The Meat Mafia Podcast

Full Audio
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[00:00:00] Should we hit it? Let's do it. One clap. You ready? Yeah.

I just pulled out the camera and said

Today's April 29th 2019

I'm gonna change my life

here's what I weigh

I just stepped on the scale

saved the video

quit my job

left my girlfriend

moved to a city where I didn't know anybody

and just restarted

Grew up in

like an overweight family

and ate McDonald's cinnamon rolls every single day for breakfast

I graduated from college

I was 23

and just went straight to work

just cold calling 150 calls every day

nonstop 10 hours a day

and it combined that ultra sedentary life with me just eating bullshit and coping from it

I got back into my previous addictions like gaming and drinking and

my life just f****** sucked man

it was a low man this was the lowest point in my entire life

I just woke up

drove my ass out to the Under Armour track in Portland

ran around this track with two gallons of water and a f****** Oreo quest bar

no electrolytes

no nothing

most intense pain in my entire f****** life

and I realized, in that same moment

that I had [00:01:00] never addressed any of the reasons why I was fat

I finished that lap 105 alone and I'm just laying on the track f****** crying

she looks at me and says

Have you ever considered sharing your story with the world?

And I know I've got to get on Instagram and TikTok somehow

I've just got to f****** do it.

woke up the next day

all the videos had a shit ton of views and I just get blown through the glass ceiling of social media and attention in a way that I never had

I'm going to launch a business and I'm going to become a f****** coach and I'm going to be the most badass f****** weight loss coach that's ever existed on this planet

I don't know how you couldn't listen to your message and not be motivated

my journey now has become more

about Operating from a place of love

and gratitude and purpose

over a place of wanting to prove my own worth

And that's what I've learned through obesity

Nick, welcome to the show, baby. Thank you. Really honored to be here on your guys show. I remember, uh, it was not too long ago that we were meeting over in that other room here at, uh, Squatch Frontier Fitness at, uh, I think it was, was it Melanie's event or it [00:02:00] was some, some event on, uh, just personal growth and we happen to be sitting next to each other and got, got the chance to speak.

And, uh, yeah, you tell me your story, losing a ton of weight. Getting yourself in shape starting to put yourself out there, and I think that was maybe maybe South by Southwest So it's probably March you had just started posting so incredible to see the journey that you're on and yeah Just really excited to have you on the show today.

Thank you, brother, and that means the world you're speaking to my soul You came just to impress today in the sport coat, bro. I'm not fucking around. It's a meat mafia podcast Come on, isn't it crazy these little like 1 percent improvements the way that it can elevate you to like even just You If you go somewhere and you slightly dress up, not too much.

I mean, it makes a, it makes a massive difference on the way that you present yourself. So I might have to little sport cut every once in a while for the pot. I'm dead serious too. I would be down. Yeah. But part of why we gravitated towards your content so much, we were saying this before we hit record. It truly is rare to [00:03:00] come across people online that Authentically just I think just tell the truth and there's like a certain heart and soul to certain people's content And you you know when you feel it and you know when you don't feel it as well and your weight loss story is like genuinely nothing short of admirable and The ethos of transformation is a topic that Harry and I have explored a lot in the show Not much from a weight loss perspective though.

So I think to start I mean, I would love to just You Tell the listener your story. Not, you know, not, um, short winded at all. But I think just, just where you were a few years ago, what kind of inspired you to change. And we'll dig into it all from there. But I think just authentically telling your story would be incredible for the guest, for the listener.

I appreciate the space to do that. My story really starts when I was a kid. I, I grew up in a single mother household with a little sister. Three female dogs and three female cats. So I was the only, the [00:04:00] only dick in the house my whole fucking life. And, uh, and I turned to and really hid from life and all the problems that I faced from growing up in a single parent household with video games and video games are really, it's so funny coming on a show and talking about this because it's just such a boyish thing to bring up.

This is one of the most instrumental things in my entire story. Because my whole life I was bad at everything. I was this fat kid that sucked ass at sports. I was the youth, you know, C team equivalent, soccer player, basketball player, throw you in the game when we're up a lot, we're down a lot, or there's nothing really on the line.

And when I started getting into playing games online, I was like, oh shit! I can be really competitive at something. And when I put more time and effort into something, I can be really, really, really good. And I developed my first obsession ever, which was the computer as a 13 or 14 year old. And I paired that with the fact that no one in my family knew shit about [00:05:00] nutrition.

Grew up in, like an overweight family, and ate McDonald's cinnamon rolls every single day for breakfast. No fruits, no vegetables, I had my first banana when I was 22 years old. Discovered that I was allergic to bananas, I didn't even know. So it's like I just had no no access to these foods. They were never in the household.

And by the time I turned 18, I was maybe 190, 200 pounds, not a fat kid. You know, I was six foot tall, but couldn't do a pushup at 200 pounds. And you could push me over with your pinky finger. And I graduated high school, went to college and decided it was time to be a real man, throw the computer away. I went out, it was 18.

For the first time in my entire life, I didn't have the language to it, but what was really happening was I didn't have any way to cope with all of these things that I had never dealt with when I was a kid. So when I got rid of playing video games, which I was doing about [00:06:00] a little over 2, 000 hours per year, so about a full time job worth of gaming, I replaced that with booze and the cafeteria in college, and also never drank.

So all these things are very new to me, right? Went into the cafeteria three, four times a day. First school year went from 200 to 250 pounds. And I come back for summer, and I'm like, What the fuck? I didn't even realize how fat I was. And that was the first time I ever went on a diet. And I was like, okay, well, If I wasn't fat, realistically, I would have had a way better school year.

I would have had way more fun at parties, I would have Attractive way more attractive women or more women that felt aligned with what I was looking for so in my head I'm like everything I'm looking for is on the other side of just not being fat So let's get this fat off the body and I went on the chicken broccoli and rice diet for maybe 65 days A little under 70 days lost like 65 pounds and never had a cheat meal one time ultra [00:07:00] disciplined ultra dialed in very motivated very strict very restrictive and Went back to college, wanted to celebrate.

Look guys, is that a fucking ab? Like everyone's like so amazed and what's so, so beautiful about weight loss is that everyone sees the transformation. So it's really affirming when you haven't seen people for a few months and now you're showing up as a totally different person. Right. And I'm like, Oh my God, best college experience ever for 30 days until I started gaining the weight back again.

And I did this cycle every single year and every single summer. On Keto, Carnivore, Low Carb, Chicken and Broccoli, If It Fits Your Macros, Intermittent Fasting, OMAD, One Meal a Day, I had the term, I don't think really existed at the time, but I was eating one meal a day, and Juice Cleansing, and I always lost and gained back 60 plus pounds every single year, and I was a different person in September than I was in May by 70 pounds every year, and when I graduated from college, I [00:08:00] was 23.

And just went straight to work. So there's no summer for me to lose all this weight, the way that I had been for the last four or five years. And I went to work at this job that just sucked the fucking soul out of me. It was a recruiter for an agency hiring 7 an hour warehouse workers in Northern Idaho.

So just cold calling it all 150 calls every day, nonstop 10 hours a day. And it combined that ultra sedentary life with me just eating bullshit and coping from it. I got back into my previous addictions like gaming and drinking and my life just f sucked man. It sucked. I hated where I lived.

I was in this relationship that I'd been in for two years that I didn't want to be in but in the back of my head I'm like, what the fuck else am I going to do? I'm a lazy fat fuck that sweats 30 seconds. It's like I don't have the ability to go out and actually find the woman that I really want to be with.

So much shit would have to change in myself for me to even be in that situation. So I was just settling for. [00:09:00] Everything, right? No close friends. And this was the moment when my life really changed. I went into work seven 30 in the morning, sat down in my cubicle and man, my shirt is so tight. So when you're losing and gaining weight like that, you've got your fat wardrobe and your skinny wardrobe.

So I've got my fat wardrobe on, but I'm starting to outgrow the fat wardrobe, just tipping over 270 pounds. I'm sitting there and I just can't breathe because my shirt is so tight. And all my co workers around me are 10, 15 years older, they're all fat, and everyone's just bitching about, I got a spam call from India last night, and the weather, and the traffic, and my wife, and I'm just sitting there going, this is my fucking life man.

Like I'm looking in the mirror at who the fuck I'm about to be in 10 years, and it was the most oppressive feeling I had ever felt, and I thought I was gonna pass out, my heart started beating out of my eyes. And I laid down on [00:10:00] the floor in the middle of this cubicle and unbuttoned my shirt. My big ass guts.

I can't breathe. It's so tight. Full, hyperventilating thinking that I'm having a heart attack at 24 years old and ended up going to the doctor that same day. My doctor who's 350 pounds asks me how my life is going and I go, well, I've got no close friends. Hate my girlfriend, hate where I live, hate my job and I'm fat.

And he's like, that makes sense. Sounds like you're dealing with some anxiety and some depression. That's why you're overweight because you have anxiety and depression. So we're going to put you on this medication and the medication was Xanax. It says on the bottle, take twice daily as needed for anxiety.

I didn't really know what anxiety was at the time. It was, this was six years ago. It wasn't as in our face as it is now. And I go home and I'm like. I think I'm feeling a little bit of that anxiety. I take one of these pills. I wake up the [00:11:00] next day with Rolos, you know those chocolate caramel things?

Yeah. Smeared all over my chest hair. Just from eating in the bed I passed out. I'm so high on Xanax. And I lived in this strung out Xanax state for two or three days. Just wasn't going to work. Mm. And was like, man, this is really great because I actually don't feel anything. And I've been feeling like shit for like the last six years.

And, it was a low, man. This was the lowest point in my entire life. It, it, it wasn't that I wanted to die. It's just that I didn't really want to live. I was like, I don't know why I'm really here. At the end of the day, I hate everything. And, I'm looking in the mirror, and I see this old, shitty little camcorder.

And I'm just looking there in the mirror. And I was so strung out, coming off this two, three day Xanax bender. Looked like dog shit. So bloated, bro. From whatever I ate the night before. Couldn't even recognize myself. And, it was just the most present moment of my entire life looking in the mirror.

Where I just thought, I'm gonna fucking die. [00:12:00] Like, I'm gonna die sooner than anybody else thinks. I can feel like I'm dying right now. And, God, it gives me chills thinking about that. I just pulled out the camera and turned it on and said, I'm Today's April 29th, 2019. And, uh, I'm gonna change my life. Here's what I weigh.

I just stepped on the scale. Saved the video. Quit my job. Left my girlfriend. Moved to a city where I didn't know anybody. Which was Portland, Oregon. I'm from the Northwest. And, uh, just restarted. I'm gonna go on it. My last diet ever. So, went into six months of isolation in Portland. outside of work, all I did was eight healthy foods and walked.

That was at 30, 000 steps every single day. Wake up, walk, go to work, come home, walk until I go to bed seven days a week. Weekends, walk 8am to 8pm constantly, no breaks. And my goal was to lose 75 pounds [00:13:00] in six months. That would have put me under 200 pounds, which I hadn't been at for a long time. So I lost 75 pounds in six months to the day.

Because I tracked every single calorie burned and consumed to the T for that entire six month period so it was set up for Me to hit my goal on the day 180 which is what happened and Was that the best feeling in the world I can't even let me tell you right now Was that the best feeling in the world that I just bet on myself and told everyone that I'm gonna change my life and then I did and That's such a great feeling That I want to go celebrate, man, because now I'm in this big city as a single guy, 24, 25 years old, that's pretty fit.

Went back out to celebrating, started drinking, started dating, started eating bullshit. Month later, I gained 10, 15 pounds back. And I'm looking in the mirror again going, At least I know my problems because most people don't even know what the fuck's wrong with their life But [00:14:00] for me like at least I know this is my thing and it'll just be my thing I accept that as as my truth, and I just was like fuck me man like At least my summers will be really fun forever.

You know and I'm on YouTube late at night, and I see this bald guy talking on a microphone And he's just talking shit about how he lost 110 pounds when he was 24 and like I'm a Navy SEAL man I run all these hundred mile races and I'm going who the fuck this was David Goggins on Joe Rogan in 2019 And I didn't even know who Joe Rogan was at the time But I was like, I'm gonna listen to this podcast first podcast.

I'd ever listened to Wow, and I listened to this show and I'm like That's bullshit, but cool like but that's bullshit And then he just, he's in my field every time I open up anything, it's David Goggins this, David Goggins that. I'm like, I'm gonna read this fucker's book. So I go read his book, which was the first book I had ever read in my entire life, maybe since elementary school.

The first podcast, first book, David Goggins. First podcast, first book, yeah, Can't Hurt Me by David Goggins. Read the whole [00:15:00] thing, did the audiobook, six or seven hours, did the whole thing in one day. So good. And, it was the first time in my life, get it gives me chills, it was the first time in my life where I ever was actually truly inspired.

Because every time I'd ever seen anybody else achieve anything, I was like, that kid comes from family money, that kid's got way better genetics, well he played football in high school so of course he's gonna have this muscular frame after he loses, it was always like me versus them, right? But when I listened to Goggins, I was like, this guy's got no dad, we were the same age, he's got all this bullshit, single mom household shit, all this trauma, horrible relationship with food, no self belief at all, and then he just did it.

And I'm sitting there going, man, if I could do 1%, just 1 percent of what this guy had achieved, it would change the course of my entire family's bloodline forever. And it would, it would exceed every expectation that I'd ever put on myself or that anyone else had ever put on me and signed up [00:16:00] to run a half marathon.

I'd like five weeks to train that never ran one mile in my whole life. Broke my foot on mile 10 of the marathon. Still finished 2 hours, 12 minutes. Greatest moment of my entire life. That's not real. Yeah, it was badass. And, but I'm just sitting there carrying the boats in my ass 13.

1 miles, right? I'm like, I'm the man, dude. And I once went 65 days of eating chicken, broccoli, and rice. And like, surely my ass could run 13 miles with no training. Did you have his audio book playing while you ran? No, I did not, no. And, um, I was always running with no music. There's a part in there where he talks about running with no music.

I'm like, I'm a hard motherfucker, man. That's when you know, that's when you know who you are, you know, yeah, like I'm not using music as a cheat code. Yeah. And, um, man ran that race, fucked up my foot, still finished. And it was the first time in my life where I had ever had a reason to not be fat.

It was to run distances. I went, Oh, I'm hooked on something like there it is. There's the reason and was in a boot for like six weeks, came out of the boot. Ran another half two weeks later and like 142 or [00:17:00] something and I was like shit, man. I'm still pretty heavy I'm like 180 190 no mutton still can't do 10 push ups and I was like I can really be a runner this is my new identity went from gamer to drinker to loser to Fat guy to now.

I'm a distance runner. That's how you're gonna get your dopamine. That's how I'm gonna get my dope Yeah, and develop some belief, you know, I just don't believe in myself and Running was the first time where I was like, I actually, when I run, I feel like I can do anything and ran two or three half marathons and then COVID happens in Portland and COVID, we, you, you couldn't be outside without a mask and it was against the law for like 18 months.

So there's no races or anything for the entire year of 2020 and I just started running then and had all these marathons planned and I get halfway through 2020 2020. And I was like, Really struggling with food. So the part of the story that I'm leaving out is that I Was eating the right quantity of food, but I was still eating bullshit So I'd like [00:18:00] get Red Robin delivered for dinner next night.

I'd get Dairy Queen next night I'd get McDonald's for the whole year of 2020 but then I'm waking up and running 40 50 miles every single week after fueled by just bullshit alone on one meal a day So I'm just white knuckling the fuck out of my weight loss results totally unhealthily And there was one day I was like, man, I'm gonna, I gotta run a marathon.

You got to get through this mental threshold. And I just woke up, drove my ass out to the Under Armour track in Portland, ran 105 miles around this track with two gallons of water and a f Oreo quest bar. No electrolytes, no, nothing. Most intense pain in my entire f life. And it was the first time where I get 18 or 19 miles into this run, 70, 80 laps by myself with no music.

And I realized, in that same moment, that I had never addressed any of the reasons why I was fat. I was like, I just hate being fat. When you're fat, you just don't want to be fat. You're not sitting there going, what's wrong with my mindset? How can I address the core of the issue? You're just like, I [00:19:00] just don't want to be fat anymore because being fat sucks.

But it was the first time where I was so deep in the pain cave I'd never been in that place before It's like all my trauma all the shit that ever happened to me that I never addressed It's all coming at me like fucking Star Wars credits And I'm just playing myself and like a video game and from the camera's view third person Running and the only way that I can keep going is if I address each of these different things all this bullshit with my dad all this bullshit with the regret that I had for never taking care of myself and I finished that lap 105 alone, nobody there, and I'm just laying on the track f crying.

And it was the most blissful experience of my entire life, man. And I started going Happy tears. Yeah, oh yeah. And I started going, I'm the fuck, man. I could really be the guy. I could really be the guy. I'm gonna run a hundred mile race. And I'm gonna be the third person that I could ever find that has lost over 100 pounds and ran a 100 mile race.

First one's Goggins. The second one is some guy that made a five minute video about [00:20:00] it and I'm gonna be the youngest one by like 10 years, so fuck yeah. And I moved across the country a couple times for work, started running, got into the ultra scene and I'm scouting out where the fuck I'm gonna go.

Where are all the runners at? They're all in Austin, Texas. So how am I going to get to Austin? My job can't get me down there. Fuck that job. Left. Moved myself down here. Got a different job. Signed up to run a 50 mile race. This is summer of 2022. In December, I've got a 50 mile run. And the plan was, because as I was losing weight, I'm videoing myself every single day on this journey back in 2019, 2020.

I feel like shit. Here's how I'm coaching myself through it. So I've got just days worth of footage from when I was fat talking to myself about how to lose weight. And my plan was, okay, I'm going to hire a documentary crew that's going to film my training for a hundred mile race. And then I'm going to tell my story coming out with this really bad ass Netflix style YouTube video, [00:21:00] and that'll be my coming out party.

So I'm one week out from this 50 mile race and I go in to get a doctor checkup and I walk in. I just, I have something to my core. It doesn't sit well with me to have a really overweight doctor. And that's just from the shit that I've experienced in my past, mostly. But I walk in, I've got an overweight doctor, and I go, Fuck.

Here we go. And they're like, well, you're running all these miles. Why don't we look at your heart, just make sure everything's okay? I go, sure. Doctor looks me dead in the face and goes, You need to get heart surgery. And I was like, in my head, I'm like, I'm so sick of fat doctors. I'm not getting heart surgery.

I go see a cardiologist the next day, he's like, you need to get heart surgery. I see another cardiologist the next day. You need to get heart surgery. And I'm just like, that's my life, man. All the shit that I did to get here, I moved here to run this race. And now I'm going to go get heart surgery for an electrical issue.

That's super rare. And, uh, I was prone to going into sudden cardiac arrest from exercise. So now I go get this [00:22:00] heart surgery, two, three month recovery, and I come back into running and The intensity is just not there. Like the chest intensity is really lacking. Get one or two hours in and there's just a deep windedness to my lungs and my heart.

I just couldn't ever work through it. And I quit running in February of 2023. So this is three or four years after I'd lost weight. I've just been running like a demon for years now, right? Completely quit cold turkey. And when I quit, I went. Shit, I never realized. I still don't have a very healthy diet.

Like pounded protein bars and protein shakes and fruit, but still a lot of bullshit. I don't feel very good. I'm still drinking pretty heavily on the weekends. I'm still rolling with a crew of friends that are partying and doing stupid shit. I'm 27 years old, right? And I just decided time to overhaul my entire life again.

What's going to be the next thing? I've been the runner for [00:23:00] years. And there's a deep rooted fear of going back to being the fat guy still at this point. And I decided I was going to go all in on relationship with food and, and optimizing my health to the best of my ability. And I just, next day, researching, all right, who are these people?

Who are the people that are really eating good foods? And um, started getting into Paul Saldino a little bit. That was when he started blowing up, like, okay, meat, fruit, that's, that seems like logically that would make sense, right? So I started eating a lot of meat, fruit, rice, vegetables, potatoes, dairy products, and, and.

Never felt so good in my entire life as I did after a month or so of doing that. No cravings, no wanting of processed foods, like all the new, all the noise just completely went away and started really feeling like what it's like to excel in my own body and feel healthy versus being skinny. I made that transition from skinny to healthy.

Everything about my life changed when I started eating better and I'm doing this for six, seven months. Fast forward to December of 23, so [00:24:00] about a year ago. And, I'm just lonely, bro. Like, I dropped all my friends that were doing shit that I, that didn't feel like it was serving. I've still got this fantasy of running all these races, but I'm like, I, man, it's been like nine months since I've ran anything, and I'm just kind of falling back into that darkness of like, what, what am I really doing?

You know, I'm making a buck fifty a year at this job, for what? Like, what am I even going to do with the money? Like, the whole thing was, I don't, why am I even on this planet, again? Looking for purpose, looking for purpose. And, And I went to this, um, I went to this yoga retreat December of last year. And, Had a really intense connection with a woman that I met at this yoga retreat.

And, after a day or two of spending time with her, she looks at me and says, Have you ever considered sharing your story with the world? And when she said it, I went, [00:25:00] What the fuck did you just say? And it was like God spoke through her. It wasn't, it wasn't even her voice. It was the world, my whole spine just lit up.

And, It triggered in me this there were points where I would post on Instagram for seven or eight days and then be like Oh, no, fuck that and then just delete it all and I never really moved forward with it when she said it It was like I lived that whole experience of what would have happened had I just not quit posting And God man with the next morning.

I wake up bought a microphone From podcast episode one the next day got a pod bean account Spotify Apple everything launched within 12 hours of Me receiving that and that being activated in me And I posted two or three episodes of this podcast, right? And I'm like, okay. I've got all these videos though from when I was fat.

I've never seen anything like this before. And I know I've got to get on Instagram and TikTok somehow. I've just got to f do it. And man, I just picked up my phone and I said, I'm feeling a lot of resistance to [00:26:00] posting content on Instagram. And it's the same resistance that I faced. When I was fat as fuck and I knew that I should be losing weight, but I just didn't really want to do it.

What I learned was when you overcome resistance at one thing, you overcome resistance in anything. So here I am at the start of my Instagram journey, which feels like day one of my weight loss journey. I posted it, watched it like 10 times. It was like, this is the dumbest shit I've ever seen, but that's okay.

Nobody watches it. Right? Second day, I pick up the phone. I go. When I was fat as fuck. I wish someone just told me that if you just eat healthier foods, like whole real natural foods, you're gonna feel amazing. But nobody talks about that. 'cause when you're fat, you just wanna lose weight. Posted it. Nobody watches the video.

And I'm going, damn, what the fuck am I even doing? This is so dumb. I got like, my friends from high school are like, what the fuck are you posting on Instagram, man? Like this is, and it's such a good tagline that you have too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I wake up. So the third day, what a hook. Yeah. [00:27:00] The third, a hook man.

The third day I go, when I was fat as fuck. Someone told me that losing weight wouldn't make me happy, but the person that said that was never fat. And also, they never told me that all the bullshit that comes with being fat, when you just put it all behind you, it makes space for whatever you want to pull into your life.

And that will make you happy. So fuck them. And I posted it, and dude woke up the next day, all the videos had a shit ton of views. And then every reel was half a million, million, three million, five million, just right off the bat. And I just get blown through the glass ceiling of social media and attention in a way that I never had.

And I've been in these isolatory phases of my life where I'm just constantly trying to up level my life by up leveling the people that are influencing me. And now all of a sudden I'm an influ overnight, I'm an influence and people are asking me for advice and I'm going, What the fuck, man? I don't know, let me think about that, you know?

I haven't really even reflected on my whole journey at this point. I've just got these old videos, you know, [00:28:00] and um, every day I'm just posting and I'm just getting thousands of people. Like, I've never heard anybody talk about weight loss like this. I've never heard anybody speak in a way that's so blunt around what it actually takes.

And it was so encouraging, man. It was so encouraging having all of that. Attention and then in visualizing moving that attention and that energy right back into more content and trying to be as authentic as I can and just billboarding my life and all the things and all the insecurities that that I had ever been around and as things are taking off.

In a way that it's just, I mean, it's not even real. I'm living in la la land, right? Like I, I am unstoppable. I'm fucking God. Nothing that I touch is not going to work. It's all goal. Like that's what's going through my head right now, right? And combine this with this relationship that I had just started end of December, end of January.

I'm going, this is just the world's way of reaffirming that everything I'm doing is, is right where the fuck I'm supposed to be. [00:29:00] And I started getting introduced to. Uh, you know, what people call spiritual community here in Austin. And I find myself in these rooms of really successful spiritual entrepreneurs.

People that are talking about their past lives. People that are talking about mindfulness, breath work, meditation. And I'm going, all of this feels really natural to me. Thank you. Because I've been practicing all of these things my whole life, without even knowing what the fuck I was doing or having the language to it, but practicing breathwork meditation and mindfulness through distance running with no music, like it's all the exact same thing.

Definitely. And that transition felt, felt really natural to me, but I felt this deep sense, man, and this is the part that nobody talks about, this deep sense of my fat mind started really coming back. And I started going, Oh, I'm not good enough, man. Like, I'm not good enough to be in these [00:30:00] rooms with these people that have been these established entrepreneurial, really integrous people for years now, and I'm just this 29 year old that's coming out and just blowing up on Instagram, but I don't really know what the fuck is happening.

I just know how to talk to my phone in a way that gets people excited and seems real. And I found myself really comparing and wanting to prove. And I started going, oh fuck, this is exactly what I used to do when I was running. Let me prove to myself, let me prove to my dad that I was worthy. Let me prove to the world that I'm not fat, man, I'm an ultra runner.

Let me prove, let me prove, let me prove. And I took all that negativity. It's like David Goggins talks about this all the time, right? I took all that negativity and I just got so used to converting it into into action That was it was the only fuel that I could even use. I didn't even love myself I hated myself through this whole journey and I just you're a bitch my ass into permanent Results, right?

And I hated it man I got to the point where I couldn't sleep and I'm just me versus everyone I want to prove to these people that I'm worthy, I want to prove to these people that I [00:31:00] can be a badass entrepreneur, I want to prove to these people that I can have massive positive impact on the world as I am right now.

And oh, I just grew so insecure because it's triggering in me all, I wired my brain the way that I lost weight to continue to have this proving attitude. And, man, after a few months in this relationship, I, it just, I couldn't do it anymore. And I left, didn't have the tools to work through any of these things, and went into isolation again.

So six, seven months ago, I'm like, I'm going to launch a business and I'm going to become a f coach and I'm going to be the most badass f weight loss coach that's ever existed on this planet. Mark my words, all y'all wrong about me. And I did, I did, man, I launched a business. It's, it's been very successful and in a way that, that.

Is unprecedented in my own life, and I feel amazing about that But what I realized was that I'm actually living out the same cycles again and again and again and again in different ways in my life overcome through proving to other people [00:32:00] So my journey now has become more about Operating from a place of love and gratitude and purpose over a place of wanting to prove my own worth And that's what I've learned through obesity.

That's what I've learned through You Relationship. That's what I've learned through mindfulness and that's my next step. Wow. Dude, I don't even know what direction to take it after that story. It's such an incredible testimony, um, to the, the cycle of the, so much of it is a physical cycle from the outside looking in, but what you're dealing with is so much more And, um, yeah.

I'm curious, like what do you feel like going through this process that you ultimately had to drop off in order to become the version that you're now, the path that you're now walking on, you know, freeing yourself from that pattern that you were in. Mm-Hmm. what, what [00:33:00] were the things that you just needed to like, let go of the idea that love is to be earned?

Yeah. So, so my whole life I always felt like, uh, when I think about unconditional love, sometimes people say unconditional love is for women and dogs only, which I think is funny. Sometimes it feels pretty true, right? And just the mindset, what that does, regardless of whether or not it's true, letting myself believe that has put me in situations where I've gone, I've just got to prove my worthiness to deserve love from anyone or anything.

And it's made it really hard for me to connect with the love in myself. The intensity of connections that I've had recently has really sparked a depth of love for me, where I've gone, man, I can actually fully operate from a place of positivity versus negativity all the time. And it's cured the war in my own head.

So I call it, like, the healthy mind versus the fat mind. It's this constant war that we see people talk about, like, just out discipline weight loss. It's like, when you do [00:34:00] that, You are constantly thinking about the good versus evil, the right versus left, the yin versus the yang, in your own mind.

And I have cured the war in my own mind, simply by just connecting more with what I actually want, and only focusing on things that are going positively. So, yeah man, what I've let go of is just other people's perceptions. And, and I've let go of the need to dislike myself and the need to prove to myself that I'm worthy and I've done it by The biggest thing for me has been morning mantras So I wake up every morning.

I say I choose a big life. I choose positive impact and influence. I choose legacy to be remembered as someone who didn't quit Someone who always told the truth I choose true financial and locational freedom. I choose magic And adventure I choose irrational positivity Everything I choose is already inside of me.

Everything I choose is already inside of me. And what it does is it makes it so that all these [00:35:00] things I'm talking about are not on the other side of achievement. Which is the same as weight loss. We think that we're going to be healthy after we lose weight. It's not the reality. You have to be healthy to lose weight.

We have it backwards, which leads to unsustainable results. And that's what manifestation is. It's pulling the future into the now.

So, when I think I want to be on Joe Rogan next year. So goal of mine for 2025, how would I dress to Joe Rogan's podcast? The same way I'm going to dress to the meat mafia podcast right now, I'm going to move like I've already been on Joe Rogan's podcast.

I don't need to prove anything to be on Joe Rogan's podcast because everything I need is already inside of me. And I visualized being on this podcast so hard that it's like I already have, it feels like a memory. It's being able to connect more with the desire of what I really want for myself has. Has really helped me drop all of the negativity and the bullshit man.

Do I feel light? Mm hmm. So that's a Incredibly powerful mental framework. So you're saying that When you have the fat minor you're [00:36:00] 275 you you are starting by acting like you're the version of Nick That's 165 pounds. And how does Nick that's 165 pounds eat? Does he get 20, 000 steps a day? Does he prioritize eight hours of sleep?

Does he prioritize water over soda? You So you're, you're saying, I'm a healthy person first before you start making all these changes. And most people have it flipped. Completely backwards. I had it backwards for years of losing and gaining weight. I think that I'm going to be happy after I lose weight, I'm going to feel better after I lose weight.

Once I lose weight, I'm going to start waking up at 7am and going on a 10 minute walk. It's like all you have to do, if you want to really come back to simplicity, ask someone that's morbidly obese what they would do if they were healthy, like write out what your day would be like. And then you just give it back to them and say, there you go, if you do that every day for 90 days, you're going to feel amazing.

And they go, never thought of it like that before. It's so simple, right? But that's, weight loss is not something to be achieved. It's something that, that is the healthy version of you is inside of you. You're not going to [00:37:00] pull it out of thin air. You're going to push it out of yourself. It's really the only sustainable way to achieve anything.

Yeah. Do you think most people intuitively know what they're doing? The right things that they should be doing to lose weight. That's something that Goggins talks about. And I'm curious if you agree or disagree.

That's such an amazing question.

Yes. I think that everybody knows what they should be doing to lose weight. I do not think that most people understand the difference between weight loss and sustainable weight loss. There's healthy diets, there's weight loss diets, and there's healthy weight loss diets. Most people never combine the two things.

They exist either in health or they exist in not health, but to really meet the Most people have never been on [00:38:00] been in a calorie deficit of mostly whole and natural foods Most people that are losing weight are losing weight in ways that are either ultra restrictive So they're constantly focused on what they can't eat which isn't sustainable for like the suburban mom You know, uh, most other people outside of that are juicing or doing Weight Watchers or doing other bullshit that requires a lot of discipline to be really dialed in.

The reality is that unless you're committing to existing in that discipline for the rest of your life, it's not going to be sustainable for you. So people lose weight and they go, I actually don't want to, you know, like, can I eat cake on my birthday? I guess I can't. If you eat the cake on your birthday, is that going to throw you off because you've been avoiding cake for six months on keto?

Right. So it's people don't, don't really ask themselves those questions. So no, most people do not know how to lose weight sustainably. Most people know how to lose. Everybody knows how to lose weight. Every fat person has lost weight before they just gain it back. What are the most common lies that you mentioned a few for your, for yourself, but what are some of the most common lies that people are running into as they're trying to [00:39:00] lose weight?

The most common lies? Yeah, so like, you mentioned like, you know, they came from money or like, you know, the Goggins, the Goggins story. What lies have you heard in the coaching business? Like people telling themselves or coaches telling people? No, no, they're telling themselves. Oh, okay. It's easier for men to lose weight than women?

Well, these aren't all lies. These are limiting beliefs, right? Yeah. And limiting beliefs are pretty regularly true. Like, I don't have good genetics. Fuck man, I got the worst genetics ever. You know, it's, I've always been fat. True. Limiting belief. Though it's a truth, it doesn't benefit you to believe it. You know, it's easier for women.

It's easier when you're younger. All these things are true, or it's easier for men. All these things are true, but when you let yourself believe these lies and you just tell yourself it doesn't matter whether or not it's true. It allows you to actually step into positive action. So if you're someone that's been fat for your entire life and you've lost weight and you've gained weight back and you're looking in the mirror going, well man, I've already done this five times.

I don't know how this is [00:40:00] going to be any different. Then it's not going to be any different. I mean, it can't be, you're not even giving yourself the opportunity for it to be any different. So a lot of the work that I do is helping people understand the power of language in their own weight loss journey.

It's easier to lose weight when you're younger, but I'm not younger. I'm older. And I missed that opportunity when I was younger. Now I have an opportunity to learn from all of the bullshit that I've done my entire life that got me to this point, and I choose to change who I am right now in the mind.

With the snap of a finger, I choose to have a healthy mindset right now and live life like a healthy person. And over the course of the next three months, my body will catch up to my mind. When you reframe that, it's like, Oh, I can do that right now. Yeah, but, but we're all telling ourselves things all the time that aren't really.

Benefiting us. Yeah. And it takes mindfulness to pause and be able to recognize that thought is not serving me whether it's true or not. I choose to believe to say out loud. I choose to not believe [00:41:00] that thought even if it's true. Yeah, when you um, when you vocalize A negative thought. I forget what the statistic is, but it's like some exponent.

It's exponentially more powerful when you say it out loud and you can't control the initial input of the the input. Yeah, of thought that you get, but then that second thought you can control how far you want to let it go. Um, I wanted to get back to some of the David Goggins stuff because I think there are a lot of men that have gone through a Goggins arc in life.

And I understand why it's so attractive because you could take this almost like. Like this suppressed rage that you've had and just like throw it into that thing. And it works really well for a period of time. And like a lot of things you hit that goal and maybe that, that rage starts to go away and you don't have that fuel source.

That was just your impetus for just being like, fuck it. I'm going to go from Portland to Austin and quit my job and figure it out. You know, that, that, that running was taken away from you. And it ultimately allowed you to [00:42:00] transform into this version of Nick that you are now. Through the common sense diet, which is something I think is way more sustainable, slow burning.

That's something that's going to, that you're going to be able to commit to for. You know your entire life and that's the whole purpose of what I think you talk about through the common sense approach is this is something that it's not a hack it's not a shortcut it's slit steady consistent compounding with nutrition over a long period of time and I would love for you to be able to explain to the audience um just what is the common sense approach to nutrition from your perspective.

Yeah I want to answer your David Goggins questions first. Please. David Goggins is committed to that level of discipline and intensity in a specific domain for the rest of his life and I stepped into that domain in a way that I once thought was impossible for myself and did not live that to the to the fullest the way that I desired to because of the surgery and that sucked but what I learned was David Goggins his [00:43:00] legacy his Dharma is intensity discipline over everything What I really desire to leave into this world is that, Man, I live an intense fucking lifestyle.

I'm dialed the fuck in. My entire minute of every single day is scheduled. The only thing that I am not disciplined in all the time, The only thing in my life that I'm not intense about is nutrition and exercise. That's it. Every other thing, coaching, I'm all the fuck in. Business, I'm all the fuck in.

My brothers, I'm all the fuck in. Ride or die, man. I don't have any friends. I only have brothers, all or nothing intensity, but not with nutrition. And what the common sense approach is, is it teaches people this concept of we want to dissociate all of the things that lead to unsustainable results from food.

So when we think about count, I want to lose weight, so I'm going to count all my calories. What are you going to do after you lose weight? Are you going to keep counting all your calories or are you going to actually learn? How many calories are [00:44:00] in the different foods and then practice eating without counting, right?

I'm gonna weigh myself every day on my weight loss journey That fucks with your mind because you don't lose weight every day. You can't measure fat day to day Are you going to commit to weighing yourself? So we really go through like every single unsustainable thing on this common sense approach and we find balance in everything How regularly do you think you should be eating healthy foods?

I don't know 80 percent of the time great. Let's start there What are some of the foods that you eat the most often? Typically, it's bullshit. Okay, we're gonna stop eating bullshit all the time What let's come up with five or ten meals This is the number one thing if anyone listening to this is really struggling with obesity right now You're eating the same five to ten things on repeat all the time At home or even eating out you have go to places instead of reinventing the wheel and getting on some diet Let's just build five or ten meals that you actually like You That are made of mostly whole natural single ingredient or trigger alert real [00:45:00] foods, right?

And that you can cook in less than 10 minutes and then set yourself up for success less than 10 minutes I don't dread cooking. I like the taste. I never get flavor fatigue or diet fatigue. I don't hate my diet Everything's high in protein already measured already dialed to fit inside of your macros If you do 30 minutes of work up front You can set yourself up for a lifetime of successful healthy relationship with food and healthy eating But people don't do the 30 minutes of work up front.

They'd rather just count all their calories every meal, every day. It doesn't make any sense. So that's the common sense approach is control your environment by spending one hour with me and making that your reality and then standardizing on meals the way that you already unintentionally are.

It's just the meals you're standardized on are bullshit. Mm. Mm. Then you take that and you practice positive self talk, how you're speaking to yourself in the mirror, Video journaling how you're feeling and what you're doing and it's just like common sense. We're just practicing mindfulness It's just can you breathe and connect with how are you going to feel after you do something?[00:46:00]

Like how are you gonna feel after you eat a piece of cake? You're gonna feel fine. How are you gonna feel after you eat two pieces of cake? You're gonna feel like shit if you just pause and breathe you'll realize that your body actually already knows the answers to what's good for You and what isn't so we're bringing mindful practice into into eating You know, the reason why people are so fat is because people don't pray over food anymore And they don't eat with their families So whether you believe in god as jesus's father or god as divine spirit or you're atheist It's like doesn't really matter you really benefit from just pausing And breathing before you put something into your body because you're never going to pause and breathe your ass into a whole bag of doritos There's not you know, and it how common sense Totally That's such a legendary comment like I, I just think the practice of slowing down for a lot of people, uh, I could pull them out of those short feedback loops of just kind of like the food, the food addict's mind.

I'm curious, do you, do you think that food addiction is actually a real thing? [00:47:00] Very rare. Extremely, I'm extremely overdiagnosed. Yeah. Maybe, maybe one person that I've ever coached would I say had a real food addiction. Wow. Yeah. Very, very, very rare. What, what's the difference in, in kind of these people who are being diagnosed as food addicts but actually aren't?

A lot of it comes down to do you benefit from believing in your own food addiction? So let's say that I'm wrong and that every single diagnosis, everyone that ever said they were a food addict, they, they were, and all the diagnoses were right. If you're a food addict, do you benefit from even believing that you're a food addict?

Or would you benefit more from saying, actually food addiction isn't real. What are the things in my life that I'm using food to cope from? If I address the root of the issue, you'll find that you probably don't actually have that much of a food issue. You probably just have more of a life issue than anything.

That's actually a really interesting point because Food is extremely hyper palatable, but there are times where I've eaten a [00:48:00] lot of processed food and then internally made the decision to stop doing it and then was able to immediately the next day shift to whole unprocessed single ingredient real foods or something like, you know, nicotine pouches or caffeine.

It's different. It's very different. That's a really important point. We take this is what people take the alcoholics approach to food or the cigarettes approach to food, which is cold turkey. Cut it. And they'll go, well, I'm gonna lose weight by cold turkey, cold turkey cutting processed foods entirely.

But you create a negative relationship with something that you're avoiding most of the time. Food isn't like alcohol because you have to eat every day. Food isn't like cigarettes because you have to eat every day. It's not I'm just gonna quit. Yeah, right. So I struggle because I eat McDonald's every day and my kids like pizza.

So we get Pizza Hut delivered three times a week. It's like, Let's practice getting pizza delivered one time per week instead. Like you can find balance. This is not alcohol. You can find balance with this. You can do this one day a week. And you can sit with the discomfort of wanting [00:49:00] more after you eat a normal portion size.

And you can do that every time with intentionality for one month. You can order pizza and intentionally eat two pieces and then sit with it. People get so mad. People get so mad at me online. The people that come from like the, the, the really negative relationship with food space, the Binging space, the bulimia space, this triggers the fuck out of people.

But this is actually what it takes to overhaul your relationship with food. It takes sitting down with intentionality for a month, and having a plan, and putting yourself in the situations intentionally, where you typically would fuck up and overeat a ginormous amount of food, and practice not doing it.

And then video yourself saying, I'm feeling like doing this and I'm going to practice not doing it to prove to myself that I have control over what I put into my body. That's how you conquer what people call food addiction. It's not to just avoid the alcohol. It's to jump into the bar and sit there and gargle with booze because in this case you have to eat to live.

So you're saying that when [00:50:00] you have a client that wants to have that insane binge, you're having them videotape, videotape it and talk through their feelings out loud. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you have to. That's amazing. That's actually, it's funny, I'm rereading Atomic Habits, and I think my initial thought process was like, oh, this is just like a cliche book, I read it five years ago, I already know a lot of the things that are in there.

And then I had a good buddy, That was working with me over because I just quit nicotine pouches 26 days ago struggled with it bad He was like you should reread atomic habits It's been on the bestsellers list for 260 weeks for a reason and one of the things that he talks about is coaching yourself to Call out the bad behavior, whether it's you know Eating a piece of eating the the wrong cheat meal or about to scroll on On social media or watch porn or whatever that thing is for you I forget what the strategy is called, but the Japanese train system It's the most efficient train system in the world and all of their conductors are Talking out loud the mistakes that are about to happen and then the New York's the New [00:51:00] York subway system started doing the same thing and their incidence of accidents went down by like 90 percent so like when you're about to have that meal literally saying if I eat this meal It's gonna set up myself my future You know my future family from becoming the version of me that I want to become or whatever it is So I love that you that you're encouraging clients to do that.

It's that it's that in combination with with this concept There's ten rules to this this diet that I built called the common sense diet rule number nine is eat mom's apple pie when she makes it So, what I mean by that is I, I really disagree with the concept of cheat meals in general. What eat mom's apple pie means is eat celebratory foods celebratorily.

Like, food is connection and culture and memory, and in a situation where you go home for Christmas and your mom makes apple pie and I can't eat it because I'm not eating carbs, mom's sorry. It's like, that's kind of a problem, you know? And that is a little bit of you, Potentially being a slave to to what you've optimized for and what I want people to understand it like [00:52:00] my real Impact that I want to have is that there is a world where you can eat one piece of pie and it's fine Most people either don't eat the pie or they'll eat three or four pieces and then bring a pie home and throw it in The fridge and eat a piece every day till it's gone It's like you can just have one piece of pie And sit with that slow the fuck down and enjoy it the way it was meant to be enjoyed like make love To that pie, you know, like people just miss that whole thing They don't, food is one of the best things on this planet.

That's such a good rule. It's really, it feels like it's mostly coming from US culture. This diet culture around, like, like I lived in Italy for a little bit, and if you even thought about the idea of not eating Nani's dessert that she made, like, if you thought about not eating that, like, you would be kicked out of the family.

Mhm. And it's like. Um, you know, in the U. S. it's become very common for us to kind of just have these rules. Diet culture is so pervasive at this point, um, that it's almost commonplace to start having like these [00:53:00] restrictive mindsets when food is the connection, as you're saying. When there's still, there's still, man, there's just this reality that people don't like to talk about.

The people that lose weight in restriction. This does not take into account people that have specific medical issues that they're on very specific diets for, so those people set aside. The people that go into restriction for the sake of permanent weight loss always have this war in their mind where they're uncomfortable in the situation.

It's like if I, when you lose weight by, I'm gonna cut out booze on my weight loss journey. It's like, yeah man, but like on my birthday, you're gonna come out and have a glass of wine. You can't do it. You can't do it, right? And it just gets to the point where like, you're always thinking about food.

Where I really operate is, is in what I call the food noise space. Are you guys familiar with food noise? No. Food noise is this concept of constantly thinking about anyone overweight listening to this will, will feel this. It's constantly thinking about I should lose weight. I'm [00:54:00] on a diet. I'm off a diet.

What am I going to do to lose weight? Great. I lost two pounds. I feel great. God, I gained 0. 4 pounds. I feel like shit. I'm going to over, I'm going to under eat to make up for it. And then you're just in this cycle forever. This is the reality for so many people that are fat. The way to work through the food noise is not to restrict yourself.

Because even if you restrict yourself to your weight loss goal, the food noise will never go away. You'll always be thinking about the thing that you're not allowing yourself. You'll always feel like you're restrictive and you'll always have this fear of potentially gaining the weight back because you've never built comfort around the thing that you're avoiding.

Interesting. So it sounds like there's just this, okay. underlying degree of mental friction that people have to just chisel away at and chip away at. I guess my question to you is, I would just imagine, you know, if you're, you know, 275 or 310 pounds and you're listening to this podcast, it's just like, how do you just get that Like, initial gust of wind to get started when you [00:55:00] literally have zero dopamine.

Yeah. Which I know is such a, it's such a loaded question and it's probably so case dependent, but Yeah. That's probably the bit, like, how do you just crack that code in the beginning when you're just in like You know, you're like a pile of rubble, essentially. Yeah, people say that you can't make someone want to do something.

Or you can't make someone want to lose weight. I, I disagree whole heartedly. When you, when you're really speaking to somebody that's obese, I, I visualize I'm talking to my old self. And I go, look, I know you've tried this a bunch of different times. Realistically, if 10 years? Like, I'm not going to feel good.

And like, close your eyes. Like, take a breath. Really walk them through. Where are you going to be living? Are you going to be walking up a staircase? Are you going to have kids if you don't have any kids now? Is it possible that you won't be able to have kids due to your own obesity? Is it possible you'll be diabetic or pre diabetic and you start really walking them through all the possibilities and they go, fuck, I never really really sat and never let myself really sit in what might happen, right?[00:56:00]

Okay. It creates fear. There's something that we're going to run away from. This is Jordan Peterson talks about this all the time. Paint very clear what you're running away from. Okay, that's a great place to start. And that's where I started. I didn't know what I was running towards. Only what I'm running away from.

But as you start running away, you can start connecting with what you're running towards. But it's really hard to see what you're running towards when you're just obsessed with feeling like you should be doing something. The most interesting part of weight loss is that When you lose weight and actually put it behind you not when you lose weight and live in fear or restriction But when you work through balance and develop an actual healthy relationship with food and yourself You can just have so much mental space.

Yes. It's like well now fuck People go I don't know what like what are you gonna? Who are you gonna be if you're not fat people don't even know What are you gonna think about day to day? What how's dinner with your wife gonna be if you're not like thinking about this is a cheat meal Oh, I should be eating less.

How many calories are in this? How different would that connection be? How different would sex with your woman be? [00:57:00] How different would your presence in the room be if you felt good about your own body? Would your kids respond better to you if you sat a little straighter and looked them in the eyes and meant what you said?

It's like, yeah, they fucking would. People don't want to think about it though, right? And you paint that really clear picture of what's actually possible for you. You go, great. The way we're gonna do that is by living that one right now. When you just make it stupidly clear, write it down, video yourself, speak it, listen to yourself, say it.

And you have the body of work to be able to speak to a client like this, because I look at these, you know, you talk about the Jordan Peterson future authoring exercise, you know, 10 years of good decisions. What does that version of Nick look like? 10 years of bad decisions? What does that version of Nick look like?

Even just hearing you tell your story, there is a version of Nick that's Literally was self medicating himself on Xanax 275 waking up with melted chocolate bars on your chest versus now, you know, 200, 000 Instagram followers flourishing coaching business. Good looking dude in a sport coat on our podcast.

It's like, it's pretty amazing the, the dichotomy [00:58:00] of the directions that you can go, man. And it's like, I don't know how you couldn't listen to your message and not be motivated. Weight loss is the ultimate teacher to a fat person. And people say that everything you're looking for is on the other side of losing weight.

Everything you're looking for is in the journey of addressing sustainable weight loss and sustainable relationship with food. Everything that I've learned about myself, everything that I've learned about how to look somebody in the eyes, everything, all the speaking ability that I've learned, the storytelling ability that I've, that I've learned has all come from practice.

The first thing that I ever practiced with intentionality successfully was weight loss and it gives you that cookie jar You can always go back to Man, this is gonna be really hard But it's not as hard as when I lost 110 pounds and I've kept it off for what's not been six years That was two billion times harder than anything else that I'm doing now And it just gives you that strong reference point man And I truly believe people that are fat have the golden ticket [00:59:00] the golden ticket You can inspire so many people in a visual way.

People will be coming to you asking what the fuck kind of pills or what kind of needles you're sticking in your ass and you'll be able to look at them and say, I'm just changing who I am as a person. And you're so fortunate that people are so fortunate to have that opportunity because that change is absolutely possible.

When you're talking, I just keep going back to the idea of your strength really being telling yourself the truth. And you've kind of just trained that into everything that you're doing at this point. And even the way that you're talking about how you speak to your clients You're just telling them The truth or a truth that they need to start to live their life within and i'm curious just like how You've obviously done it through repetition but how can people start to like Experiment with giving themselves that truth So they can start living in and stepping into that life that You are now living in and hopefully they can step into at some point.

Yeah You It's, it's, [01:00:00] what do you actually want for your life? I think the one question, if everyone in the world knew the answer to that question and could speak it without even thinking, right? When you ask someone what they really want, if they, if they can't say it in two seconds, then they don't really know.

You can think your way into something that you maybe should want. What do you really want? Why don't you have it right now? Could you have it right now? What would that look like? What would that feel like? Can you visualize having it right now? Does anyone else in the world have it? How did they get it?

Are you willing to do that? Can you do that? It's like you just blunt man. Yes or no? Yeah, get down to the yes or no Sometimes it's no like I can't be a nba player. It's not gonna happen And that's fine, you know, it's also not what I want But I truly believe to my core that if I wanted to be a professional guitar player I could I don't know how to play guitar Yeah to my core believe if you put me in a room for six months with the internet connection and YouTube that I would [01:01:00] Leave as a professional guitar player Yeah.

It's to see that. I just, I don't, like, I want to, but I don't really want to. Yeah. But it's like, if I could press a button and do that, I would do it. But I don't, like, I don't fuckin in my gut want to. Neither. What do you in your gut want? Yeah. And if you don't know the answer to that, fuckin drop every single thing that you possibly can and lock yourself in a fuckin room until you know the answer.

Or get out and run with no earphones on until you pass out. You're gonna learn something about yourself. Go to the Under Armour track and run 105 laps and rip yourself down to the core of who you are. Yeah, but man, it's, it's, that, that's all this is. This, this whole game of life that we're playing is just people trying to figure out what they want.

And then going after what they want. That's the whole game. Should I do this or not? Would a, I wanna be healthy, would a healthy person do this or not? I want to have massive impact. Brett asked me if I wanted to be on the show. Would somebody with massive impact and legacy come on the show? Fuck yeah, they would.

It's a golden opportunity. Yes. If they wouldn't have, I would have said no, right? It's [01:02:00] every decision is like, Does this make sense for what I choose for my life? And for what I want my kids to know about me? And my grandkids to know about me? Yes. Let's just do that. And like, how simple. That's actually just beautifully simple and encouraging because it sounds like, With you it's identity shift first.

Who does Nick want to be? I'm gonna act in accordance with that version of Nick and then every decision whether it's a meal that you could eat or shouldn't eat, a podcast that you could potentially go on, it does just support this version of Nick that I want to become, yes or no. If yes, I do it. If no, I don't do it.

Right. And then you just break it down a moment at a time, a meal at a time, simple. And that's the positive feeling. The feeling that you get from living that is a billion times better than the feeling that you get from any drugs or alcohol. It's just, can you put off the short term and just ask yourself, like, how's this, how am I going to feel 30 minutes after doing this?

You can do that with every single thing, man. I mean, within 30 days, you're going to be walking different. Totally. And that's all it takes, man, is it, it could, [01:03:00] you could literally be an unrecognizable version of yourself in 30 days. I know this sounds so simple, but you know, Monday of last week, I don't want to say I had a mental breakdown, but I was really low and I was trying to figure out, I'm like, why do I feel so low?

Why do I almost feel a bit manic? And I was preying on it, and I had the feeling of, I was like, I feel like there's still so much of Brett that's locked up inside, but I'm scrolling on social media so much that I'm not doing the things that I should be doing to build the dream life that I want to be able to build for myself and my family.

And I, the next morning, I just, Went to the kitchen counter and did an hour and a half of work Before I scrolled on my phone or did any even before I went to the gym I went to the gym as my reward use my phone as my reward Started reading atomic habits again, and then even seven days later It's like the way that I feel that I'm operating in business is different than Monday of last week And now it's yeah now it's on me to keep it [01:04:00] sustainable and we'll see where I am in a month from now but Even that is a proof of what you're saying that it could be like just one small win of getting that dopamine hit and now just compound on it, you know, some, something that I always say to people is, is you give yourself permission to do the thing that serves you.

People don't think like that. Most of the time, not right. Like, what would it look like to give yourself permission to do that for five days in a row? If you're pretty what would it look like to give yourself permission to just make a healthier decision around food right now instead of waiting Until tomorrow morning to start your diet.

It's like oh, I I Don't know and when you put the power in the present moment to and Make that right decision in the moment instead of putting off eating healthy the next meal Mm hmm, you then now have that cook one cookie in the cookie jar in the wind column. Yeah The, so much of this, uh, this bubble that we exist in, in, [01:05:00] in the space of, you know, really successful athletes or big food influencers, people that represent ideas.

We're in a community of people that represent ideas and

what I want people to understand is that

there is a world where, where you maintain the results that you've built with by changing your defaults. No diet will ever result in permanent weight loss ever, unless you're going to stay on the diet forever. It just won't. It may be for one in a hundred people. Most people, it doesn't. There is a world where you can actually change your baseline that you fall back to.

And it's like brushing your teeth and it doesn't take any discipline. When you were born, you came out of the womb. You didn't even know what a toothbrush was, right? When you were two, your mom's like, here's how to brush your teeth. And you [01:06:00] fuckin rebelled. You didn't want to brush your teeth for fuckin years.

You regularly skipped, and you got a cavity, your mom was pissed off. Brush your fuckin teeth, and then she showed you again how to do it. You did it. Maybe even through high school, or if you were drinking a lot of booze, you still regularly skipped brushing your teeth before you fuckin went to bed. Yeah.

Now, I hope, let me see your guys teeth. You got good, yeah, we got good teeth. You guys brush your teeth morning and night. Yeah. Right? With toothpaste? Yes. Yeah? Good water? Yeah. Yeah? A little mouthwash. Yeah, a little mouthwash. Yeah. You don't even think about it. No, do you want to brush right now? Like do you want to brush your teeth?

No, like, you know, fuck it. It's like I don't want to brush my teeth I actually dislike brushing my teeth. It seems just like a two minutes of my life that I don't like to do it Right. I just do it without even having to think about it. It's a default habit Sustainable weight loss in relationship with food with the right attention and with the right process can become the same thing.

So I don't think about keeping weight off. It's not even, there's no world where I would gain the weight back and it's not because I'm disciplined, which I am. It's not because I'm out [01:07:00] disciplining my results. I could never leave my room ever again and I would never gain the weight back because my defaults are completely changed.

I love healthy foods. Like, love them. I love meat, fruit, rice, vegetables, potatoes, and dairy products, and I actually don't really like bullshit anymore. I just eat it celebratorily when it makes sense. You can really, if you don't make that switch, you'll always be at war with yourself. You'll always hear the fat mind.

You have to make the mental switch, and the way to do it is to just practice and document. Hmm. Do you believe, this is gonna take this conversation in a different direction, but, Um, You have me thinking about just destiny and the idea of limiting beliefs. Do you believe in destiny? And I think that's almost the highest form of belief.

So I'm curious, you know, what, what you believe in. I believe that we are completely in control of our own realities. Completely. I believe that anything that you believe is true is true. So I believe that if you believe in destiny, then that is your reality. If I don't believe in destiny, then that is [01:08:00] my reality.

I choose to believe in destiny and magic and spirit because it's just a more fun way to live Yeah, like how boring to not believe in any of those things, right? Mm hmm. I want to live an exciting life man, and I and I those things make my life more exciting They make me feel like I have more purpose They make things seem more intangible and more magical and I want to live in a world with magic where we can snap Our fingers and control what's happening?

Yeah. Yeah, I believe very very deeply. I believe in destiny, but I believe that I'm in control of Of of my own destiny. It's, it's so interesting you ask that. So when I look at the next phase of, of my life, right? So all these tools we're talking about through weight loss, manifestation, visualizing the future that you want.

They just, they apply to everything. Weight loss was just the means of me learning and practicing them and starting to master them in a way, but now it's visualizing My future wife visualizing my future children and my future, my future grandchildren, like intentionally setting aside 60 seconds every day [01:09:00] to just take a breath and what would it feel like if I was the father that I never had?

What would it feel like if I was the best husband in the world? What would it feel like if I was the ultimate provider and protector for my family and just to live in that for 60 seconds every day? Is like man, it's so it's real to me. I feel it right now and I don't even know if I've met her I definitely haven't met my kids, right?

And but it's so real that it is my destiny that those things will happen with certainty It will because i'm in the energy of eluding that off of my body So anytime that i'm walking around I can I can feel it's like my like other people can feel that on me Women can feel that on me, right? And they're like again, that's what manifestation is It's can you sit in the energy of the thing that you want even though you don't tangibly have it right now in the 3d But When you live the imagination, the best thing you can do is develop a strong imagination.

If you can develop and really, actually feel the emotion of it so hard that you can almost cry. Like man when I was wanting to run 100 mile races, I would sit there and turn on some m83 [01:10:00] Instrumental music and just close my eyes and cry Finishing like what the fuck would it be like to throw my middle fingers up crossing that finish line And I visualized that so hard.

I feel like I already did it I feel like I could come on this podcast and lie and say I ran a hundred mile race and like People would believe me because I I did it in my head a billion times, you know I absolutely believe in destiny. Yeah I think there's an amazing thing Um, force that comes to your life when you seek out wonder.

And I think destiny kind of brings that in, like the probability of us all being here with, uh, you know, us even existing individually, let alone us, all three being in this room together is so small. Like it brings out this wonder that I, I truly believe, like, if we could spur some of that up in our own lives and follow that more follow that seeking the wonder, um, we would.

just find so much more gratitude and, um, and success, whatever, you know, that means to everyone individually, success would really [01:11:00] come on the other side of just like being happy with what we already have, like the ridiculous chances that we're sitting in this room having this conversation. I agree.

Absolutely. Yeah. I love what you said too, about, um, um, manifesting and thinking about. Your future wife and your future family and acting as if they exist. They just haven't materialized and I think that's probably one of the most powerful Mental models that a male in their early or sorry their mid to late 20s Could be doing because I think it's very easy to think oh My laziness or inability to make the right decisions is only affecting me And I think once you connect the dots that you're, we're literally sowing seeds right now for our family in the future, whether it's five years down the road, 10 years, 15, 20, 25.

And I think about you and, um, you not receiving that love from your dad. And then you, all it takes is one amazing man to change [01:12:00] their generation. It's not just going to impact you. It's going to impact your grandkids, your great grandkids, all from one man. Um, Making the right decisions like how powerful is that man?

I think one of the most powerful mental frames that you can adopt if you're someone that doesn't really know so much of my life I didn't know what the fuck I wanted. I mean like in the last year is where I really figured out why I'm here You know and and committed to that and started living it fully But if you really don't know you're just kind of going through life and you know, maybe maybe something's going to arise A really great mental model that that I've connected with so much recently is who did you need when you were younger?

Hmm, or who do you need now? Become that person at all costs at all costs man It's like like what I needed was someone to come online and say dude find some balance with the food stop dieting I've one person would have said that I would have gone fine. Never thought of that No one ever says that right like if I had a father my life probably would have been a lot easier Thank god.

[01:13:00] It wasn't because all this hardship that i've been, you know doing all this shit with and that's great I wouldn't change it, but i'm going to make sure that I have become the father that I never had I'm going to become the person that breaks Generational divorce and poverty and addiction. Those are the three reasons why i'm here If I was to do all those three things, I don't give a fuck about a dollar a billion dollars on my deathbed It's I did it man And Yeah, I'm so connected with that.

It took me a long time, but who do you need and can you become that person? How would you do that if you had to and how can you do that right now? Mm hmm. How could you pretend to be that person for just one minute and see what it feels like? Mm hmm. Did you like the feeling? Would you like to live in that more?

What would that look like? Is there anything from your childhood that you can think of that has given you this this? Ability to visualize the way that you can I feel like your ability to visualize the person you want to be, you know, has been something that either was a gift or just is a gift that you have.[01:14:00]

Yeah, man. I developed all that through video games. Yeah. Yeah. Video games were the most instrumental thing in my entire life. It taught me speaking ability, communication, teamwork and visualization of an outcome strategy. Yeah. It was all just gaming with a bunch of people that I'd never met online. Being able to really visualize it.

What is it actually going to take? How are we going to get there? Can we do it? Or are we fucked? It's just having those conversations with people as a 15 year old. Is what I'd go back to that all the time. It's the same thing man. This is all just a game We're still playing a video game. This one just feels a little more real and hurts a little more So you're saying you've kind of turned yourself into your own RPG character in some ways.

Yeah, I love that mindset We put so much We put so much energy and time into building these characters on whatever other shit We're doing whatever game we're playing. You just put the same energy and time into yourself like Fuckin Grand Theft Auto. You're a Grand Theft Auto player, right?

You're running around making connections, meeting baller people, [01:15:00] making money, making a difference. It's a fuckin life, man. Do the same thing with life. Like, treat yourself like you would treat your fuckin avatar. And whatever the fuck it is that you played when you were a kid. Men are gonna resonate with that.

Women are going, what the fuck is this guy talking about right now, so sorry for that. Men are like, oh yeah. Men are like, oh yeah. And I just want to say, for my future wife listening to this podcast right now, that I've been video game clean for seven years and I'm never going back, baby, I love you. Let's go.

Bro, she might be listening. Daddy's here, baby. Uh, one of the last things I wanted to ask you is, uh, as someone that's lost 110 pounds sustainably and has not gone back, Is it surprising to you to see the emergence of ozempic and semi glutides? I'm sure you get asked about it all the time, but I was going for a little soundbite moment here, and I'd love to just get your thoughts on it.

You will lose weight on ozempic. You will lose weight with gastric sleeves. You'll lose a lot of weight. And the reason why you will lose weight is because you [01:16:00] won't be hungry anymore. People that lose weight taking ozempic? Go from eating large french fries at McDonald's to small french fries at McDonald's because they aren't hungry for more.

If you try to lose weight naturally by still eating bullshit, but just eating a little bit less, you're going to be malnourished while also being in a calorie deficit. You're going to quit four days in on a thursday and restart on monday and be forever stuck in the cycle of binging your cravings from under eating on bullshit.

The reason why people that that The reason why people that take ozempic feel like shit is because they never make the switch to actually eating healthy foods. But the real question of my lawyer says I should say that I'm not a doctor. So I'm not a doctor to anybody listening to this, but I did lose 110 pounds, kept it off for six years.

And that's what it says on my contract. That being said, if you lose weight on Ozempic and you look in the mirror, you're looking in the mirror thinking, thank God Ozempic worked. If you lose weight with a gastric sleeve, you're looking in the mirror thinking, thank God that surgery worked. Thank God that band around my stomach worked.[01:17:00]

When you lose weight naturally and actually put it behind you, you look in the mirror and go

Thank god I figured this out because I'm about to kill it in every single other area of my life and I've never believed in my own capabilities so much to do anything. I'm absolutely unstoppable anything I want I can have and you deserve to feel that. You will never feel that with Ozempic. You will always go to shortcuts if you, if you shortcut this one thing.

If you shortcut the thing that has plagued your life, you will shortcut everything. When you're sad, you'll get on antidepressants. When you're anxious, you'll get on anti anxiety medication. When you're We're always going to be looking for something. The answer is already inside of you. Everything you need is already inside of you.

No needle in your ass is going to change your life, it's only going to change your body. You're not curing your fat mind, you're just curing your fat body. And over time, your body will go back to being obese when you stop taking ozempic. That's probably the best answer on ozempic I think we've ever heard, man.

Seriously. Now if you're taking ozempic, If you're someone that's really struggling, sometimes I have clients that are on [01:18:00] ozempic right now and they're losing weight. Sometimes it's really, really easy to work with people that are on ozempic because they're not hungry. So if you're taking ozempic, live life as if you're not taking ozempic and losing weight naturally so that when you come off of ozempic, you've developed healthy relationship with food.

You've reset your hormones to a nice base level through eating mostly whole, real natural single ingredient foods, meat, fruit, rice, vegetables, dairy products, potatoes. It's like, then you come off Ozempic and you forgot that you were ever even on it because you've changed your lifestyle, baseline habits, and mindset.

Most people don't do that. They just take Ozempic and go, thank God I'm losing weight. But if you're on Ozempic, the only sustainable way that you will ever keep the results off or keep the results is if you stay on Ozempic forever or if you live life as if you're not on Ozempic so that you can come off and maintain your results.

Got it. Yeah. And there's certain people, man, that are really far gone. Yeah. You know, it's, it's easy to come on and be like, fuck Ozempic, fuck the system. But brother, like there's people that are 400 pounds, like we've got to put the fire out, you [01:19:00] know? And if you're really dying, like you got to put the fire out and try to live another day so that we can figure this out down the road.

And Ozempic is that answer for some people. Dude, this has been such a powerful conversation and everywhere from. Mindset visualization to just the x's and o's of losing weight, which I'm sure is Gonna help a lot of people pull themselves out of some food relationship struggles. So dude, just appreciate you sharing the story and uh, Yeah, can't wait to see you on rogan next year.

Oh, I appreciate that brother. Thank you You've been 10 months into this journey. Just can't wait to see what uh, 2025 and beyond looks like for you and we'll uh, we'll link to all your stuff in the show notes too, man But thank you so much. I appreciate that. Well, thank you guys for having me man. It's been a It's been a real honor being here.

It means the world. Where can people find you? Find me on Instagram. Nick G E O P P O And all my links are on there. Love it. You absolutely have what it takes to lose weight and keep it off forever. Sustainably. And ordinary people are capable of extraordinary things. [01:20:00] Thank you brother. Thank you guys. Cool.