You reached your goal. What's next?

Listen as we discuss how we approach living in maintenance. How do we stay motivated when we don't have the pain of being unhealthy pushing us forward? What do we do to stay on track when we've reached the end of the path?

1:45 Are you ready for what happens when you reach your goals?
4:20 Do body goals make a difference in your quality of life?
7:43 Why did you do the work in the first place?
11:13 Fixing symptoms will never last long
16:30 Coach Nat's healing journey
19:40 The realization of what life without sickness is like
23:30 Growth mindset vs Fixed mindset
29:20 Understanding the impact of choices
39:45 Why we don't binge
45:40 What is maintenance anyway?
48:18 Are you ready to go off track?
53:05 Stay connected to your Why!

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Transcript

Coach Nat: 0:14

Welcome to the Less Glove morphist Podcast.

Coach Bronson: 0:17

With Me Coach Bronson and me, Coach Nat, where we peel back the curtains and reveal the truth behind Hot Topics in health and fitness.

Coach Nat: 0:24

This is Keto fit life unfiltered.

Coach Bronson: 0:30

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Less Glove morphist Podcast, with me, Coach Bronson, and me, Coach Now. And today, we are going to be talking about the process of maintaining a healthy lifestyle.

Coach Nat: 0:44

What is maintenance?

Coach Bronson: 0:46

What is maintenance? What does it look like when you reach your body composition goals and then have nothing left to shoot for?

Coach Nat: 0:55

What now?

Coach Bronson: 0:56

What next? What happens?

Coach Nat: 0:57

And how do you keep it? How do you keep the results? You work so hard.

Coach Bronson: 1:01

Yeah, absolutely. And this came up, actually. It's funny because I love how this stuff in our lives, we were both coaches. We lived together, and we're always talking about our clients and all the different things that are happening. I had a client specifically this week, like, two days ago, talking, no, wait, today's Saturday, right? We're recording this on a Saturday yesterday on a call with a client, and she was talking about my body composition, what my goals are going to be and all this kind of stuff. And it's like, what is your body comp? What have you gotten to? Where are you? And she's like, I've got this much lean mass. I got this much body fat. And I was like, guess what?

Coach Nat: 1:37

You're there.

Coach Bronson: 1:38

You're there. You don't really have anywhere else to go with the body composition. And the look she gave me on the zoom call was like, oh, ****. Now what do I do?

Coach Nat: 1:49

Right?

Coach Bronson: 1:50

It's like, okay, I've been focused for so long on this body composition stuff. Oh, yeah, when I get that now, what happens? And then you've recently had some stuff.

Coach Nat: 2:00

I have a couple. So one of my clients was doing a mock prep, and we put a photo shoot on her. She put a photo shoot on her calendar as a gift for her husband, and he just came back from deployment. So for her, it was a personal goal to get she wanted to basically go through a prop like she would if she was competing, but she didn't want to get on stage.

Coach Bronson: 2:24

Got you.

Coach Nat: 2:24

So she just had her photoshoot day. So that was like, show day. Right now, she's never been to this level of leanness that she is now. She never had this kind of body composition. So now we're talking about what's next with her. And then my other client, who was prepping for her wedding, and her wedding is next week, and then she already has a goal of taking this to the next level. That's what it is for her, taking her body composition. Her body composition, right? Because for her, she was in a different place. We got her to an incredible place, but now she's in a place where she could start a prep for a show. And she kind of had that in the back of her mind, was like, one day I want to compete in a show. And then she thought, well, you know what? Better time than now. I'm going to be getting married, having my wedding, and I don't want to backslide. This is a big thing for people. When we talk about maintenance, I think a lot of the time the reason why we keep setting body composition goals is because we're just so afraid of going back to where we started or going back to where we were before we hit our goal. And we're just so afraid that once we hit our initial body composition goal, or maybe not even the initial one, because if you have a long way to go, let's say to get to.

Coach Bronson: 3:45

Your you can have a couple of different versions.

Coach Nat: 3:48

There may be some spots along the way where there's okay, I hit my first goal, but now I have another one. And now I have another one. But I think that we can get into the habit of just continuously setting new body composition goals out of fear of backtracking back to our old life. Sure, we can definitely talk about that.

Coach Bronson: 4:05

I think that's one is doing it out of like, I have to have a body composition goal because that's going to keep me moving. But then I think the other thing, and you guys have all heard me talk about this, is I think a big part of it is we are so ingrained that how our body looks and what our body composition is, is what we need to do to be fit. And we forget that. That's great. I'm currently at about 10%, 11% body fat. I've got a great amount of muscle. If I had something that was limiting me, if I didn't, as an example, right now I have a limiting thing that I'm dealing with, with my wrist. Right. I've been noticing over the past few weeks that because I sit at a desk for hours at a day that I've been getting wrist pain. It's actually been going on for a while. It's been going on for months. And I thought it was because of bowling.

Coach Nat: 5:01

You just told me this today.

Coach Bronson: 5:03

No, because you know I've been having the elbow pain.

Coach Nat: 5:05

Yes.

Coach Bronson: 5:05

Right. And we thought originally it was one of two things. One, my bowling, because I bowled pretty regularly, and two, it really started flintering up when I started BJJ again. So between the two of those things, that's kind of what we were thinking. But I came to the realization just a few days ago that it's because I'm sitting on a desk, I think I have carpal tunnel. And the reason why is because if I try to do a certain movement where I'm flexing my wrist and trying to engage the two fingers on my hand that control my mouse, my track ball, those two fingers, they're not as strong at holding the position as the rest of my hand and my other hand are. I have a physical limitation because of that limited range of motion that I have that hand. So I'm strong. I got a bunch of body fat, but I have issues and pain in my wrist. I have things that I have to be careful of doing because I have a limited ability to move my wrist right now because I haven't taken care of it. So the function of our body, regardless of her body composition, will impact our quality of life. And for me, it's something as little as my wrist and my fingers. It's not a super crazy like I blew out my knee or blew out my shoulders or anything like that. Okay, guys, you have to understand this. Right now we're talking and she's taking this opportunity to take selfies of herself that she's going to post for content.

Coach Nat: 6:26

I'm assuming she also took pictures of him by the way he's talking, but since I can't do that with myself, I had to do a selfie. We need to film more of these. Just call him. Yeah, because I think it's kind of interesting just to see, like, one of.

Coach Bronson: 6:42

These days I got to pull that camera out and see if I get the spare parts together and have that it's on my list of things to do.

Coach Nat: 6:48

Yeah. Eventually we'll make it to where you can see our faces when we're talking, if you want to watch, in our.

Coach Bronson: 6:54

Makeshift studio, office, bedroom, studio. So if anybody wants to if you go search my wish list on Amazon, I had soundproofing panels that I want to put up in here to make the sound better. So basically we're going to talk about is what are some things that we do? Personally, I think that's probably the way we're going to approach this, to kind of keep ourselves moving forward, finding ways to stay motivated.

Coach Nat: 7:20

And once you've gotten to the promised land, what do you do to stay there? And a big piece of that is what you were just talking about, which is about what is your purpose for living the lifestyle that you're living? And when I say living the lifestyle, I mean choosing to eat the way that you have chosen to eat, moving your body in the way that you've chosen to move your body. Exercise, activities, things of that nature. If it's all in pursuit of a goal, whether that's a body composition goal or maybe an athletic performance goal or whatever external goal, if it's in pursuit of that, if that's the only reason you're eating keto, you're eating. Keto so you can lose weight. You're exercising to lose weight or whatever your physical goal is. Or you're an athlete and you're only eating this way to perform well at your sport. You're only training to perform well at your sport. Well, if your sport ends, you retire. Or if you're not an athlete and you're doing it for weight loss and you hit your weight loss goal, does that mean that now you're just going to abandon ship on everything that you did to get there? If it was only for that goal, then yes, you probably will. You haven't built any kind of connection to this lifestyle that you've chosen to live for any greater purpose, a means being a means to an end.

Coach Bronson: 8:58

I'm going to interrupt you there. The person you're describing right now hasn't chosen to live a lifestyle. They've chosen to do things to reach a goal. It is not a lifestyle. If you want this to continue on past your goal, it has to become a lifestyle, because your lifestyle will determine the actions that you take, regardless of the goals you have.

Coach Nat: 9:20

And I will actually step back and say, if you want to keep the result. Right. Because the goal is usually related to a result you want or an outcome you want. If you're only doing keto, I'm going to use keto. I'm going to use Keto. And weight loss is a perfect example because that's what we hear most of the time. Most of the time, if you're only doing keto for weight loss, if you want to keep the weight loss, you have to keep doing keto.

Coach Bronson: 9:49

Yes.

Coach Nat: 9:52

So it's not even a question of if you want to keep Keto, because if you're only doing keto for weight loss, then you don't want to keep keto, which is you just want the results. But guess what? It doesn't matter if you chose Keto. If you're doing a low fat, high carb, if it fits your Macros, if you're doing PSMF, if you're doing whatever diet choice simply for a goal, you don't get to keep the results unless you keep the things you did to get to that.

Coach Bronson: 10:23

Absolutely. I mean, that's like saying if I paint my house green because I want a green house, I can't go back and paint it blue and be mad. I don't have a green house.

Coach Nat: 10:37

Oh, my God.

Coach Bronson: 10:38

Right?

Coach Nat: 10:39

But it's a good example. If you go eat donuts after you hit your goal and all you do is eat donuts for a month right.

Coach Bronson: 10:49

Then what do you expect?

Coach Nat: 10:50

You can't be upset when you can't, don't be upset.

Coach Bronson: 10:53

And it's not the diet's fault.

Coach Nat: 10:56

Any diet works, but you have to stick to it.

Coach Bronson: 10:59

Yes. And that's where we come in when we talk about what is sustainable, what are some of the best things that you could do to make the lifestyle? And that's the difference. There's a difference there. When you guys have heard us talk about extremes, if you're doing everything possible to make one specific thing happen, I want to lose weight. And you're not focusing on, well, why are you why do you have that weight on in the first place? And you're trying to solve this problem. By attacking the symptom of the problem instead of the actual problem itself, then the methods are probably going to be extreme and they're probably going to be unsustainable. They're not going to last forever unless you continually put a high level of effort into them. The idea is to fix the problem that's causing the symptom. If you fix the problem generally, it's a much less intense, complicated, and overwhelming solution, and you can keep doing it for a longer period of time. And that's where maintenance comes into play. Go ahead.

Coach Nat: 12:03

The problem I would like for you to express the problem well using fat.

Coach Bronson: 12:09

Loss, we use weight loss in keto. The weight loss isn't the problem, and using keto to lose weight is great, but if you use keto in conjunction with some other things to actually improve how your body functions, right? Improve your metabolism, improve your lean mass, build a lifestyle around just being active in making good food choices, then the weight loss will come off. But you're also going to see a bunch of other things that happen in your life. You're like, oh, ****, I love my life right now. And you know what? In some cases, we can say the weight may come off. In some cases, the weight may not come off as much as you wanted to. You may find that you're happier £10 heavier than you thought you would be.

Coach Nat: 12:55

Oh, absolutely. I see that all the time.

Coach Bronson: 12:57

Right? So I see people all the time. Exactly. Same thing. I see people all the time. They're like, I am having so much more fun. I feel better about myself. I have more confidence. I feel all of these things because they're approaching it from a different way. They're not just trying to lose weight. They're like, how can I just make my life better? The choices you make, when you think about it from how can I improve my quality of life are always going to be less negatively impactful than how can I just lose weight? When you just try to lose weight? You've heard me talk about this. It's the paradigm of restriction. It's a paradigm of removal of loss, suffering through these things. Right.

Coach Nat: 13:40

To get to the weight loss, because.

Coach Bronson: 13:42

All you're trying to do is get rid of something. I'm trying to get rid of something that I'm looking at as a negative. Okay, great. Look at fat as a negative. That's great. How about we look at improving and living a better life? What can I do to live better? So I changed the focus from I'm trying to get rid of something. It's a negative experience to I want to be happy, I want to live my life, I want to be free, I want to be independent.

Coach Nat: 14:12

Didn't we do an episode where we talked about exactly. That was what you're running from, like, what you want to get rid of yeah.

Coach Bronson: 14:20

Versus what you want to run to focus on what you're going to the pain.

Coach Nat: 14:24

The pain and the pain that you're trying to avoid, that you want to get rid of and then moving toward the vision of where you want to be.

Coach Bronson: 14:34

I think we did we talk about that? It's kind of underpinning everything we talked about.

Coach Nat: 14:39

Sometimes I'm not sure if it's in a podcast, because I know we talked about that at the couple's retreat in depth, and we walked them through an actual workshop on that, but now I can't remember if we talked about it.

Coach Bronson: 14:52

Can't talk about it again.

Coach Nat: 14:54

Can you tell us if we went into that in depth, and if not, we can do it in the future?

Coach Bronson: 14:58

Yes, we can actually do a walk through.

Coach Nat: 15:00

Pain to purpose.

Coach Bronson: 15:01

Yeah, pain to purpose. Okay. So how do you coach Net? Well, here's a question. When did you get to a point where you felt like you were healed enough? Where the effort because we talked about this earlier today, the effort that you needed to put into your health was not as much, and you were able to put some of that effort into living a fun life, living your lifestyle, and doing the things that you want to do that make you happy, because that's a challenge. A lot of people are coming into this, and they're so unhealthy. They cannot afford to do things for fun. They cannot afford to make these decisions that we can make. We're healthy. We're metabolically sound. We don't have any health issues. Majorly. If I decide that I want to have some ice cream someday, I can do that. I have a good relationship with food. I understand where I'm at with it. But Thanksgiving, I had pumpkin pie and cheesecake. I enjoyed every single freaking bite, and I didn't feel the need. The next day when we went back to my mom's house, I want some more pike.

Coach Nat: 16:09

It wasn't that you didn't have just bothered me.

Coach Bronson: 16:12

So being able to do that and being at that healthy place mentally and physically opens up some doors, and a lot of people aren't there. So you are probably in some ways, I think you're across that threshold. In other ways, you're still in the doorway, still battle. How does that work for you?

Coach Nat: 16:30

Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So my initial healing journey was now about to be 2023. Is that crazy? Wow. Okay. I suppose it culminated maybe 2014, 2015. Yeah. And actually, I hadn't even competed yet. I had never done a show. My body composition was not the best it had gotten to. I wasn't even consistently lifting yet. But my healing happened through adopting the paleo diet, and this was before I ever went keto. So this was like 2014.

Coach Bronson: 17:12

2015 was when I was something besides keto helped you. Oh, my gosh. There's other things out there.

Coach Nat: 17:17

Honestly, I was just thinking about this paleo I actually think is more fringe and more countercultural than keto is interesting, okay. Because it's more about the quality of the food. It's more focused on real food real food, yeah. Than keto.

Coach Bronson: 17:42

But even the source of the food. Not just absolutely not just whole food. It's like, where did this come from?

Coach Nat: 17:48

Right? It starts with whole food, real food. And actually, I did my first whole 30 in 2013, so it's been almost ten years since then. But I started the transformation journey in 2011.

Coach Bronson: 17:59

Yeah.

Coach Nat: 18:01

And that's when I had all of my chronic health conditions and the things that were keeping me from living a full life and feeling good in my life. And I was on a lot of daily medications for those, like management maintenance medications, they call them. Right. I was just reading a post about all I want for Christmas is for doctors to stop saying that you're going to have your chronic illnesses your whole life. And that's where I was. I was in a place where doctors were saying, this is just going to be your life, and you have to stay on these medications forever, and telling me nothing about changing lifestyle. I found out all of this on my own and went down my own path. And two years later not even two years later yeah, maybe about two years. So from 2011, 2013, when I did my first whole 30, that was when I did my first whole 30. I had just come off birth control, and that was the very last pharmaceutical medication that I removed. I had already removed everything else, so it was the very last thing to come out. And so that's when I would probably say it really kind of I'm now living in optimal health. Started. That was just the beginning. I was dealing with a little bit of IBS stuff at the time as my gut microbiome adjusted to the new way of eating. But it was, like, cleaned everything up, right? Like, 100%. And it was like a 180. That was when I started feeling like, oh, my God. I didn't know how good I could. I didn't know this was possible. To live life like this without chronic pain, without stomach problems. I was on antidepressants for GI meds.

Coach Bronson: 19:52

Wow.

Coach Nat: 19:53

It's insane. I mean, it was messing with my brain chemistry, so there were so many host of things. Chronic sinus infections went away, and it was like, I used to get them three to four times a year. So that was where it was like, oh, my God, I can live this way and feel good. And I felt like I could outrun a tiger after a meal.

Coach Bronson: 20:14

I love it.

Coach Nat: 20:17

I used to have to lay down.

Coach Bronson: 20:18

That's why you're always running away from me. That's why she's okay.

Coach Nat: 20:23

I was just trying to wonder, you're not a tiger. You're the king of the jungle.

Coach Bronson: 20:32

I think I have to second the feeling. I didn't have 100 and 5200 pounds to lose, like, some people have. I lost about 70. I mean, I didn't lose a little amount. I lost about £70, which thinking just thinking that is like, Holy ****.

Coach Nat: 20:53

Yeah. Because you didn't even put a number on it.

Coach Bronson: 20:56

Yeah. I didn't think about how much I actually lost. It was actually I forget what conference we were at, and I said how much I used to weigh. And Nurse Cindy was like so you've lost about£70. It's like, holy ****. I didn't even think about that. That's a lot. I have lost some weight, but for me, I equate the issues I had with IBS and Urgent Bowels and that kind of stuff to that stuff going away, much like other people describe losing£150. Just the level of limitation and things that just controlled your life, which you could and couldn't do and where you could and couldn't go and what you're thinking about all the time and everything else. It was horrendous. And when that stuff went away, it was like a whole another level. I totally get it. It's like a whole another level of, holy ****. This is something that is literally taking up I don't even know how to quantify how much mental and emotional stress and brain power that it was taking up in my life every single day.

Coach Nat: 22:01

Absolutely.

Coach Bronson: 22:02

That totally just vanished.

Coach Nat: 22:03

And that it impacts your relationships.

Coach Bronson: 22:06

Oh, my God.

Coach Nat: 22:07

The person that you are not a happy person. Right. Like I said, it was screw with my brain chemistry. It wasn't firing the way it should. So it's crazy. Yeah. When I think back to the person I was, I've told Brunson many times, like, you could not have handled that woman. You would not have wanted that woman. I was operating from a different place.

Coach Bronson: 22:33

Well, you're operating when you're in that condition, and this may be related to somebody listening today. When you're operating in a condition of there's always something wrong.

Coach Nat: 22:42

Illness. Yeah.

Coach Bronson: 22:44

There's always something wrong. There's always something I have to think about that reminds me of my condition, reminds me of the fact that I'm living a limited life. Reminds me of the fact that I can't do some things or I have something wrong with me. Right.

Coach Nat: 22:58

You know what? This right here, as we're talking about this maintenance concept yeah. This, I think, is what's so powerful about us having created a lifestyle with this, the purpose of it. The reason we eat the way we eat, the reason why this has become our lifestyle is because it literally changed our lives. It was never about body composition. Not at the beginning. Now, for you, a little bit, you were motivated by that photo. I was.

Coach Bronson: 23:32

I did not want to be fat boy with man *****.

Coach Nat: 23:37

Yeah. For me, it literally had nothing I.

Coach Bronson: 23:40

Do want man *****, but I want muscle *****. I want muscle *****.

Coach Nat: 23:44

Kendall bigger than Kendall.

Coach Bronson: 23:48

Yeah. Right.

Coach Nat: 23:49

But no. Yeah. When I think back to really the beginning of it for me. It really was all about healing. And it wasn't until I received the healing that I started to even think bigger about what my body could do.

Coach Bronson: 24:05

That was the key phrase.

Coach Nat: 24:07

I started ariel started doing aerial dance, okay. And I built up her body strength, and I got a six pack from just lifting my body weight all the time. So this was an activity I loved that I poured myself into doing six days a week, and I started teaching it, and then that's what led me to bodybuilding, right?

Coach Bronson: 24:28

And that's the whole idea of where I was going. And we talked about this when we talked about growth mindset versus fixed mindset. And when you're living in that chronic life, that lifestyle of chronic pain and distress and despair and limited injury and illness and medication and all these things, when you're living in that, then you don't feel like there's anywhere else to go.

Coach Nat: 24:50

You can't think bigger.

Coach Bronson: 24:52

It's really hard to get outside of a fixed mindset. So when you find a way out that has to do with more than just your weight, right? This is we talk about connecting with the Y guys because it's so important when you find out that there's a quality of life aspect to what you're doing that can completely change everything about what you're doing and how you think and your outlook on the world and your perception of reality and everything, you don't want to leave that. Once you get that, once you start moving in that direction, then the lifestyle, it's so much bigger than just the weight. It's so much bigger than the body fat or the muscle mass or any of the numbers. It's about the mindset and the realization that you can literally effing do whatever you want to do because you are now capable of doing that. You can now see it's what the mind can see and conceive, the mind can achieve.

Coach Nat: 25:47

Absolutely.

Coach Bronson: 25:48

And now you can see that's where.

Coach Nat: 25:51

We'Re living right now.

Coach Bronson: 25:53

I think that's the biggest difference of where we are now to where we are.

Coach Nat: 25:56

Oh, my gosh.

Coach Bronson: 25:57

Yes. We are both very much growth mindset. We don't like negativity. We don't like we're all about the.

Coach Nat: 26:04

Whole world opens up to you.

Coach Bronson: 26:06

The whole world opens up. And every day for us is an experiment in what else can we do, how else can we grow, what else can we learn about ourselves, about each other, about the world, about whatever it is we're working on? And that is such a different way to live that I can't even it's like, compared what we've been doing, right? We have goals, we've been setting goals, business goals, financial goals, and things that we've had conversations about trying to put ourselves in the mindset of millionaires. How do millionaires live their lives? What do they think about x, y, or z? How do they approach these decisions? The same decisions we have to make, not being millionaires. And it's really hard for us to visualize what life would be like where we could just wake up in the morning and say, hey, do you want to fly to Florida for a few days or a few weeks and hang out and not have to worry about where the money is coming from. Right. Because that's eventually where we want to be. But for us, there's a jump that has to be made. And for us, it's a stretch of the imagination to be able to do that.

Coach Nat: 27:17

And we have to constantly put ourselves there.

Coach Bronson: 27:20

And for anybody listening who's not metabolically healthy, who hasn't reached that body composition goal or that physical capability or that removal of medications and illness from their life, if you're still struggling to get there, just let us know. This is for us to let you know it is 100% possible.

Coach Nat: 27:40

Absolutely.

Coach Bronson: 27:40

Just imagine it every day. Put that in front of you every day. This is what I want. I'm doing it for this reason. I'm not just trying to lose a number on a scale.

Coach Nat: 27:52

Yeah, you've got to connect it. You've got to connect it to what else it is providing for you in your life. Here's a good example. I think I have struggled with sugar addiction more than Bronson has over the years since he made his decision to go carnivore. It was a desperate act for you. For you, it was like, this is almost like life or death. It was like, I'm not living I'm not able to live my life. And it was like, that's it.

Coach Bronson: 28:26

There's a couple of things there. That was definitely it. There's other stuff we could talk about. It was way easier than I thought it was going to be. And I enjoyed it. Right out the gate was like, oh, my God, this is amazing. But, yeah, keep going.

Coach Nat: 28:40

You've had your affairs with Ben and Jerry's over the years.

Coach Bronson: 28:44

Ben and Jerry. We saw some of the stores today and I was like, no, not going to do it.

Coach Nat: 28:52

I'm wondering I'm going home for the holidays next week. I wonder if he's going to get Ben and Jerry.

Coach Bronson: 28:57

You know, I hadn't thought about it until just now. Thanks for pointing out to me. Thanks, Nat.

Coach Nat: 29:05

I think I'd rather you wait for me and we both get to do it together.

Coach Bronson: 29:08

Oh, no, that would destroy your stomach.

Coach Nat: 29:11

I don't know. I have enzymes and things now.

Coach Bronson: 29:14

Yeah, okay.

Coach Nat: 29:17

Actually, that's a really good point because gosh, I'm jumping around here now because I was going to talk more about the mental side of things, but there's also the physical side. Sure. And I think this is another thing that okay, which one do I want to talk about first? Let's just talk about the physical real quick. You brought up the stomach thing.

Coach Bronson: 29:37

I like the physical.

Coach Nat: 29:38

Okay. So we both are very in. Tune with our bodies and how our bodies respond to things. Bronson loves pepperoni and cheese.

Coach Bronson: 29:50

Oh, yeah.

Coach Nat: 29:50

And heavy cream.

Coach Bronson: 29:52

Yeah.

Coach Nat: 29:52

But that is not something he does every day.

Coach Bronson: 29:54

No.

Coach Nat: 29:55

Or even every week. It is like, I really like some pepperoni this week.

Coach Bronson: 30:00

Right.

Coach Nat: 30:00

Would you pick me up some cheese, or would you pick me up some heavy cream? When he's feeling like it, he knows that when he does that too frequently, his body doesn't love it. Doesn't love the way his body responds, the way he feels.

Coach Bronson: 30:14

My bathroom doesn't love it either.

Coach Nat: 30:17

I was trying to be peaceful.

Coach Bronson: 30:19

No. This is one of the reasons why we looked for an apartment that had two bathrooms.

Coach Nat: 30:22

Yes. We are not going to talk about my transition to Carnivore back in January. February. The fact that I went through that and we were only together for, like, two to three months at that point in time, like and we made it through that, that right there tells you that's it this is for life. That was a struggle. And that's interesting. I should definitely do a YouTube about my transition.

Coach Bronson: 30:48

Your transition.

Coach Nat: 30:51

And it's funny, because looking back, it doesn't seem that bad, but I definitely remember some really painful nights. Anyways, when I started my journey, it was gut. Health was one of the first things, the priorities for me to heal. I had a lot of issues with food, and there were certain things that really messed up. It felt like food poisoning. I would be doubled over in pain kind of thing. Dairy was definitely one of them. And grains, for sure. And so nowadays, let's say I'm confronted with an opportunity to cheat. I hate that term, cheat, but I kind of like that term, too, because.

Coach Bronson: 31:30

Well, I never understood it. Because you're not cheating. It's not getting you ahead. Cheating is when you do something to pass the test.

Coach Nat: 31:38

No, you know what? I don't like that definition, though.

Coach Bronson: 31:42

Cheating on your relationship. Okay, I get you.

Coach Nat: 31:46

You're being unfaithful to the lifestyle chip. Right. So thinking about it in that respect, I'm confronted with opportunities to cheat all the time. I go grocery shopping. Bronson does not. I literally will go every single day.

Coach Bronson: 32:03

We went to Lidl today because I.

Coach Nat: 32:05

Asked he'll go, if we're literally going in for, like, two things, we know exactly what we're going to do.

Coach Bronson: 32:13

Yes. I am definitely a man shopper.

Coach Nat: 32:15

I am a lady shopper. I like to peruse every aisle, and I look at all the new items in the stores now. Right now, at the holidays. Oh, my goodness. I have been bombarded by every everything's out holiday treat imaginable. Okay. I have a thought process when it comes to these things, because Bronson knows I am a sucker for a limited.

Coach Bronson: 32:41

Edition oh, my God. And sales.

Coach Nat: 32:45

Limited edition flavors. And don't let it be out of.

Coach Bronson: 32:48

Sale, and don't let it be a Christmas flavor. This is the worst thing right now.

Coach Nat: 32:52

Mint eggnog. Mint eggnog, peppermint chocolate or peppermint mocha, whatever it is. White chocolate, peppermint eggnog, gingerbread.

Coach Bronson: 33:06

How many more? I have a question for you.

Coach Nat: 33:09

I should have put a trigger alert. We're going to have to put a trigger warning at the top of this one.

Coach Bronson: 33:12

Yeah, I have a question. When? Tomorrow. When tomorrow mint chocolate keto brick comes out.

Coach Nat: 33:20

I have an alert set on my phone.

Coach Bronson: 33:22

How many are you going to buy?

Coach Nat: 33:23

I don't know.

Coach Bronson: 33:30

Guys. She saw that and flipped yesterday. She was like, oh, my God.

Coach Nat: 33:34

I don't know how many I'm going to order, but I will say this. If we get it before I go to my parents, I will just bring one with me so that I have.

Coach Bronson: 33:44

To okay, we need to put them in the storage unit or something because I'm trying to cut before Costa river. If you keep all those keto bricks here, they will be gone.

Coach Nat: 33:53

I need to bring one with me for the whole week or maybe two because it'll be ten days.

Coach Bronson: 33:58

Okay.

Coach Nat: 33:58

And then I can ration it out each day because I'm on a reverse diet, and so I can't just go.

Coach Bronson: 34:04

And I'm trying to cut before the and he's cutting TV show.

Coach Nat: 34:08

Speaking of. Okay, so gosh, we've gotten all over the place.

Coach Bronson: 34:12

That's what people tune in for our random ramblings.

Coach Nat: 34:16

That's what we're doing before we get to that. Okay. The physiological stuff. Right. The things that go through psychological stuff. No.

Coach Bronson: 34:26

Okay.

Coach Nat: 34:27

The things that go through my mind when I'm seeing all this special stuff. First of all, the other day, I wrote down all of my favorite holiday flavors so that I could create my own versions of them.

Coach Bronson: 34:41

Okay. You have flavorings, and we have protein powder and all the different coffee stuff.

Coach Nat: 34:45

Because part of what goes through my mind is, okay, let's think about what this is going to do to my body. It's the first thing that keeps me from just buying all of it and just eating it anyway.

Coach Bronson: 34:58

Sure.

Coach Nat: 34:58

Because what we were talking about, part of why we wanted to do this episode was we're like, okay, we can, quote, get away with a lot right now. Yeah, we're in such great shape, metabolically and physically that we could binge probably once a week and still be fine. But why do we not do that? Look, I have a lot of evidence in my past that I know what's going to happen if I do that. I know that for me, the psychological piece of it, it will not be just one day. It will become every day for a matter of months until I've put back on not only all the body fat that I worked really hard to get off, but I'm now sick again. Almost all of the chronic conditions that I healed would be back. I know this for a fact because I've done it before because in between shows where I was in a low place mentally, I let this stuff happen to me. And then what would happen? Chronic sinus infections come back. It starts with things like that. I get ill more often. I'm more susceptible. My immune system is down. There's more inflammation in my body. It's now leading to all these other things. And as a bodybuilder and athlete, now that I think about it like that, it's going to impact my ability to recover from my training, which even in an off season, which I'm going into now, we're going to talk about what we're getting ready to do in our maintenance lives right now. But going into an off season, meaning this is my building season, this is where I'm going to be eating a little bit more over time and lifting heavier and trying to put on more as much muscle mass as I can before I do another cut to get stage again. So it is incredibly important that I recover. Well, yes, because muscle is broken down in the gym, but it is built in recovery, so I need to be able to recover. If I'm putting things in my body that are inflaming my body and making my body ill, essentially, that's basically what you're doing when you're putting toxic substances into your body. It's not going to be able to perform its best, and it's not going to be able to recover its best. And then I'm going to be more likely to get sick more frequently. And it can lead to there have been years in the past where my heartburn came back, my acid reflux, like all of these things that I'd healed way back will come back with a vengeance if that old lifestyle creeps in for more than just a day or two here or there.

Coach Bronson: 37:39

I totally forgot about heartburn.

Coach Nat: 37:42

Oh, my God, it was so bold.

Coach Bronson: 37:44

I'm trying to think now. I can't remember when the last I mean, I've been so focused when I tell the stories about my gut and urgent bowels and all the other issues I was having, I totally forgot about heartburn.

Coach Nat: 37:59

That was a huge I can't remember the last time that I tums like candy.

Coach Bronson: 38:04

Oh, my God. Tums and pepto. Oh, my God. All day long.

Coach Nat: 38:07

Oh, my gosh.

Coach Bronson: 38:08

I used to have the multicolored tums in my bathroom and in my bedroom.

Coach Nat: 38:13

Oh, I had them in every purse.

Coach Bronson: 38:15

Yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah. Heartburn. Holy ****. I forgot about heartburn.

Coach Nat: 38:20

Oh, yeah.

Coach Bronson: 38:20

How cool is it, guys, to have a condition that is caused by being sick and not healthy that you totally.

Coach Nat: 38:26

Forget about, forgot that you had before? I'm sure there's a lot more. I mean, I had chronic migraines. There was a lot.

Coach Bronson: 38:34

I know. There was like, acne for me was a big one.

Coach Nat: 38:38

Oh, and that's a big one with dairy now.

Coach Bronson: 38:41

Yeah.

Coach Nat: 38:42

So my gut issues are not nearly like they used to be like, it used to be if I ate dairy, it would be a disaster. Now it's not so much a gut issue, but my skin, if I do it more than, let's say, once, right? If I do it a couple of times in a week, or if I have a lot, like when we went to the modern Stone Age kitchen and oh my God, they had all the most amazing cheese, so I just let myself eat the cheese.

Coach Bronson: 39:09

Yeah.

Coach Nat: 39:10

It was just that one day.

Coach Bronson: 39:12

And if it had been different cheese, it probably would have been way worse, I'm sure.

Coach Nat: 39:16

And it probably would have impacted my gut. And it really wasn't an issue for my gut, but my skin started breaking out in less than a week. Just a few days later, I started breaking out. And that's typically what I see now when I do the dairy. It's skin and it is sinuses.

Coach Bronson: 39:33

Right.

Coach Nat: 39:33

I will immediately start getting that sinus pressure in my face, my ears, my lymph nodes swell up. It's like my body knows there's an inflammatory substance.

Coach Bronson: 39:43

Yeah. Just to follow up, when you're talking about the physiological and just the thinking process of what it's going to do to your body, it's not just what this is going to do to my body, but it's also what is the lifestyle I want to live. So you said something, you were saying, like, why don't we binge? Why don't we do this every week? Why don't we just go out every week? Oh my God.

Coach Nat: 40:13

Friday.

Coach Bronson: 40:16

In the twelve years that I've been doing this, people in the fitness industry have the worst nutrition habits. They are the drunkest people I know. They eat the worst foods, but they go in and they overwork themselves, and they have an unhealthy relationship with food and exercise that makes them look good.

Coach Nat: 40:38

Oh my God.

Coach Bronson: 40:38

That's a whole other decision. We don't want to go.

Coach Nat: 40:40

Wait, real quick. I have to say something that drove me crazy.

Coach Bronson: 40:42

Okay.

Coach Nat: 40:43

One of the competitors who won a title this weekend, this past weekend, posts on her Instagram, like a professional photo, professional photography of her with pizza, ice cream and all the things. And a lot of competitors do this.

Coach Bronson: 41:03

Sure.

Coach Nat: 41:04

They get off stage and then they're posting with the donuts.

Coach Bronson: 41:06

They got the donuts and the cookies waiting for them.

Coach Nat: 41:09

Oh my gosh. And it just breaks my heart because it's glorifying. It's glorifying. If I look like this, then I can eat like that. And guess what? You can have both. You are destroying your inside.

Coach Bronson: 41:26

Yes. You're destroying well, and to think about this, that's just the ones outside of it. What did she have to do to get there? That's how she's eating. The tactics that they're using to get to where they are to get their body look again, guys, I said it earlier. The more you focus on just how you look, the more extreme and the more dangerous and the more you're messing up.

Coach Nat: 41:53

Absolutely. A lot of these women don't get their menstrual cycles. They are really messing with their hormones. There are a lot of things that are going to impact them later in life and their overall health. And a lot of what you don't see from these fitness influencers is that especially the competitors, they get down to a particular super lean body fat. They take all these pictures and get all of this content right.

Coach Bronson: 42:21

That's good for like eight months or years worth of content.

Coach Nat: 42:24

Exactly. For years or at least months. They're posting that, but they don't look like that.

Coach Bronson: 42:31

Correct.

Coach Nat: 42:31

A lot of them are having issues with food and their relationship with food. And then they go and they put on all this weight, but they're not showing you that. And you just think they're walking around like this, eating this weight, eating this ****, and you're like, why can they do it and I can't?

Coach Bronson: 42:46

Yeah, because they're not. They did it once, took 400 pictures. And then if you see them do alive, they're in a baggy t shirt and sweats because they don't want anybody to see that. They can.

Coach Nat: 42:56

Actually there's another piece of the puzzle, too. This goes back to something Bronson was talking about before that he had the pie at Thanksgiving. The only other thing this man has eaten that's not carnivore. Well, besides coffee, of course that's not carnivore. This entire year was at Salt Lake Redmond.

Coach Bronson: 43:19

Salt Lake. French fries.

Coach Nat: 43:20

Salt Lake. He had french fries.

Coach Bronson: 43:22

Well, you can what about mayonnaise? What about mayonnaise? Does that count? We're talking carnival, keto, crappy food.

Coach Nat: 43:28

Yeah, okay, we'll say carbs. Yeah, but really, these are like the fries you could even argue were somewhat healthy because they were cooking. Cooking?

Coach Bronson: 43:36

Oh my God.

Coach Nat: 43:36

They were taste. Those pies were it was straight up cheesecake and pumpkin pie, like standard American, but literally y'all. That is two times in twelve months. Two times in twelve months. I just want you to understand that even when you see people like us sharing one, we might have, if you want to call it a cheat meal, but for us, we would probably just say it's a special occasion, it's whatever, it's food. So even when you see that, you need to understand that these people are not doing that on a regular basis.

Coach Bronson: 44:13

Right?

Coach Nat: 44:14

So those people you see that are fit and they're eating the pizza like you're seeing the one time they're taking one bite out of that pizza, you may not even watch them actually eat that pizza in the video. They may just be doing that for social media. So what you don't understand is that that is not their lifestyle. So a lot of the time when you're still sick, you see that and you want that to be your permission to do it because, well, they can do it. And this is getting to the whole point of why we wanted to do this.

Coach Bronson: 44:47

Yeah. Now we're finally 45 minutes in and now we're getting into the meat of the topic.

Coach Nat: 44:52

But the crux is we have done a lot of work to get to the place where we can be healthy and this is now sustainable. Our level of health and fitness is in a place where sure, occasionally we could get away with that and that you can have that level of health. But then, okay, number one, what's going to keep you from doing it all the time? And number two, I don't know what number two is. What was I going to say?

Coach Bronson: 45:22

I want you to hate when that happens. I was thinking of something that I wanted to add.

Coach Nat: 45:28

Oh, just because you can doesn't mean you should.

Coach Bronson: 45:32

Okay. And that's a good segue in what I was going to say, that once you get to that point of health, once you get to that point of freedom, because that's what we're talking about guys.

Coach Nat: 45:40

We're talking about that's what maintenance is.

Coach Bronson: 45:42

Maintenance is you are living life on your terms. Okay? You've gotten your body composition goals. We both have our body composition goals. We both are at a point where we can physically do whatever we want to physically do. We don't have any health issues. Okay? My story started in my late thirty s. It took me several years to find the combination of fitness and nutrition to get me where I am today. I've been carnivore for five years, almost five years, four and a half years. And I reached my goals about three, four years ago. Three and a half, four years ago. So it took me about six months with carnivore to get to a point where it's okay, I'm good. Like what do I do now? So I've been maintaining for almost five years now, four years now. So this is a whole cool process to be in. I'm in play time right now. But one of the things I wanted to think about is once you get to this point, the things that we choose to do notice the wording we don't feel that we need to. We decide if we want to.

Coach Nat: 46:50

That is it right there.

Coach Bronson: 46:53

That is the difference between maintenance and being in the healing process. When you're still healing and you don't have a great relationship with food, when you still feel cravings, when you still have the things that you're dealing with internally and mentally and in your subconscious and in your psychology and all of the different things, and you're still trying to get to a point where you are mentally free as well as health, as well as physically free biologically, all of the things you can't afford. If you do something out of a craving, out of a habit, out of a routine, out of a whatever, that's really subconscious to you because you haven't gained control of it yet. That's where things get messed up.

Coach Nat: 47:35

Yep.

Coach Bronson: 47:36

You can't look at somebody like myself and and Coach Nat and say, well, he had French fries and pumpkin pie, so, you know, if he can do it, I should be able to do it too. It doesn't work that way.

Coach Nat: 47:47

Right.

Coach Bronson: 47:48

I'm at a point where I'm not attached to that pumpkin pie. Right. I'm not attached to the need for what that pumpkin pie is going to do for me. I just wanted some pumpkin pie.

Coach Nat: 48:01

And guess what? He didn't beat himself up over it.

Coach Bronson: 48:04

Not at all, either. Not at all.

Coach Nat: 48:06

He wasn't like, oh my God, they're going to take my carnivore card because I ate pumpkin pie last night. Like, oh my God, how am I going to live with myself? What am I going to do? What do I have to do now? Do I have to go right?

Coach Bronson: 48:18

What do I have to do now, Ketosis? What do I have to do now? No. And you don't do anything different. That's a different weekend.

Coach Nat: 48:24

That's a whole yeah, I will talk.

Coach Bronson: 48:25

About that, but just understand that and that's a good way to know if you're ready yet. If you go off track and then you feel like**** and you beat yourself up because you went off track, then you know you're not ready to be off track. That's a good way to know if you're at a point mentally where you can handle doing something that you know isn't technically good for you. I know that technically, alcohol is a poison. I am physically and mentally at a point where if I wanted to go out and someone said, hey, do you want a glass of bourbon? I could say yes, and it would not bother me one single bit. I would have to hangover from the hell tomorrow. But I would know that going in. Do I want to enjoy this or not? Do I want to or not? Because I put the investment in. I put the time in. I put the effort in, I put the work in to get to this point over seven, eight years of time to get here. It's the money thing. It's the whole money thing.

Coach Nat: 49:35

Yeah. We invest in analogy before of like it's like budgeting. You're either investing, you're either putting money into savings or you're taking it out.

Coach Bronson: 49:48

And many people are in debt right now, so they can't afford to be.

Coach Nat: 49:50

Paying around with the pumpkin pie. But also I love the track analogy because we constantly hear this, I'm off track, I need to get back on track. I'm getting back on track. I love that. What you just said, I don't know if you even noticed you said this, if you're wondering about if you're spending all this mental energy on beating yourself up because you went off track, you're not ready to be off track. I don't know if you all caught that. He said you're not ready to be off track. So for many of you, what you're probably thinking of when you hear the term off track, it means not eating keto or not eating according to the diet that you need to be eating to get your weight loss or whatever it is. You only need the track when you have a destination. You're trying to get to the group, right? You need that track right now. You can't be trusted to be off the track on your own.

Coach Bronson: 50:52

That's some deep **** right there.

Coach Nat: 50:55

Walking on your own, 2ft off Road.

Coach Bronson: 50:59

Doesn'T have any maps like that's.

Coach Nat: 51:02

Just you walking, making your decisions day in, day out. That's what it is. So really, being off track is the goal. The goal is to be able to be off the track, to not need the track.

Coach Bronson: 51:17

Oh, dang. All right, we're done with this episode.

Coach Nat: 51:20

I'm imagining the image that's going through my mind right now is like the horses in the merry go round, hopping.

Coach Bronson: 51:27

Off and just go on now free. Literally, I'm thinking of cars on the road because I use this analogy, the idea of restriction. God, I love you. The whole idea. We talk about restriction and you can go anywhere in the country you want to go if you follow the rules of the road and you stay on the road.

Coach Nat: 51:50

Yeah.

Coach Bronson: 51:51

When you are ready and able to and you reach that goal of health and physical freedom and a good mental place and relationship with food, then it's like getting a license that says you can now go off road and go wherever the hell you want to go and explore everything.

Coach Nat: 52:13

I'm imagining what are those things?

Coach Bronson: 52:15

Little doom buggies or four wheelers. Yeah, you get like your own little four wheeler and go wherever you want to go.

Coach Nat: 52:21

That is awesome.

Coach Bronson: 52:21

That's what it is.

Coach Nat: 52:23

Freedom.

Coach Bronson: 52:23

It's play time.

Coach Nat: 52:24

Freedom is okay. I'll wrap it up by saying that we were going to talk about what we're doing now, but we can do that.

Coach Bronson: 52:31

We can do it in a time.

Coach Nat: 52:32

But where I'm at right now is actually, after over seven years of bodybuilding, I now feel that, okay. It's taken me this long because after my initial healing period, when I did get into Bodybuilding, that's when all the mental stuff started going crazy.

Coach Bronson: 52:52

That's the show. This show did that for you.

Coach Nat: 52:55

This prep.

Coach Bronson: 52:55

You came out of this prep in this show and you came out of last weekend and you're like, okay, I've arrived. Let's frickin do this.

Coach Nat: 53:05

Yeah. So I will say honestly, when you asked that question at the beginning of the episode, when did you feel like you finally got that place? It's like, I know when I got the initial healing, but then I backtracked because I focused on the physique. I was so focused on the body composition goals. Once I got focused on the body composition goals, it took me away from my why instead of making that because this is why we tell you all, you have to make the connection on a regular basis to your why. When the goal for me and the Y just became getting to the body, that's when off season meant offroading and I needed the track. But this is the first time where not only it was a little bit when I got my pro card, I felt that way. And stupid 2020, it slapped me in the face.

Coach Bronson: 54:05

You and everybody else.

Coach Nat: 54:07

When I first got the pro card, I felt it. It was like, I'm a pro athlete. This is where I stay. This is where I live. Like, this is maintenance. And then I and then 2020, well, 2021 was healing all over again. The mental and emotional healing that was needed to where I could go into this prep in a new place, mentally and plus emotionally. And I have the support of the two men in my life.

Coach Bronson: 54:32

Why are you going to keep bringing him up?

Coach Nat: 54:34

My bronson and my coach. And like you said, coming out of this prep, I'm now like, this is my new normal. There will no longer be a putting £20 off in the off season because there is no off season. This is now building, guys, if I.

Coach Bronson: 54:53

Can tell you, she's gotten leaner since.

Coach Nat: 54:54

The showing at me, and it's hard for me to even like folks, she's gotten leaner.

Coach Bronson: 54:58

She's doing her arm movements and stuff while she's talking, and her veins are popping and her shoulders look good.

Coach Nat: 55:03

You know, Italians can't talk without moving our hands.

Coach Bronson: 55:06

Yeah, I think I might be a half Italian.

Coach Nat: 55:09

I do that a lot. All right. But all I want to say basically is that like you said, once you get here, the sky is the limit. So what we do now from this maintenance place is we get to set.

Coach Bronson: 55:25

New goals based on what you want, see what happens.

Coach Nat: 55:28

Right? BJJ for you. Like, I want to get back into dance. I want to start doing you can just imagine anything you want to start doing.

Coach Bronson: 55:37

I'm in the senior Olympics. Dang it.

Coach Nat: 55:40

And I'm thinking about all these muscles I'm going to grow and going to the next level and bodybuilding.

Coach Bronson: 55:47

She's already jacked. She's going to be jacked.

Coach Nat: 55:49

I have a goal to crush watermelons next summer.

Coach Bronson: 55:52

You could do that now.

Coach Nat: 55:54

You think?

Coach Bronson: 55:55

Yes.

Coach Nat: 55:55

Well, we need to test it out. Trust me.

Coach Bronson: 55:59

Yes. On that note, take it easy, guys. As always, if you have any questions, if you have any recommendations or ideas, things you'd like to hear us talk about, please let us know. We love talking about the stuff, and hopefully it's helping you guys find answers to your questions or make you start asking some new questions.

Coach Nat: 56:20

Pondering opening your mind up.

Coach Bronson: 56:24

Yeah. All right, so, as always, don't forget to eat, lift, sleep, repeat, take it easy.

Coach Nat: 56:49

Key points.