Stay Off My Operating Table

Bronson Dant: The Power of Emotional Awareness in Your Health Journey 158

• Bronson Dant • Episode 158

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Health coach Bronson Dant shares his unique approach to achieving true health and fitness, emphasizing the importance of self-awareness and sustainable lifestyle changes over quick-fix diets and exercise programs.

Key Takeaways:

  • Developing self-awareness is crucial for addressing emotional triggers and achieving lasting health improvements
  • Understanding your "why" helps filter health information and stay motivated on your fitness journey
  • Body confidence is about trusting your body to perform and protect you, not just about appearance
  • Balancing priorities in different life seasons is essential for maintaining overall well-being

Resources and Links:
• Pre-order Bronson Dant's new book "Body Confident"
• "Start With Why" by Simon Sinek
• "Help First" by Chris Cooper

Timestamps:
00:00:00 - Introduction and guest background
00:05:30 - Defining body confidence
00:10:15 - The importance of self-awareness in health journeys
00:15:45 - Success story: Dant's mother's fitness journey
00:20:30 - Balancing priorities in different life seasons

Guest Bio:
Bronson Dant is a health coach and author of the upcoming book "Body Confident." With years of experience in the fitness industry, Dant focuses on helping clients develop self-awareness and make sustainable lifestyle changes. His approach emphasizes the interconnected nature of physical and mental health, guiding individuals to achieve true body confidence and physical freedom.

Connect:
Book - Body Confident: https://bodyconfidentbook.com
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@coach.bronson
Instagram: https://instagram.com/@coach.bronson
Website: https://coachbronson.com

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Speaker 1:

Well, thanks for joining us folks. You've found the Stay Off my Operating Table podcast with Dr Philip Ovadia and we've got somebody on who we've interviewed before. It's been a couple of years. So, bronson Dant, welcome, coach. Bronson, tell us what you're up to.

Speaker 2:

Thanks for having me on Dr Ovadia and Jack, it's good to see you again.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, hard to believe. It's been probably about two years already. Time flies. And we were commenting on an earlier recording we did. It's time to start circling back on some of the amazing things that the guests have been doing. That the guests have been doing and so excited to have you back on, to catch up and to get word out about your new book, which will be dropping shortly after this episode ends up getting released. It's called Body Confident and very, very excited for that. So maybe, before we get to the book specifically, fill us in a little bit on what else you've been up to, what else you've been working on over the past couple of years.

Speaker 2:

Awesome. Yeah, thanks a lot. The book has been a lot of it the last couple of years. Outside of that, it's really just trying to get out, do more speaking engagements. I think we spent some time on the carnivore season of Reversed. Since then, a lot of different things have been going on.

Speaker 2:

So, keeping in touch with my clients, trying to build my business a little bit, get into the side of things where I'm helping people understand the struggles of the mind versus just following nutrition guidelines or just following fitness programs and realizing that anybody there are a million different places to go to get a macro plan or a meal plan or nutrition plan. There's a million places to go to get a fitness program, join a gym, do whatever. That's the easy part of the journey that a lot of people think is the hard part, and it's really not. It's doing it consistently. It's understanding if it's working for you. It's learning how to measure success. It's identifying what are the things that are keeping you from making the choices you want to make on a consistent basis. Those are the things that are challenging and that's really where most of my work as a coach has been diving into behavior change, habit change, those types of things, so I've been spending a lot of time in that arena lately maybe we'll say excuses that people use.

Speaker 3:

Or you know, one of their hesitancies with getting into getting into any of this and making changes is they always say, well, there's so much noise, it's so confusing. You know, how do I know? You know, listen to this coach versus this coach or this doctor versus this doctor and all the different approaches out there. So how do you kind of help your clients sort of start to understand that unravel that you know, and maybe beyond your clients, just people in general, how do you think it's best for them to start to work through that and find someone to work with?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think that it starts with understanding exactly what it is you want to do and for many people, what is the most popular thing? We hear I want to lose weight. That's what people think that they're trying to do and that can work for a while. It's not usually sustainable. There's always things that get in the way because there's nothing emotionally connected to weight loss. It's just something. We think that's the right answer. Going through the process of really identifying what is the driving motivational, emotional connection that you have to why you want to make these decisions to better your health or improve your quality of life is the first step. From there, when you're looking at the information and you're looking at the options you have on what you need to do, who you need to follow, who you should sign up with as a coach, what information to glean from social media, podcast, youtube, whatever it's all about the context, and context is everything, because once you've defined where you're trying to go and you're emotionally connected to that, so that anything that's trying to pull you off track isn't going to be stronger than the emotion, you have to stay on track. Once you've gotten that part worked out and you can define what that means for you. Now you have a filter that you can get information and look at that filter and say, does this filter match where I'm trying to go? This is my context. What's the context of the person that's talking and what's the context of the message being sent?

Speaker 2:

I look at it like communications. There's three parts to all communication. There's the sender, the message and the receiver, and many times we forget that our context of the receiver is the most important part. If it doesn't apply to me, then why am I listening to it? Why am I trying it? What am I doing is so-and-so said. This is what I should do, or I'm doing this because it's healthy or because it's going to improve X, y or Z. If you're not worried about improving X, y or Z, then why are you trying that thing? The answer should be I'm trying to do this in detail explanation. What is the intent of what I'm trying to do and I can explain to you why this option is going to help that happen. If you can't tell me why you've chosen to do the thing that you're doing specifically in detail, then it's probably wasting your time.

Speaker 1:

So I understand what you're saying. Conceptually, it's pretty high level. Can you give us some examples? High levels, the way to go, jack, come on. What do you tell us? Tell us some stories. Well, I'm a simple guy sure, yeah, no, I see.

Speaker 2:

Well, just example I mean super, super easy example is dealing with people, with people that come to me and they're struggling to lose weight. Let's, let's say weight loss is one of the goals that they have. And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying weight loss isn't a good thing. We do want to lose fat. They're going through all of these different things to try to lose fat and they're spending a lot of time worrying about when they should be eating. Should I work out fasted? Do I need to intermittent fast? Should I be doing OMAD? Or?

Speaker 2:

They're spending a ton of time reading up and understanding how what they're doing is improving autophagy or mitochondrial health. They're spending a lot of time thinking about hey, do I need to get a tub so I can do cold plungers? Should I get blue light blockers or should I just put my phone away at a certain time? Should I get blackout curtains? Do I need to start doing like all of these things that stack up all of the bests?

Speaker 2:

Everyone has a different thing that they're saying is the best thing that you can do to improve your health, and they're trying to stack all of these best on top of each other. What they really should be looking at is what are the main things at the trunk of the tree instead of at the leaves and branches of the tree that they can do. That's going to fix all of it right. Are you eating enough? Are you getting the protein and the fat that you need, or are you over consuming fat? Are you getting physical activity and challenging your muscles on a regular basis? Are you getting enough sleep? Those are the basics. If you can knock out one or two of the basic, fundamental things that the human body requires for function enough protein, not too much fat, muscle stimulation and sleep 90% of all the other things that all these mechanisms or protocols or biohacks are supposed to fix won't even need to be discussed.

Speaker 1:

Fair enough, fair enough.

Speaker 2:

So that's what I'm talking about.

Speaker 1:

I'm assuming that's a fairly common issue. Oh, very common.

Speaker 2:

Very common. Think about this the whole biohacking industry wouldn't exist if people just did the basics.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, that's a great perspective and it's interesting that you see that so commonly that people want to jump to all of that, that. And you know, sometimes it gets, I would say, even taken to the extreme of people doing all these various things. And you're talking to them and you're like, whoa, you know what are you eating, you know, and they're not getting that part of it right and they're trying to mitigate all of that with all these other you know, fancy tools and stuff like that.

Speaker 2:

Because they're. They're distractions, they're marketed, they're sensationalized and they're sold as magic pills. If you do this, everything in your life is going to be better. And then you find 18 different things that supposedly, if you put all these things together, they're going to be everybody's a Brian Johnson now, and we've all got millions of dollars to spend on supplements and therapies and protocols to live forever.

Speaker 2:

It would be a lot easier and this is where the mindset connection comes in it would be a lot easier if you just deal with the stuff in your head that's keeping you from doing the basics, because the basics are a lot easier, they cost less and they are more impactful long-term. So just deal with the reason why can't I put down the ice cream? Figure out what that emotional trigger is and that habit loop and fix those issues. Then you'd stop putting down the ice cream, you start picking up the steak and everything starts getting better. And that's all you had to do. It didn't cost you any extra money, it wasn't any extra stress in your schedule, you didn't have to stop eating or starve yourself. You didn't have to do workouts and all the other different things that people you know working out two a day is trying to get part of you in trying to do weight training, trying to do all these different things Right. So, um, simplicity. So simplicity is really the key to this whole conversation.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, sounds like you're talking about life coach kind of stuff like dig it down Very much Emotional triggers and trauma from childhood and oh my, my god, that's you would be surprised jack how often my coaching sessions um would, if anybody were to listen to my coaching sessions, and sound like therapy sessions, because I talk about fitness and nutrition maybe 15 10 of the time when I'm dealing with clients. Most of it is trying to help people develop the self-awareness to understand why they're doing what they're doing. When someone comes to me and says I don't know what happened, I ended up eating blah, blah, blah at a party the other night and I have to look at them and say how can you not know what happened? You had to physically pick up the food and put it in your mouth. But they're so unaware of the reasons, the emotions, the circumstance, the triggers and what their habit loops that they've taken 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 years to build. They have no awareness of what those are. So we have to work through the process of post-facto evaluation of the scenario, develop the awareness after the fact, work them through the practice and the habit and the skill. So being self-aware is a skill you must develop and maintain. So we practice that after the fact, the more we can do that. That's why journaling is a huge piece of coaching. Write it down. What happened, what was I feeling, what was the scenario, what was the circumstance, what time of day, what was happening in the house, whatever it may be, what was happening at work? You know what did I do in preparation, what didn't I do in preparation? Start tracking those types of things.

Speaker 2:

If you can develop that self-awareness after the fact and you build that as a skill, then what happens is you start reducing the amount of time to where the emotion, the trigger and the awareness happen. So right now, most people are at trigger and emotion and then reaction or engaging in the habit and then going oh crap, what happened? I got to figure this out. If you can develop that as a skill, what happens? You start bringing that awareness and you can bring it before the habit and the reaction. So what happens is you have the emotion and the trigger. You're aware of that trigger and you have a different option, a different choice you can make now because you've developed the self-awareness, so you're not immediately reacting. You can be aware wait, I'm having a trigger right now. Why is this a trigger? What am I doing? How am I going to respond? And then you can respond better and you have a much higher chance of staying on track in that way, what are the most?

Speaker 1:

common triggers Everything.

Speaker 2:

Seriously, it's everything I mean. I think stress would be the catch-all that people are going to give you uh for a trigger. But literally stress could be anything. Stress could be walking into a room and seeing somebody you don't like. Stress could be coming home and and knowing that tonight I have to do my taxes and I don't want to do that, I'm going to put it off. And whatever it could be a trigger for me was going to a parking lot of a store, a grocery store that I used to go to to buy Ben and Jerry's.

Speaker 2:

When I did Ben and Jerry's binges after my second divorce, during COVID, after losing my gym, I had a very low time in my life where, in about an eight-month period, I got divorced, I lost my gym and then COVID hit, and there was a good period of time in 2020 where I was doing multiple pints of Ben Jerry's at night multiple times a week when I finally got myself out of that, even living in the area. Every time I would drive by that store. It was stressful for me and I would trigger and I'd think about my. The first thing that would happen every time I went into that parking lot was I'd start thinking about what might be on stock in that ice cream aisle. Even though I knew I wasn't going to go in the store, it was on my mind and it was a stressful thing. So the things that people have as triggers are innumerable.

Speaker 3:

And so what do you? You know, how did you get past that? How do people? You know, how do you help people to kind of get past those triggers?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, the first thing, going back to what I said earlier, is understanding why you're really doing it. When you can get past the superficial and start digging into the emotional reason, everything starts coming together from your ability to fight through the challenges. One of the things that I want to make sure everyone understands we've heard the phrase start with why. If anybody's familiar with Simon Sinek and the book, start with why, get it. If you haven't gotten it, get it and read it. The why is the key to everything. And if you haven't been able to figure out what your why is, we'll talk about that in a second. But just understanding that, having an emotional reason and having an understanding of why you're doing it, I think a lot of people think, oh, if I get my why, then everything will be better and that is true. But not I don't want the idea of finding your why to set the expectation that it makes the process easy. It doesn't. Finding your why and having an emotional connection to what you're in this for to begin with, why do you want to even be doing what you say you're doing is your anchor. That allows the grit of facing the challenges when they come. It doesn't remove the challenges. You're still going to have temptation. You're still going to be put in scenarios that are triggers. You're still going to be put in times and have times where you just didn't adequately prepare for something that may come in front of you and you have to face it. The why gets you through those times. It doesn't remove those times. So that's one expectation I want to make sure everybody understands. But the secret to the why is digging till you have an emotional connection that is stronger than the emotional reason for doing something that's unhealthy. So we have emotional connections. I know that I'm going to be spending the weekend Okay with food. I will feel bad if I don't accept that and participate, because I'll feel like I'm not participating in the love of my family, how my family shows love, having an emotional connection. Let's say that emotional connection. I'll use my own example. My emotional connection is a couple of different things One as a father and the views that I have as fatherhood, and the example I wanted. I wish I could have set for my kids and want to continue to set for my kids.

Speaker 2:

Another one is, which we may have talked about in the past, is watching my grandparents deteriorate, fade away and just completely become not who they were. I don't know who my grandparents were when they died. They were not the same people that I grew up with that supported me, always my cheerleader, and always backed me, no matter what was going on. I don't ever want anyone to have to go through that and, having been through that, having worked with my mom in her 60s now 70, to help her prevent that from happening, there's a level of emotion that is connected to that experience for me that I don't care if anybody thinks that they're loving me by giving me something harmful.

Speaker 2:

That's not what I'm doing. It doesn't matter to me. I know that if you really love me and I really love you, I'm going to say no to that cake, because that cake isn't going to help me be around. When you need me 10 years from now, that's love. When you need me 10 years from now, that's love. And understanding that the belief in the system that I may have grown up with, the perception of the world that I may have grown up with about how to express love, isn't real unless I make it real.

Speaker 3:

Deep stuff, deep stuff, um, what, um. So we're in this journey for people um. Where do you think you know health coaching is? What do you see your role as a health coach is? Um you know, in people's journey?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think it's two things. One, helping them understand their context. Three things understanding their context, helping them filter information against their context and then helping them maintain accountability for self-awareness. So I don't define accountability the way a lot of people do. A lot of people look at accountability as somebody who's going to yell at me if I do something wrong.

Speaker 2:

I need an accountability partner. I need someone who's going to keep me on track. It's not my job to keep you on track. An accountability partner is not someone who can keep you on track, because, guess what? Nobody can make you do anything except you. So if we want accountability, what we have to be willing to do is have someone who's going to call us on our BS and fill our excuses. That's what accountability is. Why did you do that? What was the lie you told yourself? What was the justification you used to do something that goes against your stated goal. Help develop that self-awareness, help reach into the mental games that we're playing with ourselves. That's accountability. So I think those are the three things, the three main things I do as a coach.

Speaker 1:

So it seems like what you're describing to me reminds me. I realize this is way the heck out of left field. Jordan Peterson got famous oh five, six, seven years ago with his book 12 Rules for Life, and one of his rules was tell the truth, or at least don't lie, and he quoted the physicist Richard Feynman, who said you are the easiest person you yourself are the easiest person for you to fool. I didn't say that exactly right, but the gist of it is don't fool yourself, and you're really easy to fool. Um, it sounds like there's. I don't want to push this farther than it should be pushed, but it almost sounds like there is a character, a almost a a spiritual dimension to this getting healthy thing. Now, like I said, I don't want to push it farther than it needs to be, but if you're so unaware that you're lying to yourself, maybe those lies are dispersed in other places in your life. Are you seeing people guarantee significant life improvements, aside from just merely losing weight, getting fit?

Speaker 2:

Absolutely, absolutely Again, because self-awareness is a skill and we can have the spiritual conversation and I think everybody's definition of what spiritual is. The idea of talking about self-awareness could be spiritual for some people. The idea of talking about self-awareness could be spiritual for some people, but it's the idea that lying to yourself. Here's the trick of that concept. It's intended to keep us safe. Lying to ourselves, lying to ourselves. So the limbic brain right, we call it the lizard brain, if you've ever heard that phrase. It's designed to keep us safe. We're in a certain level of homeostasis. Our body wants to maintain that level. We don't want to get outside our comfort zone. Outside the comfort zone is not safe. We don't know what's out there, it's scary, we could get hurt. So our mind is going to do everything it possibly can to keep us in our comfort zone. So leave, because that's the safe place.

Speaker 1:

What you're saying is that a lot of these bad habits that have resulted in bad health spring from a primal urges to to protect ourselves.

Speaker 2:

Well, I would say that it can't that, that that is some. That is part of it. I would say it starts at a root of learned behavior and environment and childhood trauma experiences, perception Everything starts with how we perceive the world. So if we perceive the world a certain way, we engage with the world that way and then most of the time our perception is we see those things happen again and it reinforces the perception. So we never have an option. We never get out of that loop of perception reality, validated perception, continued perception, reality it just keeps going around right.

Speaker 2:

Breaking that cycle is where the brain is telling you no, I understand this world, this is the glass, these are the glasses I have on, I know what, I know what I'm looking at, I know how it works if I break away out of this loop of perception and reality and try to change my reality. We can't change our reality until we change our perception and we can't change our reality until we change our perception. And we can't change our perception if we don't think differently. That's the part of getting outside the comfort zone. Getting outside, how am I looking at things? What are the things I'm making important? What are the things I'm valuing. If I really value X, why am I doing Y? If I really believe X, why am I doing Y? Those are the types of things where the brain is fighting against us, because we're trying to change everything about who we are right.

Speaker 1:

It sounds like you're describing becoming, literally becoming a healthier human being it's not merely a healthier body, but a more complete, well-rounded, mature human being, which is that's not what I would have expected from.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, it's so interesting because, you know, we, we've all seen, um, you know, many times now, the phenomena where you know someone goes on a low carb diet and, you know, loses weight, and you know, at the same time, some of their other addictive behaviors, you know, go away gambling, drinking, whatever it is, and we've kind of been thinking about that from the biochemical process, and you know, more stable brain, energy and not having sugar up and down, you know, type thing, uh, but maybe an aspect of it is exactly what you were talking about, that when you've, uh reframed your perspective on who you are and how you exist in the world. Um, you know, that's what then allows those other behaviors to, you know, to be cast off.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely, because what happens is you start, when you start changing your perception of the world, you start redefining who you are, and it is impossible to redefine one aspect of your life without it bleeding into other areas. If I'm going to spend all of my time trying to improve my quality of life and health and I'm going to fix my fitness and nutrition, I'm going to build habits around that it has to bleed into my work life, my family life, my relationships, because those habits are now growing and developing and because it's in the mind, it affects everything.

Speaker 1:

You can't isolate improvements in the mind to one area of your life. I would like to take the conversation in a slightly different direction.

Speaker 2:

Oh, I'm scared.

Speaker 1:

Who have been your influences? Wow.

Speaker 2:

Wow. I would say at the top of the list, from coaching perspective, of understanding these things very, very indirectly, would be greg glassman. I've never met him, never talked to him. The founder of crossfit, the guy who put it all together as a program and methodology and got the whole thing started way back in the early 2000s. Improve quality of life, where physical freedom is the goal, not fitness the goal, not doing CrossFit being the goal. I'm not a CrossFitter, that's not the goal. I am a person who can live life freely. That's the goal.

Speaker 2:

The idea that there's more to health and fitness than you look, even how you perform in the gym. The idea that what we do in the gym has nothing to do with what we do in the gym. It has everything to do with what we do in real life. So I think that's where I really got first exposed to a broader worldview, my perception of what health and fitness was all about, so indirectly. I have to thank him because if he hadn't built CrossFit, I never would have been exposed to that Directly. My most, I think, impactful mentor person that I looked up to would be Chris Cooper, who's the founder of Two Brain Business. He runs Two Brain Business as a mentoring business, mentoring program for CrossFit gym owners that I was a member of when I owned my CrossFit gym. Me right next to Start With why? By Simon Sinek.

Speaker 2:

I think it is probably, from a coaching perspective, the first book that I would recommend to anybody who wants to be a coach, and it's called Help First. From the perspective of, if I have a choice to make in business, in coaching, in recommendations, advice, whatever I'm doing to help somebody, is it helping? Why am I doing it? Am I going to tell somebody something because I think they need to know it? They may need to know it, but do they need to know it right now? Is that going to help them in this moment? What is the thing that's going to help them? Sometimes, as a coach, there are 18 different things I want to tell somebody from an information perspective, but really all they need for me to go is and tell them at the time is I understand? How can I help? And it's not the information that will help them in the moment.

Speaker 2:

There's a lot of times when it comes to business where you want to do a certain thing, you want to have a program, you want to do these things, you have all these fanciful ideas of all this stuff you want to throw out there and you have to stop before you start implementing and ask yourself are people asking for this? Is this what is going to help the most people that I can possibly help? Or is this just something that I have a good idea that I think will be cool and driving everything through the filter of? Is this helping and am I helping? Before I do anything else, it's a foundational tenant for how I operate as a coach. So I think those two from a motivation, from a model of somebody that I want to emulate in how I look at life I think Gary Vee is at the top of the list. The positivity, the willingness to reach out and help people, his engagement, the way he looks at the world um, everything about, about how at least what I see from his content, which is more prolific than I can even imagine, but just the message and the hope that he gives people is another thing that I'd like to to emulate as well very good, yeah, well, that takes us to uh your book.

Speaker 1:

You got a new one coming up. I do. Let's, let's talk about that. Give me the yeah, so why? Why'd you need to write another book?

Speaker 2:

um, honestly, there's probably 10 more in me. Um, there's so much information, there's so much stuff out there going on. I feel like every day there's something else I want to write about. But right now this book is hot for me and I felt like I needed to get it out, because most of what we've talked about today people are struggling with how do I take all the information that's out there? What am I really trying to do? So I wanted to help people answer to those two questions specifically how do we define what we're actually trying to do? So I wanted to help people answer to those those two questions specifically how do we define what we're actually trying to do on our journey? And then, once we do that, how do I use all the information that's out there to figure out the right combination to fit to make my puzzle come together? And that's what this book is about.

Speaker 2:

It's about understanding that the real journey has nothing to do with fat loss. The real journey has nothing to do with how you look. The real journey isn't even about loving yourself. It's about proving to yourself that you can do whatever you need to do whenever you need to do it. It's about physical freedom and personal independence. And that's why I chose body confident, because I define body confidence as the freedom to engage in life, because you trust your body to perform and protect you. That is what it's about. It's about what you can do, not how you look. And it's not about how other people think about you, because what you can do has nothing to do with how other people think.

Speaker 2:

If I can lift 100 pounds, I can lift a hundred pounds. I don't care if Jack likes me right. If I can climb a mountain, I can climb a mountain. I don't care if Bobby Sue down the road doesn't like the way that I cut my grass. Whatever, I don't know, whatever it may be, you know. None of that stuff matters, because I know what I'm capable of.

Speaker 2:

And in order to do that, you got to know, first of all, what's your goal, what are the things you're trying to do in life? What are the things you don't want in life? How do I get rid of the stuff I don't want? How do I get the stuff that I do want? And the book lays out a framework step one through step 20. It's not really 20 steps, I'm just using that number Step one through step 20 to say here's how you work through the process of getting to where you want to go, and the cool thing about it is, once you get to the end, you can repeat it when you're ready to go into the next thing. It's a never ending cycle of progression and evaluation and making changes and identifying hey, I'm not at the same place I used to be, so the things I'm doing need to change. How do I figure out what I need to change? Let's make that change and implement the process again.

Speaker 1:

Is this just Coach Bronson's coaching in a box? Is that what I'm hearing you?

Speaker 2:

nailed it right on the head. One of the one of the things that I that I had in the back of my head for the entirety of writing this book was I want people to have a process they can use to coach themselves. That's what this is.

Speaker 1:

All right. Well, you heard it there. Folks, you're wishing you had a coach, but you're not sure that you're ready for it.

Speaker 2:

There you go, coach Bronson's book, and here's the thing, the cool thing about it, and if anybody has a coach or is looking at programs, you know I don't want to coach. I do it because people need it. In a perfect world, everyone could coach themselves and we could all just get along and have fun and enjoy life because we're all physically free. I know that's never going to happen in reality and I will probably coach till the day I die at some level. If I'm not coaching people, I'll be coaching other coaches. But giving people the tools and empowering individuals is part of a coach's responsibility. I can't teach you how to do it without me. And then what am I doing here?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah, maybe, maybe it's part of a heart surgeon's responsibility as well, Cause it sounds a lot like trying to keep people off your table. Um, ultimately and you know, that's that, that's what's been so um, um, inspire know, that's that, that's what's been so, um, um, inspire, you know, continues to inspire me. As you know, I interact with everyone around. You know, metabolic health, carnivore, you know all of that. Uh, you know you hear that over and over again that we're just trying to empower people to take care of themselves, to fix themselves, so that they don't need us to do it for them.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and that's the antithesis right of what the industry as a whole is doing. Everything else on the other side of the fence which unfortunately they're bigger than we are right now is about an interdependence and trying to milk everybody for everything they possibly can. Keep everybody sick so they make more money.

Speaker 1:

So I can't help but ask what are the goals you're working on now?

Speaker 2:

Funny. You ask that because I don't know. I'm in that transition in place myself. I was actually just on another podcast yesterday having this conversation because I realized recently that I'm at a point where, physically, I have no limitations. Health I have no health issues. Financially, I'm pretty stable. I have lots of projects and things that I'm working on.

Speaker 2:

From a physical performance perspective, from a what do I want to do with myself, I'm actually kind of in limbo. I'm in the wind right now, thinking about. You know, I don't. You know I used to be super stressed about being super lean and being a CrossFit athlete and doing all these competitions and doing all this kind of stuff. I don't really care about that stuff anymore. You know I've put on a little bit of body fat. I went from 10% to I'm about 17% body fat. Right now I don't really care about that stuff anymore.

Speaker 2:

I've put on a little bit of body fat. I went from 10% to I'm about 17% body fat. Right now I'm happy I don't track my food that much anymore, I just kind of chill, and I've maintained 15 to 70% body fat for almost a year now. So things are going so well. It's kind of like I feel like I need something, I need a competition, I need a challenge, I need to get into a new hobby. I got to find something else to do. So that's kind of where I'm at now. I'm kind of in that searching place for myself, like what is the next physical challenge or thing that I'm going to put in front of me to move forward. So you know we talked a little bit before here I'm planning on starting a master's degree here soon, so I know that will take up a lot of time. I've got the book coming out. I do have a coaching business. I do also have a regular nine-to-five job, so there's a lot of stuff going on.

Speaker 1:

But from a fitness perspective we're talking specifically there I'm maintaining right now, but I don't have anything that I'm really trying to push to. Yet I uh I happen to be standing uh with uh sean baker and the meat mafia guys at the health conference and uh, sean and and uh, I can't remember if they share their names or not, so I won't sean and meet mafia guy number two. We're talking about a goal that Sean had. He's going to be 60 here two or three years and he told my friend what his goals for 60 were, and the one that absolutely caught my ear was he wanted to run a sub 60, 400. Okay, yeah, and I was. I stopped him. I said, said wait, did you just say a sub 6400? Because most of the goals are strength goals? Yeah, this is, this is a speed goal. You know, this is something else. So I'm throwing that out there as a.

Speaker 2:

You know, maybe you could have an age-related goal I thought about it like I thought about maybe doing a powerlifting competition or a weightlifting competition or doing something like that, just the amount of time. And this is the thing is, I have to weigh, just like we talked about. I have to weigh what is the desire? Where would the desire come from to do it? Because at this point where I'm at physically, my physical, my, my physical performance goals aren't lifestyle goals, they are physical performance, they are competitive goals. So to go beyond lifestyle goals into the competitive realm is a whole different level of time, commitment, focus, intent. That with all the other things I have going on now, I don't know if I have enough of a desire or an emotional connection to doing that. That would keep me consistent to actually get to the end. So that's kind of where I'm at right now. It's like I don't know, do I worry about it? Do I just keep maintaining on the fitness side for now and focus on more of the business and the mental stuff? Right, I've got a paper that I want to write. I've got a school that I'm starting.

Speaker 2:

There's a whole bunch of other stuff that may take priority in the season, which I'll segue that into a really good idea that people need to understand is you don't always have to push on one thing, because we go through seasons in life. There may be a time where you're stressing out because you can't get to the gym four days a week and you're trying to fit all this stuff into your schedule. Maybe you just need to go once a week and let the other stuff take priority for a period of time. There's nothing wrong with that. That doesn't mean you're giving it up. You still understand it's important and you fit it in where you can. But priorities change, seasons change, we have different things that come at different times, and don't use those as an excuse, but use those as a way to practice applying intent.

Speaker 2:

What is the intent? What is the focus? Where do I need to be putting my time right now? Because I see a lot of people adding stress and complexity because they're trying to do too much, because the expectation that they're putting on themselves is more than it needs to be. It's okay to let things go right. If it's not serving you. Maybe it's not something you need to be worried about right now. Scale back on it. You can still meet the need as a minimum requirement, but that doesn't mean you have to do it at the expense of something else that is really important right now. So learning how to balance it, that give and take of the way life throws things at us as part of this process as well.

Speaker 1:

You sound like a very moderate, balanced, mature guy, rather than a radical hair on fire.

Speaker 2:

I realize you have no hair, but yeah, could you write that down, or can we take that clip and can I just use that and in the future promo yeah, yeah, no, it's.

Speaker 3:

It's interesting that balance. You know that we uh, because, uh, you know, again, I think we're always kind of pushing uh, you know, you got to be, you got to be improving, you got to be improving, you got to be improving. And you know, maybe sometimes the answer is you know, sometimes you need to be satisfied with where you're at.

Speaker 2:

Yes, and also to understanding that improvement In what Right I like to. Just an easy example is in fitness. How many times I've had a client call me because they're frustrated because the scale hasn't moved but they've lost six inches on their waist, or they've dropped their insulin from 150 to 70, or they're off metformin, or they've dropped all their their blood pressure medication, or they've off metformin, or they've dropped all their their blood pressure medication, or they've lost 20 body fat over the past 10 months. Like all these other things are happening, but because they're focused on one thing, they're missing all the other stuff. Right, oh well, I'm supposed to be doing this and I'm supposed to be doing that. Well, okay, great, um, this right now, isn't where your energy needs to be, because this is the thing that's about to kill you. Maybe let's focus on that first. So, understanding again priorities, and that there's growth can happen in more than one place at one. Growth can happen in multiple places. It doesn't have to happen in only one place all the time. Can happen in multiple places.

Speaker 1:

It doesn't have to happen in only one place all the time.

Speaker 2:

Do you have a favorite client story? My mom, she was my first client. Can you tell us Currently a client? Yeah, I mean, we started working. I started working with her as a personal training client when I owned my gym. About. Let's see, you just turned 70. So she was 61, maybe just turning 62. It's been almost nine, about nine years. She was like I can't even imagine doing that, let's just do personal training. So we did personal training for a while.

Speaker 2:

She got enough gumption to try a class Zero exposure outside of some Jane Fonda at-home workout videos in the 1980s. That was her exposure to fitness nothing, nothing else. So, starting at 60 plus years old for the first time, walking into a crossfit gym and absolutely crushing it. She loved it. She could not get enough of it. She reversed, in combination with going mostly animal-based carnivore, starting CrossFit. She reversed osteoporosis. She increased her bone density. She increased her muscle mass.

Speaker 2:

She has been consistently working out since then for almost 10 years now. Now she built a gym in her basement during COVID. So she has a gym in her basement now. She still follows my programming. I still work with her, um, mostly remotely now because I live further away, now because we moved, but, um, the joy that I see on her face when she talks to me about what she's doing when she's working out, the sadness that she has when she goes on vacation and can't find a good gym to go to, just to work out in the hotel gym like these are the types of things that I'm like. My mom is 70 years old and she's a gym rat like how I could not be. I could not possibly be any happier with that story.

Speaker 1:

That's pretty cool.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yes, it is.

Speaker 1:

All right, bronson. Dan, we appreciate chapter two that you spent with us. It's good to catch up. Remind us when does the book drop again.

Speaker 2:

What comes out. Labor Day weekend. I'm actually doing a live launch on YouTube, which I think, dr Vedia, you're going to be on for a little bit, just a couple hours, kind of have some people on, talk about the book and what we're doing, and then we'll be hitting the button to make everything go live. Oh, cool and yeah. So, right after Labor Day weekend, everybody can get it. You can go get it now. Pre-order. The Kindle version and the hardcover are available on Amazon. Um, but it would be fantastic. And I want to thank Dr Vadia, because he also wrote the foreword for the book, so, um, he's part of this journey as well.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, thank you, it was a honor to do that. And again, uh, the book is called body confident and uh be available for pre-order, and actually, by the time this comes out, we'll be about a week away from the launch event, and so keep an eye on social medias for those details.

Speaker 1:

All right. Well, we'll make sure all that information shows up in the show notes. I'll make sure there's a link to Bronson Dance's new book, body Confident. Thanks for joining us. For Bronson and for Dr Philip Ovedia, this has been the Stay Off my Operating Table podcast. We'll see you next time.

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Dr. Philip Ovadia

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Jack Heald

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