SHAWN STEVENSON: Welcome to The Model Health Show. This is fitness and nutrition expert, Shawn Stevenson. And I'm so grateful for you tuning in with me today. We just got word about a very strange but expected side effect of COVID-19 entering the picture. And this is according to a recent study. As of this recording, just published by the CDC, looking at the rates of childhood obesity, which took an enormous leap during the pandemic. According to this report, severely obese children, their expected annual weight gain increased from 8.8 pounds per year before the pandemic to 14.6 pounds. Moderately obese children, their expected weight gain of 6.5 pounds, nearly doubled, jumping up to 12 pounds of weight gain. And even children who had a healthy weight prior to the pandemic saw their annual rate of weight gain increase from 3.4 pounds to 5.4 pounds. Now, something is clearly wrong. But we really stuck to the data from the very beginning.

And looking at these very obvious trends that were going to take place as a result of how we've handled this situation, now we could have the mindset that, "Hey, maybe this is a temporary collateral damage taking place." But then we're ignoring the laws of recidivism and seeing how when these situations take hold and we see increases in weight gain, abnormal weight gain and obesity in children, it becomes exceedingly more difficult for them to lose that weight as they venture into adulthood, essentially setting them up for a lifetime of struggle, based on, again, the data that we've accumulated over decades of studying obesity. And so, a lot of folks don't realize that since 1980, the prevalence among children and adolescents, the prevalence of obesity in our children has almost tripled since 1980. Today, nearly one in three of our kids are overweight or obese. And this is a side effect of our culture. There's a cultural construct that has shifted. It's not just our children. But I wanted to highlight this because this data has just been published, which we knew this was going to happen.

We've seen the same thing happen with adults here in the United States. There's been a massive amount of weight gain. And again, it's understandable. The stress, the lack of movement, the anxiety, the increased consumption of processed foods, the more time on le’ couch, of course, these are some of the things. But we know the side effects of those things. What happens when our insulin resistance goes up because of these things? Our sedentary behavior, our weight gain. Levels of inflammation go up. Levels of chronic disease, if we're talking about our susceptibility to infectious diseases dramatically increases, exponentially grows, when we move away from health. And the thing is, we already... As we're going to talk about it in this episode, we were already experiencing a snowball effect. Again, since 1980, the rate of obesity in children has almost tripled, things were not going well. And now it's been accelerated. But here's the thing, and what this is all about, what this show is all about. What can we actually do to change this, to right the ship, to use what we've learned from the past and move forward in a more empowered, intelligent and efficacious way, so we can actually get the results that we're looking for?

The power is in our hands to make this difference. And so really, incredibly excited about today's episode. Incredibly excited about our guest. He is truly a trainer's trainer, somebody that countless folks look to when understanding the domain of body transformation, of physical fitness. He is in a league of his own, truly. Now, we actually had him on the show a couple of years ago. And he kind of shared his story and how he got into this space, which I highly recommend checking out that episode. But now we're just going to focus on... Listen, everyday folks, moms, dads, folks working a nine to five, to, I'm talking the most elite athletes on planet Earth, are coming to our special guest. And the difference is he has strategies and programming that fits all of these folks at spectrum. It isn't a one-size-fits-all. And so, we're going to dig in today and look at, so what are some of those very specific things that we need to account for so that we can start to move our own personal health and fitness forward and also out-picture these things in our families and our communities? Now, an added layer of importance with this is the data that we now have on the connection with physical fitness, on activity versus sedentary behavior in defending our bodies from the likes of COVID-19 and related symptoms.

A study conducted by researchers at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center tracked the exercise habits of nearly 50,000 COVID-19 patients and revealed some very eye-opening evidence. After analyzing their exercise habits over the two years prior to the pandemic, it was revealed the people who were consistently inactive, the folks who were sedentary, were two and a half times more likely to die from COVID-19, than people who consistently exercised.

Now, this is analyzing population study, this is observational data, but building on top of this, we've shared multiple studies that are affirming the same thing and much more. So, make sure to check out the episode we did titled The Five Risk Factors for COVID that You're Probably Not Hearing About, Episode 510, for more details and the connection between exercise, sedentary behavior and outcomes, poor outcomes, or resilience against COVID-19. And another critical aspect is our nutrition in relationship to this virus and also all other infectious and chronic diseases is what is running our biochemistry. There's this really dynamic sodium potassium pump that's driving essentially all the functions of the body. So, these electrolytes carry an electric charge, and they're able to enable or enact functions and signal transduction, so from brain cell to brain cell, from heart cell to heart cell. This is incredibly important, but it's so overlooked, and especially in the equation, looking at infectious disease.

A meta-analysis published in the Annals of Clinical Biochemistry titled, Electrolyte Imbalances in Patients with Severe Coronavirus Disease COVID-19, analyzed five studies with nearly 1500 patients with COVID-19, and found that both sodium and potassium were significantly lower in patients who had severe COVID-19. And getting these electrolytes back up is one of these important clinical inputs that we've seen again and again and again, but unfortunately, it's not being talked about.

Now, the study does not designate, is it an electrolyte-deficiency leading to severe outcomes, or is it the severe outcomes depleting the body of electrolytes? It's probably both. It's a both and world in this context because the electrolytes are already putting the body in an optimal or a susceptible state, and then so many electrolytes are getting utilized by the body when it's mounting a defense and running processes of inflammation of immune cells. It's so important and it's so simple, but it's overlooked, and we can do something about it.

Of course, we want to make sure that we're eating nutrient-dense foods and getting our electrolytes, potassium, magnesium and the like, sodium, from high quality foods, but in this instance, especially today, I'm a huge fan because I've seen the results first-hand and also I've seen this just out-picturing yourself again and again and again in the data, because of the change in our food system, even if we're eating high quality organic foods, the soil being depleted, we're not getting as many micronutrients and electrolytes through our food. Having a high-quality electrolyte source without any crazy added sugars, without any binders and fillers and unnecessary chemicals, this is of the utmost importance today. And I already mentioned in defense with our bodies in the context of COVID-19, you can get a free sample right now of the very best electrolyte on the planet.

Go to drinklmnt.com/model. That's drinklmnt.com/model, you can get a free sample of element delivered right to your door. All you do is pay a little bit in shipping, and you get hooked up. It's time to get a little bit salty with all that's happening in the world and shifting the focus to real health and wellness. Again, go to drinklmnt.com/model. And now, let's get to the Apple Podcast review of the week.

ITUNES REVIEW: Another five-star review titled, “Favorite Podcast This Year” by CJ Epples. “Shawn Stevenson is such an expert in the realm of health, nutrition and mindset, this podcast is very educational, but also gives practical advice on how to live your highest quality life. I love the knowledge and practical life advice that he gives on his show. He is engaging and brings so many cool people on this show. I listen to this weekly.”

SHAWN STEVENSON: Awesome. Thank you so much for sharing that review over on Apple Podcast. And speaking of cool guests, today is definitely going to be a game changer. Our guest today is the brilliant Luka Hocevar, and he's a former pro athlete himself, born and raised in Slovenia, playing basketball in Europe, in the NBA summer pro league as well, and parlaying that into his state side presence and founding one of the most incredible gyms in the United States, Vigor Ground Fitness and Performance. Today it's recognized as one of the leading transformation facilities in the United States, integrating fitness, performance, nutrition coaching, behavior change, physical therapy, and so much more all under one roof. Luka and Vigor Ground have been featured in Men's Health, Entrepreneur Magazine, CBS, Fox, and many other major media outlets. Let's jump into this conversation with the one and only Luka Hocevar. My man, Luka, welcome back to The Model Health Show.

Luka Hocevar: Man, I'm so happy to be here. It feels like it hasn't been that long, but it's been a minute, though.

Shawn Stevenson: Yeah, it's been a couple of years, but in the age of COVID, these years are different.

Luka Hocevar: Very, very different.

Shawn Stevenson: Basically, like dog years now.

Luka Hocevar: I know. I feel like I went to The Shire and back. On an adventure before I got back.

Shawn Stevenson: Shire! So, I want to ask you about the technical side, the Xs and Os side of things when it comes to fitness. It's obviously a big necessity right now, is getting our society healthier, more fit, more robust, reducing susceptibility to disease and all those good things, but what are some of the biggest... Let's start with these mistakes people are making. What are some of the biggest mistakes that people are making when they set out to transform their health from a technical Xs and Os standpoint?

Luka Hocevar: Okay, great question. Man, this could be a deep dive. So, I went... When we talked before, I went and put some things down as focal points. So, this is where I'm stemming from. When people... And obviously, health is a lot more than weight loss. But so much of it is related to... I would say health is related to markers of having a leaner, a lower body fat and weight loss. So, there's seven or so things that people that are able to take the weight off and keep it off do. So, it's kind of like that 10,000 foot view bigger picture. So, I want to talk about those as far as. As being these main markers because consistency is such a huge factor. I always talk about whatever you're going to do, majority of it, you have to continue doing it, so that's a behavior thing, it's in... It's who you become, it's an identity, it's like you do it no matter what. One of the first things is cognitive restrain, every person that...

And let's fall back just one quick second to say that over the course of three years, people that lose weight, 95% of them put it back on and one to two-thirds put on extra weight in that time, which is somewhat, I would say, it's definitely sad and it's challenging, it's kind of like, we're here to try to change that and get that snowball rolling in a positive direction, so we kind of look at, okay, what are the 5% of people, like what do they do? That make them successful and sustainably are able to do this, and you could probably... You could take this into some of the stuff I'll talk about, you can take it into other areas of life, lifestyle, 'cause they're like big picture behavior things.

Cognitive restraint means that you are aware, okay, and that you restrain from, for instance... And the restraint can be in a form of, I don't eat after eight. Now, obviously, that's not some scientific thing, but it creates a constraint where it may help you basically eat less. Cognitive restraint might be smaller plates, it may be any of the kind of methods, intermittent fasting, without going into what works and doesn't work, and the science behind it, but that people are aware, I'm going to have to restrain from doing something, "Hey, this is... If I do this, it's not going to lead me to my long-term goals." So if you've ever seen kind of like the four boxes of... When it comes to behaviors, there's unconscious incompetence, so that means you don't know what you don't know, and you're doing something.

So, stage two is conscious incompetence, you start becoming aware, Shawn tells me like, "Hey, Luka, I noticed that you're always interrupting me while I'm talking." Damn, I didn't know I do that, and then you kind of catch yourself. That's conscious incompetence. So conscious incompetence is usually where somebody becomes aware of I maybe eating too much, I go out and have some drinks and afterwards, I'm always snacking or eating fast food. Part three is Conscious Competence, that's where you start improving your behavior, but it's hard, change is very, very hard. So, you maybe have to have reminders, notes, meal delivery plan, like you buy all smaller plates for your home, you create the smoothie the night before, so it's ready to have it because it's lower calorie than what you usually... And then fourth stage is like where we all want to get to, which is unconscious competence, meaning like I do this thing that's taken me towards the person I want to be, and it's just a habit.

Shawn Stevenson: Yeah, you don't have to think about it.

Luka Hocevar: You just do it. You don't have to think about it. But it's good to... And they're geeky words, but it's good to kind of understand those stages because in life, you find yourself realizing something, you read a book, somebody is listening to your podcast and they go like, "Damn, I didn't know that." Right, so they go from unconscious incompetence to conscious competence... I mean conscious competence. See, the hard words making me mix them up the whole time, but it's like you go from not knowing to just knowing. You're still not doing it but knowing it. And that's a huge key. So cognitive restraint basically means that just like you have to restrain from doing certain things that you've been doing right now when it comes to... And I'm mostly talking about food right now. Number two is there's got to be some form of tracking, there has to be. Now, even if I look at our clients at Vigor Ground, I'd say that out of 10 people, about three are comfortable and do well with, for instance, tracking calories, about seven out of 10, that's not going to work for them, but that's not the only form of tracking. You can track so many different things, you can check the habit boxes, did I, "Hey, did I eat my meal delivery for lunch?" And it's automatic, it's got 450 calories, it's got this much protein.

Shawn Stevenson: Did I eat my five servings of non-starchy vegetables.

Luka Hocevar: Exactly, right. It's like, you can track that, and you can track this, you can just start with one thing, "Hey did, I get enough protein in today?" Maybe that's it.

Shawn Stevenson: Water intake.

Luka Hocevar: Water intake.

Shawn Stevenson: Yeah.

Luka Hocevar: There's got to be things that you can check and track, did you do it or did you not do it, which I'm a bigger fan of the behavior part of it, not the outcome part of, but the behavior part of it. But there's got to be some formal way that we end up seeing are we... It's like the buoy in the water, I always say we did this, these warrior challenges, and we did these swimming laps, but one of my mentors said, think of these buoys like your life, you know, you have this vision of how life should be, and the buoy is the marker that you're on the right track. So, you got to have that 'cause if you don't, you're just throwing stuff against the wall, it's like, is it going to stick? So, tracking and anything, but just don't think of tracking as being this very, very stressful thing because a lot of times if I tell... Alright. Actually listen, you can track your calories, your macros, your... I've already lost a lot of people, and I'm just trying to eat better.

Shawn Stevenson: Yeah.

Luka Hocevar: So, you can break that down in so many different ways and just go like, "Are these buoys on the path to where I want to be and who I want to be?"

Shawn Stevenson: And things that are more rational and manageable too because most people when... As soon as you said that I'm like, a lot of folks are going to think about weight because they're just going to be tracking that metric. Did you see any of the new Will Smith, he's doing this series where he's getting in the best shape of his life, is supposed to be...

Luka Hocevar: I saw that. Yeah.

Shawn Stevenson: The outcome. Did you see the first episode?

Luka Hocevar: Mm-hmm.

Shawn Stevenson: So, The first episode. Spoiler alert, but I'm just giving you a tiny bit of it, but in the first episode, he's demonstrating, he showing, he's got... He's in the worst shape that he's ever been, he's demonstrating that, and he gets to work, so he's getting after it, lifting, doing all the things, improving his nutrition, he gets on a scale pre, and then after a week, he gets on, gains a pound. He gained a pound, so he's supposed to lose a pound a week, not only did he not do that, he gained a pound, but I can literally see his... I can see his physical body is improved; he is physically healthier. If they were measuring his waist, I could tell that he's lost some of his waist just looking at his before and after picture, but because it's the scale, you could see this depression hit in the room, you could see this, this fall come over everybody's, his trainers in the room is like, Well... And they try to explain it away. But we're using this one metric.

Luka Hocevar: One thing. Yes.

Shawn Stevenson: For many people. As you've mentioned, this is what I want to say is, it creates stress around weight. And it's something that is... It's something we can manage, not to say we can't. So many people put their faith into that and not actually improving their metabolic health, reducing size of their... Their waste management, body fat, all that stuff.

Luka Hocevar: I'm so happy you brought this up because it's something I wanted to talk about later on. But it's like the making progress part of it. So, I believe that any time you go around trying to change your body, it should be three things. Body composition, people want to look better, period. That's a lot of times what drives the start sometimes. But it should be that health... If you look better without being healthier, I think that's a fail. And then number three is performance. Now, what that performance is depends on the person. Performance for somebody might be, "I want to pick my grandkid up off the floor." We get a lot of folks that are, "I want to hit my first chin up. I want to deadlift, double my body weight." Be in power. I would say our gym is probably about 60% to 65% women and love lifting because... But not just because of the body transformation, but the confidence that they gain, and their empowerment is just crazy to see. I absolutely love it. So, if you just go, "I'm going to basically connect my value or worth or progress to this number on a scale," you're shooting yourself short, because you could have dropped body fat in inches. I would say drop the body fat. Put on some muscle. Especially hyper-responders do that when you start off pretty damn good. And you're looking different.

You look at the pictures, they're different. But you're going like, "Oh man, I failed." So, it's a key that when you start, you determine what progress is going to look like. I love this question. I ask all the clients this question. If today I can wave this magic wand... So, while you sleep, I do the Gandalf. And tomorrow, you wake up and life is perfect, in a sense, exactly the way that you want it to be, tell me, tell me what problems are gone? How do you feel? What's different? Because when people start explaining that, usually it won't be like, "Oh well, I look in a scale and I weigh xyz." They'll say, "Man, I look in the mirror, and I love what I see. And I have a confidence. I have great energy. I get up in the morning and my back doesn't hurt. It doesn't take me 10 minutes to just put my socks on." So now you start seeing a picture of what they want their life to be like. Now you can reverse engineer and say, "Okay, what are some markers of progress that would take you there?" And I don't think many people determine that. They go like, "I want to lose 20 pounds." Why do you want to do that? Why is that important?

So, I think it's very, very important to figure out other markers. Blood work. When you go and do blood work and it's like, "Wow. Hey, your inflammation is down. Iron is better. Vitamin D deficiency is better. It's good now." There's so many different markers. "Your testosterone levels are much better, free-range testosterone. Damn, you're healthier." So, we said, body composition, health, performance. The performance side of it is great, because at least when it comes to strength, you can... Did the weight go up? Did you do an extra rep? I love doing stuff like speed and power stuff, and we'll talk a little bit about that later too, with anybody, not just with athletes. But you go to a mom and it's like, "Hey, your 10-yard acceleration just dropped by 0.2." I'm telling you right now, everybody gets excited. I don't care, "Man, you just produced more power in that. Your VBT score... " We have this velocity-based training stuff that we do. You can see it improve. People love improvement. It's part of the intrinsic motivator of human beings, like incompetence. If I become more competent, I become more fulfilled.

And so, what you brought up is very important because... An example of Will Smith. He did all this work. And then it seems that a lot of... I don't have enough context, but a lot of the, I would say, attachment to the outcome was what was going to make him successful or excited. "Oh, I'm successful now." But self-esteem is built this way. If I do something I said I was going to do, I'm going to put a credit in my self-esteem bank account. So, you're like, "Tomorrow morning, I'm going to get up and do 10 minutes mobility, 'cause my hips and my back are hurting." When you do that, you do this thing that you said you're going to do, check. Credit in the self-esteem bank account. Then you go, "I'm going to get my workout in today. Man, I only have so much time. So, I'm going to do a 25-minute workout." Check. And the thing is the more things that you do that you said, you build these credits in the self-esteem bank account. Now, when you don't, you put a debit in there. And what's happening in the world a lot today is that because people are frustrated with where they are, they go, "I'm going to jump into this do seven work-outs a week. I'm going to go on this diet right here." And these are super aggressive things that are very hard to put into place all at one time. And so, when that happens, debits, debits, debits. And you go, what I call, you go bankrupt in self-esteem.

And when you go bankrupt in self-esteem, then it's difficult to believe yourself that you're going to do something. And the way to solve that, rather than me just going like, "That's what happens," the way to solve it is to go, "Okay, look. Take a smaller chunk off the pie." Instead of saying you're going to train seven days this week, how about tomorrow you're going to meet your friend and do a 15-minute workout. Does that seem more doable? And it does. It's just not as big of a task. But once you complete it, you've put that credit in. And you have to... You have to ask yourself right now like, "Man, are you bankrupt in self-esteem?" And if you are, you know it's okay. 'Cause here's how you build it up. And there's the power of environments. We'll probably dig into that a little bit later. But put yourself in environments that make it easier for you to do the things, because now we're starting to build that self-esteem back up.

Shawn Stevenson: I love that.

Luka Hocevar: And the thing about that is that these are all... First of all, these are all proven things that we've, through behavior science, found that work, right? So, man, let's find ways. Don't fight it, let's find ways to implement this. Now, it is different for everybody, 'cause the capacity of people is different. Some people can take on a little bit more, some people can take on a little bit less. But I would say that it's always better to do less, but do it consistently than do more and go what I call the rest-pause mentality, right? Oh, I'm going to start training when I have a little bit more time. I'm going to improve my nutrition, but not during the holidays, not during November through December, right? Because that would kind of mean that life has a start and stop button, but it doesn't. It never does. There's always things going on. So, we got to find ways to put behaviors in our life that lead us to become the person that we want to become.

Shawn Stevenson: I love it. So, you just brought up this, there's a term of learned helplessness when those debits get us to the place where we're bankrupt. And so, to evolve from learned helplessness is to start to add strategically some credits back, and it just, by implementing simple small things, starts to build up that neurological association that I can do a thing. That's powerful, man. So, we've got number one, cognitive restrain, number two, tracking. Number three.

Luka Hocevar: So yeah, we veered off a little bit, but it's going to plan into exercise. And into exercise, so strength training and just exercise in general has proven to be a huge marker. So, 70% of the people that kept that 5% off all had a regular exercise regime. So that in itself tells you a lot. We know that maintaining and/or building lean body mass is one of the best things for metabolism. I sit here if I have more lean body mass, I'm burning more calories. But it also is connected to so many health markers, and not to mention people that have more muscle mass are able to... They have a better body fat setpoint, meaning...

So, one of the issues with weight loss is there something called a body fat setpoint, which has now been... It used to be a theory and now it's been more confirmed. So, it just means that if you've stayed at a certain weight for a long period of time, your body is going to have a tougher time moving from that weight because that's what's safe, that's homeostasis. So, if you go up or down too much, but especially down, it's going to be like oh, survival. This is not good. And then the hormone leptin is almost like a thermostat. It's a thermostat in the sense of if you drop, it's going to basically reduce the temperature so that we kind of come back. If we go up, so it's going to regulate it 'cause it wants you to stay in that homeostasis.

Exercise and strength training has been proven to be able to adjust that, or should I say help with that. So, if you drop weight and you strength train, your body will have an easier time staying at that lower weight, right? And there's been a lot of studies done around that, enough to confirm, first of all, this is something you have to do. Right now, what does strength training look like? I mean, it obviously depends, how much do you want to improve your performance and put on muscle? But any person that wants to be healthier, lose weight, be fitter long-term should be doing some form of exercise and strength training. That's been proven across the board.

And a lot of times people will say, "Okay Luka, if you had a template, now obviously everything is different for everybody, but if you had a template... " I had a great conversation with Dr. Andy Galpin about this, but what would it be? I said, "Well, one, you should strength train two to three days a week, right?" So somewhere in that range. You should do something fast, one day a week, regardless of your age, what your goals are. And I'm going to touch on that one because I think that's one that's missed out a lot on, and it's... First of all, the first thing that you lose as you age is not strength, it's power. It's not cardio, it's power, and people that... First of all, things like agility, quickness, reactivity, when folks fall and break their hips, which is a huge number, like one out of three people over the age of 50, that's power, that's speed, that's reactivity. And it's almost like there's this fear of it, right?

Oh, as I get older, I shouldn't be doing that. But it's actually like, no, you should. Now, it might look different for if I'm doing box jumps and full-blown sprints, and we have somebody that's 55, maybe even 60, they may not be doing the same thing, but you know what, they could be throwing a medicine ball explosively for them, they could be pushing a sled fast. They could be... We'd do card throws. I'll throw card, and obviously they get all wonky, they're going to try to catch them. Tennis ball drills, speed ladder drills, for them, that's going to be fast, and they can still improve that speed, and they can still, I would say, work on that, so that it doesn't... They don't lose it. You don't use it, you lose it, right?

Shawn Stevenson: Right, yeah.

Luka Hocevar: And a great example is like, my dad has Parkinson's, the onset of it. He goes and he boxes, so he does these speed ladder drills. And the doctor was like, "I don't know what you're doing, but whatever you're doing, man, it's like it's keeping it at bay." And so, speed is such an important factor of it. So once a week at least, you should be doing something fast. Once a week, you should get your heart rate up high for whatever that is for you. So, think hard conditioning, I like to do the heart rate monitoring. So do something fast, explosive for whatever that person is, get the heart rate high, let it drop back down. I know this is basics, but this is definitely a template of it. Once a week, do something for a longer duration of time on cardio, but not as high of intensity. And I would say probably more like once to twice a week on that front, and always making sure that you work on quality movement. And even in the last show, we dove pretty deep into that as far as movement hygiene, mobility. I mean, that's extremely important, 'cause my philosophy is always move well, move more, move strong, move fast.

But it starts with move well. If you don't move well, and then you add more volume, you add more load on top of that, you add speed, it's going to be... You're just going to speed up dysfunction, right, so if I have a horrible posture, and I don't first improve my mobility and move well, guess what's going to happen? Right. I'm going to load that and something's going to go off, my neck, my shoulder, my low back, something's going to break down. So when it comes to exercise, I really, really like that template, because if you strength train two to three days a week, you do a little longer distance, or should I say, longer duration cardio, which can be a lot of different things, about two days a week, you do speed training once a week, and you do one, maybe two sessions with higher intensity heart rates, that's a pretty damn good model right there. Right? And the reason I say this to this many times, is because somebody that's just starting off, hey, two strength sessions and one speed session and one cardio session, great? And you can do it all in the same day.

For example, I could do speed training and then afterwards do high intensity intervals, right? Those couple together pretty well. I can do a strength session and then afterwards do some longer duration, right? There's ways to piece it together, it doesn't have to be somebody's going like, "Hold on, so I've got to train eight days a week?" Like, no, no, no. But I'm saying that type of stimulus, right? That type of stimulus. We live in an age where you need to... We only have so much time. So, if you have an hour, I could do a quality warm-up for 10 minutes, do strength training for 30-40 minutes, and finish off with some type of high-intensity conditioning for 15, and that's an hour and five minutes. But I've now knocked out a couple of those variables inside of that training session. So, I think it's important to just look at, okay, what are the things that help us be more resilient, strong... And longevity, right?

We know cardio used to be a thing that we did to lose weight. We know that's not the most effective thing whatsoever, but it is extremely important when it comes to health, extremely. And I'm glad that one of my really close friends, Joel Jamieson has done so much research on it. He put HRV on Apple's, one of the first guys that did that, the co-relation of quality cardio and heart rate variability is, I think that you end up... There are certain markers that show you live 10% longer if you have quality cardio and you have good HRV. That's like eight years, seven to eight years. Could I sell you on that? Yeah listen, like, would you like to live 10% longer? Yeah. Okay great, make sure you do your cardio. And there's, like I said, there's different ways to do it. I think that's a pretty good template to do that.

Shawn Stevenson: That's great, man. That's so valuable. And also, if you just put this in perspective about how many hours are in a day or in a week, I'm just talking, if you construct things intelligently, three of the 100-plus hours that you have access to... So, if you put this in the context of how many hours we have in a week, for example, being 168 hours, three well-constructed hours, you could have a significant level of health. Then we get up to maybe five hours and you're crushing it. You're in the top 5% of the United States population, if you're doing it with some intentionality, of course, because we can... And I know this is a pretty... I think that this is a lot more wiggle room in this, if I say junk exercise, because just still moving, doing something you're probably going to turn out better than folks who would just couch-surfing.

Luka Hocevar: Actually, this leads to a really really cool... I was just going over some PN studies. So, over the course of reading this, I think they had a million data points on this. So, it only took 50% compliance of exercise and nutrition to, over the course of a year, average around 11-12 pounds of weight lost. So, 40%-50% right? So, think about that, that means that like you could do more than half wrong, over the course of a year, and still have damn good results. And then as soon as you go into that 50 plus to 70 plus range, it's actually pretty equivalent. I say this because that's a very, very, I would say, good data point to go, hey, you don't have to be 100%, you don't have to be 90, 80, 70, 50, 40-50 will already get you pretty good. I'll call them pretty good, right? If you want to go to very good, you got to be in the 70% range over the course of a year, which still means you can do 30% “wrong”, right?

And if we look at that in the context of an actual week. So, let's say you're like, I'm going to strength train four days a week, based on the template we talked about, right? I'm going to go to the gym four days a week and work on this thing. But the reality ends up being that like, you end up going twice a week, right, you say that you're going to eat more whole unprocessed foods, right? You eat four meals a day, it used to be a lot of fast food, but now only about two of them per day are whole unprocessed, you still eat two fast food meals. Statistically, you're going to lose over 10 pounds that year. Feel better, be stronger, be more confident, have better habits, right? That's pretty damn great, right? And I want to throw that out there because I feel that, in our minds, that pause button mentality I talked about earlier, is very like, uh, I didn't do it, I didn't do it just right. I'll start again when there's a better gap in my life. Right? Like, uh, I only did 60%, what a failure I am. Right? And no, you did 60% more than you were doing.

You have to constantly shine a light on those wins. That's such a huge factor, it's such a huge factor there. This is... I've ingrained this in my head so much with clients that like, I'll find good stuff all the time. Great job, your spine is in a better position when you deadlift. Do you know you just went up five pounds? That was moving faster than last week. Yeah, but it's the same weight, Luka, we didn't go up. But it's moving faster, and the form was better. Right? Shine a light, positive, shine a light. So, what's happening is like, I'm ingraining wins, so that they're going like, Okay cool, I'm better, I'm better, I'm better. So that's building that self-esteem we talked about, right.

But it's such a... This happens so much, where a person goes on a thing, and point number four is going to lead into this by the way. They go into a program, a diet or something, and they don't go exactly... It doesn't go exactly as planned, which nothing in life does, and then as soon as it doesn't, the thought process is I fail. So, I'm going to either start another thing or I'm going to start later, 'cause I'm just... And it's kind of almost like reinforcing, they're like, "I knew I'm not... Like, I'm not good enough, like I just can't do this." But that's not true. So, if we start, number one, with something that's right for you, you're going to be more successful, and number two, look at the things that you're doing well, and don't just keep ramping up and putting focus on the things that you know you didn't do right.

And that leads me to number four. So, the people that were successful were on some type of structured program. Now, when I say program, I mean exercise, they had some guidance on nutrition, lifestyle, it wasn't just on a whim. So, the majority of those people were... And usually that involved some type of support and community, which is actually another point that comes later on, but when you have, I call them boundaries like on a basketball court, right?

People do well with boundaries, but not too much restriction, because too much restriction means like you're on a tight rope like... "Oh, you messed up, you messed it up, you messed up this program, you messed up the diet, you failed, like you're done." Right? Boundaries is like, on a basketball court, I can dribble left and right, forward, backward, but there isn't out of bounds though. You know what I mean?

Shawn Stevenson: Yeah.

Luka Hocevar: So, I think that when you have structured programs that are created in a way where you have boundaries and not tight ropes and you get taught, educated on how to make choice, have autonomy. "Oh, I didn't have access to this. But you told me that if I didn't have that, I could do these three different things, so I did, I just did RDLs with my dumbbells instead of a trap bar, deadlift." "Hey, great job." People need autonomy in our lives, they need to have... 'cause autonomy builds confidence and not always looking to somebody for an answer. So structured programs, they help people give, I would say, those boundaries and guidance and like a path, and because they're usually part of... And like I said whether it's... You come to my gym, there's a whole group of people that are supporting you. The coaches, other members, they're all in the same journey in some way or another.

Everybody's positive. They're bringing you up like, "Hey, hey girl, I had the same problem, and here's what I did." They might listen to that member more than they listen to me. Yeah, Luka said that, but I hear you. But that was a huge, huge, huge factor, which structured programs... Now, it could be online. You can find, I would say, groups of people that are just like you, on a mission just like you. And what we do really well psychologically is we adhere to the standards of the tribe. So, this is such a key, and it loops back to the environment I was talking about, that if you get into an environment where like, "This is the type of people we are, this is the type of things that we do," you're going to want to do that. Now, that can be good or bad. All my friends go out for drinks four days a week, then they go eat some fast food. I'm going to do that 'cause otherwise I'll be left out of the tribe, right? But if I go to the gym, and it's like, "Well, yeah, we go and meet for healthy brunch twice a week, I exercise four or five days a week at this gym, and we're the type of people that, fill in the blank, are examples for our kids because we live a fit lifestyle, we read, we prepare our lunches. We do... Right? I can go down the list of habits. You start adhering to those standards. And so, when I say structured programs, it means you're following some type of program, but you're also a part of something, and that's also the next point, is social support.

Social support is such a key factor in that, because like I said, and social support can be also people that are challenging you. First of all, it means, yes, they're uplifting you, they're supporting you, they're there for you, they hear you, they understand you. But they also challenge you, right? They challenge you when you are not being the person that you said you wanted to be, right? And to me, that's love. It's equivalent to love. People sometimes take it like, "Yeah, that person is all up in my... " Yeah, but what are they challenging you on? They're challenging you to be your better self, not to be a lesser, right? And so social support groups come in many, many different formats. Now, personally, I always lead to this. I'm a brick-and-mortar guy, I do stuff online, I own gyms, and I believe in skin-to-skin, face-to-face. I think it's such a powerful thing, which is also what's been really challenging in the last couple years, because that's been restricted, there's been a lot of kind of disconnect there. And when you see people coming back together, there's just a...

Even with our clients, the stuff that they'll say will be like, just like this load coming off, "I'm around my people." It's just that energy, helps them come in, they'll be like, "I'm coming in because of that." That's the thing that gets people to be consistent, those support groups, those environments, and so that's pretty damn critical. Now, the thing is, I don't think that there's such a thing as too much, 'cause maybe you have an online group that helps you with, for instance, nutrition, lifestyle habits, and then you have a gym you go to, and that's your people and you train hard there. And you also have a community outside that you go do things, then you have a book club with people, right? My question is just always, are these environments and the people, are they supporting the person that you want to become? And there's...

There's a really big key in success. And one is managing stress. And so, we've heard of good stress, it's called eustress. Good stress is stress that once you've had it, you're going to grow from it. Bad stress is usually ongoing. It's chronic. Eustress is usually short, right? I did a hard workout for an hour. It was stressful, but then I have a release of endorphins, and dopamine, and all these feel-good chemicals. And muscles are going to rebuild, and I'm going to get better. Chronic stress is stuff like it's non-stop. High inflammation, I'm not sleeping, so I'm tired. My thoughts are always about focusing on the negative, right? These are all things that... My nutrition is putting my body in an environment that is just not conducive to energy, and health, and feeling good. That's bad stress. So, I would actually look at... One of the things that... And I know I'm going to connect this to the social support system, because who am I around? Is that person constantly stressing me out, right? Are they...? Is this environment of people toxic to me? I go home, and even if I'm not around them anymore, now all of a sudden, I'm still thinking about that. That's bad stress.

Make a chart, right? Good stress, bad stress. And in your life, think about the things that are challenging you, stress that makes you better, and then, stress that doesn't make you better. And then, you can legit probably look at that list and go, "Okay. What can I start changing? Some things may be if you work somewhere, maybe you can't just quit tomorrow, right? But you can go somewhere else instead of the cafeteria, right? You can go and go for a walk and listen to The Model Health Show podcast, right?

Shawn Stevenson: Let's go.

Luka Hocevar: And be in a better environment. So, you can look at that and go, "I can affect this good stress, bad stress here, right?" Because there's something called Allostatic load. Geeky word. But it just means... It means it's all the physical, emotional, mental, even spiritual stress that gets put on. And we look at that with, for instance, with members, because if somebody comes in and have a 14-hour day job, they're a CEO, they're running stuff, they got kids, they got... Their stress from other areas is really high. Would it be smart for me to go, "Alright? You're going to train extremely hard five days a week?" No, 'cause their allostatic load is so high that they're not going to be able to recover from it, right? But what we don't think about is our environments outside of that training space. So, what we're thinking about is like, "Oh, I go and train hard." And maybe people don't even think about sleep enough, do you sleep well?

But okay. Who are you surrounding yourself? 'Cause if 13 hours of your day, you're around folks that legitimately make you stressed out, you're in a fight or flight mode, you're constantly on, that's not going to be good for your health, right? So, social support systems, plug into all of that.

Shawn Stevenson: Yeah. Yeah, I love that. And I love that container that you put it into, because... Just because you have a positive, supportive relationship, that doesn't mean it's not going to come with stress, but it's going to be a healthier stress. People are challenging you again to be the best version of yourself, to be the person that you broadcast that you want to be, to hold you accountable, things like that, but also a lot of nurturing, fun, support, laughter, creativity, innovation, all these other things, qualities are there, versus the chronically stressful type of relationship that I know all of us have likely experienced. Many of us might be participating right now. You're in your intramurals with it right now. And you're just like, "Maybe this is your call to action to evolve beyond that."

Luka Hocevar: And what's a thing that I always try to bring up, the bigger the challenge, the higher the support has to be, right? And I think sometimes there's kind of like a disconnect between that. So, I'm not saying you can't take big challenges on in life. Life has seasons. I'm going to start a new business, or that's going to take a lot more from you, right? I'm getting ready for a physical competition in 12 weeks. I'm going to step on stage, or it's maybe this... It's a sport like, "Hey, we're getting ready to go to the finals here. And the next four months are going to be crazy, right? There's seasons in life, but if you... The more you take on as a challenge, the higher your support has to be.

And what I mean by that disconnect is, I'll give you an example, somebody goes online, buys a 12-week program. This program is going to get me shredded. It's going to be getting me this, that, and the other. You only get a PDF and go, but the support is non-existent, very like... Right? So, if you do something like that, being around people that support you, having a partner and an accountability group that trains with you, having a coach, making sure your environments are the right way so that they support this change, like I said, getting rid of toxic people, negativity, that's going to help you succeed, even though the challenge is high, right? So that's the kicker, right? You have to kind of find that balance of maybe I don't have as much support right now, let me make my challenge a little bit lower. I'm still going to succeed. I'm still going to build that self-esteem, but it's going to be... It's going to be, I would say, aligned with the size of the challenge. And that leads to, and I forgot about this one, but ability to focus on the long-term, right?

Shawn Stevenson: This number... Is this number six?

Luka Hocevar: This is number six. This is number six right here. And not letting short-term feelings and desires dictate your behavior, so that's a huge... Basically, in the surveys, that was a big thing that all these folks that basically were able to keep that weight off and sustainably change the 5%, said that was a thing. And that connects to the values part. And I know this can get like fu-fu sometimes, but we talked a little about, earlier about having gravity to attach to your goals. And when you start something challenging, and let's be very, very clear, I don't think anybody has ever said, "Yeah, me, transforming my body was one of the easiest things I've ever done in my life." Right? It is a challenging thing.

Shawn Stevenson: It's the worst.

Luka Hocevar: Yeah. It's like...

Shawn Stevenson: Stupid fitness.

Luka Hocevar: Stupid fitness, which... Did you know... Did you know that like the lifetime...? Do you know what the average lifetime attempts to weight loss are?

Shawn Stevenson: Please share.

Luka Hocevar: So, in general, it's 5.7, and then for women is 7. That means that they've attempted to and actually succeeded in losing a good chunk of weight and then putting it back on. And the reason I bring that up is talking about how challenging it is. The 5.7 and 7 is like in many a times, majority of the times, the attempt was in something that was pretty aggressive and a drastic cutting calorie, an aggressive program, there were some results, but it was not sustainable. Right? And so, to lead into number six, as far as that you are thinking about, not like in two or three months, you're thinking about, who am I going to be? In a year and ongoing, who do I want to become? That question and aligning it with, like I said, your values, because it's such a deep... I call it an anchor. The goals are attached to an anchor, so if... We would always still do ask this question. I ask myself this question a lot of time. If you say something like, "Oh, I want to make more money," or "I want to lose 20 pounds," okay, why do you want to do it? Why do you want to lose 20 pounds? I'm just curious, right? Well, I'll fit better in my jeans, and I feel better when I fit in my jeans. Okay, why does that matter? Why does it matter to you? Well, when I fit in my jeans and I feel better and I look better, I feel more confident. Right? Okay, why is that important, you feeling more confident? Because when I'm more confident, I feel like I have control of my destiny.

Uh, okay, so what you want is more control in your life so that you can create your destiny, right? It started with losing 20 pounds, but the deep anchor was that like, "Man, I don't feel like I've control in my life," right? So, if you attach that to the things that you're doing when times get really hard, when you get what I call the messy middle, think about any transformation, you start, you're excited, motivation, like, yeah, everybody's like, "You're going to do this, uh," and then the messy middle happens, you're in six weeks, eight weeks, 10 weeks, stuff gets hard, kids got more stuff, you got to run around and take it to other things, like, okay, if you're only looking at that surface goal of 20 pounds, it's not deep and meaningful enough, the anchor isn't strong enough. And so, people that are connected to that long-term goal and go like, "Who do I want to become?" and they attach things to values, they're going to be much more likely to succeed.

And my mentor back in the day said, "Hey, look, there's three different things that commitment, that I believe are kind of the laws of commitment. Number one, do what is required. And what's required is, we talked a little bit about a template for training. If you go through that template for the next year, I guarantee you you're going to be a fit person that's pretty damn strong and you've sustainably changed your body. Okay? So, do what's required. If you tell me, "Shawn, listen, man, I want to go to powerlifting competition, I want to... But I'm going to train once a week."

Shawn Stevenson: Good luck, yeah.

Luka Hocevar: In a Taken voice, "Good luck." So, that's not... It's not going to fly because there's a higher requirement to that, right? "Hey, listen, I only want to work four hours. I'm going to start a gym and I want to work four hours a day four days a week for the next two years." It's not going to happen. So, the requirement is higher. So, commitment is you got to do what's required, and there's requirements for success in certain areas. We're actually going over the requirements of people, the 5% that change their body and keep it that way. Number two is do what you said you're going to do, and preferably when you said you're going to do it. That goes back to not even just me telling you that, but me telling myself that. It's that self-esteem that we talked about, right? Stacking those credits of self-esteem. Number three, this is the biggest one, though. Do it despite of feelings, emotions, moods, and thoughts. Right? Because how many times do, we have this thing where it's like, "Oh man, I'm tired, and I want to go on date night." Right? But what type of person do I want to be?

Shawn Stevenson: Just said it last night.

Luka Hocevar: I didn't know that, by the way. But that's the truth, right? But I'm committed, I'm committed to building this relationship, so I'm still going to... I'm still going to do it. Right? And what tends to happen in life is that we let our feelings dictate our actions. "Huh, man, I'm tired right now. You know what, I'm going to just watch Netflix, I'm not going to go to the gym." So, we have basically a feeling followed by an action, and then that creates your identity, 'cause if I'm tired, and then I don't take action, my identity is going to be a person that just sits around and watches Netflix instead of exercise, but if we take, flip this pyramid around and go, "What identity do we want?" To me, that's like, who do you want to become? Okay?

Well, then, what does that person do? What does a person that's fit do? Well, every day they're going to be active and they're going to exercise. Okay, so I'm going to take that action. And that action is then going to create a feeling, and usually that's the feeling we want, the feeling of accomplishment, the feeling of confidence, of self-esteem. So, I'm always... In my mind, I'm always thinking about, who do I want to become? Who do I want to become? And it's just such a critical thing because doing that is going to lead you to the behaviors, and I always say, are your behaviors matching your goals? Are your behaviors matching your goals? And so, that's a big, big, big, I would say, number six.

Shawn Stevenson: Yeah. You know what's crazy is, first of all, when we take an action towards our goal, something that is beneficial for us even when we "don't feel like it" is changing... Our neurobiology of shifting, it's creating a new resilience. It's training your brain, it's literally getting trained to, "This is who I am, despite this circumstance, I still... Fill in the blank." Right? So, despite feelings, despite a temporary... Because feelings are temporary, they're very fleeting. Despite this thing, I still do this action, and it creates a neurological association, it builds more resilience to do a tough thing, and I think a lot more people these past 18 months, as of this recording, have experienced that more because our routines were changed. And so, I'm somebody, I love, I love it, I love to train, I love... It's just something I'm just connected to because of the times when I might not have wanted to in building that muscle, it was just a part of my...

Like you said, it's a conscious competence. No, it's an unconscious competence. And so, but I've seen times, which was very unlike me, where I'm just like, "Maybe I'll do it tomorrow," and I don't even talk like that. And so, in a couple of times, that was the case, but more often than not, I've done the thing, and I've... And I just want to throw this out there. I found other kind of treats because right now I'm forcing myself to do a thing that I might not, "feel like doing in the moment" but let me take this as an opportunity, like I've changed the meaning of it, right, so now... Versus me just doing my thing, my fitness, just to take care of my body, now I like, I'm training to be a leader right now, I'm training to be a messenger and a force of love or empowerment or whatever it is, and I'm just like, No, this is my duty, this is my... This is my opportunity to get better, to be more prepared, to whatever it is, so I started changing the meaning in those moments to now where I'm back and just like, it's non-negotiable again.

Luka Hocevar: See, that's... And that's such a powerful anchor because I think that people are... People are what they do when nobody's watching. And to me, I've always been like, Okay, cool, if there's a camera 24/7 on me, I don't know it's there though, right? And I mean, you have kids, I don't have kids yet, but there's people in my life that I always want to make proud. And it's like when you show up for even like a podcast on IG, you can orchestrate things, right? But when nobody's watching what you do, that is who you are, and if you think about like, look, somebody's going to film your life, and then once you pass away, those recordings that you didn't know that you were being recorded, they are given to your kids and would they watch and go like, "Man, that's my, Dad. I'm so proud."

You know what I mean? Look at what he was doing when nobody was watching. And that to me, that's powerful. That's an anchor, if I live my life like that and I catch myself, Oh, conscious competence, right? Man, that's going to start shifting the way that I behave in a big... The whole identity thing, to me, James Clear, kind of made it one of the better analogies, which is casting votes for who you are, and I'll take a sport that... I don't know, I was going to say ping pong, but I'm pretty damn good at ping pong, so I would say like volleyball or something, right? If I play volleyball next week and you ask me, Hey Luka, are you a volleyball player? Like, not really. I mean I play volleyball here and there but I'm not a volleyball player. But if I play volleyball three days a week for a year, and you ask me, are you a volleyball player? I'm like, "Yeah, I'm a volleyball player, man."

Shawn Stevenson: Just go, "Call me Spike".

Luka Hocevar: Call me Spike. But it's because I cast so many votes for that identity, that's who... That's who I believe I am, right? And so, it's a two-way street, your mind and physical actions like... I think physical actions always win, right? They create more neural circuitry than anything else, even though if we visualize and we have affirmations and we ask ourselves the right questions, I think that is crucial, I think it's key. But nothing will change you more than the actions change you. And so that whole analogy of self-esteem is very, very critical, because how do you do the stuff that builds the credits, and when you do that, you'll believe that you're that person, right? Number seven is actually like a number of different things. These are almost like some other things that those people did, and a lot of them are connected to nutrition. I'll go through them a little bit faster, but I think we can kind of come back to some of them. Eating lower calorie foods, eating higher protein, consuming higher fiber, this one I think is really important is flexible versus rigid rules, and we kind of talked about that earlier, right? If you have very rigid, like I got to hit this number of counts...

Shawn Stevenson: It's the... It's that analogy you used of the tight rope versus the...

Luka Hocevar: The boundaries of basketball.

Shawn Stevenson: The boundaries. I love that man. I love that.

Luka Hocevar: That rigid never works long-term. Never. And it doesn't create autonomy, right? If you're a person that doesn't get to a point where you go, "Alright, listen, you got to eat this lean ground beef," you don't have lean ground beef, but I know that there's all these other lean proteins that I like, just pick that one. Right? Helping people make those choices and decisions is basically the flexible versus rigid. So that was a big one. Another big one is not snacking and grazing. So people that snack don't do very well when it comes to changing their body, and here's the actual stat, that was most people when they snack, they eat between five to 700 calories a day that if I asked them, I'd say, "Hey, listen, tell me more about what you eat", they tell me the main meals but it's almost like forgetting that they snack and you're squeezing in like 500 and 700 calories, which adds up to a lot. Right? So, one of the huge successes that we've had when we coach people on the nutrition side is just cutting or eliminating snacks, right.

Every single time, success goes like that, right? And what's great is that once people get that, I would say... I would say unconscious competence, right? Or should I say they start realizing. So, the conscious competence part of it. They go like, "Man, I just realized how much I was snacking." It's just automatic, right? And that's another part of it, was not eating. The people that did well was, I would say, practicing to not eat with stress and emotions. And you may have heard this, it's usually in cognitive behavioral therapies it’s called HALT, the HALT strategy. So, it goes not in just nutrition, but also with anxiety. Okay. And it means... The acronym is: Are You Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired, right? HALT. And most of the time, what you recognize is that you're not eating because you're hungry. It's like you're bored. I don't have anything to do. I'm fidgeting. Oh food, right? Or like, "Man, somebody really upset me." So, what do we do? We want to be comforted. And food comforts us, especially sugary food or food that has some type of memory connection to love. Grandma made me this. My mom gave me this when I fell and hurt myself. So, if we can kind of break that pattern and go, "You know what, I'm not really hungry. I ate an hour ago. It doesn't make sense. What happened?" It's a co-worker. Like man, co-worker made me mad. You know what I mean? Peanut butter M&Ms in a, I would say, in a cafeteria, wind up snacking on them, right?

So, people that were able to work on that did really, really well. Not staying up too late. I know you'll love this one, but it's like the sleep part is massive. 'cause if you sleep less, you're more stressed out, you have more time to eat. Now, there's been a huge correlation between that lack of sleep and eating more.

Shawn Stevenson: Increased like 600 more calories consumed.

Luka Hocevar: And so now, think about just two of the things that we mentioned in this part, snacking, and eating more because you have a lack of sleep or quality of sleep. So now, you start looking at that going if you can just improve that by 50%, you're cutting down six, seven, 800 calories per day. That's over the course of a year, dramatic, dramatic results. And so, this is the thing that I want to put out there, is it's these small bricks to stack up and build a really solid building over time. And the last one is high emotional intelligence and mindfulness and shining a light on your win. So, I would say working on the more empathetic that you are and mindful that you are in life, I think it helps with just about anything. You want to be successful in business, being more empathetic and mindful will help you. Building better relationships, it'll help you. When it comes to, obviously, behaviors and nutrition, it will help you, but also being that with yourself, right?

Empathy, not beating yourself up because, man, I went on seven diets, and I failed. I suck. I can't do this, right? Empathy is like, "Hey, you know what, you're coming back for the eighth time. You know what you are? You're resilient. Man, you got a lot of fire in you." That's the way I look at stuff. I can tell you all the stuff that you're not, but man, here's all these positive properties that I see in you, right? And mindfulness is just being able to stop and be aware of things. Like I said whether it's behaviors, food, how we treat people, all those different things, right? And the whole wins, I think there's been a common theme throughout this conversation, which is how do you constantly shine a light on wins because we know it works, right?

That doesn't mean that we don't challenge ourselves, we don't challenge each other that, like I said, that there's no push, but the reason people build these identities that they can't do things is because they keep repeating that to themselves, or listening to somebody, or going on social media and going like, "Man, I'm not that lean. I'm not that strong. I don't have enough money. I should be... " That magical word I always say, "Don't shoot all over yourself, right?" I should be here. I should be there. I should... No, reality is you're here. The great thing is that wherever you want to go, you can go there. You can change that, so that last one was more wrapped into the seven, but I do feel that it's a good shining light on if you do those things, you'll be amongst the 5%. And look at it like whatever today's date is, look at the long-term. Look at next year. Who do I want to become? And if you remember, even if you're 40, 50% compliant with your actions, you'll have really good success.

Shawn Stevenson: Right. 40-50% compliant in these... And also, they feed into each other, of course, massively.

Luka Hocevar: Absolutely.

Shawn Stevenson: We've got a quick break coming up. We'll be right back. Few people know that regularly drinking coffee has been shown to help prevent cognitive decline and reduce the risk of developing Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. This attribute referenced in the journal practical neurology is yet another reason why intelligent coffee consumption makes the list of best neuro-nutritious beverages. Another study featured in the Journal Psychopharmacology uncovered that drinking coffee has some remarkable benefits on mental performance. The research has found that intelligent coffee intake leads to improvements in alertness, improve reaction times, and enhanced performance on cognitive vigilance tasks, and tasks that involve deep concentration. Now, why am I stressing intelligent coffee intake? This means acknowledging the true U-shaped curve of benefits and not going ham on caffeine. The data clearly shows that some coffee, a cup or two a day.

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Again, that's foursigmatic.com/model. And now, back to the show. I love that you mentioned this tendency towards stress eating, and that we've seen this sky-rocket, we were talking about this before the show, and the amount of weight that folks have gained during COVID. Talk about that a little bit and the snowball effect.

Luka Hocevar: Yes. I was blown away. I had to kind of keep checking the stat, because I was like, "Somebody's throwing it out there to trigger people," but it was... I think 42% of Americans gained an average of 29 pounds, and I think millennials was 41, which means almost half, almost half. Now, if you sit there and stop and think about that, that's an incredibly crazy statistic, right? Now we know that before pre-COVID that the health of this country was at a decline, it was not good whatsoever, but the analogy that we talked about earlier was that it's like a snowball, if you've ever... I come from Slovenia, so in winter, there's a lot of snow. You made these snowballs, and you go on a big hill when it was like still fresh powder snow and you'd roll the snowball and just keep picking up more snow and it gets bigger and bigger and bigger, it becomes a big, big snowball. We were, I feel like, already snowballing in a negative direction, I think. Nobody can argue with that if you look at the statistics of where we were. I think we were at 42% obesity pre-pandemic and adding on to the stat, during the pandemic, that big snowball, like somebody came and then pushed it even faster. It's almost like the decline in a year and a half is equal to...

I can't remember, but I was looking up statistics like six, seven, eight years, it's almost like 4-5X the negative decline of health in this country because of it. And so, you have to ask yourself, how do you start shifting that? Now, it can be such a big task that... Me personally, when you start thinking about changing systems and policies and things of that nature, it can become overwhelming to even think about it, 'cause it's like many of the systems are broken. So personally, for me, I look at it like this, I influence, one, myself, two, my family and friends and then my community, and things start from the inside out. And I think that's how you take back power and control, it's like, I'm responsible for my own life, and here's the people that I can influence. And again, the analogy of the lighthouse, I always think about that. Lighthouses do two things, they guide people away from danger, they guide them to safety, and they shine no matter what, storm, the whole worse weather, no matter what, right? A tugboat on the other side tries to go out, and I would say, save everything, everybody and people and tends to a lot of times drown with the person, right?

So being a lighthouse, to me, means, living in congruence with my values, who I want to become, and affecting all those people around. Now, because if I do it right, what's going to happen is another person is going to become a lighthouse and another one and another one, another one, in their families, at their work, in their communities, and we create these ripples that create waves. And the thing is, I can control that. So, you can control you, you can affect the people in your circles a lot, but if you start going like, "Well, here's this politician that didn't put this into place, here's this medical system that's not working," and there are people working on that, affecting that. I think you're doing so much in that, spreading that word, and educating. It's phenomenal. Every person then has to take that, and they have to go and become the lighthouse. Now, if we do that, it starts steamrolling, and it becomes that snowball, but it becomes a snowball that goes in the direction that we want it to go. And I feel like that's how we change things because somebody got to stop this snowball. We got to stop it; you know what I mean?

Shawn Stevenson: Yeah, we got a bunch of massive Frosty the Snowman out here getting built.

Luka Hocevar: Oh, man.

Shawn Stevenson: So, what are some of the trends, especially with you having such an incredible gym and culture and just being a leader in fitness, what are some of the trends/changes that you've seen in training tactics and culture since COVID has arrived on the scene? What are some of the changes that you've seen take place?

Luka Hocevar: So, one of the things that's been... I think there's been a trend in the last years is recovery, and so we talked about the stresses, more so than ever, we have to learn how to manage stress, I think that there hasn't been enough education around... Even for instance cardio, most people put cardio in one bucket. "Hey, do you do your cardio? "Yeah, man, I do." "What type of cardio do you do?" "What do you mean?" It's like there's different forms of cardio and cardio can be an incredible form of de-stressing, meaning if you do aerobic exercise, which is the lighter, I'm sweating, 130 to 150 beats per minute, nothing crazy, that is an incredible recovery workout after a hard session, and it can put you in a parasympathetic state, meaning, that's your rest and digest, because we do... Life is inherently very stressful. Let's look at the last two years. Uncertainty creates anxiety, create stress and right now, still, there's so much uncertainty. What's going to happen? If you have a business, if you have a job, the economy is so uncertain, and sometimes then what do we do?

We try to, I would say, use exercise as a mental health tool, which it is. But then you got to be careful, because "Okay, I go in and crush a workout seven days a week and that helps me with getting my mental focus right and putting these emotions into a space that I can exert them in a positive way." But we may be sometimes doing more harm than good because all of a sudden that allostatic load that we talked about, it's too much. Well, now you got inflammation, your back gets blown out, can't sleep, and you're like, "I don't know, I'm exercising." So, recovery is really finding the puzzle pieces I think, and this is going to continue to be something that we're going to have to really look into and piece this puzzle piece together. Here's how we're training here, and then we're also... Yes, this is exercise, but it's recovery-based, we're doing mobility circuits, and we're doing aerobic capacity work, and we're doing infrared saunas and cold plunge pools in certain scenarios and so on and so forth and we're doing IVs when necessary.

Shawn Stevenson: Yeah, I've seen more people doing those things recently like utilizing sauna, cold therapy. So, in the gym for example, 'cause this is a good connection here, is the culture... I know you've seen a shift where not as many people were at the gym. So, what were folks doing? I mean do people just kind of... Did you notice people picking stuff up and trying to do stuff at home or people trying to segregate themselves at the gym? What did you see change?

Luka Hocevar: That's a great question because that's been a conversation. For me, I'm in a fitness space, I own gyms, and I coach coaches and gym owners, so it's getting hundreds of pieces of feedback. So, one of the things I've found is that bigger gyms are struggling and struggled, I would say, maybe the most and still will for some reasons. There's not as much culture, so if you're coming to my gym, it's a belief system, it's more tight knit, there's less members, we're all kind of on the same boat. We legitimately have these values that are everywhere, and these quotes that are everywhere, and there's a way that we train, and then there's a way that we believe in how we live our lifestyle as well. So, it's the whole culture and community around it. We do combine work in the community, we do philanthropic work and so on and so forth. With, I would say, bigger gyms, there's less of that, so there's less of, "I'm not only going to exercise and follow this belief system that I have, but I'm going to go see my friends, my people," there's like you went and rented equipment, so more people will set up home gyms than ever and started exercising at home, which I think obviously is... That number's going to stay because they found that online.

There's great communities online, whether it's Facebook groups, it's apps, they can communicate with each other and still follow some type of structured program that we talked about earlier. But what's also happening, and this is somewhat statistical and anecdotal, is that when we get people back and they go like, "It's not the same." One of the things that I heard right off the bat was like, "Oh, this is the end of gyms." And I was the first person to be like, "No." 'Cause that would mean that it's the end of community, that would mean it's the end of culture, it'll mean that's the end of social gathering and connection, and it's like that's never going to happen. And so, what we're seeing is that the tightest communities that are more than just, "Hey, this is how we exercise," are continuing to grow strong and a lot of times growing and when that wasn't in place, it's more challenging for them.

And I think that this will continue as we move forward, there's like... I'm a big believer... I mean five, six years ago, the thing that I was saying that "If you're a coach and the only thing that you understand is exercise, but you don't have nutritional knowledge and guidance and you're unable to nutritionally guide your clients, you're going to become a relic." And I think now, I will say that when you look at the next four to five years, if you're not really good at understanding habits and behavior change and how these puzzle pieces fit together, it's going to be increasingly more challenging because it's all symbiotic. How your personal life and emotions and stress affect your training, your training affects... Everything is interconnected. And so, the future, I believe that the companies and businesses that understand that and also understand people, environment, social sciences like...

We'll do best because it's just such a bigger picture than like how many reps are we doing? Even the template that I was talking about. I'm a geeky person, like I study training left and right all the time, but about eight, nine years ago, I dove into change psychology, and habits, and behavior change, social science, and environment, understanding, neurology, what makes people tick, because all the Xs and Os are irrelevant, if we can't help people at the base line level, change behaviors. And you could go online and in two weeks find out some foundational things about nutrition to where it's like, Okay, if I do these Xs and Os, if I do that, I'll be good, but yet we still have the most declining health in the history of the US.

Shawn Stevenson: It's nuts, yeah. Man, it's so many good insights. I think that, especially with your data set, you being able to see this culture, to study things, and this is what really separates you in my mind, is that I know clearly, and I see clearly you've studied psychology and behavior change, and you're looking at the thing that really motivates and creates the action outside, and we tend to get so focused on the external thing. And one of my biggest takeaways from today, and this is a game changer, if we really get this, when you gave this analogy of the tight rope and the boundaries, that in of itself, because we as a culture today, we tend to have this all or nothing mentality with stuff, and if we're creating this tight rope... And I love it, you brought it back to in the training analogy, and then brought it to the nutrition domain, it's so easy to fall off. You've got a tightrope, you're probably... Your likelihood of falling off is so great and what happens when you fall off, like that's it, versus having boundaries where you create... And I think... Let me circle back to the Will Smith thing. He is walking a tight rope, if he's just looking at pound a week versus like, let's create some strategic boundaries that we're operating in here where there's going to be a myriad of success, but at the same time, you know if we are...

Let's use stress, this stressful eating as an example, you know what's crazy is that I've seen there's two templates usually, some people tend to lose their appetite when they're excessively stressed, there's one right here. Me, as well. Whereas my wife, if she would eat, she will eat in your face. If there's an argument taking place, which we don't... I love our relationship, but at times, she can literally just start going to just start chowing down, where I'm just like, how could you eat right now? But what's found in the data is that it's actually the best time for you. And what happens when you stress, when you're stressed, we tend to make poor food choices, and that can be that opening to where I've fallen off, I've fallen off this tightrope, versus I operate in this boundary, I had this poor decision that I made now, but it's all good. I'm still within my boundary, but this is when we tend to make poor food choices as well, is when we're stressed. The best time to actually eat said pizza or ice cream or whatever the case might be, is when you're actually healthy, when you're feeling good.

When you're not stressed, your body, the management of these inputs, is greatly improved when you feel good versus everything becoming constricted, inflammatory, you can really gum the system up more. Now, I'm not advocating for people to go to Burger King when they're happy, but it's just one of these things that we... It just happens in our environment. We don't realize that when we're walking this tight rope, stress hits, chance are you going to fall off, and it's much more difficult to get back on that tight rope.

Luka Hocevar: There's two things I wanted to kind of throw in there because what you want to do is, for instance, if you make a choice of, "Hey, listen, let's have pizza on Friday night," but I'm calm, strategically, and I've been on point the whole week, my behavior has been matching my goals, it's actually part of the plan. We have pizza on Saturday nights.

Shawn Stevenson: Just got those boundaries.

Luka Hocevar: You got boundaries, and you're making a decision out of power, not scarcity, not fear, not stress, so it's like, where are your decisions are coming from? Is it stress, scarcity, fear, all these negative emotions, or is it from consciously, right? And number two, as you said, all or nothing, and I always... When somebody says all or nothing, I say, uh-huh, always something. So, all or nothing is I couldn't get my hour and 20-minute workout in the way it was structured, nothing, but always something is... Like yesterday, I'm like, man, I'm coaching a rugby team, then I got to coach this, I got to make a call. I got like 30 minutes before I got to head home and jump on a flight. Now, my training session, usually the hour and a half, there's no way that's going to happen.

What do I do? I actually went home in my living room, did a 30-minute bodyweight session, got a sweat going, jet it out, but it's like... But the thing is that was always something. And imagine a dial, so in exercise and in nutrition, imagine a 10 on the dial is like the perfect optimal thing that you plan. The workout, you did it great, you weren't tired, you smashed it, right? Zero is nothing. Zero, you didn't do anything. But an eight is, hey, I got three quarters of the workout done, still really hard, but I only have so much time. A five or six is like, man, I couldn't go to the gym, but I still got a workout in with a couple of dumbbells and bodyweight. A three is like I went for a 40-minute walk, but I'm just turning the dial from 10 to one, and it's like... All or nothing is like a 10 or a zero. That's not going to work. And nutrition is the same thing. My dial at ten is like this is the most optimal meal I could have locked in in my plan to get to where I want to go.

A seven is like, man, I went to this restaurant, they didn't have the things I really wanted it, so I had to go with some extra carbs, but that wasn't planned on, for instance, right? You turn it down, and it's like, damn, instead of having a donut and a coffee, maybe you have, I will say, the coffee with just zero calorie, I would say, all milk or something else. It's like you look at that dial, and you go, "It doesn't have to be all or nothing," just think always something, because it comes back to that stat that we said, only 40% to 50% compliance will get you pretty damn good results across the year. In your mind, when you're about to go like "Uh, all or nothing, I can't do all so I'ma do nothing," just tell yourself that phrase, always something and turn the dial, and I promise you when you do... And you can do that in any part of your life, you'll have so much more success if you do that.

Shawn Stevenson: So good, man. I got to ask you about one more thing because you're the guy just to ask things like this. Anaerobic threshold, why does that matter, why does being aware of our anaerobic threshold... What is it and what can we do to improve it?

Luka Hocevar: So, when it comes to cardio, this is a great question 'cause I love talking about cardio and stuff, people put it in the same bucket, so anaerobic threshold is... Everybody reaches their anaerobic threshold at a certain point of heart rate, okay. Now the only true way to measure it is to basically do a gas exchange test in the lab, which most of us aren't going to do, but a very simple way, and it's pretty on point, is to do for instance, a 12-minute test. You can do it for running, if running is beating you up, you could do it on an Airdyne bike, you could do it somewhere, and basically what you're trying to do is in those 12 minutes, push as hard as you can, try to keep it steady. Now, you got to wear a heart rate monitor for it, and what's going to happen is that you're going to have a specific heart rate average across those 12 minutes, plus/minus about five beats per minute is your anaerobic threshold.

Now if you think about... 'Cause then that gives you some data to train it, okay. After you're done with that 12 minute, I also really like to do what's called a 60-second heart rate recovery test, and it tells you how much does your heart rate drop in 60 seconds, it's a really big marker of your cardio and fitness levels. Going back to tracking progress, these are great, most people don't know how to track progress of cardio, so we do all these different tests on how to do it, so then you have something to train it, because most of your training for anaerobic threshold is going to be in those plus/minus five beats per minute around your anaerobic threshold. So, let's say yours was 171, that means we train between 166 or 176, 177-ish. I want you to stay there for, for instance, like three minutes at a time, if we were doing some type of shuttle sprints or Airdyne bikes or whatever else. Now, what it does is it will basically raise your anaerobic threshold. So, imagine that when you go past your anaerobic threshold, you start using glycogen for energy.

Shawn Stevenson: You start to go to the aerobic side.

Luka Hocevar: You go to the anaerobic glycolytic side, so you're using the sugars, but you only have so much time to do that, that's for instance, I'll give an analogy of a fighter. So, a fighter, once they're... If they're... Usually, if they were bigger and more muscular and they're swinging, and they're killing it, and you've seen them like gas out, this is a great, I would say, analogy of like, "Man, he was throwing those punches so hard, he came in at round two and it looked like he could barely throw." Because his anaerobic threshold was pretty low, and then after that, he fell down into an aerobic zone and he just didn't have a lot of aerobic power. So, if we can raise that, it means that we can be more powerful, the anaerobic threshold's higher, and we can be more powerful in aerobic zone. Great example, friend of mine, Demetrious Johnson, Mighty Mouse, one of the most winningest fighters in UFC history. You've ever seen him fight in a fifth round, you're like, "This guy is throwing like he's in the first round."

He's one of the most conditioned fighters. My friend, Joel, actually created his conditioning programs for a decade plus, because he trained those systems so he can throw really powerfully, but his heart rate's still pretty low, now that's trained. So how can this... For athletes, this is crucial if you play a sport where, for instance, any type of fighting, boxing, MMA, but a lot of team sports, basketball, football doesn't need it as much, 'cause it's more short and explosive burst with longer breaks but most team soccer, you need anaerobic threshold work. But if you're in... For instance, if you're like oh, how does this relate to me if I'm just a person that's trying to exercise? But it's like okay, do you want to go on a hike? What about... Do you play any type of basketball, like weekend warrior type stuff? What about ultimate Frisbee?

Whatever it may be, majority of things you got to work on that, 'cause otherwise you get smoked really fast and what it does too is your form breaks down, so looking at these pockets of cardio is really important. That's why even in that template I say, "Hey, once a week do aerobic-based work, which is just steady or state, nothing really super intense, but once a week, really get that heart rate up. That could be your anaerobic threshold work." You get your heart rate up, keep it there for a while, then let it come all the way back down and repeat. That's the super basic part of it but understanding that there's different energy systems. With a lot of my NFL guy, I think a lot of the pro sports stuff has been very outdated. In Major League Baseball, they have a one mile run test, and I train some, they're the top baseball players on the planet, Cy Young award winners, they're like, "Luka, should I train for this?" I'm like, "No." What in baseball... When do you need that? You don't, it's just been around for so long.

Shawn Stevenson: Never.

Luka Hocevar: Never, right. But football is five to eight seconds of extremely explosive violent play, followed by about 35 seconds to 50 seconds of rest, that's called anaerobic alactic. It's very fast, very explosive and then you have a pretty good break, so I'm going to help those guys do two things, aerobic base, everybody needs that, and then anaerobic alactic, it's the best use of time, and it's going to transfer well to the sport. So even with clients that come in and say, "Hey, I want to be more fit," remember that question. To me, it's like what does that look like? Tell me about what that looks like. Man, I want to go on an eight-mile hike and push it.

Here's the cardio energy systems you'll need, we'll work on that. We get firefighters, I got to pass this CPAT test. Okay, what does it include? Well, I got to drag this dummy, I got to do this, and then I have to do a stepper with a weight vest and this much on. Ah, okay. And we kind of look at that and then we program in a way that helps those people achieve those specific goals. And rather than just like, "Just want to improve my cardio," you want to ask more specific things and that's why making progress, and even going back to that Will Smith conversation, I would have got really specific. What does that mean to you, what does progress look like? What would... And you get granular, and then you build that in so that the behaviors create those buoys along the way, like oh, we're on track, we're on track.

And then they can feel good about it too, because it's not just weight, it's not just this, it's not just that. I got a whole list of things that with clients, we'll go... At the end month, it's like trap bar, deadlifts of this much, your throwing is this much harder, look at your conditioning levels, and you're showing them stuff, and then they're feeling great. I'm winning, I'm winning, I'm winning, I'm winning. And maybe one of the things isn't there yet, like, "Oh, I hoped to lose five pounds, but I'm dropped down three." But what I've found is that when people focus on performance, it improves their body composition. When people focus on behaviors, it improves their body composition. It's the greatest win of all time, 'cause they keep improving and getting better, and everything else kind of aligns along the road with it.

Shawn Stevenson: Yeah, perfect man, perfect. Yes, we focus on health, the body composition comes along with it.

Luka Hocevar: 100%.

Shawn Stevenson: Man, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and your insights. Can you let everybody know where they can follow you, get more information, and also can people come by and check you out...

Luka Hocevar: Absolutely.

Shawn Stevenson: Come by the gym?

Luka Hocevar: Listen, all you got to do is let me know. Vigor Ground is open for anybody and everybody. Actually, now we get a lot of people from out of state, and they fly in the countries, just go train, hang out, we'll do mini workshops and stuff like that, but I share a lot of the... It's almost like the hub is Instagram, that's @LukaHocevar, L-U-K-A H-O-C-E-V-A-R. Say that real fast, you get 50 bucks. Then the gym is vigorgroundfitness.com, is the gym website. I also help a lot of coaches actually build their businesses, and that's yogrowyourgym.com, which you'll appreciate this, is a similar logo to Yo! MTV Raps, so the old school-ness. And on YouTube actually, a lot of the stuff too that we just talked about, I put a lot of content that's for instance how to do threshold training, cardio, workouts, muscle building, everything around fitness and nutrition, all my seminars that I've recorded, there's like 1,400 videos, you can check that out on YouTube. And that's same thing, just put in Luka Hocevar and that'll pop up.

Shawn Stevenson: Perfect, man, truly I mean, you are somebody speaking from outside and the people that know you, you're the trainer's trainer. A lot of folks are looking to you for models of their gym, their culture, education. So, man, it's just... You're such a gift, man.

Luka Hocevar: Thank you, brother, man.

Shawn Stevenson: To this world, so I appreciate you.

Luka Hocevar: Thank you. Appreciate you right back and thank you for having me on your show again, man.

Shawn Stevenson: Of course, man. Let's go, Luka Hocevar everybody. Thank you so much for tuning into the show today, I hope you got a lot of value out of this, so many incredible insights that we can use to fuel our performance, to fuel our results moving forward. I love the analogy of that snowball effect taking place in our society, we've just been seeing everything just trending downward as far as our health, our levels of fitness, our levels of happiness.

And then COVID jumping on the scene and literally it's as if the snowball that was already rolling downhill gets a strong punch in the back of its snowy shoulders and pushing it downhill even faster. Now, at the same time... Now I'm picturing it rolling through Who Town, the Grinch coming through and stealing everybody's Christmas fitness, and at the same time, this snowball can be stopped, and we can create a snowball of efficacy and a snowball effect in health, in fitness, in happiness in performance, in success, and both things are equally available, all things are possible but it's really what are we going to put our time and our attention into? And taking on some of these tools because it's one thing to say a thing and to want to do a thing. It's another thing completely to take action towards it and to actually achieve it.

And in that process of achievement, he talked about the messy middle. That's where a lot of folks lose their way, that's where a lot of folks throw in the towel, it's that messy middle, it's that Sloppy Joe section of transformation, that messy middle. And so, what can we utilize to leverage our psychology? Because the truth is, we can absolutely start with vigor to pivot off of Luka's incredible brand.

We can start with vigor into a thing, and we can traverse that messy middle and we can absolutely come out the other side with great success, but we've got to be able to utilize the most powerful tool that we have, which is to utilize our incredible minds. So, I hope that you got a lot of value out of this episode. If you did, please share it out on social media. You could tag me, I'm @shawnmodel on Instagram and Luka is @LukaHocevar. That's L-U-K-A H-O-C-E-V-A-R.

Tag him, let him know what you thought about this episode and make sure to follow him. He's somebody that I follow, always getting tips, insights, inspiration. He's always taking folks through and demonstrating for us as viewers, as followers, as students, some great insights about training, and you can actually see it first-hand there on Instagram on that incredible platform that he's utilizing in a great way. Again, it's really again, we want to curate our social media feed, start to feed ourselves things that empower us, that keep us informed and educated, and rather than inundating us and distracting us from our own greatness, things that are pressing and moving us towards, guiding us towards our own greatness. Alright, so I appreciate you so much for tuning into the show today again.

Again, tag me, tag Luka on Instagram, and of course, you could send this episode directly from the podcast app that you're listening on. You can also check out the episode on YouTube. If you're not watching the YouTube, come on what are you doing? Pop over to The Model Health Show on YouTube as well, you could send and share it from YouTube and from that app too. I appreciate you so much. We've got some powerful guests and epic masterclasses coming your way very soon, so make sure to stay tuned. Take care, have an amazing day, and I'll talk with you soon.

And for more after the show, make sure to head over to themodelhealthshow.com. That's where you can find all of the show notes, you could find transcriptions, videos for each episode, and if you got a comment, you can leave me a comment there as well. And please make sure to head over to iTunes and leave us a rating to let everybody know that the show is awesome, and I appreciate that so much. And take care. I promise to keep giving you more powerful, empowering, great content to help you transform your life. Thanks for tuning in.