I catch up with the Fat Burning Man himself, Abel James. Abel has been a prominent voice in the ancestral health community for nearly a decade with his sensational Fat Burning Man podcast (check out my episode on Abel’s show!).
Abel is a free-thinking guy who is not afraid to speak his mind and call out the BS in the diet or fitness scene. He describes starting his podcast out of frustration that Jillian Michaels (the Biggest Loser trainer) had the top podcast (he later took her down with his fast growing show). Abel describes his background as a devoted distance runner who was getting fatter and less healthy despite his devoted training, thanks to an overly stressful lifestyle. A precocious and prodigious learner, Abel took matters into his own hands and embarked upon his path to reclaim his personal health and also become a thought leader in the process. He also expresses his creativity through music — Abel is an accomplished musician with a long career playing hundreds of shows annually.
Abel’s approach to health is more inclusive and progressive than you will find virtually anywhere else. His sensational book, The Wild Diet, offers a simple, sensible, sustainable, non-denominational approach to healthy eating that cuts through the hype and propaganda and helps you enjoy the experience of eating a variety of foods as close to their natural — wild! — state as possible.
Abel brings out his multi-dimensional personality in this show, as he describes his continued passion for music (and how it helps him rejuvenate from long days behind the mic!), his increasing attention to spirituality, primarily accessed by connecting with nature, and the vagabond travels that he and his wife and business partner Allyson have enjoyed in recent years that led them to a very special and spiritual current stopping point of Crestone, CO.
Enjoy this episode with Abel, and to learn more about him, head over to FatBurningMan.com and check out his long-standing highly ranked podcast, The Fat Burning Man Show. Special thanks to LetsGetChecked for sponsoring this episode. Access home blood testing and a great discount at tryLGC.com/brad.
TIMESTAMPS:
Abel, a musician, has connected with a community of close-knit people as he travels around looking for clean air which is getting harder to find. [05:57]
He is finding spiritual growth by gravitating to the mountain communities. [14:11]
The surrounding environment has a tremendous impact on us and sometimes we don’t even notice that. [17:44]
When talking about diet, people get confused because the words don’t necessarily explain the concept. [22:39]
Many athletes are raised to think: no pain, no gain. [26:44]
Most people are generally too still throughout the day. Think about mini workouts. [28:48]
If you surround yourself with reminders of things you want to accomplish, they will encourage you of what you need to do. [35:12]
How does music play into the ability to be the best you can in the career and healthy living goals? [39:21]
During a year without the internet, Abel created Virtual Reality videos. [42:07]
We need to get our power back and be clear about what we deserve. [47:11]
We are all consumers. Make sure you are a conscious consumer. [51:52]
We are conditioned to never be satisfied. That gets in the way of healthy living. [56:49]
Fasting gives you experiences you’ve never had in your life. [58:12]
Abel’s podcasts have giving him amazing lessons. [58:53]
LINKS:
- Abel James
- CAR.O.L
- Brad’s Shopping page
- Let’s Get Checked
- Wild Diet
- Mark’s Daily Apple.com
- Designer Babies Still Get Scabies
QUOTES:
- “Emphasize the effort toward improvement, rather than the end result.”
- “Do the things you’re bad at.”
- “The Wild Diet simplifies things that are extremely complicated.”
LISTEN:
Get Over Yourself Podcast
Brad (00:03:49):
Everybody introducing the fat burning man himself, Abel James, how fun to catch up with this guy. I met him many years ago when he was a guest at our primal con event in Austin, Texas where he was living at that time before he went vagabond on us and he’s going to talk about all that during the show. Uh, but we had him to come give a talk about healthy eating and his areas of expertise and he said, Hey, do you mind if I set up shop and play a few songs, uh, during dinner? And the guy comes out there with an entire one man band set up and he proceeded to just rock the house or the park with his electric guitar and numerous other instruments and accompaniments.
Brad (00:04:35):
Oh my gosh. What a multitalented guy. And as you’ll hear in the show, he has a long career as a musician, but of course is known for his promoting of a authentic ancestral living experience, which he has taken to the extreme with his travels and settling in this wonderful spiritual stopping point of Crestone, Colorado with his wife Alison. Uh, he wrote a book with Alison called the Wild Diet and they’ve been promoting that successfully for several years. And April’s a free thinking straight shooting guy. So you’re going to love this show because he is not afraid to call BS when he sees it in the health diet, fitness industry. So we’re going to get deep into what works and what doesn’t. Uh, talk about some of his interesting background when he was a personal trainer and on a reality TV show, helping the people lose weight and uh, all kinds of fun stuff await with this nice conversation with Abel James.
Brad (00:05:31):
So go listen to his long running popular show on iTunes called the fat burning man. Very nicely produced with prominent guests and very intelligent guy that can talk shop with anybody about all manner of health and fitness and healthy living and enjoying the process along the way. Abel. James,
Brad (00:05:51):
it’s Abel James, thanks for joining me man.
Abel (00:05:55):
I’m psyched to be here.
Brad (00:05:57):
It’s been a long time since we hung out in person down in Austin and I catch up to you here and there, but you’re a man on the move. Um, literally you’ve had this, uh, this travel adventure, which I’m so excited to get into and the Wild Diet and all the great things that you’ve been, you’ve been up to. But uh, tell the audience what’s, what’s the latest and greatest. I also want to know where you ended up cause the last time we talked man, you are on the road.
Abel (00:06:20):
Yeah, we’ve been on the road for a long time. If I had to add it up, we’ve, we’ve literally moved more than a couple of dozen times in the past few years, which is exhausting, especially when you’re not prepared to do that. Which has happened a few times too. Cause monkey wrenches get thrown in from time to time. But one thing that we’ve been chasing is really, uh, a small community of close knit people. Mmm. As we know, that’s a great indicator of longevity and health is being truly connected to people. And one of the things that we lose, unfortunately when we’re on the road is that deep connection of maybe not even doing anything that’s that flashy or anything that’s that cool together. Nothing that’s that adventurous, but you just see each other every week or two. You know, even just going to the post office and seeing someone, there’s something that’s very nurturing about that.
Abel (00:07:09):
So we’re really happy to have found a small community. So to answer your question, we’re now in Crestone, Colorado in the San Luis Valley up at 8,000 feet looking straight up at like three 14,000 foot mountains. It’s just pristine and awesome and the air is clean. Um, it wasn’t so much in a lot of places we lived, we tried living on the front range Colorado for a while, close to a bunch of national parks. And I’ll tell you that clean air was one of the hardest things to find, even though we were traveling like all around North America.
Brad (00:07:40):
Uh, how did you measure that? Able, was it your, your, uh, looking up stuff on the computer or just going outside and taking a deep breath? I mean,
Abel (00:07:50):
a bit of both. Yeah. You know, how it is. Uh, I like to cycle back and forth, but between being unplugged and existing in that world, not being reliant on technology whatsoever where you can just literally see, especially if there were wildfires, right? It’s very obvious when the air is smoky and bad to breathe. Uh, same with, with some types of pollution, but not all. But then on the other side, especially in the past few years, it’s incredible how many devices have come out better. Usually the less than a hundred bucks, some less than 50 bucks that can measure the particulate matter of the air, a measure, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, other pollutants, and all sorts of different things like that that can hook into computers and, uh, and phones. So I’ve been testing all sorts of different kinds of those the past few years and a lot of them work pretty well, but more than anything, it’s like is the air clean or not?
Abel (00:08:42):
It’s kind of a binary answer. If it’s like if the particulate matter is over a hundred for example, um, I think it’s part parts per million is the measurement that, that most of them will use. Then it, it starts to turn like from a color to just like red. And that’s kind of the way I think of it too. It’s like, is today a good day to go out and really kick my own butt going along adventure and suck some air or should I do a different type of workout today? Unfortunately, that’s a calculation a lot of us really should be making, you know, and maybe we’re not, we’re, we’re blissfully ignorant often as, as runners and athletes as being like, Oh yeah, LA looks good today. Let’s go.
Brad (00:09:21):
Oh mercy. I grew up in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles. And our sense of normal was that summer was the smoggy months of the year where you couldn’t see the mountains that were 11 miles away. And, um, it’s, you know, looking back now, it was crazy because, uh, it was a disaster. It was like smoking a pack a day as a little kid riding our bikes around and that stuff. And I used to run just like you, I was, you know, high school cross country runner and I associated the, the three mile cross country race with wheezing and coughing for two hours afterward with my lungs and pain. And only when I did my first race on the beach at UC Santa Barbara, I finished the race and I took a few deep breaths and I was okay. And I was like, Oh my gosh, that was all smog. So, um, you know, the cars have gotten better, but I guess the population density and some of the weather patterns like, uh, you know, boulders up against those mountains. And I remember the, the smog coming into the America’s paradise, the fittest community in America. So where’s Crestone? Uh, yeah, it’s, it’s fun. It could ruin your day.
Abel (00:10:24):
Yeah. So Crestone is like three or four hours deeper into the mountains by the great sand dunes and it’s, uh, it’s beyond. So those, those mountains by Boulder, Denver where the East kind of meets the West are call are referred to as the front range. So we’re like past those kind of end of the mountains. And, uh, in this giant Valley that sits at eight to 9,000 feet, it’s the highest, largest desert Valley, as I understand in North America. And according to some estimates the world. So it was a really unique ecosystem. Mmm. Extremely dry. Really. Uh, you know, the altitude will get to you if you’re not prepared for it. And then, you know, starting from 8,000 feet, as you know, once you go up from that, it gets real, right? You go up a few thousand feet and all of a sudden you’re on, you’re above the tree line or something like that. And you have to be tuned in cause otherwise you just might die. And there’s something that I like about that. You know what I mean? It’s a high stakes thing where it feels different from the stress you get from social media and from email and from traffic. Right. It’s like you’re up there and you might get eaten by a mountain line so you better be together, you better be ready. And I like that
Brad (00:11:35):
He digs that. It’s a good balance. Yeah. So the start of this vagabond journey, what prompted that? You got together with Alison, I think you guys were in Austin, the coolest place in the world. And then you, then you took off and rolled out of town. So you were one of those where they have the U-HAUL stats where 126 people moving to Austin every single day. And then you were the guy leaving and they’re like, Hey, can I have your truck when you come back, when did that start? And where’d you guys, where’d you guys go?
Abel (00:12:06):
We were on and off in Austin. So my, my wife and I, as you mentioned, Alison, we met in Austin, uh, coming up on 10 years ago now, which is kind of crazy, but we use that as our, uh, kind of just like the jump off point for most of our adventures. Unfortunately, it’s not great for road trips from Austin. You’re just kind of after a while your in Texas and you know it and we don’t love flying. We love road trips. So, uh, Colorado was a place that I had just always kind of come back to over the years. There’s a, I grew up in New Hampshire, um, in, in kind of a tiny mountainous community and I feel at home in the mountains for some reason.
Abel (00:12:48):
So even in Austin, although it’s an awe, it’s a great place, it’s becoming a lot more urban than it was. Um, then, you know, compared to 10 years ago, a lot more expensive. A lot of my friends were more in the, I was playing more than 300 gigs a year. Most of the years I was in Austin as a musician. And so I saw so many places. Most of the ones that weren’t expensive, that weren’t super classy, that weren’t, you know, taking over the city gets shut down. A lot of musicians have to move out because they couldn’t afford it after a while. And my heart just started like hemorrhaging and I’m like, Oh no, this is, this is sad. Like a lot of people really are leaving and a lot of new people are coming. But it’s weird. More more than anything else though we needed a break. We were getting burnt out. Right. You can, I’m sure you can understand that. A lot of people on the, on the Primal Blueprint team, we all come against this from time to time. We work so hard and we love working and you don’t even realize how overworked you are sometimes. So we needed a break. We needed some time, especially after that TV show and all the crazy stuff that happened after that. We needed a break. So we went into the mountains at first, we went to the Smokey Mountains over in Tennessee, lived there for on and off for about a year, uh, recorded an album of music with some friends in Nashville. And then, uh, you know, went back to the mountains and it was, it was one of those things where we knew we wanted to be in some mountains, we just didn’t know which.
Abel (00:14:11):
And once we found these were like, yep, this feels right and we can go even more meta or more spiritual if you want. Cause there’s some like Shamonic stuff too.
Brad (00:14:19):
Uh, you mean in your location there?
Abel (00:14:22):
Well, certainly in the location, but also as just as part of the, how we got here. It’s, it’s fascinating because this is a tiny little community that has a, I think it’s 26 or 28 different spiritual centers, even though the population is like 2000 people tops. Uh, and, and the reason for that is because they gave away land spiritual centers as grants back in the seventies so that they could build communities here in North America. So it’s got a high, I think it’s the highest concentration of, of like Tibetan monks outside of Tibet, even though it’s a tiny little. And so I love wacky little places like that. And also since my wife and I have been traveling for awhile, we, it’s a double edged sword for sure. Not owning a house. We’ve tried it both ways, but not wanting a house and being able to move sometimes do, it doesn’t mean that we’re here forever. If a really cool project comes out, we want to move somewhere for a year, we can do that. And, and uh, we don’t want to right now, let’s be clear. We’re over it, but it’s, it’s very cool and it’s a place, most importantly, I think, to grow spiritually. And once you’re, you know, I know I’m speaking to a recovering type A, there are a lot who are listening to. Mmm. I think if there’s any reason we’re here, it’s to work on our, our spirits. And once you’ve kind of done a lot of other battles in your life and maybe succeeded or not. Uh, for me it was just, I felt like we needed to prioritize spiritual health and spiritual growth. And part of that is being in nature and in another part of that is being around and I think diverse. I’m spiritual thinkers, so we’re excited to be here.
Brad (00:16:02):
So how do you participate in the community that, are these centers have offerings that you can check in and do a meditation program or,
Abel (00:16:12):
yeah, you can, there, there are festivals, there are, it depends on the, on the centers. Uh, but you can just roll in. To be honest, we haven’t been here for that long. So most of the temple I’ve used is, is the woods here and the mountains, some of the trails are just incredible. You know, I think one of the things that, that we try to prioritize that a lot of people might miss is, is number one, picking out the place that you live, picking out the community, choosing it yourself. So many people at a job choose that or let her house choose that or something else. And if you can at any point afford to choose where you let live, like do it, do it, try it. And you might be wrong. We’ve been wrong many times it’s good to be wrong cause then you know what you definitely don’t want. But one of the most important things, we have a dog and a lot of people do, a lot of people are supposed to get out and walk and if, if there’s not something appealing and enticing in that like five minutes bubble around your house, it’s kind of rough. It’s a lot harder to get outside and just go enjoy it. You know, if you’re just living in Santa Barbara or Miami, it’s, that’s, that’s pretty cool. I mean you can make that work in one way or another, but if you’re living right up against someplace that’s blasting you with exhaust from some commercial vent or whatever, every time you walk outside. And we’ve lived in places like like that too. It’s a lot harder to make these changes in our lifestyle to be more active that we all need to, if we want to live up against this crazy world we’re living in.
Brad (00:17:44):
Yeah. It seems like there’s a balance here because I, I really appreciate how people make things work wherever they are. And you see people in New York city doing Tai Chi in central park and then who knows where they’re headed off to after on the subway. But I think the surrounding environment, we don’t even notice. You know, what an impact it has. And if you’re going out, like, you know, I used to train for triathlons dating back now 30 30 plus years ago, and I was the only guy in my community riding my bike around on the trails or running. I wouldn’t see anybody. And if I did see somebody, I most certainly knew who they were. And then you fast forward to now and you’re out in most every community and there’s people enjoying the trails and the nature. And there’s been so much growth on that. I know we’re talking about a small sliver of the population, but just having that surrounding environment of people doing workouts at the same time you are, even though you’re not doing the same workout, you can just feel that energy.
Abel (00:18:40):
Yeah, that’s another big thing and one of the things I liked about Boulder and Austin too is when you see people outside just like getting into it and also in California is great for that. You see people out running, stand up, paddle boarding, swimming, yoga, all this stuff. It’s infectious, it’s contagious, and it does affect us as much as those billboards for big Macs do. When you see someone just like chilling out, meditating, that does have a deep effect on your subconscious as well. That’s one of the other reasons it’s so important to choose, as you said, choose your environment, um, as much as you can and optimize it. Um, whether you’re talking to kind of like the micro of your own room and your own bedroom or where you choose to live your life, what city or what rural area you choose to live in.
Brad (00:19:23):
I’m wondering if that includes a fence cutters so I can cut a hole there. There’s this big property that’s fenced in and it’s right next to, it’s like a shortcut to the trails. I could, I could jog down to the middle of my town here in Tahoe, but I’m debating whether I’m, whether I’m allowed to do that or not. Probably not, but I’m trying to optimize my environment. Man.
Abel (00:19:43):
That’s, well sometimes do you, you have to go gray area a little bit and uh, I ran,
Brad (00:19:48):
but he would use it. Right? It would start to become a thoroughfare. Yeah.
Abel (00:19:52):
Yeah. I think I’m, that’s the other part too. If you see a critical mass of runners and bikers, and I’m not saying like hack up trails, you definitely don’t do that. But like if you’re in a place close to your house where you and your, your friends or training partners can get away with using a trail, I think it’s important to be able to claim that for ourselves. Because what’s happened so much in a lot of places where I’ve lived is like these, these trails that we used to be able to use all the time. Nope. They are fenced off their private land now or whatever. Or this is not the trail anymore. Dog parks too. And that’s bad for community. It’s a, I mean, I didn’t vote for that. You know what I mean? Like we need to take our, our power back, I think. And part of that is we need to be able to bike through some places and run through some places because that’s what we need to do as humans.
Brad (00:20:42):
All right, so this Wild Diet, did this emanate from the on the road? How did you guys develop the program?
Abel (00:20:50):
Yeah, well it’s been a long time in the making, but it was, uh, it’s so in 2015, 2016, that’s when I released the book in terms of the hardcover and the paperback. And that’s when I did the big TV show as well. And so the Wild Diet to me, I like the word wild because as you know, these words can be overly abused. And we see them driven into the ground. Paleo, Keto, Ken’s vegan, you know, vegetarian, carnivore. A lot of them stop having meaning after a while. Like for me, and not to go on too far of a tangent, but the carnivore thing is blowing up right now and I’m just like really? So all these people who are raging about the carnivore diet are never once eating any bit of plant matter or taking a bit of herbs as medicine or drinking any coffee or any tea. It’s like okay you are there. Is that like five to 10% or like people I know Joe Rogan was just like, yeah, I’m totally carnivore. Oh but this weekend I like had a bunch of pasta at Disneyland. I had like a pizza on sell the crap, but I’m totally carnivore but I do make diversions and it’s like no, you’re right. An omnivore. That’s right. That’s omnivorous. That’s eating plants and animals and also being kind of opportunist. So anyway, I was with the Wild Diet. I was trying to make the word wild, not represent all of that, not represent diet. Cause the true word of diet should mean what a plant, what an animal habitually eats over time. And that I think it should be plants and animal foods. And so with the Wild Diet it’s kind of trying to simplify things that are extremely complicated.
Abel (00:22:39):
So I wanted to write a really good book about it and I think that that we did and also included a lot of recipes as well. But we’re working on a lot more around all of this. And I think one of the most troubling things really is the way that people use words because people get confused. We all do. I get confused listening to all this stuff, but when the rubber actually meets the road, like you, me, Mark, Elle over at Prime, I’m talking to all you guys today. Um, we’re eating similar things at similar times in a lot of the cases. And I think it’s important to really rally around some of the things that we can agree about. Whole foods, real foods eating, like our ancestors did, moving like our ancestors did. And so, uh, yeah, the whole wild approach to things. The word wild means nature and natural in some ways, but also has the connotation of let’s be different. Let’s be weird, let’s be willing to be our own little tribe because if you want to survive in this world that we’re up against, you have to be willing be the weird one who sticks out. Um, so if you’re in a group of weirdos, it makes it easier..
Brad (00:23:52):
that premise is almost impossible to, uh, to, to, to challenge, right? Yeah. I about eating, eating foods that are wild and natural and finding your own personal try though, don’t they? Bread I guess. Yeah. I mean, but I think that that point about being precise with your language is, is really important because um, you know, the, the susceptible public is looking for quick, easy answers and, and yeah, uh, sound bites basically and we’re happy to provide them in many ways because we all operate with this flawed thinking that you can oversimplify things. And I like that where you point out looking for common ground. I had a Rip Esselstyn on my podcast, your former farmer, neighbor and Austin. And of course he’s the leader in the whole food plant based movement and we talked for an hour and 20 minutes with so much common ground.
Brad (00:24:43):
And the main common ground is our mutual enthusiasm for helping, living and motivating and inspire others to take charge. And so, you know, if he thinks eggs are going to clog your arteries and kill you, we’re going to have a material difference of opinion there. And I’m going to reference that humans have eaten eggs for a couple million years and then the listener at him or herself can can go sort that out and test things out. But that’s I think a, you know, a great name. And um, you, you back it up with kind of the, uh, the, the message that you can be intuitive and flowing. And I know you, I want to talk to you about your fitness program too cause I really liked that aspect of, of the message rather than Able’s seven, seven step workout plan that you do these days a week.
Abel (00:25:28):
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So you want me to just to talk about like fitness overall.
Brad (00:25:33):
Yeah. And your, your pattern that has worked so well for you and that’s kind of off the beaten track.
Abel (00:25:39):
Yeah. Well I sh I share a similar background, although not at a world class or elite level like, like you and Mark and a lot of the people over on your side, but have always loved running and mountain biking. I did cross country. Mountain biking, trail running and that sort of thing back in the day, but that didn’t always go well. I was just riddled with shin splints., IT band problems I was putting on weight as I got into my twenties a lot of people are familiar with, with kind of that part of the story. Um, but I learned, I was at my fattest pretty much when I was running almost at my most, like sometimes when I was running at my most it was okay, it was working out well. But other times I didn’t have that, that space. I think of my lifestyle anymore as I hit my twenties and I was trying to pay off my loans, you know, working long hours inside this cramped it’s space. Like most offices are with stale air, just sitting there, right. Moonlighting doing computer programming in front of the screen more. And then moonlighting again playing music like into the wee hours of the, yeah.
Abel (00:26:44):
Getting paid in shots, sometimes tips and shots and just whatever. And so something had to give, right. You can’t do all of those things at the same time. But I think a lot of us as athletes are raised to think more is better. No pain, no gain, all this. So as time has gone on, I’ve seen that goes horribly wrong for myself and all around me. I’ve seen that advice just go horribly wrong. So I realized that there needed to be some sort of different approach. And thankfully, geez, when was it? Yeah. Coming up on a decade ago too, I found, um, Mark’s Daily Apple.com his blog back in the day before I’d ever met Mark. And I think I found him through, um, Barefoot Running cause I was getting into that to help clean up my form, um, and get rid of the shin splints and all of that.
Abel (00:27:31):
Mmm. And that Chris McDougall book right back in the day, born and run. I got really into that. And so I found out a way to run long and hard without totally killing myself, without being fat and all these other things. But now I’m 35. I’m not in my mid forties anymore. I really wanted to push the gas for awhile, but I never wanted to have a hip replacement or like not be, be be told, never to be able to run again or never want to run again. You know what I mean? So I’ve seen that happen to a lot of people. So for me, what, what it shows up like, uh, now is you folks, I heard you referring to micro workouts. I love that. I’ve been doing that. Like today I’m recording all day. I think I have seven. And in between I’ll play a little music, just do a little bit micro, mini finger workout and mental workout or I’ll throw the kettlebells up a few times, do some pull ups and push ups just a little bit. Um, but actually I’d like, Brad, you to say the way that, I can’t remember exactly how you described it, but when you were talking about the micro workouts, it was basically the amount of wait an obscene amount of weight that you have, um, collectively kind of like pulled or moved over time invisibly in your life. Can you just cover that for a second?
Brad (00:28:48):
Right, right. I was just talking about my hex bar that’s in my side yard and it’s happened to be on the way to the garbage can. So if I’m, you know, taking out the kitchen garbage or whatever reason, I’m popping out to the side yard, uh, I’ll do as little as one set of deadlifts. So if I have 200 pounds on there and I do eight reps, um, that’s 1,600 pounds that I lifted. Well, throwing the garbage out and if you take that routine and then some days I’ll go there and maybe I’ll do two or three sets, right? And I’ll actually have a little fun and spend six minutes at my micro workout instead of one minute. But anywhere in that range, I think people can get the idea. The other one I referenced is if you’re in that cramped office space, you drop for 20 deep squats. Right in, right in place in your cube. No excuses. Right? And if you do that even once or twice a day for, you know, 50 weeks a year at work, um, you’re doing, you know, thousands of squats or lifting, you know, hundreds of thousands of pounds of weight and that launches all your workouts from a higher platform. Cause yeah, you’re going maybe go to the gym and do something for real or you have athletic goals and you’re going to go out and train. But these are things that I think are so important to inject into daily life because we’re too still.
Abel (00:30:05):
And I would just say that that’s it. It’s really about getting these tiny little workouts in. And if you’re doing that, that’s enough. It really is like depending on your goals, right. But one other thing that the mini little micro workouts we’ll do is people don’t realize, and I don’t realize, I think as humans, we’re not really prepared to realize how this works is if you go in for that 50 or an hour of just crushing CrossFit workout once a week, twice a week, three times a week or whatever, it may feel great and it may even feel great riding that endorphin rush afterwards. But you’re also training yourself to think of workouts like that. And the next time you want to do a workout, you’ll be like, you know, I was, I felt good, but I was kind of sore. And then I had to take a couple days off, didn’t feel so good, and then I felt like I didn’t achieve as much in the rest of my life.
Abel (00:30:53):
So you know what, I’m just going to skip it today. So then you like skip a day of working out and then once you’ve skipped a couple of days, it’s easier to keep skipping days and then all of a sudden the perfect becomes the enemy of the good. Right? So these tiny little workouts, I think another, another just physiological thing that happens is very emotional for me. And mental. I get this like flush after about three, five minutes depending on what kind of exercise it is. Or even like for me, 60 pound kettlebell, like 30 by by swing, 25 or 30 something happens. Don’t you think it’s like you feel, it’s like right before you’re about to sweat. Something happens. And I like that and it makes me perform better. It makes me think better. It makes me feel better. I can let go of stuff more easily. And that’s kind of like a threshold that I think is worth hitting multiple times a day if you can.
Brad (00:31:43):
Yeah. I think you’re possibly re oxygenating the brain and boosting, boosting fat metabolism because there’s research that shows that being still for as little as 20 minutes will, uh, will increase, uh, insulin resistance and decrease glucose sensitivity and reduced cognitive function. We’re just not meant to sit there and problem solve for more than 20 minutes straight. That’s why the dealers in Vegas work. Um, I think they work in a 40, 20 pattern. So it’s like for every hour of work, they’re sitting around for 20 minutes because it’s so intense while they’re, while they’re on that 40 minutes. Then same with the air traffic controllers. So if we can be, I mean they figured out that those people really need to be sharp when they’re controlling air traffic, whereas we have our own devices in the office. I like that threshold you mentioned too, there’s a bike called Carol, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen that.
Brad (00:32:34):
C A R O L the stationary bike and they promote an eight minute workout really cool. And the guy on their website is doing the workout in a suit and tie because eight minutes is about the point where you’re, if you keep going, you’re gonna start sweating, but it’s too short to really sweat. So you can do this high intensity workout with a couple of sprints and go about your day. And I like that trend in fitness. It seems like a really positive direction rather than, that thing that you mentioned that I’m so familiar with is when you’re in the moment pushing yourself hard, you get that buzz, you get that incredible payoff in your, your ego is, is nurtured and you get to write something in your, in your book. But you know, check in on me 36 to 48 hours after doing a crazy workout. I don’t feel so good. And that’s where I have to, you know, you know, rehash what, what’s going on here? What’s the best approach?
Abel (00:33:24):
Yeah. Well this has happened to me too a few times where it’s like, I gotta be honest is that run that I’m doing. Cause I like going out and running hard sometimes, but sometimes I get sick afterwards. I remember after I ran my first marathon, I ran from uh, down in Florida. It was awesome from like Ponte Vedra down to St Augustine along along the beach pretty much. And it was amazing. But aye, I didn’t, that was before I had really cleaned up what I was eating. So I think it was the amount of sugar that I had and probably some of the gels too, that crushed and the marathon, right, that crushed my immune system. I was sick for like three, four or five days. And even after that I could tell that my immune system was compromised. And so, uh, yesterday I kind of had the sniffles.
Abel (00:34:11):
I wasn’t, I wasn’t feeling great honestly when I woke up. And like with all the crap that’s going around right now, that’s, that’s a little scary, especially when I’m like seven things to record today. I really, that was going to be, it’s sunny outside. It’s like that was going to be my running day and so I had to suck it up and be like, I’m not going to go eight miles today. I’m going to grab my dog and we’re going to run for 10 minutes and we ran for 10, maybe 15 came back and I didn’t, I stayed in that fat burning zone. Right. Like you guys talk about where, um, where you’re not pulling from glycogen, you’re not hurting yourself and you’re not ramping up all those stress hormones, which can be good in small doses at the right time, but not at the wrong time. Yesterday would have been the wrong time and I can almost guarantee you if I had gone for that long run yesterday, then I would be hurting today. I might have a little bit of sniffle. I woke up this morning, I was feeling pretty good, a lot better than yesterday. And that’s I think just something where we have to be humble and, and prioritize recovery over the grind sometimes.
Brad (00:35:12):
Yeah. What’s your purpose for being out there? You’re supposed to be pursuing health and fitness and when you get the sniffles or a tiny bit of a scratchy throat, I had to learn the hard way. You shut it down and um, just be patient and wait and then you use your healthy fit immune system to, you know, fight things back twice as skilled as the person who’s, who’s, you know, nodding, not in great shape, not eating good stuff. But I think the athlete either have the best immune system around or the worst if they insist on continuing their workouts.
Abel (00:35:43):
Yeah. But that’s another reason why those, those little micro workouts are so great because after a while, that hex bar, that kettlebell starts looking at you. If you put it in the right place, it’s looking at you. And I love it. One thing about that though, I do that with instruments, musical instruments. Nice. So I leave like a guitar out or I’m looking at a banjo right now, whatever. But I do that with kettlebells and free weights as well. And just a little bands are the pull up bar and uh, you have to use it. You have to at first build that little connection with that thing because you won’t like kettlebells or pull up bars. At first. You need to build that friendship. You need to make friends. But once you do and you, you kind of build the habit to, it’ll look at you and you’ll be like, all right, let’s go, let’s play.
Abel (00:36:30):
And, um, I will say that takes a little bit of education at the beginning. Like you need to get used to it. Well, once you are, there’s no turning back. You realize the joy of that. It’s so much better than going, going into the gym. I don’t go to the gym. Um, the only time I really did was when I learned Krav Maga in Austin for about a year and loved it. That was great. But I don’t do that anymore. I don’t like being hurt for the same reason I was telling you about the CrossFit thing where it’s like, that was awesome, but I’m not feeling that right now. You know, I don’t want to be hurt. I want to have some fun.
Brad (00:36:57):
Well, it’s difficult to back off when you’re in that frenzied environment that’s created for the purpose of jacking people up. And um, I think it, you have to have some self motivation there to do the, do your stuff at home. And one of my motivators is I have this gym membership able, it’s a few miles down the road and I could get my car and drive there. And park and I love it there, but sometimes I feel too lazy or too busy. I don’t want to go. So the idea that I should go to the gym motivates me to do all my workouts at home with all my little contraptions that I have everywhere. So I’m happy to pay the monthly fee, no problem. Because it’s like, it represents the workouts that I do at home. And I think those little tricks that we play, I mean we’re, we’re goofing around here with your banjo, talking to you. But I think that’s a really profound statement. I’ve never quite heard it that way. That you, you, you place these things surround yourself with and maybe you have some crystals, a banjo, a kettlebell. The whole scene there is trying to, trying to create an energy around you.
Abel (00:37:54):
Well, it is because by default our environments are very boring. The inside environments that we have would be unrecognizable. You know, we would look like soft to dogs, to our spoiled dogs and uh, and I think that we can add some fun to it or at least add some adventure to it by putting those things like physical fitness and practicing music, drawing, sketching, journaling. I see these things as all highly physical and critical. I think to my happiness at least. I think I would argue to all people’s happiness cause like most of us agree that kids should learn art in school. They should learn physical, they should learn these, these things. Why would you ever stop though? You know, you should have recess, you should do art, you should go to gym. A gym class right in school. But then you, you grow up and you get out of that and then you just sit in sofas and you sit in desk chairs or you stand at your standing desk and in front of screens for the rest of your life and that’s it. And you never practice any yard again. You never learn to play the banjo, you never learned to sing or do these other things. I think if anyone can hop on a bike and go for 50 or a hundred miles or whatever, you can learn these other things and maybe it’ll even pay off a little bit more. But we’re all, especially if we’re like type A and really good at something, we are so afraid of being beginners. We hate being novices at anything. Right? I wouldn’t want to go golfing with you. I would be so embarrassed.
Brad (00:39:21):
That’s an interesting call out. Maybe that’s what’s behind this sort of a narrow existence. And we’re also in the age of specialization with the economy and we can, uh, earn a better and better living as we get better and better as a, at a very narrow skill, whether it’s plumbing or doing the computer programming. Uh, and I want to ask you about that, that musical influence, cause I don’t know if listeners know how, how deep you were into that music scene. You said you were playing 300 gigs a year, which is pretty deep, but the fact that you, uh, continue to pursue that mostly as a hobby now, but how does that weave into your ability to be the best you can be in your, in your career and your area of expertise in healthy living?
Abel (00:40:02):
I love that question. It’s because I see it all as the same and I see these skills as making the other ones better. So for example, when I get tendonitis from playing too much guitar shredding too fast, I can borrow what I’ve learned about the it band and my Achilles and rehab my, my fingers and my arms and my wrists. Mmm. And when I play music, when I’m singing, I’m doing a very similar thing as I’m doing right now. I’m, I’m kind of singing right with my inflection. I’m not going, I’m not using the same range that I might, or like the prolonged tones that I might, when I’m like singing in an album or in a course with somebody. But I see this as singing, I see music as communication and all these skills start to nurture each other after a while. I mean like you’re a Guinness world record holder. Don’t you think that makes you better at podcasting?
Brad (00:40:56):
Yeah. I think you can take these attributes that you find in a challenging environment like sports or playing music. I mean, I’m sure you’ve had to work through, uh, songs that weren’t coming out how you wanted or learning a new instrument and then you sort of get good at, uh, you know, taking on these challenges and you can just plug that into whatever you’re doing for sure.
Abel (00:41:18):
Yeah. Yeah. And I think another piece of that, and Elle love this, Elle Russ, is confidence. You build confidence. Bye. Bye. Kind of going through and developing these different skills. Mmm. I love hanging out with kids. My wife has a large family with tons of kids and if they, if they want to play with some sort of artistic thing or do some really goofy kid like thing, I like being the uncle that oftentimes they come to, um, to play. And that’s, that’s just such a necessary part of who we are. And I think it keeps us sharp too. Cause if you’re always the one who’s thinking that you’re smarter than kids or over kids or, or telling them what to do, then you miss out on such this, such a great opportunity to learn from them. Right. Yeah.
Brad (00:42:07):
Well said. I love that every, everyone can access their play really easily around kids. And I wonder also if when you’re in that state of, when you’re playing music, uh, do you notice like bursts of creativity come that you can go plug into the Wild Diet and whatever the content you’re creating?
Abel (00:42:27):
Yeah. So, uh, after the TV show we went up in the mountains. We didn’t have internet for almost a year, but I got really into virtual reality and 360 video creating it ourselves. We didn’t have any internet.
Brad (00:42:40):
Oh yeah. I heard you talk about this and I, I really, you got to explain this cause it sounds so cool and I didn’t quite understand it,
Abel (00:42:46):
but it’s wacky stuff. It really is. But the technology that we have to create virtual reality, I was doing this like three or four years ago now even he’s exceptional, but the cameras are so far ahead of the viewing devices. That’s the biggest problem. But even now, some of the stuff that we filmed, uh, in VR, so to explain it quickly, it’s, it’s if you’re holding a phone, imagine holding your phone in front of you and as you turn your phone, like Google maps or, or any of those like Pokemon go or whatever it, the image that it’s showing you corresponds with where you’re looking in 3D space. So you can look all the way around whether in a headset, it’s, it’s very cool because you’re looking around the globe as if it’s real life. Um, but you can also do, do 360 videos and VR with phones. But anyway, um, we were recording a ton of VR nature photography, getting up close with, with some of the animals of Colorado, kind of like putting the camera in certain places. So that was part of it. But playing music was another big part.
Abel (00:43:50):
And I decided to, Mmm. Like I said, cause we didn’t have Netflix, we didn’t have Amazon Prime, we weren’t streaming any content. So all the content we had was like literally what I was making for my wife to make her laugh. So I would put on a show like most nights and just play a bunch of different instruments and make up songs and did over 300 of them I think, um, after a few months. And a lot of them are terrible, totally terrible and it was so much fun. But what happened after that is, uh, it, it kind of opens by being willing to look extremely silly and add at things you’re good at. It kind of like opens this can of worms where I suddenly wrote a book of poetry in like the span of a few months after I did that musical exercise where it just kind of like float out.
Abel (00:44:43):
I woke up in the morning and I’m just like, I feel like making some ryhmes cause I’m mad about what’s happening in the world and I’m also, I’m not, I know that I’m not allowed to say certain words on my podcast or also be shadow banned and censored and I don’t like that. So what’s that?
Brad (00:44:58):
Is that true?
Abel (00:44:59):
Oh that’s true. So I wrote a whole book about some of this stuff and I, I really felt that it was a cathartic and necessary experience that a lot of people should be going through that we used to do all the time. Like these cowboy poets and like a lot of people from like my grandparents, uh, age, we just lost our grandmother in her nineties but she lived a long and wonderful life and they weren’t afraid to make up silly rhymes for each other. They were all at weddings, at family functions. They were writing silly rhymes and, and trying to make sense of the world and calling out hypocrisy and injustice. And we can use. If you learn how to practice art a little bit and then have fun with it, then you can use it to say something, and so that’s what I’ve done with my new book that looks very silly. It’s called Designer Babies Still Get Scabies, but I kind of worked in some pretty serious stuff in there and I’m really psyched because it seems like even though it could and will kick the hornet’s nest to some degree, most of the people who have read it so far and listen to it appreciate the honesty and calling out of some of the stuff that’s going on right now.
Brad (00:46:07):
Yeah. What kind of stuff really bugs you now? You can, you can Tran transition from health and fitness to whatever else is on your mind, but I know you’ve had a long crusade against some of the BS that’s, that’s right in our world here.
Abel (00:46:21):
Yeah. I think one of the things that’s increasingly frustrating is seeing how many of the big names and influences come from the top down with top down narratives and agendas without the people on the other side, the viewer base. Knowing that. So for me, being on that reality TV show, prime time on ABC and all this stuff, you get to see how the world works kind of from behind the scenes and backstage is ugly. So I sometimes I feel like I can see a little bit too much, and I’m sure you’ve been in the health industry and Mark has as well. It’s like some of these Keto products that come out that are packed with sugar and Franken fats, some of these things that you know, I’m sure are going to be carnivores products and some of the, I’m sure people have tried to put primal on things that aren’t primal at all.
Abel (00:47:11):
And paleo, it always happens. So we gotta be careful and we’ve got to take our power back. And I think that comes really from simplifying ideas and starting to rally around them. So, uh, yeah, that’s just a long winded way of saying that I think we need to take our power back and we need to be clear about what deserve. Because I started out my podcast because I was mad that Jillian Michael said the number one podcast, I was really mad that the biggest loser, the no pain, no gain, was telling everyone this is how it, it happens. This is how it works. And if you’re fat, that’s because you’re not good enough. And me being fat and being on the other side of that, because I followed that type of advice that I found in the running magazines that I found on TV that I found from all these big names and faces, they were lying to me.
Abel (00:48:01):
And I don’t like that. I don’t like seeing people out there just lying and getting away with it. And right now I feel like there’s very little accountability.
Brad (00:48:10):
Hmm. How do we, how do we establish more accountability?
Abel (00:48:14):
It’s up to us, I think because to some degree it’s, it’s easy for these, these different health movements, mini movements, the ancestral health movement to get stomped out and snuffed out by powerful interests, mostly follow the money and they can, they can squash anyone or they can blow anyone up to make them look really big. So I think there’s a, there’s a deep difference between an Insta trainer, right? These people who just pop up and all of a sudden they have millions of Instagram followers or whatever. That doesn’t mean that they know anything about anything except for social media and how to buy followers or whatever.
Abel (00:48:54):
Whereas you and Mark, for example, I had a great time yesterday and this morning just watching some of your content and the many interviews you’ve done over the years. You’ve put in the work you’ve put in the time and maybe, maybe all we can really do. One thing that I try to do is when I find someone good like you guys, I try to tell other people about it. I try to say, here’s one of the good ones. Let’s rally together. And when we do meet up in person, maybe who knows? The best things that have happened in my career have been collaborations. Right? And one of the richest experiences as well has been watching some people who, you know, I may have seen when I first kinda got into this movement around 10 years ago, who then themselves a few years later, not only lost the weight, took their own power back, but then started their own entrepreneurial adventures.
Abel (00:49:45):
And, um, the ventures I said adventures, but it’s kinda the same thing. Um, and now they’re the ones who, you know, we’re drinking their broth and we’re eating their little cookie bars and we’re trying their recipes and going to their functional offices. And I just loved that. I think that’s exactly how we’re going to win because it’s an uphill battle. It really is. But we’re not going to stop. We’re not. We’ve, and we’ve got each other.
Brad (00:50:12):
Yeah. Like pointing out that people who walk their talk, that’s a really nice way to establish credibility. And especially in the athletic world, if I’m considering, uh, having someone help me it’s really nice to, uh, see someone who’s been there and performed at a world class level. Not necessarily, I mean, you can have a coach that coaches at a world class level and coaches a bunch of top athletes and that’s their credibility. Uh, but I think we also are compelled to think more critically rather than just, you know, kind of succumb to the marketing forces and that’s on the consumer. And so, you know, I found I was coaching endurance athletes for a long time and a lot of times I’d refuse to give them what they wanted. What they wanted was a template that they could just plug in and not think about and say, tell me what to do every day and I’ll do it. And I’d try to reason with them and cultivate an intuitive approach and have all this flowery talk. Because that was, that was what I wanted to own as my, as my coaching approach.
Brad (00:51:18):
And it didn’t work out in, in a lot of cases. And then they’d go down the street and buy a template program or buy a magazine that they fed that crap every single month. And so, boy, I think it’s, you know, you can’t waste your breath and until someone’s ready to receive and ready to try something new. And I’ve made that mistake. I imagine you have to, where you’re trying to convince someone, maybe it’s someone in your family or friends circle. Usually, you know, what’s this Wild Diet? Then you spend seven to eight minutes given your heart and soul, but it was a miss.
Abel (00:51:52):
Yeah. Yeah. That’s why to some degree it’s also on, I hate the word consumer, but I like conscious consumer, which I’ve heard recently I think thrive market actually. Um, I was just reading one of their letters and they said conscious consumer. I’m like, Oh, that kind of tunes it up a little bit. It puts the power back on the person who’s consuming. Um, and if you are consuming, make sure that what you’re consuming is good enough to consume, make sure that it’s serving you. Um, because it’s, man, it’s tricky out there but, but there were a lot of people doing great work too. So once again, it’s one of those double-edged sorts where the people who get the loudest megaphone are the ones who are usually controlled from the top down. But because of the nature of, of the time that we live in, we’re now able to collaborate and learn from each other all around the world. And we do have access to that if we’re willing to find it and, and you know, stick with it and then put it into action, right? Be that conscious part, the conscious part of the consumer. You need to do it right. Like it’s great to, Oh, I was going to hold your book up, but it’s kind of over there. Um, it’s great to read the books, but doing it is the most important part. It doesn’t matter if like how many books you buy or how many programs or how many trainers. It’s all about putting it into action. And the more that you do that, you realize that the power is on you. It’s about your consciousness. And that’s how we’re going to actually turn the people who are consumers into the leaders.
Brad (00:53:21):
So where do people get stuck in your experience from gaining the knowledge and there’s a ton of knowledge out there, most of it’s free. You can go on YouTube for the next eight hours and learn everything you need to know, listen to a bunch of podcasts, but where’s that? Where’s that block where they, they have an executed six months down the line?
Abel (00:53:42):
I’m going to go to music here because I like studying advanced stuff. That’s harder than what I can currently do no matter where I am. But you’re never going to get better if you just keep watching a bunch of YouTube videos about like advanced bebop scales and you’re not going to get better at swimming. And if you’re just doing pushups next to the pool, so you need to get out there. I think you need to start small and not be. I think another big part of it is like when you have too much information and the answers are there, you don’t quite believe them because you don’t want to believe that it’s that easy. It’s like, yeah, the answer’s right there, but that’s like whatever. It’s like, Oh, I gotta eat my vegetables. You have right? And you move on to the next thing. But no, you do.
Abel (00:54:26):
I think you should probably, unless you’re doing a strict elimination diet for some sort of condition, you should eat your vegetables most of the time. And it doesn’t have to be more complicated than that, right? You should eat clean meats as much as you possibly can. You know, you should make your meats as clean as possible and you don’t have to eat a ton of them, but you don’t have to eat a tiny amount either. You can navigate, it’s always going to be changing. And anyone who is trying to take your power away by telling you this is how it is, is wrong inherently. I think, um, and we’re all only going to get out of this by learning ourselves. It’s all about education. So like if, if I’m trying to progress and play better, then I have to do the, the easy, simple stuff that most people like musicians, guitarists don’t like looking at sheet music and playing with a metronome. That is one of the things that they hate the most. You know what I mean? But if you’re running, you can use the metronome to really work on your pace. And so that’s another example of how like the music and the health starts to enrich each other and help each other. And I think that you can, you can get there too if you see them as more similar than different.
Brad (00:55:37):
So with, with the music analogy, you’re, let’s say, trying some new stuff that you’re not good at and making a fool of yourself sounding terrible, what have you, and then that’s your, that’s your path to progress and to breaking through eventually?
Abel (00:55:53):
Yeah, exactly. You need to go slow and kind of suck it up at the beginning and do the hard, like in order to play fast, you need to play slow first. And most people aren’t willing to play slow, if that makes sense.
Brad (00:56:05):
Right, I’m seeing the parallel man. Cause you know, you’re talked about those all or nothing workouts where, you know, I’ve had people say that, you know, the gym parking lots under construction so they haven’t been there in a while. They haven’t worked out. How about walk further into the gym or do something at home. You know. But um, that, that’s, that’s interesting. So you know, I think the most difficult part is probably to ditch those toxic modern foods that are addictive and you know, that’s the hard work out of the gate. But the payoff might come not that far along. Maybe in a week or two you’re going to start feeling fantastic. But yeah, doing that hard work out the gate just on just on faith or on, uh, you know, commitment and then, you know, flow it into habit over time.
Abel (00:56:49):
Yeah. And I think the people who stick with it are the ones who were willing to put in the work forever. And sometimes putting in the work means like pumping the brakes. Like I was saying with the sniffles in the run, sometimes that’s what putting, that’s putting in the work on your spirit and your ego I think is what that is. Right? Cause as much as we hate to admit it, anyone can mindlessly go out and run every single day. A robot could do that. And if we want to win in the future, we need to be better than robots. Clearly.
Brad (00:57:20):
Yeah. Same with food. I think we’re so conditioned to luxury indulgence, decadence. We equate that with the, they call it the good life when you’re, you know, giving these feasts and I mean, I actually do like to go to some of those buffets in Vegas, especially Caesar’s Palace is probably the number one buffet in the world. It’s like 80 bucks or something. And you definitely get your money’s worth. So once in awhile, thumbs up. But I think when we’re conditioned to constantly be satisfied and never be hungry and never have it, you know, always have the more and more, more, um, that can really get in the way of healthy living. And so then you have to kind of throw these ballot points in where it’s like, well, you know, Bailey, maybe getting hungry once in a while, uh, is a fantastic health benefit and it’s going to make me appreciate my meals even more than constantly having the, the snack jar to go to.
Abel (00:58:12):
That’s such a great example I was speaking about recently where I feel like including myself, many people, the reason that fasting is so freaky at the beginning is because you feel these feelings that you are not used to feeling. You have not felt and experienced hunger come and go the way that it naturally does when you just let it do that. You know? And, and when you let let it do that for maybe even a few days, you go through these cycles and you get these feelings that you’ve never experienced before in your life and you’ve never, I had coffee or beer, it’s gross. First time I had wine, I spit it out. It’s nasty. You know, you kind of have to, it’s education. Your body has to learn the connection between the right things and the wrong things.
Brad (00:58:53):
So you started that podcast cause you were, you were pissed at Jillian for yelling at people and, and shaming them into temporary weight loss. A good reason to start a podcast. Uh, and that thing, man, you’ve been, you’ve been grinded in cranking out the top content for so many years. I want to know like, you know, what are some of the, the high points for you or the, the greatest benefits of being that host or maybe some of your favorite guests or insights that change your life from, from the journey of putting out these shows?
Abel (00:59:23):
There is such….I love doing this for a longer, as time goes on, you see many faces come and go. But the ones that stay, it just feels more and more like family. I would say that that’s okay. Very, very cool. And some people who have gotten in touch with me, um, have had their own really amazing things happen. You know, building companies from nothing that, that are doing it the right way, feeding people real food all around the country in the world. I’ve seen many of them go in the millions and tens of millions, hundreds of millions and affecting people nationwide and worldwide. And that’s been really cool. On the other side, I’ve seen very amazing and well-meaning movements kind of get stomped to and unfairly dismissed or completely slandered in, in a way that’s, that’s unfair. And so it’s definitely an up and down journey. But one thing I will say is that I have not been doing this exactly the same way, grinding every day the whole time. Um, one thing that’s critical is that I’ve taken breaks. We took a break from the internet for a year twice in this, in the time that I’ve done my podcast. And, uh, a few times, you know, we just put on past episodes of the show
Abel (01:00:43):
and, and keep it going. And sometimes we don’t. And it’s been interesting watching all of that and learning this landscape. It’s a hairy world out there. But if, if we can learn anything, I think the way we’ll all get through it is by bringing the human piece back to these connections. Like I was saying, seeing these people year after year, we’ve lost, you know, a lot of people have died in the movement too, and that’s rough to see, but it also shows you, um, how worth it. This is, you know, cause some people who came to this movement unfortunately at the end of their lives, at the end of their life with a cancer diagnosis or with something else really serious. And I think so many people, especially the ones who aren’t necessarily athletes, um, that’s what it takes to get them into health. And so anyone that, that we can get in here, let’s, let’s be supportive of each other. Let’s not shame. Let’s not focus on, you know, I just had a carnivore on my podcast that’ll be out soon. Now I’m going to have a vegan on my podcast that’ll be out soon. I think there’s a lot that we can agree about. And even if we only agree that we’re trying to get better, that’s enough. You know what I mean? It doesn’t matter if we’re eating veggies or animals or anything in between. It’s like that’s enough. If we want to get better and we’re willing to put in the work, let’s do it.
Brad (01:01:56):
Oh man, I love that as a, as a closing statement. It’s okay. Just try to get better. Um, I had, um, a bestselling author, Ashley Merryman on my show. She’s an expert in, uh, you know, peak performance. Uh, the Top Dog was her book about the science of winning and losing and competition. And she said that, um, the best way to is also has parenting insights. The best way to motivate, motivate someone is to emphasize the effort rather than the end result. And I think that applies for anybody. Uh, but not just the effort, but the effort toward improvement. So not making a, an effort every single day, like you’re going and running like you described or going to the gym and just sweating, but you’re not getting better cause you’re getting sick and you’re getting injured. But effort toward improvement is what she argues is the way to access your highest potential.
Abel (01:02:46):
Do the things that you’re bad at. That’s some advice. I heard that I was like, Ooh, Oh, I know I’m not doing that. I should be better about that. It’s great advice. It’s not my, my advice, it’s just advice that’s out there.
Brad (01:02:59):
Abel James rocking it as usual. How do we, uh, follow you besides subscribing to the fat burning man show with the smoothest voice in the business, you’re always, you’re always on point there and all the musical interludes is a great highlight of the show. Uh, what else can we do to connect with you?
Speaker 4 (01:03:16):
Yeah. So if you want all the fat burning man stuff, go and check out Fat Burning Man.com and you can find full transcripts of over 300 shows. Um, having Brad on right after this. I’m talking to you once again. This is going to be awesome. Um, and I have a new book out called Designer Babies. Still Get Scabies. That’s that designer babies book.com. And if you go there and you get the paperback book, then I’ll give you the audio book for free. So Designer Babies book.com and you, you can find all of the silliness there. I’m also out there, I really like hearing, I feel like some people out there are shy and wouldn’t necessarily like write to people who are in podcasting. But one thing I’ve, I’ve really loved recently is just reading some of the notes that have come in so long time listeners, especially those of you out there, just like write a note, let me know how you’re doing. I read as many as I can, pretty much every single one. And uh, and I love hearing from you.
Brad (01:04:13):
Do you mind if people move to Crestone or do you want to keep it the exact population now? Is it okay if some of the, some of the people, I mean, you’ve found the, the idyllic spot. You, you mentioned it out loud, uh, that was taking a risk, but I mean, it could probably use a few more cool people coming in, right?
Abel (01:04:29):
Absolutely. I mean, if people can survive the elements here, then they’ve put in the work and they deserve it. But yeah, absolutely. It’s, it’s a wonderful place. But also, I think it’s important to say that you have never arrived. You were never there. And who knows how long we’ll even be here. There’s a big secret, potentially a TV project that I may or may not be working on in the upcoming future. So who knows how long we’ll be here.
Brad (01:04:56):
Abel James from beautiful Crestone, Colorado. Thank you so much.
Abel (01:05:00):
Thanks Brad.
Brad (01:05:01):
Thank you for listening to the show. We would love your feedback at getoveryourselfpodcast@gmail.com and we would also love if you could leave a rating and a review on iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts. I know it’s a hassle. You have to go to desktop, iTunes, click on the tab that says ratings and reviews, and then click to rate the show anywhere from five to five stars. And it really helps spread the word so more people can find the show and get over themselves cause they need to. Thanks for doing it.
