Obstacles

Instead of labeling you with a one size fits all approach, we’d rather offer you our best resources, for FREE, so you can help yourself. In the end, this comes down to proper guidance and action. Action, of course, is up to you.

The first step is to love yourself. Next, choose your own adventure, based upon where you feel you can improve the most, and what feels approachable for you right now.

Remember, you’ll need to improve in all of these areas to optimize your health:

Food

Improving your body comes down to finding your own “superfoods”, or foods that agree with your body and make you feel great. I remember, not all that long ago, I used to eat until I felt uncomfortable. After a meal, I would need to sit and relax to digest, or I would force myself to get up and go for a walk. Today, it’s very different; I stop eating when I feel full of clean energy, focused, and ready to conquer my day. Food re-energizes me, as it should you. Satiety, or feeling full, doesn’t happen. It’s a different kind of full, meaning my body feels satisfied, or no longer hungry. The best way to identify your own superfoods is by eliminating all foods except one for a meal, and then seeing how your body reacts. Over a period of days to weeks, you’ll be able to develop a list of foods that made you feel great and full of energy for the next activity. Choose these foods, and completely eliminate the rest. Before you know it, you’ll be able to look at food — think about it, feel it, and possibly even taste it — instantly deciding if it’s good for you. I call this “intuition-based eating”.

Exercise

You might be confused about exercise, and that’s expected. In fact, that’s why we’ve met today. Exercise isn’t complicated, and no one prescription is right for everyone. Your body craves movement, responds to the ‘right’ type of movement by getting lean and alleviating pain, and using food you just ate as an energy source. On the other hand, your body will cramp up, feel depleted, and become sore in areas you never meant to work out if you’re exercising the wrong way. Find the balance by learning to pay closer attention, and get an education in your body along the way. Your body is unique and specific to you. By acting in the ‘now’, you’ll be prioritizing the most important type of exercise — at this given moment — for yourself. For example, if you’re a bit wound up from working at the computer all day, you might respond best to a few stretches that open up your chest, let you breathe through your diaphragm, and bring oxygen to your muscles. After a brisk walk, you might be in the perfect state to do some resistance-training, either with your bodyweight alone or with weights, depending upon your level of experience and fitness.

Spirituality

There’s no denying the fact that there is something on this Earth greater than us. Whether you want to describe this as God, the universe, or simply energy, there is a connection between plants, animals, water, the ground, and other humans. We can tell when someone is staring at us, if there is a creepy feeling walking down a dark alley, or when we’re not alone in an otherwise empty room. Rather than try to put words to this, I suggest you feel. Feeling is more powerful anyway, and words are often limited. Get in touch with your spiritual side by praying, meditating, or simply taking time for reflection and gratitude. Learn about yourself and your connection to others during this time, and ask yourself questions you normally don’t make time to ask. I suspect the answers will teach you more than we — or anyone else — ever will.

Emotions/Mindset

Take some time to reflect on how you’re responding to your day. You might notice you’re a lot more emotional than you thought. Perhaps you have ups and downs and thought it was simply the people around you, and had nothing to do with your own “logical” personality. I know this has been a big lesson for me, and I’m happy to admit my cycles of emotions are healthy, normal, and what allow me to love fully. If I didn’t feel the other side of emotions, I’d be missing out on the comparison when I feel great. Plus, I’m human, which makes this normal and ok. It’s ok for you to feel any way you feel; acknowledging, observing, and acting based upon how you feel is the key to self-improvement in this department.

Relationships

Your relationships are a reflection of your belief systems and the energy you put into them. Instead of blaming others or feeling unlucky, consider the fact that you are able to connect with someone just by thinking about them. If you spend time thinking about the people who are most important to you — and how and why you love them — your relationships will improve. When you catch yourself upset with someone, or disappointed, ask yourself if there’s another way to see this situation. Perhaps they were distracted? Maybe they felt unloved? Maybe they were having a bad day and needed your love to bring them out of it? Put time and effort into your relationships, nurture them, and they will bloom; much like a beautiful flower emerges from a seed underground.

Career/Interests

We spend a lot our lives working or pursuing our interests, but we tend to spend a small fraction of this time deciding ‘how’ we want to spend our time. Really think about it… if you’re going to spend 1/3rd of your life asleep, and another 1/3rd working or pursuing your hobbies, that’s 2/3rds of your life! How do you prefer to spend your time? Who will you spend your time around? How would you like to be treated? What’s easy for you and difficult for someone else? Will you solve money as a separate issue from career or do you prefer them to be linked? (often times, it’s A LOT easier to separate them, so you can spend less time trying to ‘earn more’, and more time fulfilled).

Climate/Location/Living Environment

How do you respond to the weather outside? If you’re anything like me, your ancestors aren’t from the same place you live right now. It’s distinctly possible you’re living in an abnormal environment for your natural genetic profile. By realizing how your environment affects you, outside and inside (heat, cold, air-conditioning, etc.), you are taking a huge step. Also, consider how this affects your loved ones, and if a change might be needed. Consider if you prefer to live in a clean and tidy place, or if disorganization actually brings you peace. Whatever you find out, form a strategy and follow through. You can do it, but it all starts with self reflection.

Reducing your physiological age, getting rid of body fat, improving memory, and shaping your body all come down to the same principle: epigenetic optimization. This means personalized health, based upon where you are, right now. Your genes are constantly turning on and off, and you have a say about how this goes.

Some sources believe 95% of your health is dictated by your genes and 5% by your environment, or your epigenetic factors; the best research I’ve seen says the opposite (95% is epigenetic factors and only 5% is your genes!).

My personal life experience agrees with the above: epigenetic factors win the day. I credit Matt Riemann for helping me learn this important life lesson.

Not too long ago, I almost died. At the time, I was known online and offline as a “health guru”, and most people considered me a spitting image of health. Now, it wasn’t always that way; I used to be fat, tired, and in joint pain. My suffering, and the suffering of my family, led me to become a health professional, get my doctorate in Physical Therapy, and feel passion to spread everything I was learning worldwide.

Fast forward, when I dialed “everything” in — i.e. learned how to lose weight, build muscle, and get out of joint pain as fast as possible — and wanted to celebrate these victories with the world by sharing as far and wide as I could, my digestive system exploded. My intestines popped, I turned septic, and I underwent multiple organ failure.

Since I was tapped into the health field, I had the best care in the United States, the best surgeon at the top hospital, and she ended up saving my life. To this day, I am a mystery to her, to the Mayo Clinic who analyzed my intestines, and to many others.

However, I learned what really happened. I learned my mind was unhealthy. I thought stress was a motivator, caffeine was a way to overcome obstacles and persevere, and extreme results quickly were the best way to attain a goal.

While this was effective for a time, I was misled with all the best of intentions. I needed to epigenetically optimize my body, interpret this world with a different “lens”, so to speak, and perceive love and joy over stress and perseverance. My relationships needed work, my body needed more rest, and I needed to prioritize myself more.

This leads me to you today. I’m here to give you real answers to your most pressing health questions. If you want to lose weight as fast as humanly possible, I may just know how to do that.. but is this the real answer? If you want to feel better and live a higher quality of life, well then, I’m all in.

Today: form a plan. Approach one epigenetic factor that stands out as an area you could use improvement, and begin there.

Tomorrow, execute your plan. Work on one factor at at time, and watch the Domino effect take place. Your health is no longer a complicated puzzle.

I’m proud of you for taking this step, and I love you for helping yourself in a way no one else can.

I’m so grateful for you,