Finding Strength in Faith and Fitness: Jonathan McLernon's Journey

John McLaren's journey is nothing short of extraordinary. Imagine surviving a near-fatal attempted murder and losing your life savings in a foreign business venture—such harrowing experiences could break anyone, but for John, they became the catalyst for a profound transformation. As a Christian husband, father, and passionate health coach, John shares his incredible story of faith and resilience, along with his innovative approach to brain-driven weight loss that integrates psychological psychology, neuroscience, fitness, and nutrition. This episode highlights how John's childhood dreams and his amazement at modern technology that connects people globally have shaped his inspiring outlook on life and health.

In a gripping recount, John opens up about a traumatic event in South Africa that forced him to reassess his relationship with God and question the true essence of Christianity. For over a decade, John battled mental health issues, including PTSD, binge eating, and food addiction, which brought him to a place of humility and vulnerability. Through God's mercy, he found the strength to rebuild his faith from the ground up. This renewed faith also transformed his perspective on health and fitness, driving him to help others achieve wellness. John's story is a testament to the transformative power of adversity and the importance of surrendering our gifts to God.

John's compassionate approach to coaching is rooted in his personal struggles with trauma, obesity, and financial ruin. We explore how dissociating from his body after trauma led John to reach 330 pounds and how self-loathing was gradually replaced by self-compassion through the guidance of another coach. Running a nutrition and supplement store revealed to him the critical need for emotional support and guidance, beyond just supplements. This realization inspired him to become a coach who values human connection and compassion above all. John emphasizes that true change is tough but possible with gentle guidance and understanding, likening the effort required for sustained health to the ongoing process of spiritual growth. His insights on adopting a lifelong, balanced approach to health and fitness are both practical and profound, offering listeners valuable advice on their own journeys to wellness.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:15

Hello everyone, thanks again for joining me on another episode of the Daughters of Earth show. Today we have a special guest with us. His name is John McLaren. He is a Christian husband and father and a passionate health coach who combines psychological psychology and neuroscience with fitness and nutrition to equip people with the tools to create lasting health. He survived attempted murder, nearly beaten to death in South Africa, as well as losing his life savings in a foreign business venture and rebuilt himself up from the ground up. He focuses on brain-driven weight loss. His goal is to marry the science of metabolism with the psychology of behavior change and compassion of human connection to create life-changing transformation in his clients. John, thank you for the show today.

Speaker 2: 1:27

Well, thank you very much for having me, and it's always interesting to hear my own bio read back. You know, I think about our lived experience and sometimes we kind of take it for granted, a little bit like, oh well, that kind of happened to me and whatever. But you know, yeah it, it's been quite a journey, so, uh, happy to happy to share a little bit of here with the audience if it'll help them out.

Speaker 1: 1:49

Yeah, absolutely so. Usually I like to ask a icebreaker question to open up the um. The first question is what did you want to be when you were a kid? And why?

Speaker 2: 2:06

Oh man, I had a hard time settling. So it depends on what age we're talking here, but at one point I wanted to be a firefighter, which is probably a fairly common one. I also wanted to be a chef when I was nine years old. So I learned how to cook. I don't want to say I taught myself, I did have some help from my parents but I learned how to cook at a young age because I thought I wanted to be a chef, I think in my younger years I also thought it'd be cool to be a ninja.

Speaker 2: 2:34

I had no idea about jobs and employment, so I thought, well, a ninja sounds pretty cool. And I was probably slightly influenced by Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, to be fair, I thought they were pretty cool. So, between firefighter, chef, ninja, in my teen years I thought maybe a professional mattress tester might have been a fun job where you get paid to sleep. But I never imagined that I would end up doing what I actually do, which is kind of funny. If you'd have told me as a kid that, hey, you're going to be a virtual health coach of all things I mean.

Speaker 2: 3:08

Well, of course I grew up without the Internet, right? So I couldn't even imagine this was a possibility of a career. I actually recall that we, you know, as kids, we talked about, about in the future this technology is going to be so advanced we're going to be able to do phone calls and see each other on screens. And you know, it's funny because here we are now living this thing that we thought was this amazing, mind-blowing technology when we were kids, and now we get to do this through broadcasting, which is really cool right?

Speaker 1: 3:35

yeah, I mean I've had conversations from people you know all across the world in different countries. You know, like you're saying, you know 20, 30 years ago you would think that would be an impossible. You know feat.

Speaker 2: 3:49

Yeah, yeah, it was like I grew up with here this will date me a little bit the monochrome Game Boy like dot matrix, matrix game boy where you played tetris and and the original like super mario brothers. So you know, like gray. Then there was no like 3d animation or it was like four buttons on my monochrome game boy and you had to pull a cartridge out and blow in the cartridge and then like put you know and try and get it to work again.

Speaker 1: 4:17

That was my life, can you tell us a little bit about your journey of faith and becoming a Christian, and what did that look like for?

Speaker 2: 4:27

you. So the South Africa experience is actually going to tie into this too, which is kind of interesting. So I was raised in a small, I'll say a small Christian fellowship and it's kind of interesting because at this point in time actually I would never imagine this either. But the Christian fellowship that I grew up and was raised a part of is making sort of national news right now because of a scandal related to church leadership, and I'll use the term CSA and SA. I can expand on it if people need. But anyway.

Speaker 2: 4:58

So I was raised some people call us the two by twos and there's other names like that. The name sort of is derived from our homeless itinerant ministry that goes that sort of lives in the homes of congregants and goes out in pairs. So I was raised in kind of this. I don't want to say oddball. Really the intent was to sort of follow like the original, what was the word Commission from Jesus when he sent out his disciples two and two? We could debate whether how a scripture letters or not, but I believe that was the intention behind those who kind of started this fellowship. So that's what I was raised in.

Speaker 2: 5:30

You know, I have to give credit to my parents. They said we'd like you to be a Christian, but we can't choose that for you. You have to choose this for yourself. If we could choose, we would choose this for you. You have to choose this for yourself. If we could choose, we would choose this for you, but you have to choose this for yourself. And so there was never really, in a sense, there wasn't this pressure that like I had to perform, so to speak, which I don't think everybody in this fellowship that I'm a part of could say the same necessarily. So my parents were quite forward thinking in that regard. They just recognized it had to be my choice. Quite forward thinking in that regard. They just recognized that it had to be my choice. So when I was about 14, I thought this is maybe what I want to do. I do want to commit my life to God. I don't think I fully understood, necessarily, what I was doing, but I thought I wanted to commit my life to God. I was baptized when I was 16. So full immersion baptism, indicating that I wanted to really commit my life to God.

Speaker 2: 6:17

And the funny thing is, it seems like not long after, that was when my life sort of I don't want to say it went off the rails. That probably makes it sound more dramatic. I just kind of got into the usual teen stuff of like partying, secretly drinking and things like that. It was nothing too wild I never got wildly drunk or anything like that, but just rebelling basically. So it's funny that I was baptized and committing my life to Christ. And then I got into the usual teen shenanigans trying to hide it from my parents and things like that. I'm not proud of what I did, but I can't undo what I did. So through my late teens and early 20s I was kind of trying to find myself and whatnot, and I probably didn't live a very Christian life, so to speak. And then the woman who then is now my wife kind of came into my life and probably tamed me a little bit from being a wild and reckless young person.

Speaker 2: 7:07

But what I would say is I felt like, looking back now I can say that I was probably what I will call a cerebral Christian. So in other words, I have a pretty good brain. I don't take the credit, I got it free of charge, but I got a pretty good brain. I don't take the credit, I got it free of charge, but I got a pretty good brain. I have quite a good memory. I can recite things quite well.

Speaker 2: 7:24

I did very well in school just because I could just remember random pieces of information and recite them well for tests. So this also meant that I could kind of be I would also say a performative Christian. So in our fellowship gatherings I could recite a verse and I could quote something and say something that sounded good, but in a sense my heart wasn't entirely in it and it wasn't necessarily deliberately or malicious, I wasn't necessarily trying to pretend. But I could say my nature is to sort of coast because of the gifts that I have in terms of I'm a pretty smart guy. Through school I was kind of able to coast on my intellect and so on. Through school I was kind of able to coast on my intellect and so on. That traveled over into my Christian journey where I was kind of just coasting on my natural gifts of like intellect and memory and things like that. And God's not impressed by that at all. Of course you know the wisest among us is a drop in the bucket compared to the infinite wisdom of God. Wisest among us is a drop in the bucket compared to the infinite wisdom of God.

Speaker 2: 8:27

So when I was in South Africa, I went through this experience where I was attacked and nearly beaten to death by four men and it was a terrifying, awful, horrible experience to go through. And I'll call it a hellish experience because I feel like I got a little bit of a taste of hell in that experience. I was alone, attacked at night, screaming for help. Nobody was coming to save me. I mean, I do believe that God intervened somehow and gave me the strength and helped me to survive that experience. I don't know how you fight a four men after your head's been smashed a few times with a rock and you're concussed and dazed and so on, but somehow I survived that experience.

Speaker 2: 9:00

But in that experience I had this thought I can't die tonight or my soul is bound for hell. And that was a. That was a like, if you want to talk, a terrifying thought. When you think I'm going to die and I'm going to end up in hell, there is like nothing more terrifying than that. And and uh, that was.

Speaker 2: 9:13

I mean, that was one of the blackest moments of my life and I feel like Belshazzar, you know, when there was that hand that wrote on the wall that said you've been weighed in the balances and found wanting and I was like God was saying to me like I see through you, you can fool other people, but I see your heart and you've been you're a shell, you've been pretending you know you're, you're, you're, you're pretending to be a Christian. You can say the right things, you can, you can sound like a Christian, but you haven't really truly given me your heart and it took like nearly dying and really staring death in the face and my own mortality, 29 years old and just being humbled beyond belief, to recognize that, like you're not what you think you are and you're not fooling me. But God, you know people would think like why would God put you through this? But God, in his mercy, does this. It took an experience like this to really reach me and make an impact in my life, and so that was. I don't want to say that like from that day forward, I was like a perfect Christian or something like that. That was the start of almost like a new walk with God, where I had to renew my faith and I almost had to start from the ground up again and go like how do I make this my own? What does it really mean to be a Christian? What does it mean to give my heart to God, to yield my life to God? What does that even look like? I had to just rethink so much of what I knew after having gone through that experience.

Speaker 2: 10:41

I went through probably I'm going to say a decade of mental health struggles because of what I went through in South Africa. So the trauma, the PTSD there was binge eating and food addiction and all kinds of maladaptive coping mechanisms. I didn't understand at the time. I was deeply ashamed of it because of my very awesome and Christian behavior. But God, oh God, in his mercy, he saw me through all of this and uh and I don't want to make it sound like I have I'm like the perfect Christian Now. I'm still a strong soul, you know. But boy have I learned a lot along the way and I've been humbled a lot along the way and I'm so. I would not take those experiences out of my past. I'm so grateful that God brought those experiences into my life. I wouldn't ask for them again. I'm not putting my hand up again saying I want to go through that, but I'm so glad that I went through that because of what it, how it changed me and yeah, so that's kind of been my journey to date.

Speaker 1: 11:35

And after those things, think we can get things to you for the better. I would imagine.

Speaker 2: 11:40

Correct For sure it absolutely did. It laid bare a lot of things about me that maybe I'd previously been able to cover and hide, that I couldn't anymore and it brought out some natural human and physical and emotional and mental struggles in me that really brought me to the end of myself and I don't want to say that I was cocky, because I don't think I was. It wasn't that I was cocky, but again I have these gifts that I was given. I was given a very good brain. Like I said, I can't take the credit. I got it free of charge, but I was given these gifts and I was coasting on them. God was just saying I'm not impressed, like I gave you these gifts but all you're doing is coasting and you're not really yielding them to me. So it took that to get me to revisit. Like what does it mean to be a Christian? What does it mean to serve God? What does it mean to commit my life to this walk with God where I can genuinely say I'm a Christian or a child of God?

Speaker 1: 12:37

Yeah, child of God. Yeah, now tell us a little bit, because I read in the bio that you help people with health and fitness and everything. Tell us a little bit about that, with your background and what made you get into that a little bit.

Speaker 2: 12:52

Yeah, absolutely so. For a long time I had an interest just a personal interest in being fit and healthy. I go to that South Africa experience where I gained over 120 pounds through the binge eating and food addiction and my struggles with that. I'd previously just been fairly fit. I had this idea about people that were out of shape and that weren't fit and that were overweight and so on, that they were just lazy and not trying hard enough. Boy did I get humbled. I got humbled immensely because you know, and people would look at me and go like, well, didn't you notice you were gaining all of this weight.

Speaker 2: 13:28

And it's kind of hard to explain if someone hasn't been through the kind of trauma where you dissociate from your body and like in my mind I was still picturing myself as the athlete I used to be and so on. Like I was, I was denying the reality of the facts that were staring at my face as basically a coping mechanism for my trauma. And so, once I had been obese, I hit 330 pounds at my peak and had to find my way back from that. It gave me a whole new understanding and insight into what people struggle with. I no longer was just sort of educated about this. I was now living the struggle and it actually took another coach coming into my life and really modeling for me compassion for me to start to learn self-compassion. So I really fell into this pattern of self-loathing, self-hatred because of who I'd become. I just was so ashamed that I'd become obese. I was so ashamed of I was no longer the athlete I used to be. I just thought that everybody must think I was the worst human being on the planet, the most terrible failure. How could I be as educated as I am? And I couldn't find my way out of this. And someone came into my life and modeled for me compassion and it was the thing that I needed. And you know, I look at this again and I go man the hand of God in this. You know you have this one experience over here, but then you have this next experience where it's like okay, now you need to learn what compassion is and how compassion can help you, because prior to that I wasn't showing even myself compassion. So learning that compassion was not about enabling, it's not about ignoring or denying or pretending these harmful behaviors don't exist, but it's the freedom to look at them without judgment so we can get the help that we need Now.

Speaker 2: 15:11

At the time I was also running a. I was part owner and running a nutrition and supplement store because I actually have a background in marketing, psychology and chemistry, which is kind of funny. It really goes well with the supplement industry. So I know we're sort of jumping around the story a little bit. But I ended up running a nutrition and supplement store and I jokingly called myself a bartender without alcohol. So people would come into the store and we just have these conversations at the counter and I thought, man, these people are looking for a supplement to solve a problem that a supplement can't solve. And one of these other gifts that I have is this ability to read people and I can't exactly quantify it, but I have kind of this ability to read people and sense what's going on. And so I realized that I'm actually a pretty good like.

Speaker 2: 15:57

I'm a pretty good coach and I used to coach athletics as well. I used to be a basketball and volleyball coach and so on. So I had a coaching experience, so that sort of. I started to see the shortcomings of like nutritional supplements. I'm still a fan of them. I think they certainly beneficial, but I realized people need more than this, and so I kind of casually started coaching people on the side in a very informal fashion. I was not charging very much for what I did, I just wanted to try to help people.

Speaker 2: 16:23

Now, when that business failed, that cost me my life savings and left me with a mountain of debt. There's another humbling experience to go through. I'm like boy. God has sure humbled me a lot in my life, but again it's wonderful and incredible to see the provision of God. When we lose absolutely everything and then God shows us he can still provide for us. It's absolutely incredible. It's a wonderful thing.

Speaker 2: 16:47

So then I started coaching, just virtually. I was like, well, I don't have the money to start another bricks and mortar business. I don't have any money. I just have a mountain of debt. What could I do? And so then I started. I just went to my clientele and said, hey, I'm now doing this virtually and started coaching people via email and zoom. And I didn't really know exactly what I was doing as an online virtual coach, but I've been kind of coaching people informally for a couple of years at this point, and so I just started learning from scratch how to build this online business.

Speaker 2: 17:15

And the amazing thing about coaching people is they teach me so much, like I think, maybe as a coach, that I teach and guide and help people and absolutely I do. I bring a type of expertise into this, but I learned so much from my clients. Every client teaches me something and it actually is incredible exchange. A coach is not a guru. A coach is like a facilitator and a guide. I like to say that a coach is like a guide by your side, not a sage on the stage, and so that kind of got me into that, and the more you get into it, the more I realized, okay, this isn't just about information, like, yes, I'm educated in terms of the science of nutrition and metabolism and exercise science and things like that I have this stuff in my background but it's about, like, the lived human experience and we need, more than anything else, we need compassion. We need just like gentle guidance. You don't need to coach hard ass or things like that.

Speaker 2: 18:10

And so my coaching style this began to evolve and change, and so now I say like the compassion of human connection is like the glue that makes this work when we enter into this sort of coaching relationship and people become vulnerable, because it's a scary thing to try and change. It's a scary thing, it's hard. This whole getting healthy business is hard and this is going to sell a lot of programs. I guarantee you, when I'm sitting here telling you it's hard, that's a great marketing, but I feel like I have to tell people the truth of this. I guarantee you, when I'm sitting here telling you it's hard, right, like that's a great marketing, like, um, but I feel like I have to tell people the truth of this, but not that they don't already know this. But we'd like to pretend it's not. We'd like to buy the 21 day fix or the 30 day fix or whatever you know, um, the eight week challenge or whatever.

Speaker 2: 18:50

The reality is, this is a lifelong struggle because we live in a world that's hostile to being healthy, uh, hostile to being physically healthy, hostile to being mentally healthy, hostile to being spiritually healthy. And one of the things I've actually been realizing in recent days I say realizing, kind of feeling pulled a little bit more is we can't ignore the spiritual aspect of our struggle with health, because the health, our spiritual health, is in some ways manifested and reflected in our physical health, the way that we take care of ourselves, the way that we honor the temple that God gave us. That's not meant to judge or shame anybody, but to say that I'm realizing. I've been finding myself saying, hey, aa got something right when they said we need to call upon a higher power to get help with this kind of stuff.

Speaker 2: 19:34

There is so much that is like arrayed against people when they're trying to get healthy from, like food manufacturers that are just deliberately and intentionally making food immensely addictive using psychological marketing. It just like undermines people's psyche. You know, in an attention negativity driven economy like that's just made to make you unhappy, a world that's more emotionally stressful than ever before. There's a biology that wants to store fat because we're wired to survive famines. Like we're literally wired to store fat so we can survive famines. Like there is so much that makes this incredibly challenging to do. We need all the help and support we can get and somebody can tap into a higher power and ask god to help them through their struggles. Absolutely, get all the help you can need, all the help you can get in this process.

Speaker 1: 20:21

Now you mentioned something back then and then it connected to the spiritual and Bible. Basically, you said that living a healthy lifestyle, trying to live a healthy lifestyle, trying to be fit, is a lifelong process. Yes, yeah, trying to be fit it's a lifelong process. Yes, yeah, well, isn't? That the same way where, if we're trying to be more like God every day and we're trying to get rid of the sins and the temptations that we deal with in our lives from the spiritual aspect, that's sanct, lifelong, that's a lifelong bucket.

Speaker 2: 21:03

Man it is. I tell you what. You hit the nail on the head, right. I just think, like, like every time I I might start to think like, okay, I went through this really hard experience and this really worked something into my life, oh, but then this next really hard experience came along and then worked something else Okay. But then this next really hard experience came along and then work something else okay. But then this next really hard experience came along and then fatherhood comes in.

Speaker 2: 21:22

I have, I have two young boys now at the time of recording of a three-year-old and an almost one-year-old. And, oh man, again, talk about being humbled. These boys, I mean I now, I I gotta tell you I never knew how much I could love a little human. But being a father to these boys, like you know, when my little fella topples over and he has a black eye you know cause he fell off of something and bonked his head Like I feel so much pain in my own body when my little child hurts himself. I'm now being humbled and learning what it means to be a father. And then I think about God, our father, and how he feels towards us, his children and his creation, and I think about the love and how I want my children to do well and I want to protect them and I want to help them and I want to guide them. But the funny thing is I recognize that I can't always intervene. I have to let my kids struggle sometimes in order to learn something. I'm just getting the tiniest little taste of what it's like for God to look down on us, his children and his creation. And I, you know, God doesn't bring us through hard experiences because he somehow enjoys watching us suffer or anything like that. No, no, no. God only brings us through what we need to to work something into our life.

Speaker 2: 22:33

But yeah, there's a lot of parallels between physical health and spiritual health and again, this is not intended to be a criticism or judgment towards anybody. I still have to work at my health and fitness. It is a lifelong pursuit. I can't stop caring for my health now, Otherwise I'll just deteriorate back into where I was at my worst. Every day we have to invest in our spiritual health reading our Bible, praying, connecting with God, connecting with the Holy Spirit. There's this tremendous parallel. And when we recognize that our body is a temple, it doesn't mean that we need to be bodybuilders and take pictures shirtless or try to glorify ourselves physically or things like that. I don't believe that's what God intended. But we take care of our bodies because we want to. With whatever gifts and abilities we have, we want to be able to offer them to God, to in his service, and the healthier we are, generally speaking, the more able we tend to be for God to use us.

Speaker 1: 23:35

Yeah, now there are so many and in your story you lost 100 pounds and we can get into that after the question but there are so many weight loss programs and weight loss gurus and all this out there. I mean, you may not have the perfect answer, but you know why is that? And you know, is there, you know, something out there that can actually help people? Or, like you said, it's? You know there's. No, there's nothing that you can use or that you can do in 50 days that will keep that weight off. You can do in 50 days that will keep that weight off. And or is it just, like you said, a lifelong process, that I do the 50 days? I'm going to keep it. I'll you know I'll lose 50 pounds and I'll keep it off. It will never come back again.

Speaker 2: 24:32

Right. You know, in a sense we think wouldn't that be nice, just lose the weight and say, sweet, I'm done, I'm good, I've done all the work and now I can just coast for the rest of my life? No, no, I will say I've watched as I go through like life and like my coaching career and working with people and spend. You know, I've worked with over a thousand clients in the last decade, which kind of blows my mind to even say that number, like I never would have thought that would be a thing and really it's a drop in the bucket. I mean, there's much bigger companies out there that work with way more people than I have. But nonetheless I've gained a lot of experience along the way and I'm starting to realize that. Here's what I would kind of say.

Speaker 2: 25:11

There are times in life where maybe we have capacity and it's appropriate to do like a sprint, have capacity and it's appropriate to do like a sprint, to make a dedicated push with an above average level of effort that we have to acknowledge we can't sustain.

Speaker 2: 25:26

Maybe we would make a really intense push for six weeks or eight weeks or 10 weeks or 12 weeks, something like that. But if we're going to do that we want to acknowledge that we can't sustain it. So we might use that for a dedicated push for a period of time to help us to get to a certain level, and then we fall back into what I'll call maintenance mode, cause if we're not at least trying to maintain where we're at, we're going to be sliding backwards because the ever, ever present drip of time and age is dripping in the background. I recognize it. Now I'm 42 and today, like I went and I worked out and I shot some hoops, I used to be uh, relatively speaking, I used to be a pretty good basketball player. You know, I wasn't going to make like I've no way is there anything that you haven't done in your life?

Speaker 2: 26:09

well, it turns out I have adhd and so I guess what that means is I do a whole bunch of different stuff. Uh, I won't list all 11, basically, professions or careers that I've had, but I've done a lot, um, until I finally settled on this coaching thing. What I was going to say was I went and shot some hoops today and I can still shoot, okay, man. Uh, I can definitely tell that I'm 42 and not 22. I don't, I don't move like a 22 year old anymore, but nonetheless it's still worth trying to pursue health. But okay, so what I was going to say sorry, this idea of sprints and kind of like this maintenance thing. It's like there's periods of times where we make that dedicated push. There's periods of time where we just kind of fall into just maintaining where we're presently at, and we actually I think people need to come to this place of acceptance where it's okay sometimes to just maintain where we're presently at, where we're lining ourselves up or keeping ourselves in the position for, when the conditions are right, that we can make a dedicated push, that we go and make a push again. But when we do a push or a sprint, let's acknowledge that it's going to be a short-term effort that we can't sustain forever, so that we're okay with when we have to stop doing that sprint.

Speaker 2: 27:20

One of the biggest things that really gets overlooked and I kind of have to update the stuff on the website to talk more about this, and I want to talk more about it is really nervous system health. We talk a lot about mental health, but I'm not here. We talk about stress and we talk about mental health and things, but I'm not hearing a lot of talk about nervous system health as a whole. But that really dictates what our capacity is, how healthy our nervous system is. A lot of my work is now starting to go towards helping people have healthier nervous systems, which then create the capacity for the types of stress that we introduce when we pursue health. Because, let's say, it's a little bit stressful to change our eating. It's a little bit stressful to change or increase our activity level. Whenever we bring change into our life, there is some stress, and so we want to make sure we have capacity for it.

Speaker 2: 28:12

I encourage adopting what I call like a dial mindset, so a lot of us have this switch mindset on or off. I'm 10 out of 10 or I'm zero out of 10, no in between. But if we could just if I look at like what the people that I see who are successful in the long term, it's this ability to adjust the dial based on their capacity. So sometimes we're at a place where we're eight, nine, sometimes even 10 out of 10, we can really go for it. But other times maybe we're like a one out of 10 and we want to be okay with those times when we're only a one out of 10 where we're staying in the smallest way possible, still engaged with this process of trying to be healthy, but it's a one out of 10.

Speaker 2: 28:49

You know, when my second son was born and anyone who was a parent, like when you go from one to two kids, like life gets trickier. And hey, there's parents out there that have like five kids and my hat's off to you. I don't know how you do it. Two seems tricky enough right now, but maybe just the more you add, the more you kind of just figure this business out. I don't know, but like life got flipped on its head and all of a sudden now I've got two humans to try to keep alive who are depending on us.

Speaker 2: 29:13

That was hard. I didn't have the capacity to be going to the gym and crushing workouts and things like that. I had to figure out, like, what can I do right now? Can I do 15 minutes, you know? Can I go for a little walk? Can I do some workouts with my resistance bands? Like, what can for a little walk? Can I do some workouts with my resistance bands? What can I do at home to make this work? So if I could just encourage people, it would be like be okay with sometimes being a one out of 10. Sometimes you're a five out of 10. Sometimes you can be eight or nine or 10. Know how to adjust the dial based on what your present capacity is and that helps you to stay engaged with the process in the long term. It's not always going to be 10 out of 10.

Speaker 1: 29:47

And you said that you had a lot of you know jobs and a lot of things that you did before what you're doing now, and I noticed on the website that you did a 40, if I remember correctly, a 40 country nomad experience. Can you tell us a?

Speaker 2: 30:05

little bit about that For sure. So I used to be in the Navy. I was a Marine engineer in the Canadian Navy and at a certain point I kind of half joke, but maybe half serious that the military breeds divorced alcoholics. And I thought well, I love my wife and I don't want to become a divorced alcoholic, so maybe I need to think about doing something different. So I came home one day and said why don't we just go teach English somewhere? And so we hopped on a plane. There's obviously a couple of months in between.

Speaker 2: 30:36

A couple months later, here we are hopping on a plane, packed everything into storage, hopped on a plane, flew down to Mexico, started teaching English down there, not really knowing what we're doing, thinking maybe we're going to go for like six months and just get this out of our system or whatever. And that turned into like this three year sort of globe trotting adventure where we traveled all over the world and we basically circumnavigated the globe, like we went from Mexico. We thought we're going to go down to South America, but we've got job offers in Italy, so then we took up some work in Italy and then we ended up going to Poland and then down to South Africa and then back over to Australia, where my wife is from, and then kind of did a giant global U-turn. Instead of flying across the Pacific back to Canada, we did this giant global U-turn where we went back through Turkey where I am presently I'm currently in Turkey, where my brother lives Back into Poland and Italy and the UK and over back to Canada. So we spent three years just traveling around the world. We've lived in Canada, australia, mexico, italy, poland, south Africa, turkey, I think that's it. So we've lived in about seven different countries. We've visited about 45 countries.

Speaker 2: 31:42

At this point we might actually be in close to 50 countries, which is kind of cool. Most people don't care, I don't think it impresses people all that much, but in my head I thought I wanted to get to 30 countries, like visit 30 countries before I turned 30. And then I thought, man, if I can get to 50 countries before I turn 50, I got a bit of time, I'm 42, um but I thought that would be kind of cool as well. There's something really what I love about traveling is you can't help but have your mind opened the world over in different ways. There's different flavors, if you will, but we're all trying to do the same thing Make a living, feed our family, somehow get through this life relatively Well. None of us get through it unscathed, but we're just trying to get through life, feed our family, take care. We're way more the same than we are different, and I think traveling is a wonderful way to open our mind to that possibility.

Speaker 1: 32:35

Can you give us a quick overview how you came to into losing your weight and and the process of that?

Speaker 2: 32:44

oh so I joke that I've lost like 600 pounds because I lost and gained weight a number of times. That ties into this idea that this is a lifelong process. Part of it was like doing unsustainable things. I could do it for so long, lose a certain amount of weight and then regain some of the weight back, and then lose a bit more weight and then gain some of it back. It was this up and down yo-yo rollercoaster kind of thing, because I was just doing things that weren't sustainable, and so it was. I'd love to be like oh yeah, all I did was this one thing and I lost a hundred pounds. I just started this diet and stuck with it, and ta-da, it turns out there are things out there that work. In fact, many, many diets will work for a period of time, but eventually they become unsustainable, and so the process was really this sort of up and down thing, trying to figure out what actually works for me, and so ultimately, what I sort of discovered in this process of trial and error was I do pretty good with some intermittent fasting. I don't think it's a miracle cure for anything, but it really simplifies life in some senses. So a bit of intermittent fasting. I do better with a lower carbohydrate approach. I don't think people have to go keto and zero carb. You can if you want to. Some people do really well with it. I didn't. Generally speaking, a bit of intermittent fasting with a lower carbohydrate approach and staying active eventually leads to getting healthy, but sometimes it's just a case of I think again this doesn't sound very flashy but just sticking with the process.

Speaker 2: 34:17

Through the ups and downs, the commitment became not really about weight loss, but what are the things I'm going to do to try to stay healthy? I've got to try to stay active. I've got to try to eat healthy. I've got to try to make good choices. More often than not, it eventually happens. Now there were times in there where I did like a sprint, where I made an intense push, dieted super hard, trained super hard and things like that. But I came to the realization, like I've been talking about, that I couldn't sustain it forever and so it's like in between those times that I make a push.

Speaker 2: 34:44

What are the things that I do? Bit of intermittent fasting, lower carbohydrate intake, monitor my sugar intake, limit processed foods, try to sleep. I got two young kids, so sleep is a bit of a joke right now. I imagine one day I'll be able to get a full night's sleep again sometime in my life. I haven't given up hope on that.

Speaker 2: 35:03

But really, the fundamental principles of being healthy are hydrate protein at most meals, lots of vegetables. Move your body, manage your stress proactively, so include some form of meditation, breathing exercises, whatever. In some way have a proactive stress management practice. It doesn't have to be overly complicated. What it really takes is figuring out how do I make these fundamental principles of healthy living like. How do I adapt them to my personal circumstances?

Speaker 2: 35:31

Your physical ability is probably different than my physical ability. We're two different people, and so maybe what I do for my type of exercise or activity might look different than what you do based on your physical ability, right, but the principle remains the same of trying to be active and move your body in whatever way you can, in whatever way you're able to. Maybe your taste preferences are different than mine, so the fundamental principle might be like include vegetables in your diet, but maybe you hate broccoli, maybe you don't, I don't know, you know, but like that kind of idea. So you figure out like okay, what does this look like for me? Here's the principles, and then how do I shape this for me and that kind of becomes the baseline, this sort of fundamental way of living.

Speaker 1: 36:15

Yeah, and that's what you do in your coaching as well. In your business is what you eat, yeah.

Speaker 2: 36:24

So each person's on kind of a unique and individual journey. I, I'm all kind of an engineer. I mean, it was an engineer. I take a bit of an engineering approach to this as well, so I kind of help people engineer their own healthy lifestyle. So we're going to go through these different factors so, in addition, so I'm a national board certified health and wellness coach. I'm a master health coach, master nutrition coach, certified sleep science coach, certified stress manner. Like I got lots of pieces of paper with my name on it. Because once you get into this business, you're like well, I'm just going to keep learning because why not, you know? Um, specialist in change psychology. Like I, I got all these pieces of paper on my name instead of study, you know.

Speaker 2: 37:00

But the point being, what I've recognized is that we don't, we can't just deal with one variable in isolation. How well we sleep will in some ways dictate the kinds of food choices we tend to make. How well we sleep might dictate what we're able to do in terms of activity. How well we manage our stress might dictate what capacity we have for activity and so on. How active we are might dictate to some degree what our food choices can be, and so on and so forth. Everything is kind of connected to everything. What about our social relationships? What about our mental health? You know these sorts of things. And so what I think I am able to do quite well is take a lot of variables in an individual's life and distill down into the simplest high leverage behaviors. In other words, like the simpler we can make this process, the more likely it is to stick. Like we're attracted to complexity and boy, I can engineer a complicated plan for people. It seems like you get results faster making it complicated, but we don't, because we just can't stick with it at the moment.

Speaker 2: 37:57

It's difficult and then part of the process is really this process of trial and error. Okay, so it's like working with a coach. Maybe it's an imperfect analogy, but let's say it's a bit like having some training wheels on. You get to try this stuff out. You get to screw up and make mistakes and have someone kind of help you work through like hey, how did this happen? Or why did this happen? What can we do differently next time? How do we need to adjust this? You have someone by your side and then the ups and downs of life, someone there who can hear you and listen to you and validate you and encourage you and so on.

Speaker 2: 38:30

I can't overstate the importance of having somebody in your corner for this process. I would say it's kind of a unique approach. To some degree, a fairly unique approach, because I don't just hand people like here's how you got to go to the gym and do this and you got to eat this way, because this is the way it like no, let's figure out what works for you and let's honor your autonomy and your independence, which in some ways, I recognize as I share about this. This makes it sound like, okay, this sounds a little bit nebulous, but really what it is is we're going through this process of figuring out what works best for you and I use my expertise to help you understand how to best leverage your time and energy.

Speaker 1: 39:11

Yeah, is there a way that people can connect with you? People are listening today and they're like hey, I struggle with health and struggle with different things in my life that have to do with my health. I want to, yeah, connect with him, you know? Okay, hi, how how can?

Speaker 2: 39:30

you connect. But you can go to freedom nutrition coachcom. So it's all one word, no spaces and dots freedom nutrition coachcom. On the home page you'll see a little video of me talking hey, nice to meet you. There's a link where you can book a complimentary 30-minute call with me. You'll just talk to me in a conversation.

Speaker 2: 39:47

This isn't a heavy-handed sales pitch or anything. I want to get to know you. I want to know what your struggles are and figure out am I the right person for you? I'm busy enough. I'll say I have capacity to work with people. I'm not. My roster isn't like full to the brim.

Speaker 2: 40:03

But in the same token I have the flexibility to be able to say, hey, if you're not right for me, I'll try to help you find someone who is. Or if it looks like we're a good match to work together, then we can talk about what that might look like. But first we're just going to have a conversation where you get to chat with me, feel my energy. What is it like to interact with me? What is it like to converse with me? Do we connect? That's so, so important, and so I want people to have a very low stress, low key, casual, relaxed conversation At the end of the conversation, even if we don't work together, I guarantee you're going to take something away that you can do differently in your life that'll help you move forward with your health, and that's what I want to offer people. The best way to show them that I'm able to help them is to actually help them and then, if they choose to work with me in an ongoing fashion, we can figure out what that looks like.

Speaker 2: 40:46

So that's where I should just say that there's a link on the website where you can book a call. That'll make it easy.

Speaker 1: 40:52

Well, john, thank you so much for coming on the show today. We greatly appreciate having you. And one last question is for those that are listening and maybe struggling, you know, spiritually, mentally, emotionally, physically. What encouragement would you give to them? And maybe struggling spiritually, mentally, emotionally, physically what encouragement would you give to them?

Speaker 2: 41:15

I think my favorite piece of advice right now is that compassionate awareness is the foundation of transformational change. So that's a very weighty kind of meaty sentence, but through the lens of compassion we can become aware of our struggles. We have to face them. We have to look at the messy, the dirty, the whatever, the icky, the stuff that we're struggling with. We have to look at that, but through the lens of compassion, without judgment, when we can look at those behaviors and acknowledge where we're presently at and what we're presently struggling with, that compassion awareness is the start of making transformational change, and so I just want to encourage people to look at their struggles and recognize their humanity. It's human to struggle. So look at yourself through this lens of compassion. Allow yourself to become aware of what is your struggle. Face up to your struggles without judgment, and that's the foundation of making transformational change in your life.

Speaker 1: 42:06

Well again, grant, thank much for coming on the show today. We greatly appreciate having you.

Speaker 2: 42:12

Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure.

Speaker 1: 42:15

Well, guys and girls, thank you again for coming on the show and listening and please, like and review, go, check out the website and please, you know, please make a donation if you'd like to the Dorfure show so that we can continue to make great content. And until next time, god bless, bye, bye.