Episode 58 - Reclaiming Man: Zach Swinney

In episode 58 of the Reclaiming Man podcast, hosts Preston, Brad, and Michael interview guest Zach Swinney. The episode focuses on themes of masculinity, health, and personal growth. Zach, an entrepreneur, discusses the importance of balance in life, criticizing the idea that success requires sacrificing relationships and personal well-being. He shares personal stories, including challenges related to his family and military service, illustrating the cost of extreme commitment to work.

Zach also talks about the dangers of misinformation in health and nutrition, emphasizing the need for consistency, moderation, and a balanced approach rather than extreme diets or lifestyle changes. He critiques the notion that rapid success is essential, advocating instead for a steady, sustainable pace in both personal and professional life.

Overall, the conversation revolves around redefining success to include personal fulfillment and health, rather than just professional achievements. The hosts and guest share insights into overcoming life's challenges through resilience and a balanced perspective on health, family, and work.

Transcript

Preston: 0:03

Hey what's up y'all welcome to episode 58 of Reclaiming Man. Tonight you got me, Preston the Southern Canuck Radomski with Michael the Mastermind Beckwith and Brad Lieutenant Dawson. We'll get to more of that later., tonight, today, this afternoon, whenever you're listening, we are interviewing our good buddy. Actually, it's Brad's really good buddy that he knows and goes to his establishment, Zach Swinney. And we're talking about health, fitness, being a better man in general. So stick around. Great conversations are had and heck yeah. Episode 58. Let's go.

Michael: 0:45

Our goal when we have a guest on is to get to know you as much as possible to know your story, what brought you to where you're at and whether it's things that you're doing to be more mindful or things that it's doing that you're doing to build up the actual strength of your body. And demonstrate some of the values that we're hoping to discuss with this podcast, all of it centered around that concept of reclaiming freedom, which is what we think, has been virtually lost over the past decade or 2 the, concept that you can be masculine in a positive way. Just by being strong, by being honest, by being authentic, some of those types of things. So by

Zach: 1:23

not being Andrew Tate, got it.

Michael: 1:26

You got it, man. Yeah.

Preston: 1:29

Yeah. It's just, a bunch of boys talking about, you know, it's I think I was telling Brad in our polo today. It's like the whole point, I was sort of initially thought about this podcast. It's I was, You listen to podcasts with men who were like super strong and growing and just felt like these guys are so far ahead of me. But at the same time, I'm growing and I'm doing well. So how can I have a conversation or we can have a conversation that will help other men that sometimes those like podcasts just seem like they seem so out of reach, like a Rogan or whatever. It's like, it doesn't feel real. It doesn't feel real. It does, but we're just talking about like a good week, a bad week, you know, just interesting stuff. And like Michael said you know, your stories act, it's like, you know, you're somewhat of an entrepreneur of sorts, it seems like, and like just do your own thing. Cause people just be like, well, Zach, like how did Zach do?

Zach: 2:16

I was thinking about this earlier, one of the most misleading terms that I hear when it comes to success is success loves speed. Like, yeah, success loves speed. Love speed. It also loves consistency. It loves hard work. Like you don't have to go fast to be successful. And I've here recently I've started kind of getting rid of a lot of the people that I was spending time around with because in their eyes they were in this sacrifice everything mindset to where they've almost lost their marriages before to where they have struggling relationships with their kids. They miss their kids. And I think that's Cause or one of them missed her sister's wedding in the, name of a meeting of a potential client. I'm like that's, extreme. I'm not doing that. And so for some people, well, if you don't have a good relationship with your sister, so for me, you know, the way I was raised, my father wasn't around when I was growing up. He was, in the Navy. He was gone all the time doing his own thing. My mom and him got divorced and my stepdad, which is not a great human, very mentally abusive, just not a good thing to be around. And I started thinking, you know, when I raised my children and I get to the end of my life, do I want to be able to say I worked hard and made a lot of money, or do I want to say like, Hey, I had a pretty successful life and I got to be there with my kids. I got to go to my kids first football games. I got to have healthy relationships with friends and families. I got to say, fuck it, half hot Cheetos one night and sit down and watch movies all night because I didn't have to work. I chose not to. And we all have our boundaries when it comes to what we're willing to do for success. And I think a lot of people on the different spectrum of success, hyper successful to not very successful. They're very differing opinions. And a lot of people like to get caught up in the only way to be successful is to sacrifice everybody. And to me, that's always been horseshit. I've never sacrificed anybody in my life. I've never sacrificed family time with my kid or anybody, and I've been pretty successful at everything I've done. And so that's one of the things that I like to tell people is, you know, you don't have to do this. You don't have to go down this extremely lonely, stressful, life shortening road in the name of making money. You can make that money and still, you can have your cake and eat it too. The thing that you can't have your cake and eat it to is horseshit. See, I need to hear

Brad: 4:26

that. I need to hear that right now because in my world and I, as Preston I've been, pushing Preston pretty hard because he wanted to get involved in playing music downtown. And it's pretty tough to get in. And once you're in, you'll have more work than you know what to do with, but you feel like you have to say yes to every gig because you're like, it's your livelihood.

Zach: 4:45

Right. And there's, the concept of, when you sacrifice everything, they almost speak as if it's a guarantee that you'll be successful. And this is, I'm, this is, I know there's a lot of really successful people. I've got, there are millionaires in my life that I say this to, and I swear to God, they want to punch me in the face when I say it, but I'm like, my biggest pet peeve with hyper successful people is yes, there's always a lot of hard work. There's a lot of planning. There's a lot of sacrifice. The thing none of them like to admit is sometimes there's a little bit of luck in there too.

Preston: 5:17

Yeah, luck

Zach: 5:17

has a role in success. And I think we have to acknowledge the fact that I have seen people that have the most relentless spot on work ethic I've ever seen in my life. And they got nowhere. They sacrifice their time. They sacrifice everything. They enjoyed, they busted their ass off. They did everything right. Day in, day out, day in, day out, day in, day out. Nothing ever happened for them. They did that for 10 years. And at the end of it, they're just like. Dude, like it just wasn't meant to be. And sometimes luck has a role in success and sometimes bad luck has a role when you're not successful too. And so you have to decide what does success mean for you. So like for them, success was, Hey, I tried for 10 years and worked my ass off and decided it just wasn't for me. The cars weren't in it for me and I'm much happier now working a FedEx job for 12 hours. Like I enjoy this more. I don't have the stress, the anxiety, all this extra stuff. And for other people, success is like, Hey, fuck my family. I just want to be a millionaire or a billionaire.

Preston: 6:14

And

Zach: 6:15

for me, success is having enough money that I can live comfortably and I can still be at my kids sports games and go to my freaking sister's wedding. If I, want to keyword, if I want to, but it's defining what it means for you. Cause it's not the same for everybody.

Michael: 6:33

Yeah, there's definitely a bit of luck, but when you own your own company, I think you can start to, Generate your own luck a little bit to some extent, because you have so much more, you might have so much more ability to change it. So I am really interested in hearing a little bit about what got you to the, to the edge of the decision, building a company. It's a highly competitive industry based on my brief understanding of what you're doing. Can you share a little bit about that journey for? Yeah, give

Brad: 7:06

us your background, give us your background, Zach.

Zach: 7:08

I'll give you the whole story from the start. So back in high school, it's where my whole story with all of this started, it was three sports complete school sports dominated my entire life. My whole life goal was, getting to college football and then trying to get beyond there. And that all fell apart. My senior year of high school, when I got my girlfriend pregnant, Throughout high school, I never did, dude, I did nothing outside of practice, workout. And play call of duty, nothing. My senior year, I decided, Hey, I'm going to throw sex into the mix. And that's it. And then immediately fucked everything. So going into the playoffs, my senior year, I ended up finding out my girlfriend's pregnant and, I had a, moment where I had to sit with myself and I'm like, okay, college sports is a job. And if I decide to go play college football, I'm going to miss four years of my child's life, and I don't know if I can live with myself after my dad was gone for all this time. I felt like I needed to make sure I was there and I was present because I didn't want to be a father like that. And so I ended up giving up college football, which was the start of a pretty big downhill spiral for me. I started going to college. I was going originally for kinesiology. So like, you know, physical fitness I was going to go for some, something in the field of personal training. And I realized that without football, I really did not like going to college. And so I ended up dropping out and I had to think about what my next step was going to be to take care of my kids. So I was like, Hey, you know what? My dad's been in the Navy all this time. It's got good benefits, this and that I'm going to go ahead and join the Navy. And so the girlfriend I had at the time was notorious for cheating on me all the time, except I never left her because we had a kid and I didn't want to raise my kid in a broken home. And when I went to talk to the Navy recruiter, they gave me two options. They were like, Hey,, you have two choices. You can't join the military as a single adult with a dependent. You either have to sign over the rights to your kid. Or you have to get married and me knowing how she was and like, okay, I'm going to have to marry her. And then when she cheats on me again, we'll have to divorce and fight for custody. And I was a hundred percent sure I would win for custody. So I go through bootcamp as I was about to get out of bootcamp, we go to a place called Recruit Heaven where we can call our family. So I called my mom and I was like, Hey, are you guys all set to come up for graduation? All this and that. Are you bringing my best buddy Koda with you? And she paused for a moment and I was like what, was that? What happened? She was like, we're not really bringing him because we had to kick him out of your house. And I was like, okay, cool., that's weird. Why'd you have to do that? And it turns out that my son's mom and him were sleeping together while I was at bootcamp. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so that whole thing was just like, dude, that was a mind F because that guy I grew up with that guy since first grade. He had lived with us for spit for sprints of his life while his mom was in prison. And one of those things that you would never expect from somebody. And one of those things that you realize You never really, truly know somebody, as best as you can, but we never know what people are capable of until they do something stupid. And so, you know, that kind of destroyed me for a while. And I was okay. I need to focus on the next step. I need to focus on fighting for custody of my kid. So I fought for custody of my kid for 2 years. My we had a child psychologist involved in this, because his mother is. Was incredibly unfit, like to the extreme. So the psychologist interviewed me, her and my kid. He was three years old, four years old when he got interviewed. And she came to the judge and was like, here's the deal. The mother's not fit to even be a functioning adult in society right now. I recommend the child go lives. Like she was brutal. She said, I recommend the child goes and lives with the father. So the judge, you know, ripped into his mom for a solid hour because of the stuff that we had on her, the stuff that she was doing with him. And the judge stops and goes, however, and I was like, Oh boy, cool. Oklahoma, the mom state, let's hear this. She said, because you're active duty military, you're no more fit to be a parent than she is. So she's going to retain sole physical custody. And I was like, so you're telling me that. Because I signed my life away to the United States government. I'm not fit to be a parent more so than somebody as psychologist says is not able to be a functioning adult. Like, how does that make sense? And so that kind of put me through a downhill spiral. I spent the rest of my time in the Navy. I was pretty depressed. And when I got, you hear a lot about that whole 22, the veteran suicide, you know, there's 22 vets a day that killed themselves. And the transition going from military to civilian life is probably the most difficult thing I've ever transitioned through. Because you go through this really intense structure of they tell you where to be, how to be, when to be, and everything. Like, you don't have to, you don't think they tell you what to do, period.

Preston: 11:38

That's like getting out of jail, I would imagine. Yeah. Same thing. I talked about that.

Brad: 11:42

Remember we talked about that on the last podcast? We got into a little bit about prison, like, prison, I did some jail time and stuff. So, anyway. I would

Zach: 11:48

say it's very similar because you go from, Having your life completely structured for you to the next day, all of a sudden it's just

Preston: 11:56

wide open. You're like,

Zach: 11:57

yeah, you don't know how to direct yourself. So I got really depressed and nutrition and physical fitness were always a big part of my life. And it was always a big thing to me. But when I got really depressed, I had, I started having suicidal ideation and I was on the home, I was on the way home one night and I was driving, there was a huge ditch on the side of the road, it's a really dangerous road, it's called Highway 28A in Oklahoma and it's a pitch black super hilly road and I started telling myself just let go of the wheel and see what happens and in that moment I kind of had a like, holy shit, I'm on the brink of killing myself. And if I don't change something, then I'm, my kid's going to grow up without a father. And so I was like, you know what, I've got to do something. So I'm going to start with the people I'm around, the things I do, the way I talk to people, the way I interact with people, the kind of environments I try to interact with. And so I started, I went through my Facebook and my Instagram. I deleted everything I had. From my life before that, like when I was doing bodybuilding, I had my badass BMW, I was doing dumb ass street racing in San Diego with all the things that I did that I know had me in a bad circle. I deleted all of it. I deleted and blocked all the friends that I had from there. I completely like scorched earth my life and I started hanging around people that were just more uplifting, more positive, more like, Hey, dude, like everything works out like, you know, we do all these different things. I started to really look at how I can make that a living and the only way that I really know you can make a living out of creating an environment like that is owning a storefront. And I was like, you know what? The fact that I can own something like a nutrition store, for example, the whole goal can be, yeah, we're a good, healthy, fast food type option. Like you come in, you grab a protein shake, you grab a healthier energy drink, grab some snacks, whatever. But you walk in a bad mood and you leave in a good mood. And that has always kind of been the mantra that we try to maintain with that.

Brad: 13:53

I want to chime in really quick. I'm sober, so I don't go to the bar and I don't have that kind of stuff. I have two places that I go. I go to Waffle House and I know all the girls that work there. And some of them are the complete like opposite of who I am, but they love me. I tip them really well. And I have personal relationships with the Waffle House ladies. I helped the lady there one time get a refrigerator. She's got five kids. Her life is incredibly. Hard.

Preston: 14:15

Redneck.

Brad: 14:16

Anyway, the other place I go, the other place I go is after the gym, I go to Anchored Nutrition. And you know what? Go to that bar, and I know that Zach's going to have a conversation with me. I can go in there, and I think sometimes I feel like, I don't want to scare your other customers away. You know, like, we were having a conversation the other day, and one of your customers came in. I forgot her name. You know, Zach knows everybody's name. He knows everybody personally. They come in. I can tell you the fall wall story about how I got my nickname there too. But anyway, I just, I'm not to interrupt, I just like, I feel that I can go there and I'm not going there to get my peanut butter pancake smoothie. Like, I have protein powder at my house. Right, yeah. Like, I don't need to go But it's like, I go for the hang and the environment that you created. So I wanted to tell you, you've succeeded at that. I don't know that there's a bunch of other people that are sitting at the bar doing what I do, but I feel that from you. And that's why I go to your store. Like that's like the 8 for the freaking smoothie, because I want you to be a success. And like, I love going to see you, bro. Like, that's why I go there. So anyway, go on. I just, you've done that for me. I

Preston: 15:24

appreciate that. I'll go ahead.

Zach: 15:27

Sorry we, have a lot of people to do that same thing. You know, we have one guy who is a lot like me. He's got him on the brink of taking his own life. And, you know, I don't want to take credit for turning his life around because there's a lot more that goes into it than just coming to see guys smiling and having a conversation with you. But we've helped people quit drinking from just creating a relationship with them. We've helped people. You know, get out of that areas of their life. We felt we've helped people get into better careers because the way I talk to people in the way that, you know, me and my wife have made our mission is, you know, we're not there to sell you something. Yeah. Obviously we have to make money to make a living, but our goal is to help you and who you are. And we have people that come into our store and they're like, Hey, before I do anything, I'm just letting you know, I'm not here to buy anything. I just need to sit and talk. And we're like, cool, dude. Like where you're a resident therapist, like, let's hear about it. And we hear some off the wall shit, there's some things people tell us where I'm like, that's illegal. You should not be telling. We don't have, we

Michael: 16:27

don't have client nutritionist privilege. Yeah.

Zach: 16:32

No such thing exists. Do not tell me. Yeah. I was like, I can't help you here. Please. God don't repeat that to me again, we, we made that our mission for people to leave in a better mood and they come in and it's an incredibly, what is the word I'm looking for? It's it's a very humbling thing because we are really successful at it. And I don't think we give ourselves enough credit because to us, it feels like it comes really easy, honestly. But it's a lot because the things that we hear and the conversations we have it's mentally draining a lot, but And it, you know, it's come with his challenges too. You know we've had a lot of periods where we've got a question, you know, is this what we want to do? Are we where we need to be? But being able to, I feel like. Anybody that's been in that deep of depression that was on the brink, when you see that kind of darkness, you don't want other people to see that too. And you want to help keep people from getting there. And, I've really dug my heels into it with nutrition because these, are actually some really interesting statistics. The, totality of the picture is this, right? So up until about six to eight months ago, the number one reason for suicide was depression. The number one reason for suicide now is food insecurity. Which is the, dumbest fucking thing that could ever be a reason for people to be killing themselves. But we're facing, you know, I don't use this term loosely, but it's almost like a pandemic. We're facing a pandemic of horribly misleading information for people in the world right now. It's causing an identity

Michael: 18:06

crisis.

Zach: 18:07

Right. A majority of the people that are killing themselves aren't people like us that are having struggles with food or food disorders. A majority of them are parents. They're killing themselves because they're having issues properly, feeding their family, or they're having food insecurities or disorder issues themselves because they're unable to, you know, afford vegetables and salads and healthier foods, quote unquote, and things like this. And we're, it's almost like, I don't know. The damage that's going to do to the children, right? We're also seeing a whole wave of parents that are teaching their kids. Well, red dye is bad for you. Processed foods are bad for you. Certain fruits and vegetables are bad for you. They're giving these kids, these disorders at four or five years old, because they're not teaching them how to have a balanced, healthy eating habits and how to treat food with respect and be like, Hey, if I want to sit down and eat hot Cheetos a once in a while, it's okay. That should not dominate my diet, but it's okay. And for me, I'm like to imagine. That people are putting themselves on the brink and, or killing themselves because of the things they're hearing when it comes to nutrition, drives me batshit crazy. Have you guys heard of CarnivoreMD?

Preston: 19:18

No.

Zach: 19:19

Alright, well he's the biggest jackass. You know what a grifter is?

Michael: 19:23

Yes. I'm looking him up though. I'm looking him up.

Zach: 19:27

So a grifter is a horrible scumbag human. So this man is the biggest grifter on the planet. He called himself Carnivore MD. A lot of people kind of bought into the things he would say because his name was MD, it was a medical doctor. He did have a license in psychology. He did not have a license in anatomy and cardiovascular health and dietetics or anything else. It was psychology, so he really wasn't even qualified to talk about nutrition. But he started going around telling people, you know, that the ideal diet for maximum health is a carnivore diet, which is nothing but meats, And fruits, no vegetables because he said, this is biochemical, you biochemical, you're dying to kill you because he just pulled shit out of his ass. People start buying into it. And what we see when people have way too much meat in their diet is high cholesterol, high LVL, cardiovascular disease, and getting their chest cracked open because they're developing, the widow makers, things like that. And so this guy would get his blood done to prove that it was working. He would get his blood done every six months and it would always come back. He had high cholesterol, high LDL, high all this other shit. He was like, this is the medical industrial complex, whatever the fuck that means, these are medical industrial complex lying to you. High cholesterol is not bad for you. It's a sign of health. In the last six weeks, all of his handles from Instagram to Facebook are no longer say carnivore MD. They say his name. And he's going on podcasts now and backtracking saying no, I've never told people that carnivore was the ideal diet. I told him that you should experiment, eat things that make you feel good. And now I, myself have started testing out rice, different forms of vegetables, all these different things. And I'm like, What you're saying is you were about to die and you realized you were wrong. And instead of admitting you were wrong, your jackass self is just going to lie. Because if he admits he was wrong, then he's like, he's open to law. He's lost because he was giving out false medical information. His company was built on that. And so he could be sued out the ass, but we have guys like that, Spread information that people in today's world don't know how to disseminate this kind of information. They don't know the proper ways to do nutrition research. They don't know to find how to find like the proper sources for really anything. So they hear guys like this that look pretty good that sound really confident. Talk with authority and they're just like, well, holy shit. That guy must be right. The only thing you need to eat to live is apples. Fuck everything else like You just have to sound confident in today's world. And my biggest thing is, especially with a lot of my clients, is teaching them that you can eat whatever the fuck you want, but your diet needs to consist, a majority should be whole foods, but if you want to have ice cream, Don't do it every day. Get off your ass, move a little bit, eat healthy for the most part. So my

Michael: 22:14

sundaes, my ice cream consumption, I can just eat. Load up,

Zach: 22:18

go crazy, obviously don't eat like a freaking three pound of ice cream. But it's, these things where, you know, a lot of my clients, I tell these things and I get like, it's an odd to have an aha moment. And I'm like, see that right there. The fact you're having an aha moment is the problem. This shit should be common sense, but it's not because the industry has gotten so diluted and confused. Like the people that say, well if you can't pronounce the ingredient. You shouldn't be eating it. So you're telling me i'm not I shouldn't eat it or like my favorite one I saw a tick tock of a guy who said as smug as he could be about it He's walking through, he's like, no, like a lot of you guys, I I thought that I was being healthy too by drinking almond milk, wrong, and let me show you why. So he starts reading off the ingredients and he starts going, alpha, D alpha, see I can't even say that, like, that's garbage, that shouldn't be in there, and the thing he was quoting was alpha D tocopherol, which is fucking vitamin E. It's essential to your survival and people I look at the comments and everybody's on they're like, oh my god I can't believe they're putting that in our almond milk. I'm like You mean something that naturally occurs in almonds? Yeah, it's in your milk and that you need for survival and that surprises you

Brad: 23:35

like what? Well, and like what you were saying about confidence like oh, you just need to be confident and people isn't yeah or and or you just need to be extreme is a big one because if you're extreme that alludes to You don't need balance because balance is hard. It requires discipline, right? And that's hard to wrap your brain around when you live in the modern society that wants everything to be extreme And so I also wanted to say when we were talking about you can have ice cream once a week or whatever You know, it's funny me and Abby went and got some ice cream. I was having some ice cream But I went to the gym today, but yeah but, I was going to say real quick is that I'm an addict, right? By just genetic makeup. I feel like where one, you know, our saying in AA is like one is too many A thousand is never enough. I don't know that ice cream once a week is Really possible for me like tomorrow i'm gonna want ice cream again, dude like so for me like Is one bag of hot cheetos? Okay, because Something happens to me chemically. And that just comes down to knowing yourself. I actually do better with a full on strict diet. I can adhere to that better because of my personality. If you give me grace and leeway and I'll spin that around in my head and be like, well, I can have Cheetos twice a week. And before you know it, like that's what happened when I have one drink. Like I have one drink. Everyone's like, well, what are you going to do? Go down to the ghetto and get cocaine. Well, no, not the first day, but like the second day, you know But like, seven months down the road?

Preston: 25:12

Yeah.

Brad: 25:13

Like, it's gonna, it's gonna progress slowly into this rationalizing and justifying and minimizing. Because that's what I can do, right? My disease of alcoholism actually lives in my thoughts, right? It's a disease of my thinking. So what happens is I have this disease of perception. And I'm a bit, and I'm able to start like, Justifying and rationalizing every little step closer to killing myself. And so i'm getting to a point where I feel like I can have ice cream or whatever, but it's still a struggle for me Strict diets are always better for me because I know clear cut what I can and can't have If you give me what I can and can't have then I can i'll never say yes to ice cream if it's on the no List because it's on the no list Like, can't have it, you know, that's where,

Zach: 25:58

That's where having, like you said, the awareness of how you are around certain foods. So for hot cheetos, I have zero control around hot cheetos. I will go to the Sam's club. I will, once a month I'll do it. I'll get the Sam's club size bag and I'll eat it in one sitting. I do not keep hot cheetos in the house because I know if they are there, I will eat them.

Preston: 26:17

Yeah.

Zach: 26:18

And so it's having that, you know, that. Talk and being real about how you are around certain foods and be like, okay, I can't control myself around Oreos. I'm not gonna keep them in the house. And if I'm gonna have Oreos, right. And so it's, doing that. But what you're talking about with the extremism too, that's the other segue into the issue we have in the nutrition industry is the conspiracy theories all around nutrition. And so people want to distrust science and they want to distrust government, specifically conspiracy theorists. They want to find a reason to not trust the industry standard or what the industry says is healthy. And so when we have people like carnivore MD that are extreme about these things, people latch onto it because it challenges the status quo. And that's exactly what they want because they think if the government said this is true. It must be a lie. It has to be something else. It can't be that simple. It has to be more complicated. And it just, it's funnels this whole thing. It fucks up the entire industry because you have the people that spread real factual information and it doesn't get the attention or the shares that the extreme stuff does because it's not static, it's not challenging the status quo and it's not exciting you.

Brad: 27:33

It's not exactly.

Michael: 27:35

And then you have the non conspiratorial stuff like the, pharmaceutical companies that all contribute to people's distrust of science because they have, mislabeled, misrepresented what they do as science when it is purely financially motivated, no outcomes that they care about. So I think it, the same thing really bleeds over into the nutrition. Industry broadly, unfortunately, because it's the same sort of thing It, just is, it's so sad to, to see how big of an impact that has on those extreme types of minds. And, to your point, Zach, you know, with information being created so much more quickly, we're as humans really struggling to filter through it.

Brad: 28:16

I have a theory. I have a theory that I just kind of was thinking about. And Zach, you kind of asked me this the other day when we were talking, you were like, okay, if the government's out to get us, like, what's their motive? And that's been, and I think that's a great question because when you're trying to figure out if the conspiracy theory is real or, whatever, you're If you're trying to sift through this and you're trying to use your discernment to like figure your way through the world with all this crap coming at you, you start going, okay, well, if they are really out to get you, why are they out to get you? Right? Well, here's what I kind of came up with. And I think I just came up with it kind of now listening is like, I think there is, they want to create the confusion because if there's confusion, you can't educate yourself. It's not so much that they want to kill you. They just want to keep you from figuring out the truth because then they can continue to manipulate for profit so I think profit has taken over greed has taken over and Individually, I think they've rationalized it in a corporate capitalist, you know, a meeting room, you know It's like they've got a business is just geared to growth It's like Why this quarter do we need to grow another 20 percent when we're pretty successful? Like at some point, does anybody raise their hand and go like, we've grown enough, we're now depleting like oxygen from the air because of all the farming or whatever, like, I'm not a scientist. I don't claim to know any of this shit, but it's like, I can say that I do feel like there is, if there's a conspiracy, it's a conspiracy to keep us confused. So the agent continued to keep that. Yeah. That kind of control just so that it's for profit. And I think sometimes that can come at the cost of life.

Zach: 29:56

So to your point, there is, there's a portion of that I agree with because it's not a conspiracy. We know it's true. That's what I was going to say. And there are subsections of, you know, the government, like the FDA gets a really bad rap. The F, our FDA is one of the strictest FDAs in the world. Or, you know, the our version of it is one of the strictest in the world. And the issue we're seeing is it so much what they're doing to our food. The issue is the in access to the foods that we need for lower income communities. And the fact they make. You know, hyper palatable, ultra processed foods, extremely affordable. Hot Cheetos

Brad: 30:42

are more affordable than freaking vegetables.

Zach: 30:45

Right. McDonald's is more affordable than going and getting, you know, the grocery store. And so the problem we have is these companies, it's not a government level thing. It's a corporation level thing. And the government doesn't help. The fact that we have lobbyists that exist that can kind of help push legislation, things like that doesn't help. But it comes down to, like you said, the corporations are exploiting people for money. And, you know, when you look at, I can go buy a Giorno pizza in the frozen section, and I can get my calories and all the stuff I need to eat out of that and be pretty full most of the day. Versus, you know, that's 9. I know that because I get it. It's the self crust pepperoni DiGiorno pizza. It's fucking incredible. Don't need it all the time, but I could eat that or I could go get, you know, fresh basil, some avocado. I could get all the things to make really solid. Overall, good, nutritious tacos at home, and that's gonna cost me 30 bucks. And if I have a family of four kids, which option am I going to go with? Am I going to go with the 9 per person pizza? Or am I going to go spend 80 bucks for one dinner? And so, and that's, it's kind of happened with organic, for instance. You know, there's this whole thing. There's a belief that organic is better for you than non organic. It's not. Or the only difference between organic and non organic is organic used. Organic approved pesticides, which have far less research on them than the current pesticides we use, thus making it slightly riskier to consume and slightly more exposure to pesticides than you get from non organic. However, it is cheaper for companies to label things and test them and use organic pesticides. Then it is for them to do it the way the FDA regulates it. And so when you see an avocado here for 3 from the company, and then the same company is selling you an organic avocado for 9 because it's organic, they're also using that to confuse and take advantage of people because people are so paranoid about their health, and they'll spend more on the organic thing, even though it's the same fucking thing, and it's cheaper for them to make, but they charge three times the price. And so the, issue comes down to privatized healthcare, privatized insurance, the corporations having made giant, like monopolies in the United States are illegal. Yeah. We have companies like Kellogg's that have monopolized the market

Preston: 33:01

and that only

Zach: 33:02

happens because of shit like lobbyists, they can go to the government and push for legislation that allows them to do this kind of shit.

Preston: 33:09

And

Zach: 33:09

so it's, I don't fully trust the government either. Nope. We should always have a healthy distrust for our government. We should always have a healthy distrust for our government,

Preston: 33:19

but

Zach: 33:19

it's the corporations. The corporations have a freaking chokehold on all of our food supply and where the healthy options go and who can afford it. And

Brad: 33:28

it's

Zach: 33:29

a huge issue.

Brad: 33:31

Yeah, man, it's good stuff. All good stuff, man.

Zach: 33:35

But it's you know, it's interesting too when people talk about nutrition and like studies. So a meta study is a composite study of, you know, for instance, there are meta studies about red dye and it's done from 70 different countries and it's 300 different studies and it's like 30 million people in total and it looks at all of the studies from all over the world that Kind of point towards the same thing. It's like, Hey, we've done all these studies on millions of people across different countries, different viewpoints, different worlds, and all of the data we collected point to the exact same answer. It's fine to consume. That's where, you know, we can trust science more than people realize we can, because it's not just the U. S. that we get these studies from. It's all over the entire world. But that's an area where I'm also very fortunate. So my brother is a scientist

Preston: 34:21

and

Zach: 34:22

I know that he has access to all kinds of shit that, it's going to take me like multiple different kind of search cues through Google to get to. Hey, I should be like, Hey, I'm looking for the studies on this. Can you help me out here? And he can find them in half a second, send you to me. But we have people more qualified than us, like, when we start looking at, virologists, for instance, people that have been studying viruses for 50 years. Am I going to trust the guy who studied virology for 50 years, or am I going to trust Brad on Facebook who did three hours of Google research? Trust me. You should trust me, dude. He was like, Hey, so just so you know, I was on Google for three hours and this is why they're fucking lying to you, bro. What? Like, why should I trust you over a guy with three different master's degrees? It's been doing this his entire life.

Brad: 35:09

Well, but the problem is that the regular person doesn't have the time or the wherewithal to like access that they don't know, which they don't know. Brad from doctor, whoever who's, or the chemist or whoever they're doing these studies that they, like, they don't know. They just, Listen to the feed that's piped into their Instagram.

Zach: 35:28

That's the scary part. It's like you talk about, corporations being corrupt and all these things too, but you also see these creators that make these Super extreme videos about things and they're making money off of it too, because they're getting views and view time. And I'm like, you're paying them to say bad things and confuse people. And then

Michael: 35:49

it just feeds to the problem because that's like clicks and ads. And it is again, coming back to how corporate America is influencing things. And it's purely based on, shock. And some of those other types of they're very successful campaigns. I know this because my 11 year old wants to. To spend 50 or 60 on cosmetics. And she's 11. And it's just like, well, the only reason that exists is because of social media. And some very smart marketing executive was like, Hey, all we need to do is this send some of our products for free to a bunch of these people who have at least 100, 000 followers on social media. And we can capture whatever demographic we want.

Preston: 36:30

Yeah,

Michael: 36:31

this is a, please review this. And if you do, maybe we'll send you some more free stuff too. Yeah, maybe

Zach: 36:37

this this is makes for another interesting topic. Capitalism. Good or bad?

Brad: 36:44

Well, the rewarding, okay. This system of rewarding you through, you know, success or pay, you know, through views and likes. Oh my gosh, what a horrible. What a horrible pace, like scale or whatever the word is like, Oh my gosh. I definitely want to watch people fight on my Instagram more than I want to watch more than I want to watch, like more than I want to watch, Jordan Peterson talk about like the migration issue, you know, like I just, things that I should be watching are being edged out in the algorithm by things that it knows. That I'm weak for, you know, I've got all these half naked young girls on my Instagram. I don't know how they got there. And, here's the thing is like, how can we take what we just talked about? And we can think about applying it. And I'll use an example right now. I was sitting at dinner tonight. My son's 11 Brixton, Abby cooked stir fry, pretty healthy dinner. Right now, sometimes he'll have Chick fil A sometimes he'll get a different dinner than we get. And we've created this monster, but tonight he was stir fried. He was just going to have to deal with the stir fry. Well, he couldn't eat it. And he got halfway through and he, and I was like, it's not bad. He's like, it's just bland. And in my mind is telling me that I can't eat this because it doesn't have any flavor. And so, I was like, okay. And I was like, but you can't just eat, you know, snacks all the time. And then he goes, well, why do you buy them? If they're unhealthy and I was like, Abby, why do we buy this? And I said, well, you know, we're trying to teach you balance. It's like, but he brought up a great point. He's like, I said, well, maybe we should just get rid of all your fun snacks then. And we'll just start to have the stir fry and stuff like this every night, you know, and I'm pulling my dad stuff. And, the dad comes out of me that I never thought would, like, I hear myself say that and I'm like, did I just say that? Such a dad, but like, it's just like, but how do we So how do we apply this stuff? Like in general I'm sure there's a lot of different ways, like, Yeah. I just want to hear from you, Zach. Like, what do you do? I think I've worked out with, you know, a plan with my family to the best that I can, and I'm always a work in progress. I don't execute this perfectly. You just heard the story. I just, so anyway, just trying to figure out what do we do for the person listening? That's like really struggling with this. Yeah.

Zach: 39:06

So I think the biggest thing here is. You said something there about progress. The goal is progress. It's not perfection. I teach that to all my clients. You're trying to progressively increase the things for yourself and your health that you know you should be doing that you don't currently do, that you don't expect yourself to be perfect. Like, sometimes I'll have hot cheetos twice a week and it just is what it fucking is. Like I'm going to do it. It's going to happen. It's not perfect, but I'm conscious of it and I make progress towards not doing those kinds of things. The big step is, you know, eat things that make you feel good. So if you eat, you know, I don't, I know there's not a person on the planet that eats a DiGiorno pizza and feels great afterwards. And so start listening more so to your body. Start introducing things like fruits and vegetables. You know, there's a good saying where if you don't like vegetables, like I don't like broccoli, but if I put cheese on broccoli, I like broccoli. That's a net positive because I'm getting, yeah, I'm adding a little extra calories, a little extra fat and dairy into it, but the positive that I'm getting vegetables in my diet that I don't typically get in my diet is a net positive overall, and it's finding ways to introduce things into your diet that improve your overall health and give you more nutrient density. And so start small, like all of my clients, the first month that I have a client, the goal is you're drinking enough water, you're getting enough electrolytes, you're upping your protein intake. That's all you're worrying about for the first month. And then as you start to progress and go on, you start dialing it down, you start focusing, you know, you establish those things as a habit. Like I hit a gallon a day of water, half of my gallon has electrolytes in it. I'm hitting, you know, 180 grams of protein a day. And I've done that consistently. Now it's become kind of my default. So, we always fall to the level of our habits. So, if you set that up as a habit, after 30 days or so, like, you're just gonna do that. And even when you're stressed out in life and you're struggling, you kind of default and still fall to that same level. And overall, you're, you just become the person that does that. Just like how I was raised to work out and I just became the person that worked out like it doesn't matter what's going on in my life. I'm gonna work out. It's creating those kinds of habits. So like in month 2, the goal is, okay, now we're going to focus on certain type of movements or workouts for this month. And we're going to work on introducing different kinds of fruits into your diet more consistently. And it's just, it's. Taking baby steps, really, because it doesn't you don't have to overhaul your diet overnight. You don't have to completely change up and, you know, wake up at 4am every day so you can get your workout in like you don't have to do all these crazy off the wall things. You just have to make small steps in the right direction. Because there's nothing we can do in the short term that is going to destroy our health. And You know, minus the person who's 400 pounds because they've been eating like shit the entirety of their life You know, if you guys are eating like shit here and there it's not going to destroy your health in a couple of days Right just like eating healthy is not going to fix your health in a couple of days So you have time to kind of figure out an experiment and see what makes you operate better What makes you feel better? What makes you more, you know clear headed and all that and so it's just the small things man It's just focus on little baby steps

Brad: 42:13

Yeah, and those like DiGiorno, that DiGiorno pizza will make you feel good if that's what your addiction is, right? Like, you need that amount of carbs to feel good because you've now established that addiction, you know? It's like, and the obese person, the morbidly obese person I, Abby's cool with me talking about it, but her sister's one of them. She's got every excuse under the book, man, that her joints are messed up and whatever, and it's like, well, your joints are messed up because you're 400 pounds. Like, it's like, they might regenerate themselves. Like, there are exercises. She can't even get started. Abby's made her plans. She is convinced that. She eats healthy, and I'm like, man, I would love to see her in the middle of the night. Yeah. Because, like, that's when the big obese people usually do their thing, when nobody sees them. She always eats salads, whatever, I'm like But anyway, for that person, it's like, how do they start, man? How do they even get I'm I don't even know how I did it. I was brought to my knees with addiction. Like, how did I quit all this drugs and alcohol? Well, I'm I always tell people I'm grateful that, I hit a bottom. I'm grateful, I'm so lucky that I'm an alcoholic. And drug addict that those drugs tore me down so much they got I didn't die But enough to pull my head out of my ass like It took that for me to have a moment of clarity and I always talk about that It was like the desperation the gift of desperation Was so real because I finally My thinking I had this moment where like all that crap I could rationalize and justify I had to throw out the window and I was like, dude, I have to change my life and I'm and it just You And I did that three or four times. I, I didn't just have one moment. I got sober for a year and went back. Two years went back. Now I've got 10. I don't have this thing mastered at all. Something happened. You know, like something happened with all of that, that got me set in the right direction. And I've learned when I make a mistake now, I don't throw it all away. If I eat one bag of Cheetos and I do the little thing now, or I ate the ice cream or whatever I do, I go, Hey, it's all good. Just don't do that tomorrow,

Zach: 44:11

That's usually what we see. There's, you know, a couple of ways that people end up making this changes in their life. And one of the most common ways that encourage people or kind of forces them into change is like a diagnosis.

Preston: 44:23

It's

Zach: 44:23

like, Hey, you have type two diabetes. Your thyroid is failing. You're going to be dead in the next five years if you don't change it. It creates that sense of urgency. And that's why, man, for most people, that's not reality. That's not as common as people are thinking it is. Even for clients I've had that are morbidly obese. A lot of the times, their numbers are still pretty healthy. It takes a long time being in a state like that for your body to start falling apart. So, people have time to correct these things. The problem is a lot of people, when they start trying to correct these things, they take the entire picture all at once. And try to make everything happen that day. They're like, okay, starting today, I work out an hour a day. I go walk a mile a day. I drink a water, a gallon of water. I eat 200 grams of protein. I have all these fruits, all these vegetables. And they, try to cram so much into it. That, you know, like talking about your brain, it's not sustainable. Like you talk about your brain and, you know, addiction, all these different things. Our brains are wired for comfort, which is why I talk about, you know, you're trying to create these slow steps into habits because once your brain is comfortable at that level, that's what your brain resorts to. Like it's going to look for that, whether you're thinking about it or not. And when you start doing all these things after about a week, you're stressed the F out because everything is so different. It's taking a lot more work, a lot more effort, and your brain starts trying to pull you back to the habits you have, because that's what it knows. That's what it's comfortable in. That's where it likes to operate in your brain's job is to keep you in a period of homeostasis where you're balanced and you're doing things you've always done because it feels safe.

Preston: 45:58

Yeah.

Zach: 45:58

And so it's, like you're fixing like your alcoholism. Like that's, you're still fight that. And that's something with food, people that have food issues, you will always fight that. But you take the necessary steps over time or you get a diagnosis and you're like, well, should I do it or die? Those are the only two options.

Preston: 46:17

And

Zach: 46:18

people think it's almost like people think that if you're inching towards getting to where you're trying to go, you're not making progress because you have to be full sprinting. And it's almost like the same thing with business and success. People think if you're not, success loves speed. If you're not going fast, you're not successful. That's not true. Like, you can fucking crawl. If you can't crawl, drag yourself. Like, you don't have to go fast.

Brad: 46:40

And I can't help but think this, when it comes to the first thing that you can do, whether you're in anything, whether you're trying to build a business, or you're trying to lose weight, or you're trying to be spiritual, or whatever, or stop drinking, or anything, any ailment, anything you want to do, I feel like the first thing you need to do is maybe even no change right away is first observe, try to remove yourself and observe what you're doing honestly. So don't make any changes yet and just go, I'm going to step back and almost my, old sponsor used to say this, he goes, just sit above, kind of remove yourself and watch yourself go through the day, right? This could be like, take right down everything that you eat. Don't change anything that you're eating. I tell, Abby tells clients this and stuff too, like just observe, if you're able to just start to observe what you're doing, oh my gosh, I ate two bags of, you know, can you remove, can, the first step is just, you know what, nothing, I'm not going to ask you to change anything, say you're coming to my first consult and I'm a nutritionist and a fitness coach and all this stuff, first thing I'm going to tell you is, go home and just keep track of what you ate, you know, can you honestly cause, the delusion with her sister is so And the enablers around her. The family is scared to tell her that she's morbidly obese. Like, they're, like, they're enabling the problem. They're help killing her, you know? Alcoholics have this problem a lot too. Wives that go to Al Anon, a lot of times they're helping their husband to stay drunk because they have this issue of taking care of them and it's like, they're scared to talk about it. And if this person can just pull themselves away and look down at themselves and go, Hey, What am I actually doing and just beginning to observe. And that's where the inventory is really good. And the 12 steps is like, you just take an inventory, you know, a business can't succeed without inventory. You at your business, you got to look at what you have in stock. And if you have this pile of protein that you're not selling, I can't keep ordering this protein. Like it's not selling, like we got to do something. Maybe it's not protein, but it's something that isn't like we got these BCAAs and nobody's buying the BCAAs, but we keep spending a thousand dollars a week on BCAAs. Like you would never do that. Like if you're dying, you're not going to keep eating. French fries

Zach: 48:53

You're gonna be like, oh shit. Maybe I should just eat a potato instead,

Brad: 48:56

you know, like you can't so anyway I feel like that's what i've come up with is like the first step is like can you just step back and even get? Honest with yourself, you know, can you even get honest with yourself about your situation? So that's what i'm taking from this, you know in a lot of ways is like do we even know what the problem is?

Zach: 49:14

And that's a huge first step because like you said, a lot of people are very disillusioned by how they eat and by how they live their life and by their level of perceived physical activity.

Brad: 49:24

It's just acceptable. It's just acceptable behavior to eat like this. So

Zach: 49:29

yeah, I've had clients before that they gave me the spiel, you know, I've had one client about two years ago in particular. She was 320 ish pounds. She was so heavy that she could have eaten about 2800 calories a day and she would still be losing a significant amount of body weight pretty quickly because of just her overall size and after about a month she had lost nothing and I was just like, okay, walk me through your eating because your logs have been kind of in this is inconsistent. She's like, well, you know, I wake up, I have a chicken breast go to lunch. I have a salad and a chicken breast. You know, I go to dinner and I have a salad before bed. I have a chicken breast. I'm like, I was not born yesterday. Zero chance. That's what, are you eating? And then that's where she would come out. She'd be like, okay, well. On Sundays, me and my husband like to go to a Mexican restaurant. And I was like, Oh shit, here we go. She's like, usually I'll have like five baskets of chips by myself. And I'm like, what? Are you serious? I'm

Preston: 50:34

like, yeah,

Zach: 50:35

I'm like, and when we get in, once she was honest with herself about it and really sat there and was like, okay. I do eat a lot more than I really should and I don't want to fix it. So she dropped out being a client and decided she's not gonna lose weight. I'm like, all right, like, I guess I'll see you at your funeral. Like, I don't know, dude.

Preston: 50:55

I'm not gonna lie. I'm guilty of the chip game at a Mexican restaurants to it's dude, it's

Zach: 51:01

hard. I'll, eat two on my own after that. I started getting pretty full that

Brad: 51:06

Kate, that case. So dude, it's like, Oh, it's rough.

Michael: 51:11

What's with chips at Mexican restaurants? They are. Okay. Impossible.

Brad: 51:15

There's a chemical you can't pronounce. There's a chemical you can't pronounce in them that makes you eat a ton of them. It's called He is correct. It's called It's correct. Salt?

Zach: 51:25

Yeah, the government's sprinkling it in there to make you fat and kill you faster,

Michael: 51:28

so

Zach: 51:30

Nice.

Michael: 51:31

this was a, this was an awesome conversation and, testament to that we're just scratching the surface. I'm sure should should bring you back on to hear a little bit more about how things are going with the nutrition shop and dig a little bit more into the practicalities of it too, because like to Brad's point, the goal is to have some things that people can walk away with and maybe it's, it is finding the path outside of the corporate America that. Preston and I are both still trying to figure out keeping one foot heavily and despite our best desires to try to get out. So appreciate the inspiration and yeah, conversation in general, man. Just tell them

Brad: 52:10

about Anchored Nutrition. I don't know if you have a website or if you have any other coaching that you do, or what else tell us. For anybody,

Zach: 52:17

yeah, so I do, we have our website, not website. We have Instagram and Facebook. We pretty much just do everything off of there. I do nutrition, coaching, virtual and in person, just the nutrition club. And we have links inside of the bio for Instagram for all. People can ask questions, get just a consult and see if I'm a fit. For some people I'm not a fit because some people want to go the more like all out, holistic, crazy route. And some people want to hear the truth. So if you're somebody that wants to hear the truth, I'm going to give it to you and I'll baby you for about the first month. And then after that shit's going to

Preston: 52:51

get

Zach: 52:52

real. We're gonna start calling shit out after that. Cause once we know each other, the gloves come off. I'm like, all right, let's be honest about this shit.

Preston: 52:59

Yeah.

Zach: 52:59

So yeah. And anytime you guys want to have me on dude I, love talking about this stuff. I talk about it pretty much at the shop 24 seven. I'm probably talking about a little too much cause I just get going, but you guys want to have me on. I'm always in.

Brad: 53:13

What's your Instagram. You just got to tell us what it is. Oh yeah.

Zach: 53:16

The Instagram is just anchored A N C H O R E D nutrition T N. And then Facebook is just anchored nutrition and you'll see a picture of me and my wife. She's the better looking one. So

Brad: 53:26

you'll

Zach: 53:27

know.

Brad: 53:27

We love Sam.

Michael: 53:28

Yeah, I guess that wraps episode 58. Awesome, man. I appreciate you guys having

Brad: 53:32

me on

Zach: 53:34

man.

Brad: 53:34

Dude. Thanks for getting vulnerable and telling us the truth about your story. Cause that's something that I've had, I've do and share with my story. And I think it helps people to go, Oh my gosh, like I can identify with this guy's story for the other vets who were out there or somebody that struggled with suicidal ideation or whatever. They can go, Hey, this guy has a business now. Like. I'm a recovering addict and, I'm a successful musician and own a house. People weren't even trusting me to go in their house at one point. So it can happen. You don't have to be gifted some special, you know talents to, to push through this thing and to make change in your life. So I just want to thank you for doing that, man. And bring it coming on here. It was fun to get to know you more. I didn't know some of those things about you. So

Zach: 54:15

I appreciate it, man. No matter how dark it gets, there's always a shimmer of light somewhere. You just got to look for it, you know? Yeah.

Brad: 54:20

Nice. Dude. Anchor Nutrition's awesome. I love it. Hey, I appreciate it, brother. I appreciate it. I'll probably see you in a day or two. Hey, I'll be

Zach: 54:27

there. Right away.