Latest / Everyday Ancestral with James Barry / How Much Exercise Is Too Much? Why Fittest Is Not Healthiest | Dominic Fusco

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How Much Exercise Is Too Much? Why Fittest Is Not Healthiest | Dominic Fusco · Everyday Ancestral with James Barry

0:00
They had no idea, like if I was ever even going to wake up.
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I just looked up at the ceiling of the hospital.
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I just said, God, I don't know why you're giving me a second chance here, but I know that clearly you are not done using me.
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So at 24 years old, Dominic Fusco looked like the pitcher of health.
0:17
He was an endurance athlete, a health and wellness creator, deeply invested in taking care of his body.
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Then during a mild time trial with friends, his heart stopped.
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He went into cardiac arrest.
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Dom, incredible last few years for you.
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When you realized you had almost died at 24, what was the first thing that went through your mind?
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Man, well, the first thing, honestly, when I woke up in the hospital, I was coming off all the drugs that was keeping me alive.
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All my friends look like balloon animals.
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So that's like my first memory.
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It's like looking around in the hospital room and all my friends, my mom, I was just like, I was so confused.
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And obviously I didn't know what happened at that point.
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I thought I was in a dream.
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And when I finally came off the meds a couple hours later,
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And they told me that I had a sudden cardiac arrest.
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Like that whole day really is very, very blurry for me.
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Cause I mean, I was on a ventilator.
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I was on life support for 24 hours.
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So like, you know, they tried to bring me off of the ventilator three times.
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Couldn't breathe under my own power.
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And dude, they didn't know what was going to happen when I woke up.
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If I was going to be a vegetable, if I was going to have brain damage, if they had no idea, like if I was ever even going to wake up.
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And so it took a while for my brain to actually snap back into it.
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And the first thing that I remember, like actually coherently, was I just looked up at the ceiling of the hospital and I just said, God, I don't know.
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I don't know why you're giving me a second chance here, but I know that clearly you are not done using me and I'm here.
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So I just knew in that moment that there was no coincidences.
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It wasn't luck.
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It wasn't an accident that that had happened to me.
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I was...
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I wasn't really shocked.
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I wasn't like, oh my gosh, why me?
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Why is this happening?
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It was kind of just like, okay, like, I don't know.
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I just had this peace about me that this was truly happening for me and not to me.
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And I didn't know what that meant or what that was going to look like at the moment.
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All I knew is that like my belief in God showed me that, hey, like, again, this isn't luck.
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This isn't an accident.
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This isn't a coincidence.
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Like clearly he's got more work for me to do.
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And in a lot of ways, I felt like that was like my rebirth in a sense of like, hey, okay, like old Dom, new Dom, like let's go.
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So you already had faith.
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You already shared a belief in God, but did...
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this experience changed your relationship to your faith?
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A hundred percent.
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So I grew up in faith.
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I grew up Catholic.
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And so I went to church every Sunday.
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I went to Catholic school.
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I prayed the rosary.
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I did all the things, but I never had a true relationship with the Lord.
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I was never taught to read my Bible.
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Everything was just kind of rules.
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And we do this, like, why do we do this?
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Because I said so, you know,
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And so it was always just something I did because my mom made us do it.
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But it wasn't a real relationship with Jesus to me.
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I went to college and I drank, I partied, I chased girls.
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I did all the things.
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And then I graduated and started pursuing entrepreneurship.
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And my new addiction was creating and tracing business pursuits and hustle culture and grinding and all these other things.
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And again, I thought...
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I was going to be fulfilled by those things.
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And I just wasn't.
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So it was just like, man, like 23 years of just like trying to.
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feel this like, what is my purpose?
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Why am I here?
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Like, what does all this mean?
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Like, just never feeling like content, always seeking, always searching.
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And then finally, my mom had invited me back to church when I was 22 or 23, when I was 23, to a non-denominational church.
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And she was like, just come try it.
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And, you know, if you don't like it, you don't have to go.
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And I was like, okay, fine.
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So I went and I was like, wow, the worship was so pure.
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The message from the pastor was, it was all just about the word of God.
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It wasn't about these rituals or rules or anything like that.
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And it was just like, so inviting and, and, and so welcoming.
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And I was, I just kept going.
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And every Sunday I would, I would feel great for an hour while I was there.
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And then I would just go back to, you know, pursuing all the things on the side.
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And eventually I,
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one day at church, I just like kind of broke down and the pastor had shared the gospel.
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You know, Jesus came down to this earth, fully God, fully man, died on the cross for our sins so that we don't have to earn his favor.
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We don't have to earn our salvation.
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We can just put our faith and trust in him and he's going to dwell within us and we can have eternal life.
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And I was just like, man, I had heard that a million times, but I never, it had never like hit me in the heart that way that it did that day.
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And so I ended up giving my life to Jesus that day.
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And that was actually my rebirth, right?
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Like that was actually like, okay, like I'm an actual new creation.
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The Holy spirit dwells within me.
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Like now I have direction in my life.
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It was so dude, it was, it's so crazy to think about my life before then and my life after that.
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And it really is a supernatural thing.
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Like when you give your life to Jesus, it literally is a supernatural transformation.
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And I literally think about old me and the things that I used to do and, you know,
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the patterns of my behaviors and all these things.
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And it literally makes me sick to my stomach to think about like who I was.
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And man, like just how grateful I am to not be living that way anymore.
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So I had that relationship with the Lord.
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I still had faith, but I was still also pursuing faith.
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like again, hustle culture.
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I was still very achievement driven, you know, running marathons, hitting these times, growing on social media, building businesses.
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Like, yes, like faith was my pillar, but I was, I was still new to it all.
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And I was still very much interested in, you know, glorifying myself in a lot of ways.
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It's crazy, James, because I,
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That was August 7th, 2022 was when I gave my life to Jesus.
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And it was August 5th, 2023 that I had sudden cardiac arrest.
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August 6th was the day that I woke up in the hospital.
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And so August 7th was really like the first full day that I was coherent after having cardiac arrest.
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So it was literally like exactly a year apart to the day.
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where like I gave my life to Jesus.
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And then I was fully, like the first day where I was like fully coherent after the cardiac arrest, which I didn't even realize because I didn't remember the date that I gave my life to Christ.
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And then I ended up getting baptized the same day, which is an outward expression of an inward decision that you make.
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It was exactly a year apart.
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And I only found that out because my mom sent me a video a couple months back the day that I got baptized of me doing it.
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And I was like, oh my gosh, I looked at the date and I pieced the things together.
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And I was like, that is wild.
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So anyways, I remember being in the hospital and during that time being like, okay, this is, again, this is happening for me, not to me.
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I can't exercise.
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I can't train.
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I can't do all these things that I've placed my identity in, that I filled my time with, that...
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so, okay, I'm just going to dive into scripture.
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I'm just going to pray a lot more.
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I'm going to journal.
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And I just realized it started, God just started revealing to me
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where I had been falling short in my life, where I was still living for the world, still living one foot in and one foot out and how I really had an opportunity with, it's not my platform that he's blessed with, like it's his platform and he's just using, I'm just a vessel to help others, to point out that Jesus helped them with their health, their fitness lifestyle, their relationship with Jesus.
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Like that is what my platform is.
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That is why I'm here.
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But again,
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It taught me that my identity is not in any of these things that I do, the businesses that I build, my health, my fitness, even my relationships, my marriage, all this stuff.
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None of that defines who I am.
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Those are things that I get to do.
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But ultimately, my identity is in Christ and Christ alone.
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And I just had this feeling within me of like, wow.
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Like this is, this is truly what I'm here to do.
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It's like, I knew it, but I didn't really fully understand it until death.
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I'm staring death in the face.
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And then I come back to life and I'm like, wow.
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Like, and all the things that I used to worry about and get anxious about my to-do lists.
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Did this get done?
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Get that to get done.
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Did I do this?
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I never, dude, at the end of the day, my, my wife's great, great grandmother.
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No, her great grandmother is like,
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Unfortunately, not doing really well, very well right now.
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And she's 103.
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She's lived a super long life.
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But just being there and being like, wow, like, it wasn't long ago, she was 27.
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Like I was, you know, I think about like, wow, when I was like, you know, 13, 14, even when I was a kid, I was like, kind of just feels like it was yesterday.
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And life goes by so quickly.
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And it really just, it put a lot of things into perspective.
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9:27
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9:29
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9:37
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9:41
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9:44
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9:51
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9:56
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10:02
It's wild because you're a 20-year-old speaking the way most of us 50-year-olds speak.
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You were introduced to that vulnerability at a very young age.
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I want to explore, though, more of that identity.
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What does that mean when you're defining your life by your athleticism?
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And then you can no longer be an athlete.
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Like literally life or God is saying like, no, no, dude, you're like, you just had cardiac arrest.
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You're lucky to be alive.
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And now you don't get to do anything that you've been building your entire identity on.
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What is that process like?
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Because that's really, in a sense, a breaking down of the ego, which is what I hear you saying you experienced.
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Yeah, 100%.
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That's a great question.
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And one that I still, one that I'm still learning and one that I'm still wrestling with, honestly.
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And I do social media full time.
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And like, I know these things and I've went through this whole experience of having cardiac arrest, of having my identity stripped away.
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And now...
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Like being able to do those things again, I still have to catch myself and be like, okay, like, am I idolizing fitness right now?
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Am I idolizing my health?
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Like, what am I constantly thinking about?
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What is consuming my mind?
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Am I overworking myself in business and saying like, you know, it's for my family, it's for this.
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But really...
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It's just for my own ego.
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It's for my own pride and wanting to accomplish these things.
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Right.
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And so for me, it's constantly having to renew my mind.
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Right.
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Romans 12, 2 says, do not be conformed to the patterns of the world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.
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That way you can discern what is the will of God.
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And that's one that I constantly have to do daily because if I'm not renewing my mind, I'm going to start conforming to the patterns of the world because literally my job is putting my life out there on the Internet, you know, and I share like all these details of my life.
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I share the wins, the losses, like what's going on.
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And, you know, essentially like I'm judged.
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I'm constantly being judged by things.
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people, whether or not they want to follow me, whether or not they want to engage in my content for brands or companies or potential clients, if they want to work with me, like I'm constantly like being judged based on my performance.
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And if I put my identity in that performance of what I'm doing, it's very easy to let that
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infiltrate my mind, steal my joy.
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Like I've, my joy has risen and fallen based on how much money I'm making or how many views or likes or comments on my post or whatever, or how my health is looking, how my body looks or how fast I ran in a marathon.
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Like,
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at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter.
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And I'm so grateful to have a wife who is just my absolute rock, my best friend, my right hand.
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And she's, you know, we hold each other accountable.
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We're not afraid to tell each other like, Hey, like you either, you know, you're slacking, you got to pick it up here or like, Hey, like you need to pull back.
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You need to check yourself or, or just ask questions and just encourage each other out of love, um, to become more like Christ and, and, and less like ourselves.
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And that's really what it's all about.
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But for me, it's like,
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Yeah, I get out and I train my body every day.
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I eat well, I wanna be as healthy as I possibly can for my kids, for my future kids, for my wife, for my work and all those things.
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But at the end of the day, it's like, if I'm not spending time with the Lord in prayer and reading my Bible and just focusing on my relationship with God, that is where, that's like the fountain that everything pours from.
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It's the main fountain that pours into all the other buckets.
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And if I'm not doing that,
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I'm like, I wonder why all these buckets are empty because I didn't start at the top.
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How do you look at training now?
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Man, this has been, again, something that I'm still wrestling with, something that I'm still, yeah, something that I'm still wrestling with, dude.
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When I was 24, like right before I moved to Austin, right before I had a sudden cardiac arrest, I had my blood work done and the doctor was so concerned with how bad my hormone panel looked.
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Like my testosterone levels were
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99, I think it was my was made like testosterone level and my free testosterone was like a 7.3 or like just something absurdly low.
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I don't drink.
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I don't, you know, like I try to eat well.
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And it was like, man, I was just overtraining.
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so hard and I was under recovering I was sleeping like five hours a night you know because I was just in all my spare time I was just working on business stuff and I was constantly just under stress and then even over the past couple of years it's like I think I've gotten my testosterone up to like you know 350 or something like that which like is still low but it's like you know three and a half four x what it was which is a good thing but doing those things
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checks for me too because it's like hey yes they're numbers and you don't want to get hyper fixated on the numbers but they do leave clues and they do help reveal things so I've definitely gotten to points where I see myself start to overtrain I can see it in how like inflamed my body is in my
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mindset and you know how how energized and how focused i am throughout the work day and just like in my genuine joy throughout the day so my relationship with training now is it goes through seasons like i am training for the new york city marathon right now which i'm super stoked for um i was gonna try to run a sub three a sub three hour marathon which is like a 650 pace and i just realized i've been training i've run like 50 mile weeks so the past couple weeks and i was just like my body is not
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in the shape right now to go and do this.
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And I have like some really, really amazing things that the Lord's doors that the Lord's opening up from like a business standpoint that I know that I need to put a lot of effort and intention into.
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And it's like, if I'm just constantly thinking about food and training and sleeping and doing all these things that at the end of the day is just a fun pursuit for me,
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There's different seasons for it.
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Right.
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So I just recognize like, Hey, in this season, if, if I want to focus on these things from like a business standpoint that are going to help my family that are, you know, really more important than my fitness, like I'm still going to train, but like, I'm going to train in a way that makes me feel good.
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It makes me feel healthy.
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It gives me energy to go throughout the day.
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It's much more like, Hey, like I'm doing this
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One, because I love it and I enjoy it.
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And a lot of the times I get to hang out with my friends is when I'm running or lifting or doing all these things.
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It's just genuinely a hobby that I love and I enjoy.
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Doing a hard thing in the morning helps me work through the hard things that I'm gonna face throughout the day.
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That's why I train in the morning.
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But ultimately, it's like, hey, I'm trying to steward my body so I can be the best that I can be in all the other areas of my life for my wife, for my work, if I'm serving, whatever else it is.
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Because I know that if I'm constantly just focused on how fit I can get or hitting all these goals or whatever, I'm just going to be so focused on me.
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I'm going to be so focused on my sleep, my nutrition, all these other things that take my mind away from the bigger picture of life.
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I mean, this is something...
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So many of us struggle with, right?
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It's trying to find balance between, you know, all the different to-dos we have, all of our lists.
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I hear you kind of throwing out a few things like you're noticing symptoms.
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So you're trying to balance the symptoms that pop up.
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Faith.
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Are you practicing your faith religiously, for lack of a better word?
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You're using your wife as a sounding board.
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What do you recommend just everyday people do to gauge?
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When is the pursuit of health becoming unhealthy?
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Oh, when is the pursuit of health becoming unhealthy?
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I love that.
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You should pin that.
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That's a good question to ask people.
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I might steal that.
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When is health becoming unhealthy?
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So when I was getting my personal training certification back in college, nutrition coaching certifications, one of the things I learned was biofeedback.
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And so when you're working with a client,
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It's having them track their biofeedback.
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So those things being like your sleep quality, your energy levels, your mood, your focus, your sex drive, like there's, you know, five to like seven biomarkers that you're looking for.
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And so one of the things that I would do with my clients and I also do like kind of just to check in with myself.
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is how are your biomarkers?
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Like if I'm not sleeping well, if I find it hard to focus throughout the day, if I'm tired, if I'm feeling like I need to keep reaching for coffee or, uh, you know, nootropics or whatever else to, to get through my work.
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If I'm, you know, nodding off at all my computer at three o'clock, if I feel like I'm not recovering well from a workout, I'm like, yo, like,
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All right, I need to I need to check myself here.
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I might need to take a rest day.
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I might need to just get some more sleep.
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I might need to, you know, eat a little bit more carbs, a little bit more protein.
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I might need to just back off a little bit.
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So that's the biggest thing for me is like I've been doing this for long enough where
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you know, I'm not always the best at it, but sometimes I'm, you know, we're men.
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We try to just, you know, strong arm our way through everything.
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But the recognizing your biofeedback is, uh, is a huge way that I realized like, okay, this pursuit of, you know, health is, is actually not making me healthy.
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And, and honestly, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's,
19:30
health and fitness are two different things, right?
19:33
Like your health and your fitness are two different things is what I've realized is because typically when I am like the fittest that I've like, when I'm at my fittest, I'm usually not at my healthiest.
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And when I'm at my healthiest, when I feel my healthiest, I'm usually not my fittest.
19:49
Wait, I understand the part of when I'm at my fittest, I'm not at my healthiest, because sometimes our fittest is an extreme.
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But explain that when I'm at my healthiest, I may not be at my fittest.
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Because a lot of people associate health...
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Like, okay, if you're healthy, that means you are doing the things to keep yourself fit.
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So what do you mean by that?
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So I guess that just comes down to my definition of fit too.
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And like fit being, I can go out, I might be able to go out and run, you know, let's say like, I don't know, 17 miles, like hit some marathon paces, like just really be able to crush it in the gym and,
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that's like what I define as fit.
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And when I'm more focused on like being like as healthy as possible, like I might only be lifting three times a week, you know, four times a week, I'm probably not running that often.
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I'm, I'm getting, you know, eight, nine hours of sleep.
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Like,
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my diet is really locked in.
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I got very low inflammation.
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I'm leaner.
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I'm a healthier body weight versus again, when I'm fit, I might look a little bit fluffier.
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I might lose some definition in my muscles.
21:03
But like, again, there was a great analogy that I was taught in this nutrition coaching course too.
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It's like the triangle of awareness.
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And it's like, if you were to draw a triangle, it's like performance aesthetics and like just general health and longevity.
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Okay.
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And you can't try to optimize for all three, because if you go closer to this one, you're further away from this one and that one.
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So when I'm at the top of the triangle, when I'm at the performance triangle, trying to hit a marathon PR or a goal or something like that.
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I'm sacrificing my over my general health and longevity because running a marathon, like being like doing all these challenges, like it's not the healthiest thing.
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And then also aesthetics.
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I'm further away from there, too.
21:45
Like you think about a bodybuilder, which is like the peak of aesthetics, like they're not necessarily healthy and like in the place for longevity either.
21:54
Right.
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And so you're doing a lot of things that are pulling you away from those other things.
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So
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when I'm like, okay, I want to be as healthy as I possibly can.
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Typically, I land somewhere in between looking good and the health and longevity, but I'm further away from performance, if that makes sense.
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So when I'm not training for a race or a challenge or whatever else, I kind of want to be right in that middle, in that center for me.
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That really is the sweet spot.
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So I'm never going to be the most jacked, the most fit,
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Or Brian Johnson try to live till I'm 105.
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Like I'm not going to ever be any three of those, but I'm okay with that because I want to be in the center because I want to be able to perform.
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I want to be able to go out and go on runs and do hill sprints and bike rides and all these fun things.
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I want to look...
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pretty good, but I don't want to sacrifice.
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You know, I don't want to have to like track every macro count, every calorie in order to look shredded all the time.
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And I don't want to be a freaking weirdo biohacker to like try to live till I'm a hundred.
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So I'm like, I'll find myself somewhere in the middle.
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No disrespect by hackers.
23:04
No.
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Okay.
23:05
Yeah.
23:05
No, what we're talking about though.
23:08
A lot of his mindset, did the cardiac arrest create any physical limitations?
23:12
Like, can you just not
23:14
push it as far as you can physically anymore?
23:16
Or how does that show up?
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I think I've done more crazier fitness challenges since I had cardiac arrest, which is funny.
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Like I ran across the Grand Canyon.
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So I did the Rim to Rim to Rim, which was 43 miles.
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I think I've ran like four marathons.
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I've competed in high rocks, I've done
23:36
I've done some pretty, pretty cool fitness stuff, you know, compared to some of these other people out there, it's nothing.
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But for me, I was like, that's, that's pretty darn good.
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And, but it definitely took, it took a while to be able to get to that point where I was like, okay, I don't have any fear to go and do this again.
23:54
Like, cause there was definitely that a little bit at first, but as I can, dude, I just had to start from like going for walks.
24:00
Like I literally, when I got out of the hospitals, like I literally just started going for walks.
24:03
I lost like,
24:05
25 pounds like when I had after I had cardiac arrest because that was like that's a whole another thing where I was like oh like I can't work out so I didn't like earn my food you know so I was eating like you know one I was eating like one or two like bigger meals a day I was like I wasn't eating anything besides like
24:25
you know steak and like sweet potato and eggs and like raw milk i got like really and like i still love that stuff but it was weird like i would walk like 20 25 000 steps a day and i would eat like you know like less than 2 000 calories a day and then all of a sudden i was like whoa i'm like 175 pounds like well no hold on a second then so here you had this near-death experience but did it reveal that you had some um
24:53
kind of strange relationship to food and working out yeah 100 definitely definitely because it was like all of a sudden i was like i i didn't see food i saw food as like as nourishment but i also was just like oh like i'm not training as hard i don't need to eat as much so i was like i was intermittent fasting like pretty much every day
25:18
Was it connected to your hunger or was it connected to like, hey, well, I didn't run today, so I don't deserve to eat?
25:26
Because you mentioned that.
25:27
So I'm just curious, were you kind of not hungry or were you psychologically making yourself not hungry?
25:34
Yeah.
25:35
Yeah, I was psychologically making myself not hungry.
25:38
So what do you think that was all about?
25:40
My relationship with food.
25:42
And it's weird.
25:42
I'm hesitant to even say like relationship with the food because food is an inanimate object.
25:47
You can't have a relationship with it.
25:48
But basically like my mindset around food.
25:52
food right and it's something that i've had to really work on over the years um and be like if i'm trying to like lose some body fat right i'm like oh then i should train fasted even though like i know i shouldn't do that like but even in my head i'm like this is you i don't know i need to i need to eat less so it's
26:13
I don't know, man.
26:14
It's something I'm still, again, really trying to work through.
26:16
And I really appreciate you asking the question on this because it is definitely something that a lot of people struggle with.
26:23
I have this mindset, this philosophy that I took from my friend Zach, and he's a really big time creator.
26:30
He does...
26:33
recipes and a lot of awesome stuff.
26:35
But he he was like, food is either it's fuel or it's fun.
26:40
And when I kind of changed that mindset of like, oh, like this is fueling not just me for performance, but like just understanding that word performance, I had to fix my view on that.
26:51
Right.
26:51
Because it went from training in the gym, going for a run, whatever, like viewing that strictly as performance to being like, I got to perform.
27:01
right now, like we're performing, like we need to be mentally, physically locked in so that we can have a great conversation or I can put out the best work I possibly can.
27:12
Or for a mom who's got to have the energy, the strength to take care of her kids throughout the day or a dad who's got to go to work and do his job well as an electrician and then still have energy when he gets home for his family.
27:26
That is performance right there.
27:28
And it doesn't matter...
27:29
what your calorie burn is throughout the day, what the number on your watch says, or, you know, if you even go to the gym that day, it's like, we need, like, we all need food.
27:37
We need good quality nutrients that we're fueling our body with.
27:42
Like fuel is performance for life, not just health and fitness.
27:46
Like I said, like fitness should be...
27:48
working out should be part of our daily hygiene, I believe.
27:50
Just like movement should just be like brushing our teeth, like whatever.
27:53
It doesn't have to be.
27:54
You're going to the gym for an hour, crushing it, go for a run, whatever.
27:57
But like, you should be moving, stretching, trying to break a sweat every day, I believe.
28:03
And, you know, in order for us to see the adaptations, like we need to fuel the ability to go and do that and recover from it.
28:12
So
28:13
I've really had to shift it, my mindset around that.
28:16
And it was really interesting to look back at that time and be like, I just, I was so self-conscious, like about my body too.
28:25
Almost performing for other people, like doing things for other people's reactions.
28:30
Right.
28:30
And I was just like, man, well, I can't lift.
28:33
So like, I'm, I guess I'm just not going to eat as much.
28:37
Right.
28:37
And, and, and that's true for sure.
28:39
But to the point where like, I wasn't stepping on this, like I wasn't stepping on the scale every day.
28:44
I was just like, I was like proud of myself for not eating as much.
28:48
And then all of a sudden my roommate was like, dude, you don't look healthy.
28:52
And I was like, what do you mean?
28:53
And I like stepped on the
28:57
178 or something like that.
28:59
And I was like 200 pounds beforehand.
29:01
And I was like, Oh, like, Whoa.
29:04
And then I started to like, look at pictures of myself beforehand.
29:06
And I took like a picture of myself in the mirror and I compared them and I was like, dang, like I, this isn't it.
29:13
And then I got blood work done again.
29:14
And again, there was just things signaling like, yo, you need to stop fasting.
29:18
Your body's constantly stressed out.
29:20
Like you need to eat more.
29:21
And I was like,
29:22
wow, I started to feel so much better.
29:25
I started to have more energy.
29:26
I started to sleep better again.
29:27
And we go through those things and they're not, they're not bad things.
29:32
It's all just information.
29:33
It's all experiences.
29:34
And I am grateful.
29:36
I had that because I can use that testimony now to help others who, you know, have struggled with that too.
29:42
Now, your doctor never gave you a definitive reason why your heart stopped, right?
29:48
So where does your understanding of what happened stand today?
29:52
At the end of the day, I was running an all-out mile in Austin in the middle of summer.
29:58
It was 105 degrees.
30:00
It comes down to just like, I think I just overexerted myself to the point of, I put so much stress on my heart.
30:09
that went into cardiac arrest.
30:11
Like that happens, like sports exercise induced, sports induced cardiac arrest is a lot more common actually than I thought when I started to, you know, research it and dive into it.
30:22
Because honestly, if you would ask me what a cardiac arrest was before I had it, I was like, I don't know, like a heart attack.
30:28
You had just gotten the vaccine shot before that, right?
30:31
So do you think there was a connection there?
30:32
I mean, I definitely do.
30:34
Like I'm, I'm, I think there was my,
30:38
So funny.
30:38
If you ask my mom, she'll be like 100%.
30:40
There was, it was two years after, like almost to the day of like two years after I got the vaccine.
30:46
I got it literally just because I could, so I could play football in college.
30:50
Like so I could play my senior season.
30:52
Literally around that time,
30:53
Like Bronnie James, LeBron James' son had cardiac arrest the same week as me.
30:57
There was like, and there was like three other like college athletes that had cardiac arrest, something like that, like in the same week as I did.
31:05
And I just kept seeing it pop up again and again and again.
31:09
And it was all the research was showing like people like Dr. Peter McCullough, who have studied this stuff, who's a cardiologist up in Dallas, he was on Joe Rogan talking about
31:21
literally the repercussions of the vaccine on people's hearts.
31:24
So I definitely think it could be linked to that.
31:26
But at the end of the day, I just had to kind of give it to God and accept that like, hey, I may never know the answer to this and that's okay.
31:34
I just know that it's made me more conscious and more aware of like what I do.
31:38
You asked me about like my relationship with exercise and doing that now, it's like, I know when I need to pull back.
31:44
Like I was supposed to do my anniversary is tomorrow.
31:48
So I was like, I'll do my long run today instead of tomorrow.
31:52
And I was supposed to do 17 miles today.
31:55
And I was at 15 miles.
31:57
I was like, I am so spent.
31:59
Like my core body temperature is so high.
32:02
Like I need to just stop.
32:04
And like in the past, I would have just been through it because like I'm set up, I said, I'm going to do this.
32:09
I'm going to go out and do it.
32:11
At the end of the day today, I was like, bro, it's just not my day.
32:14
I'm just not feeling it.
32:15
Like, I'm just going to stop.
32:16
I know when I need to pull back.
32:18
And I don't, I don't, PR or ER is not a thing anymore.
32:21
I don't, I don't believe in that.
32:23
If we were to like break down the difference of, you know, pre, pre-dom before the cardiac rest and then now current dom, would you say that it's the difference between pre and current is presence and listening?
32:40
Yes.
32:40
Yes.
32:41
But also, also no in a way, because I wish I could say that I've never struggled with being an overachiever, with being a striver, with trying to, with focusing so much on my accomplishments and instead just being present.
33:00
But there's been so many times where like, I've still fallen short.
33:04
Like, again, I'm human, I'm always gonna fall short.
33:07
there's been like times with my wife where she's just like, I feel like you don't listen to me.
33:10
You know, I feel like you're just constantly just not present because you're thinking about work or you're thinking about this or you're thinking about those things.
33:17
And that's a hard pill to swallow.
33:20
And my pride or my ego wants to be like, no, like, you know, that's not true.
33:24
But when I really just go and pray for that, for God to reveal that I'm like, yes, like she's absolutely right.
33:32
But it's,
33:35
I'm a lot less, I'm still selfish in a lot of ways.
33:39
Truly, I think I am.
33:40
You're human.
33:41
I'm a lot less focused on the outcome now.
33:45
And I'm more focused on the inputs.
33:47
Like that's what I would say is, but like something I come back to all the time is like, at the end of the day, like I'm not in control of the outcomes, but I am in control of the inputs and the things that I consume, how I structure my day, the people I spend time with.
34:02
you know, what I say yes and no to, not burning the candle at both ends.
34:06
I'm very much more...
34:09
discerning in, in what I do.
34:13
And I try to do everything with intention so that I can give the best that I can.
34:16
But at the end of the day, realizing like, Hey, at the end of the day, like I am just simply a vessel to tell more people about Jesus, help people with their health and their wellbeing and, and try to just inspire and, and, and help out the next generation as much as I can.
34:32
That's really my mission and my passion.
34:36
And yeah,
34:37
Yeah, I would just say that I was a lot more outcome focused beforehand, whereas now I'm a lot more input focused.
34:44
It seems from my judgment that you're just, you're just, your light is even brighter.
34:49
You know what I mean?
34:49
Like you already had a bright light.
34:51
You were already coming from a very giving and connected place, but it's just, it just feels like the wattage is higher.
34:58
I love that.
35:00
I definitely feel that way.
35:03
Most days.
35:04
It's funny, man, because I feel like I'm still like, I'd be lying if I said like, yeah, my light shines this bright all the time where I'm so energized like this all the time because, dude, I love this.
35:14
Like this fills my cup up, being able to chat with you, do these podcasts, creating content.
35:18
Like I love that stuff.
35:20
But then there's other times where like, man, it's like I'll have a tough day or you just get stressed out by a lot of things that are on my plate.
35:27
Yeah.
35:28
And I won't, my light won't shine as bright that day.
35:31
So for me, I'm just, I'm, I am trying to, one of the things in my life is to, to be more steady.
35:38
And like, cause sometimes I go like, I'm really up and then I'm really down.
35:41
I'm really up.
35:41
I'm really down.
35:42
I'm trying to just be more steady in that state of like, okay, here's the line.
35:46
Like, I just want to be like above the line and stay there.
35:48
I don't need to be like, you know, top of the graph going off of it all the time.
35:53
That's kind of exhausting.
35:54
It's okay to have a bad day every now and again, but it's like, you know, how quickly you can recover, how quickly you can get back to here.
36:00
That's something I've been big on recently.
36:03
It's just like when you get knocked off course or whatever, it's like, how quickly can you recover?
36:07
and get back on track.
36:08
Same thing with fitness and your health.
36:09
It's like if you over-train all the time and it's like you do nothing for a couple of days and then you go out and crush yourself, you can't recover well.
36:16
And so you're gonna be back up here.
36:17
It's like, if I can just, boom, daily inputs, inputs, inputs, inputs, I'm gonna be able to stay right here.
36:22
I'm gonna recover well.
36:23
And we keep being able to give the best that I can to whatever I do.
36:26
Here's a question I ask everyone.
36:28
If you could wave a magic wand, bring back one ancestral practice, what would it be and why?
36:35
Oh, cool.
36:38
Wow, that's a really good question.
36:41
I actually recently learned about in like the older biblical times where they would go to bed at like, I don't know, whenever the sun went down.
36:53
So if it was like the sun went down, depending on the time of year, it'd be like, I don't know, seven, eight o'clock, maybe nine o'clock, whatever.
37:00
They would go to sleep
37:02
for a couple hours and then they would wake up in the middle of the night and have like this time from like 12, one o'clock till like, you know, three or four.
37:10
And they would like dedicate themselves to, to prayer, to reading scripture, whatever it was.
37:16
And then they would go back to sleep and they would wake up when the sun comes up.
37:18
So they would slip, they would go to sleep like after dinner, they would have that time.
37:22
And then they would, they would wake back up.
37:24
And I think that's just a really cool time or it's, it's really cool that to think about, man, like,
37:32
have especially for men having that time where you can just where you can think you can spend time with god where you can just you can just be present in when the world's kind of asleep i think that's just a really cool thing and and and with that just um people eating together you know like that that whole concept of sitting down having dinner together early dinners i'm a
37:57
commutal dinners, earlier dinners, going to bed early.
37:59
I don't know.
38:01
I felt that time in the middle of the night because I've definitely had times where I wake up in the middle of the night, I can't go back to sleep and I'll just like spend some time in prayer reading or whatever.
38:10
And I'm like, this is amazing.
38:11
I should do this every night.
38:13
And then the next day, you know, I'm like, nevermind.
38:15
So anyway.
38:16
Awesome.
38:17
Thank you so much again, Dom.
38:18
And how can people work with you or learn more about, do you take clients or is it more just they find your content and that's how they work with you?
38:29
Yeah, right now I don't have an offer.
38:30
I'm not trying to sell anything.
38:32
I don't have, I'm literally just, if you want to go check out more of my content, Dominic Fusco on any platform and search me up, buy my name, hit me up.
38:42
Would love to chat, would love to connect.
38:43
And yeah, I'm just trying to serve through my content right now.
38:46
I'm just trying to create as many good things that will help others as possible.
38:52
Well, keep it up and love seeing you.
38:55
It's been a while since we got to talk.
38:57
And thank you all for joining us today on the episode of Everyday Ancestral.
39:02
Remember, stay curious.
39:05
Thank you so much for joining me on Everyday Ancestral.
39:09
If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe so you don't miss the next one.
39:14
You can find the show notes, links, and resources mentioned at eatpluck.com.
39:18
That's E-A-T-P-L-U-C-K dot com.
39:24
And hey, if you know someone who'd get something out of this, share it with them too.
39:30
Stay curious, live well, and keep it ancestral.