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Jelly Roll (2025) - 300lb Transformation, Sobriety and Grand Ole Opry · The Joe Rogan Recap

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  Welcome to the Joe Rogan recap, and before we get going close,
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  follow us right here on Spotify to make sure you get sight of
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  our latest eisodes in your feed. O Today we're really digging
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  into a story that is, I mean, it's just a monumental personal
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  transformation. It's so much more than just a
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  weight loss story. Absolutely.
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  We're talking about a complete radical shift away from, you
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  know, total self destruction. Losing over £300, kicking severe
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  Food and Drug addiction. It's the whole package.
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  And completely rewiring his brain to pursue a life of well
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  sustained health and and real purpose.
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  You know, the word transformation almost feels too
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  small for what we're looking at here.
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  It really does. The sources show someone who
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  went from like actively feeling himself dying to living a life
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  where physical and mental challenge is the new normal.
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  I mean, to give you an idea of the physical change, yeah, he
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  had to change his OR ring size 5 different times 5.
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  Times. That's insane.
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  It really is the comparison that just floored me.
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  Was he lost a whole? David Goggins at his biggest.
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  Wow, just think about that for a SEC.
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  He literally shed the weight of an entire elite athlete.
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  He went from a point where taking seven steps meant he had
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  to take a break, yeah, to now he can just casually run 2 1/2
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  miles. It's a completely rebuilt person
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  and that didn't happen because of some, you know, fleeting
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  emotional moment. He had those before.
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  Right, he'd yo yoed like 60 to 80 lbs before, just stuck
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  between 480 and 560 lbs all through 2022.
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  Exactly. This time, the pivot was
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  intentional. It was rooted in just brutal
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  honesty. And the catalyst for that was
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  his 39th birthday. He had this stark realization
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  that well, that his survival was on the line.
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  He said he could feel himself dying, he'd already had multiple
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  heart issues and he said very bluntly, I've never met a
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  £500.40 year old. That's a deadline.
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  A real 1. It is, and to deal with it, he
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  used that Tony Robbins idea. You know that people grossly
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  overestimate what they can do in 90 days.
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  But they drastically underestimate what's possible in
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  a year. Or a decade.
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  Exactly. It was a shift to the long game.
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  A lifetime of small intentional steps beats 3 months of a crash
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  diet every single time. That reframing is everything,
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  but, you know, to make that kind of intentional change, you first
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  have to understand why you got there, and that takes
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  vulnerability. It absolutely does.
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  The sources point to that quote from the Boy, the Mole, the Fox
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  and the Horse. What's the bravest thing you've
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  ever said? Help.
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  That was it. For someone whose whole identity
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  was built on being tough and self reliant, asking for help
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  was the first real victory. So what did that look like?
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  It wasn't just a vague cry for help, was it?
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  No, it was very specific. He reached out totally blind to
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  Gary Breca, and he started intensive therapy with a food
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  addiction expert, Mary B. And they spent two full weeks
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  just on the why. Not on what to eat or how to
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  exercise, but why are you carrying this weight by the self
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  medication with food? It was all about the root cause.
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  And the first pieces of advice he got sounds so simple, but for
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  him, impossible. Poorly.
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  Get 10,000 steps and do a cold plunge.
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  At over 520 lbs, he said 10,000 steps was just crazy talk.
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  Right. So he was realistic.
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  He aimed for 1/2 mile walk in a 6 minute cold plunge.
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  But that led to this, this pivotal moment of consistency.
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  This is the part you really need to hear.
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  That first Monday morning. It was, in his words, pissing
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  rain. The old version of him would've
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  just rolled over and gone back to bed.
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  Easy excuse. But he realized if he did, that,
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  if he chose comfort that morning, his body would learn
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  that he didn't mean what he said.
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  He was breaking a cycle of lying to himself.
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  Building that internal trust back up.
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  So he went out, he walked that half mile in the soaking rain,
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  and when he got back, his family was outside cheering for him.
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  And that's when it hit him. His addiction wasn't just his
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  problem. It was hurting his family, his
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  relationship with his wife, his ability to just play football
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  with his son. That's a powerful anchor.
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  It shifts the why from just saving yourself to, you know,
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  serving the people you love. And that cemented his
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  commitment, which then allowed him to really dive into the
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  biology of it all. He realized it wasn't a moral
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  failure. It wasn't a lack of willpower.
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  It was a biological loop, and food addiction is so tricky
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  because you can't just quit. You need it to survive and it's
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  everywhere. Which is why understanding the
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  biology is non negotiable. He really urges people to look
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  past the standard blood tests. Everyone gets their A1C checked.
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  His was around 6.4 for 15 years pre diabetic.
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  Concerning, sure, but that's not the whole story.
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  Not even close. The real shock was his insulin
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  level. It was over 40.
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  Just for context, a healthy person's insulin should be under
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  5. Under 5, so he's at 40.
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  OK, So what does that actually mean?
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  If your insulin is that high and you're trying to lose weight,
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  what's happening in your body? It means you can't burn fat,
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  period. High insulin is a metabolic
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  roadblock. Its job is to store energy, so
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  when it's always high, your body is in storage mode 24/7.
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  So even if you're fasting or cutting calories.
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  Your body can't access its own fat stores.
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  It's locked away. You're fighting a battle.
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  Your own biology is rigged to make you lose.
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  That explains so much about why traditional dieting fails for so
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  many people. It does, and because he was
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  worried about some of the side effects of the newer weight loss
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  drugs, like severe reflux from GLP ones, he took a more
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  conservative route. A slow and steady approach.
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  He opted for a low dose of an older drug, 500 milligrams of
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  metformin daily. And the results were just
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  staggering. In one year, his fasting insulin
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  dropped from over 40 to 4.6. Right into the healthy zone, his
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  A1C went from 6.4 down to 5.4. And this one is huge.
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  His inflammation marker C reactive protein or CRP.
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  It went from the sixes down to 1.2 so.
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  You're saying his body went from being in a state of constant low
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  grade war with itself to being basically inflammation free?
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  Essentially yes, and that allowed his hormones to recover.
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  Obesity had just destroyed his testosterone.
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  He had the levels of a child down in the 50s.
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  Well, it should be up in the seven hundreds.
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  And his free test, the testosterone your body can
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  actually use was 2.3 almost nonexistent.
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  So what did they do? By reducing estrogen, which fat
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  produces, and adding a small amount of external testosterone,
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  his free test shot up to 149. So now his body finally has the
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  tools it needs to burn fat and build muscle.
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  Exactly. The biological roadblocks were
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  gone, but now the real mental battle could begin.
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  Right, because his therapist said what, 80 to 90% of
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  compulsive eating happens between the ears, not the teeth.
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  It's an all day loop. He realized he was only eating
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  maybe 20% of the food he was thinking about eating.
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  The obsession was the real problem.
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  So he needed a way to interrupt that loop right there in the
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  moment and he. Developed this technique in
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  therapy. The three Rs.
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  OK, what are they? First, reset.
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  The second you feel that urge, you physically step out of the
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  pantry or the kitchen. You break the pattern.
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  OK, get out of the danger zone. 2nd reconnect you ask yourself
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  who is this? Is this the sad 15 year old boy
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  looking for comfort? Is this the stressed out 39 year
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  old? You identify the old story and.
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  Then the third are. Reengage.
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  You make a new conscious choice. Maybe it's just grabbing a pinch
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  of salt to kill the craving. Maybe it's grabbing radishes or
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  celery. You make a small, healthy choice
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  and you follow through. You're retraining your brain,
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  one small decision at a time. And on the diet side, he went
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  full whole food keto, cut out bread, pasta, all the triggers.
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  And that led to one of the wildest things in the entire
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  story. The color blindness.
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  This is fascinating. After nine months with no sugar,
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  he started seeing color. With this incredible new depth,
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  he could tell the difference between hunter green and emerald
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  green. He noticed these bright purple
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  tulips he'd never seen before. And the theory is that the
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  rampant inflammation in his body was basically forcing his brain
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  into survival mode. Yeah, non essential systems like
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  nuanced color perception just get downgraded.
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  Once the inflammation was gone, his brain had the bandwidth to
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  see the world in high definition again.
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  It's such a powerful metaphor for the whole journey.
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  It really is. And you realize he had to change
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  his environment too. He has this great line.
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  You imitate your atmosphere always.
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  New playground, New play. He started surrounding himself
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  with people like Cam Haynes, David Goggins, Jocko.
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  People whose default setting is challenge, not comfort.
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  And that extended to his digital world, too.
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  He took a full year off his phone.
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  A whole year and when he came back, no social media.
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  He swapped those 62nd clips of like bar fights for long form
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  educational stuff like the Outdoor Boys channel.
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  He swapped digital junk food for digital whole food.
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  That mental shift then translated to his physical life
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  with his Hit the Hill philosophy.
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  It's. So simple, but so brilliant.
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  You voluntarily do the hardest part of your day first.
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  So if you're on a run, you find the steepest hill and you go up
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  it. Right away you front load the
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  struggle. Once you've done that,
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  everything else in the day just feels easier.
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  The emails, the meetings, all of it.
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  It builds that resilience, and it feeds into his bigger
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  realization that peace doesn't come from rest.
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  Peace comes from struggle and challenge.
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  He stopped trying to please everyone, realizing you can't,
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  and started focusing on just being useful.
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  And that search for useful challenge led him to bow
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  hunting. It did.
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  It started partly out of necessity because of a legal
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  issue with firearms, but it became this moving meditation.
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  You have to be totally present the Fredbear quote.
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  Nothing clears a troubled mind like shooting a bow.
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  Because if your mind wanders for a second, you miss and it's
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  incredibly difficult. Rifle hunting is from a
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  distance. Bow hunting you have to get
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  within 20 or 30 yards of the animal.
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  Which is an entirely different skill set and he made mistakes.
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  Oh yeah, he talked about putting on a hoodie in the blind and the
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  tiny sound of the fabric scared off 3 deer.
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  It's a constant learning process.
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  But the connection he made was spiritual.
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  The food he was hunting was so different from what he used to
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  eat. Totally wild game is incredibly
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  nutrient dense, twice the protein of beef for fewer
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  calories, and it's clean. The act of hunting and providing
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  became this connection to like our deepest human DNA.
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  Returning to the tribe with food, it reframes food from
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  being an escape to being a source of sustenance and
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  connection. Exactly.
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  So when you look at this entire story, the biology, the mindset,
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  the physical grind, yeah, what's the one big take away for
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  someone? Listening.
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  It's that huge mindset shift. He stopped searching for
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  happiness. That's a feeling.
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  It comes and goes. Instead, he started searching to
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  be useful. And in being useful to his
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  family, to himself, he found a consistent state of fulfillment
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  and, well, happy this. It became the byproduct, not the
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  goal. And you see it play out in his
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  life. He told this story about riding
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  a four Wheeler with his son on this scary hill where his son
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  had broken his wrist before. But this time he was fit, he was
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  clear headed, he could handle it.
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  He had the strength to be the parent his son needed in that
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  moment. That's utility.
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  His whole journey has become this public path of redemption.
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  It shows that what seems impossible, going from expecting
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  to die to getting inducted into the Grand Ole Opry, can be done.
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  He says God will make things bigger than your dreams if you
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  just live your life true. Which brings us to our final
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  thought for you to chew on. If this mindset of seeking
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  utility and embracing voluntary difficulty, choosing to hit the
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  hill every single day can lead to such a radical
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  transformation, how many of our own easy choices are holding us
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  back? How many of our comforts are
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  actually limiting us from achieving what we think is
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  impossible? You have to ask yourself, are
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  you hitting the hill or are you taking the easy left turn?