It’s Monday. We’re gonna talk about my friend Jason who I’m gonna wait to join. His journey from being like really really focused on exercise and fitness to switching to circadian health. So let me see if I can actually add him in. So good morning everyone. We’re gonna talk about that transition. There he is. I’m going in. Off to a good start. It’s rainy and kind of gross here. I still had my breakfast outside under the covered porch because it’s important even though there’s rainy cloudy days it’s still important to get outside. Speaking of which, there is Jason. It’s his sidewalk anyway. Hello. Oh sorry, I turned it around. It’s a lovely view of the sidewalk there. Yes, I don’t know how to turn it around. Hold on. This is my first IG live in a long time. I think it’s the third. There you go. The third little button over that’s like a. I see it now. Amazing. So yeah, I was telling everyone that we’re gonna just chat about your journey from being super focused on fitness and exercise, which you obviously still implement exercise and movement. You don’t just say I’m only gonna focus on circadian health, but how that actually happened. And you are a contributor to our health alchemy bundle. So I’m gonna direct everyone who’s watching the stream to go to the link in Jason’s bio to grab the health alchemy bundle to support his work. And yeah, so where do you want to start? Well, we could start with my story. That’s obviously the first place that most people would start. So yeah, so I started off always big into the fitness. I’ve been working out since 1990. Sylvester Stallone got me into working out and doing all that stuff. And then I had to go to college and I didn’t know what I wanted to do. But I mean, the only thing that I’d like to do was basically work out and eat. At the time, I was just following like the standard American diet, but just bodybuilding style. So everything was like super size. It was super, super duper low fat, super duper low cholesterol, very, very high carbs, very, very high protein. So back then, I was like, I got up to 222 pounds, all natural and whatnot. But I probably had like 20-25 percent body fat. But I would have told you I looked like Arnold in his bodybuilding days. So that’s how delusional I was back then. But after college, I started my business in 2007. So I started as a fitness boot camp. And basically, we started outside and then basically had to find a space indoors because it gets cold up here in Ohio. And yeah, that’s what I led with. So I probably, it was all I talked about was fitness, nutrition. I didn’t even have my own nutrition program because I was still on the little bit of a chunky side when I started my business. So I just took other people’s nutrition stuff and I taught that to other people. But yeah, that was what I led with. I thought that in order to be healthy, all you need is your fitness and your diet. And if you get those right, you are healthy. And obviously, I learned pretty quickly that that is not correct. So there’s been two times in my life I was sick. So probably mid-2000s, like right before I opened my business, I suffered with anxiety, depression, thoughts of suicide pretty much weekly. And yeah, because living an indoor life, video game addiction, I had a Dr. Pepper addiction. I would come home from school 3.30 and I drink four to six Dr. Peppers before bedtime. So not good. But finding my business that really helped me get out of my depression gave me a purpose. That’s something that I always believe that you truly need in order to move forward and become optimal. But then the second time I got sick was, it probably started right by 2014, 2015. But I really started paying attention in 2017, 2018. That’s when I started trying to find more information about why I’m getting sick because I was following the perfect, what I thought was the perfect workout routine, what I thought was the perfect diet. At that time, I was on keto, nutritional cleansing, detox, all that stuff. But I had hormone issues. That’s when I found Dr. Jack Cruz for the second time. First time I found him was 2013, read his book, implemented his protocols for about two weeks, but I wasn’t ready for that stuff. I mean, I still had the fitness programs to sell you, the supplements and the nutrition. I just wasn’t ready. They say when the student is ready, the teacher appears, or in my case, reappears. I found him from Nick Pinal, who’s also in the bundle. It started as EMF. Then from there, obviously, you’ll find Jack from EMF and whatnot. I went down that path and 30 days was life-changing, even though I did things wrong because I did things in the back of my house. By then, UVA had already come up. I missed the sunrise, but I felt remarkably better just doing that. Since then, 2020 is when I officially closed my gym to focus on this stuff. I’ve been teaching it ever since and diving deep into it. Yeah. Carrie shut down her gym in 2020. I got into this stuff in 2020 because I couldn’t get pregnant. I think we all have different paths to it. I love that you just said you didn’t do it perfectly because I think that everyone is so ingrained in this diet and supplement and nutritional protocols. We’ve done it all. We’ve tried all of it and tried to do it to the letter, exact measurements of supplements, weighing out our food, tracking and measuring it. Then we find this information about sunlight and hormones and metabolism and think we have to do it 100% perfectly for it to work. What you just said is all I was doing was getting out there at UVA, which that’s a really powerful time for hormones. Maybe we can even touch on that. You weren’t even getting the sunrise. I always think it’s important for people, and I know you teach it as well, it’s important for you to get out there for sunrise. If you’re just getting started, just go outside in the morning. Yeah. That bright light is super important. The lux can get up to, I don’t know what the high can be, but like 100, 150,000. Then indoors, it’s like 300, 500 is the max if you have artificial lights on. Yeah. Your brain needs that. If your brain’s not getting that signal, and then it’s not just even the brightness, the brightness is super important, the lux, but also all those aromatic amino acids in your eyes capturing those photons, that’s creating neurotransmitters, neurohormones, stimulating metabolism. Most people miss that. That’s a really easy way to get stuck on the diet and exercise and supplement train, that most people are still stuck in that paradigm heavily. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. Everyone that’s just joining, I’m talking with Jason. We’re talking about his journey from fitness into circadian health. I know you still do some fitness stuff. We can talk about that and what you’ve contributed to the bundle, but if you want to support Jason’s work, head to the link in his bio to grab the Health Alchemy Bundle. He’s one of our amazing contributors and has been teaching this stuff really since 2020. You’ve been around a lot longer than some of the other people in the bundle, which is pretty cool. What’s in your offering that’s in the bundle? I have two courses and the link isn’t actually in my bio yet. I’ll post it up after this. Okay. I have two courses in there. The first one is my circadian badass course. It’s basically a 14-day introductory course into basically circadian biology. Originally, I had the idea to make 14 days, 14 videos. Originally, I had the idea to make it 5-minute videos, but after the first one, I was like, no, that’s not going to be possible. I just go on and on about this stuff. It’s 11-minute videos. There’s one day, I forget which lesson it is, but it goes over. 20 minutes, but it just introduces you to all this stuff, sunrise, cold, when to eat, when not to eat, when to work out, all that stuff. And then my other course that’s in there is my healthier planning course. So my business coach, Pat Rigsby, he always says, if you don’t plan your day the day before, you’re basically hoping that the next day for you sucks. Because basically, you’re going to be dragged and pulled in other directions, and you’re not going to be focused on what needs to be done. So there’s certain things that are urgent, there are certain things that are important. And there are certain things that have deadlines. But not everything is important. And that’s what a lot of people will do, they’ll just make a to do list, they won’t have any priorities, and they’ll just be running around like a chicken with its head cut off just trying to do everything that they possibly can. And then that’s how you lose energy, that’s how you do all kinds of things. So that really shows you how to plan your day, create what I call buckets of time, because we don’t want to create blocks of time, because that’s like a mental block. So we want to create pockets of time where we can focus our energy and focus what we’re doing in that time. And then you can obviously stack different things in there. So you can stack sun, grounding, and different kinds of things that you’re doing throughout the day. So different kind of health habits in with your daily plan that’s going to move you forward towards your purpose and help serve others and serve yourself. And even if you don’t have a business, I mean, it can help you help get your kids more healthy. So I always in my planner, I always put like little sun shines next to my kids. So I will physically grab them in the morning and pull them out for whenever they wake up. So yeah, just planning your day, one of the big, big things that I think is super, super important. So when people get so pulled into dopamine traps, you know, the I keep saying it on a lot of these lives that I’ve been doing with the bundle contributors that most people, they start their day, looking at their phone, you know, they’ve got the brightness of the noonday sun in June in their face at before sun is even up. And so your brain’s already like kicked into overdrive with cortisol, dopamine, and it’s getting hijacked before you even start your day. And so I think somebody asked in the chat, what is circadian health? It’s aligning your brain and your eyes, maybe you have a different definition, but aligning your body and the clocks, every single, single organ system, your skin health, hormones, everything has a circadian clock in front of it. And so circadian health is aligning yourself with a natural light and dark signals. And most people are misaligned. Most people have gut issues, detox issues, skin issues. And there’s a clock in your brain and your body that sets off all these different systems and helps them to brilliantly work. So what would you say? Would you add anything to that? Why? We say circadian health is all encompassing for health. So you’ve got different branches of it as well. So you’ve got circadian fitness. You’ve got circadian nutrition. So sun is up, kitchen’s open, sun is down, kitchen’s closed. I also kind of have that for gym is open, gym is closed, depending on where the sun is. So yeah, I mean, it all matters. I mean, we’re governed by the light and dark cycles. Most people in this space, they just talk about the light, but it’s also about the darkness. If we don’t get that darkness, there’s certain things that need to happen. And if they don’t happen, then we end up like modern humans and have modern problems. And we’re over at Starbucks and doing things like that. So things we’re not supposed to be doing. Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s so true. If I focus on the light and getting out in morning light, which is really, really important, but there’s a purpose for darkness. There’s a purpose for winter. There’s a reason why you should be able to embrace cold weather and dark weather. There’s a benefit to your body. We’re not always supposed to be in sun mode. We’re not always supposed to be in vitamin D mode. We’re also supposed to go into melatonin mode, which is where all that, the fasting people talk about autophagy, apoptosis, and cell repair. Well, guess what? If your melatonin production is in the toilet, because you were blasting your eyes and your skin with all this artificial light at night, you’re not getting all those benefits of fasting that the fasting and the diet and nutrition people are telling you that you’re getting from doing all this rigid dieting and restriction. It’s not, you’re not getting the same benefit if you’re blasting yourself with artificial light at night. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. That was the issue that I had with the hormone problem upside down, cortisol, melatonin. Yeah. So yeah. Yeah. That happens to me on carnivores. Like I’m doing this really strict diet and you know, I think we’re not supposed to be in ketosis all the time. I know you’ve got some great posts on your page about that. So definitely everybody follow Jason after this talk, but it’s not only just that we’re not supposed to be in ketosis all the time, but we also have to give our body the time to rest and repair. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I’m fasting right now. I’m fasting Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I typically do like a longer intermittent fast, like 20, 24 hours, but yeah, yeah. Waking up for, so my, my bootcamp classes, first one was 5 15 AM. I lived about a half an hour away. So I was like waking up, waking up 4 30 AM, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and eventually I did it every day. Cause I opened up a couple other locations, but doing that, I would sometimes I would work out before the clients got there. Sometimes I’d be working out with them. Sometimes I’d work out after them. And then sometimes the last class was 7 30. So I wouldn’t get home until or wouldn’t finish till 8 15 and get home about nine o’clock. So, and then do it again. So yeah. Yeah. And I was, I was eating like right before bed during those days. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I did a podcast going over my old food log. I was basically eating. I had like a 19 hour eating window, so yeah. Wake up at 4 30, eat, bed nine, 45, 10 o’clock, eat. It’s just destroying, destroying me. And you’ve got to just acknowledge that there’s, there’s, there’s all these people who are going to give you their advice based on what they, they know at the current time, but you don’t know where that’s going to lead you. So it’s, it’s up to you to follow your heart and know what the truth is. So yeah, definitely. And I will second, like the most inflamed that I was, the most of my hormones struggled is when I was teaching yoga classes from 6 00 AM all the way until seven o’clock at night. You know, I had my day kind of sandwiched with these classes. I was starving. I would eat a big bowl of fruit when I got home thinking the fruit was healthy, you know, at nine 30 at night or dried fruit with nuts. And I would just eat right before bed. I’d be working out three times a day, you know, and then at my seven o’clock PM class was like a power yoga class. And so I was doing all the handstands and all the arm balances and all this, like getting really hot and sweaty and vigorous exercise, like until nine o’clock at night. And I think that’s one thing that a lot of people don’t understand is that you really shouldn’t be doing vigorous exercise so close to bed. What would you say the optimal times, because I get this question quite often, what would you say the optimal times for people to exercise would be? Well, the study showed like late afternoon, early evening is when you’re going to have the highest ability for cardiac output and also protein synthesis. But I mean, I don’t really follow that. I like to like I would be working out now. That’s typically when I like to do it because the sun is facing because my garage gym is right behind me and the sun is right there. So I typically like to do it like nine o’clock, ten o’clock. But sometimes I mean, I got two kids, so schedules change. You got to do it when you when you can fit it in. Sometimes I’ll break it up into two workouts, three workouts, just like 10 minutes here, 15 minutes there. It just depends. I mean, I’m always doing it. Never. Usually never when it’s dark. Sometimes I have to do it before the sunrise, but that’s very, very rare. Yeah. And I never work out before five thirty. I’ve probably done since 2018 probably three, three or four times. And one of those times was my daughter threw up at 3.30 a.m. and I couldn’t get back to sleep. Yeah. But yeah, so I would say when the sun is up, gym is open, sun is down, gym is closed. Yeah. Yeah. So. I think overcomplicating it and trying to hit a specific window is really just silly. You know, I think movement is better than no movement. Don’t sit on your butt all day, get outside, get in the sunshine, ground, move around. Don’t try to be perfect with like, it’s got to be at 4 p.m. This may not fit into your life. And then what are you just not going to do it? It’s better to do it than not, but keep it away from bedtime. Try not to do it too early in the morning because you want your morning to start in a more restorative manner because that’s we want cortisol to be as natural as possible in the morning. Use the inputs of sunlight, nutrition. Don’t stress your body out. Like I said, looking at your phone is one of the most underrated things that people are doing to mess up their cortisol in the morning and skipping breakfast and heading straight to coffee and or going to the gym at five o’clock in the morning because you think that you’re getting ahead of the day by your event. You’re jacking up your cortisol doing that, right? Yeah. Yeah. So everything’s either everything can be a stress to the body if you can continue to do it because you think it’s because somebody said it’s the healthiest thing. So I always I when I had that that boot camp, I had that mentality like you’ve got to get up and rise and grind, rise and grind. Yeah. And that’s what ground me into hormone issues and all that. So but I did a lot of stupid things when I was younger and I’m very thankful for for doing those things because the things were more noticeable, noticeable to me and I did it that late 30s and took care of it in my late 30s rather than waiting till my 50s or 60s. Yeah. So it’s got to take care of it. Listen to your body. Your body is always giving you singles and whatnot. So yeah. And I think, you know, people get into this thinking of like they’re beyond repair. And I always say you’re only beyond repair if you say you are, you know, I’ve seen people in their 50s and 60s implement this work and have tremendous results. So it’s high. It’s highly possible. You know, I didn’t get into this work until I was in my 40s, like 41, 42. And again, I’m turning 46 in about three weeks and I look better now than I did at 26. And it’s not some supplement protocol or some stringent diet. It’s a local seasonal diet, but it’s really implementing these principles consistently. Not perfectly. I’ve got two kids, sometimes one is screaming for two, three hours in the middle of the night. And they don’t care. They just go through teething and all kinds of crap. They get sick. And so you don’t have to be perfect, but you do have to be consistent. You know, you can’t just do it for two weeks and then quit and expect it to do something like it’s, it’s cumulative of just showing up daily and doing the best that you can. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Consistency over motivation. So you can be highly motivated and, but that motivation is always going to, going to win because life is going to, life’s going to come in and grab you. So Mr. Resistance, he’s always there. You just gotta, you just gotta have the habits and build them up and slowly you become a different person. So just like checkpoints and turning points and you just got to reach the next turning point or checkpoint and, and you become stronger and yeah, certain things that you used to do, you don’t do anymore. Exactly. Yeah. That’s helpful. So anybody watching, Jason’s one of the contributors to our health alchemy bundle. We’ve got about $6,500 worth of resources in there, including two of Jason’s courses. And we’ve got movement, circadian health, light environment, nutrition, I mean, EMF, which we talked about, cause you kind of got into this through Nick’s work, who Nick is one of the contributors. He’s been around talking about non-native EMF for forever. And it’s still one of those fringe topics. I just did a post on AirPods this morning and those always get a lot of attention because it’s just, you know, it still drives me crazy. Like I was watching this hormone doctor do literally do a real talking about migraine headaches in perimenopause while she’s wearing AirPods. I’m like, is this real life? Like are you actually telling women about migraine headaches and hormone issues while you’re wearing AirPods in your reel? I, the irony is insane. People just don’t know. They literally don’t know. And it’s, it’s really foundational. You know, when you talk about hormone health and non-native EMF, I mean, the information is there, the science is there, but you just have to go looking for it because a lot of it’s suppressed or hidden, but the information is there. And Nick does a beautiful job of pulling that all together in his work. So, yeah, yeah, yeah. AirPods is one thing I’m really attacking. So I’ve got, I wear like a EMF fanny pack and I’ve got the Children’s Health Defense, their flyer. I printed it off, put it in there. Every time I see somebody with AirPods, I hand it out to them. Yeah. Kids, you know, kids are the most vulnerable population. I think that you’re putting non-native EMF near their heads. And with my son, I knew about all this stuff. I didn’t even have a baby monitor in his room. I didn’t. I had one that plugged into the wall, and then I just realized I could hear him if I needed to hear him in our house. I just kind of left my door open. I never needed a monitor for him. And he’s fine. Yeah, we got a non-native EMF one that Nick recommended. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He does a good job of give it because he’s got kids, too, or he has one kid. He’s got resources for people who have kids because kids are kids are much more vulnerable to non-native EMF. Like their blood brain barrier is not fully formed. Their nervous system is not fully myelinated. And when you’re adding these frequencies to their body, you can create health issues. And I think it’s one of those things we’re seeing so many more autoimmune conditions, so many cancers, so many kids with ADD, ADHD, all these issues. And we’re introducing these new frequencies that humans have not been adapted to being around and to children who, again, their bodies don’t have the defenses to deal with these things. So, yeah, it’s the food. Yeah, the food sucks. Yes, our air is not great. Yes, our water is not. It’s like so many things, but you got to control what you can. And this is one thing you can control. You can not buy AirPods for your kids and let them have an iPad in their face 24 hours a day. Those are things you can control, though. Yeah, yeah, I always say I think the two biggest causes for all the diseases or the main causes is the blue light and the non-native EMF. So I always recommend the book Body Electric and Arthur Furstenberg’s The Invisible Rainbow. Yeah, that one. Yeah, those are good. Yeah. And if you’re just joining us, we’re going to wrap in a second. But Jason is one of the contributors to the Health Alchemy Bundle. We’ve got about $6,500 worth of resources in there. It’s only going to be on sale for a few more days. There’s a link in Jason’s bio, or he’s going to put one in there after this chat. I got a link in mine as well. But this is all the stuff that we’re talking about. Fitness, circadian health, light nutrition, non-native EMF, even homeopathy, some holistic ways of looking at health in one resource, especially if you’re just getting started with this information and it sounds really overwhelming. We have it all kind of put into one place for people who are just getting started with this. And it’s the resource I wish I had 10 years ago when I was just like, I’m working out twice a day. I’m eating perfect diet. And why am I still puffy and inflamed and dealing with hormone issues? So, yeah, it’s amazing. Well, anything else? Everyone who’s watching, make sure you go follow Jason. Anything you want to leave people with today on the fitness, circadian health or anything else you want to tell people about? Just stay consistent. So changes happen when you when you fix your circadian rhythm, changes come about real fast and you’ll notice it and you’ll want to stay with it. So, yeah, the diet fitness first mentality has to leave. It’s I mean, it’s one of the biggest causes for the weight issues that we have and the obesity and all that stuff. And yeah, so it’s just just stay consistent with it. It’s you’ll see the change. Some people it may take longer, but yeah, just stay as consistent as possible. Absolutely. I love it. Well, thank you so much for coming on live with me this morning. And I’m sure we’ll chat again soon. Absolutely. All right. Appreciate it. Bye, everybody. Bye.
