 Welcome to the 21 convention Miami, Florida. Our next speech is of a pretty interesting guy. I follow him personally on social media, and it's really cool to actually introduce him on stage. He's a former NFL player, turned primal living coach, Joe DiBonardo. Thank you. I'm going to open up this talk with a little skit. Let me know if this has ever happened to you. This is what my life looked like for nearly five years of my life. I'm going to discuss how I got myself in this pain, how I got myself out of this pain, and why I'm passionate about helping others who are looking to live a healthier life. You see, playing in the NFL with the likes of Junior Seau and the San Diego Chargers may sound glamorous. And you probably think I made a lot of money, and I don't have to work. But the truth is, is I didn't play that long. And it came with a hefty price. The smashing hits and combination of the poor nutrition for sports performance left me broken, riddled in pain and suffering with inflammation. I grew up here in Miami, Florida, about a couple of miles, actually, from this hotel. And I grew up as an overweight child. I ate the typical standard American diet. That's me right there on my way to being the Michelin man, or the Pillsbury Doughboy. And I ate the typical cereal for breakfast and sandwiches for lunch, and more carbohydrate foods for dinner, and became very overweight and self-conscious at a young age. And as you know, growing up or spending time in Miami here, it's a predominantly Latin community. Well, I grew up as a minority here in Miami, Florida, down the street. So early on, I turned to sports. I turned to sports for a couple of reasons. One, to manage my weight, to build myself up mentally and physically, and then also to gain acceptance from my peers and respect. Football and I seemed to be the perfect fit. It was that sport where I could train, keep myself in shape, manage my weight from getting out of control. But then I could take all my frustrations out on the field on those kids that were picking on me during the school hours. Well, played football all the way through as a child. And then coming out of high school, I wanted nothing more but to play at the college level. It was something that I had seen all around. There were former athletes on the wall at school that were wearing that uniform and playing in college. I wanted just to see what it was like, just to put that uniform on, to feel what it was like to be a college football player and play in front of thousands of people. So guess how many scholarship offers I had coming out of high school? Anybody have any? Guess? Four. Zero. I had zero scholarship offers coming out of high school. So my father and I, we put together a highlight reel of all my games of that year, my senior year. And we packed up the station wagon and we went to visit a half dozen schools. And the very last school that we stopped at was called Appalachian State University. It's in the northwest corner of the mountains in North Carolina, far away from the beaches of South Beach. And I remember vividly just my father and I and the coach sitting down at his desk and the coach explaining to me why I should come to Appalachian State and why I should walk on as an athlete. Walking on means you go out for the team without a scholarship in the hopes of trying to earn a spot and potentially earning one. Well, the coach then told me that there were four starters on defense that were former walk-ons. So I said to myself right there, I go, man, this has got to be the best chance of me to get on the field at some point. So I decided that I was going to walk on at Appalachian State. After the very first day of practice, I knew that I could play at that university. I knew it. Coming from Miami with all the talent down here that I'd played against growing up in high school and getting up there, there was out without question. I knew that I could play there. And after my first year, I earned a half of a scholarship. And by my red shirt sophomore year, I was the starting middle linebacker for the mountain years and I set a record for the most tackles by a sophomore in school history. I then went on to earn a full scholarship. And coming off of my junior year, I had sustained a pretty serious injury, it was a turf toe injury. I was in a game and my foot got caught under alignment and my big toe went all the way back and it tore all the ligaments in that joint. And so in some cases, this turf toe injury can be career threatening. But fortunately for me, I had a successful surgery and I was on schedule to heal in time for my senior season. My senior year, my most prolific college year coming up. I had decided that I was going to give up the sunny beaches of Miami and spend all summer in North Carolina training with the team to prepare for this big event, this big year. Upon my return, I was about at the end of my first week of summer workouts. I was in the weight room and finishing up a workout and my strength and conditioning coach came up to me and he said, hey Dibo, you have a phone call and it's your mom. And I looked at him strangely. So I walked over to the office and I picked up the phone and I said, yeah mom. She goes, your father was supposed to pick up your Aunt Peggy at the hospital this morning and he didn't show up. And we don't know where he's at. So I hung up the phone and I headed on down to the mountain to be with my mother. My father had flown from Miami to Arizona to be with his sister who was having a gallbladder surgery that he had had and he wanted to be with her during that procedure. He got there the night before. He was able to visit with her and then the next morning he was to pick her up and take her back to the convent where she lived and worked. Well he didn't show up and he didn't tell anybody where he was staying and American Express wouldn't release any information of any of his charges. So for nearly three days my father went missing and finally on the third day we got a call from the police department notifying us that they had found my father deceased on the floor of the hotel room. This was devastating news for a 21 year old man. My father was my biggest fan, my biggest supporter. I returned to Miami for the funeral and my mom insisted about two weeks after the funeral my mom insisted that I return back to North Carolina to continue my summer workouts. Well reluctantly I returned to North Carolina and when I got back I still had this numbness feeling about me and I developed this mindset that I call tunnel vision where there was nothing or nobody that was gonna get in the way of me achieving the goal of having the best year possible. So I went on to have a really good senior season. Very good in fact I was elected captain by my peers and about halfway through the season my coach pulled me aside and said hey Debo he goes you're starting to get looks from the NFL scouts. And I looked at him like are you serious? Like this was something that was a dream so far away that you never imagined would ever happen because as a kid you're watching it on TV but you don't ever think that it could really happen. Also 1% of college football players actually go to the NFL. Well at the conclusion of my senior year I worked out for over 25 NFL coaches and scouts. And I wasn't projected to be a draft pick or a high round draft pick. I was hoping to be signed as a free agent, a rookie free agent. This means each team brings in signs about a half dozen players the day after the draft to come in and compete for a roster spot. So I'll never forget I was in my dorm room and on Monday after the draft and I was camping out by the phone and the phone rang and I picked it up and I said hello. The man on the other line said this is the scout from the San Diego Chargers and we're calling to see if you're still available. I said yes sir I'm still available. He goes we don't have much to give you for a signing bonus just about $1,000 but we'd like to bring you in and compete for a spot. Yes sir thank you very much. I hung up the phone and I jumped up and I was like yeah baby I'm going to the league. I'm going to the league and then I dropped to my knees and I began to weep because I was overwhelmed by emotion. Just one year ago I had lost my father of a heart attack and a year later I was going to the NFL. So you never know how certain things can change your life for the better. Sometimes when you think that it's not. Well there I was walking the hallways of the dorm room one minute and three days later I'm sitting in the cafeteria having lunch with my idol and eventually mentor Junior Seau. I eventually went on to make that team that year. It was a rough ride. Training camp is it's hell basically. The pressure and the stress that you're under. There were guys that I broomed with that were just that would pray every night praying to bake the team. It was just this atmosphere of high stress, high tension. There were even guys that just walked out. I saw some guys that were in my position that couldn't take it and they just quit. I said to myself, how could you quit with this chance that you have but some guys did. The pressure was really high. Well I eventually went on to make that team. I was released and I was re-signed and then life in the NFL baby. Let me tell you, all right. What do you like to do for fun? What's the most fun thing you like to do? Okay, gun, sex, anybody else? Okay, so race cars or fixed cars work on them? Okay, so imagine getting paid a lot of money to, well, what was the one you mentioned? Shoot guns, imagine you got paid a lot of money to just go to the range and shoot guns, right? Imagine just doing something that you like to do, and then getting paid to do it. Playing in the NFL was that. Playing in front of 70,000 people was the ultimate. I'm not gonna lie to you. It was pretty darn cool. You had the money, you had the girls and the bright lights of the NFL. It seemed like we never had to pay for anything. We got invited to all the best parties and all the greatest shows. And people treated you like royalty. Now, the hits that come along with being the NFL are pretty intense too. There's a lot of hard hits going on and a lot of guys like myself that would not give in to pain because unless you're a superstar, okay, and you get hurt, if you get hurt, you get cut. So if you want to continue this lifestyle and continue to do what you love to do, you tend to have to suck it up. And I'm talking hits, hard hits, hits to the head, hits to the knee and yeah, this all happens, getting your bell rung and all that stuff. So at the conclusion of my first year, I returned back to Miami to be with my mother where I had planned to train in the off season and then return back to San Diego after a few months. Well, guess what? After about a month or two of being home, I got a call from my agent telling me that the San Diego Chargers weren't gonna bring me back for whatever reason, they decided to move in a different direction. There I was at the top, living at the top, living the dream, and then there it was taken right away from me. Okay, see that NFL also stands for not for long. You may have heard that. I was there one year. That football itself just being taken away from me. Hey guys, have you ever had that one thing that you love that woman that you love ripped out of your arms? Like abruptly, that was football for me. Anybody, if you had that ever happened to you, having something taken away from you, right? Football was my go-to for my physical fitness. It kept me in shape as a child and brought me all the way to this point. It was my go-to for my emotional outlet to just vent all my frustrations out in the field. Well, taken away in a second, in a second. And there I was, sitting on my sofa, not knowing what the heck I was gonna do at this point. I was, I had a degree in criminal justice and a minor in psychology. I wanted absolutely nothing to do with that. I'll be honest with you. And I remember I was glued to my sofa for about two weeks and I said to myself, dude, you gotta get off the couch and you gotta do something. You need to start bringing in some type of income. So, back then, the classified sections were in the newspaper, so I opened up the newspaper and I started looking for a job. And I found this position. It was a weight room attendant position on Fisher Island, which is a island off the coast of Miami Beach. I said to myself, I could do that. I could work a couple days a week in the weight room, stay in shape, and hopefully get picked up by another team. Well, unfortunately, I didn't get picked up by another team. So I was forced to move on. So, I was working on this island called Fisher Island. I decided to start a personal training business with the knowledge of sports performance and conditioning that I had from playing the sport of football and other sports. I was able to apply it right away. I began training, CEO of large companies, Fisher Island is one of the wealthiest zip codes in all of the US. So, definitely a good spot for that type of a business. I began training celebrities, multimillionaires, and even professional athletes. I was traveling with high profile clientele to different parts of the world. I was going to South America. I was going to Europe. I even spent three months in Africa on a special job. Flying on private planes and staying on luxury yachts and all that fun stuff. Over the years that I was teaching these people how to get healthy, how to attain their goals, how to stay fit, I, myself, the trainer, the coach, was suffering in poor health. I was suffering in chronic pain. Arthritic pain, inflammation, and I was depressed. I was taking over 20 Advil a day. I was icing my back four to five times a day just to get through a day of work, day of life. And I remember waking up one morning and looking at myself in the mirror. Oh, and I was booked for a multi-level disc replacement surgery that the surgeons weren't even sure it was gonna get me out of the pain. They were gonna have to go in through the front and implant this hardware in my lower back. And there was a lot of risks and ramifications involved and they weren't even sure that it was gonna get me out of the pain. And I was like, okay, that's it. Like, no más, all right? It was at that low point in my life. I woke up one morning, I looked at myself in the mirror and I said, how can you go on living the rest of your life like this? At that point, I had decided that I was gonna turn to alternative methods to heal myself. This is something that I didn't think in a million years was possible. Why? Because I come from such a one-sided conventional background where all we did was take pills and have surgeries for injuries and so forth and so on. So when somebody told me about alternative methods, I thought they were crazy, right? Well, guess what? I turned to some primal living, taking fundamentals and principles of our primal ancestors and applying them to today's modern jungle. I had a coach, he would make us practice our fundamentals every day in practice before we practice the rest of the day. Fundamentals such as simple footwork, form tackling, wrapping up, grabbing cloth, taking the man down to the ground. Fundamentals that we used to perform at a high level. So I began to take basic fundamentals of health and apply them to my life. The first fundamental I'm gonna go over for is sleep. Oh yes, glorious sleep. The one we love, yet we tend to neglect so often with phrases such as I'm too busy to sleep or I'll sleep when I'm dead. I once had a teacher tell me that the body only needs five hours of sleep a night to function on. Do you guys like sleep? It's pretty good stuff. Do you have trouble sleeping at night? Who has trouble sleeping at night? You can be honest. Yeah, there's a reason for that. So I have been sleeping, I had been sleeping on average of six hours of night which when did six become the new eight, right? Like oh yeah, six good and I'm solid. Well, did you know that when we sleep our bodies secrete awesome sex hormones such as testosterone and human growth hormone naturally that we need to give us our vitality from day to day to help build muscle and if you're trying to lose weight it's vital to have these hormones secreting properly. Did you know that when we sleep if you're trying to get out of pain high quality sleep will help reduce inflammation and one night of deprived sleep will reduce your insulin sensitivity up to 30%. That means you're gonna wake up feeling hungry and craving sugar for most of the day and you wonder why it's because your blood sugar gets destabilized by low quality sleep. So if you're trying to lose weight or you're trying to get out of pain and you're not sleeping it's gonna be very hard to do that. So by improving my sleep and making sleep a priority I was beginning to reduce inflammation in my body already naturally, okay? No pills, no medicated sleep, high quality natural sleep. So now I'm gonna give you five tips on how to get a good night's sleep. You can start today by doing this, all right? So grab a pen and paper and simple tips. The first one and this is the hardest one of them all for me or for people that I work with people that I teach is making sleep a priority. Number one, making sleep a priority. Number two, avoid creating a second daytime. So as the sun goes down, start reducing the lights in the house and start preparing yourself for sleep naturally. This will give your body a chance to produce the right amount of melatonin that we need to fall asleep but then stay asleep throughout the night. Next, put a curfew on screen time. So if you're trying to go to bed at 10, ideally you should have a curfew of nine and if you're one that's really suffering and trying to improve your sleep not a minute after. Why? Well, scrolling through Facebook or scrolling through emails starts over-stimulating a part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex and it's basically putting that part of your brain on a treadmill to do sprints right before you go to bed at night. So you could feel exhausted physically but mentally you're still going, all right? The next tip, make your room as dark and cool as possible. Ideally, you shouldn't be able to see your hand in front of your face and you should need a little cover to pull over to keep you warm. And finally, make two lists, one list of things to do the next day and then a list of things to worry about the next day because we go to bed at night thinking about all this stuff, physically take them off out of your mind and putting them down on paper and putting them on the bedside table. The next fundamental that I use to help heal myself as well as clients is nutrition. Here I was eating a diet for what I thought was a good diet for sports performance and that's what it was believed to be. I was eating a diet high in whole grains, complex carbohydrates and high protein, right? Because I needed all that protein to help build muscle and get bigger and stronger and faster and low fat because fat was always taught to me that it was not healthy for us. So, wow, I was in for a big change. By removing all the foods, like such as the grains and the sugar and the excess carbohydrates, removing all the foods that were wreaking havoc on my system and creating inflammation and implementing real quality whole foods such as quality meats, vegetables, and very importantly, dietary fat. The same fat that doctors had always told me are gonna give me high cholesterol, put me at risk for heart disease and die of a heart attack like my father did. These high quality fats were a huge part in healing myself. Why? Because they contain the omega-3 natural anti-inflammatory properties. So by removing foods that were creating inflammation and implementing foods that would reduce inflammation, I've got the ball rolling now. I'm starting to feel pretty good, all right? Next, exercise. I am no stranger to exercise. I've been doing it probably since I was 14 years old. I had the weight set in my weight room. And exercise can be a double-edged sword. It can be a great tool for many things, but it can also affect you negatively. And I was medicating myself to go and exercise because of the pain that I was in, because I thought exercise was making me feel better, I would release endorphins, it would make me feel good, so I'd work out really hard, medicated, like if I was still playing football, right? And all I was doing was just putting more stress on my body by doing so. I wasn't sleeping properly, then I was exercising, medicated, and I began to fall into a cycle of overtraining. I overtrained myself, even in that state. So, overtraining is one of the most detrimental things you can do to your body. You will fry your adrenals, you'll create a hormonal imbalance, and you'll leave yourself feeling like crap. And also lead to more inflammation and pain. So by exercising more intelligently and putting more emphasis on rest and recovery, I was able to begin to heal myself and reduce inflammation with proper exercise. Because going to the gym three, four times a week is like three to four hours in a week, right? There's 168 hours in the week. So, saying went to the gym three times, what are you doing for the other 165 hours, right? So I began to add a lot more daily movement in my life. I had become pretty much sedentary outside of going to the gym. I would be sitting down a lot, a greater part of the day, so I began to add more daily movement. And on my website, I came up with a commuter workout, which are all different techniques for those that have to commute long distances to and from. Simple techniques such as taking the stairs all the time, parking your car further distance away. It takes 30 minutes to find a parking spot in South Beach. It really does. So, by walking to the store once in a while, it's okay. You may arrive a little bit late, but this daily movement that you add throughout your day adds up over the course of the day, over the course of the week, and can pay dividends on your health by just stabilizing blood sugar and helping you to be more efficient at burning fat. And finally, stress management. Sleep, nutrition, exercise, are all huge components in managing stress without question. But I began to spend more time outside in nature. I began to remove myself from the artificial atmosphere that we live in through most of the day with artificial lighting, and I would start spending more time outside. Performing workouts outside or going for nature walks or kayaking and these sort of things. I began taking my vision out of the box that we live in, the box of watching TV, working on the computer, looking at our handheld device or even sitting in traffic, and expanding my vision on the horizon more regularly. Practicing these techniques more regularly are very helpful in managing stress. We develop a lot of anxiety because of just the crazy work world that we live in now. And a lot of us are driven to anxiety eating. And you could be eating the right foods, but you find yourself, is anybody here eat when they get anxious? You guys notice that? I have that, definitely. So being able to manage your stress more effectively can actually help you manage your weight, not just manage your stress, but it will help avoid anxiety eating. Because even if you're eating the right foods, but you're eating all the time, right? Because you're anxious all the time, you probably need to do a better job at effectively managing your stress. So I eventually went on to heal myself completely by reducing all the inflammation and pain in my body from those four important elements and remove the chains on my back that I've been carrying around for so long. Skin irritations that I had began to clear up. Depression that I had been suffering from. My moods began to improve. And it's funny now because some friends and family are like, they call me an extremist or some type of a health nut. For what? For wanting to sleep eight hours a night, eat real food on a regular basis, engage with nature once in a while. My definition of extreme is staying up all night, watching Netflix, eating a bunch of junk, waking up in the morning and chugging a bunch of coffee. Because unfortunately, America is really running on Duncan. Without question. Now, I realize that not everybody is going to make a change like I did or like how clients that I work with do. But I look around and I see a lot of people that are suffering from being overweight or being unhealthy, depressed. In pain and have nowhere to turn to. And this upsets me. For this reason I've created primaljo.com. It's an online platform to help more people get healthy naturally. 75% of adults are overweight and 50% are pre-diabetic. So these are pretty, pretty high numbers. On my website, you'll see a lot of what I talked about, what I've spoken about, but there's other information on there. There's a Primal Living Startup Guide, which is a map to get you on the path to good health. And there's lots of information out there now on the importance of brain health. We've heard for so long about heart healthy foods and how important it is to protect our heart from different types of foods. Well, 40% of former NFL players suffer from head brain trauma. Does that concern me? Yeah, that does actually. You know that? But with all the information that's coming out now with the importance of brain healthy foods, I feel like I'm in control of my future for myself, but not even if you're just a former professional football player, but just if you're somebody that wants to have high cognitive function well into your older years. But high quality nutrition and lifestyle will help you avoid the risks of putting yourself at risk for neuro-generative diseases such as dementia, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and depression. So if you are looking to improve your health and you're looking to better your performance at work or better your performance in your relationship or better your performance at whatever it is that you're doing because this conference is about improving your performance or improving your life. But by becoming healthy and feeling optimal, I believe comes along with looking optimal and performing optimal. So by doing so, you can improve your performance at work by improving your cognitive function. You can improve your relationships. If you're feeling optimal, then you can also feel optimal in a relationship as well. I believe that each and every person is holding a key. And I wanna help those people use that key to open the door to a better and healthier life. So if you're looking to take that first step, apply the four simple fundamentals and start practicing them every day because it's going back to basics that's really gonna lead you to feeling optimal. And if you wanna learn more information, you can go to my website at primaljo.com and you can also come speak to me in the hallway when we're done. All right, let's give it up for Primal Joe. Who's got questions? Hey, thank you for your presentation. Great stuff. I'm actually looking to change my nutrition too. I'm gonna do the elimination diet soon. Awesome. So that's a change. But for those of us who like to weight train, what warnings would you give us? And second part to that is what supplements or what stretches are available for folks that want to maintain good bone health for folks that do wanna weight train? Okay, big fan of weight training. I love it. I don't do it as much as I used to. But so, well, first of all, addressing your sleep and giving yourself the ability to perform in the weight room at a higher level and reducing your risk of injury by improving your sleep and all the other factors. I find that exercise is such a small component to all the others, okay? But weight training's a great type of exercise done properly. Being sure that you warm up correctly. I love a lot of mobility where you can get down and mobilize your joints so that you, it just puts you at less of a risk to injure yourself, but you can get great results from doing weight training. As far as supplements go, I'm not a big fan of supplements. I, oh yeah, I've taken them all, basically. I've taken them all. And excess amount of protein will convert to sugar in the form of gluconeogenesis. So you can actually elevate your insulin levels and increase inflammation and blood sugar by having too much protein and some of those pride protein supplements. You know, I believe now in just getting all the nutrients that you need from high quality food, quality rest and proper stress management. Hi, Joe, thank you. My main question, I had three, but anyway, how should athletes who really want to be competitive optimize their performance and still avoid overtraining? Great question. It's funny because I was one of those guys that always wanted to do more. And so my strength coach would kick me out of the gym because I would want to go in there and train more. But what we don't realize is in a lot of cases, even as an athlete, less, well, an athlete or non-athlete, less is more. So it's so important as an athlete, whether you're at the childhood level or professional level, to give your body ample time to rest and recover. You have to put just as much emphasis and it takes in a lot of cases for these type of individuals like myself, it takes a lot of discipline to put emphasis on rest and recovery as opposed to constantly working out, implementing more working in exercises as opposed to always working out, working in exercises such as meditation, yoga, nature walks, are great ways to recover, great ways to distract these individuals that always want to go, go, go and work out all the time and manage stress. Welcome. I don't have a extension yet. Yes. Hey, Jill, I really appreciate your talk and the time and effort I was able to spend with you earlier in the hallway and I'll be sitting up again. But one of the things I found being grossly overweight, I'm terribly obese, is that I have not been able to manage stress and a lack of sleep to the point that I've been able to out-exercise or out-diet those two. And I know I've done tremendous work towards changing that factor to the point that I've gone to a sleep study and everything else and if you look at my bathroom counter, I look like an addict. I'm not kidding. I probably have 30 different supplements on the counter, vitamin D, magnesium, any litany of amino acids and stuff like that. But one of my questions is I had taken like a series of doses of melatonin. You talked about melatonin being responsible for sleep and everything else. But my concern was the macro dosing of this stuff over a period of time and the fallout effects associated with estrogen and stuff like that. And I think you kind of relatively answered the question that you're not a big supplement guy. Can you talk to that or am I gonna be kind of hinged on trying to figure all that life hacking stuff out on the margins? And that's best served going to the middle on the basics. No, no, I love the question and I work with people like you every day. So it's going back to creating sleep, creating sleep, making sleep your number one priority. Exercise for losing weight is very inefficient. You cannot keep up with trying to lose weight and exercising. You'll just burn yourself out by doing so because you can consume, you know, five, 600 calories in one meal. And if you work out really intensely, you might be able to burn that off in an hour maybe, right? So it's just, and then it just can never keep up. So it's funny because that's how I got to this point because we're working with people for so long and just exercise and not getting the results that I want with people. I realize, man, the exercise component is just such a small part of really feeling optimal and even building muscle. But to go back to what you said is, right, eventually, you know, by supplementing your melatonin you're just inhibiting your body's ability to produce its own. So it's really getting into, and I work with a lot of people on weight loss and it's really dialing in the whole sleep component and making it a priority. And let me tell you guys, sleep can be really difficult for a lot of people. Do you remember walking into the gym for the first time after like months or years or for first time forever? It's really difficult, right? Jogging that first mile or lifting that first weight. Preparing for sleep and cutting off everything is super, super hard, but you can do it. And when you start practicing that every day, day in and day out, you'll become a better sleeper. And if you're trying to lose weight, high quality sleep will stabilize your blood sugar. So you'll be able to make better decisions throughout the day, the next day. So you won't be craving carbohydrates, you won't be craving sugar, you won't be craving food as much as if you were sleeping properly, okay? That also by removing the high carbohydrate foods in your diet, which you're probably having a very hard time metabolizing those, reducing your insulin levels. But if you're gonna remove all the excess carbohydrates, you have to implement all the healthy fat that is very important to repair your metabolic system. You can't go low carb, low fat. I'm sorry, it's just, it's not sustainable. Your body needs some source of energy to pull from. So, fat from energy will keep you sustained for longer periods of time, which will eventually rid hunger and sugar cravings. You will, over time, reduce your production of ghrelin, which is a hunger hormone. It's that signal every time we get that ghrel in our stomach that tells us to go and eat, okay? You can reduce the production of that hormone by eating fewer carbohydrates and you can increase the production of leptin, which is a satiety hormone, by increasing your fat intake. So by getting that under control and improving your quality of sleep, it puts you on such a good track to be successful. Minus all the supplements. This is all that you just have to create new habits. Create new habits and getting rid of all habits. It's not easy, but once you get into it, okay? Sun's going down. Time to get into sleep mode. I need to start preparing my nest. I need to start preparing my bed. You have maybe some type of a nighttime ritual. It starts with that. It starts with suns going down. Oh, okay. I need to start shutting it down and then practicing that every day. Now look, life happens. We're not gonna get the ultimate eight hours of sleep every single night, which I meant to mention. Ideally, on average, seven and a half, eight hours is ideal for most people, for myself and most people that I work with. Some people need more. But if you tell me you do great on less than seven hours of sleep, I'm not believing you. Sorry, it's just most people that I've worked with just feel so much better and get so much better results when they're dialing in their sleep. Man, it makes life so much better, makes weight loss easier, makes getting out of pain easier, and you feel really good. Joe, there's a bunch of people I have questions for you. I think we have time for one or two more, so out in the hallway, you're gonna be on demand. Totally. Hi, so thank you so much for your speech. So my mother has fibromyalgia. She works out a lot. So there's some stress associated with that. But very much like you, she's very convinced that pharmaceuticals are her only solution. And so I try to have her adopt this lifestyle of eating differently and maybe adopting yoga and other types of exercises. But what would you say to a person that's not convinced, and I mean, she listens, but she thinks like I'm crazy pretty much. Great question. And I deal with that every day. I work with couples and then, or the one is on board and the other one is not. Third-party information is a great way to present to somebody who's not sure. I just found that when you're constantly talking to somebody and telling them, ah, you need to change what you eat. You need to change how you sleep. It kinda starts to build up some type of resentment there. So by providing her with third-party information, especially in cases like hers, which there's many of them out there that have improved their conditions with fibromyalgia and reduce their intake of pharmaceuticals. And then also leading by example. Leading by example with yourself and sharing how these improvements or these new habits that you're creating have improved your lifestyle. Because the best way to teach somebody is to lead by example. And I've done that with my own family because we get to family gatherings and it's like everybody starts to get a little bit awkward. I don't say anything. I just continue to do what I do and teach what I teach. And since I've been doing that, I've noticed a lot more family members that I wanna help start listening and improving their health accordingly. So those would be two good ones to try. You're welcome. Hey, I've got one quick question. When you were training in the NFL, what did you learn psychology wise to help you stay motivated, to help you push through and to help you just continue even when things were hard? Like what did you say to yourself or in terms of that? Great question. Well, the love for the sport and the desire to be the best that I could be was probably the main things that got me through. Yeah, super stressful atmosphere. People don't realize you can be like cut one day or you have a job one day and then cut the very next day actually. So just staying focused, staying focused on what I was responsible for on the field, what I needed to do to prepare myself mentally and physically to perform as best as I could on the field, not worry about what everyone else was doing. Just same things that we can apply in our, in any job or any business that we're in. And when you do those things and you do them regularly, it takes care of business, it really does. So psychologically very challenging, but yeah, it was just the ultimate to be able to play at that level. So it was something that I was not gonna let go. They were gonna have to grab me by the throat and take me out of there, so to speak. So they got lucky because I was at home when I got the call. Otherwise that might have been really upset, but anyway. Awesome speech. Can you comment on those who really are challenged with motivation in the sense of starting slow? I once had someone say, get your motor running, learn to keep it running, and then learn to rev it. I'll let you expand on that for people who are really struggling, but they're just not gonna do, they can't take that big leap. Right. Can you elaborate? Absolutely. I'm not a big leap guy. I'll be honest with you, when I work with people, I think we have this perception that, oh, I'm gonna get healthy, and we create this mountain at which we think we have to climb to the top of it to be healthy, where just taking that first step is the most important. Don't look at the top of the mountain, just look at the very next step, and the very next step. Just look at what's right in front of you in the present. So don't psych yourself out by thinking, oh, I have to run to be in shape, I have to run three miles a day. I mean, you'd be surprised, you really, when you're practicing the other lifestyle factors that I mentioned in the talk, the exercise component is really not that big. It's really not. And so starting by improving your high-quality sleep, like so for example, I work with people that are in that state, like just what you're saying, and one of the reasons why I have a hard time making that first step, because they feel like crap. They're not sleeping good, they're stressed out. So who the heck wants to start an exercise program when you're already tired and stressed out to begin with? You see? So start taking care of some of those fundamentals, like improving the sleep, and improving your nutrition, and those things start to put you in a different mindset of wanting to go eventually to move your body more and to exercise a little more. Yeah, and if you're carrying around an extra, whatever, 10, 20, 30, 40 pounds, it's harder to move around with that extra weight. But as it starts to come off, for those that have a hard time with the exercise part, or just going, as it starts to come off, you start to feel more willing to want to do those things. So by addressing, I love just going back to sleep, because it's like the root of everything, it's like the root of all success, and nobody seems to be doing it anymore. It's not a very sexy topic, or it's a sexy topic now, but it's not a very sexy thing to do, because it shows maybe weakness, I think, in our society, like sleeping in, or we need to work more and sleep less. I mean, our primal ancestors were working like maybe a couple hours a day in the rest that we're playing, you know? We're playing not overstressed, like the amounts of work and stress that we're just piling on ourselves every day. So de-stressing yourself, sleeping better, man, you'll have a different outlook on getting healthier, or exercise, or whatever it might be. All right, Joe, one last question, but you're gonna get mobbed afterwards. Good. Okay, I actually am a subscriber to high-fat-style dieting, but I feel a big fear that stops a lot of people, and that kinda kept me worried about it for a long time, is the excess, or the excessive calorie count for every gram of fat, and even I haven't been able to find out what actually happens to it. Like, I know if I have excess sugar or carbohydrates, it's gonna convert to fat, excess protein's gonna convert to sugar, but I don't know what happens to excess fat that you don't burn off either idly or working out throughout the day. All right, so good question. So, excess fat, I mean, calories are, if you're gonna, if you're sedentary, whatever calories that you're intaking can lead to weight gain, to a certain extent, right? So, by eating more of a higher-fat diet creates more satiety, which helps you to be more caloric-efficient throughout the day. So, basically you land up eating less over the course of the day. Your high-fat meals are very calorically dense. There's no question, it's calorie, calorie for calorie, it's the highest calorie-dense macronutrient there is, but it'll hold you longer in between meals, so you'll help, you will avoid snacking and all the other stuff in between, grazing and so forth and so on. Rid hunger and sugar cravings. It's finding the amount or what percentage of fat works best for you with each meal. What might work best for myself or for sock may work differently for you. So, it's really becoming in tune with your body and realizing what a percentage of fat, carbohydrate and protein works best for me and how I feel and does it make me feel optimal throughout the day. Does that answer your question? Yes. Okay, good. Right, that's all the time we have for Primal Joe. Get with him in the hallways if you have any more questions or visit him at primaljoe.com. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Thank you.