Fitness, Nutrition & Mental Health

Welcome to gay men going deeper, a podcast by the gay men’s brotherhood where we talk about everythings sexuality, personal development, and mental health. We are welcomed today by Scott Weisgarber. Welcome, Scott. Welcome. Good to have you here. Another fellow member of the gay men’s brotherhood. So it’s great to have you here today. We’re going to be talking about fitness,

nutrition, and mental health and how they’re all related and interconnected. This podcast will be for you. If you’re somebody that really enjoys fitness, really enjoys nutrition, you take good care of yourself, but there’s also this element of how this stuff impacts our mental health. What is the motivation and intention behind why we are engaging in fitness, why we’re engaging in nutrition.

And so we’re going to unpack it from the gay men’s perspective, and we’re going to be tapping into Scott’s expertise in this area and as well as mine. So the questions we’re going to be exploring are we’re going to be, each of us are going to have an opportunity to share a bit about our story, how we got into doing this work around fitness,

nutrition, coaching, and, and mental health. We’re going to talk about the relationship between fitness, nutrition, and mental health, how come gay men are so concerned about physical health and appearance. How does this obsession with appearance impact mental health? The difference between approaching health from feel good versus look, good mentality. And how can we find more balance in our relationship between mind and body?

So we got a lot of good stuff for you guys today. I want to just take a moment to tell you a bit about Scott. He is a nutrition coach originally born and raised in Regina, Saskatchewan, and moved to Calgary Alberta 15 years ago, which is also where I am big up Calgary to be closer to his sister and find a path in his life over that timeframe.

Scott found a passion for fitness and entered the gym world to gain more knowledge on how to help others since then he did some schooling while working for the gym and is now helping others around, take back their health and, and, and build better lives. Outside of work, Scott continues to build, or Scott continues to live and breathe the active lifestyle,

and you can either find him in the gym crushing the next fitness goal or spending time with his friends. Scott also loves to cook and learn new ways to improve not only his own nutrition, but others as well. So that’s awesome. So we have a very similar background, Scott, so I’m excited for this conversation today. So why don’t we, do you want to start with,

you know, a bit more about your story kind of extending off of what I just shared and what got you into doing this work? Sure. Yeah. So, like I said, I moved to Calgary to kind of find my way forward in life and few jobs here and there. Then one day just saw some guy running down on the pathway there,

like fully like jacked and ripped and all that stuff in really good shape. So I entered the supplement industry first, before I moved over to gym world. Once I got into Jim world, I’ve been with the same gym for eight years. I still continue to work with them. Part-time it’s not my main priority job anymore, but I work with them part-time while running my own business.

I got into the industry just because my family has a huge background, like health issue wise. So I didn’t want to be in those type of situations. So I got into the fitness, I was a toothpick. I thought I was going to blow away in the wind. Most people thought a I did. So then, yeah. And then I just improved my health.

My posture got better. I started to feel better and, and slept a lot better then I’m like, okay, well I want to help others too. So that’s where my nutrition certification came into place. And from there, it just, it just developed over, over time and gaining experience, working for the gym was great too. So how about yourself,

Matt? Yeah. Thanks for sharing your story. Appreciate hearing that. So my background is, is in counseling and I did that for about 10 years post-graduation and I just burnt out from it and I decided I wanted to take a bit of a hiatus. I took a boat, a five-year hiatus to do fitness nutrition coaching. And that was always my,

kind of like second passion. I loved fitness love nutrition. I was always exposed to that as a, as a kid, my, both my parents were into bodybuilding growing up and both my parents were very image focused about how they looked. And, and so I kind of internalized that from a young age, just being really hyper-focused on how I looked and my appearance.

And that was a huge motivator for me getting into fitness. I remember when I was quite young, you know, seeing bodybuilders and, and seeing all these perfect physiques and I, I had a ton of magazines of, of, you know, bodybuilding and men’s physique and stuff. And I just, these, I was very much socially conditioned to, to kind of obsess about my body.

And I developed this, this obsession with my, with my appearance and with working out. And I got a lot of validation for that. So I, I, I’m hearing a difference in our story. Yours seems to be a little bit more altruistic and like focused on health and wanting to, you know, those were your motivators. And for me,

it was very much the opposite. It was a little bit more superficial. What I noticed is that over the course of like just, you know, training and, and, and being obsessive about what I was putting in my body, I, I, a lot of my worthiness and value was determined off how I looked and it had and how my body looked.

And I didn’t realize until later how much I was motivated by shame and a lot of the, you know, and, and then, and inadequacy, I think I didn’t feel good enough. So I was always trying to kind of make my body look a certain way and trying to, you know, perform at the gym to, for, for, for validation and these sorts of things.

So it was almost like I became perfectionistic around that. I, it got to the point where I was competing as a, as a men’s physique competitor. And I competed for, for prepared for, for about a year, for my first show. And I, I started to realize how obsessed I was, because I was weighing everything I ate. I wouldn’t go out for meals with,

with my friends, because I was worried that I wasn’t able to count my macros. I was working out anywhere from five to seven times a week with my workouts for like two hours long. So it was just like, I was very much, I think I had body dysmorphia to be completely honest. And so I did this fitness show, and then I,

after that, I just had an epiphany. And actually funny enough, I had the epiphany while I was on the stage for the show. I felt like such, such shame kind of wash over me. Like I was standing on this stage, like flexing and like people were critiquing me and judging me based off of my body and just the futility of that.

It just felt, so it just felt so damaging to like my sense of self. And, and so then after that, I basically went on a hiatus from, from fitness and nutrition and like for myself personally, and I’m still on that hiatus. I basically haven’t done any training for almost three years and I’ve been just letting my body recover from all the injuries that I put it through and been learning how to,

to find value and worthiness and love inside myself. That’s been my whole journey because for most of my life, I was finding it outside myself and I do love, I do love fitness. I do love nutrition. I still have a huge passion for it, but I was, I was misusing it. And I think that’s the, that’s what I want to share today with the listeners is just that it’s such an important thing,

fitness, nutrition, and health in general, but we need to be mindful of the place to which we’re using it from. And for me, shame was a motivator. And now I’m learning how to use, you know, just self care and love for myself and love for my body as a, as a, as a motivator. And I think,

yeah, I got a lot of little, little gems that I can share with the listeners today that will hopefully help people, you know, get gather insight as to their intention and their motivation behind doing, doing fitness and doing nutrition. So Thanks for sharing That. Yeah. Thanks for this thing. So the first question is what is the relationship between fitness,

nutrition and mental health? I’m curious for you, what do you, what do you think is the relationship between fitness? Well, like, you know, like the health and fitness, sorry. So the relationship between fitness, nutrition and mental health is that research shows that by having a clean diet balances, obviously hormones by feeling the body with natural volumes that girls and exercise helps with obviously the mental health side of it.

So the of good hormones that like, like, Hey, I’m feeling great. I feel positive today. And like, even just going for a long walk or running on the treadmill, or even something of some form of exercise is really good for that for the, for the brain, or even if you’re just a Yogi, right. Yoga is really good to kind of reconnect to yourself and reconnect your body and,

and improve in areas where weaknesses can, can come up. Right. So, and that’s important. It’s like, you know, like exercise is so key now these days, especially during a pandemic world and as a world opens up, right. There’s more anxiety for sure, in our world at the moment. But as that opens up more, how do we combat that anxiety?

How do we combat mental health? Well, that starts with your nutrition, that starts with exercise as well. So for sure, like that’s, that’s always, the key point is, and that’s the difference between the two is either fuel your body with proper nutrition. And then in turn, you get into the gym a lot more and you’re actually starting to feel good.

You’re starting to, okay, I’m looking strong, I’m feeling strong. I’m feeling good about myself versus sitting on the couch, drinking, pop, or eating junk and playing video games all day late or watching YouTube or Netflix or whatever for that aspect of it. And it’s not good for your health. So how about yourself in that? Yeah. Yeah.

Again, the dualism, I think there’s the approach from self care and there’s the approach from self punishment. And I want to talk about both of them, because I think, you know, I love everything that you shared because there’s self care aspect of fitness nutritionists important, right? Like you look at fitness and what it offers us is confidence, right?

Getting when your body just feels strong and it looks good, it’s, it makes us feel confident about, about ourselves. I love the, the post-workout field. It’s like, you’re on top of the world and all the endorphins are flowing through your body. And that’s a really good for your mental health as well, as far as nutrition, you know,

I’m a firm believer that most ailments can be cured by nutrition, right? And I even say that around mental health, you know, people with ADHD, these sorts of things, that mood disorders, you know, eliminating sugar is, is there’s a lot of research that shows that eliminating sugar can have a direct impact on your mental health, same with alcohol,

right? Like that’s gotta be included in the nutrition plan too, because alcohol has a, is directly related to mental health as well. So I just think that when we start to approach our, our fitness and nutrition goals from a place of self care, it’s really, really gonna attribute to a positive mental health. And I, and I think the,

the, the self punishment aspect is when we are more rooted in shame and inadequacy, we tend to use fitness and nutrition as ways to try to accomplish all those things, right. The feel good hormones look good, feel confident, have good self-esteem to attribute to our mental health, but it actually has, has the opposite effect, in my opinion, and my experience,

I think when we’re so hyper focused on results and, and numbers and how we look, I think we can easily become caught up in this whole kind of like rat race of like, it’s not enough. I’m not enough. That’s kind of the, the, the, what shame says, right. Something’s wrong with me. And adequacy says, I’m not enough.

So we’re constantly doing more. We’re working out more we’re, you know, and, and we stopped listening to our body and we are just pushing ourselves to, to maybe limits that our body doesn’t want. And that’s, that’s what happened to me. And I had so many injuries in my body because of that, pushing myself and not listening to my body,

that it became, you know, look at them now I’m on a three-year hiatus. And I still have injuries that are healing because I had injuries that were, were, I was ignoring for almost 10 years. Right. And the body needs a lot of time to repair from that. So, so, yeah, I think it’s, it’s, you know,

again, there’s, there’s, it’s a double-edged sword. We got to really be mindful of the intention behind why we’re, we’re engaging in that. So, all right. So I’m curious about your opinion on this. So how come gay men are so concerned about physical health and appearance? Well, like, you know, working the gym, I see a lot of times people coming to the gym and they’re,

you know, they see the guy who’s a CrossFitter or a bodybuilder and all that stuff. And they have all these people around them that are like, oh, like good job, like in there. And there, they have a lot of people that support them and, and congratulate them and all this stuff. And then he ended up falling into that trap of where it’s like,

oh, well, this guy has this many people around him. Why can’t I have that? Or, oh, it’s because of his body. So we start to compare ourselves to other people rather than going to our goal. Why did we step into the gym for the first place? Why did you join today? Why did you join yesterday? So,

and so forth? Well, I brought you into the gym. That’s the biggest thing that people need to know is why are you here today? Why did you show up today? Why today? Why not five years ago? Right. And then we see that person that we want to look like. And then we start comparing ourselves to that person. And what I have found in the community,

the gay community, gay men, specifically, they look at bodybuilders, they look across fitters and like, and they don’t understand that these people spend, like you said, in the beginning of your story, two to three hours a day in the gym, seven days a week training for their next thing. And that’s where they get, like, we compare ourselves to those people.

They don’t realize that it’s gonna, it’s not going to be an overnight fix. Like you don’t wake up one day and be like, oh, I’m going to, I’m a bodybuilder. Right. That takes time. And so then we start comparing ourselves to other people, which is not a good mentality. You should go into it wanting a goal. Like I went into the gym world just to feel better and to look better.

Yeah. I might saw the guy running down the pathway fully, like in good shape and stuff like that. I didn’t want to beat Jack like him. I just wanted to feel good. Right. And that’s why I joined the gym is to feel better about myself. Right. So we just got to stop comparing ourselves to other people and really focus on the goal.

Why are you here today? What is your goal? What are you trying to compete? What are you trying to achieve? Right. And how about yourself, Matt? Yeah. I love what you said. Reminds me of a, had the exact same experience. I was very, very skinny. I was an ectomorph as a kid. And that was one of the main reasons too,

for getting into the gym is because I hated my body. I was, I always looked so skinny. I hated looking in the mirror and being surrounded by all these big beefy guys in my life. I was like, I need to be, I need to be fuck. And I knew I was gay. I knew I was sensitive. And I,

I hated the feminine aspects of myself. So when I was skinny and slender, I felt feminine. And I was comparing myself to these guys, which made me feel even more feminine and inadequate. And I think, I think that’s one of the motivators. I think that’s why a lot of gay men are so concerned with appearance at least is because we want to look the part of masculinity.

And because we’ve been shamed for being feminine or we’ve been, or, or we feel like we’ve been shamed for, because we, a lot of us attribute and not just us, a lot of the world attributes, homosexuality with being feminine or less than, or that we’re weak as men. We’re not, we’re not manly enough. So I think that’s one of them.

I think the physical health component, I think some gay men might relate to this is the HIV aids epidemic or pandemic. It definitely taught us that we need to take care of our, our health. So I think there is that more altruistic aspect of like, you know, we are susceptible to obviously an auto-immune disorders, so we want to take care of our bodies.

And so I think that plays into it. And then for me, you know, my experience, the story that I’ve shared and I, and it’s, it’s so close to my heart is the, the shaman and adequacy, right? Like we want to look desirable. We want to look worthy. We want to look sexy because we might not feel that internally.

So it’s almost like physical appearance becomes an overcompensation for not feeling worthy on the inside. And that was my whole story. Right. I felt about this big on the inside. And so I needed to have this grandiose body and I needed to rely on my physical appearance to feel good about myself. And that was, it was so painful, honestly, going through that because it’s like you,

when, when you, when you get to, you know, I got to the certain age, I’m 36 now. And it’s like, your body starts changing. And you know, now that I’m not working out, because I’m healing all these injuries, my body is changing. And it, you realize like how much your worth was attributed to how you look and when your looks start to change,

it’s like, shit, what am I going to fall back on? Right. And we’re all aging, we’re all heading in that direction. And we’re all going to get to that point where we’re not going to like what our body looks like, regardless. We’re all going to get to that place. And I just think, I thought to myself, I’m like,

I really want to make peace with, with myself. And I want to learn how to love myself so that when I am, you know, older, I’m able to still have a strong sense of worthiness and love for myself. Even though my body might not look that way. So, and the last one, the last one is, there’s a strong focus of sex in our community.

So, you know, and when we see, you know, will a lot of us watch porn, a lot of us are, you know, have a lot of sex. And I think that when we see other guys in porn and they have ripped bodies, again, like you said, we compare ourselves. And then obviously when, what makes us more desirable and what is going to give us more sex in the community is to have a body that is sexually appealing.

So I think all of these things really bleed into it. Absolutely. Okay. So then how does this obsession with appearance impact mental health? And I know obsession is a strong word in some of some people might not relate to that word for lack of better term. I think just, you know, and there’s probably some projection there because for me it wasn’t obsession.

I was obsessed with my appearance. So Yeah, for sure, like, I mean, obsession is with anything, right? You can be obsessed with, you know, sex. You can be obsessed with fitness, anything like that. And what people don’t understand when it comes to the fitness and nutrition aspect of it is every single goal that you do in the gym,

starts in the kitchen, not in the gym. So what I do find is a lot of people coming to the gym world, and they’re just, they’re working out like hardcore, like an hour, an hour and a half. And you can see that they’re there, they’re physically draped. And then they see someone like, you know, like myself or another trainer who is,

can work out for an hour, has the appearance, has the health down packed and they’re able to recover. So that’s where most people make the mistakes. They think it’s all in the gym in reality, it’s actually in the kitchen. No obsession can be in the kitchen as well too. It’s what you eat though, too. Right? So the rule is always try to eat a more balanced diet in a kitchen.

So eating one meal a day, isn’t going to get you to where you want to be health wise, right? So you need to fuel your body. So we need to start focusing on being more obsessed on our diet a little bit more on the more on the clean diet aspect of it. That’s where I kind of come in and I teach people.

They’d be like, okay. So if you eat this versus sugar, right, versus this, versus this, you’ll feel better. If you’re craving the sugar and have an apple have like fruits, something that’s more natural. And that’s where we need to be more obsessed on. And I tell people like, don’t go work out and then go to McDonald’s.

It’s not going to work. It’s not going to work at all. Fear for your body. Long-term especially if you’re only eating once, once, once a day minimum. For sure. Now these days with research with intermittent fasting is two meals a day, but even I recommend something in the morning for someone who’s just starting out, right. So we need to stop being more obsessed about the gym.

And we need to be sorry about that. We need to be more obsessed in the kitchen versus the gym. How about yourself? Yeah, I think I’m, I relate to what you’re saying big time. And I think it’s really important that somebody that did this work for, for a long time and also within my own body, like I, the gym is the gym is the place where you develop strength and your,

you sculpt your body more so in the kitchen, especially with weight loss, if you’re, you know, you need to be really, really mindful of, of what’s what we’re putting in our bodies. I think that’s really important, but I, I wanna, I wanna talk about motivation because I think some people, when we are so motivated by our appearance and we have this obsession over our physical appearance,

it’s not really sustainable in my opinion, because it’s, as you and I both know it’s a, long-term play to change your body, to transform your body. And when we’re, when we’re, when we’re not seeing the results, it easily can lead us to just wanting to give up and not feel good about ourselves. And so when we are doing this from more of a,

of a good right, and just like wanting to take care of our body, wanting to put good food, good fuel into our body, wanting to go to the gym because it makes us feel good. It’s way more sustainable. And then your, the, the by-product is, and like the bonus is that you look good. But I think when we start to lead with this,

I need to look good and feel good is the bonus or the secondary. I just think that the motivation is not going to be super sustainable, at least in my experience. That’s what I saw. Yeah, for sure. And like, motivation is like key, like, like what motivates you to get out of bed in the morning? Like what motivates you to get to the gym in the morning?

Like, is it your pet? Is it your family member? Is it something that’s motivating you to get out of bed every single day? Like I’m, for me, like I motivate to get out of bed because I need to feel healthy and, and I want to have a longevity life. Like I don’t want to be, you know, in a hospice at 65 to survive for my life.

Right. I want to be healthy enough, still be running along the outside in the depths of winter during my run. Right. I still want to be able to do that. So for sure, motivation is, is a key part and you got to find that motivation. I found with my previous partner, we, he wasn’t really motivated enough to get off the couch.

That’s not my lifestyle. So it’s like, I need someone to motivate me, to get me out of that ruts and that hermit lifestyle. And they found someone he could got to that got me into that point. And I’m thankful for that person because that’s what she used to do every single day is getting out of bed and go to the gym, have a balanced diet and just be healthier,

Such an important question. Like I don’t want everybody that’s listening or watching is to ask yourself that if you are a hardcore gym goer, what is your motivation, right? What is your, why, why are you doing it? And be honest with yourself, because I think that’s going to be indicative of the amount of success. You have, the amount of longevity that you have.

And I want to, I want to share a mini story because I, I, a boat six or seven months ago, I, I had been almost off about maybe safe. Let’s say two years from the gym. And I figured, you know what, I want to get back into it. And I, I w I have a bunch of equipment and I set up like a home gym and started working out.

And I started falling back into the old pattern again, of like checking myself in the mirror too much. You know, I wanted to get back on the scale. Have I gained, have I lost? And I was becoming obsessive again. And I’m like, oh shit, this stuff is coming back again. Like what the hell is going on? And then funny enough,

I ended up re aggravating an injury. And I, that brought me out and that’s been six or seven months now. And I’ve been, I haven’t been doing anything, doing any training. And I just think that that’s really important for me to know, because it’s like, I clearly wasn’t ready. I wasn’t ready to go back. My mental health wasn’t ready because my motivation was,

and what led me up to wanting to get into working out again, I, with in retrospect, I was, I was able to notice it every time I’d get out of the shower, I’d be looking at my body and I could see these changes that were happening over the last two years. And I wasn’t happy. And I’m like, shit, I gotta get back into doing,

you know, working out. I gotta, and I w w it was fear. I was scared that my body was changing. It was shamed because I didn’t feel good enough. So I just think that it, you know, the universe was like, well, no, no, no, you can’t, you can’t do this again. We’re not going to let you fall back into this pattern.

So we’re going to create an injury re-aggravated and then let’s get you going a little deeper into that self-love journey, right? Like, so you can act, so you can come from a place of not being obsessed with how you look and just start to focus more on like, feeling good. You know, I love, I love yoga for that reason,

because yoga is not very much about, you know, image and like how much I can lift and these sorts of things. It’s just about connecting to the body and being embodied while you’re doing it. And that’s one of the things that I love about yoga. Yeah. And that’s exactly it, like, even like yoga itself, like myself specifically, I love yoga because you really get to disconnect from the universe outside and you really get to look in and figure out what’s feeling good.

What’s helping me get to where I need to be. Right. So, and that’s a really good exercise, even just doing an hour of yoga a day, turn off your device, turn everything off. That’s going to cause you to distraction and just focus. Yeah. Yeah. You’re all good. Is pretty awesome. All right. So the difference between approaching health from feel-good versus look good mentality.

I think we’ve kind of talked a lot about this, but is there anything else that you wanted to add to this? No. Like I have nothing really else to add to that. We kind of did kind of go over all that already, unless you wanted to add something in there. Matt, Let me see here. Okay. I’ll say this.

So feel good and look good. I would say, look good is more performative and feel good as more pleasure based. And I love that that distinction between performance and pleasure because performance is, or performative is usually more about other being other focused and pleasure is about being self focused. And I think when we are coming from a place of look, good mentality,

and that’s our motivation, it means we’re being very other centric. We’re focusing too much on what other people think. And that was my experience for sure. So, you know, I, I asked myself this question, I’m like, if I was the only person on this planet, would I give a shit about what my body looked like? What I care about doing my hair in the morning.

Right. I do this because I want other people to perceive me a certain way. Right. So, and, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. We’re social creatures. We want to be, we want to be performative. We want to impress. We want to please others. That’s just part of our nature. But I think for me, I was so focused on look good.

And I was very other focused that I had lost connection to myself. So I think restoring harmony and balance between feel good and look good is, is important because we they’re both valuable. And I just wanted to, to note that. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Okay. Last question, which is a big one, we’ll, we’ll kind of give the listener viewer some things to help restore balance that maybe they’ve lost between their mind and body.

So how can we find more balance in our relationship between mind and body? Yeah. So being very spiritual, some meditating is a really good tool at the end of the day, having a regular routine for sure will help big time. Like if you’re an early riser in the morning and you’re like, ah, yeah, I’ll go to the gym at five in the morning,

like power to you. Like that’s a lot of people do that here in the gym world. They get up at five in the morning. So just finding a routine and just going with it and being okay with failures and being okay with, you know, I don’t feel great today, TD weight training. So just have a little bit more balanced. I do cardio or,

or do yoga or something. So just find what works for you and go on off that versus just trying to again, go back to like, oh, well, if I don’t work out today, I’m not going to look good tomorrow. Right. So just, just find the balance is be okay with it being okay. Like how about yourself, Matt?

Yeah. I think that’s such a key word balance because I think, you know, there’s different ways to achieve balance. I think some, oftentimes people think balance is like walking this, this line and just staying on that line. And for me, it’s, you know, if you can do that great, but for me, I’m more of a black and white person I’m I swing on the pendulum.

So it’s like, you know, all, all indulge in this side and then I’ll swing over and I’ll indulge in this side for a bit. I’ve kind of always been like that. So, but some of the things that have helped me restore balance because I had, I had an over connection to my mind for so long. The first one is connect to your felt sense.

More often felt sense is it’s essentially sensation, right? Our sensations in our body and connecting and word. And those are like the things that are like whispering to us about what we need. Right. If we have sensations in our body, like they could be, it could be tension, it could be stress, it could be excitement, expansion, constriction,

any of these things, they all have meaning. And when we’re connecting to our felt sense, we’re listening to our body more and we’re allowing that to guide our path as opposed to just being mentally governed. And, and I just think that that’s been really helpful for me too, because, you know, for example, like I listened to my body when that injury got reaggravated and I chose to not continue because I’m like I still have some work to do.

Cause my body was trying to communicate to me. But for so many years I S I wasn’t listening to my body do things because they feel good. You know, we talk about performative versus pleasure. Well, how often are we just doing things because we want to, because it feels good for us. Right. And I think that’s, that’s such a w if you’re,

if you’re engaging in fitness and nutrition, because it feels good, I think it’s going to just be so much more, it’s going to be a, it’s going to be more of a pleasurable thing. You’re going to enjoy it more. You’re gonna be able to sustain it more because it’s something that feels good, right? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

They’re like, yeah, for sure. You’re going into finished nutrition to do it as a feel good, a moment. It’s it can be a pleasurable thing and it can be quite an experience and journey for sure. Like, my journey was always like that. Like I did kind of somewhat go into this too, basically better myself, for sure. Cause I worked with a nutrition coach who said,

oh, well, we’re going to do a 360 degree flip on your diet. And I’m like, that lasted a week. So taking a slower approach and taking it as a more of a journey is going to lead to a much better success. So she, with those who actually have an addictive personality, That’s a, that’s such a good point because I know when I was building nutrition programs for people,

that was the, my biggest learning as a nutrition coach is like, if you create a plan that doesn’t incorporate the foods people love and that make them feel good, they won’t stay on it. So that’s just proof right there that we need to follow what feels good, what our body wants, what our taste buds want. Right. And we can still get great results based off of doing that.

We just have to be more mindful of our macro is probably right. Yeah. Well, am I certification? They, they were saying like, you know, you’re going to work with a lot of clients across the planet. Right. So, so culture like north American culture is going to be different than a European culture with third, with their diets and what they,

what they have available. And it’s based off what is available around them. Would you force like someone who’s Indian to eat pork or beef all the time. Right. Cause obviously they’re not, they’re not going to do that. So what are they, what do they eat mostly? Right. Right. So, and that’s what you gotta find. You gotta find people who actually enjoy food and enjoy their type of foods that they like to make.

Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Benefit of listening to your body. Right. And Yeah, yeah. Yeah. My third bullet was spend less time looking for validation outside yourself because when we are governed by our mind and not by our body, we are hyper-focused on what other people think about us. So social media, you know, the apps like Scruff and Grindr and these sorts of things,

mirrors, you know, and, and again, there’s nothing wrong with these things, but I, I, I say spend less time, not no time, spend less time engaging in these things and restore balance between internal and external validation. Because if we’re, over-reliant on external validation, we’re over, we’re over reliant on our mind to give us worthiness when we’re connected to our body.

And we’re just in internally validating based off of how we feel, what makes us feel good. We, I find that that’s where I was able to really get in and build a good sense of worthiness for myself. And it really brought harmony between my mind and my body. Yeah. For those of you who have seen the movie and those who haven’t nice suggested there was a divergent was a good example.

There was a culture that actually didn’t look in the mirror. You only had five or like five minutes to look in the mirror, the fixture hair. And then that was it. Then, then the veil came down and that was it. So there’s an example like mirrors are everywhere in the gym. Yeah. I think, you know, something that can be really cool is to try like a mirror cleanse,

you know, take a week and don’t look in the mirror or limited time looking in the mirror, I think can be really beneficial. So you get up in the morning, you check, you know, whatever, do your hair kind of thing and make sure you look presentable and then that’s it. You don’t get any more time to look in the mirror throughout the day.

It can be definitely a something of value. And then the last point I have here is less measuring results by numbers or images and more by how you feel in your own body. And I think we, we we’ve said a lot of this. I just think that when we’re so focused on what the scale is telling us or what our photos are showing us again,

we’re just pulled out of the body. And we’re, we’re, we’re governed by comparison because it’s like, you know, when you’re on the scale or you’re looking at pictures, like, what are you, what’s your reference point, right? Who is your reference point? Who are you allowing to come into your psychology and say, I need to be like this or else I’m not good enough.

Right. That’s important to note. So I’m curious, what are your thoughts on that? People using measuring sticks? I think it’s, it’s good. We need both, but when there’s an overemphasis on measuring by numbers or images. Yeah, For sure. Yeah. Like, I mean, like what I’ve noticed in with the gym, people coming again,

people they weigh themselves every week on our embodied machine and it’s just like, why? Like, why? Like, like what’s like, what’s so obsessive about it. Like it gets your for sure. Measure things as far as time goes on, as you start to notice, okay, well maybe my clothes are fitting better. Have I lost weight? Or like,

or like what’s going on then? Sure. Maybe go on the scale. And like, I just don’t be obsessed. Right. So assess by the school we fall in type mentality of a perfectionist, right. We fall into that bad habit of pattern. Like for myself and my clients I teach is weigh yourself every 30 days, usually the best scale,

because you can have some days you can have, you know, excess water retention, some days you could, you know, not have enough water or eat enough or whatever the case may be. And so like, I need to keep the people to be like, don’t focus on the scale so much based on the day, maybe you didn’t go to the bathroom before and then you up on the scale.

Well, if you’d be either more water or you’re holding up some more stuff. Right. Right. So I always see people that like, don’t focus so much on the scale. Like it’s how you feel. And it’s how things start to fit. Like if you’re closer to scale is that we serve, you bought away. Yeah, Yeah. Yeah.

Good points. Good points. Well, Yeah, it’s this, it’s the same for me. Exactly what I had said before. And I think it’s just important to, to have a balance between the two. I, you know, we, we don’t want to become obsessed with numbers and you know, the body’s meant to fluctuate. It’s just, it’s inevitable,

whatever you ate, you know, it might have more salt in it. You might retain water and then you think that you’re fat and it’s just, it becomes obsessive and it’s no good. It’s like, we’re just weeding. We’ve become punitive towards our bodies. So let the body ebb and flow. That’s it. Some days you’re going to wake up and you’re going to look ripped and you’ll have,

your abs will be showing through and some mornings you’ll wake up and they won’t. And that’s just, it it’s a mind fuck otherwise. Right. Cause you’re like, what’s going on. But that’s how the body’s meant to be. It’s meant to ebb and flow. So give your body space to do what your body does and let the natural cycles of the body occur.

And don’t beat yourself up. If you don’t look exactly how you think you should or your, you didn’t, you didn’t lose the exact amount of weight you think you should have lost. So, So that’s, that’s, that’s our, that’s what we got for you. Is there anything you wanna, you wanna wrap off with or Yeah, just say like,

just to stay healthy and just continue to on a journey. There’s a lot more time on my work, on the internal stuff too. Like don’t just focus on the external or internal stuff. Right. We happened for a reason. Right. So just be healthy and love yourself, right? Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for that. I think that’s important.

And you, you have a group on Facebook called primal nutrition coaching. Do you want to tell the, the, the listener viewer a little bit about that or, Yeah, for sure. Like, so primal nutrition coaching is designed to actually help the LGBTQ plus community more around gay men. Gay men are in for sure. Aspiration for people like myself to relate to.

I know I can really am I trainer in the beginning because I was worried I am being judgemental because of my choice of sexuality. So my group is fine to feel inclusive, right. To feel connected to other people. Right. Not worry about, you know, these guys or anything like that. So it’s, it’s a good spot for sure. To be a part of.

And I recommend obviously your guys with groups in there, so like all you guys are, are all you guys you’ve you Calin and Michael are all members of that group. So, and, and yeah. I’m looking forward to seeing how it grows. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I want to just take a moment and thank you for coming on and sharing,

sharing your expertise with us and your experience and being willing to share your story. It’s been a nice spending the hour with you and learning a bit more about you as well. Cool. Awesome. Yeah. It’s nice. Thank you for having Matt. You know, this is something I’ve been working on for a little while now, and I think it’s at the right time,

wherever you are, where you’re and, and the world opens up more. And I think we start focusing on, on what’s what’s coming next. Yeah, I agree. I agree. And I want to just shout out to the listener viewer for tuning into another episode of gay men going deeper. If you’re listening on YouTube, please give us a, a subscription subscribe.

We’ve released content every week. And if you’re listening on the, your favorite podcast platform, give us a star rating, preferably five stars. If you enjoyed what you heard today, and you can also leave comments on YouTube and we will try our best to, to get to them. So thanks for tuning in and have a beautiful day, everybody.