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A Profile in Healthy Living: Chris Brogan

Well, okay, so we've been going all day talking about kind of theory and ideas and demos and walking through exactly kind of how you get things started. I wanted to invite Chris broken on to join us. He is the CEO and, uh, serial entrepreneur. I think I can call him. Ah, human business works and author. A speaker Very well known. He had a recent transformation in his own life where I'm gonna let him speak to it. But where he's now very focused on living a healthy lifestyle and feeling the results of that. I'm gonna go this way now, because there you are. Um and thank you so much for joining us, Chris. Thrilled to be here tomorrow. Thanks for having me on. And sorry that I missed the juicing, but I played along at home. Good. You're juicing at the same time. I made a apple ginger because I didn't have any beats. Sorry. That's OK. Well, thanks for making the time. I I wanted to talk to you specifically From a very practical perspective of just speaking to somebody who didn't always feel ...

so healthy and relatively recent, Lee decided to shift your life Yes, absolutely. A January 3rd is probably the key date in this particular change. The last time I ever bothered being healthy was most of 2000 and four. So it's been a while. What was for about? And then what? Kickstarted this August 2000 and three. I said, You know, like you probably figured this out and I read a few books, got involved in some fitness and health and lost £65 went from never having run a step in my life to completing a trail marathon on not too long After that, I was doing by myself just a push up and chin up competition just by myself to see if I could do because 100 push ups and 50 chin ups all within the same span of time. So in that process, I hurt myself. I tore my rotator tough, and, uh, you know, it was this stupid male injury. You know, it's just one of those things where you could have avoided the whole thing by not being so clever on and then work up busy and things happened, and I put all my weight back on and just went back to not caring. And I guess what happened in January 3rd is my girlfriend Jacqueline is part of what she was working on, said, I'm gonna try this cleanse thing and it's this Ph miracle cleanse and it's really intense. And as I'm reading it, I just thought it was pretty difficult. I think I'll try it and see if I can do it. And that just started me down. This cascade of all these other changes to really just get my health back under control and what you say cascade of other changes. Can you be just like specifically, What did you change? Absolutely specific. So the Ph Miracle, which is a book by Dr Robert Young and Susan Something Young is a book where basically, the premise is that your body has way too much acid in it, and you need to get back to much alkaline balance. And it is an insanely restrictive diet. It it is like no grain, no dairy, no sugar, no meat, no caffeine, all kinds of nose and essentially plants, preferably raw and X ray Z, and a little bit of wild caught fish. I guess that was kind of the one thing that was okay, um and so it was pretty intense. We did it for a little more than 30 days. I was supposed to be 30 days. We probably did it a really solidly for about 50 or so days. And then at that same time, we were reading a book together called Hell Bent, which was about the competitive side of Bikram yoga. You know, the hot yoga there's a competitive side to it. There is become, and several others are actually trying to get this into the Olympics as a sport similar to, you know, well, similar to what you would look at with gymnastics and the like, you know, very specific and intense poses. And, you know, there's when I didn't know about it. Seemed like the silliest thing I'd ever heard of. And when you watch somebody do competitive, you kind of go. I can see that it's not my thing, but you know, I can see it. And so I ended up joining a beak room studio, which was the opposite of any kind of yoga I ever thought I'd want to do sweat in a room full of nearly naked people while staring at myself in a mirror, doing the same thing every single day. Seemingly, mindlessly. It seemed like a horrible idea tomorrow. But you get addicted and I mean there's warnings all over the place to see you could totally get into this and lose yourself in it, because how good you feel when you're done. And I need to seem like the converted. But I like it. Yeah, and you started getting to that. And then you started. You came out of this ultra clean but then stayed pretty clean. You started introducing a couple things back in. What was that? No. So, I mean, even to this day, I have stayed mostly plant powered and I say, plant powered. Although you could almost say vegan, The reason I don't is because there's such a, you know, a collection of political opinions attached to that. I'm just not there, but and I do occasionally eat some fish and, you know, so that would disqualify me. But the reason I did there's a few things. I watched a lot of documentaries all in a row about the state of meat and food in the U. S. And that was scary. And then second, I did this amazingly lucky thing. I accidentally food poison myself. The first time I decided to have eggs and you go two or three days of ah, you know, rapid weight loss the unintentional way you say. You know, I don't think I need that. And I've been living off of, you know, really good organic, non gmo tofu and beans and things like that. And lots of plants. Yeah, and you do on social media, you show a lot of photographs of, like, foods you're making and foods you're trying and with a lot of enthusiasm, like so you when you kind of joke about being the newly converted. But you obviously feel passionate about how this is making you feel I do. And there's a couple reasons why do so much sharing is A lot of my brethren are showing me incredible pictures of their barbecue experiences down in Texas, and then they'll show me them waiting in the waiting room of their doctor's office ing. I don't know what happened. I came down with something and I just feel like I mean, I could show you Christmas time. This is absolutely true. I could show you on Instagram pictures of photos of foods like cookie trays and this and that and that and then the doctors office. I felt like, Do you not know? And so really, that's kind of the thing really nailed at home. I'm not trying to be righteous, but what I am doing is saying I'm a busy entrepreneurial guy. I've got all kinds of plates spinning. I travel a lot and I can find time for my health. I promise you can, too. And that's I guess the message I'm trying to say is that it's not on Li like Oprah who can afford to take care of their own health. You don't have to go broke doing it, and you could find the time in a day. Yeah, and especially when you start getting that kick back in that reward of why you want to make it work. Absolutely so I mean with the juicing thing, I mean giving up caffeine. I was, you know, nine cups of coffee and a two liter or two of Coke Diet Coke a day, and I was 2 to 4 leader. So, you know, I was like, There's no way I'm going to give up caffeine. I will. I will Shut down. But juicing. Once you get into the groove of juicing, you get way more energy and the energy stays longer. And so, you know, just watch a couple fat, sick and nearly dead Cinderella you're in. Yeah. Yeah. So tell me a little bit about your sleeping. We've talked a little about the magic of what you have discovered when you started prioritizing your sleep patterns. Oh, my goodness. It's I've been pushing it really hard the last few days, so I'm really thrilled to talk about it. It's just there is this perception that if you're an entrepreneur or that if you're working hard, sleep has to suffer. What I've come to realize is that the more I sleep, the more brilliant I become and that the less I sleep. I only think I'm brilliant. You know, when you it's like being drunk at a club. If you're drunk, you think you're the funniest person there. And that's just rarely true. Well, if you're punch drunk from not getting enough sleep, you think your ideas are brilliant and it's just not always true. And so what I've been working on is just kind of a ritual to shut off screens about 45 minutes before bed to take a little note pad and write down the last few thoughts that are in my head before I go to sleep on that, I just work on sleeping eight or more hours. If I'm ever lucky, I usually get 10 hours a night on This is the opposite of the national averages and thrilled. I have a great life for it. Yeah, and you go to bed like 8 30 right 8 30 I get up around five or so. And it's I mean, the five is because the first yoga class I can get to a 6 a.m. and that keeps the whole rest of my day clear. So it's not that you can't find time to sleep, and you know, everyone always has an immediate excuse. Well, I've got kids. Well, I've got that, And so to me, there's a lot of excuses we could make. But ultimately it's like every other thing in your life. It's a choice, and you just have to back that choice up with what actions you willing to take to get the success you wanna have. Yeah. So tell me, like, what obstacles Are you hitting or you concerned? You may hit, given kind of how well you're doing right now. I was worried at first that there would be food obstacles because a lot of times when you travel, that's one of the issues. Is you really just not sure what you're going to get? And there have already been times where I'll show up in the quote. Vegan option is, you know, a bunch of leaves and that'll feed me for a month and you know, So I was worried about that. I was also, I think the other obstacle is that food and drink and everything like that is a very social part of business. Yes, and you're forever going to a business dinner, and sometimes you get invited to steak houses. The cool thing there is that there's usually some good sides and the fact that I don't choose to be strictly vegan. I don't have to ask 300 questions about the menu. Like if some if someone puts a little butter on my asparagus, I won't run in fear. I'll be OK on and I'm not. I'm not trashing vegans for their opinion. I'm just saying that in my way that my lifestyle works. That's a way better option than being too fussy in front of a room full of people for my convictions. Yeah, you know, And what's interesting about that? We talked earlier about how people get extremely passionate about their food followings. Whether it's whatever it is that they've decided that is there, following on becomes something that becomes controversial. And just by stating that I eat this way, you are now considered this person, and it's gotten It's gotten to the state where it's like it's hard to just comfortably talking. Everybody share how they eat, what makes him feel good. And that's all there really is to it. I mean, it's interesting that you're feeling that already like, Well, I don't want to put in that bucket because that bucket can be perceived as this. Although I'm pretty much choosing that bucket. Just don't follow me in that bucket. You know the deal. I mean, but at the same time, people will say to me, But you know, I know you experimented with the paleo diet. Do you hate the paleo diet and I know a 1,000,000,000 diet's great. What I have a problem with is I just read a survey fairly recently where 80% of the antibiotics going out to people in the US are in the U. S. That are being distributed. 80% of them are going to meet. So you're getting there was a pig farmer on this documentary. I watched called Fresh. I think it was. We're seeing that he gives over 200 antibiotics toe every pig, no matter what, because it fattens them up on. I was just thinking, unless you really know how your animal lived before you ate it, it's just a little, you know, messy seeming. And so I just started making choices based on that sort of information. And so it's not even like I don't mind that the animal dies. I just wanted to have a reasonably decent life on the way to my plate. So I just have made a I made an opinion out of this where I just did listen, you know, I don't want to be that guy in Portlandia who asks like you know how the animal lived and what kind of friends he had and stuff like that. So it's a lot easier to, you know, leaves and Berries. Um, okay, so going forward, do you Do you feel comfortable saying you know what? This is so good. I'm here for life or you just like one day at a time. No, you know what? I don't. There was this really swell guy, Phillip McCloskey, who runs a site called Ross Something Love rah rah something. And he was a 400 plus pound guy. He was going to drive through windows, like, two or three plus times a day. And he said the day I decided to do it one night. You know, I had lived my entire day as same guy, had always been McDonald's guy. And then I said, You know what? I think I'll be Ravi and I'm going to start tomorrow, and that's how I'm gonna make the change. And it's a lifestyle change. And he just There was just yesterday was this? And today is this, and I'm that now. I think if you think of it as a diet or I think if you think of it as some kind of a plan or something like that. It's easy to fall back off and you don't ever think about it. You're So I lasted this many days. Yeah, I choose to eat plant powered. Now what I also choose is that some time down the road, I might say, You know, a juicy burger would be delicious. I don't care how many antibiotics it's had. Um, and I might do that, too, because I think that, you know, we're Omnivores for a reason. There's a there's a diversity inside of us, but I'll tell you what the the experience for me is that if I getting the results I get in my business based on this incredible lifestyle change that wasn't that hard once I committed to it, then why wouldn't I stick to it? Because it's like putting either great fuel in a car and hoping that it runs well. We're putting a bunch of gravel in your car and saying That's weird. It doesn't work the same way. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So I know you have to go. You stuck with us running a little late in the show. I have one final question. I want to hear a little bit more when you say I keep getting these great results. My business you mentioned earlier how the sleep is actually really making more brilliant, not just falsely, really. What are the tangible results that you are seeing in your business life? The first thing is that I just have all kinds of time and clarity and focus. So when I sleep really well, it means that I don't, you know, waste so much time during my day feeling tired. There's a lot of time invested in feeling tired. If you think about it, I gotta go get some more coffee. I got a real good to take a shower to stay weak. You know, there's all those dumb stuff we do that eats tons of time. And time is my most valuable asset. I mean, I can lose money. Aiken, burn money, Aiken burn business relationships and have to reclaim them in some other way. But time you don't get back. And so I have really figured out ways to optimize that extra time. I'm given by having great rest and being awake and by being able to focus. And how do you focus the systems in my body are not worried about digesting and figuring out what I've put in them. They're just all like, Here's all the energy you just gave us, Chris, Have a good day, you know? And it's the opposite. I'll tell you a story that I'll skip some things but say, I know a fellow who was living with a girl and they decided to raise their kid raw vegan. And he said that when the kid wouldn't go to bed until past 11 every night when they got sick of doing that, they brought a loaf of bread and would sneak her bread to make her sleepy enough to go to bed early. So without any without bread and her diet, she was upto that should go to bed. And, you know, that's the story to me, it like all that. All the aspects of the food were controlled, and they knew right away that what happened was how they chose to feed the kids. So I think that's a big story. Yeah, yeah, that's really interesting. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate you take the time. I'm excited about hearing more about your lifestyle of falling you online and the You have a really cool group talking about health that I'm I've jumped in on on Google. Plus, it's what is what is the name of it? Healthy steps. Something like healthy lifestyle. Theresa. I don't know what it is, but if you just go to hb way dot com slash health, it drags you right there and come and join. It's free. You just hang out with us. Yeah. Everybody hangs out and talks about exactly what we just talked about. Thank you very much, Chris. I really appreciate it. Total pleasure. Thanks for having me on. All right, Take care. Bye. I love that I love the specific detailed action items like no fluff like. That's really what I wanted. I'm watching him on social media, having exchanges and thinking he's found magic in his life through this experience and not like starry eyed, just like Look, this is better for all these reasons. And I love that