Wellness + Wisdom Podcast

On this week's podcast, Productivity & Success Transformation Coach Craig Ballantyne, stops by the show to talk about how to beat anxiety to create your perfect day. Craig is a fitness expert and the author of the groundbreaking fat loss workout systems, Turbulence Training, and Home Workout Revolution. He has been a contributing author to Men's Health magazine since 2000 and has been the editor of the personal development newsletter, Early to Rise, since 2011. Understanding Your Own Anxiety Suffering from anxiety shouldn’t make you feel like a black sheep. In fact, many people that you  know may suffer from some form of anxiety because 40 million Americans (18% of population) that are over the age of 18 face it each day. Some of these anxiety disorders include panic disorder, social anxiety disorder, or major depressive disorder. To beat your anxiety, you can change your mindset today. On this planet, every minute counts and in order to get the most out of each day of our lives, we have to get in the right mindset to take it head on as best as we can by changing our habits. Just like a fitness transformation, we need to make specific changes in order to see a mindset transformation. A new mindset transformation won’t only help us beat anxiety, but it will also help us become more goal driven and productive as well. In order to complete this mindset transformation, we can follow what Craig calls The Perfect Day Formula. How to Follow the Perfect Day Formula According to Craig, in order to begin following the Perfect Day Formula, we need to do The 3 C’s each day: Control the morning Conquer the afternoon Concentrate on what really matters The First C: You have the greatest control

On this week’s podcast, New York Times Best-selling author and striving Yogi, Karan Bajaj, shares how sabbaticals, vipassana meditation, and living in his dharma has helped him create more power, clarity, and purpose in his life and for millions of readers. The Purpose Driven Life The sad reality is that only one out of every three Americans are now reported to be very happy. It's no surprise that on the wrong road, we can find ourselves feeling disconnected from our passion, discontent with where we are, and craving a shift towards a more purpose driven life. In our journey, we may do many things to find purpose again including changing jobs or in finding temporary satisfactions through "weapons of mass distractions," like alcohol, food, and even the wrong relationships. To find a purpose driven life however, Karan plants the seed of thought that what we may need to do is simply create the time to focus on what we truly desire through yoga, meditation, and sabbaticals. To be able to feel more content with yourself and where you are in life, Karan guides us to the focus of stripping away your emotional materialism. How to Strip Yourself of Emotional Materialism Emotional materialism is defined by Karan as “constantly wanting to become something or someone better.” A person who focuses on emotional materialism is someone who is incessantly looking for growth within jobs, social circles, and experiences in order to become “someone better,” all without ever feeling good about where they are. They believe that once they have become that "better person" or achieved something bigger, only then will they be truly happy.  This however is the exact opposite of how to become content with who we truly are. After we strip ourselves of emotional materialism, we become more selfless. After we become more selfless, we can see ourselves as the best medium for carrying out our work; the magic of contentment is that it doesn’t even matter if that work fails. To a Yogi, the most important thing is that they are a vessel that carries out their work. But how do we begin this process of changing our mindset and not focus on becoming something else, but on who we are right now? How can we truly strip ourselves of emotional materialism and become selfless? Karan suggests three powerful steps: Learn, Reflect, and Meditate. To be content, you must do all three consistently over time. In order to al

On this week’s podcast, celebrity trainer of NBC's The Biggest Loser season 11, Brett Hoebel, discusses how we all can discover our unique healthy life, why our struggle can be our greatest gift, and how we can get clear on the choices that will truly make a difference. On this show, Brett shares his own story about when he experienced his own “Fitting Point” moment as a teenager. This would be a key moment in his life that led him to find his new, inner strength to overcome his struggles with poor nutrition. Without knowing it then, this new lifestyle change and a passion for fitness would lead him to have a career that he loves as one of best known trainers in the health and fitness community. In a world where we follow busy schedules that can include a family, a career, and other commitments, it can be difficult to find the time and motivation to fit in a good workout. Living a healthy lifestyle can be even more difficult if we’re battling inner demons that keep us from being the best that we can be both inside and outside the gym. How To Find Fitness From Within The reality is that if you force yourself to exercise or eat healthy foods without the right passion for it, you will always see changing your lifestyle as something negative. With this attitude, you will view these changes as something that you have to have happen and not what you truly get to let happen. At some point, you will see a lifestyle change as something positive when you finally find a personal connection to fitness. This connection gets to be be something that moves you forward on an emotional level. It can become very tiresome and boring to do the same exercises week after week. To change it up, Brett recommends finding something that truly energizes you and makes you excited to live a fitter life- in or outside the gym walls. Brett, for example, really enjoys taking the time to do Salsa dancing classes before getting into his workout. Takeaway: Do whatever works for you to make you happy and feel motivated! Discovering Your Fitting Point As easy as it may sound, finding your passion to live a healthy lifestyle is not always so simple. Life comes with so many different obstacles and curve balls that can stop us or put us off track from exercising, eating nutritious foods, and enjoying living healthy. Even Brett went through many struggles as an overweight teenager. He was involved in many sports growing up, but would overeat unhealthy foods with gluten and sugar that were against the diet he was supposed to be following. In denial of his emotional eating disorder and at rock-bottom, he had a sudden revelation and found his “Fitting Point.” The Fitting Point is when a person has found a moment in their life when they find inner strength and realize a change needs to be made for them to become healthy. This change may be trying to schedule a time to workout out more or, like Brett, stop eating unhealthy, processed foods and eat more natural foods. Identifying Your Life Passion

Damon Gameau, Actor, Director, Author, filmmaker and the creator of "That Sugar Film" drops by Wellness Force radio to discuss why he's started a movement to help change the way you think about "healthy foods." It's no surprise that many people you know have either dealt with or currently are in the process of breaking free from sugar. Modern day research papers from top leaders in the wellness movement are now showing the exact science as to why it so incredibly hard to let go of sugar: We are physiologically wired so that once we come in contact with sugar (which is rare in nature), that we crave it more and more. With clients, I see a lot of great progress in activity, sleep, and hydration, but this sugar piece this is a subtle foe; when you least expect it, it can slowly creep back into the diet and start wreaking havoc on progress.  Sugar & Childhood This episode hit me in both the chest and in the stomach. On today's show, I talk about some things from my childhood that came during the live interview with Damon, and he shares the shocking findings of his 60 day "healthy food challenge" where he developed nonalcoholic fatty liver disease and gained an incredible amount of weight. All from eating 2300 or less calories a day while maintaining healthy exercise levels by eating "heart approved" healthy foods. Breaking Free From Sugar If you're on a wellness journey and letting go of old weight, or if you're looking for more energy then this is going to be an absolute knockout for you! This week on the podcast, Damon Gameau of the documentary, That Sugar Film, shares with us how the food, media, and grocery store industries continue to push us into consuming more and more sugar, how that sugar affects us, and what we can do to fight back and eat healthy. During the filming of That Sugar Film, Damon visited the United States and purposefully ate foods and drinks that we see as healthy, but actually have tons of hidden sugar. As you will discover, the experiment took a toll on his body, mind, and emotional energy. There’s nothing wrong with treating ourselves to something delicious once in awhile, but when we have a soda here, a candy bar there, and a strawberry banana smoothie from Jamba Juice on our way home from work, every grain of sugar starts to add up. All these sweet foods and drinks may give us a quick buzz of energy, but left unchecked we can find ourselves in a sugar coma, ready to crash, and emotionally drained. We all know that too much sugar is “bad for you,” but what do we do when there’s hidden sugar in supposedly healthy foods such as smoothies, yogurts, sports drinks, and juices.  Taking Advantage of Our Biology The advertising and media industries have a lot of power that manipulates our food and beverage choices. Through television, social media, point-of-sale and other outlets, these advertisements can spread fast and vary greatly, including celebrity endorsements and promoting important charitable causes. <

When you hear the word, “craving,” what comes to mind? It might be a feeling or an itch, that if left unscratched, will eventually take on a life of it's own. What we now know is that cravings can be unnatural or natural depending on the manipulator that creates it based on satisfying our deepest physical and social needs. This week on Wellness Force Radio, Holistic Health Coach Kevin Geary of Rebooted Body shares how we can identify our "manipulators" to then stop using superficial cravings as a means of instant gratification. Decode Your Cravings Do you crave a McDonald’s Big Mac or a large ice cream sundae after a long day? Or maybe a large glass of ice cold water in the summer? Some cravings are natural and healthy; our body's voice that has spoken to us for Millenia to support health, vitality, and satisfy our soul. But having a sugary smoothie will not help us satisfy what we are truly missing from our lives. What we really crave are physical and social factors such as energy, acceptance, and a life purpose. It’s never too late to begin taking a closer look at yourself and discover what you’re truly craving in your life. When we take time to figure out our stress factors and what we crave, we can get to a place of self-acceptance and feel satisfied with ourselves. When we really look deep inside ourselves, we can find fulfillment and finally get the fit life that we want. What is a Craving vs. a Superficial Craving? A craving is something that is a human need for a specific purpose such as survival; to be happy; or other core human needs. A superficial craving is more of a desire such as a desire for a cup of hot coffee in the morning or something sweet as an afternoon snack. When we can’t satisfy real human cravings, it can increase our superficial cravings and bring on a great deal of stress so that we easily turn to different coping mechanisms such as eating unhealthy foods. Human cravings that we need to satisfy to end superficial cravings can include: Safety Mobility Movement Love and Relationships Social Acceptance Purpose Health and Vitality Self Actualization Autonomy What Are Our Manipulators? All of us have very different backgrounds that involve stressors and factors that keep us from reaching our health and fitness goals. These are referred to as BioPsychoSocial Manipulators. One specific manipulator is perfection. If we feel the need to have specific meal plans, workouts, and other specialized plans to reach fitness and body success, this need for perfection can actually have a negative effect on ourselves both physically and emotionally.<

For anyone new to the gym who’s looking to gain the strength to let go of old weight, lifting barbells can be intimidating, but not just because of the sweat that’s involved. In a fitness industry of macho-messaging, loud gym floors, and creepy dudes drinking protein shakes, the exercises can sometimes be the easiest thing to deal with. As with any new challenge, the hardest part is pushing through the uncomfortableness of a new environment to begin. From the incredible benefits of strength training for supporting fat loss, longevity, and mental clarity, today is the perfect day to start training no matter how long you’ve waited or how awkward it may feel. On this week’s Wellness Force podcast, strength coach and movement teacher, Scott Iardella, shares his life’s work on the importance of strength training and tips for how busy moms, women, and men alike can add it to their wellness journey. “Strength training does not have to be this intimidating factor that keeps us from the gym or from being the healthiest that we can be each day. With the right approach and the right guidance from a trusted coach or mentor, there can really be more benefits to strength than just your muscles.” - Scott Iardella Strength training is a phenomenal way to boost metabolism, lose weight, stay healthy, and be strong. To help you get started with your weight training, Scott has shared with with us several of his top exercises for gaining muscle. If you’re looking for a place to begin or even to add some body weight exercises during your busy day, you’ll want to note down Scott’s tips for future reference. Scott himself suffered from a major low back injury at a young age when he was training as a bodybuilder and had to learn the hard way to allow himself to recover and follow a specific program to get back to a healthy state. If you do have a sports injury, it’s okay to pull back and not push through intensive exercises and training. You need to allow time for  your body to heal so that it can perform at its very best again. Unless you have an injury or are unable to perform certain exercises, when it comes to strength training, there shouldn’t be anything holding you back. Work hard, take a break, and keep pursuing your goals. Common Myths of Strength Training for Women When women begin to think about strength training, many are afraid of gaining too much muscle and bulking up at a fast pace. However, unless a person is training specifically to become a bodybuilder and over consume food to have a higher daily calorie count, it’s next to impossible for a woman to become too bulky. Along the lines of being afraid of gaining too much muscle, many women believe that they need to do intense lifting at the very start of a strength training regime, but actually all you need to do is to keep it simple. There’s a reason why simple exercises have been used by people for so many years and it’s because time and time again, they work. However, for some women, they have no interest on becoming stronger and that’s okay. But it is important to understand that strength training can help you be fit and healthy for the long run. Even just doing a couple minutes of it can boost your self-confidence and well-being. Why Strength Train? What are the Benefits for Weight Loss and Longevity? Besides becoming stronger, there are so many benefits to strength training including weight loss and longevity. Many people believe that all you need to do to get into shape is to do daily cardio as your entire workout. However, aerobic workouts and strength training really go hand in hand. In fact, including weights can increase your metabolism throughout

The Reality: Traveling Can Keep You From Being Healthy and Fit When we're at home in our city and we have our weekly healthy routine, it's easy to focus on our goals, eat well, and get enough exercise. However, traveling can get in the way of ways and put us off course from continuing to be healthy and fit. But, as Rob Dionne, Fitness Professional and host of the Open Sky Fitness Podcast, will explain in this podcast, you don't have to let traveling get in the way of being the healthiest that you can be at the end of the day. In fact, there are many small steps you can do before or during a trip to ensure that you stay focused on eating right and getting a workout in when you can while traveling. 5 Key Steps to Staying Fit & Healthy While Traveling On today's show, Rob Dionne shares with us how to stay healthy when traveling with 5 key steps. 1. Call Ahead to Different Restaurants and Gyms in the Area Use different online resources such as Yelp, Uber, and more to find and get to the restaurants that provide the food that you want to be eating to stay fresh and healthy. If you're always traveling to the same city, keep that list of restaurants with you as a good resource for the future. In that list, including a couple of restaurants that are open late at night so you have the opportunity to eat healthy whenever you want. 2. Stop Playing the Victim Card Take the time to do a quick workout in either your hotel room or gym. Continue to do exercises that you do on a regular basis at your gym or with your personal trainer. Take control of your situation to find time and space in the day to work out and eat healthy including taking the stairs at the airport or hotel rather than the escalator or elevator. 3. Bring Healthy Food with You When You Travel Start your vacation strong by not throwing yourself off course with an unhealthy meal. It's very tempting to eat at fast food places while traveling via airport and on the go, but you can easily fix that by bringing your own healthy snacks with you through security and on the plane. Eating a meal before you travel will also help keep hunger pains at bay. Make sure you keep up your water intake as well. No need to buy an expensive bottle of water at the duty-free section of the airport terminal. Just bring an empty water bottle and fill it up once you pass through security. Before you leave for your trip, try to have some prepared food at home for quick and easy batch cooking. Traveling can be very hard on our stomachs and if you have pre cooked food or ingredients waiting at home for you in the freezer, you can cook a quick and healthy meal once you get back. 4. Know Yourself, Know Your Triggers Know and address your triggers while planning for your trip. Think ahead of time about what food at the airport will make you want to eat unhealthy or why you will decide to not workout during your trip. When you understand yourself, you can plan what food to eat while you travel and when you can fit in some fitness to continue to stay in shape and reach your goals. 5. Create a Goal for Yourself Sign up for an event or make a goal for yourself or with others so that you have an obligation to eat healthy and workout daily. With all fitness goals, be sure to set an end date that

Award winning Chef and entrepreneur Kat Humphus is on a mission to save the art of at-home cooking by making eating savory, healthy foods more simple.  The uncomfortable data is in: with the speed of modern life, men and women collectively are spending less time at the stove than ever before. Everyone knows that eating healthy trumps exercise, yet 6 out of 10 people in the country don't ever make time to cook food for themselves. When looking at the continuum of behavior change and the skill it takes to push eating healthy into the fold, there couldn't be more reasons to throw in the towel. But as Chef Kat explains, cooking healthy food at home isn't about being perfect and burning hours of time on your feet, it's about adding the right ingredients to your food and in your community to help support you along the way.  Hungry For Connection What makes cooking more fun and habit-forming? Connection. Not just to the food and where it came from, but to the people in our lives we cook for, including ourselves. What we need now as a society is for food to be something revered, not just ordered from a window. But the paradigm shift back to the art of cooking healthy as an act of self-care is under massive attack. Large food companies, who have made an absolute killing on the country's susceptibility for laziness, aren't helping either. The same corporations that make billions on packaged foods are now capitalizing on the market for GMO ladened and poor nutrient quality "packaged meals." With free time on the decline, the demand has been especially strong for what are called "fresh prepared foods," meals prepared in a nameless warehouse and then served at grocery stores, bodegas, and mini-mart's around the country. Sales of these nameless, tasteless, and obesity yielding foods now spike above $25 billion annually that point towards a lack of cooking skills in parents are also on the rise.  Turning Up The Heat In The Kitchen The reasons for the slow death of cooking in America are many, but a few big flames stand out. For one, women, who traditionally have carried the brunt of the cooking load, are working more than ever, and therefore spending less time cooking at home. In 2008, women spent 66 minutes per day cooking, almost 50 minutes less than in the 1960s, when they spent upward of 112 minutes on average. Men, by comparison, are actually spending a bit more time at the stove, albeit only a meager eight minutes more. So men have hardly made up the difference. As Chef Kat explains, making healthy cooking simple is just the first step, and what will really make the difference for busy families is adding in the the right ingredients at the right time. More About Chef kat Katherine Humphus is a classically trained Chef, a graduate of Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, France. After working in Manhattan kitchens under famed chef Wylie Dufresne at WD-50, she also cooked under world-renowned chef Thomas Keller at The French Laundry in Napa. Upon returning to her hometown of San Diego, she began working under the Cohn Restaurant group umbrella, opening up 3 restaurants as Executive Chef—BO-beau kitchen + bar in 2010, 100 Wines Hillcrest in 2012, and BO-beau kitchen + roof tap in Long Beach in 2014. Chef Kat has been honored with the title of Best Chef 2014 by the Peninsula Beacon, in addition to winning Top Female Chef by Riviera Magazine and also Best Local Chef 2012 by Ranch & Coast Magazine. Now back in San Diego with Kat’s Kitchen Collective, she cannot wait to bring exquisite cuisine to the everyday kitchen. From the kitchens of Paris, New York, and Napa, Chef Kat is on a mission to make cooking healthy possible again right in your home. Resources Mentioned In The Show

BONUS episode for a ten minute bite this week! Today, we're talking about your wellness and genetics. Yes, predisposition towards health complications do exist, but from the collective consciousness in regards to lifestyle modification, saying that genes keep you fat takes the power of positive change out of your hands. Remember when you were 7 years old and you got caught drawing with crayons on the wall in your room? What was your first response? Either fully own up to it or, most likely at that age, peel back and dive into 100% denial. When it comes to our wellness in the modern world, the national food system, personal health choices, and nutritional habits have officially become the crayons. Do you mindlessly graze on carb-packed foods throughout the day in a stress response to elevated cortisol? Do you feel like the meals you eat could possibly be an escape from a day filled with stress, deadlines, and lack of sleep? WELCOME TO THE 21ST CENTURY You are not alone. In the currently health-jaded society, our mechanized, homogenized, and pasteurized system cannot be the scapegoat for you to place blame on any longer. If you’re willing to spend enough quiet time by yourself in yoga, meditation, or breathing, completely removed from the distractions of the outside world, your intuition will tell you that the only thing holding you back from feeling and moving better is you. This ten minute bite podcast was crated to inspire you to take the action and accountability needed for your dreams – whatever they might be. Step outside the box for a minute with me and get a little bit closer to feeling the way you deserve to feel: amazing. HUMANS OF THESE MODERN TIMES We learn the benefits of denial at an early age. It comes in many forms but always has one strong anchor: it doesn’t serve our true needs. We all tend to place blame on others from time to time; our thoughts and actions miss the authentic boat. The path of least resistance is all to easy and holds no accountability to our true desires when it comes to health and wellness. We ask ourselves early in the wellness journey at some point before the awakening: “Am I just a product of my genetics?” Western medicine would like you to believe so, but after the past 10 years of coaching I can instinctively and intuitively say no. “The mind only believes what you want it to believe and the body will always follow in tow.” – T.u. Late one night, I had to go get water at my local grocery, when I ran into one of my old gym members from Mission Beach. Her shopping cart was filled with the usual suspects- bread, soy, dairy, chips, cakes and pasta. You can always tell a lot about a person by the way they shop- where they are going and where they have been. When asked about her health goals, she told me about quitting the gym and doing a master cleanse the week before. You know the drill, cayenne pepper, lemon juice and a lot of BS. Its another one of those week long diets where you starve yourself and go into ketoacidosis only to regain all of the lost weight plus 3 lbs. GENETICS & BELIEF “It’s in my genetics Josh, I just can’t lose weight, I’m going to get a lap-band consultation soon,” she says while reaching for a 2 liter of Diet Pepsi. My heart sank as I talked to her a little about

This week we showcase an encore interview with two of those most sought after body intelligence coaches and best-selling authors in the world.  Gay Hendricks, Ph.D., and Kathlyn Hendricks, Ph.D., are pioneers in the fields of conscious relationships and body intelligence and the authors of more than 30 books, including best sellers such as Conscious Loving, The Big Leap, and Five Wishes. During the past 30 years they have appeared on hundreds of radio and television shows and networks, including Oprah, CNN, CNBC, and CBS's 48 hours. In 1989 they founded the Hendricks Institute, which offers seminars annually in North America, Asia, and Europe. Their nonprofit organization, The Foundation for Conscious Living, funds research, Films, and scholarships in the areas of conscious relationships and natural well-being. >> Review Wellness Force on iTunes << Listen To Katie & Gay Uncover: How doing the work in our relationships can translate into better health and wellness in our lives. Gay & Katie's unique work in transformation & conscious living Their work in consciousness and creating a life of love, presence, and integrity The new book, Conscious Loving Ever After How to create thriving, loving, and conscious relationships Exploring the definition of emotional intelligence Healthy habits to begin cultivating in relationships with our partners and ourselves   Resources Mentioned In The Show "The Big Leap" by Gay Hendricks "Conscious Loving Ever After" by Gay & Katie Hendricks The Hendricks Institute Hearts In Harmony Facebook Page Upcoming Trainings: Body Intelligence "Being out of integrity with your genius causes a wobble that destabilizes your relationship, work, and health.” - Gay Hendricks Thanks To Our Amazing Sponsor Want to avoid more trips to the store and save hundreds of dollars a year on superfood supplements? Check out Perfect Supplements.com Go to perfectsupplements.com/wellnessforce to get your grass-fed collagen from today's show and sign up for a free membership, plus get 10% off your entire order - just enter promo code "wellnessforce" at checkout. Ask A Live Question For The Next Episode Click here to leave a voicemail directly to Josh Trent to be read live!