The B.rad Podcast

I welcome author and motivational speaker Amberly Lago to the SoCal podcast studios to tell her amazing and inspiring story. Amberly is the author of True Grit and Grace: Turning Tragedy into Triumph. Amberly offers a message of personal potential, acceptance, and living life to the fullest. Unlike the next motivational speaker or peak performance advocate, Amberly comes across as authentic, vulnerable, and overall the real deal. She offers up empowering insights and in the next breath describes how tough it is to use the tools we know we have at our disposal in daily life. Her story is going to blow your mind and give you a fresh perspective about managing whatever challenges you face each day with a little more sensitivity and gratitude.   One day in May of 2010, Amberly was coming home from another great day as a personal trainer and fitness enthusiast (hitting a PR for an 11-mile run that day!) and sustained a terrible motorcycle accident. She was T-boned by an inattentive driver, thrown 30 feet down busy Ventura Boulevard in LA. Her right leg was nearly shattered and the femoral artery was severed. Refusing the option to amputate her leg, Amberlyendured 34 surgeries and a severe complication of contracting the dreaded condition of Chronic Regional Pain Syndrome. As Amberly details her story of suffering and recovering, beautiful insights arise from the nuances of the conversation and her speech patterns, so listen carefully! She talks about how her husband’s support carried her through the dark times, and came in different forms—including setting her straight when she was complaining too much. She talks about the “toolbox” she has developed to deal with her chronic pain and other life challenges, which consists of keeping physical, mental, and spiritually fit each day. She realizes that the chronic foot pain she deals with to this day serves as a natural governor for her to keep her Texas-tough competitive intensity in check, and emphasize downtime and stress management techniques.   Amberly talks about the importance of mindfulness—staying focused on the present and redirecting any “coulda, shoulda, woulda” ruminations from the past, or stressing about the future. She talks about how her morning routine gets her into a healthy mindset to tackle her day, especially the practice of expressing gratitude for three things in your life as soon as you wake up. Amberly offers up some memorable quotes, but in her case, it’s not just a pithy quote, it’s how she really lives her life. “Start where we are, use what we have, do what we can.” Can it get any better than that for direction on how to live a happy, healthy life?!   Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-get-over-yourself-podcast/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

After getting our gut check at the end of the first show, Tommy keeps the momentum going with some memorable sound bites and takeaway action items for a long, happy, healthy life.  Referencing the gut dysfunction that ended the first show, Tommy explains that the body can find other ways to replenish necessary carbs through internal mechanism and reducing your need by becoming fat and keto-adapted.  We talk about my successful experiment, inspired by Tommy and Chris Kelly in September of 2017, to start consuming additional nutritious calories to fuel athletic performance and speed recovery. In evaluating my comprehensive test results generated by the Nourish, Balance, Thrive program, along with my complaint of crash and burn patterns (feel great, performance magnificent athletic feats, then drag ass for a couple-few days or longer). Yes, Tommy said you can even eat ice cream now and then! I transitioned from a sustained pattern of fasting until noon or later to starting my day with my Brad Kearns super-nutritious green smoothie every morning (check my someday-viral YouTube video of that name). Tommy inspires athletic types to understand that more nutrient-dense food can support peak performance, general health, and longevity. He theorizes that if you under-consume calories while striving for athletic excellence, you may slow down your thyroid and experience a decline in general everyday energy levels and metabolic function. Granted, if you are carrying excess body fat that you want to remove, are trying to recover from metabolic damage from carb dependency and/or yo-yo dieting, or have blood risk factors like high triglycerides, you may have a greater benefit from carbohydrate restriction to achieve rapid fat loss.   We’ve heard in the low carb community how fasting improves autophagy (the natural cellular detoxification process) and that having an efficient metabolism is a longevity booster, but Tommy reminds us that athletes get similar autophagy benefits from endurance exercise depleting cellular energy, and that studies show those with a faster metabolism might live longer. Tommy keeps it pretty simple with the suggestion of eating as much nutritious food as you want without gaining fat.   We also learn how the real culprit for body fat accumulation is consuming fat and carbs in combination. Food manufacturers know this can have addictive allure, and have carefully designed most of our go-to shit products to contain both refined carbohydrates and usually unhealthy processed fats.   The show ends with Tommy offering color commentary on his delightfully simple and memorable five tips for living healthy:   Sleep enough: Make sure you have a quiet, dark environment and avoid excess screen time in the evening.   Move more: Lift. Walk. Sprint. Jump. Climb. How cool that Tommy combines all forms of exercise, training and movement together. It’s not about logging your miles or hitting spin class every day, its about an overall movement strategy.   Reduce stress: Meditate. Do yoga. Nap. Spend time outdoors. We often neglect this stuff on the other side of the balance scale. Tommy reminds us that stress is subjective (read book, The Myth of Stress). Is a traffic jam stressful, or is it just another great opportunity to catch up on podcasts?  Socialize: Put down the iPhone. Have fun with friends and family. Have sex.
Remember, Tommy is deep into the scientific research that validates how this breezy stuff can optimize hormone and immune function. He mentions the dangers of lingering in the “cognitive middle gear” that really trips Brad out because he realizes he is messing up this one big time.   Eat real food. Simple as that, let’s all tone down the hair-splitting and controversy surrounding the nuances of healthy eating. Both vegans and hardcore keto folks have lots of common ground and that’s what we should focus on.   Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-get-over-yourself-podcast/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What an honor to talk with the #1 bestselling relationship author of all time, Dr. John Gray! John’s 1992 masterpiece, Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus: The Classic Guide To Understanding The Opposite Sex, launched an enterprise that is still leading the pack to this day. His 2017 book and the centerpiece of this interview is called, Beyond Mars and Venus: Relationship Skills For Today’s Complex World.   Too young to have heard of Mars and Venus? Check this: “Now viewed as a modern classic, this phenomenal book has helped men and women realize how different they can be in their communication styles, their emotional needs, and their modes of behavior; and offers the secrets of communicating without conflicts, allowing couples to give intimacy every chance to grow.”    Over the past 25 years, John has authored numerous sequels and ascended to the highest level of prominence as an author, speaker, therapist, and—most interestingly—scientist delivering cutting-edge insights on how innate gender differences and hormone balances affect relationships.   John’s recent work is a real breakthrough because it breaks down relationship dynamics to the hormonal level. It also identifies ways in which we can achieve an ideal balance of testosterone, estrogen and numerous other hormones and neurotransmitters that help us become the best man or best woman we can be—especially in the midst of rapidly evolving cultural roles that make it difficult to stay in balance.    After binging on the 10-hour audio recording and conducting this interview, I dare say the experience will be life-changing. You’ll have to listen to a future show with Mia Moore to find out what happened with us the day after the interview!    Dr. Gray’s insights cover the stuff underneath the dysfunctional patterns that we get stuck in, the frustration and confusion of not being able to understand or connect with our partners, and the cultural prevalence for unhealthy distraction (Gray observes how males are addicted to porn and video games, and females are taking antidepressants and anti-anxiety medication in record numbers). One thing is for sure—with John Gray, you are in for a wild ride. This show is incredibly fast-moving and will compel you to read both his first book and current book very carefully if you want to thrive in loving relationships.    At one point, John breaks down in describing the difficulty of losing his longtime spouse, Bonnie, to cancer in 2017. Soon after, he goes on an epic binge of profound insights for how men can rebuild their testosterone and feel valued and appreciated, and how women can reawaken their estrogen-dominant, nurturing selves who love to be heard and receive pleasure. This is a challenge because the free and progressive modern culture has allowed us to awaken all sides of ourselves, whereby in previous generations men played the breadwinner role and females played the caretaker role. From his basic premise, John takes us deep into the bedroom, describing how great sex can wash away lots of relationship conflict, the importance of female orgasm for both men and women, and how to have sex for 10 hours (sneak preview of a future book project!).    John is an animated guy with a profound gift for analyzing relationship dynamics and telling you exactly how you can succeed, maintain passion and spark, become Soulmates instead of the dated concept of “Rolemates”, and escape from the frustrating patterns and repeated failures that seem to be the norm in modern culture. If you are not absolutely inspired and touched by this interview, email me for a full refund. This guy is a classic! Enjoy John Gray, Ph.D., author of Beyond Mars and Venus. Order it right now- it will transform your relationship.   Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-get-over-yourself-podcast/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I have a powerhouse session with Dr. Tommy Wood of Nourish, Balance, Thrive where a great many topics are covered that can transform your health. This is the first of a two-part show, so fasten your seatbelts for a wild ride covering a wide range of health, fat burning, and longevity topics. Tommy is a medical doctor trained at Oxford and Cambridge, with a Ph.D. in neonatal brain research from University of Oslo. Of British and Icelandic heritage, Tommy has landed in the Seattle area, where he and his wife both do professor-ish stuff at You Dub, or the University of Washington. He is the Chief Scientific Doctor for the comprehensive health and peak performance testing and consultation service called NourishBalanceThrive.com. This is the absolute cutting edge of progressive health for athletes and anyone wanting to achieve peak performance. The NBT program goes beyond traditional medicine to identify hormonal and nutritional deficiencies through extensive blood, urine, stool and saliva testing, expert consultations, and targeted supplementation.  What’s most cool about Tommy is that he is as absolutely ankle-deep into the science of health, metabolism, and longevity as anyone on the planet, but he emphasizes the simple, practical healthy lifestyle practices above all. He did a whole show on the Nourish, Balance, Thrive podcast channel about how owning a dog can significantly boost your health (get outside frequently, engage in spontaneous play). Brucebowen, the regal white boxer seen in the show photo, has received the highest possible honor by the American Kennel Club of being banned from championship dog shows out of respect for fair competition for all lesser breeds.   Tommy talks about how positive social interactions help us manage our level of systemic inflammation—a key predictor of disease and demise when it’s out of control. We then talk about the prominent fight or flight hormone, cortisol. Understanding how to manage the chronic stressors of daily life and optimize cortisol is the secret to recovering from training, staying healthy, and minimizing disease risk. Tommy encapsulates this important concept by explaining that cortisol spikes “liquidate your assets,” quoting from a book he recommends, “Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers.”  During my career as a professional triathlete, I was repeatedly fooled by the mechanisms of the fight or flite response that had me feeling great, albeit bathed in stress hormones on an artificial chemical high where I was liquidating my assets. A wallet filled with cash and credit card bills stacking up.   Tommy explains how we respond to stress differently, and how can teach ourselves to better handle traffic jams, work stress, and even training sessions, so the stress impact is minimized. Listen to Joel Jamieson’s podcast about Rebound Training where you can do workouts that nurture the activation of the parasympathetic nervous system.    Tommy recaps his talk at Ancestral Health Symposium where he started with the compelling premise that today’s model of fitness and athletic training are wholly modern constructs that have little to do with our ancestral hunter-gatherer activity patterns. Studies from the modern day hunter-gatherer Hadza tribe in Africa show that they move around a lot but are never plunging into destructive chronic patterns like modern athletes. Tommy also talks about how gut dysfunction is very prevalent among hard training fitness enthusiasts, and how becoming fat adapted can help alleviate the stress on your digestive system caused by exercise.   Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-get-over-yourself-podcast/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Fitness and biofeedback apps are all the rage at the moment. They can help engage our workout decisions, workout performance and help track consumption of calories and macronutrients. Sounds good right? While they certainly can have their benefits, this show contemplates how being connected this way to your body’s nutrition and fitness needs actually spreads the gap further between your mind/body connection and produces an overly regimented life dependent on various gadgets. While such devices are lovely pieces of technology, on one hand, they also lead to not correctly exercising your most important muscle – your brain!    I discuss how some of this technology isn’t even viable for the average user because it’s so sophisticated in understanding your heart rate variability; therefore, such tools are rendered nearly useless to the average user.   While apps like the Primal Beat HRV are beneficial for heart rate tracking, this show lets you in on what Mark Sisson thought after using one of the sleep trackers available on the market, and I reveal which gadget, according to The Guardian, is the only tool that actually can improve your health over time. Surprisingly, this device has nothing to do with fitness gains or body fat losses. Any guesses?  There needs to remain an elegant balance between the relationship between you and your high tech versus the connection you grow or maintain with your intuition. Let your mind and body be your guide and keep the apps as a learning tool, not as a tool that directs your entire strategy toward improved health.  Hope you dig the show!  Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-get-over-yourself-podcast/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I am joined with Rick Mouw, the owner of Almost Heaven, who provides one-of-a-kind, beautiful quality, and hand-crafted sauna kits to his customers. Proclaimed as the largest manufacturer of do-it-yourself saunas, Rick is all for creating awareness surrounding heat therapy which comes from sauna use specifically. He stresses that a hot tub is more for relaxation purposes while saunas add a hearty dose of wellness into the equation. The structure is also nicely practical and low-maintenance as a bonus. My guest’s outdoor barrel saunas have an elegant barrel design, and you can tell they were made with love. My intention is not to sound like a salesman with this show but to provide you with the new and surprising discoveries that have been made about the insane sauna benefits which many of us weren't aware of previously.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-get-over-yourself-podcast/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I’m rapping again like I do on the Primal Endurance podcast! Horrors or cheers? Send your commentary to getoveryourselfpodcast@gmail.com. In this episode, I talk about the often forgotten negative aspects of fast-paced modern life: burnout. Regarding my show about maintaining competitive intensity throughout life and how valuable that is, there is a flip side where an overly intense approach can lead to breakdown and burnout. My old friend Johnny G, fitness celebrity who invented indoor group cycling with his Spinning program in 1995 and finisher of the nonstop bicycle Race Across America in 1989, likes to say that, “only things that are natural and easy to maintain are healthy.”  If you enjoyed my show with Dr. Peter Attia, you can reflect on an interesting insight that on the heels of his three-year experiment with strict nutritional ketosis (and 24/7 glucose monitor implanted into his abdomen to generate smartphone app readout.) It’s cool to pursue crazy and extreme goals as I did when I was a professional triathlete, for growth experiences are generated when you push yourself beyond your existing comfort zone and test out the limits of your physical or cognitive abilities. However, you must implement a sensible approach that is aligned with your current age and lifestyle circumstances. Over your lifetime, it’s best to continually recalibrate your goals to keep things fresh and healthy and avoid getting into ruts or burnout situations when your life gets out of balance. People ask me all the time, “do you still do triathlons, just for fun?” No, I’ve been there and done that and   I share an epic quote from Arnold Schwarzenegger that I clipped from a bodybuilding magazine 23 years ago (while working with muscleheads at a bodybuilding supplement company, trying to convince endurance athlete to pound the same powder and recover faster.) Arnold was asked in this magazine interview if he ever yearned for the days when he was back on stage, oiled up, the most muscular man in the world? “No.” was his answer! He elaborated that because he was a healthy man, he is able to grow more easily through the various stages of life. Obviously, in his case, pursuing a succession of daunting goals like becoming a movie star (with a crippling accent that they tried to choke out of him at first), and then to enter politics in a major way when he served as the Governor of California.   I have thought about this quote frequently over the past couple of decades, as I have continually recalibrated my goals as a parent, athlete, and career person to keep things fresh and exciting and healthy. That said, is there a risk of burnout when you plunge deep into peak performance goals while you are trying to manage assorted other responsibilities of daily life, and also counting the decades going by. Indeed there is, and we must be realistic with our goals and daily routines to make sure they support health and longevity, but keep us feeling fresh and energized and competitive in a healthy sense.   Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-get-over-yourself-podcast/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I visit the beautiful waterfront of Kirkland, Washington to get some breakthrough insights on athletic training and recovery from Joel Jamieson of 8WeeksOut.com. Months prior to our meeting in summer 2018, my mind was blown by an article Joel wrote on his website called “All Pain, No Gain: Why The High Intensity Training Obsession Has Failed Us All.” In it, Joel reframes our basic notion of recovery from a static activity to something that actually requires energy to achieve. If you envision your weekly energy expenditure in a pie chart, you devote slices to workouts, your career, coaching soccer, whatever, but we must also acknowledge that refreshing brain neurons and restocking muscle glycogen require energy to perform!   The harder your train, the more energy you need to devote to recovery. Unfortunately, athletes usually think in the narrow dimension of training hard and then crashing on the couch to “recover,” or worse, training hard and heading to their high-stress desk job to “recover.” What happens when you disrespect the energy requirement of recovery is you get into what Joel refers to as “recovery debt.” Listen to Joel’s show on the Primal Endurance podcast where he details these concepts.  Joel brings some more mind-blowing insights to this show when he discusses his interesting concept of Rebound Training. Here again, fitness enthusiasts are compelled to reframe our notion of recovery from inactivity to something perhaps more effective—distinct physical exercise that is designed to activate the parasympathetic nervous system and tone down the usually predominant sympathetic nervous system activity. Some more interesting food for thought: Unlike primal humans, exercise and food are no longer inextricably linked. This royally screws up our genetically hardwired dopamine reward system. In short, when we are inactive and eat in modern life, we short circuit our motivation to work out.    Joel is a longtime enthusiast of Heart Rate Variability and his new app Morpheus App (find in App store and start using it!) allows you to aggregate assorted training and lifestyle factors, including HRV, to auto-generate a Recovery score. Knowing your state of recovery, you can make more informed training decisions and stay away from the dreaded recovery debt.   Here are some examples of Rebound Training: Extensive breathing, stretching, and mobility exercises to get blood flowing without stressing the body; Doing only the concentric portion of a deadlift, then dropping the weight to prevent muscle soreness. Here you get the nervous system activation without the muscle damage; Doing very short intervals (say 10-12 seconds) and then allowing long recovery period (like 60 seconds) where you make a devoted effort to lower your heart rate quickly (Yes, amazingly, you can get better and better a this skill! Work on it in the gym and then you can use the same tips to control your stress response in the traffic jam or workplace). Joel coaches world champion MMA fighters, but every fitness enthusiast can learn to make recovery an absolute top priority and do it the right way. Since recording this show with Joel, I have altered my approach to recovery workouts to integrate some of the rebound training techniques instead of just sit around and wait for my muscles and body to feel better and then hit it hard again. It freakin’ works man! Get outside and move and you will recover faster.   Joel is a big-time helicopter pilot so you may get a fun outtake where he is talking about the importance of relaxing and going with the flow in whatever you do, including landing a freaking helicopter on a random mountaintop in the Pacific Northwest, which is one of Joel’s hobbies. After the show, Joel was headed out into the beautiful Pacific Northwest sunset for a quick helicopter trip to Vashon Island. Four hours by car, 30 minutes by helicopter. More time to recover!  Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-get-over-yourself-podcast/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It’s my pleasure to serve as the curator of the museum of healthy living and share some interesting and informative quotes on an assortment of topics, hopping from one to another. First, we cover the most simple and profound dietary advice imaginable from bestselling author Michael Pollan: “Eat food, mostly plants, not too much.” Note his epic follow-up one-liner, which is the importance of avoiding what we call junk food, but what is more literally accurate to describe as “edible foodlike substances.” We cover seven additional details of dietary advice from Pollan. Moving on to one of my favorite ancestral health movement forefathers, Dr. Art DeVany, who says “starve and exercise” to heal damaged cells in the brain and the body. DeVany also asserts that “we are most human when we don’t eat.” Science confirms that we function at highest efficiency when we are in a fasted state, where the natural cellular detoxification process of autophagy is optimized and the process of (desirable) programmed cell death called apoptosis are upregulated.   Next, a quick tidbit from Medium.com relationship columnist Kris Gage, talking about the importance of keeping promises you make to yourself in order to build healthy self-esteem. My favorite blogger Seth Godin weighs in with a classically pithy suggestion to “have the discipline to say no to distractions” and fix up flawed systems and dysfunctional self-talk that is holding us back. I share a message from Ben Greenfield where he discusses insights from Robert Greene’s book, Laws of Human Nature. We can aspire to model Leonardo da Vinci and his motto in life of ostinato rigore (relentless rigor.)   Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-get-over-yourself-podcast/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I welcome Dr. Wendy Walsh back for a repeat of her awesome performance on Episode 15 when she talked about her area of expertise, evolutionary psychology applied to modern love. Dr. Wendy brings her “A” game again with an effortless and effusive dispensation of extremely memorable and life-changing insights about relationships, parenting, the future of humanity, and her provocative new podcast called Mating Matters on iHeart Radio.   We pick up where we left off at the last show, with the examination of modern mating dynamics, and Wendy describes the attributes necessary to nurture and sustain a healthy, happy, long-term love relationship. It’s a delicate balance between healthy autonomy and sustaining a strong connection. Wendy asserts that “too much autonomy means no intimacy. Too much union means fusion, and that’s not healthy either.”  We transition into one of her most passionate subjects, parenting. Wendy points out that “parenting” wasn’t even a verb word until recent years! Wendy counters some of today’s boilerplate assumptions about parenting, observing that many parents are doing not enough instead of too much, and that raising your children should be a priority for that small 20-year window of time when you are on duty.   Oh, if you are patting yourself on the back as a hugely devoted parent running around orchestrating a perfect life for your precious superstar kid, you may want to reflect on whether it’s really about the kid, or about your ego—living your dreams through your kid. Instead, Wendy advocates that you should tune into your child, learn who they really are and what makes them tick, and facilitate the pursuit of their goals and dreams. In light of our cultural concerns that today’s kids might become hapless drones of the digital age, Wendy observes that children are extremely smart and adaptable, and they are simply adapting and leveraging the necessary skills to survive in today’s world. And keep in mind that the older generations always think that things are in decline when looking at younger generations  Wendy takes a segue to fawn over her celebrity crush, Elon Musk. You’ll realize why this dude comes to mind when you learn the recording location. Wendy says he’s definitely a genius; alas he might not be dateable material. Wendy is ever sharp, spicy and humorous, but we also get deep at times when she reflects on the future of humanity, on how to come from a position of gratitude in daily life, particularly how it relates to not sweating the small stuff in relationship (Check out Mia Moore show, episode #9 “Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff” for more on this critical relationship attribute. Another relationship tip: If you treat your partner like the king or queen they deserve to be treated as, and consider them to be a king or queen in your mind, you will manifest this into reality. Human psychic energy is real, as proven by the work of Dr. Bruce Lipton, author of The Biology of Belief (e.g. walking into a conference room and sensing low energy, and arriving to a party and becoming enveloped in the positive energy.) Consider that your brain knows no difference between what is real and what is imagined, so envision an ideal relationship and true transformation is possible.   We end with Wendy describing what’s in store for the Mating Matters show, enjoy this blurb: Hosted by psychologist and relationship guru, Dr. Wendy Walsh, Mating Matters explores the secret evolutionary motivation for virtually every human behavior. We are here to reproduce and behind everything is a desire to increase our mating opportunity. Season 1 looks at how concealed fertility has created the sexual double standard, why high testosterone men may be lousy husbands, why religions make rules around sex and how dating apps bio-hack your brain.  Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-get-over-yourself-podcast/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.