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On today’s episode of the Flex Diet Podcast, I talk with Dr. Jade Teta from Next Level Human. We start by discussing the differences in how we, as fitness professionals, speak to consumers vs. industry. Then, we get into metabolism, psychology, and psychedelics. And, yes, I was holed up in a closet to get better sound while visiting South Padre Island, Texas.

Stay tuned for more information on the Flex Diet Certification, which will open for enrollment the first week of June 2023. Go to flexdiet.com to sign up for the waitlist. You’ll be the first to know when the course opens.

Listen to hear:

  • [9:12] Customer-based language

  • [14:33] Individualizing health plans
  • [23:21] Investing in certifications
  • [28:16] Dr. Teta’s holistic background
  • [42:51] Psychedelics for habit change
  • [54:50] Learning through suffering

Connect with Dr. Jade Teta:

About Dr. Jade Teta:

“I have a degree in biochemistry, and I am a practitioner of naturopathic medicine. Although, my friends give me a hard time for never referring to myself as “Doctor.” I guess I always found it too formal, have grown past the need for accolades and, depending on who you ask, some don’t consider me a physician at all. Given my specialty in natural medicine, I have been called everything from “quack” to “witch doctor.” Believe it or not, I take that as a compliment. The choice to go into alternative medicine was conscious and deliberate.”

Rock on!

Dr. Mike T Nelson

FD_podcast_Dr_Jade

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Dr. Mike T Nelson

Dr. Mike T Nelson

PhD, MSME, CISSN, CSCS Carrick Institute Adjunct Professor Dr. Mike T. Nelson has spent 18 years of his life learning how the human body works, specifically focusing on how to properly condition it to burn fat and become stronger, more flexible, and healthier. He’s has a PhD in Exercise Physiology, a BA in Natural Science, and an MS in Biomechanics. He’s an adjunct professor and a member of the American College of Sports Medicine. He’s been called in to share his techniques with top government agencies. The techniques he’s developed and the results Mike gets for his clients have been featured in international magazines, in scientific publications, and on websites across the globe.

  • PhD in Exercise Physiology
  • BA in Natural Science
  • MS in Biomechanics
  • Adjunct Professor in Human
  • Performance for Carrick Institute for Functional Neurology
  • Adjunct Professor and Member of American College of Sports Medicine
  • Instructor at Broadview University
  • Professional Nutritional
  • Member of the American Society for Nutrition
  • Professional Sports Nutrition
  • Member of the International Society for Sports Nutrition
  • Professional NSCA Member

 

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[00:00:00] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Hey, what’s going on? Welcome back to the Flex Diet Podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Mike T. Nelson, and today on the podcast I’ve got my buddy from Next Level Human, Dr. Jade. I finally got to meet him, as you talked about in this podcast at the Real Coaches Summit of 2023, which was awesome. I followed Dr. Jade’s work at team Nation for quite a while, and just everything that he’s got going on.

Today we talk about, start off with differences in language about how do you speak to consumers versus other people in the industry and how a lot of times that gets miscommunicated in terms of messaging. And then we get into some more things related to metabolism.

And then at the end also psychology about habit changes process, how he sets up his programs which are similar in concept to how I set up the Flex Diet Certification and how if you’re a trainer or someone else, a coach, you can leverage these systems cuz we’re literally trying to package all of our knowledge into a complete system that you can then use and apply. We also talked about habit change and even the potential role of psychedelics in change.

Dr. Jade is going back to school again to formally investigate some of these things. So I think I’ll really enjoy this podcast and it is brought to you by the Flex Diet certification.

Flex Diet certification will open again June 5th, 2023. It’s a complete system based on flexible dieting and metabolic flexibility to improve body composition and performance all without destroying your health in a flexible process. We talk all about everything from carbohydrates, proteins, fat meat, which is non-exercise activity, thermogenesis, exercise, sleep, and much, much more. So you’ll learn the overall concept of metabolic flexibility. You’ll have a primer on each one of those eight different interventions based on the research.

Done in language you can understand. And then at the end, I have five action items for each one. So it is a flexible approach that is semi customizable to each person. But it’s rigged up in a way that you’ll start with the big rocks, the things that are. Gonna have the biggest effect, both from the psychology and the physiology for your clients.

So we are purposely trying to rig the system in their favor. So go to flexdiet.com for all of the information. And when it opens, you can get on the wait list there and you’ll be the first to be notified. Right now it’s scheduled to open June 5th, 2023, so enjoy this conversation with Dr. Jade.

[00:03:18] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Welcome back to the Flex Diet Podcast and today we’ve got our special guest, Dr. Jade. Thank you so much for being here, man. I’m excited to have you

on

[00:03:26] Dr. Jade Teta: here. What’s going on, Dr. Mike? Good to see you, brother.

[00:03:29] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah, we finally got to meet in person at the Real Coaches Summit a few months ago back in Vegas, which was, it was awesome.

Obviously, I’ve read a lot of yourself at, T Nation and other sources over the years and. Similar thought process and it was nice to meet you and your wife in person.

[00:03:45] Dr. Jade Teta: Yeah. Yeah, it was it was really great to for you and I to catch up for sure. I had been following your work for a while, had you on my podcast.

Yeah. And it’s really good to, to connect man. It’s I thought it’s really funny. You and I talk and it’s like we agree on most things. I thought we might have a little bit more differences, but we actually see very much eye to eye. And it was it’s been fun getting to know you personally, for sure.

[00:04:09] Dr. Mike T Nelson: And I always like these, and one of the main reasons I do a podcast is it’s my own selfish thing. And other people get to listen, which is great. And I think, especially now with social media and other things that, and you talked about this in your presentation, that if you’re presenting to an audience, you have to use the language that they’re using so that they understand you.

I think a lot of times that gets misinterpreted. So it’s nice to have a one-on-one conversation, even if it’s virtual, and see, how much do you’re probably talking about the same thing. But you may not be using necessarily the same language because you’re not talking to another peer, you’re talking to maybe the consumer, right?

So you’re, there’s gonna be this trade off on, I always have this issue myself. I keep thinking how much do I change my message so that they understand it, but I’m not going to radically change it, that it’s no longer fits what I actually believe anymore. And like, where is that kind of happy medium so people understand what the hell I’m saying.

But I’m still staying true to the things that I believe and what I’m actually teaching.

[00:05:17] Dr. Jade Teta: Yeah. I’m really glad you brought that up because, recently I had a big, social media’s a weird place. It’s one big high school thing. So people go back and forth.

And recently I had and this has been ongoing since, I’ve had a lot of success in marketing and a lot of success with my companies. And the more successful that we’ve gotten, the more it puts me in the marketing limelight. In fact, I think my company, metabolic and V Shred right now are the top spenders in the metabolism space in terms of ads on Instagram and on Facebook and on TikTok.

And it’s really interesting because of course when you market To the public. You really are speaking a completely different language. And for professionals who aren’t necessarily aware of that, it can come across as highly offputting and marketing’s never really our great our greatest look anyway.

But I do think, and I do pride myself on the fact that I did make that pivot, because if we’re speaking only to our peers and using that language, while we can do that, and guys like you and I like to do that, of course when we’re, especially when we’re talking to each other, we do miss the people that we’re mainly trying to help and they do not speak, science speak.

And you do have to, dumb it down in a sense. And not to say that you the target market is dumb, it’s just that they don’t speak your language and there is. An idea of convincing them using the language that they actually use. And so it is one of these things that I think is very important, especially if you’ve got people listening to your podcast who are trying to help people.

[00:06:49] Dr. Mike T Nelson: And I think when people think about marketing, they think, oh, you’re just trying to make money. If you wanna make a big difference anywhere, you’re gonna have to get your products in front of people and you’re gonna have to master marketing. And yes, money comes along with that, but anyone in business knows that being an entrepreneur and being in your own businesses.

[00:07:06] Dr. Jade Teta: No, it’s not. It’s not about getting rich. There’s a lot of skin in the game. Decade of entrepreneurial debt and all the rest. But yeah, learning to market is a big piece of this, and we can definitely go into that for a little while because I do think when we’re talking about, the evidence base that you and I spend our time, we’re both research guys.

We both read a lot of research. One of the things that I think happens in that is that that informs most of our work as professionals, at least it should from my perspective. However, it doesn’t inform the way we speak in our marketing. It informs the products that we build, but it doesn’t necessarily inform the marketing that we do.

What informs the marketing that we do is the language that our customer is actually speaking. And so there is sometimes of a disconnect there for sure.

[00:07:57] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah, and that’s one thing where I’d say probably the last five or six years I’ve changed in more speaking to trainers and coaches.

One because. To me that was more of an interesting problem. And then it allows me to speak a little bit more technical because the audience I’m trying to reach is a little bit more technical. But like you said, if you’re speaking more to the general public, then the reality is you have to speak to them in a language that they’re gonna understand.

And I think each person has their own threshold of like, how far down the spectrum do I go? It’s like deal Einstein quote, make it as simple as possible, but not simpler. Yeah. And I think unfortunately in the fitness field, the assumption is you just have to go all the way to the end and just be like, bro, this is how you burn more fat.

Okay. Maybe you need to go that far down, but maybe you can find some happy medium within the spectrum where you’re still speaking. Things that you can sleep well at night, but like you said, you’re getting your message across so you’re helping more people. Byproduct of that is, hopefully you can make more money, which allows you then to help more people.

Instead of this, sometimes fitness people feel like you. You’re a sellout if you make money and you should just do it for free and live in a van down by the river.

[00:09:12] Dr. Jade Teta: Yeah. It really is. It really is this and I am a big proponent of give people what they want, in terms of the sell and then, on the back end, really deliver what they actually need.

But to your point, like for example, you and I talk a lot about metabolic flexibility in our work. And so one of the ways I’ve handled this is that to use the language that they have but, use a different hook. So you might say something like, look, it’s not about having a fast metabolism, it’s about having a more.

Flexible metabolism. Yeah. One way to deal with the idea of, for example that we’re all different is this idea of metabolic types. Now you and I know there’s no such thing as a metabolic type, in, in terms of the science. There’s no nothing backing that up. But using something like a metabolic type gives people the idea that, oh, this is going to be tailored to me in a sense.

And then in the back door of the program, you actually show them that what we really mean by metabolic type is your individual type. So we might be able to say, all right, there’s a metabolic type of a overweight, metabolic insulin resistant metabolic syndrome type person. There’s a metabolic quote type of someone who’s normal weight and just wants to get in shape.

There’s a metabolic type quote of a thin person who wants to gain muscle. But then once they get into your program, they are essentially met with their individual program. And actually one of my be big pet peeves in this industry, a actually is that we still haven’t gotten to. And I’d be interested in what you think on this as well.

Cause I don’t know that we touched on this last time we had a conversation, but we still really haven’t gotten to individualize nutrition to the degree that I think it should be. We still treat people as these one size fits all identities. And I do agree when you’re talking about metabolic types, if your program is something like that’s what they are, three different metabolic types and that’s what you’re delivering.

I wouldn’t think that’s giving people what they need. However, if you start with the marketing language of, Hey, here’s your, quote type based on, your psychology and your physiology and some questions that we’ve asked you, but we’re gonna find your individual type and teach you how to do that to become like a metabolic detective in the program.

That’s a very different. Aspect, and I do think that’s where the industry should be going. Now, people will argue with me about this, but I think that we should be moving towards an individualized medicine and individualized training. Individualized nutrition, individualized metabolic programs that really take people where they are and teach them how to become metabolically flexible.

Now that being said, I think you and I would probably agree that for most people, that’s going to be some, there’s gonna be some key behaviors that are gonna be across the board for the vast majority of people. And then there’s gonna be little tweaks here and there, especially like you and I were talking about in someone’s psychology, in their personal preferences, like things that they really want to eat and in their practical circumstances in terms of what they can afford, what kind of equipment they have, et cetera.

And these are all things that as professionals, we need to pay close attention to. It can’t just be what’s the latest study that we read? And, trying to you articulated this beautifully on our last conversation, man, when you were talking about the idea of, we look at these metabolic studies where we put them in.

Metabolic chambers and measure everything, but then as soon as we take them outta that chamber and get out into the real world, you can’t control all of these things. Yeah. Hunger and cravings do certain things. We just, and this is where the individual stuff and the rubber meets the road, and I am most interested in that in terms of what I’m doing with my marketing and also what I’m doing with my programs.

It’s let’s get people into the programs and let’s teach them how to find their individual type. We are each, in a sense, a metabolic. A fingerprint. In a sense we really do differ. If you and I, and we had a hundred people in the room, we’ve seen this is a study that’s been done. We put a hundred people and we all give them white bread and we measure their continuous glucose responses.

We’ll see that some people respond to that perfectly normal, that white bread is fine for them and it controls their hunger and cravings. And other people will see wild glucose excursions and that come along with changes in hunger and cravings. And we’ll see everything in between.

So we’re starting to see that we are metabolically different. We need to make sure that we address that and we’re starting to have some tools that allow us to do so as well.

[00:13:24] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And on a individual, one-on-one coaching thing, if you have the skillset, I would say customization is rather quote unquote easy.

You still have to know what you’re doing, but you have the luxury of working with that one particular or individual at that time. Whether you’re working with, 10 clients, 20 clients, 30 clients, whatever. As you were saying, I think that’s more difficult when you are selling one product to a wider variety of people.

Yeah, and that was the biggest problem I had when I was designing the Flex Diet Cert and the fis Flex Cert was, okay, how do I do a complete system to sell to trainers and coaches to teach them how to run 30 to a hundred people at once? Doing as close as I can possibly get it to an individual customized approach, but yet within a system where I’m teaching them one system not, okay, you’ve got this person, and that’s, you’re never gonna probably get as close to the one-on-one thing.

But but that I was for myself, that by far and away took me the longest time to figure that. How do you do that?

[00:14:33] Dr. Jade Teta: Yeah. And actually what you’re speaking to is at metabolic metabolic.com my company my business partners what we have done is we have essentially done the same thing. We basically Yeah, have tweaked and adjusted and taken my clinical, my individual clinical practice in terms of how I do this and I can give cause since most of your clients most people listen to you, I think are trainers like me, we all definitely look to you for some education.

I can walk you through the back end of how we do some of that stuff now. But I think what you’re speaking of is this idea of moving from prescription based one size fits all prescriptions to process based systems. And so we have built a process based system and essentially what we do at our high levels, we essentially say, okay, we’re gonna ask you some questions to get your unique.

What we call our unique four peas, right? So it’s physiology, right? So how you respond to that white piece of bread and how does you know, a breakfast of steak and eggs versus oatmeal and blueberries, impact hunger and cravings and things like that. So we assess your physiology, we assess your psychology in terms of how you respond to stress.

So some of those questions might be like, if you’re under stress, does your. Cravings go up, or does your cravings go down? Do you want to exercise more and you have more motivation, or do you want to exercise less, et cetera. Then of course, personal preferences. Are you a beers and ballgames kind of guy and beers and burgers and things like that.

Do you like Brussels sprouts and coffee? What are your tastes you like chocolate and sweets? And then practical circumstances? Or do you know, do you have a whole foods near you? Do you have a greenway near your house? What are the practicals there? So that kind of is the idea of saying, here’s what this person looks like on paper, and then we match that with what I call the four m’s, which is the choices people are making in terms of their the four M’S would be their mindset and mindfulness, which is all about how they’re.

Recovering relaxation, stress reduction, things like that. So there’d be things like spa time, sauna therapies, cold plunges, physical affection walking mobility stuff, sleeping naps, all of this meditation, massage, that’s the mindfulness movement component. What do they do? Or mindfulness and mindset component.

What are they doing there? Then movement component is literally nepa, neat non-exercise activity, so basically this is just walking around and things like that. Are they getting eight to 12,000 steps roughly a day? Based on the research body, what we think they should be doing.

That would be the second M movement. Then we look at meals, right? Which most people are gonna look at what are you eating? What’s your mic? Macro and micro breakdown, and then metabolics. Now this one confuses people, but this is where exercise falls in. This is where supplements falls in, and this is where drugs fall in.

So then we take your four Ps, the physiology, psychology. Preferences and practical circumstances. We take a look at your fours, the mindset, the movement, the meals, and the metabolics, and we see how those are matched or mismatched and what kind of outcome you’re getting. And we feed that through a process called the AIM process, assess, investigate, modify, what are we assessing while we’re assessing your hunger, energy, cravings, hunger, injury, cravings, sleep, mood.

I call this schmeck, by the way, if your schmeck is in check. It means we’re doing, we can sustain this, right? Your hunger, your cravings are balanced, we can sustain this. So we assess that. Then we assess your body composition, are you attaining or maintaining? And then we assess vitals and blood labs, things like heart rate variability.

If you’re wearing a glucose monitor we assess that. We look at labs, we look at blood pressures resting heart rate, all of this kind of stuff. We, and we integrate Apple Watch data, aura data, all of this kind of stuff. And then we have an idea of how well that four P’s matched to the four m’s.

And if it didn’t, if you’re not getting results, we adjust the parameters in the fours. And then we just repeat that process again and again until we hone in on your unique metabolic formula and type. And you and I know what’s interesting about this is that just because we slowly get there, now, we know that your metabolism is adaptable and changeable and reactive, and it will change based on stress, based on life stages, based on other things.

And this process and a process like what you teach and your asserts, this process allows you to adjust that. So you never have to diet again. You’re not giving a prescription. You’re building and teaching a process. And this to me is how this works. And so this is, you can market a particular way, get people into your programs, and then you run these processes on them to individualize the programs.

And I do think this is the future of what we’re doing and. People like you and me are starting to see we can use these processes and build these processes at large groups. And by the way, if you’re a trainer listening, to Dr. Mike or someone listening to me, we can tell you that’s where the money is.

Once you begin to scale and you really wanna make money at w what we all do teaching and actually I believe make a bigger difference, and I’ll explain why in just a second. You want to build these processes and you wanna do it in groups. And groups have an advantage. We know this through aa, we know this through Weight Watchers.

We know that when there’s a group of people going through something together, not only can you charge less per person and make more per unit time, but they also get, seem to get better results if you do this right. And so I think we are entering a very interesting time in. The health and fitness space for a lot of US professionals.

And that’s why I, I love your certs and I love the way that you’re building these processes for all of us. And of course I’m doing the same thing and seeing fantastic results with it.

[00:20:05] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah I like that. Cuz I, I would agree that, I think that is the future. I think there’s always gonna be a market for one-on-one stuff, but my bias right now is that’s gonna shift to the ultra high-end.

Obviously I’m biased. I work for, rapid health and that’s what they do. But I think it’s gonna shift to an all-encompassing, individual blood work, exercise, prescription, all that kind of stuff. But that’s gonna be only for people who can obtain it and are willing to pay that price.

I think most of it is exactly what you said is empowering coaches and other people to set up a group type interaction with the knowledge, like my program, your program, whatever program they pick, that’s. Process base that teaches them how to set up the group. But yet each individual might be doing something slightly different within the parameters of the system that you’ve set up.

Hundred percent. And for the individual, if they’re running a solid system, they’re gonna get pretty good results and they’re gonna pay less than they would for an average kind of one-on-one type program. So it’s a win-win for. The client. It’s a win-win for the trainer and the coach too.

[00:21:13] Dr. Jade Teta: Yeah. And one, one Clinical Pro I can give you coaches who are into this conversation Mike and I are having, is that one of the things that you can do when you get these in these people in this system is there’s an upsell opportunity for the one-on-one time. Yes. So now your one-on-one time becomes an upsell addition to the general program.

So you get people into your programs and if they need some very personal attention in tweaking, you have the opportunity to do that. And they are essentially either paying a one-time up upsell fee to see you or you’re ba basically making that an additional fee. And you can even tier this where it’s one fee for a hun people in a hundred group.

That would be a low tier. T is another. Higher tier where you got five people in a group, much more attention and then much higher tier with the one-on-ones. But this business from my perspective, is better results. It’s better, it’s cheaper cheaper in general for the client, and you actually end up making way more money and having way more free time.

And, but you have to learn the processes, which is why people like Mike and I have moved in this direction a long time ago and why we both, use our certifications to teach these methods. For sure.

[00:22:22] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And to me, it’s even crazy to think that you can literally buy somebody’s system, right? So I can literally go to your website, take all your knowledge as you put into the system, buy it, and I can literally go and apply it.

And you can do the same thing with mine, like to me as a trainer and a coach. Yeah. When I started there was, some programs and systems. I think of it as the same way as like a book. You could buy a book for 30 to $50 and get somebody’s knowledge that they’ve distilled in there at a relatively cheap cost.

And granted certifications are definitely not cheap, but investment wise, I think it’s probably, and we’re both preaching to the choir here, probably one of the better investments you can do because you are paying both for the system and an outcome of something that’s already proven versus thinking you have to figure it all out on your own, which you probably can, but man, I tried that approach and it’s hard, frustrating, and takes a long time.

[00:23:21] Dr. Jade Teta: Yeah. You know what else Mike, you want, y’all know is cool about this? Think about it, right? If you and I think about what, if we go back and we think about how much did our education up to this point cost, right? And what I mean by that is, medical school, undergrad, all the courses and certifications, all the trainings, all the continued education, all of the failures in business, all the figuring it out, it’s millions of dollars, right?

And I’m the same as you. I w oh, knowing what I know now. Now when you don’t know, you don’t know what you don’t know, right? Yeah. Oh my god, that’s so expensive. But if I, knowing what I know now, someone could go back and be like, Jade, you can go back. When you started, you could pay 20 k, let’s say, and you can get all this information all at once.

I would be like, Oh my God. Give, I will pay that right now. I will take every everything I can because you just don’t know until you, until you just wow, I can get all this information for that cheap. So yeah, I do think it’s unfortunate when you’re a young trainer, you don’t necessarily know, and you’re a young business person, you don’t necessarily know how valuable.

This stuff is, and one thing I’ll say, I’ll just, since I didn’t know we were gonna have this conversation, but it’s a fun conversation to have. One, one thing that’s really interesting that I also think is problematic for a lot of coaches and trainers, is that they’re jumping around a lot too.

Oh yeah. So I do think there’s value in sticking to something. It’s almost like you want to intellectually own the cert. Like I can imagine when someone takes the flex cert from you, it’s like they really need to not jump around and go take my stuff or anyone else’s stuff for a while because they need to intellectually own that material.

[00:24:54] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Then once they intellectually own that material, then they go somewhere else. But it seems like we’re in this very weird. Place where people just try to consume information as fast as possible. And to me, I just go, that’s not how you deep learn. You need to intellectually own this stuff, use it, get the experience with it, and then what will happen is if you intellectually own it, you’ll do it slightly different in your own unique way.

[00:25:20] Dr. Jade Teta: You’ll make it your own. And then you can go in and get the next thing. But I do think there is something to be said for intellectually owning the material, not just being a someone who, essentially collects certifications, but someone who intellectually owns the certifications. And if I can intellectually own Mike’s material, think about the power behind that, and take the time to do that. That’s what makes all the difference. Those are the people who, end up speaking you and I. Were you and I both don’t speak that much, I don’t think.

[00:25:52] Dr. Mike T Nelson: I know, I don’t think, I haven’t the past couple years since Covid. I did a lot before, but Yeah. Yeah.

[00:25:56] Dr. Jade Teta: But, arm, I wanted to help him out and it was a great thing to meet everybody, but then you’re the person that everyone’s going, Hey, once you intellectually own something, they’re they want you to speak.

And then you’re on a sort of different, you’re in a different, level in that space. Yeah.

[00:26:10] Dr. Mike T Nelson: I still have an issue of kind of ADD intellectually, because I find so much stuff is just like fascinating. So I had to set up constraints for myself, at least in a professional area.

One of the greatest things when I finished my PhD was that, oh, you mean I can go study whatever I want now and I don’t have to justify it to anybody else, right? Because you’re doing an advanced program, medical school, whatever your goal is to graduate, right? You wanna finish that thing. That’s the number one goal.

And so I had to set up. Rules for myself of, okay, how far can I go down one path before I try to integrate it with something else? I did a bunch of coursework from Tom Myers who was saying that similar to exactly what you said, he said there’s too many people trying to integrate before they understand.

And he used the analogy of if you’re not an extremely high level chef and you just combine a bunch of stuff together, you get like shit stew. Yeah. But if you’re an elite level chef, you can add unique flavors and do different things because you’ve got a huge understanding of those things. So for me personally, I said, okay, if I’m going into a brand new area, how do I understand it?

How do I get as much practice as possible? And then how do I test it in the marketplace? So can I get people to pay me a market value only for that thing? So when I started doing hands-on stuff like 15 years ago, I. Okay, can I get people to only pay me for hands-on work? That’s all they know me for and what is the highest value I can charge for that?

Where people are still happy, they like the result and everything else. Once I get to that level, can I maybe teach that for the organization or for some other organization? Can I get enough experience and knowledge and done it enough with practice that people are now paying me to come to a course that I’m teaching?

And for me, once I was teaching at a high level, then I allowed myself to play with more of the integration, with other things. And then there’s not anything right or wrong with that. That was just the sort of constraints I set up for myself. And that was because I wanna do the integration that drove me to keep going down that path long enough to make sure I was at least at a decent level before I could try to combine stuff together.

[00:28:16] Dr. Jade Teta: Yeah, that’s so interesting to hear your process. For sure. My process has been a little different and a little same. So I’ve dug deep into certain areas. The first place I dug deep was, obviously conditioning cuz that’s, and then my undergrad was in biochemistry, so I was conditioning conditioning, biochemistry in undergrad and then natural medicine.

So that was a decade of that. And then medical school, I went to naturopathic medical school. Which for those of you don’t know naturopaths, it’s probably talk about marketing. It’s very poor marketing. It’s a terrible, it’s a terrible, it’s a terrible name. But what we are is we’re basically your primary care physicians that specialize in lifestyle medicine.

So we are the ones who are trained in diet and exercise and supplements and all those things. And we prescribe drugs as well, but we do lifestyle first. But then that was a decade of that. And then after that, coming outta that, it was a decade of focusing on endocrinology and hormones.

So very, three very deep holes. And of course I kept doing all those other things. And then this decade, this past decade in my forties I’m getting ready, turn 50 now, but my decade of my forties was all psychology. And I realized psychology and philosophy. And then I realized, I really want to go down deep.

Deeper, deeper into this hole. And so I actually, everyone thinks I’m nuts, but I, you and I talked about this, so I’m actually going back to school to get my PhD in transpersonal psychology. Yeah. I start in the fall and some of that will be in psychedelics and that’s partly where I wanna get into that world.

But I’ve dug very deep in what’s happened was, so these three very deep holes are four very deep holes now. And what happens is the branches of those sort of combined, right? Yep. So now that’s how come I say mine muscle. Metabolism is where I’m at now. Mindset, muscle metabolism, natural medicine kind of thing.

And what’s really interesting in those tentacles, from those very deep holes, those roots are now combining. And so like you, now, I’m at that place where I’m integrating a lot of stuff that I never thought I’d be integrated in for. For example, I, I find myself going down deep holes into quantum physics now because of the idea of, looking at the mitochondria and seeing they’re using quantum tunneling and some of these things that are just blowing my mind.

And of course, because I have a lot of background into, mi, mitochondrial, bioenergetics and all that stuff that I’ve studied very deep, I can understand a little bit about what’s going on here. And so it is one of these things as we learn I do think there’s too many people who’ve dug.

Thousands of shallow ditches and they don’t really get deep enough. So what I saw in your story is that very deep dives and then allowing yourself after you got deep enough to branch out, and same with me, these four very deep holes. And then allowing the tentacles of those to reach out.

But all of it come back, comes back to that base. And I do think that’s what makes people go, I want to hear what Jade has to say on x. I want to hear what Mike has to say on Y and partly because one of the things I feel when I listen to you, And why I think you’re such a great educator is because you have a very integrated way of looking at things because you have a va, like your experience of where your education was.

It wasn’t like you just, you went into an area like you’re an engineer mind in a sense. Yeah. And that branched off like that and that, that didn’t surprise me. I learned that about you guys time. But then I was like, oh, that doesn’t surprise me about Mike. He’s this engineer guy who went into physiology and biochemistry.

And because you came at it from that perspective, you have a unique way of looking at things that most people who just did physiology don’t have. And I think, same with me. I think I benefited from the fact that I went. An al a conventional route first, then an alternative route, and then back to conventional and, back to alternative.

And, it, it gives me this holistic, integrative sort of way of looking at things. One of the things though, that I think that, that does do, and people should be aware of, and I want to ask you this question because what I’ve seen is that integrative thinkers, like people who are integrative in this way, often do get attacked.

They’re oftentimes misunderstood cuz other people can’t make. The connections that they’re making. It’s like we, what you and I talked about last time, oh, it’s just calories. It’s just calories. It’s just calories. And you talk to someone like Mike, and you’re like, yes. And it’s the and part that bothers people, right?

Because they don’t necessarily see the and part, but someone like Mike because of his integrative thinking, right? And the way that you’ve come at it, you can see the, and Right. I do think we get in trouble when people are like, it’s either it’s this or that, right? I’m, you’re an and thinker and so am I.

And most integrative people are, they’re like, yes, calories and hormones and mitochondrial, biogens bio energetics, and oh my gosh, look quantum physics and, some of this stuff and right. And we keep learning that way. And I do think people struggle with that. So I’m wondering if you, you found that with your work being such an integrative thinker, Oh yeah.

[00:33:10] Dr. Mike T Nelson: And yeah. Does it still, I don’t know if that necessarily bothers me now, per se. Everybody wants to say stuff doesn’t bother ’em, you hear things, you pay attention to it. How much, credence you give it or whatever is variable. But it’s the industry and people in general just want the simple story.

Right? And as right? Rarely is anything in physiology, a simple story, right? The joke I make is that physiology is filled with every engineering bad word. It’s antio, tropic, chaotic, non-linear. It just is. That’s how it, it functions. And once you understand that it’s multiple redundant, there’s backups to the backups, that it’s hard to give.

Just the simple story. And sometimes part of the simple story is true, right? So calories in, calories out. Great example is calories in and calories out. True? Yes. But my favorite quote from that is from Dr. Stu Phillips. He’s yeah, telling the average person to just move more and eat less is like telling a depressed person to have a nice day.

He’s it’s a hundred percent true, but it is absolutely useless in practicality. Yep.

[00:34:16] Dr. Jade Teta: Yeah. I love that quote. It’s so good. And, and the other thing I would add to that, that is, is depressing about the work that we do. And if we’re honest, right? I always go, if you were really honest about what we do, people ask me, Jade, what do you do for a living?

I’m like I’m in, I’ve spent most of my career in metabolism working with the hardest weight loss cases, primarily women. They’re like, what’s that and I’m like if you wanna fail most of the time Yeah. Then you know what my job’s it’s like we, we, and we fail.

Most of us fail because for two reasons. One, lifestyle change is incredibly difficult. We all know that. But two, it goes to what you’re talking about. It’s like we don’t know what we don’t know. And there’s, we know the tip of the iceberg of metabolism. And I do think people think.

That we know more than we know. And I think that’s why, when we talk about calories and you just go yes, and all these other things, it’s also why what I call mechanism chasers. People who will be like, oh, they just figured out the mechanism of carbohydrates and insulin sort of action on, decreasing fat burning and, regulating appetite and all that kind of stuff.

And they just go, oh, so it’s insulin and, food and carbohydrates. That’s all that matters. And then they learn, oh, cortisol causes insulin resistance too, so maybe it’s stress and carbohydrates. And then they go, oh, there’s another hormone called a s p that fat releases that also triggers insulin.

So maybe it’s a little bit of fat and glucose. And the more you go down that you realize just what you said, redundant mechanisms for every mechanism you know, there’s probably 10 that you don’t. And the more you start to learn, the more you realize, okay, this is way more complicated. Than what we think we know.

And now it’s really about really getting people to understand, okay, there are some basics and we need behavior change. We need to understand the basic physiology, the basic psychology. We need to give people, their personal preferences and we need to understand what they’re capable of doing, their practical circumstances.

There’s other things like that, but that’s where these models come from. That’s where the four P model comes from. That’s where the four M model comes from. It goes, how can we capture all this complexity? Also realizing there’s so much we don’t know, and then helping people get the best results that we know that we can get them.

And I think that’s ultimately what I try to do with my work and what you try to do in your work. And of course, my work is dovetailing in deeply into psychological component now, because I’m convinced after, whatever it is now, 30, 30. Close to 35 years. I start, I started personal training at 15 years old.

And I say that, oh, damn. Yeah, that’s because that’s when I first that’s when I first started getting paid. Isn’t that crazy? Fif, so 15 years old, I first started getting, that’s why I say, people say, when did you start this career? I said technically 15. Started writing programs for the guys on my football team started, making money from their family members.

And I paid my way all through undergrad with personal training and part and made money in high school. And it’s been a, it is been a ride man for sure. But now, after all those years, I am convinced that mindset, psychology, and behavior change is the biggest thing. It’s also the hard, it’s if we talked about the idea of failing, most of the time it’s even harder getting into the psychology space, that’s for sure.

Yeah. That’s what I was gonna ask, because did you end up in the psychology and even the psychedelic area, Because the problem you’re trying to solve is habit change. Yes. Yes it is. And even deeper than that, Mike, so here’s for all the listeners, and here’s what blew my mind.

I’ll tell you when it started to get to me, is when I started to look and I was like in this research there’s something called adverse childhood events. We call ’em accs, right? Yeah. So these adverse childhood events, and just for, I know Mike knows this, but just for you listeners and you might know it too, but just to get everyone on the same page, between the ages of zero and six years old, we’re largely unconscious.

We’re building our consciousness in a sense and we don’t necessarily see ourselves as other people as separate from us. So our parents are extensions of our needs, so to speak. And during this time, we don’t have a logic. We can’t logically say, oh, this happened. I understand.

Like we can’t logically go. My parents are having a really tough time. That’s why dad yelled at mom. That’s why, mom had to leave. She had dysfunctional stuff, she had self-esteem worth, worth issues. We don’t know all of this stuff. We also, and of course when we get the big T traumas we, things like rape and emotional abuse and physical abuse and, loss of parents and all these kind of things.

These things, for lack of a better way of describing it, I’ll speak marketing language. Now they tie knots in our subconscious, right? And we don’t, and these knots are stories that we tell ourselves about the world, stories about safety, stories about security, stories about self-worth, stories about belonging.

And then these become seed stories in a sense. And by seed stories, we plant these little knotted stories that we unconsciously write. We’re not conscious that we’re writing them, and then they sprout and they impact all of our other stories. And what I began to see is that these stories are impacting things like how I use food to stress.

Or de-stress and how I see myself as capable or incapable of making change and all of these kinds of things. And so once I started working on some of these seed stories and trying to understand how we can unpack these unconscious beliefs, I started to see that this had an impact on people’s physiology, on their ability, their habit change and all.

And, Mike’s nodding his head, a lot of you probably are now too, right? It’s it just makes sense and this is something that has been completely ignored, not because people didn’t, did it on purpose. We just didn’t quite understand. How this, these unconscious seed stories, these unconscious knots are influencing things.

For example, just to make it for all of us who are, in the metabolism space, people with adverse childhood events, what we know is that they have a in general a ratcheted down h p a response, a hypothalamus pituitary adrenal response. Their cortisol reactivity is less technically than other people.

This has an impact on glucose management, has an impact on hunger and cravings has an impact on certain aspects of their physiology, which that will have an impact on whether they will be able to make the changes that people like us are asking them to make. And it’s all going back to some of these stories that they’ve written in their unconscious mind.

And so for me, I started looking at what are the things that we can do that begin to impact. These stories. Some of the things that we can do are things like, one of my favorites is very simple written exposure therapy. It’s one of these things that people like us personal trainers and people who are working in the clinic can do as homework.

It’s very fast to write about these traumas and to get people to pay attention to them. But psychedelics is one that really interests me in terms of its ability to deal with a lot of the ramifications of this, an anxiety depression. Some of the stuff that I worked with in clinic that a lot of you personal trainers probably won’t necessarily work with.

And then meditation, these are the three big ones that I’m interested in and the three ones that I’ll be doing some original research on. But these are the ones I wanna look at. So now if you can imagine me and Mike, let’s say we’re collaborating on one of these studies, and now what we’re doing is we’re taking some of our flex diet information and some of the diets and PR and processes that we use.

And we’re running people through them without addressing some of these seed stories, without using written exposure therapy or meditation and or psychedelics. And then the other group is getting the written exposure therapy, the psychedelics, et cetera. And we’re gonna see how these things pan out.

And so this is the direction that I’m moving in and this is why I am going back to get my PhD cuz I wanna do some original work. Still stay in the clinic, still stay doing what you and I love to do, but also doing some original research in this area. Awesome. Yep.

[00:42:03] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Do you think with the angle of psychedelics that they open up a window of more plasticity that allow a faster rate of change?

Or what do you think is your kinda. Hypothesis of how they may work, which again, is a huge question. There’s all different types of psychedelics. Yeah. With different, interactions and blah, blah, blah, blah.

[00:42:21] Dr. Jade Teta: Yeah. I’m gonna get in big trouble here, man, because you’re, people are gonna be like, oh guys, Jade just went woowoo on us.

[00:42:26] Dr. Mike T Nelson: But and this may seem very esoteric for a lot of you, I’m sure Mike will you’ll probably follow this Mike, but in general to, I think to understand psychedelics, we’re starting to see, we’re gonna have to really get into the idea of materialism versus idealism. So I’ll just break this down for you guys really quickly.

[00:42:42] Dr. Jade Teta: The materialist way of looking at science has dominated much of what we’ve done. And that idea is that the brain through its complexity creates consciousness, right? So this is the general consensus right now in the scientific space. And, and it’s a huge question. They call it the problem of consciousness.

We don’t know how this happens. People say the more complexity you get, Then consciousness just emerges. The truth of the matter is when you delve into this, th this is very hypothetical, most people say it simply can’t happen. We still do not know what consciousness is. Now there’s another way to look at this.

So that’s the materialist world. The other way to look at it is an idealists world, which is essentially we are all swimming in consciousness. So in a sense, we humans are fish made of water swimming in water, and that our brains are filters for consciousness. So Mike is 1 0 7 fm and I’m I don’t know if you, me and Mike are, I think closer in age, but I remember the old dials, remember the radio?

[00:43:41] Dr. Mike T Nelson: So it’s trying all the static in between everything. Exactly. And then you finally find your frequency. The idealist philosophy essentially says, you know what we are, what the brain really is it’s a filter. For consciousness. And and we each have our filter perspective.

[00:43:54] Dr. Jade Teta: And so if we look at the psychedelics from the materialist standpoint, then we go, okay, we see that it’s working in unique ways. It is the only substance that we know of that can actually penetrate the neurons and actually impact serotonin receptors inside the cells. We also know it does increase neuroplasticity still doesn’t necessarily explain how it’s working.

If so, that would be the materialist way of looking at it. If we look at it from the idealist perspective, we’re seeing that it does something to open up the filter. So now all of a sudden I might be 1 0 7 FM and Mike might be 1 0 4 fm, but now With the psychedelics, I can access 1 0 5 FM to 1 0 8 fm.

And that by doing that, I can see and perceive the world in a way that I hadn’t before. And to make this very clear, let’s say I had a trauma, let’s say me and Mike were brothers. He bullied the hell outta me when I was a kid or whatever. And me and Mike as brothers have had issues ever since.

And then I take psychedelics and all of a sudden, because my filters of consciousness opens up, I see it from, I’m able to f finally see it from Mike’s point of view, right? That he wasn’t. Bullying me in the sense, and he felt like he was sticking up for himself or something. He felt he had his own way of looking at that.

And by un, by coming to that understanding, I can begin to clear some of that trauma. I’ve mis I, I’ve been misunderstanding my brother, for example, my whole life. And by the way, I’m using you, Mike, as an example of my, an actual issue with my brother Keani. Ke and I have talked about this, I was, I thought he he, I was being bullied by him as a little kid.

He was just using me as fun, right? So understanding this has changed our relationship, the change in our relationship has changed. Something about the way I relate to stress, the way changing the way I relate to stress has changed Something about the way I relate to food and exercise, et cetera.

Like in a very real sense, I became a gym, gym rat, and a bouncer and, got involved with martial arts when I was young because I had a brother that was bullying me. In from my perspective, and so that, and so I built, put a lot of meat on me. And the, so these things, we think that the, they don’t.

Impact us, but they do impact these little seed stories, impact everything about what we do. And so while I can’t necessarily say which is true, is it materialism and it’s neuroplasticity and it’s impacting serotonin receptors and things like that, or this is new way of looking at it, this idealistic way where you know the brain is acting as a filter of consciousness and psychedelics are sorting, opening up that filter and giving you a broader perspective.

Either way. We do know that these things are changing the way people see the world and when they, when you change the way you see the world, your behaviors can begin to change cuz you’re no longer. Stuck in your old identity, if that makes sense. So hopefully people could follow that logic and some of what I’m interested in studying, but I do think it’s a final word on psychedelics that I lean towards the fact that materialism, as a general philosophy for science is quickly becoming is gonna be overtaken by the I idealist philosophy.

And by when that happens, we’ll start to realize that there’s so much more to science that meets the eye and we’ll start doing studies in a different way. But we’ll see as true people who are open-minded scientists, you might have a bias, but you let the data and you let the studies and you let things prove you right or wrong.

[00:47:10] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And it’s a very different sensation. So if you would’ve asked me three years ago, I would’ve said consciousness is probably just an emergent. Phenomenon. I still probably lean that way, but I’m much more hesitant to say that’s the way. And it’s public knowledge that we did a ayahuasca ceremony in Costa Rica probably three years ago now.

Yeah, three years ago. And just the short part about it, there was this guy, Rob, who we were at this place. It’s open air, we’re inside, but it was just all open air. There’s an infinity pool and just the jungle, it’s on top of a hill. And there’s this guy next to me who was just literally kneeling at the opening the entire night.

And so before the ceremony where everybody’s getting ready, I was asking him, I said what do you, what are you doing? He’s I’m protecting the opening. And I’m like, from who? Who’s gonna scale like four stories in the jungle and come at us? And then no one even really knows we’re here anyway.

And he is my job is to protect the opening. I said, okay, cool. Whatever man. And. I remember waking up after five glasses of ayahuasca, like three in the morning going, dude, I’m so glad that Rob guy is there. I feel so safe that he’s there and like it sounds, I love that bad shit crazy, but all I remember thinking one of the thoughts was, that’s cool that he is there.

I feel better knowing that he’s there. I couldn’t explain what he was doing. I vaguely understood it, but it’s very different to have different feelings and sensations that literally feel like a hundred percent real and I can, it does make you, I don’t wanna say question reality in a bad way, but the other story is we went back the next day to, to talk to the shaman to pay for the ceremony and stuff.

We were talking to her, another guy I was with, Jeff, we both left, got in the vehicle, we’re driving back. We both looked at each other and were like, I wonder how she sees the world. I would love to see how she sees everything for at least a day. I can imagine it’s radically different than what we see.

Yeah. And not to say one’s right or wrong, it’s just a very different approach. And if nothing else, it made me appreciate that there’s probably a lot more stuff out there that we don’t understand, or probably don’t even quite even have language or frameworks to try to understand either.

[00:49:36] Dr. Jade Teta: Yeah, a hundred percent.

And it is funny, you and I finally found something we slightly differ on, right? Oh, we’ll be, it’ll be fun to see where we we each come out on this, whether it’s an emergent phenomena from brain or if it’s the filter hypothesis. But one thing that’s really neat about talking to you, and I do think this is, this speaks to the broader thing that we were speaking about earlier.

It’s that. If you’re truly evidence-based, right? This is the way I think about this. If you’re truly evidence-based and then you say that can’t possibly be, but you’ve never tried psychedelics, for example, you’ve never actually had the personal experience. One of the things that science does miss is I oftentimes say this, and by the way, this is not to take away its power.

It is to me the most, the powerful thing we have. And we ha and to me science always is right in the over the long run. So cuz it’s self-correcting. But one of the things I think that’s interesting is that when you think about science and research studies, they are tools for averages, but they are not tools for individuals.

And we cannot necessarily dismiss individual’s perspectives. And so when someone goes into a psychedelic experience and they have a felt experience, That someone might say that’s just absolutely bizarre. And by the way, it may be from a scientific perspective, but what I’m most interested in is what is that thing that happened?

Whatever they think it is, I don’t care whether they think they saw aliens or whether they now believe that a purple dinosaurs running the universe, whatever. All I’m interested in is that belief change useful for them and not harmful for others. And in a sense, I feel like science should be a little bit, scientists should be vehemently sticking to, we need data for this stuff, but I also think we should be less dismissive.

Of individuals making sense of experiences because we can’t, delve into that realm. All we can say is cool, so you have this experience or whatever. We can’t prove that. We’re not ever gonna say that’s necessarily real, but we’re also not gonna say, and this is the clinician part of me coming out, right?

So the researcher part of me is one side, the clinician side of me goes, but I’m also never going to tell you that you’re completely wrong and crazy. What I’m gonna essentially say is, how can we use this for you to better the life that you want to live, to get to the place that you want to live?

And from my perspective, they’re just tools. I do think sometimes we can get in these arguments about what’s accurate, what’s not accurate, when really I just come back to look. Is it helpful or hurtful to the individual? Is it helping them make the changes that they need to make a better life?

In, in the realm of their physiology, their psychology, their sort of happiness, their meaning, mattering and making a difference. That’s really all, we’re in this for at least I think we should be. If we’re otherwise, if we’re not, then we’re not doing evidence-based medicine, we’re doing ego-based medicine, then it’s just about, the games that we play online with.

Who has the best degree, who’s reading the best research, who’s the smartest guy in the room? I’m most interested in helping people, and because of that’s why the psychology stuff the psychedelic interest, the research, I really want to understand what’s going on the individual level.

At an in individual consciousness that helps people move past their suffering. Because let’s face it, Mike one thing I know about you, you knew about me before we ever even met, is that you suffer. I suffer. One thing I know about, and you know about every single person that’s listening to our conversation right now is that they suffer.

That’s the nature of being human. The Buddhist say, life is Duca. Life is suffering. And from my perspective, I wanna understand suffering. I think if we understand our suffering and look at our suffering, there are keys to our personal growth and those keys to our personal growth as we start to unlock them, also hold the key to our physical health and our physical performance and the other things that we care about, like vanity concerns and everything else.

And we haven’t yet tied those two together. So I’m excited about, this, these conversations with you in the future to see where we’ve gotten to, yeah.

[00:53:38] Dr. Mike T Nelson: And last part, we got a couple minutes left, is your point about, I think. Any solution is require effort and also many times, quote unquote, suffering.

The goal isn’t to avoid suffering. The goal is to suffer better. And even during the Ayahuasca ceremony, we had eight people there, and it was crazy to me to think that all these people, I was just amazed that all these people signed up to do something that in vast majority of cases was excruciating hard.

One individual. Even to this day, this is by far the hardest thing she’s ever done her entire life. She’s never doing it again. Two years later she’s yes, it was very beneficial. I’m glad I did it, but I’m never doing it again. But it was great to see that there are people who knew that ahead of time.

They’re all very well educated. They know exactly what they were getting into, but yet they still showed up to do it. Same thing with exercise, same thing with anything else. And I think a lot of times in the culture that part is missing. That you’re gonna have to do hard things to get out of where you were before.

There’s just no way around it. And I think the sooner you realize that and realize how you can do that in a better manner, you’re gonna be better off overall.

[00:54:50] Dr. Jade Teta: It’s so well said, man. I have this saying that I use. It’s e Easy is earned. Nothing is easy. Yeah. People think things are gonna be easy, right? And I say no, easy is earned.

Like we have to earn that. And it does come through suffering. And so your lessons and I get everyone here think and think about all, everyone listening to this conversation right now, think about the most difficult thing that’s ever happened in your life, right? Many of us are gonna say, you know what?

That was the hardest thing I’ve ever been through and I learned the most Lessons from it we’re better because of, in a sense, who would we be without our wounds in many cases. Perhaps much less. And then if that’s not your orientation, imagine that if you looked in that painful backpack that you’re carrying around and decided, made a choice to go, I’m gonna turn this into something useful.

I’m actually gonna take my pain and make it my path to purpose, to teach something from it, to get the lessons and to finally look at it. And the people who do that, we hear this over and over again, the most, the heroic people throughout history have been the types who’ve suffered and decided, you know what?

I’m gonna use this to better myself, to enrich others and to evolve the world. And when you start thinking like that, all of a sudden you go, okay, so I’m getting ready to turn 50 Now. I don’t like the gym as much as I used to. It’s much harder than it used to be. I’d rather sit on the couch, but I know I gotta keep doing it to stay in shape, to live my purpose, to do what I need to do on the planet, to keep the energy, to write the books, to do all the things, because I know that I’m here to learn, teach, and love.

Learn, teach, and create. I’m here to learn from people like Mike, teach people like you and create things that I think will help other people on their journeys. And to me, I’m like, if we’re not here to help, then why the fuck are we here, man? You know what I mean? Like to me it’s just this is the work we do and I love it.

[00:56:40] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And quick aside to that, there’s also post-traumatic growth, not always pt, P T S D, P T S, whatever word you wanna associate. And I just in up with the special forces experience. And so their whole goal is to, can we have and put people through experiences or different trainings to try to yes, apply a high amount of concentrated stress, but to promote post-traumatic growth in getting better, not necessarily going negative.

And I think even just people realizing that. The option of getting exponentially better from something incredibly difficult exists. I don’t know what your thoughts is, but my thought is that knowing that’s even a possibility, I think is like the first step. Because in the media and for good reason, you only hear about, P T S D.

But the media in general tends to be very negative. And of course that’s definitely an unmet need. We should apply a bunch of resources that should be helped at all costs. But the assumption is that under a high stress, everyone’s gonna get negative. And the reality is some people get exponentially better once they get through that.

[00:57:49] Dr. Jade Teta: And I think that’s not necessarily told that often. Yeah I couldn’t agree more with you. And I think it, it the way that, to sum this up is to go, it’s not just what happened to you, it’s the story you wrote. Yes. About what happened to you. And so when we’re adults, we can get logical about that story and say, what did I tell myself?

What did I make that mean? Now when with adverse child events, this is why we can’t, because they’re in our subconscious. And so sometimes psychedelics and things like that can take us back and we can rewrite those stories through written exposure therapy or meditative practices or psychedelics. But it really is about taking all that stuff and saying to turn stress into post-traumatic growth.

We have to get very clear on the story that we’re telling ourselves about the trauma. And if we write a different story, we literally write a different life. And so that’s why looking at our traumas is so critical. So important and especially for this work, it really is. People go I don’t see how that relates to health and fitness.

It has everything to do with that because that energetic, spiritual, emotional energy drives the physical just as much as the physical drives the other. And if you have any question about that, just think about anything that you’ve been passionate about and you love and how energized you were regardless.

That’s, it’s like the energizer bunny for what we do for purpose. I obviously, to me, this is where I want to go next, and I think it’s a conversation that I hope people like you and I and the industry are having more and more. Yeah. Awesome. Thank you so much for all your time today.

[00:59:21] Dr. Mike T Nelson: I really appreciate it and I would highly encourage everyone to check out all the stuff you’ve got going on. And yeah, tell us more about what’s the best website, what are the couple different programs you’ve got? Cause I know you’ve got. Tons of stuff going on over there. Yeah, I appreciate that, man.

[00:59:35] Dr. Jade Teta: So jadeteta.com is the best place to find me directly at Jade Teta on all the social media. And if you’re interested in my podcast, it’s the Next Level Human podcast. And this gets into all my work in mindset, muscle, and metabolism. But slowly, as you all can tell, talking to me, I’m moving sl more and more into the mindset realm.

And so next level human and all the books that I’m writing in that realm are gonna tap more into what the latter part of this conversation, the psychology, personal development, purpose, fulfillment, living better lives as humans.

[01:00:09] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Awesome. Thank you so much for all your time. I really appreciate you coming on, and I’m sure we’ll talk again soon in the future.

[01:00:16] Dr. Jade Teta: Nice catching up, Mike. Talk to you soon, brother. Thank you.

[01:00:23] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Thank you so much Dr. Jade for being on the podcast today. Always enjoy talking to him. Super interesting stuff all the time. And I think it’s one of those things where you get to talk to a person on an individual basis. You realize that hey, we actually agree on most things not necessarily playing the telephone game of what is communicated about that person through social media or whatever.

[01:00:48] Dr. Jade Teta: Which is a nice thing I love about having this podcast and wonderful friends in the industry. I can just reach out to them and have a conversation and you get to listen along to everything that we’ve learned so big. Sure to check out all of his stuff there he is. Got great stuff on Instagram and all of his products will link to all of those below, and especially his podcast.

So huge. Thanks to him for being on the podcast here. This podcast is brought to you by the Flex Diet Certification. Go to flexdiet.com. It opens again at June 5th, 2023, and you’ll be able to get on the wait list there. I’ve got some cool bonuses. It’ll be offered to you for enrollment in the Flex Diet certification.

[01:01:38] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. Really appreciate it. If you enjoyed this one, leave us whatever stars you feel are appropriate and even just take, 30 seconds to leave us a few words in the comments section that helps us with the old algorithms to get the show out to more people.

Thanks again, really appreciate it, and we will talk to all of you next week.