Written by Christopher Kelly
Jan. 29, 2016
[0:00:00]
Christopher: Hello and welcome to the Nourish Balance Thrive Podcast. My name is Christopher Kelly and today I'm joined by Douglas Hilbert. Hi, Doug.
Douglas: How are you doing, Chris?
Christopher: I'm good, thank you. Doug is an amazing guy. The reason I wanted to get him on today is because he's just published a new book. It's called Letters to My Son: Choosing Yourself First. It is available on Amazon. I will link to it in the show notes for this page. Doug is an amazing guy. I think he's been through a lot as we'll find out in this interview. Doug is someone I'd been working with for a while now. We've done quite a lot of testing together. Reading this book, I kind of -- It really opened my eyes to just how much you've been through. You've been through a lot.
Douglas: Yeah. We kind of got into a little bit of it when we started working together. But probably not nearly the detail of how bad it was.
Christopher: Why don't we start there? Why don't you tell me about how bad it was? What was it like when things were at the worst?
Douglas: Probably the worst will be that day I would decide to go to the hospital or go to a drug rehab or something or being in the hospital and basically coding, flat lining on the table, which necessarily wasn't, what I know now wasn't necessarily having withdrawal death kind of thing. I was having a vagal reaction to getting an IV and my body just kind of temporarily shut down and blacked out. But it flat lined, I guess, in the ECG or whatever and everybody panicked.
And I just kind of woke back up like I'd passed out and everybody thought I was going to die. So that was probably the worst of physical day. But it's just years of mental torture with drugs or alcohol or overeating, smoking. On the other side, working 100 hours a week, or when I was a triathlete, training 40, 50 hours a week, really using anything I could to kind of chase the dragon, I guess, or run from my own issues.
Christopher: And then so the time -- Okay. You'd just been in the hospital. You flat lined on the ECG. What kind of physical shape were you in at that time?
Douglas: It was terrible. Probably for the year before that, we had some businesses fail and some family things because of that and lost a ton of money and my response was I quit racing to try and save the business which was, looking back, a very bad decision because I basically did my last race, sold all my stuff and quit and just went straight to working. And as that started to fail, then I just really had no motivation to do anything.
So it's like, 2 o'clock, I'm going to happy hour. 7 o'clock, I show up for dinner. So, basically, just ate and drank and ate and drank, the amount of calories like a triathlete would without working out and put on about 50 pounds in a year. And at that point, it was -- I didn't like being overweight because I'd never really been overweight, so I thought, "Amphetamines and cocaine work really well for losing weight, so I'll just add those in and I can eat and drink all day and just do drugs to lose weight." I was just a wreck. I don't really have any photos because I wasn't really looking for those moments to be captured, I guess, for life but, yeah, it was real bad. That's about all I did.
Christopher: Whenever I see those before and after photos, I think this is slightly contrived. When I wasn't feeling so good, the last thing I felt like doing was take my shirt off and taking a picture of myself in the mirror. It's a really weird thing to do, isn't it?
Douglas: Yeah. There's probably some like group party photos floating around. I know for a long time the worst photo I had was my driver's license because I had to get it renewed during that time. And I just looked just trashed, I mean, just no life in me at all. I recently had to get it updated, they don't let you keep it so I don't have that picture but when I got healthy again and people would card me for stuff and they'd be like, "That's not even you."It was just a shocking difference. Yeah, I think really the only way it would have been worse would have been if I died. And, of course, I would have been dead so I wouldn't have noticed it. But that's the pretty much the next time.
Christopher: About as low as you can go.
Douglas: Yeah. Yeah, I wasn't really interested in going to jail, so that would probably been death at that point.
Christopher: And then how's life now? What's the main change that you've noticed?
[0:05:02]
Douglas: I did three different rehab stints. I did my first one when I was 21 and it was very kind of AA-based and spiritual Christian based and that worked for about seven months and that's when I found cycling and triathlon which really became my way of channeling all that energy and staying relatively sober through that period. Some people say you were replacing with another which is true. It was a healthier addiction than drinking and doing drugs all the time.
And then when I stopped racing, I didn't have that outlet so that's when it occurred again. So drinking and drugs was always kind of the solution to major life crisis, I guess, because I never really developed any other solution. So the last rehab I did was very science based which after doing two kind of AA and a spiritual program, so it didn't work, I wasn't willing to go through it again. So I found a doctor that worked all on science and really taught me a lot of the way the brain works, dopamine and something that I could get on board with and understand and it made sense to me.
I think it's Dr. Robert Lustig, one of the first guys with like the insulin hypothesis, he has a quote that I like, "Biochemistry drives behavior." And that's something I could jump into. Okay, I'm not broken. I'm not sinning. I'm not an evil person. There's something going on on a biochemical level that's causing me to respond differently or be addicted to these substances or have these emotional problems. Therapy still helped but I found that really probably the underlying key was fixing my health.
Because I had periods of sobriety for a long time but I still had anxiety, I still had depression, I still had difficulty in relationships with people, not just romantic ones but anything. I still had a lot of these issues that I was dealing with because even though I was sober I wasn't really healthy. So kind of combining the physical health and mental health and emotional health and having a spiritual practice, when I finally got all those four things working together.
We've talked many times, I think. Now is the best I've ever felt and I'm 37. I was doing Ironman and racing triathlon in Europe and competitive and played sports in college. It's odd to say I feel better at 37 than I ever did, even when I was sober and doing those things before because my health just changed so much.
Christopher: That's awesome. I think we might be a generation of people. I'm a little bit older than you, I think. And, yeah, we're a generation of people that feel better in their late 30s, early 40s than we did when we were 18, which is kind of frightening. So tell me about -- You mentioned depression and fatigue there. How are your energy levels and how is your mood and outlook now?
Douglas: We just redid the cortisol and stuff and even though it's not good it's 100 times better energy level. I did the genetic testing or my fast caffeine metabolizer so I worked down from a pot of coffee or maybe two pots of coffee a day to two cups, half cup and I can get through the day and I feel good. My thinking is clear. So no depression, no anxiety. I was prescribed medication multiple times for all those things that I just didn't really thought worked.
And, well, really they don't know how they work. So it was like you don't know how this works and you want to give it to me and then we're just going to play around and adjust dosage and change pills whenever you feel like it. And I'm like that's just not really science to me. It just didn't work. Yeah, being able to get off all those medications over time and really just take a few supplements that I don't really even take every day and just eat a healthy diet. It sounds very simple. Yeah, it is a multi-year process. And I feel fantastic even compared to six months ago or a year ago, definitely compared to five and ten years ago.
[0:10:05]
Christopher: That's absolutely amazing. So you've managed to lose -- One of the first things you started within the books is the 50 pounds overweight. Have you managed to lose all that weigh?
Douglas: Yeah. That was relatively easy, I guess, just because I could go work out. I could get into calorie deficit. When drinking a lot and doing drugs, food is not really high on the list anyway. I always start out with the food and I'd gain a lot of weight and I'd lose a little bit of it with drinking and drugs and then I'd get sober and them I'm like, "Okay, I got to start working out." And then I'd go into like crazy exercise mode and diet restriction so I could burn that off. That was always the running joke at family functions.
People would make comments, "You're getting kind of big." And I'm like, "Yeah, I'm trying to get fat on purpose so I can show you how easy it is to lose the weight." That was my deflection of it. And I think it was easy. The one thing I noticed I always carried a little extra weight regardless of how much I was doing. I don't consider myself an exerciser now. And I'm not necessarily training for anything but I do what I feel like doing and what my body tells me I'm able to do with HRV and just have fun. But I'm actually probably at a lower body fat percentage than I ever was when I trained and raced and, I think, that's mostly--
Yeah, because I was eating the standard American diet, high carbs, and just constantly inflamed and from a body image standpoint, men don't talk about that that much but it's like, "That extra five pounds. You can't get those abs to show." That bothered me. And now, I can go two weeks without working out and my body composition change the same just from diet, which really is amazing to me. Because I never would have believed that. Ten years ago, if somebody told me that, I would have told them they're crazy.
Christopher: So what are you eating now? I'm kind of interested to know. The thing that's so fantastic about this book, and certainly at least from my perspective, is this is the catalogue. This is the instructions for achieving this success. There's some things in here that I recognize and then there's some things which I've never thought about before which I thought was really interesting. So maybe we could get into that. But why don't we start with what you're eating right now?
Douglas: Yes. I think before we started working together, I remember a couple years ago I did blood test and the doctor wanted to put me on a Statin. And I kind of took it for about a month and I really thought about it and I was like, "Man, I'm taking this." And my mother had been put on a Statin and then developed type II diabetes because of it -- kind of around the same time. So I knew the risks but I didn't really know the science.
It was funny. I was sober but I was still kind of smoking and I was dating this woman and she broke up with me and I didn't take it very well and so my gut reaction again was I'm going to start training. That was always kind of my go-to. I'm like, "Well, I'm not going to go back to drinking and doing drugs. I'm going to start Cross fitting and I'm going to do some Olympic weight lifting and I'm just going to exercise myself into the ground." Because that way, I don't have to deal with the issues of this breakup and how it affected me.
And so to go along with that, I had gotten into cooking actually. So I had like one of these weekends where I wasn't doing anything, I'm just moping around and playing on the internet. I came across Peter Attia's, I think his two first big YouTube videos. Just his story of being overweight and swimming 25 miles and being in metabolic syndrome -- and I didn't even know what that term was -- and then he goes into the details of you're triglycerides are this and your waist size is that and you're cholesterol is this.
And I'm like I have that. I've always have that. So I started going back to my blood work and I'm like, my triglycerides were 459 one time and my free insulin was 14. So he went into the ketogenic diet and basically I'm sitting there watching a YouTube video and I'm like, "I'm going to do that." Which is kind of how I've always done everything. I don't have a problem going all in. Ironman and stuff, it's like, "I'm going to do that.
So, yes. Basically, since then I ate ketogenic and kind of did it in like two weeks. I was already tracking my food on an app and I was probably eating 200 to 300 grams of carbohydrates and probably 150 on a bad day to 100 grams of sugar. But I was working out like crazy doing Crossfit and Olympic weight lifting. So I wasn't putting on weight.
[0:15:09]
I wasn't performing well necessarily. And I wasn't thinking well. And got this one right on the ketogenic diet and there's a little suffering involved the first week or two. It wasn't necessarily easy but I was doing the testing, did the urine strips at first and then I got the breath meter and then I know when we did our first urine organics acid it was off the charts. Once I made that change or the ketogenic diet, really stuck with it and, I think, that's been the biggest key to, I wouldn't even say keeping the weight off, keeping the fat off.
And then just having stable blood sugar during the day, having clear mental thinking. I don't think I could have written this book before. I couldn't have organized my thoughts and put it together and had to be coherent much less probably had the attention span to actually sit there and do it. It's just like I don't know that I was ever ADD but I probably had symptoms of it based off my diet, did you notice being that high athlete, endurance athlete, carbohydrate diet that really was, that's all I ever knew until the last couple of years.
I think just the ketogenic diet has been huge. I'm definitely not in metabolic syndrome, definitely not overweight. I'm not over fat and I feel better and I think better and my emotions are better, blood sugar is better. So really, from a physical standpoint, that was probably the biggest key to all of it. It's just high fat, high quality fat and low carb.
Christopher: That's awesome. I keep going backwards and forwards on this. As you know, I'm doing really well also on the ketogenic diet. I keep wondering whether I should just tell people to eat this ketogenic diet from the outset but I know and you know -- I mean, you described it -- that it can be a bit rough for the first two weeks. Maybe it will be a mistake to recommend to someone who's got a lot of adrenal stress, maybe they've seen low cortisol on one of these saliva tests to go through that rough patch.
But I have to say that all of the guys, they all seem to end up on a ketogenic diet and absolutely love it and don't even want to think about going back. And that's not to say they're never going to eat carbs ever again. It's just that they know that the ketogenic diet is probably going to be the default for the rest of their life. Do you think that's true of you? Do you think you're going to stick to it?
Douglas: Yeah, I think just with some of the previous health stuff and family history of diabetes and heart disease and -- My last blood test, my triglycerides were down to 88. I think my free insulin was at 2. So I don't believe in the whole cholesterol heart disease myth/hypothesis that's been out there forever. I mean, I think that's pretty much debunked at this point. We've talked controlling blood sugar and controlling the free insulin and keeping the triglycerides down. That's really the way--
And my tests show that's what's working. I think my grandmother had a heart attack maybe like ten years ago and my response to that was I'm going to be vegetarian. Well, that's when I ended up having the worst triglyceride numbers and the worst insulin numbers. I've tried that path. I've tried the standard American diet. I've tried the vegetarian diet. I tried low carb, Paleo and then basically ketogenic now. If it keeps those three numbers down and along with the mental benefits and the clarity of thinking and the better mood and not having to be on antidepressants or SSRIs, just generally being well and happier.
That's not 100% diet but I think it was a major key in getting me to this place where then I was able to work on -- Hey, I can sit down and meditate now. Brain still goes a little crazy but it's not like unbearable. If I get up and eat high carb breakfast and try and sit and go meditate, that's like impossible.
[0:20:03]
Blood sugar is going crazy. So, I mean, I think that -- With the monks I trained with, they eat like once a day. They definitely are not eating a big high carbs standard American diet for breakfast so they want to go sit and meditate for two hours. They might get a little hungry but they're not having any of this blood sugar craziness and I really think that -- And they eat vegetarian but they're not eating a bowl of Cheerios and a whole wheat tortilla and whatever no fat yogurt that's all sugar.
Yeah, I really think it's kind of like -- It's the cornerstone because I'd always kind of attack all these other things. I'm going to attack meditation or go to counseling or I'm doing triathlon and I never really put that diet piece in there. I think when I finally put the diet piece in there, all the other things that I was working on -- Like my body could finally maybe relax or get out of that crazy state of unhealthiness that was underlying everything. So then everything else I could work on really just fell into place and became much easier.
Unless my tests get worse, I really see no reason getting off the ketogenic diet. I know there's no studies and people want to maybe criticize that or they hypothesize that they might not be healthy long term but, for me, as long as I feel good and I'm happy and the tests are coming back low inflammation, low triglycerides, low free insulin and stable blood sugar, I think I would never stop.
Christopher: Yeah, I feel the same way. I'm going to keep testing and if I see something in the test results or if I learned something new then sure I will spin on a dime. But it just seems unlikely at this stage. But I'm definitely going to remain open to the possibility that there's long term harm and I keep looking at that. I think that's probably the key, isn't it, to not -- The only time I've ever come undone is when I've not been open to the idea of new possibilities and change. That's kind of a dangerous place to be especially if what you believe in doesn't really work very well.
Douglas: Yeah, that was funny because I was taking notes yesterday because I started writing my blog again and it was like every time I thought I knew everything I was totally wrong. Yeah, so just being open. And that's probably one of the unfortunate things especially in the diet industry and maybe fitness to some extent, it's the dogmatic approaches people have and then the little micro wars between Paleo and keto or vegetarians. It's like we're all eating--
Christopher: Real food?
Douglas: Better. Yeah, real food, and better than the standard American diet. So we're a lot closer to the norm. But fighting and books and all that kind of stuff, I guess they sell better when there's some kind of inflict controversy.
Christopher: Conflict, yeah.
Douglas: Right, yeah. And, I think, that's just human nature to be somewhat dogmatic. And, yeah, I catch myself because people ask me a lot of questions and I do some coaching that are like, "Oh, what's your philosophy?" And I'm like, "I don't really have one other than helping you figure out what works for you." And if that's a vegan diet, great. If it's ketogenic -- Or from training. Some people need and they thrive on high mileage and they perform well and some people don't.
It's very individualized. Yeah, I've had to kind of step back any time I think there's one answer and just really be open that there maybe one answer for each person but there's three billion people on the planet, so that's three billion answers. So any time I want to think I'm right, I'm not right 100% of the time for everyone. It's interesting.
Christopher: It is. And tell me about your writing. There's a whole bunch of things that I get everybody to do. If you sign up for a Nourish Balance Thrive program, you do some testing with me, then there's a bunch of things that [0:24:32] [Indiscernible] and one of the things we've already talked about, the diet, and then the sleep part I think is non-negotiable. And then you don't have to be an Ironman triathlete but I do think you should walk. I think walking is non-negotiable. And then we've already talked, you mentioned that the meditation which I think is really helpful. Tell me about your writing. Because writing is something I really, really struggle with. I don't mind talking but I'm really bad at writing. So tell me about your writing and how that's been able to help you?
[0:25:04]
Douglas: Yeah. So I'm kind of the opposite. I would much rather write than talk. So if I've had to give a presentation about a month ago and I'm like I want to throw up in the bathroom and run away. It's before giving this talk -- I don't know. Maybe it's always been that way. My grandmother was an English teacher and she owned day care centers. I think it was something that my brother and I -- She was really influential in our very young education because we went to her day care centers.
So that zero to six years old, she was there. So I think it's something we both have. My brother is an attorney so, obviously, he can read really well, he can write really well. So, I think, it's a skill that we were both given at a young age, to learn how to put thoughts down and kind of how it should flow, how to make an argument, how to do an explanation, how to research. For me, I just found it was very cathartic.
One of the things, when people go to treatment centers for drug or alcohol is that they usually have you write these kind of letters to people you have issues with. Not to send them to them but just to get it out of yourself. And so a couple of times when I've done that, there was a very cathartic kind of experience. James Altucher, he's a writer, and he'd been through a lot of the same business losses that I'd been through and he's very vulnerable and open in his writing and I thought, well, I'm just going to start writing a blog.
I don't really care if anybody reads it. I'm writing it for me. And just getting my thoughts out or somebody else may be able to have a conversation with a good friend or a loved one or their spouse, I'd done tons of counseling, psychiatrist, cognitive behavioral therapy and I'd walk out of there after an hour talking no better. And it wasn't even a cathartic experience. It was more of a challenge. But just when I started writing and organizing my thoughts, one, it kind of helped me move along the path.
And then there were some vulnerability in it especially publishing it versus just writing for myself. So if I was to go out and relapse tomorrow and be doing drugs on the street and somebody that read my book saw me, there would kind of be an issue. Somebody would bring it up. So some of it is an accountability with being public about this kind of stuff. But, yeah, the writing, it's just something that's always worked and I've always been relatively good at and more of an introvert, I think.
I'd much rather write somebody an email and have a discussion than have an argument with them in person. If it's emotional and then I kind of lose my train of thought and don't perform very well in that environment. But if I can write and think and re-write, "Maybe I shouldn't say that." I've always done better that way. One of the other things from treatment and was a really simple thing, one of the chapters in the book, was writing a gratitude list. Relying on drugs and alcohol, they're somewhat of an escapism and that escape is of everything that sucks in life and you're getting so myopic on the negative things and then completely ignoring all the good things.
Yeah, things aren't perfect now. I've struggles now. But it's anytime during that day, if I sat down and write down five things that I'm grateful for, it really just changes and shifts my whole mindset. My kids are healthy. We have running water. We have electricity. We have enough food today. We have a roof over our heads. I'm grateful for all those things. What else do I really need?
Christopher: Yeah. So you do that on a daily basis then? You're just like some random moment in the day you'll just sit down and write those things down?
Douglas: Yeah. I mean I try to like schedule it once a night, like kind of a recap of the day. That's how it started. But now, yeah, if I'm just in a bad mood or a funk, yeah, just sitting down really quick and jotting that down or just sitting down and doing a five-minute meditation or else I'll drive somewhere for -- I have to drive a lot for real estate and I'll just park my car and just sit there for five minutes and just breathe. Usually meditation or just writing those little lists are just my two go-tos when I'm struggling.
[0:30:03]
Really with anything. During the day I'm going to have great emotional periods and during the day I'm going to be kind of like complaining that I don't like stuff. "Oh, this person cut me off in traffic." Just really trivial things that are not important but that our minds can get so trapped on just all this little stuff that doesn't matter. Just money and bills or just whatever, our favorite sports team loses and it's like these don't really matter? No, it doesn't matter. What matters is I'm healthy and my children are healthy. We have our basic needs met. A daily reminder of those things.
For me, it's writing it down and putting it on paper. And for me, if I say something, it's not really -- It's real and the other person perceives it but, for me, it's something just, if it's in pen and paper or pencil and paper, I don't take notes, for me, it's just that physical act of writing it down what am I grateful for? My son and my daughter are healthy. That takes five seconds. And they can really just snap -- Yeah, I know they can snap me out of one of those just little pity parties.
Christopher: So the next time I find myself losing it over the fact that I can't find any ink for my inkjet printer or something like that. You have one of those moments where you realize that why am I so upset about something so ridiculous? It doesn't make any sense. But it seems like this is -- I mean, we're both laughing. I think it must be a common thing where humans are programmed to sort of be worrying about something and then the absence of something we just invent something. Maybe this trick you found, writing down the things that you're grateful for is a way to break out of that and not be so worried about stupid things that don't matter.
Douglas: Yeah. We can laugh or I'll laugh at myself. Someone once told me think about the things you're worried about in your life up to this day. 99% of them never came true probably. And the other 1%, well, it's over and you're still here and you're still alive, kind of framing it in that context. So it's like it's tough in American and modern society. Not having ink for your printer when you need to print something that's "really important," a day from now it's not going to be.
So just kind of losing that present moment focus. Yeah, I do it all the time. It's like, "Oh my phone battery is going to die," like I can't survive without it or something. It's just this little -- But for me, if I go through a full day of that and don't meditate or don't take a break to re-center, I might not sleep as well. And if I go through week of not meditating or not doing gratitude list, all those little things just build and build and build and, for me, that was always -- I wouldn't express them because I didn't want to be a complainer necessarily.
So I would always internalize it all and then eventually I would just blow up. And in the past my blowing up would be I'm going to go get drunk or I'm going to do a bunch of drugs and then I'm going to yell at somebody and really tell them how I feel. And so having just a discussion with them or just realizing, "Hey, it's over." Maybe I don't have to have a conversation with them. Maybe I need to forgive them. Maybe I need to forgive myself. It's just like the little daily maintenance stuff.
Meditation could be a minute. I trained with monks and it was pretty rigid and -- I wouldn't say rigid but it was minimum 40 minutes and we do sitting meditation and walking meditation and go on retreats. Not everybody is willing to do a 72-hour meditation retreat and eat one meal a day in silence and not talk for three days. For me, I found -- I was so extreme on the other stuff that I had to go extreme down the meditation path. But after coming back, it's like that one minute of meditating or one minute of just writing, "Hey, I'm glad my kids are happy today," and then all of a sudden all those little daily problems just go away.
Christopher: That's awesome.
Douglas: Yeah, yeah.
Christopher: I wanted to talk to you about your podcast habit. This is something that really intrigues me as well because it's one of the things -- I don't really care much for reading a lot of blogs. I read some but not many.
[0:35:08]
But the podcast is almost like an obsession for me. My phone, I can't take any more pictures with my iPhone because it's using so much space to store these MP3 files for my podcast. What part have they played in this recovery for you?
Douglas: I think we're pretty -- I'm an information junkie. It's almost like an addiction. If I'm interested in a topic, I could literally research it until my eyes bleed and the ears and everything. As I just said, that wanting to learn more so. Podcasts are great. When my diet wasn't that good -- When I'd be relatively healthy I could read but then it would get to the point where I don't really have the ability or control to sit down and focus on reading a book.
So I went to some audible books which really aren't -- They're better, I guess, in some extent but I just zone out. I would zone out and I wouldn't pay attention just like I could read through pages and be like I don't remember anything I just read. It's like, well, I had a bowl of pasta before I did it. So the podcasts had been huge and, I think, I just started with like the YouTube videos and then all of a sudden I'm like, "These podcasts are kind of cool." And then I found all the same people in just the interview format and--
I drive a lot for real estate so instead of listening to the radio or listening to the news, things really aren't that influential in my life. I found that the podcasts were real people talking about real things and people telling real stories and being open and honest and vulnerable. And then it's almost kind of like developing a relationship with the podcast host even though I don't know them. But, yeah, I get interested in their lives and I think a lot of the things on podcasts are very more health-oriented and honest and straightforward and most people that do it are not making money and they're probably spending money to do it.
So they may have some financial motivation at some point but there's a lot of time and effort that goes into doing those. Because I've looked into doing it. So there's some kind of altruistic thing, I think, about most people that do podcasts. They really love their topic. It shows just in the quality of a lot of them. It's almost, to me, yeah, it's like an addiction almost. It's like refresh it, I'm like, "Oh, there's a new one from so and so and there's this and there's that. How am I going to listen to all these?"
My photos are full because I screenshot all of them when there's good stuff, like the 40 minute mark, they said this. So I've got like thousands of photos. I haven't even gone back to even research because there's just so much stuff and just from an information standpoint, for really anybody or for the new generation. I see it with my kids. They're not interested in TV. We don't watch TV. The younger generation sees through that old media paradigm as kind of being just a method of selling people stuff.
The content is not good. With YouTube videos and blogs and everything, people want real -- They're on the social stuff and the podcast. They want a connection. We really want to connect with real people usually through suffering. When somebody is out there putting this façade on and it's all prepped and perfect and everything, I don't think the younger generation is really getting into that as much. So podcasts are huge. Everyone is listening to music but it's almost like I need more information or I want to learn more about this person. It's great.
Christopher: Have you heard -- I know Simon Hunter, who I know is on the podcast listening. Thank you for this. There's an app called Overcast.fm. I'll link to this in the show notes. It's an app. So on the iPod, there's -- Sorry, not iPod, the iPhone.
[0:40:01]
The native app for playing podcasts, there's a speed setting which is pretty good. I find that 1.5x, so you're listening to the person talk faster than they normally would, 1.5 times as fast. And it's pretty good. But the Overcast app allows you to decide what speed, a much finer level of granularity. So you can tune it in just right for a particular person's voice. Some people talk quite fast and others talk much slower. So that's super cool. And then also what it does is it removes the silence. So somebody pauses for a moment, the app just deletes that space and so you can get through far more podcasts far more quickly which I think is an awesome hack. So I highly recommend that. So that you can listen to me talk like a chipmunk.
Douglas: Yeah, I have to check that. I've tried that 1.5x or 2x and it works on some people.
Christopher: Exactly.
Douglas: Especially like Chris Kresser.
Christopher: Yeah, he talks really slowly.
Douglas: He talks a little slower. So, yeah, you could put him in 1.5. But other people, all of a sudden it is like chipmunk. I've gotten good. I mean, I listen to pretty well-rounded group. And I'm like, "Okay, well, this guy is going to have ten minutes of ads at the beginning." So I already know I'm going to fast forward through that. Which maybe isn't good for them selling to advertisers but I don't need to listen to somebody pitch their book for the 5,000th time. I probably already own it.
I think podcasters, I guess, with the advertising are getting a little smarter. They're throwing it in the middle now. Just like TV. You don't do ads but, yeah, time constraint is a little bit. I'm trying to listen to all these things. I've gone through some and I listen to some for a while and then maybe I won't be so interested in it. But I try and keep it relatively well-rounded. Most of it is health stuff and some of it is not. Some of it is for entertainment, things like that.
It's really filled a lot of time especially driving which would necessarily be wasted time. Or I would just be entertaining myself with music or listening to the news, which to me would have probably a negative effect. It's been awesome. It kind of reminds me of before the TV, everybody used to sit around there on the radio. There's just something to it when you're not watching it. So it's great. It's a huge part of my self-education and I would recommend t really to anybody.
Christopher: We're probably preaching to the choir here, aren't we, because everybody has already listened to the podcast?
Douglas: Yeah.
Christopher: And I was delighted. On your book you listed the podcasts you listen to and I was one of them. So I was kind of like -- It's kind of a weird feeling of fulfillment when you not only do work with someone and they start feeling better but they also write a book and mention you in the book, it's really quite something extraordinary. I'm wondering whether you're going to end up following a very similar path because you have done the functional diagnostic nutrition course which I did and very much enjoyed. How did you find it? How's your experience with that course been?
Douglas: It's been a good kind of 101 level where I'm at. I wouldn't say I could have learned this science on my own but just knowing that science probably has to have some context and how to correlate it with it how people are feeling and all those things, so I'd been able to work with a few clients and it's going really well. What I'm finding is a lot of it, the test results, help correlate and tell people why. And for me, it's kind of like a relief. Like I didn't have to take it personal when I'm finding that with clients that they may be overweight or they may be tired and they're beating themselves up about it.
And to come in and say, "Hey, this is not your fault. But it's your responsibility if you want to feel better that you need to do these things and here are these test results and this is why you can't lose fat and this is why you can't sleep or this is why you're tired and feel depressed. You're not a bad person. You might be metabolically damaged."
[0:45:00]
To me, it always kind of correlated with something I learned in Buddhism which was the four noble truths. It's kind of like there is suffering. Here's why you have suffering. There's a way out of suffering. Then you have enlightenment. So it's like the same path that you are suffering, okay, let's figure out why. And here's what you do. And then you feel better. It's just like that four noble truth path kind of health. I think a lot of healing can happen not only physically but mentally and emotionally.
And when we come at it from this way and that's what I always kind of try -- What I do with myself is have this kind of integrative model where spirituality, emotions, the mental and the physical, having to work on all four of those. I find really probably the easiest way to get to people is through that physical. Unless they have a really deep spiritual practice or they're going to counseling. And all those things are good but what I found for me, until I was working on all four of those.
Because I'd really love to just do the physical stuff. I get really geeked out on the science and the training and all that. But if I ignore meditating or ignore writing or my emotional health or I ignore learning and my mental health, then it really doesn't matter how fit I am or how low my body fat percentage is, my overall quality of life is not going to be as high. But the easiest way is to come in through the testing. And somebody could work on their spiritual life and their emotional health and their intellect, if they're 100 pounds overweight and they feel like crap and they can't sleep, the mind is going to fail because of the body.
So just having the balance in those areas is really what I try to work on. it's funny now I get runners or triathletes and most of the time I'm like they're over fat, they're metabolically broken and it's noble and honorable that they want to do an Ironman or they want to run a marathon or they want to run a 5k, but my answer is usually stop exercising. And for some people, that's a relief. They might not be as type A and driven. They just thought, "Oh, I have to run a marathon to lose weight."
And I'm like, "Really, if you just walk three days a week and let's change all this other stuff, you're going to lose all the weight. Then you're ready to run." Everybody else is doing it backwards. We're going to go out and 50 pounds overweight and abuse our body by running horribly with that form and you're metabolically broken, it's definitely worse on the health. I kind of follow in a lot of what Phil Maffetone does. It's like don't sacrifice your health for your fitness and the two are not the same thing.
It's probably not a message that sells a lot but the people that buy in, my goal is I'd rather have them be happier. I don't care if they can run a three-hour marathon or do a nine-hour Ironman. There are so very few people that can do that anyway. So from a business perspective, there's a lot of people that could just be a little happier and have a little more energy and have better relationships. That's kind of, I guess, what my target is.
Christopher: So, if I'm a real estate agent with low testosterone that's struggling to lose weight and can't concentrate properly, can I come and work with you right now?
Douglas: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
Christopher: And where can people find you?
Douglas: People can email me. It's my full name so it's douglashilbert@yahoo.com. Email me anytime. I'm on Facebook. I'm pretty active on Facebook. Again, it's just under my full name. That's probably the easiest way to get a hold of me. Yeah, I can work with people really anywhere remotely. I do all the same testing and just help them get better.
Christopher: Excellent. And the book is on Amazon. I'll link to that, Letters to My Son: Choosing Yourself First. It's a fantastic book. I really enjoyed it and I'm quite flattered to be in it.
Douglas: No, it's great. Yeah, you're a huge -- Like I said, I mean, if ain't got -- I was sober but I still wasn't healthy and I don't think with a lot of the work that we did together, I wouldn't really have been able to have the mental energy or focus or clarity or just overall well-being to even write the book.
[0:50:06]
Mentioning you is one thing. I mean, it's like definitely working with you and your health was one of the huge catalysts for me even being in a position where I could do it. So I have a lot of gratitude for that.
Christopher: Well, thank you. No, I really appreciate that. That's wonderful, wonderful to hear. So maybe I'm not capable of writing a book myself but perhaps I can help somebody else write and I'll settle for that.
Douglas: Yeah. That's just the other helping people thing. I get a lot of people, I'm like, well, I can't do what they can do but if I can help them do what they do better and they can contribute to the world and make the world a better place, then kind of that ripple effect has gone out. Whereas in the past, it was 'I have to do all these things to be this whatever person.' And now, it's like, no, if I can just help somebody be a better parent or be a better spouse or just be a better person, I might not know what the direct results of that end up being but if they hold the door open for somebody and smile at them today, and then that person doesn't go home and kick their dog or have road rage, so there's just this ripple effect of just helping people in a simple way, I think. Like I said, I'll never know the effect of it but if it's making the world a better place in general then, I think, it's something I have to do really.
Christopher: That's awesome. Congratulations. I'm so happy for you.
Douglas: Yeah, thank you. Yeah.
Christopher: Excellent. Well, this has been a great conversation, Doug. Thank you very much for coming on and recording with me.
Douglas: Yeah, I appreciate the opportunity.
Christopher: Yeah, thanks again.
Douglas: Cool.
Christopher: Cheers then.
[0:51:46] End of Audio
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