E114 - Muscle Expert: You Need To Know This To Get Bigger & Stronger (FAST)

33:48I never knew what supplements I needed to take. I'd always go into the pharmacy and buy a load of random bottles and end up popping pills all day, every day, not having a clue if I was consuming the vitamins, which I should be consuming at all. But Bionic came to save the day. They are a tailor-made supplement company that will put together your own specific formula based on your activity, your gender. I have Bionic Pro, where I I get the blood test done every three to four months. And based on that blood test, I get my own personalized formula. For those people who don't want to do a blood test or don't have access to that, then you can go with Bionic Go, where you just have to fill in a short questionnaire.

34:28And based on that questionnaire, you will get your tailored supplements with a surprisingly high degree of accuracy. So stop the guesswork, sign up to Bionic, and ensure that you remove those deficiencies and build up your immune system. With the playbook, how would the approach for men differ in comparison to the approach for women in terms of the programming? Guess what? They're not different. There's a lot of information out there hearing that men and women should train differently. No. We are of the same species. It is all about good programming. and a foundation of strength. Doesn't matter if you are male or female.

35:12Men and women can put on the same type of muscle at relative rates. Again, it might be less for a woman because she's smaller, but it's less of a sex difference and more of a size difference. And I guess... Yeah, because I used to coach... There was a couple of years when I used to coach people back in the day in my 20s. And when I would train both women and men, the approach was very similar, but what would be slightly different would be exercise selection. So I wouldn't have a female doing some like heavy shrugs, working on the traps. there was maybe less emphasis on quad dominant lower body exercises and more focus on glute and hamstring dominant exercises because i don't know if you've seen it with any of your clients and from your past experience but do women tend to develop their quads pretty easily i think that and i actually just had this conversation in my on my podcast you know can men and women develop glutes and quads and lower body the same and it's basically it seems to be again it's not sex difference so it's not that a woman could develop her quads more than a man it's just it's exercise selection and probably pelvic positioning depending um Um, you know, but I think that for example, you know, uh, shrugs is a good example.

36:51If a woman is going to enter into a training program, she probably doesn't want massive traps and maybe she does, but that would be, you know, I could see where she might not want that or might not want to bench press because she just doesn't want massive pecs. So I think it comes down to exercise selection and interpersonal variability, which it goes against what we're seeing in the narrative right now because the narrative right now is that men and women should train differently and the data doesn't support that um and that's that's important to recognize yeah i know quite a lot of women who uh they go to the gym fairly regularly but they literally just only train legs they do no they do zero upper body work um which i mean sure that like they look good they have a very petite and slim upper body than the legs are just like really quite jack glutes look amazing but i say to them although it looks good you've got this big imbalance of strength when it comes to your upper and lower body so if you're not sufficiently training some of your upper body muscles in particular your back like when you're doing some of these compound movements, there is that risk of your lower back giving way and actually injuring yourself, particularly if a lot of those lower body exercises that you're doing are machines which don't train the lower back.

38:21It's a really good point. You know, there is something that we put together called the foundational five and my colleague, Dr. Gerard D 'Onofrio, who's a wonderful physical medicine and rehab specialist. So he's an MD who's also fellowship trained. And what he did is he put together a foundational five for core strength and activation and things like hip airplanes, bird dogs, believe it or not, calf raises, which, you know, him and I were fighting about in the book. I'm like, we're really going to put this in. He's like, no, you know, you've got to work on ankle mobility. And so there's a handful of, and then 90, 90 breathing.

38:58So there are a handful of things that can be done outside of the gym to help augment the ability to perform when someone is in the gym or you know doing these exercises so that whether they are they're focused on training legs they're still doing things to build core strength because it is really important especially for injury prevention like you said yeah I have a lot of people who they they ask me if I've ever had any injuries when it comes to my lower back or what should they do if they have either an injured lower back or just a weak lower back. And I don't know about you, but I've found that those people, including myself, who really train and load up their lower back tend to have less issues when it comes to lower back injuries and back pain because you have a strong back yeah being sedentary you know you'll you'll hear that um this this thought that there are healthy sedentary so if you look at the data it's quote healthy sedentary individuals have you ever heard people talk about that they'll be like healthy sedentary individuals when you look at pubmed and you google okay um you know health outcomes blah blah blah healthy sedentary individuals.

40:14And that's an oxymoron. There's no such thing as a healthy sedentary. And we see this when someone goes into a cast, we get atrophy. You have muscle atrophy and strength atrophy very rapidly. And as you get older, the rate at which muscle loss happens is drastically accelerated. So a younger person will lose, I don't know, might take them a month to lose a couple pounds of muscle or, you know, longer than 30 days versus a week for an older individual who is on bed rest. And, you know, this was off the heels of you talking about back pain. And when something hurts, people, instead of thinking exercise and strengthening the muscles around, that injury will make them feel better.

41:05They have this kind of mindset where, well, I'm not going to do anything. And obviously it really depends on the injury, but oftentimes it makes people worse because it makes them significantly deconditioned. And when that happens, it becomes more challenging. It's never too late to build muscle and get better, but it does become more challenging. And, you know, we're talking about strength and activities of daily living. But what becomes more profound is as people lose muscle, then we see an increase in insulin resistance, an increase in blood glucose. So we see the beginnings of a metabolic syndrome, not because they're putting on weight, but because they're losing muscle.

41:52It is more detrimental to lose muscle mass than it is to gain body fat. is that why you coined the term muscle centric medicine well i coined the term muscle centric medicine because there's a huge gap and by the way we also created national muscle health day month month november is a national we created national holiday national muscle health month which November, when this podcast is coming out, is the first time that it is going to be announced as a national holiday. And so muscle-centric medicine is doing, it's giving skeletal muscle justice and recognizing the imports of muscle health for everything.

42:39I am telling you, you know, in the biohacking community, people are looking at these things and sunning their rear ends or all this other stuff. Like whatever it is that they're doing. And that's great. You said you love the beach. You're probably out there doing that. But aside from - Yeah, especially in Dubai, they love to see me do that in Dubai. So we have to recognize that all of that, if we think about the architecture of our house, which is our physical self, there's lots of external things like the sun and your caffeine, all these things. But if your architecture, your foundation is not strong and capable, none of this matters you are never going to be over you are not going to be able to overcompensate for the fact that you have low muscle health it's impossible so how do how do we get this uh how do you spread the word and get this movement out there well the first thing is having a understanding that there's a new national holiday I don't know that's what I mean but how do we get everybody to talk about this national holiday well number one you have to recognize that muscle is the largest organ system and roughly 80 percent of Americans I know you're not in America but they fall short of these trading goals and 50 percent of our older adults have low muscle mass and also you know I bet you for industrialized countries, it's not that different, right?

44:11We're all, the disease of comfort is low muscle mass. And regardless of where you live. So skeletal muscle is misunderstood. I don't know. I think that we should all have some kind of commitment of what we're going to do. Maybe it's, I don't know, 10 pushups that day, 50, 100, depending on what kind of shape you're in. But really thinking about our evolutionary heritage, muscle has always been front and center, and we've lost that. So to gain that back, I think collectively, as we talk about what we're doing, I'm sure there's things that we can do. So set realistic fitness expectations. And realistic could be something a little edgy, like running a marathon.

45:00yeah i think what what i would want more people to do and understand is that you know if you do go to the gym and you do want to put on a bit of muscle or get stronger it doesn't mean you have to dedicate your life to it doesn't mean you have to stop doing all those other forms of activity that you like and just go to the gym and lift weights like you could literally just have one dedicated session to begin with, or maybe two, make them ideally full body sessions so that each muscle group is getting hit twice per week. And then all the other stuff you like to do, you can continue to do that. Like if you'd like to run, go run.

45:38If you like to play paddle, play paddle. Like if you want to do the high rocks, do the high rocks, whatever it might be. Don't think that what we're talking about now is us telling you to go to the gym and lift weights like every single day and get absolutely jacked because that's not what we're trying to do and also it's not even about it's that's a really good point because it's not about being jacked and that is a conversation that that's the entry point that's what gets people interested but you know um it is it is not the the focal point of the importance of skeletal muscle and whether you are changing your body composition or not simply dedicating yourself to recognize that, listen, it's mandatory.

46:20If you brush your teeth and you shower, you should also be doing resistance training. But we live in a society where people feel strength is a luxury. It is not. It is a responsibility. And if strength is the entry point, then that is at the top of the funnel that allows for independent living, better brain function, better erections, men and women. I should just end it there. Boom. Do you know what? From my experience, one of the best things about having more muscle mass than the average person is that my metabolism is just always firing. I can have days where I'm literally not really doing anything.

47:09I'm just walking around. and I will burn way more calories than the average person just because I have to move my body and there's a lot of muscle which is working just from walking around and doing my day-to-day stuff. So some people will see me eat or whether it be the types of food that I'm eating or just the amount of food I'm eating, they're like, how are you so lean yet you eat that much food? I'm like, well, first of all, the majority of the food that I'm eating is good quality food. And secondly, my body is just a furnace. It's full of muscle that needs feeding. So in comparison to those people, this always happens when my clients in the past, when they want to lose fat, their goal is, all right, well, I just have this target weight of 75 kilos.

47:58I just want to lose 10 kilograms. I'm like, no, if that is your goal, you're going to starve yourself. You're probably going to lose lose a load of muscle. And then if you compare your metabolism to when you're 85 kilos versus 75 kilos, it's going to be less. So instead of having that weight loss goal, you should have the goal of, I want to try and maintain and hold on to as much weight as possible whilst losing as much fat as possible. And it's interesting. Now this is exactly right. You're switching the conversation from what you have to lose to what you have to gain. And if you think about muscle as a metaphor for life.

48:33If you focus on what you have to lose, then you are very negative and you are constantly in this hypervigilant state versus reorienting yourselves to a conversation of what is it that I have to gain and what do I have control over? Skeletal muscle is the only organ system we have voluntary control over. Can't tell my thyroid to pump out X number of thyroid hormones. I can't tell my heart to beat. I mean, some yogis can at 52 and a half beats per minute, but I can say, okay, I'm going to do one pushup or I can curl my bicep. It is a organ system with voluntary control. And that makes it very powerful.

49:12And, you know, for example, you know, let's say someone is listening and they get stuck in a negative mindset. people will say, we'll go meditate out of it or go do some kind of process. If you are down the spiral of you have a negative repetitive thought that you cannot get over, good luck. Good luck trying to out meditate yourself out of it. Maybe some people are really skilled. I'm not that smart. I'm not able to do that. You dunk me in a cold plunge. I'm done. I can't think about it. I don't even know what I was bitching about before. It's over. You do a max out sprint. You're not thinking about it.

49:51You pull the lever of skeletal muscle to create a bi-directional relationship of mental fortitude and a capacity to be able to control your mind. I challenge someone to be in the worst mood ever and think about it and get into a 50 degree or 48 degree cold plunge. I'd like to hear, still hear them bitch about it. It is nearly impossible. Have you done a cold lunch before? Of course. Can you be in a negative mindset and remember what you're bitching about? No, I just get on with it. You can't, right? You could be thinking about something. So essentially you are using your body as a tool to recalibrate your mind.

50:35And that's something special because it's more difficult to use your mind to talk yourself out of something, but almost 100 % of the time you can pull the lever of your body to move your mind in a direction for positive outcome and to really gain control over your own agency, which becomes critical. What advice would you give to those people who might be listening and they know what it is that they need to do, yet they are unable to stay consistent with it and often find themselves making excuses for themselves why they don't have to go and do the thing that they know they should be doing gotta get really real humans are predictable and the first thing that you have to do is you have to really anchor in onto that why.

51:30Why are you doing this? And until you find that why, then you will go through this spiral of regret time after time and then be surprised by your own human nature. So the first thing is, is you really have to get really clear. And then you have to set standards, not goals, because you're failing. You allow yourself to fail off of a goal. But if you become disciplined enough to set a standard for your life and a standard for the way in which you operate, then you no longer allow yourselves to hit a goal or not hit a goal. For us, as a military family with two little kids, we are the kind of family that on a Saturday morning, we get up and we train together.

52:12That is what we do. That is our family standard. Not, oh, did you work out today? None of that. Because at the end of the day, You know, we get to do this once. And the clearer you are, the less regret you have when you don't keep promises to yourself. Another way you train that up, say, okay, I'm not ready. I can't commit. Then you've put in various types of friction. There's emotional friction. There's physical friction. There's environmental friction. friction. And friction, by getting better at cultivating your muscle against friction, which is kind of doing the thing that you don't want to do, then you become much more skilled at navigating your way out of it.

52:57So for example, I tell a lot of my patients, we have a medical practice, strong medical, and a lot of them, one way that we train them up to be able to withstand the friction is pick three things that they really love. So some people love coffee, loud music and exercise, like loud music and stimulants before training, you know, and Starbucks. For five days in a row, they flip a coin. Heads, they get it. Tails, they don't. By the third day of not getting the thing, so the first three days, it's super annoying. Can you imagine? You're going to go training at the gym, you love your music and you love your caffeine and stimulants.

53:40Heads, you get a tails, you don't. You're like a little pissed inside. And then you got to do it again. And Tuesday, you do it. Tuesday, you don't get it again. You're like a little pissed. And then by the third day and then the fourth day, you're like, fuck it. You're way less pissed. This gives you an opportunity to then practice things that you don't want outside little things, outside of big, meaningful things. So that's just one example. And again, you know, pick the real dopamine anchors. Maybe you like shopping for clothes or cars. Go and flip a coin. Heads you get to do it, tails you don't.

54:23And that's just one example. the other ways of emotional you know emotional friction is um uh just pick that one conversation that you really just don't want to have that's just been lingering and just and you have to call one person each day with that conversation or that person you don't want to talk to so you practice these it's annoying but you expand your capacity for me one of the things which i always do, particularly if it's a session I don't really want to do, is I will always focus upon the feeling which I will have once I complete it. So it could be, you know, let's say for example, you invited me to do one of your bar for workouts.

55:10I know for a fact that it would just be pure hell doing it. And then even the lead up to it, I'm just probably getting nervous because I know how horrible I'm going to feel. But then if I visualize and think about how good I will feel once that session is done that feeling of accomplishment the feeling of doing something that i didn't want to do not to mention just the the endorphin rush i'm going to have after doing a session like that for the rest of the day that makes it all worthwhile for me but you've able to but you've mastered that right yeah um and so then how do we get other people so you get that dopamine drive you know, I'm not worried about you.

55:51You've got that anchored in. The next thing that I would do is what are we doing next to challenge you? So if you've mastered the physical domain, what are the other things that we need to put you in to do a crucible? So there is this idea that humans always strive for growth. And if you do not go to the challenge, like it or not, that challenge is going to come to you. So let's say you, Mike, are someone who's mastered this physical aspect, then you better be ready to pick that next hard thing. that next hard thing should make you a little uneasy because if you are not constantly challenging yourself um then i think it just leaves opportunity on the table for just excellence right and mastery that i think that's what this is building stronger better more resilient humans yeah you definitely become too comfortable and that can not that it would necessarily lead to a depression but certainly I feel like if you just do get too comfortable and you don't challenge yourself you feel like something is missing like it's hard to explain but whenever especially for me if I learn a new skill or do something difficult, put myself into some sort of uncomfortable situation.

57:18Once I pass that, complete it, accomplish it, whatever it might be, that's one of the best feelings that I can possibly have. But that's only going to be felt if I continue to set challenges for myself and overcome obstacles. That's exactly right. And nothing could be more important, which again, you've anchored into this. And one thing that I see with people that, you know, humans are very good at recognizing something and then doing the same thing over and over again. And that's why it's really important to make sure it becomes a positive habit. So for example, people will either become very good at avoiding difficulty or very good at understanding that friction refines them.

58:03And so they will go out and search it out because it creates enough resistance that they are able to build a stronger body and mind under pressure, right? This is about how do we thrive under pressure? And pressure now is optional. Whereas I think before it was never an option. You know, it was a hard grinding life. And now you could sit in your house and never talk to another human being and then order Instacart or Amazon or whatever it is. And pressure now is optional and that will create a slow decay of the human spirit yeah this one's quite interesting though when it comes to stress and pressure i think both are good but too much of them may have negative side effects so if we take for example i don't know it's like two big names on social media who have a great deal of influence like chris williamson obviously you appeared in his recent video about and uh jordan peterson so jordan i think he's dealing with quite a few health-related problems at the moment obviously chris has been for the past year or so now could these two people are full-on workaholics like these guys are working their asses off they're traveling all around the world like they and they're quite hard on themselves and they want to push themselves.

59:37Now, could you argue that some of those negative health symptoms that they're experiencing, is it down to too much stress and too much pressure and not enough focus on recovery and rest and maybe something to do with your mental self-talk? It is humans are complicated. And basically, the perfect formula I would say is that the challenge for the person meets their capacity is right on the edge of their capacity. For example, let's take someone who's a professional speaker, and they've been speaking for years. So they have an ability and a capacity, and then you put them in a little more challenging position where the stakes are always going to be higher.

1:00:37one can acclimate to that in its own entity however if there are underlying health challenges the physical and mental reserve are going to be lower so there are two separate things there's a physical and mental reserve that exists for each person we all have our own whatever buckets but if someone is being challenged with say chronic Lyme or some mold exposure or something, it then chips away at that natural capacity that that person has built up. So the challenge that someone would normally face that would be, nah, no big deal, or on the edge of their capacity seems to be even more overwhelmingly challenging.

1:01:23Again, that's one kind of example. Do we have to counterbalance stress, internal, external stress with the kind of ebb and flow of life. And I would say stress comes down to, this might be a little controversial, stress comes down, this is my professional opinion and personal opinion, is that stress comes down to someone's interpretation of the experience. That we've always heard of fight or flight as the stress response for humans. But there are two other stress responses. There's tend and befriend, and there's the courage response. And humans, again, are very focused and fixated on, I get stressed, I get fight or flight.

1:02:14But there are two other responses that can be cultivated and are more natural to people. For example, my husband, who is in his second career as a surgeon, something happens, he doesn't know what's going on. He doesn't go right to fight or flight. He goes to courage, where he'll be like, okay, cool. What do we got to do? We jump on a plane now? What's up? His initial response is not fight or flight. And it's not tend and befriend, which would be mine. Shit hits the fan and I'm like, hey, Mike, what do you need? I got you covered. Or I'll go to tend to my kids or tend to people in my community versus fight or flight.

1:02:52So that would not be my initial response. and so this question was do we have to balance the stress with the life and I would say yes but a large part of stress is our interpretation and our internalization of what the meaning is and if you choose the right stressor and you apply it with good intention and your capacity is there to meet it then you're able to grow are you i mean what's your thoughts on the recent i guess surge in biohacking on all of these new machines which are coming on the market are you using any of them or do you think a lot of it is kind of a bit wishy-washy depends on what it is i mean i'll try it you name it i'll probably try it but um is there anything you're regularly doing at the moment i'm really into the plunge i'm really i'm loving that um but again some so i have done a lot of work with military operators that's you know when i finished my fellowship this is the group that i fell into treating so tier one operators for us would be you know depending on what you how you think about it the seals and the Rangers, and I guess I'll throw in the Green Berets, maybe a couple of pararescue guys, whatever.

1:04:19But when you talk about stress, so there is, again, there is how you internalize it, and then there's the stressors of war. So I just want to be very clear, we're not talking about necessarily the stress of war. And with these new machines, I think that, or new dopamine modulating kind of treatments those things to treat pts or ptsd that is somewhat of a separate conversation um but yeah so the biohacking space again cold plunging i love that's red light therapy also love sauna so love but these are these are not that avant-garde yeah well i think there's a lot of the stuff which seems interesting i mean even like the oxygen therapy it looks pretty cool and there is more data coming out that actually does have health benefits but it usually is for most people inaccessible either because it might not be in your local area or it's just too expensive so a lot of these things are luxuries uh quite often which people either can't afford or don't have access to.

1:05:28So that's not necessarily to worry because I think even just the basics such as eating properly, getting sufficient protein, calories, good quality food, resting, getting good sleep, going to the gym, exercising, you can't really beat it when it comes to those three things. I think that's absolutely true. And hyperbaric has been used in the military for a long time. One of our really good friends, Kirk Parsley, he's a sleep doctor and hyperbaric doctor. These hard chambers, which is again hyperbaric oxygen therapy, have been used for years and they are typically available. They can be available through insurance.

1:06:14They're used for wound healing, all kinds of things, and they are accessible. So again, if someone does have health insurance and they're looking for those things, I do think that there There are avenues that people can go down there. But there are also a lot of free resources, like getting outside, being off your phone, probably not having screaming kids. No, I'm just kidding. Well, I've got that to come at some point. Would you say that things are looking better in America as a whole? Are things changing, improving? Yeah. I think this is going to be a really great decade where we're going to see a change and a real sense of strength.

1:06:58And I think that a lot of people are coming into their own self and being less checked out. Again, I obviously can't speak for the world and I can't speak for everybody. But from what I see, I think that there's a lot of responsibility being taken for people within themselves, which is what we've needed for a really long time. you know there's there's only one way to not be strong and that's to not do it right yeah yeah i think overall there's i've noticed a change in people's habits especially if we compare to when i was growing up when i was a teenager or my early 20s especially in the uk there was a very big drinking scene.

1:07:46It was almost weird if you didn't drink alcohol. Whereas now, I think there's a lot of people who are in their teens, early 20s, who are just choosing not to drink because I think there's a lot more information out there now that is showing how many negative side effects alcohol can have. And thanks to YouTube, podcasts, podcasts people like you who put out great books i think there's just a lot more information out there which is helping people to get into good routines and educating them on what they should be doing and what they should avoid doing and i think a lot of people you know they they are just obsessed with looking good and feeling good and also being able to look good and feel good long into the future.

1:08:37I mean, that's one of the things which I am now starting to focus on. I'm 35 years old. I do feel like I'm at my prime. I'm probably the strongest I've ever been. Um, largely down to the programming that I'm doing, the training programming. I'm not really doing that much partying or drinking anymore, but I, I'm so happy that I can do it. You know, I can go to the gym. Everything is working. I have no injuries. I look good. I feel good. I've got that strength. I want to have that for as long as I possibly can do. So what are the things that I need to do to ensure that I can keep living this life long into the future?

1:09:15When you're doing it, number one, you're getting your mind right. Without that, nothing matters. Everything is short-lived. Your why of doing it has to be anchored because it's irresponsible to not think things are going to get hard. It is going to get hard. Things are going to happen. Not everything is going to go well all of the time. In fact, I guarantee it. And recognizing that you build up capacity that no matter what happens, that you can weather the storm and you become more resilient. And you have the expectation that things, sometimes they go well and sometimes that they don't. But at the end of the day, it's just another Tuesday.

1:09:55And you can create a level of neutrality within your day-to-day life, it transfers over to some of the most successful people that I have ever seen. And I have been in practice, I finished medical school in 2006, I have been taking care of some of the most extraordinary individuals. And I will tell you what, the most capable are not that different. And one just glaring attribute that they all have that are at the top, the top 0.1 % is they're neutral. Everything is not too great and not too bad. It's just another Tuesday. I'm going to give you an example. So my husband was in the SEAL teams for 10 years and the community is just really great.

1:10:48And I had just gone to see Jocko. Jocko Willink, who is, again, I don't know if your audience is yeah yeah yeah when i saw jaco we did a podcast together um and i don't know four days later his entire um gym burned down and so i was like jaco i'm a center mess are you okay he was like good classic good everything got burned he's like you know we really need to redo that locker room anyway. Right? So that's just an example. It was, it was just like, you know, good. I think that, again, that sounds extreme, but it doesn't just happen overnight. It's, it's built up over time and it's practiced with those techniques of friction.

1:11:43I have all these techniques in the book because I believe, again, this book, this one here, it's not about eating protein, building muscle. It is about building stronger, more resilient humans, period. And in order to do that, they have to develop a level of neutrality. So, you know, this is the longest winded answer ever. You said, how do, what do I need to do so that I can be doing what I want to do by the time I'm 55 and married with a couple of kids, all this stuff. Number one, add in a level of neutrality. It's just another Tuesday. Number two, figure out your standards, your standards of eating, your standards of training.

1:12:27It is not the next hot diet. It is not the next hot training program. This is your standard. It's not January 1 and you're at the gym. You're not setting goals anymore. You're setting standards. And then number three, you don't need a crowd, but you need just a few within your community to do it as a team. Life is a team sport. People think they need a lot of friends, a lot of support. You don't. You don't need a crowd, but you need one or two people to hold you accountable because if you're not willing to do it for yourself, you'll be willing to do it for them. Who are your one or two people?

1:13:05That's easy. my husband and we have a very small inner circle uh evie pampor is one of my best friends she's a former secret service agent took care of four was on four president details it's a secret service she's now an mbc analyst crime uh analyst

1:13:29yeah she's also my size i'm five one she's taller she's five one and a half but she's It's extraordinary. It's extraordinary. So we keep each other accountable. Yeah. That's a good point. Being surrounded by people who will hold you accountable. That can be hard. I mean, if you're surrounded by... You don't want yes people. Yeah. It's good that when I'm thinking about it now, who are the people around me, closest to me, who hold me accountable? I think I need to get a few more friends in my circle, the ones that are going to call me a little bitch. That's right. When I say no to. Oh, we need to talk.

1:14:16I'm like, oh. You know, you want that. Okay, you know, this, this, and this. And that's what you want. And, you know, it's obviously kind, but, yeah, I mean. You need people who are going to be real with you and know when you're slacking off and not living up to potential. Oh, yeah. Yeah, Evie and I, we decide who's going to, you know, who's working harder at the moment. I mean, you know, it's not real, but we're both, you know, you have to match, I think, you have to match your,

1:14:54not attributes, but the things that are really important to you, that they have to be the same. So what are your values? And then if you find someone with your similar values, typically your inner circle has your values. So for us, you know, for our family unit, we believe in hard work, honor, integrity, doing what you say you're going to do, and full accountability, right? And I think that if you find, whether it's a friend or a partner, that, you know, some people value fun. Some people value, I don't know, whatever it is. But once you find the core values, you know, excellence is important to us.

1:15:43Capacity is important to us. Being, you know, reliable. Those types of things. And so you want people that hold you accountable in that way and becomes really important. And it's earned, by the way. The biggest lesson that I have learned is I think as humans, we like to give our trust away. Trust has to be earned. And it's earned over time. yeah do do you do much one-to-one coaching at the moment i do one day a week but we have a whole medical practice okay strong medical we have a whole we have an amazing team but if you like for example if somebody's like oh my god i love your stuff i need help will you coach me will you work with me is that something you do or i do i do okay um and all they have to do is contact strong medical or go to my website drgabrielleyon.com yeah i still i love seeing patients you know they're amazing you uh because i think that um that a relationship that's really important there's a handful that are really important the relationship that you have with your partner the relationship that you have believe it or not with your doctor because they They're your teammate in health and wellness.

1:17:00You want to have a good doctor, a good accountant, a good lawyer, a good partner, and a best friend. You know, people are like, ah, doctors. Man, that's your A team. You think that things go wrong from 9 to 5? No, they don't. Things go wrong when you least expect it, and you want someone who's going to be in the trenches with you that's going to have your back no matter what. Call you on your shit. Yeah. but the the key to that is finding a good doctor it's true which sometimes could be easier said than done but they're out there people will know because it matches their their personality it's very important that you um that you are well matched you know um really well matched and well suited together because you're gonna be in it you know you wanna be able to count on that person yeah good stuff awesome well i've appreciated you coming on the the podcast i've enjoyed this conversation where can people find you yeah dr gabriellelyon.com and that's the website same on social it's l-y-o-n my podcast the dr gabrielle line show not very original but i wanted people to find it we have a great newsletter a great medical practice and of course this playbook which I'm really proud of.

1:18:25Again, I'm much more proud of this than I am the first book, which is a great book. I think that together we can really move the needle for people, and that's what's needed. Yeah. Well, Christmas is coming up, guys, and if you're struggling when it comes to choosing the appropriate gift for that special someone, maybe they need a little bit of extra motivation at the start of January, the book is going to be the perfect gift. It's covered. awesome thank you guys and thank you gabrielle thanks so much