Transcript of Episode #152 Featuring Justin Roethlingshoefer! Holy Health: Habits and Rhythms to Heal Your Body and Transform Your Life!

Hoy hoy hoy— Today's episode is brought to you by my great friends at Jinfinity! One thing that I've learned over the years is that the highest performers do not rely on assumptions; they rely on data. And that's especially true when it comes to NAD+. Everyone is talking about boosting NAD+ levels, but very few people actually know where their levels are to begin with, whether their protocol is working, or how much they even need. And that's what makes GINFINITY different, which is why I am thrilled to announce that I have teamed up with GINFINITY to offer the new Dylan Gemelli NAD+ Optimization Protocol powered by GINFINITY. This protocol provides you the GINFINITY Intracellular NAD+ Test and supplies you with the most complete and NAD boosting supplement and protocol in existence, along with proper guidance to ensure that you are optimizing your health, performance, and longevity. So check out the link in the show notes and start taking control of your health today. All right everybody, welcome back to the Dylan Gemelli Podcast. So I am smiling ear to ear here with my friend. I've been waiting to get him here with me. Now we've been working on this for, I don't know, a few months now and I'm not the easiest guy in the world with given the schedule, but there was no, nothing was going to come between us today.

I don't know if, if all of you follow me on Instagram, but if you do, I gave him a little shout out with the early preview of the book that he is writing that's actually coming out next week. It's called Holy Health and it is, I wouldn't even call it a must read. It's, it's beyond a must read, but we're gonna talk about that on the show. He is the creator of Own It, and Own It is an elite health coaching ecosystem, and it's designed for leaders who refuse to accept mediocrity in any aspect of life, which is so refreshing to the ear to hear. But he's a human performance expert, and he's a data-driven health strategist and a longevity practitioner, and he's a former health and performance expert in the NCAA and NHL. So my friends, Without further ado, welcome my new very good friend, Justin Rothlingschoffer.

Oh, Dylan, it's so good to be here, man. I know we've been just working on this for a little while and I'm just so honored that you'd open up your studio and your time with me today. And I'm just, I've, I've been buzzing all day because when the Holy Spirit starts to move inside me and I just know there's going to be an anointed conversation. I just get this eager anticipation and I just know that that's going to be today.

You know, I, I go in these phases, man, and I think you might be able to relate. And I went through this time period where I'd say, oh, I have to do this today.

Sure.

I got to go interview. I've got to go do this. I've got to go do that. And you have those. We're all human. So you have those moments and I, you know, loss of sleep because of stress or whatever. But I started to tell myself, I get to do these things. I get to meet people like you. I get to sit and engage and I get to have people that want to come in and see me. So I just wanted to throw that out there that I get to speak to you today and it's a blessing. And I've had some bad sleep the last two nights and last night I had a good one finally. So I would be prepared for this conversation, man.

I love it. I love it. Well, it's, it's, it's funny. Even just talk about the power of language, right? And so often we think we're, We're committed to something, but in the actuality, if we look deeper, we're actually compromising and compromise becomes the norm of our life. And thus we're not able to recognize that our standard has dropped. And until commitment becomes the standard, life is going to feel misaligned. We're going to feel pulled in multitude of directions. And I think that that concept of coming back to like, I get to, I have a blessing to, I'm privileged to, I'm honored to, like, these are the things and these are the power words that draw us closer, pull us forward, rather than having the world push us in different directions.

How do you feel about like language power in what you say?

I mean, scripture says there's death or life by the power of the tongue. And I think oftentimes we give away our power just because of the words that we speak out loud. And there is authority in our words. We have dominion with our words. And if we start to think about the power of them, we will actually start to reshape the way we think, the way we communicate, the way we speak, the way we talk, not just to other people, but most importantly to ourselves.

Things that you say or that you feel or you think.

Yeah.

I had trouble and I'm curious your thoughts on this, cuz I always like to relate things to my weaknesses to people and see how they feel and correct it and expound on it. I'm never ashamed of where I've been weak. I actually like to show that to people so that they can understand we're all human and see what they go through, you can manifest negativity or a negative situation occurring within, can't you?

Oh, 100%. Like, how many times have you had a bad 5 minutes and it turned into a bad day? Like, my wife and I do something every night when we throw our rucksacks on and we go for a mile and a half walk every night. That's how we kind of end our days. And we do something called High-Low Buffalo. And so she tells me her high of the day. I tell her my high of the day. She tells me her low of the day. I tell her my low of the day, and then we tell each other the buffaloes, which is like the thing that surprised us, what caught us off guard. And the funny thing is when we first started that, I would come into the conversation, I'd end my day or I'd end my night, my evening. I'd be like, man, I just had a bad day.

Yeah.

And then we'd go high-low buffalo. It's like, no, I actually had like 5 really great things that happened today. And I had 5 minutes of negativity that actually soaked up everything else. And that awareness factor came back to exactly what you talked about is where we're all of a sudden able to start changing the way in which we think, the way in which we talk, and mental, physical, spiritual, emotional stress, the body does not know the difference. And so you start to have a cellular reaction in the way that your body operates when you start to think negatively. There, there, there's something I want to talk to on that same point, Dylan, because when I was playing hockey in college, one of my coaches said, we're taking the word I can't out of everyone's vocabulary. And it's something we've now adopted. In our company and in our family. And what we said is you're no longer able to say, I can't. Where you would say it, you have to replace it with, I choose not to. And so for an example, you cannot say, I can't send that email right now. It's, I choose not to send that email.

Now we get to say, is that choice you're making in alignment with who you want to be or out of alignment with who you want to be?. And a great real-life example of this was I was in Charleston, North Carolina, or Charleston, South Carolina. I was in January. And so it was like 42, 43 degrees. It was pretty cool. And there was a guy I was with, he had a big, beautiful backyard pool and we finished a workout and we walk up the stairs and we look at one another and we're like, I'll jump in and swim the length and back if you do it. And I was like, okay, cool. Like, I'm going to commit to you. Now, one of my core values. Is commitment. Yeah. Is what I say. I'm a man of my word. And so if I commit to you, I will follow through on that commitment. My yes is my yes. My no is my no. Yeah, I love that. And I jumped in the water. He and I both did at the same time. We started swimming. And I don't know if you've ever like swam in freezing cold water, but because of the molecular makeup, it gets colder.

It feels colder because you never get that little thermal layer around you, like sitting in a cold plunge. And so I get halfway through and I literally say out loud, I can't, I can't, I can't. And I turn around and I come back and I get out. He goes down, he comes back. And as I get out, I literally caught myself right in that moment. I said, I can't. And I'm having this conversation in my head. And I said, what did I actually say? I actually choose not to finish and follow through on the commitment in which I made to you. And he got out and I said, man, I just gotta repent to you and apologize. Because I didn't follow through on my commitment. So I jumped in the water, I swam down, I swam back, I got out, and there was a freedom that hit because suddenly I followed through with the commitment that I made. But it brings you back to the power of language. I could do that. Anybody can do that. Yeah, that's not a hard thing to do, right? But I chose not to, to take a compromised way out of what my commitment was.

And this is where I get to the, like, the definition of confidence is confidence is creating undeniable evidence that you are who God says you are.

Mm-hmm.

And in order to create undeniable evidence that you are who God says you are, you have to be obedient and withhold the values in which you've been instilled to carry. And when you make decisions daily, you're either committed or you're compromising. And that's where we have to start to make that choice.

I love that, man. And I'm smiling over here because when we were talking before and you said, oh, we'll go to sauna, we'll cold plunge, we'll do this and that. I'm going to commit to you now to do everything but the cold plunge because I'd rather eat shit than— There we go. So and so, I'm going to get myself out of it by not committing right now.

Oh, oh, there we go. I had to.

Oh, I can't wait, man. I love the way that you talk and you speak. I have made a lifetime out of pushing it and doing it and overcoming it. But I didn't do it well. I, in fact, I was having this conversation, man, I think it was yesterday. And I was explaining, yeah, it was at my barber. And I was explaining to him how I was able to do some of the things I did in the past. Cause he was asking me like, how do you, how do you train like that? How did you do that? And I said, well, I used to tell myself something really bad was going to happen to me if I didn't finish this. So, you know, in my head I'd be like, man, if you don't finish this mile, something really bad's gonna happen to you. And I had myself convinced.

Wow. Yeah.

That was my way then. I said, now I don't do that. I said, that's ridiculous. That's not what to do. But when I was young, I was in high school. You don't wanna do that stuff anyway. But that was my key in my way. Now it's, I just kind of just do it because I do it. But I realized, and I even said it on the prayer on the way here, is I, I don't do any of this.

Yeah.

I used to tell myself, Man, you always figure things out, or you always just know what to say. And then I realize I don't know shit. I get fed what to say and what to do. When you realize, because it's kind of like a hit and miss thing, right? You sometimes you're like, wow, I did that. And then sometimes you don't have it. If you take the time and realize where it's coming from and ask and listen to the Holy Spirit and block out the noise, you can't lose.

Yeah.

But you lose a lot because it's how hard is it to listen?

I mean, you tell me, how hard is it to really Listen, that is the question that nobody asks. It's the question that everyone's like, well, what do you do? How do I do it? Where do I go? What's, what should I say? Just listen. The answer is stillness. The answer is slow. I've got this little acronym, SLOW. You can find stillness, then you can listen. You have the opportunity to be obedient, to gain wisdom for what to do next. Oh man, I love it. So the slower you go, the faster God can move through you because you're just able to walk in the obedience of what it is that he's called you to. And I think a very, again, I, I love speaking in analogies and stories and examples. I think it makes it tangible for people. And so the way that I often tell this story, or I give the example from stage, is I'd have like a symbol in my hand and I'd say, Dylan, I'm gonna tell you the secret to making a million dollars before this podcast's over. You're like, oh bro, I'm in. Tell me, tell, tell me, tell me, tell me.

I'm like, okay, we're gonna do Everything that I say, and I guarantee you, you'll make a million dollars by the end of it. And so I start talking, and all of a sudden I start crying in a symbol like this, and I start whispering. And then I stop, and you're like, did you catch it? And you're like, no, I couldn't hear. And then I go, well, watch again. And I start whispering, and I crying the symbol, and you can't hear me whispering. And then I stop. Did you hear me? Like, no, idiot, you're crying in a symbol. And like, exactly. Our body speaks in whispers. God speaks in whispers. But yet we've got so much noise around us from so many distractions, from social media to the television to the news to our business to the people in our family. And we never allow ourselves the slow stillness and silence to allow ourselves to listen so that we can then be obedient. And so we're taking steps that we think are obedience but are actually just our own ways. And in scripture it says, when you have no king, you will do what you think is right.

And what we think is right is not the obedient way. It is actually our way. So you can't have his will while also following yours. And thus, what do I want, my will or his? I will always take his, because his will is that one that is prosperous. His will is one that is life abundantly, and that's what I want to sign up for. And so where we start all the time is, number one, knowing who God says you are, because if you know who God says you are, then you will automatically know what to do. But second is, to know what to do, you have to slow down to listen.. And if you can listen and build that into your day, for me, that's my breathwork. I was never good at this still. And I was that kid with ADHD that was dyslexic, that was all in 45 different directions. And breathwork saved my life in being able to get still and connect, not back to the sun, moon, and stars and the nature. It's like, hey, no, I'm gonna get still and I'm gonna breathe because in Genesis 2:7, it says that God breathed the breath of life into the nostrils of dust, and he became man.

And so if life started with a breath and he gives us 15,000 of them a day, there's got to be power in this thing that I want to source, I want to seek, I want to connect to, so that I cannot connect to the sun, the moon, the trees, and the stars, but I can connect to the creator of those things. And that's where the secret lies, to be able to hear, to be able to then walk and be obedient for what to do next.

You know, I, I went through a really big, deep nervous system reset. There was a lot of lingering problems. I don't, and, and sometimes it doesn't matter how close you get with God and your faith if you're not nourishing your soul with what it needs.

Totally.

And, and you, you're not hearing what you need to hear and not practicing what you need to practice. Even if you're reading and praying and everything, there's, I think people misconstrue and misunderstand that you have to use that to heal yourself.

Yep.

And I wasn't doing that. And my friend is Dr. Sean Drake and he has athletes come all over the world and he's, this is what he does. And he took me and closed his whole place down. But what I'm getting at is the key to that was the breathwork. And you know what I've noticed when I've missed now a week or so of it, that's when I fundamentally had the problems of like, ah, the negativity creeps back because I didn't take 15 minutes. To go do breathwork. And you tell me this, because I say, I always say there's no handbook to life, but there really is.

Yeah.

And I realized, and you just touched on it, that the Bible actually has an answer to everything. We just don't understand how to interpret it.

So good. So good. So when Solomon says, seek wisdom, like, that's what you should pray for. Pray for wisdom. People are like, well, what's wisdom? I don't understand what wisdom is. And so what do we do when we try to seek wisdom? You try to seek information and knowledge. Yeah. And so we'll watch YouTube videos, we'll watch podcasts, we'll watch these Instagram clips, we'll try to read books, and we'll be like, I know it all here. But because you don't understand it, it can no longer become wisdom. There's that gap. And so where we have to go is we have to teach you how to understand what you're reading, understand the body you live in. When you understand the body you live in and you understand the cell and how it functions, and you realize that your body's been given a language in which to communicate to you how it's handling stress based on your habits, behaviors, and life rhythms, and that language is heart rate variability. And once you understand HRV, you can go, oh my gosh, I need to change my habits because I'm made up of 30 trillion cells and 500 million of them become brand new every 84 days.

And every 5 to 7 years, you and me become a completely brand new human being. And my cell needs 3 things: oxygen, nutrients, and the ability to detoxify. Wow, it's actually so simple because now I can listen to what my body's asking. I can listen to the whisper so I don't have to wait for the screams of the symptoms. And when we suddenly come back to this, there is a scriptural and scientific alignment that lives so deep that what science is proving today, scripture's known for thousands of— or for centuries, thousands of years. And so how do we start to understand it? Well, we have to start to explore. And my journey, Dylan, like, I grew up in Canada, fat kid, fat kid became an anorexic kid, anorexic kid found himself in an eating disorder clinic with liver and kidney failure at 16 years old, just being told how to get fixed, how to solve this. The doctors were all disoriented, disconnected, dysregulated. I didn't trust anybody, didn't feel like they knew who I was or asking the question why was it happening, but rather just solve this problem. Like this kid's a problem. And so that whole journey led me to want to know what's actually going on in my body.

Like, why is this happening? What's going on? And I wanted to solve or answer the question, why is it happening? How do you treat it? And so I did two undergraduate degrees, a master's degree, postgraduate doctoral work in HRV and cellular biology, and then stepped forward into the alternative medicine space and had a 9-year career in the National Hockey League and NCAA. That allowed me to kind of see what an integrated, holistic, fully supported, personalized solution to health actually was. And the cool thing was that as we were doing it for everyone on the ice and all the athletes, what typically happens, we forget about ourselves. Yeah. And I started to have these symptoms at 30 years old, headaches that wouldn't go away, body pains that wouldn't like debilitate me. I'd smell food and I'd bloat like a fish, spend 4 hours in the bathroom, and all my blood work was great. They were like, oh, you're, picture of health. You got six-pack abs, you're strong, you work out, you go to bed on time, like everything's good. It's like, well, why do I feel like death then? And ultimately God gave me this epiphany.

He goes, why don't you do the same thing for yourself that you're doing for your athletes? Why don't you start to understand your own body and start to act in according to how I designed you? Mm-hmm. And lo and behold, I started to test myself, looked at all these numbers. Everything was low. Everything was depleted. Found 4 precancerous polyps in my colon and a bleeding precancerous ulcer in my stomach and was told I wouldn't see 35. And It was that point that God gave me the epiphany that I did not go on this journey from 8 to 30 to ultimately heal other people first, but rather to have the faith that my body could heal itself. And 14 months later, after aligning with how my body, what my body needed, doing everything that I did on my athletes and myself, getting hyper-personalized and changing a lot of things, had a clean bill of health and was thriving. And it coined the phrase, you heal the cell. And the body will heal itself, but we have to know what the cell needs first. And so that was really the story in which propelled me out of the NHL into starting Own It and into this whole mission to help people understand their body so that we can heal them from the inside out so they can have capacity to carry the calling that's on their life and doing so in a very scientific and scripturally aligned way.

And bridging that gap that is often left separated. Wow.

We have a similar background story I'll get into with you later off camera. Wow. I speak a lot on knowledge versus wisdom and most people don't know what that means. And I always try to explain to people, you can know everything under the sun, every book. I know some people that know even useless facts to the end of days. They have no idea how to use it. Exactly. No way to implement it properly. I tell people I gained wisdom through mistakes, through learning from other people, and realizing that I really didn't know shit.

Yeah.

Until I did, because I understood how to use it.

Yeah.

What I had. That's when I got smart. Here's what I want to ask you. When it comes to discernment—

yeah—

in all facets of life, because sometimes you think people can— well, they don't know what that even means, but when they do, then they start to think that discernment just means what they were, what they were meant to do with their life.

Yep.

But discernment really is multifaceted where it means a lot of different things. It's really just kind of like answering questions.

Sure.

How do you feel? Is that again, sitting in silence? How do, how does one understand what it means and then how to do it?

It's a very loaded question. And the easiest way I can say this, and I'm gonna go to Romans here in a second because I think this is the easiest way to bring it all together.

I only ask cuz you're equipped to answer this as I know it's loaded.

Is discernment can only happen after transformation. A lot of people try to discern while still acting the same way that they have before, meaning people try to discern while still acting the fool. And until you've had a transformative experience, until you've been able to connect with God and connect with the Holy Spirit and receive that gift, you will not be able to discern. Discernment is the fruit of transformation.. And so as we walk in, I'll give this again. I think this is so beautiful. This is my life verse. This is what I teach on. This is the foundation for Own It. It's the foundation for Holy Health, is Romans 12:1-2. And what it says is, therefore, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, use your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the patterns of this world, but rather be transformed by the renewing of your mind. It is then and only then that you'll be able to test and approve his good, perfect, and pleasing will. And I want to walk through that and break it down for everybody.

Yeah. So when we go back, basically Romans 1 through 11 is talking about how we're sinners and we've fallen and that we've stumbled and that we're not good enough, we're not strong enough. Why do we do things that we hate? Why do we know what to do but we don't follow through with it? And it's like, that's the human experience. Like, that is being human.

That is me.

That is you. That is everyone listening. But therefore, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, because he is so merciful on us, because he came. Use your bodies as a living sacrifice. In Hebrew, bodies was just another word for life because they saw body as just this holistic entity. So use your life as a living sacrifice. Living sacrifice is critical because everything back then in Roman times, sacrifices were dead things. So he said, use your body as a living sacrifice, fully alive, fully focused, fully mentally clear, fully vibrant. Use that as a living sacrifice, fully energetic. That, that is holy and pleasing to God. That is your true and proper worship. So I love it when you go to church. I love when you throw your hands up in worship. I love it when you get in the Bible. But my gosh, how are you living? What habits and behaviors do you have every single day? What choices do you make? What life rhythms are you operating within? Because then it says, do not conform to the patterns of the world. The patterns of the world are not in alignment with how you and I were created.

Right, right.

The patterns of the world are complete opposite. It's stay up late. It's eat crappy food, it's drink sugary drinks, it's take prescription drugs, it's sit on the couch and watch Netflix, it's work all day and hustle and hustle and hustle and grind and grind and grind and get it done and take it all on your shoulders. And you're the guy and you're the woman and you're the things that has to have it. You have to have it all. And that's the pattern of the world. Do not conform to the patterns of the world. And patterns are just habits, behaviors, and life rhythms. But rather be transformed by the renewing of your mind. And when it says the mind, it's not just how you think., but it goes back to the heart of what has your heart. Because again, back in Hebrew, mind was another word for heart. So what has your heart? What will you focus on? What will you strive for? What will you surrender to? So be transformed by the renewing of your mind, the way you think, the way you behave, the way you talk to yourself. And only then, only then will you be able to test and approve.

That is so critical. There's only two times in the Bible that God's asked you to test him. One is in your giving, and the second is in how you're living. Should I do this? Well, I don't know. Ask God. But you can't discern because you haven't transformed, right? You're still conforming to the patterns of the world, and thus you're confused. You can't hear because it's so noisy, and thus your habits are not in alignment with what you're doing, which is why you feel anxious, which is why you feel overwhelmed, which is why you've got excuse me, got that diagnosis, which is why you've had, which is why you have no energy, why you can't sleep at night. It is only then you'll be able to test and approve his good, perfect, and pleasing will. Good, meaning it's pleasing. Perfect, meaning it's missing nothing. And then, meaning it's approved. And that is what we're ultimately all about. That is this, this whole concept of being able to discern transformation is the predecessor to discernment, and it's the fruit of what comes on the other side.

How long, when you're looking at transformation?

Yeah.

Because when I look at transformation and I ask myself and I look back on things, I feel like it's an endless process. It is.

Yeah, it is. And that, and that's, everyone's heard the quote, the man who loves walking will walk longer, will walk further than the person who loves the destination. That's the definition of, or that is literally the same story here with transformation is transformation is an ever-evolving thing. And again, I think one of the best examples of this is Matthew McConaughey always goes, well, my hero is myself 5 years from now because I'm constantly evolving. I'm constantly growing. I'm constantly transforming. Now I had to look up the definition of transformation in order to get this true. Because the definition of transformation is to change in form and function for good.

I see.

Change in form and function for good. For good. So what that means is you can't go back and do the things you once did, right? So if we think about ourselves, like, my gosh, once I all of a sudden had my eyes opened, the scales taken off, the ears unplugged, and I was able to see that me staying up late and having 3 drinks a night was crushing my HRV and crushing my cellular detoxification pathways. And was crushing my sleep quality and was crushing my ability to absorb nutrients, which ultimately led my body to stay in a survival state that suddenly then caused me to have these outcomes of precancerous polyps and a bleeding ulcer that I didn't want to have.

Mm-hmm.

It's like, oh my gosh, well, I'm actually gonna transform my ways. And so now my sleep is something that I highly prioritize. I'm in bed by 9:30 every night and I'm up by 6:00 AM every morning. Like that is a non-negotiable. I might have one drink every 6 to 8 weeks. Like it is, it is not something that I lean on as a crutch. It's a, it gave it up. It's something I don't know. I no longer need. And the cool thing is suddenly when we are transformed, the thing that you once wanted no longer become the things that you desire.

It's funny because some of the things that I've gone through that I thought that I wanted so much. And after I would do it, you, you hate it, but yeah, still keep doing it. Well, then when going through the transformation, once I got used to not doing it, I despised the thought of even engaging in it. And, and I learned to not beat myself up over time. Sure, I went through that phase. I think many people do when they're overcoming things that they did wrong that they fixed. Sometimes people struggle with getting over— wow, when you realize what you were doing was messed up, sometimes you struggle to get over that. But then once you're able it helps you to then further progress. Otherwise your progress halts.

Yep.

If you don't let things go. And it's, it's, it's hard for people and even people connecting with God. Sometimes you want to say you're sorry over and over, but that's also a sin by not accepting the fact you were forgiven. That's like not indirectly not believing that you were forgiven, which goes against everything, right?

I want to go back to even something you said because you're like, man, like suddenly when I know what I was doing and I, I wanted something different and I got there because now I despised it. That's literally the definition, not only of transformation, but also the journey from knowledge to wisdom. Because you know, you're not supposed to do it. You know, you shouldn't go and eat that cookie. You know, you shouldn't go and watch that video. You know, you shouldn't go and do whatever that thing is, but you do it anyways because you still don't understand what it's doing to your body. Mm-hmm. You don't understand what it's doing to your mind. You don't understand what it's doing to your spirit. You don't understand what it's doing to your heart. And when you start to really understand that this body you live in is the temple of the Holy Spirit, the only thing that God called very good, that there's 30 trillion cells that are so powerfully, wonderfully, fearfully made that synergistically work together and renew every 84 days, and thus every 5 to 7 years you become a new cellular human being, and every choice, every habit, every behavior, every decision you make daily is determining whether those new cells are thriving or whether they're slowly starting to decay.

When you realize that and that you have the power to influence that, it's like, man, I don't have another choice. Yeah, why would I do anything else? And that's the wake-up call, and that's the wisdom that comes with understanding.

I started to understand, like, during Lent, when you give things up, we would always do this, oh, we're gonna give up candy or give up something, right? But what you're supposed to give up, what I finally realized after I put God first and started to get more into the understanding of how things work, is you're supposed give up something that separates you from him.

Yes.

Something that's taking away. Very good. And I smoked pot from 11 years old till 41.

Wow.

And I told my wife, you know what, I'm going to— I think this, this thing that I keep telling myself I need because it helps me think deeper and it helps me be more productive, I think I'm full of shit and I think it's taken me away from God. So I'm going to try this. So you're talking 30 years of pretty consistent smoking, aside from when I was in prison. And the, you know, obviously.

Yeah.

But pretty, pretty consistent. And when I stopped and got the clarity and the like less anxiousness and the better thoughts and the clearer pictures of things, when Lent was over, I said, I don't ever wanna do this again.

Yeah.

It's not that I, oh, I do it occasionally. It's I don't ever wanna do it again.

Yeah.

Because now that I can see clear, No, no, no, no, no, no. I don't need that at all. That was just degrading my productivity and my who I am. That's not me. And when you start saying out loud, and I went through this, that's not who I am. I'd say that when I'd argue with her, I'd say out loud, this isn't who I am. And we'd barely ever argue again. Once I went through the reset, sometimes you have to look in the mirror and say things out loud and be honest with yourself. It's this crazy word called accountability. How does one— I have a feeling you have a good answer for this. How does one work towards and understand accountability?

Well, number one, number one, you have to come back to somebody who is actually gonna hold you accountable. You have to have somebody in your life. Again, the scripture in scripture in the Bible is iron sharpens iron. Yeah. And we overuse this so much. We'll throw it on a shirt, we'll throw it up on the wall. We're like, ah, iron sharpens iron. But at the end of the day, really what we're doing in our society is it's like pillows hitting pillows.

Yeah.

If you've ever been in an iron mill or ever been like in a place that's milling iron, my goodness, it is a violent, loud, hot— yeah, like you are taking two hard, hot pieces of metal and banging them together, creating sparks. Like there's friction there. And so if you don't have somebody in your life that is holding you accountable to the level where they're going to call you on the things that you're doing, that you're compromising on, where you're going against what it was that you should be doing, or they're just saying, you know what, now Dylan, I'm going to justify that for you. I'm going to allow you to compromise. That's no longer accountability. That is literally just allowing you to slide back into who you were. And so when we talk about figuring out what accountability looks like. It starts with getting somebody who's going to hold you accountable, because until you've experienced accountability, you don't know what accountability is.

Yeah.

And that's the problem with a lot of us, is we go, I'm gonna have my wife be my accountability partner, or my husband be my accountability partner, and suddenly they're the ones who are doing the same thing that you just said that you weren't going to do. They're doing it with you, or they're going to have your best friend go and do the same thing. It's like, no, no, you— this is why coaching is so valuable. Is it— I say there's, uh, there's 3 levels, 3 I's. There's a lot of people who are interested in getting better. Oh, I'm interested in this health thing. I'm interested in getting fit. I'm interested in like really optimizing my body and feeling the best that I could to go and do something powerful. And then there's people who are invested. Interested people won't pay for a coach. Interested people will do all the free stuff and they'll show up at the concert or the convention or the the talk or the workshop or the webinar over and over and over and over again. You'll see the same faces all the time because they're interested. The invested people, the invested people, they'll go and they'll get the coach.

Yeah. They'll go and invest what they need to because suddenly you want to see where your interest goes. Your interest goes to where your money flows.

Yeah.

So invest into something and now you're going to start to pay attention. Now you're going to start to see what real accountability looks like. And once you walk through the invested side, then you start to have the impact. Yeah. That's when you have the impact of true transformation.

You know, I don't do politics ever. I watch the, the main reason I ever watched was economically. So I always, 'cause I, you know, I'm, I take care of my mom, I take care of my family. So I've always watched to see what's going on with interest rates or whatever, you know what I mean? So I don't get into all of that. But when I, there was a point in time, and I'll tell you, this is going to where I, about accountability. I got so frustrated in seeing all these built-in excuses that people had for their own inadequacy or their, their own moments of where they just didn't, didn't cut the, the, the, what they needed to cut out to do. Sure. They just couldn't cut it. And then they had an excuse. And then I saw it so much in my coaching as I got older and saw the change in the attitudes and the kids I was coaching for basketball. And I, I got so frustrated with the lack of accountability that I sat in the mirror and said things out loud to myself. And then I let God be the one to hold me accountable through the way I read.

I sat down and read the whole New Testament in like 6 months. I said, I'm reading this whole thing. And I had a way to interpret it. And I thought, man, if I'm going to do this, I'm going to do it, or there's just no point in this. So that's how I started to become more accountable. I always tell people, I tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear, because otherwise I don't care. And I had a basketball coach in college that said, if I don't jump on your ass, then I don't see you. I don't care enough to do it. And so I, I, I help myself become accountable through seeing all these other things that people are doing that I just couldn't stand and trying to teach myself so that I could encourage other people and be a coach like you're talking about.

Yeah.

So it sometimes it takes one to be so strong to become one that can just stand in front of yourself and go, you know what, I'm taking responsibility. I had to learn this going to prison, by the way, you know, which is the why most people go back.

Yep.

'Cause they, it's an excuse, an excuse, an excuse. Yeah. I spent my life making excuses until I realized there is no excuse.

Yep.

Right. So that's why I want to ask you, once you become accountable, does then, then you have to start kind of working on the excuse part of things, right? And eliminating excuses. There's reasons. But there's a lot of excuses, right? How do you differentiate that? And how do you stop making excuses? Is that it takes accountability first, then you get to that point where you stop making excuses?

The word you're looking for is ownership. Yeah. Yeah. And what ends up happening is once you have an accountability system set up, that's when ownership takes place. Okay. And the moment you take ownership, freedom lives on the other side. The only thing that follows ownership is blessing.

Uh-huh.

Because once you take ownership of it, you've called out and you've freed yourself. You've dropped the chains that have ultimately been shackling you. You think your excuses are freeing you, but your, your excuses are just simply what's holding you and weighting you down. Because again, let's go back to what we said at the very beginning. Confidence is creating undeniable evidence that you are who God says you are. But if you've got excuses for everything, that simply means that you're living misaligned to who God actually called you to be. Which is why you have no confidence, which is why you have to make up stories, which is why you lie, which is why you fabricate, which is why you embellish, which is why you have to go try to be impressive, which is why you can't be humble, which is why you do all of these things and you do the things that you don't want to do, which is because you've made excuses and you have zero confidence in, in what you're doing. And so ownership is that key that unlocks everything. But it's often the hard thing for people to do.

I love that. And that's, that's exactly what I was hoping that you would say and the word I was looking for.

It's so spot on.

It takes a lot to like overcome so many of these things. And that's why when we talked earlier, why I said transformation never stops.

It's just different levels.

Yes. So it's constant training, learning, and never being the word I despise, which I think you do too, and that is the word complacent.

Yeah.

I think complacency may be one of the worst words in existence, or at least not even worse, the worst practice that one could do. Can you explain what complacency is and why I'm saying it sucks?

So I'm gonna throw two words out and I'm gonna have everybody hear this. There's a difference between complacency and contentment. Complacency is being okay below the standard. Yeah. It's settling for less than what you deserve. It's settling for less than what you are capable of. It's settling for less than what God's called you to. It's disobedience.

Yeah.

Where contentment— contentment is being completely fine where you are, knowing that God has you in this season for a reason. But there's no less effort in the process. Okay. And so content— I'm content that we've got— I'm content that with the size of business we have, I'm content that it's just my wife and I right now and we're going through a season of infertility. I'm content. That doesn't mean I'm complacent. I'm not sitting here. I'm not staying in this season. Yeah, but I'm waiting for the Lord to move and I'm obediently walking in the direction that he's asking me. Yeah. And as I walk in that, as I continue to stay in that, that's where he suddenly is going to be able to move., but it requires me to be obedient in the process. So complacency is lowering the bar, lowering the standard, doing less than what it is that you know you are capable of, where contentment is being okay where you are currently, knowing that that's not where you're gonna stay. Yeah, I love that.

And I do think, I'm glad you broke that down cuz I, I, I didn't cover that well when I said that, but yes, I just, when I would work sales jobs. Sure. This is one of those things where it would be, okay, we've got a quota to hit and people would hit that and then just be like, okay, I can coast the rest of the month. Where me, I try to hit that thing as fast as I can so then I can go start hitting multipliers and making as much as I could and breaking records and doing everything. And it's like when you're chasing something and you set a goal and you hit it, Yeah, some people don't know where to go. Yeah, they just are like, now what? It's not what— it's great for a moment, but then what? For me, and you tell me how you normally get or how you teach people to get past this, it makes me want more. Yeah, I just am like, okay, that's done, what's next? Because I want to feel this more and I want to conquer something else. Or— and it doesn't have to— when I say conquer, it could be a fear, it could be something I'm trying to overcome, but I always want more.

Yeah, I see this. So I talk about this in Holy Health and your habits and behaviors that you do daily are simply your identity made visible. And so I can look at the habits and behaviors of somebody that they repeat daily, and I can know exactly where their identity sits. Does their identity sit in who they are? Does their identity sit in what they do? Does their identity sit in the home they have? Does their identity sit in the car they drive? Does their identity sit in the vacation they take? Does their identity sit in the thing they built, or does their identity sit solely in who God says they are? And so if we don't sit in who God says we are, if that's not where the identity is truly rooted, and we all have some form of excavation of this, I'm continuing to excavate myself. Yeah, everybody is. It's that same thing that we talked about. Transformation is a never-ending journey, but it's the process of which we have to go through. It comes back to 5 types of hearts, 5 types of hearts that have imprisoned us. You've got the performer heart, the person who, again, kind of the person you're talking about.

I have to perform because I'm, my worth is tied up in what I do, what I create, what I, what I conquer, what I build, how much I sell. So I always have to perform for people. Then there's the perfecter. This is the person who has to have everything perfect. Everything has to be fully in alignment. If you know what, if I can't do the full hour workout, I'm not going to do it at all because it's not worth it. You know what, if I can't get the groceries taken out and set time.

You know what?

I'm not going to do it because it's gonna throw my whole day off. I need to be perfect or I'm not worthy. The third is the protector heart. The protector heart is the person who's been hurt in the past over and over and over again. And thus I am not going to actually let you in. And what happens is I'm actually going to sit here on the outside and I am going to show you how much I care that I'm going to control you, which is care disguised as control. Then there's the pessimistic heart, which is the person who's negative on all things. Yeah. It's like, that'll work for everyone else except for me. God is good for everybody except to me. And then lastly is the pleaser heart, where it's like, hey, I'm gonna say yes to everything. I'm gonna say yes to everybody because if everybody else is good and nobody is upset and nobody's disappointed, everything will be fine. But I always put myself last.

Yeah.

And so those 5 hearts literally are the underlying core, the pinning of— remember we said, do not conform to the patterns of the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Mind-heart connection. Until we get to the identity, the root cause of what has your heart, and we free your heart of that and go back to who God says you are, you will always have your habits and behaviors tied up in something that you do not want to do, and you will never find the breakthrough because you're always stuck in the old identity. You cannot put new habits into old identities. Just like in scripture says, you can't put new wine into old wine skins. Why? Because the seams will burst and you'll lose the good wine. Well, we have good intentions of adding new habits. You know what? I want to wake up at 6:00 AM and I want to go to the gym. And at night I want to have a wind-down routine and do breathwork and have great conversation with my wife and have some intimate time before we go to sleep. Okay, cool. Those are awesome habits. Those are great things to want to put into place.

But the rhythms that you've set up have you working until 10:00 PM. How are you going to be consistent with that? You're working right until 10:00. You're now, you like did it once and then you never did it again. You did it for a week and it was like white knuckling your way there. You hit the snooze button 3, 4, 5 times when you were start trying to get up at 6:00. You did it for 2 days out of the week, and then 6 weeks later, you're no longer doing it anymore because you are trying to put new habits into old identities. And thus you cannot overcome the resistance or the limbic friction of what it takes to get into that state.

Yeah, that's it. And it's very, very easy to fall into bad habits.

Totally.

But if you take the time and think, how did I create this bad habit? And what timeframe did it do? So what if I try to create a good habit, just stick to it for like a week, 2 weeks, 3 weeks, and then before you know it, that's who you are. Right. And I, I've done that several times where it's like, I can do this. I just have to suck it up a couple days. Or it's, man, I really enjoyed that. I wish I could do that all the time. And then I go back to doing something that sucks. Yeah, you know, and it's, it's hard. It's very hard. But you have to train yourself to just like overcome. And to— you have— sometimes I sit and go back. I, I say this and I shouldn't say this: what was it like to be normal? And I don't know that I ever was, but it's like, you know, when I start doing something that I know is wrong— you said something earlier that I just wanted to bring up. And I, I have this thing with freedom and time 'cause I lost it. And I used to say I lost so much time because, you know, going to prison.

And then I remember, what did I gain? And did I really lose it or did I lose what I thought something that wasn't there? So for instance, I say, oh, I ate cornflakes on Thanksgiving, but what did I learn from it? And what did that time give me?

Mm-hmm.

So I value it. I didn't lose it. I just, it, it's time that could have been used differently, but it taught me something else. So I, I tell people how to extend time is how you use it. Your time goes by fast because you're not doing things that are worth your time.

Yeah.

Right. And so the freedom thing, when you said that, I always used to say, well, I lost my freedom, but then what happened when I got free from prison? I still wasn't free. Free. Yeah, I didn't actually get free for 12 years after when I got free from sin, free from what I didn't understand was idolatry. Because in my mind, idolatry was just, oh, you don't worship any other gods, you're good. It's like, no, dude, all I cared about was what do you guys think of me, how many different shoes are in my collection, or what, how many cars can I buy, or whatever. That never made me feel good. Now I just do things for me.

Yeah.

If I like it, cool. But do, is it who shapes me? Hell no. No, I don't give a shit if you like my shoes or not. If you think my hair sucks, if you, whatever, I don't care. You wanna look nice when you go out, but when you can lose that, then you can actually become who you are. I think that right now, especially given how people do on social media, which is not reality by the way, just for anybody listening, the, the, this facade that gets created makes everybody think that that's reality.

That's wild.

You know, and it's toxic. It is. And then you start worrying about what everybody else thinks. And before you know it, you're 50 years old and you're critiquing people online and talking shit about people and making negative comments. And how many people do you look at that are negative and hateful and say they look like the epitome of health?

Yeah. You know, I think I'll give, again, I like to use myself and as a, as an example to show that I'm not perfect and I'm a work in progress that I've only learned and developed and gotten to this place because I've failed more times than somebody else has even tried. And my identity, the thing that got, had me imprisoned was I needed to be impressive. Yeah. And my belief, the way I talked to myself was that if I was not impressive, if I was not impressive, I would be nothing. And if I was nothing, my soul would die. That was literally the thought That went through my mind all the time. I've gotta be impressive. So thus my identity was that I needed to be impressive. So every single thing I did was basically in pursuit of that. So every room I walked in, people needed to know what I did, what I just accomplished, where I went. So I'd better be doing impressive things. So it's not enough just to go run 100 miles. I had to go run 100 miles around a track by myself. It wasn't enough to go and work out 5 days a week.

I had to go be the guy that worked out every day of the week and be there at this time and leave at this time and make sure everybody saw me so that they're like, my gosh, this guy's just so consistent. And that was the impressive thing. And so these things became idols of my life. And so again, you wanna know definition of idol is when we think about idols, anything that makes rest feel like a sin has become the idol of your life. And for me, it was working out. For me, it was training. For me, it was food. These had all become idols that I had ultimately started worshiping, and they become not just the discipline that gets me closer to the goal, but rather the thing that becomes the ultimate thing., and as I talk through this, this talk track, if I am not impressive, I will be nothing and my soul will die. And as I was in my stillness time, it's about 4, 4 and a half, 5 years ago, as I was in my stillness time, I heard the Lord so loudly. He said, Justin, if you can be nothing, I can make it something, and that will be impressive.

So every single day I just try to be nothing. I'm nothing. Use me, Lord. I'm nothing. These words on the screen, these are not mine. Just, Lord, speak through me. I am nothing. When I go on stage, I am nothing. I am not impressive. Anybody in this audience could be up here. Lord, speak through me. Hit the one. I am nothing. This is not my business. I am nothing. Lord, take this. You multiply it. You do what you're supposed to do. Lord, the information in this book, I didn't write this. You wrote this. It just came through me. I am nothing. This is your book. You take it. You do what you need to do with it. You get it into the hands of the people that you need to go with. And every single time, Dylan, that I've been willing to be nothing, I've been willing to humble myself, I've been willing to just come and say, yeah, Lord, just use me. He's multiplied it. He's exponentially increased it, and he's made it impressive.

That's it, man. You know how many years I spent wondering, why do I think I'm doing something so good? Why do I think I'm so good, but nobody's recognizing or hearing it? Like, I used to say that all the time, and I always felt like I always had to prove something, whether it was sports, and then it got into the career. And it was always like, what, what the hell? What am I missing here? Because I know I'm so great and I'm so good. And I did exactly what you started to say, where I don't give an— excuse me— one ounce of a shit what anybody says or thinks or anything. Of course I want my word to resonate. I want my teaching to resonate. I want to make—

there's a level of excellence.

Yes. Yes, that's honoring.

Yes.

And you want to be the best at what you do. But the best at what I do is working for God, and I want to be the best at working for him. Right. So I think there's, there's a good side of that. But same thing that you just said, when I stopped all of that nonsense, yeah, that doesn't mean anything. I became my most successful. And when I say successful, it's not just money and everything. It means in getting the recognition I want by getting an audience for people to listen. I don't need one person to tell me I'm great. I don't need to hear it. I don't care to hear it. It does nothing for me anymore. What does something for me is if you walk in and say, man, you saved my life, or your guests saved my life because of the way you showcased them, or something you did made such an impact on me. Yeah, that's what I care about now. And I care about bringing people like you on that have a great audience already, but I can give a bigger one too. But I can show different sides of you that you maybe don't get to do.

You'll never do the same thing you do with me that you do everywhere else. You never will.

Never.

Because I want people to show their versatility and other things they're good at.

Yeah.

That's why I'm not asking you everything about your book or everything else, because I want you to speak truth.

Yeah.

Fact and life.

Yep.

Now we'll get into your book, now that I spent the whole time talking about that. But I wanted that more than anything because that is the most impactful. Anybody can go read your book. Not everybody can go hear you speak.

And I, I appreciate the, the whole aspect of this because I've been talking about this a lot lately and A lot of us have a battle between like, what's right and wrong? What's true and false? That's not where the real war is. The real war is what's true versus what's almost true. And the devil's in the details. Right. The devil's in what's being left out. The devil's in the nuance. And what is true versus what is almost true are not the same thing. No. But on paper, they can look very similar. Yeah. And that is why So many people are falling victim to almost-truths and why we're seeing the decay of our health, both mentally, physically, spiritually, and emotionally in the society we live in, because it's full of almost-truths.

You just opened up some shit, man, because I've been talking about this every day because of my level of frustration. I have a lot of great colleagues. You same that we're not going to name one person, but I know you are going to know exactly what I'm talking about. And I quickly went from smile to scowl because this drives me crazy because we have a very powerful voice. And the more people that listen to you, you don't realize how many people. If I have a million people follow me, there's probably 3 listening.

Yep.

Because most, I, I've done statistics on this. I don't have 'em in front of me, but it's like for every 1 follower or 1 comment, you got 10 other that don't ever say a word that all they do is linger and listen.

Yep.

So the— my point in saying that is when you have a big following, there's a lot of people watching, a lot of people take your word as gospel.

Yeah.

And I see so many people now that they do exactly what you just said. They take one study or one thing and they turn it into this thing so that you'll watch them and you'll listen, but they don't understand that they're hurting you.

Yeah.

Because of what they say. These people that put out a fact, and, and I'm just making one up about oatmeal for example, they'll make you think it's the worst thing to ever eat when there's like 20 other studies that show that it's good. Spinach, like we can go down the line. The point is, is then it confuses everybody and they don't know what to do and they give up, you know? And that's my big problem is don't do that. Yeah, don't do that. State, okay, we pulled a study on this and it did this, so just be aware.

Yeah.

You know, don't do that so you can get people to click because you know what happens? People start to believe their own bullshit.

Yep.

And then they, they, they say this stuff over and over and over and they know it's not true, but then they actually start to believe it.

Yeah. And, and that's the scary part is once you start to believe your own lies.

Yeah.

Once you start to believe your own false truths, let's not call them lies because people come back. I'm not lying. You just left out some key details. You're right. Uh, it, it, you just, and again, like Dylan, this goes back to scripture. You go to Genesis, you go back to the garden., and God said, do not eat of the tree, for you will surely die. And what did the snake say? Serpent, whatever you wanna call it, said, oh no, you will not surely die. Well, no, she took a bite. She didn't drop dead and stop breathing, but her soul died and was separated from the Lord. Yeah. And so she did have a spiritual death. There was a death that occurred, but the nuance, the devil was in the details. Right. You won't surely die. Oh, okay. I guess I'm fine. Well, no, that was the fall of man. That was the very first sin that ever happened. It created doubt. It created misconceptions. It created misunderstanding. It created falsifications. It created false truths, little false truths. And that is what sits at the core of all of this. And when you start to, when you know the truth, and that is, that is what my whole assignment has been, is to be able to walk in and be able to say, hey, This is the truth.

And when I was writing Holy Health 2.5 years ago, the Lord spoke to me, Dylan. And after all of my education, all of the studies, all of the different lab work that I was doing, all the different work with all the different athletes and people and company building, he goes, hey, I don't want you to read another book. I just want you to read mine. And for 2.5 years, that's all I read. That's it. Was just in scripture. And the crazy part, Dylan, was all I could see was alignments of scripture and science. All I could see was a manual of how to live. All I could see was a manual on how to heal. All I could see was cellular biology written into the very scripture and the very words in which were on those pages. And that was the truth that we were seeking. So when suddenly somebody says, hey, you should only do this exercise and they say it on a podcast. I don't know the millions of people listening. So how in God's green earth could I tell them, do not do this thing. Only eat this thing. This is going to solve your sleep problem.

This is going to solve your bloating. And it, I don't know. What I do know is I do know how to heal the cells because I do know what cells need. Cells need oxygen, the ability to detoxify and nutrients. I do know that if cells do not get those 3 things, the cellular environment begins to decay, and that will ultimately start signaling to the body that it needs to protect itself. If it stays in a constant and chronic state of protection, that will ultimately keep your sympathetic nervous system elevated, which will drop your heart rate variability, which is why when you look at all the data, if you are above your 50th percentile for your age for HRV, you are 84% likely to get any chronic illness in your lifetime. So when we see this and we start to understand this, that scripture and science are in full alignment, I'm not going to start blasting out random facts for things that you should do and habits you should start to cooperate in. I'm going to help you understand your body. Yeah. Because if you understand your body, you will gain wisdom for what to do next because you will intuitively know what works and what doesn't.

Because when we start to go, hey, Okay. Oxygen. The language for oxygen in the body is VO2 max. VO2 max is the language of how your body's utilizing oxygen. So now suddenly we go, well, how do we test VO2 max? Well, this is the way we do it. You can do a 12-minute Cooper test. You can do a 6-minute high octane bicycle ride, or you can go and do an actual VO2 max test. And we can then look at what your max heart rate is, and then we can get your zone 2 and your zone 5 states. And that's where you should go and operate. How do you do it? I don't care if you elliptical, I don't care if you stair step, I don't care if you sprint around a track. I don't care if you I don't care if you bike, I don't care if you sled push, I don't care what you do, but let's do zone 2 and zone 5 based upon the HRV that we— based upon the VO2 max number that we see. And then let's work from there because that's the cellular language. And I can do that same thing for sleep quality, which is the language of detoxification.

And I can do that same language for nutrient density of the cell based on genetic predisposition. And then we can understand what the cell needs so that now we can get it exactly in the pathway that creates the environment of thriving, which ultimately, what's the inevitable outcome? HRV has to increase because now you're no longer in a state of protection, but you're in a state of thriving.

I love it. I love it. You know, my whole life when I got into this reverted to science.

Yeah.

You know, my, from as young as I can remember, I was always like a math student. My dad instilled math into me and then my mom was an English teacher and I just despised science.

Science.

I mean, I— when I tell you I despise it. The only thing I ever wanted to talk about was planets. Otherwise, I didn't want to hear nothing about nothing at all. It's the only time I paid attention.

Let me talk about Pluto or I'm out.

That's it. That is it. And I used to then develop this thought that science was evil, that it went against God, and that, like, I really believed that for a long, long time. And he told me— and this was through putting it in front of my face over and over, and then me becoming so fascinated in mitochondria and then looking deeper than that, and that became a buzzword. That became the first company that I worked with was Timeline. So my focus was on mitochondria, but then I started to understand cellular health. I started to look at cellular membrane and understand why aren't we talking about this and digging deeper. The, the point is, is I realized everything that you just said to be true. God created science to, that's our body is so intricately detailed. And to the point where when you start mentioning the amount of cells that we have, and then if you start, and, and just trivial things like how long is your intestine? And then you start to go, well, I'm not even that tall. Like what? And then you start to see what seems to be impossible and how possible it is.

There's only one way that could've happened. And you see functionality, you learn biomechanics, you, you study kinesiology and you see the, the, the details.

Yeah.

Like when you really look at even how many bones we have and how we heal, and it becomes rather evident only one being could have created us. One God, one, one way. So I don't ever understand why things get mixed the way they do. I understand people like to look into details and everything, but the answer's right in front of our face. And then when I realized that, that's when the wisdom started and then the, the ability to use it like now. And then you start to explain HRV and you start to explain, you relate rest to the Sabbath and you start to go down the line and everything makes sense. Why you do— and, and I, it's hard for me to fast because of the way I work out. 'Cause I, you don't wanna know how I train that. You'll, we'll have to have a long discussion of lecture.

Sure.

But when with fasting, with Jesus fasting and being in the Bible, and then you just, everything's sitting there.

Yeah.

Everything.. So there is no, you know, people will say, well, God is this, God is that. No, God is everything. Yeah. It's, I always like to say God is love first, but God is everything, man. Like every single thing created that is not like manmade is his.

Yep.

Right. So that's the way I look at it. I, I wanna ask you about HRV specifically. Yeah. Uh, cuz it's starting to get talked about a little bit more and I'm thrilled about VO2 max getting talked about cuz I was talking about that 15 years ago, 'cause I'm a big endurance guy. But so I did some HRV stuff like a year ago with an Oura Ring and it was very shitty, like 40, 50. And then I just did, I did now a year and a half later and it was 90s every time. Can you explain why you want HRV to, well, first what it is and why you want it to be higher? Because I remember when my score was low, I was like, yeah, sweet. And then I looked at it and I was like, oh shit.

That's the wrong direction.

Yeah. Wrong direction. So what is it and why do you want it to be higher?

It's great. So heart rate variability is your body's language that's communicating to you how effectively it's adapting to stress based on your habits, behaviors, and life rhythms. So HRV is your body's language that's communicating to you how well your body's adapting to stress based on your habits, behaviors, and life rhythms. So what you do daily, are your habits giving it the oxygen, the nutrients, and the detoxification capabilities that it needs in order to create a cellular environment that you're thriving in. That is literally what it's measuring. And so when we look at it, what's happening with HRV? HRV measures the successive time intervals between each heartbeat. So if you have a resting heartbeat, Dylan, of 60 beats per minute, and I have a resting heart rate of 60 beats per minute, logical math, would make sense that both of our hearts are beating at 1 beat per second. Mm-hmm. But that's not how our, our bodies work. And so let's say Dylan wakes up in the morning, his phone's outside of his bedroom. He's not getting the EMF radiation. He wakes up, he goes, gets first sunlight in his eyes. He then goes and gets some water in.

He goes for a little run, comes back, kisses his wife, goes and has a great breakfast, does some deep work all day. Goes and has dinner at night, connects, is able to have a good night routine, go to bed at a consistent time, go to bed. Dylan's body goes, hey man, like I really like this rhythm. This is really good. It's getting me everything I need. I've got the oxygen, I've got the detoxification pathways open, and I've got the nutrients that I need to function at a great level. Thus, 875 milliseconds, 975 milliseconds, 425 seconds, uh, milliseconds, 682. There's a high degree of variation between each successive heartbeat. Meaning that your HRV is going to be higher, signaling your body's adapting to stress and strain very well based on your habits, behaviors, and life rhythms. Opposite side, I wake up first thing in the morning, go right to my phone. I start text messaging and emailing people off of things that are going wrong in the business or things that I'm now behind on. And what was supposed to be 5 minutes, I'm now on my phone for 25 minutes. I'm now anxious. I'm now overwhelmed.

The kids run in and they've got, their backpacks on the front of their chest and the breakfast is all spilled all over the floor and the dog's eating the— and the dog's eating the breakfast and the dog then vomits. And now we're late for school and now I'm taking a call in the car and it's just chaos. I then sit at my desk all day. I'm chained to my desk. I don't walk. I don't get outside. I don't see the sunshine. I don't hydrate until I have my first glass of water at dinner at night.

I—

my first meal is at dinner and it's like 3,000 calories deep and I'm snacking until the moment I go to bed. And then I'm falling asleep on the couch, watching the game, only to roll into bed at 2:00 AM and do it all again the next day. And my body goes, man, we just got to keep this freaking guy alive. We're in chronic protect mode. We don't have the oxygen we need. We don't have the detox pathways open and we do not have the nutrients we need to function. And so the differentiating time intervals between each excessive heartbeat is 900, 942, 961, 937, 921. And so the difference between each successive heartbeat is thus much smaller. Thus the number of HRV is lower, indicating that it's an alert that our body doesn't have what it needs and thus not adapting to stress and strain well, all while both of our heartbeats are still 60 beats per minute. And so it's the differentiating time interval between each successive heartbeat, a higher HRV. Is a positive thing. A lower HRV is an alert.

So my 85 to 90 is pretty decent then?

It's great. Okay. It's great.

All right. And you know why? Because I did the nervous system reset. I wasn't stuck in sympathetic nervous state anymore. I stopped being so angry, started being more compassionate. All of these things stopped having that like real short fuse of everything's annoying. Once that dissipated, everything changed.

Yeah.

And I think, and you correct me if I'm wrong, people that have a lower HRV Highly stressed, highly inflamed, often stuck in sympathetic nervous state.

Yes, yes, and yes.

Okay. So here's one of the things that I think people should try to do. And you tell me what you think. I think a good morning routine to start your, that sets your day right now. I'm not saying everybody do mine, but I get up. First thing I do is read a scripture. I know I shouldn't look at my phone, but it's on my phone. And then I lay a prayer over my wife. Then it's like, okay, into the bathroom, shave the neck and start saying prayers. And then I sit with my cat, read a scripture, I talk with her, and then I go for a walk, and then I start working.

Yeah.

Even when I travel, I don't give a shit. I time it out or people wait.

Yeah.

And I tell people, hey, I'm running late today and it's 'cause I didn't finish that and it's too bad.

Yeah.

Otherwise our meeting's gonna suck anyway. Yeah.

Right.

So do you think that, like, 'cause I believe now understanding it, that that sets the stage for your day. And I think if you're starting in a positive atmosphere with God, Somehow, some way, you're going to have a good day.

So can I bring science and scripture into this?

Absolutely. Always.

And I'm, I'm not going to disagree with you, but I'm actually going to give an alternative.

Please.

I actually don't think it's the morning routine that matters first. It's the evening routine. Okay. Because in our world, we believe that our day starts when we wake up and it ends when we collapse into bed at night. But Genesis says, Evening came, morning came, first day. Evening came, morning came, second day.

Okay.

And it repeats. And so the pattern of how our day started way back when, when we were created, our days were meant to start in the evening and end after morning. And so when we see this, it flips it upside down on its head. So your evening routine is critical because it prepares you to go and pour out the next day. So if we can now take— and on day— on the fourth day, God created sun, moon, and stars to create sacred rhythms. So evening time is a rhythm. It is a sacred time in our day to be able to prepare for the best thing that we're gonna do, which is sleep, because during sleep is when our body's actually repairing, restoring, and renewing, and then also detoxifying, that second thing that cells need. And so if we can prepare at night with a great evening routine that gets us into the deepest stages of sleep so that we can sleep well, it propels us into our morning routine that then allows us to go pour out.

See, yeah, and that's why I asked you that, because that's a much better answer. When I have a bad morning, even going through the routine, it's because I didn't have a good evening.

There you go.

Every time. Yeah, your day is doomed. I shouldn't say doomed, but it's, it's set up for failure.

Yeah.

If you have a rough night or a lack of sleep or a Bunch of scrolling before bed. I even said that the other night. I told my wife, I said, oh, I slept like shit. I was worried about this, this, and this. But the reality was I was sitting on my phone hours before.

Totally. I still read the scripture before bed, but I just, I, you were disconnected from it.

I was, yeah, I, I was distracted. Yep. Emails and nonsense and stuff. I, I don't do social scrolling, but it's like stress work.

Yeah.

When it's like, it'll wait. Yeah. Everything'll wait.

Yeah.

I'm starting to learn that now. It took me 44 years to things will wait.

Yeah.

Right. If you don't respond in 30 seconds, they're going to be there.

So here's the funny thing that you just said. And when we come back to this is there's 7 Ds that I talk about in Holy Health that lead to the destruction of our health. John 10:10 says Satan came to steal, kill, and destroy, but Jesus came so that we may have life abundantly. There's 7 Ds that ultimately lead to the destruction of our health. And you hit on the main point. The first thing that happens is we get distracted.

Yep.

We get distracted by good things, not God things. We get distracted by opportunities, not open doors. And so when we get distracted by things in our life, it keeps us from the things that we were actually called to do. So the distraction leads to disconnection. Disconnection from God, disconnection from our accountability members, disconnection from our spouse, disconnection from our communities, disconnection from the people who we actually need to be connected with. The disconnection leads to depletion because we're like, man, why can't I figure this out? Why? Like, why is this not happening? Why? Like, what's going on? So the depletion means that we're just going to start working harder. Well, the depletion means that we now start to be divided, divided between the public us, where we show everything's great, and the private us where we're falling apart. We're short with our friends. We're short with our families. We're angry all the time. We're short-fused. We're frustrated. And that ultimately leads to discouragement because we're like, man, why can't I figure this out? Like, I should be able to do this. I like, I've figured out business. I figured out everything. I guess I'm just an idiot and I'm not good enough, which leads to the mind junk that continues to go on.

Then that leads to ultimately disqualification. We're like, man, maybe I wasn't supposed to start the business. Maybe I wasn't supposed to go into ministry. Maybe I wasn't supposed to. Maybe I misheard God. I wasn't supposed to open that thing. Which leads to the destruction of our health, which is mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual decay that ultimately leads to the stealing of joy, love, peace, and freedom in the very thing that we walk in. And we are now imprisoned in this body. We are operating in with symptoms, with disease, with diagnoses, all things that have led and started with the distraction of how we were operate— of called to operate. I love it, man.

Okay. Tell me the premise of the book, because what I, my goal here was not to, I have these conversations where it's like, let's just discuss my book. And it's like, but why, why don't we discuss you? So that makes people interested in your book.

Totally.

But I do want to know the premise of the book itself and, and what your goal from writing it was.

So the goal in writing it was to get people to see the truth. That's it. This, the, in, in this book, it is all truth, science and scripture in full alignment. And when people see the truth, they can ultimately then start to understand, gain wisdom for what the almost truths are out there. And so you can now see it and you can see yourself in this book. And so the first thing, it's broken into 4 parts. The first part is all about who, who does God say you are? We have to get the identity piece right. So once we know who you are based on who God says you are, then you will know what to do. And what to do is all based on the habits of how the cell was created. We go through nutrients, we go through oxygen, we go through detoxification, we go through heart rate variability. Those are the 4 things, the 4 data points in which we start to lean into. So we know what to do. Those 4 heal the cell, body heals itself. Okay, well, how do we do it? Well, we talked about VO2 max. Making sure we got zone 2, zone 5.

Let's make sure this is there. Sleep quality. We know that sleep quality is the ultimate detoxifier of the body. The glymphatic system only turns on during REM and slow-wave sleep. So we need to make sure we get into the deepest stages. So how do we get into the deepest stages of sleep? We go through how we do that. 3-2-1 rule, consistent sleep and wake time, different tips and tricks and things that we can operate within, sleep environment, et cetera, et cetera. Then we go into Nutrients. So knowing that, hey, our body cannot absorb man-made nutrients, especially if we have methylation issues and deficiencies. So let's go back to more of what God gave us rather than what man made us according to food. Let's go back to getting some testing done to understand what our body actually needs so we can start to supplement it the correct way based on what our genetic predisposition is, because we know that genetics load the gun, but our lifestyle pulls the trigger. And so being able to understand that. And then let's go back to nervous system regulation, knowing that if we can regulate the nervous system, the nervous system is the governing for everything that operates in the body.

And it is the language, it is the whispers of our body. It is the whispers of how we function, how we operate. And ultimately, once we know how to do it, we then get the blessing of figuring out why we started this journey in the first place. So who are you, what to do, how to do it, and then figure out why, which is leaving a legacy for those that you're touching and those that you're leaving behind.

I love it. I argue, I don't argue, I guess I, I teach.

Yeah.

Um, cuz to me it's not an argument, it's, it's a fact is I stopped talking about mind, body, and spirit.

Mm-hmm.

And I changed the spirit part. I erased it.

Mm-hmm.

And I changed it to God because I, I find if I'm being honest, I'm not gonna say stuff to try to conform to what people want to hear. Yeah. Every single thing in life that we have requires a foundation. Your marriage requires a strong foundation of trust and love, right? Of a house, it has to have a strong foundation or it's going to collapse.

Yeah.

A contract has to have something foundationally built on it to, to what we're going to do here.

Sure.

What's it for? And how do we trust each other? And I say that if we want to be in total health alignment, of course it requires the fitness and the eating. I have found that I didn't put enough merit into the mind.

Yeah.

That, that actually has more control over the fitness and the, and everything. 'Cause your mind's telling you, yes, I can. No, I can't. Or no, I won't. Right. But foundationally, and you tell me, I can work with somebody and I can get you as dialed in as possible and I can dice you up, dial you in, whatever gets you the right diet. Get you the right training program, do whatever I can mentally, get you with the right neuroscientist that can. If I can't, you're never going to get there all the way without having a foundation. And my foundation is God. And that's how we get to the point of, okay, now we're really healthy.

Yeah, I think, I think we see that in real time with some of the big influencers in our space where their bodies are optimized, but they're still not there. I did a piece of content the other day. I said, I pray that everybody gets the perfect blood work. I pray everyone gets the six-pack abs. I pray everybody gets the ideal VO2 max number they want. I pray they get the perfect everything. Because once you get everything that you want, you'll realize that that really wasn't the thing. Yeah. That there's something else that has to sit at the foundation and it's knowing a relationship with Jesus and who he is, that that is what will set you free. And when you suddenly stop using your health as a sacrifice and you start using your health as worship, that the way you sleep is worship, the way you eat is worship, the way you hydrate is worship, the way you train is worship, the way you operate daily is worship, the things you do on this podcast is worship. Every single thing you do, every habit, every behavior is worship. It changes the game. It changes the way in which you operate, but it create— it is required.

That you know who God is. Yes, it's true.

And then you start to look at things different. Like I start to look at food as medicine, you know, realizing that he put it here for us, like the good food, the food we're supposed to eat.

Let's come back to it. Let's come back to scripture. There is food from, or it's fruit. There's, when we get, it's in, uh, Proverbs and it talks about how the trees have fruit for nourishment and their leaves for healing. Yeah. It's right there.

It's right there.

Everything is in scripture. Everything is in alignment. We talk about again in Proverbs again, 4:23 talks about how HRV is the language of your body communicating how you handle stress. Guard your heart for all things flow from it. It is the wellspring of life. Oh my goodness. What do you know?

I want to ask you one thing and we won't get too far into it, but I just, I like to ask people that I think have an opinion when it comes to diet related. Sure. I've been a nutritionist for 15 years and you and I both have had eating disorders So I think we probably know food pretty well. Yeah. And, and then this'll be the only thing that I get into with it, but when it comes to restriction, sure. Because everything now is an argument for keto. It's an argument for carnivore. It's an argument for vegan. I mean, it's just flat ass, like, and people get angry.

Yeah.

They don't even just talk to you about it. They like want to just destroy you over it. Yeah. I mean, it's insane. Do you feel like that, that every nutrient is there for a purpose and it serves a purpose, or do you fall into the like, well, we need to be super carb restrictive? 'Cause I mean, for me, It's like, man, if you're training hard, you need carbs. I'm, I, I don't have a problem with going low carb during certain segments if you want. Yeah. For me it's problematic. Yeah. We, given the training and then, you know, your body tells you.

Yeah.

And then you learn real quick. I think it, for me, everything is one size fits none when it comes to that. Yeah. And it's just figure out person to person what your body needs.

Yep.

Given the circumstance.

I mean, we're, we're literally speaking the same language. I always say if you're diet has a name to it. It's probably the wrong one. And so it's the same thing. All size fits none, like, is great and kind of goes hand in hand. Yeah. But when we think about this and we come back to it, like, if you literally just know what your body's deficient in, let's just feed it what it's deficient in. Let's get it what we need. And so many of us become indoctrinated with these idolatries rather than allowing our bodies to guide us and lead us in the appropriate directions. Remember, there are whispers from the body. The brain fog you have, that's not an Advil deficiency. That is a nutrient deficiency. Oh, the sleep issue you have, that's not a melatonin deficiency. That is a nutrient deficiency. The pain you have in your low back and the inability to recover, or the low energy you have when you go into your workouts Those are not caffeine deficiencies. Those are nutrient deficiencies. And so it all comes back to how we are eating and it comes back to again, the false truths or the almost truths.

Yeah.

Because my gosh, our bodies are the greatest adaptation tools that have ever been created. It will adapt to anything. They are so resilient. Our bodies are so resilient. For somebody, myself, when I was 14 years old, I was £162. By the age of 16, I was 97. And we're talking major food restriction. We were talking going through all of these things. And this is also why I had a hard time with fasting until that stronghold was broken too. I can talk about that in a second, but for a guy who had liver and kidney failure, his body eating his organs because that was the only thing they had for fuel, to 3 years later coming down to the States on a hockey scholarship, playing at the highest level possible, like feeling great, like That is just a testimony to the resiliency of the body and how it is created to heal and do its thing when you give it what it needs. And I guarantee somebody, when you train, you exercise, or you live fueled, you will never want to live unfueled ever again. No, no.

When we do part 2, I think we're— I want to sit and just cover diet aspects and like, but relating I like to talk because Josh Ax, a good friend of mine, we did Biblio Foods and diet and everything and related to that. But I, I want to relate it to, to like people in general, like person to person. Yeah, people training, people not. It's so different. People that have conditions. I mean, I had that big fear of fat for 30 years.

Yeah.

And once I stopped, I mean, the whole world opened up for me, you know, like just— and I want to talk about that to help people to overcome it. So we have a good premise for I think what will be a series, I think we'll do probably several of these.

I love it.

Yeah. I enjoyed this to the highest degree, my friend. Release date on your book. Where can people follow you? Give them the whole nine. I'll link everything for everybody to pick this up.

I appreciate you. August 11th, the book will be out. It will be holyhealthbook.com is where they can grab that. And it's, we're going to launch it in New York City. It's going to be an absolute blast. You'll love this. We're going to do a 5K in breathwork in Central Park. Oh, shit. Followed by baptisms. And so it's just gonna be a really cool way in which we're launching this thing and taking ground for him. And again, just knowing that this, this is the living offering of what is here. It is the truth of how your body's built, how it's been created to heal, designed to thrive, that you're, you heal the cell, the body will heal itself. And so August 11th, we're doing the launch date. It's gonna be super exciting. Holyhealthbook.com. And then on Instagram @justinroth.

Amazing, man. Amazing. Well, everybody watching, you can do me the biggest favor by checking this book out and following Justin. That's all I ask today. That's all I've got for you. That would be the gift for, for me that you could all do. Support my man here because his mission and this book and everything is on an entirely different level. So, dude, thank you for coming to see me.

No, thank you for having me.

No, it was kind of last minute and I'm just really grateful. I, I was bummed you couldn't come watch me speak, but I don't even care. I'm just glad that you came. There'll be plenty of those opportunities. So I bet. Appreciate you, brother. I appreciate all the work. And that wraps up another one, everybody. So stay tuned for plenty more to come. Dylan Gemelli signing off.