Transcript of Episode #74 Featuring Chris Divecchio! Insights from The Ultimate Transformational Health Coach! The importance of personalization, Defining True Transformation, Building client trust and more!

Today's episode is sponsored by my good friends at Timeline. Timeline is now offering the world's first ever longevity gummies powered by Mitapier. You've heard me talk about the importance of cellular health and our mitochondria, which is why I have Timeline as my favorite and most trusted sponsor. These are the only clinically proven Urolithin A gummies for strength and healthy aging. We may be living longer lifespans, but are we truly living better lives? What I think the key is not just adding years to your life, but life to your years? This all starts at the cellular level. As we age, our mitochondrial health starts to decline, and one of the keys to living longer and healthier is keeping our mitochondria healthy and strong, and might appear targets this for us. Take control of your health now and live the life that you not only desire, but you also deserve. As a gift to all my listeners, you can save 20% off today by going to timeline. Com/backscal. Com Dylan to get started. That's timeline. Com/dylan. I assure you, your cells will thank you. All right, everybody. Welcome back to the Dylan Jameli podcast. So today's guest actually has a special place in my heart, and I will tell you quickly before I introduce him why.

I did a podcast with The Mind of George show, and after finishing, I became friends with the host, George, and he said, You got to I got to meet this guy. I've got the perfect guy for you. He hooked me up with my guest today, and I immediately hit it off with him. I'll tell you something about this guy. I had an episode I've talked about that put me in the hospital for days. My guest I had just met him maybe two, three weeks prior, and we had good conversation back and forth. I will tell you, he spent time, the four days I was in there, I think almost every single day sending me encouraging audio clips, text messages. I mean, it's one of those things that I will never forget. There was a reason I met him, and I just wanted to put that out there before I give him the intro here. Now, we're going to talk a lot of things that are in both our wheelhouses here that are going to really resonate with so many people, and I think you're going to find it overwhelmingly insightful. But in short, because I can't give him enough accolade, he's a high-performance coach, he's an entrepreneur, he's a health strategist, and he's recognized for his ability to seamlessly blend elite fitness, business optimization, and longevity science.

Featured on Good Morning America, The New York Post, Men's Health, and KTLA Morning News. He actually made headlines for coaching a professional poker player to win the largest weight loss prop bet in history, over a mill dropping 33% body fat down to 10% in just six months. He's got 30 years of experience. Now, he's worked with a lot of executives, a lot of athletes and industry leaders. And what he does is he helps them master the business athlete mindset mindset, which is a philosophy that treats health, fitness, and recovery as essential tools for business success. My man does it all. We're going to get into it. He literally is one of the best of the best at what he does. I can't give him enough accolade, my friend Chris DiVecchio.

Great to be here. Nice dealing.

I appreciate you being on here, man. I've been looking forward to this ever since the second that I met you and I was introduced to you. God has his way of and he brings people together, and I firmly believe in all of that, as you know. Let's utilize this time and drain you for as much information as we can possibly get.

Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. You have a lot to talk about.

I know it. All right. Okay, I gave you the breakdown, I gave you the rundown, but let's talk about how you got into this. You've been in fitness, you've been in health. That's my background, so I can resonate with everything that you're doing. But we all have a story. We all have our reasons. What drove you to this industry and what really continues to drive you and motivate you today?

Yeah, there were two critical points in my life that pushed me in the direction of health and wellness. At 16 years old, was misdiagnosed with child leukemia. Unfortunately, it was only a short period of time that the misdiagnosis was there. But doctors had read some bloodwork inappropriately and had thrown the terms out there. I At that point, I was really concerned at a very early age and facing mortality at a narrow early age, which is not very common for a lot of people. Thankfully, they had a third opinion on the blood work, came back and realized they had made a mistake. I felt like I had a second chance at life. That was really something that stuck with me from an early age that made me really think deeply about the importance and the value of my health and how long I want to live. I have to take control of my own health to make that I have that lifespan that I'm looking for. I played Division One College Hockey. Hockey was my sport since I was five years old. Going into college, transitioning from prep school, I was a right wing forward. I was about 170 pounds, soaking wet.

Making that transition from high school to college was a little difficult because you're going against kids when you're high school versus playing against bigger grown men in college. The second event was really my coach coming up to me after my freshman year saying, If I didn't put on some size for the following season, that I might not be playing. That was a threat to something that I thought at that time, I wasn't sure where I was going to go with my hockey career. I had no idea what direction I was going to go, but I knew that that's what I was there for, and I didn't want that to end. I took that very seriously. Went home that summer and put on 30 pounds in three months. I took weight training seriously, my nutrition seriously, supplementation. I really learned the power and the value of being able to manipulate your body if you apply to science. The combination of facing mortality at a young age and also learning how easily you can manipulate your body, it just created this perfect storm of passion for health and fitness. I've transitioned into a small little fitness modeling career coming out of college and then transitioned into some TV and film and acting out in LA.

Again, taking my body through all these different transformations for different roles that I was playing and different jobs that I was getting at time. I had this little side business of health and fitness over the course of 30 plus years of just doing some things on the side. As my acting career was starting to fade away, I realized that there was an opportunity that I've been missing out on to really have an impact on people, as well as also bring a lot of value for me and being able to use my skills and resources to create some purpose. I decided to go full steam into my health and wellness coaching business and built my business literally out of in my backyard. I'd taken out a short loan from a friend of mine to build a little space in the backyard of this small 250-square-foot apartment that I was living in and started bringing clients in one by one and just building this transformation that I was proving we didn't need fancy gym equipment to get people into great health and great shape because we were working from the inside out. We were focusing on nutrition, we were focusing on stress management, we were focusing on sleep, we were focusing on organization and preparation and just really learning how to put all of those pillars in place to create an ecosystem that would give somebody an opportunity to get into really great health and great shape, physically, mentally, and emotionally, across all aspects.

Was very fortunate to build a business quickly through a referral base, and then had an opportunity with that poker player, as you mentioned at the beginning of the podcast, which was a really cool opportunity. Fortunately, we won that bet. Was able to get them to 8. 8% body fat, not 10%. So we crushed that goal. Somebody who was in that circle of poker players happened to know somebody from the New York Post, and they heard the story being talked about. They posted it in the newspaper, and Good morning America caught wind of it, and just started to slowly gain some traction organically, just having an opportunity to work with people around the US as well as internationally. Started coaching and training people and building programs virtually before there was even apps that were out there to create opportunities for people to do online training. I was bootstrapping the business and building video libraries on Dropbox and just finding ways to just bring value to people no matter where they were in the world. When COVID hit, it forced my business completely online, which was the direction I was taking, the coaching business in general. I was finding that I had a lot more value and opportunity to create bigger breakthroughs with people working in this format as opposed to being in the gym working one-on-one.

Oftentimes, people would come into the gym and we'd spend 30 minutes of our one-hour session just chopping it up and talking about what's going on in their day and lose a little bit of speed and momentum of the training session and the intensity, and I felt at some degree it was losing some of its edge. I found that trying to build more independence within the individual by teaching them the tools that they need, but allowing them some space to grow on their own was real becoming an impactful approach to the process. I use various different apps to be able to communicate and build accountability and have this really great structure to make it feel highly interactive and on demand for my clientele. Just been able to successfully continue to keep building on that format. Still to this day, I have had a lot of success working with people in that aspect. It's blessed as an opportunity, but also just really exciting to be able to do something I love, something that I'm extremely passionate about, and be able to try to leave my footprint on this world by making an impact on individuals and watching it just translate in all areas of their life, not just in their health and fitness, but a rising tide raises all ships.

So you see people's self-care and health and wellness start to level up. We just start to see these level ups in their career, in other relationships and other personal goals and things they're trying to improve in their lives. So it's just been really, really rewarding.

And what I love about this is you really know what it's like to build from the ground up and what it's like to struggle. I don't like to struggle. You don't like to struggle. Nobody likes to struggle. But foundationally, I feel we need to at certain points. You know how spiritual I am. Sometimes people, when they misunderstand readings, and it's like you get The struggle is put in front of you for a reason because it teaches you how to overcome, and nothing gets put out in front of you that you can't overcome, but you have to learn how to do it. Ultimately, when you do that, you have a greater sense of appreciation, you have a foundation, and you're able to do a heck of a lot more and appreciate what you have.

It helps you build the confidence within yourself that you can literally create anything and overcome anything without having those struggles placed in front of you, without having those obstacles, and being able to use critical thinking and tap into resources that you have available and accessible or relationships that you've built over the years, finding ways to tap into that. Certainly as an entrepreneur, getting gritty builds those chops and that confidence to be able to know that no matter what type of adversity you face, you'll always figure out a way to get through that and create something great out of it. Mike, the situation, can't believe I'm quoting Jersey Shore, but I heard him talk recently on one of his podcasts about how he's learned how to take his Ls and turn his Ls into lessons. You know what I mean? I think that's just a great way to frame it. We all We make losses in our lives, no doubt. I've had many Ls in my life. But certainly, I think going through my acting career is also a place where I built a lot of endurance and I built a lot of grit because when you're out there in the acting world, I think you spend some time in the entertainment industry as well.

You hear a lot more nos than you hear yeses. If you don't got thick skin and the ability to take a no and just keep plowing through because you believe so deeply in yourself and what you're trying to do, It's going to be a hard journey. Learning how to take those Ls and turn them into lessons and just build something out of that is really, I think, the value of going through those struggles. Oftentimes, when I found myself, when I've gotten to the end result of something that I've been seeking or desiring, oftentimes it falls a little short in terms of what I expected it to actually feel like, because what was so rich was more the journey and the struggle and all the value that I gained going through the experience to get there. That's what was all of the goal as opposed to the actual end result. Less struggle, I think. It just Because like you said, it maybe wanes some of that appreciation for what it actually took to earn that. If you're given something versus earning something, it always just feels a little different.

That's so true. You know my past and my background with being in that industry and then selling drugs, and the money was flying in and flying out just as fast. It meant nothing to me. Every cent that I earn now means everything to me. It's accounted for, it's documented, and it's through hard work, and it feels good. That's why I want to ask you, and this is what I find to be true, so I'm curious, your thoughts on it. You, me, people like us in our industry, part of our job is not just coaching and teaching, it's motivating, it's setting an example, it's helping people to be held accountable. Actually, I don't think, I'm not going to do that. I know that people that have had to be accountable, people that have had to struggle, It's a lot easier for us to teach, to motivate, and for it to be easier for someone to maybe listen when they've seen someone else that's gone through it. I don't recommend anyone to go to prison like I did or go through some of the things that you probably made mistakes on. However, it used to be stigmatized people that may have done what I did, for example, or browned upon.

But I think that when you see how somebody overcomes it and what they deal with it, it can offer, hopefully, a profound respect for the person and the individual for the willingness to change, to try and never give up. So I wonder for you, with all the struggles that you've had in the way that you've had to constantly figure things out, which is a testament to who you are, do you feel like that makes you, I guess, more adequately equipped to be an inspirer and a coach? Because coaching is not just factual-based. There's so much more that goes to it.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think the experiences that I've been through just gives me a deeper sense of empathy to be able to connect with my clients. Everybody has a different level of struggle, and I think it's all relative. What you've been through, what I've been through, what somebody else has been through. Arduably, we could say, those are the most challenging times in our lives. It's all relative. But if you don't have some of that experience, it can be a little bit more challenging to be able to relate to your client in a way that's commensurate with helping coach them through a critical thought process to get to the end result. Because it's not always as simple as saying, Come on, man, just get to the gym. What's the actual roadblock that's holding them back from feeling that level of excitement or motivation to get to the gym. Sometimes you just got to take it through some deeper layers, and it might be a little bit longer of a process to get to that drive. You can't just force it there right away. If you've been through some of those experiences yourself, you know how to slowly walk through those layers.

It might take a little bit longer, but you also have a lot more assurance that you're going to get there with that person, with that client, because it's just a matter of time and they need to be handheld a little bit more through a particular situation. There's so many nuances to working with each individual. But I think for me, the biggest thing when I'm working with clients, the thing that I'm really trying to do the most is help them get to this place of real truth and honesty within themselves and this high level of self-awareness so that whatever goal that we've set or that we're trying to achieve believe that they're being very real with themselves and how they're in the place that they're at currently and where they want to go. I liken it to, if we use a scale of reference of scale scale of 1-10, 10 being the best you'll ever be in your life in terms of mind, body, spirit, and one being the darkest, deepest, lowest place you've ever been. Most people generally live between a three and a five. Every now and then, they get this level of motivation.

They want to push hard, and they get to maybe a seven. In their minds, they think, This is harder than I've worked in a long time. That seven feels like a false 10. Then they get comfortable, and then they slowly let those old habits and patterns creep back in. So they start to slide back towards that three again. They get to that three and they hate it, and they remembered what they did to get to that, quote unquote, false 10. And they could and get back in. But they never really realized that full potential of what it actually takes and how hard they have to work and some of the sacrifices they need to make or some of the ways they need to reframe certain things in their mind to get to a true level 10. And so there's two things that can happen. When you've got this big gap in terms of expectations and effort, the way that you reduce some of that feeling or angst that people feel is that you either increase your effort to close that gap or you lower your expectations to close that gap. Some clients, we need to increase that effort because they really want a specific outcome that's very high level, like one percentage.

In order to get to that level, you've got really increase your effort and your intensity and your activity. Other people we might look at and say, Hey, listen, it's nice that you want to be at that level, but realistically, based on how your life is structured, based on other things you enjoy in your life, you enjoy vacationing and traveling, you like to have drinks a few times a week, you like to indulge in some fruit. There's other things that they may enjoy. In that case, we want to be a little bit more realistic and say, Look, let's just reduce some of our expectations a little bit so we can close that gap on feeling less than or feeling pressure or whatever it might be so that we can get you to a place where you find something that's really honest and real for you in terms of a sweet spot. Because not everybody has to be a level 10 to be happy. That makes sense?

Yeah, 100%. No, I've been there and I live it, so I get it. I love your approach. I love the way your outlook on everything, and that's one of the many things I relate to you on, I want to discuss with you some of your foundational beliefs. I talk about this a lot that everything is very person-to-person specific, but I will be honest with everybody, and I think you can attest to this. When you're coaching people, you tend to have the certain things you lean to. I'm a cardio guy, so I believe in cardio. I believe in the implementation. Now, it's different for everybody, but I think that it's very important. Some people argue view against it. I don't want to talk about things like that, but I want to start with diet because I think that for me, when I tell people, and I want your thought on this, too, I take this circle, and I did this with the bodybuilders I trained, and I take it with nutrition, diet, training, and then supplements, whether it's PEDs or just basic supplements, and I take a percentage of importance on where you're going to get.

I argue that diet consumes at the minimum 75% of that. I think it's more closer to 80. The training is very important, but I would put that more in the 15 to 20 range. Then the supplements, PEDs, whatever is that last little portion, 2 to 5 %. So to me, diet's everything. I want your thought on that first. And then structurally, diet-wise, and once again, this is conducive to the person's goals, but in general, what's your feeling on fats, proteins, and carbohydrates, your percentage breakdowns, like what your favorite diet is for most people, to get them in the right metabolic phase and function and flexibility and that thing. Yeah.

I would agree with you that diet is Definitely in that upper percentile, 75, 80, somewhere around there. Because all health and also physical performance, it all stems from your gut. How good, how well adapted your gut microbiome is, how healthy your gut microbiome is, inflammation, etc. The inflammation is one of the leading causes of all disease and disorder, number one. Number two, if you have high levels of inflammation in your gut, you're somebody who's out spending lots of money on high-quality foods. Well, a lot of that high-quality food isn't even getting absorbed. You're just throwing all that money out the window and all that great nutrients out the window. I really place nutrition at the top of that. Nutrition, training, and sleep and recovery are probably the top three. And I'll throw supplementation and PEDs or T-R hormone replacement therapy as my number four because at the end of the day, you could put hormone replacement therapy on top of a poor diet, poor training, poor sleep, and it won't matter. It has no impact. You can't just inject testosterone and think that everything just solves itself, and you're going to drop to 10% body fat.

You're going to build a bunch muscle and you're going to build a bunch of muscle, and you're going to feel better, and your sex drive is going to be through the roof. It doesn't work that way.

You just upset a lot of people.

A lot of people, right? But I think that's important to note because I think that's the image that's being pushed around hormone replacement therapy and testosterone because testosterone is so more easily talked about and discussed. It's so more prevalent nowadays. Everybody's very comfortable. It's like a flex to say, Yeah, I'm on hormone replacement therapy. Whereas 10 years ago, everybody was hush-hush about it. Nobody wanted to talk about it. It was like my little secret. It's got to frowned upon or looked at as cheating. Now it's like, no, you're not taking testosterone? It's crazy, right? But I know people who are using testosterone replacement therapy and not feeling great and not getting great results because the foundation is not there. They're not getting 7-8 hours of sleep. They're still drinking a bunch. Their training is not where it needs to be. They're overtraining or under training. They're untershooting on protein and total calories. There's so many aspects to it that if you want to be somebody of that top % of individuals who's in great health and in great shape, and as you're aging, people can't tell how old you actually are. These are things that you got to pay attention to.

Nutrition is absolutely at the top of that list. Going back, I think the second part of your question was about nutrition in particular and how I adjust macros. Protein is obviously king in that entire process. My whole diet, the way I write meal plans for individuals is really the premises around anti-inflammatory. I spend a lot of time with my clients going into education around the foods that you should be focusing on and consuming. They're going to reduce the amount of inflammation coming into the body, not just foods, but condiments, beverages. I teach them a lot about how to read ingredients labels. You got to start to become aware and know what you're doing, what you're selecting, what you're putting in your body. Because otherwise, in your mind, you could be thinking that you're doing so many great things to try to reduce inflammation. But there's little sneaky things that get into the diet that people don't even think about that keeps driving those inflammatory markers up. And before you know it, you're Your gut is a mess. You're not getting the results you want. You're feeling sluggish cognitively. You're just being inhibited in performance all across the board.

An example I love to use is something like Sriracha. It seems so innocent for a lot of people. They think it's just an innocent little hot sauce. Big deal. There's nothing really in it. But if you look at the ingredients, it's got Xanthum gum. Xanthum's a massive inflammatory gum filler, I ask. If you knew what to look for, and you knew and you were educated about other products out there, a company called Yellow Bird. I'm, by the way, not endorsed by them, or this is just a knowledge for the listeners out there. But there's a company called Yellow Bird that you can find at Whole Foods. I think you can find them at Sprouts as well. They make a Sriracha-type product. It's actually called Sriracha. It's all anti-inflammatory ingredients. It tastes just as good, if not better. But if you're somebody who eats Sriracha every single day and you now swap it out with Yellow Bird, you now start to reduce that inflammation pool by the day because you're reducing the exposure that you're giving your body on a daily basis, potentially multiple times a day. If you're using Sriracha on your meals often, more than once or twice a day.

It can really build up. So yeah, so protein's king. Education around inflammation is very, very important for me. I'm a big proponent of carbohydrates, but it's all about timing the types of carbs Timing your carbs around specific times. One is timing your carbs around your workout, but then also timing your carbs around balancing out the sympathetic and parasympathetic state of the tones of the body. That's going to vary from individual, but I generally keep carbs moderate. I probably don't go too heavy on a carbohydrate. I'm pushing people somewhere in the 150-200 grams of carbs. Then faster, usually I'm usually moderate, too, but I'm teaching people how to space out that fat to carb intake and not blending fast to carbs together too often. That's just the general overview. I get much more specific when I'm working with an individual because- You have to, yeah. It's got to be nuances in terms of what's their body composition coming in, what are their goals, what are their athletic abilities, how much output are they able to produce in a workout? Some people have higher intensity workouts than others because they just physically are more capable. That dictates how I make adjustments to their macros.

But within my program, the program is very dynamic at all times. I do photo updates with my clients every two weeks. They're constantly I have an app that I use where they're self-recording doing exercises in the gym, and they load those videos into the app, and then I screen-record my notes on top of their videos and teach them about the biomechanics. But I'm also looking for exercise intensity so I can see how they're training I use all of that anecdotal feedback to determine how I'm making adjustments to their program every two weeks or so, whether I'm bringing carbs up, bringing carbs down. I'm listening to their impact, their feedback in terms of how they're feeling, how their body shifting. There's so many elements that requires a lot of constant feedback and adjustment, but it's an opportunity for them to learn, which is what's fun for me. I just love reteaching this stuff and also just Just trying to figure it out with each individual. It's my version of video games, but I get to figure out and how to tweet things in a live chemistry set to see how it manifestsates and just be able to watch somebody transform is really fun and exciting.

But it's heavy protein, generally, lots of grass-fed meat, wild caught fish. I'll bring in some pasture-raised chicken from time to time. We'll bring in some organic pasture-raised eggs, things of that nature. I try to balance out some of the chicken and the eggs along with the grass-fed meat just because we know chickens consume corn brand and soy, even if they're Ashton raised. Corn brand and soy, really high in omega-6. Omega-6, highly inflammatory to the body. I don't ever like individuals going too heavy on one particular protein, especially animals eating corn and grains. I try to balance that out where the dose determines the poison. We try to smooth that inflammation curve out as much as we can.

To be honest with you, I probably do chicken three to four times a month, maybe at the most. It's funny because Probably what? 10, 15 years ago, everything was a chicken and vegetable boring. And that's like- Chicken and broccoli. Yeah, chicken and broccoli. I found a place or a company at Sprouts called Pasture Bird. That's one of the ones I found that they use very little. But like you said, I don't... And honestly, I don't really love chicken anymore, except for thighs, really. I adopted that healthy fat intake, prioritizing it with protein, obviously, but more so like that, while still having a decent amount of carbs in there and not just totally blowing them off. I find benefit in the keto diet. I certainly do. I don't want to act like that because I used to be just totally anti, and then I certainly changed my stance on it. But I do think that you need some, and especially to stay metabolically flexible. I have had some pretty in-depth conversations with Ben Azadi, and he's talked to me about you still need to have a couple of days or a day a week where you have a higher carb day if you're doing lower carb.

But see, once again, you were talking nuance for each person and seeing what works.

Well, the reason why that gets so nuanced, too, is because everybody's life Lifestyle is different. Yeah, that's right. I have some clients that work 2, 3 hours a day. They have very little energy output. It's a very easy-going lifestyle. They're going to be less glycagen dependent and have less glycagen needs, as opposed to somebody who is waking up at 5: 00 in the morning, hitting a workout, and then they're on Zoom calls from 8: 00 AM all the way till 05: 00 PM all day long. Because your brain activity is also burning tons of glycagen glycaogen and tons of fuel as well. That's why the feedback from the client is always going to be so important because putting somebody into a keto diet could work well. But if they start to give you feedback that, Hey, mid-afternoon, I'm crashing. I have no energy from 2: 00 to 5: 00 every single day. They might need a little glycaogen bump of something in the middle of the day paired with some fat to slow down that blood sugar bike and crash. Give them a little bit more sustained energy. That's where it becomes fun to play with that science a little bit and get that feedback, but also teach that individual so that if they're going through their day at any given time, and 2: 00 in the afternoon, they know they're hitting a little bit of a slump.

They've got a little thing of organic, raw, unfiltered honey, and some strawberries right next to them at their desk, and they take that little hit, and all of a sudden, they're like, Man, I'm feeling great right now. Just carry me for the next few hours. I'm perfect. What a great skill set and sense of knowledge that have that much awareness and connectivity to your body to know what to reach for at any given moment to give your body the fuel that it needs. It's really, really neat to be able to teach people that. It's just so nuanced for each individual. It's just impossible, I think, to really put your sword in the ground on one particular diet or one particular training protocol call that's the best.

No such thing, man. There's only the best is what's best for the individual. Sure. I like that you are so based on information and knowledge because I think, actually, the main reason to me why most people fail is... I mean, sometimes it's just the lack of wanting to do it, but I think it's a lack of knowledge, man, in a lack of understanding. Just like the carbohydrate talk, people can get really scared of them. But just some of the things you just listed, like certain types of fruits. I'll get people, Oh, you can't eat fruit. I'm like, Dude, what? What are you talking about? That's just not true. Who told you that? And the honey, of course, there's bad carbs, there's bad fats, there's bad protein. You know what I mean? I mean, less probably in the pro... But there are. You can find things that are full of protein that are completely filled with crap ingredients otherwise. Protein bars, for example, like many, right?

So there's bad things-It's a four-a-five candy bar, right?

Yeah, a lot of them, man. I mean, jeez, make your own. I think that's key. I love the whole breakdown. Everything that we do has to be person-to-person-specific in all the things you touched on, but also as we age, things change as our activity levels. For instance, I can't fast 24 hours when I'm training as hard as I can. So what do I do? I condense it to where I can still get in 12 to 14 hour fast, hit the workout, eat 2,000 calories in a matter of a couple of hours, and still get through it. I try to get about 3,000 with the intensity of workouts, but still have these two really big meals, and then keep it so you're not eating all day throughout the day. I found that to work for me. But you, you develop that and figure out what's going to work for each person. Now, I want to talk about your client base and who you work with and how you go about it. You work with entrepreneurs now or more well-established business people, right? Isn't that where you're at with what you do?

Yeah. I've actually, just surprisingly, have fell into this niche. It was a few things in particular that I was trying to chase. But I was working with a handful of high-end real estate agents, and fortunately had really great results. Real estate agents are well known for loving coaching. I really have enjoyed working with real estate agents because they really lean into and appreciate and value having a coach. They're adapted to that mindset. But I've been fortunate to slide into this little niche of high-end real estate agents and high-level entrepreneurs. My program at this stage is more of a referral basis. Humbly speaking, you got to know somebody to get into my program, somebody who's been in the program prior to to make an introduction, just because Because the level of my program, it really requires... You've got to have a high desire for wanting to make this transformation, make this change right out of the gate, number one. Number two, I have so many layers of accountability built into my program. There's a lot of oversight. It's not to babysit or to handhold, but it's because this is the level of involvement and engagement people really need if they want to experience the breakthroughs that they're talking about when they come to me.

Everybody wants to look like a million, but not a lot of people want to put in the work that it takes to get there. And so what I really pride myself on is taking a look at an individual who has spent their life building their wealth and success at the expense of their health and wellness. Now they've got this infrastructure of all these things that they have worked so hard for in their lives and showing them where we can make some small some additions, some subtractions, and some substitutions to basically feel like it's a seamless integration of my program into their life. But the results that they're getting are dramatically different in a good Anyway. Learning that certain foods they should be focusing on. People are eating all day long, usually anyways. It's just about learning what food you should be eating. People are going to the gym and working out anyways, but they may not be performing the right exercises that are appropriate for them, or lifting with the right amount of weight, or the right rep ranges, or the right amount of rest period in between sets. You're using good form and technique.

Some people might be sacrificing sleep because they think in their minds, that grind culture is where it's at, when in reality, the flex right now is more sleep equals better recovery equals better hormone balance equals better results. So it's Being able to take an individual who is really operating at a high level and thinks more in ROI than they think in reps, and so that I can teach them where they can get the greatest ROI in the decisions that they're making on a moment-to-moment basis throughout the day to start producing this whole new way of thinking, acting, being, and doing that is as easy as waking up and taking their first breath once they get in the rhythm of these new habits and these new routines.

Awesome. Oh, man. I'm curious. Some of the challenges that you may have with people in, I don't want to say people in power, but upper-level type of people, they can be more challenging, more demanding. Or do you find that they're very receptive and just really open to everything, or is it just a wide variety of people you run into? Have you had to turn people down that don't really fit with your style of coaching? Because I think it's important that there's a real resonation between coach and client, and sometimes it just doesn't work for whatever reason. I want to get behind the scenes a little bit with you and how it rolls, because I always told my wife when we had our gym and we had other businesses together, not all money is good money. That's one of the lessons I wanted to teach her right away. Don't just take just because it's like, Well, we can sell these memberships, well, do you think they're going to end up costing us more in stress? Than what it's worth. I think sometimes people that are gung-ho, new to business or don't understand, and they just take it, take, take, take.

It's like, Man, just understand me that that's going to cost you way more than you have that you're going to actually get from it.

Yeah, you're preaching to the choir with that one because, again, humbly speaking, I don't work with every single person that comes my way. When someone gets introduced to me that is interested in the program, My consults are designed in a way to figure out whether or not, not if it's just a good fit for them, but if it's also a good fit for me. Because there's a certain it factor that I'm looking for from an individual that I know that I can partner with to create an amazing outcome. I always present to the people that I'm working with, the potential clients that, Hey, listen, if we do this, we're actually going into business together. We're We're going into business together and we're going to form an LLC, and the LLC is you. You're hiring me as a CEO, and you are the COO. And your job is to go out and execute while I create the vision for the company. That's to be taken very seriously. For some people, that's not what they're looking for, and I'm okay with that. Again, no judgment on something. Not everybody's looking for that level of coaching and training and are looking for that level of transformation.

But for me, what I get the most out of is working with individuals who are that hungry for a massive lifestyle transformation, not just abs. Just getting abs, just getting to 10% body fat, to me, that's a low-level steak that creates a lot of pressure. I'm interested in people who are looking to transition and transform their life that creates purpose and creates a lot of positive feedback loops and drive. I know that's going to create opportunity for commitment and follow through and accountability. Those are high-level stakes that create more purpose, in my opinion. It generally starts there for me in terms of that consult and just figuring out where people are at to make sure that we're meeting each other in the right place and the right opportunity. I think the biggest challenge that anybody has coming into a program like mine is, oftentimes, they haven't ever really experienced what it's like to feel amazing. What I try to do as quickly as possible is get them to stay as focused and as 100% on point in the program as they can right out of the gate. Because I know if they can give me 2-3 weeks of just being locked in on the diet, locked in on the supplements, locked in on the training, locked in on all of their mobility work, pre-workout and evening mobility, making making sure you're getting really great sleep, they're managing their stress, they're doing all their recovery protocols.

If they're doing all that for two, three weeks, inevitably, almost every single time, I've got people coming back and truly going, Holy shit. My face looks different. The inflammation is down. My gut is better. I'm digesting food better. My energy is through the roof. Now, they've had an opportunity to gain evidence of what it looks and feels like to take yourself care to that level. I no longer have to try to work so hard to drag somebody along through the process. Now they're bought in Now we get to dance together. Now it's like, Hey, tell me what to do, I'll do it. Follow my lead, trust the process. We built that trust very early on because they got the evidence themselves. They're not just listening to me speak, and they're assuming that it's just theory or he's just preaching science. No, they've actually felt it themselves. They've gotten that feedback and evidence. It then allows us to just launch from there. If I can get a 2-3 week window right out of the gate of people just locking in, which generally I do. Of course, there's some people that struggle a little bit more. Not often people who are intentionally being dismissive.

It's usually people People are trying to get the rhythm, and they might struggle a little bit with finding the flow. Some people are a little bit slower than others to get there, but generally, people are pretty quick to get there just by the way that I design things within my program and work with nuances individually, you know what I can get for a result from somebody really quickly so they can taste and feel and smell what it feels like to get that self-care really high. Once you experience that, you never want to go back to the old way they were operating it. It gets fun really, really fast. They start to feel that addiction because nothing tastes better than feeling amazing. It's just a lot less convincing and struggling to pull them along versus like, now we're in this together, we're just playing malt.

Yeah. A couple of things you brought up. I remember when I first started doing videos, and I always get these, I just want to look good naked questions. How do I do that? At the time, I was early 30s new to this, and I just lapped it. Now I look at it completely different, more analytically and more like almost in a... I almost feel bad for the person that's where their mind is and not fully understanding what you set, which is the pressure that comes along with that. And when you're only focused on, Well, I just want a six-pack, and we can all get it. We can get it without drugs. We certainly can. That's proven because some people think you can't without taking things. But then when you get it, it's not getting there that's hard. It's keeping it. It's just like when you become a champion. It's actually getting there is the easy part, keeping it when the target's on you, when the pressure is hard, when it's more difficult to do it day in and day out. That's the hard part, and that's where the work comes in. I think that people don't understand what you're getting and what you should really be trying to get throughout this process.

It becomes a mental grind, not just a physical grind. When you start having the mental problems, then you have the internal problems, you have the inflammation, you got the lack of sleep because your mind's all over the place, and it can compound into a lot of problems. You have a very, very big job that people don't understand that I want to stress because a lot of people... It's like the people that try to tell you how to run a business that have never ran one and that do that. They don't understand the different costs and expenses and how... Well, they look at the raw component of stuff. Well, you have this big of a markup. Yeah, well, what about paying this, this, this, this, and this? Then you see the margin goes down to nothing. Well, with you, you have far more that you have to do aside from just designing a diet and fixing it and making sure somebody's training right. You're almost like a psychologist throughout all of this or a psychiatrist listening...

I mean, I take notes seriously on my clients. I know what they're doing, when they're doing it, why they're doing it at all times. That's the level that I get involved. The reason why that's important is because as I'm making those notes constantly, something's coming up in a few days for them that I just sent them a text about to remind them, Hey, make sure you start packing and prepping your protein powder, your supplements. You got a trip coming up on Saturday. You got to make sure that I don't want you doing this last minute because you're going to be flustered. You got a lot of things on your plate. If you're organized now, it's going to be a much smoother process, less stress. It's going to reduce the chaos for you to start. Oh, yeah. Thanks for the reminder. Appreciate that. I'm actually trying to train their brain how to think like an individual who wants to maintain this high level of self-care and health and wellness. This is the way you need to be thinking and preparing and organizing your life if that's something that you want to maintain. It's not just about the actual act of eating the food all the time.

It's actually how do you set your life up so that things just flow smoothly. That takes a lot of practice. Most people are conditioned to think that way. It's try to teach them how to think in the same manner that's commensurate with somebody who cares a lot about their self-care and their body and the way they feel. You could easily go on a trip somewhere and be like, I forgot to pack my protein powders. I forgot to pack my snacks. I forgot to pack my supplements, all these things that I usually take with me that help me maintain a high level of self-care. But then you're gone for a week on a trip and you feel like shit because you didn't plan and prepare. But somebody who takes that very seriously, they don't forget that stuff because it's that important to them. They make the time to be organized and prepared and plan ahead to make sure they're always operating at that high level. It's, again, I don't fault people for not thinking that way. They're just not conditioned and used to thinking that way. A lot of times I'm I'm shoulder tapping people with text messages and just dripping them with the foresight and the way they need to be thinking ahead because I got notes on.

I know exactly what's going on in their life and what's coming up. I know they forgot about this detail, but I'm going to remind them because me reminding them and then them taking the action, they're getting into the habit of starting to think that way. It's like the training wheels for a period of time. Eventually, we kick the training wheels off because now they're thinking this way, now they're organizing and planning this way. So it eventually starts to be something that passes off onto them. They pick up and start running with it on their own. But again, for each individual, some people are taking that hand off a lot faster than others. Some people, it takes them a little bit longer to learn how to ride with those training wheels. So it's a little different for everybody. But it's really about training people. What I love is teaching people that thought process and how much you need to care if you really are adamant about wanting to look, feel, and function a certain way in your life. It's not just automatic. You don't just wake up and feel amazing and wait up and look amazing.

No, you don't just wake up and have a amazing bloodwork. You work hard at maintaining a lifestyle that when you get your bloodwork done every six months and the doctor is going, Man, you're 50, but physiologically, your body is arguably 35. What are you doing? Well, I pay attention to my nutrition. I get 8 hours of sleep. I'm taking a lot of great high-quality supplements to fill in the gaps where I'm lacking in certain areas. I care a lot about my body. You got to put in that effort. Otherwise, you're going to be in a position that a lot of people are, which is they react to something. They react to an event, and then they take that action after they're in a position where they're being forced to have to do something rather than doing it initially ahead of time to prevent or mitigate any type of catastrophic health.

This is something that you live. This is not a, go sign up with or whoever you're going to sign up with, do it for six weeks, get into this, and then move on. No, no, no, no, no, day-to-day, how you live. I know people like you and I can be extreme, probably to some people. But when it comes to people, Oh, you got to live and you got to do this, well, you can't really live or enjoy your life if you're just completely screwed up internally and your health markers off. I'm not saying- If you're sick, you have low energy, if you don't have good cognitive function and resilience, if you don't feel good about yourself, you don't have that self-steam and that self-confidence, arguably that is not living a good quality life.

No.

Just have a drink or it's okay, it's just one or two or three. But the more that I've studied and I learned, even one drink is so poison inside your body, and then you accumulate that, and, Oh, it's just one here, it's just one there, and then you do it over the course of a year. Man, it's not good. There are ways that you can live your life and still do it in a good way that you're teaching and that we're developing. When I go on, because I go speak at a lot of conventions and go do appearances and things, I don't ever get a place without a kitchen and cook all my own stuff. I may be, like I say, I take a scale and I still measure, and I do everything, and that's fine. But I do it with precision because I want to make sure that everything that's going on is always in check. Once or twice here or there, okay, but it can accumulate. When once or twice becomes this once or twice a week. And then if you sit down and add up the accumulation, because I'm a data guy just like you.

I want to see it on paper. I don't want to just go, Oh, and think in my head, oh, it was just here or there. I want to look down and break down the numbers and see. And you look at that and you go, well, holy shit. Look at that accumulation. It's like the guys that tell you, what is 12 grams of sugar in something? And they show you in a spoon or a container, and that's how much sugar you just ate once? Think about doing that 20 times. I know.

You know what I mean? Because it makes me think about some of the clients that I work with, they run multimillion dollar organizations. If you ask them about their PnL for their business, they'll tell you that thing inside and out. They know what they have in their hand. But if I ask them, what's their cholesterol? What's their triglycerides? What's their AST, ALT? If I ask them, what's their testosterone levels? They have no clue. No clue. And so that analogy usually smacks people in the face pretty fast to realize there is no greater, more important number or data sheet that you need to be paying attention to than your bloodwork. Because without that, nothing else matters. Nothing else matters. That's in particular why I actually really enjoy working with an older demographic. I generally am working with clients that are late 30s plus, all the way into early '70s. Because at that age, it's more important than ever for us to be really paying attention to that blood work and paying attention to how your body moves and mobility and flexibility. Because those are the prime ages where things can turn really bad or You can really hold things off from the aging process.

There's a saying that I love that age does not dictate how you move. How you move dictates how you age. And so mobility is a prime foundation of my programming and also making sure that people are doing bloodwork. Because if you don't move well and if you don't know what's going on under the hood, then without those two things, it's going to make it very, very difficult to build long-term sustainability with an individual in terms of keeping their health in a really great place so that they live a high-quality life for a long period of time, which is what most people really want. In your 20s and 30s, you're not really experiencing a lot of those aches and pains. You're going out after a heavy night of drinking, you're bouncing back the next day and going right back at it. You don't really feel that. You're not thinking about getting your bloodwork done and making about high levels of responsibility and accountability. But as we get older, that certainly becomes much more important. One person might position it to guys like you and I as extreme, whereas I would say it's not necessarily It's really extreme because I do believe in trying to find balance, but it's more about just awareness and paying attention to the things that are really important.

You got agreed.

It's just you can't argue that paying attention to your health and looking at bloodwork and making sure that all those markers are in a good place. That is an extreme. That's smart. As an owner of a company, if you took your eye off your PnL, what would we call that extreme? Because you're always looking at the numbers. No, because you take your eye off the PnL. Your business could fail and you're out of business. Lots of people lose their jobs. You lose your lifestyle. You lose your income or a roof over your head. What happens to your family? But it's just viewed a little differently. I have not until somebody faces a health crisis until they realize, Oh, wait, it's not extreme for me to be paying attention to these things. It's been a massive blind spot. I need to start looking at these things and making sure it's a priority.

Yeah, that's a great analogy, dude. Seriously, that is so spot on. It's a fact, if you're not analyzing the financials daily, and that's a daily thing of the many tasks, especially with a larger business, you take one day off and You could have a problem. Same with inventory, same with anything else. I don't think people take that as serious with their health at all. They'd let days turn into weeks, turn into months, turn into years, no bloodwork, no this, no that. Then people wonder why they find one day, Oh, I have cancer. Oh, I have this. I'm not saying that that can't still happen even to people that take care of this because it can. But chances of it happening are a hell of a lot less.

But also, too, that the body gives us a lot of science. I call it body language. Our bodies are always speaking to us. Sometimes it could be heartburn or indigestion. Sometimes it could be brain fog. Sometimes it could be chronic IBS. Now is your body speaking to you? Some people are just getting the signs, but then they're just blowing right through the stop signs as if it's not paying attention, not being aware. Then shortly down the road, something pops up and they're thinking themselves, Man, this came out of nowhere, when in reality, your body has been screaming at you, trying to get you to wake up, and you're just not paying attention. Again, these are things that I'm really passionate about, about teaching this level awareness and sense of self, what to pay attention to, so that people are just realizing their potential of how they could look, feel, and function on a day-to-day basis. Because once you get that evidence, you'll never go back. It's very easy to give up things from the past when you've experienced something amazing in the present that just shows you something otherwise. It's not about just listening to a podcast and hearing us talk or listening to the likes of anybody, like Peter Attia or Andrew Huberman or anybody who is in this space.

We're all talking about the same things, the same benefits. But until somebody actually experiences it for themselves, It sometimes can be really challenging for them to take action. If I get an opportunity to work with an individual, I'm always asking lots of questions about just trying to understand how they're feeling, what's going on, because sometimes they don't even know what to think about or look for or pay attention to. I'm trying to extract as much of that as I can because there's a couple of things that I can help improve quality of life and quality of health. That's enough for us to get some evidence to really just dig in and just keep pushing and realize and unlock a tremendous amount of potential for that individual.

I love it, man. I have 20 other things I wanted to talk to you about, and we're out of time.

I think we may- This time, too.

Yeah, I think for sure because I want to get into some other aspects, like overcoming a lot of bad information. I wanted to talk about cholesterol myths and stuff and get into some more deeper, intricate details. I think this was nice to cover over the aspects of what it's like to be as a trainer, things for you that you deal with as a coach. This is a really good part one. Then we'll set up a part two where we can get into more in-depth, in-detail, controversial shit that we want to get into and to talk about. But real quick, though. Right now, to hire you, there's a protocol to go through. How can people get in with you that want to work with you? I don't know, what level do they need to be at because you have your certain demographic that you work with. What can people do to work with you and follow you if you put out content or anything like that?

Yeah, it's interesting. I'm counterculture in the sense of what you see people in the fitness industry nowadays. I don't really post a lot of content. The reason being is that I really dedicate and allocate all my time and my resources to the clients I'm working with. If I'm out making lots of content, it takes away from my ability to be present with my clients and be able to bring that value to them. So worse. I just find a lot more value there than I do. There's plenty of guys in the fitness industry who are popping lots of content and are probably far better than me at doing it. But for me, personally, I just really enjoy making sure I have space and that time to work with my clients and be available for my clients.

Sure.

But you can certainly... I still have a presence on Instagram. It's just my name, Chris D'Avecchio. You can find me on Instagram. If somebody's interested in the program, I think the easiest way is to just email me, chris@pmblife. Com. Maybe we can add to the show notes somewhere here at the end of the podcast. Just send me a brief email, just giving me a little background, and that you'd be interested in setting up a consult. Then from there, we would deep dive in a 45 to 60-minute consult to figure out whether or not this is really a good fit for the both of us. But yeah, that's the easiest way to get a hold of me. I'm looking for individuals who are really at a place in their life where they're ready for a dramatic change, a very impactful change. This is something that it's a lot of work, but it's also really fun because you're learning about yourself. One thing I've learned about myself is that just when I think I've got it all figured out is like, I've got so much more to learn about myself. For me, I'm just I'm sponge, I'm soaking up new information and new studies and research.

On top of that, just learning new little nuances about myself as I get older and age, so through the process. But people who are really just passionate passionate about wanting to create a pretty radical change in their life, that's who I'm excited to work with. If that's you out there, shoot me an email. I'm happy to connect and set up a time to chat and learn about you and see if this is a good fit. But I really appreciate the time today, man. We've had lots of chats just on the side, you and I. I don't think we've ever gone this deep into our own personal methodologies and beliefs. I'm grateful for this platform because it gets us deeper as well, you and I.

Yeah. To me, this wasn't even a recording or a podcast or work or anything. It was just another badass conversation that I got to spend some time with you and chill and not work at all to me. Not that it really ever is, but this is different. This is more like, Okay, sweet, man. Now I'm really just more stuff that you and I have in common and then I can learn. I like to learn different approaches approaches and different mindsets that people have. One of the things that I used to do that I am so thankful that I don't anymore is just that always my way is the only way or the best way, and not necessarily ever is that true. In fact, more times than not, I find that, no, it's really not. I take bits and pieces from people, and I implement, and I correlate, and I put it with my own and try to derive the best. I think when you realize that what you speak isn't gospel and learn from everybody, and sometimes it's learning what they do wrong. But there's always a lesson. I value the time with you, especially since we relate so well.

But you open my eyes to maybe things that I either didn't notice or maybe I'm wrong about, or maybe it at least gives me a, Well, maybe I'll check this out and see what I think. It's just like foods I've eaten or things that I've done where I've this in my head that I don't like it without even trying it. I don't know. Maybe that's the older I get. Maybe it's the more enriched with God I get. Maybe it's who knows what. But I'm just thankful for people like you that can make it easy to really learn and take a look within and say, Well, shit. This guy, he's got something different. I appreciate it, man. Thank you. To be candid, like I said at the beginning, just you will never, ever, ever ever be underappreciated or forgotten just the way that you were with me initially with barely even knowing me. I value it to the highest extent, man, really.

Thanks for sharing that, man. It's been a pleasure. How we came together was through a mutual friend, obviously. He was right with his instincts about wanting to connect us.

Yeah. God grace, brother. That's it. When I have no answer, it's very simple. There's always an answer. I appreciate it. I appreciate the time, and I look forward to recording again. Maybe it'll be in person next time, I hope.

What?

Awesome, brother. Well, thank you again. All right, everybody. I Really, really, really hope that this hits home for you and it gives you a better, broader understanding of so many different aspects of health and fitness and what goes along with it. This has been a pleasure and an honor to have my friend Chris here. So stay tuned for plenty more to come. Dylan Jamelian. Dylan Gimeli and Chris DiVecchio signing off.