If you know my wife Rochelle, you know she is a bit of a podcast junkie. She walks a lot, listens a lot, and rotates through three main shows: The Lazy Genius with Kendra Adachi, For the Love with Jen Hatmaker, and The Tim Ferriss Show with Tim Ferriss.
If you know me, you already know which one sits at the top. Tim Ferriss has always been one of my favorite authors, thinkers, and podcasters. Tools of Titans is still my all time favorite book. It is just a straight compilation of the best ideas from the best interviews. If you are into human performance, it is incredible. And if you know Tim, tell him he owes us a follow up because that book came out in 2016 and we need the next edition.
Rochelle recommends podcast episodes to me all the time, but a few weeks ago she came in hot. “You HAVE to listen to this one,” all caps, non negotiable. It was the episode with Tim and David Baszucki, the co founder of Roblox. If you are a parent with kids anywhere between six and sixteen, you already know what Roblox is. If you do not, it is an online platform where people play and create millions of user made games across every genre imaginable. It is one of the largest digital playgrounds in the world, with more than 150 million people logging in every day. Both my kids love it, which is why Rochelle wanted me to listen.
So, like any good husband, I listened.
And it went in a direction I did not expect. I assumed it would be business, strategy, and scaling all the things. There was some of that, but the beginning of the episode took a really unexpected turn. David shared the heartbreaking story of his son Matthew’s battle with bipolar disorder. The detail and level of vulnerability he brought to that conversation was unreal. I will not spoil it here, but I would encourage you to go listen. We linked it at the bottom of the newsletter.
What surprised me was what David discovered as a tool to help his son manage his bipolar; a ketogenic diet. This is not going to teach you how to do keto or why I believe keto is the end all be all. That is not the point. As a coach, I have believed for a long time that so much of the anxiety, depression, stress, and overwhelm people feel is not purely psychological. It is physiological. What is happening in our bodies is driving what is happening in our brains meaning our moods are metabolic.
I first learned about this by reading Casey Means’ book Good Energy. In the book Means makes the case that metabolism is the single greatest contributor and foundational element to long lasting vital health. Metabolism is how your body turns food and drink into energy, providing energy for essential functions like breathing and digestion. She writes, “Metabolic health is the foundation of overall health; when it is off, everything else is too.”
During the podcast Tim mentioned “metabolic psychiatry.” I had never heard that term. So I looked it up. Metabolic psychiatry is a new field that treats mental health by treating metabolic dysfunction. It looks at things like insulin resistance, inflammation, and nutrient deficiencies and recognizes how they show up as depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, or cognitive decline.
With western medicine, we have specialized ourselves into forgetting the body is one interconnected system. Headache? Neurologist. Chest pain? Cardiologist. Mood? Psychiatrist. We are taught that our health lives in isolation, thus the solution does as well. But that is not how we actually work. Our parts communicate with each other.
I cannot tell you how many times I have had someone on a coaching call spiraling, melting down, overwhelmed. And before we go anywhere I will ask:
“Walk me through the past 24 hours. What did you eat? What did you drink? How much did you sleep? Did you get sunlight? Move your body? How much screen time?”
The vast majority of the time, when they lay it all out, the emotional chaos makes perfect sense.
And then I will ask them:
“If someone else described this same 24 hour cycle to you the skipped meals, the sugar, the four hours of sleep, the no sunlight, the doom scrolling would you be surprised they feel stressed or anxious?”
Of course not. We have been conditioned to self soothe and regulate through chemicals instead of consciousness and then wonder why we feel so out of sorts.
It is not normal to feel stressed, anxious, foggy, or overwhelmed all the time. We have normalized it, but it is not normal. If your car is acting up, you would not just pour in higher octane fuel or drive it harder. You would look under the hood. Yet this is exactly what achievers do. We try to push through. Hustle harder and trick our minds into feeling better. It does not work. Then we break down, the shame starts talking, trying to convince us that we are somehow weak. You are not weak. You are solving the wrong problem.
Your body is a living breathing biome that responds to both good and bad. If you watered a plant with Red Bull and it started to wither, you would not be surprised. If you hid that plant in a room with no natural light but left a computer screen on for it, its imminent death would not surprise you. Your brain and body are the same. So many of your emotional states are actually just a byproduct of how you have been treating yourself physically. Once you stop and reflect, it becomes a truth so obvious you cannot unsee it.
Remember this forever. Your mood equals your metabolism. Good energy creates better thinking. Better thinking creates better choices. Better choices create better days. Stop trying to stimulate and soothe through man made chemicals. Take your health seriously and look for the most obvious clues that would allow you to live inside the best version of you possible.If you know my wife Rochelle, you know she is a bit of a podcast junkie. She walks a lot, listens a lot, and rotates through three main shows: The Lazy Genius with Kendra Adachi, For the Love with Jen Hatmaker, and The Tim Ferriss Show with Tim Ferriss.
If you know me, you already know which one sits at the top. Tim Ferriss has always been one of my favorite authors, thinkers, and podcasters. Tools of Titans is still my all time favorite book. It is just a straight compilation of the best ideas from the best interviews. If you are into human performance, it is incredible. And if you know Tim, tell him he owes us a follow up because that book came out in 2016 and we need the next edition.
Rochelle recommends podcast episodes to me all the time, but a few weeks ago she came in hot. “You HAVE to listen to this one,” all caps, non negotiable. It was the episode with Tim and David Baszucki, the co founder of Roblox. If you are a parent with kids anywhere between six and sixteen, you already know what Roblox is. If you do not, it is an online platform where people play and create millions of user made games across every genre imaginable. It is one of the largest digital playgrounds in the world, with more than 150 million people logging in every day. Both my kids love it, which is why Rochelle wanted me to listen.
So, like any good husband, I listened.
And it went in a direction I did not expect. I assumed it would be business, strategy, and scaling all the things. There was some of that, but the beginning of the episode took a really unexpected turn. David shared the heartbreaking story of his son Matthew’s battle with bipolar disorder. The detail and level of vulnerability he brought to that conversation was unreal. I will not spoil it here, but I would encourage you to go listen. We linked it at the bottom of the newsletter.
What surprised me was what David discovered as a tool to help his son manage his bipolar; a ketogenic diet. This is not going to teach you how to do keto or why I believe keto is the end all be all. That is not the point. As a coach, I have believed for a long time that so much of the anxiety, depression, stress, and overwhelm people feel is not purely psychological. It is physiological. What is happening in our bodies is driving what is happening in our brains meaning our moods are metabolic.
I first learned about this by reading Casey Means’ book Good Energy. In the book Means makes the case that metabolism is the single greatest contributor and foundational element to long lasting vital health. Metabolism is how your body turns food and drink into energy, providing energy for essential functions like breathing and digestion. She writes, “Metabolic health is the foundation of overall health; when it is off, everything else is too.”
During the podcast Tim mentioned “metabolic psychiatry.” I had never heard that term. So I looked it up. Metabolic psychiatry is a new field that treats mental health by treating metabolic dysfunction. It looks at things like insulin resistance, inflammation, and nutrient deficiencies and recognizes how they show up as depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, or cognitive decline.
With western medicine, we have specialized ourselves into forgetting the body is one interconnected system. Headache? Neurologist. Chest pain? Cardiologist. Mood? Psychiatrist. We are taught that our health lives in isolation, thus the solution does as well. But that is not how we actually work. Our parts communicate with each other.
I cannot tell you how many times I have had someone on a coaching call spiraling, melting down, overwhelmed. And before we go anywhere I will ask:
“Walk me through the past 24 hours. What did you eat? What did you drink? How much did you sleep? Did you get sunlight? Move your body? How much screen time?”
The vast majority of the time, when they lay it all out, the emotional chaos makes perfect sense.
And then I will ask them:
“If someone else described this same 24 hour cycle to you the skipped meals, the sugar, the four hours of sleep, the no sunlight, the doom scrolling would you be surprised they feel stressed or anxious?”
Of course not. We have been conditioned to self soothe and regulate through chemicals instead of consciousness and then wonder why we feel so out of sorts.
It is not normal to feel stressed, anxious, foggy, or overwhelmed all the time. We have normalized it, but it is not normal. If your car is acting up, you would not just pour in higher octane fuel or drive it harder. You would look under the hood. Yet this is exactly what achievers do. We try to push through. Hustle harder and trick our minds into feeling better. It does not work. Then we break down, the shame starts talking, trying to convince us that we are somehow weak. You are not weak. You are solving the wrong problem.
Your body is a living breathing biome that responds to both good and bad. If you watered a plant with Red Bull and it started to wither, you would not be surprised. If you hid that plant in a room with no natural light but left a computer screen on for it, its imminent death would not surprise you. Your brain and body are the same. So many of your emotional states are actually just a byproduct of how you have been treating yourself physically. Once you stop and reflect, it becomes a truth so obvious you cannot unsee it.
Remember this forever. Your mood equals your metabolism. Good energy creates better thinking. Better thinking creates better choices. Better choices create better days. Stop trying to stimulate and soothe through man made chemicals. Take your health seriously and look for the most obvious clues that would allow you to live inside the best version of you possible.
live freed,
Jordan
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