Eat Like A Legend: Chef Dan Churchill On Fueling Your Body For Peak Performance

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I'm here to help people cook more, cook better, and ultimately see the impact that food has on your overall life and performance. My guest today is Dan Churchill, a chef whose specialty is food designed a fuel not just health, but also athleticism.

Most people when they say they're eating healthy, they truly don't understand what that means, it's quite a generic statement. These individuals are deficient in the nutrition they're putting out because they're trying to look good without thinking about what's best for their performance.

He is the current executive chef, Asprey, in Brooklyn's one hotel. He also produces a dizzying amount of instructional and inspirational content, and he's the author of the newly released cookbook Eat Like a Legend. I started cooking at the age of 11. Follow your passion and lean in and actually dedicate yourself to it. That's how you get anywhere, and that's kind of what I did.

I'm here to help people in the spa to create their habits and retain to live a healthy lifestyle. Of course, I am changing the world through food. So good to see you. Thank you for coming out here. I've been looking forward to this for a long time, man. Can I just say, I feel I represent so many people with one about the same, the sense that how much you have influenced, I don't know you hear this, but I really mean it.

You're a mate, but you've influenced so many people in this space, and so on behalf of everyone listening right now, I want you to know how much you and your team have impacted just so many people.

I appreciate that. Thank you, man. Thanks. Likewise yourself. You are doing so many things. I don't know how you fit it all in. I want to get into like your daily schedule, which sounds like such a grind just based on me observing all the stuff that you share with the world and all your many obligations and responsibilities. It's absolutely insane, but in reflecting upon how to get into this with you and what I wanted to explore with you, I was trying to remember how we first met.

I can't remember you not in my life, but I don't remember how I actually first met you. Yeah, how was it, man? Was it? I think maybe we were maybe introduced online and we became like internet buddies, and then maybe I just went to Charlie Street. I think that's how it happened.

Yeah, it's actually how it is. Yeah, remember that. You were sitting at table table two. I don't know what it was, but I think that I was in New York City, and I just walked down there and tried to see if you were hanging around. That's how we first met. And that became like a tradition. Every time I go to New York City, I generally stay on the Lower East Side or in the East Village, and it's just a short walk to Charlie Street, which sadly is no longer.

That's what you close it down, but that was like my go to, and I would never tell you ahead of time. I would just like to show up and surprise you. And what was interesting is there were all these people that were hanging out there, and some of them were just like working. People who work for athletic greens and various brands that you work with that I work with, who just kind of made that like their HQ.

It's became genuinely the social part of my day every day with people coming in and out of that place. And I think that's one thing you kind of maybe take for granted upon reflection is like it may be hard work, but also it ticked a lot of boxes. And that's what that was for me. So like, you know, meeting people like yourself, meeting anyone just coming through New York City, you register how important like community truly is.

So it's great. Like I loved it. It was served an amazing purpose there, you know, and the people there obviously in our space, like health and wellness inspired to bring a positive light to those around them. And that connection that community brings and creates even just much more positivity in my opinion. Yeah, it was a community hub like group runs would start there. There were always people congregating outside and you would be leading people on some workout or something like that.

So extended, you know, well beyond just it being like this restaurant. So it's sad that it doesn't exist anymore, but it probably is liberating for you as well. I know trying to run a restaurant is not an easy thing. Yeah. Financially or just in terms of how you allocate your time. Well, that's the thing. I think, you know, I was reading a book and I forgot the name of it. It's like talking about how good things come to an end and how to reflect on it.

And effectively when that came to an end, it was a relief. And people were on the last day of service. Everyone's like, how do you feel? And I'm like, I'm upset about the people I'm not going to see every single day because we had babies grow up. We had friends and businesses, you know, almost be catalyst out of that space. But then the time I got back versus the reward outside of that.

I wasn't personally growing outside of it either. So like, I got so much my time back. Yeah. And also led to other creative ideas and like new restaurant. All these positive things. Yeah, we'll get into all of that. But I want to talk a little bit about the Aussie spirit. I mean, Charlie Street was like your way of bringing a little bit of Australia to New York City.

You know, it's no news to you that Australia holds a special place in my heart. Byron has sort of become a second home in the way that New York City can be for me as well. And I now have like community there and so many friends. And my love for Australia and Australia and Australians.

Dates back. I remember one story in particular around when finding ultra came out. This is 2012. And I was doing my best to like push this book out into the world in the way that you're about to saying yes to every opportunity I could find to like give a talk or do a signing.

And I didn't have a big following or anything like that at the time. So it was like whatever I could get I was going to take. And you know, I pushed the book out into the world and it wasn't a New York Times best seller, but it's slowly kind of found its own audience. But I did this one talk in Los Angeles in particular. It was at a small like community room in the department complex near the Grove, you know, where the Grove is in town.

And I had announced it ahead of time and all the kind of stuff. And I said to Julie on the way over like I have more than like two people show this thing like I have no idea what's going to happen. And it doesn't matter like this is the way that it goes right. Well sure enough two people showed up. Asher Gunsberg and Dan McPherson my two Australian buddies loyal to the Hilt who just sat in the front row and were happy to be there. And I was like glad that they were there, but also embarrassed.

You know, and so after that I was like you are my guys. Well, they're too pretty influential people in Australia. Well, yeah, they're great. But I think it speaks to something about the Australian character.

I feel like the moment I started talking to you about Australia, you lit up right. We've got a we've got a sense of chill back relaxed attitude. And you speak to most people and they say you're Aussie, I'm always going to go to your country or you know, I love the way that you guys are just so relaxed and chill and fun and happy.

You're always so happy, you know, we always have this so happy vibe. And it's interesting because it actually something I had to battle coming over here personally because you're that person. But if you don't have substance and if you try to almost always be Aussie, you disconnect from an audience.

But I can understand how specifically the wellness space for the people we like love being around the last time we love like we love that in Australia and barren, you know, Sydney, Bondi, all these places. They just exude it. I was just back there for a week and I'm like, you know, I grew up I will board shorts everywhere. That's all I wore. Did you grow up on the beaches?

Yes. So the northern beaches of Sydney, there's a stretch of beaches at about 20 odd beaches from Palm Beach down to Manly. So if you fly into Sydney, most people go to Bondi. If you then get a ferry from say circular keywear, the beautiful harbor of the Opera House and the Sydney Harbor Bridge are you get like a 20 minute ferry to Manly. And I was about, you know, 15 beaches up from that. And that was my life. Like it's definitely its own bubble.

And for me, that was, you know, my last style. And I was blessed to have surfing during the middle of school. I played rugby on weekends. You know, everything was always sunny like it is in LA.

And the idea of cold was 16 degrees Celsius. And my parents weren't rich. We were poor. Like we, once I poor, we weren't like the worst people. But like we didn't have a very well off life. But I have two incredible brothers who I call like some of my best mates. And my mom and dad were just, they're two different people. It's pretty crazy.

I just was happy. And I wasn't really, I've never been really materialistic. And they kind of look back on on that as someone who grew up in the northern beaches of Sydney, you're very chilled. You know, the idea of dinner is tie take out. And so that's like curious to me when it comes to food of how where my fondness of food came from as well. But because I grew up in such an outdoorsy last time, just always been a feeling like health and sunlight and.

Yeah, yeah, and always been fit active team sports, individual sports also. Yeah, yeah. It's such a beach swimming culture. It's another as a swimmer like I just can't believe like the culture around swimming there. And the pools that seem to be everywhere. Does everybody do like those life saving courses and all the lifeguarding kind of stuff is that like part of growing up as an active young teenager.

I think parents will want to get their kids into swimming pretty early because they said it's like a pretty natural thing to obviously support the lifestyle making sure they're having safety and swim. But then you've also got being by the beach. It's like you go to snippers on Sunday and nippers is like this carnival of events at your local beach. And so you do respective different athletic abilities and you do a lot of water training. And then you potentially go into like life saving and it's like anything you in this environment where.

The sand and the water is your life so people want to continue to surround themselves with it if you're not working as a lifeguard you're surfing if you're not surfing you're working at the local smoothie bar if you're not there you're at a cafe and if you're not there you know it's probably Monday to Friday when you have to work in the city but you seen it made if anyone been to Australia you are on the beach you just you get this like amazing why don't I live here vibe and that's what I asked you why don't you still live in Australia yeah so why don't you.

Is it that for somebody who has ambition they have this need to stretch themselves yeah because you can just be at the beach and work at the coffee shop exactly and have a good life there's no judgment on that no not at all you know I'm just being back and cut up some friends and they're extremely happy and I'm really happy for them and I'm saying like Australia's always going to be there for me but I've always been interested in motivated to push and and strive for something that's greater than myself and I believe

when I first was thinking about you know Australia versus the world it's like Australia is a very small place like despite the land mass being respectfully somewhat similar to America relative the populations 25 million people right and so it's the size of greater New York city or Los Angeles exactly so you can't really impact the world from Australia and so particularly in my field and and I recognize pretty early on that if I wanted to have a positive impact on the world

global scale I had to take a risk in going to America it's very ambitious it's been the most amazing personal development I've could have ever asked for nothing as part of the challenge but you look at Australia to an out living outside of Australia and you do notice there's similarities between us all in the sense of our ambition our ability to be interested in other things going on that could you strive connection and I think that's why I've always been fascinated by

other areas of things that aren't even in my industry but just I'm just interested in learning and you see that connection between us all its ambition that drives us when did food come into the picture I mean I'm a middle of three boys that played rugby every weekend so foods always been in my picture but in terms of a professional stay I think like I started cooking at the age of 11

dad is a very you know stern individual but he's very forward thinking so he put together this time table after my brothers and I have you had of Jamie all of our you know Jamie yes so Jamie was someone I was so fascinated by and dad realized that my brothers and mother and I were always so fascinated this one moment every single week watching this guy on TV and registered that we'd ask questions we go across the table and say like what do you think

dad was like okay this is a great life skill for my boys to learn so put together a time table where each day you would be someone else's turn to cook oh wow and so over time like this there's obviously five us in the family and there's actually two days I just loved it and what started out as terrible meals that my mom and dad

were just very patient about actually it's like superannuation or 401k mom and dad didn't have to cook as much because I love to do so so as like an investment in a way that it was like amazing in the sense that I learned my passion for creativity and sensory and smell taste and and ultimately I didn't realize at the time but I love the connection I got with my family

through these meals because despite you know growing up and I said earlier that my brothers and I are very close those moments when you're not because you're going to be a lesson period but it was the one moment we would all be together and either giving feedback or just asking about your day and that's why I love food so much I found that not enough people

actually had that moment in time when they sat down and actually just like having a conversation that was like not how are you going but like no talk to me about your day and I relish in that and so 11 12 13 14 as I got older I really realized a passion for the power of food and the positive impact you and where my place was in that and the ability to be a young young male connecting in a way that most people weren't so you know I at the time

decided to maybe give sheafering ago and back then it was like you jump into a kitchen I put the wrong one been hindsight was great went to a catering place and all I did for 90 hours a week was peel broad beans because was the first thing that I could do right so I was like maybe I don't want to be a chef that really didn't

take my creative juice so to speak so then I finished high school so continue doing high school and I didn't really know what I wanted to do but I knew I love sport I knew I loved human performance so I decided to do an undergraduate and then a post graduate like a

master's degree in exercise science so learning about the human body was phenomenal putting that to athletes and individuals and camps or helping them in prove by an extra five to 10% was was gratifying but I was always brought back to food and I still be cooking and over time what took place was I realized that there's a bit of a disconnect at least at the time between the scientific nuance as you discuss here a lot

around nutrition and the application of it and so when I was you know effectively in these rooms with listening to nutritionist talk to these athletes about what they should be eating and like what numbers to hear and all the science bespoke it wasn't registering and I realized that was going to be a problem because the long term ability to adhere to any plan is to comprehend and understand and be brought in

so what I did was I essentially knew what the nutritionist was saying and I could connect with an athlete just based on our relationships and so I decided to put a recipe together for them to repeat based on I knew what the science was they don't need to know that I was teaching the recipe and it came back with really good feedback from like the athlete was just loving the food they just like I love cooking it was a good challenge

I love that can you give me another one so I was like sure so then my athletes started asking eventually like oh this pretty short period of time I'm like wow this is pretty impactful exactly what like Jamie was doing I then put together this cookbook called dude food right and self published that and so that was like the first for a into the food world if you will what's interesting about that is this story

around how destiny finds you almost like you have this love for food you enjoy the process of it but it's not really about the preciousness of the cuisine as much as it is this vehicle for connecting with other people and how you can kind of serve people right and you put it to the side when it wasn't fulfilling you you pursue this other thing it starts to happen to you right that you have this thing that you love that you can

apply to this other area that you care about performance in an interesting way and now you've kind of carved this path where you're doing both things and you're sheffing and food is at the forefront of what you're doing but I've always felt like it's not really the food itself it's food as a messenger for something else because you're so into all these other worlds that have to do with fitness and community etc so food is the tool not the like end in and of

itself which it can be for a certain type of chef that's it that's exactly it and I think I registered earlier it's like I don't want to be the best chef in the world like that was never my you know task but when I realize the connection as you said like I really understood like wow like I'm making a difference in these people's lives you know however small it is and that fulfills me that's my currency and so how do I do this on a bigger scale

and that's exactly what I pursued and that's kind of like what let me to America like after all the books and realizing I do have to get back into kitchens and actually learn how to cook professionally but the importance for me was 100% intrinsic motivator was not to do with the end product being around like the best cuisine on a plate it was what that whole process did for people right one of the inflection points was you doing master chef though in Australia what year was that 2013 2013

2013 yeah not that long ago 11 years ago was that prior to getting your culinary training or to the culinary training come after that yeah so how did you find yourself like on a reality show it's a great thing to be the thing right yeah yeah so true so watch master chef growing up like after being into all these food like after watching Jamie and you know cooking at home as a home cook I was like I want to watch these cooking shows and the ones that aren't drama

actually about the food and so master chef was something I watched vividly for many years and then I brought dude food out because I self published it not in itself taught me a lot of our business distribution problems with like costs of goods and that that in itself is a great

thing I registered like okay if I self publish a book and if this is something I want to do I need to better my skills and what better way then throwing yourself in the fire of it's like actually an eight month process for the show from start registering through to like four months of filming so you're away from your family and friends for a period of time but you're dedicated to this process of cooking having the best

chefs around you you're constantly just in a camp cooking camp and you're learning and if you applied yourself you just continue to learn so you know I applied for the show you go through three or four forms of like different stages and I got the call that I was to be potentially away for a certain period of time and yeah started doing it and to this day people look at that show master chef and see it is one of the best forms of

programs not only for families but for development hmm who were the mentor chefs so you had Gary George Columbaris and Matt Preston wow and then amongst that you had like I got to battle Heston Blumenthal like the chef who is that I don't know he's in he was one of the notorious chefs known for using liquid nitrogen to make ice cream

his restaurant the fat dark was known as the best in the world for many years essentially he started late in his career too but he took science and applied it to cooking in a really unique way and so when I did it one of the challenges that had in that show was I got to battle him but the judges didn't know

whose this was who's blind tasting and that really was like affirmation for me that I can cook at a high level some going off against the chef that right and so that was really really cool what the three judges said if you applied yourself in this skill set you lean in you know you go far and that's something I've always registered with anyone it's like follow your passion and lean in and actually dedicate yourself to it that's how you get

anywhere and that's kind of what I did well serve applying what you understand about how to be an athlete you know into this culinary art right yeah so how did you leverage that to take the next step like how did you decide to make this incredible leap and move to New York City did you know anyone in New York like why New York City yeah how much time transpired in between the master chef experience and the move

okay so during during the actual recording of master chef I knew that in order to capitalize on the PR exposure I need to also do another book so I was like I'm going to self publish my second book which is called the healthy cook so dude food led into master chef master chef and had the healthy cook that got me exposure on more TV programs in Australia which got me noticed in America

and I got picked up by a publisher I sent you flew over what I said we love you to meet with you and they want to pick up dude food and the same time I got asked to go on the shoe which was a program right on ABC so in order to get the visa that I wanted that process took a bit of time but eventually because of those two contracts got my visa so then I flew over and I didn't know

anyone so this is like what eight and a half years ago now I didn't know anyone over here and I went from kind of starting to become pretty well known in Australia but sick in the food space is early on social media was early like I was one of the first kind of do it to then landing in America having this book and this opportunity on these shows per regularly that's when I realized how far away America was very quickly yeah a little dose of humble pie

on man it was hooked up in the Dan Churchill kitchen so so how did you make ends meet and piece together and not run back home with your tell between your likes yeah great question so when the book didn't do well because no one really thought like ever looked at a number on social media thought that

applied to the world which all my following was in Australia no one knew me in America so like all that went downhill the show got cancelled you to some situation with one of the other host was on board and so then I'm like left with no money I had just signed a lease in New

York City which is not exactly cheap and so I got a call from a manager and was like I want you to come home I was at this point I'm like no it was never like a question of I'm going home just got here it was a question of how I'm going to stay and so I got out my

lease I slept on some catches for a period of time like a long time based on my legends friends and I started to think about okay I can work in restaurants know it that's not that's not a problem nothing's beneath me but how do I get to a position where building my brand back up to the space of where I know it can be and so I started to think about audience I started to think about impact I started to really be conscious of value add how do I add value the

people are going to want to continue to come see my content come see what I'm doing and be interested in me helping them which is exactly what I thought of with my book with like dude food and all these kind of things I really built it to a point where this is for a specific audience so started doing content specifically around recipes tips all that kind of stuff which got me noticed by companies chefs want me to help with them in their restaurants so at least I got to a position after some

time of one cutting costs but then also getting some income allow me to stay which was awesome so I felt good but then I was like okay it's one thing to stay how do you thrive and so I factually just SEO the crap out of all my content to be known as the healthy

healthy chef because that's position my brand so I position my brand that way through content online portals any team I worked with anything like that and eventually I got noticed by you know Lindsay Von under armor and that allow me to sign with them to

take the role of her chef at the Olympics in Pyeongchang right at that point I got picked up as in other brands as well which really started to solidify my presence but I think what that taught me was more than anything your affiliation through brand equity is

more important than the transactional relationship you get with those brands explain what that means so a lot of people look at getting in partnership and the first thing they'll do is look at a number associated with how much you get paid I've never personally been motivated by that

but if you think about the long term viability of your personal brand your personal brand your name and you're doing that for the rest of your life so why would you think about the next two years when you think about the value you need to get for the next 10 to 15 so by me working with

you like an under armor or an age you won all these companies at the time it's like you are getting potential more brand equity and exposure that can take you to another level afterwards right and also think about how you can use their resources support you in other areas get you in front of other

companies or do the things that you need to do to share your message on other platforms and so I think that kind of gets lost in this day in age where people think so transactional and they don't think about like the other value get I always say when people ask me like

what's important to think about working with companies like well would you do it for free not because you have to but because you get just as much awesome feeling and value out of working with this company then you would if you got paid and so it's a big lesson a lot because it's an authentic

relationship that you know serves the kind of message that you're putting out into the world and also I think on that transactional piece a lot of people look at it yes like what are you paying me but also they're not thinking about like how can I over deliver for the brand like what what is the service that you're providing them right like it's a partnership and these partnerships thrive when you have a

longer term view of what the possibilities can be if you're allowed to kind of grow and mature together but I think in general this idea of you carving this unique path like the typical path would have been well I'm just going to go work in restaurants and network and meet these other

chefs and and move up in some kitchen and maybe one day I'll have my own restaurant for you to say that's an option but I'm going to pursue this digital path and believes you know kind of my own thing out there I mean what year was this this would have been

2018 yeah 2018 and kind of reimagine what a career path for a chef could be is this hybrid mentality that you have like so many ways your hybrid chef your hybrid athlete you're a multi faceted person who's doing many things we're joking at the top like I don't know how you have time to do like you now are the head chef at the osprey which is the is it the executive chef is it what you're title executive chef at the osprey which is the restaurant at the one hotel in Brooklyn after

Charlie Street closed but in addition to that you're also like this fitness influencer and you're working with all these brands and you're making all these videos with recipes and now you have the book eat like a legend that's coming out you have a girlfriend and you have a dot like you have a lot you have a real life you're not just like a dude with roommates you know in a tiny apartment like you have a full life on top of all of these different things that

you're doing and I just know when Charlie Street was open and I would drop by you're in the kitchen you're greeting people as they're coming in your kind of the host running the show and then you would go out on the sidewalk and like lift this door out of the you know and go down into this basement where there was another kitchen and that was your production studio where you would just relentlessly shoot content for like I don't know how many hours a day and that

doesn't include the fitness videos and the community runs and all these other things that you're doing like in a podcast on top of that like and making tick-tock videos and going into people's houses and cooking for them we're going to talk about that it's a lot dude but it's unique to you and it speaks to this idea of I'm not just one thing I'm doing all these other things and as an athlete you are this like tactical athlete I think fundamentally like you can

deploy your fitness acumen in so many different areas you're not purely an endurance athlete or a runner you do many things like you can cross fit and whatever anybody's doing in the gym like you're probably better at it than most and we're going to get into that as well the reason I'm bringing it up is it's a mindset like it's a unique mindset and I think there's something courageous about that to say I could go and fit into this mold or that mold or be this person

or craft an identity around this but you're umbrella is broader than that so talk a little bit about how you think about career how you think about identity like how you've created this situation where you are able to do so many things and not get like pigeon hold into one thing or the other yeah it's it is a lot I like 100% and I think for me I've always done stuff that I just love I love doing and I feel that's that's part of it but I've definitely learnt over

the time the importance of going deep and I know that sounds contrary to what you just said but I've registered pretty early on that in the space and where I want to get to is I need a restaurant or something association the restaurant to be a chef in America so tick I should have digital presence and this is all they have the impact of like genuine influence on people positive influence a social presence it's good to have a book

and I think that's a great ability and then they talk about maybe having a show right all these things are great but I think the important thing is as you go deeper you start to say no more and despite all the things you said everything relates to fitness and food and that's where I registered if it doesn't even relate to that in some way there's no point doing it I also have an incredible team like you do that supports me and everything I do both in the restaurant

so I have you know I've got my operational team I've got the one hotel marketing team I've got that whole team as well so to be a chef these days as you said I didn't want to be in the restaurant every single day but I do love cooking and I want to empower a team and so I registered okay what role would it work to me to be in and the role that I have right now one hotels is incredible I love it how did that come together

so even a Charlie Street the culinary and the F&B team used to come into Charlie Street talk to me get my thoughts on things when I was towards the end of Charlie Street days they were coming be more consistently and one day they said hey we want to talk to you about an opportunity

so this is a good lesson to me it's like it didn't take me you know a year of them coming in it took me many years of learning how to run a restaurant in New York the persistence around team building and all these skills you learn up to this point it took me like seven years to have that moment

and that was a huge understanding reflection so when they asked me I said I'm super keen to do this these are my boundaries not because I don't want to do them just because I don't want to over promise anything that I can't do because of my time restrictions

this is what I'm going to crush these things right here and they were like yep that's what we want you to do and so that is essentially how it all started and it felt so good to sign that arrangement one because I love what the one hotel stands for as a boutique sustainable restaurant or hotel group but so it's like as a reflection of where there's markers in your life of affirmation to know you're on the right path for having the success that you want that was one of them so that took years

and the thing that you're interested in killing it at is the thing that you're strongest at so what was that like designing the menu kind of being the face of this being an ambassador you're not in the kitchen cooking all I mean you'll go in there

I see the videos and all that kind of stuff so it's not like you're not in the kitchen but you're not the one who's in the kitchen every single night preparing the meals no no so if I want to be I can there's not so I just like I kind of feel like cooking tonight

so I'll go in and I'll go in there and see the team and hang out and cook with them and do that see the tables and whatnot but it's also important for me to register it's like I don't want to be just a face to the brand that's not what I want that's not what I'm just good at like I'm really good at people I'm a very good people person like I love friends like the idea of being nice is actually fun for me but I'm also interested in other people in their stories

so I want to make sure I look people in the eyes and I talk to them the idea behind that is it serves my purpose so it's my purpose of feeling like I have a home and a kitchen that I can cook in I create the menu I create obviously the content around the menu

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go to Hawaii bring presents to the Hawaiian people in their traditional cooking means I can add more value than just being in the kitchen which is totally fine for me but it's kind of like if you know you can do everything that these legends ask you to do but there's things that people can't do that you can do pick the things that you love that people I can't do because you're the only person that can do them we're brought to you today by eight sleep

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visit on dot com slash rich role and use code rich role 10 at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase why is the restaurant business so rough how we've all heard it you know don't invest in a restaurant most restaurants fail like why is it so hard okay so for one okay so you've got the margins are small that's a high part so the margins in food are small like you look at these tech companies now in the margins they're getting and the startup values and all that kind of stuff

and you look at a restaurant like if you had a hundred grand of deploy in an investment would you go there like or an index fund that annualizes 10% every year right so there's different ways to look at so number one profit is tough you're constantly getting changes and regulation from the government like we just saw what happened in L.A. with fast food and the minimum wage and all that kind of stuff so that's that's constantly changing it to women

the government managing people some people don't want to work in restaurant the whole life their prerogative is not actually to be front of house their program is not for most people it's a transitionary kind of thing exactly so it's really hard to build depending on type of restaurant you're at consistency and where your priority is for them in this space so you can us call out there's so many like small things like the delivery times and oh god the list of things like it rains

one day so that's meant to be a Saturday and a Saturday is like how you make your money and all certain that goes out the window and so it's really challenging man like there's so many things that people don't think of like even that you see people use napkins and the amount of napkins they pull and the cost of that maybe small but if you do that every single day it's like okay there's a lot of those things but I think it's relentless it's relentless

man like you saw me do the days where someone calls out okay well this restaurant doesn't open unless I'm there so anything else I had that day can kind of just go by the way side and that's another thing it's like I because I have so much going on I can't be the last loan defense with the osprey which is why I have such an incredible team and you know chef Aaron there who is you know the executive chef of the whole hotel his job is that is baby

so I can rely on him and it's he you know that's the idea so you're also this insane athlete you are naturally gifted on your website like your website said I have a resting her rate of 27 what you what you what you honestly think about well yeah I don't know like it's sort of cool like listen if my

her a was 27 like I probably advertise it as well but let me tell you my friend I'm also in a group with you so I see your data and I can tell you that you're hurt a your resting her is not 27 it's 30 it is consistently 30 which is insane yeah it's free and you have these really high HRV numbers I think your average HRV is like a hundred remember the text you said me one day like dude how do like how do you even have

a bubble 150 hLV I know I don't understand it like your metrics are bananas you got into the world and you crush it and you do all these different kinds of races and things like that but my thing is your potential is totally untapped I think you get in your own way with the way that you train and I know that you're set on breaking three hours in the marathon and you have a coach so I'm excited to see what happens when you actually

follow a proper program because you're a guy just goes out and kills it and blows whichever way the win blows all my friends are going to the gym all I'm going to do across fit workout all I'm going to do high rocks or today I'm going to run a 10 K or whatever there's no structure or kind of direction direction ality to any of this right and I'm like this guy has the potential to just absolutely skyrocket if he

would just fucking focus so when you were when you made the announcement or you said I'm going to try to break three hours in the marathon I think I'll actually do I was like all right man here's what you need to stop doing if you want to be serious about this because you like to go out and kill it and I was like you don't you actually you're fast enough already you don't need to get any faster I know you love your tempo workouts

and your interval workouts and stuff like that but what you need most and what you're most lacking is a legit real endurance foundation and I noticed this when you did was at the half iron man you raised that a couple of years ago that's where you can't hide right and talon's only going to get you so far because that's a very difficult race distance to like master you even said you said that that's a

hot distance to train for them in actual on many I think it is because you have to be it's sort of like running the 800 meters versus the 400 meters or swimming you know the 200 meter free styles opposed to the hundred like the shorter distance it's a sprint for the most part but when you extend it out when you double that you kind of have to be on the rivet the whole time if you want to be elite in that distance if you want to master that distance which makes it much more difficult than

something that's way longer where you can't be on the rivet the whole time like you have to be at a certain pace that you can maintain and you're in a lower grade state of discomfort but it's much more tolerable than the extreme pain that you have to extend out over like a half iron man distance I agree in the sense the error begins is just some you're using over like even when you get off the bike to do the 42k after that the pace you're working out there the expectation of the pace is

much lower than trying to sprint a 21k half marathon yeah but go back to what you said it's like the biggest challenge I face in in this athletic power space I just love intensity my mate throw work out in I'm like yeah let's do I'm gonna send it and that's like great for my headspace but even looking at the modality of training and this is why this training box been so interesting it's just you know 100% all in on this like that's what I'm doing and you like dude you need to slow down

this is what you said yeah like just like run slower and so you can build your zone to and I'm going to say it's just much harder for you than running fast and hard yeah like my zone two is like extremely low and it's like the idea because you have no real base right right okay yeah this is like an older brother moment so we'll see how it goes hopefully your coach is giving you some long runs and is paying attention to where your heart rate is yeah yeah 100% he's driving you under control

100% now I'd be good good challenge man where are you laying that out where you putting that to the test Boston oh in Boston yeah coming up yeah oh so I didn't realize it was right here yeah yeah we're there oh

shit yeah yeah so are you feeling I do I feel great the only thing is I had like a little bit of tell 10 the night I seen Australia so I'm just hoping it doesn't flare up again beforehand but like I ran I did my big last training block with like it was like 32 K's with a 18 at mouth on pace it

was great it was really good so see we got fingers crossed yeah we'll know soon in the middle of like trying to push a book out and do all the promotional stuff and make viral ticktocks at the center of everything that you do as you mentioned earlier is is the intersection between high

performance and food nutrition right and I bring up all your kind of athletic accomplishments to just basically you know proof of concept like your legit dude like you're incredibly fit like you're obviously living you know the lifestyle principles that you preach and this book this new

book is really about that intersection itself so as an introduction to kind of the things you talk about in the book like maybe you can talk a little bit about the difference between what it means to just eat a healthy diet versus like eating for performance like sometimes

those are at odds like what's in your best interest in terms of like longevity and being healthy isn't necessarily what's in your best interest performance wise but there is a way to eat healthy for the long term while also being performance minded yeah 100% mate I think also

that the idea of all this kind of gets gets complex and like this doesn't but the idea around healthy eating in itself we talk about this in the book is around eating for aesthetic instead of eating for performance like I knew growing up and this is very common I knew growing up that I'm like I want to eat to look good right most people I like that that's no shame in saying that in doing so which is where people say I'm eating healthy you actually have typically seen

that these individuals are either deficient in the nutrition they're putting out because they're trying to look good without thinking about what's best for their performance and if you do so you're not eating enough food to then support your performance you in turn will become essentially putting the way you look and feel on the back burner and we've seen that like I've seen it with athletes I've seen it with young males like the idea behind I think eating disorders is much more common than we

know like because the idea and even define is like you need to sort it can be simply the idea of you going out to dinner and not eating because you don't want to eat the food because you think it's going to make you look bad right I'm first to say I'm guilty of that myself right

by terms of the difference between healthy overall and eating for performance there's different times of the day different modalities different context that we all fall under where your situation requires certain energy and energy can come from fat proteins carbs the fifth macronutrient

we talk about the water everything like that and what I find is most people when they say they're eating healthy they truly don't understand like what that means it's quite a generic statement so what we've done is just trying to find eating more for their performance is

specifically to the types of ratios and including more the fifth macronutrient which is your nutrients than you should do and the reason why I say this man eating for performance isn't just for like an athlete if you're a single mother if you're someone who's trying to

just do your best your presentation you're trying to get that job promotion what's your energy like are you eating enough you know carbohydrates cool are you eating enough of the colorful ingredients cool but are you supporting that through everything else including water time of day you know

eating before and after session like people don't realize how much they're affecting their cognitive function they got when they're not supplying enough nutritional value the right time and so what I've registered is if you put a blanket over healthy eating what are the most

things people say cutting out refined sugar eat more plants and have some sort of protein it hits a certain amount of scale cool what if you're a bit more specific and making those ratios more confines the times of situations for example we use naphytic mobility are you getting enough

of the short simple sugars from quality ingredients like fruit before your races after a presentation are you supplying yourself with the right you know fats and things like that to get the brain back to its recovery states you can also sleep better afterwards so you can recall what you just

said if there's feedback needed for the follow up presentation and so that's kind of where of the fine it's like well we have this blanket term and we all know that if I cut out refined sugars if I eat more californ gradients and if I eat a certain amount of protein I'm any healthy which is true

but if we were just to be a bit more specific sometimes in understanding a bit more time and preparation around our food we could have something a bit more for our performance specific to what we're trying to achieve and that's the goal in time. We all know that we shouldn't eat ultra processed foods refined sugars the things that you just reference we want to diet that is rife with all the colors of the rainbow that has the complex carbohydrates the healthy fats the healthy proteins etc.

Timing is something I don't think we really talk a lot about it's something that I always am trying to figure out and quite frequently getting wrong to my detriment and to the detriment of my sleep and vacillations in my energy levels what are some of the common mistakes that even inform a well

intention people make around healthy eating when they know those basics and then you see what they're doing maybe it's Lindsey Vaughn maybe it's some other athlete that you're working with and you're like why are you doing this?

Honestly like when it comes to timing I think people leave it too light to eat even when they think they're eating and I mean that the sense that foods the last thing generally if you're really busy people don't put it first and that sounds like counter intuitive for a second because if you're an athlete you're different you got someone

looking after you. Tim about your day and you've got a meeting you're meeting running over how well planned are you to still eat if that's like your lunchtime period or if you go to the gym or these things like I find that people

number one the biggest root problem is they don't respect themselves enough they don't put themselves first and so when it comes to timing their first thing to sacrifice is their health through food it's not even training they'll train before they'll eat and so I think that's a massive factor for me

and so I've seen that consistently where people will be like oh go do this bit later I'll grab a creep bar and like it's not enough it's not enough like and I know it's easy for me to say because I work around food but if people simply apply the same principles of planning that they do for their work life just for like a half an hour about what they're going to eat throughout the week and how they're going to

store and all that kind of stuff that's really simple to do they could absolutely solve all these issues that I see happening every day even if you look at like athletes when they finish a workout if they don't have a setup they typically wait two or half three hours before they actually eat and it's so shocking to me and I'm not talking about this whole concept of glycolytic window just simple nutritional value the biggest issue outside of timing is not eating enough

I've seen this day and day out and a lot of it comes back to the whole aesthetics people don't eat enough food and I it's contrary to how we look at like obesity particularly in this country and how we've just noted what's like one billion people are now obese or something like that

but it comes to this particularly those people listening today who are around this health and wellness space eat to support the amount of work you're putting in not just for your effort of activity but your brain your brain needs food it needs it

and I don't want to use myself as a reference here but if you look at like a training session when you look at doing a low intensity session your body's burning calories awesome if you do a high intensity interval training session you're burning more work after the actual training session

because your body's having to work so hard to bring it back to a steady state all the parameters the heart rate the stroke volume the ultimate cardiac output that's just two or three parameters in getting your body back to its level environment the day after a training session and you'll see it in your whoop or your strain you're so high the next day you need to eat people like I'm not working out as much today so I don't need to eat you need to eat your body's working so hard to recover

and I think people say well I'm not so anymore I'm like well there's more going on than the doms that's happening so principles step one planning I definitely say we have more people not eating enough and the timing around our food is disrespected one of the things I'd notice about you is you're always eating I think there is something I don't know what the science is about metabolic health and always kind of like eating a little bit all the time as opposed to long stretches of time

and then a huge meal that you then and this is something I'm guilty of and then collapsing and falling asleep but it is like an outrageous statement on one level to say people aren't eating enough when we're all obese I know you're talking to a very specific type of person

and you know I fall into that category like I don't plan enough and I'm busy and a lot of times it just catches catch can and I make do with whatever it is and suddenly it's seven o'clock at night and I got to figure out like what dinner is going to be about

because I haven't thought about it all day that's actually it though and that comes under the same principles of everybody that are busy which we all are whenever something sends to me how are you I'm busy I'm like well so is everybody so like and I think the principles I'm trying to and still is

just putting yourself first you know I want people to register like in the day no one else is going to do the work for you and that means looking after you like you are if you try to be improving your performance you're trying to be healthier just start to put yourself first

you've got the book divided into like different categories right like pre-workout recovery sleep support game day digestion quick energy which is a cool way of organizing it rather than saying it's breakfast lunch dinner snacks desserts things like that

which speaks to this performance thing like different types of foods for different purposes so what are some larger kind of rules around like how do we eat before we work out how do we after how do we eat to maximize recovery how do we how do we eat so that we're taking out an insurance policy on restfulness at night yeah good question most important thing about this is still subjective because although what may be good for you per se you may not feel up for it

and so priming your endocrine system to do the work to make sure you actually digesting food etc is actually you know your serotonin your endorphins come out when you're lit up right you're not lit up they're not going to be primed so what I mean by that is

if you're someone who can't digest food before a run like if you're about to do a marathon and you'll say like as much as I tell you make sure you eat two hours before your race as you last made meal have a banana and maybe one of your gels before the marathon

if you're one of those people it's like I can't do that it's like cool I can't force it down your throat so if you're doing a run you're getting up to your work out whatever it is that's still subjective ideally you do want to have at least like half a banana

and your system before any workout and that's like when I'd say that's more than like a 45 to an hour workout timing wise if you're someone's getting up and doing like you know you're at 45 or you're your hit class and like I'm going to do it it's early morning you don't have to have any before hand

just have a coffee if you want but in terms of you follow up then what they say is if you didn't have anything before you work out if you did it faster you should definitely have something sooner because if you have to have amino acids in your system to break down the work that's going on

so if you're someone who does something in a faster state make sure you get food into you relatively quickly after your workout if you someone who did eat before your workout you have still two hours relative post workout where there is shown to have a amino acid still in your system amongst everything else that's going on and he has another principle as well as like make sure when you're eating what we talk about make sure you're eating a variety of foods because if you just get the protein

if you just get straight carbohydrates you don't have the micronutrients which we notice the fifth macronutrient if you don't do you don't have those principles which are huge along the whole pathway because people look at protein like oh I've got to get my proteins it's going to work like yeah but if you don't have all the you know registered micronutrients to help support that process then they're just going to be sitting there not being able to do anything

so you're going to make sure you have the right nutritional value around that whether it be just some greens and some colorful ingredients so I always say every meal should obviously we say this every meal should contain colorful ingredients right before you work out if you're not going to work if you're not going to eat before you work out make sure you have something within two hours after all right then when it comes to the food specifically this is where it

slides to vary and we talk about like the ratios of like you know you know 50% car yeah the first of like kind of thing and how do you look at that and what the plate went well we break it down the sense that carbs can be broken

down typically into starchy veggies brown rice, sweet potato all the things we register pretty normally right if you see like if your plate was a circle and it's like 50% of that it's a pretty simple basic understanding same with your protein which your favorite protein, tempeh? Tempe lentils, black beans, how much protein do you get a day? I meet my daily requirements but I don't go over when I haven't had those staples I definitely supplement with plant-based protein but I probably get

I don't know probably a hundred grams. Hungry? Hungry. There's like sort of a trend right now of more and more and more protein. I've been more conscious of it because I'm coming up on 58 now and I know that as you age it becomes much more important so I've been more diligent about it but when I was like killing it in doing ultra-man and all of those races my protein intake was definitely on the lower side and it didn't seem to impair my performance at all.

Not that's basically the case. I think people get all up in their head about protein and listen when you're kicking up on 60 maybe start thinking about it more diligently but all the energy and hand-ringing that goes into protein with younger people I feel would be better placed on making sure that you're getting your micronutrients and your fiber and all these other things that aren't as sexy and aren't as fun.

That's the most frustrating thing when it comes to this whole macro lens if you will if I put a double meaning on it. People look at protein it's like it's been drawn out just due to marketing on CPG products they see a protein on the thing. It's like oh it's a number it's a simple number to hear and everyone's like if I hit my numbers so the day it's easy. The most dominant one we look at is protein because it leads to lean muscle and the development of a better metabolic rate right?

Unfortunately the as you said the unsexy topic is the micronutrients and because they're micro we determine them as less important because the term micro is not as good as macro. Not only that it's been more complex so that's why I've just kind of positioned it as the macro the fifth micronutrient. You're not a hundred percent plant based but you're a very plant forward guy in general I am plant based and am I going to be able to pick up this cookbook and put it to work as a plant based person.

Were you thinking about me when you wrote this thing dude? I'm going to ask you to write a blur better make sure that it's got some plant based stuff. Essentially most of it is plant based or at least plant forward and then what we've done is for recipes that aren't they're flexed so I've actually graded one recipe for both plant based and not that's the same recipe and that's something it's like another thing it's like I didn't want people

to be alienated thinking they couldn't ever eat cook or do these things and to create a book around that and include those principles we're you know kind of the cusp are talking about is so important to me it's it's more important to get people cooking that is to alienate around like the specifics of it to be honest and once that happens then you can educate and so yeah like the idea of making a really creamy sour sardato foo is is actually a lot of I've done that before.

I let my wife do that. Okay you've had her cheese. Oh I do you know she knows what's up. Yeah man. How to make things taste creamy. What about hydration? You talked about the importance of hydration. That is another real important pillar. Yeah okay so I don't want to be generalistic but I'd say when you're working out people don't have enough sodium or electrolytes to

support the amount of work they've done. On average we on the lower end about 350 milligrams of sodium is typically per hour that we lose in the higher end if you're really heavy sweater it's about 725 on average. I'm a heavy sweater so when I finish like my two hour runs I'm like wow I need like that's why I have dogs lick me after I'm so salty but effectively if you look at that and you look at like some of the older generational brands of electrolytes supplements or actually like

drinks rated drinks they're kind of like around 300 milligram range of of sodium and electrolytes and you're like wow and you start to see more of these brands come out there like more like element T you got these brands they're like 500 milligram sashes which you can then deploy into water. So I think in general from an athletic perspective we've got to be sure to understand

where we're at and you can do sweat test you can do all those things. If you're more on the pre-dialed in athletic side I really recommend you do that to know where you're at because just 2% loss in dehydration can lead to a

detriment in your performance. Yeah I feel it for sure I think what you're saying is accurate certainly when I'm hydrating properly we work with element and when I'm using that during my sessions and after my sessions I do feel like I recover more quickly like my energy level just stays consistent afterwards. I don't get that sense of depletion and I do think that most athletes are not as conscious of this as they should be.

My only kind of precautionary sentiment around this is that this message because a lot of people are talking about this right now spills over into our relationship with sodium as average every day citizens and there's this message sort of propagating around the internet that people are sodium deprived in general and need to be upping their sodium intake in a world in which we're afflicted with insane rates of chronic disease and rates of hypertension

that are damaging people's health all over the place. So unless you're preparing all your meals at home and you're not using any sodium whatsoever you're more likely eating out a lot, getting postmates and all that kind of stuff and if you're eating at a restaurant not your restaurant but most restaurants they just overdo it with so most people are getting way too much sodium.

So that's almost like a PSA that I have. I mean I'm interested if you agree with that but I do see on the internet everybody talking about salt concerned about how that's being interpreted. Yeah it's a good point. So there's an article in New York Times pretty recently talked about essentially there's a quiz you can do there's ten different products and you could choose and say which one do you think contains more sodium?

And you go down the list and like I myself I someone who's in this space got five out of ten so it shocks me to see oh my god it's just hidden in so many things because it's used to make these foods palatable. 100% I would say is packaged foods in general

all have extra sodium in them hidden sodium. So to your point mate it's like yeah if you're someone who on the regular is having packets of chips, certain types of cheeses, even like certain bacon, even the turkey bacon or even like a lot of these unfortunately some of these plant based products are like super high in sodium to accommodate the preservative or even just to make them taste a certain way to that so if you're someone who's constantly having those products

you're probably doing to me. What were the ones that you got wrong? Oh I do those are cheese, there's a cheese brand, it was like a pepper jack cheese company name but it was up against a packet of Cheerios and I was not a packet of cheerio, what's that one with the cheesy fingers? Oh Cheetos. Cheetos. Yeah so Cheetos versus that and the cheese had more and I'm like what? Wow. Yeah and you had like soda cans

and a bunch of the other ones and it shocked me. I was like wow and to be honest a lot of time both of them had too much already so it's like the obvious one was still high. Like it wasn't as if it was like one was extremely low and was high. Most of the time when you pick something that was along the lower end it was still a high sodium count product.

So I guess in the nutshell if you're eating whole foods, if you're eating a lot of whole foods throughout the day and you're looking after yourself and you're athletic yeah you got to make sure you're eating enough if you're someone who's two ads you know packets of chips and things like that you may not need as much additional help. You're probably well in excess of your daily sodium required. I mean that's the only like qualified

I wanted to make of that. But speaking of things that get talked about on the internet what are some of the other nutrition trans that you find cringe-worthy? Like kale can I swear? You could say whatever you want. When people say kale's bullshit there's one certain culprit or I can think of two people come to mind

who are propagating that nonsense. I had a really good chat with someone who's about this and I was just like we worked so hard in to me I just can be a boring landscape to talk about healthy food right we try so hard to sexify that and someone comes along and says this and I was like oh come on that's clickbait it's not like you know and they know it they know better. How far does rabbit hole do you want to go down? I mean I don't want to linger here too long but by point being

there's a lot of nutrition misinformation out there. You know someone who's spinning a very reductive theory that is appetizing because it's so simple and in generally or ants around everything you have been taught or you think you know is wrong and this healthy food that you've always thought was healthy that everyone says is healthy is actually

killing you and here's a study to support that. Yeah but it's like when gluten free came out everyone's like oh I'm going to be healthy I'm going to be gluten free and it's like well I understand if you're celiac or you have issues digesting gluten but it's not necessarily bad for you

in fact now gluten free prox came out with a very high in sugar refined sugar so then all of a sudden there's sort of there's so many situations in which the solution to the problem is worse than the original problem yeah there's gluten free thing there's a lot of processed packaged foods around that. Yeah there's that one I mean there's still when people still ask me like macro accounts like if it fits your macros have you heard that one before?

No. So it's like a very big bro culture dogmatic thing where it's like and I don't mean it's in a bad way but people essentially say I'll have calories I have macronutrients and like whatever I get them from whatever source I get them from so say it doesn't matter. So say a sneak a bar macros worth of the day that's fine. I was like mmm okay got health macronutrients vagus nerve brain blood brain barrier none of that's going to get benefit dendronment.

Today's episode is sponsored by BetterHelp so at this point we're officially about halfway through 2024 so I want you to take a moment and reflect back on the aspirations you set for yourself back in January. How's it going? Have you slipped? Are you still doing that thing? You promised yourself you'd stop doing? Well it might be worth asking yourself why you're stuck and often those answers generally have little to do

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How do you think about how you present and show up on the internet as somebody who's talking about food, cuisine, performance, fitness, and the like? I just feel like you're somebody who is taking responsibility for that. You're always putting out a positive message. You're always trying to help people. But you're not looking to create some kind of controversy or trend per se. It's always pretty grounded basic stuff. Here's a helpful thing.

Yeah exactly. I think it's so important to be leading by example. And so the stuff I share is a little life the way that I want people to lead an example within their own retrospect. But I don't want to feel like I'm bringing something up that just clickbait. I brought up this whole thing around sodium. Super important on my stories. People reflect on it, understand it. Do with it what you will. It's like plant based or not plant based. People talking me should I be plant based should I not.

I'm like well here's the four and against. Here's the reasons as to why. The biggest message I would say is I think there's more important that you focus on eating more plants than deciding what sorts of protein you focus on. Because not enough people eat more plants. So I try to lead a life that is more existent with the lifestyle that I talk about. And that's simply a lead by example.

And then avoid any forms of clickbait trying to get in the media just through the title kind of SEO grabbing situation. SEO is important. My life has been a success of because of that due to the healthy cook and stuff like that. But I don't like the idea of doing anything that's not authentic to me.

So lead the life, share the message, and also surround yourself with legends who are the experts in their field that may not be as good at telling the story, but they're okay being someone to share with you to share that story. I think that's what I've always enjoyed too. It's like lifting other people up using their expertise to highlight a style that should be important.

Well the catchy sort of nugget style stuff that you do is this series around what people spend a month on food and then inviting yourself into their apartment to cook for them. And you do this on TikTok and on Instagram. And you've gotten some cool people like Ryan Serhan, Jared Leto. Who else have you had? I just said Dwight Howard. Yeah, that's right. You had Dwight Howard. Yeah. Which is always really fun. I think I joked with you if you asked me like, I have no idea what I spent or whatever.

But what's so great is that it's like how to cook. It's also healthy eating. It's also like, I want to see what this person's house looks like. You know that kind of real estate thing, you know, especially in New York City. Yeah, it is. And then how do you with something up when you open up the fridge and there's like nothing in there? And how do you figure that out like on the fly? Yeah. Like it's really fun. It's very clever. Thanks mate.

It's actually so real that people sometimes are like, is that real? Like there's people obviously like I just bump into Jared Leto. Come on man. These are like pre-arranged, right? Some of them aren't. Yeah. It's raw up on people without them having any idea. Yeah. You've got to think about this culture now in New York City where like you're almost expected to be like, especially on a weekend and you're watching to the square park and there's so much going on.

It's not easy to do it there and say, a random street in Malibu. You know, sure. But like the idea is like it came out of, okay, I want to show the fact that you can cook. People like, you can't cook from anything. Like come check out my fridge and I will show you I can still make a meal based on what you have in your fridge. And that's how it started. And so it catalyzed the ability to also show again unique version of New York City and the different types of apartments you have.

And the budgets people spend and they say they spend. And it's like, that's the fun part. But how do you scale it? How do you create a business out of that? And that was another challenge in itself. But the fun thing for me, they got the cook and I love that. Is it a business? How could that be a business? Well, not the business of, it's essentially open the doors for me.

Well, it's created, yeah, because those are the kind of videos that are going to get spread around and people are going to share it. So it just creates, it's like a billboard. It creates broader awareness of what you are and what you're doing. Exactly. So it inspires people like, oh, I can do some of it with nothing. And then you create like a, I don't know, an AI bot that can take a photo of your fridge. And you can tell you what you can cook from it and then start to translate.

You must have shot some of these where they, it goes wrong and then you don't err them. I'm like, I ask you to name names. Who said no? You know, that's what I've had to be some crazy stories. I've had some times where people start and then I'll go to edit the video or the team we go to edit the video and they hit me off and like, hey, man, I actually don't feel comfortable doing this. And you're like, oh, absolutely not. That's fine. Like I never want to be that way.

But there's been times where I'm like, I've gone up to someone and said, oh, you scared me. And obviously, you're like, whoa, especially now you're going to be really, really, really, beautiful. But yeah. You mentioned bro culture a minute ago. I look at you and I see somebody who kind of straddles. Like you've got one toe kind of dipped into that world. Like you are this tactical athlete and there is a kind of bro culture hybrid athlete, lifters who run like this is a new thing, right?

Guys who are just shredded and ripped but are now signing up for marathons and the like. It is an interesting trend. I think it's cool. Like anything that gets anybody to get interested in fitness or people who have never really embraced running to run or think about running differently because it, you know, there's a physique out there that I aspire to have that isn't like what you think of when you think of a marathon runner. What do you think about like, is this a fat?

Is this something that's building like there's all these new like high rocks is now like a huge thing? It's sort of the evolution of CrossFit on some level. Yeah. There's this whole kind of world opening up around the hybrid athlete and it's also like there's a fashion piece to it as well. Dude. That reminds me a little bit of cycling where there's all these rules about what you can wear or should wear. Shouldn't I don't know if that's a good thing.

But there's a uniform to the hybrid athlete, right? Black shorts, black tank top, white socks, white shoes. It's a thing, right? What is going on? Look at Wogooge. Is he just not, well, he's the poster boy. Right. Like, he's just this specimen, even like Nick Bair, all these guys and I'd also say Molena thinks I have more than one toe in the bro culture. Oh, yeah, yeah. Maybe a little bit. A little bit, right? But are you more endurance athlete or more bro? You're pretty sure.

I'm pretty bro, dude. Yeah. I'm looking a lot. Yeah. I think push comes to shove. You're headed to the gym before you're headed out for the long run. Yeah. I'd say like high rocks is honestly the perfect, like I'm going to have a crack at high rocks. I mean, it's the perfect type of thing for me because it doesn't include so much strength. I wouldn't be strong enough to beat with those crossfit guys. Yeah. But I love the Hunter McIntyre. Do. I'm ready.

I said to him, like, what do I need to do to beat you? And like what's that? Hunter? Yeah. You need to quit everything you're doing. Yeah. It's been the next 10 years doing nothing but training. And you still aren't going to beat him because he's a maniac. He's a maniac, dude. Yeah. He's like, yeah, you got to like run a 340 kilometer after doing a sled push and then go 330 anyway. Yeah. The high rocks, the high bread.

This world is become, I think, so much more accessible to the average individual. And I mean the sense that Crossfit had a really good job creating this almost a gamified version of fitness. It did a really good job of that. It got to a position where it wasn't scaled in my opinion to the point where it's technically was paramount. It was more about the end result. So you had more people succumbing to injuries and situations like that because you got a limpic lifting.

Like watching Crossfit people do the pull-up thing. Oh, man. Like what is happening? Pipping? Yeah. Dude, but like the Olympic lifting bars, I did a 5-year degree to know how to teach someone how to do that. And so to like have a, I don't know, you go in to do it and you just see people picking it up after a month and expecting to be perfect. It's like that's how you lead the injury. And you're not doing one rap. You're doing 15 sometimes. And I'm not here to say it's not good.

I'm just saying over time, I feel like definitely had an issue with creating a wider net of average individuals to draw into a competition. And that's why I like the idea of the running's free, right? Anyone can run. And running's become cool, especially cool because like now I have to spend next to half an hour before I go out to actually know what I'm having and where it makes me imagine. Yeah, you better put the uniform around. Exactly.

Yeah, but high rocks and all these other events have made it a much more approachable for everybody's to honestly get off the couch and train. And that's why I should explain what high rocks is for people that don't know. Yeah. So high rocks is a circuit style competition where you do eight different disciplines in between each discipline. You have one kilometer run. So you end up doing eight kilometers along with eight different disciplines.

And this one's can be anything from a thousand meter ski, rowing. You could be doing pushing a sled, pulling a sled, warballs, lunges, bounds, farmers' carries. And so when I look at this, it's like you can be someone who literally get off the couch and wanted to go do something for the first time and train for this. Actually, that's why Santa, we partnered with them. We're so excited because- Oh, yeah, I think Luke told me that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's interesting.

So like we are now the equipment and also digital supplier for them because it's like it's perfect in our wheelhouse to help support people to work towards a fitness event that they can have as a goal. I think that's something that's interesting when you look at what motivates people. It's very easy to motivate yourself towards running something or doing a marathon or half marathon or a 5K because you're like, okay, this is the date. I'm going to train towards it.

So it's so good with a high rocks event when you've got an event coming up. You're like, okay, I'm going to train for something. Great, to the high rocks event, I'm going to sign up and you've got like a 10 week lead time to train towards it. And it's like you don't have to be technically sound. You can just be want to run for a little bit at any pace I want and move my body with some exercises. It's growing really fast, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's really exciting.

You mentioned center. Center is Chris Hemsworth fitness and nutrition app. You're the nutrition guy on that platform. How did you get involved with that and what is your role in it now? Like it's grown. Like it's a big thing. It started like five years ago. It started just as an app. Chris and I met at 2 is an Australia event and he was telling me about he was making this app that we're talking about food and nutrition. Like how is eating for roles and whatnot.

And I was like, that's, you know, we're talking about those awesome dude and he's like, yeah, man, I'm thinking about creating an app to support my lifestyle and because I think it's other people want to do this and make it really approachable. So you know, I was like, I'll give you a call or I'll get somebody to call for anything happens. And I'm like, okay, cool.

And then what happened about nine months later, I got an email from the team producing the app and they asked me to be the head of this part of the division. And so it started out solely as a digital platform and now it's grown into a complete brand of wellness where we have it. We're making products and products. Yeah. We've got everything from adjustable dumbbells to home kits full racks and everything. And now we have with the equipment partner of high rocks.

Yeah. When you think of a fitness app, you're thinking of those typical apps, but this is like super high production, but like there's all these videos and like all of this count. Like it's a different version of what you think of when it's at a higher level. Yeah. The execution level is really. When the whole process of us getting someone acquired happening about two years ago, as one of the biggest pills I talked about, our content is just so intentionally good. It's so good.

And the team doing an incredible job. We now have a place in LA, which is awesome. But you didn't, were you just with them or what did I just see? Oh, it was on somebody like I just was it Luke or maybe it was you like shooting a bunch of stuff. That would be Luke. He's putting people through daily something. Maybe that was Luke. Yeah. Luke's lucky man. So Luke is Luke Zaki, Zaka famously, you know, trainer to Chris Hemsworth lives in Byron. I had a chance to go to his house and do a workout.

I'm good. He's cool. Yeah. He's got a nice set up there. True or false? You prepared a meal plan for Chris as he was preparing for Thor false false. All right. There's a lot of news around that. A lot daily mail articles about you, you know, basically coming up with the meals for him. I figured that that didn't ring true. No, no, of course. I've always like it's funny because he's had Luke does a lot of that, to be honest. Luke is with him so much.

He's confident, you know, and Luke, I chat about all the time because news article will be like, Dan did this and I have to text Luke and be like, Hey bro, this came out just FYI. And you know, you know, media is like. And so you have to set the story straight. But he's got an amazing team around him, like even Aaron who works with him on the daily on the operational side. It's like it's a true representation of having people around you that you trust and love.

And I think that's what you see, you know, it's what I see every day. It's like, we can't do what we do without the right team around us, you know, and people that you're confident to say they'll look after you. So if Chris ever asked me to make him a meal for Thor seven, I'll obviously do it. He's good. You might have to compete with Ross, Ashley, who's trying to, you know, give him cake and cupcakes. So he's talking about cookies and stuff like that.

I was like, dude, I don't think that's really how you're eating. No. How is that? How is that possible? I don't know. He's like the most ripped guy ever. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. He's going on there. We're getting him in here soon though. Are you up? Yeah, I don't know. He's on the calendar at some point. He's coming to L.A. He's doing all kinds of top secret stuff that he wants to come in and talk about. So I'll be sure to ask him, Dan. Yeah, it does.

One of the things that you think about or that is sort of a common dilemma with chefs is that it's an unhealthy lifestyle. You're eating all this food. You're in the kitchen all the time. It's high stress, et cetera. And a lot of chefs deal with burnout and poor energy levels and, you know, getting over weight and like all this kind of thing. Like, you're modeling a different way. You're not in the kitchen every night. So it's a little bit different than what one would think of as a chef.

But I think it's important to kind of spend a few minutes to talk about how you balance everything and how you prioritize healthy living because you're not somebody who only has one thing going on. You have a lot of demands on your time. Like you must have to be incredibly efficient with how you're scheduling everything out to get everything done that you're doing. Your fitness is at the forefront of your profession, so on some level that distinguishes you from a normal person.

But I do see somebody who's taking seriously that investment in self, not in like an indulgent way, but in a way where you're modeling like what's possible for anybody in any profession. Yeah. So I think like what I look at is like the role of a chef has profanely changed over the years. The opportunity to become one is the same across any industry in the way that I feel there's no one way to skin the cat anymore, right?

And I've always looked at like I want to pave my own path to what I believe is the way that will make me happy, but also achieve the success I want to have the impact that I have. And that starts with like Sunday night. My first thing I do is I write a group newsletter to my family. And that's like I'm bringing that up because that's so important to my headspace to reset my week. And I want to share within the week and being far away from them is a great way for me to connect with them.

But then from there, it's like all about setting in the things that I know are the controllables. I talk all the time about control the controllable. Now there's certain times of the day where you know stuff's going to pop up. Mm-hmm. Issues. Obligations, distractions. And so you have to find a way to put out those fires. In this situation, by putting particularly things that I really need to do for me in the morning, I know they'll get done.

And I saw at least at the end of the day if I've had a bad day or things in the other way I wanted, I still looked after me. So that involves sheffing and everything. So I know that there's a certain number of times I'll go to the restaurant. I know those days I'll get out later. It's the following morning. I'll need to look at my sleep in time and adjust it accordingly. So I set up my workouts accordingly. So I know what I'm going to work out. I then look at my gaps when I can set up food.

So again, putting myself first, look at my food. And then restaurant time. Outside of that, my team works on when to schedule in all my content staff or meetings with my partners, etc. But the most important thing that I do is, yeah, I actually put what's important to me first. Because if I can't look after me, I cannot be the best partner, Melena. I can't be the best dad to madrig the best dog in the world. I can't shop for my mates. I can't shop for my team.

And I learned pretty early on in that I was struggling. I was burning the candles at both ends and I just wasn't being the best person. So I was like, well, the reason for that is even if I get all those things done on the day and not my stuff, then I struggle. So it's so important to look after me. And it's not a selfish thing.

I really believe that if you put yourself first, it's selfless because that means you are willing to do what it takes to make sure you look after the people that most importantly around you. Hmm. What's a day in the life of food look like for you then? Ooh. Kind of very. How much prep are you actually doing? I mean, you know, you're around kitchens all the time. So you're able to like pop into these kitchens and make yourself something here or there. But are you planning ahead?

Like, what does it look like? So there's actually when you're busy. Sure. So when the rest of the busy man, I can't get in there. Like, I don't want to like get the team or me to stop what I'm doing to make a meal. But sometimes easier, either to purchase something or yeah, effectively make something ahead of time. So I definitely say despite being around a restaurant, sometimes it's a lot easier not to eat there.

So I know everyone says are you around food, but it's sometimes less easy than you think. I would say that the stuff that I do is like my breakfast oatmeal. Do you see my oatmeal bowl the morning? Have I showed you that? No. Oh, dude. It's called the power bowl. It's like oatmeal, cinnamon, frozen rice berries, you know, oatmeal and cinnamon and like maple, peanut butter, natural yogurt, walnuts, chia seeds, flax seeds. Like that in itself is awesome. Like that just gets me.

That's why I get out of bed. You're the second person in a week to come in here and just like go crazy on oatmeal. I had Michael churn out in here. I do. So he's talking about his creatures of habit, like oatmeal concoction and all of that and just getting all fired up about, you know, especially ironic in this moment where people are like demonizing oatmeal as a breakfast when it truly is like the breakfast of champions. Oh, dude. Was it yours texting? I was like, think I did, no one did that.

Ten, I went plant-based. Someone said me you couldn't build lean muscle on a plant-based diet and like you're wrong. Watch this. So I went plant-based for like eight weeks and I ended up building, you know, the muscle on the strength. And on that time I didn't realize how much protein was actually in my oatmeal that was plant-based. I had 38 grams of protein in my oatmeal bowl and I was like, wow. I'd been eating this without a swap the yogurt to be in plant-based yogurt.

It was a good lesson for me because I don't really count nutritional value per say too much. Like usually I do it one time or whatever and then like I'll know for the next time, but that was a good reflection on me going like, yeah, you can eat shit tons of protein on a plant-based diet. Sorry to diverge, brother. It was exciting for me so I wanted to share.

Yeah. But effectively I had my oatmeal and then I'll typically, particularly right now, I'll definitely do like three eggs avocado toast, three hours later and I'll have like some sort of bowl, you know, make row bowl. What I call the Monday to Friday bowl, which is like roasted veggies, some wild rice, some sort of protein sauce. And then sometimes a shake in the afternoon and then dinner, which will be, you know, pasta or something that I just love cooking up. So that's a down plate.

That's four to five meals typically. Right. And what's the workout, Resume? For that or those days? For general. Like I know you go, it goes in waves or whatever. Like there's going to be more intense days than I was. Sure. Like a typical average day. Okay. So right now I'm probably doing, I just finished up my big load week for marathon, right? So I was doing 90 kilometers. That was my big one. So I think like on the average day, it'd be, you know, 10 to 16 Ks.

That's like six to 10 miles on a morning, just an easy run. And then in the afternoon, I might do some strength work or just hit a cold sauna on a hot plant. So like right now, that's it. I typically right now my week is, pro round 80 kilometers, maybe two resistance training sessions and a lot of hot and cold. Yeah. That's a reasonable schedule. Right? Yeah. How do you do all this when you're traveling? Mm. You travel a lot, dude. Yeah. And then you share your whoops scores.

Like I saw your whoops score. Like you're, you know, you were burning it pretty hard the other day. You bounced back, all right? I saw the red to the green. Yeah. I did. I'm familiar with the red to the green. Yeah, I bet. I bet. Mate, again, it's the same principle. When I travel, I look where, and I don't have my kitchen, right? So I try and stay in a place that has a kitchen because I need to cook, like I love cooking. So I put myself in my mind and say, okay, cool. Plan, where can I eat?

Where's your coffee spot? Where's the wifi? Like all these kind of things that I think of ahead of time to make me be able to be sufficiently be my best. And then training, it's like, I'll hit up, I'll hit up my mates who train. Like, are we training this day? Are we not? And then I have my running plan right now, which is running plans are easy. It's not like you have to think of a gym to go to. You just got to run unless you have a track. And then you track close to here, where we got?

There's a couple of high school tracks around. Cool. Yeah. So like, I guess comes down to planning again, man. You just got a plan. And I'm not a lot of people put themselves in the position to do so. And I'm terrible outside of those things. Outside of that, I'm really bad. What are some planning habits or, or like, hacks or tricks that you could share with people? Like what are the apps that you're using? How are you figuring out where you're going to get your healthy food?

Perhaps somebody who's traveling, who's not going to stay in a place where there's a kitchen or doesn't want to cook? Like how do you find the healthy places? Like what are some, you know, tools or tips that you can give people who typically get tripped up when they're on the road? So I definitely always allow more time than you think in your brackets, by the way, because you're not used to the travel times, you know, you may have to set up in a place. You've never set up before, et cetera.

But I'd say, number one, I use Google Cal. So easy. Just like block it, right? The block it. If you work with a team, they know you can't be contacted during that time, even if the time zone is slightly different. Everyone knows, right? So I use that. I research essentially like gyms. And I'll know relatives that whether it be friends will tell me or what I've seen will have access to the resource that I need at that gym. Like hot and cold, who has that running obviously is easy.

And then when it comes to food, like food is, I always put into blocks, right? You've got your, what they call cafes, I feel, this is just, I think you can't allow this. Cafes in LA can almost be like these, there was like somewhat of a diner style set up, whereas like a coffee shop is more like an Australian cafe. I throw it. So like, you got the guys a great white in Venice. Like in my opinion, that's the goal idea for me as a brunch spot, like that kind of concept.

And I know it's going to be healthy, it's going to be clean based on the type of plants and veggies and everything on the menu. So relatives where you are go on to, I'd say use safari maps and type in food. And then you can look around and whether it be a bowl place, sushi or if you're vegan, you can just go to vegan and you can be relative to all those things. And at least you can put like a favorite, at least with some relative walking distance to where you're staying.

And then you can start to think about that wherever you go. And then you can even look those people up with respective apps or even on Google, it has reviews. And you can understand, they've got images, images, tell everything. Even on an iPhone, someone's taking a photo and put a review up on Google, you'll know whether it's going to be a good one or a bad one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Here's one for you.

So right after we wrap this podcast, I got a split, chat down to LAX, catch a flight, I'm flying to Austin for one night, like really quick in and out. I don't land in Austin until midnight. And I haven't eaten that much today because this is two podcasts in a row. I like, I want my energy high. I don't want to eat. I don't want my blood going down to my digestion. So I've kept it like super light. And I have very little time after this before I, you know, got a board of flight.

And I'm concerned about, I'm going to land there at midnight having not really had dinner and then having to figure out what I'm going to eat, what's open. This is a setup. Like this is a recipe for disaster. What do you tell me? Like what is the council down? Well, how should I solve this problem? I would have said, if you know that. See, if I was smart, I would have prepared. I would have had, here's my thing. I'm bringing it on the plane. I'm all taking care of, this is not my life.

This is my bad. I should have told me. I should have told you. I would have brought a meal. I should have. I know to be lazy. I would have prepared my meals for the next 24 hours and deliver them to me. I would have had a full brand. I would have, you know, rich rolls like, oh man, my bad. Okay. So I would get one of the team members right now who around this. There's a couple of them to look at key from here to LAX. How long is it? 50 minutes? It depends on traffic.

I would just say, yeah, get them to reset balls, right? Or poke and get like an assortment of low GI. So essentially like veggies, grains. And some sort of based tofu and I'd have sauce on the side because you don't know when you're going to get that. You're going to mix it yourself. So real basic. So boys, if you're listening right now, let's make sure you get it. Sounds complicated. Basically, you're saying find some place to deliver whatever to the hotel like well in advance.

No, no. Are you getting their welds still open? No, I'd say you guys get something right now. Oh, all right. And you pick it up on the way. Do what I'm out of here shortly. That's not going to happen. That's not going to solve the problem. Next time. Better plan it. Yeah, better plan it. You know, it's like, you know, I'm just chasing my tail right now. I'm going to do the best. I'll figure it out. I'll always do. I travel a lot too. I always figure it out.

But I'm just trying to imagine like the less than ideal circumstances that like a lot of, you know, people who are listening or watching like. Yeah, you just have to do what I would do is look at the distance between here and wherever you're going and look at a spot on the way, order ahead and pick it up on the way. And you go, what is a mission that you're on down? Oh, I do. What are you trying to do here? Change the world through food, bro. That's what I always say. I really am.

I always say I'm here to change the world through food. And what does that mean? Very broad. I'm like, I'm here to help people cook more, cook better and ultimately see the impact that food has on your overall life and performance. The thing that I find challenging and what I do every single day is that people don't look at cooking in the same way they look at the idea of building and developing. The first time you cook, you make cook something and you didn't do a good job.

And so you don't never do that recipe ever again. But if you went, how often did you tie your shoelace and just stop the first time and same principles of habitual nature? How often did you write the alphabet out and take practice and time to do that driving a car? If you treated it the same way that you treat every skill that you have to learn, it's so manageable. And in fact, it helped you save time, cost and also washing up time.

So what I would say is like, I'm here to help people inspire to create their habits and retain to live a healthy lifestyle. So if you look at maybe giving the challenge of picking a meal to cook every Tuesday night for the next three weeks in a row, if you can, I guarantee if you do every Tuesday night for the next three weeks, the third time you do it, you're much cheaper, you won't have as much washing up and there'll be much more enjoyable.

And if you take that into the same routine of eating this healthy lifestyle and you'll realize like, hey, I could actually do this. And then you inspire to maybe go to the gym the next day, maybe you're inspired to go for a walk and maybe you're a happier person because of the things that you're getting in personal development.

And if I've done that to one person who can then share it to the rest of their family and instill a routine like my dad did to help me cook more, that's my mission right there. That's a beautiful mission. A catalyst. A change agent. Yeah. And you do it in so many ways and you do it with this infectious energy and optimism. You really are a people person and everyone who spends time around you feels good. You leave your encounters with Dan, not only like, I like that guy, but I feel better.

I feel uplifted by being in your energy. You know what I mean? Thanks, man. The book is, we should mention is also interactive. You have all these QR codes and you can scan them and then it's Dan preparing the recipe and telling you all about it and answering your questions. Has anybody ever done that before? I don't know. It's like, it's pretty interesting. You've got the QR code which shows the videos. Then you've got the AI, eat like a legend, which you have chat GBT.

You can take a photo of your fridge and it'll tell you what you can cook from it. Oh, wow. So like, I've really wanted to make cooking all the more easier, irrespective of this book. I want people to like be able to type it out, take a photo and all of a sudden they're like, oh, that's a sick idea. I'll just do that.

As opposed to cooking tired, what I have in my fridge, I don't have to cook postmates, which I get, but over time, it's like you need to learn how to get some of these foundations and fundamentals. And so every resource that I try to put out, whether it be this book or the, you know, the AI piece, whatever it is, QR codes, YouTube, TikTok, all about helping people make their life a lot easier in this health and world of space. You are like on every platform doing it.

And it's like, pick a lane, dude. I don't know how you, it feels exhausting. Yeah. I mean, is this sustainable? But I'd say if you didn't have a team, it is 100% not sustainable. That's part of how I'm able to do all this. I, I've filmed the videos or someone else films me. I then send it to someone who then consolidates and shares it with a couple editors and then they kind of work it out and then they get feedback and that's the cycle that we have a schedule of plan.

It's like a business you have to think about it that way if you want to be able to do it. And that's how I've been able to scale it. So I think that's one thing I say is like in this world of content, some people don't treat again themselves with respect of being able to actually, how do I scale this and do this long term? Well, one, you can't do it on your own. It's you have to invest in your team. And then once they do that, you have to invest in the systems to help support the scalability.

There's no way we were able to grow our platform the way we did if we didn't have a system in place. So we actually did this whole cool thing of an application process for interns and like then they became our editors and it was a lot of fun and games. So you have to think about, if you're going to scale anything you do, what are the systems in place to help you win? Do you still work with individuals like you used to? Do you coach people? Do you dabble in that at all anymore?

No, I get phone calls and I give advice, but nothing on the professional level. That takes a lot of your emotional energy and not that I don't want to do that. I just can't give them 100% because I'm drawing into some of my own stuff right now. So you know, like I still get to work with athletes under companies and stuff like that, but it's not as specific. If it was a really cool project, I'd consider it, but I just don't have the kind of pause everything I'm doing.

I want to be in like their job is to be the best physically in their chosen field. And if I'm not giving them 100%, allowing them to improve by that 2 to 3% to get on that gold medal stage and it's hard. Right. You think you're in New York City to stay? Dude, we just bought an apartment. Oh, you did? Yeah, wow. So which I'm going to renovate that you were living in before? Yeah. So downtown and I want to be constantly building all these resources.

And we found that if you are not particularly in food, it's really expensive to find a studio kitchen. If you're going to do it a podcast, the same thing, particularly with cooking. And so now like having my own place that I'll renovate and build out, I also want to have a coal plunge and a hot sauna. Of course you do. Yeah, so it wouldn't be right down for you not to have those things. Oh, dude, if you come over now, at least you have me to come over. Cooking dinner. You and Julie come over.

Cooking dinner and you and I can jump in the coal plunge in the sauna together. Why do Australians have short nicknames for everything down? I can't decide whether I'm delighted by this or annoyed. Oh, actually, you're a David, Jacko, Steve, O, Simo, Simo. Do you call him Simon, right? Simon. Yeah, so I say Simo. Simo, it's not any shorter. Like you don't have to change it. You know, that's the thing.

When the nickname is longer than the actual word, I mean, I feel like I got into New York and most people just say by the first initial, no? Like H or H train, our dog. I don't know what you're talking about anymore. Of course you are dog. Yeah, okay. Yeah. Come on. My name is, you know, a nickname enough. Yeah, I don't need any. It would ever call you Richard? No. Oh, my book agent does. Shout out to Bird. Yeah, a couple of people do. But it's a weird quirk, you know. It's like their thing.

It's a hard question. You know, if my mom was mad at me, I was about, of course. Yeah. What is the thing you want people to get out of this book? What is fundamentally the message that you're trying to convey here? The biggest thing I want is honestly what we talked about with putting themselves first. If there's anything else, it's not the cooking. It's the intentionality about putting yourself first to really get the most out of yourself to then be able to give to others.

You know, like I can talk about how, you know, guys don't cook enough for their ladies, right? There's a great way to get more guys to cook for their ladies, et cetera. It's not about that. It's a great gimmick. But like, well, not gimmick. It's a great way of selling a book, to be honest. But to me, nothing would please me more than if someone read this book, started applying their principles and said, I'm not just doing it for cooking. I'm doing it for my work environment.

I'm doing it for my family. I'm doing everything around it to improve the way that I get up every day. The way that tackle sleep, the way that I tackle a task and the mindset of living the life that I've always wanted to. And now I'm actually putting myself first and allowing myself to do it. Can't serve others unless you serve yourself. And self-esteem is built through performing a steam of blacks for others, but also for yourself, right? Dude, that was...

Yeah. Dude, you honestly think you can change the world with food. I think I can. I really do. But I don't have to be the namesake to do it. So I can influence one person, back in that influence many, and who has the ability to make change. And that's one of the things I love about food. I can put a bowl of ramen in front of someone in Japan, and we don't speak a word of the same language, and we'd still smile and be pleased with the current situation we're in.

If I get to build up my profile to the point that I can influence the people that make the decisions and what happens in the schools, if I can start to get to enough resources that I can open kitchens and third world countries to teach people a skill that is so important rather than just giving them the food. If I can support any way of doing that, then yeah, of course, I am changing the world through food.

And why should that not be what I want to achieve in the sense that if that's what my honest end goal to myself is, like, if nothing makes me happy, I get no more currency than watching someone respond to something that I've said down in a positive light that I tell it right away, that is what motivates me. So yeah, I can't do it. I think that's a beautiful place to end it, but I got to ask, what are the odds on you breaking through in Boston? I'm feeling confident.

It's, I'm feeling very confident on my anaerobic and aerobic capacity. It's my knee, but I feel very confident. So peace per mile, what average do you have to hold? That is 640. 640? Yeah, that's no joke. That's for real. Did you watch Casey's video about how many times he tried to do this? How long it took him? Oh, man, he started from 2000 and what? Took him a long time. I can't believe that. But here's the good news. When he hired a coach, he finally solved it.

It just took a long time to get to the point where he realized he had to be on a program and that only took two times and he did it. It, wait, that guy can seriously create a story for sure. It's so true though. I think now we're going to see everyone's going to run sub three because Casey Neistat put it out there. It's a lot of work. He's a talented athlete as are you. But breaking three is an exercise in humility. It is, man. Just as much as it is, athletic prowess, right?

You have to go all in. You can't, you have to be really intentional with your training. You have to do slow. That's what I've been telling you. I know, I know, I know, I know. You got my back. You're going to give another crack at Leadville. Yeah. What happened at Leadville? Essentially, we were about two hours ahead of my mark. I got to Twin Lakes. Twin Lakes is the 38 mile mark.

I set off and got to the bottom of the hill and started to, if you don't know Leadville, Leadville is a hundred mile race. It's a 50 mile out and back loop. You do 50 miles there, 50 miles back. You're in excess of 10,000 feet of altitude. You start at 9,500 feet elevation. I set off after 38 mile mark, feeling really good, like laughing because we were just like, this is so well ahead of the pace that I wanted to be.

As you climb up Pope Pass, which is the steepest part of the entire course, there's only really two flats that you can run. Otherwise, you just kind of like poles the whole way up. I was like, sick. I'm just going to run this piece part. I set off and as I set off, it shows importance of mine and fatigue. I felt good, but my mental state obviously wasn't there and I rolled on a rock. The rock was in the middle of the flat. It wasn't as if it was hidden.

I rolled, I tore my, did a grade 2 ATFL tear on, I didn't know at the time, but yeah, so it cropped, it had a little slight little tear. I mean, agony, but unfortunately, I'm not stopping. I'm not going to like go. I got down the hill because I didn't know at the time, I know how bad it was. If I went down the hill, that means you're pretty much cutting your race. You're not going to go back up. I decided to continue going.

I got to the top of Pope Pass on essentially two and a half, well, say one and a half legs. I got to the top of the pass, as I said. I was like two hours ahead of my mark and then I was 10 minutes before the cutoff time. I lost like three and a half hours on that climb. Yeah. So, okay, then I realized I had to kind of try and sprint down the other side of the face to get to the 50 mile mark.

And to be honest, if you make that mile mark, there's still decent chance that you can make it back in time because the back is much quicker than the forward. I slipped again, fell down the cliff face and was not happy and then realized I couldn't run. So I walked all the way to the 50 mile mark and had to call it. Well, actually, I got timed out and he didn't get to quit. I didn't quit. So. I'm finished business though. You're gonna be back. Yeah. All right, man. You gonna come?

I like the heat. We'll see. We'll see. I've gotta heal up my back. I'm getting there, man. Yeah. You're a legend, dude. I love you. I just love your energy and whatever you're behind on behind on your behalf. I got you, dude. I love what you do. I love how you show up in the world. I love how you're modeling a new way of being successful, healthy, fit all of these things, like your positive role model for a lot of people and I'm here to celebrate you buddy.

Dude, that just genuinely means so much my man and much love back at you. Thanks for leading the way, bro. Right on, dude. So eat like a legend out everywhere. Dan is a legend. I'm sure we're gonna be on all the morning shows and do all that. Like you're not gonna get on media, dude. Like you figure that out. I don't know. You know, like you and Drew Barrymore are like thick as thieves and you do good morning America and all that kind of stuff.

I'm sure everybody will know who Dan is by the time this podcast drops. And are you still doing the podcast and the other stuff? Yeah, dude. We'll bring that back as soon as this is doing a project. Yes. I'll link up all the stuff. Dan's got, you could just watch his videos for the next 20 years and never run out and then you're always uploading new stuff. So I love you buddy. Love you very much. Appreciate you. Way to hang out in New York City. I still have to come to Osprey.

Yeah, we might have to. Cheers. Peace. Bye. Thanks. We're brought to you today by 8th sleep. Head to 8sleep.com slash rich role and use code rich role. A checkout to get $350 off the pod for ultra. That's 8 sleep EIGHT sleep.com slash rich role. This episode was brought to you by on. Hon is offering an exclusive 10% discount. To redeem head on over to on.com slash rich role and use code rich role 10 at checkout. That's it for today. Thank you for listening.

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