The Tarryn Reeves Show

How to Build a Strong Body (Even with a CEO Schedule)

• Tarryn Reeves • Episode 52

Share episode

Eat Like an Adult, Lead Like a Boss: Health Strategies for High Performers

In this energising episode of The Tarryn Reeves Show, I sit down with TEDx speaker, health educator, and online coach Josh Wood to unpack what it really takes to thrive physically as a high-performance entrepreneur. From his days as a wilderness guide and combat sports athlete to now helping busy professionals reclaim their strength and wellness, Coach Josh shares real talk on what’s sabotaging your health — and how to fix it.

We dive into his six habits for “Eating Like an Adult,” why most of us aren’t actually hungry when we think we are, and how emotional eating derails even the best intentions. We bust myths around fasting, starvation mode, lifting weights as a woman, and the number one excuse every entrepreneur uses: I don’t have time. (Spoiler: You do.)

Whether you’re a CEO, parent, or someone navigating the chaos of life while trying to keep your health intact, this episode will shift how you think about food, time, and performance.

What We Cover:

  • How to build lifelong strength without burning out

  • The Apple Test: How to know if you’re really hungry

  • Why “convenience” is not your excuse — and what to do instead

  • The truth about starvation mode, fasting, and weight gain

  • Six simple rules to Eat Like an Adult (and stick to them)

  • Why lifting weights won’t make you bulky — and what will

  • The connection between self-leadership, health, and lasting success

🔗 Ready to ditch the burnout and fuel your body like a high-performer? Connect with Coach Josh and download his free guide Eat Like an Adult:

🎧 Tune in now and learn how to take back control of your health — one empowered decision at a time.


Welcome to the Tarryn Reeves Show, where your journey to empowerment takes center stage. I'm your host, Tarryn Reeves, bestselling author and publishing expert. Together we'll dive into the hearts and minds of visionaries, disruptors, and trailblazing leaders To explore the most compelling and thought provoking ideas in life, business, and marketing. Let's inspire, impact and ignite. This is the Tarryn Reeves Show. Today I am joined by Coach Josh, coach Josh Wood, who is a TEDx speaker, health educator and online coach based in Hobart, Tasmania. If you haven't been, it's stunning. You really need to go. Coach Josh is dedicated to helping busy professionals achieve lifelong strength and wellness. He has over 15 years of experience as a competitive power lifter, combat sports athlete and wilderness guy. Josh brings a unique and practical perspective to health and fitness. He has a Bachelor of Health science and a graduate certificate in strength and conditioning, complimented by numerous certifications in fitness and massage therapy. As the founder of Strong For Life Online Coaching Coach, Josh combines evidence-based strategies with a deep passion for empowering individuals to live healthier, stronger lives. Coach Josh, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. It is an absolute pleasure. I'm really intrigued by what a wilderness guide is. What is a wilderness guide? That's a good question. So before I, I had kids, I took groups of people out into the wilderness and tried not to lose them for a few days. So basically backpacking guide. Um, so that's really, really cool. And like I said, Tasmania is stunning. What an amazing job to have had. Yeah, it, it is. It's a beautiful place. Obviously, if those of you listening will hear that I'm not native to the island. I grew up in the US but always been attracted to places with big trees and mountains and it's just such a magnificent place to explore and it was my honor to be able to take people out and, uh, show them around some most beautiful places. Yeah. Very, very cool. Now, you've obviously had quite an interesting journey coming from the US to Tasmania, which is quite literally on the opposite side of the world. It's lifting combat sports, and now you're a coach. What inspired these transitions into helping busy professionals with health and wellness? Honestly, I like to help people who I resonate with. And so my thing has always been I, I've basically always been self-employed for the most part except for my education jobs where I was teaching either massage or personal training. Always been busy in the professional world and I was like, I understand. I. What the challenges are with time management and constant stresses. And then if you've got a, a fast, busy brain like me, you're always working on something and the next thing, and then you forget to look after yourself. And so I, I've got a, an interesting background through the, the various competitive arenas in terms of high performance, being on stages, being in the public eye, having to perform when there's a lot of. Pressure and so I can draw from those and work with people who have been in or are in the same situation I've been in for my entire adult life. So it just helps me understand people, and that's how a lot of professions come to be when you start working with people. So who do I understand? Who can I pass on my understanding to and who's gonna jive with me? Yeah, I couldn't agree more that people often ask me, how come you only do non-fiction books and how come you only work with entrepreneurs? And I'm like, because I get them and I resonate with them and I understand the challenges.'cause I wasn't always a publisher. I started out as a virtual assistant, but I've always had that self-employment that I've been going through and that's why we end up working with people who are quite similar to us. I did try business coaching at one stage and I just. Couldn't deal with it because I didn't resonate with the people coming into those containers I needed to work with the more high-paced A DHD brained entrepreneurs like me. So I love that you said that. Now, health and fitness, especially when you are a high performance entrepreneur and a father or a mother or a caretaker of some sort, often leaves you. Neglecting yourself or going for that quick snack or that fast food, or maybe not drinking enough water, those sorts of things. How can we set ourselves up for success so that we aren't doing those things? Oh boy, that is such a big, big thing. And really it does come down to the individual in a lot of cases and, and what drives them like the most, most important thing. Is understanding what you want outta life. Life, what you want outta life and why you want it. The why is the driving force. Why do you want, want what you want? And a lot of times my soul occupation comes down to helping people contin continue to do what they love for as long as they love to do it. So it's like, okay, cool. You run a business, you have a family, whatever. It's whatever's important to you, whatever's driving you, whatever you do to spend your days. Well, do you wanna keep doing that? You won't be able to, if you don't have your health, you won't be able to if you fall apart. Yeah. And once we kind of have that conversation, or ideally I can talk to someone and, and we can have that conversation before things get really bad, but often it's someone has hit rock bottom. Someone has hit a really hard time and they're like, I want to accomplish these things. I wanna do these things with my life, but I'm falling apart or I've fallen apart. And that turning point is so key. Ideally through things like this, through podcasting, through social media. Through writing, through public speaking, I can reach people before they hit that point, and then we can stop that from happening. Yeah. But the goal is always to keep people doing the things they love, and to do that for a long time and to do it well, you have to look after yourself. Sometimes people get way too caught up in the other stuff and forget that if you don't have the good foundation, you won't keep doing it. Yeah. And from a business pers perspective, you've obviously really nailed your marketing message because when it comes to fitness and health or diet, nutrition, anything like that, if you walk up to someone and be like, you shouldn't be eating the cake, you need to eat more healthy, then they're gonna be like. Stick up the middle finger and be like, screw you, dude. I want the cake. But if you position it to them, like, what do you love to do and how long do you wanna keep doing that for? That's a totally different feeling and perspective where people can go, ah, I understand why this is so important now, and I'm curious. Yeah. Health and fitness is obviously part of who you are. Intrinsically. What is the most surprising lesson that you've learned along your way in, in over 15 years in the industry? Like I said before, I, I teach personal trainers and I've been doing that for a number of years, and I have to have this conversation with them early in the course. Like we got a new course starting in, in Feb with a whole new intake of students, and I'm gonna have to have this conversation with them in the first week and the conversation go something like this. If you can't fix people, you can't make them change. And it's the most terrifying and surprising thing, how you cannot affect change unless someone is ready to meet you. There. I've got horror stories like you, you think you, you nail the why on someone. And it's like, I remember speaking with a lady who had a couple kids under four. She hadn't been in any family photos with them since they were born because she was so ashamed of how she looked. No. Family photos. Like how devastating and depressing is that, and like how do you explain that to your kids later in life and you think, Jesus, we're having this conversation now so that we can make some changes, and you think, yeah, okay, this person knows what they need. They weren't ready to make a change. They were like, yep, I'm in. And then I never heard from 'em again. And the thing is, until someone is truly ready to make the change and that Y is strong enough for them, you will not get through to them. And that, I mean, it's taken a lot of years to really understand that and not take it personally. And I try to get to the, the students early in the process to help them realize like, you cannot make people change. You have to provide opportunity and you have to wait. And then you have to jump on that opportunity and be like, great, let's make these changes before you lose that motivation. Yeah, 100%. That is devastating, that story of that lady. I mean, as a mother myself, it's awful. I get it. I do. I mean, I feel like a, it is, it's awful. I feel like a not hot mess 9000% of the time, but I also don't wanna look back and go, what did I look like in that stage of their life? So that's devastating. But there is a quote by Tony Robbins that goes something like this. I'm totally gonna butcher it. So let's just pretend this is a paraphrase. It's something like, people will only change when the pain. Of moving through that transition is greater than the pain of where they are now. So, makes sense. Yeah, yeah. I know the quote. Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah. The hard part is when I start working with someone, like it's this process of seeing what inaction leads to. Like where do you want to be and where will you end up in a year, two years, five years, if you keep doing what you're doing now? And that's where you really start to see what the pain will be like if you don't change. Yeah, exactly. Let's talk about eating like an adult.'cause I've seen this kind of phrase all over your socials and your website and you've got a free guide eating like an adult. Tell me what this means and why it's so important. What? What does it mean to eat like an adult? Because most adults I know are eating worse than my kids eat. Yeah, that's the problem. There's like the TEDx talk. I've got the six habits to eat like an adult. It leads you through some practical changes. That you can make to improve your relationship with food the like. An adult guide just summarizes that and gives you a nice infographic you can put on the fridge. There's some steps you can take to help change it, but ultimately it comes down to one simple thing. The future that you want is created by the decisions you make today. An adult understands that that's the case and they take ownership of the decisions they make. Most people do not take that ownership of the decisions they make. They just mindlessly shovel things in due to habit. Due to a lot of times teenage rebellion like that lives on, like, I'm an adult, I can do what I want and bad mental patterns around what food actually is. Most of the time people are just self-medicating and yeah, they don't take ownership of the direction that's taking them. I get that. And let's talk about the one kind of major excuse that people use, especially us busy professionals and it's time, right? I don't have time to cook a healthy meal for myself. Yeah, I don't have time to do this 'cause I've gotta do the laundry and the full run and the whatever the heck else we're doing. What is your advice for someone who is saying, don't have time? Don't have time for what? So I think most people have this idea that there's a thousand things they have to do to make better decisions. That's not the case. If it's true that you don't have time, then you wouldn't eat so much. And the framing for my TEDx talk is the number one risk to world health right now is obesity. There's a billion people worldwide. That are obese, 37 million kids under five that are overweight and obese. That's a wild statistic that this last couple years. Yeah, the number one issue is over consumption, usually due to a lack of nutrients as well. So it's easier to overeat less nutritive foods. And so the idea of of time is just such a wild thing. If you really didn't have time, you wouldn't eat. So you reach for easy things. What you could reach for a carrot if you really wanted to. It's not hard to cook a steak or a burger fry up a hamburger patty. That's not hard. But people are also using the time excuse to eat junk, and that junk is also satisfying. Another monkey brain craving we have for feel good hormones that we get when we eat that junk. And so we're constantly topping up our dopamine and our feelgood hormones every time we eat some junk and then it crashes. We want some more. Blood sugar goes up, blood sugar goes down. So convenience is only part of the picture. Because, and this is where the number one habit to eat like an adult is the Apple test. If you are actually hungry. You're digging in your pantry or your desk drawer for your sneaky snacks, you're actually hungry. And I came up to you, behind you with a beautiful Tasmanian apple, and I said, Hey, you want this? If you're hungry, you'd eat that. There's nothing more convenient than an apple. But if you're not gonna eat that apple, you're not hungry. You just want junk. And if you just want junk, you're trying to satisfy some other things, some deficit in your life, whether it's lack of nutrients, whether it's dehydration, like you're not drinking enough water or whether it's an emotional thing. So convenience doesn't have to be unhealthy. They're the idea of convenience, to choose on healthy things and say, well, it's just time. I don't have time. So eat apple. That's easy. Yeah. I love, excuse how you frame that, because this is something that my kids do all the time. They'll go rummaging in the fridge and they'll be like, can I have a super duper, can I have ice cream? Can I have chips? And I'll go, no, but there's some leftover lunch from yesterday. Want me to heat it up to you? Nah. I'm like, all right, cool. How about a salad? Nah. How about some fruit? Nah. I'm like, you are obviously not hungry. And then they slam the fridge door. That's right. I'm like. Ful. So I, I love It's true. It's true, true. And adults do the same thing. Percent. And my partner's guilty of that too. Rummage around the fridge. I'm like, what are doing? That's like the fifth you've got up. And you've wandered back with nothing. I'm like, you're just bored, aren't you? I'm like, go work out. That's right. Or read a book or I dunno, do some gardening. Read a book's always good. Um, but it is very interesting. Yeah. It's a real interesting, um, human behavior. I wondered like we've spoken about obesity, but for people like me, like I have the metabolism of 50,000 men who work out seven times a day, I will eat. Yeah. So much food. It's healthy food 90% of the time, and then an hour later I'll be absolutely starving and I know what the problem is because I've seen medical professionals, but I'm just using me as an example. Mm-hmm. I can't put on weight for the life of me. Constant brain fog, constantly tired. The same thing applies to us. What's your perspective on that? If we're looking at health outcomes and the issues that come with being overweight and obese, like there's no way around it. That's not a healthy state to be. It isn't good for people. It leads to a host of issues. So people who eat a lot, supposedly, like if we equated total calories that you eat, especially if you eat a lot of Whole Foods, it's actually really hard to over consume. Can we put you in a Cal caloric surplus? Hmm. Like a true surplus. Consistently, you would gain weight, but for whatever reason, lifestyle, really metabolism. You can eat and eat, but you're actually dissatisfying your nutritional needs or your caloric needs. When if you're eating coal foods, you're probably satisfying your nutritional needs as well. There's no way around thermodynamics if you're in a true surplus to gain weight if you're in a deficit. You'll lose weight if you're not gaining or losing. Mm-hmm. You're in whatever maintenance is for you. And so eating and eating a lot, but maintaining means you're doing what's right for you. It would be different if you had those same feelings and cravings. And this is what happens with a lot of obese people, is that their hunger cravings are. Basically outta whack and they're constantly hungry and they have this panic response that comes from not eating. They're like, oh my God, I feel like I'm starving. And although it's not technically correct, there's no way you're starving. The greatest example of a low calorie diet is this, uh, Scottish guy, Angus Barbieri. I think it was the 1950s. Basically, he was a 450 pound man, and he went on a medically approved diet for 16 months, and this diet was zero food. He did not eat food. Actually, I think it was 14 months, 14 months of no food. He could have tea or coffee, not black. That's it. Nothing. And he came down, did he die? Knew about 150 pounds. No, he was perfectly healthy the whole time. He was perfectly healthy. He, uh, was given vitamin supplements to make sure he didn't have any nutrient deficiencies, but he took in no food for 14 months. He came down to a completely normal healthy weight. He didn't have any loose skin and he stopped craving food. It's a wild thing because people are always like, oh my God, starvation mode. It's like no starvation mode is what happens if you're in a concentration camp. You waste away. Mm-hmm. And fat is stored fuel. So we have this perfect example of like, no, you're not starving. If you've got body fat, you're not starving. You could have nutrient deficiencies. That's a different thing. Mm-hmm. But a lot of people have this feeling like they feel like they're starving, and that's a very hard thing to fight. There's a lot of things you can do with that. There's different types of psychological approaches and what do they call it? The slow amounts of exposure, slowly reducing calories over time. And then this is where we have things like the GLP one, drugs like Ozempic, that actually reduce your desire for food. So there's lots of ways to create a deficit, but the thing is, if, if the weight is up. If your weight is going up, you are in a surplus. If your weight is not changing, you're in maintenance. And so if you are lean, active, generally healthy, and you feel like you're eating a lot, you're still just in maintenance and you're doing what your body needs. Interesting. Okay, let's swing the pendulum again out of interest. So I heard once that if you are overweight and you skip meals in order to get smaller, that your body thinks it is going into starvation mode and then will store more fat of any meal. You do eat that day and so you're not actually helping yourself. And three more nutritionally dense, smaller meals a day would be a better approach. You are kind of dispelling that myth now with all the Angus over there. Like I'm shocked that he did not die. Yeah. I mean if I didn't eat for two hours, I would likely murder someone like to the point where I travel with my friends pack. Yeah. So that's so interesting. Tell me about that kind of situation because I know so many larger people who will skip breakfast, two will skip lunch and then only have the tiniest little meal at dinner time because they have to. Yeah, so there's a few things here. So starvation mode is a myth. Over time, your body will down regulate your metabolism so that you don't need as many calories to function, but you will be tired and lethargic and your body will be cold. Have a hard time maintaining temperature. And we see this in bodybuilders who are at the end of a cut prior to competition. Super lean, super, super lean. And they're lethargic and sluggish. But starvation mode is this weird excuse we have in the west. I don't think anybody in a developing nation is like, oh my God, I'm not eating enough, so I'm gaining weight. It doesn't pass the pub test or the sniff test like it. It just doesn't hold any weight. When you take it to different cultures and situations, people who are actually starving do not gain weight magically. It's just not a thing. It's impossible. So what we have though is, is a few other things to think about. And I'm not a fan of fasting. I know intermittent fasting is, is a big thing. I actually had a side note. Uh, I just read an abstract of a study recently that came out, it's like last week that showed that people intermittent fast, especially men, it triggers a, a hormone response that causes you to go bald. So that's interesting, but side, side note completely. Yeah. You listening like you've, you can't be doing that fasting otherwise. Excessive intermittent fasting can lead to. Hair loss. Interesting. Uh, but the thing is, I don't like fasting because it's depriving you of. Opportunities for improvement. So I'm very much on the protein bandwagon, like your whole body is made outta protein. Your hair, skin nails, your muscles, obviously your skeleton, your organ structures, like you need protein to exist. So when we don't eat, our body is breaking down essential tissue, and so the more often we eat, the more opportunities we have to build central tissue like muscle mass. The problem is when people tend to eat a lot, they tend to overeat. Yep. Also, the other side of that isn't, is, that's something I see a lot because intermittent fasting's really big and things like carnivore and spartan diet where you only eat once a day, but hey, if you only eat meat or you only eat keto, you can eat as much as you want and you can eat anything. It just. Excuse me, it just isn't true. What happens, and I've tracked so hundreds and hundreds of diets over the years, and I see this a lot, where someone might eat like 500, 900 calories a day and they're like, oh, you know, I can't seem to lose these 20 kilos, or whatever it is. And it's like 900 calories, 900 calories, 900 calories. Hit the weekends and it's like 10,000 calories, 6,000 calories, and they eat a week's worth of food on the weekend. And so I see that often. This fasting leads to later binging because again, if we go back to basic thermodynamics and physiology, you can't chronically be in an energy deficit. And gain or maintain weight, your body will need to find energy from somewhere. It needs to recover every night, every day it needs to move and act and do everything that it needs to do. And if you're not bringing energy in, it will use your stored energy. So often we see that people who say they don't eat a lot don't eat a lot sometimes. Yeah. And they way more than make up for it at other times because again, basic thermodynamics say energy can't be magically created. It has to be found at somewhere. Same with mass. Yeah. So interesting. So from what I can gather, and correct me if I'm wrong, consistent, healthy eating is the only way. Yeah. But consistency can, can differ. Doesn't mean three meals a day doesn't mean five meals a day. There's plenty of healthy, active, lean people eating one meal a day. Oh my gosh, I kill someone. I need like 10 meals a day. But yeah, that's right. For your body and your lifestyle, I guess. Yes. Yeah, that's right. That's correct. What starts on meal prep? I wonder, because I remember on social media a while back, I'm talking maybe five years ago, maybe even longer than that, there was this huge surge of meal prep, like everyone was into meal prep, start on a Sunday and meal prep, everything for the week and then, then it seems to have kind of disappeared or other things have taken over. What's your stance on the whole meal prep thing? Meal prep is just budgeting, but with food. So it's kind of like saying, I have this much money to spend and I've got it ready and I can pay my bills and I have this much for this thing and this much for that thing. Meal prep is just planning ahead. Yeah, like it's the same as cooking up a big casserole on the weekend and eating it for lunches. Like it doesn't have to be the fancy bodybuilder stuff where you put everything in its own little case, in its own little container. Yeah. It just means planning ahead. You know, meal prep could be as simple as cool. I bought two tubs of yogurt and berries for my breakfasts. Meal prep done. So it's just planning ahead and it's honestly kind of the key to success because if we're saying that time and effort and convenience are the most important things for me, nothing is more time efficient and convenient than having all your food ready. Yeah, I look, I agree, especially as a parent and as an entrepreneur. Like otherwise, that two o'clock slump hits and I'm gonna eat the bag of chips, I just am. Yeah. Um, because I need that little pick me up before I gotta go and get the gremlins from school and then launch into the parental activities of the afternoon after working all morning. So I'm from meal prep. I was just curious on your stance. Yeah, about it. Now you have mentioned, and obviously there's your TEDx talk, but I'd love for you to tell our viewers and listeners the kind of six steps that you recommend or the six practical kind of discussion points around eating like an adult. Yeah, so I mean a big focus, like when I work with clients one-on-one, we do a lot of digging into to diet and we look at, we do a food journal. I wanna see what people are actually doing now because I don't wanna make big, massive changes. I wanna make little changes. But make them consistently and stack them on top of each other. So I like to see where people are at and then make the smallest changes necessary to make the biggest effects. The whole idea of eating like adult is more about creating a better relationship with food as opposed to doing the whole calorie counting macros meal prep thing. So I have six basic habits. The first one being the Apple test, which we mentioned before, which is probably the single most powerful and useful one, is understanding are you even hungry when you're eating? And this goes towards drinking too, because a lot of people have issues drinking too much over the evening or on the weekends, and that really doesn't do much good for you. Yeah. Um, but a lot of times people are like, I'm thirsty, or I'm hungry, and it becomes a snack. So there's that. So Habit one, habit two is learning how to choose better. The idea is like if you're thirsty and there's an option between us. Large sugary drink and a small sugary drink. If you're thirsty, you can still have a busy drink, you can have a, a small drink, you don't have to have the big one, and then you can drink water. Mm-hmm. And just like a little swap out makes a huge change over time. If they're like, Hey, do you want a supersize this drink? Which they don't do anymore, you don't need to do that. Just have the small one because that's still gonna hit the cravings if you're actually thirsty. You can have some water after, but allowing you to still enjoy the things you like, but choosing a little better stacks up over time. Again, small habits making big changes over time. So we got, we got Apple, we got choose better. Good enough is good enough. So we again get, especially for people like us, busy brains trying to accomplish everything. Often we let perfection get in the way of good. Yeah. If it's not perfect, I'm not gonna do it. And so when people start looking at how to improve their start, how to improve their eating habits, if you go out to a restaurant and you're looking at the menu, you're like, well, I don't see that 600 calorie chicken salad on the menu. I guess I'm just gonna get the body weight pasta. Mm-hmm. With a large drink and a bunch of chips. And sauce. Well, no, you don't, you don't have to do that. You could just get something good enough. Think about like, oh, I just need to get a little protein, a little veg, a little carbohydrate easy. No problem. If I give you a meal with a, a bit of protein and a little dinner roll and a little side salad, most people would say That's good enough. Yeah. Well, that's a, that's a hamburger. Yeah, you stack that on top of each other as a burger and you can get those anywhere. And that is like my go-to. Good enough option. You don't need the side chips, you don't need the big drink. But if you just get a burger, you're usually covering your bases. Yeah. Meat, veg, a little bit of grains. You're doing fine. That's good enough. Especially when you're going out to eat.'cause we're never gonna find perfect. Yeah. So not letting perfection be our biggest enemy. Don't eat your emotions. Mm. And you know, every time I say that, I get a reaction 'cause it's so much easier said than done. Yeah. But once we start recognizing our habits around food, when we're eating, if we're actually hungry, what we're eating, uh, we start to sort of realize that a lot of the, the food that people typically reach for is to deal with emotions. But every time that we eat emotionally, we're actually making it harder to regulate our mood in the long run.'cause we're taking a short, intense fix that leads to a crash later. And so recognizing these habits then allows us to start working on better coping mechanisms. But again, like coming back to the Apple test, like always testing, am I actually hungry? What am I eating for? And then looking at could I do better? And then looking at, well, is there a good enough option to help us stop emotional eating?'cause that's a, a really big part of some of the issues that we have as adults with our eating habits. Yeah. Uh, let's see here. Then we've got treats. Treats are treats. If you're eating the same thing every day or the same time each week, that's not a treat. That's your diet. If you're coming home and every night you're like, I have to eat the block of chocolate, like I have to have the bottle of wine. Yeah, no, it's not a treat. It's like, oh, I, I've earned it. I went to work today. It's like, yeah, you do that every day. You don't get a treat for doing everyday life. Treats are. Earned. Earned the rewards. Yeah. And so keeping treats as treats is, I mean like do kids get treats every day just for existing? No, they get a treat when they do something worthwhile. Do something good, do something special. It's the same for us. We don't get treats for existing. Yeah. Have you noticed though, that kids will still try that? Yeah, so it's interesting. Human behavior. They do expect treats for just having done normal everyday stuff. Like, okay, well now I can do this. And it's like, well, no. Yes, I Where did that idea even come? No. I wonder if it is an intrinsic human behavior, what the science behind that is, because it is very, very common. Oh, it is. I mean. Why wouldn't you want a treat? But we're so trained to have treats. You know, we've had this argument with my son, he's four and a half, and he's always like. I want dessert. I'm like, you haven't even had breakfast yet. Mm-hmm. Whatcha talking about you can't have dessert, but this is a nice thing. This is an enjoyable thing. Why wouldn't you want it? Yeah. But it's our job as adults to set the example and say, well these, these are not everyday things. These are earned things. You did something great. Yeah. Let's go out and get ice cream. Yeah. Out with the family. Have an ice cream. Go have a cake with. With dinner, whatever it is, it's earned. It's uncommon and that's what makes it really a treat. And then the last habit is what brings all together is understanding, and this is the kicker for most adults, is that mistakes happen and we have to see them as speed bumps and not get derailed. So it's like common one is getting a food journal from a client and, and they're like, Hey, just so you know, I had a work event or a social engagement on the weekend, so I ate a whole pizza and a bucket of wings. It's like that's how many wings do you have to eat to be social? Mm-hmm. Like that's not how this, that's not how this works. This is just Yep, yep, yep. But that's recognizing that as a mistake and a mistake is something that is counter to what you're trying to achieve. If you're like, my goal this weekend is to eat my weight and pizza. Okay, cool. That's not a mis, I mean, it's probably a mistake. But if that's what you're actively trying to do, yeah. Good for you. Yeah. But if you're like trying to do well across the week and you're trying to eat better and try to set a better example for your kids and trying to be healthier, and then you go off the rails, that's a mistake because it's actively against what you're trying to achieve. Yeah. And so adults have to understand that that will happen at some point. You will make mistakes and then you just start again tomorrow. Yeah. And you have to learn from them. So that doesn't happen as frequently. And I, I did a podcast last month with a, a lady who runs like alcohol coaching business. And the similarities here were crazy because it's like you will go off the rails at some point when you're on this process, you will make a mistake. But the worst thing you can do is use that as an excuse. You ate a slice of cake. Well, now I have to eat the whole cake. No, no, no. It's not a problem. Just do better tomorrow. Just pick up again and learn from those mistakes. Yeah. Instead of beating yourself up about it and just going, oh, well I should just give up. Which is so common. That's right. People just trying to do that. Right? Very mm. So interesting. Oh yeah. So mistakes happen. I just wanna briefly touch on something that I found very interesting in my travel. So I've only been to the US once. You hailed from the US now. I was vegetarian at the time. I'm super mega healthy. I didn't drink, I didn't party, I didn't do anything. I was like. Straight down the line, super focused. Dunno what happened.'cause I'm not like that now. But anyway, that's a mistake, right? But when I went over there, I found it really, really hard to find anything even remotely healthy. Or even containing vegetables to eat right down to the fact that, yeah, Starbucks, for example, like a pre-made coffee that you would buy from the service station here in Australia tastes, and the same brand over there tastes completely different because the one over there is preloaded with what tasted like about eight or nine teaspoons of sugar. And here it does not taste like that. Like I took once to the vid and I was like, holy hell, what is this? Like, do you recognize a difference like that being from the US and now living in Tasmania, even though it's part of Australia, I'm like, it's even more healthy right. Than over here. Like the Tasmania's got the most beautiful fresh produce. Yes. Yeah. We, we do. We are spoiled for food quality. Yeah. That's the big thing. Like when I go back, especially if I go back in the winter to visit family like Christmas and stuff. Like, you're not gonna find a fresh vegetable. I'm, I'm from the Midwest, so I'm way up in the, the north where everything's frozen. Yeah. So, you know, seasonally you're just not gonna have that stuff. And if you do, you're gonna pay an arm and a leg mm-hmm. Um, for fresh stuff that comes out of Mexico or California. Um, so it's definitely not as big a part of the like, standard American diet. Uh, and, and it is an issue. And then the portion sizes are way bigger. Yeah. And a lot of the food is, is more often fried. Um, you know, I'm a huge fan of potatoes, but at a certain point I'm like. I just want a salad. And I don't normally eat salads. I don't, I don't normally crave salads at all, but I go over there and I'm like, man, I just want something like fresh and crunchy. Uh, but luckily they do have a lot of salad bars if you know where to look, which is not a common thing in Australia. Yeah. But it is a real thing and, and I'm hoping that there will be some changes in the near future with the, the US food system so that it doesn't so much subsidize and promote a lot of this, what we typically think of Amer as American food. Yeah, so interesting. It was such a huge culture shock to me, I must say. Right. I wanna know what is your favorite. Go-to meal for busy days. What's your absolute favorite? If you do have anything, you're busy, you're on the go. You need to be healthy. What are you having? Oh, I just, I'm so boring with my food. I keep it really simple. If I'm on, I, if I'm on a timeline, I'm just like yogurt, berries, granola, easy. Greek yogurt, lowfat, Greek yogurt. It's pretty high protein. I just, I'm just like, yep, easy, no problem. Or bagel cream cheese, protein shake, depending on how hungry I am and what's available. Like keep some of those staples around. Yeah, I'm really, really boring with my food. I, I actually, if possible, like I like to have a bunch of protein pancakes in the fridge. Yep. I've got a really good recipe for that, that I share around a lot. And happy to send it your way. It's like a cottage cheese based protein pancake. They're so good. They're so good. The kids love 'em. Everybody loves them and they're just, you know, like three pancakes is like 20 grams of protein. Now, would you prefer morning workout or evening workout? What one are you evening? Evening. Evening a hundred percent. I almost always work out in the afternoons. Yeah. Uh, I'm not a morning person. Never have been. Fair enough. Interesting. I'm definitely a morning. Definitely A morning come, I'm three o'clock in the afternoon. Like, nobody talks me. Nobody. Look at me. I'm done pee for the day. Nah. See, like I would much rather work out at three. Yeah. Right. Interesting. I, I couldn't, I don't think I could drag myself to the gym in the afternoon. Alright. One myth about fitness or health that you wish would disappear forever. Oh man. My probably biggest pet peeve is the idea that lifting weights makes women bulky. Yes. I used to be able to lift a lot when I gym. I mean, I can't even walk now at the time of recording. I'm in a moon boot with a broken ankle. I really miss walking. So for those walk. Jealous. Don't take it for granted. But yeah, I mean, I'm tiny. I am 165 centimeters. I am 48 kilos. Like I'm teeny tiny, but I used to be able to lift a lot, but I was never bulky, but I felt amazing. That's a, that's a common story. It's not lifting weights, it's lifting forks that makes people bulky. Oh, I love that. Don't lift forks, lift weights. You need to make it. Sorry. I know. Oh, that's so funny. Josh. I have so enjoyed our chat together. Thank you so much. Now we have a tradition on the. That you feel has impacted your life, either personally or professionally, that you would recommend we read? All right. If I, if I'm saying personally? Mm-hmm. I'm a big fan of fiction and Lord of the Rings is one of my favorite all time trilogies. I've read it many times like I. Absolutely. Just one of the best grand stories out there. Yeah. If I was to say professionally, uh, there's a collection of essays by Coach Dan John called, uh, never Let Go. And it's really just a collection of, of, of essays. Um, and it's all about like. His coaching style and how he works with people and they're, they're just, he's an old school track and field coach and an old school Olympic weightlifting coach. And everything is so much grounded in this works. It's not fancy, but it works. Yeah. And it's just so. Like foundation focused and it's about getting the best out of people without getting fancy, without dealing with fads and weird things people do on BOSU balls on Instagram. It's just straight up, this is how you make people perform well and it's great. I. Yeah. Yep. Amazing. Thank you so much for sharing all of your wisdom today. I look forward to tasting those protein pancakes. And for those of you who want to connect with Coach Josh, I strongly suggest you go and check out his website and the socials because he's putting some awesome stuff out there, and we could all be a lot healthier so that we can perform at our best and do the things that we love for well into our hundreds. So thank you, Josh. Yes. That's a wrap on today's episode. If you love the insights and inspiration, don't let it end here. Hit subscribe to stay connected and turn your visions into reality alongside our community of change makers. I'm Terran Reeves. Thank you for joining me. And remember, your story has power. See you in the next episode.