Lance Armstrong’s Former Chef: Fast Food Is Killing Your Potential!

[00:00:06] Nick. Nick, what's up? What's up man? Good to have you here. Nick, thanks so much. So Ice Age Meals. Nick, here we are just cooked lunch for you guys. Tell us how you're sitting here. What's going on? Nick, so I, you know, you guys have been customers for like two years I think. You know, once we take note of people ordering regularly, we're always trying to have a relationship and like really care and take care of our people. And Anastasia's

[00:00:36] the one who places the orders and I reached out to her maybe had to be close to a year ago and just mentioned, hey, we should do a podcast. You know, like I didn't know anything about you guys. I didn't know what this was. She's like, oh, we have a podcast studio. So then, like you said, walk in is more important than talking. And, and, you know, six, eight months later say, hey, let's actually do this. We want to learn more about what you guys are doing, how Ice Age Meals serve your team. And we took action.

[00:01:06] And put it together and put it together and said, I want to come down and cook you guys lunch. And here we are. For sure. Thanks for coming. Yeah. We've been eating your meals for a long time. I actually, so I'll, I'll talk about how I got introduced to Ice Age. Yeah. I don't know if it was Shark Tank. I want to say it was in watching an old episode. Sure. Or a rerun. Yeah. It was either a rerun or because for a while I was like binging that show.

[00:01:35] So this was like six years ago, maybe, maybe more somewhere around that timeframe. And we initially ordered the meals for a while and we were ordering like, I don't know, 12 at a time. It was not a lot. Something like that. And then we cut it off because I'm like, well, like I was always trying things. So it's like trying different meals, trying different meals.

[00:02:03] And I tried everything. I told you this earlier, like all the brands you could mention, even some of the ones that aren't as popular. I was even trying like the box stuff where you get at home and you cook it. Like HelloFresh and things like that. Ingredient boxes. Some of those were cool if you wanted to cook, but it's like, why not just go to the grocery store? Now with GPT, it's like, tell me how to make X. Yeah.

[00:02:27] And it'll tell you and you can go buy the stuff or now DoorDash it or Instacart it or whatever. But then when our team grew and I couldn't leave the office and DoorDash, it's like, you want to order something on DoorDash? It's like 60 bucks. It's insane with the fees and tip and everything. And it's like, we need a more efficient way. And I don't want to eat stuff that doesn't taste good. And I don't want to eat stuff that's unhealthy.

[00:02:57] And then I remembered, oh yeah, Ice Age. And I had been getting your emails and even through like the transitions of the company or, you know, I think you launched a new project a couple of years ago. And so I'm like, we're going to get Ice Age. And then we just started ordering a bunch of Ice Age. And I think it's like weekly now. And I think we even went from one box to two boxes just because then everybody else started eating it.

[00:03:22] So like started with four or five of us and then they're in the freezer. So as people came in, they start eating it. And it's like, oh, now we need breakfast options too. My story, I've never told you this, is probably 11 years ago, I started dealing with neuropathy. And I also had like really bad back problems with my SI joint and sciatica.

[00:03:49] And it was that coupled with neuropathy. So it's basically like an arthritic type of thing going on. And I just got passed around from provider to provider. I was getting back injections. It ended with this guy telling me I needed to be cut on. And at the time, I'm like 30, 31. I'm like, I'm not getting cut on.

[00:04:15] So I had studied this guy and read his book, Biohacking Secrets. And I was going through it. It's like, I'm never going to get to work with this guy. He works with high level athletes and probably cost a ton of money. And our business had gotten really successful. If you've ever had the point in life where like you set these wild goals and then you, or you thought they were wild, but then you hit them and you're like, oh crap.

[00:04:42] Like I, it's kind of like this identity crisis of like, oh, I even overshot my goal. We can talk about that later. But that happened. And so I contacted this guy, Anthony, me and Justin ended up working with them and he created, I'll have to send it to you. I'm going to connect you with Anthony. It's like a 40 page document. And the way that he approaches it is kind of like with hypnosis and prayer.

[00:05:11] It's creating like a 90 day fight camp. And so he kind of programs you to take it very seriously. And you create this document that lays out the fight camp and what inspires you and what you want to look like and why. And then he gives you this 40 page document of here's how you need to eat. Here's how you need to exercise. Here's how much sunlight you need to get.

[00:05:39] You need to be doing biohacker baths. So like Ebsen salt mixed with baking soda, mixed with food grade hydrogen peroxide and how much you put in each thing. And you're doing it every night. You're cold plunging in the morning or taking cold showers, you know, your skins in the sun for an hour a day. Like, I mean, everything is dialed. And then here's your entire supplement protocol.

[00:06:03] And then I had gone to finally a rheumatologist who did my entire blood panel and noticed that I had an autoimmune marker. Okay. And at the time, we'll show a photo, Zach, of what I looked like because I have a before and after. And I did the whole protocol, took it extremely serious, did AIP diet, autoimmune pavio, and did all the supplements.

[00:06:29] And I literally looked like a balloon that got popped. Like when people saw me, like Harrison, I went to an event and this is before he worked with us and he didn't even recognize me. Wow. Cool. And a lot of my symptoms went away. I still deal with some stuff, you know what I mean? Because I'm like prone to that and I don't think autoimmune. Yeah, you're going to Taco Bell. Yeah, Taco Bell brought it back. And I can notice when I eat, I don't eat clean.

[00:06:59] Sure. How I feel. Yeah. And then when I do eat clean, the energy I have, the focus I have, how much better my body feels, you couple that with things like sunlight getting in the ocean and it's just dynamite. I don't have the time to always do that and that's why we have the biohacking house. Gotcha. Okay. So we can hack some of that stuff like the light bed, the sauna, the cold plunge, the hock it.

[00:07:30] And there's some stuff in there for like stress and things too. I don't know if you saw that chair in the room. Yeah, I did. A bunch of nodes on it or something. Yeah. They vibrate and they basically trick your central nervous system into resetting. Okay. So they kind of, they give an element of stress, but then it brings you back down and it does that so many times. And you're listening to a track with like breath work.

[00:07:54] And by the time it's over, you're kind of back, your central nervous system is back in homeostasis. Yeah. Cool. So I've always been on this journey of, man, you got to feel good. If you don't feel good, you just can't be on your game. Yeah. You know, and running companies. Yeah. It's like, if you don't look good, you don't feel good. If you don't feel good, then you don't want to look good. If you don't feel good, you don't want to show up.

[00:08:22] You can't show up and give people the gift that you've been given. And so if you want to help lead someone or help someone have a breakthrough, you've got to be able to bring energy, focus, and bring a state. Everything's an energy. You know what I mean? Yeah. So when you're near someone, you can feel if it's like a bad energy, good energy. Like, you're going through something. Yeah.

[00:08:51] It's like we're all operating on this frequency. And so I'm just big on that. And yeah, that's kind of my story and how we got. But then the meals, where'd that come in? So through that process. Yeah. When the diet needed to be dialed in. Needed to be dialed in. And I need it to be quick. You know, I don't have time to go make stuff. Yeah. And Ice Age, in terms of taking it out of the freezer, heating it up for four to five minutes,

[00:09:21] like I have my own little hack with that. I'll heat it up just enough to be able to dump it out on a plate. Yeah. And then heat it up the rest of the way. And then I'll cut it up and everything. But yeah, we needed it to be fast but taste good. And, you know, I don't want to feel heavy and need to take a nap. So I still feel light, quick. Nick and the meals are a great source of protein and clean carbs. Yeah. Obviously, it's paleo.

[00:09:51] Paleo Nick. Yeah. But yeah, that's it. That's where it came in. And I tell people about it. Obviously, our whole office loves it. But it is the best tasting meal you can get that is frozen and ready to heat. Thank you. There's no comparison. Thank you, dude. That means so much, you know. And just so many of the things that you say are – the one is like how do you feel? I don't know if you know Marcus Philly, but he's a friend of mine

[00:10:20] and super studied and very smart. And that's what he always says. Like I can give you all the diet advice in the world, but like eat the thing. And then how do you feel in 30 minutes, 60 minutes, 90 minutes a day? Like how does this affect you, right? Right. And then we have a program called the Ice Age Meltdown that we've been working on for a couple years and just finished the first – it's a 100-day challenge. So it kind of reminded me of your fight camp, you know, 90 days.

[00:10:49] But very serious, very strict. We teach people fasting. And it's like kind of not really the best idea to be a meal prep company teaching people how not to eat, right? But it's such an important thing as far as resetting your body, right? Similar way. As far as mental clarity, like at about three-day fast, bro, your brain just goes – it goes in the mode where your hunter-gatherer, right?

[00:11:18] Your hunter – your hunting instincts aren't working and you're hungry and you're not catching – killing an animal. So now you need some help. And like it's cool, but you have to suffer to get there, right? And also teaches you about who you are, right? You want to find out who you are? Don't eat for four days. And like it's just – and from a biblical perspective, if we want to bring like – Yeah.

[00:11:43] They're saying when the guys used to live 900 years old, they would only eat one meal every three days. Have you ever heard that? That's why. I don't know how they verify that or if that's fully true, but that's – you know, I heard that. What's that do for you? Because your body goes into ketosis, right? Yes. And what's that do? There's a certain state. I mean, you just become fat adapted. That's what it is.

[00:12:08] And that's part of the trick of the whole thing is where, you know, from that point, you can't really eat carbs. Like what we do is we go a three-day fast to start. Then you're on three weeks of carnivore, meat only. Then you bring in dairy. And this is kind of on the mark of – how does that affect you? So it's like an elimination diet. Yeah. Starting at zero with nothing. And then by the end, it's a soft landing at like an Ice Age meal, right?

[00:12:36] High-quality protein with a high-quality carb, very clean. And, you know, you just adjust your journey according to what your goals are. Like we had one gal who just lost 37 pounds. We kind of told her story in an email a couple weeks ago over the 100 days. Steady Eddie, just a perfectly down-trending line for the whole 100 days.

[00:13:03] Another guy just went – he lost 37 pounds in 50 days. You know, and he was at 280 to start, so he had more to lose. But then he dropped off. And it's like, you know – but it's just such a cool thing. We're there to help people regardless, like if it's a meal to your office, if it's trying to reset your dietary discipline in your whole life. Like that's what I'm passionate about and kind of that starving artist mentality.

[00:13:32] Like maybe that's not that good for business, but it's just what – you know, it's why I'm doing what I'm doing, right? You got to ask yourself. And that's kind of where the – you know, this all came in, right? This poem I wrote when I started teaching people and saw this huge disconnect between like traditional standard American diet education or knowledge or recommendations versus like what's real? How does this really work?

[00:14:02] What are you really supposed to eat, you know? Growing up thinking like, hey, wheat bread is better than white bread. And then all of a sudden, oh, no, it's white bread. It's better than wheat bread. You know, I'm like really you're not supposed to eat any of that stuff, you know? Right. But, you know, we could go deep into the ketosis and fat adaptation. The goal is to basically teach your body to burn fat.

[00:14:26] Then your body can convert things into fat to burn the extra carbs in your system. And hydration is the big part, right? Like carbohydrate, the second half is hydrate. So the first thing you do is you lose a lot of water weight because the carbs hold water. I don't know if we get it. We could go down that rabbit hole back talking about water.

[00:14:51] But staying on track like the things that you say are tasty. It has to be tasty. Healthy, that's the goal of all of it. And then easy. Those are the kind of the three value props that we have that you can't touch. There's nobody who doesn't want things easier, tastier, or healthier.

[00:15:13] Similar to what you said, when I was a private chef working in these, you know, wealthy people's homes, they started in 2008. They started giving me these panels of their blood work. And I was like, what's this? Like DNA tests and blood tests. And now they're all allergic to all this stuff. And I'm like, okay, well. And at the same time, I was exposed to CrossFit. And then I started looking at the paleo and the zone diets that they recommend. And then I skimmed that over these panels that these people would give me.

[00:15:42] And I said, well, if we just follow this paleo diet, then I can feed pretty much everybody. You know, eggs was always on there as an allergy. And I was like, you know, I never really believe that everybody's allergic to eggs. But for the most part, as long as I did paleo, that was my guide for kind of changing the food that I made. And then I just evolved from traditional cuisine to more of a paleo style.

[00:16:11] And then the demand for that came about. And here we are 15 years later and nothing's changed, right? Like the stuff I'll – and I can hop into this whenever it makes sense. But like the stuff that I wrote in my initial thesis for launching my site and teaching people was – the original thing is the same today. All of it holds true. This is interesting with allergies. You mentioned egg allergies.

[00:16:39] What do you think about people becoming allergic to things because it's not in its natural state? So, for instance, is it natural to feed chickens the type of feed that most people use, especially with industrial farming, which is probably corn and GMO grain? Same thing with honey. You know, there's this whole thing with people becoming allergic to honey.

[00:17:06] And then the peanut allergy is this, you know, phenomenon. Everybody's allergic to peanuts. Yeah, and it's like nobody was allergic to peanuts when I was a kid, you know. And really when I was born, so 86, in the late 80s, I can't remember the year, there's this bell curve of allergies just go off the chart. And then autism kind of climbs with that too. And obviously we know chronic disease.

[00:17:35] Thankfully, people like RFK are bringing more awareness to that. Hopefully something actually gets done in Washington. You know, I have my doubts because it's politics. But at least it's becoming more talked about. And so I think eventually something will have to be done if the awareness keeps snowballing. But that's what I think it is. You know, first off, like peanut is not a good nut. Nut.

[00:18:04] Um, and I don't even think it is a technically a real nut. A pulse. I think it's called a pulse. Right. But when you look into like walnuts and pecans and like other things, those are much more healthy. Even almonds. Um, so it already has that element working against it.

[00:18:25] But then you, once you get into a big ag, no wonder people have these allergies that weren't an issue 20, 30, 50 years ago. Yeah, yeah. You know, so I think that's one thing with the eggs. I don't think like if you had free roaming chickens and you're eating the eggs, how many people are actually going to have an egg allergy? Probably. Yeah, it's so true.

[00:18:49] I mean, it's like what, it's what's your food is what your food eats too. You know what I'm saying? I think. You are what you eat. Yeah. And it's, it goes the same thing for what you eat. Right. And then if you bring in GMOs or like glyphosate, that's a huge, and it's just so nuts to me because I'm like, okay, glyphosate is a weed killer. So then how is it? Yeah. How do you, how is it in your food?

[00:19:16] Like how can they poison the food and still produce the crop? Right. So I did some research into that. And what they use it as a, is a desiccant. So they'll spray it on at the end so the food starts to die and dries out and then they harvest it. Crazy. And I just like to keep it simple and just bring it back down to like, know as much about your food as you can.

[00:19:39] And there's a big movement of people producing their own food, raising chickens and having gardens and kind of the homestead thing, making sourdough bread. But at the end of the day, know as much about your food as you can. Do everything you can to figure out how you're personally wired. That's one of the big things we do in the meltdown. How are you wired? You can't give a straight bit of advice to every person. Yeah. And we talk about that in here, like calories in versus calories out.

[00:20:08] Well, there's more to the equation than that. Right. It's like a thousand calories of table sugar or a thousand calories of almonds or a thousand calories of high quality protein. Like they're not going to affect you the same way. So become an educated eater, an ingredient reader. Like those are kind of two things that we feel that that's like our target market is both educating the people and then providing the product that we educate them on.

[00:20:38] Where'd you first become passionate about health and also helping people? Well, I was, I don't, I mean, part of it is my, we all have our story, right? It's like our most powerful thing is the story. But I grew up, both of my parents were obese. And in the Midwest, like, I don't know. I think down here, maybe it's more accepted. I don't know. I didn't grow up here, but there it was kind of a pretty big deal. You're frowned on.

[00:21:07] Like my parents had, they had a rough go. You know, people treat you differently. Even my dad from his parents, he was kind of like the redheaded stepchild because he was overweight his whole life. I saw them go through like, they used to listen to ocean waves at night to try to lose weight. It's called subliminal weight loss. Everything from Weight Watchers to like just struggle. And my mom eventually had lap band surgery. Okay.

[00:21:37] And this was when I was coming, just learning about CrossFit around 2008. And my mom came to visit and she told me about the surgery. And I was just like, oh, I tried to talk her out of it. But she didn't, she did it. And like didn't really change the habits. And she lost a bunch of weight. But even today, now she loves to eat, but she can't really eat that much. And she'll get sick or she'll have to go lay down.

[00:22:04] So that's the pretty big part of it, right? And I never really thought about that, but I had that upbringing. And then... It's interesting that the system would be more interested in surgery than preventative care. But we'll come back to that. Keep going. That's a whole nother podcast, right? And all of it. And that's how it works, right? Like that's how... Our vision is to...

[00:22:33] They now have a system called Medically Tailored Meals, the Medically Tailored Meals Act. But again, it's just as corrupt as any other government program. Like as long as you have a certified nutritionist on your staff, then you can produce meals for the Medically Tailored Meal Program that Medicaid pays for, for people kind of as a prescription for food instead of drugs, right? So a step in the right direction.

[00:23:01] But we were reached out to for a thing called the Roots Food Group. It was a recent... And I don't know if I can say... I think I can say it. That was public. But we just signed an NDA and kind of looked deeper into it because they wanted to know if we would acquire this company that was basically shutting down. And once I got into it, I was like, okay, what are these meals? Like what's in it? And it's like textured vegetable protein and canned corn.

[00:23:29] And here I was like so pumped because I just learned about the program. Wow, Medically Tailored Meals. This is... If you follow Callie and Casey Means, I don't know if you know them, but... I think I've heard of them. Callie has a thing where he's trying to get like a cold plunge would be covered by insurance, right? That'd be huge. Different things like this. And they already have it. Like that's a real thing. So then I reached out to them about food and they said, we're aware of this and we're working on it. And we're still maybe a year out before there's some progress.

[00:23:59] I was like, well, crap, do they know about the Medically Tailored Meals program? But then... And I was like, we're going to be one of these providers. We're going to do it. Like this is what we've been waiting for. And here textured vegetable protein and canned corn? Just crap. And then it's just this volume game again. Like these guys had like thousands, hundreds of thousands of meals in freezers around the country.

[00:24:26] And it was disappointing, you know? So I don't know what that little rabbit trail was, but like the passion for healthy food. Then I got into, I was cooking for Lance Armstrong, you know? Really? In 2008. Yeah. For like two years, I was, he started coming to Aspen to train for mountain biking. And I had done some chef work at this house that his, he was going to stay at.

[00:24:53] It was one of his friends and she let him stay there. And then there, there, I always had this super strong drive for excellence and perfection from Charlie Trotter. And I was like, I'm going to stay there. One of the chefs who I kind of idolized when I was just starting to cook. But, but nonetheless, she saw that. She saw it. When I went and did this dinner party, she's like, Nick, you're doing it way different than all these other guys. And like, so when he came, he was looking for a chef.

[00:25:23] And that was how I connected with him. And then I just saw like, whoa, this is a whole different way to live. We're like, health is the priority of your life. Right. That's the, the, the most important thing. And like, once you think about it, like health is the first wealth. And maybe you've seen that Shaolin monk guy says like, if you're healthy, you got a thousand problems. But if you're unhealthy, you only have one. And that's trying to get healthy. Right.

[00:25:51] So just so many paths kind of crossed all at once. But Lance Armstrong was doing CrossFit. He was trying to put on muscle to train for mountain biking and switch from road to mountain biking. And then he had a guy named Peter Park out from Santa Barbara who was riding with him and then training him in CrossFit. That was the same time this lady, Mary Scanlon, gave me her panel for her blood work.

[00:26:19] And then the same time I, my neighbor happened to have his gym certified as a CrossFit gym. I was like, I saw rings hanging in his garage. I was like, is this CrossFit? He's like, yeah, come on over. And that was like October 30th, 2008. My first CrossFit workout. I'll never forget.

[00:26:39] But all of it came together from like the blood panel, seeing Lance's lifestyle, my mom about to have lap band surgery, and then taking a look at my own life. Where am I? I'm headed down the same road that every other chef is if I don't do something. And then I went nuts on it. I think like you, I just get way into whatever I do. And I just started doing CrossFit like a maniac.

[00:27:09] And I got pretty fit, dude. I lost like 30 pounds. I was at 215. I got down to 185. And I was like, there's something to this. And then it's been a long journey since then. But the goal has kind of never changed. And I feel like I've been put here on the earth to like help spread the message and provide the solution. It's pretty crazy. Yeah, that's awesome.

[00:27:36] What's the story with Ice Age when you founded it? What did that look like in terms of getting the business going? Yeah, so I didn't, it's, I, like I said, I met with this mergers and acquisitions group yesterday, right? And they kind of want to, like, what was the business plan? Or you see all these people with these business plans and this like structured, really a lot of thought put into it. And I'm more like, you got these signs out here in your break room, like hustle, grind, and work hard.

[00:28:05] I don't put too much thought. I'm like, ready, fire, aim to squared. You know, like, so, but how it started was just through some, I was able to get some videos, some cooking videos on the CrossFit journal. And that used to be a pretty big thing. Now nobody even knows what it is. But for a series of years from like 2011 up until 18, I think we did like 10 to 12 videos a year.

[00:28:35] And they would air that typically in the beginning of the year to help people, you know, kick off their resolutions. But within that, I started a relationship with like CrossFit headquarters. And that led me to, in 2014, to get a booth at the CrossFit Games in Carson, California. And we just had this, you know, by then it was just paleonic.com. It was like my cooking paleo website subscription thing.

[00:29:04] And so we made a booth called Paleo Nix. And at the end of it, and it was kind of a cool story. Like I can go deep into all of it. But the main Levy restaurant group, what they tried to do, they had the contract for all the catering stuff at the Home Depot Center. So they tried to put a booth right outside, just decked out booth, brought in like hoods and convection ovens and like a full-on commercial kitchen out in a parking lot.

[00:29:31] And then brought in like a Holstein type smoker, the big carousel on it. And then we were next to them, right? So they had like the prime position. Well, what happened is their smoker where they were cooking everything other than like potatoes in the ovens, the chain on it, the carousel chain derailed. And they couldn't. And now this thing's like up to temp. And it's not like you can just hop in there and fix this thing. Like it shut them down. And then everybody had to come to our booth.

[00:30:00] So that was kind of a really cool thing. That's wild. But then at the end of that event on Sunday, we had a bunch of food that we had just cooked. You know, I didn't know how much to make, but we prepped about 6,000 pounds of meat for that weekend. And then had a lot left over that was very fresh, right? It wasn't like a week old. It was just cooked yesterday.

[00:30:22] So we took it back to this prep kitchen that we were using as like a commissary kitchen for the event and packaged it up. They did hot lunches for nursing homes and charter schools. So they had packaging machines and stuff. So we just portioned it out and froze it.

[00:30:42] And then I just made up, you can still see on Instagram, like I made up Ice Age Meal's name right then and just said these are available in the L.A. area for the next week. And then people just ordered through direct message on Instagram. And we went and delivered them. And then they wanted more. So then we started putting freezers in gyms down there. And then I was living in Truckee up in Northern California.

[00:31:10] I would fly down to L.A., rent a minivan, go prep a bunch of food in this kitchen, freeze it, and then drive up the coast and deliver to all these gyms out of a minivan. Yeah, hit that. And then returned the van in Reno and my wife would pick me up. And like that's how it started.

[00:31:32] And then that year, just another kind of like happenstance is that they had a big contract for all of the staff at the games. And when it was about, when we got it, it was 1,000 people, three meals a day for seven days. So like 21,000 meals. Well, in 2014, somebody else got the contract and then they subbed it out to a catering group in L.A.

[00:31:56] And they didn't really know how to cook for athletes or all the judges are like down on the floor in the heat with like black mats and stuff. And they were like bare, some of them were passing out. So CrossFit headquarters came to our booth on the final day and just bought meals over the counter in addition to the catered stuff because that wasn't doing the trick. And we're always about like hearty portions of high quality food.

[00:32:23] And then at the end, the lady said, hey, you should put in for the contract next year. So you could do this job. I said, okay, yeah. So then sure enough, a year later, I was kind of getting the whole fly to L.A. and all that. That's a mess. It's a grind, yeah. Yeah. So by the time that came around, we put in for the contract, we got it. And it was like, it was over 200 grand for that thing. And we got a deposit.

[00:32:51] So then we were able to take that money and rent, lease a kitchen and outfit it to get started. And then we, I just found the paperwork like a couple weeks ago on July 1st of 2015. We got the green light to cook in that facility. And by July 20th, we had to have 21,000 meals in L.A. And we had a booth open to the public.

[00:33:21] So like, as far as stress levels over my life, those two, even in 14, I was like in a bathtub, like trembling, shaking uncontrollably from stress and like whatever I was going through to make that happen. Didn't sleep for like four days. Wow. Wow. To make that booth happen.

[00:33:46] But in like money, like my brother, my brother and my friend, Jason Massey and Nick Knutson gave me money to buy. We needed like, it costs about 60,000 bucks for the groceries for that. And didn't know how that was all going. And in the end, we were able to just to pay them back and they made a good return and like off to the races, you know?

[00:34:10] So it wasn't this big thing with a business plan and a loan and a construction loan or, you know, any of that. It was just been working hard for a long time and opportunity came. And, you know, in the Bible, it says, I stand at the door and knock. And that's what you got to do, you know, let, let the opportunities in and you don't get those.

[00:34:37] Like what did Picasso, I think said, inspiration exists, but it has to find you working. And, and one central thing I would say, I sent out an email today, like consider the ant you sluggard. That's what it says in Proverbs. Consider its ways and be wise. It has no overseer or ruler, but it plants and it harvests on its own and like hard work.

[00:35:07] You know, it, it's the only way. The worker is worthy of his wage. It's another one. Yeah. If you don't work, you don't eat. There's so many work. There's one of my favorite verses. I think it's in Timothy. And it basically says, I'm going to paraphrase the Bible. Um, it basically says, if you cannot provide for your own family, you are worse than an

[00:35:35] unbeliever because it says you're an infidel, infidel and worse than an unbeliever. Isn't that wild? So fundamentally, I believe that men are supposed to provide for their family, just fundamentally, you know, and it goes back to hunter gatherer. And I mean, you just look at nature.

[00:36:01] Like if you go look at nature, um, I have chickens, you know, and I have one rooster. Well, I have two. One's useless. He just hides from the other one. Um, but the, the main one, the one who leads the flock, he protects the flock. You know, he gets them back in to the run before it gets dark, you know, gets them situated, lined up to sleep.

[00:36:27] Um, and he's the one who's going to defend them, you know, and, uh, he leads them back out in the morning to Rome. Um, you know, you go look at, uh, lions, you know, and a lion's going to sleep for the majority of time. I think it's like 20 hours, 20 hours a day. And then they hunt for four, you know? Um, and it's the same thing with us.

[00:36:54] And there's so, this is obviously in the Bible, it talks a lot about working and providing and, uh, all of that. And we mentioned versus, but yeah, fundamentally I, and I think this is something lost in today's culture. And I'm not saying like women can't work. That's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying the man in a family is the leader or should be, and he should be able to provide for his family.

[00:37:24] And there's all sorts of things I could talk about around this, but I don't think there's ever been an easier time. I mean, we have a supercomputer, you know, and it's like somebody just asked me a question, uh, before coming in here of like, we need this creative brief. And like, I literally took their questions and put it into GPT and spit it out. And they're like, this is great. You know, it's like, yeah, I didn't do anything, you know?

[00:37:52] But the people who can leverage this, who can understand it, who can use the tools well. And this has been throughout history, whatever the technology or tools were, the people who could use them better would excel, you know? And so there's never been an easier time to make money from home, from on the road, but there's also never been so many distractions.

[00:38:18] There's never been, uh, so many things market, marketed to us like mental health and, you know, all these things that I don't even think there would be, uh, nearly as many issues with all of this stuff if it was not marketed to us through social media, the news. Cause it's like, you hear something about mental health and I think it's real.

[00:38:44] And I think that maybe in certain extreme cases, medication should be involved. But for the most part, most people who bring it up as a buzzword now, it's like, you just have the wrong attitude. You have the wrong mindset, you know, you have the wrong beliefs, the mental diet, right? That's it. And it's like, you're, you don't really have a mental illness, you know? And it's like, what's your stress tolerance?

[00:39:11] Like if I like to go watch biographies, I was watching a Robert E. Lee's and this is probably, uh, you know, a controversial subject, but he's obviously a central figure in American history. And he actually worked with Ulysses Grant after the war to rebuild America together. And I didn't know a lot about him until I went to Arlington and the whole, I never knew this.

[00:39:37] The whole central theme of Arlington is his house is at the top of the mountain. Okay. You know, a lot of people don't know this. I had no idea. I'm like, oh, it's the, you know, it's the, um, cemetery. Cemetery. Yeah. And my initial thought was seeing JFK and things like that. And then it's like, oh, there's this huge house that everybody's going to. It's Robert E. Lee's house.

[00:40:01] Um, which I think was passed down through George Washington because he married like George Washington's granddaughter, but George Washington didn't have any kids. It was through marriage that he had like a, you know, so it's, it's very interesting. Um, but it's like, you look at his life and what he had to live through in the conditions. Yeah. You can study all these people. You could store study George Washington.

[00:40:27] You could study Truett Cathy who founded Chick-fil-A and in the great depression. And he was walking barefoot to the grocery store and, uh, they ran out of credit back then. You had credit at the store. So they'd allow you to take stuff. And, and they exceeded their credit. So the store cut them off, you know, then you fast forward many years and he started a business with his brother and the restaurant burned to the ground.

[00:40:56] And then his brother died in a plane crash and he just keeps going. And it's like, you know, this is a tangent, but my whole point is most of us don't even know what stress really is. Imagine going through that. That would be stressful. But the interesting thing is it's almost easier to operate because you either, you have a choice. You're either going to survive or die.

[00:41:21] And I went to Pakistan 10 years ago, a friend who's an evangelist. I went with them back then. I was really big into video. So I was doing a lot of this stuff and motion graphics. That's what I went to school for. And I went to Pakistan and, you know, all my, some of my family was freaking out and wigging out. I'm like, you're going to get killed. And, you know, certainly Pakistan's not a safe place. Sure.

[00:41:46] But everyone I came into contact with directly was much more happier. And I wasn't even, we can go back to energy. They don't speak English. It's a vibe. It's an energy. They were so happy and they were just stoked to be alive. Yeah. And it was life so simplified. And so I was in Lahore, Pakistan.

[00:42:14] We went to Islamabad, but then we stayed in this one place where there was kind of like revivals meetings. Okay. And it was all structured through the government. So we had like armed guards protecting us and stuff. Really, I don't think the government of Pakistan wanted Americans to die over there. So, you know, they, you have private security, but then when these big meetings happen, you have security from the government.

[00:42:42] And yeah, it was just in that village, you would, you would, and it's like literally brick and mortar, like concrete buildings and stuff. We're staying in this village. And it's a village, I think it was called Martinspur. And it was founded by an evangelical pastor from Britain in like the early 1900s.

[00:43:11] And so this little village was like predominantly Christian, but because of the laws in Pakistan, they had to pray, play the call to prayer every morning at like five, and it's several times throughout the day, but it would wake you up in the morning. But you'd walk around and be interacting with these people and you had security with you, but they'd be like, Hey, let's cook for you. Or we want to give you a gift. And, you know, they were the happiest people.

[00:43:38] And it's just interesting that they were so relational, even with not even us being able to interact verbally. Yeah. And life was just so simple for them, you know, and they were stoked. So... Living in a hut or like living in a basic, oh my gosh. You know, but I think there's something to that. And certainly when you study people through history, when their life was simplified and

[00:44:05] they didn't have all this outside noise, what we can accomplish and what we can go through is pretty wild. You know? Imagine being on the frontier and living in the... Yeah. You know? You don't have... And then it comes down to us as like, we still have the option at some point to limit, right? The time that we spend on here. There's the book Irresistible. I read that book and it's just like, it's insane.

[00:44:34] The level that you can... How deep you can get into this or the type of... I love when I meet people who don't have Instagram or they don't have... I'm just like, wow. You know, for me, that's been my whole life, right? Like that's how our business started. You've got to market yourself. Yeah. So that's... It just comes down to discipline in us and like you get to choose what you let into your life.

[00:44:58] And there's some stuff that's like propelled up, compensated, like it's on you where you have to deal with it. But a lot of it we can choose, you know? It's what you let in that counts. Yeah. I actually have Instagram deleted from my phone right now. I'll delete it during the week. And then like I'm about to go to the beach for vacation. So I'll probably add it back a little bit. But it helps me stay off it. And if you look at the...

[00:45:26] Especially with TikTok, you know, what this does to your brain. There are studies out there that talk about the attention span of a human now is about eight seconds. Eight seconds. And a goldfish is nine seconds. So, you know, this ties... I do a lot of sales and sales training and customer service.

[00:45:51] And it ties into that a lot because the name of the game was sales and the internet is like this buzzword, bad leads. Bad leads. We need better leads. These are bad leads. Like when'd you call them? Oh, we call them a couple hours after opt-in. Or oh, we call them next day. How many times you call them? Oh, I think Sammy tried, you know, once and she sent a text too. And it's like, dude, you know how many red phone numbers I have in my phone right now?

[00:46:18] Like if I just go to calls and recent, how many are red? So miss calls. And none of the numbers are saved. I have no idea who these people are. A lot of it's spam calls and things like that. But if you want to stand out in sales, you have to have a specific follow-up process. And you have to believe that the person, especially if they're opting in, that they are interested until they tell you they're not interested.

[00:46:45] And even if they tell you they don't know who you are, you have to backtrack. Oh, yeah. So you were interested in or you asked for this thing specifically. And you just nurture them, you know. And you have to be resilient. And I tell a story where a lady was on a webinar. While she's on a webinar, she goes and fills out a form, you know. So very interested.

[00:47:14] Called her after the webinar ended. Didn't answer. Sent her a text. Sent her an email. I, over a week, I contacted her 12 times. And then I kind of let it rest for a couple days. Then I hit her back. First name, exclamation point. Instantly responded, yes, question mark. Start chatting. Nurture her to a discovery call. Get on the discovery call. Book her for a solution call. Close her. Most people would have given up. Yeah. Great lead, though.

[00:47:44] Then you could talk about like, what if I had to nurture people for two years and then put them through an email sequence? And again, it's like you just believe that people are interested until they tell you they're not. Right. Yeah. And for me, I'm not just like, I don't opt into anything. I don't want contact. See, you're smart. I don't want any, you know. But what if you really did? What if there was something you really wanted? Yeah. Then I'm going to be, like I said, anything I go for, I'm going for it. Like, I'm not going to wait for you to call me back.

[00:48:13] You're a proactive buyer. If I want to buy something, you're not going to sell me. You don't need to sell me. Like, sales don't work for me. And that's maybe part of the trick for us is like, really good at making the meals tasty, healthy, and easy. But I hate being marketed to. So I don't like marketing to people. That makes sense? So, and then if I want to buy something, I'm going to find it and I'm going to buy it and I'm going to do it fast.

[00:48:42] And there's not going to be any, like, hesitation. My, I like that. My only comment would be, that's not how most people behave. You know? So it's like, and I think you know that, you know? So with pushing the business. You're supposed to be the one out of the hundred, right? So like, but. What's your favorite meals within? Let's talk more about Ice Age meals. Yeah. Yeah. Like, what are some of your favorites?

[00:49:12] Man, dude. Like, I, I love them all. You know, they're my baby. Like the, right now, the pork belly, the, the pork belly burger. I haven't had that one. Oh my gosh. It's a half pound. So like, we have two different things and like, give me talking about food. Like it's going to get, but, um, but the Tursky burger, that's one of our meals. The Tursky burger, we fold in, we put the meat in the mixer and we fold in the salt and pepper.

[00:49:40] And then that's a big laborious process. And then we portion it out in eight ounces. We can also get patties pre-made. We've never done that because they don't taste that. They're, they're not as good if you don't put the seasoning in. If you just season the outside, a lot of times, you know, like we want to do Tursky. That's my buddy. We want to do him. Right. So that's the Tursky burger process. Well, then we've said, well, why don't we come up when we got into the ice age meltdown?

[00:50:08] Part of that is you can do a meal option where you can get some meals. Well, we're not eating ice age meals till the end, but in the carnivore stage right away out of the gate, we needed some stuff there. And we kind of specialize in meat. Like that's, I'm a meat guy. Like just, I love, I love meat, you know, and I love smoked meat and open fire cooking and all that. But, but coming back to my favorite is like, we, we, we got the half pound patties that are already made.

[00:50:38] And then we do just season the outside and then smoke them. Okay. So they're not as deep in flavor as the Tursky burger, but then we pair that with six ounces of pork belly, which is full of flavor. And that lays over the top of the burger. So when you heat it up that, you know, pork smoky flavor comes down. Like, so that's a, that's kind of like the most recent one. And we're still doing the meat only meals right now.

[00:51:04] We just did the photo shoot last week and now we'll develop, I don't know if you saw where some of them just have a sticker on the top. Now we'll develop the sleeve for the meat only line. And, um, but historically like pastel de papa that came from one of my, you know, private chef clients, Matias Garfunkel from Argentina. And when I cooked for them, they would have, they wanted six days. They wanted six days a week. Well, they wanted me to work seven days a week.

[00:51:32] And I said, no, I need at least one day off. So on Sunday they'd have me, they'd have me make a pastel de papa on Saturday and leave it for them to heat up. And that's like, Argentina has a lot of Italian influence on their, on their cuisine. But that was, that's pastel de papa has green olives and raisins in it and hard boiled eggs. It's kind of a unique thing. And then that was just a potato top, but we just made it a yam top and then it's falls in the paleo.

[00:52:03] So I've always kind of had a, that's got a little soft spot in my heart. The pastel de papa, the team, our whole staff loves the lemon pepper chicken. Yeah. That's the one here. Brisket and rice. The brisket is fire. The lemon pepper chicken. Those are the two big ones here. And then now it's the pork belly with eggs, which I eat a lot at breakfast.

[00:52:27] So we do a workout Monday, Wednesday, Friday with a trainer over in the gym. And then I'll come over here and crush the pork belly and eggs and do a protein shake, maybe like an hour after, you know, sometimes I'll do the protein shake first and then wait an hour and eat the breakfast. That one's really good. The one that's a little bit different that maybe you can talk about too, and it is so tasty is the lasagna.

[00:52:57] How do you make that one? Yeah. That one we call Old Faithful. Yeah. And then Red Gold was another name. Like during Shark Tank, there's this one guy, Brian Sutherland. He was like our graphic designer, kind of helped with the website in the early days. But he, I remember him having, you know, through the night portioning out, he would just come in and he and I would portion out butternut squash lasagna. He called it Red Gold.

[00:53:26] He's like, this is like making gold right here. He said, you know, but the story behind that was kind of my brother, my brother, Jason Massey. He, he's like, man, you should do a butternut squash lasagna. Like, and I think it came from like some kind of recipe from one of the paleo, like when paleo was hot, there's like a thousand paleo cookbooks at Costco and all these people who were like, these guys aren't chefs. They're just like good at taking a staged photo.

[00:53:53] So we're really, you know, but nonetheless, inspiration was he's like, make a butternut squash lasagna. So I'm like, okay, you know, and I don't really need to see a recipe. I just kind of know what, you know, we're going to make a meat sauce. We're going to make it just like a lasagna. It's pretty labor intensive, that one. It's tricky on the production because the squash will always yield a different amount depending on the size and like so much goes into it. But that's a tasty one. Um, and you can't.

[00:54:22] It's our number one selling meal of all time is the butternut squash lasagna. No way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Harrison turned me onto it because originally I was like, ah, I'm probably not going to be into that. Harrison ate it and was like, dude, you got to try it. So I tried it. You can't tell. Like it, it literally tastes like lasagna. Yeah. There's no issue with eating and being like, cause I'm not a big squash fan. Yes. You know, but it goes back to how is it prepared? How's it cooked? How's it flavored?

[00:54:50] That can change the game with anything, you know? And that goes back to when I was doing AIP is we brought in a chef to make sure I could eat that way. And my wife, uh, dealt with autoimmune stuff too. And it worked, but the food just didn't taste that good. You know, so it's like, you've really got a amazing product that I hope more and more people can take advantage of because it's so easy. You don't have to do anything.

[00:55:18] You just order it and it comes, it's healthy. It tastes good. It makes you feel good. It gives you the right nutrients. Um, so I really think you're onto something and, um, just excited to be, you know, chatting with you about it. And I think we have a lot of things in common. Yeah, I do, man. Appreciate it. Yeah. And the lasagna is like from a macro standpoint, like that's a one pound meal. It's like 385 calories. Like it's going to fill you up. It's going to make you feel good.

[00:55:47] You're not going to bonk out and want to take a nap. Like if you go just like, if I go to Chipotle, I can crush a huge burrito, right? I can, but you're getting close to like a couple thousand calories. And then my gut's messed up for two days and I want to sleep. Like it's just, you got to get the queso and some chips. So then you're like all out of whack, you know? Yeah. Um, you want to take us through this poem? Let's do it. Yeah. So take us through this thing. Yeah.

[00:56:15] So this is the one that I wrote here when I started Paleo Nick and kind of brought in some of the different concepts that I had learned or like, okay, this, this is what the standard American diet says or what the media tells you about what diet is versus like, how does it actually work? So we've called it a couple, I just call it ode to paleo. And it goes like this. It says, it's the diet of the caveman who surely did eat it.

[00:56:44] And if you try it out, you'll be tempted to cheat it. Thanks to the cardboard box, cooking skills have been blunted, right? But cavemen didn't have this problem. Why? Because they gathered and hunted. Whole wheat, whole grain. It's all the same. We're not meant to eat it, but you're not to blame. You've been fed a bunch of baloney.

[00:57:12] The only truth of these claims is that they are phony. Now I'm not stressing about some cheese from Parma. My problem lies with Big Egg and Big Pharma. They're not afraid to feed you chemicals, sugar, and GMOs in quantities that will surely fill out your clothes. The obesity train is on a roll.

[00:57:42] The brakes are broken. It's out of control. The diabetes, the drugs, it's all a scheme. Ponzi comes to mind when I think on this theme. Now I'm sure you've all heard, but I want to forewarn cows. They don't eat corn. I'm sure they'll eat it when there's nothing else around, but when they do, their future lies six feet underground.

[00:58:05] Then start the hormones and countless injections to keep them alive till slaughter and fight the infections. It's kind of funny how this all works together. It's like big industries got us tied to their tether. I'm sure you've all heard the theory of calories in. We can move this. Versus calories out. But there's more to this equation, no doubt.

[00:58:35] Adding up your calories alone and waiting for your body to respond is like waiting for the tide to come in on a pond. I'm begging you to leave behind this tainted fodder. Take your health in your hands and drink some fresh water. Take your health in your hands and drink some fresh water. So come with me and the goods you will witness.

[00:59:01] Let Paleo Nick be your guide to culinary fitness. Boom. That's the one. Awesome. And then early on culinary fitness was the name that I really liked, but somebody had it trademarked and we tried to use it and put it on a shirt. And then the guy reached, you know, like culinary fitness is kind of a cool thing. Um, but there's a lot here. Mm-hmm. There's a lot to unpack.

[00:59:28] Like this one comes from, you can go look at, um, like cinnamon toast crunch and it'll have like heart healthy and like all the different little badges on it. You know, it just doesn't make sense to me. Parmesan cheese. Like, I'm not going to stress out about that. If you get Parmesan Reggiano, like those guys are doing it right and they care. And like, that's quality and that's history. Like don't throw out the baby with the bath water, but big egg and big pharma. This is all true.

[00:59:58] Mm-hmm. They will for profit. They don't care if you die because they can make, they want you on five pills by 50. Right. Well, they want you to get sick. They want you to get fat. Then you have to get on the pills. You have to get surgery. And then you're just in the system.

[01:00:15] And like once you're in and your health starts to go to crap, if the government cares about Americans, how is this, how is this happening? You know, if the government, there's, the government's never been bigger before. And maybe it was bigger in the last administration because now they're, but still it's enormous.

[01:00:40] And you're telling me with all these jobs, like they're fighting for the American people when, yeah, I mean, it's good. Like walk down the cereal aisle. How's that allowed? You know? Cookies, chips, cereal, candy, soda. There's no focus on health. And then, you know, we talk crap about all these other countries.

[01:01:02] And China even, and I'm not saying I want to move to China, mainly has the EU laws around their food. So they don't, they don't let their kids, like a lot of food dyes and stuff and candy. It's totally different accessibility to it. It's a lot better than our stuff. And that tells me they care more about their future generation. It's about actions over words. This is limited over there.

[01:01:32] We think it's this terrible thing. Oh, you can't get on the internet. Well, it's like, they don't want your mind to be rotted. They don't want your neurons to be destroyed by aimless. I mean, we're sitting around eating Big Macs and scrolling and killing our Big Gulp soda pop. It's like, how are we supposed to compete? How are we supposed to function? Yeah.

[01:01:54] You know, things that for the tariffs, like you've seen those little spoofs where China made, this is what the American factory worker is going to look like. Right. Have you seen that? No. So they used AI to make it, but it's just a big lab, big whole warehouse full of sewing machines with a bunch of fat, lazy people. They're drinking soda and scrolling and like pushing the fabric through the sewing machine slowly. Can't blame them for making it. But like, okay, then you go and like, okay, socialism.

[01:02:23] And again, I'm not saying I want to, there's pros and cons, but you go to Germany and they're basically homeopathic. Like even on an aspirin bottle, Jason went for Auto Mechanica, which is like one of the biggest automotive shows in the world. They have disclaimers on Advil. Like, I'm paraphrasing again, look this up, but it's basically like, don't take it unless you have to type of thing. And here's, you know, risk if you take it too often.

[01:02:53] And, you know, they're toxic. They're focused more on naturopath, homeopathic. Yeah, look at the food systems. What about like the lunch? I like the one where it's the, these are the lunches at the school lunch program, the public school lunch program. Well, look at Italy, okay? So where people live the longest and what's their diet?

[01:03:16] They actually are eating a lot of wheat grain and drinking red wines, but it's all organic. It's all natural. And they're out in the sun, which we were talking about earlier. You know, I watched the documentary on it in that district where people live to be 120. Yeah, the blue zone or whatever. Yeah, you look at the blue zones in Italy.

[01:03:40] And if you watch it, there's probably a lot of documentaries, but I think one I was watching on Netflix and they're, the people are out there harvesting grain, you know, hours a day. Then they go make it all fresh. So they're eating it that day and they're drinking their red wine from their vineyards. These people live to be forever, you know, and. And like, that's the biggest flax, right? Just look at the proof, you know, look at what's happening.

[01:04:08] And we're over here saying, oh, they're socialist and oh, they're communist. And it's like, I get it again from a, but there's so much we could dive into there. But the point is, is the people are more healthy mentally, physically. They're better educated. Yeah, big on that. And like here, dementia and Alzheimer's, like where I come from is in the Midwest. Is Fargo, North Dakota, is that the Midwest?

[01:04:36] Like, I feel like that's about as Midwest as you can get. But that zone, bro, healthcare there and hospitals and like, that's the business. That's the biggest thing around. You're always going to the hospital. And I'm like, I haven't been to a hospital like my whole life. Dude. I don't go to the hospital. I'm not going to the hospital. I'm like, and then the grandparents, they lose their minds. They lose their minds. They're going crazy.

[01:05:03] And then they just pump them with pills to like sedate them until, so they can get their monthly payment at the nursing home. Like, I mean, it's just like, wow, that's not me, bro. You know, and like, you got to be the one out of the hundred. You got to be the one person in the crowd who like gets it and educates yourself. And like, don't think like these other people think. Don't be a follower. You got to be a leader if you're not leading.

[01:05:33] Like, so that this, it's all about education. And there's a lot of education, like the paleo diet, like what is just trying to mimic the way things were naturally. Really? That's it. And like open heat and eat, that's kind of a little bit edgy with Ice Age because that's really what we are. But we try to provide a healthy, convenient option, hunting and gathering.

[01:05:59] Like if you go to look at how we're wired as humans, like there's a lot of stuff tied into that. The man is the leader. How do you act if it's been three days without eating? Right. We kind of talked about that. And like, if you, you're going to go kill some stuff. Your mental acuity goes nuts, bro. And like, and then it's in this point where you're just like, holy, all you want to do is eat because you're starving.

[01:06:24] And then all you're doing is battling like the, the, the, the mental high that you're on where you could conquer the world versus how hungry you are. And are you going to break the fast? This is what I was going to tell you with AIP. So after you do, this may be true with several diets like a carnivore, paleo, but with AIP, after I followed it 100% for 30 days, all my cravings for stuff went away.

[01:06:55] No more sugar crit. And like almost the stuff was disgusting. Like I can't even order to this day any more sweet tea at Chick-fil-A because it's literally so sweet. It's disgusting. I'm like, this is just pure poison. It's like syrup. You're literally drinking syrup. It resets your taste buds. And when you look at what that does with your body and your spike in insulin, you know,

[01:07:22] and then you, you watch it go up and then it just crashes. And you're seeing everybody wear these things on their arm to measure their glucose. That's what I was trying to say. Your glucose levels, you know? And it's like, well, that's cool that you're wearing that, but I can show you how to just eat and drink right. It all goes back to this. Yeah. If you eat, and this is what I want for the audience, simple whole foods and water. But if somebody's watching or listening and it's like, what are, what are three things

[01:07:51] they can do right now to either feel better and have that mental clarity, not that brain fog or lose weight? What are, what are just like maybe three things, four things they can do right now? You know, they say, there's a saying, the chef is only as good as his last meal. Oh, you know, it's cool that I, my last meal I cooked for you guys today. Appreciate that. But it's the same thing. Your next meal is the start to your journey.

[01:08:23] Now is the time. Take action. Fall on the floor. Do some pushups. Get an apple. Read a book. Mental diet as well. But like, don't come up with, even if your food, like what I did when I started, I went and I threw away all the food in my whole pantry, cleared out my whole, my wife thought I was nuts. We had two young boys and my wife, she's just like, Nick, you're crazy. What are you doing? It was like a couple of days before Thanksgiving. I mean, it was crazy, but that's how I did it.

[01:08:52] And like I said, when I go for something, I'm going for it. And like, that's a little bit extreme, but the number one thing is don't use the excuse of Monday or tomorrow. No, right now. New Year's resolutions. Yep. It's such a joke. And then the next thing would be, like you said, water. It's the only thing that you need to drink. Coffee. Yeah. But like water is the number one thing.

[01:09:20] If you're drinking any kind of sugary, any kind of energy drink, if you drink any, even when we're on the Ice Age meltdown, it's, you don't get this, the flavored bubbly water until like the third or fourth phase. Just drink water. It'll reset. That, like you said, the way that you taste things and like you realize how sweet things are. That would be two. And then three.

[01:09:45] I think one of the biggest flexes is like learn to cook and teach your kids how to cook. Do you want somebody to fish for you or do you want to be able to fish? Yeah. Learn to cook. Teach a man. Again, dude, it's so easy. Like I'm cooking all kinds of stuff at home just with GPT. It could be easier. I'll even go through with like leftovers and like, you know, I had a frozen okra and like leftover ham after Thanksgiving and I had frozen okra from the summer.

[01:10:14] And I'm like, how can I tie this together with a soup? Yeah. Like chat GPT tells you, it's so easy, you know? But yeah. So eat good food, drink water, learn to cook. Maybe number four could be exercise and get out in the sun. Sweat. Are you kidding me, bro? Sweating. Sweating what that does for your body and getting rid of toxins and getting your lymph moving, you know, getting the blood flowing. Yeah. It's huge.

[01:10:44] And if you want to go, you know, some simple ones are like in a general prescription, eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar. That's from CrossFit's 100 words, fitness in 100 words. That's the nutrition portion. Meat and vegetables. That's the focus. Meat can be the focus, right? Try carnivore, see what it does. Like it's all about how you're wired and what your body composition is. Like there's so much to it.

[01:11:13] You can make it really simple and you can make it really complex. But like a good place to start is eat meat for three weeks. And then I was on a hunting trip with my son and we got together at these people's house who we met on this trip and they invited us for the dad's birthday. They had, we grilled some ribeyes over a sagebrush. It was crazy. But these guys, oh, I tried, I tried, yeah, I tried carnivore for a week. I was so sick of eating steak.

[01:11:43] I could, you know, and this big guy just like crushing a bunch of carbs at this dinner. And I'm like, well, that's not going to do it. You know, the number one thing that we teach in the meltdown is discipline. You want to learn how to be disciplined? Like the best thing that you, if you can control what you eat, you can control everything else in your life. Once you learn to fast and you learn that we are eating way too much food, like then we talk about a thing called a minimum effective dose.

[01:12:11] If you're starving, you don't need to eat 2000 calories for your meal, right? One bite of something is just like heaven, right? And that's really enough to get you through whatever, you know, to the next step or whatever it is. And I'm not saying starve yourself. And I like to gorge myself after a big fast or at least have like a big steak or something. But if you think about it, we're eating way too much.

[01:12:38] And if you're coming out of a fast where you haven't eaten anything, even a small portion is all you really need. Yeah. So I've tried lots of different stuff. One of the things I tried was like a kale berry walnut salad and even like apple slices on it, you know? Yeah. With just like a local honey with a little bit of cold pressed olive oil, you know? And you could even squeeze some lemon juice in there.

[01:13:07] Use that as your dressing. But I ate this for like 30 days basically. I would eat eggs and stuff for breakfast, but for lunch and dinner I would eat. And how fast you are, like when I say fast, the mental state you're in and how fast you can move and how light on your feet you are. Just, yeah. I mean, we had a mastermind and we brought in a chef. I want you to come to the next one. I'll give you some details.

[01:13:35] I don't have dates yet, but it'll, I'll let you know well ahead of time. So I had a guy come in and I said, all you can cook is paleo. And he was asking why, like, oh, you know, and I'm like, cause I don't want anyone to feel heavy. I don't want anyone to feel tired. Sure. And I want to curate the menu to where they always have energy throughout the day. Literally two days in, people are raving about how different they feel. Oh, I can eat as much as I would.

[01:14:04] Like the people are crushing breakfast and they don't feel tired. They don't feel heavy. And it's cause, yeah, cause everything is gluten free and paleo. So you can eat more food even without feeling like crap. The paleo thing, there's another side to where it can get rid of like paleo brownies. Right. And like I put on here a lot of times cane syrup or, you know, all this is really the same, right? Yeah. Your body's going to convert it. Yeah. Agave, nectar, whatever.

[01:14:34] But then people say paleo. Oh, this is paleo. So get into these desserts. And like, that's not really what I'm talking about. And that's not what we're about. We're about like, we were talking to Zach. He's like, bro, you got to tell me what you cooked up on that salad dressing. And I was like, oh yeah, dude, that's just lemon, olive oil, salt, and pepper. That's all that is. Like the simplest thing is the best thing. And growing up, there was, you know, I kind of came into like the late nineties was my culinary exposure and starting to look at cuisine and all that.

[01:15:03] There was like this fusion cuisine and there was just like the super complex and the more ingredients, the better. And now it's just like meat and salt and smoke, bro. Like that's all you need. Some grilled jalapenos. The simpler you can make something, the better. Like what ingredient can you take out instead of what can I add to make me look fancy or like I know what I'm doing. This could be maybe number five for our list is read labels. Learn how to read labels.

[01:15:32] So when you look at like the, I won't say the brand, but the other meals somebody had ordered, there's like 32 ingredients in the meal. Go look at the ingredients on yours. You know? That's what we've always been about. It was like the easiest. And we'll go to a lot deep extents to source it. I'm like reading labels on it because I'm trying to find the other day at the grocery store, good noodles. So anytime I go, and I think Reos is a decent brand. Rouse, yeah. Rouse, yeah.

[01:16:01] But I was reading and even on organic labels or gluten-free label, it's still like modified. It's like, I don't, I'm not. So any label with the word modified, don't buy it because it's fake. It's like, it's literally genetically modified food. Yeah, it's weird. Like you can get. Modified starch. None of this stuff means, right? Green, what do they call it? Green. Bleached. That's another one. Bleached flour. Like I want to eat bleached flour, you know?

[01:16:32] Crazy. But what's the term? White. Where the terms don't mean anything anymore, right? Like the cage free. Well, all those things just became marketing. So organic, natural, gluten-free. I mean, I remember the gluten-free craze where like the most unhealthy thing in the world is labeled gluten-free. It's like, well, yeah, because they don't need to make it with gluten. It doesn't mean it's good, you know?

[01:17:01] And then there's, to your point, there's all these sweets with sugar and honey and cane syrup and everything else and it's gluten-free. And it's like, well, yeah, but you still, it doesn't mean just go crush it. Sugar. You know? And the cow is saying this one came from, I think, Food Inc. Did you see that one? Where they cut the hole in the side of the cow and look at what's going on in his stomach. And like, if you just think of a cow going into a cornfield and like nibbling on, like

[01:17:30] look at what we have to do to eat corn, right? Corn on the cob. Like, you're not going to, cows aren't going to do that. Like, that's not. They're eating grass. That's not going to do grass. Yeah. Beads and stuff. And then if you look at the one with the, I forget the documentary. It might've been Food Inc. It might've been another one. It's showing all the farmland in North Carolina and pigs and how they slaughter pigs. And they throw them in these piles and leave them there for days. And their stomachs balloon in the heat.

[01:17:59] And they go pick them up and, you know, stick a, yeah. So they can deflate. But it's like, when you look at how food is produced, yeah. Like if you can kill most of your stuff or grow stuff, I'll have to show you my raised beds and farming. Yeah. I think this is a cool idea that the government should give a break on your taxes.

[01:18:24] So some type of incentive or something for people who can submit that they're growing food, even if it's a little bit, even when you look at what that does to the environment, the air, the pollen, the ground, you know, especially if you're doing like, um, the regenerative or, uh, what is it? Back to Eden style.

[01:18:48] So you're using a lot of mulch and, um, the, uh, mushroom compost. And, and so you can just tear out the ground and maybe break it up until at one time, but then you're, you're just layering in, uh, wood chips and compost. And obviously you got to de-weed and things like that. It's easier to control and raise beds, but things like that, where it's like regenerative

[01:19:16] or if it's in smaller settings, you can do the back to Eden. You should watch that documentary. I'm not familiar with that. Watch back to Eden. Um, but yeah, like there should be incentives for being healthy, you know, versus like you're incentivized to be fat and, you know, unhealthy and we'll take care of you and be poor and fat and we'll, you know, put you on Medicaid and you can go through the hospital system and have a terrible life.

[01:19:44] The social security, you know, like that's kind of a separate topic, but it's basically the social security program could be skimmed over the healthcare program like that. It's the same concept. Like it's just a fraud and like, I'm not, my goal is not to live on Medicaid at any point in my life and I'm not depending on social security. Like it's just like fend for yourself and get to work and health is the first wealth.

[01:20:14] Yep. Eat better, live longer, try to improve yourself every day. I'm like, I don't know how you can't trust the government to look out for you. They're not going to do that. You know, just take it into your own hands and pray. For people watching, listening, how can they check you out, get ahold of you, order meals? What's that look like? Yeah.

[01:20:42] So the big thing, you know, kind of here is the employee meal program. That's really where we're kind of taking this for employers or employees and providing a healthy option for lunch. The big thing we're working on is called the cost of convenience. Like how convenient is it for you to leave this place and go to a fast food restaurant? Like how much time is that going to take you, right? To get in your car and drive there and then wait in line, typically at lunch, how much you're

[01:21:11] going to pay and how long is it going to take? And then what's the cost to your health? How bad are you going to feel? All of those things, those factors are weighed into it where we find that the people who use our meals and feed their employees, like they're happier, right? How stoked are they to get free lunch? I'm rolling today and he's, I can smell it. I'm like, whoa, it smells good. What? And it's an ice age meal. I was just like, whoa. He's like, yeah, I'm having an ice age meal right now. And that wasn't staged and he didn't know I was there.

[01:21:41] And that just like naturally happened. So that's such a cool thing for me to see. Our website is geticeagemeals.com. We have information there about the employee meal program, but very simple, just a 10, 20, 30 or 60 pack. It's not, there's no subscription. It's not forced on you. You just order what you want at your interval. We try not to be too overbearing in any type of marketing. The emails that we do send are like well thought out.

[01:22:09] And like I, I typed an email today and sent it to our list. Like while I was here, just saying, Hey, I'm in Florida with the hip guys and I'm going to make lunch and, and I'll share some more about it, you know? So, um, and that all just comes back to me. How do I want to be marketed to? I don't want, I mean, multiple emails a day, every single day. Like that's the way I, there's gotta be another way. So we're trying to, um, you know, keep that in mind, but at the same time, run a business

[01:22:38] like it's taken how many pings to get someone to take action nowadays. It's a lot. So seven to 14. It's crazy. You know, so geticeagemeals.com. We also have iceageculinary.com and that's where I've developed a 21 meal culinary bootcamp real time where I cook 21 recipes in 21 minutes or less real time. They're not cut or edit.

[01:23:05] It's just like, I'm going to start the clock and, and each one I'm turning out like between eight and 16 portions in 21 minutes. And it's a little aggressive maybe for someone who doesn't have culinary skills, but you can pause it and you just, you get the gist. It comes with a PDF of each recipe as well. And it's all stuff that's in line with paleo. That's a really good start. Like if you're not into cooking or you don't know anything about health food, like those

[01:23:34] 21 recipes right there, they'll blow your mind. You know, salmon crusted salmon with lemon caper fried rice, like insane. What is that paleo? It's got rice in it, you know? So we, we do add rice to a lot of our stuff. Like that's just from the, um, athlete perspective. We can only fit so much food in the little tray that we use for all of our meals. And some people need more carbs. So that's where the rice comes in. I'm also, I love rice.

[01:24:03] I think most people do. And it's kind of the one grain that we, you know, we don't do any soy. We only cook with olive oil. We use diamond crystal kosher salt. No, um, there's no chemicals added to that one. If you get like Morton's kosher salt, look on it. Yellow prusset of sodium is there's a chemical in there with our spices. We go to the extent of finding spices that don't have like anti-caking agents in them.

[01:24:32] Um, our tomato product is like organic vine ripened tomatoes from California. No citric acid, no chemical additive of any kind. We've put in a decade of work to source all these ingredients so that when you read that ingredient list, it's easy reading, brother. I love it. Well, thanks for being here. Yeah. Thank you so much. Yeah. Pleasure.