Written by Christopher Kelly
May 14, 2015
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Christopher: Hello and welcome to the Balance Nourish Thrive Podcast. My name is Christopher Kelly. And today, I'm joined by Kevin from the Rebooted Body and the podcast of the same name. Is that right, Kevin? Hi.
Kevin: That's right, that's right. How's it going?
Christopher: I'm great, thank you. How are you?
Kevin: I'm doing wonderful. Glad to be here.
Christopher: Of course, we couldn't really start this conversation without finding out how you got into this. Can you summarize for us how did you get started with the Rebooted Body?
Kevin: Yeah. So I'll give you the cliff notes. In 2009, I was 220 plus pounds, which is about 60 pounds overweight. I was with my wife and she was saying, "Hey, since I met you, you haven't been to a physical. You haven't gotten your health checked out. You might want to do that." So I was like, "Okay." And I went to get a physical and they basically ended up telling me, "Hey, you've got high blood pressure. You're borderline diabetic. You might want to get some of this stuff under control."
And it was a little frustrating to me at the same time because I was trying to lose weight. For many years before that, I had tried many different diets. And it's still out of the conventional advice like cutting calories, trying to eat in moderation, doing lots of cardio exercise. And I was stuck in this yoyo cycle. I would lose ten pounds and then I would gain 15 or 20 because I would end up binging and just completely fall off the rails.
So when I got this news at the physical, I was at a loss because I was like, "Okay, I get it. I do want to be healthy and I do want to lose this excess weight. But I'm stuck at how to do that. Because if go try what I've been trying, I know it's going to end in the same result." So I went home, told my wife and then got online and started searching for people who were saying something completely different than what I had heard in the past. I made the rule for myself that if the advice was even similar to what I had tried, I was just going to skip over it. I was going to keep searching until I found something radically different.
Thankfully, I came across The Real Food Movement and it just made sense to me, like processed foods, not good. Let's just commit to eating real food and good things will probably happen to you. And the more and more I got into that, the more I saw that that's actually the case and it is very beneficial and I implemented that stuff in my life. And pretty quickly, I saw really great results. I also added a lot of functional movement, exercising as well. And I was quickly down to 175-ish pounds.
And it was at that point that I got the biggest lesson of this entire process. Because I started to revert back to my old ways. I started rewarding myself for all of the great things I had accomplished and rewarding myself with food, obviously. My sugar addiction came roaring back. And I realized at that point that this journey is 80% psychological. Once you have the right information, you can absolutely still fail. I was in the process of failing after doing all of this amazing work. And I was trying to sort that out.
And it took me many, many months to really get a handle on what is triggering me and what is manipulating my behavior and how can I overcome that? Go ahead.
Christopher: Sorry. I was just going to say that's really something interesting that you've just picked up on that right away, is that psychological component. A lot of people that I speak to, they know exactly what could be done but the question is, are you actually doing it? It's another thing. How did you do that? How did you actually make all this knowledge stick? How did you translate that into your real behavior?
Kevin: I started doing a lot of research at that point on the psychology of habits, the psychology of emotional eating, things like that. So through that research, I basically came up with ways to begin to shift my thinking. And I did a lot of journaling exercises and really digging in. One thing that I tried to get people to realize is that if you have challenges with emotional eating, if you have challenges with sugar addiction, really any addiction in general, those things, people tend to want to just step on those things and make them go away. They see them as problems.
And I think that makes them stronger. And that makes them want to yell louder and rebel harder. If we instead see those things as just a learning experience, like there's something inside us that's trying to tell us something very important. So we need to listen and we need to acknowledge and we need to work through that stuff. That's the only way that it will stop manipulating our behavior. So that is probably the core of the work that I do now with people, is not just telling them the right information about how to eat and how to exercise but leading them through the process of implementation on a consistent basis and overcoming these challenges and obstacles, healing these triggers and working through the stuff that's actually going to matter long term.
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Everybody wants to know how do I be successful long term? Because I've had success for 30 days, 60 days, 90 days but I always revert back. Why is that? And I answer that question for people. Getting back to my story, I eventually, like I said, dealt with that stuff and was able to overcome a lot of that and get down to about 165 pounds and maintained that for many, many years. And I actually happened to be a martial arts instructor at that time.
So there was a lot of shame in the fact that I was 220 pounds as a martial arts instructor because I was telling my students about how important is physical activity and how important is feeding your body in a healthy way. I was basically giving them the 'do as I say not as I do' advice.
Christopher: But you were active though. It wasn't like you were sedentary at that weight.
Kevin: Right. I don't know. If I wasn't a martial arts instructor, I probably would have been 300 pounds. Yeah. That was the only thing really going for me at that time. I wasn't doing any competing, as I did in the old days, but I was on my feet all day long, kicking bags, holding paddles for kids, things like that. Yeah, definitely the movement piece was there. But the benefit of this was when I made this transformation, all of the parents who were bringing their kids in, who were my students, they saw me go through this transformation and they started asking me like, "What were you doing? I would like to do the same thing."
A lot of them were overweight. A lot of them were unhealthy as well. They were very interested in what I did. So I started sharing the things I had learned with them and they started implementing it in their lives and they started to see pretty good results. And I was like, "Wow, this is pretty cool. Now, I got to add some context to this." I was a co-owner of the martial arts studio that I worked in and my partner was not a very good person at all. And I'd been doing this for 15 years.
I was also growing very, very tired of where martial arts was headed because it's getting more towards just play games and nothing is serious and let's have people pay for belts that they didn't really earn and I was so, so tired of that. I was tired of fighting against that. For probably ten years straight, I fought with my partner about making the standards higher rather than lower. He always wanted to lower the bar. I always wanted to raise the bar. And I was pretty much done with it.
When I started giving people this advice just off hand and they started getting amazing results, I saw an opportunity there for something to jump to. So I was like, if I'm going to leave martial arts, I have to have somewhere to transition to. So what I did is I developed I program and it was a six-month long program and I did a pilot test with the parents of my martial arts studio. I basically sent out an email and said, "Hey, I'm starting this thing. If you're interested, then come do it."
And I ended up getting 16 parents into this pilot program, which I called Total Body Reboot, and, I mean, everything went amazing. Now, obviously, it was a great learning experience as well. I had to make a ton of adjustments and figure out what works and what doesn't for people. But that's really what became the start of Rebooted Body Online and the Total Body Reboot Program that we run today, which is now on version three. It's been through a ton of iterations based on what we've learned.
But without that pilot program, I don't think I would be here. And the reason I'm online, which is another key aspect of this, is because after I did that pilot program, I started thinking, okay, I can do this program again and again and again. But then I thought, well, I'll only be reaching 16 people at a time and that's not a very strong mission. I kind of had a mission where I wanted to reach millions of people. And the only place to do that I saw was online. That's why I took it there. I haven't done anything offline since then. Everything is online. And we are reaching tons of people. So it's very cool how this all evolved.
Christopher: So what were those people like, the original people that came to you? What kind of things were they complaining about?
Kevin: Yeah. So just in a similar situation as me, they were overweight. They were on the standard American diet. They had tried many, many times in the past to lose weight and get healthy and failed. They had misconceptions about what healthy eating was. They thought it was eating like a rabbit, being low fat, really counting calories, tracking, making food rules, moralizing food like there's good food and there's bad food.
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Just all of these classic paradigms they were stuck in. So when they came to me, just as the transformation I went through is very radical in terms of my history, it was very radical for them as well. I think it turns out that the radical nature of this information is very empowering for people because they realize, for the first time, that it's not them that's broken. It's the advice that they've been following is actually what's broken.
Christopher: Yeah, for sure. People have been given a lot of misinformation. And then how did you continue to reach people like that? Sometimes I wonder the problem is that the people that you're reaching through your podcast and through the blog are the people that are already subscribed to the message that you're giving. They're not going to be helped as much as the average guy. I'm sure you've done it, walk through your local Safeway supermarket and just take a look at the average person that you see in an aisle there and I'm sure you could completely change their life for the better. But how the hell are you going to reach them? Because they're not listening to the Rebooted Body podcast? How do you do that?
Kevin: Right, right. Yeah. I mean, it's very tough being in this position and seeing how many people are really struggling and needing help but not necessarily wanting help or not being able to accept it for some reason. It is very troubling. What I've decided to do is not to go after those people, to not worry about those people. My core strategy is let me put out these positive messages into the world through my platform. So writing blog articles, doing podcast episodes, making videos on YouTube. Let me put as much information and positivity out into the world and it will attract people who are ready to actually roll up their sleeves and do some work.
And the more people I can change that way, obviously, if I help somebody they're going to tell their friends. And that's much better than me trying to tell people. If a friend comes to you and says, "Hey, look what I just found. It's made amazing improvement in my life. You may want to consider it." That's far better than me approaching that person and trying to convince them of something.
Christopher: I absolutely agree. How does the program -- Well, first of all, who's the program for? So, say, I've recently discovered the Paleo diet and I've noticed some positive improvements. Maybe my energy is a bit better and kind of I had some bloating before and now not so much. So I'm kind of into this Paleo diet thing. Would your program help me or is it for someone that's really just starting out or can people that are more advanced than that benefit from the program?
Kevin: It's not for people who are advanced who had been doing, who have committed to real food for a very long time. We have other avenues that we can help them. But the main Total Body Reboot Program is for people who are still stuck in the old conventional models of what it looks like to eat healthy and to exercise and it's that radical approach to completely change the mindset, just the frame of mind and what people believe for that group of people.
So it would be people who are stuck doing things like Weight Watchers, doing 30-day challenges and detoxes and they're yoyo dieting so their weight is constantly fluctuating up and down. They can't find anything that really sticks. They're troubled by emotional eating. They know they're triggered by food. They have sugar addiction and processed food addiction, things like that. That's really who Total Body Reboot is designed for. If there are people who have experimented with Paleo and they're still in probably like the first year, then it's still a great program for them.
Because we unravel a lot of the dogma that is unfortunately wrapped up in Paleo and we kind of open people's eyes to the fact that, look, Paleo is a great probably starting point but it has a lot of unnecessary rules and it still has a lot of unnecessary kind of one size fits all advice where we try to teach people how each individual food relates to them. And does this food work for you or does it not work for you? It's very personalized. We try to completely reject the one size fits all paradigm.
Christopher: Okay. Well, this is actually, to me, almost a more interesting problem because that's my greatest challenge probably right now is where do you send someone who doesn't know any of this stuff? Maybe you've seen them post repeatedly about the Medifast diet or something like that, some of meal in a box type solution for weight loss or some other problem on Facebook or wherever else. And you're like, "Okay, so where do I send this person?" The place that I've always used up until now for the last couple years has been a book I just read, It Starts With Food.
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And increasingly, I think I was first introduced to this idea that that's not enough by a guy who you probably heard, Dan Pardi. He runs a couple of programs. And I realized that the education piece is just really just a part of it. And it's not really realistic just to hand somebody a book and say, "Okay, do this." How does the program work then? So, say, I'm listening to this. I've gotten great results in the Paleo diet. And I'd really like my dear old mom to have the same benefits but I'm damned if I can get her to read a book and I'm damned if she's going to do anything that I tell her. So maybe if could just set her off on this one part, "Okay, mom, do this program for 30 days and see what happens," maybe she might. How does the program actually work once she signs up?
Kevin: When somebody signs up for Total Body Reboot, and this is designed as a step by step process, we've really done the work to hone this in. We have found out which steps go before other steps, which steps aren't important until later on, and so on and so forth. I mean, we put hundreds of men and women from over two dozen countries around the world through this program and gotten their feedback and then reiterated, reorganized things.
It truly is the information you need precisely when you need it. And it's basically a scheduled program. So there are six stages. And, obviously, you start on stage one. And then when you're basically have been in stage one for certain amount of time, we'll unlock stage two and say, "Okay, now it's time to start learning these things and implementing these things in your life." And it's completely support base. So we have coaches that are there with you at all times. So any time you need help, you have a question or you have a roadblock or you stumble or you need accountability, we have coaches right there to help you.
But yeah, it's basically you sign up, you get instant access to the first stage and you begin to start implementing things in your life. And it starts off very with the core things and then we start getting more advanced as you work your way through the program. The goal is to make it so that is not like you're drinking from a fire hose. That is not like you're drinking from a fire hose, where you're just, here's the information you need right now. Don't worry about any of this other stuff.
Because everybody has a gazillion questions when they first come in. What about this? What about this? What about intermittent fasting? What about macronutrient ratios? What about blah, blah, blah, blah, blah? And it's like, look, you're in the beginning, just focus on these five things right here. And then in the next stage, we'll introduce you to the next five things that you need to be thinking about. And then the next stage, we'll introduce you to the next five things. So it's completely not overwhelming.
And it's just a nice step by step process through. And it doesn't require any book reading. And it's actually, we've made it as engaging as possible. So it's a mixture of reading, it's a mixture of watching videos, it's a mixture of listening to audio lessons and it's all there for you in very cohesive program. So it's very simple for people to do.
Christopher: That's great. I was going to say that's the worst possible thing you can do, to give someone your entire back catalog of Paleo books. So it's least likely that you've been acquiring. And, yeah, just give them all those books and see how that works. So that was going to be my next question actually was what does it look like? Is it interactive? Is it videos? Is it text? How does it work exactly?
Kevin: Yeah, we've made it as interactive as possible when you get in. I mean, it's all laid out on our site in a protected section. So you go in and it's basically organized. Each stage has separate modules in it. And each module has a very specific topic. So you're able to go in and go through an entire stage and you take the time of that stage, 21 days, or 30 days however long that stage may be. And you just focus on implementing that information that you've learned in those modules. And yeah, like I said, the modules are supported with either videos or audio lessons. It is very interactive in that way.
Christopher: And then how did the coaches come into it. I'm like sort of halfway through the one video and I've got a question right there? How do I get that answered?
Kevin: Yeah, absolutely. So this is very cool. We have probably the most advanced support system that's available online in this program. There's a little floating question mark icon that follows you around the site. Every page you're on, doesn't matter where you are, it follows you around. And you can click that at any point in time and a little box pops up and you type in your message whether it's question or you tell us, "Hey, I'm really having a challenge with this part of the program, blah, blah, blah." And you hit enter and it comes right to us. If we're online at that time, we can actually type right back to you as if it's live chat.
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If not, it will get sent to us. In that way, we can respond to you as soon as we're available. A lot of times I've instructed my coaches to -- This isn't even advertised in the program but I've instructed my coaches, "Look, if somebody is having a big challenge and you feel that it will be better to pick up the phone and call them and work through it on the phone with them, then do that. Don't just type back to them.
So a lot of times people unexpectedly get calls from us and we will work through, at no extra charge. It's like we're on a 20 to 30 minute coaching call with them. So we try to make this as personal as possible. And the way we make it not a one size fits all program is that we explain to people upfront that we design this to be like a framework. And we apply the framework to you. And then what we need is your feedback. We need you to say, "Hey, this part is working for me. This part is not." And if a part is not working for you, we're right there to give you suggestions and alternatives for you to try. That's what's really cool about it.
Christopher: That's excellent. And then how do you define success? How do you know that something is working for someone? Do you have them fill out questionnaires or is it just completely based on how the person feels or how do you do that?
Kevin: Yeah. Every stage they go in, before they start the next stage, they do a progress check-in and they tell us how they're doing. They can do measurements if they want to do that. There's only one rule in Total Body Reboot and is that you can't weigh yourself. You have to ditch your scale because I'm not a fan of the obsessiveness of tracking weight. But they can do measurements and things like that.
Some have done body fat percentage with a BOD POD and things like that. They are reporting their progress in that regard. And we determine success by are you moving forward? I do not have people set specific goals and targets with numbers. Because that's not what matters in the grand scheme of things. This is a very long term approach to change. This is supposed to be a permanent change.
So the obsession of numbers is not required. The question is are you moving forward or are you not moving forward? And a lot of times measurements have nothing to do with it. If you come in and you have brain fog and you're not sleeping well and you have low energy levels, we can get the measurements to go down over time. But if you are feeling great mentally, and a lot of these problems you're facing are going away and your skin is clearing up, all of that needs to be seen as progress.
I can't tell you how many people I had in the very beginning before I made the rule about the scale. I had so many people telling me about all of these improvements that were happening in their life. And because the scale wasn't hitting arbitrary numbers that they had set, they quit. They quit the program and left it. They left all of this amazing progress behind because of this one stupid thing. So I made it a rule. I think about version two where you can't have a scale anymore and you can't obsess over numbers. You have to focus on the big picture. You have to play the long game.
Christopher: I agree with that. That's interesting what you say about brain fog as well. That's certainly my experience. I was stuck in the situation where I couldn't solve my own problems because I couldn't think clearly. It was only when I met my wife who is a food scientist and she did some research and put me on the autoimmune Paleo protocol. I was pretty far gone health wise. I was a mess. It was only once I started eating according to that diet that I could really start using my brain in a meaningful way and start doing the research. And that's when the magic really started to happen. But in the beginning you need somebody like that to just point you in the right direction.
Kevin: Right, right. And too, with the triggers that I've talked about, so many people, their behavior is manipulated by their mindset. And they may realize it, they may not realize the extent of it and they have no idea how to deal with that. And that's a huge problem for a lot of people. I've said that based on my experience, eight out of ten people who have the right information about what to eat and how to exercise will still fail because they don't have the psychology piece in line.
And that's really important. I mean, going through a program that doesn't focus on psychology and it doesn't support you is not going to be in my experience an effective program long term. You may find short term success. It's not going to change your life long term.
Christopher: Yeah, right, absolutely. So this is what I'm realizing later on. In particular, I'm sure you've heard of Stephan Guyenet as well. He's talked about obesity. And his research and his writing has made it really clear to me that any kind of change I make in somebody's life must be sustainable.
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And so like telling them to drink something from a bottle every day as a meal replacement is clearly not going to work. So is it possible for you to describe the psychology piece like how that works?
Kevin: Yeah. It's kind of tough because everybody is so different and they bring different challenges and different histories to the program. But one thing I think would be interesting to talk about is the ACE evaluation. This is an evaluation that was started by Kaiser. And it really looks at the history of different individuals. They were running an obesity clinic and they were trying to figure out why did people after they found such great success in this obesity program quit the program and completely relapsed?
Because this was happening time and time again. So they started doing this evaluation on people. And ACE stands for adverse childhood experiences. And they ask a series of ten questions about somebody's childhood history. And they found that the people in this obesity clinic who are consistently quitting and relapsing had ACE scores of six or five out of ten. So basically every point on the test that you agree with, you get one point, for every on the test. So there's ten questions and if you agree with the question, you get a point.
So if you agree with six questions, you have a score of six. And they started to realize that if you kind of give this test the entire population, almost everybody would score at least a one or a two. Very, very few people are zero. And the higher your ACE score goes, the more likely you are to suffer negative health outcomes such as emotional eating, obesity, addiction, drug abuse, so on and so forth.
So I started giving this ACE evaluation to all of my clients in Total Body Reboot and my other program Shut Down Your Sugar Cravings. And what I found is that the people who are struggling the most and who are coming to Total Body Reboot, the people who are failing time and time again, without guidance and without support and without addressing the psychology, sure enough ACE score of three and four and five and six. I've had some that were even up to seven.
And this really speaks to why the psychology piece is so important. Because if that stuff is not addressed and that stuff is not healed and overcome, it will absolutely sabotage your progress. So that's kind of the best way, I think, to explain why this is so necessary and how this is so prevalent, how these challenges that people face are so prevalent.
Christopher: This is really interesting. So, first of all, the question is obviously this ACE test, is it something, is it publicly available online? Can I go and find out what these questions are? Can you remember any of them?
Kevin: It is, yeah. Let me actually -- Let's see. I think I can pull. I don't have them memorized. I think I can pull it up though. All right. I was actually starting my own parent evaluation here. Okay. So I'll just read through the ten questions for you. And these are pretty heavy. And I explain this to people too. Even if you score a two out of ten on the ACE, this is still significant because this doesn't even address common things like did your parents spank you? Did your parents shame you? Did your parents really care about your performance in sports or grades or things like that?
Those are all very, very relevant factors that can have an impact on a person's emotional health and, therefore, their physical health. These are more heavier things that are assessed. The first one is: Did a parent or other adult in the household very often push, grab, slap or throw something at you? Were you ever hit to the point where you had marks or injured? The next question: Did a parent or other adult in the household often swear at you, insult you, put you down or humiliate you or act in a way that made you afraid or that might, you might fear you will be physically hurt?
Did an adult or person at least five years older than you ever touch or fondle you or have you touch their body in a sexual way? Did you often or very often feel that nobody in your family loved you or thought you were important or special? Did your family not look out for each other or feel close to each other, support each other? Did you very often feel that you didn't have enough to eat? Did you have to wear dirty clothes that you had no one to protect you? Were your parents ever separated or divorced?
Was your mother or stepmother very often pushed, grabbed, slapped or had something thrown at her? Did you live with anyone who is a problem drinker, alcoholic or use street drugs? Was a household member depressed or mentally ill or did a household member attempt suicide? Did a household member go to prison? So these are the evaluations. And when you read these things, it's like, man, we know that people experience this stuff. But we don't know how prevalent it is.
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And like I said, people coming to the program by and large are scoring two, three, four up to seven on this list. And it's no wonder why they're struggling. And it's no wonder why they're using food and sugar and processed foods in particular to cope with these things. Because they've never really been addressed adequately.
Christopher: Interesting. Okay. So let's say I've scored three or four on that test right now. So am I doomed to be almost addicted to sugar and never really getting great results with the Rebooted Body Program? How do you go about fixing this stuff?
Kevin: No. If you face these challenges and you try to or you continue to use objects and food and sugar or it could be shopping, it could be gambling, it could be anything. People are addicted to lots of things. So if you use those things to cope with these challenges that you face, you may never really see the light of day and they're not really addressed and you see them as problems to be stuffed down or stepped on or just to be made to be silent, then yes you will absolutely continue to struggle for the rest of your life.
And the alternative, if you let these things come to the surface, you address them and you talk through them with people and you get them understood and you see how they're manipulating your behavior and why they're manipulating their behavior in a very certain, in a very specific way, then you actually become powerful enough to where they're no longer manipulating you. They may still be there in some regard but they're no longer manipulating your behavior. That's what we want to free people from, is the manipulation of their behavior.
Because we know people have great intentions to lose weight. They have great intentions to be healthy. But for some reason, they can't get their behavior to align with their intentions. And if you can't, that's a symptom that you're being triggered that your behavior is being manipulated by something else. That's really why if people want long term success, that's really the work that they have to do. And it sounds like it's not fun but it is. It is fun because you're achieving real freedom.
You're not doing some stupid 30-day challenge or detox yet again. You're not on the seventh round of the sugar detox program that you've been doing. So achieving long term freedom and feeling and experiencing that is the price.
Christopher: So how does that work within the program then? You talk to someone within the program or is it just kind of writing stuff down?
Kevin: Yeah. It's a series of -- First of all, we give lots of different journaling exercises depending on what the person is struggling with. We also work with them one on one talking through these issues. And we do evaluations as we're coaching people. If we decide, hey, look, this is something you should probably really consider doing therapy for. Getting them to a qualified therapist, for example, we've done that many, many times with people. Getting them the help they need is the number one goal. So you may have to do work outside of the program that we provide. But this program is the channel for understanding why you need that and where to get it and how to get it so that you can actually break free from this stuff.
Christopher: That's incredible and you've just get me thinking about a few different people for whom maybe I've not been able to help as much as I like. There's not very many but out of probably 350, 400 now people, there are still one or two or three that I think, "You know, I haven't really helped you as much as I would have liked. I helped you a little bit but not as much I was expecting in the beginning. And now I'm starting -- The wheels are turning. Is this what's going on and what they really need to do is not clean the pantry out of the sugar for the 15th time. So maybe think about some of that stuff.
That's really fascinating. I'm really, really interested in that. But tell me, what else does the program comprise? Do you have -- So there's diet and then the psychology piece is obviously important. But I've heard you talk about on your podcast things that you called the pillars. Can you talk about those and what they are and whether they come in all at once or do you introduce things gradually or how does that work?
Kevin: So the pillars are kind of they are addressed automatically through the different stages of the program. The first pillar is: Eat real food. So that's self-explanatory. The second pillar is to nurture your gut. And there are some things that we can do as far as gut health is concerned. But the main thing is that switching to real food is, in fact, nurturing your gut.
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But this is just explaining to people why we're doing what we're doing. Pillar number three is to align your hormones. And, of course, there's some things we can do outside of real food and exercise to align hormones. But for the most part, real food and exercise are going to take care of a lot of that. But that's what people need to be focused on. It's getting hormones in alignment, healing their gut, et cetera. Pillar number four is master your inner psychology. We just talked a little bit about that. Pillar number five is move your body, which is very important.
I do a lot of work trying to help people understand that exercise is not movement. It's a form of movement but it can't be classified as completely movement. Movement has to be much more than exercise. And then pillar number six is to respect that you're a unique whole person, that you are an individual with individual needs and you should never take advice that is one size fits all. You should always listen to people who understand that you're a unique whole person and are able to tailor their advice to you specifically.
Christopher: And then what type of -- Just to sort of drive down on the movement piece a bit, that interests me a lot. Because a lot of the people that come to me are endurance athletes. And so there's multiple problems here. And probably the main one is not understanding that running or cycling or even swimming is not going to compensate for spending eight hours a day sat at a desk. And I think some people are aware of that fact now.
But the other thing is like using exercise as an outlet for some addiction. Like I don't feel so good so I'm going to over exercise to try to compensate for that to get some endorphins going on or something. But what you do with people that are just so, so tired? What happens? I mean, that's one of the main complaints that I get when people come to me. It's like don't even talk to me about exercise because I'm going to hang up right now. So how do you weave that into the program and not lose the person at that point? When you get to this, okay, module three., now we're going to do dead lifts. You just lost me. How does that work?
Kevin: This is very cool. We have a three-part process to getting people moving. The first is that in stage one you aren't doing any exercise whatsoever. So that's pretty refreshing for people. They come in and I tell them not to exercise. But I do tell them that they have to walk every single day. So for 30 to 45 minutes a day, you have to walk. You have to get outside. You have to. Some people say, "Look, I don't have time for that." And I say, "Okay, look, in stage two, we're going to work on something I call margin," which is putting extra space in different parts, key parts of your life so that you do have time and energy to do the things that are important for you, to invest in yourself. But you have to make the time. If you can't make 30 minutes available for yourself, then you're not ready for this in the first place.
Christopher: Do you ever have moments where you kind of almost lose it and you want to say to the person, "You know what you don't have time for? A stroke." That's what you don't have time.
Kevin: Exactly. But that's so far off in people's minds as a possibility. That's why it just hits people and, okay, now we have an emergency that we have to deal with and suddenly I have all of the tools necessary to change my lifestyle, right? But, yeah, it's hard to motivate people with that because they don't see it as a real possibility. They know other people that it's happened to but they don't think it's going to happen to them.
But I think telling them that they don't have to exercise is part of letting them off the hook where they can say, "Okay, I don't have to exercise but I can walk. I get that. I'll walk." And they do it. So we start with the walking low level movement. And then in stage two we actually start an eight-week body weight strength training program. So I tell you, "Look, all right, we're going start incorporating exercise but it requires no equipment and, in fact, I don't want any of your exercise sessions to be longer than 20 minutes."
So we have them do this body weight strength training program which is only twice a week, 20 minutes a day for those two days and it's designed to just build that foundation of strength and foundation of fitness. Now it's really hard. So people tell me, "That really kicked my ass. I'm really surprised how out of shape I am," et cetera, et cetera. So it is tough but people know they can get through it because they know it's only 20 minutes long and they know it's only two days a week.
So that's how we start people off. And then we start adding a sprinting regimen in, just one day a week later on in the program. And that's kind of fitting for the high intensity still short duration, not longer than 20 minutes. But it's really ramping up their central nervous system. And then we migrate them into resistance training.
[0:40:02]
Because resistance training is a very important part of movement in general. So we get them on an eight week resistance training program. The cool thing about this is that you don't need a lot of equipment yet again. You don't need a gym. You don't need a personal trainer. We have videos online for how to do all of this stuff. And it only uses one tool. We actually use a sandbag. We use the Onnit Battle Bag. So it's based on only six core functional movements. And we do basically sets. And it changes every week.
So one week we might do a ladder type thing where you're working your way up in numbers and then back down. We might do a five by five or something like that the following week. It's constantly changing up so people aren't getting bored. But it's utilizing the same six functional movements. And by the time they're there, they're in such a groove that they've been walking, they've been doing the body weight strength kind of got them ready for this and they've ended that now so that freed up those two days.
They've been doing the sprinting and they're adding this resistance training in two days a week. So really they are walking every day. They're doing the resistance training twice a week and they're sprinting once a week. That's pretty much what the program surmises. And then the best part about this is we transition them off of that. So at the very end, I introduce them to a concept that I created actually recently called DWYLT. It stands for do what you love today.
And this is a solution that I actually came up with for myself because I was never a person who was big on exercise. And I've always had to really find different ways to either trick myself into doing exercise or just will myself into doing exercise and I would find that it wasn't a very good strategy, that I would fall off for very long periods of time. I would do no exercise whatsoever. It's kind of like I was rebelling against that.
So I came up with DWYLT. And what DWYLT is a process of discovering new activities that you like to do that are active and combining these with activities you already know you love to do. And it's an exercise in writing down, making a list of all of these activities. So my personal DWYLT list has ten or 12 different activities from martial arts to slack lining to rock climbing to just going out for a jog because I don't like to do that every day but I like to do it every once in a while.
I like to do bike riding. So I have this whole list of things. And what DWYLT says is you wake up every single day and you look at the list and you pick the thing that inspires you most and go do that that day. And that's your movement piece and that's your exercise piece. And we transition people to that because I think that is the most sustainable approach. It's the most enjoyable approach. Because if you're doing things that inspire, things that you love to do, you're not having to will yourself to do them. All you have to do is prioritize the time to do it.
But I think that's the most sustainable approach. So that's what transition people to. And a lot of people find that they love the sandbag and they love the sprinting. So they put those things on their DWYLT list and those things automatically get incorporated and that's very cool.
Christopher: That is cool, yeah. But what happens, if I was to do that list, probably mountain biking would be at the top and then road biking would be underneath it and then that would be it. So I've got two forms of seated chronic cardio. So what happens if there's nothing I really enjoy too much because that's usual to me.
Kevin: Well, there's still the number one rule, which because we live in the society, the modern society that we live in, we've been so domesticated, we have to walk. You have to walk daily. So you can't just stick to the bike riding thing and call that your movement. You have to get up. You have to walk.
Christopher: I need that constant reminder of this. When I start walking, my ankles become so weak that when I do try and walk they get sore and I start to get weird sort of pains in my bum, in my piriformis, sort of weird stuff that's just -- It just goes away. If I take a break for three weeks and just walk every day, it just instantly goes away. You can spend all sorts of time reading about it on the internet and going to do massage and seeing a physiotherapist. That's the solution, unfortunately, is just to walk.
Kevin: Yeah. And I get people to realize that walking is not a DWYLT activity. And it's not exercise. It's mandatory. You can't not do that. Like, for example, my day, if I choose -- Brazilian jujitsu as one of my favorite martial arts. If I choose to do Brazilian jujitsu on Monday, that's not all I do. I get my walk in and I've done Brazilian jujitsu. So I've done two things.
[0:45:01]
Anything you choose on your DWYLT list, walking is going to be involved before or after that thing happens.
Christopher: So how does it work? As I get to the end of the program, what's next? Like I feel maybe there should be some continuity part.
Kevin: There is. It's optional. We actually just launched this. We have what's called our Inner-Circle. It's a very, very small monthly fee, $9.99 a month right now and you get access to, you get continued access to the forums. Now, I should explain that any time you do one of our programs whether it's Total Body Reboot or Shut Down Your Sugar Cravings, you have a lifetime membership to that. So you have a lifetime membership to the curriculum.
You don't have a lifetime membership to the coaching aspect of it because we have to -- We can't afford to continue coaching people forever, obviously. So you can do the Inner-Circle which will give you access to master classes that we do. We do fresh master classes monthly. These are 45 to 60 minutes slide based presentations on very specific topics. So we might do a master class on adrenal fatigue or master class on gut health or master class on meditation, something like that.
So you're always getting fresh content. You have the community aspect of it. We have forums that are on the site for all of the programs plus the Inner-Circle. We do coaching calls Q&A, live Q&A three times a month in the Inner-Circle. So if you're done with Total Body Reboot, you're still able to come and join in on those Q&A calls, get questions, maybe get some coaching there as well. We have video lessons and audio lessons that are exclusive to the Inner-Circle that are added each month.
So that's kind of the continuity aspect of here's how you can stay engaged, learn new things and continue to implement everything you've already learned after you're done with this program. But I also want to stress that it's not necessary because the program was designed to give you the tools that you need to be successful after the program is done so that you don't have to constantly do the program over and over and over again.
We create what's called the personal health manifesto at the very end of the program. And this is a custom manifesto for each person about how they are going to live their life going forward after the program is done. And I've found that as long as they are staying engaged and at some point it could be listening to podcast. It could be just continuing to reblog articles. Just keeping that stuff top of mind is enough for them to really stay on track and continue on with enjoying life.
That's what I really want people to do. I want people to stop obsessing, stop feeling like they have to be constantly learning and just realize, hey, I've done a lot of amazing work, I've changed my relationship with food, I've changed my relationship with exercise. What's next? Enjoying the hell out of life is what's next.
Christopher: That's awesome. My final question, I guess, is do you think this makes a good gift? Could I gift this to my dear old mom and expect her to actually do it? I know commitment is important and usually the person has to be ready and really want to do it themselves. And so they probably would be willing to sign up and pay for something themselves. But do you think I could gift this to someone?
Kevin: You could and it's been done in the past but it has to be, just like you said, you hit the nail on the head when you said that people have to be ready and they have to be willing to do the work because this is a program that requires work. I want people to know that up front. Any legitimate program that you do is going to require your work. If somebody is ready to do that and you want to gift it to them, then absolutely that's definitely a possibility.
I've also found that it's really important to have people on your team. Not just coaches in terms of the people who work for me and myself but having somebody like a spouse on board with you is very important. So what we did is we actually made a rule where any program that Rebooted Body creates, if somebody signs up and they are married, they live with somebody -- They don't actually, don't have to be married. If you live with this other person, they are automatically included in your membership because we wanted to bring other people in who you live with because they directly impact your success. We wanted to wrap them into the program automatically to create the best environment for your success.
Christopher: Awesome.
Kevin: So I would say if you live with somebody you don't need to gift it to them. Just do it with them.
Christopher: Right. That's really good advice. Excellent. Thank you so much for coming to talk about this because I think this is going to be a really interesting tool for me to think about. It sounds slightly more comprehensive than just giving someone a copy of It Starts With Food. As great as that book is, this is so much more. It should be so much more, I think, in this day and age when we have all these incredible tools with the internet and everything is connected. So, yeah, I think it's fantastic.
[0:50:04]
Kevin: I was going to say we have to use the tools that are available to us now. I had that kind of challenge of should I write a book or should I put all my focus into creating a program? And to me, it was obvious that I should put all my effort into creating a program because if you write a book, somebody buys the book and they read it and it's just up to them. And there's no communication channel there. It's old school. I want people to realize, look at the tools we have available o us online, the tools for coaching, the tools for engagement.
This is, I call it, the trench. This is the trench where all the work, the real work happens. So if you want to authentically do the work, you don't need a book. You need that trench to jump into and hopefully you're jumping into it with people who can help you.
Christopher: Yeah. I couldn't agree more. I've talked to several people. I was talking to a woman yesterday that was just crushed by the process of writing a book. The publisher gives some ludicrous deadline. It's totally unrealistic. And they stress the hell out of themselves. And then at the end of the process, you don't even really make any money. So when the book gets sold in Amazon, you make a dollar per copy or something ludicrous. And then you get percent on this book tour which is final nail in the coffin. And then on top of that, the book whilst it's great, it's not very good at making people change their habits.
Kevin: Yeah. You just sit there saying, "Well, I hope the book is helping people." You don't actually know if it is. You don't have a lot of communication with these people. It would be frustrating. I would not be able to sit there knowing people are reading my book and not being able to directly them one on one.
Christopher: It's fantastic. So rebootedbody.com is the place to find the program. How much does it cost?
Kevin: Right now, Total Body Reboot is $695 or you can break that up into different payment plans. There's two other different payment plans available. We also have Shut Down Your Sugar Cravings which is $149. That's a 28-day course. And then like I said, we have the Inner-Circle that's $9.99. So we try to space out the price points so people could at least get started with something. If you can't do Total Body Reboot yet, Shut Down Your Sugar Craving is available. If you can't even get there, then the Inner-Circle is available to you. There's some way that you can start on this process.
Christopher: Yeah, I mean, it sounds very comparable. I mean, you certainly won't get a year's membership for any of those numbers.
Kevin: Exactly. And the goal here is that you're getting tools that you can use for the rest of your life, not something that is just going to be a short term thing.
Christopher: Fantastic. And then there's the podcast as well where you can learn more. What do you normally talk about on the podcast?
Kevin: We do a variety of things on the podcast. I will interview experts from time to time. I bring in doctors and researchers on specific topics. I will do monologues. Lately, I've been doing interviews with just real people. We did an interview with Tony Scarborough who's a friend of mine and we talked about all the challenges he's faced since implementing a lot of the stuff that I talked about over the last two years. I don't work with him directly one on one but he reads the blog. He listens to the podcast. I've given him, I've gifted him in the very, very beginning access to Total Body Reboot.
And I haven't done any coaching with him but he's just been going through it. And he's seen a ton of amazing results. We sat down and did a podcast with him to talk about the challenges he's faced with people he's lived with. His wife wasn't necessarily on board for a while. He had teenagers in the house who were bringing in junk food all the time. He had a knee injury that he had to have surgery on. There was an old just recurring injury that was preventing him from doing a lot of the walking and exercise pieces.
We just talked about how have you addressed these challenges? How have you overcome them? And it ended up being one of my favorite discussions. I mean, interviewing experts and all that is great but I love hearing from real people about how they've done this in their own life. And just so many powerful takeaways came from that one discussion.
Christopher: Yeah, I'm finding that with my own podcast as well. In the beginning, I did nothing but interview experts. And I learned a lot from that. And it's definitely some interesting content. But at this stage, it seems like the most popular shows are the ones where I just get like a real person on and get them to talk about their challenges and the changes they made and what worked and what didn't work. Yeah, I think it is. It's really, really interesting content.
Kevin: Yeah, because people relate to that more. They don't relate to -- Plus, the expert, a lot of times the expert has faced a lot of challenges and they have a lot of stuff in their history that will be very valuable. But because they're in this expert mode, they guard that a little bit and they just want to give the information that they think will help people and they don’t' really want to talk about their personal story all that much where I think it's their personal story that would probably be more helpful for people.
Christopher: Yeah, I know it's true. Well, this has been very helpful. Thank you so much, Kevin, for coming on and talking about this. I'm really grateful. Thank you.
Kevin: Yeah, thank you for having me. It's been great.
Christopher: Cheers then. Bye.
[0:55:23] End of Audio
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