The Other Side of 100 Pounds: The Inspiring Story of Coach Jon

How I became blind at just 17 years of age.

They always want to know how I've done it and how I've kept smiling all along the way.

Well, I've just chosen to focus my attention.

That's what I want to do for you.

Because no matter what you may be going through the mic, I hope to inspire you to focus on the podcast.

You know what?

I hope that I can also be a source of inspiration for you to just hey what's happening.

Welcome back to the podcast.

My name is Kevin Lowe, the host here on the Lowdown with Kevin Lowe.

And well, welcome to the new year.

It's 2022, and I'm here to present you with episode number 69 as we jump back in the flow of things after a brief break to celebrate Christmas and to bring in the new year.

So, anyways, hopefully your holiday season was amazing and you're ready now to kick it back into gear.

Because, well, that's what the month of January is all about here on the podcast, because we're about to get ourselves kicked into shape, get ourselves motivated, inspired to be sure that 2022 is an amazing year for all of us.

And well, today we're gonna start that off by me bringing a guest on today named Jonathan McLernan, or as you're about to know him, as Coach John.

With it being the first episode of the year, January, when everybody's making these New Year's resolutions, it would make sense that I started things off with somebody coming on here to talk about dieting.

And well, that would be what other podcasts would do.

Me, I'm not about that because I want to bring you something entertaining, super inspiring, and that's gonna motivate you way more than some lame talk about what new diet you should be going on.

So, what I'm talking about is I'm sitting down with Coach John, who is a weight loss coach and emotional eating expert.

Coach John, he has lost over 100 pounds.

Coach John has quite the past because we're gonna be talking about his career starting out as a nanotechnology researcher, to then go on to join the Canadian Navy, where he was a Navy Marine engineer.

If he didn't get enough in his system of traveling around the world with the Navy, he would then go on to do even more of that traveling as he set out for destinations such as Mexico, Europe, Africa, Australia.

Basically, the world was his playground.

But sometimes in our lives, it seems like everything is leading up to a certain event to happen.

And while in John's life, it's a pretty traumatic event that happened while in Africa.

We're gonna get to that because that's a big part of John's story, a big part of what led to kind of a new chapter in his life and is pivotal in bringing him to where he is today.

So what I'm saying is, we're about to listen to not just a diet coach, not just a thing about weight loss.

No, no, no.

What we're about to listen to is the awesome story of this guy, Jonathan McLernan, realizing his full potential in life and what he was truly meant to be doing, where his calling truly was, and well, I hope that will inspire you to dig a little deeper into your own self, into your own life, and be sure that you're living the life that you were meant to live.

With that being said, I introduce you to my interview with Jonathan McLernan, aka Coach John.

Jonathan, welcome to the podcast.

Hey, thank you so much for having me.

I'm excited.

Well, I'm super thrilled to have you today.

Super excited to dive into so many different aspects of your kind of life story.

And I guess we'll kind of start things off with you kind of leading the way of your backstory, where you've come from, and you know, will lead up to more recent times.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah.

So I've had quite a varied background, uh, all the way from nanotechnology researcher at University of Victoria to being a marine engineer in the Canadian Navy.

I've been a four-time entrepreneur with two failed businesses, and I've been a globe-shrotting English teacher.

So it was, it was kind of during my travels around the world that I went from being athletic to being morbidly obese.

And that was a result of a trauma I suffered about 10 years ago when I was living in in South Africa.

And so that actually began my own journey of this weight loss in earnest.

And, you know, I would say prior to that, I would have thought that anyone who was overweight was, you know, lazy or or undisciplined.

But after I turned to food as a coping mechanism, because I really didn't have any tools to deal with my trauma, I found myself kind of wading into this murky world of weight loss and diet culture.

And after a lot of failed attempts at losing weight, because I tried a lot of things, man, a lot of time and energy wasted trying to find answers in all the wrong places, I finally encountered a coach who was able to, uh I say, he was able to like shine a light on this glaring problem staring back at me.

And this was my relationship to myself.

So because of all of my failed attempts to lose weight, I'd really actually become very angry and and spiteful towards myself and towards my body.

And you know, I had I had repeatedly tried to I say punish into submission.

And so when someone worked with me to really to heal my relationship with myself and by extension of food, that was this huge like perspective shift that that I could actually show myself love and compassion and lose weight and get healthy.

And it really dramatically shifted how I work with people in my coaching.

SPEAKER_01: Wow.

No, that's that's very, very interesting.

And and I can can say that, you know, it kind of comes from that aspect of, you know, what's wrong with me?

And we we feel like to just punish ourselves because there's there's something wrong with us.

SPEAKER_02: Why isn't this working?

Why isn't my body doing what I'm trying to force it to do or to tell it to do?

And, you know, I I look back and and now like I feel like such a different person than I was back then.

Like I I can hardly, I can hardly recognize the state that I was in at that time, that I was so angry with myself, my body, because you know, we only have one body.

We only get one kick at this.

Like, why was I so mad at it?

But I think it was, it was, again, it was connected to my relationship with myself.

I felt like such a failure.

I felt like a loser.

And I think I was projecting like all of my insecurities.

I was like, it's it's my body's fault that I feel so insecure around people.

It's my body's fault that I'm overweight and so on.

And it was just, I was project assuming that other people would have just saw and felt the same way about me as I felt around myself.

And that really colored how I would interact with other people.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, definitely, definitely.

Well, well, I'm I'm very anxious to learn more about the weight loss journey that you embarked on.

But but first I have to go back to a couple of things that you said right at the beginning.

And so, so first and foremost, obviously you are Canadian.

So, where in Canada do you live?

I I am.

SPEAKER_02: I live in Red Deer, Alberta.

That's for for the American listeners, I would be about six hours' drive north of the border, uh north of Montana.

And I live very close to the Rocky Mountains, which they go all the way down, you know, into the U.S.

and so on.

So I live very close to that mountain range.

A lot of the beautiful pictures you would see of these snow-capped mountains with these teal-colored lakes, that's that's kind of in my backyard, just an hour or two's drive away.

And, you know, I think we've had a real privilege of kind of exploring this in the quiet times of the pandemic, which is kind of nice.

SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.

Absolutely.

I've actually in my in my previous career working as a uh travel agent, I know from from working with some luxury train companies that they they said that they felt as though the the Canadian Rockies were were more beautiful than the ones in America.

SPEAKER_02: So Yeah, the the via rail, uh, what do they call that tour?

Uh it's it's a beautiful one.

Like it's absolutely stunning.

Yeah, it's it's well worth it.

SPEAKER_01: Yes, absolutely.

Absolutely.

Well, that's wonderful.

Well, then, so so we got that squared away where you're at in the world.

And then though, the other thing that I had to to just come back to and ask you with like this dumbfounded question to make me look really stupid was what did you say your title was that you went to school for?

SPEAKER_02: Oh, I I well, I was a chemistry major with a minor in marketing psychology, but I was a nanotechnology researcher.

Yeah.

So what what is that?

So nano just means really small.

So in the metric system, you have, you know, like a meter and then a small, you break it down into smaller pieces, like a centimeter.

So that means a hundred, so it's a hundred centimeters in a meter, a millimeter, there's a thousand millimeters in a meter, and then you have like a micrometer, which is a million, so it's breaking a meter into a million pieces.

And then you have nano, which is breaking a meter into a billion pieces.

So it just means really, really, really small.

Okay.

And so we were we were trying to create particles that would emit blue light.

That was the project I was working on back in the early 2000s.

This is before blu-ray was a thing.

And so, because the way that laser works, in a sense, it's light amplification through stimulated emission of radiation.

I didn't quite get that acronym right, but essentially you shoot energy at a particle, and the particle shoots the energy back towards you in the form of colored light.

And that's that's kind of what laser is.

And so we were trying to develop a blue laser.

So in a nutshell, I was trying to manufacture or come up with a particle that when we shot energy at it, it would shoot blue light back at us.

SPEAKER_01: Wow, that's some high-tech stuff.

Yeah, yeah.

Wow, that's incredible.

SPEAKER_02: I I actually ended up opting out of the PhD program that I was sort of being channeled into and ended up joining the Navy.

It was probably, you know, back then I felt that nobody would care if I had a PhD in this in this field.

And I didn't think it would necessarily make me any more money.

And so, and you know, looking back, I probably should have done my PhD, but I didn't.

And and I I went on an adventure with the Navy instead.

SPEAKER_01: Wow.

That well, that's so how long did you end up staying in the Navy for?

SPEAKER_02: About six years total.

So I did, I did three years, and then I took a one-year break where I went and lived in Australia.

My wife is from Australia, and uh, so we were engaged by the time I went and lived over there.

And then I came back and did three more years.

And I would say ultimately it was the it was the politics of the military, because the military is a federal government institution.

It's still very, very political.

And it was the politics that sort of pushed me out or or made me decide that that this really wasn't a field for me.

I really enjoyed the what would I say, like the structure of the military on the one hand.

But the other part of it is like I'm very creative and not afraid to speak my mind.

And if I if I see something that's not being done very efficiently, I I want to make it more efficient.

But sometimes the military is deliberately inefficient to give people ways of filling their time.

And uh so me speaking my mind and opening my mouth didn't always endear me to my superiors.

And as such, I just kind of recognized that the military wasn't really the right fit for me.

SPEAKER_01: Yep.

Yeah, no, definitely.

And and I can't help but think of of other people who who I know in far different careers than than than working in the Navy, and their jobs are the same way where where you see you see where things can be streamlined so easily, and then well, that's job security.

SPEAKER_02: So there is something to it.

You know, for example, you could create a light bulb that would have basically an infinite lifespan.

And there is one somewhere in the US, I think it's maybe in Massachusetts, but I forget it's in a fire hole.

And it's a light bulb that's been shining for more than like a hundred years and it's never been turned off.

Wow.

But yeah, so it is possible to make a light bulb that simply doesn't burn out.

But the industry recognized back then if we do that, we're just basically going to put ourselves out of a job.

Like once we've sold enough light bulbs, that's it.

They don't need us anymore.

You know, we're gonna sell so few light bulbs.

So the term is called planned obsolescence.

So, I mean, and car manufacturers do this as well.

They, you know, people say that things don't last as long as they used to, and it's like that's deliberate because they want you to keep buying and consuming.

That's kind of the nature of capitalism.

And so they plan that this only has a certain lifespan so that we can continue to sell you new things.

And that has its pluses and minuses.

You could say it keeps people employed, but then of course we live in a consumer culture that creates a lot of waste.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, totally, totally.

Wow.

So now I know at some point in your journey you you got really into traveling.

And I can't help but think that the possibly being in the Navy probably instilled that in you.

SPEAKER_02: Well, ironically, not as much as you you might think.

Okay.

Because it's while it sounds cool that you get to go to these places, you kind of really don't get to experience them in the same way as you would when you travel.

Yes.

Like it just it isn't quite the same.

And so I remember coming home to my wife one day and saying, Let's go teach English.

You know, like being in the military is not a great place to.

I say it makes divorced alcoholics.

Yeah.

Because you're gone all the time.

And in the Navy, like in the Canadian Navy, our ships aren't dry.

So you are allowed to, obviously, you're not allowed to consume alcohol within eight hours of going on duty, and they have rules around how much you consume and so on.

But alcohol is purchased duty-free, and it was really inexpensive.

At the time I was in it was like 50 cents for a shot and a dollar for a beer.

Okay.

Because there's no markup, right?

Yes.

And it's bought duty-free.

So whenever we would go down to like the US Navy bases, oh man, the American sailors loved coming on to Canadian ships because they could they could get cheap booze.

Yeah.

And we were the party ships.

So it it just, but I was spending on average probably 280 days a year away from home.

And that's not necessarily consecutively, but it's like if you add up all the days, I'm not home, whether that's I'm on 24-hour watch, so I'm on the ship or I'm sailing or things like that.

I was gone a lot.

And that's not a great way to have a marriage.

Like I was missing out on life with my wife.

And so we decided to travel instead.

So we hopped on a plane to Mexico, like we packed everything into storage, hopped on a plane to Mexico without really much of a plan.

And we flew down to Puerto Vallarta, which is a beautiful spot, and then went into inland to the city of Guadalajara and started teaching English down there.

SPEAKER_01: Oh, wow.

Well, that's so awesome.

SPEAKER_02: That kicked off a three-year globetrotting adventure that we didn't know that we were we were going to embark on, really.

We're pretty sure that we, you know, we'd probably get robbed or something like that in Mexico.

And we're kind of like prepared for that.

And it never actually happened when we were living down there.

And I will say the Mexican people are incredibly hospitable.

Once they stopped seeing you as a source of tourist dollars, because you we're we were earning pesos.

Like it's not like we were earning much more than the average Mexican person was, you know.

Yes.

They really like incredibly hospitable, love sharing their history, their culture, their food, that kind of thing.

Like, I really enjoyed living down there.

It's just unfortunate that it's marred by a lot of violence and gang violence and drug violence and so on.

And so ultimately we we realized we needed to move on.

And so we got jobs in Italy teaching English to children through children's English camps.

So we went from Mexico to Italy and spent a summer there.

From Italy, we went to Poland, spent a year there, went back to Italy for another summer, and then we flew down to South Africa.

So I'm skipping over a few details, but it's because it was in South Africa that I went through the trauma.

And we don't uh I mean, I'm comfortable talking about it.

We can go there, but I don't necessarily like to say glorify what happened to me in a sense, but it's important, it's an important piece of the puzzle.

And I we were down there working with underprivileged young people, teaching them life skills, helping them to get the skills to be placed in meaningful employment, because South Africa has a has a significant youth unemployment crisis.

And it was down there working on a nature reserve, living on a nature reserve, that that I was attacked by four men and nearly beaten to death.

And obviously, nothing in life really prepares you to go through an experience like that.

I was an entirely unprepared to kind of experience that part of life.

And so my way of dealing with it was to eat food.

I am a man of Christian faith, and so I didn't turn to drugs or alcohol.

I know many people do, and I understand why they do.

I don't mean that it's a good thing, but I uh it makes sense.

So for me, though, it was socially acceptable to consume food.

So food became the tool for me to to medicate my trauma, so to speak, to essentially change the channel in my head and not feel what I was feeling.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely.

Now, do you mind kind of taking us through that experience a little bit of being attacked since that was kind of uh such a pivotal point in your journey?

SPEAKER_02: Yeah.

I will preface this by saying I'm grateful for the experience.

So I want to be clear about that, and I would not take it out of my past because of who I've become as a result of it.

It was a long road to get to where I'm at.

Okay.

It was a difficult road, but because of this experience, I am who I am today doing what I do, and so I wouldn't take it out of my past.

So just to lay the setting, um, so we're on this nature reserve, you know, it's hundreds of hectares, they've got rhinos and giraffes and things like that.

Beautiful, beautiful spot, about 45 minutes away from a town called Grahamstown in Eastern Cape in South Africa.

And they have rangers and stuff like that.

The setting for the educational center is the buildings are kind of spread out in a bit of an L shape, covering a few hundred, a few hundred meters or a few hundred yards kind of thing.

So you have the main education building, and then you have the students' dormitory, and then you have sort of the washroom and ablution facilities, and then tucked off to the side in the bushes a little bit is the instructor's cabin.

That's where they they would reside and sleep and so on.

And so it was just, it was a I think it was a Monday night.

Yes, it was a Monday night.

It was August 15th, 2011.

And in South Africa, that's in the southern hemisphere, this is wintertime down there, so they have shorter days.

So everybody was in the in the dining hall eating dinner.

And I happened to finish my dinner early, so I was just walking back to the cabin by myself.

It's dark, it's nighttime.

I'm in flip-flops, sweatpants, t-shirt.

You know, just we're we're loving the work we're doing with young people, really connecting with our students, really feeling connected to the work that we're doing.

We've been doing this for a few weeks now.

And I get back to my cabin and the door is slightly ajar.

And my brain, you know, like it goes, oh, that's that's weird, but I don't think anything's amiss.

You know, maybe I just forgot to lock the door or something like that.

Never mind, the door has actually been jimmied open, the deadbolt is sticking out of the door.

But uh, you know, in a place like this, I'm like, we're on a nature reserve, there's rangers like, you know, naturally sort of wanting to deny that anything, anything wrong was going on.

Open the door, and at the table, there's three men sitting there drinking Roybus tea, which is a very common tea consumed in South Africa, it means red bush, and they're eating rusks, which are these hard, basically hard biscuits that you dip in your tea.

And so I think I caught them a little bit off guard as well.

But I remember looking at one of them and going, I recognize you.

And looking back, I realized he was one of the rangers on the nature reserve.

They were in the cabin ransacking it, and decided to sit down and have some tea and eat eat some of our food.

Wow.

Yeah.

Now what I didn't see was there was a fourth man, and he was outside the cabin.

And as I was sort of stunned, you know, what are you doing in the cabin trying to make sense of it?

You know, it's it's you know, the brain is kind of trying to process this, then crack across the head, I get hit with a rock.

And I'm already now I'm starting to see stars.

Like, and and now my brain is like, what is going on here?

You know, and these men, they they all jump up from the table and and piled out, and you know, a crack, I get hit over the head again, I get knocked down, and they just start kicking and stomping and and beating me.

And I remember, you know, here's something I remember.

I remember one of them, I was wearing this colored like golf shirt kind of thing.

And I remember his hand grabbing the collar of that shirt and him winding up and swinging and hitting me across the head with this rock.

You know?

And I remember like looking into his eyes and seeing the smile on his face as he swung that rock towards my head.

And just like he was enjoying this.

Wow.

And I I remember like screaming for help, you know, but nobody could hear me because there's all this noise and clutter and clatter, and it's you know, a few hundred feet away is this is the dining hall where everybody is having a grand old time eating, and there's, you know, 25 students and a couple of facilitators, you know, all making noise.

Here I am screaming for help and nobody's hearing me, and it's dark and it's at night, you know.

And they, you know, they start kicking and stomping me as I as I fall to the ground and I'm concussed and and my face is bloodied, and you know.

But somehow I I managed to fight my way to my feet.

So I'm six foot one, 240, like I'm I'm big and I'm I'm pretty strong.

And so thankfully, I wasn't I wasn't knocked unconscious.

I was stunned and I was concussed, but I wasn't unconscious, like my bell was rung, we would say, but I wasn't unconscious.

And so I was able to fight my way to my feet.

What's really interesting is they could have they had knives, but they didn't stab me, and they could have.

They didn't have guns, thankfully, and they didn't shoot me.

And it's it's there's kind of a cultural reason for this, but uh, and I'll come back to that.

But uh so I was able to kind of run stumble my way over to the dining hall, and for some reason they didn't chase me.

I don't know why.

I was able to get there and and say, like, I've been attacked, there's there's there's men out there, I don't know how many there are, you know, blood's covering my face, you know, as I said, and all of a sudden, like the the room just kind of erupts in pandemonium because it's like, oh my gosh, these people like they've been traumatized, but they know the drill in a sense.

Like how many people are out there?

We don't know because there's this temptation to think that in South Africa that it's primarily a black-white conflict, and it's like there is that element of the conflict, but South Africa also has eight different ethnic black groups who are frequently in conflict with each other because of cultural differences.

SPEAKER_00: Yes.

SPEAKER_02: And so there it's actually it's a tragic, like it's a tragic situation because it's this incredibly beautiful country, and many of the people are very hospitable and friendly, but it has this underbelly of racial tension, not just black, white, but uh just amongst each other.

So we ended up kind of trapped in this building.

We we put like, you know, tables in front of the doors and stuff and barricaded them, and the doors have bar and windows have bars on them, and you know, we put a fridge in front of one of the doors.

You know, my wife was super brave.

She got, you know, the women armed with pots and pans, and they started boiling water to throw boiling water on these people if they broke through the doors.

Like we were basically preparing for wars, we're trapped in this building.

And these men out there, they had shovels that they they found shovels and they were trying to smash down the doors with the shovels to get in.

And of course, in hindsight, had we known that I as far as we can tell, there's only four of them out there, but we didn't know that at the time because they can travel in gangs of up to 15 or 20.

And so, but it was it was interesting.

I I had a I had a fork and I was kind of slumped over somewhere in the kitchen, you know, like I said, kind of dazed and concussed and trying to process everything that was happening, and I was going to defend myself with a fork.

You know, some of the men ran screaming and into the pantry and were like hiding and they were terrified.

Other men were like angry and and they were like, we're men, we fight, we defend our women, that kind of thing.

And so we were kind of trapped in this building for about 45 minutes.

Thankfully, in that time, one of the students had their cell phone and had just enough signal to make a call to the police station.

And thankfully, it happened to be a senior police officer that was walking by when the phone rang and picked up the phone and and dispatched people.

Uh, because in South Africa, the police are corrupt and the lower level police are inept.

That's just how it is.

They they they become a police officer to earn a paycheck, not to actually do their job, like just to collect a paycheck.

Yes.

And it's hard for us to comprehend if we live in a country where police officers actually, you know, take an oath to protect and serve and and do their best to follow up on that oath.

In South Africa, that's not the case.

And so there's a number of factors that I I look back and like I would say it's the hand of God, because I'm a man of faith, that that like why I'm still alive today, because these men had actually murdered a man the night before.

They beat him to death.

Uh, I was a white farmer.

And uh that was that was their intention, was to beat me to death as well.

And it had nothing to do with me, Jonathan.

They didn't know me.

They uh they only knew my skin color.

And so I say that I was a representation of something that had historically oppressed them or they felt had historically oppressed them.

And their way of taking back what they felt was feel was taken from them was to attack and try to beat me to death to demonstrate their power over me.

So yeah, the police eventually did show up.

And, you know, when they did, like the the thing is to get onto the nature reserve, you had to drive uh down through this valley and back up.

And you could see across the valley 20 minutes away when the flashing lights were there.

Like you could see, so these guys could see in the night, these lights are very bright and flashing, and they could see they had plenty of time to just sort of melt into the bushes and disappear.

And the cops get out there and they go, Oh, uh, we don't we don't see them.

You guys are probably fine.

Maybe we'll just go.

Exactly.

My wife was like, Are you kidding me?

They're still out there.

Yes.

And we are not, you are not leaving until we have all left.

We are not staying here tonight.

You know, they they took a little walk around, they they found one of the knives, they'd obviously dropped it, and one of the police officers just picked it up barehand, you know, contaminating the evidence.

It was just, they they were just, they'd never watched CSI clearly.

They weren't gonna take statements like, oh, you know, nobody was murdered or raped, so we probably won't bother with statements because that's too much work.

And and again, my wife was was very vocal.

She was like, You are going to take statements.

Some of these people have seen these men, they've seen their faces, they saw them at the windows when they were trying to break in.

They can describe them.

And uh, so, anyways, that was that was kind of the experience.

We ended up going back into the city of Grahamstown and staying the night there, and and ultimately we ended up getting a habitation um in a hostel.

We get ended up getting put up in a hostel there.

So South Africa is a really, a really very violent place.

But down there, a lot of it, they've just kind of normalized this violent way of life.

There's a whole industry of armed private security.

They will shoot to kill.

That's not a joke, that's not hyperbole, they will shoot to kill because it's life and death down there.

So we had private security because, again, the police are inept, and it was basically you got a panic button that you can wear around your neck, you push a button, it sends out a signal, they locate you, they get there as fast as they can, they come out guns drawn, ready to kill people.

That's that's what it actually is like down there.

Just to give people an idea, one in four women have been gang raped, not just raped, but gang raped, and one in two women have been raped in South Africa.

It's so there's a lot of male and female violence down there as well.

Like it's just a country that is steeped in in violence.

And so I just happen to be a victim of that.

And so I say that with sadness because it's such a beautiful country and there's many beautiful people down there.

And we did go back one more time.

Like we stayed for another four months after this incident happened to me because we loved what we were doing.

We wanted to keep doing it, and but ultimately more things happened, you know, broken into, robbed.

They even cut the copper pipes out of the house that we were living in to sell the copper as scrap.

Like just you get so angry and frustrated at constantly feeling like you're under siege.

And so we eventually just had to leave because we just couldn't take it anymore.

And there were other instances that I that I won't describe for the sake of time, but essentially we left and we were in a pretty traumatized state eventually because, you know, I was I was getting angrier and angrier as the days went on, just getting filled with rage at these people who just seemed to, they didn't understand that we were we were there trying to help people.

They didn't seem to care.

And so I was really suffering from PTSD at that point, from compound trauma.

And thus we ended up going back to Australia.

I ended up working on a on a cotton farm in the middle of like rural Australia, I say in in armpit nowhere, rural Australia.

And it was probably the best thing ever in one sense, because I had it gave me the space to psychologically decompress a little bit.

But I had to, it probably took a month before I realized like I don't have to lock every door and window and barricade myself into my room with weapons because nobody's coming to get me.

Like, which is different than South Africa, where you have six-foot brick walls with razor wire, bars on every door and window, locks on every door throughout the house, not to not to keep people out, but basically to slow their progress as they're trying to move through the house, that kind of stuff.

So yeah, it was it was quite the experience to go through.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

I mean, no doubt.

And I I mean, I'm just sitting here thinking to myself, just just how traumatizing that had to be, even even thinking of of your wife.

Yes.

And and even and even the long-term effects of of of it even on her had to be tremendous.

SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.

And I think sometimes that doesn't get acknowledged.

And I really wanted to try to remember that.

So for her, even though she wasn't attacked, I mean, there's first of all the thoughts of what if it was her walking back to the cabin, not me.

Yep.

That would have ended up probably a lot more horrific, even though she's she's capable of defending herself.

She's done self-defense and so on.

It's four on one, it's four men against a female, right?

Exactly.

So the trauma of seeing her husband, you know, covered in in blood and bruised and dirtied and clothes torn and like one, you know, I could have lost my husband that night.

And my wife is a very visual creative person.

She sees very, very vivid images in her mind.

And so that doesn't help either because then kind of replaying that trauma over and over again, that that, you know, she said it was it it took a very long time to no longer see the picture of me staggering through that doorway with my face covered in blood, saying I've been attacked.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah.

So that was very traumatizing for her.

And we we kind of dealt with our trauma differently.

For me, I I turned to food.

For her, it was just a lot of kind of distraction techniques, whether that was watching some shows on Netflix or something like that.

It was just ways to mentally check out and not think about what happened.

But she also grappled with insomnia for for a long time as well.

So it, yeah, it was you know, you think about it like oh, it was just one thing.

It was just one incident, one day of your life.

But drama doesn't really trauma doesn't really work like that.

Because the incident replays over and over again.

And it's like the brain's attempt to reconcile, or if I knew this, I would have done that.

Trying to rewrite the story.

SPEAKER_01: Yep.

SPEAKER_02: And so it was I'll say it was probably about eight months later after the incident.

I was now in Istanbul, Turkey, where my brother lives.

And I couldn't sleep one night.

And I just I had this longing, really, that I wanted to make peace with what had happened to me.

And I didn't even really know what that looked like.

I'd had a couple of trauma counseling sessions, but they're they're expensive, and at least you know, they were very helpful in helping me to understand like what was going on in my brain.

So I didn't feel so guilty about all the rage and like wanting to carry out violent retribution.

Um, I never did, because there's also a logical part of the brain that goes, This isn't you.

It's not who you are.

And so it felt very distressing to have these thoughts enter my head of wanting to carry out violent retribution to the people that tried to do this to me.

And so, but I realized I wanted to be able to think about this experience and not be angry and not have it disempower me every time I thought about it.

And so I decided that I wanted to forgive the men who had done this to me.

And I, you know, I would never see them again.

There was actually a court case because three out of the four were caught and they were charged with murder, and they were probably charged with attempted murder.

And I was supposed to go back to South Africa for the court case, but really I just couldn't bring myself to go back.

And at that time, like it just I just didn't want to.

And um, but I decided that I needed to forgive them.

And you know, that's not that's not just a decision that you make, and then ta-da, everything's good.

It's a process.

And so for me, what I needed to do was to ask the question what must have happened in their life that took them that brought them to this place?

What must have happened to them where not only they thought it was like, you know, okay, but actually like a good thing, an enjoyable thing to be violent and commit murder?

What must have happened?

Because this isn't how normal human beings develop.

And so there's very likely some kind of pain or trauma in their past that's being relived in their actions.

And I don't say that to excuse them for what they did or to absolve them of what they did, but when I started to think about it from that perspective, it allowed me to begin to cultivate a sense of compassion towards them.

And compassion is not a get out of jail free card.

It doesn't mean that they were absolved from their crime, but it means that I started to see them as, you know, damaged human beings.

And in that place of compassion, when those thoughts of rage came up, those thoughts of violent retribution, I took a step back and said, no, I need to have compassion for them and for what they did.

And there was also the other piece of the puzzle, and that was kind of letting go of my ego and recognizing that this wasn't about me at all.

I wanted to maybe make it about me.

My ego wanted to make it about me, but it wasn't actually about me.

And that was really, really important to acknowledge.

SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.

Absolutely.

So so at the place that you're at today, and even back then, you finally came to a point where you truly forgive them for what happened.

SPEAKER_02: I hold no animosity, no anger.

Yes.

Then it kind of moved into the next stage really of my journey because I I'd I'd become a binge-eating food addict.

So that was my way of sort of dealing with the trauma.

And once that pattern of behavior is established, that's also a very difficult pattern to break.

SPEAKER_00: Yes.

SPEAKER_02: And I, you know, like you can logically say, well, it doesn't make sense that you do these things.

And I'm like, yeah, logically, I knew that too.

But this behavior wasn't coming from the logical part of the brain.

It's coming from a different part of the brain.

And logic, you know, I say logic is like an ant marching north on the back of an elephant marching south.

Yeah.

Yes.

And so logic isn't enough to because we, you know, we would look at people who struggle with their weight, who struggle with disordered eating, and go, oh, they just must be lazy or undisciplined.

And it's like, no, no, there's there's almost always something more in play here.

It may not be trauma, but there's almost always something more in play here that goes beyond that.

And so, but I can say, in that experience, I really learned about what true forgiveness is.

Because it's not just saying, I forgive you, but I hope God smites you.

That's that's not that's not forgiveness, right?

SPEAKER_01: No.

No, that's that's a step in the forgiveness journey that I think most of us go through.

But no, that's not that's not true forgiveness.

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: And so we think about, you know, if we think about the in the Christian faith and we look about you know, Jesus and in his time on the cross, when he uttered the words, Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.

They were not idle words, they were intentional words of of genuinely asking for forgiveness.

And so that's the example that we uh as Christians that we take.

And so again, I think everyone that did that, they have to answer for their own actions.

But Jesus was able to do that.

And so that that's what inspires us to do this as well.

SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.

Absolutely.

And and and I must say, in talking about coming to forgiveness for to truly forgive somebody who's done wrong or harm to you or to a loved one, I can tell you from my own personal life, it's very difficult.

And and I can tell you from my from myself that there's a person who who was in my life.

And he he caused great heartache and harm to to the people I love the most, and and even to myself.

And and for so many years, I carried this hatred for him, a pure hatred.

And I always said no, I just no, I don't forgive him.

I I will never forgive him.

And then one day I will tell you that all of a sudden, it was not by my doing, but it was through my my faith.

It was truly the Holy Spirit that came over me that enabled me to truly forgive this person.

And to this day, I cannot think of any wrong feelings towards that person.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah.

And that's incredibly powerful.

And I think it's important to recognize a couple of things that you you shared here, you highlighted here as well.

The first step is making the decision to forgive, but understand that it's probably going to be a process, and that's okay.

For me, it was, you know, each time my brain would want to relive the experience, I would have to take a step back, take a breath, and cultivate that sense of compassion for those who'd done wrong.

I think the other part that helped me, I like the definition of humility.

It's not thinking less of ourselves, but really thinking about ourselves less.

In other words, not making it about ourselves.

SPEAKER_00: Yes.

SPEAKER_02: And this idea that like my life is not really my own.

And everything I own and possess or think that I own and possess is not really my own because I can't take it with me when I die.

And so really we're born with nothing, we die with nothing.

And if we acknowledge that everything really, in a sense, is a gift, maybe then we can, as we make it not about ourselves, we can more easily sort of cultivate this sense of forgiveness.

And the other part of it is I think the completion of this experience or the lesson in this experience was coming to the place where I became grateful for the experience because it's only like you could read about forgiveness in the Bible and think, yeah, totally, I do that.

But it's not until you are tested to the very limits of your ability.

And actually, I think brought to the end.

Like the end, like I say, I was brought to the end of myself.

And it wasn't within me by nature to even want to forgive.

But it's like when we're brought to the end of ourselves, it's like that's when the power of God can take over.

And I look back now over my life and I see many experiences where I was brought to the end of myself.

You know, I can say, like, I I've been blessed with a pretty, pretty good brain, pretty, a pretty capable individual.

But it's like God had to bring me to the end of myself, whether it was the end of my my mental ability, the end of my emotional ability, the end of my physical strength, and so on, to make me realize that like it doesn't matter because this isn't about those things in my life.

It's really about the power of God accomplishing something.

And if he has to bring me to the end of myself to get me to finally sort of relinquish, I guess, then that that's why I go through these these experiences.

SPEAKER_01: So Yeah, no, I I agree with you.

And and and what I will say to that too is the fact that, you know, it it would be it would be awesome if life was had no hard times, that it had no evil.

But the fact is that that's what this world is, and that's that's what makes heaven so amazing.

And I think it's when when you can come to a point in your journey, when if you've if you've had something happen to you very traumatic, like like that, you being attacked, like me, becoming blind.

When you can come to a point, though, when you can, as you said, almost be appreciative of the experience, because it was an experience in your life that becomes part of your journey and and it builds on who we are.

And if you can can take that experience, good or bad, and and make it, you know, make you a better person, you know.

And I think that's that's when, in my opinion, what really is a bad or negative experience if you can turn it around to be positive?

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I love that.

And this is where you see, I don't think it's in us or in most of us as human beings to do this by nature.

Because we might we might also want to ask the question like, why, if God is a loving God, does he permit evil and does he permit evil experiences to take place in our life?

But you know, it's in these experiences, again, we're brought to the end of ourself.

You know, we're we're the only way that we can truly experience the fullness of the power of God is when we have no more power in our life.

So, you know, these experiences like they held power over me, and I felt powerless to break free from them.

And and so, in one sense, it's these experiences allow us to not just read about, but to genuinely feel in the very depths of our soul the power that God can have in our life.

We could think about a tragic loss when we lose somebody we love, you know, experiences like that.

That's what these experiences can be turned into.

And, you know, there's this is Romans 8 28 all things work together for good to them that love the Lord.

And I think it's to recognize that again, this life isn't, you touched on this life isn't the big picture.

SPEAKER_01: Exactly.

Exactly.

So back to your story.

And so we we heard about that you guys, you you made it to Australia.

You're you're working on a cotton plantation, which that just sounds crazy to begin with.

But but so so at some point though, you turn to food as this coping mechanism.

And you you put on a lot of weight.

So obviously, you know, everybody knows that, you know, from the beginning of the show that you've you've lost a lot of weight.

You're, you know, you're now a nutritional coach.

So what tell me a little bit about that journey.

What you know was it like putting on the weight?

What was your breaking point?

And how did you start to turn it around?

SPEAKER_02: I would say, you know, there was a period of time where I was almost living disconnected from my body, if I could put it that way.

I still had this idea in my head of being young and athletic.

And I felt almost as though my body wasn't a representation of who I was.

And that might that might also have been a part of the reason why I kind of developed this like loathing of my own body, because I was like, this isn't who I am.

And so the weight gain happened like pretty rapidly.

Like I say pretty rapidly, I mean gaining 100 pounds over a course of like probably six months.

And there was a point, I remember just like sitting down with my wife and going, like, I don't, I don't want to live like this anymore, but I don't know what to do.

So then I started down the road of trying out various like weight loss diets.

And I'd been through a variety of them spanning from like I was at one point I was a raw food vegan, which actually I don't recommend, just for the record.

Okay.

Yeah.

It's it's not it's maybe not a like it almost seems like it's the most perfectly virtuous diet, but I would say it's not necessarily the the case.

SPEAKER_01: Okay.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, there's this, you know, I don't want to dive into the subtle nuances of it at this point in time, because I mean, if somebody wants to be one, then then by all means, I'll help them, you know, be the healthiest raw food vegan they can.

But I think there's other ways, better ways to achieve health.

I as much as possible, I do try to be what I call a dietary agnostic.

In other words, like when somebody works with me, I don't necessarily prescribe a specific way of eating to them.

It's more about like reverse, reverse engineering their healthy lifestyle with them.

But so I, you know, I got into like, you know, macro counting and intermittent fasting, and I did paleo and primal and keto for a period of time.

But there, there's like sort of the same recurring theme every time I tried one of these dietary interventions to lose weight.

And I have to pause and say, like, my wife is a saint.

She watched me like go through all of this.

And I would, I would be, I would come home and be like, okay, this is the one.

This is the one, and I'm starting it today.

And after about you know, the sixth or seventh time, she's just like, okay, just okay.

But she kind of already knew like, here's how the story's gonna go.

For a couple of weeks, I'm just gonna go like pedal to the metal, give everything I've got, be super intense about this, and then I'm gonna burn out, fade away, and go back to sort of my binge eating habits.

And she kind of just knew that.

And there there even comes a point where it's like you, you know, she would watch me in my destructive habits and almost a recognition of that this isn't something that she can correct in me, but I had to come to a place in and of myself where I can correct this.

And so I would say the breaking point came in about 2016 when so I I had been struggling with my weight for about five years at that point, up and down.

I'd lose, you know, 60 pounds and I'd gain 40 back.

I'd lose 20 pounds, gain 30 back, and so on.

I'm just yo-yoing.

And uh, I started having panic attacks.

That was like one of the wake-up calls for me.

So I call that my nervous system pulling the fire alarm.

I was sleeping five hours a night.

I was trying to run my business, working 12 to 14 hours a day.

I was trying to train in the gym two hours a day.

I was consuming a lot of pre-workout and energy drinks and coffee to try and function and push my body harder and drive my body harder.

And my nervous system just said, nope, you can't keep doing this.

And for a while I tried to hide the panic attacks from my wife.

Like uh, what would happen?

And I would, you know, logically, I would just sort of function as though nothing was going on internally, like my brain was screaming, you're gonna die.

I started to feel like like a dissociation from my body where it would feel like I was floating out of my body.

It was a really, that was a really hard experience.

And that was what kind of started, I don't want to say started, but highlighted the struggles that I was having with my mental health.

That was like another breaking point.

The other thing that accompanies anxiety is like depression.

So anxiety is like redlining an engine until it overheats, and then the engine actually has to be shut off to cool down before you can safely start it again.

And that's how I would kind of describe the depressive episodes I would experience.

I would fall into just this dark place.

Uh not that I was suicidal or anything like that, but I just, I just would feel like my heart was made of lead and this black cloud was hanging over my head, and I wanted to cry, and I just, you know, I couldn't, couldn't seem to function and and make myself want to do anything.

And then, you know, after that would sort of pass, I would sort of get back, you know.

So all of this was was taking place.

And at the same time, actually, I was also struggling with my business, and I was in a toxic business relationship with a a sociopathic business partner.

And I don't say that to slander that individual.

Um, I just say that as an honest assessment of who they who they are as a human being.

So a pathological liar and a narcissist.

And at that time, I didn't know what those terms even meant, or that's what I was engaged in.

So there was a lot on my plate.

Yes, metaphorically and literally.

This was again me being brought to another breaking point where I was again brought to the end of myself.

You know, I remember a doctor saying to me, there's no pill to fix this.

Like, you have to change how you're living.

If you can't keep going like this, you're gonna have a nervous breakdown.

And I had to stop going to the gym for six months because I was trying to power lift as well.

And I was trying to, you know, brute strength and just get as strong as possible.

And that that wasn't helping matters either.

And so kind of, and I'd hired coaches before, and it was such a frustrating experience because they just like, you know, here's your food planner, here's your macros, and just follow this and check in and we'll see how it's going.

And they just they didn't seem to get it, they didn't understand the struggle, they didn't understand me.

And I would just, I would end up feeling so angry because they didn't know how to help me because they didn't, they didn't have the tools, they didn't know what I was dealing with.

And so they would just try to sort of guilt me and shame me and coerce me into following like whatever it was they were trying to force me to do.

And it's like, that's not coaching.

And so a turning point came in October 2017.

And when a coach that I'd hired, he said to me, you know, Jonathan, if you make a list of all the things you love and value, how far down that list do I go before I see your name?

Wow.

Yeah.

That one hit me.

SPEAKER_00: Yes.

SPEAKER_02: Because in that moment, it wasn't that I was near the bottom of the list, it was that I was not even on the list.

And it, you know, I just I just remember feeling stunned and then just feeling incredibly sad for all these years that I've been struggling and hating myself and hating my body and loathing how I looked and loathing my struggles with weight and so on.

And here he was giving me permission to to actually start learning how to love myself.

And that was a real that, you know, it was there, there wasn't one diet.

It wasn't that I, you know, adopted a specific way of eating.

It wasn't a workout plan.

It was this relationship with myself question.

And that's and when I could heal my relationship with myself, I could then stop destructively using food.

And that's really what sort of formed the foundation of what I do.

And nowadays I like to call it brain-driven weight loss, where I work with people because I say the brain is really the driver of our behaviors.

And if our behaviors need to change to improve our health, we need to address what's really happening here, what's taking place in the brain.

And that's what this coach did for me.

And I say he gave me the space to wrestle my demons in the light.

In other words, to bring my struggles to him.

And he didn't judge me for my struggles.

He helped me.

And that's the essence of true compassion.

That, you know, not receiving judgment for our struggles because we're human, but in the same token, being like, I don't want you to stay stuck in your struggles, so I'm gonna help you.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, totally, totally.

Wow.

So so that is what then led you to lose the hundred pounds.

Well, uh fine to lose it for good.

SPEAKER_02: So if I was to add up add up the number of pounds that I'd lost and regained, I mean it wouldn't just be 100 pounds.

It'd probably be more like 600, really, truthfully.

SPEAKER_01: Of course.

Like if I was I mean Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I was gonna say, I mean, that's yo-yo dieting.

I mean, that's that's where that term came from.

And so, so I mean, just for for curiosity, I mean, I understand the, you know, the the brain part of the equation, but I mean, what did you start doing?

What did you change in your diet, your physical exercise that that then led to this just massive weight loss?

SPEAKER_02: When I stopped using food to deal with my emotions, and I stopped treating every difficult emotion like it was a problem that didn't belong there, and I started to gain the ability to sit with difficult emotions and cultivate a resilience, like the ability to be uncomfortable, that allowed me to stop eating so much, just stop eating so much and so much junk food.

Wow.

So, what I would say is like I started meditating three minutes a day, just a very, very small amount.

That was to start calming my nervous system.

So, meditation, it you know, it's not, you know, necessarily burning incense at a monastery in the Himalayas or something, you know.

Like it's it was just a breathing exercise to physiologically calm my nervous system down.

By doing that every day and sometimes multiple times a day, I began to sort of take back the power from these panic attacks and realize that they weren't, I wasn't gonna die.

They couldn't hurt me, they were uncomfortable, but I could move through them.

And so taking that back started to give me the capacity to not treat every difficult emotion like a panicky emergency that had to be smothered in food.

So then comes a point where I start looking at some of the things that I'm eating and I go, like, this is killing me.

You know, eating six Snickers bars, like that's setting me up to be a diabetic.

That's lining, you know, that's gonna lead to my arteries being lined with cholesterol.

It's funny, we think that like saturated fat's gonna do that.

I'm like, excess sugar consumption is gonna create inflammation that's gonna do that, actually, among other things, you know?

And so it, I mean, in one sense, I think people listening to this, it might be a little bit of an uh not an infuriating answer, but a dissatisfying answer because it's like, well, just tell me what, tell you to eat vegetables, tell you to eat lean protein, tell you to, you know, limit your sugar consumption and not drink so many calories and move your body a little more frequently.

Like the fundamentals of a healthy lifestyle are not complicated.

We just repackage them over and over again to try and present some people with a novel idea on the like a novel spin on the same old idea.

But so my novel spin is really focusing on the brain.

So one of the cool things our brain does is it is it forms habits.

And so maybe I could shine a light, and this will help people to kind of understand why I'm saying like it wasn't a specific meal plan, it wasn't a specific activity plan or things like that that helped me to lose the weight.

It was changing my lifestyle.

Because why I take a stand against diets is because a diet says I'll temporarily change my behavior and get a permanent result.

And that's not possible.

To transform your health, to be transformed, you have to start living in a different way that means you're not going back to that old lifestyle.

And so a lot of approaches to lose weight, they take an outside-in approach and they don't acknowledge our internal environment, our emotions, our mindset, our psychology, our habits, which are the things that most powerfully influence our behaviors and results.

And on top of that, a lot of our behaviors take place at the subconscious or unconscious level because of a variety of factors.

Like the brain will form a habit from a repeated behavior.

It will automate that behavior if you do it a few times in a row.

And so it's like if you've ever driven from one place to another and don't remember driving there, but somehow got there safely, it's like that's your midbrain just automating the task.

It's it's quite a remarkable experience.

And uh, you know, Kevin, I suppose you probably don't do a lot of driving these days, but you know, to be fair, but in in in in this example, but like that's just a I think a common example.

Another one would be like finding yourself in the pantry holding the pantry door open, trying to figure out what to eat.

And then realizing, like, how did I get here?

Why am I doing this?

Why am I eating?

Like, I don't even need to eat right now.

You know, if we were to put that, you know how on the CSI, they they spray that stuff that you can like shine a blue light or a UV light on.

Well, if we were to put that stuff on our feet or our shoes, like, and then shine the UV light, uh, and we'd start to see a pattern of footprints through the house, how we habitually move throughout our house and in and out of our kitchen and so on, right?

And so if we could say, like, if we this is all coming from the brain.

So we have those habits, we have our feelings, because our brain wants us to avoid pain and discomfort, or the primal part of our brain does.

And so it wants us to, you know, it's comfortable to eat a Snickers bar in one sense.

It's comfortable to sit on your couch and not do something.

But we also act, could I say, in congruence with our sense of identity.

So who we think we are, we will try to prove that true with our behavior, if I could just put it that way.

So I took on the identity of the jolly fat guy.

That was how I saw myself to be, which means I'm now going to behave in a way that reinforces my sense of identity.

And so any attempt to act against the jolly fat guy, in other words, to make healthy changes, I would actually subconsciously self-sabotage because my primal brain thought it was keeping me safe by holding me to the sense of identity.

You know, it's kind of a I'm like describing it, I'm thinking, man, this must sound like a little bit of a crazy concept to some people.

SPEAKER_01: Well, as all I can think of the whole time you're talking is I'm thinking, this exactly goes back to a book I read, which I highly advise everyone to read, is Atomic Habits.

Oh, James Clear.

Yeah, great.

Yeah, fantastic.

Everything that you're talking about is exactly what he teaches in that book.

And I'm sitting here thinking to myself, I think, you know, our diet, you know, the food that we consume, it's a vital part to life.

It keeps us, you know, it's, I mean, we we need food.

It's part of our survival.

And so why we then think that we can simplify it, dummy it down so much to not involve our internal self and like you said, just rely on this external thing to then totally change something and think that it's going to be changed in a way that it's gonna leave this lasting major impact.

It kind of when you think of it like that, it's like, well, duh.

Yeah, no wonder it's not working.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah.

And so, you know, I look back and I say, why was I so attracted to these like quick fixed fad diets?

And I would say it's because I wanted to believe the promise, you know, this idea that weight loss is quick and easy, because that's a really attractive idea.

SPEAKER_00: Yes.

SPEAKER_02: But it's hard to acknowledge the reality that actual like permanent weight loss is quite challenging.

SPEAKER_00: Yes.

SPEAKER_02: And it's because it's because of our biology.

We have this marvelous famine biology.

So a biology that's hardwired to store fat whenever we eat excess calories, to store them up for a future when we might have a famine, you know, where where there might not be as much food, and then we can rely on our fat reserves.

That's the way that God created us.

But we live in a 24-7 feast world now.

It used to be, you know, a time of harvest, there might be an abundance, but then you kind of get lean through the winter living off of your fat because, you know, it's not a growing season, and so on.

So there's this famine biology that works kind of in a sense against us as well that we need to be aware of.

Our body wants us to store and hold fat because it wants to keep us safe.

And so the other, so there's that part of it.

So we're we're kind of attracted to this wrong idea, this lottery ticket mentality, and we get marketed to in that way as well.

You know, weight loss companies prey on this, you know, and try to force you into a straitjacket, essentially, you know, spending hundreds of dollars a month on these pre-packaged meals or hundreds of dollars a month on these supplements, or even thousands sometimes, you know, but not really addressing what's what's really going on.

And so we think about this compassion piece.

I would say, if we treated a friend the way that we often treat ourselves, would we have any friends left?

SPEAKER_01: Nope.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah.

And so I would say, so, and this was me.

Like I I was, and this is not hyperbole, I was abusive towards myself.

And sometimes I would even like angrily like spite eat.

So I would eat food to punish myself for being fat.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah.

And you know, you know, I look back and I go, oh my, like, how was I even in that head space?

Like, I feel like such an entirely, and I am an entirely different person.

Like if that seems like such a departure from who I now am.

And maybe I could say that what's really cool about that is it means there's hope.

You know, if you if you feel yourself stuck in this place where like I hate myself and I don't see the way out, and so on, I'm like, hey, I was a food abusing, self-abusing, self-hating, self-loathing, like binge-eating food addict who was morbidly obese and didn't see a way out.

Now, I'm an entirely different person, but I can't take all the credit.

That's the other part of it.

I got help.

I did not do this by myself.

And I think it it's it's one of the most destructive myths out there is that we have to somehow do this ourselves when it's nearly impossible.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, definitely, definitely.

Now, now I I started to ask you a question was how did it impact your life after losing that 100 pounds?

But then I thought to myself, really, you you did way more than lose a hundred pounds.

You completely transformed your internal and external self.

SPEAKER_02: In a physical sense, I would say it just made my life easier.

Things that we don't think about.

What about tying my shoes, getting up off the toilet, clipping my toenails, putting on socks, like getting dressed?

Everything became a little bit easier.

You know, and I would say there are some things that I miss about being over 300 pounds, as crazy as that might sound.

But it all boils down to, I think, being able to eat without, you know, without consideration for anything other than eating as much as I want, you know, just indulging this hedonistic type pleasure.

And so, well, maybe, you know, in one sense, I kind of liked the identity of the jolly fat guy a little bit because, but it ties back to eating food, right?

And so, but I say that because it's like, it's not entirely 100% a positive thing losing the weight.

Now, the benefits massively outweigh the drawbacks.

But if we go into this thinking it's 100% good, leaving 100% bad behind, I'm like, no, there were elements of old Jonathan that were actually like pretty good.

And so I think I even had to almost grieve or mourn the loss of who I once was to be able to move forward.

And that might sound like this radical concept, but really if you think about how we go back to these self-sabotaging patterns of behavior, it's because we're struggling to leave behind this old identity and we keep going back to it.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, definitely.

Because whether, whether or not what where you're at in life, whether it's good, bad, perfect, whatever, it's what you know, it's comfort.

SPEAKER_02: Yes.

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: And to leave that comfort and to enter into the unknown is is is different.

It's difficult, you know, and and it's gonna take, and I think it's gonna take trust, trusting in yourself that, you know, that one day this new normal will become comfortable.

SPEAKER_02: Well, growth is inherently unfortunate.

uncomfortable and actually makes us feel vulnerable because our weaknesses are going to be exposed.

And this is why coaching is so powerful.

You know, like my my title might be nutritionist, but I prefer nutrition coach because I think I'm going to help you through this process.

I'm not just going to prescribe something for you know prescribe a set of like you must eat these foods and so on.

No, I'm going to I'm going to actually help you work through the the very human process of trying to create change.

When we can anchor to another safe human being it becomes okay to be vulnerable.

And if we are okay with being vulnerable we can then create change.

Like awareness is is this key probably like the fundamental part of creating change.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: And so I I have this phrase where I say weight loss is a doorway.

It's not a destination.

What I mean by that is yes weight loss is going to improve the the health of almost anyone who undertakes it, but it's never really about the number on the scale.

It's it's about the quality of life because the number on the scale is kind of just like this this placeholder for a future that we think it will enable us to live in, you know, one where we feel comfortable in our skin, where we can I I call it shopping in our closet.

You know, you wear just one anything and you feel great.

I can live life more fully you know I have a I have a young son.

I don't want to be a sideline dad.

I want to be physically present and active in his life.

So it's it's really the freedom to do the activities we want instead of the ones we we wish.

And so weight loss gives us an opportunity to experience life more fully.

Happiness doesn't come from a number on the scale it comes from our freedom and our independence and being able to leave behind this identity that's slowly suffocating us.

SPEAKER_01: Absolutely totally totally so now so basically the person who helped you you realized the power in that and that's what you became as a nutrition coach.

SPEAKER_02: Previous to that I had been running nutrition and supplement store that was this business partnership that cost me a life savings.

That was that was that was another experience losing my life savings in a in a failed business.

That was another experience of being brought to the end of myself completely trying to go home to my wife to explain not only did I lose everything I've invested in this business, I have a mountain of debt.

Like that was that was a pretty hard one.

But in in that business I had been like kind of a what I call a macro coach.

So I would give people these macros to follow and kind of try to help them follow along with this meal plan and so on.

But the truth is most people would quit within like four to eight weeks because it was just too hard to try to adhere to this.

And so I realized I needed to approach this differently and it was this coach who showed me because I wouldn't have known it except he worked with me in this way he showed me what I needed to do differently with myself.

It opened my door the door of understanding and what I would say is why people hire me is not necessarily because they want six pack abs, but there it's because it's like I'm human.

I'm real.

I understand very intimately the struggle because I have lived it as much as I I joke that I look like a fitness model and I might be able to pull the wool over your eyes for most people the truth is while I'm certainly a lot smaller or a lot like leaner than I was I don't look like a fitness model with six pack abs.

And that's not even an ideal that I'm trying to get to it's more about just being able to function.

And you know here's the thing most most weight loss programs they involve like strict food rules these restrictive meal plans expensive supplement regimes it's like trying to force somebody into a straitjacket trying to unnaturally force weight loss to happen.

And then when it doesn't you get into this terrible coaching that involves like judgment and and shame and coercion and so I wanted to create something different.

And so I call my program Lifestyle 180 and it's a 180 day program.

And I said at its core I want it to be three things the the science of metabolism the psychology of behavior change and the compassion of human connection the goal here is to empower each individual to reverse engineer their own healthy lifestyle.

Because if all it is is I give you rules and you follow my rules when we stop working together what happens you collapse because it was my forcing you to do this that made you follow it.

Instead I work with each person like we are two experts collaborating towards a common goal.

Like you are the expert of your own life experience.

And I I bring my expertise in nutrition and change psychology and together we reverse engineer your healthy lifestyle.

So we we don't impose 25 rules overnight that you have to try and follow but we build things piece by piece and we make sure it's solidly in place before we move on to the next step.

So that at the end of working together and along the way I educate and empower you with timely pieces of education.

So at the end of working together when when we part ways we shake hands and say hey that was awesome you don't collapse but you're now fully empowered educated and through a structured practice have implemented these lifestyle changes into your life and made them fit you.

And so I don't know a lot of people out there that are doing this.

Like it seems like a pretty novel or radical approach to this.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah no and I think it's it's just brilliant.

It's absolutely brilliant where with somebody who's listening and they're they're intrigued and they want to know more, where can somebody go to learn more about this?

SPEAKER_02: Go to freedomnutritioncoach.com that's my website.

I could also offer your listeners I I do have a free ebook.

I call it Crush Your Cravings.

So you could go to freedomnutrition.rocks R-O-C-K-S slash crush your cravings and uh if you enter your name and email address I'll email a copy of it to you.

And that I'll show you a couple cool things in there, you know, a four-step method to basically make any craving go away that can be you know done relatively simply how you can kind of sleep your way to a lower weight I call it you know there's there's a bit of um clickbait there.

And there's yeah and I'll show you a couple of examples of people who've put this into practice because I want people to see that it's not just a good idea, but it actually like solidly works.

SPEAKER_01: Well fantastic fantastic well I will be sure that both of those links are left in the show notes.

So so if you are interested please don't feel like you need to rewind and jot those down.

Just check out the uh show notes to the episode and you'll find those right there where you can click right over to them.

Jonathan, you know, man, your your story your story is so incredible.

I love the fact that that you know you you took something that you struggled with the the weight loss and but the fact that you you had got help and you and you realized what made it possible and that you didn't just keep it to yourself but you turned that around to now help other people you know with with their weight loss, with their just, you know, and as we talked about I feel like it kind of goes deeper than just weight loss.

It's it's a it's a life transformation.

And and I think that's what's awesome.

I think your your entire just story is so is so awesome.

It's so just I don't know just you know I I I just I look at it and I I look at the the ups and downs that you know your life has has has had you know within that climactic you know scene in in South Africa.

And and I just look at it though and I go and look where he is the today.

And I just think that that says a lot about you.

I think it says a lot about a lot about your spirit and you know and coming back to that you know the the Christian aspect of of our journey and life life is crazy.

It's messy but you know it doesn't mean that it can't be a beautiful ride.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah absolutely man and you know thank you for that and I would say it could pretty much say ditto about you and and your story and maybe I could also mention I'm very very excited that I'm going to be able to have you on as a guest uh on my own podcast called Wellness Unplugged because I want to share more aspects of your very inspiring story as well.

I really think it's it's awesome that we that we connected and it's it's very exciting to for me to meet inspiring people like yourself as well who as you mentioned you've taken these very difficult experiences that you've gone through and channeled this into a way to inspire and to help other people and I think that it gives it gives life a sense of meaning like this is not just a job to pay the bills it's something that we passionately love.

And you know I feel very privileged to be able to pursue what I passionately love because of the experiences I've been through.

SPEAKER_01: When you can come to a point in your life that you can live with passion it totally makes Monday morning have a whole new meaning you know because it's no longer it's something you dread you you're excited for it.

And I have to say for you listening you know if if you're not living with with some degree of that maybe it's time to you know kind of take a check and look in the mirror and and figure some things out because if if you can figure it out if you can make it happen you know it definitely definitely makes life uh a little bit easier.

So Jonathan once again thank you so much for being on the guests here on the podcast and I I look forward to jumping over to your podcast and uh being a guest on yours.

SPEAKER_02: So yeah thank you so much and and we'll chat again soon.

SPEAKER_01: Awesome.

Thank you so much for all of you who have tuned in today I just want to tell you thank you for your support here to the podcast means the world to me.

And you know I just hope that you have enjoyed yet another just amazing person that we have here on the podcast who has been so gracious to share just a little piece of their life story in the hopes that it can help to to inspire and empower you in in the journey that you're walking.

And that's the lowdown with the low I hope today's episode inspired you motivated you and excited you to get out and enjoy life no matter what obstacles may be standing in the way