July 15, 2024 • 49 mins
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In this captivating episode, meet Nathan Crane, the visionary behind the Plant Powered Athlete movement.
From a troubled youth battling addiction and homelessness to transforming his life through health, wellness, and spirituality, Nathan shares his incredible journey.
Discover how he overcame personal demons to become a successful entrepreneur and athlete. This inspiring story will motivate you to embrace your own path to health and success.
Join us on this holistic journey to unlock your full potential as a plant-powered athlete. Subscribe, comment, and click the like button.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Here we are with the person who actually invented the concept behind plant-powered athlete.
(00:09):
The one, the only, the man, the legend, the breakfast cereal, Nathan Crane.
The breakfast cereal. I love it.
Well, I think that's a product. That's going to be a future product, right?
Like that's, we won't go.
Protein cereal, protein, plant-powered protein cereal. That's a great idea.
All right. We got to edit this part out, cut it out. We don't want to give that idea to anybody else.
(00:32):
That's our idea.
That's the future. That's the future. That's the future us.
Yeah. So, this is part of our, every year we, Nathan and I have decided that we're going to
interview each other for at least one of these podcasts. So, I was up first last week and now
it's Nathan's turn to tell us a little bit about himself. And so, yeah. So, why don't you-
(01:00):
Give you all the nitty-gritty, gory insider secrets on anything you want to know. Ask away,
Ted. Whatever you want. I'm an open book. Ask me whatever you want.
Just like me last week. In fact, I was going to base, I don't know if you ever watched
Colin Jost and Michael Che on Saturday at Live. I was going to completely and entirely base my
(01:25):
questions on how easy you went on me last week. I was like, no, he did pretty good. I was like,
he didn't go too far down that rabbit trail. So, I said, you know what?
Next time in version 2.0 of interviewing Ted. So, it'll probably happen more than once a year,
by the way. We should probably do this every few months, once a quarter or something.
(01:48):
That's how you do it.
In version 2.0, we're going to get deep into the recesses of Ted's mind and history and childhood
and traumas and everything.
Just uncover everything. So, this mitochondria decided to fire at the exact-
Yeah. So, why don't we just start off with, how did you get here? What's your-
(02:10):
Well, my dad met my mom. I think they were drunk. That's how I got here. Pretty simple.
Yeah. Your personal health and wellness journey has been a fairly long road. So,
why don't you give a little bit of background as to how you got, well, not to here, but you know
(02:36):
what I mean. Where did you start and how did you get involved with health and wellness? Because
you have a fairly storied background in that world.
A little bit. A little bit, for sure. Before we do, I got to show you my new mug. Check it out.
Mine must be on order. Mine must be in the mail.
(02:57):
It's literally on my wife's desk, ready to ship to you soon.
That's awesome. That's great.
That's- These are going to be special limited edition. I don't even know if we'll sell these.
What I was thinking is you got to earn one of these mugs. You know what I mean? This is a
sweet mug. You got to earn it somehow. So, I only ordered a dozen. And yours is obviously coming in
(03:22):
the mail. So, keep an eye out for it. Amazing. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
All right. So, you want to know the history. I've only told this
a million times in a million different ways, but it's always- It's always sometimes short,
sometimes long. I'll give the brief overview and then if you want to go deeper into anything,
(03:46):
just ask me. I grew up in Bozeman, Montana. Bozeman and Belgrade, between Bozeman and Belgrade,
really small town in Montana. And lived there until I was about 18.
I grew up doing sports actually. I played basketball. I played soccer. I was on the
spring soccer team when I was my son's age. I think I was like six, seven, eight, nine years
(04:11):
old playing soccer. Played football, fell in love with football, wanted to be a professional
football player. That was a dream of mine. Played basketball, fell in love with basketball.
I just loved sports early on. Seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12. During my first year of college,
during those years, I was really good at all those sports. I picked them up quickly. I was fast.
(04:36):
I could outrun most everybody and I worked hard. It wasn't that I was naturally gifted. It was that
as a kid, I ran everywhere. I remember my parents telling me this story even like I think I was like
three or four years old. My dad looks out the window and he sees this little kid running like
million miles an hour down the street. He's like, holy crap, look at that kid. And then my mom or
somebody was like, that's Nathan. What? That's Nathan. They're like, because I was just like
(04:59):
sprinting because I just ran everywhere. So I was like always running and active as a kid.
We grew up, we didn't have a lot of electronics. We didn't have a lot of the games that they have
today. I played outside. That's what we did. We had original Nintendo and eventually like Nintendo
64 and the original PlayStation, stuff like that. But we'd play an hour and then we were done. They
(05:23):
weren't so addictive like they are today where kids can't stop. Or my parents would be like,
get outside, go play. Okay. So then we'd play outside for hours and hours, running, coming up
with games, jumping on trampolines. So I was always active, playing sports. Then around 11, 12 years
old, I started skateboarding, fell in love with skateboarding, like almost became professional
(05:44):
at it. Some of my friends went professional, really got into skiing and snowboarding growing up,
loved the mountains, just love being up in the mountains, skiing. I think I started skiing when
I was seven, seven or eight. And then eventually after five or six years, started snowboarding,
fell in love with snowboarding, just found it super challenging, even more challenging. And so
(06:06):
just excelled at all these sports and got better and better and had potential to like be, if I
committed to like one sport and was like focused and had good mentorship and stuff, I probably
could have been professional at any one of the sports that I really chose. But I found drugs and
alcohol and became professional at that. It became as professional as you can be at that at a very,
(06:30):
very young age, way too young. And that started to take, anybody who's been down that path knows
it just takes you down very quickly. So I had these aspirations to be a professional athlete,
you know, from doing really well in sports, from having a lot of potential to slowly stopping each
sport, stop soccer, and then stop basketball, and then stop football. And then all I did was skateboard
(06:56):
and snowboard and eventually even stop those. Because at some point, you know, your addiction
fully takes over and you're not active anymore. You're not able to really do anything meaningful
and productive. You're not healthy. You don't have the energy to do the things. The only next
thing you can think of is when's your next high, you know, literally. So partied a lot around a lot
(07:23):
of drugs, a lot of alcohol, you know, and that became my life for a few years, like 24-7,
you know, dropped out of school, in and out of jail, house arrest, you know, near death by 18
years old. Really, I was almost dead. I mean, involved with gangs and, you know, running from
the police and the feds and the DEA were after me. And it was just, it was really, really bad. I mean,
(07:45):
I was either headed for prison or I was headed for six feet under the ground. Those were really the
two options that I saw in front of me. And then my best friend at the time who just came back from,
like, he was sent away to like a military camp, I think it was called Youth Challenge. It's kind of
like a inspired by like a military boot camp, trying to get his life in order. I was living
(08:07):
with his parents who were beautiful people, very spiritual. They were vegetarian. They introduced me
to healthier eating, introduced me to, you know, more spiritual aspect of life. We taught Dennis
Davis, we'd sit and talk for hours about Buddha and Jesus and classical music. And I actually loved
it. Like I soaked it up. They took me in as their son for a while, while their son was away at camp,
(08:32):
because I was basically living on the streets since I was like 15. You know, my mom kicked me out.
She didn't know what to do with me. My dad was dealing with addiction and, you know, in a small
town far away, really drinking himself to death. I didn't really have other family that could take
me in. And so it was like, I was on my own, you know, I was living on park benches. I was sleeping
at friends, on friends' couches. I was sleeping in my car, you know, truly homeless on the streets.
(08:57):
You know, I found it, most times I found some place to sleep, but literally there were nights
where I was sleeping under a park table. Like there's a park in Bozeman, Montana, and I slept
under the table, you know, or I had this little Geo Metro I bought for like $350 with my tax return
money. And it was a little tiny white Geo Metro. I got, I have pictures of it actually. One of my
(09:18):
nicknames, my nickname growing up was Banana Head. And then it was just shortened to Banana. And then
I had my license plate actually said Banana. And I have this picture, little white, you know, $350,
$1990 something Geo Metro. And it was bashed in on one side. By the end of my time with that car,
(09:40):
there were no rear view mirrors. The hood had smashed against the windshield. Those windshields
totally cracked, totally all the way across, almost crashed going down the highway.
The hood was bungee strapped down. The back window had tin foil across it. The seat was taken out and
had a, for some reason, a little, you know, milk grate container there instead of a seat. I don't
(10:05):
even remember that. The windshield, you know, I'd punched out. Like it was, and then I gave it to my
uncle and then my uncle strapped, bolted like a thing to it that he could strap around his waist
and pull it around as part of his training as a power lifter to pull it around the block, you know.
It was like, but he still, he still used it for a while. It still ran. But basically, you know,
(10:31):
almost dead at 18, you know, homeless, like running from the feds, all that stuff.
To my friend coming back from Youth Challenge, I was living with his family. They gave me
inspiration, gave me hope, gave me, gave me a sense of like what a healthy life could be like.
He came back and said, I'm moving to San Diego. I got to get out of this. And then I said,
I'm going with you. So we both jumped in. By that point, I had a 1988 Cadillac Coupe De Ville,
(10:58):
red and white leather interior and like gold spoke rims, the whole thing.
Perfect. Yeah.
And we, yeah, I had like a, yeah, I had a suit. I literally put like a duffel bag in some,
I remember I had like some trading cards. I had like a Bo Jackson, you know, baseball cards. I had
(11:19):
some vintage, like Michael Jordan cards. I had baseball cards and basketball and football cards.
And I think like a suitcase, not even a suitcase, like a duffel bag. And my friend had like the same
thing, like a duffel bag we threw in the back. And that's like, and we had, I don't know,
a hundred bucks to our name, a couple hundred bucks, something like that. Drove to San Diego,
(11:39):
basically, you know, ran out of gas and Oceanside and literally started my life over at 18 years
old. That was in 2005. And so since then, it's been a journey, a journey of overcoming all the
addictions, a journey of cleaning up my life, of getting sober, a journey of finding my life
purpose, a journey of meeting my wife, the love of my life and having two children and raising our
(12:02):
kids, becoming a father, becoming a husband, you know, my spiritual journey, my health journey,
you know, eventually becoming an athlete again, after taking 10 or 12 years of not really being
an athlete at all and just focusing on building my business, you know, becoming an entrepreneur
and really reclaiming my health and healing a lot of the damage that I did growing up. I mean,
(12:24):
I did a lot of damage, like probably decades and decades worth of damage to my gut, to my intestines,
to my brain, to my, all my physical health, you know, just literally destroyed and deteriorated
my physical health for years. I mean, at nine years old, I was stealing my mom's cigarettes
and smoking them and selling them on the playground, right? 12 years old, drinking hard alcohol,
(12:48):
getting into hard drugs, you know, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18. And then from 18 to mid-20s,
mid to late 20s, it was still, there were still times I would relapse on certain things,
still times I would struggle, still times I would go back and drink alcohol or make excuses,
you know, but one at a time, eventually, you know, first thing was giving up cigarettes,
(13:12):
completely cold turkey, I was smoking two packs a day. You know, the other thing around the same
time was actually stopping all pharmaceuticals, doing a lot of different kinds of pharmaceuticals,
but then made a commitment to like, I'm not even gonna do, you know, Advil, ibuprofen,
none of that stuff. And then eventually, you know, the hard drugs eventually went away. And then
the longest, hardest one for me was alcohol, because like, I just made so many excuses for it.
(13:34):
It runs deep in my family on both sides. And it was the most difficult, but eventually got to a
point of just like, no more alcohol ever at all. And it's been that way for probably
since shortly after my son was born. So it's been around seven or eight years now. And I love it.
(13:55):
I love my life. I have zero, I can go to a nightclub in San Diego when I'm at like a business
meeting or something, go have a club soda, dance with everybody, have a great time, have zero
desire to have a drink, you know, just be myself, have fun, and go home at 1130 midnight and go to
(14:17):
go to the hotel and go to bed and feel good the next morning waking up without a hangover. And I
go meet everyone and they're all glasses on, third cup of coffee, they're all hung over. And I'm like,
I had fun, I had a great time, zero need for alcohol, feel so much better without it. So
I've gotten to that point in my life now that's, you know, my late thirties, getting close to 40
and just like my life is amazing, but it took, it took a lot to get to this point. It took a lot to
(14:42):
overcome those addictions, took a lot to find myself and heal the mental and emotional traumas
that I went through as a kid and took a lot to, you know, reconnect with my, my athletic
passions and desires and find that shows up in new ways through running through CrossFit,
through other things, and then come up with, you know, plant powered athlete as, as a way to really
(15:07):
support people in achieving their full potential as an athlete and as a human being. And so that's
kind of, you know, the short to mid version, mid length version of, you know, how I got to kind of
where I am today. Right, right. So, and so folks, that was the short version.
That was the short version. And because we don't have four and a half hours, you know, of course,
(15:32):
you've made documentaries, you've, you've, you've, you've received a lot of acclaim for some of your
documentaries, you know, your cancer documentaries and so forth as well. Do you want to give a short
little version of that? Because that's some of that, some of the cancer work that you've done is
quite impressive as well. Yeah. So in, by 2012, 2013, like I was already kind of deep into this
(15:58):
path of health and healing and natural health and learning about spirituality and meditation. I had
a great mentor in my life at that point, Arturo Gaitan in San Diego. He was kind of a spiritual
teacher, you know, teaching me really how to, you know, heal mentally, emotionally. And then I was
also diving deep into like the physical health side of things, getting into exercise, working out.
(16:19):
And so from 2005 to 2012, which is I think seven, roughly seven years, like I was kind of in this
health and healing and spirituality journey deep every day, you know, experience. I mean,
there were times I would literally meditate for four or five hours a day and take pages and pages
of notes and just downloads and insights and all kinds of things. I have stacks of yellow legal
(16:45):
pads somewhere in my office here of just stuff that I would just come through and I would just
write, you know, for hours and hours. And so I had a lot of these breakthroughs, a lot of these
openings and I just, and then people started asking me to teach. Like I just had this passion
for teaching. I would write, you know, inspirational articles and quotes and things like that on
websites like motivateus.com back then, this was like 2006, 2007. And I just started finding this
(17:09):
passion for learning and experimenting and teaching, learning, experimenting, teaching,
and sharing things as I learned them. And so I'm kind of seven years into this. I've taught in
front of groups of 50 to a hundred people at small events and small conferences, found this passion
for teaching was like teaching at retreats and stuff like that. So I felt, and I was, you know,
writing, I think by that point I'd already put together an anthology called 27 flavors of
(17:34):
fulfillment, how to live life to the fullest. I was interviewing, you know, dozens of world
leading experts and, you know, thought experts and personal development experts and spiritual
teachers and masters. I was meditating with Buddhist monks and Zen monks and chanting with
Hare Krishnas and doing sweat lodges with native American elders and really, you know, diving deep
(17:54):
into this kind of spiritual and health and healing journey. And I thought I knew a lot,
right? Like seven years in, I'm like, you know, got this kind of spiritual ego, like, yeah,
I know some shit, you know, I'm enlightened. Like, I don't think I never thought that, but
you definitely, at some point I did anyway, like got this kind of self identity ego, if you will.
(18:16):
And then my grandpa was diagnosed with cancer and I went to visit him in Arizona. And when I sat
with him and, you know, his hair was falling out from the chemotherapy and radiation and he'd lost
weight and he was sick and he was in a lot of pain and sitting with him, I just, I honestly felt
hopeless and helpless. Like I thought I should be able to help him, right? I have all this experience
(18:42):
and I was studying natural health and healing and spirituality, like I should be able to help him,
but I don't know what to say and I didn't know what to do. And I honestly just felt helpless.
And I knew there had to be something better he could do. I knew the chemotherapy and radiation
was killing him and it was making him sick and he was in so much pain he couldn't even walk
(19:02):
to the bathroom, like 20 feet away without being in just agonizing pain. And I just like, but I
didn't know what to say, I didn't know what to do. I left there just feeling hopeless and then he
passed away shortly after that in 2013. And I just felt like I needed to do something about it. I
(19:24):
needed to learn everything I could about cancer so that I could prevent that for myself or my
family or anybody else that I came into contact with, that I would know that I wouldn't feel that
way again. I wouldn't feel helpless and hopeless that I could actually at least give people some
guidance or send them in a, like I've had this desire most of my life for like justice and
(19:46):
rightness and helping others. Even when I was going through my, you know, craziness and addiction
and the fights and all this stuff growing up, like I still had this part within me that I think we
all do of wanting to do good and wanting to help others, you know, and being in that situation,
feeling like I should have been able to help him and not being able to, it just ate at me.
(20:09):
And so I actually produced one of the first online summits ever produced about natural solutions for
cancer. It was called the Cure to Cancer Summit. I think it was the second one ever done in the
space. Now there's been dozens and dozens, dozens back then. I think we were the second one to ever
do it. We're interviewed dozens of world leading, you know, integrative oncologists and natural
(20:31):
health experts and cancer conquerors, people who've overcome cancer and interview them and share
their stories and their methodologies and their diet and nutrition and lifestyle and how they're
reversing stage one, two, three, four cancers. And it just really, so I produced that, had a partner,
business partner at the time, helped with the interviews and I started learning and helping
people and seeing, you know, started hearing from people. They had hope, they had inspiration,
(20:56):
they had solutions, you know, for the first time in their life. It was like, these are things I
wanted for my grandpa, right? But I'm becoming fulfilled because I'm seeing that it's helping
other people. That summit turned into a conference, turned into a video series, turned into a second
summit, you know, started with 10 or 20,000 people, then 30,000, then 50,000, right? And then it turned
(21:19):
into a magazine, it turned into a membership site, it turned into the Global Cancer Symposium,
it turned into a master class. I taught Becoming Cancer Free, which is also an Amazon bestselling
book that I wrote, called Becoming Cancer Free. And then it turned into Conquering Cancer. I
partnered with some, you know, experts in the health and kind of marketing and production space,
(21:42):
and we created the Conquering Cancer documentary series, The Missing Link. And that sense, you
know, over the years, since that's been 11 years now, we've reached millions of people. We've had
hundreds of thousands of people go directly through our series, millions who've watched our
videos, read our articles, have seen, you know, our content, have had many, many people write in
(22:07):
and say, you know, you saved my life. Your content literally helped me reverse stage four cancer or
get to a place of no evidence of disease anymore. I have hope, I have inspiration. So that's like,
obviously, you know, why I've kept doing that work. It's just like, it's so powerful, empowering,
and uplifting to know that you can really serve and help people change their life for the better,
(22:28):
even if, even if all you do is give them hope, but we really give real solutions to, you know.
So that's been my big part of my main focus. The documentary was in that process. That was like a
five-year project. That's a whole other story. It's called Cancer, The Integrative Perspective.
That since has won 20 awards at film festivals and has helped hundreds of thousands of people.
(22:49):
But, you know, it's like, keep doing the work and keep helping people and keep learning,
because there's always more to learn. There's always more to like, oh, well, what if we try
this or try that? We hear somebody else's story. We hear, you know, we get feedback. The reality
is, is what's so interesting that I've learned about cancer is what we do to help people fight
(23:11):
and reverse cancer is basically the same things that you would want to do to prevent cancer.
And cancer is primarily a preventable disease. The problem is most people don't know that. Most
people don't know what causes cancer. Most people don't know what to do about cancer. And yet,
a study just came out showing that there's a 79% increase in young people being diagnosed
(23:34):
with cancer, people under 50 being diagnosed with cancer in the last 30 years alone.
So it's massively on the rise. It's affecting younger and younger people every day. It's a
leading cause of death in children and young children, aside from like childhood accidents
and things like that. It's the third leading cause of death in the United States. I mean,
(23:54):
it's killing 10 million people annually and it's not just cancer. It's also its treatments.
It's also the treatments that are literally killing people. And so for me, it's just been about
research, experimentation, education, right? And helping and empower people. So through
Conquering Cancer, we have a coaching program. We have master classes. We have a documentary
(24:16):
series. We have a whole kind of suite of educational resources and tools that we've used to
help people. And since then, I've joined the board of the Belgiansky Foundation. That's part of my
service work is helping raise funds and do scientific research into plant extracts that show
massive potential at basically killing cancer, fighting off cancer cells, because nature,
(24:40):
I truly believe nature has everything that we need. And while modern medicine has some great
solutions, some great, let's not even call them solutions, modern medicine has some great tools
when applied appropriately for chronic disease prevention and chronic disease healing.
Modern medicine is the worst thing you could ever turn to. It just doesn't work. And so
(25:02):
I have been focused on natural medicine and holistic health and medicine for almost two decades now.
All right, look, so I got to let you know about something really quick. You know, podcasts like
this usually require sponsors to basically pay the production costs and editing costs and things
like that so that we can get this kind of life changing, life enhancing, life enriching, life
(25:29):
improving information out to you week after week after week. Well, guess what? We at this time don't
have sponsors that we have brought on to support this podcast. In fact, we would rather not have
sponsors and we would rather sponsor our own podcasts. And so that's where we need your support.
We need your support to help this podcast continue by buying our plant powered protein
(25:57):
as our sponsor. So when you buy our protein, you are supporting this podcast so we can be our own
sponsors for you. And guess what? You're going to love the protein anyway. It's USDA certified
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(26:22):
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(26:47):
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protein powder, you support this podcast so we can keep bringing you epic episodes like this. All right, back to the show.
(27:11):
And for me, like with plant powered athlete, this is the next evolution of my work on the planet.
One, because I'm an athlete and that's what I do now and I love it and have been for, you know,
going on almost a decade now after that stint. I told you that like 10 plus years where I
wasn't doing a whole lot. Except a little bit of yoga, the gym a few days a week,
(27:32):
like I wasn't really focused on anything that gave me a lot of like, I didn't have a sport that I love
going to, right? I didn't have, it was like, I do yoga once in a while. I'd go to the gym two or three
days a week. I didn't, I couldn't really get into bodybuilding. I couldn't really get into aesthetics.
Yoga was great for health, but I couldn't do it five, six, seven days a week. I didn't do any other
sports. So it was just kind of like this monotonous thing. Just keep going because I know it's good
(27:56):
for me. It makes me feel good. I do some cycling once in a while, right? And I'm like, I'm going to
do some cycling for a while, right? But like, I wasn't really an athlete until I turned 30.
And that was 2017 when I found CrossFit and then just fell in love with it. And since 2013,
so since my 2010, since my daughter was born, I was also a hundred percent plant-based. And so
(28:22):
that's a whole other story. So it was like this combination of being an athlete, being plant-based
and seeing how much it changed my life for the better, how much it helped me heal, how much it
helped me gain energy and strength and I'm fitter and faster and healthier and better now than I've
ever been before. And seeing just like the low quality junk protein supplements that are out
(28:43):
there to fill with additives, chemicals. These are the things that we have our cancer clients
and cancer patients avoid is many of these ingredients I've been talking with you about,
Ted, that are inside these protein powders, right? And they just fill them with it because it's cheap.
Yeah. Or all the processed foods. So much other stuff have those fillers and things like that.
(29:03):
Right. It's amazing how much, yeah. In the past five months, I think I've learned more. And yet,
of course, I went to school for a biochemistry degree and one of my courses was food engineering.
And of course, so I'll never eat a hot dog again. But after that course, there were some,
I think, you want to change the diet, go take a food engineering course in a biology stream.
(29:30):
So I hear what you're saying on that front. But yeah, no. And so let's focus on what you've been
doing lately from your athletic background. What are some of the things like, what is your daily
routine, if you will? What are some of the things that you find help you perform well, recover well,
(29:52):
you know, and tackle on the next day? Yeah, good question. So, you know, my daily routine right now
is pretty challenging because I'm dealing with some injuries, some overuse, over training injuries.
And so like the last seven years that I've been focused on becoming the best athlete I can be
at CrossFit. This past year, like I got into an elite level professional training program,
(30:17):
I was training five hours a day, you know, five and a half hours a day, you know, morning sessions
for two, two and a half hours, evening sessions for two and a half, three hours. And like I got
my body to a point, I think I was actually feeling amazing, probably better than I felt in quite a
while with, you know, in CrossFit. And if you're training a lot, it's like you're going to have in
a lot of athletes experiences, you're going to have little flare ups and little twinges, little
(30:40):
tweaks and little pains. It's like you just deal with it, right? Like, but I was actually feeling
really amazing. And I was like six months into this program. And, and well, let me back up a
little bit. So I was skiing a few years back and I fell on my shoulder and I got up and I couldn't
(31:01):
move my arm. And it was literally, it was, it felt like it was dead and it was in so much pain.
And I had to ski to the bottom of the hill and, and get a ride home. And I don't remember how I
got home and I got home and I like, I didn't know enough about what I didn't know about it.
And was probably just kind of dumb and was like, ah, just tweaked it, strain something,
(31:24):
you know, let me do some light, you know, corrective exercise at home, some bands and stuff,
give it a few weeks. It'll be fine. Right. Well, it wasn't fine after a few weeks, but it improved.
And so I just, I got back into training too soon and just continue with training. Cause that's just
kind of how my mindset's always been like, I just trained through the pain, train, you know, David
(31:44):
Goggins mindset, just trained through the pain, trained through the pain. It's like, I've kind of
been that way my whole life when really I should have got probably an MRI, should have visited a
physical therapist, should have got on an actual plan to heal it. And what I realized like five
years later, when I was, I was snatching, I was doing a snatches and I woke up the next day and
(32:08):
my shoulder like same thing. Like I couldn't move it. Right. It was like five years later. And I was
like, what happened? And so I continued training for like three or four days through that, like an
idiot. And then, you know, and then it was really bad. I was like, all right, there's something bad
here. So I went and saw a physical therapist and we started making some pretty good progress on it
in literally like a couple of weeks. But I was like, I'm going to get an MRI and just see what's
(32:30):
going on here. Cause I'm more of a serious athlete now. And, and I found out I had like three tears,
three or four tears, bursitis, chronic inflammation in the tendon. And I was just like, and I
remembered that skiing accident. I was like, that's, that's where it was from. I didn't do
anything else since then. And it just never fully healed, you know? Right. So that kind of led to
(32:53):
like, all right, I really got focused on healing it. Got to a point where it was feeling amazing
on this intense professional level, you know, CrossFit training program, which was HWPO,
Matt Frazier's program for anybody who knows the, the, the professional level, six months in seeing
the most gains I've seen in that period, then on anything I'd done at that point. And I've been
(33:15):
trying all kinds of programs and met, you know, it was like, I made progress in like 10 different
things in my gymnastics, in my 10, 10 rep max back squat, in my front squat, in everything was
literally like improving. And, and I got to a point where like, I was under recovered far too often,
waking up every morning, no matter what, same time ice bath, get into my training, didn't matter. I
(33:40):
felt like shit. I felt tired. I felt painful, whatever. Didn't matter. Train, train, train
the morning. Didn't matter. Evening so tired, feel terrible, whatever. Didn't matter. Train,
train, train. Six, seven months and all of a sudden, like I just started falling apart.
Like it finally caught up to me, you know? And so chronic inflammation and my bicep tendon, like
bicep tendinopathy in the left one was the big thing. And then my knee flared up and then my
(34:06):
right arm flared up. And it was just like, and I kept training through it until a point where it's
like, all right, I got to stop. I got to back off. And then even though I backed off and took like
30 days off, even though I took 30 days off, which was, I realized the most time, I've never
taken more than a week off of training in a year, in seven years. So I was overdue, right? Holy shit,
(34:35):
way overdue. So you're overdue. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, and that's what happens. Like you push,
push, push, push, push, push, push, push, push. This is why I'm learning. Push, push, push, push,
I wish I learned this earlier, right? Until eventually it's like, the body's like, all right,
it's enough. Push too hard for too long with too little rest. I mean, look at David Goggins.
He's got to have knee surgery. He's got to have this. He's got to have that. And he's still running
(34:57):
through it. And it's got this problem and that problem. It's like, yeah, that mentality can get
you through some things, but it also can cause a lot of other problems. So I'm still learning as
an athlete, like how to balance that because I want to do this long-term. Yeah. I want to compete
at the highest level in CrossFit. I want to push myself to my peak performance. I want to achieve my,
you know, be my highest level of potential as an athlete. And I would still would like to be able
(35:24):
to hike and have fun and be mobile with my grandkids. You know what I mean? Like I don't
want to screw up my body so bad. And I see people in their sixties, seventies who just, you know,
have really messed up their joints and stuff who can barely move there in a level eight pain,
24 seven, they're still training through it. And I'm like, I don't want to be that. Like why live
in a level eight pain 24 seven? So still figuring out, and a lot of that is recovery, listening to
(35:49):
your body, spending more time, getting more sleep, doing more active recovery things, rolling out,
stretching. Like I used to do 20, 30 minutes of a warmup, you know, soft tissue mobilization,
you know, bandage stretching, good warmups. And I do at least 30 minutes before my workouts and 30
minutes after. And then as the years went on, it was like less and less and less and less and less.
(36:11):
And for you know what, I'm like doing a five minute warmup and then I'm working out for two and a half
hours, you know? Yeah. And so I'm getting back to the things that I used to do, which is, you know,
really rolling out good with, you know, massage, self myofascial release, bandage stretching,
you know, all kind of, all kind of, all kind of, all kinds of stuff to really warm up and keep to
joints healthy, keep the tissues healthy, keep the fascia gliding properly. And then cool downs,
(36:37):
proper cool downs as well, where like my cool down was five minutes on the echo bike, just going slow.
Now it's like, I'm back to doing like 20 minutes of myofascial release and stretching, which is
what I always did before. So I think for longevity, you know, there's, there's a young, you know,
some of their twenties, early thirties, you're probably pushed through with, with not as much
(37:00):
focus on recovery and be okay, but eventually everybody I've talked to, it catches up to you.
Amen. And so, right. So like the more time, I mean, you're pushing 50, so you know, right?
It's like the more time you put into the gym or into your sport or into your exercise, like you
need that, you need to put in plenty of time into recovery and self care. And so to answer your
(37:21):
question, nutrition is definitely number one. It's like anti-inflammatory foods, natural
anti-inflammatories, turmeric, black pepper, Boswellia, you know, different herbs, Dr. Christopher's
bone and tissue herbs, which are fantastic organics, 3d, which is, you know, fermented turmeric and
ginger, you know, PIP, Pipporin, which is black pepper, you know, mixing those are great natural
(37:46):
anti-inflammatories. You know, I don't eat any meat, I don't eat any dairy, I don't eat any of
those kinds of, you know, inflammatory foods, if you will, especially when you fry those or cook
them at high temperatures, they can become carcinogenic or inflammatory. You know, I eat a
lot of tofu, I eat a lot of, you know, beans and veggies, a lot of fruits, a lot of berries,
(38:09):
obviously plant-powered protein. I'm doing at least one, sometimes two shakes a day of our PPA
plant-powered protein. And then sauna. So I sauna a couple days a week. I took the last two or three
months off of ice baths, but I'm going to get back into them. I just, I think they'll really help with
(38:30):
the tendon healing. I'm like 80% there. Here's a cool thing. I'm like 80% there. Like I can do so
many things with so much less pain and the progress is amazing. It's just my mind's like, I want to be
there now and I have to really wrestle that and like accept the fact that, hey, it's taking time.
(38:51):
You're now at the most dangerous spot because you're 80% there, right? You know, like that's
feeling better, feeling better. Like I can do more stuff, which means I could easily push through it
and then end up back where I was. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And undo all of that, right? You know,
and to that end, like that's one of the things, especially, yeah, I'm a little bit more senior to
(39:14):
you. And that's one of the things like I've noticed is that how I recovered from workouts in my 20s
was significantly different than how I recovered or warmed up to that end in my 30s, which is
significantly different, you know, and of course I'm, you know, that's constantly a changing thing.
Cause yeah, as you get a little bit older, yeah. So your, your systems change. You can get a little.
(39:37):
What about your 30s compared to your four, like your late thirties compared to your late forties?
Do you find you're really similar or do you find it's, it's a lot different? There's differences.
There's a lot of differences. Yeah. And so I had a couple of surgeries in my late thirties that,
um, yeah, you know, and, but that being said, they're now my best body parts, ironically.
(39:58):
Um, like, yeah, like I actually, I had a fall in February, um, while skiing, ironically,
I fell in the parking lot. I wasn't doing anything exciting. I literally slipped on some ice in the
parking lot of a ski resort, but, um, uh, last week I was doing some swimming, some open water
swimming. And because I didn't put my wetsuit on properly, it just put that little bit of tension
(40:20):
just on that injured shoulder to that end. Like it was, that's all I did. So I was swam 1500 meters
and I got out of the water. I was just like, wow, something not feeling that great. And so, you know,
and yeah. So, so there are always slight differences, right? You know, and that's the thing
is that it's a constantly evolving process because your body is constantly changing and evolving.
(40:42):
Like there's differences because like you now have that, you know, that bursitis and tendonitis
and your shoulder and the bicep tendon, you know, that's going to impact even the most simplest of
moving, movement patterns, right? You know, and that's going to have, you might not, you know,
subconsciously just, you might just move slightly differently. Right, right. And that's, that's,
(41:03):
that's a hard part for me is I didn't get to go through the teenage years through the 20s,
mid 20s, late 20s, then 30s, early mid late 30s. Like I was like teenage years and then huge gap
and then started being an athlete again. Like I missed all my 20s and then started being an
(41:24):
athlete again at 30. Right. So like, it was like, so it's, you know, and then learning my body and
all that stuff and dealing with all the injuries I had as a teenager, because I did BMX and crashed
a lot on big jumps. I did skiing and crashed a lot on huge cliffs, right? Like I didn't,
all those sports, like I just didn't do it for fun. I did it for like extreme levels. I mean,
(41:47):
I was doing, you know, 80 foot jumps and back flips and aerials and, you know, Misty 700s and
all kinds of stuff on my snowboards and my skis and crashing a lot. And then skateboarding, dude,
you want to talk about destroy your body, like try to become a professional skater, like just the path
of doing it. If you can just survive, you know, five, six, seven years of skateboarding, like,
(42:11):
and I'm talking hours and hours a day, like we would skate for like seven, eight hours a day.
You would fall a hundred times in a day on cement down 12 stair handrails and do it again and again
and again and again and again. And again, you'd be bloody, you'd be torn up. You'd be, and it was
just like, and then you do it all again the next day. And yeah, and no wonder I got addicted to
(42:32):
ibuprofen when I was like 14, you know, it was like just destroyed my body, you know, as a teenager,
like tore stuff up that I had no idea. Cause I didn't go to the doctor. I didn't get stuff
checked out. It was just like my, Oh, my ankle's this swollen. Okay. I'll, you know, I'll limp on
it for a couple of days. I'll start skateboarding again on Tuesday. You know, it was just like,
that's just what I did. Right, right. You know, yeah. So that might have an impact on your health,
(42:57):
you know, 20, 30 years, you know, I am by far a professional, however, I'm just going to go out
on a limb and say, say that. So, so, so we're kind of getting to the top of the hour. So,
so I have one last question, you know, as you, as you've highlighted, you've worked with a number of
amazing professionals, you've, you've done a number of seminars, conferences and so forth.
(43:20):
Like, what are some of the common misconceptions you hear about health and wellness that you
encounter? What are some of those common, common themes that you want to want to highlight to our
audience and say, this isn't true. And here's how we correct it. Yeah. I'd say one of the reasons
for plant powered athlete is educating people that you can thrive and be strong and vital and
(43:44):
vibrant and live a long, healthy life on a plant based on a plant powered diet. And that's what,
you know, I grew up in Montana, steak and potatoes, killing our own deer, fishing, thinking I had to
have animals and dairy to be strong and healthy. Right. And it actually wasn't until I stopped
eating all that and became vegan, which I was vegan for quite a while. And now I'm, you know,
(44:07):
I'd say plant based or vegetarian, but I have a couple of eggs once in a while. I don't have dairy.
I haven't had meat since before 2010. But, you know, I do honey once in a while and I do eggs
once in a blue moon. So technically you'd say that's vegetarian, but I was raw vegan for quite
a while with my wife and when my daughter was born. So I experimented with that. But
(44:28):
people still think today you can't thrive and be strong and be your fittest self on a plant based
diet. And I want to show people absolutely you can, whether your intention is compassion for
animals, because you realize, look, animals don't want to be killed any more than humans do.
Animals are incredible beings. I think they all have souls just like we do. They're different,
(44:50):
but I think they have souls. I see it in my dogs, in a horse, in a pig, in a cow, in an animal,
any animal you spend time with, you can see they have an intelligence, they have a personality,
they have a soul. So I got to a point in my life that was just like, man, I just can't
contribute towards killing animals anymore. And no, I'm not going to judge people about it. I
(45:11):
probably used to judge people early on in my kind of plant based journey, but now I don't. Like,
do whatever you want. But I'm still going to educate and show and live by example that you
can thrive on a plant based diet, that you don't have to contribute to the slaughter,
into the suffering, and into the killing of innocent animals. In fact, nobody needs plants
(45:32):
to survive. That's been proven. I mean, nobody needs animals or dairy to survive. That's been
proven again and again. Dr. Furman reverses every chronic disease on the planet, gets people on a
99 to 100% plant based diet, and sees incredible results in people live long, healthy lives.
Like all the doctors I work with, the cancer patients. That was one of the things that I
(45:54):
noticed too, is all the cancer conquerors that I interviewed and met along the way, they switched
to a plant based diet as part of their journey to reversing cancer. So, you know, I think that's
that's the biggest misconception is like, look, if you don't want to contribute to that, to the
harming of animals, and you want to live a long, healthy life, you can absolutely do it on a plant
based diet. But you have to know what to eat, and you have to make sure you're getting diversity of
(46:18):
foods, and you have to avoid any culprits that might be harming you. And that's basic for every
diet. Every diet you want to be successful. You have to know what to eat. You got to get the right
diversity, so you're getting good nutrition, and you got to avoid anything that could be damaging
to you, which sometimes one thing damaging to you is not necessarily damaging somebody else or vice
versa. So those are three things that we are, you know, along with providing high quality, super
(46:45):
clean, organic, you know, protein powders that really help people to win. Win in their life,
win in their health, win with their wellness, their inspiration, their nutrition. It's also
educating people about you can also win in your life, in your competition, in your health,
in everything on a plant based diet, and here's how to do it. So a lot of what we do at Plant
Powered Athletes is just educating people and showing them if this is the path you feel called
(47:09):
towards, then it's totally possible we can help you do it. And there are a lot of examples
of high level professional elite athletes that are striving and thriving, I mean,
that are thriving on a plant based diet and doing better than their competition. And some of them
have been doing it for decades. And so, you know, those are just some of the misconceptions that we
(47:31):
can that we help people overcome. For sure. Sure. Well, always the last question, where can they
find you other than PlantPoweredAthlete.com? Of course, you and I have started our own personal
channels. I am not as good as you at hosting as often I am getting better. But Plant Powered
Nathan Crane, if memory serves me correct. Yeah, I've got a new like people just find me on Nathan
(47:56):
Crane on social media. But yeah, I've got new channels, come and check it out there, which is
focused specifically on Plant Powered Athletes and my Plant Powered Athlete journey, education,
etc. Inspiration, stuff like that at Plant Powered Nathan Crane on Instagram, you know, anywhere,
(48:17):
anywhere main social channels exist today bar that they don't get shut down. So we'll see. Fingers
crossed. Fingers crossed. Well, thank you for being a guest. Some of them would do better if they were
shut down anyway, right? So, well, fair enough. But thank you for being a guest on your own show.
Hey, thanks for having me. I love being here. You're a great host. I appreciate it. You know,
(48:42):
it was we understand we appreciate the sponsorship of the show and so that we might as well let him
on. Yeah, you might as well have it on. Yeah, why not? You know? Yeah. But like you said,
we'll do this every few months. I think that's a good idea just to kind of do a check in and
so forth. But but yeah, so great. Nathan, thank you so much for your time. Awesome, dude. Thanks
(49:04):
for having me. Thank you. Cheers.
Here we are with the person who actually invented the concept behind plant-powered athlete.
(00:09):
The one, the only, the man, the legend, the breakfast cereal, Nathan Crane.
The breakfast cereal. I love it.
Well, I think that's a product. That's going to be a future product, right?
Like that's, we won't go.
Protein cereal, protein, plant-powered protein cereal. That's a great idea.
All right. We got to edit this part out, cut it out. We don't want to give that idea to anybody else.
(00:32):
That's our idea.
That's the future. That's the future. That's the future us.
Yeah. So, this is part of our, every year we, Nathan and I have decided that we're going to
interview each other for at least one of these podcasts. So, I was up first last week and now
it's Nathan's turn to tell us a little bit about himself. And so, yeah. So, why don't you-
(01:00):
Give you all the nitty-gritty, gory insider secrets on anything you want to know. Ask away,
Ted. Whatever you want. I'm an open book. Ask me whatever you want.
Just like me last week. In fact, I was going to base, I don't know if you ever watched
Colin Jost and Michael Che on Saturday at Live. I was going to completely and entirely base my
(01:25):
questions on how easy you went on me last week. I was like, no, he did pretty good. I was like,
he didn't go too far down that rabbit trail. So, I said, you know what?
Next time in version 2.0 of interviewing Ted. So, it'll probably happen more than once a year,
by the way. We should probably do this every few months, once a quarter or something.
(01:48):
That's how you do it.
In version 2.0, we're going to get deep into the recesses of Ted's mind and history and childhood
and traumas and everything.
Just uncover everything. So, this mitochondria decided to fire at the exact-
Yeah. So, why don't we just start off with, how did you get here? What's your-
(02:10):
Well, my dad met my mom. I think they were drunk. That's how I got here. Pretty simple.
Yeah. Your personal health and wellness journey has been a fairly long road. So,
why don't you give a little bit of background as to how you got, well, not to here, but you know
(02:36):
what I mean. Where did you start and how did you get involved with health and wellness? Because
you have a fairly storied background in that world.
A little bit. A little bit, for sure. Before we do, I got to show you my new mug. Check it out.
Mine must be on order. Mine must be in the mail.
(02:57):
It's literally on my wife's desk, ready to ship to you soon.
That's awesome. That's great.
That's- These are going to be special limited edition. I don't even know if we'll sell these.
What I was thinking is you got to earn one of these mugs. You know what I mean? This is a
sweet mug. You got to earn it somehow. So, I only ordered a dozen. And yours is obviously coming in
(03:22):
the mail. So, keep an eye out for it. Amazing. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
All right. So, you want to know the history. I've only told this
a million times in a million different ways, but it's always- It's always sometimes short,
sometimes long. I'll give the brief overview and then if you want to go deeper into anything,
(03:46):
just ask me. I grew up in Bozeman, Montana. Bozeman and Belgrade, between Bozeman and Belgrade,
really small town in Montana. And lived there until I was about 18.
I grew up doing sports actually. I played basketball. I played soccer. I was on the
spring soccer team when I was my son's age. I think I was like six, seven, eight, nine years
(04:11):
old playing soccer. Played football, fell in love with football, wanted to be a professional
football player. That was a dream of mine. Played basketball, fell in love with basketball.
I just loved sports early on. Seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12. During my first year of college,
during those years, I was really good at all those sports. I picked them up quickly. I was fast.
(04:36):
I could outrun most everybody and I worked hard. It wasn't that I was naturally gifted. It was that
as a kid, I ran everywhere. I remember my parents telling me this story even like I think I was like
three or four years old. My dad looks out the window and he sees this little kid running like
million miles an hour down the street. He's like, holy crap, look at that kid. And then my mom or
somebody was like, that's Nathan. What? That's Nathan. They're like, because I was just like
(04:59):
sprinting because I just ran everywhere. So I was like always running and active as a kid.
We grew up, we didn't have a lot of electronics. We didn't have a lot of the games that they have
today. I played outside. That's what we did. We had original Nintendo and eventually like Nintendo
64 and the original PlayStation, stuff like that. But we'd play an hour and then we were done. They
(05:23):
weren't so addictive like they are today where kids can't stop. Or my parents would be like,
get outside, go play. Okay. So then we'd play outside for hours and hours, running, coming up
with games, jumping on trampolines. So I was always active, playing sports. Then around 11, 12 years
old, I started skateboarding, fell in love with skateboarding, like almost became professional
(05:44):
at it. Some of my friends went professional, really got into skiing and snowboarding growing up,
loved the mountains, just love being up in the mountains, skiing. I think I started skiing when
I was seven, seven or eight. And then eventually after five or six years, started snowboarding,
fell in love with snowboarding, just found it super challenging, even more challenging. And so
(06:06):
just excelled at all these sports and got better and better and had potential to like be, if I
committed to like one sport and was like focused and had good mentorship and stuff, I probably
could have been professional at any one of the sports that I really chose. But I found drugs and
alcohol and became professional at that. It became as professional as you can be at that at a very,
(06:30):
very young age, way too young. And that started to take, anybody who's been down that path knows
it just takes you down very quickly. So I had these aspirations to be a professional athlete,
you know, from doing really well in sports, from having a lot of potential to slowly stopping each
sport, stop soccer, and then stop basketball, and then stop football. And then all I did was skateboard
(06:56):
and snowboard and eventually even stop those. Because at some point, you know, your addiction
fully takes over and you're not active anymore. You're not able to really do anything meaningful
and productive. You're not healthy. You don't have the energy to do the things. The only next
thing you can think of is when's your next high, you know, literally. So partied a lot around a lot
(07:23):
of drugs, a lot of alcohol, you know, and that became my life for a few years, like 24-7,
you know, dropped out of school, in and out of jail, house arrest, you know, near death by 18
years old. Really, I was almost dead. I mean, involved with gangs and, you know, running from
the police and the feds and the DEA were after me. And it was just, it was really, really bad. I mean,
(07:45):
I was either headed for prison or I was headed for six feet under the ground. Those were really the
two options that I saw in front of me. And then my best friend at the time who just came back from,
like, he was sent away to like a military camp, I think it was called Youth Challenge. It's kind of
like a inspired by like a military boot camp, trying to get his life in order. I was living
(08:07):
with his parents who were beautiful people, very spiritual. They were vegetarian. They introduced me
to healthier eating, introduced me to, you know, more spiritual aspect of life. We taught Dennis
Davis, we'd sit and talk for hours about Buddha and Jesus and classical music. And I actually loved
it. Like I soaked it up. They took me in as their son for a while, while their son was away at camp,
(08:32):
because I was basically living on the streets since I was like 15. You know, my mom kicked me out.
She didn't know what to do with me. My dad was dealing with addiction and, you know, in a small
town far away, really drinking himself to death. I didn't really have other family that could take
me in. And so it was like, I was on my own, you know, I was living on park benches. I was sleeping
at friends, on friends' couches. I was sleeping in my car, you know, truly homeless on the streets.
(08:57):
You know, I found it, most times I found some place to sleep, but literally there were nights
where I was sleeping under a park table. Like there's a park in Bozeman, Montana, and I slept
under the table, you know, or I had this little Geo Metro I bought for like $350 with my tax return
money. And it was a little tiny white Geo Metro. I got, I have pictures of it actually. One of my
(09:18):
nicknames, my nickname growing up was Banana Head. And then it was just shortened to Banana. And then
I had my license plate actually said Banana. And I have this picture, little white, you know, $350,
$1990 something Geo Metro. And it was bashed in on one side. By the end of my time with that car,
(09:40):
there were no rear view mirrors. The hood had smashed against the windshield. Those windshields
totally cracked, totally all the way across, almost crashed going down the highway.
The hood was bungee strapped down. The back window had tin foil across it. The seat was taken out and
had a, for some reason, a little, you know, milk grate container there instead of a seat. I don't
(10:05):
even remember that. The windshield, you know, I'd punched out. Like it was, and then I gave it to my
uncle and then my uncle strapped, bolted like a thing to it that he could strap around his waist
and pull it around as part of his training as a power lifter to pull it around the block, you know.
It was like, but he still, he still used it for a while. It still ran. But basically, you know,
(10:31):
almost dead at 18, you know, homeless, like running from the feds, all that stuff.
To my friend coming back from Youth Challenge, I was living with his family. They gave me
inspiration, gave me hope, gave me, gave me a sense of like what a healthy life could be like.
He came back and said, I'm moving to San Diego. I got to get out of this. And then I said,
I'm going with you. So we both jumped in. By that point, I had a 1988 Cadillac Coupe De Ville,
(10:58):
red and white leather interior and like gold spoke rims, the whole thing.
Perfect. Yeah.
And we, yeah, I had like a, yeah, I had a suit. I literally put like a duffel bag in some,
I remember I had like some trading cards. I had like a Bo Jackson, you know, baseball cards. I had
(11:19):
some vintage, like Michael Jordan cards. I had baseball cards and basketball and football cards.
And I think like a suitcase, not even a suitcase, like a duffel bag. And my friend had like the same
thing, like a duffel bag we threw in the back. And that's like, and we had, I don't know,
a hundred bucks to our name, a couple hundred bucks, something like that. Drove to San Diego,
(11:39):
basically, you know, ran out of gas and Oceanside and literally started my life over at 18 years
old. That was in 2005. And so since then, it's been a journey, a journey of overcoming all the
addictions, a journey of cleaning up my life, of getting sober, a journey of finding my life
purpose, a journey of meeting my wife, the love of my life and having two children and raising our
(12:02):
kids, becoming a father, becoming a husband, you know, my spiritual journey, my health journey,
you know, eventually becoming an athlete again, after taking 10 or 12 years of not really being
an athlete at all and just focusing on building my business, you know, becoming an entrepreneur
and really reclaiming my health and healing a lot of the damage that I did growing up. I mean,
(12:24):
I did a lot of damage, like probably decades and decades worth of damage to my gut, to my intestines,
to my brain, to my, all my physical health, you know, just literally destroyed and deteriorated
my physical health for years. I mean, at nine years old, I was stealing my mom's cigarettes
and smoking them and selling them on the playground, right? 12 years old, drinking hard alcohol,
(12:48):
getting into hard drugs, you know, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18. And then from 18 to mid-20s,
mid to late 20s, it was still, there were still times I would relapse on certain things,
still times I would struggle, still times I would go back and drink alcohol or make excuses,
you know, but one at a time, eventually, you know, first thing was giving up cigarettes,
(13:12):
completely cold turkey, I was smoking two packs a day. You know, the other thing around the same
time was actually stopping all pharmaceuticals, doing a lot of different kinds of pharmaceuticals,
but then made a commitment to like, I'm not even gonna do, you know, Advil, ibuprofen,
none of that stuff. And then eventually, you know, the hard drugs eventually went away. And then
the longest, hardest one for me was alcohol, because like, I just made so many excuses for it.
(13:34):
It runs deep in my family on both sides. And it was the most difficult, but eventually got to a
point of just like, no more alcohol ever at all. And it's been that way for probably
since shortly after my son was born. So it's been around seven or eight years now. And I love it.
(13:55):
I love my life. I have zero, I can go to a nightclub in San Diego when I'm at like a business
meeting or something, go have a club soda, dance with everybody, have a great time, have zero
desire to have a drink, you know, just be myself, have fun, and go home at 1130 midnight and go to
(14:17):
go to the hotel and go to bed and feel good the next morning waking up without a hangover. And I
go meet everyone and they're all glasses on, third cup of coffee, they're all hung over. And I'm like,
I had fun, I had a great time, zero need for alcohol, feel so much better without it. So
I've gotten to that point in my life now that's, you know, my late thirties, getting close to 40
and just like my life is amazing, but it took, it took a lot to get to this point. It took a lot to
(14:42):
overcome those addictions, took a lot to find myself and heal the mental and emotional traumas
that I went through as a kid and took a lot to, you know, reconnect with my, my athletic
passions and desires and find that shows up in new ways through running through CrossFit,
through other things, and then come up with, you know, plant powered athlete as, as a way to really
(15:07):
support people in achieving their full potential as an athlete and as a human being. And so that's
kind of, you know, the short to mid version, mid length version of, you know, how I got to kind of
where I am today. Right, right. So, and so folks, that was the short version.
That was the short version. And because we don't have four and a half hours, you know, of course,
(15:32):
you've made documentaries, you've, you've, you've, you've received a lot of acclaim for some of your
documentaries, you know, your cancer documentaries and so forth as well. Do you want to give a short
little version of that? Because that's some of that, some of the cancer work that you've done is
quite impressive as well. Yeah. So in, by 2012, 2013, like I was already kind of deep into this
(15:58):
path of health and healing and natural health and learning about spirituality and meditation. I had
a great mentor in my life at that point, Arturo Gaitan in San Diego. He was kind of a spiritual
teacher, you know, teaching me really how to, you know, heal mentally, emotionally. And then I was
also diving deep into like the physical health side of things, getting into exercise, working out.
(16:19):
And so from 2005 to 2012, which is I think seven, roughly seven years, like I was kind of in this
health and healing and spirituality journey deep every day, you know, experience. I mean,
there were times I would literally meditate for four or five hours a day and take pages and pages
of notes and just downloads and insights and all kinds of things. I have stacks of yellow legal
(16:45):
pads somewhere in my office here of just stuff that I would just come through and I would just
write, you know, for hours and hours. And so I had a lot of these breakthroughs, a lot of these
openings and I just, and then people started asking me to teach. Like I just had this passion
for teaching. I would write, you know, inspirational articles and quotes and things like that on
websites like motivateus.com back then, this was like 2006, 2007. And I just started finding this
(17:09):
passion for learning and experimenting and teaching, learning, experimenting, teaching,
and sharing things as I learned them. And so I'm kind of seven years into this. I've taught in
front of groups of 50 to a hundred people at small events and small conferences, found this passion
for teaching was like teaching at retreats and stuff like that. So I felt, and I was, you know,
writing, I think by that point I'd already put together an anthology called 27 flavors of
(17:34):
fulfillment, how to live life to the fullest. I was interviewing, you know, dozens of world
leading experts and, you know, thought experts and personal development experts and spiritual
teachers and masters. I was meditating with Buddhist monks and Zen monks and chanting with
Hare Krishnas and doing sweat lodges with native American elders and really, you know, diving deep
(17:54):
into this kind of spiritual and health and healing journey. And I thought I knew a lot,
right? Like seven years in, I'm like, you know, got this kind of spiritual ego, like, yeah,
I know some shit, you know, I'm enlightened. Like, I don't think I never thought that, but
you definitely, at some point I did anyway, like got this kind of self identity ego, if you will.
(18:16):
And then my grandpa was diagnosed with cancer and I went to visit him in Arizona. And when I sat
with him and, you know, his hair was falling out from the chemotherapy and radiation and he'd lost
weight and he was sick and he was in a lot of pain and sitting with him, I just, I honestly felt
hopeless and helpless. Like I thought I should be able to help him, right? I have all this experience
(18:42):
and I was studying natural health and healing and spirituality, like I should be able to help him,
but I don't know what to say and I didn't know what to do. And I honestly just felt helpless.
And I knew there had to be something better he could do. I knew the chemotherapy and radiation
was killing him and it was making him sick and he was in so much pain he couldn't even walk
(19:02):
to the bathroom, like 20 feet away without being in just agonizing pain. And I just like, but I
didn't know what to say, I didn't know what to do. I left there just feeling hopeless and then he
passed away shortly after that in 2013. And I just felt like I needed to do something about it. I
(19:24):
needed to learn everything I could about cancer so that I could prevent that for myself or my
family or anybody else that I came into contact with, that I would know that I wouldn't feel that
way again. I wouldn't feel helpless and hopeless that I could actually at least give people some
guidance or send them in a, like I've had this desire most of my life for like justice and
(19:46):
rightness and helping others. Even when I was going through my, you know, craziness and addiction
and the fights and all this stuff growing up, like I still had this part within me that I think we
all do of wanting to do good and wanting to help others, you know, and being in that situation,
feeling like I should have been able to help him and not being able to, it just ate at me.
(20:09):
And so I actually produced one of the first online summits ever produced about natural solutions for
cancer. It was called the Cure to Cancer Summit. I think it was the second one ever done in the
space. Now there's been dozens and dozens, dozens back then. I think we were the second one to ever
do it. We're interviewed dozens of world leading, you know, integrative oncologists and natural
(20:31):
health experts and cancer conquerors, people who've overcome cancer and interview them and share
their stories and their methodologies and their diet and nutrition and lifestyle and how they're
reversing stage one, two, three, four cancers. And it just really, so I produced that, had a partner,
business partner at the time, helped with the interviews and I started learning and helping
people and seeing, you know, started hearing from people. They had hope, they had inspiration,
(20:56):
they had solutions, you know, for the first time in their life. It was like, these are things I
wanted for my grandpa, right? But I'm becoming fulfilled because I'm seeing that it's helping
other people. That summit turned into a conference, turned into a video series, turned into a second
summit, you know, started with 10 or 20,000 people, then 30,000, then 50,000, right? And then it turned
(21:19):
into a magazine, it turned into a membership site, it turned into the Global Cancer Symposium,
it turned into a master class. I taught Becoming Cancer Free, which is also an Amazon bestselling
book that I wrote, called Becoming Cancer Free. And then it turned into Conquering Cancer. I
partnered with some, you know, experts in the health and kind of marketing and production space,
(21:42):
and we created the Conquering Cancer documentary series, The Missing Link. And that sense, you
know, over the years, since that's been 11 years now, we've reached millions of people. We've had
hundreds of thousands of people go directly through our series, millions who've watched our
videos, read our articles, have seen, you know, our content, have had many, many people write in
(22:07):
and say, you know, you saved my life. Your content literally helped me reverse stage four cancer or
get to a place of no evidence of disease anymore. I have hope, I have inspiration. So that's like,
obviously, you know, why I've kept doing that work. It's just like, it's so powerful, empowering,
and uplifting to know that you can really serve and help people change their life for the better,
(22:28):
even if, even if all you do is give them hope, but we really give real solutions to, you know.
So that's been my big part of my main focus. The documentary was in that process. That was like a
five-year project. That's a whole other story. It's called Cancer, The Integrative Perspective.
That since has won 20 awards at film festivals and has helped hundreds of thousands of people.
(22:49):
But, you know, it's like, keep doing the work and keep helping people and keep learning,
because there's always more to learn. There's always more to like, oh, well, what if we try
this or try that? We hear somebody else's story. We hear, you know, we get feedback. The reality
is, is what's so interesting that I've learned about cancer is what we do to help people fight
(23:11):
and reverse cancer is basically the same things that you would want to do to prevent cancer.
And cancer is primarily a preventable disease. The problem is most people don't know that. Most
people don't know what causes cancer. Most people don't know what to do about cancer. And yet,
a study just came out showing that there's a 79% increase in young people being diagnosed
(23:34):
with cancer, people under 50 being diagnosed with cancer in the last 30 years alone.
So it's massively on the rise. It's affecting younger and younger people every day. It's a
leading cause of death in children and young children, aside from like childhood accidents
and things like that. It's the third leading cause of death in the United States. I mean,
(23:54):
it's killing 10 million people annually and it's not just cancer. It's also its treatments.
It's also the treatments that are literally killing people. And so for me, it's just been about
research, experimentation, education, right? And helping and empower people. So through
Conquering Cancer, we have a coaching program. We have master classes. We have a documentary
(24:16):
series. We have a whole kind of suite of educational resources and tools that we've used to
help people. And since then, I've joined the board of the Belgiansky Foundation. That's part of my
service work is helping raise funds and do scientific research into plant extracts that show
massive potential at basically killing cancer, fighting off cancer cells, because nature,
(24:40):
I truly believe nature has everything that we need. And while modern medicine has some great
solutions, some great, let's not even call them solutions, modern medicine has some great tools
when applied appropriately for chronic disease prevention and chronic disease healing.
Modern medicine is the worst thing you could ever turn to. It just doesn't work. And so
(25:02):
I have been focused on natural medicine and holistic health and medicine for almost two decades now.
All right, look, so I got to let you know about something really quick. You know, podcasts like
this usually require sponsors to basically pay the production costs and editing costs and things
like that so that we can get this kind of life changing, life enhancing, life enriching, life
(25:29):
improving information out to you week after week after week. Well, guess what? We at this time don't
have sponsors that we have brought on to support this podcast. In fact, we would rather not have
sponsors and we would rather sponsor our own podcasts. And so that's where we need your support.
We need your support to help this podcast continue by buying our plant powered protein
(25:57):
as our sponsor. So when you buy our protein, you are supporting this podcast so we can be our own
sponsors for you. And guess what? You're going to love the protein anyway. It's USDA certified
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(26:22):
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protein powder, you support this podcast so we can keep bringing you epic episodes like this. All right, back to the show.
(27:11):
And for me, like with plant powered athlete, this is the next evolution of my work on the planet.
One, because I'm an athlete and that's what I do now and I love it and have been for, you know,
going on almost a decade now after that stint. I told you that like 10 plus years where I
wasn't doing a whole lot. Except a little bit of yoga, the gym a few days a week,
(27:32):
like I wasn't really focused on anything that gave me a lot of like, I didn't have a sport that I love
going to, right? I didn't have, it was like, I do yoga once in a while. I'd go to the gym two or three
days a week. I didn't, I couldn't really get into bodybuilding. I couldn't really get into aesthetics.
Yoga was great for health, but I couldn't do it five, six, seven days a week. I didn't do any other
sports. So it was just kind of like this monotonous thing. Just keep going because I know it's good
(27:56):
for me. It makes me feel good. I do some cycling once in a while, right? And I'm like, I'm going to
do some cycling for a while, right? But like, I wasn't really an athlete until I turned 30.
And that was 2017 when I found CrossFit and then just fell in love with it. And since 2013,
so since my 2010, since my daughter was born, I was also a hundred percent plant-based. And so
(28:22):
that's a whole other story. So it was like this combination of being an athlete, being plant-based
and seeing how much it changed my life for the better, how much it helped me heal, how much it
helped me gain energy and strength and I'm fitter and faster and healthier and better now than I've
ever been before. And seeing just like the low quality junk protein supplements that are out
(28:43):
there to fill with additives, chemicals. These are the things that we have our cancer clients
and cancer patients avoid is many of these ingredients I've been talking with you about,
Ted, that are inside these protein powders, right? And they just fill them with it because it's cheap.
Yeah. Or all the processed foods. So much other stuff have those fillers and things like that.
(29:03):
Right. It's amazing how much, yeah. In the past five months, I think I've learned more. And yet,
of course, I went to school for a biochemistry degree and one of my courses was food engineering.
And of course, so I'll never eat a hot dog again. But after that course, there were some,
I think, you want to change the diet, go take a food engineering course in a biology stream.
(29:30):
So I hear what you're saying on that front. But yeah, no. And so let's focus on what you've been
doing lately from your athletic background. What are some of the things like, what is your daily
routine, if you will? What are some of the things that you find help you perform well, recover well,
(29:52):
you know, and tackle on the next day? Yeah, good question. So, you know, my daily routine right now
is pretty challenging because I'm dealing with some injuries, some overuse, over training injuries.
And so like the last seven years that I've been focused on becoming the best athlete I can be
at CrossFit. This past year, like I got into an elite level professional training program,
(30:17):
I was training five hours a day, you know, five and a half hours a day, you know, morning sessions
for two, two and a half hours, evening sessions for two and a half, three hours. And like I got
my body to a point, I think I was actually feeling amazing, probably better than I felt in quite a
while with, you know, in CrossFit. And if you're training a lot, it's like you're going to have in
a lot of athletes experiences, you're going to have little flare ups and little twinges, little
(30:40):
tweaks and little pains. It's like you just deal with it, right? Like, but I was actually feeling
really amazing. And I was like six months into this program. And, and well, let me back up a
little bit. So I was skiing a few years back and I fell on my shoulder and I got up and I couldn't
(31:01):
move my arm. And it was literally, it was, it felt like it was dead and it was in so much pain.
And I had to ski to the bottom of the hill and, and get a ride home. And I don't remember how I
got home and I got home and I like, I didn't know enough about what I didn't know about it.
And was probably just kind of dumb and was like, ah, just tweaked it, strain something,
(31:24):
you know, let me do some light, you know, corrective exercise at home, some bands and stuff,
give it a few weeks. It'll be fine. Right. Well, it wasn't fine after a few weeks, but it improved.
And so I just, I got back into training too soon and just continue with training. Cause that's just
kind of how my mindset's always been like, I just trained through the pain, train, you know, David
(31:44):
Goggins mindset, just trained through the pain, trained through the pain. It's like, I've kind of
been that way my whole life when really I should have got probably an MRI, should have visited a
physical therapist, should have got on an actual plan to heal it. And what I realized like five
years later, when I was, I was snatching, I was doing a snatches and I woke up the next day and
(32:08):
my shoulder like same thing. Like I couldn't move it. Right. It was like five years later. And I was
like, what happened? And so I continued training for like three or four days through that, like an
idiot. And then, you know, and then it was really bad. I was like, all right, there's something bad
here. So I went and saw a physical therapist and we started making some pretty good progress on it
in literally like a couple of weeks. But I was like, I'm going to get an MRI and just see what's
(32:30):
going on here. Cause I'm more of a serious athlete now. And, and I found out I had like three tears,
three or four tears, bursitis, chronic inflammation in the tendon. And I was just like, and I
remembered that skiing accident. I was like, that's, that's where it was from. I didn't do
anything else since then. And it just never fully healed, you know? Right. So that kind of led to
(32:53):
like, all right, I really got focused on healing it. Got to a point where it was feeling amazing
on this intense professional level, you know, CrossFit training program, which was HWPO,
Matt Frazier's program for anybody who knows the, the, the professional level, six months in seeing
the most gains I've seen in that period, then on anything I'd done at that point. And I've been
(33:15):
trying all kinds of programs and met, you know, it was like, I made progress in like 10 different
things in my gymnastics, in my 10, 10 rep max back squat, in my front squat, in everything was
literally like improving. And, and I got to a point where like, I was under recovered far too often,
waking up every morning, no matter what, same time ice bath, get into my training, didn't matter. I
(33:40):
felt like shit. I felt tired. I felt painful, whatever. Didn't matter. Train, train, train
the morning. Didn't matter. Evening so tired, feel terrible, whatever. Didn't matter. Train,
train, train. Six, seven months and all of a sudden, like I just started falling apart.
Like it finally caught up to me, you know? And so chronic inflammation and my bicep tendon, like
bicep tendinopathy in the left one was the big thing. And then my knee flared up and then my
(34:06):
right arm flared up. And it was just like, and I kept training through it until a point where it's
like, all right, I got to stop. I got to back off. And then even though I backed off and took like
30 days off, even though I took 30 days off, which was, I realized the most time, I've never
taken more than a week off of training in a year, in seven years. So I was overdue, right? Holy shit,
(34:35):
way overdue. So you're overdue. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, and that's what happens. Like you push,
push, push, push, push, push, push, push, push. This is why I'm learning. Push, push, push, push,
I wish I learned this earlier, right? Until eventually it's like, the body's like, all right,
it's enough. Push too hard for too long with too little rest. I mean, look at David Goggins.
He's got to have knee surgery. He's got to have this. He's got to have that. And he's still running
(34:57):
through it. And it's got this problem and that problem. It's like, yeah, that mentality can get
you through some things, but it also can cause a lot of other problems. So I'm still learning as
an athlete, like how to balance that because I want to do this long-term. Yeah. I want to compete
at the highest level in CrossFit. I want to push myself to my peak performance. I want to achieve my,
you know, be my highest level of potential as an athlete. And I would still would like to be able
(35:24):
to hike and have fun and be mobile with my grandkids. You know what I mean? Like I don't
want to screw up my body so bad. And I see people in their sixties, seventies who just, you know,
have really messed up their joints and stuff who can barely move there in a level eight pain,
24 seven, they're still training through it. And I'm like, I don't want to be that. Like why live
in a level eight pain 24 seven? So still figuring out, and a lot of that is recovery, listening to
(35:49):
your body, spending more time, getting more sleep, doing more active recovery things, rolling out,
stretching. Like I used to do 20, 30 minutes of a warmup, you know, soft tissue mobilization,
you know, bandage stretching, good warmups. And I do at least 30 minutes before my workouts and 30
minutes after. And then as the years went on, it was like less and less and less and less and less.
(36:11):
And for you know what, I'm like doing a five minute warmup and then I'm working out for two and a half
hours, you know? Yeah. And so I'm getting back to the things that I used to do, which is, you know,
really rolling out good with, you know, massage, self myofascial release, bandage stretching,
you know, all kind of, all kind of, all kind of, all kinds of stuff to really warm up and keep to
joints healthy, keep the tissues healthy, keep the fascia gliding properly. And then cool downs,
(36:37):
proper cool downs as well, where like my cool down was five minutes on the echo bike, just going slow.
Now it's like, I'm back to doing like 20 minutes of myofascial release and stretching, which is
what I always did before. So I think for longevity, you know, there's, there's a young, you know,
some of their twenties, early thirties, you're probably pushed through with, with not as much
(37:00):
focus on recovery and be okay, but eventually everybody I've talked to, it catches up to you.
Amen. And so, right. So like the more time, I mean, you're pushing 50, so you know, right?
It's like the more time you put into the gym or into your sport or into your exercise, like you
need that, you need to put in plenty of time into recovery and self care. And so to answer your
(37:21):
question, nutrition is definitely number one. It's like anti-inflammatory foods, natural
anti-inflammatories, turmeric, black pepper, Boswellia, you know, different herbs, Dr. Christopher's
bone and tissue herbs, which are fantastic organics, 3d, which is, you know, fermented turmeric and
ginger, you know, PIP, Pipporin, which is black pepper, you know, mixing those are great natural
(37:46):
anti-inflammatories. You know, I don't eat any meat, I don't eat any dairy, I don't eat any of
those kinds of, you know, inflammatory foods, if you will, especially when you fry those or cook
them at high temperatures, they can become carcinogenic or inflammatory. You know, I eat a
lot of tofu, I eat a lot of, you know, beans and veggies, a lot of fruits, a lot of berries,
(38:09):
obviously plant-powered protein. I'm doing at least one, sometimes two shakes a day of our PPA
plant-powered protein. And then sauna. So I sauna a couple days a week. I took the last two or three
months off of ice baths, but I'm going to get back into them. I just, I think they'll really help with
(38:30):
the tendon healing. I'm like 80% there. Here's a cool thing. I'm like 80% there. Like I can do so
many things with so much less pain and the progress is amazing. It's just my mind's like, I want to be
there now and I have to really wrestle that and like accept the fact that, hey, it's taking time.
(38:51):
You're now at the most dangerous spot because you're 80% there, right? You know, like that's
feeling better, feeling better. Like I can do more stuff, which means I could easily push through it
and then end up back where I was. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And undo all of that, right? You know,
and to that end, like that's one of the things, especially, yeah, I'm a little bit more senior to
(39:14):
you. And that's one of the things like I've noticed is that how I recovered from workouts in my 20s
was significantly different than how I recovered or warmed up to that end in my 30s, which is
significantly different, you know, and of course I'm, you know, that's constantly a changing thing.
Cause yeah, as you get a little bit older, yeah. So your, your systems change. You can get a little.
(39:37):
What about your 30s compared to your four, like your late thirties compared to your late forties?
Do you find you're really similar or do you find it's, it's a lot different? There's differences.
There's a lot of differences. Yeah. And so I had a couple of surgeries in my late thirties that,
um, yeah, you know, and, but that being said, they're now my best body parts, ironically.
(39:58):
Um, like, yeah, like I actually, I had a fall in February, um, while skiing, ironically,
I fell in the parking lot. I wasn't doing anything exciting. I literally slipped on some ice in the
parking lot of a ski resort, but, um, uh, last week I was doing some swimming, some open water
swimming. And because I didn't put my wetsuit on properly, it just put that little bit of tension
(40:20):
just on that injured shoulder to that end. Like it was, that's all I did. So I was swam 1500 meters
and I got out of the water. I was just like, wow, something not feeling that great. And so, you know,
and yeah. So, so there are always slight differences, right? You know, and that's the thing
is that it's a constantly evolving process because your body is constantly changing and evolving.
(40:42):
Like there's differences because like you now have that, you know, that bursitis and tendonitis
and your shoulder and the bicep tendon, you know, that's going to impact even the most simplest of
moving, movement patterns, right? You know, and that's going to have, you might not, you know,
subconsciously just, you might just move slightly differently. Right, right. And that's, that's,
(41:03):
that's a hard part for me is I didn't get to go through the teenage years through the 20s,
mid 20s, late 20s, then 30s, early mid late 30s. Like I was like teenage years and then huge gap
and then started being an athlete again. Like I missed all my 20s and then started being an
(41:24):
athlete again at 30. Right. So like, it was like, so it's, you know, and then learning my body and
all that stuff and dealing with all the injuries I had as a teenager, because I did BMX and crashed
a lot on big jumps. I did skiing and crashed a lot on huge cliffs, right? Like I didn't,
all those sports, like I just didn't do it for fun. I did it for like extreme levels. I mean,
(41:47):
I was doing, you know, 80 foot jumps and back flips and aerials and, you know, Misty 700s and
all kinds of stuff on my snowboards and my skis and crashing a lot. And then skateboarding, dude,
you want to talk about destroy your body, like try to become a professional skater, like just the path
of doing it. If you can just survive, you know, five, six, seven years of skateboarding, like,
(42:11):
and I'm talking hours and hours a day, like we would skate for like seven, eight hours a day.
You would fall a hundred times in a day on cement down 12 stair handrails and do it again and again
and again and again and again. And again, you'd be bloody, you'd be torn up. You'd be, and it was
just like, and then you do it all again the next day. And yeah, and no wonder I got addicted to
(42:32):
ibuprofen when I was like 14, you know, it was like just destroyed my body, you know, as a teenager,
like tore stuff up that I had no idea. Cause I didn't go to the doctor. I didn't get stuff
checked out. It was just like my, Oh, my ankle's this swollen. Okay. I'll, you know, I'll limp on
it for a couple of days. I'll start skateboarding again on Tuesday. You know, it was just like,
that's just what I did. Right, right. You know, yeah. So that might have an impact on your health,
(42:57):
you know, 20, 30 years, you know, I am by far a professional, however, I'm just going to go out
on a limb and say, say that. So, so, so we're kind of getting to the top of the hour. So,
so I have one last question, you know, as you, as you've highlighted, you've worked with a number of
amazing professionals, you've, you've done a number of seminars, conferences and so forth.
(43:20):
Like, what are some of the common misconceptions you hear about health and wellness that you
encounter? What are some of those common, common themes that you want to want to highlight to our
audience and say, this isn't true. And here's how we correct it. Yeah. I'd say one of the reasons
for plant powered athlete is educating people that you can thrive and be strong and vital and
(43:44):
vibrant and live a long, healthy life on a plant based on a plant powered diet. And that's what,
you know, I grew up in Montana, steak and potatoes, killing our own deer, fishing, thinking I had to
have animals and dairy to be strong and healthy. Right. And it actually wasn't until I stopped
eating all that and became vegan, which I was vegan for quite a while. And now I'm, you know,
(44:07):
I'd say plant based or vegetarian, but I have a couple of eggs once in a while. I don't have dairy.
I haven't had meat since before 2010. But, you know, I do honey once in a while and I do eggs
once in a blue moon. So technically you'd say that's vegetarian, but I was raw vegan for quite
a while with my wife and when my daughter was born. So I experimented with that. But
(44:28):
people still think today you can't thrive and be strong and be your fittest self on a plant based
diet. And I want to show people absolutely you can, whether your intention is compassion for
animals, because you realize, look, animals don't want to be killed any more than humans do.
Animals are incredible beings. I think they all have souls just like we do. They're different,
(44:50):
but I think they have souls. I see it in my dogs, in a horse, in a pig, in a cow, in an animal,
any animal you spend time with, you can see they have an intelligence, they have a personality,
they have a soul. So I got to a point in my life that was just like, man, I just can't
contribute towards killing animals anymore. And no, I'm not going to judge people about it. I
(45:11):
probably used to judge people early on in my kind of plant based journey, but now I don't. Like,
do whatever you want. But I'm still going to educate and show and live by example that you
can thrive on a plant based diet, that you don't have to contribute to the slaughter,
into the suffering, and into the killing of innocent animals. In fact, nobody needs plants
(45:32):
to survive. That's been proven. I mean, nobody needs animals or dairy to survive. That's been
proven again and again. Dr. Furman reverses every chronic disease on the planet, gets people on a
99 to 100% plant based diet, and sees incredible results in people live long, healthy lives.
Like all the doctors I work with, the cancer patients. That was one of the things that I
(45:54):
noticed too, is all the cancer conquerors that I interviewed and met along the way, they switched
to a plant based diet as part of their journey to reversing cancer. So, you know, I think that's
that's the biggest misconception is like, look, if you don't want to contribute to that, to the
harming of animals, and you want to live a long, healthy life, you can absolutely do it on a plant
based diet. But you have to know what to eat, and you have to make sure you're getting diversity of
(46:18):
foods, and you have to avoid any culprits that might be harming you. And that's basic for every
diet. Every diet you want to be successful. You have to know what to eat. You got to get the right
diversity, so you're getting good nutrition, and you got to avoid anything that could be damaging
to you, which sometimes one thing damaging to you is not necessarily damaging somebody else or vice
versa. So those are three things that we are, you know, along with providing high quality, super
(46:45):
clean, organic, you know, protein powders that really help people to win. Win in their life,
win in their health, win with their wellness, their inspiration, their nutrition. It's also
educating people about you can also win in your life, in your competition, in your health,
in everything on a plant based diet, and here's how to do it. So a lot of what we do at Plant
Powered Athletes is just educating people and showing them if this is the path you feel called
(47:09):
towards, then it's totally possible we can help you do it. And there are a lot of examples
of high level professional elite athletes that are striving and thriving, I mean,
that are thriving on a plant based diet and doing better than their competition. And some of them
have been doing it for decades. And so, you know, those are just some of the misconceptions that we
(47:31):
can that we help people overcome. For sure. Sure. Well, always the last question, where can they
find you other than PlantPoweredAthlete.com? Of course, you and I have started our own personal
channels. I am not as good as you at hosting as often I am getting better. But Plant Powered
Nathan Crane, if memory serves me correct. Yeah, I've got a new like people just find me on Nathan
(47:56):
Crane on social media. But yeah, I've got new channels, come and check it out there, which is
focused specifically on Plant Powered Athletes and my Plant Powered Athlete journey, education,
etc. Inspiration, stuff like that at Plant Powered Nathan Crane on Instagram, you know, anywhere,
(48:17):
anywhere main social channels exist today bar that they don't get shut down. So we'll see. Fingers
crossed. Fingers crossed. Well, thank you for being a guest. Some of them would do better if they were
shut down anyway, right? So, well, fair enough. But thank you for being a guest on your own show.
Hey, thanks for having me. I love being here. You're a great host. I appreciate it. You know,
(48:42):
it was we understand we appreciate the sponsorship of the show and so that we might as well let him
on. Yeah, you might as well have it on. Yeah, why not? You know? Yeah. But like you said,
we'll do this every few months. I think that's a good idea just to kind of do a check in and
so forth. But but yeah, so great. Nathan, thank you so much for your time. Awesome, dude. Thanks
(49:04):
for having me. Thank you. Cheers.
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