Tribal Origins: Killing The Habit That Fed My Lower Self
Tribal Origins: Killing The Habit That Fed My Lower Self
Carnivore vs. Plant Based Diet Challenge
The last Tribal Origins post covered my evolution from dog bandana side hustle to launching my first tweet looking for fitness clients.
And next I was going to share how I landed my first clients and what it was like to start coaching from scratch.
But I decided to share something else first:
How I killed the version of myself that was holding me back from doing it all.
My goal with this post is to help you ask:
Is there a new, better version of me waiting to come to life?
And is there an old habit of mine that’s holding me back from becoming that?
My Final Boss
Running my first two ultramarathons didn’t just give me confidence. They made me feel like a new person with a new life.
A few years before, I never even heard of ultramarathons. A marathon sounded impossible.
And now I skipped right over 26.2 and just ran over 63 miles through the wilderness.
I felt bold, capable and dangerous.
But the finish lines still didn’t conquer the part of me that held me back the most:
The chubby and insecure kid in me that went to food any time he was stressed, sad or feeling low about himself.
It felt like I was playing a video game, had conquered major quests and leveled up my character along the way…
But I still had to face my Final Boss.
Living In Extremes
I was now almost 2 years into my endurance journey and I had pinned my old binge eating habits into submission.
But they were still breathing…
I was down 60 lbs from my post-college peak and endurance training was guiding me to eat cleaner before big efforts.
But after big efforts, I still let old habits live on.
My new thing was eating an entire tub of Turkey Hill Cookie Dough ice cream on Saturday or Sunday nights after big training days. Not a pint size. The entire half gallon tub.
And in my head it all made sense…
my weight was stable
it was “planned” and after big training
I could just fast longer the next day to balance everything out
But here’s the problem I didn’t see:
The habit kept feeding a part of me that was holding me back.
Do What You’ve Always Done, Be Who You’ve Always Been
I was now an endurance athlete. And I wanted to create online fitness content.
But the process of putting myself out in the world, sharing my thoughts and opinions and making myself vulnerable was scary as fuck.
I had doubts, insecurities and fears.
And it felt like my binge eating habit validated any negative thought about myself that popped in my head.
I could not step forward confidently into the world of fitness coaching with this persistent lock on my own self-image.
You Teach Others What To Expect Of You
As soon as I finished Black Forest 100k, my family had a tub of ice cream waiting for me in a Yeti cooler in the car.
They had seen me crush a tub of cookie dough after big training a dozen times. So they expected that’s what I’d want after the race.
I remember sitting in the car after the race with the tub of ice cream on my lap and a spoon in my hand.
I was going through the motion of eating.
But a part of me was thinking, “dude… you know you don’t want to be doing this.”
The ice cream was half-melted and the cardboard tub was soft after sitting in the Yeti for hours.
I wasn’t eating it because it was good. I was eating it because that’s what I had always done.
I look back on that freeze frame from my life with some sadness and compassion.
I had just completed the biggest challenge of my life.
I felt so accomplished. But I was also tired, beat down and in need of relief.
And I went right back to the habit from my childhood that I’d rush to when I was getting screamed at for failing a test, getting in trouble at school, or caught in the crosshairs of my parent’s pre-divorce blow ups.
I had a few bites of the ice cream. Then put the spoon down.
This Part Of Me Needs To Die
I had broken into endurance, launched a business, had international manufacturers, a local footprint in Philly, sales on Amazon and just ran a freakin’ 100k.
But there was still a part of me that was trying to prove that I wasn’t who I used to be (fat, lazy, undisciplined)…
Because I still had a habit that screamed: That’s exactly who you still are!!
Endurance was helping me develop the skills of commitment, action, consistency and personal leadership. And I had applied those skills to business.
They had leaked over to my diet too. I was making progress.
But I settled for giving 90% effort. And 90% wasn’t enough for me to feel the identity shift I was craving.
I needed to get to 100%.
That’s when I thought of the challenge…
Becoming My Own Guinea Pig
I could feel the height of the “Carnivore Craze” in 2020-2021.
There were big name doctors like Shawn Baker and Paul Saladino living by the diet, sharing content daily and publishing books on it.
Both these guys were on Rogan.
Plus Rogan himself had been doing “Carnivore January” for a few consecutive years and raved of it’s benefits.
But at the same time, Beyond Meat was on the rise and Veganism was gaining heavy traction in American pop culture (see 2020-2021 peaks).
I had an idea to test both diets, cut through all the noise and challenge myself along the way.
The Rules Of The Challenge
My idea was simple:
eat Carnivore for the month of January (meat, eggs, water, salt)
eat Plant Based for the month of February (only real food, single ingredients)
track my daily Heart Rate and recovery data on Whoop
get my bloodwork drawn at the end of each month and compare results
My initial idea was to prove Carnivore right and show that eating a bunch of fake meat was not healthy for you.
But I decided to change course and give Plant Based a real shot.
Instead of eating Beyond Meat and a bunch of processed junk, I stuck to real food and was strict on only eating single, real food ingredients when I had anything out of a package.
The results of the challenge?
I got fucking jacked.
The Ultimate Mindset Unlock
Prior to this challenge, every single diet effort in my life was with the intention to look or feel better.
This time was different. My #1 goal was to learn.
And that shift in perspective unlocked a level of commitment I never knew I had.
Sticking to the diet was still fucking hard.
I didn’t have coffee during the Carnivore month (because it comes from a bean). That sucked. And it felt like torture when I was starving and wanted a snack - and my best option was hard boiled eggs.
I struggled with portion control once I switched to Plant Based and my calorie intake shifted from high protein to high carb.
But I kept learning, sharing my progress and building momentum.
My body and mind hardened in tandem and (with the focus on learning), feeding my old habit of binge eating was not even considered as an option.
My identity shift had arrived.
Get Romantic About Your Victories
It didn’t just feel like I got rid of the old me.
It felt like I dragged him in the middle of the street and shot him in the head.
Like an execution of a traitor in an old western movie right on the main strip of town.
I beat my Final Boss and shared the entire process online for the whole world to see.
And it became the launching pad for my coaching business (that would evolve into Tribal Training).
Do Interesting Things
I was nerding out on the science of it all and tagging big accounts I was learning from along the way.
The result?
It got a lot of engagement (for my standards)
It helped me stand out from other fitness accounts that were just posting meals and workouts (which was most of my content before the challenge)
A big highlight was going on Zach Bitter’s “Human Performance Outliers” podcast to talk about my experience and results.
Zach holds the World Record for the fastest 100 miler. And he wanted to talk to ME (!!!) about my diet experiment.
After years of feeling directionless in life, unsure of my path and where I was headed, it felt like I finally found something that…
I was interested in
challenged me
I was good at
And the world wanted to hear about it!
I felt worthy.
You can listen to the podcast episode here or watch it below:
Not All At Once. But Not Stopping.
The momentum around everything I was doing continued to compound.
The diet challenge was in Jan. and Feb. 2021. But it didn’t just end once Feb. wrapped up.
I kept the topic rolling and continued sharing how I applied what I learned.
Through the rest of 2021 I was invited on a bunch of other podcasts to talk about everything from my endurance mindset to my diet challenge to my approach to life and my emerging coaching business.
You can listen to a few of my favorites here:
All the external validation supported my internal identity shift.
And it made me feel like I was no longer just a random guy blasting content into the online void.
I was making real changes in my life and making real connections with real people over shared interests.
I felt like I belonged.
The Real Challenge
You can talk about content strategy and how to build a following all you want.
That wasn’t the biggest challenge for me.
My biggest challenge was changing the way I saw myself.
And giving myself permission to step forward in life as a new and improved version of me.
The Carnivore vs. Plant Based challenge attacked my biggest weakness head on.
And in the process, it connected me with people who had similar interests and positioned me as an authority to people consuming that type of content online.
In my next Tribal Origins post, I’ll share my experience landing my first clients.
Both of them referenced this challenge as reason they wanted to work with and learn from me.