Army Ranger’s Nutrition Approach: Train Your Brain, Not Your Diet

Nick Urban [00:00:01]:
You’re listening to High Performance Longevity, the show exploring a better path to optimal health for those daring to live as an outlier in a world of averages. I’m your host, Nick Urban, bioharmonizer, performance coach, and lifelong student of both modern science and ancestral wisdom. Each week, we decode the tools, tactics, and timeless principles to help you optimize your mind, body, and performance span. Things you won’t find on Google or in your AI tool of choice. From cutting-edge biohacks to grounded lifestyle practices, you’ll walk away with actionable insights to look, feel, and perform at your best across all of life’s domains. Think about the last diet you tried, and then think about what happened at the That word end is the whole problem. My guest today is Ben Fudge. He teaches cognitive nutrition, the idea that to change how you eat, you train the mind first and the body follows.

Nick Urban [00:01:11]:
He’s a former Army Ranger. He’ll explain why willpower keeps failing you and what works instead. Welcome to the show.

Ben Fudge [00:01:18]:
Pleasure to be here, Nick. Thanks for having me.

Nick Urban [00:01:20]:
When you tell someone that you do cognitive nutrition, And they picture a meal plan, what do they get wrong?

Ben Fudge [00:01:28]:
Oh, Nick, I think they get a lot, well, a lot of preconceived notions wrong ultimately. They think that it’s like, hey, here’s exactly what I need to do to succeed. Because a lot of times, Nick, when people come in, they’ve got a lot of, like you mentioned, diet history of go execute this exact meal plan, this exact training program, this exact thing for 60 days, 75 days, 6 months, whatever it might be. And then the first thing that they get is just go track, just go track everything that, like, no targets, no nothing. And they go, is this it? Is this all I’m going to do? And, but then over the course of time, they start seeing changes. They start seeing the skill sets. They start being more aware of how their own individual systems are, their own individual behaviors, their own individual relationships with the people, but as well as themselves starts to develop and change. And, that incremental approach and practice and skill development is kind of what sets TKN apart from most traditional diet programs out there.

Nick Urban [00:02:37]:
When I first came across you guys and I saw the slogan cognitive nutrition, I thought it was going to be like, okay, have a handful of blueberries every day, have your walnuts, all these things that support the brain.

Ben Fudge [00:02:50]:
Oh yeah, we, it’s, we get a lot more of what the heck is this sort of idea more so than almost anything, because like looking at nutrition in terms of a behavior standpoint and how you behave around food is very different and a much different approach to nutrition and looking at it from a more holistic approach in terms of Other elements that we bring in, thinking, how you make decisions, impulsivity, how you flex your own skills and decision-making in different environments is very different than a get ripped quick, because we could all kind of get ripped quick. And I could just be like, Nick, go have a big gulp of air for lunch and dinner, and you’re going to see some changes. But How sustainable is that ultimately long-term? And so, we take a much more nuanced approach. We obviously go through that sort of traditional because a lot of people come to us with an acute problem to be solved, which is you want to lose weight. Great. But then, it’s how do you sustain that? How do you sustain that outside of the 12 weeks, the 16 weeks, and flex those autonomy, flex those skills throughout life’s general seasons and seasonality and different environments that you might find yourself in?

Nick Urban [00:04:14]:
Why is that approach not the norm? It seems like that should be the default because over time people will follow a diet. They’ll quit a diet. They’ll try another one. They’ll quit it. Just focusing on the what, what foods am I going to put in? What foods am I going to avoid altogether? But it seems that that inherently isn’t a long-term solution that will ultimately yield the result, the results everyone’s looking for. So why aren’t people using this behavior-based approach?

Ben Fudge [00:04:43]:
People don’t use this behavior-based approach because of the own stories that they tell themselves, right? A lot of times putting on weight is a gradual, gradual process for most people. It happens with the lack of awareness, 200 calories, 400 calories here, there over time. But as it trickles on, all those calories matter. And so they just want that get Get it in, get it done, go on, and then start back over with their normal life. Everybody loves getting their shit together. It’s new, it’s exciting. People are patting you on the butt. Everybody’s supportive of this, this new year, new me, like new, different me.

Ben Fudge [00:05:29]:
But then it’s like the whole skillset is, all right, now that you’ve gotten your shit together, how do we keep it together so that you don’t come back to us and go, you know what, I’ve put back on all the weight. It’s the all or nothing thinking. that people have as it pertains to food, as it pertains to diet, as it pertains to even the mindset they have with their own decisions. I know something that you and I were talking about, Nick, during the pre-call was the adages and the norms, the common sayings that are across the fitness and nutrition space where it’s just like, you are what you eat. If you eat junk, what does that inherently make you? Well, Parallel would be, you are junk. Is that true? Like, no.

Nick Urban [00:06:16]:
Yeah.

Ben Fudge [00:06:16]:
You’re a person that ate food. I would come back to you as a coach and be like, if you came into me, Nick, and you’re like, and you’re like, Ben, I, I just blew it on the weekend. I just, I, I, I got caught up with, with the boys and we had a bunch of drinks and it like a bunch of food. I would turn to you and I would be, Nick, was it the most delicious food in the world? And you would be like, no, it, It likely wasn’t. And I’m going to turn to you and say like, all right, great. What did you learn from it? What did you learn from that experience? How do you want to behave differently in those situations going forward? And so that you can look at these environments, you can look at these situations that you find yourself and really break down that SRO model, the stimulus response outcome model that we teach a lot within TKN to be able to behave differently. the next time and get incrementally better. Like any skill there, and like driving, it just takes time and it takes practice to vaccinate yourself and practice those skills ultimately that get you closer to your desired outcome.

Nick Urban [00:07:21]:
What’s your SRO model?

Ben Fudge [00:07:23]:
SRO model is a concept that we actually took from TKN, from rational emotive behavior therapy, uh, and Dr. Albert Ellis, and have modified it to kind of fit the nutrition realm. So, at the top, it’s a triangle. And you’ve got stimulus, an activating event. Me simply talking to you, Nick, is a stimulus. And so, or you talking to me is a stimulus. And so you’ve got some level of activating event, something that happens, could be as simple as walking into the kitchen, walking into the pantry is a stimulus. In between that stimulus and R, which is a response, is time and space.

Ben Fudge [00:08:03]:
Now that time and space can be short, can be long, but then it ultimately leads to a response, a behavior, something that you do. And then after that is another time and space that develops an outcome. What happened based off of that response, that follow-on cause and effect? And then that outcome will act as a further stimulus to you and your psyche and what you tell yourself, the stories that you tell yourself about that response, about that outcome. An important piece of that, and the thing that takes the longest to develop ultimately, and why we have such a longitudinal approach to things, is your belief system, which has a lot to do with historicals. How have you dieted in the past? Your overall relationship with yourself, the thing, the stories you tell yourself, because that belief system is going to influence how you view the stimuli. Do you view the stimuli as judgment? Do you view the stimuli as a challenge? Do you view this like, how, how do you, what, by what lens do you view that stimulus? Also going to formulate how you respond. What behaviors have you reinforced over time? Have you practiced? Have you practice to the point of habitual in nature. And then how you view the outcome.

Ben Fudge [00:09:22]:
Do you view that outcome as damnation, as that all-or-nothing mindset that we talked about earlier, or do you view it as a learning opportunity and how that innerwovenness, or lack of a better term, of that belief system and identity works within the greater SRO model?

Nick Urban [00:09:41]:
If we made this practical, how would this look if we were to use me as an example?

Ben Fudge [00:09:46]:
Sure. So you get an email at work or some, some, like your boss goes, bing, you get that email and you look at it and it goes, Nick, come see me. How do you feel? Right? You’ve got thoughts, feelings, urges that naturally pop up from that stimuli. You might respond by going, oh, I’m gonna go check with other coworkers, see if they got that email, or I’m gonna just go to the bathroom, see if I look presentable, or you might send a follow-up email, or you might just ignore it entirely. There’s a plethora of responses that you could have. But then ultimately, what does that do? What does that response do? Does that build up, or do you ask clarifying information, or do you just go to your boss and go, Yeah, boss, what do you need? Right? And that outcome is now going to further have different stimuli. And then you start gathering that evidence. You start seeing that overall data, building that awareness.

Ben Fudge [00:10:47]:
And the same thing can be with food. You walk into the pantry, acts as a stimulus. How do you react and respond in those situations? Do you go to what you’ve always gotten? Do you go for that cookie? Do you go for a healthier option? Do you have, have you put in barriers in terms of the overall response? And how does that work within the nutrition space? as well. Does that outcome of turning to a cookie or turning to a food or a snack that works within your overall plan, how does that work within the outcome? And does that move you closer or further away from your goals? Again, building on that belief system of just looking at food from that lens, does it move me closer to my goals? Does it move me further away? Kind of removes that judgment as well. As you can kind of see, I’ve practiced the coaching hat going on of the, it is not a judgment on you as a person.

Nick Urban [00:11:39]:
Right.

Ben Fudge [00:11:39]:
It is just operating within that continuum of, did it move me closer? Did it move me further away?

Nick Urban [00:11:45]:
Hmm. And that’s an important difference too, between just a judgment-based coaching. And it’s like, okay, this is what objectively happened. How do you feel about it? And then let’s adapt what we do based on your own perception of it.

Ben Fudge [00:12:00]:
The great metaphor I utilize a lot within this sort of judgment space is Okay. You get a flat tire. What do you do? Do you go slash the other 3 tires? No, that sounds silly, right? You either fix the tire or like you ultimately fix your problem or you call a mechanic or whatever, call a nutrition coach or something along those lines. You don’t just go around and slash all 3 tires, all the other tires because you slashed one tire. No, you fix your problem. You learn, you adapt, you grow, you figure out how to fix a flat or call a mechanic or call that tow truck, call somebody with more like, But that all-or-nothing mindset would be like, I have a flat tire, I’m just going to go slash all 3 other ones.

Nick Urban [00:12:39]:
So then when you actually go about building the plan for someone, like there obviously has to be some kind of parameters to it. It’s not just like, do whatever you think is right and hopefully it’ll work. You give them a little guidance on like actually constructing what will work for them and their goals.

Ben Fudge [00:12:56]:
Absolutely. Absolutely. And so if you were to come to TKN Off the Street, Nick, we would be like, great, The first thing we want you to do is develop the skill of tracking. Do you know how to track and track accurately? And you’ll find via the Hawthorne effect of like, you behave a certain way, you track, your behaviors are naturally going to change. Like that is, that is just natural psychology at its finest. So we start with just track everything that goes into your mouth, start building that base of your pyramid, which is your awareness. Do you know how much or how little you eat throughout the day? So the first thing we do, Track everything that goes into your mouth and that has calories. Just track it.

Ben Fudge [00:13:34]:
And then,

Nick Urban [00:13:34]:
Before you continue there, for people who think they have an idea of how much they’re consuming and they’ve never actually measured or tracked it in any way, do you often see there’s a big discrepancy between their perception and what’s actually going on?

Ben Fudge [00:13:48]:
Huge discrepancy. And it comes with that now that you’re being aware, right? How you might find that you eat 200, 300, 400 calories just by Cooking dinner, right? The chips are out or whatever is out. You gotta sample things, right? You gotta make sure that there’s no poison in your dinner, right? But all of those calories matter. And so as you start being able to be aware of how much you actually consume over the day, it’s like a profit and loss statement. Most entrepreneurs and everybody has some level of financial literacy. It’s like a debit card. Same thing calorically. But, as you figure out what are my charges on my debit card, you can have more control and you become aware of what calories you have throughout your day.

Ben Fudge [00:14:33]:
And so, just by asking somebody to factually and objectively report their calories, we find that most people really elicit some pretty good changes right up front just by tracking everything that they put in their mouth because the handful of chips, the handful of candy, the handful of nuts that might seem like a health food certainly add up calorically quite a bit.

Nick Urban [00:14:57]:
And then, for this process itself, when people are actually tracking, are you having them write down everything they’re consuming and then take a picture of it or weigh it? Like, how does that actually look?

Ben Fudge [00:15:06]:
We weigh everything to the gram. We, in terms of one, you’re actually already tracking everything. And so, I think dispelling that sort of friction point is actually very important for people. You are tracking all the time. It just is a matter of how accurate you are in your tracking. Food gets put on a plate. That’s tracking because you’re looking at it visually. It just might be, how accurate are you? How accurate are you in the caloric makeup of that food? How accurate are you in terms of how much food volume there is? You’re actually even tracking just based off how you look, how you feel, how you take stock throughout your day.

Ben Fudge [00:15:43]:
We just ask you to be more accurate in that because the more accurate you are, the more accurate we can be within the overall manipulations downstream. And so, we get a lot of, I don’t know how to track. I don’t know how to do this. It’s like, you already do this. And so, dispelling that myth actually can be quite alleviating for people. So, we track everything to the gram. We make it very simple within the 4-4-9 method, 4 calories per gram of carbs, 4 calories per gram of protein, 9 calories per gram of fat. I know there’s some nuance with sugar alcohols, things like that that you can certainly dive into.

Ben Fudge [00:16:18]:
At the same point, what we are really trying to figure out is that base-level pyramid. Are you eating enough? Are you eating too much? Are you eating too little? And then graduate from there. Because then it’s like, now that we have a good foundational understanding of how much you eat, then it’s, can you hit a caloric target? Are you eating foods as ingredients versus foods with ingredients? What does your balance look like? Are you eating consistently throughout the day? Are you getting 3 to 5 meals a day? And what does that look like for you? Do you have specific eating patterns? And then we can make it kind of as complicated or as simple as you want. There’s a lot of people that we just kind of naturally stay at, almost protein and calories, because a natural distribution of proteins, carbs, and fats naturally happens. Can you add novelty? Of course. 95% of the time, most people eat generally the same menu on repeat most of the time.

Nick Urban [00:17:12]:
Yeah. Yes. That’s a good heuristic. Start with protein and calories, and the rest will mostly fall into place, and you can make some tweaks here or there. But the highest leverage stuff is just to focus on those 2 first.

Ben Fudge [00:17:24]:
And then, we start layering in some other levers to be pulled. What does your sleep look like? Are you persistent and consistent in your sleep? And, I use persistent very purposely in that regard because consistency has a lot of times gotten people to where they are. Now, we need the persistence to follow through and behaving differently. And so, the big 4 fundamental things that we look at: sleep, hydration, nutrition, Activity and just running those simple frameworks on repeat. And then it’s, can you apply those same 4 pillars across domain, across various situations at work, on vacation, during the holidays, during Christmas, during Halloween? And then you start developing that awareness of that opportunity cost of, I have this, that’s fine. We’ve removed the judgment. Did it move me closer or further away? How long does it take my body to recover from a night out with the boys or something along those lines? Are you okay with that? It might take 2 or 3 weeks to recover from. You’re ultimately the one that has to live with those consequences and getting people comfortable with their decisions more so than judgments.

Nick Urban [00:18:35]:
How do you help people figure out, for example, how long it will take them to recover from one decision they make, like going out and staying up late or something?

Ben Fudge [00:18:44]:
Data. Ultimately, data, data, data. And so, holding is, we take a very scientific approach. We try to limit the number of variables instituted within the system at any given time. That’s also why we don’t throw as many variables at somebody right up front. So, they have a great control of the number of variables within the system themselves. If sleep and hydration and all of those are in flux, which one ultimately caused the friction point, we’re going to pull on the biggest lever first, which is that sleep, because sleep has so many downstream impacts. And then, we work through the other variables, but then, we have a good control over the variables that have remained consistent.

Ben Fudge [00:19:25]:
Then, we also have good control over the variables that have fluctuated a bit. And so that we can very accurately determine, okay, you went from your overall variance within your fat content changed about 10%, and you see a little bit in terms of the overall inflammatory responses therein. Great. Now, we know because you flexed some calories from protein to fat, and we see an increase on the scale, and we have all that data and historical data and historical evidence, we can look and go, well, your protein went down 10 grams per day on average, and we saw the scale go up. and your fat content went up, even if you hit the same calories, then we know, all right, we gotta flex some calories back to protein. We gotta get some calories back to protein or back to carbs and see what happens in terms of the overall scale weight. And we just keep running that experiment time in and time out so that you know and can manipulate those calories and those macros on purpose and with purpose.

Nick Urban [00:20:27]:
And obviously, when people are going through different life circumstances, through different life transitions and everything, say they’re training for something, their caloric intake is going to need to change, their perhaps macro composition, what they’re eating might need to change. How do you help people make sure that they’re going in the right direction with that?

Ben Fudge [00:20:46]:
Take a very holistic approach because if you’re familiar with the theory of constrained energy expenditure, right? If you’re training for something specific, you might be training exceptionally hard for that event. What does that do to the rest of your day? If you go out for a 10-mile run, you might work, like, move less during the rest of the day. And so, we take a holistic approach and utilize that activity as a part of the bigger story. How does this impact you in the day? Because you might move less throughout the day as dedicated training and activity happens, or if it remains consistent, then it might actually lead to what do we do with the calories? Now, we’re not going to also just throw calories at the problem. We’re going to titrate up. Because if I were to be like, Nick, you just ran out 10 miles, and I threw 500, and you start putting on weight, where between where you were and that 500 calories is that overall balance point? We don’t know. And so, we’d have to kind of bracket up until we meet that threshold. And so, we’d take a steady incremental approach if someone’s training for something so that we have a very good control over the variability and can be as accurate as we can with with the caloric intake to be able to balance the training requirements, but also the aesthetic and intake sort of idea to be able to make sure that they’re getting enough calories, they’re getting enough protein, they’re getting enough digestible carbon basically to be able to support whatever they’re training for and recover appropriately.

Nick Urban [00:22:19]:
Is there a particular biomarker or something you’re looking at to say, okay, we added 200 calories per day and now we’re at the perfect balance point. If we add more, then we’ll be gaining weight that we don’t necessarily want to gain. If we add less, we’ll be under-recovered and therefore not being able to perform at our highest level. Of course, it could be more complicated, but are there any particular things you’d like to look at to see if someone’s hit that perfect balance point?

Ben Fudge [00:22:45]:
We can, we can, that’s the best part is having multiple data points to be able to confirm or deny ultimately, because if you’re only dedicated to the scale, that scale can present particular problems, particularly if you’re training for something specific. What does your insert marker for performance also balance in? Have you remained control over your particular benchmarks within your training as well? And so, it’s a balance of scale weight, it’s a balance of aesthetics, it’s a balance of heart rate variability. It can be a balance of if you actually get your blood work done. That’s a big thing that we we look to is how do you know? Because somebody could be like, oh, I’m deficient in zinc, I’m deficient in this one micronutrient. And my overall response a lot of times is, how do you know? And so, if you don’t know, you’re guessing. And so, getting some specific markers done or blood work done if you’re training for something specific while also balancing what do you look like in the mirror over the course of probably 2 weeks. 2 weeks takes, most biological processes take anywhere from 2 to weeks in order to balance out. So, we’re going to be gathering data for at least a couple of weeks at certain markers in particular if someone’s training for something specific.

Ben Fudge [00:24:04]:
What does your volume look like in terms of training? How consistently can we control the other variables to confirm or deny whatever biomarker that we’re working on at the time to be able to balance that performance with overall intake?

Nick Urban [00:24:19]:
Ben, you went from finance to Ranger Regiment to nutrition coaching.

Ben Fudge [00:24:24]:
Oh, God. Yeah.

Nick Urban [00:24:24]:
What did all that teach you about behavior change that just the certification by itself wouldn’t have taught you?

Ben Fudge [00:24:30]:
I have learned that there can be a lot to be gathered with giving yourself grace and looking at things from a performance level, uh, or, or from an objective level more than a performance level. So I went into finance. I graduated from Miami University with a degree in finance expecting that I was gonna be the youngest CEO of Procter Gamble. I was gonna make all the money in the world. I was gonna go into investment banking. That was actually my background, uh, as I was going through my junior year was like I was in sell-side mergers and acquisitions. And I was like, I’m going to make all this money in the world and then whatever. But then I was like, I want to join.

Ben Fudge [00:25:04]:
I had always had that itch, Nick, to join the military and the special operations in particular. And I was actually really torn between, do I want to be a Navy SEAL? Do I want to be a Marine and do the Marine special operations? Or did I want to join the Army? And really I went through the kind of pros and cons analysis of each and was like, well, Well, attrition rates within the Navy SEALs are what they are. I accept that. It’s a challenging course. And I was like, if I get hurt or something’s outside of my control that happens, I didn’t want to end up on a boat. That is really what it boiled down to. And so I was like, okay, Navy SEALs are out. And so I was like, Army made the most sense.

Ben Fudge [00:25:45]:
Army has, and I was like, do I want to be a Green Beret? Do I want to be an Army Ranger? Things like that. I didn’t really know what Green Berets did. I actually went in with the Green Beret sort of intent and was like, oh, the Green Berets train indigenous forces. I didn’t want to do that. And so, I was like, let’s go Ranger. And so, I joined up with the Rangers, spent almost my entire career in the Ranger. And then, that’s actually where I met Dr. Kashey as a friend because he was working out with Complete Human Performance.

Ben Fudge [00:26:15]:
I was like, why can’t I both be very, very strong and very, very fast? And, that hybrid sort of methodology of running and lifting at a high level.

Nick Urban [00:26:23]:
And, Dr.

Ben Fudge [00:26:24]:
Cashy was advising Complete Human Performance in that capacity and we struck up a friendship and we were talking philosophy, behavior change, things like motivation. And then, I graduated Ranger School and I lost 60 pounds in Ranger School. I went into Ranger School at 215 pounds and came out of Ranger School at 165. And, I asked Dr. Cashy, I was like, I want to get back to where I was physically because the normal Progression from Ranger School is you put a lot of weight back on because you’ve been sleep deprived. You haven’t been eating. You’ve basically been starving for the entirety of however long you’ve been in Ranger School. You’re kind of messed up.

Ben Fudge [00:27:03]:
And so Dr. Kashey, throughout his wisdom, went, Ben, look at the people who put on weight. What do they do? And I was like, okay. And he’s like, whatever they do, don’t do that. And I was like, it was so Mm-hmm. And so applicable that I was like, this guy knows, I can understand this. I get this. That makes a ton of sense.

Ben Fudge [00:27:28]:
And so throughout that time, and as Dr. Kashey and I got to know each other, that sort of stimulus-response outcome that we also learned about, we talked about earlier, was applicable to leadership, was applicable to decision-making, was applicable to behavior change, because even in combat, How do you create space between stimulus and response? How do you make the most informed decision that you can? There’s a stimuli. You get shot at. What do you want? Like ultimately, how do you create space to be able to respond accordingly to that stimuli? You give yourself time and space and as much time and space as you can to be able to make an informed decision as a leader in particular, even as As a normal guy, a normal Joe, how do you give yourself time and space to be able to respond accordingly? And so it just now starts being a graduate level of, one, how do you create space? How do you create space between stimulus and response to make the decision and a response in accordance with your desired long-term outcome? And then 2, what behaviors from a leadership perspective are you trying to reinforce? And looking at those as behaviors and reinforcing behaviors that you want to see more of, giving neutral responses to behaviors that you might not want to see, or if someone’s cutting corners or things like that, offering that sort of punishment, if you will, to be able to course-correct in that sort of arena. And then, I was like, as I got medically retired from the military, I was like, what do I like to do? I like applying this and helping people do more cool things with their bodies, do more cool things with their lives. And, it was a natural progression of I’ve got a ton of experience in terms of the application and multi-domain that I’ve learned via nutrition to other things. And, So, it was just kind of a natural transition over to Trevor Kashey Nutrition as a nutrition coach to help people take control and autonomy back over their lives.

Nick Urban [00:29:26]:
Ben, when you’re on the battlefield and you’re being shot at, what did you do to increase the time between stimulus and response so you could figure out how you wanted to show up and what’d you want to do?

Ben Fudge [00:29:35]:
There’s a couple of tactical ways that I think about in terms of the ability. And one could simply be take a breath. Honestly, I was like, you have a problem and your mind is going to go 100 miles an hour initially. You’re going to get that adrenaline dump. You’re just going to start going, going, going. So one is, have you practiced what you actually want to see happen? Have you practiced it enough within the, as close to conditions as combat as you can? You can never practice enough, honestly. And that is something that I harp on for a lot of young guys throughout the, is like, you can never practice enough. So just keep practicing, practicing, practicing.

Ben Fudge [00:30:13]:
Keep showing up, keep putting in the reps, and keep working hard. 2 is at the time, how do you switch gears? How do you get to that thinking slow? And sometimes it can be as simple as focusing on something else. Like in that example, take a breath. What have I been trained to do? What is my first step in this drill? Because the Army does a great job of giving you the answers to the test, basically. Now it’s how do you remember the answers to the test? One is practice. 2 is deliberately drawing your mind to that. And so it’s getting yourself enough time and space to remember what the heck is going on. We want it to be as habitual as possible, which is practice, but at the same time, you can’t practice getting shot at at times.

Ben Fudge [00:30:59]:
And so giving yourself enough time and space via our breath, via some physical distance to make an informed decision, particularly as a leader. That’s why I’m like, if you’re a leader within an organization, It’s hard to both lead and do. And so giving yourself time and space to be able to make a decision, take the emotions out of it, and respond accordingly. A story I remember is I had a buddy that unfortunately got shot and you respond to him and you go, and I went, what’s my acronym? What’s my acronym? And it’s the MARCH, massive hemorrhaging, airway, respiration, circulation, hypothermia, head, neck, and evac. And I was like, like, I’ve known that I’ve practiced it, but just going, march. Okay. Go. Gave me enough time and space to go, okay, I get that my buddy just got hit, but I need to work my problem.

Ben Fudge [00:31:48]:
What problem am I trying to solve right now? Well, I need to stop the bleeding. And so just by taking that breath, taking that split second to be able to create some time and space and respond within my skill level and training that I’ve gone through.

Nick Urban [00:32:03]:
Yeah. I’ve read that the military uses box breathing or has been using box breathing to help stay calm under the highest intensity stresses that you can endure. But even what you’re saying here is interesting is that it doesn’t necessarily need to be like a full 90-second or 5-minute practice or anything. Literally one controlled breath can give you enough time between the stimulus and response to actually rehearse what you’ve gone through mentally and then enact it.

Ben Fudge [00:32:30]:
And unfortunately, and this is, if it takes that amount of time and somebody unfortunately passes, Unfortunately, there’s going to be times where that’s unfortunately going to happen. It is warfare at some respect, and the enemy does get a vote. And so if somebody does pass within that split second that you need to take time and space, unfortunately it’s probably going to happen. And so it’s working within the parameters and the scarcity of what you have to be able to respond accordingly. And I think back to even that time and space as a leader within the military is also going to give you options. So if I’m in a room with a bad guy, I’m very limited in my options that I have. I have to figure out who’s a better shooter. But if I get one room back, I’ve got more options.

Ben Fudge [00:33:13]:
If I get 2 rooms back, I have more options. If I get outside the building, I have more options. And the same thing can be applied to business, to nutrition, to insert any domain there. Give yourself enough time and space to be able to make an informed decision. And as you give yourself more time and space, You’re going to make a more informed decision or even think through contingencies even more effectively.

Nick Urban [00:33:38]:
Yeah. And if something applies in the most high-stakes environments, it probably will translate to the lower stakes. When someone’s looking at a scale, their heart skips a beat because they see they’ve put on 5 pounds. That’s not quite life or death the same way that your situations were.

Ben Fudge [00:33:53]:
It’s not life or death. No, but it is a reflection of the decisions that you’ve made. And that’s okay. Again, looking at things as like, this is just a product of my decisions because you can feel the feel. And that’s a very important thing. You can feel scared when you get shot at. You can feel your heart can skip a beat when you see that number on the scale. What are you going to do next? And so you can certainly feel the feels and you can behave differently and you can behave in accordance with your desired long-term outcome.

Ben Fudge [00:34:23]:
Certainly feel the feels. And then what’s the problem I’m trying to solve? You put on 5 pounds. Okay, great. What are you going to do? Give up or keep going? You know, it’s a very, it’s a very fun thing is when you look at those as opportunities to learn, opportunities to grow, particularly in kind of those lower stakes environments.

Nick Urban [00:34:49]:
If training and planning are important and going through the different contingencies applied to you on the battlefield, It also can apply to other people in daily life. It’s like, I know I’m going to go to this party. There will be these types of foods or beverages out. I’m going to feel the temptation to consume them. And I’m going to like mentally visualize, rehearse this internally so that when it actually appears and it happens, that I’ve already rehearsed this and it’s no longer this foreign thing that I couldn’t possibly have anticipated. It’s not going to be brand new. And it’ll be easier to make the right decision. Do you see that working in other environments as well?

Ben Fudge [00:35:26]:
Absolutely. Absolutely. Is it going to work perfectly the first time you do it? I’m going to tell you no, like it’s not, but at the same point, it’s going to be better than it was. And looking at those situations in terms of, okay, how does that planning work going forward? And that’s the big thing is make as many decisions ahead of time that you can. Because in particularly new environments, parties, things like that, get-togethers, it’s a very stimulating environment. And so making decisions in a highly stimulating environment, especially when they’re new, can be a challenge. And so making decisions ahead of time that can influence and put the odds in your favor that you’re going to behave in accordance with your outcome can be a very, very big thing. We make thousands of decisions that we don’t even think about.

Ben Fudge [00:36:14]:
And so, particularly as you’re learning to behave a new way, being deliberate and purposeful in those decisions definitely sets you up for success. Do you look at the menu ahead of time? Do you make the decision on what you’re going to order at this business get-together ahead of time? Do you order first? And even one of those things that we practice a lot of, if you can’t make a decision, how can you create space? Very tactical sort of level decision of like, I always encourage Like if you haven’t seen the menu or you haven’t looked at the menu ahead of time, sit down, look at the menu, then stand up and go wash your hands. Get away from the table. Nobody’s going to ask a question if you’re like, I need to go to the bathroom and wash my hands. But you’ve gotten away from additional distractions, additional stimuli of people sitting at the table, the waiter bugging you about what you want to order. And so that you can digest what you just saw and make a more informed decision. Again, simply looking at it as how do I give myself time and space to make that informed decision? Planning contingencies ahead of time allows you to think through the plan more effectively, rehearse it more in your mind, or practice the skills therein, develop information, develop high probability contingencies, as well as visualize what, how do I want to show up in this situation? Can be a very big tool in those overstimulating environments.

Nick Urban [00:37:32]:
We’ve alluded to this several times, and on our previous intro call, you asked me what happens at the end And I thought about it for a bit. And the answer is obviously in the words themselves. Break that down. Why does calling it a diet almost guarantee the reversion?

Ben Fudge [00:37:52]:
Because it offers you an opportunity to go back to the way things were and the way things were. Again, why I used persistence instead of consistency and the persistence to behave a new way is it allows you to go, well, I’m just going to go back to the way I was. Well, the way you were before led to you being overweight or led to a version of yourself you didn’t enjoy. And so, to expect that you’re going to just end this diet and all your problems are magically going to be solved is a fallacy. And so, there’s that sort of transitional space of getting your act together, getting your shit together, and then keeping your shit together. And once you you’ve done the getting your shit together. Now it’s how do we reinforce that consistency? How do we persist? How do we keep going, keep practicing so that these skills, these behaviors, our outlook, how we manage emotions, how we manage stress becomes more and more proficient so that it does become just who we are. It becomes a part of our identity.

Ben Fudge [00:38:53]:
It becomes a part of that belief system that is the center of the SRO model.

Nick Urban [00:38:59]:
When people come to you and they have followed a diet, how do you coach them through that and specifically the language around it? Because obviously, the language is very important.

Ben Fudge [00:39:11]:
Language is a very important thing because language is how we give ourselves instructions. And, we find that a lot of people struggle to be as specific as they need to be within the language themselves. How do you determine enough? How do you determine I want to go to bed earlier. And so we really work through the accuracy of someone’s language to be able to articulate and give themselves clear, concise instructions to be able to behave accordingly. And a lot of times where you have these notions of dieting culture, of you’ve done some extreme things in order to get these extreme results. So what we do is we sort of break down some of those old expectations that they have because they’ve learned 12 Weeks, New Me, you see some extreme results. But, at the same point, then we go, oh, I’m not seeing the same results as having a big gulp of air for lunch and dinner. Great, cool.

Ben Fudge [00:40:07]:
Well, having a big gulp of air for lunch and dinner also led you to the revision of that weight. And so, we break down a lot of those old patterns, those old behavior patterns to be able to reinforce new ones. And, that is an important aspect is You’ve learned to behave one way, which is great. It shows that you have a very good human operating system. And that tells us that you can learn to behave a different way. Is it going to take time? Is it going to take practice? Is it going to be frustrating? Is it going to be, are you going to ride the ups and downs? Absolutely. And that’s what having a benefit of a coach long-term to be able to help you stay accountable is a great thing. It reminds me of a story that I had with Dr.

Ben Fudge [00:40:49]:
Kashey as I was training up for Delta selection. I’ve gone to Delta selection twice. And I went, I was getting a little bit frustrated and I was on the phone with him and he goes, Ben, you need a coach. And I was like, Dr. Kashey, I don’t, I was throwing my own little temper tantrum, throwing my own toddler came out. I was like, I don’t need a coach. I’ve been training for, at this point it was like 15 years, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I don’t need a coach to tell me how to get in shape.

Ben Fudge [00:41:15]:
And he goes, no, you don’t, Ben. You need a coach to tell you when you’re being silly. And it was just like, again, one of those slap upside the head where you’re just like, darn, this, he gets it. Like, and so that’s the benefit of having a coach long-term in terms of helping you behave differently, helping you get out of your own way, help you see above the weeds that, and again, what it’s doing versus seeing the grand picture and helping you remain as objective as you can, can be a very, very good thing because surrounding yourself with people who love and support you and have your own self-interest at heart is an indubitable, it has an indubitable impact on success.

Nick Urban [00:42:04]:
I’m sure some people come to you and they don’t just want to lose weight. Perhaps they want to train more effectively for whatever thing is going on in their life. Perhaps they want to gain muscle, perhaps they want just more energy. And, you mentioned that there’s different spokes. I think you said 4. And, if someone comes to you, they think they already have nutrition dialed, is it sleep that you go on to next? You always evaluate that as a potential high-leverage thing for them to look into?

Ben Fudge [00:42:31]:
It can really depend, Nick, in terms of what problem you’re trying to solve. Again, back to that specificity of intent and to that specificity of instruction. And so, I’ve got members on my roster who No intention of actually losing anything in terms of weight. Great. We counsel people all the time on business decisions, on relationships, on how they communicate, because the same fundamentals ultimately apply. If someone is coming to be stronger or stronger in some specific lift, or they have some specific training that they’re looking for in terms of physical, great. Let’s break it down. What does that mean? What does it look like? I like using powerlifters in this approach.

Ben Fudge [00:43:11]:
Is this a, is powerlifting, looking at powerlifting as a movement-based thing? And then, how do you break the movement down? Taking the bench press for an example. Well, getting the bar off your chest to about halfway up at the elbow flare is a proponent of the lift. How do you get stronger at that portion of the lift? Then, the elbow flare to the lockout can be another separate problem that we try to solve. And so, breaking the The skill development, what problem you’re trying to solve, practicing the skill, getting better. And then it’s what is the next problem that we ultimately need to solve? Using that same bench press example, once you start getting good at getting the bar off your chest, well, you’re probably going to start failing at the elbow flare. Great. Good. And then we work on the elbow flare for the next block.

Ben Fudge [00:43:57]:
And then what happens? You’re probably going to start failing on the chest again. And then we just keep playing that ladder game. But your skill development and the baseline Of how you approach that has ultimately increased every single time. Same can be applied to business, looking at the things of like what is the problem you’re trying to solve? Oh, I have a revenue problem. Great. What does that mean? You need more customers. You need more leads. You need more marketing qualified leads.

Ben Fudge [00:44:21]:
And then we break it down to that data point of like you know how many leads come in. You know what your conversion rate is. How do you get more leads? How do you increase your conversion rate? I’ve got. relationships that I’m trying to improve upon? Great. What does the communication look like? How does the coding decoding work? And so, we actually have quite a few members on our roster that have almost no qualms about physicality training for something, but ultimately want to behave or make more informed decisions. And we help break that down for them also.

Nick Urban [00:44:51]:
Here’s another one I’ve heard you say, and it is life is a marathon, not a sprint, but a marathon is still a race and races end.

Ben Fudge [00:45:00]:
So, what’s wrong with that frame and what Very similar to the idea of ending the diet, right? When the marathon is over, what happens? Are you going to stop running? Are you going to stop? And if you’re specifically training for a marathon, yes, you ultimately are. Again, you’re training for something specific. But looking at life as how do we increase the skill acquisition over life? How do we behave differently? How do we make more informed decisions and take a lifelong approach, especially as it pertains to behavior change? Like we mentioned, the belief systems, the practice of these skills takes an exceptionally long time to break down because I’m 35 years old. I’ve practiced some skills and behaviors for the greater part of 35 years, whether that is intentional or unintentional. And so it can take just as long to break down some of the things, ideally not as long because we’re doing it now on purpose and looking for these opportunities to deliberately practice behaving a different way. And then how do you reinforce it? How do you be habitual in that nature, then what is the next problem you’re trying to solve? Are you trying to level up? Because ultimately we become professional problem solvers. Once you solve one problem, there’s going to be about 15 other ones that naturally start to rear their ugly head that you didn’t even think about. Great.

Ben Fudge [00:46:17]:
Which ones are worth your time? Which ones are easy to do? And you can look at that from that perspective. What is easy to do and practice frequently? What have high returns on investment? In order to start building that momentum in the direction of your intention, because it can be a daunting thing of practice and iterating and stress. Like all of those things have a profound impact on your ability to perform in whatever domain that might be.

Nick Urban [00:46:44]:
How do you balance focusing on the one individual little thing, say this tiny little part of the overall movement or raising the floor? so that everything is more effective across more domains? Because obviously you want some degree of both of them, but then at any point you can only focus on one or the other. You can only focus on one particular very specific component, or you can focus on the overall.

Ben Fudge [00:47:12]:
Well, ultimately your brain can only really focus on one thing. It’s like the idea of give deliberate effort to whatever that thing that you are focusing on. Anybody that’s like, oh, I can balance multiple things at once, is really you’re just flipping back and forth between those things in rapid succession. I’m focusing on this, then I’m focusing, and then just going back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. And so, focusing on that deliberate action allows you to build evidence. It allows you to build that structure. It allows you to do things on purpose. So really what we do is we build the structure and the awareness piece of things, and then we start building that evidence because that evidence is going to start creating confidence.

Ben Fudge [00:47:49]:
That confidence is going to build persistence and consistency. And as you do it more and more, you start building even more of it. It’s more consistent. You build that identity piece. And then we look at the application of how do we take this structure and apply it across domain? Because if you have a structure that’s working for you, great. How do you apply it to other domains? And looking at it of anything you practice frequently, anything you practice 3 to 5 times a day, you’re going to get pretty proficient at. And so is the beta Or the correlation going to be perfectly to this next domain? No, not likely. If you’re trying to take a nutritional approach to the workplace, is the beta going to be 1? No, it’s not.

Ben Fudge [00:48:31]:
But at the same point, if I went, hey, it’s going to have a 50% applicability to the workplace environment, that’s much, much better than trying to create a workplace structure from ground zero. And I’ve actually done this with one of my members that is a wealth management guy is we took his awareness sheet of his Excel document, basically that running Excel document and went, this is how you’d modify this to fit workplace performance. And so that he can gather data and not have to come up with his own system from ground zero. He already kind of knew. And then it’s just a matter of gathering the data. How do you apply the workplace data to this structure? And make the smaller tweaks versus trying to come up with it from ground zero.

Nick Urban [00:49:17]:
Yes, exactly. Those kinds of things where you can modify, you can learn a proficiency, a skill, and you can adapt it to being useful in different scenarios. That seems like it’s a really good place to focus for most people.

Ben Fudge [00:49:30]:
We call it skills to build skills. Like, how do you deliberately set out to develop the skills to learn proficiency in other skills? How do you break that down? And so, one of those things is momentum. How do you reinforce that idea of learning something new, that skill acquisition, looking from operant conditioning and B.F. Skinner’s approach to behavior modification? Something that you can do frequently, something that you can reward often and as immediate as you can in order to start building momentum. So, we look at things and like, what is the lowest hanging fruit in this And then practice it, reinforcement, because as you start building that evidence, as you reinforce it, you’re going to keep showing up. And ultimately through showing up, practicing, and building, you can start developing confidence. You can start building momentum. The hardest thing for most people at work is just logging on the computer for the first time.

Ben Fudge [00:50:22]:
So how do we decrease the amount of time or how do we make it reinforced to show up? How do you make it easy to start the activity, especially when it’s new. If it’s something physical, like I want to go out and run, how do you make seeing your shoes a reinforced behavior? Because if you see your shoes, you’re more likely to do it. If you set your clothes out the night before, you’re more likely to go out, go for that run, go for that workout in spite of whatever thing you might be feeling, stressed, tired, sleepy, whatever. Operant conditioning has a huge proponent on how we do things in in Trevor Kashey Nutrition. How do you wake up in the morning? Your phone goes off, the alarm goes off, you hit snooze and you go right back to bed. Great. The problem, you’ve made that thing go away. You’ve just reinforced, hey, I’m going to remove this pain point, the alarm going off.

Ben Fudge [00:51:12]:
Like, great. Now that’s reinforced just staying in bed. So put your phone somewhere else that you have to get out of bed to turn it off can be a huge way to start the process of showing up for yourself or learning whatever new skill that Yeah.

Nick Urban [00:51:28]:
And that one’s interesting too, because if your alarm goes off, you click snooze, you go back to sleep. It seems like it’s a small little thing. Like you just click snooze, went back to sleep, but really it’s teaching your brain that there’s a link here that when this happens, it doesn’t actually mean anything to me. I can just click a button and it goes away. And in a way, it also like on a micro level creates a little bit of of like self-betrayal. It’s like, hey, this mattered to me of getting up at this time. And I say that it matters. I set my alarm for this time, but then I don’t actually follow through on it.

Nick Urban [00:52:03]:
And it’s better just to change your alarm to be the time that you wanted to wake up after the snooze. So say 10 minutes later than it was set originally and to have the phone in the other room or farther away where you have to get out of bed.

Ben Fudge [00:52:17]:
And that is a big thing is like, what is the definition of mental toughness? And we define mental toughness as just doing what you said you’re going to do. do. And so how do you set the odds in your favor that you get to, you are going to do what you say you’re going to do and then reinforce it. And whatever that might be, reinforcement is one of those things that a lot of people struggle with, particularly for themselves. A lot of people give a lot of really good grace to other people. They reinforce other people very, very well. It’s a challenge to reinforce behaviors with yourself, to reward yourself for a job well done. Even in the military, it was one of those things that Excellence is the expectation, not the exception, right? That can be a very limiting sort of idea.

Ben Fudge [00:53:04]:
How do you perpetuate good behavior? How good things, the excellence, you make it known, you reward it, you reinforce it to the point that people want to achieve it. They get that reinforcement. And so how do you take that same approach to yourself? Like I said, a lot of people are very good about giving that to other people. Nick, you did a great job on this podcast. You did a great job on that. But then it’s like, how do I do that for myself? And it can be as simple as giving yourself the self-high-five, giving yourself a pat on the back, checking something off the list. People love lists. Check it off the list, scratch it off the list.

Ben Fudge [00:53:40]:
Let it be known that you are proud of yourself, letting the group know within TKN that, hey, I did this really cool thing. Let other people also love and support you in order to reinforce reinforce even more things that move you forward.

Nick Urban [00:53:54]:
And the only one of the few forms of self-reinforcement that might not be as beneficial, and I think it’s the one that people tend to turn to first and foremost, is like rewarding through some kind of external behavior or substance or even a food, I guess.

Ben Fudge [00:54:14]:
Oh yeah.

Nick Urban [00:54:15]:
And that’s not necessarily going to be the uplifting kind of rewarding that you want.

Ben Fudge [00:54:21]:
Food is a particular one that is just pervasive within society. How do you cope with being sad? You eat. How do you cope with celebrations? You eat. And so, a lot of our own societal norms and societal reinforcements revolve around food. And so, how do we do something else? What we look for is different. How do we reward doing something else? How do you set that expectation? How do you draw your own boundaries of things that serve you, things that move you closer to your goal. And it’s an experiment because one reward system that might work when you’re at home might not work when you’re on vacation, might not work at work. And so coming up with those contingencies and those plans deliberately to be able to see, does this, does this apply? And it allows you to work through that experiment to figure out what does work.

Ben Fudge [00:55:12]:
It goes back to the Thomas Edison sort of analogy. I found out 10,000 ways not to make a light bulb. light bulb. Great. But it ultimately led him to finding the one that does. Same sort of idea as it pertains to reinforcement and what leads to you doing more good things. And a lot of people view discipline as sort of punishment or something along those lines. Even I like using the analogy of vacation of like, if you view sticking to your plan as punishment on vacation, you’re going to start to detest vacation.

Ben Fudge [00:55:40]:
How long are you going to do something that you view as a punishment from a behavioral perspective? Not very long. If you start viewing the gym as something that you loathe or something that is a chore, you’re not going to do it for very long. And so that simple reframe of how do you want to show up in this situation? How do you want to behave in this situation? Allows you to look at that from an objective level and reinforce those behaviors that move you forward.

Nick Urban [00:56:06]:
Hmm. Let’s explore Ironic process theory, the whole idea of don’t think about a pink elephant. Tell people what happens in the brain the second a diet or something is saying, don’t eat a cookie.

Ben Fudge [00:56:21]:
What, well, even just that instance, I go, well, I thought of a cookie. So, your brain has 2 operating systems generally at once. It’s got like the idea of don’t think about the pink elephant or don’t think about the cookie, but then your brain also goes through the monitoring process. Of, am I thinking about this thing? Am I not thinking about this cookie? And so just by those 2 operating systems psychologically at once, your brain is in tune to thinking about the cookie. So substitution in that regard is the most meaningful way of progress. What do you want to think about? And that same idea can be applied to a number of behavior things. What are the things you want to do? Giving yourself clear, positive, present tense, and actionable instructions of what do you want to do? I want to go to bed earlier. Great.

Ben Fudge [00:57:11]:
What does that mean? I want to go to bed at 9:00 PM. Great.

Nick Urban [00:57:15]:
Cool.

Ben Fudge [00:57:16]:
That’s a positive present tense instruction. Now, the secondary effect is what does that look like in action? What does that mean for the rest of your day? Now that you’ve set that intention, how do you turn it into practice? That intention intervention How do you action that intent? Well, it might mean what time do you start shutting the house down? Okay, great. That’s easy. What’s the follow-on to that? Well, in terms of if it takes an hour to shut down the house and I want to be at bed by 9 o’clock, well, I got to start shutting down at 8. What does that mean for dinner? What does that mean for the other, the rest of your day? And just by being clear and concise and actionable within that, it allows you to do the thing. Something, make a plan and focusing on the things that you can do versus the things that you don’t want to do or generally want to avoid.

Nick Urban [00:58:05]:
So, after that, you’re reverse engineering, you have the endpoint that you want, and then you’re saying, okay, how do I get there? How do I have to schedule my day and my evening so that I arrive at that destination?

Ben Fudge [00:58:14]:
Exactly. Like, if you want to run a 5K, what does that mean? What does that take? Having an outcome goal is great. What does that mean? Especially if someone’s just starting out. Well, have you run before? Or when was the last time you ran? And so even looking at it from that perspective of, I have a member that wants to run a 5K. The first challenge I gave her was just go run. I don’t care for how long. I just want you to run. And so the idea of, she got up, she ran, and then she let me know again, the ability to reinforce that behavior.

Ben Fudge [00:58:48]:
We’ll start getting her forward. And then once we start building on that behavior of I run, great. Can we either, what is the next lever we want to pull? Is it a duration of that singular run? Is it we want to run twice a week? Is it, and so that you can start looking at these things as steps along the journey. And ultimately, by being in tune with that process, that 5K is going to come to her. She’s, it’s just going to be a matter of showing up because she showed up all the way along the process.

Nick Urban [00:59:16]:
Hmm.

Ben Fudge [00:59:17]:
Same thing nutritionally.

Nick Urban [00:59:20]:
Yeah.

Ben Fudge [00:59:20]:
If you hit your targets, guess what? You’re probably going to lose weight. You’re going to decrease in body fat. Now, we can run into the idea of the scale versus the aesthetics and things like that of how 10% body fat looks on somebody that’s 200 pounds. It’s going to look vastly different than somebody that is 200 pounds at 25% body fat. They’re still 200 pounds. So, you might have to look at different markers along the way to confirm or deny, but at the same point, the same process applies.

Nick Urban [00:59:50]:
Ben, I’m hearing here that you’re coming at this from a place of gentleness with yourself and with others, and then also progress over perfection. Yet, obviously, in your background earlier, you were in a world built on discipline and standards and hard charging going forward How do you hold the tension of those 2 opposites when they both seem to yield some kind of results?

Ben Fudge [01:00:16]:
So punishment in that idea will only work until it basically doesn’t. And so it will also ultimately stunt growth. And so the most successful companies and the most successful organizations, whether that’s the military or beyond, are looking at things in terms of an idea of curiosity, in terms of how can we be incrementally better. And looking at the proverbial idea of discipline is doing something that you want to do, don’t want to do, or that you like just have to do in spite of, which there is a powerful case to be thinking one thing and the power of and behaving differently is that a lot of things can be held mutually exclusive or mutually, I’m going to say that again. A lot of things can be held within the same scope. I can think a standard, even within the military, is silly, and I can still adhere to it. I can think, and this is a good example because I had a good conversation with a senior enlisted advisor, was like, I think dog tags and wearing dog tags in the uniform is archaic and dumb. I can still wear them because that’s the standard.

Nick Urban [01:01:24]:
Yeah.

Ben Fudge [01:01:24]:
I can think and behave differently, and that is the power of and. I can be a upset and I can be a professional and I can show up and be professional. You can hold multiple thoughts and multiple things that are somewhat innocuous, but you can hold those thoughts simultaneously. And that is the power of and, because we also view discipline as when the mind and the body work together. When the mind and the body work together. When your thoughts, when your feelings, when your urges work with how you behave, you’re able to reinforcement and ultimately live a life of integrity and live that idea of I’m behaving in accordance with what I value.

Nick Urban [01:02:11]:
Ben, if people want to work with you, they want to find their and instead of a but, where do you want to send them?

Ben Fudge [01:02:18]:
If you’re ready to take control of your life, take control of your decisions, and ultimately live life on purpose and with purpose, visit TrevorKasheyNutrition.com. That is T-E-V-O-R-K-A-S-H-E-Y Nutrition.com and book a call with a member of our team.

Nick Urban [01:02:40]:
Can they request you specifically?

Ben Fudge [01:02:42]:
They can. They can request me specifically or one of our other coaches. We’ve got plenty of coaches with tons of varying degrees. If you feel more comfortable with a female or a male or a hard charger, like one of our coaches, Huggy, absolutely. If you want to work with me directly, absolutely. You can request me. You can email support@cashincommand.com and we can, we’ll definitely take care of you.

Nick Urban [01:03:04]:
Perfect. If people have made it this far in the conversation, what do you want to leave them with? Are there any final takeaway messages?

Ben Fudge [01:03:13]:
Keep going. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going. If they’re listening to this, they, there is a portion of them, Nick, that wants to continue to be better, that wants to continue to improve. If you, as the listener, are tired of where you’re at, take action. Take action and start building that momentum.

Nick Urban [01:03:41]:
Ben, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today.

Ben Fudge [01:03:44]:
Nick, it was a pleasure. And I look forward to coming back at some point in the Yeah.

Nick Urban [01:03:49]:
And thank you all for sharing your time, your energy, and your attention with us today. Until next time, be an outlier. Thanks for tuning in to High Performance Longevity. If you got value today, the best way to support the show is to leave a review or share it with someone who’s ready to upgrade their healthspan. You can find all the episodes, show notes and resources mentioned at outlier.com. Until next time, stay energized, stay bioharmonized, and be an outlier.