I want...
July 23, 2024 By
Leanne Vogel
February 4, 2025
Coach Bronson Dant
There’s only a few things that we need to do to fix 90% of the problems that people are having. Guys, it’s super easy. Eat more meat, lift more weight, get more sleep.
Leanne Vogel
Hello. Welcome. Welcome. We get to talk about one of my most favorite things and that is just mindset. And I myself struggle with mindset for sure. So today we’re talking about purpose and body confidence and what this is and how to have a different mindset which shifts your motivation and gets you motivated. We’re talking about moving well and moving often and nutrition, density and satiety and just everything to do with why you’re not doing what you know you should be doing and why that is. We’re going to be talking about grit and the simplification of our goals.
Leanne Vogel
It’s just. Oh, I just love our guest today, Dr. Coach Bronson. He has been on the show a couple of times. He has a new book that you can check out. I’m going to include the link in the show notes today for that. And it’s all about body confidence. And the first question, well, one of the first questions I ask him has to do with like, what is confidence? And to me, confidence is knowing that you’re on the right direction and not being swayed easily.
Leanne Vogel
And when we understand what’s going on with our body and we have inputs like little data points that we’re getting from our body, it becomes a lot easier to have confidence within what we’re doing. And I hope that through this conversation you see that much of the information that I share here on the show is so that you can have confidence, so that, you know, you start to put things two and two together. Like all the dots are starting to connect and you’re starting to understand yourself more. If you love this conversation with Coach Bronson, I’ve had him on the show before. Episode 398, we talked about keto and carnivore and workouts and motivation. And then episode 423, we chatted about how to gauge fitness performance outside of is the scale going up or down? Okay, so, so let’s cut over to our conversation with Bronson Dant. Hey, my name is Leanne and I’m fascinated with helping women navigate how to eat, move and care for their bodies. This has taken me on a journey from vegan keto, high protein to everything in between.
Leanne Vogel
I’m a small town holistic nutritionist, turned three time international bestselling author turned functional medicine practitioner offering telemedicine services around the globe to women looking to better their health and stop second guessing themselves. I’m here to teach you how to wade through the wellness noise to get to the good stuff that’ll help you achieve your goals. Whether you’re seeking relief from chronic ailments, striving for peak performance, or simply eager to live a more vibrant life, this podcast is your go to resource for actionable advice and inspiration. Together we’ll uncover the interconnectedness of nutrition, movement, sleep, stress management and mindset, empowering you to make informed choices that support your unique health journey. Think of it as quality time with your bestie mixed with a little med school so you’re empowered. At your next doctor visit, get ready to be challenged and encouraged while you learn about your body and how to care for it healthfully. Join me as we embrace vitality, reclaim our innate potential, and discover what it truly means to pursue healthfulness. Bronson, thanks for coming on the show again.
Coach Bronson Dant
Thanks for having me on again. I appreciate it.
Leanne Vogel
Leanne oh, of course. So for those of you out there that haven’t listened, you must, must, must listen to a couple of episodes that we’ve done with Coach Bronson in the past. That includes episode 398 and 423. And now we’re here to chat about motivation, mindset, nutrition. I never really know where these conversations are going to go, so I’m excited. What comes up?
Coach Bronson Dant
Let’s do it. I love this stuff.
Leanne Vogel
So we were just chatting before recording that you just attended the low carb cruise and you said this was the best one yet. Can you tell us what the cruise is and what your favorite part was?
Coach Bronson Dant
Yeah. So I’ll try to summarize the cruise. I believe if I overheard a conversation correctly, this might be the 18th or 19th year that they’ve been doing it. So it’s basically some amazing ladies who organize. I think we had almost 300 people this year and we basically just get on a cruise and we basically have a conference, like a regular keto health conference, but it’s on a cruise. So basically every day that we’re at sea and not we don’t have a port to be at or excursions and stuff, we’re in a conference. So, you know, this year we had, let’s see, we had Coach Jessica, Dr. Trow, Dr.
Coach Bronson Dant
Brian Lenskis, Dr. Bickman, Dr. D’Agostino and his wife also spoke. Dr. Leshia Ironica, Dr. Donald Vega, myself, Coach Natalie, two crazy ketos. One of my coaches, Michelle hall, the speaking Jonathan Shane, talked about some stuff. It was absolutely phenomenal from the first day to the last day, all the speakers, it was almost like.
Coach Bronson Dant
Which didn’t happen. Oh, Maria Emmerich talked about some stuff from the first day to the last day of the conference days that we had. It was literally a progression of let’s get our minds right first. Here’s how you look at all this information you’re about to spend the week getting. And then here’s all the information. If you’re new, here’s where you’re at. If you’re. If you’ve been doing it for a while and you’re stuck, here’s like.
Coach Bronson Dant
It was such a progression of information and the way everything flowed with the constant similar themes that I think we’ll talk about. The similar themes of information is good in context. There are nuances. Information is good, and it’s going to work based on where you are in the journey. We have all this information, but the consistent themes are things like, you need protein, you need muscle, you need to move your body, you need to get your mind right. You know, there’s, there’s, there’s all these things that it doesn’t matter what you’re doing. These are the things that we need to address, no matter what we call our diet or our lifestyle. And that I think was really super cool because none of us talk to each other beforehand, what we were talking about.
Coach Bronson Dant
It just. That’s kind of where I think a lot of us who have been doing this for a while kind of realize over time, you know, like, we just talked about slightly, you know, just a minute before we get on here, it’s not the diet that’s doing the thing. It’s the things that you’re implementing because of what the diet is asking you to do that’s making the difference. And that can be the same regardless of what label you put on that diet or fitness or lifestyle that you decide to go with. So it was. It was amazing. It was amazing.
Leanne Vogel
It’s always funny, like, when you haven’t chatted with somebody in a while in the space, and then you jump on a recording like this and you guys are finishing each other’s sentences, right? How are you on the same wavelength as me? Like, we’re all kind of doing this at the same time, and I find that so fun. And I love the direction that we’re all kind of taking as a collective with the let’s build muscle and let’s focus on protein. Because a couple of years ago, like, five years ago, within the low carb space, we were all very afraid of Protein triggering gluconeogenesis and everyone was keeping it low. What have you seen within the protein space that’s shifted and what views of yours have changed?
Coach Bronson Dant
Let’s answer the first question. What have I seen about protein in the space that people are? The shifting mindset around protein, I think the awareness of people thinking that diet alone is going to solve all their problems. I think people are starting to realize that it’s not just that, that there’s a fitness component, there’s a physiological component, not just a biological component. Um, and that in order to improve the physiological component, I. E. Build muscle, protein is a requirement. You have to do that. You have to, you’d have to get more protein than you’re getting in order to increase your muscle mass.
Coach Bronson Dant
Outside of the other things you gotta do as well. I think that that realization for people is probably the biggest thing because in my experience, for most of my probably say 80%, 90% of my clients are women who have been doing everything. Air quotes right on the nutrition side and still not getting to where they want to go. And the minute I tell them you need to eat more, particularly protein, and you need to start building muscle, everything changes for them. I have women that were doing hit that. I have, I have a bunch of different programs in my. In my system, but I’ve got functional fitness programs, I got high int interval training programs, I got a bunch of body weight programs. All of the women that have moved from those programs that I have to a program that I have called Muscle Mommies, which is literally no cardio, no high intense interval training, nothing.
Coach Bronson Dant
It is literally just strength training. They have seen the fastest, most impactful changes in their body composition over the shortest amount of time than they ever expected. And it’s blowing their minds. I stopped doing cardio and now my body’s changing. It’s like, yes, because the mus. Muscle is so crucial. Right. Protein is so crucial.
Coach Bronson Dant
So I think that’s where a lot of people are. They’ve been doing it for so long and not getting anywhere if it’s not working. At some point in time, you have to be confronted with the fact that what you’ve been doing isn’t working. You gotta do something else. So focusing on the fat isn’t working. Maybe we should start looking at protein.
Leanne Vogel
Yes, completely. I couldn’t agree with you more. And I’ve said that from the very beginning. If you’re bashing your head against a wall, like, why isn’t what I’m doing working? Like, because it’s not working. We need to try something else. We need to shift that perspective. So you have written a book called Body Confidence. It comes out in the fall.
Leanne Vogel
I want to ask you what body confidence means to you. Like, why would you, why would you write a book on body confidence? What, what’s the meaning of body confidence to you? And how does that tie into the work that you do?
Coach Bronson Dant
Yeah, so it’s everything about what I do, and I think at the root it’s the reason why everyone is on this journey. It has nothing to do with weight loss. It has nothing to do with looking a certain way. It has nothing to do with all of the things that we think of, self image, all those types of things. And it has to do with our, the freedoms that we have in life and our ability to trust what, what we can do. So I define, and it’s in the book I define body confidence as the freedom to engage in life because you trust your body to perform and protect you. That’s what it is. It takes the knowledge of what you can do, which you’re not going to know if you don’t challenge yourself.
Coach Bronson Dant
It takes the proof of overcoming those challenges to give yourself the evidence in life. And then it takes the. That’s what you have. You can’t have confidence if you never challenge yourself. You can’t have confidence if you don’t know. It’s not the fit guy that walks into a room that everybody goes, oh, man, look at him. He’s walking around like he owns the world. It’s not because of how he looks that gives him that mentality and makes the room stop and look at him.
Coach Bronson Dant
It’s not the super fit woman that walks into a room that everybody goes, oh, my God, look at her. It’s not because of how their body looks. It’s because of how they carry themselves. And they know what they can handle and they know that no matter what life throws at them, they can take it and come out the other side. So there’s an air of confidence. There’s an air of being in control of our lives that body confidence gives. And that’s where I think a lot of people are stuck, is they feel like they’ve lost control. They’ve tried a bunch of different things.
Coach Bronson Dant
They got all this information out there that everybody is telling them, do this, do that. There’s 18 different best things that they need to be doing because 18 different PhDs, scientists, influencers, doctors, coaches, trainers, whoever on social media are telling them this is the latest and greatest thing to do. And they’re trying to stack bests on top of each other, and none of it’s working. And so now they’re lost. They’ve lost control and they don’t have any confidence. They think it’s their fault. They’ve tried everything that everyone says to do. It’s not working.
Coach Bronson Dant
So something must be wrong with me. And that’s part of why I wanted to write this book. This book is, you know, I said my last book was a culmination of years of coaching and information, and this is also years of coaching and the culmination of my experience and realizing that it doesn’t matter what fitness protocol you use, it doesn’t matter what nutrition protocol you use. If you don’t know why you’re doing it and if you don’t know what the things about the protocol you’re choosing are that you’re trying to leverage to your success, then you’re not going to get where you want to go. And that’s not in the name of the thing.
Leanne Vogel
What I’m hearing you say is like having direction and purpose. Would that be part of it?
Coach Bronson Dant
Absolutely. Absolutely. It’s all about intent. The intent. If your reason for doing something is because Dr. So and so on YouTube said this is the best thing to do, there’s no focused intent on how that’s going to specifically impact your goal. Do you have a goal? Is that goal? We get into the whole nother setting goals and expectations and all that other kind of stuff. Right.
Coach Bronson Dant
But, you know, a lot of people think that their goal is to lose weight and that that may be a step on the way, but that’s not the end result. And a lot of people think that that’s the end result. And I’m here to tell you guys right now, I’ve never met a single person who has lost weight and been happy just because they lost the weight. Right. There’s always something else. Yeah. I mean, I’m not talking about if someone’s £400 and they lose 150, 200, £300, yeah, they’re going to be happy. But there’s also going to be something that comes next.
Coach Bronson Dant
They lost the weight. Now what? Now I need to build strength now. I need to be able to move my body now. I need this now. I need that. It opens up doors that the weight loss is never. Let me rephrase that. I’ve never seen anybody that’s lost a ton of weight who stopped at the weight loss.
Coach Bronson Dant
There’s always more. There’s always something deeper. There’s always some other place to go. And even with huge amounts of weight loss, if you don’t have a good understanding of the why and what the vision for your life is that you want and who you want to be, the weight loss isn’t going to solve that problem. And it’s very likely it will come back because you didn’t lose it for the right reason. So there’s a whole lot that goes into the mentality. You know, I think one of the things that moved me to write this book was the idea that coaching isn’t about fitness or nutrition. I can give anybody a fitness plan.
Coach Bronson Dant
I can give anybody a macro plan. We can do meal plans all day long. I can give you exercises all day long. But until you address your individual context and understanding why you’re doing it and how it impacts your life on a day to day basis, you’re not going to do it and you’re not going to sustain it no matter what I give you. And that’s what coaching is about. And I want people to get this book and be able to coach themselves through that process.
Leanne Vogel
I want to share something that’s truly transformed my daily routine and overall wellbeing. Timeline Nutrition’s Mito Pure Supplement I’ve been taking it for about a year now and I can honestly say it’s been a game changer. I first heard about Mitopure through a trusted friend who raved about its benefits and I decided to give it a try. Let me tell you, I am so glad that I did. The energy boost I get is incredible. Not only do I sleep better, but I can also push harder in the gym and recover faster. There was a point where I unintentionally ran out of Mitopure and I was without it for about 45 days. The difference was undeniable.
Leanne Vogel
I felt more fatigued, my workout suffered and my overall energy levels just weren’t the same. For me, taking Mitopure is all about investing in my long term health and muscle strength. I want to be able to hike, run, lift, play even into my 90s and Mitopure helps make that possible. Now here are a few things you should know about Mitopure and why it’s so effective. Timeline the company behind Mitopure is a Swiss based life science company and a global leader in Urolithin A research. They spent 10 years developing this product. Urolithin A is a powerful postbiotic that you can’t get from your diet alone. Mitopure is the first product to offer a precise dose of urolithin 8 upgrade your mitochondrial function, increase cellular health, and improve muscle strength and endurance.
Leanne Vogel
Think of mitopure as a little pacman in your cells, chomping up damaged mitochondria that make you feel old and tired and recycling them into new, healthy ones. Whether you prefer the convenient soft gels or the berry powder that you can mix into your yogurt or smoothie, mitopure has a fits your lifestyle. And the best part, timeline is offering 10% off your first order of Mitopure. Just go to timeline.comkdp that’s T I M E L I N.comkdp for 10% off your first order. For those that you know they’re loving what you’re sharing, but they’re not really picking together or putting the pieces together on intention and purpose and direction, can we kind of take them through, through an example individual, maybe a woman who thinks that she’s in it for weight loss, but through understanding intention, direction, purpose, she discovers what. Like, what is an example of something that’s lasting just so that women can start to understand those listening what you’re meaning. Like, I know for myself the reason why I eat the way that I do is because of energy. I really need good quality energy throughout the day.
Leanne Vogel
And I have a lot of women in my family that have struggled through not eating enough. And so I want to go into my 50s, 60s, 70s, being strong and having a functioning brain. And when I go to the gym specifically so that I’m strong as I age and those pieces kind of keep me anchored in. I’m not doing this to be a certain weight. I’m not doing this to look a certain way. I just want to be strong because I want to be resilient, because I want to live long and be comfortable. Is that a fair enough example of purpose and direction, or would you take that further just to understand?
Coach Bronson Dant
Yeah, way further. So there’s something in, you know, just without. Without putting you on the spot and asking you the questions, what I would say would be, why is it important for you to be strong and resilient? What is it about that idea that makes you want to be that? And then when you can answer that question, maybe there’s something that, you know, you. You’ve seen in your. In your family, like, I don’t want to live that. Maybe it’s a why not? Not a why. The things you don’t want in your life can be many times more emotionally connected than the things you do with the thing you want in your life. So maybe there’s something you’re trying to avoid you want to keep out of your life.
Coach Bronson Dant
Maybe it’s, I saw, you know, I’m taking care of my parents and I see how much effort I have to take in putting into getting them to doctor’s appointments and paying for their medications and taking care of them at home and all these. And I don’t want that for my kids. I want to be able to wipe my own butt when I’m 90 years old. Right. Whatever that may be. And maybe there’s. And then just keep digging and digging and digging. So, you know, we use, we use the seven levels of why and just digging in every time you give yourself a reason why.
Coach Bronson Dant
Is that reason important? We often the most common thing I hear is I want to lose weight. Okay. Why do you want to lose weight? Well, because I want to be a good example for my kids. Okay, great. Why is it important that you’re a good example to my kid? To your kids? Well, because I want them to grow up and be healthy and live long lives. Okay, great. Why is that important to you or why don’t you think that you’re a good example now? Well, because this, this, this. Okay.
Coach Bronson Dant
If you change those things, will that make a difference? Maybe it will, maybe it won’t. Maybe there’s something else that you’re really avoiding and that you really need to dig into that you need to change first. Maybe it’s the ability to face a challenge. Maybe it’s not because you’re overweight that’s really the struggle. Maybe it’s, you want to be able to show your kids that it’s okay to set hard goals and that it’s okay to struggle and fail and try again. And you want to keep trying until you get where you want to go. That’s the lifestyle, that’s the example you want to set. Maybe you dig into that and it’s important to set that example because you didn’t have that example as a kid.
Coach Bronson Dant
And maybe there’s something that you were missing in your childhood that you want to make sure your kids have. I mean, we could get, we can dig and dig and dig. It goes on and on and wherever you go with that. A couple of things in that process just to let everybody understand. Number one, it’s going to take time. It’s not something you can sit down in a 15 minute session on your couch and figure it all out. Right. I have, I have women that I’ve worked with.
Coach Bronson Dant
It takes them years to get to the thing and the Entire time. A lot of it is the internal walls and the internal defense mechanisms that we put up about being honest with ourself and facing the things that we don’t want to face. And in many cases, going through this process will make you realize that you need to see therapy just to be completely honest. There’s some things that you may get to. I have some women, Lynne, that are so ingrained from childhood that they have to be perfect in everything that they do. There is so much, and I want to say trauma, but it may not be trauma, but I know we classify a lot of this stuff as childhood trauma that they’ve been through in their lives and the expectation that they have to be perfect, that they are so afraid to make a mistake and to do something wrong. They one overanalyze everything and never make a decision or they do something and the minute it doesn’t go the way that they planned, they completely fall off the rails because it’s just the end of the world. They’re horrible people.
Coach Bronson Dant
They can’t do anything right. And then it’s, you know, one week of good once something happens, and then it’s four weeks of off the rails and it’s like, hey, we know where you’re at. I think you need to go get a therapist and work through some of this childhood trauma stuff, you know, because I can’t help you with that. I can help you with some of this stuff, but there’s some things that you really need to work with a professional on those types of things. So it’s deep. It’s not something that’s. That’s easy.
Leanne Vogel
Yes, completely. When it comes to earlier, you were saying body confidence, it sounded like sometimes it’s other people’s perception of us. Or would you say that body confidence is something that we just feel ourselves and we’re not looking for others to validate that confidence?
Coach Bronson Dant
Absolutely. No. Yeah, absolutely no. Body confidence by definition has nothing to do with anybody else. Okay. If you’re basing anything about how you feel about your body based on anybody else’s perception, number wrong. Number number one. I said one and wrong.
Leanne Vogel
Number wrong.
Coach Bronson Dant
Yeah, Number wrong. Number one. You’re wrong because you don’t know what anyone else is thinking. It is impossible. That is a completely made up fantasy in your brain. So that’s not a thing. Okay? So the ability, and that’s why I said it’s based on the proven evidence of you overcoming challenges. Give yourself something hard to do.
Coach Bronson Dant
Do it. You can’t deny that you did it. You see the results from it. Now you know what you’re capable of. You are now confident. You now have the confidence to try something else. Confidence is a skill. It’s crazy to think about.
Coach Bronson Dant
We think it’s a feeling, it’s an emotion. I feel confident. No, you are or you are not. You are good at developing confidence in yourself or you have not developed confidence in yourself. And the only way to develop confidence is to set a goal and work your butt off to get it.
Leanne Vogel
I feel like so much of my purpose is wrapped up around. I just want to see if I could possibly do that thing.
Coach Bronson Dant
Yes.
Leanne Vogel
And then I do it, and I’m like, I actually did this thing. What could I do with this other thing? And it’s like, it just. It’s this curiosity, and it builds more trust in myself. And I’m like, I can actually do this. Like, it’s just. Is that what you’re talking about?
Coach Bronson Dant
100%. It’s all about curiosity. Beginner mindset. Being a kid again, I call it playing right. You’ve got to. If we are afraid to try anything, then we’re never going to get anywhere. You can’t. You know, the old adage of a bat never swung is a ball never hit right.
Coach Bronson Dant
You’ve got to take some swings and you’re going to strike out, you’re going to miss the ball, but if you never swing it, you’re never going to hit it. And you’ll never know if you can. If you can hit it once, you can hit it twice. If you can hit it twice, you can hit it three times. And that’s what we’re talking about. I love that curiosity thing because I talk about that in the book, and I talk about, you know, if we’re not curious and developing more curiosity as we go, then we’re going to get stuck. You’re already. Here’s the thing.
Coach Bronson Dant
You’re already not doing the thing. So if you don’t do it, what’s changed? Nothing. If you want to change, you have to try to do the thing. So if you fail at the thing, guess what? You go back to not doing it. Nothing’s changed. But at least you tried. There’s nothing wrong with trying. And if it doesn’t work, try something else.
Coach Bronson Dant
And that’s. That’s. That’s part of where the people get stuck, is they think that they want to try the one thing. And if the one thing doesn’t work, nothing’s going to work. That’s a whole nother. I think that’s. That’s a. An offshoot of the way marketing and social media has.
Coach Bronson Dant
Everybody sensationalizes solutions. You know, we. We want the quickest, fastest, easiest, most impactful thing. Like, we want. We want to take the bazooka to our lives. And if that bazooka doesn’t work, well, nothing’s going to work. I might as well just give up. And it’s not a bazooka, guys.
Coach Bronson Dant
It’s one step at a time.
Leanne Vogel
It’s.
Coach Bronson Dant
It’s. It’s the little. The little taps here and there that move you forward.
Leanne Vogel
And we really do learn from failure. I can’t remember what podcast I was listening to, but the host was saying that an individual had made a pretty ginormous mistake. It was like a $400,000 mistake. And he was asked, are you going to fire this. This employee that works for you? And he’s like, no. Like, I just paid $400,000 for them to learn a lesson. Like, I’m not going to fire them. And I thought that was just such an encouragement, too.
Leanne Vogel
Like, I’ve always been one that’s quite an adventurer. And I have a curiosity, and I really. I think from my upbringing and just the way that my. How quickly I had to grow up and all those things, I know how bad life can get, and I know that the decisions that I make, if I have a genuine curiosity, even if I fail, it’s okay. Like, I’ve learned something about myself, and if I totally win at it, then I know that I have built the strength in a certain area and we can continue forward. And I think that curiosity really is important, but I think there’s also a layer of. Would you say, grit in that? Because it’s. It’s not always easy to do the hard things.
Leanne Vogel
Like, where does grit come into that? Is there willpower? Is that something different? Like, how do you. How do you move forward with these things?
Coach Bronson Dant
Yeah. So. Oh, gosh, there’s so many. I’m trying to figure out which part of that I want to focus on. Let’s talk about grit. Grit is. Grit is. You got to have grit.
Coach Bronson Dant
I mean, the. The ability to push through when things are challenging is. It’s the cement that puts everything together, that keeps everything together. And going back to what we talked about earlier, you can’t apply grit if you don’t know why you’re doing it in the first place. So, again, everything goes back to the why. And grit part of grit is understanding that the emotional connection you have with your reason to do something doesn’t remove the Challenges. The challenges will still come. Your ability to keep the why and the motivation in face of the challenges is what grit is.
Coach Bronson Dant
It’s not just I’m pushing through. It’s not discipline all the time. Sometimes you need discipline. I’m going to do it regardless of how I feel. That is going to be a thing. It is.
Leanne Vogel
It’s like my leg day. Every time it’s going to suck. It’s going to suck every time. But we’re just going to do it.
Coach Bronson Dant
We’re just going to do it. And then there’s. But there’s also the aspect of you needing to remind yourself why you’re doing it. And sometimes you need to say, you know, I really don’t want to do this thing, whatever this thing may be. Maybe it’s food. I find often it’s more about food for most people because people have more of an emotional connection to eating the wrong foods as opposed to working out. It’s not like I have to get people to work to work out because they’re emotionally connected to the gym, although that is also a thing just to put that out there. There are people who are addicted to working out, and that’s a whole nother the thing.
Coach Bronson Dant
We gotta back off, guys. It’s not that bad. But when it comes to, you know, reminding yourself why you’re trying to do it and what it is you’re actually trying to do, the emotional connection you have has to be stronger than the emotional connection. You have to not do the thing or to do the wrong thing. And, you know, that is a key component of grit is staying in touch with why you want to do it so that you’re always in touch with the stronger emotion. Right. We got two wolves. We got the good wolf and the bad wolf.
Coach Bronson Dant
And Grit is consistently feeding the good wolf, if that makes sense.
Leanne Vogel
Yeah, totally, it does. Electrolytes facilitate hundreds of functions in the body, including the conduction of nerve impulses, hormonal regulation, nutrient absorption, and fluid balance. Nearly every one of my clients that I work with, one on one, have an imbalance of electrolytes and some way from symptoms of headaches, muscle cramps, fatigue, sleeplessness, or seen right there in their blood work. Much of this is improved with proper electrolyte supplementation. I consume at least one packet of electrolytes daily. And not just any electrolyte element because it doesn’t have sugar fillers, coloring, artificial anything, and has the effective electrolyte ratio that so many other brands do not do. Right. 1,000 milligrams of sodium 200 milligrams of potassium, 60 milligrams of magnesium.
Leanne Vogel
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Leanne Vogel
One question that kind of came up as you were talking and just like setting goals and setting purpose. I know for myself I got kind of lost in the weeds for a bit there with my own life and my goals and I was focusing on the wrong thing and I was having a really hard time staying committed to the goal that I had set. And in hindsight is because the goal was kind of like an empty goal, it didn’t really have purpose. So I kept trying to achieve it and I kept failing. And then I kind of like stepped back and I’m like why? Why am I doing this? And there was really no reason. So I kept failing because I just, I didn’t actually, I didn’t. It’s not that I didn’t want to do it, I just didn’t desire to do it and it didn’t align with my ultimate purpose. And as soon as I realized that and I shifted, all of a sudden I’m like, oh well this is actually kind of easier.
Leanne Vogel
And I’m actually like hitting my goal now that I shifted it and it’s aligned with my actual purpose and my why so do you find that that’s too is like it’s not necessarily that you suck and you can’t achieve anything. It’s because what you’re trying to achieve doesn’t align with your actual purpose.
Coach Bronson Dant
Like, yeah, I find that more when it comes to the process goals that people set for themselves, I’m going to do this blank, blank, blank, whatever it may be, because I want to reach whatever the end goal. The vision that they have for themselves may be fantastic. They may have worked out a great thing. I want to this is the identity that I want to have. This is the lifestyle that I want to live. This is the way that I want to live my life and the example I want to set all those types of things and they may have everything worked out way more in depth and to a degree that goes far beyond just losing weight or whatever it may be. But then when they start looking at their process goals and saying how they’re going to get there, I’m going to do this. Okay, that is great.
Coach Bronson Dant
But is that thing really going to get you where you want to go or is that being driven by the fact that you have three other friends who are doing that thing and you want to do that with them or that you think this influencer said this program is the best one for them? Right. I see it a lot with fitness. People will say, hey, I want to get to this goal. I want to improve my mobility. So they go straight into a bodybuilding program because they’re also wanting to build strength and do these other things. It’s like, that’s great. And you may improve your mobility to a point depending on where you’re coming from. But a bodybuilding strength program in general isn’t going to the be the best thing for your overall mobility.
Coach Bronson Dant
Right. Looking at a functional fitness program or something that includes mobility, flexibility, balance, coordination in the program itself may be a better bet. So looking at things like that. So I think that’s where some of the ability to experiment and, you know, the curiosity of trying something and being okay, this is the key, being okay to shift, because that’s what you did. And that’s, that’s the thing, Right? It’s when you get so stuck in the identity of what you’re doing, becomes who you are, then it’s a lot harder to shift. Right. We see it on the nutrition side all the time. I’m keto, I’m carnivore, I’m dirty keto, I’m lazy keto, I’m hypercarnivore, I’m bbbe, I’m high fat Carnivore, I’m.
Coach Bronson Dant
Whatever it may be, everybody’s using these labels of their nutrition or I’m a crossfitter. I used to say it all the time. I’m a CrossFitter. I am a fan of CrossFit and I utilize the methods and the principles that CrossFit has as @ its core in all of my programs. I’m not a CrossFitter anymore. Right. Even though I’m a high level, certified CrossFit coach and I preach air quotes CrossFit a lot. It’s more about the methodology and the principles than it is the protocol itself.
Coach Bronson Dant
And I think we need to step into that more. What is it about the things that are working and the ability to change and shift and Adjust as we go through the process. Because even if you have a goal and you pick the right thing to get to that goal at some point in time, guess what? That goal is going to morph and change and mutate into something else down the road. And the thing that you’re doing isn’t always going to match that. So you’re going to have to change at some point.
Leanne Vogel
Yes. I can speak from personal experience on that. Big time. I spent the last year and a half cutting down and trying to build muscle, and I got to my goal weight, and it was important to me, and now I’m doing the exact opposite and eating a whole, whole bunch and gaining again. And it just, it’s fun to like, shift. Shift goals, shift perspective, challenge yourself. That curiosity driving things. Yeah, it’s just a way better time.
Leanne Vogel
What, in your personal life, what is the one thing that you’re working through right now using these same tenants and mindset pieces? Or do you have it all locked in? You don’t even have to think about it anymore?
Coach Bronson Dant
I’m perfect, Leanne, what are you talking about? I know. Never have anything to work on. Geez, no. I’m working through right now. In the last year and a half, maybe two years, I’ve come to a couple different realizations. And I’m really trying to in some way, on the fitness side of things, I’m trying to redefine myself, but I don’t know where I’m going. So right now, I’m actually kind of in the wind. And here’s the reason why.
Coach Bronson Dant
And honestly, it’s going to sound weird, but I want everyone to get to this place because I realized about a year and a half ago, two years ago, somewhere in there might even have been less than that, because it was while we were in this apartment. So about a year ago, sitting on the couch, looking out the window, we got giant windows in our living room oversee the city. We’re in a high rise apartment building. I’m just looking out, sunrise, sunsets, you know, sunrise is coming up and looking out at everything, getting ready to start my day. And I was like, I’m here. Like, I have no sickness. I have no physical limitations. I have no injuries.
Coach Bronson Dant
I have nothing that is limiting me in anything that I want to do. Zero. I’m financially stable. I have a good job, I have a great business that I’m building. I have a great passion, and I’m involved in projects that satisfy my soul. I have nothing to complain about in life. I don’t know where to Go from here, right? It’s like I don’t even, like I have all the. Not that I don’t have goals, right? I have business goals, I have work goals, I have projects that I’m working on.
Coach Bronson Dant
You know, I’ve got tons of stuff I’m working on. You know, I’m going to be starting a master’s degree here in a few months. I’ve got, I mean, I’ve got, I’ve got a book coming out, I got a business I’m running. I work a full time job still. Like, I got plenty of things happening, don’t get me wrong. But from a fitness side, I realized I’m not, I don’t need to stress over my body composition. I don’t need, like for years I wanted to maintain 10% body fat or less. That was a goal.
Coach Bronson Dant
And for years I did that. And I realized at one point, why am I doing? Like, what is the point of doing this? You know? And that was part of that revelation. Like I’m measuring everything, I’m tracking what I’m eating, I’m doing all this stuff and it’s like, do I care? Right? So I went from that to right now I’m at about 17% body fat, which is weird for me, right? But I feel fricking amazing. I don’t stress over anything. As far as food goes, I haven’t measured in, I don’t even know how long this has been since I measured food. I haven’t, you know, I’m still strong. I still have, I don’t have any issues. All my blood work is still good.
Coach Bronson Dant
I just put on more fat because I don’t care. It’s not about that at this point. It’s about what can I do physically. And nothing that I can do physically has gone downhill. I’m just as strong and mobile and everything else is still there. So I’m kind of at that point now. Like I said, I’m in the wind. I was just telling Coach Nat recently that I need, I need something to shoot for.
Coach Bronson Dant
And I don’t know what that is. I don’t know if I want to enter a powerlifting competition or get back into CrossFit and start doing CrossFit competitions again. Or I just, I feel like I need something and that’s kind of what I’m searching for right now. And then I can put these things in place, like, you know, like you talked about in the book and the method that I have for. Okay, this is where I want to go. What are the things I need to do to get there and then start working that cycle again. Working that process.
Leanne Vogel
Yeah. That’s so fun. I have a suggestion for you.
Coach Bronson Dant
Oh, shoot.
Leanne Vogel
You should learn how to sail.
Coach Bronson Dant
Oh, my God. Because that kind of money. What are you talking about?
Leanne Vogel
It is so fun. You can get one of those dinghy sale, like sailboats and it is so physically demanding and it is really intense. And you’re outside and you said in the wind so many times. I’m like, bro needs to be in the wind.
Coach Bronson Dant
Literally get him in the wind. I love it. I love it.
Leanne Vogel
There was a piece that you shared a little while ago on individuals that have just lost control and they’re lacking confidence, They’ve lost control. Can you explain a little bit about what’s going on in the mind in the day to day of an individual that’s lost that control? Like paint a picture of what their life looks like. I think we’ve touched on this a little bit, but I just really want the individual listening to like, hear themselves perhaps.
Coach Bronson Dant
Yeah. I’m going to pull out. While we’re talking. I’m going to pull up a present. I just did a presentation for Nutrition Network and I talk about the circle of despair. Let me see if I can pull that up real quick. Because I think it’s really. It’s a process that happens over time.
Coach Bronson Dant
It’s not something. It’s like an overnight thing, Right. The cycle of despair. Information without context. And I think that’s where we’re stuck right now in society where we have so much information coming in. And the reason that people don’t feel like they’ve lost control is because, number one, the expectations that they’re going into this with are off. It’s going to be this one thing, this one final piece to the puzzle that they need to put together that’s going to bring everything together. It’s not one piece, guys.
Coach Bronson Dant
There are a thousand pieces. I’ll tell you that right now. If you’re looking for one thing, you’re going to be disappointed. It’s a thousand pieces you got to look at. Each piece will help and it’s exponentially beneficial the more pieces you add on. But it’s not one piece in isolation. Okay? The increased information has also increased the complexity with which people are trying to implement things. Instead of looking at what’s the one big thing that I can do, that’s the easiest thing for me to implement, that’s the most sustainable thing for me to maintain.
Coach Bronson Dant
That’s going to cause the least disruption to my life and give me the biggest bang for the buck. Everybody’s looking for the bests and they’re trying to implement five biohacks, 18 different supplements, and five different programs and challenges all at the same time wondering why the cortisol is going up. They’re too confused about everything and nothing’s working. And they can’t sleep, right, because they’re. We’re trying to. We’re trying to. I use this in the talk on the low carb cruise. I use the analogy of a tree.
Coach Bronson Dant
You don’t cut a tree down at the branches. We cut a tree down at the trunk. And right now everybody is in the tree trying to trim branches to make the tree smaller. And part of the reason you feel like you’ve lost control is because there, for every branch you cut off, another one’s growing. New information’s coming in. Oh, maybe that’s the branch I need to be cutting off. And you’re just imagine a monkey running around in a tree, right? They’re just running all over the tree, branch to branch to branch, swinging and jumping and climbing and doing all this kind of stuff. And that’s what we’re doing with our lives.
Coach Bronson Dant
We have no control because we haven’t brought things down and narrowed things down to the base of the root cause. And the root cause is metabolism, metabolic function, not the symptoms. Everyone’s chasing symptoms. The root cause is how well is your body actually working. We can fix that. There’s only a few things that we need to do to fix 90% of the problems that people are having. Guys, it’s super easy. Eat more meat, lift more weight, get more sleep.
Coach Bronson Dant
Those three things in and of itself will take care of 80%, 90% of the problems that most people are having. And we’re so stuck on. We need boron, we need leptin, we need to fix leptin resistance. We need sardine fast. We need more fat, we need less protein, we need more protein, we need less fat. We need blue light blockers, we need cold therapy, we need hot sauna. Come on, guys, let’s get the basics done first. That’s where we need to be.
Coach Bronson Dant
And that’s why I think people are losing control.
Leanne Vogel
It sounds to me like simplification.
Coach Bronson Dant
Absolutely.
Leanne Vogel
But how do you even. Like you talked about meat sleep and lifting, but there’s like, well, what kind of meat? And like, if I can’t sleep, then do I take melatonin or why can’t I sleep? It’s my hormones and I think we can get lost in the weeds in that too. Do you have any suggestions on how to manage the simplification of even those simple things?
Coach Bronson Dant
Yeah. Yeah. So it starts with understanding what the basics are first and then realizing that if I don’t have the basics in place, any of the tweaks don’t really matter. Right. Unless you’re trying, like you said, trying to tweak the basics. So if I know that sleep is a minimum requirement, I need to get sleep. That is something that has to be in place because it’s a basic, fundamental requirement for my health. If I’m having trouble sleeping, then that is something that I need to analyze and figure out.
Coach Bronson Dant
So maybe there are some things that I can try. Right. We know that, you know, darker is better when you’re sleeping. Cutting off electronics, you know, 45 minutes to an hour, maybe longer before you go to bed. You know, dropping the temperature a little bit more, getting a weighted blanket, melatonin, magnesium. Like, there’s a ton of different things that we can do. You know, is it beta wave or alpha wave music? I forget which one it is that you put on at night. So there’s.
Coach Bronson Dant
There’s different things. There’s a whole bunch of things you can do there. Being willing to try those different things in order to meet that minimum requirement. Right. There isn’t a minimum requirement for cold therapy. I love cold therapy. It’s great. I think people can do it.
Coach Bronson Dant
It’s fantastic. If you want to play around with it, go for it, but it’s not something you need to do. Now, we’re getting a little complicated and nuanced here, but you can do cold therapy before bed and it might help you sleep. So that may be an application where the protocol is helping you meet the minimum requirement. The principle of good sleep. Right. So trying to think about it from that perspective first, you gotta understand what are the minimum things I need? The minimum things I need from a nutrition perspective, I need as much nutrition as I can get. Nutri, nutrient density.
Coach Bronson Dant
I need as much bioavailable nutrition as I can get. If my body can’t use it, it’s not helping me. And then I need satiety. I need to make sure that I’m. The food that I’m eating is supporting satiety, not bypassing satiety. So those are the three main things. There’s a lot of different ways to do that. Doesn’t have to be any one thing.
Coach Bronson Dant
Everyone’s got a different place. From a fitness perspective, I need to move weight, I need to move well And I need to move often. So challenging your body physically to let it know that it needs to adapt to physical challenge, moving well so that you can improve your ability to control yourself in your physical environment, and then doing it consistently so that that adaptation never goes away and you continually progress. Those are the key things there. From the physical part, from our body’s perspective, those are the six main things that we need. Right. I call those the tenants of our systems of function. So those are the six basic core things.
Coach Bronson Dant
Now within that we could go. And I go into a lot more of this stuff in the book. Right. Breaking these down and what are the different components of things in there? Right. Protein, fat, sleep, recovery, different types of muscles of training for fitness. You know, all the different components of fitness, metabolic pathways, all those different things. But if we don’t start at the basics and then work our way down to finding how do we implement that basic. That’s where, that’s where we get stuck.
Coach Bronson Dant
So I think a lot of people are working at the protocol level and then trying to work backwards again. We’re trying to cut the tree down from the top down instead of going to the root, the trunk, and trying to cut it down from the base. I hope that that was kind of esoterically described, but I hope that makes sense.
Leanne Vogel
It makes perfect sense. What I’m hearing you say is that it’s a lot of about intention, like knowing why you’re doing what you’re doing and seeking a solution for the problem you have as opposed to like red light therapy and cold plunges and going for a walk before sleep because you need to get your steps in, like just willy nilly throwing stuff in with no real intention.
Coach Bronson Dant
Yeah, I like what you just said there because it triggered, it triggered a phrase. If the reason you’re doing something is because it’s supposed to be good for you, then you’re not stopped doing it. You don’t. That literally means you don’t know why you’re doing it. Right. This is supposed to be good. It’s supposed to help with autophagy. Okay, great.
Coach Bronson Dant
Why do you need to worry about autophagy?
Leanne Vogel
Yes.
Coach Bronson Dant
When getting up and down out of the couch is hard for you right now. Right. That’s where, that’s where people are at. I’m literally having conversations with people who can’t walk up and down the stairs and they’re asking me questions about optimizing mitochondrial health. And it’s like, who cares about mitochondrial health? Start walking up and down the stairs. Right. It’s it’s, that’s where. And that’s, that’s what gets me fired.
Coach Bronson Dant
You get me fired up now. LEANNE.
Leanne Vogel
I think the intentionality piece, too, also simplifies our life, because I think so many of us are just burdened by all the things that we feel like we have to be doing, but we’re not really sure why we’re doing them. And they don’t align with our goals because we don’t know what goals we have. And that’s really the loss of control.
Coach Bronson Dant
Of just absolutely, absolutely. And let’s. Here, I’ll give it. I’ll make a recommendation or suggestion. Here’s a way to think about this for everybody listening to this. If you’re stuck and you don’t know where to start and how to take all this information and figure out, what am I supposed to do next? How do I wipe the board clean if I want to start from scratch? Where am I starting? What am I doing with all this information that’s out there? It’s super easy. It’s the easiest thing you’re ever going to do. Write down a list of all of the things that you don’t want in your life right now or that you want in your life but you can’t do and then make those things happen.
Coach Bronson Dant
If getting up and down out of the couch is hard for you right now, that is the only thing you need to worry about, because that is one, the physical requirement that you need to go through to make that an easy thing in your life is going to improve every aspect of your metabolism at some level. Number two, it will immediately impact your ability to engage in your life at your environment that you live in. So what are the things that you are physically limited in? What are the things that you have to say no to on a daily basis? Make those things possible, and then everything else will take care of itself. The idea that we can improve this is the craziness, right? We’re going to break this down real quick. Thinking about mitochondrial health. Okay, if I told you, what would you say for you people listening, if I told you that if walking up and down the stairs is the hardest thing for you to do in your life right now, that just by you doing it five to ten times a day until it becomes easy, you’re going to improve autophagy, improve lean mass, increase mitochondrial density, increase mitochondrial health, increase mitophagy, increase glucogen storage, increase lean mass, increase strength, increase mobility, increase the reduce the risk of injury, and the list goes on. And all you did was get better at walking up and down the stairs. Right? We don’t have to worry about that long list of all those little things.
Coach Bronson Dant
Just make your life better. That’s what, that’s where we need to be focused.
Leanne Vogel
Mic Drop where can people find more from you? I’m going to include a preorder link for your book in the show notes. Where can people find more details connect with you? Where are the best places?
Coach Bronson Dant
Yeah, Coach Bronson.com and then pretty much anywhere if you just type in Coach Bronson. I should come up YouTube, Instagram. I have a Discord server so we have a free community on Discord if anybody wants to hop in and just talk and share stories. But yeah, come, come check me out on Instagram, watch all my YouTube videos and make comments and all that good stuff.
Leanne Vogel
I love it. I love it. Thanks again for coming on the show today and thank you.
Coach Bronson Dant
Thanks for letting me rant for an hour. I appreciate it.
Leanne Vogel
I love every time you come on and I know, I know our community does too. They often ask for you. So thanks for coming back.
Coach Bronson Dant
Thanks. Appreciate it.
Leanne Vogel
I hope you enjoyed our time with Coach Bronson. You can find more by clicking the show note links and then there will be a link to his book Body Confident. Okay, we will see you back here next week for another episode. Bye. Thanks for listening to the Helpful Pursuit podcast. Join us next next Tuesday for another episode of the show. If you’re looking for free resources, there are a couple places you can go. The first to my blog, healthfulpursuit.com where you’re going to find loads of recipes.
Leanne Vogel
The second is a free parasite protocol that I’ve put together for you that outlines symptoms, testing and resources to determine whether or not you have a parasite, plus a full protocol to follow to eradicate them from your life if you need to. That’s available@health fullpursuit.com parasites and last but certainly not least, a full list of blood work markers to ask your doctor for so that you can get a full picture of your health. You can grab that free resource by going to healthfulpursuit.com labs. The helpful pursuit podcast, including show notes and links, provides information in respect to healthy living recipes, nutrition and diet and is intended for introduction informational purposes only. The information provided is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis or treatment nor is it to be construed as such. We cannot guarantee that the information provided on the Healthful Pursuit Podcast reflects the most up to date medical research. Information is provided without any representation or warranties of any kind Please consult a qualified health practitioner with any questions you may have regarding your health and nutrition program.
Coach Bronson Dant
RA.
Hi! I'm Leanne (RHN FBCS)
a Functional Medicine Practitioner, host of the Healthful Pursuit Podcast, and best-selling author of The Keto Diet & Keto for Women. I want to live in a world where every woman has access to knowledge to better her health.