Introduction to the Body by Phil Podcast

From YouTube's automatic captions, so a few words may be wrong.

00:00 Hi, welcome to the Body by Phil podcast. I'm Phil. Years ago when COVID hit, I started a podcast that was an audio only and it was uh entitled Battling Obesity and I still have it up on Spotify and various other platforms. and it did really well. And it talked about my personal journey going from a skinny and fit kid to going into my adult years after the military, gaining masses amounts of weight, becoming morbidly

00:30 obese. My life turned very dark. I went into drugs and alcohol addiction for over 20 years or so. to dig myself out of that toxic lifestyle and become a champion natural bodybuilder and then go on to become a award-winning personal fitness trainer and how I was able to number one get myself better so that I could uh help and inspire other people to take a hold of their lives and to help them reach their goals whatever

01:02 they may be. So, I wanted to take the opportunity now to kind of introduce myself and introduce what this series of podcasts is going to be all about. Why should you tune in to these? Why should you subscribe to this or or hear what I have to say? Well, it's quite simple. I I lived through it. I survived things that people tell me were definitely against the odds that I really should not have survived. Not only the addiction, but the massive amounts of

01:34 food that were were destroying my my body internally, my DUIs, my incarceration. I was in and out of jail, DUIs, uh um I was shot in 2002, almost killed. All these patterns, these destructive behavior patterns, uh were leading me down a path that was inevitably going to end my life. So because of my health starting to fade and for the sake of my young son, he was young at the time, I didn't want to leave him without a positive role model,

02:06 a positive father figure who I certainly wasn't at that time and I was in fear for that. I didn't want my son to grow up not knowing who I was. After a full physical, I had to have a gallbladder removed from uh the damage it had received from all my bad food choices. I lived basically on fast food. I was definitely addicted to it. And of course, with with the mass amounts of whiskey and beer and other types of alcohol, my internal body system was

02:39 like a man in his 70s, um my body composition was far older than my physical appearance. And it became very clear to me very quickly that all the choices that I had been making in my life were literally killing me. And if I didn't do something soon, I probably wouldn't have too many more opportunities to make it right. So for the sake of my boy and by the grace of God, I hired a personal fitness trainer. Now I went into that really not expecting it to do much, really not

03:10 expecting it to work. I mean, I had tried kicking the food. I had tried to get on a a healthier nutrition plan. I had tried to join gyms and and try to do this on my own many many times. And here's how it would start. I would be okay for a couple of days and eat a chicken salad and then maybe instead of drinking 15 to 25 beers in a night, I would drink three to five. Okay, I would, you know, to me this was making progress. But that wouldn't last. I

03:42 would go to the gym a couple of times. was really not sure what I was doing in the gym or what I was working or why. So, I didn't want to look stupid on a machine not doing it right or a weight or wasn't sure how some of the cardio equipment would work. So, I'd go in and out of the gym. I'd be there maybe an hour and out of that hour, maybe 15 minutes of actual work. I would try these things, have little to no success, get discouraged. I'm paying for something that wasn't paying off for me. So, it wasn't going to last and I would

04:13 get bored and frustrated with it and eventually quit. And I think that resonates with a lot of people. I mean, especially look at the New Year's resolution people, okay? They all come in very gung-ho and ready to make these changes, not really knowing quite how to do it, going in with completely unrealistic expectations. They don't see the result they want in a week or two, so they inevitably give up and quit. This happens every year. I was one of those statistics until I got serious. And I knew that it was

04:45 time. It was time to take that bold and decisive stance and say, "I have had enough of this lazy, destructive behavior. I want to add years to my life, not subtract them through these poor choices, and I want to be there for somebody who depends on me." So when I hired a trainer, like I said, I wasn't really convinced this was going to be it for me. And the first thing this gentleman did was sit me down, learn about who I was, and I kind of expected

05:17 him to say, "Look, I don't think you're quite ready. I don't think you have what it takes to to go all the way with this." And I really didn't think that it was going to be a good match. To my surprise, he looked me right in the eye and said, "I got you. let's start tomorrow. And in that moment, I felt this incredible sense of relief. It was almost like there had been something lifted from me. I for the first time in a long, long time, I actually had a little sense of hope. And to those

05:48 people who know what it feels like to lose hope, lose your identity, lose who you are, that's a very scary, that's a dark and bad place to be. And I had been in that for a long time, most of my adult life. But when this gentleman looked at me and somebody who he didn't know, a complete stranger, and looked at me with confidence and said, "I can help you. We have this. Let's start." Okay. I got excited, right? So, I show up to my very first day, and it was punishing. It

06:20 was grueling. It was really, really hard. And then 15 minutes in, I realized, wow, this was just the warm-up, right? So, I'm I'm uh I'm in trouble here. But it really was I knew right away this was going to be the hardest but yet the greatest thing I had ever done in my life and I was right. Hiring a trainer uh in my first year I lost a 134 lbs and uh he happened to be a natural bodybuilder and got me into the world of bodybuilding. Now when I keep saying natural, this natural

06:52 bodybuilding means that there were no anabolics or any unnatural substances taken. All of my muscle growth and my physique was going to be created from my hard work and the proper nutrition. So I was very interested in that because I knew with my addictive personality, you know, here's a guy. I could eat bags of fast food and really never feel full. I could eat or drink um 20 30 beers and never feel satisfied. I didn't really have an off switch. So, if I was going

07:23 to get into the anabolic or illegal substance game when it comes to bel bodybuilding and fitness, then I knew that that self-destructive and addictive behavior would more than likely most definitely follow me through there and that could probably end my life uh just as fast as the drugs and the alcohol and the obesity would have. So, I stayed clear of all of the unnatural substances. I did my first bodybuilding competition and I uh absolutely loved it. It was supposed to be a oneandone,

07:54 but I felt so good about my accomplishments. I felt so good about stepping on that stage and doing something that was so foreign to me and a year prior to that just not even a thought. It wasn't something I'd ever went into trying to do. I was really just trying to survive. But through the training and through being around somebody so positive as my trainer was, who believed in me wholeheartedly and knew how to push me well past my limitations. And it really just kind of

08:26 changed the the course of my life. Through that experience, people witnessed this transformation. The same people that would see me in the gym and work out and prepare for a bodybuilding show would come up to me and say, "Wow, you know, a year ago, what a difference. you know, how did you do this? Could you train me? Can you help me do what you do? You know, I've been coming to this gym for many, many years and and here you were a year later and you've already reached and exceeded your goal. You know, can you help me? And I wanted to help them, but I had no idea how. So, I

08:59 went and got my personal training certification and I started helping people and seeing people transform the way I did regardless of their goals. Um, some people wanted to lose weight, other people wanted to gain muscle. I did train other bodybuilders who wanted to hit that competitive stage. One of my greatest joys was training uh youths and and getting these good solid core principles of health and fitness instilled into young minds so that they wouldn't struggle and and have to go backwards like I had to do in my 40s.

09:31 And you know, it just it was a domino effect really. you know, you start with one or two people and I never really advertised. I never really had to because somebody who say was 400 lb, you know, and two years later they've hit their goal. You know, if they lost 100, I've had people lose 150 lbs in one year. People will take notice of that and they will say, "Wow, how are you doing this?" Most people, here's what they want to hear when they're asked that question. How did you lose this weight? How did you have so much success

10:01 in the short time that you did? What they would love to hear is say, "I took this magic pen. I took this magic pill or shot. I drank this magic potion and everything just fell off." They would be that would be wonderful. But unfortunately, it just doesn't quite work that way. To do fitness the way you're supposed to and to have long-term success, it requires a little bit more than that. You have to allow time. You have to allow patience. And above all things though, you really have to be consistent with your effort. And you

10:33 really need to have somebody in your corner that knows you, that can help you, that can inspire you and push you on the hard days when you want to give up, when you don't think you can do this anymore. You need somebody there to say, "Hey, take a day or two off. Recoup. Reheal. Come back strong because you can burn out, too." You need people in your corner that can recognize these habits and these patterns in you and always be there for you when you're not sure that you can do it yourself. So, what I want to put together these episodes here, I

11:05 want to touch on a different theme every week. There's themes like fitness and nutrition, but there's so much more to it than that. There's motivation. There's lack of motivation. How do we train when we really aren't feeling it? There's things like how to keep positive when the scale doesn't move. If weight loss is one of your goals, if if you're doing everything right and you get on the scale and you gained 3 lbs, does this mean that it's over? No, not at all. It means your body hit a plateau. You know, these are things that you have

11:36 to you have to learn. I didn't know them. you know, I had to be taught these and through years and years of a lot of trial and error and seeing other people's successes and failures, you know, you learn as you go and everybody's an individual. So, I think everybody needs to take that individual specific depending on their needs, their abilities, and what they have access to for fitness. I also want to talk about addiction because I think addiction comes in many ways, shapes, and forms. Everybody knows of drug and alcohol

12:06 addiction. And I think that's just really common. We hear it all the time. But I never really knew about food addiction, you know, and food addiction is real. I suffered with food addiction. And I got to say, even though I kicked the drugs and the alcohol, the food addiction is still probably the hardest thing because it's so available. It's all around us. People don't judge us as much. If you're shooting up heroin on a street corner, people are going to say, "Wow, okay, that's not good." But if you're, you know, walking around the streets with a bag of fast food in your hand, that's normal. That's what we do.

12:38 But we suffer in silence, I think, with that. You know, me in particular, I could eat a bag of fast food and 10 minutes later go get another one. I just never really got a fill for that. And um I I didn't understand that I was addicted to this. And I was addict addicted to I think the feeling of eating that. It wasn't so much the food itself. It was trying to fill some sort of absence or void in my life. The drugs and the alcohol and the food. I was trying to to fill it with these substances that it wasn't working. And

13:09 you know, your body can only take so much of this until it starts to suffer and ultimately fail. So becoming a personal fitness trainer and taking some of these unique experiences that I had, I think have helped me become a very relatable trainer. When somebody comes to me and they're very obese and they're very overweight or out of shape and they're struggling with their sessions and they're struggling, they know that I know how hard it is that they're fighting. I know and I know how hard to push them because I've been in their shoes and I also know when to back off,

13:40 too. So, I want to talk a lot about uh the motivation. I want to talk about um setting goals. Goal setting is absolutely critical. You have to set the the most realistic goals, right? We don't just come in and say, "Okay, I need to lose 140 pounds. I need to do it right away." There is no right away in this game. Right away will just lead you to right away gain it back. And so, you want to do things slow and steady and at a good, comfortable pace. When my trainer first looked at me and I said,

14:11 "I I got to get this weight off. I got to get this weight off. I got to get myself healthy." He told me to breathe. Take a deep breath. Relax. And he reminded me that it took me 20 years to put this weight and get into this horrible condition that I was in. That it was going to take a little bit of time to get it off. I didn't gain it overnight. I didn't learn these bad habits overnight. So, how could I expect to for everything to change overnight? And where some people might find that discouraging, I felt that refreshing to

14:42 me. It that seemed kind of like a breath of fresh air that um yeah, you know what? What is the hurry? What is the panic? I would rather do this and have it take time but do it right than to have moderate success or a little bit lose 10 lbs and then ultimately gain 20 or 30 back. I had played that game for a long time and I wasn't interested in a yo-yo type excess. You know, gain a little, lose a little, gain it back. I didn't want to do that. And once I lost the weight, I'm happy to announce, you know, you know, 13 years later now, I

15:14 have still been able to keep it off and be able to stay strong. I have been in recovery. I haven't had a drink uh 13 years. I'm very proud of that. You know, those people who are out there struggling with addictions, there is hope. You don't have to be what you've been was something that I learned in recovery and something that I'm going to talk about in future episodes. So, all of my podcast episodes are going to be somewhere between 30 and 40 minutes at the most. I want to keep everything kind

15:45 of uh, you know, short and direct and to the point. And I just wrote a book and I'll get into that. My podcast is Body by Phil. My book is called The Black Sword. And I want to delve into that and uh explain what prompted me to write that book and what that book is all about too. It's really kind of a guide to help people like these podcasts will be that are struggling with adversities of any kind. And just to know that there is somebody out there that can help you, understands the struggles that you're

16:15 going through, that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. These are not cliches. This is true. I did it and if I could do it, I'm just a normal guy and I'm going to have guests on here that I have trained. We are just normal people. There's no paid actors or nothing is scripted. I don't write anything down when I'm doing these because everything I do, it's coming from my heart. And the people that I'll have on here, you know, these are people that came to me with that same self-doubt and those same fears and anxieties that I had when I looked at my trainer and said, "I don't

16:46 know if I could do this." And, you know, I look at my clients now and what do I tell them? I tell them, I got you. We're going to get through this. We're going to do this, and all I need you to do is show up and we'll take it from there. So, I'm very excited about having the opportunity to do these. I wanted to do these for such a long time. So, these are the Body by Phil podcasts, and I'll be putting up one every week, and the next one's going to be how I traded a bottle for a barbell. Thank you.