How I Traded a Bottle for a Barbell

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00:00 Welcome back to the Body by Phil podcast. This is Phil. Today I want to talk about how I traded a bottle for a barbell and how it changed the course of my life. Now, as you know or may not know, I suffered from a over 20-year alcohol addiction that on several occasions nearly ended my life through a battery of health issues largely based on the overalcohol consumption and poor poor diet habits, very bad eating

00:32 habits. My body was in in the state of shutting down. I was massively obese and had shot up to well over 305 310 lbs. And I knew that it was time to make a change. Okay. For me, I went into this transformation by wanting to get physically fit and I turned to a gym and hired a personal trainer to help me create some new lifestyle habits. When I say that I I traded in a bottle for a

01:04 barbell, that metaphor really all that means is for me it was literal. But for those people who want to change something in their life that is not a positive thing, they want to replace it with something that's going to help you and and help you live a healthier lifestyle. For me, that was physical fitness. All right? So really all I'm trying to say is that you want to change make positive changes. Replace one negative thing that's going on in your life that's become maybe a pattern or a

01:35 habit and replace it with another good pattern or habit that is a lifestyle. Something that's going to help add years to your life and maybe you know not subtract them. So for me it was definitely physical fitness and through that transformation of losing over 140 lbs in my first year and kicking alcohol completely I I did it cold turkey was one of the most challenging things I'd ever had to do in my life. But it was also one of the most rewarding things I had ever done in my life. And what I do now is I teach people how to do the same

02:07 thing for themselves. I I think there's a responsibility there that not just that I survived the drug and alcohol and overeing for so many years, but that I am now able to share these life experiences with other people who may feel like they can't do it. Okay, I was one of those people. I I thought, well, you know, I think I'm too far gone. Uh I've been drinking all my life. I've never really worked out and I'm so overweight and heavy. You know, I think

02:38 maybe this is all there is for me. This is as good as it's going to get. It probably won't ever get any better. And as good as that was, it wasn't very good at all. And finally, through, you know, the major health scares and because I had a young son who I didn't want to leave fatherless, I knew that it was time for that that change. I call it a moment of revelation. And I think everybody at some point in their life, hopefully if there's something that you want to change, some kind of addiction

03:11 or some sort of adversity that you're trying to battle, maybe you've battled it your whole life, maybe you you've tried to kick these habits, but you you couldn't do it. Finally, you get to a a point in your life where it's kind of that hand slam down on the table. I've had enough type of a moment. It could be brought on by any any sort of variable in your life. For me, it was not wanting to leave my son. But when you have that moment of revelation and you know in your heart that the change is now, then you have to be prepared to go all the

03:43 way with it at any cost. I know that uh people used to tell me all the time, they'd say, "Shil, you are going to the gym six and seven days a week. You're going to burn yourself out. You're going to kill yourself." They had no idea what my life was like before I decided to get serious and take that commitment. I wasn't going to die in a gym. I was going to die if I didn't do things that uh were keeping me from fitness and from a gym. So, I knew that my current lifestyle change habits had to change in

04:14 order for me to make room for the new and improved ones. And I think, you know, we all go through this back and forth in our head. I did for years where I'd say especially hung over. I think this happens a lot. You drink too much, you get hung over and you say, "You know what? No more. I'm not going to do this again. You know, I feel terrible. I feel like crap. You know, I missed work or whatever the case may be." And then before long, you're back at it. You're doing the same routine. And that is what actually becomes your routine. That pattern of I'm going to stop. I'm going

04:45 to do better. I'm going to eat healthier. But ultimately we go back to our own ways. And I think a big reason for that for me in particular was that was just my pattern. This is what I had go grown so accustomed to for most of my adult life that I didn't know anything else. All I knew was ultimately I was going to go back to my old destructive behavior and that the new and improved me that I wanted to create really had little chance of succeeding. Like they say, old keys do not open new doors. And

05:16 that couldn't be more true for me in particular. So, how do you reverse that? How do you trade one great one bad habit for something good? Well, it it's consistency really. For me, it was you you I would get into a pattern of trying something, give it a little bit of time, but then fail. And I didn't understand that the process was going to be a long one. Okay. If if people go into this thinking that it's going to happen overnight, you're sadly mistaken. This

05:48 is not a fast gimmick. And again, the old antage is if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. That couldn't ring more true than with fitness. We see it all the time. I mean, it drives me crazy when I see all these fads and these gimmicks that promise you all the fitness and all the weight loss and all the success um you can stand by just taking a pill or taking a shot or one of my favorite is stop doing cardio to lose fat, that cardio will add fat. All these

06:20 ridiculous claims that are out there we believe because it sounds easy and it fits into our lifestyle. Easy doesn't work in fitness. Fitness takes a tremendous amount of dedication and hard work. But it's not for nothing. And it's what I try to instill in instill in my clients is there's something very rewarding for you in it. Your hard work, your sacrifice and your efforts are rewarded by your goal and your success. What greater motivation is there when we

06:52 start to see and more importantly feel improvement from our sacrifice and hard work? I think that above all is what motivates us to keep going. So by trading your your one destructive behavior for something positive is worth the risk I think right sometimes we think about it we think about it before we react or act on it and I think partly because we're afraid to take that first step because what if we fail you know if

07:22 we fail then it our sacrifice was for nothing but you have to understand that failure especially as it pertains to fitness is a part of the journey. It's probably one of the few sports and I'm going to call it that activities that failure is actually used as a positive. When we push our muscles to the point where they can't take it anymore and we've overloaded them, that's failure. But we learn from that. We get stronger from that failure. When we do cardio and

07:52 we're working our heart as hard as it can go and then we stop because it got too hard. This is good. these these efforts that push us show us how far we can go, how far we want to go, and how hard we have to continue to get to the next level. So, it's it's always a work in progress. I try to tell my clients who are trying to make these drastic changes to start small. Start small and try not to reinvent the wheel. Just do something. Do something that you want to

08:23 do, something that you feel that is within your realm to do it. Don't think about going to a gym and trying to run five miles. If you've never ran before, walk a mile. See how that feels. And the next day, maybe give it a little bit more. Then maybe increase your speed. We want to do these things gradually. And then kind of rally around that success and hold your head high in the fact that you just did something that you didn't think you'd be able to do. And then the next day, push yourself a little bit

08:54 more the next week or the next month. Give yourself that fair chance. If you're replacing a old habit with a new one, remember that your old habit probably took years to create. And good or bad, it probably took a long time. It didn't happen overnight. So, you're going to want to allow yourself enough time for your body and your mind to adjust to the new changes that you're willing to put it through. Again, the the biggest thing I see where people go wrong is they try to do too much too

09:25 soon. This really resonates with the New Year's resolution crowd. They come in and they've blown the whole year waiting for that magical January 1st day where their entire lives are going to change. And that's a great great idea except they come in with really unrealistic expectations and goals. They want too much too fast. This is why it only usually works about two weeks. After two weeks, everybody goes back to their own pattern. They didn't allow enough time. And a lot of that came from frustration.

09:57 Why? Wrong goal, wrong mindset. We need to start slow and steady and believe in yourself. Even if you've done something several times and failed at it, you've never really failed if you keep trying. You're certainly not going to get to your goals by just throwing up your hands and quitting when things get hard. And I think it's human nature in most respects to stop when something becomes hard, to stop when something becomes painful. Okay? When something becomes

10:28 discouraging. Physical fitness is a little bit different than that, though. physical fitness, the really good, fun, and exciting things really start to happen right at the moment where you want to quit, but something in you says, "No, I have a little bit more in me. I can push myself a little bit more. Maybe it's just a few more steps on a treadmill. Maybe it's just one or two more reps under a bench press, whatever. You just push yourself just that little bit more." Sometimes you surprise yourself. You're you're really kind of shocked. Wow, look at what I just

10:58 achieved. I didn't even know if I could do this at all, let alone do it over and over and over again. So, give yourself a fair amount of time. Be very patient. And above all, be consistent. Don't be afraid to take the risk. If you try and fail, at least you tried. And then you get back up and you try again. And you continue to try until you do it, until you win. People say you shouldn't live in regret. Well, I regret wasting 20 years of not believing in myself and not taking that chance. I think regret is

11:30 okay in in a lot of ways because regret means I look back and wish I would have done something a little better. It means I care about where I am and how far I came out of that old destructive me and how I don't ever want to go back to it. So once you reach your goal, you want to look back and say, "Look how far I've come. I've really accomplished some major things." And it it can become a real source of inspiration for other people who witness your journey, who may be quietly thinking to themselves the same things you did about wanting to be

12:02 better, wanting to do great things, but not having the courage or the knowledge or the belief in themselves to do it. So my best advice to you, pray it in whatever it is that is bothering you that you're not happy with in your life that you want to replace. Find something that you want to do for you, just for yourself, and have the courage to take that first and very important step.