Well, hello ladies and gents, Robert Sykes Keto savage.com to
Dev get special guest Vince Pitstick on the line.
He is the man behind so many of the waves done in the functional
medicine space. He's in the coaching space,
started off as a bodybuilder, went to integrative medicine and
is totally been changing the world and changing people's
lives in the process. Thoroughly enjoyed this
conversation. We have a lot in common and not
on the bodybuilding background, but also OCD and just a lot of
similar mental approaches to things in life, our extremist
attitude. So I really resonated with a lot
of things he was saying. Like I said, thoroughly enjoy
the conversation. I've got no doubt that you will
take something from it regardless, you will leave this
conversation feeling fired up, so definitely give it a listen.
Let's roll the intro. And we are live, Vince.
How are you, brother? I'm doing great, Robert.
Good, good. I'm excited to talk with you
man. So I I historically do not do
any research on my guests before they come in.
I just like it to be an organic conversation.
But I jumped on your IG literally 30 seconds before we
jumped on here. And your Last Post was talking
about women specifically who are constantly chronically under
eating. And that is probably the largest
demographic of clientele that I just coincidentally get.
And it happens all the time. I love to just kind of flesh
that out. But before we even get into
that, man, just what got me, what got you in the space,
because you've been doing this for a long time.
Yeah, so to, to, to make a Long story short, take a young boy
who gets really, really sick at the age of 7.
Rare physical and mental disorder, unexplained idiopathic
people didn't know where it came from.
Traveled, you know, failed by the medical system.
They just want to throw me on drugs.
Ended up, you know, the course of 12 years working through
different health practitioners got lots of different diagnosis
is one of them was like a severe like OCD.
But I also had like, you know, gut issues, anxiety issues, all
kinds of other stuff going on. And in the end, it ended up
being a combination of holistic practitioners, cleaning my
nutrition, gym therapy. And I was kind of liberated from
it, but not before I started self medicating with street
drugs. So then I became addicted to,
you know, St. stimulants and I had another 10 year battle with
that. And so in that journey, I
learned all the different layers of healing that kind of have to
happen. And I worked with holistic, a
lot of holistic practitioners. And you know, when I went to
college, it was one of those things where I just didn't have
a passion for anything but helping other people because of
my own journey. So I was in the, I was like
third year in this middle of this finance a degree.
And I'm like, what the hell am I doing?
I got about a class. I never look back.
I'm like, where am I going to start helping people?
I was like, well, I'll start as a trainer because I was already
in bodybuilding. This is like 20 years ago now.
And I'll start as a trainer and we'll we'll see where it goes
from there. Ended up building if a full
membership training program that included holistic services,
blood work from a hormone Dr. And everything was like
included. That program took off near
Chicago. And then I got picked up by a
global Health Organization called Metagenics, where I got
the trained under some of the best doctors in the world and
functional medicine. And when you take my
bodybuilding background, fat loss nutrition, athletic
nutrition background, and then you combined all the functional
medicine tools and training that I had, I made AI, made a good
medical consultant for doctors all over the country.
So I was the guy behind the guy of some of the biggest doctors
in the country for many years. And I saw the inconsistencies in
the medical field. But I was the guy that sat in on
the cases. I was the guy that got the call,
you know, at 8:00 AM or 8:00 PM if something wasn't going right.
And I would help practices build out their protocols, build out
their cash pay services, fat loss services, holistic health
services. And so I learned about every
method from every kind of doctor you can think of.
There's, there's not like a therapy I don't know about,
haven't seen treatment with or know how to do a protocol
around. And so I, I, I accumulated this
infinite amount of wealth or of knowledge in that, in that area.
And, and then one day I said, you know what, I've learned all
the best things. And what's missing is that what
really needs to happen is that they need to be coached through
all of these tools and all these tools need to be put into one
program. So I developed what was called
the 4F4F method. I quit my cozy job and I'm
opened up in the back of a chiropractic office in
Waynesville, OH. Starting with about 10 clients.
And now the the, the the main business, Vital Coaching is one
of the largest one-on-one functional health coaching
companies in the United States. From there I launched all my
other businesses so that the service could be totally
contained. I can make the exact supplements
that I wanted. I designed the app for the
experience that I wanted. I launched a couple other
coaching companies and then I eventually launched a university
and then my own medical company. So that way when you come to
work at my with any one of my coaches or anything, you're a
complete medical operation, even if you don't have a license.
So I can, I can make any coach have all the tools that they
need so that they can be a one man or female show so that they
can really lead people to the true other, you know, meaning of
health. And so that, that's been my
journey. And so now I'm, you know, the
founder of the vital Network, which is about 7 different
businesses, about 120 staff. And we're, we're all
aggressively pursuing radical change in the fitness and health
industry. And we think we're the tip of
spear that's going to do it. So that's the, that's the short
of it, Robert. I love it, man.
I love it. Ambitious.
I liked it. How old are you?
Just turned 40. Nice man Killing it.
Killing it. What do you think the big
problem is in the health and fitness space now?
Because it seems to be in some ways making leaps and bounds.
Another way is just stuck in, you know, no man's land.
Yeah. So you got to kind of judge, got
to judge in industry by its fruit, right.
And so let's start with the medical field.
So you've got more doctors, more prescriptions, more science,
more health networks than ever before in human fit history.
Yet almost every single known human disease is growing at all
time rates. By 2037, out of 10 people in the
world, not just in the United States, but in the world, will
be struck with some form of lifestyle disease that will
significantly hamper their joy, their vitality, their life.
And you have to go. There seems to be an inverse
relationship between more medicine and worse health,
right? And we believe it's because of
the special specialization. So let me explain, Robert,
you're going to be a for just for two minutes, you're going to
be a endocrinologist, you're going to work on thyroid, and
then I'm going to be a gastroenterologist.
I'm going to work GI OK, so you and I are both going to go to
school and then we're going to divvy up everybody.
You're going to work thyroid, I'm going to work gut.
You're going to stay in your lane.
I'm going to stay in my lane. You make your money, I make my
money. All was well, right.
That sounds really wise or logical, doesn't it?
Very logical. So that's why the when they call
IT systems medicine, it's because they've they've divvied
up the human body into they've chopped it up into eleven
systems. And then they dictate a
specialty for each doctor to be just live in that system.
But once a condition that you have had goes past six months,
it is no longer acute, it is chronic.
And when it is chronic, almost by definition, that means
multiple systems are working improperly that work together to
create a function. So think of like you did chronic
fatigue, right? Think of chronic joint pain.
Think of chronic gut issues. Doesn't matter what it is, it's
not one system anymore. So for example, metabolism is a
great, we could use metabolism as a good example.
Where is the metabolism on your body?
It was not in one place, right? It's everywhere.
And all 11 systems of the body play a part in your total
metabolic rate because they're all metabolizing things in these
systems. And they all have, they all have
an effect on the messaging that happens to every little cell and
how much that cell jostles and metabolizes that adds to the net
total of your total metabolic rate.
And so, you know, if I was going to work one system, if I, if
everyone came to you, Robert, and was like, hey, I want to
lose weight. If you just trained everybody,
you'd only be working the musculoskeletal system.
Well, one system approaches do not solve complex issues, which
is why medicine fundamentally is opposed to healing, because it
does not happen in just one system.
It's multiple systems working together, which is why as a
coach, you'll do nutrition, you probably do mindset, You're
working on stress management, you're working on sleep, you're
working on water, you're working on nutrition, you're working on
supplementation. You're working all kinds of
systems together that then create incredible outcomes.
Would you agree with that statement?
100%. OK, so you all you just
naturally get get it that you have to work multiple systems in
order to bring alignment back to the body and create vitality and
fix it from the root, which is what functional means.
So when I broke out and created my career, there was no, there
were health coaches that taught you how to drink water and sleep
and stuff, but there were no functional health coaches that
use deep functional medicine, science programming and then
fitness programming together. It didn't exist about 15 years
ago and so we had to create a term for it.
So we just made it up and we're like functional health coach.
So and you can see on record, we were the first to just kind of
get it out there because we needed something to describe
what we were doing. And, and that didn't really, and
nothing really fit at the time. And it kind of picked up steam,
you know, and, and So what we believe in and, and what I'm
trying to do is create my own Health Network that when you
come in, you see a coach, but that coach is really your guide,
the guide to make sure that everything gets in alignment so
that you can have the outcome that you actually desire.
So like if someone comes and sees you, you're not just going
to do nutrition, you're not just going to do XY or Z, you're
going to put everything in a row for them so that all the systems
fall into place and the outcome happens.
You don't have that in medicine. So people fall through the
cracks. They'll go see the the
dietitian, but then their dietitian doesn't work with
their diabetes specialist or their heart, you know, doctor or
or whatever. No one's talking to each other.
It's not Cleveland Clinic style and it never will be.
And so everyone falls through the cracks and that's why no one
actually gets better. They just manage their symptoms.
And so we have we the pandemic of our time.
Robert is right in front of us and it's not a comet, it's not
UFOs, it's not COVID, it is us. We are going to kill ourselves.
Do you think the current standard of care and just the
Western medicine system as it is, is like malicious in nature,
or do you think they just kind of defaulted to, I don't know,
whatever they did that made the most money and that kind of
became the system that it is? I've had a lot of time to think
about this because you never can tell when a when a tragedy or
travesty happens, if it's ignorance or maliciousness, you
know, malice. And I think for the most part,
most people that get into medicine have a genuine duty to
serve, but it is beat out of them because the the real
politics and the people that run medicine don't care.
And so you're seeing a few people at the top who own all
the businesses who just look at it like a business.
So they're slightly ignorant, but they're also just slightly
malicious because they're so self-serving that it's not about
creating solutions, it's about creating profits.
And that's even though I'm a, I'm a red blooded American.
I love my country, I love capitalism.
That's where it fails us sometimes.
Although again, I'm not saying the single payer government
controlled system would be any better, but but I am saying that
it is the problem. Western medicines 12 system
approach will not solve the problems that the world has
today. And it's obvious.
Do you think, I mean, it's like such a big ship, it'd be kind of
hard to to turn it? Is it going to be just an
implosion that acts as the catalyst for change, or what's
going to happen? Well, did you not, you know,
it's interesting that we talk about this.
Did you not just see the, the killing in New York of the head
of the insurance company and the amount of people.
Now listen, I'm not for murder, OK, let's be clear.
But what you should see is the reaction of the of the public,
which is much different than we expected.
It's it's almost 5050 in support because people are getting sick
and tired. And as pressure builds,
opportunities will arise, new markets will emerge.
And we saw this with the rise of nursing, by the way, you know,
the boom of nursing did not exist.
And then one day, Florence Nightingale created a school.
She was not licensed. She was just a woman that
created a process that reduced emergency room deaths by 80%,
that was focused on the human element of healing.
And she created a process and then she opened a school and she
trained others and there was about 200,000 nurses that were
just home care, cash pay entrepreneurs.
Sound familiar? Like coaches today.
And then eventually it got so popular it became adopted and
that led to mass adoption. And that's where the licensure
came in. And nursing is the greatest
technology to ever hit medicine because it's the human element
of healing right up there with penicillin.
And, and I believe that coaching is the next version of that.
I believe that you're either going to get AI services, you're
going to enter your symptoms in on ChatGPT and then it's going
to Amazon's going to drop you off a prescription or, or you're
going to get preventative care or work with a forward thinking
doctor and you're going to be guided by a coach.
I think there's going to be coaching for everything in the
future. And that's why my organization
is heavily leveraged. I'm making that a reality and
functional medicine though is growing in popularity every
year. The the market forecast shows
24% growth year over year on functional related services.
So the demands already coming and I think we are going to see
a reckoning over the course of the next, especially by 20-30
when so many people are sick and the medical system can't handle
it. We're going to be looking for
something new. And so that's, that's what I
believe. And so I'm heavily invested in
that future fitness. You would think be should be
benefiting from this and it is. But the problem with fitness is
because it doesn't know enough about the functional side or how
the system of the body works. They apply the same method to
every single person. You know how maybe you go to a
chiropractor, it just so happens that every treatment involves a
adjustment. You go to a hormone specialist.
It just so happens that every treatment involves a hormone.
You go to, I don't know, GI doctor, every treatment involves
proton pump inhibitor. See, the whole problem is
getting spent becoming a specialist.
We need more generalists that kind of know how to put
everything together because if you apply a caloric restriction
and high resistance training to every problem, more often than
not, you're going to cause more problems long term than good.
Not that working out is not phenomenal.
It is, it's medicine. Not that nutrition isn't
phenomenal, it is, it's medicine.
But there is a time and a place to on a, on a system that you do
different things to bring it back to full health and then
fully stress it. There is an order of operations
that gets missed and because that gets missed and people
don't really know what they're doing and they think that
everyone's they're training everybody like A and coaching
everybody like a 19 year old male.
And, and the methods of dieting that we've been giving women I
believe are making us in general worse and not better.
When you look at the totality of the industry, I think it's got
one of the greatest armies of people who want to help people,
but I think they're misguided with predominantly fitness
research only on small research sample sizes.
And then they go apply that to everybody like it's the Bible
and it's just not true. It is inadequate.
And so the more that fitness grows, the people still get sick
at a higher and higher rate. So I don't know if we're doing
that great of a job except making money for ourselves,
because nowhere in the world, per capita do we spend more
money than the United States on supplements, fitness programs
and gym memberships. Yeah, no, I, I agree on
everything you just said, man. I feel like it's very easy for
people to get stuck in their information silos and then just
not be open receptive to anything outside of that.
Like I feel like for me, I came from, you know, the bodybuilding
space. So like I had all of that, you
know, evidence backed, you know, bro, dieting wisdom, so to
speak. But then I got to the ketogenic
space, which was like a very nice, you know, marrying of the
two because the ketogenic space as a general rule of thumb is
pretty open and receptive to the functional medicine, these
alternative medicines. So like I was able to kind of
took what I learned from the bodybuilding background and
apply that to what I have learned in the nutritional
space. And I feel like it's only opened
my mind all the more. And you don't really see a lot
of that in the space. Yeah, people are afraid in
medicine and in fitness to be judged by their peers.
The government doesn't have to do much because the fear of
public opinion keeps us strapped, keeps us in our
groups. Group think we get into tribes,
right, tribal behavior. And I've never been good at
that. Remember, I grew up kind of boy
in a bubble. I grew up looking at looking at
the world from my window and I've never felt felt fit into
one group. And I, I've been on the pursuit
of truth and knowledge about nutrition and it's taking me
some to the, some of the most uncomfortable places that have
had me what I believed was true, turns out it's only half true.
And I had to expand my mind and expand my programming.
Keto was one of those areas. I'm a big, I'm a big, big fan of
keto. I use it in certain ways, but
also fasting. I was anti fasting and I
realized that it's actually the truth.
I was, you know, I was all about building muscle and I still am.
Muscle's still important, but it's not as important as I
thought it was in terms of there's a rate limited to health
and size. And if if you're trying to live
forever, getting big is not a good idea.
And so there's things I had to learn and functional medicine
taught me two things that we believed in.
Functional medicine have changed.
And you've got to be willing to be humble and a student and
continue to learn because I want to be the best in the world.
I care very little to be right. And that's, that's my pursuit.
So it's taking me to some really uncomfortable places.
And so I, that's why I have the answers that I do today is
because I was willing to do that, that we teach, that we
teach to doctors and coaches all over the world in my university.
I love it. I love it.
I feel like functional medicine as a whole has, you know,
definitely generated a lot more momentum.
Like I've had several people in the podcast from the functional
medicine space and it, you know, 20 years ago or 10 years ago,
whatever the time frame was like, that was kind of like the
laughingstock amongst traditional Western medicine.
Whereas now they they tend to play a lot better because they
they've got this underlying respect for one another, it
seems. Yeah, that, well, we're starting
to see a blending of fitness and functional.
You're seeing that those two worlds are, are actually kind
of, you got Peter Attia, for example, right?
You, you got certain practitioners that are starting
to embody this middle ground, which again is what we, that was
our we champion for that. Because if you take what people
don't understand, if I wish the functional doctors knew that if
you take the bodybuilding structure, OK, because people
don't understand the structure of your programming and your
lifestyle can 10X the speed of your outcome and the altitude of
your outcome. So what I what do I mean by the
structure? So if you go to a function
medicine doctor now This is why I quit and did it for myself.
They can call themselves functional.
They can run labs, they can throw vitamin D at you.
They can give you a sheet of paper that shows some foods on
it, say eat this and call themselves functional.
Nah, Nah, Nah, Nah, Nah, Nah. That's not functional.
The the framework of coaching and functional, that's when you
see incredible outcomes because human beings, they first need to
believe and they need to feel connected.
That's why a coach gets better outcomes than a doctor in my
opinion, because a doctor sees you every three to six months.
A coach talks to you weekly, keeps you in the game, keeps you
at 95%. So then the things you do
exponentially create outcomes faster, right?
They get them to believe that they can do the thing before it
you even do the thing, which is the, it's half the the damn game
is the belief. It's the mind.
It's not what you do physically. It's it's what happens in the
mind and your belief. And So what I found was the
framework of bodybuilding is the model for medicine.
So it's like I'm going to change some of your, I'm going to watch
your biofeedback. I'm going to have some labs.
I'm going to watch your body change over time.
I'm going to be a touch point with you weekly.
We're going to dial things up and down as your body adjusts.
And then that's how you solve complex systems like the human
body. You do not solve it in a in a
process where it's like, I'm going to look for a symptom,
treat the symptom here, take this for six months, come back,
let's see where you're at and try again.
That's the recipe for never getting better.
Yeah, it's interesting because like it's cool that we both have
a bodybuilding background because a lot of people, I mean
most people I work with are not competitive bodybuilders, but
I'll implement a very similar protocol from like that
structured standpoint. I mean, if you can measure it,
you can manage it like variable control.
Basically, you just, you reach the goal much more efficiently,
much more effectively if you have that standardized approach
that you can manipulate confidently and accurately.
And so many people have this hesitancy to approach things
from this bodybuilding esque, you know, style.
But at the end of the day, like bodybuilders, nothing special.
We're all human beings. Like if it works for them to
reach desired outcome, the same principles would apply to you.
Yeah, see what people don't understand about let's say
research, for example, and this blows my mind that you get
people running around beating people over the head with
research like it's the Bible. Even if research has a has a
strong P value, right, Which is the accuracy of the data and has
a large sample size, you know, So like let's say that N is
greater than 500 or 5000, right? The date is only accurate for up
to 68% of people because that's one standard deviation away from
the mean. So that means that the polar
edges, right? The other, what is that 32%
right, which is usually the people you deal with in coaching
is the people that don't fall in the standard.
Those people, right, have bio individuality that is not
accurate, adequately represented in the literature.
But then they're being told on social media that all they need
to do is follow what everybody else is doing and what coaching
allows us to do by watching biofeedback.
And that's why we do genetics coaching too.
So I get your genetics report. I'm looking at your microbiome.
I'm doing advanced Dutch because you have, you really have about
17 hormones. You don't have three.
You have like 17 with the metabolites.
So I look at all of those things.
If I if, if the client has the money for it and I'm, I'm
tracking your biofeedback week over week.
I'm adjusting for your bio individuality, which is why my
success rate, you know, the average success rate for a
doctor is like 60%, but it also has about an 80% relapse rate.
That's standard medicine. Our program right now has a 95%
completion and success rate at six months, 6 to 8 months.
So like, it accounts for the bio individuality that is not
represented in research. And that's what you mean by the
coaching method. You know what I mean?
And that's why the success rate gets so high.
And I wish people would know that, but they don't.
They're unfamiliar with coaching.
Less than less than 12 1/2 percent of Americans have ever
been offered coaching or functional services.
So like, if you've never been offered, you can't partake.
They don't know because they're not familiar with it.
Their friend on the street doesn't do it.
They don't really follow those people on social media.
They, they, you know, they don't know anybody.
And so as this thing grows, it will, it will diffuse and become
very popular. We're, we're at the beginning of
a revolution, I believe. And you're going to see that all
of a sudden, just like fish oil and vitamin D.
Do you remember, Robert? Just this is literally, I can
remember this 'cause I was one of the first, like fish oil and
vitamin D was a big thing for me.
And we didn't know I was giving people D2 at the time.
We didn't know D3 was. Anyway, you had to learn.
But I told people about fish oil and vitamin D and they're like,
what the F are you talking about, right?
If you ask somebody today, 18 years later, they go, you don't
take vitamin D and fish oil. You see what I'm saying?
So it's a diffusion through the market and that's where
everything's heading. So if anybody's listening to
this, who's in the in the health space, if you're leaning into
functional, it's going to be a good decade for you.
Well, beyond that, I mean like the coaching component, like
that controls for the physiological, you know,
individualized factor, but also the psychological component.
I feel like that's where most people miss the boat 'cause if
you're going to see a doctor once every six months, you get
an annual lab work done. They're giving you some generic
recommendations. There's no psychological
component in place there. And that's where so many people
trip up. That's the number one.
I couldn't agree with you more. We're, we're completely in, in
alignment at my, for example, So we, we have about 40 coaches at
Vital coaching and about last year, I, I totally changed a lot
of our training. I'm way less concerned if you
are an expert in functional medicine, and I'm way more
concerned if you're a functional or if you're if you're a
transformational leader because transformational leadership is
what's going to get people to follow the process much more
than you know in 17 different ways to use Ashwagandha.
And that's why I found that the more letters you have behind
your name, the less typically effective you are as a
practitioner because you're more of a researcher instead of a
doer. And I need doers.
I need people. They're going to get in the dirt
with you that have been through the issues like yours.
That's gonna that's gonna you know, that's gonna put his hand
on his shoulder and it's gonna walk you through the suck, you
know? Yeah.
And that's and that's what I, I believe today.
So I, I tell my coaches, stop going and getting more
certifications about one more thing about microbiome.
Go learn about go, go get, you know, transformational
leadership courses. Go go language courses, sales
courses, non verbal communication, public speaking,
because those are the tools that are actually going to create the
relationship and the experience necessary to get them through
the hard moments. 100% I want to dive into nuts and bolts of your
curriculum and how you get that structure, but you said
something the very beginning piqued my interest.
So you said that you were suffering from OCD when you were
younger. Yeah, so I I had many health
issues, but one of them was a rare form of severe OCD.
Yeah. How did that manifest itself?
In massive intrusive thoughts, I, I, I, you know, I would get
the thought that my mother was going to die if I didn't do XY
and Z or, you know, that, you know, I even, there was, there
was even a year of my life, as strange as it sounds, that I
thought my mom was an alien. Although I tell you what, that's
not that weird today, considering look what's going on
there. I, I had a fear of thinking.
So at 7 years old, I was worried about simulation theory.
So I was worried I was living in a simulation, which is kind of
weird 'cause we're, we're talking about that today, right?
But I was dealing with the fear of that with no tools of how to
logically understand it at 7 years old.
And I'll tell you what, it really challenges your mind when
you don't know what's real, You don't know who to believe, you
don't know where to turn. And no one's really been much
help. And that's why I stand in the
gap today for others because most people that find coaches
have this desire because they're not comfortable where they're
at, but they don't know where to turn.
And, you know, that's why. So.
Yeah.
So a pretty rare form. And it found out I was exposed
to environmental chemicals on the farm that I was at.
I I lived in the cornfields as a kid.
You couldn't get me to go back inside and I was exposed to some
pretty nasty chemicals that that actually got pulled off the
market and that so toxic exposure mixed with a lot of
family trauma. There's like a lot of early
family issues, severe issues in the home.
You mix multiple stressors at once on a five to seven-year old
kid. That's when you start having
dysfunction, right? And so that's, that's, that's
how my journey started, yeah. Do you have any OCD tendencies
today? Like anything, you've been able
to obviously mitigate and manage it, but any tendencies?
Yeah, you, you learn to optimize it when once you the the beauty
of it is that once you get the right tools, which is why I like
in my program, we have group therapy.
You get your nutrition, your training.
We also have our own medical team that can give you stuff
that will help balance it out like LDN.
Low dose naltrexone is amazing for compliance.
FYI if you have clients that are non compliant it it at higher
doses it's used for to help people come off alcohol but at
micro doses at 5 milligrams it helps with compliance and just
general feelings of balance. It's not an anti anxiety or
antidepressant. It's out of your system in six
hours. It has no side effects, it's
free money. It's amazing.
My medical clinic. I launched my medical clinic
vital Med specifically to have access to these tools and have
my own doctors because I got tired of I'm not referring to
doctors no more. I wanted to train my own
doctors. I wanted him to the amazing
people. I wanted him to do great service
and and not a gouge people. So any if anybody's looking for
great like hormone or just functional medicine care want to
see a doctor, you guys can check out vital vital Vidal Med ME
d.com. My team is the best.
They work with coaching companies and other
practitioners all over the country because I just got so
sick of the BS that I was getting from doctors.
And so we, we pull all that stuff together.
So my OCD today is a superpower. That's why my work rate, I just
outwork everybody because I can get obsessed, but I have tools
to make sure that I don't go too far, that I stayed relatively
within balance. And I'm, I'm glad for it today
because there's just, if anybody wanted to go head to head
against me, you'd have to be, you'd have to be mentally
insane, literally to probably outwork me.
No I love it man. And I asked this because I've
had debilitating OCD the majority of my life.
Like what got me into bodybuilding.
Like I remember doing like 50 Rep sets then having to double
it and triple it because I would have these intrusive thoughts of
like someone holding the gun to my parents head saying if you
just give me 50 more reps I'm putting a bull between the rows.
Like that was literally what fueled my workouts.
Brother, do you know? OK, so check this out.
So that happened to me, but it happened to me when I was
younger. So I wasn't lifting yet.
It was in basketball. So my parents, the way they
found out something was wrong is I would go out to practice and
it would be full storming, tornado warnings, whatever's
going on, and I'd still be out there.
And I wasn't telling people what was going on because I was
afraid. I thought I was like, I was
broke and so I was bad kid, something's wrong with me.
And so I would literally go out to just shoot just like 10
minute game of hoops. But then if I didn't make 50
shots in a row, I couldn't go inside.
There was one day I shot basketball for 23 hours.
Yeah, I. Totally.
Totally get that man because I have the exact same thing
throughout my competition preps and it was like it used to be
before I got into bodybuilding. It was like germs, like I was a
germaphobe, like Howard Hughes shit with the OCD.
But. Then it got into the fitness
component and like whenever I'm going through a competition
prep, it's like if I mess up one little thing, I've got to redo
the entire thing multitude of times over to prove to myself
and just prevent something bad from happening that would never
happen anyways. But yeah, man, I've never really
talked to people that had that same phenomena, so this is
interesting. Yeah, man, yeah, yeah.
We listen. We've lived like, yeah, you
that's lived, by the way, if you've never been diagnosed.
I mean, that's Hallmark. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, like for
sure. But it's cool because like once
you realize it and you can harness it, it is totally a
superpower. Like like you were saying, I can
outwork anybody because once I like freaking take the ceiling
off of that thing, I can direct it and I'm unstoppable.
There you go, bro. I'm, I'm so here's, so I call
that. So I have a nonprofit program
called Emotional Freedom Fellowship and it takes
individuals of greatness because I don't know if you know this,
but all people that you find interesting have some version of
this of a, of obsession, compulsion, addiction.
And so we call it the inner addict.
And our job is to utilize the inner attic to make us great for
everyone around us, including ourselves and our society, but
to put for it to not consume us. And, and so the whole program is
to help you harness your superpowers.
It's called EFF and I I, I, you know, entrepreneurs are all
basically addicts, you know, bodybuilders are all basically
addicts in, in not, I don't think out, don't think
alcoholic, but just emotional addict, right?
Like, and you almost kind of got to be, to be great at anything.
And, and So what I, what I've learned is that it we, we define
addiction as an individual with great of greatness with the
wrong beliefs and actions to meet their needs.
So I used to believe that if I took one more line of cocaine,
everything would be OK. So all of my thoughts, actions,
behaviors were centered and focused around getting cocaine.
Today I believe that if I'm able to help one more person, I've
just changed the input. So the input is helping others
lives makes everything OK. So all of my thoughts, actions,
and motivations are around helping other people.
And so that's why I've become such a sharpened tool for good,
you know, because that's all my brain does.
And you know, this other people's brains are preoccupied
with a lot of things. But the one thing that's kind of
nice about OCD is if you get locked in on something, that's
it. That's where you are.
And it creates an an ability to to just fly past everyone else
while you're worried about this, that and the other whatever's
going on, your thoughts are going no, I am 24/7 locked in.
The problem is, is then I get isolated.
I get disconnected from others and then I start becoming
restless, irritable, discontent. I start judging others.
I start being a little bit frustrated.
I get judge mental. I lose my relationship
connection to my higher power, which I call Jesus Christ.
And then when I lose that connection, I become dangerous
to myself and others. You know what I mean?
And and then maybe not in like, not like I'm a pull a gun on
anybody, but you know, like just not treating people great, not
doing the right thing. You know that right, All, all
the, all the components that can go with it.
So that's why I have to keep a balance.
Yeah. And it's, it's like, what, what
do you have in, in place in your life?
Like what are some checks and balances, so to speak?
Because like I, I don't believe in this mentality of like work
life balance. Like if, especially if you're
OCD and you get locked in, like balance is bullshit.
Like you have to be an extremist.
Like you have to harness that in a positive way, ideally for the
betterment of those around you and yourself.
So like what what happens in your life that kind of acts as a
reckoning to realize that you got a direct course?
So there's no such thing as balance, but there is seasonal
restoration. So I intentionally, because I
have like my team around me, like like my top dietitian
assistant sitting right next to me right now.
And I've got my assistant and I've got close friends and I and
I make them hold me accountable. So like I would be a workaholic
all the time, but I'll set an intention.
I'll say this season guys is about this launch, doing this
and doing this and then I make them book out trips or I have
people that hold me accountable because it is necessary that I
come up for air on occasion and that I enjoy what I'm doing.
And then I'm in the moment and sometimes I won't recognize that
I'm not doing that. So that's one is having having a
few people, a community around you that you help hold you
accountable. Two, I'm lucky I have recovery.
That's why I created EFF because I needed a group of people that
I could go have a sponsor. So EFF gives you a sponsor and
it's just somebody that you check in with and this mentally,
how you doing? Where are we at?
How how are things going? You know, and that allows you to
have some authority in your life outside of yourself and and just
make sure you're in a good mental headspace.
And then obviously, you know, my accountability and my Lord and
Savior Jesus Christ, you know, I've got to answer to him.
At the end of the day, I am not perfect.
I'm not the Christian most Christians would want me to be.
I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm a different type.
My, I think my walk with Jesus comes with a limp.
And so, but at the end of the day, I've got to, I got to
answer to him imperfect or perfect.
And so those are the things that really helped me stay stay in
the track that is that's thinking about others and and
continuing to try to do the best that I can.
Yeah, I think, you know, kind of with the OCD, but also just in
probably with anybody that has this go getter mentality, like
when you from a spirituality component, when you remove self
as the highest power, like you have this sense of humility and
that allows you to function at a more sustained rate for the long
haul, 'cause like I used to burn it all the time at age.
I used to be like, yeah, I used to just, like, flirt with
death's door on a regular basis. And I like it.
That's the weird thing. Like I'm a freaking masochist,
man. Like, I like that it makes me
feel alive. But I recognize that that's
probably not the most conducive thing to overall betterment long
term, especially for those around me.
And once I'm at my last prep is when I kind of got really dove
into the spiritual component of it and harness the OCD, but also
just recognize that I was doing things that I couldn't have done
solo, you know? And that was an eye opener for
me. There you go, that was it.
I mean, you took the words right out of my mouth.
And I really recommend that for anybody because the problem with
so I, I talk about the five stages of change a lot and
they're, you're constantly in a cyclical growth pattern of the
five stages of change. And the, and the fourth stage is
called the cocoon phase or the process phase.
And bodybuilding teaches you this because what you learn
really fast is if you want to make great transformation in a
particular area of your life, whether it be mental, physical,
spiritual, you have to reduce the number of things that you're
doing in the chaos and, and, and, and, and get focused, which
means that your world is going to become smaller.
And when your world becomes smaller, it's, it's like
bringing a mirror really close to your face so that you,
because you're going to come really close with your own
unmanageability. And that's why most people whose
nervous systems aren't really regulated, That's why when they
get into that space and coaching, that's why they start
getting into self sabotaging behavior because they come up
close with their own unmanageability.
And in the discomfort of it, they seek comfort sex, scrolling
sex or food, you know, And what I've learned though, in that in
that process, though of cocoon phase, you must have the answer
to compulsion is connection. So think about, I don't know if
you've ever heard of the study of on rat Park, but they took a
they took a rat, they addicted it to cocaine.
Well, no, it's not what they did first.
Actually, they took a rat. They put it in a in a room with
a lot of sexually active female rats that were that they made
aroused with medications and the rat was having so much sex, they
became a sex addict. Then they took the rat, put it
in with water and cocaine, and it immediately chose the cocaine
'cause you can get coat addictions.
So people who have gotten semi obsessively compulsed to one
thing are very likely to get compulsed to another thing.
They're way more likely. Then they took the rat and they
put the rat in rat park, and Rat park was just normal rats who
acted normal. Put them around a lot of rats
and guess what? Put the cocaine in with the
water and the rat stopped consuming the cocaine and went
for the water. So the, the, the, the lesson to
that is is that you have to cocoon in order to create great
transformation. That's why the Caterpillar turns
into, you know, obviously the drag, what with the butterfly.
I'm, I'm, I'm in, I'm in my what's called my hell week.
We see like 120 clients this week.
It's non-stop. So I'm going all the time this
week. This is this is my, this is my
grind week. But, but at the same time, you
can't get disconnected. And that's what happens to a lot
of bodybuilders. They get disconnected and then
they in in lieu of not having connection, they become
obsessed. And so that's where it, it's,
it's one thing to appreciate your body of work.
It's another thing to become so obsessed that you're never good
enough. And so that's why when they need
that, when we take young minds into a prep, we have to, we have
to get them to understand the pressure that develops and the
tools that they need, not just physically, but emotionally in
order to successfully navigate those waters.
And I tried to tell all my body goers, because what they'll do
is instead of having like good connection with friends, family
or something, healthy connection, what are they going
to do? Well, I know what I did.
I went out and drank and got laid.
That was not great because I'm on steroids.
I'm, I'm, I'm doing and that's not the connection that was
going to last. So it's just going to give me a,
it's going to give me a little boost and then, you know, I'm
going to be back to it. But we will, we will satiate on
that for quite some time, but it will never fully satisfy.
And that's the problem. So then we keep chasing more and
more and more instead of just pursuing our best self.
It becomes about more and never being good enough.
And then that's when bodybuilding, which is an
amazing thing, turns very, very negative and toxic.
Yeah, no, I totally agree. Are you you married, you got
kids or anything like that? No, I have not had the pleasure
yet of becoming married, although hopefully kids and
marriage are in my near future because I'm looking forward to.
It, yeah, it's, it's interesting, man.
Like it creates a whole new dynamic.
And I was kind of fearful of it at first because it's like, I
don't know if that's going to be conducive to my dreams and
aspiration. I thought was going to slow me
down and hold me back, but it's not really had that effect.
And my wife is very different than me and she kind of acts as
that, I don't know, point of integration to some degree of
normalcy where I have a sense of fulfillment, but it's not a
detriment to my own ambitions, you know?
Yeah, that's great to hear, man. That's a good message for
everybody because I you know, that is always the biggest fear
because the one closest to you is either going to build you up
or take you down. Yeah, totally.
What? What?
What's your, what's, what's your demons now, man?
What are you fighting now? Man, again, my work rate versus
family like like dating life. I don't particularly like
dating. It's annoying this day and age
more than ever, but so like work life balance, which is always,
you know, a teetering cascade. But again, on the other hand
though, like nobody questions LeBron James's work great
because it's like, well, of course he's going to work a lot.
Well, that's that's me and my other people's expectations of
my life. I do not have to hold to right.
So it's like, yeah, you may not want to work this much.
I do, right. So there's a difference.
It's part of what makes me happy.
But at the same time, I don't know, I get into I man, I like,
I liked it. I get in a little bit like
nicotine pouches and stuff like that.
I get into that sometimes. I don't know, I'm pretty stable
and everything else, man, I, I got a pretty good consistent
process. So it's, so it's just, it's just
balance in the, the risk versus reward.
How big of risk do I want to take in my business and in my
life? And you know, that's it, that's
probably it. You know, I do, I do a pretty
good job now these days. Sometimes, maybe sometimes
they'll let Netflix get me on occasion, like I got to stop
watching TV. So I'll, I'll pick stuff up and
I got to drop it 'cause I'll get obsessed with it real quick.
You know, that's why I don't play video games.
I, I, I, I, I don't play many sports.
I'll let bodybuilding, but I get competitive.
I don't ski anymore 'cause I, I always go to the black diamond
and I can't trust myself. So, so I just, I stick to the
games that I can win, you know what I mean?
Yeah, no, totally man. Respect that for sure.
Well, talk to me about the the university of the programming,
the protocol. Like what does that look for
somebody that's interested? Like, walk me through that road,
man. Yeah, imagine if somebody had
figured out how in a 13 week program I could teach you 4
steps, 4, four steps in a process that could pretty much
solve almost any condition in the world and also create
amazing aesthetic outcomes. And you wouldn't even need a lab
to do it. That's the 4F method that I
trademarked and that's the base certification, Functional Health
Coach certification level 1. And so my amazing team at
Metabolic Mentor University, we have courses that you can buy,
you can get the certifications. They teach every strategy of
dieting that you could possibly imagine.
So we're a Mediterranean keto, carnivore, lions, you if, if it
comes up, vegetarian fasting, intermittent fasting, because
they're all tools and there's a time and place for all of those
tools. And, and then we also teach
everything about peptides, hormones, if, if you're dealing
with people that are older, we, we teach everything about all
the different types of systems to overcome weight loss
resistance, autoimmune, PCOS, you know, you name it, the list
goes on. We've, we've set the bar and we
can teach anybody coming off the couch.
You could be sitting at home right now hating your life,
working at a 711. And in 13 weeks, I can teach you
how to solve almost any problem in the world.
And that's the Metabolic Mentor University.
You guys can check it out or you guys can just check out my
Instagram, start following some of my content.
I go live every Monday answering everybody's questions too.
And breaking it down. It's Vince under score pit
stick. That's pit and stick.
Pretty simple Australian deodorant even though I'm German
and check me out on Instagram or Metabolic Mentor YouTube.
Nice, man. Awesome, awesome.
What are you excited about going for 2025?
Coming up at the end of the year here.
Man, 2025 is going to be a big year for functional medicine.
We got Robert F Kennedy that's going to be ahead of the the
sounds like the you know, the that maybe the FDAI don't know
where it depends where where he lands.
I don't know what the kind of czar they're going to make him.
I I'm excited about the economics of 2025.
I'm going to be very aggressive in my pursuit of growth.
We are particularly we're we're we're launching concierge
medicine. So you get a coach, but you get
the doctor with it. And we're going to position it
in the market that way because we have it now, but we don't
sell it as that. We sell it as coaching and
there's a doctor included. But changing the framework to
like try to reach more wider base of audience, not just like
people who are into fitness or general health, but all people
of all walks of life. And so we have a very aggressive
2025 marketing strategy. And I'm, I'm just, I'm just
looking forward to how many lives we can touch.
You know, right now our 4F system is in over 2000 practices
across the country and reaches about 2 million people a year.
I want to get to 50. Let's go I.
Love it. I love it man.
And where are you located again? Well, we're virtual, but my
look, my I live in Saint Pete Beach, Florida.
Nice, nice. You work people all over, I
mean, I guess all over the. World.
Yeah, We got clients in every country, Yeah.
Awesome man, I love it. I love it.
Well, I would definitely link out, make these people to find
you. Genuinely enjoy this
conversation, man. I like, yeah.
Me too, man. You're kindred spirit, bro.
I listen. I just want you to keep going
out there, changing lives, inspiring people.
That's what you were tasked to do.
That's why you've got the OCD, bro.
You've got the that's what you're that's what you're meant
to do. You're doing what you're meant
to do. Yeah, and likewise, man,
likewise. It's cool to see people that are
also, I mean, like there's not a whole lot of people that I've
talked to that have literally done and gone to the exact same
thing my mind's going through. So it's cool whenever I connect
with someone that is. So hats off.
To each other, yeah, man. Well, you're, you're gifted and
highly favored, man. It's a gift.
Remember that. 100% Well if I'm ever in Florida, which I am
quite frequently. What do you lift in man?
You, I we will absolutely. I'll I'll shoot you my phone
number. We'll get a rocking whenever you
get down here A. 100% well appreciate events, keep killing
man, keep changing lives and keep in touch.
Thanks man, you too. See you bud later.