June 1, 2025 • 35 mins
Kent Johns is a former sports broadcaster who, after years of feeling burnt out and exhausted, put in the work to turn his health around, and has never felt better. This inspired him to follow a new career of health coaching, and now he wants to help kiwis feel as good as he does.
In this episode, Toni and Kent chat about the events that led to him seeing a nutritionist for the first time, his new non-negotiables including good sleep, great food, and laughter, and the small changes you can make in your everyday life to see massive improvements.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
We need to talk conversations on wellness with coastfm's Tony Street.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Hello, it's great to have you with us on that
we need to talk podcast. Let's talk about exhaustion and burnout.
It's something that I personally think about a lot as
someone who works shift work. Even if you don't irregular
hours can be a punished and when you're juggling a
million different things like work and kids and businesses, it's
hard to not feel stretched. I certainly haven't mastered the
(00:28):
art of balance. I don't actually know what it is,
but I know that I'm in survival mode. Someone who
has is Kent John's. You might remember the name. Kent
was a sports broadcaster for years for Radio Sport before
he retrained and relaunched himself as a health coach. You
can find him right now on Instagram. His handle is
at Kent John's Health. The catalyst for the change in
(00:49):
carea was feeling unhealthy and worried about the impacts that
would have on his kids. The changes he's made were
so profound that he's now inspired to help others, particularly men,
to find the spark again. So if you're a woman
listening to this, have a look at your partner and
think could this be something that they might need to
kent as great to catch up again, Tony, it's been
(01:11):
a long time.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Well, do people know that where you started? Were you
very first started? You were broadcasting career.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Do you know the very first day I started my
broadcasting career at radio sport as a little intern, you
were there.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
I was there.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
You were there, and you were much more seasoned than me.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
I have followed your career ever since, and often people
will say to me, do you know Tony Street? I say, yes,
I do, Tony, and I go back further, probably than
most of her broadcasting colleagues.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
So true, and I got the bug after that first day.
But what's interesting to me is that's where I met you,
and you're very good as a sports broadcaster. You're now
not doing that, and you look healthier than I've ever
seen you.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
I look at myself now and go back to when
I was twenty one, twenty two, twenty five and drinking
a lot of alcohol and playing football and being a
rah rah lad, and I actually feel that I'm healthier
now than I was then.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
How are you now forty?
Speaker 3 (01:59):
Sive?
Speaker 2 (02:00):
So you're healthier at forty seven, in your twenties and thirty.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
I would say, so, yeah, Wow, tell.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Me what your life was like back then, which was
two thousand and six, two thousand and five when I
first met you. What did your lifestyle and hours look like?
Speaker 3 (02:15):
Man, I could have done that job at Radio Sport
for nothing. You and I would have been exactly the same.
To me. You turned up with a young enthusiasm for
the job and you just wanted to make good. I
just wanted to be as good as I could be
in that profession and learn heaps and absorbed heaps and broadcasting, journalism, media,
A lot of drinking, a lot of partying, a lot
of fun, so much fun. I would change none of it,
(02:37):
by the way, I've got no regrets at all. But
I was going really hard and didn't have kids, didn't
have a mortgage, didn't have a partner. I was single
for many, many, many years. Just loved my mates, played sport,
drink beers after football, going hard, loved it, totally loved it.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
But what hours were you doing then?
Speaker 3 (02:54):
I would have been working probably eleven un till seven,
and then I became the afternoon the night show host
on Radio Sport for three years two thousand and six,
seven eight, So that was sort of getting into the
office at six thirty finishing at midnight. So maybe that's
when the sleep irregularity started to kick in. The years
of sport and injuries and inflammation and bad diet and
(03:14):
alcohols just started to catch up with me. And I
think what happened is slowly but surely, because burnout and
chronic illness and all sorts of these things, Tony, they
don't just happen overnight. You just don't wake up and go, oh, geez,
I feel like shy. So true, it happens over a
period of time. And it's not now with the benefit
of hindsight that I can look back and say, man,
you just disregarded your health. You disregarded your own well
(03:36):
being because you're having so much fun, and you were
oblivious to what the price that you might pay in
your thirties and forties.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
So what was the change for you? When did you decide?
Because most people realize it at some point, but it
often takes a lesson or some kind of lightning bult moment. Right, Yeah, I.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
Started to feel overwhelmed, probably when I became a dad
in twenty sixteen and I've been doing the same show
for five years. I was the afternoon show host on
Radio Sport and I've been doing that for five years,
and I just had gone stale, and I've lost the
passion and the enthusiasm. And it was a job that
(04:13):
I really loved, but my love of it had turned
to a like of it, and then it became a tolerance.
I could tolerate my job. And I'm like, man, how
has this happened? How have I gone from someone so passionate,
so energetic, so driven, with a love of life, always smiling?
Have I gone to this? And I basically hit the wall.
And thankfully my boss at the time, Jason win Stanley,
(04:35):
who I know, you know really well, he said, look,
I think we're going to put you into the Breakfast show.
And I thought, oh god, those hours I've done breakfast
radio before.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Oh it's a toss up where the nights whill breakfast
is worse?
Speaker 3 (04:47):
Oh man, and I will you know when you get
offered something that's too good to say no, But part
of you is I'm about to pay a price for
this decision. So I knew it was going to be rough.
And so anyway, long story, I got to the end
of twenty seventeen. I've been doing breakfast radio for a
year and a half. I was in tears a lot.
I was broken. I went to a dietitian, karens and
(05:07):
doctor Karensen, and I said to her, please, can you
help me? I basically begged her for some help.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Once eating it exhausted, Oh.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
Crape fast food, fried food, McDonald's, crackers, biscuits, cakes, I
had no idea, Yeah, just the classic Western died a
lot of process carbohydrates, still drinking a lot of alcohol.
I was so exhausted, Tony. I know now that I
was burnt out, and I got healthy in a relatively
short period of time just from changing diet. And it
(05:35):
lit in me a desire to move a lot more,
to start exercising again because I'd stopped that because of
a football knee injury. Started to just become curious, Shit,
is this what actually good health could look like? Man,
I'm getting on but now I'm forty years old. But
the overwhelm and the burnout, I've been through it, and
I know plenty of people who have. And once you've
(05:56):
gone through it once, you don't really want to have
to go through it. A second time.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Isn't it funny how sometimes it's quite obvious where you
are falling down in life and why it's making you
feel that way, But yet we don't change it, and
it can be right in front of us, and we
still keep doing all the things that are making us
feel bad.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
Yeah, because people find it really hard. It's that cognitive dissonance,
and that is I want to change. I know something's wrong.
It's like jumping paddocks. The paddock looks That paddock over
there looks good, But I like this paddock and do
I really want to leave this paddock to join that one.
It takes courage to make a few changes, but I
can assure you and your listeners that if you're brave
(06:36):
enough to make a start, that you're halfway there.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
So when you went to this dietiian, how did she
change your diet? What sort of things did she incorporate?
Speaker 3 (06:46):
She said, Kent, I want you to go without these
big five for two weeks. So it's basically a challenge.
And I could handle a challenge. And I thought, Hell,
I'm thirty nine years old. What two weeks in the
life of the thirty nine year old is nothing. I
can do this. No sugar, no white rice, I'm pasta,
no bread, no potatoes.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
What did you eat?
Speaker 3 (07:02):
I ate none of those for two weeks? Fould a
million bucks.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
And after the two weeks, were you then motivated enough
to carry on totally.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
And I see this all of the time because I've
been coaching now for five years and three days a
week I'll work at the Autonomy Health Clinic in New Market,
So I'm working with people who are looking to change
the metabolic health and either reverse their diabetes or not
be as sick as they are. And I've seen this
personally and we see it in our clinic all of
the time. If you can just hang in there for
(07:32):
a few days, you will start to see the benefits,
which then transfers back into motivation, which means that you
will continue. Where people fall down Tony is they feel
they don't feel very good for two or three days
and they stop stop because they get disheartened and they stop.
And if you can just find a way to break
through even for one week, ten to fourteen days, that's
(07:54):
when people start to really notice the benefits. Less inflammation,
they've got more, less joint pain, they start to lose
a little bit of weight, their skin improves, their nails improve,
they start getting compliments. The energy levels go up. I'd
almost guarantee anyone to who they if you ever reduce
sugar or quit sugar, your energy levels are pretty much
guaranteed to go up. And so you start to move
(08:15):
a little bit more. Because when we have more energy,
we move. When we do all of those things, we
sleep better. So people can feel real. Like I was
telling you about my story, in hindsight, I was probably
unhealthy for decades. I turn around pretty damn quick, and
I know so many people have done the same thing.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
So two weeks goes by and you've cut out those
big five, did you carry on doing that same way
of living or did you sort of slowly bring in
some of those things.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
Start to kind of bring it back a little bit.
It's kind of that lock at, lockdown approach. Go hard, remember,
go hard, go early. Oh yes, those four famous words. Well,
when I was hearing our health professionals talking about go hard,
go early, it resonated with me because I can relate
that to behavioral chain engine health is that if you
can just stick with it for a couple of weeks,
(09:03):
you can then start to play around a little bit.
Scientists call it an en equals one experiment. So what
works for you may not work for me, may not
work for Jackson, for example. But if I can just
tweak a few things, I can figure out what I
can tolerate. So I don't have to stay off the
sugar forever. I don't have to stay off the alcohol
forever and ever and ever. It's probably an idea for
some people. For sure, I don't have to stay off
(09:25):
processed carbs forever. But I also know that my body
probably doesn't want many of those. So what can I
bring back? How can I play around with things? If
I'm going to go and have a curry, do I
have the narn bread but not the white rice? So
I call it MTD tony minimize the damage? How can
I still enjoy some of the stuff but not hurt myself?
And so that's what I started to do. I started
(09:46):
to play around with it and to figure out, Okay,
what is it that I enjoy, What is it that
works for me? What is it that's sustainable? Because when
it comes to behavior change, when it comes to getting healthy,
it's about making sure that what you're doing is sustainable.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
What I find, and this is se to be so
true in your situation as well. When you're overwhelmed and
you're in that kind of burnouty phase, you don't take
notice of things because you're just in survival mode. So
it's actually quite hard to notice, oh, that sugar meetings
making me feel bad. You just know you're feeling bad,
but you kind of don't know why, and so you
just keep going. So this actually took a bit of
(10:19):
self reflection from you to actually go and see your
dietician and then suddenly you realize, oh, there's a connection.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
Duh. Root cause. So, if you look at the chronic
disease that we have in New Zealand, of which it's overwhelming,
our health systems will buckle and break at some point.
And chronic disease is type two diabetes, obesity, metabolic syndrome,
Alzheimer's dementia, stroke, cancer, cardiovascular disease, depression. They are all
(10:46):
chronic diseases. And the one thing that they or a
couple of things that they all have in common, is
that they are related to lifestyle. They are related to
something called in sheillin resistance, and they're related to inflammation.
So then we go, okay, so what causes that? Because
then we need to come back and figure out what's
the driver, what's the root cause of these diseases. So
you'll hear people say, we've got a type two diabetes epidemic,
(11:08):
and we've got an obesity epidemic. I think we're the
fourth fattest country in the world, which is not something
that we should be proud of. But we don't have
a diabetes epidemic and we don't have an obesity epidemic.
What we have is an epidemic of metabolic dysfunction. Though
not having a healthy metabolism and a poor immune function
go together an inability to deal with stress, they're all
linked further on down the line, Tony, if you're unhealthy
(11:31):
for long enough, you will develop cardiovascular disease CATS or
one of those other ones. Yep. So what's driving the
metabolic dysfunction? And largely it is our food?
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Now that or we need to talk with Tony Street.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
So let's go back to your career. So you're now
working on the breakfast shift, and you go and you
take your health into your own hands. Do you carry
on working?
Speaker 3 (11:55):
Like?
Speaker 2 (11:55):
How did that work? And because you now don't work
the early shifts. It all kind of happened at the
same time, right.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
Never again, you've done it longer than I did. I
did the breakfast save for three and a half years,
and people said to you, ah, you know, I suppose
I'm sure you've heard this. I bet you get used
to it. And my answer was, yes, you get used
to being living in fog lend Yep. There's a massive
advantage to work in breakfast hours because you get so
much time to yourself. But there is one If you
were doing pros and cons, the list of pros would
(12:25):
be enormous, and there's one dirty, big fat con over
the other side, which is that you honestly are living
in a fog for hours and hours and hours a day.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
And sometimes time to yourself isn't actually a pro because
you're so dog tired, you you know, do you just
inside your own head going, I've got how energy to
do anything? It's not even free time.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
But I got through those three and a half years,
And I don't necessarily say that I thrived at that
because of the sleep deprivation and the work pressure and
everything else. But I shudder to think how I would
have gone had I not have made those changes changes
a couple of years earlier. I shudder to think whether
I actually would have coped.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
I actually notice even now, and I'm not a heavy drinker,
but like, for example, very recent we had a Naball
game last night and I coached, and I get very passionate,
you know what it's like. And I got home and
it was such a great game, and I was so pumped,
and I was like, I'm just going to have a
glass of wine to chill out. Well, I woke up
this morning and I actually noticed the wine. It affected me.
(13:23):
I was like, I can't do that anymore. I can't
get up at four and have a glass of wine,
a big glass of red wine the night before. And
so I am starting to realize the triggers and the
things that make me feel bad. But I'm forty one.
It's taking me a long time.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
I know what you're saying about the alcohol be nice
to drink. I hate it too that I can't go
to the pub with my mates and have two or
three beers consequence free. If I go and have a
couple of pints on a Thursday with them, chances are
that'll be just enough to bump my sleep, and alcohol
is a notorious sleep disruptor. It's one of the worst
things you can have for sleep, and then you feel
rubbish for two days afterwards from two beers. It doesn't fear,
(14:00):
but that's the reality. And I know a lot of
people recoil it that messaging and they hate to hear it.
But that's the inconvenient truth, is that alcohol will do
you know good. So I still battle with that. I've
really cut back on the amount of alcohol that I drink.
But if I was to say I was a teetotal
and I was off it, that would be a lie.
I still enjoy a beer, but I'm every single drop
(14:20):
of alcohol that I have now Tony is mindful.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Yeah, conscious drinking.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
It's a conscious choice. Where is that next beer? Like,
there's that ad campaign? Where's that next drink taking me?
Speaker 2 (14:29):
There is?
Speaker 3 (14:30):
Wouldn't that'd be one of the best campaigns I've ever seen.
I can liken that too to sugar and chocolate.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
I need to think that the next time I reach
for a chocolate bar, where is this taking me?
Speaker 3 (14:40):
Well? In my case, if you give me a block
of Wits peanut, like a big block of Wittockers peanuts,
s lab or an arm and gold or something. If
I open I'm not having two squares of that, I'll
probably go half a block.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
So how do you stop having it?
Speaker 3 (14:54):
Don't buy it, won't power.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Yeah, that's actually a really good idea. You just don't
have it in the house, because I go searching for
it in my house, like I will scrounge high and
low when I've got a sweet craving.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
Yeah. So the thing is with that, and a lot
of people have sweet cravings, and we become kind of
stuck and a sort of a victim of processed food
and chocolate and sugar. It's no surprising it's addictive. It
lights up the dopamine pathway in the brain, That reward
center in the brain bang lights up within a fraction
of a second of that first mouthful of chocolate. So
(15:26):
the biochemistry comes first, the behavior comes second. So we
beat ourselves up for being addicted to chocolate, and I
can't resist it all the stuff. It's actually not our fault, Tony,
it's the chocolate. The food is the problem. So if
you take that out, you take that out of the equation,
it gets easy to do this now what you've done
is that you've made it easier on yourself to be
(15:47):
successful and to do the things that you want to
be doing.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
I like that that. The thinking now is it's not
just simply willpower.
Speaker 3 (15:53):
It's got to be won't power. It's got to be
affirm willpower cannot be affirmative because willpower is relying on
you making a really good decision for yourself at seven
thirty at night, after you've made fifteen hundred decisions that
day and you're suffering from decision fatigue. Will power cannot
be trusted. Won't power can be trusted. It's affirmative. I
won't have it in the house, so I won't eat it.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Won't power. I like that. That's a good catch phrase
to flip.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
You flip that around.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
Can we go back now to you finishing up on
the Breakfast Show and somehow you take these life changes
into a new career. How did that come about?
Speaker 3 (16:29):
I was losing my passion for sports broadcasting. I had enough.
I had a crisis point because people often asked me,
was there a moment? Was there a moment when you
just knew? And I take it back to being on
holiday and Fonga Matara and the coremandal, and it was
the end of twenty eighteen and I had two years
to run on my contract at Radio Sport, and I
thought they would probably be my last two years. And
(16:50):
then I went away on holiday and I've never had
a panic attack in my life, and I'm not saying
that I had one there, but I started to feel
like I was on the beach talking to my partner Laura.
You know, hubbies and wives and partners are like they
end up with red ears from offloading. Thank goodness, I've
got here in my life, and I was kind of shaking,
and I said, I can't do this anymore. I just
(17:13):
don't want to do sports broadcasting anymore. I'm done. I've
had enough.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
That's your gut feeling coming through.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Well and just authentically knowing that I had. I've just
for a multitude of reasons, which we won't go into
here because I'll bore you with them all. But I've
had enough. And then I was panicking, like internally, not
a panic attack, but just go what am I gonna do?
What am I gonna do?
Speaker 2 (17:37):
When you've got two years still to run? That's usually
quite hard.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
What am I going to do? Okay, deep breasts. I
made sure that I calmed down, but I reckon for
half a day. I was in fight flight mode big time.
My head was spinning. I was basically panicking, thinking, it's
all I've known, it's all i've known. I've been in
sports broadcasting for twenty years. It's all I've known. Jeez,
what else can I do? And then, thankfully, I just
(18:01):
took some time to myself over the next couple of days,
just being on holiday on the beach to having some
nice time, thinking, Okay, mate, let's be realistic here your
working life. You have that magic number sixty five in mind.
You've still got more than half of your working life
ahead of you. It's not too late to change. You're
not a one trick pony. What else could you do
(18:23):
that you would really enjoy? Because on one of those
I've had many jobs over the years, Tony, but I
now know, through good and bad, I have to be
doing something that I'm passionate about that I enjoy. It's
just the nature of my personality. How can I add value?
Where can I give back? What will I really enjoy doing?
And I thought, I actually think i've in a former
life might have been a good teacher. What could I
(18:46):
do to help others? Now that I've rediscovered some health
I've got a few tips and tricks. Now I know
what good eating looks like, I know what it leads to.
And so I just played around, did some research, decided
to become a hell.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Health coach, and you aligned your kind of two passions.
And actually your knowledge of sport would go hand in
hand with that as well, because essentially coaching leads into sport,
right and teaching.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
Yeah, it does. But the art of coaching, I think
the really good coach is sports coaching is different because
it's results driven, and if you don't get results, you
lose your job. So coaches often need to tell players
what to do to buy into that team effort. This
is how we win, because if we don't, when I
lose my job coaching one on one as a health coach. True,
(19:33):
real coaching, at its essence, is actually listening. It's not
doing a lot of talking. It's listening and then redirecting
back to the person who is doing the talking.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
I guess the coach though of a sports team, while
we're debating sports, they've got to be a good listener
too to get the best out of the players to
then prescribe.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
Yes, right, that's a very good point. So this is
how I look at coaching. My job is to help
you get the best out of yourself.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
I love that, and it takes a bit of courage
to do that though, Like if I suddenly quit my
job here at radio after doing journalism and broadcasting for
twenty years, that would be a little bit scary. Exactly
how did that go down with your wife?
Speaker 3 (20:12):
She was fully supportive. Yep, Laura was fully supportive. Yeah,
fully supportive. It was very courageous what I had to do.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Did you have to retrain?
Speaker 3 (20:20):
Yeah? I did. I've been training for the last few years.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
So I've gone through and done many many courses, many papers,
lots of study, lots and lots and lots of study.
But I've loved I've loved all of it.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
How did you cope with it? Because there'll be a
lot of people listening to this that are thinking, I
don't love my job. I actually want to do something different.
How did you bridge the gap financially?
Speaker 3 (20:40):
Well? I was made redundant at Radio Sport in two thousand.
At the start of twenty twenty, which would have been
my last year anyway, so that helped me get my
business up and running. Laura was working, so I was
a stay at home dad for me, and life goes
so quick. I was a stay at home dad for
three or four years while I was studying and earning
on the side. Laura was the chief breadwinner with that.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
From being a full time worker to being stat home.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
I actually think I did okay, but but I also
know at the time that I had that negativity bias
where I was picking myself up for what I thought
was average parenting or a lack of attention. I was
getting tired, I was getting frustrated. I thought that this
is I'm not well suited to this. I think a
lot of men feel that way, timing that they're not
suited to being at home with the kids. Mums and
(21:27):
women are far better far Jenna, you guys have got.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
A six set that there is that natural, yeah.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
Maternal instinct. I've been a dad for eight and a
half years. I meant to find it. I don't have
it right.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
I'm sure you're a great dad, but do you know what,
we're actually not meant to parent the same right you
have two parents so that you can offer different things.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
Yes, so I was, but I'm so glad I was
so grateful to be a stay at home dad now too,
because I've had great time with my kids. Man, the
number of fathers that I've spoken to over the years
that have said I wish I had more time, And
this often turns into deathbed confessions too. For men, their
number one regret in life as they didn't spend enough
time with their family. And I've made it. There's no
(22:09):
way in hell that'll be me. So yet a lot
of juggling over the last few years, heap of juggling.
I love learning. I love studying. So I've studied through
a company called PreCure, which is doctor Luis Gofield and
Professor Grant's Gofield, the Visionaries. I'm all on board with
those guys. I'm in the tent with them. Nice thing
is now Tony, I'm on their teaching faculty. So now
(22:30):
I teach people, help teach people to become health coaches.
I love to do that, and I love learning and
then applying what I learn into a job. So to
be having to be able to have done that has
been awesome. Hardest thing I've ever done personally, though, I
mean being your parent's the hardest. I would challenge anyone
to disagree with that. That has been the most challenging.
(22:53):
But second to that has been learning business, becoming a businessman.
I knew it would be difficult. I had no idea
how hard it would be to get a business up
and running and to bring in money.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
So many so hard as well.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
Right, this is we need to talk with Tony's three.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
Here's a question for you. And I see this, and
I hear this all the time from the people that
I connect and interact with in terms of backing yourself
and your own abilities, particularly when you're going into a
new field. For you, did you have those moments where
you thought, why am I doing this? Am I actually
going to be good at this? Like? Are people going
to want to do this? Are they going to want
(23:33):
to listen to me?
Speaker 3 (23:33):
Imposter syndrome? Yah? One hundred percent?
Speaker 2 (23:36):
How did you get over that?
Speaker 3 (23:38):
I think it still pops up from time to time,
to be honest, but I think it is important to
be confident. It doesn't mean that you're arrogant. It doesn't
mean that everybody else has to know. You don't have
to strut around going hey, look, at me, I'm so great,
But I internally I know this through studying behavior change,
that you have to talk yourself up. You've got to
(23:59):
be your own biggest champion. Do you believe in the
ghost totally? I know that to be true. I know
this in my heart to be true. I also know
through experience now that it is true. You have to
be able to talk yourself up. So, if you are
looking to make change in your life, if you're looking
to change careers, get healthy, whatever it might be, and
you talk to someone about that, what are they likely
(24:20):
to say to you? Way to go, man, Streety, You're
going to be amazing. You're going to be amazing. You're
going to smash it. You're going to be awesome. If
you need any help, just let me know because.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
They know your great qualities better than you.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
Yeah. So, people, this is what happens with imposter syndrome.
For people that get offered new roles or new jobs.
It's insidious. The only person that is doubting their ability
to do it is there. They've been offered a role,
they've been given a job, They've been given an opportunity
by someone who truly believes they're good enough. Yet I'm
sitting here going no, I don't think I am.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
Yeah, which is staggeric. And do you know what it
isn't just for people that are new at things, like
someone like me. I've been broadcasting for twenty years and
still have moments where I'm about to EMC event, am
I am I up for this? And I'm like, jeez,
if you're not up for it, who is?
Speaker 1 (25:05):
You know?
Speaker 2 (25:06):
And you have to actually have you have to have
that conversation with yourself sometimes to go, don't be stupid.
You've done this for a million years. Of course you
can do it. And it's staggering how many people that
are really qualified for things and they still doubt themselves,
which says I don't know what it says about our
psyche just as humans that we have this sort of
negativity bias, right, we often throw to the pessimistic side
(25:30):
of things totally.
Speaker 3 (25:31):
And look, it's you do a lot of MC work,
You do a lot of public speaking, So to why
I speak at conferences now, which I never thought I'd
be doing speaking at health conference. I saw some of
your pictures, But crowds, it beats some good crowd EMC
with all of the sort of stuff, and I'll get
up there and I'll scan the room because I like
to know have I got the room? Do I need
to up the humor? Do I need to back off?
How we go? And it's easy to focus in on
the guy down the front with his arms folded, looking
(25:53):
totally and utterly bored.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
So many people do in the crowd look like that.
By five I look.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
Like they could go to sleep. Well, they're bored. I
was to worry about him, I might ignore the fact
that ninety percent of the crowd is actually engaged. So
you're right about the negativity bias. For sure. A lot
of successful people get imposter syndrome. It's just part of it.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
I want to go back now to the key for you,
because you've said it started with your diet. Yeah, you
now work with a lot of clients, lots of men,
which I think is a great area to focus on.
What else are we doing wrong? What else is the
key to having to feeling goods and having a happy
life aside from diet?
Speaker 3 (26:27):
Are you ready for the core for Oh? Yes, this
is what I call the core for eat, move, sleep, laugh.
So let's go through these very quickly individually. Eating to
me is and I've gone back and forth on this
a little bit over the years, but I think it
comes back to how we eat is just You cannot
overstate that. Change your eating, change your life six words.
You can put that on a T shirt. I believe
(26:49):
it to be true. I've seen it so many times
so collectively. In New Zealand we have the most densest
availability of processed food, arguably in the world. So if
we go to the supermarket, you and I could do
it two around together. All of the good foods around
the outside, up and down the aisles. You're talking seventy
five to eighty percent of that food is ultra processed
upf the five has been taken out of it, nutrient deficient,
(27:11):
high end sugar, high and added salt that's not required,
high and added, all sorts of detergents and mixes and
emulsifiers and crap. Right, So we know without a shadow
of a doubt that in New Zealand we are eating
the wrong food and we're eating too much of it,
so we're eating poorly. If you can minimize the amount
of process food and sugar you eat, you will have
access to more energy because literally you are able to
(27:33):
access the stored energy that you've been eating. When we
eat a diet that's high on ultra processed food, our
inchulin goes way up. We can't access the energy that
we're just eaten. So people are literally literally don't have
the energy to exercise all to move change you're eating.
Then we go to movement. Ministry of Health says that
we should be doing two and a half hours of
modern exercise per week. More than fifty percent of adults
(27:54):
don't do that.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
And the key there you said moderate, right, it doesn't
have to be hard core.
Speaker 3 (27:59):
No brief to moderate exercise. That's not optimal by the way,
one hundred and fifty minutes, but that's what we should
be doing at least, So two and a half hours
a week of movement. Most people aren't doing that. So
we're not eating well enough, we're not moving enough. We've
got a chronic slept deeprivation problem. If you talk to
any sleep expert, every single one of them will tell
you that there's a chronic slept deprivation problem.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
The link to depression.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
Absolutely, it's all there. So one of the questions I
ask whenever I go to a workshop or a health
conference or a team day or whatever. I'll always ask,
and I'll preface it by saying, now, my next question,
I'm guessing fifty to sixty percent of you will put
your hands up, hands up, who would like better sleep? Bang?
Within a fraction of a second, the hands are going,
and it's at least half every single time. It could
(28:42):
be a room of ten people, it could be a
room of two hundred and fifty. At least fifty percent
of people are not getting enough sleep. That is a
key link to depression and other chronic disease. And the
fourth one is laugh. You could use the word connection
if you want. I go with laugh because it's affirmative.
You can't make yourself laugh. You have to be around
other people. And we know that loneliness has never been higher.
(29:05):
We're talking about men here, kind of guys in their
thirties and forties. I know this. You lose track with
your mates. You don't see your friends enough.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
My husband so much worse than I am. Our girlfriends.
We're always going having wine or we're going to boot
camp together. And I will often say to him, you know,
if you want to catch up with your mates, you
have to organize it.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
Organize it. Someone has to drive.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
It mean, aren't great organizers by nature?
Speaker 3 (29:26):
No, we're not. But but is the beauty of the
female relationships is that you will have two or three
four really good close friends and you's that opposite each other,
like you and I are now, and you look at
each other and you'll ask how each other's going, and
you'll share a coffee or a shame or whatever. Whereas
guys we have to be shoulder to shoulder.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
It's so true you're each other.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
So we're standing at a pub, we're standing at a
pub leaner, or we're a game of sport. We've actually
got to organize it to go out were we're in
a comfortable environment and we're sort of leaning looking around
side to side a man, how you going? But I
know with my friends we're all approaching fifty now, we
are having better conversations than we used to when we
were younger, because we.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
Really need to have them. I don't know that it
seems to be that there's a bit of a sense
of permission now that's actually okay for men to have
those chats, whereas it used to be very much like,
oh lads, we don't do that. I'm glad that that's
changed three words.
Speaker 3 (30:19):
Vulnerability builds trust. I've been to health conferences in the
South Island. That's something called the men's Muster, and we
had this. I'll never forget this as long as I live.
We had a quarter of about forty or fifty people.
Wayne Shelford was there, a great man, Buck Shelford, and
he was there. He didn't talk, but he was just
taking notes. And Callum Bruce led the conversation. Callums are
(30:40):
four Newsid Mauldi rugby player, sevens player, super rugby player,
great guy, and he said, right, who wants to go first?
Just tell us something about yourself and guys look down.
I was the MC for that event, so I didn't
partake either. I just was standing in the circle. I
wasn't going to say anything, and I was shuffling shoes
with people shuffling shoes with their feet. And then one
(31:03):
good sullen sullen strong man goes, oh, I'll go first,
and he told a story. It wasn't particularly deep or meaningful,
but it was important that he got something off his chest.
What that did was set off this cascade of blokes
standing forward to talk about the suicide of their children.
The attempted suicide of their children, the trauma that they'd
(31:24):
been through. We had people who had lost a loved
one to a shark attack. We had a man who
was in the police rescue team who told us about
pulling dead bodies out of the water. And these guys
were saying, hey, I've never been able to tell anyone.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
This before because they haven't had a platform.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
They had had a platform. They had the safe environment, Tony,
they had the safe environment where I don't know these guys.
We've come from different parts of New Zealand, but I
trust this environment. I'm going to offload vulnerability builds trust.
It took one guy, and you see this all of
the time with ki we men. One guy who's the
first to say, Hey, guys, I'm not feeling very good.
(32:04):
I'm no good. I need to have a chat about it.
Can we go and have a beer. I'm rubbish. I
need to talk to you. I'm overwhelmed by work. I'm
overwhelmed by being a dad. I'm overwhelmed with mortgaging. My
phone never stops, my emails never stop, by managing fire,
I'm overwhelmed. I need to tell someone. Chances are if
you are if you were brave enough to be the
(32:25):
first to have that conversation. Everyone will come out of
the worldwork.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
So question as a health coach is that we you
kind of come in to be able to bridge those
conversations and do you work with people one on one?
Speaker 3 (32:34):
Yes, and having those power asking those power questions, because
chances are, tony you have not asked yourself these questions.
What am I most proud of? What am I optimistic about?
What am I hopeful for?
Speaker 2 (32:45):
Life gets in the way, doesn't it's in the way.
Speaker 3 (32:47):
So I'll ask someone when was the last time you
really felt great?
Speaker 2 (32:52):
And I look up, thinking twenty years ago?
Speaker 3 (32:54):
You know, you know, yes, exactly, that's the art. Oh
and they'll look up. You know you've asked a good question.
Whenever someone looks up, you've landed a good question. Oh
and they'll go back in time and it'll be ten
years ago on their wedding day. It'll be fifteen years
ago when they were playing sport. It'll be eighteen years
(33:15):
ago when they were not a single and had a
bit of freedom to live the life that they wanted
to live. Chances are they had less stress in their
life and they were moving. They would have been active,
they were playing sport, or they were moving although walking,
although we're young.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
And they just don't realize that that's why they aren't
feeling great now.
Speaker 3 (33:35):
Yeah, and no one's asked in that or they've never
thought to ask themselves when was the last time I
felt authentically, truly great about myself? And often it's ten, fifteen,
twenty years. We get a lot of people in tears
at this point because they're reflecting, going where's the time gone.
The great news is Tony, is that it won't be
fifteen years to come right.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
You can do it pretty quickly.
Speaker 3 (33:54):
It might not be fifteen days, but fifteen weeks. You
can make enormous progress in fifteen weeks and then you
talk fifteen months. Holy moly. I've known guys that have
gone from being overweight, out of shape, with no energy
to then doing an iron Man eighteen months later.
Speaker 2 (34:09):
Wow, that's impressive. Kent, I have loved this chair, and
what I love about it is one it's not just
the fact that you were able to turn your life around,
but I think it's a real lesson in doing what
you're passionate about and not being afraid to change up
and as you say half of your working life, You've
got another half to go, and this, I can tell
is your vocation. And I also think it's a really
(34:30):
good advertisement for having someone to talk to and to
coach you through. We get coaching and everything at work,
we get coached in a fitness but who's there actually
guiding you through the whole thing, like your life. So
I love it and I think it's going to be
a great business. You've been doing it for five years.
So if you want any of the details for Kent,
I'm just going to remind you his instagram is at
(34:52):
Kent John's Health, or you can go to Kent John'shealth
dot co dot nz.
Speaker 3 (34:56):
Well hit me up at LinkedIn. I'm easy to find
Tony my on there. I'm easy to find. I'd love
to hear from people well being in health is. I
now truly appreciate that it's an investment time. If at energy,
maybe there's some money that you need to spend when
you go to the gym or whatever it might be,
have yourself a coach. It's an investment in your well being.
It assures how late it cost.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
We need to talk with Coast FM's Tony Street. If
you enjoyed the podcast, Click to share with family or friends.
To get in touch, email we need to talk at
Coast Online dot co dot nz
We need to talk conversations on wellness with coastfm's Tony Street.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Hello, it's great to have you with us on that
we need to talk podcast. Let's talk about exhaustion and burnout.
It's something that I personally think about a lot as
someone who works shift work. Even if you don't irregular
hours can be a punished and when you're juggling a
million different things like work and kids and businesses, it's
hard to not feel stretched. I certainly haven't mastered the
(00:28):
art of balance. I don't actually know what it is,
but I know that I'm in survival mode. Someone who
has is Kent John's. You might remember the name. Kent
was a sports broadcaster for years for Radio Sport before
he retrained and relaunched himself as a health coach. You
can find him right now on Instagram. His handle is
at Kent John's Health. The catalyst for the change in
(00:49):
carea was feeling unhealthy and worried about the impacts that
would have on his kids. The changes he's made were
so profound that he's now inspired to help others, particularly men,
to find the spark again. So if you're a woman
listening to this, have a look at your partner and
think could this be something that they might need to
kent as great to catch up again, Tony, it's been
(01:11):
a long time.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Well, do people know that where you started? Were you
very first started? You were broadcasting career.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Do you know the very first day I started my
broadcasting career at radio sport as a little intern, you
were there.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
I was there.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
You were there, and you were much more seasoned than me.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
I have followed your career ever since, and often people
will say to me, do you know Tony Street? I say, yes,
I do, Tony, and I go back further, probably than
most of her broadcasting colleagues.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
So true, and I got the bug after that first day.
But what's interesting to me is that's where I met you,
and you're very good as a sports broadcaster. You're now
not doing that, and you look healthier than I've ever
seen you.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
I look at myself now and go back to when
I was twenty one, twenty two, twenty five and drinking
a lot of alcohol and playing football and being a
rah rah lad, and I actually feel that I'm healthier
now than I was then.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
How are you now forty?
Speaker 3 (01:59):
Sive?
Speaker 2 (02:00):
So you're healthier at forty seven, in your twenties and thirty.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
I would say, so, yeah, Wow, tell.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Me what your life was like back then, which was
two thousand and six, two thousand and five when I
first met you. What did your lifestyle and hours look like?
Speaker 3 (02:15):
Man, I could have done that job at Radio Sport
for nothing. You and I would have been exactly the same.
To me. You turned up with a young enthusiasm for
the job and you just wanted to make good. I
just wanted to be as good as I could be
in that profession and learn heaps and absorbed heaps and broadcasting, journalism, media,
A lot of drinking, a lot of partying, a lot
of fun, so much fun. I would change none of it,
(02:37):
by the way, I've got no regrets at all. But
I was going really hard and didn't have kids, didn't
have a mortgage, didn't have a partner. I was single
for many, many, many years. Just loved my mates, played sport,
drink beers after football, going hard, loved it, totally loved it.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
But what hours were you doing then?
Speaker 3 (02:54):
I would have been working probably eleven un till seven,
and then I became the afternoon the night show host
on Radio Sport for three years two thousand and six,
seven eight, So that was sort of getting into the
office at six thirty finishing at midnight. So maybe that's
when the sleep irregularity started to kick in. The years
of sport and injuries and inflammation and bad diet and
(03:14):
alcohols just started to catch up with me. And I
think what happened is slowly but surely, because burnout and
chronic illness and all sorts of these things, Tony, they
don't just happen overnight. You just don't wake up and go, oh, geez,
I feel like shy. So true, it happens over a
period of time. And it's not now with the benefit
of hindsight that I can look back and say, man,
you just disregarded your health. You disregarded your own well
(03:36):
being because you're having so much fun, and you were
oblivious to what the price that you might pay in
your thirties and forties.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
So what was the change for you? When did you decide?
Because most people realize it at some point, but it
often takes a lesson or some kind of lightning bult moment. Right, Yeah, I.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
Started to feel overwhelmed, probably when I became a dad
in twenty sixteen and I've been doing the same show
for five years. I was the afternoon show host on
Radio Sport and I've been doing that for five years,
and I just had gone stale, and I've lost the
passion and the enthusiasm. And it was a job that
(04:13):
I really loved, but my love of it had turned
to a like of it, and then it became a tolerance.
I could tolerate my job. And I'm like, man, how
has this happened? How have I gone from someone so passionate,
so energetic, so driven, with a love of life, always smiling?
Have I gone to this? And I basically hit the wall.
And thankfully my boss at the time, Jason win Stanley,
(04:35):
who I know, you know really well, he said, look,
I think we're going to put you into the Breakfast show.
And I thought, oh god, those hours I've done breakfast
radio before.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Oh it's a toss up where the nights whill breakfast
is worse?
Speaker 3 (04:47):
Oh man, and I will you know when you get
offered something that's too good to say no, But part
of you is I'm about to pay a price for
this decision. So I knew it was going to be rough.
And so anyway, long story, I got to the end
of twenty seventeen. I've been doing breakfast radio for a
year and a half. I was in tears a lot.
I was broken. I went to a dietitian, karens and
(05:07):
doctor Karensen, and I said to her, please, can you
help me? I basically begged her for some help.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Once eating it exhausted, Oh.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
Crape fast food, fried food, McDonald's, crackers, biscuits, cakes, I
had no idea, Yeah, just the classic Western died a
lot of process carbohydrates, still drinking a lot of alcohol.
I was so exhausted, Tony. I know now that I
was burnt out, and I got healthy in a relatively
short period of time just from changing diet. And it
(05:35):
lit in me a desire to move a lot more,
to start exercising again because I'd stopped that because of
a football knee injury. Started to just become curious, Shit,
is this what actually good health could look like? Man,
I'm getting on but now I'm forty years old. But
the overwhelm and the burnout, I've been through it, and
I know plenty of people who have. And once you've
(05:56):
gone through it once, you don't really want to have
to go through it. A second time.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Isn't it funny how sometimes it's quite obvious where you
are falling down in life and why it's making you
feel that way, But yet we don't change it, and
it can be right in front of us, and we
still keep doing all the things that are making us
feel bad.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
Yeah, because people find it really hard. It's that cognitive dissonance,
and that is I want to change. I know something's wrong.
It's like jumping paddocks. The paddock looks That paddock over
there looks good, But I like this paddock and do
I really want to leave this paddock to join that one.
It takes courage to make a few changes, but I
can assure you and your listeners that if you're brave
(06:36):
enough to make a start, that you're halfway there.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
So when you went to this dietiian, how did she
change your diet? What sort of things did she incorporate?
Speaker 3 (06:46):
She said, Kent, I want you to go without these
big five for two weeks. So it's basically a challenge.
And I could handle a challenge. And I thought, Hell,
I'm thirty nine years old. What two weeks in the
life of the thirty nine year old is nothing. I
can do this. No sugar, no white rice, I'm pasta,
no bread, no potatoes.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
What did you eat?
Speaker 3 (07:02):
I ate none of those for two weeks? Fould a
million bucks.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
And after the two weeks, were you then motivated enough
to carry on totally.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
And I see this all of the time because I've
been coaching now for five years and three days a
week I'll work at the Autonomy Health Clinic in New Market,
So I'm working with people who are looking to change
the metabolic health and either reverse their diabetes or not
be as sick as they are. And I've seen this
personally and we see it in our clinic all of
the time. If you can just hang in there for
(07:32):
a few days, you will start to see the benefits,
which then transfers back into motivation, which means that you
will continue. Where people fall down Tony is they feel
they don't feel very good for two or three days
and they stop stop because they get disheartened and they stop.
And if you can just find a way to break
through even for one week, ten to fourteen days, that's
(07:54):
when people start to really notice the benefits. Less inflammation,
they've got more, less joint pain, they start to lose
a little bit of weight, their skin improves, their nails improve,
they start getting compliments. The energy levels go up. I'd
almost guarantee anyone to who they if you ever reduce
sugar or quit sugar, your energy levels are pretty much
guaranteed to go up. And so you start to move
(08:15):
a little bit more. Because when we have more energy,
we move. When we do all of those things, we
sleep better. So people can feel real. Like I was
telling you about my story, in hindsight, I was probably
unhealthy for decades. I turn around pretty damn quick, and
I know so many people have done the same thing.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
So two weeks goes by and you've cut out those
big five, did you carry on doing that same way
of living or did you sort of slowly bring in
some of those things.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
Start to kind of bring it back a little bit.
It's kind of that lock at, lockdown approach. Go hard, remember,
go hard, go early. Oh yes, those four famous words. Well,
when I was hearing our health professionals talking about go hard,
go early, it resonated with me because I can relate
that to behavioral chain engine health is that if you
can just stick with it for a couple of weeks,
(09:03):
you can then start to play around a little bit.
Scientists call it an en equals one experiment. So what
works for you may not work for me, may not
work for Jackson, for example. But if I can just
tweak a few things, I can figure out what I
can tolerate. So I don't have to stay off the
sugar forever. I don't have to stay off the alcohol
forever and ever and ever. It's probably an idea for
some people. For sure, I don't have to stay off
(09:25):
processed carbs forever. But I also know that my body
probably doesn't want many of those. So what can I
bring back? How can I play around with things? If
I'm going to go and have a curry, do I
have the narn bread but not the white rice? So
I call it MTD tony minimize the damage? How can
I still enjoy some of the stuff but not hurt myself?
And so that's what I started to do. I started
(09:46):
to play around with it and to figure out, Okay,
what is it that I enjoy, What is it that
works for me? What is it that's sustainable? Because when
it comes to behavior change, when it comes to getting healthy,
it's about making sure that what you're doing is sustainable.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
What I find, and this is se to be so
true in your situation as well. When you're overwhelmed and
you're in that kind of burnouty phase, you don't take
notice of things because you're just in survival mode. So
it's actually quite hard to notice, oh, that sugar meetings
making me feel bad. You just know you're feeling bad,
but you kind of don't know why, and so you
just keep going. So this actually took a bit of
(10:19):
self reflection from you to actually go and see your
dietician and then suddenly you realize, oh, there's a connection.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
Duh. Root cause. So, if you look at the chronic
disease that we have in New Zealand, of which it's overwhelming,
our health systems will buckle and break at some point.
And chronic disease is type two diabetes, obesity, metabolic syndrome,
Alzheimer's dementia, stroke, cancer, cardiovascular disease, depression. They are all
(10:46):
chronic diseases. And the one thing that they or a
couple of things that they all have in common, is
that they are related to lifestyle. They are related to
something called in sheillin resistance, and they're related to inflammation.
So then we go, okay, so what causes that? Because
then we need to come back and figure out what's
the driver, what's the root cause of these diseases. So
you'll hear people say, we've got a type two diabetes epidemic,
(11:08):
and we've got an obesity epidemic. I think we're the
fourth fattest country in the world, which is not something
that we should be proud of. But we don't have
a diabetes epidemic and we don't have an obesity epidemic.
What we have is an epidemic of metabolic dysfunction. Though
not having a healthy metabolism and a poor immune function
go together an inability to deal with stress, they're all
linked further on down the line, Tony, if you're unhealthy
(11:31):
for long enough, you will develop cardiovascular disease CATS or
one of those other ones. Yep. So what's driving the
metabolic dysfunction? And largely it is our food?
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Now that or we need to talk with Tony Street.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
So let's go back to your career. So you're now
working on the breakfast shift, and you go and you
take your health into your own hands. Do you carry
on working?
Speaker 3 (11:55):
Like?
Speaker 2 (11:55):
How did that work? And because you now don't work
the early shifts. It all kind of happened at the
same time, right.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
Never again, you've done it longer than I did. I
did the breakfast save for three and a half years,
and people said to you, ah, you know, I suppose
I'm sure you've heard this. I bet you get used
to it. And my answer was, yes, you get used
to being living in fog lend Yep. There's a massive
advantage to work in breakfast hours because you get so
much time to yourself. But there is one If you
were doing pros and cons, the list of pros would
(12:25):
be enormous, and there's one dirty, big fat con over
the other side, which is that you honestly are living
in a fog for hours and hours and hours a day.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
And sometimes time to yourself isn't actually a pro because
you're so dog tired, you you know, do you just
inside your own head going, I've got how energy to
do anything? It's not even free time.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
But I got through those three and a half years,
And I don't necessarily say that I thrived at that
because of the sleep deprivation and the work pressure and
everything else. But I shudder to think how I would
have gone had I not have made those changes changes
a couple of years earlier. I shudder to think whether
I actually would have coped.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
I actually notice even now, and I'm not a heavy drinker,
but like, for example, very recent we had a Naball
game last night and I coached, and I get very passionate,
you know what it's like. And I got home and
it was such a great game, and I was so pumped,
and I was like, I'm just going to have a
glass of wine to chill out. Well, I woke up
this morning and I actually noticed the wine. It affected me.
(13:23):
I was like, I can't do that anymore. I can't
get up at four and have a glass of wine,
a big glass of red wine the night before. And
so I am starting to realize the triggers and the
things that make me feel bad. But I'm forty one.
It's taking me a long time.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
I know what you're saying about the alcohol be nice
to drink. I hate it too that I can't go
to the pub with my mates and have two or
three beers consequence free. If I go and have a
couple of pints on a Thursday with them, chances are
that'll be just enough to bump my sleep, and alcohol
is a notorious sleep disruptor. It's one of the worst
things you can have for sleep, and then you feel
rubbish for two days afterwards from two beers. It doesn't fear,
(14:00):
but that's the reality. And I know a lot of
people recoil it that messaging and they hate to hear it.
But that's the inconvenient truth, is that alcohol will do
you know good. So I still battle with that. I've
really cut back on the amount of alcohol that I drink.
But if I was to say I was a teetotal
and I was off it, that would be a lie.
I still enjoy a beer, but I'm every single drop
(14:20):
of alcohol that I have now Tony is mindful.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Yeah, conscious drinking.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
It's a conscious choice. Where is that next beer? Like,
there's that ad campaign? Where's that next drink taking me?
Speaker 2 (14:29):
There is?
Speaker 3 (14:30):
Wouldn't that'd be one of the best campaigns I've ever seen.
I can liken that too to sugar and chocolate.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
I need to think that the next time I reach
for a chocolate bar, where is this taking me?
Speaker 3 (14:40):
Well? In my case, if you give me a block
of Wits peanut, like a big block of Wittockers peanuts,
s lab or an arm and gold or something. If
I open I'm not having two squares of that, I'll
probably go half a block.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
So how do you stop having it?
Speaker 3 (14:54):
Don't buy it, won't power.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Yeah, that's actually a really good idea. You just don't
have it in the house, because I go searching for
it in my house, like I will scrounge high and
low when I've got a sweet craving.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
Yeah. So the thing is with that, and a lot
of people have sweet cravings, and we become kind of
stuck and a sort of a victim of processed food
and chocolate and sugar. It's no surprising it's addictive. It
lights up the dopamine pathway in the brain, That reward
center in the brain bang lights up within a fraction
of a second of that first mouthful of chocolate. So
(15:26):
the biochemistry comes first, the behavior comes second. So we
beat ourselves up for being addicted to chocolate, and I
can't resist it all the stuff. It's actually not our fault, Tony,
it's the chocolate. The food is the problem. So if
you take that out, you take that out of the equation,
it gets easy to do this now what you've done
is that you've made it easier on yourself to be
(15:47):
successful and to do the things that you want to
be doing.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
I like that that. The thinking now is it's not
just simply willpower.
Speaker 3 (15:53):
It's got to be won't power. It's got to be
affirm willpower cannot be affirmative because willpower is relying on
you making a really good decision for yourself at seven
thirty at night, after you've made fifteen hundred decisions that
day and you're suffering from decision fatigue. Will power cannot
be trusted. Won't power can be trusted. It's affirmative. I
won't have it in the house, so I won't eat it.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Won't power. I like that. That's a good catch phrase
to flip.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
You flip that around.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
Can we go back now to you finishing up on
the Breakfast Show and somehow you take these life changes
into a new career. How did that come about?
Speaker 3 (16:29):
I was losing my passion for sports broadcasting. I had enough.
I had a crisis point because people often asked me,
was there a moment? Was there a moment when you
just knew? And I take it back to being on
holiday and Fonga Matara and the coremandal, and it was
the end of twenty eighteen and I had two years
to run on my contract at Radio Sport, and I
thought they would probably be my last two years. And
(16:50):
then I went away on holiday and I've never had
a panic attack in my life, and I'm not saying
that I had one there, but I started to feel
like I was on the beach talking to my partner Laura.
You know, hubbies and wives and partners are like they
end up with red ears from offloading. Thank goodness, I've
got here in my life, and I was kind of shaking,
and I said, I can't do this anymore. I just
(17:13):
don't want to do sports broadcasting anymore. I'm done. I've
had enough.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
That's your gut feeling coming through.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Well and just authentically knowing that I had. I've just
for a multitude of reasons, which we won't go into
here because I'll bore you with them all. But I've
had enough. And then I was panicking, like internally, not
a panic attack, but just go what am I gonna do?
What am I gonna do?
Speaker 2 (17:37):
When you've got two years still to run? That's usually
quite hard.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
What am I going to do? Okay, deep breasts. I
made sure that I calmed down, but I reckon for
half a day. I was in fight flight mode big time.
My head was spinning. I was basically panicking, thinking, it's
all I've known, it's all i've known. I've been in
sports broadcasting for twenty years. It's all I've known. Jeez,
what else can I do? And then, thankfully, I just
(18:01):
took some time to myself over the next couple of days,
just being on holiday on the beach to having some
nice time, thinking, Okay, mate, let's be realistic here your
working life. You have that magic number sixty five in mind.
You've still got more than half of your working life
ahead of you. It's not too late to change. You're
not a one trick pony. What else could you do
(18:23):
that you would really enjoy? Because on one of those
I've had many jobs over the years, Tony, but I
now know, through good and bad, I have to be
doing something that I'm passionate about that I enjoy. It's
just the nature of my personality. How can I add value?
Where can I give back? What will I really enjoy doing?
And I thought, I actually think i've in a former
life might have been a good teacher. What could I
(18:46):
do to help others? Now that I've rediscovered some health
I've got a few tips and tricks. Now I know
what good eating looks like, I know what it leads to.
And so I just played around, did some research, decided
to become a hell.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Health coach, and you aligned your kind of two passions.
And actually your knowledge of sport would go hand in
hand with that as well, because essentially coaching leads into sport,
right and teaching.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
Yeah, it does. But the art of coaching, I think
the really good coach is sports coaching is different because
it's results driven, and if you don't get results, you
lose your job. So coaches often need to tell players
what to do to buy into that team effort. This
is how we win, because if we don't, when I
lose my job coaching one on one as a health coach. True,
(19:33):
real coaching, at its essence, is actually listening. It's not
doing a lot of talking. It's listening and then redirecting
back to the person who is doing the talking.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
I guess the coach though of a sports team, while
we're debating sports, they've got to be a good listener
too to get the best out of the players to
then prescribe.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
Yes, right, that's a very good point. So this is
how I look at coaching. My job is to help
you get the best out of yourself.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
I love that, and it takes a bit of courage
to do that though, Like if I suddenly quit my
job here at radio after doing journalism and broadcasting for
twenty years, that would be a little bit scary. Exactly
how did that go down with your wife?
Speaker 3 (20:12):
She was fully supportive. Yep, Laura was fully supportive. Yeah,
fully supportive. It was very courageous what I had to do.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Did you have to retrain?
Speaker 3 (20:20):
Yeah? I did. I've been training for the last few years.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
So I've gone through and done many many courses, many papers,
lots of study, lots and lots and lots of study.
But I've loved I've loved all of it.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
How did you cope with it? Because there'll be a
lot of people listening to this that are thinking, I
don't love my job. I actually want to do something different.
How did you bridge the gap financially?
Speaker 3 (20:40):
Well? I was made redundant at Radio Sport in two thousand.
At the start of twenty twenty, which would have been
my last year anyway, so that helped me get my
business up and running. Laura was working, so I was
a stay at home dad for me, and life goes
so quick. I was a stay at home dad for
three or four years while I was studying and earning
on the side. Laura was the chief breadwinner with that.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
From being a full time worker to being stat home.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
I actually think I did okay, but but I also
know at the time that I had that negativity bias
where I was picking myself up for what I thought
was average parenting or a lack of attention. I was
getting tired, I was getting frustrated. I thought that this
is I'm not well suited to this. I think a
lot of men feel that way, timing that they're not
suited to being at home with the kids. Mums and
(21:27):
women are far better far Jenna, you guys have got.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
A six set that there is that natural, yeah.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
Maternal instinct. I've been a dad for eight and a
half years. I meant to find it. I don't have
it right.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
I'm sure you're a great dad, but do you know what,
we're actually not meant to parent the same right you
have two parents so that you can offer different things.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
Yes, so I was, but I'm so glad I was
so grateful to be a stay at home dad now too,
because I've had great time with my kids. Man, the
number of fathers that I've spoken to over the years
that have said I wish I had more time, And
this often turns into deathbed confessions too. For men, their
number one regret in life as they didn't spend enough
time with their family. And I've made it. There's no
(22:09):
way in hell that'll be me. So yet a lot
of juggling over the last few years, heap of juggling.
I love learning. I love studying. So I've studied through
a company called PreCure, which is doctor Luis Gofield and
Professor Grant's Gofield, the Visionaries. I'm all on board with
those guys. I'm in the tent with them. Nice thing
is now Tony, I'm on their teaching faculty. So now
(22:30):
I teach people, help teach people to become health coaches.
I love to do that, and I love learning and
then applying what I learn into a job. So to
be having to be able to have done that has
been awesome. Hardest thing I've ever done personally, though, I
mean being your parent's the hardest. I would challenge anyone
to disagree with that. That has been the most challenging.
(22:53):
But second to that has been learning business, becoming a businessman.
I knew it would be difficult. I had no idea
how hard it would be to get a business up
and running and to bring in money.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
So many so hard as well.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
Right, this is we need to talk with Tony's three.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
Here's a question for you. And I see this, and
I hear this all the time from the people that
I connect and interact with in terms of backing yourself
and your own abilities, particularly when you're going into a
new field. For you, did you have those moments where
you thought, why am I doing this? Am I actually
going to be good at this? Like? Are people going
to want to do this? Are they going to want
(23:33):
to listen to me?
Speaker 3 (23:33):
Imposter syndrome? Yah? One hundred percent?
Speaker 2 (23:36):
How did you get over that?
Speaker 3 (23:38):
I think it still pops up from time to time,
to be honest, but I think it is important to
be confident. It doesn't mean that you're arrogant. It doesn't
mean that everybody else has to know. You don't have
to strut around going hey, look, at me, I'm so great,
But I internally I know this through studying behavior change,
that you have to talk yourself up. You've got to
(23:59):
be your own biggest champion. Do you believe in the
ghost totally? I know that to be true. I know
this in my heart to be true. I also know
through experience now that it is true. You have to
be able to talk yourself up. So, if you are
looking to make change in your life, if you're looking
to change careers, get healthy, whatever it might be, and
you talk to someone about that, what are they likely
(24:20):
to say to you? Way to go, man, Streety, You're
going to be amazing. You're going to be amazing. You're
going to smash it. You're going to be awesome. If
you need any help, just let me know because.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
They know your great qualities better than you.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
Yeah. So, people, this is what happens with imposter syndrome.
For people that get offered new roles or new jobs.
It's insidious. The only person that is doubting their ability
to do it is there. They've been offered a role,
they've been given a job, They've been given an opportunity
by someone who truly believes they're good enough. Yet I'm
sitting here going no, I don't think I am.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
Yeah, which is staggeric. And do you know what it
isn't just for people that are new at things, like
someone like me. I've been broadcasting for twenty years and
still have moments where I'm about to EMC event, am
I am I up for this? And I'm like, jeez,
if you're not up for it, who is?
Speaker 1 (25:05):
You know?
Speaker 2 (25:06):
And you have to actually have you have to have
that conversation with yourself sometimes to go, don't be stupid.
You've done this for a million years. Of course you
can do it. And it's staggering how many people that
are really qualified for things and they still doubt themselves,
which says I don't know what it says about our
psyche just as humans that we have this sort of
negativity bias, right, we often throw to the pessimistic side
(25:30):
of things totally.
Speaker 3 (25:31):
And look, it's you do a lot of MC work,
You do a lot of public speaking, So to why
I speak at conferences now, which I never thought I'd
be doing speaking at health conference. I saw some of
your pictures, But crowds, it beats some good crowd EMC
with all of the sort of stuff, and I'll get
up there and I'll scan the room because I like
to know have I got the room? Do I need
to up the humor? Do I need to back off?
How we go? And it's easy to focus in on
the guy down the front with his arms folded, looking
(25:53):
totally and utterly bored.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
So many people do in the crowd look like that.
By five I look.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
Like they could go to sleep. Well, they're bored. I
was to worry about him, I might ignore the fact
that ninety percent of the crowd is actually engaged. So
you're right about the negativity bias. For sure. A lot
of successful people get imposter syndrome. It's just part of it.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
I want to go back now to the key for you,
because you've said it started with your diet. Yeah, you
now work with a lot of clients, lots of men,
which I think is a great area to focus on.
What else are we doing wrong? What else is the
key to having to feeling goods and having a happy
life aside from diet?
Speaker 3 (26:27):
Are you ready for the core for Oh? Yes, this
is what I call the core for eat, move, sleep, laugh.
So let's go through these very quickly individually. Eating to
me is and I've gone back and forth on this
a little bit over the years, but I think it
comes back to how we eat is just You cannot
overstate that. Change your eating, change your life six words.
You can put that on a T shirt. I believe
(26:49):
it to be true. I've seen it so many times
so collectively. In New Zealand we have the most densest
availability of processed food, arguably in the world. So if
we go to the supermarket, you and I could do
it two around together. All of the good foods around
the outside, up and down the aisles. You're talking seventy
five to eighty percent of that food is ultra processed
upf the five has been taken out of it, nutrient deficient,
(27:11):
high end sugar, high and added salt that's not required,
high and added, all sorts of detergents and mixes and
emulsifiers and crap. Right, So we know without a shadow
of a doubt that in New Zealand we are eating
the wrong food and we're eating too much of it,
so we're eating poorly. If you can minimize the amount
of process food and sugar you eat, you will have
access to more energy because literally you are able to
(27:33):
access the stored energy that you've been eating. When we
eat a diet that's high on ultra processed food, our
inchulin goes way up. We can't access the energy that
we're just eaten. So people are literally literally don't have
the energy to exercise all to move change you're eating.
Then we go to movement. Ministry of Health says that
we should be doing two and a half hours of
modern exercise per week. More than fifty percent of adults
(27:54):
don't do that.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
And the key there you said moderate, right, it doesn't
have to be hard core.
Speaker 3 (27:59):
No brief to moderate exercise. That's not optimal by the way,
one hundred and fifty minutes, but that's what we should
be doing at least, So two and a half hours
a week of movement. Most people aren't doing that. So
we're not eating well enough, we're not moving enough. We've
got a chronic slept deeprivation problem. If you talk to
any sleep expert, every single one of them will tell
you that there's a chronic slept deprivation problem.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
The link to depression.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
Absolutely, it's all there. So one of the questions I
ask whenever I go to a workshop or a health
conference or a team day or whatever. I'll always ask,
and I'll preface it by saying, now, my next question,
I'm guessing fifty to sixty percent of you will put
your hands up, hands up, who would like better sleep? Bang?
Within a fraction of a second, the hands are going,
and it's at least half every single time. It could
(28:42):
be a room of ten people, it could be a
room of two hundred and fifty. At least fifty percent
of people are not getting enough sleep. That is a
key link to depression and other chronic disease. And the
fourth one is laugh. You could use the word connection
if you want. I go with laugh because it's affirmative.
You can't make yourself laugh. You have to be around
other people. And we know that loneliness has never been higher.
(29:05):
We're talking about men here, kind of guys in their
thirties and forties. I know this. You lose track with
your mates. You don't see your friends enough.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
My husband so much worse than I am. Our girlfriends.
We're always going having wine or we're going to boot
camp together. And I will often say to him, you know,
if you want to catch up with your mates, you
have to organize it.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
Organize it. Someone has to drive.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
It mean, aren't great organizers by nature?
Speaker 3 (29:26):
No, we're not. But but is the beauty of the
female relationships is that you will have two or three
four really good close friends and you's that opposite each other,
like you and I are now, and you look at
each other and you'll ask how each other's going, and
you'll share a coffee or a shame or whatever. Whereas
guys we have to be shoulder to shoulder.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
It's so true you're each other.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
So we're standing at a pub, we're standing at a
pub leaner, or we're a game of sport. We've actually
got to organize it to go out were we're in
a comfortable environment and we're sort of leaning looking around
side to side a man, how you going? But I
know with my friends we're all approaching fifty now, we
are having better conversations than we used to when we
were younger, because we.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
Really need to have them. I don't know that it
seems to be that there's a bit of a sense
of permission now that's actually okay for men to have
those chats, whereas it used to be very much like,
oh lads, we don't do that. I'm glad that that's
changed three words.
Speaker 3 (30:19):
Vulnerability builds trust. I've been to health conferences in the
South Island. That's something called the men's Muster, and we
had this. I'll never forget this as long as I live.
We had a quarter of about forty or fifty people.
Wayne Shelford was there, a great man, Buck Shelford, and
he was there. He didn't talk, but he was just
taking notes. And Callum Bruce led the conversation. Callums are
(30:40):
four Newsid Mauldi rugby player, sevens player, super rugby player,
great guy, and he said, right, who wants to go first?
Just tell us something about yourself and guys look down.
I was the MC for that event, so I didn't
partake either. I just was standing in the circle. I
wasn't going to say anything, and I was shuffling shoes
with people shuffling shoes with their feet. And then one
(31:03):
good sullen sullen strong man goes, oh, I'll go first,
and he told a story. It wasn't particularly deep or meaningful,
but it was important that he got something off his chest.
What that did was set off this cascade of blokes
standing forward to talk about the suicide of their children.
The attempted suicide of their children, the trauma that they'd
(31:24):
been through. We had people who had lost a loved
one to a shark attack. We had a man who
was in the police rescue team who told us about
pulling dead bodies out of the water. And these guys
were saying, hey, I've never been able to tell anyone.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
This before because they haven't had a platform.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
They had had a platform. They had the safe environment, Tony,
they had the safe environment where I don't know these guys.
We've come from different parts of New Zealand, but I
trust this environment. I'm going to offload vulnerability builds trust.
It took one guy, and you see this all of
the time with ki we men. One guy who's the
first to say, Hey, guys, I'm not feeling very good.
(32:04):
I'm no good. I need to have a chat about it.
Can we go and have a beer. I'm rubbish. I
need to talk to you. I'm overwhelmed by work. I'm
overwhelmed by being a dad. I'm overwhelmed with mortgaging. My
phone never stops, my emails never stop, by managing fire,
I'm overwhelmed. I need to tell someone. Chances are if
you are if you were brave enough to be the
(32:25):
first to have that conversation. Everyone will come out of
the worldwork.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
So question as a health coach is that we you
kind of come in to be able to bridge those
conversations and do you work with people one on one?
Speaker 3 (32:34):
Yes, and having those power asking those power questions, because
chances are, tony you have not asked yourself these questions.
What am I most proud of? What am I optimistic about?
What am I hopeful for?
Speaker 2 (32:45):
Life gets in the way, doesn't it's in the way.
Speaker 3 (32:47):
So I'll ask someone when was the last time you
really felt great?
Speaker 2 (32:52):
And I look up, thinking twenty years ago?
Speaker 3 (32:54):
You know, you know, yes, exactly, that's the art. Oh
and they'll look up. You know you've asked a good question.
Whenever someone looks up, you've landed a good question. Oh
and they'll go back in time and it'll be ten
years ago on their wedding day. It'll be fifteen years
ago when they were playing sport. It'll be eighteen years
(33:15):
ago when they were not a single and had a
bit of freedom to live the life that they wanted
to live. Chances are they had less stress in their
life and they were moving. They would have been active,
they were playing sport, or they were moving although walking,
although we're young.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
And they just don't realize that that's why they aren't
feeling great now.
Speaker 3 (33:35):
Yeah, and no one's asked in that or they've never
thought to ask themselves when was the last time I
felt authentically, truly great about myself? And often it's ten, fifteen,
twenty years. We get a lot of people in tears
at this point because they're reflecting, going where's the time gone.
The great news is Tony, is that it won't be
fifteen years to come right.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
You can do it pretty quickly.
Speaker 3 (33:54):
It might not be fifteen days, but fifteen weeks. You
can make enormous progress in fifteen weeks and then you
talk fifteen months. Holy moly. I've known guys that have
gone from being overweight, out of shape, with no energy
to then doing an iron Man eighteen months later.
Speaker 2 (34:09):
Wow, that's impressive. Kent, I have loved this chair, and
what I love about it is one it's not just
the fact that you were able to turn your life around,
but I think it's a real lesson in doing what
you're passionate about and not being afraid to change up
and as you say half of your working life, You've
got another half to go, and this, I can tell
is your vocation. And I also think it's a really
(34:30):
good advertisement for having someone to talk to and to
coach you through. We get coaching and everything at work,
we get coached in a fitness but who's there actually
guiding you through the whole thing, like your life. So
I love it and I think it's going to be
a great business. You've been doing it for five years.
So if you want any of the details for Kent,
I'm just going to remind you his instagram is at
(34:52):
Kent John's Health, or you can go to Kent John'shealth
dot co dot nz.
Speaker 3 (34:56):
Well hit me up at LinkedIn. I'm easy to find
Tony my on there. I'm easy to find. I'd love
to hear from people well being in health is. I
now truly appreciate that it's an investment time. If at energy,
maybe there's some money that you need to spend when
you go to the gym or whatever it might be,
have yourself a coach. It's an investment in your well being.
It assures how late it cost.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
We need to talk with Coast FM's Tony Street. If
you enjoyed the podcast, Click to share with family or friends.
To get in touch, email we need to talk at
Coast Online dot co dot nz
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