December 14, 2023 • 63 mins
Chef Andrew, a firm believer in the power of local ingredients, gives us a riveting account of his life journey—from his roots on a fruit farm to his experiences with modern city living and his enriching experiences with hunting and foraging.
This is not just about food; it's a deep dive into how these experiences have shaped his philosophy of cooking. Of course, we also delve into the serious side of things— the effects of industrial farming on our health, athletic performance, and the planet.
Chef Andrew shares invaluable insights into how clean and organic food can enhance performance and recovery, and how sustainable farming practices can lead to a healthier and more vibrant life.
But it's not all about food. We also explore the importance of disconnecting from technology and immersing ourselves in the natural world. We encourage you to take a refreshing outdoor walk, appreciate the rustling leaves and feel the cool breeze against your skin.
This episode is a profound exploration of our relationship with food, nature, and ourselves. We wrap up with a discussion of guided foraging trips and cooking courses with Chef Andrew, a unique opportunity to deepen your connection to the food you eat. Embark on this journey of self-discovery, health awareness, and the joys of foraging and wild game cooking. Enjoy!
Andrew Garrett is a published and award-winning chef who has a passion for food and life thanks to countless adventures and travel around the globe. Having grown up in Sonoma, California, Andrew quickly developed an appreciation for all things local. While serving for the U.S. Army in Germany, he was able to spend many weekends traveling to France and Tuscany, where he felt right at home enjoying local delicacies, such as wine and cheese and in his leisure, foraging and taking up butchery. Andrew is enamored with French and Italian culture and cuisine and its regional diversity. His passion for ingredients is quintessential in bringing his patrons the best possible recipes and sauces. Andrew is excited to share his sense of adventure and thirst for knowledge and inspire anyone with a passion for great food.
Connect with Andrew here:
Instagram: @chef_garrett
Website: www.chefandrewgarrett.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Your life is your greatest work of art, and it all
relates back to thesynchronicities.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Welcome to Integrate Yourself.
I'm your host, alison Pillow,and you can find me at
finallythrivingprogramcom andalisonpillowcom.
You can find my book FinallyThriving on Amazon or any other
place you can find a book, aswell as Audible and any other
places you find audio books, aswell as on Spotify now, so you
(00:57):
can listen to it there too.
It's a great gift to give topeople this time of year.
If you do want a signed copy ofmy book, if you'd like that to
give someone else or to giftyourself, you can email me
directly and we can go ahead andmake that happen.
I will leave my email addresson as a way to contact me on the
(01:20):
show notes today.
I hope you're all enjoying theholiday season.
I hope you're giving yourselfthe gift of presents as well and
creating that space foryourself this holiday season.
If you want to know more abouthow to do that, I talk about it
in my last episode, my solo cast, about giving yourself the gift
(01:44):
of presents and how importantthat is this time of year and
what that leads to as weapproach the resolution time of
January, how you can make itmuch easier for you to resolve
what you need to resolve thattime of year when you start to
practice prioritizing time withyourself.
(02:06):
Now Registration for my finallythriving program.
My next class is open now.
You can head over to the linkin my show notes as well to go
ahead and sign up for that.
It starts January 22nd, so ifyou'd like to be a part of that
(02:26):
class it's a companion programto my book Finally Thriving.
If you want to get familiarwith the information, go ahead
and order the book and startreading that now and you will
have a good idea of what we gothrough in class.
Together we go deeper into theseconcepts of aligning the mind,
connecting with the bodynaturally, and learning how to
(02:47):
listen to our spirit, connectingwith our soul on a deeper level
, which brings us into a placeof inner calm and peace where we
know ourselves, we can feel ourown energy and we can move into
life, and connecting withothers in a very easeful,
graceful way.
It's a pleasant, pleasant wayto go through life and I've
(03:10):
helped many people with thisprocess and I frame it.
You know I have a holisticwellness lens here for this
class.
It's from the lens of wellnesson all levels and all aspects
mind, body, spirit and I giveyou many, many ideas on how you
(03:31):
can build your own wellnesspractice and make that a daily
practice so that you can bringthat health on all levels into
your body and be more aligned inyour mind, so you can attract
more of what you really want tocreate in your life and then
learn how to focus in and payattention to the messages your
(03:54):
spirit is asking you to payattention to.
That goes for intuition, thatgoes for all of the higher
senses and appreciation for thebeauty in our life, the people
in our life, the connections.
This is what happens.
When we can connect with ourspirit, we can go through life
(04:18):
much more joyfully.
So if you want to be a part ofthat class, it's a 12 week
course and coaching program andI take you through some very
practical steps which are verytransformative for people's
lives.
They've already been, peoplehave already been or how do I
say this?
Their lives have already beenchanged.
Yeah, it's just amazing towatch the personal growth of my
(04:43):
students.
So if you want to be a part ofthat, if you're ready to take
that next step and manage yourwellness and your emotions and
your mindset and really getclear on what your body needs,
this class is for you Head overto the link in the show notes to
(05:04):
sign up.
So today's show I have ChefAndrew Garrett, my dear friend
Andrew, who is on the show today.
We've been wanting to do thisshow for some time.
We finally got around to doingit.
He really shares so much wisdomabout food and foraging and
(05:25):
abundance in nature that we canfind in our food system here.
So you know, we tend to thinkof food as coming from the
grocery store, but really we'rereally built to be able to see
and find food everywhere innature.
So this is really trueempowerment when we can start to
(05:46):
see how much abundance there isand how much beauty and
appreciation we can have for ourfood this way.
He works with athletes.
He's also been on some realityTV shows and he's owned his own
hot sauce business as well.
So he has got a lot ofexperience in the food industry
(06:12):
and he has a lot of wisdom toshare today.
So, without further ado, it ismy honor and my pleasure to
introduce you to Chef AndrewGarrett.
Enjoy.
Your life is your greatest workof art.
(06:49):
Today I'm here with my goodfriend, andrew Garrett.
He is a published andaward-winning chef who has a
passion for food and life thanksto countless adventures and
travel around the globe.
Having grown up in Sonoma,california, andrew quickly
developed an appreciation forall things local.
While serving for the US Armyin Germany, he was able to spend
(07:12):
many weekends traveling toFrance and Tuscany, where he
felt right at home, enjoyinglocal delicacies such as wine
and cheese and an as leisureforging and taking up butchery.
Andrew is enamored with Frenchand Italian culture and cuisine
and its regional diversity.
His passion for ingredients isquintessential in bringing his
(07:35):
patrons the best possiblerecipes and sauces.
Andrew is excited to share hissense of adventure and thirst
for knowledge and inspire anyonewith a passion for great food.
He's also been on Chopped andSupermarket Steakout, which was
really cool to be on.
I'd love to hear yourexperience about with that,
(07:57):
andrew.
He's also just an amazing chefand we're going to get into how
he got into that and the type ofchef he prefers to be, local
food forging and those kinds ofthings, as well as just what
he's doing with it.
Now.
We're just going to get intoall of that.
(08:18):
I'm so excited to have you here, andrew.
Andrew's a good friend and thishas been a long time coming.
I'm so excited we're finallydoing this.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
Yeah, we finally made it happen.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Exactly.
We kept talking about it for awhile, then finally we did it.
Yeah, andrew man, you have sucha diverse background.
You've been on reality TV shows, you have your own hot sauce
business, you've been a chef forprofessional athletes.
(08:53):
Kind of just give my audiencean idea of how you got to be
doing what you're doing.
It's really special.
It's a special thing to offerpeople.
I would love to hear more aboutthat, how you got there.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
Absolutely.
Thank you for the introduction.
Yeah, very, very, very stokedto be here and talking to you
about about me yeah, it is myfavorite subject.
So but how I got started?
Really it goes back to growingup.
My parents were caretakers on a12 acre fruit farm in a little
town called Glen Ellen, which isjust outside Sonoma A lot of
(09:31):
people just kind of group ittogether with Sonoma.
But I grew up there as an onlychild and so I had a plethora of
chores and my dad worked earlyin the morning, my mom worked
through mid to evening, so I washome alone a lot and you know I
have to get myself to theschool bus, get off the school
bus, get back to the house andthen take care of whatever
(09:52):
chores I had to do.
But with that growing up on thefarm, my father was a great
cook, fantastic cook, and a lotof times you know we were just
going out to our garden andpicking fresh vegetables and
cooking straight off there.
I was fortunate enough to spenda lot of weekends hunting with
my father, even just days thatwe would walk out to our front
(10:15):
porch and you could shoot quailstraight up the front porch.
You know there's a flock of 50,60 birds right there and you
know, shoot them, go out there,clean them up, take them inside
and cook them alongside, likefresh zucchini or fresh
jalapenos, fresh cayans, likeyou know.
All these my experience was sodifferent.
I mean even the crick runningbehind the house, you know, you
(10:37):
go out there and I could catchthree or four trout and bring
them upstairs and cook them.
So growing up, that was myexperience, you know.
And just the hills around thatarea were also full of
chanterelle mushrooms and so,you know, in the fall we'd go
pick mushrooms and that was myintroduction to the.
In my mind, that's how food was.
(11:01):
When I got to 12, my parents haddivorced.
When I was six we moved intothe city and I was far away from
that and that's when I gotintroduced to things like fast
food and it was so muchdifferent than actually walking
out to the garden and you know Ifound myself really missing it.
At the same time, I was veryfortunate to be a really good
(11:26):
athlete.
You know, I was good at sports.
Just kind of naturally I pickedthem up.
They made sense.
I love team atmospheres.
So I was playing all thesedifferent sports and my
performance is when I reflect onit, like at that time I had no
idea what I'm talking about.
(11:47):
At 12 years old I wouldn't knowwhat it you know.
When I reflect back on it, Ilook at the correlation between
how I was eating from six to 12versus 13 to 20.
And my performance was in linewith that just my energy levels.
But again, being so fortunate togrow up in a place where riding
(12:09):
my bike every day throughoutthe summer, riding it for miles
at a time to go to a fishinghole or, you know, go out to the
mountains and go hunting,that's really where my passion
for food really settled in.
I think the bigger part of itreally was in my formative years
(12:31):
, my parents were at odds on aregular basis.
There's a lot of arguing, a lotof bickering, and the only time
that things were ever calm orsettled we're at the dinner
table.
It was the only time that weever had any kind of you know,
calm or consistent was in thosemoments, and so I think,
(12:54):
especially you know, as funny asafter reading your book, it
really helped me to dive intosome of those things that were
experiences that I didn'trealize had such an impact on my
long, long term life and goalsand feelings and emotions.
And so that's it.
(13:15):
That's where the real depth offood and dining and eating
really came together for meafter reflecting on this, where
I landed?
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Yeah that's incredible, yeah, and so it
really cooking for you and inproviding people with this kind
of service, really provides aservice to yourself on a deeper
level to connect more with yourfamily and when you felt like
that was really, those times arereally good, right, it has like
that, that feeling for you thatyou're continuing to revisit,
(13:51):
you know, through your cookingand offerings that way.
So that that's incredible and,yeah, it sounds like that.
You got that early on that,that connection with food that
many people don't get, you know,and that's so rare these days.
But it's amazing when we takethose experiences and share that
with other people, because it'sit really does connect us into
(14:16):
even the deeper aspects of whatyou know meals like you were
saying what meals really mean tous, what this time spent
together eating really means.
You know it's changed so muchthrough the nutrition industry,
the fitness industry.
You know it's like it's justgotten so convoluted and complex
about how we eat, but reallyit's so simple and heart
(14:38):
centered in a way, right, andthat's what I love about what
you do and what you offer people.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
Well, it's a trip, so I collect cookbooks back behind
me.
I mean, a lot of those arecookbooks and I have a handful
of books that are from the 19,early 1900s to, you know, mid
1940s and then from the 40s tothe 70s, to the 80s, 90s into
present day, and it's reallyinteresting to watch.
(15:05):
You look at recipes from 1910.
I've got a better homes andgarden cookbook from 1915.
And you look at that book andyou look at the recipes and you
look at.
You know you go out and picktime from your garden, you go
out and get eggs from your coop.
You know the, the, theinstructions are the, almost a
manual for homesteading, what wewould call homesteading now.
(15:28):
But that was life.
And then, you know, you fastforward to 1940, 1950.
All of a sudden everybody'scoming home from the Great War.
Life is.
It becomes a lot faster, itbecomes a lot more important.
You know we have two parentsthat are both working and so the
time that we were taking tocook is now reduced.
(15:51):
You know we go from 1214 hoursof preparation to this.
You know 45 minute window.
And then you fast forward to1960, 1970, and that 20 minute
window turns into a 15 minutewindow, then the 80s and 90s,
and we're going to a five minutewindow.
All of a sudden, you know, wehave to hustle and move and
hustle and move and hustle andmove and that's just not the way
(16:11):
we're designed as humans, in myopinion.
In my opinion, but I don'tthink that's the way we're
designed as humans.
You know, we were designed tobe outdoors and and experiencing
nature and exploring andforaging and finding these
ingredients.
Now it's it's a game ofconvenience, you know, and I
think somewhere in the late 60s,early 70s, food manufacturing
(16:39):
really took advantage of thatand we started to look for ways
to how can we can things andmake them last longer than they
already do.
How can we add preservativesthat we don't necessarily need
food?
And so you look at thetransition from manufacturing
ingredients being vinegar, somespices and herbs in a jar that
(16:59):
you can to oh, here's this readyto eat meal that's full of
sodium, sodium by drowsy, andthen, in 2008, green-lidded
sugar, chloride, chloridedioxides and then any other
number of hidden ingredients,you know, and it's really
(17:21):
fascinating to look at that andkind of see where we're really
taking a hard veer in our foodchain.
And it's all down to me that,you know, and there's folks that
are my age that have eaten thatway their whole life.
They've never experienced and,like you said, it's like having
(17:43):
that experience growing up is.
No one gets to do that anymore.
You know.
I mean even now, you know, I'vegot a handful of friends that
have kids and they're constantlygoing from one thing to the
other, one thing to the other.
You know you have to be.
It's almost like folks have tobe doing things.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Yeah, it's like a trauma response, like busyness,
right.
It's so interesting to me tooto think about that, cause I've
done it.
I did it in my life.
I was a you know, an athlete,so we were running from you know
one thing to the next fourhours in the gym, coming home
like at eight or nine o'clock inthe evening.
So it's like there wasn'treally a lot of space for
(18:22):
cooking and my parents werealways driving us places and so
we had to go to McDonald'ssometimes, you know, because
that was really the only theonly way to kind of fit that
meal in.
But even before I really gotinto athletics, like I remember
my dad really spending time ongardening.
He had this huge garden outback and we'd get a lot of our
(18:43):
food out of the garden.
So with my relatives, you knowthat lived in the neighborhood
as well, and so most of my foodmy aunt, who I'd stay with in
the summertime, most of her foodcame from her backyard garden.
You know that we'd eat, she'dmake us for lunch, and so I was
so happy that I got toexperience that before I started
(19:04):
to experience the life of theathlete, you know, and the
rushing around, and because itreally did.
You know, as I got older, Ihave come back to, you know,
what is very simple and naturaland like what's the most natural
thing is for us to grow foodright it's and pick it out of
our backyard and we all haveaccess to that.
(19:27):
It's just prioritizing the timeto do it and learning about it,
you know.
And so, but many people don'tmake time for that because we
prioritize so many other thingsthat in some of that, I think it
just it isn't like progress,like it feels like progress, but
when you look at it is itreally progress, you know.
(19:48):
And so, getting back to what isreal, because you know we're all
doing things a lot on thecomputer.
I'm one of those people and isthat really the real world, you
know?
Is that a reflection of ourreal world or is it what we're
looking at outside, you know,and seeing what's growing in our
backyard, seeing what we can,you know, being still and
(20:10):
present for our meals so we canhave a healthy digestion, and
really having gratitude for that, like true appreciation.
And so that's where I thinkthat space taking that space
with your meal is.
This is something I teach mystudents, and my program is how
to just be present with yourmeals and even go through some
(20:30):
kind not necessarily a religiousthing, but like blessing your
food and appreciating it andlike sending that energy into
the food before you bring itinto your body, because that is
really an important intention toset.
This will help you be morehealthy and have just more of a
(20:51):
view of abundance in your life.
That's a little bit differentthan material goods or money.
Speaker 3 (20:59):
A lot of folks just don't.
They never have thatopportunity.
It baffles me still today thatI run into some clients, that I
work as a personal chef with alot of clients and some clients
have no idea where things comefrom.
Still, I grew up raising hogsand steer, so I know that when I
(21:19):
put that time and effort intoraising this animal and then
it's on the dinner table, Idon't have a Disney.
I guess that's really what itis.
I don't have that Disneyassociation to it is.
I don't have that.
Oh my gosh, that's the pig thattalks.
That's not like.
Oh no, that's Amos.
We're going to eat him in sixmonths, when he's big enough to
(21:41):
harvest at a proper size, andwe're going to feed him all
these good ingredients.
We're not just going to tosshim in a pin stacked on top of
six other animals and then well,I guess it's time and then
throw it into a giant processor.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
Yeah, so you have respect for the animal right.
It's a respectful process andit's so, it's so.
So most people are exposed toconventional ways of doing that
right.
So would you want maybe sharejust the difference between that
and a more restorative orregenerative farming technique?
Speaker 3 (22:20):
The way that that again kind of getting back to my
timeline there of the 50s to70s I guess we could expand it a
little bit is we went fromraising these animals ourselves
to going to our local butcherwho's getting their animals from
their local rancher, and we'retalking 500 to 1500 head of
(22:41):
cattle.
And then all of a sudden we'rein this oh my God, we don't have
time in the 70s and 80s and westart to see the real rise in
industrialized farming.
Right so we start stackinganimals in the smallest possible
area and it creates so manyproblems.
Because now we're, you know, ifyou think about you know, a
(23:03):
human living.
Right, like humans, livingstacked on top of each other is
not an ideal situation forhumans and a lot of times we see
a lot of illnesses that arepsychologically, emotionally
established in those areas.
Right, so animals are the sameway.
And when we start stackingthese animals and just like, we
need to just turn, turn aprocess, turn a process, turn a
(23:24):
process.
We need to produce, produce,produce.
The invention of mass freezing,right Like the amount of, and
again there's now, for me,there's nothing wrong with
frozen protein, frozen fish,frozen meats, there's nothing
wrong with it.
But when we're producingsomething to store it for future
use, that's where we start toget into these problems, because
(23:46):
now we're just turningsomething over.
You know, canning is a greatexample of that.
In overall food manufacturing,I think in America today we
produce something like 890trillion calories a day.
We consume as Americans,something like 350 trillion.
(24:06):
So we have this deficit.
Deficit, that's almost 500trillion calories, right, but
yet we have people starving inAmerica because they're not
being, they're not receivingnutrient dense food, they're not
actually eating things that areclose to them, they're eating
things that are from thousandsand thousands of miles away.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
So even like, even chemically like laden stuff too,
right I mean yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
Exactly, yeah, and it's not.
In my opinion, it's not howwe're supposed to eat.
You know we're not supposed toeat these things that have all
these preservatives and you knowwe're hunter-gatherers and for
my own personal, you know, Ifeel the best, I perform the
best, when I'm eating somethingthat is gone from a raw, fresh
(24:52):
state to a prepared state,versus canned or fast food.
And don't get me wrong, like Iindulge, I indulge, you know,
it's one of my things.
But, yeah, the disconnectionbetween where our food comes
from and how we consume it.
(25:13):
We really don't spend that timeand I think that's why I really
like most about the personaland private chef work that I do
now Is I get to enjoy thosedinners with my clients and you
know, even though I'm preparingthem, they're my animals.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
Is that?
Speaker 3 (25:31):
your cat.
Wow.
They know I'm doing interviews.
So, getting back to the story,you know, taking that time to
slow down with a client andseeing their progress, you know
I and it's really cool workingwith these professional athletes
Because there's a tangibleresult from my, my experience
(25:57):
and my cooking is I can see howwell they perform or how, what,
how good they feel when they'retraining or weightlifting.
Because I think in you knowyour athlete, the old school
idea of chicken and rice andtuna, chicken and rice and tuna,
chicken and rice and tuna, eata bunch of pasta the night
(26:17):
before your football game, likethat whole mentality of like car
bloating the night before, hascompletely been debunked.
But yet we're still.
There are still places wherethese athletes are coming from,
that those are.
That's still the standard.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Yeah, I can see that.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
Yeah, it's hard to break that, and so I've had
clients ask me to make themchicken nuggets.
I'm like sir.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
That's the funny thing I've noticed too, like
being being an athlete comingout of that world.
You would think that, as timeshave changed with our awareness
of organic food, higher qualityfood and those kinds of things
that would have trickled intothe athletic arena, but it has
not, and it seems to be thateven with a professional athlete
(27:02):
, so it just surprises me, butit's starting to.
There are some athletes that arestarting to realize how, how
beneficial cleaner organic fooddoes for their performance.
You know, one of my mentors,paul check, works with, I think,
first Kobe Bryant and changedhis mind about that, and I think
(27:22):
then he influenced some peoplewhen he was alive in the NBA as
well, towards that.
And then so you're doing thesame thing.
You're just educating them like, hey, you know, yeah, you can
do this, you can, you canperform at a high level with
this crap diet, but could you,could do even better, even
(27:43):
better, like because athletesare looking for that edge right,
even better for restoration,coming back from injuries, those
kinds of things with a cleanerorganic diet, you know, and it's
really easy for them toimplement because they it's not
about money for them really, andyou know so, it's just about
(28:04):
education, right and value.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
Yeah, it's an athlete that I'm working with right now
currently, actually, you knowhe's, I it's.
We've worked together for threeyears during his off seasons
and it's taken that amount oftime to build that trust of like
, look, what I'm going to giveyou is is going to help and what
I'm recommending is going tohelp.
And you know, we're three yearsin and he's like, yeah, you
(28:28):
just do whatever you want.
Chef G like, you know, whateveryou tell me to do, I'm going to
do it.
You know, I brought him twocourts of beef bone broth, right
, like real beef bone broth.
And he's like, hey, when you'rehungry during the day, like if
you're snacking, drink eightounces of this.
And you know, don't snack, justdrink this.
And we've done that for threeweeks.
(28:50):
And he's like I don't want tosnack because you're totally
satiated.
Right, because you're gettingthese really nutrient dense
ingredients that are, you know,helping helping to curb those
those, you know, instantgratification moments of like,
oh, I'm just going to grab somechips.
Oh, you know, even though this,this beef turkey, is seemingly
(29:12):
healthy, it's not, you know.
And so it's fun to help folkslearn and then watch them feel
better, play better and justhave these, these really cool
growth opportunities.
You know, I've got him eatingno carbs, right, no carbs in
(29:33):
there.
That's, that's my role for him.
I'm like, look like, if you'regonna eat carbs, even in the
morning, and do them with a, youknow, an oatmeal or something,
that's going to be a simple,quick digesting, you're going
into your game.
And then watch going into yourgames like it'll burn, right,
because before the mentality of,oh, I'm going to eat all these
(29:54):
carbohydrates at night before Igo to bed and then wake up, oh,
my gosh, why am I sluggish?
Why do I feel so bad?
Because our body doesn'tprocess him.
It's not taken me a ton oflearning, right, like I'm
learning everything I was evertaught.
Playing athletics at a mediumhigh level is like Whoa, and I'm
(30:14):
fortunate because I've had ahandful of mentors who have
taken the time to talk to meabout these things.
Yeah, liam is probably mynumber one resource for hey,
what do you think about this?
Because he dives into things sodeeply.
You're another one of myresources.
Like, hey, what has this beenlike for you?
(30:35):
And even like reading your bookis going through, and the parts
where you're talking about howyou were eating and why you were
eating.
I related so directly to thatand unlearning it for myself so
I can pass that to others isthat in itself is a great
experience for me, right?
Thank you, yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
Yeah, it's all about hormonal balance too, you know.
And so with athletes, they'realways a lot of them do the what
is it?
Hormonal supplementation, liketestosterone, I don't know what
the name of it, all those are,but they get growth hormones and
stuff.
But really like you could dothat naturally with your food if
you knew how to do it right.
(31:16):
And that's one of the things Ido talk about in my book.
It is more for kind of more forpeople who are just super busy
and have a low thyroid function,low metabolic function, and how
to change their hormone tofavor their metabolism.
But with athletes, I mean, itcan be a similar thing, you know
(31:38):
.
So, because a lot of them arejust working so hard and it does
slow down their metabolism ifthey're not keeping up with it,
with the food aspect.
So that's why they might needthe hormones sometimes, because
their metabolism is actuallyslowing down because they're not
able to give it enough fuel orthe right fuel to run, you know,
(31:59):
properly, like it's supposed to.
So because they're just puttingso much stress on their body
and you know, being an athletemyself, I can understand that.
But so that's why I tell myclients is the recovery process
that to focus on, and part ofthat is food right, eating the
right foods, right time, justreally supporting and nourishing
(32:20):
yourself and not depleting toomuch.
Depletion is going to lead tolow energy levels.
It's going to lead to your bodybreaking down over time your
connective tissue as well.
So this is so important for usto really bring in that high
quality food intentionally inthe diet, especially for doing a
lot of activity.
Yeah, right.
Speaker 3 (32:41):
Yeah, it's wild.
I mean the way the body reactsis have you seen the recent
information they've been puttingout about caffeine and cortisol
production?
Speaker 2 (32:51):
No, but I have my own thoughts on that.
But what have you seen about it?
What are they saying?
These days.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
There is a direct correlation between caffeine and
cortisol production in thehuman body.
So caffeine is a stimulant andit gives us that same like fight
or flight essentially is, whatis triggering?
Is that fight or flight mode?
And what they found is thatlater in the day, if we're
drinking caffeine, say past two,three o'clock in the afternoon,
(33:19):
some people are like, oh, I'mgoing to be eating the caffeine
but I can't seem to lose thisbelly fat.
Well, the group of researcherslooked at it and they realized
that people that were drinkingcaffeine later in the day, their
cortisol production was likeway, way up and you know.
So I personally stoppeddrinking caffeine after 11 am
(33:41):
and I immediately noticed,within three to four days of,
like, my energy level beingsignificantly greater, going
through the day and then wakingup without that like hormonal
hangover, you know so you know,my body didn't feel like it was
in fight or flight mode allnight and I make nice hard night
rest asleep.
I use to drink caffeine just allday.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Well, yeah, that was the nature of your job, right
being in the restaurant industryso many people do that.
Yeah yeah.
So my thoughts on it are, yeah,similar.
I agree it's.
I do coffee like.
I usually do one cup in themorning.
I do my best to eat with thecoffee.
Like I always tell my clients,don't just drink coffee by
(34:25):
itself first thing in themorning.
If you have to do that, thenjust eat pretty soon after so
that that will curb the cortisol, the excess cortisol, because
we already have a lot of naturalcortisol going in the morning.
That's natural for us to dothat.
The sun, actually it actuallyactivates that cortisol
production naturally in yourbody by hitting you, the sun
(34:45):
hitting your skin, yeah, so,which is, we're supposed to have
that to wake us up in themorning.
But then, yes, if you keeptrying to keep your ramp, your
nervous system up through theday with that, then yes, you're
going to.
It's going to be unnatural foryou to be doing that, because as
the day progresses, you shouldbe lowering your cortisol levels
(35:06):
so that you can have a nicerestful sleep at night.
Of course, screens will do thattoo, if we're not wearing glass
, blue light glasses during theevening to watch our TV or do
something on the computer forstressing ourselves out mentally
, emotionally, right before wego to bed, same thing.
So all these things, yes, canproduce cortisol.
(35:28):
But yeah, just yeah.
Eliminating coffee later in theday, make a rule no coffee past,
like I don't know, like 10 or12 noon or something.
It could do something if you'rereally into it.
But I usually just drink onecup in the morning, I'm good to
go and, yeah, like you said, Ithink then you just get back to
(35:50):
your natural circadian rhythm,which is not being up all day
like crazy adrenaline levels.
Right, we have to curb thoseadrenaline levels a little bit,
and we do that through food aswell.
So food helps us regulate ourblood sugar, so our adrenaline
levels stay at a certain levelduring the day.
Our stress hormones aren'tgoing off all the time, you know
(36:12):
, and that's another thing thatleads to not great sleep, as if
we're not handling the bloodsugar during the day too.
So, yes, all those things, Iagree, caffeine does have some
health effects that you canbenefit from, but you do have to
do it, you do have to use itwisely.
So, like you know earlier, inthe morning and with food is
(36:34):
what I recommend.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
You hit on something that also is just like been hot
with me right now.
I bounce from what's hot andwhat's not, you know, every week
there's something new.
But I recently read a book by agentleman named Michael Easter.
It's called the Comfort Crisisand he essentially he asks a ton
(36:58):
of questions of reallyintelligent people, researchers
across the globe, and seeks outanswers to why things you know,
why the human body reactscertain ways, different things,
and one of the chapters he goesinto, why people that spend time
in nature have such a lowerlevel of anxiety, depression,
(37:22):
stressors overall.
You know, and he's one of thesepeople, like he worked for
Men's Health Magazine, he waseditor there and you know he
lived in big cities and he wasone of those folks was like, oh,
you know what, the city doesn'tbother me, like you know, I'm
just doing my daily thing, doingmy daily grind.
But the reality that he foundwas that living in the city,
(37:44):
surrounded by so many millionsof people, really does a number
on us, and even though we'vetrained ourselves, myself
included, to have this idea oflike I must constantly be going,
I have to be around people thatare constantly going.
We don't stop to go outsideanymore.
And what one of these studiesthat he found in Japan is?
(38:09):
they go out and they do whatthey call forest bathing, and
they spend 20 minutes, threedays a week, in the woods, no
cell phones, no earphones, justin the woods around nature and
this is within city limits, likeyou know just being around
trees and bushes and greens andshrubbery.
The people that do this, theiranxiety level drop by like
(38:32):
something like 25 to 30 percentthis just ungodly number and I
was reading this, I'm likethat's absolutely nuts and I
happened to be in one of mygrooves where I was outside
hiking every single day, everysingle day, 45 minutes.
I was going for a walk.
I live in a neighborhood that'ssurrounded by trees, in nature,
no headphones, no phone, justwalking.
(38:53):
It was amazing to see the calmthat I experienced in my life is
like just being outside.
I just got back.
I spent the month of Juneworking as a camp chef for an
outfitting guide in Idaho.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (39:10):
No cell phone, no internet, no emails, no cars, no
buildings, just trees, tents,camps, fire, that's it.
And adjusting back to real lifein the beginning of the July,
it's taking me, it's August, soit's taking me four weeks to
really settle back into being ina city, because it just feels
(39:31):
so unnatural to me, it's just,it's blowing my mind.
I'm just like elk season startsin 32 days, and so now I'm just
like counting the days until Iget to the woods again, and so
it's yeah, we don't spend enoughtime outside, and I think that
that's one of those things thatif folks just took that 20
(39:51):
minutes to go stand by a treeand enjoy the calm of that, it
would decrease so much stress intheir lives.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
Yeah, Wise words.
Wise words, yes, yeah, that'sso true and it's so simple.
But, people, you know our mind,our ego, wants to make
everything so complex, right?
So that's it's the ego thatwants to make your life complex
and make it hard.
And it's really easy, it's just.
(40:20):
I think the hard part is formost people, especially if
they're addicted to busyness,which we all are, you know, to
some extent, right, I think theproblem lies is prioritizing
time for yourself, like havingenough self worth to even give
yourself that space to do that,because we always feel like we
need to fill that space up withthings, like we must be doing
(40:42):
something, we must be, you know,productive and and like we've
been told, you know, this iswhat you know, a program to do
these things.
But if you really get to theheart of who you are and find
the truth within that, then youunderstand that really, you
don't really have to do anything.
And if you come from thatcenter place of peace within
(41:04):
yourself, then you get toactually do what you want to do
instead of doing what you feellike you should be doing.
So that's a big energetic shiftright there, and so I feel like
there's nothing better thannature to show you that because
we are nature, we're a part ofit and when we get out in it we
connect with it because that'sour natural space.
(41:25):
What we're doing right now isso unnatural, but we've been
living in it for so long.
We think it's natural, right,but we're learning is no, that's
not the natural way to live,it's not organic.
You know, this is not organiclife.
Life is nature.
So because our bodies are ournature, you know it's organic.
Our bodies are organic life,you know.
(41:47):
And so when we connect withthat, we connect with the
messages that you know.
I've even been like looking intotelepathy lately, like how we
have this natural innate abilityto have telepathic
communication.
It sounds really out there andsomething super scientific,
because that's what we've beentrained to think about that.
But it's actually if youthought about it, it's you do it
(42:10):
, you've done it before.
You know.
It's just that now we havecomputers and we have phones,
that kind of provide thatsynthetic telepathy for us.
But if we were thinking aboutour innate natural telepathy,
when we go out in nature weactually hear.
We hear, you know, sounds, weconnect with the voice of nature
(42:32):
, so to speak.
We feel more in tune withourselves, which helps us really
being in tune with others.
So you know, in a way, just youknow thinking about someone or
you know them thinking about youand then you're, they pop in
your head Like that's a form oftelepathy.
But we it's hard for us toconnect with those kinds of ways
(42:54):
of communicating and connectingwhen we're, when we're all
caught up in the old programmingof what we thought was natural
right in the modern life.
So I think that it's such aprofound experience and lesson
to start doing that forcebathing, even just a little bit,
like you're saying, 20 minutesa day, we'll build into so much
(43:17):
more and you're going to, you'regoing to really build your
inner, knowing your intuition,and you know that form of
communication that goes beyondwhat we're using right now.
You know it's.
It's like this is amazing tothink about, for me anyway, you
know.
Speaker 3 (43:32):
Yeah, no, it's crazy If you, if you think about you,
know the original humans, youroriginal hunter-gatherers, right
, and scientists and biologistsand what's the word
anthropologists look at.
Oh well, they didn't have awritten language.
They do these pictures.
So if you think getting on thetelepathy side of things is like
(43:57):
these folks were communicatingfrom long distances, hunting and
gathering with one another,like there, we are wired as
humans and even you know, I cansee, you can see it in nature,
you know, if you watch apredator hunt, it's prey.
Or you know wolves are.
A great example is watchingwolves work together without any
(44:17):
noise at all, like there's this, this symbiotic relationship
that exists between all of themand the way that they work
together and that's the wayhumans are.
So, yeah, the telepathy side ofthings, I definitely, yeah,
it's a trip to think about itand you know, but it's one of
those things that definitelyexists because it happens in
(44:37):
daily life when you let go ofthings you know, and you know I
wouldn't be experiencing whatI'm experiencing now.
You know I read your book when Ifirst started reading again.
You were my first book and itreally unlocked like the joys,
and one of the things that stoodout to me most was like being
in the gym, because I love goingto the gym Like that's my
(45:01):
sanity, but it's always a veryserious thing.
I got to go and when you speakto letting your inner child out
and dancing in the gym and beingbarefoot in the gym, and just
like enjoying that moment inthere.
When I started doing that, itunlocked this whole new world of
oh, I could actually get goingthis gym and I could listen to
(45:23):
some ridiculous music.
I could listen to Paula Abduland have a great time dancing
around barefoot in my gym, right.
And then I go into readingMichael Ester's book and it's
like your book unlocked the doorand opened it for me.
And then I get into his bookwhere he's talking about all
this nature and like all of asudden, like everything is just
(45:43):
like expanded further and Idon't, you know you nail it as
like we don't, we take ourselvesway too seriously, you know,
and that's the way we'reprogrammed and you're right.
It's like the ego.
Is that that driving force ofwhy we're just way right?
Because we have to be, we haveto be next.
And then we live in a worldwhere, you know, we have false
(46:04):
idols that are millions offollowers.
Oh, I've got a millionfollowers.
Oh well, that person must bewhat I'm supposed to be.
And then we chase that and youknow we're chasing someone
else's goals.
We're not setting our ownpersonal goals, we're not doing
what's right for us, we're doingwhat we think is right for
others.
But our ego becomes so attachedto that we can't separate.
You know you mentioned the hotsauce company earlier.
(46:26):
You know we closed that twoyears ago and it was one of the
hardest things I've ever done,not from a business standpoint
but from an ego.
Self perspective is like peopleknow me as the hot sauce guy,
I'm the sauce guy.
Like, oh, you're the hot sauceguy, you know, I've got the
(46:48):
tattoos.
And separating myself, like theloss of that ego was huge and I
had no idea I was experiencingit and it's taken me two years
to really finally realize oh,I'm just Andrew, I'm not Jeff,
I'm not the hot sauce guy, I'mjust Andrew and that's all I
(47:10):
have to be Like I don't have tobe chasing dollar bills every
day, and that's the other thingis like as soon as I stopped
chasing dollar bills, my lifegot so much simpler and just
sort of doing the things that Ilike doing and my bills are paid
roof over my head, like justday by day, like everything's
(47:31):
gonna be okay.
But it starts with separatingthat ego and just being okay,
being me right.
You know, tomorrow what's theday?
It's the third.
Tomorrow I'll be 16 years,sober.
Speaker 2 (47:42):
Right Congratulations .
Speaker 3 (47:45):
Again, it's like a miracle in and of itself is.
But again, you know, I wasusing and drinking because I
thought that I had to be thisperson.
Like I wasn't comfortable withmy own skin, like I couldn't go
to an event, I couldn't go to aparty, I couldn't go to work
unless I was high or drunk.
I couldn't do those thingsbecause I was so associated with
(48:06):
you know.
Oh, I have to do this to becool, I have to be the center of
attention.
I want people to know me, knowwho I am, know who I am.
And you know, after I cut thatoff and I, you know, probably
five years before, I really waslike okay, being me, you know,
there's five years of like justreally uncomfortable and then
finally just kind of likesettled in.
(48:27):
But again, a lot of that wasgetting back to spirituality and
being comfortable in my ownskin, having a strength that is
not me, because, at the end ofthe day, like I'm not the center
of the world, no matter howmuch I want it to be, I am not
the center of the world.
And so it's been this yeah,it's a trip to see how deep
(48:49):
we'll go just to chase our ego,just to fill that, you know,
false sense of pride that wethink we have to have.
We're to hold that image andfood is one of those things is,
you know, we're constantlypresented with the ideal human
body Like this is what we'resupposed to be, this is what
we're supposed to be, this iswhat we're supposed to be, and
(49:10):
it's not like it's not.
You know, we can achieve thesethings through nutrition,
through health, through activity.
You know we can achievewhatever we want, and I think
that we get lost in the ideathat, oh, this is unachievable,
but it's like it's just.
It seems so insurmountable,right?
You know, for myself, at myheaviest, I was 260 pounds, just
(49:35):
completely obese, couldn't doanything, just tired and
sluggish.
And you know, it was such a bigidea to stop eating candy,
right, just walk away from candy, to walk away from Big Macs, to
walk away from all these things.
And someone at that time saidto me it was like, just, stop
(49:55):
one thing.
Why do you have to doeverything at once, right?
Why can't you just, you know,let go of candy this week and
then, you know, maybe next weekyou don't need a Big Mac, right?
And that was so hard for me tounderstand.
But when I did it, when I tookthat little tiny step okay, no
sugar this week then everythingelse kind of you know becomes
(50:17):
easier.
You know it's a sugar is onehell of a drug.
People talk about cocaine, butI tell you what sugar like that
is the number one for me is.
You know, I still, if I get ona binge, I will binge and I go
until I'm sick.
And you know again, like havinga head full of knowledge
(50:38):
doesn't stop me fromexperiencing these poor choices,
you know.
Speaker 2 (50:43):
Right right.
Speaker 3 (50:44):
Unless I really have goals set in front of me, I am
susceptible to 100% ofeverything that I preach against
.
And so I've really tried to bemore transparent with clients
too, because a lot of times Ishare all this knowledge with my
clients and they're like oh man, you must eat like this, you
must work out every day.
(51:05):
You've got to do all thesethings.
All the things are right Likewhoa?
Nope, that's how I got my egoin the bad place to begin with.
I have to tell you the truthhere.
No, I ate three of these naturalcandy bars yesterday.
Like you know, I didn't workout.
Today.
Like you know don't get mewrong like I have the knowledge
that I can share, but puttingthe discipline into action is on
(51:28):
the individual right, and thatstarts with me, and it's a hard.
It's a hard post while I wastalking to a friend on a hike.
You know, I went for a hikethis morning and I was talking
to a friend about it.
It's like it's so easy for meto make the right decision on my
own health and nutrition, butit's even easier to just like
sit and sloth right, it's just.
(51:49):
It's so easy for my brain to belike ah, you can take the day
off today and then all of asudden, three weeks later, I'm
like man, that was a long dayoff and so well you know, I
think it's, I think it's amatter too of like finding that
balance because, yeah, there aresome days you need some rest,
you know.
Speaker 2 (52:05):
And then you know, and I think sometimes, when we
are so tired that it takes us solong to get back to it, is that
we have overdone it, you know.
And so finding the okay, so isthis too much?
And so that's what I thinkhappens in the very beginning
for most people is like when youI love how you say it's take
the small steps, because thesmall steps will bring that
(52:27):
awareness to, are you overdoingit and you can start to pay
attention to that more insteadof doing everything all at once
and it's kind of hard to figureout like and also to stay
consistent with something,because it's almost too
overwhelming.
Because we're creating newpatterns, we're creating change
in our life, and so we it needsto happen one step at a time so
(52:50):
we can integrate that.
So that integration process is,I think, what people tend to
bypass within this.
They think just, you knowstarting, you know just starting
the action, or you know, isonly like the first step, and
but really, what comes from thatis, you know, old wound healing
(53:11):
, like cause we're reallynavigating from old wounds until
we become aware of that.
When we become aware of thatlike you have, andrew, then you,
then you start to understandhow much easier it is to stick
with habits because you valuethem.
Now you're looking at it from adifferent perspective than you
were when you were wounded rightor traumatized and or
(53:33):
programmed a certain way.
So when we can just kind oflift those blocks and become
aware of those, then it becomesmuch easier to take full
responsibility for that, like asa mature adult.
Because now we are, you know,we're lighthearted, we're not
super serious like we're, butwe're sincere about what we
(53:55):
value, right.
So we follow through with thatand that's what mature adults do
, you know.
And so I just think that is sobeautiful, the process you've
gone through, because it'sexactly where you need to be and
you know it's like giving yourspace, self space, for it to be
awkward, you know, cause there'sgonna be times where that's
(54:15):
gonna happen.
It's gonna feel really weird,you know, because you're just
stepping into a new part ofyourself, like you haven't been
yourself for a long time.
I know that as a you know as apeople pleaser and a
perfectionist in the past, likeyou were so much trying to be
somebody else and fit in and getpeople to accept you and affirm
you, that you forget who youreally are.
And when you start to gotowards who you really are, it
(54:39):
becomes like reallyuncomfortable cause.
It's like you're just kind ofexposing yourself, you know, in
a way.
So it really takes a lot ofcourage to go down that path,
and so I really congratulate youfor that, because you've come
so far in your realization andso you're helping so many more
people with that now, becauseyou have that awareness of how
(55:02):
to show up as yourself and youcan help other people with that
too, through, you know, honoringthe value first of like what
you're eating, what you'reputting in your body, like
that's important, you know.
Speaker 3 (55:14):
And that's where it all starts.
You know it begins with thatfirst bite of whatever it is,
and you know when you're eating,when I'm eating clean, when I'm
eating like home cooked food,like real ingredients, not a
bunch of processed stuff, I feelbetter and it's so much easier
for me to just make the rightdecision, cause I'm already
(55:34):
eating this way, so I might aswell go for a walk, cause you
know why am I gonna?
You know what else am I gonnado?
You know I should read thisbook because I feel good about
what I'm doing right now.
And you know, again, that getsback to mentorship and having
people men in my life that havetaken the time to really you
know hey, this is gonna help you, but never shoving it down my
(55:56):
throat, you know, never forcingme to like, hey, this is the way
I think, so you have to thinkthis way, it's?
You know?
I have a mentor now who reallyasked me a lot of questions Well
, why do you think this?
This is what I think, this iswhat I've found, what do you
think?
And having someone that doesthat or like questions me or
(56:17):
kind of forces me to to slowdown and think about how I'm
gonna speak or what I'm gonnasay next or how I'm gonna use my
words, is is been huge in mylife, right, like I mean, even
you know you get again.
I'm kind of bouncing around.
But getting back to to egos,you know, being on on food
network, right, being on choppedor being on, you know,
(56:38):
supermarket steak out is all ofa sudden millions of people know
who I am for 30 minutes, right,and so that 30 minutes of the
idea in my head, like this iswhy I have to be, because
millions of people know me.
No, they don't, they know, theydon't.
They know me for 30 minuteswhile I'm on this show.
That's, that's the extent ofhow long they know me for, and
(57:01):
you know it's so easy for you.
Oh, you don't know who I am.
You know, and it's it.
It feeds my ego andperiodically, you know, I'll run
into situations where I'mcurrently a rerun.
Oh, yeah, yeah my top episode ison this rerun cycle and it's
not on any of the it's not.
It's not on any of thestreaming platforms, but you can
(57:23):
catch it on a rerun.
And I was at the gym and thereI am on TV and this person on
the treadmill next to me looksthat the TV, looks at me, looks
at the TV, looks at me.
I'm like I have to walk aroundthe gym with my chest pumped out
and like you know but you knowI get back to the mentorship is
(57:45):
like having having someone in mylife that can ground me and
help With hey, no, this is thetask at hand.
Like how you can do that, likewhat's your process, what's your
thought?
Speaker 2 (57:59):
It's huge, you know so yeah, so we don't get caught
up in the shiny objects right inour life, because I've done
that too.
Yeah, it can be very enticing.
Speaker 3 (58:11):
My goal great yeah.
Speaker 2 (58:14):
Yeah, yeah.
But then when you start to heal, heal yourself and and become
aware of like those, thoseDeeper programs within you, it's
like, oh my god, like no, Idon't want that at all.
Yeah, you needed it for somereason, right?
(58:34):
Right that's awesome.
Well, andrew, I feel like wecovered just about everything
like this was an amazinginterview.
Do you?
Will you just Share, like whatyou're offering now, what you
want to share with in closingfor our interview today, because
I know you offer a lot ofamazing things you do.
You do also do like private Bohunting.
(58:59):
You do, well, you do, bowhunting on your own, but you do
these private hunting Eventsright, and what else is there
that you that you offer you also?
Speaker 3 (59:11):
Everything, all the personalized Realm.
You act as a personal chef forfolks that just want to, you
know, have a properly cookedmeal in their home.
Once or twice a week I Gocamping with people and so if
folks want to go camping andthey don't want to do food, or
they want to have an upgradedexperience of food in the woods,
I travel for that.
(59:33):
I'm also gonna be.
This fall I'll be doing guidedforaging trips on chanterelle,
bulit, mushrooms, stuff, likethat, and then I also offer wild
game cooking courses andbutchery.
So folks that are out therelearning how to hunt, I love
talking to them and kind ofconsulting them on how to do
(59:53):
things and saving them time andmoney on how to process in our
own animals and how to eat thewhole animal and not just throw
away the liver and the kidneysand the heart and the tongue, so
that.
But you know, I anything thathas to do with food.
I will spend time talking tofolks and see if I can help them
with, you know, just developingsome recipes that are easy to
(01:00:14):
cook at home.
Speaker 2 (01:00:14):
So that's amazing.
Thank you so much, Andrew.
Thanks for being there.
Speaker 3 (01:00:18):
Do you have?
Speaker 2 (01:00:19):
a.
Do you have a website, by theway, that you can mention.
Speaker 3 (01:00:22):
Yeah, it's chefandragarrickcom, that's okay
.
Speaker 2 (01:00:26):
And I'll put that link in the show notes as well.
All right, thanks so much,andrew oh it's my pleasure.
Speaker 1 (01:00:51):
Your life is your greatest work of art, and it all
relates back to the sacrednessof Jesus you.
Your life is your greatest work of art, and it all
relates back to thesynchronicities.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Welcome to Integrate Yourself.
I'm your host, alison Pillow,and you can find me at
finallythrivingprogramcom andalisonpillowcom.
You can find my book FinallyThriving on Amazon or any other
place you can find a book, aswell as Audible and any other
places you find audio books, aswell as on Spotify now, so you
(00:57):
can listen to it there too.
It's a great gift to give topeople this time of year.
If you do want a signed copy ofmy book, if you'd like that to
give someone else or to giftyourself, you can email me
directly and we can go ahead andmake that happen.
I will leave my email addresson as a way to contact me on the
(01:20):
show notes today.
I hope you're all enjoying theholiday season.
I hope you're giving yourselfthe gift of presents as well and
creating that space foryourself this holiday season.
If you want to know more abouthow to do that, I talk about it
in my last episode, my solo cast, about giving yourself the gift
(01:44):
of presents and how importantthat is this time of year and
what that leads to as weapproach the resolution time of
January, how you can make itmuch easier for you to resolve
what you need to resolve thattime of year when you start to
practice prioritizing time withyourself.
(02:06):
Now Registration for my finallythriving program.
My next class is open now.
You can head over to the linkin my show notes as well to go
ahead and sign up for that.
It starts January 22nd, so ifyou'd like to be a part of that
(02:26):
class it's a companion programto my book Finally Thriving.
If you want to get familiarwith the information, go ahead
and order the book and startreading that now and you will
have a good idea of what we gothrough in class.
Together we go deeper into theseconcepts of aligning the mind,
connecting with the bodynaturally, and learning how to
(02:47):
listen to our spirit, connectingwith our soul on a deeper level
, which brings us into a placeof inner calm and peace where we
know ourselves, we can feel ourown energy and we can move into
life, and connecting withothers in a very easeful,
graceful way.
It's a pleasant, pleasant wayto go through life and I've
(03:10):
helped many people with thisprocess and I frame it.
You know I have a holisticwellness lens here for this
class.
It's from the lens of wellnesson all levels and all aspects
mind, body, spirit and I giveyou many, many ideas on how you
(03:31):
can build your own wellnesspractice and make that a daily
practice so that you can bringthat health on all levels into
your body and be more aligned inyour mind, so you can attract
more of what you really want tocreate in your life and then
learn how to focus in and payattention to the messages your
(03:54):
spirit is asking you to payattention to.
That goes for intuition, thatgoes for all of the higher
senses and appreciation for thebeauty in our life, the people
in our life, the connections.
This is what happens.
When we can connect with ourspirit, we can go through life
(04:18):
much more joyfully.
So if you want to be a part ofthat class, it's a 12 week
course and coaching program andI take you through some very
practical steps which are verytransformative for people's
lives.
They've already been, peoplehave already been or how do I
say this?
Their lives have already beenchanged.
Yeah, it's just amazing towatch the personal growth of my
(04:43):
students.
So if you want to be a part ofthat, if you're ready to take
that next step and manage yourwellness and your emotions and
your mindset and really getclear on what your body needs,
this class is for you Head overto the link in the show notes to
(05:04):
sign up.
So today's show I have ChefAndrew Garrett, my dear friend
Andrew, who is on the show today.
We've been wanting to do thisshow for some time.
We finally got around to doingit.
He really shares so much wisdomabout food and foraging and
(05:25):
abundance in nature that we canfind in our food system here.
So you know, we tend to thinkof food as coming from the
grocery store, but really we'rereally built to be able to see
and find food everywhere innature.
So this is really trueempowerment when we can start to
(05:46):
see how much abundance there isand how much beauty and
appreciation we can have for ourfood this way.
He works with athletes.
He's also been on some realityTV shows and he's owned his own
hot sauce business as well.
So he has got a lot ofexperience in the food industry
(06:12):
and he has a lot of wisdom toshare today.
So, without further ado, it ismy honor and my pleasure to
introduce you to Chef AndrewGarrett.
Enjoy.
Your life is your greatest workof art.
(06:49):
Today I'm here with my goodfriend, andrew Garrett.
He is a published andaward-winning chef who has a
passion for food and life thanksto countless adventures and
travel around the globe.
Having grown up in Sonoma,california, andrew quickly
developed an appreciation forall things local.
While serving for the US Armyin Germany, he was able to spend
(07:12):
many weekends traveling toFrance and Tuscany, where he
felt right at home, enjoyinglocal delicacies such as wine
and cheese and an as leisureforging and taking up butchery.
Andrew is enamored with Frenchand Italian culture and cuisine
and its regional diversity.
His passion for ingredients isquintessential in bringing his
(07:35):
patrons the best possiblerecipes and sauces.
Andrew is excited to share hissense of adventure and thirst
for knowledge and inspire anyonewith a passion for great food.
He's also been on Chopped andSupermarket Steakout, which was
really cool to be on.
I'd love to hear yourexperience about with that,
(07:57):
andrew.
He's also just an amazing chefand we're going to get into how
he got into that and the type ofchef he prefers to be, local
food forging and those kinds ofthings, as well as just what
he's doing with it.
Now.
We're just going to get intoall of that.
(08:18):
I'm so excited to have you here, andrew.
Andrew's a good friend and thishas been a long time coming.
I'm so excited we're finallydoing this.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
Yeah, we finally made it happen.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Exactly.
We kept talking about it for awhile, then finally we did it.
Yeah, andrew man, you have sucha diverse background.
You've been on reality TV shows, you have your own hot sauce
business, you've been a chef forprofessional athletes.
(08:53):
Kind of just give my audiencean idea of how you got to be
doing what you're doing.
It's really special.
It's a special thing to offerpeople.
I would love to hear more aboutthat, how you got there.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
Absolutely.
Thank you for the introduction.
Yeah, very, very, very stokedto be here and talking to you
about about me yeah, it is myfavorite subject.
So but how I got started?
Really it goes back to growingup.
My parents were caretakers on a12 acre fruit farm in a little
town called Glen Ellen, which isjust outside Sonoma A lot of
(09:31):
people just kind of group ittogether with Sonoma.
But I grew up there as an onlychild and so I had a plethora of
chores and my dad worked earlyin the morning, my mom worked
through mid to evening, so I washome alone a lot and you know I
have to get myself to theschool bus, get off the school
bus, get back to the house andthen take care of whatever
(09:52):
chores I had to do.
But with that growing up on thefarm, my father was a great
cook, fantastic cook, and a lotof times you know we were just
going out to our garden andpicking fresh vegetables and
cooking straight off there.
I was fortunate enough to spenda lot of weekends hunting with
my father, even just days thatwe would walk out to our front
(10:15):
porch and you could shoot quailstraight up the front porch.
You know there's a flock of 50,60 birds right there and you
know, shoot them, go out there,clean them up, take them inside
and cook them alongside, likefresh zucchini or fresh
jalapenos, fresh cayans, likeyou know.
All these my experience was sodifferent.
I mean even the crick runningbehind the house, you know, you
(10:37):
go out there and I could catchthree or four trout and bring
them upstairs and cook them.
So growing up, that was myexperience, you know.
And just the hills around thatarea were also full of
chanterelle mushrooms and so,you know, in the fall we'd go
pick mushrooms and that was myintroduction to the.
In my mind, that's how food was.
(11:01):
When I got to 12, my parents haddivorced.
When I was six we moved intothe city and I was far away from
that and that's when I gotintroduced to things like fast
food and it was so muchdifferent than actually walking
out to the garden and you know Ifound myself really missing it.
At the same time, I was veryfortunate to be a really good
(11:26):
athlete.
You know, I was good at sports.
Just kind of naturally I pickedthem up.
They made sense.
I love team atmospheres.
So I was playing all thesedifferent sports and my
performance is when I reflect onit, like at that time I had no
idea what I'm talking about.
(11:47):
At 12 years old I wouldn't knowwhat it you know.
When I reflect back on it, Ilook at the correlation between
how I was eating from six to 12versus 13 to 20.
And my performance was in linewith that just my energy levels.
But again, being so fortunate togrow up in a place where riding
(12:09):
my bike every day throughoutthe summer, riding it for miles
at a time to go to a fishinghole or, you know, go out to the
mountains and go hunting,that's really where my passion
for food really settled in.
I think the bigger part of itreally was in my formative years
(12:31):
, my parents were at odds on aregular basis.
There's a lot of arguing, a lotof bickering, and the only time
that things were ever calm orsettled we're at the dinner
table.
It was the only time that weever had any kind of you know,
calm or consistent was in thosemoments, and so I think,
(12:54):
especially you know, as funny asafter reading your book, it
really helped me to dive intosome of those things that were
experiences that I didn'trealize had such an impact on my
long, long term life and goalsand feelings and emotions.
And so that's it.
(13:15):
That's where the real depth offood and dining and eating
really came together for meafter reflecting on this, where
I landed?
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Yeah that's incredible, yeah, and so it
really cooking for you and inproviding people with this kind
of service, really provides aservice to yourself on a deeper
level to connect more with yourfamily and when you felt like
that was really, those times arereally good, right, it has like
that, that feeling for you thatyou're continuing to revisit,
(13:51):
you know, through your cookingand offerings that way.
So that that's incredible and,yeah, it sounds like that.
You got that early on that,that connection with food that
many people don't get, you know,and that's so rare these days.
But it's amazing when we takethose experiences and share that
with other people, because it'sit really does connect us into
(14:16):
even the deeper aspects of whatyou know meals like you were
saying what meals really mean tous, what this time spent
together eating really means.
You know it's changed so muchthrough the nutrition industry,
the fitness industry.
You know it's like it's justgotten so convoluted and complex
about how we eat, but reallyit's so simple and heart
(14:38):
centered in a way, right, andthat's what I love about what
you do and what you offer people.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
Well, it's a trip, so I collect cookbooks back behind
me.
I mean, a lot of those arecookbooks and I have a handful
of books that are from the 19,early 1900s to, you know, mid
1940s and then from the 40s tothe 70s, to the 80s, 90s into
present day, and it's reallyinteresting to watch.
(15:05):
You look at recipes from 1910.
I've got a better homes andgarden cookbook from 1915.
And you look at that book andyou look at the recipes and you
look at.
You know you go out and picktime from your garden, you go
out and get eggs from your coop.
You know the, the, theinstructions are the, almost a
manual for homesteading, what wewould call homesteading now.
(15:28):
But that was life.
And then, you know, you fastforward to 1940, 1950.
All of a sudden everybody'scoming home from the Great War.
Life is.
It becomes a lot faster, itbecomes a lot more important.
You know we have two parentsthat are both working and so the
time that we were taking tocook is now reduced.
(15:51):
You know we go from 1214 hoursof preparation to this.
You know 45 minute window.
And then you fast forward to1960, 1970, and that 20 minute
window turns into a 15 minutewindow, then the 80s and 90s,
and we're going to a five minutewindow.
All of a sudden, you know, wehave to hustle and move and
hustle and move and hustle andmove and that's just not the way
(16:11):
we're designed as humans, in myopinion.
In my opinion, but I don'tthink that's the way we're
designed as humans.
You know, we were designed tobe outdoors and and experiencing
nature and exploring andforaging and finding these
ingredients.
Now it's it's a game ofconvenience, you know, and I
think somewhere in the late 60s,early 70s, food manufacturing
(16:39):
really took advantage of thatand we started to look for ways
to how can we can things andmake them last longer than they
already do.
How can we add preservativesthat we don't necessarily need
food?
And so you look at thetransition from manufacturing
ingredients being vinegar, somespices and herbs in a jar that
(16:59):
you can to oh, here's this readyto eat meal that's full of
sodium, sodium by drowsy, andthen, in 2008, green-lidded
sugar, chloride, chloridedioxides and then any other
number of hidden ingredients,you know, and it's really
(17:21):
fascinating to look at that andkind of see where we're really
taking a hard veer in our foodchain.
And it's all down to me that,you know, and there's folks that
are my age that have eaten thatway their whole life.
They've never experienced and,like you said, it's like having
(17:43):
that experience growing up is.
No one gets to do that anymore.
You know.
I mean even now, you know, I'vegot a handful of friends that
have kids and they're constantlygoing from one thing to the
other, one thing to the other.
You know you have to be.
It's almost like folks have tobe doing things.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Yeah, it's like a trauma response, like busyness,
right.
It's so interesting to me tooto think about that, cause I've
done it.
I did it in my life.
I was a you know, an athlete,so we were running from you know
one thing to the next fourhours in the gym, coming home
like at eight or nine o'clock inthe evening.
So it's like there wasn'treally a lot of space for
(18:22):
cooking and my parents werealways driving us places and so
we had to go to McDonald'ssometimes, you know, because
that was really the only theonly way to kind of fit that
meal in.
But even before I really gotinto athletics, like I remember
my dad really spending time ongardening.
He had this huge garden outback and we'd get a lot of our
(18:43):
food out of the garden.
So with my relatives, you knowthat lived in the neighborhood
as well, and so most of my foodmy aunt, who I'd stay with in
the summertime, most of her foodcame from her backyard garden.
You know that we'd eat, she'dmake us for lunch, and so I was
so happy that I got toexperience that before I started
(19:04):
to experience the life of theathlete, you know, and the
rushing around, and because itreally did.
You know, as I got older, Ihave come back to, you know,
what is very simple and naturaland like what's the most natural
thing is for us to grow foodright it's and pick it out of
our backyard and we all haveaccess to that.
(19:27):
It's just prioritizing the timeto do it and learning about it,
you know.
And so, but many people don'tmake time for that because we
prioritize so many other thingsthat in some of that, I think it
just it isn't like progress,like it feels like progress, but
when you look at it is itreally progress, you know.
(19:48):
And so, getting back to what isreal, because you know we're all
doing things a lot on thecomputer.
I'm one of those people and isthat really the real world, you
know?
Is that a reflection of ourreal world or is it what we're
looking at outside, you know,and seeing what's growing in our
backyard, seeing what we can,you know, being still and
(20:10):
present for our meals so we canhave a healthy digestion, and
really having gratitude for that, like true appreciation.
And so that's where I thinkthat space taking that space
with your meal is.
This is something I teach mystudents, and my program is how
to just be present with yourmeals and even go through some
(20:30):
kind not necessarily a religiousthing, but like blessing your
food and appreciating it andlike sending that energy into
the food before you bring itinto your body, because that is
really an important intention toset.
This will help you be morehealthy and have just more of a
(20:51):
view of abundance in your life.
That's a little bit differentthan material goods or money.
Speaker 3 (20:59):
A lot of folks just don't.
They never have thatopportunity.
It baffles me still today thatI run into some clients, that I
work as a personal chef with alot of clients and some clients
have no idea where things comefrom.
Still, I grew up raising hogsand steer, so I know that when I
(21:19):
put that time and effort intoraising this animal and then
it's on the dinner table, Idon't have a Disney.
I guess that's really what itis.
I don't have that Disneyassociation to it is.
I don't have that.
Oh my gosh, that's the pig thattalks.
That's not like.
Oh no, that's Amos.
We're going to eat him in sixmonths, when he's big enough to
(21:41):
harvest at a proper size, andwe're going to feed him all
these good ingredients.
We're not just going to tosshim in a pin stacked on top of
six other animals and then well,I guess it's time and then
throw it into a giant processor.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
Yeah, so you have respect for the animal right.
It's a respectful process andit's so, it's so.
So most people are exposed toconventional ways of doing that
right.
So would you want maybe sharejust the difference between that
and a more restorative orregenerative farming technique?
Speaker 3 (22:20):
The way that that again kind of getting back to my
timeline there of the 50s to70s I guess we could expand it a
little bit is we went fromraising these animals ourselves
to going to our local butcherwho's getting their animals from
their local rancher, and we'retalking 500 to 1500 head of
(22:41):
cattle.
And then all of a sudden we'rein this oh my God, we don't have
time in the 70s and 80s and westart to see the real rise in
industrialized farming.
Right so we start stackinganimals in the smallest possible
area and it creates so manyproblems.
Because now we're, you know, ifyou think about you know, a
(23:03):
human living.
Right, like humans, livingstacked on top of each other is
not an ideal situation forhumans and a lot of times we see
a lot of illnesses that arepsychologically, emotionally
established in those areas.
Right, so animals are the sameway.
And when we start stackingthese animals and just like, we
need to just turn, turn aprocess, turn a process, turn a
(23:24):
process.
We need to produce, produce,produce.
The invention of mass freezing,right Like the amount of, and
again there's now, for me,there's nothing wrong with
frozen protein, frozen fish,frozen meats, there's nothing
wrong with it.
But when we're producingsomething to store it for future
use, that's where we start toget into these problems, because
(23:46):
now we're just turningsomething over.
You know, canning is a greatexample of that.
In overall food manufacturing,I think in America today we
produce something like 890trillion calories a day.
We consume as Americans,something like 350 trillion.
(24:06):
So we have this deficit.
Deficit, that's almost 500trillion calories, right, but
yet we have people starving inAmerica because they're not
being, they're not receivingnutrient dense food, they're not
actually eating things that areclose to them, they're eating
things that are from thousandsand thousands of miles away.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
So even like, even chemically like laden stuff too,
right I mean yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
Exactly, yeah, and it's not.
In my opinion, it's not howwe're supposed to eat.
You know we're not supposed toeat these things that have all
these preservatives and you knowwe're hunter-gatherers and for
my own personal, you know, Ifeel the best, I perform the
best, when I'm eating somethingthat is gone from a raw, fresh
(24:52):
state to a prepared state,versus canned or fast food.
And don't get me wrong, like Iindulge, I indulge, you know,
it's one of my things.
But, yeah, the disconnectionbetween where our food comes
from and how we consume it.
(25:13):
We really don't spend that timeand I think that's why I really
like most about the personaland private chef work that I do
now Is I get to enjoy thosedinners with my clients and you
know, even though I'm preparingthem, they're my animals.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
Is that?
Speaker 3 (25:31):
your cat.
Wow.
They know I'm doing interviews.
So, getting back to the story,you know, taking that time to
slow down with a client andseeing their progress, you know
I and it's really cool workingwith these professional athletes
Because there's a tangibleresult from my, my experience
(25:57):
and my cooking is I can see howwell they perform or how, what,
how good they feel when they'retraining or weightlifting.
Because I think in you knowyour athlete, the old school
idea of chicken and rice andtuna, chicken and rice and tuna,
chicken and rice and tuna, eata bunch of pasta the night
(26:17):
before your football game, likethat whole mentality of like car
bloating the night before, hascompletely been debunked.
But yet we're still.
There are still places wherethese athletes are coming from,
that those are.
That's still the standard.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Yeah, I can see that.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
Yeah, it's hard to break that, and so I've had
clients ask me to make themchicken nuggets.
I'm like sir.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
That's the funny thing I've noticed too, like
being being an athlete comingout of that world.
You would think that, as timeshave changed with our awareness
of organic food, higher qualityfood and those kinds of things
that would have trickled intothe athletic arena, but it has
not, and it seems to be thateven with a professional athlete
(27:02):
, so it just surprises me, butit's starting to.
There are some athletes that arestarting to realize how, how
beneficial cleaner organic fooddoes for their performance.
You know, one of my mentors,paul check, works with, I think,
first Kobe Bryant and changedhis mind about that, and I think
(27:22):
then he influenced some peoplewhen he was alive in the NBA as
well, towards that.
And then so you're doing thesame thing.
You're just educating them like, hey, you know, yeah, you can
do this, you can, you canperform at a high level with
this crap diet, but could you,could do even better, even
(27:43):
better, like because athletesare looking for that edge right,
even better for restoration,coming back from injuries, those
kinds of things with a cleanerorganic diet, you know, and it's
really easy for them toimplement because they it's not
about money for them really, andyou know so, it's just about
(28:04):
education, right and value.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
Yeah, it's an athlete that I'm working with right now
currently, actually, you knowhe's, I it's.
We've worked together for threeyears during his off seasons
and it's taken that amount oftime to build that trust of like
, look, what I'm going to giveyou is is going to help and what
I'm recommending is going tohelp.
And you know, we're three yearsin and he's like, yeah, you
(28:28):
just do whatever you want.
Chef G like, you know, whateveryou tell me to do, I'm going to
do it.
You know, I brought him twocourts of beef bone broth, right
, like real beef bone broth.
And he's like, hey, when you'rehungry during the day, like if
you're snacking, drink eightounces of this.
And you know, don't snack, justdrink this.
And we've done that for threeweeks.
(28:50):
And he's like I don't want tosnack because you're totally
satiated.
Right, because you're gettingthese really nutrient dense
ingredients that are, you know,helping helping to curb those
those, you know, instantgratification moments of like,
oh, I'm just going to grab somechips.
Oh, you know, even though this,this beef turkey, is seemingly
(29:12):
healthy, it's not, you know.
And so it's fun to help folkslearn and then watch them feel
better, play better and justhave these, these really cool
growth opportunities.
You know, I've got him eatingno carbs, right, no carbs in
(29:33):
there.
That's, that's my role for him.
I'm like, look like, if you'regonna eat carbs, even in the
morning, and do them with a, youknow, an oatmeal or something,
that's going to be a simple,quick digesting, you're going
into your game.
And then watch going into yourgames like it'll burn, right,
because before the mentality of,oh, I'm going to eat all these
(29:54):
carbohydrates at night before Igo to bed and then wake up, oh,
my gosh, why am I sluggish?
Why do I feel so bad?
Because our body doesn'tprocess him.
It's not taken me a ton oflearning, right, like I'm
learning everything I was evertaught.
Playing athletics at a mediumhigh level is like Whoa, and I'm
(30:14):
fortunate because I've had ahandful of mentors who have
taken the time to talk to meabout these things.
Yeah, liam is probably mynumber one resource for hey,
what do you think about this?
Because he dives into things sodeeply.
You're another one of myresources.
Like, hey, what has this beenlike for you?
(30:35):
And even like reading your bookis going through, and the parts
where you're talking about howyou were eating and why you were
eating.
I related so directly to thatand unlearning it for myself so
I can pass that to others isthat in itself is a great
experience for me, right?
Thank you, yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
Yeah, it's all about hormonal balance too, you know.
And so with athletes, they'realways a lot of them do the what
is it?
Hormonal supplementation, liketestosterone, I don't know what
the name of it, all those are,but they get growth hormones and
stuff.
But really like you could dothat naturally with your food if
you knew how to do it right.
(31:16):
And that's one of the things Ido talk about in my book.
It is more for kind of more forpeople who are just super busy
and have a low thyroid function,low metabolic function, and how
to change their hormone tofavor their metabolism.
But with athletes, I mean, itcan be a similar thing, you know
(31:38):
.
So, because a lot of them arejust working so hard and it does
slow down their metabolism ifthey're not keeping up with it,
with the food aspect.
So that's why they might needthe hormones sometimes, because
their metabolism is actuallyslowing down because they're not
able to give it enough fuel orthe right fuel to run, you know,
(31:59):
properly, like it's supposed to.
So because they're just puttingso much stress on their body
and you know, being an athletemyself, I can understand that.
But so that's why I tell myclients is the recovery process
that to focus on, and part ofthat is food right, eating the
right foods, right time, justreally supporting and nourishing
(32:20):
yourself and not depleting toomuch.
Depletion is going to lead tolow energy levels.
It's going to lead to your bodybreaking down over time your
connective tissue as well.
So this is so important for usto really bring in that high
quality food intentionally inthe diet, especially for doing a
lot of activity.
Yeah, right.
Speaker 3 (32:41):
Yeah, it's wild.
I mean the way the body reactsis have you seen the recent
information they've been puttingout about caffeine and cortisol
production?
Speaker 2 (32:51):
No, but I have my own thoughts on that.
But what have you seen about it?
What are they saying?
These days.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
There is a direct correlation between caffeine and
cortisol production in thehuman body.
So caffeine is a stimulant andit gives us that same like fight
or flight essentially is, whatis triggering?
Is that fight or flight mode?
And what they found is thatlater in the day, if we're
drinking caffeine, say past two,three o'clock in the afternoon,
(33:19):
some people are like, oh, I'mgoing to be eating the caffeine
but I can't seem to lose thisbelly fat.
Well, the group of researcherslooked at it and they realized
that people that were drinkingcaffeine later in the day, their
cortisol production was likeway, way up and you know.
So I personally stoppeddrinking caffeine after 11 am
(33:41):
and I immediately noticed,within three to four days of,
like, my energy level beingsignificantly greater, going
through the day and then wakingup without that like hormonal
hangover, you know so you know,my body didn't feel like it was
in fight or flight mode allnight and I make nice hard night
rest asleep.
I use to drink caffeine just allday.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Well, yeah, that was the nature of your job, right
being in the restaurant industryso many people do that.
Yeah yeah.
So my thoughts on it are, yeah,similar.
I agree it's.
I do coffee like.
I usually do one cup in themorning.
I do my best to eat with thecoffee.
Like I always tell my clients,don't just drink coffee by
(34:25):
itself first thing in themorning.
If you have to do that, thenjust eat pretty soon after so
that that will curb the cortisol, the excess cortisol, because
we already have a lot of naturalcortisol going in the morning.
That's natural for us to dothat.
The sun, actually it actuallyactivates that cortisol
production naturally in yourbody by hitting you, the sun
(34:45):
hitting your skin, yeah, so,which is, we're supposed to have
that to wake us up in themorning.
But then, yes, if you keeptrying to keep your ramp, your
nervous system up through theday with that, then yes, you're
going to.
It's going to be unnatural foryou to be doing that, because as
the day progresses, you shouldbe lowering your cortisol levels
(35:06):
so that you can have a nicerestful sleep at night.
Of course, screens will do thattoo, if we're not wearing glass
, blue light glasses during theevening to watch our TV or do
something on the computer forstressing ourselves out mentally
, emotionally, right before wego to bed, same thing.
So all these things, yes, canproduce cortisol.
(35:28):
But yeah, just yeah.
Eliminating coffee later in theday, make a rule no coffee past,
like I don't know, like 10 or12 noon or something.
It could do something if you'rereally into it.
But I usually just drink onecup in the morning, I'm good to
go and, yeah, like you said, Ithink then you just get back to
(35:50):
your natural circadian rhythm,which is not being up all day
like crazy adrenaline levels.
Right, we have to curb thoseadrenaline levels a little bit,
and we do that through food aswell.
So food helps us regulate ourblood sugar, so our adrenaline
levels stay at a certain levelduring the day.
Our stress hormones aren'tgoing off all the time, you know
(36:12):
, and that's another thing thatleads to not great sleep, as if
we're not handling the bloodsugar during the day too.
So, yes, all those things, Iagree, caffeine does have some
health effects that you canbenefit from, but you do have to
do it, you do have to use itwisely.
So, like you know earlier, inthe morning and with food is
(36:34):
what I recommend.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
You hit on something that also is just like been hot
with me right now.
I bounce from what's hot andwhat's not, you know, every week
there's something new.
But I recently read a book by agentleman named Michael Easter.
It's called the Comfort Crisisand he essentially he asks a ton
(36:58):
of questions of reallyintelligent people, researchers
across the globe, and seeks outanswers to why things you know,
why the human body reactscertain ways, different things,
and one of the chapters he goesinto, why people that spend time
in nature have such a lowerlevel of anxiety, depression,
(37:22):
stressors overall.
You know, and he's one of thesepeople, like he worked for
Men's Health Magazine, he waseditor there and you know he
lived in big cities and he wasone of those folks was like, oh,
you know what, the city doesn'tbother me, like you know, I'm
just doing my daily thing, doingmy daily grind.
But the reality that he foundwas that living in the city,
(37:44):
surrounded by so many millionsof people, really does a number
on us, and even though we'vetrained ourselves, myself
included, to have this idea oflike I must constantly be going,
I have to be around people thatare constantly going.
We don't stop to go outsideanymore.
And what one of these studiesthat he found in Japan is?
(38:09):
they go out and they do whatthey call forest bathing, and
they spend 20 minutes, threedays a week, in the woods, no
cell phones, no earphones, justin the woods around nature and
this is within city limits, likeyou know just being around
trees and bushes and greens andshrubbery.
The people that do this, theiranxiety level drop by like
(38:32):
something like 25 to 30 percentthis just ungodly number and I
was reading this, I'm likethat's absolutely nuts and I
happened to be in one of mygrooves where I was outside
hiking every single day, everysingle day, 45 minutes.
I was going for a walk.
I live in a neighborhood that'ssurrounded by trees, in nature,
no headphones, no phone, justwalking.
(38:53):
It was amazing to see the calmthat I experienced in my life is
like just being outside.
I just got back.
I spent the month of Juneworking as a camp chef for an
outfitting guide in Idaho.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (39:10):
No cell phone, no internet, no emails, no cars, no
buildings, just trees, tents,camps, fire, that's it.
And adjusting back to real lifein the beginning of the July,
it's taking me, it's August, soit's taking me four weeks to
really settle back into being ina city, because it just feels
(39:31):
so unnatural to me, it's just,it's blowing my mind.
I'm just like elk season startsin 32 days, and so now I'm just
like counting the days until Iget to the woods again, and so
it's yeah, we don't spend enoughtime outside, and I think that
that's one of those things thatif folks just took that 20
(39:51):
minutes to go stand by a treeand enjoy the calm of that, it
would decrease so much stress intheir lives.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
Yeah, Wise words.
Wise words, yes, yeah, that'sso true and it's so simple.
But, people, you know our mind,our ego, wants to make
everything so complex, right?
So that's it's the ego thatwants to make your life complex
and make it hard.
And it's really easy, it's just.
(40:20):
I think the hard part is formost people, especially if
they're addicted to busyness,which we all are, you know, to
some extent, right, I think theproblem lies is prioritizing
time for yourself, like havingenough self worth to even give
yourself that space to do that,because we always feel like we
need to fill that space up withthings, like we must be doing
(40:42):
something, we must be, you know,productive and and like we've
been told, you know, this iswhat you know, a program to do
these things.
But if you really get to theheart of who you are and find
the truth within that, then youunderstand that really, you
don't really have to do anything.
And if you come from thatcenter place of peace within
(41:04):
yourself, then you get toactually do what you want to do
instead of doing what you feellike you should be doing.
So that's a big energetic shiftright there, and so I feel like
there's nothing better thannature to show you that because
we are nature, we're a part ofit and when we get out in it we
connect with it because that'sour natural space.
(41:25):
What we're doing right now isso unnatural, but we've been
living in it for so long.
We think it's natural, right,but we're learning is no, that's
not the natural way to live,it's not organic.
You know, this is not organiclife.
Life is nature.
So because our bodies are ournature, you know it's organic.
Our bodies are organic life,you know.
(41:47):
And so when we connect withthat, we connect with the
messages that you know.
I've even been like looking intotelepathy lately, like how we
have this natural innate abilityto have telepathic
communication.
It sounds really out there andsomething super scientific,
because that's what we've beentrained to think about that.
But it's actually if youthought about it, it's you do it
(42:10):
, you've done it before.
You know.
It's just that now we havecomputers and we have phones,
that kind of provide thatsynthetic telepathy for us.
But if we were thinking aboutour innate natural telepathy,
when we go out in nature weactually hear.
We hear, you know, sounds, weconnect with the voice of nature
(42:32):
, so to speak.
We feel more in tune withourselves, which helps us really
being in tune with others.
So you know, in a way, just youknow thinking about someone or
you know them thinking about youand then you're, they pop in
your head Like that's a form oftelepathy.
But we it's hard for us toconnect with those kinds of ways
(42:54):
of communicating and connectingwhen we're, when we're all
caught up in the old programmingof what we thought was natural
right in the modern life.
So I think that it's such aprofound experience and lesson
to start doing that forcebathing, even just a little bit,
like you're saying, 20 minutesa day, we'll build into so much
(43:17):
more and you're going to, you'regoing to really build your
inner, knowing your intuition,and you know that form of
communication that goes beyondwhat we're using right now.
You know it's.
It's like this is amazing tothink about, for me anyway, you
know.
Speaker 3 (43:32):
Yeah, no, it's crazy If you, if you think about you,
know the original humans, youroriginal hunter-gatherers, right
, and scientists and biologistsand what's the word
anthropologists look at.
Oh well, they didn't have awritten language.
They do these pictures.
So if you think getting on thetelepathy side of things is like
(43:57):
these folks were communicatingfrom long distances, hunting and
gathering with one another,like there, we are wired as
humans and even you know, I cansee, you can see it in nature,
you know, if you watch apredator hunt, it's prey.
Or you know wolves are.
A great example is watchingwolves work together without any
(44:17):
noise at all, like there's this, this symbiotic relationship
that exists between all of themand the way that they work
together and that's the wayhumans are.
So, yeah, the telepathy side ofthings, I definitely, yeah,
it's a trip to think about itand you know, but it's one of
those things that definitelyexists because it happens in
(44:37):
daily life when you let go ofthings you know, and you know I
wouldn't be experiencing whatI'm experiencing now.
You know I read your book when Ifirst started reading again.
You were my first book and itreally unlocked like the joys,
and one of the things that stoodout to me most was like being
in the gym, because I love goingto the gym Like that's my
(45:01):
sanity, but it's always a veryserious thing.
I got to go and when you speakto letting your inner child out
and dancing in the gym and beingbarefoot in the gym, and just
like enjoying that moment inthere.
When I started doing that, itunlocked this whole new world of
oh, I could actually get goingthis gym and I could listen to
(45:23):
some ridiculous music.
I could listen to Paula Abduland have a great time dancing
around barefoot in my gym, right.
And then I go into readingMichael Ester's book and it's
like your book unlocked the doorand opened it for me.
And then I get into his bookwhere he's talking about all
this nature and like all of asudden, like everything is just
(45:43):
like expanded further and Idon't, you know you nail it as
like we don't, we take ourselvesway too seriously, you know,
and that's the way we'reprogrammed and you're right.
It's like the ego.
Is that that driving force ofwhy we're just way right?
Because we have to be, we haveto be next.
And then we live in a worldwhere, you know, we have false
(46:04):
idols that are millions offollowers.
Oh, I've got a millionfollowers.
Oh well, that person must bewhat I'm supposed to be.
And then we chase that and youknow we're chasing someone
else's goals.
We're not setting our ownpersonal goals, we're not doing
what's right for us, we're doingwhat we think is right for
others.
But our ego becomes so attachedto that we can't separate.
You know you mentioned the hotsauce company earlier.
(46:26):
You know we closed that twoyears ago and it was one of the
hardest things I've ever done,not from a business standpoint
but from an ego.
Self perspective is like peopleknow me as the hot sauce guy,
I'm the sauce guy.
Like, oh, you're the hot sauceguy, you know, I've got the
(46:48):
tattoos.
And separating myself, like theloss of that ego was huge and I
had no idea I was experiencingit and it's taken me two years
to really finally realize oh,I'm just Andrew, I'm not Jeff,
I'm not the hot sauce guy, I'mjust Andrew and that's all I
(47:10):
have to be Like I don't have tobe chasing dollar bills every
day, and that's the other thingis like as soon as I stopped
chasing dollar bills, my lifegot so much simpler and just
sort of doing the things that Ilike doing and my bills are paid
roof over my head, like justday by day, like everything's
(47:31):
gonna be okay.
But it starts with separatingthat ego and just being okay,
being me right.
You know, tomorrow what's theday?
It's the third.
Tomorrow I'll be 16 years,sober.
Speaker 2 (47:42):
Right Congratulations .
Speaker 3 (47:45):
Again, it's like a miracle in and of itself is.
But again, you know, I wasusing and drinking because I
thought that I had to be thisperson.
Like I wasn't comfortable withmy own skin, like I couldn't go
to an event, I couldn't go to aparty, I couldn't go to work
unless I was high or drunk.
I couldn't do those thingsbecause I was so associated with
(48:06):
you know.
Oh, I have to do this to becool, I have to be the center of
attention.
I want people to know me, knowwho I am, know who I am.
And you know, after I cut thatoff and I, you know, probably
five years before, I really waslike okay, being me, you know,
there's five years of like justreally uncomfortable and then
finally just kind of likesettled in.
(48:27):
But again, a lot of that wasgetting back to spirituality and
being comfortable in my ownskin, having a strength that is
not me, because, at the end ofthe day, like I'm not the center
of the world, no matter howmuch I want it to be, I am not
the center of the world.
And so it's been this yeah,it's a trip to see how deep
(48:49):
we'll go just to chase our ego,just to fill that, you know,
false sense of pride that wethink we have to have.
We're to hold that image andfood is one of those things is,
you know, we're constantlypresented with the ideal human
body Like this is what we'resupposed to be, this is what
we're supposed to be, this iswhat we're supposed to be, and
(49:10):
it's not like it's not.
You know, we can achieve thesethings through nutrition,
through health, through activity.
You know we can achievewhatever we want, and I think
that we get lost in the ideathat, oh, this is unachievable,
but it's like it's just.
It seems so insurmountable,right?
You know, for myself, at myheaviest, I was 260 pounds, just
(49:35):
completely obese, couldn't doanything, just tired and
sluggish.
And you know, it was such a bigidea to stop eating candy,
right, just walk away from candy, to walk away from Big Macs, to
walk away from all these things.
And someone at that time saidto me it was like, just, stop
(49:55):
one thing.
Why do you have to doeverything at once, right?
Why can't you just, you know,let go of candy this week and
then, you know, maybe next weekyou don't need a Big Mac, right?
And that was so hard for me tounderstand.
But when I did it, when I tookthat little tiny step okay, no
sugar this week then everythingelse kind of you know becomes
(50:17):
easier.
You know it's a sugar is onehell of a drug.
People talk about cocaine, butI tell you what sugar like that
is the number one for me is.
You know, I still, if I get ona binge, I will binge and I go
until I'm sick.
And you know again, like havinga head full of knowledge
(50:38):
doesn't stop me fromexperiencing these poor choices,
you know.
Speaker 2 (50:43):
Right right.
Speaker 3 (50:44):
Unless I really have goals set in front of me, I am
susceptible to 100% ofeverything that I preach against
.
And so I've really tried to bemore transparent with clients
too, because a lot of times Ishare all this knowledge with my
clients and they're like oh man, you must eat like this, you
must work out every day.
(51:05):
You've got to do all thesethings.
All the things are right Likewhoa?
Nope, that's how I got my egoin the bad place to begin with.
I have to tell you the truthhere.
No, I ate three of these naturalcandy bars yesterday.
Like you know, I didn't workout.
Today.
Like you know don't get mewrong like I have the knowledge
that I can share, but puttingthe discipline into action is on
(51:28):
the individual right, and thatstarts with me, and it's a hard.
It's a hard post while I wastalking to a friend on a hike.
You know, I went for a hikethis morning and I was talking
to a friend about it.
It's like it's so easy for meto make the right decision on my
own health and nutrition, butit's even easier to just like
sit and sloth right, it's just.
(51:49):
It's so easy for my brain to belike ah, you can take the day
off today and then all of asudden, three weeks later, I'm
like man, that was a long dayoff and so well you know, I
think it's, I think it's amatter too of like finding that
balance because, yeah, there aresome days you need some rest,
you know.
Speaker 2 (52:05):
And then you know, and I think sometimes, when we
are so tired that it takes us solong to get back to it, is that
we have overdone it, you know.
And so finding the okay, so isthis too much?
And so that's what I thinkhappens in the very beginning
for most people is like when youI love how you say it's take
the small steps, because thesmall steps will bring that
(52:27):
awareness to, are you overdoingit and you can start to pay
attention to that more insteadof doing everything all at once
and it's kind of hard to figureout like and also to stay
consistent with something,because it's almost too
overwhelming.
Because we're creating newpatterns, we're creating change
in our life, and so we it needsto happen one step at a time so
(52:50):
we can integrate that.
So that integration process is,I think, what people tend to
bypass within this.
They think just, you knowstarting, you know just starting
the action, or you know, isonly like the first step, and
but really, what comes from thatis, you know, old wound healing
(53:11):
, like cause we're reallynavigating from old wounds until
we become aware of that.
When we become aware of thatlike you have, andrew, then you,
then you start to understandhow much easier it is to stick
with habits because you valuethem.
Now you're looking at it from adifferent perspective than you
were when you were wounded rightor traumatized and or
(53:33):
programmed a certain way.
So when we can just kind oflift those blocks and become
aware of those, then it becomesmuch easier to take full
responsibility for that, like asa mature adult.
Because now we are, you know,we're lighthearted, we're not
super serious like we're, butwe're sincere about what we
(53:55):
value, right.
So we follow through with thatand that's what mature adults do
, you know.
And so I just think that is sobeautiful, the process you've
gone through, because it'sexactly where you need to be and
you know it's like giving yourspace, self space, for it to be
awkward, you know, cause there'sgonna be times where that's
(54:15):
gonna happen.
It's gonna feel really weird,you know, because you're just
stepping into a new part ofyourself, like you haven't been
yourself for a long time.
I know that as a you know as apeople pleaser and a
perfectionist in the past, likeyou were so much trying to be
somebody else and fit in and getpeople to accept you and affirm
you, that you forget who youreally are.
And when you start to gotowards who you really are, it
(54:39):
becomes like reallyuncomfortable cause.
It's like you're just kind ofexposing yourself, you know, in
a way.
So it really takes a lot ofcourage to go down that path,
and so I really congratulate youfor that, because you've come
so far in your realization andso you're helping so many more
people with that now, becauseyou have that awareness of how
(55:02):
to show up as yourself and youcan help other people with that
too, through, you know, honoringthe value first of like what
you're eating, what you'reputting in your body, like
that's important, you know.
Speaker 3 (55:14):
And that's where it all starts.
You know it begins with thatfirst bite of whatever it is,
and you know when you're eating,when I'm eating clean, when I'm
eating like home cooked food,like real ingredients, not a
bunch of processed stuff, I feelbetter and it's so much easier
for me to just make the rightdecision, cause I'm already
(55:34):
eating this way, so I might aswell go for a walk, cause you
know why am I gonna?
You know what else am I gonnado?
You know I should read thisbook because I feel good about
what I'm doing right now.
And you know, again, that getsback to mentorship and having
people men in my life that havetaken the time to really you
know hey, this is gonna help you, but never shoving it down my
(55:56):
throat, you know, never forcingme to like, hey, this is the way
I think, so you have to thinkthis way, it's?
You know?
I have a mentor now who reallyasked me a lot of questions Well
, why do you think this?
This is what I think, this iswhat I've found, what do you
think?
And having someone that doesthat or like questions me or
(56:17):
kind of forces me to to slowdown and think about how I'm
gonna speak or what I'm gonnasay next or how I'm gonna use my
words, is is been huge in mylife, right, like I mean, even
you know you get again.
I'm kind of bouncing around.
But getting back to to egos,you know, being on on food
network, right, being on choppedor being on, you know,
(56:38):
supermarket steak out is all ofa sudden millions of people know
who I am for 30 minutes, right,and so that 30 minutes of the
idea in my head, like this iswhy I have to be, because
millions of people know me.
No, they don't, they know, theydon't.
They know me for 30 minuteswhile I'm on this show.
That's, that's the extent ofhow long they know me for, and
(57:01):
you know it's so easy for you.
Oh, you don't know who I am.
You know, and it's it.
It feeds my ego andperiodically, you know, I'll run
into situations where I'mcurrently a rerun.
Oh, yeah, yeah my top episode ison this rerun cycle and it's
not on any of the it's not.
It's not on any of thestreaming platforms, but you can
(57:23):
catch it on a rerun.
And I was at the gym and thereI am on TV and this person on
the treadmill next to me looksthat the TV, looks at me, looks
at the TV, looks at me.
I'm like I have to walk aroundthe gym with my chest pumped out
and like you know but you knowI get back to the mentorship is
(57:45):
like having having someone in mylife that can ground me and
help With hey, no, this is thetask at hand.
Like how you can do that, likewhat's your process, what's your
thought?
Speaker 2 (57:59):
It's huge, you know so yeah, so we don't get caught
up in the shiny objects right inour life, because I've done
that too.
Yeah, it can be very enticing.
Speaker 3 (58:11):
My goal great yeah.
Speaker 2 (58:14):
Yeah, yeah.
But then when you start to heal, heal yourself and and become
aware of like those, thoseDeeper programs within you, it's
like, oh my god, like no, Idon't want that at all.
Yeah, you needed it for somereason, right?
(58:34):
Right that's awesome.
Well, andrew, I feel like wecovered just about everything
like this was an amazinginterview.
Do you?
Will you just Share, like whatyou're offering now, what you
want to share with in closingfor our interview today, because
I know you offer a lot ofamazing things you do.
You do also do like private Bohunting.
(58:59):
You do, well, you do, bowhunting on your own, but you do
these private hunting Eventsright, and what else is there
that you that you offer you also?
Speaker 3 (59:11):
Everything, all the personalized Realm.
You act as a personal chef forfolks that just want to, you
know, have a properly cookedmeal in their home.
Once or twice a week I Gocamping with people and so if
folks want to go camping andthey don't want to do food, or
they want to have an upgradedexperience of food in the woods,
I travel for that.
(59:33):
I'm also gonna be.
This fall I'll be doing guidedforaging trips on chanterelle,
bulit, mushrooms, stuff, likethat, and then I also offer wild
game cooking courses andbutchery.
So folks that are out therelearning how to hunt, I love
talking to them and kind ofconsulting them on how to do
(59:53):
things and saving them time andmoney on how to process in our
own animals and how to eat thewhole animal and not just throw
away the liver and the kidneysand the heart and the tongue, so
that.
But you know, I anything thathas to do with food.
I will spend time talking tofolks and see if I can help them
with, you know, just developingsome recipes that are easy to
(01:00:14):
cook at home.
Speaker 2 (01:00:14):
So that's amazing.
Thank you so much, Andrew.
Thanks for being there.
Speaker 3 (01:00:18):
Do you have?
Speaker 2 (01:00:19):
a.
Do you have a website, by theway, that you can mention.
Speaker 3 (01:00:22):
Yeah, it's chefandragarrickcom, that's okay
.
Speaker 2 (01:00:26):
And I'll put that link in the show notes as well.
All right, thanks so much,andrew oh it's my pleasure.
Speaker 1 (01:00:51):
Your life is your greatest work of art, and it all
relates back to the sacrednessof Jesus you.
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