20 months ago I spent 90% of my days in bed. With blood sugar constantly bottoming out- made worse by simple activities like walking to the bathroom. I had wild, sharp heart pain. I couldn’t relax. Blood pressure fluctuations. Adrenaline rushes followed by exhaustion.
I had also lost a ton of muscle and gained some serious fat. But that was the least of my worries at the time.
I was terrified.
I feared I would die.
And after my heart scan and being told I was at risk of a heart attack, that didn’t help either.
I was bedbound. And broken.
I’ll get into WHY this happened in the first place and what exactly I did to heal. Because believe it or not, my story may be seriously useful to you for your own health.
But today, I want to talk about how I’ve gone from bedbound and broken to lean, strong, and healthy.
So here are the 5 lessons I learned as I healed my body, rebuilt muscle and strength, and dropped fat.
- Your Value Comes From Who You Are, Not What You Do
- Toxins Might Be Destroying Your Health and Fitness Efforts
- The Steel Strength Training Principles Work…Really Well
- You Can Build Muscle on a Crazy Low Number of Sets
- Healing Your Nervous System Changes Everything
Your Value Comes From Who You Are, Not What You Do
This was a tough pill to swallow. It felt like swallowing a basketball without water.
Prior to getting sick, I had no idea just how much of my identity and confidence came from what I did.
My whole life I’ve been insanely high energy, very smart, lean, fit, and incessantly driven.
I created a lot of success from all my doing. But it was breaking me. (More on that later.)
When I was sick, broken, and bedbound, and doing very little work in my business or around the house….I had to learn my value came from who I was. Not what I did.
But until that lesson sunk in- I would lie there in that bed feeling totally worthless.
This was possibly the most painful lesson I’ve ever learned but what a gift. Some of you are still living your life, at 50, 60, even 70 believing that who you are is what you do. And it’s just not true!
Toxins Might Be Destroying Your Health and Fitness Efforts
“If you have a liver and kidneys, your body is detoxing. So besides a bad acute exposure, any fear about toxins is pointless.”
I’ve heard something along these lines by health and fitness professionals over the years. And it’s complete B.S. It also shows they, like the majority of people, have an elementary understanding of how the detoxification system works.
This is deserving of it’s own post, if not multiple posts, so we’ll do a deep dive into the nuts and bolts of this soon but here’s what you need to know today.
We are constantly being exposed to toxins and our body is constantly eliminating those toxins through the liver, kidneys, poop, pee, and sweat.
But if we are exposed to more toxins than our body can deal with, our body starts to store them away to deal with later.
And do you know where toxins are stored? They can be stored in most places in the body but the number 1 place BY FAR is fat cells.
That’s right, you store toxins in your fat.
So even if you aren’t dealing with some kind acute toxin exposure that’s landing you in the hospital, you could totally be dealing with a toxin issue.
And when you have accumulated excess toxins in your fat cells your health declines, you can develop autoimmune issues, inflammation, poor sleep, poor exercise tolerance, and dozens of other potential symptoms.
Not only that but in order to protect you, if your body isn’t ready to deal with the toxins in the fat cells, it can slow down your metabolism significantly and downregulate your energy levels so you don’t get rid of that fat.
Now I’m not saying this is going to prevent you from being healthy or losing fat. But I am saying it could be the reason many of you are doing all the right things but progress is slow. Or the reason you have to eat like a bird to lose weight.
Now in my case, toxins were the reason for all of my health issues. I was VERY toxic.
But by addressing that over the last year and a half, my body finally got to a place it was happy to shed the extra fat I’ve been carrying around. And what do you know, it was super easy to do after healing first!
The Steel Strength Training Principles Work…VERY Well
I’ll admit, it’s been a bit frustrating to be teaching what we teach:
Strength Training 2-4x/week
Good Nutrition
Lots of Walking
But not be able to follow it fully myself. As soon as I was healthy enough I did start training again and walking a lot. And we’ve always eaten well.
But it was frustrating doing all the right things and not seeing my body change the way I wanted it to. That is until I addressed the previous point! Then physique changes became easy.
Of course I know what we teach works, I lived it for years until I got sick. The Trainers at Steel live it. We’ve helped over 1,000 every day men and women change their life with it.
But to live it all again and see the rapid progress I’ve made…it’s super cool. A great reminder of what I do what I do.
I love helping you get lean, strong, and healthy so you can do the things you love with the people you love. And all you need to do that is Strength Training, Good Nutrition, and Lots of Walking
You Can Build Muscle on a Crazy Low Number of Sets
So on my road from bedbound to healthy…when I started to Strength Train again, I had to be very careful not to do too many sets. It sounds crazy but my recovery capacity was still so low that often times doing a 2nd set per muscle group per workout would send me into a flare of symptoms whereas 1 set was totally fine.
For most of my lifting career I’ve been more of a low volume guy. LEss is more….fewer sets taken close to failure, etc. But I had never trained with THIS little volume.
I did it out of necessity, but to my surprise I’ve built a lot of Strength and am stronger today than I’ve ever been despite doing SO FEW sets.
From everything I’ve seen, you can build muscle with as little as 1 set per muscle group taken close to failure done twice per week.
That’s not to say that’s OPTIMAL, but it is EFFECTIVE.
It just further backs up the point that every single person on the planet has time to reap the benefits of Strength Training.
Healing Your Nervous System Changes Everything
This also warrants multiple posts. And possibly a book. But man oh man, this is my most recent discovery and my life has flipped upside down ever since I understood this concept 7 weeks ago.
In all the health circles where people talk about healing from toxin exposure, I hear many people say the importance of healing your nervous system.
After crazy health issues (or even life in general) your nervous system can start to become wired from a place of trauma. So whether you realize it or not you’re always on edge. Or you have a hard time fully stepping into that parasympathetic mode (rest and digest) where healing and recovery happen.
And there are tons of programs out there designed to help you heal your nervous system. I’ve heard wonderful things about them. BUT I tried a few and none of them resonated with me.
I just didn’t get the feeling it was going to help me.
Fast forward to 7 weeks ago and here’s what I learned (also just role with it. I’m going to use the words Performance Energy and King Energy):
I’ve lived my whole adult life in performance energy.
Meaning I was constantly trying to perform. Trying to achieve. Trying to succeed. And trying to perform for those around me.
Not in a being fake way, but in the sense that I was trying to be exactly what the other people around me needed. I was morphing myself to fit their needs.
I’ve always known how to build instant rapport with people, detect their own energy and match it so they would trust me.
I wasn’t doing this from a place of manipulation. I genuinely wanted to serve the people around me. But it was stressful to the body.
Now, if you can’t relate to this, maybe you can relate to running from stressful situations, being a people pleaser to keep the peace, or hiding yourself so you don’t take up much space.
Regardless of whether you’re in FIGHT (this was me! I wasn’t fighting people but my body was always ON trying to perform), FLIGHT (you run away from stressful situations), FREEZE (hiding emotionally so you don’t take up space and won’t be noticed), or FAWN (people pleasing.)
I had no idea just how exhausting this was, because this was how I lived my entire life, until….
Enter King Energy.
And ladies, for you we can call it Queen Energy.
I owned who I was. I stopped catering to people around me. I still showed up to serve but out of overflow and because that’s who I am, not because I’m trying to fix someone else’s emotions.
I can’t fully explain the change, but everyone who interacts with me sees it.
Most importantly my wife and kids see it. They are getting THE best version of Nate by a mile. And we all thought I was a pretty good guy before all this lol but this has been a game changer for my marriage, for my family, and for how I should up in my business.
My stress levels are so low. I’m handling the stress I do have much better. My wife and kids don’t even know when I’m stressed anymore except for when I share with them I am.
I move slower, I enjoy life more, I feel more, and while my health has continually improved from my sickest and I’m doing really well today…stepping into King Energy has unlocked new levels of healing.
This isn’t some gimmick or some new phase. This is a legit change of just stepping into who I really am, and shedding that Performance Energy. And now that I’ve stepped into it, there’s no going back.
Look, being bedbound and broken sucked. It was so painfully hard. I didn’t know if I was going to make it. And I didn’t know if my business was going to make it. God brought me close to the brink of death in both arenas. It was the only way He could teach me what He’s taught me.
I’m going to keep banging the drum of Strength Training, Good Nutrition, and Walking Lots. But you’re also going to hear me bang the drums of King Energy and the Importance of Supporting Our Bodies Detox Processes.
I’m still me. But God has called me up
To continue helping you thrive so you can be who He made you to be so you can do what He made you to do.