[00:00:00] Intro: We’re saying goodbye to the rigid numbers and strict budgets, and putting relationships back at the heart of personal finance. This is more than a podcast, it’s an invitation to reimagine your money story and journey with us through a landscape of intuitive strategies and abundance. Join a community that nurtures transformative financial mindsets.

[00:00:25] Welcome to Intuitive Finance. I’m your host, Dylan Bain.

[00:00:36] Dylan Bain: Hello everyone, and welcome to the show. I want to introduce my guest today. His name is Coach Josh Wood from Strong for Life coaching. He’s a Tasmanian-based fitness expert offering a new perspective on health and physical fitness.

[00:00:49] Now, Coach Josh has a very interesting backstory, which we’re going to start off the episode with. He was born in Oregon, spent his youth exploring the American Midwest, and at 18, he left the United States and embarked on what became a lifelong journey around the globe, traveling through Europe and Asia. During that time, he became a competitive powerlifter, a boxer, a BJJ practitioner, and a wilderness and hiking guide. Now, he’s a family man in Hobart, Tasmania, just south of Australia, and spends his free time tromping through the Australian bush, then developing new skills such as archery, mace training, and small scale homesteading.

[00:01:26] During his time, Coach Josh has developed a holistic approach to fitness, grounded solidly in the pragmatic and natural world. His programs are highly individualized and efficient, activating muscle development with zero wasted effort. At the core of Coach Josh’s approach is an understanding that every person, whether they’re a professional alpinist, a mother, a power lifter — every minute of life is precious and top tier coaching will help them thrive.

[00:01:49] To date, he’s helped thousands of folks online and in person around the world become the best version of themselves. And ladies and gentlemen, we’ll just have the full disclosure at the top of the show. He’s my trainer. So if you’ve been following my weight loss journey, you know that I’m currently as of this recording, 40 pounds lighter. And I have Coach Josh to thank for that.

[00:02:08] So without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, here’s today’s episode of my interview with Coach Josh Wood. I hope you love it, it’s going to be great. Let’s get into it.

[00:02:16] Thank you so much for being on the podcast, Josh.

[00:02:19] Coach Josh Wood: Hey Dylan, thanks for having me.

[00:02:20] Dylan Bain: Fantastic. Well, I deal with money a lot, but I always like to say — and I compare a lot of people’s money struggles to fitness struggles. And I thought, what better person to talk to than the person who’s helping me with my weight struggles? And I just kind of want to level set for the audience. Where did you start with this? Give me the epic story that is Josh Wood to this point.

[00:02:42] Coach Josh Wood: I’ve been in the fitness industry for 12 years now, almost 13 I think? I started in 2011, working out of a women’s focused strength and conditioning facility in Melbourne, Australia. At the time, I was actually — either had started teaching at a massage school or was just running my clinic at the time, so my background’s in education. I worked in teaching manual therapies and personal training for a number of years at a bunch of different institutions in Melbourne and here in Hobart. But I actually got into fitness myself through MMA. When I was a teenager, I was just a slightly more scrawny nerd working at a computer shop. And one day I just was like, this is no life. I need to learn how to fight and so I was like, I’m going to become a kickboxer.

[00:03:27] And I never did. I found an MMA gym instead, because they didn’t have kickboxing in my hometown, in Minnesota. And so I was like, okay well, let’s do some research. What can I do? I’m like, oh man, Muay Thai sounds cool. I’d love to learn that. Nah, nothing available. And there was just this old Irish family boxing gym in an old auto shop, had been around for a few decades. And in the back corner was this Brazilian guy, Mario Roberto, who was running MMA classes on this like, four by four jigsaw mat thing that he picked up every day at the end of class. I was like, okay well, I’m going to learn how to fight. And from there, I did MMA and jiu jitsu for a number of years, and then I was like, okay. I did that while traveling. I did jiu jitsu when I was traveling in the UK. I remember training at a gym above a pub, which was awesome, and just kept that up as I, wandered and ended up in Australia. And then when I got here, I was training at mostly in MMA and no gi jiu jitsu.

[00:04:27] And I was like, you know what? The body is an interesting thing. And so I was like, I should learn more about it. And then I kind of started looking into some options and courses and I don’t know where to go. And I’d studied massage. And I studied massage for about a year and a half, did two certifications in that. And then I got invited back to start teaching. And so I worked in the education space as I was running a clinic. And then as I was doing that, I was looking at, well, this is an industry in which we try to fix people when they’re injured. How do we prevent this from happening? And that’s where I sort of got interested in preventative medicine. I started learning personal training. And I was like, okay, this is a good building block. This is a good place to really meet people where they’re at and make them less likely to end up on my table.

[00:05:15] And I did that for a while. And I was teaching massage, and I was working out of the fitness facility, the strength and conditioning gym. And then as I transitioned my interests from combat sports to powerlifting, I decided to further my education. And I did a bachelor of health science, but my major was Chinese medicine, so I’m technically a doctor of Chinese medicine in herbalism and acupuncture. And I did this four-year massive degree. It was this new degree. It used to be like this six year monstrosity, and then they squished it into four years and three study periods across the year. And I was just doing that. I was competing in powerlifting. And I was doing that, and I was still teaching massage, and I was coaching people in the gym. And I’m starting to get the itch to get back into combat sports, and so I started focusing on boxing, and then went and worked out of a boxing gym in Melbourne and competed for a couple years.

[00:06:06] And by the time I finished that and finished my degree, I basically decided, well, I’ve had enough of all this. I don’t really want to work in clinic spaces anymore. I’m just going to go all in on personal training and boxing coaching. And then went over to Canada and trained, taught kickboxing classes and trained a couple of people to get into the ring for the first time, and just went all in on the fitness. And that’s where, I think it was 2016 where the whole Coach Josh thing kicked off for real, where I was like, this is what I’m going to do. No more dabbling. I closed up my clinic space, went over to Canada with my wife, we lived over for two years, and I found a gym to work out of. I was like, okay, this is what I do now. And ever since then, it’s been coaching people to get them harder to kill.

[00:06:52] Out of that, I kind of slowly started creating this, ethos around what is it that I’m trying to do with people? Because I don’t want to just be your average gym bro rep counter. There’s more to this. This is how you get more out of life. This is how you actually learn to live. You need to be physically capable to get the most out of your existence. I sort of came up with this philosophy of becoming harder to kill, but then turned it around into a positive. It’s about being Strong for Life.

[00:07:21] And my most my clientele are like you and myself. Their parents were professionals, a lot of business owners and entrepreneurs, and people with multiple kids trying to not just be an example for their families and their kids in the community, but get more out of their existence. Climb, sometimes, literal mountains. Or do a lot of outdoor adventures and stuff like that, and that kind of tied into my work as a wilderness guide that I did for a few years too. Mix it all together, and I was like, okay, Coach Josh had his time. It’s time to focus on getting people Strong for Life and rebranded that and created this company with multiple coaches and a nutritionist and focusing on the lifestyle, how do we reach people and show them that there’s a better way? And how do we get the most out of them? And the whole Strong for Life online coaching business and philosophy really took off in the last couple of years. And it’s out of that background of fighting and trekking and trying to grab life by the balls. It’s like, okay, we can bring this to other people. And that’s where Strong for Life Online Coaching really comes from.

[00:08:34] Dylan Bain: That is an amazing story. Starting in Minnesota.

[00:08:38] Coach Josh Wood: Yeah.

[00:08:39] Dylan Bain: On a four by four jigsaw mat. It’s just going, I’m scrawny and I want to learn how to fight. And then you’re traveling around the world. How cool is it to live above a pub, right? And train boxing all the way to this idea where — and I loved what you said of, this is a lifestyle. And I think where it connects into a lot of the money stuff is, people will look at their bank account and they think that this is just spreadsheets and numbers. And if I just hit the numbers, life’s going to be fine. But it’s not, and it never is. And so I would love you to talk more about that Strong for Life and the lifestyle and how that — how you see that come alive for your clients.

[00:09:18] Coach Josh Wood: Yeah, and you’ve experienced this firsthand, you know, it’s really — okay. The first thing we do is we look at baselines. And I’m sure you do this with finances too. It’s like, where are you actually at now? Unfortunately, most people have no idea. And it comes down to tracking. There’s a lot of parallels here. And the first thing we do is we start writing things down. We start looking at what you’re actually doing. What’s your sleep like? What’s your recovery ability with your sessions? What’s your actual movement quality? We do movement assessment. How would — you may remember we do a food journal, because — the funniest thing is like, I worked in gyms for over a decade and everybody comes in and they’re like, I want to get a bigger butt. I want to get bigger biceps. I want to look jacked. And most women are like, but I don’t want to look too jacked. I’m like, okay, whatever. And the guys are like, I want to look hella jacked. I’m like, okay cool. And then I go, okay, that’s great. We can do that. This is how we look at your programming and your training.

[00:10:12] What’s your food like? And they’re always like, yeah, it’s pretty good. Yeah, no, I think I’m doing okay. I don’t think I need a lot of food help. And I go, okay cool. So why are you trying to lose 50 pounds? How come you don’t have the build you want? And people go, oh, yeah maybe it’s not so good. And that’s when I start doing food journals, and with the online space and the online coaching. It’s so much easier because I have contact with people seven days a week. I got its immersion, as opposed to you come in for your one hour session and then we spend half of it going over how shitty your diet is and how we need to get this up to scratch. But now it’s daily, I see those food journals all the time and people start to look at that and I’m assuming it’s exactly the same as finance. Like, you got to put down the numbers and figure out where you’re actually at to know how to get to the next step, to know where you need to be. How to map that out, how to plan that. And that’s the key is you start off creating these baselines and go, okay. We’re here. This is where you’re at now. You’ve got 30 things we need to figure out. We can’t do that. We got to pick the one thing or the two things that are manageable and changeable now.

[00:11:17] And this is this concept that I work on, TNT. It’s about those tiny noticeable things because it’s TNT that moves mountains. And every day, you do one small noticeable thing. And it’s okay, today I’m gonna hit my protein. And we, for a lot of people, we’ll spend two to six weeks just going, let’s focus on hitting protein. Basic workouts, but let’s get that protein, right? And that’s that first step. And it’s okay, now let’s figure out your calories. We need to get you in a deficit while still hitting that protein. But if I start going, you need protein, you need to search your calories, you need to do X number of workouts, we need to get your steps there. It’s untenable. People can’t do a million things at once, but starting with the one thing or the two things that have the greatest impact, we stair step that.

[00:11:56] And I see it all the time. It’s like, in the beginning, they go, holy shit, I’ve been eating like garbage my whole life. I’m like, yeah I know. And I knew that when you walked in. I knew that when you sent me the email, because otherwise you wouldn’t be talking to me. And then it’s, okay, we create that realization. You understanding where you’re at. And then it’s easier for them to go, okay, this is why I need to make the change. And then we stair step all these tiny noticeable things. And then six months later, you look in the mirror, and you’re like, oh shit, I don’t even think about having to do my workouts. Like, I’ve got my meals planned for my whole family on the weekend. There’s no more stress around food. I know that if I’m going to go out for a social thing, I know how to manage that and stay on track and not just blow out and give up on everything. I need to stair step these little things until each month, three months, six months later, you look back and you’re like, I’m a different person living a completely different life. And it’s only because we tracked and measured, and took check ins, take those photos, take those measurements, that people then realize it for themselves. And that’s sort of the whole process and just getting to that point where they look back at themselves or they look back at an old photo and they’re like, whoa, that’s not me anymore. That’s an amazing thing.

[00:13:06] Dylan Bain: Oh, my God. There’s so much to talk about — we could do the entire podcast just in that little bit, because you’re completely right, when people come in and they say — one of the things I want to just really highlight was you said, well, people come in and they’re like, I want to be jacked or I want a big ass or I want whatever. And then you ask about food, right? They’re expecting a workout, something they could turn the crank, get the cookie. And here’s the result. And you’re looking at it and going, what’s the deeper issue here? If we don’t — if we’re not eating appropriately, we’re not going to get the results. You can’t outwork this. And it’s the same type of thing on money where we actually — people come in. We establish a baseline. We look at what their metrics are. We look at how often are you actually having this conversation? And then in the — very first suggestion is where do you want to go with this? What does this mean for you? What is the deeper, underlying reason?

[00:13:54] And I remember coming into your program taking photos of every meal I had for the first time in my life like, tracking and actually okay, how many protein, how do I put this in this app? It was just weird ’cause I’m an accountant, right? You’d think I’d be good at this, but I wasn’t. And so I really love that bit about looking at the TNT, those tiny noticeable things and saying, you can’t get overwhelmed. You might know exactly what they need to do, but can’t do it all at once.

[00:14:20] How often do you have clients who come in and they’re starting to make this change, but then they stumble, they fall, they go back, and then you start seeing them in these shame spirals?

[00:14:31] Coach Josh Wood: Occasionally. So part of how I manage that is like — in person, all the time. Online, much less, because there’s a better vetting process. You know, it’s like you fill out an application. You have to acknowledge where you’re at and what kind of help you need, where you’re trying to get. Usually people have been following me on social media for a while, or they’re familiar with some of my work, or they’re in my Facebook group. And some people are kind of aware and have been gathering resources and sort of understanding like how I work and what my thing is and then what kind of change is elicited by these systems. And so when they come in they’re, okay I’m ready to make the change. This is one of the biggest reasons I got out of clinical spaces and working in clinics because I got so sick of people coming in every week with the exact same problems and I go, hey, do this list of things and your life would get better and you wouldn’t have to see me anymore. Which isn’t a good business model, but it’s a good health model. And people be like, yeah, I don’t want to do anything. I just want you to fix me.

[00:15:30] And so when people come to me now, they’re like, I just need direction. I need a map, I need a plan, I need accountability. I’m ready to make those changes. And so that’s why there’s an application process to become a client. That’s why there’s vetting process prior to being offered a client position. And so people, or the type of people I work with are more ready to make those changes, and so they’re a little bit more resilient. That said, there’s still always an occasional person who has some really deep seated shame around what they’re trying to accomplish and where they’ve been and where they want to go. But the beauty of the online systems as well is that I know when they miss a workout. I know when they’re missing a thing and I can get on top of that early and be like, hey, how’s everything going this week? I noticed you’re a little late on your workouts that you normally hit all the time. What’s going on? And start those conversations where, in person, it would be like, cool, how has the last week gone? And it’s just this big thing. So being able to see what’s happening more quickly and act on it stops a lot of those shame spirals that cause people to just disappear. Not always, but usually.

[00:16:35] Dylan Bain: When I’ve observed you in the coaching sessions with people saying, oh my God, I fell out the way again, or I’m feeling like I’m taking a step backwards, and how you’ve met them there and saying, but your trend line is positive. Look at all the tiny things you’ve done. Look at how much further you’re gone. And I just think that is like, one of the core things that makes the Strong for Life concept really different from a lot of other training programs. When you talk about your work in the clinical space, you’re seeing people after they’re broken. I always kind of think about this concept of the babies in the river. Two guys walk in through the woods, they see babies in the river. They jump in the river, they start pulling babies out. Eventually, one of the guys says, you know what, I’m done with this. I’m gonna go find the guy throwing the babies in and deal with him. And I — this is what this feels like to me when you’re saying, I don’t want you to come in broken, I want you to prevent you from ever needing to come in broken.

[00:17:30] Coach Josh Wood: Exactly. Yeah, prevention.

[00:17:33] Dylan Bain: 100%. One of the other things that I — that was interesting about your backstory and this formation, was you talked about being a wilderness guide. And I know that you do a ton of stuff outdoors. What do you think the role of nature is in the Strong for Life philosophy?

[00:17:48] Coach Josh Wood: Oh, my God. I mean, look at my logo. It’s mountains and the trees and the sun coming over the mountains. Like, it’s core. And I don’t even have to tell people about that usually anymore. It’s sort of integrated into the brand and the imagery and what I do. And it’s funny, I was just part of a research project on the connection to nature in backpackers specific to a certain multi day trek over here — there’s a research project going on at the local university that I was interviewed for. And been talking about this a lot because there is no separation between us and nature.

[00:18:22] And so my philosophy is — and I get mad at all the young greeny urban hippie kids who’ve never actually slept outside, but tell you how you’re supposed to interact with nature. They create this false dichotomy. There’s nature, then there’s us. It’s like, they’re — no, we are as much part of nature as anything else, and it is essential to our health to have a connection and spend time in the untamed world. We need that. Honestly, most people are weak and fragile and that makes it hard to actually go out there and experience nature in its full glory, you know?

[00:19:03] And this is where originally I’ve focused my marketing on, trying to get people backpacking and hiking. And I still work with a lot of people in that industry. And I do work with some of the local guiding companies, and making sure their guides are capable, and making sure their guests have support to make sure they’re capable to go on multi day treks. So I think it’s essential. It’s not something that I really market or push as, hey, you need to be outside all the time, but it’s very obvious, I think, in both my branding and in my content and the stuff that I produce. Because it’s a lot of times it’s just — this is what I’m doing, and it’s stuff outside. My gym is in my garage, and it’s open to the elements, and I get to train in the sunrise. And this morning I went on for a run as the sun was coming up, and I’m just I mean, I’m honestly blessed to live where I am.

[00:19:56] You know, I always say go outside. And when we talk about doing things like steps and daily cardio and things like that, those things that are essential to your health and to weight loss, where are you going to do that? It gets people outside. It gets people outside, it gets them walking. So it’s integrated, but not, such a big thing that I push because it kind of just starts to happen as people get healthier, more capable. They want to go on adventures.

[00:20:22] Dylan Bain: Yeah, I know one of the pieces of advice you gave me was your kind of, order of operations. Here are calories, make sure your nutrition is on point, get your steps, and get your workouts in, and in that order. And living here in Colorado — so you’re exactly right, like doing 10,000 steps in my kitchen sounds terrible. So I’ve been hitting the trails.

[00:20:43] I hear this in finance all the time where the person has like, the unique circumstance, right? And I’m sure you’ve never seen that before, right? The person is completely unique in their own mind. So what would you say to somebody who lives in the middle of the concrete jungle, say, downtown Indianapolis, where human beings have removed as much nature as possible? And they’re saying, Josh, I just can’t do this. What would your bit of advice be to somebody in that situation?

[00:21:06] Coach Josh Wood: I kind of talked about this maybe a month or so ago on my podcast and it was talking about green exercise. There’s a fair body of research out there on what we call green exercise or green spaces and your ability to perform and recover and particular be a more relaxed mental state. So more of a parasympathetic nervous system. You can access that literally by having nature pictures around your training space, or in your house by having nature sounds. Like, you can work on a treadmill and do those little video treadmill courses where they have you like following a trail, and like it has very similar benefits. It’s accessible anywhere. If you’re training in a home gym, you could open up the windows. You can have some nature sounds in the background. You can put up a picture of a nice tree.

[00:21:55] Like, all those things will actually have physical benefits to you, but there is no such thing as a truly a hundred percent urbanized environment. If you think of the biggest cities in the world, I mean, what makes New York so famous? Central Park? I was just in Melbourne, one of Australia’s biggest cities, and there’s a gigantic park in every neighborhood. There is access to green spaces. You can make synthetic ones, but I don’t believe anybody doesn’t have access to that. I’ve got a client in Jakarta. Big, massive, crazy city. Still does her walking outside. Still finds natural spaces.

[00:22:34] Dylan Bain: Jakarta is a — it’s a jungle for sure. Well, yeah, I’ve talked about this before many times on podcasts about like, what is the human underlying all of the problems we’re facing, right?

[00:22:47] So many of our problems are actually caused by the fact that we forget that there’s humans at the center of this. And in my world, it’s all the economics, right? You know, everyone’s on a spreadsheet, we assign them numbers, and then we can lay them off because we don’t think about the families that are being destroyed, the neighborhoods, communities, or any of the other stuff. And I think that’s also true with nutrition when people are saying like oh, it’s very simple, just eat nothing but rice and chicken, right? And they’re forgetting the human that’s underneath that of, well, breaking bread is part of the human experience. Breaking the — breaking your fast in the morning with your family and greeting the day together. This is a part of the human experience.

[00:23:27] So I love what you said of, just get outside because humans are supposed to be outside. So even, if you are just walking down the sidewalk, you’re still closer to nature. But I do want to ask do you like, when you look out from you’re — as the thought leader in the Strong for Life space, what do you think is kind of the trajectory that we’re on when it comes to the lack of a lot of people’s nature contact? Is it like a hidden problem or is it just something that would be beneficial?

[00:23:58] Coach Josh Wood: It’s an obvious problem. And my philosophy is, the more we actually remove ourselves or think of ourselves as removed from the natural environment, the sicker we get as people and as a society. I mean, look at the popularity of the vegan movement. It’s the single most removed from nature ideology you can think of. And it’s becoming more and more popular, but it’s not with rural people. It’s not with people who live an agricultural lifestyle. It’s not with people who are connected to nature. It’s with the overprivileged urban youth. It’s like, the more we remove ourselves from that connection, the crazier we get, the more ill health we see in people in a society as a whole.

[00:24:40] And I mean honestly, God, I think like, everybody should be forced to have six months or three months or like a stint — not of military service, but of working on a farm, like going out and having some sort of agricultural job where you actually have to manage livestock or crops or work in some sort of nature based field and see how life and ecology actually works. And I think that would solve a lot of problems and give people a greater understanding of where we come from.

[00:25:14] Dylan Bain: Yeah, I’ve have long said that I think that at least here in the States, everybody should be required two years of service in some capacity. And I think your suggestion of being on farms, I think is absolutely critical because I’ve had people — I hunt, and so I bring down wild game boars specifically because they’re an invasive species. And I’ve had people say like, well you don’t have to hunt. You could just get your meat from the grocery store. My question to them is always. Where do you think that came from? Did you know that started out as a cow, right?

[00:25:47] Coach Josh Wood: And yeah, that connection to where your food comes from. So I’m in Tasmania and I’m an archer, and bow hunting is illegal for all species except rabbits and hares here on this island. So I hunt rabbits. And I have, you know, a half dozen jars of potted rabbit in my fridge. And although my freezer is empty now because I just turned them all into potted rabbit, I eat what I can from what I can source. And I keep chickens, and I eat all the eggs, and I garden and like, understanding where your food comes from makes people more understanding, more empathetic, more kind. Honestly, the greeny left group tends to like to make omnivores and normal humans out to be these heartless things, but you actually understand things better, and it makes you kinder to people and animals, I think, in general, understanding what it actually takes to make a natural diet for yourself.

[00:26:41] Dylan Bain: Yeah. Well, it brings into that idea like, people will cite the statistic of, well people who work at slaughterhouses tend to have higher rates of domestic violence. That’s a true fact.

[00:26:53] Coach Josh Wood: It’s a fucked up job.

[00:26:55] Dylan Bain: Exactly. So the question, is it because they’re slaughtering animals, or is it because those jobs are terrible and stressful, and you’ve taken the humans, you’ve taken what is part of our role in nature, and you’ve removed — you’ve dehumanized it to a point that to me, I think is the bigger issue. Because I’ve slaughtered things. I’ve slaughtered goats. I’ve slaughtered pigs. I’ve slaughtered chickens. Haven’t done the cow yet, but being able to take a chicken that was running around, put it in the cone, kill it take the feathers off, do the whole thing gives you a huge appreciation for what the energy production or the energy output to provide you with chicken breasts in the grocery store really is.

[00:27:36] I grew up hunting, bringing down, you know, pheasants and white tailed deer in Wisconsin. And so it was never a strange thing to me, and trying to help that with my daughters I think is as absolutely critical. But as long as we’re on the topic of vegans, I do want to put a pin in that because my wife was vegetarian for 10 years. And we never did the vegan thing. I used to eat vegan food when I did triathlons, but only because my numbers were better for some reason.

[00:28:05] But I would love to talk a little bit about like when you’re preparing nutrition and food. What fats are you using? What oils are you using to cook, and why?

[00:28:15] Coach Josh Wood: Yeah so, I basically just use ghee, butter, lard, and olive oil. I’m not in the camp that if it’s a seed and you use oil from it, it’s gonna give you immediate cancer and make your life worse. I don’t think the evidence really supports that. I think a lot of times it’s the industrialized process that people look at and go, oh, this must be bad for you because I don’t like how it’s processed. I don’t think the literature actually supports that in a lot of cases, but my opposition to a lot of those industrial seed oils is more the process as opposed to the oil itself.

[00:28:49] Because I mean, if you’ve used peanut oil, sesame seed oil, sunflower oil, those are seeds, they just get squished. You squish the seed, they’re fatty, fat comes out, you can cook with it. How is that any worse? You know, understanding your omega 3, omega 6 ratios is important, but if you’re using that much oil that often, that’s probably the main problem. But myself, I use the oils I mentioned. Lard, ghee, butter, olive oil, for both the flavor and the cookability. So the saturated fats are higher smoke point, you can sizzle things with them and it’s not going to burn and create heterocyclic hydrocarbons, and things that can be carcinogens. They just are more robust. Olive oil is actually pretty good for cooking. The smoke point isn’t super low. It’s not that fragile of an oil, but I use it for more fresh stuff. Yeah, that’s usually where I go. And I know butter is delicious and awesome, but it actually has a pretty low smoke point. So I’ll use ghee more often when I’m doing steak or sautéing some veggies or something like that.

[00:29:53] Dylan Bain: Amazing. In my own imagination, in my theater of the mind, I’m hearing everybody gasping and clutching their pearls because you said lard. But I know anecdotally — and this is something — a choice that I made a little bit before we started working together, was to eliminate the seed oils, particularly anything from cotton seeds, because in my mind, it’s like we probably could eat some cotton seeds, but that quantity of seed is going to be kind of weird because that’s what Crisco is. But I started using lard.

[00:30:22] Coach Josh Wood: And that’s hydrogenated as well. So it’s run through a process to make it solid as a replacement for lard and tallow and saturated animal fats.

[00:30:32] Dylan Bain: So what we ended up started doing is I started rendering my own beef fat into tallow, because I was doing a lot of brisket at the time. And you start cooking lard and frying chicken in lard. And so many people told me like, you’re going to kill yourself, this is gonna be terrible. But at least anecdotally for me, my cholesterol and triglycerides are both half of what they used to be. Have you seen that in anyone else that isn’t me? ‘Cause I’ve been told like, oh, you must be, an alien.

[00:31:03] Coach Josh Wood: Because a lot of those increased cholesterol numbers and triglycerides are due to more, from my understanding, inflammation. Like, your body uses cholesterol to repair epithelial damage, the lining of the blood vessels. And so it pumps that in there to heal that. And that, why is it healing that? Well, because there’s inflammation in the vessels. And so, those numbers go up. As you have more inflammation — and the issue with seed oils and things like that is less of the oils themselves, but the fact that a lot of them are not very stable and they’re going off, they’re going rancid and you’re consuming rancid oils — which you need fats for your body to replace its cell membranes and regenerate new cells and things. And if you have rancid off oils coming in like, you don’t really have any good building blocks. And so we have damage, oxidative damage.

[00:31:51] And what’s interesting and saturated fats are really stable. There’s a reason that your body stores all its energy stores as saturated fat, primarily saturated fat. But an interesting thing about lard is that when you look at the fat breakdown — so we’ve got saturated fats. And then your unsaturated fats, mono and polyunsaturated. Your omega threes and sixes are polyunsaturated, poly meaning that there’s multiple open carbon bonds that oxygen can then attach to, which is what creates oxidation and oxidative damage. So like, our really healthy oils, like our fish oils and stuff are not stable and they can go off very easily. Monounsaturated, meaning one potential carbon bond site, one potential open site on a carbon bond, means there’s only one opportunity for an oxygen molecule to attach to that and cause oxidation and breakdown.

[00:32:43] And if we think about oxidation, think about rust. Iron oxide, that’s what oxidation is. This is breaking down as oxygen molecules attach to open sites on whatever molecule we’re talking about, the carbons usually. And so monounsaturated fats are pretty stable, saturated fats are completely stable. You can basically put a jar of saturated fat, coconut oil, beef tallow, being more saturated and it’s shelf stable forever. More or less.

[00:33:11] Lard actually has about the same monounsaturated content as olive oil. It’s very similar. And so if you put olive oil in the fridge it solidifies, and lard melts easier than tallow at room temperature or slightly above room temperature, because it is less saturated than say coconut oil or beef tallow. And so people get up in arms about lard, but it’s not that far off of the same fatty acid makeup as olive oil. And as a cultural note, there’s been big divides in the various cultures and in the culinary communities about the difference between using lard and fat, or lard and tallow.

[00:33:56] And I had this old 1969 English cookbook and there was like a one-page rant in there about how kids these days have switched to using lard for their fish and chips as opposed to tallow, and it’s inferior because it doesn’t give you the same golden brown crispiness that tallow did originally. And now we’re sitting here going like, now they’re boiling it in cotton seed oil, and it’s like we’re trying to go back to lard and tallow. And it’s just funny how that always comes back around. But our animal fats are, they’re stable. They taste good. They’re less likely to go off. But in general, I think the issue is that people just eat too much of them in general.

[00:34:38] Dylan Bain: I love the historic thing of those damn kids in their lard. Because you hear that so often of like, damn kids in their phone. I studied a lot of history when I was in college, and I read through all these newspaper articles talking about how the newspaper itself was destroying society because people were reading the newspaper on the trolley rather than talking to each other.

[00:34:58] Coach Josh Wood: I’ve seen old photos of that.

[00:34:59] Dylan Bain: Yeah I mean, it’s crazy to me. And even my grandmother used to say she in the later years of her life, she was really convinced that us abandoning lard was what was dooming American society. But it’s good for your brain. I mean, in working with my nutrition and stuff like that, I’ve had to learn how to cook. Like I’ve always been a very good cook, but I’ve had to be very much more creative. And I — one of the things that I love to make is hot chicken sandwiches.

[00:35:28] And so, we were making these natural hot chicken sandwiches. We’ve done it several times, but it was like, we’ve always done it in the canola oil ’cause that’s what the recipe called for. And when we got done, after eating it, we felt bloated. My inflammation was up. I felt terrible. And so it was a sometimes food. We get to, now we’re getting rid of that, we’re gonna fry it in lard. I felt better after eating that sandwich than I did before I ate that sandwich. It was the first time I’ve ever had that with fried food. So when you’re talking about the rancidness, since then when I’ve stepped into restaurants that have fryers going, I feel like I can smell it now. To be like, this doesn’t smell like food. This smells like death.

[00:36:12] Coach Josh Wood: Yeah, you can definitely smell off oil. If you leave a bottle of grapeseed oil or canola oil or random vegetable oil open on the countertop, like you come around to that in a few weeks and you smell it, it smells bad. It just doesn’t have great shelf stability because it is primarily unsaturated. That’s what makes it liquid at room temperature too, is it’s unsaturated. And avocado and olive oil, I have a lot of monounsaturated fats in them. So they are not a hundred percent shelf stable, but less prone to going rancid than the polyunsaturated oils.

[00:36:45] Dylan Bain: Amazing. So other than just the fats, what are some of the other things for people who are listening to like, I’m — they’re starting to get hungry. We’re talking about fats, we’re talking about food and cooking.

[00:36:55] Coach Josh Wood: Yeah.

[00:36:55] Dylan Bain: What are some of the other things that like, the average person isn’t going to think of in terms of how they can live a more human centered existence with their food? Because I imagine the bag of Funyuns is probably not a very human centric food.

[00:37:12] Coach Josh Wood: Yeah I mean, honestly, the shorter the food chain or the shorter the food distance, the better. So my philosophy is what I call a locavore diet. The more local, the better. You’re not going to go to the factory and top up your canola oil jug, you know? You’re not going to go down to the sugar factory and top up your tub of white sugar. But you can source pretty much any animal product within the state in almost anywhere you are. Your dairy, and especially your fermented dairies, are pretty readily accessible from most places. You know, your animals are raised everywhere. The reason that there’s so much animal agriculture is because it’s easier to raise animals on less than ideal land than it is to grow, and it’s less labor intensive, and you get way more nutrients in the same plot of land. Like, a cow can feed a small family for nine months. But if you grow wheat for a family, you need a lot of land.

[00:38:17] And it’s just one of those things like, the more you think local and what’s actually available in your locale and in your season, the easier it is to be healthy. Like if you’re buying strawberries from California in the winter and you live in New York, like the distance they have to travel, and the stuff they have to spray on those, and the amount of effort that goes into keeping them cool and safe and packaged. Like, not only does your effect on your ecosystem increase, but you just aren’t getting anything fresh and you’re not getting as much nutrients. So you’re better off eating local, eating from the smallest distance you can, and then thinking about, okay, how are things stored?

[00:39:01] If you can eat fresh things, it’s better. Well, if you can’t have fresh things, fermented things — eating your fermented veggies in the winter is a very natural, seasonal way of eating your fresh thing. if you’re eating salad in the middle of winter, where the hell did that come from? No one’s ever done that. In the history of humanity, you’re not eating lettuce leaves in December in Minnesota. You might have some old, tough cabbages sitting in the basement, but it’s sauerkraut and pickles and fermented things. And you’re eating a lot of animal products in the spring and summer. You’re eating a lot of fresh veggies because that’s actually what’s growing. And so, thinking about locale and seasonality with your food probably solve a lot of problems because you can’t really overeat seasonally. It’s only when you’re shipping things from all over that’s highly processed and huge quantities. Like, you can’t eat that much of what’s growing at that time of year. Enough to cause obesity and health concerns, you know?

[00:39:57] Dylan Bain: 100%. And this kind of ties right back into what we were talking about. No one’s worked on a farm. They’re not going to be in touch with their food. And I remember having a conversation with one of my aunts who’s maybe one of those lefty greeny people you were talking about earlier, and she was eating asparagus. And I was like, it is February in Wisconsin. Where do you think that came from? She’s like, oh, it’s growing on a farm. I was like, yeah, but where? And the answer was Argentina. We’re like, we just kicked off an entire like conversation about where our food is coming from and where we get closer.

[00:40:31] You know, and I don’t know what it is in Tasmania, but you know, around where I live, right on the edge of the Denver metro area, so there’s — we have a lot of farms that are close by. And so one of the things we did when we first got here was — you know, I’m from Wisconsin so obviously cheese and dairy that runs in my blood. And I found a local dairy, and the cows that our milk come from are literally less than 10 miles from where I live. And they bring us cheese and they bring us dairy. I’m still looking for a source for farm fresh eggs, but I know you have chickens, don’t you? So I would love, I mean maybe, it’s been too long. What is the difference between that fresh egg from the chicken versus what you get in the grocery store?

[00:41:11] Coach Josh Wood: Honestly, it’s a little tricky. So when I go back to the States, I realized there’s a huge food quality difference between what is commonly available in grocery stores there and what is available here. Like, we’ve got year round growing seasons. Like, we can get veggies year round because one state above you, it’s a season behind you. So here in Tasmania, even our grocery store eggs are pretty damn good. But when I go back to the States, I’m like looking at these sloppy, pale yellow things that come out of a shell, and I’m like, what is this? It’s the same with the butter. You know, I noticed in the US your butter is white. Our butter looks like cheese here. It’s yellow, because it’s coming fresh from the perpetually growing grass on the north side of the island or from New Zealand or — because New Zealand’s three hours away like, we’re getting incredibly fresh produce from the mainland locally or from three hours away. And the quality is generally quite good. That said, even so, eggs that you grow yourself — you don’t grow them yourself, you raise the chickens and they make them — but there is, the whites are denser and thicker, the yellow, the orange of the yolk is much more vibrant. But a lot of that also is freshness. This is freshness makes a huge difference as well.

[00:42:36] Dylan Bain: The first time I ever had a farm fresh egg, I thought there was something wrong with it. It was just how, together it was and the woman who ran the kitchen at the farm that I was working on at the time, she cracked the egg and she grabbed a pair of chopsticks and pulled the yolk out with the chopsticks. And I was just like blown away that this was even possible.

[00:42:56] Coach Josh Wood: Yeah, amazing. They’re so dense.

[00:42:59] Dylan Bain: Yeah. Well, and you got to think that’s more what our ancestors were eating in the beginning.

[00:43:03] Coach Josh Wood: Yeah. It’s close to, this — I’m not really a recreationist. I was like, the food we’re eating isn’t what hunter gatherers ate, but we want a close approximation.

[00:43:13] Dylan Bain: A hundred percent. A hundred percent. So if there’s somebody who’s listening to this and they’re like, okay, I get the food thing, I got the Strong for Life. What’s the sales pitch on why would somebody need to hire the coach and bring that professional in to be able to help them with this journey? Why is it — why do you think that’s a needed thing?

[00:43:35] Coach Josh Wood: The long answer comes down to the questions that I’ll ask. So someone will be like, hey — first of all, they’ll be like — how much does it cost? And I’ll be like, that doesn’t matter because we haven’t decided if you’re going to be a client. So let’s look at this. What are you trying to achieve? And they’ll say something like nine or 10 times weight loss. What are you doing right now about that? And they’ll say, everything I’m doing is perfect. Okay, that’s not true. But how long have you been dealing with this? Oh 5, 10, 20 years. Okay, so if you haven’t accomplished it under your own means in that time, you absolutely 100 percent need help. Whether that’s going to be me or someone else, that’s to be decided.

[00:44:16] But you can’t come to me and go, oh no, I’m doing everything great, but I’ve not accomplished my goals in X number of years. I’ll be like, no, that’s bullshit. I call people out on this all the time, because the biggest thing that they lack is accountability. You can find a gym plan on the internet. You can find a diet plan. You can just log into MyFitnessPal and follow the formula. All those things will elicit a level of results on their own. But unless they have accountability and someone to say, hey, I noticed that you didn’t do what you said you were going to do or say, hey, great job on getting the thing done that you need to do to get where you want to be. If someone lacks that, whether it’s a community or an individual like a coach, only one in 1000 is actually going to accomplish what they set out to accomplish.

[00:45:04] And it’s usually young people who don’t have any responsibilities and live at home because like, I have the time, I have the resources, nothing better to do but get jacked. But if you’re a busy parents or a professional, the accountability is probably the most important thing and I’m usually talking to people who have spent years telling themselves that they’re doing the right thing but never getting where they want to be. And so, the number one thing is if you haven’t done it, you’re not going to do it magically. You need help. And the biggest thing you need is someone to hold you accountable. So you actually do the work.

[00:45:43] The second most important thing is being told what that work is. And then, this is part of my application process and interview process with clients is, okay, what have you been doing? What has held you back from achieving your goals while doing this? What challenges have you run into? And then it’s roadblocks. What is it that is stopping you from figuring it out on your own? Information’s free these days. You can figure everything out on the Internet. I mean, there’s no excuse for not knowing the basics, if you want to. But there’s usually a roadblock. The challenge is usually figuring out what those basics are. Some people don’t get that far. The roadblock stopping them from achieving that is usually something like, I have five kids and I’m a single mom. Or I’m a stay at home mom, you know? Or I run a business. I just don’t have time or some combination of the two. It’s okay, that’s a legit reason. You have other priorities, so you may want to change your health. You may want to change your physique. But other priorities have gotten in the way of figuring out how to do it on your home.

[00:46:46] That’s where people like us come in. The coaches go, okay, don’t waste your time and energy figuring out how to do it. Follow our instructions. Let us hold you accountable, bring you into a community of people doing the same thing, walking the same path, and we’ll do it together. And then that way, you don’t stress about what you’re supposed to do and how you should do it. You just tick the boxes. And every time you tick a box, you’re one step closer to where you want to be, as opposed to spending the last two to 20 years not getting anywhere and sliding further behind.

[00:47:16] Dylan Bain: Amazing. Yeah, I know when I first started really getting serious about it, my parents were like, well, why are you doing this, right? ‘Cause my family culture — the men just — where they work until they break and they die quietly in the corner. That is what the men in my family do. And so that’s where I was.

[00:47:34] Coach Josh Wood: At least you have traditions.

[00:47:35] Dylan Bain: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Well, I mean, like when we started, it first started working together. If I got 2000 steps in a day, it was an active day, right? You know, it’s like, no you got to get out there. You got to do this. But my wife’s response to the question of why I was training, she’s like, Dylan’s training to be 90. And I think about the cost that comes into that I’m paying to hire a professional to help hold me accountable, to give me those boxes to check, because I just got too much other stuff on my plate. And every time I think about it and I look at my budget, I’m like, oh man that’s a recurring expense. But then I go and figure out what a triple bypass is going to cost me, or what cancer is going to cost me, or how much would I pay for more time with my daughters, right? If I make it to 90, when I make it to 90, I will have the high score for men in my family. No man in my family has hit 90.

[00:48:26] Coach Josh Wood: And so that is the powerful motivation.

[00:48:28] Dylan Bain: That’s the goal. Well, this has been an amazing discussion about fitness and nature and food. And I would love to keep talking, but I want to be respectful of your time. But for those people who are listening, how can they find more Josh Wood?

[00:48:43] Coach Josh Wood: Just @CoachJoshWood on Instagram. You can head to StrongForLife.online, which is the website, which will send you to all the socials and the YouTube resources and the Eat Like an Adult guide and all that stuff. So those are probably the two best places. You can just Google me Coach Josh Wood, I show up on most platforms.

[00:49:03] Dylan Bain: Fantastic. Highly, highly recommend you look into Strong for Life coaching. It is revolutionizing how I look at my fitness and I know it would help you as well. Thank you so much for listening and we’ll see you next week.

[00:49:14] Coach Josh Wood: Thanks for having me.

[00:49:16] Outro: Thanks for listening. The conversation doesn’t end here. Please share the show with friends and make sure you keep up with all the latest updates on Instagram and Threads @TheDylanBain and dive deeper into the world of finance with me at DylanBain.com where you’ll find insights, resources, and strategies to reimagine your money story.