The Food Medic - S9 E7: How to live an awesome life with Ben Coomber

Episode Date: February 20, 2023

In this episode, Dr Hazel is joined by Ben Coomber - a multi-award-winning Coach, Speaker, and Author of “How to live an Awesome Life”. For 10 years Ben ran a #1 rated podcast called ’Ben Coomber Radio’ with over 20 million downloads, is the Founder & CEO of The BTN Academy - a Nutrition Education Company, and Awesome Supplements - a multi- award-winning plant-based supplement company. This episode covers:- Ben’s personal journey with health and fitness - Why he wrote “How to live an awesome life” - The 11 step Awesome life formula*How to identify your core values- The power of writing your own obituary - Making daily movement manageble - Sleep for parents of young kids - What to do when you’re not feeling inspired If you loved it you know what to do - leave us a review, a rating (hopefully 5 stars) and share it with someone you know will love it too. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Wendy's most important deal of the day has a fresh lineup. Pick any two breakfast items for $5. New four-piece French toast sticks, bacon or sausage wrap, English muffin sandwiches, value iced coffee, and more. Limited time only at participating Wendy's Taxes Extra. Hello, and welcome back to the Food Medic Podcast. I'm your host, as always, Dr. Hazel. I hope you're having a fantastic day so far or evening,

wherever you're listening to this podcast in the world. So today I'm joined by Ben Coomer, a multi-award winning coach, speaker and author of How to Live an Awesome Life. For 10 years, Ben ran a number one rated podcast called the Ben Coomer Radio with over 20 million downloads, and is the founder and CEO of the BTN Academy, a nutrition education company and Awesome Supplements, a multi-award winning plant-based supplement company. I've actually known Ben for years now and I've followed his work for a long time and I think he has some really valuable but very practical advice on how to improve your health and your life. Today we're going to dive into his 11 step system for an awesome life so stay tuned. This episode is brought to you by Whoop. We're a few weeks into the new year and I want to know

how you're getting on with your new year's goals and resolutions. I'm actually pretty happy with how consistent I've been with my sleep schedule but I'm not going to lie there have been one or two slip-ups but one thing that has been keeping me accountable is my WHOOP which reminds me daily when I should be getting into bed for optimal rest and allows me to track my progress with daily, weekly and monthly reports of my sleep outcomes. If you've also slipped up on your new year's resolution WHOOP can get you back on track so that you can optimise your performance throughout the year. Whether you are hoping to sleep better, exercise more,

drink less alcohol or just live a happier, healthier life, daily insights from Whoop are tailored to help you meet your goal. There's still time to set yourself up for success in 2023 so if you've not had a chance to get started but you're looking to up your game in 2023 go to join.whoop.com slash thefoodmedic to get started you'll get your first month on me for free first of all thank you for coming into the studio it's so nice to have you on the food medic podcast thank you and so lovely to see you after such a long time as well. I know the last time I saw you I think was at your book launch a couple of years ago in London, Roof Terrace, very cool. So yeah it's exciting to be here and let's chat. Let's chat. Well I would love to start with your story and your journey as Ben Coomer with Awesome and Awesome Supplements and now your new book and really what brought you into

this industry what got you excited about it and what's kept you here yeah personal story um which I think underpins hopefully a lot of good coaches having your own experience you've been there you've done it so at the age of 18 I was obese uh got diagnosed with ADHD had asthma eczema as a kid and uh I was then going into the performing arts and I was doing like auditions in RADA and in London and failure failure failure failure and there was a point where I looked at myself and I was like perhaps it's me perhaps I'm the problem perhaps it's not like because you blame the system initially like why aren't I getting successful at the auditions and I kind of looked at myself I was obese I didn't have a lot

of energy had a lot of health conditions and there was a moment which is a longer story where I just committed to turn myself into a better version of myself and it just sort of started so I had the physical weight loss transformation which was 5.5 stone and then I sort of went on the muscle building journey being a young man and wanting to be all athletic and alpha male and all that stuff and then as you're probably aware like it just steamrolls like you you realize that there's a better version of yourself and you just enjoy peeling the layers back and then I went to uni got involved in pro sport and then kind of sort of entrepreneurialism drifted across my desk and I sort of started to have a play and I wanted to travel more so you then just unravel yourself and I think that's

what culminated in kind of like my career today because I know you're going to ask about the book today and the book's kind of like I suppose it's a weird one for me because people are like why have you written that book because I've talked about nutrition for so long and fitness and mindset. And I'm like, but when you zoom back, there's a higher purpose behind it all. Like we go to the gym to like become stronger, to become better, to become fitter. Like there's a higher purpose behind everything. And I wanted to make sure that people started to really tune into that. And I think that's,'s you know goal setting comes

up in everyone's journey i think that's why a lot of people don't achieve their goals because they've not they're not really in alignment with that like higher purpose so yeah i know i'm straying from the train tracks already but that's how it kind of started and uh life's a journey and i'm enjoying being on it and so you've just released your book congratulations how to have an awesome life to you what's an awesome life there's one word that sticks out and it's fulfillment yeah a couple of years ago I was researching some stuff sort of in and around my business and I was looking and looking at global statistics around what people like struggle with on a personal and mental level.

And this word fulfillment kept coming up and it was something like 71% of people don't feel fulfilled in their life. And I thought, well, there's many layers to that. And I think superficially we attach words to our version of success, like achievement and success and money and stuff. And I think when it boils down to like any aspect of your life if you're fulfilled with what you're doing whether you're there or not yet and that's arguably maybe not the right focus of whether you're there or not yet I think you're for the most part be pretty happy if you're fulfilled so fulfillment underpins a lot of the book and uh the first half of the book takes the reader on quite a journey around sort of like it goes quite deep to be honest like why

are you here like what is showing up in your life that you don't want anymore what do you want more of and then we sort of unravel it and um there's a real key chapter in the book called life imposter syndrome and i feel a lot of people are standing like outside of their life and they're not really in it and i want to bring people back into their life at a conscious and subconscious level sort of unravel it and then build it back up again and that's where the practical kind of steps come in which is what you traditionally see with coaching around like what you eat how you move how you think what time you go to bed that kind of stuff yeah absolutely i think that's really interesting, the life imposter syndrome. You have this 11-step awesome formula.

Would you call it a formula? Step process? Yeah. Which step do you think we miss out on the most of all of those steps? Maybe talk us through the steps first. Yeah, I probably need the book in front of me to remember the 11 steps but um ultimately the steps get very practical but they they sort of follow a journey and there's all the things you'd expect in it like you know what do you eat what is good nutrition how do you move um how do you think like your environment

the people your career um money and wealth which I think a lot of people are scared to talk about but it underpins a good life if we're honest you want to earn well to afford things and then there's like how you get inspired in your life because inspiration comes and goes and then there's like the education that kind of underpins it all but what underpins the whole book is like the deep stuff of like what is your life about what do you want it to be about and know that you have choices so I think the most poignant chapter for me is is kind of the the deep reflection I asked the reader to do and there's a lot of moments in the book where I ask people to get a pen and write in the book and the reason why I wanted to write

a book like that is I read a book many years ago called How to Be Brilliant by Michael Hoppel it's a beautiful book and I would probably argue that when you read a book like this not many people actually do the writing bit they're like they're flicking through it in bed and they're like I'll come back to that bit but the beautiful thing about writing is it applies the brain to action a lot more and there's a lot of science around if we write things down we're more likely to do it and achieve it and stuff. So I really implore the reader to like reflect what you're unhappy about, what you're angry about. Where's their friction in your life? Like, let's solve that.

And then for me, the practical stuff becomes a lot easier because if you make if you develop more self-worth in a person more confidence in a person more trust in someone's ability they'll go out and crush life because there's so many or there's so less fears they're not as afraid of the fears as they used to be yeah i think that self-awareness is like really important and i haven't fully read your book but I was going through it before this episode and reading a section about values. And that's something that I always talk to people about doing is really getting down on paper. What are your three big values in life? Because I think if ever you come up against a hard question or an obstacle in life or you're going to make a big change you're trying to answer a question if you have those values that you can come back to it makes the decision so much easier how do you encourage people to go about finding what their values

are because sometimes it's that's really challenging and also really confronting for someone find a big list and literally highlight the ones that you resonate with um so in the book i have this huge list it's probably too long and i ask people to just sort of circle them and then what you'll probably do is you'll circle almost like too many because we sort of aspire to have a lot of really good values like um i want to be kind like all of that kind of stuff but they're more like character traits things you should probably aspire to anyway because you probably should be kind and etc what you want to boil it down to is literally like like you say the top three what really burns and you

probably have to spend a bit of time with it because they're probably a bit wrong because you probably align your values with your current life and you think well if i'm currently living like that i must value it because I'm living it. But a lot of people will probably argue they're not living fully in their truth, not in full alignment with themselves, not being fully fulfilled. So I implore the reader to put the book down quite a lot. I'm like, I do not want you to read this book in a week. I want you to really spend time with this stuff because it's taken me a long time, probably the same for yourself, to unravel some of the things in our life and make sense of them. So spend time with your values and see if if you start to make decisions through them, they feel really right.

So one of my key values in life is freedom. Awesome. Another one is integrity so like once you start to look at decisions that are in your life and say oh here's my values filter let me run it through it if it then feels right you know you're probably on the right path but if there's then friction or anxiety or frustration you know you're probably not at that moment in alignment with your values and just need to do a bit more work there yeah absolutely and i think also your values can change over time so sometimes it can be a really helpful exercise to just sit down after a couple of years and

and sit down and are my values the same am I living in alignment with my values and really ask yourself those questions I think when we have these conversations some people can think this is a bit woo a bit extra a bit too much work but really it makes all of the the next steps so much simpler and like you said it really feeds into that kind of your life blueprint um which is so important one of the exercises you use um is writing your own obituary and i found this really interesting in the book what do you want people to take from this did you find it really uncomfortable writing I didn't it's probably because I've been practicing it for quite a while it's a technique I learned quite a long time ago and it's done quite a lot in more like the business world to

sort of benchmark where you want to kind of get to but the reason why I did it is because everyone probably to some degree fantasizes about the person that they could be and if you were to ask someone to write it down you could almost like imagine it as like a wikipedia entry so I use those two examples in the book and the reason why that is is because I think when we set goals people will quite often look at like the money or the job or the car or the house and actually I think what people want to aim towards is like a complete character reshaping so when you write your obituary you'll probably say things like oh or you'd want to say he was a loving husband he was a caring father he took his kids to the

seaside every weekend like all of these things that you would really want to aspire to so actually when you then sit there with it you can start to get really emotive about that it starts to really guide decision making and you can then say cool that's how I want to end up when I'm 80 or you know whenever I die what do I need to do now to change the course change the trajectory what actions what behaviors what habits do i need to change um and that's what i yeah i want people to do and i can imagine people will need to practice doing that it would be quite weird because we're not taught to do this kind of stuff in school right are we all like you know our early job years like if i think about um reflective writing at school it was all about like history and English language and stuff like that

but I don't think people are very comfortable at talking about their emotions and then writing their emotions and then writing how that looks or should turn up in their life and I think that process will help them do that as well yeah I think it can you know like on on first reading it can feel really morbid or like that it's it could be quite negative but i think it's also very it helps someone be really aware of maybe how they're currently living to how they should be living if that's what they want kind of for people to remember them by and i think you know sometimes we can get really wrapped up in the superficial things of like oh what do people think of me like i'm only going to be loved if i look a certain way or people will only deem me successful if i have a house or a mortgage where i have kids and that's not the things that

people remind i remember you for they don't remember you for how many bedrooms are in your house they remember you for how you made them feel so, and how you make people feel is based on the person that you are and like, and, and your values and how you treat people. And so I think that's what I took from that particular exercise in your book, which I think is really interesting. Have you done it yet? I haven't fully done it. I will do it.

I will, I will do it and I'll text you and I'll let you know what comes up. Movement is one of the steps which, of course, is so incredibly important. It's a non-negotiable in my day and I think it feeds into all aspects of our life, like physical, mental health, sleep, productivity, relationships, everything. But it can be really tricky to fit it into a very busy life what are some ways people can make movement both manageable and realistic with their schedule yeah i think firstly it's interesting because we we now have to sort of like manufacture movement a lot into our lives because the way so many of our lives are now like you think how many people sit down for like nine hours a day they're in stuffy meeting rooms bright

lights and you think oh it's then like i probably should go to the gym or run or do something physical because i've literally been sat down a lot of my family they're farmers and they're like they wouldn't even think about structured exercise because they're literally you know they're exercising all day and it's kind of i suppose a reality of our modern lifestyle for many people i'm a huge fan of just first and foremost trying to see how much general activity we can get like for the moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed are there just loads of mini micro opportunities to just walk up the stairs rather than take the elevator or take the dog out three times a day instead of two times a day like even if it's like five minutes like it all just really

adds up and I mean like many people I've got a step counter on my watch and when you consciously do that you'd be amazed at what ends up happening with your generalized activity because you just have the mind to move towards it I suppose I've definitely got a different perspective now being a parent of two young kids like that's really hard to be active because there's just so much to like do with young kids and I think it's about making it really small and manageable because I used to be a guy that would go to the gym four days a week I play rugby like there'd always be huge blocks of time where you dedicate to training and now i can't dedicate those times so it might be like right i'm literally going to go in my shed for 15 minutes and just go on the assault bike and just like literally do that or yeah i think like making it micro because i think the fitness industry is very good at telling people what

fitness should look like oh your gym session should look like an hour of this and you warm up like this and you do this and it's like well what if you've only got 15 minutes how do you adapt it so i always try to get people to like commit to something small but big but they know they can regularly do and then when there's opportunity to add bits and add bits so i can usually in my lifestyle commit to two good weight training sessions a week sometimes i can do three very rare i can do four or do do something else but at least if i do the two core things i'm like really happy i've made progress i've you know tried to build some muscle or whatever um and i think sometimes that's a really good thing because people set a very high bar quite often for

themselves with fitness i'm going to get to the gym four days a week. And it's like, how often does your life actually enable you to have that happen? So set the bar lower, do three sessions or two sessions or one session. Like it's better than nothing. And then be really happy with that and be even happier when you kind of build on it. I coach a lot of people. And it's amazing how many people are incredibly self-deprecating to themselves because they've set this incredibly high bar and i'm like i think

you're just being really unrealistic you know you're not the fitness influencer that's got three hours a day to go and sit in the gym that afternoon because it's half their job you know be kind to yourself yeah i love that message it's so important and actually grace beverly was just on the podcast before this episode and she was saying the same thing and it's one thing that she's changed her mind about as a previous or former fitness influencer she's you know people who are online and that's their job is to exercise all the time and encourage exercise but we all don't have the same amount of hours in the day if we really break it down and we all have different lifestyles and different jobs and things like that so comparison can be almost so detrimental to your progress if you're constantly comparing yourself to someone else especially people online i want to sort of almost stand back

for a second with the the sort of goal or the purpose of exercise for many people like when I was younger and I can imagine other people would have done this I quite often use exercise as a way to like control my weight feeling control of it and I know that if I didn't do sometimes what I'd intended to I felt like everything else was going to come crumbling down so I used to like really control it and hold on to it and when I became a dad there's like this narrative when you become a parent that like your body and mind just sort of go to go to pot I was about to swear but I don't know if I'm allowed to so like there's this whole like dad bod narrative and it's like I didn't put on weight when I became a dad even though I got really ill with long COVID and, you know, it could have been horrific and stuff. But I sort of, people were asking me the question,

like, you know, why haven't you put on weight? You're not in the gym, you're not playing rugby. I'm like, because all the other variables I've kept the same. I'm still getting good sleep. I'm still eating well to maintain my weight. And it would be, it's amazing, I think, how little exercise you have to do when the stimulus is right to have, you know, the physique or the body or whatever that people want. When all the other variables in the right place, when you're eating well, when you're sleeping well, when you're thinking well, because for most people, it quite often comes down to a body composition thing. People don't want to be overweight. I'm like, cool, then do a good job on your nutrition if your nutrition's really on point you'll probably stay a really healthy weight and that two hours of exercise you do do a week it'll be really

positive and beneficial to your body you'll really see the results because what you're doing in the kitchen is really spot on that's very true you mentioned sleep and that you kept that as one of the variables in control but you have two young kids and kept that as one of the variables in control. But you have two young kids. And I know that one of the questions I get asked, I have no kids, is, you know, I talk about sleep a lot. And I get a lot of parents with young kids say, you know, Hazel, it's all well and good. I hear you, but I have children and I really struggle to do all of these things that you tell me to do for like my sleep hygiene and get enough hours what advice do you have for parents of young kids for getting good quality

sleep where they can what we do is we just go to bed really early in short and we do that because chances are one of them is going to wake up in the night so that means that we kind of just like we basically hedge our bets so we're usually asleep by like quarter past nine nine and you know we'll wake up whenever and that that really works like it's not perfect like tonight i'm running on five and a half hours sleep sorry today um but that's not the norm i'm generally getting six and a half seven hours of sleep but i have a big commitment to it like i really prioritize it and when you speak to a lot of people i'm like could you prioritize it more like you know could you get in bed like just half an hour earlier could you really increase the time that you've got to get a good night's sleep and most people

probably can yeah i guess it's tricky in those earlier years but like you said getting into bed just a tiny bit earlier does increase your chances of falling asleep earlier and getting in more time sleep yeah i think the number one thing that i hear from parents is and this is a problem and you'll never get enough of it is enough me time when they go to bed at seven half seven they're asleep you're like right now it's time for me you clean the house and everything and you know previously me time might have been three hours of netflix in an evening well now you might only get one hour or maybe even less and it then just comes down to values and priorities like are you going to prioritize sleep cool we'll watch 45 minutes of netflix and

then get in bed like nice and early so you can get a great night's sleep and sometimes that's just the harsh reality of how little time you have as a parent. Yeah, that's very true. One of the things you have in the book is E for Eat. And it's no surprise that's in there because you're probably best known for being in the nutrition space because that's kind of where you started and you're really well known there. What's your approach to nutrition in the book and how has that evolved over time maybe from when you first got into this industry has it evolved much it's probably not i was really fortunate my early exposure to nutrition was through i'd say quite holistic practitioners so i was introduced to food on a very like wholesome natural kind of level um and in the book i essentially get people to focus on kind of first and foremost food quality and then start to have awareness of how food makes them feel whether they get like bloated

from certain foods there's a reaction that kind of stuff and then I get them to sort of ask the question of how do you want food to play a role in your life from like a weight loss or body recomposition perspective and then sort of explain well there's kind of many ways that you can go about it and ultimately the amount of data you use will probably just improve the accuracy of the result so we all know about calorie counting you can calorie count to lose weight you can also not calorie count to lose weight by doing things that will probably create a calorie deficit like stop snacking eat more whole foods etc so i kind of give just people options in the book and i'm like here's how you can get more specific and then more specific again and then more specific and then from a coaching perspective i'll always get my clients to eat

real food like talk to them about balance talk to them about kind of the weekend and enjoying themselves and then say cool i want you to go away and get quite specific with your nutrition for at least like a month or two and ultimately i want you to use that as a learning process like for me i want calorie counting to serve the purpose of just understanding what's in your food like if i went to your house and you cooked me a spaghetti bolognese i'd like to be able to like just look at it and go oh what hazel's served me that kind of looks like 900 calories just kind of kind of like take a little bit of a mental note and then what i do as an individual that probably needs to eat around 3000 calories a day is just like

you're then able to like constantly eyeball your diet and just have a rough idea it then almost becomes like a subconscious behavior of like you're just kind of keeping things in check but i think for most people when you're sleeping well you're pretty active you move a fair amount or just you know an adequate amount and then you're eating consistently whole foods that are well balanced without too many real kind of moments of um overindulging then you're probably going to be in a right way anyway like you're probably not going to worry about it too much but if it does change and you can just dial it in a little bit more track a little bit of data and just kind of like readjust do you think that calorie counting is essential for an awesome life no i think calorie counting is probably not conductive to live in an awesome life.

And I say that because I think minimalism is something that I want a lot of people to buy into. I think we live in a world where there's like an app for everything now. You look at your phone and you could spend all day on your phone tracking data, tracking sleep, tracking mental health. And they're all relevant tools. But I think they're tools we should use to serve a purpose, to bring ourselves more into alignment, build our intuition and our self-awareness, and then just almost have it there as a life skill. It becomes something within us

rather than we have to track it every day. So, you know, you might buy a new watch with a fitness tracker in it. Well, you don't want to be looking at every day like how many steps I've done. You ultimately want it to help you change your behavior and then just be someone that moves a fair amount every day anyway like i don't count calories now but i've used it to teach me more about food and where my diet probably needs to be so that i can successfully maintain my weight which is a goal of mine i think it's very goal dependent and like you said

for some people can be a really useful educational tool but it's a tool that can be used for a purpose as opposed to like this long-term thing that we're doing and i think that's what i was trying to pull out of you and something that we talk about a lot on the podcast is like you know what's long-term sustainable healthy habits that not only contribute to your physical health but your mental health and i think for a lot of people being very rigid with their food intake and worrying about like how many calories are in this versus that when they're also you know not getting enough sleep or not getting whole foods into the diet not moving enough when they're the most

important things that we should be focusing on and not getting bogged down by like this has 300 calories versus this which is 350 like the grand scheme of things focus on the kind of big picture low-hanging fruit versus getting into the nitty-gritty and i think it is very dependent and i'm not anti-calorie counting but i'm very much like pro people understanding what works for them. That makes sense. Definitely, definitely. Quick one. I have a new and exciting membership coming out

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Head over to www.thefoodmedic.co.uk to join now from £9.99 per month one of the other things that you talk about in the book and actually you mentioned it in the beginning was inspiration and i think you use this in tandem with motivation maybe am i right yeah and a lot of times we can go through life and have these lows of inspiration we're feeling motivated or not feeling like inspired by our life maybe what are some ways that you encourage people to maybe pull themselves out of that low and find inspiration again yeah so in the book i ask a lot of questions and i ask a lot of questions because I want people to think very critically about what's happening. Inspiration for me, it comes and goes and it will come and go depending on

what's in your life to essentially support it. So I can imagine the listeners of this podcast listen to it because they get inspired by it, lifts them up, they get educated, it's great guests, they love you and that's one tool that they can have in their life to inspire them but that tool is only going to get them so far you know it might cheer them up for half a day or you know whatever and if you put that on top of someone that is maybe not enjoying their job right now is maybe in a relationship that it's not quite working out or their parents are really on at them and there's just a lot of stuff that's really running the inspiration bucket dry this podcast isn't going to be enough for them to keep lifting them up so they need other things so I essentially talk about life and someone's environment and starting

to design it in a way where as much as infinitely possible it's all inspiring you so the place that you live in the house that you live in the relationship that you're in the job that you have the people that you meet the gym that you go to the food that you eat the experiences that you have the travel that you go on like all of these things inspire you um and sometimes you need a bit more than that depending on the journey that you're on like i'm i'm a business owner and one of the things that i do is i go to like business events to inspire me with like just what's possible what other people are doing meet like-minded people it's the same with fitness like people go and do like you know crossfit events for example like they probably love the fact that like they're seeing someone else better than them to like inspire them to push them on. So sometimes you need that like bit more.

You go to an event or you join a kind of group that's geared around doing something quite inspirational. And if you build all of that into your daily life, I think you'd have quite an inspired life. And I think one of the things I've maybe not done well enough in the book, and I've been thinking about it a lot recently. And I've been thinking about this because I did a C-dip the other day. I love a C-dip. I don't do it enough. But someone said to me, like, why do you do it? experience all that life has to offer all of it like how can i go through my career my relationship being a parent to truly experience it in a deep brilliant inspired beautiful way and that's what i want people to have in their lives and i think we can almost have it all like we we live in an incredible time like the internet is you know democratized so much you can do like any job you can live like nearly anywhere like you can just do so much and i think that gives opportunity but in the same time it makes it confusing because there's a lot of information out there it feels

very messy if you scroll instagram you're getting you, 50 different messages in the space of five minutes. So I get people to stand back and just break down every area of their life. Like, how do we make this more inspired? If you're not inspired by your job right now, what are your options? And it's not just like quit your job. It's like, could you move department? Could you speak to your boss? Because could you approach it differently? Could you speak to your team members? Could you build an initiative in your workplace that like reinvigorates you in kind of the role um you know as a weird example i had someone that came for our nutrition course and she was in the police force and she was thinking of leaving the police force because it was she just didn't enjoy it anymore she did our

nutrition course and she was like i think i'm going to try and do a talk for the police force around nutrition so she went and did a nutrition talk and i'm going to try and do a talk for the police force around nutrition so she went and did a nutrition talk and then they absolutely loved it and they were like can you start doing this to like other sections of like the police force and they've now turned her job into like half nutrition coach half police person that's amazing and how cool is that and now she loves her job again because she's like doing the things she always wanted to do. But now she's incorporating like a new passion project, a new interest there. And I'm like, that's so cool. So, you know, there are these narratives out there that you just have to like quit and move on.

It's like, no, perhaps you just have to take a different spin on it. Yeah. And that's what, yeah, I want people to do. What a great story. What's the biggest thing you want people to take from your book to know that people have so much more potential than they think they do um i've been a coach for 16 years and if i think of all the clients that have like not followed the diet plan or not like done the fitness plan not completed the journey in their eyes it's all come down to a self-worth factor a lack of confidence a lot of fears past trauma being around people that don't believe in them like there's a whole host of reasons that have

affected them on a deep mental and emotional level and what I want to do is i want to get into the core of all those people that are struggling on some level and go you're an incredible human being it's time to believe it it's time to see it i'm going to start to just peel back that onion because i can't just tell someone and they'll believe it they don't just go and change their lives but i just have to show them that there's a seed of potential there then i want to plant that seed of potential and then be like cool now we've started to open you up as a character and started to see who you really are let's layer all the practical stuff on top which is kind of what i've been doing in sort of my role as a nutritionist and a fitness trainer and stuff because i realized that everyone that came to me wanted to live a better life they didn't just want to lose two stone or compete in a

whatever competition or whatever they wanted to be a better version of themselves deep down and on kind of like a connecting it to a selfish level or really resonating with that person that's all i want to do that's what everyone wants yeah i just want to be the best version of themselves and i am really lucky i'm really lucky that in my childhood i was a i was able to make myself like a blank canvas and not a lot of people have had that opportunity so i went to military school it was a very like alienating environment it's very difficult environment very cold environment and then sort of after that I was on my own because I didn't, when you're at boarding school, you're basically like everyone moves away, like no one lives like where the school is.

So when I finished school, I was like, I was on my own. So I was like, oh, I've now got to rebuild like my friendship group. I've got to get a job. So I had these opportunities in my life where there's a lot of blank canvases and I could make decisions about my life. But some people, you know, grow up in some pretty tough environments with unsupportive people with you know really bad things that have happened and that's really affected their life trajectory hugely and if I can take that individual and go right bad things have happened I get it and there's loads of like scars there and stuff but let's work through that let's come to terms with that let's move over that let's start to see your potential and layer things on top that can help you kind of achieve it and yeah that's i suppose that's all part of the mission that's

great mission to have before we wrap up i've got three questions which actually the listeners pitched that we ask all our guests um they're sort of quick fire but the first one is what's one thing that you've changed your mind about i've changed my oh i i haven't thought about this enough but you know in the world of nutrition and you can probably help me like answer this or navigate this in the world of nutrition there's this big argument around like calories food and then hormones like hormones don't like do anything when it comes to body composition um so about four or five months ago i went on to trt testosterone replacement therapy and when i went on to it on a body composition level there were some like subtle changes wasn't training any differently wasn't eating any differently i'm really consistent with

all that stuff so like i was then really fascinated by like okay cool i've now got what i would describe or what medicine would describe as optimal testosterone levels for a man but i do i look a bit different like i'm fuller i'm more muscular like when i eat it feels like it goes into my muscle rather than into my fat like And this is all very subjective. And I do know some of the science about it, but I'm not as privy to it because I don't spend time there anymore or teach that kind of stuff. But I'm starting to change my mind a little bit around the hormone conversation.

I know that doesn't change the bulk of what has to happen with body composition changes but if i think back in my journey like there were so many men that i used to coach on a muscle building level that i'm like why are you not building muscle we're doing like all the right things and there's a big hormone picture there and i knew some guys i used to train and they used to just turn into hulks like you know within like 12 12 weeks of a structured you know intense training program so I've like half I'm not changed my mind but it's something I'm thinking about a lot and soon as you asked I thought that's it yeah no I think it's I think it's really interesting and I think obviously how quickly and how much muscle we build is like

multifactorial and taking like males and females for example which is like i guess my area um you know the reason why women can't like build as much muscle is because of those differences in in kind of physiology but also hormones being one of the kind of biggest things and testosterone is obviously you know hugely muscle enhancing but i think what's really interesting and like a tangent to that is the whole how we really we're very reductionist sometimes when it comes to nutrition and health and you know people there's constant debate and actually it's recently come up on another big podcast this week is the whole kind of calories don't count argument and i find that really unhelpful because i think there are other things in addition to calories that matter when it comes to nutrition

and also body composition how it affects us and i this kind of particular phrase was in relation to to weight loss i've listened to the show yeah but i think calories are still king at the end of the day when it comes to energy input and output and energy balance but all these other inputs hormones age genetics all do play a role and we can't ignore them what's often lost in those quick sound bites is that there's a lot more to it and i think we do people a disservice by saying calories don't count or everything or calories are everything you know like there's a lot more to it and i get very frustrated as someone who you know hears these frustrations from people who are just more confused now because now we've just you know a very big person in the field of nutrition comes

on and says that now Now we're more confused. And so I think it's really important to, A, have more context when we're talking about these things. And also, B, be willing to say we were wrong once or it can change our mind. And by you saying, you know, once upon a time, I believed this, but now I've got this information. I'm in this situation and I've changed my view on that. And also, we're learning more as a field because we're getting more information, we're getting more research. And so things are never black and white.

And, you know, we can never have this one absolute answer to everything. Yeah, it's interesting because I have this aspiration for social media in the future that people will stand back and ask more questions before they fire more shots because you'll you'll see social media posts and there's people diving in with their opinions and you just talked about context and it's so rare that you see someone comment on the social media piece to be like can i understand more context here i don't think you've painted the picture and I think the world would be a better and kinder place if more people did that and I suppose I only know of that because I'm a coach and I've had experience there that it's my job to ask all the questions I need to get a complete

picture otherwise I can't build a plan for someone that's hopefully going to work it's very true and i think it's it's also very tricky on the other side of the coin as if you are creating social media content to build your business or get more listens or whatever it might be because more and more they're asking for shorter videos more punchy videos more catchy titles and like as someone who who is doing that as well as i'm a health professional, and so context really matters to me, but also I want people to see the information I'm putting out because hopefully it's educational and helping them.

And it's a constant battle between like, you know, giving too much information and no one seeing it because algorithms like, that's boring, put that aside, versus someone who's willing to go on and say, calories don matter yeah that's interesting we both went off on a ramble but true and then soon ai is gonna take over so let's not get into that let's not get into that okay next question is what's a non-negotiable in your day sleep like yeah prioritizing sleep like i just underpin so much and having had quite a lot of health challenges over the last two years it's impacted me so much like when i had long covid

sleep was like hard it was just hard to get a good night's sleep and it made me so unfunctional as a human it makes me a better dad makes me a better boss makes me more loving to my wife like it's just everything so yeah i completely agree with you and the final question i am the food medic and this is the food podcast what would be your death row meal a roast big classic english roast all the trimmings yeah i love it yeah i think you're the second person to say that yeah we love a roast in the UK. Amazing. Well, thank you so much for giving us your time and insight today. If people want to follow you for more, get the book, where should we signpost everyone?

Yeah, I'm benkoomba online, C-O-O-M-B-E-R, so all platforms. And then the book is called How to Live an Awesome Life, and it's available on Amazon, Audible, in bookshops, and most of the normal places. Amazing. And I narrated the book as well. So if you read it, you'll get to hear a few tangents in the audiobook as well. That's lovely. Amazing. Thank you so much.

Thank you. I hope you found that episode helpful and it's inspired you to maybe work on at least one of the steps in Ben's life formula. Let us know on social media which one resonates with you the most. If you love this episode, you know what to do. Please leave a rating and a review and share it with someone you know will love it too. That's all for me. See you again next time.