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It was so great having Nate back on the podcast, who was wildly popular in his last episode. In this episode, we dive into a topic a lot of us unknowingly have – Adrenal Fatigue.

We discuss what adrenal fatigue is and the stages that we go through as symptoms increase. We discuss the connection between cortisol and insulin and the foods to eat more of and avoid.

We also go into the psychosomatic causes of adrenal fatigue: hustle + urgency culture, burnout + perfectionism.

We then go into how adrenal fatigue may be a sign that we are disconnected from our dharma, soul’s purpose, and true soul expression.

We both share our personal stories with this– you’re in for a good one! This episode is truly beyond a masterclass, with tons of wisdom + science here, infused with real life experience. I’m glad that we get to provide this information for free here on the podcast so it can support the lives of many and help bridge healing to the communities that need it most. Grab a hot cup of tea + notepad to take some notes!

 -Sahara Rose

 

 

Episode #478: How To Heal From Adrenal Fatigue – The Signs, Stages + Spiritual Causes with Nate Ortiz
By Sahara Rose

[00:00] Nate

Most people look for exercise because it makes themselves feel better, because that’s the only way they express their emotion, energy emotion. So, I have to teach them other ways they can have expression to express their emotion, because if they don’t, if a person has too much emotion in their body, then what happens at night, is that, that emotion overfloods their brain like a toilet being backed-up. And what happens is that this person starts overthinking about their life. And to numb that overthinking – wine, drugs, some eating, can help numb that down a little bit.

So, a person that’s stuck in a root chakra, usually is disconnected from their body. The more you’re stuck in a root chakra, the more you’re disconnected from your body, because the more you’re working from the ego. In my opinion, there’s no science to prove that, but the more you’re working from the ego and the GPS system to keep you safe on earth, and you lose the connection to your highest self, and to spirit, and to something bigger than yourself, to have faith, so, you’re stuck in fear, not faith. And the brain only entertains one at a time, you can’t have faith and fear. 

[01:13] Sahara

Hi, I’m Sahara Rose, and welcome back to The Highest Self Podcast, a place where we discuss what makes you, your soul’s highest evolvement. 

[01:20] Sahara

If it’s your first time listening, welcome! I’ve been doing this Podcast for over five years and I really started it because I believe that there was need, and there still is a need, to make spirituality more grounded, and relatable, and fun, and diverse. 

[01:35] Sahara

And I started this Podcast just wishing I had a safe space for myself to have these kinds of conversations, and it has, since, turned into a global movement, of over 35 million downloads, which I still really can’t compute with my mind, but the most amazing part are the conversations that I’ve had with people, people like Nate, who you’re going to hear from today, and all of the wisdom that so many of these incredible guests have shared here on these Episodes.

[02:02] Sahara

So, if you just started listening, hello, we’ve got like 500 Episodes for you to dive into! And if you’re here all the time, how excited are you to have Nate back on the Podcast!

[02:12] Sahara

So, I’m going to keep this intro short because the interview is 2 hours long, this is literally a masterclass, this is better than a paid masterclass that you would get on adrenal fatigue. Trust me, because I’ve signed up for many of them and this is better, this is the most in-depth overview of adrenal fatigue that I have ever seen, and I am someone who’s really looked into this because I have suffered from it, I have been diagnosed with adrenal fatigue multiple times since I was 21 years old.

And if you don’t know my story, when I was 21 years old, my body completely shut down, went into perimenopause, and doctors said that I would never be able to have children, I had zero estrogen, zero testosterone and really bad adrenal fatigue, digestive issues and a whole host of other imbalances, which brought me on my healing journey to Ayurveda, eventually to spirituality, eventually to living my dharma, my soul’s purpose, and then being here with you guys today. 

So, I share some of the gems of my journey along the way, as you’re listening to this, but I’m so excited to have Nate back on because he was on the Podcast about six months ago and it has been one of the most shared Episodes ever. 

[03:18] Sahara

So, I found Nate on TikTok, where I find many of the guests, because I like to hear from people that aren’t, like, on every single podcast, with their perfectly polished pitch and story, like, I like hearing from diverse people from different walks of life.

[03:33] Sahara

So, if you did not hear the first Episode with Nate, I highly recommend listening to it, it’s all about why you have digestive and hormonal issues, from a spiritual cause. I will link that Episode in the show notes, you can even pause this now and then go back and listen to it, or I’ll just give you a little synopsis on his story because I think that it gives so much more oomph and depth to the wisdom that he shares, because he’s a genius. Like, you’re going to see, just his wisdom of science, and the mind-body connection, and then bringing it into this deeper sense of purpose. But his story did not start out this way at all. So, just a little CliffsNotes’s version of it and you can listen to him tell his whole story on the Podcast.

[04:18] Sahara

But he, as a child, grew up in a very gang-ridden environment, right outside of New York, and he was born as a, this is his words, so I’m just going to put this in air quotes, “a crack baby”, his mother was addicted to heroin, and he had to learn, from a very young age, survival.

He, you know, experienced a lot of hardship in his life, he was even homeless for periods of his life, his dad was dealing drugs and would even get him involved in these situations, and he needed to learn, from a very young age, how to use his intuition, otherwise he could’ve been killed. And he knew that the only way out of this poverty-stricken area was for him to get into sports because those were the only people that he would seek at scholarships. 

So, he, every single morning, would show up, and he told his teacher “I’ll tell you everything about my life and what’s going on with my family if you open up the school gym early, every single morning, and I’ll be there at 6:00AM, and you shoot hoops with me”. So, he did that and got on the basketball team and then, eventually, got a scholarship to college, to actually play football, and in college, just learned so much about exercise and physiology and became a trainer. And then from becoming a trainer, started to realize that a lot of our imbalances were connected to the mind, and connected to the fashion, connected to deeper things, and rhen started to get even deeper, starting with Paul Check, and realizing how many of our physical symptoms actually come from childhood trauma. And then he started to put together the pieces of his life and starting to heal the trauma within himself, and that led to him having greater vitality and health, but also a deeper sense of purpose and following through with his dreams.

[06:04] Sahara

So, he’s been sharing a lot of incredible videos all about different forms of syndromes that we see in our society today, from adrenal fatigue, to fungus and candida, and the list goes on, but what I love about him the most is just where he comes from and the fact that he’s sharing this in such a unique way. And you’ll just hear his voice and his depth, and it’s so refreshing, for me, to hear it from someone who really needed to learn it for their own survival, their own selves, and to me, speaks a million times further that he was able to cultivate this wisdom despite the challenges that he was brought up with, despite not having money, even being homeless, and so many different obstacles that would’ve easily knocked many people off course. The fact that he was able to not only overcome this, but be able to share this wisdom with us today, is so invaluable and it’s people like him that I really love to support.

I’ve been helping him with writing his book and getting his message out there and he’s supporting me in getting stronger and more fit, and even healing my digestion. So, it is always such a beautiful opportunity to have him back here on the Podcast.

[07:15] Sahara

He actually came down to Miami, specifically, to record this Podcast in person, which just means so much, and you’re just going to get so much from this Episode. Like, I don’t even want to give it away because he goes into the stages of adrenal fatigue, the symptoms related to each one, how to heal it, diet, exercise, nutrition, but also, he opens up and shares that it’s not always a hero’s journey either.

And the first Episode, he inspired thousands of you to reach out to him and to really see how he has been able to take nothing out of something, but he shared that he still continued to struggle, especially with his own adrenal fatigue and social media, and you know, going to the next goal, after the next goal. So, at the end of the Episode, he really opens up around why he chose. And it’s just such a powerful conversation where we both open up a lot about our own journeys, struggling with stress and perfectionism and adrenal fatigue while also giving tangible tools. He’s just such a gem, you’re going to learn so much from him and I can’t wait to see the feedback that this Episode gets.

The last Episode was 90 minutes, this is even longer, so there’s like even 30 more minutes of gems. And we did it in person too, which is just, like, always the best energy and I know you’re going to love it!

[08:31] Sahara

So, even if you don’t know what adrenal fatigue is, maybe you’ve heard about it, we really start from the ground up and give so many tips and tools. You’re going to want to have your notebook for this one. I also recommend having, like, a cup of tea because this is really, like, a portal, this is a masterclass that we’re going to go into. So, have a cup of tea, get your notepads, you’re going to want to take some notes, you’re probably going to listen to this Episode three times, just saying.

[08:55] Sahara

So, without further ado, let’s welcome Nate Ortiz, back to The Highest Self Podcast. 

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[10:23] End of Advertisement

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[10:24] Interview

[10:24] Sahara

Welcome back Nate, to The Highest Self Podcast, it’s so good to have you here, and to be here in person in Miami.

[10:30] Nate

I’m super, super excited, so, thank you so much for having me! The first podcast that we did together was lifechanging, so, I’m super excited to be here.

[10:38] Sahara

Well, the first question I’d love to ask you again, if your answer has changed, is, what makes you your highest self?

[10:44] Nate 

I think you need to ask me that for the second time. Okay, so, the first time I said being honest with myself. For this one, staying clear. 

I think, a lot of times, in today’s world especially, there can be a lot of distractions where we can lose focus on what we’re here for.

So, what makes me my highest self is, I’m able to, always, when I feel like I’m getting out of balance, to readjust and get clear again on why I’m doing what I’m doing. And as soon as I get clear, then I start getting rid of distractions, then I start, basically, getting myself back to being balanced and staying consistent with my dreams. So, staying clear is what makes me my highest self.

[11:22] Sahara

I love that! So, in the last Episode, you told us about your story, and I think that that was the most riveting and surprising part for all of us, because, I found you on TikTok, because of your wisdom, and you are truly like, I call you like the gangster medical medium, you know. But your story is beautiful and it’s just such a testament to yourself. And I’m going to link that first Episode we did below, so you don’t need to tell your full story. 

For people first hearing you today, can you tell us a little bit about how you got to where you are now and why you have this sense for intuition, that I feel that your upbringing helped cultivate within you, even if was through trauma?

[11:59] Nate

Yeah, 100%. So, yeah, my upbringing is going to have a lot of correlation with today’s podcast, as far as the things that come with it, right? Like, I spoke about it in the first Episode and I made it – it’s a heroic story, but at the same time, these things can have consequences.

I think – and then, today, I’m going to be relating a lot to the subject because I’ve been through a lot of it. But my story made me who I am today, it helped me to get to where I am today for the simple fact that it helped me stay clear and basically consistent and persistent towards what I want in my life. I saw the worst of the worst, so I’m like – okay, this is an example, like, when my family’s at, living in the ghetto or going through drug abuse and people dying, that’s the worst-case scenario, right? And if I repeat those patterns, I’m going to end up like that.

So, my number one thing was like “Okay, I have to do the opposite, and if I do the opposite, then I know I can go where successful people end up at, right?” Having a college degree – that doesn’t mean that you’re successful, but I’m doing the opposite of what my family is doing. But my upbringing helped me a lot, for the simple fact of, when I went through hard times with business or school, I know that it wasn’t as hard as it was for a lot of my friends or the people I know, because I’ve been through a lot worse than that one situation.

So, if I failed a test or if I’m going through business and I’m not getting clients, or if I’m trying to lose weight and I can’t lose the weight, or I’m dealing with stress, I have a very strong tolerance towards stress, for the simple fact of my upbringing. It helped me stay persistent and stay consistent towards I want in my life and I never felt down from it, but it did come with side effects too. 

So, one of the things of that is, after a while, when you really come from nothing or you come from a stressful background, you can, kind of, be addicted to the stress. So, one of the things that I started to notice in my life is “Okay, why can’t I have a good time sitting down throughout the day, on a day off, and I have this urge that I have to do something?”, right? Or have this consistent hunger that doesn’t go away, as far as for success. And I thought it was just because I wanted to be successful, but I started to learn a little bit more about myself, I’m like “Oh, this is actually because it’s a deep fear that I’m going to end up, still, being in that situation that my family was in when I was growing up, or going back to the ghetto”, right? So, when you have that, it can create an imbalance in your life. 

So, being aware of that made me study the things that we’re going to talk about today because it was the only way, it was the biggest side effect of my life. I couldn’t enjoy the success, I couldn’t enjoy anything because I was stuck in this fight or flight. So, I had to learn all that, “Okay, let me find some more information about this”, I couldn’t find the information anywhere, I had to go deep to find information. 

I’ll be giving you, like, when I speak about a couple things, I’ll refer a lot of things because it’s pretty hard to find and I have an opinion on why it’s hard to find. I think people profit, big time, off of us being in fight or flight all the time. Yeah, that’s how it got me here. 

So, my story was, I had the ability to share my story the first time we did a recording, so, thank you for that, but it got me very far in my life. And one of the things, the reason why my upbringing continues to help me is, it helped me to stay persistent, I know what it’s like to go the other way, and I don’t want to be there.

[15:09] Sahara

And I think, a lot of times, our childhood traumas are the things that make us have this hyper-aroused nervous system, right? Or even hypo-aroused, depending on how your nervous system responds. So, the hyper-aroused state, which, I relate to that, of not being able to take that day off because you’re like “What am I supposed to be doing right now? What can I do to move the needle forward?”, because, often times, when you saw your parents hustle to survive, that’s all you know. So, if you’ve never seen an example of someone resting or enjoying themselves, of course, you’re going to feel like “Not only am I not worthy of it, but if I do it, I’m going to put my life at risk”. So, of course, we’re going to keep looking for these things. And I even notice it, as an entrepreneur, because as an entrepreneur, there are countless things for you to be stressed about, you know. It could be something on your social media, it could be your emails, your this, your that, it’s like, we put ourselves in these situations in a way to, like, heal that very thing that needs to be addressed.

I think a lot of us who, maybe, are attracted to entrepreneurship, have these types of backgrounds. And for some people, that has gone on for so long, they’re in the hypo-aroused state, where the nervous systems shut down and freeze. 

So, something that’s been in my life and in my awareness for over ten years now is this concept of adrenal fatigue. So, I remember the first time, in my early 20s, I did the cortisol saliva tests, and they were like “You have such low levels of cortisol because your cortisol levels, your stress hotmone, has been high for so long that your body has shut down”, and I was like “Well, I don’t feel like that, I got more to do, like, I’m in my early 20s”. And you know, throughout my life, I took a couple more of these tests, and sometimes it was, like, high and I was excited that the cortisol was high because that means that it’s better than the super low, but more recently, it was the super low again, which I shared with you, I was like “Is this horrible?” And I share this because I’m someone that, maybe people are like “Oh, Sahara has it figured out, Sahara even has a spiritual podcast”, but it’s like, even adrenal fatigue is showing up in my field and awareness, and I think most people probably, out there, have it So, can you share a little bit about what adrenal fatigue is?

[17:09] Nate

Yes! So, adrenal fatigue is, in a medical system, it’s not really respected, and it’s because the medical – of you go to a medical doctor, they’re looking for Addison’s or Cushinson’s, right? If your cortisol levels are too high or if your cortisol levels are too low. But there’s something in between, right, and if you fall in between that, then the chances of you being diagnosed correctly, or looked at like you’re crazy, is very high, because usually people that diagnose that is going to be naturopathic doctors, holistic doctors, and more and more people are going for that type of help. 

But adrenal fatigue, there’s three stages. Stage one, what we learn, is alarm stage. That’s when the adrenals are pumping out a lot of cortisol, and cortisol levels are high. When the cortisol levels are high, we feel great because we have energy all day. Cortisol levels get you in flight or fight, and flight or fight works because we’re in survival mode. So, the higher the cortisol levels are, the more of the flight or fight, we turn on the nervous system, the more the reptilian brain is working. The reptilian brain is only about safety and security. So, if you’re just stating off being an entrepreneur, you have high levels of cortisol, it can be a benefit because you’re doing everything you can, you’re going to push through being tired, you’re not even going to feel your body hurting, because cortisol and adrenaline can numb the body, so, this person feels like they’re unstoppable. And you usually see this, this person is able to go to work, this person’s able to do overtime at work and then leave work, go home, change and then go to the gym, and then have no problem staying in shape. 

And then you get to stage two of adrenal fatigue, and this is the resistance stage. And stage two is when a person’s circadian rhythm switches. So, normally, during the day, especially during the morning, your cortisol levels go up and then, throughout the day, they kind of come down. Fight or flight comes down, parasympathetic nervous system turns on, and this is when melatonin levels come up, and this is for rest and digest (the parasympathetic nervous system). What happens is, people have, when cortisol levels are very high, very high, very high, then it starts to come to a point where the cortisol levels are not being produced enough during the morning, so, now this person has a hard time getting out of bed, they have a hard time, even, they can sleep for 8 hours and feel as if they didn’t get any sleep that night. It’s really hard for them to get their day going, they can’t start the day without caffeine or stimulant. 

And what I see with clients, is when I start doing paperwork with them, you’ll first start seeing a cup of coffee, then two cups of coffee, then it can go up to like three to five cups of coffee, in stage two, just to get their day started, because coffee turns on the sympathetic nervous system and your cortisol levels. So, then, you have, during the night time, their cortisol levels are usually up and their melatonin levels are down, so, they consider themselves to be night owls, they can’t go to sleep at night, they’re up all night. And what happens usually with that person is, by the time night comes, they can’t go to sleep, they go to sleep late and then they start the cycle all over again, and it’s a nasty cycle. 

And then you get stage number three, which is the crash, which is usually when the person’s not producing enough cortisol throughout the day. And when a person’s not doing that, it comes with a lot. And you can still get tested and still not come back with Addison’s disease. So, you’ll start having many, many different issues, and I can break down all the symptoms because adrenal fatigue symptoms are all relatable for each stage, but they get worse, they turn on and they give you more pain. Anything in life, any time the nervous system is trying to indicate something to you and teach you something, the more you ignore it, we bring more pain. Sometimes it’s pain that comes as a consequence of our luck in life, right, like you can’t catch a break in life. So, it may not even be with your body, it can also be with your relationships, with the Universe, on even attracting things towards you, so, it goes deep. 

So, that’s adrenal fatigue, and there’s many different things and it gets deep because when I work with a client, and what I see with people, is that you have to understand, when you have any stage of adrenal fatigue, you have too much cortisol level production, too much stress, usually you’ll see people that are resistant towards the fact of hearing that they have too much stress, especially if they are a go-getter. So, what happens is, too much stress – a person thinks about “Well, when I was in my 20s, I never had this problem”, “When I was in my early 20s or even early 30s, I never had this problem”, so, trying to get this person to recognize that their too stressed is very difficult because they usually come back with good lab tests.

Number two, you have to understand, when you turn on cortisol levels to be high, the more stressed you are, the more you’re working from the root chakra. The more you work from the root chakra, the less energy that goes up to the highest chakra, seventh chakra. So, usually, you find these people stuck in thinking (subconsciously) not having a belief or an understanding that there’s something bigger out there to help them on their journey. 

So, any little thing that comes as a threat towards their safety and security, they’re going to go crazy, not crazy, but they’re going to put more stress on themselves because they think they have to control everything, even situations they have no control over. 

So, their adrenals, which produce cortisol and adrenaline, attached to the root chakra, but also your sacral chakra and your solar plex. It’s the one gland that connects to all three. So, then you’ll start seeing reproductive issues, digestive issues, and for people that have a hard understanding that, on a more spiritual side, I can bring it out scientifically, right, because cortisol levels produce fight or flight, turns off digestion, so, there goes your solar plex. The more fight or flight you’re in, you go into something called progesterone steal, where your body steals nutrition from Vitamin B5 and cholesterol that feeds your reproductive hormones (your sex hormones). It steals that to feed cortisol instead, so, to support cortisol. So, then you’ll start having imbalances with procreation. So, that’s chakra two.

And then chakra one, the safety and security, this person’s going to have a lot of issues with safety and security. Any threat to safety and security, family issues, any threat to either one of those, or there’s going to be some type of imbalance. And I’m going to go deeper on that.

[23:08] Sahara

I want to stop you right there because that was my exact lived experience in my early 20s, of, I got really deep into doing ashtanga yoga. So, three hours a day I was practicing this very intense form of yoga, I was raw vegan, I was in a really stressful period of my life, I didn’t know what my purpose was, I didn’t know what my job was going to be. Then I was also fighting with my family, so, that root chakra stuff, and them saying “You need to get a job for money”, and I stopped producing any hormones, so I stopped getting my period for two years, and then when I got blood tests they said “You’ve gone into perimenopause because you’re no longer producing any estrogen and testosterone, so you’re never going to be able to have a child”, and then that was related to me getting osteoporosis earlier in life. So, like, everything you’re saying right there, it’s just like reminding me that the cortisol was really at the root of a lot of this, especially from a more of, like, scientific level, as well as the spiritual level of, I had a root chakra imbalance, I didn’t feel safe, I felt like I needed to do something or go somewhere and figure it out, to survive, which then linked to my sacral of not feeling in my feminine, which was related to not getting my period, and I also had horrible digestive issues. Like, I couldn’t eat food without being in so much pain, which made me not want to eat food because I’m like “I don’t want to eat and, like, be on the couch, like, curling for so long”, and that made me more afraid of food, which made me more controlling, which made me more obsessed with the raw vegan thing, and it just kept linking on. Then I couldn’t focus on the heart chakra, the throat chakra, the third eye, the crown, I had to just focus on what would heal myself. So, like, everything you’re saying has been my experience.

And I feel so many people listening to this right now, especially women, especially, I’m noticing in the millennial, and I’m going to assume in the Gen-Z generation as well, because we are the generation that has grown up with screens, and internet, and social media, and things to do, and always feeling like you’re running behind, as well as diet trends and obsession with thinness, and all of those things. So, I think what you’re speaking into, this generation, this is our work to resolve it so it doesn’t continue to pass on.

[25:16] Nate

One hundred percent! And most of my clients are women, and you’re starting to see women in their 30s go through menopause, I’ve got them as my clients, right.

I had a client that couldn’t have her period for 14 years, and she was 14 years old.

[25:30] Sahara

Wow.

[25:31] Nate

And we got her, her first period, and she’s trying to work on having a child now, because of too much stress. 

The thing is, when a person – so, the childhood traumas is the first place I will look for. The reason why is because childhood trauma is subconscious and most of the things we do today, we know better, we know we should change, but subconsciously, changing anything to be subconscious takes time and it takes repetition. There’s two ways you can get into subconscious – repetition or trauma.

So, a trauma that is subconscious, you have to handle in the four layers of energy, is what I call it. You have to deal with the muscular system, you have to deal with the nerves (the nervous system), you have to deal with the organ and gland, and then you have to dig into the emotion, energy emotion, into that zone (I call it zones) because it’s easier for me to picture it in my brain.

[26:20] Sahara

So, whenever we hear the word zone, you’re talking about chakras?

[26:23] Nate

Yes, exactly, because I have a lot of respect for chakras and where it came from, and it’s 100%, they were way ahead of their time, right? But today some people get – as soon as they hear chakra, they get a misunderstanding of what it is. And it is, the zones is – I break it down scientifically and then the expression or the consciousness at what that state, that zone is at, expresses where that chakra is at, right? The conclusion of it is the chakra, but to break it down, to be scientific, to help people who really, can’t really get into that, I help them.

For an example, you have, say, the root chakra thing, for example. You have adrenals, that’s the organ and gland; the muscles that are responsible for that are your legs. Okay, so, one of the emotions stand points of that is standing up for yourself, right? 

So, if a person has a root chakra…   

[27:12] Sahara

And legs were always my weakest muscle.

[27:14] Nate

Exactly, that’s what you’re going to see. Now, for the person that wants to know that scientifically, why, well, the legs would be the last place a person stores fat on, the more cortisol levels they’re producing, because the higher the cortisol levels, the more likely the fat around the organs is going to take the extra fat.

[27:29] Sahara

Which is why they tend to have more apple shaped bodies.

[27:31] Nate

Exactly! There you go! So, another thing is, from 1-8, you’re going through the consciousness of standing up for yourself, you’re learning the consciousness of what it’s like, you’re going to the root chakra, “Who’s my family? Who can I trust? How do I survive? What is safe? What isn’t safe? How do I walk and how do I stand up for myself?” 

So, the emotion that you’ll find a lot, with people that have a dysfunction with the root chakra is, I look for the legs being tight, levels of anxiety, the nervous system showing me anxiety, right. So, I’ll do a couple muscle testing with them, and then I look for their beliefs. A test that you can do with someone that has really, really bad issues with being too, I call it stuck in fight or flight, is, they stress about money, subconsciously, money is an issue. They can have money in their account but they still work as if they’re broke and they live a life as if they’re broke, right, or, they have bad spending habits.

So, if we have – one of the exercises I like to do is take a piece of paper and draw a line right down the middle. On the left, how much money is coming out, on the right, how much money is coming in. Most of the time you find people have more money coming out than going on, or most people never even look at their bank account because it’s a trigger. Money, safety and security are triggers for people that are stuck in fight or flight and their root chakra. 

So, adrenal fatigue work, it is the consciousness, the scientific consciousness, or the expression, of what we understand when the body has a hormonal imbalance of the root chakra. So, when you look at it, you can’t help this person unless you go through all four. And I’m going to be sharing a lot of different things, for the audience today, to help them get through it and recognize it more. 

And then you have number three – so, number one you have the adrenals, cortisol levels being out of balance; number two, you have the chakra itself; number three, you have something called the reptilian brain. 

You have three parts of the brain, reptilian brain, emotional brain, intellectual, okay? Scientifically, reptilian brain is still considered to be the reptilian brain, but in science it’s called the limbic system, the limbic brain and then the neocortex. 

So, the more stressed a person is, the more their consciousness is going to be pulling from the reptilian brain, the reptilian brain is going to be activated. So, the chances of this person having emotional issues in relationships, or being present in a relationship, is going to be very high. The chances of this person being intellectual, that’s like the last stage. 

I like to make this example – imagine you have a house, you have a basement, first floor, second floor. The first floor is where everything that you depend on to live in a house safely is at, your AC, your food, to control your heater, everything is in the basement. The first floor is a stove, a tv, and your partner, and your kids. The second floor is a room that you have with a nice desk, with a view of the outside, it looks beautiful, this is where you journal, this is where you create your content, this is where you create ideas, become creative. 

If there’s a flood in the basement, a person’s going to be spending most of the time in the basement fixing the flood, because it’s going to wreck the safety of that house. By the time they come up to the first floor, they’re not thinking about becoming a creative and going to hang out upstairs, they’re most likely starving because they’re skipping meals. So, by the time they finally get their meals and finally do that, then, the time that they can spend with somebody, they barely even have energy for. So, they can feel irritated because they couldn’t do anything for ‘I’, but they’re spending time with ‘we’. And then, usually, the sit on the couch and they have some type of compulsive behavior with overeating, or some type of addiction. You’re going to find addiction in adrenal fatigue hand-in-hand. So, any time I know somebody has adrenal fatigue, I’m like “What’s your addiction?” Work can be an addiction, alcohol can be an addiction, overeating food.

[31:02] Sahara

Chocolate.

[31:03] Nate

Chocolate, right! And then, after doing that, they feel guilty, so, then they’ll go “Oh, man, I’ve got to create…”, they feel guilty and they think about how they should be upstairs creating something for their life, to change this pattern.

What I’m trying to say is, when a person is stuck in reptilian brain, that’s the basement. Then, the second floor, they barely have time for emotional, so they can have a partner that’s complaining that they’re not getting time or they can feel guilty because they’re not being present with their kids or whatever the case, or their friendships, to the point where by the time they’re doing that there, they’re just doing catch-up, they skip means. 

So, a person with adrenal fatigue is going to be skipping meals and they’re going to be pushing themselves even more, you’re going to find people go to the gym.

One of things I have clients do, I have them understand, I teach them, you can’t strength train right now, five times a week, what is strength training, what is training a muscle becoming catabolic, what does cortisol do? It makes your body catabolic, it breaks down muscle tissue, it breaks down tissue, breaking down is what catabolic means. Anabolic means building – sleeping and resting is anabolic, working out and running and exercising is catabolic. If a person is already catabolic and we make him go to the gym, and we have them in the gym and they’re pushing themselves, they become more catabolic, which makes them more stressed. So, then they start to cycle all over again, and most people look for exercise because it makes themselves feel better, because that’s the only way they express their emotion, energy, emotion. So, I have to teach them other ways they can have expression to express their emotion, because if they don’t, if a person has too much emotion in their body, then what happens at night is that, that emotion overfloods their brain like a toilet being backed-up, and what happens is this person starts overthinking about their life. And to numb that overthinking, wine, drugs, some eating, can help numb down that a little bit. 

So, a person that’s stuck in a root chakra, usually is disconnected from their body. The more you’re stuck in the root chakra, the more you’re disconnected from your body, because the more you’re working from the ego, in my opinion, there’s no science to prove that, but the more you’re working from the ego and the GPS system to keep you safe on earth and you lose the connection to your highest self, and to spirit, and to something bigger than yourself, to have faith. So, you’re stuck in fear, not faith. And the brain only entertains one at a time, you can’t have faith and fear. So…

[33:21] Sahara

And I want to note on this, what we just said about the root chakra, because I think it’s really important to note the differentiation between a balanced and imbalanced root, or zone one, because a lot of times we think “Oh, spirituality must be to be disconnected to my body”, you know, if it’s the upper chakras, then it should be “I should be, like, only meditating, only hanging out in the attic”, and it’s not that. It’s, we don’t want to have the shadow of the root chakra, which is the worry about survival, the worry about safety, the reaction, the anger, anger at every other person and not at you”, and it’s like, that’s really coming from the ego, which is also connected to solar plexus. But when I think of that energy, it’s very different than the energy of, like, a grounded root chakra. 

[34:03] Nate

One hundred percent!

[34:03] Sahara

Which is someone who’s really in their body and feeling things, and connected to earth, and connected to dance and movement. And I see, sometimes, people lump the two of them together, so they think “Oh, root is worse than third eye, third eye is where it’s at”, and then they try to disconnect themselves from the body because they think that “Oh, if you’re focused on the body, that’s not spiritual”. 

[34:24] Nate

No. And thank you for bringing that up. Absolutely, not. It is when the adrenals have an adrenal fatigue and it has a dysfunction that correlates and will make it an unbalanced root chakra. It’s very important to have – your root chakra, when you’re balancing your root chakra, then you’re able to work through the other chakras in a balanced manner. Some people meditate, or some people have a hard time using their imagination because they are so stuck in that, subconsciously. 

So, no. You want, in my opinion, the way I envision it is, the root chakra keeps you on earth, right? There’s a benefit to having fight or flight, right? It saves our life, it gets things done, but being stuck there all the time, it’s kind of, like, you lose connection from what’s above you, which is, I like to say, your universe, the universe, right. 

You can get some people who get so out of balance and say “The root chakra and the ego, you want to destroy forever”, and you want to stay here. I work with a lot of those clients too, and when they’re stuck in the spiritual and have no balance in their root chakra, you can find these people not really be there for their responsibilities, their bills, their relationship with their children. 

And one thing that I’ve learned from my mentor is that you have three different clients, and one of the clients will be the super spiritual, where they think, when you’re talking, they’re looking at you and waiting for you to speak, to basically show you how wrong you were, and to show you how smart they are. But usually, the more spiritual a person is, and no connection to their root chakra, the more likely they’re going to have money issues with being broke. 

[35:57] Sahara

Go to Venice Beach!

[35:58] Nate

Exactly, exactly! So, I remember I had this conversation with this one client, she was telling me that she had a spiritual coach, and I have no problem, when I work with a client, that they have coaches or whatever, because most of my clients are going to have a chiropractor, a therapist, and I’m like “Okay, awesome!” And what she was doing with me is, when I would speak about something, she would turn down everything, she would send me emails and she was sending copy/paste emails from her spiritual coach on what they’re saying, and then she would put me in a group chat with the spiritual coach. And I’m a very respectful guy, I like to avoid conflict, he was basically telling her everything opposite, like nutrition, sleeping, everything, and I was like “Okay, look, you know, maybe you should go on your journey and go that way”. But long story short, I told – I get these all the time, these clients that have these coaches. In my mind, I didn’t want to say anything, I wrote in my notes, just, you know “Just be aware of that”, and then she ended up telling me she had to fire him because he kept on coming. And then she got another one who was a woman, and she kept on coming, and they would basically overcharge her and started borrowing money and things like that because they were having financial issues. 

So, at first, I didn’t believe my mentor, when he told me that, I’m like “I got to see that”, but then I started seeing the cycle, and that happened three years ago. So, as I started seeing that cycle, I became aware of it because it’s important…

[37:15] Sahara

Yeah, the embodiment. If the embodiment is not there, then yeah, you have all these ideas that you talk about in your head, but you’re not living it. And that’s why, to me, like, working out is a spiritual practice because I’m feeling my muscles and it working together, I’m creating more groundedness and connection to the earth, which is my body, which is the collective, and seeing it as the altar, not this thing that’s outside of me, but seeing myself as that. However, I also remember, I had a friend who I was traveling with for some time, and she was like a bikini bodybuilder competitor, she was only body, there was – all she could think about was “Okay, what am I going to eat”, and this. And when we would travel, everything revolved around her food schedule. 

You know, so, it’s like, the importance of like “Yes, be in your body and know that you’re not your body”. Like, cultivate a personality and know you’re not your personality. Work on your mind and you’re also not your mind. And have spirit and also know you’re human. And, like, the duality of all of it.

[38:10] Nate

Yeah, balance. I tell people all the time, the hardest thing for me to do is, I have to sell balance to people. You know, people come to me like “Oh, what do you think about this one diet?”, well, what do you think about that one diet? Is it working for you? 

[38:21] Sahara

Well, it’s confusing. I mean, I’ve asked you about so many, I’m like “What do you think about what this person says about form?” Even just the form in exercising, people have so many different, you know, contradicting facts and I think that contributes to our adrenal fatigue because we’re trying to be healthy and we’re trying to do it right, and this one documentary says go vegan, and this one says go paleo, and this one says go macrobiotic, and that one says ayurvedic, and we’re like “What do we do?” And it’s like, people say “Listen to your body”, and it’s like, you can convince your body of anything.

[38:48] Nate

You can! Placebo effect, right?

[38:49] Sahara

Exactly!

[38:50] Nate

One of the things I do with a client is, if they’re having that feeling with a diet, with anything, I say “Try it and document it”. So, for an example, if you’re trying different diets, okay, how’s your bowel movements, how’s your sleep, how’s your skin, how’s your energy, how’s your mood, how’s your stress? And then, usually, you’ll see people, when they start documenting it, they’ll have a belief that this is the best diet in the world, but then, they start seeing differently when they document it. 

[39:14] Sahara

Right, and it takes a few months too.

[39:16] Nate

One hundred percent! 

[39:17] Sahara

That, like, for me, raw vegan was great for the first few months because I had all this toxicity in my body that I needed that. And then after a few months, it wasn’t.

[39:24] Nate

And that’s what makes you awesome, because you’re able to understand that, right? You know, it’s all about us becoming a teacher of ourselves. I can’t tell you what’s best for you and say, like “You’ve got to know yourself”, that’s why – the worst thing you can do is rob someone from their experience, that’s the last thing I ever want to do. So, if I see a person that really wants to try this one thing, I’m like “Try it”, and they’re like “This person said this and that person said that”. When you get two people that contradict each other, the best thing you need to do is try both of them and see what works for you. Because one works for the group of people that may have toxins in their body, that knows plant-based was great for them. Another may have issues when it comes down to dysbiosis is their gut and having digestive issues, and notice that any plant food is making them bloated, so going carnivore for a little bit is going to help them balance out the Cebo, balance the small bacterial overgrowth is going to die off, dysbiosis is going to die off. And both of them are great, but what are you going to see? Most times you’re going to see people come out on YouTube or come out and admit that they had to go back and have meat, or they had to go back and have plants, and not a lot of people are actually admitting it because they created a brand behind it.

But long story short, that’s another thing, telling yourself the truth, being honest with yourself and being clear, are two things that are very important for us to navigate when there’s a bunch of different confusion and distractions.

[40:42] Sahara

Yes! So, I want to talk about body types and adrenal fatigue, because I have read that there’s an adrenal body type and that looks like more of an apple shaped body, you tend to put on, not just fat, but even have a sturdiness around your waist area. So, would you say most people who have adrenal fatigue were, like, born with this body type, or it develops? Can you be pear shaped and have adrenal fatigue?

[41:06] Nate]                                                           

Great question! So, adrenal fatigue, and you can learn this in the book “Adrenal Fatigue” by James L. Wilson, he has the best book on that. Adrenal fatigue can start at birth, it can start when you’re in a womb. If your mother has adrenal fatigue, you’re going to be born with weak adrenals, and then, when you’re a child, you can get a diagnosis of attention disorder of ADHD because the nervous system is being overwhelmed, so, trying to get me to sit down when my nervous system is overwhelmed. 

We overlook a lot of things – number one, we overlook the nutrition that most people are taking in; we overlook the lights, the lights hitting off our skin creates cortisol levels that go up (EMF, right); we overlook a lot of things. So, if you have a child that’s not sleeping, that has weak adrenals from birth, then has lights around them and then has to sit in the class for 8 hours, and you can’t get this child to sit down, that’s not even including the toxins in the water and the air, etc., they’re going to get diagnosed with attention disorder, or ADHD.

So, a person can be born with weak adrenals. The adrenal body, when the body is under a lot of stress, here’s what happens: the body, it is called, they don’t believe in adrenal fatigue as a term, so one thing you’ll learn is that it’s hypo-adrenio, hypo means low, adrenio means adrenals. The production of the adrenals producing enough cortisol is low. So, what happens is, you’ll find people start having, the first thing I see, blood glucose issues (blood sugar issues). So, if a person has blood sugar issues, that means that, what’s responsible for blood sugar? Insulin. So, the more stressed a person is, your body goes into, your hypothalamus pituitary adrenal (HPA) gets a signal from the nervous system that they’re stressed. It can be stress from the environment, it can be stress from your digestive tract, it can be stress from a virus, those are the top three that you usually can see. When the body gets that signal, the hypothalamus communicates with the pituitary and adrenals to have an end product of cortisol and adrenaline. When that is produced, if a person doesn’t have sugar in front of them present, the body will produce its own blood sugar through gluconeogenesis. Your liver has stored glycogen, it will pull that glycogen out. 

Now, when I went to school, we also learned, the more stressed a person is, and the less glycogen they have, they can start turning, converting, muscles from their arms, and their butt, and their legs, into – you can break that muscle tissue into protein, it’s glucose as well. I don’t want to go that deep, but I just want to throw that out there. 

So, if a person is pulling up blood sugar from their liver, now, blood sugar is present, that means insulin has to be present. So, then, insulin comes in, takes the blood sugar out, and a person starts having something called hypoglycemia, or become hypoglycemic, and then they start that process all over again, how can they naturally bring up the blood sugar.

[43:50] Sahara

Which is different that diabetes, you know. Because I think, sometimes, you go to a regular doctor and you’re like “Check my blood sugar”, like “Oh, it’s normal”, because they’re only looking at the extremes, right?

[44:00] Nate

Yes, and there’s something I came across called The Bell Curve, where, if a person does not get diagnosed, I mean, doesn’t hit the specific numbers that they’re looking for to be diagnosed, they’re left with syndromes, that’s adrenal fatigue, they’re left with syndromes because they’re not Cushinson’s and they do not have Addison’s, you’re left in between, you’re left with syndromes. 

So, yes, it’s different when you go in, but in the book “Adrenal Fatigue” by James L. Wilson, who’s a medical doctor, who did it for over 25 years, where he explains in the book is that, diabetes, you’ve got to see which one came first, is it diabetes or is it the adrenals that weren’t working properly. So, I’m saying all that to say, if you look at someone who’s a diabetic or pre-diabetic, they store most of their fat around their belly. If you look at someone who’s going through adrenal fatigue, they can start storing their fat around their belly. 

Now, women and men store fat differently. Women usually store it around their belly and their hips; men store it around their chest and their belly. 

So, when it comes down to body types, it’s called the visceral effect, the more fat that we store behind our skin, the more likely that there is a metabolic syndrome present, and you usually can find, if someone has a metabolic syndrome, or pre-diabetes, or blood sugar issue, that’s why I say blood sugar issues, because they didn’t get diagnosed yet, it can create adrenal issues. If they have adrenal issues from cortisol, then they can create blood sugar issues. You’ve got to see which one came first. But the protocol that I put people on takes care of both, so we’re not guessing.

And in the book, the book that I referred to, the author explains, in that book, that every time a person has adrenal fatigue, has blood sugar issues. So, this person’s going to be tired, this person’s going to be always craving sugar, this person’s going to be having, I can get into more details about the symptoms, but this person can be having issues with feeling light-headedness, this person can feel, when they eat sugar, their body becomes resistant or glucose intolerant, where they get more tired after eating. So, based on the blood sugar and how the blood sugar works with the response of insulin and cortisol, the body thinking that, let’s look at it from a non-scientific approach, the body believes that it has to survive. What are the most important things to the body? The organs. Fat is stored energy, the body brings stored energy around the organs – in the organs of your heart, your liver, usually non-alcoholic fatty livers being looked at, or looked for, and the belly. So, yes, the adrenal fatigue body can come in different shapes, you can say, due to men storing more fat around the belly and chest, and women store more fat around their belly and hips and legs.

[46:34] Sahara

So, if someone’s listening to this and they’re like “I feel like I store some fat around my belly, but it’s more around my legs”, does that mean they have less chance of having adrenal fatigue or no?

[46:44] Nate

No, no, no, absolutely not. Because then, we have to look at, you don’t just look at one thing, my brain does not work like that. I look at everything holistically. So, you look at that, that’s the last thing I really look at. I look for what’s their problem, first. They’ll give me symptoms, digestive issues, sleeping issues, PMS, and then, as they give me these issues, most of the time I’m working with clients, it’s on Zoom, I can’t even see their body, then I fill in the blank with all the rest and say “Okay, do you have more stored belly fat? Do you notice it’s hard for you to get up in the morning? Okay, do you notice that you always stress about safety and security?”, and then I’ll go down the list and then I’ll see, I’m like “Okay, I know what I’ve got to deal with now”. And sometimes, the deeper the client is, the more challenging it is. You have to have a strong skill set to coach this type of client because you’re working with a client who, they always got the result by working more. The approach that I have to give them is not working as much, that goes for exercise, that goes for everything. And when you do that, you build a consciousness out of the safety and security. You build the consciousness at being in fight or flight. When you’re no longer in flight or fight, you don’t know who you really are, so we have to create a new version of you and your imagination, your highest self, your best version of yourself, we have to create a version of you that you know you’re capable of getting to and we have to create a dream.

So, I have a way that I want to bring to how a person to get the results, but one of the things is finding what your purpose is, what your dream is. What are you willing to change for?

So, a lot of the things that I try to get them to see thing, bringing the subconscious out with a lot of presentations, with a lot of art work, helps me a lot with my clients.

[48:25] Sahara

So, yes, let’s talk about, now, healing this. 

[48:27] Nate

Yes.

[48:28] Sahara

So, let’s say we’re at stage one of adrenal fatigue, so, we’re noticing, maybe, there’s a bit of tiredness, maybe we’ve done a test and our cortisol levels are, at this point, is it already too high or is it too low, if it’s at stage one?

[48:42] Nate

Stage one is too high. Stage one is high all throughout the day, this person feels at an all-time high. This is, we can usually feel this in our 20s, you can feel it at any stage, but I find it with myself and you say your story, a lot of my clients’ stories, we started off in our 20s, when we first start to get out of college and, you know, you can go out and drink with your friends, wake up the next day, you don’t feel anything, your body is, you know, is never sore, you feel unstoppable and you do a lot, you grind out. And then you go into stage two where it starts to drop in the morning. And cortisol levels are meant to rise in the morning, usually light hitting your skin turns on the production of cortisol, that’s why going to sleep with the phone on your face, or the tv on and sleeping all night, you’re not allowing your body to get into deep sleep. 

So, yeah, if you want to help somebody, there’s a couple things I’ve been saving these lists if symptoms. Cognition, a person has a hard time staying focused. A person does not feel motivated, nothing really makes them happy, or they don’t want to participate in fun, not because they’re a boring person, it’s because they just don’t have the energy. Low sex drive is a huge one; cravings for salt. The adrenals, there’s a connection between adrenals and salt. When the body has a lot of adrenal issues or imbalances, that creates the body to get rid of a lot of fluid. So, one of the things that the body wants to do is hold onto fluid. If you meet someone who is a pre-diabetic, they usually pee a lot. So, a lot of the times, this person can get caught peeing out a lot of the micronutrients and minerals like potassium, salt, magnesium, that’s another one. So, you have digestive issues, fight or flight, or stress, cortisol turns on sympathetic nervous system, turns off digestion. So, when you eat, food just sits there and doesn’t get digested properly, so you’ll see things like Cebo, IBS is an easy one to see with people. Okay, then you get – waking up in the morning is really hard for this person, it’s really hard. You get a person that, they are starting to refer to themselves like a different person “I’m not like who I used to be. I used to do this”, you hear these stories on what they used to do, how they used to have energy, and they don’t have that. 

Sugar, cravings for sugar is going to be another big one as well; storing weight around their belly; unexplained weight gain. When you look it up, a lot of people talk about losing weight. I run into, probably, in every ten people, one or two people who lose the weight, who are going through malnourishment of not gaining weight because they don’t eat. 

A lot of people who are in the fight or flight don’t really have an appetite especially in the morning time, because cortisol levels being produced, produces glucose neogenesis and blood sugar by the time afternoon comes around, they can find themselves hungry, and if they’re not prepared, they’re snacking on a bunch of different things that are now bringing their blood sugar up or down. 

So, those are just some of the symptoms, and I named other ones, I know when I’m done with this, I know I forgot to say these five, but I’m going to try to have a reference to all of this. I send you or I can have it set up on the link to my Bio on my social media. 

There’s six things I do: Number one, first thing I do, on the first day, I’m talking to the client. The more stressed a person is, if they’re in stage one, the more I can dance with trying to bring up, do dream mapping – something called dream mapping. Number one thing I like to do is sit a client down and figure out what do they love enough to want to change for. So, there’s two questions I go through with them. Number one: what is a goal that you’ve never accomplished before, that you really want to accomplish? Number two: how would your life change when you accomplish this goal? Right here, it brings them into a different state, I’m bringing their imagination in and they’re getting out of the fight or flight. Because fight or flight makes this person fear and doubt and focus on “What is 100% something I can do and I know I have the facts behind?” When you bring up faith and you bring up the imagination, these are these things you’re looking forward to; that you can see yourself doing. So, those two questions usually get a person to wake up.

Then we figure out, we carve out their dream from there, then we make a dream map, put that in a circle.

[52:31] Sahara

And I just want to add to that, that for me, I always tell people my greatest healer was not the foods, it was not the herbs, it was not any of those things, it was connecting to my dharma, my soul’s purpose, because that was the missing link of why I felt disconnected from my body, from my mind, from everything. And me, connecting to something larger than me, and having a sense of direction and purpose, it’s like, it made me not want to worry about my health anymore, you know. Whereas before that, it was like I was obsessed with my health and if I wasn’t, like, eating, I was thinking about what I was going to eat and then reading about what to eat, and it was just, you know… And in a way it was a passion, but then it was like “What is the point of all of this?” To me, the purpose of health is so we can live our dreams, so we can fulfill our dharmas, not so we just get a gold star of having perfect digestion and perfect health and perfect hormones, it doesn’t even actually exist, right? There’s always going to be something. 

So, I think that this is so important because, you know, also, when you are in the healing journey, it might feel like a sacrifice at first, of like “Wait, so if I go to dinner with friends, like, I can’t eat the pasta that everyone’s eating” or “I can’t have that birthday cake of my friend’s?” And you know, especially when it comes to adrenal fatigue, like, sugar, is a really big thing, and that, for a lot of people, is one thing that they don’t want to give up, and not just, like, refined sugar, but, like, bread and pasta, and, like, all of those. And sometimes you just have to connect to something greater than you and realize that you, being low in energy, you feeling just depleted all the time, you not having the cognitive ability to finish the task that you’re starting, is holding you back from living, like, your best life, and being creative, and expressive, and free, and abundant, and all of these things. It’s like “Is the pasta really worth it?” And when you put it together like that, it’s like “No, of course not”.

[54:22] Nate

That’s beautiful that you just said that, that’s amazing, because that’s exactly what I do with my client. After we figure out their dream, then we have to figure out what do they need in order to accomplish that dream. Core values – putting… Most of them put me time, me time to move my body, me time to dance or do some type of art work, me time to eat properly, drink enough water… So, after making that list, we have core values. So, when someone goes and tries to get you to do something that goes against your core values, you learn how to say no. I teach them “Your yes isn’t good enough until you learn how to say no”. 

So, you can’t have that pasta? You can have that pasta, how’s that going to make you feel tomorrow? You have the weekend that you were going to work on your dream, but now, you don’t have the energy because you’re recovering from last night. So, I always ask them “Is that going to help or hurt your dream?” And that’s up to you, I’m not here to force you to do anything, I’m here to work with you.

You’re going to see people have issues because addiction is a part of, the more tired a person is, the more likely they’re going to have an addiction issue, because they’re looking for a way to numb themselves, they’re looking for a way to connect to something, that’s why they can become compulsive with spending as well.

So, figure out their dream. After we figure out their dream, we figure out the core values. After we figure out the core values, we see who respects our no. If those that don’t respect our no, at the moment, they don’t get a dream team jersey. What’s a dream team jersey? The people that respect our core values, we give them a jersey and then we pull them to the side and we tell them our ideas, we tell them what we’re doing, we tell them we’re on a new diet or we’re telling them how we’re going to go for that one dream of ours. These are the people that get our time and energy, when we have time and energy. The people who don’t get a dream team jersey are the people who don’t get that because we cannot afford to lose our energy explaining on why it’s important to chase your dream in life or do something you love to people who are negative, who bring us down. And then when you’re done with that conversation, they’re pulling you into a nightmare.

[56:11] Sahara

And that’s why I tell people to go on an advice detox, because we’re so used to asking everyone on our lives for advice before we take anything, that we lose sight of our own intuition and our ability to make decisions and trust our decisions.

And I know for me, with my parents, like, especially in my early 20s, when I was going through all this adrenal and hormonal stuff, every time I was, like, going to make a change, I would tell them but I was, like, actually really looking for their approval before doing it, which, I would never get, but I would still keep doing it and it was like, this like – and then one day I just realized, I’m like “Why don’t I just stop telling them everything I’m going to do and do it”, and it was like, but I didn’t have that cultivation, yet, of my root and my solar plexus chakra yet, that I was still, like, needing the affirmation and the pat on the back, and the support, and feeling like I had someone behind me, until I realized like “No, bitch, I can stand on my own legs”.

[57:04] Nate

One hundred percent, one hundred percent! And that’s – we’re looking for confirmation, and usually that’s solar plex. But yeah, one hundred percent, when you – I like that, what do you call that, detox advice?

[57:14] Sahara

Advice detox. Yeah, even if it’s for 30 days, like, just don’t ask anyone for advice because you know, like, in any situation, everyone’s going to answer from their level of awareness, right? And everyone also has their own agendas, right? And like, some people’s agendas is to keep you close to them.

[57:30] Nate

Yes.

[57:31] Sahara

And keep you close them might be keeping you small. 

[57:34] Nate

Yep, because you – here’s what I find out. When a person tells somebody, say somebody is going to lose weight and their mother wants to lose weight, but knows she failed in the past. And now, you do your core values and say “Listen, I’m not going out this weekend”, and their mother or their friend go “Why not? Why are you not going out?”, and he goes “I’m trying to lose weight”, and they go “Oh, you want to lose weight? You think you’re going to lose weight? You’re never going to lose weight, you’re going to be fat forever”. And what happens is, at that moment, I try to get my clients to understand, that’s your friend or your family member projecting their shadow because deep down inside they know they should be doing the same. And you can run into people’s partner doing that; I’ve run into a lot of, I mean, just imagine, a 29-year-old dude with tattoos coaching your wife, when you’re 45. A lot of men can have an issue with that, right, and start bringing down their wife, “Oh, you’re never going to fix yourself” or “You’re never going to do that”, because I don’t know, I feel like some of the people that I work with, I notice their partners are scared for their partner to become a better version.

[58:32] Sahara

They think you’re going to steal their girl!

[58:34] Nate

No, no, I think they just fear their partner doing things they know they should be doing as well.

[58:41] Sahara

Or even, their partner feeling confident and maybe being like “I don’t want to be in this relationship anymore”.

[58:45] Nate

Exactly. 

[58:46] Sahara

You know, or like “We always drink on the weekends, you want to leave that?” or like “We always order Chinese food and binge Netflix shows, like, you want to leave that?”, and it’s like we want someone else, but it’s, like, the same thing as the heroin addict wants someone else to do that with them and that’s why most heroin addicts fell into the drug from their partner introducing them to it. 

[59:06] Nate

Didn’t know that.

[59:07] Sahara

Yeah.

[59:08] Nate

You told me a lot today, I like that, now I’m going to use that.

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[59:11] Advertisement

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So, you can head over to rggquiz.com to learn what your unique Rose Gold Goddess Archetype is. Again, that’s rggquiz.com and you can find that link in the show notes. And I’ve created custom graphics that you get in your results so you can share which Rose Gold Goddess Archetype you are. I’m super excited to see! 

[1:00:42] End of Advertisement

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[1:00:44] Nate

When a person is going through – we have core values, they learn how to say no, and then when they start figuring out who’s on their dream team, they start noticing how much time and energy they’re wasting on the people that weren’t on their dream team. And then we teach them the four pillars of health. 

So, now that you have your dream, your core values, your dream team, now we have to keep you balanced. I like to call this ‘the charger to your dream’. Your dream is the battery to life, this is what I like to look at. It’s your battery to life, it’s what gets you through the day, it’s what gets you up in the morning. But then, that battery needs to be charged and that battery is charged through: 1) you need to make sure that you’re eating appropriately for your metabolic type. You need to be eating at a point where you know what’s helping you. With someone with adrenal fatigue, we have to be very aware of giving our body food that digests fast. Number one, just processed food, white flour, even fruits that are on a high glycemic index. We’ve got to be careful, because remember, your body is going through stages of hypoglycemia when you’re really stressed as it is. 

[1:01:47] Sahara

Like a banana smoothie with dates and like, you know.

[1:01:49] Nate

Oh yeah, you’re drying out. And you’ll notice, what I notice…

[1:01:52] Sahara

I used to eat an acai bowl every day and I thought “Oh, I’m so healthy because I’m having acai bowls”, and I didn’t even realize, some, a lot of places you go to, they’re even using acai sorbet. You’re sort of eating an ice-cream bowl after the gym and thinking it’s healthy, or back when I used to think pink berry was healthy, I was, like, proud of myself for having a frozen yoghurt because I thought, like, it was marketed as this like really healthy low glycemic thing. And we don’t realize too, it’s like – and I think there’s a whole conversation, and we won’t get into that, of like, some people say humans are meant to live off of carbs and they’re like the high carb, like, 30 bananas a day people; then you have people who are, like, carnivores, and there’s, like, everything in between. But what I hear you saying is, for adrenal fatigue there’s a specific.

[1:02:35] Nate

Yeah. You’ve got to see what stage they’re in. The more sensitive a person is to – and there’s things that you can see when you’re sensitive – if you eat a banana, you notice that you’re starving in the next hour, but back in the day, you used to eat a banana and it used to keep you full for hours.

[1:02:48] Sahara

Oatmeal – my mom’s like “Eat oatmeal every day, it’s so good for you”, and I would eat and be so hungry after.

[1:02:52] Nate

There you go. So, then, right there, that’s an indication that there’s something going on with how that fluid is being oxidized or digested.

So, what you’re learning is, you want to – most people that I get, the first thing that we start doing is, the most important meal is going to be breakfast, but it my opinion, it’s going to be their dinner. Because, I find most people eat too many carbohydrates before bed, which then brings your glucose levels up and then those glucose levels start to drop around 01:00-04:00 AM. 

[1:03:19] Sahara

Okay, I keep hearing a mixed thing on this. Some people are saying don’t have fruits in the morning because it brings up your blood sugar levels, so instead, have them at night because you’re going to sleep and it, like, helps…

[1:03:32] Nate

Aid digestion?

[1:03:33] Sahara

Yeah, and it also like with your muscles, it brings like glucose back into your muscles, so it’s helpful. I heard this whole, like – because everyone would always say, and even Ayurveda always says how fruit, before your meals, so, have it in the morning. 

But yeah, I saw this book and it was called “Only Eat After Seven”, so you know how they say don’t eat after seven, this book is “Only Eat After Seven”.

[1:03:52] Nate

Yeah. Is that by a guy, he had glasses?

[1:03:55] Sahara

I don’t know who, I just saw it at the airport and I thought “This is interesting!” So, what is your take on all…

[1:04:00] Nate

Cut him a book deal.

[1:04:01] Sahara

Yeah, exactly. You’ve just got to come up with something revolutionary, even if it doesn’t make sense?

[1:04:05] Nate

Well, so, the science behind what he’s suggesting, just based on what you just said – when you go throughout the day, you burn glycogen. So, if you eat at night, when you eat those carbs, those are most likely going to be stored as glycogen, that’s what he’s trying to state.

But remember, the best way to see what works best is to see where you’re at, right? A person that has Cebo, it may not be best to throw a whole bunch of prebiotics, a soluble fire, because…

[1:04:29] Sahara

Kombucha.

[1:04:30] Nate

You have bacteria in the place of the intestines, that it’s not really supposed to be in. So, we’re going to be overfeeding them, so you’re going to have to starve them out. So, it all depends where the person is at. And that’s where, in life, this is something that you’ll learn, the more fight or flight, the more root chakra imbalance that you have, the more imbalance, the less you are present in your own body and you’re easily manipulated.  

And that’s why, when I said in the beginning, there’s a deep down, personal opinion that I have on why it’s not really being looked at, because if you read the book, James L. Wilson “Adrenal Fatigue”, you’re not going to regret it, he shows in that book that most disease that we deal with today is due to the fact of the adrenals not producing enough stabled cortisol.

One of the steroids they give you is a cortisol steroid, to help you fight inflammation and disease when you’re really sick, because a person has, one of the first things that comes up is respiratory diseases, are big. What I find is most people have a fungal infection because of the adrenal fatigue.

[1:05:26] Sahara

The fungal guy, who I’m known on TikTok now.

[1:05:30] Nate

Exactly, I’m trying not to make no more fungus videos on TikTok. But a person is wide open to a fungal infection or a parasite because of the body’s, stress suppresses the immune system. Cortisol has good benefits and one of the things is helping with inflammation. So, if you have not enough, or imbalance of not enough or not producing enough cortisol levels, you’re going to have issues with inflammations and things like that. 

So, we have the dream, core values, okay, so then we have nutrition. What nutrition, what I find works the best is, most people are not eating enough fat and protein with their dinner. Fat and protein slow down the digestion of carbohydrates. 

I’ve worked with 300 people that have this problem, I just made that up in my mind right now, I was going to say thousands, but it’s at least from 300 to 1000 people. As soon as I fix their dinner, they sleep throughout the night, because if you do not – if you eat too many carbohydrates, that doesn’t mean you can’t eat carbohydrates, too many and not enough protein…

[1:06:28] Sahara

It’s the ratio.

[1:06:29] Nate

Exactly! Not enough protein to tie it up, your glucose levels will drop while you’re sleeping. What happens when glucose levels drop? Hypoglycemia, hypoglycemia can turn on the sympathetic nervous system. So, now your cortisol levels are up…

[1:06:42] Sahara

Should it be like based on your weight? They say, like, 0.8g according to 1lb of your body weight is how much protein you should have.

[1:06:50] Nate

That’s a good question. 

[1:06:51] Sahara

Or some people even say per weight it should be a gram of protein?

[1:06:53] Nate

Scientifically, yes. We learned that in school. Yeah, to sustain muscle, especially when you’re losing weight or you’re trying to…

[1:07:00] Sahara

But that’s very hard.

[1:07:01] Nate

It is. In my opinion, this is my opinion, this is why you can’t, when I work with a client, it depends on the person. 0.8, I try to get a person to hit 80g of protein before I put 0.8. So, I have a male that’s 250lbs, I have a woman that’s 170lbs, I’m not going to tell them to hit 0.8, that’s going to be around 130-150g of protein, no, we don’t do that. What I first do is, instead of getting – you have to be careful with some people on giving them macronutrients, some people have eating disorders and it can be a trigger to weigh themselves, to track food, so, we make it like “Okay, here’s a meal and a half, what do you think about this meal?”, “Oh, I like it”, “Try it, let me know”. 

So, for example, for dinner, one of the things that we do for dinner is, we can do, here’s a perfect example, we take a potato (if you want a carbohydrate), take a potato, we slice up that potato into nice circles, olive oil in a pan, and we put those potatoes in there, oven at 350°F, for about 25 minutes, we take it off, we put some sea salt and we let it cool off. When the potato is cooling off, we’re making that potato into a resistant starch. A resistant starch becomes a strong prebiotic for their micro balance, for their good bugs, but it also can cut the glucose index down on that potato. So, now, it doesn’t digest as fast and it keeps a person a lot more focused because it has a lot of fiber. Then we take a protein source, it can be salmon, it can be ground turkey, ground beef, we take a protein source and then we have like an avocado with that. So, we can have ground turkey, avocado, sweet potato for dinner.

[1:08:27] Sahara

How much avocado?

[1:08:28] Nate

One avocado; a half of avocado, yeah. And then, what a person would do is track that and see how they sleep. If they notice that they – one of the signs you’re going to see is peeing throughout the night, when a person eats too many carbohydrates, they pee throughout the night. They wake up out of their deep sleep to pee, they sweat in their sleep, or they wake up and can’t go back to sleep. That’s a sign of the blood sugar dropping or the body trying to get rid of the extra glucose. So, then they’ll wake up in the morning feeling tired and they have no energy so they go straight to a pot of coffee and then they start the cycle all over again. 

So, the first thing I like to do as a nutritionist, is fix their dinner, see how many carbohydrates they can withhold. So, if they notice that even with one sweet potato, they still have that problem, let’s cut it down to half a sweet potato and see how we’re doing.

[1:09:09] Sahara

So, kind of like, the worst the adrenal fatigue, the lower in carbohydrates they need to be?

[1:09:14] Nate

That’s a good question – no, that would be ignorant of me to say, sorry, no.

[1:09:18] Sahara

Because I hear mixed things of, if someone has adrenal fatigue, they should be eating a lot of sweet potatoes and different carbs like that.

[1:09:25] Nate

Yeah.

[1:09:27] Sahara

But then I also hear, like, the blood sugar perspective, so…

[1:09:30] Nate

We want a complex carbohydrate. So, we’ve got to see how they do it. At the end of the day, we don’t want to put them on a Keto diet, just don’t want to do it. In my opinion, you just do not want to do that, because when you go Keto, you put your body under stress to produce its own, to make fat into energy, that could be too much for somebody. Complex carbohydrates over process is simple.

So, you can have your carbohydrates, but try to track it. If one cup of rice still makes you feel exhausted, then try half a cup. If a half a cup does the job, try that out, and then in about three weeks, try to do one cup, you see what I’m saying? But either way, complex carbohydrate, protein or a protein with some fat, not a bunch of fruit, not a bunch of potato chips, not a bunch of processed carbohydrates, those are the things that are going to spike and drop really fast. A person is going to be kind of, I’m not going to say dependent, but they can utilize complex carbohydrate for energy because if they don’t and they go too low carb, that means their body has to either break down protein for energy, muscle for energy or fat for energy. And usually, they have to put themselves into ketosis, and it depends on the person’s life demands. If a person is a construction worker, or an athlete, or a mother, it can be very hard to do that.

[1:10:41] Sahara

Yeah, and I think it also depends on, like, what you’ve been eating before because if you go to a lot of cultures and you’re like “You can’t have rice anymore”, they’re like “What?”, and just that will be so stressful and, like, give them adrenal fatigue, you know. 

[1:10:51] Nate

No, you don’t want to do that. You don’t want to crush someone’s belief system. 

[1:10:55] Sahara

Yeah.

[1:10:55] Nate

Right? And that’s why I’m very careful and sensitive on – I know one thing, high glycemic carbohydrates and processed food like processed bread, potato chips, that right there is a big no, no when you have adrenal fatigue, a big no, no, you’re going to be left hungry, overeating, a bunch of issues. Complex carbohydrate, protein and fat is what we’re looking to combine. Now, that’s number one.

Number two, controlling the caffeine. So, usually, I get a client that drinks two to three cups of coffee, I’m not going to say we have to take you off of, 100%, coffee, that is extreme and that’s hard. What I like to do is free up a little bit of energy, little by little, and the more they (a client) see that (a person sees that), the more motivated they are, they continue to grow. So, instead of two cups of coffee, let’s start the morning off with an Americano, that’s one shot of espresso. A cup of coffee can be anywhere from 100-250mg of caffeine, and an Americano is one shot of espresso.

[1:11:49] Sahara

Wow, I always thought that espresso had more caffeine than coffee.

[1:11:52] Nate

I did too, because you’ll be going to a coffee shop and people be like “Let me get a red eye, three shots of it”.

[1:11:57] Sahara

Right!

[1:11:57] Nate

Well, it depends, because you can make 3-4 shots of espresso in one cup of coffee.

[1:12:00] Sahara

Right, it just depends on how strong it is.

[1:12:02] Nate

Exactly! So, Americana, we dilute and we water down the espresso itself, and then we can give them a hit of that, because you don’t want someone with adrenal fatigue…

[1:12:09] Sahara

Or a latte, maybe, with one shot?

[1:12:11] Nate

A latte is cool. Trying to put some type of protein or fat with the caffeine to slow down the digestion of caffeine.

[1:12:19] Sahara

Like collagen or a protein powder?

[1:12:21] Nate

We see how they deal with that. I usually have a whole set up at home, but since I came down here, my safest bet is macadamia nut milk. When I put that in, it has a little bit of carbs, has more fat to hold back the caffeine from being digested so fast.

[1:12:35] Sahara

What do you think of bulletproof coffee?

[1:12:36] Nate

I was about to tell you that. That’s when people did bulletproof coffee and that’s why people can see benefits with that, you’ve just got to be careful. The more stress that you put yourself under, the more you’re going to produce your own blood sugar.

[1:12:47] Sahara

Yeah. To me, I tried the bulletproof, it made me anxious.

[1:12:51] Nate

Yes, because you can create a huge imbalance with your energy sources that your body is going to use. You have all this fat, but then now, you have all this caffeine at the same time too, and remember, fight or flight needs glucose.

[1:13:04] Sahara

And it’s like black coffee, there’s no milk in it too, that’s why I think it’s so strong.

[1:13:08] Nate

Yeah, it all depends where the person is at too. The more stressed they are, I’m not putting someone on bulletproof, personally I’m not. People have their way, they have their own reasoning, but I’ve seen so many results fixing dinner, fixing coffee, to an Americano instead, and putting, like, there’s a supplement, it’s not collagen, but it’s a coconut, it’s called Layard Hamlinson creamer.

[1:13:28] Sahara

Oh, right, coconut milk powder.

[1:13:29] Nate

Exactly. You put that in, we mix that in with their Americano, we take our sugar, immediately. When I find the client that has adrenal fatigue, that puts sugar with their coffee, I’m like “Oh my God, just take the sugar out!”

[1:13:39] Sahara

Or even oat milk, like hello, can we have a conversation about oat milk”! Because everybody things oat milk is so healthy and actually, they have found that it has tons of vegetable oil in it.

[1:13:50] Nate

One hundred percent! And I was that crazy when I said that about a 1.5/2 years ago. 

[1:13:55] Sahara

Cannolo oil, I believe.

[1:13:56] Nate

Cannolo oil, yes, it’s can be made of cannolo oil, or, they like to make things sound like they’re healthy, like cannolo oil, grapeseed oil…

[1:14:04] Sahara

But it’s not actually made of a cannolo plant, it’s – vegetable oil is not actual vegetables, it’s just a completely refined super high in omega-6, I believe, which are the ones that are bad for you, that counterbalance the omega-3, it is toxic. 

[1:14:19] Nae

Yes.

[1:14:20] Sahara

I went to LA and I couldn’t find anything besides oat milk because it’s, like, the thing right now.

[1:14:23] Nate

Yes, and oat milk, almond milk, you’ve got to be careful with them because, remember, they can be enzyme inhibitors. What does that mean? Especially nuts and seeds, they’re enzymes…

[1:14:33] Sahara

Almonds are sprayed with glyphosate.

[1:14:35] Nate

Of course! And enzyme inhibitors is – when I work with a client and we’re trying to figure out what’s getting their digestion out of balance, I find a lot of nuts, seeds and grains are the ones that go for first.

[1:14:46] Sahara

Yep.

[1:14:46] Nate

So…

[1:14:47] Sahara

Because nuts are in everything healthy these days.

[1:14:49] Nate

Exactly.

[1:14:49] Sahara

You get a non-dairy cheese – nuts! For Steven, my husband’s, birthday, I got him this Keto, vegan cake and I was eating all of it myself and I’m like “I probably just ate like 20 bags of cashews”.

[1:15:00] Nate

Yeah! And what happens is, the body is not digesting – look, when you eat food, you want to be able to digest, assimilate and eliminate. If you can’t do all three of them, you’re going to create some type of malnourishment, right? So, a lot of people who eat all the nuts that are not – that’s why it’s called sprouted nuts, when you sprout the nuts, look at the water when you’re done sprouting them, you see a bunch of white gooey stuff, that blocks enzyme inhibitors, I mean, enzymes from digesting your food, so they’re called enzyme inhibitors, they don’t allow your enzymes to break down and assimilate your food, which then leaves you hungry, tired. And then, now, your organs that depend on your nutrition, is not getting nutrition, skin issues, all that crazy stuff.

[1:15:38] Sahara

What about flax milk?

[1:15:40] Nate

Flax milk, I don’t have enough information on flax milk.

[1:15:43] Sahara

What about pea protein milk? Going through all the milks.

[1:15:46] Nate

Pea protein can be very hard to digest. Vegan proteins are known to be very hard to digest. You can look up Dr. Ted Neman’s work, he has probably about a hundred presentations on YouTube, explaining, scientifically, on how eating plant protein is very difficult to break down and it doesn’t meet, anywhere near, the benefits that meat brings you. Plant protein tries to protect itself when you try to digest and assimilate it, and sometimes that protection can cause inflammation, it can cause a bunch of different reactions in the digestive tract and it’s hard to get the protein (the end result), get the protein you need from it. 

But if a person is going – this is how I like to think about it – if a person is drinking milkshakes and they’re trying this new vegan protein shake, that’s a rainbow bridge, we make them, because if I tell a client “This is bad, that is bad, this is bad, that is bad”, then I’m overwhelming them with information.

[1:16:37] Sahara

So, what milks do you drink, that are…?

[1:16:40] Nate

I get this one macadamia nut milk or I get home, I’m not in LA at the moment, but I used to go get fresh made almond milk from sprouted nuts, or coconut milk, I go for them.

[1:16:51] Sahara

So, what about the coconut milk that’s, like, in the container at the store?

[1:16:54] Nate

I’m not drinking, personally, I’m not.

[1:16:56] Sahara

Do you think that the milks that are in the fridge are better than the shelf-stable ones? Or it’s the exact same thing, they just put one in the fridge?

[1:17:03] Nate

You mean the ones like…?

[1:17:04] Sahara

Like, sometimes you’ll find coconut milk or almond milk in the fridge and some are on the shelves.

[1:17:09] Nate

Got you! 

[1:17:10] Sahara

I think, I’m assuming the ones on the shelves have more chemicals I it.

[1:17:12] Nate

Yeah, because it – preservatives to keep it from being refrigerated, would be my opinion.

[1:17:16] Sahara

Right, but someone told me, if you actually look, I guess it depends on the milk, that it’s the same, it’s just the marketing because we’re mentally used to milk being in the fridge. 

[1:17:23] Nate

You know what, that’s a good point because after you open up the ones on the shelf…

[1:17:27] Sahara

Yeah, you put them in the fridge anyway.

[1:17:29] Nate

Yeah, you put them in the fridge anyway.

[1:17:29] Sahara

Exactly.

[1:17:30] Nate

I saw that when I was at coffee shop one time, I’m like “What are you doing over there”, caught them!

[1:17:34] Sahara

If you had to choose a non-dairy milk at the store, what would you choose?

[1:17:38] Nate

Worst-case scenario – see, it works for me, macadamia nut milk works for me. Like, I had it this morning because I’m traveling right now so, I like to throw in some fat and protein, but my partner, she does good with oat milk.

[1:17:52] Sahara

Okay.

[1:17:52] Nate

So, she does good with it.

[1:17:54] Sahara

I’ve been doing flax, because I thought…

[1:17:55] Nate

Flax has a lot of protein in it too.

[1:17:57] Sahara

Yeah, because I had the protein and I was like, I feel like it’s at least not a nut, I feel like I don’t need more nuts in my life because I always eat these bars with nuts in it, so I’m like, I feel like there’s a lot in there, because of that, the seed, the hormone balancing, but at the same time, I try to make flax milk myself, at home, and it did not work, so I’m like “Hmm, how are they getting this flax to turn this milky?”

[1:18:18] Nate

I remember, you told me that. I remember, we spoke about that.

[1:18:21] Sahara

Yeah, I tried making every kind of milk and the only one that really came out good was like the cashew milk because it’s very fatty, or the almond milk. Even the coconut milk, it separates, like, within hours and you have to, like, totally mix it every single time and it hardens. So, the fact that they’re making these milks stay in that consistency for weeks at a time, shows the levels of fillers. I mean, I notice it myself, I still drink them, often, but I will get bloated after and I know that.

[1:18:47] Nate

Yeah, because they’re hard to digest. And remember, any time your intestines are inflamed, nerves that connect to the intestines, connect to the core muscles. Your transverse abdominus turns off, bloat. 

So, yeah, in my opinion, when I work with a client, we get them from being super numb and stress, to then, when they’re getting energy and they’re feeling a little better, they become aware of that, “You know what, I’m going to stop drinking oat milk, Nate”, “Why?”, “Because it makes me bloated, it makes me tired”, and I’m, you know, they can’t see me, like “Okay, they got it”, because now they’re getting in tune again. 

So, my number one thing is to get rid of the worst things and then get them to sleep, get their nutrition for that. So, that’s the nutrition part, we do the nutrition. 

Then we do movement. My goal with movement is try to get them not to overtrain, and I call it ‘the high vibe walk’. Remember your dream you told me about? Go find someone who’s living their dream, who’s teaching or talking about it on podcasts, on YouTube, go find them now, save that podcast, get that ready, bring some headphones with you, find a neighborhood you want to live in or a find a park that brings you good energy. 

Number three – nobody negative can come with you. Number four – no phone calls, no work, I don’t care. Put your phone on airplane mode, save the episodes, listen to music, or listen to music that brings your energy up. Go for that walk for 60 minutes, visualize yourself becoming the person that you want to become. You’re changing the state at which you felt from before, you’re getting more into the, I don’t say you’re getting into the seventh chakra, the sixth chakra, no, you’re actually elevating and you’re moving your emotions in a different way. Instead of “Ugh, I could go to the gym”, you’re walking, visualizing, and then start studying the people that live in the neighborhood that you want to live in – what kind of car do they drive, how do they walk, how do they talk, what do they smell like? I became obsessed with that because that helped me escape. Sometimes we are stressed because of life, work, family, and sometimes, when we’re stuck in that environment, it’s hard to even think positive, but if we escape that and put ourselves to go on the high vibe walk, you’re elevating, or you’re rising, your vibration, you’re bringing up your vibration from feeling good, breathing, getting the body to pump itself and having an imagination that’s being fed, you’re putting yourself in a position where, when you go back to that negative situation, you have inspiration and motivation you need to get out of it and stay true to your dream.

So, we try to put them on some high vibe walks, try to get them to relax, usually the first week or two, I give my client homework to get a massage. Being in touch is very important as far as when you’re feeling tense, stress, the muscles get tight and it helps them relax a little bit, but training, I tell clients all the time “If you can’t go in the gym and beat last week’s training program, you shouldn’t be in the gym”. You train to have progressive overload, or you train if you want to be like an aerobic, an athlete, or bike, or marathon, then you train, I get that. But when you train in the gym, you train to progress. So, sometimes you go to the gym and you just beat ourselves up so we can feel something, so we can sweat and then, at the end of the day, nothing was beaten and then this person has a high chance of overheating.

[1:21:47] Sahara

Well, because we think going to the gym is about burning as many calories as possible, so you go to the classes where you’re doing the boot camps and a million things, that’s what I used to think, the more I sweat, the better of a workout it was. So, I would go to hot yoga because like “Oh, now I’m, like, sweating even more”, but that actually doesn’t – like, maybe you’re burning a little bit more calories because it’s just hot in your thermal temperature, but you’re not increasing your daily caloric burn the same way that you would if you increase muscle.

[1:22:15] Nate

Well, the chances of you overheating are very high, after. I see it all the time. Number two, HPA access communicates with the HPT, hypothyroid, the pituitary thyroid, so the hypothalamus, pituitary thyroid, communicate, the higher levels your cortisol are, the more issues you have with your thyroid stimulating hormone. What does that mean? Your body thinks it’s so stressed that it’s not going to survive. So, what do it would do is, is, it needs to save energy. So, you’ll start seeing people get hypothyroidism, your thyroid drops, one of the first signs you see with a person is their hands, they’re cold, because they’re not regulating temperature because that takes rested of metabolic rate, that takes energy. So, the body is tries to find the way on decreasing rested metabolic rate so it can save energy.

So, you used to eat 2500 calories to maintain your weight. You eat 2500 calories now, but your body saved energy, so it doesn’t need 2500 more, it needs only 2000, so the extra 500 calories, you end up gaining weight, so, a person will start gaining weight.

So, if a person goes to the gym and they add more stress on themselves, the chances of them going home hypoglycemic, hungry and tired, and then, to stress, compulsive eating, addiction, etc., so…

[1:23:30] Sahara

Yeah, since I started lifting weights, I realized that you don’t actually need to spend that long in the gym. And I would hear people say that before, I’m like “Yeah, right, like, you’re lying”, but now, I’m like, even if I just do four exercises in that workout, and before I used to think it needed to just be like leg day only or this. And now, even today, I did, like, maybe two or three leg exercises, two or three upper body, but I’m going at my maximum weight, and with everything, single set, I’m like “Okay, can I go heavier, with keeping the form?” And, you know, I’m lifting heavier than I thought that I would do, I had this belief that “Oh, I would get bulky if I lift heavy”, and you just judge, and I think it’s also our society, but I realized, I just – when I fee, so much stronger, like when I travel, I don’t have to worry about “Oh my god, I’m traveling by myself, how am I going to get my bag on the overhead thing?”, like, that used to stress me out so much of like what if no one can help me. And like, these days, stewards don’t really help you with that.

[1:24:25] Nate

No, they don’t.

[1:24:25] Sahara

So, it’s like, little things like that, I’m able to do, but I actually just feel better in my body that, like, I used to like wake up and check my stomach, like “Am I bloated? How fat am I today?”, I was like the obsession. And now, I never do that, I don’t even weigh myself, I don’t need to because I know, like, no matter what, I’m going to be consistent in my exercise and it’s not like “Oh, I have a photoshoot, I need to lose weight for the photoshoot”, it’s like, I’m always going to – and I look better than I ever have before.

[1:24:53] Nate

You look great! You look great! When you came in, I was like “She’s looking strong”. Remember, you kind of thought I was crazy when I first told you that, I’m like “You don’t have to hit the gym every day”, because you have all these, you hear all these experts say things, right? But you’re a beast too, because I gave you a hard workout and I was, for sure – because I remember you saying “I don’t know how to start”, “I will give you a hard workout”. We worked heavy and hard, and I texted you the next day “You sore?”, like “No”, I’m like “What? There’s no way she’s not sore”, but I believe it because I remember you telling me you like to sweat and you like to push your body. And I remember the first time we trained, I was demonstrating all these things and I was showing you the importance of lifting heavy vs this and vs that, and I was scared I was going to lose you as you be leaving. I remember that day, I’m like “Oh man, she’s probably not even going to believe me”, but you – I saw your videos and you continue to increase your strength training.

[1:25:45] Sahara

Yeah, and also like, coming from a background like yoga, you know, no weights at all, and then the next thing was Pilates and so, there was a little bit, then bar, now you’ve got little 2lbs weights, and then when the pandemic happened, I couldn’t go to the bar class anymore, so then I started to do YouTube, I was like “Let me try this, like, strength training one”, but it was kind of an aerobic strength training, and then getting a little bit more and a little bit more. So, like, yeah, if I met you in my deep yoga days, I would be like “Hell no, I’m not going to do it”, whereas I needed to just get, like, a little bit heavier.

And now, I’ve learned too, a lot of these compound movements that you see people do, that are like, you squat and then you do a bicep curl, and then you do an overhead press, all with the same weights, I’m like “That’s such a waste of time”.

[1:26:24] Nate

Yes.

[1:26:24] Sahara

Because you could squat so much heavier than you could do a bicep curl. So, why would I, basically, reduce my squat to whatever I can bicep curl, which is like 10lbs, and I can squat like 200lbs, like, why would I do that?

[1:26:36] Nate

Exactly, exactly! Because it looks good.

[1:26:38] Sahara

Yeah.

[1:26:39] Nate

Remember, I told you, because it looks cute.

[1:26:41] Sahara

Right!

[1:26:41] Nate

“Oh, that’s cute”, “Let me see it. Oh, that’s cute”. Now, you have people going to the gym doing that – when you do a compound movement…

[1:26:47] Sahara

You think the more it’s complicated, it’s better.

[1:26:49] Nate

Exactly, exactly! And that’s the fitness industry confusing people, that’s the fitness industry – I’m a certified coach, a trainer, I see it in myself, and I got results because – the truth of the matter is, if you get the results, you’re no longer my client.

[1:27:05] Sahara

That’s why I don’t text you anymore! I used to always send him my squats, I’m like “Yo, I got this shit!”

[1:27:12] Nate

You got it now, you got it now! Yeah, because with you, we saw some imbalances. I was teaching you things that were boring, but I’m like “Yo, I’m telling you, we’ve got to fix this, we’ve got to fix that”, and then you started killing it. You don’t need me anymore, that is my goal.

[1:27:23] Sahara

Right! Instead of doing like a hundred of these, like, glute bridges, I’ll do like 10 of them, at my max, which I sent you – what did I do with that one I sent you?

[1:27:33] Nate

Oh, you did a lot of weight, that’s when I think you were in Texas, I was like “What is she doing down there right now?” She’s showing off now! 

[1:27:40] Sahara

Yeah, exactly! But it’s crazy because I feel, actually, even more, like, compact, and not that I’m doing it because of my size, but it’s true, muscle is just smaller and denser than fat.

[1:27:54] Nate

Yep. And putting stress on the nervous system builds muscle, right? Your body doesn’t go “I want to look sexy”, the body goes “Okay, we have to adapt to that resistance”, and that’s the strength. If you adapt to that 10lbs squat, curl, now, if you do it faster and faster, you’re not going through the muscular system of adaption, you’re going through the cardiovascular system, which is your cardio. 

We pull the client from the gym, we give them a high vibe walk, and then we start doing this. People lose weight, right? We track our food, we track everything, as far as making sure we doing all the things right, if they do have a weight loss goal, but people start feeling better, you’re still moving your body. And guess what, a walk can get you (depends on how much weight you got on) anywhere from 200-250 calories burned, sometimes even more than that. So, you’re still burning a lot of calories, but now, when you go home, you lifted your energy and you lifted your organs, they’re working properly, everything’s not catabolic, it’s anabolic now, so the chances of you overeating are very small and the chances of sticking to your dream and staying clear on what you want in life. very high; the chances of distraction bothering you, very small – and now we get consistency.

[1:28:54] Sahara

So, if you went to the gym and you’re like “I’m so hungry”, that means you overworked yourself out?

[1:28:58] Nate

No. That would be wrong of me to say because when you break down muscle tissue, the body wants protein and restore the glucose. When you eat that meal and you’re still starving, and you’re overeating, and you’re overeating, you notice that, then that’s a pattern we have to pick up on. So, it’s normal for your body – as soon as I life weights, I know exactly what my body wants. If I give my body a banana or something like that, I’m going to be starving, my body wants protein and a little bit of glucose, and I’m good after. So, that’s number two. 

So, we have movement, dream, diet, quiet. So, me time and sleep are two things we need to focus on. We get in better sleep because we’re fixing our carbs, but during the day you need to press time-out, you need to cut things off, you need you time, and that’s appropriate. 

Sometimes we put ‘we’ and ‘all’ before ‘I’. I can’t love you until I love myself. So, for me, I’m selfish. In the morning when I wake up, my dogs know not to leave my bedroom with me. When my puppy comes down with me, she chills, but other than that, she doesn’t bother me. But I’m not feeding you in the morning.

Sometimes, if my girlfriend wakes up early, she knows I’m over here in the living room and I’m studying something and I’m having my cappuccino, give me 30 minutes, because as you know, as an entrepreneur, and even as a mother (for people listening), or someone who’s a student, wherever you are in life, you know when it’s, like 8 o’clock, 9 o’clock, emails start calling, text messages start coming in, I need to talk to myself first, right? So, it’s important that – me, to the morning. I wake up, I like to wake up at 5:00 AM, I’m wide awake at 5:00 AM. I think that I get a head start at 5:00 AM. If I wake up at 5:00 AM and America is waking up at 8:00 AM, I got 3 hours extra a day, times by 7, I got 8, while that person has 7 days, that’s how I think about it. 

Now, I go to sleep early, I go to sleep at 9:00 PM (9:30PM).

[1:30:41] Sahara

So, that’s when I’m working. 

[1:30:44] Nate

Yeah, we’re the opposite. So, my brain just works better in the morning, but I find, nobody bothers me. If I want to go to the coffee shop, there ain’t no traffic in the coffee shop, there’s no line at the coffee shop, I get the world to myself, and I appreciate that. 

So, making sure you have time to turn your brain off and then making sure you get sleep. ‘I’ before ‘we’, always, that’s quiet!

Then the extra two, I’m going to throw in. So, we have diet, quiet, movement, dream. The extra two: sit down on a piece of paper, on the left side of the piece of paper write down how much money is coming out of your bank account; on the right side, how much is coming in. I want you to have a goal, start off small. How can we stop having three, if you’re having financial issues. Financial issues can turn and make a person very stressed – work, finances, environment. 

So, one of the things I personally see, and I’m speaking out of a personal experience with this podcast, with adrenal fatigue, root chakra, reptilian brain, is, I continuously see a person stressing out about money, we have to clear that up. 

So, two things – if a person actually shouldn’t be stressing because they’re good financially, then we make them recognize that, and they can take a vacation, could you tell this person “Hey, why don’t you just take a week off”, and like “I can’t do that”, so we have to show they, hey, you can do that, it’s good.

Number two, if they feel like they can’t, it’s because their expenses may be so high, that even though their income is good, expenses have still got them working out the root chakra and safety and security, so, how can we decrease that about $300? And what you’ll start seeing is, most people eat out and eat food that makes them tired, so, now when you’re no longer tired, you have the energy to cook; now you have the energy to cook; now you’re not spending as much as money. 

And then we come up with a couple of ideas on how can we add $300 coming in each month. And this puts us at a surplus of $600 and then it makes a person clear. 

I can’t tell you how many times I worked with people that had money coming out, that they just didn’t know or they forgot, or they recognized – some people over-hire coaches. 

So, one of the first things I like to do is to see if you can afford me. If you’re giving me your last dollar, 9/10 times I’m going to day no because you’re going to be working out of the root chakra by working with me. I want what’s best for you, so I’ll give you references that will listen to, then save up, take care of your responsibilities. Sometimes it’s too many coaches, too many something we have to figure out.

And then the last one is, after we got their dream, after we got their finances, then we start to move and focus on stretching the hips. So, I got the muscle, I got the emotion, I got the emotion of the belief of being stuck there. And one of the things, when you figure out someone’s dream, if you continuously run to someone with a subconscious that’s responding like they can’t do it, the more that they have a trauma running the subconscious. And sometimes, when you work with people that deepen the trauma, as someone who is a professional, I refer them to go see a therapist. Because I feel like I can do everything, but there’s a time and place where I have to say “You have to go see a therapist”. Therapists are very skillful on working with people with trauma, they’re specialists, so sometimes people need to go see that. 

But if I see a recurring issue, the first thing we go for is, sometimes it’s appropriate to remove them from that environment, that’s why the high walk is important, because if you have a father that traumatized you, and you live with your father still, that’s hard, right? But opening up the muscular system of the quads, hamstrings, calves – but you’re going to see tight quads, tight calves. Tight quads pull somebody into their pelvic tilt, sometimes it can turn your feet out, or, and the first stage, quads get tight, abs get tight, knees knock, foot pronates, depends on what muscle gets tight.

But long story short, anteopelvic tilt is going to be there. When the anteopelvic tilt is there, their hamstrings are going to pull, so they’re going to think their hamstrings are tight because they’re pulling. The hamstrings are being tight because they’re being pulled from the hip flexors being tight. 

So, you run into a lot of people who go into therapy or years of tight hamstrings, never can fix them, because that’s not the root cause. So, we open up the hip flexors, we open up the calves and then we get then the final way to be grounded. Thai Chi can do that, to go bare foot in the grass, or put your feet into the earth and do 10-15 minutes of Thai Chi, grounding yourself.

But most importantly, when we fix those hips, then we get the body posture to stand up nice and tall.

[1:35:04] Sahara

So, when you say opening them up, you mean by foam rolling?

[1:35:08] Nate

Foam rolling quads, hip flexure stretch, using a new fine foam roller, and you get someone to lay down – I usually do one hip and quad at a time, you notice the shakiness, some people may start crying, some people may start feeling emotional, some people may hold and suppress these emotions. When emotion gets suppressed, it marinades itself into the nervous system, into the muscular system. They may get that out, it may be expressed at that moment, but when they stand up, the more you work on fixing your anteopelvic tilt, the more likely you’re able to stand up straight. When you stand up straight, you’re able to, metaphorically, stand up for yourself, to the world. When we get all those working together, and I’m pretty sure there’s other things I do, but while we were talking, I was like, I have to put at least, like, each of them into a box. But when you get all those flowing together, then you get a person who overcomes the issues they have and accomplish their goals. And guess what, a person does this with me if they like it or not. Sometimes you can’t tell somebody, you’re making them do this for this reason because, sometimes, their belief system may be too strong in a way that’s hurting them and not helping them, and that’s not my place to say that to them, sometimes they can’t handle that. So, sometimes I’m like “Just go for a walk”, and I say “Look…”, I’m not telling them why I’m doing it, but they start feeling better, they’re like “You know what I noticed, Nate, I’m able to have my ideas”, and they tell me…

[1:36:33] Sahara

Oh, like, going on a walk, it changed my life. Like, everything that I, especially, again, you know, in my early 20s, I would take these walks every single day and it allowed me to process and get so many ideas and clarity around patterns in my life and why this happened and how I felt the way that I did. 

And, even just today, I think one of the hard things is, you take a walk and you use that as a time to get back to all your texts, and your WhatsApps, and your emails, and send all my voice notes, and I catch myself doing that a lot, and it’s just such a reminder of the importance of taking a walk where you’re just, like, listening to music or even listening to nature and just letting yourself be in that state. Where, I get a lot more ideas when I’m walking than if I’m just sitting and meditating because my body is in motion, so my mind can open.

[1:37:16] Nate

Active meditation. I’m not sure if that’s called active meditation, but I like to call it active meditation. 

[1:37:20] Sahara

Yeah, walking meditation is a huge thing in the Dr. Joe Dispenza retreats, so…

[1:37:24] Nate

For real?

[1:37:25] Sahara

Aha.

[1:37:25] Nate

You keep mentioning him. I’ve never read anything about this doctor.

[1:37:28] Sahara

You’d love him.

[1:37:29] Sahara

I know face though, I see his video sometimes. But absolutely, because one of the things – I’m very active, my nervous system is sensitive, so I can’t sit down and meditate, it’s almost impossible because my body just has a lot of energy. 

But when I go on my walks, I’m able to calm down my nervous system, and I had a thousand thoughts when I first started it and it broke it down to a hundred, then to ten, then it’s like slow motion. I pick a thought out, I digest it, I play around with it, I’m like “Okay, this is good”, “This one’s no good, throw it out”, so, by the time I’m back home, I’m more clear and more grounded. I did a nice walk before coming here, on the beach.

But there was something I wanted to mention. In the “Eastern Body/Western Mind”, the author explains the importance of understanding that a person can almost get an addictive, be subconscious that wants to – I call it being addicted to stress, because they’re uncomfortable not having so much stress hormone in the body. So, I want to make that clear as well, and understand the consequences of that too much stress.

[1:38:33] Sahara

Because it’s the urgency culture that we live in as well, that like, everything is urgent, it needs to be responded to right now. And I know for myself, sometimes I feel like “Oh, I just need to respond to everything so then I’m, like, free from it”.

[1:38:44] Nate

Yeah.

[1:38:45] Sahara

But there’s another thing to respond to, and another thing to respond to, and then you’re always responding to life rather than creating.

[1:38:51] Nate

Yep.

[1:38:51] Sahara

For me, something that was helpful was this free app you download called Boomerang, and you can pause your email and unpause it.

[1:38:58] Nate

Oh, wow!

[1:38:58] Sahara

So, I just pause my email so I’m not getting emails all the time and I can, like, focus on my work, and then whenever it’s time for me to check it, I’ll unpause and I’ll get, like, read all ten of them or whatever, and then I’ll pause it again. You can even set it up, so just once a day you get all of your emails.

[1:39:14] Nate

Wow.

[1:39:14] Sahara

So, little things like that. Also, Facebook Newsfeed Eradicator, it’s another free thing you download so you don’t have, because, sometimes I use Facebook Groups in Dharma Coaching Institute and I have to go on Facebook, but I don’t want to get distracted by, like, someone from high school had their, like, seventh baby, like, I don’t give a fuck, you know! So, I need to eradicate that newsfeed so I’m not like “I wonder what they’re doing?”, “Oh my god, they’re out of jail! What?!”

[1:39:36] Nate

Right! I think I had 3 more years, let me do research on that!”

[1:39:40] Sahara

Yeah, exactly! Wow, he did this crime?! Crazy! 

[1:39:44] Nate

I think he can get 30 years for that! Let me live that long! Yeah, it could be a huge distraction.

One thing I started doing, and I teach my clients to do, especially entrepreneurs, two phones. One phone is where my music is at, and my family, if they need me in an emergency, it’s my personal phone. The other phone is where all the social media is on, all my emails are on, and guess what, when I go on my high vibe walk, I leave that phone behind. When it’s time for me to go to bed, I mean, I leave it alone.

[1:40:10] Sahara

It’s funny because I just got a new iPhone, I upgraded it, so I have my old one, I was – you know, most of the time you get rid of your old one, you just forget about it, I’m like “Maybe I should”, but the new one has a good camera, that’s the thing. 

[1:40:20] Nate

Yeah, that’s the thing for mine too. My phone is broke, like, I have to update for, like, the last…

[1:40:25] Sahara

Maybe my family will get the shitty one, but then I have to carry it around. So, how does this work?

[1:40:29] Nate

Right! No, well, what I do is, I use the good camera and the good one for business. I have no guilt behind investing. I teach clients about money because you have to do a lot of things in coaching about money with them, with their mindset, when a person is in fight or flight. When you spend a dollar, ask yourself “Am I spending this dollar or am I investing?” When you spend, the dollar goes and there’s nothing in return. When you invest, you spend the money and energy comes back, it can be money or it can be energy.

I spent $7 on a coffee before coming here, it’s organic coffee, only coffee shop in Miami, I know that they’ve got the macadamia nut milk, when I drink that coffee, it gives me the energy that I invested in. If I go to a coffee shop that has toxic coffee, and I drink that, it makes me feel tired, so, I just spent money. Any time I invest money, I return it. 

So, my phone, I’ve no guilt on spending on new iPhones because the new cameras, the new iOS on them help me in my business. Do you know how much money you can make from your phone? And the other phone is if my mom calls, “Hey mom, how are you?”, “Hey dad”, and where my music is stored. So, when I’m done with work during the day, I don’t touch that business phone until I clock in. Because if you don’t manage yourself as an entrepreneur, you can catch yourself always “I can’t be grateful”, I’m like “Oh my god, this video only got 300k views, I have to get 3 million”, “I only have 270k followers on TikTok, I should be at 4 million”, and I’m looking at that at 5:00AM. I don’t do that, that phone is over there, sometimes clients text me, sometimes I have emails, I’m not conscious of that, because if I want to start my day off in a positive note and I see an email that I have an issue with, or something that happened on social media that disappointed me, sometimes I open up Instagram and see something that happened in hip-hop. There’s a lot of rappers getting killed and that hurts my feelings, a lot of these people come from where I come from and I see these kids getting killed and I’m like – and then there’s a video, and it happens to be the first thing that shows up on my Feed at 5:00AM.

[1:42:35] Sahara

Especially on TikTok, I’m like “Now I just saw the most traumatic ever and now TikTok thinks I like this and keeps showing more of it”, I’m like training and I’m like not interested, not interested, but it’s like, those are the things that are in the collective consciousness because fear draws us in.

[1:42:50] Nate

Exactly! And as soon as I feel that… Now, I had this idea of creating a podcast, today, making videos, I’m not in the mold to do that. Now, my girl comes downstairs, I’m like “Can you believe this?”, and now my whole day is surrounded by that.

So, one of the things for stress is don’t be on the phone, don’t put a phone on your face, the phone is not allowed in my bedroom. I have an alarm clock and I have my personal phone there just in case there’s an emergency, but I have it only for phone calls and it’s not allowed on my bed. 

When you have phone light hitting your face, it turns on cortisol, it doesn’t allow you to sleep deeply. And my tv has a funny tv show on, something that brings me a good vibe and it has a timer on it, I got 30 minutes of tv. It’s at 9:00PM, I’m in bed by 9:00PM, they call me old, but I wake up with energy and I’m consistent. And watch who you’re following and what you’re following on social media, that’s stressful, if you like it or not, that’s stressful. If you’re watching something and comparing yourself, and it makes you feel sad, it may be time to give it a little break, go build yourself up so when you come back on, subconsciously, you may be projecting your shadow. So, go work on yourself and then you may come back and you don’t have that problem.

In 2019, I noticed, any time I came home, my partner was stressed out, she was happy when I left but she’s upset when I came home, it’s because she would go on social media and she would see a job that she was supposed to book, and now, she’s crying, she’s sad. So, what I did with her – your consciousness is there, so, the Universe is bringing you something that you were manifesting, but now, you’re being doubtful, you’re crying, you’ve got to be sure, not “Oh, hold on, hit the brakes, hit the brakes!”, they’re not ready yet. Hold on, they’re not ready yet, they lost faith, or they lost positivity, or their frequency, their vibration went down, we can’t pull it to them, it’s not matching. I made her delete Instagram for 8 months! So, guess what you do when you delete the app, now, subconsciously, you pull it out when you’re on the toilet, you pull it out when you wake up out of the bed, so, there’s no app there and what we do is, we put audible there or iBooks, something there – and what book or what audible book you’re listening to is anything that helps you get in the vessel of your dream. You want to be an actress, you want to be a singer, whatever you want to be, you rewire your subconscious mind with someone who’s doing it, and you learn.

[1:45:04] Sahara

Even, like, the difference of a podcast and TikTiok. We were talking about this and I’m like “Oh, why isn’t my TikTok really working?”, you’re like “People listen to podcasts who are at a higher intellect”. Like, we’ve been talking for like 2 hours, you know, and it’s like, people who can, like, be in this conversation for this long and let yourself go deeper. Whereas, often times, people who are on TikTok and these different social media apps, it’s like, they’re training you to become ADD. Even if you weren’t – I was like, I never thought I was ADD or ADHD, and then TikTok is like “Do you just keep scrolling through different videos and then you can’t do things?”, I’m like “Maybe I do have it”. It’s like, well, the technology is creating it in your brain because if I lived in nature, I definitely wouldn’t feel this way. 

So, I think that even just, like, listening to long form conversations, books, deep podcasts, even just having conversations in your life instead of this, like, quick hit where you’re – like, if you listen to 10 seconds of our conversation right now, you wouldn’t even get a glimpse of this whole conversation, these layers and this net, but people think “Oh, I listened to this 15-second clip on adrenal fatigue, so now I know about adrenal fatigue, I know about this.

[1:46:10] Nate

Exactly! And that’s why I’m very careful how I say things because I understand that’s the world we live in now and I understand that people are looking for whacks, you see what I’m saying? Naturopathic people “Oh, woo-woo”, people say the world chakra, “Oh, woo-woo”, and what they’ll try to do is try to discredit me on what I know and what I’m saying, so I have to say it in a certain way and I have to – it’s a gift and a curse.

[1:46:35] Sahara

And also, the algorithm trains you also, to say things this way, to trigger controversy.

[1:46:40] Nate

Exactly!

[1:46:41] Sahara

So, then people on TikTok, most of the videos that you’re seeing, the only reason why you’re seeing it is because it’s controversial, so, you’ve created this belief system that everybody is fighting and it’s not safe.

I see so many people “I don’t want to share online because I’m afraid of being canceled and people hating me”, but the reason why is, you’re only seeing those videos rise to the top, because, again, the collective consciousness is very root chakra imbalanced and we want to focus on someone else doing something wrong, because “If I know the thing that they did wrong enough, then I’ll be safe”.

[1:47:09] Nate

There you go! 

[1:47:11] Sahara

And then we think the whole world is like that and then we don’t share our voices.

[1:47:14] Nate

Exactly! And then, the root chakra being turned on, actually feeds off of the 808 beat, the beat bowl, in hip-hop, you hear it today. So…

[1:47:23] Sahara

Well, you know, I have a different thought on this, because a lot of people – I have heard people say they 808 beat is very root chakra, however, I’ve also heard people say that that 808 can be very grounding. So, I think it’s also like your intention around it as well.

[1:47:36] Nate

One hundred percent! I’m with you – there’s an artist, I’m not going to mention his name because he’s going through a lot. There’s an artist who made that beat popular in hip-hop, but had positive messages behind it. That’s not the hip-hop world anymore, hip-hop we’re in is “Boom, boom! I’m going to do this to your boom. I’m going to take this person, boom, boom”.

[1:47:57] Sahara

Yeah.

[1:47:57] Nate

It’s threatening, it’s…

[1:47:59] Sahara

It’s using your collective energy that you feel when there’s that base, but them towards violence.

[1:48:06] Nate

Exactly, exactly! So, when I’m sitting here and I’m looking at my nephew’s rhyming a song that is talking about threatening somebody…

[1:48:17] Sahara

Right! And they use a lot of nursery rhymes too.

[1:48:20] Nate

Yeah, I’m like, do you understand what you just said? 

[1:48:21] Sahara

Yeah.

[1:48:22] Nate

Like, what does that do to you? And I sound old, like my grandfather used to talk to me when I listened to hip-hop, but it’s a little different. But I’m saying all that to say, it’s feeding off fear, fear consciousness. And there’s a book by Napoleon Hill that I find fascinating, and he has a conversation with the Devil, and in the book it’s him having a conversation with the Devil and the Devil’s laughing at him like “You think I’m a red guy? No, I’m just negative consciousness and I come into your life when you’re negative, I come into your life when you’re smoking cigarettes, when you’re not sleeping, you’re drinking beer, watching entertainment and I rule your consciousness and I run your life like that. I don’t run your life by sleeping over, etc.” In the book, Napoleon Hill is trying to show you that negative consciousness, or becoming negative, is being pulled into the metaphoric need or bad energy in the world, and we get fed off that, 98% feed off that, get fed, or be fed off it. For example, compulsive spending, addictive behavior, that’s why you have the smartest people in the world figuring out how they can keep you on the app longer, that’s why it’s free. 

And look, I benefit from the app because we would’ve never known each other without it, but I’m the type of person that, I’ll go missing for 3 months of TikTok and people are like “What happened to you?”, “Oh, I just needed a break”.

[1:49:37] Sahara

Yeah, I was wondering where you were.

[1:49:39] Nate

I just needed a break, right? Because I start to notice, as soon as I feel like I can’t be creative with my work and I have to manipulate my work for the algorithm, it disgusts me, I can’t fake it.

I was going to say this to you earlier, you see how we did the thing for the reel, the Instagram reel, I’m not good, scripted. I’m not, I would never be a good actor. This, everything, when I speak, I just flow, if I have to repeat something or restart something or act something out, like, okay, it’s resetting “Welcome back to my video”, no, you can’t say it like that, you’ve got to do it like this “Hello…”

[1:50:11] Sahara

Oh my god, I did this tv show yesterday and I was – and the episode was 10 minutes, and it took us 1h to do because of how many times they make you repeat yourself, and I’m like, I don’t feel like I’m in flow state. And for me, I’m the best – like, in this Podcast, there’s zero edits in it, at all, because it’s like, you’re just channeling source and able to bounce back. And I believe that even that gets you out of adrenal fatigue because you’re in, again, consciousness that is streaming through you instead of being so in your head and trying to get it right. And that perfectionism, I believe that’s such a huge cause of adrenal fatigue.

[1:50:43] Nate

One hundred percent, and it is, and you’ll red that in the reference. I wanted to make one great reference, it was the James L. Wilson book “Adrenal Fatigue”, he talks about that, being a perfectionist, because you never rest, nothing is ever good enough. 

[1:50:57] Sahara

Right! And you’re afraid of what will happen. And it’s like, follow that fear down, like “If I stop producing at the level I’m producing, then I will lose my money, then I will lose my relationship, then I will lose my house”, and keep following that thread till the end of it and you’ll realize, even if all of that happened, you’ll be okay.

[1:51:16] Nate

So, I’ll share something really personal because I feel like this is – I love how this conversation just went like this, but I’ll share something really personal. I recently just, as you know, I moved out of LA, people thought I was crazy. As was at an all-time high, I was getting the celebrity clients, my girlfriend lived right down the block from, you know, the studio she filmed at, and then I noticed, most of the people I was getting were stuck in fight or flight, rich people, people that are successful on tv, your favorite hip-hop artists, your favorite actress or your favorite influencer, I had one of them as my client and I started to notice this pattern. When you live in LA, LA, let me just make this clear, I love the esthetics of LA, I love it, but the truth of the matter is, for the most part, LA is more expensive than people can afford, okay. So, here’s the pattern I’ve seen, people end up buying a house they really can’t afford or are paying for rent that they really can’t afford, which then leaves them in a position where they can’t rest, they have to work, work, work, number one.

Number two, if you did something amazing last night in LA, congratulations, but there’s a new star tomorrow morning. So, when you wake up, you never feel like you’re enough. Number three, you can drive the best car in the world – say your dream car is a Mercedes and you worked your butt off and you got it, there may be a 16-year-old kid that pulls up in a Mercedes and a dude that’s 47, pull up in a Mercedes to the right of you, one is purple and the other dude got a mow hawk that’s yellow, right? What I’m trying to say is, nothing is really enough. 

So, when I was there, I saw myself being stuck. This is where I start to say to myself “Nate, you have this problem”, because I hit my 1 million views on TikTok, right, I felt nothing. I set myself, then I hit 5 million, felt nothing. Then I 10x-ed my business, then I was making all the money, then I – carpets with my partner, then Bryant Park, New York City, shut down their theatre due to Covid for her premiere party, for her tv show, like, I’m talking about everything. I’m at my favorite rapper’s house, I’m doing all these things, and I’m telling you tight now, I feel nothing, I drove my dream car, felt nothing, and I wanted to know why. Subconsciously, I was trying to keep up, trying to survive at the level I want to survive, and I felt scared to rest. And when I granted myself to rest, it was an opportunity and you just can’t say no to. You have this one person that wants to work with you, you know if you help this transformation, you know that your business is going to be good for another year. 

So, one of the biggest fears that I faced was, one of the things I started learning was, I had to heal my root chakra, I had unfinished business from my childhood trauma that I never finished. When I left New Jersey in 2012 for a scholarship for Delaware, for football, I never went back. So, when I go back to Jersey, I see my dad getting older, my brother, my brother’s growing up, my friends and family are having kids, and I don’t know what it’s like. When I came home, I always felt like enough, I felt like rich when I came home, like “Oh my god, you going to Starbucks?”, I’m like “Starbucks? I used to go to Air Ones for my coffee!”, you know what I’m saying? 

So, one thing I recognized is, I had to sit myself down and say “Nate, you can buy this $2 million house, but if you buy it, just know, if you think you’re working hard now, you can’t rest at all because the mortgage, the responsibility, the taxes”. “Okay, Nate, you can go back to Jersey, right across from New York City, buy your dream house for half of that price”. And when you go home, here’s the biggest thing of all, what did I say in the beginning – money, tribe, safety. When I was in LA, I never felt safe, there was a whole bunch of armed robberies going on, there was a bunch of that. I’m from the ghetto, so the first thing that someone like myself would do is dare somebody to try me – I’m smarter than that! There’s people out there who are tougher than me, who will kill me, so, I got a dog, a guardian dog to protect my house, but that was more responsibility. I was trying all these ways to feel safer out there at the moment, it was a little difficult to do that. But the biggest thing is, if I buy that $2million house, my father can’t come have dinner with me tonight, I had survivor’s guilt. As I was becoming more successful there, I felt less tired, I felt less successful, “Who am I?” The guy I’m working with is ten times more important than I am, according to the world. I’m doing social media, I’m trying to eat dinner with my partner and people are doing a social media skit behind me in LA. And it was coming to this point – it was a beautiful place, it me. It wasn’t because of them, it was the position I happened to be in. And then, the friendships out there weren’t authentic, because, at the end of the day, a person’s your friend because they’re trying to find a way to survive as well, it’s hard for them, not the native people in LA, but the people that are there to try to improve their career. Subconsciously, they’re working out of their root chakra. So, if I’m trying to heal, and I’m trying to be your friend, you know, we’re becoming friends, and I already have trust issues, because I have root chakra issues (imbalances), then what happens when I no longer have videos with a million viewers or 300k, I can’t do nothing for you, are you there when I need you? No. I saw that happen over and over again. And I wasn’t crying out for help, I didn’t want friends, but I said “Oh thank god I didn’t depend on that person”. 

So, long story short, intuitively, I had this calling to go home. So, to trust my intuition, I was doubtful, I started noticing my creativeness wasn’t there and I had no inspiration for life, not for life in a way of, like, trying to harm myself, but I’m talking about like, I would sit there and say “Okay, I had to force myself to be creative and inspired”, it was a struggle that I couldn’t explain. So, what I did is, I called my mentor, it was like 56-57 years old, this guy knows me like the back of my hand, his name is Bob Finelli, he came down, and I said “If he tells me I’ve got to go home, I’ll go home”. He came, I’m showing him the new car I got, I’m showing him my house, I’m showing him all that, and we’re sitting around the fire, he comes over by me, gives me a hug, looks me in my eyes, didn’t tell him anything, he says “It’s time for you to come home”, and I felt like crying, I felt like this little boy, I felt – I bought a house a week later. So, I’m saying all that to say I was stuck in a cycle for 2 years because I went out during Covid, I had to build a business. When I built the business, it was going very well, but then, most of my things, I was being compulsive, I had bought a jeep, it broke down on me, then I was like “I’ll never buy a jeep again”, and then I end up buying a jeep, another jeep, a week later, that gave me problems. So, I had two living cars back-to-back, then I bought – you know, I started seeing myself, I bought a dog that was shipped from a different country here, to protect my house, and that dog cost me over $15.000-$20.000 of training because he had too much anxiety. The trainer told me that he doesn’t want my money anymore and told me I need to rehome him, so I lost my dog. So, in the beginning, the first podcast, I told my story, it made me, I love my life, it would be unfair, it would be too Instagram-ish to just flash how great I am and I show you “Hey, listen, these are the side effects that came, but these are the things that sharpened my tools a little bit to become the best coach”, because when I work with someone, I see myself. 

So, after going through this experience, I started to notice the Universe was bringing me consequences of pain, couldn’t catch a break. Two brand new jeeps being a lemon car, you have to go through lawsuits for both of them, what are the chances of that? A dog that you buy, that couldn’t fit in my house, as far as, like, his personality, he just was too much, he needed special care, but I tried to force it, I bought him the best trainers, still nothing, accolades, after doing things, still nothing. Then I said to myself “I have to dig deeper”, because I was disconnected from myself. So, I ended up buying a home, and when I bought the home, that’s why you have to take your piece of paper and start seeing “What is financially smart to do?” I have the money, if I wanted to buy a house, I could’ve bought a house in LA, but I buy a house in LA to be empty. Then I started to see “Oh, this is where my favorite artist talked about, this, in his song”, I thought they were crazy for leaving this or doing that. And I made an agreement with myself, when I go back to LA, I’ll be in a position where I’m not building and I’m sustaining myself, I’m not stressing. 

So, I say all that to say, I was stuck in a root chakra (imbalance), even with success. And I noticed that I’m not going to become the best version of myself until I heal that. And one of the things that I understood is that I need to go spend time with tribe, I need to go – when I drive my car, my dream car, where I came from – I don’t live in the same neighborhood I came from, but I bought a nice house in the suburbs, right outside where I grew up at, so I can get dip in, dip out, I can see my girlfriend’s family. We have family come over almost every day, right now we have family watching our dogs, I feel connected. My family members will tell, they will put me in my place, see what I’m saying? This is how they say it, “You’re bugging right now, go sit down”. My cousin came over, she’s pregnant, she saw me working in my study, she said “Yo, after that, go lay down”, she was only coming to get a cup of coffee, she’s like “Yo, go lay down”, but that’s what I need, I needed that. I left 10 years ago, I needed to be grounded again, and then I noticed, I don’t need to kill myself from working all the time, I can take that rest from social media, I can take care of my mental health, I can take care of myself and now, it’s hard to contain it because I’m so grounded and inspired, again, now I’m ready to on the world, see what I’m saying? 

So, I just want to personally bring me and my personal story to make a full circle with this Podcast, to tell people the adrenal fatigue thing is real. I had to, I’ve been a low carb guy my whole life, the reason low carb works is that every time I eat carbohydrates, I felt dizzy, I felt tired and I used to think “Oh, because of this, because of that”, no, it’s because I was too stressed, I was always in fight or flight. I’ve been a guy that sweated in his sleep, I’ve been someone who’s had anxiety – anxiety disorders, that’s what they diagnosed me with, attention disorder, etc. So, for me to be able to ground myself after learning what caused these things, I fixed those things along with fixing the root chakra, or the consciousness, that can bring pain in your life as well.

[2:01:54] Sahara

Well, thank you for sharing that full picture because I think, sometimes, we see a story as a before and after and then it’s like, even our right now is going to be the before of the future.

[2:02:03] Nate

Exactly.

[2:02:04] Sahara

You know, you rarely realize your before, you know. Most of the time you’re like “It’s the best I’ve been”, and then, one day you’ll be like “Oh wow, I remember being in that state of consciousness where I always felt I wasn’t enough or I needed to keep up with the Jones’” or whatever else. So, I think it takes a lot to realize, even when you’re successful and you’re doing the thing that you’re in one right now, and that even for myself, and for every single person, like, there’s always things that we’re going to be working on and we’re always going to be learning more about ourselves and having different versions of success too. 

[2:02:36] Nate

Exactly!

[2:02:37] Sahara

And it sounds like you needed to go back to – you just finished your Saturn return, in astrology, which is…

[2:02:43] Nate

Oh really? I’ve got to look that up.

[2:02:44] Sahara

Yes! Which happens around 2029, but it sounds like you needed to go back home to your roots and, like, heal what was going on there so you could come full circle, which often happens, also during a Saturn return especially. 

[2:02:55] Nate

Saturn return – I’ve got to look that up, because that is exactly… It’s amazing, astrology is the only thing I haven’t dug deep on, and babies, the development – I know with the development of the body (babies), as far as movement, but I’m talking about the consciousness and things like that, because I’m saving that for when I have a kid, I want to test it.

[2:03:12] Sahara

Yes, yes. Don’t read too much, just be in it. Well, thank you so much for sharing all of this! I know there were so many gems, people can relisten to this again and again. So, where can listeners connect with you further?

[2:03:24] Nate

begreatwithnate.com, my Instagram is @begreatwitnate, because somebody’s still got the ‘with’, and TikTok is begreatwithnate. My podcast is Be Great With Nate. You got me – so many people that came from the podcast, on my podcast, 7000 followers from my last conversation. And also, I’m just going to throw this out, I’m hoping you’re okay with this, you also encouraged me to write a book and you’ve been a great supporter in writing a book. I probably would have ever even thought about writing a book until I was like 35, but you motivated me, inspired me and you even gifted me someone that’s helping me, as far as with the process with it, so, I’m truly grateful for you! And I tell people all the time, after we did our podcast, I got so many people that came over to work with me one-on-one, people that came to my workshops and stuff, I tell people all the time, you are the most authentic person that I’ve ever met, that has a following. You’re the most authentic one! And tell them all “Oh, she looks great”, I’m like “Listen, let me tell you something, she is the most authentic person”. You don’t see this thing on Instagram, you get this whole weirdo behind the screen or this person is known to be not so nice, you get the sweetest, most inspiring person you can get. 

There’s times when we used to hang out in LA, after having our meetings, we just sat there and talked for 4 hours, you know, and you were there, you gave me those – you know, we talked in those moments where I was going through this situation, and having someone that is in a position that can relate to, as far as trying to take their business and improve their business, was inspiring for me, right? So, those things meant a lot and I just want to personally thank you for, not only the first time having me on the podcast, but the second time, and thank you for believing in me and helping me get my message out there, because you’ve helped a lot!

[2:05:04] Sahara

Aww, well, I know that you are a shining light that is going to really raise the vibration of the planet and that your story is so important. I tell your story to everyone, I’m like “Oh my god, you can’t believe it, he went from, you know, he’s the gangster medical medium!” And your book needs to be out in the world, like, people like you need to share their stories and it’s so refreshing to hear it from a different vessel that’s not like a super, well-off, white dude who is so disconnected from the pain, suffering, of humanity, so, it feels refreshing to hear it from someone who has experienced turbulence and doesn’t have this just, like “Well, the book says it should be like this”, but like a lived experience that’s so refreshing, and I’m always here to support you. so, thank you for being on again!

[2:05:48] Nate

Thank you, I appreciate it!

[2:05:49] End of Interview

________________________________________________________________ 

[2:05:50] Sahara

All I’ve got to say is wow! I am blown away by the wisdom, the depth, the knowledge, the specifics that Nate shared on this Episode! This was beyond any Masterclass I have ever listened to on adrenal fatigue, and just life. Because, the truth is, the way that we’re showing up in the world is going to reflect in our health. 

[2:06:14] Sahara

So, that’s what I love about this Podcast, is, we take something as physical, as our digestion and our adrenal fatigue, but we bring it up of the deeper realms of why this is going on. 

So, thank you so much for tuning in!

[2:06:26] Sahara

And if you loved this Episode, I would love for you to leave a review. This really helps the Podcast be listened to by more people who could deeply benefit from it. And as a free gift, I will send you my Womb Meditation. So, this is a meditation to connect to your inner womb wisdom, to hear her answers and connect to your body’s truth.

So, you can head over to the iTunes Store, leave a review, take a screenshot before submitting it and email it over to me at [email protected] and you can find that in the show notes, and I will send you my free Womb Meditation. 

Please, share this Episode with anyone that can benefit from it, share it on your stories, get the word around. Imagine what the world would look like of we all come from a more peaceful and balanced place, we would raise more healed, empowered children; we would have less urgency culture’ and I’m holding the vision for all of us, and it starts from within.

[2:07:20] Sahara

So, thank you for sharing this message for amplifying Nate’s voice and I can’t wait to have you back on the next Episode. 

Namaste!                    

Episode #478: How To Heal From Adrenal Fatigue – The Signs, Stages + Spiritual Causes  with Nate Ortiz
By Sahara Rose