Getting to Know Jonathan – Episode

Empowering you Organically – Season 3 – Episode 20
Title: Getting to Know Jonathan
Hosts: Jonathan Hunsaker & TeriAnn Trevenen
Guest: N/A
Description: We’re all on a health journey. We don’t travel alone in this! Join us as we learn more about our founder, Jonathan Hunsaker! He’s openly sharing about his childhood and how he came to start Organixx. Jonathan shares inspiration and motivation by sharing his struggles and successes along his health journey.

Jonathan’s one big takeaway for you is take it one thing at a time, and if you fall off the wagon, don’t wait until January 1st to get back on it, don’t wait until your birthday to get back on it, don’t wait until Monday to get back on it. Just get back on it now, right? Everybody does that. It’s like “Alright, well, it’s Wednesday. You know what? I’m going to start my new diet on Monday.”

Well, what do we do? We eat like crap all the way through Sunday night, and then Monday morning, we decide to start our new diet. Well, Wednesday, we fall off our diet, and it’s like “You know what? I’m going to try again Monday.” But then we eat like crap until Monday. And the problem is, is we think that we’re going to go restrict ourselves, so we’re going to start doing this thing that we’re no longer—that’s going to keep us from being able to enjoy all this other fun stuff, and so, we gorge.

And during this process of trying to start a new diet or a new way of eating, whatever you want to call it, we actually gain weight because we’re gorging for those three days before we start a new diet. Well, consider not waiting. Consider starting today, start right now. If you’re listening to a podcast, you want to make a decision to quit smoking, quit right now. Don’t wait until Monday, don’t wait until tomorrow.

As Jonathan tells us, “I think that if you fall off the wagon, get right back on it. Only tackle one thing at a time. And over a year, over two years, over three years, you will develop healthy habits that will stick with you for the long-run. And if you fall off, like I did, you have a strong base to get back onto and continue on that journey.”

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Episode 20 – Getting to Know Jonathan

Subscribe to Empowering You Organically 
Never miss an episode! 

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Episode 20 – Getting to Know Jonathan

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Jonathan: Welcome, everyone, to another episode of Empowering You Organically. I’m your host, Jonathan Hunsaker, and I’m joined by my co-host, TeriAnn Trevenen.

TeriAnn: Hey, everyone.

Jonathan: I think most of us are on a journey to health, whether that’s a journey to losing weight, a journey to eating healthier, to exercising more, to whatever it may be. We’re all on our journey. So, I figured why not share my journey, share my ups and downs, and the good and the bad, and maybe even some tips along the way, and hopefully, you find some value in it. So, let’s get started.

TeriAnn: Yeah, so I think you should share your story just from the time you were little, up until you were like in your 20s. You’ve talked about it a little bit on the podcast before, but just talk about where you were when you were younger with health, and your belief around health, and then where you were prior to getting into companies that focused on health.

Jonathan: Absolutely. So, to start way back when, I’m the youngest of six. Raised by a single mother. My parents got divorced when I was about six years old. And at about the age of 13-14, I think my mom was pretty much done raising kids at the time, so that’s when I got introduced to the real world and went out and got a job and had to really provide a lot for myself.

Throughout all that, health-wise, I mean I was not the healthiest throughout my teenage years. I mean I remember, I was a door-to-door salesman in Baltimore, Maryland, selling The Baltimore Sun door-to- door, and they would pick us up after school, and we would stop at a convenience store, and that would be where I picked up dinner.

So, it’d usually be some Hostess cupcakes, and probably a Dr. Pepper and something else. We’d go out, we’d knock doors until 7 or 8 at night. They’d drop me off at home, and I’d get up the next morning, go to school, go knock doors, be home at 8 o’clock. And so, most of my food came from either the school lunch or it came from the convenience store on the way to go knock doors.

So, I was a “husky” kid. I wasn’t quite the fat kid in school, but I certainly wasn’t the skinny kid, either. I had some extra jelly around the mid-waist. And so, let’s see. After high school, I actually dropped out of high school after my junior year, and I moved to Austin, Texas. My brother, Michael, was there doing a landscaping business, and I moved down there to start my own landscaping business.

I always knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur, always fascinated with business. And in high school, I was smoking a lot of weed, I was doing other things that just weren’t good for me. So, I left and moved to Austin, and that was really the first time that I started getting healthy. My brother Michael and I would get up at 4:30 in the morning, we would go for a run down Martin Luther King.

We would wake up at 4:30 or 5, get up, we’d go for a hard two-mile run down The Drag. We would come back, we lived across the street from a 7/11. I’d get showered, I’d walk over to the 7/11, smoke a cigarette, buy a chocolate Power Bar and a Dr. Pepper, and that was my breakfast. And then we would leave out and we’d go do landscaping for the day.

And then every day at lunch, I had a McDonald’s, at the time was a #2, it was a Quarter-Pounder with Cheese, super-sized, with a Dr. Pepper. And I ate the same thing every single day

TeriAnn: Were you self-conscious when you were a little kid?

Jonathan: Absolutely.

TeriAnn: About the weight?

Jonathan: Yeah. I always had my shirt on. I never—I always wore my shirt at the swimming pool, at the beach, and yeah, I was always self-conscious.

TeriAnn: I think most people are. That’s a tough struggle, and then like—what was it—how did it change your thought process in how you felt about yourself when you started getting thin and fit?

Jonathan: It was an amazing reflection, no doubt about it. I mean I remember when I first started running, and we went to the Austin Community College little gym there with my brother, and they had a dip machine. And I could do like one dip, right? That works your pecks out, it’s where you’re kind of on parallel bars and you dip down as low as you can and then lift back up.

And then a couple months later, I went back there, and this is after running and probably losing 20 pounds, I was probably 120 pounds, 125 pounds, and I did like 35 dips, and I hadn’t done anything but just lose some weight. And it was an amazing feeling, for sure, to feel like I could control my body. At the same time, I started doing rock climbing at an indoor gym, this place called Pseudo-Rock in Austin.

I started climbing and was climbing without any ropes or anything. That was another amazing feeling. I mean for once in my life, like I could really handle my body weight. And I could climb all over that gym. I could do—I could do 20 or 30 pullups with the—with a minimal grip, hanging from chains. And my brother, my other brother, who also moved there, my oldest brother Michael was already there, then my other older brother David was there. I moved there shortly after. And he’d call me little Bruce Lee, like I was ripped at the time. I was really in good shape. I still smoked, but in terms of physically and my appearance, I looked great and was in better shape than I’d ever been.

TeriAnn: Yeah. And then at that point, from that point to when you got into the natural health space, just talk a little bit about your journey there and what happened.

Jonathan: So—and I have an older sister who’s a Bikram yoga instructor, I have another older sister who’s a massage therapist, so I’ve always heard about healthy lifestyles, and I think I went—I think the first yoga class I ever did, my sister took me to, was a Bikram class, and I had no idea, didn’t take an extra towel or water or anything.

I don’t know that I’ve been back to a yoga class since. And she’ll tell you that she [crosstalk 0:07:28] that wasn’t the first one that she took me to. So, I’ve always kind of understood and heard about it, but I never really lived it myself.]

I left Austin, there was some just not good influences for me there, and I left Austin. I went to Utah. One of my brothers was living there at the time. And I went and I started lifting, started power lifting, started being kind of that excuse for getting fat really quick. Then I followed it up with muscle. So, I started getting into protein shakes, and started taking glutamine and creatine, and was power lifting.

And before you know it, I was leg pressing 1,300 pounds. And so, I got big really quick. I was still fat, but at least I had some muscle now underneath of all of that. And I’d just started in internet marketing. Again, this is probably 12 years ago now. And was starting to really understand copy writing, and Google Ads, and building websites, and all of that.

I have a very high risk tolerance, so entrepreneurship was definitely right up my alley. But where I always struggled was with my body and my health and my self-confidence in myself. I didn’t—I just didn’t— didn’t have a whole lot of confidence at all when it came to my body. And I didn’t have a good, positive self-reflection of myself when I looked in the mirror.

Now business, on the other hand, was different. So, I say all that to say I was still—I was still enjoying alcohol five nights a week, six nights a week. I wasn’t out there getting blasted, I wasn’t waking up drinking it, but I would have a few glasses of wine every night to “relax.” And that happened for several years.

And listen, I was there during when The Secret came out, The Secret movie, and The Law of Attraction. I was doing a lot of marketing around that and with other people, and I was doing a lot of marketing around life coaching programs. So, I really understand and understood personal development, and I really understood the power of thoughts and the power of thinking, and just your whole mindset, and how your thoughts turn into actions, which turn into reality, and all of that.

So, I was very well-versed in all of that. But I still wasn’t taking control of myself physically, and my body and my health. So, at this time, I had moved back to Austin. I was dating a massage therapist and decided to move down to Panama. I was at a phase, I was like “Let’s get out of the US, let’s go travel. All I need’s the internet to work from.”

We moved down to Panama. I had a buddy that was living down doing internet marketing in Panama City. We went and lived down there on the Pacific coast in a place called San Carlos for about a year. Then I discovered Bocas del Toro, which is an island on the Caribbean side. Moved out to Bocas and lived in a little shack built over the water

It was beautiful, right over the top of the Caribbean, but I was getting fatter, right? Every night was Friday night. Everybody that was out there was either backpackers traveling. In terms of work, I was doing some consulting, I was, again, really good at business, so I didn’t have to work a whole lot of hours to make enough money to live, didn’t cost a whole lot to live there.

So, about that time, my brother-in-law, Mark, he had been telling me about Ty for a while, Ty Bollinger, saying “Hey, you guys got to meet up,” and this was a couple years before that, and I just kind of blew it off. He ended up introducing us, and Ty, at the time, was doing—he had written a book about cancer and how to beat it, alternative health and all of that.

I think they wanted to publish the 6th edition of his book, Cancer: Step Outside the Box. That didn’t excite me much.

I mean there wasn’t much around a 6th edition of a book that excited me. But the more that I talked to him, that’s when I thought of the idea of “Hey, let’s do a docuseries. Let’s send you all around the country, let’s interview a bunch of doctors about alternative medicine, alternative health, and let’s give it away to the world for free.”

We did that, and it exploded, right? Now right around that same time that Ty and I partnered up, and Mark was part of the business as well, we were all 33 percent owners of the business, 33 1/3. We developed The Truth About Cancer, we did the doc—we were starting on the docuseries. Right at the same time is when I found out Shannon was pregnant with my oldest daughter, Alivia.

And so, this was February of 2014. And again, I mean when I was introduced to Ty, I was still smoking, I was very out of shape, fat, unhealthy, and right at the same time, Shannon got pregnant with Alivia now. And I knew something had to change, right? And the biggest motivator was my daughter. I was not going to be a fat dad. I was not going to be a dad that sat on the couch and watched his kid run around but couldn’t get off the couch and do anything.

And then on top of that, now I’ve started a company called The Truth About Cancer, right? And now, and I’m running all of the business around The Truth About Cancer. I’m doing all of the marketing around The Truth About Cancer and really driving that whole ship. Well now, I can’t be a hypocrite, either. So, there were these two things that really just hit at the same time. It was like “It is time to get your shit together.” And it’s time to get healthy. And I did.

TeriAnn: How much do you think you learned, like in the time span of like when you learned about The Truth About Cancer and then released the series? Like do you feel like you just had information overload about health and how you could change your life?

Jonathan: You know? I really didn’t. The first series, we filmed, and we released in May 2014, and I was still smoking. I had tried quitting smoking a couple times, but I was working. At this point, like I was working to get this information out to the world, so I’m going day and night marketing. I’m not even watching the content as much. I was watching the content and learning it, but I wasn’t implementing it. It was a matter of “How do we put this together? How do we reach a large amount of people?” And so, that was the focus. Right after that first airing of the docuseries is when I took a breath, and it was like “Yes, this is amazing and it’s going to change the world, and I have to change me, too.”

So, I was making attempts there at the beginning of the year. It was July, I think, 14th, when—14th or 15th, that I smoked my last cigarette, got really clear. I read about it online, the best way to quit is cold turkey, and I believe that wholeheartedly, the best way to quit anything is cold turkey. With the caveat, depending on how heavy of a drinker you are, or if you’re an alcoholic, I mean you can definitely have some health risks there, quitting certain pharmaceuticals, there’s definitely health risks.

Maybe I’ve touched one, but I’ve never smoked one since. And shortly after that, in August, August- September, my lungs weren’t healing.

I was starting to get a little bit concerned. After—we were just now making the second docuseries, and I was learning all about the ketogenic diet, was learning about how it’s an anti-cancer diet. I was still overweight, 260-some pounds. I also knew that when I was making this change, I’ve known better, I’ve known that you don’t change it all at once, it doesn’t work.

So, step one was quitting smoking and quitting the drinking. And that once I quit that, then I could move on to step two, which may be tackling my eating, and then step three, maybe adding exercise in. So, I did that. Around September, I started the ketogenic diet, and it was—my daughter was born on October 7th. I think I started the ketogenic diet just a little bit before then, and I started seeing phenomenal results.

I started having more energy, I started losing weight, and it worked for me. And sometimes, when you’re at that level, I know there’s a lot of controversy around the keto diet. I’m not saying that I think keto is the best diet for the rest of your life, right? I think that it’s—I think that it’s very important to learn how to turn fat into fuel.

But at that time, I was seeing results and I was losing weight. We, at the time, we also—my daughter was born, we moved away from the island. There wasn’t clean, running water on the island, and just wasn’t the right place to raise her, so we moved to Boquete, Panama, up in the rainforest there, a nice little house.

And I quickly went from 265 to like 225 and started walking in the mornings and started running some in the mornings. And yeah, just everything started progressing. I think the real thing to understand here is it’s not an overnight fix, it’s not a one-time thing. It’s a process and it’s understanding that if you try to fix everything at once, your chances of failure are extremely high, whereas pick the biggest problem.

So, we’re living in Boquete, I’m getting healthier. I wanted to move away from Panama. We went and looked down in Southern Chile. Went down to Pucon, Chile. Beautiful little place.

Lived at the base of an active volcano. And was still, I was focusing on being a dad. We launched more docuseries with The Truth About Cancer. I was getting healthier. Things were really going well. Unfortunately, things with Shannon and I were not as healthy. They were getting worse. She was pregnant with our second daughter. And being down in Southern Chile just wasn’t helping.

It was hard being away from family, being away from friends, and the stress was starting to accumulate. So, we moved back to the Dallas/Fort Worth area.

But moving back to the states, under the stress of a breakup, understand, too, when I was living in Panama, there wasn’t fast food. I mean there’s fast food in Panama City, and over near San Carlos, there’s fast food, but when we were on the island, there was no fast food. When we were in Southern Chile, there was no fast food.

It was all healthier food, it was all local food, it was generally organic food. And coming back to the states, while it’s not an excuse, I definitely fell into that trap of the stress and then stress eating and stress drinking, and all of that. And I went back up to about 245 pounds. Very—that hurts you on a confidence level as well, right?

You just made all of this great progress, now you’re up to 245. Instantly went back on keto, got my life better in shape, and got re-committed to what mattered to me, and that was my girls. And that’s what meant to me more than anything in the world. My oldest daughter, Alivia, was two at the time. Ava was born. And it was time to get things back in check again. I went back to what I knew worked well for me, and that was keto. And through keto, I dropped back down to about 215, was feeling good, was—things were going well. I mean we’re probably talking, I don’t know, early 2017, mid-2017 at the time. And stayed around there for—stayed around that weight.

And again, I’m getting healthier. Now let me back up a little bit, because I’ve only talked about the personal stuff. Mid—when I was down in Southern Chile, we had also launched Organixx, the supplement company. It was launched as Epigenetic Labs. We had so many people following us with The Truth About Cancer that wanted good supplements.

I wanted good supplements. I was on a health journey as well, right? I was down in Southern Chile, things were going well. And so, we started creating supplements that didn’t exist before, like really high- quality, organic-sourced, good quality blends, because that’s what people wanted. We knew what was really healing people, although I’m not making any claims that it was healing anybody, and I never would, and never will, but we knew from a lot of the doctors that we interviewed, from a lot of the research that was being done, what ingredients, what minerals, what herbs, what spices, what mushrooms, what seeds were really making a difference.

And so, we started Epigenetic Labs at the time. In 2017, we changed our name to Organixx, to better reflect who we were. While I still believe wholeheartedly that you can change your epigenetic makeup through diet and exercise and things like that, Organixx was a more mainstream name that really reflected who we were and some of the things that we stood for.

Our supplements were designed to help healthy inflammation levels and boost your immune system, and we had our great Bone Broth and Detoxx.

So, I’m taking all of that, but it wasn’t changing my weight. I felt great. I wasn’t smoking, I wasn’t drinking. I felt healthy, I felt strong. And I was still wanting to drop those pounds off. So, I went keto, lost the weight some more. And I’d go on and off keto. About early 2018 was the—it was time to really separate—we had a big company at the time that was TruNorth Management, and everybody worked for TruNorth Management, and they, TruNorth Management provided services for Organixx, for The Truth About Cancer, and The Truth About Vaccines.

We were just too big, you know? We needed to separate out the companies, we needed to separate the people that were working on the companies, so that we could become a lot more efficient and effective at what we were doing. We started that process in spring of 2018. Around June of 2018, I got really clear that I was getting burned out. I had been working 80 hours a week running three massive companies.

At the time, I say running, but you were the CEO as well, but I was still involved in everything, and still working like crazy. I knew that for my health, we needed to separate the ownership of the companies as well. I just was not able to sustain myself in running all three companies. It was damaging my health even more. And I, at the time—at that time, I had gotten down to about 195. I was starting to run a little bit more in the mornings, was really feeling good. And I’ve got to work on my stress management. How do I deal with stress? Because during that stressful—the next few months were very stressful, and I naturally put weight back on again.

I got up to about 220. And until things kind of settled down there, and we were able to fully separate out the companies and come to agreements and all of that, then it was time to recommit again, to getting healthy, and it was time to recommit, and I started running again in the mornings. I mean we got to—this is just six months ago, right?

I started running again in the mornings, went back to Old Faithful, which is keto for me. And then I didn’t—I’ve learned a lot throughout this whole time period. So, I’m kind of giving the Cliff Notes of everything. Meanwhile, I’d been learning tons about health, right? I’d been learning all about—a lot more about mushrooms and bone broth and juicing, and I’ve done some 30-day juices, and I’ve done some 7- day and 10-day juices and cleanses.

Just recently, I’ve started playing with water fasting and extended water fasting, doing 100+ hours of just straight water, and doing them while running in the morning. I mean I just, a month and a half ago, had my biggest running week of 30 miles, and I did it while fasting, only having water. And so, I say all that to say, like I’m on a journey, too, right?

I’m on a journey to get healthier. We launched this podcast so that we could share what we’ve learned, but more importantly, share what other people have learned, right? We have guests on our podcast that are experts, right? Whether it’s Dr. Susan Pierce-Thompson, when it comes to sugar addiction, whether it’s John Easterling, I don’t think his podcast has aired yet, when it comes to botanical foods and nutrients, and using botanicals for healing. And we had John Malanca on talking about cannabis and talking about the benefits of cannabis.

So, I say all that to say, like I’m on this journey right along with all of our listeners. I’m on this journey right along with you. When I talk about taking 7M+ [now 7 Mushrooms], the mushrooms, for boosting your immune system, or anti-aging, it’s because I’ve researched it. We formulated a phenomenal product, and I’m taking it right along with you.

Whether it’s taking collagens to help rebuild the glue in your body again. I just turned 40 last year, right? It’s important for me. So, I say all that—and I’m running now. I’m now training to run my first marathon. I turned 40 years old October 27th of last year. I started running a little bit more, and I was like “Eh, I’m going to do an 5K a day challenge.”

I’m now down to 195 again. My goal, by the time of running the marathon, is 160. Now it’s not all about weight. I could get it, I might be 180 and be really healthy, but I like setting that stretch goal for myself. I think that I will be very lean at 155 to 160, and that’s where I hope to be. And I’m going to keep exploring with different things and testing things out with my body, like doing water fasting, doing intermittent fasting, doing some juice cleanses, doing some different cleanses.

And so, that’s—I mean that’s my motivation. My motivation is my daughters. My motivation is myself and my health. And my other motivation is you listening, right? I refuse to be a hypocrite. I refuse to not practice what I preach. And so, it’s all in an effort to just get healthy. And I think most people on this planet today are on a journey.

They have not reached their destination. And if you think you’ve reached your destination, that’s just probably part of your learning process to realize you’re still on a journey. And I hope to be inspiring on some level. I’ve been playing with doing daily vlogs after my runs for a few weeks now, but I’m not an “in front of the camera” guy. I’ve always been a behind-the-scenes guy.

TeriAnn: So, through your journey in health, what’s been your biggest lesson and your biggest takeaway?

Jonathan: The biggest lesson and biggest takeaway, it’s interesting, because it’s twofold. It is not taking on too much at once, but what you do decide to take on, take it on in a big way. So, for quitting smoking, right, it wasn’t “Let’s smoke 5 less cigarettes a day.” And I was a smoker. I was smoking a pack and a half a day, right?

It wasn’t cutting down. My goal wasn’t “Let’s quit by the end of the year.” It was to quit smoking right now and be done. And the goal was never to touch a cigarette again. Now my goal at the time wasn’t “Go to the gym every morning and lift weights and then run two miles after that, and only eat organic, and only…”

I didn’t stack myself, because that was going to stack me for failure. I found what I felt was my biggest— my biggest thing preventing me from being healthy, and that was smoking. Now I did quit drinking with it, because drinking was such a strong trigger, but you know what else was a strong trigger for me? Driving in the car.

What else was a strong trigger for me? Talking on the phone. What do I do running companies? I’m on the phone eight hours a day talking to people. So, smoking just helped there—stopping drinking just helped the evening triggers. There’s a lot you have to fight through. And it’s the same thing now. For me right now, what’s the biggest thing?

I don’t smoke, I don’t drink very often at all, and I’ve actually made the commitment not to have a sip of any sort of alcohol until after my marathon, not that it’s a bad thing or a negative thing or a trigger thing, it’s just I know for my body, isn’t as healthy. My eating is fairly under control. I follow keto a lot of times, and the rest of the time, I still eat clean.

But my big thing right now is my running. And so, I—taking on running as the one thing that I want to focus on right now, and then setting my lofty goal of running a marathon in a short amount of time. That’s what’s worked for me, and it’s worked for me for years. And again, I’m not saying I didn’t have struggles along the way and fall off the wagon, but that’s what’s worked for me consistently.

TeriAnn: Awesome. So, I mean this has been amazing, listening to your story today. I think that you’ve come a long way. I think that you’ve been through a lot. And I think coming into the opportunity with business, where natural health was a huge part of the story, it’s changed a lot of people’s lives, including ours.

You with your daughters and your life, and getting healthier, and certainly, a lot of people who have come into the companies and worked with the companies. And so, I appreciate you sharing your story today, and I think a lot of people go through those ups and downs and struggles and back and forth, and health is a journey.

I think that’s the biggest takeaway from what you’ve shared today, that health is a journey, and that we’re all figuring out our groove, and it just takes time, and it takes finding the right pieces of the puzzle and putting them together, and that looks different at different times in our lives. And so, definitely inspiring, hearing your story, and I think you’ll definitely inspire more people as you continue on your journey of health.

Jonathan: Thank you for that. Yeah, if I can just stress to those of you listening that are looking to make changes in your life, it’s very easy to look at “all of the bad things that are happening,” or all of the things that you wish you could change at once. “I wish I was skinnier.” “I wish I didn’t drink.” “I wish I studied more.” “I wish I worked a better job.” “I wish I this…” “I wish I slept more.” “I wish I was nicer.”

I mean there’s all these things, and especially when you’re in not feeling healthy mode, to just pick the one. Pick that one thing and focus on it, and let that be your life for 90 days, right? They say habits are formed in 21 days, I think it takes a lot longer than that, personally, especially if you’ve had a negative habit or a negative self-talk, or negative self-reflection.

Find that one thing and just focus on that one thing, you know? And if it’s exercising more, exercise. And if you find that you’re still eating more pizza and junk and things like that, that’s fine. Tackle that the 90 days after you’ve taken on your exercise and you’ve made exercise a routine. Because what—we live in a world right now where everybody wants instant gratification, everybody wants a solution in a bottle, everybody wants this quick fix, and it’s not.

And if you get a quick fix, it’s not going to last. It just won’t. Whether I’ve learned this lesson through health, but I’ve really learned this lesson through business. When you go for the quick fix in business, it never lasts. It’s a grind, right? To have a successful business, to be successful entrepreneur, you grind it out. I ground it out for 20 years before having the success that I have right now.

And even still, it’s still a grind constantly to maintain any amount of success that you have. Well, it’s the same thing when it comes to your health, is find that one thing and get it good, grind it out, become good at exercising, or whatever it is you want to do, and then next, tackle your diet. Personally, I think diet’s more important to tackle than exercise, so I want to make sure I put that caveat out there.

I think that diet will have a bigger impact on your life and your mental health, and all of that. So, if you’re going to tackle something first, tackle your diet for 90 days, then the next 90 days, maybe it’s exercise. Maybe the next 90 days after diet is learning how to de-stress, so maybe tackle becoming good at meditation, something I would love to become good at.

And so, my one big takeaway for you is take it one thing at a time, and if you fall off the wagon, don’t wait until January 1st to get back on it, don’t wait until your birthday to get back on it, don’t wait until Monday to get back on it. Just get back on it now, right? Everybody does that. It’s like “Alright, well, it’s Wednesday. You know what? I’m going to start my new diet on Monday.”

Well, what do we do? We eat like crap all the way through Sunday night, and then Monday morning, we decide to start our new diet. Well, Wednesday, we fall off our diet, and it’s like “You know what? I’m going to try again Monday.” But then we eat like crap until Monday. And the problem is, is we think that we’re going to go restrict ourselves, so we’re going to start doing this thing that we’re no longer—that’s going to keep us from being able to enjoy all this other fun stuff, and so, we gorge.

And during this process of trying to start a new diet or a new way of eating, whatever you want to call it, we actually gain weight because we’re gorging for those three days before we start a new diet. Well, consider not waiting. Consider start today, start right now. If you’re listening to a podcast, you want to make a decision to quit smoking, quit right now. Don’t wait until Monday, don’t wait until tomorrow.

And yeah, I just think that it’s—I think that if you fall off the wagon, get right back on it. Only tackle one thing at a time. And over a year, over two years, over three years, you will develop healthy habits that will stick with you for the long-run. And if you fall off, like I did, you have a strong base to get back onto and continue on that journey.

TeriAnn: Awesome. Jonathan, thank you for sharing today. It’s been amazing listening to your story.

Jonathan: Thank you very much. Hey, I’m going to give a quick plug to our podcast. If you like this podcast, give us a rating on iTunes, leave us a written review. Obviously, subscribe if you’re not subscribed already. EmpoweringYouOrganically.com is our podcast website. Watch all of our previous podcasts, download any of the show notes, check out any of our sources, if we’ve talked about different studies or things like that, will be in those show notes.

I will give a plug to our company, Organixx.com. O-R-G-A-N-I-X-X.com. And especially, it’s not the supplements, but our health, INSPIRED Health Library. There’s tons of videos, tons of articles, tons of content to help educate you on your journey to health. And my final plea will be come on this journey with me. I would love if you tuned in every week to our podcasts and learned right along with us. I’d love to hear from you a year from now and tell me about your journey to health. And hopefully, my journey to health will have a different story to tell a year from now as well. So, thanks for listening, and I’ll see you on the next episode.

TeriAnn: Thanks, everyone.

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Episode 20 – Getting to Know Jonathan

9 Tips for Cutting Back on Drinking

11 ways to curb your drinking

Rethinking Drinking – Alcohol & Health

WebMD – Smoking Cessation

Quit Smoking

I Can Quit

Readers’ stories of how they quit smoking

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