0:00 thank you [Music] welcome back to another episode of careful boys we are currently off the Record thankfully we have those two very great guests we got Eric and we also got Christos so um I wanted to ask this because um you I think you mentioned something and it kind of gave me the idea that a lot of people might benefit from hearing um how have you guys overcome addictions in the past oh cause you know I'm addicted to a lot of ████ well you mentioned that you were smoking for like how many years 20 five no so I'm 38 now and then I started smoking at like 12 or 13. and you cold turkey quit it just done yeah how did you do that that was pretty hard because it was um I've been wanting to quit
0:51 when I like for the past two years and at the time uh the person I was with we both were trying to quit but also it's not good because if you're both addicted and you're both fighting because you're addicted too you causing arguments because you're just like man I need a cigarette now look what you made me do ████ ████ I gotta go you know like so so uh that was a tough one yeah but I do remember um so I used to do these ████ karate boot camp Retreats right where my karate club would um get some you know you know they would rent out space at a university they'll rent out a dorm they would house us feed us so all you got to do is just focus on ████ training so um it's like almost a week long so I was like this might be the perfect time for me where I can't be smoking
1:42 because I'm it's gonna make my life harder trying to do ████ Karate kicks and ████ while I have a cigarette dangling off of my mouth you know so I said all right I'm just gonna throw this pack away and and this rope like let's just cold turkey it and then after the end of it because the first day um being a smoking like athlete right it's there's a lot of there's actually a lot of people that are doing like in in UFC there's like like Fighters that'll just like beat the ████ out of somebody and just go and then they can still do it yeah but for me I think like I I was really feeling it like I just like I was like this is my last pack so I'm just gonna go ham and I just went ham right the next day I couldn't even ████ like dude like there were senior citizens Passing Me Up On The Run and I was like dude what the
2:33 ████ I shouldn't be this bad my stamina is so horrible and I always that was always my thing is like I'm like like if I'm sparring or whatever I'm just so tired and so I started feeling the negative effects of it and telling my head for the first time like this is why smoking sucks like you you can't ████ run like a grandpa you can't fight and stay like whatever and then I kept reminding myself it sucks it sucks because I kept telling myself I love a cigarette and coffee I love a ████ after a meal just go hit you know and then eventually at the end of it all I was like I don't ████ need this ████ man but for a whole month straight I was like but what if what if I could get just one you know yeah or like I would be like maybe I could call my friends up and we could go
3:23 get some uh we could do some hookah ah yeah or like you know it's like I'd find clever ways to get nicotine right but I didn't do any of it because I was like nah just ████ stop and then after that point it got easier and easier and now I can't even stand the smell of it like if someone's smoking around me I'm like there's children what the ████ what up yeah you completely changed so you haven't smoked one since the karate theme no no I had to say I had a cigar like a year ago that's different though yeah you're not really inhaling you're not inhaling yeah flavor yeah so how many years has that been I think that's 2019 maybe 2020 yeah so I think it was 2019 20 21 22. yeah good for you oh July is actually when I ended so it's been a four four years four years
4:16 foreign I've done every jug in the world and this is the hardest thing that was that I thought I had to quit like it was the hardest thing so now knowing knowing that you can do that is that something that now you you understand you have a you have a muscle for discipline that's like that's the hard that was the hardest thing yeah so you can put that towards other like in-depth yeah like right now um me and my girl were doing caffeine so we're on month four with like no caffeine okay that was ████ hard yeah that is really hard yeah and I've done no sugar before too and I think that was the hardest that was harder than caffeine for me sugars and a lot of food yeah that's why because you have to read everything what do you what makes you pick like uh I'm gonna take out sugar or take out caffeine or like I'll probably like one day you know I just read a lot of ████ or like watch
5:07 something and then I go hey this might be the reason why I have insomnia or like I'll see a thing about how sugar is in all of our foods and it ████ with our hormones or whatever and I'm like so what is it like without it then so I get curious and then I just want to see what it's like cigarettes was always like I don't like this feeling of addiction and I don't like this feeling of like um when I especially when I was doing martial arts with you guys like I was feeling so tired and I'm like I shouldn't feel this tired at my age yeah yeah I remember when you cut like when you stopped smoking cigarettes cold turkey I just was like man I don't know like in my head I was like I don't know that's a good idea but you ████ did it dude and I was like wow I was very impressed because that's so hard because growing up my dad was a smoker my whole family is a bunch of smoke it's hard and I see my dad every stage in his life try
5:57 to stop smoking until he had a stroke maybe about like two three years ago and that's when he actually actually stop smoking cigarettes he had like he was smoking and he was driving and then he had a stroke while he was right oh crazy right that's ████ crazy did he crash no he pulled over to the side and he was like ████ up but he was like he got lucky you know he was one of those things yeah the longest time I'll take something like that for them to stop so when I heard you doing that I was like damn bro good for you because the longest time I quit before that was in my mid-20s or something like that um and it was almost two years yeah and that was the only time pretty solid too yeah pretty solid run but before yeah it's crazy I don't know it's just one of those things it's always been there since I was like 12 13. and it's always going to be right and I and I got myself addicted because like I was so curious
6:48 like I would be like what is that like you know everyone's doing it but then we can't do it why yeah and then so I started picking up cigarette butts on the ground lighting it and puffing it because I just wanted to know what that was like yeah and then like I would be like age dad's a smoker like can I get one and then so like me and my friends would like steal cigarettes from their like you know from their parents and ████ and we'd go in the backyard and try to smoke it and we're like we don't know what we're doing you know and then teenagers would be like that's not how you inhale you inhale like this yeah and I had I ████ up my lungs and whatever but like you're becoming a smoker the process is you really gotta try like you really Gotta Fight to enjoy it and it ████ sucks it's like beer yeah because the kid like you don't like beer yeah you don't drink beer and go this is delicious you're just like I have to
7:38 keep liking this you're playing beer pong and that's the thing of like okay now I can go for a cold beer but what does that even mean nothing you know what I'm saying don't taste train yourself to like it yeah and yeah but I don't know right now I think it's like caffeine but now I just like experimenting because I'm I just want to know what I would feel like what my normal is if I didn't do this routine yeah that's right yeah because I'm just really interested like now I'm like what if we try to live as close to our ancestors as possible it's hard to do because we live indoors climate controlled processed foods all this stuff yeah but I'm like what if we lived in a hut and then we ate fresh fish and things that we picked every day that's gonna cost a lot to recreate that
8:29 right or you just gotta like throw it all away and go into the jungle and do it I've seen videos of people doing that like like turning these caves into like homes like hold to YouTube genre oh I love watching those stuff bro hell yeah but I'm so curious like what would what would it do because like when I changed my diet and do all these things my Eczema cleared up I've been living with it all my life right yeah every time yeah eczema yeah yeah all of my arms but when I when I when I uh changed my diet and all these things I was like this ████ is I didn't know it was this easy I thought I needed pills and things to fix all this stuff so I'm like what other things can I just fix naturally right interesting that's dope yo I did that with uh like I tried vegan I thought that would be impossible especially being a Puerto Rican in Dominican like rice and chicken is that that's you know but uh it's actually not
9:20 that hard rice and bananas yeah rice and bananas with beans you could do that but then and then also you know with Your Greens too you know it's how you season it how you you know or like cooking your broccoli and frying it like is there or cauliflower you know they're changing each other like your fried cauliflower buffalo and all that stuff like there's how do you feel any difference when you change it for sure yeah I honestly I felt like I was like oh damn and honestly okay I was only vegan for like four months but it was it was still enough for me to go there's enough of a change I can do it yeah I can do it and then I I fell into the like wow I feel so much better after I eat I'm like I could run a mile right now you know what I mean like it really does feel that way like when they when vegans do because I used to get so annoyed when I would eat like you know at a round of being around a vegan's house where they cook and then they're like you know what you just ate yeah
10:11 you know what I'm saying yeah it wasn't me yeah the whole Burgers like that's a flower you're like how did you do it tastes just like it don't it so it's a whole thing I got I got into it whenever I started eating I was like damn this makes sense it's like you feel you feel good good you feel yeah you know because meat has so much like it's really hard for your body to break that down so when you're just eating you know you're just like I'm about to tear up this ████ brisket oh they said that you're feeling like dead like this because your body don't even know how to break that ████ down you know I like that yeah I like that ████ though we like that ████ oh ████ this is the best thing though so I'm I'm the exact opposite so I was like I was raised in this cult right and part of the cult we had to be vegans for a long time and then so the first thing I had when I got out of like I I broke
11:02 free from the cult was I had chicken wings but I I do a lot of like Ultra endurance type of like cycling races and I've for me I recover faster with a little bit of meat and everything's in Balance right but if I have the meat like meat Foods a clean meat of course and a good balance of vegetables and stuff I recover faster but everybody I think is different I learned ultimately it's just balance yeah you know what I'm saying like you you don't it don't matter if you want to be be completely vegan or if you want to be completely on the on the other side where you're eating what's that liver king cat like you know what I'm saying you can either be on there and sexual Tendencies yeah yeah that guy's insane he's literally turning into raw meat like he's he already is ████ and he's like oh I don't take any steroids yeah yeah that's a whole other thing but I'm saying you can either be all over there or all over here or in the middle you know what I'm
11:53 saying like it's not it's not going to kill you to eat meat and it's also not gonna kill you to just not eat meat yeah balance it out you know can't have too much anything anybody have any other uh habits that they had to break or anything that was man well for for me I think I developed this really weird like binge eating issue like when I was like fighting and stuff because I would there was no education on how to like wake up properly so anytime we'd have competitions we would just like starve ourselves do all the worst kinds of weigh-in right yeah to weigh in on a certain day and just like it was just the worst way to go about it you know and like I would lose like 15 pounds in like a week and a half wow you know and then throughout the whole time I'm just like obsessing over food I'm gonna lose 15 and a half pounds don't do it that way I promise you don't do it that and
12:44 like uh because it is a trash bag yeah he knows about that no but uh and I just created like it was more mental than anything like I built up other Foods in my head to be like the sole focus of everything that I want to do like I mean like good good food bad food or you mean not even food stress eating whatever the case may be so then like I would just I would binge eat like crazy you know and then just feel like ████ the next day and then just continue to do it over and over and over again and I like I developed this really bad habit of like not eating throughout the day but then whenever I was hungry I would just eat like all the water like really bad not just like bad foods but like fast food
13:34 and just like indulge and then my mind would always be just like centered around eating these kinds of foods constantly so I just developed this really weird habit over time and I just didn't like how my body was looking how I was feeling so then that kind of I had to like rewire everything I had to rewire how I approach food how I looked at food so it took a lot more education for me and obviously I'm in that Fitness field so I had to really deep dive and a lot of the clients I was dealing with were going through the same freaking issues so then it allowed me to kind of pull back my lens and really study it and realize how to create that balance right because you would hear all these things like this is bad for you this is good especially in the nutrition space you know depending on who you talk to everything is terrible for you everything's gonna give you cancer everything's gonna make you fat so then I was like I gotta figure this out
14:25 myself you know and through that process I was able to realize just like everything else we all know we need to be eating you know and I just it allowed me to look at food in a more objective way and then through there I was like okay I think I was able to fix this issue that I had of just binging all the time and have a stable weight and not just be yo-yoing like 20 to 15 pounds depending on the season of when I was training or not so man like through that process of just education for me that allowed me to kind of fix those issues and a lot of discipline too but for me the biggest chunk the biggest move for me was just the education part but what I realized like getting into more and more things is if you just dollar cost average your
15:16 life that's literally the key right like baby snip everything yeah investments just do that you don't have to buy ████ 10 Bitcoin at once or 10 10 100 000 whatever ████ stocks at once you little e dollar cost average Investments you want to get smarter just read 10 pages a day yeah you don't got to cram five books in one month and then don't read for five years you know Fitness you don't gotta ████ go run 10 miles and now you're ████ burnt the ████ out like literally the the key to life is just everything that you're supposed to do to like your mind your spirit whatever your body you just need to go you don't got to go crazy like anti-carbs or whatever it's just dollar cost average everything yeah but what if none of that excites you that's the problem but nobody wants to hear that though yeah no one wants to know me no one wants a quick fix exactly that's the thing
16:06 on it yesterday yeah yeah and so much of that is based on like their feeling of like the day right so like they might be good Monday through Thursday and then Friday they're like I had a really rough day and then that causes them to like throw everything the work that they have accumulated from Monday Thursday out the ████ window and then they're just like I just want to do whatever the ████ I want I want to eat whatever I want that's how I feel like when I want a Cinnabon yeah you know what I mean oh God yeah I pretty much just good I was just about to say like a lot of our decisions are made emotionally like our emotional yeah there's this one cycle that's why I invest that's how I invest too nft worlds uh there's this one psychologist his name is Gabor mate and his theory is that a lot of um a lot of addiction stem from trauma and Trauma also creates a lot of emotional response to things so I I
16:57 can't speak for for all addictions but there are certain addictions out there that you could clearly look back and be like why am I doing this like I was addicted to work like I'd be a workaholic avoiding my family odd stuff to just work work work work and I started realizing that's how I was raised my dad he would work 60 70 hours a week to make ends meet so I would look at my dad as a model of success but for me to be like my dad I got to answer work 70 hours a week and only see my kids on the weekends type of thing right and he he unintentionally did because he want he needed to support the family I didn't need to do that in the position I was at because I was doing okay right but like I was looking back at them like why am I such a workaholic why do I feel guilty when I want to take a nap why do I feel guilty I want to go when I want to do a vacation and I look back I was like oh it's just how how this conditioning this trauma that had in the past type of thing so I don't know
17:47 that's just kind of like an interesting like kind of like thought process of like why do we do certain things that's true because certain things that aren't addict uh like so like let's say crack is highly addictive right but like gambling shouldn't be but it is right because it's not a chemical reaction that you're taking anything like it has a serotonin hit it it is yeah but it's just the hope of winning or whatever it is the hope that was uh that was me with uh with women really heavy yeah just because I would just that's the addiction you can't kick hell yeah well this guy is not well yeah but it was just my dog my eyebrow the Opera well a moment where it's kind of like you know uh you know it's a problem when like your your entire day is just like invested in just like who can I hit up and try to you know score for the night
18:38 or situate or like or like being on dating apps in this talking to strangers in this doing have these crazy conversations you get to these things or just like you're just trying to get off you know me and after you come you just have that grace period of chillness and then two hours later you're hitting up another do it again yeah do it again yeah it's like and I and I realized yo like I was realizing that uh like how am I how how life was going for me when when I'm in that pocket when I'm in that phase where I'm just like dark this in my apartment not leaving I'm just kind of like just doing my my own little thing you know what I'm saying like and so I realized that nothing was really going right you know I mean like if just in life just things are just kind of just going wrong and I realized on the other side of it where I'm like doing things that are like you know more beneficial to me or making me feel happy or going out and like going out training
19:29 with y'all or like dancing on the stairs life is going well and I'm getting I'm getting opportunities and things are happening I'm like oh snap I had to really think about like oh I see how because then you test it because then you go all right well let me see if life is going good let me go back to getting down you know what I'm saying and and seeing what's up and then when I realized I was like oh s███'s hidden hitting the fan again I'm like okay I'm recognizing the pattern I'm putting a lot of energy towards and stuff that doesn't even matter you know and it's just for a quick little fix or and then I would even it would get to the point where like I would like reward myself I was like if uh if if I just like made a video that went crazy viral I would just be like I'm like ████ like let me hit up a shorty you know what I'm saying like or I hit up or or like or even something that's like a you know small
20:19 achievements or whatever it is it's just like you get that that that testosterone feel of like I'm gonna ████ ████ and I need to conquer you know what I mean and um I I what would help me break that was uh moving back home and then getting back into dancing because the amount of like work and dedication it takes to like get these dancing moves like I'll break dancing for absence low-key right yeah it takes a lot penis it basically like it got me to like um get those endorphins going that same like because when I hit windmills for the first time yo like literally an out of body experience you can't explain it yeah unless you do it I'm gonna do this all day yeah it was almost yeah it was
21:09 just like each windmill was like an orgasm so like like a woman you're like coming eight times you just get back up you're just like yo yeah and so that that was something that I was able to like you know and now it gives me even even more confidence you know going to these clubs and knowing that like I know what I could do I know how I can get down and like now I'm getting more attention right become dancing and doing all these things but at the same time it's like I'm I'm cool with how I feel and I know what I know what that I know what that journey is going to be like I know what's gonna like yeah that'll be hella cool the perfect scenario like yeah me shorty same night just now then it's like well ████ I just I messed up the the the wave that I've already like created you know what I'm saying that's some beautiful
21:59 self-awareness I know that's true it's shifting because like we were like for as kids we're taught to do things to impress other people yeah but now you're doing things to impress yourself yes yo for real yeah it took this was this was the longest because you what I realized was that out of the when I moved out here in 2013 I was I got into a relationship up and then that didn't work out got into another relationship like within like six months I was getting into new relationships so like seven out of the you know five out of the seven years I were invested into relationships and I didn't like I was like I didn't move out here for that you know what I mean and when I'm you know when I'm in a relationship you want to be the best boyfriend ever you know you're going to be the best for this person but like when now I've been single for two years and that's almost like me being sober like it's the longest I've ever been single ever like since like high school you know so like Within These two years I'm learning all
22:51 these things about myself and literally having to become obsessed with myself to just like okay let me you know go to the movies by myself or let me go train let me go let me do some things instead of feeling like let me hit up a shorty just investing in yourself yeah because some people they learn dance to get ████ you learn dance to get away from ████ windmill away from the vagina [Music]
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