A (24:25)
Well said. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the all in one website platform designed to help you stand out and succeed online. There is this gap, I think we all experience, the gap between having something to offer on the one hand and actually getting out into the world on the other hand. And what lives in that gap isn't usually talent or vision. It's the operational stuff. The website, the payments, the logistics. And the friction of not knowing how to figure any of that stuff out. Well, that's where Squarespace comes in. You can build a professional site using their award winning templates or blueprint AI, which creates amazingly, a custom design based on your goals in just a few steps. No technical skills, no team. So if you're offering services, consultations, workshops, coaching, you can showcase what you do, schedule appointments and invoices, and get paid all from one place. 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It sleeps cool, it's firm, luxurious, without being soft. Just really thoughtfully designed, beautifully made and built to last. They're shipped straight to your door, rolled up in a box and super easy to set up. You get 120 night risk free trial. And they believe so strongly in their mattress quality, they back it all up with a limited lifetime warranty. So I want all my listeners to enjoy a deep, restful night's sleep with a new mattress from birch. Go to birchliving.com richroll for 27% off site. Quiet. All right, let's move on. A lot of people are asking me about how my recovery from my spinal fusion surgery is going. So just really quickly I just eclipsed nine months. The surgery was May 8th. We're now, we're recording this on February, what is it, the 9th today? The 10th. So a couple days past nine months. At six months I got the green light to start a very, very low key, modest exercise routine. And I've sort of built on that very gradually. So for context, in mid November I had ballooned up to 207 pounds, which is a lot for me. That's almost as much as I weighed pre kind of life transformation at 40, I think I was like 210, 215 around that time. And what was amazing is how much it snuck up on me. Like I didn't even realize I was gaining weight. Obviously I wasn't being physically active and I had the big beard and like the whole thing and I was walking and I knew I was like getting out of shape and getting a little puffy or whatever. But then I bought one of those body composition scales like when it to celebrate like six months. And I was like, oh, now I'm going to like really hold myself accountable and get on track. And it was kind of shocking to realize how much weight I'd gained. But I've lost 30 pounds of it. I'm down to like 177 now and kind of stabilized there. My weight is remaining the same, but my body fat percentage is going down and my lean muscle mass is going up while I stay at this same weight, which feels really good. So basically just been on the indoor bike trainer, alternating that with days of functional fitness, like light lifting, you know, kind of like dynamic exercises in, in this little home gym that I have. And, and that's, that's been working good. And it feels really good to like reconnect with my physical body and remember like, oh, this is what I loved about this because there was a moment there where, you know, I'm working on this book and I'm walking around the house in a bathrobe with this big beard. I looked in the mirror, I was like, what are you going to be Julian Schnabel now? Like, what is going on? You know, your Malibu Graham youth in you, you know, like, you don't have to descend into like, you know, the pot bellied, you know, like writer guy. So anyway, nice to know that I can still drop a little bit of weight. And how'd you do it? I mean, just, I just got really rigorous with my, with my nutrition. I basically just got really binary with it. Like I, I basically eat the same thing every day. Like I eat a big bowl of black beans. That's it. And then this salad that I get at Erewhon, it's called the, I think it's called the Thai tofu salad. So this is like tofu lettuce, a bunch of veggies in it, carrots and stuff like that. And so I'm just, I'm modestly calorie restricting but not noting. And the main thing is like I cut out like all bread and pasta, like any kind of, any kind of like refined grains. Like that's a big one. And I cut out like late night snacking and eating and just like by adhering to that and not. And keeping things really simple, just progressively it's been working, which is good. So I'm starting to feel a little bit of vitality come back into my body. I still have a long way to go. Like I have tightness and discomfort in my lower back. The fusion doesn't fully set for 12 to 18 months. So I have to be very careful. And so even as I start to get a little bit more fit, I have to hold myself back. And because I'm writing this book, I have these other rules around my gym time. So I generally wake up at like 3:45 or 4 in the morning and I just get a cup of coffee, I go right into the gym and I restrict my workout to one hour because I've got to get to the page, you know, or I've got to prep for the day's podcast because left to my own devices, I'll just be in the gym for hours. But a lot of it is me, like on my phone or something like that. So I leave my phone out of the gym, I set a timer and I go in there and I hold myself to that so that I'm not overextending myself. And I still have, like, good energy when I go right into, like, focused, deep work mode after that. And it's been fun. It's required a tremendous amount of patience, but it's also allowed me to focus on a. The gratitude of being able to do this again after not being able to do it, which has brought a lot more joy into it. I think in the past, a big part of my relationship with fitness has been so focused on performance goals or, you know, trying to achieve something so that I can be perceived in a certain way. And that has created at times a bit of an unhealthy or less joyous experience of it. I still love it, but not always doing it for the right reasons. And I'm really focused on doing it for the nourishing aspects of it because I love it, not necessarily because it's tied to some kind of performance goal. I need those goals to progress my way forward, but I'm not so tied to them in, like, an identity defining way as I have been in the past, which. Which allows me to kind of have a more relaxed relationship with it that has been new, different, fun, and hopefully, you know, demonstrates some level of, like, personal growth on my part.