Escape Your Limits & LIFTS

Authenticity is key to long term success. A DJ, TV presenter and radio host who found fame on the BAFTA award-winning Made In Chelsea, Ashley James is a regular face in the British media. An articulate social commentator, activist and empowerment coach, she's using her platform for good, campaigning for body positivity, mental health and honesty on social media. This is a lesson in how to stay true to yourself, no matter what others think. For more information visit https://escapefitness.com/podcast Video version – https://youtu.be/n-PdgfT-bz8   Ashley James always wanted to be a presenter but didn't realise it was an option for years. Her first mini break can after hustling for a radio job, doing teas and coffees for her local station when she was 16. She went to university and did a graduate scheme with Abercrombie and Fitch. After moving to London and working various jobs, Ashley struggled with money but got her break with her first reality TV appearance on Made In Chelsea in 2012. She also appeared on Celebrity Big Brother in 2018. Ashley had been swept up in the world of a celebrity, but soon realised that it wasn't fame that would make her happy. She's since been working hard to follow her passions and show authenticity throughout her personal and professional life. A campaigner for mental health, body positivity and social media honesty, Ashley has appeared on both BBC News and Sky News to discuss topical issues and draw on her own past battles with self-harm, bullying and body dysmorphia. She’s DJ’d internationally in Cannes, Ibiza, Marbella, Dubai and Thailand and at the Reading, Isle of Wight, Wireless, Citadel and Mighty Hoopla festivals in the UK. She’s even shared the decks with Groove Armada! For more information visit ashleylouisejames.com   Episode highlights - Why you shouldn't take negative feedback to heart, but continue to pursue your dreams and passions while taking constructive criticism on board. How changes in opinions surrounding lockdown affected social media activity for influencers and personalities that may have had fear of posting about certain topics. What the beauty is in owning your mistakes and why putting your hands up to something you don't fully understand is often the best way to overcome getting caught out. How to navigate clickbait online, and how to cope when clickbait articles are written about you or your business. Why you need to unfollow and mute people on social media, even if you like them in real life. How to deal with the challenges around body positivity and mindset, and what lifestyle changes will shift old habits or cyclical behaviour. Why it's important to be authentic online, especially when posting images, and why editing photos in certain ways only furthers the damage that our culture of snapshot social media can cause.   Join Matthew Januszek in conversation with Ashley Louise James…

Evergreen business innovation tips from a world leader in sport technology. Whether it’s a traditional school education or learning on the job, a growth mindset is key to personal development and discovering your strengths. This Escape Your Limits podcast guest has not only gone from student to teacher, but has educated himself on building a business along the way. This episode is a lesson in what it’s like on the frontline of fitness at Loughborough University, with Mike Caine, professor of sports technology. For more information visit https://escapefitness.com/podcast Watch the full episode on YouTube – https://youtu.be/fM9c3zqbeS4 Before becoming a professor, Mike Caine was a student of Loughborough University and decided to return later in life as an academic. Studying maths, physics, and chemistry, he started falling in love with one particular field doing a degree in human biology. Mike followed his first-class degree with a scholarship to study for a PhD in sports science, while also starting his own company and embracing opportunities of taking a product to market. During his study, he also launched a business, bringing a class one medical device to market that helped people to improve their breathing. From then on, Mike has embraced life as a professional at the intersection of innovation, entrepreneurship, sport and fitness. Progressive Sports Technologies operates from space in the Advanced Technology Innovation Centre at Loughborough University. Maintaining a small but highly skilled research and development team, they are primed to support unique project requirements through validation, research, and development support to the international sporting goods market and its related industries. Offering both tactical and strategic support, Progressive is an on-demand R&D service to suit requirements, fast. When you need extra resource to successfully deliver your project Progressive is there to assist.   Episode highlights -  How to find your way through all the opportunities out there, developing your understanding through learning and discovering your passion for a career, post-education. Why you’ll need to find your balance between working long days and ensuring that you make time for family and your own hobbies as well as business. Why making money is often not the focus for product development, when there’s a chance to make a huge difference in people’s lives, especially in the medical sector. How surrounding yourself with the right kind of support, whether that’s through colleague, family or friends, will empower you to learn and ultimately succeed in your chosen passion. What different paths you’ll take if you’re open to trying something you may not have previously thought of, whether it’s in a professional sense or anything else in life. What the most important attributes to success are, whether you’re an entrepreneur or employee. How important building the right team is, and why complementary skills and interests will build momentum more quickly while also leaving you more fulfilled. Why it’s OK to fail and be open about it in order to recognise both your strengths and weaknesses. What’s wrong with the current state of education and university access, and what can be done to improve it so that more people can learn, progress and succeed.   Join Matthew Januszek in conversation with Professor Mike Caine…  

The secrets of a humble but passionate path to success. Martin Seibold is a resilient business leader who has overcome many obstacles in fitness. Today he's overseeing LifeFit Group's six brands, including Fitness First, Barry's Bootcamp, elbgym, Smile X and The Gym Society. Passionate about the fitness experience and the atmosphere of the gym, in this episode Martin teaches us how to lead in times of crisis, lessons from the rise and fall of one of the biggest fitness brands in Europe, and the highs and lows of reopening after COVID-19. For more information on the Escape Your Limits podcast visit https://escapefitness.com/podcast Video – https://youtu.be/BaQfYlW4Lm8 Martin Seibold started out working in the family-owned gym of his parents. The facility was the first member of IHRSA in Germany, bought by Fitness First which took on the staff and achieved incredible growth both nationally and around the world.Martin's passion for fitness had been sparked. He joined as marketing manager and, within six years, the business has expanded to over 90 gyms. Martin has been living in the UK since 2006 when Fitness First founder, Mike Balfour, asked him to move, following eight years of success with the brand in Germany. Today, Martin is leading multi-brand strategies and teams around the world in implementing humble growth strategies for the long term success of the LifeFit Group. The LifeFit Group unites multiple fitness brands from the boutique, high-value-low-price and premium segments under one roof, including Fitness First, Barry's Bootcamp, elbgym, Smile X and The Gym Society. The Group is committed to inspire and support its customers to live their best lives through personal, fun and focused health and fitness experiences.   For more information visit www.lifefit-group.com   Episode highlights -  What lessons Martin has learned as a business leader responsible for incredible expansion, and what he'd change if he could do it again. Why looking after people and partners, both internally and externally, is the only way to achieve long-term survival. Expansion isn't the only goal and it's easy to forget how important relationships are to success. How you can diversify your offering in the right places to ensure that the customer has exactly what they want in the right location, and ensuring a sustainable business. Why you need to assign specific teams to specific responsibilities, and not spread your resource over too many different skillset needs. How important it is to take interest in what your teams are doing in order to get the best out of them and support them. What merging cultures, strategies and teams together is like in practice when a business is acquired. Why buy-outs can be awful for members, leading to a worse service offering in the short term at least, but how it can also be used for good. What multi-brand strategies can do to provide flexibility in an offering, and how you can decide which responsibilities are based centrally and which need to be carried out by local teams. Why it's important to celebrate mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes, but being open and honest, or even laughing about them, means that you can learn from them to ensure that a problem doesn't get bigger. How you can manage and forecast in uncertain times, and what benefits there are to ensuring there's trust between operators and investors when it comes to a business model. Why this is not the time for cutting percentages here and there, but making substantial changes to how you work and the structure of everything that you do. How long will it take to get back to pre-COVID revenue levels after the pandemic passes.   Join Matthew Januszek in conversation with Martin Seibold…

Using AI, this is how to stop someone cancelling their gym membership, before they even realise they want to. Through integrated artificial intelligence and machine learning using years of data, Ian Mullane explains how every fitness operator can stop guessing about gym member activity and actively predict what's going to happen. This episode was recorded before the pandemic. For more information on the Escape Your Limits podcast visit https://escapefitness.com/podcast Video version – https://youtu.be/w5g2arKz57c   Ian Mullane has a background in financial engineering and financial software. Not the traditional fitness professional, he's ditched the field of the hedge fund field of corporate life to turn his expertise to another sector. A passion for boxing was keeping him in shape. With some other likeminded enthusiasts, he wanted to open a 20,000 square-foot boxing club in a disused grandstand in the old Singapore Turf Club. His wife had different ideas, which turned out to be much more lucrative, and Ian was left with a 1000 square-foot to play with. Here, Vanda boxing club raised over $3m for charities through white collar boxing events, in one of the first boutiques in the city. Today, Ian is overcoming traditional challenges of attrition and growth using data sets to explore predicability on whether or not members will stay or leave. Through this AI and machine learning expertise, he's able to help operators around the world drive revenue. A revenue acceleration platform for the fitness industry, Keepme.ai is all about smarter member retention using artificial intelligence and machine learning. The platform identifies members who are close to cancelling and win them back before they even plan to leave. Through SaaS expertise, Ian and his team exist to help health and fitness businesses retain more members. Regardless of whether customers are big box or boutique, pay as you go or contractual, Keepme.ai equips them with the ability to accurately target and engage members, implement behavioural science approaches, and allows operators to truly understand the people they serve. For more information visit keepme.ai   Episode highlights - What the simple explanations are behind AI and machine learning. Why bringing a huge number of decision trees together with the right algorithm will bring high levels of accuracy in probability for any data set. What the difference is in accuracy between statistical modeling and machine learning predictions. What the importance is for revenue in segmenting data and providing the correct results for each member depending on what they need. How far machine learning and predictive algorithms have moved on in recent years, and what the future holds for people with accurate data sets. Why “dirty data” in the fitness industry will provide challenges for some operators, but what off-the-shelf tools can be used to overcome this. How looking forward and being able to predict what's likely to happen is going to leave you at a better competitive standpoint than people only looking at historical data. The importance of having an API on any software that you purchase, for future developments even if you don't think you need the function now. How you can integrate your predictions with other sources such as purchase data to better understand everything about a member and supplement information. How you can understand what members you will keep and lose, and what members you should be focussing your marketing on to improve retention rates. Why better business isn't always about the upsell, and how downselling members at the right time will keep them in your business for the long term. What partners such as Myzone can do to indicate when you need to intervene and interact with members to avoid their interest dropping off, leading to a member leaving. How Google, Facebook, Amazon and other giants are going to make greater steps into fitness using data and machine learning than many traditional fitness businesses in future. What you can do to predict your own health or apply preventative measures based on data from fitness trackers, accessories and apps. How the offer weighs up for communities between the connected home environment of fitness compared to bricks and mortar.   Join Matthew Januszek in conversation with Ian Mullane…

This is how to take control, turning negativity into positivity for good. Jessie Pavelka is an internationally-recognised health and wellbeing expert, known for his expertise in extreme weight loss. He hosts Obese: A Year To Save My Life and was a trainer on NBC's The Biggest Loser. In addition to his work helping people and businesses change lives, he's the ambassador for Cancer Research UK's Race For Life and England Athletic's Run Together initiative. For more information on the Escape Your Limits podcast visit https://escapefitness.com/podcast Video version - https://youtu.be/ZAS3Cq5e-44 Jessie Pavelka started out as a trainer in the early 2000s. He immediately knew that he wanted to be an independent changing lives instead of working directly for gym chains. It didn't take long before his focus shifted to extreme weight loss with his business partner to help clients better understand their needs making changes beyond the physical alone. Jessie also understood the importance of platform, and continued his journey as a fitness model to develop his personal brand and profile around his passion. In 2008 he got his first break on TV, adding production values and broadcasting experience to his list of abilities. During the coronavirus uncertainties, Jessie Pavelka has been teaching his clients all about control, consistency and connection to cope with everything that's happening in the world. His pathway to a better understanding revolves around the  physical, mental, emotional and social needs of us all to feel more grounded and in control. In his business Jessie Pavelka believes that everybody can find true health through the four elements of: Eat, Sweat, Think, Connect. By disrupting your normal, Pavelka can help you achieve more than you dreamed possible. Pavelka Wellness is a wellbeing partner for a range of organisations, including technology giants Cisco Systems, helping employees become more resilient and healthier in a fast moving, dynamic world. Visit https://pavelka.co.uk and https://pavelkawellness.com   Episode highlights -  How lockdown and the issues around the COVID pandemic have been both challenging and opportunistic, and how anyone can react positively to both elements for a better business. What the uncertainty of the coming months has meant for the majority of people who are looking for finish lines, and why you need to embrace 'different' as much as you can. Why it's important to confide in people in your close circle to let them know how you feel during difficult times, but also to better understand yourself through their support. How you can understand your connection to yourself, connection to your team, and connecting to something greater than you. Identify what they mean to you in your own life, and use that to do better in every relationship. Why building your personal brand and profile in addition to following your professional passion is vital to not just personal development but long term business opportunities as well. How to manage the conflicting values between making work about genuinely helping people and also building yourself as a professional personality. In particular, why the modern world of influencers can fall foul of achieving this. What you can do to as someone struggling with weight or an entrepreneur struggling with burnout to understand the overall value of behaviour, both positive and negative. How you can understand your baseline; the standard of living that you start off with every single day. This is how you stop making things too complex, slow down, simplify and define how you want to live your life at a base level. How to shift mindset from reactive to proactive in business, and what you can do to improve your employees' mindset in addition to holding your own company accountable. Why giving employees creative space for reflection in some level of solitude is much more important than preventing them from breaking up the day and clock-watching. How you can show the human side of your business by not only looking after your people, but also understanding your customers' genuine needs and challenges, too. What you can use to help other people if you've already had a transformation of your own.   Join Matthew Januszek in conversation with Jessie Pavelka…

This is how to make LinkedIn generate more revenue for your business. In this episode, Shay Rowbottom explains everything from content creation, missed opportunities in video, revenue generation and the LinkedIn secrets to growth on the social media platform that isn't as B2B as you think. For more information on the Escape Your Limits podcast visit https://escapefitness.com/podcast Video version - https://youtu.be/0J8frpTL8u4   Shay Rowbottom started out as a musician trying to make it in the entertainment industry. She dropped out of college at 20 to focus on making art and performing, while holding down a waitressing job. At the time, she was very naive to business and social media. Looking for an alternative pathway to success, Shay made the best decision that she had at the time, even though it sounds counterproductive... She gave up on her dreams. Instead of music, Shay began working on video content as a freelancer for a very profitable blog and Facebook page, making money from Google ads. Here, she gained valuable experience and started to hone her newfound craft. She grew her company, gaining clients, learning the science of social media and licensing videos for an expanding group of entrepreneurs. Today, Shay has founded and sold a start-up, before pivoting completely to LinkedIn and inspiring audiences and other entrepreneurs to optimise every bit of content for the biggest effect. Shay Rowbottom Marketing is about more than just viral videos on LinkedIn. Her team offer DIY programmes and online bootcamps to improve your LinkedIn activity, with coaching sessions that will help you transform your business and close more deals. Alternatively, SRM will take more of an agency role and run an entrepreneur's LinkedIn profile for them, which is ideal for busy professionals.   For more LinkedInformation or to schedule a call, visit shayrowbottom.com   Episode highlights -  Why content strategies from many social media platforms are more effective than you think when applied to LinkedIn, even if you think they're too informal in the traditional business world. How LinkedIn is a cleaner feed to grow and cultivate meaningful business relationships as well as develop personally, compared to other social media platforms such as Instagram or Facebook. What content specifics, styles and treatments work in the newsfeed best when it comes to video on social media. What regrets Shay has about turning fully introverted to focus on her business, and how her hard work has paid off to give her more freedom today. Why if you're seeking approval from someone about the business decisions you make as an entrepreneur, you should probably cut your relationship with them in order to grow unrestricted. • How you can address your confidence issues and discover your feeling of value that you can provide to help others. What benefits LinkedIn offers for organic content with little competition, at levels that are unheard of on other social media platforms. • Why your LinkedIn presence needs to be seen as a constant source for good, adding value to an audience instead of being a grab for instant return on investment. What talking about your vulnerabilities and insecurities will do to your engagement and your business, even if you feel it may be to your detriment. What will make your LinkedIn Sales Navigator and direct outreach spend more effective, and what is just going to annoy your potential leads and prospects. How you can make subtle changes to your social media activity to get the best engagement and business opportunities from your activities.   Join Matthew Januszek in conversation with Shay Rowbottom…

This is how to stop negativity in its tracks and keep progressing.  In this episode, Jerzy Gregorek teaches the art of embracing delayed gratification and accepting the hard choices that will make your life better in the long run by far. A multiple world record holder, he came to LA in 1986 as a political refugee from Poland. Today Jerzy is helping celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs and everyone in between turn back the clock and become more youthful through mindful exercise and nutrition. For more information on the Escape Your Limits podcast visit https://escapefitness.com/podcast Video episode – https://youtu.be/mR4ez4CCS3o Jerzy travelled to LA in 1986 as a political refugee from Poland. He's won five world weightlifting championships, founded the UCLA weightlifting team, and leads as head coach with his wife. Today he's helping people turn back the clock and become more youthful through a set of standards, teaching the understanding of how to make hard choices that benefit longevity and a positive lifestyle. The Happy Body is a nutrition and training programme by Jerzy and Aniela Gregorek. With mindfulness and movement at its core, it helps people break free of diets, fitness fashions and contradictory advice. The goal is to remove the feeling of powerlessness and depression that many fitness concerns cause, and empower you to engineer your own weight loss within precise timeframes. The 30-minute routine a day will leave you less stressed, injury free, and with a happy body for the long term. Visit www.thehappybody.com for more information.   Episode highlights - Why it's important to be in the present moment and connect with what you're doing. How you can stay positive, even under the pressures of challenging climates and stressful schedules. What you can do to have patience, deal with irritations, control yourself and override impulses that lead to negative outcomes. Which ways you can make the present moment work for you in order to adapt and make things better. How transparency is the difference-maker in fitness, and why without it a business or entrepreneurial venture is just based on entertainment. What having standards for yourself, such as your ideal body weight, will do for your lifestyle and progression towards goals. • Why time is needed to achieve certain results, and why if you don't appreciate the time it takes, you'll never achieve the goal. Patience is key to progress. How to set yourself up on the journey to becoming better, and how to engage with life so that you're able to move and motivate yourself at any age. • What microprogressions and improvements you can make to keep yourself in the unknown and continually escape your limits.   Join Matthew Januszek in conversation with Jerzy Gregorek…

It's about helping people think differently to help themselves. In this episode, Tanni Grey-Thompson talks sport, politics, business, family inspiration and how we can make the most of opportunities in fitness post-COVID. A global ambassador of sport, Tanni is most famous for her world records, London marathon wins and Paralympic gold medals. However, it's her work in UK government that's inspiring change at the highest level to improve lives and raise the bar of how good we can all become in business and every day life. For more information on the Escape Your Limits podcast visit https://escapefitness.com/podcast Video episode – https://youtu.be/nXoZianX7J4 Born with spina bifida and paralysed from a very young age of around six years old, Tanni grew up surrounded by a supportive family that always challenged her to try new things and explore the world. At 13, she found her love for wheelchair racing and went on to reap success after success in marathons, world record attempts, and multiple Paralympic Games. Today' Tanni is an ex-athlete, proud Welsh woman, a mum, a wife, a Parliamentarian and an inspiration to many around the world. Tanni has continued to be involved in sport and physical activity. She is chair of ukactive, and a board member of institutions including London Marathon, the Sportsaid Foundation, the Duke of Edinburgh Awards and Join In.   In 2010 Tanni became an Independent Crossbench Peer in the House of Lords, taking the title Baroness Grey-Thompson of Eaglescliffe in the County of Durham. As a working peer, Tanni uses her experience and knowledge during debates in the House and she has spoken on a range of issues including disability rights and welfare reform in addition to sport.   Episode highlights - • How we can take the positive aspects of working from home in how we continue to work after the pandemic lockdowns are lifted. • Why having an athletic mindset will enable to challenge yourself all the time and be better in other areas of life such as business. • Why doing the boring stuff, whether it's training, working or writing speeches, will enable you to make the most of your time to make a difference, when competing, selling or speaking in public. • What mindset you can take to appreciate the value of time in reaching your goals and working towards whatever your success metric for the future is. • Why everyone should try new things before they decide if they want to pursue them or not, making decisions from an informed position. • How even if you get stereotyped or stuck in one image from a previous success, there are more parts to what you can do and what you can achieve that people need to see instead of sticking with a single perception. • What you can do to prepare your children for the world and inspire them to make a difference, even under challenging circumstances such as living with a disability. • Why evaluation is key for any win, loss, success or failure. This will enable you to see where you made the most impact or where you may have missed an opportunity. • What societal challenges Tanni Grey-Thompson has faced as a disabled women and how she's overcome these challenges, or changed attitudes to educate ignorance. • Why fitness isn't taken seriously on a nationwide level and what the COVID-19 pandemic has done to highlight the need to embrace physical activity at all levels. • Why we like to think we're a nation of sports lovers but we're actually a nation of people who like watching big sports events. • How physical activity is more than just about gyms and leisure centres. • What we can all do as industries and communities in changing the mindsets of people when it comes to fitness and physical activity. Join Matthew Januszek in conversation with Tanni Grey-Thompson…

How to double down on long-term success through boutique fitness. In this episode, Barbara Chancey teaches us how there's more to fitness than repeating what's worked in the past. Discover the secrets of how to create an exciting and captivating fitness atmosphere, designed through the eyes of the instructor. Since founding Barbara Chancey Design Group, she has innovated with passionate design and operational excellence in more then 200 successful studios across six continents. This is how the fitness industry gets stronger after a pandemic. For more information on the Escape Your Limits podcast visit https://escapefitness.com/podcast Video Version – https://youtu.be/8O8qfSQtTJg Founder of her eponymous design group, Barbara Chancey has been creating extraordinary fitness spaces for over a decade, bringing philosophy, branding and vision to life. With hundreds of clients in highly competitive markets, she's worked all around the world, helping boutiques, start-ups and redesign projects for commercial or residential opportunities. With her expertise in concept development and the design work itself, but also operational needs such as instructor training, equipment and amenities, there are few people better suited to explaining how we can recover stronger from a pandemic through full-scale understanding of the boutique business. Based in Dallas, Texas, the Barbara Chancey Design Group creates some of the world's most beautiful and successful boutique fitness studios. Through concept to completion work on business plans, pitch decks, floor plans, instructor training, operations, and design excellence, CDG specialises in gyms and boutiques, as well as expanding into luxury residential and exploring boutique hotels for fitness opportunities. For more information visit the Barbara Chancey Design Group website or email info@barbarachanceydesign.com   Episode highlights - How a revolution in boutique spin studios was started from Barbara doubling down on her own ability and taking advantage of opportunity. What aspects of design had to be changed in order to motivate members and give them something they didn't realise they needed, long before the boom of brands such as SoulCycle came onto the scene. Why keeping the instructor happy keeps members happy, and what operators need to provide in order to improve classes and keep them selling out. How a studio is only as good as its worst instructor's worst playlist. Bring the creativity, bring the variety and you'll get the right attention. What themes instructors can run throughout their classes, and how they can make each session relevant and timely for engaging workouts. How lighting effects, magic and creativity mean that instructors can't wait to get up and teach, while members and clients can't wait to come back. Every single detail matters. What the key differences are between an inspirational studio, a competitive studio, a rebellious studio or any other niche approach to member attraction. How a gym, and particularly a boutique studio is taking its place as a community, a religion, and a passion that it needs to live up to every single time for members. Where the inspiration for incredible showmanship and lighting comes from, and how working with partners in other industries such as musicians on a world tour can massively impact the excitement. What pitfalls of service offerings you can avoid, and how you can protect your facility against as many pandemic risks as possible. Why it's important to train instructors for the day that it's not going to work, and how every good instructor can overcome any problem without any blame. How to price your business offering if it's a service by how much passion your client has and how easy it is to work with them, rather than entirely on how much money you get through affiliations and back-room deals. Why being remembered for your kindness can be so much more valuable for your business over the long term.   Join Matthew Januszek in conversation with Barbara Chancey…

Your food isn't as healthy as you think it is. Here's why. In this episode, Eugene Trufkin leads a deep dive into the detriment of modern diets. He teaches us what we need to be doing to improve or boost our immune system, and reveals what you should be eating and where you should be buying it from. Misinformation and labelling scams are rife within the food industry. Author of The Anti Factory Farm Shopping Guide, Eugene explains the pitfalls behind chicken, beef, fish, and how their diets through the production process are affecting your own. It's not just meat either, as we also learn about how fruit and vegetables can impact our health negatively. For more information on the Escape Your Limits podcast visit https://escapefitness.com/podcast Video version – https://youtu.be/VEt_Zz__wMs   Eugene Trufkin was born and raised on an off-grid bio-dynamic farm in the Ukraine. He came to the US thinking that all food was sustainably sourced and manufactured before being enlightened by a seminar from Paul Chek. From that moment, Eugene starting questioning how all food was being produced compared to the sustainable and nutritious upbringing that he'd known. Today, Eugene is a trainer, author and entrepreneur, dedicated to helping people interested in attaining six-pack abs, eating a well balanced diet, and pursuing an anti-sedentary lifestyle. Through Trufkin Athletics, Eugene is dedicated to people interested in attaining six-pack abs, traveling, eating a well balanced diet, and pursuing an anti-sedentary lifestyle. There is more to fitness than fat loss pills and gym memberships. If this interests you, his website is for you. Eugene prides himself on leading by example. Everything you see him doing, you could easily do as well. Eugene has always wanted the most out of life, and his goal is to show you, through personal experience, that it's 100% possible.  Visit http://www.trufkinathletics.com for more information.   Episode highlights -  Why it's almost impossible to source high-quality food in the US, and in many communities around the world due to misinformation and blurred lines of quality during production. How “free range” does not mean that chickens and hens have space to roam and live a healthy lifestyle that's beneficial to both animal and the nutrition of people consuming the meat after production. Why ethics and morality doesn't even have to come into the discussion surrounding raising animals for the meat industry, as many methods use marketing spin to hide the negative impact of production on the quality of food for the consumer. What “vegetarian fed” means on chicken meat packaging, and why they should be fed an omnivore diet to ensure that the resulting meat isn't causing inflammation concerns for anyone eating it. Why genetically modified corn and soy is often used as feed because 80% of a meat farming operation is the cost of food for the animals. How there are many underlying concerns in mindset or other aspects of life affect diets and cause a person to have obesity or other physical concerns. What foods cause nutrient deficiency due to low nutritional profiles leading to empty calories. Why farmers are not necessarily to blame for meat industry misinformation, and how they're scammed by companies and often put them out of business. How you're spending way more on NOT eating an organic and healthy diet, backed by statistics. What materials are not legally allowed to be used in food due to health guidelines and legislation, but can be fed to animals that will eventually end up as food, therefore affecting its nutritional profile. How it's not just meat that is affected by poisonous chemicals and nutritionally detrimental approaches; the fruit and vegetable market also has just as many pitfalls. What mindset and mental or lifestyle challenges create incentives for people to seek out food as a source of unconditional love, and why these “story gaps” lead to unhealthy lifestyles, stress responses, and weight gain.   Join Matthew Januszek in conversation with Eugene Trufkin…