This entry was posted on Saturday, July 14th, 2007 at 1:10 pm

Recently I interviewed fitness mindset expert and health and happiness coach Kevin Gianni. Kevin is a master at helping people create positive and lasting lifestyle changes.

When it comes to living a happy and healthy life few people walk the talk better that Kevin Gianni…

Push The Play Button To Listen To The Interview:

Chris McCombs (CM): This is Chris McCombs from SoCalWorkout.com, and I'm here with Kevin Gianni from LiveAwesome.com and TryItOnEverything.com.

Kevin, how're you doing, buddy?

Kevin Gianni (KG): I'm doing great. How are you?

CM: I am awesome. I'm really glad to have you with us today. This is actually the second time I've done this call with Kevin. He's been kind enough to do this call for me, and you guys are in for a big treat, because this guy's got a great energy, he's knows what he's talking about, and he's really living the lifestyle.

So we're going to jump right into it. Kevin, could you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do?

KG: Sure. I am a health and fitness expert. How I came to get that trial through trial and error. It took me a long time to reach the health that I have achieved right now, and what I've done is I've taken all that information I learned over the last 8 to 10 years and made it really easy for people to understand, so they won't have to go through all the effort and all the back-and-forth and all the failures and everything that I did to get to where I am now. I've done that through writing books, and I've done that through working with people one-on-one, working with people in groups, and just to help them reach the optimal health that they deserve. I really that everyone all the time deserves to be happy and healthy and live vibrant lives, and that's what I've set out to do. That's my mission; and my mission is to reach as many people as possible and to give them the message that health and fitness can be easy, it can be something that you don't have to focus on all the time, and you can have a whole lot of fun doing it.

CM: That is very well said. Kevin, when it comes to being healthy and happy, how important is mindset?

KG: That's where it all comes from, because when you start to do stuff, when you start getting into a fitness program, you have to make decisions, and your mind needs to be in a place where you can make the decisions that are best for you. When I talk to people about health and fitness programs, the first thing I tell anyone — the first thing I say to anyone before I say anything else, before I talk to them about different foods or talk to them about exercise programs, or talk to them about books that they could read — is that you have to forget everything you've learned.

A lot of people's jaws drops when you say it. "Huh?" Yes, you have to forget everything you've learned; because what I teach is not principles, necessarily, like you have to do cardiovascular exercise or you have to eat this many calories per day. What I teach is body awareness, and I teach people — I say, "Hey, this is going to be your journey. You've got to figure out what works for you and not listen to, necessarily, what everyone else is telling you, particularly the magazines."

Let me just tell you this. I just flew back from Atlanta, and my wife, she had a magazine that bought off the newsstand, and she bought it because the title caught her eye, which it always catches your eye; the titles on some of these magazines are just incredible. It's like "Lose 150 pounds in 3 hours!" You can't not pick that up. What are they saying? And so we read through this magazine together; and we read some of the information in there, and it's very blanket-type information. When you read this, you would think this applies to everyone. What I found is that not everything applies to everyone, and that's a really interesting statement, because everyone says a calorie is a calorie. Well, when your body is processing things more efficiently, then you can throw some of that calorie knowledge out the window.

So how do you know what's right for you? Well, you just need to begin to listen to your body, and peel away the layers of — what you might even call scarring or non-feeling, because you might be so far removed from listening to your body, or feeling things when you react to it. I know now, because I'm very honed in to what my body does. When I eat sugar — processed sugars, which I eat very, very rarely, that I go crazy. My body starts to fire in all the wrong directions. I get hot, sweaty, jittery; I can't think straight, I can't sleep, I wake up the next morning with black lines through under my eyes; and a lot of us wake off like this every day, and we don't know what's causing it.

So then, what do we do? We go to the doctor and we say, "Hey, doc, I have this issue. I'm getting these black spots under my eyes." And the doctor says, "Well, maybe you're not getting enough sleep." Maybe they prescribe sleeping pills, when in fact, you might be able to address the issue beforehand, and you might be able to look it and say, "Hey, maybe it's the sugar that's causing me to feel this way. Maybe it's the sugar that's not letting me sleep." It's a whole new paradigm of health and wellness, and it's something that we really need to take into account; because what's going to happen is the more we are aware of what our bodies do, the healthier, the happier, the longer, we're going to live. Doesn't that sound good? It sounds good to me, and that's what I'm all about. I want to be happy and feel great all the time. And in order to do that, what you really need to do is start to listen. Your body will give you clues, and just start listening. They might be really, really, really subtle at first, because you're so far removed from it. But you'll get there; I promise.

CM: Very, very well articulated. I want to talk a little bit about your nutritional strategy. I like what you call "crowding out" and I want to talk about what foods you think are best.

KG: Sure. Crowding out, or adding, or whatever — there's a few terms that I use to explain it, and it's a real simple principle. Instead of taking things away, because when you take the rattle away from the baby, what does it do? It starts to scream. You take anything away from anyone, the first that you want is you want it back. If you go on a diet, and you can't eat cake for two weeks, the whole time — I know because I've been there before — the whole time that you're not eating cake, you're thinking about when you're going to be able to eat cake at the end of those two weeks. It is just our nature.

So, instead of trying to change it, let's live with it. So what I really believe in is that — look, if you're eating pizza every single day, what I suggest is instead of cutting out pizza, what you do is you add things to it to make it healthier. What's going to happen is that eventually, your body is going to be able to filter out and know what is good and know what is bad; and so you're going to get more nutrients, you're going to be feeling better, and eventually, the pizza, which might not be the best part of that thing you're adding — so say you added more vegetables to pizza, just vegetables. Maybe you're eating cheese pizza all the time, and you added vegetables. What's going to happen is that you're going to eat less pizza because your body's getting more nutrients from the vegetables, and eventually, the pizza will just go away and you'll start eating the vegetables.

And what I found telling people this is that they really understand the action of it, because you're not taking things away. You're not focusing on willpower anymore. Willpower is so much more difficult to do. Think about it; you could hold out for a year on something, but then, if you haven't changed your behavior towards it, you're going to go right back to it in a year. Think about how many people quit smoking and then start smoking; how many people quit drinking and then start drinking again. They really haven’t addressed the underlying behavior. But when you change a behavior — so now, what you're doing is you're now saying you're looking at every meal you put in front of you.

So when you go out to a restaurant — or a better example is when you're sitting at home and you've just made yourself a steak and some mashed potatoes. Well, look at that and ask yourself the question. That's all you have to do, is just ask yourself the question: is this the best possible meal I could eat right now? And chances are, it's no; there might be something better to add to it; not take away. Don't cut the steak in half or anything like that. Just leave it as it is, and add something different to it. Maybe it's a salad; maybe it's steamed kale or some steamed spinach or something like that. Add it to it, and know that that's what helping you out. Maybe, even eat that added thing first, and then eat the rest of the meal and enjoy it. Our lives are too short to not enjoy every single day of them.

So if you're — and this is some pretty bold advice, but if you're on a diet right now, and you don't like it, stop. Just completely stop it, because it is not fun, you're not enjoying yourself, and start taking this approach. Your behavior's going to change and your life is going to change, because you're going to feel better about it. You're going to feel great. Imagine feeling good all the time. How incredible would that be!

CM: It sounds pretty good to me.

I want to talk about superfoods.

KG: Yes. There are many foods out there that you may or may not have heard of, and "superfoods" is kind of loosely thrown around, and what I mean by that is you'll hear of or read some books that a cherry is a superfood, which it is; that blueberries are superfoods, which they absolutely are; that avocados are superfoods, and they are, too. But there is even a level above that, which brings highly, highly nutritious foods, very concentrated foods, and give you super, super energy, which we all really want. I think we really want more energy. How many times do you wake up in the morning and hit the snooze button? I guarantee that almost everyone has done this for an extended period of time for one point in their lives. These foods boost your energy. They give you super nutrients, as well.

For instance, some of my favorite superfoods are, of course, leafy green vegetables fall into this category. Things like kale, chard, collared greens; things like these, I didn't eat until, I would probably say, about 8 years ago, and these foods — you can replace things, you can add these to salads on top of your lettuce. What you're going to find is that you're going to start to crave these foods because they are so much more nutritious and your body really feels that. Wow! Why should I eat iceberg lettuce when I have something like kale, which just is a power punch of nutrients and fantastic things.

Other really awesome superfoods, again, are in the berry family, are goji berries. These are known in Chinese medicine for thousands and thousands of years for all their healing properties, and they have a super-high source of beta-carotene — I don't know how many more than carrots, but I know it's a ton more than carrots. So if you're eating carrots for, say, eyesight, or you're eating carrots for your beta-carotene, try goji berries, and you can get so much more of it. That's what superfoods are all about. You can eat something, or you can something that is a superfood and get even more of it.

Think about it; if you do just in your regular daily life, say, at your job, you're doing something mediocre, you get done on a normal timeline. But if you do something very efficiently, you get it done a lot faster, and I'm all about efficiency, too. Why would I bother — not that I do eat carrots — but why would I bother, if I need beta-carotene, why would I eat 30 carrots, when I could have two handfuls of goji berries. To me, it seems counterproductive; I really want to make sure that everyone's eating efficiently, too.

The other, and one of my favorites is cacao, which is the raw chocolate nut. It's actually a nut; it's not a bean, and this is super-high in magnesium and super-high in antioxidants. It has more antioxidants than red wine and green tea combined. You can get that in its natural form. It's bitter, but you can add some natural sweetener to it, and I make these cacao macaroons, they're actually chocolate macaroons. They're all raw and they have coconut oil, which is raw; they have shredded coconut; they have agave nectar, which is a natural sweetener, and they have cacao powder; and these things taste amazing. And they taste like dessert, but they're good for you. Imagine eating dessert that’s good for you, that doesn't give you a crazy sugar high and then a crash. It doesn't raise your insulin levels and store fat on you. Imagine that! The power of some of these foods that are out there that we don't know about as much, they're not in the public eye as much, is incredible.

And these are the foods that the people you see on the street that look really healthy — I guarantee that some of these people either know about these foods or are eating them, because they are just so power-packed with nutrients.

CM: Where can people learn more about these foods?

KG: One of the best places to learn and find out more about these foods is a site called 21daystohealth.com, and you can go there and you can check out — there's going to be some information there on that site where you can find out some of those foods.

CM: That's great, man. I want to talk about EFT.

KG: EFT is one of those really cool tools that you can add to your mindset toolbox. I'm really big into toolboxes, and what I mean by that is think about trying to build a house with just a hammer. You get all the lumber delivered, you get all the floorboards, you get the electric wiring, you get the light fixtures, you get the doors, you get all this stuff, and all you have are nails and a hammer. Well, yeah, you can do it, but imagine cutting a 2×4 with the back claw of that hammer. It would take a long, long time; and I tell you, you'd probably give up building that house.

Now, imagine if you had a whole toolbox that had circular saws, that had wire cutters, that had all these different amazing — levels, and all these amazing tools. Well, guess what? You'd probably more likely to be able to build that house quicker, faster, and it's going to look a whole heck of a lot better than if you clawed away with the claw of the hammer.

So what I'm big into is I'm big into building people's toolboxes. So what you need to do is you need to have a few different toolboxes. One is a fitness toolbox, which has a bunch of different workouts that you like; a nutrition toolbox, which is a bunch of different recipes and foods that you like; and the third is a mindset or a spiritual toolbox, which has different tools that you can use to change your mindset when you need it. So when you start thinking about things that are negative, things that are changing your vibration internally, things that are making you tense, things that make you anxious, things that make you angry; that you could reach into that toolbox and you can use them.

And what falls into that toolbox in terms of for me are things like affirmations; things like written-down goals. I'm big into elephants, and I've got elephants all over my office, and what those do to me, those symbolize stability and wealth. I have little knick-knacks, and this is all part of my spiritual toolbox, and one of the other things I use is EFT. And the fantastic thing about EFT is — it's more fantastic than affirmation — is that in order for affirmations to work, you really need to say them, because your body will listen to what you say out loud; you need to see them, so you need to visually see it — not necessarily see it like it's right in front of you, but you need to see it in your mind's eye; and you really need to feel it as well. If you don’t have those three things in affirmations, they're not going to work for you.

What EFT does is it works with Chinese acupressure points — it's basically self-acupressure. So you're taping these meridian points along your face and your torso, and you're letting your body actually feel some of the things that you're saying out loud; and you're addressing any sort of negative beliefs, too; and while you do that, what you do is you change the energetic composition of your body. Just like if you go to an acupuncturist and they stick some certain needles in a certain meridian points down along a different channel, the idea is that it will change your energetic system. It will realign you; it will zap the electrical current in you to change you and make you flow more efficiently.

Now, with acupressure, you don't need to have needles stuck in you. You can just tap some of these points and you can do the same thing. That's what EFT does. It addresses your beliefs as you're doing a similar process to acupuncture.

CM: Where can people learn how to do this?

KG: I'm actually producing a documentary on EFT right now. The site is TryItOnEverything.com. There's some information there you can download to learn more about how to do this, as well.

CM: Sweet. Kevin, we really appreciate you joining us today; a lot of quality information, very well articulated, and I appreciate your energy.

Where can people learn more about you, again, and the documentary?

KG: Absolutely. One of my links to the site is LiveAwesome.com, and what I do there is I do interview health and wellness experts, and I get out there and I try to get the best information possible.

I hope that everyone learns from this call. I know that it's short, but one of the things I like to tell everyone is don’t ever, ever get overwhelmed. What I want you to do is take action on something, and eventually you'll get there. And when you're done listening to this call, I want you to take action. What I want you to do is real simple. I want you to put down the phone or close the webpage. I want you to stand up. I want you to take a real deep belly breath, exhale, and I want you to just put a huge smile on your face, just the biggest smile you ever had, and say to yourself and say it out loud, and say, "Man, I am on the right track." And just say that; say it once, say it twice, say it three times, it doesn't matter. Just know that you are on the right track and that this doesn't have to be difficult.

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