Hunger for More in Life

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Mike: Welcome everybody. This is Avoiding the Addiction Affliction, brought to you by Westwords Consulting, the Kenosha County Substance Use Disorder Coalition, and by a grant from the state of Wisconsin's Dose of Reality Real Talks reminding you that opioids are powerful drugs and that one pill can kill. I'm Mike McGowan.

Mike: When some people get depressed, they make poor choices around alcohol, other drugs, other destructive behavior. Some folks make healthier choices like counseling support groups. My guest today coped by... i'm not gonna tell you, you're just gonna have to listen, and even then you probably won't believe it. JD Trembley is the Director of Human Performance at Hungry Warrior Academy.

Mike: He's a Canadian Humans Performance Specialist, a naturopathic practitioner, integrated engineering graduate, and a military veteran with over a decade of service. He is also the author of Hungry For More In Life. In his Spare time, JD serves as a firefighter and is an ultra endurance athlete recognized worldwide for as numerous extreme endurance achievements, we'll get into what all that means during our conversation. Welcome, JD.

JD: Hello, Mike. I'm glad to be here on the show. Thanks for having me.

Mike: Thank you for doing this. All right, let's get we'll get to Hungry Warrior Academy in a few minutes, but let's start with the tease that I started with, you found relief from depression in ultra endurance events.

Mike: Now okay, i've done four marathons and I used to run a lot. What's an ultra endurance event?

JD: So the common races that you would have, which are known around the world, are usually in the Olympics. So we're looking at a 42 kilometer, or a marathon, as most would say. Then after you pass the marathon mark, which in kilometer, it's 50. So when you go to 50 kilometer, this is considered an ultra endurance event. So anything that is above what is now considered as the norm is now an ultra event. Now you have multiple ultra events which are in every single sports. For swimming. You have some for cycling.

JD: You also have some with the running as I just mentioned, and then it can go up to now you see these races that are now crossing countries.

Mike: Yes.

JD: Which is bringing a new set of athlete to the game. I would say.

Mike: And then you combine swimming and biking and running, and you get the triathlon and the ultra triathlons and the Ironman.

Mike: And I gotta ask you right off the bat, because you talk about it in your book, tell us what an Epic Deca is.

JD: The Epic Deca is a race that was put on by a company called Epic Five. They do an event every year. For five Ironmen or Iron distances in five days, on five different Hawaiian island. For their 10 year anniversary, they complete, they did the Epic Deca, and the Epic Deca is 10 Ironmen in 10 days on six different Hawaiian Island.

JD: Now, during that year, there were 10 people that were registered. Six people showed up on the start line, and only three finished. The race will not happen again to my knowledge. Because it was only for their 10 year anniversary, so they have not done it again. And there are only, at the moment, three people in the world that have completed it.

Mike: And you're one of them?

JD: That is correct, yes, i'm one of them. (laughs)

Mike: I know what it is, but for those that don't, tell us what an Ironman is and you're doing 10 of these consecutively in 10 days. So what's an Ironman?

JD: An Ironman is 2.4 miles of swimming or 3.8 kilometers of swimming either in the ocean or in a pool, depending on what island we were on.

JD: Then you will do a 112 miles or 180 kilometers of cycling, and then you do a full marathon. It has to be done in a certain amount of time for an Ironman branded event, which is 17 hours. For us, we just had to make it to the next island, and we had 24 hours. So not only were we finishing that Ironman, but we also had to travel from island to island.

JD: So unpack all our gear, clean it up, put it back together, and then fly to the next island and complete it as well.

Mike: Yep. That is just an unbelievable, people train their whole lives to do one Ironman and to do 10 in 10 days is really intense. And that's, part of why I wanted to have you on. Is your book, which I held up before, you don't discuss in your book, in great detail the circumstances of your depression, which is fine.

Mike: You, you concentrate a lot more on how you overcame it. But family, work, relationships, the military can all contribute, right? It's never one thing, is it JD?

JD: Exactly. It's a plethora of stimuli that might happen over time. Very often what we've seen, at the Hungry Warrior Academy, is that people do not complete the action that they're supposed to, and then it's snowballs from there.

JD: If we're using a Canadian analogy of the snow. (laughs)

Mike: (laughs) Oh, I hope we're done with it. I hope we're done.

JD: (laughs) Exactly. And then it becomes a heavy burden over a long period because you're not addressing the main concern. Now, if you have the right mindset, if you have the right coaches, if you have the right systems, then you might be able to overcome certain challenges.

JD: But again, the reason why I am not talking too much about one specific factor. Or I'm not talking much about the the level of depression that I was into, is because I think... I know there are millions of other books that you can go out there and find out about your feelings, about your emotions, about what triggers it and instead of focusing more on the part that very often I can't control.

JD: Trying to control your emotion would be like holding your hand up and trying to control the wind. Not many people are able to do that other than superheroes in Marvel movies. And even then. (laughs)

Mike: Yeah.

JD: So instead we should focus on what we can control. Which are some of the variables in equations or in certain systems, and I wanted the reader, I wanted the people to understand how they can drive some momentum in their life and make some traction in their mental health, whether they're going through it right now, or they might go through it later on.

Mike: Yeah. One of the lines I liked in your book, and I think people who have went, had struggles could probably identify with this, is you said that, you say that the pain of doing a full Ironman triathlon, without training, was less than the pain you felt inside.

Mike: That's, there's a lot of people that can identify with that. I think.

JD: That's deep. Exactly. You're totally right and I think you're the first person that touch on it in any of the podcasts, any of the interviews I've done and I've done hundreds of interviews and there's not many people that touch on that component.

JD: So you're completely right Mike, there is something there that many people are not understanding.

Mike: And sometimes, JD, people turn to, the first place they turn is friends and family. Okay, friends and family are friends and family, they're not professional. They don't oftentimes help and sometimes they make it worse.

JD: That's correct. My dad was one of them. I love my dad, we have an amazing relationship. He's coming this weekend. Looking forward to it. We called each other yesterday, however, when I was in a deep pit and I was on a couch looking at the ceiling, my dad was not helpful. My dad was even at some point, he said, the best I can give you, is what you need. And very often that's what I advise other people to give. If you have, for instance, if you have a couch, just give the couch to the person and they'll figure it out. For me, my dad just gave me a couch and he said, "Just figure it out." There are still... now... use a couch, while still following the rules of the house.

JD: I was not allowed to do drugs, although that was not my problem or my concern. You are not allowed to drink alcohol or do parties. That was not my concern. My concern was on porn. So that, that to me was my biggest problem in my life. Okay? That's what I was medicating, and that's what I was using.

JD: That was my drug of choice, so to speak. Now for my dad, this was not that much of a concern because he was not involved in it. He was just understanding that he was not able to help.

Mike: Yeah.

JD: So when I turned to friends, one of my friends said, JD, how about you turn to triathlon because you, you know how to swim, you know how to run.

JD: But cycling, you're biking all the time to work, so how about you turn to triathlon? And at first my pride kicked in. I said, "I can't because I don't know if I would finish first." They said "That's the beauty of triathlon. The beauty of triathlon is that everybody fits in their own category. Everybody wins because you're finishing the race, and that's ultimately the message of life. You have to take on challenges, it will be painful, there will be some level of preparation and it there will be discomfort, but ultimately you're not there to win a medal and finish first. You're there because you want to finish the race. That's what you're there for. You're there because you want to essentially live a healthy, life and help others in the process, create an impact in the world, and that's what you can do through triathlons. For you, JD, it's natural." I hopped on it and I never looked back. Mike.

Mike: At what point in your training or competing did you find, one, your depression slipping away and your focus away from what you were trying to lose and shift towards what you were trying to gain?

JD: It's not until I wrote the book

Mike: Really?

JD: Which was after the Epic Deca. Yeah. I was doing it naturally. For example, if I had a craving and I wanted to masturbate to pornography. I was jumping in the snow, not really understanding what I was doing at an endocrine level or at a nervous system level, or there was no understanding of that.

JD: I just did it. That's it. Why? Because I understood the reaction of my body. It was not about emotion. I did not want to jump in the snow and have fun in my underwear. Rolling around minus 30 degree. And even Wim Hof talks about it, right? (laughs) That he doesn't wanna do these things, but because of the body's reaction.

JD: Then he was doing it and eventually he became one of the most known figure in ice swimming or ice not swimming, but ice plunging, I would say. And that's when I realized, because I put it in clear terms, like what have I just done? What have I just accomplished? How did it really make sense what I just did.

JD: And so when I put the system, now I was able to not only recreate it for myself, but I was also able to understand it, and then eventually it just moved to creating an impact for others because now others are now able to recreate it.

Mike: Yeah.

JD: So for example, we use a n acronym. And the acronym for recovery, very often some people would use 12 steps and 20 steps, and it gets very complicated when you look at all of these steps. And then remembering them is even worse because very often the brain is affected by addictions. So now you're not even able to remember all of these steps or what you have to do and how to juggle.

JD: So the acronym is RISE. And it starts with R, which is recognize the pattern. So if you're able to recognize the pattern, for me, for example, it was the washroom. When I was going at the at the johns at the washroom, I was bringing my phone with me. So that was the trigger. That was the, I recognize if I did not bring my phone, which at first was unheard of that's where you get peace and quiet from my son, (laughs) from the family. So I was going to the washroom without my phone at that time. So I recognized that pattern and then I was able to make a shift eventually. The brain's able to adapt, it's called neuroplasticity, so most people would know about that.

JD: Then the I is based on identity. There needs to be an identity shift. It's no longer I am an addict, it's, I am in recovery or I am recovered or I am a winner. If you go into a race, and that's what I did in the Epic Deco. I did not go into the race going: "I'm not going to finish it."

JD: No, I knew I was going to finish it because I did all the preparation. I did everything I could to be a winner, and that's what I wanted to do. Now that I finish third is completely irrelevant. Okay? I did finish third. Okay. (laughs) I did finish and that, that was my goal, right? So my identity was rooted on I am.

JD: For example, some people are saying, I am a Christian. And I use Christianity because I am a Christian, I am a Christianity, and that's what I was doing. I'm a Christian, but you're compromising because the Bible is saying something completely different than what your actions are showing. And we see it now throughout the globe where people are saying I'm a Christian.

JD: They wear the cross. They have those tattoos about Jesus everywhere. We have people right now having statues of Jesus everywhere and talking about it openly and then all of a sudden their actions just doesn't even match their identity. Make sure that your identity is following the I use Christianity.

JD: Okay. We could pick on any other religion or set of value. I use Christianity because we're talking about how JD did it, what is the pattern, and how you can apply it to your life. Okay? So you can use whatever system of value you want or all your listeners are wanting. As a structure of the day, which many plays they would say, structure the day.

JD: Many people don't even understand (laughs) that when you are in a deep pit, depressive state, that structuring an entire day is massive. For me, waking up in the morning was I could not even function, like waking up in the morning, getting off that couch from looking at the ceiling was the most painful part of my day.

JD: How about you structure five minute. (laughs) If you can structure five minute. I need to do pushups. That's it. There we go. Just jump on. Pushups has nothing to do with triathlon, but you just accomplished something. You are going to get a dopamine release and because you accomplished it, then depending on how far you went or what you did as an exercise, that not only will you get the dopamine, you might get serotonin, you might also, you might also secrete other types of hormones. Maybe you're doing it as a group, so now you're secreting oxytocin. So again, all of those, you don't have to understand the whole process. All you need to do is structure five minutes. If that's what you're able to function with. If you're able to function with more fine, structure an hour. If you're able to function with more, structure an entire day. But trying to fit in structuring an entire week might not work for you. And so the E, engage in healthy challenges. This is so many. I see that all the time. And when I say engage in healthy challenges, okay? Don't try to rearrange everything all at once. Put it in a priority.

JD: And that's how we started our conversation. Mike, even before that podcast, he said "How are you able to do all of these things, JD? Are you able to do that every well?" I said it's a structure. That's it. So if, let's say the person has a drug addiction and smoking addiction and they are completely unrelated, okay, completely unrelated.

JD: Then all of a sudden you say I will tackle the one that is the most prominent to me. Right now I wanna quit drugs. That's it. So focus on drugs. Forget about the cigarette. Now this comes from a certified naturopathic practitioner. Okay? I'm not gonna lose my license because of, because I'm telling someone to continue smoking.

JD: Okay? (laughs) But based on the circumstances, one is greater than the other, and you chose that one that is making the most sense to you to cut out of your life. So pick that one, engage in those healthy challenges, challenge yourself. " I wanna quit that. How about we quit for one week, two weeks?" And you'll see there are lots of guys out there.

JD: We have our own community, and we put those guys in those communities where they can challenge each other. That's what we need. We need those communities, whether you do it through the Hungry Warrior Academy or some other organization, that's fine. Just go out there, find some guys that are like-minded and fight for those healthy challenges. Alright, Mike, let's do a one week no smoking. How about that? Mike, do you wanna do it? Let's do it. Perfect. And then we challenge ourselves. We call each other and you will see that you're developing those healthy habits and it will develop healthy relationships also, which are, all of those things are just added bonus that you just don't understand.

JD: You're just going through it. Again, rise is easy to remember and it's just again, four letters.

Mike: Yeah.

JD: So easy to remember.

Mike: I was talking about this just last week with somebody and and it makes a lot of sense that she was saying that even in recovery, you have to be careful of your structure, right?

Mike: So at like the way you recover can also become an obsession. How do you keep that in a box that is also healthy and doesn't become unhealthy? So it's affecting your relationships and everything else. Because I'm sure that when you're training for this stuff, you have to really focus on your training.

Mike: And there has to be a cost somewhere along the way, whether it's work or relationships or just isn't time in a day to do everything.

JD: Here's the thing, Mike. You're gonna have pain regardless of which option you choose. And this perfect lifestyle that everybody is looking for with a perfect equilibrium does not exist,

Mike: Goes back forth.

JD: It does not. Exactly. It deviates. You are right. There's nobody out there, including me, that wakes up at four in the morning and had this eight hours of sleep. Then I have to do my skincare, then I have to do my hair.

Mike: And it looks great.

JD: And then I have to do a cold bath and eat shea seeds and fresh cut fruit and go do a massage and work out.

JD: And then a thousand podcasts and be on every platform and then make a million dollar per day. And work only two hours in my entire day and drive 5 4, 5 0 4 Lamborghinis and all of these fancy cars. Put your priorities in one spot. Make sure they are in alignment with your values. If your values are about money, then you will have to give up uncertain parts of your life, put them on the back burner. Look at it was a famous billionaire Kevin O'Leary, which is known as

Mike: Mr. Wonderful.

JD: Exactly! You beat me to it. Thank you, Mike. (laughs) So most people know Mr. Wonderful from the Dragon's Den. And when you look a little bit behind, he talks about putting his family on the back burner to make money.

JD: Now, does he regret it? He does in a sense, but now he is a billionaire. He is using that money to rebuild these relationship and his values shifted because he understands some other things. Now, was it a good thing or was it a bad thing? In my opinion, it was a good thing. Okay. Now, his children might say something completely different.

JD: In my opinion, it was a good thing. Why? Because you have to prioritize something. And the reason why I'm saying he is successful is because he focused on one thing. He did not try to and I'm using this again in terms of addiction, as the same pattern. You're focusing on one addiction.

JD: For him, it was about money. He wanted to make money. He did focus on that. It hurt his family, it hurt his relationships, but he focused on one thing and he did it consistently. He had the discipline to do it, and to me that is success. It's all of these people that try to again, take all of these things and try to again, juggle with everything in life and try to make it into an equilibrium. I'm gonna go to university, but at the same time, I'm also gonna make a $500,000 income, but also I will have a healthy family with my children. Here's the thing, here's what I did, okay, so we'll go back to JD and I read in my book, for me, Christianity is about, one, your relationship with God.

JD: Two, it's your family. Which is your first ministry. And third, then you go out in the world and you spread the message of the gospel and you do. Okay, wonderful. So let's look at this. I focused on, on God, on my relationship with him. So I started praying more and understanding what types of prayers I needed, what type of meditation I needed, what is the type. Then I understood now, active meditation, passive meditation there's all sorts of prayers, not just go pray about it.

JD: Now, there's all sorts of ways to have a healthy relationship with God. Then I went with my son. I still wanna work out. How am I gonna do it? Here's the thing. I built a harness, took some rope, and put my son in a sled. I would climb mountains with him on snowshoes, with ski goggles. Minus 30, we're just going out for six, seven hours climbing mountains.

JD: So again, is my son involved into it? Yes. Am I having a solid relationship with my savior, Lord Jesus Christ? Yes! So there you go. So to me, these two criteria are at the top of my pyramid. Therefore, it fits my schedule. Am I going against the grain by saying I did not work, or I had to let go of my business.

JD: It cost me tens of thousands of dollars. I was in debt. And yes it did. But here's what happened is I can do everything right and that's how I looked at it. I said. "I can do everything right, have all of the right mindset. I can have all of the best preparation physically, but there are variables that only God can control."

JD: Talking the weather, we're talking uh uh, there are... See the Epic Deca, that can only happen at that time, at that specific moment. And then it came that I was minus $20,000 in debt. Okay, so minus not double negative, but I was in debt by $20,000. And I prayed to God and I said, look I have a good relationship with you.

JD: I wanna serve you, but I don't have the money. And now just in terms of registration, it's gonna cost me $15,000 or $10,000 U.S. How am I gonna pay for this? I wanna have a healthy relationship with my son, which I did. So again, comes down to priorities, values, and then your goals after... My house sold exactly at the right time, exactly at the right moment, and that's what I did Mike. So maybe it's a giant bomb for everybody, is that I did sell my house so I could afford to go for two weeks to Hawaii. I spent over a hundred thousand dollars in two weeks for an event that gives me no money, no return on investment, and I had to now fight to make all of that money back.

JD: This is insane! But I did it. Why? Because again, I control what I can. God takes care of the rest. That's it. So again, looking back at it, I have no regret at all, Mike. No regret at all.

Mike: That's success. And you define success to you then what is failure?

JD: Failure is not being able to achieve that success. Which again, you have to define that success. So for me, if the success is, I wanna finish the race, that's it's not successful. But if all of a sudden the race to me was about finishing first, while I'm not achieving that success, it is a failure to me if I did not finish first.

JD: So again, that failure is not achieving that success. But again, if you don't define success firstthen you don't even know what you're failing at, and then you go back into "I did not fail. I just learned. There are no failures, there are just learning opportunities." Which that is that is a... (sigh) it is not the right way to look at it. That's just a rewarding of your situation. You failed, because you set barriers and you did fail. That's it. You have to accept and take responsibilities because your success was defined by a certain a certain data point. If that data point is not met, then you are failing.

JD: I wanna have a healthy relationship with my son. What defines a healthy relationship? What defines that really well, a healthy relationship to me for my son is that I don't have to worry if my son is in a good or a bad position. If there's something going wrong with my son, I know, this is my success, can be something else with somebody else, but I know now my son will pick up the phone or whatever means of communication he has to reach out to his dad, and that my success will also be defined as my reaction to react to that stimuli.

JD: I will, that is my success, no matter if I'm on a podcast or anywhere in the world, I will drop everything and go towards my son and that is the success. So those, again, I just define two terms of success as to how I will react and what is the relationship with my son. That's my success. It can be defined.

JD: That's my data point. It can be defined in any other form. That's up to you to define it.

Mike: It's interesting 'cause I asked you what, to you, what is failure? And you, without even thinking about it, turned it back into success again. So I assume that when people come to the Hungry Warrior Academy, that's part of it.

Mike: It's all about the mindset. It's about the attitude, it's about the values, and then the structure that comes out of those.

JD: Correct. We use the DECA system, which stems from the Epic Deca. Our foundation is based on the four pillars, which makes the acronym EPIC. And the DECA system is the D stands for discipline.

JD: Don't have discipline. I don't care how much motivational video you watch or how much caffeine you intake, or how many energy drinks. You can even took an IV of energy drinks. Okay. If you do not have the discipline, your body will break down. You will not achieve something that is of a magnitude.

JD: Okay? Now, there, there are those places for caffeine and all of that, and I can talk about it. But again the, what I was driving as a point was discipline is mandatory. E stands for energy regulation. If you do not fuel your systems properly and you do not recover properly, and we've seen it with... we've seen it with ultra endurance athlete who push hard and are completely focus on just the race, just the event, and eventually by the age of 40, 50 screws all over their body.

JD: DNFing, they're not capable of functioning in an ultra endurance event because their body did not reg, they did not regulate their energy level properly. You have to adapt. You have to let your body recover. So again, it's not just in terms of pushing harder, it's also in terms of releasing that pedal, lowering yourself, lower than 3000 RPMs.

JD: Maybe cruising for a while. The CS capacity, are you even built for this? For me, naturally speaking, yes. I am built for ultra endurance events. It was natural for me. Now, that's not to say that you're not built for it because you are overweight or that you, it's just, it just means that to me, I'm not billed for a fast race and I've tried many fast races.

JD: I'm not an Olympian. I will most likely, I'm not putting it out there, but I will most likely never be an Olympian. Not because of my age, but because I do not have the capacity. I'm an old diesel. That's it. I'm an old diesel engine. I'm about to push 40, and whether it's old or young, to some degree, I am still able to continue.

JD: And I have the capacity and I know it and I understand it. Now, am I built from the eight to four? Not at all. That's it. But a lot of people, and I would say the majority of people are not built to be entrepreneur. Now we're looking on social media as, oh, become this coach because this person get out on the eight to four.

JD: You might even be hurting your addiction, by the way, just by quitting your eight to four. You're just removing the structure that you already have. You're removing the safety net for your entire family. So I'm not against the eight to four when nine to five, or call it whatever you want, but you're just removing the structure.

JD: If you look at it, an electrician over time might be doing way more money than a person who goes to university or an entrepreneur, because most entrepreneurs and the broke and back from the eight to four, we just don't see about it. Okay. And to me, I was blessed that it turned around and we're doing well and were able to do even philanthropy.

JD: But to some people, there you go. They might not make it. The final one, which is the final driving marker, which a lot of, so many programs do not have that. One is the action. How many times have I went to church and I went with my problem and I said to to some people who've been in the church for years, and I say look, I have that problem.

JD: And they look at me and they say, yeah, we'll pray about it. They never do or they never do it on the spot. Or maybe sometime they do it on the spot. But again, it's just, oh, go pray about it. O okay, what's what's the action? What am I supposed to do? They just go in a dark room, close my eyes go, what am I supposed to do?

JD: Like what? What is prayer? What is, so again, you need to do action. There needs to be some action you can have all, when you have discipline, there's still some action that is involved. If you are not doing action, then what you're doing is you're just hurting yourself and really you're depriving the people from having you at your best self.

JD: So you're depriving the entire world of what Mike could become or what JD would become. And once you understand that, then you're able to just put the needle to the pedal all the way to seven 8,000 RPM when it's the time needed, and then you go back to 2,000 or sometime you put the car in the garage and then you just let it rest and then you're fine.

JD: So again, that's the system that we use. We use the DECA system, but driven by discipline, energy regulation, capacity, and most importantly to me is action. You need to have the driving marker.

Mike: It's great. JD, I'm gonna be respectful of your time. This has been fascinating. I love your book. We're gonna link the book as well as your website for the people at the end of this podcast.

Mike: So if they have questions or wanna inquire more about the academy, they certainly can. I can tell you I'm not doing any of the ultras anytime soon. I bike every day, but I don't have the capacity to do what you did.

Mike: For those of you who are listening, watching we encourage you to find love, courage, support, and your action wherever you are.

Mike: As always, thanks for listening, watching. We want you to be safe, be well, and to quote jd, if your goals don't scare you, and this is in the book, raise the bar.