Ep 253 – Bodybuilding Changed My Life: Coach Ben’s Story

In this episode, Ben shares his full journey into bodybuilding and coaching, from early insecurities and extreme dieting to developing a more balanced, sustainable approach to fitness.

He talks about how his mindset evolved, why relationships and lifestyle flexibility now play a bigger role in his approach, and how those lessons shape the way he coaches clients today.

The conversation dives into the psychology of behavior change, the challenges of coaching different personalities, and why long-term success in bodybuilding requires more than just discipline…it requires adaptability and self-awareness.

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TRANSCRIPT

Sawyer (00:00)
Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Muscles by Brussels. I’m Coach Sawyer.

Ben (00:05)
I’m Ben.

Sawyer (00:05)
And today we’re gonna continue our series where we have kind of been meeting the coaches and getting to know our backstory because, you know, I think it can be kind of fun, especially if you’re kind of hesitant or you’re kind of curious what coaching even is or how people get into it. I think this is a cool series. ⁓ And we just launched the one about me, which was really cool to listen back to and like just reflect on and how I answered questions. And now I’m excited to do that same thing for Ben. You guys are gonna get to know Ben in this one.

And you know, I’m biased, but I think he’s pretty cool, so I think you guys are gonna think he’s pretty cool too. But ⁓ yeah, so let’s get into it. But first of all, actually no, first of all, Giacomo would kill me because I have to establish rapport. We have to chat about silly little things, whatever. Anyways, Ben, give me an update on you, man. What’s been going on in your world?

Ben (00:52)
I was going to say I edited enough of our podcast to like know the dynamic between any two kind of combination of coaches. And it’s always you trying to get right into the topic and Giacomo being like, whoa, he’s into it. So.

Sawyer (01:00)
Yeah

I know, I know, he’s so mad.

He’s so mad all the time when I do that.

Ben (01:08)
We all have our own ways of doing things. So yeah, my weekend was good. We’re recording on a Tuesday here. I spent the weekend on Cape Cod, which is the little kind of ocean-y part of Massachusetts where my parents have a home. So I went there with my girlfriend and our cat and we kind of just hung out for a few days. She had a few days off from work, so we were able to just hang out there and…

Sawyer (01:11)
Yeah.

Ben (01:33)
cook some good food, hit the gym, do a little bit of painting and just relax and unwind. It’s just nice to have another place outside of our apartment that we can go to nearby. have, you know, my parents’ other house as well as kind of more in the Boston area, but more in the suburbs. So it’s just good to have changes of pace and different locations just to keep things a little bit fresh. And then it’s kind of like,

Sawyer (01:44)
Yeah.

Ben (01:55)
We’ve talked about this before when you’re in a building phase, after a certain amount of time it gets a little stale and you get excited about cutting and then kind of vice versa. You’ve been dining for a while, you get excited to go back into a build just for the novelty of it and just the freshness of it. And then you look forward to actually doing the other thing. And I feel like it’s kind of similar where, you know, maybe we’re cooped up in our apartment for a couple of weeks. Okay, it’s nice to get away, but then we appreciate it when we come back from wherever we’ve been.

Sawyer (02:02)
you

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Ben (02:24)
I think

just having the ability, the flexibility to be able to do that is really nice. So in terms of other stuff that’s going on, it’s pretty status quo. We’ve been working really hard on integrating this new app into our system. And I’ve been really excited to hear a lot of people who are enjoying the change. Of course, there’s always going to be little kinks to work out, but I think we’re all excited about that.

Sawyer (02:28)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Ben (02:48)
And otherwise, no really trips or anything coming up. It’s kind of just the same. It’s actually finally warming up here. We had a 70 degree day here yesterday and my mom and I went for a run outside. That’s something that I’ve been doing just a little bit more for cardio that I haven’t done in the past because my girlfriend likes to run and my mom likes to run. So it’s easier for me when I have somebody kind of there with me who’s motivating me and like encouraging me, hey, you want to do this? It’s a good opportunity to chat or just listen to my music and kind of switch off.

Sawyer (02:52)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Ben (03:18)
we don’t, you know, we’re not doing any kind of crazy pace, but it feels nice to get the heart rate up a little bit. And especially cause it was just so nice yesterday. So I did that. And then training training is pretty status quo. ⁓ it’s going pretty well. I’m kind of just like, I would say I’m kind of focusing on body recomposition and, like staying more or less in the same kind of weight range, but like slowly coming down over time, just cause my goal is to be a little leaner than I am right now, but I’m really not in any rush. So.

Sawyer (03:22)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Ben (03:44)
I’ll have certain days that look more like deficit days and certain days that look more like maintenance and maybe even in a slight surplus. And I kind of just depends on the context of where I am, who I’m with, how I’m feeling, you know, all of those things come into play. So it’s different. Like in the past, I’ve been very like one-minded, like this is my goal. I’m going to do this for a period of time. And then I’m going to switch completely to something else, which I think does make for an efficient process, but it’s not as

Sawyer (04:07)
Mm-hmm.

Ben (04:11)
It hasn’t been as enjoyable for me recently to do it that way. So I’m taking a little bit more of kind of just a slower and steadier approach to what I’m doing with my bodybuilding. But yeah, I think that’s enough. I’ll leave it there for now.

Sawyer (04:15)
Mm-hmm.

That’s cool,

a good update. I think it’s really cool how you value and think about the flexibility of your lifestyle. Sounds like things have been a little bit calmer, so it was nice to switch it up and go somewhere new. And then you’ve also got just, I don’t know, you seem to be in a more flow state, like not forcing things type of.

Mindset in life lately. I think that’s really cool. I think that spells confidence too because it’s still you have goals, but you’re not like trying to push so hard in one direction or the other that you Are kind of stressing yourself out like you kind of know the progressions are important You kind of know like okay, kind of want to head in this direction But I’m not in any kind of rush because you know most of all like the things that matter the metrics that matter and you’re not trying to stress out about things that like

don’t matter as much. I think that’s cool. think it’s reflective of feeling more confident, more like you’ve gathered more wisdom over your time doing it. And it’s not to say that you won’t do a more intense thing later if you realize that’s what you’re motivated to do. But I do think it’s cool that you are allowing yourself to slow down. Because I know you, you tend to be more intense and more, like very, like,

motivated to do things all in. And so to hear you be like, yeah, I’m kinda like slowing down, but I’m still pushing for progress, that’s kinda cool that you have that flexibility, that freedom to do that, and you’ve kinda allowed yourself that breathing room. That’s cool.

Ben (05:48)
I

think if I was left to my own devices, I probably would default back to that way of thinking because I think it’s just a lot easier when you don’t have other responsibilities or obligations or people in your life that rely on you. It’s a lot easier to kind of just silo yourself away and do your own thing. I think that there’s a certain amount of, I think you can get a certain amount of contentment from that.

Sawyer (06:01)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Ben (06:13)
But I found for me that after a period of time of doing that, it did start to get a little bit old. And I remember my kind of major reflection after my bodybuilding season, which I learned a lot from that experience. But my major reflection was just that I really didn’t want bodybuilding. saw, you know, there’s almost like these diverging paths that I could go down where I could kind of continue to silo myself more into being the person who is more of a hermit who kind of just, you know,

Sawyer (06:13)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Ben (06:42)
sticks to their routine 24 seven and lives kind of like a robot. And, you know, I have a lot of, you know, I could say maybe admiration or like, I think it’s cool. People that do that, because obviously that’s a great way to get very consistent and you know, fantastic results. ⁓ But I think for myself, you know, I realized that I was not pouring my energy into these relationships that I really valued.

Sawyer (06:46)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Ben (07:06)
that I missed, that I felt like I kind of had let go a little bit as a result of being so into bodybuilding. And it was okay because I had this goal that I was so focused on and so passionate about. But then at the end of it, even if I had achieved a certain level of success with that, it just wasn’t as gratifying or fulfilling as I would have thought it would be, thought it would have been. And I think it just…

Sawyer (07:09)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Ben (07:28)
goes to show that the process of how you do something is just so important. so ⁓ now having some more of those like relationships in my life, I found that that super hyper rigid way of thinking and being was actually just, you know, creating more stress and anxiety, like putting this pressure on myself that I had to be this certain way. Like I wasn’t even enjoying it anymore. And the whole reason I do this is, I mean, obviously there’s many reasons, you know, like health, but a major reason is

Sawyer (07:33)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Ben (07:55)
⁓ just because I want to make my life more enjoyable and like lifting weights and bodybuilding is a way to keep myself healthy, but also I enjoy it. It’s a fun hobby. And I wanted to find a way to continue to do that even if it was different than what it looked in the past. I went through a lot of feelings of maybe like guilt about, you’re slacking off or you’re not doing, you cause you you compare a environment or context to a current one.

Sawyer (08:16)
You

Ben (08:22)
We talk about this with clients all the time, right? Not to compare to what a circumstance or environment looked like in the past versus now. Goals can change, priorities can change. And so I kind of was just like, how can I alter my mindset and actually the logistical structure of my routine to make bodybuilding still that is something that is very enjoyable for me. And ultimately it’s such, you know, being a natural bodybuilder anyways, it’s such a slow process that

Sawyer (08:22)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Ben (08:48)
I’m like, you I want to be able to continue to do it for five, 10, 15, 20 years without this kind of like resentment for it because it took away from other opportunities. ⁓ and so it’s just been, it’s, it’s a continual process of finding kind of that push and pull between when do I need to be a little bit more like, I guess you could say, when do I need to evaluate, reevaluate what I’m doing and maybe say, you know, I could improve this a little bit better and be a little bit more critical. And when do I need to actually just.

Sawyer (08:55)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Ben (09:13)
show myself a little bit more compassion and say, know what, actually you’re doing a good job of balancing these different things and it’s okay if this isn’t exactly how it used to be.

Sawyer (09:22)
Yeah, I think that’s good. And I think another benefit of doing it that way is, well, in addition to enjoying your life more and connecting better with the people around you, is that you’re not so alien to your clients and the people that you connect with on a daily basis. It’s like, you know, because if people are coming, like you already know, we talked about this in the last episode, like it’s not so much the what, it’s the how. It’s like.

how can people get this stuff implemented into their lives in a reliable, predictable way, even if it’s not the most efficient route? Whereas if you live like a monk, yeah, you could do it just the simplest, most direct way, but if you don’t, if you live in community with other people and connection, there’s a lot more tangled, complicated stuff happening, and that’s the situation for most people we work with. We’re not really working with professional athletes most of the time.

It’s mostly gen pop people who are just trying to be a healthier, fitter, more confident version of themselves and they’re gonna have to learn how to make these things happen alongside all their other life stuff. So I think it’ll make you a better coach too, to like pick that path and be like, all right, I’m gonna choose the more complicated way, but the more enjoyable way to go enjoy, you or to make these gains. And I think it’s just gonna make you more relatable, better coach overall.

So that’s something too. Yeah.

Ben (10:37)
And funny

enough, oftentimes when I’m thinking about some of these thoughts that I’m having, I’m actually putting my coaching hat on and saying, okay, let me take this thought and try to look at it objectively. And if this is somebody that I was talking to, I was coaching, what would I say in this circumstance or that environment? And I think in that way, yes, my own process helps me with my coaching, but also coaching, I think, to a certain extent and really reinforcing those.

Sawyer (10:48)
Thank

Mm-hmm.

Ben (11:03)
pieces of advice that I give to other people and then kind of turning the back on myself has been has been really helpful as well. And just being able to to not be so hard on myself and not put so much pressure on myself because that was where a lot of I think the discontentment with the process that I was having came in was this pressure that I was putting on myself to be a certain way, you know, be a little a little bit more of a perfectionist and that sort of thing. So ⁓ I think actually like the people we surround ourselves with is very important because

Sawyer (11:10)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Thank

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Ben (11:31)
I mean, even just looking at our coaching relationship together, that’s more recent. think that I know you well enough to kind of be able to provide like a, an even keel measure to, to, balance you out when you’re having moments where maybe the anxiety is a little bit higher or you need some kind of reassurance. ⁓ and similarly, I think in my relationship that I have now, I’m a lot more like type a, like I want things to be done a very certain way. And like in,

Sawyer (11:50)
Mm-hmm.

Ben (12:00)
with exact precision and knowing what I’m doing all the time and planning it out. Whereas my girlfriend is a lot more kind of, she’s like that in some ways with certain things, but she’s also a lot more spontaneous and like wants to go with the flow. And I actually really like doing that when I push myself outside of my comfort zone. Like I find that I enjoy things I wouldn’t have thought that I would have enjoyed. So it’s been a really good growing experience for me as a person to have her in my life and be able to challenge me in some of those ways and see like,

Sawyer (12:04)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Ben (12:29)
can I still continue to hold myself to a certain standard with, let’s just say, my bodybuilding and still kind of incorporate in some of these new ⁓ maybe experiences that I wouldn’t have had otherwise. And I mean, it’s not like it’s completely different. Like she loves going to the gym too and like eating similar stuff. So there’s a certain level of compatibility that I think needs to be there. ⁓ But I think it’s nice to have somebody who does kind of challenge you in new and different ways.

Sawyer (12:29)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Totally agree. Yeah, I think it’s so cool how relationships, especially romantic ones, are such a one-to-one mirror. Like it’s just you and this person in this little safe space and you guys are constantly comparing. Like, you can’t even help it, but you’re comparing each other, yourselves to each other. And you’re learning about yourselves through them and about them through you. Like it’s a pretty cool experience and I do think it’s one of those things that tends to make people better people if they…

have an appreciation for the differences as opposed to feeling like you have to be the same on everything because that’s just not going to be realistic. with that said, I think that was a really cool entry point because we kind of talked about what your goals are right now, right? And that’s kind of a cool place to start. But I’m also curious, what made you, and kind of leaning into the coaching conversation first maybe, is what made you pick coaching as a career?

and what do you enjoy about it? Maybe that surprised you or that you kind of knew it was going to be good for you.

Ben (13:53)
Yeah, I feel like in order to get into why I decided to become a coach, it would be helpful to give just a little backstory about why I even ended up kind of relative to this field. So I got my degree in exercise science, but that wasn’t necessarily something that was even on my radar.

Sawyer (14:01)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Ben (14:12)
I didn’t really know what I wanted to go to school for or what I wanted my occupation to be growing up. Like whenever somebody would ask me what I wanted to do when I grew up, I never knew how to answer that. I would never really have an answer for them. I just knew kind of some things that maybe didn’t really appeal to me. So I didn’t really like the idea of working like your typical nine to five and being in an office all day. Like I didn’t really like the idea of that. I think I am somebody who

Sawyer (14:24)
Mm-hmm.

is this.

Ben (14:38)
likes to have structure, but I also like to have a good degree of autonomy with making my own decisions and how I spend my time and that sort of thing. I can even remember like when I would be in school, we would be learning things and I was always fortunate enough to be pretty quick picking things up and I would get it pretty quickly. And I felt like the second that I kind of like got a concept and everyone else was still kind of working on that. I’d be like daydreaming about something else or like thinking about whatever it was that was really like,

Sawyer (14:45)
Mm-hmm.

Ben (15:06)
my passion or my hobby at the time, like whether that was noodling in my notebook. Like if I was into trading cards for a period of time and I would be like building decks in my head or like on paper while we were like sitting in class or thinking about, you know, what ultimate frisbee drills I was gonna run at practice later that day, or, you know, watching game footage when I could and, you know, under my desk or whatever. So I was just very like engrossed and absorbed in, you know, kind of doing my own thing once I felt like I had.

Sawyer (15:08)
you

You

Ben (15:32)
done what I needed to do otherwise. So growing up, played, I tried a lot of different sports. played baseball, basketball, soccer, tackle football up through like freshman year of high school. And I liked the competitive aspect. I’ve always been very competitive. I love games. I was so competitive when I was younger that I’m not proud to admit this, but I would like cheat at a lot of board games. Like I would steal.

Sawyer (15:34)
Mm-hmm.

⁓

Ben (15:55)
money from the banker and monopoly and do

Sawyer (15:56)
my god

Ben (15:58)
little sneaky things to get ahead. So I’m a very competitive person. Yeah, I know. I’m terrible. I’m terrible. Everyone can judge me in the comments.

Sawyer (16:04)
You’ve grown you’ve grown I wouldn’t I

would be surprised if you still did that it is funny though that you ever did

Ben (16:11)
No longer.

That’s that’s the past version of myself, but that just gives you a context. I’m very competitive. I enjoyed team sports. I like the social aspect of it, but there was never really a sport that really I had a natural disposition for. I was good. I was always kind of middle of the pack, like somewhat athletic, but never like super great at any of these sports. I was always kind of like, okay. So.

Sawyer (16:14)
you

Mm-hmm.

Ben (16:34)
In high school, a lot of my friends started playing Ultimate Frisbee, which for people who are not familiar with Ultimate Frisbee, it’s a 7v7 game. can be played, you can actually be played, they call it mixed, but it’s kind of co-ed, so that’s like a fun kind of wrinkle to it as well. And essentially it’s a mixture of like soccer, basketball, and football. So you can’t run with the Frisbee in your hand, similar to like if you stop for a pivot in basketball.

You try to advance the frisbee by throwing it to one of your teammates and them catching it. If it ever hits the ground, the other team gets it and play never stops. So it kind of keeps going back and forth until a team scores by catching the disc in the end zone. So that’s kind of a very basic rundown of ultimate frisbee. So I really loved it. I started playing that in high school and that really became like my passion, something that I was into all the time. I would run.

Hills with my friends, I would get outside and throw the frisbee for like an hour or two every single day. I’d be like texting people to see who I could find to like throw the frisbee with me. You know, hey, let’s go grab our cleats, go to the field and like practice our throwing. I would work on conditioning. I’ve never really gotten to the gym just because I think I was a little intimidated by it. So I didn’t really do too much of that. Like maybe I’d go every now and then with some friends, but never really got into that. So when I went to college, yeah.

Sawyer (17:33)
Mm-hmm.

Were you like one of those packs of

high schoolers who would show up at the gym and like stand around one machine and not do much?

Ben (17:50)
No,

no, that was no, that was never me. That was my brother more. He would kind of do that with some of his friends actually, ⁓ cause he was a soccer player, but, ⁓ no, for me, it would be like, I don’t know. Maybe I’d have like a one-off, like a friend who said they were going to the gym and I would go with them or something like that. but I don’t even remember. Hey, no, I know.

Sawyer (17:55)
⁓ yeah. Yeah.

Mm-hmm, yeah. No shade, I’m not throwing shade. I think whatever is gonna get you in

the gym and make you feel okay there, like if you gotta go with a pack of friends, that’s cool. But I was just curious, because sometimes people get annoyed.

Ben (18:16)
Yeah. I mean, when I see people

these days at the gym, like, with their friends, I’m like, that’s cool. It’s fun. It’s like not at this point. I’m there to get in and get out and do the work that needs to be done. But if you have all the time in the world and it’s just like social time to hang out with your friends, that’s awesome. And like I to a certain part of me wishes that I had that when I was younger, because I think I would have liked that and it would have been fun. But anyways, that was high school, went to college, didn’t know what I wanted to do for my career.

Sawyer (18:27)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, me too.

Ben (18:43)
So I took a bunch of different classes and kind of experimented. I also kind of like, as I mentioned, I have a very obsessive personality. I latch onto certain things and it kind of consumes everything that I want to do. So again, I would go to school, I would do all my classes, I’d do well, but then in my free time I’d spend, you know, researching or really like diving into whatever thing I was really into. So it was still frisbee for a really long time. And…

Sawyer (19:06)
Mm-hmm.

Ben (19:07)
sophomore year of college, I decided to switch into exercise science because I kind of got this idea of, you know what, I could probably be a physical therapist and maybe I could work with ⁓ athletes who have been injured and maybe specifically I could kind of like brand or market myself for ultimate Frisbee players because it’s a big hobby. It’s a big, if you want to call it a sport, like there’s lots of teams all over the country and all over the world, like local teams, youth all the way through adult.

Sawyer (19:30)
and

Ben (19:33)
I felt like it was something that was related to what I was really passionate about. And I’m like, okay, this, this seems exciting to me. So to.

Sawyer (19:37)
Mm-hmm.

And also your mom’s a

physical therapist as well, right? So that maybe planted some seeds.

Ben (19:43)
Yes, she is. Yeah, she’s

still licensed. She hasn’t practiced in quite some time, but she was started out as a physical therapist and then transitioned more into like healthcare administration. she kind of had gone that route. so part of me was like, okay, maybe it would be fun to go that route and obviously have her for guidance along the road.

Sawyer (19:53)
Got it.

Ben (20:04)
I started, you know, my first year of exercise science classes. I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed my major and my cohort. and I started doing my physical therapy observation hours outside of school and I started doing all my prerequisites for grad school. So that was like definitely in my plan. ⁓ and then in between my sophomore and junior year of college, I just picked up a book that I found lying around my house. I was kind of home for a little bit of the summer and it was like a book about strength training.

And, ⁓ and nutrition, was basically about like just how to, you know, body recomposition, how to, how to change your body with lifting weights and eating right. And I was very lucky in that the person who wrote the book, is Mike Matthews. He’s like the founder of Legion, which is a really, you know, pretty popular evidence-based supplement company. I’d consider him to be quite evidence-based. think he’s definitely a good source of information. And, ⁓ so I was lucky that that was kind of the first book that I picked up.

And I read through it and really it was more of a curiosity thing. Like I wanted to see, you know, okay, if I want to kind of practice what I preach and I want to, you know, help athletes, be stronger, be more resilient. need to know more about resistance training and weight training. need to actually get some experience with that as well. So I was reading about kind of some of the fundamentals and the principles around that. And that was supplementing the classes that I was taking, but the classes I was taking in school were a lot more, on kind of the, the.

anatomical level and not as like much the practical side of things. So this was really a great way for me to get an introduction to strength training by, you know, laid out programs and how to structure them for yourself. And then there was the nutrition side of where it was talking about this idea of like macronutrients and tracking your macros. And I had taken a intro to nutrition class. So I kind of had a basic understanding of this, but I didn’t really know kind of how it pertains to body composition and you know, evidence-based recommendations for.

protein and spacing out all this. And I thought it was cool, but I also thought it was like, I’m I’m these a food scale and weigh all my food. Like that’s so much work. I don’t want to do that. So I kind of stopped reading it like halfway through. And then a week later I was like, just give it another chance. Just finish the book. And so I finished the book and I’m like, you know what, what’s, you know, what’s the harm in, in giving this a try? I, and now kind of I’ll tie in talking more about like fitness. And I guess you could say,

actually more like body composition. I was, I was never like really too overweight growing up or out of shape, but I do, I did get teased every now and then for being on like the chubbier side compared to some of my friends who are more athletic. And my brother was always like very kind of lean and athletic. He was the sporty one in our family. Even though I played sports, he was like, like a star sports. Like he was like, you know, quarterback of his like peewee football team. And he was like one of the best soccer players on his team most years. So.

there was a little bit of, think, just insecurity and lack of self-confidence. I didn’t like going to the beach or the pool and taking my shirt off, that sort of thing. so there was a little bit of that and a little bit.

Sawyer (22:50)
Yeah, that’s something we have in common.

that insecurity at that age, like noticing like, I feel a little different. feel a little bit like eyes on me don’t feel good in this respect. So yeah, sorry, continue.

Ben (23:01)
No, yeah, totally. And I think that’s normal growing up. Kids can be pretty brutal and everyone’s kind of judging each other and trying to see where they fit into the packing order, so to speak. once I started paying attention to my nutrition, going to the gym, I became, like other things, I latched onto it. I became pretty obsessive about it and I wanted to do it right. I wanted to be meticulous.

So I went from a body weight that I think was actually probably a pretty healthy body weight for me. And what I wish I had done had kind of just been like eating at maintenance or maybe eating in like a slight surplus even, and just focused on getting stronger in the gym. definitely was focusing on getting stronger, but I was, I wanted to be leaner. So I was eating, I was pretty, I definitely say I was like under eating and in a pretty steep deficit. So I lost about

let’s say 25 pounds in three months, which is pretty steep. ⁓ That’s like a pound and a half per week, which is like, it’s still within the realm of being evidence-based in terms of like fat loss percentage guidelines, but you’re on the upper end and you’re doing that consistently. ⁓ also, yeah, you know, like anything when you don’t fully understand the principles and what matters, you have a rudimentary understanding of it. I was very rigid about the way that I did it. Like I have to,

Sawyer (23:53)
Wow. Yeah.

It’s aggressive.

Ben (24:18)
you know, follow this meal plan or be really strict with my macros and I can’t be flexible with like what I’m eating or, you know, when I’m eating, I had to be very rigid about things. And that was kind of my, my first experience was doing this cut, but I really fell in love with going to the gym. So that was a positive to come outside, to come out of that. And I was still doing the ultimate frisbee alongside of that. So school started back up. That was kind of the summer where I lost that weight.

And I came back to school and of course people were like, ⁓ man, like you got the six pack now, look at you. And of course it feels nice to a certain extent to get those compliments. Yeah. Yeah, it’s, it is dangerous, especially, exactly, exactly. It’s not the healthiest. But weirdly at the same time, I’d have people kind of pushing back on some of the stuff I was doing and isn’t it a bit extreme and.

Sawyer (24:49)
Oof, dangerous. Yeah. I was just gonna say it’s dangerous when you start getting validation for something and even if it’s not the healthiest, yeah.

Ben (25:05)
It was in hindsight, but when you’re kind of in it, you don’t want people to tell you that because it feels like they’re invalidating your efforts or you feel like they don’t understand why I’m doing this or what it takes or whatever. So you can justify what you’re doing pretty easily. And so I would say I regained a little bit of weight from there. I actually, tried kind of like going through my first bulk. I was pretty scared to put the weight back on because I had actually been lean for the first time in my life. Again, like getting those compliments, but I was way under-muscled. I knew that.

I wanted to have more muscle on my physique and it wasn’t probably a healthy spot for me to be. My food focus was really high. My calories are pretty low. So I started playing ultimate frisbee again and I just had to like increase my cal. I was not gaining weight. So my calories were going up and up and up and up and up. And finally I got to the point where I was kind of slowly gaining weight and able to like still lift weights hard and do my frisbee alongside it. It was a little tricky to manage it, but I was doing it. And then the

COVID shutdown happened. So then I went home and again, this is just an example of not understanding the principles. I was still eating the same amount that I was at school, but I wasn’t like playing all this frisbee and doing it. So then I started gaining weight really fast. And then all of a sudden I was like, my God, like what happened? I’m not where I want to be anymore. So then my initial gut reaction was okay, going to go back into a deficit fat loss phase. And it was a little bit more flexible this time than it was the time before.

Sawyer (26:20)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Ben (26:28)
So that was a plus. This was also the time that I had just gone vegan. So I went vegan about nine months into my lifting weights journey. So I basically built all of my muscle being vegan because in that first nine months I spent, I was like basically like super lean without much muscle. hadn’t, yeah, exactly. And I hadn’t really put on, spent that much time at maintenance or in a steady surplus with progressive training and not having all this, you know,

Sawyer (26:42)
This

Slashing calories.

Ben (26:55)
ultimate frisbee going on alongside it as well, which is making it difficult to really see my performance increase. So then I kind of settled into this like leaner body fat. I would say I was probably maintaining around 10 % body fat for maybe another like year or so after that. So I spent like two years pretty lean. And then after that, I kind of had come to this point where I decided, you know what, like,

Sawyer (26:59)
Mm-hmm.

Ben (27:20)
You’re lean, but you really haven’t built that much more strength or muscle over the last like year or two. You want to have more muscle on your frame. You really enjoy the training part. And I think because I just gone vegan, I was putting a lot of time and attention into like finding recipes that fit my macros and experimenting in the kitchen. I had all this time because of COVID as well. So I wasn’t really putting as much emphasis on the training as I think I should have. And I was also hearing things from people who were

Sawyer (27:37)
Mm-hmm.

Ben (27:46)
you know, taking PEDs talking about, you know, diets 80 % and the training’s 20%, which really, I think for a lot of people, especially if you’re like a natural bodybuilder and you really want to build as much muscle as possible, it’s probably more the other way, like it’s 80 % training, 20 % nutrition. Once you get your nutrition to a certain point, if you haven’t gotten like those fundamental nutrition habits, then yes, you’d need to put more time and attention into those. ⁓ But I really started focusing on the training. I found channels like Renaissance Periodization,

Sawyer (27:51)
⁓ man.

Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Ben (28:15)
back when I felt like they gave a little bit better information than they do now. But we won’t go down, we won’t go down that rabbit hole. Maybe we can do an episode at some point about like content creators and maybe some that we really like, some that we’ve maybe changed our mind on over the years, but that’s not what this podcast is about. I started really experimenting with different training methods, really being diligent about writing down my workouts. I had started doing that when I first started strength training. I had been like obviously logging everything because the book said to do that.

Sawyer (28:17)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Ben (28:40)
But then because I was staying lean all the time, I wasn’t progressing and it was very discouraging to me. So I stopped logging my workouts for a while because I was like this ignorance is bliss sort of thing where it’s just like, I just wanted to enjoy my workouts and not worry about the numbers. And, but then at a certain point I’m like, I’m not getting bigger and I’m not getting stronger. So I need to start doing this again. and then from that point out, I started doing more successive bulking and cutting cycles. I’m not going to get into all the specifics around that, but I did that for the next couple of years. And over time with every like.

Sawyer (28:47)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Ben (29:08)
building phase and fat loss phase, it became a little bit more seamless. I didn’t need to track as diligently. I could be more flexible with going out to eat. I understood training more and more and continued to kind of experiment with what worked well for me. And so that was really the start of me wanting to get into bodybuilding. In terms of competitive bodybuilding, like getting on stage, that was something that I first kind of like…

thought about as an idea of, I could possibly do this as I was kind of closing out college. So this was about that time that I finally like committed to, you know what? I want to add more muscle to my physique. I’m done kind of being like lean and not making progress. That was around the same time that I decided eventually I want to compete in bodybuilding. So it was a good motivator for me to really commit to that process. So,

Sawyer (29:42)
Mm-hmm.

Ben (29:51)
I had said initially, I think that I wanted to wait at least like five or 10 years into training to really compete because I knew that I needed time to build up my, my muscular sort of base, so to speak. Um, but as it turns out, it ended up being a little bit earlier than them, uh, cause I started lifting weights in 2019 and I competed in 2024. about five years and which is pretty early, I would say for most people in terms of competing. Um, but I felt that I had enough.

Sawyer (30:06)
Okay.

Ben (30:17)
muscle mass and my habits were developed enough and my mindset was developed enough to make competing viable. So that takes me up until my first competition, but I figured that would be a good place for us to stop and let you kind of ask questions or go into topics.

Sawyer (30:25)
Yeah.

Yeah, no, that’s a good,

yeah, I appreciate you telling it kind of succinctly like that. And I think, you know, even though the timeline may seem really fast, I mean, it makes sense with somebody with your personality that you would be able to make that kind of progress happen faster unless kind of, I mean, yeah, you made a lot of mistakes, but you were able to quickly kind of learn from that and turn it around and turn it into something that.

kind of lasted throughout the rest of your journey, which is that you were like, okay, so learn that, check that box. Whereas, you know, myself included, I feel like there’s a lot of times where people will like have to experience something several times before they really learn it. And so kudos to you, man, for learning this stuff so early. I remember when we first met and I was thinking, this guy is this young and has figured out so much about training and nutrition and…

Granted, yeah, there better resources now than bodybuilding.com forums and crap like when I was coming up, but at the same time, you had a lot of experience and had learned from that way of doing things too. So it was really cool to get to know you and see kind of where your path had led you and then now hearing it back. Like, okay, yeah, it makes sense with his personality why he was able to just keep leveling up, leveling up, and getting more and more into it.

feeling encouraged by his results as opposed to kind of defeated by things that didn’t go so well because you are just somebody who is kind of persistent. So yeah, man, that’s really cool that ⁓ at least now people can see that’s kind of why you are the way you are. yeah, think now we can get into the coaching kind of section too if you’d like to because I think one thing I find really interesting about you is that

you kind of have figured out all this stuff for yourself and you realize like, okay, I am this way and I am very like obsessive and like kind of like very matter of fact about things. Not only are you trying to actively like push yourself in a direction of like, wanna be more even keeled, I wanna be more balanced, but you also work with a lot of different types of people and that probably challenges you to think differently as well. I’m curious like what…

started making you want to actually help other people in this process and how fulfilling have you found it so far? Because I know you’re still early in your career of it, but yeah.

Ben (32:44)
So in true Ben fashion, I didn’t even answer your initial question at all. I went completely off on a tangent, but I promise it ties back in. So I was in school for exercise science and because I was still kind of thinking about going down the physical therapy route, I took up a concentration that was health and wellness coaching.

Sawyer (32:51)
No, I mean it was something I wanted to get to eventually.

Ben (33:07)
And the way that this was pitched to us was it was really kind of like a set of skills that would be helpful in a health care setting to get the most out of the patients or the clients that we were working with and help them with behavior change. So I thought that that would be a useful thing to have. So I started doing that concentration and that was probably the best decision I could have made because that has been the most useful thing more so even than my exercise science degree in working with people and

throughout that coaching process, it was definitely uncomfortable, like learning how to have these conversations in a very kind of more structured way. Like there’s strategies and tools that you use, such as motivational interviewing. can, know, folks can look that up if they’re interested. That really help you to pull out of people, what are their motivations and their deeper whys behind doing what they’re doing.

Where are they at with their self-efficacy? How can we kind of help them to feel more confident in their abilities? You know, how can we set these kind of small steps in place in order to get them closer to where they want to be? All these different strategies that I find myself using very frequently in coaching. through doing that concentration, I didn’t know that it was going to like help me in my future career, but it really has. And once I started getting really into fitness and working out, I kind of

my passion for ultimate frisbee, but also, you know, kind of done all the prerequisites for physical therapy, I just decided that wasn’t really the route that I wanted to go down. So I was kind of figuring out what would lead me to eventually working kind of in this role now that I’m, you know, as a coach on a team. So at first I was kind of thinking that I would continue with my education. And so going to school to…

I get a master’s degree in nutrition was my plan and then trying to get, you know, become a registered dietitian and get onto a team that way. Because I think I had a belief that because I was young and right out of school that I would have difficulty finding kind of the job that I wanted or did the job that I want even exist, you know, working as a, you know, a vegan fitness coach for a company. And I ended up going to grad school and then like,

a semester in I realized I really don’t like this. It’s too clinical for me. I can’t see myself doing this for another three years and putting even more money and time and attention and effort into this. Cause I would still just be doing the same thing or in my free time, I was working on my passions and not really invested in what I was doing. So I’m like, why am I doing this at a certain point? So I ended up getting a job, which is where I met you working for a different coaching company. And that was great because I got a lot of experience like, and found out what

Sawyer (35:32)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Ben (35:43)
Did I like about this role or what did I like about what, you know, what was I looking for also like in a company that I was working for both in the way that it was managed. Did I like a smaller team versus a larger team? Did I like it being kind of asynchronous versus it’s remote, but it’s actually more kind of like live so to speak in terms of commitments and time showing up. So it was a, it was a good learning experience. I was there for four or four and a half months, something like that.

Sawyer (35:56)
Mm-hmm.

Ben (36:10)
And that’s where we first connected. And I really learned a lot about coaching in that time period. And I think this is something that people probably don’t understand if they have never worked with a coach or they don’t really have much experience with getting, I guess, outside help with, fitness. It’s really not about like, you have to have a certain amount of knowledge around programming around nutrition in order to be effective. However,

Sawyer (36:12)
Mm-hmm.

Ben (36:36)
coaching is a lot more psychological than anything else. And I knew that I really enjoyed kind of viewing myself as an N of one experiment with my own process and figuring out what worked for me and what didn’t. And I wanted to kind of try to help other people with that too. But as you quickly come to learn, it’s not necessarily just about the puzzle pieces of the programming and the nutrition. It’s really about the people skills. And so that was something that was definitely like a little bit of a

Sawyer (36:58)
Mm-hmm.

Ben (37:02)
I guess a little bit of a shock to me and I was like, okay, is a lot, no, this is challenging, like getting to really understand what makes people tick and really pull information out of them. And part of that I think can come down to the way that the coaching is advertised or structured or set up or the systems in place that facilitate that coaching. But it also is on, I think, the coach to have a certain degree of skills around working with people. And really that comes through.

Sawyer (37:13)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Ben (37:28)
somewhat knowledge, but also experience just working with enough people to, to understand what strategies can be effective and Hey, I’ve used this strategy with, with people before. Let me try it here. ⁓ one thing that I really like about coaching is obviously it feels so great when I have somebody come to me and, ⁓ say, you know what, working with you has been such a, you know, it’s been such a positive experience. It’s really helped me to feel like I have more control over.

Sawyer (37:34)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Ben (37:52)
this process or a healthier relationship with exercise or with nutrition. Like those are obviously super gratifying things to hear because I, you know, I made a difference in somebody’s life because people, know, they have to eat and, you know, exercise is a large part of people’s lives as well. especially if, know, being, being fit and, ⁓ capable into older age is important to them. So that, that feedback is obviously always really nice to hear. you know, if I’m helping somebody.

Sawyer (37:55)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Ben (38:18)
go towards more, you know, plant based or becoming vegan. That’s obviously really like really awesome as well. But I just felt like the more that I did it, the more that I just learned about people in general. And I feel like it’s, it’s, you know, applied to my personal life. But I see certain scenarios come up or it’s just, think helped me to have a lot more empathy and compassion for people. It made me realize kind of what, what sort of a coach I like to be the way that I like to kind of guide people.

Sawyer (38:23)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I would agree.

Ben (38:44)
There’s just been a lot of lessons that I’ve learned throughout the couple years that I’ve been, know, the over four years now that I’ve been doing this.

Sawyer (38:47)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, what’s like an example of like a challenge that you faced early on that maybe is still a challenge or maybe it’s something you feel like you’ve kind of figured out by now? Like, do you have any things like offhand that you could be like, ⁓ this is something that I struggled with?

Ben (39:08)
I think for me, probably the thing that I still struggle with the most is when to be a little bit tough on people and give them that tough love versus when to kind of just give them positive encouragement and reinforcement. I know you can relate to this as well because I think our natural disposition is just to kind of like find the silver lining in what people are experiencing and kind of give them that motivation to hopefully help kind of snowballing some of these positive habits. Like maybe somebody said,

Sawyer (39:14)
Mm-hmm.

yeah.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Ben (39:36)
A lot of things didn’t go right this week. Maybe they kind of throw in a couple of things that could be seen as wins. And so I’ll really focus on those and try to, you know, say what are the small steps that we can take to work on some of those things you want to work on it and kind of lead from that positive place. And it’s harder for me when I see somebody kind of repeating these, these same patterns and behaviors to kind of say what needs to be said in order to kind of snap them, snap them out of it. And sometimes I will, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t work. And so, especially since I’m

Sawyer (39:59)
Mm-hmm.

Ben (40:04)
very much not that like drill sergeant type who’s going to be like, you need to do the blah, blah, blah, blah. ⁓ That, you know, walking that line of when to, you know, tell people what needs to be done versus kind of just giving them encouragement. ⁓ And I’d still say the vast majority of the time, I feel that going that route of focusing on kind of the positives and what they’re saying and really trying to foster that self-efficacy and then focus on the small steps they can take forward. I still feel like that’s the most effective.

Sawyer (40:09)
No.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Ben (40:32)
way for the majority of the people that I work with, especially since I think of the majority of the people that I work with are kind of more the, and this isn’t everyone, but more kind of the, they’re hard on themselves. They’re maybe a little bit more sensitive. so taking that, that approach and the more nurturing approach tends to work better. But I do think that there are a smaller percentage of people who respond better to a little bit more of that, of that tough love. So that’s probably the thing that I am still.

Sawyer (40:35)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Ben (41:00)
working on finding the balance with.

Sawyer (41:03)
Yeah, I think it’s always something you can toss around in your mind of like, I handle that right? Or could I’ve helped them with a little bit more of like this or that? One thing I’ve found, I’d be curious to know if you agree, is like the sooner you’re able to establish like trust and rapport with somebody, the more easy it is to figure out where you should be on that spectrum in any given moment. Because like for instance, if I have a client hit me up every couple of days saying, hey, this is what I’ve been experiencing, blah, blah, blah.

And I start to feel like close to them and I start to feel like we have an understanding of like, hey, I’m not gonna freak out on you. I love that you’re being honest with me. And like, they kind of start to see that sooner rather than later. It’s not such an affront to who they are, what they do when you check in and say, hey, I think you could do better on this. You I think you’re giving yourself a little bit too much slack here. Because they know that you know them and that you’re not trying to…

say that they’re a bad person and they don’t care about this, but they’re just like, need to tighten up a little bit, right? Like you do that to me, like pretty constantly. And I love it because you’re like, no, I don’t think we’re going to do that. I think you’re rationalizing something you want to do anyway, whatever. And I’m like, yep, got it. Like I’m not, I’m not ever questioning your motives or you know, if you’re really on my team or if you really, you know, like, or if I really want it badly enough, because we’ve had enough of that trust building that I know

you’re focused on the goal and you’re trying not to let my mind get in the way of that. And so I just, it’s implicit. So would you agree that once you’ve established kind of a really solid bedrock like relationship with somebody, it’s a lot easier to know when to push and when to pull and that it’s, don’t have to like tiptoe around to make sure you’re not going to like set them off, you know, kind of thing.

Ben (42:42)
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that’s a big part of why there is a certain level of rapport or

the comfortability you need to have with the people that you work with that they feel like they can disclose what they need to disclose to you and vice versa. You feel like you can be honest with your feedback that you give them. I mean, most of the people that I work with are very like, hey, you know, I would love your input here. Like, let me know if there’s anything different that I need to be doing. Oftentimes, you know, the people who ask for that are the people who are doing stuff, you know, because their conscience is enough to ask for that feedback and to want to improve.

Sawyer (42:52)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Ben (43:17)
that most of the time, those are the people who are actually doing a lot of the stuff right anyways. And so I’m like, you know what? I don’t have much for you. Like you’re kind of doing everything that you need to be doing. whereas the people who are maybe a little bit quieter, who maybe don’t ask for that feedback as much, who are the ones who maybe need it. But then it’s kind of this double-edged sword where there might not be asking for it because they might be a little bit more hesitant to get that feedback. They’re not as confident. So I think that initial stages of really building somebody up and making them feel good about the.

Sawyer (43:25)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Ben (43:47)
what they’re doing and building that momentum I think is important.

Sawyer (43:49)
I agree.

Yeah, having that self-efficacy and and comfortability with you are both so important. And I think it is cool to see somebody grow in that way too. I think, you know, what’s interesting is like, it can almost be reflected in how, how many, or how good they are at establishing trusting relationships in their lives can reflect on like how quickly you can get there with them. So, you know, I think it’s.

It’s interesting how much like humans are social creatures and there’s no way around that. And so, yeah, I just, you know, I’m just kind of nerding out cause I really like the psychology of all of this and we could talk about it forever, but it’s cool that you have seen like yourself grow in that kind of way. And like, you’re still focused on growing. Cause yeah, I do that all the time where I’ll be like, Oh man, could I have handled that better? Or could I have given better advice or, you know, maybe that was too harsh. Maybe that was too soft.

Like it’s good to not be the kind of coach who just thinks, no, I know the right thing to do all the time and I’m always, you know what mean? I think that would be a pretty big red flag if you were never like questioning if you handled something the best way, you know? Cool, so thanks for indulging me on that one. I was really curious. So yeah, another one is… ⁓

And then maybe we’ll go on to the veganism stuff pretty soon, because I do want people to hear about that side of you, and we’re running a little bit low on time. What was something that surprised you about coaching? Is there anything that you can think of, you changed your mind about, or kind of took you aback a little bit?

Ben (45:20)
Perhaps maybe to a certain extent how emotionally invested I would become just with the people that I work with. I think I care a lot about the fact that they feel good about the experience that they had, that they feel, you know, I think sometimes people come in wanting to get a certain result or outcome with their body composition and maybe in the time that we work together, they don’t get quite to the point that they thought they would get to, but.

Sawyer (45:25)
Mmm, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Ben (45:45)
they do get past maybe a lot of mental barriers that they had had. And now they’re at a good point where they can start to focus on that a little bit more. But first we had to kind of trudge through the mud a little bit to get there. And I think that for me, sometimes it’s difficult to not take work home, so to speak, because we’re, know, to a certain extent we are, you know, we could choose to work all the time, you know, in the morning and the evening whenever there’s not this kind of hard line separation.

Sawyer (45:52)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Ben (46:12)
So I think it’s been a process of self discovery to figure out what works well for me in terms of like how to have that work life balance and not, you know, not take it personally. For instance, if something doesn’t work out with somebody, whether they decide to pause coaching or they stop coaching, or maybe they, you know, they’re not as content with their experience and also just realizing like most of the time.

Sawyer (46:25)
Mm-hmm.

Ben (46:35)
Of course I can, you know, I can make mistakes or maybe could have done stuff better, but, you know, I can always at least look back and say, you know, I gave that, ⁓ whatever my best effort was at the time. And I can learn and grow from that. and you know, not take it. So like, you know, I’m a bad coach or I did, you know, I did this wrong again. It doesn’t mean I’m infallible and I don’t make mistakes, but, ⁓ just learning that it’s all part of the process of becoming better at, at this, at this skill.

Sawyer (46:47)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Ben (47:03)
of coaching and also learning like what is a good way for me to establish that balance. there’s periods of times where I work on weekends, somewhere I try to keep it strict of like not working on weekends. Same thing with like having certain time periods where I work. Again, I’m kind of in this phase right now where it’s a little bit more kind of like going with the flow. Like you said, like some days it’s more working in the morning. Some days it’s more in the afternoons or midday. Some weeks it ends up being more on weekends versus weekdays. It really kind of just

Sawyer (47:03)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Ben (47:29)
depends, but I would say, yeah, in terms of something that’s maybe surprised me is just like how that, you know, the closeness of the relationships that I end up forming with a lot of my clients and you know, how, ⁓ how again, invested I’ve become in a lot of their their journeys and you know, the friendships that I have developed with a lot of them.

Sawyer (47:39)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, that’s a really good answer and I would agree with that as well. You think, I guess we kind of conditioned it from a young age to think, work’s just gonna be work, I’m gonna plug in a bunch of numbers in a spreadsheet and then I’m gonna leave and then I’m gonna live my life. But when your job is really investing your time and energy into helping people succeed, it’s hard not to want that, especially the people that you feel like really, I don’t know, you just really get along with and just feel like, okay, we really have a,

similar values and interests and communication styles and stuff like that. It’s just like, man, you’re so cool. We’re gonna be friends forever. I have a whole lot of friends from this job and I’m so grateful for that and I know you’re the same way. So it’s like, I don’t know, I just feel very lucky to do this for a living. Okay, cool. So let’s touch on veganism before we leave.

Because I want to make sure people know why veganism is important, guess, vegan lifestyle as you like to say. I know that’s a very specific type of language you like to use. So I want people to know why you choose to adopt a vegan lifestyle and how you approach it, like practically and philosophically. So maybe start with why you started living this vegan lifestyle and what are some of the benefits you’ve noticed of living this way.

Ben (49:01)
Well, you know, just thinking about the verbiage there, sometimes I like to use that language because I think sometimes people get very caught up in labels and identity and sometimes like saying I am this or I am that, like people then reflect on themselves and say,

⁓ I’m not this, so therefore you are other than me and I’m going to put up some walls or barriers as opposed to like, this is something that I do, not someone that I am. It is kind of both to a certain extent because we are kind of what we do really when you think about it. ⁓ But a vegan lifestyle is really just one that seeks to minimize animal exploitation and that is both human and non-human animals and.

Sawyer (49:25)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Ben (49:44)
so the, way that this kind of manifested for me, I read the omnivores dilemma in school. understood a lot of the arguments around factory farming, but I never actually kind of stopped to think about it or felt like I was in a position where I would be able to make a difference. I always kind of had this mindset of, I’m just one person, you know, what does it matter? What, what I do? Obviously that’s a flawed way of thinking, but back then, you know, being a teenager, I was just.

Sawyer (50:06)
Mm-hmm.

Ben (50:11)
Whatever, I was not as self-aware. I was not as clued into my own set of values and morals and ethics. I think I was kind of just trying to survive teenage life to a certain extent. Fit in, that’s another one for sure. So as opposed to my girlfriend who like, she remembers feeling like she wanted to, you know, not eat animals anymore from the age of like seven or 10. I forget what she said in the.

Sawyer (50:14)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

fit in. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Ben (50:38)
That is always amazing to me. I’m like to have that level of kind of self-awareness when you’re young. I don’t even remember like what thoughts I was thinking when I was that young. ⁓ But as I got older, I’m trying to think about maybe some experiences that I had that may have planted seeds. It’s hard for me to remember specific ones, but I will say that what kind of re-ignited my…

Sawyer (50:40)
That’s cool.

Yeah.

Ben (51:02)
interest or kind of maybe got me got down this path was when I’d started getting into lifting weights, obviously, I was doing a lot of like research on nutrition, and the game changers documentary had come out a little bit after I started getting into this. So I watched that and I thought it was pretty cool. And I thought it was interesting. I think I still had a lot of fears around whether this would harm the my progress in the gym and

Sawyer (51:15)
Mm-hmm.

Ben (51:26)
I just was, there was this uncertainty because it was a little bit more different or out there than what I had been kind of reading or, you know, content I had been consuming. So I was like interested, but not actually like willing to take any action on it at that point. But then I kind of just started to become more more curious. So I was watching YouTube videos about like different vegan bodybuilders and what they ate in a day and like seeing the results.

Sawyer (51:38)
Mm-hmm.

Ben (51:47)
I was just more and more like, okay, this seems like something that’s pretty doable. Again, it was more so at that point, like was more interested in some of the health benefits, but I wasn’t really making any changes. Then everything kind of shut down because of COVID. And I had had a couple of stints where I had like tried going vegetarian for a period of time, just to like, honestly, it was just like a curiosity thing. My sister has been vegetarian since she was like 10. And my brother and I would like give her a bunch of crap for it.

Sawyer (51:59)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Ben (52:16)
I remember one of my best friends growing up tried to go vegetarian for a period of time and we were like making like steak jokes or something. I was the biggest meat eater out of all of my friends in my friend group. So I just like think it’s funny when people tell me like, ⁓ I could never do that. I loved, I like, I love meat. I’m like, you don’t even understand. Like in my group of 12 males who were like, you know, in their early twenties, I was the biggest like meat eater out of all of them. So I.

Sawyer (52:38)
Mm-hmm.

Ben (52:40)
went vegetarian again, of like right around the start of COVID. just honestly, I was just sick of like eating all this meat, because I was really getting into, you know, I was into like the fitness thing. I was just sick of it. I like didn’t enjoy like the texture, the taste of it anymore. And I was just like, I just don’t really feel like doing this. And then I don’t remember exactly why, but I think I was just bored because there was nothing to do.

Sawyer (52:55)
Mm-hmm.

Ben (53:04)
within lockdown and I just started watching a lot of these like Netflix documentaries, like what the hell and then I watched Cowspiracy, which is a little bit more like ethics focused than, than just health. And then I ended up watching, uh, Gary Yourofsky had like a famous speech on YouTube that has like 10 million views. think it’s called the greatest speech you’ll ever hear. And I think he’s giving a speech at Georgia Tech. did this like college campus tour where he went around talking about veganism. And after I watched that,

Sawyer (53:04)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Ben (53:32)
That was really like the thing that sold me on the ethical arguments of being vegan and not consuming animal products and also, you know, trying to minimize or completely eliminate purchase of any sort of, you know, clothing and stuff like that as well that contained any animal byproducts. So wasn’t just about like the health side of things.

Sawyer (53:46)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Ben (53:53)
And

after I watched that speech, I was, I was really convinced. And I just said to myself, I’m like, what do you, what do you do? And you agree with the arguments. Like it’s time to, it’s time to jump on board. Did I know really anything about like foods that like vegans mainly like how to make tofu or to, don’t even know what Tempeh or Seitan was. I didn’t know any of that. I just, I was like, Oh, I’ll just eat like lentils and vegetables and that sort of thing. But I didn’t really care. I was just like, I was very like,

Sawyer (54:05)
Mm-hmm.

Thank

Mm-hmm.

Ben (54:20)
this makes I was very logical about it. I’m like, this makes sense. I don’t want to put my money towards furthering this this industry. I don’t want to pay somebody to basically kill an animal for me. Because that’s essentially what I’m doing. I finally made that connection of no, it does matter what I’m doing. Like I’m, I’m paying for this. And so the that after I finished that we were like, I don’t know, my family, think was in the kitchen making dinner and I was like, on my laptop watching and I closed my laptop and I’m like, well, I’m going vegan now. And they’re like, what?

Sawyer (54:22)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Ben (54:48)
And I like explained all that to them. saw my friends later that night. I told them as well. And I’ve been vegan ever since that point. ⁓ yeah, and it was like ⁓ a process of kind of like finding out how I could still get enough protein and keep the calories in check and what foods to eat and playing around with recipes. But it was fun for me. It wasn’t like, and maybe part of that was it was COVID and I had more downtime, but I didn’t, I didn’t feel like

Sawyer (54:53)
Mm-hmm. It’s pretty cool.

Ben (55:13)
bad about missing out on certain things. Like I was just like, I was just doing my own thing and I was okay with that. And I think ⁓ that was something like that time period. I also became a lot more comfortable just like doing stuff by myself and being by myself. ⁓ Cause I was, when I went back to school, I was by myself a lot. Cause again, it was kind of like lockdown sort of procedures. And I think that made me very okay with.

Sawyer (55:19)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Ben (55:38)
becoming the person that I wanted to be and who I felt like I was, you know, being a bodybuilder, being someone who’s vegan, like two kind of strange things that not a lot of people can relate to or know a lot about. And just like being okay with that identity and like leaning into that a little bit more, not worrying about like what people would think or some of the social pressures. It doesn’t mean that it was always easy. Like I still get uncomfortable sometimes when people ask me about being vegan or being a bodybuilder, like I, it makes me feel a little like weird or strange, but

Sawyer (55:46)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Ben (56:07)
Most of the time, think people are just coming from a good place and they’re interested and they want to hear about it. I think over time, I’ve gotten more more comfortable having those conversations and just listening to people and trying to connect with them in whatever way I can.

Sawyer (56:07)
.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, that’s wonderful, man. It’s really cool to see when somebody really starts to feel like themselves and that they own their differences instead of trying to just follow the pack. And I’m not saying that everybody who’s not vegan is doing that. Sometimes people just haven’t thought much about it. Sometimes they really think it’s okay. But the cool thing is that you, in your personal journey, were able to just be like,

this is how I feel and I don’t want to just do something or not do something because it’s gonna be seen, make me seen as a little bit other, you know? And that in turn gives other people permission to be themselves and to do things that they believe in without feeling like too weird. So it’s cool like a domino effect or like a.

ripple effect where people see you doing your own thing and feeling confident about it and kind of putting yourself out there as I am living this lifestyle or I’m doing this thing and I’m going to define myself that way. It’s pretty cool. But on the other side of things, it’s like, yeah, you can be a little bit too intense at people and they can, it can be kind of off putting, but I feel like you avoided the angry vegan phase maybe more than I did. maybe we can talk about that in a future episode.

Ben (57:27)
With certain people, think with again,

it’s like, who are you comfortable with? Like with my family, I’m comfortable with them. So I was probably a little bit more angry vegan with them. Maybe not as much like my friends and stuff like that. No, it’s interesting. It’s a, you know, one experience that I had that really reinforced, I feel for me that I was going down a path that I wanted to go down was in late 2022. Let me think about this.

Sawyer (57:32)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Ben (57:54)
Was it 2022? Yeah, I think it was. My lung collapsed. So I had like a pretty much full, close to a full lung collapse. Spontaneous pneumothorax is like the medical term for it. And yeah, exactly. And it wasn’t like, it wasn’t like my life was in danger sort of thing, but it was a pretty big, like it was a, you know, it was an intense experience. It was, you know, some of the most like.

Sawyer (58:05)
I rubbed some dirt on it. Just kidding.

Hmm.

Ben (58:19)
pain that I’ve ever experienced. was in the hospital for like a week between the surgery and just recovering from that. I had to be out of the gym for a couple months after that, you know, I’m paying kill painkiller meds all the time. And it’s, know, it’s definitely like a pretty tough surgery in terms of like the recovery timeframe, like you, a lot of those surgical sites don’t heal up for like a, you know, six months to a year afterwards, there’s still a lot of swelling and inflammation and stuff like that. I can’t, you know, I can’t

Sawyer (58:28)
Mm-hmm.

Ben (58:46)
go skydiving or go scuba diving because of the dangers of the lung potentially collapsing again due to the pressure changes. So going through that, I think that even though it was a difficult experience for sure, and a lot of people were very concerned and worried about me. mean, I was pretty like, there was never one point where I was really like down on myself or felt really like.

Sawyer (58:53)
Hey.

Ben (59:09)
sorry for myself and I was just thinking a lot about my life. Cause you know, when you’re forced to just like basically sit in a bed for a long period of time without even like, even like moving my arm kind of hurts. I wasn’t like on my phone, really doing anything. I had to, you know, have people come help me with stuff. I was just thinking a lot about my life and just, felt, I felt like very grateful for the life that I had led up into that point. And like the relationships that I had with people, with my family, with friends.

the kind of route that I had chosen to go down for my career and for my own personal hobbies and interests. And I felt very much like, again, it’s kind of like a bit like macabre, but like, if this was like the end of my life today, like I would be content with the way that I’ve lived it. And that was like a very like, I think, affirming point for me to continue down the path that I had gone down and continue to kind of lean into that more. So that was an experience that I had where I’m like, I’m glad that I decided to kind of like forge my own.

path and do something that’s different and more out there. And I think a lot of the people that I have in my life, like appreciate that about me that it is, it is different what, know, what I do for a living and kind of just like the, the lifestyle that I lead. And so I think it makes for interesting conversations with people as well. And I’m just, you know, I’m, I’m grateful for everything that’s kind of led me to the point where I am now, even through the, you know, the challenges as well.

Sawyer (1:00:08)
Hmm.

That’s, yeah,

that’s beautiful, man. And I know we talked about last time, like just how, even though it can present some challenges when you do start down your own path and you start doing things like on your own terms, the connections you do make tend to be stronger because you’re connecting on a level that not as many people understand and it’s a little bit hard to communicate if you’re not actually living that way. So yeah, I’m…

I’m super grateful to know you and to have connected on all these levels. And ⁓ I just think you’re one of the coolest, like best people I know. And I’m not trying to get all bromance-y on here, but I really do feel that way. And it’s cool to like have friends that you admire so much and that you feel so aligned with doing hard things with you. Like, I feel like that’s, you know, like to dive into my nerd side a little bit more, like the fellowship of the ring. was like,

this small band of weirdos who are like, we’re going to make a difference in the world, even though there’s barely any hope. And it’s crazy to even dream that. But you feel stronger with people that are on the same mission and who have unique abilities and interests and like, really know who they are. And it’s just cool. I feel like having you as a friend makes me feel bolder and like things that I want to do.

And that even if I were to change my mind on some other aspect of life, that you would be genuinely curious and supportive, even if you didn’t want to follow down that same path. And so long as we’re not betraying the values that we share, think it only deepen our friendship in some ways and make it more interesting. So I don’t know. All of that is to say that like,

I really appreciate that you have this kind of way about you that you’re very clear on what you care about. You are, yes, afraid of things just like everybody else, but you choose the path, not of least resistance, but of like most purpose and the most aligned with who you are. And I think that that encourages others like me to follow suit and part of why you’re such a good coach for me as well. So man, just…

Hats off to you, because you’re an amazing dude, and thanks for walking us all down, like, how you became this guy, this coach, this activist, bodybuilder, athlete. So many layers to you, but it was a really cool way to get to know you, and I hope that people feel like they have some follow-up questions for you, or that they feel more connected to you now that they know a little bit more about your story.

I guess the last thing I want to leave people with is, last time we talked about what would you give advice to a new fitness person and I answered that question, but I want to give some advice to the newer vegans since we didn’t touch on that last time. What would you give advice to newer vegans and then you can close it out whenever you’re

Ben (1:03:12)
Nice, nice, I like that. So, I would say the biggest piece of advice that I could give somebody is to find community. I think community is so important. think people, a lot of people wanna be vegan in their hearts and it’s a lot of the social influences and social pressures that make them feel like they can’t or it’s going to be too difficult. And so I would say first, like look in your immediate area. Is there some sort of meetup group? there…

Sawyer (1:03:29)
Mm-hmm.

Ben (1:03:37)
Anything that’s even kind of adjacent to that that you could explore. Maybe circles of people that might be Facebook groups, absolutely. ⁓ You could even find like sometimes there’s a crossover between, know, people, even people who are ethical vegans, like oftentimes maybe are a little bit more health conscious or health oriented. So you could maybe try to see like outdoor groups, like hiking groups. You might find some people who are a little bit more like-minded that way. But yeah, specifically like plant-based vegan vegetarians, see if there’s

Sawyer (1:03:41)
Facebook groups.

Ben (1:04:05)
you are there restaurants in your area you could go to and maybe meet someone there? Even dating apps like these days, they have vegan dating apps, actually my girlfriend on one of those, but also like you can kind of filter by I think like vegan or plant based or something like that. But then online, online is a big one. If you don’t feel like you have those places near you, find community online. Obviously we have an awesome community at vegan proteins. And that’s a reason that we get a lot of people who, you know,

Sawyer (1:04:28)
True.

Ben (1:04:30)
sign up for our membership. you know, that’s, that’s another reason actually that we wanted to switch over to this, this current app that we have now is like the community function there and being able to kind of have it be its own self sustaining thing. And I think that, yeah, just having people that you can feel like that you can relate to that through like in positive ways and also through like challenges, like people struggle with the same things and being able to hear them. I really like.

Sawyer (1:04:43)
This is…

Ben (1:04:55)
doing the coaching calls, like the group coaching calls that we do once a month with everyone for that reason, because I feel like it just gives people a platform to share what’s going on and to feel heard, not just by maybe a coach that they’re working with, but by other people and to be able to give advice and say, I can relate to that. Like I also live in an area where we don’t really have many vegan people or.

Sawyer (1:04:59)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Ben (1:05:18)
Maybe your,

you know, your, your spouse or your significant other isn’t vegan, but you are in like having people that you can talk to that about. think just feeling like you have support and feeling like you have community is really important. So that would be my recommendation is to seek that out. you know, there’s tons of other like specific tips I could give about like nutrition and how to, you know, in terms of like, okay, whatever meals you’re eating right now, try to eat that, but just like make it vegan, make it easy on yourself to find like the swaps.

Sawyer (1:05:30)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Ben (1:05:45)
stuff like that,

Sawyer (1:05:45)
Mm-hmm.

Ben (1:05:46)
know, find foods that you enjoy. But I think the community is a really big one. I think that’s a big reason why people stop being vegan even if they figured out, you know, figured out so to speak what they like to eat, the nutrition component. It’s just like the social aspect of it that I think is really hard for a lot of people. So find community is what I would say.

Sawyer (1:05:54)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah,

it’s a good answer. It’s a very good answer. And you usually learn from the people that you’re around too. So you’re gonna learn by association anyway. So a lot of the tips that we could give to do with that, you’re probably gonna learn them along the way. If you meet some people who have been vegan for 10 years and they just do certain things certain ways, you’ll be like, wow, I never thought to do that. And you’ll just pick up stuff. So I think that’s a really good, succinct piece of advice. And yeah, unless you have anything else, feel free to carry us out, man. Thank you for.

sharing all your life experiences with us and ⁓ hopefully we can do more episodes like this because there’s always more to go down, ⁓ more rabbit holes to go down with you.

Ben (1:06:36)
Definitely, definitely. Thank you for hosting. I felt like you were the right person on the team to host because we’ve known each other for the longest and we have kind of an insight into each other and how we tick. And obviously we’ve developed a close friendship and, you know, similar to what you were saying, I feel like I am inspired by you in a lot of ways to, you know, to be a more compassionate human, to see, you know, what I can do to, you know, to connect with people. And I think you just have like,

Sawyer (1:07:00)
Aw, thanks, bro.

Ben (1:07:04)
Definitely have like one of the biggest hearts of people that I’ve ever met and that really, ⁓ you know, that’s something that I always try to, you know, to be more like you in that way. So thank you everyone for listening to another episode, of course, of Vegan Proteins Muscles by Brussels Radio. If you are interested in getting some assistance in your health and fitness journey, that is what we do here. That’s what we’ve been doing since 2008. We’re the longest running vegan fitness coaching company online.

Sawyer (1:07:09)
Thanks buddy.

Thanks buddy.

Ben (1:07:31)
So if you’re interested, there will be information down in the description below to get in touch with us to learn more about our coaching. We also have the membership that we mentioned. And so if you’re interested in checking out our new app, you can find that by searching vegan proteins, either in the Google Play or the Apple store and getting in touch with us that way. Consultations, all of that is also available on our website. Of course, if you’re enjoying the podcast, it is super helpful to share this with people you know, to leave a good review.

to leave a rating, to comment, like if you’re on YouTube and let us know what other topics you’d like to see, what you’d like to hear more about from any of the coaches. And, you know, we really appreciate you listening and, you know, taking this time out of your day to be here with us. So thank you so much again. My name is Ben.

Sawyer (1:08:15)
and I’m Sawyer.

Ben (1:08:16)
and we’ll catch you on the next episode. Thanks, everyone.

Sawyer (1:08:19)
Thanks guys.