Ep. #491: How Fred Used My Work to Lose 215 Pounds and Turn His Life Around

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LegionAthletics. com L E G I O N Athletics. com and use the code FRIDAY19, numerals 1 9 at checkout and you’ll save up to 30 percent on your entire order. Hello, and welcome to episode, what is this, episode 491 of Muscle for Life. I’m Mike Matthews, and this time around, I interview Fred, who is a dude who used my work to radically transform his life and literally save his life.

Fred originally got in touch with me through one of my live Q& As that I do every once in a while on Instagram, and that I. Plan on doing more frequently, even if they’re shorter, I figured I could probably even do 15 minutes at a time and maybe even get one done every day. If that sounds interesting to you, make sure to follow me on Instagram, Muscle4LifeFitness.

Anyways, so Fred, he reached out to me during one of these live Q& A’s and after hearing his story, I thought he would make a good guest for today. The success story type of episodes that I do here on the podcast. And the reason is, before finding me in my work, Fred weighed 415 pounds and was dying. And that might sound dramatic, but that’s the truth.

Fred had a heart attack, his kidneys were failing, and his doctors actually told him that it was probably time to say goodbye to friends and loved ones. And that was enough to make Fred really Take stock of his situation and really decide conclusively to make a change. He started going to the gym and he lost a little bit of weight, but then he found my work and things really kicked into high gear and he went on to lose over 200 pounds and get into the best shape of his life.

And Fred’s also now a fitness coach himself. That’s how he’s paying it forward and he’s inspiring others, showing through example that anyone can do it. can improve their health, improve their fitness, improve their longevity, and even get into the best shape of their lives, no matter how bad their situation may seem currently.

And in this interview, Fred and I discuss his story, and how he ended up in the hospital, and how he started to get healthier, and how he learned to refuse to make excuses, especially the excuses he used to make, and the excuses that almost killed him. And, Also, Fred’s thoughts on what it really takes to completely change your body and change your life.

If you would like a jolt of inspiration and motivation, and if you like hearing stories of how other people have made dramatic, Positive changes in their lives and how you can too, then this episode’s for you. Frederick, thanks for taking the time to come on my show and share your story. Thank you, man.

Thanks for having me, 

Frederick: man. I appreciate it. 

Mike: Yeah. It’s funny how this happened, right? So I was just doing a, for people listening, I was doing an Instagram live where I’ve done them previously as Q and A’s where I’ve asked people to put Questions in chat. And then I would just grab random questions and answer them.

And I did it differently this time. I was telling people to join the live so you can request to join the live and then it just goes split screen. So I was just telling people like, Hey, maybe this’ll be more fun. At least this would be even more interactive. So if you have any questions or anything you just want to say or whatever.

Just request to join and I’ll just, first come first serve, wherever it was requests pop up, I’ll accept them basically. And Frederick, you requested to join and then we were talking and you were just sharing your story and I thought it would be a great story to share on the podcast. So here we are.

Why don’t we start with where you’re at now versus where you were at before you started down the path you’re currently 

Frederick: on right now is going to share my weight with you guys. I’m about. 213 pounds right now. Currently, I am a personal trainer and a nutrition coach for us. Dieting just to keep it simple, like basic 40, 40, 20 diet at the moment.

Sometimes I switch between ketogenic dieting and standard dieting, all depends on how I feel. Working out about five, six times a week, as I said, personal training, sharing my knowledge with everybody on Instagram and Facebook. I guess you can say I’m an influencer. I’m currently sponsored. By Ambrosia, Mike Rashid.

So I work with them pretty closely and that’s pretty much it. As far as the after, people probably just want to hear the before. 

Mike: I think it’s good to hear the after first. So then there’s some context. 

Frederick: Absolutely. In regards to, like I said, fitness it just something that it’s so much more than muscles.

I always tell people muscles are just a by product of fitness. I’m just living a blessed life, extremely healthy, things are fantastic. Fitness really put a clarity on my life that I never thought could do. I always thought it was just having a six pack or having big arms or a big chest, but fitness changes everything in your life.

It makes people treat you differently. People interact with you differently. You treat your family differently. I have three daughters, so just the ability for me to be able to get up and run around with my daughters all day during the summer or when they come home from school to do homework and have energy and and just to be able to spread the word of fitness, it’s truly, it’s a blessing.

It’s an absolute blessing. You’re one of the people that I definitely. Influence me in regards to getting into fitness amongst several others. 

Mike: Yeah. I agree with everything that you’ve said, of course. And so let’s rewind those. So where were you? I guess it was what, six or seven years ago before you started.

Frederick: Yeah. About. I say about roughly about four or five years ago, I’ll go ahead and break it down. So this was about second week of July. I was in my home on about a Monday and I wasn’t feeling too well. I thought I had the flu. I couldn’t get up from my bedroom. I couldn’t make it from my bedroom to my kitchen.

At this time, I was about 415 pounds. Having trouble, moving around. So by day or two went by and luckily my mother called me and she’s checking in on me. How are you feeling? I said, I’m not doing too well, mom. She said I’m gonna keep checking in on you. And she said, it was a Wednesday. She said, I’m gonna give you till Sunday.

She said, if you’re not feeling better on Sunday, I’m coming and I’m taking you to the hospital. So I don’t know, whatever. I’m not going to the hospital. So she calls me on Sunday morning. She asked me how I’m feeling. I say, I’m still feeling the same, feel terrible. So this, this flu bug really got me.

So about an hour later, my doorbell rings and it’s her, she says, get up. We’re going to the hospital. You know how it is, when mom says something, you go ahead and you do it. So I got up, put my clothes on and we went to the hospital. I walked into the emergency room and I, lo and behold, I walked in as a full emergency room and the nurse seen me walk in and he says, you.

To the back now. And I said, wait what do you mean? And he says, look at your arms, look at your ankles. And my, I had edema, which means my ankles were gigantic. And so are my wrists, my wrist and my ankles. It was retaining so much water. It looked like a cartoon. So they took me to the back, put me on a magnesium potassium drip and doctor came in and he said, Mr.

Henderson, you had a heart attack. And I said, wait, I had a what? He goes, yeah, you had a heart attack said, by the way, it looks, it looked like you had a heart attack a couple days ago. So they run some tests and they come back and for all my nurses or doctors out there, they have stat, it’s called a heart and fraction.

Your, I guess the average heart and fraction is about 60 or 70. Mine was four. My doctor very strategically told me, he said, Mr. Henderson, we’re not too sure you’re gonna make it outta here. He said, maybe you should contact your friends and your family and let ’em know. At the moment, my best friend, Keith was there with me.

I told him, I said, Keith, I need you to do me a favor. He goes, man, I’ll do anything for you. I said, I know you’re not a religious person, man, but I need you to pray with me, brother. He said, all right, let’s do it. So we prayed and I said, if you let me make it out of here, I said, I promise you I’ll make a change.

I’ll make some changes in my life. I’ll get some things done. Honestly, I had about 200 people show up to the hospital and they all came in one by one. And we honestly, we said our goodbyes to my family, my friends, the actual doctors, they thought it was my church. It was so many people, but yeah, I said my goodbyes to everyone.

And I was in the hospital from that Sunday until July 25th. I remember that cause that’s one of my best friend’s birthdays. I got out of that hospital July 25th and my mom was driving me home. We stopped at CVS and mind you, I had no idea about fitness. Of course, I always had an office job, desk job for over 10 years.

So we stopped at CVS and only thing I knew was Gatorade. I said Gatorade, I know, the commercial say it replenishes things. So I got a Gatorade, got back in that car and we stopped at Subway and I got a Subway sandwich. And I went back home, I ate that sandwich and I drank that Gatorade in my room.

And I told my family, I said, I’m going to the gym. And they said, you can’t go to the gym. You just got out the hospital. Now, mind you, I wasn’t allowed to drive. So I asked my family for a ride to the gym and they said, no. So I went on the internet. I looked up the two buses that can get me to the gym that I knew about.

And that’s what I did. I remember so clearly, I caught the 33 bus to the 54 bus. And it dropped me off in front of a little rinky dink local gym that we have here. It’s called Fitness 19. And I got on my fitness journey from there. Every single time when that hour long bus ride, I would go on Google and I would go on YouTube.

And that’s how I discovered Legion. At the time, you guys had an athlete, Sholly Coker. So I will watch all these videos, all those guys, CT Fletcher, you, Mike Rasheed, Shantur Bhatti, Christian Guzman. The list goes on. I will watch them all. And I was just watching, I would write things down and people on the bus would look at me like I was insane.

I would write things down. I’m telling you, I had the biggest notebook. I would just write stuff down and I would study and study. Now, mind you, I live in California and I live in the desert. Now. I told you I got out of the hospital July 25th. Now, if anybody’s familiar with the California desert, yes, it gets 110, 115 up here.

And I caught the bus in that weather every single day, sometimes twice a day. I was focused. I had too many things to, I had too many things to see. That’s what I always told myself. I said, you have a lot of things that you need to see. You taking advantage of food or abusing food. People always ask me what motivated me.

I said, my biggest motivation was I didn’t want my nieces and my nephews. To have to bury their uncle. And I didn’t want my mom to have to bury her son. That was really important to me. And I always say this, and I say it to this day, I’d say, I don’t want people to have to bury me because I like cheeseburgers.

Mike: It’s a, it’s very straightforward, stark, but truthful, just facing things the way they are tight. Cause that’s the reality, right? That’s where you were at. Absolutely. And you can try to spin it and you could have tried to spin it and you could have, for example, spun off into body positivity, nonsense, which is not that I completely disagree with all of the ideas.

If we’re talking about somebody who is otherwise healthy, but they don’t look like, a fitness model, should they get down on themselves? I totally agree with it in that context, but to try to take that idea and apply it to your situation might have ended up Yeah. Absolutely. It sounds like it almost certainly would have actually, if you would have just been like I should just love myself the way I am.

This is just who I am. I’m just going to keep doing what I’m doing. There’s a fair chance you wouldn’t be here right now. Absolutely. 

Frederick: And I always tell this to my clients also, and the people in general, say, if we were taking a trip. If I was going to drive from California to Washington, when we do that, we make sure our car has gas.

We check our car to the very tip top last detail. We make sure it has gasoline. We make sure it has oil. We make sure it has all the way down to the window white washer fluid. We make sure the tires are not stripped. We do that. And these are things that are essential for our vehicles to work.

What’s sad? We don’t take that same responsibility with our bodies. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not being preachy because I was there also, but I didn’t have anyone to share that information with me. So I’m sharing this information with everyone else. We take all those precautions with our vehicles.

We don’t take these same precautions with our bodies. Okay. Our bodies, there are vitamins that our body needs. They’re essential. And we don’t give them those things. And we wonder why we’re passing early. We were wondering why we’re suffering from heart disease, diabetes. Unfortunately, one of my best friends, he lost his mother to diabetes last year.

My mother suffers from diabetes. My grandmother passed from diabetes. My close cousin, Just had a stroke about 11 months ago. So these things are really, and these are people that I’ve warned, I told him, I said, use my story. You’ve seen it up close and personal. So use my story as a precautionary tale, because I always tell people, there’s a couple of things.

Let me tell you something. Heart disease, diabetes. These are the Rocky Marciano’s of diseases. Okay. And what I mean by that, Rocky Marciano was a boxer and he was undefeated. He never lost. So you better believe these things are undefeated. These things you can’t negotiate with them. You can’t buy your way out of them.

Mike: And you certainly can’t bullshit your way out of them. You can tell yourself whatever you want. You can believe whatever you want to believe, but you can’t make reality, whatever you want it to be without. Working at it, having a plan. That’s just how it 

Frederick: works. It astounds me. Some of the, and yeah, I do. I’ll call them excuses.

Some of the excuses that I hear. My favorite one is I don’t have time. I love that one. I don’t have time. And you’re talking to a man that my friends can vouch. They can. Put, you can put them on here and they can tell the exact same story. I caught the bus. I got my butt on the bus. Couldn’t drive.

Sometimes I caught two buses, three buses. It all depended. I was just focused and I was determined and I had a goal. And the one thing I always suggest for people is to find your why. It needs to be a good Y. It needs to be something bigger than I want to have big arms. I want to have a big chest. You need to find your why you’re doing it.

What’s truly inspiring you to do these things. Because once I found my why, I developed tunnel vision. And I was almost obsessed with not getting in shape, but obsessed with developing a knowledge that I knew that I could spread to other people to let them know that it can be done because I will go get my blood work done every 90 days.

And from where I started, I remember talking to my doctor post heart attack, going to see my new doctor for the first time. And she was asking me what my diet was like, and I was explaining it to her and the look on her face was just. She was just astounded. She was, you can see it in her eyes. She was just looking at me like, how can you eat that?

So then she asked me, she goes what vegetables do you eat? And I said, I don’t need vegetables. And this is one of the aha moments that I had. She looked me right in the eye and her name is Dr. McKinney. And I’m thank God for every day. She looked me right in my eye and she said, what kind of grown man doesn’t eat vegetables?

And when she said that to me, I’m like, shit, what kind of grown man don’t eat vegetables? Get it together, man. What are you doing? 

Mike: That’s one of those things that only a woman can deliver with enough bite to it. You know what I mean? A guy says yeah, whatever. But when a woman says it, it just cuts deep.

When she told me that I was 

Frederick: just like, man, you are absolutely right. So she told me, she said, you have two choices. You have choice. Number one, which a lot of people choose is they just choose to literalize the same. And I don’t see him in 90 days because they’re dead. So I went back 90 days later and I was about 35, 40 pounds down.

Like I said, this was years ago. She always told me, she said, Frederick, you need to share your story. And I was always telling her, I said, Dr. McKinney, nobody wants to hear my story. Nobody cares. So then I would go another 90 days and I’d be down another 50 pounds. And she would tell me again, Frederick, please, you’re doing the world a disservice by not sharing the story.

I got about 120 pounds down and became 150. And then after that, she told me, she said, look, if you don’t share this story, you’re going to have a problem with me. So 

Mike: what kind of man doesn’t share his story? Frederick, come on. Yeah. 

Frederick: Yeah. She’s come on, get it together. People need to hear this.

You’re an inspiration. You’re a walking inspiration. You’re a walking testimony that it can be done. We’re talking about a man that was told he wasn’t going to live. We’re talking about a man that was told that I needed to be put on a heart transplant list. That’s what they told me.

They said, I need a transplant. You’re talking about a man they told was a couple months away from dialysis because my kidneys were failing. When I went to the doctor and my doctor told me we’re taking you off that list and they told me you don’t have to Do dialysis anymore and I’m like what and I’m like yeah, I can name all my medicine like easily ferrosamide Aspironolactone amlodipine Potassium what else was I taking?

Is there anything else? I believe that’s it. Oh carbetalol I was taking all that stuff when I got out the hospital and I remember like it’s yesterday when I went in that hospital And my doctor looked me in the eye and she said, we’re taking you off for everything. You don’t need it. You don’t need it.

She said, you worked your butt off and you don’t need it. Your heart is, you’re a miracle. Your heart is fine. And she’s go live your life. And I was like, what are you kidding me? This is the benefit of health. I’m thinking it was, I thought it was muscles and abs and a six pack. Being able to take your shirt off at the beach.

And that’s what I thought it was. I always tell people I have the benefit of experience, but I also have the knowledge also, so I got the education on it, but I lived through it. So when you say you can’t, anyone tells me they can’t do it. I reached my phone so fast and I show them that old 400 pound pitch for me.

It’s up to you if you want to do it or not. You make the time you get the drive, you make it happen. If it’s important to you, cause I tell people also fitness isn’t for everybody. This isn’t for everyone. I see people in the gym all the time. You’re a trainer, people in the gym and God bless them, they go to the gym and you’ve seen them there for a year and they look exactly the same, that’s not going to cut it.

We commend them on going to do it, but that’s not going to cut it. You want to do it optimally. I always tell people we all have the basic skills to make a stake. But let me tell you something, when Mike Matthews makes a fitness steak, it comes out way better than yours. 

Mike: Who knows? We might have some true steak connoisseurs listening that could outsteak me easily.

Frederick: Yeah, absolutely. Like my girlfriend always says, she goes, all of you guys got the same recipe. She goes, but Fred, you got, your sauce tastes different. It’s the same recipe. We’re all putting in the same ingredients, but guess what? I know how to do a dash here and a pinch here. And it’s just a different kind of sauce.

So 

Mike: yeah, the devil’s in the details, as they say. Absolutely. Yeah. Just on that point of time, I have that in, it’s actually in the Q and a section in my books for men and women, bigger than you’re stronger and thinner, you’re stronger. And the question is. Along the lines of I don’t have time to exercise or I can’t find time to exercise.

What should I do? My answer is along the lines of, I don’t know anybody who can just find time to exercise. I’ve never had anyone come to me and say, Hey, so Mike, look, I have way too much free time. Like literally have more or less nothing to do. So I was thinking, I’ll just go hang out in the gym a couple hours a day.

What should I do? It’s always the opposite. Most people live hectic lives. And most people, they don’t have time for anything new. It really comes down to priorities. It comes down to analyzing in detail how they’re spending their time. Literally every waking minute. Sometimes I’ve told people to keep a log of how they’re spending their time, specifically when they’re waking up, what do they do next, what they do next.

Just run through that. And then. Look and see, because almost everybody can figure out some pocket, like it might mean for some people, it just means watching less TV or spending less time on the computer or, just dirtling around on social media for many people, that’s actually all it takes. And they go, all right, it might mean watching no TV.

Maybe that’s just a weekends thing, or maybe that’s a non training day thing. So somebody goes, all right, fine. I’ll drop out the TV three days a week so I can go to the gym. Easy solved. In other cases, there have been couples, right? Who were both people are very busy and kids are involved, which makes it trickier.

It makes everything trickier, but so they work out okay, so the husband’s going to watch the kids on these days during these times. So the wife can go do her workouts and then she’s going to reciprocate and they’re going to flip like that. It’s just a matter of. Making it work, figuring out how to make it work.

And that really comes down to just priority, right? How important is it? And everybody makes time for the things they want to do. So that really just comes down to how much do you want to do it? And I. Don’t say, Oh, I don’t have time for that, right? I don’t have time to do regardless of what we’re talking about.

Right? And just intentionally, because I don’t believe in the concept. What I’ll say is I don’t want to make time for that right now, because that’s actually the truth. So whether it’s having more of a social life and spending more time with, it wouldn’t necessarily just be friends, but also you.

I’m a member of a group called YPO, for example, it’s like a business association type group, and I’m not very active in the chapter and why I could say I don’t have time for it, but that’s not true. It’s that it’s not as important to me as mostly my work and my family. That’s where I am putting my time, but we all put our time consciously.

We all have the same amount of time, more or less. Some of us might need a little more or less sleep than the other, but. We more or less have the same amount of waking hours and we just choose to use them the way that we use them for me personally. And this is not only because it’s my job now, but it would be the same thing.

But even if I wasn’t in the fitness industry, exercise would be exercise and probably good sleep hygiene would get the top of my list. And they would be things that I would be unwilling to compromise on. If you need to here and there, that’s fine. If you got to skip a workout because of circumstances or you got to get a little bit less sleep because whatever, but I’m just saying in general, I wouldn’t be willing to trade the time allotted to, I wouldn’t need that much.

If I had to pare it down, I’d probably say at least three or four hours of exercise per week and shooting for seven to eight hours of sleep per night. At least being in bed for eight hours or so is like what I go for now. And I would only compromise those things if it really meant something more important needed to happen.

And that meant that the smart thing to do is skip the workout, do it tomorrow, put the fire out now, or I don’t know, take the early flight for the business meeting. Even if you might sleep a little less, whatever you can, of course, you don’t have to be rigid and completely inflexible. But that’s how I think about.

Time, for example, I don’t watch any TV during the week and really don’t watch much on the weekends, whether it’s TV shows or movies. And there are two reasons for that. One, I don’t really enjoy it that much. It can be fun sometimes, I guess it depends on what I’m watching, but I would rather spend time otherwise with my wife or if it’s just me, I’d rather read or maybe watch something interesting on YouTube.

I like to watch. Interviews and informational videos and I’m getting back into golf. So maybe I’d watch some golf instructional videos or whatever, but also TV seems to mess with my sleep. Like reliably, if I watch, even if it’s just 45 minutes, 30, 45 minutes, like one episode of a show before going to bed, there’s a fair chance I’m not going to sleep as well.

And I’ve tried it a number of times to where I was just like, okay, so that’s it. And that’s again, a matter of priority for me. It is getting enough sleep is much more important to me And staying up to date with the never ending flood of TV shows and movies to watch. 

Frederick: Yeah, I hear you along those lines, I used to be a huge TV watcher.

I thought, I remember some of those conversations, people like, can you go without TV? And I was like, no way there’s no way. And over the last two years, three years, I might, and I’m being a hundred percent honest, I might watch maybe. Three shows a week, I’m always finding myself doing something that involves some kind of physical activity if it’s taking my daughter somewhere, along those lines and in regards to what you said about the, just to retouch on the too busy thing, I do this a lot to always tell people when they say they’re too busy, I always tell them, I say, maybe this fitness thing isn’t for you and I’d say, it’s okay, but you got to be honest with you got to be honest and you got to say, okay.

I don’t want to do it. Don’t ask me for fitness advice and then tell me you can’t make time to go to the gym because you can. And I always use this analogy with people. I say, if someone calls you right now on the phone and said, you have to drive 90 minutes, you’re going to drive, but you’re going to get a million dollars cash guaranteed.

I said, I don’t care what you’re doing. You’re going to find a way to make it. If your kids are with you, you’re going to find a babysitter. If you’re at work, you’re going to find a way to leave work. You’re going to find a way if it was guaranteed, because that measures the importance to you. It’s just not important enough to you, that’s all.

Mike: They would do it for, you get to flip a coin, heads is a million dollars, tails is you get to go home with nothing. Even that, all of us would find a way to get there. 

Frederick: Absolutely. So I always tell people, it’s hard. I have empathy because I’ve always been in that field. I’ve been in that field to have empathy.

I always have empathy, but I don’t have any empathy for excuses. None. And I won’t. My girlfriend is self employed. I’m self employed. We have three daughters. Our careers take up our whole day, but we always make it to the gym. I’m 215 pounds down. My girlfriend is 97 pounds down. There’s no excuses in this house.

We don’t make excuses, but we have, that’s another thing too. We have daughters, four, six, and eight. The last thing I can ever see myself doing is looking them in the eye. And telling them that they don’t have time for something that they believe in, if you can’t make time for something you believe in, then what in the world can you make time for Netflix, YouTube, Instagram and Twitter?

Exactly. I always tell people this. So I’ve been taking my fitness journey, documenting my fitness journey with my Instagram for about 4 to 5 months now. I’ve literally went from 300 followers to almost 3000 followers in four months. So the thing that’s strange for me is the fact that I’m considered a social media influencer.

So for me to have that phone in my hand as often as I need it to be, it’s still Doesn’t sit right with me. 

Mike: I limit my time on it. And yeah, that means that I limit the amount of followers that I get and it limits the value of it from a business perspective, but I’m okay with that because if I put too much time.

Into let’s say it’s Instagram. Oh, I really want to grow my Instagram. If I put too much time into that means that the book that I’m working on, which is the second edition, a new second edition of beyond bigger, leaner, stronger, it would take a lot longer to get it done. And it would mean that I may not be able to record as many podcasts.

And it would mean that I wouldn’t be able to write as many articles, and I may not be able to be as involved in other aspects of Legion just behind the scenes and helping it grow. So again, it just goes back to, it’s. Priorities and having to look at now, would it be fun? Maybe it would be fun to, cause it’s easy, right?

It would be easier than all the other stuff I’ve just mentioned. That work is harder in that. I don’t think anybody would argue that it’s harder to write a book than it is to build a, an Instagram following. There could be that type of appeal where it would be more fun. It’d be easier to just sit on Instagram and have that also as a, it’s very quantifiable.

You get immediate feedback, so it feels good. You get, you gain followers, that number changes every day and you dive into the analytics and you can see all your engagement that there are a lot of ways for you to feel good about yourself, but. How much would it contribute to the overall big picture?

And what I’m really going after, like, why am I doing this? And it would be a mistake. That’d be a silly way to prioritize my time. So I know what you mean. 

Frederick: Absolutely. And the only thing that right when I’m thinking about slowing down on Instagram or slowing down. Talking about my journey, I’ll get that one.

Damn. I got a DM about two weeks ago. This gentleman sent me a picture of himself on his hospital bed and he had tubes everywhere. He had a heart attack and he had, I believe he had quadruple bypass heart surgery. And he told me, of course, it’s difficult. If you have X amount of followers to engage with every single one, but he told me, he said, man, I’ve been following you for Years, man.

He said, I remember what you look like when you first started. I was here. He said, man, you inspired me, man. He said, man, I lost 150 pounds because of you. And I said, man, like this is I messaged him back. I said, he wrote me a book, but I messaged him back. I said, this is why I do it. This is like you reinforce the reason why I do this, man.

You really do. And Man fitness is, who knew? I wish man, some people wish they can go back in time and man, I wish I can go back in time and start this fitness journey when I was 15, 16 just to let people know how, when people hear me talk about that, they always say, I make it sound like poetry. I go, ’cause it is it’s beautiful the way you feel.

And when you understand how the body is fueled off of certain things. Certain vitamins and minerals and protein and, macronutrients, micronutrients, and, the beta alanine, the arginine, things like that. Like I almost, man, I turned over some of those Legion containers, man, pulse, and I looked on the back and, looked at the ingredients and Googled so many ingredients, man.

I did it all, man. And it’s I always tell people, be careful when you ask me something about fitness, because I’ll talk to you all day. I’ll go all day. If I tell people if we’re in the gym and let me tell you something, it drives my girlfriend crazy when we go to the gym because I know how it’s been on my journey.

So when people stop and ask me questions, I sit there and I talk to them. We talk for 20, 30 minutes because I’ve been there. It’s funny to me when people are like, Oh, I need to lose 60 pounds. I don’t know what to do. I said look at this. I lost 215. So yeah, you can do it. And if you want to learn how to do it, if you’re really passionate about it and you really want to get it done, then let’s do it.

Let’s make it happen because it can be done. Fitness, one of the main things fitness taught me is there’s no ceiling. There really is no ceiling. And my favorite thing about fitness, and I tell people this every day. In my eyes, it’s the only thing in the world where you go into the gym and you can see yourself improve every day from data.

It’s not, am I improving? I wonder if I’m improving. I wonder if I’m getting better. Am I getting better? No, it’s one week you’re lifting forties and the next week you’re lifting 45. Then the next week you’re lifting 55. If people are looking for social media for instant gratification, go to the gym and get some instant gratification.

Like I said, it’s just, it benefits in every aspect of life, man. Really, your confidence goes through the roof. Everybody looks at you different. You become an alpha. You really do. You really become an alpha. You develop this uncanny ability to teach and to be humble. I do martial arts also. And that’s another thing too.

Martial arts and fitness. It all coincides together, because when you know you have the ability to do something, when you know in your heart that you truly possess the ability. You have no want to floss that ability. You’re fine knowing that, you know how to do it. You don’t care if anybody else knows, you know how to do it.

It’s not even a concern to you. If someone wanted to pick a fight with me, I’ve been doing judo and jujitsu, kickboxing, Aikido, I’ve been doing it for years. The simple fact that I know what I’m capable of makes me not want to display it. And it’s the same thing with fitness. I understand like these bodybuilding shows and why they get so hype about it.

And because it really is, it’s like Picasso or Van Gogh. It’s beautiful. It’s beauty. It’s like a symphony watching it, the sacrifices and the discipline that these people have. And in regards to that, because like I said, I’ll run my mouth all day. But in regards to that, people always ask me, they go. What motivated you to lose weight?

And I was telling him, you know what, when I looked at Mike Rashid, CT Fletcher, when I looked at you guys didn’t motivate me. You guys inspired me. I would tell, I had the motivation. You have to motivate yourselves. Cause I can’t come to your house and make you get up at eight o’clock in the morning and go work out now I could, but you’re not going to like me for it, but if you’re motivated, you get your butt up and you go do it and you use me for inspiration while you’re there.

Mike: Yeah, it’s you, like you were saying earlier, it’s just comes down to why, right? I have a chapter again in a shameless plug of my books and it’s finding your. Your biggest fitness wise, it’s part of the inner game section on the book. And I go over that and break it down into a few different ways of looking at it.

So you have the looks and that’s totally fine. You want to look a certain way. We all want to look good. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s not, it’s not vain in a negative sense, at least to say, Hey yeah, I would like to have abs and I would like to be. Muscular and fit and at least part of the reason they’re sure you, there’s a lot more that comes with being fit a lot of other benefits, but a major reason why all of us keep doing it is because we’ve come to at least like the way that we look when we’re in shape and want to maintain it.

And that’s totally normal. Nothing wrong with that, but then there’s how your body feels, right? So this is one of the many hidden benefits I think of fitness is just. A fit healthy body is just more pleasurable to inhabit than an unfit unhealthy one, right? You can look at that in terms of how it feels physically and mentally, emotionally, even spiritually, depending on your beliefs in that realm.

And so in the book, go into finding some wise related to that. And there’s also makes me think of the thing that came from Toyota. It was like the five wise of getting really to a deep. Answer of where you ask yourself, why, right? Why am I doing this? And then ask yourself why does that matter?

And why does that matter and why does that matter? And reducing it down to something that is almost visceral, something that is related to the. Deep seated emotions, or even your identity is something that inspires you. Something that makes you feel like you want to get up right now and start doing it.

That’s what we’re going for. It’s not something that you go, yeah, I guess that would be nice. No, you have to find that. Why? And it’s a simple statement. It’d be simply setting a good example for their kids, right? Specific, meaningful, something personal, or maybe it’s being more productive at work, right?

And maybe some people need to go deeper than that. Again, this is a very, just personal subjective process, but it’s finding the things. And it can be more than one thing, of course, as well. And finding the things again, that excite you, that make you feel like you’re coming alive. That’s what we’re going for.

Hey, before we continue, if podcast and elsewhere, And if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives, please consider checking out my VIP one on one coaching service. Now my team and I have helped thousands of people of all ages, circumstances, and needs. So no matter how complicated or maybe even hopeless you might think your situation is, We will figure out how to get you the results you want.

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And let’s see if our program is a good fit for you. 

Frederick: I just talked to someone yesterday about that while I was at the gym. He’s a younger kid. And he said, man, I haven’t cheated on my diet in two months. And I said, man, that’s great. And he said, man, I’ve never been able to do it before. I said, do what? He said, not, not cheat on my diet every once in a while.

He said, I was at work and it was a bunch of donuts. And I went and opened the donuts and I couldn’t bring myself to do it. And he said, I don’t know why I said, cause you found your why. And he goes, what? You found your why. You know why you’re doing it. It’s bigger than muscles. It’s bigger than abs. I said you’ve ascended.

Your mind’s ascended to a whole nother area. You’re so focused where you refuse to let anybody stop you. It’s like playing sports and being in the zone. I tell them you’re just in the zone. You can’t be stopped, and also I tell people I’m 40 years old. So I got into fitness when I was, 36, 37.

People tell me all the time I’m 40. People think I was asking people, guess my age. It’s 31, 32. I said, no, I’m 40. I’ll be 41 this year. And I wake up every morning, 5. 00 AM. No alarm clock. I get out of bed. I have no joint pain, nothing. My back doesn’t hurt. I know people in their early thirties, mid twenties.

That have joint pain, their backs hurt and this, that, and the other. And I don’t have any pain. I have zero pain at all. And I’m taking my daughters to go see the lion King tonight. We’re going to hang out and we’re going to just enjoy it. We’ve been enjoying ourselves all summer, going to the lake and this, that, and the other, it’s so much more, man.

And I tell people all the time. Also, I said, look, I don’t care if you let me coach you, you let me train you. I don’t care if you let me do it. I don’t care if you let somebody else do it, just do it. Just go do it and change. Your life change your whole perspective on life because there’s so many things out there that they have no idea about and I reminded of that every day when I get and I’m sure you are also when You’d sometimes people send you the simplest questions where you questions you can answer in two seconds And you’re still wondering why people have these questions.

I have people still to this day random people who message me I get fat if I eat after 6 p. m Or, and I’m thinking in my head wow, that’s really, people really think that and I always tell them, do you think your body knows what time it is? Like the simplest questions, man, that people want to know.

Mike: What happens if you go hop on a plane and flood Tokyo? Then what? Yeah. Yeah, seriously. Does your circadian rhythm keep up there? And then the fat storage time is, does it shift as well or does it have jet lag 

Frederick: Or the whole, the carbohydrate? Oh gosh. The, God bless these people. And like I said, I do my best to help people and I do it because like I said, I was there, so I say this from the most humbling of places, but this whole carbohydrate.

Kick is like carbs are just like the, I don’t even, like carbs just make you fat. I don’t even know when this, I have no, 

Mike: now it goes beyond that. It’s that carbs are just killing you actually. Yeah. Like 

Frederick: I’m just like, wow. Like really? And the, but this is the best rebuttal that I have is because of my, me having that heart attack years ago, I have to get blood work done every 90 days.

So I love to try new diets. And then when I tell people about a certain diet, I said I’m going to high carbohydrate diet and go, oh, that’s going to jack up your insulin. And I go to the doctor and I go bring on my blood work. And it’s perfect. 

Mike: Yeah, you’re fasting 

Frederick: glucose is exactly where it should be.

And yeah, it’s perfect. And they’re like, wait, what? And I go, I’ll debate over things that need to be debated, but I’m not going to debate over anything where data can be provided. We’ll just look at the data and we’ll stop it from there. There’s no point in having a discussion once the data hits, it’s fine.

Mike: That’s the power of exercise, the power of being fit. It’s the, it is the number one thing you can do for your body in terms of just health. Longevity overall wellbeing is exercising regularly so that, and that’s where healthy at any size, there’s some truth in that. It’s not, it’s entirely true.

There is a point where it’s unhealthy or it’s unhealthy to be too fat. But if let’s say you’re a woman and you’re 25 percent body fat, which maybe by Instagram standards is like unacceptable, right? Can you be healthy at that? Absolutely. You’d be healthy, probably a 30 percent body fat if you are. Exercising regularly and probably doing a couple other things right now.

There is a point where it becomes unhealthy, of course, but my point is just that the power of exercise it’s hard to overstate it in terms of how much it benefits our bodies. It’s just our bodies were not meant to be sedentary. They just weren’t. We evolved the way we evolved. And if we want to maintain optimal health, we have to do some kind of exercise and you can’t use diet as a substitute for that.

You can’t. Not exercise think that you can just not exercise and eat well, and you’ll be okay. You may be okay, but you’re not going to be as okay as if you were exercising and not eating so well, that’s something that I’ve spoken and written about. And there is some research that I’ve discussed that. I wouldn’t say as direct evidence of that, but it’s like circumstantial evidence of that, that even if your diet is not optimal, and that means that you’re not eating maybe as many nutritious foods as you’re supposed to, your macronutrients are maybe a bit wonky.

If you are exercising regularly, and if the exercise is intense enough, you can be perfectly healthy. You go to the doctor, you get blood work done, they would be like, wow, you are in perfect health. And that’s the power of exercise. 

Frederick: Like I said, even along those lines. So about three days ago, my aunt, I got a call from my cousin because my aunt was having chest pain.

She went in the hospital three days ago, they found out that she had a blockage. So I just continue because if I have to tell every story that I know about, and I will, because I continue this to let people know that, like I said, these diseases, they are undefeated, man. And they are taking people away.

Unfortunately. And literally it’s because we have these unhealthy relationships with food. And that was one of the things I battled with. Also, when I, before I got into fitness, we celebrate with food, you get a promotion, we go have dinner, kid has a bad day, gets bullied in school. We take him to get ice cream, be careful of the habit.

I’m not saying you can’t do those things of course, cause that’s ridiculous. But be careful of the messages that we communicate. To each other, especially with kids, because kids don’t have much of an idea why something is happening or why we’re doing it with that as a reward. So develop these habits.

Let’s just develop better habits. Let’s communicate with each other. If people have any questions, man, reach out to anyone, in your local gym or someone, that works out somebody online, reach out, man. If you have any questions, because. Like I said, man, the last thing I want is for somebody to experience what I experienced, man, with heart disease and kidney failure and things like that.

Oh, man, you don’t want to go through that, man. Especially males, man. Guys, those kidney stones and stuff oh, man, let me tell you something. I’ve had some nights, man, where I’d be in bed and my kidneys, I’m talking about, we’re talking about pain of 1 to 10, the pain was like 

Mike: Yeah, I’ve heard that gallstones, 

Frederick: kidney stones are excruciating.

Oh, my gosh. Oh, let me tell you something it is You do not oh my goodness, not even i’m, people say not their worst enemy I am serious not on my worst enemy. You do not want those things man. They hurt Like hell man when you break it down to the bare bones of it. It’s because And people, I got to stress to you, people, I’m not saying that you can’t enjoy your life.

My clients drink wine. My clients have burgers. My clients go on vacation, but let’s find a balance. That’s the only thing I’m saying. Find a balance in your life. Me and my girlfriend and I, we just got back from San Diego last weekend. We went to San Diego and we enjoyed ourselves, but let me tell you something else.

Once you develop a certain lifestyle change, it’s hard for you to have. Donuts and pancakes for breakfast, then follow it up with fast food and follow it up with a candy bar, then follow it up with more fast food for dinner. Those habits go away. 

Mike: You find a natural balance, which is where you go somewhere and maybe you just do one of those things.

And that’s enough for you. You’re like, Oh, that was nice. I had the fast food. That’s your thing, right? I had whatever I had the cheeseburger for lunch and that was nice. If you establish the right habits in your day to day, when you consciously break them, like you said, it actually is hard to push it too far.

It’s hard to really fuck it up. You have to really try. And why would you, it’s like a point where, my version of that is my wife is German, right? So we go to Germany every other year for Christmas and I like German bread. Now, the last time I didn’t do this, cause I just didn’t even care to, but two trips ago.

I, for the first several days, ate a bunch of bread, not that there’s anything inherently wrong with bread, but I don’t normally eat bread, right? So for the first few days I was eating like a basket of bread every morning with butter just because it was delicious, right? My macros were messed up and I wasn’t eating very many vegetables, very much fruit for the first several days.

Then I actually just, Completely. I just didn’t even want to anymore, but not psychologically. Not because I felt bad. I knew it wouldn’t matter if I eat a bunch of bread and if I just like basically protein and bread for a couple more days, I’ll be totally fine. It’s not this is, here’s my one hurrah per year.

But I physically, it was almost like my body was saying. Please, can we just eat a vegetable? Come on. Come on, man. Feed us like some real food, please. And that’s when I stopped and I was like, okay that was fun. And I’ll go back to eating like a normal human again. And you can do stuff like that.

And there is, there are no consequences and you just get to enjoy yourself. There’s no guilt associated with it. Because again, when you put it in context, it doesn’t matter if you’re doing the most important things, mostly right. Most of the time, I’ll say that I say that, often, because I think that’s the right attitude to have.

Frederick: And I remember when I first started, cause like I said, before this, I never ate vegetables, I’m talking about zero. And I tell people when people tell me, oh, I have bad eating habits. I tell them what I used to eat on a day to day basis. And this is a hundred percent, this is a hundred percent true breakfast.

I would wake up in the morning, probably have a snack or something before I left work, eat a bowl of cereal, drive into work, stop, get a donut. And then I stopped at Starbucks. I got a caramel Frappuccino, the venti, which is about a thousand calories on top of that. I get to work. Probably have a bag of chips before lunch will come.

I go get fast food for lunch, come back from work at my desk typing and I’m a, I was always a Snickers bar guy. I would get up, go get a Snickers at the vending machine, maybe a bag of chips, work, get off work on my way home. I’d stop and get a more fast food with a, like a shake or something. And then I drive home.

Then I’d sit down and. Play video games, some along those lines. And if I wanted something else, of course, when you live in that way you have certain things in the fridge and the cabinet, I go have a. Some kind of pastry or something. And I eat that and that would be my day.

So we talking about easy 4, 000 calorie day. And then along those lines also, it was just a complete sedentary day, just sitting on my butt all day. So I was hoping your habits aren’t bad than mine. And then when I would play video games, it would be, I do two large pizzas and I would drink like a two liter of Coke out of the bottle.

Damn, 

Mike: that’s impressive. You could even eat that much pizza in one sitting. I can eat a lot of food, but I could do that, but I think I would be struggling unless it was thin crust and 

Frederick: not much cheese. Oh no. I could, let me tell you something, man. I would take some stuff down, man.

Wasn’t nothing safe, man. 

Mike: What’s a large pizza in terms of calories? I guess it depends what’s on it. It’s like 2000, I don’t know, two to 3000 or something. 

Frederick: Gotta be at least. And I would take down two, man. I’m a pepperoni sausage to the end, man. I 

Mike: bet you just a straight cheese is probably around 2000, I would guess.

Then you add the meat on top of it. That’s easily another thousand. 

Frederick: Man, let me tell you something, man. I would drink like 15, sometimes 12 to 15 sodas a day. Seriously, man, my water habits were terrible. So what I was saying along those lines, I remember when I first really made a decision to like, and I’ll put some greens in my diet.

I’m going to get some fish oil in my diet. I remember doing it like about two weeks in, I remember one morning I woke up and it was like five 45. And am also, let me tell you something on my weekends, I was sleep to about 1130 AM. But when I changed my diet, I remember I woke up at 530 AM one morning and I got up and I thought I had to just go to the bathroom and I got up and I stood up out the bed and I was like, Up.

I was like, wait a minute. I’m awake. I lay back in bed. Like I’m going to go back to bed. And I just sat there and my eyes wouldn’t close. I was just, I was up. My body was like, get up Fred. It’s time to go. It’s time to get the day started. And I was like, what the hell’s going on? And I walked up seriously, man, I walked and I got dressed and I went outside for my walk.

I started every morning. I walked to the bus stop the gym. I walked to the bus stop and I’m standing at the bus stop waiting on the bus. And I’m like, are you kidding me? Like I’m wide awake, man. I’m like, And I went and worked out and came back home and on the way back I’m like, I know I’m gonna take a nap when I get home.

Like I always take naps, nope. Wide awake, man. I remember the first thing I ate was the first one out. People always tell me to say spinach. Like spinach doesn’t taste like anything, like just suck it up and eat it. So I got spinach and I eat spinach and I would just buy it by the tub. I would put it in my eggs and I would just eat spinach.

And I’m telling you, man, like I can literally feel the difference and I would eat more fruit. And I was just like, wait a minute. And then I did more research and I found out dieting was more than chicken breast, rice and broccoli. I was like, you can eat more than. Like you can eat more stuff than that and you can eat certain things.

And I was just like, man, then I started doing research and I found like bars and I found your BCA. And I was like, what in the hell are these be like, this is the, like, why didn’t people scream in the rooftop about fucking BCAs? What the fuck? Like these things, they’re fucking amazing. Like it makes my water taste incredible.

Mike: Actually don’t sell BCAs because that’s the only real benefit. People will ask, are you going to do BCAs? When you do BCAs? Yeah. And my answer is just Hey, as of right now, never, because they really, that’s all they are for is making your water taste good. And that’s just not a great pitch. If I was going to pitch them, honestly, that’s actually all I could say.

I could say, if you don’t like drinking water, this is going to make your water taste better. It’s not going to help you in any other way, but Hey, if you are willing to pay a premium to drink tastier water, then BCAs are a good place 

Frederick: to start. Yeah. Cause there’s so many more aspects of people, people always ask me and I’m sure they ask you a lot, but they always want to know what’s the best, what’s the best workout split, what’s the best diet.

I thought the best diet. So when you can stick to for the rest of your life, the best workout split is the one you enjoy the one. You’re going to keep going back and doing, I can’t tell you what works for me. Cause it might not work for you. And the same thing along those lines of the BCAs, if we’re going down the list of.

Yeah. Things that I think you should have. Will BCAs be on that list? Yes. Would it be high on that list? No, there’s plenty other things that I always tell people, even regards to things like protein powder. They say I can’t fit it in my budget. I don’t fit it in your food budget. It’s food. 

Mike: Yeah.

If you look at it in terms of cost per gram of protein, it actually is pretty affordable. If you go with the highest and most expensive, not necessarily, but if you go with a good. Mid tier, mostly weight concentrate type of protein. It’s a very affordable way to, to get protein. Yeah, absolutely. I looked on a large pizza, by the way, so a large pepperoni and sausage pizza from Domino’s is apparently about 2600 calories, about a hundred, 120 grams of fat.

50 grams of saturated fat, about six grams of sodium. That’s good. So you need 12 grams of sodium in one sitting. 270 carbs and a hundred grams of protein. I’m telling you, man, Two of those washed down with a couple of liters. I don’t 

Frederick: even know what a liter of soda is. I don’t even want to look. I’m telling you, I always tell my girlfriend, I go, man, fat Fred’s looking at me, just shaking his head.

He’s man, what the hell is wrong with you? Fucking spinach. What’s going on? Yeah, like spinach. What the hell? I’m telling you, man. You’ve banished him. You’ve exiled him. Oh gosh, man. He, sometimes he tries to come back. He tries to sneak out and eat certain stuff. But that’s another thing, guys, I want to share with you guys.

Once you guys change your eating habits, your body, there’s going to be certain things where you’ll eat them and immediately your body will tell you like, this isn’t for us. 

Mike: Yep. Your palate changes for sure, where you go and you try to eat stuff. Maybe that, you liked previously and just not enjoyable anymore.

And then that doesn’t necessarily mean of course, we all we can all find desserts that are delicious, of course, but there are certain people who don’t. Just very low quality foods that’s how they taste to you now, or you’re just like, really? I liked this. It’s just tastes like sugary.

Nothing. It just tastes like chemical 

Frederick: garbage. So we went on on the 11th, we took my girlfriend’s dad to dinner, Mexican restaurant. I asked for a diet Pepsi and they brought me a regular Pepsi. Oh man. When I drink that thing, I’m like, seriously. The people looking at me, like I was putting on a show, I almost gagged.

I was like, Oh my God, it’s so sweet. I’m like how did I do this? I have no clue. Seriously, I have no, if I can, let me tell you something. You know how people use time machines to go back in time and do cool stuff. I go back in time and just slap the shit out of myself. 

Seriously, man. 

Mike: So a liter of soda is 400 calories.

It’s like a hundred grams of carbs. Basically there’s just sugar. Of course, just a hundred grams of sugar. Just there you go. So you can wash the 5, 000 plus calories of pizza down with 800 calories of sugar, basically. That’s why this has been a great discussion. I’ve really enjoyed it. So what are your future plans?

Where are you going from here? 

Frederick: Like I said, I did training, personal training, nutrition, coaching, just expanded it. Which by the way, where can people find you if they want to reach out? My Instagram is the underscore Jim underscore Reaper, and then it’s underscore O K U and then five R’s and O to Cardi B.

So people 

Mike: listening, if you put in Jim, G U I M, Reaper, R E A P E R, and then these are separate words, obviously, and then put in O K, he’ll be the only one that comes up. 

Frederick: All right. Sounds good to me. Yeah. You guys can see the, we’ve got pictures to prove it, man. So you guys can go look at those pictures and you can see it can be done, man.

Anybody feel free to DM me if you have any questions. I’m always posting. I’m insane. So I have a good time with fitness. You’ll see me on there. Shaking my ass. I’m a girl. Just enjoy it, man. Fitness saved my life. So I really enjoy it, man. I enjoy fitness. Just know guys, you guys are, if you’re listening to this and you’re just starting your fitness journey, man, just understand that’s your gym too.

I tell my clients that all the time. When they go in the gym and they’re nervous, this is your gym too. The guy that’s been there for 20 years is somebody that’s just starting. It’s your gym. It’s your facility. Also, one thing I do with all my clients when I’m in the gym, a lot of personal training clients that are really shy.

I make them go in the middle of the gym. I make them how like a wolf, man, because I tell them yeah, I’m dead serious. I do, I’m 

Mike: that runs. And there is a, it’s some challenge getting outside of your comfort zone challenge. And one of the things that, Things was to go lie down on the sidewalk in like a busy area or lie down just in a busy public area where a bunch of people walking, you’d have to just lie down on the ground for 15 minutes and say nothing.

Frederick: Yeah man. We go howl like a wolf. And you know the best part about, it’s people that don’t even know me. They, when they hear ’em howl, people howl back. People be howling back and it’s so funny. They’re like, what? I go, yeah, like you’re a wolf man. This is, I do that because it’s time to take over your life, man.

It’s time to. Man, be a lion and it’s time to embrace your life. Take it back. Take your life back, man, whatever it is, whatever you lost, if you lost yourself in a breakup or death in the family, I’m just trying to take your life back. That’s what fitness is, man. Fitness gives you your life back. There’s so many avenues and so much information out there.

And also I’m working on a couple of blogs so I can get some information out there. There’s a great companies that I would absolutely. This is my thing. I always tell people everything I’ve got because I work my butt off. So I’ve never asked for a handout. The only thing I always asked for was a stage, something like this, a forum.

That’s it. Just a forum to share my story just so people can know it can be done. And I know everything else will take care of itself. I’m not worried about that. I’m not worried about fame. I’m not worried about money. 

Mike: You just want the opportunity. 

Frederick: That’s the opportunity to share my story because to let people know that it can be done, man, because I have so many people, I had a guy, this was last year.

Now he’s a good friend of mine. His name is Aaron. I was doing a cable flies in the gym and he came up to me and he goes, man, what does that work? I go, works your chest. And he goes, man, one day, man, he’s goes, he was, he’s a big guy. He goes, man, one day I hope I can be lean like you. And I said, I stopped doing my chest.

I said, wait one second. I put my phone out and I showed him a picture of myself. I said, you can be lean like me one day. And he goes, Holy shit, man. He goes, I’m going to finish my workout. My buddy Shaw told me, he goes, you see what you did? I go, what did I do? He goes, you literally gave him hope in a matter of 10 seconds, you installed hope in him.

That’s what we’re doing this for. So it’s bigger than me. It’s bigger than Instagram. Facebook is bigger than all that. That’s why I give out free fit, just like you, we give out great fitness information, free information, because it’s a lifestyle change. We can have the benefit of the world being healthier, better.

Fathers living longer with their daughters and their sons, and husbands and wives having better relationships. And I heard how you just said you and your wife took a vacation. My girlfriend and I, we went to Disneyland a couple weeks ago. The God on this truth is the thing we remember about it the most.

Is we both remember when we were overweight and we couldn’t walk around Disneyland and we walked around Disneyland all day. We were there for about seven, eight hours nonstop. And when we were done, we’re walking back to the car and we didn’t talk about what rides we got on. The first thing we said was, damn, babe, you remember when we couldn’t even do this?

We have to sit down and take breaks. And it’s like, how does it feel? It’s just it feels damn good. This feels good. And once you get that feeling, you never want to go back. Never. Yeah. You just never want to go back. But if anybody, like I said, anybody want to contact me, you can DM me.

I’ll be glad to answer any questions you guys have. Just thankful, man. Really thankful for the opportunity and thank you for the information you put out every day. And I have a really close friend. Her name is Nadine. I met her at the gym when I first started my fitness journey also. And she is a gigantic.

Legion fan. So I know a lot of people that, they love your products, but she is a gigantic Legion fan putting her on blast. She comes to the gym with her pulse in her bag. Nice story. Yeah, she sure does, man. She come to the gym with that pulse in her bag. I just need more Nadine’s. That’s my goal. I love your products, man.

And that’s the one thing too. People always ask me what made you do the, I go I’m not going to associate my name with anything. I’ll never do anything for clout. I associate my name with things I believe in. Your stuff is one of the things I believe in. And I trust me, I’ve gotten, when you lost 215 pounds, it’s pretty safe to say you get a lot of offers for things.

You get a lot of offers to put your name on a lot of things, especially with the growth of my Instagram and my social media over the last couple months. I get a lot of offers for things. I really I chose to do this because I think what you guys are doing is incredible. I really do. Like I said, man, I’ve been watching since Charlie, man.

I really have what that’s, that has to be at least what three years ago. 

Mike: This is year six for Legion. 

Frederick: Yeah. So it has to be a while back for everybody on here that’s listening. You guys can go ahead and. You guys can add Mike at Mike Matthews, tell him, go ahead and send that legion sponsorship right on over so we can get to work.

Like my parents always told me, close mouth. Don’t get fed. I’m a sick, my pit bulls on your mind. Absolutely, man. Man, whatever you need, brother, let me tell you something, whatever you need, and I would love to talk or collaborate or figure something out, I don’t need a handout, man. I want to, I would tell people I’ve never been afraid to work.

And then I’ll end running my mouth and let you get back by saying this. I remember about. Like I said, five, six months ago, when I really started to take the fitness thing serious. And I told everyone I knew some videographers and I knew some photographers and I have a clothing line is doing incredible right now.

It’s called no leap, no legacy. It’s doing outstanding, man. We got 419 pieces sold in three months. Nice. Yeah, man, everything is great. But I always tell people that if it’s given to you, nobody wants to hear that story. How did you do it? Oh, I just got up and did it. And it was easy. Nobody wants to hear that.

They want to hear the struggle. They want to hear the pain and the ups and the downs. And that’s going to happen. Every story has one. But even then, man, the best story is the comeback story, man. That’s the best one. Nobody wants to hear it. Nobody goes to the movies to watch a movie about a guy who just won from beginning and end.

Mike: Just 

Frederick: never stopped winning. Nobody gives a shit about that, man. Nobody gives a shit about that story. So I always tell people when you have a hiccup, I say, I tell them, it just makes the story even better when you get to the end. That’s all. It just makes your story better guys. When you get to the end of the story, man.

Just keep pushing. Y’all keep kicking ass, man. My girlfriend’s going to be proud because let me tell you something. I’m a cursor, man. I love a good curse word. So just keep fucking shit up, y’all man. Keep fucking it up, man. And keep, just stay on it, man. And I told people about my journey and I said, Hey guys, if you guys want to be a part of it, I’d love to have you a part of it.

I’d love to have you guys documented, Take photos and this and do some videos and this, that, and the other. And I got a lot of all we’ll see maybe. And then when they see the, I always call it the train. That’s my thing. I always say the train is coming and I say, either you get on this train, you get on the Fred train or this Fred train is going to run you the fuck over.

So you have two choices. And that’s just how I’ve always lived. And for all the people that didn’t want to get on the train when it started, and you guys know who you guys are. And these same guys are in my Begging me to work now. They’re begging for me. They’re begging for me to work. But guess what? I always tell them when people do that to you, you don’t have to tell them no.

But what you do tell them is you tell them the terms of change terms of definitely change. So guys, just get on it, man. Get on it. And use this interview as the first day to fucking change your life, man. Cause it can be done, man. It can definitely be done. And if you need a cheerleader, man, I’d be your number one fucking cheerleader, man.

I mean that from the heart, man. That’s real shit right there. 

Mike: That’s great, man. I really appreciate you taking the time to share your story. This is a great discussion and I’m sure it’s going to be well received. 

Frederick: Thank you, man. I appreciate it, man. You have a blessed day. And like I said, man, whatever you need, let me know.

And I’m about what I say, and I’m definitely sending you that DM about that Legion sponsorship, brother. 

Mike: Yes, sir. I’ll forward you over to Miles. That’s his department. So you guys can start that discussion for sure. 

Frederick: Yes, 

Mike: sir. 

Frederick: All right, man. You have a blessed day, brother. 

Mike: If you like what I’m doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me do more of it, if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives too, please do consider supporting my sports nutrition company, Legion Athletics, which is currently holding its biggest sale of the year for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

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So again, if you appreciate my work and if you want to see more of it, please do support me so I can keep doing what I love, like producing more podcasts like this. To shop and save now, head over to www. LegionAthletics. com L E G I O N Athletics. com and use the code FRIDAY19, numerals 1 9 at checkout and you’ll save up to 30 percent on your entire order.

All right. That’s it for today’s episode. I hope you found it interesting and helpful. And if you did, and you don’t mind doing me a favor, could you please leave a quick review for the podcast on iTunes or wherever you are listening from? Because those reviews not only convince people that they should check out the show, they also increase the search visibility.

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And I hope to hear from you soon.