Is it all just Physics?

The power to grow is often hidden. Never ostentatious but unmistakably present. Did you know that a rock-hard lentil can sprout and morph into a deliciously crunchy salad after just 2 days of sitting on your kitchen counter? After 6 months and trying and failing miserably at learning to swim, I began to feel a lot like a dry lentil.

That is, until I switched coaches before I gave up on learning to swim in this lifetime, entirely.

In just 3 weeks the new coach had we swimming free-style laps. In another month, I had moved into backstroke, by the third month I was simultaneously working on breaststroke and butterfly. All the while in my head channeling Luda "backstroke, breaststroke, stroke of a genius." Jokes aside, both coaches were giving me detailed instructions on the physics of a perfect stroke - for maximal propulsion you reduce the drag.

The first coach I chose, looked great on paper. She had impressive credentials; she swam competitively and coached a swim team. The second coach I chose, had none of those fancy credentials. What she coached me on though, was nothing short of magic - the physics of swimming only explain what to do, it takes unrelenting belief in yourself to turn those instructions into execution. This is the metaphysics of coaching - great coaches believe in you, in those critical moments when you are having difficulty believing in yourself. At Feed your power we live and breathe the notion that to execute the life you want, all you have to do is believe that you can do it.

When Things Break Down, We Think We Need to Try Harder

You know that moment when things break down – it’s frustrating, you panic and you start to re-think all the decisions you made leading up to this moment.

Let’s put a pin on this exact inflection point – this is where you give up, you end things too early, you beat yourself up or you compare yourself to someone else’s journey.

Negative self-talk takes over:

• "This was never a good idea".

• "I need to try harder".

• “I can’t do this".

For most of my life, I believed intensity was the answer to everything. If something wasn’t working, the solution was to push harder: more effort, more discipline, more work.

But over time I realized something uncomfortable — my need to control the outcome was the very thing holding me back. The real breakthrough came from a sobering reality I didn’t want to admit there are moments when you must let things break down before you can break through.

Let’s talk about the breakdown – it’s messy, it challenges your ego and it takes no prisoners. The founder of analytical psychology Carl Jung described this moment as the “dark night of the soul” — a painful but necessary period where the identities we rely on begin to break down so something more authentic can emerge.

As crazy as it sounds, this is an opportunity to step back and recalibrate – it’s the space where your mind and body slow things down. As things start to slow down, you gain awareness and that awareness turns into clarity. My ah-ha moment was when the doctor shared results from my yearly physical - most lab results were out of range. My body had sent me the receipt, and it was an expensive tab.

For most of my life I viewed food as comfort, entertainment, and community — but never as a tool.

When we use the right tools, the body responds. Attention sharpens, energy improves, and strength begins to return. But when we fuel ourselves with the wrong tools, the opposite happens: we feel sluggish, motivation fades, and even simple decisions begin to require more effort.

I was searching for answers, and food was the last place I looked to change - we will change jobs, friends or even the city we live in before we think about changing our nutrition! I realized for many years I had overlooked what I put into my body– relying on outdated stories I would tell myself, “I can run this off and go back to eating whatever I want”. This time it was different. Years of compounding had caught up, and my body was no longer responding the way it once did. Weight was not coming off as easy, I was tired and moody all the time, and I was internalizing my frustration – I was using the wrong kind of food as my safety blanket. The thing I love most - exercising: basketball, weightlifting, sprinting - I could no longer do at a high level.  

As you read this, my story may not be that different from yours, athlete, non-athlete, teacher, business owner, husband, wife – it doesn’t really matter. We face the same challenge when it comes to what we choose to eat each day. Here is the piece that resonated with me and I believe will resonate for you too: when we commit to changing the food we put into our bodies, we begin resetting the feedback loop between the body and the mind. The body responds, the mind becomes clearer, and over time the two begin working together instead of against each other.

Start simple. Consistent improvements compound over time. Because the moment you choose your health, you begin reclaiming your power.

-- Coach Gus