The Craig Van Cast
Hey, I’m Craig. I've dedicated more than a decade to understanding the human spine. Now I’m sharing what I’ve learnt. Get started with my SPINE STRENGTH project - Part 1 is free. Subscribe and you’ll receive my work as I release it.
The Craig Van Cast
Why I Stopped Following Health Experts (and tripled my energy)
YouTube Description - Episode 06: Why I Stopped Following Health Gurus (And Tripled My Energy)
Final YouTube Description:
I spent years following every health guru and still had zero energy. Here's how I stopped being a Puppet to external advice and became the Pilot of my own health—tripling my energy by learning to read my body's intelligence instead of depending on everyone else's rules.
✅ EAT System | Get Your FREE Action Plan:
► https://craigvan.com/eat/poster
––– THE CRAIG VAN CAST –––
✉️ Newsletter: https://craigvan.com
🎙️ Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/33YUexvQc7XOGoUF5zCKc7
🎙️ Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-craig-van-cast/id1436755419
––– CONNECT WITH ME –––
Website: https://craigvan.com
X: https://x.com/craigvandotcom
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/craigvandotcom/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/craigvandotcom/
CHAPTERS:
00:00 My Journey Through Diets and Realizations
02:12 The Truth About Making Dietary Decisions
03:12 Introducing the Body Intelligence Framework
05:11 Pillar One: Body Intelligence
14:31 Pillar Two: Internalization
18:53 Pillar Three: Mission Focus
23:27 Bringing It All Together
24:39 Your Next Steps
#eat #bodyintelligence #healthautonomy #nutrition #biohacking #menheath #internallocus #puppet #pilot #selfreliance
@craigvandotcom (on all channels)
Website: https://craigvan.com
X: https://x.com/craigvandotcom
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/craigvandotcom/?hl=en
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHJ9dnY6Vj7BVNNCMQ72hbQ
I spent many years letting other people tell me what my body needed, and none of it kept me energized In the long run, paleo, keto, carnivore, vegan pescatarian, I followed them all like a well-behaved puppet, dependent on their strings for every move for direction. And modern life is designed to make us give our power away to experts, to apps, to the latest protocol. We're constantly pulled to look outside ourselves for answers, dependent on external guidance for our decisions, until I realized what my body was capable of, that I hadn't yet learned to understand. I've tried every diet protocol you can name. I've spent thousands on supplements and lab tests. I've tracked every macro and micronutrient, but I always landed up. Still exhausted. Still uncomfortable, still foggy. And then one day coming out of a 10 day silent meditation course, I did something that I've never done before. I listened to an internal hunch, not an expert, not a diet rule, not some idea that I'd attached myself to. Definitely not anything that I could logically justify or explain. Instead, I acted on some guidance, which was coming from somewhere inside of my own body. That was eight years ago. Today I have more energy at 35 than I did even at 25. And not because I found the perfect diet, but because I learned to stop giving my power away to everyone else's ideas about what I should eat, my body became my guide. I know you're tired of conflicting health advice. I sure was one expert saying keto is best. Another saying vegan. Meanwhile, we're still crashing every afternoon and wondering what to believe, even though we're following the diet or the protocol to the letter. Now, look, today I'm sharing the truth about making dietary decisions and how you can know what your body actually needs. How to give up being that puppet with your strings, being pulled by whatever your current diet of choice is, and instead becoming your own pilot, charting your own course. This isn't about finding the right diet, it's about recognizing your body's sophistication and that you have a duty to study all of its signs and signals if you care about your life's work. If you connect with your body, you won't just triple your energy, you'll upgrade your entire life's mission. Let me explain. Every aspect of modern life pulls us to externalize our decisions, to surrender our inner knowing to something outside ourselves. It's a constant battle to maintain our internal connection. That's where this body intelligence framework I'm about to share comes in. It has three pillars that transformed me from dependent to independent pillar. One is body intelligence, acknowledging that my body is a sophisticated machine and that symptoms and signals are not random. They are either, uh, clear communication with a direct message, or they have a cause that deserves investigation, not random. And this leads us straight into the next pillar, pillar two, internalization. Once we understand what the message is or what the cause is. We can bring our decision making back inside. We use this behavior to guide our behavior. I'm sorry. We use this information to guide our behavior. We move the trigger of our actions from the outside to inside of us. We're still always left with a choice that we need to make, and this is where pillar three comes in. Pillar three is being mission focused. Every choice we make, we try and filter it through one question. How does this impact my mission? We analyze how the symptom or the signal that we're experiencing, we analyze how it impacts our mission negatively, and we choose a response which benefits our mission the most. So pillar one is body intelligence. Pillar two is internalization and pillar three is being mission focused. This framework doesn't give me a set of hardcoded rules to follow. It gives me a framework to make my own decisions. It helps me connect to my body to make decisions based on my personal experience and to remember how each of my choices, or to help me understand rather how each of my choices is shaping my future. Now let's unpack each pillar a little bit more. So let's start with pillar one. Body intelligence. A puppet follows what an expert says. A pilot learns to follow what their body says. One of them is navigating reality. The other isn't is merely entertaining ideas. I remember coming back from a movement session a few years ago, and more of my joints were aching than I had a good explanation for, despite the fact that I was following my very trusted vegan diet, vegan with lots of eggs, chicken's, eggs, to be specific, the only, that was the only animal product I was eating. Of course it was clean only. Good stuff, nothing toxic, gluten-free, sugar-free, et cetera. Well, theoretically, at least, it was good. I should have been feeling great. This was a phenomenal idea. Theoretically, so much fiber, so many vitamins and minerals, more than enough animal protein technically, and I was following it to the letter. But my symptoms were telling me that my body was clearly inflamed. And as a side note, if the same joint hurts on both sides, you need to rule out systemic inflammation before you assume it's a mechanical injury. Back to my vegan diet. The puppet in me defended my brilliant idea and even commended me for such a great idea and for so. Diligently acting on it. I told myself that this joint pain is must just be a temporary phase that I need to pass through, or maybe my sleep wasn't good enough or my hydration wasn't dialed in, or any number of things and one of a million things that are not right, but it's obviously just not my diet because my diet makes way too much sense theoretically. Now that's what it looks like to think about ideas of good diets instead of observing the reality of how our body is responding to food. And ultimately, all of our ideas originate from outside of us, from people and experiments and research. So by following an idea, we are inherently still being dependent on the external for our decisions, trusting information from outside of ourselves more than we trust the information within us. And this is what we want to change many studies on interoception, our ability to sense our internal experience. Have showed that men who can read their body signals have dramatically better health outcomes. Not because they follow better diets, but because they are connected and responding to their reality. But our challenge is that modern life drowns out these signals, information overload, conflicting advice. The constant noise coming from every app and every expert sucks us into. A whole world of ideas pulling us away from paying attention to our personal reality. Think about it, your body is the most sophisticated technology in our galaxy. It's been refined through millions of years of evolution. Every signal, every symptom, they're communicating something that we can use if we understand how to. Contrary to popular belief, our bodies don't produce symptoms for no reason At random. If something doesn't seem right or there is a signal, there is always a cause that we can investigate, understand, and respond to. Yeah. Once you start to understand this, you start to see symptoms as opportunities, not as problems. When you see that every signal can be used to understand more about your body and what it needs and what's going on in your body, you'll start to see the signals as a form of intelligence rich with opportunity to learn. And just like every other thing we pay attention to. Our awareness of our body's signs and signals grows as we pay more attention. They get louder and clearer. The signs and signals get louder and clearer the more we give them attention. It's no different to learning a language. In fact, it's exactly the same. And we, through this process, are learning to speak one of our body's languages. To get started, I recommend you study, uh, three categories of signals, energy, digestion, and clarity. First, your energy, your body's battery, how much power and inspiration do you feel like you have to do what you wanna do? It's constantly changing, but what we need to acknowledge is that it never changes for no reason. Second, our digestion or our digestive comfort or distress. Our body's fuel and waste management system, this is mission critical. It's also continuously communicating loads of information with us. Fullness, hunger, bloating, tension, constipation, diarrhea to name a few signals. Third, mental clarity or fogginess. This is your body's most executive high order function, sharpness, focus, concentration, memory, creativity, decisiveness, just to name a few aspects of clarity. Dr. Mark Hyman, a true pioneer in the field of functional medicine. Has said most people have never connected the dots between how they feel and what they eat, as simple as that. So I want you to start connecting the dots between how your energy, digestion, and mental clarity feel, and start noticing what patterns exist between these feelings. And what you eat. Let's start tracking these and start connecting these dots. Not calories, not macros, not the latest diet, just these three signals. If I eat almond, my stomach immediately feels a kind of subtle, stiff fullness, like a sharp fullness with a dash of heaviness. It's like my stomach is saying, what the fuck are you doing? While my mind wants to believe that almond are healthy. A while ago I figured out that I had developed a subtle reaction to almonds. Then I just so happened to confirm this in lab tests a few months later. By chance, I didn't know what was happening to me when I ate the almonds, and it took me some time to even connect that subtle sensation to almonds. But when I did, it was clear that my body didn't want me to eat them. No study could have predicted that. No expert could have warned me. I only knew because my body told me directly. I didn't know why I couldn't explain to you the mechanics of what was happening. I didn't need to know why. I just knew that my body didn't want me to eat almond, and that's the kind of body intelligence that I'm talking about. You learn to notice things and you stop seeing symptoms as problems. You start to see the information as intelligence, as opportunity. You start to see your body as a sophisticated machine that you can have a sophisticated relationship with, and you don't need to be able to reasonably explain. Or intellectually explain why something is good or bad for you. You only need to know if you feel better or worse what is happening in your reality, better or worse in a sustainable way, and this is an important point. Cocaine might feel better for you today, or it may. It might make you feel better today, but it'll make you feel worse for the rest of the week. Now, let's move on to pillar two. Internalization. If the Temple of Delphi in ancient Greece gave us the first pillar, know thyself, then Emerson gave us the second pillar. Trust thyself and modern science has proven him right. Self-efficacy. Your belief in your own judgment is a significant predictor of health outcomes. But sadly, the truth is that we are trained to, from birth, to give our power away, to trust everyone else's opinion over our own experience. It's a habit that runs so deep. That most of us don't even realize we are doing it all of the time. And where most men get stuck is that they know what their body needs, but they still look outside for permission, for guidance. Should I try intermittent fasting? Is it okay to eat carbs at night? What would my coach think? I wonder what diet that athlete is on. And that's what it looks like to keep our attention and our locus of control outside of us. After my meditation retreat that I shared earlier, my body demanded plants, only plants, and I'd never given up meat before. All the experts I trusted at that point would've said I was wrong, that I didn't understand what my body needed, but I didn't ask for permission. I didn't try to lead reason or ize. I trusted the signal and I trusted my body. My clarity happened to compound. From that moment, my work quality improved. I was sustaining the fire for my life's work, not just following advice or optimizing metrics. For over a year, I ate vegan. And I've got many benefits, many psychological and spiritual, but also physical benefits. Then all of a sudden, one day, the signal changed my body, called for fish, no guilt, no dogme, just sovereign decision making based on my present moment, awareness of my personal reality. Internalization is the active process of bringing our decision making back inside. It's reclaiming the power we've been giving away our entire life. It's saying, my body's intelligence plus my lived experience equals my guide, my truth, my reality, not the latest study, not a trending protocol. Instead, my internal experience, the. And it happens to be the only reality. I have direct access to the only truth I have direct conscious connection with. And this sounds simple, and it should because it is. But that doesn't mean it's easy. It doesn't make it easy. We still have to face all of the habits, all of the addictions, but at least we can have confidence about where we are trying to go. It should be a little bit easier to have some faith every day. I'm still faced with familiar challenges, gluttony in one form or another, binging, emotional eating, mindless eating, et cetera. In some days I still crash at 3:00 PM in the afternoon. Still reach for the nuts when I'm careless, but the difference is now I know why I feel the way I do and why things happen, and I'm still continuously choosing awareness over automaticity or switching on that autopilot. I am paying attention. I don't have to be perfect, but at least I'm observing the reality with each year that passes. I'm getting better at listening to my body and I'm reclaiming my ability to make decisions. Decisions which are in alignment with my highest good. My highest benefit. Now let's move on to pillar three being mission focused, and this is where everything converges. Our mission is our motivation. For every single choice we need to remember, observe, and ask, how does this symptom impact my mission? Negatively. And what response to this symptom will benefit my mission the most? Our mission deserves our peak performance and our performance depends on our health. This is our why, and it only works if we keep it in mind and we keep paying attention as men. It's our mission that drives us. So we need to use that drive to make better choices, and we need to be honest with ourselves and admit that we will not serve our mission if we don't have energy and clarity. But what most people are missing is that missions are lifelong and that, and that epic achievements are, are reached through compounded effects. Through the long game, not in desperate sprints, which try to rush greatness. Therefore, our health plus play the long game too. We need energy and clarity for an entire lifetime if we want to have the greatest impact. Self-determination theory shows that internal motivation that's doing things for your own reasons. It creates better outcomes, not just in health, but in everything we do. And when I stopped paying attention or so much attention and depending on experts for every decision, and I started instead to listen to my body's signals, something shifted. My afternoon crashes disappeared. My decision fatigue vanished. My creative output multiplied. My clarity grew. You see mission-focused decision making transforms health from a, a series of short-term rules into strategic questions. What serves my mission for the next 10 years? Not just how do I follow the rules for the next 10 days? And then we are starting to talk about 10 x improvements over 10 years, not just 10% improvements over 10 days because it's just like in our mission, there are compounded effects in health that are waiting for us over time, which in turn will multiply our impact. And this is the feedback loop we're aiming for compounded impact multiplied by compounded health. Body intelligence reveals your sophisticated internal wisdom. Internalization brings your locus of control back inside. Mission Focus directs and fuels every choice towards those compounded results. Together they create a man who doesn't need gurus. Because he's learned to understand his body's signals and intelligence while playing the long game. This journey from external to internal control, it's not a one time shift. It's a daily practice. Every meal, every choice, you're either giving your power away or you're taking it back. Now we're not rejecting. Please notice we are not rejecting all external input. We're using it to serve our experiential knowledge. We are not dogmatic. It's about knowing when to trust yourself and when to seek external input. Researchers call people who master this balance by locals. They adapt their locus of control to the situation. You still learn from experts. You just stop letting them override your lived experience. You keep what works and you discard what doesn't tried and tested through direct experience, you personal, direct experience. So let's bring this all together. The framework is three pillars. Body intelligence is acknowledging your body's sophistication. Symptoms do not appear for no reason. Internalization is bringing your locus of control back inside where it belongs, and mission focused. We remember our reason for being here, and we study how every choice impacted, and when we master all three, we start to accumulate compounded results. Ultimately, we go from being confused and bouncing between protocols to confidently charting our own course that we fully trust. From a confused follower of external rules to a confident authority of our own internal signals from a man who needs permission to a man who trusts his judgment. And so here's what I want you to do. Start studying your body for the next seven days. Track. Your three signals that I mentioned after every meal, the energy, digestion, and clarity, and ask yourself, is this choice a quick fix or a sustainable long-term solution for compounding results? And if you're ready, download My Body Compass poster. The link is in the description. It shows you how to read your body signals and gives you a framework for choosing. Better foods. So which pillar that we discussed resonates with you the most right now, which are, which do you think is impacting your journey the most, and which do you think you wish to change? The soonest body intelligence, internalization, or mission focus? Let me know in the comments.