The State Fair is one of my favorite times of the year. However, it brings up the dilemma of binge consumption. As someone who suffered from binge eating while in a depressed state, it’s important to be mindful of what you’re putting into your body.
The host opens the stream with a playful walk-up attempt, greets the audience, and shares morning rituals like journaling, a cold plunge, and grounding laps. He also mentions attending a concert the night before which led to a later start to his day.
He introduces the main topic—the state fair—and explains his love for it and how it became important in his relationship. He also flags that this year is different due to a recent ruptured appendix and notes how food can derail his progress mentally.
The speaker reads from his book about a period of depression when he binged on sweets, describing shame, compensation through excessive exercise, and a cycle that lasted years. He connects that long-term behavior to inflammation and ultimately to his ruptured appendix, emphasizing delayed physical consequences.
He describes how state fair trips historically led to bingeing, visible inflammation, and extended setbacks (e.g., during football season), and urges listeners to notice physical signs like bloating. Using a 'embers and flames' metaphor, he advises managing frequency and quantity to avoid fanning internal inflammation.
He recommends getting an MRT blood test to identify inflammatory foods and offers help connecting viewers to testing resources. He encourages mindful drinking/eating at the fair, shares his plan to attend mindfully, invites viewers to connect, and closes the stream.
Good morning, Cadre. I figured I'd try to do a fun little walk up. I figured I'd try to do a fun little walk up this morning. I don't know if that's ever been executed before. So I was like, let's give it a try. Let's see if we can add a little pizzazz to the beginning of the live stream. So I hope you enjoyed that mediocre attempt. Another beautiful morning here today. You can kind of see a little bit. I got my journal here. Did my cold plunge. Did my few laps in the yard for some grounding. And yeah, I got a little later start to the morning today because I went to the Rufus Du Soul concert last night at Mystic Lake Amphitheater.
It was my first time there. It was amazing. I had a bunch of our friends, so it was really great to see everybody connect in that form of community and share a wonderful experience. A couple of our friends who flew in from Austin, Texas got engaged during the concert. So that was really cool. And yeah, it was just a great night. So I got back a little later than anticipated and a little slower starts in the morning, but that happens. It's good to step outside of the box a little bit, go and have some fun.
And what I want to talk about today is something that is fun, but can also be a little tricky. And that's the state fair. And I love the state fair. So does my wife, Melissa. When we first met one of her friends sneakily asked me, so what do you like the state fair? And little did I know that this was a very important question. And I sat there and I stood with like a blank face as if I didn't like the state fair. And then I said, well, I love the state fair. And that was a big thing for us early on in our relationship was our shared love of the state fair.
And so the state fair for me is, I love every aspect of it. I'll go on rides, I'll go to concerts depending on who's there, I'll eat food, I'll imbibe a little much. But this is a different year for me because it was almost five months ago that I had my surgery for my ruptured appendix. And pretty much anything at the state fair is going to be highly inflammatory. So just take note of that and don't use this or try not to use it as a means to step too far back. And for me, It's like food can be a mental thing that can kind of derail my progress.
I decided to pull out my book, Pain Management, My Pain, Your Gain. And there's a chapter in there that I call The Battle with the Mind. And that was, that's a recount of me struggling with depression and food is playing a large role in this trap that I'm in and I have there's a just a little paragraph here I'll just read it really quick but in the fall of 20 In 2005, things were unraveling for me. I couldn't find my groove. Partying with newfound acquaintances in Florida wasn't fulfilling. While the people I socialized with were great and full of life, I still felt disconnected as if I belonged elsewhere.
That's when I started searching for happiness and I ended up finding it in the form of deliciously hot, fresh Krispy Kreme donuts. I could smell them from my apartment on campus, literally. There was a fan blowing that insatiable aroma directly into my window and I swear their neon red sign reflected in the night sky like a bat symbol. I started out with just a few of them, but quickly moved to eating a full box with a dozen donuts glazed to perfection. A dozen donuts every day. So I didn't, and what that did for me was it caused this intense shame on myself.
So instead of getting a good sleep, I'd go to bed on a full stomach and I'd wake up angry with myself and force myself to go on a workout for like 90 minutes to two hours to counter the behavior that I had done the night before. And this was a beginning of a rough cycle that lasted throughout my entire depression. So a couple, like the better part of three years. And it was infuriating because I couldn't control it. I described this desire to eat sweets as the werewolf, like a werewolf that would only come out at night.
So I would be okay during the day. I would essentially kind of starve myself. And because I knew that the amount of calories that I consumed in the form of sweets was, you know, probably in like the 2 to 3,000. That's just a blank estimate. And you couldn't really see it in me because I was using it as fuel, poor fuel. think of your body as a really nice car. Well, you're not going to put crappy fuel in there or mix it with water. You're going to put premium fuel in. And I was running on fumes. So I feel like this exacerbated my depression because it was this just cycle of bad behavior.
And what would happen is I'd go and I'd work out and I'd feel better. I feel like I got it out of my system, like literally. And I'd go about my day and I would try not to think about eating later. I would try to motivate myself and then I would just be right back in the trap and couldn't get out of it. And when I left Florida to come back home, that transitioned to late night grocery store stops or late night gas station stops where I would get candy bars, Butterfingers, Kit Kats, dunk them in peanut butter, and that was my thing.
So, and I'm pretty sure that that type of behavior created this underlying base layer of inflammation in my body that over time with the addition of stress, led to my ruptured appendix. So things that you do might not be experienced right away, but if you do it, if it's bad and you do it long enough, it's going to create problems physically and mentally because it was tough to do to myself. So at the state fair, I would usually run into scenarios each year where I'd go to the fair. We'd probably go twice because there's so much to do.
And it was that excuse to just binge, right? And it always would set off this just run of inflammation in my body. I could see it in my face. I could see it in my stomach and in my low back. And then I'd go back to the fair and kind of do it again. And that would lead into football season where you're meeting up with friends or having lazy Sundays and probably consuming more. So September would always turn out to be a rough time for me because I would just set myself back. And I could go and physically work out, but I would have to work out more.
It would take away the time I had to do the things that I needed to do, which is just create another just string of mental battles that I had to unnecessarily face. So And it's still, I'm not perfect. There's still inside of me this desire to binge or just have too much. Because I used to eat, I would probably binge so much that even a reduced level of binging is still significantly more than the average person. So I have to be really careful with what I'm doing to my body, which in turn affects my mind.
So I know sweets and eating things of that nature, maybe it's on the salty category, if you're not a sweets person, that has, that will cause a lot of problems in your mind and maybe you're not noticing it. Maybe that quick fix of dopamine, that dopamine hit with the sugar or the salt or whatever is making you feel good, but then you're attributing feeling bad somewhere else. So the power of food really does create the direction that you want to go. And if you can start to like focus on a good diet, it should allow you to sleep better, rest better, regenerate yourself, and then you're in a better state of function.
So with the state fair coming up here, I just want you all to be mindful of what you're putting in. You know, maybe notice how your stomach Is it gargling? Is it cramping a little bit? What did you have that was going to do that? So that's, you know, I mean, especially when it comes to beer, which I haven't had a beer since Easter Sunday when my appendix ruptured. But I, so I talk to people about that and people will talk to me and they'll say like, oh yeah, I just, I get so bloated and full, but it's so good.
And I'm like, bloated and full, it shouldn't be the result of consumption. It's really a sign that you're not responding well to what you're putting in there. And for me, I learned that wheat is the highest inflammatory thing for meat. And alcohol is just, you know, I mean, you stick a match to alcohol, it burns, right? So that's flames. It's, that causes inflammation. And, you know, I think our, I think maybe I've mentioned this before, but I see food now and anything we put into our body, can be a liquid, as little embers.
And you can have flamey big embers or damp embers that, you know, where the flame is almost going out. And it's important to put more of those damp embers in your body than those raging coals in a sense that are just going to fan the flame inside of you. And it's all about frequency and quantity. So it is 100% necessary to take days off in between consuming those big embers that would fan the flames. So, and you know, the best way to do that from what I've learned is to take a blood test, specifically an MRT.
It's a mediator release test. And I was getting that knowledge for My appendix recovery was huge. So to know the certain categories of food that I can consume to dampen the flames inside of me just makes me feel better physically and mentally. So if you're looking to get this test, I'm happy to steer you in the right direction and get you connected with someone who can get you the test so that you can take it and get this valuable information and then, you know, information is what you do with it.
So when it comes to feeling good, what we put in our bodies is a product of how we ultimately feel up top. So as you go to the state fair, enjoy yourself, right? But enjoy yourself with a little more mindfulness. throw a nod to Jen and Jen Varale and the mindful drinking. Maybe this is a week of mindful eating or mindful consuming because I know it's going to have to be for me. I'm going to go back to a place. I'm going to be at the state fair on Monday. If anybody's there, send me a message. Maybe we'll connect and share a story, take a picture together, one of the two or who knows.
But yeah, I'm going to go there on Monday and I'm going to be excited, but I'm going to have to take a whole new approach. And I'm going to make sure that I come away feeling good and not feeling ready to explode. So yeah, that's going to be it for me on this mighty fine Wednesday. And I hope everyone's having a great week so far and trending for wonderful rest of the weekend and we'll see you very soon. Cheers cadre.
