Podcast Transcription: RTF 142: Health Red Flags That Every Entrepreneur Should Look Out For with Ted Ryce

Ted Ryce: Your body is not a car, obviously. However, there are a lot of similarities. For example, our body is a biological machine, just like your car is mechanical and electrical machine. And one of the things that both bodies and cars do is that when an issue starts to go wrong in your car, a “check engine” light will come on or a “low oil” light will come on and your body gives you signs just like your car does. 

And I remember when I failed to heed the warning, when a check engine light came on on my car. I was 22 years old and I just thought I could keep going after that yellow check engine light went on, and I ended up losing the. I thought I would've learned my lesson about waiting to do something about red flags. 

However, with my body, I wasn't sure about some of the things I was experiencing. So in that spirit, my intention today is to help you learn red flags, signs that your body are trying to tell you, listen, you've got to do something about your health. So what is up, my friend? And welcome back to the podcast, the Legendary Life podcast. 

I'm your host, Ted Ryce, coach to entrepreneurs and executives, as well as other high-performing professionals. And let's dive right in. The first red flag I want you to pay attention to is poor sleep. Poor sleep is something that you must do something about if you're experiencing it.  

I remember when I first started having poor sleep, I was in my late 20s. Now, I had poor sleep in my early 20s, but I knew it was from being out in the club and drinking alcohol and smoking weed and taking ecstasy. But by the time I got into my late 20s, I had stopped all that stuff. I wasn't going out, I was so tired of it, and I really wanted to do something with my life. 

However, I was having some issues sleeping. And I remember thinking that it was kind of normal. For example, I would do a tough workout at jiu-jitsu, and then I wouldn't be able to sleep at night after. And I did that three times a week sometimes, and I just thought it was normal.  

Sometimes I would wake up in the middle of the night, sometimes more than once, and I just thought it was normal. And I would wake up too early, like before my alarm clock went off. In those days, I was getting up at like 6:30 or even 6 sometimes. I pushed it up. I used to do 6 AM clients. That's when the gym opened, I'd wake up at 5.  

But even then I would wake up earlier, not having slept well, little sip of tea, and I thought it was normal. And I thought feeling bad was normal. I thought having poor sleep was normal, that it was maybe part of age. And I was 28 years old, 29, 30, 31 years old. Fast forward to now, I'm 45, I sleep better than…I want to say my whole entire life, which can't be true. 

But certainly, since my 20s, I sleep way better than I did in my 20s. And here are some things that I would tell you: if you are suffering from poor sleep and you're blaming your age, there may be something to age, especially if you're in your 60s or 70s. However, if you're in your 40s or if you're in your 30s or 50s or even 60, there's a lot you can do. 

And the first thing I would tell you is, number one, get an Oura Ring. Don't think about it. Don't research it for eight months to see if it's a good investment, look, get an Oura Ring, and I'll tell you what the ordering has done for me. And no, I don't have a promo code for you. This isn’t a sales pitch or anything like that. 

I would be happy to be affiliated with the company, but I'm not, I'm too busy for that. That said, here's what the Oura Ring has done for me. And I don't care whether you get an Oura. I happen to like the Oura. I haven't tried the Whoop, but get something that measures your sleep quality, especially if it focuses on sleep quality, like the Oura or the Whoop does, versus the Apple Watch where it kind of does sleep quality, but how good is it?  

I don't know. I'm not an Apple Watch wearer, but track your sleep. And then what you can see, especially with Oura Ring is you can see, okay, am I sleeping better? What causes me to sleep poorly? What causes me to sleep better? And then you can start to work on improving them. For example, what I've learned is that I thought poor sleep was just something I had to deal with. 

And what I ended up realizing from using the Oura Ring, was that I was able to figure out, okay, when it's too hot, I sleep poorly. So I need to always be in a place where I can control the temperature and put it down. The second thing that's obvious, especially if you're in the United States, you’ve got an AC, but a lot of places, in Asia and Europe don't have ACs. 

So the second thing is light. I need to be able to control light, and the darker, the better. Even if you have just a little bit of light, it affects your melatonin product. It stimulates melatonin production and it can mess with you. So if you're a person, you're getting up and going to the bathroom in the middle of the night and you're turning on the light full blast, and then you're wondering why you can't get back to bed. 

Well, now you have some idea of why that's happening, and the Oura Ring or some type of sleep tracker, it helps you dial those in. And another thing I've learned about sleep is, if I'm too stressed or if I do things that are too active, for example, I used to do Brazilian jiu-jitsu. I used to practice Brazilian jiu-jitsu at night, and then I wouldn't be able to sleep after. 

And I just thought it was normal, and I just powered through it because, hey, I'm mentally tough. And I paid a big price and I wanted to tell you sleep is the first thing I'm talking about here, because if you fix your sleep, it can fix so many things for you, it can fix your energy, it can fix your performance in the gym. 

It can fix so many other issues that in uncontrollable, hunger or cravings that you feel, sleep should be the first thing that you fix. And I highly recommend get something to dial it in. Oura Ring is like having a sleep coach. It lets you how you did the night before. 

And if you didn't do a good job of sleeping, it lets you know, hey, it took you too long to fall asleep. Hey, it only took one minute to fall asleep, right? That's called sleep latency. Also, it tells you how long you've been in bed, because a lot of us, this is another thing I've learned from Oura is that, we're in bed for eight hours, but we're not asleep for eight hours. 

So it tells you how long you've been in bed. And it also tells you how long you were asleep, and it gives you a percentage, which is called your sleep efficiency—very important number. And the more efficient your sleep is in general, the better, but you don't know how to fix your sleep if you can't isolate what the issue is. 

So get a sleep tracker, but do not accept poor sleep as just part of getting old. There are a lot of people who are older, who sleep well, and you can be one of them. Second thing, irritability, irritability, “Oh, I'm just an irritable person.” No, you're not. Either something happened in your life that you didn't deal with or you're kind of running on the edge of burnout now and it’s causing you to be snappy with the people that you care about.  

And I remember sometimes when I was feeling really… I used to be a very irritable person and sometimes I still have that tendency and it's a way like, “Ooh, I'm irritable.” In fact, I caught myself just the other day, last Friday, I was like, “Hmm, I'm irritable, you know? Hmm.” 

And what I ended up doing was I did a one hour float, actually, a 50 minute float in a float tank. I'm here in Brazil right now, about 15 minutes away, there's this place that I can go and I can do an hour float or 50 minute float. And what they offered, they're like, “Hey, do you want to do a massage afterward?” 

I'm like, “You know what? It's Friday night. I don't have any plans. I'm feeling stressed. Let me do it.” So I did an hour float or 50 minute float, and I had a 50 minute massage afterward, as well. And guess what? I didn't feel irritable after, where in the old days I just felt it was just part of who I was. 

But in reality, what I was doing was, I was getting so stressed out and I wasn't doing anything about it. I thought that just hopping in bed, turning off the lights and watching some Netflix was my way to de-stress. But here's what I've learned. Stress relief, de-stressing needs to be proactive. 

You think it's just sitting there not doing anything, but your mind is racing, you're checking your phone. You're trying to enjoy the show, or maybe you even do enjoy the show. Maybe it sucks you away, but as soon as it's over, you wake up, you're still not feeling a hundred percent. You must be proactive. 

If you notice irritability coming in frequently, do something about it, don't make it other people's problem. People’s got to deal with you because you're irritable because you won't step up and take care of yourself. And I used to be that person. So I'm not judging you harshly here because I've been there. But I will say this: now you know that you can go do something about it. 

And the thing to do is some type of stress relieving activity. Maybe you need a massage like I did. Maybe you need a vacation. Maybe you need to leave your job. Maybe you need to leave the relationship you're in. I don't know you so I can't tell you exactly what to do, but I will tell you this, there's some form of stress in your life and you're not dealing with it, and it's making you irritable.  

Go do something about it, please. Not only will the people who around you appreciate it, but you are going to feel better as well. And I know that's why you listen to this podcast. You think there's some answer here and I will tell you there are answers, but you've got to act on them. 

Number three, joint pains. Oh man, I've suffered with so many joint pains. In a recent episode, I talked about some of the injuries that I've had, and I will tell you this, joint pains are also a source…. Okay. So there's a couple things here and I don't want to get too deep about it, go down too deep down the rabbit hole about it, because we could talk about the theory of pain and where it comes from and how it's related to your brain and central sensitization and other things. 

But what I will tell you is this: if your joints are in pain, it means there's some type of inflammation going on. Now, it could be like an autoimmune type of inflammation with psoriatic arthritis or rheumatoid arthritis. It could be osteoarthritis from overuse, and no, running doesn't give you bad knees and weightlifting doesn't give you bad joints. It's how you do it. 

And what happens with most people is that we overdo exercise, not for our muscles, although that can happen too, but for our joints. And I want to tell you, it's not entirely your fault if you've done this, because it's almost like two different systems. 

You have the systems of your joints and then you have your muscles. And it's called your musculoskeletal system. I almost said skeletal system. I thought I was Canadian there for a second or British. But your musculoskeletal system. And the issue is this: your muscles, you can tear a muscle and it responds quickly. It heals quickly.  

But if you damage your meniscus in your knee, if you damage your labrum in your hip or shoulder, if you damage one of your vertebral discs in your cervical spine or your lumbar spine, that doesn't have a blood supply. And it takes a really long time to heal if it ever heals properly at all.  

And one of the keys to letting it heal properly are making sure that when you have joint pain, you do something about it. See a physical therapist, find ways to work around the injury, but certainly don't train through pain. Don't do that. I've talked about how that was one of the biggest mistakes I've made. 

And I do want to say this too. I said, I wouldn't talk about central sensitization, but I'll just say, going back to our first red flag, which was poor sleep, poor sleep causes something called central sensitization, and it causes your nervous system to be more sensitive and you hurt more as a result. So if you're having joint pains and poor sleep, you know what to do about it, or irritability as well. 

Let's get to the next one. Low sex drive. Gosh. I remember having a low sex drive in my early 30s. And I didn't understand why, because if you looked at me, you would've said, “Whoa, you are jacked. You are ripped. You must be a sex machine, a se god,” except I wasn't. I remember having sex more than one time in a week and I felt like it was too much. I felt like it was too much was like, “Oh man, you know, this is too much for me.” 

And here's what I learned about that. Number one, you can get... I think there's a few things here that we could talk about. Now, the first thing that will people might, or especially men might talk about is like, “Oh, well it's a testosterone issue.”  

Maybe, maybe not. We go to testosterone. That's what's marketed to us. And that's what we think will make us more of a man if we have more of it. But I'll tell you this: I've had my testosterone measured a bunch of different times in my life, including when my sex drive was very high, and I was having sex every day. 

That's recently, by the way. And my testosterone was not that different. It was in the 500s, which is not that high. And when I was having low sex drive, it was also in the 500s. I haven't had it tested that many times, to be honest. But I'll tell you, one of the reasons why I don't care about it as much, is I don't think it's as big of a deal. 

Now, obviously, some people, if you have a traumatic brain injury, if you had a testicular injury, if you have a vericocele, which is a varicose vein that leads, you know, one of the veins that attaches to your testicles, if you have a varicose vein there, that can cause testosterone issues, and you should be checked for those things if you're a guy and you haven't. But I'll tell you this.  

What I've learned is this: if you're having low sex drive, ask yourself these questions. Number one, how much am I sleeping? If you sleep six hours or less, eh, that's an issue. Number two, how good of cardiovascular shape are you in? Can you walk up 10 flights of stairs without having a heart attack? 

And this third thing is your stress. So how well are you sleeping? How good of cardiovascular condition are you in, and how stressed are you? For example, if you have very low sex drive, but then you go on vacation and then you’re making love like a bunny. Well, that shows you you've got a stress issue. You don't have a testosterone issue.  

In fact, I remember having a conversation with a guy in his 20s, late 20s, and he is like, “Oh man, I think I need hormone replacement.” And then we got into talking about it and I was like, “Well, how do you feel on vacation?” It's like, “No, man, it comes back, and then I'm having a lot of sex, it's great.” It's like, well then, it's your lifestyle. It's not a lack of testosterone then, isn't it?  

So whenever you have…I want to say this, a higher sex drive, if you're horny or healthy, I'll just leave it at that. And it's not the hornier you are that you're healthy because it can be like an addiction. That's not what I mean, but if you're like, “Yeah, yeah, I have a sex drive. I'm interested in sex. I want to have sex every week, several times a week.” 

Look at those three things. Look at your sleep. If you're not feeling that way, look at your sleep. Look at your stress. Also ask yourself how good of aerobic shape are you in? Because if you're in really poor aerobic shape, because you are overweight or you don't do a lot of aerobic exercise because you just want to get jacked and lift weights all the time. That's a problem when you get older. Because if the blood don't flow where it needs to go, you're not going to be having much fun. 

So more important than testosterone. Again, we're not talking about clinical issues with testosterone. Like you're really low in testosterone, but if you're in the normal range, but you're like, “Yeah, but I'm not like 800 or 1000 nanograms per deciliter,” or whatever the unit is, it is probably not that. 

Get into really good cardiovascular shape and see if that doesn't fix the problem. Start prioritizing cardio and measuring your resting heart rate and get it down into the 50s or better even 40s. And then tell me if you're still feeling the issues with your low sex drive. 

So let's get to the next one. Growing waistline. I should have maybe put this one up first. Growing waistline, what do we say about it? “Oh, it's because of age, it's because of age.” Really? No, not really. Not really. Not at all. Not at all. Now I want to be clear here. I want to be clear, because we can say, “Oh really, Ted. I don't believe that. I think you're just downplaying it. You're not even old enough to say these things.” 

And what I want to tell you is this: we know that when we hit 60 years old, that there is some slowing of our metabolism, but I want to put this into context for you. Number one, if you ain't 60, don't ever say that it’s your age. It is your behaviors. It is your stress. It is that you eat more, but you think you're not eating more, because you're just eating when you're hungry. 

But you're doing like five handfuls of M&Ms throughout the day or crackers or whatever other snacks or nuts or whatever it is. And you don't realize you're just eating when you're hungry, and your hunger has changed more so than your metabolism, and it's due to stress, it's due to not enough exercise, it's due to poor sleep, but it ain't due to your age.  

And even when you get into your 60s, your metabolism doesn't slow down by that much. It's very gradual. I forget the exact number, but it's very gradual, like what percent, but it's only like a couple percent and what I'm trying to tell you here, and I'm not trying to make you feel bad. 

I'm just trying to tell you the truth. I'm just trying to show you. Look, I was in that place where I was blaming my age and I was in my mid-30s. And what I wish I could do is I could go back and do things differently. And that's a lot of what drives this podcast. I want to help you not go down the dark paths that I have in my life with my health. 

The good news is, I did something about it, even when I was a fitness professional, and I should have known better and I didn't know better, but now I do. So, if you notice that your waistline is growing, you've got to ask yourself, what is driving your appetite? Let's be honest here. What is driving your appetite? 

Do you sleep poorly? How stressed are you? How bored are you in life? What is upsetting you? And certainly, is there some genetic component to a growing waistline, for sure, but ultimately, it's our behavior. Just because you have the genes… We can put you in Cambodia where you won't have enough food to eat, a poor village in Cambodia where you're eating rice and fish sauce. 

You know, and a few other things, you're eating rats and bugs, and some fruit and you won't have a growing waistline. But because of our rich—because we're in an affluent country. If you're listening to this, you speak English and the chances are quite high that you're in a wealthy country, too. 

So don't take a growing waistline as just part of getting older. Don't accept that. Ask yourself, what's causing you to turn to food. What's causing your hunger to go up? And we'll do a podcast about how to control your hunger later. I've got some pretty powerful things I would love to share with you about that, but not today. 

So the next one is bad blood panel. First of all, have you had a blood panel in the past year? Because if you haven't then you need to go get one. So number one thing, you've got to start putting your health first here. Don't listen to this podcast and…Here's what people do. They listen to podcasts. 

They feel really good about listening and then they don't do anything. And listen, it's okay if you're there, but I will tell you this: you're stuck. If you're in the listening, listening, listening, listening, listening, not doing, not doing, not doing, not doing mode, you're stuck. It's okay to be stuck. I've been stuck, but realize you're stuck. 

So that was a little bit of a tangent, but just a message to anybody out there who's too busy to take care of their health. So I had a bad blood panel. Again, when I was about 37, 38, I don't know how many years, I had a bad blood panel—probably a couple, probably more than I'd be happy knowing about. I don't remember how many blood panels I had. 

Now, I get one frequently. I get one every year. About to get a new one. And I had one just last year. I'm going to have a new one, and I'm going to get my D3, in addition to all the other things that I had last time. And I had my testosterone taken last time too, and sperm count and just…Story I'm not going to share, but a bunch of things were taken. We're doing that.  

Well, I'll just say this: sperm count thing, it's because I want kids and I wanted to make sure that I was able to have them. So I had a bunch of things tested to make sure. And everything's okay. And my testosterone isn't super high, but I'll tell you, my sex drive is way higher than it used to be. And my blood panel is better now, too.  

So if you haven't gotten a blood panel, get one. And if you have one, and here, I want to tell you about this. I got one and I had borderline pre-diabetic blood sugar levels, and I've shared that many times on different podcasts and you've heard it, probably seen it in my marketing. 

And by the way, that's true. I'd had that, pre-diabetic blood sugar levels. I was pre-diabetic. Not like, “Oh, it's a little high.” No, you're pre-diabetic. Not good. Especially for someone in the health industry, and I had cholesterol issues, but I think the big one is the pre-diabetic. My cholesterol wasn't too, too crazy, but it was like, “Hey man, you're about to get diabetes here.” 

And man, I just, you know, it didn't dawn on me, it didn't click with me. And what I want to tell you is don't accept those values. And the thing that I wanted to share about this particular story is when I had my blood taken and my doctor told me, he was not so worried about it. Like, he was like, “Oh gosh, you're pre-diabetic.” 

But he didn't say, “Hey man,” looked me in the eye and said, “listen, you really need to do something here. What's going on with you? You're 38.” He did not have that hard talk with me, and as a result…And not that it's even his job to, and that's why I'm doing this here, having that hard talk with you, if you haven't done your blood panel or if you've got some numbers and you're just like, “Eh, it’s age, right?” 

No, it's not age. It's your lifestyle. It's the way you're living. It's that you're medicating with food. You're overeating, for some reason, maybe drinking too much alcohol and overeating. Do something about it. And then the last one, this is more recent, but it's working hard, but not caring about success anymore. 

For example, I caught myself… we've been having great months in the business. People have started seeing the results that we get in the coaching program and they've wanted to join the coaching program. Fantastic. Great. We're making more money than we ever have. And by the way, no small part due to the business coaching that I'm getting. 

But I've noticed that I really love certain things about the business. I love to create these podcasts. I love coaching people. I'm very… I won't even say I'm lucky. I've noticed that even when I got past liking personal training, I would still feel better going to my clients. And most of the time, I would go to work, maybe not wanting to go to work. 

And then after spending an hour with someone and taking them to a workout and shooting the shit, I felt better. And they felt better. I felt better. I felt like I was doing a good thing. And so I feel that way 10 times more with the type of coaching I do now. I feel like I'm getting people to really not just change their bodies, but their life in a way that makes keeping a lean healthy fit sexy.  

Body sustainable for life. And I'm passionate about it, but there's other things in the business that I don't like doing. Like, I've got to track all my numbers. We have an assistant, a coach, I'm learning how to train our assistant coach. And I don't want to say that I don't enjoy...I enjoy… 

Stefan is our assistant coach. I’ve got to have him on the podcast sometime, because he's a total rockstar when it comes to knowing how to design programs, and he's just awesome at that stuff. And he has a really cool backstory about how he got into fitness, but there are some parts of the business like, “Oh man, I’ve got to learn how to coach him. 

I've never coached a coach before on how to coach. And luckily, a lot of it is just me doing my thing and him paying attention and just kind of shadowing. But I didn't even think about that. And also about how to grow on social media, that stresses me out. And sometimes I find myself stressed out in my business and I don't give a shit that I'm making more money than ever. 

And I want to ask you, do you feel that way too sometimes? Like, if you looked, maybe you're even stressed about money, but if someone asks you, “Hey, how much money were you making 10 years ago?” You're like, “Whoa, I make a lot more now.” And yet it's not making you happy. What I would tell you is. There's something missing from your life. 

And back to my story, I was feeling that way recently. And so what I did was I'm like, “Man, I'm not feeling good about the success I'm having.” That is not a problem with my business per se—actually, it is. I need to do some things. But again, it comes back to me, what am I not doing? What do I have to do differently so that I feel great about my business? 

And that's actually one of the coaching lessons I've learned from my business coach, Mike. He's like, “Listen, make sure you calendar things, make sure you put in your calendar, the things that you need to do weekly, monthly, quarterly, pay yourself first.” Meaning, that's an entrepreneurial term. 

That's just like, hey, if you don't…Because if you're not an entrepreneur, you may not resonate or realize this, but a lot of entrepreneurs, they get paid and they'll make a lot of money. And then they'll just put the money back into the business. An extreme example of that is Elon Musk, right? He does not… 

And granted, maybe he's really enjoying what he's doing and he's got a purpose, but anyway, most of us aren't Elons. Most of us are doing this because we want to achieve a feeling, we want a good feeling. And sometimes we'll find ourselves in a situation where the money's coming in, but our level of happiness and fulfillment doesn't match the amount of money. 

It's not like more money, more fulfillment, at least not always. And so what I asked myself was what do I need to do differently here? And as a result, I started scheduling fun things in my calendar, and I don't look at it as part of, as separate from business. I don't look at it as separate from business. 

I look at it as part of business. And I want to tell you, even if you're not an entrepreneur, let's say you're an attorney. Let's say you are an auditor. Let's say you're an accountant. Let's say you're a doctor. If you are not scheduling things in your calendar, you are not doing your job.  

That's what I told one of my serial entrepreneur clients. Rest and relaxation and fun and joy is not separate from work. It's part of your job to go do those things, because then you can come back and serve your clients better or serve your patients better. So it's part of your job. That's the way I look at it now. So let's recap. 

Number one, red flag, poor sleep. Number two is irritability. Number three is joint pains. Number four is low sex drive. Number five is growing waistline. Number six is bad blood panel. Say that three times fast. Actually, you probably can, just not me, but seven is not caring about how much money I was making. Not caring about success.  

So I want to ask you, out of those things, which one resonated with you the most, which one do you need to act on right away? Do you need to go order an Oura Ring to dial in your sleep? Do you need to go schedule some fun things in your calendar? Do you need to schedule a checkup with your doctor who you haven't seen in like three years and get that blood panel done? 

Do you need to reach out to someone like me because you’ve got a growing waistline or you did have your blood panel done and it ain't good. What is it that you need to do? And that's what I want you to take action on. Hope you enjoy this. Have an incredible weekend. Love you lots, take care of yourself. Your health is everything. 

Always remember that, your health is everything, and I really want you to be healthy. I really want you to win. That's why I share these tough conversations. So on that note, love you lots. Speak to you on Monday.