How to Get Out of a Bad Relationship | Ask Me Anything

Chris Albert 00:00:00 (link to this point)

This is Chris Albert, and I'm here to remind you of one thing. Someday, you're going to die. Now that's not some morbid statement or scary idea. It's solid fact. Your time here on this earth is limited.

And we need to be reminded of this as much as possible for one simple reason, to live your best life while you can. This is the Warrior Soul Podcast.

What is going on, ladies and gentlemen? Welcome to this ask me anything edition of the Warrior Soul Podcast. This is where I take questions from the audience, and I give you my answers to them. If you haven't been to the Warrior Soul Podcast before, if this is your first time listening to us, my name is Chris Albert. I am a Marine Corps veteran and I started this show with one mission in mind and that is to empower The US military veteran community and anybody else willing to listen to live their best lives.

And I do that by delivering tools, tactics, strategies and ideas that help the members of my audience to show up as wiser, stronger, more capable human beings in the civilian world or anywhere else that they show up. So that's what this show is about. I love doing the show. I really appreciate those of you who have supported me over the past three years. The show is growing weekly, we are getting into the ears of more veterans.

And with doing that, we are helping more veterans to dominate life. And if you guys want to help me do that, listen, here's the thing, of course, I offer products, of course, I have things to buy, but you don't ever have to buy anything from me. You can take advantage of this show for free. The only thing I ask of you in return is that you head over to iTunes, and you write us a written rating and review. If this show has helped you in any way at all, if it's helped you, you know, improve your life, even just a little bit, if you can head over to iTunes and write us a five star rating and a review, that helps us to get this show into the ears of so many more veterans.

And in turn, we help the veteran community and we can help this country by helping them to step up to become leaders in this society. So take the time just takes three minutes doesn't cost you anything. Be a huge help. So this week I've got a bunch of questions to cover and a lot of them are fitness related questions. Got one non fitness related question and I will start with that one, the non fitness related question.

So I got a question this morning from a young man and he had mentioned that he's been trying to get out of a bad relationship for a long time. The thing is he loves this person so much, but the relationship is just completely toxic. It's bringing him down. They're having so many issues and it's getting really really bad. And he asked me, well, if you love a person, how do you just step away?

And want to preface this by saying I'm not the end all be all know it all of relationships. I've had a lot of mistakes that I've made in relationships over my time. I've been through a lot of pain through relationships. I've been through a divorce. And the biggest thing I can tell you is this, there is nothing, nothing that can ruin your life more than a toxic relationship.

Now, I am a fan of marriage. I believe that that marriage is an institution that should be respected. And having been through a divorce, I never wanted to go through a divorce. Never, never wanted to go through a divorce. I don't think anybody who gets married comes in and says, hey, think I'm gonna get divorced at at a certain point.

But here's the thing, I think that part of marriage is understanding the responsibility involved. When when you guys get married, like, you can't escape from that person. You're financially tied to them. You are you're intertwined with them spiritually, you are intertwined with them financially, you're intertwined with them legally. And so part of the the responsibility of getting married, I think, is making sure that you're getting married to the right person.

And if you're involved with a toxic person and this person's giving you the signs while you're dating them, or if you're in a long term relationship with them prior to getting married, then it is up to you to understand that it is your responsibility to either fix that situation before you get married or to get out of it entirely. Because if you do make the mistake of becoming intertwined both spiritually, legally and financially, then it's going to be your responsibility to deal with it afterwards. And if you end up going through a divorce, you're not only ruining your life, you're ruining that person's life as well. Right? And you need to think about that.

And so my advice to you is this, if you're in a toxic relationship right now, you have to understand that you staying in that relationship, that's not just hurting you. That's hurting the person you're involved with and it's hurting everybody around you. If you end up having kids with that person, then that is also going to affect your children. And so while this is not an easy decision, and this is so much easier said than done, and definitely sympathize with you here, you need to make the decision. You can't just waffle.

You can't just sit there and say, hey, I'm gonna hope everything turns out for the best. You can't just sit there and say, okay, maybe they'll change or maybe I'll change. You have to either what do you have to do either one of two things. You have to commit to working with that person, and remember it's a two way street, so they have to commit to working with you, and you have to hammer out these issues. Or if that commitment is not going to happen, you need to have the strength and the moral clarity and the the non selfishness to walk away.

And I will tell you that yes, you work this out, it's awesome, right? But if it doesn't work out, and you end up walking away, life will go on. You will be able to find another person. That person also will be able to find another person, and maybe that's what you're a little bit little bit tentative on. Maybe you don't want that other person to find somebody else.

And if that's the case, then you gotta look at yourself and you gotta say, well man, I'm being selfish here. Right? Remember, staying in a toxic relationship is not just going to affect you, it's going to affect your partner, it's going to affect children if you have them, it is going to affect everybody around you. Everybody who loves you and cares about you and wants you to be your best. So don't sit there in indecision, and don't sit there and turn yourself into somebody who's just holding on to someone because you're scared you're gonna lose them.

Because that's selfish. That's not being a man. Right? You've got to make the hard decision regardless of what's gonna happen. Right?

And you have to make the hard decision so that you can become who you're supposed to be, and so so your partner can become who they're supposed to be. Right? And if you're just holding on to that, then you're not letting them do that, and you're not letting yourself do that. And in turn, you're not being who you need to be for the world. K?

And I know I'm I'm again, that's a hard thing, and I don't want you to think that what I'm saying is callous. I've been there before, but you're gonna be so much better off if you make that decision for for for one way or the other. But if you're gonna stay together, it's gonna be a full on commitment. Okay? The next question, now we're gonna get into some of these fitness questions here.

My boy Nathan, he asked me, what's a better exercise? Traditional straight bar deadlift or hex bar deadlift? Do the benefits from straight straight bar outweigh the additional shear on the spine? Here's what I would say. They're actually two different exercises in my opinion.

So when you're looking at a straight bar deadlift, there's gonna be more of a hip hinge involved. Okay. Now, do I mean by hip hinge? That's where you are actually bending bending at the waist and what's happening is when you're hinging, you're not bending over, you're actually just pushing your butt back and activating your hamstrings. Right?

And so on a traditional deadlift, what's happening is your chest is starting over the bar, you're in a bent knee position, your shoulders are back, your chest is out, okay? With a hex bar, what tends to happen is you end up getting into a little bit more of a squat position. Now, it's a different load than a squat because the the weight is not on your shoulders, but the mechanics become much more like a squat. And so what I would say is this, they're two different exercises, and I believe that each one has their particular benefits. So I'm not in a position to say that one is better than the other.

They work two different things. What I would say is that hex bar is fantastic if you're looking to do non eccentric stuff. So what do I mean by non eccentric stuff? I mean that you're picking the bar up, you're picking the hex bar up, dead lifting the weight and then just dropping it. You're not going down with it.

And that's great for performance, that's great for working explosion. Straight bar of course is is awesome if you're a power lifter and if you are looking to to incorporate that that posterior chain strengthening into your routine. And so that's gonna work a little bit more your glutes, a little bit more your hamstring, even a little bit more of your upper back, right? The hex bar is going to work a little bit more of your quads and your glutes. Okay?

Now as far as the sheer pressure on the spine, here's the next thing I would say. I think that unless you're a power lifter, the idea of deadlifting more than you can handle, well, you shouldn't do it. Alright, unless you're a power lifter. Now, if you're a power lifter, your goal is to lift as much weight as possible. But but most of the people here, they're lifting weights to perform better at other things.

They're lifting weights to perform better, let's say, at being in in the military, being in the infantry, being in in, you know, in their in their job to prevent injury. Maybe you some of you guys play sports that you're trying to keep yourselves from being injured at. And in that case, what I would say is that you don't wanna be lifting crazy, crazy amounts of weight. Of course, you want to challenge yourself, but I don't see any reason why you should be trying to approach a one rep max on a deadlift unless you're training for a powerlifting competition. And so my advice to you is this, I would deadlift and I would deadlift weight that you could do five repetitions at.

Alright? And that should alleviate a lot of the the potential for injury. Now in addition to that, I really work on your technique. Like I said before, pulling your shoulders back, sticking your chest out, working on your hip hinge that can reduce a lot of that shear pressure on the spine. And the truth is that most people don't know how to deadlift correctly.

And what I'll do is I will put a video up on the show notes from my YouTube channel that can help you with this, that will show you how. And I use the Coach's Eye app to show you how to take you through those body the the those body mechanics that you're gonna need. That being said, I do believe that the deadlift is something that most people should include in their routine. Unless you've got a really severe spinal injury, unless your back is completely messed up, It's a great exercise to include in your routine because there is no other real exercise out there, squats that are going to put the load on your skeletal system like deadlifts are. And that's going to improve your bone density.

It is going to help you so much as far as total body strength, and it's just a really great exercise to improve performance. So check the show notes out. I will give you that video so that you guys can work on your form and get as much as possible out of that exercise. Sal Bolanos, he said I'm 43 years old going on 44, He said I may be thinking about checking my testosterone levels. He said the VA won't support it, so I have to look at outside resources.

So a couple things here. Testosterone replacement therapy has grown increasingly popular over the past few years. There's a lot of anti aging clinics popping up all over the place. There are a lot of doctors, lot of chiropractors doing anti aging. A lot of men are feeling the pressure or the desire to go and begin using exogenous hormones through the consultation of a doctor to increase their testosterone levels.

And I think that's fine, I'm all for it, particularly if you're having a problem with testosterone production. There are a few things that I would say you need to try first before you do this, because once you're on testosterone replacement therapy, there's a there's number one, you're gonna be on the therapy forever. Right? You will develop a dependency on the therapy itself. And if you're on that therapy for a while, let's say you haven't had kids yet, well that can eventually keep you from having kids, Because you're injecting exogenous testosterone in your body that can lead to sterility and things like that, So that danger is always there.

So number one thing I'd recommend before you do this is to make some improvements in your nutrition. Right now I know everybody's like, oh but I don't want to work what's diet going to do? Here's the thing, digestion is one of the things that can most certainly lead to a testosterone deficiency. And if you improve your digestion and you improve your nutrition, you ensure that you are getting healthy fats, good cholesterol in your diet, to give you the raw materials for producing testosterone, then that can reduce your need for exogenous testosterone, right? And so that's one thing.

I wrote an article for testosterone nation last year that talked about bad digestion and testosterone. And this is one of the things, there's so many men walking around with horrible digestion. I'm talking everything from heartburn to gut dysbiosis to leaky gut syndrome to full blown ulcerative colitis or Crohn's like I have. And if you are dealing with those issues, you cannot let that go. You gotta fix that.

So I wrote an article last year with steps to improve your gut health, your intestinal tract. And you know, a lot of these are basic. So number one, chew your food. Alright? Number two, if you're eating vegetables, make sure you're cutting up cutting them up, letting them sit there for ten minutes before you eat them, and then steaming them or softening them in some way.

If you're eating nuts or grains, make sure you're eating them soaked or sprouted. You know, getting collagen protein into your diet so that you can heal any issues with the intestinal lining. Right? Making sure that you are getting good sources of butyrate and a diet that's full of probiotics. Now here's why.

Your intestinal tract houses about 75% of your immune system. It's also connect to your brain via something called the vagus nerve. And if your intestinal tract is damaged, can lead to inflammation. Now this affects you testosterone wise in two ways. The first one is very direct, and that is through your testicles.

Your testicles are outside of your body for a reason, and that's because they don't like inflammation, they don't like heat. And if you've got high levels of inflammation from a bad digestive tract, what can start to happen is as those inflammatory levels go up, your Leydig cells, the cells responsible for producing testosterone, they start to die off. So that can lead to horrible testosterone production. The other way is through your brain. Your brain is connected directly to your intestinal tract via something called the vagus nerve.

And if you've got inflammation coming from your gut that can affect your brain, that can in turn affect your hypothalamus and affect your pituitary, and that in turn can lead to a decrease in the production of testosterone precursors, like follicle stimulating hormone and luteinizing hormone. Right? And that in turn can also affect your testosterone production because it's hitting it farther up in the hormonal cascade. Now veterans have an additional worry here, that is the fact that they've been around things like explosions and gunshots and probably have sustained low level TBI at some point. And in that case, you already have brain inflammation going on.

And so if you're gonna go and you're gonna go see a doctor, should find somebody who specializes in this for veterans. So couple of good places you can go. Number one, doctor Mark Gordon. He runs something called the Warrior Angels Foundation along with Andrew Marr, and he's been perfecting therapy like this for veterans for a long time. I've interviewed him several times on the show, and again, I will include the links to that on the show notes here.

But in addition to that, Nick Koumalatsos, who's been a guest on this show as well, former Marine Corps Raider, he has also been begun working with doctors to get therapy for veterans on a low level basis or a low cost basis by working with a few of these anti aging doctors. So I'll provide links to that up on the show notes as well. The big thing is if you're a veteran and you're dealing with this, you really want to make sure you're working with somebody who's not just gonna give you a few hundred milligrams of testosterone cypionate and say and call it a day. You wanna make sure that somebody is really, really taking the time to look at your your hormonal profile and seeing how they can fix that cascade. Kavita, she said, how do you stay motivated and disciplined?

And I've been talking about this for the past few weeks as far as goals are concerned. The way I stay motivated and disciplined is that every goal that I am going after I attach it to a higher meaning in my life. I attach it to a higher meaning in my life. So when it comes to doing something like this podcast, which by the way, I mean, it takes a good amount of work. I'm not I'm not trying to canonize myself here, but it takes a lot of work to do the show.

And there's not a lot of return on it. Right? So like financially, there's not a lot of return. Right? But but what keeps me doing it?

Well, the thing that keeps me doing it is understanding the impact that it's having on the community. Right? My community, the veteran community, it pushes me to to get up every single day knowing that I'm helping these guys out, knowing that somewhere out there there's a young veteran listening to me who is looking for a better way in life. And I think about that every single morning. I visualize that every single morning.

Before I'm gonna do a show like this, I sit there, I visualize, actually think about what that guy looks like, what he's going through right now. And I think about, you know, how happy he'd be if he just fixed one of the problems in his life. And that's what keeps me going. So visualization is a big thing. When I'm thinking about my fitness goals, I sit there and I think about my life with Shawna, my amazing girlfriend.

And I think about what I want our lives to look like as we get older together. I think about what our kids are gonna look like. I think about what our house is gonna look like. I think about what I'm gonna look like. I'm ten years older than her.

And so the last thing in the world I want is for me to be old and feeble and weak and be a burden on her. And so when I am thinking about going to train, if there's a doubt that comes up in my mind about training, then I think about myself as as what it would be like if I was old and people and she had to take care of me. And, you know, and then I switch that with a vision of myself being strong, being old, playing around with my grandkids. And so I attach that meaning to it. You know, it's never it can't be about vanity.

It can't be just about, okay, I want six pack abs, or I want this, or I want to look like this. Right? Because that doesn't mean much. At the end of the day, if you don't have six pack abs, you're gonna keep going. But if you attach it to something that is so important to you, that is that is so meaningful to you, that no matter what you do, you're gonna keep going.

That's how you stay motivated. That's how you stay disciplined. Right? You have to think about what this actually means to you. K?

And hope that makes sense. Right? Because for a lot of people, it doesn't. But I'm working on a book right now on that. And hopefully, that'll be out later this year.

That's one of my twenty twenty goals. So and finally, I've been getting a lot of people coming at me with the carnivore diet. Alright, because obviously I suffer from ulcerative colitis. There's a lot of people who think that the carnivore diet is a cure. And here's my take.

I've interviewed Doctor. Shawn Baker on this show. I've got respect for Doctor. Baker and I definitely see a lot of people getting a lot of anecdotal at least benefits from the carnivore diet. And here's what I'll say.

I look at the carnivore diet as elimination diet. Whenever you eliminate a lot of the crap that we eat, in addition to eliminating potential allergens, you are going to feel better. If you get rid of the sugar, if you get rid of all the crap in your diet, you're going to feel better. But here's the thing, is that good for the long term? Do I think somebody should be on the carnivore diet for like six, seven years?

And the answer is this: I don't know. I don't know. What I do know is that if you are following a diet that completely eliminates every single thing, every other nutrient, every other food class for a long period of time, for a lot of people that's not going to be sustainable. Right? It's not going to be sustainable.

And in addition to that, I don't know that it is healthy. I mean common sense wise, sounds like it's not. But again, I'm not going to sit here and say, hey, don't do the carnivore diet or do do the carnivore diet. What I will say is that for me, that doesn't make sense. For me, that doesn't make sense.

I've done things close to the carnivore diet before, and it it didn't have a huge impact on me. But again, you know, I and and and also just from what I know about gut bacteria and heterocyclic amines and some of the cancer causing compounds in meat, I know that if you're not getting certain other things in your diet that can have an impact. So what I would say is this, if you're trying the carnivore diet and it's working out for you, awesome. Just really pay attention to yourself. Pay attention to your digestion.

Make sure you're getting your blood work done. Because from my memory, when Doctor. Baker got his blood work done, it didn't look very good. So that's my take on it guys. And, you know, a lot of people want me to come out and say, yes, do this or don't do that, but I'm not gonna do that because, honestly, I'm not God and I don't know.

So that's where I'm at with that. And that looks like I covered all of the oh, somebody asked me this. What are my thoughts on the current state of the fitness industry? What are my thoughts on the current state of the fitness industry? There's good and bad.

There's good and bad. We live in an amazing time and place because we get a lot of commentary, right, through YouTube, through podcasts like this. Right? And I think that's awesome. At the same time, you know, there's just so much stuff out there.

There's so many different perspectives, and and people have, like, cartoned themselves into off into different tribes. There's a lot of bad advice out there. Right? What I think it comes down to is this, the onus on becoming fit, the onus on becoming, as fit as possible, as healthy as possible, and performing as best as possible. It's not on the industry, it's on us.

It's on our ability to get out there to research, to discern what's the truth and what's not. And the only way to do that is to educate ourselves. And so my thought on the fitness industry is that if you don't want the bad things in the fitness industry to affect you, then make sure you're doing your homework. Make sure you are putting the time in to learn. Make sure that you are putting the time into yourself to understand your body as much as possible.

And that alert says that I have to jump on to a meeting in a second. So I am going to end this show. Again, I wanna thank you guys so much for the support you've given the Warrior Soul podcast. Please, if you enjoyed this episode or any other episode that we've done, head over to iTunes, write us a written rating and review. Support our sponsors.

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We've got a Patreon set up for donations. You can donate as little as a dollar or as much as $400. You can do that at www.patreon.com/warriorsoulpodcast and any little bit helps. So again, thank you guys so much. I hope you enjoyed this AMA episode, and I will be back at you later on this week with some more awesome content.

This is Chris Albert with the Warrior Soul Podcast, hoping you go out there and live your best life while you can. And I am out.