I finally got a chance to interview Miguel Carrasco.
I've been watching as he has successfully launched a new business around his passion for fitness.
Miguel has an awesome perspective on life and is helping many people achieve their fitness goals.
Best part, Miguel just recently left his life as a developer to pursue this new passion.
Listen below and let me know what you think.
Full transcript below:
John: Hey everyone, welcome back to Get Up and CODE. I have someone I’ve been wanting to talk to for a long time. I’ve been following his journey as he’s been doing a lot of entrepreneurial type of things. I’ve been seeing this guy’s success here. Today, I’ve got on the show Miguel Carrasco and he is a currently a Beachbody coach but also a lifelong entrepreneur. Welcome to the show, Miguel.
Miguel: Hey, great. Thanks for having me.
John: I’ve been following you. I can’t remember exactly where it was. I’ve been seeing your updates on Facebook, and the thing that’s really drawn me to want to get you on the show is just like the intersection of the things that we have in common and really your passion for—I keep on hearing or seeing all these things, the write-up, the same type of optimistic viewpoint that I have of doing the hard work and then you’re going to hit those rewards. I really like that. Why don’t you talk a little bit about your background and who you are, how you got started for everyone that doesn’t have you on their Facebook?
Miguel: Yeah, sure, John. No problem. Yeah. No. Thanks. First off, yeah, thanks for having me and I really appreciate the opportunity to talk to a lot of people here. My background is interesting. I guess ever since I was 16 or probably since I was 8, I was fascinated with computers and technology. Even growing up, my parents actually didn’t—we didn’t have enough money so we didn’t have a computer at home. When I got started, I actually learned to program by going to the library. I go to the library, take out computer books and program on paper, and then on weekends –
John: Wow.
Miguel: Yeah, and then on weekends, I’d go to my uncle’s house who had a computer and I’d basically type up my computer programs. Because of doing that way, I actually got really good at programming because I learned not to make mistakes. Fast forward a bit I guess, I got involved pretty early with computers in high school, got expelled from my computer science class and subsequently, my keyboarding and math classes that all required computers for – basically being bored in class, we wrote a computer program with a friend of mine that ended up working for me later on at Microsoft so it’s funny.
We wrote a computer program to actually steal teachers’ passwords and yeah. Long story short, I actually ended up passing still that year. We got zero on our final exams and half of the grade in our final quarter, but we had done so well in the first 2 quarters that we ended up getting a pretty decent mark. That was funny.
I guess just early on, the reason that story is important is early on I’ve just been one of those people that wanted to follow my own road kind of a thing. If everyone was heading in one direction, I was like, “Why is everybody heading that way? Maybe there’s something else over here” and it was fun. Yeah. Just ever since the beginning when I started programming, I thought, “What can make me stand out from everybody else?” I realized public speaking. I was scared to death of it before, but if I got good at public speaking maybe that would give me and advantage and it definitely did. I got to do a lot of cool stuff.
I work for a company here locally in Winnipeg and I got to travel a lot. I got to present a lot with Microsoft across Canada, the tech days and all these different conferences they used to have a lot and got involved with in Winnipeg here in Canada where I'm from, I got involved with the local Winnipeg .NET, User Group Guru that group too. I think at max, we had a big Flash versus Silverlight event. It was the last big event I helped headline. We had about 250 people out for that user group.
John: Since you’ve been out of the game for a little bit here, I’ll give you an update. They both lost.
Miguel: They both lost. Yeah. That’s so funny. Yeah, it was really cool and just the passion I’ve always had for technology. I’ve always enjoyed getting other people riled up around the same things that I thought couldn’t make a difference with people. It’s been an interesting career. Most of my career, like I’d say the last 16 years or so was all on computers, programming, all that kind of thing. Then about 2 years ago, it’s where the whole fitness story starts.
John: How did that happen? Did you get bored of the programming aspect? Obviously, I see this entrepreneurial streak like you want to go your own way. Was this like a jumping off point? What drove you to that?
Miguel: Yeah. It was awesome. I loved where I used to work. It was an amazing place. I never wanted to leave. It was never my intention. Over the years if you go to Microsoft events and whatever events you go to, you’ll notice your friends are all getting bigger. I was getting bigger. Every year I gained the 5 pounds and everyone was too nice to say anything to me. Yeah, about 2 years ago I had gone.
In high school, I was active. My dad owned a martial arts studio. I was in great shape, 150 pounds, competed in martial arts tournaments, and then moved out of the house. Started eating, you know how the lifestyle is. You’d eat pizzas at user groups. You entertain clients and you go out for drinks. All of a sudden, you have unlimited budgets to spend with them.
It’s crazy, right? We’ve all been there. I'm sure a lot of people on these calls are there, and maybe you have an event tonight to go to. You just assume that your body can handle it. Because you’re getting sick maybe a little bit more, you’re getting flu but whatever, like you’re okay. You don’t ever worry too much about that kind of stuff and that’s where I got to up until 2-1/2 years ago or so, it was at June of 2012. I was driving my son home from daycare and all of a sudden my left hand started feeling numb. I wasn’t sure what was going on. I'm a guy. It’s like whatever. It’s cold out and maybe just banged it on something.
By the time I got home, my whole left side started feeling numb. I wasn’t sure what was going. I put the kids to bed. I decided to have a shower and maybe try and feel better. In the shower, I was shampooing my hair and I felt like the left side of my head I couldn’t really feel it.
John: Oh, no.
Miguel: Yeah. I'm like, “This is not good,” and, of course, I’m like, “Whatever. It’s fine.” It’s like 8:30, 9 o’clock and I always stay up until 2 in the morning. I told my wife, “Hey, I'm going to go lie down and have a little nap.” She’s like, “What’s wrong?” I'm like, “What do you mean?” She’s like, “You never go to bed like what’s going on?” and I said, “Oh, nothing. I don’t feel good.” She asked me, “What?” and I said, “Well, just the left side of my body feels really numb right now. I'm not sure why.” She’s like, “Oh, you need to get to the hospital.”
There were commercials on TV a lot at that time for some reason. It was like about strokes and stuff.
John: Yeah, strokes, yeah.
Miguel: She was freaking out. Of course, she won the argument about 2 minutes. I got my car and I was like, “Oh, man. It’s nothing.” I get to the hospital and yeah. I don’t know how it is in the States or wherever, but in Canada, if you’re from Canada, you’ll know. You’re waiting like 18 hours sometimes to see anybody. I get in and they put like blood pressure monitor or whatever. They triaged me. Then within like a minute, a doctor comes out. They pull me in and they hook me up to these EKG monitors and all that stuff. I'm like, “What’s going on?” like this isn’t good. I wasn’t going to talk to them and ask them because they were obviously busy.
John: Right, yeah.
Miguel: Yeah. I remember I was trying to get my cellphone to text my phone and it was dad, and then I remember looking over to the left of me and there’s like the monitors and stuff and it says like my blood pressure is like 190/140. Yeah. I know enough to know that’s not good, and I wasn’t sure if I was just freaking out. What was going on? Long story short, they ran through a bunch of tests and over about a month period … they let me go the next day, but like that moment I guess something clicked at me in that moment. I got scared, right? I tell people to this day that ask me, “How did you lose the weight?” Quite frankly, it’s not the workout program. It’s not the eating. It’s not diet. It’s not the gym. It’s not the running, whatever you decide to do. It’s the state of mind to me.
John: Yes, exactly.
Miguel: Whenever I talk to people, I wish I could put my hand through your iPhone or Windows phone, whatever you’re listening to for this podcast and like make you feel what I felt that moment because I was so scared for the first time in my life. I’ve been so successful with everything. I was scared and I was scared like, “What was going to happen with my family? What was going to happen? Did I pay the bills?” like the stupidest things are going through your head, right?
That moment, I was like, “What am I going to do?” I went to doctors for about a month. None of them said to lose weight which is hilarious.
John: Wow, yeah.
Miguel: They’re all like, “You should take this pill,” or, “You should take that pill.” Up until I was 18, I actually was vegetarian. I hadn’t eaten meat until I was about 21, and my parents brought me up never to take any prescription stuff, whatever, like I was one of those kids that suffer through flu. Yeah, I never treated that. I did my research on these pills and stuff and I still remember like one of them said one of the side effects was like sexual dysfunction or something. I was like, “All right, that’s it. You might as well shoot me. I am not taking this.” I got to figure this out. These doctors don’t know what they’re talking about.
I took matters into my own hands at that point and I tried to exercise. I tried figuring out what I could do and I didn’t know anything about working out. For me, what I ended up working, like I tried going to the gym. For me, I was getting any results. I'm one of those people that likes to see results fairly quickly or I’ll just try different things. I try different things until something sticks. I tried running and I couldn’t run, like my knees were just destroyed after. I know now.
I was like 230 pounds at this point so it just wasn’t … I'm like 5’5” on my best day. Yeah, it wasn’t working for me. Trying all these different things I finally ended up trying home workout, and that’s what ended up working for me.
Again, the key that I tell people all the time is like it’s not what you do. We can talk about that maybe like what works for me. Ultimately, it was that state of mind. It was that state of mind and I know people in the software community that, I'm sorry, are a little bit overweight and unhealthy. I was and no one told me anything about it.
On the contrary they all wanted to go out more and have drinks and do whatever. I beg you guys that if you’re overweight or if you’re getting sick a lot like time is coming, we can’t run from it forever. Eventually, it will catch up with you. If you’re not sick yet, you’re going to get sick. Even if you don’t get sick, you’re going to cut away some of your life. Ultimately, the listeners see your video, but I see the pictures of your family in the background. Ultimately, we tell ourselves this lie that we’re working so hard for them, but in reality, I was one of those guys too that was addicted to work and just wanted to keep working, keep working, keep working and achieving stuff. Eventually, it will catch up with you. What you think you’re doing it for, you’re going to end up harming them.
John: Yeah, yeah. That’s a real good point. Just in the last episode, I did an episode talking about failure and just the idea that like you said, it’s that mindset like that’s how you’re going to succeed on doing this. Unfortunately, I’ve talked to a lot of people on this show where the fear has caused them to—every single person that comes on the show that has had one of those scares like you they always say thing like, “Do it before you get to that point. Don’t put your health in risk.” I like what you said about can I reach through the phone and let you feel that fear because sometimes that’s what it takes to motivate someone. Yeah, that’s a really good point.
Miguel: That’s what happened to me. In terms of like what I did, I guess for me, like I results quickly. Not that I won’t persevere and wait a year or 2 to get a result. At the same time, if I don’t see something tangible occurring in terms of agile, if I will see something working out, if I see that I'm taking a step back, then I'm going to switch my approach as quickly as possible.
What ended up happening to me was I started realizing and I'm still working full time. I'm still traveling. I was traveling like 200 days out of the year, right? The gym doesn’t work because I’d go to a hotel and I’d show up, say, in Chicago at 6 and they’d want to go for dinner by 7. So I didn’t have time to go out into the gym and even find the gym at the hotel. Even if I did find the gym, they didn’t have the right workout equipment half the time.
What ended up working for me was I just bought an at home workout program. I'm sure everybody has heard of the P90X. I just bring the DVDs with me and I would just do them in the hotel. I’d get to the hotel and I knew that I wouldn’t work out after because we go out for dinner. That’s what always happened. I would basically drink a shake and then do my workout and then go out for dinner. That’s basically what I followed for about 90 days. In 90 days, I lost 45 pounds doing that.
John: Oh, wow. Wow, okay.
Miguel: Just working out at home like I always say I worked out in my underwear. That worked for me because, again, I have 2 kids. Even when I was home like to tell my wife, “Hey, I’ll be back in 2-1/2 hours,” it was not exactly good for my marriage. If I said, “Yeah, I'm going downstairs and doing a 25-minute workout, and I’ll be right back up and have a shower,” that worked and she was supportive of that.
The cool thing about it was that because I was watching what people were doing like on the video, I feel like—I like watching people just like Paris programming. If you’re doing Paris programming, I don’t know if that’s cool anymore but we did it like 5 or 6 years ago. It was awesome because you’d be able to learn from each other. With doing this type of workout, I was basically watching this guy, Tony Horton, do a workout and I would just follow along, basically. All the way, I would learn better form, better movement, all that kind of stuff. It worked pretty well for me.
John: That’s a good point. I never like considered that point because I think a lot of people, when they get into the gym even trying to lift weights and stuff they never really see someone doing it. They get bad form. They don’t know what they’re really doing. That’s an interesting thing. I never really considered that.
Obviously, you had success with that. 45 in 3 months is definitely an awesome success. It sounds like you just totally changed your life. It sounds like you’re able to just to add this on and make some minor changes, instead of going on like a crazy extreme diet and a crazy running routine, and all of these things. Is that what led you in? I'm assuming basically like I'm not going to do software development anymore, I'm going to do this new thing.
Miguel: Yeah, it was really weird and it was weird even from where I was working. They’re like, “Did you plan this?” like “We’re going to miss you” kind of a thing. I was like, “No,” like I totally didn’t plan this at all. It was just one of those weird things I look back on life now. I'm fairly religious so I'll share from my perspective, like I just look back now and I feel like everything was set up for a reason for me to do this. I’ll talk a little bit about that, I guess.
Basically, what ended up happening was I lost all this weight. To do that, to lose 45 pounds in 90 days I basically – I’ll not say disowned, but I stopped hanging out with my friends basically, right? For once in my life, I thought okay like, “I’m going to take time for me,” because like, again, I was so scared like the day after, even for a month after being in the hospital, I would sleep with my kids every single day looking at them. I have panic attacks and I was not healthy like I was in bad shape.
Once I had gone through that for months trying all the doctor’s stuff. I finally realized, “Okay I’m going to do this for me and I’m just going to focus on me.” I did that and for 90 days I did the workouts. I ended up doing it for about 120 days and I still do it. Over 120 days or so, I lost almost 50 pounds but most of it I lost in the first 90. I started getting muscle and all that kind of stuff which was good.
I’d start meeting up with my friends and they hadn’t seen me in a while. They’d be like, “Wow,” like, “How did you do that?” like, “Well, you lost so much weight. What did you do?” I remember one of my friends. We went out for lunch and he’s like, “Hey, are you sick like do you have cancer? What’s going on?” I was like, “No, I’m fine.” A lot of them were programmers. I'm not making this up. I was a programmer. A lot of us are overweight. I'm not trying to offend anybody. It’s just the truth like we are so obsessed with like computers and programming, and getting results for our clients which is a good thing. We’re not really working. We’re doing what we love, but at the same time we’re ignoring the one thing that matters the most which is your body.
That’s the one thing I tell people all the time. It’s the one thing you can’t replace. It’s the one thing that’s totally yours that can never be taken away and it’s the one thing that your family cares about. If you look at your family right now you could be flat broke but your family will still love you. If you’re gone because you’ve worked too hard then you’re gone.
Because I was so passionate before, I was basically an evangelist. I’m an MVP with Microsoft and all that kind of stuff, user experience representative in New York with a lot of UX guys and all that kind of stuff, internet week. Yeah, so I started slowly transferring, I didn’t even notice, all of my passion towards fitness. I started meeting up with my friends and just telling them I started writing a blog, I started a podcast which I ended up ending. I just started doing all these different things to see what would stick just to help people. I wasn’t a coach or anything. I was just showing people how I did it.
Yeah, so it was just one of those things where eventually someone came to me and said, “Hey, you should become a Beachbody coach.” They explained the whole thing to me and I was like, “I don’t know. That sounds weird. I don’t want to be involved in anything like that. I just like helping people.” Then I started looking into triathlons. So I started thinking, “Okay, well, I should maybe do a triathlon. It will push me to become better.” Then I started looking at the cost to do a triathlon and the cost to get a good swimming instructor and the cost to buy a triathlon bike and all those kinds of stuff because I wanted to do it well. We’re going to have to travel to these triathlons and train properly. It was expensive.
The first thing I needed was a bike and the bike was like 3 grand or something and I asked the wife about it and she’s like, “You’re not spending $3000 on a bike. You don’t even have a mountain bike. I thought you were going to say $200 and I was going to say no, like $3000 on a bike, you’re crazy.” That night, my friend again said, “Hey, you should really become a Beachbody coach.” That’s where I thought maybe if I become a Beachbody coach and I’m helping people anyway because at this point I’m already telling people, “Hey, here’s the website to go buy P90X” or “Here’s the website to go buy Turbo Fire” which is a different workout. I thought, “Okay, well, I might as well sign up as a coach and start helping them and I’ll learn more about the programs” and all that kind of stuff. I thought maybe in 3 years I’ll make $3000 as a Beachbody coach. That was my goal.
John: Okay.
Miguel: Yeah, and then it just all kind of started spiraling from there like it went crazy. Yeah, I just started helping more and more people. Up until this point, as of today I probably worked with about 1200 people online. I do a lot of it online. What I’ll do is if someone wants help losing weight a lot of it is really honestly it’s motivation and a check. It’s not the other stuff. What I do is I run Facebook groups, private Facebook groups one a month, I start a new one and I get people that want to try different workouts in the groups and we group message and we’ll do group challenges like, “What did you have for breakfast? Take a picture of it. Post it on the group. What running shoes are you wearing today when you’re going for your run? What was your favorite part of your workout? Why are you doing this? What’re your goals?”
Before they start I even send them a Word Document that they fill in and sign which says, “Hi, on this day, whatever, I’ve agreed and committed to changing my life and here’s 10 things” I call them 10 commandments, “that I’m going to do over the next 60 days to for once focus on me and get results.” Just doing that has just spiraled and became this incredible effect with different people just losing weight, getting in better shape. I had a friend that was trying to lose weight for 10 years. She was 360 lbs. She’s down to 280 now over a year period. She’s getting healthier and healthier, little changes.
That’s what kind of what ended up happening was I just kept helping people. This is all in my spare time. I never thought of it to make money kind of a thing. This is all like I’d go to work from 8 to whatever, 6 or 7 some days and then I’d come home. What happened about 3 or 4 months ago I would get so many emails during the day like, “Hey, how can I modify this movement? I can’t do this. My knees hurt.” Or, “I can’t do a pull up. What are some suggestions to be able to do a pull up?”
I kept getting all these people asking for help and it just got to a point where I felt like I was ignoring people that needed help and then I started looking at my income which at this point I was just depositing into a separate business account or whatever. I just sat down for a week and I realized I could probably leave my fulltime job and just become a fitness Beachbody coach full time and help more people.
Over a couple months period of thinking it through and whatnot, end of January this year I decided that that’s what I was going to do. Yeah, it’s been awesome because not only people think all fitness computers, it doesn’t make sense, but the thing is with computers I learned so much about software, about website building, about podcast, stuff. I know you listen to Pat Flynn and all that kind of stuff, so do I, right? I’m an entrepreneur. I’ve listened to all that stuff for years. There is actually a really huge connection I feel with the 2 which is why I was excited about your podcast because I was like, “Yeah, it’s a great podcast.”
It’s unfortunate in a way because computers are so amazing but at the same time they can cause you to become lazy or not focus on the things that are important. I think there’s room to do both. I’m not telling everybody to go quit their computer career and become a fitness coach by any means, but I think that if you can find something that you’re passionate about and find a cool niche, like my niche right now is basically helping people. A lot of them are people that were involved in computers and still are and I’m talking to them and shared my story and getting them in better shape and hopefully that’s a couple of lives saved. Hopefully that’s a couple of years added on to people’s lives.
People don’t realize what – the levels of cholesterol that some of these programmers have, the blood pressure that if you were to go and sit down and just get your blood pressure checked, it’s free. You could go to any pharmacy in the world almost now and just stick your hand in those machines you would blow your mind at how unhealthy probably 90% of the listeners are, right? Maybe not your specific podcast, it’s one of those things that we always say tomorrow. We always say tomorrow. I’ll start my workout program tomorrow. I’ll start tomorrow. Or I’ll find people that will listen to me at a presentation and they’ll be like, “Okay, I’m totally going to do this. I’m totally in. I’m going to do it. Tomorrow we’re going to do this. I’m in. I’m all in.” Then I call them up and then that level of excitement has left.
Now they’ve had a slice of pizza. Now they’ve remembered how good that beer tasted or whatever and then they’re back on the thing. That’s why I tell people, “If you only knew what you’re doing to your body.” Like now I still have the occasional drink or whatnot. I don’t enjoy those things as much, I’ll be honest. You start enjoying what you do just like you start enjoying technology, I started enjoying fitness. It’s just one of those things where I look forward to my 5K run. I look forward to working out downstairs at my little makeshift gym that I’ve made. The whole transformation has been incredible. I still pinch myself.
I actually just got back from a cruise. Somehow I ended up becoming one of the top coaches in Beachbody in the company. Within about a year and almost 17 months I’m ranked 20th in the company out of 150,000 coaches.
John: Oh wow, congratulations. That’s big. That’s huge.
Miguel: Oh thanks. I mean a lot of it was technology. I always tell people, “You have to have a great story” which is my story is true and it’s exactly what happened but because I had that computer background I was able to magnify it and amplify my story because I for some reason stumbled upon this expo and met Pat Flynn and he talked about being everywhere. All these things that circumstance just happened, I knew what to do. When I had the story I was just like boom, exploded it and because of it helped so many people.
I was working out on this cruise ship. Beachbody paid for this cruise ship. It was like Royal Caribbean or whatever, Liberty of the Seas and there were 3500 coaches on this boat all rented for Beachbody and every morning we do workouts. So like 7 AM there was a workout, 8 AM there was a workout, there’s another workout at 4 and it was all like the guy from Insanity Shaun T was there. Tony Horton was there and just doing these workouts. The bars were converted to shakeology bars where we drink all these health shake drinks and protein drinks. It was just an amazing experience.
Just to think back like I was sitting on the balcony, they upgraded my room to this amazing kind of suite. I was sitting there one day like I would never pay for this out of my own pocket. I’m sitting there and just thinking back on the last year and half of how my life changed. It’s really cool. The coolest thing that excited me the most was just like I feel like this is a second chance, almost like a second run at life which most people don’t get. I think it happened for a reason. One of the biggest things I want to do is try and share that story with people and just say like, “It’s never too late.”
You could be someone else, 400 lbs thinks, “Oh you know what? It’s just never going to happen for me.” But that’s not true. You can totally turn around. Any minute, your body, what I learned if anything is that our bodies are amazing. They are so freaking awesome. If you start feeding on the right foods, exercise 20 minutes a day, sweat out the toxins you’re going to lose weight. You’re going to get there. Your body will reset to its ideal weight. Life is going to change for you. We just have to give ourselves that opportunity.
John: Yeah, yeah. Wow, that’s amazing. That’s an amazing story. Congratulations on switching over to this new thing. I didn’t realize it was as recent as this January that you had switched over to full time doing this. That’s pretty cool. Just a couple of years ago I had left my fulltime and now I’m doing fulltime entrepreneurial type of thing. One of the things actually that influenced me the most was like you said Pat Flynn’s Be Everywhere. That’s why I do podcasts, YouTube videos, blog posts and just try to saturate everywhere. That’s really cool. I mean I can see how that would definitely help you like using that kind of a strategy with your background to become one of the top Beachbody coaches.
Miguel: Oh thanks, yeah. I mean I think it’s pretty cool that – especially as technology people like the ability and the power that we have to really transform society, in my viewpoint is amazing. We can do it in so many different ways. Growing up I always thought one day I’ll quit or whatever. I might work for Microsoft for another 10 years and retire when I’m 45, 50. That kind of was my goal. Yeah, just being able to do this slight little shift has just been able to not only change my life but the amount of people that I’ve been able to help just from the exercise perspective. I never realized – because not even 2 and a bit years ago I was at MVP Summit in Seattle. Microsoft has these. I don’t know if you about them. They have these yearly little summits and they bring 4000 or so people come down to Seattle and Microsoft kind of wines and dines you and you have all these amazing experiences with people and you connect.
It was great but I mean to be honest my goal from day 1 getting there was always like, “Hey, where are we going to have drinks? Where are we going to have dinner? What steaks are we going to have?” It was all around eating and drinking and having a good time. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s great but at the same time like I always tell people now I’m like, “If that’s all you do it will totally catch up with you.” It’s not going to help your employer. It’s not going to help your career. It’s not going to help anyone if that’s what you do.
I’m trying to change that at least here even in my city and with my friends and a lot of people in Canada I’ve been trying to change it a lot lately just to say, “Hey, it’s all good to do all those things but we have to focus on the most important thing and that’s our health.” If we don’t focus on our health it’s pretty tough to do anything to be honest and that’s why I’m so productive now. I’ve already went for a run this morning. I had a great breakfast, just getting so much done around the house because I have all this energy now. It’s just amazing.
I used to say all the time, “Oh, I can’t go to the gym at lunch.” I’d see people go to the gym, I’d be like, “Oh, I can’t go to the gym. I’m too busy. You’re not busy enough. I’m just so busy that I can’t go to the gym.” Or, “Oh, I don’t have time to go have a good lunch. I have to eat at my desk. I have no time. I’m just going to have more coffee all day.”
Again, as programmers we have no idea. Now I know what that does to your body. Now I know what that does to your insulin levels. Now I know what it does to my stress levels. Now I know all these things that people don’t know and I don’t talk about it that much because they’re kind of boring but ultimately what most people do like you’re killing yourself. You would never put water in your car. If you have a BMW or a Lexus it says right on there, “You must only put the premium gas in your car.” Even then you would never cheat and put the crappy gas. You’ll put the expensive gas in your car.
I tell people like, “Why cheat yourself? Why put in caffeine and all this sugar that’s just going to make you crash in 2 hours and then you’re going to eat a ton of carbs that’s going to make you carb crash 2 hours later and you have to have a chocolate bar.” It’s just this vicious cycle that doesn’t make you more productive. It’s a lie. If right now you’re thinking, “Yeah, you know what, I don’t have time” you’re lying to yourself. You do have the time. If you’re one of the listeners right now I was you that listened to people like me and would say, “Well, he has no idea.” Yes, I know that, but here’s the thing, I was lying to myself. I did have the time. I could have went to the gym at lunch. I chose not to go to the gym and I used it as an excuse to make myself feel better.
Having 2 Starbucks a day or 2 Tim Horton’s a day whatever you drink is not good for you. I was lucky that it wasn’t a stroke. I was lucky that I had a chance to fix what happened. I wish I could strangle people sometimes and just be like, “You need to feel this feeling that I felt” because yeah, I don’t want to lose any more friends because I have lost a couple of friends recent years, I won’t mention the names. They’ve been sick. They ended up in the hospital. My uncle at late 40s passed away. He had diabetes. My aunt passed away, cancer a couple of years ago recently. I never equated them together. I never put the pieces together. Now I felt like someone, for me it’s God, came down and just told me, gave me a big shake and said, “Here we’re going to put you through.”
At the time, I was like, “Why me? Poor me.” Now I look back and I’m like I’m glad I went through that because now I can tell people what I went through and hopefully it will help them not have to go through what I went through.
John: Yeah. Well that’s great. That’s awesome. That’s definitely the mission of this podcast is to help especially – dude, because we know it. I mean programmers need to hear this message. I’m glad that you’re able to give this message today because hopefully if we can just get a couple of people to get off their butt and realize that they need to do something to change their life then this podcast is successful because that’s really the goal.
Miguel: That’s awesome.
John: Awesome. Well thanks for being here today. Before I forget I need to make sure I thank our sponsor. A big shout out to SignalLeaf. Signalleaf.com is the sponsor of this podcast. They host the podcast for us. If you’re interested in starting your own podcast, maybe if you’re a follower also of Pat Flynn and you want to start a podcast, you want to be everywhere go check out signalleaf.com. It’s really easy to get a podcast set up. There’s really not enough developer podcasts out there. Hey, this doesn’t have to be the only podcast about fitness for developers. Give us some competition. Share what you’re learning as well. Yeah, check it out.
Yeah, thanks again Miguel. This is awesome. I definitely want to talk to you more and maybe check back in with you a little bit later on and see how you’re doing, how Beachbody and everything is going.
Miguel: That would be awesome. Yeah, thanks, John. I appreciate it. Yeah, and if anyone wants any help or whatever, just motivation you can add me on Facebook, www.facebook.com/miguelcarrasco and I’d love to help you out. If anything, just try move and exercise for 20 minutes and just eat a little bit better and don’t go crazy. Cut out a couple of things and you’ll be shocked at the difference it can make in your life.
John: Awesome. All right, take care everyone.
