Order of Man - March 21, 2018


ITT 003： Losing Weight and Paying Off Massive Debt ｜ Bart Folse


Episode Stats


Length

14 minutes

Words per minute

202.17998

Word count

2,974

Sentence count

191

Harmful content

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, Mr. Bubba Downs shares his story of how he turned his life around and became a better man. He talks about his struggles with depression and anxiety and how he was able to turn it all around.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.040 Gentlemen, welcome to In the Trenches, an Order of Man podcast dedicated to interviewing
00:00:04.360 ordinary, everyday men like you and me who are currently in the battle of becoming better
00:00:08.840 men.
00:00:09.460 You'll hear the good, the bad, and the ugly from guys who are striving to become stronger
00:00:13.680 husbands, fathers, business owners, and community leaders.
00:00:17.560 It's our mission to deliver the stories that will inspire you to become the man you are
00:00:21.620 meant to be.
00:00:22.320 Your host for this podcast is a man who is not only in the trenches, but has drastically
00:00:26.920 changed his life for the better over the past two years.
00:00:29.260 Here's Mr. Bubba Downs.
00:00:32.700 All right, gentlemen, today I am joined by Bart.
00:00:35.680 What's going on, brother?
00:00:37.360 Oh, not much, dude.
00:00:38.280 Thanks for having me today.
00:00:39.520 Absolutely, man.
00:00:40.280 So tell me a little bit about yourself, man.
00:00:41.860 Tell us a little bit about your story.
00:00:44.120 For me, my story is, I guess, probably not too dissimilar from a lot of guys who are probably
00:00:50.580 listening.
00:00:52.100 At one point in my life, probably about three years ago at this point, I was in bad shape.
00:00:58.580 You know, physically, mentally, emotionally, and all of my relationships.
00:01:03.240 It just was kind of a bad place.
00:01:05.340 It was a pretty dark time for me.
00:01:06.660 It was a lot of depression.
00:01:08.380 You know, some thoughts of suicide at certain points.
00:01:11.920 Long story short, because I know we're going to dive a little bit deeper into it.
00:01:15.120 But I refocused myself, and I've been able to, you know, sort of turn my life around.
00:01:21.540 I'm in a better place in all those areas I've already mentioned.
00:01:24.180 In a better place in all those areas.
00:01:25.820 You know, my relationships are stronger.
00:01:28.020 My finances are better off.
00:01:30.340 I'm in a better place professionally.
00:01:32.260 And oh, by the way, I've lost 135 pounds.
00:01:35.660 So that's helped, too.
00:01:36.880 Man, that's amazing, man.
00:01:38.620 So let me ask you this, man.
00:01:39.680 How did you get started on this journey?
00:01:42.160 So, you know, like I already said, I was battling some, you know, some pretty, you know, deep depression.
00:01:49.360 And all I can say, the thing that kind of kicked me off was I hit rock bottom.
00:01:54.240 And I didn't know what else to do.
00:01:56.240 I finally, you know, for the first time in my life, I sought some help.
00:02:01.340 Started talking to some people and had people who actually listened to me for what I felt was the first time.
00:02:07.180 And one of them, you know, really gave me some really great advice.
00:02:11.200 You know, he looked me square in the eye and he called me.
00:02:13.660 He called me on my BS and he just said, he said, look, you're the problem.
00:02:20.400 You know, you're the one who's in control of all this stuff.
00:02:23.320 You know, so why are you making excuses?
00:02:24.840 Why are you telling yourself you can't do any of this?
00:02:27.220 You know, for the first time in my life, you know, it just hit me square in the face that, yeah, I was a problem.
00:02:31.780 But that also meant that I was the solution to the problems and that I was in control of it, ultimately, you know, making my life better.
00:02:38.980 So from that day forward, I've been committing every day to be a better man.
00:02:41.660 That is powerful stuff right there, brother.
00:02:44.980 So what are some of these milestones that you've reached while doing this, man?
00:02:48.860 Man, there's been a bunch.
00:02:51.140 You know, the obvious ones, the ones that everybody sees are the weight loss milestones.
00:02:58.920 So, you know, I've already said I've lost the total now, depending on where I am on the scale today, somewhere between 130, 140 pounds, which has been huge.
00:03:10.020 Absolutely.
00:03:10.580 I feel, you know, I feel like a new man.
00:03:12.480 You know, most importantly, aside from the number on the scale, the biggest health benefits been I've been able to get off all of my medications.
00:03:20.280 I was at one point I was diagnosed with diabetes and high blood pressure and everything else essentially beat diabetes, which, you know, not a lot of people can say.
00:03:28.400 I've dropped my sugars to controlled levels and I don't want to take meds.
00:03:33.300 You know, so those are the obvious things that everybody sees because you can see a before and after picture on that.
00:03:38.120 You know, what people don't see is the financial discipline that I had behind the scenes.
00:03:42.920 You know, part of what was weighing on me and leading me to that stress and anxiety was some financial burdens.
00:03:49.840 My wife and I had gotten ourselves into some pretty significant debt.
00:03:53.200 And over the past three years, we paid off well over $100,000 in debt to the point now that we're, aside from my mortgage, we don't really have any debt to anyone.
00:04:03.400 Wow, man.
00:04:03.840 How did you manage that?
00:04:05.200 It was ultimately a calculated risk.
00:04:09.360 You know, you read so many good things and so many bad things about debt consolidation and what it can do for your credit and everything else.
00:04:16.940 And, you know, finally, one day I got out of my own damn head and I said, you know what?
00:04:21.220 I said, what I'm doing now is not working.
00:04:24.300 I'm, you know, chasing every creditor now and trying to make the minimum payment is not working anymore.
00:04:30.400 I've got to try something new.
00:04:31.860 And I said, you know, I can either try to do this or, you know, in a year or in two years, I'm going to file for bankruptcy and then it's really going to hurt my credit.
00:04:40.900 So I decided at that point to get a debt consolidation loan and, you know, compiled a whole bunch of stuff together, basically compiled it into one manageable payment and paid what I could.
00:04:53.260 When there was extra, I paid more.
00:04:54.500 And now we've, you know, we've paid off our vehicles and that other consumer debt and we're good, man.
00:05:02.240 That's fantastic, dude.
00:05:03.680 So what would you say are some of the biggest hurdles you've overcome?
00:05:07.380 Probably the biggest one, honestly, is the sort of, you know, pseudo support you get from friends and family.
00:05:15.620 Everybody says on the surface that they want to help you.
00:05:18.340 Everybody says that they're there for you and that you can lean on them.
00:05:22.800 But the moment the moment things get real and the moment that you really have to lean on somebody, all of a sudden, you know, they they flake out and you find out the old adage.
00:05:35.120 You find out who your friends are.
00:05:36.040 That's that's an old adage for a reason.
00:05:38.600 You know, it's amazing, man.
00:05:40.260 Just how many people try to run away when you're covered in shit.
00:05:43.000 Yeah, absolutely.
00:05:44.660 And, you know, I was covered in shit for a long time.
00:05:47.040 And, you know, I realize now that a lot of the people in my life who who I enjoyed being around when I was covered in shit were the very people who were covering me in shit to begin with.
00:05:57.140 They were facilitating the bad habits.
00:05:59.300 They were, you know, they were letting me, you know, they were letting me drink and eat myself to death.
00:06:05.140 They were letting me take on additional debt when I couldn't afford it.
00:06:08.300 And and I'm not blaming them because ultimately it was my choice.
00:06:11.960 But but when you start climbing out of that and you start changing your habits, it becomes very clear to you who's actually shoveling the shit on you.
00:06:21.820 And that's that's the situation I found myself in.
00:06:24.600 That's probably the biggest hurdle.
00:06:25.540 And then the other hurdle is the flip side of that is not letting my mind convince me that I belong to be covered in shit because all these people are telling me, you know, I should be covered in shit.
00:06:38.280 It's tough, you know, because you you go through a life.
00:06:41.200 I mean, hell, I live I live 30 years on Earth.
00:06:44.040 And for a significant portion of my adult life, I felt like I was, you know, like I was a loser, like I couldn't do any better.
00:06:50.680 I just continued to gain weight.
00:06:52.180 I continued to accrue debt.
00:06:53.340 I continued to just be stuck in what I felt like was a dead end job.
00:06:57.560 You tell yourself these stories and you say you convince yourself that you're only capable of so much.
00:07:04.720 And then one day that all changes and you decide that you're capable of so much more.
00:07:10.880 But every time you have an interaction with somebody from your past, some of one of those those shit shovelers, once you have an interaction with them, 1.00
00:07:17.860 it's hard not to think back to, you know, to where you were and start questioning if you really should be covered in shit.
00:07:26.180 So there's there's the self-doubt.
00:07:28.100 There's the lack of confidence that, you know, even after three years now, I can tell you, I can look at before and after pictures of myself and not recognize the man in the before pictures.
00:07:37.200 But when I walk into, you know, when I walk into a store to go and buy a new shirt or go buy new pants, I immediately grab the largest set, you know, pair of pants and the largest shirt on the rack because I still feel in my mind like I'm that size.
00:07:50.900 Like I'm still that guy covered in shit who's, you know, almost 400 pounds.
00:07:54.780 It's just your mind plays tricks on you.
00:07:57.220 And if you're not conscious of that, you're not cautious of that, it can really put you into a downward spiral and you end up in the same place.
00:08:03.200 And something I want to touch on right there, one of the things that I've learned as I've been going through this, because I feel you 100 percent on that whole self-doubt thing, man.
00:08:11.680 Surrounding yourself with people who are not only just a little bit better than you, but who also uplift you to help you elevate yourself, man.
00:08:21.860 That is that is one of the most powerful things you can do whenever you're climbing out of the shit.
00:08:26.620 Absolutely.
00:08:28.300 And there's that saying that you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with.
00:08:32.380 That's, you know, it's not a coincidence.
00:08:34.640 I spend my time with pretty damn successful people now and not people who are just successful professionally or financially.
00:08:42.280 You know, people who have successful marriages, people who, you know, people who have overcome debt, people who are physically healthy, you know, people who are smart and intelligent and growth centered.
00:08:55.040 You know, so they're reading voraciously and they're listening to podcasts every time they get a chance.
00:08:59.260 You hang around those people enough and you start, you know, their habits start to rub off on you and you develop habits of your own.
00:09:06.140 And all of a sudden now you've got other people who, you know, maybe where you were a year ago who want to rub off on you a little bit and get some of what you're learning and some of what you're drinking.
00:09:17.180 That's been the coolest part for me is starting to see some of that.
00:09:20.020 You know, I'm having people reach out to me saying that they're inspired by by what I've done.
00:09:23.660 And I'm just like, man, I've, you know, I've just been grinding for the last three years.
00:09:27.100 It hasn't been pretty.
00:09:28.120 So I'm glad you can draw some inspiration so it wasn't all in vain.
00:09:31.600 Absolutely, man.
00:09:32.260 That's that's something that's been really cool that I've noticed at a certain point.
00:09:35.360 You start you stop receiving and you start giving and that's how you receive.
00:09:40.080 And that that's a really cool, cool feeling when that comes around.
00:09:44.940 Yeah, absolutely.
00:09:45.680 So, man, what would you say has been your biggest takeaway from this journey?
00:09:50.100 You know, my biggest takeaway honestly has been and I'll kind of I guess I'll jump on the trendy bandwagon a little bit.
00:09:57.700 I know you're a big fan of stoicism, but but so am I.
00:10:02.320 And, you know, that's I've learned and one of my biggest takeaways has been that if I follow the tenets and the practices of stoicism,
00:10:10.960 then then I'm going to overcome all of those hurdles because I'm not going to let those people who are trying to shovel shit all over me.
00:10:18.860 I'm not going to be concerned with their actions.
00:10:21.260 I'm only going to be concerned with my own.
00:10:23.180 And the moment I start to doubt myself, I'm going to call that into question.
00:10:26.760 I'm going to check myself and realize what the reality is and reassess.
00:10:30.080 And then I'm going to I'm going to assess what's really in my control.
00:10:33.980 And I'm going to attack those things, you know, ferociously until I improve them to the extent that I want to.
00:10:40.180 I love that, man.
00:10:40.960 Love it.
00:10:41.980 So let me ask you this, brother.
00:10:43.160 What advice would you give these guys that are just now starting their journey?
00:10:47.380 It's it almost sounds cliche, but don't give up when it gets hard because it's going to be hard and it's it's going to be hard.
00:10:56.240 It's going to be hard, particularly early on.
00:10:58.140 You know, the first for me, when I finally decided that I was going to do something, it was right around my 30th birthday, which is in September.
00:11:05.840 And I was on and off of diets for probably six months before I before I really committed and I was really all in because it got hard.
00:11:14.180 And, you know, you do it for a month at a time and, you know, or straight for a month and then you fall off of it.
00:11:19.260 And, you know, then you do it again for another month and you fall off it and you have a New Year's resolution and everything's good till the middle of February.
00:11:25.720 And that's I think that's human nature.
00:11:30.140 But I think if if I could tell you anything, it's just be resilient.
00:11:34.740 You know, you're tougher than you give yourself credit for.
00:11:37.420 You know, you don't have to curl up and die every time the first thing goes wrong.
00:11:42.220 Absolutely, man.
00:11:42.860 One of those bearded gurus that I follow said something like consistency trumps talent.
00:11:48.840 Yep.
00:11:50.000 And every time, every single time.
00:11:53.080 Let me ask you this.
00:11:54.640 Finally, man, if you could challenge these guys to do one thing this week, what would it be?
00:12:01.080 I would challenge them to find one little thing in their life that's within their control, whatever, whatever that thing in their life is that they're trying to get under control, whether it's their health or their finances or whatever.
00:12:14.060 Find that one little thing that can give them a victory and that they can do consistently over the long term.
00:12:19.020 You know, going building off of what you just said, you know, one of my favorite quotes is little things done consistently over the long term yield big results.
00:12:27.580 You know, my first step and this is what, you know, I tell everyone is my first step wasn't wiping out, you know, a terrible diet and quitting drinking and stopping doing everything all at once to try to turn myself around.
00:12:39.300 My first step was literally switching from regular soda to diet soda.
00:12:43.860 And it was a simple step, but it was a win that I could get for a couple of months and build a habit and get some momentum and some confidence to then build off of that and say, you know, I'm only going to have, you know, two diet cokes a day.
00:12:54.760 And then I'm going to cut them out completely.
00:12:57.620 And then, you know, I go from that to, you know, now I count my macros and I measure my food like I'm a goddamn bodybuilder because I've learned and I've refined and I've built off of all of those little habits.
00:13:09.960 So find that first little small win and just attack it.
00:13:13.500 Get that win.
00:13:15.500 Absolutely, man.
00:13:16.320 I love that, dude.
00:13:17.460 That those little steps add up so quickly.
00:13:21.260 You know, once you make that a habit, then add another one, make that a habit, add another one.
00:13:28.100 And that's the thing, you know, you said my favorite word there is habit.
00:13:31.360 People, people underestimate the power of habits.
00:13:33.900 They rely so much on motivation.
00:13:35.540 They rely so much on, on their why they, they rely so much on this sort of internal drive to get things going.
00:13:43.540 When in actuality, truly successful people and truly people who are able to, you know, truly transform themselves in one way or another, they're relying on habits.
00:13:52.760 You know, motivation gets you going.
00:13:54.100 Habits keep you going.
00:13:56.000 Absolutely, man.
00:13:56.720 I love that.
00:13:57.760 All right, man.
00:13:58.200 Well, I think that's, we're coming up on time.
00:14:00.060 So let's go ahead and wrap it up there.
00:14:01.620 Brother, I can't thank you enough for coming on.
00:14:04.820 Dude, your story is inspirational.
00:14:07.860 I can't tell you how many times I've looked at what you've done and it's pushed me just a little bit further, man.
00:14:12.560 Well, thanks, Bubba.
00:14:13.800 I appreciate it, buddy.
00:14:14.600 Yes, sir.
00:14:15.300 All right, man.
00:14:15.740 We'll see you around.
00:14:17.040 Yes, sir.
00:14:17.380 Thanks for having me.
00:14:18.060 Thank you.
00:14:20.440 If you've been inspired by this conversation, we encourage you to learn more about the steps, tools, strategy, and resources these men are using inside of our exclusive brotherhood, The Iron Council.
00:14:30.140 The Iron Council is a band of brothers dedicated to leveling up their lives and committed to helping you do the same.
00:14:35.440 You can learn more at orderofman.com slash inthetrenches.
00:14:38.500 Until next week, take action and become the man you are meant to be.