ITT 009： From Complacency to Contentment ｜ Doug Hershberger
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
199.87643
Summary
In this episode of In the Trenches, I sit down with Doug Hershberger to talk about his journey to becoming a better man. Doug shares his story of how he went from being overweight and struggling with his health to now being a strong, healthy man.
Transcript
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Gentlemen, welcome to In the Trenches, an Order of Man podcast dedicated to interviewing
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ordinary, everyday men like you and me who are currently in the battle of becoming better
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You'll hear the good, the bad, and the ugly from guys who are striving to become stronger
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husbands, fathers, business owners, and community leaders.
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It's our mission to deliver the stories that will inspire you to become the man you are
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Your host for this podcast is a man who is not only in the trenches, but has drastically
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changed his life for the better over the past two years.
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Before we get started today, I just kind of wanted to remind you that this has been a
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We decided we were going to do 12 episodes of In the Trenches.
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So we are three quarters of the way through that.
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And if you like what you're hearing and you want to hear more of it, why don't you reach
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out to Ryan and let him know what you think of the show?
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You can do that at ryan at orderofman.com or you can just post it in the Facebook group
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If you're really interested in what we're doing and you'd like to see more of it, you
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can go to orderofman.com slash In the Trenches.
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All right, gentlemen, let's get into my conversation with Doug.
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Let's talk a little bit about the journey that you're on.
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Give us a little bit of background about yourself.
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Yeah, so I'm younger, relatively speaking, than a lot of guys that we hang out with in
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And so I've come from a background of being overweight and struggling with my health.
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And that's really what has been a launch pad, that transformation for who I am now.
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So I think if I were to sum it up in a brief statement, it's more of getting out of that
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life of complacency and into a life of contentment through some of my actions and changes and
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Dude, I love that you made a difference right there in those words.
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I know it sounds like parsing hairs, but there is a difference in contentment and complacency.
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But for me, it was growing up as a kid, I was always looking for the easy way out.
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And what that looked like in my health was I was always overweight, hated running, hated
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– I love sports, but I hated having to do the work for it and being an athlete.
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And so it kind of depreciated into this apathetic life where my school, my grades reflected it,
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my desire to achieve anything in life reflected it, I was kind of just a lazy – for lack
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of a better term, lazy jackass most of my high school career because of that complacency
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And so taking hold of what we talk about, the lowest hanging fruit, which is your fitness,
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for me was the impetus for change for the rest of my life.
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So what was the actual catalyst to get you to get off the couch and get into what you're
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That's a good question because it's hard to pinpoint one thing.
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It's a good story to tell and it's probably healthy if you're trying to create some kind
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I recall back when I was graduating – not sorry, I was finishing up my junior year in
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high school and faced a lot of what we would call today bullying or maybe just a little
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bit of sense of feeling discontent or like I didn't belong and didn't really have much
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of a group of friends, just kind of isolated by my own choices.
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But after that junior year, I went to summertime and I started looking for a job because I wanted
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to make some money and had grown up with my dad who works construction and painting and
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And if you know anything about mowing lawns down here in Florida, it's pretty damn grueling.
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And you sweat all day, you're going through gallons of water and you're walking around
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So a pretty good recipe for weight loss if that's what you're looking to do.
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And actually at the same time, then got another job working in a nutraceutical company.
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So I was packing supplements while in other days I was mowing lawns.
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And so that got me thinking about health and fitness and what I looked like in the mirror,
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And the one week I remember I thought, well, shoot, I don't know what to do.
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I don't have any knowledge, but I do know that eating less food makes more, makes sense
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Bubba, let me tell you, I'm not going to do that again.
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And I lived off of canned green beans and mixed vegetables.
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And it sucked, but I saw some change in that one week in terms of weight and in terms of
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And I thought, well, maybe I should start researching this and find out some more information.
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And that summer between my junior and senior year was really the series of changes or incidences
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So yeah, being a vegetarian, man, guys out there, if you want to be a vegetarian, that's
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I know some good guys that are vegetarians, but it's tough.
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I have a master's degree in exercise physiology and some training in nutrition and whatnot.
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And I can tell you, if you're going to be vegetarian, you're going to have to do some footwork
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to figure out how you're going to get all your nutrients in as a guy, especially protein.
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Um, so I don't have any pictures from that time.
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I have some pictures from before my heaviest and after.
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And, uh, the only way I can recall is seeing 270, 275 at, uh, 16 years old.
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I don't know what I was when I was 17, my junior year, but, uh, so I would guess 270, 280.
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Right now, uh, if I stepped on the scale, I think 191, the lightest I ever was, was 168,
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So I lost about a hundred pounds in about a two years span.
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So man, that sounds like a pretty, pretty incredible hurdle that you've overcome.
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What are some of the other ones that you've come across?
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Well, like I said, I saw I'm younger, so I anticipate a lot more challenges coming my
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Uh, but you know, one of the things that I saw, there's not a lie.
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One of the things that I saw a lot of growth happen was how I started seeing my future and
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You know, I was, in many ways, I was a stoic before I know what stoicism was.
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And when we talk about, when I talk about stoicism, I'm talking about contemporary stoicism,
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not ancient, um, stoicism in terms of philosophy, but just having the mind of control and take
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control of what you can control and then let the rest go.
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For me growing up, it was, I can't control anything.
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When I started to see weight come off and start to feel better because of my choices in
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terms of fitness and exercise and diet and, uh, and whatnot, uh, then I started to look
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And so specifically, uh, my academics would be a good example.
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You know, when I, the end of my junior year, uh, I sat at about a 2.1 or 2.2 GPA, um, good
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Didn't give a crap about any subjects, kind of showed up cause I was supposed to.
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And, um, then the senior year, uh, that whole year I just got down to the grind.
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So I did what I could hustled for it and, uh, graduated with a 3.0.
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And if you're, if you know, high school GPA, when you, that, that, uh, junior, senior year,
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that's money for, um, getting yourself set up for college.
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And so I started to make the connection between, I can choose who I want to be, uh, going to
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college or trade school, whatever it is, uh, the next 80 years of my life, or I can just
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So I think academically, uh, I saw some huge change in terms of where I wanted to be in my
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career as well as what that took, uh, my senior year of high school.
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I've noticed a lot whenever, whenever I really delved into stoicism and I'm, I'm not really
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a contemporary, so I'm more of the ancient stoics.
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I really dig getting into, you know, like the interideon and discourses.
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When I first started reading it, I was looking at it like a cow looking at a new gate.
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It was, it was hard to really wrap my mind around, but once I really got into that and
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I started thinking about, especially that, that part that you're talking about right
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And the one thing that you can really control are the choices that you make on a daily basis.
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That, that was a pretty big game changer to me.
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And one of the things I tell young guys when I work with them and, and, uh, really anybody
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I talk to, you know, I, I work, I'm, um, um, a role player here down in, uh, South Florida
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F3, but when we talk to guys about, you know, where their life's at right now, you know, obviously
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the first step is identifying the problem that, and admitting that you're in it, that
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you're overweight, that you're in a job that you, you hate and that your marriage sucks admitting
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But the second step is realizing what you can control and then admitting what you can't
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control instead of just throwing it all out with, uh, the baby out with the bath water,
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but actually identifying what things can I do right now that are going to create some
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And I think the stoic mindset makes it real simple.
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And if you make sure that you write them down and put that stuff on paper so that way you
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can actually visualize what it is that you need to control, it makes it that much easier.
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And I can speak from first and experience is if there's nothing you can identify that you can
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That's, I mean, that's, that's a, that's an age long, uh, task right there.
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So if you're just working on your health and fitness, you've got a job in front of you.
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Don't worry about anything else, but that will snowball to the rest of your life for sure.
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So what would you say some of the biggest takeaways you you've had on this journey have been?
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So I tie my Christian, my faith with my stoicism and the worldview that I have.
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And so the biggest thing is, you know, we talk about the word stewardship and, uh, we
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And I think that's great and all, but stewardship applies also to what you're given physically.
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And since we're on the theme of physical health, uh, I think the biggest takeaway for me and
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my mission in life is make sure one, I steward my, my health, my fitness, um, the things that
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I get, the food, the money, all that steward it so well so that I don't have to make be
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And then secondly, uh, model that and impact as many lives as possible so that people can
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start to realize how important it is for themselves too.
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That light, that lighthouse theory, man, that's, that's been a pretty big one for me too, where
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you, you model the behavior in order to influence as many people as possible.
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I spent two years working with young boys who are delinquent.
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They're, uh, referred out of the school system.
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And at that point, especially for boys, but I think men in general, at that point, once
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you've, you've tried and you failed, the biggest thing is to look at people who succeeded and
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And so if you are successful, you have now a job to show it to other, to show yourself
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Instead of just telling them what to do, you gotta, you gotta model it.
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So what, what's some of the biggest advice you would give to some of these guys that are
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Um, yeah, you know, the, the simple kind of cheesy one is just get started, just go
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out and walk for 10 minutes or just, you know, say no to that ice cream, you know, whatever
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I think that's good is just start with baby steps.
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That's, that's healthy, but I'm actually going to shift to the other side.
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I think one of the biggest changes that I made was that week of vegetarianism because
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that extreme experience led me to, first of all, believe that it's possible that I can
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do something and it can impact me, uh, in a way that I'm going to see results.
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But second of all, that, um, it shocked me a little bit, you know, it made me realize
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how crappy I had been eating and how much knowledge I didn't have, how much I had to
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go research and start to double down on finding out answers and resourcing myself.
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And, you know, we talk about periodizing your diet, periodizing your training program in
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terms of stacking, uh, baby steps, bigger steps and larger steps.
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But I think, you know, for some people, maybe it's ordering P90X, maybe it's getting a personal
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trainer, maybe it's, um, hiring a nutritionist, maybe it's doing the keto diet, maybe it's
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doing whole 30, but maybe tackle something, one big thing and, and, and just go all out
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And, uh, I guarantee that's going to have an impact on you.
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And then you got to figure out what baby steps are going to be sustainable after that.
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All my guests get to challenge the listeners for one week to do one thing.
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What's, what's that challenge going to be from, from Doug?
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Uh, so one week, I would say, um, pick one, one food that you identify as your vice that
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you know for sure, if you knock it out of your life, it's not going to, uh, impact you negatively.
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Maybe it's a nightly bowl of ice cream, maybe it's beer, maybe it's, um, shoot, I don't
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It could be something like a donut and just cut it out.
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I'm not huge on abstinence, but I think that's a really good start.
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When you start to realize you can win over those little things, um, then the bigger things
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Make sure you post those in the Order of Man Facebook group with the hashtag in the trenches.
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All right, Doug, man, I've got, I've only got one more question for you.
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Did not prepare you for this, but what does it mean to be a man?
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Cause I've heard a lot of Ryan's podcasts and I've heard guys answers and a lot of them
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Um, my wife and I are talking about this, this concept of belonging.
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And I think every person, every human being, not just men have this yearning to belong.
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And, uh, but I was, I posed a, I posed a, a, uh, dilemma to her.
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I was like, this is the paradox of belonging is that in order to truly belong, you've got
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And so I think being a man is having a sense of office, plugging in somewhere and committing
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and then, uh, having that responsibility and being consistent with it, not quitting when
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it gets hard, whenever all the odds are against you, not, not checking out because there are,
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And so maybe that's marriage, maybe that's kids, maybe that's a job.
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Uh, there are times for change, of course, but I think a big one is plugging in and just
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having a sense of office, having a sense of responsibility.
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We kept this one short, sweet, but there was a ton of actionable, actionable steps in
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If you've been inspired by this conversation, we encourage you to learn more about the steps,
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These men are using inside of our exclusive brotherhood, the iron council.
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The iron council is a band of brothers dedicated to leveling up their lives and committed to helping
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You can learn more at order of man.com slash in the trenches until next week, take action