Coach Ted talks about the exogenous substances that we consume - or that consume us.
Caffeine and Other Exogenous Substances
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Caffeine and Other Exogenous Substances
Season 6/Episode 66
February 26, 2023
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
This is the Ted O'Neill program. There's so much information in science and philosophy, physical training, performance optimization, nutrition, human experience with Ted O'Neill and Jon Leon Guerrero.
0:23 Jon
Welcome to the Ted O'Neill program. We've had a number of our fellow trainees deal with a particular substance that I think is a reality for everybody. (Steroids) Yes. Or at least a stimulant of some sort and that is caffeine.
0:41 Ted
Oh caffeine. (Yeah) I was going to say because I don’t, I don't know that Diablo in this iteration has a particular steroid culture. (Yeah) Which is odd for being in a powerlifting gym but whatever. We'll talk about caffeine then.
0:54 Jon
And I'm sure we can get to that subject in another episode, but I want to talk about it specifically because I had my own experience with it, and we can talk about that. But I think you mentioned that Tom and Susan, after the morning ritual of having a cup of coffee every day for, well, those two are, they've been together for a while.
1:16 Ted
Yeah, like, like five decades. (Yeah) It's pretty magical.
1:20 Jon
So, they've had a cup of coffee practically every morning, that whole amount of time and now they've decided not to take out a high interest loan. Against their adrenal glands.
1:30 Ted
Right. So, this is pretty cool. So, I've talked about stimulants or specifically we'll say coffee quite a bit in our Recomp program and for those who are engaging themselves in that training, and the reason is it's something that I think as a topic has a particular amount of merit. Because a lot of people do this, just out of the habit of I get up and I do this. And you and I have talked about this on the show before to where there are certain things that become aggrandized and cultural, like don't talk to me until I've had my coffee and this kind of thing. And so, if you can't do it without your coffee, for example, then what does that really mean? Or if it's just a ritual that you enjoy that you've done that for, let's say 20 or 30 years straight. What does that mean? Because it at least raises the question, which gives us the opportunity to explore what's on the other side of that coin. Now, the reason I find this to be an important topic, at least worth doing an internal experiment, you mentioned taking out a high interest loan on your adrenals because that's directly, (your words) yes, directly out of our training. (Yeah) If you think about how people start something like we'll say, drinking coffee, it's usually to create a state change in the body. (Yeah) And this is probably the precursor to doing it every morning as part of a ritual. But let's say I wake up and I'm fatigued. And so, I don't feel like I can quote “face the day”. My energy is low. So then I have a cup of coffee, which creates an exogenous, exogenous compound outside the body that creates a chemical state change in the body that I wasn't able to manufacture on my own. So then, generally speaking, what happens is that it allows us to perform at a level that is outside of our current ability, had we not taken the exogenous compound. (Yeah) Right. So that we're all on the same page here so far. So then if you asked a logical question, if I dig deeper into my reserves the next morning, am I more or less likely to have more of my own manufactured energy, or rely now on operating at a greater deficit?
3:39 Jon
Yeah, greater deficit and a weird dependence.
3:43 Ted
Well at least in the beginning it was probably just a greater deficit. (Yeah) Because if you're able to push yourself farther than you could have without it, then you're going to have a deficit. So, then you're actually going to feel that you want to do that again, (right) so you don't experience the deficit. And if you don't pay the piper fairly early on, then it gets into exactly what you're talking about now about a weird dependence, or at least something that we become unaware of or something we've said this is now what I need to do to get up in the morning.
4:13 Jon
And it's so normalized, that we all just think it's okay.
4:17 Ted
Yeah, because we see it everywhere. And it's normalized. (Yeah) So, that doesn't necessarily mean that it's good, bad or indifferent, but I think it at least bears one a little bit of an educational piece. And then to an internal experiment to see if you're making choices that are really in line with where you would want to be long term. (Yeah) That is indicative of problems that we could spend an entire season on. (Sure) If I'm not enough, and enough myself, based on whatever trainings I'm currently engaged in to face my life and to show up in my life a certain way. Then without even being aware of it. I'm going to be on the wrong side of every circumstance and situation I encounter and I say that very specifically, every circumstance and situation. (Yeah) Because if I'm starting from a place of a perceived deficit…
5:13 Jon
or something as simple as getting going.
5:17 Ted
Yeah. Then anything that comes at me I'm viewing through the lens of self. Now one could call that being centered on the interpretations of self or self-centered. (Yep) So that everything now becomes about me. So, if there's anything discordant in the world around me, I'm now looking at that as having to do with me specifically. And this is why, for example, when people come at me with something that they find kind of confrontational they'll say, Well, it's not about you. It's like, yeah, you don't have to tell me that. (Yeah) I'm good. I actually do the work. I recognize anything you say to me about me has nothing to do with me. (Yeah) It just doesn't. It only has to do with the way that person views the world through their experiences. (Right) So, I don't need Asterix before we start the conversation. You can just tell me exactly what it is that you need to say and then we can unwind that. But this becomes an important thing because the more we lock into that, the more we're operating from a place of lack or limitation. We're seeing ourselves behind every situation, kind of always playing catch up, we're always interpreted through the lens of limitation or something that we don't have. (Yeah) So, physiologically, I mean, that's just that's the mental component, right? With us addressing the physical part in a very small way. Just recognizing we are at an energetic deficit, because over time, you don't typically feel that you have that same lift from something like caffeine, (right) as when you first did it, but now you can't think of the idea of not having it.
6:48 Jon
Well. There are a couple things about that, that I'm just I'll shine a light on. They once heard Deion Sanders and he was talking about you know, guys who had extreme warm up rituals or whatever and his ability to just get on the field and get going. And he said, You know, when the lion sees a gazelle he doesn’t need to do a bunch of things. He doesn't need an appetizer. He just goes and gets it. And I think that one of the reasons that I so enjoy training early in the morning, is that it allows me to make that demonstration for myself that I just go get the gazelle. (Yeah) And that's a lot of fun building on that. I gave up caffeine for two Recomp rounds in a row. And I was at a point where I didn't think I would enjoy it. I won't say that I didn't think I could do it. I knew I could do it. I just didn't think I would enjoy it. And it turns out I just decided that that was what it was going to be and then it was. (Awesome) So, I've reincorporated the use of caffeine, not anything deliberate. We drink a lot of decaf from my house. But I do like coffee. I just don't drink it first thing in the morning and then by the time I have my coffee in the morning, if I have coffee I've trained already. So, I'm a solid couple hour into my day. So, it's not about getting going, it's just about enjoying some coffee.
8:17 Ted
Well, you're coming from a different place of discernment. (Yeah) So, this is important because I'm never an advocate of dogmatism. Doing something because I'm supposed to do something because somebody told me to do something. Right? And that's the way that it is, but really like, addictions are an extreme form of dogmatism, where we've lost the power of choice (lost the power) at the moment. So, this is why this gets confused sometimes. (Yeah) So, if you look at something like an addiction through that lens, it takes some of the stigma off of it. Because there's all manner of things. I would say almost everyone on this planet has an addiction to something. (Sure) That’s one of our core programs, the emotional sobriety curriculum, can clearly delineate where we have addictions to our own biochemical processes, based on habituated thought. So, for me, I like to give people the option B, right? because you can always choose to go back to something but if you're in a habituated state, and it's not something where you're doing it intentionally now just fills the space and is a requirement so if I say to you, you know, Johnny take coffee out of the morning. If you freak out, internally or otherwise, (yeah) then that's a really great moment of introspection. (Yes) Because then to me, it's extremely valuable to, one, know fully. What is that, what is occurring within my body when I ingest that substance, so to really get educated on it, right? to really know what's happening because people do this all the time they engage in things and they really have no clarity on it at all, other than the way that it makes them feel, in other words, other than the way it changes their state in their body chemically. They don't know how they just know what it feels like. It's a bit of a dangerous place to come from. So, when you've received the education on that part two of the education would be what would happen if I took this out of my day to day practice? Right, that would be one of the PPT disciplines displacement and replacement. (Yep) Because if you initially balk at doing that, right, then that's an indication that you may have lost the power of choice. (Yeah) Especially if you can line up a whole bunch of things on the negative side of the column as to where this might not be the greatest decision to make. So, this is an educational piece, right? It's not a judgment and it's not dogmatic. (Yep). This has to be something where we become more self-aware, we should be looking for these places in our life where we're spending our energy spending, right? There's a cost value associated with every single thing that we do physically mentally, emotionally, energetically, it costs something that's obviously paying attention. Because we're not paying attention. You're paying toward distraction, which is way more expensive. So, that would be like paying interest on something. (Yeah) Instead of receiving interest. And that's why we say that drinking coffee or taking caffeine is like a high interest loan. Because when you cease that activity for a while, now, your adrenal glands have taken a hit for a period of time, and they're not going to be as responsive as normal. So, that's where you're going to feel that effect of being dulled down and being kind of lifeless and having a lot of brain fog until your body can react, automate and find a new level of homeostasis. So, whether it's caffeine or anything else, that's an easy one. That's the low hanging fruit because so many people, as you say, normalize that. And if you're in that place where you've normalized it and you're doing it without thinking about it, then I would encourage you to find out what it's like for say, a month or two months to remove that and then see what occurs in your life. And then if you choose to go back to it, do it selectively so you're in charge of it, not being consumed by the things you're consuming or what we call consumed by our consumption. And we talked about this briefly off mic before we started the show. An interesting phenomenon at Diablo is that I don't know anyone on our powerlifting team right now. Take pre workout supplements. (Yeah) But that's an entire industry and it's a different era. It definitely wasn't like that. Everyone would be doing some kind of essentially legalized methamphetamine. The pre workout supplements that are on the market today, I think are some of the most dangerous things out there. (Wow) They're so strong and they're always these compounds that no one's ever heard of, and are really, you know, kind of a… (liquid meth) yeah, a little bit. So, people usually have no idea what's happening, what's happening and thereby they just do it because they get way more energy and they train. So, now they're depleting themselves way more than they would normally be able to do so you're always playing catch up. No one does that anymore. And I think that's a function of greater awareness, greater focus on precision, nutrition, and greater mental and emotional training. You just find you don't need it.
13:21 Jon
You don't need it, and everybody still catches the gazelle.
13:27 Ted
Yeah, right. This is important, because if it's something that you don't need, in other words, it's an artificial prop, then you're not functioning from a place of being optimal. (Right) So, then it's actually blocking you from getting into the state of optimal performance. So then upon removing that one would have to then ask the question, what would optimal look like? (Yeah) I would be in charge of my own processes at all times, physically, mentally and emotionally. So, if someone for example, if their mind isn't trained, such that they're reactive to everything in their outside world, they're burning huge amounts of energy. And that's going to manifest before doing something like a really heavy training session. You go into feeling already depleted because the world owns you, and you're a slave to the outside world. So, anything anyone says you take it personally, you're always in this combative state. You're burning massive amounts of energy. (Yeah) You're going to need a pre workout drink to get through training. Wow. Right. And we don't see it that way. Because all of this is normalized. (Just spilled over into everything) Yeah, you just see an ad and this is what you do, but it's what everyone else does. So, this is now what I do. And I have no greater awareness of what's actually occurring and just one more place I give my power away, because that's the habituated state that that one would live in if they've not received physical, mental and emotional training concurrently. There is no crossover into their life; they see everything has been compartmentalized. (Yeah) So, when you start to understand… (that just doesn’t work that way) No not even a little bit. That's evident in how the world is currently working. (Yeah) Right. It's not very functional. (Not very functional) So, when you begin to access higher places of training, you're going to find a lot of the things are really most hopeful, nearly all of the things that are normal as behaviors. Begin to look abnormal to you
0:23 Jon
Welcome to the Ted O'Neill program. We've had a number of our fellow trainees deal with a particular substance that I think is a reality for everybody. (Steroids) Yes. Or at least a stimulant of some sort and that is caffeine.
0:41 Ted
Oh caffeine. (Yeah) I was going to say because I don’t, I don't know that Diablo in this iteration has a particular steroid culture. (Yeah) Which is odd for being in a powerlifting gym but whatever. We'll talk about caffeine then.
0:54 Jon
And I'm sure we can get to that subject in another episode, but I want to talk about it specifically because I had my own experience with it, and we can talk about that. But I think you mentioned that Tom and Susan, after the morning ritual of having a cup of coffee every day for, well, those two are, they've been together for a while.
1:16 Ted
Yeah, like, like five decades. (Yeah) It's pretty magical.
1:20 Jon
So, they've had a cup of coffee practically every morning, that whole amount of time and now they've decided not to take out a high interest loan. Against their adrenal glands.
1:30 Ted
Right. So, this is pretty cool. So, I've talked about stimulants or specifically we'll say coffee quite a bit in our Recomp program and for those who are engaging themselves in that training, and the reason is it's something that I think as a topic has a particular amount of merit. Because a lot of people do this, just out of the habit of I get up and I do this. And you and I have talked about this on the show before to where there are certain things that become aggrandized and cultural, like don't talk to me until I've had my coffee and this kind of thing. And so, if you can't do it without your coffee, for example, then what does that really mean? Or if it's just a ritual that you enjoy that you've done that for, let's say 20 or 30 years straight. What does that mean? Because it at least raises the question, which gives us the opportunity to explore what's on the other side of that coin. Now, the reason I find this to be an important topic, at least worth doing an internal experiment, you mentioned taking out a high interest loan on your adrenals because that's directly, (your words) yes, directly out of our training. (Yeah) If you think about how people start something like we'll say, drinking coffee, it's usually to create a state change in the body. (Yeah) And this is probably the precursor to doing it every morning as part of a ritual. But let's say I wake up and I'm fatigued. And so, I don't feel like I can quote “face the day”. My energy is low. So then I have a cup of coffee, which creates an exogenous, exogenous compound outside the body that creates a chemical state change in the body that I wasn't able to manufacture on my own. So then, generally speaking, what happens is that it allows us to perform at a level that is outside of our current ability, had we not taken the exogenous compound. (Yeah) Right. So that we're all on the same page here so far. So then if you asked a logical question, if I dig deeper into my reserves the next morning, am I more or less likely to have more of my own manufactured energy, or rely now on operating at a greater deficit?
3:39 Jon
Yeah, greater deficit and a weird dependence.
3:43 Ted
Well at least in the beginning it was probably just a greater deficit. (Yeah) Because if you're able to push yourself farther than you could have without it, then you're going to have a deficit. So, then you're actually going to feel that you want to do that again, (right) so you don't experience the deficit. And if you don't pay the piper fairly early on, then it gets into exactly what you're talking about now about a weird dependence, or at least something that we become unaware of or something we've said this is now what I need to do to get up in the morning.
4:13 Jon
And it's so normalized, that we all just think it's okay.
4:17 Ted
Yeah, because we see it everywhere. And it's normalized. (Yeah) So, that doesn't necessarily mean that it's good, bad or indifferent, but I think it at least bears one a little bit of an educational piece. And then to an internal experiment to see if you're making choices that are really in line with where you would want to be long term. (Yeah) That is indicative of problems that we could spend an entire season on. (Sure) If I'm not enough, and enough myself, based on whatever trainings I'm currently engaged in to face my life and to show up in my life a certain way. Then without even being aware of it. I'm going to be on the wrong side of every circumstance and situation I encounter and I say that very specifically, every circumstance and situation. (Yeah) Because if I'm starting from a place of a perceived deficit…
5:13 Jon
or something as simple as getting going.
5:17 Ted
Yeah. Then anything that comes at me I'm viewing through the lens of self. Now one could call that being centered on the interpretations of self or self-centered. (Yep) So that everything now becomes about me. So, if there's anything discordant in the world around me, I'm now looking at that as having to do with me specifically. And this is why, for example, when people come at me with something that they find kind of confrontational they'll say, Well, it's not about you. It's like, yeah, you don't have to tell me that. (Yeah) I'm good. I actually do the work. I recognize anything you say to me about me has nothing to do with me. (Yeah) It just doesn't. It only has to do with the way that person views the world through their experiences. (Right) So, I don't need Asterix before we start the conversation. You can just tell me exactly what it is that you need to say and then we can unwind that. But this becomes an important thing because the more we lock into that, the more we're operating from a place of lack or limitation. We're seeing ourselves behind every situation, kind of always playing catch up, we're always interpreted through the lens of limitation or something that we don't have. (Yeah) So, physiologically, I mean, that's just that's the mental component, right? With us addressing the physical part in a very small way. Just recognizing we are at an energetic deficit, because over time, you don't typically feel that you have that same lift from something like caffeine, (right) as when you first did it, but now you can't think of the idea of not having it.
6:48 Jon
Well. There are a couple things about that, that I'm just I'll shine a light on. They once heard Deion Sanders and he was talking about you know, guys who had extreme warm up rituals or whatever and his ability to just get on the field and get going. And he said, You know, when the lion sees a gazelle he doesn’t need to do a bunch of things. He doesn't need an appetizer. He just goes and gets it. And I think that one of the reasons that I so enjoy training early in the morning, is that it allows me to make that demonstration for myself that I just go get the gazelle. (Yeah) And that's a lot of fun building on that. I gave up caffeine for two Recomp rounds in a row. And I was at a point where I didn't think I would enjoy it. I won't say that I didn't think I could do it. I knew I could do it. I just didn't think I would enjoy it. And it turns out I just decided that that was what it was going to be and then it was. (Awesome) So, I've reincorporated the use of caffeine, not anything deliberate. We drink a lot of decaf from my house. But I do like coffee. I just don't drink it first thing in the morning and then by the time I have my coffee in the morning, if I have coffee I've trained already. So, I'm a solid couple hour into my day. So, it's not about getting going, it's just about enjoying some coffee.
8:17 Ted
Well, you're coming from a different place of discernment. (Yeah) So, this is important because I'm never an advocate of dogmatism. Doing something because I'm supposed to do something because somebody told me to do something. Right? And that's the way that it is, but really like, addictions are an extreme form of dogmatism, where we've lost the power of choice (lost the power) at the moment. So, this is why this gets confused sometimes. (Yeah) So, if you look at something like an addiction through that lens, it takes some of the stigma off of it. Because there's all manner of things. I would say almost everyone on this planet has an addiction to something. (Sure) That’s one of our core programs, the emotional sobriety curriculum, can clearly delineate where we have addictions to our own biochemical processes, based on habituated thought. So, for me, I like to give people the option B, right? because you can always choose to go back to something but if you're in a habituated state, and it's not something where you're doing it intentionally now just fills the space and is a requirement so if I say to you, you know, Johnny take coffee out of the morning. If you freak out, internally or otherwise, (yeah) then that's a really great moment of introspection. (Yes) Because then to me, it's extremely valuable to, one, know fully. What is that, what is occurring within my body when I ingest that substance, so to really get educated on it, right? to really know what's happening because people do this all the time they engage in things and they really have no clarity on it at all, other than the way that it makes them feel, in other words, other than the way it changes their state in their body chemically. They don't know how they just know what it feels like. It's a bit of a dangerous place to come from. So, when you've received the education on that part two of the education would be what would happen if I took this out of my day to day practice? Right, that would be one of the PPT disciplines displacement and replacement. (Yep) Because if you initially balk at doing that, right, then that's an indication that you may have lost the power of choice. (Yeah) Especially if you can line up a whole bunch of things on the negative side of the column as to where this might not be the greatest decision to make. So, this is an educational piece, right? It's not a judgment and it's not dogmatic. (Yep). This has to be something where we become more self-aware, we should be looking for these places in our life where we're spending our energy spending, right? There's a cost value associated with every single thing that we do physically mentally, emotionally, energetically, it costs something that's obviously paying attention. Because we're not paying attention. You're paying toward distraction, which is way more expensive. So, that would be like paying interest on something. (Yeah) Instead of receiving interest. And that's why we say that drinking coffee or taking caffeine is like a high interest loan. Because when you cease that activity for a while, now, your adrenal glands have taken a hit for a period of time, and they're not going to be as responsive as normal. So, that's where you're going to feel that effect of being dulled down and being kind of lifeless and having a lot of brain fog until your body can react, automate and find a new level of homeostasis. So, whether it's caffeine or anything else, that's an easy one. That's the low hanging fruit because so many people, as you say, normalize that. And if you're in that place where you've normalized it and you're doing it without thinking about it, then I would encourage you to find out what it's like for say, a month or two months to remove that and then see what occurs in your life. And then if you choose to go back to it, do it selectively so you're in charge of it, not being consumed by the things you're consuming or what we call consumed by our consumption. And we talked about this briefly off mic before we started the show. An interesting phenomenon at Diablo is that I don't know anyone on our powerlifting team right now. Take pre workout supplements. (Yeah) But that's an entire industry and it's a different era. It definitely wasn't like that. Everyone would be doing some kind of essentially legalized methamphetamine. The pre workout supplements that are on the market today, I think are some of the most dangerous things out there. (Wow) They're so strong and they're always these compounds that no one's ever heard of, and are really, you know, kind of a… (liquid meth) yeah, a little bit. So, people usually have no idea what's happening, what's happening and thereby they just do it because they get way more energy and they train. So, now they're depleting themselves way more than they would normally be able to do so you're always playing catch up. No one does that anymore. And I think that's a function of greater awareness, greater focus on precision, nutrition, and greater mental and emotional training. You just find you don't need it.
13:21 Jon
You don't need it, and everybody still catches the gazelle.
13:27 Ted
Yeah, right. This is important, because if it's something that you don't need, in other words, it's an artificial prop, then you're not functioning from a place of being optimal. (Right) So, then it's actually blocking you from getting into the state of optimal performance. So then upon removing that one would have to then ask the question, what would optimal look like? (Yeah) I would be in charge of my own processes at all times, physically, mentally and emotionally. So, if someone for example, if their mind isn't trained, such that they're reactive to everything in their outside world, they're burning huge amounts of energy. And that's going to manifest before doing something like a really heavy training session. You go into feeling already depleted because the world owns you, and you're a slave to the outside world. So, anything anyone says you take it personally, you're always in this combative state. You're burning massive amounts of energy. (Yeah) You're going to need a pre workout drink to get through training. Wow. Right. And we don't see it that way. Because all of this is normalized. (Just spilled over into everything) Yeah, you just see an ad and this is what you do, but it's what everyone else does. So, this is now what I do. And I have no greater awareness of what's actually occurring and just one more place I give my power away, because that's the habituated state that that one would live in if they've not received physical, mental and emotional training concurrently. There is no crossover into their life; they see everything has been compartmentalized. (Yeah) So, when you start to understand… (that just doesn’t work that way) No not even a little bit. That's evident in how the world is currently working. (Yeah) Right. It's not very functional. (Not very functional) So, when you begin to access higher places of training, you're going to find a lot of the things are really most hopeful, nearly all of the things that are normal as behaviors. Begin to look abnormal to you
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