Improve Your Mindset For Stronger Bones And A Better Life

Kevin Ellis

Yeah, thanks so much for having me, this is gonna be great and I am happy to start out with a little bit of my story and I love how you just started out with, you know how I basically took something that wasn’t that great of news and I turned it into my life’s work and my purpose and you know it all started with the way I reframed thinking about the situation and really that whole situation was started a lot longer, a lot longer ago when I was about two months old or actually when I, when I was two months old my father passed away, my mother was five months pregnant with me, she was told my father had cancer and two months after I was born he passed away, he was 35 years old at that point in time and he was a marine, you know did 22 months in Vietnam and he survived combat but he got cancer from agent orange and he passed away you know when I was so so so young and I didn’t know him but I knew when I was growing up that I thought I was going to make him proud by just going in the Marine Corps and being a really good marine. 

So I did that, I went in the marines, did a couple deployments and then I got out and I started having all these different health issues and I had poor stress, you know poor sleep had got health issues, digestive issues. I was diagnosed with celiac disease. So I had been malabsorption nutrients for many, many years here. This big tough, you know strong marine can endure anything and then gluten which is that you know when you consume in a jazz gluten and you have celiac disease. It actually damages the villi in your small intestine and the villi are these tiny little nutrient absorption centers and mine were effectively being damaged and blunted to the point where they couldn’t do their job and they couldn’t couldn’t absorb the nutrients that I needed. So my body still needed those nutrients to execute its daily functions. I wasn’t getting them or absorbing them. So went to the largest reserve of nutrients that I had or minerals which were my bones. And it started pulling from my bones and then I was subsequently diagnosed with osteoporosis right around 30 years old and when people hear that they’re like oh my gosh, you know how is that possible? 

You know a 30 year old marine can get osteoporosis, could it happen to me? And I was just as shocked. I actually when I got the diagnosis it wasn’t even like somebody called me and told me it was a letter in the mail, it said you have osteoporosis, go on a gluten free diet and it was horrible, Absolutely horrible delivery number one horrible delivery to get the news that way. But then at the same time I remember opening that letter up and I read it and the blood just rushed from my face because I didn’t fully understand it at that point because I didn’t think it was something I would have to even think about at that point in my life and when I started googling, what does osteoporosis mean for my future. Obviously the first thing that came up were just not good things. It was fractures and medication dependence and it scared me here. I am tough marine scared you know crying and I was really upset about this. So I went and got a second opinion. They confirmed that osteoporosis but I was and I was at this point where I had a young daughter a song on the way and I thought I was going down the same path as my father who passed away at a really young age. And I realized I couldn’t do that to my kids and I couldn’t do that to myself and I had to figure out what I needed to do to improve my health and improve my bones. 

And I had a really strong impetus at that point to make some changes and to do some things to figure things out. So I started doing the reading the research, consulting with people, spending a lot of money to trying to figure all this stuff out. And I finally, slowly but surely started getting the right plan in place and I was improving my health was improving my bones and I realized along the way it’s not the average 30 year old male that’s dealing with this. It’s the woman, 50, 60, 70 plus, sometimes men as well and they’re told they have osteoporosis and they’re presented with four options calcium, vitamin D. Go for a walk, take a bone drug and that is woefully inadequate and it’s for that reason that I was like, I can probably apply the same energy and enthusiasm and mindset that I applied in the Marine Corps to help and help a whole lot of people. So I became a coach and I went and I sought out a bunch of different experts in their respective fields and I said, Hey, here’s who I’m helping and here’s what I’m doing. I’d love for you to be a part of this. And I brought in a bunch of credential team members, we built out this program that has now gone on to help people in over 1500 cities around the world, featured in Forbes and wealth inside an economic journal and all these other places. And it’s helping people every single day get the right plan in place to improve their health and improve their bones. And we’ve got a, you know, significant growth in our community right now. It’s really exciting to see that.

Jana Danielson

So when we think about health and wellness, we might think of, you know, our heart health, respiratory health. How do you, why is bone health so critical in this formula of health and wellness?

Kevin Ellis

It’s important because it’s the structure that holds you up. It’s the structure that’s going to take you to your best years yet. And it’s going to take you to 70, 80, 90, but it’s not just the structure that’s going to get you there crumbling. It’s the structure that you want to have intact. So you can be active and you know, be there for the people you love most and pick up and hug your grandkids and ride the horses and do those extra little adventures on all your travel and your trips that you want to do. That is the reason why your bone health is so important now and really understanding where you’re at now is so important.

Jana Danielson

So for those people who are here on the summit this week and, you know, you’re really our one and only expert that is, you know, rooted into bone health yet. We’re here on this mindset summit. How do how do things like, because we all deal with them, we all deal with stress. We all deal with anxiety at certain, you know, phases of our life. How do those, you know, having our sympathetic nervous system jacked up where we’re like full of cortisol yet, there’s no lion chasing us, but we don’t know how to get out of that. How is that impacting the health of our bones.

Kevin Ellis

Yes, psychological stress, It’s not always that physical threat, right? It could be that psychological stress that is actually causing, not just issues with your bones, but your health in general and those issues could be stemming from fear worry, emotionally charged thoughts, financial challenges, family conflict, keeping up with the perfect lives of the joneses on social media these days. That’s a huge one. And all of these things are contributing to and driving that stress response. And when you’re driving that stress response all the time. And you’ve probably heard this over and over again. But you’re activating that fight or flight response and you’re operating in what’s like the red zone right in the in the red zone, you’re sending the blood and energy and nutrients of resources away from the areas that are not required for immediate survival and you’re sending them to areas that need it most like your muscles in your heart and then you’re communicating to your body to secrete these different hormones, adrenaline and cortisol. 

And it’s not like those are bad but you have to have those things in the right amounts at the right times when you’re flooding your body all the time. That’s not going to be a good thing for your health and especially not your bones. So it’s going to impact your cortisol levels and your stress are going to impact your blood sugar. So if you have issues with blood sugar regulation excess cortisol can make those worse. It can impact weight gain and obesity. It can contribute to leaky gut which is intestinal permeability and that can lead to a whole host of other issues. That can be a gateway to a lot of other conditions. Can increase cardiovascular disease risk, can lead to hormonal imbalances disease in terms of disease, it can actually affect the immune system and weaken and suppress your immune system to can impact different hormone levels. Your thyroid function is usually down regulated and stressful conditions. So T3 and T4 levels they actually decrease when you’re in this chronic state of stress all the time, your mood, it’s gonna affect your mood right now. 

That’s gonna definitely affect your mindset at that point. Two and then your brain health and your sweet, sweet quality. Those are some of the other big things that are affected, but not only that, it’s going to affect your bones too. So when you have a lot of stress it’s going to reduce your progesterone production and this is a really important hormone that you have to have. And if it’s when you have chronically elevated cortisol levels, that’s going to reduce your ability to make progesterone. One of the other things that it’s going to do is reduce the ability of the cells that build bone the osteoblasts to form bone. Okay, so now we have two things going there that are really causing issues. But the biggest one I would say is that glucocorticoids are these things, they’re natural steroid hormones that they give a powerful anti-inflammatory effect. 

That’s what cortisol is right. But when you have that going all the time when you have high levels of that, it can actually kill these cells called astrocytes and osteria sites are these cells that live within the bone and they are like the orchestrators of the bone remodeling process. So they sense mechanical loading and stress and damage and they can send out signals to other bones, the osteoclasts to break down more bone and the osteoblasts to build more bone. But you can actually damage and kill those cells as well when those glucocorticoids levels are too high. So you can see right when we’re in our own head or maybe we’re we’ve got these psychological stressors taking place all the time that can have a really negative impact, not just on your health but on your bones as well.

Jana Danielson

I had the luxury of sitting in the audience when you were presenting at a conference that we were at in person and you shared part of your process and that how you have, you know, women come and you do these group coaching calls with them and educate them about your program. And one of the things that really kind of hit home for me was you were explaining the reactions and I want to touch on some of the some of the stories and some of you know, your experiences with these beating hearts who stepped forward because maybe for years they’ve been muted and didn’t know where to turn for help and they step into your world. And you talked about a woman that you know raised her hand and said yes that she wanted to go down this journey with you in tears and absolute tears and had her husband with her so that you know, kind of was this you know, snowball rolling downhill. There’s lots of emotion that goes on take us into the world of some of your clients and how they come to you for bone health. But really it’s the entirety of the person, it’s their emotional health, it’s their spiritual health. Give us some examples of what you’ve actually noticed. 

Kevin Ellis

A lot of times when people are coming to me, they are stressed, they’re worried, they’re overwhelmed, they’re waiting through conflicting information. They’re really scared. They had the same exact I know the position they’re in because I’ve been in that position so I really can feel for them. And I you know, they’re on Dr. Google. They’re looking up what is osteoporosis too. What about these medications, should I take them there? They’re searching google and coming up with conflicting information. The same search. So they’re trying to wade through all of this stuff and then they go to their doctor who’s an important person to work within their plan. But they realize at the end of that 15 minute, 30 minute conversation they’re going to be presented with a pharmaceutical and they may not be comfortable with that. In fact 90% of the people I work with are trying to do everything they possibly can naturally without considering medication as an option. And that’s kind of the state they’re in. When they come to me now before somebody comes into our programs, we have a group call and I like to see how people do interacting with each other in a group setting, but it also helps them understand that they’re not alone. 

And there are other people on this journey and that’s kind of the first part of the process that I use before I even start working with people. And like you had mentioned,  one of the first calls I ever did in this format, we had five women on this call and you know, they can bring their husbands to if they want. But she brought her husband and we went around and we just did little brief intros and I asked everybody, you know, tell me a little about a little bit about yourself and why you’re here. And she went around and she was the first one and she said I lost two inches of height in the last year and I’m scared. And she started crying and her husband, you know, put her hand on her back and was kind of consoling her. And then another woman on our call started crying too. And I realized in that moment, I just got chills on my cheeks when I said that I realized in that moment that we were all connected and I see this every single day, it’s really powerful to know that when you’re having these health challenges, no matter what health challenge, whether it’s your bones, whether it’s an autoimmune condition, whether it’s, you know, something else, it’s good to look for and find that community, find a group. So you’re not going through this alone.

Jana Danielson

The importance of that. I read a study probably about a year ago and it was, you know, talking about some of the just the impacts the societal impacts of, of Covid and how we were asked to like distance and and they compared the the impact on the body of being, you know, alone or feeling alone to the same as what it would be to smoke two packs of cigarettes a day. And I had to kind of read, I had to read the paragraph a couple of times over because that really puts, you know, puts our health into a really unique perspective. We don’t think about the connections with others. You know, it takes a village, that’s not that old proverb is not just words, it actually does take a village. And so how do you think that, you know that isolation where they do? 

You know, these women are going to Dr. Google and they’re seeing probably, you know, pictures of these little, you know, decrepit people that have lost. Yeah, like you said inches and inches and right away, you know, where does their ego go? Our ego only knows our familiar past and then the future that we can, you know, look to versus being in the present and thinking what can I do in this moment to impact that picture of my future self. I want to loop back to mindset because you mentioned it about you know the mindset of a marine and I think you’re probably our only marine on this summit and when I think of you know the marine corps and what that stands for, I think of like a brain and a mindset like in armor, like a turtle shell. But that probably is such a a stigmatic way of thinking about the mindset of a marine. Let’s go there with the next part of our conversation and then back into what you know, my seven year old mom might take from that story as she sits and is working on her own bone health. 

Kevin Ellis

Yeah. And the mindset of the marine is I think it’s different. It is a little bit different than most people would have for their mindset. So for me, I was in the infantry and it was, it was not the easiest job to be in and I had a bunch of marines that were underneath me, I was in a leadership position, I was a squad leader and I had to lead marines on combat patrols and things like that. So there was a lot of responsibility and that. So the mindset I had to cultivate was that of, you know, I can endure, I can do anything. We will, I will all that stuff. And that has, I don’t think that’s something that will ever leave me at this point. And that’s good. It’s actually really good because for me I’m able to wake up every single day and even though right now we’ve got about 80,000 people in our community. I wake up every single day and I know I know we’re already helping a million people, over a million people. We just haven’t crossed paths yet. That is the mindset I take when I start my day. And for anybody on any kind of journey, I would always encourage people to just think about to knowing where you want your path to lead. Doesn’t mean you know where each step is placed. Day one right? You just have to know where you want your path to lead. 

So if you know also where you don’t want your path to lead. Like if you don’t want to be the woman that’s hunched over with the cane or the big one that I hear is I don’t want to be in a wheelchair. You know, staring out the window, watching my grandkids play. I hear that all the time. Okay, what do you want your future to be now? We know where the path needs to lead. What do we need to do? What are the steps we need to take and how can we start today? Right? Because where you want to be then starts here and now and you just have to remember that as you start any journey and it doesn’t have to be this intense process where you devote all of your time and all of your energy and expend it all because most people don’t have that left over. A lot of the people I work with their caregivers, they’re givers, they give everything to everyone first and they think about themselves last there the last priority. And sometimes they’re at the point where they’re like, it’s time to make me a priority. 

I’m ready for me now. But even if you don’t feel like you’re 100% of the priority right now, all you have to do is do things 1% better today, then you do, you know then you did them yesterday and think of what the impact of that is going to be long term, that’s gonna add up, that’s gonna be, there’s gonna be some compounding interest there. That’s going to do really, really good things for you and along the way to you need to be kind to yourself, you need to be patient. You need to realize things aren’t gonna go perfectly from day one. And if you approach things with curiosity instead of expectation, your disappointment is going to disappear when things don’t go the right way. So just think about that as you’re heading into any plan or any journey or anything like that, be kind be patient. But you gotta start.

Jana Danielson

When I heard you say the be curious part, it reminds me of, I’m the mom of three boys and when they were there now 21, 19, and 17, but when they were like 10, 8 and six for Mother’s Day, they bought me this figurine of wonder woman, right? Because they thought you know, they had all their little superheroes. So, and I still have it and I woke up one day and it’s behind, it’s right on my like little nightstand and it’s kinda like my little altar and there she is. And for some reason when I woke up one morning and looked at her and I just thought of wonder woman, if you, if you kind of just twist the word wonder a little bit like that’s the curious part. We should all be wonder men and wonder women because that’s where you know that I think we start we we age slower. We stay in that youthful fun energy when we wonder and we ask the questions. And so I’m glad that you brought that up because I feel like sometimes and I’m glad that you also said that there is a time and a place to visit, you know your doctor with the whites with the white coat with a stethoscope around his or her neck. There is a time and a place. 

Yet we often will just give up all of our wonderment or all of our curiosity because what is being said to us is being taken as 100%, you know, that’s the way it is forever and ever amen. And when we can be in this curiosity and courage, sometimes it sometimes takes courage to say, you know, help me understand that or is there a different way? It still might not, you know, you might not still here what you want to, but thank you for bringing that up because it is I think we lose that as we get older to see the world with that curiosity that we want our, you know, our kids to to be a part of so I want to know how let’s touch a little bit on nutrition, how does that piece of the puzzle fit into, you know, our bone health, our confidence, which all looks back to mindset?

Kevin Ellis

Yeah, I mean nutrition is so important. And actually before we touch on nutrition, I do want to touch on 11 thing that you had just mentioned in there too is you know, a lot of times when we’re talking about physicians and doctors that you may be working with right there, they’re an important part of your plan, but they’re not the whole plan. Okay. And when you go into those people and you’re having these conversations just know that you as the patient you have the right to say, I’d like to gather a little more information first before we move forward. That is your right, you can be educated and empowered and be your own best advocate. Yes, it does take some courage sometimes to say that especially if you’ve been with a provider for 10, 20 years, you know, this is my person and it may be really hard to say no to that person, Okay. If you don’t want to say no, then don’t say no, but you could reframe things just a little bit and say I’m not ready just yet or I respect what you said, I’m not ready just yet. Can you help me gather a little bit more information? Can we do a little bit more testing? 

Will you support me if I go this route for a little while and then we can come back. I’m not saying no, but I’m just saying not not yet, approach things that way. And that way you don’t create this adversarial relationship with somebody who could be a really important part of your plan. You all of a sudden have just created this partnership in your health together where you can move forward together to find answers. Okay, so that could be a really important piece of having a partnership in healthcare long term. So we don’t just want to burn bridges everywhere we go. Okay, so now nutrition. Nutrition is so important, so important and that is one of the things, a lot of times when people come to me and they’re talking about bone health and osteoporosis. It’s, oh, my mother had it, my aunt had it. It’s all in my family, you know, it’s genetic, that’s my destiny. Okay, genetics do play a part. The next are part of the picture, but those are not things that you’re going to influence, right? You’re not going to be able to impact that you need to impact the things that you can influence. So where does that start? We talked about stress earlier. So adopting some practices that help you reduce and manage your stress or develop a different relationship with it. And then also nutrition plays such an important role and you’ve got multiple opportunities to do that every single day. 

So what does that look like? I’m going to give you some of my favorite foods to incorporate. I’m gonna make this really tactical actionable for a minute so that we can walk away and be like, okay, I feel good about this. Well, if you like the foods that I talked about. So first one, I really like canned fish, I’m gonna start with one that maybe you haven’t tried yet, but maybe you might try after this. Okay, so, and these are not, if you get canned fish, you want to get the bones in and these would be your sardines, your mackerel, your wild sockeye salmon. Okay, And you would look for a non BP a line can those that that would be what you want. You want to make sure the bones are in, the reason you want the bones in is because those bones, they’re not hard poke bones that are gonna hurt your mouth. They contain all of the minerals and nutrients and the ratios that nature put them in to support your own healthy bones. Okay, that’s number one and a lot of times people are not consuming a lot of dairy or I don’t recommend drink a bunch of milk. 

Okay, so if you pulled out dairy, which is a bio available source of calcium, you need to have other areas and sources of that. This is one of those sources. Okay, the next thing that these canned fish have in them is protein. Protein is so important for building muscle and building bone muscle and bone are, there’s a tight connection there and you have to have, you want stronger muscles and bones, you gotta have protein. And also your bones are 50% protein by volume. So they need this constant supply of amino acids, it’s not just minerals and calcium. So that’s the second reason. The third reason I like these can fishes, they contain omega three fatty acids. Now, omega threes are a type of fatty acids that are help dampen inflammation in the body and anything that contributes to inflammation, especially if it’s chronic, especially if it’s long term that’s going to fuel and contribute to bone loss. So you basically get a three punch win with that one. That’s why we started with that one. So the second one I really like is arugula. Arugula is a leafy green in different parts of the world. It’s called Rocket too. But it’s a leafy green, same cruciferous family vegetables, broccoli and kale. It’s rich in potassium, folate, vitamin C, vitamin K. And bio available calcium. So if you go to the store and even though I hate plastic clamshells right I hate those plastic clamshells because they’re everywhere. But if you get one of those that has about 200 mg of bio available calcium. So you can eat that raw in a salad you can see sauté it down, It actually sautés down pretty small. You do light sauté with some organic extra virgin olive oil, A little little crack. 

Black pepper, a little sea salt. You got a great side dish there. Okay. The other reason I like arugula is that it is a bitter and we have our diets today are largely devoid of bitter foods and bitters are so important because they help stimulate bio production bile is produced by the liver stored in the gallbladder and is pushed into the small intestine to help you break down and emulsify your fats and your foods. And that’s going to help you absorb and take in those fat soluble vitamins A. D. E. And K. Okay so that is another reason why I like Arugula. Third one. Third reason why is it contains a bio active compound called Harrison and Harrison in a recent clinical study has actually shown to help turn off the activity level or slow down the activity level of osteo clacks which are the cells that break down bone. And the fourth reason I like Arugula is that unlike spinach and I don’t like to vilify foods. Okay unless it’s just you know a bunch of sugar and processed stuff but I don’t like to vilify whole foods but oxalate star an anti nutrient that combined up bone healthy minerals like calcium. 

Spinach is really high and oxalates. So if you go to the store and again plastic clamshells everywhere you turn that one over, you look on the nutrition label and it says oh spinach is really high in calcium. Well that calcium is actually not bio available. It’s bound up. Okay so you have to be aware of that and then if you are somebody that has issues with Oxelon. So let’s say you have joint pain digestive issues kidney stones. You may have a hard time breaking down and degrading that Oxelon. So you can swap the spinach for the arugula. Okay that’s my number two. The next one I really like and I’ll just talk about a group of foods for this one. Vitamin C rich foods. The reason I like vitamin C rich foods, and I think we all understand at this point, vitamin C is important for a lot of things, right? Your immune system, your brain health, your heart health all a whole host of things. But it’s amazing for your bone health. The reason for that is vitamin C stimulates pro collagen, It enhances collagen synthesis and it stimulates something called alkaline phosphate activity, which is a marker for osteoblasts, bone building self formation. That’s pretty cool, right? And your bones are made up of this collagen protein matrix structure. So you have to have vitamin C to support healthy skeleton maintenance and development. It just has to happen. And so what are your what are your good food sources of that vegetables? You’ve got your peppers, those are going to be your highest sources of vitamin C. 

If you have an autoimmune condition, you’re probably gonna steer clear of the night shades. So we could do like Allison Otto or dino kale, you can do some steamed brussels sprouts, some steamed broccoli, incorporate some of those foods into your plant. In terms of fruits, You’ve got your citrus fruits, right? Your lemons or limes, things like that. You’ve got your berries too, that you can incorporate Kakadu plum casserole and cherries. Those are all different foods that you can incorporate into your plan. Now I’ve got a whole, I’ve got a bunch of them. But I think that’s a good kick start right for getting started with nutrition.

Jana Danielson

That was fantastic. Just touch quickly, Kevin on, does it matter how we’re taking in that like raw versus sautéed versus like, should we be just getting a mix of that or do you have any advice from that perspective?

Kevin Ellis

Get a mix. And I think it also depends on, it’s not just don’t just do all raw, don’t just do all smoothies, don’t just do all soups, don’t just do all, you know, whatever the method is, mix things up, adjust the methods of cooking, get some nutrient diversity. Don’t just eat the same thing every single day over and over and over. You kind of want some different nutrient profiles too. And that’s why it’s good to find some good recipes that you know have the foods that you like in them that have the nutrients, you know, to support healthy body, healthy bones and just build out a plan. Sit down at the beginning of the week, especially if you’re not just cooking for yourself and you have to cook for family members or you know, you’ve got kids or grandkids that are gonna be watching too, You want to get their buy in also. So one of the great things you can do is on a Saturday or a Sunday. You know, you could figure out, sit down and say, Hey, what, what meals do you think we should have and it doesn’t have to take long, it could take five or 10 minutes. What meals do we have to have? You go and you find a couple of meals online and then make sure that they’re easy to make and get buy in early before you just make it okay. Then when it comes time to make it, they’ve already had their say in their input. So that can kind of make it a little bit easier to. 

Jana Danielson

We’re gonna talk about how people can get connected with you after my last two questions, because I love being on your mail list because you send out these recipes like this all the time. So we will touch on that, but I want to know from you based on, you know, your area of expertise and how you and your team show up to serve. What do you think is not being talked about enough?

Kevin Ellis

I would say the biggest thing, especially in the world of bone health, is there are other approaches outside of medication that are effective because at that point of diagnosis, when somebody is they get their bone density scan. And by the way, if you haven’t had a bone density scan, get one, understand where your baseline is, don’t not get one because you’re like, I don’t want to know what the results are. That would not be a good approach right? Think about, remember what I said, think about 70, 80, 90 where you want to be, how active you want to be. You have to take steps now to make sure you set yourself up to be at that point. And so that means you have to know where you’re at now. So if you haven’t gotten a bone density scan, go press your doctor a little bit to get one. And then once you get that, if it comes back and it does say you have osteopenia or osteoporosis, just know there are other things that can be done beyond. Just at the end of that conversation. Here, go take a bunch of calcium and vitamin D. And here’s a bone medication. Okay? So what are those other things just briefly summarized first thing would be you have to understand if you’re still actively losing bone. So you’ve got to get these things called bone turnover markers. One of them that I like is called the serum Ctx or CT low peptide test. It’s a blood test helps you understand if you’re actively losing bone, there are others. I won’t go into all of them. 

But that’s a good starting point and if that activity level is elevated or really high, that can be an indicator, there’s an underlying condition that still needs to be addressed. So even if you were sitting in that office and you’re told, hey, take some calcium vitamin D. And a bone drug and you haven’t done that test then you don’t even know where you’re at right now before you’re starting a medication that’s going to affect those levels. And what can happen is if you don’t address the root cause it will be underneath the surface, still doing its thing and you could take a medication thinking, okay, this is gonna be the solution. And guess what, you didn’t address the root of the issue, It’s still there and you can still have bone loss. I’ve seen that. I’ve seen it a lot. So that’s the next thing. Feel good knowing that you can, you can say I need a little bit of time, right? I’m not saying no, but not yet. Can you help me get a little more little more information then go down the path of figuring out those root causes and things like that. So that is probably the, the biggest thing I would say is there are other things that you can do beyond that.

Jana Danielson

I have a little mantra that I use sometimes and its clarity creates confidence and confidence creates clarity and that’s exactly what you’re coaching your people to do, right, is just get a little more clear so that the path you choose, you’re feeling really, really good about it and it doesn’t mean that you can’t pivot or shift, right? Once you start to learn more. So thank you for watching. Now, let us get into the mind of the notorious Kevin Ellis and I would love for the last bit of this interview for you to leave us with one or two things that you’re doing in your day or in your week that are kind of like non negotiables for you that really feed and nurture your mindset.

Kevin Ellis

Yeah, the first one is meditation. When I first started down trying to resolve my health issues and make improvement in my health think of this like type a marine go, go, go, gotta be in control. You know, that is, that is how I originally was going to approach my health, anybody listening like that, you might be like, oh my gosh, that’s me, right? So you may be in that situation to meditation will not come natural, if that is, if that’s kind of the way that you typically approach things. It actually took me an entire year. Now this is one thing that I did stick with, I had a very marine mindset, I will get this, I will stick with this, I will make it a part of my practice and I will anchor it to something else that I’m doing. So for me it would be like, okay, I’m gonna meditate and then I’ll eat right after okay. So I anchored it to something I knew I was going to do every single day and it was a non negotiable and then what I would do is I would get outside, I would get down to everything but my underwear and I would face the sun and it was usually, it would still be, you know, somewhat in the morning time and the sun was kind of coming up and I would just face the sun. And I remember when I really first started this practice or actually when it really clicked for me, I remember I had walked I was actually in a park and it was, there was snow covering the ground and I walked down this path, I was all by myself, nobody else was around and I walked all the way down towards the river and I sat on the snowy bank and I looked up and my friend was there, this son and it was freezing cold outside. 

I had a hoodie on and I unzipped the hoodie so that the sun could touch my chest, my face and I just opened up my arms and I faced the sun and I continued doing this practice that I had, I was determined to figure out and I was maybe 10 minutes into this and I just felt this connection and I felt loved and I felt this like massive hug from myself, but also kind of like my new friend, you know the sun and every single cell in my body, it was like the sun was just permeating it and from that point on it is still a regular practice every single day, I just, the other day, I think I meditated for 30 minutes or something like that and I felt like I could have kept going and it’s just this, it’s so rewarding to know that you can go to a place that you can just be at peace and nothing can pull you out of that and it’s going to do wonders for your health and your mindset just knowing that that’s available to you.

Jana Danielson

Tell us one, I’m just, I want, I just have a quick follow up question to that because what I know a lot of people are probably thinking is 30 minutes, like, am I sitting there, you know, with my legs crossed, give us a little bit of insight into what you’re actually doing in that 30 minutes.

Kevin Ellis

That’s great. And by the way, 30 minutes is that’s longer. Sometimes I only have three minutes And that’s okay. Sometimes that’s all I need. Sometimes you may be, you may only have 60 seconds and that’s okay too. All you need to do is get to a point where you know, and I wouldn’t consider myself an expert on like meditation, right? And where I’d be leading sessions of meditation, but for me, I’m an expert for me, I am an expert of, of me and I know what I need, that’s going to get me to where I need to be. So sometimes I’ll sit down, I’ll get comfortable, my feet are on the ground, sometimes my palms are up, sometimes they’re not. Sometimes I actually like to have my hands together and it’s just sometimes it’s just a little more comforting for me and I’ll still be facing the sun and I’ll close my eyes and angle my head up just a little bit and I’ll take a deep breath in through my nose and I try to breathe and focus on breathing through the belly. 

And if you haven’t breathed through your down into your belly before you did a long time ago. But you may be familiar with, you know, breathing from your chest a lot more. You can even place your hand on your belly and you take a deep breath in and your belly should rise first and then your chest just a little bit right, and that’s how I breathe. And then I exhale through my mouth sometimes through pursed lips and really, really slowly like that for me works really well and it just puts me in this really peaceful place. Sometimes I hold my breath a little bit at the end. Sometimes I don’t, But I just kind of vary on what I feel like it’s going to be the best thing for me and sometimes it’s only two minutes. Sometimes that’s all I got, you know, right before a meeting or an interview or something like that. Or sometimes it’s 30 minutes and I just sit there and hang out. It’s great.

Jana Danielson

So tell us everyone grab a pen because Kevin is gonna give us, tell us where is the best place if you’ve really touched the soul of some of these people watching today and they want to connect with, you learn more about what you do, how you do it, where can they do that?

Kevin Ellis

You can always find me at bonecoach.com. Okay. We have multiple resources there to help you on your stronger bones journey. If you’ve already been told you have osteoporosis, we have a free seven day osteoporosis kickstart guide, right on the main page of bone coach dot com. If you’re just like, hey, I need some recipe ideas. We’ve got recipes. If you want to listen to podcasts, actually did a podcast with Jenna too and John is amazing. So I’ve got a podcast to, or you can just find me on social, let’s say, you don’t even want to go to the website. You can find me on YouTube, find me on Instagram. I’m trying Tiktok, I’m not really, you know that one? I don’t know how that one’s going exactly, but interest and whatever the other ones are, Facebook, right? So you can find me on all those places at bone coach.

Jana Danielson

Okay. You’re not doing like the trending videos where you’re voicing over like Kim Kardashian and anything that, no?

Kevin Ellis

No, you know what, they’re pushing me to do that. But I haven’t done that. But I did have a cucumber video on Instagram. We added like, I don’t know, 18,000 followers in a couple of weeks just from a cucumber video. But I did. So by the way, if you want to learn why cucumber is so good for you, Go over to the Instagram and watch that. Perfect.

Jana Danielson

You’re gonna grab a whole bunch more followers looking for the cucumber video Kevin. This has been great. Thank you so so much for showing up the way you always do. You know, sharing your information and what I hold so many of our speakers is that the way they disseminated or share that information has been in these beautiful bite sized pieces that is easy to understand and that I think that a lot of us are craving that kind of information where we’re not having to like look up a definition of what did he just say. So thank you. Thank you for showing up in your brilliance as you always do.

Kevin Ellis

Thank you so much for having me. And this was, this was a great, I love the natural, you know, conversation that we kind of had as we were going through this. So thanks so much Jenna and thanks everybody for listening. 

Jana Danielson

And yes, thanks everybody for listening and you know, go grab a sip of water, head to the bathroom, maybe grab a citrusy fruit. And then make your way back for the next session, we’ll see you soon, bye bye.