Raw + Paleo For Your Dog, Why Cooking Can Change Your Perspective, And Using Food To Overcome Limiting Beliefs

George Bryant and I start out talking dog food, and end up figuring out the key to life.

From the “doing” to the “being,” you don’t want to miss out on this talk with my good friend and partner in crime. He’s getting married, building a house, celebrating his daughter’s 10th birthday, and making more waves in the world of wellbeing.

As you may well know, Alyson and I have been traveling all over the place, living in National Parks across Northern America and experiencing other cultures in awesome places like Peru. But now we’re back, and it feels really great to be recording a ton of new podcasts and getting back into the groove.

Before we get started, I want to take a minute to tell you that I read every one of those podcast reviews you guys leave for me. That’s where I get ideas for interviews and that’s how I direct content and also get inspiration. I especially appreciate it when you share the rough stuff—how you’ve learned the hard way and what’s gotten you to this point. Those kinds of comments really keep it real. So, thanks.

Speaking of keeping it real, having battled his weight for 25 years and nearly losing his legs during his duty as a U.S. Marine, my friend George Bryant is a guy who has been through the tough stuff and come out the other side. He and I built a bestselling app together—Caveman Feast, available for Android and Apple. He’s the New York Times bestselling author of The Paleo Kitchen and has one of the most popular (and coolest named) food blogs on the internet—The Civilized Caveman.

Today, George and I are talking about how to feed your dog raw, why cooking can change the way you see the world, and a simple trick that you can do every day that will help you more than you thought possible.

FEEDING YOUR DOG RAW

Four months ago, George rescued a 70 pound pit bull named Laylani. Laylani is not just a pet—she is George’s service dog for PTSD. She goes everywhere with him… and of course, she had to match his persona. After feeding her organic, grain-free kibble for a while and noticing that she chugged over two gallons of water a day, he switched her to a completely raw diet. This is what he did to transition her, and you can also follow this regime with your own dog, too.

Have your pet skip one meal, then introduce a meal of raw chicken or poultry with a little bit of broth. Give your dog all the RAW bones and cartilage and organ meats.
Your dog should eat every 12 hours.
Stick to ONE protein source for four weeks so they can adjust.
Once they’ve adjusted, stick to these ratios:
60% muscle meat (breast, thigh, heart, etc)
20 – 30% soft tissue, bones, cartilage
10 – 20% offal (organ meats, brains)
Add in some bone broth, healthy fats (like coconut oil), the cooked vegetables from bone broth.
Keep an eye on your dog. Because everyone (and every animal) is different, watch them to see if they have good energy, a nice coat, and regular stools.

Once, George’s dog got a little constipated so he just added some cooked, pureed pumpkin into her food and it worked like a charm. You’ll start to notice that your dog’s stools become more regular and almost odorless. They may even simply disintegrate into the soil before you have a chance to scoop them—because they’re doing what they’re supposed to do!

As a 70 pound dog, Laylani gets 2 ½ pounds of food a day, which comes out to less than a dollar a pound. (You’ll have to figure out the right amount for the size of your pet.) She loves chicken feet and the parts of the animal that we normally wouldn’t choose—which makes it cheaper.

If you’re already Paleo, you probably have a relationship with a farm… George gets calls from his pig farmer like, “Hey, I’ve got some ears and feet if you want ‘em!” A pig’s ear in the back yard will entertain a dog for several hours… unlike a bowl of kibble, which they wolf down in a few seconds.

A FEW DON’TS:

Don’t EVER give your dogs cooked bones, which will kill them.
Don’t give them butchered bones, which may be splintered by the saw and could puncture their stomach.
Don’t feed your dog kombucha or bubbly sauerkraut—it might make your dog drunk, which could be funny, but feels like animal abuse (seriously, don’t do it).

Finally, and I hope you already know this—don’t every give your dog chocolate, grapes, raisins, or xylitol. These items are deadly to dogs.

PALEO FX TALK: HOW TO USE FOOD TO OVERCOME LIMITING BELIEFS

George says, “When I tell people this, I get the exact response I want… which is ‘What?’” In fact, when he said this is what he’ll be talking about at the upcoming Paleo FX conference, he got some pushback. But this has EVERYTHING to do with health and wellness. It’s about the “being” rather than the “doing.”

Food is something we do three times a day, every day… and how you relate to food is how you look at everything. How is that so?

Think about it—we are creatures of habit. We wake up in the morning and we have habits, whether we think we do or not. And we all have the opportunity to practice a new relationship with food, and with everything.

How many of you have started a 14 day juice detox and only made it to day 7? It’s likely that you started it out of a place of resentment or insecurity. You’ve trained yourself not to like it, and you probably use self-defeating talk in regard to it.

You can retrain yourself. George says he drinks a lot of coffee (in fact, he’s drinking a cup of butterscotch coffee as we speak—coffee with butter and maple syrup). Even though he knows he needs to hydrate, he’ll say, “I’ll drink a coffee now and I’ll have water later.” He wouldn’t drink the water later.

He started to see a pattern of not following through… with his wife, with his work, et cetera. But once you commit to taking a sip of water every ten minutes, you see something amazing happen. You make this commitment to yourself, you regain a sense of control, and you start following through in every other aspect of your life. After seven days, you’ve created a new pattern and you’re actually recreating your neuropathways.

You’ll find that committing to drinking more water (or eating a salad every day for lunch, or whatever it is), can actually lead to a more successful marriage or a better work relationship and more. Everything flows from that one commitment.

THE 60 SECOND RULE & SIMPLE TRICK TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE

Here it is in a nutshell: Anything that takes you 60 seconds or less, do it now. Send that email. Make that phone call. Clean off your desk. Whatever it is that’s been nagging you or needs to get done, if it’s quick, do it now.

A 40 minute workout can quickly turn into the most productive time of your day following this rule—by using the two minutes of rest between sets to do those quick things. Do this for a while and you’ll start creating new habits… but you can’t do that if you have 22 tabs open on Chrome. Even though we live and work in the digital world, the healthiest way to be glued to it is to unglue from it.

Now, start looking at those 60-second things you HAVE to do as things you GET to do. Actually, look at everything that way. You don’t HAVE to respond to that email, but you GET to because you have this awesome job. You don’t HAVE to clean up your smoothie mess, but you GET to because you made a healthy and delicious smoothie.

Remember, the dialogue you tell yourself actually creates the life you’re living. So, stop speaking in negatives. When you say, “I do not want to lose my job,” the Universe hears, “I want to lose my job.” Things will start aligning to make that happen. Same thing for all the young couples out there saying, “I do not want to get pregnant,” or anything like that. What message do you want to send out there?

Instead, try—“I have an incredible job and I love it.” Or, “I am really happy with our relationship as it is right now.” See how the language is different?

You can choose to be anything you want—when you realize this, you go into a responsibility mindset. You start to take responsibility for your own life. For example, instead of saying that the person you encountered was really mean, ask yourself, “How was I being that allowed them to speak to me that way?” Then, let the moment pass… like a pair of toddlers who just had a punching match and are now best friends two minutes later. Let the moment happen, then move on to the next moment.

When you get to this place, man, it’s a powerful place to be, and the power comes in recognizing your patterns.

George admits that his past pattern was egotistical and defensive. If someone criticized him, he’d get angry and come up with a list of reasons why they’re wrong. Now, he simply goes, “Huh, I wonder how he’s feeling that made him say that?”

If you could give people one thing to work on right now that will change their future, what would it be? George says, stick one thing, and close the loop. Find completion or closure for one thing—always moving toward what you fear, instead of letting it fester.