In this episode, Narado Zeco Powell and I talk about metabolic flexibility. You can find Zeco online on his Instagram and at the Matter Over Mind podcast. If you're curious about the tool he mentioned, Lumen, you can find it at this link. Use HEALNOURISHGROW at checkout to receive $50 off. Watch this episode on YouTube Automatically generated transcript, please forgive errors. Cheryl McColgan: Hey everyone, welcome back to the Heal Nourish Grow podcast. I am the founder, Cheryl McColgan, and today I am joined by one of my old friends, Zeco Powell, and he has a podcast that I was on quite a while back, and we have known each other on social media now for a couple years. He does some awesome work, and so I can't wait to share his story with you today. Zeco, welcome. And if you could just start by telling people. how you got into what you're doing today, because you have a very interesting past about how you grew up and how you became sort of interested in all of this health and wellness stuff. So I'll just let you kind of tell a little bit about your story, how you got into this. Zeco: old friend. That's an excellent introduction by the way, because I'm like old as dirt. So thank you so much for letting the audience know when you're talking to your butt. But yeah, so I grew up in Montego Bay, Jamaica, and my history is a little different than most people. Like I wasn't overweight, but I was underweight. So growing up, I think I was 17 years old, five foot 11, and I weighed about 113 pounds, right? So imagine what underweight Cheryl McColgan: Wow. Zeco: I was at that time. So when I moved to the US, and this is when I moved to the US, is first I actually weighed myself, right? And when I was here, I started to get interesting in weightlifting, because I was a skinny kid walking around. So I started weightlifting, eating more, and then I eventually would gain weight. You know, I would gain weight, lose weight. I mean, I've been over 200 pounds before, did not drop back to 150. And I got to the point where it was becoming dangerous, because it wasn't just about... you know, health anymore is just how much weight I could gain, then I feel like, like body dysmorphia, right? Like I gained this weight, but I'm like, I'm not happy with myself. I ain't start losing this weight again. Right away. But it really, when you look at it, I've been like healthy, or semi, I've been fit all my life, not healthy. I was fit, but wasn't healthy. I saw that asthma, I had eczema issues. I mean, you look at me, I look good, you know, and, but you would never tell that I have all these problems. And this is something I tell people that We see people in the gym and we say, oh, this person looks so good, but that doesn't mean they're healthy. That's why you shouldn't actually strive to be like somebody else because you don't know what they're struggling with. So anyway, fast forward to about, let's say, five years ago, my asthma was really, really bad. And it was bad to the point to where days I couldn't work. I have to go home, lay on the couch. I mean, I'm completely dizzy. I feel awful. And the last time I, one of the times I went to the doctor, he said to me, I said, hey, Doc, look. because they put me on more medication. They kept increasing my medication. I said, there's something I can do outside of this medication, right? I'm gonna take your medications, but now you have me on pills and Advair, plus my butyrol I've already been taking, and I'm not getting any better. I'm only in my 30s at this point. And he said, no, well, you know, you could try to eat better, and that's about it, you know? And I was like, okay, no, this can't be it. There's no way this can be it. I'm too young to be on these medicated pills, and I know what's gonna happen down the line, right? So I started reading books from like Dr. Stephen Gunter, Dr. Mark Hymer, listened to podcasts like Ben Greenfield and the Model Health Show. I mean,