This episode is sponsored by a company I've used for well over a decade and that is 511.
I wore their uniforms back in Anaheim, California and have used their products ever since.
From their incredibly strong yet light footwear to their cut uniforms for both male and female
responders, I found them hands down the best workwear in all the departments that I've worked for.
Outside of the fire service, I use their luggage for everything and I travel a lot and they are
also now sponsoring the 7X team as we embark around the world on the Human Performance Project.
We have Murph coming up in May and again I bought their plate carrier. I ended up buying real
ballistic plates rather than the fake weight plates and that has been my ride or die through
Murph the last few years as well. But one area I want to talk about that I haven't in previous
sponsorship spots is their brick and mortar element. They were predominantly an online
company up till more recently but now they are approaching 100 stores all over the US.
My local store is here in Gainesville Florida and I've been multiple times and the discounts you see
online are applied also in the stores. So as I mentioned 511 is offering you 15% off every
purchase that you make but I do want to say more often than not they have an even deeper discount
especially around holiday times. But if you use the code SHIELD15 you will get 15% off your order
or in the stores every time you make a purchase. And if you want to hear more about 511, who they
stand for and who works with them, listen to episode 580 of Behind the Shield podcast with
511 regional director Will Ayres. Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast as always my name is
James Gearing and this week it is my absolute honor to welcome on the show former law enforcement
officer and the man behind Keto 50, Eric Reynolds. Now Eric has an amazing story from his childhood
growing up as the son of June Hawkins, the Miami-Dade detective that caught Griselda Blanco,
his own journey into law enforcement, the bank robber that tried to kill him and his partner
in 2012, the physical and mental rehab of that injury, his own powerful mental health story,
how he reclaimed his health through ketosis, the carnivore diet, finding his half brother through
a DNA search and so much more. Now before we get to this incredible conversation as I say every week
please just take a moment, go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the show,
leave feedback and leave a rating. Every single five star rating truly does elevate this podcast
therefore making it easier for others to find and this is a free library of over 900 episodes now.
So all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and women stories so I can
get them to every single person on planet earth who needs to hear them. So with that being said
I introduce to you Eric Reynolds. Enjoy.
Well Eric I want to start by saying thank you so much for taking the time and coming on the Behind
the Shield podcast this morning. Thanks for having me James, I'm looking forward to this. Hopefully
I don't break down crying, I usually cry when I'm talking about the show. I'm sorry for the
lack of sound. I'm sorry for the lack of sound. I'm sorry for the lack of sound. I'm sorry for the
loss of the air Therefore can't have a appeal to you or to me, thank you for your commentsers.
Thanks for having me James, I'm looking forward to this. Hopefully I don't break down crying,
I usually do somewhere in the stories. You are in the right place, I think I've lost
count of the number of people on here that have cried so you know this is a safe space and let
me use that term positively not derogatory like it's used these days. So very first question
an hour on the other side of the mountain from Asheville, North Carolina.
So we're East Coast, Tennessee, staying on my buddy's farm.
He's got a little RV hookup.
We travel full time in our RV for the last four years.
We doing it pre-COVID.
Well, we bought the trailer and all that.
But yeah, we're in Tennessee right now enjoying the nice weather and
the sunshine and fresh air and vitamin D, you know.
Well, let's jump ahead. Firstly, Asheville.
I've been there. It's absolutely gorgeous and climbed up to Chimney Rock,
which is the famous one in Las of the Mohicans.
But my son actually has Cherokee blood himself.
But talk to me about that.
What I know we're going way, way ahead.
But what was it that made you decide to get the RV?
And then what was that experience like during COVID?
Things happen kind of crazy.
And I went on a health journey in 2018.
We started looking at the books, whether I could retire when I turned 50
or should I stay on longer for like the drop money or, you know,
now that you invest your pension and get a big payout when you leave.
And meanwhile, you're sick and, you know, ready to die.
And she started looking at, you know, downsizing.
You know, she was like, let's just get smaller.
We don't need this big house in Palm Beach County, Florida.
You were most of your paychecks going to a mortgage and, you know, the big,
you know, you're spending all your money for all these things.
And while she's a little crazy, you know, we're looking at tiny house shows
and treehouse shows and stuff like that.
And, you know, it made sense to maybe retire and then get out of Florida,
maybe go looking at different areas.
One of the areas we considered was Asheville.
I had an evidence background at my police department.
I was thinking civilian stuff, get an evidence job there.
You know, we can live in the mountains, fresh air,
get away from the hustle and bustle of South Florida.
So we ended up buying a rig and then we went traveling around.
We left July 2020.
We had purchased the rig and then everything got shut down for a while.
Finally got our rig and hit the road.
And I never towed anything in my life, man.
It was the most scariest thing.
You know, I was more intimidated doing that than driving a police car and stuff.
It was crazy, you know, because I had never done pulling a rig around and backing
in all the things that people worry about.
Yeah, that was me. I was worried about every one of them, you know, blowing tires.
We've gone through it all, you know, and you learn, you get good at it
and you start to see the different scenes of this country.
You know, the mountains, the rivers, the oceans, you know, the woods.
And you really realize there's a lot more out there than what I was doing
previously in my life, you know, and it's great for my kids.
So that's pretty much we're already homeschooling.
It made sense. Hey, let's take a couple of years off.
I was done with police work.
So let's see where we're at.
And now we're looking for land.
We want a homestead and come become little farmers and stuff like that.
So brilliant. That's amazing.
It's funny, because I know a lot of people that have, you know, Winnebago's,
for example, especially at the height.
You know, that was kind of the thing when I went to California
right before the crash, a lot of my friends had Fifth Wheels and Winnebago's
and all kinds of things.
But they would sit on the driveway for, you know, 48 weeks of the year.
You know, and I think this is the application where it makes sense.
You sell everything up and then you live in that and you get to see the country.
But I think the kind of projection of all the toys that people should have,
especially at that particular time where, you know, financially,
there was a lot of insanity going on.
You know, there was a lot of crippling by telling everyone that you need to have,
you know, a Winnebago.
The other thing is funny when you say about that,
the number of people that, you know, get given a U-Haul or,
you know, a Winnebago or something like that with no experience
on how to drive it. And they may have driven, you know, a Fiat
their whole life up until that point.
And it's, you know, we hold the semi drivers are such a high level,
but you can give anyone a trailer and just wave as they pull it away.
Yeah, it's terrifying.
We see all the videos and we've seen people making mistakes
and even myself not paying attention, driving, you know,
you know, I don't go over 65 unless I'm passing somebody.
I try to stay around 60, kind of like with the trucks.
You kind of blend in with them, you know, like you're in a big herd.
And, you know, it's it's it can be a little stressful, you know, but,
you know, speed is not your friend when you're towing, you know.
And I think people forget that they're towing some.
They just get caught up.
And, you know, you don't want that little wiggle in the back
because things aren't going to end well, you know, and slowing things down.
I was one of my biggest challenges was slowing the pace of life down,
you know, because, you know, many years start for me.
I was working since I was 15, playing high school sports routine.
Boom, boom, boom, go, go, go.
And then you get in after college.
I'm in the work industry and, you know, and then being a first responder
and being all doing all that stuff.
And next thing you know, you never slow it down, you know, even vacations.
You're looking back and when you got to get back.
Oh, I got to go back Monday or I got it, you know.
And it was a whole nother mindset, man, of just, hey, you don't have anywhere to go.
You don't have any, you know, and it took a while.
I mean, I was pacing around and reorganizing my toolbox or something,
you know, and just kind of what do I do?
So not only was that transitioning from the retirement of police work, it was also
I don't have a house anymore.
You know, I'm driving around, but, you know, it turned into a great thing.
I mean, I started meeting cops and retired first responders, military,
other full timers and people that have been doing it a long time.
And you start make networking just like if you moved to a new area, you know,
your friends get along with certain friends and now you become friends with their parents.
I mean, we have the same thing as everyone else does.
It's just our neighborhood changes a little bit.
And we meet up with the same people around the country.
It's pretty cool. Beautiful.
Well, you mentioned about childhood.
So let's go to yours.
So tell me where you were born and tell me a little bit about your family dynamic,
what your parents did, how many siblings?
Oh, boy. OK, so I was born in Key West, Florida.
My dad was in the Air Force.
My mom was actually a Florida State art major.
She got a full ride to Florida State when my dad was in the service,
when they were dating and then he had a knock on her up.
They got married. She she dropped out of Florida State.
And ironically, that's where I was conceived.
It's always a funny thing because that's where I went to college.
So I finished the job.
And it was she became a military wife.
And after a couple of years, I mean, she was 19.
He was 19. Things didn't work out.
And she divorced my dad when I was about four or five years old
and moved back to Miami, Florida and lived with my grandmother.
And my mom was Cuban. She was born in Miami.
My grandmother was born in Cuba.
So I was raised by the Cuban grandmother while my mom was out there hustling,
you know, saving the world.
You know, she ended up going on a date with a fireman.
She's looking for work.
You know, here she is divorced in 1974.
And I'm five, six years old.
You know, I'm still playing my little toys and stuff.
And she's trying to hustle and make a living, you know, and
she ended up applying to be a police officer down in Dade County
because they had good benefits, you know, and she was just worried about me.
I got to provide for my boy, you know, and she fell into some interesting
career path that she I mean, she got involved in so many awesome crimes
and not awesome crimes, but also investigations of crimes.
And one of the things she got involved with was the cocaine
Cowboys, Narcos days when they were shooting people in intersections
and at malls and stuff like that, because she was fluent in Spanish.
She was able to do wiretaps or, you know, a lot of translations
or listen in on stuff, do undercover work.
And because no one had recognized her light skin complexion as Cuban,
you know, she just kind of slid right in.
And here I am, 10 years old.
My mom's solving homicides, you know, she's in car chases, all this stuff
I don't even know about, you know, she's not coming home, telling her
10 year old son that this is going down.
So anyway, she had a long storied career about 30 years down there in Miami.
You know, she got married a couple of times, you know, happens to cops or,
you know, people in our profession, you know, I know first responders
across the board have a high, high divorce rate and she's got me off
the Florida state, you know, she figured, all right, I'm done with police work.
I'm retiring soon.
And then here I come out of college and I ended up becoming a police officer.
So in a way she was dragged back in a little bit based on my career, you know,
but she's had good things, you know, her character is portrayed in the Griselda
show on Netflix, Detective June Hawkins.
She's like the star character that's battling Sofia Vergara, who's Griselda
Blanco, that notorious queenpin of the cocaine dealing days back then.
So it's pretty cool to be seeing my mom all of a sudden getting phone calls
from these Hollywood executives, working out contracts and talking to actresses
about scripts.
And it was pretty crazy, you know, because we're just, you know, I mean,
we're not a normal family.
Trust me, you know, when your mom's a homicide sergeant, it's not exactly
a normal life growing up, but basically inside the house, we're a normal family.
So, you know, you got people calling you and they want to know your mom's story.
It's like, whoa, what's going on here?
You know, and it was exciting to go back and relive some of those days.
What was going on?
You know, seeing my mom at 30 years old, you know, or an actress playing my mom
at such a young age, I was like, wow, look what my mom was going through.
Because I know how hard that job is already just for a man.
And then as, you know, women have their own challenges.
And then back in 1975, when my mom got hired, I can't imagine the challenges
she faced and the, you know, criticism and the sexism and just the mental,
you know, stress that she had to go through working in a man's world.
You know, and some of that comes out in the show, you know, they had the AC
cranking the AC story and there's some other stories that pop up that they
didn't put in the show, they're pretty gross, but, you know, we'll save that for,
you know, sitting around a campfire drinking some beers or something.
But yeah, it was great to see her.
My stepfather is also portrayed in the show, Sergeant Al Singleton.
He's my stepfather.
They got married about 10 years after they worked together, maybe 15 years.
They ended up dating and getting married after they worked together previously.
So it's pretty cool story.
And that's how I pretty much got in law enforcement.
I'm the third best cop in the family.
That's why I tell everybody, you know, and it's tough.
I'm always freaking, was it bronze?
I'm always the bronze, you know.
Well, when, when you look back now with this veteran lens that you have,
having gone through your own mental health struggles, were there elements
of your childhood as far as the impact of the job on your mother that you
recognize now with this kind of more mature perspective?
Oh yeah.
There's some serious PTSD, my mom, or let's say undiagnosed PTSD.
She's definitely, well, she's a lot like me because we both kind of have
the same type of trauma from the career, you know, just every day of seeing,
I mean, she was seeing dead families executed.
And so, I mean, she saw some horrific stuff and at a young age too.
So by the time she was 50 years old, getting ready to retire,
she's seen everything, you know, and she did hostage negotiation.
You know, she was involved in the pillowcase rapist investigations in the 80.
I mean, it was just nuts what she had seen.
So, you know, I, I'm very careful when I mention stuff like that to her,
cause I don't want to send it down the wrong, you know, direction, but yeah,
I see it in her, I see this, you know, the short temper, the, just get
hardheaded man, you know, and I see it in her.
I see it in her and it's also old age.
I mean, she's getting older now, so too much Fox news, maybe I don't know.
God, Fox and CNN are the enemy of happiness hands down.
All right.
Well, then we want to get to some other elements of your child.
While we're on this discussion.
Um, I think one of the least discussed elements of first responder and military,
et cetera, mental health is the formative years, you know, before we ever put the
uniform on, when you look back now, were there any elements of your
upbringing you think that contributed to the struggles later in life?
Well, my, I mentioned, my parents got divorced.
My mom had gone through it.
Um, she's, that's her third marriage now, but my dad had, has been married five times.
So there was something with seeing pops growing up all the time when I'd have a
new stepmother, a new house, a new car.
You know, you keep getting divorced, you keep losing all your stuff.
You know, I don't know if they told you that.
So he went from having something to nothing.
So that was a learning experience too.
I mean, just to see how he handled relationships, how he handled the
divorce between my parents, you know, we were in two different states.
I would go see him the summer for Christmas, spring break, you know, is that,
Hey dad, now you try to be full-time dad when you're not around your son, you know?
And then here you are getting married again.
And then I have through those marriages, I have three, well, that's
in the whole other story at the time.
I had a younger brother, 14 years younger.
And then in his last marriage, he's got, I got a 22 and 24 year old younger than me.
Siblings, a sister and brother.
So we got us four and then we found one through a DNA search that led down a whole
another freaking story about my dad.
So yeah, I know his, his relationships were always, I just think the minute he
had a crush on a girl, he just got married.
He just didn't want to lose him.
You know, he figured that was a way he could lock them in, you know, control them.
Some, some weird psychology that's going on with his own struggles, with his
own relationship with his parents when he grew up, you know, you can see it.
And we saw it going to domestics or you see a kid that you knew at little and
there he is a thug on the streets and you know, you see the family dynamic or whatever.
I could see it in my own history of like, wow, maybe this is why I had a little chip
on my shoulder all the time walking around without dad.
Cause back when I was a kid, it wasn't a lot of divorced kids standing up in class,
you know, Hey, yeah, my parents are divorced.
This is my mom here on career day.
Cause that couldn't come, you know, dad's in another state.
So looking back, I'm always like, wow, yeah, that was pretty messed up, but you
know, my mom got me in the sports luckily, so I could take out my aggressions on,
you know, the football field and, you know, take orders from coaches and other
role models that were positive.
So it wasn't like I went the wrong direction, but I know looking back, I
fought a lot, I got paddled.
That's how old I am at 54.
I was telling somebody the other day, I got paddled by my principal at this
private school we were at.
Oh yeah, that's an old another.
It turned out my P coach was a pedophile.
I mean, there are pedophiles everywhere, dude, looking back in the seventies,
cause they didn't have any backgrounds.
I would even look at the previous town you came from.
I was crazy back then.
So, but yeah, it was, uh,
you know, I was sports saved me, you know, and my mom was very involved for
as much as she could, you know, she stayed with it, grades studying, you know,
you have chores, chore lists throughout the house.
I mean, I know in the Griselda show, they talked about her writing memos all the
time, really good memos.
And she left memos all over the house for me, you know, grocery store, cut the
yard.
So she stayed on top of me, the best she could, you know, there's some others,
you know, I made some knucklehead decisions, like, I'm going to be a
some knucklehead decisions like everybody that she don't know about, but it's
not no felonies or anything like that.
So yeah, I see it, you know, I, and I see now being married and with my wife,
almost 17 years, waiting a long time to get married, cause I wasn't ready to
commit and I probably would have made a lot of mistakes, you know, early on,
whether it would have been adultery would have been my drinking that made a bad
decision or it would have been something else.
You know, I met her when I was 37 and it was a good time.
I was ready to, you know, I was more mature.
I already been a cop for a few years.
You know, I was realistic with stuff and, you know, it was perfect.
I didn't screw it up.
Like, you know, I would have done in my early twenties and, you know, I don't
know if that's life experience or if it's just timing, you know, but I didn't
want to repeat what my upbringing was like, not that it was terrible, but it was
just a little bit different and there was a lot of loneliness when you're a kid
getting bouncing around a lot.
You're like, you know, so I didn't want that for my kids.
And then we homeschooled them, not cause I was a homeschool proponent.
It was just in 2018, we didn't like the direction it was going for my oldest son.
He's like a little active warrior and needs to be outside running around doing
stuff and then he can focus and do some learning and then he's got to run around.
Wow.
I mean, this whole saying locked in a cubicle in school all day was not
going to work for him.
And then, you know, obviously we started camping and I retired and then everything
just freaking just got so much better.
Once I got off the, you know, the rat wheel, you know, the hamster wheel and
running in circles, paying this and realizing in the end, I'm just enslaved,
you know, so yeah, there's a lot there though.
No, it's funny when even with the multi-generational trauma, I've just, just
about to finish this week, the final draft of my second book, and that's one of
the underlining themes because, you know, whether it's the us in uniform itself,
or whether it is the homeless, the addict, the gang member, whatever, you
know, it's kind of ironic that we're a very faith-based or supposed to be a
very faith-based country, yet there's such a lack of compassion when it comes
to people who are struggling.
So I think these are important things to hear when you go back and you hear that
my father was this way and then his father was this way, you start to see
that they're dominoes and the next domino is going to hit the one in front
unless you finally identify it and pull the domino out, you know, out of the way.
Yeah, we found out that, I guess we should dive into the brother thing
because my dad's dad, so my, I guess my great grandfather had two lives.
He had two sets, he had another wife with other kids and that came out in some
family tree when I got contacted by another Reynolds family in Maryland.
And they're like, Hey, guess what?
And they were like, Oh no, we got a whole nother branch, a whole nother tree
going on over here of people, you know, and yeah, my dad, I mean, you want to
talk about my brother?
I mean, it's kind of in this LA dynamic.
So, um, then back in 2019, I had done a 23 and me a couple of years ago, just
before that in 2016, cause they already had my DNA for all these investigations
anyways, so I wasn't worried about them, you know, making a clone.
Now I am, but back then I wasn't.
So they, uh, you know, I found out my Cuban history through my mom, going back
to Spain, you see some, you know, drops in France, and then you see my dad and
mom's father's side, which is all English, Irish and the Nordic, you know, up there
and all that, the Vikings and wherever the Vikings were attacking or settling,
whatever, that's where all my DNA is from all that area.
So I was like, ah, cool.
You know, and then 2019 I'm at breakfast in July and I get an email from
23 and me says, Hey, you got a family member wants to get in touch with you.
And it's always pretty routine.
It's a cousin, third cousin, or some far away.
And then right there in the email, it says, Hey, my name's Dave stall.
Corn to 23 and me, you know, we're half brothers.
Not only that we're both cops and we both live in Florida.
And he didn't know anything about his upbringing.
He was adopted when he was a baby.
He ended up growing up in San Diego.
He's adopted by a Navy helicopter pilot.
And he grew up in San Diego at the base out there surfing.
Long hair.
I'm like, look at this guy.
He was actually at the same base where Top Gun was filmed.
And since his dad was the officer in charge of the base, lived on the big
house, you know, on the hill, he got to like interact with the cast.
And he's got, he met Tom Cruise.
He's wearing like goose's bomber jacket.
And I'm like, what year is that?
What year?
I'm like, my mom's solving homicides.
I'm going to YMCA, you know, after daycare or daycare camps or whatever
for kids, you know, after school.
And he's on the set with, you know, Top Gun and stuff.
So it's like one that bad.
But we ended up, we ended up hooking up, found out he is a cop in Orange
County, which is Orlando area.
He'd been a cop a lot longer than me.
He was about to retire within two years.
And it was just, we FaceTime, you know, looking at this guy, it was like
they dropped an A, it looks like my dad, more like my dad than the rest of us.
And like, he got the strong DNA and he got that 18 year old DNA.
I got the 19 and the rest got the weak ass DNA.
So, so it was crazy, you know, and then talking to him and like, what's your
life about?
And he's like, well, tell me about our dad or something, you know, like,
oh yeah, your bio dad.
All right, well, listen to this.
You know, I got to sit him down because it's not like this.
I mean, he's not a terrible guy.
He's just, there's been a lot of stories to tell and I had to share the story
about, you know, his divorces, multiple marriages and stuff like that.
Some of his own mistakes and, you know, but he's a good honorable man.
You know, he did his time in the Air Force was even a cop in the Air Force.
So, you know, here we are surrounded by these law enforcement warrior type of
people, always trying to get out there and, you know, make a difference or
defend stuff.
So anyways, we ended up meeting my dad, had to call my dad and say, hey, where
were you in the fall of 19?
67, you know, he's like, I was working at Zairs in the paint department.
He was kicking with this girl in the lingerie department.
I go, guess what?
Because she ended up having a baby and he, he goes back and he remembers her
saying something about her being pregnant.
And then you don't think that would be kind of a pull in conversation.
Well, he wanted to marry her.
He goes, well, I guess we got to get married.
And then it came back.
She came back.
No, no, no test or it wasn't pregnant.
It came back, no, no, no test or it wasn't positive or whatever.
And it turns out she was actually promised to be married to somebody else.
And the whole hit.
So he ended up finding his birth mom, meeting her.
He has two siblings on that side.
So he's got us four on my dad's side.
And then he has two on the other.
So now he's got six and now he's got all these nieces and nephews.
So he ran for nothing.
I mean, he's married and his wife has two kids from a previous marriage that he's
grown up pretty much as his, but he didn't have this like crazy family tree.
So yeah, that was pretty cool meeting him.
We got we got to go a little bit viral.
We got to go on Fox and Friends in the morning.
They interviewed us because 2019 they love first responders, right?
And we love you guys.
You know, a year later, they're flipping our cars and shooting us.
Right. So then fired us from taking a vaccine.
Exactly. Stuff like that, which, you know, I had retired, you know, so here I am.
I'm retiring mentally, find a brother and now we're on Fox and Friends.
I'm like, this is pretty cool.
And Dave has been camping for 10 years, living the RV life.
So now we're in discussions, my wife and I are already about the RV life.
And here's this guy that drops out of nowhere.
Maybe he's a spy. I got to double check that DNA because everything's a little bit
too nice, you know, you know, pull its face off and have been alien head.
I know, right. You're not Dave.
But yeah, he ended up teaching me at a camp.
We camped together.
I mean, he didn't teach me every day, but he taught me, you know, where to go
and how you do stuff.
And so it's all kind of like that a guardian angel pop up right at the right time.
Same time we auditioned for Amazing Race.
They contacted us and they loved the idea of two brothers that don't know each other
competing or we're probably going to choke each other out, you know,
because I don't know this cat.
We're going to get in some disagreements, you know, on that show.
So we auditioned for that and we were actually going to go out there in December
of 2019 out to L.A. for casting and some stuff.
And then Covid kind of delayed it.
And then once I saw that first police car get lit up on fire,
I remember talking to Dave, I go, I don't think we're going to Hollywood, bro.
I think this ship has sailed and it never came back.
So it's probably for the good.
But anyways, all that cool stuff was happening, you know, and that same time
that's when I got called from Doug Myra of the Narcos Netflix series.
And he's like, hey, you know, this show called Narcos on Netflix.
I'm like, yeah, absolutely.
I watch that stuff all the time.
I go, I'm watching Mexican Narcos right now, you know, and he's like,
well, we want to talk to your mom.
I was like, oh, I thought you wanted to talk to me and Dave, you know,
because I thought we'd maybe get something, you know, with the two brothers story.
I don't know. We were just caught up in the moment.
And then I end up hooking my mom up with the, you know, Narcos people.
And that's how the Griselda show.
So all this great stuff's going down.
I'm retiring on my 50th birthday, you know, and all during that time,
I'm battling heart disease.
You know, this is a whole nother side story that nobody knows
what's going on behind the scenes.
You know, I was, you know, I don't know.
We want to go back and rewind to the shooting.
But at the time when I was really at my worst, I was about 250 pounds
severely obese from from my I mean, I'm six foot tall.
She probably rocking 100, 185 pounds, you know, maybe 200 if I bolt up.
But I should nowhere be near 250 pounds or 250 pounds.
So the heart disease, I was getting all the cholesterol talk.
I was getting stents. They want to put stents in me.
I had a CAC score for my, you know, checking to see the calcium in my arteries.
And I was 1500, which the top is 400.
So I was just I was getting all this freaking pressure.
Oh, don't worry. Now it's 4000.
But we can get into that later on my healthy 4000 CAC score.
So it's just been crazy.
But anyways, that was all going down at that time, you know,
and then changing my diet was probably the biggest thing that helped me get right.
At least on the right path, you know, being shot in 2012.
That like I said, that was an igniter for a lot of bad habits.
Brought a lot of things to surface and I developed some other things
I didn't know I was going through.
You know, if I was already stressed about work, well, guess what?
I'm more stressed about stress about bills are more stressed,
stressed about going out in public and more stress.
Hyper vigilance was everywhere, you know, and that's what led into more drinking,
more isolation.
During my darkest moments, I never really had a thought about suicide.
It would pop up because you hear about it.
You can't stop hearing about it, right?
Especially in our profession, you know, and we even know people that have done it.
So it's just it never was to the point where it was that where I had to go to that point.
And it's probably because I had my wife and my kids.
I still had my job.
I still had some support.
I still had my kids.
I still have my job, I still have some support around me.
But I can tell you if I didn't, I could see how guys go that go that route.
And you can't shut it off.
You know, it just is there is there.
You know, in my shooting situation, I came out with Austin Monroe.
We came out victorious.
We won the battle, you know, and I know a lot of guys get tortured if they didn't win the battle.
You know, maybe they got shot.
They did nothing to do.
You know, you walk up to a car and a guy freaking unloads on you.
What do you I mean, if you're lucky to survive it, you know, but now you're battling man, you know,
like in football, sometimes I get knocked on my ass.
But you know what? You get up.
You got to you're just going to keep getting trampled.
And I know it's not the same when you get shot on a traffic stop or something like that.
But I can see how it can play on your mind because now you're like, damn, the guy got me.
He got me that day. I knew better.
I should have done this.
I should have done that over and over. And that's what probably would drive me nuts.
You know, if just replaying the situation over and over again, because I do it now and I won,
you know, and that's still a battle.
Let me ask you something. Yeah.
One of the things that I've observed, because I never got to that dark, dark place either.
And, you know, it was definitely a black cloud was a real shit magnet in my career.
And when I look back, I am no better or worse than any other person who's ever put a uniform on before.
I'm a human being that was born as a crying, pissing poop in a bundle of flesh, you know, and then life happened.
And what I am seeing as far as a common denominator between those of us who are able to,
you know, we're going to have highs and we're going to have lows, but we're able to shirk off the very, very darkest of dark.
Is that there seems to be an element of trauma or struggles when we're younger, but also an element of healing.
And I'll give you an example. I almost died in a house fire when I was four years old and my parents had a frickin horrendous divorce.
And then there was another time we were almost killed by a massive wall that fell, crushed the car right next to us.
My dad drove away. So, yeah, there was some there were some things.
But I grew up on a farm. You know, my family was intact, even though by the time I got to my like mid teens,
I realized that it was kind of a lie. My parents divorce. It was still they were both there in the house.
We had dinners around farm tables. We talked, we laughed, you know, nature, healing, all these things.
So I didn't do anything to create that.
I was just fortunate enough to be born in that environment where equal and opposite to the trauma were elements of healing that I feel led to resilience.
And I think the only difference is that some of these people that really struggle in uniform,
that ended up getting buried down and not addressed through no fault of their own.
It's just the circumstance. When you look back at your early life,
were there elements of kind of equal and opposite healing or processing of some of the bad things that maybe fostered resilience later in life?
Well, I was in eight different schools. You know, I was a new kid mid school year once.
You know, I was going to schools in different states.
You know, my mom let me live with my dad a couple of years because they said, I want to live with my dad.
And she's like, all right, you know, even says in the show, you get to find out what an asshole he is.
So that's kind of what her thinking was. Plus, you know, she had her own things going on back then.
And, yeah, I would get into fights as a new kid all the time.
You know, I was constantly meeting new circles, whether it was new football team, new baseball team.
Then you pulled me out of Georgia. Now we're in a new neighborhood in Miami.
You know, and then we move around there because my mom was always up, you know, moving up apartment, townhouse, duplex house.
You know, she it was that struggle that she was going through.
But every one of those new houses was a new circle to get used to, you know, bullies from the other block.
You know, so I fought a lot, you know, and I wasn't a UFC fighter.
I just street fight. And, you know, I became a tough kid.
And, you know, I learned how to take a punch.
You know, and that's some of the stuff that I think made me more resilient later, even on the job.
You know, you know, not every call goes your way.
You know, I would take I try to write good reports, you know, as representation of me when I was in uniform.
I helped, you know, I had an honor and that came from my mom and having respect in your, you know, in your work and in you.
You know, you have value.
So doing a lot of that stuff was what probably saved me a lot because I was applying when I was in college, I smoked a ton of weed.
Right. I wasn't big in the drinking and driving and trying to get, you know, arrested as a college kid and derail my college career,
which is nothing but partying at Florida State for six years.
I went to, you know, I worked, I went to school, but I didn't learn real life until I got out of there.
So getting, you know, I caught shoplifters after college, you know, and I just it was always just stepping up myself, you know, getting up to the, you know,
I did the same thing, apartment, let's get a house and just moving up the rankings.
And, you know, I when I was talking about smoking weed, I couldn't get hired right out of college because, you know, you touch the stuff and you're disqualified.
You know, even though I knew cops had snorted cocaine and like a freaking this guy.
So anyways, I had to wait a while. I started catching shoplifters for a store like a Macy's or something like that.
And I was really good at I loved it. Undercover work, playing close stuff, you know, chase guys down, tackle in the parking lots and fight them and stuff.
It was just old school as before, you know, liability was like you can't leave the curb or anything like that.
And we were like cowboys, man. It was awesome. But they recruited me down and boy, they're like, hey, you keep chasing all these guys.
Once you get a tool belt and a gun and some pepper spray.
And I'm like, everyone's disqualifying me for, you know, the drug history.
And then I ended up getting a job as a dispatcher. I did that for about six months.
And then I got a community service officer job helping out in traffic crashes.
You know, I helped the T.H.I. guys and I would do minor crashes, got my foot in the door.
And then after about nine months, I put in my memo and my mom helped me write.
I mean, she's the memo queen and it went straight up the chain.
And then next thing you know, they put me in the academy. So I proved myself by that point.
But yeah, it was always that's been the story of my life.
Where I went, you know, new I remember getting picked last on basketball teams or football teams.
I'm like, all right, you'll see. Yeah, that's all right.
You know, so that fire came from those experiences, of course, being isolated back against the wall.
Not that I was in the hood, getting shot at or anything like that.
But we had our own street stuff going on that went unnoticed, you know, in suburban neighborhoods, kids coming over, stuff going down in school.
I was in YMCA after school camps. I say that there's a lot of freaking stuff that goes on by school buses.
You know, there's all these different, you know, you get on the school bus, you got one badass that rules the school bus.
All right. All right. And I got to keep this guy off my back.
You know, I got to keep this guy out of first period off my back.
You know, it's just you're in the jungle right off the bat.
You know, you talked about smoking weed.
And it's funny because I had a very similar experience.
I weed wasn't really my thing. I tried it, though.
But when I was in Japan, I did X and danced a lot, hugged a lot of strangers, had the time of my life.
Never miss a day's work. You know, but I was very honest years later on my application.
It was kind of a collaborative test down south that they would send all the results to multiple departments.
And Miami Beach was there. And so the pre-app said, have you ever tried them?
Yeah, I've tried it because honestly is the best policy.
And he literally screwed it up and threw it back at me and goes, you're disqualified.
And I'm like, ah, so you have to lie to be a firefighter. Got it.
And then from then on, I got through every polygraph and every other thing.
And it's not something to brag about.
It's just simply it shows a ridiculousness of the way that we filter.
That being said, as we progress now, you know, a lot of things people will be disqualified for back in the day,
a lot of things that on cops TV show officers pursued on high high speed pursuit and then a foot chase and then a big old fight for a little baggie of marijuana.
Now we have a very different perspective.
So between your mother, you know, addressing some of the more dangerous side of, you know, of illicit drugs,
what is yours or your family's perspective of the change in in the way some of these drugs are viewed
and maybe the change in the way that addiction specifically is viewed these days?
Yeah, she was she was, you know, art major at Florida State, so she wasn't ever too preachy on marijuana.
It was like, don't be you know, don't dumb your brain down. You got more important things to do.
But the cocaine, heroin, all that hard stuff she's pretty strict about, you know.
And when I was about the age where I probably would have been doing stupid stuff like that, Len Bias died.
He was a first round pick of the Boston Celtics.
And supposedly he just did cocaine the first time and died of a heart attack.
So at that point, that terrified me. That scared me.
Knowing now he probably was doing cocaine a lot more than that.
But, you know, I know at that point, I believed it.
And the cocaine, I saw it in Florida or down in Boyden Beach where I was all those years.
We saw the meth. You know, we saw the heroin, saw the opioid crisis come through.
You know, some of the units I was in, we arrested doctors for, you know, part of those pill mills and the pill shopping
and just that whole thing that, you know, that dark side that pharma has all the time that they hide behind.
And I never was trustworthy of pharmaceutical companies at all.
They're a legalized cartel and they do things the legal way and they're, you know, sometimes illegal way,
because, you know, there's people disappearing and get in the way.
Probably I will one day. And what's crazy is I, with the addiction, you know,
we would talk to the addicts that would come down from Kentucky doing these pills shopping.
You know, they're going to multiple doctors. You know, they get in front of a couple thousand dollars
to come back for all these pills that they're going to, you know, triple or ten times the profits back in that state.
And I'm asking these guys, I'm like, so how are you 21 and you're freaking out on disability already?
Like I was in a car accident, you know, or one guy was an athlete and hurt his knee or something, you know.
And then they gave him the freaking, you know, the heroin disguised as a pill and the kid developed an addiction
and rerouted his whole life, you know.
So I'm still, I'm still thinking education is the way I still would go, show people examples,
but it's still going to be people's free will. People are still going to end up doing it.
And yeah, some people might, if you legalize certain drugs, might go out and try it because it's legal.
Well, then if you're still doing that, you're a dummy.
You know, if you don't do the research on something you're going to put into your body beforehand, you know,
and we've all made mistakes with booze and mixed drinks, but at least you know alcohol.
You know, most of us probably grew up around it. You know, I'm not growing up around guys shooting at, you know,
heroin and then wondering, oh, well, I would do that if it wasn't illegal.
No, that's not how it works, you know.
Think the, you know, unfortunately, the way our government is run and some of the governments we've created
within the, you know, the control of the drugs, it's its own moneymaker and they're never going to stop it.
They're all making money on both sides. I've seen that.
You know, I've seen it especially in the food industry, you know, the pharmaceutical world got me thinking about my own,
my own diet and the own food that I was putting in my body and the FDA, you know,
and what do they allow on these shelves for these kids to be like our cereals and the candies and all that.
That is pure poison. They allow it because they're getting paid. That's all it is.
If they really knew and it was their kids, all this shit in our grocery stores would be pulled.
Pretty much 95% of what's in the grocery store.
And we're just shoving it down our pie holes, getting fat, getting sick.
And then we go back to our doctor who's just as fat as we are.
And he's writing us a script from the billionaire, trillionaire yacht owner.
And he's sitting back as stocks are going good and all this and we're getting fat and sick.
You know, that's the way I took it. That that guy made me sick.
And the propaganda they pushed on these parents and what even did my own mom because, oh, here's the cereals or here's your TV dinners.
It's healthy. It's done. And, you know, our parents were like, you know, we pay taxes.
We trust our government, you know, and they they were played flat out lied.
We got the fattest country around. We can't even fill up our military, you know, unless they were addressed.
Then they let them in. You know, it's freaking insane, you know, and and it's psychological is what they've done.
They it's mental disease across the board.
And the minute they get the kid on formula, the minute they get the kid on sugar and some of these other processed foods and then you indoctrinate them in schools.
And when do we got these problems? You know, you know, your kid, you come home, try to be a part time parent on the weekend, go to soccer practice with them.
That's not going to freaking do it. You know, you got to be there day in, day out.
There's some days you're not there. Well, that's the way it goes because of life.
But you know what? You still got to have structure set up for your child, you know.
And, you know, I know you're talking about my opinion on drugs.
I'm still thinking, hey, if you're going to do it, you're a dummy. If you OD, well, you know, we survive.
We keep moving on. You know, hopefully the next person doesn't do that.
I don't think arresting people and trying to make the value of a go up by making illegal and then make you know, for the cartels, the profit is the way to go about it.
I didn't do drugs because not because it was illegal.
I didn't do drugs that I didn't want to freaking hurt myself.
I don't want to get stupid. I didn't want to get a, you know, crash my car or get a DUI.
That's why there is consequences. That's why I didn't do it.
You know, yeah, no, I went off. No, no, it's good. That's good.
But this is why I love hearing all these different perspectives.
It's all well and good to stand there in your home and say, this is my opinion.
What's really amazing is to ask hundreds of other people about their perspective, especially if they've been in the trenches in the hospitals, in the police or fire or EMS vehicles, you know, and really seeing the impact on families like we do.
And I think one of the things that I think is so encouraging is countries like Portugal that have done a decriminalization.
So, you know, you could have a hybrid. You could legalize things that are clearly doing a lot of good, whether it's psilocybin or, you know, marijuana, where ironically the illicit drugs that we used to vilify are now helping a lot of our first responders and military heal from their trauma.
But then you have the decriminalization element. You're not going to go into a grocery store and find meth and heroin and, you know, coke. Those are going to be illicit drugs.
But if you're caught with a user's amount, then in Portugal, you're not even really arrested.
You're literally given an interview where you're explained the resources that are available to you.
Therefore, you give the addict their own autonomy to make their own choice.
You've removed the fear of arrest, so the stigma, and you've plowed a lot of the money that went into the war on drugs, air quotes, and you put it into mental health counseling, addiction counseling, job creation.
Not only does that then allow most of the addicts, you can't save them all, but most of them start getting back on their feet.
But now the resources, law enforcement courts, etc., can focus on the people selling drugs and the people smuggling drugs and then all the other crimes associated that we see on the streets.
So it's an absolute win-win. But the problem is it takes proactive leadership, and you've got to then address the lobbying that goes against that.
The lobbying that goes against the obesity, you know, stopping the obesity crisis by addressing our shitty food.
That is where the real kind of cancer is. And I got to talk to Tulsi Gabbard about that recently.
Until we address that as a nation, which we can, we can all just stand up and say enough is enough.
But until we do, I mean, I just shared a video today of I think she was a 14-month-old fentanyl overdose that they saved, an amazing EMS save.
But, you know, that's a freaking 14-year-old that didn't deliberately take drugs. They're just out there everywhere.
So until we stand up as a nation and demand a way, a different way, a proactive way of doing it, then we're going to keep burying people. It's that simple.
Yeah, I know I didn't, we didn't have a lot of options as police officers either.
It's either alcohol or you got to suck it up and tell a doctor you need some help. I mean, what's it going to do?
Here you go. And then you're going to hide that from everybody because they're not going to tell people you're on anything, you know, because it could impact your ability to drive or do your job.
So you're not going to say anything. So I always question that.
And, you know, I got into marijuana because it was more therapeutic for me when I was younger.
I played a lot of football, a lot of head injuries, a lot of undiagnosed concussions because if you started talking about your head hurt, you wouldn't be playing.
They push off the side, you know, go get evaluated. So you suck it up.
You know, meanwhile, I got fucking sorry, I got freaking my ears ringing in the rest of the day or the next two days because I want to play Saturday in the game, you know, so all that.
So I found it very therapeutic. It slowed me down in college to where I could get, you know, a little bit more manageable of my time.
And it was good for me. You know, I didn't abuse or anything.
But then, you know, obviously, you're a cop now. You know, I can't smoke weed.
Can't be freaking doing that. And what do you do? You drink. And it's culturally acceptable in our profession.
We get around each other. We all see Saturday night. All right, dog.
And you all get trashed, you know, because you're so stressed out, you know, and for making decisions all the time and just builds on you, you know.
And I wonder, you know, I joke around my camping buddies about coming up with either some type of Rasta 5-0 brand of gummies or some to help guys that would be able to be legal for them to have it in their system, but not on duty.
Because obviously that was the thing. You could smoke a joint on Friday and Monday you crash your car, you're going to piss hot.
But if you're snorting lines Friday night, you're not going to piss hot Monday. Usually, you know, it's out of your system. 48 hours.
So I don't know how you do it. I don't know if they can. But guys need sometimes an escape besides alcohol.
You know, yeah, you can gym it. You can do it. And what's the other thing we do?
We eat stuff in our mouth all the time because we're stressed out, you know, stress eating, trying to squeeze in meals, you know, and you're eating that crap that's out there and this is making you fatter and sicker.
You know, we had an officer at our department die after five years and he had three pensions. He had the Coast Guard. He had the city pension.
And then he went to school board for six years to get vested in the state and he's dead five years later.
And that just that bothered me that when I was like, God, man, he worked all them years. I already knew, you know, my, you know, being a cop, I was looking at the heart attack stuff with cops all the time, you know, and God, it just that constant.
Every time that alert tone goes off or you're showing or someone doesn't answer there on the radio, you think the worst, you know, all day long, you know, 12 hours a day, you know, for all those years.
That's normal, man. You know, our hearts aren't designed for that much pounding. You know, think about you're wearing out an engine, you know, and that's why we drop, you know, by the time we get to that age, 65, 70 years old, we're just worn out, you know.
And I saw it in my own blood work and my own health journey with my CAC score. And I had if I didn't find the ketogenic way of eating pretty much meat and vegetables and getting off processed foods and breads and all that high carb stuff.
I probably would have died of a heart attack because I had so much plaque built up in my arteries, you know, that I would have dropped, you know, because now it's hardened up. I've had this massive healing.
I'm seeing a really good cardiologist, Dr. Philip Ovadia. You know, he wrote my fixed hearts. He used to be a heart surgeon discovered he was, you know, everything he's been told is wrong.
You know, half Moses patients should never have been on his table, you know, because he could have fixed them another way. You know, he fixed his heart.
So I did his podcast like a year ago and here I am now as patient.
You know, so he's helped me. You know, we discovered we did a whole full panel blood work. We discovered I got heavy mycotoxins, a lot of heavy molds, which could be a lot of the grains I've eaten could be the grains, my meat that I eat possibly in the past.
All the cereals, all the everything I had growing up, you know, the arsenic. I'm sorry. And then I also tested heavy on the heavy metals, you know, so all this stuff is contributing to the heart disease, you know, but, you know, I'm not diabetic.
My A1C is 5.3. All my glucose, you know, everything is normal except for the high CAC score. And I know that's from the stress of the job.
All those years just boom, boom, boom. And then you got to calm down. Then you're back up. Calm down. You know, imagine living like that. I mean, you take a certain animals and put them in a lab and they're going to die of stress already.
Just being out of their environment. So you can imagine how hard it is for us. And, you know, I saw it with that. And then obviously when I started losing weight, the 50 pounds and then 80 pounds just by controlling my diet, with all that, it got my brain better.
It made me more focused. I got more positive. You know, I think, you know, I wasn't hooked up to any machines, but when you're feeling better and then you have more confidence in yourself because you feel better, you know, and you're happier.
And then, you know, of course I retire and I find a brother and, you know, I'm like, oh, this is for you. Great. You know, just the weight just came right off.
Once I gave up the gun and, you know, said I'm done with this career and another 30 pounds came off and here I am, you know, 176 pounds, body fat was 28%.
Now I'm 13% and it was all from diet. No medicine, no freaking jazzercise class every day. It was simply watch what I'm putting in my body, weight train specifically like resistance training.
I'm not trying to lift, you know, a Volkswagen off my chest anymore. I'm lifting to be physically strong, work on my core because I realized my core was really weak all those years, even though I played ball and I just, you know, it wasn't strong enough.
So now I'm doing handstands. I'm doing a lot of different workouts that I never did before. Pull ups was my enemy.
I mean, that's why I never got my patch in elementary school because I couldn't do the stupid freaking pull ups for the presidential test. And now I can do eight to 10 pull ups depending on the day. You know, I'm getting there, you know, and it's insane.
And it's all from losing weight, you know, and they pushed the pharmaceuticals down. Every doctor I went to, you know, luckily my wife was very, you know, on the naturopathic side of things and she's like, you can heal your body of the ways, you know, and we did.
You know, and that's when I started helping cops and they started nicknaming me five. Oh, you know, keto five. Oh, and it just kind of kept going. And then I started a company from and who knows? And it was all after because I lost weight. You know, started eating more meat.
I mean, it's it's so important to hear these testimonies. It's funny when you were talking about the research before one of my friends who's a former Marine recon. Now he's big in the human performance space.
He we were talking and we kind of had this realization because he was like, well, is there you know, is there any research that they study the firefighters on these shifts? And I was like.
I think I think I responded and he was like, well, they wouldn't even allow that. So basically, if you set up a lab and you took, you know, X amount of people and you kept him awake for 24 hours every third day, let's say for two months, and then you throw in some mandatory overtime.
So every two or three weeks, they did a 48 hours with no sleep. No ethics board in the country would approve that study. Yet that is how we work on in this particular case, how our firefighters work for 10, 20, 30 years.
And we wonder why they fall apart, you know, so this is such an important conversation is, you know, people ask, Oh, have you got the research? No, because no one wants to do the fucking research to be completely blunt because they know damn well what the results are going to be.
And they don't want to face it. And Boynton, your old department has just recently gone to a very progressive shift where they brought the firefighter work week down to 42 hours instead of 48 and what used to be 56 before.
Insane. So, you know, the environment that these first responders live in sets them up for failure. And then, as you said, now you don't feel well. Now you go to your doctor and they throw drugs at you.
No one's telling you about how dangerous a lot of the foods that you think are quote unquote healthy. And now you have this perfect storm and you hit on the nail on the head with the five years.
Even though again, there isn't research because again, you know, once we once we retire, we cease to become a statistic. There's no one's counting how many firefighters or cops kill themselves or die of heart disease from the moment we retire onwards.
But, you know, it seems to be acknowledged that it's about five years after retirement that a lot of us drop dead, which is extremely unacceptable.
So this is why this conversation is so important. If you understand all the things that are set against you and you advocate for the things that you can control and you can change the chances of you having a long healthy career and then a healthy retirement increase exponentially.
The job I was telling somebody the other day, I go, you know, when I got shot in 2012 by we didn't get into it, but it was a bank robber car chase.
He crashes. He can't get out his door. He opens his door as I'm getting out of my car to see what he's going to do.
He starts shooting at me and the other officer hits me twice my foot and nicks my leg. Didn't know it at the time.
We just kept firing and then we walked up to the vehicle and finally put him down and actually got a ride from FD and their damn rig.
They see wasn't working. Here it is June and it's spitting out frost and they're apologizing like, sorry, man.
You know, this is the best we got. This is a truck. They're going to be replacing it now.
You know, next year budget, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, man, I get shot and I got to take a ride in a hot ass freaking transport FD vehicle.
I go, what about that water? He's like, yeah, you don't want to drink that. I'm like, man, that's the worst.
I've heard about helicopter flights, you know, and stuff like this. But what I ended up doing, you know, I dealt with the physical injuries.
OK, you know, rehab, you know, you know, my I can't feel my big toe.
You know, there's some nerve things up middle of the night. Nerves are like, ah, you know, for no reason.
And but then when I started looking at going back out there in the road again, you know, that's when everything got elevated and started getting really stressed out.
I ended up in evidence. I thought I was safe and then new cheese come in. Why is there a sworn cop and evidence that doesn't make any sense?
Let's put a civilian in there makes half the money. But that's why we're in there, because the civilians stole the money 10 years ago.
So, I mean, you know, I mean, I'm not going to risk my pension. I'm not going to steal anything. So they let me sit in there.
But I started looking at PTSD. I knew I was suffering. I needed help. My wife was talking to me about it.
I was drinking a lot, just trying to stop it and slow it down. I didn't know what was going on at the time.
I hadn't. You know, I just knew I was, you know, like what they used to say, you know, all the Vietnam veterans.
And they it was they used to call it a shock back in World War two. Oh, yeah. Shell shell shell shock.
That was when I was. Yeah, I was kind of thinking my mom had a boyfriend once he was like dirty hair.
He had been he was a bomb squad guy and he had some issues. I was just like, yeah, that's what happens.
You know, so. I remember trying to find out how do I get help for this? Like, where do I go?
What's the avenue? And a lot of guys don't know. I mean, what do you do? You know, what I did, I went to a boss that I trusted had been in a critical incident himself.
And I broke down to him. I just talked to him and I told him everything's going on.
I was thinking I was crying because I was getting all this off my chest. And he goes, well, Eric, yeah, I feel for you.
And he, you know, hugged me and he got me into EAP. So I went there first, you know, employment or employee assistance program.
So I do that and jumping through ropes with them and they're like, yeah, you got PTSD.
You definitely need to see somebody. I mean, especially when they say, how do you feel back out there on the road?
I go, I'm definitely going to shoot somebody again. There's no doubt about it.
And they're like, whoa, you know how to get a jury, isn't it?
Well, yeah, exactly. It wasn't because I was going to just be shooting right crazy.
I just knew I was super focused and I'm going to be faster than I was last time.
I'm not going to let the guy shoot me like last.
You know, that's what was going on in my head. So I reach out to luckily I had somebody had given me a workers comp lawyer.
It's always worth a sit down with those guys. And I sat down with this guy, told him the situation.
He's like, well, you have an open workers comp claim because your foot injury and your rehab.
And I filed a claim for the one therapy and those M.F.s, man. All right.
So then they bring me in a room a couple of months later, a board room for like four lawyers, workers comp lawyers.
They got the little freaking typist, little Satanist.
It's good. Write down all the wrong things. Anyways, she you know, they're going to find out if I'm worth it.
Oh, does he really need, you know, you know, I've been shot, killed a guy.
Let's just make sure he needs the therapy. Right.
So I felt like I was just, you know, being they didn't they pretty much just made me break down from the whole room going over, you know, everything that's going on and how I was feeling.
So then they sent me to an independent psychologist.
He finally goes, yeah, this guy needs help. Finally, I get to my doctor that I've been wanting to see on their dime.
That was the whole point. I mean, I could have been trying to pay out of pocket, but, you know, this is an injury from the job.
And I didn't know how much this hair therapy would have helped me or I would have been paying for it myself at the time and tried it.
Whatever. I would have just done it for my own health.
And talking to Dr. Barnett and Palm Beach Gardens, the first thing he says, you have to learn how to dance with this.
And I didn't really understand it, but then he explained the central nervous system and the hyper like why you're not sleeping as well at night, why you don't want to go out as much, why you want to kind of keep your family close and, you know, and why everything so aggravated.
And he did. And then he would talk to my wife and talk to my kids separately to find out how Eric's doing, you know, to get a whole picture.
And that was probably the biggest thing in it. I know the department found out about it.
You know, I had to tell my boss is, hey, I'm going to go see the doc twice a week or once a week for two, you know, whatever it was.
And I saw him for five years until I retired.
And that was the best thing I got. I go in there and bitch about whatever is going on in my life, whether it's my wife, my kids, life, work, you know, and all this stuff.
And we always get back to me and what was, you know, and that's what he was trying to do, get me back to thinking about me, how we're going to heal you, Eric.
And, you know, that's when I started losing weight. He even started looking at some of the stuff I was feeding him.
So I'm helping my doctor, you know, lose some weight. Hey, get off the carbs and the rice and stuff.
So that was the thing I think I look back that was probably the hardest thing to do was to go get help.
And it's a shame that that's it's that difficult. You know, we're already hard on each other.
Macho, we got to be a tough guy, you know, and all this bullshit.
But the stuff we see is not normal, guys and ladies.
It's not it was these are human made professions, you know, that we weren't supposed to see on a day to day business or day to day.
You know, people getting slaughtered, people car accidents, fucking heart attacks, families crimes, murders every time you get somewhere.
People looking to you to save the day. You know, it's not normal.
It beats you down, man. And we see it, you know, and that's why you're doing this for you.
An awesome podcast getting the word out there. And I'm just trying to go camping and help guys that I meet camping.
And then they tell me to take my flag now and then I lose my shit and I started a nonprofit because of it.
So, I mean, it's funny how things work out, how you can change your life and how you can, you know, make some negative things into a positive.
So let's go back to to the kind of the events leading up to the shooting and then kind of where that took you initially.
The reason why I say that there's a narrative at the moment that.
You know, cops are just waiting, they just can't wait to execute someone, you know, and then if you believe certain news stations, someone of color,
who they're dreaming of killing every day when they get to the station in the morning, the reality is that that individual just had to was forced to take a life.
So walk me through kind of that event and then, you know, where did that take you?
I mean, it's amazing that you found the therapy and want to explore that a little bit more.
But what was the impact of that event on you, the law enforcement officer that had left your family to go and protect complete strangers that day?
You know, it was when I was about 10 years into my career, I was 42.
All the FBI averages of cops that get killed are 10 to 12 years. Average age is 42. Family, you know, at least one.
You know, I was right in there and.
I. The guy we kill was a black guy, you know, and we were both on paper to white cops, even though I'm Cuban descent.
You look at me, you don't think I'm a free and Cuban, you know, so.
That did beat me down to thing and how society and look at this, you know, I remember being at home that night of the shooting and watching the news.
I remember Miami Heat lost Oklahoma City in the NBA championship is game one.
They know up sweeping them, but at this point, they lost. I remember being bummed out like, Dan, the day I got shot, my damn team lost the freaking NBA championship game.
So and the news came on and it was like tonight at 11, another officer shot, done, done, done, you know, that's I was like, holy shit, that's me.
I was like, let's see what they say. You know, it was just interesting.
You know, I've never been on that side of it.
And like he's at the hospital now. I go, no, I'm not. I'm at home.
But, you know, it's just listening to their tell the story.
And I'm like, man, are they going to tell it right? You know, and then I'm remembering we fired 38 rounds.
I'm like, it's a lot of shots over two minutes.
You know, it's a long shooting. If you ever want to see it, it's out there on YouTube, on my channel, or you just Google my name.
You can probably find it. And it's a long shooting. There's a lot of stops and starts.
I mean, he was trying to clear his weapon and we're just peppering him.
And then, you know, I never looked at a skin color at that point. I saw that gun.
That motherfucker started shooting, kill me at that point. It was like we got to get him before he gets us.
And very primal talk about the darkness. I went to a state where if I was on a battlefield,
I would have probably decapitated that dude in that much anger.
I would add a sword just like you see those Valhalla freaking Viking crazy battle shows.
I was that enraged, dude. And I can't imagine what those guys went through back in the day,
constantly fighting, you know, day after day and these long battles.
No wonder we didn't make it past 30 years old. Right. So.
But I was there and I didn't like that at all. I did not like that going back that I was able to get there.
And I was saying I was almost out of control, you know, and like I said, it's very primal.
And it's a place I've tapped into a couple of times in life, you know, since then.
And I don't like who I am. I mean, the flag incident when they told me to take down a flag
tapped into it again, where I went off the handle really fast on some I was passionate about.
So I can't imagine what would happen when someone with my kids or something like that.
You know, so it's it's a loaded gun all the time that I'm battling and people don't understand.
You got to be careful you're doing without there, you know, in society.
You never know where they're at in their day or in life, you know.
But I taking a life was a little hard, you know, for a long time because I didn't get in what to do that shit.
You know, and then you start thinking, well, the CF family, does he have a son?
I mean, I got two sons. They'd probably be pissed if their dad got killed. Right.
So, you know, you worry about shit like that.
And then we got to take a trip off to Washington, D.C.
We got honored, you know, it's awesome. But we were national officers of the month for February in 2013.
We were up there with the Boston bomber cops that got those guys and a whole bunch of other hero stories.
It was just bad thing was the administration at the time didn't back cops.
So that was a whole nother thing. But it was so fantastic to be out there and experience that.
But it's also traumatic at the same time, because now you're seeing all the widows and, you know,
the kids and daughters of officers that have passed.
And it was just my mom's got her friend Cheryl Sidon that's on the wall.
She got killed off duty trying to protect her and her friends from getting robbed.
She pulled her gun out of her purse and got shot to the neck and killed her a couple of days later.
But she's on the wall. You know, all that stuff is still traumatic.
Because then you're like, well, why did I survive?
So you got the freaking survivor's guilt playing, you know, so that was.
Yeah, I went through a lot looking back.
You know, that's probably why I was drinking more to kind of calm the beast, you know,
and then not talking about it enough, of course, you know.
And then sorry, still hits me.
Still gets me. But anyways, and now I'm a dad.
My kids are like, oh, yeah, my dad was a cool cop.
You know, I'm just an old, you know, goofy dad walking around in their mind.
You know, I'm not this cool guy as I used to be, you know.
So coming to grips with that took a while, you know, knowing that, you know, I didn't do anything wrong.
I did what I was trained for and I would do it again, you know.
But as you get in that profession and you're growing in it, you see the sadness of society.
You see the it's not going to change.
You see this kid is probably going to be dead in the street in 10 years because you just see the path that he's on and you're helpless.
You know, and that was one, I think, hardest things about that job overall was,
hey, we just see the sorrow all the time.
It just never stops, you know.
So that's why I wouldn't when I'm camping and I'm going to different campgrounds and I'm my flags flying and I see people and they start talking.
And we start sharing stories.
You know, like you said, we're all human beings in the end and we all have trauma.
We all have. I mean, everybody I meet so interesting, like where they come from, especially if you're camping.
I mean, everyone's from everywhere. You meet a guy from Alaska.
I mean, we had one of our cops and campers rally.
We had Gwen Grimes, who was on Naked and Afraid for three seasons.
She's an Alaska cop, you know, and she's out there surviving off the grid, you know.
And you're like, holy cow, man, what an interesting person.
You know, she's had five kids and she's naked on TV.
I mean, who would have thought, right?
But in the camping world, there is it is a bond that you're finding, you know, I, you know,
I meet these first responders where they're firemen, you know, they could be dispatchers, whoever.
We've all gone through it, you know, and when we get together, our little retreats, that's what it's about.
We're talking. Some guys are crying. Some guys are just sitting, listening.
They're ready. They're just going to sit there and go fishing and just be at the party, you know.
And that's what we do at that end. Try to really address some of the how it's OK.
It's not going to always stop that freaking what you went through, but you just got to dance with it.
Like my doctor told me, and we're here to dance with you.
Let's play some music. Let's freaking tell some war stories and guys get it out.
You know, I did a brief little documentary called Cops and Cabins.
It was eight of us went to the cabins in North Georgia. Most of us didn't know each other.
One of the guys was a documentary cop that did film and he made a documentary out of it.
And being together with those guys and hearing the stories and the question of the day, you know,
what's the most embarrassing time as a cop?
And you're like, oh, boy, and you remember some that you did, whether it's leaving stuff on the car.
You know, mine was locking my, you know, arrestee in the back of a car and I couldn't get him out.
And then there was a car chase going on. So him and I were just sitting there looking at each other in a parking lot for a couple of hours.
It was crazy. But, you know, you have the saddest moment you had.
He was like the worst boss and we'd have boss stories or, you know, so therapeutic that when I got out
and then the camping incident happened when they told me, you know, I got into that argument.
I remembered the get together. So now that was so then I then turned it into, you know,
I ended up getting suspended from a whole camping club called Thousand Trails because they said I was belligerent to staff
because I gave the guy my two cents about what I thought of his flag policy.
And they suspended me. But then all these campgrounds in New York opened up their doors and said,
bring your flag, your rig and your family. You're staying with us.
And it was awesome. And every campground we went to, cops are showing up, give me challenge coins.
That's why I started a challenge coin like I sent you.
But it was just like, I was like, wow, this is great. Look at all these cool people.
I go, we should just do this at pro cop or pro first responder campgrounds and turn it into outdoor therapy.
You know, in my event in New York, I got Dr. Robert Kiltz coming.
He's a metabolic health freaking just master. You know, I've got Kevin Donaldson coming out.
He just wrote a book, Man, You're Crazy. You know, he's a cop that's dealt with PTSD struggles.
And he does a podcast called The Suffering. He's coming out to be a speaker for me and camp with his family.
You know, and so I guess what I'm trying to say is it's not the dark days are going to get better
if you just, you know, change some things in your life and it may be give up the career to save your life.
You know, I know it's tough if you're your own rookie, you know, you're just starting off.
You can't say, oh, I'm done, you know. But, you know, we got a cop that's been in three shootings already.
Then we have 10 years on. I'm like, how's this dude going to make it?
Yeah. Well, we chase as well, you know, this this timeline is dictated by a pension.
You know, and I've said this a lot recently. You didn't. I didn't. I certainly didn't get in for the pension.
I don't have a pension now. When I left, I cashed it out to fund this.
But, you know, it was never about that. I remember people talking about drops.
I'm just like, we'll worry about that later. Like, for fuck's sake, you know, you only got 10 years, 15 years on, you know, let's focus on the job.
But there is a kind of half life to it. And everyone's is different.
Some guys, you know, and women last 40 years in uniform.
And if it works for them and they they have a healthy retirement after, then great. Maybe they don't have kids.
But, you know, whenever that does kind of wind down, there's almost like guilt and shame if you didn't do 25.
And it's ridiculous. You know, this especially, you know, if the environment is not allowing you to thrive, if it's a very, you know, negative environment,
toxic environment or just physically a mentally detrimental, then at what point do you take a look in the mirror and go, look, my health, the more importantly,
my family's health and unity is more important than this job. This job to me, this calling was a hair below my family.
I love it so much, but it was never above my family. And that's, I think, an important question to ask yourself.
Yeah, I had an older. That makes sure I was on mute. Older cop told me that one time he pulled me aside and goes, see all this, all your friends, all this.
No, it's going to matter when you retire. It's going to be your wife and your kids.
And then you see it. You see these guys are retired and they may have been divorced and their kids are grown and they're just sitting around crabby, grumpy old men.
You know, I do want to say you guys on the FD side of things kick ass because I remember I was a rookie. I think it was 2003 Christmas.
A kid had fell into a pool, a two year old, and he was blue as can be when we got there and we brought him out to the curb.
And I remember FD got there and they picked him up in the rig and the boss going, Reynolds, get in the back of the rig, because now it's a crime scene.
Possibly. So now I got to stay with the chain of custody of the evidence, which is the poor kid, you know.
And I remember sitting in there and that kid looked dead, dude.
And I was like, oh, my God, Christmas. This kid's going to what had happened with those grandparents for Christmas.
Well, they have a pool and they're not used to having kids around all the time.
And the kid got out the sliding, you know, typical out the sliding door.
And by the time they realized that he was floating in the pool and he looked dead, dude.
And they they worked that kid for about two minutes as we were going to the hospital.
And that kid started breathing, dude. It was the best thing I ever saw.
So I don't tell a lot of people that because I don't talk to a lot of FD guys.
But that was fucking awesome.
And I don't even know those guys were because I was still a rookie tripping out like, holy cow.
You know, so I was still excited to have the gun on my hip.
You know, that shit was so real, dude. And years later, that kid's like 35 year old dad now or something.
You know, it's I want to share that with you. I don't know why.
Well, I'm glad you did.
I mean, literally, that was what I wrote with this post of them saving this fentanyl overdose, you know, toddler today was just that.
I mean, I get the the meaning behind it, but it I just can't fucking stand it when people say,
no one's coming to save you, save yourself, because I tell them there are fucking millions of people that train every day that leave their families to do exactly that.
So should you become a liability and completely ineffective as an individual?
No. But don't say no one's coming to save you because when you're having your first day,
there will be police cars and fire engines and ambulances outside your home and the people will be fighting to save your loved ones.
So we need to look at that as there are fucking people that will come to save you.
And it's your responsibility to fund them and support them so they are ready when you need them the most.
Yeah, it's you know, it's another thing that people do that I wish they'd stop.
It's not bringing us all these cookies and cakes to the department, please.
You know, you bring us some steaks and pork rinds, you know, they're like, yeah, here's this fattening food that's going to affect your insulin levels.
It's going to make you fat and slow and then you're going to make bad decisions, going to get you indicted.
So that's what that bad food is doing to us people. Come on.
Let's talk about Q2O5O for a second then.
So all right. Talk to me about the inception of that.
And then what are some of the principles that you'd like to impart on the first responder profession when it comes to their nutrition?
Yeah, I got into it.
Guys playing basketball with lost 50 pounds. Typical story.
How'd you do it?
You know, wait, watchers or, you know, work out more crossfit, whatever it was.
And he had mentioned ketogenic like keto.
And I thought it was some type of crossfit painful, some I wasn't going to like doing type of exercise, you know.
He's like, no, you just watch her eating fat and, you know, get rid of the carbs and use fat fat for fuel.
And, you know, I was very I didn't understand any of that then.
You know, it's funny, I could write a search for him, but I didn't understand anything else.
Put him in my body or didn't understand how to read blood work.
You know, those couple of points I try to get to guys.
And, you know, I looked into I read up on it was this ketogenic way of eating.
And then I started seeing some stuff how we used to eat back when we were farming and, you know,
before we got so big in the cities and eating processed foods.
And I really didn't know 100 percent how much stuff turns into sugar.
That was one of my biggest.
I didn't know like potatoes, bread, cookies, you know, all this chocolate, all this stuff is going to turn into sugar anyways, you know, and add to your fat storage.
Anyways, I dove in that world. I started meal prepping.
All right, I'm going to make my food.
And I was always heavy keto war.
I would do a lot more meat in my dishes than I, you know, than the recipes I was reading about, you know.
And I started fasting.
I would only eat at like pretty much my window was 12 to 5 p.m.
So I'd get up in the morning and have my coffee and start adding some like bone broth to my coffee, heavy cream.
You know, I was a cop.
So Dunkin Donuts coffee was a staple in my career.
So I do do a shot of stevia, you know, and I was satiating.
That would I would stay kind of full for a while and I'd hit the gym and then I'd, you know, not eat right away, you know, and I just start getting into some good habits.
Eating habits.
And within two weeks, I was down like 15 pounds or something.
I was like, that's all water weight, you know, whatever.
And I just kept going.
And six months, I was down 50 pounds.
And I was like, holy, you know, I'm 204 now from 250 and guys started noticing.
They ask if you're sick.
First of all, they think you got cancer or something like, no, dude, I'm happy as heck.
And, you know, I bought a little, you know, a step counter, you know, and I was watching my steps.
And one of the biggest things I did was get a desk that stood up because I was in evidence now and around and sitting down all day typing, getting all tired.
You know, your body thinks you're getting ready to sleep.
So your body's slowing everything down by standing.
I moved around a lot.
My energy level is better, less back issues.
I was able to stretch as I'm standing there touching my toes and twisting.
You know, I just stay a little more active and guys start asking me for help.
They're like, so what did you do? How did you do it?
And I'm like, dude, you know how bad sugar is like they're drinking a Dr. Pepper.
I go, let me see the back of that can.
And I start telling, I go see that high fructose corn syrup.
Your body doesn't know what to do with that.
You know, it's not eat.
I'd rather you drink cane sugar in it rather than, you know, that's why some products in other countries are legal and they're not here because they use the fucking cheap shit that gets you addicted and sick here.
So start teaching them, sending articles, little group chats, five of them on there and then became like 10.
You know, and then it's like, well, let me start a little Facebook group.
You know, five or eight people, you know, one of those.
And I had some deputies from the nearby agency, you know, tap, you know, wondering what's going on with diet.
And because, you know, we don't we don't like being heavy in our gun belts and we're already wearing the vest, which is already miserable.
You know, it's just we don't like looking like fat cops.
Trust me, we don't, you know, we know how we looked in the Academy and we know how we look now.
And we see the sizes go up every year.
So anyways, they started losing some weight and then word got around, hey, you got to go talk to Keto Five-O and evidence, you know, and we're always called Five-O in the hood.
Anyways, you know, Five-O is here, troll, troll.
So they just stuck, you know, and then when I was retiring, I was like, yeah, let me just work on a logo.
And I found one of my old logos is pretty funny.
It's a thin blue line flag with Keto Five-O and where the stars are.
And it's kind of funny because now my two passions are Keto Five-O and then I've got this bad boy behind me, the thin blue line flag, part of cops and campers.
So it's funny. I look back to 2019 when it all started and it grew from there.
I ended up doing a podcast with Low Carb USA.
They asked me to come on and talk about PTSD and how the low carb way of eating helped.
And then he goes, hey, would you want to go to nutrition school?
We got an online program about nine months long and blah, blah, blah, and cost this and you can do it online.
I was like, what? Me? I don't know about this.
I can't even pronounce half the words, you know, in some of the books that I'm reading right now.
So I ended up doing it. You know, I got outside my comfort zone.
I did these online classes, you know, group classes.
I had to, you know, I got my personal training license, my nutrition's license.
I got my health advocate. You know, I got my health coach resistance training.
So I ended up doing a lot, you know, at least on paper and then having to, you know, you had to show that you knew what you were doing.
Meanwhile, training myself, training guys online, training people on, you know, just advice, helping them work out better, you know, and less weight, more reps, type of slower reps, you know, slow is, you know, slow is fast, you know.
And that was my goal. Hey, I'm just going to be a nutrition guy. I'll be a health coach.
And, you know, and then we went camping in New York and that's where the flag incident happened.
And now I'm all over freaking TV because I'm freaking, I'm the guy that was mad about my flag.
Like, go home and take your flag and go home. You know, sorry, copper.
But then they had a rally there a week later at that campground.
And I went back and there was like 50 trucks with Thimble line flags and New York State Police stopped us from the campground and was crazy, dude.
No one got arrested. But it was just like, and then I was like, you know what?
I'm going to bring the health world into my camping world because everyone I meet that's retired, they're all metabolically sick.
They're all pre-diabetic. If not diabetic, they're all on medications. If not blood pressure, it's cholesterol mitts.
Get rid of all that shit, you know. So, yeah, that's how it kind of the keto world started really building.
And now more carnivore. I eat pretty much animal based products. My wife might make sourdough bread and I'll do avocados.
My kids do blue. You know, everyone's always asking about my boys 12 and 8. How did they eat?
They're pretty much keto boys. They eat mostly meat. They supplement it with blueberries, strawberries, all, you know, of course, it's, you know, it's a healthier versions.
You know, we're not just, you know, buying the cheap stuff because we invest in our health. So our our grocery bill is substantial.
You know, we buy we try to buy shares of a cow or an animal that we have slaughtered, you know, harvested or whatever.
So we have to do those things because it's, you know, there's just too pricey.
But it's for our health. It's for my kids health and their future. So they're not metabolically sick.
So they're not having any mental disease as they get older to whether it just be a normal functioning human being that doesn't need the government to feed them
and doesn't need modern med to prescribe stuff to them. And they're just going to be educated on it, you know.
And so that's what's turned into all that hard work craziness in my whole police career. Now I'm driving around in a box that we tow around from campground to campground.
And we get to see the cool views of this country and sleep in the same bed every night. It's pretty cool.
When you talk about the price, it reminds me I had Joel Salatin on the show a couple of times.
And one of his quotes is you think good food is expensive. Have you priced cancer lately?
And this is it. Again, it's that proactive conversation. A burger shouldn't be 50 cents or a dollar.
It's a piece, you know, it's part of a cow that was raised for a long, long time and then slaughtered and then, you know, ended up on your plate.
So that should be more. It's not that it's overpriced a lot of times. It's just that's what it's actually worth for, you know, food that wasn't put through some horrendous factory farming experience.
So, you know, yes, it might seem a little bit more expensive up front, but think about what you're saving, you know, what the cost is of obesity and all the associated diseases that come with it.
Yeah, you can get ground meat right now. Grass fed ground beef ground for five or I think four ninety nine or five ninety nine at Earth's Fair.
That's exactly where I show it. So I'm still wondering where that's coming from. But, you know, we're still looking into that. If we don't get it from a farm that we really know, that's one of the options we do.
And we'll spend. I mean, we spend our money on meat, man. It's it's satiating. It's good for you.
You know, I know people, you know, obviously you don't want the factory farming type of meat because even that meats.
I mean, that's why I got sick. I was eating bad meat. You know, even the chickens you eat are effective. Mike, my kid is a sensitivity to a lot of the chickens that eat any kind of corn or soy.
It goes it affects him. And I don't think people put in enough of what you're eating, even though you're eating the animal. The animals eating toxic shit. You're eating it too, bro.
It's going into your body. Well, they're sick, too. I mean, this is what people understand.
The hormones are accelerating the growth process, but the environment and the unhealthy speed of which they're aging causes disease, which is why I forget the numbers.
I think that like 90 80 percent or something like that is very high percent of all antibiotics consumed are actually in the factory farms because, you know, so what you're actually consuming is a sick animal.
And that's why it's on medication. Yeah, I've worked on in our journey the last four years, we worked on some farms for a few months to cover our stay.
And my kids have been there, you know, gardening, helping with the cattle. You know, we've slaughtered a pig, a bull, plunge of chickens.
I mean, I'm not into the chickens like they are. I mean, my kids will walk around with their heads on their fingers playing puppets.
You know, I mean, they're they've already been used to it now. I'm still like, oh, still a little crazy to me.
You know, I'm a suburban kid in Miami. I'm not used to playing with the heads of bodies, but they think it's cool.
And at least they understand where their food's coming from, how hard work it is.
And that if it is really cheap that you're getting it, what is it?
You know, they've diced up our food with so much fillers compared to what it used to be.
It's no different than a cartel dicing up the cocaine or heroin with this extra crap. It's all they've done to our food.
You know, I mean, you're not even getting meat in half the time, you know, when you're ordering this out.
And that's the I had a lot of fast food, man. Looking back in my life growing up, I mean, our high school, whatever we would have buy one Whopper, get one free.
And we all mad dashed a freaking Burger King at lunchtime. Our Whopper coupons.
You know, it's just you see it and they make money. And now I know I know the secret and they're not going to get my family or my kids.
You know, and anyone I can tell, I'm going to tell them every time I go. They don't care about you. They care about profits.
Tobacco bought the food industry. What do you think is going to happen?
The same people that told you that smoking wouldn't kill you on our food.
Where do you think we're going with this? I mean, it's common sense. It's an organized crime. I see it. I've been in this class. I've seen this.
Well, one more question on nutrition before we go to some closing questions.
You touched on the fact that as far as the relationship between ketosis or a healthy body weight homeostasis,
however you want to kind of label it and good mental health or the impact on mental health. So expand on that.
Well, I don't think people directly know that in your stomach, it's a direct line to your brain.
You know, so if your stomach is all jacked up on stuff because you're not feeding it right, you know, maybe you need a little bit more of coleslaw or some.
Hey, I was thinking like fermented vegetables and stuff like that. So I know that.
With our own kids, you know, by sampling with diet by accident, you know, let them have a slice of cake or let them have that pizza at a party.
I would see what it would do with them, you know, not only the highs, but the lasting effects for a couple of days.
It's like a hangover they would have. And I'm like, this is just food. It's not even like alcohol.
Like that was used to that. But to see a food hang hangover or sugar hangover or carb overload hangover affect my kids was an eye opener.
And then when people don't realize why there's so I mean, you call it hangry, right?
You get angry because you can't. Well, it's probably because you're not eating substantiated food, you know, or good enough satiating food enough of the time.
Because when you're eating the carbs, you burn right through and you're hungry again.
I think of it like Kindle. You're just burning a little bit of leaves or trash or something.
You know, you need some long lasting that's going to hold you, you know, and people worry about meat being too.
Oh, it takes too long to digest. It's supposed to take a while to digest.
You're not supposed to have your metabolism go in high speed all day long. That wears out metabolism.
You can't do the other things your body needs to do. Your body needs to heal in other ways.
It needs to process toxins in your body and these are releases toxins and needs to strengthen muscles and needs to, you know, do so many changes in your body.
If you're constantly eating and keeping your metabolism jacked up and you're why do you think your stomach just gets tired?
That's supposed to be working all day long like that, you know, and when you eliminate a lot of the processed food and you eat a healthier, cleaner diet,
you will not only notice your energy levels will go up because you're eating better food, you're going to be more, you know, you got to get your sleep.
I mean, there's a whole pillar of things you got to do. Get in the bed, you know, turning off the blue screens and, you know, getting up at a routine,
normal routine and having the same habits and, you know, I get up, I make my coffee in the morning, my little bone broth combo
and then I ease into the day and then I get into what I'm going to work out, stretch, do some, you know, you got to find that happy balance
and you're not going to know what you're really doing until you get your diet right. You're going to be too focused on this.
You're going to be depressed about this. You're going to be just up and down all day long and you're never going to get anything done.
How many times have you done that? You walked in a room and forget what you're doing. You know, now I walk in a room and I know what I'm doing.
I might forget, you know, something else I was trying to do at that moment. But yeah, everything gets better. Your memory, your,
my biggest thing was I wasn't intimidated to try new things anymore in a lot of ways. You know, I got out of my comfort zone, did some things.
I'm like, you know, let's try it. Let's go to nutrition school. Let's learn, you know, about amino acids.
I used to never really know what the heck it was, you know, and now I'm driving a truck and trailer. I never did that before.
You know, I'm living, I never worked on a farm, you know, not this guy, you know, but everything's, you know, you never stop learning.
I know it sounds like a cliche, but the more you keep trying to improve yourself, whether it's mentally, physically, socially or whatever you're trying to do.
I mean, it changed my life. I changed my diet. That's the biggest thing.
Nobody else helped me with the pills. None of the pills helped. None of the exercise until I got the food right.
You know, that's what it was for me. And, you know, fat is good people. Fat fat is bad.
Brilliant. Well, I want to shift to some closing questions so I can be mindful of your time.
The first one, is there a book or are there books that you love to recommend?
It can be related to our discussion today or completely unrelated.
Books. All right. One is Big Fat Surprise Nina Tyshultz.
It's all about the sugar industry and how they fudge numbers and bribe Harvard scientists to say that fat was bad and that sugar wasn't.
That's one book. Lies My Doctor Told Me by Dr. Ken Berry.
All those little white lies from doctors all these years.
And the other book that I read that was really opened my mind to how agriculture in a lot of ways has been damaging us as a species overall.
Not total agriculture, but just this organized industrial agriculture that we've gotten into.
And it was The Carnivore Code by Dr. Paul Saladino.
And it pretty much goes back to looking at how tribes lived back when we were hunter gatherers and how there was a lot more leisure time.
And there was more, you know, life, even though it was hard, it was simpler in a lot of ways.
And they can even show it by digging up the bodies and the DNA and the bones that they're looking at of how we went to more of a plant-based diet back then.
And we're just not as physically strong.
I mean, we got to this point by eating meat, people, you know, and just global warming.
Look where the money is. Just follow the money, people.
Follow where the money is at. And that's going to show you your answer right there.
I mean, if there's money to be made in controlling the climate, they're going to do that.
When I look at the carnivore diet specifically, the one issue I have with it is if you go back far enough in time,
there was a long, long time where homo sapiens weren't able to hunt yet.
We hadn't developed tools. So arguably foraging would have been our main thing.
And then probably scavenging meat that had been killed by something else, which I think is why the bone broth and some of those things work and collagen.
What is the conversation on that as far as, you know, our supposed leaning into meat when if you go far enough back,
we probably weren't eating a huge amount of meat a long time ago.
Well, how far back can we go? I mean, religion tells you one thing.
Science tells you another thing. And then they fight amongst each other because they can't agree.
And I don't think either one's right. I think we go through stages and there's times, obviously ice ages that we've gone through
to where maybe a heavy seal diet was what's got us through it.
You know, and there's other times where maybe we were able to ferment foods and like you said, scavenge and hey, I could catch some animals right now without tools.
I mean, not a whole bunch of them, but there's a few like trust me, I can get.
And let's not think about the horrific things humans have done throughout history, eating each other.
You know, they don't like to talk about it, but we did it, you know.
And I know for me, if you are struggling with your weight and you got a lot of metabolic issues,
if you can at least start off with something that's at least very minimum.
And that's why carnivore got so popular because your elimination diet, you get rid of all the bad shit,
a lot like what people do with, you know, going vegan when you get rid of meat.
You know, they're also getting rid of the seed oils and some of the sugars and some of the processed foods that's contributing to their decline in health.
And the minute I think you find your balance, you know, meat does really well for me.
You know, I know my wife can't eat as much meat as me.
You know, she she has more of the Mediterranean diet.
Maybe she wants a little more fish in there rather than the red meat.
I just it's all you got to do is go to a freaking dialysis place and see all that plant based food that those guys are eating.
That's what's in the bag. And if you give someone some chicken or some steak, there's hardly anything in the bag.
Your body absorbs as much of that as you can. And that's the key.
You got to get all the freaking waste out of the food, all the fillers.
You know, people are so crazy. You know, you know, who hasn't had fiber in like four years?
This guy. And you know, doesn't have a problem. This guy.
So, I mean, it's crazy that they end in the fluoride in the water. Don't even get me started on the water.
That's another thing you got to watch out there. Poisoning is in the water.
My heavy metals is from the water supply. I'm guaranteeing that.
But yeah, I you just got to get off the fast food, get off soda fast food right off the bat and you'll already get better.
You'll see your health improve automatically. The sodas are sugar water. You're not getting anything from it.
It's addicting. They're not even using sugar in it. They're using the high fructose corn syrup, which is freaking toxic.
And I could go on and on and on about the nutrition and, you know, how I want to just do you know, in the history of the FDA,
there's only been two of their board members never take a job with big food or big pharma.
Oh, it doesn't surprise me. Look at OxyContin.
In the history. So that's the kind of shit I'm getting into now.
I'm like, I don't know if I'm going to be knocking on some doors or be in Washington one day, but then they'll arrest you and say you started a riot.
But there's got to be some going on. I mean, the food in these school systems is shit.
The food that they give to the freaking poor is shit.
You know, the food that they give to our military is crap.
You know, you see it all along. Wherever big food has their hand, they got it in everything.
You know, let's donate to Haiti. Poor people. Let's send on a bunch of shit.
You know, it's just crazy. That's all that food is to me.
And, you know, it's they're looking at just getting full for the day.
Oh, well, they'll tell me that they'll go to bed with a full tummy.
Yeah, go to bed with a full tummy. A metabolic disease is what they're going to bed with, you know.
And I know there's it's expensive to help people.
And I know they're trying, you know, and it's just you can't, you know, unload a bunch of freaking cows off a ship in those situations.
You know, I know there's realistic things you can do, but, you know, the amount of meat that they're destroying out here in these factory, you know, destruction.
I just think we can do a better job of feeding people in this. You know, it can be a little bit better managed overall.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, this is my criticism during the pandemic, because we have the perfect opportunity to address a lot of these things, to support local farmers, to put real food back in our kids' schools
and take the soda machines and fast food companies out, you know, to put PE programs back in, to pedestrianize local areas, to put more equipment, you know, in parks.
But none of that happened. Zero. You know, and now we are fatter and sicker than we ever were after, you know, a virus swept through that showed us the mirror.
They held it up in front of our face and said, if you are sick, you're going to die. This is going to kill you.
But the takeaway was vaccines, then let's not talk about vaccines anymore. Then let's just move on.
You know, and it's disgusting because the answers are so simple. And we did it 100 years ago.
There was real food in schools. They were out playing all the time. And then we created this industrialized system where children are, you know, basically, as you said, you know, sitting for hours and hours and hours.
Like, I remember my little boy when he was about eight or nine doing a three hour FSA test in front of a computer. What the fuck is that?
You know, so this is the problem is that while people are making money on the food and on the pills because of the disease that we get from the food,
we're going to continue to see this happen. You know, this get worse and worse and worse.
But I optimistically I'm hoping that we're the beginning of a revolution where people are finally starting to see behind the curtain now and go, you know what?
This isn't working. We need we need to start changing it. And it's still a small group that's thinking that way. But I feel like it's slowly snowballing.
Yeah, there's something going on. All the mama bears got pissed off when they told them they had the Vax or kids and that just shook them all. And they're like, no, no, this doesn't happen.
And now they're peeling back the layers on, obviously, the food industry, the vaccine industry, everything.
I mean, I couldn't believe in Florida. They were shutting down beaches and freaking parks.
I'm like, this is insane. Well, the virus could defy airflow. That was what made it unique. It could just stop midair and just suck to your face.
So that's why the beaches were so dangerous. All the dolphins died from what I heard.
Yeah, it doesn't stop you through the Taco Bell drive through, though. No, no, no.
Those are essential workers. So we've got to keep those open. And the COVID never is impacted by alcohol for some reason.
So they let the alcohol go. We don't want you to leave the house. So we'll deliver fast food and alcohol to you while you watch Tiger King,
because that's going to improve your mental and physical health and strengthen your immune system.
I can mark myself safe of Tiger King. I never saw it. I heard so much about it.
I didn't even have to see it because every day or whatever I was listening to, whatever talk show, they were giving me updates on what was happening anyway.
So I guess I was involved in it without watching it. Oh, that show. Yeah. I mean, it's been it's been a crazy ride, man.
I mean, just figuring out stuff along the way from my own nutrition and obviously pharmaceuticals and how much control they have.
And then listening to like minded people and just discussing topics like, why do you feel like that?
Why do you feel this? And just having regular conversations we used to have before people got so I don't know.
It's like you got to pick one way or the other. And there's a lot of sometimes I feel a little bit on this side about this.
And I'm not directly down the middle, man. It's just so crazy how they separated us so much.
But yeah, the job that, you know, even though I did only 19 years, it was it was a blast.
I mean, that's all I ever once I started to be a cop and wanted to become one.
I loved it, man. When I put that uniform on, when I got to go to calls and help people and catch the bad guy, that's all I want to do, man.
You know, and then it became so political. What shift? What boss? What unit you're going in?
What pension? What car you got? You know, what girl you're dating or whatever crap was going on in our department just became what a cancer, you know?
And to this day, you know, I remember another cop was like, you're only going to be friends of maybe one or two guys after you leave.
I mean, you're going to end up making new friends. And that's what's happened.
I've made better friends in the last four years of camp. And, you know, and they a lot of them were cops in other agencies.
It's just, you know, sometimes that agency, you don't want to see those guys in your agency.
Maybe it reminds you of the fucking shit storm you were in, you know, and or you didn't like him.
Anyways, he got promoted and became a freaking, you know, a dick sporting goods.
All right. Well, the next closing question, is there a film or documentary that you love to recommend?
Yeah, fat fiction. It's also magic pill. That's another one that got me started.
Yeah. Oh, another another great series is the Griselda show on Netflix. No, I'm just kidding.
I was just made as a promo. I do have a you know that they have a little Eric in that show for a brief scene when he's given his mom shit about.
She's left a gun in the glove box of the car and.
He'd only meet that kid. They need to work on him.
That's what I remember, like, oh, he's not a meat eater.
But yeah, it's been a fun ride, man. It's been interesting.
And, you know, and to be now in this world of talking to people about it and, you know, doing online stuff and trying to make things happen, you know, is a whole new world for me.
You know, I wasn't ever looking to do this. I wasn't looking at social media.
I wasn't I just want to retire and go camping there.
Yeah. And now, you know, this has been put in front of me for a reason.
And, you know, getting phone calls from guys I've never met that have either seen the documentary we did on cops and campers.
You know, getting together and wives calling me and saying, hey, he needed this.
He needed something. You know, there were he was in a funk.
You know, now he's going fishing every other weekend or, you know, you start making trips with other people that you get along with and you're supposed to enjoy life.
Right. Not supposed to be stuck in your house all miserable watching Fox News or CNN, you know, and, you know, hate in the world.
You know, people are good overall, man. If you get out there, you'll see it.
You know, been stuck in your neighborhood all the time with the same people. You're going to get the same shit over and over again.
Speaking of TV shows, when you were talking about almost being on The Amazing Race and then obviously all the riots happened, I could just imagine that there were probably some execs going, what about The Amazing Race Wars?
Could we make that work? There you go.
It's got to be a way of profiting from all this just is trouble in the country.
How can we turn it into a TV show? You have to do.
Yeah, it had to be the Amazing Race, but it'd be like Chicago style.
And now you're running. Try not to get hit with freaking pipes and sticks. Yeah, exactly.
That would be the most appropriate South Park-esque show for sure.
All right. Well, then next question. Is there a person that you'd recommend to come on this podcast as a guest to speak to the first responders, military and associated professions of the world?
See, this is interesting because there's some people that are already known and then there's people that could be a diamond in the rough.
I'm thinking about. Let me think.
I was going to say my mom. That's easy. That's an easy answer.
I would say the guy that's coming to mind right now is Dr. Sean Baker.
I recognize that name. Remind me who he is.
He's a carnivore MD guy. He's always eaten. He's like six, five, six, six.
He's got like a world record at like fifty six years old for rowing or something.
But he was actually a doctor in New Mexico and they didn't like him talking all this nonsense about healing people without them, you know, cutting into you and making a profit.
So they pulled his medical license. So now he's like a huge doctor star in this keto carnivore world of help.
He's been on Rogan a couple of times. He he's really big out there.
And, you know, obviously in the proper way to raise animals and, you know, regenerative farming and stuff like that, you know, obviously.
And he's just a voice that is on our side about just eating clean meat and vegetables and not being a sucker for, you know, processed foods and the medical system.
So he's a voice for us out there. That's pretty powerful. And he loves first responders, I think, is a military guy as well, if I'm not mistaken.
He's always supporting so many different groups. It gets hard to keep up with sometimes.
But, yeah, I would talk to that guy. He's full of all kinds of cool information and you should get Joe Rogan.
I that'd be a twist. I'm still trying, you know, Joe, to flip it backwards.
Joe has never had a career firefighter on his show over 2000. So, you know, I mean, it doesn't have to be me, but I would love to to be a voice for our profession
and kind of pull the curtain behind or back for him on that.
You know, first responder community that we have, I know that several of the firefighter crews saved his house in California a few years ago,
and I know he did a big kind of cookout for them after. So I know he's got a lot of admiration for that.
And he's had a couple of people that were firefighters for a heartbeat, but never like, you know, really spoken to a career firefighter before.
So I would love to get him on the show.
But conversely, it would be great to be a voice for this profession on such a large platform to educate the masses on what we actually do and what we see as well.
I think our perspective on how our country actually is is invaluable.
Well, I'm going out to Austin in the end of the month. I'm going to the mothership for a comedy show.
Oh, brilliant. I definitely if I see I'll put a good word in for us, all those first responders that he needs to have a first responder week,
maybe knock out five of us needs a crazy dispatcher in there.
You know, you get some crazy corrections guy, you get FD guy, you got to get those all you rescue guys are saving people off of mountains and shit.
You know, that stuff is always fascinating. All those guys.
He's got tons of material if he gets you guys on there, you know, tons of good stuff.
Yeah, I mean, I mean, he gets the he gets the military veteran guys on there a lot.
You know, he's had a few couple of cops here or there. But yeah, I think hidden home getting these people that are at home will be a interesting conversation for him to have.
100 percent. Well, the very last question before we make sure everyone knows where to find you and all of your platforms.
What do you do to decompress these days? Decompressing.
So I do dabble in CBD to calm my central nervous system down. I do use this. I like commercial cardiology coffee.
No, but it's actually a low mold. You know, there's no toxic anything in it.
That's one of the things I'm trying to do is get I'm detoxing right as we speak.
I'm taking all my little pictures and stuff that my wife's little serums I got to take to get my body.
I was having a methylation issue. So some of the way I was processing and also, you know, detoxing was an issue.
So we're trying to eat right and clean. But the only thing I'm pushing is, of course, my cops and campers, you know, nonprofit to try and sponsor cops to get out there.
Maybe ones that have been in a tragic situation. They need a weekend away. And we we have an event or we're going to have one.
You know, we cover their trip and stuff like that. Obviously, food therapy is stuff with all that money goes to.
The other thing is with you can find that cops and campers dot com and then anything keto five related.
I'm out there on social media. You can find us that way and join our groups and our chats.
And you can even reach out directly to me. You know, I'm always taking calls and messaging and people from all over the world.
You know, New Zealand, I've even reached out and be like, hey, I heard you on the plant free MD show or something.
I'm like, oh, that's cool. You know, and then we start, you know, they had a high CAC score or something.
You just start something's gone with everything that I've gone through. Someone's gone through it.
They've either had a founder brother or sibling. They've had cancer. They've had heart disease.
Not that I have cancer, but we all know someone and gone through it.
It's just been such a great platform to get out there and talk to people. And if you're you need it, hit me up, man.
I'll talk to anybody.
Beautiful. Well, Eric, I want to say thank you so much. The first time we sat down, I think, where the where your camper was wasn't in a great place.
We had to reschedule, but this has been an amazing conversation.
So I want to thank you so much for being so generous with your time and for your courageous vulnerability when it was coming to talking about some of your struggles as well.
So thank you so much.
All right. Thank you. And as my son always says, he says cops and Pampers.
That's his little shout out. But yeah, thank you, man. Thanks for having me.