Pioneering Health Wisdom With Dr Benjamin Zacherl

✨ Meet Dr. Ben, a pioneering health transformation expert with over two decades of experience helping thousands of patients achieve lasting health breakthroughs.

As the creator of the Iron Clad Immunity Method, he uniquely blends ancient wisdom with cutting-edge science to target the root causes of chronic health issues. His innovative approach goes beyond conventional medicine by emphasizing the powerful connection between the mind and body, inspiring lasting change and true wellness.

You can connect to Dr. Ben and the Iron Clad Immunity in the following ways ⬇️

🎥 YouTube -  @ironcladimmunity6910  
https://www.facebook.com/ben.zacherl
https://www.facebook.com/groups/ironcladimmunity
https://www.ironcladimmunity.com
📩 Email - info@ironcladimmunity.com

#health #immunity #inspiration #meditation #community

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to Melancholy Coaching Podcast
• 5:06 Introducing Dr. Ben: Health Transformation Expert
• 8:20 Mind Mastery: The Core of Health Change
• 17:45 Breaking Free from Self-limiting Cycles
• 27:12 Understanding Immunity and Body-Mind Balance
• 36:03 Seasons of Change: Transformation Requires Rest
• 47:11 The Ironclad Community and Future Vision
• 1:01:42 Gratitude and Positive Language Challenge
• 1:12:05 Closing Thoughts and Contact Information

Transcript

Fran Barley: 0:00

Hello everyone, welcome to the Melancholy Coaching Podcast. I'm Fran, your host and NLP coach. Join me as I interview inspiring business owners and self-improvement seekers about their experiences, while delving into personal development, motivation and strategies for overcoming challenges. Let's ignite our creative potential together. Challenges let's ignite our creative potential together. Hello everyone and welcome to the Melancholy Coaching Podcast. I'm Fran, your NLP coach, and I'm excited to introduce an empowering guest.

Fran Barley: 0:42

Pioneering health transformation expert who has helped thousands of patients across two decades achieve lasting health breakthroughs. Creator of the ironclad immunity method, dr Ben combines ancient wisdom with modern science to address the root causes of chronic health challenges. His approach transcends conventional medicine by focusing on the mind-body connection, helping patients reverse conditions like diabetes, autoimmunity and inflammatory disorders, which sounds incredible. A gifted speaker and passionate educator, dr Ben leads an international community of ironclad warriors which also sounds very exciting, by the way who have achieved what they once thought impossible. His work is driven by a simple yet powerful belief transformation begins in the mind and the body follows, which I thoroughly agree with. I think that's amazing. So, dr Ben, welcome to the show.

Dr. Ben: 1:41

Thank you. Thank you for having me. It's an honor to be here. It's an honor to have you thank you.

Fran Barley: 1:45

Thank you, uh, for having me. It's uh, it's an honor to be here. Be here. It's not, it's an honor to have you here, thank you I'd like to just begin by asking you a question like a burning question of mine okay, so your your ironclad immunity method. So this uniquely blends ancient traditions with modern scientific insights. So could you give us an example of an ancient practice that you've incorporated, you know and, if you're able to, kind of you know how does it work, alongside the scientific understanding?

Dr. Ben: 2:20

Yeah, that's a fantastic question. Probably the best example yeah, that's a fantastic question. Probably the best example is that the mind is where most of our problems start with. Right, let's think about it from the perspective of a lot of inflammation really probably the worst diseases of modern day society, say heart disease. A lot of data and science about cancer as well.

Dr. Ben: 2:44

A lot of the addictive things, from alcoholism to food addictions if you look at obesity rates, all these kinds of things, how they're tied to cancer. All that stuff comes from the same sort of problem and I think we all know what this problem is it's like. Well, maybe some of us some of us are are just maybe born with amazing discipline I certainly wasn't. And it's not just having one ice cream that gets you in trouble. It's having like 10 a day for over-exaggeration, right. It's not having one beer, it's having 20, you know. So the interesting thing about it is it's really it's a willpower thing in a way, and as an NLP practitioner and coach yourself, you understand how our minds really create the experience for us and how it makes us feel and how we kind of live out of these programs, right?

Fran Barley: 3:36

Yeah. I believe that our minds create our reality.

Dr. Ben: 3:40

Absolutely right. So a lot of times what we'll see in Ironclad is the exact same meditative maybe, to answer your question more directly, the exact same meditative processes that you have to go through to do a simple meditation or maybe even an advanced meditation, has a discipline component for your mind. So, let's say, like a yoga nidra if you're familiar with yoga nidra, it's still no, no, okay, well, you know just any like a Zen meditation practice. You're sitting in a Zen meditation and you get your body in a posture you know and you can even think of this to a degree of Tai Chi or some other sort of Shigong kind of practice. You have to tell your body to stay, like a colleague, mentor of mine, joe Dispenza, says you know, I'm going to tell my body to sit like it's an animal and it's gonna listen. Right. That simple body stay, don't move. If you have an itch, I'm not gonna scratch it. That simple mind ability to be able to do that in other meditation practices but focuses on your breathing. All those types of things build a part of your brain that huberman talks about and we'll get into the technical aspects of the neurology but the part of your brain that allows you to be stronger in getting yourself to do something. So it's kind of a backdoor way, using these different meditative practices at the right time to kind of trick people into getting willpower. So that's, it's a really interesting thing. Aside from that, being able to grow in willpower, you also get incredible reductions in the amount of stress that you have, how you feel stress-wise, like we were just at this.

Dr. Ben: 5:16

I'll give you an example from our last week with our group, one of our amazing members. I asked her, I said so, when you tell yourself she, she, she, she wants to eat sweet stuff, right, that's one of her things. So you know, a lot of people have this. They eat one cookie and becomes another, and you know then the whole bag's gone and so she's trying to overcome that. And I said to her so what happens when you tell yourself no? And she says well, I get this feeling, feeling inside myself like I'm not celebrating myself, like I'm, I was a good girl, I need to get my cookie, you know. Or I need to get my my dessert, right?

Fran Barley: 5:51

it's a reward. Yeah, right it's.

Dr. Ben: 5:53

I give me, give me this reward. I feel like I'm punishing myself when I don't have that cookie. So I said, well, let's talk a little bit about that. So, basically, what, what? What she was able to experience is to understand that feeling of disappointment, that feeling of I told myself no. And now there's this you can do meditative practices, kind of discharge that feeling without going into it.

Fran Barley: 6:16

It's hard to sit with those feelings of disappointment, though.

Dr. Ben: 6:19

Yeah, and and and. So the the thing is is that you can, through the meditations we teach people, disperse that energy instead of sometimes it's a simple thing of distraction. Ok, well, are you going to go for a walk? Are you going to do a hobby? You're just going to distract yourself with some other sort of thing? In the beginning, some people need to kind of do that. I can give you an example from our process that is doing like alcohol. Example from our process that has to do with like alcohol, but it it really does boil down to the same willpower that you need to sit and do.

Fran Barley: 6:49

a meditation builds up a certain kind of awareness and ability to to do, to pick another path to disperse that energy so I presume that works the same for if give an example, say if it's that cookie, yeah, so it's not a reward. Say if it's that cookie, yeah. So, it's not a reward as such. It's that you want the second cookie to taste as good as the first cookie, and it doesn't. But maybe the third cookie will taste as good as the first cookie.

Dr. Ben: 7:13

Yeah, so you're chasing that feeling.

Fran Barley: 7:15

Absolutely yeah that's definitely so. I presume it would work. The same.

Dr. Ben: 7:24

It's more about the feelings you get when you resist yourself, right.

Dr. Ben: 7:32

So we have this voice in our head that's telling us I want to do this. A lot of times it's programming. We talk a lot about this as we go through the gauntlet, but it really does boil down to the ability to get yourself to do what you want yourself to do, or to resist your own urges, to not go into an unconscious state and just react. It's one of the reasons why the yogis and a lot of these really spiritual people have really really great willpower is because they the true ones is that through the meditation practice, you learn to master yourself, and mastering your brain masters everything else. So you're able to, and it's not, you don't struggle, it's not like it's hard, it's it's it's it's it's, it's an easy thing to do because, oh, I'm feeling this tension. I know how to disperse that tension right away a lot of people are running.

Fran Barley: 8:18

The thing is, though it's uh, it's, it's the hardest thing in the world if you don't know how.

Dr. Ben: 8:24

Yeah, Well, people feel like they're and a lot of people just are unconsciously reacting.

Fran Barley: 8:30

Yeah.

Dr. Ben: 8:35

They just are enacting, you know, in patterns that they've established, and we talk about this in a part of this. What we do in Ironclad through the course of the three months. The first month is about really about awareness, growing the awareness which helps people make changes, the awareness of what three months the first month is about really about awareness, growing the awareness which helps people make changes, the awareness of what their individual problems are and, and not necessarily the food things you learn a lot about that too, but yeah I'd say, that was.

Fran Barley: 8:56

That was kind of an example, wasn't it? So it could. You know it covers other areas as well, not just, not just food well, we I mean we, we we try to keep ironclad incredibly simple.

Dr. Ben: 9:06

You can pretty much think about it is that we have a food challenge every week and we have a mental challenge every week and they're they start off really simple because we have people that are incredibly advanced meditative practitioners. But what we found as well most of the people that start ironclad are good at like one or two kinds of meditation they haven't done I've. I mean, when I was 18 years old and this is this isn't a bragging thing but well, actually I wanted to be a, a tibetan monk.

Dr. Ben: 9:34

I applied to go to a monastery oh, I love that and and I was denied because I thought I had it when I was 18. But I'm grateful because I was just so passionate about it and I've done a lot of work and I most recently completed a yoga nidra training course with Tanis Fishman, who's amazing. She actually made some meditations for our group. Originally, it was in one of her meditations that I got the inspiration to create Ironclad. But so the different paths that we walk and the different meditation practices, they kind of all are woven together in the same area and you'll have people that are amazing and we have practitioners that are amazing at Shigong, or I'm from the, I live in the Netherlands, I'm from the United States, but I live in the Netherlands, and you have Wim Hof practitioners.

Dr. Ben: 10:19

Right, you know the everybody most people know is the guy with the beard and he goes in. You know who wim hof is. He goes in ice. He's the ice man. He goes in cold water and you he climbs to the top of mountains and you see him in snow and he's in his shorts and that's quite.

Fran Barley: 10:32

That sounds quite extreme well, there's some.

Dr. Ben: 10:35

There's some really good, good stuff to do that. The the benefits of cooling your body down for anti-inflammatory effects.

Fran Barley: 10:42

There's a lot of honestly that's that's why people have ice baths and things like that and uh yeah I've actually been in like a cryo chamber. Yeah, when you go in and it's like really cold temperatures, yeah, and it's all monitored and everything, and it's meant to have a lot of health benefits.

Dr. Ben: 10:56

Yeah, that's how that works it kind of helps to break the inflammation cycle, and we have we have, for example, in our club we have a week where we work on that and we do the breathing exercises, because the deep breathing exercises the different kind of yoga breathing is. We also go through the phases of that in our program. And why? Because they take people to different states. So as we walk through the Ironclad gauntlet we call it a gauntlet because it's continually challenging the people who do ironclad to grow, mainly mentally there's every week like a physical challenge as far as food.

Fran Barley: 11:30

It's nice to have that kind of almost like a token of recognition that you're progressing.

Dr. Ben: 11:36

Yeah, well, depending on what the goals which is it's really interesting as well We've had members, a lot of the members that we've had through the years, especially the ones that we have now, are unfortunately dealing with cancer. So we've got people that are struggling with that. Either they've had it before or they're actively dealing with it. We've had, sadly enough, members who were kind of given up on and it was sort of their last hope kind of thing, and they're all doing great Diabetics as well, because, again, this stuff goes down to food related choices.

Dr. Ben: 12:07

Cancer is a little bit different in the sense that the food things are. Sometimes we have to like with every single member. Some members need to have things a little bit tailored to them because of where they're at and what their goals are, but the program is largely the same. Let's take, for example. We have members, for example, who want to gain weight, which is weird. But you'd think, well, what does somebody who wants to gain weight and someone who wants to lose it have in common? Well, I want to give you one great example. It both has to do with stuff that they're either eating or they're not eating.

Fran Barley: 12:38

Yeah, or possibly just to do with their bodies, like I give you a personal example example one of my daughters has epilepsy and she's relatively what would be classed as thin. She says she's a very she's tall, but she's a very small build and doesn't put on any weight, and some of that's due to her medical condition and the the medication that she takes. She just doesn't put weight on so yeah, you know well if she had more kind of you know help with her mind, and then what? What to feed her body with?

Dr. Ben: 13:09

right? Well, let's get, let's go on. An example of that, for example yeah, how old is she?

Fran Barley: 13:14

she's 27 27.

Dr. Ben: 13:16

Okay, there's a. There's a lot of, for what I've seen. A consistent thing with people who have struggled gaining weight is generally they. One of the sensations that we get people to learn about is do you have, is you have, the feeling? How do you like the feeling of an empty stomach as opposed to the feeling of a full stomach? Ok, personally for me right now I've been fasting for two days. I haven't, I've only had water for the last two days, so I know I'm very intimately right now with the feeling of an empty stomach is like there's nothing in there except just some water. That's it right. So and I do this as part of my own practice and other things that I've done and there's reasons why we're getting ready to guide people in the end of our group in three weeks. So, but, for example, it's very similar in a way, because this sensation I had to learn to know I'm not dying, nothing bad's happening. I had to learn to appreciate it.

Dr. Ben: 14:12

Whereas people who are generally very skinny, they generally like the feeling of having nothing in their stomach. They don't like the feeling of I just ate a big meal and it's just sitting there. We've all had a meal like that. That doesn't sit right with us, right? Just kind of a big lump, just oh, it feels heavy. They don't like that sensation, whereas people who generally struggle to lose weight do not like the sensation of an empty stomach. They like that feeling, they want that feeling of there's something hardy and heavy.

Fran Barley: 14:41

So it's yeah, I suppose it's almost. I was just thinking. Actually, I think she may actually even be 30. I always get the ages of my daughters wrong, I won't.

Dr. Ben: 14:55

Yeah, I understand that, that feeling of full, because that can also be a comfort, right, yeah, and so it's like a hug, you know. Yeah, and that's damaging yeah there's. There's only a handful of reasons why people eat stuff at all. Anyway, we eat stuff because of ritual, because it's just the time of the year to eat it.

Fran Barley: 15:09

Yeah.

Dr. Ben: 15:09

You know, in the Netherlands, having lived in, I grew up in the States and I moved here and they have, you know, the Sinterklaas, st Nick thing where they have these little peppernut cookies. They're these sort of gingerbread cookie kind of little round things with these really not very tasty candies. Why or why they they give them out by the the handful to everybody, all the kids at around that time. Why is that? Why do we eat a turkey in the united states at thanksgiving?

Fran Barley: 15:37

some kind of um. I mean, you said ritual, but similar to conditioning, in a way like a nine to five or something you know. When I've worked nine to five jobs, it's been that's your break time, that's your lunch time. You know whether you're hungry or not. You know you kind of yeah, made to go at those times so it's a conditioning what other animal in nature eats three meals a day? Um, I know a few that would, if they had an opportunity to you know. Whether they should or not is another matter.

Dr. Ben: 16:09

Yeah, so, but this isn't about how many meals a day that you eat. It really is that, but it's just an example of why do we react to some programming. I mean the reason why. For example, do you know why we eat turkey in the United States for Thanksgiving?

Fran Barley: 16:27

No, actually.

Dr. Ben: 16:27

I don't't. I feel like I should know. I don't just just for reference, I'm in the uk so for anybody listening, I'm british so you know about everybody, you know about the tradition, right, the turkey and the thanksgiving and gravy and all that kind of stuff and probably similar to a british christmas yeah, what you see?

Dr. Ben: 16:45

yeah, sometimes we'll have that. My family we did have that for christmas too, but that's the traditional thanksgiving thing. The reason is that there was after the world war ii, there was a magazine called the saturday evening post and I think norman rockwell painted a painting called I think it's called no Pain or Harvest. He painted a painting that became very famous. It's a very famous image. It's a woman and she's got a big turkey and she's at the head of the table and all the kids are. There's this lifestyle, and it was on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post and became a, a very. It became like the synonymous image of what is associated with thanksgiving and that's why every family needed a big turkey with, because it just just because of that one image became this also then goes into some kind of commercialism and very good marketing as well yeah, yeah, well a bit like, bit like things like diamonds yeah, yeah

Dr. Ben: 17:46

the marketing of them coca-cola, the, the coca-cola snow to polar bears with. With santa claus drinks coca-cola, you'll. I've seen families in the united states where people put out coca-cola. One of the tradition is cookies. But because santa claus on the commercials, all the kids want to leave a coca-c. I mean it's it's, it's it's, but it's. It's really good marketing, it's bonding and your, your product, is being linked to this, this ritualistic thing.

Fran Barley: 18:15

So that's just one thing. So it kind of almost would make brains feel safe around that, and that's potentially why some people are more for Coca Cola than Pepsi. You know, it's that kind of that loyalty and that's potentially why some people are more for coca-cola than pepsi. You know, it's that kind of that loyalty and that marketing, and we can do the same things to our own selves, can't we?

Fran Barley: 18:30

yeah those things that we do or those things that we think it's all to do with, those condition conditioning or those rituals that we've got. But the habits can be broke, you know, they can be made more healthy absolutely.

Dr. Ben: 18:43

Yeah, that's a very, that that's a very, very good. Yeah, the one of the rich. So what we do through the process, the gauntlet, is we're breaking those rituals consciously by, by generally shedding down the things. That, for example, it's I. I. I really do love and enjoy different kinds of special beer. It's one of my favorite things. But why is it that? So? There's certain sort of times where I really want one, for example, a nice warm summer day and you're at a terrace or something and you're like, oh, it'd be nice, you know, on other times.

Dr. Ben: 19:15

I don't want one at all, but there's a ritualistic time. Yeah, and so you're aware of that. It's like, well, now we're in season, we're gone, but I don't have to do that. We went, for example, to a really cool festival last summer and we were sober the entire time, had nothing to drink, and really consciously made the decision of doing that to change it. Fasting is a great way to just not limit that, but limit all food and see where your routines.

Fran Barley: 19:50

it's a huge reset button for your whole life and your psyche and but yeah, that's that's the sort of stuff that we get into in ironclad, and and why we like to do that, and and we we use every week a new meditative practice because I need I'd heard of meditation you know and I've kind of known people that have done it and I didn't actually I say, give it a try.

Fran Barley: 20:00

I didn't actually give it a try. I didn't actually give it a try myself until what part of my story is that I had? I've had depression for many, many years and it hit really badly during menopause. I'm age 55 now and the menopause hit me quite hard. I was very depressed and felt that I needed to try and help myself and I started using a mindfulness practice and I wasn't aware of mindfulness either, which I now think is absolutely shocking that I was in my 50s and hadn't heard. You know, I was approaching 50 and didn't realize what mindfulness was.

Fran Barley: 20:34

you know, I feel like some of these things we should know when we're younger well, I know, but just how much difference would it make to us as human beings if we knew some of this stuff well, it absolutely I.

Dr. Ben: 20:45

I I've kind of come around to the idea that everybody has it. We just don't call it that yeah, that's.

Fran Barley: 20:53

That's yeah, because actually, thinking about it, I had sat and smelt that cup of coffee and lingered over it, but hadn't realized what I was doing.

Dr. Ben: 21:03

So that, yeah, you bring like the conscious intention into it. But you, you take, take any anybody like a musician, that it's, it's a meditation to to practice your instrument. A lot of times, you know, or yeah, sometimes cleaning for somebody is a meditation.

Fran Barley: 21:20

They love it, they get into they get into the flow right, you get into the zone and don't even start me, because I love that yeah, right, because I've got another. I've got another specific question for you, yeah, okay, cool if that's all right, we can go, keep going so no, that's okay, just want to like, because I've got a few, like a couple of questions just linked around your okay more specifically about what you do, so in your experience. What are some common misconceptions people have about immunity and overall health?

Dr. Ben: 21:52

misconceptions about overall health. And what was the other one? Yeah, like their immunity immunity, you know yeah, and overall health great question misconceptions, generally people.

Dr. Ben: 22:05

Unfortunately, it's one of the difficult challenges. Maybe back up a little bit of of like marketing, what ironclad does, because every marketer's like you need to go down to like one niche, like one thing, and health is it is a total body thing, your immune system. You can't just be like I'm just going to boost that and I'm not going to worry about the other structures and functions yeah, I hear you.

Fran Barley: 22:28

So it's that kind of thing of oh, I need to give my immunity a boost. I'll take some vitamin c for five days and you know it's not necessarily going to do the job well, if that's the only thing you were deficient on and everything else was good, then that's fine. But it's generally we'd have to know, wouldn't you? You'd have to have had those tests done, and and not only just that like it's.

Dr. Ben: 22:49

It's the factors you can look at. It. Let's, let's, maybe let's look at. Look at health from first off. My definition of health is that you, when we say something is healthy, it is increasing. Or or when something's unhealthy, it increases our risks of having something negative happen to us. It's it's, it makes us more likely to have a negative health event. Right, and when something's healthy, it decreases our risk. Well, it's challenging because you know, like water is really healthy, but if it can also drown you and you can drink so much, you'll die.

Dr. Ben: 23:25

So it's like they have a saying in German. It's like it's the quantity that makes the poison, you know. So it's kind of back to what I said about it doesn't matter, it's not one ice cream, it's 100 ice creams. Now, I don't eat that, but some people do. You know. It's not one beer I like that, it's 20 or 30 or you know.

Dr. Ben: 23:47

Continual, too much, too many, anything out of balance is going to create new problems and it's because our body functions. As a doctor, you learn this about the fundamental idea of homeostasis, that everything needs to function and work within balance. So the nervous system is divided into two main functions. You have the parasympathetic system and the sympathetic system. Sympathetic is the blood goes to your brain, into your arms, and it's like fight you got to fight, or flight Got to go right. Pedal to the metal.

Dr. Ben: 24:12

Sympathetic is modern day society Going, going, going all the time. Phones that are alerting to us. We're constantly on the go, we don't have any time to relax. You know, you just come home when you crash. Parasympathetic is after you've had that big, huge Christmas dinner or Thanksgiving dinner and you're just like full and you're going to. Parasympathetic is sleep. It's the mode we generally allow ourselves to go into on vacation. It's one of the reasons why people get sick right away, because their immune system has finally had the opportunity to kind of work stuff out and, yeah, sort of it reacts and boosts because you're giving it rest you said something of interest there.

Fran Barley: 24:48

You said allow yeah, it's like we allow ourselves we allow ourselves to to take that rest and then you know, potentially we can become unwell because we're not holding the thought up. You know exactly, so it's all about that permission, isn't it?

Dr. Ben: 25:04

it's and it's about the, the homeostatic balance that you need to find to get there. So what people don't generally understand about immunity is immunity is like it's like a a a balanced immune system doesn't overreact, so it so a lot of people have autoimmune related diseases because their body is literally attacking itself. So it's, it's properly regulated. Sometimes the therapies in medicine are to suppress the immune system, which then you're going to suffer the downsides of not having that. So you need to take, for example, corticosteroid that suppresses the immune system, and then they have to take an antibiotic because you can't fight off the bacteria. So you're getting these stacks of medications on top of each other and then you have the side effects of those, and what are those effects going to be? So that's one of the issues with, with not seeing your health as a total, as a totality thing. I think that's that's really important. And the second one is I don't think and this is something I know you understand, you kind of hinted at it People don't understand the ability that their mind has to do, how important the mind is, not just from like the decisions of I'm going to eat this or that, but also from the constant being able to shift into what I'm, I need more energy.

Dr. Ben: 26:14

How to shift my energy up? We teach meditative practices that do it in a natural way, from breathing exercises or whatever, or being able to take yourself into a I need to rest and relax state. That's why you get a lot of people that they're caffeinating themselves in the morning to get themselves going, and then their alcohol or whatever some depressant sort of thing, or they'll use exercise to crash themselves at the end. You need to have balance of both. You can't just be in a depressive state where you're just everything's down and you're you're energetic.

Fran Barley: 26:42

That's why things like energy drinks exist, isn't it? Yeah, you know and that that in itself, potentially, I wonder whether that can become addictive, whether it's the feeling, or that you get from it, or, you know, maybe the sugar, I don't, I'm not sure you want to stay in balance, right.

Dr. Ben: 26:59

So I, when I was younger, very young I was very depressed. No one would describe me as depressed today, but I, I was very, very depressed. And part of the reason why and this is one of the things that people don't understand, it's why we have a food component is people do not understand how the way they're eating is creating how they feel. They don't realize that Because, let's say, you're kind of having a depressed day, you know that hit of sugar, that sweet thing, is going to give you, it's going to make you feel a little better and it's easy, it's right there, you grab it, but then you get a speak, a, really a really big peak in your blood glucose and then you're going to have an insulin reaction. It's going to bring it down and you everybody knows that the crash and in your hunger, when, when you get those really sharp drops, that stimulates more hunger. So then you go back to more sugar and you kind of get in this vicious cycle.

Dr. Ben: 27:52

So it it what ends up happening, the byproducts of this. There's a lot of information about what this does. It overstimulates the dopamine centers in your brain and people who are depressed want to feel anything that's good. So they go for these really easy fixes and they end up feeling worse, like any addict does. Same thing happens with whatever cocaine or alcohol or whatever drug you want to use. You'll get an initial reaction, but eventually you're going to end up worse than you started.

Fran Barley: 28:18

Do you think some of that is because, I don't know, this is a bit of a general statement, but as human beings I wonder if we're wired for instant gratification, absolutely. Or whether it's just in some personalities or something that we're wired for instant gratification.

Dr. Ben: 28:39

I think there's definitely something.

Fran Barley: 28:40

That instant thing that's going to make it work or make you feel better.

Dr. Ben: 28:44

Yeah, well, that goes also absolutely. People don't. Another thing too, too, and this is maybe important. We believe this is really maybe important to say this, which makes this makes ironclad very unique. We believe that we have a concept in ironclad of seasons, and what we mean by an ironclad season is like, twice a year, we guide people individually through our, through our process. We do that in the beginning of fall and then we end around the first week of December and then we have another spring session. We're in our spring session right now and we're almost done. We are working on building an on-demand program right now, because it's a little bit too difficult to to to. We're getting a little overwhelmed with with with that that. So we'd like to have people that could take an on-demand program to whatever they wanted. But that's what we're doing the way we're doing it now and the reason we have these seasons very consciously taught and understood.

Dr. Ben: 29:39

We want you like what you like. For a reason like I'm, I'm drawn to beer because there's something I don't you know. You know whether if you believe in God or not, or you can just believe in the fact that we have taste buds, you know, I was a chef before I was in college. I mean, I love to eat amazing, good quality food that tastes delicious it's, and that these amazing meals and these amazing beers and amazing things like I want to live and enjoy and use the sensations that I was given. There's like, for example, fast for a few days and then have a strawberry and you'll have an amazing experience it's like it's like.

Dr. Ben: 30:16

This is like the heavens nectar, you know but then that's where the willpower comes into it to not eat all of the strawberries right, right, well, yeah, but and everybody else's as well yeah, right, or maybe eat all the strawberries and then get sick and feel like, well, that wasn't what I was supposed to do but for, for example, but? But the idea is to have a season of restriction and this is one of the problems. People, our bodies are built this way. We have a ketogenic energy system. The ketogenic system is that what causes us to lose weight. It really really does an amazing job.

Dr. Ben: 30:48

Cancer cells live on sugar, so when we're in a ketogenic state, we can't. Cancer cells generally can die, especially if you do like I'm doing right now. I'm on the second day of a fast. I like to go at least three, because that really helps to wipe out cancer cells in your body. So my immune system gets upregulated. Right now, 80% of your immune system is around your digestive tract to protect you from all the things that you eat, so I'm able to. My immune system right now is all these cells are being activated going through my body, especially when I'm dealing with doing like I am doing, these different meditations to help kind of keep everything going, reduce my energy, self-direct things that I want to have focused on. That. It really is a powerful way to have this, but it's it's really difficult. You, in fact, I would say probably not healthy to stay in this well fasting. You can't do it indefinitely, you're going to die. So you have to right. You can't just all be in one state, you can't be in just a gross state. You, we are built.

Fran Barley: 31:44

We, we are natural it's about that, so potentially well, it's just because I get a bit excited to speak, so it's um, it's about that, the reset and then starting again. So it's kind of, you know, the fast in itself is the reset and then you're good to go again.

Dr. Ben: 32:02

Yeah, and and to celebrate those things. So throughout the process of a gauntlet, people learn to let go of things that they, that they don't want to have like, for example, I I don't generally, after one of my very first experiences with with with arc, that I I don't eat sugar. It's just not a thing that I eat Like. That's why I don't have ice cream I do. One of my reasons that I like, one of my sort of weaknesses I guess you could say in some aspects, are are are ritual as it has to do with and social pressure ritual somewhat less, but social pressure somewhat more.

Dr. Ben: 32:39

So if you, if I, were to come over to your house and you bake me some sort of sweet cake or something and you're like, bake this for you and you don't know that I don't have sugar and I'm like please try it, I might say no, but I'll probably have a bite and I'll and I can appreciate it, just not like I'm gonna die or anything. And if I like it I'll maybe have two, but it's, it's, it's, it's, it's not a part of my identity, if that makes sense. So I don't eat it, but I used to. I used to drink coca-cCola and eat all that stuff and the reason I don't is because what it does to me now I don't like how I feel when I have it. So it's a part of my identity that, like I don't drink Cola, when I, if I ever have some, it's like it's bizarre. It tastes really weird and I used to drink it all the time.

Fran Barley: 33:17

So some of this right. I just like to say that I want to say obviously, but maybe it's not obvious all of this comes with no judgment, so anybody listening to this is absolutely no judgment, and oh, yeah, yeah, within an lp.

Fran Barley: 33:30

I always say there's like, there's no right, there's no wrong, like it just is. You know, these, these are just kind of things that we're bringing that have worked for us, that can pay forward to help other people, like with what I do helped me, it helped me through my depression, it it could help somebody else. It may not, but it comes with no judgment excellent point there is and there is none.

Dr. Ben: 33:53

I mean with with even these things, because everyone struggles. We all struggle on different stuff. It's about learning, because people I'll get judged all the time. They'll see like, oh, the big health guy who started iron cloud, here he has at a beer festival drinking beer with his friends. Yeah well, they don't see me fasting for four days now, but you know what I mean. Like, but but it's not about that.

Fran Barley: 34:10

It's really easy to say that the funny thing, I could, I could get judged as well, because I'm like with food related stuff. I'm vegan and the possible like misconception that I have generally from people is that I'm really healthy. Yeah, I'm gonna be the one with my face in that ice cream.

Fran Barley: 34:31

Yeah, I was vegan for a number of years, so I I don't, you get it people assume that you know you either don't eat a lot or you know you're really, really healthy and I'm like look, I have to, I have. I've got those, those, those kind of little food voices as well that say eat meat, you know, wherever it's all the sugars and all the rest of it. So I don't have added sugar, but I don't necessarily cut sugar out. So you know, potentially I could actually dig into that junk food. It's only that I try and get my mind to override things and say, look, you're not going to feel good afterwards.

Dr. Ben: 35:04

No, you know Well the problem, and this is for me personally. I know people who are. We have iron cladders who are vegan. It's challenging. It's more challenging, I think, because you really have to know the recipes and really be well prepared for that. It's definitely very doable.

Fran Barley: 35:25

But it comes in the same same though for people that have allergies or maybe intolerances or kind of dairy or you know. Things have to be adjusted sometimes, don't they?

Dr. Ben: 35:33

yeah, well, of course, and and sometimes, for example, we have we have a phase in ironclad where we remove all toxins and people say, well, I need to take my medication. Of course you do. We we've we've had ironcladders, for example, who are taking chemo and going through a bunch of different stuff, and you adapt things to get them through there. The thing about what iron cladders is a community of people. So we've been doing this for years and years now and people continue to come back and people rock it for three months and then they go back and they kind of fall back into their own patterns. They've changed and some of them make long term changes that are a deeper level, and some people have a bad week or two and they come back and they feel ashamed.

Dr. Ben: 36:09

But isn't about that. Yeah, the thing about it is I don't know any addict that really enjoys their addiction. You know like it's that there's no pleasure in it. It's not like if you eat, you're drinking all this beer or whatever alcohol or whatever it is. I really, when I go to a beer festival, I really enjoy it, and if I have some sugar or candy or something, if someone were gave to me and I wanted to have it. I'd really enjoy it. I don't enjoy that stuff so I don't have it anymore because my tastes have changed and I'm part of it because my identity has changed. That's one of the things, for example, with being a vegan, that I struggle with a lot is that I had, I was eating a lot more sugar to, to, to get my my, and it caused those, those, those spikes in my, in my glucose and it. I didn't like how that made me feel over the long haul.

Fran Barley: 36:58

I tend to know the places that I can go, because a lot of the time, especially being vegan or having dietary restrictions as such whether that's for medical reasons or personal it's not as easy just to go out and get something.

Dr. Ben: 37:11

Right.

Fran Barley: 37:12

You know, you actually start to see how much we're driven towards all the sugars and the fats and you know the things in. I suppose a lot of it's to do with processed foods and stuff. Yeah, but as you've said, ironclad isn't just about food, is it?

Dr. Ben: 37:27

No.

Fran Barley: 37:27

It's the mind as well.

Dr. Ben: 37:28

It's your mind and your body the food is more like the way, like similar as what I'm doing, like with a fast. The fast isn't really about food, is it? It's about everything other than it's about.

Dr. Ben: 37:41

How do you feel good without that? How? What meditation practices can I utilize? I get a tremendous amount of stuff done when I'm on a fast because I don't have to worry about cooking and preparing food and all that sort of stuff and I trust me as I mean as a chef and everything I eat really well. We have really really wonderful meals. I love going to gourmet restaurants and stuff like that. I really I eat. I eat amazing when I'm in in that, that phase wonder whether right, you say sorry.

Fran Barley: 38:10

You say that because you're not having to prepare meals or think about that, so you get more done. But I wonder whether initially you would get more done to take your mind off not wanting to cook or not wanting to do anything else.

Dr. Ben: 38:25

Well, maybe one day, as ironclad grows, we've thought about this, having people through the process, because we do have as we go through. We we'd like to with our youtube channel. We have some recipes on there. We'd like to have more. Maybe to have like a whole kind of thing. There's recipes everybody can make or a variety of stuff. Maybe a whole cookbook will come out one day, because I did do a lot of cooking and some of our members are really high-quality chefs and we've kind of come up with some really kind of cool things that we can make that are really delicious and they don't take a tremendous amount of work, but they do take some.

Dr. Ben: 38:57

But it is a time. And the other thing too now you know what really is cool, fran. Nowadays you can probably go online and order all the stuff you need via various sort of services. Now there's a lot more options online for people especially if you plan it out right where you can order particular types of food or whatever based on what season you're in. But for us in Ironclad, the thing I want maybe the big thing about season to mention is that it's and a lot of the beginning.

Dr. Ben: 39:22

Ironcladers don't understand this. They get to the end of the first gauntlet of three months, they're like I'm going to never change, I'm never going to go back to doing this, that or the other thing. And we try to tell them you were drawn to that for a reason, you know. And and it's not about you need to learn, because to have a balanced life you need to be able to go out. Even though I'm this health expert and overcome all these really and help people really be really amazing diseases, I still go to a festival and have a hot dog and drink beer, and you know I mean cause. What kind of bodily life is this when you can't, when you have to live the super restrictive? You know?

Fran Barley: 39:57

and I'll go to places. So it does come down to discipline, though, doesn't it?

Dr. Ben: 40:02

It absolutely does, and to understand that, like I'm not gonna, or what are the good, the best options here for me, based on where I'm at in this, in what season, and, of course, to plan accordingly. But I go out, I want to have a good time, you know, and a lot of times the weird thing is is like I don't eat very much bread, but when I go to a place and I have to get some, it tastes like dry dough for the most part, you know what I I mean.

Dr. Ben: 40:28

Like it's like. It's like, it's like what it is and it's like I don't.

Fran Barley: 40:30

It doesn't taste like food to me anymore, yeah, or like a pizza. Your taste buds to change.

Dr. Ben: 40:33

And yeah, oh, yeah, yeah, that's that's that's one of the main things people say after the first season like pizza is weird, it's like it's like it's not. It's not a food. Do you mean like we're food is something that you can like if you look at it? We have a saying in Dutch of eight what you ate, which means know what you eat. I know what a tomato is, I even know what like a stew is. You put tomatoes and you put a piece of meat. Or you put stuff in a pot and some maybe say an Indian curry, you put stuff in there. The lentils, you get all your coconut, you get your your spices in there, some onions, some garlic, you get like get every, get it bubbling I know what all that stuff is, but I don't know what is in a pizza dough and in in these weird things, that what's the cheese?

Dr. Ben: 41:16

what kind of is that? I mean the whole idea of milk. As a vegan, I think you'll understand this. It's and I'm not, like I said, no judging anybody because I have cheese sometimes when it's gourmet. I I have these things that are produced, but that's because I want to try the experience of it. We are the dominant species on Earth because we've learned how to utilize and get energy from all these cool sources and there's a whole culture.

Fran Barley: 41:37

I feel like the overarching thing with this particular part of our conversation is to is that awareness, so it's being aware of what you're putting into your body, it's being and with your mind, it's being aware of the thoughts that you're having yeah and that see, that discipline for me comes into it, because I'm very prone to depression and I'm I love sitting with negative thoughts or there's just.

Fran Barley: 42:04

There's just such a safety for me in there because it's familiar. I'm not saying it's right for me, but it feels familiar, so it feels safe and I've had to override that. So every time I have those negative thoughts about myself, I consciously catch it and have to say something positive instead and I try and reframe it and flip it around. So it's kind of that overarching thing of for me. It's being aware of all of my thoughts all the time, just so that I can make sure that I keep my mind healthy with your body.

Fran Barley: 42:35

It's being aware of what you're putting into it, isn't it?

Dr. Ben: 42:39

I have a challenge for you.

Fran Barley: 42:41

Go on.

Dr. Ben: 42:42

You want to try this. This is kind of right up your alley.

Fran Barley: 42:46

Yeah, go on.

Dr. Ben: 42:47

I'll give a little bit of a background of where this came from. So this is a long, long long God, probably one of the best books I ever read. This is when I was in my I think I was 22 or 23,. Was Don Miguel Ruiz, the Four Agreements? Do you know the book?

Fran Barley: 43:03

No, not familiar with that.

Dr. Ben: 43:04

Amazing book, if you can get it, don Miguel. It's called the four agreements. It's a short book. It's it's probably about like this size, not, not, not very big. One of the best books I've ever. Just just, I got all his, all his books, loved it, but basically I won't get into it. What, what those things? You can check that out yourself. I'm sure people some people watching this know what it is. It's. It's a pretty famous book.

Dr. Ben: 43:29

Basically, what I did and this is the challenge that I'm going to challenge you to do this became. It became a big discussion in my family and what we did, what we decided to do as a result, it was a challenge. This is the challenge I have for you. Okay, really, a good, good one. Up your alley, do not? I want to challenge you to just go the rest of the day, maybe the rest of this weekend, okay, and you may not use negative words. You may not speak anything in the negative, okay, you may. That means you can't say no, we can't say any. We could. We can do it now for a little while, just to pretend it right.

Dr. Ben: 44:09

I did this with my girlfriend, love of my life, mother of my daughter. I did this with her about a month ago. We got in a conversation about something how she was struggling with this negative thought stuff. You know she's being negative about herself, so let's try this as an example. So if you do this experiment, what you'll really quickly realize is how quickly less than positive things right, so, avoiding saying even the word negative how quickly less than positive things just spring into your brain. So instead of saying I'm not going to do well, do you like this? Instead of saying I don't like it, you'd say, well, I like other things a lot more. Right, just, it's an amazing mind exercise to do that and to catch yourself and to see how quickly you say things negatively.

Fran Barley: 45:01

And it's a great example of that reframing as well, you know, ok, so it's like like that, but how can we say it differently?

Dr. Ben: 45:07

coming up with incredible so you're getting your brain to come up with incredibly creative ways of not using negative word, negative, just negative verbiage. You can't speak it and you'll see how quickly the negativity gets. It'll change your mood in so many ways because you, literally through the language inside your brain, are just as a challenge just to see and, and what kyan found and is so quickly. She's like you can really do this like well. I used to do this for like long periods of time when I came to the netherlands and I learned dutch right. I'm fluent in dutch, I I removed all negative words from my language. I could just not learn how to say anything in a negative way. I could just say everything, always in a positive spin. So and it really does affect how your mind works, how your energy works, how that, how that goes.

Fran Barley: 45:52

So to give that, one a try, it can yeah, I like that and it can be a challenge for anybody listening as well.

Dr. Ben: 45:58

Yeah, if you're stuck in any sort of negativity. There's two things. That and the other thing too. It's this is well known. Same kind of idea is it's one thing we do in constantly in ironclad is we. We are really, really in active gratitude a lot. We spend a lot of time talking to people about getting them to really and and when I'm saying active gratitude I mean really we spend a lot of time in our one-on-one sessions, in our group sessions, talking about what we're grateful for, about our bodies so it's also being conscious.

Fran Barley: 46:32

It's being conscious, isn't it?

Dr. Ben: 46:34

being consciously grateful, and really, I mean, and in the things that deeply matter, and you can see people, when we, when we start with them, a lot of them people don't have experience with, with, with gratitude at all, or they don't, or they they kind of stay upper surface. It's really easy, by the way, when you've just it's your birthday party and you've got all these gifts and everyone's there and you know like I got so much to be grateful for. It's much more amazing to do that when you're broken and you're having a really bad day and you learn a tremendous like. Sometimes it's like we always have so many things that we're breathing. I see this all the time with with patients and other people that grateful that you got another day, be grateful that you're here, you know watching this and listening to it, just the fact that you can breathe in and out and you know there's so much beauty and wonder in the world, so much to love as well, and you know, there's so much beauty and wonder in the world, so much to love as well.

Fran Barley: 47:35

Let's see, I, I do. I completely hear you. I do, and I've switched a lot of that around myself since, you know, started on my own journey with, with the nlp and the mindfulness and everything. You're talking to somebody who, right, I'm going to be completely honest here. So cover your ears. Anybody listening if you don't want to hear it.

Fran Barley: 47:49

If, if somebody had previously told me that you can choose to be happy, you can be, you know, you can have sincere gratitude and be conscious about it, and that you can choose to be happy, probably have thought about I wouldn't have acted upon it, but I'd have thought about punching them in the face, because how annoying can you be to say something like that.

Fran Barley: 48:11

It's not true, like I would never have believed it to be true and it would have actually have irritated me. I would have felt irritated about it Because how can it be true? And since then, like, sometimes I think about that, I think I, how I think I would have reacted, you know, because I would have shrugged. I know I would have shrugged it off, because anybody that would say to me like, oh, but you know why are you so depressed all the time. I just shrug it off all the time, like you don't know. It's like it's just part of me, it's in my bones. I can't be any other way. And because I didn't see any other way, because it couldn't be true, how can it be true if you don't, if you don't believe that it could be a fact?

Dr. Ben: 48:47

well, you have to. Yeah, exactly, I I 100 with you, I I. One thing I noticed about a lot of different archives myself is this is a great example for me. I'm I struggle, struggled a lot with perfectionism, and perfectionism really saps at the it's. It's been an incredible driver in my life, the things that I, that I've done and learned. It's it's been because I'm kind of very relentless and perseverant and I'm very stubborn, I don't give up.

Dr. Ben: 49:19

But a part of that comes from this, this, this, this perfectionism, and I was thinking this has got really wonderful qualities for success in life and all these other sorts of things. But it's a it's a torturous thing. You know I'll do amazing things and I'm like well, of course you should do that, that's what you're. You know, that's the only thing and I, the only solution I found for that really that works in switching that is gratitude, because perfectionists, the best you they get are like well, of course you should do that, that's that's, you know, that's, that's the minimum you should expect from yourself, kind of thing, as opposed to, which is basically a constant message, self messaging if it's not enough, it's never enough, it's never enough, you're never enough, or the situation isn't enough or you've got to do more.

Fran Barley: 50:09

You could have done better when the I've come to realize that things like emotional awareness and emotional intelligence and that is not given like we have to. We have to learn that and we have to be aware of it. So you know my my revelation about being incredibly irritated by happy people, you know said more about myself and my own understanding of the world and learning. So now I'm not irritated by happy people, I love them. But I do understand. I do understand that kind of depression side of it and you know, I know we're on a challenge here, but you know the negativity, I understand it yeah, well, we do it for the sake of the sake of discussion.

Dr. Ben: 50:51

It, it, it. It's probably better to put that one on pause, but try that that negative uh really give that a shot, especially in your relationships with people, with talk. Just just really give it a try to speak nothing negative, to see if you can get, and see how quickly yeah, that's a challenge, and when, in what areas.

Fran Barley: 51:11

It's very, very interesting yeah, because that helps with um your own self-awareness as well yeah, no, totally yeah, uh, it's really, it's really cool yeah right, I've got another specific question for you. Um, how do you envision the community of ironclad warriors growing and evolving in the future?

Dr. Ben: 51:32

That's pretty cool. We spent a lot of time on that actually, because what ironclad is is really a community of people. We are kind of a movement in that regard and the reason is we need each other to transform. I kind of say, like it was me and god were the first ones and then after that we just but I couldn't have done it, I there's some things that I just I feel are just divinely inspired. I don't exactly know where some of the stuff we do comes from, but it's really really powerful and it works and it comes from that. That sort of space of. You know, we talk about. Atman is is what they talk about it in yoga Nidra, but it's like the, it's the, the, the space where all health and love and joy flows from. So but we do it with other people. The power of, of. We've never had a done iron clay without a group. We've always had it. Even the first group was was a group of 10, and we've we done Ironclad without a group. We've always had. Even the first group was was a group of 10, and we've we've grown steadily since then. And so the community of people, what we're, what we're going to stick with, is having a, a spring and a fall group, with a break time in between to to do with the seasons, and we're working right now on that will always be live, so that's always a live group for people with new information, new meditations, new and different things and and it allows the the power of the community, of the people that are in there right now. We do two live zooms a week with the members and that and then the rest of the stuff's all via. We use a slack app right now to do that, to disseminate everything and people and people are in a private Slack app. We are very, very.

Dr. Ben: 53:09

One of the things about Ironclad in our community that's really important to mention is we have famous people. We have people, for a variety of reasons, don't want their identity to be widely, widely known. So we're very protective of people's privacy. It's people's health and there's other reasons why, like some people, we have doctors, for example, that take our they don't that are themselves health coaches to help the people they don't necessarily want to be out there for doesn't matter to us. We. We regard the privacy of everybody. So the community is, is is a community of people who bring, come together to help each other heal and it. It really is something that grows the primary ways via the other iron cladders themselves.

Dr. Ben: 53:57

And why this is important is it helps us, for example, if, if you were an iron cladder and you went through you, you love it, you think it amazing, and then you tell other people the next season you are much more likely to push yourself a little bit harder, go a little bit deeper, go better, because you've got people that are looking up to you, who are in there. So we've got a lot of that. That goes on. It grows kind of like in that sort of a way. But we are to the point too. For us it gets challenging to be able to keep up with numbers. That's why we're working with an automated program that people can do that first and then afterwards, if they need more help and assistance, they can join our live groups or if they're, this is like totally for me, I love it, get in there, so would would the the automated program that?

Fran Barley: 54:44

so I'm guessing that would work the same as like an evergreen program.

Dr. Ben: 54:50

Yeah, evergreen type of thing. Yeah, exactly, we are not. We haven't, we don't have an automated one yet. We're working on that, putting it together.

Dr. Ben: 54:59

One of the reasons also it's become more important is we have to have a version that's dedicated for people who have cancer, because cancer people like, let's say, say you, cancer patients need help immediately. They need to be able to start right away. And other people want to start right away. A lot of people should, but some people struggle when they get on there with motivation like, well, yeah, it doesn't really fit in my schedule right now, I don't have the time. Generally, most cancer patients are like I have all the time in the world, whatever it is is going to make me live another day, please. So we need something that they can on-demand start on, kind of like right away.

Dr. Ben: 55:32

That's one of the things. For example, if we're we just started, we're well, we're two months into our group, we're done at the end of this month, and then we won't start again until September. So if somebody reaches out and says, hey, I really need your help, I'm going to have to basically have to wait, and that's that's happened before. So we really need to have some sort of an automated program for those people that can get in there and then they might have questions and need help and other stuff. The live groups are the best, I think, because that's where we really we tailor things. We can answer specific questions, we can, we can tweak stuff, whereas the automated program is less like that and we don't really have it fixed yet. So we kind of know what we're going to do. We've been doing the same thing for a long time and we know what works and what doesn't. But we don't have it automated yet. But that's where we're going. So there'll be an automated version for people and then there'll be, twice a year, live groups for the folks we these for this stuff too.

Dr. Ben: 56:26

So everybody who's watching this maybe, fran, you could consider yourself to be what we call ironclad curious Yep. So you're curious about what it is. You don't really know what it is Once people decide they go on a really important call with us, the ironclad breakthrough call, and on that call we, we, we, we kind of get you down to your reason why this season, every season, has a name. This is the season of why in ironclad we've had the season of power, we've had the season of kiara, we've had the season of transformation, but this is the ironclad season of why and the reason is it's it's really ironclad is this season are really really getting in touch with their reason why they want to transform, what their reason to transform is, and and really breaking it down to something that's deeply, that deeply matters, so like. I'll give you an example where this came from. I had a patient the patient who was struggling with his weight.

Dr. Ben: 57:21

He was always overweight and saw him for years. And he came in one day and he's slowly losing weight and I saw him a couple months later and he kept the weight off and then you know, three months after that he'd still like man, you, you're looking great. What did you do? He's like well, my wife. And I said your wife, yeah, like I think. What did she say to you? She's like no, no, it's not like that. He's like I didn't. I didn't tell you this, but my wife, her last kidney is being rejected. His wife had kidney disease and his, both of his the kidneys were being rejected and his. The doctor said you can donate one of yours, but you have to maintain your weight at a specific level for six months. That's a why. That's a reason why, other than I just want to look better when I go to the beach- and that's a really big motivation you don't do it right no-transcript.

Fran Barley: 58:14

Why is similar to a motivation, isn't it? Because you're motivated towards your why? But then as human beings we all have different motivators, we're motivated in different ways, so that obviously that situation found his motivation to strive towards his why.

Dr. Ben: 58:33

And then he was able to stick to the thing because he thought about her every day, he saw her every day. He's like. You know, I'm constantly reminded of this. If I don't do this, I might lose the woman I love, you know. So that's a deep motivation For me.

Dr. Ben: 58:45

The motivation my first motivating thing for Ironclad came from a moment a long time ago when I looked in the mirror and I didn't recognize who I was and I felt terrible and I just knew in my soul. I knew that if I just kept going in this direction, I wasn't going to be around a long time, I wasn't going to be there for my children and for my family and for my patients, because I'd gone through a breakup and things were really tough and I was in a really, really, really bad spot. And I remember catching myself in the mirror and being like who is this person? And really coming to an idea of like I need to do something or you know, I'm, I'm. This isn't the kind of quality of life I want to live.

Dr. Ben: 59:19

I hate how I feel and I just had this really ominous feeling that if something didn't change, I wasn't going to be around for a long time. It was, I was going to some. Some sort of disease or sickness is going to kind of take me and I I'd seen enough of that with my patients. I didn't want to be one of those people and I wanted to really change my life and my health. I wanted to figure this out. I had all this information in my head, all this stuff about, well, this is how you're supposed to change and you're supposed to do this and do this diet.

Fran Barley: 59:46

Yeah.

Dr. Ben: 59:46

But I didn't know why none of it worked. And none of it worked because I was. I was focusing on the sort of what to do, like the I would do this and do that and do this and this, this on this diet plan, and I wasn't focusing on, like how I thought I wasn't thinking about the meditative practices and the processes. So what ironclad is is a kind of synergy of all those things together, having the commitment of a group with you, having people that genuinely care about you, that have the knowledge and expertise to help you, depending on what your situation is, because I'm everything that's out there, we've seen it but also really being able to connect you to what matters. And the other thing, too, with Ironclad is it's very simple, it's not very complex.

Fran Barley: 1:00:28

It also kind of brings to mind that everybody's got their own timeline as such. So, therefore, somebody that's already in Ironclad and ready for it, you know, wouldn't necessarily be the person that's curious. So the friend that's curious may not be ready.

Dr. Ben: 1:00:46

Right.

Fran Barley: 1:00:47

So it can't you know, these things can't happen until you're ready. Yeah, you're not to know when people are ready. Are you no?

Dr. Ben: 1:00:54

no, and well, part of the process is, you know, when people are interested in us, they get a form that they fill out, a short form, and it gives us questions to get a sense of like what sort of health issues are they dealing with?

Dr. Ben: 1:01:09

And the other thing too is this is why, with everybody that that's become ironclad, they all go through the breakthrough call and on that call we talk to them about their situation and we get a sense of like and generally what happens either come out of that with their like they want to do ironclad and we want them to join. Sometimes they they're interested in it, but we don't think they're the right fit for us because the people are going to be with us forever, right? So it's like it's kind of like a marriage, but like you're joining the family, you know it's like so you're, you're in, you're in with us, with everybody as part of the group. And then you also have other individuals are like yeah, this is perfect for me, we want you in, but they don't want to for a variety of reasons, or it's not the right time. We they want it, but not right now. So and all those things can happen sometimes.

Dr. Ben: 1:01:45

That's because and on the breakthrough call, the call really isn't about whether they go ironclad or not. It's about figuring out the core of what their their problem is and they're getting them down to their deep reason why, like, like what they're really struggling with, and then sometimes it's just you're doing amazing, add this, that or the other thing in there. You need to to practice this kind of meditative practices. It'll really help you, you know, or like you need to work on x, y or z, so it it. Sometimes it's given directing people to other practices or other things that can help them, because that's what we're doing, Other resources as well.

Fran Barley: 1:02:21

So I presume because you've got a YouTube channel, so I presume that would come under a resource. Yeah, people that aren't necessarily in iCloud, but they could subscribe to your YouTube channel and consume your content.

Dr. Ben: 1:02:34

Yeah, yeah, and that's a resource for them I need to do more with our YouTube channel, for sure, but what I do have, I have a lot of stuff on social media, different posts I've done about variety.

Fran Barley: 1:02:43

There are resources as well, aren't they for people?

Dr. Ben: 1:02:45

so they can still kind of come into your world yeah, we have a facebook group as well, the ironclad immunity community and I see I was going to mention that in that in that facebook group we we help give people a lot. A lot of posts are in there throughout the years. That was one of the first things we ever made years and years ago, so that's been there forever. But yeah, it's an amazing thing to be able to help people and guide people through all that.

Fran Barley: 1:03:11

But where's the?

Dr. Ben: 1:03:11

community going to go. We're going to continue to grow. Eventually it's going to get to the point where other ironcladders will help start other groups, because we just can't maintain everything. And that's where it's probably going to grow, kind of grow and spread like that, and we'll keep doing what we're doing every twice a year and for the people that want to hang out. And the other cool thing where I'd like to go as well is because the way I look at meditation, meditative practices, they're all designed to kind of get us to the top of the hill. So a lot of times what happens in our live sessions is explaining maybe the biomedical stuff with why we're taking away a particular type of food or dealing with a particular type of mental struggle somebody's having, or talking about different meditative practices that will help them through what they're going through.

Dr. Ben: 1:03:55

For example, like the example I just gave you, if you you're stuck in negative thinking, try speaking only positively for a weekend and see what that does, where you have to constantly be aware of like wait a minute, like, and then, when you go into your automatic rhythm of like, oh, with my family, my kid, whatever, you immediately go back into this, this natural flow, your partner, yeah, all right, it work, whatever it's like a reprogramming yeah, it really is.

Dr. Ben: 1:04:24

And the the first part of that, if you think about like for I could do the first part is the awareness that you're what you even say, because people are, they're. They're like I said, people are unconscious most of the time. They just sort of react out of an unconsciousness. So so fasting for me is a huge reset. It blasts out all of my mind, my body, everything is kind of put into a in a bubble, and that's kind of what ironclad does. It's a gauntlet in a way that really helps people to sort of get a new perspective on life and to change, to make really deep, directed change. The other thing, too, to say about this is what we actually do in ironclad at the end is people build a new identity. So ironclad is build a new name and their new identity is based on who they want to become, and then we work on that throughout the process. So it's a great thing because a lot of people their issues boil boil down to the identity.

Dr. Ben: 1:05:14

Well, I just told you several of my identities. Like, I'm a doctor. That's an identity, but it's also I'm a beer drinker. I like special beer. That's an identity. If I really don't want to have beer anymore. I need to change that identity.

Fran Barley: 1:05:24

I don't do that anymore, right and sometimes there are things that are adopted as our identity that aren't necessarily what we would choose yeah, and they're unaware of it.

Dr. Ben: 1:05:32

Right. So instead of making learning, hey, I can make a conscious choice and through every gauntlet, at the end we just do we like the identity that we've chosen for ourself we're working to be? Do we want to change that? Do you want to create something else? And a lot of these things go so much deeper than you know and I want to lose some weight or something that they're there, or even the disease they start off with that, because it's incredibly important. You're not going to be able to do anything for your family and friend if you're in your business, if you're sick, you're not focused, you're not thinking. Well, that that's that has to be like the basics, and then later on people can transform in other ways that they want. So that's that's really like. As we've gone further advanced, we could bring in other people into our under the community. We could have a lot of different kind of guests come and help with different meditative practices or some other ideas we've got.

Dr. Ben: 1:06:17

Last season we had the end of season of power. We did some some more power, boot building, physically strength. We. We came up with something called the ironclad gorilla, like, like, be the, be the, get your get your inner gorilla to come out, go, lift, lift hard, do that kind of those types of things. So there's, there's a really kind of cool uniquenesses and things we have with every season that make it kind of cool, but the basis is always the basis it's it's getting people to, to, to, to become aware of, like, what's going on with them, what their habits and patterns are bringing in them, and that we do that in really cool ways in the, in the pro, in the process of the gauntlet.

Dr. Ben: 1:06:54

Second month is Starting to sort of buckle down and to make trans transformation, and last month is really hardcore transformation. It's where people really push the metal of the pedal of the metal and really make stuff. And then we end with the Metatonia, which is our, our closing weekend, which which Metatonia? What? What that means is deep transformation through penitence is deep transformation through penitence.

Fran Barley: 1:07:22

So it's like. It's like you've gone through a religious like almost a religious experience and you've, but you've also been penitent You've.

Dr. Ben: 1:07:33

You know, like what we, what Catholics or Christians, Catholics used to do with Easter? Oh, they would. They would have the easter lent, they would fast and they wouldn't. You know, they would abstain from something and then you have easter sunday as a big party. It kind of has elements of that in there big party?

Dr. Ben: 1:07:49

well, that's what it sort of was, jesus is risen and you know like yeah, I remember doing that as a kid like, okay, now you don't get to have candy for this time. Now I get a big eas Easter basket and gorge out on it. So that's not what we recommend. Arcologists do just go back to all their worst stuff at the end. But it is about celebrating and feeling good and enjoying those things. And the real cool thing is how do you change your tastes? For example, breaking all your sugar for a period of time and then coming back at the end and having some again. You realize I don't really like this that much. It's not really what I wanted.

Fran Barley: 1:08:23

So you can't know that unless you have a break from it, so you need to take time away. So, like I said, like right now you give me a strawberry yeah, you give me a strawberry right now.

Dr. Ben: 1:08:28

It's going to be the most delicious thing I've ever had in my life. I'm not having one because I get to eat in a couple days, but anyway, but thank you for your time.

Fran Barley: 1:08:35

I really really like this. I love that. I'm going to ask you just a little favor, please, Can you so? I've been calling you Dr Ben. Can you please say your surname, because I'm not a hundred percent sure how to pronounce it?

Dr. Ben: 1:08:50

Yeah, dr. Benjamin Zacharyl.

Fran Barley: 1:08:52

Zacharyl. I thought it was, and I wasn't sure whether to put more accent on the E or it's Zacharyl.

Dr. Ben: 1:09:00

Yeah, it's or it's. Yeah, it's, it's, it's german from austria, but that's zacharel is how it was, how I was caught it, although if you go down to german, to that area, this is a hole.

Fran Barley: 1:09:09

But yeah, that's what they say yeah, I can say zacharel, so zacharel is great, thank you.

Dr. Ben: 1:09:15

Thank you very much.

Fran Barley: 1:09:17

Yeah, so thank you very much for sharing your insights and your experience.

Dr. Ben: 1:09:21

Thank you, it was really wonderful. I'm glad I you were the first interview I've done on there. I've got been a couple other things. I've had a couple of set up and they didn't work out and get canceled, but I'm really glad to have done this with you. This is why.

Fran Barley: 1:09:33

I do this. I'd love to have you back. Okay, yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, yeah. If you want to have me back, let me know, that'd be great. Yeah, um, so I just want to say so. For those of you listening and or watching, those of you interested in learning more about dr ben zackerell and his work, you could visit his youtube channel, which is ironcladimmunity6910. On facebook, benjamin george zackerell Facebook group, I believe is that just called Ironclad Immunity?

Dr. Ben: 1:10:01

I think it's the Ironclad Immunity Community.

Fran Barley: 1:10:06

That's quite a tongue twister, isn't it?

Dr. Ben: 1:10:07

Let's try it A little rhyme, a little rhyme.

Fran Barley: 1:10:09

Ironclad Immunity Community the.

Dr. Ben: 1:10:11

Ironclad Immunity Community.

Fran Barley: 1:10:12

yeah, Okay, so you can. There are different ways of accessing Dr Ben.

Dr. Ben: 1:10:18

We have a website too, wwwironcladcom.

Fran Barley: 1:10:22

Oh, amazing, thank you.

Dr. Ben: 1:10:23

Yeah, and wwwironcladnl, if you're a Dutch speaker. But that's yeah, and there's other stuff too. But that's great. People can reach out to me if they have any questions. They can also send an email at info at ironcladmediacom and I'll get it. Reach out to me on whatever social media.

Dr. Ben: 1:10:37

I'm not, to be real honest, friend, I'm not a huge social media lover, because it's kind of opposite what we do in Ironclad, but it's you've got to be available for people. It's a way of people either getting resources so that you can kind of nurture that interest, or just a means to an end of communication, isn't it absolutely? But it it does. We have helped people through that. So, but I'm, it's not not my, I'm not a huge fan of social media, but I'm there. I just because I'm a fan, just because I don't.

Dr. Ben: 1:11:08

It's not something for me. You know what it is. It's that. It's a weird thing and people have told me this before. It's that, as much as I love helping people, because that's my, my heart goal, it's what I I love to do, absolutely love it. It's what my life's devoted to. I'm not a person who needs the. You know there's, there's people they need this attention. I'm I don't need that and I. The only reason I I spend as much time on social media and the things that I do is just to get people attention, so that people know what we do and I'm able to help more people.

Fran Barley: 1:11:37

I don't have you ever see this. That's, that's the whole. Because, again, gonna say, no judgment, those want inattention or go get it. You know, absolutely no judgment. But I feel like there's another big conversation to be had there, because that sparked a lot of things in my mind actually about, like you know, the, the intentions and the things that we do. You know for different reasons, and I feel like we need to. We're going to come back to that one. So for today, thank you very much.

Dr. Ben: 1:12:04

Thank you very much. It's been wonderful. Thank you Appreciate it.

Fran Barley: 1:12:07

So if you're interested in more content like this, be sure to check out the Melancholy Coaching on YouTube, because I'm on YouTube as well. And until next time, stay curious, keep igniting your creative potential. Check out Dr Ben and come and find me as well. Thank you very much. Bye. Thank you for joining me on the Melancholy Coaching Podcast. I'd love you to subscribe, For queries or to connect email info at melancholymentorcom. Until next time, keep igniting your creative potential.