More serious about bodybuilding because i stopped playing football because i blew my knee out for the third time and it was a rap. And i'm like i kinda fulfill this competitive nature was something you know And i started to research like bodybuilding. And then i typed the natural bodybuilding one day. Because i realized that i was looking at you know jay cutler ronnie coleman and all these guys and they're like two seventy and at the time i was about two hundred maybe two hundred and five pounds. Maybe two hundred and ten pounds. But i'm looking at these guys. And there's no way that they got that way without using some type of steroid or some type of drug and so when i typed in natural bodybuilding for the first time guys like dave. Gooden popped up philip ricardo. Junior doctor joe cleanser ski. Les norton on these names popped up and i looked at guys and i was like if i really trained and i really get my diet in check. Why could i not look like that in five years because already had the foundation right so i think a lot of young guys when they start lifting and stuff like that. They're they're so. They want the immediate gratification. I was totally okay with delayed gratification Because i realized that. If i'm gonna be healthy i don't want to be healthy for you. Know i don't want to be healthy for the right now in gained twenty pounds muscle in three months. Unlike i'm okay with gaining slow amounts of muscle throughout the duration of my life and never putting any exhaustion hormones in my physiology. That's essentially going to alter who i am. And so. when. I found natural bodybuilding. I realized that some of this is probably the biggest thing frank was. When i found natural bodybuilding and i realized that some of the best natural bodybuilders in the world were only about one hundred and seventy five to one hundred eighty five pounds. I said i can totally do that. Because you know i was like i think i need to lose. Maybe twenty pounds to be staged lane at the time. I had no idea. I would eventually need to lose like fifty But basically what i did is i bulked up to like two hundred and thirty pounds in college And then. My first natural bodybuilding doe. I ended up weighing in at like one seventy two. I lost sixty something. I think like sixty pounds. And i use the methods that i basically learned through my own education. Yes i have a degree. But they don't teach you a lot about nutrition in academia or at least directly applied nutrition in academia so a lot of the people that i learned from early on with people like dr jones ski. Who's like the oj of akron nutrient coaching And then we'll norton at the time they were the only ones that were putting out really good quality information that was teaching natural bodybuilders. How to be better natural bodybuilders And so i found this information. Like i didn't even have a laptop. I didn't have nothing. I had to go to the public library with some change in my pocket in print out these articles from the internet and start highlighting all this stuff about proteins. Fats carbohydrates out of formulated diet. Plan and all this. Yes so i myself with that information and education that i got from the public library Myself my first natural bodybuilding show took me about twelve to fourteen weeks And i won the overall. And from that point. In time i if i can achieve this look without using anything without using any steroids drugs whatever why will why would i ever need to take them. And there was never any interest for me to be a two hundred and fifty pound monster per se. Once i got down and as lena's i was at a hundred seventy five and again. This is where. I thank my parents for genetics is that i felt like i had a body that people looked at me. And they're like he's he has to be enhanced and so i never felt like i needed to use them to go into the mpc or the ifp and stuff like that. It was more so just. I founded nation the bodyboarding world And i tried to cross over a couple of times. I tried to go into the mtc. As a natural. And see how i would do. And i a couple office titles. And then when i went to the open in the mtc I would get like second place. Third place fourth place. And i realized that those guys that i was competing against most of them were enhanced In the time where i basically navigated away from ever wanting to compete in the nbc again. And there's no knock on the mtc page own Was when i was a bodybuilding show and it was a bit of a larger show here in florida and i saw somebody walk into the bathroom. Stall with a fanny pack on and when he came out of the dressing the came out of the bathroom stall with his fanny pack. I noticed that he had these like pin looking marks on his body so like his chest in his dealt and from what i know he just got done injecting like some synthetic or something into these areas to make his muscles look rounder and once i saw that i said i'm going back to the natural bodyboarding world. I don't really don't have any I really don't have any passionate about that side but again no knock on anybody that chooses to use performance enhancing drugs. It just wasn't my past you know. I know i'm not here to you. Know to knock anybody. Who's well i wish. Some of this stuff was more. You know it's hard to put these kind of things like out into the public eye but you know you see these you see these in and you had all these young kids coming up. And it's like they dream and they aspire aspiring. It's like they're only being shared really half the story. You know what you're talking about there on on this simple. I want to ask you to mind you man. That's what's it's like. That's what's attractive. And that's what's marketable to the person that wants to see it right like they don't want to see people that are one hundred seventy five pounds right. They wanna see the freaks they would they wanna see. The three hundred pound guys have been on stage. no And i think even if you look back to maybe the golden era of bodyboarding which was a very very articulate. Very aesthetic era That to me even enhance that to me is what bodybuilding could have been or should continue to be Just because of the fact that the guys yet were they using enhancers yes but was the look less of a freak show than it is now. Was it safer. i think it was. Yeah i mean. Look at look at guys like like arnold anyway. He's he's in his mid to late seventies and i mean he's still still living still out there. No active on you know whatever your thoughts on on what arnold is involved in now is besides point but yeah no he was truly the one that i mean leveraged bodybuilding to to get him to to the next level. I want to ask you a question about about self awareness. Because it's something that's just been like literally jumping out at me as you kinda shared from all the way growing up kinda you know realizing from a very young age at the situa like my family's not healthy and i know there could be something different and then as you got into school you're like i saw the kids that know. Maybe came for more in how they were not as grateful in they were seeking kind of kind of instant gratification. Where did you know. It's cared into to your bodybuilding careers will well. Where did this self awareness for you in your life. Did you have somebody from a young age. I mean i know you talked about kind of some trauma you know between you know your family home. So did you have somebody outside of the house that was speaking to you. That was shown you you know what self-awareness was her. Was it just kind of a natural instinct. No so it's amazing question. I think reflecting back on it. I just always respected my mother so much for what she went through with my dad and growing up and watching that that i never wanted to do anything in all honesty. I never wanted to do anything. That i felt like would negatively upset her or you know be harder for hurry within her life because she already had a hard hard road you know and then i also even from a young age. I knew that nobody in my family had ever gone to college. And so i had this kind of this internal pressure on myself to say you're good at this thing. You better make it. You know and so i never really wanted to do things that would alter that or messed that up. You know even back to high school My dad growing up. He was an alcoholic..