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https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikedrop/
http://www.madgenie.io/

Russ Johns
It is the pirate broadcast today and we are here we are awake we are doing something interesting with interesting people, people doing interesting things. And today I want to bring out Mike, Mike is someone that I've been connected with for time now and he's gone through a lot of changes, a lot of growth, a lot of transition and And I just I just find it fascinating. So I thought I'd bang on his door and say, Hey, Mike, let's let's talk about what you do and what you're up to. And so Mike, welcome to the show. How you doing, man?

Mike Casavant
Fantastic. Thank you for having me. I know it was just we were just saying earlier, like, it's crazy. We've known each other for a few years and haven't really actually ever had a conversation outside of just the direct message. So this is pretty awesome to hear from you. And I've kind of went I went goes this last year, year and a half on social and this last month or so, kind of came back out of my cocoon, if you will. And I had a pretty big life change journey and this last year or so, and I kind of felt more confident to come back to social media. Well,

Russ Johns
you know, it's it's social media is a double edged sword because we all you know, it's it's this innate ability to want to connect with people. You know, we want to connect we want to build community and its really can be challenging at times because, you know, you think you have to keep up with the person next to you and everything going on and it's sometimes you just have to unplug and say, Okay, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna unplug, relax, recover, and, you know, connect with my family or my friends or whatever in real life and do that. So I love that you did that. And and So talk a little bit about what you've been doing in the meantime

Mike Casavant
for sure. So I think the big thing for me was that I felt really disconnected with myself. That was a huge portion of why I stopped really creating content and I just felt like nothing I was doing was purposeful anymore. And in sort of this this year is pretty wild for me to actually be on the show with you right now. Because so two days ago was my one year anniversary of a weight loss journey this last year, which took me one year. One year ago, I weighed in at 460 pounds. And, you know, I lost almost 200 pounds in about a year. All through just fasting,

Russ Johns
Oh good. I mean, I saw the video bar and you're talking about,

Mike Casavant
yeah, man, it was kind of one of those things. It's just I've struggled with my weight, depression, mental health my whole life. It's been it's been an ongoing battle and I think just binge eating is always been the only thing that really I could relate to for because it was the only thing that I could find that would feed this unfillable thing inside of me. And so I developed and worked on a fasting protocol with this gentleman, Nick Don Pierre, that I connected through through Instagram Actually, it was a random kind of scroll I saw before and after and that kind of led me into this interesting world of understanding what prolonged fasting does to the your mental health and I kind of had this statement of being without taught me to go within. And that's kind of the best way I could describe fasting because at this point where I didn't have anything to feed my addiction anymore, and I was like, wow, I'm actually very aware of my everything about me now and I kind of know all the variables and things that that affect me and you know, the times of this last year were stress anxiety depression, I hit multiple times through this last year. And I would typically buy like two large pizzas and just eat my you know, eat my feelings legitimately. And I just decided that like, once I started fasting, that attachment was no longer a thing anymore. And so this last year has been pretty revolutionary for that for sure.

Russ Johns
So I want to break that because I'm fascinated by this because, uh, there's a lot more content around at least on social media and about fasting, you know, intermittent fasting. A friend of mine, Red O'Laughlin in Houston, he's an advocate for fasting. He's like this Brainiac on kind of health and fitness. You know, he's an old gentleman that's been studying this thing for years. And there's a lot of research around the fact that fasting actually resets some of your metabolism and some of the things in your body and I'm, I'm the mess it up if I try to even guess on all the facts. However, the biggest takeaway that I just heard you say is that it helped you dive in and really explore the cause of your binge eating and why that was a I want to it can I use the word question? Because it's a lot of people use addiction as a crutch to buy the symptom of something of the core behavior. Right?

Mike Casavant
Sure. Okay. I yeah, man. Like, my, it's all it's always I look in the sense of the easiest thing to do was the thing that was poisoning myself, right. It's like, Oh, I'm stressed out. So now I gotta go eat my face off. Or it's like, I mean, and I talked to friends of mine that are recovering drug addicts, and we have the exact same symptoms. I mean, legitimately. Yeah, I mean, that's kind of where I started to realize like, the downfall of portion control and sort of, I guess, like, what we've been taught in society and sort of the overall perception of what nutrition is, doesn't really, that conversation has is so different for someone that's struggled with their weight their whole life more, really These binge eats because it has nothing. And I truly believe this man. Like, I love food. I come from a huge Italian family from Massachusetts like, I I will never be apart like I've always surrounded it with guilt and shame and and i mean to this day my mom will call me go, oh my god, I just ate chocolate, it's going right to my head. And I'm like, Oh my God, Ma just, you know, it's so there's always this kind of constant negative narrative that is very challenging for someone that, you know, has struggled with their weight their whole life, because I realize that was always the go to it's like, oh, I'm happy, I'm gonna eat sad, I'm going to eat even worse. And so the easiest thing for me to do is always to just choose this bad thing to fuel something that was never actually fueling me. Um, and so it was definitely a crush that I knew I had to get rid of. It was like, man, Something's got to give because showing up to be the best version of my Self was impossible. Like, it was literally impossible. So I, I firmly believe that like the the crunch component that you just mentioned is is without question I don't consider myself an addict but I definitely feel like there are symptoms that are very similar to an actual drug addict and someone that's a binge eater very similarly because, again, you're both feeding an addiction but I don't consider it necessary addiction. I think it's a mind frame shift once you understand your body.

Russ Johns
Yeah, and the thing, is really easy to do. today's society is, you know, it's quick, easy, you know, drive by go through the drive thru, you know, grab a couple of burgers or something like that, and, you know, pizza, okay, let's, let's have it delivered. You know, it's, it's super, it's so easy to just get out of control. And so let's talk about the mindset or change in the shift that you have. You know, like myself, I have a tendency to when I get stressed out I like to work more so mine is my go to places working more. The side effect though is that I gain weight. I'm you know not fit, and I've been out biking every day's though it's me it was cut back on my intake, increase my activity and you know get back into a self care it has to do with self care it okay take care of yourself take take breaks, you know, you know, get out of the house once in a while, do some, you know, shift your activities and with binge eating or something along those lines. How did you know to go out and take a break? You know, it's like you're going out for a meal or you are going out for coffee Are you going out? You know, there's always re surrounded by food. So how did you mindset is is how did that shift for you? So it was here to accept the fasting piece of the puzzle.

Mike Casavant
You know, I took a very leisure approach to this and I remember reading a book called The one thing which I recommend to a lot of people and it just really revolutionized my thought process to figure out that I've been doing things so wrong my whole life when it comes to my weight and it's like I dude, I've been the biggest which was this last year to the leanest and like, and everything in between. and I look at all the regimens I used to do with like portion control, like chicken, rice, broccoli, like six meals a day I've done, I've done literally everything. And I realized for me, I said, Look, I come from the fitness industry. I was in the fitness industry for six and a half years. I'm like, I know too much and I think That was a problem to

Russ Johns
the curse of knowledge. Right?

Mike Casavant
Yeah, totally. And, you know, I've been out of that space for several years but I, I just I realized coming into this thing I said, Look, I've always approached training I was powerlifting and doing strongman training for years so everything is surrounding it even like physical activity was always this monumental like two and a half to three and a half hour ordeal, which was so unlike not sustainable for me to images and other things outside of that, and I realized I was making like this whole thing as a as a whole as opposed to a piece. So coming into this last year, I think I said right out of the gate, I don't want to even work out I don't know how I'm gonna feel fasting I want to understand let it consume me. And let me just go really free mind to just go let's just focus on this. I don't care about working out. I don't want to put pressure on myself to be like at the gym six days a week because I know I'm gonna fail if I do that. So I kind of took the opposite approach where people will say things like if you're going to start dieting or lifestyle change clean out your cupboard, I think it's polar opposite. I think you shouldn't avoid those things because that's all you're going to do is think about it, right? So in, in sort of realizing again, I remember March 3 at like 1159. At night, I'm eating a bag of chips like housing it because I knew march for it. I was starting and I'm like, I'm going all in, I'm going to do it. I actually went into my first fast with about 42 hours. And what was surprising being that big and letting you know, the food consuming in retrospect, I realized like it wasn't as hard as I thought it was and it really wasn't. And so I actually found like, the people around me had more problem with it than I did. So if I was going out to a meeting or something at dinnertime, and I was on a fast, they'd be like, Dude, why don't you eating and I'm like, Guys, I'm okay. And I found that being around it and the aroma always was like, Man, that smells great. That looks awesome. I have to I'll definitely remember this place so I can come have this, you know, at a later time. And I found that that was a huge saving grace for me. Because I think in terms of feeling like, if you're fasting, the thing you don't want to do is be around food because you're going to be tempted, I actually found that I wasn't really tempted. And to this day, like, I just finished a 96 hour fast last night. So Sunday to Thursday, I had, you know, I hadn't eaten for days. I doesn't feel different for me from day one to day four. And I think once you build up that in awareness, I've been around food for the last five days and stuff that I absolutely love. And I just said this the other day, I was like, man, I can't wait to have that because usually Saturday's are my days I'll have I'll be more loose and I won't be as like, I only want to eat this, this or this. I've kind of like I'll have a bit more thing I enjoy, and I don't hold any, any guilt or any shame around it. It's like I'm unapologetic about the things that I love and I'm apologizing about it don't. So it's kinda gotta have a good balance.

Russ Johns
Well, I love that. And that really kind of boils down to the idea that it's a mental game. It's the mental shift in your head that says, Okay, I don't need this to survive right now I need to allow my body to go without and actually, you know, do something else with my time and really kind of focus in the mental aspect of it. Because once you It's almost as if you, I'm reading, you know, tiny habits. Sure. And then there's atomic habits by James clear and you know, a few of the books like that It reminds me of that process. It's like if you're tied to a goal It's it's kind of challenging, but it's you can reach a goal and then, you know, after that goals done, where do you do? And if you develop tiny habits of you know, just a bit every day, you know, it's just like, okay, you went 48 hour fast and then you went, you know, last that, you know, you ended up with a 96 hour fast. Yeah, it, you build up that muscle of mentality to allow yourself to kind of shift your focus on food, and then focus focus, as you said, you know, focus on the inside and what is the what is the pain that I'm trying to fill? That is I can't quench this thirst or this appetite for my pain. And so you have to you have to look on the inside and and change your, state of mind in order to accomplish this goal. Yeah, so since what was the difference versus where you are now, in your mental state, depression, anxiety, stress, some of those things talk about those things, because it's important for us to understand.

Mike Casavant
Yeah, I think recognizing that, you know, binge eating is, I mean, I'm a binge eater. I know that, like, I know that I've eat my emotions, all those things. And, I think having the, I mean, I remember, I think I was probably two or three years old, actually being depressed. And I didn't know what it was, but I just remember that that feeling and like this overall. So I mean, that's something chemically i think is always will. I mean, it's in my family. It's definitely something that I don't necessarily believe it's my identity. I don't want to be my identity. But it's something that I know it's always been a problem. And until this last year, I mean, if you look at March 4, last year, it's March 4 this year. I mean, mentality wise, I am not even like if I couldn't even have a conversation if we were if I was talking to myself last year right now, I can't even relate, honestly. Because it's like they always talk about breaking yourself down to the to nothing to rebuild. I mean, I can't stress enough how miserable My life was for years. It's just, and no one no one knew it. I mean, sure, you can physically see that I was big, but I was really good with putting them the face on. I'm a really big personality. So everyone's like, Man, you're always happy. And like, If you only knew what was actually going on, in my head right now, I actually, just, even to this day, it's still hard for me sometimes even just talk about things that are bothering me. And I've always, I'm a musician too. So like, that's always been another Muse for me to just kind of dive into and actually, you know, it's interesting. I was on tour from 22 to 27. I was signed when I was 22. To record label and play music all over the world. That was my biggest passion in life, right?

Russ Johns
Yeah, mine too.

Mike Casavant
Yeah, man, and awesome. But I just remember getting depressed

Russ Johns
we have the LinkedIn band.

Mike Casavant
Dude, seriously, I know. It's funny. It's always like an arm's length away because I have ideas. I'm always wrestling. But I I hadn't picked up my guitar in like six years. I just I got like, really? Yeah, it was it was insane. And all my friends that are in professional bands and stuff like, couldn't believe it because I write songs. I'm a songwriter for sure. And I got away from it for so long. And then this last year, back in April, around my birthday, I just said you know, again, I'm I'm also a little over a month into fasting and all of a sudden, my mind starts getting clearer and it's like, I realized the things that I was filling it with prior Like we said, right, it's like almost like you no longer have that crutch and so it's like well what can I now add into this thing which is for me it was going to Guitar Center and finding this acoustic that and I'm I love playing acoustic bands my own way of ever write? Because I think it's very much the the foundation for me of every aspect of my life where I don't need the glitz and glamour or like all the entire professional setting. I just need an acoustic and I know the concept I see all the drums I see the entire arrangement on the rarest form of like the simplest foundation. It's amazing with the whole ensemble of things. And so I think even with music, I don't use it as a crutch with modern technology. I actually I think it's I go the polar opposite way. So I think in terms of light, kind of how I approached this fasting year and everything else. Last April, I allowed music to come back into me because it came it was like, that's a thing, what are you doing what you like, it's not even a matter of a lot. It's like, if I'm not writing music, I realized that's where I can start getting really down the rabbit hole of just, I feel extremely detached from life because that's the way I can express myself. And I think between that and writing poetry, those are two areas where I've always really, really shined in just to be able to express myself and I think this last year really opened that up that portal again, to me to realize all the things that I was fueling myself negatively, all of a sudden realized, wow, like, I actually want these these other things that are so much better for me and make me such a better person. And I think that was a huge, huge factor for sure.

Russ Johns
Well, you know, and to kind of amplify what you're saying is I'm doing exactly What I'm doing right now, as a result, my you know, my falling three stories and going from being a drummer to having a broken arm and no, no, you know, and so the create art in some of the things that had to take place for me kind of wiping the slate clean and saying, okay, I can't do that. So I have to do something else is somewhat like if you're, if you're depressed, you're thinking about it, the creativity part of the process, and the first thing that you should be thinking about, right, right. Because if you're expanding and doing what you love, it's harder for depression to take ownership of your mindset. Right? And it sounds you know, and I'm not sure this is you or this is the case, but For me, it's it's when I wasn't doing music and I wasn't creative, I wasn't putting that. That piece of the puzzle in my life when I was when it was outside of my life is when I got most depressed. Yeah, you know, any notice it because lowly it just it's kind of like this little thing that creeps in and it's like okay, it takes some space and all of the things you love are out of your life and and then you get depressed, then you go to things that are unhealthy and whether it's smoking, drinking, whatever it happens to be, and it's this. and I understand and appreciate kind of some of the people that puzzle and I applaud you and thank you for sharing this and you know, I hope that I hope this message helped them lands on somebody that needs to hear it right now because it's important to me to share these kind of conversations. And concepts with people that other people out there that are there people out there changing or doing something else and you know, we all have a journey to go through and so it's really important for us to know that you're not alone. You know, these things are these things are out here. So there's a lot of people. Hey, I want to I want to take a second Mike and just appreciate Gabriel's on here, Heather's here, Wendy's here. You know, Lori Knudsen pavlina. Carl. I see Kenyatta is in the house. Leslie Osborne. Probably a lot of these people that you already know. Derek Monroe, Jeff young, so much for being here. Melissa Preston Angie, thank you, Sherry Lally always supporting if you have questions about This and you're not the mic just go ahead and reach out to Mike and you know he's an awesome individual that is just really pouring a lot of his his journey into the story here and I just want to thank you so much for being here Mike and so what's kind of in the future is this is this you're going to start getting back into music and what's what's the deal?

Mike Casavant
totally bad So yeah, I mean my I think my fondness at this point is just the fact that I've kind of found something that's definitely a part of me now with with fasting and I still got another probably 3540 pounds to get to my goal weight which will be wonderful. And then, you know, do I see myself at that point doing 90 sixes and that kind of extremity? Probably not. I probably would be more around the 24 hour or 48 hour kind of somewhere around there. I definitely like I don't like eating every day at all. It's it doesn't work with me. And that's definitely something I'll, you know, I'm going to kind of continue for sure. And then music I've got a probably written almost 400 songs this last year that I'm looking forward to kind of, you know, just diving back in the studio, this is coming here to work on a bunch of music. And then, you know, kind of this in this process, we started working on a new new company that we're developing right now, which is more around CBD oil. So we're kind of focused around. And that's sort of space and it's been kind of something I've been fascinated by. And I found a lot of, you know, positive effects from that as well. So that's kind of the main stuff I'm really tied into right now.

Russ Johns
you're up in the northeast, as I recall. So yeah, so I'm

Mike Casavant
from Massachusetts, but I'm in Midwest in Milwaukee.

Russ Johns
Yeah. Okay. Do you know a Ariel Mongolis

Mike Casavant
I'm not sure

Russ Johns
I should connect you guys. He's doing training and CBD as well. So it's a he's very advocate for that. And also Rex Powers here in Arizona as well. So Oh, and it's just there's a lot of things that we don't understand and a lot of benefit people, but labels on that may not necessarily hurt so, yeah, yeah. So the reality is, you know, fasting doesn't necessarily need to be 96 hours it can be 24 can be 48 at times and it what's the emotion or what's the feeling that you have from your physical layer versus your mental state when you're fasting and what what's the experience people have other people have had that you've talked to

Mike Casavant
Yeah. You know, I think it's kind of it's kind of, it's different for everyone. And I think it just comes down to their tolerance and some people will experience like, their first and it's funny cuz I didn't experience any of this like people and sometimes in the first couple of days or if they're doing a 24 hour fast or like oh my god my head I have a headache. I'm starving, I just want to house food. And like, I think it's also just comes back to the individual and so for me, I'm, I'm an extremist on every level, I just, I just am. So if I do something, it's never just like, oh, I'll just have a piece of pizza. Like I'm gonna eat the whole, like, everything I do is always been, you know. to the full extremes And, and I'm okay with that. Because that's just it's, it's who I am in retrospect.

Russ Johns
you just need to understand and how your body works and how your your mindset works as it relates to that writing. That's an amazing feat for Yeah, any writer right? There's a 40 is not 40 is not enough. I'm gonna wrie 400

Mike Casavant
Yeah, well and then it's funny because I had this old iPhone six s plus that like it was I would delete I'd like no apps on it because I had this little recording app and I kept it on my rifts on that. And, and then, you know, started, transferring that over to a Dropbox eventually, but it's just, yeah, man. It's like this. I think like the best thing I can sort of tell people that do fast that I talked to about it or they're interested in it. Just don't set an expectation from the beginning. Like if the guy started working with Nick said, Hey, man, I want you to fast for 96 hours that I wouldn't have done it like I know I would have failed. So I just said he said look, I want you to fast for as long as you can. until you feel it. That's it and I was like, okay, and like I think that whole societal pressure of like, Oh my god, I didn't you know, I didn't work out this way on my lose it you know, all these things. It's just I think we we already set ourself up to fail when we put so many, so many, like diligently fine tuned details that don't really matter. And I think kind of going back to the one thing and sort of that focus of just Well, what's the one thing that will universally changed my life in all aspects, but I knew it was my health. So it's in the trajectory to get there. I found I consider, I believe I found the simplest way to maintain the most optimal wise brain neuro transmitters in your mind to overall sense of wellness and while being with one, just the discipline, I've realized how great it is to feel that I don't need it. Even though I need we need food and nutrients to survive. I don't need it in the sense that I want to feed my addiction, right? It's like when I want to eat something out of my norm until I do, I don't care and I don't feel like We can hold those stigmas around it anymore because it just like, once once you sort of achieve that, like, you know, your first 24 hour fast or 18, whatever, you start to see like, wow, actually, this isn't me this is not bad. And then you the next day, you're like, hey, maybe I'll see him around 26 hours or 27 and it's just one step at a time. But the but the almost everyone I talked to that, that have been doing prolonged fasting or whatever, they say the same thing. You hit this wave where it's no longer like it's a I can't say it's an out of body experience by any stretch, but I just felt a little too righteous i think but I think it you really feel like you're kind of in this flow state because your body and organs like you were mentioning earlier, develop an entire a new it basically recycling in getting rid of old cells, bad cells and recycling new. I mean, if I can look at pictures from when I was 22, I'm 36 now I look other Younger now than I did back then. And it's wild. Yeah. And so it actually they've stated that it's one of the most like anti aging, best regimens for anti aging. So I was like, I'm all in dude.

Russ Johns
Nice, nice. Well, thank you so much for being a Mike it's, I want to track your, your journey and, and really I want to, I'm serious about this idea of creating some music somewhere because yeah, I mean, there's lots of platforms that you can actually collaborate with other people in the, around the country and take some tracks and stuff like that. And I'm a nerd, like I got into technology so I could actually learn how to write Midie, you know, program in Ableton Live and some of these programs that are guys doing dubstep in Houston number years ago and you know, there's always an outlet, there's always a way that you can do this. So for everyone here, I I appreciate that Angie says that I once was fasting and swear that everyone decided to grill out every day. Every meal. it's like you know, it's all in here. It's a lot of what we're doing. Have you ever read Ben Hoff bubble breathing?

Mike Casavant
Yeah, totally. He's someone that I'm fascinated by because I tried the meditation thing it doesn't work on my brought my brain it just goes too much and it's very challenging for me to slow it down and I kind of realized I don't want to slow it down. So his breathing techniques are fascinating and it's actually I have a friend of mine that's going out to study with him for hours live with him for about a month or so and develop cold like a basically like a bath house for cold remedies. And I was like, that's insane, but like people are all about it. So yeah, it's really fascinating to me.

Russ Johns
Yeah, yeah. Well, Mike Thank you for the broadcast I want to thank everyone that joined us. Thank you I, you know, if you're listening to the replay check out Mike Casavant he's fun, encourage him, you know, connect at conversations around this because mental illness, depression, all of these things plus our lives this is everyday stuff you know, we're all dealing with it. Everybody's you know, not happy and Instagram, you know, it's like, Don't look at don't look at person look at look at how you can help other people along the way and assist other people in in doing things and setting the example and setting the tone so I just really, I really appreciate and applaud you for what you're doing Mike and keep it keep us informed and updated on your progress and and I love that and also maybe share a track just saying.

Mike Casavant
Drag, dude you know you know what actually I share a few tracks you know that we know we should do we should we should write a song for your for your show.

Russ Johns
Deal I love that I know. Definitely some intros and outros. Yeah. Because this is this is a kingdom just because we're not in the physical same location we we do have a community. Oh totally I have. I have prior broadcast on Facebook. So if you're on Facebook and you want to join the community, and track down the pirate broadcast, I got the pirate syndicate fired up. So I want to create shows for other people and help them along. And also I'm going to be doing some I'm going to be doing some workshops because a lot of people ask me all about you know how I do things. So I'm going to be putting that out there as well. So love to have everyone share that out and and appreciate the support for the community and help each other out. So Mike So Mike, kindnesses, cool, smiles are free. And you Everyone got to enjoy the day.

Mike Casavant
Yes sir.

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