This morning's discussion is with Trevor Eddy.
Trevor is the Co-Founder & CEO at Leadsforward. When he’s not focused on business strategy, investing and building multiple companies, Trevor enjoys time in nature, traveling with his wife, and sinking his teeth into delicious, ripe fruit.
Trevor can be spotted early in the morning, with his feet in the grass, taking some deep breaths as he prepares for the day.
He’s also a plant-based food enthusiast and loves to create nutritious, mouth-watering dishes that leave people feeling happy, healthy and full of energy.
Trevor loves nutrition, weightlifting and exploring the unknown which is our topic for the day.
Trevor's company is Leadsward: https://leadsforward.com/
He also has 1 e-book and is working on more!
Welcome Trevor!
This is Part 1/2. Continue to part 2 for the next video.
Below is a transcription of the video:
Violaine: Good morning Trevor! Actually good afternoon for you! We are in the same time zone!
Trevor: Good afternoon! We are!
Violaine: How are you doing today?
Trevor: I'm doing very well! Thanks for having me on.
Violaine: Well thank you for joining me on this interview and I'm very excited to go over this as I know it's a very passionate subject for you.
So to get right on, can you please introduce yourself? Including your background, specialty, the number of years you've been working and doing research in your field.
Trevor: Okay, well thank you for that question. I have been a bit of an entrepreneur for the last 15 or so years. I launched my first web design business, post college.
I've always sort of been driven by an entrepreneurial spirit which was instilled in me by my parents who run a business together.
In 2016 I founded Leadsforward. I lead a team of 15 and we specialize in effective lead generation and marketing for contractors and Home Service Businesses through SEO and marketing.
Beyond business I'm very much into nature, health, nutrition , meditation, going within and fitness. Part of my research has been just improving my overall health and well-being. I am a plant-based food enthusiast, if you will, and even recently published my first recipe book. So that's a little bit of an intro, to start there.
Violaine: Okay, well thank you for the detailed intro. You are passionate about health, I can confirm that. Can you explain what role does your diet play in your life and share how it intertwines with your personal and professional life.
Trevor: Okay great question! Well, I see the diet as more of a lifestyle, not just a set of rigid rules that I have to follow. So embracing this, specifically a whole food plant-based approach, has become pretty natural for me and is shaping both my personal and professional life quite a bit. It has quite an influence. This shift for me was influenced by just encounters with different information and people and experiences and it's been very transformative. So treating my body like a temple is really a key part in this philosophy.
Mindful eating, as well, has just brought incredible benefits. I really benefited from the increased energy primarily. The physical well-being and I've been illness free for the last five years. Nothing, not even a tiny cold. Previous to that, I was sick every flu season, so that's incredible.
Professionally this shift to this food system has had a huge boost in focus for me; productivity and inner peace is a big one, as well as enhancing my ability to contribute more effectively in my business and in my life, so yeah.
Violaine: Well thank you for answering this. We'll take a little bit of a side topic but I believe working out and maintaining a regular physical activity is important to you. How do you combine it with nutrition? and does it help you in your physical development? Meaning muscle gain. I say that due to the fact that, you know, plant-based doesn't always resonate with muscle gain like we hear in the industry.
Trevor: Yes, there's a lot of stigma around that. Like you imagine little skinny soy boys, as they call them Which is unfortunate because you can get everything you need and more from a whole food plant-based diet. I personally have a genuine passion for working out and weight training specifically. It's been a part of my life for the last 10 years and really tapping into this mind-muscle connection and the raw presence during these workout sessions.
So it's not like a chore for me when I have to get up every morning and go to the gym. I truly love it, enjoy it and I prioritize strength training five times a week and that's just motivated by the significance of muscle building for overall health and longevity. That's a big reason why I do that.
As far as nutrition, especially with a plant-focused, a plant-based diet, this is key for performance in the gym. My performance has never been so good and I have gained, I mean my weight has fluctuated, but in the last three years when I've been focusing on weight training and this way of eating, I have gained about 30 pounds of muscle. Of lean muscle. I have a much lower protein diet and higher carbohydrate diet but I would say that the hydration from these foods, from the fruits and veggies, along with the essential nutrients, the vitamins, the minerals, the anti antioxidants and so on, that you really can't find an animal flesh, this is what supports my optimal performance along with everything else found in plant foods, including pure amino acids which is what the body really is, looking for not dense protein structures, so yeah.
Violaine: Well yes that was going to be my next point. What are the key differences you've noticed between a plant-based diet and a more standard diet especially in terms of health outcome. You've already mentioned a few, and if I can just quickly mention, it’s just because, due to diets’ popularity that we see often on TV, I feel that it's a whole marketing thing. We hear keto, we hear all sorts of new trendy diets, so we don't know what to follow.
If asked to, would you ever consider reverting back to a non- plant-based diet or because now, with the benefits you're experiencing, you’re pretty much convinced that this is the key for you?
Trevor: Well I look at it as it being a very personal and individual journey for everyone to discover for themselves. What's right and optimal for their body and their life. I remain open minded, of course, and open to the idea that there might be something else and another experience that shifts my perspective but, having eaten this, the standard western diet, fairly on the healthy side for 30 years, and then completely changing things in the last four years to this whole food plant-based way of eating and lifestyle. From these last four years of experience with this way of eating, after coming off this standard diet, this approach or this way of eating really minimizes resistance in the body. It is the most easily digestible, assimilated food that we can find. It reduces inflammation significantly and just boost - a huge boost - in overall energy strength and recovery which is a big one for the gym, like you can't achieve this with an animal based or omnivore way of eating from my point of view. I feel so much lighter and overall happier and at this point, I would not consider reverting back based on how I feel in my overall health.
Violaine: And would you say it's high vibrational food? Do you experience lightness too in that way? Due to the foods that you eat? They're high vibrational, they're living food, they radiate energy and therefore are also more digestible and just easier on the body?
Trevor: Yes of course. I mean these foods that I've switched from are much lighter in general. I mean they are light essentially, everything is if you really get down to it. But these foods are much purer and easier to digest and shifting to this really impacted my energy overall. And my emotional and spiritual sort of well-being by replacing these foods.
The western diet, the meats, the dairies, the eggs, they're so dense and acidic forming, the gluten and of course the processed foods. This is what we've eliminated and you replace that with organic high vibrational, yes, they have a high frequency. Fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts and some seeds. I experienced an immediate increase in freed up energy. That's what's happening, less digestion is going on, less processing and this translated into a sense of mental clarity, lightness and from my experience, reduced inner mental chatter and an increased presence in my life. That switch just brought a remarkable decrease in reactivity and a heightened mindfulness and that's one of the huge benefits of eating this way and eating light like this. You're not eating less! But the foods themselves are much lighter and cause way less resistance in the body.
Violaine: Thank you for all this details I know I I want to be a little a bit of a sideway here. Now with what you just said, can you explain how this diet and this food have influenced your emotional and spiritual well-being?
Trevor: Yes, I sort of just covered that a little bit.
Violaine: The emotional side.
Trevor: It's all connected really, the mental, spiritual, emotional. It's all one thing. They're separate aspects of one thing, but from the emotional side this reduced mental chatter and reduced reactivity has allowed me to tune into higher vibrational emotions and really just feeling an overall sense of calmness and clarity from that from a spiritual perspective.
Embracing this kind of lifestyle has deepened my connection with my environment and everything within it and the shift allowed me to tap into a more profound kind of spiritual experience and deeper realization of the connection that already exists with the Divine. I think I attribute this transformation to the energy that's liberated when you give up processing these unhealthy foods. It's something that just comes along with this journey, so it's pretty cool.
Violaine: Thank you for those details and I would say that you know, it's pretty much an undercover type of diet even though a lot of people and more and more people are searching for healthier lifestyle, healthier diets but…
> Continue to part 2 for the next video.