[00:00:00] Carl Lanore: [00:00:00] hey. Hey, welcome. Come back to another episode of super human radio. Today's a really special show. They're all special shows. I know most of you probably think, Oh, call everything you do is special. Well, maybe not, but today's show really is special. I'm going to be joined by a guy. I am proud to call a friend during the first hour.

[00:00:20] Named Dan Mayfair, those of you been listening to for the show to the show and he liked the time. Remember Dan used to come on the show regularly and do the ma the motivation hour. And he was, he was great. We're gonna talk to him. And he's going to be featured in a mussel saves lives episode. You know, I've been talking about how muscle increases health span and lifespan, but that's usually from a metabolic standpoint.

[00:00:47] But that's been shown in science, but the one thing that hasn't been shown in science is something that I've been talking about for a long time. And that is the sheer mass on your body is protective. And we're going to talk about [00:01:00] that today. Then, then later in the show, we're going to be joined by Shannon Pena.

[00:01:05] Uh, the gal who, who invented the quest protein bar. Think about this for a second. Shannon is amazing in the kitchen. She can take decadent, desserts, remove all the sugar and still make them taste great. And that's, that's a town and an art and the quest boss started in her kitchen. She was making them for her personal training clients before her husband, Ron Penna said, you know, I think we need to do something bigger with these.

[00:01:33] That's really where quest started. And then last year the company was sold for $1 billion. She's going to start doing regular episodes, helping us learn to cook. And make foods and snacks and desserts that tastes like they're bad for you, but they're not remember that. Remember, Elisa's a spot when she's doing the quest protein bar spot.

[00:01:54] You'll think you're cheating, but you're not. Well, Shannon knows how to do that. And she's [00:02:00] going to teach us how to do that later in the show, before we get started, of course I have to thank. My title sponsor and that's legendary foods without them, the show would come to a screeching halt. And I say that with all honesty.

[00:02:17] That's why I asked you at the top of every show to show them some love, go to eat legendary.com. Use the code SHR save 10% off. One of the things that Shannon created for, for legendary foods. Is there nut butters, they taste like they're loaded with sugar. They taste decadent, they taste sweet, they taste so frigging good that you can eat them jar like as a dessert, but they have no sugar added.

[00:02:45] So try any of the great nut butters and you can thank Shannon for those inventions as well. Culinary inventions, uh, eat legendary.com the code SHR 10% off. Check them out.

[00:03:00] [00:03:00] So now let me bring my, uh, guests on camera. Those of you who've been watching the sh watching my show, listening to my show for at least the past five years or so have been introduced to Dan  in the past. How are you doing Dan?

[00:03:15] Dan Matha: [00:03:15] I'm doing great. Carl. It's crazy to think it's been that long.

[00:03:18] Carl Lanore: [00:03:18] I know, right?

[00:03:19] Because you went to Florida with the WWE, but we'll get into that. We'll get into that. So first I have to tell people my Dan made the story. I train at a little gym here in Louisville, Kentucky called Louisville athletic club. And there's some hardcore trainers there, but I wouldn't say it's a hardcore gym by any means.

[00:03:37] And one day I walk into the gym for a normal training routine and I see this guy standing up at the squat rack. Cradling 405 pounds in his arms and doing searcher squats, but not only is he doing church's squats, but he's looking at himself in the mirror and he's smiling and he's not smiling [00:04:00] fake. It's like, he's smiling because he looks like a kid.

[00:04:03] They just walked into Christmas land and I'm like, who is this guy? So. Later on that day, we bumped into each other. We start talking and a friendship came out of that. That is still strong today. A day I knew the moment I met Dan that he was destined for something great. Cause he's not only super strong.

[00:04:25] He's not only super handsome, but he's highly active Teligent and he thinks about things. He's a deep, deep thinker, and that's why we used to do the Maita motivation hour. Where he would actually come into the studio and he would come prepared with such great insights that we would talk about. And if you haven't heard those shows, go back into my archive and just search for Metha motivation and you'll find so at when Dan was here in Louisville, he was with the OVW, which is the farm team for the WWE preparing to be a wrestler, but his, [00:05:00] his, uh, sports.

[00:05:02] History goes all the way back to the Cincinnati Bengals. So let's start there. You played for the Cincinnati bangles, right? Yeah. Talk briefly about that.

[00:05:11] Dan Matha: [00:05:11] So I finished up, uh, at the, at any university of Pennsylvania where I was an all American played football there finished up that season and, uh, started training for the combine pro day to get brought in by a team.

[00:05:27] Right. Uh, I was a priority free age. I got brought in by the Cincinnati bangles. Uh, had a brief little stint with them. Uh, wish it would have lasted a little bit longer, but I had, uh, I'd failed a physical. That kinda kept me from getting in there a real longterm last I had

[00:05:45] Carl Lanore: [00:05:45] a, uh,

[00:05:46] Dan Matha: [00:05:46] laboring tear. Yeah. And at that point in the game, especially unless you're like in the first two rounds in the NFL.

[00:05:54] You really are disposable because you've got a thousand other guys every year that are going to come in. And the only time money is [00:06:00] guaranteed in the NFL is when somebody is injured. So it's just one of those things. Uh, it didn't work out quite the way I wanted to, but it was an awesome experience. And, uh, one that I treasure and I'm privileged, I'm greatly proud of.

[00:06:13] And I've taken with me into the rest of my life from there. Uh, I still thought I wanted to pursue football. You know, I kinda, I still had the dream I wanted to get back there. So I went up to Canada, CFL, played with mantra, Allah wets. And that's really where the wrestling journey began. Yeah. When I was up there, because I didn't realize it at the time, but I was really just chasing a paycheck and kind of chasing them.

[00:06:38] It's like, it's almost like, kind of related to when you're in a relationship and you love somebody. But for whatever reason, you guys kind of grow apart and, you know, deep down in your heart, like you need to end it, but it's like that emotional attachment is still there and you're just not ready to let go.

[00:06:52] That's kind of where I was at when I was in Montreal. And I had a dream one night that I [00:07:00] left Montreal to start wrestling. Well, the next day I woke up and I got released unexpectedly

[00:07:06] Carl Lanore: [00:07:06] the team.

[00:07:08] Dan Matha: [00:07:08] And it kind of blindsided me Lil legitimately saw us sitting in the airport, drinking some airport beers, kind of depressed agents calling me and trying to get me on a couple other teams that were looking to bring me in up there.

[00:07:20] And I kind of just thought that dream kind of came to me. It was just coming over and over. And I just was like, this has gotta be assigned. You know, this has gotta be a sign. I don't know. You want to call it God, you know, you'd call

[00:07:35] Carl Lanore: [00:07:35] yeah. The universe. Yeah. Whatever energy connectedness. Yeah.

[00:07:39] Dan Matha: [00:07:39] I'm just like, I think I, and one week we'll talk about this accident.

[00:07:44] Something kind of similar. I felt the same way that same presence kind of come over me. And almost as if it was teaching year, Eric guiding me and I, and that's what I felt like was happening. And I was like, Oh, this is, this is one of those moments in your life where it's like, okay, this chapter was awesome, but it's over.

[00:07:59] And [00:08:00] it's time to write the next one. So I told my agent, thank you for everything. Yeah. Moving on with my life. Yeah. And I made the decision that I was going to start wrestling. So. I, uh, at the time I didn't have, I didn't have any money. I, you know, I just had spent the last of my money on those airport beers.

[00:08:16] Carl Lanore: [00:08:16] So I called good investment. Right.

[00:08:23] Dan Matha: [00:08:23] I needed those airport beers. It was worth going negative 42 in the account.

[00:08:28] Carl Lanore: [00:08:28] Right. Right.

[00:08:29] Dan Matha: [00:08:29] So I called my grandpa, told him I was in a hard spot and my grandpa viewed the awesome human being that he was. Okay. I got a spot in the basement for you kind of went back there, sat in the basement for a week, sulking slash researching.

[00:08:44] And, uh, I found OBW, uh, decided, okay. If I don't know how I'm going to get into the wrestling business. But I need to, I think I just need to go to a school start training. And I just know, I knew in my heart that [00:09:00] if I could get in front of the right people, everything else would take care of itself. So I found OVW a couple months later and I ended up moving down there and started training.

[00:09:10] Sure enough, I was there. I think I was there. I started training there for like four or five weeks and I got a call from the WW right away.

[00:09:18] Carl Lanore: [00:09:18] Yeah, you were, you were, you were here and then out like that quick. Yeah,

[00:09:22] Dan Matha: [00:09:22] yeah, yeah, it happened. It was. So it was like, it was meant to do that. That was meant to happen.

[00:09:28] Those things were like meant for me to get there, to do that. And I just, I knew, right. Like I knew that if I got in front of the right people, everything would take care of itself and sure enough, it did. And they called me, uh, the person who's in charge of like, Talent evaluation Canyon seaman hit me up and was just like, Hey, I know it's super short notice, but in 13 days we've got a, we've got a trial.

[00:09:57] Now, if you're not, he would be, well, he was like, if you're not in [00:10:00] shape, let us know. And then we have another trial in six months. And before he get finished that I just was like DMA, the This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Send me everything. I'll see you in 30 days candidate.

[00:10:10] Carl Lanore: [00:10:10] Right? You were like in the gym one day we were trained and talking.

[00:10:15] And then like a couple of days later, you're like, I'm leaving for Florida. I'm going to go work with the WWE. It wasn't even like you, you weren't even talking about it up to that point. Like, Oh yeah. We know Dan is going to go. It was just like overnight you were gone.

[00:10:30] Dan Matha: [00:10:30] Yeah. It was, it was a pretty quick situation.

[00:10:32] Um, which I kind of like, you know, I I'm, I'm one of those, I'm a doer. I like to just, I like to think, like you said, I do like the thing, but a lot of times, you know, thinking. Thinking sometimes as it's, you know, you can think too much. So sometimes like the action. So that was one of those. And that's what you do, all that preparation for that's, you know, you're talking about me doing them, surgery, squats, getting trained, training my body and my mind.

[00:11:00] [00:10:59] It's like, if you're in shape, you never got it. You know?

[00:11:04] Carl Lanore: [00:11:04] Yeah. You're ready. You're ready. You're ready to jump out of the plane whenever they need you to, you know, you used to do these box jumps. I was just telling my buddy this morning. So what are you about? Six

[00:11:15] Dan Matha: [00:11:15] I'm six, seven,

[00:11:17] Carl Lanore: [00:11:17] seven. Okay. So you're six, seven.

[00:11:19] And when I met you, you, you are a lot thicker. You were carrying a lot of body weight, but you actually have trimmed down for the WWE. So now you're just all muscle. Um, but, but you are heavier then. And you used to stand about three feet away from a box that had to be at least three feet or more high and just leap up on it.

[00:11:40] Like it was nothing. And I remember thinking to myself, this guy, like, like, uh, you know, 10,000 years ago, you would have been a gladiator. You know what I mean? You would've been the guy with the big sword, you know, like cutting six people in half in one shot. I mean, like you were, your genetics are just insane.

[00:11:58] I

[00:11:59] Dan Matha: [00:11:59] would have, [00:12:00] so that's one of the things that's true. I always say I was, my ancestors were guys riding horses, you know, we were the, we were the weapons of mass destruction before there was guns and bombs and stuff. So, um, Hmm. And I did an interest. I did a 23 of them. My ancestry, uh, was quite interesting.

[00:12:20] I thought I would, uh, cause my grandparents are Italian immigrants. So I thought I was going to have much more Italian than even, I only have like 15%. I had quite a bit of, uh, like German and Scandinavian and which, I mean, I'm sure most people aren't surprised by that, but it was, there was like an interesting little, uh,

[00:12:41] Carl Lanore: [00:12:41] well, but you gotta remember Italy back in the day was like the United States is today.

[00:12:44] People left their countries to go to Italy because Italy was thriving. It was the center of the Renaissance. It was the center of. Of, you know, uh, art and, and everything good. Like my grandfather had red hair and blue eyes on my mother's side. He was an orphan. [00:13:00] So he ended up in Southern Italy, but his people were from North, probably from the aspens or something like that.

[00:13:05] So, you know, it's being from Italy. Doesn't always guarantee that you're Italian. Let's just put it that way, you know?

[00:13:13] Dan Matha: [00:13:13] Yeah. Yeah. And there's, you know, there's like you said, it was, you know, I mean, if you go back as far as like the Roman, you know, the Roman Republic, like you said, it was the epicenter of the world.

[00:13:23] So, uh, yeah, I do. I explosiveness those type two muscle fibers have always been something that I just kinda inherently had, even before I got into athletics. Um, And I always found, I know a lot, especially when with Lyft, like any type of football players, a lot of training, kind of a thrown into the Olympic lifts a lot because of the, you know, the great explosive benefits that come from that.

[00:13:48] But I was fortunate enough to kind of learn, uh, you can train all of those, that triple extension through jumps and throws, uh, without having to learn a whole new skill, [00:14:00] which is Olympic lifting. And without having to put any of the stress that comes

[00:14:04] Carl Lanore: [00:14:04] with and the potential injury, which is what you're talking about.

[00:14:07] A lot of guys injure themselves. Once they start doing Olympic lifting, it's all formed

[00:14:12] Dan Matha: [00:14:12] because don't people don't realize that is a sport in itself. So you're teaching these college a lot of times, high school, collegiate athletes. Or even just, you know, uh, recreational lifters that a sport in itself, but you're not giving it its due process.

[00:14:29] You're just training it. But like there's a skill acquisition that is going to take place in Olympic lifting on top of the physical acquisition that is going to take place. Um, so yeah, I w you know, I'm a big fan of John Spock shouts. Uh, I would do, I like a lot of explosive work. It primes your nervous system.

[00:14:49] It gets you ready to hit any type of maximum lift or even submaximal lift it. Just, it kind of primes everything. So, uh, with that process, where were we at? WWE?

[00:14:59] Carl Lanore: [00:14:59] Yeah. So then, [00:15:00] so then you go to WWE and you go down there and you work hard. I mean, you literally disappeared from everybody's radar for quite a while.

[00:15:06] And then you started slowly coming back out, like you had, you had an Instagram page and all that sort of stuff. You worked hard while you were there.

[00:15:14] Dan Matha: [00:15:14] Yeah, man. So it was like, Starting back over at ground zero. Uh, I entered, you know, I had all this success from football, um, and you know, I was a big fish in a big pond.

[00:15:29] And then now I'm going to the WWE and I'm learning something that is completely foreign. And I, you know, a lot of people probably look at wrestling and they just, they think if you're a good athlete, you'll be able to just be. I would be a good wrestler, but there's, yeah, there's a lot of physical skills that you have to learn, but the physical skills pale and conspirator, and to comparison to the, uh, psychological and like [00:16:00] mental aspect of performance, because it is, you say performance and that adds in not only is it a performance, it's a performance in front of a live audience.

[00:16:11] Which increases the variables exponentially. So it is something that takes quite a bit of time to learn. I had to kind of almost bury my head into the sand and just get tunnel vision on learning a new skill again. And they had to be done. You know, you're down here in Orlando, Florida at the WWE performance center and just training training six days a week, seven days a week.

[00:16:38] Carl Lanore: [00:16:38] So many hours a day. Yeah.

[00:16:40] Dan Matha: [00:16:40] When I first got there, I was training from, so I'd get into the building around eight class. My first class would start at nine and I wouldn't leave there until eight o'clock at night. So you would be getting the, you'd have a three hour ring session. You'd have like an hour and a half in between.

[00:16:58] You'd hit the gym. [00:17:00] Then you would have, you would hit extra. There was like extra ring sessions that you could get. They were, they were, I guess they were, uh, Voluntary, but I would hear these extra rain sessions. I would do that for about an hour and then I would rush upstairs shower, eat real quick, change my clothes.

[00:17:17] And then we would go to the promo club. Yeah, it had, depending on that, you're there 60 hours and it's just rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat then the weekends come Thursday, Friday, Saturday. You're doing all of those things now. And then you're now traveling. So now you're traveling here locally in Florida, anywhere up to three or four hours away from Orlando, traveling to a venue, setting up the ring, watching people put matches together.

[00:17:45] Once you get enough experience yourself and you're privileged enough to start having matches, then now you're having matches now. So now you're going setting up a ring, thinking about what you're going to do, choreographing and talking about, you know, what you want to get out of the [00:18:00] match. How do you want to have the match?

[00:18:02] Then actually Todd comes to execute the match, right? Which is its own stressor in itself. Through with that coming back through the curtain, show's over tearing down the ring, getting in your car and drive it back home, rinse, repeat three days in a row.

[00:18:20] Carl Lanore: [00:18:20] You basically the band and the roadie at the same time.

[00:18:25] Dan Matha: [00:18:25] Yeah, man. It's the, so the developmental hustle is no joke. You are, you are an entertainer, you're an athlete. You you're hard labor you're, you know, light sound. You, you learn everything. I can set up a ring, I can set up lights, I can set up audio. I can put a match together. Uh, you know, I can, I can do

[00:18:48] Carl Lanore: [00:18:48] that.

[00:18:48] Were you getting paid at that time, Dan? Or was it just like the privilege of going to school there?

[00:18:54] Dan Matha: [00:18:54] Yeah. No. So they put you, so you were on salary when you're in the developmental program and you know, you work [00:19:00] out that, uh, you worked that deal out with your, uh, okay.

[00:19:05] Carl Lanore: [00:19:05] Your handler, whatever.

[00:19:07] Dan Matha: [00:19:07] Yeah. Well it's really just, you, you handle everything.

[00:19:10] They don't, they don't like

[00:19:11] Carl Lanore: [00:19:11] it. Top of that. You have to be your own agent as well.

[00:19:15] Dan Matha: [00:19:15] Yeah, you do. You do have to be your own agent. They don't like it when you get an agent. So.

[00:19:22] Carl Lanore: [00:19:22] Yeah, they don't want you to, they don't want you to smarten up too fast. Now

[00:19:26] Dan Matha: [00:19:26] those developmental contracts are not friendly. They're not very friendly to the talent and the, you know, before there was really wasn't any other companies to compete with.

[00:19:37] So they really kind of had you by the balls. Yeah. Unless you came in with a big name and you could kind of throw your weight around, they kinda, they kind of took advantage of you. But it's one of those things where it's like, do you want it or don't you?

[00:19:51] Carl Lanore: [00:19:51] No. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. So you were at the w E WWE training camp for how, how long altogether?

[00:19:58] I

[00:19:59] Dan Matha: [00:19:59] bet. So I was there [00:20:00] just under five years. I've been trained. I've been wrestling for six, if you count my time with OBW. So when I left the WWE, but with the WWE, I was there almost five years.

[00:20:12] Carl Lanore: [00:20:12] Okay. And so, um, At that point in time, what, wasn't your stage name? Like Dorian something.

[00:20:20] Dan Matha: [00:20:20] Yeah, so they had me actually performing under my real name for quite some time to have made, but then I joined a group called the outliers.

[00:20:29] It was me and another wrestler named Reddick Moss. And Robert Strauss was our manager. And when they put me into that group, they decided for whatever reason they wanted to actually give me a wrestling name. So we, uh, I came up with the name Dorian Mac, uh, I sent them a list of names. Actually. I had a list of names.

[00:20:46] Dorian was one of them. They liked Dorian. So then I came up with the last name Mack and, uh, so that's what we rolled with. So yeah. Uh, w been performing under the name, Dory and Mac.

[00:20:57] Carl Lanore: [00:20:57] Right. And you've actually, I mean, you've [00:21:00] you been tell us some of your mattress had been televised at that point in time, right?

[00:21:05] Dan Matha: [00:21:05] Yeah. So I had a well now, so I never was on TV. Some of the, so some of my stuff did you on TV? I was pretty strict lead developmental, not had some really awesome experiences. A lot of, they liked taking me on the international trips where we would, you know, whether we went to Saudi Arabia, Dubai, China, India, they would take me and I would run home, run the trials with them and I would.

[00:21:32] I would take the guys through all these, you know, the roles and really the very basic fundamental stuff. And I would kind of help scout analyze who were people that were going to help the company that would bring me along with those. And they were awesome experiences. One of the cool things I got to do was when I was in Saudi Arabia at the greatest Royal rumble was I got to actually be in the, a.

[00:21:56] I got to be in the greatest Royal rumble. And that was a super cool [00:22:00] experience. 70, I think it was like 77,000 people, um, King of doula stadium outside, super sick, like the a hundred yard ramp. And it was a very awesome experience. Got to spend 14 days in Saudi Arabia as well, which was unique. Cause I got to be on the ground, uh, and actually like talk to people in Saudi Arabia, which was.

[00:22:23] For resting. Cause we have as Americans, we have our, you know, our perception of other countries in the world that a lot of times are kind of stewed or manipulated

[00:22:36] Carl Lanore: [00:22:36] just like they just like, they do have us. It's the same thing, right? Yeah,

[00:22:40] Dan Matha: [00:22:40] yeah, yeah. Very much though. And so it was cool to be on the ground, you know, and to talk to people and travel the world and you kind of just realized that people are all the same.

[00:22:50] For the most part, it doesn't matter where you are in the world. We all kind of have the same wants and needs and desires. So that was an awesome experience. But there was, I got to, yeah, I got some [00:23:00] TV time there and that particular incident.

[00:23:03] Carl Lanore: [00:23:03] So now let's fast forward a little bit, before we go into this first break, I want to set the stage.

[00:23:07] So you're basically experiencing a level of success that you want. Life is going great. Um, you leave the WWE, right?

[00:23:18] Dan Matha: [00:23:18] Uh, I did leave the WWE, but I didn't leave the WWE until after my car.

[00:23:24] Carl Lanore: [00:23:24] Okay. Okay. So, okay, great. So now the car accident comes into the discussion. This is where we're talking about muscle saves lives.

[00:23:33] So where were you going that day? Were you just leaving training? Where were you going?

[00:23:39] Dan Matha: [00:23:39] I was actually on my way to pick up some, uh, I was on my way to pick up end tables for my apartment for, cause I started, I had just started a well at the time I was just getting ready to start my podcast, the drop. So I need, I was looking for some cool end tables to kind of accentuate the [00:24:00] studio.

[00:24:01] I was, I actually found a really nice set on Lego. I think it was her Facebook marketplace is one of the two. Reached out to this lady. She was about 30 minutes away from my house in Florida. So I drove out there, saw them, pick them up and then on the way home that's when the accident.

[00:24:17] Carl Lanore: [00:24:17] Right. And now, so for the, for the fans that are listening to this, you use, you used to not wear seatbelt, right?

[00:24:23] Dan Matha: [00:24:23] Yeah. Yeah. My mom would always yell at me. People would yell at me. I wasn't a big seatbelt guy.

[00:24:30] Carl Lanore: [00:24:30] Okay. So you're driving and what happens?

[00:24:33] Dan Matha: [00:24:33] So I'm driving to some head back to Orlando. Uh, this is a rural area in Florida that I'm in, never been here before Sorento, Florida. I'm driving down. It's about 7:00 PM and I'm driving on this long road and there's not any side streets.

[00:24:49] It's kind of fields everywhere and I'm approaching this intersection. And as I'm approaching an intersection like any intersection, I'm starting to slow down, preparing to stop. I get a little bit closer. I [00:25:00] don't see a street light. Get a little bit closer. I don't see a stop sign. And then I start thinking of myself, that's weird.

[00:25:05] I don't see a street light or a stop sign, but in Florida they do have these intersections where they only have stop signs for one direction, which are always making me feel kind of leery. I always feel like those was super dangerous, but I was just like, Oh, that's what this must be. And so I'm like, that's weird, no stop sign, but I let off the brake.

[00:25:25] And I continued through the intersection. The next thing I remember on waking up on the concrete and I see there's three people hovering over me. There's like mangled cars in the distance and ambulance is rolling up and there's people everywhere.

[00:25:42] Carl Lanore: [00:25:42] Yeah. So that way, if the ambulance is a rolling up, you out for a while, that means,

[00:25:46] Dan Matha: [00:25:46] yeah.

[00:25:47] Yeah. However, I mean, whatever the respond time it takes for MTS to show up to a two to a spot is what it is. What was the time that it took me to [00:26:00] kind of start realizing or waking up from whatever I was knocked out.

[00:26:05] Carl Lanore: [00:26:05] Okay. So the EMT show up. What happens next? Do you, do you try to stand up? Do you, are you, yeah,

[00:26:13] Dan Matha: [00:26:13] so I actually tried, so I actually tried, so when I first came to and saw the people standing over me, I'm just like what the, what I was just, you know, I was just driving on the concrete, like what is happening?

[00:26:25] And this is all very, like this memory is super blurry to me. So I'm like getting up and I get up and the lady,

[00:26:32] Carl Lanore: [00:26:32] wait, wait, wait, I want to, I want to say, I got to emphasize you get up. Yeah. Okay, go ahead.

[00:26:40] Dan Matha: [00:26:40] So I I'm like getting up and the lady in the middle, I don't know. She told me she was something to do in the medical field.

[00:26:47] Cause I can't remember specifically what she said her job was. She told me, her name told me her job title, which was. Something as a nurse. And then as I got up, she kinda like grabbed me around like my head and [00:27:00] neck, almost in a supportive way, but like looked me like she was like a laser beating me.

[00:27:04] Carl Lanore: [00:27:04] Yeah.

[00:27:04] She wants to see your pupils bull.

[00:27:06] Dan Matha: [00:27:06] Yeah. And she was pleading with me. Like you were just in like a severe car accident and we need to keep you a mobile until the ambulance gets here. Right. And when she said that I, you know, me being, uh, Just being in athletics and in collision sports, I knew that she was right about that, even though I had no idea what was going on, I knew that the song was wrong.

[00:27:29] So I was just like, okay. And I got back down then the next memory now I don't remember anything from there till being on the stretcher and getting into the ambulance. And then. That's when my memory came back to me. So I kind of have this little glimpse of the memory of like all the kind of chaos going on around me.

[00:27:51] Right. Next memory I have is being in, getting put into the ambulance. And then that's where my memory comes back.

[00:27:59] Carl Lanore: [00:27:59] Yeah, [00:28:00] you were in shock obviously, and your body was trying to protect itself and it's going to shut down. So I want to take our first commercial break here. When we come back, I want to talk about you arriving at the hospital.

[00:28:12] Because we have a picture of the vehicle. So Dan corrected me. He's six foot seven. How much do you weigh at this time? Dan? Through when the car accident, two

[00:28:22] Dan Matha: [00:28:22] 85 to lighting

[00:28:24] Carl Lanore: [00:28:24] and Dan is solid muscle, he doesn't carry, he's never really carried any fat. He's been thicker and we'll muscular. And there was a time where his neck looked like a small tree, but Dan does, Dan is lean.

[00:28:37] So if he's two 80 at this time, he's a super muscular 280 pound, six foot seven superhuman who just got thrown through that windshield that you see right there. You could see the crumble of the car. The impact was intense. Dan. Entire body ejected through that windshield, which means, which means his head hit the [00:29:00] windshield first and open that windshield up.

[00:29:02] So then his big shoulders could come through. And then the rest of the other 280 pounds of him could, could launch through that windshield. So I'm betting when we come back, we're going to find out that the doctors are wondering, how is this guy not dead? And this is where we get into the topic at hand.

[00:29:20] That muscle does save lives because I am going to propose that any lesser of a human being doesn't remember waking up because he doesn't wake up. He just dies there. Stay tuned. We'll be right back with more superhuman radio and Dan Mason.

[00:29:40] Dan Matha: [00:29:40] This is the superhuman channel, doing reps with the weight

[00:29:43] Carl Lanore: [00:29:43] of the world.

[00:29:47] Welcome back. We are, uh, I'm leaving this image up for a little while longer because I've been talking about how muscle saves lives for over a decade now. And originally [00:30:00] it was about longevity and health. But it started to occur to me that I knew people who were in disastrous situations. I can tell a story about myself that clearly the only reason why we didn't suffer greater damage to our bodies is because muscle creates physical resilience.

[00:30:21] It allows you to be battered, thrown through a windshield. I mean land on the pavement, thrown through a windshield head first land on the payment pavement. Stand up afterwards and have to be told. No, no, no, lay down. You're injured. It's like, no, I'm not injured. I'm standing up. No, no lay down. And you're right.

[00:30:40] You know, she's like, you could have a fractured vertebrae in your neck. You you're up. You could actually cause yourself some paralysis that would linger for years and years. So it's the right thing to do. And just get back down. But I can't tell people often enough that people used to make fun of me.

[00:30:58] When I would say having more [00:31:00] muscle on your car, Marcus actually will protect you from being injured, but people like you show this. So now you, you roll into the hospital, you roll into the hospital and by the way, we have a comment here. But whoever posted this, your security settings, don't allow your Facebook username to come through.

[00:31:18] So if you wouldn't mind posting your name so we can give you credit and attribute this comment to you, this is an incredible story. My goodness. Thanks for sharing. Yes. More people should understand the value of muscle today. So you roll into the hospital on a gurney. What happens?

[00:31:35] Dan Matha: [00:31:35] Yeah. So I'm rolling in there.

[00:31:37] Now in the process. So I'm 30 minutes away from Orlando trauma. So I'm in as ambulance hauling ass on the way down to a Orlando trauma. And at this point, this is where I'm gathering as much information as I can talk to the EMT. Like what happened? Where am I? Am I okay? They started telling, I mean, what they think is wrong, you know, you were in a car accident, you were [00:32:00] injected through the front window.

[00:32:01] And when they said that that was the first time that I realized what just took place. Right. When they said you were ejected through the front window and I'm now strapped to a girl, you know, my neck is colored down. My head is strapped

[00:32:14] Carl Lanore: [00:32:14] down on. Yeah,

[00:32:17] Dan Matha: [00:32:17] right. Oh, immediately, immediately. When they said, you know, you were in a car accident, you were rejected and we're worried that your neck is fractured.

[00:32:25] You have a broken neck. Immediately. I start moving all my extremities, start moving my fingers, start flexing every single muscle that I possibly can pecs that glutes hamstrings. I'm just trying to get as deeply connected to all the muscles that I have to just make sure that they're all firing properly.

[00:32:43] Um, they, so they do, they finally get me there. I get in there they're the team, like it was like a scene from ER, there was like a team waiting for me. As soon as I get off, they start poke and prod and asking a hundred million questions running as many [00:33:00] tests as they possibly can. Finally, they get me to the CT scanner.

[00:33:05] We get into the CT scanner. They run off of full length scan of my spine of my cranium of my pelvis and my left elbow. Cause my left elbow was pretty jacked up and. I get out. I get set into the, into the ER ICU room and I'm waiting there for about 30 minutes until the doctor gets the scans reads on me.

[00:33:27] He comes back in and he goes, dude. I don't know who you are or where you're from, but there's nothing wrong with,

[00:33:35] Carl Lanore: [00:33:35] I love it. It's like, it's like, you must be from another planet because you just went through a call windshield and landed on the pavement and we could send you home now. Like, could you imagine like, like the astonishment on the doctor's face used, he's used to somebody coming through an accident like yours, like, Oh yeah, you're going to be.

[00:33:55] Paralyzed on the left side of your body for the rest of your life. And you're going to have to get a colostomy [00:34:00] bag and it's like, dude, I don't know who you are, what you're made of. I love it. It's it's so freaking great.

[00:34:07] Dan Matha: [00:34:07] Well, the funny thing, so, uh, fast forward a little bit to one, I ended up leaving. So I got into the first time check I got, when I was in the hospital, I heard it was 9:00 PM.

[00:34:18] So the accident happened around seven ish. I ended up first time check. I get when I'm in the hospital's not on PM. I believe the next morning at 11:30 AM. And I walked out of the house. I got up, I put my feet on the ground. I stood up. I had to go to the bathroom. I peed. And I had to pee to prove for what?

[00:34:41] Carl Lanore: [00:34:41] Yeah. Yeah, because you're blood that you're passing. Otherwise you have to come back if it's backing up.

[00:34:45] Dan Matha: [00:34:45] Yeah. So I agreed. And then they were like, you were good to go. They wanted to give me a wheelchair to roll out, but I was like, I don't need it. And I walked out and I left, but when I left, before I left the nurse, that was looking after me and she goes, [00:35:00] I'll never forget this.

[00:35:02] She goes, Donna, I've been on this floor for 16 months. Now I've never had somebody come in here that it hasn't had to have multiple surgeries or go ahead and die on.

[00:35:14] Carl Lanore: [00:35:14] That's amazing.

[00:35:15] Dan Matha: [00:35:15] And when she said that to me, that was like, it was all the whole night was very emotional for me. Cause it was just like, I should be dead.

[00:35:25] Like I should not have had that. Like I, that happens 1000 times that accident happens 1000 times, 999 times of debt. Or worse I'm paralyzed. Right? Right. Cause in my opinion, there's worse things than death, right? Someone like me, I will anybody. It's just, you know, you lose the ability to move, speak. You don't function as a normal human being.

[00:35:50] I just there's worse things than death that could have happened. And 999 times it doesn't, we're not sitting here talking anymore girl, but that one time. [00:36:00] That's how it did. And I feel like, you know, we were talking about earlier about, you know, a higher power we're talking about God universe, mystic, divorces, whatever I felt like on that day, whoever that, that greater the creator it was was just, he said, it's not your day.

[00:36:18] Carl Lanore: [00:36:18] You know, I, you know, I know that in order to resolve the feelings, like my son just went through a situation. Uh, CLA uh, hiking in 97 degree temperature. And he, he, he suffered from heat stroke and like, they had to take him off the mountain. Like a ranger had to take them off the mountain. They were like, dude, man, you're going to die if you stay up here.

[00:36:42] And he wants me to keep going and he cried the next day, because all of a sudden you become overwhelmed. Like, wow, like. That moment. I'm dead. I'm not here today. Thinking back about it. It's something overwhelming about that. The recognition of your own mortality is a very, very [00:37:00] intense observation to happen retrospectively and we need, and we want to feel like, well, something intervened because clearly like I'm dead otherwise, but I'm going to say something and I'm not challenging.

[00:37:14] Anybody's faith. When I say this. But the only reason you lived is because Dan made that has done something for decades, right? That the average normal nonsense superhuman doesn't do. And that is you. Okay. Trained with extreme weight for decades and your body is resilient. Your body could go through a frigging wall and where it would smash everybody.

[00:37:39] Else's bones you'd end up with surface scratches from the, the sheet rock. So while, while it's great to say. There's a higher power at work here. It's also even better to realize that you had total control and input on your outcome. You did it, you, you saved your own life. [00:38:00] So

[00:38:00] Dan Matha: [00:38:00] without a doubt, you know, the, like I said, I felt like there was a higher power at work, but without a doubt, the training that I've done, the physical, you know, from, from the weight room, From, uh, you know, training my body since I was 12 years old, I've not missed one single

[00:38:19] Carl Lanore: [00:38:19] day wrestling to think about it.

[00:38:21] You get blindsided, you have football. How many times did you get blindsided in football, where you just get banged? You didn't even see a guy coming. I've

[00:38:29] Dan Matha: [00:38:29] been training my body in collision sports since I was 12 years old as well. So 15 years of football, six years of wrestling. My body has been completely conditioned to it, you know, and we have the, we have the data now that proves, uh, augments of linemen defensive linemen.

[00:38:50] They're about a yard of heart and they collide into each other. But those collisions on average are the equivalent of a 30 mile per hour car acts. [00:39:00] Now you can have up to 50, 60, 70, he plays in a game where that happens, where you're having those. Many car accidents, not including all the time, all the hours of practice and wrestling.

[00:39:15] Anytime you hit the ring, like a bump up in the ring, that's what we call. Anytime you get flat back onto the ring, that collision that goes through your body is equivalent to a car accident. I've been training my body

[00:39:26] Carl Lanore: [00:39:26] to be in car accidents,

[00:39:30] Dan Matha: [00:39:30] training my body, to be in this, you know, and then. Through context clues.

[00:39:35] I realized that when I went through the front window, cause I had zero memory of the accident zero. It was the first thing. The last thing I remember is this is a weird intersection. The next thing I remember is waking up on the concrete, like where am I? I have zero recollection of any of the accident.

[00:39:52] There was no, like last second. Oh, shits were break. Nothing. Don't remember any of that. But what I put together [00:40:00] three bet from everything afterwards, because I have a gnarly golf gash on the back of my head. So I had, so I did have a concussion. I did have to get five stables and 12 stitches, and then I had road burn down the left side.

[00:40:12] Carl Lanore: [00:40:12] Sure.

[00:40:13] Dan Matha: [00:40:13] Yeah.

[00:40:13] Carl Lanore: [00:40:13] Which,

[00:40:14] Dan Matha: [00:40:14] which I have healed at an incredible pace, like the way I've been able to heal, even from those injuries. It's far surpasses. What I even thought I was going to heal that. And I, I, you know, I've had some injuries that I feel pretty quickly from it's crazy how quick I recovered from those, which I contribute to taking care of my body since I was 12 years old training eating properly, hydrating appropriately as well.

[00:40:43] I attribute all of that to my ability, to not, to not be paralyzed, to not. And then to have the ability from the little injuries that I did have to recover it at a super gym, you know, I felt like I had a body pool ring and it was like healing proper, you know what I mean? And [00:41:00] I, I attribute all that to training.

[00:41:03] And then the context clues that I was getting to was. When I went through the window, all those years of training of being able to control my body, you know, my proprioception, I must have went through the window and turn to like roll because you see, my elbow is jammed and my shoulder was jammed at, so what happened was that one I had to brace myself like this and just the force was obviously two 60 mile per hour.

[00:41:31] Car accident was just too much for my body. And then as I, I, I landed, I, my back hit and then my head whiplash dolphins. So

[00:41:39] Carl Lanore: [00:41:39] you actually, so you actually get, when you amid air instinctively, your body went into the role movement because you knew like I've been here before, this is what you do when you're up in the air coming down.

[00:41:51] Dan Matha: [00:41:51] Well, so to go back to the WWE and part of the training we do before we go through a little, you know, [00:42:00] warm up and one of the first things we do every day, we're in the ring. As we roll, we do gymnastic rolls. We do somersaults, we do back rules. We can one our rules, short rules, long rules, any type of body control, where you're jumping and throwing your body through the air, and then controlling it, landing very gymnastic S.

[00:42:18] I've been doing that for six years. I've been doing thousands and thousands and thousands of reps, and they do that to train your body so that when cause sometime listen, we're working together for the most part in the WWE, when your work has a wrestler, you're working together, but shit happens. You got two big sweaty dudes.

[00:42:35] Sometimes you get tired. Sometimes you get put in a weird situation and you're falling in a very. A disadvantaged situation. So the ability to control your body as well as essential. So just instinctively I knew without even thinking. That I had to like roll to protect my body. Yeah. And that's what I, you know, I think that was another proponent into meat being blended [00:43:00] as safely as possible,

[00:43:01] Carl Lanore: [00:43:01] completely in that

[00:43:03] Dan Matha: [00:43:03] training a body, you know, that's another aspect of training.

[00:43:06] That's one of the things that I tell young people, young athletes, all the time, they worry about getting strong, explosive building muscle. Those things are great, but none of those things mean a damn thing. If you don't have the ability to control your body as well, you know? And so between my ability to control my body, and then also over the years of just building, not just building, just lifting and building muscle, but dense, functional, you know, like my skeletal system, my bone density.

[00:43:37] It is through the roof, the nutrition that I put in my body as well. Like all of those things played a major, major factor to be able to literally walk away from something that would literally kill anybody

[00:43:49] Carl Lanore: [00:43:49] else. You know, Dan, uh, before we go into the break, I want to tell people that you have a podcast now.

[00:43:59] Uh, we've [00:44:00] kind of mentioned it alluded to it a couple seconds already. The podcast is called the drop. And it's on YouTube, but very shortly, you're going to be starting a Patrion, a paid program where you actually will give people a challenge kind of thing to, to, to, to help them manifest the best possible physical, mental, spiritual aspects in their life.

[00:44:21] Right?

[00:44:23] Dan Matha: [00:44:23] Yeah, man, it actually kind of, so that, that program has a lot to do with just things that I've learned, but it started here on superhuman radio with the Mayfair motivation. That made it the motivation segment that we used to do every month, back in the day, it kind of, you know, I started doing a little little make the motivations, a, a, you know, about two, three minutes worth on my Instagram.

[00:44:45] Once I kinda got back into social media and they really, I didn't realize how impactful they were to people. I just kinda was doing it to just create some content that I was hoping was valuable. But one day, one week I didn't do them. I said, you know, I [00:45:00] had something and I just didn't do them. And I had like an outcry from a lot of the people that fall.

[00:45:05] Carl Lanore: [00:45:05] Yeah. They look forward to it. Yeah. Yeah. They look forward to it.

[00:45:08] Dan Matha: [00:45:08] So the Patrion is kind of built after the meet the motivation. It's just a, it's a 30 day challenge that is going to help people build. Habits that are going to help change their emotional state and then hopefully, you know, whatever their goals are to achieve.

[00:45:25] And these are all things that I've either gotten from other world class performers or that I've implemented myself. And I figured during these crazy times with the core team where people's habits and schedules been shredded to pieces, I just thought what better time than now to be able to put something out that's going to help people, because I personally have had to re.

[00:45:48] Reorganize my schedule because obviously the accident and not working right now, but then also being in the core team, like everybody else, like my routine has been kind of thrown in the air and it's just like I [00:46:00] had, I had to recenter and regather myself. So these were some of the tools that I've used.

[00:46:05] So that's what I'm putting out there and building that community too than just selling a book.

[00:46:10] Carl Lanore: [00:46:10] I want to take our last commercial break. And when we come back, I want to talk about how you exited the WWE. I would, if I was like a manager at the WWE, I was like, I would have been like, We can use this, right.

[00:46:21] We're going to roll him in to the ring. We're going to announce that he, you know, that he had a horrible car accident, went through the windshield show, the pictures, people gasping, and we roll you into the ring. Like, so do you can say farewell and then some, some wrestler like says, yeah, it's a good thing.

[00:46:35] You're. You're crippled now because I would have kicked your ass and then you literally break the casts off and you step up and you jump in the ring and you bash them. Like we would, that would have been, that's like, Oh my God, the plot thickens, that would have been perfect. I can't believe they did Jews that I can't believe it.

[00:46:51] Dan Matha: [00:46:51] They should have had you, you should have been the Booker Carl. They should have had you right in the story,

[00:46:57] Carl Lanore: [00:46:57] man. I have a lot of talents. I just, uh, I just got to [00:47:00] focus them all. I look, we're going to take a less commercial break when we come back, we'll talk about Dan's, uh, exiting the WWE and of course, check out his podcast on YouTube, the drop and, uh, check them out on Patrion.

[00:47:11] And we'll be right back with more. Don't forget, we're going to be joined by Shannon Pena and just a couple of minutes to talk about how to cook. Decadently tasty, desserts and foods, without them harming you, they took supplements around.

[00:47:30] Dan Matha: [00:47:30] This is the superhuman channel evolution just

[00:47:33] Carl Lanore: [00:47:33] got kicked up a notch.

[00:47:39] Welcome back. We're talking with Dan Mayfair, former WWE II, former football player, former hard training individual. Lifelong athlete, who at six, seven and 290, a 280 pounds was thrown through, through the windshield of his car and walk the way [00:48:00] unscathed, other than, you know, some stitches he needed on the back of his head.

[00:48:03] I mean, this is, this is miraculous and this is why muscle saves lives. It's not just about metabolic when it comes to muscle, it's about the kind of thing that takes you from being physically injured when disaster happens. And it's another worthy reason why people need to get into the gym. I've been saying muscle is metabolic currency.

[00:48:24] Get into the gym and make a deposit today, but it's more than just metabolic currency. It's it's, it's the source. It's your, it's your life source. It really, really is. So Dan, you ended up leaving the WWE after. The car accident.

[00:48:38] Dan Matha: [00:48:38] Yeah. So there was a little bit, so leading up to the car accident I had, like I said, I'd been with the WWE for just about five years and, and not last year I was with the WWE.

[00:48:52] I was, I was frustrated with, um, their lack of, I guess, a [00:49:00] lack of wanting to do anything with me, or at least showing initiative of wanting to do anything with me. And there have been some, you know, some behind the scenes games that had been being played and some people weren't being honest or they were saying things that, uh, weren't true, you know, whatever.

[00:49:16] However you want to look at that. And it was becoming frustrating and like anything, especially something such as wrestling. It, it's not just, it's not just a job. It's it's. It's I'm losing, like I'm damaging my body. Just every time I step in that ring, the ring itself is very destructive to the human body.

[00:49:37] Let alone all of the physical contact that goes into that. So at a certain point, I just kind of was like, I'm not happy with format. I think based on my skill level and the performances that I've been putting on. That I need to be. I thought I should be in a different position than when I'm in. I had done any and everything that I possibly could to [00:50:00] showcase that I was a team player.

[00:50:02] And then I wanted to like, you know, I wanted to help the company. You know, I have an asset, I have an ability in that talent, but it was very unique to a lot of people on the planet. I don't know too many people to bring skillset like me. And I would like to help the company, you know, flourish. And, but. I can't keep doing this to my body.

[00:50:22] No matter how much I love and love this, I can't, I just can't do it. It's just, it would be a poor business decision. It'd be a poor life decision, to be honest with you. Cause there's only so much damage. The human body can take even one such as mine. So I had been frustrated. So I had asked for my release in February, and then that car accident happened March 28th and then a week after my car accident, they had given me my release.

[00:50:48] During the day, they'd given a bunch of people that are released at that point in time. They, uh, they laid off like 40% of the, of the company's work force. So what do you,

[00:50:58] Carl Lanore: [00:50:58] what are you looking at? [00:51:00] Looking, looking forward to now you're starting, you've got this podcast. You've started. You're going to put all your heart and soul into that for now.

[00:51:05] Is that, is that going to be it? Yeah. Well, that's not

[00:51:08] Dan Matha: [00:51:08] it that's. So the podcast has always been a, uh, that's just been. Something in the back of my mind or quite some time, that's like a passion project of mine, um, that I am going to put my heart and soul all of that, but I've also, you know, that's a slow grind in terms of monetization.

[00:51:27] So I gotta be able to pay the bills I had to find we'll find other ways to do that. Um, I've been training people, uh, either in person or virtually, I've been doing quite a bit of virtual training, Google Hangouts, zoom, things like that. I'm doing classes with people. Um, I'm also writing up workout plans for people.

[00:51:47] I've also, like I said, the Patrion as well, I'm putting together this, this community. Cause one of the things that I kinda made that help made me want to kind of move on from the WWE, if things weren't going to [00:52:00] progress the way I want to. So I felt like I've been being very selfish where it's like, everything's been Mimi, Mimi.

[00:52:07] In my life and deservingly like rightfully so. I mean, you know, the things that I had to achieve and wanted to achieve you, you almost have to be selfish. Right. Uh, but I felt like there was a sector of my life that was missing and that was like giving back to people. And I feel like a lot of people have given to me over my lifetime, whether it was teachers, coaches, or just guys, such as yourself, where the universe just puts people into my life and they just drop little.

[00:52:35] Knowledge or, or acts of service that really kind of propelled more.

[00:52:40] Carl Lanore: [00:52:40] Oh, VIP passes to the Arnold. Okay.

[00:52:43] Dan Matha: [00:52:43] Yeah, that's it. I

[00:52:47] knew that I had a blast. That was the, that was the first time I ever went to the oral.

[00:52:51] Carl Lanore: [00:52:51] Dan. I believe that I believe in you and I believed in you for a long time. And like I said to you earlier, it doesn't, you may not have the target. Where you were [00:53:00] in your eye yet, but you're destined for greatness.

[00:53:02] There's no diamond doubt moment. There was never any doubt in my mind about it. Really it's. So people go and check out your podcast on YouTube. It's called the drop. And then also look for him on Patrion where he'll have some special, uh, aspects of what he does and how he wants to teach people available to.

[00:53:22] Paying patrons there and I'm sure we'll have him back on the show again. I'm glad you're healthy. I'm glad you, uh, flew through that window. Like a Superman and live to tell the story really,

[00:53:34] Ron Penna: [00:53:34] really

[00:53:35] Carl Lanore: [00:53:35] very, very happy with you. All right, Dan. We'll talk soon. Okay, brother. Thanks. Bye man. Okay. All right. We're going to take one quick commercial break.

[00:53:42] And when we come back, we're going to do some cooking lessons. Yes. Because we all want to eat things that tastes good, but quite often the things that taste good, aren't good for us. Well, here's a gal who really, uh, is an artist when it comes to this kind of stuff. [00:54:00] And that's Shannon Yorkton, Penner, and I believe we're going to be joined by her husband to Ron Penna, a guy who was a, actually a mentor to me.

[00:54:10] If you can, can you imagine I'm 62 years old and he's my mentor. And it's true. Stay tuned. We'll be right back with more superhuman radio.

[00:54:22] Dan Matha: [00:54:22] Spit

[00:54:22] Carl Lanore: [00:54:22] that out right now.

[00:54:24] Dan Matha: [00:54:24] This is the superhuman channel.

[00:54:30] Carl Lanore: [00:54:30] welcome back. This is so cool. So I'm being joined by Shannon and Ron Penna. How are you guys doing? Let me get your audio set up. How are you? Perfect. Perfect. Oh, there we go. Hi, Ron. How are you doing well. Good, good, good. And who do we have? There is that Fiji and that's Maui. Maui. Okay. Okay. I can't see her.

[00:54:51] Oh no. Now I see her head. She just picked when you sit in the hallway, she picked up her head. Yeah. Okay. I want to thank you for joining today. Um, I, [00:55:00] I, I wanted to do this for a long time. In fact, I think I'm. You know, one time I texted you a year or two ago and said, why aren't you on the cooking channel?

[00:55:09] Because we need people who have your skills on the cooking channel, because all they show on their foods that lead to chronic disease. Um, but more importantly, it's not just that you are so skilled in the kitchen, but, um, I don't know. I don't think I'm lying when I say that. Your protein bar led to what would become a billion dollar company and that's quest nutrition.

[00:55:34] I mean, you was, you were for people who missed that first interview, you were making the quest bar and selling them to your personal training clients. And Ron, you will like this far is just too good to keep to ourselves. We need to do something with it. Is that the reader's digest version of what happened?

[00:55:51] Pretty

[00:55:51] Shannan Yorton Penna: [00:55:51] much. Yeah.

[00:55:52] Carl Lanore: [00:55:52] Okay. Okay. So it's, you know, it's not, it's nice to learn, you know, I'm a big proponent. I always say, if I want to learn to play the [00:56:00] piano, I want to learn from a concert pianist, not from somebody who's just moderately better than me. And so if we really want to learn how to cook and bake and make things that really aren't in, in.

[00:56:15] Innately good for us because of all the sugar and the garbage in them, but then have been modified to be healthy. You really are the best at that. In my humble opinion. I'm saying that I'm not asking you and I've watched you and I've watched, well, I watched, I remember one day. I was fortunate enough to train with Ron one morning.

[00:56:35] And after that, we walked into the kitchen and you made us this dish with eggs and tortilla chips. And, and it was, it was amazing. And you did it like this, this, this, this, the next thing I know, you're cleaning up the pan and I'm like, this looks like I just got served at a restaurant. I mean, she makes it look effortless.

[00:56:51] Right, Ron? She does. Okay. So we're going to start to share your recipes with the audience. And in [00:57:00] fact, this entire recipe will be both available. On the superhuman radio website in today's show, as well as a link out to Shannon's Instagram page, where you can learn even more recipes that she makes. And this particular recipe is for a cinnamon bun or cinnamon roll, whatever you want to call it, that really does taste so much like the really bad ones for you that you get at the mall.

[00:57:27] But it's really good for you. So just, just kinda real quickly go through the recipe, the ingredients in it. And at first, cause I think there's a shocking ingredient hint here that people will not see coming.

[00:57:40] Shannan Yorton Penna: [00:57:40] Um, so, well, we'll start with that. The shocking ingredient is mozzarella cheese. Most people wouldn't think putting mozzarella cheese or cheese of any kind into a dessert, but.

[00:57:49] Um, I'm not the one who came up with this, this isn't, you know, uh, my ideas, my more fun recipe, but, um, there's something out there. Oh, fat head pizzas or fat head [00:58:00] dough, and people make pieces out of it. It came along in that whole low carb Quito recipe world, and I just kind of morphed it and used ingredients I want to use.

[00:58:10] So I tend to use, um, mascarpone cheese, a lot ricotta cheese. Um, in a lot of my recipes, not just this one, um, you can use cottage cheese. If you want to bump up your protein, it's all kind of what you want to do. You just have to be willing to play. Um, and me being someone who likes to play with food and ingredients, it's a fun thing to do and see what you come up with.

[00:58:31] Um, so these cinnamon rolls are your, your basic cinnamon roll cream cheese type thing. I've done Khan Virgin. I've done. Fruit versions with some berries and stuff inside. So it's almost more of like a, what we call like the strawberry cheesecake cinnamon roll. Um, so you can play with it and make it what you want.

[00:58:48] But the basic dough recipe is almond flour, uh, mozzarella cheese and cream cheese. That's your base. That's really all. That's there. Um, the mozzarella cheese, [00:59:00] when you melt it down, allows for that, the plasticity, it gives you more of a dough like consistency. So when you bake it, you know, it, it firms up, but it gives you that stretch.

[00:59:10] Carl Lanore: [00:59:10] So the recipe is on the website. So don't, we're not going to focus on the recipe right now. We're going to focus on some aspects of it, but so have you always loved cooking or did that evolve when you were competing? Cause you were, you were a very, uh, effective competitor at one point in time as well.

[00:59:28] Shannan Yorton Penna: [00:59:28] Thank you. Um, no, I, I used to bake with my mom when I was a kid. So my mom used to cook and do things like that. So I learned some of my little skills from her, but we, we, you know, we bet we made real banana bread and real chocolate chip cookies and things like that. Um, obviously as I got older and into training, which, you know, I started training weight training around 16.

[00:59:49] So by the time I was in my early twenties, I was always looking for low carb options. And, um, I've always baked a played and cooked very, uh, we'll call it cleanly or low

[00:59:58] Carl Lanore: [00:59:58] carb.

[01:00:00] [00:59:59] Shannan Yorton Penna: [00:59:59] Um, and that kind of know when I started competing, that's what morphed me into finding sweet treats that I could eat that didn't have the cards or that would sort of fit my, I don't want to stay fit my macros so much, but just fit my lifestyle.

[01:00:14] Dan Matha: [01:00:14] Um,

[01:00:15] Shannan Yorton Penna: [01:00:15] and that's what led me into making, um, Protein bar. I used to love the idea of protein bar food on the go quick, easy. When I was a personal trainer, I used to eat protein bars in between clients. It was just easy. It was hard to get a whole meal. Um, and protein bars are just so full of carbs and sugar and things like that.

[01:00:31] So, and sugar alcohols, all the stuff like you tend to not either want to eat or they upset you or whatever it is. So that's, that's what took me into that making quest bars.

[01:00:40] Carl Lanore: [01:00:40] So, um, and, and the, the quest story is a very interesting story. Uh, because, like I said earlier, you were making these bars for your clients.

[01:00:51] Ron, when you were eating these quest bars, did you think to yourself, you know, people would love these, we need to do something on a bigger scale or was it [01:01:00] just like that? It just kind of organically get bigger and bigger?

[01:01:04] Ron Penna: [01:01:04] No. Well, I mean, one of the things we always have to be careful of is we've been eating low carbs so long.

[01:01:08] We've learned not to totally trust her, to expose. So I had a software company at the time and I was taking her cars and two guys that were, you know, they were eating Doritos, they were drinking, you know, regular mountain Dew and Snickers bars. And the next day I went back and they're like, can we get some more of those?

[01:01:23] And I remember the guy saying to me, I'm thinking that's a disconnect here. These guys that I'm looking around and just telling junk food, wrappers. Yeah. Brought more in and they ate them all. And that's when it really said, you know what? This actually may go beyond just the weird freaks that need really clean diets.

[01:01:38] Um, and that was really the Genesis of it. And I was wanting to be in the nutrition business, but I always tended to think about supplements, but food really is if you want to change somebody so that their mother can't even recognize it, you're gonna do that through food and supplements will be a supplement to that.

[01:01:53] So that was really the Genesis of the idea. When I realized regular people wanting to eat it, I knew that there was a pretty big market.

[01:02:00] [01:02:00] Carl Lanore: [01:02:00] Yeah, no. And actually I had a quest bar right before the show, and this is they're there. They're amazing. They still are to this day, a delicious bar and you don't feel bad eating them.

[01:02:11] And that's the key, it's the guilt. I often wonder, like when you eat something and you feel guilty while you're eating it, if it actually changes the way you metabolize it. So I'm sure somebody will find out that that's true. So. Um, getting back to the cinnamon, uh, the cinnamon bun. You, you make these pretty effortlessly and quickly now.

[01:02:31] Right? How long does the prep time? How long does it take to make them?

[01:02:34] Shannan Yorton Penna: [01:02:34] I mean, I would say honestly, prep time for me is probably 15 minutes now. It's, it's a pretty easy, quick, it takes a little hand work. I mean, so one of the things to this recipe is you can't use a mixer, a stand mixer. I tried and it doesn't work it tears apart the dough.

[01:02:50] And it's almost like it mixes it too. Well, it won't work. Um, so you have to do it by hand. Um, so you have to get a little, little dirty in there, but, um, it gets pretty quick. [01:03:00] I mean, you just, you grab your few ingredients, you mix and go and you lay it out on your, you know, perfect paper, whatever, roll it out.

[01:03:06] Fill your filling, roll it on up. Cut it, bake it. It's not that hard once you get it down. So,

[01:03:12] Carl Lanore: [01:03:12] Ron, is this one of your favorites that she makes?

[01:03:15] Ron Penna: [01:03:15] Yes. Yeah, I've been eating it for probably. It's four years. Maybe I remember in the early days it was really an almond meal type product. And now it's more, this mozzarella cheese and what's weird is the mozzarella basically is a replacement for gluten because gluten is a protein, but it gives it that stretchiness.

[01:03:31] And what's great about these is the cross, correct? So like if you got one on your plate, it looks smells, you know, like I said, some role and when you cut into it, you'll get that crap like on the outside, but then the center stays gooey and it's got that kind of

[01:03:44] Carl Lanore: [01:03:44] pull.

[01:03:45] Ron Penna: [01:03:45] Um, which is really strange to me, even as I'm eating and I'm thinking about a mozzarella, it's like, it doesn't, it doesn't really compute, but it's so strange that mozzarella via a really good analog for, for gluten.

[01:03:56] They look totally different, but that, that really is the trick to [01:04:00] making this like, yeah, you can feed it to your guests and if you don't say anything, that's okay. That's really the best test and kids are the best. They're almost impossible

[01:04:07] Dan Matha: [01:04:07] to

[01:04:07] Ron Penna: [01:04:07] fulfill

[01:04:08] Carl Lanore: [01:04:08] kids know right away.

[01:04:09] Ron Penna: [01:04:09] Yeah. Um, and if you were to put side by side with a kid, pick the real, uh, cinnamon roll, the carpool one, I'm almost certain model,

[01:04:16] Carl Lanore: [01:04:16] but

[01:04:17] Ron Penna: [01:04:17] we've given it to other people.

[01:04:18] And the common quote is why would I eat the real thing? Cause when you look at the macro is, I mean, we both keep our carbs really low year round and it's, it does feel achieved. So the, the guilt factor that you were talking about, hopefully it won't metabolize. Uh,

[01:04:33] Carl Lanore: [01:04:33] and so into poisons in my body. Well, you know, and, and more and more evidence has come out that the low carb lifestyle can actually reverse the aging of the brain.

[01:04:41] I mean, there's so many benefits to going low carb. And like, just recently, I started working with a guy who does diets. For IFB pros and he's got me eating a little bit more carbs than I used to, but not no more than a heart, 25 grams a day. Um, I have been [01:05:00] doing low carb for so long that I don't, I don't like a lot of carbs.

[01:05:03] My stomach feels wonky. I just don't feel good. I feel sluggish. Um, and so people who are gonna look at this recipe that are used to eating. You know, just regular food. It may say, well, that's a lot of fat. Well, it is. And it'll increase the tidy. You won't feel hungry again, but the reality is carbs are the demon.

[01:05:22] It's not sugar. Sugar is the demon and it's not addictive. That's not true, but sugar is the demon. It's not fat. Would you agree with that? Shannon?

[01:05:32] Shannan Yorton Penna: [01:05:32] I do. I do. You know, everyone's got their talking about nutrition. It's like

[01:05:37] Carl Lanore: [01:05:37] religion, religion. That's

[01:05:39] Shannan Yorton Penna: [01:05:39] dangerous, slippery slope, but. For me personally. Yeah. I mean, and I was not someone who ever grew up with a lot of hearts.

[01:05:46] My father was body builder. Um, and you know, I think we had the occasional baked potato wheat bread in the house, but like, we didn't eat that regularly. We ate a protein and a vegetable. Um, yeah. And that was it. So I grew [01:06:00] up that way. So it was simpler. Um, uh, I guess, lifestyle for me to, uh, live with or adapt to.

[01:06:07] Um,

[01:06:08] Ron Penna: [01:06:08] and essentially, because in the, in the sixties, old Navy bodybuilding, all those guys really went low carb. Pre-show it, there wasn't a lot to read about nutrition. There weren't that many crazy ideas floating around and, you know, there's nobody that was taking their carbs off back then. They were all taking it down and pretty much had a lot of people like your dad who were protein, fat people ate a lot of protein.

[01:06:27] Shannan Yorton Penna: [01:06:27] My dad's just dropped over all calories, but you know, he always ate a ton of protein. A pretty good amount of fat. Um, he, he did a very little amount of it, you know, in terms of maybe a little bit of fruit, or like I said, a little bit of wheat bread. Um, and then he would just overall cut calories. That was more of his game.

[01:06:44] So then, you know, that's the sixties and whatnot, but, um, but yeah, I think, you know, low carb is for me, it's a longevity game more. I mean, obviously I care how I look at it, you know, aesthetically and stuff, but it is very much, um, [01:07:00] And internal thing, you know, what is my blood work saying? How am I feeling?

[01:07:03] And, um, it, it's the longevity game for me.

[01:07:06] Carl Lanore: [01:07:06] How many people have contacted you Shannon and said, I found your Instagram page. I started making your recipes. And everybody in my household is healthier today.

[01:07:15] Shannan Yorton Penna: [01:07:15] Uh, actually, you know, surprisingly quite a few. And I'm surprised about that. Cause I was never, I never even wanted to do an Instagram.

[01:07:22] It was all kind of because of quests and things like that. So I figured eventually other than posting pictures of my dogs, I might as well post some of the things I made. And I got a lot of comments about that. Not just like how to make it either. It was simple to make or wow. They completely covered it tasted and I've had several people write me that, like you said, their family started eating better and their husband is now off his medication.

[01:07:46] Ron Penna: [01:07:46] Let me take this one because she shared one with me probably a year and a half ago about a lady who said all my husband's not really taking this seriously. He's got diabetic complications. We're talking about amputation. He was pretty far down the spectrum. I remember thinking, why are you [01:08:00] wasting your time with it?

[01:08:00] Shannan Yorton Penna: [01:08:00] She always says that to me. Why do you waste your time with these people? Because I think there's simple ways to do things. People are always looking like, Oh, it's so hard. So this I'm also a tough love kind of person. So I'm not like, Oh baby steps.

[01:08:13] Carl Lanore: [01:08:13] Yeah.

[01:08:14] Ron Penna: [01:08:14] And then about six months later, she said, Oh yeah, that lady went back and worked for her husband.

[01:08:18] I said, let me see a picture. And she had

[01:08:20] Shannan Yorton Penna: [01:08:20] provided, sir.

[01:08:21] Ron Penna: [01:08:21] And the guy went from looking ill to. Almost glean. And I remember thinking

[01:08:27] Carl Lanore: [01:08:27] the reason

[01:08:28] Ron Penna: [01:08:28] some pilots and basically they were living on cinnamon rolls or pizza rolls. And I was thinking, wow, I didn't need did that other lady. You sat down with that one time.

[01:08:37] Shannan Yorton Penna: [01:08:37] Yeah. I mean, one of the things I always tell people is fine, healthier snacks that you like, but that your family will like. So whether that's the question, the quest cookies in the legendary foods, you know, TCP streets, whatever it is that works for you. Get rid of all the other stuff in your house and only have that, then you don't have options.

[01:08:54] Carl Lanore: [01:08:54] Right.

[01:08:55] Shannan Yorton Penna: [01:08:55] They only have the colors.

[01:08:56] Carl Lanore: [01:08:56] Yeah. If it's not in the house, you won't eat it. Yeah.

[01:08:59] Shannan Yorton Penna: [01:08:59] Right. [01:09:00] So you leave that to around eventually they'll go ahead and cause if you leave the options, are you going to pick the, the quest chips are over the Doritos? Probably not. So don't have those in the house. And so that's one of the things I said with her is get rid of everything else.

[01:09:13] Only have the cleaner options. Oh. But he won't need it. He won't eat it. He will. When he's hungry about. And sure enough, he adapted and that was all that was there for him, you know? And I told her, keep things around cheese sticks and knots and just the real, simple, easy, low carb stuff. And sure enough, you know, it took about six months, but he's off all his medications, no longer diabetic lost all the weight.

[01:09:33] A bunch of things. I mean, it, it does work. Uh, so you know, you stick with it. Some

[01:09:39] Ron Penna: [01:09:39] people can use the manipulation approach. I generally wouldn't think it would work, but yeah, they just start tricking everybody. And then they're eating all this stuff all the time and it changes.

[01:09:48] Shannan Yorton Penna: [01:09:48] I said, people are agreeable to it, but some people are absolutely, you know, they're like, no, I'm not

[01:09:53] Carl Lanore: [01:09:53] gonna, I saw I had a guy contact.

[01:09:55] I had a guy contact me through the show about four years ago [01:10:00] through a wife, a friend, a friend's wife. And he was a, he's a very powerful attorney. And he had several segments of his intestines removed because he had, uh, uh, rheumatoid arthritis, but he also had like IBS and these other things going on.

[01:10:17] And. I said, you know, I'll talk to him. So I talked to the guy the first, very first conversation. So I'm asking him, so what, so what do you, what do you eat every day? And like, he listed things and it's all bread. It's like, I eat a sandwich, I eat toast, you know, I eat a big hero. And so I said, well, you know, you have a automatic noon disorder.

[01:10:37] And a lot of times grains, you know, trigger those things. Can you give up the bread? Not forever, but just like for a couple months to see if you're you're. Condition gets better. He said, absolutely not. I said, I, and I asked him, I says, why? He says, because I'm retired now, but I have a client that it's a Panera bread and I do work for [01:11:00] them and they pay me in bread.

[01:11:03] Yeah. And I'm like, Okay. So can't you just give up the Panera bread for like six weeks? Just give it a try. Absolutely not. I says, well, I says, it's just going to get worse. They're going to just keep removing pots of your intestines and your, your, Oh, you had ms. That's what it was. He had ms. I said your ms is going to get worse.

[01:11:21] You're not gonna be able to walk anymore. And he didn't care. And. You know, after a near death experience of my own, when I was 39 years old and realizing like how desperate I wanted to be healthy and how militant I became about what I needed to do to save my own life. And then that guy, I like, I just, I don't get it.

[01:11:40] I'm like, well, don't you want to be healthy and live longer, I guess. Not, not everybody.

[01:11:46] Shannan Yorton Penna: [01:11:46] Yeah. I mean, not everybody, some people just feel it's too hard or they tried before and they failed. They just know they can't do it. So they've just given up. Um, you know, and it's, it's, it definitely is a mindset thing.

[01:11:57] Um, you know, there's another girl, [01:12:00] like I kind of worked with, if I say that casually, meaning like, I don't do stuff like that for PE. Um, but she needed help. She'd been on every diet and use every different coach and everything, and nothing was working for her. And I said, why don't you just try. Quito because it helps you stay fuller.

[01:12:17] You don't have to get into ketosis. That wasn't the goal for her. It was just to lose some weight, but for her, if she could have the protein and the fat fill up, not eat so much, not even walk to snack, that would really help her. So I said, give it a shot. She's like, I don't know. You sure. What about all that fat?

[01:12:33] You know, so we talked it out. She gave it a shot and in four months she lost 50 pounds and. Felt so much better, felt strong with surprise that the keto diet allowed her to still feel strong during her workouts. And she, you know, she's on this journey

[01:12:49] Ron Penna: [01:12:49] and she had had two or three diet coaches that did the traditional higher carb, low fat approach.

[01:12:55] And when Shannon started working with her, she said, wait a minute, all the things I'm not supposed to be [01:13:00] like, you know, ground beef and sour cream and all the fatty stuff that she loves you, you know, I think she was Mexican and

[01:13:06] Shannan Yorton Penna: [01:13:06] like,

[01:13:06] Ron Penna: [01:13:06] yeah. And, um, she was like, wow, this is such a weird thing. But for her, it was

[01:13:11] Carl Lanore: [01:13:11] one of those people that

[01:13:12] Ron Penna: [01:13:12] she was just effortless.

[01:13:13] You know, you hear about these stories and I'm always like

[01:13:15] Shannan Yorton Penna: [01:13:15] effortless, you know, firewalls, water off candy and stuff. That was her big thing. She also realized by not being hungry, how much she used to snack. Cause she always said to me, Oh no, I don't snack. And I said, trust me, you do, you know, people just don't realize what they do.

[01:13:29] She works from home also. So she'll go to the fridge, grab something and not consider that a meal. That's the thing. People count their meals, but they don't count

[01:13:37] the

[01:13:37] Carl Lanore: [01:13:37] grays,

[01:13:38] Shannan Yorton Penna: [01:13:38] the coffee,

[01:13:38] Carl Lanore: [01:13:38] the grazing, the grazing

[01:13:41] Shannan Yorton Penna: [01:13:41] through the day, they think, Oh no, I eat breakfast, ate lunch, ate dinner. And it's like, okay, but what happened in between?

[01:13:46] Not much, they sort of forget those little things. And so when she realized, Oh my God, I'm not going to the refrigerator all this time. Where I, all the snacks I used to eat are still there. She realized, wow, I eat a lot more than I thought I did.

[01:14:00] [01:14:00] Carl Lanore: [01:14:00] And the

[01:14:00] Ron Penna: [01:14:00] weird thing is her husband and her son too.

[01:14:03] Shannan Yorton Penna: [01:14:03] She and her husband lost 35 pounds or some lost 25 pounds because she started cooking a certain way and they loved the food because she could make, in a sense, all her Mexican dishes, I just told her to get the low carbon would be as if you're going to use a tortilla.

[01:14:16] Um, there's the sheer talky rice, you know, things that when you do enough, like fun cream sauce and meat, you don't notice that the rice isn't the real rice. It works when you get used to it. When you're someone who eats rice regularly and then tries to switch over, you kind of go with that tastes different.

[01:14:32] But once you do it regularly, it becomes very much a staple and it's normal and it tastes very good to you. So it's also all, all what you get used to.

[01:14:42] Carl Lanore: [01:14:42] Alyssa Alyssa put a comment up with Chris. She was listening to when we would talk about how, why wouldn't someone want to save their own life and heal themselves?

[01:14:49] She said, life is not for everybody. As I say, I told you that story where we were at at the Bulletproof coffee one morning when my son chase was very young and he threatened to kill himself. And I looked at him, I said, [01:15:00] well, I guess life isn't for everybody. That's right. And he was shocked. Like he thought I was going to like, go no, no, no.

[01:15:05] I was like, well, Lee and he never said that he never threatened to kill himself. Again. He said to me, I guess if I threatened to kill myself, I have to fall follow through with it, with this. And then it's funny.

[01:15:16] Ron Penna: [01:15:16] It works because he's such a cool guy.

[01:15:18] Carl Lanore: [01:15:18] Yeah. I know. He's a great kid. So he's got his head on it.

[01:15:21] He's so, so much further along at his age than I was at that age. So. The other thing I want to talk about is the fact that you continue to influence. So the nut butters at legendary foods, which I use as desserts, like at the end of a meal, I feel like I want something sweet. I just, that's just my way. And I'll take, you know, um, A couple tablespoons of the, uh, Apple pie, nut butter, or the banana chocolate nut butter.

[01:15:51] And they taste so decadent, they taste like they're loaded with sugar, but they're not. And they taste so good. Those all began in your kitchen also, right? Shannon.

[01:16:00] [01:15:59] Shannan Yorton Penna: [01:15:59] Yeah. Yeah. So I, I, I've always been a big nut butter, specifically peanut butter person, but you know, I, um, I don't discriminate. I like all the nut butter.

[01:16:08] So, you know, there was a big, uh, I don't know, boom,

[01:16:13] Carl Lanore: [01:16:13] protein, nut butter.

[01:16:14] Shannan Yorton Penna: [01:16:14] And I tried every single one of them. I either didn't like the taste or I couldn't stand the texture. They were gummy, they were greedy. They were strange. And at the end of the day, a lot of the ones that might taste good have real chocolate chips in it was sugar or real talky bits with sugar, you know?

[01:16:30] So you think it's healthy? It's really not. I got so discouraged with it. I started making my own at home and it kind of grew from there. I had. You know, at one point hoped to make a product and, but never really thought much about it. And then we did legendary foods. And so there, there went, but it was a fun thing to play with, you know, to, to make different nut butters and make different, uh, fun flavors like I used to do with the bars.

[01:16:56] Carl Lanore: [01:16:56] Yeah. You do you do this, do you do the season nuts also? Do you create the [01:17:00] seasoning for the season?

[01:17:01] Shannan Yorton Penna: [01:17:01] Work on that with R and D team that wasn't my project alone. But, um, but yeah, I have a little bit of hands in there,

[01:17:08] Carl Lanore: [01:17:08] so, you know what I noticed the most about the seasoned almonds, the almonds tastes so fresh.

[01:17:14] Like I'm a big stickler for fresh nuts. I don't like roasted and you know, when nuts start to go bad, they literally smell like latex paint, especially. Uh, like walnuts, like they smell like latex. Right. And when I bite into some of those seasoned almonds, what I taste the most is the freshness of the almond.

[01:17:32] It's an M that's

[01:17:33] Shannan Yorton Penna: [01:17:33] it. That's definitely a big thing we've been very conscious of is, is the freshness that, that the nuts don't, you know, kind of go re-answer to spoil or. Um,

[01:17:42] Ron Penna: [01:17:42] I dunno, we also tested for living approximations. So, you know, we're just into that stuff just from a nutrition standpoint,

[01:17:48] Carl Lanore: [01:17:48] because you know how bad that stuff is, right.

[01:17:50] Ron I'm you were the one who told me like, wow, we tested nuts one time. And like, you can't believe how ranted most nuts are.

[01:17:57] Ron Penna: [01:17:57] Yeah. It's because most of the people that are doing it, [01:18:00] they're just focused on taste, taste, taste. So they, they just, they want to make sure that they get them nice and crispy, and that's really what they're focused on.

[01:18:05] But in the early days, before we even launched. We looked at truly raw pasteurize, all that to really determine what, what that level was. And it's just a matter of caring about that. Most people don't really realize that, you know, the, those fats and a lot of them get damaged pretty easily. So you gotta

[01:18:19] Carl Lanore: [01:18:19] really

[01:18:20] Ron Penna: [01:18:20] control that.

[01:18:20] And of course, if you do that, a lot of people will roast it for the year. And then they're just working on the stockpiles.

[01:18:26] Shannan Yorton Penna: [01:18:26] Now those nuts are sitting there for a whole year having already been roasted.

[01:18:30] Carl Lanore: [01:18:30] So, yeah.

[01:18:32] Shannan Yorton Penna: [01:18:32] And the same thing with nut butters. I mean, oftentimes I find that buyers, especially if you, if you buy in.

[01:18:37] Um, I don't know, online somewhere, you open it up and you can just smell it. Don't even taste it, smell it. You can smell the staleness of nuts or nut butters. And so that, that was a big thing for us, you know, to, to focus on.

[01:18:50] Carl Lanore: [01:18:50] So when I asked Shannon to do this show, I immediately attributed the tasty pastry to her.

[01:18:56] I'm like, Oh, I'm sure that the tasty pastry. Uh, evolved [01:19:00] from something you were working on. And she says, no, that was completely wrong. In fact, I didn't think adults would even want to eat a pop tart.

[01:19:07] Shannan Yorton Penna: [01:19:07] Hi, so I, so I didn't grow up with pop tarts. I wasn't really allowed junk food. When I was a kid I got on Friday nights, I got like my.

[01:19:14] Uh, root beer diet or regular dr. Pepper and peanut butter. Cause that was the only tree I was allowed. I couldn't have some sugared cereal. My dad bought all that stuff is junk. I didn't grow up with those things. Right. And I had a pop tart, like when I was a kid at a friend's house, I just thought who it, why eat this?

[01:19:30] Like, I, that is not my kind of dessert. I'm a cheesecake girl. I'm an ice cream girl. That's

[01:19:34] Carl Lanore: [01:19:34] my rich richer.

[01:19:36] Shannan Yorton Penna: [01:19:36] Yeah. So pop tarts to me were just not. Of any interest. So when Ron first brought it up to me and was saying like, I want you to start working on this. I thought, why I, I like

[01:19:47] Carl Lanore: [01:19:47] them. How could I be something

[01:19:49] Shannan Yorton Penna: [01:19:49] I don't even like that that's a hard one for me.

[01:19:51] So it was, it was a hard thing. We have other people in the R and D team. So he got another guy on the project and he started working on that. But [01:20:00] yeah, I mean, I liked them now because I actually think our dough to me tastes better than. There's a real culture, like a real pop tart dough. I find it like, it's like, I don't even know what it's like.

[01:20:15] Carl Lanore: [01:20:15] Yes. It's bland. It's split. In fact, it's it's uh, it's obviously when you eat them raw, you can tell the difference. So real pop tart tastes like raw dough that just doesn't have a lot of moisture in it and it breaks up. It's still light. Yeah. It's like

[01:20:31] Shannan Yorton Penna: [01:20:31] dry crap. Right? I don't know. So I am not. Some stuff like thing, but anyway, I obviously did it helped with the taste test, taste testing and stuff like that.

[01:20:42] And I was really, really pleasantly surprised, you know, I, I was pretty surprised when we said so. Yeah, I eat them on a regular basis.

[01:20:49] Carl Lanore: [01:20:49] When will we see a new flavor and the, uh, and, and the tasty patient,

[01:20:54] Shannan Yorton Penna: [01:20:54] that's all him.

[01:20:55] Ron Penna: [01:20:55] Well, probably by October. Okay. Yeah, we've got three new [01:21:00] ones coming out. We've worked on eight or nine of them, but there's three winners that are willing to come out.

[01:21:06] And some other changes a little bit that I think it looks like people too.

[01:21:10] Carl Lanore: [01:21:10] Excellent. Excellent. Looking forward to it. So they they're selling so hot selling, selling so fast that for a while that you couldn't even keep them in inventory. I'm sure the inventory problem is not an issue any longer.

[01:21:21] Ron Penna: [01:21:21] No, we've really worked hard on making sure that now they're also available vitamin Shoppe and they're starting to going to the retailer.

[01:21:26] So, you know, you can't really make a misstep there. So we have much more capacity now. It was, you know, we were expecting big things, but, uh, it did, it did take us a little by surprise. And it's amazing how, um, you know, When people find something, they like that whole word of mouth thing, it just really exploded.

[01:21:44] Social media probably adds some fire to that, but there's a lot of behind the scenes talking to that really launches these things.

[01:21:49] Carl Lanore: [01:21:49] Yeah. No, they're so good. I love them so much. And I'm, I'm very cautious, you know, to try to get any sometimes because I know that they, they run [01:22:00] out really fast. I am, I'm anxious to, to hear about the new flavors.

[01:22:03] When will you start to let us know when the new flavors will be.

[01:22:08] Ron Penna: [01:22:08] Um, well, as soon as it's really locked in and the nutritionals are in there, it's one of those things, you know, we're an already focused company. We're always tweaking, even when something's launched, whatever you're eating. It's three versions behind them, the reality of what we're doing, the R and D kitchen.

[01:22:22] So it's just a matter of making that right base, where it cracks a certain level and you never know how that insight is going to happen. It could be a breakthrough today. Might've already happened this morning or still might take a few more weeks. That's why I say October, um, you know, 60 days prior to us launching it though.

[01:22:38] Carl Lanore: [01:22:38] Okay. Shannon, why do we not see pistachio based nut butter?

[01:22:43] Shannan Yorton Penna: [01:22:43] You know, it's funny, there have been some, some basic ones out there where they've done, like pistachio and vanilla, or maybe they've done one more for cooking. Like they do a nut butters for cooking with like a Thai chili or whatever, but yeah, especially is a really strong flavor and you can't overcome it.

[01:22:59] So [01:23:00] you either have to blend and work with it or overcome it. So with. I mean, part of it is with peanut butter. That's why you seek seeking about with chocolate chips, people ever talk it's more additions. You can't, you know, overtake that peanut butter taste better is one of those that you can kind of throw a bunch of flavors and things into it and kind of cover it.

[01:23:18] So it's just a really strong, strong flavor I would love to in the future, you know, do macadamia get better? I had some hopes for macadamia because definitely the KIDO world there. Um, some other fun flavors. So we'll see what comes, uh, down that I know we're very focused on, on, uh, tasty pastries and stuff.

[01:23:38] So, um, but yeah, I mean, possession is just a tough one.

[01:23:42] Carl Lanore: [01:23:42] I want to try. I love pistachios, you know, being Italian, uh, uh, spumoni ice cream, the green ice cream was pistachio and I love pistachios. I would love, I make, I make pistachio. Canolas. Around

[01:23:54] Shannan Yorton Penna: [01:23:54] Christmas time.

[01:23:56] Carl Lanore: [01:23:56] And I use Demonte. Demonte is a pistachio [01:24:00] liqour from Italy.

[01:24:01] I actually have mixed that in with the regard to cheese. So it has that liqour flavor in it too. It's really good. Um, for those of you, yeah. Who don't know this and how you would not know this? I don't know. Legendary foods is the title sponsor. They make this show possible without legendary foods. This show would come to a halt, even with the other sponsors.

[01:24:20] And that's why I, at the beginning of every show, I say, go to eat legendary.com, use code SHR 10 and get 10% off. SHR, get 10% off your entire order. The nut butters are unbelievable. They go so fast in my house. In fact, the other night Elisa and I, we watched it one hour of TV at night. It's usually something we recorded that we're interested in.

[01:24:40] We'd like to watch, um, historic stuff. We're watching George Washington right now. And I remember. I was at Lisa said to me, if your tongue was longer, you could just stick it in there. I was working that, trying to get up underneath the rim and trying to get best. Yeah. It's just that those nut butters are unbelievable.

[01:24:58] I love them so much and they [01:25:00] satisfy my sweet tooth and I don't feel bad about eating them. So they're fantastic. People should check them out, so. Okay. We're going to have you back on periodically to introduce a new recipes to the audience. The audience can go to your Instagram page. I believe it will look.

[01:25:15] So everything is on the super and radio, uh, website for today's show. You'll find the recipe. You'll find the link to Shannon's Instagram page, where you can explore other recipes, uh, and follow her there as well. And then eventually we'll get to get. Ron on, because I want to talk nutrition with Ron. One of the most brilliant people when it comes to nutrition.

[01:25:38] Um, I learned so many things from him that I say on this show, and I always try to attribute to you. And one of the things I always say on this show is it's not what you add to your diet at what you remove. I learned that from you, and that is a very, that that is a very, very powerful truth. The other thing that you once told me is anything that works, works, and nutrition has to [01:26:00] hurt.

[01:26:00] In other words, you gotta, you gotta, you gotta really want it so bad and you gotta say, no, I'm not having it. And that is when you're in the right place. And that fits nicely into something that I learned early on. When I was 330 pounds, I learned to embrace hunger. When I felt hungry, I saved myself. Ah, I'm where I belong.

[01:26:21] That's where I want to be. I want to feel hungry and I want to embrace it. Where most people go, I'm hungry. I want to eat. I would say I'm hungry. I want this to last for awhile. So I I'm I'm with you on that. It's got to hurt. If it's going to work, it's got to hurt.

[01:26:33] Ron Penna: [01:26:33] It's an unfortunate truth, but yeah, it really is true.

[01:26:36] And it kind of goes hand in hand with the whole subtraction thing. People are always trying. Every article you read about nutrition, I should say many of them talk about how you can add this super fruit or this weird Berry or something, but mostly what works is attractive. That's why fascinating, which I'm really surprised fasting caught on because it is, as you say.

[01:26:52] It's kind of a psychological battle, but the stuff they can do in the animal models with fasting, it's incredible. So there is an [01:27:00] element of discomfort, um, and there are some additive things, but it's attraction really is

[01:27:04] Shannan Yorton Penna: [01:27:04] just have to think about like every article that's out there, every news program that says, add this, you should eat this.

[01:27:10] If you really did every one of those things, you'd be eating massive amounts

[01:27:13] Carl Lanore: [01:27:13] of okay. In and down. So

[01:27:16] Shannan Yorton Penna: [01:27:16] it's like when people start growing, which one do I do? You know?

[01:27:20] Ron Penna: [01:27:20] Totally unintuitive, but eating cinnamon rolls or tasty pastries, you know, basically what you're doing is you're removing carbohydrate and sugar, even though you're eating something.

[01:27:28] So even there it's

[01:27:29] Carl Lanore: [01:27:29] really subtractive where the magic

[01:27:31] Ron Penna: [01:27:31] is. It's not so much that there's something magical in

[01:27:33] Shannan Yorton Penna: [01:27:33] the property

[01:27:35] Ron Penna: [01:27:35] factor. Yeah. It's that you're getting rid of something out of your diet.

[01:27:38] Carl Lanore: [01:27:38] Well, we're going to try to make the cinnamon rolls this week, Elisa and I, and we'll post them on Facebook and Instagram and hopefully they'll come out.

[01:27:46] How do you know that? I don't think the macros were actually on. The recipes.

[01:27:51] Shannan Yorton Penna: [01:27:51] I'll send those to you so you guys can put those up.

[01:27:53] Carl Lanore: [01:27:53] Yeah. I want to add that we have, because people want to know. They want to

[01:27:57] Shannan Yorton Penna: [01:27:57] know. Absolutely. For sure.

[01:27:58] Carl Lanore: [01:27:58] I want to thank you so much for [01:28:00] being here. I did see the little puppy.

[01:28:01] Where's the little puppy.

[01:28:02] Shannan Yorton Penna: [01:28:02] She is sleeping. She's down here. Let's wake her up. This is our new little one and this is pepper.

[01:28:09] Carl Lanore: [01:28:09] Oh, how cute then such great pictures on

[01:28:11] Dan Matha: [01:28:11] Instagram.

[01:28:12] Shannan Yorton Penna: [01:28:12] Yes. Yeah, she's our new little luck we rescued her. So cool,

[01:28:17] Carl Lanore: [01:28:17] Ron, thanks for being here, man.

[01:28:19] Ron Penna: [01:28:19] Absolutely. That was a pleasure. Fun

[01:28:21] Carl Lanore: [01:28:21] as always.

[01:28:21] Okay. And we'll do this again real soon. Okay. Alright. See you guys later.

[01:28:26] Shannan Yorton Penna: [01:28:26] Okay. Hi,

[01:28:28] Carl Lanore: [01:28:28] that's it for today. We've got a great week ahead of us. Hopefully you'll be able to tune in for all the shows. If not, there's always the podcast. And of course these videos share them with your friends. They can walk them later.

[01:28:41] It doesn't have to be right now. And thank you for being here today. We'll see you tomorrow or super human radio. Let me get my music rolled up here and here we go. Bye. [01:29:00]