Welcome to the Vici Code, where we unlock real stories of small business owners who have battled chaos, crushed doubt, and conquered their finances. Faith. Family. Finances. No fluff, just raw, honest conversation that decode the path to victory, one story at a time. Welcome to the Vici Code. We're going to get into the inspiring journey and personal triumph of professional athlete, Ed Ten Eyck. Welcome, Ed. You know, we're going to get into your background. You're a husband, father of three, retired athlete and founder of Ultimate Health and Performance. you know, your mission, as I know it, is promote health and wellness through education in the field of nutrition and exercise. In other words, helping people create a positive relationship with food and achieve their dream life through nutrition and training, something that I've personally experienced with you on my own journey. I've been an athlete, you know, pretty much my whole life, and I think you get to a point where you think you know it all and you don't really need help, but then you start aging, questions start coming up and you're like, wow, this is new. And you and I connected a few years back, right after COVID, I think I had that food business. And I think through a couple of mutual connections, we ended up meeting each other. And it wasn't very long till I started, you know, picking your brain on, you know, how I can do things better. So just to get the audience caught up, you know, I started working with Ad a couple years ago. And I would think I was at around 20% body fat, maybe a little over that. Um, he recommended that, you know, we start working out at a local CrossFit gym, you know, to add in some cross training to my, my current regimen. Um, so the combination of Ed's advice on which foods to eat, um, when to eat, how much to eat, uh, with, uh, with some additional advice on when to, uh, what type of workouts to do, that's led to a significant transformation in my own physique and honestly, how I feel about myself. So I'm at around 15% body fat now. My goal this year was to get down to 12%. So I got a few more months to get that dialed in and I've got the momentum going in that direction and continuously meeting with Ed and reviewing what I've been doing and tweaking that has been definitely been very beneficial. But I've done enough talking. I want to introduce Ed. Ed, thanks for coming on to the show. Go ahead and tell us a little bit about United, our That was a good, that was a good recap. Um, yeah, I mean, so pretty much what, what I, what I do and what I've been doing, um, obviously with every business there's evolutions, but, um, from the beginning I used to have a mantra of eat, move, live, and really like that, that to me kind of encompassed everything that I felt was important. And at the time I was, I was still a competitive athlete. Um, so. You know, we'll talk about like the origins of the company and stuff. But you know, for me, it was always about like, there has to be like dieting sucks. No one likes it. And, you know, especially working with a lot of a lot of endurance athletes, a lot of long distance athletes, I knew that You know we can't we can't diet our way through training when we're training for performance based outcomes because if you deplete and you can't perform there's gotta be a happy medium and then you know also through. You know the learning curve of. You know, I hated dieting. Like I have, I've had coaches in the past that to hit specific weight goals, you know, they, you know, you'd eat breakfast would be like 10 egg whites and half an avocado. And I'm like, if I eat another egg white in my life, I'm going to throw up. So, you know, and it was just, so I'm like, there's gotta be a happy medium. Like what if you can eat the foods you enjoy, but obviously if it's McDonald's three times a day, that's not going to work. But if, if you're willing to put some work in the kitchen and you eat the foods that you enjoy, We can we can get you to where you need to go and i mean we've done that with you is you know your wife's a great cook she makes dinner every night so it's like let's lean on that and then. what can you eat your other meal or other two meals throughout the day to really be able to keep you focused so you never feel like you're dieting, but yet you're getting the results of the old school dieter mentality. And that's really, again, that's that eat, move, live. If I eat well, I move well, I'm going to live well. Those two are going to lead to that, right? And that's, again, that educational piece that we try to bring. We talked about your food. We talked about like, what are you doing, you know, for you, like CrossFit isn't for everyone. You and I actually originally met, um, very briefly at CrossFit Syracuse when I was still there. That's right. I remember that. That is probably like 16, 17. I don't even think you had knife hand at the time. You were doing it out of your, you were doing it a little bit out of your house at the time. Yeah. Um, So we had met briefly, and I think I left right after that. But again, that was I knew you had that love of that type of training. And again, for everyone, it's not perfect. So it's find something that someone can do that they look forward to doing, and eating foods that they look forward to eating, and then we're just manipulating the values of those foods, in other words, their calories, to be able to get you to where you want to be, where you can envision yourself being. And that to me is really what ultimate health and performance is, is finding And I'm glad, you know, you kind of took us back a little bit. I like to go a little bit further back, you know, because your background as a retired athlete, it's really fascinating. And at one point you even considered yourself obese. How did you experience, how did your experience in competitive sports, you know, with its focus on discipline and performance eventually lead you Again, I mean, it was, 2014. Um, so I had already had. At the time I was a do athlete, so I would compete in run, bike run events. Um, and I don't know. I never thought I was, I was that good because when it came to the running part, even though I was a good runner, I wasn't a great runner. I was a very strong cyclist, so I could kind of make up for it. Um, but I had just graduated with. my bachelor's in exercise science. Had been a personal trainer since 2006, just certified personal trainer, no educational component at that point. Went back to Cortland, got my bachelor's in exercise science. Was racing all the time, pretty much every weekend. We didn't have kids, so my wife and I, that's what we did. We'd go down and I'd race basically a New England, or New England, Mid-Atlantic circuit. In any, any race in every race, 30 or so of them a year. And you know, the one thing that you never really talk about, but it's always kind of there is like, you're on the bike nutrition. What do you do after your workouts? How are you recovering to get ready? Because at those distances, you're pushing a ton of intensity, every workout when you're, when your peak is in the, in the 90%. So you got to recover that. Um, and. So like, I dabbled with a whole bunch of different things. Should I be doing this? Should I be doing, you know, in same thing as a personal trainer, what's the number one question that personal trainers get asked? What should I be doing for a diet? Should I be doing keto? Paleo was big when I first started personal training. For me, I love the science. I love the data. I love that realm of exercise science. For me, it became more of I'm spending more time researching what clients are asking me about these different diets. And what diet is best? And I'm like, but they all claim to be the best. Is vegan the best? They say it is. So it didn't matter. So then I was like, well, what if I go back to school? And at this point, I waited until 2017 to go back to school. And it was a master's program with New York Chiropractic College in clinical nutrition. And And I was like, well, we had two kids at the time. I had Jerry and Parker. Parker was just a baby. And And I was like, well, if I get this, and this could be supplemental, this'll work really good. At the time I was coaching, I was still racing, but I was also coaching probably 15 endurance athletes, plus had my personal training clients, plus working at a CrossFit gym. So I was like, this'll really supplement everything that I'm doing, and it'll just give me the knowledge to be able to answer people in an intelligent way, in a fact-based way, in a data-driven way. And I'm like, that's really what I wanna do. Um, and, you know, so once I, once I got done with that, I realized I could spend 30 minutes working with you, you know, twice a month. And all of a sudden we're seeing these drastic changes in body composition. And I'm like, I can't get that out of the gym. And then that, that dawn, that, that kind of spawned the idea of like, maybe I do more of this, less of the hands-on personal training. And, and that's kind of, that's again, that's where ultimate health performance was, was pretty much born. Um, it was born on a run. I was, and that was typically like you and I've talked about this in the past, like some of our best thoughts come either out on a, on a long walk or out on a run. Um, you know, no music, just, just you and your thoughts. And I was like, what if I. My goal with Ultimate Health and Performance has always been, I want to do the nutrition. I want you, the gym owner, or you, the trainer, to train. In a perfect world, I don't have any personal training clients because you're the professional, you can spend all of your free time doing that. I'm gonna spend my free time doing the nutrition piece. And we collaborate together. Your client is getting a two-headed approach that's gonna give them the best results possible. And that's exactly how it started and even the facility that I'm at right now, that's how I work with the trainers there. I don't want new clients. I'll take clients that'll ask me for training and I'm like, here's Corey, here's It's funny how many amazing things come to you when you least expect it. I always say that walks, even a walk is just so underrated. Some people won't do just a daily walk because they think it's not going to actually amount to much. But, you know, It may not be a ton of calorie burn. It's more than not going for a walk first and foremost, especially when so many of us are sedentary. Getting that blood flow is important, but the mental health aspect of working out in general, but just for a walk, It's amazing, it's done wonders for my marriage. Being able to go out and do a walk at the end of the day with my wife, it's just been huge. So yeah, I can relate to, like you said, we've talked about how many great moments, aha moments come in those workouts. I wanna talk a little bit about your why, right? Every entrepreneur has their why, a core purpose that drives them. For you, it's about helping people create a positive relationship with food. Can you share a moment, a challenge you faced early on that solidified that mission for you? A time where you had to rethink your approach, which ultimately led Yeah, so from the business perspective, I worked for a facility and we were, We were really pushing nutrition challenges. It started with member feedback. Members wanted, oh, we want a nutrition challenge. And it was big back then. It was like 16, 17. It was a lot more popular than it is now. you know, people wanted, they wanted that. And, and it was highly restrictive and it was ridiculous. I am embarrassed at this point in time, um, looking back at some of the stuff we did, uh, because to me, like, again, you know, you evolve as a business, but, um, you know, people would, I mean, people were crushing it. We would do these six weeks challenges and a very good friend of mine, he's still a very good friend of mine. Um, you know, He lost like seven and a half percent body fat in six weeks, but three weeks later, he's put two and a half, 3% of that back up because it's so restrictive. It's so unattainable to be able to maintain that. Even if you try to reverse diet your way out of that, like. You know, it's so, you know, hindsight being 2020, you look and you say, man, that's just going to lead to a lot of problems. And, you know, we, we ran, I want to say we ran that about four times in right before I left. So I left in April, April 1st of, of 20, I think it was 2017 or 2018, 2018, um, was my first official, like I'm in ultimate health performance for life. no longer in a gym doing nutrition. Um, you know, and they were getting ready to launch another challenge and they wanted to have 105 plus people in it. And I was like, you know, there was other logistical issues that I had with them, but I just didn't believe in that, in that cause anymore because I was seeing just people were going, Oh, we're doing a spring nutrition challenge. Oh, we're doing a midsummer nutrition challenge. Oh, we're, you know, and they would just, Eat horrible in between the challenges to use the challenge to get back to where they were. It was just like, of course, man, you're going to burn yourself out on this roller coaster. So that's really like for me, when I opened the doors for ultimate performance, I was like, look, we're going to do it different. I want you eating awesome recipes, and I want you, yeah, you're, you know, I don't think I've done a nutrition challenge since being at Ultimate Health and Performance where we've seen more than 3%, which to me, I'm like, hey, if you're losing 3% body fat in six weeks, can you do better? Absolutely, but can you maintain that for 10 years? Probably not. Like, it's a lot harder to do. In that process, there's a huge component of education. Education trumps results because The education allows you to be able to continue to do that six months, eight months, 12 months, five years down the road, right? So to me, that was a big piece coming in into the office. And that's really, for me, was a big component of, yeah, we're going to change how we do it, because I want people to do this. And I've always said, I'm like, whatever diet program or nutrition program, whatever you want to call it, whatever meal plans you get from me, you should be able to look back at those five years from now. Let's say that your maintenance five years from now, you can look back at that and be like, I'm going to do that one again. Um, because I've got my sister's wedding coming up and you know, I want to one up her and look a little bit better than she does. So I want to, I want to trim that extra little body fat that I've still got kicking around. And it's like, you should be able to go back and do that and feel great and eat the foods that you enjoy. And, still live life a little bit and it's like, hey, and I can get results. So that for me was a big piece of it is seeing how I want to say we wrecked people, but we definitely, we definitely pushed them extremely hard for a, you know, for a, for a long time. And, and there just wasn't, there wasn't, there wasn't a good end in sight for I knew a few people who did the, you know, the biggest loser challenges and like that. I don't know any of them, um, who did well in the challenge that are still doing well. It seems like a lot of them kind of went back cause again, it's not sustainable, uh, that type of lifestyle and it's just not even realistic, um, at best, you know, especially in this country, um, when there's just so much temptation all around. Um, But I think that comes to mindset, right? So that's, I'd like to talk a little bit about how, you know, what things look like in the future and a little bit about like, you know, mindset to stay with these things. So, you know, my next question is, you know, you've helped thousands of people, including me, see that anything is possible through nutrition and training. How do you keep, how do you help people break through the mental barriers and emotional baggage they have with food? Um, you know, what's the key to making that connection between why you eat and Um, that's a good question. That's like, uh, you know, thinking about that, like to me, I mean, everybody's different, you know, um, I'll just easiest way to answer that is to use a real person. Um, you know, I had a, I had a girl come in. I met with her three weeks ago. She's battled with food her whole life. She's on anxiety medications, depression, you name it, she's taking it. So someone like that, I approach it with, yeah, we're still gonna take the gloves off, we're gonna get a little dirty. One, again, we're gonna go over what foods do you enjoy? we're having breakfast tomorrow, what do you want to have? What do you look forward to having? What kind of flavors do you like? So then I can start to kind of model like, okay, because again, I want you to eat food that you enjoy. If you are miserable eating oatmeal every day for breakfast, the first opportunity you have to not eat oatmeal, you're taking it. So finding something that you enjoy, being realistic with Okay. She's got very slow digestion to the point where she is able to take medication because it's just horribly slow. Gastroparesis is something that's real. She's got it. She's like, you know, I really don't want to take another medication. And I'm like, okay. So kind of structuring her day around, like, we're never going to have one big meal. Um, so what does your daily schedule look like as far as like, what time are you up? What time are you going to bed? When's work? When do you eat? Like all of that stuff. So then we can kind of put in a bunch of little micro meals along the way. Then I follow it up with what's your daily activity look like? I don't exercise. Okay. Guess what we're gonna start? 10 minutes a day. I'm like, can you Okay. Then why don't you do that now? I don't know. I'm like, when? And then I follow it up with, when are you going to do that every day? Oh, I can do it at my lunch break. Great. So what I want you to do is I want you to have your lunch and then I want you to go for a 10 minute walk. And the reason that I want you to do it this way is because that'll help with the absorption and movement of your food through the system, but it'll also help with your blood glucose control so that we don't, we make sure that you don't become diabetic because currently she's waiting on results to see if she's diabetic. Right. So, you know, and, and that's, that's how, and it's just that constant conversation with people of, where, where are we going to find these? How can we put this puzzle together? Because obviously she had tried things on her own, made no progress. She came in after two weeks, she's down, you know, like 1% or so body fat. I think it was like 0.9%. She's down three and a half pounds of body fat. Her lean mass has stayed the same. And she's like, I've, I've, I've never, I've never lost weight like this and I'm she's like I didn't think I was doing good because I was still eating like right my regular meals and I'm like Right, but we just changed your regular meals and she's like, you know And that 10-minute walk every day is becoming easy and I'm like, I know Now we're gonna now do it again for another two weeks and then let's see if we can make it a little bit longer or can we throw a five-minute one in after dinner and it's in again, it's eventually we're going to continue to make that progress. And someone like that who is depressed, who has anxiety, who has all these other things going on, you know, that's going to be someone that as they see that composition change, now all of a sudden, they sit a little bit taller, they look a little bit further down the road, people aren't walking by him in the mall, they put their head down because You know, and that's that's what we're going for. So that's really like, to me, that's how I approach it is, you know, take the individual and really kind of read them read, read their situation, read their history, and then work with them to be like, Okay, this is this is how we're going to do it. This is, you know, this is how it's going to work. This is what you have to commit to doing this is what I'm going to commit to doing for you. And here you know we're gonna check in twice a month to make sure that you're doing your end i'm gonna do my end and you Yeah. I mean, it's a similar approach that I take with my clients. You know, at the end of the day, you know, you do nutrition training, I do, you know, accounting, but each client has their different quirks, their different nuances that you, you know, if you're not taking a holistic approach and you're not getting to know your client and know what their, what who they are and what drives them, how are you really going to give them the right advice? And thank you for sharing that story. It really shows that that style can have such a really good impact and leads to results. You've had success, but as a business owner, a husband and a father of three boys, and trust me, I know you guys are a baseball family. We're a baseball family. It's crazy juggling all that. What's the biggest challenge you're focused on overcoming right now? And what's your vision for the future for ultimate I would say the biggest challenge right now is you know, just continuing, um, I, you know, may 1st, I moved into a new facility. Um, you know, so now I'm out, I'm out on court street in the city. Um, you know, it, it's sports zone at sports center court street. So I've, I've got comp training systems right there and pure performance, which is Corey in, um, you know, we've got a physical therapist over there too, and. You know, so for me, like that, that movement, and it's in and of itself was huge, because there's, you know, that's, that's where the kids play baseball. So Rick's got a bunch of athletes that he trains. Same with Corey, you know, so now I'm exposed to more people on just you know, going over seeing people in the gym, seeing people come in and out, you know, exposed to the kids that are coming in and out for baseball, their parents. So for me, like that move was was pretty strategic, like Rick and I have known each other for years. And you know, when, when he asked, he was like, what would it take to get you to move out here? And I was like, just ask nicely, man. He's like, no, seriously. And I'm like, I'm like, no, like, all you gotta do is ask nicely. I'm on a month to month lease. And for me, I had been, you know, training over there for, you know, probably at that point, three or four months. And I had, you know, every time I'm going in, I'm like, man, I would love to have office space over here because there's so many people that I'd have the opportunity to help. And so for me, that was a big piece of it. And business has definitely changed in how I'm doing things now that I'm over there, where it's gotten busier. There's more traffic. There's more communication. And I just sit there. I've become pretty good friends with some pro athletes that train there. They just pick my brain and I, you know, maybe in me, I'm just an open book. I'm like, Hey, you got questions ask. And, you know, there's a guy that was getting ready to play, you know, go play professional basketball. And he's like, I got to drop 10 more pounds. Like, this is what I've been doing. Like, you know, I, I, you know, I don't, I don't want to, I don't want to steal, you know, your, your thunder. And I was like, oh man, I'm like, do this and this, and you know, you'll be, you'll be safe. Because I know like, he'll come back. And when he comes back, there's my opportunity, right? Because if he sees success with the tips that I gave him, now I've got that, you know, you've got that little bit of an end. So, you know, for me, that's, that's going to be the modeling of the future. You know, definitely working with those guys, even more, you know, but It's always tough because now there's all the medications that you can take to lose weight. So those are probably the biggest hurdle that I have to face right now is the GLP-1s. I'm not opposed to them for the right demographic, but it's just, if we're gonna take the easy way out, it's never gonna, if you don't have any skin in the game, you're never gonna get the results you truly want and that you're gonna ever keep. you know, you've got to learn how to do it on your own. And continuing to push out that message is really, that's what Well, I'm excited for the future for you. You're changing people's lives. You're helping them give a healthy relationship with food in a time where, you know, there's a lot of confusion on what healthy food really is, especially with uh, the leeway that brands, um, and marketing agencies have, you know, to market and label, um, foods as healthy. We know there's a lot of disinformation out there. So thank you for, you know, sharing your story of, you know, you, you know, where, where you came from as an athlete to your aha moment and specifically, you know, sharing some of those more intimate stories of successes that you've had with clients. Um, It's inspiring to see that those types of changes are possible even with the clients that they may seem to think that it's impossible, but there's no shortcut. It's one brick at a time, whether it's business or your own personal health or relationships. So Ed, thank you so much for sharing your inspiring story and thank you for having a positive impact on my own life. I'm still continuing on my journey and like you said, consistency is everything and you're not gonna get results overnight, but if you stick with it and you have a plan and you have the right people in your life, like for me, it's you and a few other people that hold me accountable, has led to significant results and breakthroughs. I do want to remind our listeners that they can find Ed at ultimate-health.net. That's ultimate-health.net. And then he's also on Facebook and Instagram at Ultimate Health and Performance. That's at Ultimate Health and Performance. Ed, thank you so much. And to our listeners, thank you for listening to The Vici Code. Join us next time as we continue to explore the journeys of purpose-driven leaders. Thank you. Thanks for tuning into The Vici Code, where the underdogs rise and the numbers finally make sense. If today's story hit home, share it. And remember, faith fuels the fight,