Top 10 cities in Europe with the highest demand for English language teachers While many people wanting to teach English abroad move to countries in Asia or Latin America, Europe is also a popular destination that cannot be ignored. Despite strict visa regulations and tougher job markets for teachers, there are still many places in all parts of Europe that have a need for foreign teachers. Here are the top 10 cities in Europe with the highest demand for English language teachers. Madrid, El Foro, the Forum of Spain Spain is one of the most attractive countries for teaching English abroad in Europe. The country's capital, Madrid, has the largest job market for EFL teachers in Spain. While citizens from non-EU countries may find it difficult to secure a work visa in Spain, many teachers are able to obtain a student visa which allows them to work up to 20 hours per week. Madrid is a city of elegant boulevards and lush big parks such as the Parque del Buen Retiro. The city is also renowned for its art galleries and museums which are filled with European art such as the famous El Prado Museum. The Royal Palace of Madrid from the 18th century is another of Madrid's cultural gems. Get started by taking an in-class TEFL certification course in Spain and learn more about living and teaching in Spain in our country guide. Prague, the city of a hundred spires Another hotspot for EFL teachers in Europe is the Czech Republic. Prague, the capital of the country, offers the most opportunities for teachers. Unlike many other countries in Europe, the Czech Republic doesn't make it particularly difficult for non-EU citizens to obtain a work permit. Prague is a beautiful city divided by the River Vtava. The old town square is the historic heart of the city, featuring baroque buildings, Gothic churches and the world-famous astronomical clock from the Middle Ages. Get started by taking an in-class TEFL certification course in Prague and learn more about living and teaching in the Czech Republic in our country guide. Rome, the Eternal City This list would not be complete without the Eternal City. Rome is one of the most visited cities in the entire world, and it also has a strong demand for qualified English teachers. And despite what you might have heard, it isn't too hard to obtain a visa to legally teach English in Italy. The city is filled with art, architecture and cultural sites dating back nearly 3,000 years. The Forum and the Colosseum are two of the most interesting attractions from the former Roman Empire. While the Vatican City, with St. Peter's Basilica and the Vatican Museums, houses some of the finest masterpieces from Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. Get started by taking an in-class TEFL certification course in Rome and learn more about living and teaching in Italy in our country guide. London, the Royal City Despite being an English-speaking country, there is still a high demand for EFL teachers in England, especially in London. With a high number of summer camp students and immigrants needing to learn English, there are a variety of job opportunities for English teachers in the country's capital. The history of London dates back to Roman times, offering countless historic and cultural attractions. The Houses of Parliament, the iconic Big Ben and Westminster Abbey make up the heart of the city. Other famous attractions include the Thames River, the London Eye and Buckingham Palace. Learn more about living and teaching in the UK in our country guide. Paris, the City of Love The City of Love, art and fashion is one of the top destinations in Europe for travelers and those seeking EFL employment. Teachers from other EU countries will not have a hard time securing a legal work permit in France. However, non-EU citizens may need an alternative, such as a student visa, which allows you to work a certain amount of hours a week. Another option is the Teaching Assistant Program in France, short TAIPIV, which is a government initiative that places applicants into French state schools to work as teaching assistants. As a center for art, fashion, gastronomy and culture, Paris is one of the most exciting and vibrant cities in Europe. These most important attractions include the Eiffel Tower, the Gothic Notre Dame Cathedral and the Louvre, the world's largest art museum. Get started by taking an in-class TEFL certification course in Paris and learn more about living and teaching in France in our country guide. Lisbon, City with a Future Even though the EFL job market in Portugal isn't as big as in Spain, Italy or the Czech Republic, there are still lucrative opportunities for TEFL certified teachers in Portugal, especially in the capital city Lisbon. Lisbon is a beautiful coastal city with a hilly landscape and exciting historic and cultural sites, like the South George Castle and the National Azulejo Museum. Learn more about living and teaching in Portugal in our country guide. Budapest, the Pearl of the Danube Similar to the Czech Republic, Hungary is also an affordable destination for teachers to live and work in. Teachers can earn a comfortable salary, but you will need to be TEFL certified to be able to find a good teaching job in Hungary. Most jobs can be found in Budapest, the country's capital, and many teachers work under the Central European Teaching Program for teaching English in Hungary. The beautiful River Danube is all that separates the hilly Buda district from the flat Pest District, which together create the city of Budapest. Some of the city's most famous attractions include Castle Hill, Buda's Old Town, the 13th Century Matias Church, and the Fisherman's Bastion. Learn more about living and teaching in Hungary in our country guide. Athens, the City of the Violet Crown Even though the economy in Greece has seen better times, opportunities for qualified teachers are still very rosy. As tourism is a large part of the economy in Greece, teachers will find positions at private language academies, teaching adults working in the tourism and hospitality fields. Teacher salaries in Greece also allow for a comfortable lifestyle. The city of Athens has a long history, boasting landmarks from the 5th century BC, including the Acropolis and the Parthenon, two of the city's most famous tourist attractions. Besides cultural attractions, the city also has a great nightlife, with thousands of restaurants and bars to choose from. Get started by taking an in-class Teflos certification course in Athens and learn more about living and teaching in Greece in our country guide. Istanbul, the 2nd Rome Viewed as a bridge between the East and West, Istanbul is the largest city in Europe, and an important trade center between the two continents. Paired with competitive salaries, this makes Istanbul a great place for teaching English overseas. Istanbul's old city is filled with exciting historic sites, including the open-air Roman-era Hippodrome and the Egyptian obelisks. The Blue Mosque and the world-famous Hagia Sophia are the two most important landmarks in the city. Learn more about living and teaching in Turkey in our country guide. Moscow, City of the Sars Another country stretched between Europe and Asia, Russia offers a huge market for qualified EFL teachers. Moscow is the capital city, the country's commercial hub, and the home of the largest job market for foreign teachers. Although there are a range of potential opportunities, many teachers working in Russia teach English to business professionals. Located on the Moskva River, Moscow is a rising star on the EFL market. The Kremlin makes up the heart of the city and is the home of the president at numerous historic treasures from the era of the Sars. Just outside the Kremlin lies Red Square, the symbolic center of Russia, where Lenin's mausoleum is located. Get started by taking an in-class TEFL certification course in Moscow and learn more about living and teaching in Russia in our country guide. Are you ready to start a new career teaching English in Europe? Living and working in Europe is the dream of many qualified teachers around the world, and it's not as difficult as many say. These top 10 cities in Europe, with the highest demand for English language teachers, are a great starting point for your teaching career in Europe. Apply now for your TEFL or TESOL certification course and start teaching in a matter of months. Speak with an ITTT advisor today and put together your personal plan for teaching English abroad. Send us an email or call us toll free at 1-800-490-0531 to speak with an ITTT advisor today.


Welcome everyone to this rescheduled webinar, the first of the year. It's me, Patrick Munley. I'm here today to discuss with you some of the core concepts that I believe are imperative to your success as a self-directed trader. First of all, I would just like to check that you can all hear me loud and clear if you could type a why in the chat box, that would be useful. And you should be able to see a welcome screen showing the tick meal welcome we want traders to succeed. So why in the chat box would be very helpful. Good stuff. Okay. So let's first of all move on to another very important aspect of trading and that's understanding the risks. And as always, we want to quickly review the risk disclaimer and be cognizant of the risks involved in foreign exchange or any other type of trading. Just give you a second to review that and we'll get going here. So once again, welcome to today's session. For those of you who are new to these sessions or haven't joined me before, I'm just going to today briefly give you an overview, I guess, of the context in which I'm presenting here to you today. So as many of you know, my name is Patrick Munnally. I'm a fund manager, mentor, market commentator, which all sounds pretty impressive. But in truth, it's an overnight success story 15 years in the making, as well as being the resident market expert for tick meal. I'm also the head of proper trading for a firm called Little Fish FX, and I'm the head of trading and trader education and leading trading education firm called FXcareerswap.com. I haven't always been involved in financial markets after graduating in 1998. I enter the world of consulting, specifically executive search. And in 2000, I left the comforts of a city firm to co-founder boutique executive search business. This company experienced rapid growth in 2004 we merged with another business. And at that stage I cashed in my stake finding myself with a lot of time on my hands and some chips to play with. I started to explore my long term passion for markets. Due to the nature of my previous work, I'd had a front row seat to the tech boom and bust and then watch people gain and lose fortunes in the markets. So with some capital to spare, I started to double day trading really in the S&P 500. Like many who first start trading, I caught some very lucky early breaks and started to make some solid and then really quite significant gains. However, as is often the case, my beginner's luck was about to run out and the gains I've managed to make, I gave back and then some. It was at this point that I decided to really stop gambling and playing at the markets and to get serious about trading and most importantly, applying myself as a student of risk. It was a period during which I became considerably more self aware, focusing not just on developing my technical skills, but more importantly my mental skills. By 2007 I had a solid, extensively back tested trading strategy, which was underpinned by a rigorous risk management approach. So finally I had a complete trading and business plan which I set about executing. Since 2008 I've been consistently profitable on an annual basis, which is really how I measure my performance. I'm not interested in the outcome of individual trades. My interest lies in my trading edge demonstrating its positive return over an extended series of outcomes. I can tell you that after developing a successful non-markets business and now successful trading career that the common thread in success is patience and discipline. If you're just playing at trading you can expect to liquidate your account. Trading like any other commercial endeavor requires a serious commitment and the persistence to take the hits and to keep going. The discipline to develop and execute a plan and the patience to incrementally increase your account over time. If you're looking to make a fast buck, forget it. You have way more fun at the Blackjack Tables in Vegas because whilst handing over your hard-earned cash you also get free booze. So that's a flavor of where I'm coming from today. Now I want to introduce you to some of the concepts we're going to be discussing today and specifically what it means really to be a trader. Firstly what I want to identify is really what the core challenge is. And the core challenge really to anyone who's new to the markets or is just getting started here is really how you can look to yield returns from what appears to be random data, which is obviously the markets that we're looking to trade. So really what you have to do to make a go of things in this business is you almost have to flip the challenge on its head. So if we think about the randomness or the seeming randomness of market data, how can we overcome that hurdle? Well really there's some core ideas and these are based around having a rules-based approach, understanding risk, which is absolutely imperative. And then being able to repeat that rules-based approach and that's what will ultimately deliver your returns. So really just again we want to focus on this, we want to have a rules-based approach, we want to pay laser focus to risk. And this risk and rules-based approach needs to be, you need to be able to repeat that process to deliver consistent returns. Now what we're going to do now is I'm going to unpack some of these ideas as we move through and I'm first of all going to explain to you how we established the rules, the risk and the repetition. But before we get into that what we want to do and an incredibly important aspect of becoming a successful trader as opposed to the act of trading, it's important that we understand the core difference. So trading in its rawest sense is you pitting your wits against the marketplace that consists of the best and brightest minds on the planet. We're also carving out an edge that delivers a profitable equity curve to a trading account. So from the outset, it's paramount that you have an unwavering commitment to trading excellence, because only that will allow you to compete on this stage. Anything other than that and you're playing a game that will ultimately just lead to loss and disappointment. To be a trader is a profession unlike most accepted in the general career context, because you are not paid for your time or the amount of clients you close. The market has zero regard for the hours of trading you think you may have put in. This is a business that requires a stellar will based on some key principles which will allow you to only enter the market when your trading plan criteria is satisfied. Not because the price looks so high that it has to reverse or so low that it must bounce. The market doesn't care what your view of bias is and those trading purely on that premise will rapidly eliminate their accounts. The only way we can succeed is by having a rules based approach to trading and this is essential for us to survive and then ultimately to be to thrive. To be a trader is to understand oneself at a deeper level than you did before you decided to become a trader. Because at the end of the day, every trade you take has a counterparty that is essentially another human being with a plan in mind. And unless you have a clearly defined plan, you're already at a disadvantage in what is essentially a zero sum game. Being a trader and the act of trading are two independent concepts is important to grasp from the outset that cash is a valid position for the professional trader. And that some of the best traders in the game are those who trade the most infrequently. Successful traders do not try to make things happen. If their system gives them a signal, they take it. If the system does not give them a signal, they don't do anything. The sooner you realize that you can only take what the market is willing to give you, the better off you'll be. The market is always moving somewhere, but movement doesn't equal a business opportunity. Analysis and execution are polar opposite experience. Many new traders focus all their efforts on developing technical skills, as this has a stimulating intellectual appeal, but they forget to nurture the mental skills required to survive and conquer the extremely visceral and emotive experience of executing and managing trades. So it's incredibly important from the outset that you know yourself, match your persona to your personal trading practice. Studies have proved that professional trading has a lot in common with professional sports activity and competition. In fact, sports coaching and training experience can be replicated and implemented to train financial traders. In any kind of sport, a series of fundamental exercises which have to be learned and practiced regularly are necessary to reach competition level and become successful, and that is absolutely the same in trading. So what we're going to do now is frame these ideas. So for me, the rules-based approach equals our market and our method. Our risk is our money management and risk management profile. And then the repetition part, so the ability to continually repeat your process, is all down to your mind and the mental task ahead of you. So what I'm going to do now, we're going to break down each one of these sets. So we're going to run through what these ideas mean, seeing a believing, probabilities over predictions, process over outcome. These are key ideas to developing that market method. Then we're going to look at risk, why cash is king, preservation over profit and risk over reward. And then finally we're going to wrap up looking at some of the mental ideas here regarding attitude over analysis, grind over grail, and the key concepts of patience and discipline. Okay, so let's jump in here now and get started with seeing over believing. I would like to say at this stage, if you do have any questions, please make a note of them and you can ask me. I'll open up the floor at the end of the session to cover any questions you might have. So make a note of them as we proceed through and I'll let you know when it's time to chime in with those. So let's start here now with seeing over believing. Creation of market prices occurs through the confrontation between buying and selling decisions. Essentially the market is a human organism. It's made of individual decisions, billions of them, which generate a continuous and collective decisional stream. This stream is what defines the price of a specific instrument at a specific time. As traders we have the possibility to continuously make multiple decisions based on our expectations about the market. The amount of invested capital or loss limit levels and the duration of a trade with the possibility to modify our decisions at any time. Markets are a constant stream of data and information. There are times when the data will be favorable to your position and there are times when it will be unfavorable to your position. To enhance our decision making process, it is incredibly important that we remove our ego and focus purely on our edge.  As it is the ego or your desire to be right, which will detract from your decision making process. It is essential that we come to the market with a neutral mindset. So we're open to opportunity that we trade the market as it is demonstrated on our screens, not as we think it should be. We trade what the market is telling us. One of the key skills we need to develop is moving past our biases and learning to read market data objectively. This is the best indicator of direction. So we drop the notion of being able to pick tops or bottom or trading off gut feel. We rely on our plan and our process. Let's think about probabilities over predictions because as we know the market is always moving and always changing. It has no defined structure and offers high profit and loss opportunities. In a fraction of a second the markets can go from apparent quietness and stability to extreme speed and turbulence. This specific market characteristic is often ignored by inexperienced traders. By having to cope with a completely unstructured fluid and ever changing environment is not something that we're used to. It's likely projected into a world without laws similar to the motion of atoms in quantum mechanics. As human beings one of our main purposes is to create mental structures for ourselves which will bring us security and stability. And this is the main problem that traders have when confronting the financial markets. We are not used to interacting with an environment which is mainly ruled by changing uncertainty. An environment where the mental and decisional processes of all market participants are constantly changing. A core rule of the market is to accept change and market uncertainties. There is no other way to survive the financial markets than to accept that a rules based approach will help us overcome ambiguity. And this rules based approach is focused on probabilities. So we will have back tested a trading plan that gives us a probabilistic outcome when we're analyzing certain market data. We are not interested in predicting the future directions of markets. We want to focus purely on probabilities. Rules are fundamental precisely because it's obvious. Easy to understand from a theoretical point of view but much more difficult for us to put this rules based approach into practice. Trading is about the management of probability rather than controlling certainty. On the contrary understanding that fluctuations in market prices depend upon mental processes and decisions that can vary depending upon an infinite number of unpredictable factors. This allows us to start eliminating all the mental mechanisms which generate pain from adverse market data. Process over outcome accepting change and uncertainty doesn't mean having a confused or insecure mindset or attitude. In the world of trading control over outcome has to be given up as does the need to always be right. This often comes as a real shock to control feats or perfectionists out there. In trading we can do everything right and still lose money. The process or the repetitive routine is essential. Your overall approach including when you trade where you trade all the way down to the procedure you established for executing a trade will form the basis for a structured process. Your routine is a safety net which is linked to the discipline which makes you commit to your process every time. If you trade outside of your trading plan then this will more likely be the wrong trade, more really a puns that you've taken without forethought. And yes you may get some big wins but consistently over time you will not be trading a plan and this is not going to be a process that is going to be repetitive or have the ability to be repetitive and as such will ultimately fail. Obvious rules like don't chase a trade or always trade with a stop loss to rules you develop over time based upon mistakes you've made. They are all created out of the principle to regulate the correct conduct for trading. All aspects are important but rules cannot be broken as breaking rules will lead to losses because you now know that these are in place to keep you safe from the markets and more importantly from yourself. The rules you adopt will be guides to make consistent results. You need to be committed to not breaking them or trading outside of your trading plan. At the core of a successful trading performance is the tolerance or the vulnerability of being wrong. And this is found mainly in the uncertainty of the markets. That tolerance is defined as the courage to face misguided beliefs about your power to control and the recognition that you are never in control once you place the trade. The only thing you could control is your risk. Trading and draw downs in your trading account only expose the illusion of control. Once we've busted that illusion of control and the vulnerability of being wrong is now front and center for us. It is here where you face the psychological demons and the fears lurking behind the need for control and the need to be right. This is also where successful traders are born. If you listen to your trading account rather than what you falsely persuaded yourself to believe about markets. Let's move on to think about risk. And we're going to start here with risk over reward and preservation of the profits and key concepts. To not be able to apply risk and money management principles is most certainly very much disadvantage disadvantage is to trade us to better understand this point. Let us first define what risk management and money management are by assessing market conditions risk reward ratios probabilities and the use of stop losses. We are able to define risk management. This aims to minimize losses for every trade and helps us focus on capital preservation. On the other hand, money management focuses on the steps necessary to maximize profit by the use of trailing stops and adjusting trade sizes, etc. It's imperative that you make your mind up regarding the maximum amount of capital you're willing to place at risk at any given time. Most professional traders choose to risk less than 1% on any one trade. This is while having a maximum of 3 to 5% at risk on total open trades. If risk in 1% of your account on a trade can't deliver your returns to match your objectives. Then you are under capitalized and capitalization is a death knell of many robust trading strategies. It's similar to the idea that Larry Hype gave us when he quoted, you can't win if you don't bet, but if you don't, but you can't bet if you don't have any chips. So capital preservation, the idea of focusing on our risk profile before we're focusing on the upside, the outcome, or the potential positive outcome of any trade is imperative to our long term success. The next concept is incredibly important and now we're moving into the idea of attitude over analysis. The need to be in control, the need to be right is often associated with effective strategies for success that people experience in careers before trading. Yet the reality of trading is an ability to maintain positive expectancy, even under a potentially extended period of negative feedback from the market, i.e losses. So what prohibits people from this are some fairly well characterized emotional responses. Such as inadequacy, there are traders who have tendencies towards perfectionism. They must be right or at least not wrong. They make a mistake, they take it as a personal reflection on their competency almost as a human being.  This is like a negative talk and feedback loop. So they see losses as an attack on the adequacy of their person rather than focusing on realistic competency and standards that are applied to trading success. To the perfectionist, one mistake proves that they're not good enough. Notice that this is an assumption learned somewhere that is being applied to trading and competency in working with probabilities, not certainties. The problem is that the assumption has now been hardwired into the circuitry of their mind as a belief or a truth. Then we have the idea of mattering. Many traders believe that they have to be making money and a lot of it to prove themselves to others. So their mattering as a human being becomes tied to the need to be trading large amounts of money to show that they're in charge of the market. This unexamined need for confusing money and mattering is at the core of over trading and revenge trading. It is also what drives many alpha personalities. Then we have an idea of self-worth in the same way that personal worth becomes tied to money. So self-worth equals net worth. Many traders believe that they have to work hard for the money and if they don't work hard, they don't deserve to make easy money. Others don't believe they deserve to be making money beyond a certain level and every time they go beyond that glass ceiling, they self-sabotage themselves. Another important idea is powerlessness or helplessness. Have you ever seen a trader fall apart or have you experienced falling apart while managing a trade? So someone who experiences a sense of being overwhelmed powerlessness and ultimately becomes unglued in managing the trading situation. This trade is behind many and alphas blowing up in the heat of trading. Their illusion of power over the outcome is exposed and the underlying powerlessness is revealed. What they have not learned is the one thing that they do not have power over, even in the midst of uncertainty.  It's a new paradigm that people really need to learn this idea of being present in the moment as opposed to jumping forward to a future outcome or being caught in the past remembering prior losses or prior negative scenarios in the markets. In the successful trading mind, we're able to disconnect our sense of adequacy, worth and mattering from our performance. And as you're able to do this, the greater control you have over your emotions with respect to your performance. In short, your authenticity as a human being is not linked to your trading success. Instead, it comes from our capacity to risk vulnerability to follow our process. Performance no longer is the key outcome that we're focused on. What we are now focused on is process and where we get our reward from our mental reward is following that process. So once we're in a position whereby we have an absence of pain from changes in market data, then we have the possibility to be objective about the market. And this is a key perspective that we require to be successful. Objective perception is fundamental in training as traders have to recognize market patterns. Therefore, a rational and objective mindset will help us develop a rational decision making model, which is not based on emotions. Acknowledging the fact that markets are unpredictable and accepting trading risk is what makes the difference between a successful and unsuccessful trader. Losses are inevitable. They're a business cost and can only proceed gain. Accepting responsibility for every aspect of your trading performance is essential. Now a key concept and one that many struggle with is the idea of grind over grail. Because as retail traders, we're bombarded with information, knowledge and the promise of achieving overnight success that will deliver financial wealth beyond our dreams. Or at least in a very short space of time. The convention is that trading will set you free financially, socially and professionally. But are there any truth in these claims? There is an occasional tale of glory where a novice trader has hit it big and it's paid off. However, let me make something clear. If you're trading based on feeling, you may as well flip a coin because your luck is eventually going to run out. If you rely on that kind of trading, it is tantamount simply to gambling. Therefore, on the whole, it's widely accepted that trading will not instantly set us free. Trading is a fantastic route to providing the freedoms I've just mentioned. However, as with everything in life, we have to put in genuine effort. The inspiring aspect about trading is that it provides an equal opportunity vehicle to obtain these freedoms.  Having said that, due to the constant barrage of instant success ringing in the ears of retail traders, it's difficult for some to travel the long and winding path to trading success. You need to change your approach and think of trading as a career that takes time. The correct application of knowledge, practice, and most importantly, patience. Many traders become obsessed with trading strategies or indicators or at least the latest headline grabber in your inbox. Remember, trading is about you more than it's about the system. A trading strategy is not as important as the mindset you apply to it. There is always a chance you will correctly pick the direction of the market, but you may not make a huge amount of profit in doing so. So let's consider why this might be the case. It is the fact that we need a trading system. And we have, however, as a general rule, the trading system needs to be clear, concise, and does not need to have a whole host of indicators clogging up the screen. The simple system that suits your personality will form the bedrock for your trading, which in turn offers you a fallback when things aren't going so well. You have to be familiar and comfortable with it, and you have to be able to trust in your strategy. And this comes through rigorous backtesting. This is what once you've seen hundreds, if not thousands examples of your setup and the outcome, this helps to build conviction in your strategy. Plisting needs to be at the heart of your training plan so that it can be easily interpreted and replicated as you put the pieces of the jigsaw together. Developing your plan must be a labour of love to survive the endless pitfall. It's a snakes and ladders type experience demanding practice and research, which ultimately gives you a probabilistic edge in the market. Similarly, successful traders have found a method which is adapted to their personality and best capabilities. Good trading is a grind. It's repetitive. It's day in, day out, applying your process and your framework. Most importantly, most or really more so than any other industry is the emphasis you must put on you. For what makes or breaks your trading, you need to be focused. This means picking a time of day to trade where you can concentrate 100% on the markets, no distractions from family work or day to day life. Finally, let's look at patience and discipline because believe me, it's this that provides the paydays. But what is it? What is trading discipline? How do we define it? Many people when asked them, this question suggests that it's the ability to be able to consistently execute your trading strategy and to follow your trading rules. And this also may be inclusive of completing trading disciplines such as preparation and evaluation. Let us consider the two keys to successful trading. One, having a trading strategy with an edge and a positive expectancy. Two, being able to consistently execute that strategy. In trading, you'll ultimately have to overcome what is likely to be your biggest challenge yourself. So embrace this because it is part of the journey. Often when I speak to traders, at some point they'll tell me of their discipline issues. Some of these traders may see themselves as being ill disciplined and talk at length of their poor discipline. This will in all likelihood merely compound matters, reinforcing their problems with negative self-imaging. It is important to understand that discipline is a general term. It's an umbrella term for a variety of different behaviors. And that very few traders have challenges with every one of these behaviors. Indeed, in most cases, it's just one or two areas that are a major obstacle to moving their trading forward to the next level. It is useful for us to be aware of the components of discipline and to be able to specifically define our challenges so that we can seek the required methodology to address them. Because when a car breaks down, it's very rare that if ever that the whole car fails, it's usually one or two component parts. But some component parts are obviously more important have a greater impact on the overall operation of the car. And it's the same for us as traders. Isolating our specific challenges will help you target and defeat them, as well as keeping your discipline through difficult periods in trading. So when do traders lose discipline? Well, there are two main drivers. One is technical regarding strategy and the other is mental. So let's just briefly look at strategy. Not having clearly defined strategy with an edge is the first typical problem. Having this is a prerequisite to successful consistent discipline trading. Without one, it's actually impossible to see if you're being disciplined or not, as there is no accountability as to whether you followed your plan and you stuck to your strategy if you didn't have one in the first place. Without having a clearly defined trade trading opportunities, you are trading in a random haphazard fashion, which will quickly lead to loss. Trading a timeframe, a style or market that does not match your talent skills or risk tolerance and your personality is also another problem. If you are trading in a way that is not best suited to you and particularly if this is a long way off course, then cracks will appear and elements of ill discipline will occur. This isn't a problem with yourself as a trader but arises simply because you and your strategy are out of line. For example, someone who is trading a short term timeframe but who is a much more analytical, slower thinker and decision maker may find that they have challenges in taking trades with sufficient speed. To make matters worse, they then get frustrated that they missed out on a trade and end up getting in too late and ultimately chasing a trade. A loss of confidence in trading or a lack of understanding of probabilities and statistics is another issue. Sometimes you'll get a run of losing trades for no other reason than the fact that you are in a trading environment that contains randomness and that you will not know the distribution of outcomes for your strategy. Losing streets are not uncommon or unnatural. If you toss a coin 100 times, you'll get at least four strings or either of either four heads or tails in a row and potentially you can get five, six or many more in a row. When you understand this, coping with a string of losses is much easier and the temptation to try and recklessly recover them is lessons. Mental and patient, the mental idea or the mental aspect in terms of issues with discipline are often referred to are often caused by environmental or external distractions that are issue come about during quiet periods in the market. So this is basically just plain boredom. One of the biggest revelations that many new traders experience is that trading is not a 100% full on adrenaline fueled roller coaster. There are actually long periods of time when not much is happening and the markets are quiet. The danger here is that you get bored and trade just to do something and not because a trading opportunity as defined by your strategy has actually arisen. So you need to ask yourself, are you trading to relieve border or am I trading to make money? Find other tasks to do when the market's quiet, read, research, strategy development and so on. Then there are some fairly well defined emotional responses to the market such as anger and frustration. So when we are involved in a period of drawdown, this anger and frustration can be dangerous. The changes that occur to our physiology and psychology when we're angry and frustrated affect our ability to make objective and recent decisions. You're greatly at risk of trading emotionally and not objectively. So when we go through a losing period, it's important to take time out and wait till we're in a good mental state before re-entering the markets. Equally on the flip side over confidence resulting from the string of successes can also be a dangerous emotion. It will get you involved in the markets, potentially with bigger positions that might be appropriate. Create awareness of where overconfidence might occur for you and where it's necessary to actually stop trading or consciously manage your positions. Equally an unwillingness to accept losses. The loss of versions now that we talked about earlier most regularly related to the ego is a common problem. If you're not willing to take a loss, then you are always likely to run one and to move your stops out. Accepting losses and dealing with them effectively is key to discipline trading. Taking on too much risk. High risk creates higher stress and higher stress creates stronger anxiety and worry. All this weighs down badly on your decision making ability. Excessive positions also carry with them the potential for huge painful losses and no one wants to take them. So take appropriate risk is key necessity for discipline trading. Equally greed is another pitfall wanting too much too soon or trying to make every trade a big winner or home run. Again the key is to assess your strategy except that as traders we are in and out of the market over a desired time frame. Whilst the market moves both before and after we enter and exit our trade. Our aim is to capture profits within the time frame for our strategy. Equally fear this can come in many forms and may lead you either to not entering the market or getting out too late or too early. Fear of loss, fear of missing out, fear of leaving money on the table are just three possibilities. Managing trading position size, accepting losses as part of trading and having confidence in your trading strategy will help to reduce and eliminate these feelings of fear. Ultimately trading without emotion is a fallacy. I know exactly what you mean when you or I know exactly what people mean when they say this that you should be trading without emotion, but it's not that we it's impossible that we can't have any emotion at all. So what we're really trying to articulate is that we want to have no negative emotions. So those that we just talked about fear, anger, greed, frustration, those are the emotions we want to recognize because some states are conducive to peak performance and some are not. Some states hinder optimal trading performance from taking place. Trying to do something when you're not in the right state of mind is like putting your foot on the accelerator when the car is not in gear. Lots of revs but we're not going anywhere. Most people have heard of the phrase of being in the flow. A phrase that has been made popular by performance psychologists to describe people who are performing at their peak. When people achieve such states, they will have access to be in their ideal performance state or in trading terms, ideal trading state. Getting to your ideal trading state is important and is essential to your future success. When I talk to traders who I've worked with about when they've traded their very best. They typically describe their state using such words as feeling alert, feeling balanced, calm, energized, positive, focused, confident. Their trading is effortless and almost automatic. So in order to actually trade with patients and discipline, there are certain precautions we can take to predispose us to achieving our goal. We can check in with ourselves and sit down. We can run a personal inventory to see where we are from a mental and physical perspective. Initially, this sounds somewhat over-engineered, but as with all skills, labor is required to form habit. The principles I've covered today really cover some of the core beliefs that I've developed over the past 15 years with respect to markets. What it means to be a trader and what it means to strive for trading excellence. John Maxwell puts it in a great way. You'll never change your life until you change something you do daily. Secret of your success is found in your daily routine. Ultimately, consistency comes from discipline. Discipline comes from patience and patience comes from preparation and preparation comes from a willingness to learn. The reality of trading is this. We show up, we place trades fearlessly, we manage our risk and we do whatever we can to stay in the game long term. If you can do this consistently, even if you don't have a massive market edge, over many, many trades, you'll end up profitable. Be obsessed with the quality of your process and risk management, not the outcome. In trading, the hardest thing of all is to learn to love the process instead of being so overly focused on the trade-by-trade outcome. Yet, that changing approach is critical. Avoid making this game about being right or wrong. Whatever temporary satisfaction you get from being right will almost certainly be met by an equal or greater opposite reaction when you're wrong. Strive to remain neutral. That is essential to your future success. You've got to love your trading rules. If you don't have any, you should be putting your hard-earned money on the line. Let go of the get-rich-quick mentality, tone down your impatience, put in the work and then see what happens. So hopefully you found that useful today in terms of me reviewing some of the core concepts that, like I say, I've developed and adhered to over the past 15 years. I've been operating in the markets. What we've got now is about five minutes. If anyone would like to chime in with any questions regarding the content we've covered today, I'm happy to answer those now. I'm just going to have a quick sip of water and then feel free to ask any questions. So, again, Arina, thanks for the question. You either enter, you exit trades too early or too late.  And so you should have rational and logical criteria that one identifies a trading opportunity. It gives you an entry, a risk-reward profile, so a stop, and a take-profit objective. Now, here's the issue. Unless this take-profit objective is based upon a extensive backtest. So you have X number hundreds or even thousands of trade outcomes whereby you have developed your take-profit strategy based on that backtest. You are always going to struggle with the idea of uncertainty because without having that backtest and having that data to base your take-profit objectives on, you're operating from a perspective of uncertainty, and that's what drives you to either exit too early or exit too late. Whereas if you are, if you've got a data set that you're analysing and you have an optimum take-profit level, sometimes you'll achieve that take-profit level and sometimes you won't. But that's fine because you know that from the data set, from your backtest, you know that more often than not you will achieve a certain take-profit level. Does that make sense, Arina? So again, it's a good question, but it really comes down to having that backtest behind your plan. You have a five-year back-tested strategy. So over that five years' worth of data, presumably you have identified an optimum take-profit level for your strategy, or you should have, or you certainly should be able to if you review the data. So then what it comes down to is your conviction in your strategy. And this, you know, lots of the concepts we've covered today, I suggest really listening to today's webinar, because what you're talking about there are the common issues related to a lack of conviction or a lack of adherence to your plan. Because if you've got five years of back-test, and I, you know, I'm presuming that depending upon your timeframe, you have a minimum, let's say, of a thousand instances of your setup and then execution of the trade trigger, you should then have a data set that allows you a high degree of conviction in your plan. Any other questions? What specifically is that dialogue? I think hopefully I'm pronouncing your name right there, dialogue. What specifically about race dialogue? With your many experience, can you, Ticknell, develop an indicator of who? I have indicators that I use. Since I have some proprietary developed indicators that I use as the core basis for my trading strategies to help identify high probability scenarios. So yeah, I already have those in place. I've been advised by other traders, 2% risk per trade is okay. Here's the thing. Obviously, this is why retail, or this is a key aspect as to why retail traders struggle is that once you've got a trading plan in place, the key to removing your emotion from the individual outcomes of trades is trading in a size that means if you experience 10 losses in a row, you could quickly, you could still quickly recover from those losses. Now, if you're trading at 2%, that's a 20% draw down. So just to get back to break even, so just to get back to where you started from, if we started from a neutral account balance, you have to, you know, that's a 25% gain you need to make. Which is, you know, some people, you know, if you think about professional money managers or if you track professional firms or money managers, 25% is a healthy return on a year. So I mean, if you take, you know, if you take a hit of 10 trades in a row and a loss of 2%, you need to make 25% just to get back to where you started, which is no mean feat. The reason why I risk less than 1%, I mean, most of my trades are actually a 0.7% risk is that a loss of 10 losses in a row to me is easily recoverable. But if you're risking 2% or 3% on a trade, and you can expect in your trading career to go through periods where you lose, you know, 10 trades in a row.  So I mean, this idea of risk reward is incredibly important. And here's the thing, inexperienced traders are only focused upon the upside, all they want to know about is how much they can make, whereas professional traders are just laser focus on the downside. So when I'm in a position on my first, the first thing I want to address is my risk for the trade, and I'll pass on trades where I don't have where the setup can look fantastic, and the analysis is, is, you know, jumping off the chart. But if the risk reward profile isn't correct, then I pass.  I need to know that the risk reward stacks up. And that's my key focus.  I trade in a conservative fashion on the basis that I know over a year, you know, and I'm always thinking in terms of years, you know, I'm looking at, you know, what my, what the outcome is going to be over the next 12 months. And I know that trading at, you know, keeping my risk low, focusing on my process and my plan is going to deliver me a healthy return at the end of the year. So I'm not, not thinking about, you know, the outcome of individual trades is really not important to me. Okay, so I am just focused purely on my process, like we talked about today, process over outcome. Yes, I mean, there you go. So if you've had 19 losing trades in a row, and you're trading at 2%, that's nearly 40% draw down on your account. I mean, you're having to make over 55% just to get back to break even, which is not an enjoyable experience. I don't know, I don't, I don't hedge Evans. I don't have a, you know, I'm a market speculator. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not hedging positions. I take a naked exposure in the market based on the directional bias that comes from my training strategy. So now I don't, I don't hedge. Don't get me wrong. If you're running a big equity portfolio of individual stocks, then certainly you can hedge positions in the options market.  But this idea of getting into a trade in the spot market and then taking a counter position to it is, is not really worthwhile. Any other questions, guys? Okay, if we don't have any other questions, I'll, I'll wrap this up here today. We'll reconvene on Thursday at 11 o'clock UK time, where we're going to start moving into the charts now. And we're going to look at multi timeframe momentum on Thursday. So hopefully that you'll be able to join me and, and we'll take things from there. So thanks very much for your time today. And I hope this content was useful.


and anyway hey guys we're recording right now I have Alex on I'm super excited he he is we were chatting back and forth a messenger and he's like I want to go to another level I want to make some shifts and changes and so I'm like let's do some coaching so basically we're gonna take and Alex has lost 30 pounds when he started maybe more maybe less we don't know he doesn't weigh himself which is a big props to you Alex but you've been doing some physical activity but you're just looking for that kind of like what's the next step what's the where do I go from here and how do I make some changes and then what I'd like to do too is maybe why are you plateaued and so I think it's sometimes good to understand why we're at we're at and then how do we what's our expectation to go forward so thanks for coming on I appreciate it yeah I'm excited too so no rush but first off I know you said you started at 340 you went down to around 310 you haven't weighed yourself in a few months but you kind of feel like you're in this limbo land is that correct just so we're on the same page right that's correct cool when you got started what was your initial goal like what's the one thing you wanted to achieve well the whole initial goal was just getting 30 minutes of movement every day okay cool why why why why was that so important well the big thing was drop pounds okay did you have a certain number of weight you're looking to achieving just you wanted to really because you know you read various things online and people say well you're this tall you should wear this you this tall like I just want to be a healthy weight to where like you know I could play an hour basketball with my son and just keep going and you know as I get up there in age a little bit like I kind of get these aches and pains and stuff right you know I you know my job is I sent from a computer all day so I needed to incorporate activity in my life perfect so one of things that I think is important for us to kind of recognize and you and you and you had success right you started moving in this direction and what's what can happen though if we don't have and it doesn't have to be this huge monster goal like I like big goals right but I always like to have a step to go after the reason why it it gives us something tangible to measure right because one day you go play basketball with your son you're like I felt pretty good then the next day you're sore and you're like do I feel as good as I did yesterday and it's not a way to like assess it that well so if you think about this if you have a goal I just did alive about this if you if kind of the weight loss is your only goal which yours isn't which I'm glad to we're just going to quantify a little bit I'm going to give you some steps to take if weight loss is your only goal I've never seen anybody achieve it and maintain it ever they always have to be there's got to be something else tangible that we can assess because you ultimately you're creating a new life for yourself right your old life didn't serve you the way you want it to you're creating a new one so we have to go out and design what that looks like so Karen so also so Karen I want you to listen to this um now what kind of fit you said you want to be working out more um what kind of physical activity have you been doing currently and how long you've been doing it for uh so my main probably 99 percent of my activity has been walking I uh uh today was day 155 in a row walking it's huge yeah it's funny that you mentioned the old basketball thing that feeling well because Monday I think it was I played basketball with my son and that day I woke up my knee was killing me so I'm like man but I still get out there and you know not as quick as other days but it all initially started like hey we're 100 days from Christmas who wants to jump in and start moving our bodies and getting ready for the holidays and all that kind of jazz and so Christmas came and went and I was like you know what I'm gonna keep this going because I feel good you know whenever I go out and walk and so do you celebrate that yeah have you done a huge celebration I mean like that's awesome yeah I mean I'm just thankful every day I get to do it okay cool so let me ask this question how far do you walk each day and how so how far is it and do you change it up at all uh usually I do it uh like where we live there's a lot of neighborhoods around schools and stuff so I just alter my route and then um if I'm not gonna be around home you know I'll go walk somewhere else or sometimes I'll drive down to each area and I'll walk along the beach and um it's usually at least two miles up to four miles it just kind of depends on how much time I have okay so this is going to be I'm going to get some more in depth here so if you're watching this right now um basically Alex had lost him weight plateaued he's been very active about 180 days 158 days uh consistently 155 155 consistently walking days but his body's kind of plateaued so there I'm gonna give you two things now the other thing a lot of you don't know is you've been doing OMAD OMAD one meal a day is that majority of the time how long you've been doing that for I I officially haven't started that I've been doing it yet you're just you're just doing the last thing so I think I need to shift that around so because my evening meal I think is kind of affecting results everyone I'm eating too late in the evening okay but say like by nine o'clock I'm done eating I typically don't eat until noon the next day okay is that almost every day you do that I've done that ever since I started walking I've been doing it and I think there was one day I had breakfast okay so I have some good ideas for you I think this is going to work really really well for you um are you open for some shifts and changes heck yeah I am all right here we go number one is when you start a physical activity and this is anybody that's plateaued if you start working out or become a physical active when you start your walking when you if I was to tell you to go walk four miles how did you feel was it hard to do did you feel tired maybe fatigued sore from walking four miles yeah if I asked you this week going for a walk for four miles do you feel tired fatigued or sore at all from walking four miles no so what happened was is when you first started it was an exercise and then it turned into an activity so this is really important for people to realize is that when you're trying to make a transformation you're trying to change your body you have to apply an external force that's greater than what your body's capable of doing not all the time but you still have to apply that once or twice a week twice a week probably is not optimal so what happened was is you're you went to a maintenance phase you're basically in the maintenance of of where you want to be because the walking has just become consistent right which is good don't stop that because obviously it's helping you maintain everything you've accomplished at the same time it's not going to help you get further ahead so all you have to do is something simple um and let me ask you this question how fast can you walk one mile um like 18 minutes 18 minutes now do you have you have you created a template to be competitive to get to 17 minutes I have yes okay so you have so you want to get it to 17 minutes what are you doing to try to get to 17 minutes uh nothing all right so let's do that I set out my pace and then like I've noticed some of the times when I pushed myself I do have that pain like I started developing shin splints okay and I'm like well I always dial it back because I don't want to stop walking every day right and I don't want shin splints to put me out let me ask this question have you always been pretty stocky guy yeah I was asking you what would you rather do run for 20 feet or run for two miles what would you say 20 feet 20 feet so you're training and I'm not against walking four miles or two miles honestly I probably wouldn't I mean you can walk like a long walk maybe once a week like on a Saturday's kind of like your long walk but I would move you more into some interval trainings now if you were more of a stick figure and you're more endurance-based I would probably push you to run a little bit more like do a run walk I don't think you're going to get a better result of walking further I think you're going to get a better result of doing something more intense shorter so this is what I'm going to recommend I want you to do it twice a week and it's going to be a you can go up to three times a week but for right now I'm going to do twice a week you're going to go for a two mile walk the other day I want you to walk every day by the way and I don't really care maybe one day a week you go to four miles you do your long walk and then the other days you're going to shoot for the two miles three of those days you're going to do two miles what I want you to do is I want you to go do like a 10 minute warm-up you're going to then go sprint and the sprint doesn't have to be a hundred percent it could be a 65 percent sprint something that gasses you but I don't want you to stress your joints I don't want you to beat yourself up you might choose to do this on more of a hill because it's a little harder and I want you to go for about a 20 second sprint okay 20 seconds not very far okay and then what I want you to do is I want you to take at least a minute and 40 seconds rest walk slow okay minute and 40 I'm trying to time it out so you go 20 seconds hard a minute 40 off so every two minutes you're basically running for 20 seconds okay got you're gonna you're gonna start you're gonna you want to work up to eight to ten rounds of that so the first week first first time you do it you might only do it four times you're like I'm smoked then good because you're gonna do it you're on the consistent path so you're gonna stay consistent on this so you don't have to rush to the end once you can do that eight to ten times three times a week right now you're speeding up your walk does that make sense you're speeding up your time because you'll be running for you know four or five minutes of the mile two mile walk okay so you're gonna speed up the time so you're making yourself more fast right once you get better at that what we're gonna do is we're gonna we're gonna keep the 20 seconds but just bring down the recovery a little bit and then add more two to the end or we can run 10 seconds longer right and keep the recovery back 10 seconds right so you just make slight adjustments to it okay also two times a week if you feel good do three don't rush the goal is get the three eight to ten reps once you can accomplish that and you feel comfortable doing that then we got to change it again we're gonna modify because eventually it'll just become normal again right that's number one number two what I want you to do is just start working on when you do your walks at the end probably at the end of your walks I want you to do something simple like maybe it's 10 lunges each side and just work on range of motion if you do a squat work on your full squats right let's start working on joint mobility you said talking about the knees and shins and stuff like that I can send you over if you want me to I can send you over the lunge routine it'd be more of like a split squat lunge do you have any knee surgeries or anything like that no I haven't had any surgeries so yeah so I want you to I want you to get stronger around the legs and around the knees um and right more range of motion so I would do maybe it's 10 it's it's it's more like an active range of motion rather than it's like a workout but I just want you to kind of start putting a standard in there I want you to add five or ten push-ups okay okay just those two things for now we can always throw some burpees in there we can add more stuff but I just want you to kind of work on just range of motion and just working through those the depth of your joints because you sit a lot and you're not using those muscles when you're sitting on them so this is a way for us to use them so that's going to be your physical activity change just something subtle now I don't want you to go to the point where you hate walking when you stop your routine because keep that going okay keep that going okay yeah because we only do one sprint for the first week I'm cool but then let's let's just add a little bit to it if you have to go 20 seconds and then walk for five minutes before you do your next 20 seconds if that's your starting point I don't care I just want to start challenging your body differently okay that's number one number two eating this is really important so if you guys are watching this and you've been doing intermittent fasting which I'm a huge fan of fasting at the same time I know I didn't ask your calories but can you just give me an idea of what you eat per day so you drink your ketones in the morning right yep I have actually when I get up I have water and then I usually have a coffee with some keto cream then I go for my walk typically okay and then when I get back I'll have my ketones and then for lunch is usually you know a lot of times it's just like today for example was a like sirloin steak and some broccoli how big it was probably six inches by three and a half okay it was pretty thin okay um so then I have just drink water and then I have ketones at around three o'clock in the afternoon and then dinner is typically like it usually is like has some type of dairy ball cheese usually and then some sort of protein but I think part of the problem is that nine times out of ten there's no green vegetables involved um sometimes it's like the protein the cheese and crackers okay not the most ideal right right right is it so it's relatively low-carb but it's not like you're not crazy keto crazy low-carb restricted correct correct and then calories overall I mean I would think I'm probably like around 1800 so based on what you just told me I would be surprised if you're over 1500 yeah yeah well I mean that lunch is not typically the steak and broccoli you know a lot of times it sometimes it's white rice that I've cooked earlier in the week just because it doesn't spike my my insulin okay and then um it's usually that with like some sort of protein things of that nature but I you know you you could be right on point as far as calorie-wise well that's what my concern is right so so you're kind of you're eating more intermittent fasting more controlled glucose control is what you're focused on that necessarily low carb it's lower carb than you know probably used to be your average the average person my big concern is your long-term low calorie so I wouldn't measure your calories for the day how tall are you five seven so five seven and you're active too it's not like you're not walking right if you're I mean I know you sit a lot too but you are out moving your body also um I think if we looked at your calorie component of it and just so you all know I'm not a huge fan of counting calories although it does there's a couple factors you want to keep in mind one to lose body fat you have to be less calories than you currently burn on the flip side of that if you're on the low end for a long period of time you can slow down your metabolism especially if it's long-term so calorie confusion is what I'm going to actually recommend for you um now Wednesday last time you went kind of more like full low carb without using any type of cracker or rice do you have you done that at all um no I think either one of the two meals had some sort of type of carb involved okay so that's something that we can play with I think a little bit later I wouldn't do that right now but I think we play with that down the road um I think maybe you go like hey listen I'm gonna do 10 days or maybe five days I'm gonna go more low carb during the week and then maybe give yourself a you know as long as you don't binge eat on it in the afternoon in the weekends I'm fine with that but I want something that something we'll just put on pause for now but this is what I'm gonna recommend I want you to kind of just give yourself an idea of how many calories you're consuming today hit me back on that if it's under 2,000 calories a day and it's been you're pretty consistent over the last you know 100 days or longer that does concern me so what I'd want you to do is find two days a week where you basically I call it a refeed this happens a lot y'all this is something that people are getting competitive low calorie and and the reality is we want people to be less food than they're normally eating but the thing is you don't want to be competitive at it you also got to feed the warrior inside right so when I when you do the refeed days and I might tell you what that is I want you to kind of assess how your performance is the next day how was your how would how did you sleep how were your cravings at night you might find that you're getting less hungry late at night because you fed more earlier so what we're going to change some things up so two days a week sorry two days a week you're going to do refeed days now I still want you to keep those I want you to keep them healthy it's not not eat what you want that's not the idea of these but they're the idea is for you to eat more on those days is to create calorie confusion for your human for the body it doesn't have to be back to back if people that the weekend that's fine if that's just the easiest for you to do but it could be a Wednesday Saturday it could be a Monday Monday Thursday it whatever works best for you but two days can be back to back and you're going to eat at least three meals on those two days or two very larger meals but I recommend three meals I recommend spreading that a little bit and I you can intermittent fast still but you don't have to necessarily go long you might if you get hungry at 8 a.m eat at 8 like let's not make it so rigid okay yeah and give yourself the ability to do a refeed this is something that I see chronic is a problem for people is that they're competitively trying not to eat and that's not like ancestrally think about it this way we would have went days without food right we would have found little bits of food time to time but then we would have feasted also so we're trying to recreate that just a little bit within the the normal world that we live in and so we got to find some of that in there and some of those factors in there so so that's one of the one of the things I would like for you to do let's up Liam and I think that's going to help then what I would do is after about two weeks I want you to really look at how is your performance and test your mile walk again okay and see if that's gotten better that mile walk time if you see that improve that tells you your body is an enhancing performance and that tells you that your body is going to be way better at fat metabolism okay it's going to be easier to go for another challenge and then I would say in maybe two to three weeks we go and do maybe a few cycles of low carb at least five days in a row if not maybe go 14 days in a row if you're willing to commit to that and try a little bit more aggressive low carb for just to kind of accelerate the fat burning effect okay cool yeah I'm all in man awesome I'm going to give you one more a couple more little tips um if you want them yeah cool so this is a couple other tips I want you to do on your long walk days when you wake up in the morning you pretty refreshed are you pretty ready to go or you kind of like I need my coffee to get going uh usually it takes me a while to get going but you know I like to get outside right away get some fresh air if I told you to go for a walk without coffee would that be not no bueno that'd be no good no I can do it I can do it so I want you to try something on your days that you're not doing your intervals your sprint intervals I want you to go and just have your water and walk without the coffee okay okay have your coffee when you get back on your days that you do maybe on the long day if you go for the four hours you know maybe you can do that um you can play around with it but on your day that you're going to go for your sprint intervals I want you to have your ketones first and save your coffee for after all right we're just gonna flop some things around so we're not taking anything out we're just changing the order a little bit um so we'll use the ketones for performance and then I want you to be more fasted on your morning walks on the days you're just going for the long walks okay and then we'll start fueling your body after that you got it okay so then hit me back I'd like to see an update you know within two weeks an update just kind of give me fill in fill me in um we'll come back and we'll tell everybody uh you know how things are going and then we can talk about maybe doing a little low carb challenge um for for you because sometimes we need to go a little bit a little bit more aggressive towards to get the metabolic health dialed in so that you can be metabolically flexible what it means to be metabolically flexible means that you can take some days off and you don't just pack on the weight right and your body you can go back and forth a little bit more efficiently um right now your body is prone to storing body fat and we need to make that turn completely and we just don't know where that's gonna come from so but I think changing your exercises changing refeeding a couple times um and focus on performance is gonna get you there fast and you're gonna feel better your energy level should go up probably by 20 or 30 percent yes all right any questions for me um as far as like the eating stuff is it kind of stick to what I was kind of eating already yeah I don't I don't want to change a lot at the moment I really just want you to you know try not to eat too late at night you know try to stop before eight o'clock um that does make a difference um you make 8 p.m kind of that late night done um prioritized protein which is what you're doing um I wouldn't change a ton at the moment just add the refeed days and the refeed days I want you to prioritize protein on those refeed days so I wouldn't I wouldn't change a lot I don't think it's as much about the food as is just some of the other factors um if it's about the food then we're gonna have to go more to the the keto or the low carb living where it's a little bit more like clean or strict um let's not jump to that conclusion because you're elevating your keto levels you're eating your eating while you're moving while you're like you're doing all the other these other things maybe we don't need to go so far that way in a couple weeks we should kind of know and then we can test it from there at least now you get an awareness you're like okay listen my body did really well by not going so extreme to the low carb side of it and I still'm getting where I want to go or you're like listen I'm doing all these things and I'm not getting there the next thing I have to do is go to the low carb side of it so then we know when you can make a decision otherwise you're just going back and forth and then people never truly know right cool yeah awesome um you sit all day long do you go out in the middle of the day at all do you go outside in the middle of the day at all here and there but okay added bonus you live in Florida added bonus the most important time to go outside is between 10 and 2 p.m 10 a.m. or 2 p.m so if you can take your lunch and go outside and eat it outside I'm okay with you taking your socks off putting your feet in the grass all that will just make things better they only it'll only help you it will not hurt you at all okay 20 minutes of good sunlight in the middle of the day is huge very important I will do that okay and your darker skin you have darker eyes that's even gonna be more important for you than for the fair skin individuals awesome Dustin thank you you're welcome you're welcome oh we got this question so is fasting okay I don't get hungry until about 3 p.m and then I feel so hungry by that time I drink tea things at the end of the day um yeah so it's really important when you're fasting um there's a level that the competitive fasting thing is what I'm talking about is like like people are setting benchmarks and goals um and I've done that too I mean I've done long fast before but it's really important you feed the warrior and the more stress you're under the more you physically are active the more you still have to feed your body and that's why I like to focus on performance I would never take an athlete and not feed them right I'm going to feed them perfectly so they can perform the best but think about it we want to perform the best weekend too so it just made me different so I think fasting regularly is important right so you might do a long fast you might do some short passes you might do some intermittent fasting but I think it's the cycle of all of it that really is where you people find the sweet spot it's going to look differently if you find that you're not eating and then you get super hungry and you're binge eating basically that's a tipping point um you're you're either not listening to your body so you need to you need to start preparing for that so I would tell you two two hours before um you got hungry start eating um meaning feel your body with something high quality food so you don't just go binge because if you don't have your ketones available what happens you grab whatever crap you can't because your body just it's like your body's going into survival mode and if all it has to do is go hunt in the pantry it's gonna go hunt the pantry if that so you don't want to push it to that far at the same time you want to understand the psychological side of it some people are fasting and they're hungry for the wrong reasons it's not because of their hungries because of their mood and it's because of it's because of their habits and these are all things that we have to take into consideration but we start looking at the basic biochemistry and basic survival mechanisms of the human body um which is the people that like you're got now right you're at a different phase than you were when we started so that's things that we have to keep in mind that we we don't want to try to beat survival because you'll lose all this if you're trying to beat survival that's why we that's why I encourage Feed the Warrior Dr. Jacob Wilson we talk extensively about this I'm a big fan of cycling calories not carbohydrates I don't think people need to really cycle much carbohydrates either you eat them or you don't but you do need to cycle calories where you don't want to necessarily be for most people they don't want to be on the same thing every single day their whole life right they typically that they they set themselves up to fail especially if they're on a health transformation so um for people that like to meal prep that is a great idea um that's not my style though so all right Alex man I appreciate it any other questions for me no I'm set right now you gave me a gave me a boat load man I appreciate it hey any time and stay in that dude's group we throw challenges out there all the time and just go for them you know I don't always hit all the challenges and stuff um but just go for them because it it's we know that you're creating a new life right you are creating a new future for yourself and we know that your future will not be the one you're existing in today when you're when you're healthy when you get to the ideal health that you want to be in and your body you want to be in for your kids and your family and your activity levels you're going to be in a whole different place that means your whole day will look different you know um right now I'm working with like I don't know five or six 50 year old women 50 year old plus women that are doing crossfit and high high intensity training these women never touched a weight in their life but they grew into that because they've great got momentum to get stronger now they're experimenting with other things that are enhancing their life we didn't start them there but their life got different so just be okay with designing a new life for yourself you know be okay to say okay what is gonna like and I'm you're probably not built to run five miles or a marathon so maybe don't think that way think about what you naturally like to do you know you might enjoy doing strong stronger competitions like where you about strength of your body because you're a stronger guy you're not a person that wants to run miles you want to run 20 feet so be okay with thinking your brains more that way because you're built more that way okay awesome yeah all right y'all hope this was helpful um thanks for letting me do this uh I truly appreciate it because it just hopefully helps other people live better and feel better because we all go through different things and we just need to hear from different voices so Alex I appreciate you so much thank you Justin all right can I take a picture send it to Christy perfect thank you cheers y'all