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Mike Diamond is without a doubt a multidisciplinary personality. He’s a busy professional that delves into many fields and has found success as an author, television personality, director, athlete, entrepreneur, motivational speaker, and life coach.
Mike’s life story is nothing short of stunning – he has had to battle alcohol, drug addiction, and various health problems to become the man he is today. Now, he wants to use all the experience and knowledge he’s gained over the years to help other people do the same. For that, he’s got a new set of projects lined up and ready to roll. Judging by the success of his previous and current projects, we have a feeling that Mike has many great things coming up.
But why take guesses when we can hear it from the man himself? We had the opportunity to sit down with Mike Diamond and talk about his work and his plans for the future, so here’s what he shared with us.
You have A Dose of Positivity podcast, a book, a supplement, and a new restaurant coming out. How are all these things related?
It’s all about purpose. My purpose is to inspire, educate, motivate, and help people live their potential, and love themselves because they matter. Any product, whether I’m writing a blog, doing a podcast, or doing a supplement, all has to revolve around my purpose and to bring value to people.
You’ve been doing the podcast for a little while now. It’s still pretty new, but it looks like it’s really taking off. You’ve got a lot of celebrities, and a lot of interesting topics, so tell us a little bit about that.
The podcast A Dose of Positivity brings on guests that can dose you with inspiration, motivation, and education, whether it’s an addict or an entrepreneur. It’s bringing on people that have compelling stories and can give the audience tools and strategies to help them. It’s all about hacking the system – getting out of a dated paradigm and figuring out how to be my best self in the shortest period of time. What I like to do is study people, model their behavior, interview them and then give the information to people so they can grasp what they need to be better.
You have everything revolving around one sort of umbrella, which is dosage. One of the biggest things that you’ve got coming out is your book, A Dose of Positivity, which is related to your podcast that’s related to everything else. A lot of people are waiting for that, so can you tell us more about it?
Yes, the book comes out March 14th through Matt Holt imprint under BenBella Books which is distributed by Penguin Random House. The reason why I talk about a dose of positivity so much is very simple, being an addict in recovery and being someone that’s always looking to improve myself. Every human being is looking to avoid pain and gain pleasure. That’s everyone’s primal motivation. So, under stress, we try to take shortcuts because it’s a very stressful world to survive, especially with the pandemic or trying to just get by nowadays going through a deep recession. I try to find empowering ways to take those four brain chemicals, dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphin, and teach people ways to get an empowering dose, not a disempowering one.
For me, when I was under stress and pain, guess what I did? Cocaine and alcohol, which is disempowering. So, I teach people the power of thinking positively, and how a positive thought can affect how you feel and act. For example, if you think about sex all day, you get horny. If you have a negative thought all day, it sits in your stomach. The trick is to think positive, be compassionate, have gratitude, and it affects the energy centers of our bodies which then affects how you treat the world around us. It’s all about giving yourself and giving others an empowering dose.
Nutrition is also a big part of that. You have sort of two things, but let’s start by talking about Diamond Life Fuel, which is your supplement.
Prior to the supplement, there was this idea with addicts, and people on Adderall, which is through the roof right now. When I was healing naturally in 2017 from stomach surgery after my appendix burst, I wasn’t in good shape while i was trying to heal. I didn’t want to go on Adderall with ADHD, or anti-depressants, and being an addict, I didn’t want to take those chemicals. So, I created a supplement that has turmeric in it, which is great for inflammation and gut health, vitamin C to help the immune system, and then I poured a little caffeine with three different nootropics, to give yourself a spike of dopamine naturally. L-tyrosine is a precursor to help spike dopamine in the brain, DL-phenylalanine is the same, and theanine slows the brainwaves down when you put the caffeine in.
So basically, the whole point of the product is to boost your energy, improve your performance, and elevate your mood. If you take it, that’s how you feel. And it’s doing really well, a lot of addicts take it, and it’s for everyone. It doesn’t matter if you work out, or you don’t work out if you’re a housewife, athlete, or a secretary. It’s for everyone to feel good. productive without being jacked up on coffee all day, feeling moody, and then crashing. The point is to be healthy happy productive and a good person.
The latest thing is going back to nutrition again. We’ve heard something about a restaurant.
Yes, an idea came up. There’s an opportunity for me to partner with an old friend who’s 31 years sober. He asked me if I have a food concept and I said I do, it’s called The Healthy Dose Grill. The problem with people right now is we overconsume calories, eat the wrong calories, and we don’t eat correctly. My concept is very simple: you’ll have some vegan options, whether is tofu, plant-based steak, or plant-based chicken, you’ll have some actual organic chicken, and organic meat, and I’m negotiating whether to do some fish, which I probably will.
The problem right now in America is – you go into a place that’s supposed to be fast food and it’s supposed to be healthy and your healthy bowl is about 800 calories. No human being needs to consume 800 calories unless they’re Mike O’Hearn, a professional bodybuilder who’s 300 pounds of muscle. The regular person needs 350 to 400 calories in a bowl. So, when you go into these grills, you’re getting about 8 ounces of protein. You need about 5 to maybe 6 ounces of protein if you’re an athletic person. Then you’re going to have a mixture of a little bit of carbohydrates, whether it’s brown rice, white rice, or some yams, and then you’re going to have vegetables.
So, if you go into the grill, it’s not fast food, it’s food on the go – clean, organic food on the go. If you want extra, we’ll create special add-ons for people who need to consume more calories, like the titan bowl, the Mike O’Hearn bowl, for the big guy that’s 300 pounds of muscle and can actually eat 8 ounces of meat or chicken. But I want to keep it clean. Another thing that we do, is we go and get a salad that’s 1500 calories. Which completely defeats the purpose of eating a healthy salad. Another thing people do is add ridiculous amounts of condiments. Some dressings contain around 300 to 400 calories. So, I’m going to come up with actual dressings that taste good, are super low calories, and are super healthy.
I saw people eating pizza dipping it in ranch. And then they go into the gym all day, but they’re not going to lose weight. I ran 30 half marathons in 30 days and I ran fasted. I was burning 1800 calories fasted, running one half marathon, so after that, I could pretty much eat whatever I wanted, but I was still very mindful about the choices I made. Another thing I have observed is we don’t eat our food correctly. We are always rushing and on the go. You need to chew your food, by chewing it correctly you build digestive enzymes, by building digestive enzymes you digest your food, then you build the serotonin correctly in your gut which then helps you think. So, it’s teaching people how to get a healthy dose mindfully by taking the time to eat correctly. And that’s the whole point of the healthy dose grill and philosophy.
When can we expect to see these start popping up? When should people be looking out for that?
There are a few spaces I’m currently looking at in Atlanta right now. The whole purpose and experience I want to create is to educate people on how to be mindful of what they eat and more importantly how they consume their food. Food is fuel but if we don’t consume it correctly it doesn’t help us it hurts us.
We’ve heard rumors you may be shooting a reality show as well.
I’m in talks right now to shoot a documentary that may end up being a reality series depending on how the documentary goes. It’s really an experiment that I think will be great viewing. It may take 6 months to a year to shoot. We will take two to three people who are struggling right now. It may be an addict, someone who has lost a business or job, or it could be someone going through a divorce, break up, or emotional crisis. I will work with them and bring in a team of expert people I trust and respect to help the person get back on their feet again. The working title of the show is projected 180. But like any show title that could change as we start shooting and so could the show. The purpose, mission and point of the show, is to help someone who has hit hard times and is down on their luck. My goal is to help them get back on track and get unstuck so they can flourish and shine.
So, I’m shooting those two shows. Obviously, the experimental one is a risk but it’s worth the risk-taking. I’d rather shoot a 2- or 3-hour documentary and discover with all my resources that we can really help someone, and then we can go out and just help massive amounts of people with their mental health and their addiction problems by just giving them the right information.
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This content is brought to you by Rabeel Ahmed
Photos provided by the author with written permission from Mike Diamond.