Too often, the quest for a fitter lifestyle can feel like a never-ending cycle of failure. Lose weight, gain weight, fast, feast, work out, and then give up. But the truth is that the key to changing your body isn’t finding some magic exercise or diet, it’s about changing your mindset. That’s where Devan Kline, author of Stop Starting Over comes in.

Devan and his wife Morgan are cofounders of Burn Boot Camp which is a fitness empire that was created to maximize the quality of women’s lives by going beyond normal fitness routines. Burn Boot Camp already serves over 300 locations with plans to open 15,000 locations globally over the next 10 years.

Devan takes an integrative approach in fitness that transcends workout and diet routines. By identifying these deeper psychological goals, he’s helped over 20,000 women build a healthier and more fulfilled life. In this episode, he’s going to give you some of his best coaching lessons and share some client’s success stories that will help you reframe your own story and turn your beliefs into action and results and also, help you conquer common excuses so you can develop life changing strategies.

Devan believes that happiness is 90% psychology and 10% strategy, and with his techniques, you’ll be able to master both your mind and your body to build the happy, healthy life you’ve always wanted.

Devan Kline: Being 30 years old, sometimes I get weird looks. People sometimes perceive my success at 30 as something that happened because of some type of fortune that my parents had. I get that a lot.

It’s like, “I wonder how much money this guy had before he started this?” And the answer is $600.

I think my background is my biggest advantage.

I grew up in Battle Creek, Michigan, in what most people would refer to as low income housing or some might refer to as the ghetto. My parents were addicted to drugs and alcohol. Very violent household. Any given weekend we might have an incident go down.

You know, the times were harsh, and while you’re in it as a kid, you don’t really understand it. It just kind of becomes normalized. So when I turned about 15, I found a CD. I’m old enough to remember Sony Walkmans—I had one and I would use it back and forth coming to and from school. I found an old CD in my parent’s collection. It was a Tony Robbins CD called Personal Power.

Photo Credit: MusicOomph

I’m a huge Tony Robbins fan. That CD, I listened to for a couple of years going to and from school. It really shaped who I was, because I never had a role model, you know? My dad is a caring guy, but drugs and alcohol got the best of him, and he wasn’t present a lot.

My mom fled when I was 13 years old, and I’ve not had a relationship with her since. Finding Tony at 15, and that culmination of me having to take care of my brothers and sisters as the man of the household, it taught me a lot—especially about business—at an early age.

Some things that some of my peers are struggling with at, 45, 55 years old, I had to deal with when I was 14 and 15 years old.

Charlie Hoehn: Like what?

Devan Kline: I would say, when you’re running a business, there’s so much emotional stress mental stress, and physical stress that comes along with it—even spiritual stress.

As you’re going through the process, it’s somewhat difficult. I had to reflect as an early kid on who I really was and what I was capable of and who I really wanted to be.

“I knew intuitively that it wasn’t the path that my parents went down.”

I really had to open up mentally and emotionally at a young age to be able to handle the threshold of things that were going on that shouldn’t be happening to a kid at that age.

I think that it’s really translated to—fast forward to 30—being one of the fastest fitness growing franchises right now.

I think it’s translated into my threshold of control that I have as a business owner. I’m not starting off on the bunny hill—I’m starting off on the black diamond. I’m ready to attack it and then go after it. I am focused on where I’m going.

It was just instilled from a young age.

Strength from Your Past

Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, you know, first off, really remarkable, thank you for sharing your origin story. As difficult and challenging and frankly, awful as it can be to grow up around that, it gave you some super powers, I’m guessing, right?

Devan Kline: It’s my ultimate advantage. I don’t ever tell my story to get sympathy from anybody. I try to just put in context what I stand for and what I’m about, Stop Starting Over as a book, it transcends fitness.

I’m a trainer and I’m a fitness professional and a franchise professional, but really, I wrote this book to create a blueprint for people to have happiness. Because that’s all I ever sought, growing up in those environments.

The last 15 years of my life—really, since I found that new perspective in Tony Robbins and his teachings—it really catapulted me into this kind of lifestyle university that I’ve been on for the past 15 years. Trying to master the game of physical, mental, emotional, spiritual stress. Trying to really take those four areas and apply principles into all the areas of life that we care about—our careers, our family, our finances.

Whether you have a job, whether you’re on the PTA at school, whatever it is, whatever your mission is, whatever your outcome is, there’s multiple elements. It’s my belief that you have to never let any of those get into the red.

“Always deposit in all areas that can help you to grow to be holistically successful.”

Charlie Hoehn: You just sound like a healthy person who is, I’d imagine, just like this all the time, right?

Devan Kline: Yeah, I mean, you can’t not be energetic when you wake up every morning and you love what you do, love who you’re around. I love my headquarters crew like they’re my family. I love my franchise partners. I love the 50,000 clients that email you in the morning and say, “You know, Devan, you’ve had a hand in changing my life.” I just explained a little bit about my background and, obviously, that’s not synonymous with having a lot of money.

When I was 25 years old, just getting started with this, I had enough money to be satisfied financially. What I needed was the fulfillment that comes from the gratitude that I feel when people actually love our service.

Not only just love it but love it so much that they tell everyone about it and get all their friends to do it.

“That’s what keeps me energetic.”

It’s natural, yes, there’s a certain level of it that’s extroverted, but also, it’s not any manufactured internal enthusiasm. It’s really just the passion that stems from me from feeling that gratitude.

How to Stop Starting Over

Charlie Hoehn: Well, let’s talk about Stop Starting Over. Why did you title it this?

Devan Kline: I’ve noticed something, really over the past six years and since I’ve started training clients. I’ve now trained personally over 20,000 clients here in North Charlotte, in the Lake Norman area, and then hundreds and thousands of more through the osmosis of me mentoring my trainers out there.

I just really started to become fascinated with human psychology and this internal conflict in America. How there can be this overwhelming statistic that almost 70% of our population is overweight, almost 35% is obese, 17% and rising percent of our children are overweight, and yet if you go on the corner and look at all of the fitness places, if you go on social media on Instagram and Facebook and YouTube and you look up fitness, it is everywhere.

It’s a perceived saturation, but it’s almost like we’re just starving for the wisdom behind it. You can have all of these tools and all of these strategies, but if you don’t have a reason behind why you want to reach a health transformation in the first place—a purpose, a passion that’s more compelling and enchanting than just pressing snooze in the morning or keeping your hand on the cookie jar. If you want something that’s a greater pull to get you over those obstacles, then days turn it, weeks, weeks turn into months.

“Every quarter or every week or every year or every New Year’s, you reset the same goal that you had last year.”

Out of 20,000 clients—a pretty good sample size, especially when you’re working with them one on one hands on, they’re like, real time case studies—I noticed that there is a distinct difference between people.

Those who were ultimately successful, looked at myself, this program and my philosophy as “This is what I’m going to do, I’m going to run with it.”

It’s done, I’m changed mentally and emotionally, and I will be changed physically. And they’ve had the conviction to stick with it.

Then I’ve seen other people who have done the opposite. I started studying this and I started kind of trying to find patterns, right? I think that’s what a good business man and a good trainer does really—finding the patterns between success and unsuccessful people and sharing that.

Basically, Stop Starting Over is a culmination of all of those observations, all of those principles, all of the focus meetings that I have one on one.

Even though I am a group trainer and Burn Boot Camp is a group training atmosphere, we have one on one sessions called focus meetings. I really lay out a blueprint for somebody to take complete control.

First, psychologically, deeply rooted at the problem that has made them start over so many times. Removing that, deleting those belief systems, those patterns, installing new ones and then asking for a commitment.

Because you’ve got the blueprint here in Stop Starting Over, I need your commitment and meet me halfway. Hey, you’re ready to go. This is a blueprint to change your life physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually.

Find Your North Star

Charlie Hoehn: What I heard you saying and this is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately which is, you have to have a state that you actually want, not be focusing on the state that you don’t want.

Devan Kline: Yeah, it’s definitely easier, when you have what I call a north star and there’s two questions that formulate a north star. The first question is, “What is my outcome, what do I really want to transform here? If I’m setting off on this goal, what is it that I really want?” Because clarity is power when you’re able to clearly define concisely, exactly what you want, not what other people want.

A lot of people will say, “I want to be fit and toned.” Well, you know, fit and toned is a goal that pretty much everyone has. Welcome to the club.

“What do you really want to transform?”

The second question is, “Why do you really want it?”

Charlie Hoehn: Give us an example of what a better outcome would be than fit and toned?

Devan Kline: Something specific to you. That’s a great point.

Let’s say my name is Jessica, and I’m 32 years old and have three kids. One of my kids plays soccer. When I get home from work and my kid gets home from school, every day my kid wants to play soccer.

I’m out of shape. I’m 60 pounds overweight—there’s no way I can get out there and play soccer with you for 90 minutes. I’m going to pass out.

Being specific and setting your outcome can say something along the lines like, “I am committed fully to changing my life mentally, emotionally, spiritually, physically because I have a daughter who I refuse to watch grow up to have her look back on her life and say, ‘Mommy could never play with me outside.’”

It’s something that’s connected to your life that’s tangible to who you are, that you can draw on, that’s going to actually move the emotion.

“Nothing moves forward without emotion—it could be negative, it could be positive.”

A principle that I teach in the book is using negativity to your advantage. If you’re not really sure what you want, then you’ve got to figure out what you don’t want, and you’ve got to project that pain to the future. How are you going to feel in 10 years if you were to drag these habits out with you over all of this time?

If you eat fast-food every weekend and don’t move your body, what are you going to look like in 10 years, 15 years, 20 years? I call it the projection of pain exercise, which we talk about in the book, and it’s so powerful.

Take 15 minutes on each one of those questions and come up with a statement that basically says, “This is what I want out of my life ultimately, and this is why I want it.”

We’re going to use that as a guiding light to the decisions that we have to make in order to create the rituals that we need in order to get there eventually.

It’s basically reverse engineering your life and figuring out what you really want, and then you can start to dial the years, the months, the weeks, the days, the hours, the minutes backwards until you know exactly what you need to do in this moment, right now, to be where you want to be and to continue to progress to that moment of happiness down the road.

Get Your Head in the Game

Charlie Hoehn: What are some of the principles of mental mastery?

Devan Kline: The book is broken up into different principles, and mental mastery really starts with the overall concept.

It’s 90% psychology and 10% mechanics.

In order for you to set up the foundation to succeed, you have to have that belief system first and foremost installed.

That 90% of what you want to achieve out of your life, that 90% of your ability to get to that north star that you had set for yourself, relies on your ability to choose what thoughts you think most often.

Charlie Hoehn: I think the question for a lot of people is how do I install that new software? How do I get started?

Devan Kline: Ask yourself the right questions, and you’re going to get the right answers. I think most people often times will ask, “Why is this happening to me?” When they need to say, “Okay, this is happening to me,” and face that actuality. “What am I going to do about it?”

Ultimately, when you’re speaking about principles to live your life, it’s like a map.

If we were to go to Los Angeles, California, and you know that if you head west, generally speaking, you’re going to hit California at some point and you know, whether you land at Sacramento, whether you land in The Bay or you land in Los Angeles or San Diego, doesn’t matter because you’re headed towards California.

Now if we start to get more distinct in that path, we can go right to downtown Los Angeles.

Now, if we add a GPS into that map, we know the exact turns to go on every route. That’s all that principles are: they’re helping you navigate that path to get you where you want to go. If you don‘t know where you want to go, you’re just going to end up in northern California when you’re trying to get to San Diego.

“The principles of the book are about just guiding you.”

I’m here to be a coach and a leader, and I think the best leaders are the ones that ask questions that make the mentee really think hard and come up with their own answers.

That’s the only way that they can ultimately own that plan—the only way they can ultimately stop starting over—is if it’s theirs. If they own it.

If I just sit here and give you a meal plan and an exercise plan, are you going to use it? No, probably not. If you do, it’s going to be for 30 days and you’re not going to learn anything. All you’re doing is just robotically following a system that’s generic to everyone. It’s not lifestyle.

Instagram is a perfect representation of the culture that we live in today.

“Everyone is focused on aesthetic, and no one is focused on health.”

I think that’s a key differentiator. The reason I wrote the book and added these principles in there isn’t to give people another 30 day strategy. It is an evergreen book, where you’re going to be able to draw on it when you come a crossroads at some point in your life.

Changing Your Mindset

Charlie Hoehn: It was hard to change the thoughts that were repeating in your head, right?

Devan Kline: Yeah. It definitely is a challenge. When I was a baseball player, I played in the minor league with the San Francisco Giants for three seasons, and a lot of my time in baseball really helped me prepare to be an entrepreneur and to grow as fast as we have.

There are inevitably big hurdles when you’re in a nationally recognized company. Baseball, really, is a mental game. The entire thing’s a mental game. Yeah, you have to have the physical skill, but there are guys throwing a hundred miles an hour out there that never even see a dollar from baseball because they don’t have it mentally.

Being able to go through that, and being able to go from 7,000 to 9,000 people on good nights and to have the ball in my hand and to know that it’s me versus the other guy. That largely my success is dictated on my ability to control my emotions, that in reflection, it’s an amazing gift to have. I would say that that’s really prepared me to be able to speak on it now.

I have my own podcast, the Devan Kline podcast. On my Instagram account, I’m preaching every single day, and my close Facebook groups I’m preaching. Every day, some type of audio or some type of video, documenting my life and talking about these things on a daily basis.

“Part of the way that I am able to remember it is just repetition.”

You’re teaching it, but you’re also repeating it too. One reason that I say that is because, I really want this book to be a tool for those to take what I’ve written down as their own philosophy and start to take it and teach other people.

A lot of what I talk about in here, stems from philosophies—As A Man Thinketh, the Tony Robbins philosophy, Jim Rohn, Ray Dalio’s philosophies, Will Smith, some of his esoteric, crazy stuff gets thrown in there. I think it’s really important as we continue this progressive generation of growth that we honor these guys that have come before us who have paved the way.

We stand up on their shoulders. We find our own point of view. We don’t have to agree with everything. You can take principles and philosophies from different people and kind of massage them and make them your own.

I think you’re doing the world a service when you’re taking somebody’s words, standing on their shoulders, and shouting them from a mountain top.

“I want people to do that with this book, because I have done that my whole life.”

That is, modeling and being able to emulate successful people, iconic people. People I look up to—Gary Vaynerchuk, whether you like him for his profanity or not, is a brilliant marketer. Mel Robins. Vani Hari is a more of a regional celebrity to me, but I’ve looked up to her—her name is Food Babe, she’s in my book, she’s one of the world’s leading activist on nutrition labels and making sure companies are ridding it of any harmful ingredients.

I’m just always doing it, you know what I mean? Always repeating it. Take this book and utilize it, share it with other people, do book clubs, whatever you’ve got to do to be a master of it and to teach it over and over.

One Hour a Day

Charlie Hoehn: So let’s talk a bit about emotional mastery. This is very difficult for a lot of people. Break it down for us.

Devan Kline: I think that controlling your emotions and being able to find that control and develop that control is ultimately one of the most important skills that you can have in your life because the thoughts that we think and the conversations that we have internally are more than conversations than we have with all of our loved ones and collective friends combined in a year.

We talk to ourselves more in one week than that.

I don’t know how true this is, but they say there are 60,000 thoughts in a day, and the majority of them are negative. I really wanted to lead with mental mastery in the book and then also followed up with emotional mastery right behind it.

If you were to break down every ounce of success that I’ve had or that I have ever seen anyone else have, across every person that has success, big or small, there is a common denominator in the rituals that they have when they get out of bed in the morning.

“It’s always about getting up and focusing and priming the day.”

I call it pre-gaming. I am an athlete, and this is what I used to do before I knew I was going to pitch a game that night. I would get up in the morning and I would really prime myself and get myself mentally and emotionally ready to be able to handle everything that comes with grinding and trying to be successful.

Whether you are working on losing weight or you are in a business, whatever it may be, getting up in the morning with that ritual that I have been able to create for myself is super important. Basically, I am saying dude, take an hour for yourself first thing in the morning and schedule it every single day.

Mind you, before you go to bed the night before you want to write down on a piece of paper or type it in your iPhone or whatever you want to do—you want to write down everything that you want to accomplish that day. Then on top of it, write down how is that going to make you feel once you’ve accomplished it.

So that way, the night before you start to get it connected to those emotions and, subconsciously, your day’s a lot easier to attack when you get up.

So I get up in the morning, and I like to lay out some shoes and some shorts and just go out on a nice 15 minute to 20 minute very light jog for the purposes of breathing and focusing on gratitude.

As simple as that sounds, once you trade all of the expectations and all of the ambitions and all that stuff that you have for the moment and can feel the wind on your face as you are running down the street, that puts your life in perspective on a daily basis.

Sometimes, we make things way bigger than they are emotionally, don’t we? It really puts in perspective how the things you are thinking about are the things that actually matter when you are grateful, and it is not all the nitpicky things so.

Then I will go right into a workout—so for me it is a 45-minute workout. I don’t work out any more than 45-minutes six times a week. During my workout, I am usually listening to an inspirational podcast or listening to a YouTube video. Seldomly, I listen to motivational music.

Not only am I simultaneously creating mental stimulus and physical stimulus, but I have already done it emotionally.

“So in the first hour of the day, you can work on your mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical health, every single day.”

That is really what taking care of you is about. It is okay to be selfish. A taboo word for too many people is this word selfish. You have to be selfish.

When you are on an airplane and the stewardess talks about the oxygen mask, she’s obviously like, “Put your mask on first before helping anybody else.”

That is just a metaphor for life that says you need to be filled up before you can fill others up. If you have all this energy that you want to give out, you have to have the emotional energy put in first and the physical energy in first. S

o an hour a day, 10 to 15 minutes working on gratitude, asking yourself questions like, “Who do I love, who loves me back, what am I grateful for?” And then going into some type of workout, whether it’s walking, Burn Boot Camp.

Honestly, I really don’t care what it is. I just want you to move and I want you to move with a purpose and with an intent in the morning.

Philosophical Nutrition

Charlie Hoehn: What are your philosophies on nutrition?

Devan Kline: I think nutrition has such a long way to go, and I am privileged to be one of the professionals out there in the fitness industry spear-heading it.

I think that big business, I think that marketing companies that control the dialogue and big medical companies that control the dialogue are ultimately doing us a disservice. Almost 70% of our country isn’t overweight because they are sitting around waiting to be overweight. They are overweight because nobody is feeding them the right knowledge or the right education.

I am really passionate about nutrition. I have my own supplement line called Burn Nutrition. I partner with the world’s largest number one natural nutrition company, Shaklee, they have been around forever. I practice every day what I preach.

This is something that I think is one of the biggest psychological hurdles to overcome. There is this all in or all out mentality, and I really want to break that. So people might be surprised by the fact that I am not going to lay out a nutrition plan for you. I really am not going to.

Surveying 20,000 clients, there are not 12 people that eat the same food, right? I am just pulling that number out, but there are no 12 people that are going to eat the same exact diet every single day and be happy and fulfilled and satisfied and satiated with it.

“My goal is to change the dialogue surrounding nutrition.”

I really want to get rid of these silly notions that carbohydrates are bad. Carbohydrates are essential for our body to function. You need a 100 milligrams of glucose a day for your brain to function.

And if you deplete yourself of carbohydrates, you’re going to cause your body to react in adverse way creating an acidic environment that breeds disease.

So I have this vision to teach people how to properly nourish their bodies, rather than telling them what to do without educating them on anything.

So it’s not sugars, it’s not carbs, it’s not fat, it is not the enemy.

I have almost all of my successful clients twice a week binge eat fruit on purpose. You have never heard that before, because there’s this word around binging that’s like this negative association. I have you do it because it’s bioavailable vitamins, it’s bioavailable minerals that live within these fruits. It’s fructose sugar, which comes naturally to your body. Your body can digest that better than sucrose or sucro-low sugar, which is the fake sugar.

You’re getting that need to just throw your hands in a bowl of stuff. You are getting rid of that need. I’ve found it works really, really well. So fats, carbs, sugar, they are not the enemy.

The enemy is acidity. We need to start to look at the root cause not only psychologically but also nutritionally as well. It’s acidity in our body—not carbs, not sugar, not fat.

Foundational Nutrition

Charlie Hoehn: What kind of stuff do you eat? Apart from the supplements and everything that you take.

Devan Kline: I’ll keep it generic because I am generic in the way that I eat. Let’s say these are some foundational principles.

So every time I eat a piece of protein, it’s fish, it’s chicken, it’s turkey, it’s London broil, it’s shrimp, it’s seafood, whatever it is—which are acidic foods, even the cleanest cuts of meat are acidic in nature—so I always have a big bowl of greens or a bed of greens.

In the book, there is a column with a ton of foods—not all the foods in the world, but a ton of them—the most common foods that are acidic versus alkaline. I start to get people to put that line down the center so that they can understand: when I go to reach a piece of food, is this alkaline or is this acidic? Is this going to help me or hurt me?

Throughout the day, I’ll have eggs in the morning and or some oats with maybe a little bit of protein powder in it. And I will also have lemon water. Lemon water is the easiest way for people to balance the acidic foods, because outside of the body, lemons are acidic in nature but once they are mixed with chemicals in our stomach, it actually becomes an alkaline property for the body.

If you took nothing else away from this nutritional little speech here, just drink lemon water all day long.

“Put one whole lemon in a gallon of water and you’ll never feel better.”

So it’s random because I travel and I have a lifestyle. I wish I could sit here and say I am one of those trainers who marches to the orders of macro nutrition and follows everything to a tee.

I am just a human being who is out here trying to be healthy and trying to build a business and run a family, and it’s 85-15.

As cliché as that sounds, I care about what people do 325 days of the year, because I know there is 40 days in a year that we need. We need those days.

Happiness Is the Real Goal

Charlie Hoehn: You have a chapter towards the end of the book called 80% of Happiness. What is that?

Devan Kline: Here is the big thing with this, 80% of happiness—this chapter is all about getting away from the fitness transformation. I really wanted this book to create an idea of holistic happiness for somebody. A book that gets away from this work-life balance mentality that most people have and focuses on what my wife and I call holistic integration.

We are basically taking all of the things that we’re passionate about in our life, only doing those things that make us passionate or that light us up, and not trying to draw any lines between them.

When we come home from the evening, we know we are going to sit down with Cameron, our daughter and our son, Maxwell, and we’re going to sit there for two hours from six to eight-ish, and we’re going to have some fun.

“We’re not going to get rid of technology, we are going to use technology.”

I am going to show my daughter a video that I did from earlier in the day in the gym kicking somebody’s butt. I am going to let her talk, and my wife and I are going to talk about business moves.

I want to get people to really get to a place where they can wake up by default, and be in a beautiful state all day long. Hate Fridays and love Mondays. Ultimately, that’s what I have been able to do with my passion.

Maybe you don’t like the job that you have, your nine to five. Maybe you love the job that you have. But if you don’t, then you have to do something about it. You are spending 80% of your time on your income, especially if you are the breadwinner, and you want to be happy.

If you are not happy, if you are not fulfilled, where else is that going to spill?

And we all know it’s going to spill into your relationship. It is going to spill negatively into your finances. You are not going to be passionate, and you are not going to go in early to get the promotion that is going to give you more money.

“Side hustle is what it’s all about.”

If you want to be happy and you are stuck in a place right now where you have some discontentment, then what are you doing between six and 11 PM every night?

Two of those hours might be with kids. I mean family is not just an important thing, it’s everything. The entire reason why most people draw on their north star is their family. Somebody that they love. Your north star is always going to be connected to something that you really love. It is going to be connected to emotions.

I want people to be self-aware. I want them to say, “Okay am I discontent? If I am, what am I doing about it? If I am binge watching Netflix from six to 11 every night and complaining about work, I’m not allowed to do that anymore. That’s counterintuitive.”

I really want people to be able to be happy in all regards of life, not just fitness, because I’ve got to be honest. I am a fitness professional. I think it’s a gateway to health. But if you think fitness is going to solve your problems or losing weight is going to solve your life’s problems, you’ve got another thing coming when you get to your fitness goal and you’re like, “Oh is this all there is now?”

I mean that’s why people who make a lot of money get to a point where they’re like, “Okay I am here, this isn’t cool. It’s not as cool as I thought it was going to be,” and then the discontentment comes back.

One Changed Life

Charlie Hoehn: So of the 20,000 or a hundred plus thousand clients that you’ve worked with directly or indirectly, what’s been your favorite transformation that you’ve seen?

Devan Kline: It’s funny that you ask that because my favorite transformation that I have seen, I actually put in the book. Her name is Brandy Parker and she is a dear friend of mine. We set out on a 12-month journey to lose a 100 pounds, and Brandy ended up losing a 174 pounds in 12 months.

The coolest part for me though what made me the most proud, was the distinct difference in the way that she carried herself at 374 pounds versus 200 pounds.

The confidence, the ability to walk in the room and hold your head high, light up a room and smile and make eye contact with people. That confidence that she gained was a beautiful thing to watch. At the end of her transformation—she didn’t know this is how crazy I am—she didn’t know that we were going to go out on a trail run half marathon.

“If you have ever done a trail run, you know how hard those are by themselves.”

To throw 13.1 miles on top of that is—that’s a beast. She didn’t know we were doing that. So we run it. It takes us three and a half, four hours, we get done, I get done just a little bit before her. As she is crossing that finish line, we just shared what seems like the longest, most emotionally impactful hug you could possibly imagine.

From that day forward, Brandy has been a completely different person. I am still honored she is a part of Burn Boot Camp and is still a client and coming at 5:30 AM every day even though I am not her trainer anymore.

Man there’s no better feeling. Money, or any other thing that people try to achieve, or that people perceive as success…it’s not about success. It is about moments like that in your life that can create fulfillment for you.

Connect with Devan Kline

Charlie Hoehn: I’d imagine a lot of our listeners are thinking, “How can I follow this guy?” What is the best place to do that?

Devan Kline: So I am pretty much all over the internet. I am a marketing guy by trade, so you can find me on YouTube and Instagram and Facebook and podcast, Devan Kline Podcast. Probably the best place to follow me is Instagram because I am on that all the time. Every day, I am posting, interacting, I answer a lot of my direct messages, trying to do as many as I can, trying to help people.

You are always one DM away. You’re always one message away from being helped. I have a team full of hundreds of trainers and several fitness professionals on our team that could help.

I would be more than honored to have people reach out, follow me, direct message me and hey let’s get this thing going.

There is also a private Facebook group by the way, I should add this. It’s a closed Facebook group. You can search “Stop Starting Over with Devan Kline,” and only people who can show me a picture of their Stop Starting Over book are allowed to be in the group.

“If you purchase the book, you get a workbook.”

It is about 12 pages long or so, and it walks you right through all the exercises that are in the book so that you can have something tangible to takeaway and something to reflect on.

I am a big believer in that. So head over to that Facebook page or request for access to the workbook once you have that picture of the book—you’ve got to show it to us. We are very strict about that because we want serious people in that group who really want to create lasting change for themselves.

A Challenge for Listeners

Charlie Hoehn: I’d like for you to give our listeners a challenge. What is something they can do from your book today or this week that will have a positive impact on their life?

Devan Kline: Okay, I’d give you two things. The first one is an at home rule, okay? I have vacation rules on the book for nutrition. I have at home rules, and then I also have rules when you travel for work. So this one comes from principle number eight of nutrition: five at home rules.

The first one is following what I call the 12-hour rule. I talk about 85-15. In the book, I’m never going to tell you what to do without telling you how to do it.

So the 12 hour rule really creates that 85-15 balance for you, and it basically works like this: You pick 12 consecutive hours at any given time throughout the week that you feel like you want to modify a healthy diet. You feel like you want to go have bread and wine, you feel you need to let it out a little bit.

Now you are not going to blow it out, but we’re going to let it out, all right? We are going to crack the door, not kick it wide open.

And you’re going to give yourself the option to do it or not to do it.

“I want you to have more options, not less options.”

That’s the way you have options. You are going to choose what works best for you. If you are struggling with nutrition, 85-15, you are going to get 12 hours a week, let yourself modify a little bit.

Number two, this one is super important because water can increase a dehydrated person’s metabolism up to 30% with some people. Create these things called hydration events about two times throughout the day, for five to 10 minutes.

Each one of these, you are going to be focused. You’re so focused. Your main priority is to drink as much water as you possibly can, because that is going to combat the time when you get to work or school or whatever you’re doing throughout the day when you get super busy and bogged down with everything.

We can’t use that as an excuse to not be hydrated. So in the morning, in the evening, consume lots of water at two major periods throughout the day. Then obviously try to remember to drink it. But create these events for your life.

Gosh, hydration is the thing that gives people more energy than anything else, and it’s the simplest thing to do. It is going to keep your body properly hydrated. It keeps you mentally sharp so you can discern those real hunger queues versus the fake ones, and it helps you control your appetite as well.