If you're wondering why I've got my shirt off, it's because it's August in Florida and it is as hot as hell in here, even though I have a window AC unit. Shirt off is most comfortable for me. And I see these sexy girls — some not sexy either — and I'm like, damn, they've got these bikinis on their streams and everything, and I'm like, come on. Come on. I'll get this sexy man, shirt-off, minimum-clothes vibe going up in here. Navi, Navi, where art thou? Come hither. To me, being shirtless is about taking off your armor — clothing is like a basic level of armor. That's the main question people ask when they're new, so I thought I'd answer that for you.
Getting Used to Nintendo 64 Graphics Again
If you haven't seen Nintendo graphics in a while, and you're used to nice graphics all the time in these new games, you get used to the older graphics after a little bit — as long as you don't throw up first. Whoa. Damn, give me a chance to get up first! There we go — I just use Z to roll on the way. Damn, it's coming this way. It just rolled over me four times. That's nice. There it goes. Ah, shit — I'm definitely not gonna be the next Indiana Jones. You remember in Temple of Doom — or was it Raiders of the Lost Ark? — where he's outrunning that big-ass rock at the beginning? Oh, so I do a helicopter spin.
The Energy You Bring to a Livestream
I put a lot of work into things like yoga, massage, and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. If you're a creator, I put a lot of energy into making sure the energy you bring on your livestream is right, because it makes all the difference in the world. I think the main reason people watch live streams is either to get attention or to feel better. So if you're wanting to feel better, that's why I do my live streams — to help you feel better.
We throw this thing and I'm not seeing a rupee pop out. Let me try another one. Oh, here we go. Okay, we can make a little bit of money throwing stones. Rupees don't pop out of all of them — no, just some of them. I imagine if you'd like to go throw some rocks in your yard and see if some dollar bills would pop out of them, you'd be throwing rocks all day. That'd be a new job, wouldn't it? "What do you do?" "I throw rocks and wait till $100 bills pop out of them."
An Honest Dentist and the Problem With Profit Motives
Hey, I went and got my teeth cleaned yesterday — can you tell? Dude, my teeth look so good. I hadn't gotten my teeth cleaned in almost a year, and I've got a dentist who was actually honest. They're like, "Your teeth look beautiful. You've got no cavities. You're all good." Oh nice — and a recovery heart, too. It's so nice to find a dentist that's honest at all — not trying to make problems or turn a little tiny issue into a problem they can make a profit on. I'm glad I found a dentist that's honest. And well, I don't know if honest is the kindest word — a dentist that's there to give me the best care regardless of whether they get a big profit out of it or not. I mean, I get it: if you're a dentist and you can sell people on "yeah, this tooth is messed up, you need a filling, you're gonna see cavities" — if you've got that motive to make a profit in there, that's part of the challenge of our capitalistic society. There are so many profit motives that it's hard to tell what's truly good for you and what's actually just a profit motive. My intention is to be someone that helps you get connected to things that are truly good for you.
How I Lost 80 Pounds on a Whole Plant Based Diet
Like there's a book you can read if you're overweight. Odds are, if you're reading this, you're overweight, because something like 70% of Americans are overweight. I used to be overweight, and only recently have I not been overweight — most of my adult life I was overweight, and I didn't think so. I didn't like to think so. But whenever I tried to diet, it didn't last. There's a book called How Not to Diet, written by Dr. Greger, and I've come to believe that if you follow what's in that book, you will be at a healthy weight relatively soon, very cheaply — nothing expensive you need to do. He did the research, and he found a lot of these diets are just out there to make a profit. Somebody makes up some diet, gets a couple of stories based on the placebo effect at best, and then sells the book — and the diet is actually made to fail. The diet is supposed to fail, so that you think it's you that did it wrong, and then you come back and go, "Oh my god, I'm going to come back and try and do it again."
When really, there's a very simple diet that I eat. It's called a whole plant based diet, and from the research I've read, it prevents and can even reverse the top 15 causes of death. In my experience it leaves you at an ideal weight very easily — like I don't have to work at it. I weigh about 160 right now, I'm 5'11", and I used to weigh 240. I can eat whatever I want that is a whole plant food, and I can eat a little bit outside of that too — if I want to, I can have a piece of cake or a little bit of candy — and I feel great. I've lost 80 pounds, I don't drink alcohol, and I don't take any medications. All I take is a vitamin B12 supplement pill that Dr. Greger recommends. I do my live streams so I can share real stuff like that, because the gameplay's nice, but if I can help you be at a healthy weight the rest of your life, that's life changing.
Is it awkward at barbecues, the whole plant diet? No. I look at it like this: I can eat whatever I want to. The question is, how do I want to feel and how do I want to look? If I go grab that chicken wing, I'm putting a little bit of fat on myself, and I'm also making it easier to grab another one in the future. If I want to be a fat ass again like I was before, I can just go down all the meat and cheese and dairy and eggs — I can eat all of that I want to if I want to be a fat ass again — and I don't. So I go to a barbecue and I look around and say, what's the healthiest thing I can eat here? Often it's fruits or vegetables, and I fill myself up with those. Then if it's a kid's birthday party, I'll throw down a piece or two of birthday cake — even ice cream cake.
Alcohol Was My Solution
So if you're like me and you used alcohol to help relax and numb pain, what worked for me was getting some new tools that provide the same effect — because, well, there's nothing like being sober to help remind you why you drink. That's why, if you really like drinking and you think it does a lot for you like I used to, it can be difficult to stop — because you're essentially giving up the solution to your sober problem. The problem of being aggravated, and hating people, and hating yourself, and life seeming like there's no point in it and being boring — alcohol was the solution to all that stuff for me. And I'm like, okay — I didn't realize it, but I thought alcohol was my problem, and whenever I'd get sober I'd realize, no, alcohol is my solution. What the hell do I do without my solution?
Well, I'm grateful I've had my wife there to support me so much in my sobriety. She said my early sobriety was worse than my drinking, and that's what's tough. If you've been in the habit of drinking — not even necessarily every day, but drinking to kind of deal with life — and then you try to do without it, it's like, oh god. It seems to you, and sometimes to the people around you, like it's actually worse than the drinking was. That's the challenge with it. But that's why I go to Alcoholics Anonymous almost every day: because that's where I get the tools and the help I need to make a sober life that's so enjoyable, so good, and so able to handle difficulty that I don't need alcohol anymore — and I don't want it anymore either. Now, after seven years sober, there's nothing alcohol has to offer me except pain and misery, and I can get plenty of that.
Drinking kind of puts you into a bit of a fog where, yeah, you might not be able to see your pain and your problems as clearly — but you also can't see as clearly what's going on around you either. Which means you attract people taking advantage of you, you attract a bunch of bad vibes all the time, which ironically means there's even more of a need to drink, because now you've got all these additional bad vibes. And it really snowballs — for me, to where I didn't even want to live anymore. I'm like, this is miserable. All right, where's that heart? We need to get that heart. But now I love and treasure my life so much, and I rarely even have days that are that difficult anymore. And if I do have a day that's difficult, I say, you know, God, please help me learn something from this — what do I learn from this? I think that if we have a difficult day, the goal is to change us, to encourage different behavior.
Gaming Is the Opposite of My Marriage
It's funny — my gaming lately is like the opposite of my marriage. In my marriage, you know, I only fully enjoy being with one woman, and I enjoy the depth of that experience — being with my wife. Whereas with gaming, a lot of gamers treat their gaming the same way, like they just play one game all the time. Which leads me to see the opportunity to have the opposite of any kind of commitment in gaming — just play a lot of games a little bit. But then I kind of feel a little sad sometimes, like, man, I could just totally play this game all the time — but if I do that, then I don't get to play all these other games.
That's a really valuable tip — that's a really good tip, thank you very much. That is incredibly helpful. All right, so we've got to wait till it lunges at me. We're learning how to Z-target — a little sloppy right now. There we go. All right, nice. There we go. That was a huge help.
Thank you for that tip. That's why I always suggest you reach out and ask people for help. Whatever you're struggling with is an opportunity to let somebody else help you — and helping others is what leaves us feeling good. I hope you feel good for the tips here, because they helped a lot.
What the hell's my sword button? Oh, okay — I'm gonna hit R to use my damn sword. Dang it. The controls are obnoxious right now — the controls are so obnoxious. I guess that's just a learning curve for it. Damn it. Fuck, man — I want to take this scene now, I don't want it to be so hard. But I do notice I'm drawn to things that are a bit challenging. I actually don't like things to be too easy.
What We Forget About Old Games
All right, so we've learned a lot. I also notice there's the desire to impress you all with my gaming ability. What we forget about playing old games, lots of times, is how much we struggled before we figured them out. If you play a game you haven't played in a while, you'll remember that quickly. I mean, my brother and I beat GoldenEye on every single level at the highest difficulty — and yeah, I went back and played it again and I'm like, oh my god. My brother said he was praying to our deceased grandpa to beat GoldenEye. It was that hard. It's good, though. It's good to get aggravated, it's good to get challenged. I like when I can get aggravated and challenged by video games instead of it being my wife or my kids — I much prefer to learn to go through my different emotions and stuff that way. Ah, switch back to the sword.
Video games, to me, are a fantastic spiritual practice. I have a saying I really like in life: anything worth doing is worth doing poorly. Anything worth doing is worth messing up at and not being very good at as you learn to get better. I really like that saying because it helps clear out the myth that you can just jump right into things and be amazing. Very few things in life have I ever seen where it's like that. Most everything, you've got to learn and work.
Playing Sober Hits Different
Same thing with drinking. I used to drink and play games, and quitting was a bit of an adjustment. I remember the one day I was able to play Call of Duty Black Ops 2 Zombies on Origins and have just as much fun sober as I used to have drinking — I just cried, I was so grateful. I'm like, thank God. Oh shoot, that's in water — good. I remember thinking I'd lost something, like maybe I couldn't play video games once I got sober, and I'm very happy to find that I can play video games much better when I'm sober.
Oh, that's a big spider — that must be the queen. Actually, it might not even be. All right, can I get some intel on this? One of the parasitic monsters — its eye is vulnerable when it's red. Okay, we're gonna need to dodge, probably, so we can slingshot it or throw a stun at it too. Where is it going? Oh nice — got it right in the eye, right there. Good. Thank you for that tip. Oh, we're backed off now. I'm glad you don't mind the graphics — I'm used to them now. I remember when I first played GoldenEye after so long, a few months ago, I couldn't get over the graphics, but now I'm used to it. Oh my goodness — that was easier than I thought it'd be. Slingshot her eye. All right, we got it.
Little Blue Truck and 99 Rubies
I used to read my kids books. I'd read them Little Blue Truck — "Little Blue Truck drove down the street." They liked it at first, then they're like, "Daddy, use your normal voice." Little Blue Truck — beep. Oh lord. We can pop potions all night, baby — you can have whatever you like. Shields on me, potions on ice. I got 99 rubies, but a rupee ain't one. Yep — rap songs are so catchy for some reason.
Well, we're gonna go ahead and save and sign off now, so I can get ready to go pick my daughter up from school. Thanks for a great time today playing Zelda — and if you want more adventures like this Ocarina of Time run, you'll find all my gaming videos on my Games playlist.