My name is Edward Bryan. My story begins with obesity, hypertension, and heart disease(atrial fibrillation). Those were the three pillars that surrounded me, all before I was 20 years old. They weren't always up either. I built them with years of poor decisions and irresponsibility . I'm 29 now and I've managed to chisel away at all of them. Through hard work and consistency I managed to lose 160lbs and turn my 6 daily pills into 2. This journey has been hard and filled with bumps but I've stayed inspired and dedicated to my health and now its time to share what I've learned.

What is Grind To Thrive?

Grind To thrive is a mantra that I started using when I realized the kind of commitment it took to take control of my health. Its not just about working out and eating right. It' about accepting the details of doing those things properly.  As I began to try and get healthy I went on basically every kind of diet you can think of. I did juice cleanses, low fat and whole grain, strict calorie counting, etc.. I lost and gained for years. The real turning point came after I had my worst episode of atrial fibrillation. My cardiologist recommended me for gastric bypass to lose weight and for radio frequency ablation to try and cure my heart condition. I was 24 at the time and just didn't like the idea of having these procedures so young. So I decided to try and finally attack these things under my own will. 

I learned about the paleo diet through Dave Asprey(founder of the Bulletproof Diet). He was a guest on the Joe Rogan podcast and I couldn't stop listening. I heard things like bacon and butter are perfectly fine if they are sourced well and humans have more mental clarity running on higher fat and lower carbohydrate consumption. All of this was contrary to what my doctors had told me. I decided to give this paleo thing a shot and the results were astounding. I also began to educate myself on what atrial fibrillation is. I researched the natural remedies that seemed to work for people and learned that adequate hydration seemed to drastically lower symptoms and episodes for people. I started supplementing with magnesium and taking a sugar free hydration powder daily and the heart palpitations that I just accepted as part of my life began to reduce drastically. In fact, to this day, if I skip my daily hydration regimen my palpitations come back and the chances of being thrown into a full blown episode go way up.     

At first I didn't exercise much. The anxiety of having my heart conditioning kept me from getting my heart rate up. I would be sent into a panic attack as soon as I felt any kind of heart rate elevation. I worked through that by just learning the signs of panic and breathing through it and eventually I began to get active. The first type of activity I started doing was combat training. My friends and I taught ourselves how to grapple and strike and I fell in love with mixed martial arts. The thing that really started my transformation though was finding out about kettlebells. I started kettlebell training because I had watched some videos on Youtube about Jiu Jitsu athletes using kettlebells. I got my hands on a dvd called Keith Weber's extreme kettlebell cardio. I did that everyday along with the combat training and I got down to the lowest weight of my adult life. I was 380lbs at the beginning of my junior year of high school. My first day as a personal trainer I weighed in at 208lbs. 

Grind To Thrive represents my journey. My past, my present, and my future. My failures and my accomplishments. Most of all now it represents my goal of helping all of you and of distilling all of my education and experiences into a coaching platform that focuses on a complete lifestyle.