Uncle Marv's Unhealthy Podcast

You can do everything you’re supposed to do and still feel like something is missing. I sat down with Elke Scholz, a registered psychotherapist, expressive arts educator, and author, expecting to talk about anxiety and running on empty. Instead, we got into the story behind her work: a difficult home life, feeling out of place in school, and the creative classes she credits with saving her life as a teenager.

Elke’s path took her from calligraphy and teaching art to writing a book and eventually going back to school, even while money was tight and anxi...

I know the routine: work all day, come home exhausted, turn on the TV, and promise yourself you’ll do something different Monday. Coach Willie Blake joins me again to talk about getting out of that cycle without pretending we can change our whole lives overnight. After exploring his experience with dyslexia and his health journey in our first conversation, we get practical about what comes next: figuring out what you actually want and choosing one small thing you can do about it.

Willie also shares the less polished version of finishing 75 Hard on his eleventh attempt, in...

Coach Willie Blake told me it took him 11 attempts to finish 75 Hard. My first thought? I probably would have called it quits after three. But the more we talked, the more I realized this wasn’t just about finishing a challenge. Willie grew up with dyslexia, worried about being called on to read, and found comfort in food when he didn’t feel comfortable with himself. Those feelings followed him long after his school days were over.

We talk about the family photo that made him take a hard look at his health, the confidence he had to b...

Sometimes you’ve got to live in the mud for a while. Not call it beautiful. Not pretend you’re enjoying it. Just admit that it hurts. Laura Bratton joins me again to talk about what helped her move forward after losing her sight, including the support of people who believed in her when she struggled to believe in herself.

I wanted to know what grit and gratitude actually look like on the hard days. Laura shares how she learned to acknowledge her grief, stop treating every frightening thought as a permanent reality, and take life in smal...

What happens when life changes in a way you never asked for, and there’s no going back? I sat down with Laura Bratton, an author, speaker, and coach who learned at nine years old that she would eventually lose her sight. She understood the words, but understanding what they would mean for her life was something else entirely. Laura shares how losing vision during her teenage years shook her confidence, her identity, and her belief that she still had something to offer.

There wasn’t a countdown, either. Nobody could tell her whether it would happen at 4...

Marylee Calmes is back for a practical, honest conversation about something most of us are not very good at: paying attention before our bodies force us to. With more than 30 years of experience as a licensed acupuncturist, herbalist, educator, and traditional Chinese medicine practitioner, Marylee explains why symptoms are signals, not just inconveniences to push through.

We talk about stress, sleep, food, movement, seasonal changes, and the small habits that can either support us or slowly wear us down. The big takeaway is simple: you do not need a perfect plan or an expensive tracker to start...

Prostate cancer is one of those subjects many men would rather avoid, until it lands in their own doctor’s office. Michael Bovarnick knows that feeling firsthand. He was diagnosed 23 years ago, had his prostate removed, lived with the anxiety of ongoing testing, and then learned the cancer had returned two decades later.

Michael’s story is not just about cancer. It is about resilience, being proactive, and getting past the silence that can hurt men and their relationships. He shares why PSA testing, education, asking questions, and involving your spouse or support system can make a real...

Marylee Calmes spent years dealing with asthma, allergies, recurring illness, headaches, and the frustration of being handed one more prescription without getting a real answer. Her personal health struggles eventually led her to traditional Chinese medicine, where she found a different way to look at the body, not as a collection of disconnected symptoms, but as a whole system with patterns worth paying attention to.

We talk about why health problems often build quietly over time, why recovery is rarely instant, and what can happen when you stop treating your body like an inconvenience. Marylee’s story is...

Picky eating can turn every meal into a battle, and too often the child gets labeled as difficult before anyone asks what is really going on. Lena Livinsky is back on the podcast to help us look below the surface. She explains her B.L.O.O.M. Framework, a practical way for parents to consider connection, health, oral function, the microbiome, exploration, and boundaries when food becomes a struggle.

What I appreciated most about this conversation is that it was not about blaming kids or blaming parents. It was about paying attention. Sometimes the issue is...

Tracy Smaldino is back for part two of our conversation, and we get real about what healing after trauma actually looks like when life keeps moving. Tracy shares how breath work, meditation, journaling, and simply learning to pause helped her recognize the physical signs that something was off before she reacted.

We talk about the pressure to keep up appearances, especially for men who were taught to tough it out and women who were taught not to cause trouble. Tracy’s message is simple but powerful: nobody is coming to save you, but that does not mean yo...

Tracy Smaldino is the founder of Trauma Rockstars, a keynote speaker, author, podcast host, and someone who spent decades looking functional on the outside while carrying trauma she had never truly faced. When the pandemic forced her to slow down, a simple meditation practice opened the door to memories, survivor’s guilt, and pain she had worked hard to bury.

We talk about trauma without comparing or minimizing it, why being busy can sometimes be a way to avoid ourselves, and how healing can affect everything from relationships and self-worth to weight, movement, and the ability to se...

Dr. Hema Murty returns to Uncle Marv’s Unhealthy Podcast for a real conversation about health that goes way beyond the gym and the number on the scale. Dr. Hema brings the perspective of an aerospace engineer, advanced yoga instructor, personal trainer, and nutrition coach to explain why our bodies need to be treated like individual systems, not like cookie-cutter fitness projects.

We talk about the overlooked basics that can make a big difference: quality sleep, drinking enough water, managing stress, moving in ways that respect your body, and taking a break from being emotionally married to th...

Hydration should be simple, but the marketing has made it feel like plain water is no longer enough. I wanted to look past the flashy labels and find out when electrolyte drinks can actually make sense, when they are probably unnecessary, and what we should be watching for when it comes to sodium, sugar, and ingredients.

I share my own honest struggle with moving away from soda, trying flavored-water products, and figuring out how to make healthier choices without pretending I have it all figured out. My takeaway is straightforward: water is still the baseline for most...

Dr. Hema Murty has a PhD in aerospace engineering, but the work she is doing today is all about helping people move better, hurt less, and stop treating their bodies like machines that need to be forced into submission. Her path into wellness began with her own knee pain after training for and completing the Toronto Marathon, followed by years of frustrating advice that did not actually solve the problem.

We talk about why one-size-fits-all fitness plans often leave people discouraged, the connection between stress and physical pain, and why fitness should support your life instead of...

Liz Watt is back for part two, and we go deeper into what happened after her personal health turnaround. Liz is the CEO and co-founder of Be Healthy Utah, an author, speaker, health coach, and someone who has built a meaningful community around natural health, resilience, and the belief that it is never too late to make changes that support a better life.

She shares how a dream, a big leap of faith, and a conference that did not go exactly as planned became the beginning of something much bigger. We talk about burnout, building a team...

Liz Watt had spent years living what she believed was a healthy, natural life. She cooked from scratch, raised six kids, leaned into natural remedies, and built a life around wellness. Then her body began falling apart in ways nobody could explain. Pain moved through her joints, numbness spread across her back, and everyday life became something she had to fight through.

What I appreciated about Liz’s story is that she does not pretend there was one magic fix. She talks about slowing down, paying attention, changing foods that seemed to trigger her symptoms, and rebuilding he...

Mealtime battles can wear a family down in a hurry. You start out trying to serve a decent meal, then suddenly you are negotiating over one bite of chicken, making a second dinner, or wondering whether your child is getting enough nutrition. I sat down with pediatric speech-language pathologist and holistic feeding specialist Lena Livinsky to talk about why picky eating can be more than just a frustrating phase.

Lena shares how her own son’s struggles with food changed the way she viewed feeding therapy. We talk about sensory needs, oral-motor development, gut concerns, breathing and ai...

Could one meal a day help you lose weight? Maybe. But feeling hungry, run-down, and stressed about food is not exactly the definition of healthy, so Uncle Marv digs into what OMAD can do, what it cannot prove, and what a more realistic middle ground may look like.

OMAD, short for One Meal a Day, sounds wonderfully simple on paper. One meal, fewer decisions, less cooking, maybe fewer calories. But simple is not always the same thing as sustainable. Uncle Marv looks past the dramatic claims and asks the practical questions: Can you get enough protein, fiber...

Coach Brian Parana returns to walk through the “how” behind getting healthier when you’re a driven dad, business leader, and frequent traveler who lives on planes, in hotels, and at conferences. Instead of yelling “try harder,” Brian breaks down simple systems that fit the real-world chaos of client dinners, late nights, and inconsistent schedules. We talk through his AIM principle for moment-by-moment decisions, why the first win is often just maintaining your weight on a trip, and how to rebuild trust with yourself through small, repeatable wins.

Brian also explains his Rise 72 “lose three pounds in three days”...

If you’re a business owner, IT guy, or high performer who feels like you’re crushing it for clients but limping home at the end of the day, this conversation is going to feel very familiar. Brian has spent more than two decades working with husbands and dads who are worn out, overweight, and half present at home, and he explains why so many of us hit that wall in our 40s and 50s. We walk through his journey from coaching cross country and teaching classes at the YMCA to training business owners and professionals who just want to f...

This conversation picks up right where part one left off, but now we zoom in on Barb’s actual work helping overwhelmed professional women who say yes when they want to say no. She breaks down “internal safety” as the ability to have your own back when someone is upset with you or when that old guilt and negative self-talk shows up, instead of caving or beating yourself up for weeks. Barb drives home that boundaries aren’t about controlling other people, they’re about deciding what you will do and following through, even when it’s uncomfortable.

We also ge...

When Barb Nangle talks about boundaries, she’s not talking about controlling other people, she’s talking about finally realizing you have standards for your own life and you’re allowed to live by them. She shares how she went from “just dealing with whatever came at her” to saying no to things that drained her, limiting time with people who couldn’t respect her needs, and choosing sleep, health, and sanity over people-pleasing.

We walk through her codependent bottom, inviting a homeless friend to stay “just to be nice” until she felt trapped in her own home, and how th...

Dr. Noushin Hart’s story is a raw one. She talks about living with hidden trauma for decades, trying to push through with therapy and medication, and eventually hitting a wall where she felt like the usual medical answers had run out. That moment changed how she saw herself, how she saw patients, and how she looked at healing.

What makes this conversation hit hard is that it is not just about cancer care, it is about what happens when people feel dismissed, boxed in, or told their story is already written. Dr. Hart explains why she st...

Paige comes back on Unhealthy and basically dismantles the idea that we can “fix” ourselves with another diet, a GLP‑1 prescription, or sheer willpower. We talk about dopamine with a memory, why you end up back in the cookie jar at night, and how using food for comfort is giving it a job it was never designed to do. She walks through the deeper stuff we usually dodge: trauma, grief, loneliness, boredom, lack of purpose, and why weight gain is just the visible byproduct of what’s really going on.

We also get practical. Paige breaks down her own...

Most of us joke about having a sweet tooth, but Paige Alexander has lived through the darker side of sugar, where “just one cookie” turns into a full-on binge you hide from everyone. She walks me through her journey from living on a dessert diet and out-exercising the calories to hitting that point in midlife where the weight crept up, the binges got worse, and the old tricks stopped working. Hearing the word “addiction” for the first time wasn’t shameful for her; it was a massive relief, because it finally explained why her brain would push her toward sugar even...

I brought Catherine back for a third round because we both felt something was still unfinished, and it landed in a place I didn’t expect: how much we’re letting AI and tech speak, feel, and even relate for us. We start with her process of trusting zero prep, trusting intuition, and even helping a 77–year–old finally drop a lifetime of jealousy, then swing hard into this strange new world where people let chatbots write texts to their spouse and apps raise their kids.

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Catherine Creestani is back to talk about what life really looks like after you walk away from the job, the title, and the version of “success” everyone else applauds but your soul can’t stand. She shares how her days now revolve around mom duties, homeschooling, writing, podcasting, and clients, and why she actually schedules empty days on purpose so her nervous system can come down out of permanent hustle mode. We talk about the difference between feeling productive and actually being in flow, and what happens when your calendar is packed but your life feels empty.

Cather...

If you’ve ever convinced yourself, “I just need to push a little harder,” this episode might hit a little too close to home. Catherine walks us through the arc from ambitious young speech pathologist to co‑owner of a booming clinic, pulling six figures a month while quietly abandoning her own needs, values, and even her love of music to keep the peace at home and at work. We talk about how over‑functioning becomes a habit: micromanaging staff, answering 100 emails every morning, never getting sick because you’re too wired to stop, and then waking up one day realizin...

If you’ve ever done all the “right” health things and still felt awful, Jason Yun’s story is going to sound uncomfortably familiar. He was the textbook gym owner: 4:30 am alarms, 5:15 am classes, late‑night sessions, massive smoothies, and bodybuilding nutrition that looked impressive on paper but quietly wrecked his hormones, sleep, and mental health. Behind the scenes, he went from chasing muscle and performance to dealing with a popped back on a deadlift, losing about 70 pounds, spiraling into severe depression, and battling weekly suicidal thoughts while still being “the health guy” for his clients.

In our conversati...

Magic Barclay spent more than 40 years being the “good patient” who did what she was told, took the pills, and tried to push through the pain, only to be told it was all in her head. In this conversation, she shares how chronic illness, cancer, medical gaslighting, and being quietly dropped from social invitations finally forced her to ask a hard question: what if my body has been right all along and nobody bothered to listen.

We dig into how functional medicine helped her stop playing whack‑a‑mole with symptoms and start looking at root causes, includin...

If you’ve ever walked out of a doctor’s office with “normal” labs but a body that feels like it’s falling apart, this episode is for you. Greg Lee and I dig into the tech he uses in his Lyme Research and Healing Center, a scanner that works kind of like Star Trek medicine to pick up hidden infections, toxins, brain issues, and gut problems that standard tests miss. We get into why some folks do “everything right” with antibiotics and still crash, and why so many end up asking Google and AI for answers after the medical system...

Greg Lee didn’t leave NASA because he got bored playing with robots in space. He left because his gut was exploding, his brain felt like dial‑up internet, and the meds that were supposed to “fix” him made it worse. Picture running high‑stakes experiments at 2:30 in the morning while wondering if you’re going to sprint out of a meeting to the bathroom again. His doctors told him it was irritable bowel syndrome, gave him a prescription, and sent him on his way… even as the brain fog and anxiety started tanking his work and his sleep.

Out of o...

This episode is for anyone who has ever counted calories, tried the next “miracle” diet, or gone to bed mad at themselves because of what they ate… or didn’t eat. I talk with registered dietitian and eating disorder specialist Jessica Setnick, who has spent decades in the trenches of those hard conversations, about why so many of us feel like food is running the show and why “I’m fine” usually translates to “feelings I’m not expressing.” We start with that little word fine, move into the awkward “so what do you do” conversations about being a dietitian, and quickly l...

In this episode, Dan and I walk through the messy middle that most comeback stories skip: the fear under the jokes, the “get me out of here” note he wrote from his hospital bed, the boredom and grind of rehab, and the second “you’ve got to be kidding me” brain setback that dragged him even lower than the first. He talks openly about fatigue, living with a 75 percent battery, and why he let himself “lay in the suck” for a while before deciding to go all‑in on recovery instead of living like a victim.

Dan also shares the...

I’ve talked about it before, but this time I actually followed through and bought a smart ring: the RingConn, not the Oura Ring. Oura has the stronger peer-reviewed validation story and a big reputation, and I’m not arguing with that at all, but when it came time to swipe my own card, RingConn made the more practical argument for where I am right now.

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Companies / Vendors / Products Mentioned

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Beverly Meyer is a certified clinical nutritionist who's been in the game since the '80s. She's also a self-diagnosed wellness warrior who figured out her own...

Beverly Meyer is not your typical nutritionist. She's a certified clinical nutritionist and functional health practitioner who's been in the health game since the 1970s. Her whole approach is built around getting to root causes instead of slapping a Band-Aid on symptoms, and she's been preaching blackout bedrooms and mouth taping for 20+ years before it was trendy.

We started with sleep apnea because Beverly has it herself, and she's become somewhat of an expert on living with it. The stats are wild: sleep apnea is the number one undiagnosed medical disorder in the United States. One in...

This episode is part two of my conversation with anti‑diet health and life coach Sherry Shaban, and yes, we’re still poking holes in everything diet culture has been screaming at us for years. Sherry recaps her journey from a brutal back injury at 16, to hard partying, to obsessive fitness, and finally to building a much healthier relationship with food and her body.

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This conversation with Sherry Shaban is for anyone who has ever stared at an empty pizza box thinking, “How did we get here again?” while also knowing way too much about carbs, macros, and whatever diet is trending this month. Sherry is an osteopath, strength coach, and self-described science nerd who used to live in what she calls a self-made food prison: counting grams, tracking every bite, and stressing out her family and friends with constantly changing rules about what she would or wouldn’t eat.

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What I liked about Brian is he's not out here selling some magic diet or begging you to join CrossFit. He's talking about real systems that fit into your actual chaotic life. One of his clients lost 38 pounds in 100 days by walking 10,000 steps a day. That's it. No vegetables. No meal prep Sundays. Just walked and managed his calories. Another guy dropped 13 pounds, got his confidence back, went job hunting, and landed the same position at a different company for 65 grand more a year.

What I liked about Brian is he's not out here selling some magic...