Day 4 My middle son threw a curveball my way, and my day started at 2:30 am as he was informing me he just puked all over his bed…YES! Exactly what I was hoping would happen…
While I was sad for Cooper, I was dreading what the rest of my day would be like operating on such a low level of carbohydrates as a fuel source and not fully understanding how my body would handle the diet change yet…Even more concerning, if I got this, would everyone assume it was the food???
As many of you know, if you have kids….or a dog, that creates a massive mess at 2:30 am, most of the time, you may as well just stay up, because you may only wake up more tired if you take a nap at this point. Well, today, I did just that, and it was a terrible mistake. I could barely keep my eyes open by the time the clock hit 7:00 and it was time for me to head to work, and today was a busy day.
*Muenster Grain-Free Salmon with Bacon Fat & Freeze-Dried Chicken added. My snack for the next week or so!
While shooting videos to promote our new customized solutions, I found myself hungry, and desperately wanting a cup of coffee, on a day where I certainly could have used a boost. However, I held strong, snacked on some kibble & drank as much water as I could, and prayed the day would be over quickly. I also thought “Oh no, what if this is what I feel like for the next 26 days!?!?!” To say I felt a little panicked would be an understatement.
The only bright spot I had today was when Aubree called me to let me know Cooper had rebounded and was doing better already. As we went back to filming videos for our “My Custom Dog Food” I was sure to include plenty of bacon fat on the product that I would be taking home for me and my pups! Here’s to hoping I break free of the carb flu tomorrow….because this was a tough day!
-Mitch Felderhoff
Also, a special coupon code: SwimUpstream will save you 10% on bags of Grain Free Salmon or Ancient Grains Ocean Fish good thru April 12, 2020
Day 3 was a long tiring day for me…..the why behind it is simple. For the past 7 weeks I’ve pretty much eaten the standard American diet, including cheeseburgers, nachos, pizza & more sugar than I’ve had in years. The result – any time I needed a boost in energy, my body was searching frantically for sugar/carbs.
Now that I’ve reduced the number of carbs/sugars to less than 20% of my diet by utilizing our low carb kibble & Freeze-Dried raw, my body is learning how to pull energy from somewhere other than the junk food I’ve been relying on (not to mention caffeine). Typically, when you remove the sugar & carbohydrates from your body, it can take 5-7 days to learn how to efficiently operate on a low carbohydrate diet.
What’s the good news about this? Your dog can take as many naps as it wants to throughout the day because most of our dogs don’t have a strict work schedule! However, they are just as susceptible to an insulin “crash” as we are. When we feed our dogs starches & carbohydrates, the body converts them to sugar, uses what they need from an energy standpoint & then an insulin “dump” takes place after the body has the fuel it needs.
The insulin released into the bloodstream causes the body to switch it’s energy supply away from carbohydrates/sugars and to the next most efficient/easy source of energy (the dog’s muscle). Now, it resorts to muscle because of the high level of insulin forcing the body to “freeze” fat storage and flips the switch to gathering the energy/nutrients it needs from muscle.
Over time, this can be devastating to a dog. It causes a reduced level of muscle, chronic inflammation & lowers the dog’s metabolic rate. In turn, the dog needs fewer calories, but we keep feeding them the same amount, and in turn, cause larger and larger insulin dumps….until it’s too late and the dog’s pancreas can no longer keep up, resulting in insulin-resistant diabetes.
Sooooo…..In order to combat this, we need to give our dogs a diet lower in carbohydrates. When feeding our dry based kibble and combining about 25% freeze-dried, you’re lowering the carbohydrates to approximately 15-20% of their diet, ensuring they stay well below the 24% that dogs can efficiently process. However, it can still take your dog a week or so to get efficient, so let’s give them some grace if they take an extra nap or two :).
Day 3 is in the books and I’m looking forward to the transition into a light ketosis state!
-Mitch Felderhoff
Also, a special coupon code: StartStrong will save you 10% on any order of Beef Heart Strong Meal Toppers good thru April 12, 2020
On the morning of my first day to eat exclusively dog food, I had yet to eat even a single meal of only dog food, much less a full days’ worth. I found myself on the first day of eating dog food with 29 left to go….I hadn’t made a plan on what I would eat or when, I just said the heck with it, I’m doing it, we’ll figure this out as we go.
Well, at 7:00 am, I told myself I would pass on breakfast and just snack on some kibble at lunch, or maybe some freeze-dried….Well, lunch came and went, and I had just spent a few hours in our freeze-dried facility where I had the smell of freeze-dried beef liver powder coating my sinuses and inside of my mouth (not a pleasant taste you really want to carry around with you all day), and it certainly didn’t make me hungry.
By 6:00 pm, I still haven’t taken a bite of food and I’m not really sure what I’m going to try first. Eventually, I’m staring at a kitchen table filled personal-sized pizzas Aubree has made for herself and the kids. She looks back at me and says, “well, WE’RE eating, and I suggest you join us, are you doing this or not? I smiled, and just said “ok,” grabbed some Ancient Grains chicken & pork, a few chicken meatballs and sat down.
The first bite I took made me cringe….I thought “I just committed to taking thousands of bites of dog food, and this was just one”. I thought to myself, “what in the world did I just sign up for, and why didn’t I try this for a day or two first?” Well, the truth is, if I had tried this for 2 days first, there’s no way I would have voluntarily said: “let me do this for 30 days.”
One…bite…at…a…time
Bites 2,3,4,5,6 & 7 weren’t any easier. I wondered to myself, “how could I get out of this?” The truth was, I couldn’t. I had told everyone I knew I was doing it, proclaimed it on social media, and told my kids. I thought of what our customers would if I called it quits after one meal and thought “that’s really showing them how much I care.” Then I thought about my boys, and how pathetic it would be if I gave up on day one. We have a set of family core values that Aubree and I are trying to instill in our boys, and this was an opportunity to lead by example.
We tell our boys all the time: “Serve God. Don’t lie, cheat, or still…..and never, ever quit.” Well, with that in mind, I knew I had no choice but to continue, and figure out a way to make it 29 more days. So, I decided, I would eat fast, drink a lot of water & find creative ways to prepare the food without adding seasoning, sauces or spices.
If I wanted to make it through this, the key was going to be making sure I had a plan each day, just like we do for our dogs. I mapped out the rest of my month to determine what time of day I had meetings when I would have to plan on avoiding lunches, how to eat dinner when we meet other’s out, and most importantly how to carve out the time needed to prep my own meals each night.
This is when I learned my first lesson. Feeding a dog is something we take for granted often, and we need to make sure we have an easy delivery mechanism. For the most part, you can just feed it to a dog as is. However, one thing I didn’t consider is, what about people who have dogs with special needs, that don’t have teeth or need the food to be warmed before eating it? Well, for these 30 days, I have special needs, make the food in a way I can eat it without spending an hour on it, and in a way that I can replicate it quickly.
What will I try first? As soon as I get home and need dinner quick, I’ll be turning on the stove and heating some water in the tea kettle. This will ensure I have warm water to rehydrate the freeze-dried (warm water works 10 times faster), and I can eat it quickly without waiting. If you have a picky dog or a senior dog that can’t eat easily, this is a great solution to ensuring you can feed them without an hour of meal prep.
Today was a tough day, a nerve-racking day, but also a day I realized I was going to learn a lot about not only myself but also how to make myself think as other pet owners may think. I also realized that by the end of this, I would have a paradigm that no other pet food manufacturer can look through, and that is “how does the dog think/feel about what, how, when, and why it eats what it eats?”
-Mitch Felderhoff
Also, a special coupon code: meatball5 will save you $5 on any order of meatballs, beef or chicken through 2/29/2020
My wife and I had just left the DFW airport and were about an hour into an 8-hour flight to celebrate our 10 year anniversary trip. We’re both avid readers and wanted to use this trip as an opportunity to hit the reset buttons on our minds & focus on our marriage and how we’re going to plan the next 10 years, and then spend some time reading and listening to podcasts. I’m not sure anyone out there looks back after 10 years of marriage or life and says “That’s exactly what I thought it would be!”
While we are very happy together and have had a blessed life, it certainly hasn’t come along the way we mapped it out when we first said our vows. We’ve been given many challenges like most couples have. We’ve ridden the rollercoaster of career changes, I became an entrepreneur, we became parents, and we’ve had to fight long term chronic ailments. In the past 10 years, we’ve also moved homes & schools, lost loved ones & brought new ones into the world. We’ve made progress financially and suffered setbacks that we didn’t anticipate. But overall, we’ve lived a blessed life, and we’re still here!
When we started to discuss what the next 10 years of our life would look like, I knew it would be different. I knew I wanted something different. I knew that if I wanted something different, I had to do something different. It was time for me to take control and be myself more than I have been. I needed to stop trying to do the things I can’t, and focus on my strengths. I also felt like I needed to raise my level of commitment to my family, my business & our customers.
Feeling unproductive
One of the things I struggle with personally is feeling like I’m never doing enough. Our parents raised us to value hard work (which I’m incredibly grateful for). We would routinely witness them work 12 hour days Monday-Friday, and then head back to the office on Saturdays & Sundays during some times of the year. So, naturally, if I’m not putting in 60 hours a week, I feel inadequate and like I’m letting someone down, mainly myself. I don’t know why exactly, other than that’s what I’ve equated to winning.
I’ve had many good friends and mentors tell me the past few years that I’m stretching myself to thin, and at some point, I’ll pay the price. Well, that has certainly presented itself this past year. As I progressed through the year, I found myself working even longer hours & starting earlier. There are times I tuck the family in for bed and go back to work from 10-12, only to get back up at 4:30 and do the same thing. I spend a lot of time taking 3 steps forward and 3 steps back. I find ways to slowly stop working out, slowly start eating worse, slowly stop reading, and eventually end up at the same spot every year. I end up looking like someone who used to maybe be an “athlete”, about 10-20 pounds heavier than I should be, chronically fatigued and frustrated that I found myself at the same place again.
An unhealthy version of me from 2017 (my heaviest)
Do you know what the worst part of this is? In the end, the work I was doing wasn’t as important as I thought it was. Most of it was busywork that I refused to punt to someone else on the team…and we have a great team. I tell myself that I’m the only one who knows how to execute what I’m thinking in my head, and in the end, we have so many people who can do a lot of the things I’ve been doing, but better, I just needed to get out of the way.
Trying to gain clarity
So, knowing all these things, you can probably understand why a trip without kids was something we both needed. My wife (Aubree) goes above and beyond for our family, and the past few years I haven’t really been as present as I had committed to being when we first said our vows. She has found herself playing the role of a single parent too many times, and I needed to find out how to do my part better, along with gaining a clear vision of what we wanted for our life in the next 10 years. I also knew I needed to evolve as a leader and adapt to what our company needs me to be.
As we reflected and looked over notes we’ve taken from books and podcasts, one thing continued to stand out to me. If I want to live the life I want to have, I have to think differently. When Jeff Bezos (Amazon’s owner) was debating at the age of 30 whether or not he wanted to quit his job on Wall Street and start an online book store, he asked himself if, when he turned 80, would he regret not taking the risk? The answer was yes. Look at what he’s built because he was willing to take that risk and pursue his dream.
One of my favorite quotes is from Les Brown, “The graveyard is the richest place on earth, because it is here that you will find all the hopes and dreams that were never fulfilled, the books that were never written, the songs that were never sung, the inventions that were never shared, the cures that were never discovered, all because someone was too afraid to take that first step, keep with the problem, or determined to carry out their dream.”
When I looked at my notes I had taken from Ed Mylett’s book & podcasts, this one stuck out to me: “Make sure you don’t turn your DREAM into a NIGHTMARE and regret the rest of your life that you didn’t give it everything you had.”
A mentor and friend of mine named Jeff York said “Nobody is proud of the easy things they’ve done”…..This certainly wasn’t going to be easy, but I knew I’d be proud if I could finish it. More importantly, I know I would regret not doing it in 20 years if I passed on the opportunity.
Do you see a trend here? Everything I was reading and listening to that made the biggest impact on my current state of mind, had to do with the fact that I don’t think I was truly executing my dream. I wasn’t being the dad I wanted to be, the husband I wanted to be, or the leader I wanted to be in my company. I had been pushing too hard to check items off of a to-do list, that I was no longer spending time looking at the big picture at home or at work. I had been lying to myself and told myself “if I can be busy, I’m making a difference,” but in the end, I wasn’t focusing on my strength or my dream, I was just staying busy.
Being honest with myself
As Aubree and I talked about what we wanted for our marriage and our kids, we then turned to what we wanted for our careers. It was at this moment, I decided to stop lying to myself. I’ve never been the kind to sit quietly in the back and wait. I wasn’t the kid who was asked to raise his hand, it was always up. When someone is stuck and trying to find an idea, I always volunteer one. When the teacher would ask someone to read, I would do it, and be happy about it. Slowly over the past 5 years, I had somehow turned into someone that just opened their computer and responded to emails all day, worked on spreadsheets, and spent evenings and weekends responding to trolls on our Facebook page (somehow thinking that was productive….).
I decided I was going to be happy, I needed to get back to being myself. I needed to act boldly and fearlessly. I’ve known for years that we needed to be more active on social media, that I should be doing videos & podcasts, and that I needed to get out there more to help educate our customers, and yet I didn’t. You know why? I hated the sound of my voice and didn’t want to listen to myself…Everyone has always told me that I’m a good storyteller and that I’m a great speaker, but I’ve never believed them, until now.
Acting with Conviction
Now, how was I going to take the next step and become what I knew I needed to? Well, I was going to do something that I’ve been telling myself I should do for 2 years. You see, I’ve always believed that you shouldn’t sell something unless you truly believe in it. When I worked as a personal trainer, I stopped selling training because clients didn’t want to do the work to get better. I sold supplements instead because I at least knew there was some benefit there. When I started working for my parents, I sold our foods that didn’t have corn & wheat in it, because I knew too much starch for dogs was bad for their health. Now when you look at our product lineups, you won’t find those ingredients in our foods. If we don’t believe it benefits the animal, we don’t do it.
For 2 years, I have toyed with the idea of eating our dog food for a month. Not just as an advertising bit…..far from it. I want people to know that we are so passionate about what we do, that we’ll do anything we can to make sure we’re providing the best food possible for their dog, so much so, that we’ll even eat it ourselves. Am I saying that because I did well on it, dogs will? No, that’s absurd, that’s why we work with a Ph.D. nutritionist who has over 30 years of experience in our field. I’m doing it because I want people to know that we don’t just guess about our ingredients, suppliers, and process, we trust it. I know when my brother tells me we’re making quality products and buying quality ingredients, that I don’t have to worry about the safety of the food.
The taste, well that’s another story for another day, but I also don’t care. You see when you’re truly passionate about what you’re doing, who cares if you have to pass on pizza for a month? I know I don’t.
Living out our passion
Chad and I have a vision for our business. We want to feed as many dogs as we can a healthier diet than the conventional pet food options on the market. We want to provide customized solutions tailored to individual dogs. We want to employ hundreds of people and pay them above-market rates for their talent. We want to make a difference in independent and family-owned pet stores across the country. We want to inspire others to do the same and hope that by leading a company of faith that we can slowly inspire that in other areas of the country.
In order to do that, we have to act boldly, and while I was staring at the ocean with my wife, for some reason, I felt it, and I knew that it was time for me to do something crazy and out of my comfort zone. I was trying to figure out how to compete with the voices of the National Brands who spend millions of dollars…..WITHOUT spending Millions of Dollars. I thought, “what can I do, that the CEO of Nestle, Mars or Blue Buffalo probably wouldn’t be willing to do? I looked at my wife and told her “when we get back, I’m only eating our dog food for 30 days”.
Without a beat, she looked at me, said: “You’re being serious, and if anyone can do it, it’s you”. When I returned to work, I spoke with my sales and marketing team, they’re response: “hell yeah, let’s do it!”. I called Chad and told him, he laughed and said, “ok, let’s go get em, glad it was your idea, I’ll cook it, you eat it.”
Aubree and I after I broke the news of the impending dog food breath ^
Not doing this alone
As I write this, I’m on day 20. I wasn’t sure how I would make it as far as I have, but I do now. Aubree and the kids have been so great (the kids love helping my meal prep). Our fans on Facebook and Instagram have been super supportive. My parents, mentors, and friends have called to give support & advice. Everyone from Chad, to our office, sales, marketing & production team is rooting me on and trying to eat with me when they get an opportunity (Yes, they are volunteering to eat dog food with me so I’m not alone!!! How freaking cool is that!?!?). The number of friends, retailers and even customers that have reached out wanting to join me for a meal is overwhelming! Even my doctor, nutritionist, pastors, and parents were on board with this project.
I have 10 days left of dog food only, I’m down 20 pounds and feel absolutely fantastic. I haven’t had a drop of alcohol or a cup of coffee in 3 weeks and feel better for it. I’ve never felt more confident in the products we’re producing, or the team that’s producing them. I feel like I’m living the life I was meant to live, even if it means I’m eating dog food.
We at Muenster Milling have served our customers for 83 years now. The way we do that in the present day speaks for itself – we provide them high quality, trustworthy, locally sourced pet foods in stores and online. That’s the present day though. In today’s blog we’re going to take it back to the 1930s to see how Muenster Milling began, and how a farmer built a business out of nothing. Continue reading “Our Founding Father”
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