Barbell Shrugged - [Fat Loss] You Can’t Screw This Up w/ Adam Bornstein, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Dan Garner #696

Episode Date: May 24, 2023

Adam Bornstein is a New York Times bestselling author and award-winning writer and editor. He is the founder of Born Fitness and Pen Name Consulting, and the co-founder of The Pump with Arnold Schwarzenegger. For the past 20 years, Bornstein has been “the trusted voice in health” as the Fitness and Nutrition editor for Men’s Health, Editorial Director at LIVESTRONG.com, and a columnist for SHAPE, Men’s Fitness, and Muscle & Fitness.  Bornstein has worked as a nutrition advisor for LeBron James, Cindy Crawford, Lindsey Vonn, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. He’s the former Chief Nutrition Officer at Ladder and former Vice President of Nutrition for FitOn. His work has been featured in dozens of publications, including The New York Times, Fast Company, ESPN, and GQ, and he’s appeared on Good Morning America, The Today Show, E! News, and The Cheddar. He lives in Denver with his wife and two sons. His latest book “You Can’t Screw This Up” can be purchased at https://www.cantscrewthisup.com   To learn more, please go to https://rapidhealthreport.com Connect with our guests: Adam Bornstein on Twitter Adam Bornstein on Instagram Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Dan Garner on Instagram

Shrug family, this week on Barbell Shrugged, we are hanging out with Adam Bornstein because he has a brand new book called You Can't Screw This Up. Why eating takeout, enjoying dessert, and taking the stress out of dieting leads to weight loss that lasts. What's super cool about Adam, I've known about Adam for a very long time. We crushed a lot of sushi together out in Boulder Colorado about a year ago and you know how there's some people this is probably in whatever industry you are in as well but specifically in fitness I'm always blown away by this of people that I've

like known for a very long time but never known how deep their claws are into the fitness industry tell you sit down at dinner with somebody and you start just going through life experiences and learning lesson or lessons learned and and all the things that you've accomplished in your time on this earth and you start hearing names like Cindy Crawford and LeBron James and Arnold Schwarzenegger and you're like holy crap not only is he like a multiple best New York Times best-selling author but he's worked and still works. He's the freaking nutrition consultant

for Arnold Schwarzenegger. Is there like a bigger name in the fitness nutrition space over the last, what, 60 years than Arnold? It's really, really crazy. And this book is kind of the culmination of the last decade of his coaching. We even talk about how long it's taken to write this book, which has the culmination of the last decade of his coaching. We even talk about how long it's taken to write this book, which has been a decade from when he came up

with the idea to actually getting it on the shelves now. And you can go purchase your copy at can'tscrewthisup.com. C-A-N-T-S-C-R-E-W-T-H-I-S-U-P.com. Can'tscrewthisup.com. I highly recommend getting into it. I have a copy of it sitting right in front of me right now, and you should absolutely get over to can't screw this up.com and check it out for yourself. As always friends, if you want to learn more about rapid health optimization and see Dan Garner and Dr. Andy Galpin doing a lab lifestyle performance analysis, which is a big piece of what everybody receives once they join Rapid Health Optimization.

You can head over to rapidhealthreport.com. That's rapidhealthreport.com. Friends, let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Anders Warner. Doug Larson. Dan Garner. Adam Bornstein, the New York Times bestselling author.

We actually had dinner. We ate a lot of sushi, not a lot, an enormous amount of sushi in Boulder last year when we were at a space conference. That sounded so cool, right? We were at a space conference. You guys almost lost Dan, but I mean, that's besides the point, leaving him at the airport. Yeah, right. We did. It's unbelievable. almost lost dan but i mean that's besides the point leaving him at the airport oh yeah right you did it's unbelievable the number of words you have written around the fitness industry um i'd love to kind of dig into a little bit of your background here to start um talk about

maybe we'll do the pump cub later because that's i hate talking about myself but whatever you guys want to talk about what do you want to talk about that's what we're here. I hate talking about myself, but whatever you guys want to talk about, what do you want to talk about? That's what we're here to do. But the meat of what we're going to be digging into today, your brand new book, You Can't Screw This Up. And if you read the back of the people, there's this guy named Dr. Andy Galpin,

somewhat well-known scientist that has endorsed this book. So there's got to be something good inside it that we're going to dig into today. Let's kick this thing off with a little bit of background. Where did your brain turn into, I need to be a fitness writer to get people making healthy habits here? But this book or all the way back in the beginning, how far back do you want to go? If it's leading to the book, let's go to that part. The leading to the book goes all the way back to 2014 this is a nine year project so 2012 i write a book that becomes a bestseller in 2013 about a year later a couple

things dawn on me most notably uh you have a lot of diet books out there right i've written many of them but you have a lot of people who cannot sustain the success that they want. I would argue that it's not hard in terms of like people seeing results to lose weight or gain muscle, right? People do it, but it always happens in the short term. So the initial idea that I pitched my book agent is like, I want to uncover, explain and solve why most wellness plans are designed to work in the short term, but fail and frustrate in the long term. That's because like, that's the issue we're trying to solve, right? Like, not how do we lose weight? Like people can do it, but like, it's the

sustainability of it. It's the consistency of it. And like, why is this so freaking hard that, you know, you would think by now with, you you know all of the books that have been written all the money that is spent on wellness that like more people could figure this out and that is obviously a super super complicated thing to tackle so and fast forward kind of like three years finally have a proposal together which means i've written chapters i've come together with my thesis and it's my book agent who is a wonderful person, but he essentially writes to me and he's like, yeah, this is terrible. What a piece of garbage. Don't take this personally.

Don't take this personally, but you screwed this up. And I was like, oh no. And, you know, I was like, all right, I got to figure this out. And there are several things that we can discuss along the way that like helped me have more clarity. And I kind of figured out what I needed to write and what I needed to do. And I talked about in the book, you know, one of the big inflection points for me is, you know, for about five years, I worked with Tim Ferriss and I did everything on the marketing side of, you know, his universe. And Tim would always ask me this question, you know, if this were easy,

what would it look like? Right. Which when you think about it, it's a very, very complicated question of looking at problems in different ways. So you can figure out like, what are the barriers that stand people and stand people's way? Right. And for me, it was like, we can talk about nutrition all day. You know, we can talk about fitness all day. We can talk about the X's and O's. Right.

But there are these elements of like the cost, complexity, and convenience that fundamentally end up being barriers for people. So it's like, how do you solve for those things where there's no easy solutions for the cost, for the complexity, for the convenience? So ask yourself different questions, get different answers. And I ended up like writing this book built around this idea. And part of the friction was, you know, I've written a lot of books. I've ghostwritten many bestsellers. I wrote a bestseller of my own. And a lot of what you hear from the publisher, and you guys are probably like seeing some of this, is like, what's the hook?

What's the shtick? What's the new thing? The new thing is like people are going to get healthy. I'm like, no, no, no. We need like, what's the villain? I'm like, the villain is like, we're really unhealthy, right? Like three quarters of people in the US alone are overweight or obese. Like three quarters.

What do you mean? What's the hook? Like, what was it that came out recently about 2025? The amount that we spend on healthcare is going to be 2.2 trillion. We're spending trillions of dollars and we are more unhealthy than ever. In the 19, whatever, 50s and 60s,

obesity rate was around 13 it's at 40 back on that same time period about seven percent of men and 14 of women would go on one diet per year today 40 of men and 65 of women go on multiple diets per year i'm sitting here like guys just look at the rap sheet what do you mean the shtick the shtick is like we're we're struggling we're suffering and they're like oh oh yeah yeah yeah what's the hook and i'm like yeah it's crazy that fat loss is uh like you would consider most things if you if they just broke even and you didn't get better a failure but we don't even break even it's like missly failing because it's moving in the wrong direction so fast it's it's terrible right so it became like this barrier of like how do i get this book and you know when i pitched the book it

was one of those things where i'm like i i'm going to title it one thing that i know i'm not going to submit the title ads just so I can get my foot in the door, right? Because my biggest frustration, my job in the fitness industry is to open doors for the people who need to have the biggest stage. I realized probably 10 years ago that I didn't need to be that person. I needed to find the best people and elevate them. But I needed to write this book because I wanted a book that fundamentally changes publishers changes documentaries changes like the things that get the big media attention how do we go ahead and like show that like we can do this the right way without sensationalizing things and like the people with the best information who are most helpful are the ones who should

have the grandest stage not the people who are saying the wildest shit because that's how it works right now right so uh i kind of looked at that and the book was pushed is one thing was initially pitched is like the takeout diet because i do think part of this like cost complexity convenience triangle is like you have to teach people how to fundamentally coexist with their environment in order to overcome the environment instead of starting with this like let's just fight against it right it we kind of mistake where we want people to go with where they need to start right and behavioral change is this pattern of progressions but we try and start people at a 10 and started instead of being put like a stable one so i'm going to take

out that but i really wanted to call the book the comfort zone because it was more about teaching people how to expand their comfort zone rather than just completely leave it because of the idea of like the york stodson curve right like if you have too much anxiety and stress you can't change your behavior if you have too little right you're super complacent you don't people have to find this comfort zone but in the process of writing this i had 500 people go through this program because you need real people to go through this to get real feedback to make it what it needs to be yeah everyone kept on saying to me even those who are having the most success, I'm going to screw this up. I'm going to screw this up. I'm going to screw this up. And that helped reshape what this book was, what the focus had to be. So the process of writing

the nine year journey, the putting the people through it, the understanding those primary barriers. I realized that a big part of this narrative is, you know, a lot of the wellness industry in trying to make people better breaks people down mentally. So they fail mentally and that is why they fail physically. And if we do not kind of combine those two and we do not understand how to build the resiliency and help people understand what success looks like, how people understand the habits they need to build in order to be successful. It doesn't matter how good the plan is. People are just going to continue to keep on failing. And we need to get them out of this mindset where they expect

to fail, where they expect to screw up. And most importantly, the things that people perceive as the biggest screw ups are not the screw up at all, right? The errors are not these kind of alleged errors. They are the reactions to the screw up. So the real screw up is the overreaction, the overcompensation to behaviors that our bodies are perfectly resilient to handle. But we have to stop screwing up by thinking we screwed up. Shark family, I want to take a quick break.

If you are enjoying today's conversation, I want to invite you to come over to rapidhealthreport.com. When you get to rapidhealthreport.com, you will see an area for you to opt in, in which you can see Dan Garner read through my lab work. Now, you know that we've been working at Rapid Health Optimization on programs for optimizing health. Now, what does that actually mean? It means in three parts, we're going to be doing a ton of deep dive into your labs. That means the inside out approach. So we're not going to be guessing your macros. We're not going to be guessing the total calories that you need. We're actually going to be doing all the work to uncover everything that you have going on inside you. Nutrition, supplementation, sleep. Then we're going to go through and analyze your lifestyle. Dr. Andy Galpin is going to go through and analyze your lifestyle.

Dr. Andy Galpin is going to build out a lifestyle protocol based on the severity of your concerns. And then we're going to also build out all the programs that go into that based on the most severe things first. This truly is a world-class program. And we invite you to see step one of this process by going over to rapidhealthreport.com. You can see Dan reading my labs, the nutrition and supplementation that he has recommended that has radically shifted the way that I sleep, the energy that I have during the day, my total testosterone level, and it's my ability to trust and have confidence in my health going forward. I really, really hope that you're able to go over to rap health report.com. Watch the video of

my labs and see what is possible. And if it is something that you are interested in, please schedule a call with me on that page. Once again, it's rapid health report.com. And let's get back to the show. 500 is a great number. Great number. I don't want to be on a slack group, right? So I haven't I got a three month diet plan for within the in the thing that was that created a lot of friction was i told them i need you guys to be eating takeout two to three times per week not for the point of forcing that like being healthy doesn't mean eating two to three to take out two or three times per week but most people have these

perceptions that there are certain behaviors that are going to get in the way of them being healthy and they just think there's no way out of it right and all of us go on the road and do stuff we're like we are fundamentally put in situations that we cannot control the biggest thing parts of life and one of the biggest problems is that many diet programs are great when they're in a completely controlled scenario right if everything is great if you're well rested if you're feeling good if you're never on the road like you'll freaking crush this. Reality is like we get tired, we get stressed, we have to travel, we have days we're overloaded, and we know that we should cook a meal. But like, you might just be ordering takeout because you have to. And in those moments, you shouldn't think that this whole thing is going

to fall apart. Like again, teaching people how to coexist with is really important. So I not only wanted to put people on this plan, but I wanted to make it as realistic as possible, where I was fundamentally going to make you a little bit uncomfortable and tell you things to do that you think you can't do while seeing results, because I need you to see that what you think it takes to be healthy, what you think it takes to get to the stable platform where you can essentially do whatever you want from your body isn't as complicated right like the foundations of health are built upon like these just almost vehement relentless consistent basic behaviors and then the next level tiers if someone so wants to pursue them that is where you get into more of the complication, but we tend to build foundations on the complication because we think that complication equals effectiveness, which is

a huge misnomer and a reason why a lot of people fail because like we just give something that is too complicated for them to build those foundations. And there's no surprise that we feel like we have to make it easier to build those habits and then challenge people. Yeah. Okay. I think a lot of the listeners here, they absolutely know who you are because you've been a damn legend in this industry. And they know that you work with a lot of high level people. But it sounds like this book is going to be made for basically anybody who can read it and start to expand their comfort zone. So a question that I've been thinking as you've been talking is, have you learned any comfort zone lessons

from the high level people that you've worked with that you're applying in this book? Yeah, I mean, so I think it benefits both and it benefits trainers, right? You kind of imagine those people who are going to really this is going to serve. And like I said, it's, it's a zero to one book, but it helps make sure that those foundations that allow you to be your healthiest in any situation are secured and reinforced, right? I said like life can feel like a tornado or hurricane when you're in a tornado, what do you do, right? You find your secure place and the thing that is most stable to grab onto. A lot of times we have not necessarily bolted those things down. So those healthy habits that we need in the most difficult times are there for us at any time, no matter what is going on. But yeah, it's definitely designed

more for the zero to one and for people who are like, wait a second, if shit goes crazy, am I just going to like completely fall apart? And even for like the highest level people, I think a lot of times, you know, we can occasionally have a house of cards because the habits and routines are so ingrained, but it doesn't mean the foundations have been mastered. And I think what was interesting for me is you guys probably see the same thing. You work with a lot of these like high level athletes and a lot of them succeed in spite of themselves. right? They're genetically talented, incredibly hard working, but behaviorally, they have not created boundaries that make it easy for them to succeed.

And in order to do that, when people ask like, well, where do you begin? I walked through this in the book is that the hardest thing is like, well, what like habit should I start with? Right. And for that, I recommend kind of a method of inversion. So a lot of people, when they want to accomplish something, they start with goal setting, right? They kind of start with the beginning, the vision of what they want to achieve. When I work with high level athletes and what is really helpful for them is like, these guys think they can do anything, right? They actually don't have the problem that most people have, which is like, they don't think they're going to screw up. They think that they are unstoppable.

And that is both a strength and a weakness. Because they are so confident that it's going to put them on a path where they don't think they're going to fail. But they're so overconfident that it makes them blind to their own weaknesses. And I think our job as coaches is not only to build up strengths, but it's to identify weaknesses so you can remove them. So what I do with people, and I talk about this, is invert the situation. Look at, you know, let's take from a diet perspective and ask yourself, six months from now, I'm seeing you, you have failed, which for most people on a diet path is, they don't even make it six months, right? About three months is the average amount of time. Six months from now, you have failed failed i don't say this to be negative in the same way that like memento mori i

talk a lot about stoicism in this book a powerful brian holiday and james clear mark manson right there's a lot that we can borrow from the psychological space to help us become better right memento mori is this idea of you will die i don't tell you will die to be morbid i tell it so that you can embrace more living when i say i want you to start from the end of when you have failed it's not to be like you are going to fail it's that you can be honest about yourself of like what is the thing that is most likely to erode this house this structure this habit you are building and why right what what is it and it's going to be something different for everyone but if you're being honest with if you might find that like oh oh, at work, I always skip lunch, end up

ordering out and like lunch is my big problem meal. Or, you know, and I can eat healthy, but I drink like six sodas a day. Or I only work out after dinner, but I can't train for 90 minutes. And I get home and I'm tired. like next thing i know like i've gone three weeks and i haven't worked out by starting from the end you can find the thing that is most important to you right uh we'll do the gratuitous name job of like i've worked with lebron james for many years and like his big thing is like keep the main thing the main thing and that's also something that i tangentially connect to then mark manson's subtle art of not giving a fuck the best thing about that book and like and and there's some people love it. Some people hate

it is that like he argues you can't give a fuck about everything. And in nutrition, oftentimes we try to give a fuck about everything all at once, right? We're worried about our inflammation. We're worried about our sleep. We're worried about our macros. We're worried about our meals per day. We're worried about our lifting sessions. We're worried about the progressive overload, right? We're, we're worrying about, am I doing my cold plunge am i hitting my heat shock proteins and like all of this stuff adds up and it's like holy shit yeah like maybe one day none of these things are bad but when you're trying to do all of these things at once and you have not identified right what i call trap doors we all all have trap doors, right? The thing

that like anyone else can see that we're standing on, but like we don't realize we're standing on that trap door and you're like, get off that thing. That's what makes it suck so much. I'm trying to make people wake up to where their trap doors are, figure out how to make the main thing the main thing. So I'm going to not only teach you how to identify it, I'm going to teach you how to fix it. I'm going to teach you fundamentally why we keep on missing these things so that you don't have to do anymore. If you can see the trap doors and you can have tools in place to help you build healthier habits and you can cut out a lot of the noise so you can build foundational habits that make you healthier, regardless of what diet you want, right? And I even say say like i don't care if you're vegan or carnivore i have my own personal preferences right but i know enough that like trying to change

someone's mind about their you know their dietary allegiance doesn't help people and usually gets them to like dig in harder against what i'm saying i care about helping people and helping people is really an agnostic approach from a dietary standpoint and from like a fitness standpoint. And it's more about the habitual. It's more about the mindset. And then you can apply those tools as you see fit. Yeah.

It sounds like you've also kind of picked up three of those like big pain points slash excuses. And I want to dig into the cost side of things first, because I don't think I've gone out to a dinner in the last year and a half that hasn't cost me triple that I assume I'm about to pay for a relatively healthy meal. Go get some fajitas these days, and you're out $25, it feels like. A chicken breast, you can go to Costco and get a whole bag of those things, and it might not taste as good. Chicken breasts, I've had bag of those things and might not taste as good. Chicken breasts had enough of those in my life. But like every time I hear the cost argument, I just kind of shut down. I'm like, hold on a second.

What, where, what you don't, it's not McDonald's. That's not, we can't, we have to agree that McDonald's really isn't the best. But if you're eating at a place that serves food, it is so much more expensive to eat out and so much more expensive to not be in your house. Walk me through kind of like the thought process on the cost side of things, because that one throws up red flags to me every time I hear somebody say the cost. Yeah. So when you hear red flags, what do you mean in terms of like you can't eat well for affordably? No, I think it's much more. They're saying it's too expensive to eat well. And every time I hear it, I'm like, no, it's way more expensive to eat unhealthy, even if you're going

to get real food. And I'm not even talking about the long tail of the cost. I'm talking about that specific meal that you are taking your family to is five times more expensive than if I were to make the fajitas at my house. Right. So part of the one, I think I need to teach you how to cook chicken a little bit better. There's a way to make chicken delicious. Don't you feel like you've had like 30,000 chicken breasts in your life? How do you make your chicken though? I smoke the thighs on the grill in the back and they're gangster. But the chicken breasts in your life and you're how do you how do you make how do you make your chicken though i smoke the thighs on the grill in the back and they're gangster but the chicken breasts if plus it all happens on sunday how do you make your how do you make your chicken breasts oh dry right but like how do you how do you prepare we're gonna have a detour

that anders doesn't like his dry terrible chicken i don't. Yeah. It's not intentional that it's dry. It's that chicken breast. How do you prepare it? On a grill. Okay. So I'm going to change your life. Change your life. Yeah.

Go ahead. I've got my 30,000 chicken breast. I'm finally getting a lesson in chicken breast. I come on here to try and convince people to buy this book that I spent nine years on but here's going to be the real truth i love it can't taste kind of bad or like if i would argue if you're barbecuing it well it still should taste pretty good it does part of the the key to making delicious i'm dieting too hard right now to have patience for this conversation. You are enraging me. He's shredded right now.

He's only eating chicken breast for the last three months. He's literally snorting chicken breast. He's going to murder Anders through the screen. So, you know, chicken, you don't want it to be rubbery, right? So it's about making it taste really good. But it requires a lot more patience than people want from the cooking process. So one of the easy things is obviously you can brine it. So basically just inject some salt into that bad boy or even like stab it and

sprinkle salt in. But the real key is about how you cook it. So what you're going to want to do is you're going to take your chicken breasts and you can, you know, you don't need very much, literally like pour a little, like a dab of oil in your hand and you're going to like coat that bad boy in oil. Okay. Not a lot. We're not talking about low enough in calories, literally like a penny size same penny size on a pan and you are going to pan through that so you're going to turn the heat up to high so you see the smoke start coming off of it all right season your chicken however you want it seasoned i don't care salt pepper is basic garlic's going to hit it really really nicely especially if you brined it you're going to drop it on one side for one minute on that high heat.

One minute, okay? After one minute, you are going to flip it over and drop it down to low heat and you are going to cover it and set a timer for 10 minutes. So your heat will be on low. This is covered for 10 minutes. 10 minutes goes off.

You turn the heat off completely. Keep the lid on it for another 10 minutes and then you take it off. So it is one minute with that pan sear. Flip it over. 10 minutes on low heat. 10 minutes on no heat. All covered.

Take that thing off. Slice it open. And tell me it is not the most juicy, delicious chicken breast you've ever had. And I am telling you, you're going to be like, how have I been making chicken for 20 years and I've never done and i am telling you you're gonna be like how have i been making chicken for 20 years and i've never done it it takes you 21 minutes so it's longer than the typical like chicken making right there i say you will never look at chicken the same way again i am so strongly i used to be fitness nutrition for men's health and one of the things they would have to do is do all the food stuff sometimes they'd have me do the sex stuff and i'm like guys i am the wrong person

do not let me write about sex do not advice there is nothing sexy or understand i just know what are you doing i'll stick to the chicken keep me with the cooking and the gains you guys and the fat loss but you learn a lot of things and i'm not kidding like i was even like 21 minutes for chicken who's got time no it's stuff this is good this is gonna be what everyone takes away like it's gonna be we did we did the world a good deed because uh i'm really glad i'm really glad how long this bit was because you deserve all of that so you get back to the cost question yeah i'm gonna stop talking because we could keep going

i'm done i lost that battle i'll take it we are i think we have the curse of knowledge yes the curse of knowledge right is that like we and this is a big argument i make in the book where i like so many diet books struggle is that we don't take people from where we began we take people from where we are the analogy that i keep on mentioning with everyone is like in any other industry this would be like so obvious like if i was teaching someone how to swim would i throw them in the deep end no you like literally you might even have them put their like little pinky toe in the water to just make sure that the water isn't like terrifying right but in in nutrition in fitness right we throw people in the deep end and we toss them in with some sharks and we're like good luck and then like if they barely barely stay alive we

then cut their arm and let them bleed out while the sharks are in there and it's like oh you failed you suck you're terrible right or like we bring them in the gym and like they've never worked out before and they're like hey bulgarian split squats are awesome i'm going to do an interior loaded bulgarian split squat here's this weight'm going to do an interior loaded Bulgarian split squat. Here's this weight while you stand on a BOSU. And like they fail miserably because it's one, a stupid exercise, and two, it's like so difficult. And you're like, oh, why are you so weak and awful? And it's like, oh my goodness, what are we doing? Since when did we decide that we don't need to add and subtract before we can multiply, divide, do calculus and algebra,

right? But this is the way that we go about it. So when we go to what people think healthy eating is, right? We have this perception of a certain number of meals that we have to eat per day. We have an idea of a certain type of superfoods that we must purchase, that everything must be organic and prepared a certain way, that there are certain brands, even that if we do not buy from them they are better than others and it is not that healthy food itself is more expensive it is that the perception of what healthy is and what people think it needs to be yeah it's so expensive and it is also the fear and shame that is associated if you happen to find yourself at a McDonald's and then not even being thinking that you can enjoy that meal. Listen, the last place I personally want to eat is McDonald's.

That's just me. Yeah. Now, if I find myself there, the last thing I'm going to do if I'm trying to be healthy is like eat a salad. Like there are things that you can order at all the fast food restaurants, which I share in this that if like you find yourself there a don't freak the fuck out b there's a healthy way to eat there c if you do it you are fine right in the same way that like if we were to sit here and tell anyone hey so like once every two weeks once every two weeks you're going to work out but only once right so it's the once every it's the bi-weekly one-time workout how good a shape are you going to be in not very good shape right once

every two weeks and that's it why in the world if once in a blue moon we go out and eat a food or we have fast food and if that's the only meal right i'm not saying you're eating this all the time if that's the meal why are we worried about what this is going to do to your body if the average person eats three meals a day and probably more eat like four, there are seven days in a week. So there's a minimum of 21 meals. If you're 20 out of 21, 19 out of 21, in what universe is 90% not kicking ass? But we don't do that.

We catastrophize those behaviors. We then fast and detox and work out twice. And we beat ourselves into the ground to a point like yeah of course you're gonna think you're sick or we eat that one meal we just say fuck it i had mcdonald's so i'm gonna have mcdonald's for the next six days and then like people tell themselves that they want to like well if i could eat whatever i want i would just eat mcdonald's every day and i'm like no you wouldn't you're doing it because you feel bad about yourself right you were internalizing an emotion and turning that emotion into an action and an action that actually harms you. Because if you were to eat McDonald's

seven days in a row, you certainly don't feel good. You certainly don't have energy. You don't feel better about yourself, but you're doing the thing that you need to do because you've been told that you've screwed up, right? Like we've conditioned these maladaptive behaviors of what it takes to be healthy and condition these maladaptive behaviors of what we need to do when we need to console ourselves when we feel bad about it. And that is just like fundamentally problematic. So it's more about teaching people what healthy eating really looks like and what the cost of this is, as opposed to this like almost condescending, expensive approach. Like I won't rail against supplementation, but like people don't need to build their healthy habits on supplementation. They need to build a foundation of eating and

then see where they struggle or see where they lack conveniences to do certain things and then fill those gaps with the supplements. So like, okay, if eating vegetables are really hard for your digestive health is really hard for you. Here are things that you can do to be easier. Is there a cost to this? Yes. But what is the associated cost of not doing it and feeling more terrible but like you don't again you don't identify these problem points unless you strip away all the layers and realize like foundationally like how are we building our health how are we teaching people to eat a certain way i even imagine like if we were to talk to to dan about like if he was truly starting with a blank slate with someone. That's one of my favorite games to play when I go to the airport.

You have a blank slate. Like, what are you doing? And I would imagine these are things that feel complicated for people because they're difficult. But if you tell it to the average professional, you'd be like, oh, that's actually like really, really simple. And that's because you're just more advanced. But like those are the foundational pieces in the same way that if you bring someone to the gym the first time, you don't need to load the bar with 300 pounds and have them squat with that for it to feel like it's super heavy.

You put the bar on them. And if they've never squatted before and they don't know how to move that way and they've never had load on their back, that 45 pound bar feels like 300. And that's where a lot of things, like a lot of healthy habits feel like 300 pounds for people because they just haven't done it. But if you can get them to do it, right, at some point, 45 is just like throwing some plates, right? Throwing some wheels, like this is lightweight. We have to take that same approach with people. We have to get them so confident and so comfortable that the hard stuff actually feels really, really easy. And then the things that are truly complicated, we add those later.

We can't start with the more complicated stuff because we're not putting people in an environment where they're more likely to succeed. Yeah. What do we do with the environmental pieces? A lot of this book is not going to be aimed at the person that lives a mile from Whole Foods that has asparagus water at five bucks a pop and has all the access to- That's why people think it's expensive right there, $5 asparagus water. I hope you remember that when the CEO of Whole Foods got on Twitter and was like, sorry, we forgot to take the asparagus out of the water. That was one of my favorite burns on Twitter of all time. That guy's mouth was so good. But the environmental factors, I have always agreed, are the hardest pieces of this, especially for people that are coming to make real changes in their life. And then they step outside and they look around and maybe a

convenience store is the closest place to get groceries. Like maybe they really don't have access to even a lower scale grocery store where you could buy fresh meat, fresh vegetables. Maybe fresh just isn't even a real possibility. How do they start to overcome the environmental factor and the environmental piece to this that really would... I mean, it's kind of like when we travel and everybody comes home and it's like, I'm constipated. We've eaten out five nights in a row. I just had a couple of drinks every day.

And that's the environment. And it's really hard. It's really hard. It's part of what got me like figure this out because i had that struggle for two years i was on the road every single week this is when i was working with lebron and arnold cindy crawford and lindsey vaughn and that is enough name dropping for an entire more do more oh my goodness i i started to struggle and i did i made the mistake that i now realize like I was like, oh, wow, like I really should like start fasting and I should do this and I should do that. And things got 10 times worse, right?

Because I put myself in a more stressful environment than I needed to be in. Part of the food environment is not good, right? Let's let's not mince words. The food environment is not designed to help us eat healthier, but better understanding the food environment and better understanding that you, again, can have some of these allowances. And I talk about like being able to eat out, take out, understanding what an ultra processed food is and separating that from a processed food, right? If you were having to go to a grocery store or convenience store, like all processing is not bad. Like getting a, you know, beans in a can or lentils is not bad.

That food is processed. There are types of breads and pasta and rice that you can get that are processed. There are frozen foods, frozen proteins, right, that are okay to eat. Would it be great if it was fresh? Of course. Is it bad if it's not? No. If you need to get

frozen vegetables or frozen fruit because that is more affordable or canned goods, you can do that. And it doesn't mean that you like can't ever have a sandwich or an ultra processed food. I talk about like really trying to identify what those ultra processed foods are, right? These are the bliss point foods. These are things that are engineered to make you eat more. They combine salt, sugar, and fat in a way that chemically stimulate your brain to want to eat more food right these things exist your body can tolerate them but they can only tolerate them up to a certain amount before you just become like they like the see more eat more diet where like yeah right the food you eat overwires the wiring of your brain because you know dan could explain it way better than me, but like satiety, right, is as much a neurochemical signal as it is

a physical sensation, right? Satiety center in your stomach and it sends a neurochemical signal to your brain to tell you you're full. And we also take in other sensory information, right? Where like, if you see what you're eating, it actually helps you feel fuller because our brain's eyes, optic nerve goes ahead and ties in and also connects with that satiety center to tell you that like, this is going to help like you're eating a lot of food. They've taken studies where people are blinded. They can't see what they eat, right? So this would be akin to someone like scrolling on their phone or

watching TV and they see how much people will eat. And the people who are distracted eaters eat significantly more. And part of the reason is they don't feel full. And the reason they don't feel full is because they're not actually paying attention to how much they are consuming. So part of existing in this environment is one, like, do we know how to do the little things that make a big difference for helping us control hunger? Do we understand that if you always feel hungry, one of the easiest things you can do is just like slow down when you're eating. And this is really hard for people. The average person takes nine minutes to eat a meal, but the signal, the amount of time it takes for you to feel full, right? Like we don't have

a highway here is roughly 20 to 30 minutes. It differs for everyone a little bit, roughly to 20 to 30 minutes. So if you are scarfing down your meal in nine minutes and you're always hungry, of course you're hungry. Like your body has not yet processed what you are eating. If you are not eating the right types of foods that leave you more sated, right? A protein and a fiber. If you're not thinking about like, do I have a protein and fiber in this meal? That's really tough. Proteins and fibers, you can find that at a convenience store, right? We can like a lot of the things that we need to build our diet around there are higher grades of this but a lower grade of a good thing is better than a high grade of the shitty thing yeah yeah for sure i mean this is like the lower yeah go ahead go ahead sorry no go ahead no i need

you to chime well i was gonna say here it's what we're talking about actually reminds me a lot of something i used to do like 10 years ago when I was I started out my career as a personal trainer at a gold's gym. And maximizing satiety is a lot about like habituation and hunger in training, and seeing those things that you're used to seeing not changing too much. And when you're talking about expanding one's comfort zone, an exercise that I used to do with people that was massively successful breaks all of the rules that people talk about today. So I used to work with very, very average people. So everyone starts out their career. And I would look at this food log. And it was like what you would expect to see it was

bacon, eggs, and peanut butter toast for breakfast. They would go out for lunch because they're too lazy to pack it. So let's say a burger and fries for lunch. And then dinner is actually kind of usually solid. It's usually some sort of square meal of meat, starch, vegetables, but then there's a dessert. So I would always look at this approach. And I'm like, okay, how can I get this person moving in the right direction in a way that they're comfortable? Okay, bacon, eggs, and peanut butter toast. Okay, keep it all, but let's swap the bacon for turkey bacon. Now we have lunch, you're going to have a burger and fries for lunch. Eat the burger, fine. But let's try and get a side salad instead of fries. And then for dinner, dinner is already a square meal, but we probably don't need the dessert. So after dessert or after dinner, can you have like a cup of blueberries or maybe some

Greek yogurt with blueberries or something like that? And they would almost always unanimously agree to these tiny, tiny switches. And then a newer person in the industry might look at me and be like, dude, they're still eating a burger. They're still having this stuff with dinner. Like, what are you talking about? Isn't this the insulin isn't this going to make everything you stop it stop it right now because we just decrease their calories by 500 per day in a way that they're currently comfortable with you can't beat that and then you could roll that out that actually

created a massive amount of success over time. And it could even just be just change breakfast first, and then lunch, and then the dessert after dinner, or it could be all at once, whatever they were comfortable with doing, I would match and that would get the momentum going that needed to change their mindset for the long term. And I love this, you literally explain how I then tried to operationalize what I do, right? Because the approach here is, again, make it so easy that it's hard to fail. Small changes can lead to big results. And like when someone's eating that way and you swap out the fries, it's a massive change. And it's important for people to be able to see and understand success because most people

don't understand what success looks like or feels like, right? They think that they're doing something that feels better when they make that one change, right? The adjustment of like someone who's drinking like a full sugar soda and then switching to like a non-nutritive sweetener and then eventually maybe to water or a flavored beverage or something like that. You just change that and look at the diet and like, no, you don't even understand. Like they're drinking three cans a day. That's 120 grams of sugar. Like their blood work alone is going to feel, it's going to look different. Their sleep is going to be better. Everything is going to be better everything is going to fundamentally change and yes there are other things to do but now these people are believers and as a trainer they're like bought

in but as the individual you are empowered whereas most of the time when people are making these changes the only thing that they feel better about is whether the scale goes up or down and as we know like there are going to be times where the scale isn't going to move you want to look the longer term trend and be able to identify that diagnose the issues. But, you know, I talk about, you mentioned the dessert thing. One of the kind of the tools that I use here is that, you know, I understand people who like intermittent fasting as a concept. I think a lot of the benefits are overstated, right? And this is coming from a guy who wrote a bestselling book about intermittent fasting in 2013. The one thing that it gets right is that like meal boundaries are actually very, very helpful. There's a study that was

published where like people literally moved back to breakfast by an hour and a half and moved up their dinner time by an hour and a half. That's not practical for everyone. I can't move up my dinner by an hour and a half. My kids are still in school. But that alone led people to lose a significant amount of weight with no other changes. And why is that? It was an open kitchen, closed kitchen. And the way I explain this is that like, why are people so stressed by work today? Right. There are a lot of variables that make work stressful, but like when you control for variables, right. It's not the money or the people that you work with. It's that like work no longer has a nine to five boundary right now, the people who really love their work, they're like, they're

filled up by it. But a lot of people don't love their job. And what stresses them out is like, it never ends. There's always email. There's always work. So it's very, very stressful not having boundaries of when you're working. In the same way, it's very, very stressful not having boundaries of like when you can eat. And I don't care when those boundaries are. I'm not going to get caught up in like, are you doing a 16 hour fast or a 14 hour fast? What I'm going to get caught up is like, do you have a time where you tell yourself you're going to start eating whatever time works practically for you? And do you have a time where it's just like kitchen is closed, right? I don't care if you're hungry, you're not going to starve, man. It's like 10 o'clock at

night, kitchen's closed. All right. So it's like, it's teach people to create these boundaries. And that usually would cut off the dessert. So instead of saying, Nick, you can never eat dessert, right? It's just like, no, man, there is a kitchen open. There is a kitchen closed. There's the idea of like the plus one, right? You were talking about the burger and the fries. And like, if the foundation of a meal is protein and fiber, because again, as you lose weight in particular, your brain works against you, right? Like fat loss goes down. You're losing fat. Leptin goes down, which means like you're just not going to like feel as full, right? So like you're going to want more food. Well, like again, this is a brain thing. You got to eat the foods that are going to fundamentally make you feel more satisfied. So

that's what protein is fiber is such is such a key and you're going to just feel more satisfied in general. Some people like carbs, some people like fat, low carb diets can work, you know, low fat diets can work. Do you like carbs? Or do you like fat? If you like eating more carbs, you're going to have to eat less fat. If you like eating more carbs, you're going to have to eat less fat. If you like eating more fat, you're going to have to eat less carbs. I'm not going to tell you which one to do. So if you're having the burger, right? Kind of already got your carbs from the bread.

You got the fat in the burger because most burgers are fatty. That's good. You don't need the fries. Like Dan said, you throw in a salad to get that additional fiber from the greens and you have a meal. And it's actually like people are like, oh, burgers are terrible. Sandwiches are terrible. Not really. Not really if you know how to make them the right way. And if you consider it a larger structure of a diet. So many of these habit-based changes that give people a tool

where they can look at this, where it just feels simpler, where it's not like, can I eat a burger? It's like, no, if i'm eating a burger what should be on the side right if i'm if i'm like having dessert how often should i be having it rather than like sweating and then like when you have that dessert like truly enjoy it right so many people again like the catastrophes you know part of the reason why people crave dessert so much and we look at this from like the social emotional thing is that they have so much guilt when they're eating it that they don't enjoy it that they still end up craving it as opposed to like being the moment enjoying it and then like getting back on things for people who just like infrequently eat dessert

they tend to lose more weight like there was a study i think it was like an appetite where it asks people to completely restrict all desserts and sweets and what happened people ended up eating 133 percent more calories because it's again like the thing that you you know when you're told you can't have something you want it more but instead if like people know that it's there that that option is there so they don't feel like it's like completely removed it's just like the dial is turned down psychologically it changes that way we act like we are just physiological creatures but when we are building behaviors the psychological barriers are often way bigger than the physical barriers It changes that way. We act like we are just physiological creatures, but when we are building behaviors,

the psychological barriers are often way bigger than the physical barriers. And that is true for most people. And that is true for even the highest level athlete. If you can teach them to overcome these psychological barriers, they will feel unstoppable. And then all of the physiological aspects become easier until you get to that highest level, right?

Until you're getting to Dan Shredded level highest level, right? Until you're getting to like Dan shredded level right now, right? There is a journey where probably because it's automated, it feels good. And then like that last few percentages, which is like where the elite live and not everyone wants to be elite and that's okay. Right. That's the part that's hard, but getting 90% of the way there, which for most people is going to be 100 of all they ever want right dan and any of you guys could talk about this like anders doug when you guys have tried to get in the best shape of your life when you are like 90 there and you look better than like 99 of people is that part a grind any sort, that last bit is a push.

It's hard because you're exceeding whatever you've done before in your life. Right. But the journey there isn't as bad as it seems. It's like when you go into the space that you were going to go. And not everyone desires that. and that's not a that's not a knock like most of us like yeah i love when dan calls it when he calls it going in robot mode it's actually not uh there's the hard part is saying no to everything but if you're not trying to live your life like that then it it's not that hard. Right.

Cause you don't have to get to a place. And that's a choice. We, I want to put people in a situation where they feel they have a choice about how far they want to push their physical limits, not where they feel they are forced to live in a body and a mind that is not of their own. And what I am arguing is not that these extreme measures can't be effective. It says that you do not start with them. In fact, like you do not do that until the last mile, because like, if you've done all that stuff,

you make it actually hard to work when you need it most, right? Like you can get really, really, really far with incredible habits and probably accomplish 99% of all of your goals that most people want. When you're looking at the general fit, athletic, be strong, build muscle, lose fat. The majority of the things that people want to accomplish are built upon these big boulders, right? And then the final fine tuning, that's where a lot of the complexity and like strain really would come in. Yeah.

I found personally that like being too restrictive has really backfired for me. Like you were talking about that kind of that last 10% trying to get really lean or really, really muscular, whatever it is. The times of my life where I've been the most lean is when I've been cutting for MMA fights, where I walk around at 195 to 205 kind of on average. I used to fight welterweight at 170. And so I would have a hard end date where I had to weigh in at 170, even if it was just for a brief few minutes. But in those times where I had to be at a specific weight on a specific day,

no matter what, I would have to be very restrictive at times just to not even to look better, but just to make weight on the day. And I don't tend to have a very healthy relationship with food. I don't tend to have cravings for a lot of junk food. I like healthy food. I like all the food that I eat for the most part. I like eating meat and vegetables and it's never bothered me to not eat chocolate cake for dessert or whatever it is. But when I would be cutting four MMA fights, that would be the only time in my life where I'm like, I'm like 175 and I've fucking eaten 800 calories that day and then barely my life where I'm like, I'm like 175. And I've fucking eaten 800 calories that day. And then barely drinking any water I got, I got away

tomorrow, whatever it is, where I'm just like, craving all this shit that I never, ever, ever crave. Like when I get out of here, I'm just like thinking about pizza. I'm thinking I'm thinking about I never think about pastries. I'm thinking about cookies like that never happened to me almost ever in my entire life where I had cravings for, for these types of foods. But then when I was being overly restrictive, then I was craving those things. So I had empathy in those moments for people that are on yo-yo diets where they, they don't feel like they can eat any food without gaining weight. And so they're being really restrictive. And then that psychologically makes them crave those foods. And then they try to

to not eat them again. And then they do eat them. Then they feel bad and they're up and down and they're just on this crazy psychological ride that i didn't have perspective on before i ended up in a situation where i had to be very restrictive in order to hit a weight in in my opinion for a good reason because i was trying to fight mma which i which i love doing but most of the time even though i was eating eating very healthy in those moments i i really had a window into the psychology of a person who's on a this pattern of yo-yo dieting. And that, and that's the key, right?

There are both physiological and psychological barriers, trap doors that like we need to navigate because they're very real. I also love how you mentioned like pastries and pizza in front of Dan right now, you guys are terrible friends. I want to hear, I want to hear the end of the 500 people where are they at now how many people were able to stick with it um that's like the the the real mark of does this thing work and and should people go read this book yeah so i lost track of probably about say almost 150 of them just because they won't respond to my emails yeah Yeah. But I don't know why they don't like me anymore.

The damn open rate. That was right. You had to do the follow-up before you can write a book. Right. So this, that 500 people ended more than a year ago. And in general, when you look at the rate of not regaining, it was about 70% of the people did not the weight. It's not 100%. I'm not going to act like it's 100%. I'm not going to make up

fucking numbers. They're going to people that either like the plan didn't work for them. But the goal here is like, in general, you look at, you know, there's a study out of UCLA that looked at like the follow up, like how many people gain weight after going on a diet. I think the number is 67% from that one study itself. And you know, a lot of times like people will inflate the number of like how much people will gain weight, but in general it's not that, and that's the gaining weight. The majority of people will like get back to their prior weight. And then because of like, whether you believe in set point or not, people tend to have a weight that they like it's easier for them to stick at but a lot of people right obesity reviews i think had a study where it was 40 so you're looking at any between like 40 to nearly 70 of people gain more back than when

they started so if you're at a point where like 70 of people can be keeping it off it's a special place and i think a lot of that has to do with one, resetting like what it is that you're trying to accomplish. And I think a lot of times people are chasing a goal for no reason other than like they think this is what they're supposed to do, right? The best way to get incredible results is to have true intention with what you want to do, be able to identify those points where you're going to fail and then build habits that make it very, very difficult for them to fail.

And that three-part process is really, nice. Cause a lot of times people are just borrowing programs that whether they're good or bad, aren't going to work for them because it's not aligned with their goals, right? Like for the person who just wants to be healthier, for the person who wants to just lose 10 pounds, for the person who wants to eat dessert and have energy, but like fit into a pair of jeans, following the six day per week bodybuilder workout that's designed to get you like stage ready is not the right approach. And it's not that the plan won't work. It's misaligned with the goals and the lifestyles and the sacrifices that someone is willing to make. Not to mention getting to that part is a progression. Let's get people to the point where they can be doing the things almost automatically that

will make them feel better. Let's get them to a point where they can, you know, sufficiently be walking a certain amount of steps, eating protein and fiber in their meals, having meal boundaries, being able to eat dessert without freaking out the next day. Eat dessert without feeling they need to go on a detox eat healthy without freaking out that like they can't afford it like again identifying those big rocks and when that happens even when people aren't completely dialed in they know how to show up and that's a big thing that i talk about like we have this illusion that like health means that

at some point we figured it all out. And every single day we wake up and we want to train and eat healthy. And that's not true. Even for the people like Doug who enjoy eating this stuff, like some days, like you, it's not that you want to, he might not be craving chocolate cake, but he probably isn't going to be as dialed or like eat as less like the control of the amount of the food, or you don't feel like you're in a PR that the difference between these people is that like 50% of the time, I would argue you actually don't feel like it. And those are the moments where you need the tools the most, because it's about showing up and doing something. And if you're doing something 50% of the days when you don't feel like it,

and if you're doing something 25% of the days when you feel like kind of good, it's not bad, but, and then if you're doing like something really good those other 25 of days were like you just feel like you can conquer the universe yeah uh where can people find them oh sorry about that i thought that big break right there in the in the language sorry finish cutting me off man i didn't mean to i promise you're all good i wanted to make it so smooth uh where where can people find the book man i'm sorry about that it's the easiest url in the world it's can't screw this up.com i dropped the u but can't screw this up.com we've got some cool bonuses people who buy two books buy one for yourself

buy one for your friend you can win a chance to go train with arnold at gold with me i fly people out to LA. I believe people and experiences are what it's about. So we got some cool bonuses. Do we get two admissions? Yeah. Yes. For you. Let's do it.

We got to get this crew to train with Arnold anyways. I know. Guys, we're going to make that happen. I'm already working on it, but yes, if people buy the book, chance to train with Arnold, lots of bonuses. I think that, on it. But yes, if people buy the book,

Chance to Train with Arnold, lots of bonuses. I think that, you know, I respect people's hard-earned money a lot. I think the book stands on its own. But if you are going to support the book, I want you to get so much value that it is a no-brainer for you. Because my hope is that, you know, it fundamentally changes the way you look at health

and you realize that, you know, you can't screw this up. I love it, man. Dan Garner. Cool. you guys can find me at dan garner nutrition on instagram there it is doug larson also on instagram douglas e larson i'm anders warner at anders warner we are barbell shrug to barbell underscore shrug make sure you get over to rapidhealthreport.com that is where dr andy galpin and dan garner are doing a lab lifestyle and performance analysis. One of our clients inside Rapid Health Optimization.

And you will get one of the same videos personalized to your lab lifestyle and performance. That's over at RapidHealthReport.com. Adam, thanks for coming to hang out with us, man. We got to get back to Boulder or Venice. We're going to be out there in June. We're going to be out there. Huh, bros? Bros, you want to get jacked together?

Got one month. Always yes. We're going to be out there. Huh, bros? Bros, you want to get jacked together? Got one more. Always yes. Yeah, yes. Awesome, man. Thanks for coming on. Thank you.