Dhru Purohit Show - The Most Underrated Tools for Longterm Weight Loss

Episode Date: September 22, 2025

In the noisy debate over diets, calories, and weight loss, it can be hard to separate fact from hype. Today’s guest draws on deep expertise to cut through the noise, break down the science, and deliver trustworthy insights into nutrition and wellness. Today on The Dhru Purohit Show, we’re revisiting one of our most talked-about moments with Dr. Layne Norton. Dr. Norton shares why exercise is critical for sustained weight loss and appetite regulation. He also explains that the decision to make lifestyle changes, along with consistency, is key to long-term success. Dr. Norton further discusses how the standard American lifestyle complicates weight loss and why it’s necessary to take an empathetic approach to helping people succeed. Dr. Layne Norton is a renowned fitness coach, bodybuilder, and entrepreneur known for his evidence-based approach to nutrition and training. He earned a Ph.D. in Nutritional Sciences from the University of Illinois and has achieved significant milestones as a competitive bodybuilder and powerlifter, including winning national titles and setting world records. Dr. Norton is also the founder of BioLayne LLC, a fitness and nutrition coaching company that has helped countless individuals achieve their health and fitness goals. He is also a prolific writer, speaker, and social media influencer, using his platforms to debunk fitness myths and promote science-based practices. In this episode, Dhru and Dr. Norton dive into: The importance of exercise for long-term weight loss (1:44) Exercise and appetite regulation (5:20) Stories of people who decided to change their lifestyle (16:11) The standard American lifestyle of convenience (23:41) Why some people struggle with appetite control and the role of Ozempic (33:02) Accountability and the need for an empathetic approach to weight loss (38:42) Final thoughts (42:29) Also mentioned: Full episode with Dr. Layne Norton This episode is brought to you by Maui Nui and Birch Living. Right now, Maui Nui Venison is offering my listeners a limited collection of my favorite cuts and products. Just go to mauinuivenison.com/dhru to secure your access now, but hurry, supply is limited! Get 25% off your Birch Living mattress during their extended Labor Day sale —just head to birchliving.com/dhru today!  Sign up for Dhru’s Try This Newsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi everyone, Drew Prode here. Weight loss is a topic that so many people are into. And it's one we've talked about a ton on this podcast. But today's episode goes beyond just how to lose weight. It's a conversation about how to keep it off. And even more importantly, how to build and maintain lasting health. So what does it look like to maintain a lifestyle that prioritizes your well-being? To help answer that question, I'm sharing a segment for my interview with renowned fitness coach, bodybuilder, and entrepreneur, Dr. Lane Norton. Dr. Lane Norton is known for his evidence-based approach to nutrition and training. He earned a PhD in nutritional sciences from the University of Illinois and has achieved significant milestones as a competitive bodybuilder and powerlifter, including winning

national titles and setting world records. He's also the founder of Bio Lane LLC, a fitness and nutrition coaching company that's helped countless individuals achieve their health and fitness goals. He's also a prolific writer, speaker, social media influencer and uses his platform to debunk fitness myths and promote science-based practices. In today's featured moment from a full episode that I did with Lane, we explore why exercise is fundamental to maintaining weight loss beyond just burning calories. We also discuss how muscle mass plays a role in hunger regulation and why many people regain weight even after losing it successfully. We also take a deep dive into the growing world of GLP1, weight loss drugs like OZempic and Weigovie. Lane offers a ground at take on these medications

and shares why sustainable change is unlikely without building new habits. If you're looking beyond short-term results when it comes to your health, this featured moment is for you. Let's tune into this excerpt with Dr. Lane Norton. Of people who lose weight and keep it off for a long period of time, 70% of them exercise, over 70%. Now, the reason exercise is important for long-term weight loss is probably actually less about the calories. you burn during exercise, which really, unless you're doing like hours and hours of exercise, it's hard to burn enough to really make a big difference in weight loss. But the differences are you retain more lean mass.

And even if you're like resistance training obviously is primo for that. Like if you resistance train, you're going to retain a lot more lean mass when you're dieting. But even just regular like yoga, walking compared to sedentary, cardiovascular. of stuff, that will still maintain more lean mass than somebody who doesn't exercise at all. And lean mass is important because typically when people diet, you end up losing, if you don't resistance strain or exercise, people lose anywhere from like 20 to 40 percent of their mass that they lose from lean mass. Lean mass is your metabolically active tissue. And if you lose it. One, you're going to reduce your total energy expenditure, so you burn less calories throughout

the day. But also, there could be effects on longevity. There's a lot of very strong data suggesting that past, you know, age like, I think 60, your lean mass is very highly correlated to how much longer you live. So there's that. But also, there's some evidence that your lean mass has a appetite regulation effect that they did there was some refeeding studies the Minnesota Starvation Experiment that was done during World War II which for those aren't familiar they took conscientious there's no way this would get past an IRB now but they took conscientious objectors from World War II and basically starved them for six months I think they had the meat like it was like around a thousand calories a day right and these people so

people who say calorie deficits don't work there was no people who did not lose weight in this experiment, we're talking about a lot of guys, and they all lost weight, and they all lost about what you'd expect. So when you control what people eat, they lose weight, and then they refed them, and then they looked at, like, what happened to their physiology. And one of the things that was interesting is they noted that when they allowed them to start eating again, they had this hyperphagic response, meaning they just, they ate way more than they needed, right? And they gained body fat really quickly. And their hyperphagic, response continued even once they got back to their original body weight, it didn't stop until

their return to their original lean mass. So as they were refeating, their lean mass is coming back that they lost. Their body fat's coming back, but the body fat comes back on quicker. So they hit their original body weight and lower lean mass, higher fat mass than original. And they didn't stop overeating until they got back to their original lean body mass. So there's of this hypothesis slash theory out there that maybe you have what are called protein stats, which is essentially like part of your nervous system, your brain appetite regulation, that senses how so how much lean mass you have and tries to maintain that as well. So that's another reason exercise may be helpful.

And the final reason is actually exercise helps with appetite regulation. There's actually a lot more data on this than people think. So there was a very classic study in Bengali workers in like the 1950s. And they had them, they just tracked their intake and looked at their activity level. So they had sedentary, lightly active, moderately active, heavily active, like heavy labor job, right? And what they saw is from lightly active to heavily active, they just perfectly compensated their energy intake.

They basically just ate more calories to compensate for the energy they were spending. and they maintain healthy body weight. Sedentary ate more than lightly active, and I think I want to say more than the moderately active group. I'd have to go back and look at the study exactly, but it was like this J-shaped curve, right? So when you're sedentary, it actually disregulates your appetite. But when you're active, you become more sensitive to satiety signals.

And people will say, well, don't exercise too much because it increases your appetite. Again, there's outliers, but on average in the research studies, if you exercise, yes, you do increase your appetite, but it doesn't compensate for the exercise you did. So, for example, if you exercise 100 calories worth of energy expenditure, you might compensate by eating another 30 or 40 calories, but you're still netting out, you know, a deficit out of that, right? So even though you're maybe increasing your energy expenditure by a couple hundred calories per day, your brain doesn't tell you you need to eat more calories if you're going from sedentary to active.

So that's one of the biggest reasons that I think exercise is so helpful for weight loss is its effects on appetite not regulation, not because you burn a bunch of calories. Like that's another benefit. But I think the appetite side is much more powerful. And that's what we're finding now with these GLP1 memetics as well, is because for, you know, four decades, science focused on how do we increase metabolic rate? And we got nowhere. And then they focused

on appetite. And then in five years, the entire game changed. Right? Because appetite is by far the bigger regulator of body composition than energy expenditure is. To connect those things together, you had a social media posts. I think it was from your diet app carbon that helps people attract macros and calories

and other things. It says 30% of fat loss is activity, right? 70% is nutrition. This is what you're talking about. Appetite being a big driver. And then tying it back to the opening question, 100% of long-term results is staying consistent with all of those things.

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Everybody wants a hack, they want a trick, they want something quick or something that feels easy. And I tell people, if you took all. the time and energy you spent looking for a shortcut and just did the work. You'd be shocked at how far you got. And this leads to my final point about the 5% who keep it off. And I was reading a systematic review of successful weight loss maintainers. It was out of Oxford by a gal named Marie Shrekly. And so they didn't just do a quantitative analysis. They did a qualitative analysis as well and interviewed a lot of people who lost weight and kept it off. And something that

popped up that I hadn't seen before was most of these people said they felt like they had to form a new identity. And I thought about that for a while. And then I texted Ethan Suplea. Do you know, Ethan? I didn't know about him, but only because I've seen some of your content. Yeah. So, Ethan was a Hollywood actor who lost 300 pounds. And he was like, he was always just kind of the fat guy in movies, right? Like he was in Remember the Titans. He was in,

my name is Earl. And now he looks like, you know, a special forces, you know, actor, basically. But whenever he puts up his exercise,

like he'll put up posts of him exercising. And he'll say, I killed my clone today. And I text him, I was like, is this what you mean? Like, you had to form a new identity.

And he said, that is exactly what I mean. He said, because that person was inside of me and I had to kill that person, I had to be somebody else. And I think so many of us in this, I mean, I'm guilty of this in other areas of my life. It's like we want our outcome to change, but we don't want to change the input. We want to get the result we want, but we want to do it while we drag all our old bad habits and behaviors behind us. And no, you have to jettison those things.

Like, you have to change. And it's like, take an alcoholic, right? If they get sober or a drug addict, they get clean, you have to change everything. Your whole lifestyle is going to change. You can't hang out with the same people. You can't go to the same places. I mean, and in this systematic review, they actually identified that their friend's circle changed. And I think some people will see that and think, oh, well, you know, they lost body fat.

Now they think they're too good for everybody. No, but if you're, here's, it goes both ways. So somebody is in a group of friends and they start trying to better themselves. They start losing weight. Now it activates the, the insecurities in that group. And other people go, oh, why are you doing that? Or can't you just enjoy this or can't, I remember when I got into bodybuilding, even though I was already in pretty good shape when I was, you know, bringing my food somewhere,

even though I'd still go hang out with friends. You're like, well, okay, is this really going to hurt you? Is this really going to do? And it was like, why do you guys care? Like, I'm still here having fun. You know, why is this, why does this bother you guys, right? And then later you realize, oh, it's because they, it makes them feel bad about themselves. Same reason that, you know, when people go out and they drink alcohol, they're like,

well, you're going to have a drink or you can have a drink? But if they're drinking by, like, they won't have one when they're drinking by themselves, you know, or a lot of people, won't. And it's funny because I, like, I do enjoy, like, alcohol in moderation. And I'll tell people like, I don't, like, if I want a beer, I have a beer. I don't care if somebody else is drinking. If they don't want to drink, I still have a good time with them. You know what I mean? Like, why do you need somebody else to be doing the thing that you do? And I think a lot of it, you know, boils down to our own inner insecurities. And so you get that. But then also, if you're,

you're going and you're spending your time, you're exercising, you're exercising, you know, you're you're getting consistent with your diet, you're just not going to have as much in common with the people you used to be around anymore. Like, and I think it's just going to be a natural kind of why your friend's circle changes. And so I heard this, this quote, I think it was Robert Downey Jr.

And I think he was on Oprah. And I've only heard this segment. So I might butcher it a little bit. But he was talking about his drug addiction. And he said, it is not that difficult to get past these seemingly ghastly problems. And Oprah was like, wait, you're saying it's not difficult? He goes, no.

What's hard is to decide. And that really stuck with me because I think a lot of people, once they flip the switch, they go, man, it really wasn't that bad. It really wasn't as bad as I thought. Ethan says it. He said, you know, I was talking to him on the phone. He's like, I did a ruck yesterday with a 50 pound rucksack. and that was really hard for like two hours.

And then I think I used to wear six of those. Every day, 24 hours a day. So no matter how hard that two hour ruck is or no matter how hard my exercise session is, it's nothing compared to how hard my entire life used to be. And again, you can, when I talked to him about it, like what changed? He goes, I just got sick and tired of the way my life was. My brother was addicted to meth. A lot of people don't even know I have a brother because he's not on social media.

But, you know, he's doing much better now. But he went to jail. Like, and I asked him one day, probably about a year ago, I said, what was the, like, what changed for you? You know, like what happened? And I said, was it going to jail? He goes, no. He goes, I just woke up one day and I realize I lose everything. I get a job and I lose it.

I get some money and I lose it. I get a relationship when I lose it. I just got sick and tired of losing. And I really do think at some point, if you're approaching this as well, I just want to lose a few pounds. Oh, well, I'd like to get in shape. It has to become, it really does have to kind of boil down to this is too painful for me to stay this way. And no matter how uncomfortable this is, it is more comfortable. than staying here.

But I think a lot of people, it's like, man, I wish I could show people the comparison, like Ethan was saying, let me put you in this body for 24 hours and let you feel how that feels compared to how you feel right now. And you would be probably tripping over yourself to do the work it takes to get there. But I think a lot of people don't trust the process,

process and I talk about this with entrepreneurship, but it really applies to anything. The difficulty, I think, one of the main difficulties of being an entrepreneur is you can do all the work, you can do everything you're supposed to do, and you may still not get the outcome you want, right? So you put in work with no guaranteed outcome. Now, a lot of people are willing to put in the work when they have, well, if I do the work, I get my paycheck every two weeks, and I'm good, right? The reality is they can be fired at any time.

and, you know, but, but it feels safe. People have a hard time, a lot of people have a hard time doing the work when there's no guaranteed outcome. And I think that's how a lot of people feel with weight loss, and that's what's hard to get them to start. And I think social media has also made it more difficult because we don't normalize setbacks. We don't normalize, hey, there's going to be times when it sucks.

Hey, there's going to be times when you screw up. That's normal. Like I, you know, not the same thing, but I talk about it in powerlifting with injuries and pain that I've been through when I, when I'm having a bad, you know, week or month of training. I'm like, yeah, this week sucked. Here's what's going on. And I've had so many people say, man, thank you so much. Like, I just, you know, I see all these accounts and all they're doing. It's just like, it just seems like they crush it all the time.

I'm like, nobody crushes it all the time. Like, and nobody has it all, has it together all the time either. Like, I promise you, the person who you think has it the most together in the entire world who you look up to, they have times where they feel like they're a hot mess. And I just think if more people understood that and allowed themselves to balance personal responsibility without shaming themselves, the game would change. And for me, like I said, I can only provide my own personal anecdote, which never really struggled with weight, but I have struggled with personal relationships and like I'm

neurodivergent. I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was six. My therapist who I've worked with for eight years with a PhD in psychology, she is very certain that I'm on the spectrum. And so there are certain things in personal relationships that have been really, really tough for me. And again, it was funny because I kept trying to like hack my way around stuff, right? change the outcome without changing the input.

And once finally, my therapist got me to start doing the hard stuff, which wasn't even the hard, it was just journaling, right? And then doing little things like, hey, when somebody says something that is, you know, hurt your feel, like it's okay to tell them or it's okay to ask for what you need in a relationship or like it's okay to have boundaries. Like when I actually started implementing these things, yeah, it was hard,

but it was way easier than dealing with the downstream ramifications of not doing any of that stuff. And so for me, again, staying the same got more uncomfortable than actually making those changes. And I think that is at the core of a lot of this stuff.

I realize I just dumped a lot on you. No, it's all great stuff. I'm going to pull on a few threads that talked about. The first one that I want to pull on is I want to zoom out for a second. You mentioned that with willpower, it's not so straightforward. There's a lot of nuances that are there. I think a lot of my audience in particular, they're used to hearing people come on this podcast and say things like, yes,

calories matter and you're going to lose weight when you're the amount of calories you burn or the amount of calories you eat is less than what you burn. So they've heard that. But they've also heard a lot of those same people say it is more complicated because there are things that are going on in our environment that play a role in why people more than other countries uniquely gain a lot more weight here in America. And I want to get your thoughts on that. You know, you mentioned, you know, the government can't come in here and like do something and solve your problems when it comes to like weight loss or other things. And in a compassionate way, I'm asking on behalf of myself and my audience, they're looking around the rest of the world and saying, it seems like America is uniquely complicated in a way that maybe other companies don't, countries, sorry, have to struggle the way that we struggle to not get severely obese. What are your thoughts on that? I think there's a lot of things that play into that.

I mean, America is very much the like, we make it bigger, we make it better. we make it more fun, right? And that goes for food too, right? Like we're, we love big portion sizes. You know, when I, so zooming out, we live in a society where we have free access to very inexpensive, very tasty, very calorie dense foods. It's really that simple. And we don't have to do a lot of energy to get it.

Okay. People don't like the simplicity of that, but it really is that simple. our brains are hardwired for appetite regulation from tens of thousands of years ago. They're not hardwired for free access to very energy dense, very hyper-palatable foods. And let me just give you an example. We had ultra-processed foods 50, 60, 70 years ago, but people weren't obese. Why? Well, you still had people who were doing pretty active jobs, you know, at least.

least if it wasn't heavy labor, they were still like standing or moving around quite a bit, right? You didn't have Zoom. You know, you couldn't just sit at the desk all day. And also, if you wanted a hyper-palatable food, cakes, cookies, ice cream, you had to go to a specific place to get it. You couldn't just like, oh, you're filling up your car with gas. Oh, just pop in, grab a bag of M&Ms.

No, you didn't have that option, right? Like, you had to walk down to the bakery, you're to drive down to the bakery. there was physical limits to your access to these things. Now there are no physical limits because you don't have to leave your house. Look, you literally don't have to leave your house. You can just, if you work online, you can sit at your desk all day. You can DoorDash, Amazon, you know, all your food, Uber eats. And you can have whatever you want, all the tasty, hyperballible food that you want.

And you don't have to work for it. at all in terms of like actual physical energy. And our brains just aren't, but they're not evolved to be able to handle something like that. And so even if you look at Europe, right, honestly, what it takes to get ourselves back in the line with appetite regulation is not that much. It's really not because in Europe, what do people have to do more of? There's people don't drive as much.

They walk to places. they take the train, you know, they like to go down to cafes. Portion sizes are much smaller. And so just those small barriers right there drastically reduces the incidence of obesity. Now, again, that's partly a cultural thing, right? Like if you've gone to Europe and you've eaten at a restaurant, you don't get real big portion sizes. Right. Like I was in Greece last year and I never like, you know, the portion sizes were very reasonable

what they bring over there. But you go to America and this is kind of a, I always tell people like eventually the responsibility falls at your feet. You have to take responsibility for it. Because people will go, well, couldn't we get the government to legislate, you know, portion sizes or whatever it is? Yeah, I guess you could. But then how do, what's your hard limits to that?

Because, you know, a little small thing, a cheesecake is more calories than a bigger plate of pasta. Or how are you going to, like, regulate that? It's going to be a certain amount of calories per meal. Who's going to enforce it? You're going to have to create a government entity to regulate it. It's like, one of my favorite quotes is there are no solutions. There are only tradeoffs. So let's say even today, you can take a magic one.

I'm going to take out all the, we're just going to ban ultra-process food, right? we're going to put hundreds of thousands of people on work. What about them? Right? So what I tell people is like, listen, it's kind of hard to put the bullet back in the gun once it's been shot. You know, what we need to do is teach people better ways of being able to live with this stuff, try to lower the barrier to entry because I think a lot of the hand-wringing about even starting a program is one, people have paralysis by analysis because there's so many conflicting opinions

out there. It's a lot easier to make money when you overcomplicate this stuff. Buy my program, do my course. Right, right. The three. The three foods making you fat, the avoid this ingredient. Like those are all like, it's just, like I said, people like sound bites, but it doesn't do a whole lot for changing people's lives.

That's much more complicated in implementation. So I tell you. people, one, embracing the personal responsibility aspect of it, which is, it may not be your fault, and it probably isn't totally your fault, but it is going to be your responsibility to start making some different decisions. Now, people will say to me, well, it doesn't, don't these new weight loss drugs kind of, like, reduce that? Yeah, they're great appetite regulators.

And I'm, you know, I'm very balanced on. this thing. Like I think I have a very balanced view of this. Because a lot of people in the fitness industry are very, very anti-weight loss drugs. And I'm like, wait, so you're anti-weight loss drug, but you have a link to a fat burner that doesn't really work in your bio for 10% off. Please explain to me how this math works internally in your mind. Okay.

So basically, for those people who aren't familiar, GLP1 is, a hormone that is secreted by the gut that is a powerful regulator of appetite. Now, the problem with GLP1 itself is it has a half-life of a couple minutes. And so things like Simaglutide, which the brand name is Ozimic, they, Mangorno, they modify the GLP1 protein so that it stays around much longer. So I think like the injections are like weekly or something like that. So it's a very, very powerful appetite suppressant, very powerful because in research studies, I mean, on average, people are losing 15, 20% of their body weight.

That's very, very powerful. And I think what I've said to people is I think that is great for helping people who have really struggled to make these lifestyle changes because it's kind of forcing a life style change. You're eating less. And again, people who wanted to die calories in versus calories out, they say, well, I couldn't lose weight, but then I started taking an olympic and my metabolism was slow. So, well, gelp1 doesn't act on your metabolism.

It doesn't increase your metabolism. It acts on your appetite. So calories do matter. This is not magic. It's making you eat less. Now, I think where the blame from fitness culture and whatnot comes in is, well, you could just eat less not taking this. Sure.

But this makes it easier to eat less. And I think my concern is that if you go from a crappy diet to eating, a smaller amount of a crappy diet. If you're not prioritizing protein, fiber, those sorts of things, then sure, you'll lose weight, but you're not getting all the health benefits that you could possibly be getting.

And if you're going to stay on these things indefinitely because if you stop taking them and you don't change your habits in terms of like your food selection and whatnot, you'll go right back to being how you were before. I know there's a lot of like worries about, well, causes people to lose. lean body mass. I don't really think that's the case. The research studies shows a similar

amount of lean mass loss with using these drugs compared to people who just diet but don't exercise. My guess is if you add exercise to it, it's going to have a similar effect. So really, like I said, you lose 25 to 40 percent of weight from lean mass if you diet and don't exercise. the studies you lose about 30, 40% of your body mass from lean mass if you don't exercise using GLP1 memetics. So I think on balance, they're a positive, but I would just encourage people to not just take the drugs, but also work on changing their lifestyle.

And I see this as like, here's some training wheels so that you can ride a bike one day, right? So that because a lot of these people, especially if they've tried a bunch of different diets and they seem to maybe lose it for a little bit, but then they put it back on, if they have some consistent results for a time, then you can get some buy-in, right? And maybe it helps them long term. Any thoughts as to why some people have good levels of appetite control in relationship to, let's say, like, their production of GLP1?

And for some people, it genuinely maybe seems broken, missing, or out of whack. I don't know what the proper term is. Yeah. But seems to be for some people, I don't know. There's been people that have been on this podcast that have said maybe they're not making as much. Maybe there's a functional deficiency. Any thoughts on that? So I took a course specifically on Appetite in graduate school.

And I left that course going, we know nothing. It is incredibly complex. There's probably more than a dozen different hormones at play, multiple neural inputs. There's cross talk between adipose tissue and the brain and the brain to adipose tissue. There's, you know, this hormone makes a difference, but only when this hormone is present. And if it's too high, then it doesn't make a different. it is very, very complicated. And what causes that dysregulation, we're, I'm a big fan of the biopsychosocial model of most things.

And I think we have really focused on the biology of stuff and haven't focused as much on the psychology and sociology of this problem as well. So hunger makes a difference, yes. But also, some people don't lose weight. using GLP-1 memetics. Some people don't. People eat for a lot more reasons than just hunger. Like think about, do you think about the last time

you were actually really hungry, right? I think I was really hungry yesterday when I was on the plane and I was waiting to land. But before that, it's probably been weeks since I actually like felt real physical hunger, right? Because we eat for different,

well, it's breakfast time, it's lunch time, it's dinner, time or, well, I'm in a group setting. When was the last time you went to a social event that didn't have food? You probably can't remember, right? Dinner plates in the 1800s, like that big. Now, that big. Clean your plate.

Finish food. The starving children in Africa. People who have trauma in their background. There was a study looking at obese women. They had a 50% higher rate of having. sexual assault trauma in their background than normal weight women. People who are obese have a higher 10 to, on average, get a higher reward from food than people who are not obese.

So this is a very complicated issue that I really, I think what bothers me is when people go, well, it's this one thing. That you, you're eating the wrong breakfast or you're, you know, you're, you know, it's this one hormone. No, it's a lot of stuff. I don't, so I don't, I don't know this specifically, but I would doubt that obese people have lower levels of GLP1 on average. I think that these drugs are so powerful that it really overrides, it's able to override a lot

of that circuitry, essentially, like, kind of drowned it out. And what, well, a few people I've talked to anecdotally. have said to me when they took gLP one memetics as they said it stopped the food noise in my brain or it calmed down the food noise i stopped thinking about food so much like for me i don't usually get excited about food like i like anybody else but i'm not like somebody i mean i know people who are like oh man we're like if we're going to like we're going to la we got to go to this place and we got to go to this place. We go, like, I'm like, oh, okay, where's close for lunch? I go here, right? Like, I'm not like that, but some people, they have a very, that food noise is screaming in their brain all the

time. And is that caused by a hormone? Is that caused by the way they were raised? Is that caused by trauma response? All the above. And it's probably a different milieu for each person. And so, again, I'm going to use an Ethan Supley quote. He goes, we have spent a lot of time worrying about who started the fire in the house instead of just getting the hell out of the house. Like, there's all that we can figure out who started it later. But like if the house is on fire, get out of the house. Like just start making some positive changes.

And again, I know there's, and one of the reasons I do all the content I do is because there is a lot of confusion out there. and people feel like, well, you know, this documentary said that these foods are bad, but then this documentary said these foods are bad, they're all compelling and I don't know who to believe. Okay, but if I put down a plate of burgers and fries and cheesecake, and then I put down another plate with fruits, vegetables, and lean meats, you know which one is more conducive to weight loss or maintaining a healthy body weight.

You, like, you know. So maybe you don't have the perfect plan. You haven't got it all figured out. Start, honestly, like, that's, if people were just willing to, what was the quote I heard, weighed into uncertainty. If people were willing to wade into uncertainty. And I'm sure, again, as an entrepreneur, a self-described serial entrepreneur, you, I If I'm wrong, please tell me, but the people who make it an entrepreneurship are not the people who plan, plan, plan, plan, yeah, like have a plan, but at a certain point, you just got to go.

Like, you just got to go. Because there's going to be things that you can never foresee no matter how much you plan. They're going to pop up and smack you in the face. And you have to deal with them when they come. But that's how you learn. That's how you get better. That's how you grow. That's how you actually make something awesome.

I think I heard an interview from Mark Zuckerberg who said, they asked him what mistakes entrepreneurs should avoid. And he said, don't even bother trying. Just be ready to learn from them when they happen. And I would say the same thing with weight loss in your health journey. Like just go and start making some choices. Like you know some of the stuff to do. Start doing it.

Stop waiting for the plan to be perfect and go as imperfect as you are. And when things come up, you learn. I mean, a lot of what we do with our team biolane, one-on-one coaching clients is we always say like coaching is good coaching. You have to have accountability and empathy. They need to be both, both-hand, right? Because if it's just accountability, you know, if you're like the, if you're the drill sergeant, just like, well, you were supposed to do this and you did this.

Well, what happens? Well, people, they feel ashamed. And so then they stop being honest with their coach because they don't want to get upset. They get them in trouble. But if you're just empathetic, so, well, you know, I understand it. so hard then there's no empathist for change right so what you need is somebody who says to you and i i had this conversation i only have like four or five clients who i've had for a long time now um but i had this conversation with client the other day i'm like because they missed a couple

workouts and i say hey listen totally get it but you have said this is a really important goal for you this is a big priority for you. And so if you decided to skip those workouts because you decided, you know what, that actually has more priority for me right now. Like, I don't know what it was, but I'm like, but, you know, it comes to the cost. And you have to decide, like, you know, it's not my job to tell you what you should do with your life or what should make you happy. But it is my job to reflect back to you the goals that you have told me.

are important and then make sure that your behaviors are in alignment with those goals. So if you were saying that this isn't a big goal for you anymore, that's fine. We can pivot, you know, but if this is a big goal for you, then you have to prioritize accordingly, right? And maybe that means we need to think of some new ways. Maybe we need to, you know, look at where we can save you some time, whatever. And so I'm holding him accountable, right, for the workouts he missed. But I'm not saying he's lazy.

I'm not shaming him. I'm saying, okay, so we had this thing happen. How do we learn from it? How do we make it so that we can get you back into alignment with those goals? And one of our coaches had a great line. She said, if your behaviors are consistently not in alignment with your goals, you need to change the behaviors or change the goal, one of the two. And I think there's not as much honest conversation around that as there probably should be.

I hope you found this featured portion of my conversation with Dr. Lane Norton as powerful as I did when it comes to addressing the complex layers behind making lasting changes. Whether you've struggled with your weight in the past or you're just trying to figure out how to get healthier and feel better in your body, there's one big message that came through loud and clear. It's not just about knowing what to do. It's about building the identity of someone who actually does it. Of course, what you eat and how consistently you exercise are major factors in long-term

weight loss. But just as important are things like being honest with yourself about your goals, having both accountability and empathy for yourself, and being willing to start, even when the plan isn't perfect and the path ahead feels a little uncertain. We've all been there before. And maybe the most beautiful part of the whole conversation, change doesn't have to be perfect. You just need to start, reflect, learn, and keep going. If this excerpt from this episode resonated with you, I hope you share it with someone who you care

about. And if you're interested in checking out my full conversation with Lane Norton, you can find the link to that in the show notes below. In that full interview, you'll hear us talk a little bit more about some additional topics like how sleep can impact calorie intake, Dr. Norton's daily diet, his thoughts on protein and seed oils, and so much more. If you want to dive deeper into the topic of weight loss, it's something I cover a bunch in my try-this newsletter, which I'll also link to in the show notes. Until next time, thanks for tuning in.