Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 292: You Can't Screw This Up, How to Get Fit - With Adam Bornstein

Episode Date: May 30, 2023

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Hey, everybody, welcome in to another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. As always, I'm your host, Danny Matranga. And in this episode, I will be sitting down with author and fitness contributor extraordinaire, Adam Bornstein. Adam is a New York Times bestselling author. He is the founder of Born Fitness, and he currently contributes to Arnold's Pump Club and works very closely with huge names in the health, athletic, and fitness space like Arnold Schwarzenegger and LeBron James. This guy knows his stuff. And after years of writing, training, and living a fit life, he has put it all together into a very simple, nice read. You can't screw this up. Why eating out, take out, enjoying dessert, and taking the stress out of dieting leads to weight loss that lasts. Adam's philosophies around dieting, fat loss, and living a healthy lifestyle that

also leaves room for the stuff you enjoy is very similar to mine. And I've been looking to chat it up with him for quite some time. I love his written work, his tweets, as well as his contributions to Arnold's Pump Club. This guy is a real G, a real cool guy, and we have a number of things in common. So not only do I think you'll enjoy the book, You Can't Screw This Up, which you can get on Amazon. The pre-order is available on Kindle, on Audible, and in hardcover with a price guarantee for somewhere between 15 to 28 bucks. This is a great book for anybody looking to get in shape and have some flexibility and an awesome conversation that I'm going to have with Adam. So please, please enjoy this. I certainly did. And I hope you learn a ton.

Sit back and enjoy. This episode is brought to you in part thanks to some of our amazing partners like LMNT. LMNT makes the best electrolyte product on the market. In fact, I've actually started drinking my LMNT each and every morning before I have coffee so as to optimize my circadian biology, make sure that I'm hydrated, and make sure that I'm getting ahead on my water intake throughout the day and not reliant on stimulants, but instead being somebody who's reliant on hydration and the proper balance of minerals and electrolytes. If you want to feel your best all day, mentally and physically, it's imperative that you stay hydrated. LMNT provides a balanced ratio of sodium, potassium, and magnesium to support brain and body hydration. This combination of electrolytes

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box together, I try to load up on raspberry and citrus. And when you put your box together, you can get a free sample pack containing all of Element's amazing flavors like mango chili, citrus, raspberry, orange, and more. To get access to this free gift with purchase, scroll down to the show notes and check out using the special link for dynamic dialogue listeners. Adam, how are you doing, man? I am doing fantastic. Yourself? I'm doing quite well. I did intro the podcast to all of our listeners. So they're very much aware. But you just finished writing a book titled, You Can't Screw This Up.

And I know you have a ton of time spent in the fitness industry. I've read some of your tweets. I think they're fabulous. I think they're succinct. You're definitely somebody who has gone through that kind of continuum of learned a ton and learned so much that you can distill it quite simply, which the more time I spend in fitness, I've spent about half as much time as you, the more I learn the real experts can distill the most complicated stuff down into some very simple, actionable directives. And I think that's something that you do very well.

And that's something that shows up a lot in this book. And I'm wondering how you've reached the conclusion that you can't screw fitness up when 300 million Americans have screwed it up so much, they think they're a lost cause. How did you get there? Watching a lot of people struggle and fail and be frustrated. And, you know, you probably know this really well. It's a great thing that we get to do in helping people. It is oftentimes a difficult position to be in when you oftentimes meet people at their lowest or their most painful or their most frustrated. And, you know, I've been doing this for a while. I've been doing it for 20 years now, which just makes me feel older than I feel that I am. But it is what it is, right?

And at some point, and it truly was about nine years ago, I realized, you know, we didn't need more books telling people like the difference between a healthy and an unhealthy food. We didn't necessarily need more workouts. We need to spend more time figuring out why is it so hard for people to put these things into action? And more importantly, why is it so difficult to sustain that? Because there are lots of good books out there. There are many more terrible ones. Unfortunately, ratio of good to bad fitness and nutrition nutrition books, it's not on the positive side.

But, you know, there are enough good books out there. And yet, even with the good books, right, you're looking at the current state in the U.S. alone, you know, 70% of people are overweight or obese. And that is just awful. That truly just pains me and it's like you you start looking at the research and it's like could people become more informed about like different proteins or complete versus incomplete or different carbohydrates sure but on average people know could identify if you put in front of it if this was a lineup and it's like can you pick out the culprit people can very easily pick out of a lineup, like what the problem foods are, what the problem behaviors are, but it doesn't mean they

can pick out why. Sure. And what I wanted to focus on is like, A, how do you create something so easy that it's hard to fail? Yeah. That's huge. Kind of a foundational principle of habit-based change. And it doesn't mean you never seek discomfort, which we can talk about. That's kind of a common misnomer. There needs to be a little bit of discomfort, but not too much actually, right? It doesn't mean you don't seek discomfort. It means that you need to create a stable foundation of habits by which you can then build upon. And you need to get into someone's mindset. And the book, this book took me nine years to write. Took me nine.

It is my ninth book overall, but I do a lot of different ghostwriting, but I haven't written one on my own since 2013. And the reason was this one was just so difficult to figure out because the harder part was understanding that there's a dual meaning here is like one, you want to create this simple plan that's hard to screw up, right? So you can't screw up. The other one is when people start plans, there's an internal narrative where they tell

themselves, I'm going to screw this up. I'm going to mess this up. I'm going to eat the wrong thing. I'm going to do the wrong behavior. I'm not going to sleep enough. I'm going to eat more sugar. I'm not going to exercise. And they have this reverberating in their mind. I know this because people told me this. I hear it all the time. You can't screw this up. You can't. And I was like, oh my goodness, it's right in front of me. Like part of the battle is simplifying the approach that people need to take where they can create doable, sustainable behaviors. So true. The other part is actually changing their internal narrative because the reason they go down this wrong path is that they tell themselves they're going to screw up. They screw up. And that means they make a mistake that they interpret as a mistake, but begin this domino effect of behaviors that are the real things that take them so much

farther from their goal. So true purpose of writing this was about creating, you know, taking a different approach to wellness, but also really keen in on that internal narrative, which oftentimes is kind of playing this role of navigator, but like navigating you into choppy waters. Sure. I think that's a great point. And to compliment you in the most genuine way, I can definitely tell the way you speak is in a way that shows you've written a ton of quality material.

You're very well-spoken. You speak in a way that shows you've written a lot. You've got a very clear and succinct mastery of language, especially in fitness, because I'm sure you've spent decades now training real people. And I'm wondering, in that time training and honing this message and this ability to communicate, did you have a moment where you realized, oh, shit, people will make one mistake, and then, to your point, a cascade of subsequent more damaging mistakes will follow. It's never the first mistake that does the damage. It's like when you say,

that mistake was so bad, I failed so miserably, I'll just give up and then erode my progress with these oftentimes secondary and tertiary mistakes that are bigger and they kind of compound. Did you as a trainer, did you ever have a part of your life that was challenging like that? Because I know for people like you and I, fitness might come a little easier. Maybe it's because we have a genetic predisposition for leanness or appetite, or we like hard work. There's no denying for some of us, it comes easier. Were there things in your life that you maybe stumbled on or failed on that helped you realize? Because you are young. You're young enough that this kind of wisdom had to come from some degree of time in the trenches. And it's hard for a lot of trainers to resonate with their clients' struggles because it comes

easier for them. Did you realize this through maybe some struggles of your own? Yeah, it's great that you mentioned it because my own struggle, and it came somewhat recently, is what allowed me to piece together the narrative. So this has been a nine-year process and I didn't intend it to be a nine-year process. When you do nine books in time, this is my first of my own in nine years, it gives you an idea of like, I used to write a lot and write books for a lot of other people. And then I took a long break. You know, I originally proposed this to my book agent in 2014. Wow. me it was awful. He was right. And then, you know, in 2018, I started traveling every week for two years, every single week. It was very, very difficult. It was for like a wonderful work opportunity that in retrospect, I completely, not completely, a lot of it, I regret. It just

took me away from my family. I've got two young boys. It was very hard on my wife. It was very hard on my kids. So here I am, this guy who's been in fitness and nutrition forever, this job that I'm doing, I'm literally working with LeBron James, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Cindy Crawford, Lindsey Vonn, like you're elite people, the health people, and you're supposed to have your shit together. Yeah. I know everything that I need to know. I don't know everything there is to know, but I know everything I need to know in order to be healthy. So here I am traveling every single week, and I'm getting more unhealthy.

Now, on the surface, it's like, of course, you're traveling, you're eating out, but I'm supposed to know how to navigate these situations. And what ended up happening was I ended up making the same mistake that I didn't realize from people mistake, you know, that people make. I sat there and I'm like, oh, man, things aren't going well for me. I'm gaining weight. I'm not as fit. I need to do something about this. And I leaned into very, very extreme behaviors that were completely unnecessary.

And what happened? So like there was essentially like a six month period where like, it's not too bad. Like I gained like five pounds over six months. Right. Sure. Nothing like shocking, but enough that it's like, oh, like I've been pretty stable in my weight for the last decade. Something's going on.

It wasn't, I'm not a scale weight person. It was more like I didn't feel good. Yeah. It wasn't functioning the way I like to function at was more like i didn't feel good yeah it wasn't functioning the way i like to function at a time where i need to actually be more elevated so i like start leaning into things right years ago i wrote a book about intermittent fasting it was a new york times bestseller most of the things that i failed that i write i was wrong about i'm very open about that i mean this is 2013 sure this book came out so at the time it's like oh my goodness

this is cutting edge it's amazing and as more science came out it was like not saying intermittent fasting can't be helpful just saying that many of the claims people make about them are not accurate sure right sure right i'm gonna i'm gonna start fasting again i'm gonna start like working out differently and like the more i actually push towards extremes the worse my health became right and i i hit pause and i was like wait a second what is going on here and i'm like why am i doing these things that are completely unnecessary they're not the foundation of like you fit or well in the first place and i'm like if i'm doing this with all of this knowledge and experience that i have how miserable and difficult is it for everyone else who doesn't have all that experience and that really gave me clarity in terms of like what the foundation

of the book had to be, which is like, do we even recognize when we make mistakes? Because oftentimes I would say no, right. We overreact and we overcompensate to things. And then do we know how to course correct? And like, what is the internal narrative that helps guide us through?

And then what are the behaviors? And I found that so many people, you know, buy into this idea that there are certain rules that they need to follow. There are rules of being healthy. And I'm like, I think that's dangerous because rules come with a lot of baggage.

They come with a lot of stress and anxiety, guilt and shame. And rules can be good for certain things. But oftentimes I think that more people would benefit from our tools. Because tools are more flexible. Tools, sometimes you need a hammer, sometimes you need a screwdriver, right?

Sometimes you need a hammock so you can just go and lay down, right? We have different tools for different situations. And I thought that if we can reframe what people need, it would benefit most, and how they could use it without always needing to be perfect. If we could retrain and understand how we speak to ourselves and if we could identify the trap doors that people will stand on without even realizing it. Right. I make the joke that, you know, the thing about a trap door is like when you see it in a cartoon, like you're all being like, what are you doing? The trap door is right there. But the person on the trap door never sees it yeah right and then it opens up

and you're like oh what was i doing how did i not see this coming and i feel that's what happens in wellness that's what happens in nutrition there are a lot of trap doors because the environment isn't exactly designed to help us it doesn't mean that we can't succeed in the environment and i think the main goal of this book was not to have people fight the current food environment that's what i think most books do right when it comes to take out it's like don't ever eat take out never order a bread basket get your dish cut it in half and set the rest of the side, never ordered dessert. And all of this, A, sounds completely impractical and not sustainable. And B, sounds kind of miserable. Yeah. And I don't think that like health shouldn't make people miserable and stressed out. So I wanted to take my own lessons where I was like, I was still going to be traveling.

I couldn't remove that at that time. Sure. So how do you go ahead and learn to coexist with the food environment? How do you learn to eat, take out, drink alcohol if you so want, balance fitness and exercise and stress and family in a way that is truly sustainable, knowing that like these things are a part of life and acting like they're not acting like we live in a bubble where you can control every single variable just isn't fair to people. And that was the insight. And like, that was the goal. And like, from there on, you know, the next like three years has just been writing, researching, and in many situations, stepping outside of fitness and nutrition to look more, you know,

habit-based change is a soft science that oftentimes people can learn a lot more of, like, as opposed to just leaning into nutrition science, right? Absolutely. And there's lots of work that, you know, I referenced James Clear in his Atomic Habits, you know, I talked to Ryan Holiday and his approaches on stoicism, Brene Brown, Mark Manson. Four of my favorites. Right. so it's like you get these people who help change people's lives but in ways outside of fitness and you start talking to these people you start interviewing these people you start looking at the research behind behavioral change and you're like the foundation of what we need isn't more like let's teach you how to be amazing

at counting macros it's more about teaching you how to be amazing at counting macros. It's more about teaching you how to be amazing, but like balancing all of the stuff that we juggle in life and then how we fit health in there in a way that feels doable. And then as we get better, teach people how to progress rather than like being like, start at this place that in an ideal world is great. It's great if you cook all world is great. It's great if you cook all of your meals. It's great if you never crave sugar, but it's not a necessity and it's not realistic for most people. It's not. And I think as you know, I'm getting closer to 30 and I started personal training when I was 18. So it's 10 years for me now. You've done it for 20

years. You look quite young. So I started at 18. I am 40. Okay. So you, and so you've been doing it for 22 years. And I think at 18, when you don't have kids, when your life is essentially fitness, it can be quite easy to just look at other adults and be like, bro, like, what are you talking about? Like it takes 10 minutes to track macros. I'm curious how getting married, starting a family, having published so much written work, just the natural course of evolving from what I'm imagining most young male 18-year-old trainers' lives look like, probably a lot like mine, protein shakes, protein bars, I Tupperware everywhere I go. I've got the stringer on.

I've watched Pumping Iron 800 times. I've watched every YouTube video on it. Only 800? Yeah. I remember specifically, I would do flat bench, decline bench, and incline bench every chest workout because you don't want to leave a pec fiber unpunished. And that lifestyle, you can lean into that and really groove with that when you don't have a lot of external responsibilities. How did, I guess, becoming a man and a father help you create something that connects with the 70%?

Because as an 18-year-old, genetically perhaps gifted, thinner, more muscular, athletically inclined dude, it's a lot harder to connect with 70% of people than... You come to learn how difficult it is over time, but something changed and I think allowed you to key in on this is more about habits. It's more about making things simple than it is about getting people to be more like me and more like this unsustainable young buck with no responsibilities outside of getting swole. Yeah, I think I was able to empathize with, two groups of people or get find themselves in the fitness industry. Those people who just love it and are gravitated towards it or those who are like overweight and transform themselves. I fit in the overweight bucket. Oh, really? Fascinating.

OK, I never would have guessed. Yeah, I was the guy who, you know, just I love food and I could stare at food and would be like the one who would like put on weight. And I wouldn't just stare at it. I would eat all of it and then go back for like seconds, thirds and like sixth. Okay. Okay. And you know, knowing that feeling, no, knowing like that discomfort allowed me to empathize with people who didn't think that they could become healthier. Right. You meet those people. And just as we know that the sun rises on one side and sets on the other, like they wake up every single day thinking like they are trapped in this body. Yeah. And that's really difficult. And then, but I am someone who is just like very habit-based. And

then once I figured out how to push those right buttons, uh, I was able to, you know, transform, buttons, uh, I was able to, you know, transform, or I would say like, leave that old person behind, take the remnants of what I wanted and create a new human. Right. Which was really so much about changing self-perception, which is what I talk about, right? Self-perception is a big part of behavioral change. Cause a lot of people think that motivation comes first, then action. And then like you change who you think you are. Yeah. You really have to start by changing who you think you are. Totally. Then you take action, then the motivation increases. And the rules of self-perception are something that sound way more daunting than they are.

But it's not an easy lift. But it is a very doable lift when you realize what it means to think you are something. In the same way that you get hired for a new job. You've never done that job before. It doesn't mean you're not capable of that job. You don't walk around being like, I can't do this job. No, you get a new job when you're really not equipped to succeed in it because you've never done it before. And you think I'm going to be great at this because of all these different variables. The same thing happened. You can be completely out of shape, but the fact that you

either invest in a trainer or you pick up a book and buy it, or you listen to a podcast means that there's some part of you that believes you want to change because if you truly didn't change and you truly weren't a healthy person you wouldn't do anything about it and you wouldn't even think about it right so like recognizing the signs of how you create a stronger self-perception is a big part of like changing your self-perception and being in a position where you can succeed totally change for me from a lifestyle standpoint is yeah once i got that fitness bug once i became this trainer like 18 and then like just became obsessed with it just like you every angle of bench you know every day is a training day carry around a gallon jug yeah um it's it's different when you start adding you know responsibilities and tasks

and when you look at the bigger picture of like socializing with people and being with your friends and like am i making myself healthier at the cost of like missing out on life right and you you start to realize that and the first realization was when i went on the first date with my wife and like i was like that obsessive guy and like here this person was obsessed with on this date she was not all that into me yet i had to work i was obsessed with her and she wanted dessert and there was truly this like angel demon moment of just like, right. Like the, like the angels, like, and it's like the wrong narrative to the angels, like stick to your macros.

Don't have the sugar. And the demons like, look at her. She's beautiful. Eat the dessert. Don't be an idiot. Yeah. And I came to this moment, right. Where it was just like, at that point, you know, I met my wife when I was 28. Right. And I was like, man, like, how healthy am I if I'm really like nervous

about having dessert while I'm on a date with this person that I like. And then dating her and going to that really kind of opened my eyes in terms of like how much we create parameters around health that are just unnecessary. And I'm not saying you're going to have to have dessert all the time or you have to drink alcohol or anything like that. So many of these are lifestyle decisions. But a lot of times, and it's because of what we're taught, we take things to an extreme that's completely unnecessary for the outcome we desire. Totally. That's another part of it. Like, what is the outcome that we desire? A lot of us don't feel like we need to walk around like 4% shredded, right? You start realizing that like, man, I just want to be healthy. I want to feel good. I want to like look good. And I want to be like, eat foods that I like

and interact with people and like not worry about this stuff, right? The goal of like having this stuff is that you actually worry less because you take care of yourself. Not that you take care of yourself to such an extreme that you worry about everything. And that, and that was a big aha moment. And, you know, I talked earlier about intermittent fasting, you know, I don't intermittent faster for six years for people who want to do it. It's absolutely fine. But yeah, my firstborn I had in 2015 and I sat there one day thinking like, do I want to not have breakfast with my son every day? Do I want to miss out on all of that? And I'm like, no.

And I'm like, why am I creating a construct that is fundamentally creating friction with something else that is important to me as opposed to like making an overlap and really work. I would argue that I'm way healthier now than I was, whatever it was, eight years ago in 2015. And I haven't been intermittent fasting all that time. And it served me well for when it served me. But I think like you have to realize that there are certain health behaviors that you want to follow because they are good. But within each one of those behaviors, there is room to adapt. Absolutely. So they fit, you know, I mentioned in the book that, you know, everyone talks about like,

everyone talks about like diet being a lifestyle, but how many diets actually consider the life you want to live? Yeah, next to none. Right. And it's like, and that's the place that it should start from. That's the place. And, you know, having kids and being married and helping people for 20 plus years, you start to realize that, you know, there's there's almost this narrative about like what healthy is, which is kind of like the arrogant like person that you don't like.

Right. If you were to create a persona of what wellness is, it ain't someone you want to be best friends with and i thought that and i thought that that was wrong because like we get one of these right we get one body and everyone should feel good in their body and everyone should feel that they should be able to change their body and the research is very very strong about that even people who are genetically predisposed to way more i talk about this like there's this whole myth of metabolism there's a lot of metabolism myths but there are people who are genetically predisposed to weigh more but the thing about that is that it is easier for them to

gain weight but it is not any harder for them to lose weight necessarily so the ability for anyone to lose weight and change our body that's's like, it's a, in general, a level playing field for most, but they're not told that way. And they're made to feel pretty bad. And you know, at some point you just ask yourself, like, do I want to like be on a high horse and like act like I'm the fittest person? Or do I want to like get on the level of people and really help them and really help them feel better and really help them have that breakthrough. And in order to do that, you can't put up all these boundaries that are just like too hard for people. And I don't think there was one moment, but there's lots of those lessons where like the moment you have the dessert, the moment you like

don't fast, you realize like, Oh, nothing. Yeah. Nothing bad happened. Right. You like, again, I'm going to screw this up. You're waiting for something to happen. And, and it doesn't. What's going on guys. Coach Danny here, taking a break from the episode to tell you about my coaching company, core coaching method, and more specifically are a one-on-one fully tailored online coaching program. My online coaching program has kind of been the flagship for Core Coaching Method for a while. Of course, we do have PDF programming and we have app-based programming. But if you want a truly tailored one-on-one experience with a coach like myself or a member of my coaching team, someone who is

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selecting the online coaching option. And if we have spots available, we'll definitely reach out to you to see if you're a good candidate. And if we don't, we'll put you on a waiting list, but we'll be sure to give you the best shot at the best coaching in the industry. So head over to corecoachingmethod.com and apply for one-on-one coaching with me and my team today. head over to corecoachingmethod.com and apply for one-on-one coaching with me and my team today. It's interesting because I feel as though I had a lot of those moments where I deviated from what was considered to be the personal trainer slash fitness fanatic wellness enthusiast thing to do. Maybe I had an artificial sweetener, or I did something I wasn't supposed to do. Maybe I had an artificial sweetener or I did something I wasn't supposed to do. I took two rest days in a row. No, not two.

I know, right? And you realize in that moment, not only does life keep going, but a lot of these arbitrary rules hold us back from being able to have a nice balance between our fitness and our ability to enjoy life and be social. And it sounds like you've really got this figured out. And I'm wondering, first of all, what are the high leverage, big rock habits that you think are reasonable to include for people who do want to make change and who are concerned like, hey, I'm worried I might screw this up. And in knowing that I have a history of screwing up because I've tried insanely rigid diets and unreasonable protocols that were oftentimes peddled by ripped, shredded, genetically gifted

misinformation specialists slash marketing extraordinaires. They've tried it all. They feel so. They feel, what are those high leverage habits? And then maybe also, what are the trap doors? What are those common pitfalls that people can really be on the lookout for? Yeah. So I think the biggest habit is really more of a strategy. And that is like, I is something I talk about quite a bit is I want people to understand they need to find their comfort zone. And what I mean by that is, you know, a lot of us think that in order to change, we have to seek discomfort. And this is true up to a certain extent, right? The behavioral model is known as the Yerkes-Dodson curve, which is this beautiful inverted U, which shows the amount of anxiety or stress that you need to be in a situation in order for you to perform your best is kind of like this little goalie locks rule, right? Not too little, not too much, but just right. And oftentimes when people want to change, they either like do not challenge

themselves at all and then change doesn't occur, right? So that's like one end of the curve. Or they put themselves in this very, very challenging situation, which for someone who's been doing something for a while is great, right? It's these nuanced details that are not bad, but they're not the place for someone who is just trying to build a habit to begin. And this is where most diets start, where it's like, cut out all carbs, do your detox, have no, God, what do we want to insert here? Gluten. Seed oils. Gluten. Artificial sweetener. Let's worry about every single thing that might cause inflammation in your body is if your body can't handle any inflammation if you had no inflammation in

your body it's very possible you might die let's just be honest because then you couldn't fight off bugs or diseases or anything and we would just be attacked that's a complete side rant right we we cause people to like major in the minor and it's not sometimes the minor is bullshit it's just it's a shorter lever right and other times like the minor is something like you do for the last one to two percent not the first 70 to 80 percent so finding the comfort zone means that you have to take a little bit of what is new and unfamiliar and combine it with a little bit of what is comfortable and familiar. And the reason why this is important is that by doing some of the things that you are comfortable with,

it allows you to sustain longer the things that you are uncomfortable with, right? Because like we are trying to change behaviors. And if everything you're doing is brand new, you're going to be so uncomfortable that you're on that other end of the curve where the stress and the anxiety and the pressure is too high. And eventually you're going to fail as opposed to, you know, not don't try and replace every single behavior or habit or what at once it's too much, right? If this were a scientific study, scientific study is a byproduct of your independent and your dependent variables. You want to minimize the number of variables you change, because if you change a whole bunch of variables at once, you actually don't know what led to the result. The same thing happens with our habits. We kind

of want to go slow to go fast. Yeah. Want to be able to change one habit at a time, master it, be so comfortable, so confident that it feels second nature great example is like brushing our teeth is a healthy habit most people don't think twice about brushing teeth but when we're kids i got kids right now they don't want to freaking brush their teeth they run away it is a battle i go in at night every night just ready like how am i going to outsmart these two little men that have spent all day coming up with a plan of how not to brush their teeth. Right. But at some point we learn these things and we get the biofeedback and it's better for us. But like, we, we forget this journey is when we're adults, right? The analogy I use in the book is that like,

when you're building a habit, the idea should be like, when you're learning to swim, you put your foot in like the shallow end and you're like, oh man, the water ain't scary. In diet and wellness, it's like, it's time to swim. And we throw you in the deep end. We cut your arm and we put sharks in there. Good luck. Have fun with that. And, and that is a big problem. So strategically, you want to make sure that you take a slower approach to how you go about these habits. And that's what will allow you to actually move faster instead of trying to change 10 things at a time, change one at a time. What are some of these like bedrock habits? I can give you one that is like tactical versus one that is more like high level. The tactical one is like, our bodies can handle things like sugar, things like carbs. But the hard thing is when we start to lose weight,

unfairly, our hunger goes up because our body wants to revert back to its weight. So part of eating is about making sure that you know how to eat in a way that you are satisfied. So satisfied means A, picking foods that you fundamentally enjoy and B, picking foods that are fundamentally keep you fuller so that as you're losing weight, your brain doesn't send a signal saying like, give me more food. So the things that keep you fuller are protein and fiber. So one of the bedrock habits is just like, if you're eating any meal, ideally you have both of them. But if you're in a pinch, just make sure you have at least one of them. So as you're eating less, your brain will be satisfied. And then you want to make sure that you mix in other foods that

leave you satisfied. I teach people how to add a plus one to every meal. People freak out about carbs or fat, and it's just like, it's completely blown out of proportion, right? People can lose weight and be healthy on so many different diets that like, there's no point of debating what is the best diet. The best diet is the one that you can sustain, but the one that you can sustain is a, the one that's going to keep you satisfied, your brain and be your body. So you have to pick foods that you like. If you're more of a carb person, make sure you include carbs. I don't care if it's rice and pasta, those can fit in. If you're more of a fat person, let's go ahead and throw that in, but you're probably gonna have to make other adjustments. It's a continuum. The more carbs you have, the less fat you'll have.

The more fat you have, the less carbs you're going to have. Keep protein and fiber somewhat stable. And the other like add on to that is people should really slow down what they're eating. This is one of the hardest things for people to do. I put 500 people through this program when I wrote it. And out of like the five million tools that I share, this was the hardest one. I told them to take 20 minutes to eat a meal. And like, this shouldn't be that difficult, but no one could do it. Average person took 8 minutes and

about 2 seconds. And why? It's because like, we are always in a rush. We are always hurrying. And here's why it's a problem. People are always like, I'm so hungry. I'm so hungry. Or like, I overeat. Or they eat, feeling like they're hungry. Then like an hour later, they're like, oh man, like I'm not feeling so good. Uh, hunger is right. Driven by your brain, our brain and our body are connected. And we say neurochemical signals back and forth between the two of them. You have a satiety center in your stomach, right? Think of it like a gas tank. It takes some time, right? This, this isn't a, the highway over here. It takes some time, right? This isn't the highway over here. It takes some time to send your stomach to send a signal up to your brain. Roughly, it takes about

20 minutes. So if you truly want to know when you are full or when you are satisfied, you kind of got to slow down eating or else like you might take in a lot and be perfectly full, but your brain doesn't know it yet because you haven't given the time to do it. And then you add in all these factors of distracted eating. We're watching TV, we're on our phones and we get sensory information. People who like do not look at their plate will eat more than people who do look at their plate. Because again, our brain is the master command here and your brain can see all the food on there and it's going to play a role in thinking that you are fuller. So slowing down, being aware of what you're eating, enjoying the meal, enjoying the people that you're with, if you're with them, or just like enjoying the food

that you're eating. While it sounds silly, one from a quality life would be great. And from a hunger standpoint, makes a big difference because like you just end up feeling more satisfied from your meals. You end up enjoying food more. And when you're not having the healthiest meals, right? When you're having dessert, when you're having sugar, you learn to enjoy and appreciate that so much of this guilt, shame, I'm going to screw up cycle is like when we go to have these things that we fundamentally should be like really savoring because there's so much guilt. We start this thing down and we don't truly enjoy it. And then we still end up craving it as opposed to being in the moment and being like, I'm going to go to town on this cheesecake or this cookie, and I'm going to enjoy every single bite. And by doing so, I'm not going to crave it so much that

I want to have it again the next day. So, you know, slowing down is something that even in life, it's just, it's a beautiful thing. It is. It's something that I struggle with tremendously. And I have a tendency to eat rather quickly. Like I've probably done 20,000 one-on-one personal training sessions and fit meals in between the five to 10 minute gaps where you're essentially just inhaling food while you scroll on Instagram and the mindlessness of how many of us eat, whether or not we're fit, you know, is a huge, huge impediment to having a quality relationship with food. And the other night I went out to dinner for my birthday and I was sitting with five friends and the conversation was just going so well and so deep, I noticed that I got really full and I looked down at my plate and I was like, gosh,

this is only half eaten and I am completely stuffed. And it's because I was slowing down to talk and be social. This reminds me of a tweet of yours that I liked from recently where you highlighted the importance of social health and connection and the dangers of loneliness. So I'm wondering, as a fitness professional and writer, and you've done all these things, to what degree would you recommend having a partner, a trainer, a comrade, somebody who can not necessarily just hold you accountable, but be on that pathway with you? How important is it to have community in our pursuit of better health? I think it's essential, right? Can some people do without it? Of course, right? There are exceptions to every rule, but so many of us

go throughout life feeling that we're like we're fundamentally alone in the struggles that we have right i don't know many people who don't find it difficult to be fit or healthy even the people who do it for a living sure um and i don't know many people who don't feel better when they're able to connect with someone on something either of personal importance of, you know, of something that adds value to their life or of something that, you know, bakes in a sense of accomplishment because then you get to share that accomplishment. They get to cheer you on, you get to cheer them on. And all of that feels amazing. And the accountability is so important, but it also

makes you feel more connected to things, right? So much of the research about loneliness and isolation isn't just about being isolated, right? Because connection is about feeling like you are a part of something. It doesn't necessarily mean you have to have a ton of friends. So this connection can occur virtually. That's completely fine. The bigger picture is like, do you feel that you are fundamentally connected to people where you are all working towards a similar goal or a similar interest, or that you feel like your own interests are not floating alone on an Island. And when that happens, it helps add the sense of meaning. And when you have a higher sense of meaning, you have a higher sense of drive.

And when you have a higher sense of drive, you have a higher sense of action. And when you have a higher sense of action, you do more of the things that are fundamentally good for you. So when you look at this research, it's hard to, you know, a lot of these studies are like observational in nature. So you can't control all the variables. What you see is the people who suffer from this lack of connection, they don't sleep as well. Yep. They don't exercise as much. They don't eat as well. So it's no surprise why they're not healthy. But oftentimes we're like, we look at these people and it's like, oh, you're just too lazy. You're not motivated or all these things. And it's like, we label people

in truly unfair ways. Whereas when we think about the moments when we feel our worst, or really when we feel our loneliness, it's hard to do those things. So, so much of having, whether it's a trainer or training buddy or being a part of community, isn't just about like how it lifts your spirits and how it creates this camaraderie of pushing towards a goal right the you know rising tide lifts all ships type of idea it's that it also prevents you or lessens the likelihood that you're going to be in a mental space that will make it even harder for you to do the things yes that good for you. And I think my whole mission in life is like, how, again, how do we make it so easy that it's hard to fail? How do we put ourselves in

situations that fundamentally make it easier for you to do the things that are good for you? Because oftentimes we put ourselves in situations that make them more difficult. We lose our leverage. The idea of you can't screw this up is that like we tend to go actually into the harder, more difficult spaces. Yeah. And that's because we associate complication with effectiveness. So true.

Whereas oftentimes the things that are going to be most effective, the things that are easiest, but we think they sound so easy or so simple that we're like, that can't possibly work. When that is exactly what you need. At what point do you start saying that all of these extremes and difficulties and hurdles that I'm putting in front of myself, while it feels like I'm overcoming some challenge, all I'm really doing is making it more challenging and less likely to succeed. And those little things, right?

Like the community that you mentioned, like having a trainer, whatever it might be, that's a competitive advantage. And there are lots of competitive advantages that people can stack up, like blue chip stocks that they can then lay down in any situation and be like, I got this on my side, so it doesn't have to be so hard. And that is a beautiful place to be. And that is something that you can beautiful place to be and that is something that you can democratize for everyone and anyone regardless of how much money you have

or experience there's no supplement you got to buy to do this nope right there are easier affordable ways to do it and and that's like that's the mission that's the goal because when people when it clicks for people oh man i i know you know this. There's nothing better. There is nothing better. There's nothing better than seeing someone just realizing like, oh my goodness, I can change my body. I can change my mind.

I can change my life. And that's the mission. That's the goal. I'll leave you with this question. It's something I've wanted to ask you since I did a little research into your work. You've gotten the opportunity to rub shoulders with arguably the greatest bodybuilder and greatest basketball player did a little research into your work, you've gotten the opportunity to rub shoulders with

arguably the greatest bodybuilder and greatest basketball player who have ever lived. For my money, I think LeBron's the best to ever do it. I know you're a native Chicagoan, so that might be blasphemy. I'll just say two phenomenal players. I am a fan of that. I do not think you can compare different players from different eras. systematize it and simplify what it is that they do. What, what can people looking to get in shape borrow from these Titans, uh, who have accomplished so much? What are some lessons from working so closely with two incredible humans that everybody can take with them? Yeah. So, uh, I'll start with LeBron. I've had a lot more time with Arnold. I've known Arnold for more than 10 years. Um, the guy's an amazing human. LeBron's I've had a lot more time with Arnold. I've known Arnold for more than 10 years. The guy's an amazing human. LeBron's thing is his focus, right?

So LeBron will always say, you got to keep the main thing, the main thing. So for a lot of us, we actually lack focus. It gets back to the whole idea of like trying to change 10 things at once. Like if you're keeping the main thing, the main thing, like what is the main thing? Because a lot of people don't even identify the main thing.

So true. If you were to reverse engineer this and start at the end, right? I talk about this as a principle known as inversion. A lot of people don't want to start at the end because oftentimes the end is like something that didn't go the way you want it, right? Like you didn't lose the weight or like you didn't lift the amount that you wanted. lose the weight or like you didn't lift the amount that you wanted. But if you start at the end and you'd start reverse engineering and ask like, well, what is the main thing that caused the most friction and frustration for me? And then if I could do it differently, what would I do? Right? So, and that's where the focus goes. You start there, you start at the big boulder. So keep the

main thing, the main thing, but that means finding the main thing, focusing on that. And then when you solve that, move to the other things. Love that. I love that. Arnold is all about habits and routines, all about habits and routines. This man is just obsessive. I mean, he gets up every single morning, he makes his coffee, he feeds his animals. The guy's got like a zoo at his house. He has his friends show up to meet him at his house to keep him accountable. They will ride their bikes to cold gym. As long as it's not bad weather, they will lift at gold gym. They will ride their bikes to breakfast. They will have breakfast.

Then he will go home. So cool. That is his morning routine every single day, right? That's just what he does. But there's lots of things that he set in place where you think about habit loops right like before he feeds the animals he gets the coffee after he feeds the animals he has his friends show up to make sure that like he's not gonna be like i'm staying in bed or i don't want to go and do this today after they go and lift he has the reward of going and having breakfast right there's just like all these things but he's gotta

like go bike his way over there the thing that makes him so great about this is that he's tried to build routines into different parts of his day. So it's like, what is the one habit that you're going to create in the morning? What's the one habit you're going to create in the afternoon? What's the one habit you're going to create in the night? And what is the structure you're going to put around it to help make it much more automatic to the point that it does become like brushing your teeth? And I think the beautiful thing that Arnold talks about it, and I've really picked and taken it to heart, is that those days that you don't feel like it are actually much more common than the days that you do.

And the sign that you don't feel like it isn't a sign that you need to stop, it's the sign that you're just human. Man, I love that. And that's when you realize that all humans go through this, but certain humans decide to go ahead and do what they feel they need to do, right? He'll do it. He'd be like, do it. Just do it.

Yeah. And some people are like, no, like something must be wrong. No, like more often than not, you're not going to feel like a million bucks. More often than not, you're not going to have all the motivation to train or eat healthy. But like, how do you go ahead and create a system

where like, even if you don't feel the best, doing something is better than doing nothing. I've borrowed from him and I talk about it in the book, where it's just like, the goal isn't to have a hundred percent weeks. The goal is to have no 0% weeks, right? Because if we go through and we just have an off day or we miss a workout one

day or two days, we have a couple of meals. We get to that, you know, that fork in the road where we can just say, screw it. I've already screwed up. I'm not going to eat well. Or you can say like, you know what? That happens. Everyone has bad days. Like if it's two, if it's Wednesday and I had a bad Monday and

Tuesday, the majority of the week is still there for you to win. Right. The majority of the week is still there. Even if it goes later than that, like if you are a fan of sports, how often does a team have just a terrible three quarters in the fourth quarter, the lights go on, you have a terrible comeback. Do they throw it up their hands and just say, no, some teams do. And those are the terrible teams. The good teams are like, no, we are going to figure this out. We're going to have a fourth quarter comeback. It's amazing. And nothing feels better because you didn't give up. And if you realize that like you got four quarters every single week, every single week, you have an opportunity,

no matter how the week started to turn it around, that can be an empowering and exciting structure because like you don't have to win each quarter to win the game. You don't have to win each day to win each week. You don't even have to win each week to win each month or win each year. You don't even have to win each week to win each month or win each year. You just got to realize that like when you get to those moments, you can't screw

this up as long as you just keep going and doing the things that you're supposed to. Adam, I love it, my man. Thank you so much for coming on. Where can everybody find your work, find the book, find the things you've got your fingers on? Because this is just, this is good stuff. This is what people need. Yeah, you can find me at Born Fitness, all social handles, BornFitness.com for the book. Pretty easy. Can't screw this up dot com. No, you in the URL, but can't screw this up dot com.

And thank you so much for having me today. Dude, anytime. Happy to talk to you again in the future.