Jocko Podcast - Jocko Underground: Is Taking Weight-Loss Drugs "Cheating"?

Episode Date: September 1, 2025

>Join Jocko Underground< Weight loss drug and discipline “Am I cheating myself by using a weight-loss drug?”Belt test fees in jiu jitsu “My new BJJ school charges $70 for a belt test—should I see this as a red flag?”Discipline cycles vs. laziness “How can I tell if I’m slipping into laziness when discipline wanes, and how do I stay truly on the path instead of lying to myself?”Working at a nonprofit with doubts “Is it moral or ethical to keep working for a nonprofit whose mission or practices I don’t fully believe in, even though I help vulnerable people every day?”Leadership, influence, and ownership “If I’m the only one who clearly sees a looming problem, how do I take ownership, persuade my team to act, and prevent failure without damaging relationships?”Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is the Jocko Underground podcast number 180 sitting here with Echo Charles. We've got a bunch of questions from you all. And we will try and answer those questions, give you some guidance, give you some courses of actions to follow. And that's where we got. Let's get into it. First question. I want to start by thanking you for a positive influence. In order of importance, I'm a father, long-term partner and a site supervisor and a bio-gas plant.

I've recently started using tersepte. A weight loss drug as I am classed as obese and have failed time and time again at losing weight. I'm struggling with the feeling that I'm cheating, that I should have just persisted. I should have kept persisting and that I could have lost weight naturally as I have in the past. I live regularly, but have always struggled to control my eating habits. However, since starting, I've lost 12 pounds. I have more energy to help out my partner at home. I'm less distracted at work and I no longer focus on dieting and I'm about to restart

Muay Thai and jih Tijuana. Hell yeah. Hell yeah. What are your thoughts on this? Did I make the right decision to kickstart a positive movement or did I take the path of least resistance? You know, first of all, like being obese is a medical problem. And it causes all kinds of other medical problems and it'd be great if you could have done it

without the drug, but you, I'm assuming you've tried everything and you've still failed. You might have some kind of metabolic condition and condition, right? You might have some kind of thyroid things, some kind of slow metabolism. Like, I don't know. I don't know. But, you know, depending on how old you are, how actually obese you are, and what other medical conditions you might have. This might be a very good call at this juncture.

I know in the past people would get medical surgeries to lose weight. This seems like a much safer option than getting a surgery. And you know, you've got to figure people are having some real issues if they got to have like a surgery. You know, cut open your stomach and go in there and, you know, do medical procedures inside your body within fat. Like there's all kinds of risk there, but people do it and have done it. because they had such a hard time losing weight. So it seems like, you know, you've exhausted other attempts to do this naturally.

And I would rather have you, like, losing the weight, getting some help medically, then have you continue down a path of, you know, being obese and all the other medical problems that that causes. I would say let's focus on making sure we get our health back in check. Let's have a plan of like, okay, at this point, we're going to get off the drug. I don't know much about these drugs.

I know that they're kind of all the rage right now, you know, in the world for people trying to lose weight. I don't know if they're addictive, you know, or if, you know, is it one of those situations where you come off the drug now you put all the weight back on type thing? You're nodding your head. Echo, is that the case? Yes. Oh, really? Yeah.

Okay. So we got to be careful that. You know, maybe that's where you have to kick your discipline in and you get a little jumpstart with the drug. But then, you know, let's try. I won't get off that drug. And hopefully you can get a pathway to the future when you don't need it anymore. And remember, I'm not a doctor. I'm not even a, you know, I don't have any medical experience other than competent.

bat trauma. Sure. But I do know people that have struggled immensely with weight loss. And like I said, I'd rather have you get down like to fighting weight and have the opportunity to stay there than to spend the rest of your life in an unhealthy situation, which is going to have all kinds of compounding problems across the board. So I don't think you're cheating. I think you're, uh, you got to do something right now to get your, get it squared away.

So that's kind of where I'm at. Yeah, I think you're right. You know, as far as cheating goes, it's not cheating. The only time you cheat is if you're, A, competing with someone, and B, there's rules to it. And when you break the rules, you cheat. That's kind of it real simply. Well, there you go. Echo with the simplicity.

Yeah, I think in regards to this, yeah, yeah, for sure. You know, and I get it. You know, we, I think a lot of us from time to time we put in kind of these rules in our head, like, you know, or these, at least these virtues in a way where it's like, no, no, no, I'm going to, I'm not going to use. some drugs to help this or whatever, you know, like, you can make those rules for yourself and I understand that or whatever, but I think what you said is more important, where if it's like, hey, if this is helping you in a way that you were failing, then, hey, man. And you got, of course, you've got to measure the downside, all this other stuff. I, the thyroid thing and the genetics, like, like, this ailment, you know, a lot of times people who are obese, they'll say like, oh,

I have thyroid thing or I have a whatever when they don't really have it or they, or they I didn't know that. Yeah, that was I think. It's pretty rare. But it does happen, but it's not good practice to say, oh, it's probably my thyroid or whatever if you didn't go medically test that and get it professionally diagnosed. Because a lot of times mentally, it can serve as like this kind of excuse, you know, which is the core of all of this weight loss stuff.

It's like, he says, struggled to control my eating habits. That was his words. It's a behavioral problem. Like that's what it, like, you know, when the decision comes time to make that decision, he behaves the incorrect way. Time, time, time again, you know, consistently over time. So these drugs, from what I understand, just had a fresh conversation about these drugs many, many times, but the fresh one was with Dr. Luke.

And it was like, hey, they are working. They're straight of working. And Mihal was part of this conversation. It was actually very funny. I'm going to use his words. But anyway, so Dr. Luke's like, yeah, they're working. They're working to basically to control your behavior with food. And it's starting to come out with other stuff as well.

Now, when you get off of them, your behavior goes and normalizes back to like what it was. But the drugs are helping in that way. There are side effects. So what did Miha say? And he put it perfectly, by the way. So he was like, he was more talking to me. Mejah was more referring to, you know, how like sensitivity issues, right, like body positivity. And, you know, like, you can't tell an obese person you need to just eat less, right?

Because it's like it's not PC or whatever, right? So instead, there's mihano. He's like, yeah, it's funny how before we couldn't just say to obese people, eat less. You can't say that. Now we say, lift up your shirt, pull out one of your fat rolls, stick this drug in there, and then eat less. you know what I'm saying? No, but we can say that because literally that's what the drugs do. They make you not want to eat as much.

You know what I'm saying? They modify your behavior to, you know, to eat less and then subsequently lose weight. And then the good news about any kind of behavior modification, it leads to other good behavior modification. So like my sister's one of these, she lost like 90 pounds or something like this, just because one behavior kind of led to this kind of progress. You know how progress like elicits dopamine where you want like more. You know, you want to, so she would, she, they got a dog.

She started walking the dog for like 45 minutes, right? You got to walk the dog and just leave it inside. So that's all she did. Let me just walk this dog. After a few weeks, her clothes just are looser. So she's like, oh, let me weigh myself. I feel like I'm kind of skinner for no apparent reason. Just because she got this new dog and she has to walk it.

Boom, she's down like however much pounds, right? Or many pounds. And she's like, oh my gosh, I'm kind of on a roll here. and I didn't even know it. So let me start paying more attention to what I, you know, see how many more pounds I can lose. See how it just leads to one, you know. So that's the benefit of any triggering thing that modifies your behavior, whether it be some drug or otherwise. Yeah.

So you'm saying? Because really at the end of the day, it's what you do. It doesn't matter like like the chemical stuff or whatever. Your behavior is going to control all that part of it, how your body, how your physiology responds to it. You see what I'm saying? So if you can modify your behavior in the correct way, right? You're going to do it. So, hey, man, take the drug.

As long as you can deal with the side effects and you understand, just like I said, if you get off of it, just, hey, pay attention to that kind of stuff. You know, if you want this thing to keep going, you got to pay attention to that kind of stuff, you know. I think that's a lot of time of the issue is we don't pay attention to this kind of stuff. We just kind of like, oh, I feel I'm in the mood for this. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. You see what I'm saying.

No good. No good. All right. Well, get on it and modify your behaviors and make sure you track them so that when So that is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko underground podcast. So if you want to continue to listen go to jaco underground.com and subscribe and we're doing this we're doing this to mitigate our reliance on external platforms so we are not subject to their control. And we're doing this so that we can support the Jocko podcast, which will remain as is free

for all, as long as we can keep it that way. But we are doing this so we don't have to be under the control of sponsors. And we're doing it so we can give you more control, more interaction, more direct connections, better communications with us. And to do that, we are building a website right now. where we'll be able to utilize to strengthen this legion of troopers that are in the game with us. So thank you. It's jaco underground.com.

It costs $8.18 a month. And if you can't afford to support us, we can still support you. Just email assistance at jaco underground.com and we'll get you taken care of. Until then, we will see you mobilized underground. Thank you.