Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 330 - Ethan Suplee - How He Became Jacked and Tanned

Episode Date: February 17, 2020

Ethan Suplee is an American Film & TV actor from productions like Remember the Titans, American History X, Wolf of Wall Street, and Boy Meets World. Outside of his on-screen credentials, Ethan is the host of the podcast American Glutton, where he documents hisn weight loss journey (530lbs+ to 260lbs Jacked & Tan style) and helps others do the same. Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Visit our sponsors: ➢Icon Meals: http://iconmeals.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" for 10% off ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $99 ➢Perfect Keto: http://perfectketo.com/powerproject Use Code "POWERPROJECT10" at checkout for $10 off $40 or more! ➢SHOP NOW: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/ Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz

You know, we're seeing a lot of people jumping on the carnivore diet lately, but I think for some people, sometimes that's too hard. You know, and that's not where I started with my diet. And so when I think back, I'm like, man, how could someone get started? And I'm getting a lot of questions like, man, that seems really hard to only eat meat. Yeah. And I think a great place to start is with a keto style diet. A keto diet allows you for some more options. You get to kind of open up the playbook.

It's okay if you have some more options. You get to kind of open up the playbook. It's okay if you have some veggies here and there. It's okay if you can even have some treats here and there, which are really, really wonderful. And I don't know if you guys tried the birthday cake, perfect keto bar yet, but holy crap, they sent me some of those bad boys and I think they're gone unfortunately, but those are delicious. But I think keto is a great place for people to start because sometimes being so locked into a carnivore diet can be really difficult. Now we just got more options on a keto diet. And another way for you guys to get started is a cool little survival kit that we have

from Perfect Keto. Okay. So we got four different items, four of my favorites. We first have the MCT oil powder, that powder that you add to your coffee every morning. The salted caramel flavor I heard is actually amazing, but Mark here took it. So you can get the MCT oil powder. Then we have the instant keto coffee, which you can just, it's an instant coffee that you can just have directly with water.

And then we have something wonderful. The ketoneutropic. If you want to get into zone mode or Zen mode, right? And be able to focus while you're working. The ketoneutropic is absolutely amazing. Andrew had some cool points about it, that it's fat soluble, which is why it works so well.

Yeah, because the perfect Keto Nootropic actually adds fat in, so you don't have to add in any of your own. And that makes it so that way your body can actually absorb the Nootropic. It also has actual ketones in it. It's got BHB in it. That's pretty dope.

Yeah, that's why it works so well. And then lastly, one of my favorites the keto electrolytes so especially when days that i'm low carb or no carb i gotta get some electrolytes before i do a lot of jujitsu because i'm sweating and those electrolytes are awesome i love them stops me from cramping and get all my electrolytes i honestly think it was an unfair advantage that you might have had in your last jujitsu match but i don't want oh you know i don't want to speculate controversy let's be careful there yeah yeah you guys got to head over to perfect keto.com slash power project at checkout use promo code power project bundle for 25 off your order of 100 or more or use power project 10 for 10 off any order of 40 or more like figured this one out but we've had like a few

other ones and for some like we had one that would just go to 9999 after it got to like 15 minutes we don't know what that means but we really had a lot of struggles on this show yeah i guess so yeah it hasn't been going so well i guess i'm trying it all looks so high tech i can't believe that any one of these things could fail it's shocking but it happens. I feel like we're at a news studio somewhere. Yeah, it's not bad, right? It's awesome. We got a pretty cool setup.

Cool. I'm ecstatic for today's show, man, because I think, let's see, this is like 300-something episode. I don't know exactly what it'll be. but out of all the uh the whole tenure of the power project podcast i don't think we've gotten more requests to have you on our show than anybody like ever really yeah as soon as like you started your podcast and as soon as like people kind of caught wind to your your transformation instantly we're getting tagged in all your posts i'm getting dms left and right from people like dude you gotta get ethan on it's like all right we're working on it we're trying and then you know talk to mark about it and bam here you are so thank you so much for being here man thanks for having me both sides

i think are really going to like dig today's show man yeah yeah i'm excited i i i have gotten so many, it's been, I like, I can't even look at all of it because it's like, whoa, thousand comments. I can't read a thousand comments. It's like my whole day reading comments. It's been really wild. story, people can really get behind a comeback story or people can get behind things that relate to them, you know, and in America today, I think, uh, we, you know, we obviously have, there's many issues out there and there's, uh, some larger than others, but one of the biggest things that faces us is just ourselves and our addiction to food. And it gets, it gets to be really, really hard. So people, I think, I think maybe before you were speaking about it, before you had your podcast, I think that, you know, people maybe just didn't even recognize you. Right. They just didn't even know that this is the guy from remember the Titans.

This is the guy from mall rats. This is a guy from all these other films and stuff that has had to be a big, a big, a big change for you. You know, now you're, you're talking about it. You are getting, you know, more and more comments. What was that like when you just i mean you've already been famous you're already an actor you're already in hollywood you're already on the set with some of the best people in the world whether it be a director writer producer or you know another high level actor um but social media is like brings a really interesting thing to the mix.

The Rock is the greatest actor in the world via social media. He has elevated his game to the point where now people are invested. They want to go see the films regardless of what they think of the actual movie or what they think of as acting talent. They are invested in him. They are supportive of him. And they're supportive of new products and stuff that he does. And so it's really elevated him to heights that I think maybe otherwise he wouldn't have been able to get to without Instagram. So what has that been like now that you're sharing the story and stuff like that? I had lost weight, and I was actually quite a bit smaller than I am now.

Um, I guess it was like 2010. I weighed 220 pounds, which is about 45 pounds less than I am now. I wasn't talking about it at all because I didn't actually like how I looked. So it was kind of just like a place I had gotten to, um, you know, and, and I went a little bit crazy with my eating habits. Then they were probably as unhealthy as I was when I was eating whatever I wanted, but because I wasn't really comfortable with how I looked, I wasn't discussing it. And then I find that instagram changed that paradigm quite a bit because i was now in control of the pictures of myself you know what i mean like you can get a terrible picture of me now and um back back when i had lost a bunch of weight uh paparazzi would follow

me around on my bicycle to get pictures of like the loose skin on my leg or whatever it was. And, and, and then there would be stories saying, this is the downside of weight loss. It wasn't like, God, look what he's done. It was like, look at the result. It's not great. You know? And so now I can go like, here's an image of myself that I'm totally happy with. I'm going to put it out there and whatever the reaction is going to be. And because I'm now happy with how I look most of the time or for the most part or I can touch that sense of pride, which isn't constant, it's fleeting. But I can find that. I can muster it up.

I can put it out there and I can talk about it you know what I mean so I think that has been a the biggest the biggest difference in and and it then this time around the reception has been overwhelmingly positive you know there are every now and again somebody will say something shitty am I allowed to say that word okay and uh you, at the end of the day, I just don't really care about that one person. You said you lost the weight. Um, that was like, was that your first time dropping that weight like that? Or have you done that before too? I started dieting in 2002. Okay. I was 530 plus pounds. I, there wasn't, I didn't have a scale at my house that could weigh me, but the last time I had been on a scale that could weigh me, I think I was five 36. That's the number I

recall being, but then I'm sure I gained weight from there. So I was massive and I did a liquid diet for two months and I dropped 80 pounds and that was like a really big deal. And then I started eating solid food, but very little food and I lost weight. And I think I got down to around 300 pounds. And then I started doing My Name is Earl in 2005. So it took me about three years to lose to get down to around 300 pounds and then over the course of four and a half five years doing my name is earl i gained about 100 pounds because i wasn't you know 14 hours a day at work and not going into

every day bringing my food which is what i do now when I go to the set, I don't ever show up without food. I'm not going to craft services and eating catering and stuff like that anymore because I can't be in control of it. And then after that, I had all this free time when My Name is Earl was over and I started riding and racing bicycles and I got down to 220, but was just not thrilled with that result. You know, yeah, you were talking about control. I think, you know, there's some factors that really hurt people with their diet, you know, and, uh, environment is one of them. And so how do you like safe proof yourself once you leave your home? One thing I have an issue with in trying to help people and trying to communicate with them, I will say like,

okay, you know, what's your plan? Like what are you going to do for the day? Do you know about the time that you're going to eat? Do you have a good understanding of that? And then do you know like what you're going to eat or where you're going to eat? And so you control a lot of aspects once you cook your own food and then you know exactly what's in it and those kinds of things. And then even let's just say catering, um, you know, let's just say catering is, is good. Like, let's just say there's some healthy choices, but maybe for you, it doesn't work great because you, you're like, ah, yeah, I'm going to have a little extra of this, you know, half a cookie. What's the big deal?

But then you spin and spiral and trigger things that are bad habits. And I think a really effective thing for people is to start to think about what is your day going to look like, maybe even roughly schedule or sketch out. It can't always work out because there's different things. There's emergencies. There's you work longer than expected and there's things like that. But if you have a decent idea, I'm going to eat at nine 30. I'm going to eat at 12. I'm going to, you start to get a schedule. And then when you're hungry and you face these battles, you're like, oh, well I have, I have chicken. I got rice. I got fruit. Like that's going to be awesome. I'm going to eat that. And I'm, you know, I, okay. I got rice, I got fruit. Like that's going to be awesome. I'm going to eat that.

And I'm, you know, I, okay. I was hungry. I have the food here. I'm prepared. Boom. You eat it and you're over it. And you may have smelled a bunch of yummy food from everybody else walking by you, but you were able to gain control by kind of controlling your own environment.

Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and to, to that point, you know, I, I love the, the general who says like the plan goes out of, out the window once you get into the battle, right. But you can make multiple plans, lateral plans, and you can jump over to another plan. So like have your plan. If something happens that derails your plan, have another plan and have a plan for if that gets derailed. And, you know, I don't go anywhere without food.

Now I always have protein powder and a shaker bottle with me. All you need is water and you've got food. How about that slingshot protein though, huh? Is that, I just had some of that. It's fantastic. It's amazing. Yeah. Yeah.

It was great. And it, it tasted like chocolate milk. Like it really did two grams of carbs. It was awesome. Yeah. We lie about the nutritional content in there. It was like, I think there's like 800 calories per scoop or something like that. Well, that's what it tasted like. So I don't disbelieve you, but, um, I don't really go anywhere without food now. Um, because, you know, the other thing is I don't believe that we as human beings have evolved to deal with the amount of food that is available to us. Like I believe that we are programmed to store fat efficiently.

I believe that we are programmed to see a bush full of berries and eat every last berry. Even if we just ate a gazelle, we're going to eat all the berries to store that sugar. And we haven't spent enough time with the amount of food we have accessible to ourselves to go like, there's a seven 11, which is like a berry tree packed full of calories. I'm just going to avoid it. No, I'm going to go eat everything in there. I'm going to get a Slurpee and a Slim Jim and a hot dog and some cookies and bars and all of it because it's so cheap. We're not programmed. We can't deal with this. So I have to like really excise all of that from being available to me and like pretend like that's not food.

That is not my source of fuel, you know, because I also get into the fact that I'm like comforting myself and feeling good emotionally by eating, even though the minute I'm done eating stuff like that, I feel super guilty. So I just have to get rid of all of that and control it a hundred percent. We hear that a lot. I'm an emotional eater, you know, or I have a bad relationship I'm an emotional eater, you know, or I have a bad relationship with food. And I, what I say to that is we all have bad relationships with pizza,

you know, we all want to eat a lot of it. And what you just said about the berries is actually, uh, makes a ton of sense and keeps it very simple for people to understand. Uh, what is it like to have, if you did have emotional eating and what do you think people are trying to reference there? I think there's whatever feelings within us that we can't deal with analytically. We can't think through them. They're just impulses or compulsions or whatever it is. We can deal with by having something that makes us feel good even if it's just for a moment we can control how we feel while we're eating that now that could come with regret

afterwards but you're in uh in that moment where like a drug addict isn't thinking this is gonna suck when i come down i understand what you're saying. Like, that's the trick with unhealthy food is it does work. You wanted French fries and you ate them and you're like, that was amazing. And, yeah, like you said, there could be regret afterwards. But it did fill in that void. You wanted French fries. You went for them. You ate them.

And you felt awesome because you're like, this is so enjoyable to eat these French fries while you're watching a movie or watching TV or whatever it is that you're doing. It kind of does work. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like I'm battling, constantly battling multiple personalities. And so one personality could sit down and make a plan and say, what is the most efficient, most accurate way for me to sustain or achieve some physical goal? And I can make that plan. And then there's another guy who will come in and go, but you really want the double-double and you don't want it protein style.

You want the bun. You want extra cheese. You want the fries, but you want animal fries. And then you want to order extra sauce and put that extra sauce on everything. And you want the fucking in and out dust salt so you don't lose a single grain of salt it sticks to everything you know what i mean you don't wind up with salt at the bottom of your scraping the cheese off the thing oh yeah thing they serve you're practically eating the paper that the burger can you might eat some you

don't care it doesn't matter so there's these two guys and like they're fighting and i have to go like this guy that made this plan i'm gonna stick with this guy and when this other guy comes in who goes but you had a shitty day and that cheeseburger will make you feel good i gotta tell that guy to go fuck himself you know what i mean i really do and i have to keep telling him that and the more more I tell him that, the less power he has. And I might have to tell him. He keeps coming around. He has less enthusiasm. He's like, hey, man, you've had kind of a bad day.

Yeah. And you're like, I told you to go fuck yourself 20 times, dude. Like, get the fuck out of here. And by the way, he might disappear for a week. And then, like, when you're a little tired and a little hungry he may pop up with a lot of enthusiasm and be like now is the time and then you're like yeah fuck the guy with the plan and you still have to stay with i'm sticking to my plan whatever my plan is by the way my plan might include a double double with a bun at some point so like how does that actually fit in for you then

because like you know it's going to happen you know at some point you So like, how does that actually fit in for you then? Cause like, you know, it's going to happen and you know, at some point you may actually want or need to have that burger. Do you set up cheat meals for yourself? Do you structure that or how's that work for you? Yeah, I don't, I don't consider them cheats because I plan them. And so if it's a part of the smoke, you don't get any ideas over there. He's going to be like, these are all planned. These are all scheduled.

He's got seven cheats a day. Yeah meal is a is a cheat meal no but i think if if i if i go if i if i look at what i'm actually gonna like you know there are what what are my capabilities what can i actually stick to how long can i go without having some food that makes me feel good. Right. Because for the most part, I am trying to not have that sensation with food and to just have it be a fuel source. So at some point it's like, I'm not just drinking protein shakes, which I could get fuel from them and have like, you know, with no flavor. I like, I enjoy the flavor. Like the protein powder I just had was delicious.

That's nice. enjoy the flavor. Like the protein powder I just had was delicious. That's nice. Eventually I'm going to have a quote unquote cheat meal. I'm going to put up restrictions around that cheat meal and I'm not going to go beyond them. So if I have a double, double, or even two double doubles, but the plan is two double doubles, I'm not going to have a third one, even if I still want it. So it still has to be structured. I'm not going to have a third one, even if I still want it. So it still has to be structured. And I'm going to consider what my energy output is for that day and make sure it doesn't like curse the week of hard work I've just done.

I found in the past when I would just have a cheat day, I would undo the whole week. And so then I moved it to a cheat meal. I can still eat quite a bit in one meal. I can probably eat 7,500 calories in a meal. And then I'm just sick for a couple of days, which is not sane either. So I structure it and I don't go out of those boundaries. So it's still part of my thing. I love what you're saying. You got basically like these rules of engagement. You're about to have a competition or a fight against maybe even just yourself and against some of the urges that you've had before. And you're like, well, because of all that, I should probably set up a little bit of a game plan. some reason pizza keeps calling to me and uh rather than like go off the deep end and really mess up maybe i'll plan for it like next friday i'll i'll have some pizza uh and then maybe

wednesday and thursday maybe i'll exercise a little bit more friday comes around maybe i'll get in a good workout before i go and have that pizza and then maybe even uh you know try to like quote unquote work something some of it off which can, uh, sometimes not a great path to go down as well. But if you do so in a structured way, then it can be very safe because you're doing a little bit of a, you're, I think you're just being very rational and very reasonable about it. You're like, I did this. So because I did that, uh, I'm going to make sure that I do this to help counteract some of that. Yeah. And yes, exactly. And there's never a point where it's a free for all. There's never a point where it's like I'm showing up at the buffet and I'm eating until I'm sick.

And again, that's specific towards you and your situation. Yeah. I'm not advocating that anybody do what I do. I'm just saying for me, I found this to be workable. I found that I, if I, I've been married for a long time, I'm in a very, I have the best wife ever. Prior to her, if I had a girlfriend and I started thinking about another girl and it led me to any actions with the other girl, even if it wasn't like cheating on the girl, every step led me further and further from the relationship I was in. You know what I mean? And this is kind of an analogy to anything for me.

Once I cheat on something, I'm no longer doing that thing as much as I was. Yeah. I mean, there's even something like Instagram, which you could think is fairly innocent. It's a feed, right? They refer to it as I was. Yeah. I mean, there's, you know, even something like Instagram, which you could think is fairly innocent. It's a feed, right? They refer to it as a feed. It's stuff that you're consuming. And so, you know, be careful how many butts you're consuming in a day.

If you're, if you want your relationship to continue to grow and continue to prosper, then maybe allowing your mind to like wander too much is, you know, maybe have, maybe set up some guidelines, set up some rules, just like you're doing with your food. Yeah. Set up rules, stick to them, but be, be, be aware of what you're capable of. And if you have to look at a butt on Instagram, look at a butt, but don't look at butts for five hours or whatever your structure is. What other rules have you set up for yourself? Like, so you, you don't go anywhere without your food that you had. You do structure these meals in what, whatever structures have you set up for yourself that have allowed you to be so successful this consistently?

Exercise some, some kind of exercise pretty much every day other than Sunday. Sunday is a rest day. I still have, I still want to get around 5,000 steps on Sunday, but it's not like a forced March. It's not hitting a gym, but every day I want to get 10,000, like Monday through Saturday, 10,000 steps and time in the gym. I, I do go back and forth between fasted cardio, like right when I wake up and then warming up at the gym after having breakfast. So I haven't – that's not been fixated. But there is some cardio every day, a certain amount of steps and weightlifting and food.

That's been my structure and sleep I find to be pretty important too. What was repeatable in the beginning? Because I think that finding things that – you know having stuff that you can actually do and i think like holy crap like what a great focus you know and if you were to sit down with someone that's 600 pounds now and uh you you know you start throwing everything out i'm all right man like we got to go to the gym you know we got to go to the gym we got to get on this diet you're gonna eat a lot of protein and it's like holy shit like they're getting hit with a lot of stuff. What was something like an actionable item that you could start with?

Was there kind of like one thing you were able to start with and then repeat it for maybe a few days, a few weeks and gain momentum through that? I found I started with a liquid diet. So, like, I mean, I think it is certainly different for everybody but if we talk about like being morbidly obese i would not suggest like go out and start exercising i don't know if you're physically capable of that i was not in a place where at my heaviest i was going to be going to the gym i also think that this is a very misunderstood piece you know because some people like dude this is mental but it there's a lot of different things going on when you're in that condition. And I would just say, like, the best thing to do is just not speak upon it if you've never been there.

I've never been in your shoes. So I have been heavy before. And I do know that even just from being heavy, I wanted to move less. You know, I was like, I don't feel like, you know, going to the mailbox or like my back gets pumped or my shins get pumped from walking 100 yards. I can't imagine what it would be like to be 200 pounds heavy or something like that. It's got to really play into everything that goes on in every single day. Yeah. I mean, there are constant aches and pains standing.

Your feet are just almost always sore. You're sweating. You're out of breath with just a little bit of movement. You take up much more space than anyone else. So going – and then there's concerns about just sitting on chairs. Like I remember a long period of my life where it was like, am I going to break this chair as I'm sitting was kind of something that I was always thinking. And it would be like almost a full minute before I would let my weight fully go, you know, where I'm just easing into it, feeling if structurally the thing is going to hold

up. Um, I think, uh, being realistic with yourself is very important because we can set such a high goal that is maybe unattainable. And then by not attaining this unattainable goal, we feel like a failure and we give up and we don't do anything. So I actually think smaller goals are more important immediately. You know, at some point you can set a higher goal once you've achieved a bunch of little goals. But my day one was just, I have three protein shakes and one gallon of water, and that's what I'm consuming today. I'm not going to leave my house and I'm going to make sure I don't consume anything. And it was just like, I'm going to get through this day and I'm not going to think about anything else. And I think constantly, like almost as a mantra, every time those other voices sneak in to say like, well, I have another idea here.

You can do this. Let's change it. No, I'm staying the course. I'm going to follow this path and I'm going to get this goal one day and then just string those together. Where'd you get that concept from? It was something you kind of just did yourself or you read somewhere about it or something like that? Yeah. I just, it was just kind of, well, no, no.

Some of it comes from, I'm a sober person. So some of it comes from AA. You know, they say take it a day at a time, which can be really difficult because a day can be a dauntingly huge amount of time. Maybe in this case, take it a meal at a time. A meal at a time. And I would break it down to sometimes minutes at a time. Like in that minute when I am having an urge to deviate from my path, I'm just going to get through this minute and then I will reevaluate after I get through this minute. So it was a little bit of that too. I think they're very

similar things. Addiction to anything, you have to have tools like that to help you get through it. What about just being like hungry? You know, three proteins. There's somebody listening right now and they're like, man, I would be massively hungry. Were you insanely hungry? And did the hunger maybe over a period of time, did it like dissipate a little bit? Yes, I was insanely hungry. But I found that, and this has been true for the last 18 years of dieting, hunger goes away. and this has been true for the last 18 years of dieting, hunger goes away.

Like I have not been hungry and not eaten and just stayed hungry. Eventually your body just goes like, okay, we're going to think about something else. So it is just something to get through. It's like a momentary thing. And if you look at like graphs and stuff on hunger, your hunger will spike and do its normal thing with or without food. Yeah. So that's a weird thing to think about.

But like, you're like, when I was 330, I was still hungry. Yeah. And when you were 550 or whatever the weight was, you were still hung. You still had a lot of hunger, even though you obviously were eating. Right. Yeah. Yeah. even though you obviously were eating, right?

Yeah. Yeah. I would, I just think it's a, I think it's a bunch of confusing stuff that we've been programmed or whatever to pay attention to hunger, what we want, what we feel is right for ourselves, 7-Eleven, fast food, like that for me can't be a source of fuel. It just can't. Like that for me can't be a source of fuel. It just can't. Hunger for me cannot always be an indicator of whether I need to consume a bunch of fat or a bunch of carbohydrates.

You know what I mean? It's fuel. Okay. If I'm hungry, what should I be eating to fuel my body, to satiate that hunger? It's not, it can't just be what the one wackadoo voice says time to get the double double i can't listen to that guy you know what i mean i so i think there's a lot of things that play a part on in how we consume calories that are that we could just stop listening to you think about like uh being hungry right like if we don't solve that problem within like 30, 40 minutes, like we're in a real panic. And I agree with what you're saying in terms of like having that food with you,

because in your specific case, you get to dampen that hunger and you're like, well, I had something. And even if it's only a protein shake, it's something, it just, it soothes you. It calms you down. Like the urge to have sex or the urge for masturbation, you do it, it's out of your system and you're like, cool. Like I'm, I'm, I'm good for a little while. I think it's a massively important to have a plan for those things as you're pointing out. But just so everybody knows, and everyone's on the same page, hunger doesn't mean that you need to eat within five minutes. Hunger used to mean it's time to go hunt. Right. And you are acutely ready, your brain, your body. You know, that's why everyone's like, oh, man, I feel so sharp when I'm fasting. That's kind of the reason why is because

now you had to go hunt down an animal. And if you didn't get the animal, I imagine you'd be really hungry. But if you did get something, you know, you're able to solve that problem but how long how long would it take to get an animal how long would it take to skin it and to get to it and you know i'd imagine there's a you know a tribe or you have a lot of people that need to eat too so it could take several hours before you get to your food so if you think think about it, it doesn't mean to walk to the refrigerator necessarily. You know, if you have that convenience, you don't have a weight problem, maybe it's not a huge deal. But just realize that your hunger is a signal towards, okay, it's time to get food sometime within the framework of this day. Right.

But not within the next two minutes. Yeah, I love that. But not within the next two minutes. Yeah, I love that. I think a lot of what has changed my thoughts on food have been thinking about it in those kinds of terms. Famine has killed a lot of people historically, prehistorically. have adapted to famine because it can kill you so quickly before you can procreate, which is really the key in changing genetics. If you die prior to procreating or you are experiencing a famine, something affects your body that deeply, that can have a change on your offspring. So what happens is we now are programmed to eat carbohydrates whenever we come into contact with them, to eat as much as we can.

And so now in this convenient world where food is so abundant, we're just like following these instincts that we have that don't apply anymore. You know what I mean? So, so the idea of hunger being time to eat and there's a McDonald's right next door. So I'm going to eat that because that's called food. We,

we got to think about it differently. Hunger might be a good time to work out. You know what I mean? Which is totally counterintuitive. Yeah. Cause you'd be hunting. You'd be active. Right.

For you, where does this philosophy of food as fuel come from? Cause I mean, you, you, you hear it talked about a lot, but not many people like live that way. And I can tell, obviously at this point, this is the way you go about everything. So when did you change from food as being something that makes you feel good to the fuel aspect of things? fuel aspect of things it was it was just it was it was when i started really like i had for a long time growing up in la we had um you know uh fat is bad for you we went through that period we went through the period when salt was bad for you we went through the period when sugar was bad for you uh high fructose corn syrup was bad for you, nightshades were bad for you. When nightshades? Yeah, just vegetables, right? Oh.

That's kind of like a veggie or something. Yeah, eggplant, tomato, potato, pepper, certain types of, and then like more recently it was lectins, which are another, but I think many nightshades have a lot of lectins. Yeah. You know, MSG is bad for you. And yet it's in so much food naturally. So all these things throughout my life, and I think LA is the epicenter for this kind of stuff. And, and you go like, well, shit, I have Candida. If I just cure my Candida, I will be a normal person so what does that mean that means i get

rid of these foods and then it was like no i've been doing it wrong because i eat dairy dairy is my problem and then it was nope you've been eating egg yolks you know so i've had these these for the for the longest time these um kind of zealots pushing or I've been receiving the message that all of my problems lied in like one specific type of food. And, you know, brown rice is better than white rice. And now, no, that's not true. White rice is better than brown rice. And you can't keep track of it. I, you know, and then it was carbohydrates was the most recent thing.

And I finally got just sick of it and was like, this is all BS. Like I'm going to actually figure out and find out what, what does a carbohydrate do? Cause I didn't know, oh, a carbohydrate allows your muscles to hold on to liquid so that you have energy in your muscles. Well, that doesn't seem so bad. Why am I being told that that's poison? I want my muscles to, I want more muscle than I have. So I just started studying about what does fat do? What does protein do? And when I got down to it, I was like, oh, I can basically eat whatever I want as long as I'm getting enough protein and I'm in a caloric deficit. And so I just started living that way. I found, though, that certain foods would instigate the feeling of eating more of them.

So that's when I was like, fuck this. I'm still being emotional. This is not for emotion. This is not to make me feel good. This is just to fuel my body. I'm not going to think of it in any other terms. Yeah. Weighing your food can help regulate the overall calories that you take, but also the food choices can really help with that a lot. And so you kind of pick whatever side you want to jump on first, but you pick something that feels like repeatable so you kind of pick whatever side you want to jump on first, but you pick something that feels like repeatable to you. What was repeatable to you as in terms of

you mentioned the liquid diet being kind of the first place you started. Were you exercising at the time? Were you implementing any like walking or anything at that time? No, for two months, no, nothing. And I, I, I, uh, I didn't move a whole lot at all and and honestly i think the first time uh my girlfriend was like we're gonna leave the house and we're gonna go and do something and you're gonna be okay i was like a frail baby like scared of the world and scared of like am i gonna like accidentally find myself doing uh lines of french fries in the bathroom at a McDonald's or something like that. You know what I mean? Like that was my fear. And I went into the world scared with my protein shake. And then it was just time that got me through that. But I didn't

start exercising really until I had lost some weight and I had had that like that wonderful feeling of success at achieving a goal. And I was nowhere near my long term goal. It was just like I did two months. I lost 80 pounds. That's huge. OK, now what happens if I start to move around also? Yeah, losing body fat is tremendously therapeutic and it feels it good to, to a certain extent, a certain point, but also it gives you a lot of energy. So out of nowhere, you're probably like, Hey, like, okay, getting out of the house ain't so bad. I wonder if I could, you know, walk a little bit or get a little more movement in there. What was the first form of exercise you started to use once you started to feel a bit better? The first was just walking around. It was my girlfriend would just go like, let's go walk around the block.

And the first few times doing that, I really was kicking and screaming and not enjoying it, not wanting to do it. And then I started to like look around and feel more comfortable in the environment. And I started to enjoy that and um and then after that i think i went i went to a gym and i was using the gym just as exercise there was no thought of like muscle retention or uh cardio like i wasn't thinking in those terms at all it was just i'm in a place with a lot of stuff to, to, that you use, that you move your body on and I'm going to move my body on them and I'm going to sweat and I'm going to feel better. And I always felt better when I left the gym. You know, thinking about your situation, I think

Mark mentioned this, like if, if you've never been 500 and something pounds, you can't really speak on that. So you knowing what you were doing then, you mentioned that you, you gained weight and you lost weight multiple times going back to it. Like I think you said in 2010, you were like, what you got down to 200. Yeah. Two, two 20, but I was real thin at two 20. So actually on, on that one, how did you drop all of that weight? And then what did it look like?

I guess from 2010 to 2020. Now I, my name is Earl ended in 2009. And then what did it look like, I guess, from 2010 to 2020 now? I, my name is Earl ended in 2009 and I woke up one day and was like, what am I going to do today? Um, and I just got on my bicycle and started riding my bicycle around. It was like a beach cruiser and I lived in the Hills in Hollywood and I was riding up a really steep hill and it was hard. And at the end of that ride, which only lasted an hour, I was like, that was really fun. I wonder if there's some way to get up the hill faster so that I could keep going rather than, you know, I know there are bikes that are more equipped for this. So then I started looking at different bikes and I got to the point where I was riding my bike eight hours a day, six days a week.

Wow. And four hours on Sunday. And that was my recovery day. And then, you know, I got really into like cycling and followed all the races and went to the Tour de France twice and rode most of the stages. And I mean, you know, know in cycling those dudes want to be

as thin as possible because you are the most efficient on a bike when you're as thin as possible and so for a while i was only allowing myself to eat while riding the bike and i would just have little liquid liquid gels or these things called bonk breakers, which are like an energy bar. And, you know, I'd have a few in my pockets. I would probably eating 1,000, 1,500 calories a day and doing eight hours of hard cardio. You know, like 150 mile ride in a day with lots of mountains. That's not sustainable. That's not rational and smart.

And when I got to 220, I did not sustainable. That's not rational and smart. And when I got to two 20, I did not love how I looked. I felt weak. You know, I had no upper body mass. I had gigantic legs. Um, and I wasn't happy, you know? And then it also at the time, uh, you know, I looked very, So at the time, you know, I looked very, I thought I looked weird and it wasn't good for work. And so I was like, well, I'm not going to do this anymore. I'm just going to eat whatever I want. And I gained weight again. How much did you gain back from that point?

I think I probably got back up to around 400, 375, 400. Yeah. And when you got there, I'm guessing like, did you start, is that when you started entering the gym or like how did that start for you no i actually was lifting weights the whole time because you were yes because i felt better after the gym after going and lifting weights i felt better so i was eating whatever i want i wasn't i wasn't going to the gym trying to lose weight i wasn't even thinking about putting on muscle i was just eating whatever i wanted and going to the gym and i wound up around 400 pounds uh and like i look at pictures of myself from then and i had good traps like i i've always liked traps so i was kind of muscular

but i was really big yeah you uh so it was just clear it up again, you, so you went to 220. Yeah. Then you gained a lot of weight back. Yeah. And then ended up weighing 400 pounds again. Yeah. You know, we had a guy on the podcast that explained, uh, weight loss to us and he basically just said, and this is, you know, something that people can, you know, take and, and,

and maybe just think about is that, you know, you mentioned earlier that the body is really good at like, um, you know, holding on to stuff, you know, holding on to fat and things like that. You can kind of think about, you know, we have muscle memory, somebody, uh, you know, who's really well built, they'll train for 15 years and then they stop and they lose a bunch of muscle mass. They come back into the gym and it all just explodes back onto their body but i think we have uh you know fat memory too you know i i and uh joel green explained that in one of our episodes basically just describing it um almost as if your fat cells um have like rubber bands on them so you you know your fat cells were kind of like this you shrunk them down you did a great job but they're still there and now because you went from 500 to 220 uh now they

just have a ton of tension on them and they're ready they're ready at any moment you know like they're like yo as soon as you start to give us food like we're ready to ramp back up and then you know they start to explode again and obviously this is, this all has to do with control. You know, I don't, I'm not a believer that anything other than yourself, you know, makes yourself fat, but trying to perpetually be in a weight loss situation all the time, even for somebody who is obese, just isn't a great idea. You should probably try to have breaks. You should probably, you know, it's great that it worked out the way that it did for you.

You're able to get back on top of it and gain control again. But I think so many people, you know, losing weight is not a problem in America. Keeping it off is the biggest issue. Many people have been successful at losing 10, 20, 30 pounds, which is awesome. But then they gain it back. And a lot of times we hear that they gain it back and then some. And it's super frustrating. You know, a lot of people are trying to figure it out, and it's very, very difficult.

So in your journey, one thing that I find unique about you that we haven't had other people really talk about is you're talking a lot about muscle mass. And I think that's great. And I think you said you're 260 now? 260 to 265. Yeah, you look awesome. You're jacked. I feel great. Yeah, you look fucking jacked. Soed. I feel great. Yeah, you look

fucking jacked. So there's a difference between, you know, going from fat to skinny, you know, and we talked a little earlier today about, you know, how sometimes big guy will come way down. You start to kind of look stringy and weird. You don't look like yourself anymore. And you look like a melted candle at some point, which it's still all amazing that you lost the weight, but we still, you know, want to be prideful and still want to have a good look. And we want our body to do a lot of the work for us. You know, when you were over 500 pounds, you were a slave to the food. When you were 220, you were a slave to your body. Now you're somewhere in the middle, which is a great spot to be because now your body is working for you. You invested the time and the energy to put the muscle on.

And so your muscle mass is chewing up a lot of your calories. Yeah. Yeah. And I hadn't ever done this before. But this time around, I've done a bunch of maintenance periods where, you know, I'm used to like, what's my goal? I want to be X pounds, which I don't even really think about pounds anymore. I just go like, okay, this is a good size. I actually want to put on muscle at some point.

So the pounds are kind of irrelevant, but whatever my size is right now is good. But normally I would go, I'm here. I want to be here. I'm dieting straight through. And what I found helpful this time is maintenance periods where I go like, okay, wherever I am, I've been dieting for eight weeks. I'm just going to take four weeks and, and, you know, I'm not eating whatever I want, whatever that one crazy voice wants, but I'm not losing weight for four weeks. And I'm kind of allowing my body to adjust to wherever I'm at. You know what I mean?

Yeah. It's super hard. It's all of this. By the way, everything is a fight. You know what I mean? Introducing carbohydrates back into my diet was a brutal fight because I hadn't eaten them in so long. I gained eight pounds, even though my calories were under in three days, eight pounds and getting on the scale every day. I was like, I can't, this is insane. Why do I keep this? I'm just going to get fat

again. And then it settled out. And then that water came off and I started losing weight again. But every step of it, I have to be super analytical, think through it, use reason, use logic, use the scientific evidence that I can look at and go, this is the way this works. And I'm going to give it a shot and I'm going to see what happens. And like a maintenance period, you know, you almost feel like I'm wasting time, but you're not because the point is at some point you're going to live this way, you know? And if you, if you can't do that in the middle of a diet, you're not going to make it when you're done with the diet. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it would sort of look a little bit like this. Maybe,

and I know you started out with kind of a harsh thing with the liquid, but aside from that, maybe in the beginning you had, you know, you cut out just like junk food in general and you make a decision where you're going to eat meat and some carbohydrates and things like that. As you start your diet, as you get into it, you might be like, okay, well, you know, this is working pretty good. I lost some weight. I'm going to take it down a notch a little bit. And instead of getting the fattier meats, I'm going to get the leaner meats.

And instead of putting butter on my potatoes and stuff, I'm going to use like fat-free sour cream or just not put anything on there and just kind of suck it up. And you do that for a period of time. And you're like, okay, cool. I lost 10 pounds. I lost 20 pounds. I lost 30 pounds. Now you get a little stuck and you're like, all right, well, maybe I should switch things up. Maybe you're just sick of it. You know, you're like, fuck, I'm training hard. I'm doing a lot of things the right way. Let me kind of serve myself back up some fun foods. Let me bring some of those fats back in, put the butter on the potatoes, maybe have some butter on the eggs, maybe even bring in like keto for a little bit, just so it's a completely different thing. And I get to eat bacon and cheese and enjoy some of those things. Is that a little bit how it

looked for you? Yeah. I think if you give a version where you're not dealing with all my mental illness, that's how it looked. That is pretty much how it looked. But this was a constant fight with myself over what do I do? What is my goal? What am I doing? You know what I mean?

And just not giving up also. And it's, but yes, that's pretty much how it looked. You know, you, you, I don't, I'm not sure what you meant by mental illness there, but you didn't mention addiction before. So what I'm curious about is throughout this whole process, I guess maybe it's been 18 years of this battle with your, with your weight. How did, I don't know what you had addictions to, but how did that play 18 years of this battle with your, with your weight. How did, I don't know what you had addictions to, but how did that play into all of this? Cause I can imagine that that would make dieting very difficult or sticking to it very difficult. How did you, how did you fix all of that? Yeah. I basically just mean any of the, you know, I don't believe

that there's just me who's doing this thing, right? There's a lot of different, you know, I don't believe that there's just me who's doing this thing, right? There's a lot of different, you know, a lot of different versions of me within me. And so if, if I can sit down and as rationally as possible, formulate a plan that one version of me wants, there's going to be other versions of me trying to attack that plan. Right. So that's what, that's another word for what I would call mental illness. Like the deviation from that plan would be, you know, clearly illogical, irrational. You know what I mean? So I, I find that the best way to beat those guys, which are still me, is to just go exercise, walk around. We live in California. There's some of the most beautiful.

You can go to the beach. You can go to the mountains. You can go to the desert. Like we have so much space that we can go to outside, look around around and just feel better at the end of a walk you know um i'm sorry it's it no it i you know you're kind of talking about like mental illness and then how to kind of uh you know be able to still diet you know kind of while doing stuff like that but i like what you're saying here because i have not heard it really framed that way before and then you know it gets to be a touchy subject

and people, you know, sometimes they get offended by everything nowadays, but like, uh, it definitely is, there's definitely a huge issue with, here's my goal. I know that I'm heavy. I'm heavier than I want to be. I agreed to this plan. I wrote down the, I even wrote down the plan. I took the time to think about it. I took the time to study it. I watched a lot of YouTube videos. I had a conversation with my girlfriend or my wife or my parents and said, Hey, you know what? I'm trying this new thing. I want to let you know, this is, I'm going all in on this thing. And then there you are, you know, with a bunch of wrappers of candy around you in the middle of the night. Right. And so that, that definitely, you know, if you came to us and you said, here's, you know, here's what I'm doing.

And then we saw you, you know, eating a bunch of candy and stuff. We'll be like, dude, you're crazy. What are you doing? Yeah. Like that's kind of, that's kind of crazy. It's kind of insane. Like why you mentioned this goal and this plan that you had and everything you did aligned with all the goals that you had, there were good quality, good quality things that you're doing towards those goals. And now you just completely threw it out the window. I don't understand.

You were trying to be faithful to this concept and you went off the rails again. Right. But I don't think there's any person who doesn't have impulses. I think some people may have to fight harder to beat them. But I think you can. I to fight harder to beat them, but I think you can. I don't, I wouldn't just cave and go, well, those impulses are going to win.

So I'm just going to do what they say, you know, because I've done that and it's not, and you wind up in a place you don't want to be. So I have to constantly be trying to figure out how to beat myself. You know, it's be the same thing. If a dude comes in here with a gun, bust in right now and start shooting people, there's going to be a version of me that goes hide. There's going to be a version of me that goes attack him with this pen.

There's going to be a version of me that goes like, put a tourniquet on the lady who got shot. You know what I mean? There's going to be a bunch of those things. I have to hopefully go with the version that's going to be the most rational, but jerks the wheel, but you got to get used to the honks. Right. And, and know like, okay, somebody honked. What does that mean? Look around. I'm going to take, I'm going to, you know, do I like the OODA loop from the military observe, orient, uh, decide and act like, right. You, you take all the information in and you use

it in the best possible way, but that's work. It's not just innate. Okay. Well, what I was, what I was also curious about, I think, um, was like, did alcohol, like, how did you deal with a lot of that? Because like we had Chris Bell on the podcast before, and he had to be, he had to deal with that to be able to get his diet in line. Was that an issue that you were dealing with at the time too, or not really? I got sober first. You got sober first. Yeah. And I mean, I don't think I could have, look, I don't think everybody has to be sober. My wife is not sober for, for the longest time. I don't know what we would do now. Cause right now I'm low fat, but we would go to, she loves to drink wine. And so Napa or Italy or France,

and we're going around to the vineyards. I'm taking little tastes of olive oil because all the wine vintners make olive oil too. You know what I mean? I'm doing little thimble shots of olive oil to taste them because I can't eat the bread. Usually they'd go like, you want to taste the olive oil? Here's a loaf of bread.

And at the time I was not doing that. And so they'd give you a little thimble of olive oil and I'm throwing these back in my wife's tasting wine. That's how I can navigate that. Now, when I first got sober, I certainly would not have been out with somebody who's tasting wine. It wouldn't have been the right thing to do, but with enough time and enough repetitions of here's what happens, how do I feel when somebody is drinking? What does that do to me? There's alcohol at our house now. I'm never tempted to drink it. I have a lot of time and practice navigating that. You know what I mean? Like I can now go out to dinner with my family and figure out what to eat or have eaten at home or sneak a little Tupperware container under the table, which I've done.

Like I can figure it out. It's not scary. I'm not worried about the voices who are going to go like eat your kid's dessert. That's not an issue anymore. But it took a lot of practice. I think sobriety is something that can help a lot of people, um, lose weight. You know, it could really help a lot of people because I think it's just a, you know, slippery slope, uh, where maybe you have a couple of drinks and then you eat, uh, something that's not

great for you. And then there's just so much research about sleep. You know, if you're not sleeping properly, you're going to have more, uh, more urges. You're gonna be more hungry. You're gonna have more cravings, uh, being that big, you know, your sleep must've been just all over the place. Right. It was terrible. I had sleep apnea.

Um, yeah, I wasn't sleeping a lot. And then, you know, during the day driving my car, sometimes just stopping at a red light, I'd fall asleep. Yeah. It was not good. Yeah. How did, so when you just lost the weight, was that one thing that obviously helped sleep? Did you do anything on other than that to rectify your sleep or no? No. Okay. I do notice now, um, if I wake up in the middle of the night, sometimes I have to take like a big handful of amino acids because sometimes being hungry affects my sleep. Uh, but I sleep generally pretty good, but I do, if I wake up hungry, I'm going to have a protein shake, have some amino acids, something like that. So that I know I get back to sleep. And I was also curious about this because you mentioned it before you

mentioned how, like when you were, when you lost a lot of weight, some Pete, like, I guess individuals are trying to cast, you couldn't recognize you. when you lost a lot of weight some p like i guess individuals are trying to cast you couldn't recognize you did you ever feel that it was necessary for you to be bigger to actually get roles or was that ever a pressure for you or not really yeah it was yeah i mean i remember talking to a casting director who said like you know you're so much more interesting at a bigger weight you know so that was surely a thing that happened um and it happened and and and i cared that it happened so that might have played a part in gaining weight again i just don't think i really care at this point because i also wasn't comfortable at being thin and i was properly thin you know um

i i don't feel thin now you're jacked bro right i'm like comfortable now you know uh i'm not i'm not walking around thinking i look great i don't but i'm way more comfortable now than i was 40 pounds 50 pounds lighter than i am now got it when you first got started like uh when you know after my name is earl and stuff did you go to a gym right away or was that just straight to the cycling? It was straight to the cycling. I think what I, I, I was cycling. I went and visited a buddy who was doing a movie in Australia and I actually packed my bike and took my bike with me. And while I was there, uh, he was like, come to the gym today instead of going on your bike ride. And I did. And, and the Australians were doing, doing i don't think it was crossfit but it looked like crossfit but this might have also been before crossfit got big here but i saw an erg the rower and and i and i and my buddy was like you have strong legs let's see what

you can do on this and i crushed everybody at their gym and And these were like big, big Australian dudes who are like super competitive. Yeah. And my buddy was like, you should do this. And so the minute I kind of slowed down on cycling, I bought an erg and started like training a lot on that. I did a marathon on a rowing machine. I think in 2011, you know, the concept two ones, you get the little card and you can put it in your computer and like be on the leaderboard and stuff. I think for the – and seniors. I don't feel like a senior, but I'm a senior and a heavyweight.

I think I was like ninth or tenth for a 30-minute effort, which was pretty damn good because everybody else was like Olympic rowing guys. So I started doing that and then I got a kettlebell. I started doing kettlebell swings i did do crossfit for a while hurt my knee so that was kind of the end of my crossfit journey which was not very long i also never felt good about doing those olympic lifts fast yeah you know i mean there are parts of that that are fast but but really it's like, let's do this one time really well, not 50 times kind of shitty. And I hurt my knee. And so that was kind of when I started more just strictly weightlifting.

Yeah. Because I ask because I'm sure like some of the like the thousands of people that you've inspired with your transformation, they're nervous, right? They're scared because they've been the bigger guy or the bigger gal and they don't want to go to the gym where the people that are in shape that have probably made fun of them or said something bad to them, they don't really want to do that. But it seems like you didn't really have that issue when you started training with your buddy in Australia and stuff. Yeah.

Because we saw a little bit of it today, right? Like when you and Mark had that last drop set, you're like, oh, shit, I'm nervous. And so I was like, hmm, I wonder if he dealt with that too in the past. Yeah, of course. I think, though, like if you go to the gym and you're really thinking about what – look, it's hard. I'm there. Mark's going to do a certain amount of reps and listen, my, I was doing less weight than him every time, but he's going to do a certain amount of reps. I'm going to feel weird doing less reps. That's

something you got to fight through because the only person I'm really competing within the gym is myself. Really? It's you're just there unless you're in a weightlifting competition or something, but you go to the gym, the other people there should be completely irrelevant. You know what I mean? And like, and, and this is something I have to fight through in my day to day life anyway. But like, there's a lot of embarrassment. I still have plenty that I'm embarrassed about with my body, but is that embarrassment going to beat me?

You know what I mean? Like I have to beat that. That's just another voice trying to mislead me. That's all that is. It's more mental illness bullshit. And I'm not denying. I'm not saying that it's not there. It's there.

You got to beat it. You got to push that guy aside and make the goal guy, the guy who has the hat on that's the time to go to the gym guy. You got to follow that guy because that guy is the guy who's going to take you where you want to go. And you replace some of that with work too, right? Like just, you know, working at your trade, getting in the gym, walking. Like these are all things that are like, yeah, like I am working on becoming the person that I've always wanted to be. I'm, I am working on becoming the person that I've always wanted to be, you know, and it's okay that if I don't feel like I'm a hundred percent there, because if you really to think about it, um, I don't know anybody that's just like, yep, I'm totally like, well, there

are people that might feel that way. They might be older and stuff, but for the most part, everyone wants to like, yeah, I could be a little bit better at this thing or I want to improve there. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And, and I think like, if if if you're going to go like those voices or those urges or those compulsions i can't beat them then i don't know then i can't i can't motivate you then what i did doesn't work right and that and i and i would never assume that it

will work for everyone i just don't think we're, I don't think the same thing is true for every person. But I do think if you can ever, if you've ever beaten one of those voices, if you've ever beaten one of those parts of yourself that is an urge towards something that you don't ultimately want, if you've ever beaten it once, you can beat it again. And that's all you have to know to be true,

to be able to beat those urges, those compulsions. And if you've beaten it in a different area of your life, you can beat it in another area. I share this with people all the time. I even shared it with my dad at one point. I'm like, you're so strong. You're very powerful. And I didn't mean like in the gym or anything like that. I just meant you're somebody that, you know, when you decide to do something, you do it with everything you've got.

You just have this one area where when you walk by potato chips, you know, you start to eat one and you have more and so on. And, you know, I was like, if you can take some of the other things that you've done in your life where you have tons of discipline, like you never brought us to football practice late, you know, you never showed up to work late and you worked, you know, for IBM for 20 years or whatever, whatever it might be, you know. And I think a lot of people need to take that mentality. If you're a mom, if you are a dad, you have a, you know, nine to five and you've been steady with it for a long time, or you just graduated college, any of these things, these are all points on the scoreboard. These are things that this means that you had discipline or have discipline somewhere. And you could take that

discipline and you can start to think, I can, okay, you know, I'm 500 pounds and I make a lot of mistakes with my food, but I can do, I can do better than weighing 500 pounds. I could start working on weighing 450 pounds right yeah if you yeah that's so wonderful because if you have discipline in any area of your life you can you can just figure out the formula for that and apply it to another do you wipe your ass every time you go to the bathroom do you i do yes i've never missed i've never not been disciplined and trying to make sure you're cleaned up and even carry around baby wipes. By the way, that's discipline, right?

It is. That's amazing. So you can be disciplined about that. Yeah, brush your teeth in the morning. Right. There you go. I could work on some of that with my kids, but I do that. I have discipline over that.

I don't miss that. There's nothing that would make me. I would have my attention on that all day and feel kind of crappy how many times have you traveled and forgot like toothpaste or a toothbrush you go to the store the next day you're like fuck i gotta i gotta figure this out before i talk to anybody i'm gonna kill everybody yeah yeah that's discipline if you can find discipline in any aspect of your life you can apply it to to to any other aspect of your life that's wonderful before the whole weight weight loss stuff started in 2002, like you were obviously acting a lot before that too. Were you an extremely disciplined actor? Did that help anything that you were trying

to do when you start focusing on doing weight loss or was the whole thing kind of new? Uh, I, I mean, I think, I think I learned like maybe not right in the beginning, you know, but I was, I've been doing – I've been an actor since I was a kid. Yeah. And so you learn like, hey, if I'm late, there are hundreds of people who are literally waiting on just me and therefore I'm wasting their time and then the boss's money and and like you you can get a get an idea like that's not cool I don't want to be the guy holding up hundreds of people so I don't think I learned that in me I didn't walk into it with that discipline but I did get a sense of that I also feel like manners are important you know and so how would i want to be treated i don't want to be waiting on some somebody for for some stupid reason like because

they just were late or they just don't care like that's that's dumb um so i i learned discipline in acting uh and and the two rules that i have been fairly consistent with are beyond time and know the lines i have to say and and outside of that you can be super creative and you know it can be artistic but like those two points i am very disciplined with got it yeah and it's like that's just simple right there so you got two main rules you know and what i like about a lot of stuff you've been talking about even when we were talking in the gym it it wasn't any special requirement of you uh having some sort of superpower or or some sort of special genetics or some sort of special circumstances it's just been you know i took this simple principle and i try to carry that

everywhere i go yeah and and apply it to every part of my life you know i think it's a i think discipline is is important and and also like understanding that i am going to try to talk myself out of it and that it's my job to slap myself in the face when i do you know what i mean yeah how many children do you have four four kids four girls and uh what are the ages 23 21 14 12 yeah and so you and you mentioned you've been at this diet for 18 years. I would imagine bringing kids into the picture in some cases probably made it harder just because, like, I don't know, we love our kids and we want to feed them junk and we probably shouldn't, but we do. But also probably helped instill the discipline more because you want to live for them, have a good, strong, healthy life partially because of them. How did they play into the picture? I think that that's a huge part of it is the idea that I don't want my kids –

I don't want to miss a huge portion of my kids' lives. I want to see grandkids. I want to be around for them for as long as possible. And I want to be a good example to them also. You know, I want, I want to be, you know, look, they're girls. My biggest fear is that they wind up with some crappy dude, you know what I mean? Or, or some crappy girl or whatever they wind up with that is not ideal because I set a bad example for them. You know what I mean? So I want to show them what an honorable man does and is. They stick to their word.

They set goals. They achieve goals. You know what I mean? I want them to see the way I treat their mom is how I think is an appropriate way to treat somebody in a relationship. All of that's really important to me. but self-discipline I think is very important too. Yeah.

I've heard you say actually, um, something about like your wife being one of the catalysts for you wanting to lose all that weight. How did she push you in that direction where maybe other people didn't? Well, I think the real key is she didn't push me in that direction. She, she was totally amenable to it when I brought it up and was like, oh yeah, let's do that. But we were together and I was gigantic and she loved me and there was no, um, there was no pretense about how much she loved me. You know, we were, we were very happy together and it was kind of like, I was just going like, I know she loves going on walks. I don't do that. She loves going to museums. I don't do that.

Like there's a whole bunch of stuff that she loves to do that I'm not doing with her. How long is she going to put up with that? You know what I mean? So when I went to her and said, I want to do a diet, I want to lose weight. And she was like, great, let's find you a diet and I'll help you. It wasn't that she suggested it. She was just complete. She was like my cheerleader, you know?

Okay. she was like my cheerleader you know okay and and i eventually said to her um i started i literally started saying please take this food away from me because i will eat all of it and so she would take it away and then she started doing it on her own and the first time she like picked up a plate of food and took it away from me i was kind of like what the fuck just happened i didn't tell you to take that and then i had to like go like but i did give her permission to do that so okay that's what she's doing too but prior to me like setting this goal she never brought it up not once do you think if she did it might have pushed you away from it or maybe just woke you up a little bit sooner i hope that it would have woke me up sooner i don't know it just kind of happened the way it happened i don't know i i

never i never had success doing anything at the behest of someone else yeah because we we talk about on the podcast a lot where we we have people like telling us like hey like i want to do a diet or whatever but my significant other won't get on board but i'm thinking about the opposite maybe there is somebody listening right now that they're looking at their significant other and they're like man how do i how do i approach them and they heard you say like they were just or that you know your wife didn't say anything at all and she waited for you yeah um if they were to kind of bring it up, how do you think they should? That is a real tricky place because being a sober guy and a professional dieter, I've not found that with sobriety or food that going to somebody and going like, here is what I perceive to be your problems. Yeah. And here is what I perceive to be your solution.

It's not like you're not aware of it. Right. It just doesn't, it's not, it's like, here is, I'm going to take the solution I believe to be right now. I'm going to give it to you and I need it to be your solution.

I've not found success with that. I've found success with somebody coming to me and saying, I need help getting sober. Can you help me? Yes, I can help you. I've found success with somebody coming to me and saying, I need help getting sober. Can you help me? Yes, I can help you. I need help doing a diet. Can you help me? Sure. I'll tell you what I did. That's how I can help you. But beyond that, like, I don't know. It's a terrible spot to be in, you know, because I think like I am kind of a moral relativist where I go like, I don't know what's right for anybody else. I only know what's right for me. I don't know what's right for you or you or any other person morally. I can't say that's wrong. I can make an argument about health, but there's lots that we could argue about health. We live in cities.

There's pollution. Like if we want to be absolutely healthy, we should all probably like stop driving cars. You know what I mean? Like there's a lot of health stuff that I can't make that decision for anyone. So I think it really is up to the individual. That's just how I've seen it successfully happen. What if you were to maybe just say, um, you know, something to the effect of, you know, I just, you know, you, you call attention to it. Obviously they already know

that they're heavy, right? Yeah. So I know that this is a real struggle for you and just anytime you're ready, I just want you to know that I would be supportive of that. Yeah. And it might be a hard conversation to have, but just, you know, if you do want to make a change and I'm all for it, I could start cooking different things. I can make sure there's not certain things in the house and I would love to maybe assist you and maybe help soften the blow and take on some of the burden.

Yeah. If I could help you, maybe something like that. But again, it does have to be the person's decision. No, but I think what you're saying is super valid because when I went to who is my wife now and I said to her, like, hey, I want to do this thing. I didn't know what her reaction i you know i never thought that she was going to go no you know don't do this like was this like a thing or was this like something in passing or was this like a sit down like you guys got kind of emotional about the whole thing and you oh yeah went through everything top to bottom kind of i was in a real low spot

and i was pretty upset and i was talking to her and I was super vulnerable and I was basically saying, I'm relinquishing my power to you. I need somebody to tell me what to do. I need your help. And I didn't know if she was going to – I didn't know what her reaction was going to be. I didn't know she was going to go, okay, I have a plan. Don't think about anything. Here's what you're going to be. I didn't know she was going to go, okay, I have a plan. I don't think about anything. Here's what you're going to do. Like, I didn't know what to think. So I think that is super valuable to tell somebody you love, like, Hey, as soon as you're ready, I'm going to help you or I'm here to help you or I'm available to help you or I'm accessible and amenable to you

doing this. Um, I think that that is probably pretty valuable. I didn't, she had never done that with me and I didn't know what the conversation was going to become. You know, it could have been like, okay, we'll figure it out, which it wasn't. And maybe had it been that, maybe I don't make it or maybe I do, I don't know. But it was here, this thing I'm not happy with. I'm't know. But it was here. I'm this thing. I'm not happy with.

I'm going to turn it over to you. You tell me what to do because right now I don't know. You know, you're definitely better off having a conversation rather than having somebody die or end up with a divorce. You're better off just, you know, getting out in the open. Yeah, I agree. You mentioned that, like, you know, she was taking walks and she was going to museums and stuff.

But was she also like eating differently than you like what were she eating the same things you're eating or was she like different in that sense too i was kind of so out of it i wasn't really paying attention to that certainly she was not eating like me yeah um but i also did a lot of uh hiding of food know, like I would also go and in the middle of the night go and eat or after, you know what I mean? So she wasn't doing that. And she certainly ate a lot less than I did. But she wasn't like on a program. Yeah.

A lot of people do that. They, they wait for everyone to go to sleep, you know, and because they don't want to like, you know, be out of control, you know, with, uh, kids seeing them, their, their wife seeing them and they, uh, just go attack the pantry or the freezer or whatever it is. Yeah. Yeah. That was me. I was always like, I didn't like people watching me eat. It made me very uncomfortable. Gotcha. And now like, I'm curious about these, cause I don't think we've talked about it these past few years. Like, I don't know how long you've been like, you know, taking food to work and just eating the way you're eating, but what exactly does your food look like now? Like what do you eat? I, I am in, uh, about a 20, 20 to 25% caloric deficit. Okay. Uh, I eat between one and 1.2 grams of protein per pound of body weight.

So that's anywhere from 265 grams of protein to about 312 grams of protein. The remaining calories are kind of divvied up between carbohydrates and fats at around 65, 35%, 65% carbs, 35% fats. That's pretty much it. If for some reason I'm starving and I got to eat something else, I'm eating lean protein. Like that's what will, you know what I mean? Like it's going to be amino acids or a protein shake or a piece of chicken with no skin on it. I even think that when you were heavier, if you were just to anyone who has a real hard time with their diet, no one would want to do this because it's,

you know, weird. But if you were to eat like, I don't know, six or eight egg whites before you ate, if you were to eat some chicken breast before you ate, now look, it might not work the first time you do it, but if you did it all the time, if you had that nice surplus of protein before you had your meal, even if you were to eat ice cream or pizza or any of these things over a period of time, you will start to eat less and less and less. And it'll be less, it'll be less likely to really indulge. You'll have, I mean, even something like a chicken breast, it takes a little while to eat a chicken breast, a lot of chewing and cutting, and it takes some time.

So, you know, anyone that has a real hard time, they struggle with their nutrition, they struggle with their diet. If you can simply just try to add protein into the mix and take your time with it, and maybe you can find walking or maybe you can start to cut back on your last meal of the day or your first meal of the day or try a little intermittent fasting. Just these small techniques can end up having a huge impact. Yeah. I think that's such a cool idea.

You know, just eating more protein and doing it before your meal because you're going to fill up on that. That's a great idea. I might try that for the next maintenance of the cycle. Yeah, protein leveraging. Earlier when we were in the gym, you were saying that you did try the ketogenic diet. For years. Yeah, is that what you started with? No, well, I started with a liquid diet.

That's right. Sorry. Okay. By the way, I've done every single diet that has ever existed. I've done Beverly Hills, Hollywood, the cayenne pepper drinks. And to a certain extent, they all worked? If you stick to a diet, you're going to lose weight. Right.

But like to what ends? You know what I mean? Like that's the other thing. I don't think anybody tells you when you're doing the cayenne pepper lemonade drink that you're just dehydrating yourself. And then maybe you're going to lose actual weight after a certain amount of time. But it's going to be a lot of muscle too. You know what I mean? And that you're setting yourself up for rapid weight regain.

Like nobody's giving you those pointers with stuff like that. Yeah. So, yeah, all of them. You can lose weight. By the way, maybe if you're a dude or a gal who has a photo shoot or wants to go to a premiere and just wants to dehydrate themselves a little bit, maybe that's a valid diet. You know what I mean? Who am I to say that's not right?

It's certainly not right for me today. But yeah, all of them, I've had success and I've failed at lots of diets. But when I did them the way they're laid out, they all kind of put you in a caloric deficit and you lose weight. By the way, I've done keto and not lost weight because I was eating too much and i've done keto and and found that the fat actually keeps me feeling fuller longer versus low fat right now when i get hungry i feel hunger in my toes you know what i mean like i'm like and i hadn't been feeling hungry like that on keto on keto um but when I tried keto with a massive amount of protein, it would throw me out of keto. So I'm just doing low fat now, literally with one goal of having a perfect six pack, which I won't ever have because I have loose skin and that's just my lot. But I'm going to have something.

You know, I still have shadows now. I think like for long-term life stuff, when I think, am I going to be measuring food for the rest of my life? Probably not. And probably the easier life choice for me is keto. It's kind of a low-carb lifestyle in general. Yeah. That's why I was asking what the motivation was to switch over to, you know, the low fat compared to the high fat. And I'm right there with you, dude. I'm on the low fat train right now.

And I actually really, really enjoy it, though. I do, too. Yeah, it's fun. I find it to be a lot more food. Like when I went from chicken thighs to chicken breast, it's just a lot more food. Yeah. In terms of other people in your life, too because like, it doesn't sound like anyone was ever discouraging you from weight loss, but did you ever run into that before? Cause a lot of

individuals, when they start making a switch of their lifestyle, um, they'll have some people that are cheering them on and they'll have some people like, why are you even doing that? Questioning them on that. Did you really ever deal with that? Or you just had like pure support all the way through? Yeah. I i never i never had a person other than myself rooting against me that's dude that's awesome that's that's so rare because like so many people like when they're trying to do this it's either people at work or sometimes people at home or significant other they do have to deal with that but i guess that just shows like if you have a friend that's doing this just don't be a dick right i mean i i guess there were a few i did have a conversation with a casting

director where she said you were more interesting heavier but okay like what does that mean you were gonna make me some kind of a big movie star you know what i mean that like i think that's all irrelevant nobody close to me was ever rooting against me that's all what about yourself were you thinking like uh you know i'm gonna once you started to get out into the world and you had your vegetables and stuff you know were you trying to still even eat that kind of in private because you're like they're gonna be like all right fatty you're on another diet again right are you gonna were you concerned about that oh yeah um the weekend that i released my podcast which i'm going to shamelessly plug american yeah go podcast um i got a lot of uh reaction

which i hadn't really been expecting and on fat, a lot of the times my travel meal is this low carb, low calorie bread with turkey breast, sliced turkey breast on it. You know, it's sandwiches. I was going to New York and I had a backpack full of sandwiches for my trip. And I'm in the airport and people are coming up to me and I'm like, I can't let anybody see me eat a sandwich.

This just looks like a fucking sandwich. They're going to be confused. Yeah. So, yeah, I guess I still don't like people to that. I just don't always feel comfortable with eating in front of people. That probably goes back to being a little kid and like my grandparents telling me like no more food you know and so then i would sneak it and eat by myself i'm sure that's all connected you know what i mean what you know, the idea that somebody is actively making a choice to be obese. I don't think that's totally fair because I certainly was never doing that. There was no

thought of like this habit that I've created i'm doing on purpose this was a little similar to drug and alcohol addiction you think yeah i think so i don't think it's like you're going through life thinking this is how i want to be now there could be some instances where somebody wants to be obese and they're going like i need to. And like, I think that's probably very rare, but, um, so kind of treating somebody like they're doing something on purpose and that they're just totally at, in control of it, I think is a mistake. Um, I think that's probably the biggest, uh, for your, for yourself. I mean, it's hard to speak and project onto other people. But for yourself, do you think that somebody could live a great life and feel really good about themselves being as heavy as you were?

Like more in your case, not anybody else. Right. I couldn't right um now there are obviously degrees of this right so we're presented with convenient food everywhere we turn we're programmed to consume food in a certain way, whether it be biologically, genetically, or what, we have created a situation in America where we can't help but have an obese populace. It's like that's the way it's designed. So when I look at people who can walk around and live their life and, and fit into a airplane seat. And like, yeah,

I think, I think as long as those things, like I see no problem in it. It also depends on like what you want to do, what your goals are. I, I feel better when I can move my body and I actually now kind of look forward to being sore. I was so sore every day coming home from work that like my feet would swell up and I couldn't get my shoes on sometimes the next day because I was 500 pounds smashing down on my ankles. I was constantly looking for like, where can I sit down? I don't do that anymore and I'm happier to not do that. So for me, I think there are degrees, but I think me, even at 350 pounds, I could have been happy.

You know, I just got this burst of like, I want abs, you know, I should be able to have abs. Let's see what this is like. But I think that versus 500, I was never going to be really happy at 500 pounds. Never. In terms of that goal setting process, because at the beginning of the podcast, you talked about setting small goals, right? Now you, you gained and lost weight a lot, but I guess in the last, in the last part where you were able to get down to two 60, the way you are now, um, was that the first time that you started setting

smaller goals or is, has that been your mode of goal setting since the beginning? No, I wish it had been, but in the beginning it was just, I'm, I'm miserably unhappy. I'm going to turn this over to my girlfriend. She's going to tell me what to do. And my goal was just make it through each day following her orders. Look, I don't know how. I don't think we live on an island by ourselves. I think we're designed to have relationships with people that are, there are exchanges. You know what I mean? Like, you know, I'm not saying that it has to be this capitalistic thing, but like,

what do I do for her? What does she do for me? There's an ebb and flow. We communicate about these things. I could not have done that by myself. I just, it just wasn't going to happen. So I don't know if you're not in a relationship with somebody that you can turn over the reins to, to, to tell you what to do. I wish I could have gone, here's a goal for myself because today I can do that. Yeah. But it took a long time figuring stuff out, understanding stuff and finally going like, I'm not, I'm not going to get, I wasn't going to get my goal on keto the way I was doing it. I had to like really look into it and, and dig around and like fine tune some stuff and start lifting weights even differently. I wasn't doing, you know, progressive overload. I never did that. I just lifted weights. You know, I didn't really know what I was doing.

I had to like study and figure stuff out. But, but day one, I really just had to turn it over and like put myself in and say, I don't know what to do. Please help me. I'll do what you, I'm going to really do this. I just don't know if that's realistic. I think we really do need people to talk to to motivate us. I really do. What do you see nowadays when you look in the mirror?

Are you proud of yourself or are there still – you still have the conflicting other guy there with the voice in your head that other guy is always there will always be there i i do have moments of pride you know if i go into the bathroom and there we have like two sets of lights we both turn both sets of lights it's like the room's glowing lights coming at you from every direction and i look at myself and i'm like i look terrible i turn off one set it's all overhead and i'm like holy shit look at that guy that guy looks great the little lemon dressing room yeah it's like perfect yeah so the that guy's still there i don't know i i i'm my biggest critic yeah it's you know i gotta fight that guy off all the time you know if i go to the gym thinking if that guy wins i'm not gonna go to the gym because i because that

guy's that guy's only trying to like fuck me basically you know you mentioned sometimes having a sense of pride sometimes feeling like you just have so far to go. Yeah. And I think that's really interesting. I think that's what a lot of us face. It might not be with necessarily the body, but it could be with your work. It could be with your relationship. It could be with drugs or alcohol or anything. Yeah. And the other key I found is like having a goal is super important.

The minute I have a goal, I'm producing to get to that goal. The minute I achieve that goal, my potential production is up here. My actual production is here. That empty space is a death trap because that empty space without a goal is like I'm floundering. I see what you're saying. Always having a goal. So when I get to my goal now, I have to set a new goal immediately because that empty space where you're like, oh, now I'm going to relax.

I don't believe relaxing is a good thing. I think you should always be working towards something. As far as fitness is concerned, I know that you mentioned you want to get some abs. That's one of your goals. Do you have any other goals fitness wise right now that you're trying to achieve in between that realm like what's what's coming up um no i mean not really i i i i always think i could probably go heavier on my on my deadlift i'm I'm like a little scared to go super heavy. Because of the bicep? Yeah, but I don't even – I'm not even doing it in a dangerous way. I like the Reeves deadlift where my arms are out here, and that's pretty much not messing with that bicep tendon.

But I think I would like to go heavier on that. Those are tough, man. It's like a snatch grip deadlift. Like your hands out by the power rings there. Well, I want traps like yours, Mark. Well, I've never done those before. You have great traps. You have great traps.

Just kind of statically just flex all day. Flex on everybody. That's it? Yeah. Okay, good. And also, we were talking before. You said that like you stick to the rep range of 12 because you found that that works really well for you and it feels good for you. So as far as lifting for yourself, what, I guess, parameters have you set up for yourself there?

Because it seems like with your nutrition, you set up things that work for you well. So what's been really working for you as far as lifting is concerned? I'm usually alone, so I don't have a spot so i stick to that rep range because i know i'm safe no matter what you know what i mean even if i end off at 10 leaving some in the tank i know i'm not going to ever do anything where i'm getting stuck right um so that's really mostly the reason i want to do that but also because i'm not working out to be strong right now. I'm working out just like I'm doing, I'm getting these scans just to make sure like I'm not pissing away muscle. Um, so trying to be as safe as possible using progressive overload,

but not doing it in a silly way. I would rather add two and a half pounds and add three sets to increase that volume than I would adding a 45-pound plate. Do you know what I mean? Does that make sense? No, that makes a lot of sense. So I'm kind of doing that with everything. Look, I can do pull-ups now, but I would rather do assisted pull-ups so I can do more of them. You know, like what you're talking about here, it's simple, but it's something that like a lot of people who have been lifting for a long time don't even do. So like for yourself, I mean, you've talked about doing a lot of research and stuff.

Has there been anyone that's like helped you out with this along the way? Or have you just like been going at it and figuring it out i've been going at it figuring it out i i really like what mike isratel has to say on all this stuff i find him to be super smart and hilarious yeah he's funny yeah and so i i i read his diet book too which was one of the one of the things where i was thinking first his ted talk and then his diet book where I was like maybe I should eat some carbs and increase my protein. And his stuff really helped me move in that direction because you got to understand. For years, I just believed carbs made you fat. Yeah.

Because I didn't know what their use was. I didn't know what they did other than everybody's allergic to carbs and they make you fat and like, what are people doing? They're crazy. How could anybody eat carbs? I eat, I don't eat carbs for years. And now you can eat carbs. I can eat carbs.

I eat carbs every day. I eat rice and I eat some bread and, you know, and I'm fine. Nothing. I haven't, nothing bad has happened to me. It's been fucking wild to be honest with you. But it was scary. Yeah. So I, I have read a lot of his stuff.

Lane Norton wrote a really great diet book. I read his book, but those that's, I mean, I don't have a trainer. I don't, I'm not in the gym with anyone. I'm in the gym by myself, just kind of getting through it. You know, I've tried to do as many compound movements as possible. Gotcha. And do you think, do you think other people will have to maybe dive in as deep as you did or do you think it might be a little different for everybody?

Because I mean, you're, you're basically an expert, you know, at this point, like you can give diet advice to people and it will work really well sure um do you think other people have to you know because it's it kind of seems like you you you know a lot i mean you're talking about talking about lifting and you're talking about all these different diets that you tried and stuff what do you think uh i don't think anybody has to get as into it as i am i would suggest that like if you like look and i think it's different from person to person if you're 500 pounds and you just are going like i don't want to be 500 pounds anymore i think from 500 to 350 you don't have to really worry about it

move more eat less you can go super extreme in the beginning and it's not going to mess you up. You know what I mean? Like I would never do a liquid diet today, but I would always suggest to the 530 pound me do that liquid diet. That was a great way to start. You're going to have this, you're going to, you're going to do something monumental really quickly and you can hold on to that feeling of success and kind of ride it. You know what I mean? I think as you get progressed towards something, you're going to have to set, you know, more specific goals for yourself and go like, am I a guy who wants to run a marathon? No, I'm not. I don't want to run a marathon. Uh, but I do want to hike. What does hiking mean?

What can I do in the gym that helps that? Or is there a little hike I can start with? You know what I mean? And you can look at what, what you can try out different fuels for what, what your hike is. Do you do better eating no carbs? Do you do better eating carbs? Is fat a good fuel source for you?

It's not for my wife. My wife gets a terrible stomach ache when she eats too much fat. So keto just doesn't work for her, but she does like really good on kind of low fat paleo type stuff. And she's very happy and she eats some sweet potatoes. You know what I mean? But she doesn't eat, I eat more complex carbs than she does. So it's kind of like, you got to figure out what's right for you, I think. But you don't have to. I mean, I'm kind of an obsessive guy who's like looking at all of this. I mean, I went and wrote all the stages of the Tour de France. So like when I was riding bikes, I was obsessed with that.

I'm curious about this. You know, you mentioned you and your wife when like, you know, she would go wine tasting, you drink olive oil, right? You talked about a lot about that voice that's on your shoulder that's telling you eat this or whatever, right? It seems that your willpower is on another level, you know, and it's because of all the reps that you've done. But if you can remember in the beginning when you were trying to go about this and you would fail, right? You go out, you eat a massive meal and fuck up and then you'd have to try and get back at it the next day what did that dialogue look like for you it was always real hard when

getting back on after well so there were times when i would have the the cheat meal or the cheat day but i would be ready for the next day so like whatever i'm going to eat the next day that's all ready before the cheat day that was helpful um but it it's just i've always found those days or those meals where where that was like i'm i'm giving into all temptation and i'm doing whatever that little crazy voice says. Um, when there were no boundaries, it would always be hard. It was really hard. And, um, you know, sometimes it would derail me for a week or two weeks.

And then it was like, you know, like also going to the gym every day is easy when you go to the gym every day. If you get an injury or for whatever reason, you take a week off, even though you're like, I got to get back in the gym. It's not as easy getting back into that routine. But when you're doing it every day, it's not hard at all. So you just have to remind yourself of that. Like get through this moment that's more difficult than I remember it being. And it will be easier. A cheat meal kind of reminds me of like, you know, driving down the freeway and a rock hits your windshield.

And you're like, oh, shit. Like I think it made a little chip, you know, and then a couple of days go by. And sure enough, it's splintered out into every, you know, every facet of your windshield. And it's totally shattered. And you got to get replaced. Eventually, sometimes with these cheat meals, eventually they might catch up to you and eventually you might have a price to pay. And the price to pay could simply be the fact that it derailed you for an entire week, or it could be something where, you know, you may be just really struggle the next day. That's, that's what happens

to me. If I was to eat a pizza tonight, like that would be amazing but uh i would have a hard time all day tomorrow i'd be thinking about the whole the whole time and you know at the moment now like i don't think that way so why you know why have that pop back up again yeah i totally agree it's unnecessary and also that idea of the um you know just keeping it consistent because like definitely after not going to the gym for a week, getting back into it's super difficult. But setting up a streak or trying to like some people like to set up calendars and just put X's for every day that they go or every day that they stick on their diet. And seeing that streak and visibly seeing it happen for a lot of people makes it easier for them to continuously do it over and over. Did you have anything that I guess allowed I guess allowed you or, uh, encouraged you to maintain that consistency? Did you do anything like that? Or I, well, I noticed that like, uh,

Sunday is my quote unquote rest day. And I, and I'm, I just don't, it's not, it's my least favorite day of the week. And I don't feel as good Sunday as I do every other day. And I've got this kind of like, well, I guess I have to rest thing. So, you know, I'm constantly having to talk myself into that rest, knowing that I can get an injury if I don't ever take a break. So it's like that. I have that voice telling me to go eat a cheeseburger and go to the gym and never stop going to the gym. So it's like, you got to really battle all of these. Cause you can think like,

Oh, he's trying to tell you the right thing to do. No, that crazy voice is not ever telling me the right thing to do. It's always trying to take me off of the path that I'm on. Um, but as far as like streaks, um,

I kept a diet journal for a long time and that was super helpful. And I noticed that like if I – even if I miss writing down a meal, I would like get to it at the end of the day. I wouldn't miss a day. So I think that can be real helpful. But yeah, I think that's super valuable. I just know like the holidays come and you travel and it's like, what are you going to do? Am I going to do pushups and squats in my hotel room? Or am I going to be a real slob and just watch pay-per-view and order room service? You know what I mean? Like those are my choices basically. Yeah. I think the Sunday

rest, what's important to point out is like, you may not like doing it, but Sunday rest is for Tuesday. It's for Wednesday. It's for Thursday. The recharging of your batteries. You know, we get asked the question all the time about motivation. How do you stay motivated? How do you stay dedicated to it? And, you know, fatigue is going to be the thing that changes your character like if you feel tired if you feel run down uh you won't be like your

ordinary self all passionate and fired up about the diet and all excited about uh training for the day because you're gonna be like you know i just i just don't i don't feel that good i don't really i don't just don't feel like going and once those things start to uh you know once those bells and whistles start to start to be heard then you start talking yourself out of the workout so those bells and whistles start to start to be heard, then you start talking yourself out of the workout. So it's important. It's hugely important to have a day, you know, and I think even, you know, I've never really messed with this before, but I I've, I've lost weight in a, in a lot of stages, you know, and, uh, you know, I, I had a friend of mine who told me, I, so I guess I have done it before a while back, you know, when I went from three 30 to like two 70 or so,

I've done it before a while back, you know, when I went from three 30 to like two 70 or so, um, my friend who was guiding me through all this, he's like, all right, man. He's like, just enjoy the week. You know, I was like, cause I was like, Hey, what do you want me to do this week? Cause I kind of check in with him weekly. He's like, just do whatever you want. And I was like, like, what dude, what are you talking? I was like scared. I'm like, I can't be left to do whatever I want. What do you mean? You know? He's like, no, honestly, just, just do whatever you want for the next couple of days, you know, for the, for the whole week. And I was like, all seven days, you want me just to do whatever I want? And he's like, yeah. You know? So I, I did. Yeah. I was like, okay. But like even having some of the power thing background and stuff, like I would always go

for protein. I'd eat steak and I'd eat, um, you know, eggs and stuff like that. And then at night I'd usually, if I was going to eat something like unhealthy, it would be later in the day, which would, you know,

uh, throw me off. Cause I obviously weighed a lot at the time, but he knew that if he gave that to me at that time, that it was a break and that I would just be like, fuck this after I did it for three or four or five days. So luckily for me, it was a break and that i would just be like fuck this after i did it for three or four or five days so luckily for me it was like he just said hey you know go do it go kind of do whatever you want but those diet breaks can be huge huge yeah deloads too deload

weeks yeah where you just lift less yeah it's hard you know you're in there and like you want to kill yourself in the gym and you're like i I'm not even, I like I'm embarrassed about what I'm doing. But you know what its purpose is. You know what I mean? And maintenance time on your diet where you're like, what? This is such a waste of time. But you know your body needs a reset. Your body needs a break from being in a caloric deficit.

Your brain feels good doing that. Yeah. It is all very helpful the same voice that's trying to lead you into like you know doing shots of hershey's chocolate syrup and stuff like that is also trying to make you overwork and and and you know i know i could spend easily three or four hours in the Yeah. I'm not going to work out very well the next day. And so there's that magic and I'm not going to feel good either. I'm going to have to go lay in a bed. There's that magical kind of zone where you get, you get more energy from the gym than you had before. The break is almost like a mediator coming in and saying, Hey, you know what?

You got a good point over there with like being a savage and with your training and your diet. And you got a decent point over there with relaxing every once in a while. It's like somebody kind of in the middle to give you a voice of reason. Yeah. And I, I've not read, I've read about these principles, but I've not read anything where it's like every single person should do this many reps, this many sets over this amount of time. Like, I think it is all kind of like, you got to figure it out by doing it is all kind of like you got to figure it out by doing it and going like maybe you got to overtrain to know what overtraining feels like and yeah you know maybe you gotta not take a break to realize like oh i used to feel really

good when i went to the gym and now i'm just like sluggish and tired all day like that's not it i'm assuming you did experience that because sure from what you're saying, it sounds like you went through that. Yeah, for sure. I, I, I went, when I first read about, uh, um, progressive overload, I was like, well, we just do this forever, you know? And then I was like, why isn't this working? You know what I mean? And I'm also not eating enough. So, I mean, you know, not enough to like really go super heavy with progressive overload. But like I had it in my head, like I can add two and a half pounds or five pounds every week until I'm bench pressing, you know, 495 or something like that. No, sorry. Not going to work like that.

You've got to take it. When I was a kid, I like I the first time i did uh you know progressive overload uh it worked great you know i was young and i was just getting to learn the sport and stuff and i think i benched like 315 or something like that and then so what i did is i wrote it out for the next like two years and i was like oh my god like when i graduate high school i'm gonna bench like 550 i'm gonna be fucking awesome you know and i always thought i was gonna like work out and then i was as i was doing i was like oh the progress comes a lot slower and then i have to do it more like your body gets used to it and yeah it's a giant process and i'm like damn i wish it just wish it i wish it worked the same way every time right i wish i

could bench press a thousand pounds yeah right we got a guy in the gym he actually works here at super training you met him today he kind of had the same thing with cody he where he was gonna bench 600 pounds like oh yeah the next two weeks because he did 405 and then he did blah blah so we always give him shit for it it's pretty funny he's like i gained 50 pounds on my bench in two months he's like yeah he's just a natural progression of things yeah you're going to gain another 200 pounds. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, Ethan, you and Mark are like, you guys are similar age and I think you guys are at the perfect age to have heard the, uh, like, uh, saturated fat is bad. Uh, low, uh, high fat is bad. No low fat is good. Like you've seen all of the trends and you said you've tried the diet, like all the diets yourself. Was that some of the motivation to start your podcast to try to like educate people and like yeah that was certainly

part of it um while i i also want to say like whatever somebody has success with that's a valid thing you know what i mean but i also want to talk about it because I'd never talked about weight loss really before. And I want to, I hope it keeps me accountable. And I want to just share with people like, Hey, I'm there is nothing special about me at all. I get obsessed with stuff. I do stuff in extreme manners, but really there's nothing special about me. So if I can do this and it's a motivation to somebody, I hope that somebody can get something out of it. And also if you're telling me you're getting something out of it, that's just more fuel for me to keep doing it.

You know? And there's so many people telling themselves that they can't do it. So it's great to have someone say, well, you know, uh, I did it and this is the way that it worked for me. And I, I, I believe that you can find maybe not the exact path I took, but something similar and you can have success too. Let's, uh, let's bring this one in, uh, Andrew, you want to hit up our sponsors and I would love if you have time, I'd love to talk to you more because I feel like, I feel like there's kind of another part to

this that is, uh, different than what we've talked about. I'd love to talk about your childhood a lot. Cause I think that so many parents are struggling with their children and there's so many kids out there struggling with their weight and it's just a, it's an awful thing, but I think it'd be great to dive into that as well. Yeah. Cool. So we'll shut this one down and start up a new one. Heck yeah. Yep. Yep. Okay. All right, cool. So then a huge shout out to Perfect Keto for sponsoring this episode. You guys know we utilize the MCT oil powders for our fasting. And Seema uses the electrolytes when he's rolling. I mean, the guy trains here at Super Training Gym.

Then he rolls right into jiu-jitsu. Jiu-jitsu. Jiu-jitsu. Usually you're fasted too, right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's really hard to do, but using Perfect Keto's electrolytes makes it a lot easier.

If you guys want to get in on that, head over to perfectketo.com slash powerproject at checkout. Enter promo code powerproject10 for $10 off any order of $40 or more. And if you're a real savage, any order of $100 or more, use promo code powerprojectbundle for $25 off. That's all I got for you, Mark. Where can people find you? Nsema? Nsema Yin Yang on Instagram and YouTube and Bytema and sema in yang on instagram and youtube and bite and then sema yin yang on twitter and tiktok how about you andrew uh i'm andrew z and please

make sure you're following the podcast at mark bell's power project mark what you got ethan i'm at ethan suplee on twitter and instagram and the american glutton podcast which is available wherever podcast at mark smelly bell strength is never a weakness weakness never strength podcast, which is available wherever podcasts are. At Mark Smelly Bell, strength is never a weakness, weakness is never a strength. Catch you all later. What up, podcast? I hope you enjoyed this episode with Ethan Supley. Please make sure you come back tomorrow for another episode with Ethan.

Tomorrow we talk about childhood obesity, kind of the things that he had to deal with and whatnot. But right now I wanted to take a second to thank Rat Tacos. That's a really cool name. Rat Tacos gave us a rating and review on iTunes. And this is what, I don't know if it's a he or she, so I'm just going to say this is what Rat Tacos said. One of the best podcasts out there, quote, if you're looking to improve your life, crush your goals and be entertained, you need to give the Power Project a listen. Great interviews, conversation, humor, information, information and even motivation my man or woman rat tacos uh awesome name first and foremost but thank you so much we really appreciate that you just uh hooked us up with the biggest thank you possible and you really you really really helped the show if you want to be

like rat tacos and have your name and your review read on air, please head over to iTunes right now. Drop us a rating and a review and you could hear your name and your review read at the end of a show just like Rat Tacos did. We'll catch you guys later. Peace.