Mark Bell's Power Project - Experts Share Top Strategies for Fast Weight Loss!

Starting point is 00:00:00 Dr. Robert Lustig, author of Metabolical, he contends that if you just eliminate processed foods from your diet, you can't get fat. Animal-based protein, for patients, it's really hard to overeat that stuff. An hour of running is going to burn more calories than an hour of any other form of exercise, including strength training. The problem is the adaptations that we end up inducing are not beneficial. The average American gains one pound, that's it, over the holidays. But they never lose that pound, you know? The first step is actually finding a provider and an individual you connect with and trust. Sometimes you get stressed and then like this new monster shows up. Oh, you really should eat. Now you're fighting two fights in your own head. I like how Dr. Robert Lustig, author of

Starting point is 00:00:40 Metabolical and many other good books, one of the leading anti-sugar crusaders in the world, of Metabolical and many other good books, one of the leading anti-sugar crusaders in the world. He contends that if you just eliminate processed foods from your diet, you can't get fat and you won't get sick. You won't get metabolic disease patterns. And it's as simple as that. And so that's some common ground. I can get fat.

Starting point is 00:00:57 You can get fat. It's harder. It's harder to get fat, but you can definitely get fat. I mean, tell me when. Trust me. Right away. I guess. I'll show you the when. Trust me. Right away. I guess. I'll show you the bell jeans.

Starting point is 00:01:09 You'll be shocked. The bell jeans. Mr. Bojangles bell jeans. Yeah. I mean, you go fatten yourself up on steaks and eggs. You know, you went from six eggs to 12 eggs a day, and then you went from three steaks to four. There's a certain point where you're probably going to level off and it might be above our performance weights if we all do this experiment.

Starting point is 00:01:30 But it's not going to be disaster. Yeah. And there's a lot of, you know, this talk about endotoxins, which you hear a lot of people talking about now. you produce endotoxins, it's internally manufactured toxins that interfere with your ability to burn fat or to function mitochondria effectively. And so you start to get bad at burning energy internally. And so therefore, where do you trend to? You're reaching for more and more processed foods and sugary beverages

Starting point is 00:01:59 just to get energy because you can't burn fat internally and everything's all screwed up because you have these processed foods in your diet. And so that sends you down a slippery slope. And that's why I think zero tolerance is probably a good recommendation for a lot of people that are stuck in this processed food, sugar burning pattern is you got to walk away from that stuff and get good, you know, get your body back in gear. Yeah, you gotta break yourself away from that stuff. Yeah, like Jay Feldman says, hey, if you say that you feel better

Starting point is 00:02:28 from fasting versus eating breakfast, we gotta go take a look at your breakfast. Because if you have a nice nutritious breakfast, you're probably gonna feel pretty good. And you might feel good fasting too because you've built those capabilities. But that's a good quote also. It's like, get the shit food out of your diet, You're going to start feeling better. But then what if you,

Starting point is 00:02:48 back to my personal example, because I have good blood work, I have good body composition, where's my optimization? I'm looking at, I've been on a three-month experiment now to eat more food and see what happens. And I think you're bringing up a really excellent point. A lot of people in fitness, like if Andy Galpin was here right now and he was observing us talking about, even all of us here talking about fasting, he would be like, this is a ridiculous conversation. Why are any of you guys fasting? And that's just because, again, like we're already in good shape. I think one thing that's interesting is that somebody that is unhealthy and very overweight, what I've noticed is that they got to get themselves to a healthy point before they can start to really lose weight. Now they might lose some bloat and they might lose some weight and

Starting point is 00:03:34 they might knock off 10, 20 pounds. I've seen people do that before. Like, oh, I tried keto and bam, you know, this weight came right off. But there's like a little extra piece of the puzzle that after some of that initial weight comes off, they have to try to figure out how to get themselves healthy. And that is really hard because you're thinking that it would work the opposite way around. You're thinking, if I lose this fat, this is my road to success. I'm going to be healthier. But it's a little bit like being successful, or it's a little bit like attracting a woman. It's a little bit like attracting success, where you have to first become a successful person. You need successful attributes to then be worthy of success. We had a Russian lifter years ago explain to us how to deadlift.

Starting point is 00:04:33 And he took the rings, the Olympic rings that you use for gymnastics. And he said, this is how you deadlift. And he said, deadlift is like pretty woman. And he pushed the ring away from him. And then he let it go. And the ring swung towards him. And he's like, but most of you are trying to reach for the pretty woman, you know? And then he showed how it goes, like when you reach for it and grab it, it goes away from you. And I think that a lot of the stuff like this, when it comes to the diet and, and when it comes to success, you have to first have the habits ingrained first.

Starting point is 00:05:06 You have to start to accumulate some of those habits. How do you ingrain some of those habits? Sometimes you're gonna have to go to like a bootcamp almost. Sometimes you're gonna have to really go to war with it. Make these black and white rules to where you're like, I'm doing this for 60 days. I'm doing this for 90 days.

Starting point is 00:05:22 Andy Frisella has 75 hard that he does and it's a challenge and he gets rid of drinking and he tries to have people really commit to something that they would consider to be hard for 75 days. But again, when you get healthy, none of it's hard because you leveled up and you're used to it. So it's a complicated thing to kind of get when you're on the outside and you're very upset and frustrated with where you're at at the moment. But it's those little tiny steps,

Starting point is 00:05:54 that 10 minute walk that you force yourself to do. You pushing off a meal that you know that you shouldn't have. Like those are the harder things to do. The decision to eat the good food isn't really that hard usually for a lot of people. It's the saying no in the circumstances and situations that you're always in where you know the food's going to be compromised, watching a football game or going to the birthday party or whatever social thing it is, right?

Starting point is 00:06:21 Yeah, yeah. In your opinion, can people smash lean protein and fill themselves up a bit and maybe dampen some hunger signals and things like that? Do you feel that that's anything that you've seen work for people? Yeah. So if they're not, I mean, of course, if they're going the drug route, they're able to start eating the lean protein and that type of stuff. But if we're trying to use without medicine, it's hard to overeat a lean protein, right? Like, you know, I always get into it with the keto people online. It's just fun. I don't get into the vegans. The vegans are vicious. They'll just like, so I don't mess around. They're like, oh, you want to kill innocent animals? I'm like,

Starting point is 00:07:01 okay, I don't want to just please leave me alone so i stick with just messing with the keto people so i could overeat ribeyes like put some butter on it put a ribeye i mean it's pretty good yeah take a take like a top sirloin you know without butter on it a little salt on it of course but like it's hard to overeat that it's not as not as pleasurable but it's filling you know you get to a point where you're like fuck yeah or the probably the best the best one like it's really hard for me to overeat salmon or or some sort of fish it's not as palatable as like a beef or maybe even chicken but yeah these types of things are filling you know there's actually there's controversy you know i see the scientists go back and forth about these studies looking at different macronutrients i'm sure you guys have talked about this before but

Starting point is 00:07:48 whether protein is the most satiating but like i tell you what you know of course you're drinking whey protein you're not going to have much of a difference compared to maybe some other types of you know smoothies that's mostly carbs from like fruit or something like that. In fact, the fruit might be more filling cause it's more fiber, but lean like meat, animal based protein. Um, I don't know. I think they need to do more studies on, on that and compare because for me and for patients, it's really hard to overeat that stuff. I have a question cause you know, we had Alan Aragon on a while ago and he's, multiple people, including Lane, some of them have mentioned how protein, even if one tends to overeat protein, and you also see this, oddly enough, in bodybuilders are starting to get leaner, they start to really drive up their protein intake to could be 250, 300, 350 grams. But for some reason, there doesn't seem to be fat gain or weight gain, especially a potentially same or slightly increased caloric amount, but they continue to trend down as far as fat loss is concerned. And there have been certain things that we've said like, oh, maybe protein doesn't count like all the other macronutrients.

Starting point is 00:09:17 Is that a safe statement to make? Or is that just like blasphemer? It's calories in, calories out. to make or is that just like blasphemer it's calories in calories out yeah yeah no it's a good it's so when people are saying you know a calorie is a calorie well okay it's a unit of energy but when people say a calorie is not a calorie what they should probably be saying is a macronutrient not a macronutrient these things are metabolized and utilized just differently in our body and it's hard to take protein and convert it into, you know, triglyceride or adipose. It's, it's, it's, it's really hard to do that. So hypothetically, when you, when you start looking at these overfeeding studies, when people, people start overeating protein and they gain, they can gain weight, but it's like

Starting point is 00:09:59 lean mass, you know? So it's, it's, it's hard. They they've they've tried to look at it it's it doesn't easily convert to adipose now i think probably alan he's a good buddy of mine so is lane so i'm sure they described though like but if you're kind of like alcohol if you're it's actually hard to store alcohol as as fat but like it will it will cause you to store other things that you eat with it as fat. So it's possible eating more protein. If you just start eating more protein along with the fat that you already have in your diet, it's possible then that you'd store more of that fat as fat. These are kind of like hypothetical things.

Starting point is 00:10:37 But as a general rule of thumb, it's hard to store protein as adipose. Kind of seems like if you were to eat like 30 or 40 grams of protein from a fairly lean source, like a chicken breast, or maybe even like a chicken thigh, get a little more fat in there and eat something like an apple that it would really, again, calm your hunger. And that's something that we promote and talk about quite a bit on the show is like, for people that are heavy, we like fasting and stuff like that too, but that's, we, we enjoy it for us, you know, and we, and we'll promote it out to people that, uh, have already had some success in their diet. They're already familiar with the correct foods to eat. I think for some other people, it's, it might not be the greatest place

Starting point is 00:11:21 to start. Um, but I think for most people that are heavy, the best thing for them to do is to really concentrate on not allowing themselves to get too hungry. Because when you get hungry, you get to be out of control. And we've all been grocery shopping before when you're starving and you look at that shopping cart on the way out and you're like, Jesus, I bought a lot of bullshit today. Yeah. You know, I actually like chicken thighs more than chicken breasts. I'm kind of with you. Yeah, the chicken breasts are tough. Yeah, the chicken thighs, they're not that fatty.

Starting point is 00:11:57 I mean, if you get the ones that are relatively skin off and everything, and they just taste so much better. Just get the chicken thighs, unless you're just like prepping for a bodybuilding contest and you need to be like extremely lean um which is you know most of my patients they're not needing to do that some people might actually like the chicken breast more i don't i like chicken thighs but anyway yeah i think focusing on foods that are absolutely filling and more satiating is a great place to start. So just, you know, it's hard to over, you know, people are like, well, fruit has fructose in it, so it's going to make you fat. It's like nobody's gaining weight from eating fruit unless I did have one patient say they couldn't stop eating frozen grapes.

Starting point is 00:12:39 I suppose that might count if you can. Those are delicious. It's good. I was just thinking, too, watermelon is really good. I love eating like a giant. We get watermelon all the time. I eat like a fucking giant bowl of it. I've done that the past two nights.

Starting point is 00:12:55 It's so nice when it's like in season and everything. Yeah. A carton of like strawberries is like 150 calories. I mean, just eat the carton. I mean, whatever. It's a lot of fiber, a lot of good stuff there. So yeah, I think being in this environment and you just – sure, you know you should probably eat this fruit-filling foods. Sometimes it's just hard.

Starting point is 00:13:19 So I agree. Like if you can make sure that you have it, make it tasty enough to where you want it a little bit. We know it's not going to be as good as a donut per se, but if you can focus and try to eat that first and then say, do I want that donut now? That's probably a better bet than just waiting until you're super hungry and then choosing the other foods over the donut. The old weight loss paradigm is totally false. It goes something like this, right? So we're dealing with this obesity epidemic. That's that umbrella health issue. And then underneath are all the connected issues, right?

Starting point is 00:13:53 So dementia, Alzheimer's, diabetes, osteopenia, osteoporosis, cancers. But obesity is kind of the big umbrella issue. And the old paradigm said, okay, in order to lose weight, you need to take in less calories than you burn or put it differently, take in more calories or burn more calories than you take in. And so the formula looked like restrict calories. And then the exercise portion of the formula was like this. They looked at exercise and they valued all exercise for one thing. How many calories does it burn while you do it? So they look at all forms of exercise and they said,

Starting point is 00:14:27 okay, we need to burn more calories. Therefore, the most valuable form of exercise that'll combat obesity, improve our health, is the one that burns the most calories. And the problem with that approach is that it ignores the real and true value of exercise, which is how does this exercise, this form of exercise, get my body to adapt? And then what does that mean? What do those adaptations mean?

Starting point is 00:14:50 So we've ignored that and just looked at the calorie burn. And when you look at just the calorie burn, it does become quite clear, right? Cardio, sure. An hour of running is going to burn more calories than an hour of any other form of exercise, including strength training. The problem is the adaptations that we end up inducing through that form of exercise are not beneficial for the average person who's going to work out two or three days a week who wants to lose weight and improve their health. Well, the adaptations look like this, right? So here's what happens when you exercise. And I'm sure I'm speaking to a lot of people probably already know this. But when you exercise, you stress the body.

Starting point is 00:15:28 And your body aims at getting better at that particular activity. So if I go try running and I've never run before, one block is going to be very difficult. The next day, I might be able to do a block and a half and so on as my body adapts. What's happening to my body as it's adapting for this form of exercise? Well, that form of exercise well that form of exercise burns a lot of calories while i'm doing it doesn't require much strength at all in fact it requires very little strength cardiovascular activity requires minimal strength as evidenced by extreme endurance athletes they're they're they have very little muscle on their bodies

Starting point is 00:15:59 so what the body does is it improves its endurance and it pairs down muscle. Why does it pair down muscle? Because muscle is expensive. It's an expensive tissue. So my body's trying to learn how to do this activity, but burn less calories while I'm doing and burn less calories all the time. I'm trying to become more efficient. So think of it this way. It would be like having an artificially intelligent car that adapted to your driving habits. And then imagine if you drove every single day, you know, 200 miles at 30 miles an

Starting point is 00:16:30 hour, it would turn itself into a very small engine or an electric engine. It wouldn't have much power and it would conserve energy. This is exactly what that old paradigm is causing. Restrict calories, do lots of cardio, slow your metabolism down. So you've gotten your labs done, whether it's six months ago or a year ago, and you want to know where things are at, but you don't want to get a full panel again. That's why I've partnered with Merrick Health, owned by Derek from More Plates, More Dates, and we have something called the Check It Panel. This is an affordable panel with 55 different labs that allow you to see all those different biomarkers. And you can get this channel every month or every two months, whatever frequency you like, but it'll give you all the specific labs that you want to know so

Starting point is 00:17:07 that you can make sure that you're moving in the right direction for your specific hormones. Andrew, how can they get their hands on it? Yes, that's over at merrickhealth.com slash power project. That's M-A-R-R-E-K health.com slash power project. There you guys will see our checkup panel. Load that into your cart and at checkout enter promo code PowerProject10 to save 10% off of that panel. Again, MerrickHealth.com slash PowerProject. Links in the description as well as the podcast show notes. In fact, studies show consistently that when people diet plus cardio, they actually lose half the weight that they lose is muscle. So if you lose 10 pounds, five pounds is muscle, five pounds of body fat. Now, why is this So if you lose 10 pounds, 5 pounds is muscle, 5 pounds is body fat.

Starting point is 00:17:45 Now, why is this a bad thing? It slows down your metabolism. Also, you're not any leaner. You're just smaller. You've lost 5 pounds of muscle and 5 pounds of body fat, which means you're a smaller, same flabbiness, slower metabolism version of yourself. So over time, what is this? And we've all experienced this, either ourselves or definitely clients we've trained or family members you lose weight initially right half of it muscle half of it body fat then you plateau why do you plateau my metabolism slowed down it adapted how do i get it to move anymore oh better do more cardio better cut my calories more eventually at the end of that you're left

Starting point is 00:18:19 with i have to eat 1500 calories a day and I have to run five days a week just to maintain what I've lost, which for the average person is completely unsustainable. And it's done a tremendous disservice to people because nobody's considering the form of exercise that does the opposite to the metabolism, which is strength training and resistance training. strength training, and resistance training. When you do resistance training, although you're not burning tons of calories while you're doing it, the main adaptation is get stronger, build muscle, and that speeds up the metabolism.

Starting point is 00:18:51 And this is what it looks like when you do resistance training as part of your fat loss or weight loss routine. The weight loss starts off slow. You don't lose as much weight initially, although the weight that you do lose is body fat, not muscle, and sometimes you build muscle in the process. But over time that you do lose is body fat, not muscle. And sometimes you build

Starting point is 00:19:05 muscle in the process, but over time you get this snowball, which I would see with clients all the time. I train people and they would, you know, luckily I was very convincing. So they do what I told them. And we would see the snowball effect as the metabolism starts to kick up. Oftentimes at the end of weight loss with resistance training or proper resistance training, you end up with a faster metabolism than you went into. So I might've been overweight before eating 2,200 calories, but now I'm lean eating 2,400 calories, far more sustainable. And there's way more, by the way, that goes into how resistance training affects the body and why it's the superior form of exercise for most people.

Starting point is 00:19:45 In a scenario where the person's running and burning calories, it's great. They're putting in a good effort. They're burning, let's just say, 500 calories, but they're trading out their time for those calories, basically. It's manual. It takes X amount of time to burn 500 calories. What you're saying is, hey, we might be better off maybe going at it from a different point of view. We might be better off just building muscle because muscle will burn more calories for us even when we're at rest.

Starting point is 00:20:13 Yes. And by the way, and I want to make this very clear because when you say building muscle to people like us, we get excited. You say building muscle to the average person. Now, usually men are cool with it. Sometimes guys are even funny about it. Like, I don't want to get big.

Starting point is 00:20:27 You say build muscle to women and they freak out because they think they're getting big. I'll tell you something right now. If I could magically add 10 pounds of muscle to every single woman watching or listening to this podcast right now, they wouldn't look any bigger. They'd just be a lot tighter. They would just feel more firm.

Starting point is 00:20:42 You know, it's funny when I used to manage gyms for a long time, I grand opened health clubs and managed gyms. And one of my jobs as manager was to get people in, to sign them up, make sure that they were consistent, get good results, the whole deal, right? So when I would bring in a potential member, I'd do a tour. And I'd walk through the gym. And if it was a woman, the average woman, I'd walk through and I'd say, oh, here's our cardio. And she'd say, oh, my God, I love this part. Here's our aerobics.

Starting point is 00:21:06 Oh, I can't wait to take the classes. Here's our machines and free weights. Oh, I don't care about that. I'm not trying to get big. Then I would talk about the benefits and why she wants to do this, especially if she's trying to lose weight. And if I still couldn't convince them, we'd go back to my office and I would always have a staff of trainers. And I'm remembering one trainer in particular. It was this young lady.

Starting point is 00:21:27 She was about five foot two and very sculpted. Like she had the body that most women would want. So we'd sit down in my office and I'd say, okay, I tell you what, I'm going to call in one of my female trainers. If you can tell me, if you can guess her weight within 10 pounds, I'll give you a free membership for three months. And of course she would take that challenge absolutely so i'd say okay attention staff so-and-so sells office and would walk in my five foot two personal female personal trainer and i'd

Starting point is 00:21:53 say how much do you think she weighs they would say something like oh she's 105 pounds 110 pounds i'd say okay and i had a scale in my office i'd be like stand on the scale and she'd get on it 135 pounds or 140 pounds and it would blow her mind because people equate weight to lots of mass but when you're talking about muscle it's very very dense and then i would ask this female trainer now tell you know so and so what you ate for breakfast oh i had four egg omelet you know three strips of bacon two pieces of toast what'd you have for Oh, I had a whole burrito from Chipotle. She can eat all this because her body is burning these calories on its own. How would you like to have a metabolism that does that for you so that you don't have to worry about moving all the time?

Starting point is 00:22:39 And by the way, we were just talking about how ineffective that is because it's such a manual way of burning calories. There was a study that blew my mind. It came out, I want to say about five years ago, maybe a little more. Scientists went and studied modern hunter-gatherers. So these are people that live the way we lived 10,000 years ago. Very active. They don't have computers and phones and TVs.

Starting point is 00:23:02 They don't sit down. They're either gathering or they're hunting. And the way that they hunt is the way that we probably hunted thousands of years ago, where you throw a spear at an animal, you wound it, and then you run after it until it gets exhausted. So you're talking about incredible amounts of activity. So they went down and they studied these people's metabolism through some pretty sophisticated testing to see how many calories these people burn. What they found at the end of the study was remarkable they burned roughly the same amount of calories as the average western

Starting point is 00:23:30 couch potato right around the same amount of calories now first you think to yourself like how's that possible but then think about evolution it wouldn't make sense for you to burn 8 000 calories as a hunter-gatherer you're not going to find 8,000 calories out in the wild. You'll die. Their bodies adapted to all that activity by slowing down their metabolism. And this is essentially what people are doing by following this old paradigm of exercise. It's no wonder that 85% or 90% of people fail with weight loss. Of course, you're going to fail with weight loss.

Starting point is 00:24:04 You're setting yourself up for total failure so then is um resistance training with cardio still a good thing or is that something that you just want to avoid if you are you know i guess if you have too much to lose no that's a good question because sometimes we'll get the moniker that we're anti-cardio we're not um i want to be very clear. All forms of exercise have value when applied appropriately. That's an important thing to... Also, wouldn't it be fairly obvious to say that if you were to build more muscle

Starting point is 00:24:33 and you did some cardio, I'm not talking about excessive amounts, that you would be able to burn a great deal of calories more because now you have more muscle mass on you. So that hour jog that someone did or mile jog that someone did when having 160

Starting point is 00:24:45 pounds of muscle on their body is probably quite different than someone having 180 pounds on their body yeah no absolutely and again all form if i were to construct a perfect routine for the average person it would have the base would be strength training then you would have a cardiovascular component a flexibility and a mobility component but But here's the deal. I trained regular everyday people for over two decades and we are totally lying to ourselves if we think we're going to get the average person to work out more than two or three days a week. In fact, two or three days a week is that's us doing a damn good job. That's us doing a really, really good job. And so telling people to do four different forms of exercise, it's not going to happen. You know what they're're going to do if we're lucky and we do a good job and we teach them how to develop

Starting point is 00:25:28 the skill of discipline and you know create these behaviors what they're going to do is going to choose one form of exercise and they'll do it two or three days a week in that context you want to pick the one that gives you the most bang for your buck the one that's going to protect you the most against chronic illness and the one that's going to produce the leanest physique with the least amount of effort and time. Hands down, that's resistance training. There's nothing that comes close. So that's why I talk so much about strength training. Cardio's got its benefits, though.

Starting point is 00:25:55 But, you know, again, average person, when they think I want to lose weight, what do they do? They don't go grab a pair of dumbbells or do body weight strength training or use bands. grab a pair of dumbbells or do body weight strength training or use bands, what they do is they decide they're going to go run or go ride a bike because that's what we've been telling. I say we generally as the mainstream fitness industry, that's what we've been telling people that is the most effective way to lose body fat and get healthy, which is totally false. I think there's a massive misunderstanding of how to even lose weight. I think that people are still very confused, which is interesting because there has been so much information given out over the years on many different podcasts.

Starting point is 00:26:39 And there's been people talking about the calorie equation. There's been people talking about specific diets. It seems like most of these things work for a period of time when someone follows it, but then when somebody gets off of the plan, which makes sense because you had a plan that helped you lose weight, now you're off the plan and you're back to the habits that led you to gain the weight in the first place. So oftentimes people will gain the weight back. There's a lot of evidence that shows that a lot of Americans have lost weight many, many times over, but they just have a hard time keeping it off. And I think one of the biggest mistakes that people can make is to think, is to link exercise and going to the gym with weight loss.

Starting point is 00:27:19 I just don't, I think that's a habit that can really be helpful. I think lifting weights can be a habit that can buy you some insurance and can be a great habit for your future. So if you're a young person now or anybody really, you spend a little bit of time lifting, you're going to increase your metabolism. You're going to chew up carbohydrates. You're going to help prevent disease. There's a lot of great things that come with lifting weights. But lifting weights and or most of the activities that you do in the gym, if it has any benefit toward assisting you to lose body fat, it's a simple fact that you're probably spending an hour or two without eating in my opinion. So in my opinion, the kitchen, the outside world of just basically your nutrition, your eating schedule, that is the most important thing. Your nutrition is the most important thing when it comes to the management of your body weight. The signals that we get from exercise

Starting point is 00:28:20 can help, but they don't help that much. The signal that you get from running, the signal you get from jujitsu, those are all things that can be really, really helpful because it can ingrain a habit. And hopefully you like that habit. Something like jujitsu is a great example. Hopefully you like that habit so much. It doesn't even really seem like you're fitnessing. You're just like you're in a sport and then therefore you're more active and you're able to drop some weight that way. But I think that people too often they tie their body weight. They try to wrap it around just exercising and exercise can be massively helpful. A huge fan of it.

Starting point is 00:28:58 The habit of it is important, but you really won't have the results you're ever looking for unless you can straighten your shit out with your food. Do you think that, you know, kind of what you're saying about people just they don't even know like how to like how to lose weight. Everyone's very, very lost. Do you think that people that are in the gym that are actually lifting, do you think they like over they think that they're expending way more calories than they actually are? You know, as far as like with the food that they're taking in? I do think so. There's also, there's a lot that goes into some of this stuff, but like the rich get richer, you know, the people that are lean and when they do go to the gym, the gym can serve its purpose because someone who's super fit can produce a lot of force.

Starting point is 00:29:44 So someone who's super fit can go on lot of force. So someone who's super fit can go on an assault bike and do 10 sprints and have an amazing workout from it. But if you're weak and you're new and you've never done that before, your workout from the assault bike is not going to be as productive. Like you literally won't burn nearly as many calories. You won't be able to generate nearly the amount of force and you won't be able to liberate the same amount of fat there's some studies on like some high-level runners on how i forget what it is but it's a certain amount of grams that they are liberating certain runners that they're liberating that they're utilizing as an energy source while they're running most people can't

Starting point is 00:30:22 ever even get anywhere close to that. They're working in grams where somebody else might be working in like milligrams or even less than that because they just can't, they're not there yet. So it takes time to build that. And that's why it's good to start with some sort of exercise. It's great to build a habit, but it's going to take some time for that to be as productive as you would want it to even be. I was at one of, I was at my school and it was one of those presidential fitness tests where

Starting point is 00:30:52 they would collect all the height and weight of all the kids and then do all the usual exercises to see where they measure. And I said, this is a very distinct memory. I was in line. The entire school was completely lined up to just have these two women record the height and weight. And one woman was taking the weight and the other one was in line. The entire school was completely lined up to just have these two women record the height and weight. And one woman was taking the weight and the other one was recording it. And I'm in about fourth grade. And I remember hearing the kids in front of me being roughly

Starting point is 00:31:15 like 65 to 70 pounds. And I ended up being up and get weighed. And the woman kind of double took and tried to say under her breath, 110 pounds. What ended up happening was everybody ended up hearing it. And so that was a little bit of a tough situation just because it was one of the first standout moments of my, my weight really differentiating me from people. But that was when I, that was right around the time when I was still able to understand my weight and keep track of my weight. There is, there is a problem because a lot of the scales can only go up to about 300 pounds. Yeah. That's that weight. It's not necessarily healthy to be, but it's also very hard to record your weight. And did you try anything like you personally or your parents? Did anybody try anything to help you lose weight was anything ever successful or no one really did no one really did anything no people actually did

Starting point is 00:32:11 and it was my mom being an overweight woman has done nothing but spend almost all of her mental energy when i was young to try to help me lose my weight and there were two diets prior to the one that actually stuck where i lost my weight, where I lost about 50 pounds. It was a no carb actin set diet and I lost about 50 pounds. But the second I started going back to my old ways, I just gained it. I gained it back and I ended up actually probably netting gaining weight from about two diets before the diet at 17 that I started that actually was successful. that I started that actually was successful. How do you think, uh, I think shame maybe played into this a bit. Cause I know that we use that word and we just always think it's bad. I heard you mentioned that you got ridiculed and made fun of, which really sucks and is extremely hurtful,

Starting point is 00:32:57 but it's great that you, for you personally, it sounds amazing that you were able to keep your social side. Uh, it kind of sounds like without that, your story might be quite different. It might have been too hard to ever even come back from that particular situation. But how do you think kind of shame and pain of being upset about the situation, being made fun of, being teased? How do you think it kind of made you into what you are today? Because you probably have lost, I don't know, almost 300 pounds or something like that. Right around two 50.

Starting point is 00:33:30 I want to say around two 25, since the lockdown happened, I gained a little bit of weight and I don't feel like I've earned the right to say that just yet. However, my story is never ending. So I'll have it back. Right. How do you think shame kind of played into, yeah. Turning you into who you are today? I would say that the negativity that I experienced in my life when I was overweight was probably a

Starting point is 00:33:52 double-edged sword. When I was young and I had lost the weight, so roughly 19 years old, I was a little bit distant from who I was when I was overweight. I had finally gotten myself out of it. And it was just a tough situation where I almost kind of shut it out. And from looking forward and kind of reflecting on it all and learning and growing, the shame today is actually nothing but good because any of the hardship that I experienced when I was overweight, chances are it gave me a little bit more thicker skin today. And I'm just lucky enough to be where I am today in a different situation. So I would say that it was preparatory, but at the time, shame is a large reason why I would stop dieting or stop thinking that at one point in my life, I would ever get out of this weight cycle where I would ever move forward and lose my weight. I definitely would say that had some effect. What do you think ultimately led you to

Starting point is 00:34:49 saying like, this is it, you know, I got to really make a change. And then you actually being able to stick to that change. Two main things stick out. So out of all my reflecting through these years, the two things that really stuck out to help me lose weight. One is rather serious than the one to me is kind of funny. So the one that's kind of funny is I stopped actually fitting into six XL clothes at the big and tall store. So from there, it might not seem that important of an intrinsic motivation to lose weight is that. However, what am I going to wear? Where do I go from there?

Starting point is 00:35:23 If the big and tall store no longer has anything in my size, is there a bigger and bigger tall store? No, there's not. So that's one of them. And the second one's just a little bit more serious. I ended up having a really good high school experience in terms of my professors and teachers. They really took a liking to me. I've always been a lifetime student and I try to stay humble and they always seem to gravitate towards truly liking me. And there was one day that I was out on a hike, not even a hike. That's a terrible way to word it because I was out on a very small walk around this little college campus that was right across the street from my school. And I was out with one of my professors. And I actually, just from probably 10 minutes of the light, light walking, I ended up

Starting point is 00:36:07 having a pretty bad asthma attack. I never really had any asthma attacks, but I've had asthma my whole life. And I just remember practically 50 feet outside of my school's door to cross the street, I was winded. And by the end of maybe half of the walk, I ended up having to have my professor go back to the school to get my inhaler to come back and then let me have my inhaler to then let me get back to the school. The coming to terms with being so out of shape that even something that the simplest of human that, you know, I was I was a young man. My professor was probably 20, 30 years older than me, and he's just fine walking around. And, you know, I've always been observant. And that was just one of the straws that broke the camel's back, so to speak, because I genuinely have never felt that way in terms of asthma attack.

Starting point is 00:36:57 Since when I was young, I went to one of those medieval dinner theaters, and I found out the hard way through this experience that I was allergic to horses. My throat closed because there were so many horses around. And I self-induced that same feeling by just simply walking. And that was terrifying to me. So when you start all of the changes at 17, I'm curious, first, like later on what diet you did, but how did you start changing your habits in terms of just the way that you lived versus what you were doing before? I'm curious about how you were living before in terms of how sedentary you were, et cetera. But what physical things did you start to change and slowly move towards that were some big needle movers for you? Absolutely. So I would say it's actually been more of a step-by-step process.

Starting point is 00:37:54 My weight had gotten so out of control that looking at it now, it was just so many things to try to tackle right away. And so initially my thought was to change my eating habits. And in terms of diets, there's probably no specific diet that this is called. But what I did was I logically thought of the food that I could eat almost every day. And I stuck to those foods and the way I would kind of spice it up and also just, you know, be a human and not just live in the same modality my whole life would be like different sauces, teriyaki sauce or barbecue sauce. my whole life would be like different sauces, teriyaki sauce or barbecue sauce. But what I tended,

Starting point is 00:38:31 what I tended to stick to was some form of one rotisserie chicken the entire day. And I would break it up and put it into little containers, a baked potato, some rice and Caesar salad. And then from there, the where I found my variety was different dressings, different sauces, but my young mind and my family at the time, because I was young also helped me figure out what to eat. And those just seemed like the logical things to gravitate towards all of the foods that I ate before I lost my weight were the typical over-caloric large plate meals. And that was just probably one of four or five meals per day when it came to the diet and the weight loss that actually stuck. And it really moved me

Starting point is 00:39:14 forward in my life. It was more doable because I stopped caring about, um, how do I word this? I stopped allowing myself to think that that was true food, true food. And my mom actually gets credit for this food should be looked at as fuel, not something that's an enjoyment or a scapegoat. And that's always been a mantra to this day, looking at food as fuel. That's wonderful. I start a lot of people there when I communicate with somebody about their kind of weight loss journey.

Starting point is 00:39:51 I'll sometimes ask them, I'll say, what's your favorite food? And they might say pizza. And I'll say, let's try again. I'll say, what's your favorite food? And they'll say French fries. And I'm like, what's a real food that you like? You know, and I think that's really brilliant what you did. You said because you had previous experience at times in your life of trying diets, the diets did work.

Starting point is 00:40:17 You mentioned you lost weight a couple different times. But when you went off of those plans, they didn't work, which is obvious because then you're back to your old habits. But very intuitive of you to recognize, hey, those experiences I had before weren't necessarily bad. I just didn't enjoy the food enough to really stick with it. So what are some foods? How do I meet myself halfway on this? And I think that is a really great place for people to start. Did you end up still cheating a lot and messing up on the diet here and there?

Starting point is 00:40:48 And if you did, how did you, how'd you have enough positive self-talk to keep putting one foot in front of the other? So for some reason, and I really attribute it to the asthma attack and just when you can't wear clothes at that size anymore, that is kind of like, so to speak, rock bottom. And so a lot of it I attribute to those leaving any excuse that might have given me a choice to stop my diet, leaving. But there's another part of it where when I started this specific diet, the one that had success and the one that took, at the very beginning, it was really, really easy to stick to. And when it comes to the cheating element of my diet, I'm a human and willpower is just about as depletable of a system as a muscle energy. So I did absolutely allow myself to eat.

Starting point is 00:41:37 But what I ended up doing was I structured it so that on my birthday, on holidays, I just stopped caring about what a diet would be and the hard part. But what I taught myself to do through that was the day after it doesn't matter what you did, just go back to it. Prior to that, like with the first initial diet, it would be if I cheated for a day, my mindset would be, well, you've cheated already. You're off your diet. Why not just let this bleed into the next day or the next? And that attitude, I just don't know if I could afford it the time to have anymore because at that age, you know, at any age, if you have weight issues and you just feel different, you're very aware of it.

Starting point is 00:42:20 The mirror every day will remind you. So at the end of the day, more times of just looking in the mirror and more times of realizing what I've become just gave me a little bit more motivation this time because this was the first time that my health was in question. a simple tip for people to just lose body fat i know you did mention earlier that you think that people that are training and training pretty hard should maybe only go for those lower body fat percentages one time per year and i think that that's pretty cool but what are some just like someone just wants to make some small changes and they just want to lose a little bit of body fat i mean the number one is learn to enjoy the process of losing the weight or you're never gonna you're never gonna keep it off anyways. And that's because you have this goal, but once you hit that goal, you don't get to stop.

Starting point is 00:43:10 And also, once you hit that goal, if it's a goal that's something you're going to actually maintain, you've already made new goals by then. And so you have to find something you can stick to. And that's just the biggest problem because we don't gain weight overnight. People talk about the holidays, they gain weight over the holidays.

Starting point is 00:43:27 The average American gains one pound, holidays and gain weight over the holidays the average american gains one pound that's it over the holidays but they never lose that pound you know the average american typically gains about a pound over the summer months summer months too you know and then maybe like one other time they go on a binge or something so you say the average american maybe gains three pounds a year they just never lose it so if you you know you live 30 years, that's 90 pounds. Boom, you're fat. And so it's really understanding that. You just have to reverse that. So we can try to lose those 90 pounds in three weeks, which isn't going to happen, and it's certainly not going to be something that you can stick to,

Starting point is 00:43:55 or you can try to make better food choices and try to move more. And that's really as simple as it is for most people, because most people, all their weight gain is in the meals they eat out of the home, almost always. When you're eating in the home, most people eat within 100 calories, all their weight gain is in the meals they eat out of the home, almost always. When you're eating in the home, most people eat within 100 calories per day of their BMR all the time. Because even eating 100 calories more is 10 pounds of fat a year. So obviously we do. When do we not?

Starting point is 00:44:16 Almost always when we're eating out. Well, what do we do when we go out? We're like, that looks good, that looks good, that looks good. Appetizers. Yeah. Dessert. If people simply went from picking of these four foods, which one tastes the best to which one of these four foods that I want is healthiest. If that's all you did. So you're already picking foods you want to eat.

Starting point is 00:44:36 Just pick the healthier version of that. And you're probably going to cut several hundred calories out every single time. And now you do that over 20 years. Now you don't gain 50 pounds. every single time and now you do that over 20 years now you don't gain 50 pounds i wanted to ask about i'm sorry if i missed it but um like cardio that you recommend for people for dropping fat not necessarily because you just mentioned walking which is good for every uh for everybody but some of your athletes like what what do you recommend well in general i recommend hit actually but i do it a different a different way i don't do like 15 my guys aren't running sprints they're

Starting point is 00:45:04 not athletes. Most of my clients are. But I have most people do the same type of hit. So what I'm thinking is we need to perform in the gym. And what's like the hardest set in the gym? Like a higher up set of squats, set of 20 on squats, or like a set of 12 on deadlifts. You don't do them very often.

Starting point is 00:45:20 But when you do them, you don't want your lungs to be the failure point. So I have people do one minute hard, one minute light. And it's kind of self-deciding how hard you push because you have to work hard for that minute, but it can't be so hard that you can't recover in the next minute. But then what that does is then it makes training. Now training, we can just focus on training. No matter what we're doing, our muscles are the failure point, not our lungs. It increases appetite. You get a little bit of EPOC, elevated post-exercise oxygen consumption consumption but that's probably on the order of like a few tens of calories a day so

Starting point is 00:45:49 not really much but you get it it's better than nothing and then it also allows us to get a basically i have people do like 12 minutes of that kind of a standard three or four times a week and that's replacing 20 minutes of pretty decently hard cardio you get to do it you know 55 of the time you know and you're only really doing six hard minutes they suck you know because it's you're talking like level 12 or 13 or for me like on the step mill which you know for someone in shape that's probably not much but for me i feel like i'm dying you know i dropped down to like level two or three for the next minute and go back and forth like that and it improves everything your appetite improves your your body

Starting point is 00:46:24 fat level stay a little bit lower you can eat more calories now you can eat so you have more nutrients passing through the body to build muscle or whatever yeah you know so yeah and obviously you're healthier that's a good way of regulating it because like that minute you can only go so hard if you have 15 seconds you can go balls to the wall or even 10 seconds right but that minute puts a it puts a governor on how how hard you're going to go so they can actually maintain that yeah for me i thought i mean like i don't want to say running especially but the running for what it does as far as what your heart rate is what your calorie count is is really good cardio for all overall health but you're not

Starting point is 00:46:59 going to get bodybuilders to run and this is about as close as i can get to getting them similar to what what running would do this is from pay the man okay what are the best bang for your buck forms of cardiovascular exercise you can pair with a weekly lifting schedule that will help you lose weight every week raise working capacity as well as look and be conditioned it's a lot of you want a lot what else do you fucking want bro that's a lot of things at one time i think you know sometimes with a question like this um i think sometimes people have to try to probably find more unconventional ways to like lose body weight or lose body fat although um you know figuring out ways to make better food choices and things like that are are really important i

Starting point is 00:47:52 would say if i was to start at a hierarchy uh with i don't know this individual i don't know how much weight they're trying to lose and those kinds of things but i'm imagining they probably have more than like 20 pounds of body fat to lose. And they'd probably like to just, you know, knock off at least half of that in a fairly short period of time. My hierarchy would be much different than it would have looked like many years ago. I would say the first thing that you need to start to try to gain a little bit better habit with is your sleep.

Starting point is 00:48:22 Just because if your sleep is compromised and messed up, it makes all your other decision making harder. It's just going to make your diet harder. It's going to make your training harder. It's going to make your resting heart rate different. It's going to make everything different. It's going to make everything worse. And fatigue makes cowards of us all and it makes the decision making skills a little bit harder. So sleep would be the first thing I would work on. do your best to try to at least lay down every night for seven to eight hours something like that beef power project family it is grilling season now i really don't know much about grilling since i use an air fryer at home my boy andrew does though

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Starting point is 00:49:36 Try to maybe start to get yourself to bed a little bit earlier than what you used to, maybe about a half an hour earlier, maybe an hour earlier. Put your phone away a little earlier, get away from blue light a little earlier. I recommend, you know, trying to get some sunlight in the morning. I think that really helps with your circadian rhythm. I've also been going outside at night and, uh, just going outside for just a few minutes every night. And that seems to relax me when it's dark outside. I think some of those things will really be helpful. And then in terms of trying to lose weight week in and week out, I would say weigh yourself.

Starting point is 00:50:13 Weigh yourself like once a week. I would, you know, try to do your best with protein leveraging, eating, you know, eating good amounts of protein every day. And then picking an energy source. Like do you want to mainly utilize carbohydrate or do you want to mainly utilize fat? Pick one or the other, or if you're going to pick carbs, you've got to keep the fats lower. If you're going to pick fats, then you've got to keep the carbs lower just so you're not overeating, you're not overdoing it. And I think that would be a good place to start.

Starting point is 00:50:43 And in terms of cardiovascular exercises, I think you can get a lot of bang for your buck with something like an assault bike. It seems like that's, there's just a lot of like a lot of energy you can expend on that damn assault bike. So those would be some of my recommendations. Sleep is huge. So like Mark mentioned there, all those things that'll make everything else easier. When you need to stick to your diet so that you don't overeat, if you haven't gotten enough sleep, all of that's going to be worse. So just really try to make sure you have that down. Now, you mentioned multiple things. You mentioned that you want to lose weight and you want to raise work capacity. And then I combined both. You said you want to look and be conditioned.

Starting point is 00:51:23 Look good, looking conditioned means you want to lose weight. And being conditioned means you want to increase your capacity. So take your weight once a week. And also don't be focused on losing weight every single week. Because some weeks you might be a little bit more stressed. Some weeks you might have been overdoing it for the past six weeks. And because of all that stress, you might be holding on to water or your body is just like stuck and your weight might be stuck or it might go up a little bit. So yeah, weigh yourself once a week, but it's a really good idea to take measurements of yourself. Take measurements of

Starting point is 00:51:53 your waist, take measurements of your hips, take measurements of your chest area. Because some of these areas, especially the areas that you hold more fat, might be decreasing even on the weeks that your weight stays the same. That happens a lot. When I was working with competitors, there would be three weeks where their weight didn't move, but their waist measurement went down consistently and their glute measurement continued to go down because that's the place where they held more fat. That shows you that you're still making progress despite not seeing the scale go down. Another thing to remember is if you're looking for the scale to go down every single week all the time, sometimes you might be losing weight too fast.

Starting point is 00:52:25 You might be doing too much. You might be losing muscle, which is going to fuck with your performance, right? You're not going to be able to put out the type of – you want to increase your work capacity. Well, if you're not able to put out what you need to do to increase work capacity, those workouts are going to be useless. So you need to eat enough to do that, right? I love what you said about the assault bike. Cause I use my assault bike like three times a week. Um, I'll legit just do like a 15 minute or some this morning. It was like a, this morning it was 12 minutes, but I'll do, um, circuits on it. So I'll do 30 hard seconds, a minute, 10, you know, slow 30 hard seconds. and i try to keep it nasal the whole time

Starting point is 00:53:05 um and then when i really output maybe the last two maybe my mouth will open a little bit but like my work capacity has been increasing so much just from that 12 to 15 some days when i want to go a little bit harder 20 minutes of doing those intervals on that assault bike i've noticed the difference in jujitsu i've noticed the difference in how i can have higher work capacity with a lot of these things that assault bike's fucking killer i think the salt bike is amazing because you can recover from it so if in semo is going to a track and sprinting that would be great exercise would be great work and maybe we'd see some improvements maybe you would even get like leaner than normal but the impact on the body would be would be rough. So that's why a machine can sometimes be better.

Starting point is 00:53:46 And if the person that we're communicating with, um, if you're, you know, if you're 250 plus pounds or you're 300 pounds or you're an older person, you might even just want to start out on like an elliptical. I know people tend to think those things are silly or whatever, but you can work your ass off on those things. So just go to whatever level you need to go to to be able to get a great workout, have tons of output, but not have any damage. Yes. So going and sprinting would be fucking awesome. And we know how jacked and ripped sprinters are. It's kind of hard.

Starting point is 00:54:18 You'll be you'd have a hard time finding someone that does like under, you know, someone that does 400 meters or under, um, at a high level, that's over 10% body fat. It's just, you very rarely see it. So we know that sprinting is amazing. However, uh, can have a lot of negative impact on the body. So probably pick some sort of machine to do some of your sprinting on. Yeah. Um, one other thing I think might be a good idea if you're, you know, if you're trying to get into the, to running, cause obviously you've been running a lot, so there's a lot of people that are trying to get into running, right? Something that my girlfriend will do, and I'll do it with her sometimes, is we'll go on walks. And walking is super important in general, right? But like sometimes she'll just be, okay, let's do a jog for like a minute.

Starting point is 00:55:00 And we'll just go on a little jog. We'll run a little bit for like a minute, and then we'll walk again. And we'll just go on a little jog. We'll run a little bit for like a minute and then we'll walk again. So depending on where you're starting with your skill of running, run walks are a great introduction to being able to get yourself to be able to run a good distance. We've talked about that a bit. But that's easy. It's something that won't cause too much fatigue but it will move you in the right direction.

Starting point is 00:55:27 Something like a run walk is amazing for multiple reasons because you can conserve energy when you're walking and you can actually put more into the running. And again, if you're choosing to run and not necessarily jog, then you can go a lesser distance. You don't have to go as far. And then if you're also choosing to run instead of sprint, then you can end up with a good speed. You can actually look at your speed. You can get one of these apps and you can look at your mile time, mile time and you could be excited and you can be like, dude, this is kind of cool. I'm keeping like a six minute mile pace or seven minute mile pace for 30 seconds. It's kind of fun to do it. And then when you walk, you'll see it like track back up and it might be, uh, that you're at like a 15 or 16 minute mile pace. And you can, you can kind of

Starting point is 00:56:03 leverage that excitement and utilize that to get yourself through some good workouts i would say if you are going to run see this guy mentioned being like like having good conditioning and things like that wants good yeah running is great to help build out an aerobic capacity so so jogging here and there so if we had to kind of break it all down hit some sprints on the assault, maybe go out and do maybe over a period of time, get yourself to be able to do a longer run. That's, that's a nice, easy jog. Like 20 minutes. And you might want to start out with like a jog walk at first.

Starting point is 00:56:36 So you can keep most of it in the nasal breathing category. And I would like to see people eventually go from like 20 minutes to being able to go to like 40, 45. A lot of the, I'm not a huge fan of like just studies, but there is a lot of research that kind of points to the fact that if you can get yourself towards an hour of zone two cardio every week that it has a lot of great health benefits. So that would be a good thing for this guy to aim for over time.

Starting point is 00:57:03 He could do it all in one chunk or he can break it out into two separate workouts over time. So sprint on the assault bike, start to work your way into figuring out how to get about an hour of a jog in there somewhere. And then even in addition to that, you can do some walks and some running in between. And a very small tip with the assault bike that I really dig about assault bikes is that it has that thing that you can see your wattage. So when I do my sprints, I pay attention. Like, I think when I was starting out on the assault bike, for those 30 seconds, it would be really hard for me to maintain a wattage of like 600, right? I was like, Ooh, okay. But after a few

Starting point is 00:57:40 workouts, now my goal is do not let your wattage go below 700 when you're in your sprint, right? So you'll feel that lactic acid buildup. So you'll know like what's reasonable for your sprint. Maybe your wattage is 500 and that's when you're like, oh, okay. So I'm just not going to allow myself to go under a 500 wattage. And then you can slowly – like you'll be able to literally see how your work capacity increases by gauging the wattage on your sprint sessions so then at a certain point you're fucking you know you're just not letting it go under 700 for that 30 second period and you are that you have you can it's a measurable difference in your work capacity it's

Starting point is 00:58:15 fucking awesome then there's some like more a little bit tougher stuff you can uh work on if you really want to challenge yourself you can work in like a three to eight minute range and you can really like really make it tough like that it is yeah like like a tabata type thing could be really good um or you can do because what that'll do is that'll help push up your um that'll help with your vo2 max and so some vo2 max training can be really good i know we're giving you like a lot of shit to do but these aren't things that all have to be done in the context of like one week. You can spread them out throughout the month periodically. But basically, if you just work as hard as you can within reason and do multiple sets of, let's just say,

Starting point is 00:59:01 three to four sets of three to four minutes on something like an assault bike, you'll get a lot of reward from that. I actually think that that type of exercise will help people with so many things. I think it will help with their sleep. I think it will help with people are hypoxic, like they're not getting enough oxygen when they're sleeping. And so I think by breathing hard, if you kind of think about it, by breathing really hard, you know, they talk about heart rate variability, but I think we need some breathing variability. Some people don't have the ability to like some people, if you got them, if you pushed them really, really hard on something, they would be like, they like wouldn't be able to catch their breath really good. But somebody that's in really good

Starting point is 00:59:40 shape would just be like a couple of times and they would be able to start to calm down from it. So you want a nice variety with your ability to breathe. So a little bit of VO2 max training would be kind of dope too. You know, one of the things that we've been talking about more recently and something that we're kind of obsessed with is, you know, how do we get some people to kind of take that first step? Because there's people that are, they have challenges. Maybe they, uh, were abused when they were children and now nowadays they're obese and they have had many, uh, medical issues and now they need kind of like a medical intervention. And yes, it'd be great for them to go to the gym. We all love lifting. It'd be great for them to

Starting point is 01:00:19 walk and do all those things. But, uh, some people are, um, they're like not ready for it. So what are some like first steps that somebody, or when you meet somebody and you start kind of walking them through how they're going to like get better? I know there's like medical intervention, like there's all kinds of things. You can use pharmaceuticals can assist and stuff like that. Well, the first thing I am going to tell you may be somewhat surprising. Individuals oftentimes, more often than not, do not have a great relationship with their provider where that person feels not only like family but also a friend and someone they can count on.

Starting point is 01:00:56 And above and beyond any intervention, the first thing that needs to be established is a relationship. I would tell that person to be open-minded and forget their experiences that they had previously with their provider because ultimately that's what the sticky point is. It's actually not the action because when you have a teammate, you're willing to show up for that teammate. If you have a coach, a trainer, a coach, you're willing to show up for that coach. Many people that are in a point of being stuck in their life

Starting point is 01:01:31 have had very bad experiences with the medical profession previously. And or they might just have a stigma associated with like, I don't want to go to the doctor. They're just going to tell me that I need to exercise and that I'm fat and they're going to be rude and mean and make me do stuff I don't want to do. Right. Therefore, the first step is actually finding a provider and an individual you connect with and trust above and beyond anything and knowing that you can count on them.

Starting point is 01:02:01 Along with that, though, a lot of people go to a doctor. My mom has gone to a doctor before, and he's told her to eat less protein, eat less meat. And with her, with all the information that she's gotten over the years of watching Oprah, Dr. Oz, right, there seems to be this effort to get people to eat less meat and get more plant-based protein. Then when you go to your doctor and then they tell you you probably should try eat less meat and get more plant-based protein. Then when you go to your doctor and then they tell you, you probably should try eating less meat too. You wonder, why is there such a divide between some of the information that we're getting from people in the fitness space and then the medical space seems to be spitting in that? That is a great question. And the first thing that I would say and bring up is that it's very hard to

Starting point is 01:02:45 be good at everything. What I mean by that is physicians are trained in medicine. They are typically not trained in nutritional sciences, which is essentially, you know, it's somewhat of a difficult position. But I also believe that physicians shouldn't be required to be trained in nutritional sciences. And the reason is, is because it takes a lot of effort and education, right? I did seven years of nutritional training. I don't expect my husband who is going to be a reconstructive urologist to also be able to be in that domain and put attention, time and attention to that. Reconstructed urologist. Guy's a total loser. But, I don't know.

Starting point is 01:03:30 He's going to be building some dicks? Yeah, totally. We're an amazing human. Hey, listen, I got something for you to build, okay? Can he fix it if it ain't broken? Like, can you make it better? He wants to be a robocop. He's still got his training going. can he fix it if it ain't broken like you make it better hey listen i always joke that muscle is the organ of longevity and shane my husband always says listen there's another organ of longevity that uh yeah let's go yeah so um the concept that a physician is giving nutritional advice is challenging to me because it, in one hand, is incredibly necessary.

Starting point is 01:04:08 They're the primary intervention point. The flip side of that is where are they getting their information? And the challenge is typically, not all physicians, but typically physicians are not trained to look at nutritional science research. It's very different than medical interventions. There's a lot of nuances. It's a whole different space in and of itself. The difficulty is the individuals in charge perpetuate a narrative to eat less meat, not because of good evidence, to eat less meat, not because of good evidence, but because of some of the fundamental beliefs at the top, which typically is to eat more plant-based, to reduce red meat consumption, because it's somewhat of an anti-animal narrative.

Starting point is 01:04:57 Might be also an effort to just lower calories. Quite possibly. However, if that were the case, a good choice would be having a discussion about increasing lean meats and decreasing overall processed foods. Something simple versus saying that individuals should eat less red meat. It's amazing the impact that that can have. Just what you just said right there. You didn't say to completely get rid of processed foods, which would be amazing if people could figure that out, but that's hard. You and I, just during your stay here, we're talking about like cookies and donuts and- Which by the way, Mark is eating under the table. You said carrot cake. It was weird. I was like-

Starting point is 01:05:37 I may or may not have had that yesterday. Yeah. I don't know. He took me for a run and then we worked out all day. She's like, I deserve carrot cake. I don't know. Anyway. Carrot cake. People don't have, they don't have to. Yeah, right?

Starting point is 01:05:53 Yeah, you get a lot of fiber from the carrot, right? And the beta carotene. Gotta do something. We gotta be able to fit carrot cake into the diet. Anyway, you didn't say that they need to completely cut it out and you mentioned increasing the protein. What happens when people increase protein? There is something called the protein leverage hypothesis. You guys are familiar with that and it's that an individual will eat their protein need in terms of there's this biological drive for these amino acids, which is what make up protein, that they will continue to feed until they meet that need.

Starting point is 01:06:28 So one of the things, the theories is as you increase dietary protein, your hunger mechanisms kick in and you eat your amount and you no longer are driven to continue to consume. When you have a more optimal protein diet, your hunger is under control. Your muscle is fed well, right? Your blood sugar has a potential to remain stable, of course, assuming that calories and carbohydrates are in check. So you might potentially eat a Give Me S'mores, Ben & Jerry's, and not be satisfied or filled because you don't have, there's not much protein in there. Right. And also it's affecting blood sugar, you know, we got an issue with Ben and Jerry's. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm getting closer to the size I

Starting point is 01:07:15 tell myself and the size I actually am. So I'm a little closer to the five. So yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I was texting Russell during the show. I was like, man, maybe he can slide in here to ask a question to Dr. Nadolski. Yeah, definitely. Nadolski. Spencer. Spencer. To your point, losing a little bit of weight,

Starting point is 01:07:35 gaining even less muscle, getting a little bit healthier. You're gaining a good amount of muscle, dude. You're in the gym. I see you in the gym lifting all the time. It's fucking dope. He's got some sunlight on him, too. The face good the arm looking good it's these uh little tan i heard from someone to take these um what do they call 10 minute walks oh yeah outside and uh chris

Starting point is 01:07:57 is always saying peel so i've been peeling with chris peeling being this big and walking around your block with no shirt on, I get looks. Oh, okay. Yeah, I've been peeling lately. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The confidence, though. I mean, me personally, like, I have a hard time taking my shirt off walking with these guys. But, like, that's huge.

Starting point is 01:08:15 What did that feel like? Well, I mean, whenever you go to the pool, I mean, like, the sooner you kind of, like, go, listen, I mean, I know I'm kind of a fatty, kind of. The sooner you kind of like go, listen, I mean, I know I'm kind of a fatty, kind of, but I just got to like live my best life, love me as who I am and still effort to be better. It just makes a big difference, right? Mm-hmm. Right. We just got told about Obesity Week and we had to apologize because we started to laugh, but we were thinking Obesity Week, it kind of felt like we get to eat whatever we want. Mm-hmm. What do you think when you hear obesity week?

Starting point is 01:08:46 Like, okay, I have a multifaceted opinion about this, right? Like, again, you want to love yourself. You want to be good to yourself. But like being fat in and of itself is not like any admirable quality, right? The level of it being like, I'm so nervous. The level of it being like a negative is, I mean, it affects your health. I think sometimes some of these moral judgments that get associated with it are a little off putting. Right. Because they may or may not be true. Right. But in all cases, they're not true. Yeah. Right. So, I mean, yeah, like you want to see clothing companies that have shirts for fatties. Right. And I think that's just good business. But like the clout chasing part of it, it's kind of insulting, insulting and sort of like

Starting point is 01:09:37 like brands, like, like posting pictures of just like really large people or something like, is that what you mean? The clout chasing, like, Ooh, we're also in support like is that what you mean the cloud chasing like oh we're also in support is that what you mean yeah like you don't want i mean i've had i've had people say well hey like i've been told you shouldn't be on the church drama team because you're fat and we don't want to put that out to the world right so damn i mean so like there's just such a wide margin you know extreme attitudes on any side usually sounds ridiculous yeah right you got to find like the common sense middle so yeah and do you think some of the common sense middle has kind of been lost i mean is this a common sense society we live in right there's common sense seems to be out the door streams it doesn't get attention right yeah i think uh

Starting point is 01:10:20 you know something that's you and i talk about quite a bit, it's, I guess people don't know how to, like, I don't think that people understand what it's like to be a heavier person and what it's like, like, I think it's hard for people to gain perspective. And you've given me wonderful perspective because we've had so many conversations about it uh but like my urges are just they're different than yours right you know and i think that uh when we talk about like pain like we know better than to judge your pain versus my pain right uh my brother dying versus you having someone die in your life there's no reason for us to compare those things maybe something uh hit me differently at a different time or maybe something hit you differently a different time maybe you have a different interpretation of uh those things but when when you go through a time where you're thinking about making a decision towards eating something that you already know is not in your best interest, how fucking hard is that for you to block?

Starting point is 01:11:30 And are you getting a little bit more successful at it or does it sometimes feel like – because you've lost like 60 pounds, maybe even a little bit more. You were 505 or 515 if you don't mind me saying. Right. I was like 510, 550. Yeah. And now you're 456 this morning. 45 was like 510 550 yeah yeah and now you're four or 456 yes yeah thanks man so right this uh distinction between hunger and appetite is real like hunger is pretty manageable right you you feel the sensations of hunger in your gut it's a little

Starting point is 01:11:59 rumble in the tummy a little uncomfortable you're like oh i'm hungry i should eat or i want to eat or whatever. But appetite is like a different thing. Appetite. I was trying to – I was listening to your guest today and like I feel appetite in the back of my head. It's like a tingle. It's a drive. It's a drive like you're stressed.

Starting point is 01:12:19 You're stressed. You need to eat. You're stressed. You need to eat. It's broken. I mean, I know it's broken. But sometimes, and I was trying to explain this to Mark the other day. Oh, I get nervous. You can be as nervous as you'd like and you can cry and you can laugh and you can get mad.

Starting point is 01:12:35 You can do whatever you'd like. All this panic, flop sweat, I'm just going to say it's tears. And it'll be fully accepted. But like sometimes you get stressed. And then you're dealing with like the nuances of that stress. And then like this new monster shows up, Oh, you really should eat that will kill the stress. And then now you're fighting two fights in your own head. And I, I mean, I've, I, it was the other night, I think I might've texted you.

Starting point is 01:12:59 I literally had to yell at myself like this internal yelling, like, stop. You are not going to act out on this desire to binge, eat trash food right now. You know, and I hope as I get cleaner and I get better at this and my gut biome and my neurochemistry and my pathways in my brain, that, you know, hopefully I can form new pathways and defeat this once and for all. I certainly hope that it's not going to just be a lifetime of battles when you do lose though you're not losing the same way like it's it's less right like when you uh are having a binge i don't from what i understand it doesn't seem like it's anything like what you were doing maybe previously yeah i mean it just you know i identified a long time ago that there is just this broken autopilot that drives my appetite. And whenever I let go of the wheel, it just wants to just take me to bad places.

Starting point is 01:13:53 And I just have to fight it. Maybe you're right. Maybe the habits are starting to change. I hope so. It's been a lifelong fight. Some years I'm more focused than others in fighting this fight. This year I've been pretty focused. Last year I've been pretty focused. And the gains are coming slow, but I have to keep pushing, right? Yeah, how long has it been? You lost about 60 pounds or so, and how long has that taken you? Because that's always the question how long did it take i know i mean it's been like almost a year and a half yeah but what i have gained is so much more mobility like in spite of my my flat sweat

Starting point is 01:14:31 right now and the ability to walk around the block well that's all it's gonna say only like kind of partially walked around the building first time i think i used to get very winded just going back and forth to the dumpster outside the outside our house chris wanted to take me for a walk one time we started at your front door. By the back door, I was like, hey, man, I'm sorry, but I don't want to see what happens another hundred yards down the road. And he was always really cool about it and so forth. And now we do the walk.

Starting point is 01:14:57 We do the one-mile walk. So, I mean, my mobility, my ability to stay active and hold a little certain level of just not being, you know, of light activity has really gone up a lot. And like, of course, I want to lose more weight and I want to open up more opportunities in my life. You know, I want to go on a roller coaster someday, right? With my kids.

Starting point is 01:15:18 But just being able to go walk and I mean, I know it sounds silly. No, it doesn't. It can be so easily taken for granted, but I was right on the edge. You know, I, I was pretty immobile before, before COVID, COVID hit. I got super paranoid, big fatty, everything inside said, you know, you need to this now or never right now or never. But I just found myself staying inside all the time, ordering food in afraid to go out and get COVID, you know know didn't like to wear the mask because you think i look bad right now i get so claustrophobic when i wear a mask yeah i feel my hot air coming back to my face you're in the checkout aisle in the grocery store you know everyone's like oh look at the fatty what's the fatty got in their grocery cart right

Starting point is 01:15:59 and everyone wants to get so tight and i would just have these like this panic tech right now is a mild one i would have have major ones at the grocery store. I started ordering everything in. And like I don't know if I've even told you. I'm like about 15 pounds away from losing my COVID weight. That's how bad – I gained just over a year. I gained like 80 pounds in just over a year. I gained like 80 pounds in just over a year. So, you know, it was just, but what do you do, right?

Starting point is 01:16:32 You don't roll over. You know, I have things I want to do in my life. I have kids to look, to love and look after a wife I want to share my life with. That's been the cool thing is that you've still been doing it. Yeah. And we've talked about that. Like the only way for you to fail or for you to lose is for you to quit right exactly haven't quit like you might have a day that's bad you might have two days that's bad or whatever it might be still get back on plan like you're checking in with me and my

Starting point is 01:16:53 brother we're kind of starting to do that for each other like every day and just trying to stay on top of it because if you don't stay out in front of it you know what could happen is is not great right yeah i mean it it snowballs fast right it snowballs fast that i just have to be very intentional and and learn how to fight this fight against the appetite better right have a plan have have have healthier sources to relieve my stress call text a buddy yeah you know go for a walk you know do other things do other things

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