Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1465: The Truth About Health at Every Size

Episode Date: January 11, 2021

In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin discuss recent Cosmopolitan covers and the health at every size movement. Why Cosmopolitan isn’t the place to go for health information. (3:34) What the “health at every size” ACTUALLY means. (8:20) The history surrounding obesity and how there is a wide range of body types. (12:31) Why being “healthy” encompasses A LOT of things. (19:10) What loving yourself really means. (27:17) Related Links/Products Mentioned December Special (Extended until Jan. 10th, 2021): 3 MAPS Bundles for your level of fitness! Visit Legion Athletics for the exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Code “mindpump” at checkout** Cosmopolitan Cover Promotes Plus Size Women as ‘Healthy’ @mindpumpsal post “Health at every size” Health At Every Size Community Resources Loneliness: A disease? Workout Because You Love Yourself Not Because You Hate Yourself – Mind Pump Blog Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mite, op, mite, op with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You are listening to the number one fitness health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Plum. Now, in today's episode, we talk about something that's been circulating on social media quite a bit lately. Cosmo did a couple covers where they had some women on the covers that were what you could say, objectively obese. And it also said this is healthy. It triggered a lot of people in the fitness space.

So we wanted to cover this and talk all about the health at every size movement and tell the truth about it. We talk about how Cosmo really isn't probably the place you should go for health information. We talk about what health at every size actually means if you go on their website, what they say is not what's being represented by a lot of these companies. We talk about obesity itself and how there's a wide range of healthy bodies. We talk about how health encompasses a lot of things, not just your physical body. And then we talk about what loving yourself really means.

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This particular promotion, I think there's only a few hours left of it as of the airing of this episode. So go check it out, go to mapsdysember.com. Again, that's maps, M-A-P-S, December.com. So you have to address the recent article that has gone viral on Cosmo. And it's the... All the covers? Yeah, the two covers, right? The health at any size,

and you did a really good post talking about it, and I know that there's a lot of controversy around this conversation. Yeah, I know a lot of the people in the fitness space really got irked by it, because objectively on the covers, there were two of them. It has two happy looking women who objectively would be categorized as obese and morbidly obese.

Right. And on the and underneath it says this is healthy and so that hurt a lot of health and fitness people and they're, you know, this is not healthy. And I think first off, it's important to talk about Cosmo, the magazine Cosmo. Yes. Has Cosmo ever been, has it ever been model on their cover or whatever they promoted has ever been in the health direction? It's never been a bastion. Yeah. Well, that's why I okay. I like you in this direction and this is how or this is I this is where I can defend

the people that are you know backing in saying that's not fair because you know nobody was when we had a 105 anorexic, cooked out model on there, five years ago or 10 years ago, nobody was saying anything. No, in fact, Cosmo. It's like the standard. Yeah, Cosmo promoted the, they called it heroin chic back in the 90s.

What? Yeah, we're, Wow. You had like, remember Kate Moss? Do you remember her? Yeah, so I don't know, maybe Doug, you can look up Kate Moss, heroin chic, Cosmo cover, whatever. But these were covers where you'd have

these really emaciated looking models and they would even have kind of dark circles under their eyes and they'd look kind of whatever. When you see the cover, you'll recognize it because we all grow up in the next- And that's not like the heroic term, that's actual heroin with the drug. Yeah, no, they say the heroin chic is what was the, was the,

really? Actually, call that out. Now, hair-scree bull. Cosmo didn't, but people would, would say that about some of these covers. Okay, I know. So you could see, you know, they're, I mean, just, you know, she looks almost to me, say, no, I mean, who knows, this is probably,

maybe her normal body looks like or whatever. But it's never been, it's never been a bastion of health. If you read Cosmo to learn about nutrition or exercise or health, you're looking completely to the wrong place. So then posting to obese women and saying, this is healthy, I mean, it's kind of par for the course. I do get why some fitness people are getting upset,

but it's cosmo. Well, number one, here's the statement of it, I think, that was really like triggering and shocking to a lot of the fitness people. Yeah, and here's where I'm gonna get all of them though, and that's why I really liked the way that Sal wrote about the post. I knew that he would, I knew he would articulate

the way we felt about it better than, I think, most fitness professionals. Most fitness professionals are jumping on the bandwagon of it's click baity to talk shit about it right now. And it jump all over and bash it. But to me, how can you do that if you weren't bashing these girls five years ago, five, 10 years ago that are just as unhealthy, just a different spectrum?

You know, they're sticking their finger down their throat and they're throwing up or they're doing drugs and they're not eating and they look at this. And by the way, I'm over generalizing. I know that, just like I know that there's probably been some healthy people on the magazine, but if we're gonna make a big stink about this girl who's 80 to 100 pounds overweight

that's on the cover and it's saying healthy, well, I feel like you have to make a big stink about the girls that were 105 pounds and doing drugs or throwing it to be consistent. Yeah, yeah, throwing up their food. Right. So, and now, I don't know if they actually said that they were healthy, they just glamorized them, but look, I typed in, I googled heroin chic, you know, Wikipedia article comes up. And it says heroin chic was a look popularized in early 90s 1990s fashion and characterized by pale skin dark circles underneath the eyes a

very skinny body dark red lipstick stringy hair and an angular bone structure so this was like a real thing that you know you would see and if you do you guys remember this this is a Calvin Klein you this was what's their name, Kate Moss and the Calvin Klein advertisement back in the early 90s? I remember back then it kind of caused a little bit of a stir. I guess the point I'm trying to make here

is to start with, Cosmo is not, they could say this is healthy all they want. But I tell you what, I could pull, I could pull the last 10 articles, pull up their diet recommendations and workout recommendations. They're good at their terrible. They're good at making it exact. And it's all totally and completely terrible. It's all wrong. It's not true. Now that being said, there is this movement that they, you know, they call the health at every size movement or any size movement, I should say.

Now here's the thing, when we talk about this, we do get messages from people who are saying that the message, the real health at any size movement message has been hijacked and bastardized by marketers. It has. And it has. I know, so the first time we came out and we talked about it, I think I was probably the most, I mean, vocal about how I felt about it. And of course, I got tons of DMs of people.

And you know, complete transparency up into that point. I'd never gone to the official website that promotes this message and where it's originated from. And when I did, and I read what it had to say, I agree with it. I think it's actually really good, and it's a really good message, but it's completely been bastardized, and it's not that,

and that what we're seeing on Cosmo is not that at all. Yeah, no, the difference is, so health and any size movement, if you actually read about, and some of this stuff, I'm kinda like, eh, I don't know, but a lot of it is stuff that we talk about and preach on the podcast,

and it says things like that, the diet culture, right? So the culture of extreme dieting and weight loss pills and, you know, that kind of stuff has led to more problems for a lot of people, disordered eating, hating your body, you know, feeling inadequate or extremely insecure. These are all problems. Diet, at least the way that we've been marketed diets and the way we've told that we should do them. They don't work, they really don't.

And the reason why, first off, statistically speaking, diets don't work for something like 97% of the people that ever try them. And the reason why they don't work, again, this is what we talk about on the podcast all the time. They don't focus on loving your body, taking care of yourself, and real fundamental changes to your behaviors. They're all about these kind of short-term, extreme fixes. And they all

do focus on self-hate, your fat, your disgusting, you need to change that, do this extreme diet, you know, do this cabbage diet, do this HCG diet, do this, whatever diet, and fix that about yourself. So the health at any size movement, the actual website talks a lot about kind of healthy behaviors, taking care of yourself, exercising the way that's healthy, not over-training, not over-working yourself,

like we've seen a lot of people do. But what's happened is markers have taken this, and the way that they've used it is it's basically saying, okay, you're obese, that's still healthy and it's all good. It's everything's fine. That's not an issue. Let's ignore all the health markers and concerns that, you know, physicians have. Right. And that's just false. Objectively speaking, okay, obesity by itself, okay, by itself. If you take somebody who is, let's say, 60 or 70 pounds overweight, and I would say overfat. The reason why I'm saying that is because BMI,

according to BMI, I'm overweight, right? But I carry a lot of muscle. So we'll say overfat, right? You take somebody who's, you know, 60 to 70 pounds overfat, they could have, they could not fat, they could have, they could not smoke, they could have all these other, everything can be controlled. The obesity itself is more dangerous

than almost anything else. Yeah, it's still a risk factor. If you took that sound, just a risk factor, it's one of the biggest risk factors. Right, and if you took that same person and you had them lose that 60 to 70 pounds of over fat, they would be objectively healthier, right? Fat itself is a hormone sensitive tissue. When you have a lot of it, your body responds differently to hormones like insulin, estrogen and man testosterone,

gets affected, growth hormone gets affected and gets changed. Extra weight on the body like that is, which is body fat, is extra weight that is not supporting your weight, right? So if you have 50 pounds of extra muscle on your body, that extra muscle provides a function there. Yeah, it stabilizes your joints, your stronger, you can move more, you got a faster metabolism as a result of it.

If you have 50 pounds of extra body fat, that body fat just sits on you and you're just moving around with this extra weight on your body. Now, do you think some of what plays into this too is this idea that some people believe that they were genetically destined to be obese? That's so fun.

Okay, so evolutionarily speaking, there was nothing that happened that changed our genetics to cause obesity. Yes, there's a range of weight, so you find, you know, you could see a wide range of weight, that's 20, 30 pounds, but 70 pounds, 80 pounds, 100 pounds overweight, 60 pounds overweight. That almost did not exist until the 20th century,

at least the back half of the 20th century. It just wasn't common. You go around and societies in the early 1900s and before and you just didn't see that. In fact, you didn't see that until processed food really became a big part of our culture. I love bringing this up, right? You could look up back in the day,

circuses traveling circuses were a thing, and they used to do this thing where they would have what they called the freak show. It's kind of terrible, but they would have people who looked different, had deformities, and then people would pay to look at them. And a common, I don't know, act in some of these freak shows

were the fat man or the fat woman. So it was this obese person that people would be like, oh my gosh, look at that, right? Look so crazy. If you look up pictures of the circus fat man from the 1800s, that same person today would walk around Walmart and would blend right in. It wouldn't be a big deal.

But it was such a big deal in the 1800s that people paid money to go look at this, to see it because it was so insane. Yeah, I mean, we'll learn a world of abundance now. This is something that is different. It's a different landscape. And so what used to be, like not as common is definitely has taken over.

It's very easy to find food and to be able to access food in large amounts. And so this has created a whole new problem that we have to account the fact that it can be a problem. You can't over-endolge, just like you can over-endolge drinking or taking drugs or you can do harm to your body by over-endolgence. Yeah, you're addicted.

No matter how you draw it up, you're addicted to food. So I think why it's so much more controversial or we're hearing so much more about this versus like what we referred to earlier as these anorexic looking girls is that it's harder to prove that. You could be a very skinny girl and actually not be anorexic, not is that it's harder to prove that, right? You could be a very skinny girl. And actually not, not be anorexic, not be doing heroin. I'm doing that. You could be on the cover of that magazine. It'd be 105.

But it's impossible for you to be 250 pounds and it not be obvious. There's a food addition there. Sure. You didn't get to 250 pounds without obsessively over consuming for a long period of time that doesn't happen overnight to anybody. Right. So you have been addicted to food for a very long time. that doesn't happen overnight to anybody, right? So you have been addicted to food for a very long time.

We can't prove that with somebody who is 115 pounds. You can be 100, they can be sick, they can be, yeah. Right, it's not as obvious, so I feel like everybody is jumping all over this because it's more obvious. Well, also, you got to consider this, right? The market is shifting. So today, we're almost at the point where majority of Americans are considered obese, and a good chunk are considered,

it's was a severely obese, I think it is, right? That good chunk, it's something like, I don't know, 15, 20% of Americans or something like that. So now you have the market, which is now getting bigger and bigger and bigger, so the people that, and that's who you're selling to, right? So you're selling, Cosmos selling that, selling to that. So doing stuff like that's gonna sell more magazines.

For example, if you're... Well, just like any other addict, you wanna hang out with other addicts so you feel better about it, right? So if I'm... It's normalizing. If I'm gonna subscribe to this magazine, I don't wanna look at these skinny bitches all the time.

I wanna look at somebody who looks like me and me feel good about my food addiction and not feel like I actually have a problem. Right, right, so I'll give you guys an example. So I have family that lives in Italy and I know when I travel over there, if I can't get, so here in the States, if I buy a T-shirt, it's a large.

When I buy a shirt in Europe, it's an extra or double X large, same size. So our closed sizes are different, our food servings are different, and it's all starting to match kind of the market. But yeah, back to the food addiction thing, you know, it's, when we say food addiction, I think some people are like, oh, that's not like an addiction like, you know, like, you know, heroin or cocaine or alcohol or whatever, it is in the sense that you're medicating with food.

This is what leads to this issue, is that we start to medicate with food. And also, in the sense that food has been engineered now to have drug-like properties, right? So I've used this example so many times in the podcast, but I'll use it again because I think it's a really powerful one. But if I were to take the average person and give them five plain baked potatoes

and told them to eat them all within an hour, most people wouldn't be able to do that. But if I gave you a bag of Lays potato chips, which contains five potatoes in there, most people could eat it and get through that easy. No problem. So food has been engineered to be so palatable that it's almost drug-like. So you have this drug-like quality to food. It's convenient. It doesn't require work to get. You don't have this drug-like quality to food. It's convenient. It doesn't require work to get. You don't have to cook it or make it anymore. It's super convenient.

It's inexpensive. And then you're stressed or whatever. And you turn to cravings. And you turn to cravings. And it provides comfort when you're depressed. You're stressed out. You're not feeling so great. Like it's something that you're seeking out

to make you feel better and that's the same thing with any of these drugs. So I learned this as a trainer, I know you guys have to, we talk about this all time, when you're working with someone, anybody actually wants to lose weight, but especially when they have to lose a lot of weight, you're not going to be successful at all unless you are able to, unless they open up and you're dealing with the root drivers, psychological issues that are causing it. Studies show that obese people who die it and what I mean by diet is change their nutrition and work with a therapist are far more successful than people who just die it. So what

you're looking at is often times, most of the time, root causes. People are damaging themselves because there's some issues that are underneath the surface. Right, boredom, insecurity, depression, all the anxiety, all this stuff is happening. And instead of medicating with something that we've demonized now, like cocaine, heroin, things like that, your choice is food because it's widely accepted and it's okay. And that's 100% correct.

Food is an accepted drug. We all of us at one point have abused food. Now I do want to be clear by the way, and I think this is an important thing to point out. I don't want to come across like we're judging people who are severely obese as the most unhealthy people in America. Well, no, because here's the argument

on the other side of that. What we can't measure, we don't know. I know in our forum, this, that post went viral, and I believe, I don't know if you guys saw, I think Sandra brought up that she follows the girl. She follows one of those two girls, and she's like, really flexible, and she does like strength stuff. And so, maybe this girl's not as unhealthy as an average 250 pound could be. And maybe she's even technically healthier

than the guy that's on the cover of men's health who is 250 pounds, 3% body fat, steroid out of his mind, beats his fucking girlfriend at home, forget has all these insurge. It's hard. Yeah, right. I mean, so maybe she is actually healthier than that guy and we

can't measure that and say that. Now, that's the problem. The problem is comparing person against person. Yeah. Rather, what you should do is say to yourself, okay, this woman who we're talking about who's flexible and works out, who's 250 pounds, would her health improve if she was, let's say, 170 pounds, right? And she did the right way. I want to make sure I say that, right? She did the right way. Would her health objectively improve? It would.

Her joints would improve. Her heart health would improve. Her hormone sensitivities would improve. Everything would improve simply because she lost some body fat. But yeah, it is, again, we do need to be clear that there's a wide range of mental health. Well, in, we do need to be clear that there's this, there's a, there's a wide range of well, and the opposite is true to the analogy that I gave,

right? Right. Right. The guy if he got off of steroids put on four or five percent body fat, stop doing some of the bullshit he was doing at home, he would be technically a healthier person. Exactly. And there's also this range. Look, you can be a healthier obese and a less healthy obese, right? You can be a healthier lean and a much less healthy lean, right? So the only thing you can really say is, really apply it to yourself. And look, genetics play a big role too. Some people can be 70 pounds overweight

and suffer less health issues than somebody who's just 15 pounds overweight. Don't compare people against other people. You have to look at just yourself. There's so many genetic differences in the way that bodies even look and present themselves and how they carry weight too, which, you know, so that's why it's such an individual thing,

but, you know, body fat itself as being in an objective, you know, measurement is something to consider. Like if you do reduce, you know, measurement is something to consider. Like it's, if you do reduce, you know, down to, to healthier range, it is going to make an impact. It is. But yeah, it's, look, you can, people can, can you look at someone and determine whether or not they're healthier or unhealthy?

I think in some cases, you can say that person could be healthier, that person could be less healthy. I also think why do that to other people really look at yourself? You most certainly can't compare that person to another person. No, not just visually, because that's the thing,

and that's the thing that I think we talk about. I mean, in extremes maybe, but yeah, I get what you're saying. Yeah, well, because health, when you say health, that's a big sphere of things. Yes, you know, they can have terrible relationship health, they can have terrible emotional, spiritual,

all these other health markers can be off the charts, but look amazing on magazines, or they can look horrible on a magazine from a body fat percentage-wise, but then have those other boxes check to me, they're great, they're a great mother. They're great at, you know, they have, they just have issues with food. Yeah, they're great mother. They're great at, you know, they have,

they just have issues with food. Yeah, they just have issues with food. So this whole idea that I think we, and that's why like for the fitness professionals that were triggered by this and they went out and they came after it really hard, it's like, you know, who cares? This business is in a marketing and selling magazines.

They shouldn't be anybody's guide to what is healthy nor should Instagram. Has there ever been a cover with just an example somewhere where they literally stated this is healthy? I don't know that I've ever even seen that. No, I mean, they did that with this point. That's an interesting point. Yeah, you're right, you're right.

I mean, and they were obviously, look, it's obvious to me they were being controversial. Yeah. They knew that it would cause and obvious to me they were being controversial. Yeah. They knew that it would cause and start the selling record numbers of magazines. Yeah, because you can't, I mean, it's not an objective thing to look at somebody and be like, hey, you're healthy.

Right. I'm gonna put you out there. Right. You don't know. Right, you know, I like what you were saying Adam about this fear of health. It encompasses quite a bit. I'll, look, I've, again, we've all said this.

Some of the least healthy people I've personally known were worked in the fitness industry, worked in the fitness space. People who had followed extreme diets. They don't sleep at all. They took drugs. Lots of antibiotics. Steroids and diet pills and terrible relationships, narcissistic or had bad relationships with friends and family because they were so focused on how they looked. They were just so unhealthy, but if you just looked at them, they looked amazing. You'd be like, oh man, look at that guy's biceps,

any soline, or whatever, they seem to be healthy. That's not how it works. Also, here's the other thing too. What's that one saying? Don't judge someone because they sin differently than you. I like that state. Now, we take out the word sin. It's like, don't judge someone because they do something

that's unhealthy differently than you, the way you do things that are unhealthy. You know what I'm saying? You can look at someone who's obese and you could say, oh, they have a bad relationship with food, but then if you're an asshole about it, it's like, hey, nobody has like everything. Everything perfectly balanced.

Yes, well, that's why I love you shared that study that came out this last year, right, about the cigarettes versus relationships. That's why I loved talking about that study because that's an exact, if you were to compare somebody who maybe just never sees their family, they work all the time and they're busy, they're very successful But they have a terrible relationship with their mother and their family and friends because they're so focused on being successful

But they look all in shape and you compare that person to the person who was smoking I don't remember how many cigarettes a day it was yeah, I was like 10 cigarettes a day Yeah, like 10 cigarettes a day and you go like hey, who do you think is healthier? You'd be like oh my god this guy over here who's got all the financial shit going and he looks fine, but this person is smoking all these cigarettes every day. They're probably gonna die early because of that. But in reality, that's actually unhealthy. I know, they showed that the bad relationships

was just as bad. Right, crazy. Just as bad. Here's the other thing too. And this is now I'm gonna speak out to the fitness people on social media and the fitness experts, okay. You have to, first off, don't allow yourself to be triggered by your own insecurities.

And what I mean by that is maybe not insecurities with yourself, but your insecurities with your profession. So you see an article on Cosmo with an obese woman that says, this is selfie, it'll trigger you because it's counter to what you preach and what you talk about. But put that aside for a second and remember what your real goal is.

What's your real goal? Your real goal is to help people, right? So use that as a way to communicate in a way that's empathetic, that, you know, what's that saying? You can attract more flies with honey than you can with shit. Right, we should. I see all these fitness professionals who are like, no, fat is unhealthy and they're, okay,

some of the, a lot of stuff they're saying is true, but they're not helping anybody. And if anything, they may have someone who's struggling with weight, but not want to follow them. And if anything, they may have someone who's struggling with weight, but not want to follow them anymore, not want to listen to them anymore because they're coming at them so hard. I would never, when I ran gyms and I dealt with real people

in front of me, would you ever hammer somebody who's obese who came into your gym? Never. In that way, I would never do that. Do you want to encourage them to come back? Right, absolutely. Well, not to mention, it could be argued that this extreme was necessary to get us closer

to the middle or need to be anyways. Because nobody was in uproar, like I said, 10, 15 years ago when you had all these girls that were on the covers of magazines that were unhealthy in the first place. Nobody said anything back then, but yet people know it. And obviously there's a lot of people that are aware of it today.

And this is now the other extreme. It is. You know, and so hopefully we find somewhere in the middle where it's a little bit more healthy than what we've seen. We've just seen these extremes, which extremes is what sells, right? It is. And here's the part that gets on my nerves that I don't really annoys the hell out of me is when they twist it and they sell it as this is self love. okay? This is me loving myself. It's not. It is not loving yourself. Loving yourself, let's take yourself out of the equation. It's a, imagine you're raising a child,

you're raising your kid, you love your kid, your kid wants the candy and donuts every day. Right. And you don't want to, why not? Because you love them, right? Okay, loving them doesn't mean you give them whatever they want all the time and you let them indulge and destroy their health. It'd be like, my kid coming up to me say,

hey, I want to smoke cigarettes because I like them. And I'm like, well, because I love you, I'll let you do whatever you want. I'm saying, no, sorry, buddy, you're not allowed to do that. Loving yourself means you have a sense of discipline and you also check some of your indulgences. This is part of what it means to be human and to understand these things. Love isn't just a feeling.

I think people confuse love with the feeling of... An happiness and love is an action and it is not a feeling. Absolutely. And it's not like. Like is different than love. Like, do you like your spouse all the time? I don't even like my kids all the time. I love them all the time.

I never stop loving them. But there's definitely times I don't like them, but I love them in the actions my actions show that. So I think what happens is people confuse love with not hating themselves. So you have somebody that's obese, and they've maybe they've done all the crazy dieting, the restriction, they've hated their body,

they've been insecure. And then they finally, at one point, they read this Cosmo or they hear this twisted version of health at any size and they say, you know what, I'm done hating myself, I'm gonna eat whatever I want and just that's it. Now I love myself, that's not love. You might not hate yourself anymore,

but you're not loving yourself. In fact, your actions are actually showing that you're still hating yourself. You've taken the first step to start really focusing on not hammering yourself so bad, which is an important step, but that's not where it stops. True. Love is also honest. Again, take your... The reason why I say take yourself out of the equation is because when we're talking about ourselves, I think we have a tough time being objective, but when you talk about an outside person, your ego gets in the way.

Exactly. But when you talk about someone you care about, it's easier to understand. So let's love is honest, right? So I love my brother, for example, right? If he came to me and he said, hey, Sal, you know, be honest. Am I physically, am I healthy? Now, I know I'm gonna hurt his feelings if I tell him the truth, let's say he's obese,

but I love him, so I'm gonna say, listen, I love you, but yeah, physically you're just, you're not taking care of yourself. You need to take care of yourself a little bit better, right? Now, turn that into yourself. Love is also honest. Now, it's not hating yourself, but it is being honest. So what does that mean?

That means you can look in the mirror and say to yourself, right now my body does not, it reflects the fact that I haven't been taking care of myself well. Now, it's different than hating yourself. You don't want to hate yourself. Don't look in the mirror and be like, I hate this person. Also, don't identify with the fact that you're maybe overweight

or whatever. That's not who you are. It doesn't define you, just your body, but you can be honest and you can say, I haven't taken care of myself, like I should, I'm gonna start loving myself through action. And when you do that, what does that look like? Well, it looks like you eat right,

you eat in a way that cares for you, you're active because it's better for you. By the way, what are the results of that? Forget the physical, the cosmetic, you know, effects, the aesthetic effects. Let's forget about that for a second. What are the other effects? When you start to eat, right?

You start to be more active. You feel better. You actually start to treat people differently. Your mood increases. Like all these different factors, yeah, your relationships improve, the your productivity improves, like it just, it just compiled as like a snowball effect

once you really start working on your stuff. Right, now, can you lose weight? Can you change your aesthetic self to make it look, quote unquote, better, but doing away that reduces your health? Of course. Absolutely, Of course. You know, you could look in the mirror and be like, I hate my body so much.

I'm going to go chain myself to the treadmill. I'm going to eat, you know, once every other day, I'm going to take diet pills or whatever. And that's that. That's also not loving yourself. So that's where I have the issue is when people, I remember once, years ago, I was at a company dinner with my ex-wife. We were sitting at a big table. I think it was a Christmas dinner.

Everybody's introducing their spouses or whatever. I said, oh, I'm a personal training studio. Whenever I say that, whenever I used to say that to, and I'm sure you guys experienced this, whenever you say that to a group of people who are not in the fitness space Especially if you're eating dinner or something. You're gonna get comments immediately Yeah, people automatically start to feel a little insecure like I'm sure they're thinking put the cupcake back Right as you watching me as you whatever my day off my G day

Yeah, so exciting yourself Yeah, so I said that and then I usually do that and I was used to the you know, I was used to that right as used to the The ways people's attitudes would change or whatever but I said that and then as we used to that. I was used to the ways people's attitudes would change or whatever. But I said that and then as we're eating and drinking and people are making comments, there was one lady in particular who was like, I'm going to have another roll of bread and she'd look right at me and laugh. And I was used to it. So I'm like, well, no problem, whatever.

So as the night goes on, she says, you know, she goes, she had a few drinks. So then she was kind of a little loose. And she says, you know, Sal, I had a friend who was a fitness fanatic. She worked out all the time. She ate perfectly and at 55 years old, she got breast cancer and then she died. And she goes, and I tell you what, when that happened, I said to myself, I'm just going to enjoy life and do whatever I want and eat whatever I want because it's totally, it's not worth it or whatever.

And I sat there quietly, I felt my ego could fire it up a little bit, but I sat there and I said, look, I said, nobody knows the future. I could walk out tonight, get my car and get an accident and die, I don't know that. I said, it's not about necessarily living longer, it's about living better. It's not a punishment, it's a treat,

it's how you take care of yourself. So if you were exercise now, you're not killing yourself because you hate yourself, you're doing because you're taking care of yourself, you're enjoying it and your quality of life improves. So what you're doing right now may feel like you're saying to yourself that you love yourself, but it may not be. In reality, taking care of yourself is really loving. It's an investment. It's the same thing that you then now as you give with the child, like giving him candy one day is also not going to kill him either right but you continue to do that what by not doing that and teaching him to take care of himself you're investing in in them long

term and that's just an example that you love them. Yeah and you know what I will say I you know I'm I'll put some of the blame on the the fitness industry at large for messages like the one that Cosmo just put out I mean let's be honest. The fitness industry at large for messages like the one that Cosmo just put out. I mean, let's be honest, the fitness industry for a long time has promoted it wrong. Yeah, this is basically a backlash to that. That's what I say, it's just the opposite. We're just swinging the other way

because I mean, we've been saying that since we started this, I mean, to me, I'll never forget the experience of getting in the competitive world. Cause up into that, I was really oblivious to this. And truth be told, even as a personal trainer in the space for already a decade before, I really looked up to that community thinking that this is the elite of fitness people. I mean, the bodies reflect it, right?

So they must be some of the healthiest, most disciplined, dialed, and people all ever meet. And then when I got into that group and I was accepted into this bodybuilding community and I started to meet people and lots of people I liked, a lot of people I thought that were great people, that were smart people, that maybe did have some pretty good relationships. But what I found was that I saw more issues in that community than I had seen previously in the previous 10 years of helping average people, which include these morbidly obese people and average people that have just are overweight. The people that I was competing with on the competitive level that were walking around

with six to seven percent body fat most of the year were some of the unhealthiest people that I ever met in my life. It blew my mind. Right, so it definitely is a backlash. Obesity by itself on its own, makes your health worse. You would be healthier, physically speaking objectively, if you weren't obese,

but there's many factors that play into your health. And if you're a fitness professional or a fitness influencer, be careful how you communicate this message. Don't let it trigger you. Do it in a way that you're going to help people rather than hurt people. And then the last thing I'll say is this, don't look at Cosmo as a place to- That is not your place for health.

That- they do not- Not. Yeah, they don't talk about health properly. They don't exemplify health. They have the terrible information. If you like to read it because you like to look at the pictures and the ads, that's fine. Other than that, throw it away.

Look, MindPump is recorded on video as well as audio. Come check us out on YouTube MindPump podcast. You can also find all of us on social media. You can find Justin at MindPump Justin, me at Mind Pump Sal and Adam at Mind Pump Adam. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at Mind Pump Media dot com.

The RGB Superbundle includes MAPS and Ebola,IC, MAPSTERFORMENT and MAPSISTEDIC, 9 months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs. With detailed workout blueprints in over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money-back guarantee, and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at MindPumpMedia.com.

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