The Chris Cuomo Project - Cuomo On The Couch: You're Going To Fail

Episode Date: July 18, 2023

Chris Cuomo examines how people get thrown off course by failure, why quick fixes like Ozempic feed the idea that hard things can be simple and easy, and how there’s no straight line towards reaching your goals. Follow and subscribe to The Chris Cuomo Project on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube for new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What we want to do is achieve a goal, and we can talk about what that is. But the biggest reason you don't get there is that you're going to fail. And it's not as simple as the reality that you can't get to where you want. It's that when it doesn't happen the way you expected, what would be easiest? You forget about it altogether. Sound familiar? Support for the Chris Cuomo Project comes from Factor. I got to tell you, this stuff is good. I like it. And if you're a meal prepper, okay. But if you're a meal prepper wannabe and on the go,

but you want to get your gains and want your macros in place, this works. They sent me a bunch of them. I tried them. The kids liked them. My wife liked them. She liked the ingredients on the back. She liked the nutritional information, okay? Chef-crafted, dietician-approved, right to your door.

35 different options, and not just in terms of variety of food, but type of diet, keto, calorie-smart, vegan, veggie, whatever you want. So you want options, you want it cost-effective, but you want it to be the fuel that you need to get where you want to be. You should get started today and have a feel-good week of meals that are ready to go. Factor is the perfect solution if you're looking for fast, upscale options done easily. So, head to factormeals.com slash Cuomo50. Factormeals.com slash Cuomo 50.

And you will get up to 50 percent off your first box and two free wellness shots per box while the subscription is active. OK, again, head to factor meals dot com slash Cuomo 50. Factormeals.com slash Cuomo 50. Use the code Cuomo 50 and you'll get 50% off your first box and two free wellness shots per box while your subscription is active. Okay? The code is Cuomo 50 at Factormeals.com slash Cuomo 50. You'll get 50% off your first box and two free wellness shots per box while the subscription is active. The Chris Cuomo Project is supported by Cozy Earth. Why? per box while the subscription is active. Okay, well, what is it? Well, it stresses all kinds of things. But the wrong sheets can make you hot, can make you cold. I'm telling you, I don't even believe it either.

But Cozy Earth sheets breathe. And here's what I love about them. Cozy Earth's best-selling sheet is a bamboo set, okay? Temperature regulating. Gets softer with every wash. I'm not kidding you, all right? Now, so if you go to CozyEarth.com and you enter the code, enter the code Chris, and you can get up to 35% off your first order.

CozyEarth.com and the code is Chris. I'm Chris Cuomo. Welcome to a special edition of the Chris Cuomo Project Podcast that we call Cuomo on the Couch, because we're all about big ideas and being clever here. Now, we're about the obvious and what's relatable and what we deal with and what I have learned and what I am learning, but often don't do well, don't put into practice consistently. But hopefully, we'll help you. Hopefully, what I suspect is true, which is you're better than I am.

So these ideas may fuel something in you that helps you get to a better place. And that, even if it doesn't work for me or even if I'm unsatisfied, at least there's a value there to what I do know will work. And that takes me to today. There's a value there to what I do know will work. And that takes me to today. We get thrown off course all the time by the same thing. Doesn't matter who you are, where you're from, or what goal we're talking about. Weight loss, getting in better shape.

Not the same thing, by the way. You know, let's say you want to build up a certain way. You want to build up your legs. You want to shrink your legs. You want to build up your ass. You want to shrink your ass. You want to bigger, whatever it is, whatever the parameters are,

and I'm not belittling them. They're all real and have value based on who you are and how you feel about yourself and what you want for yourself. More money, you know, less time at work, different job, different aspects of relationships, whatever it is. The same thing derails us all the time, failure. Now, you're like, duh, no, no, no. I'm saying that we let going off track change the road and just change the reality and erase the goal.

What do I mean? Okay. We've all tried to lose weight, right? Most of us, not my son. My son's always trying to gain. You got a teenage boy in your house? All the food, so much food all the food, so much food all the time. Gains, gains, look at my gains, look at my, anyway. For the rest of us, you're trying to lose weight and you have that bad meal. You go to lunch with friends, they order the fried galama or whatever it is and you indulge and you're like, oh, there goes my diet. And that night, it's like, I might as well have the cheeseburger. I already screwed it all up. Right? Okay. We've

all been there. And then all of a sudden, the diet's gone. And like the next two, three days are just the worst. And it's almost perversely, and I don't want to make fun of this, but there's a phenomenon with addiction and recovery that very often when people have gotten clean, but they're not yet sober, meaning they're not really dealing with the underlying reasons for why they were self-medicating and abusing the substance, that they'll relapse and overdose because they'll go back to the dosage they were taking before and their body's no longer acclimated to it. The tendency is to double down on our self-destruction.

So you have that one bad meal. We both know that the correct answer is to do the right thing with the next meal or to skip it all together and replace it with a double workout the next day or you know what I mean, or cut your cat. We all know what the solutions are, but we know that there's such a strong drive not to do those things, to do the opposite, to double down on self-destruction.

Why? Well, maybe you're a self-loather. Maybe that's how you work. Maybe you like to punish yourself. Or it's, you know, less, you know, Freudian than that. And it's, or Jungian actually. But more just along the lines of, I'm going to quit.

Why? Because our mindset is if it's not perfect, then it's over. Think about it. We do that all the time in things that we want. I know that I certainly do. You know, the other day I was sweeping my garage in a wind. But what do I think is going to happen? You know what I mean? I'm sweeping leaves and detritus or whatever the stuff is that's in my garage, the wind's blowing. Like, what do I think's going to happen? It keeps getting blown in. I get obsessed with, oh, it's not enough. I haven't gotten all the stuff out. First of all, why would you be doing

that in the wind? What is a recipe for frustration? But secondly, it's like, how clean does your garage have to be? You see what I'm saying? You have to change your expectations of what success is. You want to lose 25 pounds today. You know what I mean? In a straight line, you want to lose a pound every day for 25 straight days. Have you never read anything about dieting? You know what I'm saying? It's unreasonable. And what we do is we create an unreasonable expectation, and then you will double down on it and be even more unreasonable when you don't meet that unreasonable expectation. So no matter what the dynamic is of change, it's not going to be straight line. It's not going to be straight line. It's not going to be perfect. Nothing is. And it's almost certainly not going to be easy. This is my beef with Ozempic

and the other drugs. I'm not saying don't take them. Who am I to say that? But I'm saying be careful. And I'm also saying be careful not just for the medical or psychological considerations, check with your doctor, yada, yada, yada, but it feeds the misperception that something can be simple and easy and that's all it's going to take. The word diet, I've told you many times and you probably already know it. It comes from the word daily, okay? This is an always thing, not a three-month thing, not a sometimes thing, okay? You will not keep the weight off if you don't change the things that put the weight on, okay? It's not going to happen, not on a permanent basis.

And that's why when you look at people's weight, it's like whoop, whoop, whoop, the yo-yo thing, man. That's why the diet industry loves the three-month fix, loves it. Why? Well, one, there's something that's either real or imagined about three months where like that's a significant

chunk of time, three-month romance, you know, 90 days of sobriety, you know, it's something about three months. But they know that you can do it for three months. But then what happens after three months? You know, these people lose this weight on whatever the diet is, and then it comes back. Why? Because they didn't change those things permanently. They gave themselves a hard out. And what you really need to see is that all of the change, all of the realities are not straight line. Good days, bad days. You're going to make progress and you're going to regress. It's going to happen no matter what it is. You're not going to get stronger every day. You're not going to get stronger every day. You're not going to get faster every day. You're not going to be a better runner every day. Come on, this is nonsense and you know it.

So if you know it, why do you let it defeat you? He says to himself, because that's the human condition. And I think it bears reminding. For me, it falls into a dynamic of the ability to forgive yourself. I have a real problem with this. And I would argue it's because I'm a real repeat offender and I don't deserve the forgiveness. But that's not setting myself up for better. It's almost guaranteeing worse. And that's the irony, right?

Is that you think you're taking some hard line on yourself, but really all you're doing is reinforcing what you don't want to happen. Look, no shame in my game. I've been using AG1 for over five years. Why? It works, it's easier, and it's less expensive. That's why.

Since 2010, they've been getting their formulations right and tweaking their formulas. Why? Because the science changes, okay? It's not like politics where people decide to believe one thing and no matter what happens with the facts, they never shift. This is the opposite. Oh, prebiotics work with probiotics, but in this way. D works with K and this type of B works with that. They have the scientists doing it, so I don't need all the bottles, I don't have to spend all the money, and I don't have to figure out when to take what and why. More importantly, it's not just the regular list of vitamins.

It's the extras, okay? The adaptogens, the prebiotics, the probiotics that support your body's universal needs. Gut optimization, immune support, stress management. That's what foundational nutrition is about. And these are the people at AG1 who've been doing the work to get it right. Okay? I tell friends, I tell family, I get no I tell family I get no complaints. Okay.

If you want to take ownership of your health, it starts with AG one, try AG one. You get a free one year supply of vitamin D three K two and five free AG one travel packs. Okay. That's what happens with your first purchase. So make it go to drink. AG one.com slash CCP drink.

AG one.com slash CCP. DrinkAG1.com slash CCP. Check it out. We don't fake the funk here. And here's the real talk. Over 40 years of age, 52% of us experience some kind of ED between the ages of 40 and 70. I know it's taboo. It's embarrassing. But it shouldn't be.

Thankfully, we now have HIMS, and it's changing the vibe by providing affordable access to ED treatment, and it's all online. HIMS is changing men's health care. Why? Because it's giving you access to affordable and discreet sexual health treatments, and you do it right from your couch. affordable and discreet sexual health treatments. And you do it right from your couch. HIMS provides access to clinically proven, generic alternatives to Viagra or Cialis or whatever. And it's up to like 95% cheaper.

And there are options as low as two bucks a dose. HIMS has hundreds of thousands of trusted subscribers. So if ED is getting you down, it's time to pick it up. Start your free online visit today at HIMS.com slash CCP. H-I-M-S dot com slash CCP. And you will get personalized ED treatment options. HIMS.com slash CCP. Prescriptions, you need an online consultation with a healthcare provider, and they will determine if appropriate. Restrictions apply. You see the website, you'll get details and important safety information. You're going to need a subscription. It's required. Plus, price is going to vary based on product and subscription plan. So there's a lesson in this. Product and subscription plan.

So there's a lesson in this. It's not going to be easy if it matters. And it's hard to be fat. It's hard to be fit. Choose your heart. It's hard to do better at work. It's hard to suck at your job. Choose your heart.

Why is it hard to just suck at your job? Isn't that about not trying? Because you're going to lose your job. Because is it so hard to just suck at your job? Isn't that about not trying? Because you're going to lose your job, because you're not going to get advancement, because you're going to fall behind where you need to be to be who you want to be. It's hard to be a good parent. It's hard to be a bad parent. Why? Because you're going to have kids that don't know how to comply and don't know how to do for themselves and don't have healthy boundaries, and that's going to be a pain in your hiney. So it's choose your heart. And if you think you're an injection of Ozempic or something away from your life from there on in

being so different, you're kidding yourself. You're going to have to do other things. Look, you got to eat less and move more if you want to lose weight and be more fit. I can guarantee you, I can guarantee you a plan for an outcome. And I can guarantee you an outcome from that plan that's favorable. Guaranteed. One hundred percent guaranteed.

Okay? Here's what you're going to do. Oh, and you want it easy? I'll give you easy. Walk every day. Every day, walk. Anywhere you can. And each week, you're going to increase how much you walk.

Not dramatically, but you'll increase it every week. Every morning when you wake up, assuming that you're physically capable and able to do it, you're going to start with a number of sit-ups and push-ups and air squats. And you're going to do them right when you get out of bed.

And you're going to also do that before you go to bed every night. And each week, you're going to increase those numbers. You do not have to change anything that you eat. You have to cut out a meal a day. Okay? Eat what you want. Of course, you should be reasonable about your intake and what kinds of things you're eating, but I'm going to make it easy. You just cut out one meal a day. Cut out one meal a day. you just cut out one meal a day cut out one meal a day booze if you if you need it if you if you can't go without it one day a week pick your day three months of that you will look different

yep guarantee it assuming you don't have some outstanding medical condition. Now, what happens? Well, one, you're not going to walk every day. You're not going to do it. Why? Because you don't want to, but you'll make some excuse. I don't have the time. It's raining.

It's this. It's that. You'll make an excuse. You won't skip the meal. You'll compensate otherwise. You'll do things. You'll screw it up. You won't do the workout, say it hurts or something like that. And then once that happens a few times, you'll stop it altogether. Because that's what we do. Because we're weak and we're flawed. And this is hard.

because we're weak and we're flawed. And this is hard. What I'm saying is build in the failure. It's going to happen. And I'll tell you what, even if you kind of half-ass it for three months, you're still going to lose weight. You're still going to be more fit than you are today.

Assuming that you're not doing any of these things. So you don't have to be so hard on yourself and unforgiving. And not because of some kind of feel-good reason. It's impractical. You're going to fail. You're not going to be nice all the time. You're not going to be kind all the time. You're not going to be any way that you want to be all the time. And the real problem is not that reality. It's what you do in reaction to that reality. That's where it really gets you. That's where it certainly gets me. That's where I have become completely stymied. You know, for instance, I was around 240 pounds because I had gone into a phase of wanting to build up and get stronger. I was kind of trying to find some kind of relatively easy attainable success for myself. I was kind of doing it with a buddy. And then I was

like too big and my clothes weren't working. Now, how did I do that? Well, I was just, I upped my calorie intake. I've been working training for a long time, so I know what I'm doing. And I trained differently. I was lifting more heavy weights. I was doing a lot of hypertrophic lifting and I was doing a lot of sprinting and stuff like that.

And I have to get back to the sprinting. It's really important for an aging athlete to keep doing explosive movements. Otherwise you lose the ability to do it and you'll get hurt when you try. You gotta be smart about it, but incremental. So then I wanted to lose the size because it's too hard for me to maintain.

My body knows it. There's muscle memory there because I used to play at that weight, but that was a long time ago and it was very different body composition. So now it was like, well, how do I lose the weight? And I've been doing reasonable things to lose weight. There's no secret.

There really isn't. You can lose weight a million different ways. It's about intake less, output more, right? And rest. And I kept plateauing. And I'm saying in truth, I still am plateauing. I keep bouncing up. My body wants to be at a weight that's like five pounds heavier than I want to be, which is interesting to me. But what has really been interesting to me is how I deal with compensating for failure, how you feel and how you react to the day

that you don't do the workout. Now, I really believe in doing something every day. Now, don't kick your ass every day in the gym. Why? Becomes counterproductive. Certainly diminishing returns. But that's how you get hurt and that's how you overtrain and that's a thing.

So, but you should be doing something every day. I don't believe in a rest day. I think you should take a walk on that day, you know, play a sport if that's what you're into, do some yard work. You know what I mean? Like you should do something every day that's physical. I believe that.

And it's really important in terms of compensation so that when you, oh man, I went out and I wound up having some drinks with my friends. Oh, I feel like shit today. I'm not going to work out. And I ate all this crap last night and my diet and I'm bloated and I'm up. And I, what do you do? I have a really good tendency on those days to blow out the next day. Blow it up. Just blow it out. Especially after work. Why? Something has changed in me in terms of how I process performance. And I used to be completely unaffected

by the fact that I had done television immediately before what I was now doing. Like I'd come and meet you out somewhere after I'd done the show. And it was like, you know, I'd just been somewhere else for an hour. That's not true. It takes a lot out of you being on live television

and thinking effectively the kind of show that we do. It's draining. And there's something about wanting to eat after it and drink after it that I've noticed more this time around than before the troubles. And so I really had to fight that. And what I had to fight most of all was being okay with the lapses. Be okay with the lapses. You're going to fail. It's going to go wrong. You're going to screw up. It's going to go wrong.

You're going to screw up, okay? And you just got to reset. You just got to do the next right thing. Now, when it comes to diet, that's really easy. That gets a lot more complicated with more complicated dynamics and relationships where you can't just unsay. You can't just fix. You can't just make it okay.

All right, that's true. Life can be a bitch. And remedying wrongs can be hard and sometimes it can't be done. And you got to deal with that. But you also have a choice every time out about how you respond to it and how you use that situation. And that's 100% on you.

Now, the lapse was on you too. And that's why you get mad at yourself and then you want to it and how you use that situation. And that's 100% on you. Now, the lapse was on you too. And that's why you get mad at yourself and then you want to punish yourself. But remember, you are in complete control of what you do next. So there's a beauty in that. And there's certainly a truth in it. And there's a strength in it and there's a power in it.

Tonight, I am going to try to eat right. And if I don't, I'll try to make up for it tomorrow morning. It's as easy as that. It's as simple as that. Now, instead of waking up tomorrow morning and having pancakes because I ate the Chinese food the night before, just let yourself be better. Take the next step. Take the next chance.

Take the next opportunity to do something better. But don't go crazy about the failure. It's going to happen to everyone in every way all the time. And you want to avoid the trap of self-sabotage in those moments. And it's a bizarre psychological thing. You should Google it. Why we would do that. It's so nonsensical, but so are we very often. And this is a real thing. There is no straight line path to our goals, the ones that matter, and our relationships,

and our expectations, and our outcomes. Simple as what you keep out of your face, a food, right? To how you change a dynamic with a child or a loved one. Not that your children aren't loved ones, but changing a relationship or a dynamic or how it's going at work, complicated situations with a lot of different factors

or something as simple as what you completely control, which is what you eat and what you do. You're gonna fail. You're gonna fall short. You're gonna screw it up. Don't double down on dumb. Don't self-sabotage. Accept the failure.

Use it to motivate the next right thing. And as I just learned from Gabby Bernstein, such an amazing interview, your change is not a function of one thing. Positive change is a function of a lot of little things done over time with consistency. So it's going to be like this. That's the growth, okay? It's not going to be like that right the only thing that happens this way is this right you can totally submarine something you can totally destroy something real fast real easy but then it's going to be hard to deal with it so you might as well choose your heart

and i really hope you choose the hard to get yourself to a better place i struggle with it i struggle with it but life is with it. But life is struggle. Life is pain management. And there are tools, and this is one of them. And I hope you use it, and I hope it helps you get to a better place, and I can't wait to hear about it. Thank you very much for being with Cuomo on the Couch,

Couch Potato. Subscribe, follow. Check us out on News Nation, 8 and 11 o'clock at night, Eastern, every weekday night. I appreciate you. Please listen to this, if nothing else. Take care of yourself and take care of the people who take care of you.

See you next time.