The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Think and Grow Thin: The Revolutionary Diet and Weight-loss System That Will Change Your Life in 88 Days! by Charles D’Angelo

Episode Date: May 15, 2025

Think and Grow Thin: The Revolutionary Diet and Weight-loss System That Will Change Your Life in 88 Days! by Charles D'Angelo Amazon.com Charlesdangelo.com Millions across this nation have eaten themselves into a prison they can’t escape – and with Think and Grow Thin, Charles D’Angelo busts down those walls and unlocks the secrets of weight-loss success. This one-stop comprehensive guide targets your mind more than your muscles to help you battle the mindset that’s making you fat. Whether you have 10, 200 or even more pounds to lose, Charles’ easy-to-follow success strategies and eating plans will give you the skills and motivation to make weight loss finally work. Filled with inspirational success stories along with photographs. You won’t believe your eyes!About the author Although it might be hard to believe that a formerly morbidly obese person could earn national acclaim for helping hundreds of people take control of their health and habits, Charles D’Angelo has done exactly that. A decade ago, the idea of such a bright and promising future would have been incomprehensible to Charles. He was a teenager, morbidly obese, miserable and had resigned himself to lifetime of lonely nights spent gorging on junk food in front of the TV.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Cause you're about to go on a monster education rollercoaster

with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. This is Voss here from the Chris Voss Show. Die, go. Woo hoo hoo. Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to 16 years and 24 hours episodes of the Chris Voss Show. Unless you're watching this year, so now then, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen,

ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen,

ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen,

ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, gentlemen, or review of any kind. We have an amazing young man on the show we're going to be talking to today. We're going to get right to him because we're a little pressed on our timeline so he can get to another event. But in the meantime, he's going to spend some quality time with us and educate us on all the smartness that we can contain within our brains. Boy, I sure put him up to the challenge, didn't I? We like to throw a guess in front of the bus. Sometimes. He is the author of the book, think and grow thin, the revolutionary diet and

weight loss system that will change your life in 88 days. It came out January 16th, 2012. He's got another book this out as well. Charles D Angelo is on the show with us today. We'll get into it with him. He's an American weight loss and personal development coach known for his transformative work in helping people reshape their body and lives through mindset, structure and personal responsibility. Who would have thunk it?

Personal responsibility. He was once a 360 pound teenager, I'm laughing because I know what that feels like, who faced relentless bullying and serious health challenges. He believed he wouldn't live to see his high school graduations, but just two years later, he was well on his way to the incredible health and fitness he maintains today, having lost 160 pounds through self-directed changes in diet and exercise. His own transformation became the foundation for his coaching philosophy. Welcome to the show.

How are you, Charles? I'm great. Thanks for having me, Chris. Thank you for coming. We really appreciate it. Give us your dot coms. Where can people find you on the interwebs? The easiest is at my website, CharlesD'Angelo.com. It's D-A-N-G-E-L-O.com.

So give us a 30,000 overview of what you do and what you put in your books. So as a teenager, as you mentioned, I was 360 pounds. I came from a family of people on my father's side. I certainly wouldn't have predicted the future that I enjoy. Doing the simple things, getting from the car to the curb, making it up a few stairs, approaching other people to talk, all were difficulties. At that age, 16, 17 years old, my heart beating out of my chest in a classroom, a sweat just dripping off my forehead, that I might not live to see my high school graduation. So I recognized that if I wanted my life to be

different, I was going to have to shift from thinking that the things around me and outside of me were going to change and get to work on changing myself. Pete Slauson Ah, shifting things, you know. So, what were you doing that was, or what weren't you maybe doing that was leading up to you putting on that weight? And then how did you flip the switch? David Erickson For many of us, myself included, it wasn't so much one thing. It was a lot of little things that were uncorrected over a long period of time.

I was always a tall kid, but I found salus in food. How many of us turned to something to distract ourselves, to console ourselves? And I grew up in a family where my mother struggled with alcoholism and prescription drug addiction. And unconsciously as a kid, I think I was using food as an analgesic, as a way of trying to treat the anxiety, the uncertainty, the instability in my house. So by the time I was 16, I was 360 pounds. I wasn't athletic as a kid. I was more interested in academics than I was in athletics.

And my father, while he was a very caring, good person, didn't have much education. And as I mentioned, his family was all obese, Italian heritage. And so food equaled comfort, equaled security. And so for me, it was a perfect storm that led me to weigh 360 pounds by the time I was 17. Wow. So was there any sort of, was there any proponents born? It was just an unstable childhood,

parenthood, anything that was really, you were really medicating or just in general? I think we turn to things outside of ourselves when we lack a strong attachment to a sense of security, a sense of attentiveness from others. When we're kids, we're totally dependent on our caretakers and our environment. So when that's unstable, it's easy to see why any of us would look outside of ourselves to get some sense of comfort. So I think it was those things. I think it was that, it was being bullied, not having a whole environment at home that offered the type of comfort that unfortunately I thought food was giving me. I was trading my future for short-term gratification. Pete Slauson Did you find yourself in a spiral where if,

you know, high school, being overweight in school, it can be relentless and mean, and everything is mean in school. I mean, it's kind of a hazing procedure of getting ready for life really when you understand it. But some of it's a little much and we certainly aren't prepared or taught or trained as well how to deal with this shit. But God forbid, we should definitely teach calculus to everyone, forcing on them. I was young. But, you know, teach us some social skills, maybe

self-personal skills, you know? It's interesting, we don't teach self-development, we don't teach how to manage credit, how to balance a checkbook, how to, you know, do all these life skill things. We just go, you want an Algebra 2 that you'll never use unless you're a scientist? Okay. How did you, so you came out of it, how did you become a thing where you started mastering it, educating other people, coaching other people, etc. etc. Yeah, so I don't think transformation is really complicated. I think it's profoundly simple, but there's something missing in so many of the different approaches out there. Now all the rage are exogenous medications, injections, pills to trigger weight loss.

But I think unless you get to the heart of the issue, that is why are you using food the way you are? What are you ignoring? What do you distract yourself from? What's really eating at you that's leading you to eat? Unless you address those issues, I think you're setting yourself up for a lifetime of frustration.

I found that having tried the pill, and tried the gyms, having tried the books, that there was something missing and everything else out there. And what I concluded was, the missing link in this whole equation was, how do you change your relationship with yourself so that food or anything else for that isn't mistakenly sought after as a means of comforting yourself as a means of reassuring yourself. And the answer is you've got to recondition the way you relate to yourself. You relate to other people because all of us are searching for essentially connection. I think at the heart of all the work I do, the work with some of the most profound thinkers

and highest achievers you can imagine, to a person working an everyday job, all of us are trying to change how we feel and ultimately feel that we're lovable, that we're wanted, that we are worthy of what we should have been given freely as kids. So to go back to what you had said about of what we should have been given freely as kids. So to go back to what you had said about we ought to be teaching a lot of these things in academics, I think that something that's grossly overlooked is so much of the responsibility comes back to how we're raised at home.

Our family has a lot to do with how things are gonna turn out and we can't burden the system, the schools, with all that responsibility. Certainly, that's true. You want parents to parent? What kind of monster are you? Yeah, your parents have to do what they have themselves. That's a fortunate thing.

So I think that it comes down to the individual. The most important job, I think, any of us can ever take on is that of a parent. Because in a certain way, your influence is going to ripple out far beyond what you could ever comprehend. And to have the gift of having that influence in the life of a child is an amazing, amazing gift. So I think many of us that take on that challenge are asking a lot of ourselves and a lot of healing can happen too, by the way, when you become a parent, if you've had an adverse childhood, you can discover a lot more about yourself and what you're capable of than you otherwise

might have found out. Pete Slauson Yeah, it's definitely a thing that people, I wish, would think more about when they get into it, but they really don't. I mean, I think you should have to go to college for a few years before you become a parent, but what I know that rule never get made is let's take some innocent human beings, fuck them up for life and just be concerned about ourselves. It's something that people need to think about. The blueprints, the example that you set for your children, the life you lead and how you get along with your relationships, sets everything. And so many people, you know, they don't fix their trauma.

Of course, that's another thing we should probably teach in school, how to fix your trauma. The, you know, they just pass it on. You just create this generational trauma from one thing to another. Sometimes that's included in the food, you know. I watched the show with the, I think it's the 600 pound girls or something like that it's called. And yeah, the sisters. And I think you can see the generational trauma there. I think there's one cut of a meme that goes around where they're like, mommy said that sodas weren't bad, sodas were good. And so they literally don't drink water or weren't drinking water and they just lived on Soda Pop pop as they called it.

And you know, that's an example of where a parent has failed in passing down and failed in also passing down generational trauma with these general belief systems around eating and food. And you know, it's kind of been interesting to me even as a child in seeing that parents had fat kids and realizing that as I lost 100 pounds and changing my diet, that a lot of it comes from just your belief systems. You know, when I, I found, I was kind of helped by Gillette Penn's, Penn Gillette's book,

I forget what it's called, but he basically lost 100 pounds and he talks about it. And one of the things that helped me in the book is he identified a lot of belief systems that he had and he showed a blueprint of how to flip the switch on this. And a lot of them were the same that I had. You know, I had the dumbest belief systems about food. You know, one of my excuses was when I was a child, my mom would take us to the store and she would be like, okay, if you get in the store, you get, you know, a candy

bar and a soda pop, right? And so, yeah, we're like, okay, you know, and you know, she didn't have to deal with us bouncing around the walls in the store, but she probably had to deal with us bouncing around the cars. We consume that sort of thing. But of course, in the 70s, when I grew up, you know, they still, I don't think they fully had the rollout of, of corn syrup and, and high fructose, but still, you know, it wasn't the best thing, but I lived for 45

years with the belief system that I needed a reward because I went to the fucking store. So every time I go to the store, not only would I buy several cases of Mountain Dew and drink 10 to 15 of them a day, I would buy a giant fucking Coke. And we're not talking, we're talking a liter bottle of Coke for the drive home and you know, a bag of chips and things. And you know, that was just an example of this belief system I had that, that, oh, I need a reward.

And I'm like, cause I realized, how am I rewarding myself? Putting myself in the hospital 20 years from now? So much of what we're up to is really unconsciously conditioned. So I think you're pointing to a very important fact that a lot of programming happens at a time where we can't really sort it. And I think the process of becoming an adult is all about that very, that very fact, sorting out those things that fit, that work, that are helping you move from where you are to where you want to go, and dispensing with those things that don't. But that also can be psychologically threatening because

in a certain way, it can make you feel alien and isolated from your origin, from the family you came from. How many of us come from a family that in some ways we recognize we've outgrown? It's not easy to work on yourself and recognize you might have to limit the associations that for a long time were very, very critical and important in your life. That's why personal development is a never-ending process. We're all changing. The question you want to ask yourself is, are you making progress towards the things you want? It's really wonderful to hear that inadvertently, it sounds like. You just became very conscious, obviously triggered by that book, of things that weren't working for you. And the bigger thing about weight loss, as I see it, having worked at this

for 21 years with myself being my first client, is it's never about the food. It's always about food is a symbol. You know, a person has a very, very troubled life, a very bitter existence, and they reach out for something sweet just to bring sweetness into their life. That's not something that they sit up and not think about, but it's a way of that inner state and making things feel more manageable and within their control. I think that the more that you can learn how to become emotionally fit, not relying on things outside of yourself, the more able you're going to be able to let go of those things that are withdrawals from your future and make the types of sacrifices in the now that are going to bring you to where you want to be. You know, and belief systems is so much of it. There was like so much crap that I

believed, you know, and they were just, what's the word for this? They were just fusty in bargains with myself. Where I'm like, if you do this, you know, hey, if you buy that box of Oreos, you won't eat half the box when you get home or tray like you normally do. And I promise that this time will be different. Some people do this with relationships and you know, so I'll buy the Oreo box and then you get home and then the whole, the whole one line of the tray is gone. And you're like, damn it, did it again. You know, one of the, one of the beliefs that I had to adopt was if it's in your house,

it's in your mouth. So don't buy it and bring it home. But yeah, you're right. These belief systems and emotional connection and these Faustian bargains that we make with ourselves, anytime I find myself starting to bargain, when I'm at the store, oh, it's only a bag of chips. It's only a half bottle of vodka. Oh, it's only, it just turns to sugar. Oh, it's only a half bottle of vodka. Oh, it's only, you know, it just turns to sugar. Oh, it's only, you know, I even, I remember one time I did a Faustian bargain where I really wanted some Pepsi. And so I found the sugar cane Pepsi that's supposed to be healthy for you and healthier.

Let's put it that way, I guess, or maybe it's not supposed to be healthy. Let's just put it that way. It's just, it might be less unhealthy. Let's, that's probably the term I'm looking for. And so I bought the half cans cause my Faustian bargain was, was, I'll drink just a half a can. And that's all it'll be is one half can a day. You know what I would do? I drink two cans to make up for the missing can. And that went out the door. You know, the belief systems are so right. So tell us how you help people.

How do you work with them? You work with, I think, Bill Clinton and Tony Robbins, if you want to reference that. But how do you work with people? How do they onboard with you and get to know you better? Now, President Bill Clinton endorsed my first book. I didn't work with him, nor did I work with Tony Robbins, but he endorsed his second book. With President Bill Clinton, I became connected with him as the Clinton Global Initiative does a lot of work to combat child obesity. And so I admired

him immensely and worked with a number of people that he was close to and he witnessed their transformation. So when my book was being published, he was kind enough to offer a really, really generous endorsement about my work given he had seen the outcome of it in a lot of ways. The first and most important thing I think any of us have to acknowledge is our discontent with where we are. So underneath all those bargains that you run back in there, you'd want to ask yourself, what was underneath all of that?

Why was that dialogue happening? What was it that you weren't addressing, that you weren't satisfied with, that was allowing for so much of that energy to be spent on something that really was just kind of spinning your wheels? So admitting to yourself where you really are is a major step in maturity. It means having humility. It means looking at yourself in the areas that you may not have wanted to look at or work on. Once you've done that, you need to accept that. And by accept, I don't mean submit to it being forever, but say, yes, with this being the case, how am I going to move forward?

And that's the first step of change is admitting and acknowledging where you are and having enough humility to recognize that something's taken up more space on your emotional landscape than it really ought to. Reasonable. And trying to shrink that down to be something that's far more within scale. I mean, being 160 pounds overweight, it obviously for me wasn't because I had some type of insatiable appetite. I was unsuccessful at trying to accomplish some aim. And the work is discovering what that's about. The belief system that you constructed, Chris,

were a reaction to something. What that something is is a mystery. I have no idea. You'd have to do some introspection and ask yourself, why was it that those things became so important, aside from your early life conditioning? And once you admit where you're not happy, accept that that's the starting point, then it's time to get to work on creating a vision for yourself that may very well fly in the face of your history. That's where the belief systems parts come in. Because if you grew up in a family of obesity or you didn't have any models around you, it's very easy to accept that as your lot in life.

So I encourage people to think about consumption in more ways than just food. Who are you spending time with? What are you watching? What aren't you watching? What are you reading? What aren't you reading? Who are you listening to? How much are you actually, choicefully and consciously, selecting the things that are influencing you? You don't have a choice when you're a child. But if you become an adolescent, as you become a young adult, as you become an adult, you have a lot more say on what and how things are going to impact you. But that also requires the acceptance of personal responsibility as you mentioned in the introduction, which is,

my life is only going to turn out as well as I determine it will. Now, I'm a believer and I believe that all of us have access to grace and there are certain assisting forces in our life that come to our side when we're working towards goals and objectives, but you have to be aware of all that. And you have to, in some ways, step outside of yourself and watch yourself and see what you're up to. And if you do that, I think that that's the trailhead into change is actually becoming someone who's watching him or herself. And noticing what is it you're doing? As you mentioned, you started to become far, far more self-reflective and that's the change. Pete And you've got to, you've got to be, you've got to be advocating for yourself.

I think that's what you're saying, right? You've got to take, you've got to, you can't rely on anybody else. Oh, my parents raised me this way. Oh, I was always taught this way. You know, you've got to advocate for yourself. Well, it's not about blame. So often after people fall into it, it's, it's, they feel that by acknowledging the truth of their earlier life, in some ways they're dismissing the role they had, the responsibility.

That's not at all the case. Acknowledging it just means allowing that in to say yeah this really did happen. I was abused. A lot of the clients that I've had the privilege of coaching over the years have had incredible incredible early life challenges. Molestation, physical, emotional abuse, neglect, abandonment, and yet these people have found a way to use those things to strengthen themselves in many ways. I mean, it's remarkable how many of the adults that I've had the privilege of coaching never even had a childhood.

Wow. They've always been, in some some ways the parent for themselves. And you can't blame someone, nor can you blame your parents. I think that you have a far more evolved perspective, which means accepting that, as I said a few moments ago, no one can give you what they don't have. You know, our parents' generation, as you alluded to, weren't as evolved or sophisticated in their way of looking at the world and role function and everything else. So, it's a privilege that we're born at the time we are, where we can be the parents for our children and for ourselves that perhaps we wish we would have had.

Pete Wow. That's pretty powerful. No one can give you what they don't have. Do I have that quote right? Yes. That's brilliant because, you know, we all look to our parents and I think we see them as, or expect them to be infallible, perfect. Sure. As your first. We also see that with institutions like the church, schools, we kind of deify people only to end up finding ourselves tearing them down. And what you have to recognize is it's very important as

children to have that construct of your parents being all knowing, all present, all powerful. But it quickly becomes obvious as we grow up that each of those projections bite the dust and so do they in our romantic relationships. You know, you meet someone and you have this idealized image of who they are and the more you know them, the longer you're with them, the more human they become. And so loving others is very much loving yourself because the more you can accept all the diversity, the good, the bad, everything in you, the more you're going to be able to tolerate that within another person. Pete You know, and that's when you said that, I equated that because I deal a lot with relationships, dating and coaching for that sort of stuff. And a lot of people do that not only to their parents

and institutions like you mentioned, but they also do that, you know, they're seeking to fill a bucket from sometimes people who don't have that thing. And… Pete Slauson They're looking to undo, recreate, fix, heal what another healthy adult would never be willing to. Pete Slauson Yeah. And a lot of people, it's been said by a lot of psychologists, a lot of people are recreating their childhood, their broken childhoods, their damaged relationships that

maybe their parents had with each other. And they're trying to round the square, basically reconcile those by recreating those and then trying to do better in those relationships. And sometimes those relationships just fail because of the nature of the people that were involved in them and finding those people and, you know,, reacting out that relationship probably is the smartest idea when it comes down to it. Yeah, I call that dressing the adults of today in the wardrobe of your past. Oh wow, that's a good line. You're dressing your partner up in the clothes of your parent.

A healthy adult doesn't want to become your parent, they want to be your partner. I wish we had more time to delve in this because you've got some great analogies, but I know of your parent. A healthy adult doesn't want to become your parent. They want to be your partner. I wish we had more time to delve into this because you've got some great analogies, but I know we need to get you out for a hard out you have. As we go out, give us your dot coms, final pitch to everyone to reach out to you, how they can reach out to you and all that good stuff. Sure. The easiest way to find me is CharlesD'Angelo.com. I am still accepting personal coaching clients. And if you're interested in my books, the first is Think and Grow Thin.

It's available at any major bookseller. The second is Inner Guru. Again, any major bookseller, the library, Amazon, my website, CharlesD'Angelo.com. And as far as what I hope everyone gets from today's talk is that no matter what your history, what your biography, that does not have to be your destiny. It's your choices, everything can change for you. Pete So, thank you very much for coming to the show. We really appreciate it. Very insightful stuff, Charles.

Thank you. Charles My pleasure. Thanks for having me, Chris. Pete Thank you. And thanks to our audience for tuning in. Pick up his book where refined books are sold and reach out to him as well. The book is entitled Think and Grow Rich, or I'm sorry, Think and Grow Thin. And it will make you rich if you're thin, I don't know, health-wise.

Think and Grow Thin, the revolutionary diet weight loss system that will change your life in 88 days. Thanks for tuning in, be good to each other, stay safe, we'll see you guys next time.