The Dr. John Delony Show - Overwhelmed With the Fitness Industry? Here’s Where To Start with Sal Di Stefeno from Mind Pump

Episode Date: October 19, 2022

Today’s show is super epic because we’re talking with Mind Pump’s Sal Di Stefano about all things health and fitness. We dive into things like: - Why the fitness world has gotten so extreme - What kind of fitness goals are actually unhealthy - The habits you can start today that will radically change your health Let us know what’s going on by leaving a voicemail at 844.693.3291 or visiting johndelony.com/show.  Support Our Sponsors: BetterHelp DreamCloud Churchill Mortgage Thorne Add products to your cart create an account at checkout Receive 25% off ALL orders Resources: Own Your Past, Change Your Future Questions for Humans Conversation Cards Redefining Anxiety Quick Read John’s Free Guided Meditation Listen to all The Ramsey Network podcasts anytime, anywhere in our app. Download at: https://apple.co/3eN8jNq These platforms contain content, including information provided by guests, that is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. The content is not intended to replace or substitute for any professional medical, counseling, therapeutic, financial, legal, or other advice. The Lampo Group, LLC d/b/a Ramsey Solutions as well as its affiliates and subsidiaries (including their respective employees, agents and representatives) make no representations or warranties concerning the content and expressly disclaim any and all liability concerning the content including any treatment or action taken by any person following the information offered or provided within or through this show. If you have specific concerns or a situation in which you require professional advice, you should consult with an appropriately trained and qualified professional expert and specialist. If you are having a health or mental health emergency, please call 9-1-1 immediately. Learn more about your ad choices. https://www.megaphone.fm/adchoices Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy

Coming up on the Dr. John Deloney Show. Health isn't eating, you know, the right amount of calories and proteins, fats, and carbs and exercising all the time. Sometimes healthy eating is, you know, hey, I haven't seen my friend in a year and we're going to go get some pizza and have some beer. Sometimes that's healthy. Usually it's not. Sometimes it is, though. Hey, what's up, what's up? This is John with the Dr. John Deloney Show, the greatest mental health and marriage and parenting podcast ever recorded. Hope you're doing well,

and I'm so glad that you have given us your most precious, precious, precious, your most precious resource for time. I'm grateful that you're here. And this is also a show about linguistics because I'm such a clear talker. Good grief. Hey, don't forget to leave your five-star reviews and share these episodes with folks that you think would benefit from them. And if you will subscribe, it just helps kick the sucker up into the algorithms and it helps more people that would otherwise not know about the show. It helps them to see the show. So thank you so much. It's a way you can just support us and help other people out in your communities without

having to pay for anything. Y'all are getting, having to pay for everything these days. And so this is a good way to help out without out with very little effort. Um, all right. So today's show, it's a different show. In fact, it's a show we've never done before. And I need to tell you, it's, I think about an hour over on their podcast and it ended up being a great episode for their crew. But I stayed and recorded an episode of the Dr. John Deloney show with Sal in their studio. And so I need you to know this. I talked about things publicly that I've never spoken about to somebody other than my wife, including my challenges with disordered eating and body dysmorphia and some of the struggles. I've been lifting weights for 30 years and some of the struggles I've had trying to navigate fitness and

what is working out look like and exercise. So Sal is a master, a master. The whole gang is, at making exercise simple. And he has, him and his team, the Mind Pump crew have made it their mission to go after the fitness industry, the nonsense. They're all been personal trainers for decades. They have been coaches for decades. They train coaches and they are just extraordinary human beings. And so buckle up. This is a long interview, and I'm not even going to wrap it up at the end. So when the interview's over, the show will be over because I don't want to waste your time.

But this is a transformative interview. My life has been different since this interview has ended, and I've implemented a lot of the changes. Those of us who were in the interview, we all left California with our lives different. So this is about exercise. This is about nutrition. This is about mental health.

This is about relationships. This is about living and creating a life worth living. Stay tuned for my interview with the great Sal DiStefano. All right, Sal, dude, thanks for letting me be in your house. Yeah, thanks for coming. This is our first show in somebody else's house. Is it really?

Yes. How do you like our studio? If I'm being super honest, it's super, it's way cooler than my studio, man. I thought you were going to say something bad. No, you got guitars on the wall. You have,

yeah, this is rad. Thank you. We just put it together to make it look more visual. It's legit, man. Appreciate it. Thank you all for is rad. Thank you. We just put it together to make it look more visual. It's legit, man. Appreciate it. Thank y'all for your hospitality. Appreciate it.

Whenever we meet folks, you always wonder like, are they going to be cool? Yeah, yeah. Super hospitable, man. I'm super, super grateful. Thank you. Okay, so we're going to talk about a couple of things that are a big deal to me personally.

Okay. And if the listeners are in on it, that's cool. Okay. So I want to talk about your new book. It's been out for a year, The Resistance Training Revolution. We were having a conversation about it on the airplane, and just the folks that travel with me were like, what? What?

Right? And the second is you've been working with trainers for years. And so you, we talked about earlier, getting behind like the meal plan and the weight loss. Why are people struggling the way they're struggling? Yeah. Right. And so let me start off this way.

What happened? What happened to the fitness and the diet? Like what happened? Because the more I'm learning, the simpler it's getting. But I consider myself somebody who's up on the science, knows what I'm talking about. And dude, I was so lost at sea, man. What happened?

Yeah, so you could say it's both very simple and very complex. And also the way that we've tried to tackle the problem is from the wrong angle completely, which is why we failed so terribly. So let's start with the, I guess, the obesity or poor health epidemic. In a nutshell, our environment changed far faster than our ability to develop, I guess, guidelines or structures or behaviors around that new environment. And so the result of which has been poor health. But to be more specific, I know in the 80s, so I'm old enough to remember

obesity being blamed on fat, and then it got blamed on carbohydrates, and who knows what they're going to blame on next, maybe protein. So I'm old enough to remember that and also old enough to see how they were wrong on all of that. Really, what a lot of it has to do with, and poor health is quite complex, but obesity a lot has to do with just the consumption of heavily processed foods. And it's not that these foods are inherently unhealthy, although many of them are. It's that these foods are engineered to make us overeat.

And there's some really, really good studies on this. So if you like looking at data and studies, there's some excellent studies done on heavily processed foods where they take groups of people. And one of the challenges with nutrition studies or diet studies is a lot of them are observational or, you know, they have to come in and kind of report. How many tomatoes did you have last year? Yeah. It's super, it's super inaccurate, but these studies were really good because they

were controlled. They actually took people, put them in a lab and they said, okay, you group over here, you have unlimited access to whole natural foods. Whole natural foods being foods with like one or two ingredients like bananas, apples, steak, you know, that kind of stuff. And then the other group's like, okay, you guys have unlimited access to heavily processed foods. So these are foods that are in wrappers and boxes, things with long shelf lives.

And they actually even... And they actually even controlled the macro content. So it's like similar proteins, fats, and carbs, similar proteins, fats, and carbs. They had them stay in those rooms for a while and observe them. And then they'd switch groups,

which is, I love this part. They took this group, put them in this room, took this group, put them in that room. And what they found on average is that people consume about 500 to 600 more calories a day when they eat heavily processed foods. And that's, again, because these foods are engineered to make us overeat.

And if you look at, if you really want to put your finger on the main culprit, although, like I said, it's complex. If you want to put your finger on the main culprit, if you look at the predominance of heavily processed foods in the American diet, it starts off very small, but then it rapidly becomes a majority of our diet.

You'll see that it almost mirrors the obesity epidemic. You just lay that map right on top of the other one. And you'll see that it almost mirrors the obesity epidemic. You just lay that map right on top of the other one. And you'll see that really almost starts to mirror it. So to give another good example of kind of what I'm talking about, we had Chris Kresser on the show a few years ago, and he gave this wonderful analogy, and I use it all the time now.

And he said, look, if I took five boiled plain potatoes, I just boil them in water, give them to you, no salt, no butter, and said, here, eat all these, you probably wouldn't be able to do it. After about two potatoes, you'd gag, and you'd get what's called palate fatigue. But if I gave you a large family-sized bag of Lay's potato chips, which contains roughly four to five potatoes, you could probably eat them all. You could crush it. That's right.

And so what's happened is all the research and development that's gone into heavily processed foods, the vast majority of it goes into understanding and hacking how to get us to eat more of these foods. It sells more product, but what it's done is it's hijacked our systems of satiety. And so there's this belief that humans are eating machines. If you just put food in front of us, we'll just eat until we die. That's not really true. We do have satiety that kicks in.

We do get palate fatigue, right? We've all experienced this. You eat dinner, you're full. I can't eat any more. Then they bring out dessert. All of a sudden you feel like you can- My kids call it my dessert stomach is doing great right now. Right. And this is a very interesting phenomenon. We have this. So we can actually, so our bodies will tell us to stop eating because evolutionarily speaking,

it was bad to overeat just like now, just like it was back then. And there's lots of reasons, right? You could have overate, poor digestion. You would have died. Jeez, you got diarrhea a thousand years ago. That was it. That might've been your life, right?

So, but again, these foods have hijacked those and so when you eat a lot of these foods i mean you can apply discipline you could try to like no i'm not gonna eat anymore but it's it's it's it's almost a losing it's it is a losing battle it really is how do we get from that to blaming the consumer oh because because the consumer does i mean I do have some responsibility not eating those chips. And at the same time, man,

I'm fighting a whole bunch of scientists who have, have like engineered it to make me not want to. I am not blaming the producers because they're a market and they're just giving us

more of what we want. Okay. Okay. And markets are really good at that. Okay. They'll give us what we want. And what do we want? Convenience.

And we want the hedonistic pleasure from the food. We want that, that feeling. So we got that. Okay. They'll give us what we want. And what do we want? Convenience. And we want the hedonistic pleasure from the food. We want that feeling. So we got it. Yeah. How do we get that responsibility? Well, first, we have to become aware.

We have to become aware that, look, these foods, my body perceives them different than other foods. I'll give you an interest, like, really, really effective

tip that I used with clients. And it took me a few years to kind of figure this out. So early in my career, I wasn't a great trainer. And later on, I became a good trainer because I didn't do a good job and I really had to figure out what it took to do well. And early in my career, I would do things like, hey, Mrs. Johnson, I want you to cut your calories by 500 calories. And I'd have her track and do all that stuff. And so like every day, here's your calorie target. Just do this and you'll get great results. Well, that didn't work long-term. It never does. Later on, what I would do is I'd tell clients, hey, eat as much as you want. Eat until you're satisfied. Just avoid heavily processed foods. And they'd say, okay.

And they would get the same results as if they cut the 500 calories. And it was, again, because our bodies will eat more or less what's appropriate when we remove those types of foods out of our diet. And that's just one piece. And there's a lot more that goes into this. Our approach towards weight loss has been all wrong, both mechanistically, but the big issue is that we tend to view humans as like robots. You plug in the numbers and you'll get the result. And I did this as a trainer. Oh, you want to lose weight?

Here's your meal plan. Here's your workout. Just follow this and you're going to be totally fine. As though weight loss is solely due to a lack of correct information. It doesn't work. Yeah. I mean, food alone.

I mean, gosh, food is proteins fats carbs calories and nutrients but is that all it is culture man it's laughter it's joy it's hanging out with your friends your family big italian family it's it's everything it's it's the center piece it's connecting it's i'm depressed it's i'm anxious it's i'm at the movies so i eat these kinds of foods yeah it's uh i'm you'm breakfast foods and lunch foods and dinner foods. So to try to simplify diet all the way down to eat this, don't eat that, here's your calories, is really ignoring how we really value food and what it means to us. It's this huge part of who we are, and it's a big part of our behaviors.

And unless we tackle it that way, we're going to fail. And look, diets have 85% fail rate. And this is within the first year. You stretch that out to five years, I bet that number gets north of 95%. And that's the other problem. We don't need to figure out new ways of losing weight. We do a good job, by the way, losing weight. Millions of Americans lose weight every single year. We got to tackle the real issue, which is how do we keep it off? Keep it off. Now, what's the problem?

Why are we all gaining the weight back? And I do talk about in the book a lot of the reasons why I think we're gaining the weight back. So yesterday, a friend of mine called. This is literally, I'm on the streets of San Jose. Take a step out, take a call. And he said, hey, I went to the doctor

and like he looked at me and he mentioned probably five times i need to lose some weight and we've let him know that for years just as one of our friends and he said he gave me this list of all these different diets i can try and whichever ones and he's like so which one of these what do i we're at a point now where i told him i said i don't have a great answer for other than you got to make peace with why you eat too much. And you got to quit drinking. And that wasn't a mechanistic, well, he told me to try intermittent fasting.

He told me to try a high fast. And if that didn't work, then I could probably try a vegan diet. You just got to make peace with why you eat. That probably wasn't a great answer for him. Just me walking on the street on the cell phone. Like, what do you tell somebody in that? Because that's the person listening to the show right now, right? They're an over-the-road trucker.

They just want to be a little bit better dad. They're a busy, busy, busy mom whose husband's running around. What do you tell that person who's like, you got to cut about 30, 40 pounds before you start? You actually gave them good advice. Really? Yeah. I never give good advice.

Yeah, that was great. Okay, so you want to know what's funny? If you look at the data long-term, okay. So we all look at the like, how much weight did they lose in a three-month period? Ignore that. Yep. How much weight did they lose forever? That's what we got to look at. If you look at the data, the most effective stress, if we were to compare diets, diets to therapy, therapy is more effective. You take someone who's obese and you have them see a counselor and they go to a counselor or therapist

and they say, I just have this issue with food. They'll have more success. Dude, I didn't even know that. That's fantastic. That's true. Now, as a trainer, I figured this out later on

and I would work with my clients and therapists and my success rate went through the roof. And this is how I learned. This is one of the ways I learned a lot of my strategies was by hearing how these therapists would communicate to these people. I'll give you a great example. Okay. Most people enter into a diet or a workout program from a place of self-hate. Okay. I don't, I look gross. I'm not sexy. I'm too skinny. I'm too fat, whatever. Okay. So they're going into it from a place of self-hate. I look gross, I'm not sexy, I'm too skinny, I'm too fat, whatever. Okay, so they're going into it from a place of self-hate. When you hate

yourself, diet becomes restriction, exercise becomes punishment. So when I used to manage gyms, I would see this all the time, people would come to the gym and they would value the workout based on how much pain they felt and how hard they sweat and how hard they sweat and how sore they got. Why? It was cathartic because they had to punish themselves.

I'm so overweight. I'm going to go beat myself. How many times have you heard this? Damn, that's me, man. Well, that's most people. You're describing me? Yeah. That's most people.

How many times have you heard people say, oh man, I ate so much pizza yesterday. I'm going to go and just sweat it out and beat myself up. Yeah. Right? So that, right? It's no wonder up. Yeah. Right? So that, it's no wonder people,

yeah, okay, so I'll tell you a story where this really, where this really became, it was illuminating to me, this particular conversation.

So I was at a dinner with my ex-wife. So she used to work for a tech company and they would have these like big dinners where you can meet spouses and whatever.

And we're, I'm hanging out with all these, you know, all her coworkers and their spouses, and we're all introducing ourselves. And, you know, as a trainer, whenever I introduced myself, of course, people all of a sudden become self-aware of like the food they're eating. So, you know, oh, I'm, you know, my name's Sal and I, you know, I own a gym or whatever. Of course, people are like, oh, don't look at me. I'm eating all this bread. Oh, I'll have another glass of wine. Don't make fun of me or whatever. So that kind of starts out at first,

but then everybody got comfortable. And as the wine started flowing, I remember this lady sitting across from me. She goes, you know, Sal, she goes, I had a friend who, you know, she was 48 years old, exercise all the time, ate right, whatever. And then she got cancer and she died.

And so I just said, you know what? I'm just going to enjoy my life. I'm just going to enjoy my life. And I'm going to eat everything and drink and just, you know, forget exercise. And I sat there really quiet and, you know, I empathize with her and I sat there and it hit me. And I said, what a strange thing to say that, because we know this, this is a fact. If you eat right and you exercise, the quality of your life improves dramatically. There's almost nothing that won't improve if you're healthier, that you're a better parent,

better employee, innovate better, more productive, everything, right? I said, gosh, she said she just wants to enjoy her life so she's not going to do those things. And I've heard that so many times. I thought, how can that be? Oh, I know. Exercise is a punishment and diet is restriction.

It's, they go into it with a self-hate. I hate myself. They divide themselves into two different people. The child that needs to be tyrannized. Don't do that. Don't do this. You're gross, whatever. And eventually you leave because why?

You rebel. I don't want to do this anymore. This sucks. I don't want to punish myself. I don't restrict myself. I'm a grownup. I can do whatever I want. Yeah, whatever. And eventually you leave because why? You rebel. I don't want to do this anymore. This sucks. I don't want to punish myself. I don't restrict myself. I'm a grownup. I can do whatever I want. Yeah. Yeah. By the way, this is why when people go off a diet, they don't go and have one cookie. Oh, they have a box of cookies. We're having a bag, dude. Yeah. They are rebelling against that in that because of that psychological phenomena that happens. What if people did this instead? What if people went into diet and exercise like

this? Instead of looking in the mirror and says, oh, I look gross. I'm disgusting. I'm going to go beat myself up or whatever. What if they said, you know what? I haven't been taking care of myself and I deserve to be taken care of just like anybody else. You know what I'm going to start doing? I'm going to start taking care of myself like somebody I care about.

And then they go to the gym and they do what? They train themselves appropriately. They don't overdo it. They don't beat the crap out of themselves They go in there and the goal is to feel better, right? What about diet? I get to I don't have to yeah Now the diet is balanced You offer me that cookie. It's I can't have it. It's uh, you know, I actually don't want it I know how I know how I don't feel good after that yes or yeah i'll have that i'm all in yeah because you know here's the thing about health we talk about this a lot on the show health isn't eating you know the right amount of calories and proteins fats and carbs and exercising all the time health is a is

a is a sphere and it's quite balanced. Sometimes healthy eating is, you know, hey, I haven't seen my friend in a year and we're going to go get some pizza and have some beer and connect. Sometimes that's healthy. Usually it's not. Sometimes it is though, right? And that's how you develop that balance.

That's how you have that cookie and not eat the whole box. And it's not because you can't, it's because that's what you want. And, you know, if we can get people, and this is what I eventually figured out how to do, is to get people to develop that relationship with exercise and diet,

and then they do it forever. It's not a, I got to force myself or I have to, you know, feel motivated, which is another issue. You know, I got to have this feeling. We'll talk about that in a minute, yeah. Yes. So, I'll, let me forget these questions.

We'll just just this will be a therapy session for me um i've struggled with body dysmorphia for a long time and for those of you listening it's it's this idea that i don't care what the objective data says i don't care what my wife says i don't care my friends and how my clothes fit it's what i see in the mirror isn't good enough and i gotta keep to keep pushing, keep pushing. I've reached a point now where I exercise because I can simply feel better. And I now know if I eat this, I'm doing some work on trying to be a better parent.

I recognized if I eat this whole pizza, which I could polish one off on a Friday night, I won't sleep very well. I'll be up and down, up and down. I'll be a little bit grumpier Saturday morning. Then my kids will come in and I'll be a little bit more dad pokey and there'll be a little bit more separate, which then sets off some of my childhood stuff. And then I'll be like, Hey guys, and get a little bit louder. And all of a sudden nobody wants to be wants to be around dad, and by Sunday morning, I'm Sunday afternoon dad. I am frustrating to be around.

I've got that ball of energy. I'm starting to dread Monday. All that can be traced back to that Friday night. So I'm pretty intuitive when it comes to that. I haven't made the leap to my wife over Christmas. This was her great quote. My family was there there i'm pretty sure i had covid i wasn't feeling good um we had a whole bunch of drama going on and i was like i

just got to go down and get a workout in she looked at me and goes stop i was like no i just need to go down and lift i have a gym in the basement and she said it's 15 john i was like what is that and she said of all of the total of the reason I love you, how you look is 15%. And she said, it's maxed out. You look good. You look good, all 15%. And A, I was like, it's got to be way more than 15%.

But she was saying, you don't need any more. I don't need any more from you in that area. But for me, I haven't made that leap yet. So I feel like the bar moves on me, right? I lose 10 pounds. Cool. I just,

I need a 10 pound point. I need to get a little bit bigger, a little bit smaller. How do you stop the bar? Cause I feel like I'm on a treadmill that I can't get off of. It's a process and it's definitely a journey. You're going to learn that lesson one way or another. So what I mean by that is,

well, everybody gets older. Yeah. You know, if you look at celebrities, these Hollywood celebrities, you can see, you can see the ones that is, well, everybody gets older. If you look at celebrities, these Hollywood celebrities, you can see the ones that are so connected, their identity is so much about their youth and their appearance that you can see that they are very distorted and they're unhealthy.

And we see this in the health and fitness space quite a bit. We talked about this earlier when you were on our show. My space has got more eating disorders and body dysmorphia than almost any other space. So you'll figure it out. But I think the key is you're a father. Okay. We take care of our kids better than we take care of ourselves. Okay. So I do that to myself. And by the way, I started working out because of body dysmorphia. And I probably still struggle with it from time to time as well. And I got to remind myself, am I taking care of myself

like I would take care of my son or my daughter? And then that's the answer. That's the right answer. Even if I don't want to do it, that'll usually point me in the right direction because I'm a better, I take care of my kids, like I said, better. And as a trainer, by the way,

I was a better trainer for my clients than I was for myself as well. I'm a way better counselor for other people than for myself. Totally, right? So there's that. The other part is if you do this long enough, you know, fitness, one of the things I love about fitness is that it's this really unassuming

vehicle of personal growth. It's unassuming because nobody goes into it thinking, I'm going to do this personal growth thing and become this better person. Everybody's like, I want to lose weight and look better. I want to look sexy. I want to look good in a bikini, right? But if you follow it long enough, what do you learn? Acceptance. Like, you know, at some point I accepted as a kid, I ain't going to look like

Arnold Schwarzenegger. It's not going to happen. I don't got a genetics. It ain't going to happen, but I still do it, right? Or I'm getting older. I'm not as strong as I used to be. I still do it anyway, right? So there's that acceptance. There's the, I suck. I suck at stuff. Like the first time you do a squat, you're not going to be good at it. Right. How do you get good at it? You keep doing it. You practice. Pull-ups. Yeah. You learn that, right? You go through the, this is what I got to do to look a particular way. And then you start to go, well, this is what I got to do to feel a particular way. And then you go, wait, there, maybe there's more to health than just

exercise and diet. Maybe I look at this meditative practice or spirituality or all these different things. So you start to figure it out so long as you appreciate the journey. So if you appreciate the journey, you know, like, oh, you know, I've gone through periods of my life that were really challenging. You know, years ago I had, this was like back to back. It was like in a two-year period. I had a friend, sorry, family member, very close family member that lost a struggle with cancer.

And it was a long battle. And I was very close to them. And then shortly after I went through a divorce. Now, during that whole period of time, the exercise for me was not about hitting PRs. It was not about looking better. I went in there because I needed it. I needed to disconnect from some of that stuff,

focus on me for a second, feel better for a bit, keep myself healthy enough so I could deal with these other things, right? So it's that journey process. Like, why do you value the exercise? Is it because it makes you look good? Well, eventually you're going to learn that you're going to have to let go of that. It runs out of gas, yeah. Eventually you just do it because you enjoy the process.

And if you do that, well, I mean, then you'll never really stop. But it is a process. I don't know how long that process, probably lifelong. But I bet you, how long have you been working out now? My whole life, yeah. Yeah, so I bet your body image stuff is probably better now than it was 20 years ago. Absolutely.

And just hearing that makes me want to approach this. Anytime I read or hear objective wisdom or data and it conflicts with what I'm feeling, my feelings are what needs to change usually, right? And so this is a good place to be curious about it. So the next time I feel less than just to ask what is it where is what is my body trying to protect me from why does it why is it announcing that we don't look good we need to cover where my wife always gets on me because i like to wear a shirt at the pool why it's like i don't know i you know since i was a little kid yeah um and so that was one of her requests for our anniversary trip she's like we just take your shirt off at a pool at a public pool like you know what i mean

um but it was less about it was more, I want you to be comfortable in your own skin. And so I think it's, it's a, it's a practice, right? It's a thing I'm going to lean into. It is. And again, it's, it's the journey. It's something I quote that I've said, uh, before. And funny, I was on another podcast and I said this and it went viral. It's all over the place now, but I, and it's not my wisdom. This is actually ancient wisdom. And it's that, uh, the man who loves walking is going to walk further than the man who loves the destination. So, you know, once you can, once you kind of fall in love with the journey,

then you'll never really stop. You'll never stop learning either. And that's the, that's the, that's where you want. That's the, the goal, right? That's where you want to be. If you're listening to this and you struggle with this back and forth relationship, like most people with exercise and nutrition, you got to figure out, okay, how can I fall in love with this journey? Part of it is not falling in love with the goals and the results. I know it sounds funny. That's been big for me. Yeah. And those things take care of themselves if you follow the process.

Listen, 100%. Here's another, you know, another thing I communicate quite a bit. And this, I had to learn the hard way. You know, in my early 30s, I learned this hard lesson because up until then, I was really the meathead trainer. Like I knew exercise, right? I knew cardio. I knew how to build muscle and burn body fat

and macros and supplements. But it was still very driven by how I looked, my aesthetics, and identified with muscle and look in a particular way. Well, anyway, I developed some really bad

gut health issues in my early 30s. At one point, I thought I had Crohn's disease. And I lost a lot of weight. I lost like 13, 14 pounds. This armor that I had built of muscle was deteriorating all around me. None of what I knew was solving it.

Thankfully, thank God I had, at the time I had a wellness studio. And at least I had the wherewithal to know that there was value in other practices. So in my studio, I had a wellness studio. And at least I had the wherewithal to know that there was value in other practices. So in my studio, I had a gut health expert. I had a hormone specialist. I had a functional medicine practitioner, massage therapist, meditative specialist, acupuncturist.

And they were all in my place, right? Even though it wasn't for me, I could see the value in my clients. Well, anyway, here I was. Couldn't figure this out. Losing weight. I look terrible. So this was really bad for me, right? And I sat down with a few of them. And I said, here I was, couldn't figure this out, losing weight. I look terrible. So this was really bad for me. Right. And I sat down with a few of them and I said, that's it. I give up. I'll do whatever you guys tell me. I can't, nothing I'm doing is helping. I don't know

what the heck's going on. And so they said, okay, here's what we're going to do. And I followed their advice and I had to not look in the mirror in order to follow their advice. So, because I knew if I looked in the mirror that that would trigger me to go do the old shit, right? So I didn't pay attention to the reflection in the mirror, didn't look at the numbers on the bar when I was working out. And really my goal became my health. How do I feel?

How's my digestion? How's my energy? How's my sleep? And that's what I focused on. And I did this for, it was about a year through this process. And then I was at a pool party with some friends. And we're at the pool hanging out.

And I got up to go to the bathroom. And I walked into the bathroom and they had, there was like three mirrors that were reflecting off each other. So I don't know if this ever happened to you, but I saw a reflection of myself from an angle that I didn't recognize. So in a split second, I saw myself objectively. It was a really weird feeling, right? So I saw this reflection, and I realized it was me.

But in that split second, I objectively, without body image issues, without any of that stuff, saw myself. And I said, oh, my God. And I looked in the mirror. I said, I look better than I've ever looked. I said, holy cow, who would have thought chasing health would have produced this aesthetic look?

And that's when I realized, you know, if you chase health, you're going to get the aesthetics that you're looking for. Great deal of it. If you chase the aesthetics, you'll eventually lose your health and you'll lose the aesthetics as well. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp.

October is the season for wearing costumes. And if you haven't started planning your costume, seriously, get on it. I'm pretty sure I'm going to go as Brad Pitt because we have the same upper body, but whatever. Look, it's costume season. And if we're being honest, a lot of us hide our true selves behind masks and costumes more often than we want to. We do this at work. We do this in social settings. We do this around our own families. We even do this with ourselves. I have been there multiple times in my life and it's the worst. If you feel like you're stuck hiding your true self behind costumes and masks, I want you to consider talking with a therapist. Therapy is a place where you can learn to accept all the parts

of yourself, where you can be honest with yourself and where you can take off the mask and the costumes and learn to live an honest, authentic life. Costumes and masks should be for Halloween parties, not for our emotions and our true selves. If you're considering therapy, I want you to call my friends at BetterHelp. BetterHelp is 100% online therapy. You can talk with your therapist anywhere so it's convenient for just about any schedule. You just get online and you fill out a short survey and you'll be matched with a licensed therapist and you can switch therapists at any time for no additional cost. Take off the costumes and take off the masks with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash Deloney to get 10 percent off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash Deloney. Have we gotten too obsessed as a culture with goals?

Yeah. In my old world, in the university setting, you used to earn a master's degree on the way to a PhD, and all it was like somebody handing you a cup of water on a marathon. Yeah. Like you're to earn a master's degree on the way to a PhD and all those were was like somebody handing you a cup Of water on a marathon like you're a lifetime scholar and we're just gonna pause and recognize look how far you've come And you got the rest of your life to do this now they become destinations, right? I'm gonna go get this certification so that I can tell the world look how look how much I know Look how many classes I sat through and I feel like

Everything's about a goal here and a goal here and a goal here as a place to start instead of saying, no, what if sleeping better was your goal or what about having a better marriage was your goal? And if you pull that thread

long enough, you probably should work out. You should move your body, right? Yeah. What's that phenomenon? There's a term for it where you would see this in athletes.

Like they train their whole life to compete in the Olympics. Then they get to the Olympics, they win gold, and then they get depressed. Oh, they fall off the map. Yeah. Because their identity was that. Yeah, yeah.

That's what happens with a lot of people. You'll see people lose 30 pounds. I'm here. Uh-oh. Yeah. What do I do now? Like this is, I don't know if I could do this. I don't enjoy this.

So yeah, I think goals are fine, but I don't think we should worship goals. I think it's really important to figure out how to enjoy the process, you know, because then you're always going to want to, you're always going to want to do that. And part of that is how you go into it. How do I go into this? Am I taking care of me or am I punishing me? Is it because I love me or is it because I hate me? You know, why am I doing this? If you go into it the right way,

and then once you understand that, by the way, once you go into the right way, there's more, right? Then we can discuss the mechanisms and the most effective ways and what's going to give you the most bang for your buck and all that stuff, which everybody wants to talk about. But that's all minor stuff. Right, and we'll get there.

We can get there. We'll talk about all that. But you got to go into it the right way. If you go into the right way, then the stuff I can talk about the mechanisms uh that work and that help um then they become very effective i mean the parallels with dealing with your marriage or with mental health is the exact same it's the same like if you go into a disagreement with your with with my wife to win we've both lost right or if i go in to show her where she needs, we've both lost. If I go in like trying to help this relationship, it's totally a proposition, right?

Absolutely. It's 100% the same thing. And this, again, I found so much value in working with clients who had therapists. And, you know, I guess my saving grace was I cared so much about helping my clients that I was able to question my own methods when they weren't successful. So at least it dissolved that part of my ego where I'd say,

okay, this isn't working. I really care about this person. Like what's going on. So I'd work with these therapists and I'd ask them questions and like, you know, how do I communicate to this person? I remember once I had a client, my first, first time having a client that told me they had an eating disorder. I had somebody who was recovering anorexic. And just, you know, thankfully I did. I said, okay, you're working with a therapist. I need to talk. Is it okay if I communicate with them so that I can know the right ways to approach whatever?

So I talked to this person. They said, okay, don't talk about weight. Don't talk about body fat percentage. Don't talk about how they look. Focus on their performance. And I remember it was like a light bulb. Oh, yeah. Let's just see if they, let's get them strong. Let's just focus on their performance and i remember it's like a light bulb oh yeah let's just see if they let's get them strong yeah let's just focus on strength the side effect of which being you're gonna have to eat feel better yeah yeah you gotta eat if you're gonna get

stronger that's right and it worked it was so effective now you could get obsessed with that as well but it was a wonderful segue from body focus to performance to, all right, now I'm going to take care of myself. But yeah, that's the biggest thing. And what we've done, there's a few different reasons why we failed to solve this. One is how we go into it. I hate myself. And then the fitness space and the health space capitalizes on that.

It's a very powerful short-term motivator. If you're hating yourself right now, I can sell you something real quick. In fact, in sales, they talk about pain points. You ever take a marketing course, they'll tell you, find a person's pain points and hammer on those. I never thought though we're creating them, right? Yeah. Let's create a pain point and then solve it. Oh yeah. Oh, create it, find it, get that pain point and hammer on that and they'll buy your product, right? So there's that. The other part is the motivation model, okay?

Which is, and fitness loves this, right? The newest class. Oh my God, it's so exciting. Urban cowboy hip hop dance class or whatever. It's new, you know, new exercise machine. It's so fun, right? And I get it. We all love the feeling of motivation.

I've never had to convince a client to exercise or eat right when they're motivated, right? It's the other times. So we have to learn how to develop skills of discipline that stick with us forever. All right, let's get on that road. Yeah. So we live in a culture that, we talked about this earlier, it's all feelings. What do you feel?

What do you feel like? What do you feel like? If you don't feel like it, if you feel like you need a raise, you should go demand it, right? And if you feel like you don't want to pay back your student loans, you should just write a letter to the Congress. It's all about feelings, feelings.

And for me, when it comes to exercise, when it comes to taking care of my relationships, when it comes to doing my own stuff, feelings get me about 10 yards down the road, man. And then I have to go do the hard stuff. I think all mental health can be summed up in do it anyway. All right. Talk to me about the difference between motivation and discipline.

Yeah. And how you cultivate. Motivation is a feeling. And we all go through periods of motivation, but we all go through periods without motivation. So if you rely on motivation, you're going to eventually fail when that's gone. Okay, so-

Like 100%. Yeah. Marriage, parenting, all of it. When you don't feel like it, if you haven't developed a way to do it anyway, then it's not going to happen when that feeling is gone. And that's true for all things, but especially, yeah, and I see that in fitness.

Obviously, I saw that all the time with fitness. So I like to give people measurable, like step-by-step things. And this simplifies it, but again, it's more challenging the way I'm going to make it sound. But I would tell clients, I'd say, look, here's what we're going to do. Let's start with one step that we can take

that is challenging because it's got to have meaning. If there's no challenge, it doesn't mean anything to you. But also realistic in this context forever. Not 30 days, 60 days, 90 days until I lose the 30 pounds. But I want you to be honest. You have to be honest with yourself. Is this a step I can take now that I think it's still challenging, but I think I feel pretty confident that I can maintain for the rest of my life. Okay. That means through the times where you're not motivated, when you're tired, whatever. Okay. Start there. And I don't care what that step is. It could be the smallest. I mean, I had a client once. The first step was to read one page

out of a nutrition book once a week. That was the first, that's where we settled. Okay. Okay. We settled there. So we start, that's the starting point. So I don't care what it is. You know, I'm going to drink a glass of water extra every day, or I'm going to walk for five minutes after breakfast, or I'm going to go to the gym once a week. Whatever it is, challenging, but realistic forever. Start there. Do that.

When you do that and it feels like a behavior, it feels like something that you just do now, then start over. What's the next step I could take that is challenging yet realistic forever? And continue that process. And what will end up happening through that process is you end up developing confidence and you'll develop the skill of discipline. And now here's what it looks like for people.

Just because I like to paint this out for people. I used to like doing this for clients because it would make me look like a wizard, like I could tell the future. But this is what it's going to look like for you. That first step like doing this for clients because it would make me look like a wizard like I could tell the future. But this is what it's going to look like for you. That first step's going to be very small and there's going to be

a period of time between that and the next step. But between each step, the time tends to get shorter and each step tends to get bigger. It's just generally what happens.

The first step is really small. The next step tends to get a little bit bigger. I'm going to read a page. I'm going to read 10 pages. I'm going to read a chapter. I'm going to read a book a week. Yes, yes.

And it gets larger and larger and more consistent. And over time, you develop this skill of discipline and these behaviors that stick with you largely forever. You know, I had a client once. I love talking about her. I know she's heard. I guarantee she's heard me talk about her. So, and I'll change her name a little bit

because just in case. But I used to train at one point. I had a lot of doctors that were clients of mine. I used to have my wellness studio was next to a hospital and I trained one doctor and then they started referring doctors to me and then they would start to send me patients. And I had one lady that I trained, wonderful general surgeon. And she said, Hey, I got this client, I got this patient and I really want her to see you. She really doesn't want to work out, but she's recovering from cancer, and I know she'll benefit from this. So I'm working on her.

Well, anyway, one day she finally walks in. So in comes Kelly, and she's got this look on her face like she don't want to be there. Introduce myself to her, and she says, before we get started, I'm only going to work out once a week with you. I'm not doing anything on my own, and we're not going to touch my diet. And I said, okay, no problem. That's where we're going to work out once a week with you. I'm not doing anything on my own, and we're not going to touch my diet. And I said, okay, no problem. That's where we're going to start. Now, I knew at this point I was an experienced, much wiser trainer.

Early trainer me would have totally screwed up on this. But I knew if I did a good job with that once a week, it was only a matter of time before she would want to do more stuff on her own. And sure enough, that's what happened. For one year, I trained Kelly once a week. For one year. Now, in that year, she definitely built some strength. We definitely saw improvements in mobility.

Her posture got a little bit better. She got a little bit less pain because she had some chronic pain due to some movement issues. So she saw some stuff. And I made sure to make the workout super enjoyable for her. So she was a professor. So she would come in very intellectual.

So we used to have these wonderful stimulating conversations when she would come in. And so I knew that she showed up because half the time she wanted to come in and have these great conversations, which for me, I loved it as well. So she'd show up once a week, very consistent. And that was it.

Well, a year, sure enough, a year into this, she comes up to me and she says, hey, do you have any more time on your schedule for more sessions? Absolutely, Kelly. Let's get you in one more day a week. So we did that. Four months later, hey, Sal, are there any movements I could do on my own at home, you know, when I'm grading papers or, you know, whatever? Yeah, here's three movements. Do these at home. Do them whenever you want. They're going to help some of your movement issues. And I think this will be good for you.

A few months after that, you know, Sal, I'm thinking about cutting sugar, removing sugar from my diet or cutting it down. What do you think? Absolutely. Anyway, three years later, this was a three-year process. Three years later, this woman was exercising three days a week regularly. She was doing stuff on her own. Her diet had radically changed. And this woman had completely transformed her health and her fitness.

Now, that was almost 10 years ago. I haven't trained this woman for a long time, right? I stopped training people about six years ago Uh because of you know mind pump and all that stuff. She's still doing it. She's still consistent. She's developed this Relationship with exercise and nutrition, but it was through that process now imagine if she came in And she said i'm only doing one day a week. I'm not working out on my own and I'm not working on my diet. And now I can be very, I can be very convincing. I can throw some charisma at people. I was a real effective salesperson early on as a trainer because of those things. And I could have probably convinced her through my motivational skills or whatever. No, you got to come three days a week. It's going to

make you better at this. And here's that. And here here's why. Everybody's got the same time of the day. Everybody's got the same 24 hours. You can do the whole speech and maybe I would have convinced her to hire me three days a week. You know what would have happened? For two weeks. She would have stopped.

That's right. She was a few months into it. She would have stopped and I never would have seen her again. Okay, dude. That reminds me. While you're talking, I'm thinking about parenting

and the power struggles I get into with my six-year-old. When my son was little, he was crawling around on the floor, pulling off video tapes, VHS tapes, right? And a buddy of mine who had older kids was over, and I said, don't touch that cabinet. And my son would look at me, and he'd crawl over and whack that cabinet. And I moved him, and he did a couple times and said,

if you touch that cabinet again, we're not, and I don't remember what the thing was. And my buddy goes, he was just laughing. He goes, well, you over-parented that one. And I was like, what do you mean? He goes, well, now none of us are getting ice cream. Whatever the thing was, it's like, why? I mean, my son walked right over and just touched it to see, right? And I realized I was in a power struggle with a two-year-old

or with a three-year-old. And it's taken wisdom on this side when my daughter's like wearing an Elsasa dress somewhere like we're going like to a baseball game it's 500 degrees i'm wearing this elsa dress is this the moment for me to get into a power struggle right is this right that took a lot of wisdom where did you get that wisdom to sit down with somebody that you knew like if you worked out three days a week and changed all of you like i know the answers that will help you, but that's not the answer that's going to help you.

Like there's an answer. There's a, there was a question beneath that question. Yeah. And for a year you earned her trust. And for a year you kept showing up and showing up in her life on her terms. And it was a long game that has changed your life forever. How do you teach somebody how to pick those battles because that's that's about wisdom

man you know what i mean yeah you had the answer i screwed up a lot yeah early i remember i trained people for a long time now i love fitness but i love people more and so my saving grace was that i think that's it you love people i just wanted to help them yeah and so i was constantly evaluating my methods you know i i've trained a lot of trainers. And there's this talk that I do with trainers. I love doing it because if they haven't heard it, it always blows their minds. And I always go, okay, tell me the most important traits of a successful trainer. As defined by, they get their clients great results. They also built a good business.

And it's consistent. And the results of the clients are long-lasting or forever, right? What are those traits? And they always say, like, oh, they're motivating or they're empathetic or they know a lot of, you know, they're really good with information or whatever. And I say those are all important, but those aren't the most important. Most important is their ability to communicate effectively, right? If you can communicate, if I could, like the matrix,

if I could plug my brain into yours and give you my knowing, right, we'd solve whatever your fitness issue is, but we can't do that we have to use our words and I have to understand how to communicate effectively and so I've I've through years and years of failing like I'll tell you a story it breaks my heart every time I tell it is I had this woman who hired me she wanted to lose weight struggled with it on and off. And I trained her for a little while. And I also trained her husband and she was slowly gaining weight. Uh, as I trained, I used to test body fat every week, which I stopped doing later on, but I would test body fat every week to keep people on track. Right. And her body fat was slowly creeping up. And then I'd

have her bring me her food logs, right. She'd write down her food and I'm looking at him like, she's only eating, you know, I don't remember what it was, 1,400 or 1,300 calories. This is insane. This isn't right. So I'd say, are you writing everything down? Are you telling me the truth?

And yeah, yeah, I totally am. Well, anyway, I trained her husband. And her husband, and he probably shouldn't have done this, but he said, hey, Sal, I want to tell you something. She's not writing everything down. I see at night she eats this and she doesn't write it down. So she's not being honest with you. So I decided then i'm gonna have A real hard talk with this lady. Yeah, so she came in

sat down in front of me and I Essentially scolded her right because that's what i'm supposed to do. I'm a trainer. You hired me get your shape I'm telling you the truth. I'm a scoldy right and she got in tears and oh, i'm so sorry You're so right whatever and she walked out and i was so proud of myself. And she never came back. And I failed. Why did I fail? Because at least she was working out twice a week with me. For all I knew, probably, she never worked out again.

She had a terrible experience. Probably never worked out again. Totally failed. And I look back on that. I said, man, I really screwed up how I communicated. Was I right? Yeah. Did it right? Yeah. Did it help?

Nope. Yeah. I totally failed that poor woman. And so that's where I kind of learned and figured some of this stuff out. And you got to meet people where they're at. And there's a couple of general things that I've learned to understand. One of them is, and this is a big one, and I know this is in your space too, because you do a great job of this as well.

You do a great job of communicating to where the average person can listen and understand what you're trying to say. Really get what you're trying to say. That's actually why we invited you on the show. A lot of people in my space

talk to each other. Yeah. It's like I'm talking to other fitness fanatics and I realized this five years into my career, she's not going to become a fitness fanatic.

Right. I'm not talking like if I do the whole, you know, rah, rah, rah, go in the gym, it's great, get the pump, that's awesome. That's never going to become a fitness fanatic. I'm not talking like if I do the whole, you know, rah, rah, rah, go in the gym. It's great. Get the pump. That's awesome. That's never going to resonate with her.

If it did, she'd become a trainer. Right. Or she'd own a gym. So I'm not talking to fitness fanatics. I'm talking to the average person. What does the average person want? They want to improve the quality of their life. They really don't care about getting shredded.

Everybody's like, I want to be shredded. Not really. I mean, okay, we could dream. But really, people just want to be fit and healthy. They want to be generally lean Not shredded. They want to be generally lean. They want to be generally healthy. They want to have good mobility I want to have good energy for my life My fitness improves my life. My life is not fitness, right? So I had to figure that out Now, what does that mean? Well, if we do a damn good job, if we do an excellent job as fitness professionals,

the most we could probably hope for, for the average person, is about two or three days a week of structured exercise. We're not going to get more than that. We're just not. Good luck. That's humbling though, right? Say what?

That's humbling though, right? Well, it's humbling, but also it's true. Yeah. So two or three days a week. This is, if I get the average person who does nothing exercise-wise, in terms of structured exercise, and I get them to work out forever, two or three days a week, I won.

You won. I'm not getting more than that. You've changed our family tree. That's it. So let's stop pretending and trying to get them to become fitness fanatics. It just ain't going to happen. So now we know that. Two or three days a week, this is what they're going to do. So that's number one. Number two, let's look at food. They don't look at food like a fitness fanatic looks at food.

A fitness fanatic or an obsessive person, or dare I say orthorexics, which is a lot of them in my space, they look at food. By the way, for people that know, orthorexia is an eating disorder where you got to eat perfect, right? So you got bulimia, anorexia, that know, orthorexia is an eating disorder where you got to eat perfect, right? So you got bulimia, anorexia, and you got orthorexia right there as well. They don't look at food like a fitness fanatic and, well, that's just fuel. You ever hear fitness people say that? Food is fuel. That's right.

Yeah, that's the way to do it. It's no pleasure. That doesn't work that way for most people. Most people, food is what we said earlier. It's culture. It's connecting. It's, you know, sometimes it's numbing. what we said earlier. It's culture. It's connecting. It's, you know, sometimes it's numbing. Sometimes I'm sad.

I'm bored. It's pleasure. It's all those different things. So we got to understand those things. And then we got to also understand that this is more of a modern issue. We are very busy, but we're also very sedentary. So we are actually busier now than we were 50 years ago. Like we were talking about this earlier. We all have kids. My parents didn't schedule play dates when I was a kid. We just

played. You want your kids to play with kids nowadays? You know what you got to do? You got to plan it. You got to schedule it. It's going to be on the calendar. Yeah. You got to drive them here, drive them there, take them there. So we're busy, but we're sedentary. So this is what we're working with. Okay. So how can we figure out how to put together something that's effective for people in that context? Oh, and then one more thing let's add. Food is everywhere. It's hyper palatable and it's very cheap.

So this is what we're dealing with. How can we figure out how to solve this issue? Well, we talked about the how we go into it. You got to do this because you're taking care of yourself, not because you're hating yourself. So that's the most important part. But now the how we go into it. You got to do this because you're taking care of yourself, not because you're hating yourself. So that's the most important part. But now the how. Well, if you're only going to work out two days a week or so consistently, let's pick

the form of exercise that's going to be the most effective for you long term. The form of exercise that's going to help you stay lean, keep chronic disease away. In other words, what requires the least amount of time that's going to give you the most payback, the biggest payback. So we'll start there for a second, if that's okay. When you look at the weight loss model. Oh, it's clearly go buy a pair of running shoes

and run five miles a day. No, actually, we'll get, let's talk about that for a second. When you look at the weight loss model, you know, this is a fact, right? In order to lose weight, you got to take in less calories than you burn. It's a law of thermodynamics.

Or burn more calories than you take in. So that's true. Now, the problem is what we've done is we've taken that burn calories side of the equation and we've valued exercise based off of how much calories we burn while we do it. Because since you got to burn more calories, let's pick the form of exercise that burns the most calories. And that is logical.

It sounds logical. The problem is, is it ignores the most important factors of exercise, which is how does this get my body to adapt? And then what do those adaptations mean? That's more important than how many calories I burn while I do this exercise. In fact, how many calories you burn while you exercise is very, that's way down the total, but it doesn't mean very much at all. Let's look at the adaptations. Okay. So what kind of adaptations do we want in our bodies? Well, if we're only working out two days a week, forget the calorie burn. That's not important. Even if we worked out six days a week, by the way, what adaptations do we want? Well, we're surrounded by food. We don't move much. What adaptations could we induce in our bodies we're surrounded by food. We don't move much. What adaptations

could we induce in our bodies that will protect us the most? Build muscle by far. Building muscle or the process, even just the process of building muscle or the sending that signal to your body to build muscle teaches my body to burn more calories on its own. I develop a faster metabolism. Now, why is that important? Well, now I can eat more and maintain a leaner body fat. I can eat more and get away with more. And I know you're friends with my good friend, Lane Norton. He talks about this all the time.

When calories are appropriate, sugar, fat, the types of things that we tend to demonize, they don't matter as much right you can actually have a high sugar diet if your calories appropriate all the the dangers that come from sugar the vast a lot of them most of them kind of go away now that's not to say that you won't feel crappy sure or your appetite your fluctuations and appetite are gonna be up and down or your mood right but that's that's all important yeah But calories make a big difference. So if we can get your metabolism to speed up, we can negate a lot of those other issues. Building muscle does that. Building muscle also organizes your hormones in a way that are more youthful. I use the word youthful because that sells it better. But really what does it mean is it means men are going to have higher testosterone.

Women are going to have a more balanced estrogen and progesterone profile. You're going to see better growth hormone. Cortisol is much more appropriate. Now, why does strength training or resistance training do that? Because when I tell my body to build muscle, in order to do so, my body has to organize my hormones in a way to do so. And it just so happens that the hormone profile that builds muscle is the same one that you had when you were in your 20s or your teens. I have a hypothesis.

Tell me if I'm wrong. And there's 100% chance I could be wrong here. If I think through infertility, all the different testosterone issues we have, the various cancers that are considered reproductive cancer. Is there a possibility that just global hormone disruption has been because about 100 years ago, we just quit carrying heavy things? That's a big part of it. I'm sure there's more. It's probably multifaceted.

At least that's what the research is a big area for me that I really look into. So there's probably more. There's definitely a lot of factors. However, strength training directly, it's definitely a lot of factors however strength training directly it's the only form of exercise that will directly increase testosterone and increase androgen receptor density these are the receptors that testosterone attaches to there was a study they did um i think over the last 10 years it was i want to say it's only been maybe 10 years old

maybe less where they tested the grip strength of college-aged males. College-aged males today have the grip strength of 65-year-olds in 1983, I think it is. So show you how much weaker. And it was, was it, maybe it was a T. Somebody was mentioning the other day that grip strength ends up being one of the longevity markers. It's one of the best single metrics that can predict all-cause mortality there's almost nothing more effective that's wild yeah grip strength yeah i mean obviously if you

want to the best uh picture you look at multiple metrics but if you had to pick one grip strength is actually a pretty damn good one and that's one of those causal but it ends up a you can catch yourself in your fall and things like that but also it usually means I'm doing other things, right, that require grip, right? Yeah, it shows that you're weaker, mobility's worse, hormones probably reflect that as well, and then lack of movement and weakness contributes to lots of other things. You talked about cancer. Strength training reduces your cancer risk by 25%. There's no other single form of exercise that'll do that. Now, getting healthier in general reduces your cancer risk, but just building muscle will reduce your cancer risk by about 25%.

Just building muscle will improve your insulin sensitivity better than almost anything else also. They have studies on the severely obese. They don't even have them lose weight. It doesn't make them build a little bit of muscle. And their insulin sensitivity improves quite measurably. And that's because muscle is a, it's one of the ways we store glycogen,

which is where, you know, what we turn carbohydrates into. It's also a very insulin sensitive tissue. So you build muscle and you get this great response with insulin. Everybody right now is talking about insulin and its role in mitochondrial health and longevity and all that stuff. And we know that, you know, blood sugar issues and insulin and pre-diabetes is just, this is a massive, massive issue.

Build a little bit of muscle. So the complaint, I don't want to look like Arnold. Yeah. Like my favorite dude. I had one of my close buddies. I mean, one of the skinniest guys I've ever known in college. And I got the Arnold Bible. You remember that it was like three inches thick? Are you kidding me? I me i have it oh you probably got it here oh god i have it somewhere

it's all taped up oh my favorite book yeah and i'll never forget his favorite quote his his famous quote i'm not gonna do that i don't want to get that big and we all looked like dude there is no chip but that's that's the most common thing like i don't lift weights yeah that would be like quicker it's easier it's faster i don't have to go to the gym as much it's not the beating up your body like running i don't get that big yeah okay so that would be like me saying i you know i don't want to read any books on astrophysics because i don't want to be stephen hawking's so i'm not gonna do it yeah i'll just uh yeah or you know i don't want to swim i don't want want to be, you know, Michael Phelps. That's just how silly it is.

But, okay, so let me break it down so that people can— That's the number one when I talk to women about street training. You're right. Is either, A, I don't feel comfortable getting crushed under a squat bar, and two, I don't look like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Let's address that first one. I don't look like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Let's address that first one, by the way. I have—you know what shocked me so much,

well, one of the things that shocked me the most, in a good way, of training female clients was the confidence that they built from getting stronger, specifically because of what you said. Getting under something heavy and lifting it and being stronger. And as a man, I never really understood this, but I got it. I had one of my female clients explain this to me once.

I had this woman that I trained, very successful CFO, tech, you know, executive, very smart woman. And she wanted, she was very petite. And we did strength training. And she came back from a business trip. And she was, as she was telling me, she got emotional. She says, I got to tell you something, Sal. She goes, this craziest thing happened to me. And I'm like waiting for this crazy story.

And she said, I put my bag in the overhead, you know, compartment on the plane by myself. And she says, I always have to ask a man or somebody to help me. She goes, you know how empowering that is? I thought, wow, that's, that's amazing. So lifting heavy things and doing it successfully is a very empowering feeling to anybody who does it. But if you're a woman watching, yes, it's challenging, but if you do it right, first of all, it's very safe and it's a great feeling. All right, let's talk about the muscle thing. First off, let's talk about genetic abilities to build muscle. So I'm not going to use muscle because I'm going to use height because that's much more of an obvious, more visible one. So if you look at the spectrum of genetics on height, on one end,

you have NBA basketball players and the other other end, you have dwarfism. The vast majority of us are somewhere in the middle. So let me ask you this. Besides going to a professional basketball game, if you've ever done this, how many times in your life have you seen someone that's seven feet tall? Yeah, very, very, like a handful, right? Very rare. You probably remember each time because it was so rare. Okay. The types of genetics required to build muscles like Arnold Schwarzenegger or a pro bodybuilder or that female bodybuilder that looks so crazy or whatever, that is about as rare as that. Okay. So if- But it feels like it's everywhere because it's in media, right?

It's a distorted idea of what, you know, how, just like if you, if you lived in the NBA, you'd think, oh my God, I'm six foot five. I'm so short or whatever. Right. So it's, it's just, it's not true. By the way, if you had those genetics, you would know. And no, it's not like, oh, it's not like, oh, I get a little thicker when I work out. No, no, no, no, no. You would be a freak. You would be the biggest, strongest person, you know, all the time, all the time, even if you don't work out. Okay. so that, first off, that's number one. That's not you. You're way over here somewhere in the middle.

Number two, they also enhance themselves with anabolic steroids. Right. Okay, but even with that, I'll tell you something right now. I could take all the anabolic steroids and growth hormone in the world. I'll never look like Arnold Schwarzenegger

because I just don't have his genetics. All right. You could take those pro bodybuilders, take them off drugs, and they'll still be far more muscular than I would ever look. Yeah, yeah uh what's he say about lance armstrong they're like yes and he's still better cyclist exactly so faster than you don't worry about that okay um and also you're not going to work out and then wake up tomorrow and be like oh my god i went too far oh you know

i built too much muscle i'm too big it's not going to happen what'll end up happening is if you dedicate yourself even if you dedicate yourself, even if you train five days a week, and I mean, hardcore strength training, you're going to get a very sculpted, shapely, fast metabolism physique. That's what you're going to get. For most people, no, you're just going to get,

you're going to feel tighter when you touch yourself, and you're going to get leaner easier as well. Also, muscle. You'll fit better. Yeah, and also muscle is dense. It takes up a little bit more than three-fourths of the space of body fat. In other words, if you gain 10 pounds of muscle, lost 10 pounds of fat, you would lose almost one-fourth of your size.

Just to show you the difference in weight and in density. And I say that because when I know, when I say build muscle to someone who's really, really interested in losing weight, they don't want to add anything on the scale. That's right. You know, but the scale just measures mass. I mean, you can cut your leg off and lose 30 pounds and that's not the kind of weight. You know, I used to have this trainer that worked for me. I've talked about her before on the show too. She was this female trainer and she was this real petite. I think she was like 5'1". Anyway, when I would have a potential member that was a woman who would say something like,

I don't want to build too much muscle. I'd say, okay, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to bring in one of my female trainers. And if you could guess her body weight within 15 pounds, I'll give you a six month membership for free. What do you say? And I say, okay, let's do this. So I'd call her in and make an announcement, you know, attention staff, so-and-so come to my office. In would walk in my female trainer, about 5'1", and she was lean, right, right fit, small. I'd say, how much do you think she weighs? And they'd be like, oh, you know, 90 pounds, 110 pounds, 115 pounds. I get her on the scale, you know, she was, I think she was 138 pounds. And it would blow people's minds. I'd say, she's fit, she's got a lot of muscle she's just very very lean and then I'd say now tell

this person what you ate yesterday and she'd list off oh I had a four egg scramble two slices of toast burrito for lunch this and that I'd say she ate that much because she's got all this calorie burning machinery in her body called muscle and then that usually would win them over and they'd end up getting a membership and hiring a personal trainer

so yeah the whole like I'm going to get too big ain't going to happen. It's not going to happen. It seems like everybody's talking about how crazy the housing market is right now and how powerless homebuyers feel. Mix that with the stress of moving and life change and job change, and you've got a tornado of anxiety fueling one of the biggest purchases you'll ever make. This is not a good idea. So if you're a new home buyer right now, my advice to you is to focus on what you can control, like the people you choose to help you in the home buying process. You need folks like my friends at Churchill Mortgage. Churchill is a Ramsey trusted provider that's been helping people with their home mortgages for decades.

And their Home Buyer Edge program will help you skip a bunch of the stress. Here's how it works. Apply to become a Churchill-certified home buyer and cap your interest rate for 90 days. Then you'll get a $5,000 seller guarantee to help your offer stand out. So go ahead, take a deep breath because Churchill has your back. Check them out at churchillemortgage.com slash D'Loni and get the home buyer edge today. Let's project ourselves. We are a mom of three kids and we have the oldest one's six and i'm a dad we can pick you can be the mom i'll be the dad vice versa um i've put on 15 pounds over the last few years um i the phrase

i hear is i want to get my body back right after kid number three kid number four so much garbage out there dude we talked about another show about influencers and the tiktokization of fitness and weight loss and dealing with food and trauma and culture husband and wife team they're sitting there they got three kids kids are in bed and look and say we like i want to feel better um you started snoring i want to sleep better i just want to show up better uh we want to get our sex life back. We want to change this stuff. What's two or three or four things like where do they start? Yeah. No, that's so much nonsense. That's good. Now it's going to be different from person to person. Of course. Of course. But look at nutrition from a behavioral standpoint, not from

mechanisms like counting calories and counting macronutrients, stuff like that. Although I think it's important to know proteins, fats, carbs, and calories because you want to have that information. Start with behaviors first. So here's some easy ones. One, try to avoid heavily processed foods. That'll usually result in a reduction in calories by itself. Get out of your house.

Just try not to eat them and don't buy them. Okay. That's an easy one. Here's another one. Studies will show that you will cut your calories by about 10 to 15% if you simply eat when not distracted. Okay. So you don't even have to change your diet. Just eat without looking at your phone or the TV or basically not being present. Okay. You'll eat about 10 to 15% less that way. So eat whatever you're eating. Just sit down and eat and focus on your food.

A third one would be don't drink anything, water or otherwise, while you eat. Okay. Now there's no magical like, you know, fluids with food causes thing to happen in the body. Really what it is, is you just chew your food more and you slow down. Gotcha. Okay. You're more present. These are all behavioral things. So don't drink while you eat.

Don't eat while you're distracted. Avoid heavily processed food. If you just did those, most people, in my experience, let's say somebody needs to lose 20 pounds or so, will get like 10, 12, 15 pounds. Wow. Over time just from doing a few of those things.

Okay. As far as exercise is concerned, make the foundation of your routine strength training. It speeds up the metabolism. It'll organize your hormones well, and it sets you up better on long-term. It's a longevity play. Yeah. It is because, and I used to do this all the time with clients. If we did it right at the end of their 30-pound weight loss, they would be eating more than they did when they started. Not less. What you don't want to do is end up in a position where,

yeah, I lost 30 pounds, but now I'm eating 1,200 calories a day. My life's miserable. Like, okay, I got to keep this up forever. Like, you want to be in a position where you have room and you're okay. And strength training helps to encourage that. Okay, so make that the foundation. And then here's the last one I would say. There's nothing wrong with cardiovascular training. In fact, it's great for health and all that stuff, but don't, don't try to burn the calories off by doing tons and tons of cardio.

That'll actually shoot you in the foot. It's actually a- So that's like an, that's a, that's a shape shifter moment. And this is something I picked about a decade ago and I didn't realize that it wasn't in the popular culture. The damage there, right? Now I run, if I go for a run, it's for my, it's almost entirely mental health. Yeah. Like it clears. That's a great reason. Right?

Or if I go for a long bike ride, it's for my head, right? Not for getting jacked, right? But say that again. Like that, we got to hit home on that because that's a new thing for folks. Yeah. So let me explain that, right? Okay. So there was this great study that illustrated this.

Scientists went and studied the Hadza tribe, which is a modern hunter-gatherer tribe. So they live presumably the way that we all lived thousands of years ago. So they don't have modern technology. They don't even use agriculture. They hunt and they gather. Okay. So for all intents and purposes, they're way more active than the average Western couch potato. I mean, the way that

they would hunt is they would stalk an animal, track it, throw something at it, injure it, and then run after it until it got tired. Miles. Yeah. Oh, 10 miles or whatever, and then you got to bring it all the way back. You got to drag it back, yeah. So tons and tons of activity in comparison to the average Westerner. So scientists

through some pretty sophisticated testing, went down and tested their metabolic rates. How many calories are these people burning every single day? And what they found was that they burned, generally, the same amount of calories that the average Western couch potato burned. And you think, how's that possible? Well, it's an evolutionary adaptation.

Oh, their body's downregulated, huh? Well, I mean, there's no way we would have survived if humans burned, if our metabolisms had us, huh? Well, I mean, there's no way we would have survived if humans burned, if our metabolisms had us burning 8,000 calories a day. You couldn't stalk and kill that much food. You ain't going to find 8,000 calories a day. So your body adapted to become more efficient. Now, let's look at the type of activity that causes that.

It's cardio. Lots and lots of endurance-type training pairs muscle down, because muscle's very expensive, and it teaches the body to become very efficient with calories. Tell them what expensive means.

Calorie expensive. Burns a lot of calories. Yes, yes, yes. First of all, you don't need a lot of strength to have a lot of stamina. I mean, you look at long distance runners,

right? They're very skinny, not a lot of muscle. You just need a lot of stamina and because the activity itself is calorie expensive, right? Doing cardio does burn more calories per time spent than anything else. Your body just learns to become extremely

efficient at what it does. It's an adaptation process. So if the cornerstone of your workout routine for weight loss is lots of cardio, what you'll experience is initial weight loss and a hard plateau. And then in order to get the weight to come off even more, you have to cut your calories more or increase your cardio more. And then you end up in this like, I'm doing six days a week, an hour of cardio. I'm eating 1,200 calories. I still got 10 pounds to lose. What the hell is going on?

So you just explained the United States in the 80s and 90s in early 2000. That was it right there. Go take a fitness class. Do a spin class. Go run miles and miles and miles and miles. And eat way less. And just stop and keep eating less and less and less and less. Less and less, yeah.

And that's it. Wow. Yeah, that's a totally failing strategy. What you want to do is you want to build muscle and feed your body appropriately to build muscle. And through that process, the weight loss looks different. It starts off a little smaller or slower, I should say, mainly because it's fat loss with some muscle gain.

So the scale might show- Offsets, yeah. Yeah, it might show a couple pounds, but in reality, mainly because it's fat loss with some muscle gain. So the scale might show- Offsets, yeah. Yeah, it might show a couple pounds, but in reality, you lost more body fat than you gain in terms of muscle. But then as the metabolism speeds up, you get this kind of snowball effect where the weight loss starts to accelerate,

and then it becomes much more permanent. And I like to use this analogy. It would be like if I had an advanced AI car that adapted to my driving behaviors. So imagine if I got in my car and every day I drove 350 miles at 30 miles an hour. What would my car look like? It would adapt and turn into this like energy efficient machine. Now, what if I got in that car and I did the quarter mile as fast as I could every single day, right?

Yeah, true. I'd get that car and I did the quarter mile as fast as I could every single day, right? Yeah, true. I'd get this huge- Big back tires and- Yeah, this engine that just burned a tremendous amount of energy, right? Yeah. So strength training does that. And that's why it's the best strategy for a modern lifestyle because it doesn't take much time and it also speeds up our metabolism.

And that's a good thing when, first of all, that'd be a bad thing 10,000 years ago. You don't want a fast metabolism 10,000 years ago. But today, food is everywhere. I want a fast metabolism. That's going to make it a lot easier for me to navigate this, this landscape where food is so easily accessible. It's hyper palatable. Um, that's what, that's what I want. So building muscle allows us to do that. And there's other, look, there's other reasons why I think strength training is so awesome, uh, for the average person. I mean, it's the only targeted form of exercise that lets you shape your body. No, dude, that's not true. Cause there's a button on the elliptical at the gym,

at the hotel, and it says tone. It's the tone button. No, it doesn't work that way. It's for buns or whatever, like tone your yeah do you know that word tone the the literal definition the real definition of tone is a muscle's ability to contract yeah the fitness industry took that and used it as a marketing term and sold women memberships because they were afraid of building muscle so they said no don't worry you're not gonna build muscle you're just gonna tone you know muscles don't do that it's not a thing no they build or they shrink that's it toning in that sense is building to a smaller degree that's all it is so as you build muscle it feels stupid dude they feel tighter it's incredible i know it's incredible

yeah no i'm just gonna um i'm just gonna do thigh master i'm just gonna work out i just want to lose weight on my thighs yeah no yeah i'm gonna do that now spot reduction is also uh largely a myth but spot shape lifting is for real. Yeah. So, like, you could, like, shape your butt. Yeah. You can tell I do tons of shaping on my, mostly on my arms.

Yeah. That's what I was just noticing. Why is that funny, man? You could shape your shoulders and your back and your posture and your, you can target build your body and create this kind of more shapely looking physique through strength training.

It's also very individualizable. It's the primary form of exercise for rehab for a reason. I could do strength training with anybody. I can't do running with everybody. I can't do swimming with everybody, but I can use resistance in a way to build. By the way, resistance training, the way that I'm, you know, what I'm talking about is using resistance in a targeted way to build strength and muscle. That can be any resistance. So I want people to know, I want to be very clear. Yes, that includes weights. It also includes machines. It also includes resistance bands. It includes body weight. And so all those arguments about which one, that's just major into the minors, right? That's just like, just shut up and do push-ups or, like, do something. Yes, and it has to be appropriate. Right, right.

Yeah, so if I train someone that does nothing, no exercise, no strength training, very little is needed to induce any types of adaptations. Gotcha. If I'm training, you know, a top-level athlete, well, it's going to be a lot more to get their body to improve any further. And I want to say that because one of the biggest mistakes people make with all exercise is they think the harder and the more sweat and the more sore they get, the better.

That's actually, not only is it false, it's the opposite. But that feeds into that earlier thing you were saying, because man, my head's been spinning since you, if you don't like, if you genuinely dislike what you see in the mirror and working out is a self-flagellation, like I'm punishing myself for looking like this, then the only way to work out is to be sore.

That's the only metric, is if you're sore the next day, you did it right. Yeah, and to perceive it as a punishment. But as a good, like a punishment that, yeah. I mean, that's been a hard toggle for me is working out to where you can work out again tomorrow and then work out again the next day. And then to see the gains with the Z has been so much greater, right?

After not trying to trust myself. I'm going to blow people's minds right now. Soreness means you went too hard. It's not a good thing. Totally disagree. You're wrong. That's incredible. No, if you got sore, first of all, if you're a little sore, that's fine. If you're really sore,

you worked out wrong. And working out wrong means you're going to get results slower. Okay. Not faster. It's like, it's almost like- Is it slower? Is it physiological or is it slower because you're going to go not as hard the next time because you're sore? Both. Okay. Physiological. So it would be like, here's what I mean by physiological. If I get a sunburn, am I going to tan faster? No. No, I'm going to tan slower because now I got to wait for my body to heal. Yeah. And I'm not going back out in the sun anymore.

And I got to go and then I got to start the process over, right? So here's a good rule of thumb. You should have more energy at the end of your workout than you do in the beginning. You should leave your workout feeling better. Yeah. Not worse. Yeah. I remember when I first, I pieced this together with my clients. I used to, as a trainer early on, clients would, if they canceled, there was a lot of reasons why people cancel the workouts, but often they'd be something like, I'm really tired. I didn't get good sleep. My shoulder kinds of hurts. I need to skip this workout. And that was common. As I got better and more effective, I would get these phone calls. Hey, Sal, you know, I'm really tired.

You have any time on your schedule for a workout? Or, you know, my shoulder hurts. You think I can come see you so I can work on that a little bit? That's when I knew I was doing the right thing. So let me tell you, this crazy thing happened. And here I am, been lifting my entire life. So it's a big deal for me. One of the things I tell people all the time is don't ever plan to do nothing, right? When it comes to retirement, like I just want to retire. I want to work 50 years

so that I can do nothing for seven and then die, right? All the metrics say, the moment you start doing nothing, your life falls apart. But when it came to vacationing, that was me. I would run myself into the ground. I would never take vacations.

And then I would stay up late, pack in the night before, and I didn't really want to go. I'm trying to answer emails. And then we would go, we'd get somewhere in the evening. I would be kind of burnt out. So we'd eat a little too much. I'd probably have an extra drink and I wouldn't sleep. Next morning we'd have plans. Like, let's just sleep in. Three days in, like my wife does not want to talk to me. And I don't want to talk to her. I should read my book. We just got back from our 20th and we did it different for the first time ever. Took 20 years to figure this out. We got where reading my book. We just got back from our 20th, and we did it different for the first time ever. It took 20 years to figure this out.

We got where we were going. We went straight to the gym and just worked out, just exercised. We'd been sitting in a car for six hours, and then the next morning, we had a long hike up a mountain. I brought my ruck bag with me. We were mobile.

Dude, by day three, I had settled into a rest that i didn't understand i don't think i've ever experienced it my sleep was super deep and we were staying more active and the more active we got together so my relationships were getting good more active i got the more rest i had man and it's totally counterintuitive but i would have thought you just want to eat a bunch and drink a lot and hang out it was completely that's the on's the on the off, on off the wagon, you know, on the wagon, off the wagon mentality that we tend to do with exercise and nutrition. It's either all on or all off.

And it's hard for us to achieve a balance because either I hate myself or I, oh no, I'd say I don't want to hate myself anymore. I just want to enjoy life, you know, type of deal. Which, you know, that's, that's, again, that's why people lose weight, gain it all the time. No, you, you want to feel better after your workout than you did before. I love that. You want to feel good. That's been a big shift for me.

And you want to treat your—and here's the other thing, too. I remember a long time ago, I was hiking up in the foothills over here in California. And people would pass me—runners would pass me. And as a trainer, it's hard for me not to notice biomechanics, right? So I'm sure just like you, you hear people talk. It's hard for you not to notice biomechanics, right? So I'm sure just like you, you hear people talk, it's hard for you not to pick up. People talk to their kid, I'm like, probably shouldn't say that.

Yeah, exactly. So people run by, I'm like, oh my God, that guy's feet are pronating, or look at that person's anterior pelvic tilt, that's gonna really hurt. And then this guy ran by and he looked like a gazelle. He just ran so beautifully. And it occurred to me, I'm like, you know,

humans evolved to do a few things really well physically. One of them is run. We actually can outrun for distance when we're fit and all that stuff. Pretty much any other animal. That's how we hunted. We'd throw with accuracy. We'd do that really well. Then we'd run them down, right?

Like, why can nobody run properly? I said, oh, I know why. Nobody realizes it's a skill. When people want to start working out, they lace up their shoes and they just go to get just go to get tired. Or sore. Yeah. Like I'm just going to run until I'm tired. And I thought, my God, people do this with strength training too. They don't go to the gym and say, oh, I'm going to go practice the skill of squats. I'm going to go get my legs sore. I'm not going to go practice the skill of rows. I'm going to go get my back sore. The way you need to treat strength training,

if you really want long-term success, it's a skill. So when you go to the gym, stop thinking about getting sore and beating yourself up. Instead think, all right, today's workout is going to be, I'm going to squat, I'm going to bench press, I'm going to row, and I'm going to overhead press, right? I'll pick four really good exercises. I'm going to go practice them and get real good at them. And every time you go, whatever, two days a week, three days a week, you practice exercises and you try to get better at them. That's all you're trying to do. Get better at those skills. And you know what you'll get from that? Amazing, consistent results and you won't get hurt. Consistent, amazing results and you won't get hurt. And you'll enjoy it. It's way more enjoyable. I promise you.

Dude, that's the exact same thing when it's like, how to have a hard conversation with your spouse. Practice it. Just get better at it. How do you sit down and talk to your kids about a hard conversation?

Practice it. Just go do it and figure it out and then go do it again and then go do it again. Go do it again. That's it. And over time,

you'll get stronger. Yes. Your form will get better. Beautiful. Your technique will get better. Also, you know, when it comes to exercise, there's a,

you know, if I were to give them a rating like zero to a hundred, a hundred being the I were to give them a rating like 0 to 100 100 being the most value I could get out of an exercise 0 being none the better you perform the exercise

the better your skill is at that exercise the more I'm going to derive from it if I'm really good at squatting got good control good technique good connection I'm going to get

great results out of it if I don't have good skill and technique with it I'm not going to get good results out of it. If I don't have good skill and technique with it, I'm not going to get good results out of it and I'll probably hurt myself. Yeah. So I want to feel better at the end of my workout. I have good energy.

I don't want to get sore. Or if I do, maybe a little bit. I want to practice these exercises and I want to focus on strength training. That's really the gist of it. That's a body that, that's a person who loves himself. Like I'm practicing,

I'm going to go practice softball. I'm going to practice golf. Not going to take a hundred swings. It's never going to work. You imagine if we treat it the sports-less way, by the way? Yeah, I mean, same. If people are like, I'm going to go play basketball and lose weight, and they just go as hard as they can so they get sore. Yeah, do you mean ACLs flying all over the place? You wouldn't be playing basketball. No.

Yeah, so. I mean, and the truth is, you don't need exercise design when you work out that way. I don't care what you do. Do whatever you want. You're going to get the same results. You're just going to get sore and beat yourself up. Hey, what's up? Deloney here. Listen, you and me and everybody else on the planet has felt anxious or burned out or chronically stressed at some point. In my new book, Building a Non-Anxious Life, you'll learn the six daily choices that you can make to get rid of your anxious feelings and be able to better respond

to whatever life throws at you so you can build a more peaceful, non-anxious life. Get your copy today at johndeloney.com. Over the course of this conversation, you've talked about, I was this kind of trainer and then I was that kind of trainer. I think we've got a cultural illness where we have an inability to say the words, I was wrong. And you've got some, like you've been pretty humble about that, right?

Pretty open about like, I used to think this was the right way. Then I worked with people. I was not afraid to go get information from somebody else, ask them wisdom. How do I talk to this person here? What's the best way? And how do you coach people?

Here's where I'm struggling. Like, we were talking offline about Lane. Dude, I used to have spreadsheets. I'm a nerd, right? I had spreadsheets about what I had. I bought my own glucose monitor. I wanted to know what my body did when it was vegan, when it was raw.

My wife used to come, like every month when we were doing our monthly bunch, be like, what are we this month? Like, are we keto? What are we doing?

Because I just want to track it and find it. And then, I had to have like some time of grieving it. To be like, no, it's just really,

just follow the macros and it's calories in, calories out. Just don't be stupid. And you, Deloney, you can't control gummy bears and so you just got to abstain out just don't be stupid and you deloney you you can't control gummy bears and so you just gotta abstain just don't that's hard for me man it was hard for me

to say those words because i had spoke publicly about the keto diet and add more fat and cholesterol nobody you shouldn't care about cholesterol triglycerides mean nothing i was i would run my mouth about that in public settings i would tell individuals about that i would take over dinner parties, telling people like, you know what? And then I sat down with a buddy who's a scientist and I had to look in the mirror and go, I was wrong. Like, how do you learn the wisdom?

How do you learn the humility there? And then how do you change positions? You've been telling somebody, you need to be doing this, doing this. Nope, you gotta do something different. If we could all learn that skill, I think the culture would shift. Oh man, I wish I knew the easy answer for that. You know, I'll tell you

something that impacted me quite a bit years ago. I had this woman that I trained and you know, I'll take a step back. I loved training people for a lot of different reasons. One of them was very selfish though. I got to train so many different personalities and so many different people, different professions that I love learning. And I love people. I love studying people. I love listening to people. And so I got to train all these different,

and I would ask all these questions. And just so it turns out that people like talking about themselves. So it worked out really well, right? But I would ask all these questions, and I loved learning from all these different people that were so smart. You know, I talked to surgeons about surgery and medicine and I had clients that were psychologists and I had clients that, you know,

were married for 60 years and I asked them all these different questions. Well, anyway, I had this woman and she was just, she blew me away because she was so balanced and well-versed on almost any topic. So we would debate or discuss a topic. And she did this,

she had this ability to be able to argue both sides and understand both ends. And just, she was so good. And I asked her, I said, where did you learn this? Like, how do I figure this out? She said, well, she goes, try this. She goes, try to find people who have an opposing view from you, who are smart, and then be open-minded to having your mind changed, and then start a discussion with them. And try not to be an a**hole. She said that because, you know, if you get confrontational, people don't want to...

It's over. Yeah. So she said, try to find these people and ask them honest questions and go ahead and discuss with them and debate with them, but do it in a way to where you're open, okay? And I said, okay, I'm going to do that. So what I did is I went on Facebook

and I signed up for all these different groups. I still do this. I still have all these different groups. This is, by the way, great hack. You can sign up for groups of things that you want to learn, like neuroscience. And they will pick the best studies and break it down for you.

You don't even have to do the work because you've got a bunch of neuroscientists and students in there that'll do it. And you can read the comments and hear them debate. And I don't need to do any of the work. It's all in there, right? So I would go to all these different groups and I would go in there and I would start discussions with people.

Well, why do you think this? And what's going on here? And I'd be open-minded. And I remember the first time, the first few times I got my mind changed where I was like, man, I was wrong. And it was a great feeling. Yeah. It was better.

It's a great feeling because I don't have to be, now I can be right. Or now I get, I'm closer to truth. Right? So I think you have to have that attitude where being right, you know, personally is not as important as finding the truth. Yes.

Right? When my identity is in, I got to be right, then I got to go to the bottom of the ocean on that topic. If my identity is in loving will or want to help people or only a culture of the truth, man, then you,

yeah, you welcome being wrong, right? Totally. And I had to learn this also because of my love for people because you know how many times my paradigm got shattered with clients? I can't, yeah, I can't imagine. Oh my God.

Because, you know, there's so many, when it comes to health and fitness, and I'm sure you see this too with mental health, there's so many individual variances. Like I remember once I had this client who, very smart man, anesthesiologist, loved him, Mike, good friend of mine still. And he did, smart guy, and he used to also donate his time. He'd do the Doctors Without Borders. So he'd go, you know, across the world and, you know, and he used to also donate his time. He'd do the Doctors Without Borders.

So he'd go, you know, across the world and, you know, donate his services to help, you know, children who, you know, have certain issues, whatever. And he would go over and do this stuff. And he lived in this for, it was like a three-month period. He lived in this village that was largely vegan, okay? So he lived there and he came back and he, you know, I was asking him about this trip or whatever and he goes

You know what man? I felt really good eating Vegan now i'm at the time i'm like look studies show meat is nutrient dense. You need proteins. You need this you need that So as I counter Everything that I believe i'm like no, no, no, no, no, I think it was other factors that made you feel good You need all these nutrients humans Humans evolved eating meat or whatever. And we went back and forth for a little while.

And then I said, you know what, Sal? I was talking to myself. I said, stop being so arrogant. Like, if he feels better, let's see what happens. So I did. I had him go vegan. And it turned out he had some intolerance, a lot of intolerances to animal products.

And he just felt better. Now, that wasn't most of my clients, but that was him. And it shattered my paradigm. I said, you know, I got to start listening to people more than trying to always be right. And you just run into that all the time with individual variances. Oh, this is the truth.

This is the right thing. And then you got the one person, well, not for them. And so that really molded and shaped me, you know, kind of who I am now. And it's still a journey. I mean, I know I still fall into that same, you know, old pattern. But luckily, you know, kind of who I am now. And it's still a journey. I mean, I know I still, I'm still falling to that same, you know, old pattern, but luckily, you know, I've developed that habit. I think of, you know, I'll pause or usually it's after a debate or argument. Usually it's later on after I think I did a good job and I'll be at home and I'll be like, well, was I open-minded?

Maybe I was being a little arrogant and hardheaded, you know? There's that great Charlie Munger quote, and I'll butcher it, but you cannot publicly state an opinion until you can publicly state your opponent's opinion better than they can. And if you take the time to be that thoughtful, then we'd all talk a little bit less. I guess I'm caught off guard by this one's bothering me. Usually I love when I find out I'm wrong.

I always invite people on the show if I say something psychologically inaccurate call me on it dude I'll read it. This one's bothering me and I think I just invested so much of my identity

in being a countercultural diet guy and the systems that I think I made it an identity. In fact, saying it out loud I know that's what I did. I made an identity

and then I had to die on the whatever hill that was. You know how they say, you know, when you're at a dinner party, don't discuss politics and religion, right? Throw diet in there. A thousand percent. Yeah, people identify strongly to their diet, some more than others. And a lot of, some of them have been politicized, which is very interesting.

I've never seen diets be politicized, but you're starting to see that now. Everything's, dude. Yeah, everything's being politicized now. It's amazing. But people identify so strongly with their diets. Here's some general truths. And then there's a lot of variants. General truth, don't overeat. For the most part, whole natural foods are better. So I don't care if you're vegan or paleo or carnivore or whatever, Mediterranean, whole natural foods, don't overeat. And then here's the other one. I don't care what diet you're on or whatever,

you can develop dysfunctional relationship with food. And it comes from things that have nothing to do with losing body fat or gaining weight. It's usually a way to cope, a way to numb, a way to distract. It's one of those things. This is why, like I said earlier, some of the best diet studies or success are people who just go to a therapist. Yeah. A close friend of mine asked recently, wait a minute. I used to always wonder about where you're going to have dinner. We're going to have food at home could that be why

every time we go out I over order and then I always order way too much and I was like for sure man like your body's remembering oh yeah

oh yeah and so but it's pulling that thread right oh absolutely I mean my family you said this earlier I'm the first generation American and

my family's from Sicily poor very poor Sicilians so my dad very poor you know six siblings and dad, very poor, six siblings, and shared a room with all his siblings and all that stuff. And then my grandparents, forget about it. The stories they tell me is pretty crazy.

So I was raised where they literally would put food in. I mean, if you didn't have food in your mouth, then there was something wrong constantly. But that was like an objective measure of we're going to be all right is our kids will never be hungry. Yes. Right? We will solve for that.

Yes. Yes. Well, bro, listen. That was ingrained in me to the point where I was doing it to my own kids. Yeah. And I didn't become aware of it until later on. Yeah. You better finish everything.

And this is what you're going to do. Clean your plate. Yeah. Yeah. And I was like, oh, wait a minute. What am I doing here? Yeah. To the point where I would like bribe them. If you finish that, this is what you're cleaning your plate or yeah yeah and i was like oh wait a minute what am i doing here you know to the point where i would like bribe them if you finish that i'll give you this oh all day oh dude yeah and i was like oh this is my own thing i got raised with so well dude your hospitality is just top-notch and just

beating great people all over the country i'm so grateful to meet you and for your hospitality and your wisdom thanks for sharing it with us and for real, thanks for being my therapist for a while. I needed to talk. I hadn't thought about some of this stuff ever, so it was good for this to come out organically. But I'm grateful for it, brother. Thank you so much. I appreciate it, man.

Thanks for having me on. Thanks, John.