Well with Arielle Lorre - 404: Diet Lies, Weight Loss Truths & Why We’re All Craving the Wrong Foods with Harley Pasternak, MSc

Episode Date: August 6, 2025

Celebrity trainer and nutrition expert Harley Pasternak joins me to break down the biggest diet lies we’ve been told, why other countries don’t struggle with obesity like we do, and the truth about what really makes people lose weight. We talk portion control, the “good, better, best” method for carbs, why cravings happen, and how to get past plateaus without falling for crash diets or food fears. Harley also shares surprising stats, personal stories, and his take on diet sodas, food dyes, and why you might be eating more fat than you think—all with his signature, no-nonsense approachPre-order Harley’s new book: https://rstyle.me/+3LpyhXUdZIi6CGrhTLMvhgPlease note that this episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services. Individuals on the show may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to in this episode.Visit www.ynab.com/well to claim an exclusive three-month free trial, with no credit card required.Get 20% off your first Ned order by visiting foriawellness.com/BLONDE OR use BLONDE at checkout.Visit fieldofgreens.com and use code WELL for 20% off & free shipping.Try LMNT and get a free sample pack when you to to DrinkLMNT.com/WELLHead to jolieskinco.com/WELL for free shipping Go to hungryroot.com/blonde for 40% off your first delivery and free veggies for life!Visit justthrivehealth.com/discount/well for 20% off your first 90 day bottle of Just Thrive with promo code WELL.Produced by Dear Media.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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you will be hooked. Again, it's ynab.com slash well. This is Well, a podcast about wellness in all its forms. I'm Ariel Lorry, and each week I'm sharing unfiltered conversations. I'm sharing unfiltered conversations with people shaping how we feel, live, and look. Come for the substance, stay for the honesty, and leave with the tools to be well, inside and out. Hi, everybody. Welcome to the show. I'm so happy to bring you this episode this week. I was listening back to it to make notes for my team. And not only was I cracking up, it's a very funny episode, but I feel like it is the episode that we need right now when we are in the midst of so much food and diet noise and food and diet trends. It's hard to know what to make of all of that. And my guest, Harley Pasternak, just has such a balanced, realistic approach to

nutrition and also to exercise and overall health and well-being. But he also cuts through a lot of BS. And he is an OG in the industry. He's been in the industry for over three days. He's been in the industry for over three decades. He's trained so many thousands of people, including the most high profile celebrities. He's seen all of the crash diets and fads and trends. And he knows what is actually going to stick. So in this episode, we are talking about his new book, The Carb Reset, which is amazing. I highly recommend getting it. I read it in a day. It has illustrations, which I love. It has Harley Hacks. It has the concept of good, better, and best when it comes to carbs. And it's just such an enjoyable read. And I do share this, I think, in the episode as well. It's not like a dense nutrition book. It's really fun and it's

really, really helpful. So we're covering everything from that good, better, best approach to carbs, to why cravings happen, why we fear hunger and what actually helps you break through a plateau. We talk about the diet lies that we've been told and the ones that might be sabotaging your results, why some foods marketed as healthy sneak in more calories from fat than you think, which is really interesting. We talk about America's obesity problem. We talk crash and bad diets. And if they ever work long term, we do lightning round. We talk his favorite workout gadgets, go-to-cheat meal, funny personal stories. We talk what to know about sugar, diet soda, food dyes, food fear, protein portion control, why plateaus happen so much more. So if you have ever felt

confused by all of the nutrition and exercise advice out there, if you have felt confused about carbs, calories, why you always feel hungry, this episode is going to change the way that you think about food and fitness. So I know you guys are going to absolutely love it. Please enjoy Farley Pasternak. I read your book, by the way. I did not get a physical copies. So yesterday, I'm like, so I email your publisher and I got the galley and I read it yesterday and today. Wow. Wow. It's amazing. Oh, no. Stop. It's amazing. Really? I love that you have the illustrations too and the food list and the recipes. I feel like sometimes the books can not yours, but health, diet, nutrition, whatever. It can be so dense that like after a chapter or two,

I tap out. But this is like you break it up. I like the client stories. I like the pictures. I like the layout of it. I like the little Harley hacks. Yeah, it was great. I also feel like the better you understand something, the simpler you can explain it. Yes, for sure. And I feel like sometimes when people write nutrition books, bullshit baffles brains, right? Like they're trying to really, this is so complex when I'm a good, but it's not. Yeah. There's like a lot of word salad. Have a potato. Everyone needs to chill. Yeah. I know last time I was here when I was sitting in this chair, I was wearing a big baggy sweater. And it looked like I was wearing my dad's sweater. And like, I was just sitting in a chair like a, but now this is better.

I like the black. Thank you. The contrast. That's why we changed the background lights as well. So I thought that it would be fun to start with some like lightning round quick fire questions. I love that. And then I have some that I want to circle back to after the conversation. But I'm curious about these as well.

So what's your favorite workout song right now? My favorite workout song right now. Gosh, that's so good. Oh my gosh. You know, I really just have TV on when I work out lately. Really? Yeah, because I'm so used to listening to music all day when I'm training clients. And I listen to music all day.

I listen to eight hours a day of music when I'm working out. I want to be distracted and entertained. So I have, I've been watching Stick, the golf show on Apple TV, The Comedy. And I've been watching, I just finished friends and family. Oh, yeah, we watched that. Friends and neighbors. Yep, John Hamm. I love doing like heavy deadlifts and watching John.

Ham. Because he's so hot. He is so good. He's hot. Sure he's hot. Yeah. But he's so good. Very good. I feel like John Hamm is the male Nicole Kidman. He's in every show and movie right now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She's in everything. What else is he in? I just saw him in two things. Oh. And I know that's not a lot, but I saw him in two things. And then he made a guest appearance in another thing. Toast of London. Yeah, he's everywhere. Okay. Yeah. Interesting. because you and I have gone through a lot of music genres in our years of training. What really reminds me of you is dance hall. Yes. Remember the dance hall?

Yes. Shabaranks. Freddie McGregor, Ninja Man, Buzhoubantan. Mad Cobra. Mad Cobra, girl, right? Yeah. Chacademoson pliers and pliers. Yeah.

We did a Drake phase. I remember when that album came out a couple years ago. That always reminds me of training with you. So anyway. You know what I'm listening to now? What? Clips is a new album. Oh.

Clips has a new album. Push a T and his brother. Tess, it's like, yeah. Like, honestly, Push is a dear friend

and I've worked with for 20 years. Their album is, they're finally getting their flowers. It's amazing. Clips like grind in clips? Clips like grinding. No way.

Yes. Yes. Their first album in like 20 years or have they been putting things out? No. So Push's brother left music and he went to work as a minister. Mm-hmm. As a preacher.

He's an incredible guy, great lyricist. No malice. And so they're back together and Ferell produced the album and it's so good. Tassie, you've listened to it? She's all about it. Okay, I have to listen to this. Interesting. Favorite fitness gadget or app? Favorite fitness gadget or app? You know, I'm old school and I helped sort of with the launch of Fitbit back in the day. A lot of come out since then. I still use Fitbit all the time. And so I use the app to sync with the device. I'm wearing one right now. But I would say That's a big one for me. TRX straps still. I love using that as a gadget. And if there's one other one,

I would say, are lifting hooks, these little right to go around your wrist and there's a hook. So if I'm doing weights that my grip can handle, but my legs can or my back can, then I've got those hooks. Amazing. Favorite healthy restaurant. Favorite healthy restaurant is any Japanese restaurant. Any Japanese restaurant, you can eat healthy and it's delicious and there's not heavy sauces and stuff. Go to comfort meal. Go to comfort meal. Ah. You're going to self-disclose in this episode because you do it in your book. Okay. Well, definitely chocolate chip cookie, but that's not a meal. I would say a really good deli sandwich, a really good corned beef sandwich with French fries, maybe a Rubin sandwich. Favorite meat meal. Favorite cheat meal. I know you don't call them cheat meals. Favorite free meal.

You know, I would say my son loves hamburgers and I really love taking him to hamburger places. He likes burger she wrote and for the win. and hi-ho. So a burger and fries, I love. Okay, last one. What do you eat when no one's watching? Well, I call it Italian lubricant. It's otherwise known as Nutella. Really? That are chocolate chip cookies, yeah. Okay. When we were in Tuscany, we had this chef at the villa, and I don't know if Chris sent you a picture of this, but he made the most amazing pizzas, and he made this Nutella pizza. It was, everybody on YouTube can see his face right now. Yeah. I would not have. in February. Oh, he did tell me about this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Chris is very, very excited. Because he called

him, Chris called me, he's like, do you have a pizza of it? Yeah, he's buying a pizza. Why do I have a pizza? He's like, don't worry, I'll get one. For what? He's like, never mind. Yeah, don't worry about it. That's where the chef from Kianti. Okay. So I just got back from Europe, as we know, where I was basically living on bread and pastries and French fries, which is very common there and pasta and things like that. And it's interesting because when you're there and you see people who live there or local people, I really don't think I saw any obese people. And yet here we're told that carbs are bad and that you can't eat bread, pasta, rice, you name it. That's the enemy. And you are setting out to change that myth, right? To dispel that. Yes. Yeah. You know, growing up, we were told that

that fat was bad and carbs were good and snack well cookies. Remember snack? The chocolate? Right? Yes. Oh, my God. For those of you don't remember, Nabisco came out with, I think it was Nabisco, with these cookies that were zero fat.

They were loaded with sugar and hyper-processed things. But because they were fat-free, you could have boxes and boxes of them, which obviously is not the right answer. And then I never forget the first time I went to Japan, there was no one there that I saw that was overweight. I mean, no one. And I'd read that they had the longest like. lifespan in the world and the lowest incidence of diabetes and heart disease and cancer, most cancers.

Yet they consume most of their calories from carbohydrates, specifically white rice. And then I'd come back here and they're like, no, no, carbs are bad, don't eat white rice. And then I see everyone here is such a high obesity rate. I think right now Japan has a 4% obesity rate and the US is 44%. Japan has amongst the highest carbohydrate diet in the world. The US has amongst the lower carbohydrate diet consumption as a percentage of calories. as a percentage of calories in the world. And I took more time, and I've read every nutrition book over the years.

I've read the China study. I've read the Okinawan diet. I've read the Mediterranean diet. I've read the Scandinavian diets. And all of these diets receive exponentially more carbohydrates as a percentage of calories than we do here in the United States. And I never understood where this messaging came from, this low carbohydrate messaging. And then it sort of dawned upon me that people are looking for a quick fix here.

And you can lose more weight on a scale by cutting carbs. than any other way. It's all water. But in one week, you can drop 10 pounds of water by cutting carbs. And people are looking for that. And from a scientific perspective, we know that a low carb diet and a high carb diet long term, there is no benefits of a low carb diet for long term weight loss at all. So why do it? And who thinks that a bacon double cheeseburger is healthy for you as long as you don't eat the bun or the tomato, which we know is not. It's calories in versus calories out. That's really all that matters. Yeah.

And in your book, you talk about how in like the late 90s, early 2000s, there was this shift where, you know, it went from everything being low fat and fat was the enemy and the snack wells and all of that to low carb. And then around the same time, that's when obesity rates started going up, right? So is that causation or correlation? Can you say? I can't say it's causation because there's so many other factors, but I think correlation for sure. I think it's coincidence that at the exact same time those things happen. Other things

happen. The intranet became bigger and maybe people were a little less active. But I think the biggest issue is people consuming more calories. And when you're eating most of your calories from foods that are way more calorically dense, fat, it's almost two and a half times the calorie density of carbohydrates or protein, you're going to eat more calories. And when we bless certain foods, like you can have a fatty cut of meat, it cooked in clotted butter and with cream on the side, and as long as you don't have that carrot, you're going to be okay. We have to sort of question why. There was a crazy stat, I read, between 1974 and 2024, that 50-year period. The average American consumes 700 calories more per day. Okay. Of those 700 additional calories,

How many do you think come from sugar? 40 out of the 700 additional calories come from sugar. Okay. Most of it is coming from added fats. Interesting. And that's really been the biggest change in the American diet. Sure, we eat more, but we eat more because we're eating more caloricly dense foods.

And most of that is as a result of having fats. And when we think about certain foods that are carbs, oh, I don't want to eat that. Look, I cut out pastries. I cut out donuts. I cut out French fries and potato chips. All those carbs are lost weight. Actually, none of those are carbs. Those are all fats. They receive more than 50% of their calories from fat. So you're cutting out a calorically dense food of which most of the calories are fat. You don't get fat from eating a baked potato. You get fat from having a baked potato loaded with sour cream and bacon and butter and all of those other things. But the potato itself is harmless. I mean, over the years you've worked with so many thousands of clients, you've been doing this for

more than 30 years, right? Which is crazy. 34 years, 1992. Isn't that wild? And so I'm sure that you've seen every kind of bad diet, crash diet that there is, and you do talk about this in your book as well. Are there any instances where some of those things do work long term? Like, are there any outliers? I'm going to pull this up because I created this list for us today. I want to show you how wild this is. So there's all of these case studies of academics trying to prove the point that weight loss is just calories in versus calories out. It's the law of thermodynamics. That is really what makes people lose weight. If you eat less, you're going to, you know, versus more.

So this was a great one. So the Twinkie diet. So Mark Hobb lost 27 pounds. He was a professor at Kansas State University. He lost 27 pounds from only eating Twinkies, Doritos, and Oreos for 10 weeks. He had 1,800 calories a day. So given 1,800 calories, anything he ate, as long as it was 1,800 calories, had him lose weight. And that was Twinkies, Doritos, and Oreos.

And then you had the McDonald's diet. So John Sistina, another professor, he ate 2,000 calories a day every day, only McDonald's. For 90 days, he lost 37 pounds and actually improved his cholesterol level. There was the potato diet. Chris Voigt did the potato diet. And he only ate potatoes for 60 days. He lost 21 pounds. and most of his blood markers were improved.

You had Penn Gillette who also did, he lost 100 pounds by almost eating only potatoes. And so the list goes on and on of all of these examples of people, as long as you control for calories, no matter what you eat, you're going to lose weight if you control for calories. Now, you want to have quality calories and you shouldn't eat Twinkies every day.

It's not necessarily healthy for you. But as far as weight loss goes, it's calories in versus calories out. Yeah, I mean, that kind of aligns with like the whole if it fits your macros movement, which I did 10 or so years ago whenever I started my Instagram account trying to get in shape. And that philosophy was you can eat anything as long as it fits into whatever macros you have. And so sure, you can eat 1,800 calories of gummy bears or whatever, or you can eat 1,800 calories of broccoli. And you're going to have the same effect when it

comes to your weight, right? But you're going to feel like shit, probably if you do. I feel like you're going to be hungrier if you're not getting quality calories. So if you take two identical twins who have the same physical activity and one gets 1,800 calories a day from salmon and broccoli, and one gets 1,800 calories a day from chocolate cake, I know which one I'd want to be. They would lose the same amount of weight. They wouldn't have the same health markers, but they'd lose the same amount of weight. The difference is the one getting chocolate cake with all their calories.

It's probably going to be really hungry because they're not getting fiber to make them feel full. they're not getting protein, they're not getting certain healthy fats, whereas their brother would be satiated, most likely. Yeah, I mean, I'm just trying to listen from the audience perspective because I know that there are going to be people who say it's not just calories in calories out. I did keto and it changed my life. I do intermittent fasting, blah, blah, blah, whatever it is, hormones, you know, so many variables. There's so many anecdotes of people who've been successful doing different things. And so in 34 years of practice, I've seen the South Beach diet, the Atkins zone, the Pridikin,

the cabbage soup diet, the lemon drop diet, I've seen, the master cleanse I've seen, the total 930 or all of these things. Every diet works for some people for some amount of time. And then it doesn't. And when you eliminate an entire food group like carbohydrates, there's only so long you can do this keto. And I think it really got its big popularity from Dr. Atkins. May he rest in peace. I don't want to slam him at all. But when he created the Atkins diet, which was the original keto diet. It was because he had all of these obese people that needed heart surgery

and it was dangerous to put them under general anesthesia. He'd give them this crash diet where he cut out almost all the carbs. They'd lose weight really quickly so they can get the heart surgery to save their life. He had a good intention when he created it. He never said this is a healthy diet. He never says,

this is something you should continue with for an extended period of time. But people love that when you step off a scale in a week, you cut out carbs, you lost all this weight. It's not all fat. It's very little fat. it might be no fat, but they just love that number. And so that's why people gravitated to this low carb thing, which is not necessarily healthy for you. And we know for a fact that the quality of the

calories you're skipping whole grains and legumes and fruits and vegetables are things you need to live a very healthy long life. I remember when that diet first came out or when it got popular because I was in high school and my boyfriend's family, I would eat dinner with them like every night. And they started doing the diet and we started eating cauliflower mashed potatoes. That's kind of sustained. Like, I feel like that's still a thing. Yeah, it somehow has stayed, unfortunately. cauliflower and smoothies, cauliflower. I got Goop Kitchen the other day because I was like so jet lagged.

I didn't want to cook and they had mashed potatoes, but it's half mashed potatoes, half cauliflower. That's a bit better. Yeah, it lightens it up a little bit. I don't notice it. You know, I don't want to piss off Gwyneth. Yeah, I know you guys are friends. But at the same time, anybody who swears, they love mashed cauliflower or rice cauliflower

flour rice, you're fooling yourself. That's like people who have raw vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free pastries and think it's the best thing in the world. No, it's not. Me. But when you compare it to a real one, you're like, oh, I get it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally. Well, and you say in your book, too, like, as soon as you make a certain kind of food group prohibited, that's exactly how you create cravings, essentially. So it's like you have this compensatory response. Once you start depriving something, I remember I had this woman, Evelyn Tribbley on my show, years ago. She was kind of the head of like the intuitive eating movement. She's a registered dietitian wrote books on it, very like old school. And she said pretty much what we're talking

about when you restrict things. It's like when you hold your breath when you're underwater. When you come up, you're going to go, you know, and the same thing happens with diet. If you're white knuckling and restricting and something is off limits, it's going to be all you think about. And then your body is going to suddenly cave. And that's like how binge eating habits come to be. And, And it creates that cycle. And when I hear people say, I will never eat that ingredient or never eat that food, I always say why. It's bad for you. Okay, it might be bad for you to have throughout the day, every day, every month throughout your life.

But what's wrong with having it now? I mean, nothing. And so like you said, if you are too regimented and too strict with cutting out certain things, your body will find a way to fight back. Yeah. So you mentioned fiber before. And in the carbri site, you talk about protein. fibers and fats, giving your brain a stop signal. So let's talk about that and talk about what people should be focusing on when they eat. So the idea of satiety, of feeling full, I think one of the most

important things of managing your weight is managing your appetite. And that's a huge thing. It's funny, I had a client who called me two days ago and said, I'm on location filming something. And where I am, marijuana is not legal. So I haven't had any cannabis and I've lost 16 pounds. I came up with a new idea for a new food book. It's the no weed diet. And it's because their appetite is ravenous when they're using cannabis. And so there's somewhere where it's not. So keeping that appetite in check, the carb reset is not about cannabis. The carburetis set is about eating the right combination of foods to make you feel full or faster and longer. And when you have fiber and when you have protein and when you have healthy fats, I call that the holy trinity of satiety. You're going to feel full

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So let's talk about path. Path, exactly. And there's illustrations in the book to show you what this looks like, which I found very helpful. Did you ever weigh your food? Did you ever weigh your food? Oh my God, yeah. When I was doing macros and it just became very insidious because I got it in my head where I knew how much everything weighed and how much that meant in macros. So like even if I was just looking at a food,

I would calculate in my head, oh, that's like X amount of grams. And that means that it has this many, you know, grams of fat. And it was so hard to kind of untrain my brain from thinking that way. I mean, it took a long time to break up with that approach. Yeah, it works. But it's very antisocial and it's not good for your mental health. So I want to get people away from measuring everything in a very micro way and do it in a bigger picture, more of a gestalt way. Using your hand is the easiest thing. Bigger people tend to have bigger hands, tend to require more food. So I base it on your hand size to some extent. So path is a palm full of carbohydrates, P for palm. So how much carbohydrates fit in your palm, whether it be whole grains, high fiber fruits,

starchy vegetables, sweet potatoes, legumes, what fits in your palm. A in the word path is for all the vegetables you want, as much as you want. You don't even have to have any, but if you have them, there's no limit. T in path is for thumb, the mass of your thumb of healthy fat, nut, seeds, olives, etc. And H is at least the mass of your hand of protein. So if I'm breaking down a meal, you know, I'm having a fistful of eggs in the morning, and I'm having some diced peppers in there, there's my vegetables, and I'm having some avocado is my healthy fat, there's my thumb, and then a palm full of carbs. So with that, I'm either having some oats or some high fiber toast or some berries and I've

got my path. It really, really simplifies things and you don't get lost in the details. You can really see how people go off the rails, though. Like, I'm just thinking of myself and I'm thinking a thumb of avocado, like I would eat a half an avocado or a whole avocado. Or like when it comes to cooking with oils or something, I have the graza thing, drizzling with all the olive oil. It's probably like a quarter cup or more like on vegetables.

And then eating rice as I'm cooking. You've been over for dinner when I made that rice. I'll just munch on things. And I think people don't realize. And I'm sure that you have this with your clients where they're like, no, I swear, I'm only eating X, Y, Z. And then when you really look at it, especially in that way again, because I'm a visual person, it's like, oh, wow, you realize how much you might be overshooting the mark there.

And not to get too philosophical with it. part of the path using your hand is you have to take your hand off of your eye. And by that I mean, quite often, I can be in a room with you. I can be in a room with all of you. I can cover my eyes and pretend I'm the only one in the room. We do that with diet. And my favorite is Costco. If you ever go to Costco, those calories don't count, right?

All those free samples, you go, they don't count. I think, I figured out I ate 1,400 calories of free samples that don't count last time I was there. And so, you know, taking your hands off your eyes and not pretending like these things don't matter, I think is really, really important. That's part of Pat. Let's talk about things like breads and pastas. You talk about good, better, best in your book, which I loved this concept. A lot of foods are villainized, especially things like white bread or certain kind of grains and pastas. So when it comes to including those things in somebody's diet, what's your philosophy on that? So, yes, best, better, and good. Is that what I had it as? Good, better best. Good better best. I love that. Yeah. I do like that. Gosh, that was good. I think when it comes to any ingredient, it's like that. There is no bad ingredient. There's no ingredient that we should never, ever have. But I think when it comes to breads, for example, you want to have a bread in a perfect world that is, you can still see a bit of the grains. It's a little less refined. It's a little granolay and nutty. And fermentation is really important. So something that's been fermented a long period of time. Sour dough I love is from a fermentation perspective. The second would be any bread that has at least three grams per slice and 100 calories, less than 100 calories per slice. So at least it's got some fiber. It's a little less refined. It's not as much as the first one. And the third would be really any

bread that brings you joy, whether it be a croissant, whether it be a white bread, whatever it may be. So I make my kids a healthier French toast. And the bread we use is not the most high fiber bread, But I take some blackberries and I heat them up on the side and make a high fiber fruit compote that goes on top of the egg white. So I don't need the fiber and the bread because I'm getting it from somewhere else in the meal. When it comes to things like pasta, I feel like you're not a pasta person. You know, we went to Evaldi the other night. We invited you guys.

I know. Well, he went. He may. Oh, that's right. I keep again. That's right. Because he's like, we can come. And then at the end, he's like, I might grab a snack.

I was, you know, we'll talk off my. about the travel days on the way back. The Philly cheesecake? Yeah, we flew through Philly. And I was like, I don't understand why. And then we got there. And I'm like, I do understand why we're doing this. Can I read you a text?

Can I read you a text? I made a joke. Here's a text, okay? This is your boyfriend. Okay, listen to this. This is a, so here we go. I tried to call him. He says, I'm on a flight, flying home.

I said, oh, great. When do you arrive? He said, stopping at Philadelphia on the way back. I said, what's in Philadelphia? He said, Gino's cheese steak, best sandwich ever. I said, you're getting one there? He said, that's why we're stopping in Philly. He is so dead.

I think he's joking. I don't think he really chose that as. Because when he flew, because when he came back from Europe, I was there for six weeks. He came back to L.A. for three nights. He flew through Philly, not on the way back, but on the way back to meet me in Italy. And of course, he was late to LAX. And then he was telling me he was going to just stop at Gino's really quick. He had like a really short connection.

And I was like, if you missed your flight, I'm in Naples at a hotel like on the harbor waiting for him to come so we can go to Capri. I'm like, if you miss your flight because you're getting a fucking cheese steak, you are done. Like done. And so when we were flying back from St.ropay, we woke up at like five in the morning, which is not relevant to anybody who's listening. They're like, huh? And then we flew at 3 o'clock in the afternoon from Nice to Philadelphia. So we get to Philadelphia 10 hours later.

So that's 10 o'clock at night-ish for us. And then we have a four-hour layover in Philadelphia to fly back to L.A. at 10.30 at night, Philadelphia time, which is then 4.30 in the morning. And then get to L.A. at 2 in the morning. I'm like, what? And it was Gino's and it was also a burrito place. There were two. So a burrito place. Anyway, how did we go off on that tension? I don't know. Yeah. Talking about Ginos. Oh, you're asking about pasta. Oh, yeah. Good, better, best, when it comes to pasta. So look, Yes. When it comes to pastas, I think anytime you can opt for a pasta that's going to have a higher

fiber content is great. There are wheat pastas, whole wheat pasta actually has a pretty good profile. There's good amounts of fiber. There's a good amount of protein in there. If you're someone who is celiac disease and you have to stay away, there's lots of legume-based pastas, bean-based pastas, lentil-based pastas are super high in fiber, super high in protein. Those are also really great. And then there's just whatever pasta you want, just the best pasta.

What makes pasta something not great for weight management is really what you put in it and how much you eat. And if you're having a cream sauce or fatty meat you're adding to it, that's where most of the calories are going to come from, not from the pasta. So the pasta itself, if it's loaded, if there's vegetables or lean proteins in there and you're using a tomato sauce, especially if you're eating a spice in there, all of that will help with the satiety so you don't overeat it. Well, and that was the thing.

Like in Europe, it's not even the main course. Sometimes it can be, but, you know, oftentimes, especially in Italy, it's appetizer, pasta. And like, you literally, I remember at the villa when we had that chef, you get one piece of ravioli. Right. One. Right. That's it. And then you move on to the protein.

And it's the best ravioli. The best. And you're done wanting more. And I think there's something to be said about done wanting more. And that's something Americans don't do well because we have access to everything, unlimited. access to unlimited foods in most places. And I think learning when to stop. I learned from being in Sweden something called Lagom.

They practice in Sweden, which means just enough. Or in Japan, and forgive my Japanese, Hary Hanme Buche, which is eat like a stork. You can only eat what fits in your beak and then wait. And so I think if we can listen to the Swedes and the Japanese, both who have a lot more carbohydrates in their diet as a percentage here in the U.S. and they live a lot longer and they're a lot healthier than I think we'd be better for it. Yeah, and I've also heard of something where you stop when you're still kind of hungry.

Yes, that's same, yeah, same thing. Something like that. Yeah, because satiety lags behind ingestion. And so there's nothing worse than going to a salad bar and just loading up with the biggest thing ever and going back, put a little bit, come bring it, eat it. And then by the time you come up the second time, you're kind of almost full. It lags behind. I feel like we have a fear of hunger here a little bit. I mean, it's like we, we overshoot the marks so much, constantly eating all, if you're hungry, eat a snack. And I mean, there's probably nothing wrong with that. If you're, you know, active and you're having three meals a day and two snacks or something like that. But I just feel like people don't, they just can't tolerate hunger. And then you eat,

we eat till past being full. This is in our DNA. Yeah. Do you ever read Sapiens? Yes. You've all Noah Harari. Yes. Amazing. Yeah. I've never felt smarter than walking around with that book. Yeah. Even if I didn't read it. I just, it's so hefty. Yeah. It's so thick and it's so verbose. I'm like, I have this book. I must be smart. Yeah. It wasn't until the audio book came out that I went same. I went through half of the actual physical book and it's like what I was saying in the beginning. It's so dense and it's so interesting, but I would read like two pages and then I'm like, I'm at like I can't retain it. And then I listened to the rest on audio book. It was my sleeping. drug for a while. But now it's actually my white nose, Jess laughs. It's my white nose. Anytime she walks

in a room, I just have it on, the audiobook. You should do homo deus. Oh, right. Did you read that one? No, should I do that one? Yeah, that one's really interesting too. I'll do that one. In little chunks. But in it, he talks about how, you know, back from from thousands of years ago, food was not abundant. Actually, food was not abundant up until very recently, you know, we had to really try and find food. And as a result, when we had access to food, we would gorge in fear of when we would be able to access food next. It's the same thing in our body. This is evolutionary.

We still have it in us, which is why when we have an unlimited amount of food, it hasn't registered in us yet. Because it's pretty recent we have this unlimited amount of food that, hey, I don't have to gorge. You can get food in six hours from now, three hours from now, an hour from now. Chill out. I don't know about you, but I have found it very difficult to get back in. into the routine of cooking and planning my meals after all of my traveling this summer. Planning meals really can be stressful and time consuming, but it doesn't have to be. So imagine having your week of meals already decided for you with personalized options that

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Yep. Because I feel like this is all great. And then you start training and your appetite goes crazy, at least for me. That was my experience before I traveled and stopped working out. I was working out a lot and I was starving. So it's like the hand was not going to cut it for me. So where does that come in? I think the massive appetite change happens when people over cardio,

eyes. And you see in one book I wrote, I think I opened the book by giving a case study of a former client of mine who was wonderful, who typical day would be they'd wake up after lying still for eight hours and they would get in their car and they would drive 30 minutes sitting to Soul Cycle where they would sit on a bike in a class and they would spin their butt off and they were just ravenous by the end of the class. And then they would have a fresh press juice of 400 calories and, you know, 80 grams of sugar. And then they would have a gluten-free scone of 350 calories. And A, they were ravenous from doing such high-intensity cardio in the class, but also this permission they gave themselves. I deserve this scone and this juice because

I just worked hard in a class. And so getting away from that is a really, important. I find there's an optimum amount of aerobic activity to do each day, and that's why I call it steps, as opposed to putting a time amount on it. And the idea is that you don't do it in super intensely. And no one walks around the block a few times and comes back and say, God, I'm starving. I just walked around the block. No, you're probably not. And I think strength training is important because it doesn't increase your appetite in a dramatic way, but more so it increases your resting metabolism. So by putting a little more of lean muscle tissue on your body,

your body burns more calories at rest. And so you burn a few more calories per hour, and over the course of a day, a week, a month, you're burning thousands of extra calories without doing any extra exercise. And if somebody feels like they are plateauing, then is that a nutrition fix? or is that a workout tweak or does it just depend on the person?

I think it depends on the person. You know, there's people I know that absolutely love working out, love strength training, love all that stuff, but the food thing is an issue for them. And there's other people that have really good diets, but you just can't drag them into a gym and strength train. So everyone's different. I also want to ask you about protein,

because I feel like protein has been like the thing lately, kind of the sexy diet thing. I don't know how that happened really. But do you think there's an over emphasis on protein. We know protein is important, but do you think that that's too overemphasized and carbs are too under-emphasized? Yeah, I think in this really strange roller coaster diet that America's had over the years, we've gone from loving carbs to loving fats to loving carbs to then loving fats again. And then we're like, well, we don't know if we love carbs or fat, but let's for sure just love

protein because we know that protein's tough to store as extra body fat because you know you have to convert it to carbohydrates and then you have to convert the carbohydrates to fat so there's more steps required to turn that into body fat and protein has a lot of health benefits to it so you know and it's also the one macronutrient you can't really store in a reusable way in the same way as fat and carbohydrates we can store carbs as glycogen you've heard of carb loading we all know you can store body fat but storing protein is not the same way so I can't remember the last time I met someone that was protein deficient, but I meet it. Most people are fiber deficient. You're supposed to have at least 30 grams a day, hopefully 40.

I think the average American gets 11 grams of fiber per day. And that's very heavily tied into cutting carbs. Yeah. What are your favorite sources of fiber? Two kinds of fiber soluble and insoluble. Soluble is the kind that draws water into your stools and softens it. And insoluble creates the bulk of the tools. Water soluble. I actually love cillium. And so I'm a medibusal guy. There's something so delicious about that artificial orange flavor. I got to be honest. It reminds me of tang. Remember when you're a kid Tang? Yeah. Or Capri Sun. There was those spaceship flavors. I love Capri's Sun. Oh, that little packet. Freeze it in the summer and make a popsicle. Oh, I've never done that. Yeah. We would freeze. I think we would like cut the, no, we would freeze them and then we would cut the bottom off and then

just squeeze it out of the pouch. And it was, yeah, do it for your kids. Oh, that's genius. Is it still in business? Capriza? I think so. I don't know. I don't know why I'm looking at Tasso.

All right. All right. We'll find out. So I love whole grains. Whole grains, anything that expands when you put them in water. Whole grains, seeds, fruit, great source of water soluble fiber. And then bulking fiber, you know, my vegetables,

basically any green leafy vegetable or any color vegetable has some degree of bulking fiber. So those are probably my favorites. You mentioned fruit. I feel like fruit has become something that people are a little bit unsure of again because fearing carbs, fearing sugar. Let's talk about the sugar conversation, fruit and otherwise. You talk about in the book how you have a sweet tooth. I've witnessed it first. And I have to say I was surprised as well, I think when I first saw it, which was probably years ago when we were training and you were eating cookies when I'm working out dying. And since I've been with you in various settings where you love a cookie. And you talk about this. And I'm not the only one that was surprised. Yes. So let's talk about the sweets of it all.

It's my steam release. It's my on a teapot when that water boils, there's got to be a steam release on that pot that whistles. Because if it's sealed tight shut, it'll explode. And I feel like it's the same thing. As long as I know there's something that truly brings me such incredible joy. throughout the day. I don't drink alcohol. I don't use anything that's really dangerous or bad. I don't smoke cigarettes. And what brings me joy is a pastry, a good pastry. And so I strength train and I do my steps and I sleep well and I have a really great balanced diet. And I like a

chocolate chip cookie every day. And that's okay because it's still within my nutrient profile. I'm not overeating calories. And I'm really happy and I look forward to it. If I take that away and I've tried, then everything else collapses like a deck of cards. And I think when you try and create perfection in anything, real perfection, you often lose sight of the bigger picture, right? With anything. And with diet, having that for me, it's my cookie. I always say to people like, what's your cookie?

For some people, it's a soda a day, right? Or three or five or whatever. For some people, it's, Jess loves a really good French butter on toast on a really great bag. God. I mean, you know my wife. She's in the most incredible shape ever. She has bread and butter every day.

But everything else she eats is excellent and she exercises and she does everything right. And so her cookie is a little bread and butter. Whatever your cookie is, know what that is and earn it. So if you're doing everything else right, you can have your cookie and feel great about it. What is your take on Diet Coke since we were talking about it before and since you mentioned soda? There's a massive amount of research looking at diet sodas. All of them show weight loss associated with diet sodas. All of them.

Fabulous. Every single one of them, you know, weight loss with diet sodas. I think when you hear people say, oh, artificial sweeteners are bad, I stop them in their track because there's eight or nine different sweeteners. Which one are you talking about? They have nothing to do with one another. And so that's one thing. The other thing is they're called GRAS, generally regarded as safe.

Any studies that you show with any sweeteners, where they've shown any negative effects, it's an elaborate, for the most part. And the amount they're consuming, you and I would have to have like 500 sodas a day for many days to even come close to that for a lot. It's not something we need to think about. And I think that's part of social media today. There's such clickbait that people want to see something that's like, oh, this will kill you and that's really bad.

Well, read it. Take your time. Read through it. Well, now they're calling Diet Coke fridge cigarettes. fridge cigarettes. I'm like, okay, I'm going to have my bridge sig. For me, it's Sprite Zero. Oh, that's what you like? One of the diet seven up or spread zero. Because there's no caffeine in it and I can have it.

Like if I want at dinner and I want to have some sweet and delicious, it's so delicious. There's no calories. There's no, I'm not dying from that. And you and I talked about this a long time ago. For anyone out there freaking out about a food dye in a meruccino cherry or a color and a fruit loop or all of this minutiae, yet this person is 60 pounds overweight and doesn't exercise. and they're focused on that random thing. It's a distraction.

And if you take a look, okay, what are the leading causes of mortality and morbidity in the United States? And what are the lifestyle factors associated with each? The number one cause of death in the U.S. by far is obesity. Diabetes, heart disease, most cancers, et cetera, et cetera, stroke. The second is smoking. And then third is, I believe it's accidents, right? So drunk driving or workplace, falling.

off a ladder or texting while you drive. And then I believe it's mental health and addiction. So if you're not obese, you don't smoke, you're not doing drugs, you're not texting while you're driving, there's 95% of every death. Focus on that. Are you nailing those things? And before we get distracted with the other stuff, I'm not just not saying they're not worthy, but they're so far down the line of things we should be worried about. And if you want to have a diet soda, big freaking deal, have a diet soda. Amazing. I'm going to have mine after this. Dying. Oh, and I should say for anyone listening, I am not here being paid by any beverage company by any sweetener company at all whatsoever. I'm not. Yeah, and I think anybody who's hyper fixating on those things, I understand you don't want to

be like consuming, you know, hyper processed artificial stuff all the time. But I think you need to really audit your life and look at these other areas. Like, are you dying your hair? Are you getting Botox? Are you, do you have tattoos? Like, the dying hair thing. Do I now, am I eligible for that? There's like these chemicals everywhere. Like there's no such thing as perfection. Right. And I think there's certain terms that we're scared from, which we shouldn't. The term artificial, the term chemical, GMO, we're confused by terms like organic and natural. We don't know what any of these things mean. Water is a chemical. Cocaine is natural. I'm serious.

I mean, the lists you can go down, if you take organic milk and non-organic milk and you put them under a microscope, it's the identical same end of product. When you say, I'm never going to have GMO, how about everything that you're eating is GMO? How many forms of apples do we know? There's Fuji, there's Red Delicious, there's a Granny Smith. There used to be one kind of apple, it was called an apple. And through splicing one apple and putting on a tree with another, you've now genetically modified that apple and created a new species. So everyone needs to just chill out with their high horse. They've got to just enjoy life, have some carbohydrates, have a piece of really good pizza.

By the way, I have the best healthy pizza recipe. No way. The best healthy pizza recipe. Is it on Instagram? Yes. It's on my Instagram. Okay. Yes.

And it's six minutes beginning to end. No way. Yes. How do you make it? I use a whole wheat lavash bread. I get it from Trader Joe's, but you can get a lavash bread anywhere. For anyone out there, it's like a paper thin, you know, flat bread. I put tomato sauce on it, whatever one you want.

I like rouse, but a little bit. But before I do anything, I take that flat bread, a little bit of olive oil, and I put it in the oven for like three minutes to just crisp it up. Take it out, put on my tomato sauce. Whatever vegetables you want, I'll use like fresh basil. I'll use thinly sliced tomato, roasted red peppers out of a jar. I love roasted red peppers. and I'll put in some really good roasted turkey.

And on the top, I'll put some parts skim shredded mozzarella. I'll put it back in for about three minutes. It's everything you love about pieces. It's tangy. It's cheesy. It's so good. You got to eat it quickly because when it cools down, it's not as good. But when it's hot, it's so good.

That sounds amazing. Okay. Let's go back to some quicker, like lightning round ones. What is a snack that everyone thinks is healthy but isn't? trail mix. Trail mix is I think that's my weakness. Oh my gosh if you take a look at the nutritional profile of trail mix. In fact, there are some films I've worked on where I had to fatten people up for a role and I did it with two things, three things. I did it with trail mix. I did it with granola. My other favorite thing. It's just too easy to eat those things, right? I know. Yeah. And I did it with

peanut butter stuffed pretzels. Ooh, I love those. These are all my airplane snacks by the way. I get trail mix. I get those Quinn peanut butter stuff pretzels. It's insane how colorically dense those things are and they're mindless. You just pump a fistful. The next thing you know, I just had 8,000 calories of trail mix and granola. That travel day that I told you about, I think I exclusively ate trail mix, granola pretzels. They didn't have peanut butter stuffed there. What else? Protein bar, protein bars, like kind bars that are nuts and dried fruit. So, basically trillments and granola. Yep, exactly.

That's pretty much it. So you would have been better off with the geno cheese steak. For sure. For sure. I know. When we were at the airport, I was dying. I went to the lounge and I was like, I'm just not like, I just, you don't want to talk to me right now. Right.

And he called me and he's like, babe, I found a great food place for you. They have rice and cabbage. And I was like, thanks. Rice and cabbage. I know. He meant well. He meant well. And by the way, just not to backtrack.

He did not route you guys through Philadelphia for the sandwich. Sure. I think when I mentioned, oh, he said he's looking forward to the, yes, I don't think that's why he read it. Yeah. I mean, you just have to love him. Oh, my favorite person in the world, other than my wife. Yeah.

Yeah. He's the best. But I was like rice and cabbage, really? And I was like, be there in five minutes. Right. Yeah. And I got a bowl. I did.

That was one thing that I did have besides trail mix. rice, cabbage, and sweet potato. Right. Because at that point, I was so tired. I was nauseous. Yeah, it was a carb bowl. But I'm okay with that because by the way, your rice, sweet potato and cabbage, that whole thing, you were probably consuming less than 200 calories of food.

I mean, and I only could, at that point, I was so tired that I was like, nauseous. I thought I was going to throw up, like the wheels had fallen off. So I was like, I really can't stomach anything. But all I had had was like sugar and, like, dried fruit and nuts. And I'm on this. Oh, dried fruit. That's another one. Yeah.

That's another one that is like a fake healthy. You get those mango packs. Oh my gosh. Those dried mango packs. Look at the nutritional profile. First of all, do you know where they get most of their calories from? Oil.

Oh. Or a lot of their calories. Oh, really? Oil. There's oil in all of those. Oh, my God. There's oil. They add sugar.

It's hydrogenated palm oil. You could have like 2,500 calories of dried mangoes. Oh, easy. Oh, man. Well, yeah, that's what I was, that's what I was eating for like the entire day. leading up to but you I mean you you you're within reason you're never going to overreed I don't no no no no no and I knew I was like this is not healthy but like the plant there were no good

options put it that way rarely is I mean the niece airport there's nothing you know John and Vinnie's was doing the food I think it was on Delta for a long time really yeah also like not how like very heavy yeah but at least delicious I just this is people are going to hate me it was like a humble brag I was flying somewhere for work and someone they I think got my ticket mixed up and upgraded me more than they should have. I think they overbooked. So they had to upgrade somebody. I got the lucky number. And I had a shower on the airplane. I mean, you're not living life until you, one of them. You're not living life until you have a shower on an airplane. Yeah. And then you look around and you're like, all right, I'm done. Like I think I've done everything

in life. I had a shower on an airplane. No, because then you can get the Singapore air, their big suite where you have like the queen size bed. No. Yeah. I'll send it to you. I saw it last night and I was like, where are we going? Because I need to experience that.

How do I get them to screw up and buy mistake upgrade me as well? You have to play the points game. All right. Oh, yeah. Yeah. All right. Let's see. What's one last one?

Who's the funniest person you ever trained? Oh my gosh. Will Farrell for sure is up there. A young Jonah Hill hysterical. Seth Rogan, Paul Rudd, Amy Schumer. too funny. Sarah Silverman, like beyond hysterical. Jack Black, next level, funny. All of these

people are really, really funny. Yeah, I would say they're, it's hard to say who, oh, I wouldn't say I really, he was my client, more of a friend, but Zach Gallifanakis is probably the funniest person I've ever met. He seems like he would be really funny and very down to earth. He is so, the things he says, I can't repeat on air right now, but very funny. Who has one celebrity client? who surprised you the most. Who surprised me in a good or bad way or either. Either you don't have to say. Oh.

We can all guess. Well, there was one, yeah, that was really bad. They're bad. So who surprised me in a real positive way? Gosh, so many in a positive way. People you would never think that are so busy and so successful, don't you? Her, the singer, her? Yeah, she's so nice.

Nicest human being in the world. Most respectful, hardest working nicest person in the world. Arianna Grande, not one second late for anything ever. She's like two minutes before and like ready. And Jane Fonda, I take it back. That might be one of the funniest people I've ever trained. Really? Not because she was trying to be funny, just she's Jane Fonda.

Anything she does is like, that's Jane Fonda. But yeah, a lot of them have surprised me in different kind, wonderful, generous ways. And I say generous with their time, generous with the consideration with their thought. So many wonderful people. I liked your story about Halliberry and your book. but everybody's going to have to get the book and read it to hear that one. That's right.

So. I'm going to leave people up to think what the story's about. But yeah, we'll see. Yeah, just have to buy it and read it or listen to it. You did the audiobook as well. So everybody who loves Harley's voice. And if Hallie's listening to this, I would not be in the U.S. without her.

I would not have much of my career today. So a big thank you to Hallie Bear. She's for sure listening to this, obviously. Yeah. No, we know she's listening. But Hallie, thank you. Holly, thank you. Thank you for listening.

Where can everybody find you? Where can everybody get the book? We'll link it in show notes. On Instagram, I'm pretty active with my recipes. Harley Pasternak. And by the way, you didn't see today. Maybe you did. But we had our Rice Krispy Square beforehand.

Are those on Instagram yet? I'm going to post it later. Okay. So by the time this comes out, it was like the best thing. I haven't had a Rice Krisp's treat in probably 20 years. And it was like insane. someone's going to come out. It's like, oh, that's a GMO rice kernel. For sure. And it was worth it. You know what? That person is not having fun in life. Yeah. That person is not having fun in life.

Really. Yeah. So Instagram, Harley Pastranaq. My website's Harley Pasternak. And if you've ever stayed at a four-season hotel or different hotels around the world, you'll have been to one of our gyms. So gym by Harley. Thank you so much. I hope you enjoyed that episode. If you liked the episode, and if you like the show in general, please take a second to rate review and. subscribe. It goes such a long way in supporting the show. Follow the show over on Instagram at well. Dot pod. You can also follow my personal Instagram at Ariel Laurie. I'm always sharing great clips from the episodes and we also have full episodes on YouTube as well if you want to watch in entirety. Thanks for listening. Hey guys. I am Brian E Bass, a Pilates teacher and the founder of Pilates by Briani. I started my podcast Beyond the Mat after having some of the most moving conversations with people on the mat. Expect full disclosure moments, life hacks to level up your life and stories that activate

your dreams with no gatekeeping allowed. Listen to Beyond the Mat every Thursday wherever you podcast. Please note that this episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services. Individuals on the show may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to in this episode.