WHOOP Podcast - Gaining 60 pounds on purpose: Why Drew Manning is putting on weight just to lose it

Episode Date: December 17, 2020

Drew Manning, the founder of Fit2Fat2Fit,  garnered international attention 10 years ago when he deliberately gained 75 pounds just to lose it in a few short months. Now, he's doing it again, gaining 60 pounds in four months before starting a massive weight loss effort in January. His goal, he says, is to better understand the struggles many go through trying when to lose weight. Drew discusses how the idea came to him (3:25), how he's going about his weight gain (8:30), the shock to his system as he doubled his food intake (10:08), seeing his HRV tank (16:22), gaining weight, losing sleep (17:34), respiratory rate and body changes (21:04), finding empathy for those who struggle with weight (22:19), the emotional toll the process has taken on him (29:20), staying in shape as you age (30:47), how his mental state has changed (35:08), finding your willpower (40:15), and using data to better understand your body (46:19).Support the showFollow WHOOP: www.whoop.com Trial WHOOP for Free Instagram TikTok YouTube X Facebook LinkedIn Follow Will Ahmed: Instagram X LinkedIn Follow Kristen Holmes: Instagram LinkedIn Follow Emily Capodilupo: LinkedIn

What's up, folks? Welcome back to the WOOP podcast. I'm your host, Will Amit, founder and CEO of WOOP, and we are on a mission to unlock human performance. That's right. We build technology, hardware, software, analytics. It's designed to monitor you. I think the biggest differentiation of WOOP from other products is that we help you understand

your body, change behavior, and improve your health. It's that simple. And it's the season to team up. Now when you buy a 12-month Woop membership, you can get a second membership for 30% off. It's a pretty good deal. Okay, this week's guest, Drew Manning, personal trainer and the founder of fit to fat to fit. Drew is in the middle of a deliberate effort to gain 60 pounds in four months. That's right.

It's a masochistic, crazy, crazy idea of his. But because he is a personal trainer and because he's had clients tell him that he couldn't possibly understand what it was like to gain weight and lose it, he actually is taking this on himself. And so this is unbelievable. If you look at Drew, a photo of Drew before he did this, I mean, he's got an eight pack. He's got like 8% body fat. And now he looks really uncomfortable.

And so we talk about this journey that he's on. now to be gaining the weight. And he discusses the mental and the emotional toll of that weight gain and how difficult the process has been. What it's like going through this experience now that he is about to be 40 years old. And what is it like to gain that much weight at that age? And how he's using whoop to monitor his body during the weight gain. Drew has been a long time whoop member. So 8% body fat Drew wore whoop and now 60 pound overweight. body fat, Drew wears whoop. So it's pretty amazing. We go deep on that. And then of course, we're going to have Drew come back on once he starts losing this weight. So without further ado,

here is Drew. Drew, welcome to the Wooop podcast. Will, thanks for having me, man. It's a pleasure to be here. Now you're looking a little heavy. It's not every, it's not every podcast that I can start out just by calling someone a little heavy. Explain to people how you got into this whole phenomenon. Yeah. So about 10 years ago is when I did my first fit to fat to fit experiment, mostly because I was someone who grew up my entire life in shape. I played football. I wrestled from a very young age. And I grew up in a family of 11 brothers and sisters. And so being active came easy for me. Being in shape was easy because it was a byproduct of living that active lifestyle for so long. And then in 2009, I became a personal trainer. And here I was

as someone who had never been overweight a day in my life, trying to help people who were overweight the majority of their life. And there was an obvious disconnect because in my mind, I'm like, it's so easy, you guys, here's your meal plans, here's your workouts. Like, it's not that difficult. And then they would struggle to stay consistent. And I would be frustrated because I'm like, you guys, why is this so hard? Like, it's so easy in my mind. You just do it. And it's not that difficult. Yeah. Because for me, it's easy. And one of my clients told me, you know, Drew, you don't understand how hard it is because for you it's easy but for me and people like me it's really hard and so I kind of took that to heart one day and I was like you know what you're right and so this

idea of getting fat on purpose as crazy as that sounds it kind of made sense in my mind it was almost like a light bulb went off like okay what if you do this what if you actually do this and so the idea was for six months no exercise eat a standard American diet and document the whole journey online. And then, you know, to make a long story short, the story went viral, landed me on TV shows like Dr. Oz, Good Morning America. I wrote a book, which became a New York time bestseller. I created a TV show called Fit to Fat to Fit on A&E. And then started this whole movement, this whole brand. And so that's kind of where this whole idea started about 10 years ago. Now, you got exceptionally fit after gaining, what was it, 75 pounds?

75 pounds in six months. Yes, a pure fat. No, bulk. no exercise for six months and what year was that 2011 so 2011 so that's a good that's a good amount of time that's passed and in part i wonder if maybe you had forgotten a little bit just how painful it was gaining that weight and losing that weight before you decided to dive back in i'm going through that right now almost 10 years later i turned 40 at the end of this year which is why it's called fit to fat to 40 this time so um it is way harder than i remember it being Let's give people some stats. So what was your weight, your percent body fat when you first started this?

Yes. When I first started, I weighed in at 181.6 pounds, 8.4% body fat at the beginning of my journey. I just did also, I got skinnier. I did a hundred mile run a couple of months before I started my journey. So June. So you are really fucking with your body. Yeah. I was doing some.

Hey, 2020 is a crazy year. I kind of lumped in these crazy experiments at the same time. I was like, why not? Now, did you know immediately after that you were going to go into this fit to fat to 40 phase? Yeah, yeah. So, well, the 100 mile run was supposed to happen in April, but COVID happened. Okay, sure. Got pushed back, pushed back, and just decided to pull the trigger in June.

And then I knew August 27th was my start date because I wanted to end on my birthday, December 27th. So four months of gaining was the idea. So I wanted to make sure the timing was right. So June was 100 mile run, August 27th started fit to fat 40. So describe a day in the life prior to this. So you're 100 and just over an 8% body fat guy. You're 39 years old. What did a typical day look like?

Yeah. So I wake up in the morning, you know, we get my workout in, usually earlier in the morning. And, you know, I always work out fasted. That's kind of my thing. I work out with no food, you know, take some supplements, take some coffee before I go workout and then do my workout, which is mostly, you know, a mixture of either, you know, heavy lifting, a CrossFit style, Metcon, or some type of, you know, cardio. Or I live here in Utah, so sometimes I'll just go for a hike.

And then from there, you know, sometimes I'll do a second session with my girlfriend. She's a yoga instructor. So we'll do yoga together or we'll go on a bike ride that afternoon or, you know, a hike here in Utah. And that's a typical day as far as exercise goes. But, you know, I eat twice a day, lunch and dinner mostly. And that's kind of like how I maintain my weight, my physique is, you know, a lifting session of some type, some type of like a therapy, I call like therapy cardio session, you know, get out in nature and just get my heartbeat up and something like that, nothing intense. But, you know, obviously for the 100 mile run, that was a different type of

training. That was like three hour runs, four hour runs back to back some days. But a typical day is usually, you know, I'll lift weights four to five days a week. And then the other two days are mostly like active recovery hiking days. And in terms of your meals, so lunch and dinner, obviously this is before you started gaining weight. What would you like to eat? What, what kind of diet did you feel like gave you that low up percent body fat? Yeah, mostly a high protein ketogenic diet, which works well for me. My carbs were usually between 50 and 75 grams per day, just because I felt, I feel good on a lower carbohydrate diet. My mental clarity is through the roof.

My digestion is better. So 50s to 75 grams of carbs. Total calories? Probably around 3,000. 3,000 calories. So these are larger meals. Yeah. But yeah, 3,000 calories per day.

Do you ever drink alcohol? Yeah, I do sometimes. Maybe twice a month, you know. Okay, not a lot. And if I do, it's usually dry farm wines, which is a ketogenic wine. Every once while, liquor, if I go out and have like a cocktail, but it's usually no sugar with my alcohol. You're like the walking model citizen of keto and like a healthy lifestyle. And then, okay, now you're starting this process.

What does a meal look like for you now? Yeah. So my fits have had to 40 journey, the whole four months, the idea is to gain as much weight as possible. You know, what I'm doing in four months kind of is not exactly. exactly what people do in four months who are overweight. But I'm doing in four months what some people do over the course of years, right? So five pounds a year, 10 pounds a year, it kind of slowly adds up. And then before you know it, they're 50, 60 pounds overweight. So I'm kind of shrinking that down to four months. So I'm having to consume 5,000, 6,000 calories a day.

Breakfast usually is some type of growing up in the 80s, some type of sugary cereal, man, because I remember TV commercials that would sell us a complete breakfast was like cereal, toast and juice, you know, and that's the way we were programmed to think, like, oh, that's what breakfast is. So I'll have like four or five cups of like cinnamon toast crunch or crunch peanut butter cereal or whatever it is with like a tall glass of juice and then, you know, with a side of toast, right? That's a typical breakfast for me. Now one thing I've always heard about keto, right, is that you're kind of even keel all day, right? It helps you kind of have this mental clarity. I did paleo for about six months.

this was years ago, but I could attest to the fact that it kept you like I felt a more constant output. I felt like my food was affecting my output less in a way. And I feel like that might be similar with keto. How do you go from keto to eating, you know, that breakfast just gave me anxiety because your body's not, your body's not used to that at all, right? There's got to be some kind of an enormous reaction to that. There was a huge shock. I think the first day, I ate over 7,000 calories that first day. Just to kind of like go from one extreme to the other extreme.

And yes, my body was freaking out. So I was monitoring my blood glucose with a CGM device. And you just see these huge spikes of 150 or even closer to 200 sometimes. And then it would crash down to like 50 or 40. And then I'm hypoglycemic at that point needing another, you know, sugar rush, if you will. And then multiply that time, six times a day. The brain fog, the lethargy was for real. The sleepiness, the, you know, having to take naps was almost instantaneous that first day.

And so, you know, those are the types of foods that I focused on where these highly processed carbohydrates that we have here in America that are super convenient, right? They're marketed to us. Sometimes it is even health food, you know, fortified with vitamin A or vitamin D or all natural ingredients or gluten-free or organic or, you know, these things that you know people think oh well this is this is healthier for me those are the types of foods that have eating and they're also super convenient and affordable like they're cheaper than real food and so our system our society we've set it up almost backwards to where we have to fight you know pay extra pay a premium for just real food which right it shouldn't be that way and this food is you know made where it's it's designed to be hyper addictive and the the

hyper palatibility of these foods is extreme to where your brain craves it again and again. And so those are the foods that I'm focusing on. I did do a little experiment. I don't know if you saw that where I did a dirty keto week, dirty paleo, dirty vegan, dirty vegetarian. Yeah, talk about those. Yeah. So this time around with my journey, I wanted to begin more educational than the first

time because this time around I have a film crew, have a marketing team, have a PR team helping me with this journey versus back then. I was just kind of winging it. I wanted to make it more educational and show the downside of these popular diets. If people just jump into these diets and don't really do their research, and I see a lot of people make mistakes coming from the keto world, but also I see it in these other categories of paleo, vegan, and vegetarian of almost, I wouldn't say a wrong way to do the diets, but a very unhealthy way to do the diets.

So I did dirty keto, which was, you know, a lot of low quality dairy products, lots of cream cheese, lots of butter, you know, tons, a copious amount of fat in my diet, you know, huge like 500 calorie, bulletproof coffees, low quality, you know, lunch meat, things like salami and pepperoni, just the cheapest quality of food you could possibly buy, plus all these keto treats now that we have, keto ice cream, keto cookies, keto cupcakes, and that's mostly what I ate, to be honest with you, was these processed keto products that exist out there, which are good every once in a while, but people sometimes think, well, I'm keto, so I'm just going to stay in this category. And as long as I'm in ketosis, I'll magically lose weight. So I wanted to show

people the unhealthy version of these diets. And then same thing with paleo, lots of paleo, pancakes, paleo cookies, vegan was lots of Oreos. There's lots of sodas that are vegan. There's lots of candy that's vegan. You know, lots of bread, pasta, rice, cereals that are vegan as well. Same thing with vegetarian. Vegetarian was almost easier because vegan, you have, the check for milk or eggs or butter or honey used in some of the products. Vegetarian was just anything without meat. And so mac and cheese, bean and cheese burritos, lots of these delicious foods and ended up gaining weight.

And then I just did my blood work just recently. And it was interesting to see some of the numbers. So just to give some context, will, my triglycerides, my baseline was 46, right? Really good number. Anything under 100 is really good. And explain what that. is. So it triglycerides are kind of the amount of sugar in your blood. And it can, if your numbers continue to stay high consistently, it can lead to cardiovascular disease, heart disease. So it's kind of

the amount of sugar left over in your blood. If you are eating a high carbohydrate, you know, high sugar diet plus a caloric surplus like I am, this is what causes a lot of health issues for people. So my baseline was 46, right? Anything under 100 is really good. And I highly recommend and people know what their trigis right numbers are so that you know if your diet is is healthy for you right and so doing keto intermittent fasting 46 is a good number after one month of eating the standard american diet it went up to 246 and then i did dirty keto and it dropped to 79 which makes sense because i was still even though i was keto i was just doing no sugar right dropped to 79 paleo went up to 152 because i ate a ton of fruit on paleo like lots of fruit right

And then vegan, it went up to 483, and then on vegetarian, I'm at 500 plus in my triglysis rates. Oh, my gosh. Yes, which is scary. I think when most people hear the word diet, they immediately assume they're going to lose weight, like going on a diet. And then I think the second thing that everyone loses sight of is some of these other important biomarkers that also are dramatically affecting your body. because there is a scenario here where going on, say, the vegan diet or the vegetarian diet maybe helped you lose weight, but it completely screwed up your sugar levels and your triglycerides, right?

Very true. And this is kind of why I'm such a huge proponent of getting your blood work done instead of just focusing on the scale only. Because if you just go off the scale, that doesn't mean you're improving your health necessarily. It's important to get your blood work done. I would recommend a body fat test over the scale any day to make sure you're gaining or losing the right kind of weight, right? You want to lose fat. You don't want to just lose weight because that doesn't, you don't know the difference between fat loss versus, you know, lean mass loss. So that's, that's one of the most important things that I'm trying to do with my journeys, make people more aware

of eating this type of food, being sedentary, it doesn't just make you gain fat. It affects you, you know, at the cellular level, it affects your hormones. Well, your hormones are off. And let's get into sleep deprivation because that's one of the biggest things that I noticed that first month was so my my HRV is usually like around 100 or so I'm usually in the green almost every single night for the most part on my Woop app right so I use your your device which I absolutely love and it's a great it's great data to track on this journey because I didn't have this 10 years ago yeah I'm excited about this so you know usually my scores are like 80% 90% so I'm mostly in the green, occasional yellow or red if I'm like out partying or something like that, which doesn't

happen very often. Almost immediately, my HRV dropped to like the 40s, right? Wow. 400 to 40. Yes, exactly. So I was always in the yellow or red almost literally every single night because one of the things I started doing was drinking a couple beers at night because let's be honest, most Americans, you know, we drink some alcohol every now then maybe some wine, some beer at night. And that jacked at my sleep to the point where I felt so different. I I felt like a different version of myself. Any of the parents out there might be able to relate to this, where you have a newborn baby,

your baby's not sleeping through the night. You're sleep deprived. You're kind of like in survival mode of like, you know, barely making it through the day. And your ability to handle stress is severely diminished. And plus tracking my HRV and my recovery score just made it so clear that, you know,

the sleep deprivation affects you in so many ways. You can't even imagine. Like your ability to love your spouse. or be patient with your kids or, you know, be focused during a business call, you're a different version of you when your sleep is off. And if it's caused by the lifestyle you're living with the foods that you're eating, these big huge blood sugar spikes and crashes throughout the day, you know, it affects how you sleep, which then affects how you are, you know, how you show up. And so this is what I'm trying to make people more aware of. And so that data from the,

the Woop device is really, really valuable. It did improve on the keto and paleo. weeks. And then, you know, I got a couple of green nights in there. Actually, keto was the first week I got four, four nights in the green during the week. And I felt like a new human after that. And paleo kind of the same thing, started to go down a little bit during vegan and vegetarian, just because I think my body does not handle the carbs really well. Like a thousand grams of carbs a day is a lot of carbs. Totally. And so it affects my sleep. And then when my sleep is affected, yeah, I'm not the, I'm not the nicest version of myself. I'm not as patient. I'm not I'm so much more reactive, and yeah, I can meditate all day if I wanted to, but I'm still

this different version of myself. And this is what this journey is about is to educate, inspire, motivate, and also help raise people's awareness of connecting these dots of like, okay, this food, this lifestyle affects my sleep, affects my hormones, affects my sexual health, affects my relationship with my spouse or my kids or whoever. And that's what I'm trying to make people more aware of. Now, let's talk about sleep for a second. Have you noticed that you're slow-wave sleep and your REM sleep numbers are way down. Yeah. I would think as a percentage of your overall sleep, you're probably getting less REM,

less slow-wave sleep. Yeah, I can't remember if my REM was about an hour or two. What's yours? What's a good rim? I'm trying to think of what my base-or- Typically speaking, if you're spending, you know, if you're getting over 50% of your time in bed as REM and slow-wave sleep, you're in pretty good shape. Okay, oh, those two combined.

Yeah, those two combined. Okay, gotcha. That's considered quite good. And unfortunately, some people, you know, get 10% of their time in bed is REM and slow wave. And I would, what I've seen in Woop data, for people who experiment with diets, obviously not even nearly as extreme as what you're doing, but for people who all of a sudden are having more sugar in their bodies, like what they'll typically see is more sleep disturbances at night. They'll typically see less REM sleep because, you know, REM sleep's when

your brain is repairing cognitively. Sugar tends to disrupt that. Alcohol, same thing, right? So when you see people, for example, who do like a sober October, all of a sudden, they tend to be getting more REM sleep, more slow-wave sleep because the alcohol is not in their system. So things like that. Yeah. So if I look at, I'm looking at my app right now, I've been averaging about two to two and a half hours of REM plus slow wave sleep combined over the past week. Okay. Which is not 50%. That's probably down from where you used to be, right?

All I know is I wake up really sleepy, and it's really cool to have this data because I post almost every single day what my sleep was because people find that really interesting. And they always ask, you know, how are you tracking this, you know? And it's really good data. And I think it's really important. And you guys just recently added respiratory rate. Yeah, exactly. Well, respiratory rate is a very important metric in this world of COVID-19 because we found that we found that respiratory rate, actually, I'm interested in here it hears us, but we found our respiratory rate stays flat for people. You know, over time, it typically stays completely flat.

Now, if you made massive fitness gains, it might go down slightly. If you made massive fitness declines, it might go up slightly. But breaths per minute while you're sleeping is typically pretty flat. What we've also seen, though, is if you get COVID-19, about 80% of cases show a dramatic spike in their respiratory rate. And so it's been a useful tool for people to just keep an eye on their bodies during COVID-19. I think it's really good data. I think mine's at 16.8. And do you know what it was before you started, like when you were a healthy keto person?

Between 14 and 16. There you go. In August, yeah, I see the difference now. So your respiratory rate's gone up two breaths per minute, which is actually a lot. Yeah. It's an enormous amount, which makes sense, you know, your body's getting heavier, you're exercising less. Now, what are you doing like, you know, psychologically?

Like, are you sort of, like, are you trying to do anything to offset feeling like a worse version of yourself or as part of the exercise, not the exercise? as a part of the experiment to actually somewhat torture yourself in every possible way. I'm torture myself almost in every way possible, except I did commit to meditating every day, writing a gratitude list every day, and going on a 10-minute walk with my dog every single day. Other than that, it's pretty much Netflix and chill. I mean, I still have a lot of work. I still have to record podcasts and film stuff with my film crew and all kinds of posts on social media,

that kind of stuff. But most of my stuff is sitting down, right? I don't really stretch. I've just kind of let myself go completely, which is part of this whole journey is just to kind of get me off of my mountain, if you will, like where I used to be, of always being on the top, always being fit, always being in shape. This is kind of a way to humble yourself, like forcing yourself to be humbled so that you can kind of see things through a new lens, through a new perspective. Tim Ferriss talks about this a lot and he does different experiments where he'll live off $50 a week or he'll wear the same clothes every single day and, you know, just kind of putting yourself in different circumstances to force yourself to see your life through new lens. And that way,

I think that that's what this does. My whole journey is about empathy. And I want people to be more empathetic towards those who struggle with their weight instead of thinking it's so easy. Like, hey, guys, just eat less and work out. Like, what's wrong with you? Stop being lazy. Just will power your way through it because that's the problem with the fitness industry, in my opinion, is it lacks empathy. And there's a lot of judgment towards people who are, larger and people think they're lazy and that they're less than because they don't take care of their health. And I'm trying to bring awareness to the mental and emotional side of transformation and just how hard it really is because we think it's just about eating less and working out.

And yes, in theory, that's kind of what people need to do. But there's such a strong emotional connection to food that sometimes people don't understand that people, since a very young age, have probably programmed their body and their mind to distract themselves from stress or trauma or challenges in life with a substance like food that's legal. It tastes really good. It makes you feel good. And it numbs you temporarily to not face those demons or those emotions. And so people do this all the time with food, drugs, alcohol, sex, porn, like social media, movies, TV, whatever it is, we're a society of kind of distracting ourselves from the real issues.

And we've just programmed our brains for so long. We've created these pathways in our brain. And to rewire our brain is really difficult. But this is what I'm trying to bring awareness to. This whole movement is about empathy. And we need to have more empathy because I feel people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. And that's what my journey. That's what my brand is all about.

And I feel like people are more willing to listen if they feel understood, if they don't feel judged. And that's kind of what my hope is with this whole movement. Look, I think it's amazing. I think you're putting yourself through a really painful. experiment. But I think the origins behind it are really quite healthy, ironically. The way you describe the reason for all this is, I think, really powerful. Now, your girlfriend, is she doing any of this along with you? Or is she trying to actually stay away from every meal that you're touching? It's so funny. She's definitely trying to stay healthy. She would not be up for doing

something like this for sure. It's way harder than people think psychologically, for sure. A lot of people think it would be fun. It's like having Christmas morning, every single day. It's not fun. It's like it loses its special feeling, right? Yeah, I can't. I don't think it would be fun at all. I mean, if I have two days of bad meals, I'm like, God, I got to go on a cleanse or something.

You know, I hate the idea of what you're doing personally. I hear you. But she's just been struggling to try and eat healthy and stay healthy, but she gets to work out every day. She does yoga. She goes to the gym. she lifts, she hikes, she takes the dogs for a walk. She still has that outlet. That's like her therapy. And so yeah, there are moments where I'm eating my Oreos and having my Ben

and Jerry's where she's like, okay, screw it. I'm just like going to eat something. I'm like, you can have it if you want. I'm not, I'm not going to force you, but there's no way she would forcefully, you know, do this to herself to gain the weight with me. She actually has lost weight so far since we started. Some of that's like an overreaction, right? You see someone eating Ben and cherries and you're like god that's like his third bowl of ben and cherries i got to go outside like go for a run exactly and how have you found this is affecting your like emotional relationship with your girlfriend or other people in your life like do you just feel like you have less patience for people or are you so aware of all this stuff that it almost doesn't affect you it's so interesting i'm i'm way more aware of this

time around versus back in 2011 right so i have a lot more tools at my disposal to be more aware and present in the moment. But even with all of that, there's so many times where just my programming takes over where I just become reactive. And then after that, I'm aware of like what I just did. And it's almost it's so weird because it just kind of takes over. The normal me, I'm able to step back and be the observer of my thoughts and a lot of situations. But when you're constantly in survival mode, you're sleep deprived. Your recovery is not good day after day after day, which a lot of people that happens to, I feel like this is why people are so reactive in this world. It starts with health, physical health, mental and emotional health. It carries over into that. And so just to be

totally honest with you, Will, like we've talked about it openly on our podcast where we've struggled in our relationship, even though we know what I'm doing is temporary, like what I'm doing is on purpose. There's been times where we've gotten into fights where normally we don't fight that way. and I know a lot of it stems from me and kind of how I show up in those moments where my fuse is usually a lot longer when I'm more patient. When you're sleep deprived

and you're constantly in survival mode like I'm talking about, it's a lot shorter to where I try and be calm in the beginning of an argument, which all couples argue. And then after five minutes of like trying and it's not resolved, I'm like a grumpy little kid.

And that's kind of what happens in these moments. And so we've had arguments where we've had to take a break from each other. You know, we work with an awesome therapist. She's helped us through this. And I just constantly trying to remind my girlfriend, like, hey, I'm sorry for what I said to you when I was angry. And, you know, what I said to you during this fifth, a fact, a 40 journey, just realized that this is temporary. It will all be over soon.

I kind of have to tap into my mentality when I did my 100-mile of it's a constant pain. It's a constant uncomfortable feeling. It's a constant, hard. Every day is hard. There's no, like, easy days. every day is hard. I just have to remind myself that this will be over soon and that things will get better in the near future. It's so interesting. It's like you're two different people embodying the same body. When you get on the scale, because obviously you're motivated to demonstrate

that you've gained weight for the story and for the audience and for people following along, do you take some pride in seeing the number jump up? Or is part of you still like, God, how did I just gain 10 pounds like yeah that's interesting i think there's a part of me that expects to gain the weight and i know there's a lot of pressure from people following the journey when i do the lives and post on social media there's a lot of people that um uh expect big numbers like the first week i gain 14 pounds mostly water weight of course but people like to see these huge numbers and if i gain just two pounds i know people are going to be like oh that's that's boring right like no one that's not a lot but yeah there's like there's two sides of me there's a sense

of accomplishment like hey i'm doing these things and i'm i'm uh progressing but then another part of me is like damn how am i going like this is getting scary you know i'm way ahead of pace of where i was back in 2011 just so you know like i i'm on pace to gain like closer to 75 pounds in four months on this journey versus 75 pounds and six months and and is part of you scared about that like are you at any point in this are you saying to yourself like well gosh i'm i'm actually meaningfully older now than I was this last time. And, like, maybe it's actually going to be much harder to lose the weight or whatever, you know. Yeah, no, there is, and that's kind of the whole purpose of doing this the second time, almost 10 years later is different metabolism, different hormones. Everybody in their

40s and older, that demographic tells me a lot of the time, like, you know, hey, when you turn 40, it's going to be harder to lose weight. It's going to be harder to maintain. It's going to be, you know, your hormones are different. Your metabolism is different. And so I kind of want to give that demographic hope and say, look, I'm turning 40 this year. Let's do this journey. together. I'll be testing the waters and really, you know, seeing what it's like as a 40-year-old doing this again. Will it be harder? Maybe. But I do know it's still possible. And that's the whole idea is come January. I want people to join me on the journey back to fit so that, you know, I know everyone's going to want to be done with 2020 as soon as this year's over. It's been a crazy

year with elections going on. Everyone's like, everyone's like, let's just fast forward to January, please. So January 4th is my first day. People can follow along for free through my website to see what I do every day and we'll do this together as a team as a community and there's going to be a lot more data a lot more educational things along the journey for people you know tracking a lot more more data like using your whip device is going to be really cool to see the flip side of this um and so i definitely want to show people that and give them hope so that 2021 we can start off on the right foot now when you lost 75 pounds uh almost 10 years ago uh how long did it take six months six months of gaining six months of losing, the goal this time is four months of gaining four months of losing.

Wow. And you think that's pretty manageable? You're not worried about four months? That's my hope. I really don't know if it will work out as planned. My hope is that yes, I will. And I want people to understand, like, I'm not going to be doing anything extreme where I'm going to be working out four hours a day and, you know, starving myself, eating 1,000 calories per day. The goal is to eat between 1,800 and 2,000 calories per day, work out five days a week, three days of like gym time, you know, lifting two days of cardio. And that's kind of what the idea, the plan is, and each workout's maybe 45 minutes along. It's not extreme. Like maybe for some people, that's extreme, but it's kind of a good balance, I think, of like a healthy lifestyle.

It doesn't have to be this extreme thing of working out five hours a day because no one has time for that, right? Right. So it's almost, you're almost not even going fully back to your prior lifestyle. Yeah, it'll be similar, but this time around, you know, I'll probably be a little bit more strict. Just be honest with you. I won't have a cheat meal every single weekend or sure. I'll have to be a little bit more strict with my macros and calories and all of that stuff. But it'll be similar. I plan on doing keto and intermittent fasting mostly, but I do plan on revisiting those diets, keto, paleo, vegan vegetarian to show people if you're going to do them, here's the correct way to do them. Yeah, that's cool. I do a mixture of those just to kind of give people other tools. So not

Everyone thinks they have to be keto to be successful. Like you can lose weight with any diet, but there's a healthier way to do these diets. So I'm going to show people that as well. Gosh, I really like that. Now, what has been the most intense meal that you've had so far? I just recently, well, it's probably just because I just did it is a five pound burrito challenge here in Utah. It's a Mexican restaurant.

And it is massive, dude. Like it was me against a couple other local celebrities here. and we kind of went at it. And I thought I was going to be able to finish it, but I didn't even get close. I finished like maybe three pounds worth of it. And I was like stuffed for the next 24 hours. Like I could not eat anything after that. And it was pretty intense.

But I do these fun food challenges once a week to kind of entertain people. People like to see me eat massive amounts of food. That's not kind of what I'm doing every single day. Every other day is like a normal day. But yeah, the five pound burrito challenge still haunts me a little bit. amazing now what what uh what else is there about this journey that maybe you wouldn't expect or someone observing might not expect it honestly it kind of has to do with the relationship with my girlfriend and how that's been affected and i think the the hardest part that i've kind

learned is like even though i still have these tools of meditation gratitude list i thought it wouldn't affect me as much mentally emotionally as it has just because i have those tools and it's just it just has been a wake-up call for me to show how powerful you know human biology is like with eating this way sleeping this way living this lifestyle i i totally feel like my brain chemistry is way different than what it normally is to show and that shows me how i have changed or showed up as a dad as a boyfriend uh as a boss sometimes and i'm just like man why am i so like frustrated or so annoyed today i'm like so annoyed at everything and i'm like this isn't the normal me. Like, I'm crying during commercials. Why am I crying during commercials? Like,

I don't get emotional. And this is the power, the power of, you know, our amazing bodies that we have and how it changes with, one, starting with the food we eat, how we manage our stress, how we sleep and lack of exercise and lack of getting outside. Like, there's a huge, huge difference, even for me. But this is what's so interesting is I went from one extreme to this extreme. So for me, of course, this is hard. But this extreme is some people's normal for the past decade or decades of their life. Right. And we wonder, why can't you just change, right? Why can't you just eat less and eat these real foods? It's like, this is their normal for so long. They don't really know what's like to feel the other extreme of being super healthy. And I think that's the biggest piece that's

missing is, you know, people don't really know what they're missing, right? Because they've been living this way for so long. It's normal for them to be sleep deprived. It's normal for them to be in survival mode and they've gotten so accustomed to that their body's adjusted to that it's really hard to think okay well i'm going to eat whole foods now i'm going to do keto i'm going to go exercise six days a yeah six days a week and totally changed my lifestyle it's just it's not a simple jump for people like we think it is well the education process i think is a really good point in all of this like the fact that you're able to show hey you can gain a ton of weight on any of these diets if you're not doing them properly i think that's a very powerful

message. The one thing I wonder, though, is the person you're describing who lives their normal life in this state that you're in, is any of, like, do you think any of it is also just the discipline to take, to make the change? I mean, what you're doing also requires an insane level of discipline, which is why in the back of my mind, there's really very little question as to whether you can lose the weight, because I know that you're going to have this super regimented four months. Yeah. Just based on interacting with you, you're the kind of guy who's going to do the thing that he says he's going to do. Yeah.

What are roadblocks for someone who's maybe at a place in their life where physically they're not happy what they are, but they actually can't find the discipline to do what you've done? Like, where can that come from? Is that just an inner drive? Or are there other ways, do you think, in working with clients or working with people who are out of shape to give them that discipline? That's such a great question.

And that's kind of the ultimate question for people when they can't figure out why. they can't just do the things they need to do. Like everyone knows they need to exercise and eat healthy. Why can't they just do those things? And this is kind of what I've been on a journey to help discover for, you know, the past probably six years of my life going through some personal experiences to really see things through a different lens of why people don't have that discipline to just stay consistent with their meal plans and their workouts.

And the couple things I've learned. One is that there's no one-size-fits-all approach like, oh, this is what's happening. And this is the pill they need and the exercise they need to do to fix it. It's like every single person has their own individual journey and life experiences that have shaped their beliefs to look at things through their perception, right? And so when people have some type of emotional trauma or programming that stems from childhood to look at food a certain way, and you know, to you almost have to become more self-aware to realize why you are the way you are. So it requires digging deep and bringing up some old emotional stuff that you didn't think was affecting you. you, but on the subconscious level is keeping you from being consistent because in those moments of being triggered where there's emotional stress in your life from family, friends,

finances, business, you on the subconscious level, don't even think about it. You gravitate towards that food or you sabotage yourself because you've been doing that the past 10, 20, 30 years of your life and you just try and willpower your way to a new lifestyle. It can't happen until you almost release that and overcome it and figure out that that's what the trigger is. And then in those moments of reacting, the key is to become more self-aware so that you can become the observer of your thoughts and take a step back and say, okay, here's what's happening. The triggers are coming. I can see that happening.

The motions are coming up. And now my brain is telling me to go towards this food or this substance to numb that pain because that's what I've been doing. So self-awareness is the key. It's not as simple as just turning the switch on. Self-awareness is something that has to be learned. And in those moments of reacting, you know, you have. have to take a step back, observe what's happening, and then thoughtfully respond to

eventually break those habits. There's also a really good book called Willpower Doesn't Work by Benjamin Hardy. Great book for anyone trying to figure out why they can't do the things they know they should do. And his book is really good because he talks about how humans are the ultimate adaptation machines and that the key to change isn't willpowering your way to a new lifestyle, but it's changing up your environment to force you to adapt to that new environment. And once you adapt to that new environment, change becomes a byproduct of adapting to that new environment. And that's how we create lasting change instead of just trying to willpower a way through it, thinking, you know, there's something wrong with me or I'm broken because

I can't be disciplined. I can't stay consistent. I will say this, though, there are some people that are born with that ability to be disciplined, like David Goggins of the world, the Jacco Willings of the world, like even if people would consider me, you know, doing these hunter-milers and doing this type of journey where you just have the discipline. Yeah, I think there are people that are born with being able to be disciplined. It's easier for them versus other people. Yeah. I mean, you're definitely in that camp of discipline. And it's interesting what you're talking about with that book. Like they've done all these studies, for example, even just of how food is laid out in a kitchen. If you've got a jar of candy that's sitting in the

middle of the room open, even versus closed, more candy bars are going to be eaten out of the jar. I mean, it's just talk about humans being these sort of adaptation machines. It is that simple sometimes. Yeah, it's the simple things, like sleeping in your gym clothes the night before, laying them out so that it's ready to go, putting your alarm clock further across the room that forces you to adapt to walk to further to turn the alarm off and by that time you're more likely to be awake or um you know doing things different than what you normally would do you have to get creative to okay find ways to change up your environment like you said get rid of the candy or hide it or have someone hide it so you don't know where it's at and that way your body has to create these new

neuro pathways to adapt to a new environment and hopefully by doing that time and time again constantly adapting and changing you are able to make progress finally, because people train, you know, they don't want to change too much. They don't want to make it too hard for them. And that's what I think creates, you know, in the end, unfortunately, not a lot of success when you're trying to make a huge lifestyle change. You're like, oh, well, I don't want to do that. I don't want to get up really early to do my workout. Like, you know what I'm saying? But sometimes it takes a radical change like that. Okay, now changing topics for a second. Obviously, the whoop audience is fascinated by measurement. What are some. of the different tools that you're doing or that anyone can use to understand their bodies at the level that you are. Yeah. Honestly, the biggest thing really is I went on a journey of self-discovery after my divorce. So I left my religion and went through a divorce at the same time. Those are like two huge things that define your identity, right? And I kind of hit my rock bottom. And in that moment, I had to really discover who I was without those things. Because

my whole life I was told to be these things and without them, well, what's left to me? Who am I without that? And so that took a lot of self-discovery and the tools that I've used to get to this place of being able to be more self-aware is one was meditation, you know, being open to a breathing practice like meditation and learning how to become the observer of your thoughts. Meditation was the first step, a daily gratitude list, some type of journal that you keep every single day, and then a positive affirmation practice that for me and my clients have has worked miracles, honestly. Saying positive words about yourself to yourself every single day is really, really powerful tool. Then from there, therapy, life coach of some type to help you see your world through a different lens

because you just get stuck in the same neuro pathways and the way you think. We get stuck in those same loops. So you need someone to help you see things through a new light, a new perspective. from there reading books. Brenay Brown's books are really powerful. There's another book called Loving What Is by Byron Katie. I highly recommend that. The Four Agreements is the book I think every human should read or should have read

to understand how to let go of a lot of fear and worry and anxiety and a lot of unnecessary suffering. The other book I would say is Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday, A great book to learn how your ego gets in the way of a lot of the things in your life and causes a lot of self-sabotage and suffering. Yeah, that's pretty much it. Also, getting out in nature, spending time in nature is huge as well. Those are the tools that I've used mostly.

Fascinating. If you think about the tools that you're using right now to measure everything about your body, so for example, you talked about the body fat test. What are you using for that? Yeah, so right now I'm using. in-body, which is a very popular scale, you step on, you hold these little handles. It's not the most accurate, I would say, but that's not the most important thing. It's you're measuring change.

Be consistent with the tool that you're using and measure change. That's the biggest thing. Whether it's accurate or not is irrelevant, in my opinion, but staying consistent with the same tool. So in-body is what I'm using for that. Whoop is what I'm using to track my sleep and recovery score. And when I start working out, I'll track my strain levels as well. I'm using a CGM device, a continuous glucose monitor.

You don't have to have that. You could always pick your finger. It's super cheap. You know, this company levels, you do have to get a prescription from your doctor to get access to one. But I think it's going to become more available, more mainstream in the future. Let's see what else. How are you doing the blood work? So blood work, I'm doing once a month with my doctor.

We did a weekly draw during those diet tests to show the weekly differences. but I recommend everyone listening, like your average person, maybe two to three times a year. Like, you don't need to do it every month like I'm doing. But it's really important data to kind of see, okay, if you're keto, how do you know that's the best for you? You know, yeah, you might be able to lose weight, lose fat on it, but is it really healthy for you? That's why blood work so important.

Or vegan or vegetarian, like look at your blood to see which lifestyle serves you best, which one you feel the best on and gives you the best results as far as blood work. goes. Now, if people want to follow your journey in great detail, how do they do that? Yeah, so there's two ways. You could go to my website, which is fit number two, fat number 240, either 40 or spelled out.com. And everything is available on there or on social media. All my handles are at fit number two, fat number two fit. So fit to fat to fit on all social media handles. You got to make it through the holidays. My birthday is December 27th. And then January 4th, it's go time. We're going to do this journey together. And like I said, I'll hold your hand every

step of the way. It'll be a really powerful journey. So I'm excited. Well, look, we're, we're pumped to Woop to see you on Woop and using the platform to guide yourself through this. And look, I think what you're doing is torturous, but I think it's enormously powerful. And so we're watching here closely and we'll make sure to promote it on our side. Thanks so much, Will. Really appreciate it. And like I said, I wish I would have had this device 10 years ago, but the fact that I have it now is really, really cool to capture this kind of data to show people what else is happening when we live this lifestyle outside of just fat loss or fat gain, right? So thank you for having me on. I appreciate it. Thank you for Drew for coming on the WOOP podcast.

Thank you to all our members, podcast listeners. A reminder, you can use the code Will Ahmed to get 15% off a WOOP membership. We've got a great holiday. deal going right now, buy one, get another one 30% off. Follow us at Woop at Will Ahmed and stay healthy. Thank you.