DIET MASTERCLASS: What To Eat, When To Eat & How To Eat For LONGEVITY | Sal DiStefano

obesity is a choice this doesn't mean it's easy to solve but it is a choice you must accept this or you will never solve this problem yeah all right I agree with that wholeheartedly and I know how much you care about people so I don't want people shutting down or thinking that you're being a jerk it's just like this is a problem that you can unwind and it is a problem that you created for yourself again lies abound lies in the food pyramid lies that we tell ourselves lies that our parents raises with all that but so the the list that I gave you in terms of what people need to understand what they're going to have to unwind and then I had you put it in order so in no particular order this was the list diet exercise which for what we're talking about we'll call cardio already accumulated fat I don't think people understand is is a it's a organ and it signals hormonally and all kinds of stuff muscle mass excuses insulin resistance mitochondrial dysfunction hormones life style which for this I'm going to say is sleep sunlight and stress and then love relationships joy joy for Life something a hobby that you really love all right that was the list so in terms of things that that get people there and keep them stuck what what's the order all the things that you listed contribute but a couple of them contribute to the rest there's a couple of them that are drivers all of them so first I want to I want to address the tweet that I sent out and I say that with the most compassion I made a career I mean two and a half Decades of working with people trying to help them improve their health and anytime you're trying to change anything you have to you absolutely especially if you want to do it long term you have to accept the things that you can't change and you but you also have to take the responsibility for things you can so that feeling of empowerment is crucial to long-term success like there was one indicator one predictor of whether or not a client that I worked with would be able to get that long-term success which by the way is less than five percent if you look at all the data on weight loss diets and attempts to lose weight it's like a 95 fail rate it's it's dismal and it doesn't matter is that initial weight loss or long term this is like within a couple years so you lose the weight and then you gain it back that's like 95 and I would stretch it out to even higher if you were to go uh stretch that timeline out even further I mean millions of Americans lose weight every year right nobody can keep it off so and it just doesn't matter what the diet is right by the way they compare all diets diets that are considered healthy like Mediterranean diets that are extreme like carnivore veganism um you know fasting you name it all of them have a similar or the same fail right okay so the problem is not losing weight the problem's keeping it off and the challenge is like what's what's happening what is it that is preventing people from being able to positively impact their health and then maintain that that process or maintain that type of relationship that keeps them there and that was the problem that I worked on and tried to solve for years and years and years you have to start with believing that there are things that you can control and accepting that those things are your responsibility and saying okay now that doesn't make it easy it at all it's still hard as heck obviously modern society is the default of living in a modern society is poor health the default is obesity you have to it's really terrifying that's 100 if you just lived a quote unquote normal life in modern societies you're going to be sick unhealthy and probably overweight okay so you have to take conscious steps develop different behaviors disciplines structures you have to be weird in the sense that you're not going to be like most people um in order to live differently in order to to break free from the default which is sick unhealthy um and obese you accept that there's things that you can change control except that this is my responsibility doesn't make it easy but you got to start there and then let's talk about that list that you sent me so you went through all those different things there are two things that contribute to the rest now I remember years ago it was a a trainer I first started out thinking that losing weight would help people become happy I later took me 10 years to figure out that you first had to learn how to be happy before you could really lose the weight and keep it off forever that's really the direction of where things go when you look at data on people working with dietitians or nutritionists versus people working with therapists we're talking about obese people therapy has a higher success rate long term than people who work with dietitians or nutritionists let me restructure this let me paint a different context um when you're eating and living in a way that is making you severely obese and giving you poor health it's not unlike somebody that has a poor relationship with let's say alcohol so let's say you have a friend that has got a bad relationship with alcohol they're an alcoholic and from the outside it's easy for you to look at them and say God why can't they just see that they're killing themselves like why can't they stop doing this it's very similar to when somebody's let's say 60 pounds overweight it's like what is going on why can't they care for themselves in a way that's gonna make them feel better why can't they take care of themselves like somebody who deserves to be taken care of that's the root of what's going on we use food um rarely as a way to nourish ourselves and rarely do we eat because we're genuinely hungry most people in modern societies never really feel true hunger we don't go more than a day without food for most people okay I think the right way to think about food is it is a drug that you have to take every day to survive that's one that has drug-like effects 100 so that's one very accurate way to look at it so if you look at all the reasons why people eat it's usually because of feelings I'm anxious sad depressed happy or because I'm bored or as a distraction um we develop a relationship with food in modern societies that revolves around palatability mostly how good does it taste you know how does it make me feel while I'm eating it and maybe convenience those are the two main things and so our relationship is almost entirely revolved or developed around those two things this is why when people are with each other and they say hey what do you want to have for lunch it's an interesting conversation well I feel like this or what about that or it's what they're what they're using to regulate or consider what they're going to eat next is those two things palatability convenience maybe fun and that's about I want to push on this a little bit so when I think about therapy being more effective than going and working with a trainer or a dietitian that brings me back to this idea of it's a drug-like effect so last year was the first time in my life where I've ever been so stressed that I found myself wanting to manipulate my neurochemistry and I was like whoa so now I understand uh how people get here because I was like this is this is really intolerable and if I didn't have rules in my life if I didn't have meditation if I didn't have a healthy relationship with my wife if I didn't have a healthy relationship with food I would have really gotten myself into trouble and it was the first time where I was like oh this is the people get into a neurochemical state that is so unpleasant they will do anything to get themselves out of that they will smoke weed they will drink alcohol they will sex addiction food addiction all of it like that they have to change that neurochemical state there's something though when I say that it's like a drug that I can tell doesn't quite click into place like a puzzle piece for you yeah but for me that sounds right what is it you think that I'm missing that is still congruent with the idea that therapy is the most useful treatment yeah so what you're saying by the way that it's like a drug is 100 correct the reason why what you're reading is that it doesn't maybe fit 100 is because when we use the word drug the um the understanding that people have or the I guess the knee-jerk reaction is oh that's negative because food is can also be quite positive by the way so can drugs drugs can also have profound positive effects as well but when we say it in that context be like oh my God it's negative I'm saying all this though in the context of someone is obese and they are stuck yes no you're you're 100 right um they aren't eating uh to feel good um long term it's to feel good in the moment or to numb themselves or distract themselves and this is a a very difficult relationship to break in fact if you look at the the studies on drug addiction which we can put food addiction in this category when you look at the studies on drug addiction with you know the old ones on mice they would put mice in a cage and then they'd give them like water or Like Cocaine waste water and the mouse would just shrink the cocaine laced water until it died and so they said oh these are so powerfully addicting that you can't control yourself well later on scientists said hold on a second this is a mouse stuck in a cage let's create an environment where they have Playmates where there's lots of space there's lots of things for them to do and what they found is the addiction rate dropped significantly so the substance wasn't necessarily the problem it was the state of mind that drove the animal which or human to this type of abuse so what we need to do if we're looking for long-term success is stop considering or stop thinking of humans as machines where we can put inputs and then it just follows directions and remember that were these emotion driven Behavior based creatures and so when you gave me that list I put at the top two which Drive everything else all the other stuff in order in order okay let's hear it I'll give you what's number one yeah I wrote them all down so lifestyle first love then comes excuses and then the rest are important but the order of them isn't as important then it goes diet muscle mass exercise hormones insulin resistance mitochondrial dysfunction and then already accumulated body fat now all right hold on so I got lifestyle love excuses diet muscle and then exercise hormones people have got to be freaking out the exercises that low I know uh insulin resistance mitochondrial dysfunction and then already accumulated body fat last one is body fat yeah okay so interesting yeah and I'll I'll explain this and it'll start to make sense okay so why did I put lifestyle love at the top those two things Drive behaviors if your stress is dysfunctional if you don't get lots of sunlight you get poor sleep those are very very strong Behavior drivers that will drive your behaviors to comfort distract seek out Foods or activities that in the moment might make you feel better but in the long term aren't so great love is right up there as well love has or lack of love has profound negative effects on our health and amazing um effects on our behaviors there was a study done um within the last 10 years where they showed that having poor relationships was as bad for your health as smoking 10 cigarettes a day so you could be a health fanatic but also have terrible relationships and you might as well be smoking 10 cigarettes a day do you know what the mechanism of action is like is it that it raises your blood pressure or something like that do we know all of the above when you look at the the physiological effects of poor relationships all of the physiological measures that we can measure decline all of them immune function hormone uh hormones become imbalanced sleep becomes dysregulated neurochemical balance becomes dysregulated we're such social creatures that it's in the Geneva Convention isolating someone for too long is considered inhumane this is these are prisoners of War okay um that's how that's how terrible it is for us now this list is linear but it's actually more of a circle okay because all those other things that I listed when those start to go downhill when I start to not be active when I start to lose muscle mass as a result of it when my mitochondrial function starts to become dysfunctional when I start to develop insulin resistance when I develop when I gain more body fat and then that body fat starts to Signal my body through hormones and chemicals what it does then is it goes right back to affecting my lifestyle affecting the relationships that I have which then also affect all those other things and it actually becomes a positive feedback loop so for people who don't understand what a positive feedback loop is it's like when you have a microphone and a speaker and you put the mic close to the speaker and it gets real loud because the microphone picks up the noise of the speaker the speaker then projects it and it just gets super loud so when you get into that spiral um it gets really really hard to break now um this isn't to say that you need to just focus on lifestyle and love and everything else will follow exercising alone if you do it in the right way um and that's going to remind people how low exercise is on your list yeah yeah again if you have a bad lifestyle and poor relationships you can become fanatical about exercise you can become orthorexic about your diet you're not going to be healthy and we're talking about health here okay you're not going to be healthy and and I know plenty of people like this in Myspace in the fitness space Fitness space is riddled with bodies that look ripped uh that belong to extremely unhealthy dysfunctional uh individuals and so where if if somebody is obese first of all for anybody that's listening to this as a podcast style is jacked uh it's important to note uh and for anybody that is obese and they're looking at somebody that's in shape it I think they would need to understand what under the amazing outward appearance where they do look healthy what isn't going well yeah that's that's a really really good question you know the one of the biggest challenges this is where I feel for people who struggle with obesity well there's lots of reasons why I feel for them but this is one a big one obesity is a very outward visible obvious sign of poor health or dysfunction I'll say if we can tie it back to Lifestyle when I see somebody that's overweight I know they're struggling emotionally I don't wonder I know right but like a gambling addiction can't always see it a drug addiction a lot of times you can't see it someone has a sex addiction terrible relationships other dysfunction they could present themselves and at first glance they're like oh they're okay but if you're walking around 80 pounds overweight you know there's a lot of judgment there's a lot of assumptions um and uh you're it's like you're wearing your challenges um on on your sleeve it's it's out for everyone to look at so it makes it even more challenging uh I would say um but okay so you look at somebody and they look ripped you're on Instagram oh wow look at that person they're super ripped but what you what you might not know is that person abuses their body through over exercise that the relationship with diet is not a healthy one it's extremely restrictive it's very orthorexic lots of stress around their food if it's not perfect if I'm not hitting the right macronutrients uh oh my God I'm gonna be going on vacation what am I going to eat I'm going to that restaurant I can't go there I can't enjoy birthday parties I don't like going out with anyone unless they're Fanatics like I am so uh it's it's this unhealthy relationship that on on the surface appears to be because you look at someone and we've learned to glorify extreme bodies um as healthy oftentimes drug abuse drugs that make the person feel better that don't have calories you'll see a lot of drug abuse with the fitness space that isn't alcohol because alcohol makes you fat so what drugs are popular oh gosh any drug that doesn't have calories cocaine uh ecstasy you know marijuana you name it oh it doesn't help it doesn't make me gain body fat so I'll abuse it and then uh pharmaceutical performance enhancing drugs anabolic steroids growth hormones appetite suppressants and the like so they can be very unhealthy and be quite miserable even though they appear and and this is one of my gripes with the fitness industry there's so much bad information that comes out of the fitness I'd say majority of the information that comes out is bad and a lot of the reason why it's bad part of it it's consumer driven we want the Quick Fix easy answer but a lot of it is that the information that we get is coming from these uh Fitness fanatic orthorexics like these are people who don't understand uh what it's like to be normal they're obsessive about their lifestyle and so they're communicating to the everyday average person and so what do you hear you hear stuff like Beast Mode no days off food is fuel I don't even taste the food I just eat what I need to nourish my body you know type of deal which I could see for some high performers might have some value look you're a high performer in business I think you know what I'm talking about when it comes to that you have this another gear that you could turn on but I think when the average person hears that first of all either they're like oh that's what I got to do and that doesn't work because they're not that fanatical or it turns them off completely you know so I want to talk about that for a second um okay going back people are obese they're stuck there are lies running around in their head a lot of those lies are being told to them by them they've absorbed some things through other people but I want to go back to your Tweet and it's like yeah okay I come from a morbidly obese family when I say that I love these people I love these people so in no way do I disparage people that are in this gnarly situation but I I really want people to understand that when somebody says go beast mode go ham all that it will work and if you do it and you can sustain it like there is something I don't ever want to say hey this really hardcore mentality is not going to work I love that [ __ ] I love people going ham and pushing themselves and like dude I want to be the greatest of all time and one of the things that drives me crazy is when everybody's like uh the tyranny of low expectations like oh you're overweight oh man like you're never gonna make it like don't worry like aim low no and of course people don't say that but it's like hey aspire to something that you are inspired by that you really would be prepared to just go after for a very long period of time but understand that you have to find a thread and You Begin pulling it and so just anchoring background lifestyle lifestyle was sleep sun and stress which you said is everything is Downstream of that yeah and so people like I I don't want to give people low expectations I want them to Aspire to something great but then I want them to take one step at a time so I know that being a trainer for as long as you were really beat you down because a lot of people give up and so I've heard you say a lot that like my goal is to get people to do two or three days a week and they'll sustain it I really have a hard time with that I know you know why you have a hard time with that how many Tom Billiards do you think exists in the world are people like you you are literally one in a million so those messages that you hear the beast mode and Aspire and they resonate with you because that's who you are there's two ways to do this sustainably okay there's two ways one which is extremely rare which you fall into is The Epiphany this is the moment that's it the light switch and it could be anything it could be trauma it could be you just decided it could be an event someone had a heart attack my friend died from cancer sometimes you see this and they're just like that's it I'm never gonna be the way I was before that's extremely rare extremely rare I know more people who've had heart attacks more people who've lost people to poor health who didn't have that Epiphany than people who have and it stuck with them so you're a rare individual now here's where the majority of people are it's the developing the skill of discipline and modifying and changing their behaviors over time this is where a majority of people will find success I am not saying aim low I'm saying if you want to climb the mountain there is a way to get there and it's a step-by-step process and every step is a step forward you do have the control you do have the responsibility but we have to do this in a way that is sustainable and the only way to do so is to take this step-by-step approach now the reason why I say my goal is to get people to develop a relationship with exercise where they're doing it two or three days a week is because in my experience the average person who is not the ultra driven High performing High achiever You Know Rarity the average person wants exercise to improve the quality of their life and they don't want to do it all the time they want to go to work not because they want to you know be the most successful person in the world but they just they want to do something they kind of enjoy but they want to go back to their house and enjoy their family and leave and Lead that kind of a life and there's nothing wrong with that so those are the people that I'm talking to now if you were my client um you came to hire me you'd be easy you'd be the easiest client in the world I know I would know exactly how to train you I tell you what to do and you do it and you'd show up as many days a week as I told you and however many times a day I told you to show up in my 25 years of working with people I can say I've had like two or three clients like that the vast majority that wouldn't work and I'm a I can be very inspirational motivational speaker and communicator and in my early days as a trainer that's what I tried to do is I tried to turn everybody into a Tom or a me in that regard and I was successful at getting people on board terrible fail rate um long term and again the data is super clear on this so how do we get the average person to become healthy you can reboot your life your health even your career anything you want all you need is discipline I can teach you the tactics that I learned while growing a billion dollar business that will allow you to see your goals through whether you want better health stronger relationships a more successful career any of that is possible with the mindset and business programs in Impact Theory University join the thousands of students who have already accomplished amazing things tap now for a free trial and get started today how do we get the average person to lead us the lifestyle that's balanced that improves their longevity makes them feel better balances out the hormones get them to a body fat percentage or body composition that is sustainable but healthy improves their Mobility gives them energy how do we get those people to do so it's a different conversation it's more of a conversation like um you know like like this take ask yourself the following questions and I've said this so many times I think I even said it last time I was on your show what's one step I can take today that is realistic forever but also somewhat challenging it's got to be challenging because otherwise it doesn't mean anything but it's got to be realistic forever because otherwise I am going to set myself for up for failure 95 okay whatever that step is there's no wrong answer there is no wrong answer so it could be I'm going to drink an extra glass of water it could be I'm gonna walk five minutes a day now is that ultimately what's going to lead them to this healthy lifestyle if they just did that no probably not but what it does and in my experience is they do that and they do it and it becomes a consistent Behavior they develop a good relationship with it and then on their own naturally they ask themselves again it usually happens within a few months what's the next step that I can take what else can I do and over time this trend becomes a snowball and over time we developed this relationship where I'm never going to stop taking care of myself I enjoy this I'm never going to stop eating in a way that's healthy because I want to not because I'm feeling forced but because this is something that um is is caring for me that I'm caring for myself that's the direction that takes people there long term everything else is good luck um I could give people all the answers I could give them the cheat sheets what I used to do and it just it just doesn't work it's hard it's almost impossible this is a skill that takes time to develop and again the Epiphany when you say this is a skill what's this this relationship with yourself with exercise with nutrition with lifestyle that is healthy okay so going back to give a Counterpoint to that and I want to fully acknowledge that the number of people that you've seen in this context is extraordinary and so I don't want to diminish the just you've tested this idea against Real World people um what I come back to so I get the same kind of thing through impact Theory University but it's not usually about the body it's about the mind so think of it as goals that aren't the body so you've dealt with goals that are the body an ideal endlessly with goals that aren't the body and the one thing I've seen over and over and over is that people don't want it badly enough it's a it's a game of desire and there were two things as you were talking that I wrote down one was desire that people just they have to want that thing and the problem with fat loss the reason I think that people lose fat but then they gain it back is consistency like people don't understand like when it comes to success in business they can do what I tell them for two weeks but can they do it for two years and even if they can't two years is nothing can you do it for two decades so every time I put my head down and I'm like I have to get this person to change their behavior I come back every time that they've got to want it badly enough and then they have to see results now the thing like that I want to scream into the [ __ ] camera and get people to hear me if you eat right you will feel awesome but there there is this window for me it was about three weeks where when I started eating well which I will say is Whole Food and don't eat things and Spike your glucose if you do those two things oh my God like you're gonna be in great shape but for three weeks it was miserable and I remember going to my wife and saying if I ate a cookie right now I would feel better I have a headache this is [ __ ] stupid like I just want to eat a cookie and my wife is like you can keep whining about it or you can realize that if you keep going down this path you will break your addiction to sugar and supposedly because this is a long time ago now it's like so commonplace that people understand metabolic flexibility the difference between burning sugar and burning uh ketones and ah but I didn't know any of that but she was like look supposedly on the other side of this you're not addicted to Sugar anymore and those headaches will go away so either eat the cookie and stop complaining or get to the other side of this my wife can be really cut and dry sometimes I [ __ ] love it and so I was like yeah you're right I'm not gonna eat the cookie and then I woke up one day and I was like I feel different it was so on off like I went from headaches this is miserable to waking up one day and being like something is different and like I there is a person I'm thinking about right now that I love very much so very much and every time I see them they are in tears over how much they hurt they don't feel good and they they'll even say I know I know it's my diet and I'm like for three weeks just for three weeks because if they get that result and they start feeling better now they want it and once they want it like nobody has to tell me to eat well anymore because I don't like the way I feel when I don't eat well and I'm lucky enough to be old enough that like if I eat something bad my skin will start to itch my joints will hurt and so I'm like I know how much I can get away with so I never eat more than that because I don't want to be itchy or I don't want my joints to hurt or I don't want my sleep disrupted I don't want brain fog oh my God so but ultimately what I really want people to hear or for you to smash me down and say I'm out of my mind because I am very open if you can open a door to me and I can see a way to helping people that I don't currently see they've got to do something to build the desire and if they if they fail to build the desire they will never get beyond the like doing enough yeah you're um there's a lot of Truth in what you're saying but you have to ask yourself this right how many people became sober and then went back how many people lost weight improved their health felt better and then went back so it's like what's going on they got the result they felt better they felt healthy and yet they went back to what they were doing before that made them feel so crappy what do you say in a single sentence what you think happens they didn't build the right relationship with what they were doing so I'll I'll give you an example okay let's say um I go into weight loss from a standpoint of um self-hate I hate my body I'm gross exercise is now a punishment diet is now restrictive so while I'm eating better it's restrictive I can't have that I can't have that I can't have that exercise in the beginning is cathartic because I'm punishing myself this is why people initially love working out to exhaustion they leave crawling out of the gym wow that was a great workout right they commiserate over how hard the workout was with their friend but then eventually it's like this sucks who who could possibly enjoy beating themselves up every time they work out so the relationship they built with this lifestyle although their health is improved although they move better what they're focusing on you know what you shine the light on is what you what you see right what they're focusing on is this is punishment this is restrictive this sucks now let's flip that um instead of saying I hate my body I'm gross it's like I Love Myself by the way it's not a feeling it's not like the joy the the love feeling love is an action okay I have kids I don't always feel the feeling of Love sometimes I want them I want to kick them out of the house but um I actively love them okay so it's an action you have to choose oftentimes if you've been married for a long time anybody who's done that for a long time knows it's a choice sometimes so I can look in the mirror and say I need to start loving myself I need to start taking care of myself I deserve to be cared for by the person who is most responsible for me which is myself now exercise becomes self-care malnutrition becomes self-care it's no longer restrictive I can't I can't I can't it's you know what I don't want that I actually don't want that going to the gym is no longer punishment it's self-care you show up the gym and you go all right what can I do to like take care of myself sometimes it's hard workout sometimes it's easy to work out sometimes it's stretching sometimes it's cardio sometimes it's strength training you're actually trying to care for yourself now you've developed a relationship with the behaviors that lead to healthy Fit Body because it's the behaviors that lead to that it's not it's not the effect it's not the result that leads to the behaviors it's the behaviors that lead to the result that's how it typically works so now I want to care for myself now when I eat I want to care for myself now I've developed a relationship with those things where look um I crave healthy food I know people hearing this might be like what are you talking about no no I know Pizza tastes better than a fresh salad like I know the palatability of pizza is through the roof but I've developed a relationship with food to wear I also know all the other values that that's salad may bring me I feel better my skin is better my energy is better I feel sharper my digestion is better um that pizza is going to taste amazing but I know all the other stuff that comes along with it so when I'm sitting down and I'm offered both nine out of 10 times I don't want the pizza and I can't have it that's very different I don't want it I do want the salad you know um Tang but Tom this took me 10 years to figure out I trained people I I apologize to all the people I trained the first 10 years I was a trainer because I was terrible but I remember um early on or for those first 10 years I should say first decade when when I would look at people's diets and change their diets I would take things away okay write down what you eat over the next two weeks and then they bring it to me and I look at it okay we're gonna cut this out we're going to cut that out we're going to cut this out and it was a terrible long-term approach I mean if they listened to me they would do it we'd see results and then everybody eventually went back everybody later on I stopped taking things out I started adding things you might think well how's that make any sense you're trying to get someone lose weight what do you mean you're adding things I added things that I knew would contribute to the behaviors that would then get them to take things out of their diet so I'll give you some simple examples I would say hey look eat continue eating the way you are but here's what I want you to do I want you to hit these protein targets every day so here's what we're gonna have to do we're gonna have to add protein to every meal to hit your whatever 130 grams of protein a day so that's going to be 40 grams of protein plus a protein shake so when you eat your breakfast lunch and dinner I don't care what else you eat but before you eat whatever you eat hit the 40 grams of protein then eat the rest now why would that work protein is very satiating protein controls blood sugar contributes to behaviors that make you eat less gives you more sustainable energy so when they would do that you know what I would find they would end up eating less here's another one um I would say hey do whatever you're doing continue doing it but I want you to drink uh almost a gallon of water a day let's let's hit that Target every single day there's no fat burning Miracle properties of water aside from you know if you need to get the right amount of water but I knew when they would do that they wouldn't drink anything else that had calories they had to drink a gallon of water you know hard that is to do for most people um and it also helped with craving satiety energy inflammation those types of things this is a great strategy without denying that I will say it is sidestepping that therapy is more effective so when I asked if you could describe in a single sentence what you think is going wrong the single sentence I have is that this is a neurochemical problem people are trying they have an emotional issue and they are manipulating their neurochemistry and the reason I think people rebound so I know somebody that was sober for a very long time 30 years and then they relapsed and if I told that story to a therapist and said what do you know about that person they're going to say something stressful happened and the answer is yes and if it's a breakup if it's a career failure whatever things happen in the mind that people go I can't feel this way and going back to you know one of the really brutal things about being overweight is that everyone can see that you're struggling with something emotional but there are other ways that people can begin to develop that healthier relationship therapy is one of them but then the other is feeling good which we talked about but the other is a compelling future and so what do you think the role of compelling futurists like I am excited about something and I'm willing to fight for that something yeah that's all you know you you said we're sidestepping therapy what I said about adding things I learned from therapists I I had huge growth as a coach and trainer working concurrently with therapists with clients and it started with clients that I would get that um were recovering from eating disorders so I get people who are recovering anorexics or bulimics and they would come to me hire me and I'd say do you mind if I work with your therapist because I'm a trainer I'm not a therapist and I would work with the therapist with these people and I learned a lot a lot about how to be effective through my vehicle which was Fitness and that's one of the things that I learned was the psychology that we have around restricting can be so powerful take tell people to take things away and it's hard tell people to add things and it tends to be a little easier because it doesn't feel they're rebelling against instructions the Rebellion tell me what I can eat absolutely by the way speaking of rebelling you know why people when they go off a diet they don't like just go back to what they were doing before there's a period of like where they went worse they go worse than what they were doing before you ever notice that it's like they don't go off the diet and eat like one cookie they go off the diet need a box of cookies make themselves sick it's because they're rebelling against their own selves their own tyrannical identity that was telling them you will punish yourself with exercise you will restrict your diet and then eventually that inner child or whoever feels like they're being punished who's like At first they're like yes you deserve to be punished but eventually he's like I don't want to live this way anymore breaks free and like a teenager doesn't just go back to what they were doing before actually over corrects did the therapist ever give you anything around how to get them to stop feeling they need to punish themselves yeah absolutely you have to connect one of the biggest mistakes people make with exercise is obsessing over the scale that's a metric it's not it's not it's an important one so I'm not going to downplay and say it's not important but it's not the only metric there's lots of things that exercise and nutrition positively impact that for lack of a better term most people are not even aware of because all they're focused on is the scale in fact people are so focused on the scale that they'll sacrifice their health in order to make the scale go down they'll actually make themselves feel worse but they're like oh it's working because the scale is going on down um not even paying attention all the other things so I used to really help people connect the dots to all the other things that were happening so it's like okay the scale hasn't moved over the last couple weeks but how was your sleep how was your energy how's your skin have you noticed any changes in productivity what about your moods what about your libido and then they come back and be like you know what yeah actually I'm sleeping like way better than I was before and you know I feel more patient with my kids you know I remember I had this one gentleman that I trained it was very successful um entrepreneur and he had a tough relationship with exercise but it was this very disciplined entrepreneur that used to always confuse me by the way where as a trainer early trainer I thought it was just people were just lazy and then I realized like these are some pretty successful people that are hiring me I mean a higher personal trainer you have to have Expendable income so most of them were doing pretty well and I thought they're not lazy there's something else that's going on they obviously crush it in other areas of life they are lazy just in that area in that area but but they're but how can I get that carry over you know it's like they're not just generally lazy people like what's going on here right so I had this gentleman who was a successful entrepreneur and I remember when this connection happened to him and I knew like this guy's never going to stop now he came to me and he goes Sal I am giving the best sales presentations I've given in years and he goes and I realize because I feel so much better from exercise and that's what I knew this guy's not going to stop now the thing that he loves most he has now connected to the fact that he's exercising which by the way there isn't a single and this is a great selling point for most people there isn't a single thing in your life nothing that will not improve if you improve your health nothing I agreed partner you'll be a better partner uh entrepreneur you'll be more productive more Innovative you'll have better ideas you'll be able to work harder sleep gets better libido improves hormone profile improves you're a parent you'll become a better parent because your health improves on the other end of that there isn't a single thing in your life that won't become worse if your health declines so why is this important well um we talked about the scale okay all right well so the scale is one metric let's look at everything maybe you didn't lose any weight and you've been working out for three months because you still haven't figured out the right amount of calories you're still kind of overeating but you're exercising maybe making some different choices with food that were better than before what other things can you look at what other things have you noticed those are also very important pay attention to those things as well then you start to develop this this broad complete picture of what's happening through this process then you start to develop this full relationship this balanced relationship that then stays with you for the rest of your life I'll tell you what if you were to take 100 people who have been consistently appropriately exercising for 10 years people are consistent with it people who've developed a good relationship with it tell them to list the top five reasons why they continue to do it and I bet you how they look what make the top five I bet you number one has to do with something mental I feel better I have better energy uh it makes me more positive or helps my depression or anxiety how they look won't make the top five trip off that and yet the number one reason why people approach exercise is to change how they look um here's something that I've said on my show many many times and this one I remember when I first said it it's like people it resonated so strongly and I realized that I was taking this for granted if you chase Aesthetics you will eventually lose your health and then you will lose the Aesthetics if you chase health you'll get health and then you'll get those Aesthetics you your body is a reflection of your health and if you compromise your health to accomplish this look that you're looking for then you'll have neither eventually you'll lose both I learned that the hard way you know you mentioned my microbiome gut issues I learned at the age of 31 when I had sacrificed my health for the pursuit of trying to look you know ripped or buffed or whatever and I lost a lot of my health and then my I started losing muscle and started feeling terrible and I had a whole year where I had to like completely change how I looked at things and thankfully it was a blessing I looked back and it was a terrible time but I'm so so uh grateful that I had that because it really shaped and molded the voice that I have now um on my show and how I communicate health and fitness to most people so the way I'm talking about health and fitness is I believe strongly the way that we need to communicate it to the average person it is not easy I'm not saying that uh you know what I am saying is this is that if you want to get there you want to do it long term you have to work on the why not as much as the how the how is important what I do for exercise what I eat all that also contributes to the you know the why and the drivers but let's let's start to look at the why why am I doing this what's making me do the things that I do um why am I reaching for the the the slice of you know cake or pizza instead of the thing that I know that'll make me feel better why am I not getting up to move why am I allowing myself to to make my health worse what's going on here this is not an easy process it is a process of awareness but as you move through this process you'll get there you'll totally get there and there's there are um and I don't want to make it sound so esoteric I can give specific ways that'll help a person get there like I'll give you one example a lot of um unhealthy behaviors become impulsive behaviors impulse is just under Consciousness it's just under awareness it's that reaching for that unhealthy food because I'm anxious um and I'm not really fully aware of what's going on right so one simple silly sounding yet effective way of helping somebody through this process is create barriers between you and your impulse and don't allow yourself to be distracted when you're eating those two those two things right there would typically with my clients result in like a 10 pound weight loss just those two things right there so I'll give you an example of the barrier um take a food that you know for yourself is like your impulse food right for me it was potato chips don't have it in the house but don't say you can't have it say oh if I want it I'll have it I just got to drive to the store and get myself a bag of potato chips that barrier between you and the impulse just creates the space for a little bit of awareness and what happens often when you do that is you pause do I really want to get in the car why do I want the am I really hungry uh I'm not going to do it so that's one silly simple example it makes a big difference the other thing I said was to not eat while distracted so studies are um I've shown this by the way when you eat while distracted on your phone on your computer watching TV you'll need about 10 to 15 percent more calories so you want to cut your calories by 10 to 15 without even trying just sit down to eat and don't be distracted literally sit down you and your food and just eat don't do anything else that will naturally in the studies show this result in a 10 to 15 percent reduction in calories so if you eat 2500 calories a day you'll eat 250 less calories a day which is like 30 minutes of cardio you know that's how many calories you burn about 30 minutes of cardio like simple things like that make a profound difference another one which I think I've said on your show is to avoid foods that um have been engineered to make you overeat so when people I used to love doing this by the way people would think I was like a wizard or there's some magic to what I was doing I would say you know Miss Johnson would hire me she wants to lose 30 pounds I'd say all right here's what I want you to do eat as much as you want just don't eat heavily processed foods she's like what do you mean does that eat as much as you want Whole Foods fruits vegetables um potato meat eggs you know eat whole Natural Foods eat as much as you want let's start there and then they lose weight and they'd be like what I can't believe like heavily processed foods or so you know make your body gain body fat and then I tell them well you're eating about 500 calories less a day you just don't realize it and the data on this is some of the best studies done on food are done on heavily processed foods versus whole Natural Foods actually take groups of people in a controlled setting one of the challenges with nutrition studies is they tend to be observational so people will come in and Report which is just notoriously wrong tell people to tell you what they ate a week ago it's like forget it yeah they can't remember or they lie yeah it just it just never yeah but by the way I'm super aware I know it's some food tell me to estimate I'll be off right so um just super that's that's why there's so many conflicting studies but these studies actually took people put them in a controlled environment and said and they put whole Natural Foods in this side type heavily processed foods in this side macros controlled similar ratios of proteins fats and carbs and they just let people eat and they observe them then they took those groups and switched them just in case you had like a group of people that ate more than they switched them five to six hundred calorie difference between the two sides that's a big when I tell people when I cut people's calories down to get them to lose weight I typically would try to cut about five six hundred calories so again we're talking about behaviors here right psychology I could tell somebody track your calories cut 500 calories or I could say eat as much as you want just don't eat heavily processed foods both will result in the same calorie reduction one of them is much more likely to feel restrictive and the other one is more likely to be something that they'll feel like they're not restrictive and it's something I can maintain and do on a long-term basis that's so interesting so going back to um where we started so you've got everybody is there are lies that are bouncing around inside their head most of them are self-inflicted and they're causing them to make mistakes causing them to go for hyper palatable food to manipulate their brain chemistry causing them to think that I need to be punished and so I'm going into the gym and now I hate the gym because I'm just beating myself to death uh I need to punish my I'm fat I'm gross I'm disgusting and I shouldn't eat these things and so now they're ruling things out but then because they haven't dealt with the emotional issues a stressful thing comes up they're feeling bad again they turn back to their drug now they're not eating a single cookie they're eating a whole box of cookies and they're in this death Loop and this is why I say it isn't that people don't know what to do anybody that's made it this far in the episode has already heard you say the very simple truth and that is eat Whole Foods and so if you eat Whole Foods and avoid spiking your glucose uh you're done like you don't have to worry about anything else and so the question is now that everybody that's heard that uh I have a feeling 95 of people will still put the weight back on long term and so I want to go back to the therapist and this idea of self-punishment and the way that I combated this was with rules so I'm really prone to negative emotion and so I'm really prone to um thinking oh I did something I didn't succeed the way I wanted to succeed and you know damn it that's makes me a bad person I've done something wrong and I need to be punished for that and when I finally realized that I had that because it was subconscious not like I thought I need to be punished but it was just like I was beating myself up I was going over and over and over like oh my God you're a loser like you're never gonna do it like of course this is where you're at like because you're dumb or whatever right and so just like I realized okay hold on I need to set guiding beliefs in my life and I was like okay I think every person ought to act in accordance with the following statement you should only do and believe that which moves you towards your goals and that ended up really changing things for me because I realized oh wow like I was beating myself up because I thought I deserved that level of punishment but once I had a rule that said I can't stop that first negative impulse of like oh you're an idiot or you deserve to have lost I was like I can't stop the first one but I can stop myself from looping on it what's my goal is my goal honorable because look if you're a dirt bag and you've got goals that are about manipulating and taking advantage of other people like not good but if my goal is Honorable and exciting to me so I really want it going back to desire but then also it elevates not only myself but other people okay well then why would I death loop around what a loser I am because it will stop me from pursuing this goal that is Honorable and so I was like okay I that really makes sense and I think making that a Guiding Light in my life will be useful and it was it was huge it stopped me from spending the mental and emotional energy on like either beating the life out of myself in the gym starving myself which I was very good at by the way uh and so all of that back to your point about you have to develop this healthy relationship once I started not only putting uh behavioral guide posts around what I ate like and I think it's brilliant eat the protein first great behavioral guideline but also put a behavioral guideline around what I allowed myself to think repetitively ended up being really transformative and so going back to when you were talking about hey I had these entrepreneurs they're really high performing I know they're not lazy people but they are being lazy about this thing what gives it it just comes down to what do you want badly enough what do you have behavioral rules around like even when I think about my own physique I used to have more muscle mass I used to be leaner and I always tell people my body is a reflection of the exact amount that I care and so I care right I'm not obese I stay healthy I make sure I don't have joint pain I make sure I'm sleeping I don't have brain fog I'm very clear I'm optimizing cognitively but I'm not yoked because it was just taking too much time and energy but my life really is regulated by behavioral rules around what I allow myself to think and then everything Cascades from that Tom I want to I want to interrupt you right there because what you what you said is so brilliant in that what you just went through and I don't know if you realize this were the four stages of learning which we all go through whenever we develop a an automatic lifelong behavior and this is what they are this is what the four stages are the truth is hitting your career goals is not easy you have to be willing to go the extra mile to stand out and do hard things better than anybody else but there are 10 steps I want to take you through that will 100x your efficiency so you can crush your goals and get back more time into your day you'll not only get control of your time you'll learn how to use that momentum to take on your next big goal to help you do this I've created a list of the 10 most impactful things that any High achiever need needs to dominate and you can download it for free by clicking the link in today's description alright my friend back to today's episode it starts off with unconscious incompetence okay you don't know that you don't know like you said you had this negative self-talk but you weren't even aware of it it was just like there it was happening so you had to move to the second stage of learning which was conscious incompetence oh this is what I don't know this is what's happening right now okay I need to do something about that which takes you to the third stage and sometimes people get stuck here if you get stuck here then it's it's hard to continue to progress but the third stage is conscious competence I have to consciously do the things that move me forward I create the structures the disciplines the behaviors so for somebody with weight loss it would be like I'm going to eat protein first I'm going to avoid these Foods I'm going to get up and move on these days okay conscious competence but conscious competence you can't live there for the rest of your life okay I'll give you and so the fourth stage of learning and then I'll use this I'll use other examples kind of illustrate why you want to get there the fourth stage of learning is unconscious competence okay so let's talk about a behavior or a skill that we have that is in stage four that we take for granted breathing walking imagine if you had to consciously think about walking and breathing all the time and in fact I apologize for people watching because you're probably now consciously breathing it's real uncomfortable but it would suck right you have to consciously take a step every time or consciously breathe in and breathe out like you can't live there right so you can't live there when it comes to your health you can't live there when it comes to your lifestyle but you have to go through that in order to get unconscious competence which happens through doing it over and over and over and over and over and over again until it becomes a behavior and that's exactly what I've what I'm trying to communicate here is you go from each stage so it opens up by you don't know what you don't know to okay I'm listening to the podcast I'm watching this video I'm hearing them talk that's all the stuff I don't know I'm going to make these changes I'm going to create these structures these these behaviors and Sal said start with something small make it something realistic that's challenging I'm going to start there so now I'm consciously competent about the things I'm doing do it long enough and then it becomes like I lead you know I exercise and I eat a particular way and I'm in that fourth stage I'll probably never stop it's just a part of living it's like walking and breathing for me that's the place we need to get to if we're looking to have this be the rest of our lives because going back circling back to the beginning of the episode Modern Life the default is poor health if you just live a modern life according to the way Society structured the way technology is structured the way our jobs our houses are organized the way everything's organized your fourth level of learning is going to take you to poor health the unconscious competence that we have in modern societies is to eat hyper palatable Convenient Food to ignore all the other signs is to be inactive everything's designed to reduce activity I mean I I you could doordash anything you want to your door you could walk nowhere if you wanted to almost literally pretty soon we'll have hover chairs like they do in Wall-E um your your our medical system is designed to keep us there I have a headache take a pill I feel joint pain take a pill I feel this take this not let me see what's causing those types of things so it is a it is going to be a process you do have to get the conscious competence stage but if you're able to do it properly and you do it long enough then you'll get because I don't look I'll tell you what I'll ask you this I guarantee you don't have to sit there and consciously think about your structured discipline like you did when you first started I bet you now it probably feels like second nature it would probably be hard to kick you out of it now whereas before you had to keep yourself there you had to really really focus on what I was doing and what's going on and am I moving forward you probably still have those conversations with yourself but it's not like it was in the beginning and that's only because you're so growth minded that you're probably always trying to grow even more right you're always trying to put yourself through that through that that scale of those four stages of learning but yeah that's it right there and if if you get to that fourth stage diet becomes just how you eat you know exercise well this is just this is just what I do do I enjoy it yeah I enjoy it for the most part you know just like I enjoy breathing and walking yeah man this this topic is is something I fret about a lot because the fact that the default stance in the modern era is unhealth the fact that being unhealthy makes people miserable in Myriad ways one if people aren't already aware I really believe there's a subroutine that runs in your mind that if you're if you're not in shape not shredded or anything like that but if you're not in shape you will feel badly about yourself I don't think there's any escaping that I don't care how much body positivity comes out people will not be able to escape it did you see the meta-analysis that came out on that no there was a meta-analysis that recently came out and they are now finally this is positive very positive news they are now finally going to consider exercise as a first line treatment for anxiety and depression so the meta-analysis came out you think that's more important than diet yes really not in the not in the context of what's going to make you healthier just talking anxiety if you get you get people to start exercising and they do it right and it's appropriate and they enjoy it they tend to then try to eat better they they tend to then try to to uh take care of themselves why people could exercise so much lower on your list then because the rest of them were kind of lumped into one interesting because so the other stuff led to Lifestyle and love and relationships lead to everything else but with this meta-analysis showed was that exercise was as effective and this is this is in the meta-analysis of looking at like six months okay as effective as uh Pharmaceuticals and talk therapy yes now I would argue and I and I I'll bet my house on it that in the long term exercise is more effective because than diet no van um Pharmaceuticals and yeah because um there's no down regulation of receptors there's no adaptation to where it's no longer as effective this is very interesting and I don't want to lose the force for the trees here but so as somebody that struggled profoundly with anxiety I will say that the the biggest breakthrough for me wasn't exercise I was exercising like a cleaned at Peak anxiety and exercise amazing I don't want anyone to think it's not vundabar but if I were going to say n of one plural event of one is not data or whatever the phrase is I get that but I will say my bet given how much the gut regulates neurotransmitters it's something like 70 or more of the serotonin in your body is created and stored in the gut there's a reason for that so you are a collection of a lot of microbes from mitochondria to the bacteria on your skin in your mouth in your gut now for me it was Diet monster once I cut diet monster out my anxiety dropped by like 70 percent I'm going to say this so it's in the context of appropriate exercise I bet you a lot that you overworked out I bet you that when you first went into exercise it was inappropriate I'm pretty bad in the gym yeah don't I I want to give myself that credit and okay look how you do anything is how you do everything and you're uh you have two gears probably sleep and go no so oh God I don't want to deny that how you do that that is a very good heuristic okay very good rule of thumb it gets you real close but the reality is I think that what people's lives end up becoming is what do you care about and I know I sound like a [ __ ] broken record but I really want people to understand this like if you are not consciously saying I care about these things yeah this is why I tell people get your [ __ ] value system down what do you value because and people value things and they haven't take the time to pull it into their conscious awareness and so they're just steering by like for instance if somebody tells you you can't eat those cookies and you are like [ __ ] you I'm gonna go eat those cookies you value autonomy you do not want anyone telling you what to do be honest about it I don't like people telling me what to do okay are you going to be a slave to that you need to be very thoughtful because if autonomy is like over everything which mine used to be so I can certainly relate yeah same then you're going to be in real trouble because now you're just doing something to be defiant instead of saying oh I value longevity I value love whatever but like rank really put them in order yeah I mean to be fair okay to be fair diet and exercise are I mean if I had to pick here's why I if you forced me I would pick exercise here's why exercise is easier than the diet to move a little more statement I can get someone to move a little more more successfully than I can get them to change their diets food or drugs baby it's hard and people are in a bad mental state so that's why I sell it this way because I know people are watching right now and here's what ends up happening they're going to hear what I say and if they do anything they're going to do well Sal said this is more important more people will find success by moderately applying appropriate exercise at first then they will by trying to change their diet at first so when I would get clients and any trainer who's watching has been doing this for a long time will tell you it's easier to get them to show up for the workouts than it is to get them to fundamentally change their diet so that's the reason why I would rank it a little higher now I would just say this so that I can firmly establish myself as the [ __ ] in this conversation I'm just gonna say boys and girls that are listening that's a you problem because diet is way more effective I need people to acknowledge to themselves you are doing a sub-optimal thing because you've not gotten a hold of your own mind so if you let me think out loud for a second I want to ask myself why I feel so strongly about that so I work with people a lot so people that only know me on YouTube but don't know me and impact their University where I'm trying I am trying man to teach people what I did to go from scrounging my couch cushions to find enough change to put gas in my car to be able to afford to drive to a [ __ ] job interview to building and selling a billion dollar company this is my third multi-million dollar company in a row like this [ __ ] is teachable now I my father-in-law didn't want me to marry his daughter my mother assumed that I was going to fail when I left for college my best friend said I just assumed you were going to marshmallow your way through life these people had not misidentified me I really was that lazy I really did not know how to put things together it is just a series of ancient ideas that have literally been around for thousands of years that if you deploy them everything in your life will change but I have a real issue remember this is me thinking out loud I have a real issue with like people aren't just saying the real [ __ ] thing and I think the real thing is you have allowed I get it life is hard your parents [ __ ] you up in a thousand ways the bully that picked on you messed you up but you going back to your Tweet you have to own that you can change 100 it's what I call the only belief that matters the only belief that matters if you want to change your life is that if I focus on getting better at something I will actually get better and the thing I am that I think keeps driving me to push this point is the thing you actually need to get good at if you want to go from the 95 of people that fall back and put all the way back on to the five percent you it's going to be a little cheesy and so I reserve the right to refine this you don't love yourself and you have so much negative emotion that you are flailing about in every area of your life and whether you're like me and you are like the thing that I use to soothe myself is meaning and purpose and so meaning and purpose leads me to work a lot now I'm very thoughtful about managing love love is my highest priority my marriage to make it not cheesy my marriage is my highest priority but even I know that like like I understand that there are insecurities that I have that lead me to want to prove that I'm worth something and I manifest that in the world of business cool acknowledging it being aware of it keeps me from ever letting that spiral out of control but people need to understand there's a mess inside your mind you don't love yourself you don't have a healthy relationship with who you are and who you want to become and you're ignoring your biology and if I can get people to hey if eating protein first is the thing that gets this going I [ __ ] love it man like whatever thread you can pull whatever's going to be the doorway if if working out a little bit is like that thing that okay it gets you going but if you don't address your mind you will never address your biology and if you don't address your biology you are dead in the water yeah you are you are 100 correct but I'm going to give you an example of a story I'll tell you a story that or create a story that kind of exemplifies a little bit of the the approach What's Going to Be an Effective approach so I remember as an early trainer people would sit in front of me and I'd ask them about their fitness goals and what's prevented them from working out in the past and I would get the um I don't have enough time I don't have enough time to exercise I'm just too busy now initially or early on I would do the whole we all have the same 24 hours in every day it's how you prioritize your time and the more time that you make for exercise and for your health will contribute to the time that you do other things that'll make you more productive it'll make you better parent the whole thing all true all totally true okay not nearly as effective as when I learned to say this it is tough you probably are really busy how much time do you have to commit to some exercise and then whatever answer they gave me was fine was fine because it opened the door they would hire me and I'd train them once a week and if I did a good job which I figured out how to do later on then they'd come back twice a week and then three days a week and then so on so what you're saying is correct but the way that we're going to reach most people you know what's that saying you attract more flies with honey the way you reach most people is empathy understanding truth honesty which is what you're delivering right now I do not believe in lying to people you got to be honest with people create those boundaries um be very clear but let's start here and then let's see what happens and what almost always happens is they start to move in that direction they start to move in the right direction so everything you said is 100 true and it is 100 a choice and you do everybody watching listening to this right now has the power to move in the right direction 100 and it's your fault you're where you're at it's largely your fault yes there's circumstances yes there's but if you made different choices different decisions you would be in a better position maybe not perfect nobody is but you'd be in a better position accept that okay what do you do with that information now it's still hard I don't know what to do do this take one small step that's it take one small step start caring for yourself you said people don't love themselves people listening to this right now are like well how can I change that feeling I have all these negative emotions how do I change those negative emotions here's how you do it act like somebody who cares about themselves that's all act like somebody who cares about themselves act like take care of yourself like somebody that you actually love and then here's what happens those negative feelings start to become less and less and you start to create more positive feelings what do you think about this you have to do things that you believe are worthy of respect in order to have self-respect 100 100 agree with that absolutely if we treated ourselves here's what makes it tough Tom this is why people treat themselves so poorly it's because who knows you better than you so you know all the shitty thoughts that you have you know all your imperfections you know all your weird whatever stuff so you can judge yourself pretty damn harshly based on real information that's what makes it so hard so I like to tell people this think of someone in your life that you really care about how would you treat them how would you feed them how would you encourage them what would you say to them when they struggle what would you say to them when they have those negative thoughts what would you say to them when they want to skip going to the gym or not being active that's how you should talk to yourself and if that means you have to act it out because you don't feel it well that that's that's that's where you start 100 eventually it becomes more like second nature but that's where you have to start so this whole like you know you mentioned body acceptance movement and body positivity movement it's such a um it's been presented as such a distorted opposite end of the spectrum incorrect terrible approach you know I went into the Spectrum you have the whole hate your body you're gross look like these sexy people or you're worthless and what they did is they went the other end and said um your poor health means you love yourself loving yourself and accepting yourself means you do nothing about the fact that you're 80 pounds overweight or that you have bad health or that you can't you know play with your kids because you ran out of energy or you know out of breath that's also incorrect um acceptance is more like this um yeah this is this is what I look like this is what's going on I accept the fact that I've played a big role in this and I've accept I accept my limitations I don't have the genetics to look like a model or whatever that's fine body positivity and self-care is okay now it's time to take care of myself and what does that look like what does it really look like what does that really look like most the time most the time it looks like eating healthy most the time it looks like being active most the time it looks like prioritizing good sleep most the time it looks like getting rid of toxic relationships and fostering the good healthy ones sometimes it's eating a cookie and having some pizza and a beer sometimes it's taking a day off of the gym but most the time it's all that other stuff so if you just go from that standpoint and separate yourself and ask yourself those questions the decisions you'll make will most of the time point you in the right direction and again I want to be very clear not easy so one of the hardest things to do as evidenced by the fact that a majority of people uh have poor health and majority of Americans are overrate and we're on our way to becoming a majority obese Jesus so it is not easy it's super hard but it is possible it is 100 impossible and the the way it will create for you you know this this other thing that annoys me about my space is this a whole emphasis on motivation which I'm sure probably irks you just as much in the business space whereas people like I don't have motivation like well I don't wake up motivated every day either I do it anyway I do it anyway that's the difference between discipline and motivation by the way creating the behaviors that make you consistent having that discipline leads to the environment that Sparks motivation more often also so you like being motivated then do it when you're not and you'll get motivated more often anyway isn't that isn't that weird yeah facts all right I want to talk about the mechanism of action with some of these things so we've talked a lot about lifestyle but just to put a fine point on it sleep sunlight stress um I don't think people get nearly enough sunlight yeah but that's probably uh another episode love we could definitely derail on that excuse as we've talked about but let's get into diet a little bit more okay so um what are your like what if you were going to put a quick nutshell on your strategy what's uh to use Ray dalio's terms in finance what's your all-weather strategy you don't know who the person is you don't know what they're struggling with but what's that nutshell where it's like go do this I want to preface this first by saying that there's a there can be a very wide variance when it comes to individuals and diet so you're going to see some people who are going to do much better on diet based on genetics and microbiome or something yes and and behaviors and emotions and our connections to food and that kind of stuff so just we're just such a fingerprint physiologically and emotionally and psychologically but generally speaking most of us are somewhere in the middle generally speaking if you prioritize protein and eat a high protein diet you'll eat less generally overall and you'll get better blood glucose levels that are more stable which leads to behaviors that lead to better eating so you don't get these spikes and drops that tend to make us irritable or have cravings and that kind of stuff which leads to overeating so high protein diet this across the board has been shown to be beneficial for fat loss muscle building energy and is there like a ratio one gram per pound of lean body mass 0.6 to 0.8 grams of protein per pound of body weight I tell people the only way no matter what you're 800 pounds no um uh for relatively average weight individuals so if you're a little overweight or whatever that's fine if you're obese use your lean body mass so you want to take your body fat percentage subtract that and then that lean body mass is the number that you'll hit and I tell people to aim for a gram because most people fall short of it and they fall within that number and again that's better for almost any goal um and it helps you care vegetable versus uh meat no not if eating that much protein if your protein goes below that then animal sources make a big difference it's so in other words if your protein intake is high you're eating a gram of protein per pound of body weight doesn't matter the sources if your protein is like you know 0.3 grams per pound of body weight animal sources make a big difference they really do so I'm glad you asked that question um the second thing I would say is avoid heavily processed foods just avoid them they are carefully and expertly engineered to make you over uh over eight do you think overeating is the only problem or are there chemical issues that are also causing all of that leads to the overeating but yeah you're 100 right so they have drug-like effects they've taken here's what they do if you've ever I don't know have you interviewed anybody who's in the um processed food space that talks about how they they engineer these Foods it's remarkable I used to be in the food that's right so we hyper aware of this is remarkable it's like it's not just the taste it's the texture it's the mouth feel that's the yeah it's the wrap Vanishing caloric densities the imagery they use oh the science is remarkable I mean you could eat most people could eat a family size bag of potato chips but they couldn't as a warm-up yeah but they couldn't eat five plain potatoes right same same amount of potatoes in fact the potato chips are so crazy higher in calories right so avoid heavily processed foods because they will make you overeat or you're gonna be white knuckling this thing the entire time which it's that's a terrible idea so high protein white knuckling meaning I have to reduce my calories so much yeah you're just oh you're just constantly like it'd be heavily processed foods you're constantly gonna be battling overeating it's just just you're not going to win that battle uh it's very very challenging so high protein avoid heavily processed uh Foods um make sure you get enough fiber fiber also has a wonderful satiety effect on most people great for digestion leads to a healthy gut microbiome as you've talked about on the show microbiome can drive a lot of our behaviors it turns out our bacteria influences our behaviors to ensure their own Survival yeah so it's kind of like where zombies walking around with bacteria it's telling us what to do having a biological experience yeah like getting people to understand that you're in a battle you're you're living harmoniously with all these bacteria but they want things and they'll speak up they will they will change your mood they will change whatever you eat you will want more of so if you eat cakes cookies pies ice cream you're gonna crave that if you eat meat and vegetables you're going to Crave that people don't believe it until they do it but it is bananas it is it is is 100 true so um the next thing I would say is um eat or sorry is drink half a gallon to a gallon of water a day this tends to contribute to better behaviors overall better energy so here's what the data will show you the data will show you it's not that big of a deal too I don't see how it could be anything else yeah because dude from an evolutionary standpoint animals [ __ ] kill each other at the water hole water holes are seasonal they're there sometimes they're gone the next like how would humans ancestrally have ever had access to that amount of water you know what the challenge you know what you know what it is is that what we're not talking about is essential and optimal there's like you need a certain amount of water and this is what we understand optimal of what we don't understand so much just like protein essential protein for a man would be like 40 grams a day maybe um I mean I weigh 210 pounds I could I could eat 40 grams of protein a day and I would definitely lose muscle mass and the like but I wouldn't die right eating essential amount is it optimal not even close right with water there's essential and then there's optimal and in my experience a half a gallon to a gallon a day for most people so long as your electrolytes are balanced and all that stuff that's a whole other discussion um you will typically see better behaviors more energy less Cravings better digestion um and and so on it tends to lead to just just behaviors that lead to a healthier lifestyle so those would be the most important um you start there you could totally start there by the way starting your day off with a high protein meal they're now showing they have CGI so continual glucose monitors are pretty cool they'll show how your body responds to food in real time if you start your day with protein with a high protein meal even if you eat garbage later on your blood glucose levels won't be as affected as they would have been had you not started with a high protein meal so start your day off with a good protein fiber breakfast and later throughout the day you'll probably will have better behaviors or less cravings and you'll feel better later on and then down down the list I would say learn how to track your Macros this is that whole conscious competence stage where now I'm kind of paying attention I know with 30 grams of protein looks like I know what 50 grams of fat looks like I know you know what 30 grams of carbohydrates look like I know what 10 grams of fiber looks like I know what what what's in the foods that I'm eating and that's important because when we get to that unconscious competent stage we have to be able to attach or connect the foods we're eating to how we feel and then eventually it could be like I don't count I don't sit there and count my macros I I know like oh I need more protein that's what makes me feel this way or I'm gonna you know like today I'm coming on your podcast I eat a particular way when I do these podcasts because I really optimize my yeah yeah oh there's a way I'll eat to optimize my physical strength and performance and then there's ways that I'll eat to optimize my cognitive performance what what do you do on a day where you need Peak mental acuity oh it's usually it's going to be high protein fat fiber lower carbohydrate and in fact if I really want to be sharp this is my this just works best for me and you'll see this with a lot of people um fasting slash ketogenic tends to provide that for me if I want best physical performance I want to go hit a PR in the gym I want to go lift a lot of weight then I'm going to have a lot more carbohydrates and typically starchy carbohydrates if I want to positively impact my digestion this is again for me that I'm going to eat well-cooked vegetables fish grass-fed meat and I'll avoid starchy carbohydrates I'll have berries those tend to do really well for me I've identified that for myself by the way what's cool about that now is um I don't sit down and think about it I see how I feel and then that tends to be what I crave so I came here and this morning what did I crave eggs berries cooked spinach so that's what I had for breakfast this morning that's very interesting there's there is a lot of n of one individual stuff with diet but I found that there really is and it I would say it lines up what I would tell people is basically identical to what you just told people I I think that there are going to be things outliers on the extremes where some people really like a vegetarian or vegan diet they just feel so much better and then you know on the other side where it's all meat all the time but for the most part like there's a real down the middle fastball that if most people just stick to that they're going to be yes and you can't separate this is where things get really interesting and this is why I talk so much about the mental emotional component you can't separate how you feel about foods not physiologically but maybe emotionally or mentally with the physiological aspect I mean you take a vegan who is vegan because they truly do not want to kill animals like they're like the vegans that stay vegans long term forever are typically these like they really believe like I don't want animals hurt I don't like to eat animals I do this for the betterment of animals you give that person a piece of meat you force them to eat a piece of meat you will see a spike in blood sugar because of the stress response the fear response really absolutely because they ate something oh my God this is terrible oh yeah you you'll if like right now if you get stressed out you get some bad news you answer the phone you'll see a spike your liver will release uh cortisol goes up and your liver releases a ton a ton of yes true compared to eating carbohydrates oh it could be worse get really really stressed out and you'll see your physiology act like you've just ate a bunch of candy or like you just made not sure for me so I wore a continuous glucose monitor probably for six of the 10 months that I was stressed out of my [ __ ] mind and it was I could see it when something acute would happen I'd be like okay yeah but compared to eating something I would I would and you're this is where the variability in individuals I would venture to say that you probably do pretty well with stress yes yeah so yeah so um I'm speaking generally um there's also an immune response um some you might have someone who eats an avocado and sees a strange spike in blood glucose really yeah but it's not because of the the fat or anything that's in the you know obviously it has no carbohydrates or sugars but maybe their body has developed some type of an immune reaction to the avocado and that releases glucose yeah because it's a stress response it can in some people so people like people have food intolerances and they'll eat a food not an allergy but like an intolerance lead of food and then they'll feel like garbage afterwards that's an it's a systemic um stress response um there may be foods that you have a positive association with and you'll see positive neural chemicals and hormones and stuff you know that I mean you can't separate the two you really can't it's like um they both speak to each other so why is this important to know I mean we're getting into the weeds here but it's important to know because you you want to consider all of it you want to consider all of it when you're getting if you get down if you get through the basics that we talked about which that's that's 90 something percent of it okay but when you get through all that and you're doing it then the other stuff starts to starts to matter more and you can say okay well um I do have this positive association with these things this negative association this does for whatever reason make me feel a particular way who knows but it doesn't matter I feel this way it's like the placebo effect placebo effect is real we can measure it so is it there yeah it totally is yeah it's so interesting talk to me about hormonal regulation so one thing I'm actually considering uh well not considering I'm going to get my blood tested do you know Derek for more plates more days yeah I do it's gonna say I think you guys had hit it off yeah uh so had him on the show was talking about trt yeah um so he's going to be doing a blood draw for me running a panel I'm super curious to see where my testosterone levels are um what do you think about trt so I know you've done it for a while yeah so I I uh Western medicine is amazing for what it's great for and if there's what acute issues that could be solved through medical intervention um if if uh lifestyle fact if lifestyle and behaviors can't solve a particular issue and medical intervention can can help and go that route okay I'm so I'm not a black and white I'm not what should I do naturally first before I say oh I need trt so the things that affect testosterone in men um significantly are sleep stress diet exercise in particular strength training and sunlight um not like Brazil nuts or anything like that if you have a nutrient deficiency if you have a zinc deficiency and you supplement with zinc or you eat something that's high in zinc you'll see a positive influence on your testosterone if you don't have a nutrient deficiency it's not going to make a difference so these foods that raise testosterone are typically because they're feeling nutrient deficiencies that are common uh in men okay but if you supplement like if you have low vitamin D and you take vitamin D you'll see better testosterone levels but if your vitamin D is great you could supplement with vitamin D all day long it won't do anything for in fact it might be detrimental so um those things that I listed so like if you lift weights and you're getting stronger and building muscle you'll typically see uh higher testosterone levels Higher free testosterone and more Androgen receptor density so these are the receptors that testosterone attaches to if your sleep is not great but you improve your sleep you'll typically see an improvement um in testosterone if your stress is uh overwhelming and you find a way to manage it better whether that be reduced stress or have stress management techniques then you'll typically see an improvement in testosterone levels and then there's genetic factors and other factors that are harder to parse out like you know personally for me in the early 2000s you know full disclosure I don't think this is a surprise for most people this is why most people start exercising um I started working out because I had body image issues I had insecurities too skinny yeah too skinny and so I started working I wish you know people who I've struggled with being overweight say that people who are too skinny I know I know we have a guy here that just he struggles to put on weight it is so crazy to me yeah to watch him eat I'm just watching him pack away the calories and he'll be like dude if I let off like my just obsession with make sure I eat all my calories he was like I will lose like three four pounds in a week I'm like what the hell I know it's weird never it's but insecurities are insecurities right so uh well yeah you can't tell him tell someone otherwise but I got into it because of body image issues and in the early 2000s uh you had this Market gray Market of supplements that were called pro hormones I remember that remember that when uh Mark Maguire was taking Andrew stand it down all that stuff well anyway supplement companies can be pretty they can be like the pharmaceutical industry what they did is they went through the laws and they saw what was illegal and what wasn't necessarily legal and they went and found discarded anabolic steroids that pharmaceutical companies stopped pursuing that weren't technically illegal and sold them as pro hormones over the counter so here I am young kid insecure I want to build muscle oh I can buy it over the counter it's legal it's a pro hormone so it's not technically but it was it was a designer steroid and so I took them and you know in fact they're not Black Market steroids but they could you could get them over the counter so I took them on and off for years and then eventually stopped taking them well it turned out that they affected my body's ability to produce testosterone once I hit my late 30s early 40s I was just just couldn't tell what was wrong I had everything optimized I was doing you know I'm a fitness guy so I worked out slept good ate right took the right supplements did everything right um the part that was weird to me was my libido was okay um but it's I've now learned that libido can be affected by so many other factors than testosterone but you were having issues everywhere else lethargy just my energy was off I was getting anxiety which I'd never had before so that's part of why I want to try it so I've dramatically reduced my anxiety but it's still like a daily thing where I'm like ah like it's there I won't say ever present but it's there yeah it was weird for me like I just get I would get anxiety speaking which that's my favorite thing to do um it just it didn't feel right I would tell my wife my PRT helped with that so I got my testosterone levels checked so we had a um a company approach us hey we want to work with you guys we're a hormone replacement facility um and we've been approached many many many times by other companies but this one said hey we'll give you guys free blood work and so we're like okay let's go see what's going on and um I went and got my blood work tested and it came back and my testosterone was in the floor it was my total testosterone was to was below 240 which is like yeah 300 is like the bottle right um and then you know in retrospect at that point I was like oh my gosh it all makes sense now and at that point I was like exercising well and eating right and taking the right supplements and I you know I get my nutrient levels tested and I had this conversation with my wife and I said honey if I raise my testosterone by 50 I'll be low I'm still going to be low wow like this sucks and so I had this like it was really challenging for me to make the decision because why because I'm a health and fitness guy so I'm like oh I shouldn't have to you know this is and I know some people go through this which I consumed I always would need to as I got older yeah so I got I so I went on testosterone replacement therapy and um yeah I was like Game Changer complete Game Changer and I was like okay now I feel like myself um and by the way I'm a great you know and of one so people who are like what's the difference between low testosterone and high testosterone in terms of like let's say athletic performance and fitness so and I'm a great example because I was doing everything right before and I continue to do everything right after somebody the only change was the testosterone and for me it was about around 14 pounds of lean body mass and around seven pounds of body fat yeah so I lost body fat and built this was over the year over a year and a half interesting because I've always told people 15 pounds of lean muscle for somebody that's not obese is a game changer oh yeah like you're gonna look fundamentally different now you were already I'm sure pretty big so maybe not as noticeable on you but oh no I mean it's a good amount of muscle it was a game changer for sure um but that's because I went from low to like High um and where are your levels now now uh now so what happens when you get tested um because there's different ways you can administer testosterone but um I prefer the old-fashioned you know once a week injection um when you imagine why not daily um I feel better I feel better this way um and most people with an athletic background will if they go on trt we'll we'll go this route interesting yeah so I just feel better but uh I know people who are more like the convenience of topical you know you pay attention to Rogan at all I do because he does trt I thought I heard him say he does daily I don't want to put words in his mouth but not sure but I know he does testosterone he's also done growth hormone a couple other things um but yeah it'll it at its peak it'll be out of range a little bit out of range but by the time it comes down during the week then I'm around like 800 900 uh total.com so which is about free do you pay attention oh God I you know what that's a good question um same it would be slightly out of range and then within within high within high normal and it you know this again I'm not a doctors this is out of my wheelhouse now uh when we're talking about like testosterone levels and stuff like that but as explained to me by the people that I work with they base it off of the range but also how you feel so and you look at things like libido energy um sleep you know that kind of stuff and then they'll look at markers like blood markers uh your you know red blood cell count cholesterol levels you know blood lipids that kind of stuff um so now I'm an advocate but I'm not the I'm not going to tell people to uh go on trt when they have an unhealthy lifestyle because that'll mask a lot of things and probably not going to help you a ton um I mean it's I'm sure it's better than nothing but um you are typically your testosterone levels are quite manipulatable through lifestyle and we can see this in in studies with with men although although testosterone levels of men have been dropping consistently now for decades and we're quite not sure we're not quite sure what the hell's going on this is again out of my wheelhouse but this is well established like men's testosterone have been going down since the 50s and 60s that's crazy yeah like an average 20 year old testosterone now is like what a 50 year old would be in the 70s and 80s or something like that I'm gonna just pop off because I know nothing about this but if I had to guess it's going to be diet it's going to be chemical exposure um both on the food and in the air yeah I'm sure between those two things you're going to get obliterated from an endocrine perspective yeah they think it's like xenoestrogens uh they think it's lack of activity in diet that's that's probably causing lack of activity yeah yeah I can see that lack of muscle mass strength men's strength levels of decline pretty significantly as well um but yeah so that was a that was a a game changer for me so if it's appropriate I'm a huge believer it was a life-changing my health dramatically improved yeah it's very interesting to me okay insulin mitochondria yeah what do you how do you think about those um I so as news started coming out about that Alzheimer's is probably Diabetes Type 3 or diabetes of the brain um and then I had a guy on named Chris Palmer I don't know if you know him but he's got a hypothesis he wrote a book that's basically the punch line is that mitochondrial dysfunction is the root of all mental illness anxiety depression schizophrenia like all of it all of it all of it and while I don't know if he's right or not he's got a pretty compelling case for if you look at what's happening to the mitochondria that when you take those might like if it's the um mitochondria in other parts of your body it will manifest as not being able to have enough energy it will manifest as an inability to deal with glucose appropriately body fat storage like on and on becomes an issue what happens when that's happening in the brain and it just asking the question of what does mitochondrial dysfunction in the brain so if we're unable to get the right amount of energy in the brain what ends up happening what are the consequences of that it makes sense that there would be some pretty scary repercussions do you think about that is that something that you look at yourself yeah so that's um that's compelling that's a compelling argument now the challenge is uh what contributes to the poor mitochondrial function that's a much more complicated conversation but here's uh here's what's interesting you take people with Alzheimer's dementia and sometimes um actually a significant percentage of people with depression anxiety you put them on a ketogenic diet and you see improvements and that directly has to do with the energy production of mitochondria so people who have issues with utilizing glucose for energy the reason why you see improvements is they're now utilizing ketones and ketones are just a cleaner easier source of energy and so glucose literally sticks to cells yeah so it's so if your body isn't inappropriate if your body isn't um utilizing glucose well then that's why you see improvements in those things with people when they go on like things like like I said like ketogenic diets where they fast for example that's pretty interesting okay so let's talk about insulin and mitochondrial function um and I think they're both closely uh pretty closely related you're when you start to become insulin resistant you start to see some dysfunction uh in the mitochondria one of the most one of the single most effective ways to improve insulin sensitivity is to build muscle now it's not the be-all end-all but it's one thing that will almost always improve insulin sensitivity in fact they have studies on muscle is very insulin sensitive it's also one of the places that we store glycogen which is made from glucose and use it and use it right so the liver being the main source place but then muscle mass so if you build a little bit of muscle mass you you improve your body's ability to store and utilize glucose for energy um so they do they have studies on obese individuals where they don't have them lose any weight at all they haven't built a little muscle and we see some improvements in in their blood glucose and their insulin sensitivity you know I'm going to say if I wanted to get somebody to work out that was struggling with weight one thing I would do put a continuous glucose monitor on them and then say you can eat whatever you want this this could absolutely [ __ ] kill them at a cellular level but this this is so powerful for me at Christmas where I take all all of my rules I throw them out the window I eat whatever the hell I want I steer only by how I feel and one thing I've learned about myself is if my blood glucose goes to 175 I don't feel good I actually feel kind of sick I'm like lightheaded it's really gross I absolutely hate the way that it feels so nobody has to tell me not to go over that but one thing I realize is I can eat let's say ice cream which is a big thing for me ice cream and licorice oh wow uh yeah so that's it yes oh wow is there any other kind yeah licorice is not licorice it's red vine yeah licorice is a flavor yeah you're right anyway I get on my high horse about licorice uh at Christmas what I do is I will go and do a lot of uh leg workout leg legs and back oh okay and so big muscle groups yeah so in early in the day I just go do really high rep legs back legs back legs back and I'll mix it up obviously so I don't end up like with imbalance but then I find I can eat a ton and four so I did this uh for about two weeks over Christmas and my average glucose level was like 78 so I had a CGM on the whole time morning noon and night eating ice cream licorice Cookies Cakes pies whatever the hell I wanted and all I steered by was my average glucose level I was shocked you just by working out so to your point that the muscles just suck it up now whether the following statement is true or not but I heard this I'm almost certain I heard this from uh Jesse the glucose goddess uh who said that if your muscles are screaming out for glucose it will actually go into those cells without the need for insulin if that's true and it's also true that insulin actually ends up damaging the system when it's in over abundance then working out having that muscle mass becomes an incredible way this is terrible but it becomes an incredible way to be able to cheat a little bit on your diet and get away with it no you're I mean this is a bodybuilders have known this for a long time or they'll I do not advocate for this I think this is terrible I think it's terrible it just it Fosters a poor relationship with food but they'll say things like eat gummy bears and pixie sticks post workout and they'll show that they're that their blood glucose isn't affected and they see it's great well you got a lot of muscle you just did some strength training and your bodies are your muscles are sucking up amino acids and glucose uh to repair muscles are glucose you know utilizing machines and they're very insulin sensitive sarcopenia is very strongly related to diabetes what's sarcopenia muscle loss it's very strongly related to diabetes and insulin resistance so now you have nothing using that glue yeah you know by the way all exercise appropriate exercise will have a positive impact on on blood glucose and insulin sensitivity but nothing compares to strength training in that regard strength training has the most profound and when you do a apples versus apples time versus time spent one day a week of cardio or whatever one day a week of strength training five days a week of each whatever you go Apples to Apples strength training controls or works with blood sugar glucose insulin you know sensitivity far far more effectively and it's just because it just builds muscle so if you can see it with a CGM like I the first time that this happened and I was feeling weird from eating ice cream I was like let me try to do some air squats and literally over the course of I don't know 45 minutes to an hour I just watched it just start going down down down down down down and normally when I eat ice cream it's going up up up up up up up up so it's very impressive it's it's one of those things that is as drug-like as you want it to be it's like oh you have this thing your blood glucose is escalating just doing air squats now I had to do a lot of them but just doing air squats you could watch it happening on the cgms that's so fun yeah that's why like uh pre and post activity even if it's mild actually is pretty good for um for that when you eat so what they call postprandial activities so like you eat and then go for a walk you'll see significant just a walk yeah there was a study oh this was a good one I hope you guys can find it if not I'll look for it they did a study and they of course they Market it as like this miracle thing but it's there's nothing spectacular it's what happens the body where they had people simply do cat like heel raises like I'm doing them right now you can't see it on camera but literally I'm just picking my heels up and bring them down they had people do that while they ate and afterwards and they saw significant improvements in their their blood glucose and insulin sensitivity so yeah so even just activity around a meal and it doesn't have to be much you know what I find that's interesting about this Tom when you if you want to find truths one of the best ways to do so in my opinion is to look at different cultures different societies and see if you can find commonalities in their behaviors and then there's typically some value there and what I find that's interesting is most old cultures value a post-dinner walk or post meal walk you'll find this in many different countries where it's like they eat a big meal and then let's go for a little stroll outside very interesting um but yeah that's that has a pretty good effect it's real simple but yeah just just build some muscle and most people are inactive will build a decent amount of muscle just strength training even once a week you'll see a nice Improvement in that yeah that especially so going back actually to one of the ideas that we touched on briefly is I think the most transformational thing that you can do for your life your mentality everything everything is ADD muscle the the act of having to do it and I've heard you talk about this and this is very important if you could take a drug and out of the muscle for you it won't work but the person you have to become in order to be consistent enough to show up to put on the muscle it teaches you this really powerful lesson at like a deep limbic level of I showed up I pushed myself I did something hard and I added muscle you're going to earn self-respect so and I think it is very important if you want to respect yourself you have to do things you think are worthy of respect there's no way around that so you can't stare in the mirror and say I love you I love you I love you you've got to go do something that you already think is cool that you think is valuable and if you do that it's really transformational for how you feel about yourself I don't think I would have gone on to have the success in business that I had if I hadn't first had to morph my physique and by showing up and pushing through everything and getting trapped under the bar multiple times and like having to figure your way out and like embarrass yourself and ask for help like all of those things and and you see it and it actually happens and you go from like one of the coolest things in the world to me like I can't do this anymore but I used to be able to bend over and pick up almost 400 pounds and that used to really like every time I do it I'll be like this is crazy like I literally you can just bend over proper form bending my legs obviously not straight legged deadlifts but that psychologically was so powerful and so the fact that it then also helps with glucose and it also helps with mitochondrial function and it also helps with mental acuity it's like one of those things that and this is why I want to like scream into the camera to get people to do it because man if you push through and you stay consistent on the other side of that self-respect you hit the nail on the head Tom you could take a helicopter and it could fly you to the top of Mount Everest and the view will be amazing and everything's look great and wow this is beautiful but it's nowhere near the transformational experience is climbing the mountain yourself and I've said this so many times on my podcast that one of the things I love most about Fitness that I learned myself personally and I could see in the clients that I train was that it's one of the most powerful vehicles for personal growth it's extremely powerful part of the reason why it's powerful is it's unassuming a lot of people don't go into it thinking like this is a personal growth you know thing it's like I just want to get more fit but you mention a lot of things that you learn from it you know getting pinned none of the bar uh that's like learning how to fail like you know uh there's a story what was the statement winners winners lose more than losers lose okay so it's like learning how to win is great learning how to lose is even more important because you're going to lose way more in life than you're going to win um so what does exercise teach you if you pursue it how to suck how to lose um I had to continue to try and practice teach you self-acceptance because at some point you're gonna get older and you're not going to be as strong as fast as you were before but you do it anyway uh it creates a positive relationship with pain you know like um people who who are Advanced with exercise feel as much or more pain in the workouts than beginners do yet they feel it differently or at least they experience it differently think about the carryover into everyday life with that I mean think about how you can learn how to experience pain and challenge in everyday life because you go to the gym and you can you know push yourself through a set of 20 reps in the you know heavy barbell squat or whatever um it teaches you growth it teaches you how to keep trying and iterate and change and try different things and change the directions because this isn't working well that's working oh this is great it's a wonderful Journey it's one of my favorite things about it I used to love training kids for that reason I would train young teenagers or you know late teens and they come see me and their parents would come and comment about how they got better grades or how they were you know better at home why because this week we did 10 push-ups next week he did 12 push-ups guess what Johnny yeah you're not the same person this week as you were last week you did two more you are fundamentally a different person like you can't tell me that doesn't have carryover into everything else so yeah you hit the nail on the head with that massively brother where can people follow you uh mind pump media uh you can find our podcast you can find us anywhere but mind pump media look us up I love it all right everybody if you haven't already be sure to subscribe and until next time my friends be legendary take care peace keep watching if you want to learn the daily hacks to melt fat lose weight and live longer Sean Stevenson welcome back to the show I am very excited to talk to you and at the end I want everybody to stay tuned because I'm going to give you the best John Stevenson quote which sums up one of the most important principles

Channel: Tom Bilyeu

Views: 515,109

Keywords: Tom Bilyeu, Impact Theory, ImpactTheory, TomBilyeu, Inside Quest, InsideQuest, Tom Bilyou, Theory Impact, motivation, inspiration, talk show, interview, motivational speech, Sal Di Stefano, The Resistance Training Revolution, Mind Pump Media, Health Theory, Conversations with Tom, health tips, obesity, gain weight, lose weight, overweight, weight training, fitness, mind pump podcast, sal di stefano workout, sal di stefano weight loss

Id: LYf5zPzIqwQ

Length: 113min 11sec (6791 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 20 2023