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It gets 50% off and the shredded summer bundle is 50% off as well. Here's how you get that. Go to maps, fitness products.com and use the code April special for that discount. All right. Enjoy the rest of the podcast. You know, a couple interesting statistics, uh, that kind of recent that came out, which kind of highlight a problem, which is almost, which is interesting. This problem we're about to talk about because it's almost become, uh, like one of those topics that you can't bring up, which is strange, but anyhow, two statistics, one 70, roughly 70% of Americans are now considered overweight. 45% obese. Okay. So almost half of us clinically obese. And then the other statistic, which is more timely is, uh, that, uh, the number one risk factor for severe, uh, COVID symptoms is obesity. I think it's like 87% of people in hospitals with COVID were obese. What's, uh, what's the clinical definition of obesity now? Is it, is it 30 pounds of weight? You do not body fat that you should not have in your body? Cause obviously our bodies, we need fat. People need to understand that. Your body needs fat. It's healthy to have a certain amount of body fat, but is it, is the clinical definition? I believe it, I release, I thought it was going off that or still off of BMI. No, it's BMI. Yeah. Yeah. It's off BMI. Now, of course, BMI has its problems, right? BMI is body mass index and it's just your total weight. Um, and obviously I'm probably overweight or obese because I have more muscle, right? But generally speaking, so it's BMI greater than, what is that? Uh, what's the number that it gives us? Greater than 30 kilograms per meter squared. Yeah. That's not the number. I have no idea. Click on the, click on the chart up at the top there. I think it's over 20, I think it's important that we define this because I, here's the thing that I ran into a lot. And I think you guys did run and ran into this a lot as a trainer too. Many people that are obese don't think they're obese. I don't know how many times that I did a body fat test. And I actually, I remember learning that I would have to set the table before I did it to let people know that, Hey, it's not about what we find out today. It's about that this is a starting point and where we go from here. Because I remember as a young trainer, not knowing any better, just take a body fat test and it'd be like, Oh, you're obese. Yeah. Some people carry it differently. Oh, and people cry and get all broken down from it because they, up until that point, they just thought they were a little overweight. I would, I would bet that, so the BMI is over 30, right? So if you're, if you're over 30 in terms of, So I knew the 30 was in there. So yeah, that's considered obese. Now I would bet more people than we think are obese because there's a lot of people who are very low muscle mass, right? Have high body fat percentage that would be considered obese. Now, of course, there's definitely those athletes and stuff that carry a lot of muscle, but that's a very small percentage. I'll never forget the first time that I told this ex model that she was obese and she didn't look at all that way. She was actually really pretty lean, relatively lean. You mean lean or skinny? You know, what? You said she was obese, but she was skinny. Yeah. Yeah. Skinny. Yeah. Yeah. Skinny and what we just call skinny fat, right? So she had so little muscle and her diet was like the, you know, she did the extreme, you know, live off of celery and carrots, which you get ready for a shoot, never really strength trained whatsoever. And yeah, she felt like she'd put on a few pounds. And that's why she was hiring me. But she by no means looked obese. But then when you actually measured her body fat percentage, she would fall in that category. Yeah. So we need to tell people why this isn't even important, why we should even try to solve this problem. Like why fix the obesity epidemic? And it is an epidemic. You know, I know that they named it officially an epidemic in the late nineties, but obesity had been climbing for a couple of decades before that. It was only really in the nineties that they said, okay, this is an epidemic and it's growing. It's been growing ever since. So why even solve it? Why even look at this issue and say, what are the things we can do to fix this problem? Well, those are some big reasons. Number one, the health risks associated with obesity alone are tremendous. It dramatically increases your risk of all cause mortality. So being obese means that you're much more likely to die of any reason at all. But to be more specific, your risk of type two diabetes goes through the roof. Heart disease goes through the roof. Stroke goes through the roof. Gallbladder disease goes through the roof. Osteoarthritis goes up quite a bit. Cancer, you know, some recent studies attribute can literally say that you could just by not being obese, you could reduce the risk of like 75% of cancers. Okay, so just being obese increases your risk of cancer. Sleep apnea is another one. So it's a big problem. Now, a lot of people might say, well, that's personal, right? If you're obese, then it's your, you know, your own issue. And I get part of that, but here's the truth. It literally, no joke, if you look at obesity and you look at all the things that are connected to obesity, it threatens to bankrupt modern societies. Well, and it's reversible, you know, as much as, you know, we want to love ourselves and kind of meet our like, like find out where we are in terms of like where we stand, we also have to do a very good job of a better job of really assessing, you know, what's best for me and what's best for my body and where I can strive to be. And so I think, you know, the first initial movement towards, you know, this movement towards like loving yourself and accepting yourself for who you are, you know, is a great mental space to be. But we have to get back to reality and face the fact that when we are obese, it does increase the chances of all these other diseases from being exaggerated and taking us closer to death. Well, what about COVID? You shared that stat the other day. Absolutely, right? All illness, in fact, obesity increases your risk of severe illness. No matter what you get, it causes a pro-inflammatory state. Remember, fat is a, it's not an inactive tissue and having a lot of it does increase your body's total inflammation and you're in the way your body clots blood. This is why they think, by the way, it causes problems with COVID because of how it affects circulation. Now you brought that up the other day on the podcast and you actually got a long message and I put you on the spot right now because I don't think you were ready for me to bring this up. But I think you should share it or at least summarize it because I also think that it's important that when we talk about this message that we come from a place of empathy too. Yes. It's not, this isn't a place of shaming or trying because you got it, you got an interesting message the other day when we talked about that stat. Yeah, and I can't remember. I think the person's saying, I can't remember specifically what they said, but they said essentially that they feel anxious when they hear us talk about obesity and its effects because they themselves are obese and they're trying to lose weight. And I want to be very clear, all of us built our careers around helping people through largely through obesity. Personal training is not a career you get into to make a lot of money. It just isn't. You ask any trainer, one of the top five reasons why he became a personal trainer, I guarantee you none of those reasons will be to make a ton of money. I guarantee you one of them, if not the top one, especially for people who've been trained for a long time was to help people. So I, I sincerely at my deepest level want to help people, but we can't, if we don't have an honest conversation around this. And right now there seems to be this message that we can't talk about it because we're shaming people. Now, if I'm talking to someone, by the way, this is very different talking generally on a podcast versus talking specifically. If I had a person sitting in front of me that I'm looking eye to eye with and they're saying, Hey, you know, I'd like to hire you or whatever. How can you help me? I wouldn't sit here and say, Hey, did you know because you're obese? I know you're going to, you have 75% more chance of dying. Yeah. And you're going to never use that. Of course I wouldn't do that, right? That's not going to help them. It's going to make them feel terrible. So this is, this is different. We're talking generally, and we're talking about a topic. And we do need to be honest about, you know, there's one silent issue that nobody really talks about that obesity affects, which is your mental state. And I don't mean just because you don't like the way you look or whatever. Forget that it literally will affect your chances of getting depression and anxiety and just the way you view and see things, you know, inflammation alone is connected to depression and being obese increases inflammation. Being obese increases, like I said, the risk of depression and anxiety. So here you are, right? Let's say you fall in this category of obesity. And you are, and because of it, now your filter with the way you see the world is through, is not in a healthy space. That means that you're less likely to view things positively, more likely to view things negatively. You're less productive, less innovative. You're more sick more often. It's, this is a, this is a world problem. It's not just an issue just for yourself. Now the way you fix it is by focusing on yourself. So I'm not going to, I'm not going to advocate for like, you know, big programs to solve this issue. But it is a big problem that we need to look at. In fact, if we look at all the problems that are, that, that modern societies face, that can literally destroy us. Okay. Obesity is near the top. It really is. It, again, I mentioned this earlier. It threatens to bankrupt us. It's in 2008, obesity related illness and whatever costs $147 billion of medical costs. That doesn't even count the productivity loss that we get from, from some of that stuff. If we continue down this path, we're going to have some big problems. So this is an issue that needs to be talked about. And you know, Justin, you mentioned, you know, acceptance and stuff like that and loving yourself. I am, not only am I for that, that's what we, that we push that all the time. But when we push it, we're talking about real love for yourself with honesty. Correct. And I think that's one of those things that's been removed from a lot of conversations as of late, which is so unfortunate because there's people out there really trying to, to improve and, and to live a better life. And the information that they're getting is just like so fear driven. And it's so, you know, hide and, and cover yourself and stay away from all of the, you know, potential dangers out there. And you can live your life in such a different way. And you can, you can be active and you can, you can face these things by, you know, putting the training in place to build your body up to be more resilient towards these things. Self image and body image are separate, right? Correct. It's you can, you can look at yourself in the mirror and be objective and say, this is a result of me not taking care of myself and still love yourself. Absolutely. You can still love who you are as a person and, and understand that that's your self image. And then you could also look at your body image and recognize that it is a reflection of your behaviors. And there's something there to be addressed. Yeah. And we're all, but all of us are flawed. Nobody is perfect, you know, in the, in the words of, you know, one of the most popular religions in the world, right? We're all sinners, right? So I understand the challenge of obesity because it's visible. Like you can't look at someone and tell, see that they have a sex addiction or an addiction to gambling or bad relationships. You can't right away see that, right? But if someone's obese, it's very obvious. So, and that makes it much more challenging. People can see your challenges and your challenge happens to be with, you know, with food or how you treat your body. Right. So I have all the empathy in the world for that. But again, we need to be honest and it is a problem and it will cause problems. And it is a result of you not really loving yourself in the best way. Now the, again, nobody's perfect. So I'm not saying that I'm love myself necessarily better than somebody else. I could be, I could have terrible ways I love myself or care for myself in other ways, maybe not so visibly. Nonetheless, this episode is about obesity and its challenges. And if you are obese, you are not really taking care of yourself in the honest way. But what you said, Adam is 100%. In fact, when people really love themselves and accept themselves in a true way, they start to lose weight because they start to care for themselves that way. There's other hurdles too though, right? Like I do, I do have a lot of empathy and compassion for this, this topic because there's definitely somebody who's listening right now who actually feels like they do try and have busted their ass trying to get there and they continue to fail. And that has a lot to do with, I think, some of the messaging that's out in our space. Misinformation. Right, and their approach is not the ideal approach. And because of that, because what I used to get a lot of is a client that would look at me and say, you know, Adam, honestly, like I'd rather be the little overweight and fat or even considered obese, but then enjoying my life and doing all these things because when I try and lose weight and I do all these things, I'm miserable. I have headaches. I'm tired. I'm achy. I'm in the gym all the time. I have to make all this sacrifice. And I feel miserable while I'm doing it. And so they have this really bad experience in the pursuit of what they think is trying to be healthier for themselves. And then they fail a lot and they just go, they throw their hands up and they go, fuck it. I'd rather just be obese. Well, one of the biggest fallacies I see a lot from, you know, the messaging out there is that they have to tackle all these things at once. And, you know, if they're going to really step into this journey of weight loss, they're going to have to take all the food out of their cupboards and they're going to have to completely start, you know, this five, six day a week training plan and be consistent. And if you don't be consistent, you're going to fail. And it's like all these, you know, like really like extreme sort of, you know, parameters for them to be able to buy into. And it really doesn't have to be like that. It could be one very small thing that just sparks this momentum. And this is something that we try so hard to convey. It doesn't need to be this difficult. It doesn't need to be this complicated. It could be one very simple thing that, you know, you just build slowly. You build upon that. And before you know it, your body starts transforming and things start moving in a very positive direction. No, no, no, you're 100% right. Look, if you do this the wrong way, you're going to feel like what Adam said. You're going to feel terrible. It's going to feel like torture. You're going to hate yourself through the process. And at some point, you'll get sick of hating yourself. And then you'll say to yourself, I'm done with this. I just want to love my, you know, live my life. I just want to enjoy my life. I'm done doing all that. Now that's because your approach was all wrong. And, you know, maybe it's because you followed the approach of popular fitness media, which is 99% of the time wrong or just trying to sell you a product. The truth is, if you do this the right way, it's still going to be challenging. Don't get me wrong. There's nothing easy about change. Change is always challenging. Fundamental change is always challenging. But you will feel like you're enjoying your life more. You will feel like you're loving life more. You will feel a better connection to yourself. The enjoyment you'll get from it will be better than the enjoyment you got from not doing it. Now it's, again, it's challenging, just like any change is challenging. So no matter what you do with this process, and even if you do it the right way, the way that we'll explain, you're still going to get challenged by it, but you'll feel good through the process. You will not feel like I hate myself. I hate life. This all sucks. So if you feel that way, your approach is wrong. And it won't last. We got to change the way you approach it. You have to share the story. You've shared it on the podcast several times before, but for somebody who's listening in for the first time, you have to share the story that you talk about when you were sitting at the dinner table and there was a lady who was kind of mocking you, making decisions on what you were eating and what she said to you. So no, what it was, it was like a Christmas dinner. So it was with my ex-wife, and they had like a company Christmas, I think it was a Christmas dinner or whatever. And so like the whole, all the staff was there, big company, a tech company, right? So we're all sitting at this big table and there's people around and- You're the fitness guy. I'm the fitness guy, right? Cause people are like, hey, what do you do? And I'm like, oh, I'm a trainer. And like immediately when you say that sometimes, depending on the circles you're in, any trainer who's listening knows, you immediately get looked at and then people start to become self-conscious of the food that they're eating in front of you or, and they'll make comments like, oh, you know, I'm going to get a piece of cake, you know, sorry, Mr. Trainer or whatever. So, and I'm used to it. It's not a big deal. So we're at the table, you know, I'd ask me what I do. I tell them I'm a trainer and, you know, we start talking a little bit. And I'm passing up on the bread and passing up on a certain, a couple things. And one of the ladies pipes up and she goes, why aren't you, you know, why aren't you eating the bread? Or why aren't you- And I say, oh, I have, you know, it bothers my gut. I don't respond very well to it. And, you know, it's not a big deal. I really don't want any. And she goes, you know, I had a friend once who was so into fitness and nutrition. She was like fanatical about it. And then she got cancer and she was, I don't know how well she was young. She was like 50 something years old. She got cancer and then she died. And you know, after that happened, I said to myself, I'm just going to enjoy life. I'm just going to eat whatever I want, drink wine and just enjoy my life because it's not worth it. And I said, well, I said, you know, exercising and, you know, having a good relationship with exercise and eating right isn't necessarily about living longer. Oftentimes it does result in longer life, most times, but it's not about living longer. It's about living better. So although your friend might have died at something 50 something years old, I'm sure she up until the point she got sick, she probably had a better quality of life because she was more fit and because she was more healthy. And that's really what it's about. It's not about, you know, the long life or it's not even about the living, losing the weight necessarily. It's really about improving the overall quality of her life. And that's the approach that we need to have. Now, what I want to talk about in this episode is really how to solve it broadly. Like why do we have an obesity epidemic to begin with? Why is this a problem in modern Western societies? And, you know, this is something that I've done a lot of reading on in the past and I did some more actually last night in preparation for this episode. And it's really interesting, you know. We'll talk about America. America has probably attributed, we probably get the credit for the obesity epidemic. We're the worst, aren't we? In Western society. We are the worst. Other countries are catching up. We're still, you know, America is still number one. But we are still seeing, you are seeing countries really start to catch up to us. Europe took a little while. I know the UK, obesity is growing. Mexico, which, you know, the last decade or two, all of a sudden it's become, you know, a couple of decades become a big problem. So we got to look, what's caused this? What the hell happened? Now, the old paradigm was, oh, it's because we're eating too much fat. I remember this was the message we all learned in school. Like all of us are, we were all born in the, you know, or young kids in the 80s. And, you know, we were teenagers in the 90s. Yeah, it was butter and steak getting everybody fat. Yeah, bacon and butter and, you know, don't eat that. It's the fat that's making everybody fat. And we were, we were told that this is the problem. And so people started cutting fat. And yet obesity continued to climb at a very fast rate. Then it became carbs, right? Oh, no, no, no, never mind. I remember when that happened, right? Those Atkins came out with his book and it, you know, flipped everything on its head and everybody's like, that's the problem. It's the carbs. Look it, we're eating more carbs. That's why we're all fat. And so then people said, let's cut carbs and obesity continued to climb. Here's the issue. And this is very clear now. And there were some studies that were done over the past couple of years that highlight just how big of a problem this is. And we've referenced these studies many times on the podcast, but they'll, they'll take, they've taken study, they've taken groups of people, controlled it, put them in laboratories or whatever, and given them just full access to food. The only difference is one group has heavily processed food. The other group has whole natural foods. And they actually match the macros, believe it or not. They actually have the macros relatively the same. So, you know, the whole natural foods have this much protein, fats and carbs and same thing with the, the processed foods. Then they'll have them stay in that room for a week or whatever. And then they'll switch the groups. So it's, you know, it's a, it's a crossover study or whatever. And here's what they find in these studies. Just by having access to heavily processed foods or just by eating heavily processed foods, the average person will eat five, around 500 more calories every single day. That's roughly a pound of body fat, excuse me, that you'll gain in a week. That's a lot. Now, if you look at when obesity started to become a problem in the U.S., very interesting. Go look at processed food. Processed food really didn't start making its way into our diets. It started to come in into the, in the 50s and 60s. By the way, as a promise to liberate housewives, this is how they advertised these foods. It was the, the TV dinner. This was the thing, right? Oh, that's right. And it was like, oh, you know, poor, this is how they would advertise it. Like poor housewife, you get your, you're slaving over this dinner, making this home, whatever. Right. Here's an easy way. It's a, you know, Salisbury steak or, I don't know why you can revolve their own microwaves at some point. Yeah, right. Well, this is even before it was just, it was like a tray, right? And then you put it in, you warm it up, it was frozen and then here's your dinner and you eat it in front of the TV and it saves all this time. And now, you know, it was liberating housewives or whatever. My wife never panics. She just takes Swanson TV turkey dinners from the freezing compartment of our refrigerator when I'm a little off schedule. And right you are, Jack. And that is because Mary Lou knows that she can have a swell dinner ready in just 25 minutes. Right. Well, slowly over time and then faster, heavily processed foods started to dominate the market. Today, heavily processed foods makes up roughly 70% of the average person's calories. So that's so amazing that just, you know, at 50, 60 years old, now 70 years ago, it was just non-existent to where now it's more than a majority of what we consume. Absolutely. And here's the thing, like, and this is the, this is the, I guess, the beauty and then the downside of markets, right? So America is a very market-driven country. And so that means that companies are relatively free to meet the demand of the consumer and innovate and spend money and invest and, you know, figure out what they want and I'll do it better than you and they compete, right? And they spent a lot of money engineering food to make it so desirable that you literally, they'll do FMRI studies and show that the brain lights up with some of these foods like you're taking drugs. It almost has a drug-like effect on the body, right? So effective that it makes you overeat. So you go past the point of feeling full and you eat more, you eat faster. You know, studies will show that people eat something like 50% faster when they're eating heavily processed, like you just got to get it in your face. And the truth is the health space is just as guilty of this. If you bring this point up all the time on the show that, you know, if you look at the products that are bought the most, even in the health space, it's the ones that taste the best. Of course. So even in that space, we're guilty of this. Absolutely. And so they've spent a lot of money, a lot of research, a lot of development on how to make these foods so incredibly irresistible that you'll keep buying it and eating more. Now, of course, these companies are trying to sell a product. Nonetheless, this is what happened. By the way, you know, if you do a little bit of research online, it'll blow you away. The science that goes into these foods is incredible. Literally, they have studied the amount of residue that a chip will leave on your fingers. They'll calculate that, what makes it more palatable. The color, they have it down to the perfect color. All the way to the packaging, how you open it, the entire aroma that fills your face, all that stuff. Everything, the crunch, like the amount of crunch that it has. And all of this creates this experience of palatability. And all of it is a part of that. Now, we think it just tastes, tastes as a big part of it, but it's everything. For example, they've done these funny studies where they'll give people ice cream, but they'll serve it in like a plunger or like a toilet. Like a brand new toilet, right? But they'll give them ice cream. And they'll say, you know, eat as much as you want. And people eat way less just because of the association. Dressed out. Just to show you, or they'll give people a big plate versus a small plate or bright lights versus low lights. And all these things affect how much you eat. And these scientists who design these foods, because if you go like Doritos, for example, like what percentage of the research and development do you think goes into making it nutritious? And what percentage goes into making it as palatable as possible? By the way, it's such a big deal that they patent, they will patent their formulas. They will literally have a patent on the formula for their product. You cannot copy it. That's how like, we hit the magic. This is the magic, you know, sweet spot. This is why our product is so. And so what ended up happening is these processed foods started to dominate little by little our, how much we ate. And little by little, we ate more fat and we ate more carbs. We also ate more everything. Yeah. And we just end up overeating as a result. Well, have you guys ever seen the, have you ever seen that? I think there's, Doug maybe could pull this up, the showing like French fries and soda drinks, the size of them over just like the last 15. Their portion sizes started to blow up like crazy. Yeah. Like just, I mean, if you just looked at, I think 50, 50, 60 years ago, if you looked at what a large was considered back then is, if it's, I don't even, I think it's smaller than what a small is today. So we've just, we've just slowly increased that. And same thing with like portion size and you brought the point up of like plates, like they've grown all that. So when you look at your plate and your plate isn't as as full anymore, you don't feel like you're eating as much, but the reality is you're eating twice as much as you were just 50 years ago. They're meeting consumer demand. And I know this is kind of like a crazy example when I compare to drugs. Yes, I know food isn't like drugs. However, I will say that food kills way more people than drugs do by far. But nonetheless, it's also something that people use to medicate. Of course, people are addicted to food and they use it to, you know, eat their feelings or to medicate themselves. But let's compare this to drugs for a second. Okay. When you do drugs, you start to build a tolerance and you need more and more. So people don't start out as heroin addicts or addicted to cocaine or addicted to drugs. They start out by using some and then gradually they need more and then gradually they need more. This is exactly how the behaviors are around heavily processed foods. When people have some, they start to know. In fact, if you rarely eat heavily processed foods, it might not even taste that good. It might be overwhelming. In fact, I know, for example, with my kids, they never drink soda. We just didn't have it and I'm not a big soda drinker. And I know when we'd go to birthday parties, I'd let them have some. And I would see them leave most of the soda. And I'd say, why don't you finish your soda? Oh, it's too much. Just do whatever. But then the kids who have it all the time, they're pounding it like crazy. They've built up a tolerance over time. There was that one, that documentary, well, it's kind of documentary that, what was it, the Supersize Me, where the guy started out by eating McDonald's every single day and you're supersizing it. And you see the process of him at first being like, oh, I can't eat all this. And then like towards the middle of it, he's like, his body started to adapt and this is what ends up happening with these foods. One of the most interesting examples of that for myself was when I was competing, I did this for a couple shows. I did a couple shows where I allowed like, it was all whole foods, right? Everything was, other than maybe like the occasional protein shake. And then I did another one where I allowed like process foods, where I just followed my macros and hit my macros. And I allowed things like Quest bars and things like that that taste really good that are quote unquote healthy for you in the diet. And I remember coming off of a show where I did all whole foods and then the first time I bit into the bar and I remember going like, God, I don't remember them. I thought I had a bad box. Oh, wow. And I remember like getting another box and I'm like, it doesn't taste right. But I still, I said, and I was testing something with myself to see, watch my own behaviors with these bars. And at first, I didn't really like the taste, but if I needed the macros for the day, I'd have one and have one every other day or so. And then eventually I started eating them every day and then all of a sudden I started to like the taste again. And then it got to a point where not only did I like the taste, but then I was eating two or three of these bars day, so long as it fit in my macros. And it was really interesting to watch my relationship with this even healthy quote unquote, process food that how much I didn't really like it that much at first. Then I was like, okay, kept it going in my diet. Then I started to like it. Then I started to crave it. And then it was actually really hard for me to not have three or four in a day. And then when I decided to go away from it, it took a lot of discipline to kind of get it, you know, to wean off of it and stop eating them. And this is why if you're diet, if you're like most people, average person in your diet is comprised of a lot of heavily processed foods, when you move off and you eat whole natural foods, they will taste bland. They will legit taste bland to you. Fruit will not taste sweet to somebody who eats candy on a regular basis. A steak will taste bland to somebody who eats pizza and burgers or processed foods all the time. It's just, it's just true. Now your body starts to adapt in each direction, but it's just to highlight the power of these heavily processed foods. There's one more thing that goes along with heavily processed foods. They tend to be eaten in states of unawareness. Okay, in fact, the original processed foods that I talked about, those TV dinners, they literally, they call it a TV dinner. It was advertised to go along with this new thing everybody has in their house called a TV. Eat this in front of this distracting device known as a television. If you think about the foods that you eat when you're on social media, when you're watching a movie or when you're distracted with something. Convenience foods, right? So like you go to the gas station and you go to the convenience store because you're going in there to get all the packaged chips and bars and everything else for the road or for while you're super distracted as well. Absolutely. And so that goes along with it as well. And we're very distracted nowadays. Nowadays, we have a phone that can distract the hell out of us. It could entertain us at any moment. And so we're eating these foods that studies show we eat faster, we eat more of, and we're disconnected from our body because we're also watching things while we're doing it. And this is a recipe. This is a recipe for obesity. You are going to overeat when you're bought. And this, and I like to communicate this because you know, it's like telling an alcoholic, you know, listen, it's not a big deal. You can live in the bar and drink alcohol every day. Just don't over drink. And it's like, man, that is a failing proposition. You know, we're telling people, watch your calories, don't overeat, but we're not telling people to avoid eating the foods that make it almost impossible. I'm going to tell you something right now. I'm a fitness fanatic. I've been in the space for decades. Obviously, we host one of the top fitness podcasts, right, in the world. I don't have these foods in my house because I know what I do when I have them. I know when I have these foods in my house, it's like a fight. It is like a disciplined fight. Am I, you know, and eventually I'll end up losing that. Well, you remember, we stirred up, those that have been listening for a long time, we came out and stirred up a lot of controversy in our space about the IIFYM movement for this exact reason, not because if you follow your macros and you fall in that category and you still eat pop tarts and it all fits, can you not lose weight and build muscle? Absolutely, you can do those things. But from our experience of training normal people and realizing what these types of foods do as far as behaviors long term on people, it's why we came out so strongly opposing that message of if it fits your macros, it's okay. Because we know what inevitably happens to these people is they, you justify saying, okay, it fits my macros and one comes in. And then when you're not, for some reason, weighing and measuring and following your diet, you've now allowed all these processed foods into your diet on a regular basis, and it makes it extremely difficult for somebody, especially if you lack self-awareness, to control that. Oh, totally. You know, it's funny, it took me a while to figure this out, but at some point I realized it's always hard to get clients to eat properly or whatever, right? And I remember when this light bulb went off for me, I said, whoa, it's about the processed foods. What if I just tell people one thing? What if I just say, let's mostly eliminate heavily processed foods out of your diet and then just eat as much as you want? And my clients looked at me like, what, what do you mean eat as much? Eat until you're satisfied. You know, make sure you're balanced. So I don't want you just to eat one food or whatever, but eat as much as you want and just don't eat heavily processed foods and let's see what happens. Every single person lost weight. I remember that. Every single person lost weight because naturally they ate appropriately for their bodies. They were not no, they were no longer. They were satiated. That's it. Because you're satiety level, which is supposed to be here, which is natural, keeps you here because your body doesn't want to be overweight. It doesn't. I know that the mentality is, oh, we evolved as hunter-gatherers and if you just put food in front of us, we'll eat until we die. That's not true. It was just as bad to kill a buffalo and then eat the shit out of it all at once and make yourself sick back then as it would be now. We still had these natural systems of satiety that told us, okay, that's enough. Now you're full. We've all felt that before, right? That's a natural, but it evolved without heavily processed foods, which we engineered to hijack that to the two to five to 600 calories every single day. So when I eliminate those processed foods, everybody naturally ate less. Everybody naturally lost weight. I remember my clients coming to me being like, this is what they would say to me. They thought there was something magical about the processed food and the whole foods in the sense that whole foods burn fat and processed foods didn't. They come to me and be like, this is weird, Sal. I'm like full all day, but I'm losing weight. What is it in the processed food that makes me gain fat? And I'm like, you just eat more of it without realizing it. I noticed the same thing with my clients doing that. And also because before that, it was like, well, maybe we'll just have one day where they can indulge a little bit and they can make that like their weekend day where they had sort of a quote unquote cheat day. And we explored that somewhat. But what I found with that was it was just such a powerful response that they get after eating these things that inevitably it would just slowly creep its way back in the diet throughout the week. And it was one of those things where it was just a craving that it was a constant tug of war of this craving. So the entire week, all they could think and obsess about is getting back to that state. Well, not only that, I mean, that message promotes the whole binge restrict mentality. I mean, that's why again, we came out opposed on that too. It was another thing that we shook up early on in the space was these cheat days that everybody was promoting in the space at the time. It was very popular to, hey, if you follow your macros six days a week, you can have this day where you kind of go bananas and can you get in shape doing that? Yeah, sure, you can get in shape that way. But the behaviors and the relationship that you build with food by doing that does not set you up for long-term success. And this is the problem that's going on in our space. And this is why you get those clients that we would get that are just heartbroken because they try. I try to do all these things and I fail all the time and I always end up back here is because they hear this stuff from these fitness leaders that are putting this information out that are really setting these people up for failure. Yeah, now here's the other side of the coin with the obesity epidemic. This is the other side of where we've really messed up. We've been selling the wrong paradigm around fitness to people, to the average person who's trying to lose weight. The way that it's been sold forever is like this. You need to move more, exercise more so you can burn more calories. If you burn more calories, then if you burn more calories and you take in, you'll lose weight. And so that's why working out is so important. You just need to go and burn more calories. This is wrong. This approach fails every single time. If you approach exercise through a I'm going to burn calories approach and that's your weight loss approach, you'll fail. You'll fail. 97% of you fail. Studies prove it. Again, in my experience, I know yours is spirits. It fails almost every single time. And it fails for the following reasons. Exercise, although it does burn calories, if that's all you value it for, then you'll end up picking the forms of exercise that burn the most calories and you'll stop paying attention to the adaptations that those forms of exercise cause in the body. And over time, your body actually does a great job of bringing you back down to homeostasis. It will actually slow your metabolism down so you're not burning a ton more extra calories. And again, there's studies that are remarkable on this when they study modern hunter-gatherers and they find that these people who move like crazy don't burn that many more calories than the average person and it makes sense, right? It doesn't make sense for your body to burn 6,000 calories a day because you're moving all the time in when we evolve without that much food. The paradigm that we need to promote is the following. Forget the calorie burn from exercise. What is the adaptation that this form of exercise is promoting? And is that adaptation going to benefit you in modern society? When you look at it that way, it becomes very clear what you want to do is build strength and build muscle. Yeah, what we need to promote is ways to build muscle and we need to get those ratios back like to the beginning of this conversation of what people don't realize is what your body consists of completely. And if you're going to be honest with yourself, if you're not lifting weights or weight training at all, you may be slimming down, but what are you consisting of? Is it mostly fat or are you balancing that out with a healthy amount of muscle to bring that percentage down? It's also important that you know where to start with this too though, right? So even if we just cut out, okay, this person's not going to just try and burn a ton of calories and run or do a lot of cardiovascular activity and they're hearing the message, okay, I need to start strength training. That doesn't mean you go and you strength train five to seven days a week. If you got somebody who is obese and lives a pretty sedentary lifestyle and is never really weight trained much, knowing to start them off slow on a few things and build upon that is really important too. Yes, because again, if you look at exercises as a way to elicit adaptation, then you don't need much to get the body to change. In fact, if you do too much, what ends up happening is your body gets, it prioritizes healing, right? If you over do resistance training, your body's just going to heal. You're not going to build strength. You're not going to build muscle. You're just going to be sore all the time. The appropriate dose is what gets you the best results. And for most people, that appropriate dose isn't much. In fact, most people could get pretty good results resistance training a couple of days a week. And when I say most people, I mean the average person who just generally wants to be fit and healthy. Now what would that couple of days a week of resistance training do? Over time, it starts to build strength, build muscle, speed up the metabolism. So now you burn more calories all the time, whether you exercise or not, but also muscle is very protective. It protects your health, especially in the context of modern life, which is sedentary as hell. When you have more muscle, your body's more sensitive to insulin. It's less likely to develop issues like Alzheimer's and dementia. It balances out hormones. So in men, it'll increase testosterone. Resistance training is a pro tissue form of exercise. Other forms of exercise tend to be anti-tissue. So with resistance training, the main adaptation is build muscle. Other forms of exercise, the adaptation may be build endurance and stamina, but as a result, pare down muscle, maybe lose some body fat. So what we're looking with resistance training is build muscle, the side effect of which being fast metabolism and a leaner body. And here's the best part. This is why you promote it so much. You don't need to do it as much. And I know that the average person is not going to work out every single day consistently. So why don't we give them a form of exercise that they could do a couple of days a week that'll give them the most bang for the buck? The goal is to do the least amount possible to elicit the most amount of change. And what does that look like? It means you just got to do a little bit more what you were doing the week before. And if you're talking to somebody who's doing less than 2,000 steps a day is sedentary on the couch, not doing any cardio, not doing any strength training, literally that person doing a couple sets of body weight squats is already going to set that person in the right direction. Their body will start to change. And you got to remember, this is for the rest of your life. You got plenty of time to scale up and add more. If you're trying to make this a behavioral change, this is something you want to take slow and slowly build just a little bit every single week. And it's probably the number one mistake that I see this person make when they're all motivated and hyped, whether it's a New Year's resolution or their doctor just told them they had to. And so they go from being this sedentary and then all of a sudden, I've got to make this change. And the part that is, it can be very misleading is that the results will happen in the first couple of weeks because you're doing so much. So if you take somebody that sedentary and all of a sudden they go from 2,000 steps a day, they're doing 10,000 steps a day, they're exercising five days a week, then yeah, you'll see a lot of change in that first month. You'll even see more change doing that than what we're trying to tell you right now. But it's not about just 30 days. This is about changing your life forever. And if you want to change your life forever, the goal is to do as little as possible to elicit the most amount of change. Yeah, so what it looks like is if you do it like that where you just burn as many calories as possible and start restricting your, I'm going to eat little calories and just, you'll initially have this real fast response and then you'll have this hard plateau that doesn't go away. If you do it the way we're talking about, it's a snowball. It starts off slow, but it starts to speed up. And then over time, it starts to feel like your body's working for you. It starts to feel like this is my body, my body's working for me, versus what I hear from people who do it the wrong way, which is when they say, I feel like I'm fighting my body. I feel like it's not cooperating. And really, it's the best way to find your individual dose, that right dose. And this is something that a lot of people don't realize is a major factor when you're going to train. You want to train to be able to adapt and to be able to get all the desired attributes that you're going for and not overdo it, not underdo it. You want to find that sweet spot. And the only way to find that sweet spot is to really just gradually sort of go through it and find out what's working the best. Yeah, you know, it's funny. If literally, this is no joke. I know there's a lot of books written on the obesity epidemic and how to solve it. And they're like, all these complicated. Literally, this is it right here. If people just reduce their heavily processed food and take down to about 10% of their diet. So 10% of your diet or less heavily processed food. That's it. Eat like you want to. Enjoy your food. Eat until you're satisfied. And also do resistance training twice a week. Because that, like I said, that fortifies your body. It makes your body resilient to illness, to chronic illness and improves your health. Just do those two things. That's it. Which, yes, I know they're big things, but they're much easier and simpler than all the other stuff that people try to do. If you just did those two things, we would solve the obesity epidemic. The other thing that I would add to that, and I find myself having this conversation more today than I did the previous 10 years as a trainer. And that is increase awareness around what you're doing by not being distracted when you're consuming food. Totally. We're in a whole, we have a whole different monster today than we just did 20 years ago. When you talk about cell phones and television and Netflix and streaming stuff, I mean, it's so easy to become distracted while you're doing this. And so I've had a lot, you talk about having a lot of success just telling people to eat whole food, say eat whatever you want, and they lose weight. I've had a lot of success just telling people don't even front of the TV or your phone. Just literally don't do that. And that in itself makes you more aware more present of what you're doing. And most people know what binging looks like or overeating looks like. And if you're just paying attention to it, a lot of times that will, that'll kick in right there and you'll stop that behavior. But if you're mindlessly eating because you're, you know, sucked into Netflix or you're on your phone and you're scrolling, it's very easy to get distracted and they over consume. This is one of the strategies that I would teach clients was to just create barriers that would encourage awareness. So like an example would be, you know, I have a client who says, yeah, I know, you know, heavily processed foods, but I really like Lay's potato chips. I'll use an example. I love potato chips, one of my favorite things. So does that mean I can never eat potato chips? I say, well, no. You can eat potato chips. And the reason why I would say that, by the way, is I know if you do a hard restriction, you just, people tend to go in the other direction. They rebel. So I'd say, here's the deal. If you really want potato chips, drive to the store and buy yourself a single serving. So don't say to yourself, I can't have them. Say to yourself that they're not in the house. But if I really want them, then I'll drive to the store and buy myself a single serving of, you know, a small bag of potato chips. Now what this usually resulted in was people more often than not not eating the potato chips. But sometimes they would get in the car, drive there and get it and enjoy it. But what it did is it created a barrier, right? Cause what happens with heavily processed foods is they're instantly available. Of course, they overcome your systems of satiety. You're distracted in front of the TV. It's right there. So it becomes an impulse, impulse grab, impulse grab. But if you create a barrier that says, gotta drive to the store. Now you stop, you think about it. Do I really want it? Oh, I know I'm okay. I'm grabbing that. Maybe I shouldn't. You know what, let me eat this. Let me eat this apple. It's the awareness. It's the awareness part of it. It forces you to do that. You're driving for 10 minutes to the store. You're thinking about what you're about to do. A lot of people wake up in that time. You're right. Go ahead. Yeah, any method that you can apply that will slow the entire process down is going to be a lot more effective. So even just, you know, like focusing on you chewing your food and just slowing your heart right down and just, you know, being in a place where you are observing exactly what you're doing. It's all about being present Do you remember that moment that we had that Sal talked about? He hasn't talked about in a long time but he used to talk about all the time after it happened with Paul Chek. Remember when he used to bow his head and close his eyes, yet we knew that he, you know, he wasn't Christian and he didn't really pray or anything like that. And so you were like, what are you doing right now? Like I know this guy's not praying. So and he was literally just taking a moment before he consumed the food to basically ask himself, am I nourishing my body? Am I doing something that's going to help my body? And that moment right there is enough to help that person be present and realize what they're doing. It's a moment of awareness. If you think back to the last time you binge ate something, you, if you really think back to it, what you'll find is that you weren't even concentrating on the food in your mouth. You're chewing it while you're reaching for the other rush. It's a rush to get it in. Get it as fast as possible because I don't care about the one that's in my mouth, even though that's the only one I can taste. I care about the next one that's coming. It's a very unaware, impulsive process. Funny, they do studies on having people use their non-dominant hand. So silly. Like, if you're right-handed, eat with your left hand or they'll do studies that say, in between bites, put your fork down or don't drink fluids while you're eating. And people eat less calories. When they do that, because why? They're just more aware. They're just focused. They're just more aware. Well, there's a viral diet way back when that happened with the chewing. I can't remember what it was titled or what it was called, but it was just forcing people to chew like 50 something times. Yeah, the fact that you had to count why you chew made you think about it, become president in that moment, cause you to eat way less. Isn't that funny? Yeah. It's a very, very interesting thing that awareness brings. Now, here's something that's interesting. If this is you, if you're thinking yourself like, I'm going to try this, it's not as easy as it sounds because here's what you may actually find. You may actually find yourself, and I've seen this with clients, fighting yourself to not be aware because bring awareness makes you realize, ah, this is what I'm doing. I actually would have clients that would tell me, I know you told me before I eat to write down how I feel, because what I would tell clients, it's okay, one strategy was before you eat anything, write in a journal how you feel and what you're going to eat. And really it wasn't to have them write, it was just to have them slow down and pay attention. But then they'd come to me and be like, oh, I ate four, five Oreo cookies yesterday, I ate a whole sleeve of cookies yesterday or whatever. I'd say, well, did you write in your journal to be like, no, about how come? I didn't want to. They didn't want to become aware of what they were about to do. So keep that in mind, if this is something you're going to practice, you may actually find yourself purposely avoiding those barriers or avoiding ways of bringing awareness because you don't want to deal with the fact that you may be doing this. Well, the truth is, and we've talked about this many times, is that you really should consider, like if this is somebody listening right now and this is you, consider actually having a therapist to talk to while you're also going through this journey, because many times you want to be distracted, you don't want to be present, you don't want to be self-aware, and you're medicating with the food. And so asking someone to do these things when they still haven't addressed the root cause of what's going on in their life, I think, and I don't know if I've ever. There may be trauma, there may be pain there that, you know, that's all wrapped into it. And so I think that's a great advice is to really bring somebody in that can help you through that. I don't think I've ever trained anybody that was obese and it wasn't because they just didn't know about food, they didn't know about exercise. It's almost always, if always, if not always. It was their drug. Yeah, there was something else that was going on, that's totally not related to exercise and diet and stuff going on in their life or has been going on in their life since they were a child, that they haven't addressed and it was their way of medicating. And because food is accepted as good, right, it's very easy to fall into that trap of medicating with it like a drug. No, you're right, because when you eat, especially when you eat something that's hyper palatable, it brings you pleasure. So if you're stressed out or tired or anxious or angry or whatever, eating that food brings you that temporary feeling or distraction of pleasure. And so this becomes a really easy way to distract yourself. And so when you become more aware, when you stop yourself, what you've done is you've taken away your favorite way to medicate yourself. That doesn't take away the feelings of why you were doing it in the first place. And so this is why sometimes it's challenging. It's like, you know, I did bring awareness to my eating and now I have to deal with my anxiety or now I have to deal with whatever. And that's okay, that's okay. That's the challenging part, but here's the deal. Imagine you find better ways to deal with how you feel, right? How's that going to feel? It's going to feel good. It's going to feel like you're taking care of yourself. And that's kind of how we talk. That's what we said earlier on this podcast. So there's your ways to solve this obesity epidemic. Number one, dramatically reduce your heavily processed food consumption. Number two, lift weights. And number three, try to bring awareness around what you're doing. Just do those three things right there and I can guarantee you the vast majority of people listening and watching this podcast will solve their obesity problem. Look, if you like this podcast and you like our information, go to mindpumpfree.com. Go check out all of our guides. We've got a lot of great written information. You can also find all of us on Instagram. You can find Justin at Mind Pump Justin. You can find me at Mind Pump Sal and Adam at Mind Pump Adam. Emotional intelligence. You have to be able to understand the filter the way other people are looking at things. And if you don't understand and comprehend that, you will never, ever speak to the mass audience. You're only going to speak to a selective few. Leadership is the most important element of any...