 How many of you think it makes sense to combine your diet and fitness programs together? We don't think you should. They're njrew22.com here with another low carb, keto, carnivore, chat. I got a little bit of a mess going on here. I was fixing my tractor this past weekend. A lot of times when it comes to a health improvement, you'll see people combining their diet and their gym. And it's this whole big complicated mess. You can get really confused when you say I'm going to go to the gym, I'm going to work out five days a week, I'm going to do this, I'm going to cross fit, I'm going to eat right. And you may certainly experience positive gains with just being healthier and more active in general. But you don't really know what's working and what isn't. It's not a good experiment to perform on yourself. And I've seen this happen with a lot of people, myself included, where if you had a good week at the gym, I'm going to reward myself with some sandwiches or disgusting junk food. And that just holds you back. And you really don't know how to be in tune with your body if you have, let's say, a heightened sense of fitness, which never lasts, only for the top 5% of people, does it really become a lifestyle. The second thing is that people get sold on these before and after images. Here's this fat guy or this fat girl, and oh, I did this gym program and I ate right, and look what happened in 30 days or six months. They have this before and after. And everybody thinks that when they perform whatever program or engage in any program, I can't speak today for some reason, that they're going to get this body. And that's what sells them, that image of a body. Instead of just getting the fundamentals worked out, so it's sustainable for a very long time. This is why people go on these flip-flop diets, the yo-yo diets they're called. I'm going to do January 1st, I'm going to go on Atkins and they lose 10 pounds, they feel their self-confidence goes up a notch or two, and then they just slip and fall back and most of the time worse off than they were when they started. So it mucks up everything. So my suggestion is to start with the diet. Get your food, because I believe 90% of your health comes from what you put in your body. The workout should be the cherry on the cake, no pun intended. I mean, it always makes sense to be an active person. You do not want to sit in front of the television and binge watch, even if you're on a good diet. It's just probably not a good idea to be sedentary. Some people have sedentary jobs, you know, a lot of the tech jobs, nobody's really doing anything. That's why they feel that they have to compensate with some activity. And I guess busy people have to go to the gym just to get their fitness or stretch their body out. Sure, I guess why not, but don't make it into this crazy thing where you think that you're working out is making a difference. If you have to squeeze in a little bit of activity now and then, that's probably not a bad thing, but I wouldn't put too much emphasis on it. Focus on the diet, and that's what we're doing. We've lost probably around 90 pounds since our worst, and I'm guessing I have 10 to 20 more to go before I want to bottom out where I can't really go any lower. I don't want to become emaciated. Obviously, I'm busy too. I work. I have a lot of household responsibilities and kids and so on, and I'm definitely not sitting around. But I'm going to get to the point because I know I have extra body fat to lose, and we're taking our time with it. We're not taking our time in the respect that I'm not doing anything about it. Oh, I'm just going to... I eat low carb all the time, and the weight comes off, sometimes three pounds every couple of months. But I have a chart, and it's going down, down, down, down, down. Maybe next year when I truly feel like I'm at the... As far as I can go in terms of perfecting the diet, then we will focus on bringing back the muscle mass. I'm sure you could argue all... If you do have the perfect low carb diet, or a carnivore keto diet, then sure, it probably is not harmful to combine it with a fitness program. But it's still hard to figure out what works. For me, all the things you read aren't true, and they may not even be true for you if it's true for me. So you have to figure out exactly what... Once you can iron out and big stamp of approval your diet, and you know what works and what doesn't, then I suppose it probably wouldn't hurt. I could probably start doing the gym now and quite likely accelerate my achievements. I'll probably drop 20 pounds in two months if I combine this current diet with a serious three to four day a week strength training program. But I just don't want to do it. I want to make sure that I know how far I can go. And it's possible that my current expenditure level for energy is not high enough to lose weight rapidly. I doubt that. I think it will continue getting better. So just be careful with these quick things. The 30 day things. I want 30 day results or two month results. When you correct your food intake, it's going to take a long time. I would say two to three years at least. You'll lose maybe half your weight in the first month or two. And then the last part is always the hardest. Along with the mistakes you make or alcohol, that's the thing I'm working on right now. I'm really trying to find a correlation between alcohol and body fat loss. And I think it was possible, and this is just an initial theory I have, but it was easily possible to lose weight and enjoy regular alcoholic beverages and lose weight. And then you may hit a plateau on the way down to the point where you probably have to go several days in a row every week to get another few pounds knocked off the block. Because I think alcohol in your body, if you don't eat bad, alcohol doesn't necessarily like vodka, for instance, or low carb seltzers. Don't make it gain weight, but they make it a whole lot harder for you to burn that stored body fat. So taking days off, I've noticed when I go on these streaks where I limit my alcohol consumption tremendously, that improves my body fat composition even more. So I'm working that out. If I figure that out, then it's going to be on to building myself back up again. So that's my advice for you. Diet first, figure it out, perfect it. And then get down to where you want to go in terms of body size, clothing size, and then continue the diet and then start your fitness program. That's our recommendation based on experience and observations. Have a good week ahead and enjoy those juicy burgers without the bun.