 This one has a big impact though, mostly on behaviors. I agree with you, Adam. It's like when you're not getting good sleep, your behaviors are going to point you more towards obesity than not. You get that brain fog. I mean, it's going to affect your energies throughout the day. So there's just a lot of, um, you know, cause and effect to not getting good sleep, um, that lead towards like, you know, these behavioral things that you got to adjust. Well, I'm less likely to do my workout. I'm less likely to be active and move or just move around through the day. Cause I'm, I'm not feeling well. And then on top of that, I'm also going to make poor food choices. Those are three big rocks when it comes to trying to, with weight management and just simply not focusing on your sleep could be impacting that. And this is again, an area that is a young, as a young trainer, I didn't focus a lot here and I realize what an impact it makes on all the other things that I think are so important. And so now it's become an area where it's like, that's a top priority when I'm asking a client like, if you're not fully recovered, you're not giving your body the chance to, you know, rebuild it and, and you're just, you're constantly in a day with stress and you're not really like being able to filter that out and fully recover. All right. It's time for some hard truths. Uh, obesity. It's not your genetics. Your genetics are not why you're obese. If you are obese, it's about your lifestyle and the environment that you're in. But I'm big boned. I know I catch some fire. I know, you know, so first off, I want to be really clear. Like this in no way means I don't have empathy for the millions of people that struggle with obesity. This is a huge challenge. I devoted my entire career to working with people in this category. I have a deep passion for helping people through this, but I also think it's important to be very honest because, uh, if, if not, then we're not going to get any closer to solving this problem. And one of the biggest lies that people believe or that they're told is that the reason why they're obese is because, um, it's their genetics. They have no control over it. I know my parents are overweight. My uncle and aunts are overweight. Therefore, um, like there's nothing I can do about it. It looks like there's no way out if you have that kind of mentality going into it. Yes. A hundred percent. And, and that's just, uh, totally false. This is factually, uh, false. Obesity is not humans didn't evolve, uh, to be obese. I mean, you go back, I don't know, uh, 150 years ago, uh, and obesity was quite rare. In fact, uh, I love this example to a rich man's disease. In fact, yeah, if you were obese, it meant that you had like access to a lot of food and resources. And what was considered obese then is not what they consider it now. I love using this example of the, the picture of the, the circus, you know, free show fat man from the late 1800s. So back in those days, circuses do had these traveling circuses. And one of the things that they would have was called a freak show. It was really kind of a mean, you know, it would never fly today, obviously, but they would have people that look different. Either they were born with a genetic deformity or maybe someone was really tall or had a hormone issue or there's a kid with, you know, you know, missing fingers or whatever. And they would present these people like Siamese twins, for example, right? And they would be in this, what they would call freak show and people would pay money to look at them because it was this oddity, right? It was this wild thing you never seen before. Well, these freak shows usually would have a, or oftentimes would have a, a, what they would call the fat man or the fat woman. And they were so obese for the time. So we're like, again, late 1800s, early 1900s, they were so obese that people would pay money to go and look at them and be like, wow, look at that. That's crazy. Now what's crazy is we have pictures of these people. So we have pictures of these, you know, like I said, late 1800s, early 1900s, circus, you know, performers or acts or whatever. And these people today would, they wouldn't stick out at all. Like nobody would, nobody would look at them and be like, oh my gosh, that's the strangest thing they would fit right in. And our genetics did not change in 150 or so radically that that it went from being so rare that people paid money to look at it to that now it's, it's just, it's so common that it's not a big deal. Now, before we go into the list of things that you would probably have as far as a conversation to this client, right? So clients says, let's say you have a client, they're well over a hundred pounds overweight and they tell you the genetic thing, you know, oh, my parents or I'm just my genetics, I'm screwed before you start diving into these 10 things that we listed. What are some things that are people are affected by their genetics? What are some things? What are, because we do know that genetics play a big role in how much muscle you build. Some people do lose body fat a lot faster than other people. Some people are much smarter naturally than other people. So genetics do play a role. So how do you communicate that to the client on what what role they do have in their life? Yeah, well, there's two things. One is that you, if you have your genetics that you're born with, it doesn't make sense to focus on it because you can't change it. So really, okay, what am I going to do now? So that's one. But two, there's definitely a range, right? There's going to be people who are naturally skinny or ripped and people who are heavier and thicker and tend to store more body fat, for example. But it's a range that's like this, like you're looking at a, you know, 15 to 20 pound range, not a 60 pound or 100 pound range. So that's the part that genetics doesn't account for. Like to have the kinds of genetics that would make you be 100 pounds overweight would be extremely rare, be more rare than the types of genetics that would make someone seven feet tall. It just, it just doesn't happen. Well, that was 15 to 20, 30 pounds. Yes. That's almost like attributing us, somebody who is like a professional athlete to all genetics, but they didn't put any work in, right? It's like the same thing. But even then, like professional athlete genetics are super rare, right? So that's my point. That's my point is that it's so rare. And then it's also saying that you, other factors don't play a role. It's like, yes, there is. It's a very small percentage that genetics do play a big role on that. But then there are so many other things that contribute to that person being that professional athlete, not simply their genetics didn't get them to the MBA. Yeah. That's my point. If you took the genetics of a human from a thousand years ago, you wouldn't be able to decipher if they were from a thousand years ago or from today. Okay. So that, that thing's really changed. There haven't been these radical evolution, you know, evolutionary changes to us in a thousand years, let alone 150 years, what's radically changed is our environment and our lifestyle. So we have bodies that evolved to live a particular way, and then we radically change the environment. And that's the reason why we say it totally. I mean, environment, but also to like epigenetics in terms of like certain conditions that may be expressed because of lifestyle, environment, you know, that stuff sort of triggering and affecting things that happen. But, you know, in terms of like, if there's history of those things, like if you apply better lifestyle behaviors, better like nutritional choices, you know, exercise, like there's ways to kind of stave off some of these conditions from ever, you know, kind of being part of your life. Do you guys also believe that for every disadvantage that someone might have genetically, that they also possess an advantage too? Well, they exist for a reason, except for maybe the, you know, the genetic mutations that cause death and stuff like that. Like for example. Malaria and... Yes, like sickle cell, anemia, that gene like prevents people from getting malaria or getting severe malaria, right? The genetics for, they're finding out people who have issues with deciphering letters and dyslexia, for example, that they do better navigating and finding direction in certain circumstances, if I'm not mistaken. People with ADD, for example, probably are, you know, we're better at, you know, taking risks and, you know, having thoughts that were more creative and thinking outside the box. So there's a lot of theories around that. But generally speaking, like this, the obesity that we see now, it's not a genetic thing. And if you see your family members that live that are that way, because that's what people will point to. Well, that's not true because my mom and my dad and my siblings, it's because you all have the same lifestyle. Yeah. That's the commonality. I think that's the part that's hard to, I mean, from the outside, it's easier to see. It's hard to see from the inside because you see, you know, your environment, your parents, whoever, they're always, they always look this way and it always seems like this is what I'm inevitably going to become because this is what our family looks like when, in fact, you know, if you really look at the environment and how much, you know, that played a role in terms of the sedentary part, the eating, you know, all of that. And you really like are honest about that. You could, you could start to see it. Well, the reason why I brought that question up was because what I found with my clients that, you know, that would blame their genetics and let's just say that they, let's say they are at a disadvantage, right? That they do put on body fat easier, relatively quick, like they can gain weight in comparison to maybe somebody else, a different body type. Those same clients tend to also have an easier time building muscle than the than my client saved for on the other end of the spectrum, right? I have the super, super skinny kid who can't put on any weight, struggles, thinks he eats all the time and he just cannot gain a single pound. And then I have the other extreme, you know, kid who feels like, man, I just look at bad food or look at, I look at a donut and it puts on, I put on body, body gain mass, but maybe you haven't tried building like muscle and that mass on. And that's what I meant by if you guys believe that there's for every disadvantage, there's an advantage that someone has to gain in a situation like that. And that's been my experience training so many clients like this is like, OK, so we tend to struggle with the food and staying in check there. We tend to struggle with moving in a lot of activity right there. But we do build muscle really easily. So that that could be work to our advantage if we focus on that first. So yeah. And again, look at all the stuff that's clear with genetics, like look at height, right? There's definitely men that are five foot two. And then there's men that are seven foot two. But most most men are in this kind of range, right? So that's that's what obesity is. Most of us have this genetics that will put us within this particular range, which is somewhere in the middle. The outlier where you're 70 pounds, 80 pounds, 100 pounds overweight. That is not genetics. The genetics would be like Justin and I having the same lifestyle and, you know, he carries five percent more body fat than I do. Like that would be genetics, right? Not if him and I have the same lifestyle and I'm 80 pounds more body fat than him. That's not something I could say that genetics would do. So this the list that we're going to go down these are these are the environmental things and the changes that have happened to how we live and move that all play a role in obesity. Some play a bigger role than others. But all of these you have the ability to influence. So what we're going to go through these are things that you can change or at least be aware of and work with and manipulate that will have an impact on the fact that you are dealing with obesity. All right, everybody, here's the giveaway for today's amazing and controversial episode. I know this episode is going to stir up some controversy, even though it shouldn't, but it will. Here's the giveaway today. Maps Prime and Maps Prime Pro, the correctional exercise combination that is great for movement patterns, mobility, and preventing or helping you with chronic pain, getting you stronger with less pain. Anyway, this is how you can win, right? So leave a comment below in the first 24 hours that we drop this episode. Discussing this episode, start a good conversation. Also, subscribe to this channel, turn on notifications. If you do all those things, we'll notify you in the comment section that you won Maps Prime and Maps Prime Pro. Also, we got a sale going on right now. We have bundled together multiple different combinations of Maps workout programs. Like the best combinations we can think of, the ones that are most popular, we've put together a whole bunch of them. Here's the deal. Every single bundle you see at maps august.com, every single bundle, each one is only $99.99. Okay, so that's the price of one program. But in these bundles, you'll get two or three programs. So $99.99 for any bundle you find on maps august.com. All right, here comes the show. Now, the first one I think is the biggest contributor by far because everything we go through as a contributor. But this one by far is the biggest thing. And that is that you eat a diet that is largely comprised of hyper palatable, ultra processed foods. The last time I checked, the average American diet was made up of 70% of these types of foods, meaning if you took an American's food for the whole day, 70% of that that the food would be what's considered hyper palatable ultra processed, meaning foods that come in wrappers or boxes, hot, you know, long shelf life, lots and lots and lots of ingredients engineered essentially engineered foods with food ingredients, but turned into things packed with calories. Yeah, well, they just turned into things like chips or cookies or a frozen food or a pizza or those types of things. Now, why are these contributing to obesity? They make you overeat fact. This is hands down a fact they have the best studies on nutrition lately are the ones done on these foods. And they in these studies in controlled settings where people are literally in a lab, and then they take groups and they switch the groups to see if they react the same or whatever, about five to 600 more calories a day from eating these foods just left to their own devices. That's a lot like an extra five to 600 calories a day. That's when I put somebody on a bulk. That's how I but a bump their calories. So in other words, if your diet is made up of largely ultra processed foods, you are you're consuming probably 600 more calories than you would if your diet was not made up of these types of it's it's so wild how this works. One of the best examples I think we talked about this a long time ago on the show. And there was an episode man versus food. Oh, Chris Christer brought this up. Oh, yeah. Yeah, on our episode. And he and he's he's eating. It was a ice cream out of like a sink. I was like, I remember. Kitchen sink. I remember seeing the episode. And I think that was the challenge that can you finish a whole kitchen sink of ice cream or something like that. It was like an hour or something. Yeah, something crazy. Then he's he's like crushing it. And you see towards the end, like he's getting sick, like he's he's gonna throw up and he can't eat anymore. And he orders a basket of french fries. Yeah, and ultra salty, super salty, super thousand calories, right? Of plus of french fries and eats the french fries. And then the french fries help him finish the ice cream. Yeah, to eat more to be able to eat more. Yeah, that's that to me was like, it's obviously an exaggerated version of how most people eat on a daily basis. But what I think it highlights is how how easily that you can hijack hijack your body's natural systems that are trying to tell you your stuff by doing that. Just last night, I was actually eating these. I love these. They're wasabi, soy almonds. They're like spicy. Oh, yeah. And then I also eat them with these like salted pretzels. And it's crazy because if I if I was eating just dry almonds by themselves, like no, no salt, no flavor, nothing like that, I would only be able to eat a few of those. But man, bouncing back and forth between the salty pretzels and then the spicy, I could eat like a whole bag of those things going back and forth to those versus if I was just eating raw almonds, how quickly I would be like over it after we've all experienced 25 to 30 novelty. Yeah, we've all experienced seeking that. Yeah. How many times have you had a big meal and you're like, oh, man, I'm so stuffed. There's no way I could eat anymore. And then they bring out dessert. Oh, all of a sudden I can eat a little more. Right. Like this is these are the systems of satiety that we have. And what these foods, when you look at ultra processed foods, a lot of money goes into making these foods. There's research and development. So like a Dorito, when that was invented, like they put a lot of research in and they fine tuned it, right? Most of the money that goes into these foods goes into making them so palatable that you overeat them. That's what makes them money. So they're engineered this way. Well, that's sort of the danger of just placing most of your value in the flavor and of what you're consuming. Right. And that's just something like you got to look to more values that are there in terms of like how it's nourishing you, like what you know, what need this is filling in terms of like your body consuming it, because if we're just going to keep going on the flavor route, inevitably you're going to come to these hyper palatable foods and it's it's going to be mind blowing for you because they have engineered it to in a way where it's just like on an experience like nothing else like a regular fruit, vegetable and grain could provide. Dude, you know, this isn't on your list, but what Justin's saying right now has got me like thinking like, how much of this do you think, too, is like just being conditioned by like advertising and stuff like that? Like that's something that's relatively new since television and radio and stuff like that, right? It's been around where we've been able to connect like these super hyper palatable foods to like moments and like cool things. Like you see if you watch to convert like movie theaters, McDonald's commercials, movie theaters, like they did such a good job of of making these foods ballpark connect to happy good time and stuff like that. And so not only is it already hijacking your body's natural signs of satiety, but then in addition to that, you have this nostalgia about it of like, oh, eating the ball, the hot dog reminds me of the going to the ballpark with my dad or what's always been that way. Food's always been connected to culture always. They just took that and ran what's I mean? I mean, you're right. It has we've always sell all cultures have celebrated with food. But we took it to like we put on steroids when it came to television, right? Oh, 100 percent to market. I mean, the first the first widely consumed, you know, ultra processed foods. I mean, the ultra processed foods served a need at one point. You needed foods that had a long shelf life. You know, you needed spam for soldiers, you know, stationed in the Pacific, right? This, by the way, by spam is a if it considered a food in Hawaii, because like Hawaiian, that's not a traditional Hawaiian food, but we had soldiers stationed there, spam lasts a long time. It's processed meat. Great way to have people eat meat over there. Now it's part of the cuisine. Look what the astronauts have to eat. It's just like, yeah, it makes sense. Like they've solved problems in terms of situations like that and, you know, and food being scarce like back back when like that was a big issue for people. So they're able to preserve here. I'll tell you what right now, get get a bag of Doritos and take the ingredients out. Take the corn. Take the pepper. Take eat all this ingredients separate. Could you eat? Could you eat all the ingredients, a bag of the ingredients or would you have to eat the bag of chips, right? So there's a science to it. And if you and I used to get people lose weight all the time by doing this, eat until you're satisfied. Just avoid these foods. Watch what happens. You lose weight. These foods now are most of our diet. And if you if you look at the consumption of these foods, you could line up the the how how much of our diet is made up of heavily processed foods with the rise in obesity. And this is why they're like it's carbs that are making us fat. It's fat that are making us fat. Salt is bad for you. No, it's these processed foods that tend to have combinations of these things in ways that make us just make them so resistible. So that's one of the main reasons why there's so much obesity. Yeah, I mean, you could also make the case for your second one is really close there, too. And I think I flip flop back and forth on what I believe is is is more of a problem. And that's the the movement. Yeah, we just don't move. We don't. I mean, I just shared a recent story of, you know, this epiphany I had with doing chores with my son in the backyard. And it's like we've just that used to be daily life. You know, there wasn't an outsource that to somebody else to do. We didn't have services that did things like that. Like you took care of your land that you lived on. And and I've I've worked that life, right? So from from like literally from 15 to 20, I worked on a ranch and got to see that life. And it starts at 430 in the morning and it don't end till about 10 o'clock at night. And 95% of everything is very physical. Like you just burn so many calories by doing that. So sometimes I think. I mean, even if you were eating Doritos and ice cream and all this crap all day long, the amount that you have to move during the day to do all this physical labor would almost probably cancel. Well, it would it would definitely help with your health. I mean, they've done studies on that and find that the calories play a bigger role. However, lack of activity contributes to poor health, poor hormone health, which stand down the road. I think definitely contributes to fat gain. It's funny because we solve the activity problem because usually a problem, right? Like backbreaking labor. I can't move. I'm so tired, right? This is just so tough, right? We solved all that for labor, but kids always moved a lot until recently. Now entertainment, like we always play. Like when we were kids, like most jobs in the 90s were desk jobs in the 90s, too, just like they are today. Let's so, but still quite a bit. Like I don't know. I don't know. Everybody wasn't doing crazy hard labor in the 90s, but every kid was playing outside. Like when I was a kid, you didn't have to make a play that you just went outside and their kids playing today. Kids don't even move. You know, kids, my uncle was just in town. He was and he's ex-military and he's in his he's in his late 60s and he was telling I believe was Fort Bragg where he was stationed. And he said he hadn't been there in 30 years, 30 plus years. And he just went back there not that long ago. And he just wanted to see how much of the base looked the same and like and it was like completely different. And he was like walking around, asking people stuff, you know, where's this? Where's that? Like he didn't know where the barracks were. They look like these like super like luxurious hotels now in comparison to what they used to look like and everything. And you know, it was like a weekday or so that he's like, where where are all the soldiers? Where's everybody at? And they're like, oh, they're they're in their barracks playing video games. And he's like when he's telling me the story that he was when I was he was Adam, we would be there. You'd always see, you know, 10, 15 people running. People over here would be walking or throwing the Frisbee or throwing the ball. Just you would see all these soldiers out just being active outside. They would. None of them would be in their barracks where it's completely flip flopped to where nobody was outside. Everybody's in there plugged in on their their gaming consoles and sitting in front of in front of their TVs like gaming with each other all day long. It's like how great. And you're talking about not even a lifetime. That's just 30 years ago. How much we have dramatically shifted like behaviors like that that were so norm to do that to now nobody does that. It's crazy, which leads to the next one, which is you have little muscle. We have a muscle and strength problem today. They do studies where they look at grip strength and college aged males today have the strength of 60 year old men. Yeah. In the 1980s, because they've done these, they've tracked these over the decades. Muscle is one of the most protective tissues on the body. It burns calories. So when you have more muscle, you have faster metabolism, which means you can burn more calories than you take in, which negates the negative effects of consuming like too much sugar or inflammatory fat. So you're more likely to stay lean because you have more muscle. It keeps you insulin sensitive, helps you process sugars. Muscles are very protective and we just don't have a lot of muscle because we don't move much. So like, for example, when we were kids, you guys remember the presidential fitness award test? Yeah. What it always involved what pull ups for boys, right? And girls was a hang dead hang. So I remember you had to go up and do pull ups. And I don't remember how many you did would qualify you for the presidential fitness award. They changed that. Nobody does pull ups anymore. Now the guys have to do a dead hang. And I think it's a body row, if I'm not mistaken, for the girls. They change the standards completely. So at least they're still doing it some places. And they change it completely. Did you know that they changed the standard for throwing a grenade in the military? Yeah, because they couldn't throw as far like we don't have as much muscle. So we don't have this protective tissue because look, we talk about this all the time on the show. If you had to pick one form of exercise to fix your obesity, it'd be to do strength training because it builds muscle and muscle really makes a huge impact on calorie burn and hormones and all that stuff. So well, if you don't train it and use it, you lose it too. Muscle, it's totally adaptive. It goes one way or the other way depending on what you do. Right. Right. So if we're not, if you're not built, if you're not building or working towards building muscle, it's going the opposite direction. So I think that's a huge problem right now. 100%. All right. Here's the next one. And this one for me is a bit personal because I, you know, I'm a first generation American, my parents were poor Sicilian immigrants and my grandparents are here too. And there's a culture of food that my parents generation and before really had, especially in Southern Italy or Italy in particular. And that is they have this respect for food because there's a culture around it. There's preparation. You know, when my mom was getting Sunday dinner together, it was an all day thing that she was doing. And I'm not making the argument that we need to like go back to, you know, taking two hours to cook dinner. But one of the side effects of the fact that food requires very little preparation or work is that we don't respect it. It's just you don't respect it is when you I mean, I don't know about you guys, but I don't know if you have you done this before, Justin, where if you have your kids make something with you, they're more likely to eat it just because they made it. Yeah, just because they respect it. Yeah, they they understand well, plus they get like some bit of ownership over it. Right. Like I was a part of the process of it. And so yeah, they're way more inclined to want to partake in it. And I do think that's an important thing, especially with kids, is to really like involve them in the process, especially when you're cooking and they understand like the ingredients that are going in there. And I think it's just like anything else. We've removed ourselves from a lot of these things, like even how we, you know, gather meat like and you know, it's uncomfortable to kind of think about how that all works. But like it's convenient for us to just buy at the grocery store now and not have to realize like, you know, there's a whole process of raising an animal to get to this point. There's a whole process of, you know, growing these vegetables to get to a certain ripeness and, you know, and fruit and everything else. And I just, I think we're just disconnected a lot from like all these things. Well, I think there's an easier way to respect it than spending two hours in the kitchen too. And I think what it reminds me of a story you used to share it's all the time of the podcast when, when we had Paul check, we had Paul check come have dinner with us and we know he's not a religious person. And then you saw him kind of pray over his food. And I remember Sal asking him, you know, I thought you weren't religious and what's with the prayer before the food and everything like that. And he, and he's saying he's just, he's taking a moment to ask himself if he's one prepared to eat. Is this food going to nourish his body? Is it like he's respecting it? Yeah, he's respecting the food. So you can be a non religious person and, and still practice something like that. And I tell you, if you do that, hovering over a pop tart, I doubt you're going to be going like, yeah, this is going to nourish my body. It just brings more awareness. You're pausing. Like imagine if you have this impulsive, like I'm going to eat some, you know, some gummy bears and then you pause before you eat. Like, okay, is this nourishing my body? Is this bringing me value? Is this what I need? Yeah, you're like more likely to be like, I don't know if I should eat this. So this is not good for me or I'm only eating this as I'm stressed out or sad or anxious. Absolutely. I think that's why in spiritual practices, prayer before eating exists so much besides the fact that... Yeah, cause I agree with the, obviously hunting and killing your food or cooking it for two hours in the kitchen kind of forces that naturally to happen. But in today's life, that doesn't happen a lot of times. And so another way to a good practice is that simple stopping and praying right before. Yeah. And I mean, this is a later point. So I'm not going to go over it in too much detail, but like just slowing down, like acknowledging that it builds like kind of a barrier there for a lot of those impulses that naturally just drive you towards it. Yeah, it's interesting. I had a family member whose mom was really good at baking. She would make homemade candy. The kids would get involved. They would make homemade potato chips, homemade cookies, and they were not obese. And it was different. Like, you know, make potato chips with your kids versus buying potato chips or make burgers and fries versus buying burgers and fries or make pop tarts versus buying pop tarts. I bet you you're more, you would over consume, you're more likely or you will over consume more often when you don't prepare it yourself versus when you do. And again, I don't think it has to do with specifically the fact that you're doing the work, but rather you just respect it more because you know what goes into it. I like the point you brought up too, Adam, that makes a lot of sense, especially because people are busy. So they're not going to take two hours away out of their time to prepare their food. All right, here's another one. This one's kind of interesting and we're getting more and more evidence that is showing that this is playing a role in some of the poor health that we have. And that's that these what are known as endocrine disrupting chemicals or chemicals that are typically in plastics. Some of them were in detergents. Some of them are in things that make like paper feel smooth that affect our hormone system. They're known as endocrine disrupting because although they're not estrogens, for example, they interact with the estrogen receptor and they can change the way our body store body fat or change our insulin sensitivity. BPA, one of the more common ones, which is now banned. We know that this is one that's out there, but there's a lot of them that are out there and then the combination of them and the amount that we're exposed probably is playing a role in some of this. It's just so easy to, it just sneaks up so easily because if you're not paying attention to that at all and you are consuming water all the time in plastic water bottles and you're not reading the labels of like, what's in your shampoo or in your lotions or like you're constantly, yeah, paper, it's really smooth or like there's, if you don't see that a lot and you're constantly just inundated with these disrupting chemicals, like it's gonna affect you. It's gonna have a physiological effect on you. No, I don't think you ordered these at all and the priority that I think I would discuss them, right? Because I think that- Yes, to be probably lower on the- Yeah, if I'm talking to my client who's really obese and we're checking off all the things like that I want them to like really start to, you know, pay attention to. Unless I do have a very specific client that has some sort of hormone problems and imbalance then maybe this jumps up to priority list, right? Like maybe they've already been abusing this stuff for so long that they have actually have some issues going on hormonally and so this might be an area we try and clean up. Yeah, I think if you tackle the big offenders, you're good. Like glass containers, like so don't use a lot of plastic containers and definitely don't warm up your food in plastic and microwaves, that's big. The cosmetics that you use, just kind of like make sure that they tend to eliminate the known hormone disrupting chemicals. And then you're doing okay. I think you're doing okay. Those are the big ones, like the plastic containers is a big one, especially if you have stuff in plastic containers that you freeze or you warm up or you keep in the car or you compete, you know, you constantly reuse, you know, non-stick, you know, Teflon, that kind of stuff gets into your system. If you get rid of the big offenders, I think you're doing a good job. We work with a company that you can buy products from, public goods and they go through and they make sure the products they sell don't have all these known chemicals. So you can even do something like that. Like, okay, this company's done that for me. I'll go through the different products. I'll get all my products from this company. Yeah, you just adjust your buying habits just a bit just so you're not like surrounded by all these chemicals. Yeah, I think the next one is one that I would 100% be addressing towards the top of the list. And that's the staying up late or not getting good sleep. You know, this radically changed with the invention of electricity. We used to go to bed much earlier because, you know, it's dark. Circadian rhythms, yeah. Now, ever since we had like electric light bulbs, we extended how long we stay up. So this is a modern issue. People used to sleep way more. Well, and I think that this is an area that I didn't really focus on personally until later on, until I really started to realize the effects of it. And it's not like staying up at night is making this person obese, right? Or not getting good sleep is making this person obese. But what I find that's interesting and we've talked about on the show before is the behaviors that come from poor sleep that really, really start to affect you. Now, mind you, you can disrupt obviously hormones and stuff like that by not getting good sleep or being sleep deprived, especially for days at a time or whatever. But what I notice is the cravings. So if you're already somebody who's challenged with hyper-palatable foods and portion control and being mindful and all these things that we're discussing today of like help to help you stay on top of eating in more of a balance, this right here will fucking throw it all off the window. If you are not getting good sleep, man, that is that makes it so much harder to make good choices. Cause now you're, now not only are you already challenged with the normal behaviors that you have, but now you're fighting this internal crazy craving thing that's kicked up that you're not used to because you didn't get really good sleep the night before. And that just makes it 10 times harder. 100%. And there's also direct effects. You're less likely to build muscle if you get just a little, if you don't get great sleep, like I'm not talking about terrible, terrible sleep either. Just constantly not great sleep. You're not going to build muscle as easily, which then can affect metabolism, which then can affect fat storage. Or you can go to bed on time and wake up eight hours later, but you go from watching a bright ass TV, being in a bright room to straight hitting your head on the pillow and expecting your brain to shut off into sleep, essentially wasting an hour and a half where if you wore blue light blocking glasses, for example, or if you're in a dark room, you'd be ready to go to sleep right away and you'd be able to utilize all eight hours. This one has a big impact though, mostly on behaviors. I agree with you, Adam. It's like when you're not getting good sleep, your behaviors are going to point you more towards obesity than not. You get that brain fog. I mean, it's going to affect your energies throughout the day. So there's just a lot of, you know, cause and effect to not getting good sleep that lead towards like, you know, these behavioral things that you got to adjust. Well, I'm less likely to do my workout. I'm less likely to be active and just move around through the day because I'm not feeling well. And then on top of that, I'm also going to make poor food choices. Those are three big rocks when it comes to trying to with weight management and just simply not focusing on your sleep could be impacting that. And this is, again, an area that as a young trainer, I didn't focus a lot here. And I realized what an impact it makes on all the other things that I think are so important. And so now it's become an area where it's like, that's a top priority when I'm asking a client, like how do you sleep? If you're not fully recovered, you're not giving your body the chance to, you know, rebuild and you're just, you're constantly in a day with stress and you're not really like being able to filter that out and fully recover. I remember learning this from a wellness practitioner that worked in my studio. And I actually tried this with some clients where all I did was help them with their sleep and they lost weight. They just, they're from working on their sleep, like 10 pounds, which is pretty interesting. All right, this next one's pretty cool because it's ramped up dramatically over the last few decades and it's eating while distracted. So you may think, well, what does it have to do with being obese? Studies will show that you'll consume about 10 to 15% more calories when you're eating while watching TV or on your phone or distracted. So 10 to 15% more calories. So if you eat 2000 calories a day, that's an additional 200 to 250 calories or 300 calories a day. That's not small just from being distracted. What's interesting about this is this, humans have always liked to do things while they ate, but they were usually very present with other people. It wasn't super common that people ate and were watching TV or whatever. In fact, eating in front of the TV wasn't a thing up until probably aroundies. Well, I'd say around Doug's generation or earlier, where TV dinners became a thing. Yeah, yeah, what were the TV trays that came out? When did the TV trays come out? I don't know, 70s maybe? Yeah, 70s is my guess. We never had them in our house because we had no TV. You know what I watched was, you know what got really popular was who's the famous cooking show? She's got a documentary out right now. Oh, Julia Childs. Julia Childs. Like so the birth of her show became really, really popular for people to make the food and then sit down and watch. Yes, but actually marketing food to be eaten in front of TVs wasn't a thing when TVs first came out. Nobody thought to do it. No, I don't know, so it's the 70s. 1954, Swanson's TV dinners. Oh, TV dinner. That's when they started marketing it and they were like, oh, this is a great pastime. You can sit in front of the TV and eat and it was this novel thing because TVs were relatively new technology and so little by little people started eating in front. It still wasn't a big thing until later where still in the 50s, yes, there were TV dinners but dinner was like traditionally let's go eat together. Then it became more and more a thing where you sit in front of the TV. Now we have our phones. You pull out your, it's right there. It's immediate distraction when you eat and you're distracted and when you're distracted you're not connected to your body. You're not connected to the signals of satiety. And again, the studies will show 10 to 15% more calories. Literally, what does that mean? That means let's reverse this for a second. If you ate exactly the same stuff you eat now but when you eat, you don't have a phone, you don't have a TV, it's just you and your food, you can reliably, you can count on the fact that you'll eat about 10% less calories just from doing that alone. So it sounds like a small thing but it affects your behavior to the point where it actually- Oh yeah, I mean, I would make the case that's more than that because this goes hand in hand with the respecting the food thing that you said earlier because if you're not distracted you're less likely to make bad choices too. We already, the studies already show that you'll eat less of the same foods but if you're not distracted, I mean, I remember just making a rule in my house that just like, okay, we're gonna stop eating food in front of the TV at all. So it's just like, so that eliminates a lot of these snacky foods that you love to do while you're watching movies. And so it's like, and I'm not telling myself I can't have those things, it's just, I gotta sit down at the, and I'm not gonna sit down and make myself a bowl of popcorn at the table and just eat a whole bowl of popcorn. But I assure you it will crush a whole bowl of popcorn watching the movie. Let's be honest, if you're eating those snacky foods and being distracted or you're driving and you have to get something quick or, you know, what are those options look like? Those are the processed, like you're not gonna be eating, like, yes, steak and broccoli just on the road. So like just typically, like that all kind of like folds together. You know, and I'm listening to us have this conversation about all things that I'm very aware that we all allow in and out of our lives. So it's important to know too that I don't think that when I'm talking to a client like this, that it's me standing in my ivory tower, what are we doing with that? Telling them, this is why you're fat is cause all this stuff and you can't ever do these things. It's no, it's like, these are all behaviors that lead to overeating and you have to learn to respect them. It doesn't mean that you can never have, I just went to the movies and had a big old thing of popcorn with my son and had an incredible experience. But that's also something that is not a regular thing that we do and somebody who is put on this much weight has allowed all these things that we're talking about to become regular things in their life. And in order to gain control that you, this is where you have to kind of like become aware of all these behaviors that you're doing. And you'll notice nothing that we're saying is like, eat this many calories, eat this many grams of protein. These foods. Weigh your foods, it's literally just be aware of some of these issues and behaviors. Modify some, take some of the biggest ones and you'll notice the weight loss will just, it'll feel like it's happening on your own, on its own because you've just changed some of these behaviors. All right, this next one is interesting because this wasn't a thing until it became a thing and then that was it, it was everywhere and that's liquid calories. So here's what's interesting. You guys ever look at the size of like a soda when Coke, in the 19, let's say 40s or 50s when people, when it started to really get popular, how small it was compared to what a Coke looks like today. And people weren't drinking sodas or calories with every meal like now is totally acceptable. Like if you had a Coke with your meal, it was because you went to the drive up or you went to this on a date with a girl or whatever. It became very quickly, so much a part of our life that it became a part of dinner became a part of lunch. And then people and kids drank juice all the time. And I mean, before that it was like, you either had a glass of milk or water and milk was for the kids. You give a glass of milk to the kids. They didn't drink cowards like they do. I really saw this explode in like convenience stores, right? Like your 7-Elevens or gas stations, like and just watching the evolution of like, you know, the smaller drinks and then now they have like the actual fountain drinks and the fountain drinks were like a gulp. And then it became, you know, double gulp. And then like super double gulp. And then like, and I saw this because my brother and my dad were just like completely, that was like, we had to stop there so you get the cherry Coke that was like this big. And like, I didn't think anything of it just because that's how we grew up. Well, we've been conditioned to even as kids. I remember my younger brother and sister, it was super common that they always said, which is crazy to me because like Max has still never even had this before, you fill up their little juice boxes like crazy. The Capri Suns and I mean, these things are marketed to kids and it's basically soda for kids. When we were kids. You look at the sugar content and the constant, but then it's marketed like it's healthy for them. When we were kids, like little kids, kids in the 80s, parents thought that was healthy. Oh, why would you give your kid water? Give them apple juice. It's way healthier for them. Now we know better, or a lot of us do, but back then that was it. You got a pack lunch for you when I was a kid in elementary school. You didn't get water. Who the hell gave you water? You drank water in a hose. I see Capri Suns, all these sugary drinks. So you're just conditioning them to adulthood when they just graduate to the other beverages. You know what's interesting? If you go to the South, look at our neighbor in the South, look at Mexico, look at their consumption of sodas. It was not a part of their culture and then it became a big part of the culture and they've actually talked about how this was one of the major contributors to obesity. Mexico had no obesity and then all of a sudden became one of the most obese countries in the world and they talk about how soda was never on the dinner table and then all of a sudden it was sodas everywhere and they say that contributed a huge percentage of calories in the obesity. They got that good Coke there too. They got the super sweet. They got that good Coke there too. So good. All right, so these next couple have more to do with medications that are being used quite a bit that have been shown to contribute to obesity so the next, the first one is antidepressants. Antidepressants, it's pretty consistent. They'll do this for a lot of people can lead to weight gain because of the behaviors that they influence. Now, I don't wanna tell people to go off antidepressants but just be aware that this can definitely play a role in how you are with food and behave with food and pay attention to this because this is definitely something, this is not just the side effect that's not that big of a deal because obesity can cause poor health and contribute to depression which would offset the reason why you're taking them in the first place. So pay attention to this because again, they've been shown in a lot of cases to increase the rate of obesity. It's crazy because you know how often you guys see this is like this like vicious loop, right? Like somebody puts on, somebody has these bad choices, bad behaviors. They put on all of this weight. All this weight ends up making them feel lethargic. They don't wanna move. They don't get good sleep. Then they're also depressed and so then they're on the antidepressants. The antidepressants also doesn't promote weight loss or helping them out and it's like this crazy freaking cycle that they get stuck in and it just feels like it's impossible to break through it. And you know what, I mean, Sal, what about what's just coming out right now with what we know about antidepressants, right? Is it still gonna be something that's even used? Oh, well, there was a, I mean, this is big news but the serotonin model of depression has been flipped on its head. Now, what you wanna be careful is that, is to say that antidepressants don't help because there's probably a mechanism there in any cases that we don't fully understand. But what we are understanding is it's not the serotonin. So, and what doctors are not doing is just taking people, oh, okay, everybody off antidepressants because there's a lot of people that do find value in them and studies have shown that it's not a huge effect but there's definitely a positive effect with certain types of depression. But nonetheless, one of the main side effects of antidepressants is weight gain because of how it affects your behaviors. So, I just wanna dive into that a little bit in terms of like how it affects your weight gain. Like, is it a sense of trying to feel pleasure by eating something more pleasurable? Or is it because, you know, because in terms of the sense of being doled a bit with the antidepressants, like, what's the mechanism there? Are you saying like it down-regulates like that? Like, why would you gain weight on an antidepressant? Yeah, it takes more of the... It's pretty complex, actually. They're not quite sure. But they do know that they think it has to do with the fact that you're less... Because do the antidepressants give you like dopamine hits? Well, there are ones that work with dopamine, but that's the direction you're going, right? You're like... Well, serotonin. Yeah, well, serotonin, yeah. It's serotonin. Okay, so here's what they're called SSRIs, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, meaning they inhibit the reuptake of serotonin, thus creating larger or more serotonin in the system. Yeah, but if you're doing that artificially, to the point that I think Justin's trying to make, if you're doing that artificially, and then you're also trying to, and you still get some of that pleasure from foods, is it forcing you to have to have more of those foods to get the same pleasure? You know what, I've read on this, and they're not quite sure, but they think it has to do with, it kind of messes with your natural systems of satiety, so you're less likely to stop eating. It's been shown in some cases to increase cravings, so because it's affecting the serotonin of the system, and serotonin plays a role in foods that you want, and desire, and how they affect you, that through that, it affects how people behave with food, and they think that that may be the case. This next one is another medication that's often used that in some cases has been shown to contribute to obesity, which is birth control. Birth control in some way, shape, or form is either the estrogen hormone, or progesterone, or similar hormones. Hormones play a role in obesity. Hormones are signalers in the body, meaning they can tell the body to build muscle, to store body fat, to get rid of sugar, to store sugar, to have more energy, to do all these other things, and when you're taking birth control, you are taking something that is working with the hormonal system. This is definitely something you'd want to work with your doctor with, but if you're gaining weight because you're on birth control, I would definitely bring it up because there may be better options for you, but this can definitely play a role, and then here's where it gets a little wild, but they find now residues of birth controls and tap water, and it may play, because it's hard to filter out, so unless you have reverse osmosis filter, you drink tap water, you may be taking in low amounts of some of these hormones when you don't want them, and that could also affect obesity. Well, I know that Katrina's one of the few girls I've ever met that's actually never used birth control in her entire life, and her thought process was on it was just, it is just taking something that wasn't natural to affect your hormones and that it may potentially change your hormone profile forever, so is that a fear for, or is that a common thing that happens? Somebody who takes, say, birth control for, say, 10 years and then they get off of it is... Boy, yeah, that's a loaded question. There are, so Dr. Jolene Brighton will talk about this. That's why I would turn to, she's a doctor. Be on the pill. This is an expert, and she'll say, like people will go off and it can take them a while to get their bodies back to normal or be able to have a baby, or it's masked all these other issues, like you hemorrhage too much, or you feel a particular way, and the doctor's like, oh, go on birth control. It'll control that, which it's now masking the root cause of some of these issues. So I would defer to someone like her to really break something like that down. Now, my opinion is if you alter your hormone profile and you do it long enough, that there's, at the very least, it will take a while to go back when you go off of them. I mean, I would think it's not that much different than someone like me who took testosterone at the doses I took it for as long as I took it. I was never the same again after that. For sure I was, no, I still got my testosterone back and I didn't like- But it never went up to where it should. Yeah, but it never went back. It disrupted probably what my natural hormone profile would have probably been, for sure. Yeah, but it's, like I said, be on the pill, great book. And Dr. Jolene Brighton is a resource I would turn to. And she talks a lot about this and supplements you could take that could help with some of the effects and what to look out for. And weight gain is definitely a known side effect of many different types of birth control. Look, if you like our information, head over to mindpumpfree.com and check out our guides. We have guides that can help you with almost any health or fitness goal. You can also find all of us on social media. So Justin is on Instagram at Mind Pump, Justin. Adam is on Instagram at Mind Pump, Adam. And you can find me on Twitter at Mind Pump Sal. This one's really important and that is to phase your training. If somebody trains for a full year doing a bench press, and they're always aiming for five reps, if you compared that person to a person who did bench press where they did three or four weeks of five reps, but then they did three or four weeks of 12 reps and then three or four weeks of, let's say, 15 to 20 reps and then they'll throw in some supersets, at the end of that year, you're gonna see more consistent progress from the person who's moving in and out and less injury.