 There's now good evidence that fructose is a mitochondrial toxin, and mitochondria are those little organelles in all of our cells which are actually engulfed bacteria that produce energy for our cells. And the last thing we want to do is poison our mitochondria with fructose. And one of the reasons we are getting sicker and sicker and sicker in this country and fatter and fatter is our year-round availability of fruit and our year-round availability of fructose in the form of high fructose corn syrup in almost all of our food products. So one of my favorite sayings is give fruit the boot. Remember, great apes only gain weight during fruit season and you do too. And that's because winter was coming. And now we have 365 days of endless summer. Hang on, so I can eat fat and still lose weight? Absolutely. You should be eating fat at every meal. More specifically, you should be eating olive oil, MCT oil, or avocado oil at every meal. And no, eating fat won't make you fat. As a matter of fact, there's evidence that healthy fats found in olive oil could actually support weight loss. So go ahead, drizzle that oil onto your salad, eat that avocado. If you're sticking to foods that are approved on the Plant Paradox Plan, you'll be fine. How did you go from a 300 pound college student to the world's most famous biohacker? After my second knee surgery before I was 23, I said never again I'm gonna lose this weight even if it kills me. I worked out an hour and a half a day, six days a week, went on a low fat, low calorie diet. And at the end of that time I could max out all the machines in the gym and I still weigh 300 pounds. And I thought, ah, it's because I'm eating too much lettuce. Yeah, it must be that. And I realized since then that 90% of how you look is what you put in your mouth and what you put in the world around you. Exercise is the other 10%. I think that's a really good point. And you and I obviously agree on a lot of things and that's certainly one of them that exercise absolutely has a place, but I think we put far too much emphasis on that part and not enough emphasis on what goes in our mouth, what goes on us, and what goes in the mouths of things we might be eating. We know, you know, from the biggest loser that intense exercise does not result in long-term weight loss. Unfortunately. Unfortunately. You know, it's interesting, not to kind of veer off, but years ago I was involved in this tracking of people who had successful long-term weight loss. And one of the conclusions of that study was that you do not need to exercise to lose weight. Number one, that's been proven by hibernating bears as I like to remind my patients. If you don't eat, you will lose weight. But what was interesting is most people who were successful at long-term weight loss had an exercise program that they enjoyed. So kind of take it from there. Let's talk about, you know, intense exercise to lose weight versus an exercise program that you like. What's your thought on all this? Well, I think you said it right there. The key word in all of it is enjoyment. And the enjoyment piece of it is not, in my opinion, just for sustainability. But anytime, in my opinion, that you are fighting yourself and that you are forcing yourself to do something that you that you really don't enjoy. Something happens psychologically, emotionally, and I believe physically that that impacts your progress. There's a whole array of other types of physical activity that if you can find joy in it, if you find it fulfilling, if it releases endorphins and positive stress hormones, then now we're on a different path and it's not only sustainable, but it brings you joy in your life. It reduces your cortisol levels. The impact of it is less this calorie in, calorie out equation and more from the holistic, broader sense of what it brings to your life. So you and I have been, you know, down these roads of weight loss. What do you, what do you tell people think this is just too hard to do? Be patient. It feels really hard if you think of it as this one big thing you have to do all at once. If you think I have these little tiny micro goals, it's not so bad. Because then the setback is just a tiny setback, not the end of the world. And you get to check a lot of things off your to-do list rather than one big thing that you feel like is never going to happen. The other thing that was interesting to me, and I've taught them all my patients through the years, many times there are these almost psychological stop points. For me, 200 pounds was this amazing barrier. And I see it with a lot of my patients. They get to 200 pounds, they get down to 198, and then all of a sudden they're up at 204. And they go, what the heck, you know, and they'll go again. It took me probably, I don't know, couple of months to get off 200. My next barrier was 180. And the same thing is like, you know, what do I have to do? And I, looking back, these are actually places to take a pause and say, okay, let's not sweat it. You know, I'm going to tread water. Turns out we have set points in our body that said, oh, you know, you're starving to death, and I'm going to do everything I can do to stop you from starving. And did you ever have that happen to you? I definitely did. And one of the biggest things I did for myself was go, you know what? It's fine. You've come this far. It's already remarkable. Give it a minute. I actually would let myself eat a little more. And sometimes I found that just upping the calories I took in a day would rejump started. It was like me giving my body permission to keep going. I met a years ago, I was lecturing in Phoenix, and there's a blogger by the name of Kiefer. And Kiefer was really one of the original ketogenic dieters. And I've told this story before he introduced himself to me and told me a story. He was almost constantly in ketosis. And a big exercise fanatic. And one night, apparently, as he tells that he just couldn't take it any longer, and he ate a dozen donuts and several pieces of cake. And he went to bed. He says, Oh my gosh, am I going to pay for this? Well, the next morning he woke up and he was actually three pounds lighter. And he said, What the heck? And what had happened was that he, he was so in so he was actually insulin resistant being in ketosis for so long. And this blast of carbs actually got fat to burn better than he did. So he actually cycles. So yeah, I think a lot of times just changing it up for a few days will make a big difference. But the important thing that you and I both know is don't sweat it. Don't sweat it. Be patient. And celebrate little victories because it's hard. Yeah. And it was like, you know, I said in my first book, wait off fast will never last. Wait off slow, you're good to go.