Personal Trainer Reveals the Mental Obstacles You Create When Getting in Shape | Drew Manning

ever since that first experience i felt like there needs to be a change in the health and fitness industry because it's all about macros and calories and weight loss and supplements and how to get the body and if you get this body then all your problems will go away and then then you'll fit into society and then people will love you and then you'll love yourself and i i wish that were true i really do hey everybody welcome to another episode of health theory i am here with the fit to fat to fit maestro himself drew manning drew welcome to the show tom bill you dude it's always a pleasure to be on thank you for having me back on dude my pleasure what the hell though are you thinking why are you doing this again uh such a good question so here's the thing tom 2020 has been such a year of radical change right whether people like it or not things are changing we are changing as a society as a culture uh as a world so fit to fact if it was my original first journey of gaining weight on purpose back in 2011. i put on 75 pounds in six months and that was the first time i've ever experienced what it's like to be overweight because my whole life i grew up in shape i played football and i wrestled since i was little and i as a personal trainer i couldn't connect with my clients in a sense where i couldn't understand why it was so hard for them just to eat you know live a healthy lifestyle i'm like you guys it's so easy for me why why is it so hard for you so anyways this idea popped up in my mind and so i i i jumped on it and decided to do it and i put on 75 pounds of fat in six months and it was one of the hardest most humbling experiences i've ever been through but i learned so many valuable lessons from it because it shifted my perception of how i viewed transformation and then from there it totally shifted my branding and how i helped people more so on the mental emotional side of transformation versus just the physical side and um for me that's where i felt ever since that first experience i felt like there needs to be a change in the health and fitness industry because it's all about macros and calories and weight loss and supplements and how to get the body and if you get this body then all your problems will go away and then then you'll fit into society and then people will love you and then you'll love yourself and i i wish that were true i really do um but you know like i was saying 2020 is a year of radical change and i feel like i have an opportunity to make it even more impactful more educational more inspirational because now people can follow me as it's happening back then there was no facebook live all right there was no insta stories it was just my facebook posts from time to time that was it and i feel like if i could do this again in 2020 as a 40 year old my message of empathy which is what my main thing is about that's what my brand is about is bringing empathy first to the fitness industry and then from there we could talk about diet and exercise and supplements and those kinds of things but no one cares how much you know until they know how much you care first and i truly believe that especially in this industry and i feel like if we want to help change people in this industry i feel like let's try empathy why not this this time we need empathy in this world more than ever and i feel like in the fitness industry it's an industry that lacks empathy people who are larger are judged they're looked at as lazy or or weak or less than they don't have the willpower or the discipline and i feel like that's just not true and it's not fair and i feel like this is a vehicle to bring my message of empathy and then also i turned 40 to your advice called fit fed to 40 that demographic we all know you know as you get older people are like oh my hormones my metabolism is changing well let's put that to the test let's do this together i'm going to gain the weight and then come january 2021 i'll hold your hand we'll do this journey together so that's those are the reasons in a nutshell man it's so interesting this idea the idea of empathy is i like that a lot i want to though go back to why there's so much um i will say inherent shame to being out of shape where even if nobody else were heaping it on you i think people will keep it on themselves and one of the things i found interesting about the first time you went on this journey was that you were paranoid about the way people were looking at you without even knowing if they were actually looking at you some kind of way and i'm curious why do you think people struggle so much when they're out of shape just in and of themselves i think it's it's our programming from the social media the movies we watch the tv shows the magazines and i feel like some people have experience being treated differently in society i think for men it's a little bit different it's okay to be a little bit pudgy and to be a little bit bigger but for women especially i think women have it way harder than men in our society because maybe someone made a comment maybe it's from their mom or from their dad or from their siblings about their body and at some point in time you know we bought into that myth that i am only of value if my body looks a certain way and if i don't then you know i don't fit in and people will make fun of me and i think it starts from a very young age i have two daughters that are 9 and 11 and i'm super careful about how i talk about my body and their body in front of them because i think it starts at that age and it's it stems from you know whether you like it or not your parents or even your grandparents of how they viewed their bodies and i don't think it it happened until probably you know the 20th century when we put more emphasis on fitting in and looking a certain way and um i think people buy into that myth at some point in time and then from there i think that's where the self you know shame and even self-hate stems from is because they bought into that myth at some point now how do you talk about your body and what you're going through with your kids i'm super curious yeah i did a post about this a couple months ago and it was really popular because you know how i talk to my daughters and how their mom talks to them is super important we never make it about their body image we never make it about losing weight or having you know or being skinny we always talk about health and so you know when we talk about foods i don't like to label foods good or bad for them but what i try and say is like hey these foods will probably make us feel better and eating this junk food is probably going to make us feel worse and it's really interesting tying this into what i'm doing now they see that firsthand they get to see their dad struggle eating these foods which they think is fun they're like yeah yeah i want that i'm like but look what it's doing to me i'm taking a nap two three times a day and i'm grumpy and i'm moody you see how this is playing into it so it's not so much about my belly growing or it's not so much about you know them gaining fat or losing fat it's about what's going to make them a better basketball player they like basketball you know they're into skateboarding now what's going to make you better skateboarder what's going to make you better at roadblocks right even like the video games that they that they play i try and make it about that rather than body image and this is what i learned from my first journey my body image back then was my self-image and if i could help my girls realize that they are more than their bodies that they are not just their bodies um i feel like then growing up they won't be as as obsessed or attached to their body image as their self-image so we talk about you know the other talents that they have whether it's singing whether it's dancing whether it's how smart they are at at school or their ability to um you know even play a video game really well like i think a couple times too when they've overcome fears of what riding a bike doing the monkey bars um you know little things that they didn't think they were good at at first letting like reminded them of those moments when they overcame fears and how brave they are so those kinds of things you know throughout their their life is is constant i think constant reminders to them of what they can accomplish not just with their bodies but also with their amazing minds do you worry at all about being so afraid to put any pressure on them that they won't take their bodies seriously that's a good point but yes and no because i think you could go to extreme on on both sides of it right and i feel like the way we approach it is very balanced where you know they do know that their bodies are important which is why we teach them about health and why we teach them about what it's like to feel good but then also i've given them learning experiences where they felt what it's like to eat a bunch of junk food and guess what they felt like crap and that experience helped shape their belief of like all right maybe i shouldn't eat 12 twinkies in one sitting you know maybe just one you know from time to time and they don't eat twinkies but i'm just saying in general um so i think i feel like we do we have a good balance but dude being a parent is freaking hard because you think you're doing things right and i don't care how perfect you think you're doing things i think kids are just this amazing learning tool to let you know just how much you need to grow as a human still talk to me more about that what do you mean that because i'm assuming any sort of disturbance you create in their psyche was not done on purpose are you saying that you worry that if you haven't dealt with something and you process sort of out loud or live in a way that they'll then interpret in a way that's ultimately going to lead to a negative outcome yeah and it's based off of my experience of how i view my parents because how i assess my parents now that i'm 39 years old i look back i'm like they did this they did that that caused me to do this that it shaped me in a certain way so i'm like all right now i'm the parent this is what i'm going to do differently thinking okay well i'm not going to do what they did that messed me up now i'm going to do all the things that i know how to do but at the end of the day my girls still throw tantrums or they they fight with me and i fight back with them and so there's these constant reminders of like yeah you think you're doing things right but who knows it's it's a it's one of those things where you could check all the boxes and you know show that you're doing things what you think is is right but kids are very surprising they're their own person so no matter how well how formulated how well formulated your approach is they're gonna surprise you and they're gonna throw you curveballs and that's the beauty of being a parent in my opinion of like okay well this is happening let's try this and see if this works you know or take away their phones or maybe limit their their phone time or all these different techniques and each one is is so different from you know i have two girls they're so different from each other so what works for one doesn't work for the other that that's the crazy part to me man it's like you might even nail it with one of the kids but then yeah the other one struggles or you might nail it with one aspect of their personality over here and then it doesn't work over here but then what's working over here then isn't working over there it's ah that that's really really rough now one thing that i find intriguing about you so for anybody that doesn't know your story you come from 11 brothers and sisters if i remember right so obviously big family i'm guessing one of the ways you stood out was through your involvement with sports wrestling football i think and i'm curious if you think about because i'm i'm really focused on this idea of body image and what constructs that and if you think there are nudges into things like either sports or weightlifting or something hiking something that will give them an exciting relationship to their physicality that might then allow them to recontextualize it instead of just an asset of beauty but something else as well yeah and that's why i'm open to them exploring you know um like i said right now their thing is basketball but for the other one um she likes more dancing and ice skating and so we allow them to kind of go through those experiences rather than saying hey like for example if i had a boy my mentality before i had kids growing up playing football was like hey if i have a boy he's playing football from this age i'm gonna coach him he's gonna he's gonna work out whether he likes it or not you know that that whole approach with my girls i've kind of learned there's a good book called strong fathered strong daughters i highly recommend it to any girl dads out there and i think for me and those other girl dads it's important to let your daughters explore what they want to do instead of put pressure on them to fit in like hey you got to be a cheerleader hey you got to do this i'll support them whatever they want to do but i feel like there have been some nudges from me knowing how important health is to try something that's physical a sport of some type versus just video games and watching netflix all day and i feel like as a parent you got to get creative sometimes and just say instead of just saying well one day she'll pick what she wants to do maybe i put her in things purposely and see if she likes it or not if she hates it i'll take her out but if she loves it maybe that's her thing and she never would have known that had she if she didn't have that experience yeah totally now talk to me about um is there such a thing as like an innate driver in your mind to be in shape or to look a certain way or do you think it's all external coming in yeah so a grown up a family of 11 brothers and sisters all my brother older brothers played sports and football and wrestling right and so i saw them as a little kid and they had muscles and i'm like man for some reason that was so cool and growing up in the whole arnold schwarzenegger era like seeing him in movies i'm like man why like conan the barbarian i'm like i want to be like that guy so i think those experiences shaped my beliefs of what i wanted to fit into so from a very young age i was working out wanted to lift weights wanted to to build some muscle and that carried over into into my sports and so i think now being 39 years old having done one fit to fit experiment and and luckily having that self-awareness now knowing that i am more than my body there is still this part of me that loves to yeah i look good but i love just the feeling of being healthy and now that i'm doing this second experiment that's what i missed the most i would choose feeling healthy any day over having the body now that i've experienced this now two times i think that's what sometimes people miss they're like i want the body i don't care how my health is i'll do whatever it takes to get that body thinking that's gonna but i think as you get older you get wiser you realize that your body might not look that way forever and what what what good does it do one thing that was really interesting to me when i really got lean was and this goes back to you know how much of this is external versus internal no one ever told me what having muscle felt like so i never thought of it it wasn't some external pressure that was on me it wasn't even a concept that i had and then one day i after working out like a demon and getting lean i reached across myself like this and realized that my pec was hard and i was like whoa that was so [ __ ] cool i was like that's so rad and then you're like there's something about palpating yourself when you're lean that feels good like you get this burst of like whoa that's cool and palpating yourself when you put on fat that doesn't and that that isn't me like nobody in my life had ever touched me and said you feel squishy never ever ever but when i would touch myself when i got heavy i was like ooh like there was something that felt intrinsic about it now the reason i harp on like this is not so that people will develop body dysmorphia and become obsessed with getting lean it's to get to understand why the diet industry is as big as it is why people fret over this as much as they do why people are so drawn to what you're doing why empathy is so powerful in all of this because on the other side it's like i wish that there was nothing pushing you internally to want to look better and feel stronger and for guys anyway to feel harder but yeah it is and it's there and if you ignore this it's the same as ignoring doing hard things you just won't ever get to the place that you could get to where that sense of emptiness lack of fulfillment goes away because people think it's going to be money they think it's going to be their body in and of itself it's not it's doing hard things to get a result that matters and by matters i mean part of it is that intrinsic push yeah i think one of the interesting things i'm noticing during this journey that kind of is um has to do with what you're talking about is is i went from one extreme being super healthy to being super unhealthy to the other stream and man i i kind of forgot how hard it was mentally emotionally physically i'm like damn this is a lot harder than i remember it being um but it's so interesting because going from that extreme to that extreme of course i'm going to notice all the differences and all the major changes that are happening but let's say someone has been living in the unhealthy world for a long time that becomes their norm that's their day in and day out they drew everything you're talking about like that's my life but they don't notice that huge shift and change because they've never been on the other side of it so i'm like man if i could give someone the feeling of being healthy or of being lean like you're talking about if i could just give that to them for a moment they might then be like man that's what it feels like because they don't know any different they're like i feel okay like i don't feel like i'm dying but they don't really know what they're missing and so for me to go from this extreme to that extreme i'm noticing it every single day and it's way harder than people think it is to lose your health like that um but this is where transformation gets so more complicated than people think because people are like yeah you should have this drive so therefore just do it but what people don't realize is is self-sabotage self-worth those kinds of things keep people from from actually doing it because they feel like you know what i don't deserve this i'm a failure i suck at life and there's a lot of people that have bought into that myth from a very young age and now they're in their 20s 30s 40s and like you know it's too late for me or this self-sabotage kind of mentality which carries over into others go a little deeper about self-sabotage for me how do people end up there when it comes to body and exercise so inside of all of us we have this little uh you know negative self-critic all the time saying you're not going to be able to do this that's going to be too hard for you you're going to quit you're going to give up and from a very young age we've kind of taught ourselves that through experience like you tried something and let's say you sucked at it or you gave up after walks it got hard and then that builds this this little negative uh self-critic inside your head constantly reminding you of those moments those experiences from the past letting you know like yeah it's cute you're trying for this but guess what we know you you know that we know you you're going to go back to this way and so people in the moment they're like nope this time i'm going to willpower my way through it i got this i can do this you know two weeks in three weeks and they're like damn this is so hard i want this i feel like i want this food their body almost fights back against them and that negative self-critic never goes away it's always constantly there to remind them like you know what you are going to screw up and then that moment when life happens stress gets in the way and they're like you know they had a hard day at work or with their spouse or finances hit them really hard or something happen they're like you know what screw it give me the beer give me the pizza like and and then the second that happens that negative self-critics there is like see i told you so and they're like they're convinced they're convinced that no matter how hard they try they can never accomplish what their goal is because of life experience and so man this is where transformation is so much more mental and emotional than just saying hey here's your meal plan here's your workout here's your supplements you know you just do it and then you'll look this way then you'll be happy but i think this is my hope is that it's time for change like 2020 is a year of change let's bring some change to this industry where it's been the same thing over and over and over again to really help people on the mental and emotional side overcome those challenges overcome that trauma that has kept them from you know from really truly living a healthy lifestyle consistently and help them overcome the self-sabotage the the emotional eating the addiction um and that self-worth that sense of self-worth so that they do feel worthy to be healthy because that's what keeps people back is like yeah their body wants to do these things it wants to be healthy but they just a lot of people just don't feel like they're worth it or they're worthy to to to really live that that healthy lifestyle that we're talking about how do people develop self-worth so it starts with self-awareness you know knowing who you are i think honestly becoming the observer of your thoughts what happens is you know as we grow up i think we but we become attached to our thoughts we we become attached to our stories and we become attached to our emotions and so in those moments we're just you know being pulled in all these different directions based off of how we react to situations and the biggest key to overcoming any kind of addiction or any kind of you know you're trying to transform any part of your life it's taking a step back and becoming the observer of those thoughts and when you become the observer of those thoughts in those moments you can kind of see like a movie playing out in front of you what's happening what you know what emotion is triggering you to gravitate towards this food or this drug or this alcohol and you can then thoughtfully respond in those situations but the problem is that we don't have that self-awareness yet because we're just like on the go the second we wake up we look at our phones we're being pulled in all these directions it's all about self-reflection so meditation getting out in nature finding ways to really just not judge your thoughts that's so hard for people because they have these thoughts those thoughts become stories those stories become their reality and then they react to those stories throughout their life and it's just like man if we could just learn to observe you know just for a second in those moments of stress in those moments of like reaction where you want to grab the food if you could just learn to observe and say okay here's what's happening i'm getting i'm getting triggered here my spouse is doing this my kids are doing that okay there's the food normally i would go for it but now when you have that self-awareness now you can thoughtfully respond and be like okay do i really want to go down this road i'm going to eat the food but this is what's going to happen afterwards so maybe in that moment we choose the higher road and say okay now i'm in more more in control of my thoughts and reaction do you have tools and techniques for people developing that self-awareness like journaling or um what does that look like so there's a list of a few things one some type of meditation practice whether you are a monk or not some type of meditation practice or what do you call it thinkitate right like that type of practice where you you can just sit with your thoughts and just let them be don't judge them don't attach yourself to them that's the most important thing and then two is journaling three i would say would be a gratitude list to you know re wire your brain to look for things to be grateful for um and then a positive affirmation practice so saying positive words about yourself to yourself whatever that looks like you know it doesn't have to be stuart smalley from saturday night live you know we all know that clip it doesn't have to be cheesy like that but it does feel cheesy at first but it's really powerful if you can be consistent with it and then from there getting out in nature you know as much as possible wherever you live i think is really important for us to kind of just sit back reflect you know if you've ever been like in front of an ocean in hawaii like man this is so beautiful and you just observe right and so those kinds of things are the list that i would recommend for anyone wanting to truly transform but you know has struggled with the willpower right and so i would recommend those things instead of just do this workout and do this exercise and eat this diet what do you think the um need for or maybe you don't think there's a need but what what do you think the role of doing hard things is for self-worth it it develops that that belief in oneself first and foremost so believing that you can do hard things like the hard part is people are like okay i'm gonna go 100 miles and you've never ran 10 miles or a marathon and then you go and you try and you fail and you're like man see i didn't i couldn't do it what if you just started with one thing like hey let's make our bed today every single day this week that's can be hard for some people but maybe by doing that then they're like okay i believe that i can make my bed every single day and then from there it's like okay i'm gonna turn the water on cold in the shower for 30 seconds and that's another small thing and then they're like okay that sucked but i'm gonna keep doing it anyways so you find these things that suck but they're small things at first and then from there you build and you're like okay i'm gonna eat vegetables every day this week that might suck that might be hard for some people and that builds the confidence that instead of saying all right i'm to get skinny in 30 days i'm going to do this diet why not start small and little baby steps first and foremost so that you start to develop that self-confidence that you can do hard things and then once you believe that then you can go outside of your self-limiting beliefs and try maybe 100 miles like like i did and i never thought i would be able to run 100 miles but then it grows from there and then you realize you can accomplish harder things that are outside of your self-limiting beliefs and that's where it becomes really powerful talk to me about your journey to running a hundred miles was it your brother that read can't hurt me yeah we both read at the same time and he was the one who after reading it was like dude i wanted 100 miles and we've done kind of extreme things before his brothers but nothing like this crazy so we attempted it last year i remember i text you that i was gonna run 100 miles or attempt it and here's the thing i got 80 miles done so i didn't accomplish my goal of doing 100 miles in 24 hours but then i thought man i never knew i could do 80 miles in 24 hours holy [ __ ] maybe maybe if i train for this maybe i could really pull this off and so this year i brought on friends like iron cowboy and zac bitter to help actually help me train for this because i'm not an expert in running i suck at running i've always hated it ever since i played football that was a punishment you your punishment was to run it wasn't anything fun or happy to do and so i was like okay this year i'm gonna train for it so it took seven months to train properly adjust my diet and my lifestyle to go on these longer runs and i was gone for three hours four hours some saturdays and sundays wake up at four a.m you know and in the middle of night doing these long runs and this year you know i was really determined to do it but then covet happened and so we kept pushing it back and pushing it back and i'm like you know what screw this i'm just gonna go do it in my own not backyard but just like 10 minutes down the road i found a little path set up the course little five five mile loop you know two and a half miles down and back i had my base camp had some friends and volunteers helped me out and i'm like i'm just gonna do this by myself and i just went out there and did it one day in june in the middle of summer here in utah which is freaking hot as hell and it was i struggled to make it through um but i did it and in that moment i'm like damn i want to sh i want to show people that look i don't expect you to go out there around 100 miles but what can you do that's outside of your limiting beliefs that you haven't tried yet because you're too scared and so for me that was 100 miles dude that's amazing i actually love it more that you didn't have an official race or anything like that that you just got sick of putting it off there's something in that mindset that i think is extraordinarily powerful walk me through so you do the 80 miles which is technically a failure what are you saying to yourself in that moment you know there was there was two sides of me because the old drew was very critical the self-discipline like hey you failed at this therefore you are a failure i know we talked about that in our first interview and that kind of sided me i was aware that it's there but then the other side of me was like damn look what you did you did 80 miles in 24 hours you should be damn proud of yourself and so those two things combined uh in a way was like a healthy balance for me to push myself to want to do it again to say you know what i think i can do this again if i actually train properly and i hate running dude i don't think i'll ever do it again but it was really cool to say that i did it you know what i'm saying for sure now put me in your mindset you're running 100 miles um seems like it would actually be more difficult doing it on a track that's that short how how did you deal with the times where i'm sure you wanted to just stop like hey nobody is forcing me to do this like no i don't know if i quit why how did you keep yourself focused what were the actual words you were saying in your head uh well there's a couple things it was the words but also the people that showed up to support me there was people that ran certain parts of it with me and having that companionship throughout my girlfriend was there a couple of friends showed up to run a couple laps with me that was really motivating the other part and this kind of carries over into my fit to fed to 40 journey there was this other part in my head that said look this is gonna suck it sucks right now this is gonna this is uncomfortable this feels like hell but guess what all this hell all this pain is temporary and what happens is people get so trapped in the moment and they think their current situation is their final destination and i constantly reminded myself that my current situation of how bad the sex my feet my knees my back like everything was was was super painful i just reminded myself that this is 24 hours of my life this will be over soon and this pain this all this stuff is temporary and so that's the mentality i'm carrying over into this this fat gain phase of four months to remind myself like look yes i don't feel the best i don't look the best um this is way harder than i thought it was gonna be and it's way harder than people think it is but all this uncomfortableness and this pain i just have to remind myself look this is all gonna be temporary and it's all gonna be okay in the end now one thing that i'm excited about with the way that you're doing it this time is that you're doing different diets and i'm super curious what have you done keto already yes so do you want to talk about that really quick yeah i want to go into all four of the diets that you're going to do or have done yeah so keto paleo vegan vegetarian i wanted to show people educate people on how not to do them because let's be honest when people dive into keto they're they don't do the research like oh yeah butter bacon and cheese cut out the carbs i got this you know i'm saying and so i wanted to show people how not to do them first actually show people hey you can gain weight you know on keto on paleo and vegan vegetarian no matter you know if you just jump into it you just can't expect to lose weight you have to know what you're doing so with keto i did it for a week and here's the results which is so interesting and i'm currently on paleo this week um i lost two and a half pounds which is insane i was eating 500 calories a day what yeah 500 calories a day i lost two and a half pounds but there's a big butt there gained one percent body fat and my in my waist went up one and a half inches so this is what i wanted to show people i was eating dirty keto food so all the low quality dairy you can imagine all the diet sodas all the low quality like bacon and salami and and lunch meat and all the keto cookies and treats and all that stuff that exists out there eating a lot of that food and i was in ketosis still no in my life not possible no way at 5 500 calories you actually were posting ketones so 0.5 was the highest it got up to so yes let's put it into you know reference here 0.5 was the highest but i it was usually between you know uh 0.3 when i woke up and then by the end of the day we get up to 0.5 but um but my glucose levels so i'm tracking my my glucose on my cgm device right here this is what the interesting thing was as much as i love keto and and i definitely don't advise people to do the dirty version of keto my glucose levels that energy throughout the day was way better having that level that flat level of insulin throughout the day like i slept better um and like i said my weight went down but i'm doing my blood work too and i'll get the results back soon to see how my blood work changed so that's the keto that that already happened i'm currently in the paleo phase where i'm just eating you know just a [ __ ] ton of paleo foods you know paleo cookies and paleo waffles and all that stuff but still some whole foods to show people like look you can eat healthy food and still gain weight and then i'll do the same thing with vegan and vegetarian i'll do my blood work before and after to see the changes that happen week to week and then we'll do a comparison you know of my weight my body fat um you know my measurements but also my blood work to see week to week you know the changes and then come january i'll be showing people look if you want to do these diets here's the correct way or healthier way to do them and the quality of food is important that's the other thing i'm trying to educate people on is like look you can do dirty keto and lose weight for sure easy if you stay at a caloric deficit same thing with veganism you could eat oreos all day and if you're in a certain calorie range you can lose weight but is that healthier do you feel better and that's the thing i'm trying to show people is like we know people that are super lean super fit but they eat a bunch of junk food and it fits their macros and so they look good but are they really you know the healthiest version of themself define that what do you like if you're getting lean in what way would one be getting unhealthy it's a so that's where blood work comes in and no one really cares about blood work they just care about body fat percentage so get your blood work done see see if your thyroid is functioning properly see if your hormones are at optimal levels you know i think those kinds of things are really important but they're just overlooked because you could have awesome blood work but still be you know not super lean and be like well i'm healthy like i know a friend of mine who most of his blood work is is good i haven't seen all of it but he's like 500 pounds and his cholesterol's and normal levels and hdl ldl all that triglycerides are obviously really high but what i'm saying is like it's not the end all be all but why don't people go off of their blood work as much as they do off of their their you know body fat test man so the notion that somebody can be 500 pounds with their blood work be in the right ranges and look i heard you loud and clear and i'm with you you didn't see them all and so there may be problems hiding it yeah but i've actually heard people say that getting obese is a protective mechanism that you're pulling the stuff out of the bloodstream to keep it from being a problem there shuttling it off into the fat cells now fat as an organ which can have all kinds of signaling molecules that create secondary problems like having a very hard time actually losing the fat um is an interesting thing but the notion that somebody can be quote unquote skinny fat that they can be lean but their blood markers are a mess man this stuff is so complicated so complicated i'm super curious what's happening to your testosterone levels i haven't gotten that checked yet but if my girlfriend was on she'd probably tell you she'd probably tell you brutally you know very she'd be very brutally honest with you my libido has changed i do find myself more emotional uh which is the sign that my testosterone is dropping i remember from my first journey back in 2011 it went down it got down to the low 200s at my heaviest as a 31 year old now i'm 39 i'm so at the end of month two i will do my testosterone levels again because it takes time to change so at month two and month four at my halfway point i will be doing the uh all the blood work so stay tuned for that you're definitely going to want to see what happens bloodwork wise with the continuation of this journey and then obviously comparing the diets too i think that will be really interesting interesting to see even though that's the dirty version of these diets could maybe some of my blood markers improve or get worse we'll see so we'll talk about all the stuff that's what this journey of fit to at 40 there's something for everyone if you want to geek out on the science there's something there if you want to focus more on the mental and emotional spiritual side of transformation there's going to be something there as well that's why i want people to hopefully follow along this journey even though i'm gaining weight and that part's entertaining it's like a train wreck you you can't not watch but the journey back to fate 2021 i know people are going to want to make a change because 2020 sucked for so many people and it was really hard for a lot of people but that's the things like hey let's do this together let's why not like i'll hold your hand we'll do this together come 2021 and that's the part that i'm excited for because i want to give people those tools on the mental and emotional side so that they understand this is a complete transformation and their perception shifts and that's where they make some real lasting change in their life are you 100 confident that you will go back to your lifestyle that you've been at all these years previously 100 that's my default mode and that's like being a dad my why every day isn't to be the fit to fit guy and make money my wise to be the best dad i can be and i know for me being the best dad i can be requires my physical mental and emotional and spiritual health to be as as best as it can because then i i show up differently for them i show up differently from my girlfriend that's one of the biggest hardest things about this journey is my ability to handle stress is so diminished because i don't have the motivation because i feel so lethargic i'm like okay fine whatever okay you need this you need that here just let's just get rid of the stress the quickest way possible because i don't want to have to deal with it i've noticed those little things start to change where i'm sleep deprived my sleep has sucked because i've tried been tracking on my whoop my sleep is in the yellow or red almost every single night and that carries over into other areas of your life and the ability to handle stress is is way harder and that's what i want to bring bring awareness to is like you're not the same version of yourself when you're unhealthy it's not just about getting fats it's not just about that if that's all it was that would be cool but there's way more other there's way more things that happen on the mental emotional level that you have no idea but if you could see you know the other areas that it's affecting i feel like then people would hopefully make a change for the better yeah no question um so as you're going through the process then um and you think about getting back into shape i know you're trying to develop this empathy where is it that people fall off so if you know that you're gonna be back on it what what is it that you have as a mental tool that you think people lack yeah and it's gonna be hard in the beginning and this is what i remember from my first journey those first two weeks were hell for me even for me someone that loves being in shape someone loves being fit i struggled because my body fought back against me and so you have to realize that just because you make good choices doesn't mean your body is going to follow suit and be like yeah we want broccoli and kale your body's going to want the high that it got from these foods that you have been feeding it for the past four months four years or even four decades so that's the part where people are gonna need the most help so there's here's what helps people in those situations one is community a support system people that give them a balance of a kick in the butt every once while because we all need that but also empathy and letting them know that they're worth it so that's what the whole power of this fit to factor 40 journey is is we are doing this journey together as a team as a community and so that's the first thing the second thing is all those mental emotional tools and and tricks that i i mentioned earlier meditation positive affirmations uh a gratitude list um you know getting out in nature going for a walk every day uh those kinds of things as a daily practice on top of eating healthy and exercising i think will help people build that self-awareness so that they become the observer of their thoughts and so that's what i'm really going to be feeding them is the meal plans and workouts you know those are a dime a dozen you can find those anywhere but the biggest thing is the help on the mental emotional side that we're all going to be doing every single day as a checklist and i feel like that's where people will hopefully as a team as a community will come together and shift their perception of what success looks like in health and fitness because it's not about getting the body it's about falling in love with the process because you're worth it not because you hate yourself and you want to look skinny but because you're worth it to live a healthy lifestyle and that's the the the switch in their head that needs to shift and that's where these things can help out i know at one point you were recommending to people to join like support groups and stuff so they could be around other people that were going through the same thing do you still do that do you recommend therapy like how big of a journey is it for people to get their head right oh man it's the biggest part but there's so many tools it doesn't just have to be you know a a group you know facebook it could be religion it could be church it could be plant medicine it could be a breath work it could be you know their local crossfit gym whatever it is whatever it takes for that person find whatever works for you best that helps you feel like you're not alone in this journey and i am open to different things for different people but that's the biggest part i think the biggest component because we as humans we need that human connection and there's something about suffering with other people that it's way more motivating than just suffering by yourself it sucks way more you know so so that's kind of the whole point of the second half of the journey we'll be doing it together in our you know facebook group and online at my website um so there will be this community aspect to it and your primary attack vector for the back half is going to be ketogenics uh it'll be a mixture of ketogenic it'll probably be more of a mediterranean style keto which i feel like for me and for a lot of people seems to work better versus better than you fine that for me so it's gonna be more poly unsaturated and mono and saturated fats uh so less red meat you know less bacon uh less dairy because that's like i'm doing now with with the dirty version of keto it's kind of like yeah that works you can lose weight on it and maybe it's more enjoyable for you but when it comes i think to most people's health people tend to improve their health better on a mediterranean style keto where it's not just saturated fat all day long but i think for me i feel a ton better on higher quality you know mediterranean style fats inside what's actually on your plate so we're talking things like olive oil um and olives avocados are big parts of that more fish more lean meats in my opinion doesn't have to be the fattier cuts of steak all the time i think for me you know a lot of people gravitate towards that but it's going to be more of the leaner meat with things like um olive oil or avocado oil do you just keep the lean meats relatively low like when you say that you're doing a ketogenic diet are you actually in ketosis yes i will be in ketosis my calories will be a lot less than what it was for this experiment but the cool thing with lean meats is you can't always control the fat amount that comes in meat so you know if you get uh one rib eye compared to another ribeye the fat content can be totally different and the calorie count could be totally different so if you get the lean meats and then add in your fats then you're kind of in control of how much fat you're actually getting and that's kind of my approach my philosophy when it comes to keto now versus back in the day i was like all right all the fat all the fat all the time you know the fattier the better i feel like yes that can work but i think if you're trying to dial it in a little bit you know getting the prote the lean proteins most of the time not all the time but then adding in your fats you can control how much fat is actually in that amount of food that makes sense yeah for sure and are you is it a primarily plant-based diet when you're doing that i wouldn't say primarily plant-based but i i'm a big fan of vegetables i do a carnivore thing every now and then and i actually feel great on a short-term carnivore but the thing that keeps me away from doing carnivore is i just love i love avocados i love you know some uh some broccoli uh cooked in in butter and salt like i actually enjoy it i do so for me it's it's more of a plant-based approach like um dr will cole has a book called ketotarian and it's it's more of a plant based approach to keto but trust me i'd love my protein so i love my animal protein one thing i'm going to be really curious to see so i so i used to wear a constant continuous glucose monitor probably worked for about six months it was so interesting i really really enjoyed it but one thing that shocked me to my core was that i had an impossible burger and it spiked me almost as hard as cold stone ice cream uh i was like i'm sorry what it was the craziest thing in the world so it'll be interesting to see how easy it is for you to spike your blood sugar even going vegan like you said you can have oreos on a vegan diet and then obviously then showing people how you can do it well at the end that'll be super super intriguing are you going to be publishing all of your blood results as you go yeah it'll be on my website as i go kind of showing comparisons throughout so you can kind of see side by side what's happening to my blood work i think the glucose the ketones the sleep data will all be on on one site or or a one page of the website so that's not up there yet but it will all be available because the the end goal with all this is to have everything available to everyone you know so they could see everything that's happening to my body my mind how it's affecting all of that so all that information will be on my website eventually in a format that is easy to you know easy on the eyes dude where where can people go to follow you on this crazy journey yeah so either fit2fat240.com either 4-0 or spill it out um that's my website you could follow you know the the updates throughout and then my uh social media is all fit number two fat number two fit and that's facebook twitter instagram tick tock all that stuff so yeah make sure to follow along and pray for me because this is hard man it is amazing well dude thank you so much for coming on the show i hope that everybody follows this journey and if you haven't already be sure to subscribe here and until next time my friends be legendary take care thank you guys so much for watching and being a part of this 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