These QUICK CHANGES to Your Diet Will Have the Most Impact on FAT LOSS | Dave Asprey

What is up, everybody? Today's episode is brought to you by our very own Impact Theory University. To celebrate our second anniversary, we are offering almost 40% off our mindset course. With over 60 hours of video lessons and monthly live calls with me, this is the best way to get the skills that I used to go from sliding towards depression, laying in bed 4 to 5 hours a day, needing shame to get out of bed just to make a sandwich for Lisa, to building and running my third wildly successful company. Guys, I'm telling you these are the skills that will change your life. Learn more and sign up today at anniversary.impacttheory.com, and I'll see you on the inside. Take care. What is one change that people could make to their diet that would have the biggest impact? Counting calories simply does not work at all. And people will say, "Oh, but it does, it does, it does." Well, if you look at the scientific studies, it doesn't. We are prehistoric in that when we see food, smell food, or talk about food, we can eat more food. Most people eat in such a way that they always experience cravings, and they've never experienced just hunger without a craving. I was like that 100%. And when you clean out the stuff that's causing the cravings, like, "Wow." I understand that I'm staring at a candy bar, so of course my mouth is going to water. That doesn't mean I have to eat it. The reason carbohydrates are very problematic is that they tend to be processed. So, processing removes a lot of these satiety signals. So, even if you've eaten a huge buffet and somebody says, "Hey, do you want a few sips of uh my soda?" You'd say, "Sure." Just don't be afraid of healthy fats. Uh coconut oil, avocados, olives. Once you understand your physiology and your physi- physical response to just the seeing of food, you can begin to navigate and control those urges a little bit more. I know now that our sleep quality is more important than our diet and exercise combined. Fascinating stuff, how much more fat you lose when you get optimal sleep. It's it's insane. It's not just physical, right? The mental, emotional, and even spiritual side are all paralleled and like it has to be a complete transformation. Otherwise, it's just going to be a diet that people do for 30 or 60 days. You can look at yourself in the mirror and say, I do what I say I'm going to do for me. But if they can work on the mental, emotional, and spiritual while they're working on the physical, that's where I feel like people will really truly be fulfilled because they realize that it's not just about being skinny or having six-pack that brings them fulfillment. What is one change that people could make to their diet that would have the biggest impact? And I'll be cheeky and sneak in and say, and also what's one change that they could make to have to their workout routine that would have the biggest impact? Got you. So, the number one thing diet diet-wise is don't be afraid of healthy fats. Coconut oil, avocados, olives, um implementing these healthier fats into your diet, just starting off with that we've been been doing low fat for so long. I think just adding in healthy fats can make a huge difference with people feeling you know, satiated and fuller longer. Um I think that's that's the the easiest thing to do for people, right? And people like butter and they like, you know, a full-fat cheese. And so, um these types of healthy fats I think could would be an easy good start. As far as workout goes, the easiest thing would would would be to do interval training. So, get your heart rate up to a very high level, whether it's walking up the stairs, walking uphill, uh running on a treadmill. Maybe let's say you run for 30 seconds, you get your heart rate up, whatever it is that you're doing to get your heart rate up for 30 seconds, that could be jumping jacks, right? And then recovering for about 30 seconds, and then repeating that for about 10 minutes will give you the most bang for your buck, in my opinion. I think simplicity and understanding that we're very habitual creatures, uh understanding and leveraging the habit habit patterns that we were talking about, leverage your hat Don't don't hate your habits. Don't be mad at your habit. Create new ones and leverage it. So, um there's sort of a moat around your castle. Like, you just kind of wake up and you make one of these great five healthy breakfasts, and you don't even think about it anymore. I always call it the beginning of your healthy meal repertoire, because we're just going to add to it, right? So, your friend calls and says, "Let's go out for Mexican." And you're like, "Oh god. Oh god. What am I going to do? How am I going to do this?" And you kind of do a little bit of research, and you realize, "You know what? I'm going to get the fajitas. I'm just going to eat one tortilla and get the rest of it over salad. I'm going to try that. See if it works, right? Try on that hat. See if it works." It works great. Now I know every time I go to Mexican, I've got this sort of go-to thing that's really yummy, and I like it, and it works with my program. So, it's like that understanding and doing things that are right for you in your life. Very important. If you're eating real food most of the time, and you're moving your body every single day, uh biking or swimming or Zumba dancing, ecstatic dance, uh whatever it is, moving your body, all right? Just getting out there and moving and eating real food, um you know, no one It's super easy to eat 20 cookies, right? Like, if you're like stressed out and you're having these baked goods in your house, but no one's going to eat sit down eat 10, 20 avocados, right? I mean, I've never seen anyone do that cuz they're stressed out. And I think if we could just get people to focus on the process of the habits that make a healthy lifestyle, rather than the results, then I think the results will take care of themselves. The The of a habit is simple, right? Habits are just very, very simple. They are made up of three distinct things that happen. There is a trigger or a cue of some sort that kicks that routine off, that kicks the habit off. That habit then gives you some sort of a reward. So, you may know that it would be best for you to have a healthy breakfast, right? And but your habit isn't that you don't know that perhaps having a healthy breakfast would be smart. It's that your bad habit is you wake up and use the snooze bar three times in a row, making you, you know, 15 to 20 minutes late every single day. So, you get up, all of a sudden you're running late. You then skip breakfast altogether. You're completely stressed out. You get in the car, you get to the office, and there's a coffee cart with donuts outside. You say, "I'm just going to get coffee." But as humans, anytime we see food, smell food, or talk about food, we're triggered to eat it. So, you see the donut, you don't have any resolve at that moment because you've been eating the donut habitually for days. But it also releases a big fat dose of serotonin. So, you are getting a real feel-good kind of thing. We back it up and we say like, "So, why is this happening? Okay, let's take that alarm clock. This trigger is this trigger's bad. This this lateness is triggering this this donut. Let's move this alarm clock across the room or stop using your phone as an alarm clock and get an actual alarm clock and put it across the room so you have to get out of bed. And let's stop being late cuz that extra 10, 15, 20 minutes allows you to then go to the kitchen where we trigger other things, right? Where I put post-it notes of like, "Okay, today's breakfast is X, Y, and Z." So, you don't have to think. You just have to start to create this new pattern. Once you do something about three to five times, it begins to become this new fledgling habit and it's not as painful. I think in that anatomy of of habits, I think no one ever has talked about the emotional difficulty that ensues from changing a habit as well. I just I like to tell people to be aware that there will be so many emotions when you try to change something that's so comfortable and you don't have to think about. You will be mad, you'll want to stomp your feet, you'll feel angry, you'll feel sad, you'll feel, you know, all of this anxiety. It's just that your body wants so badly to not have to think about these sort of less than important decisions that it feels very painful. But if you will repeat those things, as I say, three to five times, they become this fledgling habit and you just need to sort of fan the flames of that habit. Soon enough, that becomes the comfortable thing. And all of the sudden, breakfast is knocked out. Like, all of the sudden you're like, "Oh gosh, I've got the stuff in the house. I'm eating breakfast every day. I'm not getting over hungry. I'm not eating the donut." That starts to lead to actual weight loss. You know, what I had learned in medical school was all about sort of calories in, calories out sort of uh thing. But the more I looked into it, one, it's a very, very um uh unsuccessful way to lose weight. Counting calories simply does not work at all. And people will say, "Oh, but it does, it does, it does." Well, if you look at the scientific studies, it doesn't. Every single study that's looked at sort of say, you know, trying to restrict calories leads to at best a couple of pounds of weight loss over like 8 years. So, you acknowledge that if you if you take calories out of somebody's diet long enough, they are going to get lean, regardless of anything else. So, where is where does that paradigm break down in reality, and is it just willpower that people aren't sticking to it, or is it something else? Well, it's something else, and the whole point is that it's not the number of calories, it's what your body does with those calories. Because if you take 100 calories, if you eat a cookie, for example, and you take 100 calories, your body has a decision to make. Do I store that fat, or do I burn it for energy, and say increase body heat generation, for example? And that's the basal metabolic rate. That's the number of calories that your body uses in a day. So, which your body does with from that same 100 calories, you can either become fatter, or you can have a bit more energy during the day. And which one your body does really depends on the hormones that are associated with the foods that you're eating. And that's the real key, because if you simply cut calories, and this is the way that, you know, I was taught, and everybody was taught, you simply cut the fat, eat less fat, because fat is very dense in calories, you get less calories, and therefore, your body is going to lose body fat. But that's not necessarily true. If you eat 500 calories less, your body could simply decide to burn 500 calories less, and you won't lose any body fat. And it's not a matter of thermodynamics, because that's that whole idea that it's just about thermodynamics assumes that your basal metabolic rate remains absolutely rock stable. That is, if you're using 2,000 calories a day today, you go on a diet, you'll still use 2,000 calories a day. But you won't. We know we've known that for at least 100 years of basic research that your body will actually use less, fewer calories. So, cutting 500 calories a day, which has been the standard device, is very unsuccessful because if you don't change the hormonal system in your body, the the the and different foods contain different hormonal instructions. Your body could simply decide to burn 500 less and you will not lose body fat. So, it's it's it's simply false to say if you cut 500 calories a day down, you'll lose a pound of body fat a week. It's actually not true in any way, shape, or form. It's not the total number of calories that's important. It's what your body does with those calories and that depends on hormones. And in fact, everything in our body runs on hormones. Those are the instructions that we give to our body as to what to do. So, everything your body does or doesn't do depends on hormones. Those are the sort of mediators. Do you feel stuck, hopeless, frustrated, or even just lost? Do you feel capable of more, but you're not sure how to get there? Well, if that's how you feel, trust me, I've been right where you are at and now I want to help. My Impact Theory University Mindset Course is a digital learning platform that will help you strengthen your skill set to get over any negative self-talk and discover the power of a growth mindset. You're also going to have access to a global community of other people that are developing a growth mindset, fellow students like you, and this includes student-led accountability groups, virtual monthly meetups, book club, and a whole lot more. And to celebrate our second anniversary, I cannot believe we've been doing this for 2 years. It has been amazing. I'm offering my entire mindset course complete with live coaching from me for almost 40% off. Just go to anniversary.impacttheory.com to learn more and sign up and I will see you guys on the inside. Take care. Coming out of the Weight Watchers world, right? Which is a low-fat, almost no-fat diet, and I started to really disagree with it about 5 years ago, and I'm trying to to help the Weight Watchers members who've been stuck in this mentality, sort of gently teach them about moving into high-fat foods and not fearing them cuz you know, I get to work with these people face-to-face. This is real. Like people are stuck in the '80s. I'm not kidding. Like they're stuck and they're like, "Where are my Snack Wells, man?" Like I'm like, "You you you shouldn't be eating that." Like, "How do I move you?" So, yeah, this is a very gentle movement um and fluidity and in eating the things you love and learning to manage the things you love is the key. Like that is like for me, I drink wine. Like I drink wine and yes, I've I've definitely fallen on my face with that, literally, more than You know, I've had my issues learning to manage it, but I came up with a personal system that really works, right? Like I don't have it in the house. Before I can have a glass of wine, I have to have a glass of seltzer. In between every glass of wine, I have to have a glass of seltzer. That spreads out my drinks. Now that's habitual. If pizza is your thing, if you make it taboo over here, it's now bad, right? What do we What happens when something's bad and we feel guilty or shameful over eating it? We're going to highlight that reward system. We're going to go overboard with it. So, I'm trying to get people to say like, "Okay, I am going to look at my week and on Friday night we are going out for pizza and I'm going to have it, but I'm going to have a salad first, right? I'm going to do some behavior I'm going to shift some behavior around that food to see how that impacts me." I may still fail. Not fail, that's a terrible word, but I I may still not do as well as I was hoping I would, like my mimosa day, but I learned something and I I'm going to keep chipping away at this thing that has become something bigger than food, right? That is now bigger. That pizza is now not just pizza. It's like it means so much more. So, you've got to kind of chip away at that and try different behavior around it. If you can start to navigate this very dangerous environment that we live in and say like, "Okay, I understand that I'm staring at a candy bar, so of course my mouth is going to water. That doesn't mean I have to eat it." Once you understand your physiology and your physi- physical response to just the seeing of food, you can begin to navigate and control those urges a little bit more. Why are carbohydrates more, quote and quote, problematic when it comes to storing fat? The reason carbohydrates are very problematic is that they tend to be processed. So, processing removes a lot of these satiety signals. So, even if you've eaten a huge buffet and somebody says, "Hey, do you want a few sips of my soda?" You'd say, "Sure. No problem." Because they don't activate your satiety mechanisms. And same for like a cookie. You can easily eat a cookie after after you're full from dinner where you would not eat another, you know, pound of steak. So, it's a it's a bit more complex because there's multiple interacting hormonal systems that regulate how we respond. Protein doesn't seem to be nearly as bad even though it has a lot of insulin effect, it has probably a lot of these other hormonal effects that are just as important and really stop us from eating. Just like if you were to eat steak and eggs in the morning, a lot of fat, a lot of protein, it tends to keep you more full than if you were to eat white bread and jam. You eat that and then at 10:30 you're looking for a low-fat muffin, for example. And and this is one of the things which I always say is like when you're thinking about weight gain, weight loss, you really have to think about hormones because it's really a hormonal imbalance, not a caloric imbalance because the the calories in all these foods can actually be exactly the same. Um and that's why I'm not you know, not all carbohydrates are bad for you. Like clearly there have been many many um societies that have lived primarily on carbohydrates. Yet if you measure the insulin um response, they're actually quite good. So something like the they did a study in Kitava, for example, which is a South Pacific island and um they measured their diet and it's about 70% carbohydrates, but natural carbohydrates and they weren't eating all the time. Then when they measured their insulin, their insulin level was below the fifth percentile of a reference sort of Swedish population. So that means that even though they're eating a lot of carbohydrates, their insulin levels are still very low. So there's lots of things, not only the foods that you eat, but also the frequency which with you eat them plays a really important role and the amount of processing that goes into it. And you can see that effect in something like the glycemic index where when you eat white bread, things just spike way up. But if you were to eat beans, which is all carbohydrate, the glycemic index is much much much lower. And most natural foods are like that. You don't see that huge spike that you get. So the the processing of the carbohydrates makes it especially problematic because it is a fuel source for our body that our body is able to use very easily and it's highly refined so that you don't have any satiety and and you're getting it sort of absorbed very quickly because you've removed all the fiber, you've removed all the fat. And that's you know, that's that's sort of what goes into it. But focusing on the hormones is really important because it leads you away from focusing on something like calories. The only implication of focusing on the hormones as opposed to calories is that some foods are more fattening than other foods. That's really the only implication. It's like, "Boy, if you were to ask your grandmother or great-grandmother, she'd say, 'Well, duh. I hope you didn't have to go to university to learn that. Of course some foods are more fattening than other foods. Like cookies are fattening. Like anybody could have told you that. Anybody with an ounce of common sense would have told you you don't get fat eating broccoli. Like these are just like things that we take for granted that we should know." But you get so people get so so focused on, "Oh, it's all calories. It's all calories." that they say ice cream is as fattening as salmon. It's like, "No. Obviously not. If you've ever lived, you know, in on this earth, you would know that ice cream and salmon are not equally fattening for the same amount of calories. That's just common sense." A lot of people mix up the metabolic and the cognitive and the health benefits of fasting with the self-control benefits and they try to mix them up. And the truth of the matter is that you and I are pretty fortunate. You know, we've had companies that have done well. And we don't have to worry about getting up, driving for an hour in traffic. Our kids are or now staying at home with, you know, two kids hanging off each arm and just a huge amount of chaos. Oh, and on top of that, I'm just going to fast today even though I'm metabolically not really in good shape. And what's going to happen is you'll be just like me when I weigh 300 lb. You're going to be hypoglybitchy. You're going to be hangry. You're going to yell at your kids. You're going to yell at your boss. And it's not going to be a good day. And you're going to say basically F fasting. This is stupid. It doesn't work. But you don't have to do that. You don't have to experience pain and hunger to get the benefits of fasting and to go into fasting. And after 10 plus years of recommending this in my my writing and 15 years of practicing this, what you find out is that there are things that you can do in literature that don't trigger the two things that break a fast. What breaks a fast is having sugar or carbohydrate that raises your insulin. So, if you keep your insulin low and your blood glucose won't change much except for based on your adrenal adrenal function. Um if you do that and you don't eat protein, which impacts a whole different set of enzymes, you're getting the benefits of fasting. And now, some people are already up in arms going, "You can't have 5,000 calories of fat." No, you would get disaster pants if you did that. But, you can have small amounts of this. And the evidence I have for this is called number one, Bulletproof Protein Fasting, which has been practiced since 2012 when I wrote about it. And this is you eat less than 15 g of protein during a day, but you eat carbs and you eat fat and magically autophagy turns on. In studies, you can do that. So, I've always thought of fasting as you put nothing in your mouth that isn't exactly H2O. That anything beyond maybe I recently broadened my stance to include salt, just normal table salt. important. I was going to die on a That's it. If you had told me I had to fast, I'd have been like, "No. Like, I'm not going to do that. I'll go into starvation mode and it's going to suck and then I won't be able to do my job and you know, I'll act like a jerk and all that stuff." That message is playing super loud for everyone who's got extra pounds. And then, they have this desire to fast, but then you feel like a failure because the automated system in your body wants you to eat and you don't know how to deal with it. So, the deal is I'm going to put you in charge. That's what's going on here. And so, all of the bad things that you think about fasting won't happen. What's going to happen is you're going to save time and you're going to feel better than you do today and you'll never be hungry. And then they're like, "Okay, I'm going to try this once. I think you're full of crap." And they almost always start with a fasting hack. There's a reason that there's been several hundred million cups of Bulletproof Coffee, and people have lost a million pounds on the Bulletproof Diet. It's because when they had that fat in the morning, they were intermittent fasting, they just didn't feel hungry. And for the first time in their lives, when lunchtime came around, they're like, I guess I could eat. Instead of the way I used to be, which is like, "What's for lunch? What's for lunch? Tacos?" You know, that whole voice there, it just shuts up, and oh my god, it's so liberating. Yeah, it really does change your relationship to hunger. That was the thing that I could never quite get people to understand about ketosis specifically. And it's not like you're not hungry, it's that it doesn't have a grip on you. Which is very, very different. It's because there's two things that we confuse. One is a craving, and the other is hunger. And hunger is the sense that, you know what? It's time to eat sometime soon. Uh but I could wait a while. And a craving is, if I don't eat right now, someone's going to die. Whether it's me or someone else. And most people eat in such a way that they always experience cravings, and they've never experienced just hunger without a craving. I was like that, 100%. And when you clean out the stuff that's causing the cravings, like, "Wow, uh the experience of lunch is so different." What's the ideal split for you? The ideal split is whatever you'll do. And 16:8 is great, but for especially women, eating, and then I eat however much I want in an 8-hour window, or do you put limitations in the eating window? You can eat as much as you want during the window. Of Twinkies? Uh you know, you can, and you'll still get benefits, to be perfectly honest. You'll just get more benefits if you eat good stuff during the window. And that's the other thing. Okay, maybe you don't want to go grass-fed only, maybe you don't want to eliminate french fries from your universe. Okay, fine. Intermittent fasting will help everybody even on a complete crap diet. However, you'll be more hungry during your intermittent fast if you eat crap. So, you got to deal with that. And ideally, what you're eating after you break your fast you can have carbs or not have carbs, but don't have sugar, don't have seed oils, and eat grass-fed meat or don't eat meat. And if you follow those basic principles, and there's other nuances in there, what you find is that you feel really good. And the next morning, you wake up and you're not ravenous. And you're like, "Oh, yeah, I don't even want breakfast." And And that's a very liberating thing. Because if we're spending so many of our thoughts every day on food, food, food, and then you just aren't hungry, it really changes things. So So I I want millions of people to say, "I'm going to try this basic thing. I'm not going to worry about getting my diet perfect. I might make a few changes, but I'm just going to learn how to intermittent fast." And what I don't want them to do is what a lot of the fasting community does, where it's all about the fast and you know, every month I'm going to fast for a week. And And what you end up doing is you get people who become um they basically burn out their adrenals. And so women see sleep problems as the first symptom that they're overdoing it. And then they see hormonal problems in their monthly cycle, and then see hair loss and hair thinning. Guys, same thing, but it's usually 2 to 4 weeks out for women. First is sleep problems, then you wake up and there isn't a kickstand. And then you It took me a second. I forgot there, yeah. Uh and then after that, you can see hair thinning as well. And this is from excess cortisol because you overdid it. And you can see the same thing from just being keto for 3 months straight, right? That's why I've always recommended cycling cuz I made all these mistakes when I was learning about all this stuff. It was just very early days. And And so, how do you make this sustainable? And the truth is, fasting the same way every day is bad for you because it doesn't lend your body the idea of metabolic flexibility. It's like, "Oh, I live in a world where there's almost never enough food." So, have breakfast every now and then. At least, you know, Saturday morning have breakfast with your family. And you can have a keto breakfast, or you can have the gluten-free waffles, whatever you want. You should be able to handle that. Just don't eat bad oils. And over time, takes about 2 years to replace half your cell membranes, the oil in those membranes. Over time, you'll become more and more metabolically flexible cuz your cells work better. But if while you're intermittent fasting, you're still eating a ton of junk food, you won't get that benefit, but you'll get many other benefits of fasting. You're still going to lose weight. You're still going to have an improved blood sugar profile, but not as good as if you made a few changes in the diet. So, this is something everyone can do that's cheaper and more convenient than what you do in the morning right now. I know now that our sleep quality is more important than our diet and exercise combined. The what it does for our health, and also literally our physical appearance. Fascinating stuff. How much more fat you lose when you get optimal sleep. It's it's insane. When we're talking about how sleep influences your body composition, I think everybody needs to know this. There was a This study really blew my mind, and this was done at the University of Chicago. And they took people and they put them on a calorie-restricted diet, kind of typical stuff again I'm taught in college, to see the impact on weight loss when they're sleep deprived or getting enough sleep, all right? So, they put the people on this particular diet, monitor everything. One phase of the study, they're getting 8 and 1/2 hours of sleep, all right? And then they check all their metrics. Another phase of the study, same exact diet, same exercise, they don't change anything else, but now they sleep deprive them. And they take away 3 hours of sleep. So, now they're getting 5 and 1/2 hours of sleep versus 8 and 1/2 hours of sleep. At the end of the study, they found that when individual were well-rested, they burned 55% more body fat just by getting more sleep. And so, the question is, how does this happen? Melatonin, when I talked about this a little bit earlier, it's not just that it's involved in sleep, it's also involved in fat loss. In this study that was done in the Journal of Pineal Research, found that melatonin production helps to increase your body's mobilization of something called brown adipose tissue, right? This is a type of fat that burns fat, all right? The reason that it's brown is that it has more mitochondria. So, it's very energy dense, right? These mitochondria, just for people who I'm sure people have heard of this, but it's like these energy power plants in your cells that are creating the energy currency of your body, like how you experience energy, the energy exchange, something called ATP. And so, when you are producing adequate melatonin, you're producing and mobilizing adequate amounts of brown adipose tissue, which just puts you in a metabolically advantaged state, all right? But, if you're not getting the melatonin production, which you've got to meet two requirements, number one, you need a biological night. So, that means this could actually be during the day, but it's a consistent cycle of when it gets produced. But, the other requirement needs to be met, that you need darkness. Your body produces melatonin exclusively in darkness. And so, that's one. Also, how do you get How do they get that body fat change? HGH production, which we talked about, too. Human growth hormone is muscle sparing. And it's a big driver of energy. It's also known as a youth hormone. Kids have an insane amount of HGH being produced. This is why they have so much energy. We have a pretty sharp decline in our production right around 18 to 20. But, my argument is that around 18 to 20, we generally in our culture like leave the house, we might go to college, that kind of thing, and we no longer have structure, we no longer have rules, and we're not going to produce as much HGH. Transformation is so much more mental and emotional than people think. And if you've never been overweight, mostly what you can relate to is the physical side of weight loss, right? Eat less and work out. You know that, right? You got that. You've lived that. But the mental emotional side, you haven't lived that until you've kind of been down this path. And so for me, my eyes were opened. I realized just how wrong I was with trying to help people, right? And you mean your strategies were actually bad because you didn't understand the mental bad. They were just incomplete. They were just focused on the physical. So if someone was struggling with their transformation, I'm like, "Okay, change up your macros, change up your calories, change up your workouts. That's the missing component, right? That's what I uh I focus on cuz that's all I knew. Rather than trying to help them on the mental emotional side, which is what people struggle with, right? I think people it's not so much a lack of knowledge, right? Uh people know they need to eat healthy and work out. It's it's the application on the mental emotional side and the consistency of living that lifestyle over over time and that's where people struggle is is maintaining as a lifestyle change, which is more up here than it is in the gym or in the kitchen. So I want to really define what you mean by mental and emotional. Okay. So what is it that people are struggling with? An attachment to food, um the emotional reward of eating, like what is it? Yeah, and it's it's different for each person. The thing that I realized was was how powerful the emotional connection to food really is. Whereas before I'm like, "Look, it's not that hard. You just, you know, stop eating the junk food, put down the soda. You go to the gym every day. What's wrong? Like it's not that hard." Until I lived it even even though it was only for just 6 months. When I had switched and tried to lose the weight, that emotional connection to food was way more powerful even for me as a trainer, someone who lived their whole life healthy. And my body went through those withdrawal symptoms, right? Almost like a a drug addict. I won't I won't say I was addicted. Some people are truly addicted, but for me, just being aware of how powerful that emotional connection to food really is. And what do you do when you have cravings or you know, when you when you eat your emotions, when you're sad or you're happy. We celebrate or we had a stressful day, so we're like, "You know what? I deserve wine and chocolate tonight cuz I had a stressful day." So how do you help people through that? So I grew up in a morbidly obese family so I know exactly how people can find comfort and or celebration in food. How do you help them dive into that? Like do you get like psychological and and actually almost like a therapist walk them through that stuff? So there's obviously a physical component of transformation so that you help them with the physical side but I think you know it's like 10% that 90% help them with the mental emotional side and how I do that is putting them in support groups right? So it's not just me because I'm still a fit guy and it's putting them in a support group where they it's a safe place for them to share their struggles their successes their failures and receive that encouragement and that empathy that love and that people letting them know that they're worth it to continue to fight for their health. I think that's the majority of people that struggle with their health. Some people really don't feel like they're worthy and how do you convince someone that they are worthy? I still don't know. It's it's still up to them. It has to be their idea. I can't tell someone they're beautiful they have to truly believe that they're beautiful and they have to truly believe that they're worth it. It's you know hope that by telling them and putting them in a group where other people are telling them as well that they will find that inner motivation inspiration and kind of like you know inception to come up with that idea themselves like maybe I am worthy. Maybe you know I can do hard things. The health and fitness industry in my opinion hasn't used this fully yet and that's kind of what my hope is with FitBit Fit is to use empathy as a tool. People are going to be more willing to listen to you know their trainer or coach if that person has that empathy and can really come down to their level walk in their shoes a little bit and really understand where they're coming from and then they'll be more willing to listen to the advice that you have and that the physical tools or hacks that you have to help them along their their journey. I love in the book how you talk about that exercise is really about exercising the mind even more than it is about exercising the body. I think that's so astute and I think that people really um miss that a lot and and going back to the notion of earning credibility with yourself, what does that process look like? Yeah. We are all day making promises to other people, right? I have children, and you know, if I tell my child that we're going to I'm going to show up for them, you have to believe I would literally walk across fire. Like, I would walk across fire for that child. But, what I realized was I wasn't ever doing the same loving thing back to myself. I had become completely disposable. I was, you know, making a promise and then breaking that promise to myself, which made me not trust or love myself. Cuz would you trust or love an external person who continually broke their promises to to you? So, establishing integrity with yourself becomes probably one of the greatest things you will ever do. You're going to gain life skills that that make your work better and your family life better and your love life better, because once you can look at yourself in the mirror and say, I do what I say I'm going to do for me. For example, like is is on a physical transformation, they're trying to get healthy, if they have these small wins in their life, right? Like, I did my first burpee, or I did my first push-up or pull-up, or, you know, I ate healthy for a whole day. Um, these senses these small things of accomplishment help build that confidence of maybe I can do hard things. I recently had this guy from Nashville come out um to work with me. You know, he started out 600 lb. He's been doing keto, intermittent fasting, is down to 450 lb. And the thing that gravitated him to me and my brand was the the whole empathy thing, and and understanding where he's coming from, um because he felt judged by by other people. And so, he's like, "Drew, I only want to work with you." And we took him to this place called Gym Jones in Salt Lake City, and they've trained the the of 300, and they train um Superman, um and so these celebrities and I'm like okay we're going here and he was like scared to death. He's like Drew you're trying to kill me. I'm like no I'm not going to kill you like I understand that we're going to start out slow but um you know I had him do modifications to the things that we were doing in the workout and it was hard for him but at the end of the day he's like Drew like he started crying he's like Drew I like this was the best thing for me like to being able to do you know ball slams like you guys and being able to do like modified push-ups. He's like I haven't moved my body in in years. And I I think after he came out here like he was super confident and and I had him say these positive positive affirmations to himself like I can do hard things as he's doing the workout. I can do hard things as he's doing farmers carries and wanted to give up but he pushed harder. And if I can get him to believe that he can do hard things even though it's small at first then it's going to help motivate him and push him you know when he tries to do something that's like oh that's impossible there's no way I could do that but now he's like maybe I can do that. What would you prescribe to them to do to show them that they can do the hard things to begin building that self-worth? Put out these mini challenges throughout the month like okay you guys this month we're going to focus sometimes it's a physical thing but other times it's like hey guys for 30 days I want to challenge you to do maybe three to five positive affirmations every single day and all you're saying to yourself is I can do hard things or I am worthy or I love myself and I'm proud of who I am. It's not a direct you know cause of weight loss but if you can uh set yourself up for this win that's going to help you set set that's going to help set you up for these other wins down the road when it comes to the workout you're going to do this month or sticking with whatever diet you're trying to do for that month cuz then you realize man I can do hard things even if you don't believe it at first and that's the thing people really don't believe positive affirmations at first cuz they've had 30 40 years of negative self-talk and now you're trying to tell them you know just say these things out loud to yourself words have power and they can actually change your beliefs, and they can actually change you at the cellular level the more you say them consistently. So, I think there's something to saying positive words about yourself to yourself every single day. And so, that's that's one thing that I do in these private Facebook groups to build that confidence and and uh convince that person that they can do hard things. I remember the first time I said a positive affirmation, I had goosebumps and I almost started crying. Like, and um for me, like a tough dude, it was weird. Um so, for me, just kind of telling you my own testimony of this, it's changed my life 100%. Back then, I focused so much on the physical aspect of of weight loss or just transformation in general. But now I've been doing this for years, I realize like that's what we're missing in the health and fitness industry is it's not just physical, right? The mental, emotional, and even spiritual side are all paralleled, and like it has to be a complete transformation. Otherwise, this just is going to be a diet that people do for 30 or 60 days. But if they can work on the mental, emotional, and spiritual while they're working on the physical, that's where I feel like people will really truly be fulfilled because they realize that it's not just about being skinny or having six-pack that brings them fulfillment, right? You can have the perfect body, but so many people with perfect bodies are miserable inside, and they hate themselves still. Why? Because they don't take care of the mental, emotional, and spiritual, and they have to all be taken care of, otherwise they'll atrophy like you said, and you'll you'll be you'll find out that your life is is um out of balance in a way. What are some other things that you would have people do as sort of a a part of just like your regular routine? Uh daily gratitude list. And what I mean by that is is looking around you and being grateful for what you have now, rather than like, oh, I'll be happy when I reach my first million dollars. I'll be happy when um you know, this or that happens in business. I think a lot of people do it wrong, though. They, you know, just like with physical transformation, they're like, oh, I'll be happy when I meet this goal, and then I'll celebrate. I think that's where people struggle and people suffer because they get unhappy cuz they're not there yet, right? And then they get there and they're like, "Well, that wasn't it. What is it now?" Like they're looking for something else, some kind of outside source of happiness. When in reality, you can create it inside, you know, you can choose to do it. It's hard. It takes rewiring your brain. It doesn't happen overnight. But, um I promise you that, you know, if you can do things like a great a daily gratitude list every single day, that's going to uh help you be fulfilled in the here and now while you're working on a better version of yourself. 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