Episode 309: Adam Bornstein: The Shocking Truth Behind Diet and Fitness Myths

Hi, guys, it's Tony Robbins.

You're listening to Habits and Hustle, Gresham.

My podcast today is with the one and only Adam Bornstein, and we're laughing because it is so freaking hot and we haven't even started yet.

We're in my kitchen.

Long story, I don't want to bore you with all the details of why I'm not in my actual studio as normal, but we are both literally like sweating through our clothes and we haven't even started.

It's like a sauna podcast.

I'm really excited I chose to wear jeans today.

I was going to say, and black.

Jeans and black.

I didn't know this was the sauna episode, but you know, sauna has benefits.

So by the time we are done, we are going to be so healthy.

Sauna has a lot of health benefits, which is so apropos for what this podcast is.

So let me just give you, let's give a very brief intro on who Adam is, because if you don't know, you don't know.

But if you know, you know.

So Adam is like the guy in the health and wellness fitness business that he's like the, like we all, everyone knows who he is in that space, right?

But not necessarily outside of that space because his career is so vast.

He was the fitness editor at Men's Health years ago, like probably one of the first things you probably ever did.

Right.

And he's written eight books.

He builds fitness brands.

He did it.

He does things with like Microsoft, Google, Eric Schmidt, Tim Ferris.

I mean, the guy is the guy.

And we're going to get into like your whole origin story, but he's on because he has a new book out or yeah, almost pretty new.

Pretty new.

Pretty new called You Can't Screw This Up, even though I almost screwed up the title.

No judgment.

And we're going to talk all about fitness, health, trends, myths, and so much more.

So thank you for being on.

Thank you for having me and in the sauna today.

In the sauna.

Yeah.

I know.

You're welcome.

Thank you for being in the sauna with me today because

it takes a big person to want to sweat for two hours for no apparent reason.

Oh, there's a reason.

I just didn't, I knew there was a reason for being here.

I just didn't know the sweating was going to be the side benefit.

Yeah, it is definitely.

So, Adam, let's start by, can you just kind of give everybody, even though I kind of gave your brief little bio, like who you are, like, what is your origin story?

If you had to

put it is I am a university researcher, turned editor at big magazines when magazines were a thing.

Yeah.

Turned online media editor.

So when online sites ruled the airways before social media took over, and I ran livestrong.com at a time that when livestrong.com was the biggest site on the internet, we were getting 40 million plus coming to the site a month.

And then I kind of went on my own path to go and help many different businesses grow, reach audience, create products and resources for people, write books.

And as time went on, I think I realized the biggest impact I could have would be by helping people with huge platforms rather than making the platform about myself.

So I've been very lucky to work with a wide variety of people, but I think the superpower is understanding research at a level that a scientist can understand, but then being able to translate it in a way that the average person could read and do something with it.

And that intersection and the ability to tell stories and do so in a way that is helpful and isn't full of BS is rare in the field because either you get the people who don't understand science or you get the people who are great communicators but don't understand the science or the people who understand the science but have no idea how to communicate.

And they really only care about sounding smart as opposed to helping people or creating tools and resources for people that just push people forward.

I always said, like, my job, the way I view it, is that it's, you know, everyone has a gap between where they are and where they want to be.

And my job is to help eliminate that.

Well, you know, it's interesting because like I was kind of alluding to earlier is that in this space of the health umbrella of wellness or health or fitness, you're one of the only people where I think across the board, people are like, oh, yeah, that guy's really smart, or that's a good dude.

Like, he knows what he's talking about, or he's like the, because in a space where there's so much misinformation, so much not like frivolous fact, so to speak, not fat, body fat, but just like noise and like just benign nonsense, you know, I think it's really important to have voices like yours out there who are talking facts.

Now, I want to start by asking you something that I've noticed, and maybe if you've seen it because, you know, similarly, I feel that when you do give people like the true honest information, like the basics work, right?

Like, you know what?

It's not about these trends, these fads.

It's like, do the basics.

People like don't want to know, like, don't care, don't want to listen to it.

And it doesn't track well, right?

Like, it doesn't, it's not, it's not cool marketing.

It doesn't trend.

But how do you like, because you're that guy, like you're like, this, like, you are a very like honest, this is what, this is actually unfortunately what works.

Like it is honest.

Is that kind of, do you find that it's hard to even get your message out there sometimes because you have to like compete with such bullshit that's out in the marketplace that people glom on to basically?

Yeah, it's incredibly difficult.

And, you know, I talk about this a little bit in the book that it's not always our fault.

Right.

It's more that the market preys on how we think and operate than we, I think, intentionally do this.

So there's, you know, research that looked at our brain imagery, fMRI, and it found that when you share information that is sensationalized, a little bit crazy, too hard to believe, our brain lights up and releases dopamine.

Right.

Right.

So the pleasure center that makes it more likely for us to believe, or more importantly, more likely for us to engage.

But when we share something that is boring or almost too simple, nothing happens in the brain.

It doesn't register.

Right.

So you see this a lot on social media, you know, that the crazier the claim you know the

you or i could look at it and be like oh my goodness this is bullshit but for people who are at a place of pain or a place of frustration or haven't found what works for them they see that and they go oh this is different or more likely this is difficult

this is restricted it must work and the funniest thing is that you know science is dependent on two ideas reliability and validity right If you want to say something that something is scientifically likely to be true, because science is not about complete certainty, right?

We can always test something and challenge it, and that's what frustrates people, right?

We want thing, we want certainty, we want control.

And science is like a new study can always come around and ask a new question.

And maybe if that question provides an answer that we didn't expect, it causes us to ask many more questions.

It's why we learn new things as time goes on.

A lot of people view that as being wishy-washy.

Like to me, that's being open-minded.

And that means that it is being cognizant that evidence should determine outcomes over time.

So science has got reliability and validity.

All it really means is like you want to know, like, is this reliable?

Does it actually measure what it claims to be testing?

And is it valid?

Can you do the test over and over and over again and get a similar outcome?

So that you can say with certainty, oh, this wasn't like a one-time thing.

Right.

Like this.

actually works.

Right.

That's how science is defined.

And when you test something over and over and over again, like, oh, eating protein it is good for you it's aligned with building muscle or keeping you fuller or helping control calories you can say with a high degree of certainty that like protein is okay or you know when they test it in healthy people eating protein does not cause kidney damage does not cause kidney damage does not cause kidney damage okay eating a high protein damage does not damage your kidneys based on everything that we know right now That's the stuff that works, but it fundamentally means that we are testing the same thing over and over again.

It becomes boring.

It becomes mundane so that when you share it,

no one wants to listen, no one, and also it becomes like I feel what's happened.

Like, God, it's like it's everything has been repackaged so many times.

It's the same information that's been repackaged in a little bit different or a little more sensationalized to get the

likes, to get the hits, to get the whatever that thing is, right?

So, it's about whoever's packaging this information better.

And sometimes you add some like flavor that's not necessarily accurate to kind of get that.

But I, before you came on today, I googled, you know, the most asked questions about fat loss, about weight loss.

And seriously, it's the same questions that we were asking 30 years ago, 20 years ago when I was doing this, right?

Nothing's really changed at all.

Like the real answers are still the real answers, but because now social media, it's just become a whole different thing.

What would you say, even in your, in your life now, would be the number one question that you get about fat loss, weight loss, all of it.

Which diet will help me lose the most fat fastest?

And it's the wrong question to ask because many diets can help people lose fat, right?

This has been tested repeatedly.

Yep.

Right.

That they have gone, they've compared low fat to

low carb, right?

And there's this great DietFit study, huge, long study, and they looked at it and it came down to the difference was 0.25 pounds per week versus 0.21.

So the difference is literally four one hundredths of a pound of a low fat compared to a low carb diet.

They've looked at all the different styles of diet, like a zone diet or a Mediterranean diet or a vegan diet.

There was a New England Journal of Medicine and they found that which one performed best?

Well, it depended on how long you were consistent with the plan.

If someone was consistent, all five produced similar outcomes.

So the question really isn't like what leads to fat loss.

We know lots of things do.

And at the root of it is like reducing the amount of calories that you take in.

And then, as your body adjusts, you have to adjust how much you eat because what it takes for you to lose weight when, let's say, you're 200 pounds is different than what it takes when you're 180 pounds because your body metabolically adapts.

The amount of calories you burn per day actually decreases.

People think that, like, oh, you've got such a fast metabolism.

The smaller you are, the slower your metabolism burns because your metabolism, or at least the majority of your metabolism, is connected to your body weight.

Heavier people burn more calories than lighter people.

End of story.

So that's so interesting because that is why probably when you're heavier, it's easier to lose weight versus when you're smaller, like losing that last five pounds

is so hard.

So difficult.

And it's why then that the issue isn't like, well, how do we lose weight?

Right.

No, like most people, if they've tried to lose weight, have lost it.

They just gain it back.

They gain it back.

So the question is, how do you sustainably lose weight?

How do you keep it off?

And after you've lost that weight, how do you take the next step?

Because in the same way that if what you did if you were a business to go from $0 to $1 million is not going to be the same thing you go from 1 million to 10.

It's not.

And it doesn't take away what you did from zero to one.

The challenges become different.

So the things that you did to lose, say, those first 20 pounds was great.

Now you have to adjust and learn how to maintain.

And then you have to adjust again and figure out how are you going to lose an additional 10 if needed, if you want, from your new weight.

Let's talk about that.

Tell people because those are questions that are, I'm sure someone here is listening to this podcast and is like, okay, you know, for those who have lost weight and now they're plateauing, right?

Because that will happen.

You're not, you've got to continually change what you're doing.

Give us the real facts on how somebody keeps it changing as their body and their body composition is changing.

Yeah, I think the question is more, how did you get there in the first place?

Okay.

Because here's what typically happens.

Okay.

We all want rapid results.

Right.

All of us.

No one wants to wait for a while.

And you can get rapid results, but usually the rapid results cause you going to extremes.

Yeah.

And that can work for the short-term weight loss, but it doesn't work for the long-term weight loss.

And here's why.

So let's say that, again, you're 200 pounds and you want to lose weight.

So you dramatically cut your calories, right?

Let's say you're eating 2,000 calories a day and you decide to cut down to a thousand calories and you start exercising six times a week and you lose those 20 pounds in three, four weeks and you're just feeling fantastic, but you're probably feeling a little burnt out because you cut your calories a lot.

You saw a lot of success, but now you're pretty hungry.

You've been exercising a lot, so you're a little exhausted, but you see the results.

So now your body's at 180 pounds.

Metabolically, you are probably burning fewer calories because now your basal metabolic rate, which is roughly 60%, 60 to 70% of the total calories you will burn from your metabolism, which is just the energy it takes to be alive, is less because you're at a new body weight, right?

Like just like a bigger car, a truck requires more fuel,

a smaller car requires less fuel.

So you are a smaller car now.

Where are you burning those extra calories?

You've already cut your calories down to a thousand.

You're already working out six times a week.

What are you doing?

You've actually backed yourself into a corner where you make it very, very hard to lose more weight because you prematurely made it hard for you to cut from somewhere.

So that's why a gradual approach to fat loss in general is more effective.

Not because we want it to take longer, but because a gradual approach to fat loss means that you can figure out what is the most amount of food I can eat and still lose weight.

Right.

That is the way you want.

Most people are like, oh, how much do I have to cut?

No, you want to figure out like, what is the sweet spot of like, if I just cut a little bit of food or if I like reduce these portions, can I lose weight?

And how long can I lose weight?

Because you should make small changes, see if you can lose weight, and then keep on seeing how long you lose weight, and then wait until the weight loss stops.

And it's not a day-by-day thing, it's a week-over-week thing.

People want to weigh themselves every single day, but daily weight fluctuations are normal the amount of sleep you had will affect it the amount of water you drink whether you do a podcast in a sauna and like lose five pounds while doing it will affect what your high scale weight is tonight oh exactly right all these things are day to day but if you were to do it for a whole week you would see it's going up and down but is the trend line trending down right healthy weight loss for most people and the more weight you have to lose the more you can lose in a healthy way is going to be like one to two pounds per week and most people are like oh that's nothing but if you were to scale that out over like three months, you know, and you were to lose, you know, if it's, if it's 12 weeks and you're losing two pounds a week and you lost 24 pounds, you're going to be pretty happy.

But the difference from that versus the rapid weight loss is you have so much more leeway to continue to make changes.

And the problem is less about, you know, how do I lose fat and more about like how many levers can I still press?

You want to keep as many levers as possible.

So phallos about like, what is the most amount of food you can eat?

Keeping the things you love, keeping in the carbs so that when weight loss actually stops, you drop carbs a little bit, you drop fat a little bit, you add walking an extra 1500 steps, you add one workout.

I want lots of levers to pull so that it doesn't become miserable.

It doesn't become awful and it doesn't become, I have to cut out everything because what happens is people become miserable, they quit, they say, I've screwed this up, they eat everything, they gain back the weight and they're like, see, This will never ever work for me.

Yeah, I totally agree.

So what you just said, because I think that is so true, it's very common sense, but people sometimes don't have common sense, is that if you do something so drastically right off the bat at jump, then you have nowhere to go from there.

Correct.

Right.

So, like, yeah, you'll have drastic results.

And then you will like, then what?

You can't keep on cutting.

So, if you do it more methodically, you're actually, it actually behooves you over time.

But let's say, okay, they've done that.

Yep.

Okay.

Now what?

Now they've lost the weight properly and they lost their 30 pounds, 20 pounds, whatever it is.

What do they do now for that last five pounds?

Because like you said, the smaller you are, the harder it is.

And I know this, you know, what can you do?

Because what will happen is you may, like, it will teeter for a bit, but you'll come, the baseline is, you know, it's hard to screw with that baseline, right?

What do you do?

There are a couple of things.

So one, from a dietary standpoint, the hardest thing is that as you lose weight, you tend to become hungrier.

Yeah.

It sucks, right?

Why is that too?

It's just you, your body, your body is no longer in its homeostatic state, right?

The body wants to be in balance.

Yeah.

Truly wants to be in balance.

When you lose a bunch of weight, even if it's good for you, it is different than what your body was used to.

So your body's like, I used to be eating

all these more calories.

Now I'm eating fewer.

I'm hungry.

Your body will adjust.

Metabolic adaptation is a real thing, right?

It's a psychological though.

It's hormonal.

Yeah.

It's psychological and it's physiological, right?

Because as you lose weight, leptin and ghrelin are these two hormones that affect your hunger and your satiety.

And as your body adjusts that, your body isn't producing as much leptin, so then you become hungrier.

But the body needs to adjust.

And if it adjusts to body weight, leptin can end up leveling off and be produced well.

But the things you want to do is that, like, we're seeing more and more of this is that hunger is driven by the brain, right?

This is why the GLP3 Agnes, the Ozempics of the world,

are so powerful.

Everyone's like, oh, Ozempic helps me lose all this weight.

Yes, but it's not doing anything to your metabolism.

It's not doing anything to how many calories you literally have no desire to eat because it is triggering essentially the chemical reactions in your brain that make you want to eat or not eat.

Because what people don't realize also is that these were designed originally for diabetics and then for people with obesity.

People with severe obesity, their brain does not work like the rest of us.

When we eat food, we send a signal to our brain saying, I'm full.

People with obesity, that signal doesn't get to the brain.

So they can eat all the right things, but they still want more food.

And what Ozempic or Wagofi, all these drugs are doing is it's shutting that off, which is why they're now looking at it for all paths of addiction, whether drinking or cigarettes.

Like, can this drug be a way to cure addiction because of broken pathways in our brain?

Now, assuming you're not overweight or obese and that signal isn't working, as you lose weight, you're going to get hungrier, but the pathways are still the same.

So the two easiest things to eat to make sure that you tap into satisfaction are protein and fiber.

Protein and fiber fill the satiety center in your stomach that sends a signal to your brain saying, I'm full.

So learning how to eat in a way that allows you to sustain that, because everyone's diet's going to be a little bit different.

But when you get to that sticking point, bumping up protein, bumping up fiber are the two things that are going to help you eat less because at some level, you have to eat less.

And if you've done it the right way, you have more leeway.

But as you drop those calories more, hunger can increase unless you know how to trigger your brain chemistry so you're not as hungry.

So like one is like, how do you double down on protein and fiber?

How do you eat more of that while either either having a little bit fewer carbohydrates or a little bit less fat?

The idea is that carbs or fat are neither good or bad.

What you have to do is you don't want to eat a lot of both of them.

So if you're at the same time.

You can eat them at the same time, but you need to cut down on one of them.

So like if you're going to bump up protein, you might want to decrease the total amount of carbohydrates or decrease the total amount of fat.

You don't need to decrease them both at the same time because again, you want to leave more room for change.

So, increasing protein and fiber is one.

And the other one, which is everyone sleeps on it, walking.

People's daily step counts because we focus on all the time in the gym and the calories that we burn.

As we lose weight, what we see in general is that metabolism, the amount of calories that we burn in the total course of the day, it actually decreases because you're taking in less energy.

So, you not by design, but subconsciously become lazier.

Studies have seen that, like, we move less throughout the course of the day outside of gym activity as we lose weight.

So, you need to, yes.

So, you need to compensate for that by consciously saying, like, if you were to track your step count, for example, from when you start to when, like, you've lost that 20 pounds, research would suggest it drops pretty significantly.

And then people are like, well, I don't understand why I'm like burning fewer calories.

And I'm like, well, you're actually, you end up moving less.

And again, this is not the gym activity.

This is the neat.

So the non-exercise thermogenesis.

So the movement that you get in general tends to decrease it.

So you have to be very intentional about increasing that.

So what's interesting is, I was going to say, I would think the opposite because a lot of people that I know, once they see, it's always like until they actually see a difference, once they actually see a difference and they are losing weight or they're looking the way they want to look and feel the way they want to feel, what happens?

It becomes an obsession.

And that to me is what I notice more: that like, oh, okay, I look more toned.

I feel better.

I have more energy.

I'm going to double down now.

And what happens is you then overwork, like you overwork out, you over move, you don't rest enough because you become obsessed with what the results that you've seen or have had happen.

And then you get frustrated because everything that you were doing in the past worked and now it's much slower and it doesn't work.

So then what you see is like you keep on like, you keep on doing more, more, more more exercise, you eat less food.

And that becomes a very vicious cycle.

Yeah.

I mean, that can definitely happen for some people.

And I think it might even be self-selecting in terms of the people that you're around.

And when they catch that exercise bug, what happens?

Well, if you're not going to be able to do that, but then what happened?

But then what happens in that situation?

I think the big thing that people need to know is that if you want, if you have a lot of weight to lose.

No, it's more about if you

have lost the weight.

Right, but I'm saying like if you have a lot of weight to lose, don't start out with a super ambitious plan

because then you can keep on adding in things.

And then when you lose that weight, people are going to be surprised by how easily they can lose that weight.

That's the thing.

We think that we need to carb starve.

We think that we need to detox.

You don't.

Well, that's interesting you say that.

So because let's go over all the different trends right now, right?

The first one is intermittent fasting, right?

Everybody and their dog is doing it.

I feel like I'm the only one.

I'm like, I really like breakfast and I really like dinner.

And it's hard for me to miss a meal or eat in a window.

And I feel like I've been like bullied because I'm like not doing what everyone else is doing.

How dare you not fest.

You gave the best answer ever on how people should look at any diet.

That is chef's kiss fantastic.

Really, okay.

I like eating breakfast.

I like eating dinner.

You're very fit.

You probably are happy with the conditioner and you might have goals that you want to push yourself towards, but

you understand

that if there's something that you like in your life and the diet's going to make you not do it, the likelihood of you doing it for a long period of time is very low.

Very low.

So intermittent fasting, it's not bad, but it's not better, right?

I wrote a best-selling book, a New York Times best-selling book in 2012 about intermittent fasting, which gives you an idea how long it's been around.

Yeah.

2012.

And here I am 11 years later telling you that I don't intermittent fast anymore.

And there's a reason for that.

One, many of the things that I once thought were true were not, right?

We talked about science being based on reliability and validity.

The more that people tested fasting, the more that we saw that, it's not that it's bad.

Again, it's not better.

If you compare people who intermittent fast to people who just reduce their calories, the outcomes are the same.

It is not superior.

Now, if you find that you can't trust yourself, because if you're in the kitchen, and you can just eat at any time, intermittent fasting might be a good solution for you because it creates a very simple parameter in terms of like when you eat and when you don't.

And if that means you don't overeat and you don't become your own worst enemy, that is super, super helpful.

But if you're like me, you know, I stopped intermittent fasting in 2015 because I was sitting there not eating breakfast one day with my newborn child and I had an epiphany.

I sat there and I was like, am I going to never eat breakfast with my kid ever?

And I was like, no, this is stupid, especially when a lot of the things that people say, oh, the intermittent fasting, you, you have autophagy.

I need to make sure I get the autophagy.

Well, you go through autophagy when you sleep.

You also experience autophagy if you reduce calories, irrespective of fasting.

You also experience autophagy from resistance training.

So it's like, oh, I can go ahead and do other things to get the same benefit.

And there's no evidence that the autophagy you get from fasting is superior from other things.

No different than, you know, cold tubs are really big right now.

I got nothing against the cold tub, right?

If you want to do it, if it builds resilience or grit or you feel amazing, great.

The research on the fat loss, a little sketchy, but more importantly, a lot of people do it for the dopamine boost, right?

They want to feel better because you do, you get like a high.

Guess what?

You can get a dopamine boost doing other things.

You can get a dopamine boost from listening to music, from going for a walk outside, from having sex.

So if those things sound better to you and you don't want to jump in a cold tub, you don't have to.

I think so much about fitness is we make things seem like this is the one and only.

Intermittent fasting is the only way to lose fat.

It's if people haven't been losing fat and been healthy.

Like we're more unhealthy now as a society with intermittent fasting than we were 30 years ago when nobody fasted at all.

Right.

So you can't be telling me that this is like, this is the holy grail.

Like we used to be a healthier society.

There are a lot of reasons that contribute to that.

So so many of these diatrends, again, it's just trying to get you to buy in because it sounds cool.

It sounds sciencey.

It sounds like it, it must work, right?

People start throwing on terms of growth hormone and cortisol and and insulin.

We talk all about mechanisms, but like mechanisms are cool until you actually compare things head to head, right?

I love the mechanisms, but then what happens when we just reduce calories or we fast and there's no difference?

So if you like breakfast and you like eating around people or it doesn't work for your schedule, why would you go ahead and do something that you fundamentally in your heart know is not going to work when the one thing we know about diets, it's all about like, what is the thing that you can consistently sustain for the longest period of time?

Okay, I I bravo to that answer.

I agree with that.

And that's also what the fit and like when people say, well, what's the best exercise to do?

Well, it's the one that you'll actually do.

Yeah, versus the one that you show up and do.

Or like, it becomes like a gateway drug, right?

I was reading some study recently for like for Arnold's like daily newsletter that we do about people who garden and how they burn more calories and move 45 minutes more per day and they eat more fruits and vegetables.

And like, is gardening the true secret to health?

No.

But if gardening forces you to move move more, if gardening puts you in the presence of healthier foods, if gardening gets you outside and that inspires you to feel a little better and then you go on more walks or then you go to the gym one more time a week, it could be like almost that first domino.

And for so many people, it's about doing that first domino.

When we look at weight loss, it's really less about like the physiological mechanisms, what's happening to your body, and it's more about like the psychological barriers.

What is the thing that you can do so consistently that it becomes habit, just like brushing your teeth becomes habit.

habit so then you can build on that what are the behaviors that you can master that becomes a gateway so that this stuff becomes easy because most people who are super fit share the routines that they do today but those are not the routines that they did when they started you know if you looked at your own journey if i looked at my own journey what i do now is so different from where i started and that's because like i had to do the thing that allowed me to gain confidence, right?

Evidence is confidence.

People need to be able to do something like it is based on behavioral change.

James Clear talks about this.

You know, he wrote Atomic Habits.

That if you really want behavioral change, you have to figure out how to build habits.

And if you really want to build a good habit, your goal is to make it so easy that it's hard to fail.

And that flies in the face, right?

And we set goals.

We set these big, hairy, audacious goals.

And that's important.

It's important to have a vision.

It's important to be bold.

And that is the vision.

That's the long term.

The action, the habit is like, what are you going to do today that is so easy that it's hard to fail?

So you succeed.

You succeed.

You succeed.

You build confidence.

It becomes easier.

You become more motivated because most people think they have to wait for motivation, right?

I'll go to the gym when I'm motivated.

And it's bullshit because here's why motivation follows action, not the other way around.

So if you do not first take action, you will not become motivated, which means when you have to take that first step, it's kind of going to suck.

It's kind of going to be hard.

So you should find a first step that's actually easier.

So it sucks a little bit less that you keep on doing it and then you can progress to something harder.

That's the key with almost everything in health.

Can you find that gardening experience, that first domino that you can do that doesn't necessarily feel like too much of a barrier?

And as you gain confidence, you do it.

Like for me,

I look at what I do now.

And if you turn back the clock 20 years, there's no way I could have done that 20 years ago.

I totally agree.

I want to take a quick break from this episode to thank our sponsor, Therisage.

Their Tri-Light panel has become my favorite biohacking thing for healing my body.

It's a portable red light panel that I simply cannot live without.

I literally bring it with me everywhere I go.

And I personally use their red light therapy to help reduce inflammations and places in my body where, honestly, I have pain.

You can use it on a sore back, stomach cramps, shoulder, ankle.

Red light therapy is my go-to.

Plus, it also has amazing anti-aging benefits, including reducing signs of fine lines and wrinkles on your face, which I also use it for.

I personally use Therasage Trilight everywhere and all the time.

It's small, it's affordable, it's portable, and it's really effective.

Head over to Therasage.com right now and use code BE BOLD for 15% off.

This code will work site-wide.

Again, head over to Therisage, T-H-E-R-A-S-A-G-E dot com and use code BBOL for 15% off any of their products.

And that other thing you just touched upon before, I didn't want to interrupt you, which is so true, is that, you know, we've been doing this forever, years and years, and

people are heavier than they've ever been, less healthy than they ever were.

And back when

we never had as many diets and trends and nonsense.

But like you said, there's a lot of variables that play into that.

But at what point is it going to be like, we're just, it's going to get worse, right?

Now with social media, like it's scary.

It's really scary.

75% of the U.S.

is overweight or obese.

75%.

When what you're doing isn't working for three-fourths of people, it's a problem.

And it's not that we're not trying.

We can argue all day about where the government or anyone should be spending the money, right?

But it's a misnomer to say, like, there aren't programs or efforts put into making people healthier and there's not fitness influence.

And if you would actually trend the number of diet books and the obesity and overweight, they almost overlap.

The more diet books that we've come up with, the more people gain weight.

Why is that, you think?

Wait, would you say that if you had to pick three reasons why we keep on getting to be fatter as

a country, a nation,

with more information, more diets, more trends, more of everything.

You can't just say it's because portions are big.

There has to be other reasons.

Portions are one, the shift in ultra-processed foods.

And we're seeing more and more changes.

And like, this is something obviously that we can't control, but it's true.

Like, 60% of the foods now in grocery stores are ultra-processed.

And ultra-processed does not mean any processing.

People misunderstand, right?

Like, olive oil is a processed food.

All processed foods are not bad.

Canned beans, processed food, right?

Because there is a level of processing to put them in the package that you get.

All processing is not bad.

Ultra-processed means that we are adding salt, sugar, fat in unnecessary ways to foods.

So all bread is not bad, but a lot of the packaged bread that has like extra salt or fat or sugar that could last on your shelf for three months naturally.

Preservatives, we don't know all the mechanisms yet, but there was an amazing NIH study by a scientist named Kevin Hall who looked at the effect of ultra-processed foods.

He was done in a metabolic ward, so these people were tightly controlled.

Two-week study, all right?

These people go in and they are put on a diet.

One is ultra-processed and one is like less processed foods.

Like the ultra-processed, like you're eating like Chef Boyer D, mac and cheese.

But the interesting thing is they controlled the macros.

So they made sure that the plates, the macronutrients were equal.

So the total calories equal to a percentage of proteins, carbs, and fats from these two meals were identical.

But they let them eat ad-lib, which means that like you have the same amount of food on the plate, but we're not going to tell you when to stop eating.

You stop eating when you want.

The people in the ultra-processed category ate approximately 500 calories more per day and gained a whole bunch of weight.

And then, here's the fascinating part, they switched conditions.

The people who were eating ultra-processed started eating less processed or non-processed food, and the people eating the non-processed whole foods are now eating the ultra-processed.

And same thing.

All macronutrients are matched, all calories, eat until you're full as much as you want.

End of story.

The people who gained all that weight lost all of it.

And the people who lost weight and are healthy gained it.

So we are in an ultra-processed nature where we are creating hyper-palatable foods that we talk about hunger being brain that tricks our brain somehow, some way into wanting to eat more than we should.

So it's short-circuiting, it's tricking us into consuming more.

And we're all eating these foods in high quantities.

And the food environment is designed to get us to overeat.

So that is one difficult, especially because some people can't afford organic everything, right?

The answer isn't simply never eat an ultra-processed food because like that truly is a privileged entitled take because so many people, that's all they can buy.

But these foods, the canned and packaged foods, weren't always created this way.

But in the 1980s, food companies figured out how to doctor foods to make them more palatable so you eat more and you buy more.

So before the 1980s, people were not putting that much junk and preservatives in the food?

Yeah.

So people will call it kind of like the

snack balls effect.

Yeah.

The snack balls effect is kind of looking at snack balls, cookies come out.

And it was the low fat, low fat everything.

It's like, don't worry that it's got 30 grams of sugar.

There's no fat.

You can eat as many snack balls as you want.

Is that right?

So it wasn't necessarily that, like, oh, it it was a sugar or carb thing.

It was that like we learned how to ultra process foods.

And we didn't realize until, again, very recently that when we eat more of these ultra-processed foods, we just tend to eat significantly more.

And more people are buying it.

More people are eating it.

More people are mass producing it.

So that is like kind of an environmental issue.

Okay.

Part of it is then like, I think the wellness industry is part of the culprit.

We have pushed people towards extremes that we break people mentally so that they fail physically, right?

How many diets come along that keep on giving people short-term solutions with long-term failures where we break people or we get them to go to extreme where we've been seeing from biggest loser studies, there was a study that looked at the biggest loser, the people who lost like 100 pounds and then what happened to them.

They truly like broke their metabolism by trying to do this quick fix approach where then when they gained back the weight, right?

Because all these people gained back the weight.

They looked at 14 people, 13 of the 14 gained back the weight and some people lost hundreds of pounds.

That's really sad and frustrating.

But here's the fascinating thing.

We talked about your metabolism being like a dial that as you lose weight, your metabolism downshifts.

If you were to gain back, your metabolism should upshift, right?

So you just don't become like infinitely heavy.

The people who lost all this weight so quickly and then gained it back, their metabolism never reshifted.

They were burning.

fewer calories than they should because they went on this like yo-yo extreme diet.

And I think it says like the average person now goes like two to three diets per year, spanned across like 20 to 30 years, where it's like the percentage of people who diet has increased so much.

Back in the 1950s and 60s, 7% of men and 14% of women dieted.

Now you have 45% of men and 60% of women going on multiple diets per year.

And here's the most fascinating fact is like, oh, well, it makes sense.

More people are heavier, more people are going to diet.

Those rates have been static for almost the last 30 years.

So we've had 30 years of people dieting as that obesity overweight curve continues to go up.

And I think that people are investing in solutions that are not solutions at all.

They become more and more frustrated.

They do more and more damage.

And they become more and more desperate.

So they are more likely to buy in to another solution, but it's not another solution, right?

It's like I make the analogy in my book that's like, this is true, like the Charlie Brown scene, where the football's right there, and you're going to kick it, and you pull it out, and you fall on your back, and you're ashamed, and you feel terrible.

And then you're like, but you want to kick the football, you want to lose the weight, you want to be healthy.

There's not a single person who doesn't want to be healthy for whatever reason it might be, whether it's playing with your kids, whether it's living longer, whether it's being stronger, where it's looking good, naked.

It doesn't matter what the reason is.

And some people say, oh, the vain reasons are bad.

Fuck that.

No, like, whatever your reason is that you want to be healthy, you are entitled to that reason.

And you shouldn't fall into another scam that's truly designed to take your time, money, or sanity in exchange for this like short-term result that isn't possibly sustainable.

And as people repeat that over and over, I think that is very, very problematic.

And then I think the third variable is like these lifestyle factors.

We do move less.

We do exercise less.

We do sleep so much worse.

Like our sleep behavior is really, really poor.

We are addicted to our phones, which creates more stress and anxiety.

We are really stressed out about eating.

I saw one like survey result that showed that the average person stresses seven to eight times every time they eat.

So if you're eating three times a day at a minimum, let's say, right, you're adding 21 additional stressors.

And like the net of all of that stress, right, pushes you towards, right?

The more stress we get, the more sleep deprived we are.

Two things happen.

We talk about hunger being driven by our brain.

The more sleep-deprived, the more stressed we are, the more it short-circuits us feeling full.

So that signal is supposed to go to your brain that says, like, I'm full.

I don't want to eat.

That doesn't work.

And even worse, it lights up the center of the brain that makes you crave the very foods you want to resist.

When you are overstressed and underslept, you crave more of the salty, sweet, fattening foods.

So it's like mind control.

So even if we know we shouldn't, our brain is pushing us saying that we should.

And when you combine the environmental factor, you can combine the frustration of this thing that's supposed to be helping us that fails more people than health, and doesn't mean everyone in the wellness industry bad, doesn't mean that nothing works.

No, it just means that these, this ethical bargain of like, I'll get you to lose weight really, really quickly, even if it means like zoom out two, three months, you're going to be heavier than when you started, is the ride that most people go on.

And then the

lifestyle variables of movement, stress, sleep.

Well, I think a lot of times people don't also come to, they don't realize they're looking at someone else's life and then trying to fit a square into a circle, right?

Right.

And so they look at these, you know, quote unquote fitness, wellness, health influencers or big pages, let's say on Instagram, and think, well, if I just do what they're doing, I will look like that.

I can be healthy like that, not taking into account probably that person is not healthy.

This is the misconception, right?

Just because someone looks good doesn't mean that they're healthy.

Or that they feel good or even that they love themselves.

I know some of the best looking humans in the world.

These people, you would see them with their shirt off and you're just like, damn, how do I look like that?

And they are so unhappy.

They're in a prison of their own making.

100%.

And like, the truth is, it's nothing like that is really sustainable.

And even if we know that psychologically, like even if we look at something and intellectually, we know that, like you said, the dopamine starts to like hit in and we like like what we look, what we see, and then we want to do it.

And the reason why I'm bringing that up is because a couple things.

First of all, even when you know that, how do you not, you can't stop yourself, right?

And what happens is you end up doing a plethora of lots of people's like advice, which is like, you hear the eat protein, don't eat, eat vegan, have shakes, don't have shakes, do this, eat that, do this activity, do the sauna, not the sauna, how long to do it, where it's an overload of information.

People can't decipher what actually is going to work for them.

Right.

Do you have any advice on how we could make better decisions for ourselves and like choose things like to actually like let like stop letting our brains trick us?

Yeah.

If you cannot master the basics and do them like you're brushing your teeth, do not add all the sizzle.

Right.

And what are, so give us in your book.

So you wrote this book called, You Can't Screw This Up.

I want you to tell us, A, why that title, because apparently we can screw it up like we've been talking about.

So why did you pick this title and give us some ways we can't screw it up?

That originally was not the title of the book.

Oh, okay.

Well, and then I changed it because I put 500 people through this.

If I've learned anything from writing a whole bunch of books, it's like let real people do the program.

And they will tell you where it doesn't make sense, where they have problems, or where it's not working for them.

Because the goal for a book isn't to sell a book.

A goal for a book is to help people.

And I've written books.

Tell it to your publisher.

Yeah.

Right?

They will tell me it's to sell me books, and the sweet spot is to do both of them.

But I truly believe that, like, if you want to write something, right?

I waited nine years to do this book, and I knew that what I wanted to write nine years ago, but it took me nine years to figure out how to do it.

Cause, like, the goal, again, should be to help people out.

And a lot of people were going through this program, and I had them all on a Slack group.

And the number one thing I kept on hearing, even from the people who are having success, was like, I'm going to screw this up.

I'm going to mess this up.

And I was really curious, like, why?

And what does that even look like?

To them, a screw-up is anything less than perfect.

So we have been trained to believe the moment we have sugar, the moment we have bread the moment we have a sip of alcohol we've done something wrong we catastrophize we punish and one of two things happen we make that screw up and we just decide to say it i'll get back to it on monday and monday becomes like next monday or like a month later or maybe like eight months later when january starts again or we go all in too right or we go into punishment mode i'm gonna work out twice per day.

I'm gonna cut out even more.

And what that does is it more rapidly leads to burnout, which eventually gets you to still take that same path, that same exit.

But what if,

just what if these behaviors, these imperfections were actually part of the path to success?

And if you talk to the healthiest people in the world, they all have these built-in because they know the things that they want to keep in their life that fulfill them and keep them happy.

Some people will consider them screw-ups, whether it's, again, whether it's dessert or alcohol or eating takeout, whereas they consider it a built-in part of the plan that allows them to stay sustainable.

So part of it is like removing the mindset of like, you can't screw this up because people, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

They're waiting to screw up and realizing that those screw-ups are actually not the screw up.

The real screw-up is the moment you do that thing, which is perfectly tolerable for your body, that you catastrophize and act like your body can't handle it, right?

It's no different than if you look at the inverse, if you told the average person, like, you're going to work out like really hard one time per week, but you're not going to do anything for yourself.

You're not going to walk, you're not going to train ever, like, how healthy would you expect someone to be?

Not that healthy because the majority of their time they're not doing and yet when we like have one or two bad meals in a week we act like we're going to fall apart and we can't handle the human body is incredibly resilient it's incredibly powerful and it reacts to what you do most of the time not all the time so stepping away from that perfection building in things that help make it more consistent for you whatever it is that you truly enjoy is the secret and as you go on what people find is that like a lot of things that they thought they needed in their life, they realize they want to ditch, right?

Personal development, personal growth isn't this process where you just embrace all this discomfort and suddenly realize, oh my goodness, I realize discomfort is a part of change.

But most

people step into too much discomfort, which does not give them a realistic chance to succeed at what they want, right?

An example I give in the book is when you're trying to start swimming, I could throw you in the deep end and see if you can swim, but you're probably going to drown if you've never swam before.

Some swim teachers do that, though, to babies, by the way.

Right.

Babies are a little bit different.

But as an adult, what you would do for most people, you would start them in the shallow and you get them familiar and comfortable.

The water isn't going to hurt you.

And you teach them how to tread water and you teach them how to swim.

No different.

Like if you want to do math, you're not going to start with someone with calculus or geometry.

You teach them addition and subtraction.

And the addition of subtraction sucks the time.

You walk into the gym for the first time.

I can have you do bodyweight squats or I can load 300 pounds on a barbell and see if you can squat it.

Totally.

Now, if you did bodyweight squats and you never trained before and you do three sets of 10, your legs are going to hurt.

You're going to try and sit down on the toilet the next day and you're going to be like, oh my God, what happened?

If I put the 300 pounds pounds on the barbell, the same thing is going to happen, but that 300 pounds probably crushes you.

You're probably severely injured and you may never step into the gym again.

So understanding the threshold of like, we need to embrace some discomfort.

Yeah.

But the discomfort shouldn't be so much that it doesn't allow you to perform, succeed, and come back and do it again.

And when we do that repeatedly and people become more confident, they become healthier.

They realize that, oh, I was doing this one behavior because, you know, I thought I liked it, but I, but I don't.

Or now that I'm exercising, now that I'm eating healthier, I find that when I I do this other thing, it actually makes me feel worse.

It's amazing what happens when people start to feel a little bit better.

It's amazing.

I imagine like in your stuff about bold, the moment you have to take the huge, the biggest jump when you just do something.

Yep.

I'm just looking for something.

That is a little leap of faith.

And then, like, even if it doesn't go the way that you want, you realize that, like, oh, that didn't hurt so much.

And it builds confidence.

My son recently wanted to perform in a talent show.

He's seven now.

And he wanted to sing,

he wanted to sing an Ed Sheeran song in front of his whole school.

And I remember he's there and he gets up there and the music won't work.

So he has said, so he's stood up there for like three months, minutes in front of everyone.

Everyone's just staring at him, no music, goes back down.

And I'm watching them from where I'm sitting there.

And he is just terrified.

He's in his head.

You can see it.

And I go and I walk around and I come over.

His name's Bodhi.

And I'm like, Bodhi.

And I'm like, how awful was that?

He's like, dad, it's the worst.

And I'm like, you were in front of everyone, just everyone was staring at you, no music, and you were just waiting.

And you were so nervous.

He's like, I know.

And I'm like, and how are you right now?

And he's like, oh, I'm okay.

And I'm like, So, that was all your fear, right?

Every worst thing that possibly could have happened.

You go up there and like, nothing works.

And, like, how are you?

He's like, I'm okay.

And I'm like, So, do you think it's going to be okay when you go up there and like actually get to sing?

And he's like, Yeah, he went up there and he crushed it.

Our minds make things out to be much worse than they are.

We just have to create a low enough threshold that if we overcome it, we see even in the worst scenario, it was not as bad as we thought it had to be.

Right.

And a problem is that even though we know these things intellectually, it's hard for us to

act.

Super hard.

That's the hard.

And like, but you have to do things over and over again.

And that's why, like, lowering the discomfort, but like the minimum, again, the person who's never swam before, going in the water, in the shallow end where they know they can't drown is still terrifying.

I agree.

I mean, I think though, like, I guess we've talked about it in different ways, different analogies, but you did say, I think you talk about this a little bit, the dieters versus like a non-dieter, right?

Because sometimes when something's in your head, like we're saying, we could tap, it becomes kind of like the forbidden apple, where then we want something more and then we act accordingly.

Like if I say to myself, Jennifer, today you're not allowed to eat any blah, blah, blah.

I'm going to think about it all day and then I'm going to end up binging on that thing because it's in my head.

And that's right.

And that's true.

There's a fascinating study where that's what they did.

For one day, they told people, do not eat these foods.

And what happened?

They ate 135% more calories.

It was one day.

You had one job.

And it was just like, we want what we can't have.

Or there's fascinating research that was done at UCLA where they looked compared dieters to non-dieters, right?

So these are people who took the diet for some people that, and it's what you almost expect, but it's not what you expect.

But when you think about it, it makes complete sense, right?

The non-dieter, the dieters came out the gate and lost a bunch of weight.

The non-dieters are not doing it.

And it's like, oh, dieting is way better.

Then you zoom out a year and you zoom out two years.

And what happened?

The people who were dieting did the yo-yo, right?

They lose like the eight pounds and they gain 12.

They lose the six pounds and they gain 15.

And their net is a bigger loss.

The average person gains about one to three pounds per year on average.

Yeah.

But the average dieter who fails gains up to twice as much because during the diet, they lose some weight.

But on the after diet, on the off diet, they gain significantly more because they're so burnt out.

They're so fed up.

They do behaviors that even go beyond what they were doing before they did the diet because the diet messed them up so bad.

So you could, it's not that like, oh, dieting is horrible.

When you pick the wrong plan, it truly messes you to the point that it throws you off.

It makes you worse than you were before because you're more confused than ever.

100%.

Also, willpower is a muscle that it gets weak after a while, I guess.

Finite resources.

Willpower generates from the part of your brain that comes from all your decisions.

So when you were deciding what you wanted to wear for this podcast, when you decided that you were going to do this in the kitchen and have us do this with no air whatsoever, what you ate for breakfast, what you were going to do with your children today, all of those generate from the exact same place where willpower comes.

So especially, as you can understand, maybe if that's why so many people have more success, usually when they do things earlier in the day, because if they're relying on willpower, it's less tapped out.

It's not that early in the day is better than later in the day, but when you have to make a decision at the end of the day, your willpower is probably tapped out.

So, unless you've built a habit where, like, I do this thing at this time, where it's automatic, right?

It's not hard to brush your teeth every single night because, like, it's literally, it's no choice.

It is just automatic like a machine.

But if you haven't built that habit and you go to do it at night, and you've had a long day or a hard day, or you're exhausted, or you're you're stressed even if you know what you need to do yeah and you're going to rely on willpower it ain't going to be there exactly that's why i'm all about the habit

I'm super excited to share my latest health obsession with you guys.

It's called Metabolic Daily by Pendulum.

Metabolic Daily is a powerful multi-strain probiotic that really improves your metabolism, reduces your sugar cravings, breaks down carbs more efficiently, and sustains your energy.

I've been taking metabolic daily for a few months, and it's unbelievable the results I've seen.

Not only do I never struggle with my cravings, but I'm seeing a huge improvement in my body composition from breaking down carbs more effectively.

I love penilin because they are really disrupting the probiotic market with clinically studied strains that aren't available anywhere else.

They were founded by PhD scientists and are backed by the Mayo Clinic and Hallie Berry, who recently became their chief communications officer because of the results that she's seen.

They're the only company with, I think I'm pronouncing this correctly, it's called Acromancia, a next-generation strain that's called the Keystone strain for gut health.

You can get it as a single strain or in Metabolic Daily.

Plus, you guys can take 20% off your first month of any Pendulum product membership with this code, Jen Cohen.

So go now to pendulumlife.com and use my code at checkout.

Trust me, you will feel incredible.

I want to talk about your habits, but wait a second.

So can we talk about a few other myths?

I want to go into myths a lot because people I know are listening and they're thinking, what about this?

What about that?

What are some top myths that you want to dispel right now?

Just in quick five- all of them, a big one is like genetics, yes, they matter, but they do not prevent you from losing weight.

So, some people are genetically disposed to gaining more weight, but even those people with a genetic predisposition to gain weight do not have any more difficulty losing weight.

So, every single person, any person,

can lose weight regardless of their genetic predisposition.

Can they keep it off?

Yes.

Okay.

Another myth.

Another myth?

Intermittent fasting is better than non-fasting.

The fast metabolism one that we also talked about.

Oh, the one about intermittent.

This is what you said also.

I wanted to chime in.

It's that whole thing about the autophagy, the hormones, like all that.

That's the argument that all these big fasters use.

Yes.

Which you said, and I want to say this again because it's so important.

You can get those same benefits from doing other things.

Yes.

And there's no research or science saying that what you get from fasting, those benefits that you get from that with fasting, it's any better or stronger than other ways.

Right.

And when you look at the actual outcomes in humans, not in mice, when we look at longevity, when we look at weight loss, when we look at lipid, your blood health, there's no superiority.

So you can do it, especially if it's great for, that's a habit, right?

It's a habit to not eat until noon.

It is not a physiological advantage.

So people like to focus focus on mechanisms, but mechanisms are only great if they give you the outcome they want.

I can tell you all day long that fasting increases your growth hormone and reduces cortisol, but if it made you gain more weight, would you really care?

Oh, no.

And also, not at all.

A couple other ones are, I heard that if you put a mirror in front of you while you eat, you will lose weight or you will eat less because you're watching yourself eat.

I think that's the biggest joke of all time.

I mean, isn't that hilarious?

Have you ever heard of that?

I've never heard that, but I will say this.

Forget looking at yourself and think about paying attention to your food because what they have.

My phone says, right.

Myophilos is a big issue.

There's this wonderful study where they did is they gave people two plates, same thing on the plate, but that people were able to see what they were eating or not.

And the people who could not see what they're eating ate significantly more because they were just distracted.

Again, our brain is the master control of all of this.

And if you are not paying attention to what you are eating, you're not giving your brain the signals to know that I'm putting a lot of food in our body.

Your eyes are a signal to your brain as well as your stomach, as well as your mouth.

So when you're not paying attention, and yes, you're not eating blindfolded, but if you're on your phone, if you're watching TV, if you are distracted, distracted eaters eat significantly more.

Yeah.

So get off your phone.

You don't need a mirror.

Just don't be on your phone.

Be present and also eat slower.

We talk about that signal that needs to go from your stomach up to your brain.

That takes roughly 20 minutes.

The average person takes eight minutes to eat a meal.

So how often have you eaten a meal?

And you're like, I'm still hungry.

I'm still hungry.

And then half an hour later, you're like, oh my God, I'm so full.

You're like, what happened?

I was so hungry.

You ate too fast.

People who are slow eaters, people who actually take a longer time, you think that people who take longer to eat would eat more, right?

They're in front of food.

But people who take longer to eat food eat less because they're eating slower.

They get fuller.

This is why like some people believe that in European countries, they're lighter because they have these long, drawn-out meals, just smaller portions, but it gives your stomach more time to fill up that you're not craving this food because your stomach's already sent the signal to rain.

The two-hour meals you eat significantly less what i listen i eat in three i'm like a machine like if it's in front of me i inhale it in two seconds and that's the problem that's why i end up eating 20 times the amount i should and uh versus allow i mean this is this is the thing though adam a lot of us know in this like a lot of us know this information the problem is actually

like doing something about it right like it's really hard to break habits it's like we're talking all about habit building and like doing, you always fall back on what you typically do, right?

Right.

But there are things, and you even say it in like, and like that's the thing.

You got to work on, people have to work on that.

But like, even like in, I see the word takeout, of course.

And I actually really liked your book.

I think because, again, it's very common.

I like when people speak with knowledge and common sense, right?

That sometimes people need to like be, it needs to be reiterated.

But things as simple as like takeout food or going out to dinner or where or lunch, whatever, you're you're eating so many extra calories that otherwise you would never even, you don't even think about.

Because when you make something, when a restaurant makes something, always add another five to 700 calories on that.

Easy, right?

Easy.

Like a quick like hack, eat at home.

Make your own food.

Because also you can see exactly what you're eating.

It will, you will lose weight guaranteed, like right away just from doing that little hack.

Yes.

And it's easier, I would say.

So it's like, we know these things and why don't we do them?

Right.

Part of the reason is that when we look at the majority of the plans that we're giving, we don't think we can stick to it for a long period of time.

Right.

There's these interesting research that looks at happiness and confidence.

And most people walk into a plan unhappy and unconfident.

So you know it's not going to work.

You want to believe and you think this, but you don't really believe that it's going to give you a long-term sustainable outcome.

You're just trying to lose some weight for whatever reason.

You're hoping by some chance it comes off.

Something that I tell people to do is like, when you start a plan, if you really want to make it easier to do this, because it's not about knowing, it's about doing.

And if you want to make it easier to do, you got to make sure that it's not as stressful, a little more happy, and it feels like I can do this.

Start with something that you enjoy, right?

We usually, we're so used to like when you start a plan, it's all about like, well, we're going to, we're cleaning out the kitchen, we're getting everything, everything, there's no sugar.

No, no, no.

All that does is like you start dreading it from day one.

You want the outcome, but you're like, oh, sucks.

Start with something you like.

And for me, the one thing I find that people enjoy the most is takeout, which is why, like, I went to like the top 50 takeout restaurants in all the U.S.

and I show people like what they can order.

And it's not just like order salads, right?

I want people to understand that you do not have to remove everything to succeed.

So a big thing that I tell people is like, find the one thing that you truly enjoy.

It could be dessert, it could be takeout, and set a quota.

This isn't about a cheat meal.

It's about like, all right, if you have, because think about it, if you have eat three times a day and some people at four, some people at five, some people at two, but let's say averages three times a day, you have seven seven meals, seven days in a week.

That's 21 meals.

If you took three meals where you had a little more flexibility and then just tried to eat well, those three meals in the grand scheme of things will make no downside, right?

That's like 80% good.

That is more than good enough.

You know, I've been able, I've been fortunate enough to work with Cindy Crawford.

Her thing is 80% good 80% of the time.

I remember the first time I met Cindy at her house, she was making like a rhubarb pie.

And I was like, my mind was trying to wrap my head around this supermodel.

And she's like, Yeah, I love pie.

like, I enjoy dessert, and like, that's what makes it easier for me to stick to my plan.

So, but she probably doesn't eat huge quantities, like, I'd eat that whole pie.

Most people will eat the whole pie because they restrict the whole pie all the time, and that's also what the research when you do not restrict, you do not desire as much.

So, the thing is that our binge-like behaviors are dependent on the restriction.

If you gave yourself a slice of pie each week, you wouldn't want that second slice of pie because you don't need it.

The same thing you talk about, like when you say, I can't have pie at all, once you get the pie, pie, you're eating the whole thing, damn pie.

So like when you get another one, then I order another one, and then another one, right?

Because it's like, when am I going to get this again?

And then there's the shame and the guilt and you feel terrible.

Vicious cycle.

And it's like when you find, like, when you give yourself, you find that sometimes you don't even tap into that quote because you're like, I actually don't feel like pie this week.

Or when you want it, there's none of that guilt and shame.

There's none of it, like, what have I done?

So you almost need to create, I think, boundaries are a huge way to be successful in life.

You create boundaries that allow you to understand that if I want it, I have this allotment.

It's nothing creating a budget.

Like,

if people don't

have something in their budget where they can get something for themselves, at some point, they're not going to want to budget at all.

Like, I never get to spend my money on things that I love.

Eating is the same way.

Like, start with the things that you want and then embrace these changes.

And those difficult changes become easier, right?

The knowing versus doing.

Yeah.

Because, you know, like, oh, like, I can go and get takeout twice this week if I want.

And it's okay.

And there are ways to order in a more educated way, but it's not like I can't ever have my favorite takeout or I can't ever have my favorite foods, which is what people come to crave on these plans, which is why they leave these plans, which is why they hate these plans because they're not built for real life.

Okay, so tell me what you do.

What are your habits?

Like, what do you do?

What are the parameters that you've given you yourself?

So

two that helped me a lot.

One, I love eating takeout, right?

So twice per week I do takeout, right?

And that is with my family.

That is every every single week.

Because it's usually every Friday and every Saturday.

That's what we do.

We got a pizza night on Friday.

We have a night out on Saturday.

And then we have like takeout like food, where Sunday night is usually burger night or barbecue during the summer.

So like, that's what we do.

And Friday nights with kids.

Barbecue.

Okay.

Yeah.

Fridays with the kids, Saturdays with my wife.

And like, that's just what we do.

And if every now and then we do it on a different night or it happens a third time, it's not the end of the, it's not the end of the world, but like almost every week we have takeout twice per week.

That's what my family does.

Also, I love eating at night because usually I'm working at night and my like guilty thing is just like kids' cereal.

Like give me a box of frosted flakes and that box is done.

So what I found that is very, very helpful.

And this was based on a study that what they did is they moved up breakfast two hours and they moved back dinner two hours.

And they made no other changes.

And people lost significant amount of weight and 12 months later, they kept it off because all I did was create these parameters, these batteries, what I call open kitchen, closed kitchen.

So this isn't about intermittent fasting, it's about finding times where, like, you do not.

We talked about like mindlessly eating, but there's also mindful eating to like being intentional.

Why are you eating?

Most people will unnecessarily eat early in the morning, so like they wake up and like, I need to eat something, my blood sugar is low, I need to boost my metabolism.

There is no truth that eating first thing in the morning boosts your metabolism, none, zip, zero, zilch, nada, none of it.

I love the excuse, though.

That's what I go with.

Right, I'm boosting my metabolism, I'm jump-starting it.

Jump-starting my metabolism, not jump-starting your metabolism, I promise you.

And then, so I have an open kitchen, closed kitchen time.

Okay, what is it?

So kitchen is closed for me at 8 p.m.

So if I am hungry after 8 p.m., I'm not going to starve to death.

There's enough meat on these bones.

I'm not eating.

I'm just not eating.

Now, if I go out and we have like a late dinner with a friends, that's fine, but like kitchen for me closes at 8 p.m.

Cause otherwise I'll sit there and have like a bowl or two of cereal and then I'll see a bowl or jar of like maple almond butter.

I'll be like, one scoop doesn't hurt.

And it's like the most giant scoop ever.

And then like the floodgates open or like it's just the same thing like eating in front of a tv like late night you turn and like you just eat and eat and eat and again if you do it every once in a while it truly makes zero difference but if this is your nightly behavior which it was for me it's like what are you gonna do about it wait what time is the open kitchen The open kitchen for me starts at 7 a.m.

Okay.

You can eat all day until 8.

Okay.

All day until 8.

And again, there's nothing specific to that time.

I just know that my kids go to bed at eight o'clock.

And more often than not, for another hour or two, I'm likely to go and like write some.

So I will usually work somewhere between like from eight to nine or eight to ten at night after my kids go down to sleep.

And I know when I'm sitting there and I'm always at my kitchen table, I don't even go down to my office.

I'm like at my kitchen table doing work.

Right.

And then I'm usually not sweating like this.

And

all I want to go ahead and do is just eat and eat and eat.

And it's just like having the discipline to be like, no, this is closed kitchen.

I make myself tea.

I make water.

And it's just like, I drink, I drink and I drink and I drink.

And then I usually pee too much in the night.

But that is the

sacrifice I get for

just having that parameter where it makes it easier.

So I'm not my own worst enemy.

So I think the thing is, like, know where your own worst enemy is, right?

Like, a lot of people struggle with lunch.

If you struggle with lunch and eat out, like, find a solution for lunch.

You are bringing your lunch, you are having a protein shake instead.

Like, the simple swap of the one part where you make the most mistakes can be life-changing.

It can be that simple because most of us, right, we are good 80% of the time.

And then 20% of our effort or 20% of our, I would say, lack of focus or intentional work leads to 99% of the damage that we do.

So you just have to have that moment of awareness.

Like, when do I actually do this?

And it's okay to admit, like, I struggle with this.

I know everything that I need to know about nutrition.

I don't know everything about nutrition, but I know everything I need to know about nutrition.

And I still fall prey to these things.

So it's either like,

just admit it to yourself and then say, like, okay, kitchen is closed.

We don't do it.

And like, my wife is usually down there, like, watching TV and she knows.

She's like, stop it.

I see you go in the pantry.

Stop it.

I'm like, but Tony, the tiger's right there.

And it's like, so accountability helps too, having someone, or if I really wanted to do it, if I wasn't doing it, I'd go down into my office because then I'm not in that environment.

And that's another thing, make it hard to get.

There's this amazing study that was done at Google where they realized that Googlers were snacking too much.

They were eating too much for the snacks and their employees were becoming too unhealthy.

So what did they do?

They moved the snacks far away from the common areas and people started eating 250 calories less per day.

They changed nothing else.

They just made it harder to reach.

So when you think about even designing your own kitchen, the things that you want to eat the least amount, not that you don't have to have in your house the least amount, put them on a high shelf, put it where there's actual work to get it, and you will consume it less where like you have to put in the the effort because at some point your brain's going to be like oh i shouldn't do it if you make it easy for you to screw up you you will we're human that's part of our joy is we're so fallible and we have to come to expect that rather than giving ourselves an unrealistic standard of like why don't i have the willpower why don't have the discipline i don't know because you had a long day your kids are screaming all day you're tired you're hungry and those frosted flakes taste really freaking good 100 and also that's what i do too i have like a fridge downstairs and like if i get hungry i want it and i'm like oh i don't want to go all the way downstairs, forget it.

I put stuff on purpose in there.

You're just like, oh, yeah, or it's

our laziness, or you don't buy it, right?

The laziness cake standard, like, I don't want to do that as opposed to, well, like, it's right there in the pantry.

100%.

One more question for you, and then we, and then I'm going to wrap this with you because it's hot.

What is what other habits and rituals?

Like, what's your fitness ritual?

What do you do, Mr.

Adam Born Fitness?

Yeah,

that's his tag.

That's his hashtag.

That's his Adam Born Fitness.

That's his tag.

I'm on Instagram.

the plan I thought I'd never do, but works out really well.

So when I became a dad, I had a lot of friction of like figuring out how to like balance three businesses and being a father where I wanted to be around.

And I wanted to do the workouts that I always did.

And I just like, I consistently failed.

So I shifted to I train more often, but for less time than I ever did.

And I used to like laugh the people who do like the 15, 20 minute workouts.

Like, what can you do in that amount of time?

So four to five times per week, I will do a 20-minute workout in the morning after I drop off my kids.

And then on weekend, on Saturday, I have one long day where I still train like I'm 20 years old and just go all out for two hours and heavy, like two hours.

And I will just train as you almost always like a lower body day.

So like deadlifts and squats.

So I have one,

Michael Easter, who is a fantastic author, who wrote the book, The Comfort Crisis, calls it like burn the boats, where you just have this one all out workout.

And research shows actually in terms of recovery, in terms of maintaining strength, this one aggressive strength session, especially as you age, is fantastic at helping you maintain strength.

And I can say like with confidence that I am stronger than I was 10 years ago.

And I've been following this style of training for seven years now.

And it was a huge adjustment because I used to train like three, four times a week, but like hour and a half plus every single time, Monday through Friday, it's that 20 minute workout and it's just like broke up.

So it's a push.

pull lower body split so monday would be like uh actually it's a pull so monday would be a pull tuesday is a push wednesday is a lower body.

And then I would repeat.

And then Saturday, I have that long grueling.

And I, I love it.

It's my, it's my favorite thing.

And I found that I'm injured less often.

I have plenty of time for my kids.

You know, and I get what I need in order to like train and train consistently.

And it's one of those things, whether I'm on the road, whether I'm doing it, I can still find 20 minutes, right?

It's another thing.

Like my life requires me to travel.

My life requires me to be busy.

I can always find 20 minutes.

And I truly, like, if I'm not, it's, you know, as Arnold would tell me, he's like, you can't find that 20 minutes.

He's like, how much time are you you on your phone today?

And he's like, I love it.

Could you have cut 20 minutes off of that?

You were scrolling on social media and instead of done like a body weird circuit.

And I'm like, I want to, I didn't ask you about him.

I'm going to ask you right now.

Do you do hit training for 20 minutes or you do like body, like you do a pull?

Like, give me an example.

So it goes on different cycles.

It depends on working on.

So if I'm working on strength, I'll usually do like an every minute on the minute, like a heavy lift.

So I'll do like an overhead press or a row.

And I might do like 10 minutes every minute on the minute where I'll just be focusing on like in that three to five reps.

So I'll do three to five reps, rest the remaining of the minute, and then do another three to five reps.

And the load, the weight can be pretty heavy.

And at that pacing with that amount of rest, you are just smoked.

Then I'll do one or two auxiliary.

And that's it.

I'll do that for 10 minutes.

I'll do another two exercises, like auxiliary work, like you just superset it, and that's it.

If I'm going for more volume, it might be a circuit.

It could be like going ahead and creating like a barbell circuit, barbell complex, where I've got eight exercises, right?

You're doing like a front squat, overhead press, a lunge, a bent over row, a deadlift.

You cycle this all together and you try not to put the barbell down at all.

So the weight isn't that heavy, but after like 15, 20 minutes, you truly are cursing the heavens and you hate yourself because it's so difficult.

So it depends on the training circle.

Like, what is the goal?

Am I trying to build muscle?

Am I trying to become more athletic?

Am I trying to burn fat?

Yeah.

Burn fat.

If you're trying to burn fat, are you doing steady state cardio?

What do you believe in steady state cardio?

I believe, I have come to believe that walking is maybe the single best thing that you can do for yourself.

And it was that kind of an aha aha moment of like how I was feeling and how I was looking.

And it was in 2021 and I realized that I was getting like 3,000 steps a day.

And I was like, you've got to be kidding me.

Like, what am I doing?

And I truly believe that walking is one of the single best things that you can do in the beauty is that we can all do it.

So I'm now like, it's a made-up number.

I'm totally a 10K steps per day guy just because I feel better.

I do some of my best thinking.

You know, I can, I'll take calls.

I'll listen to music.

I'll listen to podcasts.

It's, you know, it's meditative.

I think it's really good for you.

So I'm a huge believer walking.

Everyone should be walking more.

I think so too.

Well, Adam, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

This has been so fun.

Okay, you guys, his book is called You Can't Screw This Up.

This is his ninth book.

Ninth book.

And I'm telling you, this guy is like a fountain of information.

He knows everything.

I didn't even get into all the Arnold Schwarzenegger stuff.

Can you just tell me quickly what you do for him, like in literally 40 seconds?

In 40 seconds,

along with Arnold and his chief of staff, Daniel Ketchell, we put out a daily email called Arnold's Pump Club, where we try and make sense of the confusing world of health and fitness every single day, do a daily podcast.

We've got an app.

I've been his nutrition advisor for 10 plus years and get to follow along all the amazing things that he does.

So that is a fascinating human with a mindset unlike anyone I ever met.

So I'm just, I'm partially trying to absorb from him and partially trying to put out because we are trying to create the positive corner of the internet.

That's amazing.

I love that.

I have so many more questions.

We're going to have to do a part two on the fitness side.

Yeah, because there's too many things to get to with you that I had to like kind of focus on one.

Make it happen again.

Okay.

Well, one condition.

What?

No sonic.

I know.

I know.

Thank you so much, Adam.

I love that you came on this podcast.

And yeah, the book is called You Can't Screw This Up, even though I keep looking at the name of it.

Then I screw it up.

And where can we follow you?

You follow me on social at Born Fitness.

You can find the book at can't screwthisup.com.

So easy, Jen.

We'll get it right one of these days.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.