1695: How to Lose 100 Pounds

Boom! Great episode coming at you right now. We're talking specifically to people who need to lose a lot of weight. Very challenging we feel for you. We've trained a lot of clients in this situation and because this episode is targeting people who need to lose a lot of weight, the giveaway is going to help reflect that. So here's the giveaway for today. MAPS Starter. This is the best MAPS program to start your resistance training journey. This is if you don't work out now, you're new to exercise, you haven't worked out in a while, you want to know how to get started. MAPS Starter is the perfect program. We're giving away for free. Here's how you can get that discount. Excuse me, here's how you can get it for free. Leave a comment below in the first 24 hours that we dropped this episode. Subscribe to this channel and turn on your notifications. Got to do all those things. If we like your comment, we'll notify you and you'll get free access to MAPS Starter. Also, we're still in the middle of our Black Friday sale. In fact, it ends tomorrow. Huge sale, 60% off all workout programs and all bundles. Everything is on sale, 60% off. So if you want to sign up for something or you want to get multiple products, head over to mapsfitnessproducts.com and then just use the code BLACKFRIDAY. No space. It works on everything. Again, 60% off site wide. All right, here comes the show. I have one for us to discuss today. Cassie's messaged me a few times about this, and I think we've kind of loosely talked about this topic, but I don't think we've actually sat down and like, I don't know, organized our thoughts on like a methodical approach on how we may help somebody in this case. And that is how to lose a hundred pounds. Oh, yeah. And I know obviously all of us have trained lots of clients in our time of being trainers that have needed to lose a hundred pounds. And I would say that this rule, even though the title will be like a hundred pounds, it really applies to probably anything 50 and above, right? I mean, it really, once you start getting 50, 60, 70, a hundred pounds plus over, it's a little bit more of a special case than somebody who's just trying to shred down 10 pounds that they put on from the holidays or something. Yeah, I know we've talked a lot about like ways people, you know, like negative ways that people have approached this in terms of like the wrong methods applied, but we haven't really been able to take time to kind of, how would we put all this together? So I think that is important. Yeah, this is probably one of the most challenging categories of clients that I would say I'd ever worked with because yes, it's a lot of weight to lose. And yes, the way you lose weight in terms of the, I guess the steps or the mechanics of it are the same if you want to lose 20 pounds or if you want to lose a hundred pounds, but that completely ignores the real psychological and behavioral challenges that we're dealing with when you have to lose this much weight. And this is just the reality. And I've worked with a lot of clients. And at one point I had quite a few clients and I know you guys did too. I think the gym that we all worked at, at one point- It was right next to a bariatric clinic. Yeah. So, and you're dealing with, I mean, at one point, I think, you know, if you're 30 pounds overweight, 40 pounds, and it starts to climb, you enter into a different mental state and you start to kind of like, okay, I don't care. And this is just how I live. And it's very, very challenging once the person makes the decision and says, okay, this is enough. I want to reverse out of this. It's a hard position to be in because it requires some big lifestyle changes, which are not easy. I want to be very clear. Changing your nutrition is hard for anybody because how we eat is very closely connected to our personalities and who we are and our emotions and how we celebrate. Food is much more than just nutrition and calories. It's connected to so many different things. And activity also, you know, how we move throughout the day, how we structure our day. Like, these are all intricate components of how we live and changing them radically and then trying to make it stick. Very, very, very, very challenging. I'm very passionate too about this specific conversation. And a lot of that has to do with, I think, the most popular conversation around this is had by the biggest loser show. Which is a terrible example. Yeah. And I think they do a really terrible job. Although people that watch it are inspired and it makes for good TV. I remember very clearly when that show first aired, I was a trainer and the wave of people that I got in. And so there's the positive side. It motivated some people to get off the couch, head into a gym, potentially get a gym membership and hire a trainer. But the only problem is I now had to overcome this hurdle of this expectation of, you know, the next three months, can we drop this a hundred pounds? Because they did it on biggest loser and they were so inspired that I want to do that. I saw them do it. I'm tired of, you know, being this way and, you know, I'm here to invest in you and let's do this. And I struggled with that. I struggled with that for the first couple of years on how to communicate this the right way. And over time I've learned how to do that. But at the beginning it was a challenge because there was so much energy around that show that people wanted to be trained that way. Well, we got to be very clear. Okay. Losing the a hundred pounds. Okay. I know it's going to sound kind of crazy. That's the easy part. Not saying it's easy, but of the whole formula, that's the easy part. The hard part is keeping it off forever. Way more people, a much greater percentage of people lose a hundred pounds than are actually able to keep it off. The fail rate on all weight loss is something close to 90% 80 to 90%. It's got to be higher for this kind of weight loss because of its challenge and all of the things that we're going to talk about today in terms of all the challenges that you encounter. The biggest loser, I, in my opinion, was terrible because then not only did they do it the wrong way, but they made people think that, you know, the, the happy ending at the end is I lost a hundred pounds, right? We don't know what happened five or 10 years later. And that's the challenge. So how do we, how do we fix that? Is it, do we lose the weight and then figure out how to keep it off after that's what a lot of people do, right? They think, listen, I'll lose the weight first and then I'll figure out how to keep it off. Oh, I even had, I had people that were like teachers and they came in like literally trying to map it out. Like, listen, I don't have to work for the next three days or three months. This is what I want to do with you. Or I even had some people say, I have all this time saved up. I'm going to take my vacation time all together. So all I can do is come and they, and they wanted me to train them five days a week and as much as bubble. No, it did it. It really, uh, it really did it. The positive thing is it got a lot of people to take action and come into the gym. The negative thing that it did is it completely distorted, uh, reality, expectations, reality, and yeah, you're, you're absolutely right. And so it's not the wrong approach is I'll lose the weight and then I'll figure out how to keep off after the right approach is the way that I lose the weight is going to determine how well or how easy or how sustainable it is afterwards. So it's, everything depends on how you get there because that will determine how easy it is to stay where you're at. So it's very important. And I, I do want to say this. People are going to, I know people are going to want to know a timeline. Well then how long should it take a year? At least give yourself at least a year to lose a hundred pounds. Now that's not because you can't physically lose more weight faster, but losing weight faster typically results in a far more negative impact on the metabolism. And we'll get into that. In other words, at the end of a fast weight loss, you're probably going to end up like a lot of people on the, on the biggest loser where they lost a hundred pounds. But now in order to maintain that a hundred pound weight loss, they're eating 1500 calories a day and working out like crazy every single day, which is just, it's not sustainable by the way, that's not sustainable for me. And I'm a fitness fanatic. Let alone the average person, let alone somebody that struggled with weight to the point where they had to lose a hundred pounds. So number one, it's got a negative effect on the metabolism. Number two, psychologically, mentally, emotionally speaking, making radical changes all at once that would result in faster weight loss, far more likely to result in weight gain afterwards. So it's a slow, steady process, both for you physically, but also for you emotionally and mentally. And again, if you do this the right way, your success rate long-term goes through the roof. You do this the wrong way. You can almost guarantee. In fact, if I had to bet money and if there was a way to bet on this, and if I saw people lose a hundred pounds in three months, I'd be a billionaire because I would always bet that they'd gain the weight back. Cause that's how, that's how guaranteed it is. Well, it's a kind of, yeah. Piggyback on the whole biggest loser thing that I had the biggest problem with is everything became a race. And again, to the expectation part is like, there's so much urgency because, you know, they're faced with this realization that I have this weight. It's not, you know, benefiting me. My health is deteriorating. Like I, this is all the entire thing that's on my mind right now. So if I'm not, if I'm not losing weight almost immediately, I feel like I'm, I'm, I'm not doing well. I'm not doing good enough. And so to kind of deprogram, you know, that mindset and try to do things that benefit their body for the longterm and build strength and, you know, apply, you know, adequate amount of calories. So that way it's not like, you know, this, this crash dieting situation, like all of these things, you know, we're a really hard barriers to overcome. I've had a lot of clients lose a lot of weight and I've had a lot of them gain the weight back, but the ones that kept it off were the ones where it took some time, where they took their time. The changes that we made were slow and steady. We came from a good place, which I want to get to as well. And I mean, I had one woman lose over 120 pounds. It took her over two and a half years, but it was a slow, really good, effective, you know, process. It came from the right place. Now this woman became a trainer. She literally became a personal trainer at the end of this journey. I've had people lose a hundred pounds with bariatric surgeries and extreme dieting, and they all gained it back. So I really want to make that point. By the way, a year is gone so fast. So don't think it sounds forever. I know right now, especially if you're watching this and you're thinking to yourself, like, I'm ready. I want to do this right now. And you're like, oh my gosh, Sal says it's a year. It's not as long as you think, especially in comparison to the rest of your life. Well, I've seen both, you know, case scenarios with different clients who just really would take my advice, but also would like add onto that on their own. And they just kept doing like an exorbitant amount of cardio and, you know, would lower their calories substantially and they'd lose weight really fast versus, you know, the other client that would listen. And we'd kind of draw it out a little further. The one that drew it out a little further because it was paced out and it was a bit slower, was able to really identify, you know, like their own behaviors, like a lot, learned a lot about themselves in terms of what the triggers were, like what, you know, the root of all of it was. And this is something that just gets overlooked when you're just on this horse blind or approach where you're not going to take ownership of the journey. Well, this is the main reason why 85% plus put the weight back on is because this wasn't just a calories in, calories out problem. And that, I think it's looked at like that very often. That's how Biggest Loser addresses it. Less food, make them burn a ton of calories, watch them lose weight. And the reason why it's not successful long-term is you never address the root cause. And that's why I think it's perfect that you listed the very first, you know, first tip of the 10 tips on how to do this is hiring a therapist or enlisting someone that you trust and that you know loves you. And that really is there for that emotional support and to help you do the work, the internal work. Totally. First off, this has to come from a place of self-love and self-care. And often, I would say most of the time doesn't. Most of the time, this comes from this initial motivation. Oh my God, I'm a hundred pounds overweight. I need to lose weight. Comes from a place of self-hate, shame, disgust. I can't believe I've let myself get to this point. I'm so impulsive. Why can't I just, why is this such an issue for me? I'm a bad person. I'm fat. And so it comes from this place of self-hate. And when you approach this struggle or this journey from a place of self-hate, everything you do is a punishment. Exercise is a punishment. Diet is a punishment. It's restrictive. I deserve this. I can't eat that. I have to go move. This is what I deserve. And I'll tell you something. Self-hate is very powerful in the short term. Terrible in the long term. In the short term, you hate yourself. You're going to make some crazy changes. In the long term, at some point, at some point, you're going to want to improve your quality of life because you're not going to want to hate yourself anymore. And that's when you fall off. At some point, you're going to say to yourself, you know what? I deserve to eat that cake. Or you know what? I need, you know, I just want to live my life. I just want to enjoy my life. Boy, the last six months have sucked, right? Which is interesting considering exercising, improving your health, eating right to improve your health should be a quality of life enhancer, not a quality of life destroyer. But if it comes from a place of self-hate, that's exactly what it's going to do. So you got to say to yourself this, and you can be very honest. I haven't been taking care of myself very well for a long time. And I'm someone that deserves to be taken care of. I care about me. I'm going to do what's right for me. I'm going to take care of myself. And what helps with that is a licensed therapist, because you're going to go back and forth between self hate and self love. Sounds easy. The self love part sounds easy. It's not. It's really hard because you're going to want to hate yourself. You're going to want to be shameful, especially as you start to tackle the challenges that have gotten in front of you in the past. And you're going to want to say to yourself, like, why didn't I do this before? God, I can't believe I did that. And why did I screw up on my diet? And so a good therapist can help you with this. And the clients that I've worked with who've lost a substantial amount of weight who did very well, I got them to work with a therapist. If you can't afford a licensed therapist, by the way, once a week with a therapist would be good for most people. But if you can't afford that, involve somebody you care about that you know truly cares about you. So who is this person? This is a person that shares in your successes. They celebrate with your successes and they mourn your losses. This is a person that's not going to judge you, but it's going to be honest to you. They're not going to give you nutrition and fitness advice. You don't want nutrition and fitness advice from a non-expert, okay? Because this person might care about you and they might give you the wrong advice. So don't worry about that. But what you want is emotional support, someone you can call. And I get on the phone and I'm like, man, Justin, this whole journey I'm on, it's really hard. And I had a terrible weekend. Let me tell you what I did. I woke up in the morning and I know I was supposed to go on a walk. Instead, I watched TV. I opened up a bag of, I went to the store, bought a bag of cookies, ate the whole damn thing. And then it was crazy from there. And then I did this and I did that. And then Justin, who I know, because I enlisted somebody that really cares about me, is on the other line saying, look, that sucks. I'm sorry you went through that. You're going to do okay. Like I care about you. I know you care about you. Right. You're going to make it through. You're going to make it through. That's the kind of support that you're looking for. And that makes a big difference. If you can afford it, a therapist is even better. Of course. I mean, because you don't know what a therapist can do even better than what Justin just said back to you is a therapist is going to help you dig deeper into why. Of course. And that's what, I mean, that's their profession. They know how to do that well. And then, and also how to be that supportive loving person. Go uncover some trauma or some other things that you- 100%. And that's so key is that you have somebody that helps you get, again, to the root cause. The other type of person that I see that's really successful with this too is, and this is the second step, is the ditching the motivation hype and understanding the importance of discipline and habits. Yes. Again, this is another thing, this is another knock at Biggest Loser and another reason why I don't like that show is that it's very, I mean, I've tuned in on it and I get goosebumps when all the hugging and the emotional and the playbacks of the memories, and they do such a good job of giving you the feels initially, but the problem with that is it's fleeting. You're happy, sad, motivated. That ebb and flows all the time. And if you're going to have long-term success, you need to build habits and discipline and routine and rituals in order to be consistent. And I can understand why people are so obsessed with motivation because it's- Feels good. It's easy. Feels good. When you're motivated, you don't need to talk yourself into working out. When you're motivated, you're going to make the best, quote unquote, best food choices. Because you're motivated. When I'm motivated, man, I work my ass off. I do everything I need to. I'm a great dad. I'm a great husband. I'm cleaning the yard. I'm motivated. That's not the hard part. The hard part is when that feeling, which is fleeting, nobody's permanently motivated. It doesn't work that way, right? When that feeling is gone, that's when the challenge happens. Now what do I do? So how do we go around? How do we get around feelings? Because feelings, we're human. We've got all kinds of feelings. Wrapped all up in that. Discipline. Discipline means you do it anyway. Okay. So that sounds easy. Well, how do I build discipline? Like any skill, you start very small and you build upon it. So a good example would be this. So this is how I always explain it because it's the easiest way to kind of understand it. You want to have a very honest conversation with your unmotivated self. So if you're motivated right now and you're watching this, place yourself in the mindset of when you're not motivated because our motivated selves, we overshoot always. You ask somebody who's motivated, how big do you think you could build your business? And it's going to be some crazy number versus when they're not feeling so hyped, right? So put yourself in an unmotivated state of mind and then ask yourself the following, what changes can I make now that I feel relatively confident I can do forever? And also it still needs to be a little bit challenging. Okay. Here's why. If it's not challenging, it has no meaning. It's not going to mean anything to you, but it also needs to be realistic forever because you don't want to have a lot of failures on your plate. You want to be able to have these little successes. So this means it's different from person to person. Someone may be watching this and may say to themselves, it's very realistic for me to not eat sweets every single day. So I'm going to avoid sweets. Someone else might say that is not realistic for me. I'm going to avoid sweets, you know, three days a week, or someone might say, I'm only going to, you know, I'm going to walk every single day or someone else might say, I'm going to walk two days a week. You have to create small habits that are realistic yet challenging. Once that habit becomes a habit, once it becomes an actual habit and you're doing consistently, then you add upon it and that's how you build the skill of discipline. And that's what the long-term approach looks like in a sense. And that's why it's so important for you to establish the right mindset going in and be real with yourself and realize is that reasonable? Can I replace all the soda in my diet with, you know, something a little bit more healthy for me, you know, more water? Can I just focus on that as one thing? I know I can do this every single day, even though sometimes I'm going to want soda, but I know that this is going to be a challenge, but I could definitely do just that one thing. I have to pick what those few things are and then run with that for, you know, a few months and really see the transformation happen in the momentum. So you build that slow momentum that you can add to, and it's going to stay moving forward instead of trying to take it all on at once. And that's where you do need motivation. You really can't take everything on at once without motivation. That's a real difficulty. I had a client, just to give you an example of what I mean, I literally had a client that, and we had this real honest conversation, and the first step was for her to read one page out of a nutrition book. So it was like, we had this go all the way back. Well, can you do this? Can you do that? And she's like, well, that's not realistic. That's not realistic. Do you think you could read a page out of this book every single day? I'll start there. And here's what happened. She did it. She did it consistently. Then she came to me and said, I'm ready for the next one. And then we slowly built upon it. By the way, this accelerates. It's a snowball effect. Discipline builds upon discipline. So it's not, it might start off slow, but it starts to accelerate and each step becomes bigger and bigger. So that's the, that's kind of the light at the end of the tunnel. The third step is probably one of the most difficult or the biggest mind **** of all the steps. And definitely one of the hardest challenges I had as a trainer communicating this information, because you get somebody who comes in and that is to focus on strength and not the weight loss at first. And that's really hard. Getting stronger, right? You get somebody who comes in and they're like, Adam, I want to lose a hundred pounds. And especially if they've been watching shows like Biggest Loser, all they want to do is hop on the scale every week and talk about, did I lose five this week? Oh, next week, let's try lose 10 and trying to beat their weight loss where I'm trying to get them to completely reframe that and say, Hey, we're not really going to pay attention to the scale. What I want you to pay attention to, if we're going to watch any metric right now is are we getting stronger in the gym and explain to them the importance of us building strength, building muscle to speed up your metabolism so that when we do lose this a hundred pounds, we keep it off for the rest of your life. Yeah. They actually did a study years ago where they, there was a belief that if you were really, that if you were severely obese, you also had more muscle mass. And they showed in studies that that's not true. The severely obese also have low muscle mass, just like anybody else who doesn't, you know, work out. They still have low muscle mass. So building strength is a couple things. One, it builds muscle, which speeds up your metabolism. That's very important because it would be wonderful if you had a faster metabolism at the end of your 100 pound weight loss goal, which is possible. Then you went into imagine being able to eat more after you lost a hundred pounds, right? Imagine eating more, but you're smaller, right? What happens often is the reverse. They lose the weight and now they get it like nothing. And they got to work out all the time to keep it off. Imagine if you could eat more and you could do that by focusing on building strength. The second reason is strength is a wonderful metric because you have to nourish yourself and you have to be somewhat healthy to see strength gains. Whereas just to see the scale move down, we could do a lot of things wrong and get you to lose weight. We can make you very unhealthy and make you lose weight. With strength, it's a lot harder. Like if you're in the gym, you're like, okay, I did two push-ups off my knees. And then, oh, I could do three push-ups off my knee. Like you're getting stronger. It's a very positive signal that you're moving in the right direction. By the way, one of the biggest challenges that you have when you're, when you have a lot of weight to lose is your body starts to lose sensitivity to insulin. Okay? So your body has to produce more and more insulin to get your, to do the functions that it does in the body. And this can lead to eventually diabetes and it can definitely contribute to more fat gain and all that stuff. Okay. One of the best ways to improve insulin sensitivity is just to build a little bit of muscle. You don't even have to lose weight. They've got studies on this where they get the severely obese, they have them build a little bit of muscle and they get significantly improved insulin sensitivity scores. So you're also optimizing your hormones to a level, to a degree, excuse me, by building a little bit of strength. So when you go to the gym and you are exercising, focus on getting stronger. It's a much healthier and much more effective approach, especially initially. Well, and too, I think that this type of a client didn't really realize as well that focusing on building strength was a great way to alleviate pain as well. And I get that too. There's this thought that just losing the weight is going to solve a lot of my joint pain, is going to solve a lot of the way that I move because I'll be lighter. But at the same time, you need strength, you need strength support, you need stability around your joints. And if you can work on that, it's going to have an even better long lasting effect of pain relief. Totally. The fourth step, which is one of my favorite things to teach a client, and I think it's one of the easiest things to show them and then to get them to start building the discipline and the habit and the routines around, which is to increase activity through daily habits. So instead of this one hour session of walking or running on a treadmill, like a hamster on a hamster wheel, I'm encouraging you to do these short 10 minute walks here or park further away at the grocery store when you do this or choose to use the stairs instead of the elevator. This makes a big difference. People don't think it does. It makes a huge difference. It makes a huge difference because what happens a lot of times when you get a client that has put on this much extra weight along with that has also become a more and more sedentary lifestyle. And I've done this where I've tracked their steps and looked at the average where they start heading. And they're talking about people that are only stepping 1,500 to maybe 4,000 steps in an entire day, which is literally, if you were to go outside and walk for an hour straight, just walking, you would accumulate more than 4,000 steps. And that's for the whole day. That's for the whole day they're hitting those numbers or less, right? And they could string multiple days together. So how do I help them find little ways to just add more activity that doesn't feel like they're doing a lot, but I know over time that that will start to add up. And it will also start to back to like the last or the two points before is it'll start to help build that momentum off those small little achievable goals. And before you know it, this person who was sitting around only moving 1,500, 2,000 steps a day is now doing 8,000 steps a day. And it doesn't feel like they're exercising. They've just changed some habits in their life. Yeah. The reason why this is so effective isn't because it's a magical new way to burn calories. It's literally the psychological effect. It's much easier to stay consistent when you've attached increased activity to normal daily habits. So an example would be, I'm going to walk for 10 minutes after breakfast, lunch, and dinner, right? That's just a simple example. Now, I eat breakfast and lunch and dinner every single day. So if I attach it to those meals, I'm more likely to do it versus, oh, I got to do my 30 minutes of cardio on the treadmill, have to schedule it out, got to put on my sweats, got to get on the treadmill and block off this time. Instead, it's just, I eat breakfast. Now I'm going to go walk around the block for 10 minutes. Another way to do it, like you said, if you go to the grocery store and you go, let's say you go to the grocery store every single day. This, by the way, I never thought this made that big of a difference until newer technology came out. We were able to track calories burned in steps. And then I had clients start doing this kind of stuff. I used to, I used to scoff at this when I would hear trainers say, oh, take the stairs or park far away. I'd be like, oh gosh, that's so dumb. Just get on a treadmill. The reality is it's extremely effective. I would have clients park at the end of the parking lot and they go to the grocery store every day. And it was like they did. And you know, you'd see crazy how it adds up. It adds up. Or yeah, I work on the second floor. I don't take the elevator. Now I take the stairs or I had a client once. One thing that she did, what I thought was brilliant is she said, I, you know, I, I take a bathroom break every other hour or so to go pee. Now, instead of going to the bathroom, that's on my floor, I walk up a flight of stairs and go to the bathroom on the, on the next floor. And that's all she did. And it jumped her steps by a couple thousand a day just from doing something like that. Well, that was the cool part about some of these, um, you know, tools like Fitbit and body bug and all that is it kind of just revealed some of the daily habits and like where you're most sedentary. And so we kind of peered into that a bit and found some of my clients like a natural tendency was after working, you know, even if it's a desk job and they're working and they're sitting all day, like you get tired. Right. And so the first thing you want to do to get home is sit down, you know, kick your feet up, watch TV. And so just, you know, actively making that a priority to like come in, you know, walk around, make sure you don't like sit down right away and, you know, put things away. And now like your house is cleaner, you know, there's all these like byproducts that happen that reward you as a result. And it just, it builds, it builds momentum, uh, you know, in terms of like activity, just you feel more energized as well. Yeah. The fifth one is a tip that I think is, is pretty easy to implement. Um, and I believe that this is also responsible for, um, one of the, one of the number one culprits for people's weight gain is sugar drinks, right? So making it a habit that all I'm going to drink is either water, tea, black coffee, and avoiding all drinks that are loaded with calories. You're better off eating your calories and drinking them. And, and it's, it's such, it's a very simple thing to get people to implement. It's not, it's not a huge leap to ask them to do that is to cut out all the calorie drinks. But again, it's one of those things, it sneaks up so fast. You don't realize how much of a role it's playing in this excess calories. Yeah. I'm going to add to that, Adam. And I'll say this. If, if, if when you hear us say, drink only water and you feel yourself cringe a little bit or shrink up a little bit. And I know, look, I understand this. I've had clients, I've had many clients. Like I had clients that tell me they didn't like the taste of water because that's how much soda and flavor drinks that they had. So here's another way to do it. So here's another strategy that I think for some people is even more effective. Instead of thinking to yourself, I'm only going to drink water. Think to yourself, I'm going to aim for a gallon of water a day. That's why I love that. I love that. So instead of, instead of saying I'm only drinking water, you're saying I have to hit a gallon of water. Now the side effect of eating, hitting a gallon of water naturally replaces those other drinks. You're not going to have room to drink all that other stuff. This is why we, and on a recent podcast, we talked about that arbitrary number that's been out there forever. And there's a lot of fitness professionals that have ---- all over that advice saying that, oh, this gallon of water, it's so individualized and that's more than enough for most people. And it's a stupid piece of advice. And I disagree for that exact reason that I have found the clients that I made pay attention and track their water. They're so worried about hitting their target and peeing that they don't have time to drink mocha frappuccinos and sugar drinks because it's hard to get that much water in a day. It also curbs a lot of cravings, which is something that I think people mix signals a lot of times that I'm really hungry right now, or like, you know, when in fact they're actually like thirsty, they need to be hydrated. Yeah. So literally what you can do, this is really easy. Again, if that drink only water statement makes you go, oh my gosh, that's tough. Buy a gallon or half gallon container or whatever, fill it up. And then that's your target. Okay. This is what I'm going to drink for the whole day and just pay attention to it throughout the day. And again, the side effect of that, and I've seen it time and time again, is that people just don't drink their calories because they got to hit that gallon of water every single day. It makes a huge, for people who drink calories, avoiding the calories and drinks in my experience results in hundreds of calories cut from a person's diet. But you don't have to think of it that way. You don't have to think to yourself, I'm cutting calories. All you're thinking is I'm only drinking water or I have to hit that gallon of water target. Well, it also helps with the point that Justin actually just alluded to, which is the avoiding heavily processed foods. So the sixth tip is to avoid and stay away from that. Drinking the water throughout the day does start to curb those cravings. And that's one of the worst things that someone would do. And it's one of the best things that I've ever got a client. I'm not going to make you count calories. I'm not going to weigh and measure food. I'm simply just going to say, stop eating the ---- that's in a wrapper, in a box. Make sure you make your food, eat whole foods. I'm not worried about how much of it you're consuming right now. When you're hungry, eat, just choose from those whole foods. And it's amazing how much weight people lose just simply by doing that. Now there's nothing inherently magical about whole natural foods or processed foods in the sense that you're cutting heavily processed foods. So now your body wants to burn body fat. Although whole foods tend to be healthier. That's true. But that's not the reason why we're saying this. The reason why we're saying avoid heavily processed foods is because processed or engineered foods are specifically designed to make you eat more. And they're super effective at doing so. And we have studies now to support this. There's several studies now and they're well done studies that show when people are just, just eat until they're satisfied. If their diet is comprised of a lot of heavily processed foods, they eat on average 600 more calories a day versus when they're also told eat until you're satisfied, but you can only whole natural foods, they eat 600 calories less. So rather than counting calories and cutting your food intake, you can say to yourself, I'm going to eat until I'm satisfied. I'm just going to avoid the foods that are designed to make me overeat. So I'm just going to avoid heavily processed foods. So now instead you're eating baked potato or chicken or steak or tuna fish, and you're having some fruit and some vegetables and you can make it tasty. I don't care, do whatever you want with it, but you're going to eat less naturally because it doesn't, it isn't engineered to make you overeat. You'll naturally cut your calories. The best part is you don't have to think about cutting your calories. You don't feel like you're restricting. You don't think, feel like you're restricting. I've done the same thing, Adam. I've literally told clients and I love it because it's like a magic trick that I pull and I'll say to them, Hey, look, I want you to eat as much as you want. All you got to do is not eat heavily processed foods. And they look at me like I'm crazy. Like I can eat as much as I want, but absolutely eat as much as you want. Just avoid heavily processed foods. And they always come back with weight loss as a result because again, those foods are engineered to make you overeat and they're really good at doing so. So now brings us to the next one. Now, this is a very important piece of the self-awareness that is required to do what we're about to do. And that's create barriers between yourself and your impulses. Okay. So think to yourself, what are my impulsive tendencies when it comes to overeating? Well, if I have snacks at my desk while I'm working, I tend to eat a whole bunch of them. Like I, you know, if I have a bowl of peanuts or if I have, you know, uh, you know, crackers or whatever, while I'm working, I end up eating a whole bunch of them. So what you need to do in that scenario, and there's many scenarios where people have impulsive kind of behaviors is you just create a barrier. So rather than saying to yourself, I'm, I can't snack, say to yourself, if I want a cracker, I got to walk all the way over to the break room and have some. Or better, I have to go all the way to the grocery store because I don't carry it in my house. And I'm going to call out some people that I guarantee that are, that are thinking in their head, because this used to be the number one excuse when I tell my clients this, because it always would blow my mind. By the way, I don't know if you guys did this or not, but with this client, I would actually, a lot of times go to their house and like go through their cupboards and like help them actually shop and say like, this doesn't belong in your house. And it always would blow my mind when I'd look at these clients that tell me that they're struggling with weight loss and they can't make these decisions. And I go look at their cupboards and I go, well, that's because you don't ******* have a single good choice. Like everything in here is a bad choice. And then the number one response I would get is I have kids, which used to drive me crazy as a trainer is that what a terrible reason for you to excuse having nut butters and ice cream and all the chips and stuff like that, like you should be feeding your children this. No, your kids should be eating what you're eating and there's nothing wrong with them eating whole foods and they're going to eat whatever you eat. And one of the easiest barriers that you can start to put up is simply not buying it by not putting it in your house. And you're not telling yourself you can't have it. Right. If you really want that bag of chips, get off your ass, drive to the grocery store, park far away, walk into the grocery store, go get your chips and come back. And you know what? Watch how many people won't do it. But you know what? Sometimes you will, but most of the time you're not going to. And when it, look, I'm glad you brought up the whole kids thing. Here's a deal. One of the biggest challenges with this is that you, you probably have a family or you live with people. You're making these changes for yourself. Everyone else is going to be like, why do we got to make these changes? Right. So it's challenging and you're going to get complaints. There are other snacks you can get that aren't nearly as impulse creating or nearly as engineered to make you overeat. Cheese sticks. You can have some nuts. I like nuts and shells. So rather than buying peanuts, I'll buy peanuts in the shell. Why? The shell is a barrier. I have to break it open before I eat it. Right. High quality beef jerky. Yeah. Beef jerky fruit. So your kids are like, I got, I want snacks. We can go in the cupboard and see what we have. Where's all the cookie? Oh, I don't have any today, but we got the cheese sticks. We got some of these nuts and they may complain, but that's okay. They still have those snacks, but it does create a barrier between you and that impulse. Another one would be just like a trigger foods. I'll use myself as an example. Potato chips, potato chips for me. And you guys notice you've seen me on, on trips we've gone on. If there's chips around, it's like, I'm an alcohol, a recovering alcoholic. And I'm at a bar. Like it's just, it's so it's just calling my name. I want to have them. And it's, it becomes a test of willpower. So I never have chips in my house. Does that mean I never buy a bag of chips? No. If I really want them, I'll say, you know what? I don't say to myself, I can't have them. I'll say, I'll go to the grocery store and buy myself a serving. I'll buy myself a small serving bag of potato chips, not the big family bag. So there's lots of ways you can create barriers between yourself and certain behaviors. So you're not telling yourself, no, what you're doing is you're creating space. Now, why is the space so important? Because impulsive behaviors happen before awareness. They happen before you have the time to logically think about something. Because if you say to yourself, man, my trigger foods are cookies, it's in my house, get up, eat it. By the time I'm done, I think to myself, oh man, why did I do that? But if I, if I say they're not here, I got to go to the store. You know what? I'm going to the store. I want those cookies. I got to go put my shoes on, put on my jacket, get in the car. By the time I'm doing all this, I have time to think. I have time to process. I have time to say to myself, do I really want those bad enough to get them? And, and oftentimes the answer is no. Yeah. And, and two, you got to be mindful about, you know, uh, when you're actually eating food. And so the speed at which you're, you're eating the food. And so we're talking about a lot of these types of snacky food where it's really easy to just like wolf it down like super quick. Or I, I go and I do what you say and I create that barrier, but I go get it. And then I'm eating it in my car super fast. And I always feel like I have to have something on hand. Uh, but, uh, to, to really take that time out and devote special time to slow down, to, to slow your breathing down, to chew all your food all the way through. And I've said this a couple of times, but it made a big impact on me. So I used to eat food so fast I would choke and have to wash it down. And so it's, it's just taking that extra amount of time. So your body catches up, it gets the signal that, Oh, actually I'm full and I don't need to keep cramming in anything else. They've, they've made an entire diet around, uh, chewing your food. Like, so there's, there's, I forget, it works. I forgot what the name of the book was, but I will never forget the first time that I saw it. And it's like, I, it's like 52 chews or something like that where you've, if you chewed every bite, like 52 times, like you would lose weight just from that. It's just a mindfulness practice. That's all it is. It's the mindful practice that that's really doing. It reminds me also of the, the Paul check experience that we had where he prayed before he wasn't praying because the guy doesn't pray really, but the, his meditating above his food before we ate. It also reminds me too, of the tip that I used to give clients where I'd say, listen, I'm not going to tell you what you can or can't eat. All I'm going to say is don't do it in front of your phone and in front of the TV. And it would be mind blowing how much that would restrict people from eating them. They would restrict themselves just because they simply see what they're doing and they're, they become aware of what's going on when you're distracted. When you're distracted by the television, you're distracted by your phone. You know, they've done studying on this. You'll eat something like 15 to 20% more calories when you're watching TV on your phone or distracted while you eat. You also eat faster when you're doing those things and you have food. So a very easy way to be mindful is to say to yourself, when I eat, I have to sit down at a table. So I'm not at my desk or on the couch. I'm at a table, no phone, no television, me and my food. And I chew my food and I put my fork down and I eat mindfully. And even if you say to yourself, I'm not going to cut anything, I'm not going to restrict anything. I'm just going to eat as much as I want. Studies are consistent on this. They show that you eat less as a result simply by being mindful. And if you really are honest with yourself, really honest, and you think of the times you overate, you were not being mindful in those periods of time. So all you got to do is create that space for mindfulness to happen. Well, also consider your digestive system. And I know for me, I used to suffer from acid reflux a lot. And yes, it was partially due to certain types of foods and grains and sugar and whatnot in the diet that I was able to parse out. But a lot of it had to do with speed and also being in a stressed state. And so if I'm hovering over my food and I'm trying to get it in while people are yelling, and that affected me to where I would actually feel the effects almost immediately, I would get acid reflux. Well, that's part of the digestive process, right? That's the first initial part is the chewing up of the food. In fact, Doug just pulled up the book. The book was 32 chews, not 52. And it's not only to improve for weight loss, but also the digestive process. And it's amazing. I remember the first time I saw it, I'm like, that's so silly. And then I started counting just to see how many. And I was like, holy ----, I don't chew my food anywhere close to 32 times. And it just feels weird to me. It takes a while. Oh, it does. It takes a while to do it. But what an interesting hack, right? Of just, hey, I'm not going to tell you what you can eat or whatever. Just literally chew every bite 32 times. Go to town, whatever you want. You just got to chew it 32 times before you swallow it. Watch what happens. And I think that's just amazing. Along the lines of food, something that I think is, and we talked about this recently in our Thanksgiving tips and stuff that we gave. And I think I alluded to this in that episode that I said, this is something that I've adopted year round for how I eat. And that is to prioritize protein. When you sit down and you're about to eat and you look at your plate, regardless if you're eating out or you're eating at home, is to eat first protein, which is very counterintuitive with how Americans serve food. We typically go starch first. Yeah. Bread comes out, chips and guac come out. All these starchy foods come out first, and then you get to the protein and you're already stuffed from all these appetizers. And so it's just a switch. And it's not saying you can't have the chips. It's not saying you can't have the bread. It's just saying, hey, eat all of your meat first. Eat all of your protein first, and then go there. And it's amazing how few of calories you consume just because you went that way first. Protein is satiating. Again, studies are clear on this, that on a gram per gram basis, when you compare protein to carbohydrates or proteins to fats, proteins create more fullness and more satiety in the body. So prioritizing it sets yourself up to not overeat later on. Not to mention, protein is a very important macronutrient for building that strength and that metabolism that we're trying to build. And protein often comes with a little bit of fat. So if I'm eating steak or chicken or fish, it's going to come with some fat. Which are both essential. Proteins and fats are essential macronutrients, meaning you have to eat them just to be alive. Carbohydrates are non-essential. Now, I'm not saying that they're not desirable or they don't have their own benefits. Just saying they're not essential. If you had to only pick two macronutrients to survive, it would be proteins and fats. So proteins first, then move on to everything else. Prioritize those proteins. You'll hit your protein targets. You're going to be satisfied faster and you'll eat less calories. Not only that, by the way, and this is a small effect. So I'm always a tread lightly when I communicate this. But protein also has more of a thermic effect than other macronutrients. Meaning your body burns more calories through protein than it does through fats and carbohydrates. Now it's a small effect. So this isn't the answer. It's just another little thing that sells, eating protein first and prioritizing it. Now, I want to make the point that we've gone over nine different tips for you to lose 100 pounds and we have yet to address any sort of tracking food or macros or calorie counting whatsoever. And I do like that we put this in here, but we put it in as the 10th and the final tip or final step to this whole process. And there was a reason behind that because I think you can get pretty damn far, if not all the way for a lot of people without ever having to weigh, measure or track calories whatsoever. Now, that being said, I do think there's tremendous value if you have the affordability to hire a nutritionist to help you with your relationship food with food during this process and make sure that you're getting what your body needs. Yeah, it's good to know what's in food, what's not in food, what portions, how many calories, typical portions look like. The reason why we didn't say track your calorie, because it could have been like this, right? We could have done this very mechanistic approach and said, okay, figure out how many calories you're burning, cut your calories by this much, burn X amount more calories, you'll lose weight. The problem is that counting calories and tracking is very triggering to people, especially people who need to lose over 100 pounds. It's very much, oh, I do it, I hate it and I don't want to do it ever again and I'm going to go in the opposite direction. So, the nine steps we said before help work on the behaviors, they help work on the relationships you have with yourself, with food and with exercise. Once you kind of feel good with that, then you can get into starting to track and really understand macronutrients, proteins, fats, carbs and calories, because it is an important thing to kind of know what's in your food. But you do want to build a little bit of a base before you get there, hiring a nutritionist or somebody who is a professional that works with people like yourself. So, somebody that is experienced working with people who need to lose 100 pounds, who does very well, who will also work with your therapist, ideally, is a good approach at this point. Not an online bikini coach. Do not hire fitness influencers. I'm so glad you said that. Yeah, I'm serious. You want to damage your body, hire an influencer or you want to make your relationship to yourself with yourself and food worse, hire one of those idiots. Plus, educating yourself in general, I mean, that's empowering, right? You need to, all of these steps bring about self-awareness. And this is just another piece to that that helps you to really identify what you seek out, you know, where that lines up in terms of, you know, the amount of calories you're consuming. You have more leverage going forward in terms of how to navigate your way around a lot of these things. And so, it's just, it does take more discipline and that's why it's at the bottom, right? And so, this is one of those things, it scares a lot of people, it seems daunting, but you'll find going through this process like, wow, I can do a lot and I can take more on now. And so, this is just one more thing that will help to, you know, make everything else seem easier because you really have the knowledge now going forward. The irony of this is that the science would support that this would be the first thing that you would do. Of course, because the science is all about losing 100 pounds but not about keeping it all. We got to nail that down, you know, and then we go from there and we got to figure out our maintenance calories. And that's why I love that we agreed that it obviously plays a significant role, right? All the studies wouldn't support it if it didn't have a significant role in the success of losing 100 pounds. But as far as the priorities from our experience of training lots and lots of people in this situation, the nine steps before are far more important that you get those established and you hit those out the park before you move into this space and not the other way around. Yeah, I'm glad you said that. And, you know, before we sign off, I do want to say one more thing, right? Be kind to yourself. You're probably your most harsh critic and the person that's probably meanest to you can be you. So, be very kind to yourself because this is not going to be a linear progression. You're not going to get better and better and better every single day. There's going to be setbacks. That's when you need to forgive yourself, be kind, forget the shame part. It's a hard journey, but you will get there. Look, if you like our information and you want more free information from MindPump, head over to mindpumpfree.com and check out all of our free guides. You can also find all of us on Instagram. So, Justin can be found at mindpumpjustin, you can find me at mindpumpsal, and you can find Adam at mindpumpadam.