Episode Transcript: Inflammation 101: The Invisible Health Condition Behind Everything From Heart Disease To Erectile Dysfunction with Ted Ryce

What's up, my friend? My name is Ted Ryce, and today, I'm coming to you from Phuket, Thailand, where I've been for the past few weeks. Really enjoying it here. First time in a while that we're close to the beach. Only made it to the beach once in Bali. And today, we're going to be talking about something really important.

So, if you are a person who you've been talking about your age, your slow metabolism, your hormones, or maybe even your genes as the reason that you're not getting results, then you're going to want to listen to this episode, because we're going to talk about what's really going on here.

And I know we've been doing a lot of mindset issues or mindset episodes but today, we're going to dive deep into the science of inflammation, how this inflammation works, the difference between acute inflammation and chronic inflammation and how it might be the thing that is really to blame for your lack of results if you're putting your efforts in the right place, especially in the gym, but you're not seeing the results in your body, you're not getting stronger, you don't notice a difference in your body, even though you've been working hard at it.

And if you're new to this show, just to let you know, Legendary Life is all about upgrading your mind and body. So, if you're looking to make a breakthrough in your health, to lose fat, to perform at the highest level in life, you are in the right place, all right? And all of those things go together. So we talk about tactics to get your health back and/or to improve it.

So, make sure that you press that subscribe button wherever you listen to the podcast so that every time one of my episodes or interviews goes live, you'll be the first to know. So, let's talk about this issue because so many people say that it's their age, their slow metabolism, their hormones, or genes. And then some people are just completely off base and their lifestyle is absolutely horrible, and they're just making up excuses.

So, I'm not talking about those people today, I'm talking about the people who are kind of doing, I mean, you're doing good things, you're not over eating junk food, you don't have massive issues with staying up till three in the morning online or scrolling through social media, you're in there, you're exercising, but you still don't see the results, and you kind of know a bit about health and fitness. And not only know it because you've been listening to the podcast, but you actually apply it.

But still, as you've gotten older, you've found that your body responds less well to exercise in particular, and you're kind of wondering what's going on. So today, we're going to dive into the real underlying reason that you're not seeing results from your efforts in the gym. And what this boils down to really, in many cases, is excessive inflammation.

Now, inflammation is a word you probably have seen many, many times. But today we're going to talk about what it is and talk about the nuances here. So, inflammation is often talked about as something that's inherently bad. That is incorrect! Inflammation is not bad! I'm going to repeat that one more time: inflammation is not bad, it's not wrong, it's not something that you want to get rid of.

In fact, the inflammatory response is your body's way of signaling to the immune system that you need to heal and repair damaged tissue. And in case you're interested in fighting off bacterial infections and viruses, inflammation is important for that as well. It's what causes the fever when you get a fever. And the fever is not so that you feel terrible, it's to fight off the infection.

So your body does these things and inflammation is one of its defense mechanisms. And beyond just that is also how your body gets stronger and more resilient from exercise. More specifically, it's how your muscles grow. It's how your muscles grow, and it's how your body gets in better shape. For example, when you lift weights, it creates inflammation in your muscles, it creates these micro tears and all this fancy biochemistry happens. And this inflammatory response starts the process of repairing muscle so that they start to grow bigger and stronger.

In other words, it's a good thing, if we didn't have the inflammatory response, we'd all die every time we got an infection, our muscles would not heal. So it's part of the healing process. Inflammation is healing. However, if the inflammatory process goes on for too long, or if the inflammatory response occurs in places where it shouldn't, that's when it can become problematic.

So what we need to talk about now is the difference between acute and chronic inflammation. So, acute inflammation: that’s something that you might hear a doctor say, but we're going to make this real simple. So think about, maybe you got to cut on your knee, sprained an ankle, you tweak your shoulder working out, or maybe you got a sore throat.

So what happens with acute inflammation is that the inflammation goes to the area where you have the cut, or where the bacteria is causing an infection in your throat, or your ankle that you sprained or your shoulder that you hurt when you were working out. And the telltale signs of acute inflammation include redness, swelling, heat, and sometimes pain.

Now, you probably won't, if you tweak your shoulder joint, you're not going to see redness, swelling, and you won't necessarily feel that much heat, unless it's a really bad injury. But you've probably seen this, when you get a cut, you definitely see this, right. And/or if you sprained your ankle, you see that the inflammation happening, it gets hot. And if you've ever broken a bone, you really see it.

So blood vessels dilate to allow for increased blood flow and white blood cells swarm the injured area to promote healing. And there's also these chemicals—we're not going to talk too much about these because it can get really complex, but I will talk about them a little bit. So these chemicals known as cytokines, or cytokines, you know, tomato, tomato.

So, all you need to know is that these cytokines act as emergency signals that bring your body's immune cells, hormones and nutrients to fix the problem area. And why am I even mentioning this is because some of that...And we can actually measure inflammation, and we'll talk about this in a bit. And the best what are the tests which can detect, which can measure inflammation includes some tests that look for these cytokines, and we'll talk about them a little bit.

But back to the acute inflammation thing, as the swelling happens, as the cytokines are released, as the nutrients in white blood cells swarmed the area to fix the problem, your body heals in the inflammation gradually goes away. And you've seen that when you get a cut, it gets all red outside the cut on the skin, and then as the cut heals, the redness goes way. You've seen that, okay. Now, that can happen in any area of your body, and that's normal, you get an injury and then it heals.

So, let's talk now about chronic inflammation. Because unlike acute inflammation, chronic inflammation can have long term and body wide effects. In other words, it can affect your whole entire body. Another thing, just FYI here, is that chronic inflammation is also called low-grade inflammation, because it produces a steady low-level of these chemicals circulating throughout your body.

And like I mentioned earlier, we can detect chronic inflammation by measuring blood markers using specific blood tests. For example, you probably heard of C-reactive protein. The best one is high-sensitivity c-reactive protein. Another one is called tumor necrosis factor-alpha. Now, don't worry, there's not going to be a test at the end of this episode.

So you don't have to remember them, but I'm just going to throw them out there, just because these are things you might hear about in the future. And then, as you begin to hear more about them, or perhaps you've even heard about them in the past, you can start to wrap your head around a little bit more.

So again, high-sensitivity, C-reactive protein, tumor necrosis factor-alpha, and interleukin 6. Now, tumor necrosis factor-alpha, and interleukin 6 are both cytokines. High-sensitivity C-reactive protein is a protein, so it's not, as far as my knowledge is concerned, considered a cytokine. But there's also other tests. But we'll be talking about C-reactive protein, tumor necrosis factor-alpha and interleukin 6.

In fact, I've worked with a couple clients, one had psoriatic arthritis, and one had ankylosing spondylitis. So those are both autoimmune conditions, characterized by this excessive inflammation. And both clients were diagnosed with these through looking into tumor necrosis factor-alpha.

So just back off the “sciency” side for a second, in case all the talk about those strange-sounding chemicals was making your eyes glaze over, I want to talk to you about the diseases connected with chronic inflammation. So, we know that chronic inflammation plays a part in cardiovascular disease, in cancer, in diabetes, in arthritis. And we're talking osteoarthritis here, but also auto immune disorders like rheumatoid arthritis or ankylosing spondylitis, or psoriatic arthritis as well.

So, both osteoarthritis and autoimmune conditions are included or are connected with chronic inflammation, and other things like chronic kidney disease and age-related macular degeneration. And osteoporosis is another one.

Now that's on the more physical side. But even on the, what you might say, psychological side or cognitive side, there's a small but significant association between elevated interleukin 6 and C-reactive protein in depressed people, which has been seen in many population studies.

And it's not quite clear whether inflammation is driving the depression or depressed people have more inflammation; it's probably a bit of both, because there's data supporting both ideas, but just know that inflammation in the brain in particular, it's been talked about for a while as either, you know, worsening or maybe even causing depression, and cognitive decline.

So, several studies have linked chronic low-level inflammation in older adults with cognitive decline and dementia, including Alzheimer's disease. So this is a big deal, this is a huge deal, this chronic inflammation. And here's something else that's really important about it. Your doctor, he might, or she might, I personally like seeing women doctors, but whatever doctor or gender your doctor is, they probably aren't testing for it, even if they're really good.

I saw a really excellent physician, a doctor actually in Thailand, in Chiang Mai, Thailand, excellent doctor, just really, really good, and she tested me for all types of things. But she didn't test me for this, and she's an excellent, I mean, you would be blown away you'd be like, “Wow,

I can't believe…” probably the best doctor as far as general practitioner that I've ever had in my 42 years of going to the doctor, just an excellent doctor, but she wasn't looking for this stuff.

She didn't say, “Hey, let's test your C-reactive protein and your interleukin 6.” More progressive doctors will but in general, it's not something that your doctor is looking for. What they're looking for is something that they can fix right now. So they're going to look at your fasting glucose, your you know, liver enzymes, the biomarkers of kidney function, your cholesterol, all those types of things.

And if you have an excellent, excellent doctor, they'll be looking at this stuff. But yeah, so let's just say that even if your doctor was looking for this stuff, it's kind of on you, because most of the problems with chronic inflammation come from our lifestyle.

So, let's talk about the causes of chronic inflammation for a bit, and then we'll talk about what to do to get it under control. And what I want to tell you is, age is one of the biggest, I don't want to say, causes of inflammation, but what we found was that in contrast to younger individuals, who's inflammatory response typically only rises in response to like, an infection or an injury then goes back down. But older adults can have consistently elevated levels of these cytokines, of these inflammatory markers, especially interleukin 6, and tumor necrosis factor-alpha.

And really important—I want you to pay attention to this, this is critical here—these elevations are observed even in healthy older individuals. Now, what constitutes healthy in the studies they were talking about? Was it just they had a good BMI? Was it that they had good blood work? Not quite clear. But what we know is that even if someone's relatively healthy, inflammation increases, and it's not quite understood exactly what causes it. The ideas are that mitochondrial dysfunction and oxidative damage might play a big part of it.

Now we're going to talk about the other things, but I'm just saying, age is going to get you. In fact, I forget the exact thing, the exact phrase that Valter Longo, who wrote the book. The Longevity Diet, said, but he basically says aging is the thing that—it's worse than smoking. He has some joke that he says that basically, you know, it's the worst thing you can do for yourself.

But it's a joke, because there's nothing you can do, right? We all get older; we all eventually die. That is the sort of thing that both kind of like, ", man, I don't want to die, I want to live on and enjoy life." But at the same time, it's kind of what makes life so special, is that we have a limited time.

But I did want to say this, because it's the only thing that I'm going to be talking about that is outside of your control. So I know I constantly get on people for talking about their age, their slow metabolism, etc. a lot of women who are postmenopausal and saying, “You know, after menopause, I noticed big changes in my body, this age thing is really kicking my butt.”

And so I wanted to acknowledge those people and say, yes, there is something with age, okay, eventually, you're going to have these problems that come with getting older. But what I want to tell you is, for the most part...Well, number one, there's nothing we can do about aging. So funny, I was in Bali, Indonesia, and there's a very popular beach club, Pool Party Beach Club, I hesitate to call it a beach club, because it's on the cliff of a beach, and it's on the top of a mountain overlooking this beautiful beach.

So it's not really a beach club, in that, you're actually on the beach, because it's very far, far down below, probably, I don't know, 150 feet, maybe even 200 feet, but absolutely beautiful. And it's this, you know, kind of luxury hot place where they're playing House Music, and my friend was having one of his mastermind retreats there. And I was talking with one of the attendees, and this guy had just sold his company to Facebook, not that long ago. And he's probably worth close to a billion dollars.

And so, this guy, we were talking about aging and anti-aging and these things, and it was so funny because it's like his whole mission in life seemed to be, before he sold his company, that he wanted to make money, right? Wanted to be successful in life, wanted to make something happen for his career, for the business that he was a co-founder of. And then, after he got all the money—because if you sell your business to Facebook, you're going to be okay.

And now he's stressed out about getting older and freaking out about it. And he's investing in money and trying to figure out a solution here. But what I want to tell you is short of doing that, and really looking into these things that, you know, we're not going to get into a detailed talk about aging, but short of that, there's nothing you can do about aging. And the scientific breakthroughs will happen, so don't stress about it too much.

The whole point of me even talking about this is I want you to focus on what you can do now. That was kind of what I was telling the guy, because he was talking about all this stuff. And I'm like, “Man, that may or may not happen, but what you can do right now is take control your health,” and that was kind of my argument.

So let's talk about what you can actually do. Number one, lose body fat. If you are overweight, if you are obese. In other words, if you've got excess amounts of body fat, we know that you are going to be secreting—you're going to have higher levels of inflammation than someone who isn't fat, okay? Because fat tissue, we used to think it was just stored energy. And that's what fat tissue is for the most part, but it also releases hormones and some of those cytokines that we talked about.

For example, fat cells, both produce tumor necrosis factor-alpha, and interleukin 6. And the fat around your midsection, in other words, the visceral fat or the abdominal fat, they can produce these levels in a much greater level. So this is an issue. By the way, just to point out a nuance here. This typically happens with women because women store their body fat—a lot of women store their body fat around their hips.

The fat around your hips is less dangerous to your health than the fat around your midsection. So if you are a person, a man or woman—and a lot of women have problems after menopause, around menopause with the visceral fat, or abdominal fat—visceral fat is the dangerous stuff. And we know that visceral fat cells produce three times the amount of interleukin 6 as fat cells elsewhere on the body.

And in overweight and obese individuals, it may be producing up to 35% of the total interleukin 6 in your body. So, really important. And I want to also point this out: if you're in the gym, and you're working hard...There was a nine-month study on postmenopausal women who were lifting weights. And what they found was not only did they find the same connection that I just told you, that there is a big connection between abdominal fat and interleukin 6 levels.

But they also found that the more chronic inflammation the women had, the less muscle they gained. So if you're not seeing results, you've got to lose fat. It's critical that you lose fat. And I know someone right now is going to say, “But I can't lose fat. I can't lose fat, because of my age, my hormones, and my inflammation...” No, that is not the reason, you're eating too many calories, your nutrition is not dialed in. You have no idea what the right types in the right—and more specifically, the right amounts of foods that you should be eating. That is why you're not losing fat.

If we put you on a desert island, when all you can eat is coconuts and whatever bugs or blizzards you could catch or whatever, you would lose fat. And if you didn't eat enough, you would starve to death. That's every single one of us. There's no person that they've ever found who survived a famine or being starved because they had a slow metabolism, it just doesn't exist, or because they were postmenopausal. Everybody loses fat when they get this dialed in, so keep that in mind.

So if you are overweight or obese, if your doctors told you to lose weight, if you've had a body fat test, which is the best way of figuring this out, and if you are over 25% as a woman, or if you're over 20% as a man, lose body fat, okay? Make it a point. And don't make excuses. Figure it out because it is “figuroutable”. It's just, you're not doing the right things. It's not your age, your slow metabolism, or anything like that. It's your strategy, it's not dialed in.

Now, the next thing I want to talk about is really important here, especially if you're the type of person who says, “You know what, okay, I'll lose that fat, Ted, you know what I'm going to do, I'm going to go work out six days a week for 90 minutes each time.” So, here's the thing: while intense workouts, spending a lot of this 9- minute bodybuilding routines or high intensity interval training, CrossFit, Martial Arts, like Muay Thai or Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, long distance running, all those things in moderation are good for you, it's fine, but they increase your inflammation levels. The harder you train, the more steeply your inflammation levels rise. So, we're going to talk about this in a second.

And here's another important thing. What we know is that if you're pushing yourself too hard with exercise, you actually get less good results, you grow less muscle, compared to people who are training with the right amount of volume. So what I'm saying here, and this is a really big shift to make a big mental shift, is that, if you're not making consistent progress with your routine, then you're not doing it right. And if you're really one of those people, who pushes themself, and you're one of those grunting, sweating, people who are just killing themselves in the gym, it doesn't work.

Or I should say, it only works, if you are sleeping eight hours a night, have very low stress levels. And most importantly, because this is the most important thing of all, if your workout is actually working. And I don't mean you just started working out two weeks ago, and you're making results, I mean, month after month, after month, year after year, right, month after month. Most people hit a plateau in a couple months, or maybe a little bit longer, because they just are pushing too hard.

So, what you need to ask yourself, are you performing more reps every single workout? If the answer is no…Or adding weight when you're doing so many reps, that is just like, “Okay, I'm doing more than 30 reps, I need to add some weight here.” If you're not, then your workouts not working. And if you're a person who's pushing yourself really hard, then this could be the underlying issue.

Another thing is that, is your resting heart rate rising and then falling back down? In other words, are you recovering? Because the key to this, the key to exercise is stressing yourself then recovering from the stress. But if you're constantly just stressing yourself, because you think that you're going to try to out train your diet, which is what a lot of people try to do, you're not going to be able to keep it up. So if you're having to out train your diet...

Again, I'm going to refer to what I already said, which is you really need to dial things in if you don't know what you're doing, if you're not getting consistent results with fat loss. Every single person can lose fat, there's nothing stopping you from losing fat, other than your lack of knowledge and/or lack of experience on how to apply the knowledge to your situation.

Because I'm sure if you're listening to this podcast, you're really knowledgeable. We don't attract the dummies, this isn't the “Getting in Shape For Dummies” podcast, as you probably know. You're already more knowledgeable than, I don't know, 90% of people with this stuff? So the thing is, you've got to be making progress.

Another way to tell is if your sleep is improving or getting worse. If your sleep is getting worse because of your workouts and it's not because of any other sort of thing, any other stress in your life, then that's a good sign that you're doing too much.

And I'll give you an example. I did a two-hour Muay Thai workout the other day in a group class. I usually do private classes, but the trainer I was working with couldn't work with me. So, I did a group class, and it was absolutely, I mean, just brutal. And today, I'm feeling it, and my heart rate, which is usually about 45, 43, 42, it was a 50, which is really high for me, as far as a resting heart rate.

So, I know that I need to really take it easy for the next couple of days. And that's exactly what I'm going to do. And I didn't sleep well, either. So, if your sleep is getting worse, then that's a sign you're really pushing the exercise too hard.

Another thing to talk about here is sleep issues. So, we know that if you have disrupted circadian rhythm, this can lead to issues with inflammation because we know that inflammatory cytokines that we've been talking about appear to follow a circadian rhythm. And so, they may be involved in some type of regulation of healing in the body or in restoration. But what we also know is if you have disrupted sleep, or actually if you sleep too long, we know that this increase, at least, acutely, inflammation.

And of course, they don't do long term studies on that, but we also know that if your sleep is disrupted for a long time, people have higher elevation in these inflammatory chemicals or cytokines in their body. So that's another thing: you've got to make sure you're getting good quality sleep.

And it's really important, because you might be, regardless of your body fat percentage or age, you can still have problems with this if you have sleep issues. So you could be a good weight, you could be young, but if you have a sleep issue, you're going to have higher levels of inflammation. Even if you're young and otherwise healthy, you've got a healthy body fat, your normal healthy body fat range, or even lean and athletic.

I mean, this was me when I was doing jujitsu competitions, but my body ached, I was in pain all the time, I slept really poorly. So, if you're sleep deprived, or if you got disrupted sleep, meaning you wake up several times a night, or you sleep too long, then you've got to be a bit careful about the other things that you do, because it's just easier to spike inflammation levels, and especially with the amount of exercise that you do.

So let's talk about stress—really important. And there's a lot of sources of stress in your life: it could be money stress, could be marital stress, could be job stress, could be from something that happened in the past you, it can also be physical stress from exercise, right, you're beating yourself up with exercise. We know that stress, both physical and emotional, leads to these spikes in inflammatory chemicals, the cytokines that we've been talking about.

And to add insult to injury here, we know that stress also messes with your sleep. And then which causes an issue that causes elevation in these inflammatory chemicals even more. And it's just this vicious circle that's very hard to get out of. So there's this stress-sleep connection, where usually the higher amount of stress you have, the higher the inflammation, but also stress messes with your sleep and disrupts your sleep, so that also creates more inflammation. So, very important to kind of get this handled.

The stress in particular, and what happens with stress usually triggers, number one, you don't get good results in the gym, especially if you're pushing really hard. Number two, usually leads to stress eating, and if you're messing with your sleep, it can lead to stress...

Well, already talked about stress eating, but the disruption in your sleep can lead to elevations in ghrelin. And I've talked about the endocannabinoid—I forget how to pronounce it. But this endocannabinoid that also makes you kind of—gives you like the marijuana munchies, except you haven't smoked any marijuana, you're just sleep deprived.

So it makes it really hard to control your appetite, which then leads to you over eating, and then all of a sudden, you're putting even on more body fat, which leads to more inflammation. So, all of these things are connected. I'm hoping you're starting to see the picture here.

So how to cure inflammation, how do you reduce chronic inflammation? Well, the number one thing I would tell everybody is to first look at your stress levels, because this is going to be the area of your life that affects every other area. Because you can exercise, you can eat well, you can try to sleep well, you can get to bed on time, you can sleep in a cold, dark, quiet room, but if you have too much stress from your job, if you're fighting with your spouse partner, too much money stress, whatever it is, the first thing I'd say is develop a stress reduction routine.

And now that could even include things like low intensity exercise, like aerobic exercise, like walking, especially if you're walking outside in nature, doing something like that. But you've got to understand that, stress, if you don't handle it, it's going to mess you up in every area of your life, it's going to affect your weight gain. In fact, that's probably the number one driver of weight gain in America, is stress.

First, we see that people’s blood pressure starts going up, their heart rate starts going up, driving up cortisol which starts affecting sleep, which starts affecting eating behavior, and then all of a sudden, you're eating more than you even realize, all because your stress levels are out of control. So, this is the first place. And if you're looking for something to give you a big reduction in stress, and it doesn't involve like walking outside, in the sunlight, you know, in nature somewhere, because maybe you don't even have access to it, meditation is the key here, my friend.

So what I want to especially tell you is somatic meditation is the best method that I've found for reducing stress, because you actually learn how to get into the tension in your body, to tap into it, to build your awareness of it, then start to use your conscious mind to relax the tension in your muscles.

So it's not about focusing on your breath, at the tip of your nose, or the expanding and contracting of your diaphragm, or any of the other meditation techniques out there. I'm a huge fan and very opinionated when it comes to somatic meditation being the thing that everyone should try, because it just is super powerful for actually reducing the tension that we're all holding in our bodies without even realizing it.

All right, so that kind of wraps up everything that I've got to say here. And I'll tell you, there's so much more to say about inflammation. But the big point I'd love you to take away from today is that the sources of stress are all interconnected. The way we look at the stress in our life has a huge part. We didn't even talk about mindset today, but how you view the stress.

But even before the mindset thing, I would even say you've got to learn how to handle your response to stress, because it's very hard to say, “Oh, no, no, I'm not that stressed. Ah, yeah, I'm not that stressed.” And really, you're completely out of control, you're trying to lie to yourself, in other words, because you are super stressed. And that just doesn't help.

So, learning a somatic practice, where it's kind of like giving yourself acupuncture, even getting a massage, which are both effective stress reduction techniques as well. But it means that you've got to throw down some money, find someone who's good at it, drive there, get it done, or have them come to your house, whatever, those are effective. But even if you do that, because I get massages every week, I get acupuncture when I'm around someone who's good. But I do meditation almost every single day, and sometimes multiple days, it is my secret weapon.

And again, specifically Google “somatic meditation”. If you're interested, I may even do a type of meditation teaching on here where I kind of walk you through it. But in the meantime, because I've had a few—a bunch, actually—just a few people reach out to me about meditation and the type of meditation that I'm doing. But it can be a huge game changer. And it's much easier to do, I find, for people, than to focus on your breath, but it does take some practice to develop that ability to get your awareness into the tension in your muscles, and then to relax it.

So we're going to wrap up now, but I hope you understand that inflammation, it's not your age, it's not the slow metabolism, it's not those other things. It's really inflammation and managing inflammation, that is the key to getting better results from your workouts, also to perform better in life, because this has fought wide-reaching effects into every single area of your life. So, the way to do it is all about what we've talked about here. So losing fat, managing stress, fixing your sleep, avoiding excessive exercise and doing the right amount, and the right intensity of exercise.

By the way, I just wanted to let you know that I will be coming out with the other supplement guides, they've taken me a little bit longer, and why? Because I only want to put out information that is correct and applicable so that when you use the supplements and supplement sacks that I talked about, you get results, and you understand, okay, well, you know, if this isn't working, then I need to try this. I'm doing all of that for you. I'm having so much fun doing it but it is taking a little bit longer than I thought, but those other guides will be coming soon.

Now I want to talk about something else. So we're in the last quarter of the year. And what I want to tell you is the end of the year, by Christmas time, or whatever holiday you celebrate, you could be down 15 pounds or even more on this scale, you could be stronger than ever before. You could be eating carbs every single day and make your keto friends jealous, you could be working out just three times a week for 45 minutes, and still be making better results than your friends who are killing themselves in the gym six or seven days a week.

Imagine showing up to your holiday parties smiling, leaner than ever, and still eating the things that you want to eat, while everyone else's waistline gets tighter and tighter. And, you know, they're just thinking about after the party, how they're going to have to do a New Year's, new you, type of thing.

You could be looking back at your experience in the legendary Life program, saying, “I can't believe it. It sounded too good to be true. But it was true. And I wasted so much time thinking about whether I should do it and not taking action. But I am so, so grateful that I trusted in Ted, took the plunge and joined the Legendary Life Group Coaching program.”

And after that, if you continue to take what I teach you in the Legendary Life program, and use it, you could end up like so many of our clients. In fact, I want to tell you, we have a few people in the program right now. This Legendary Life Group Coaching program is new, and it's done in a group format. So you don't get the one on one access like the one on one clients do that I work with, but it's at a much lower financial investment, and the results are still amazing.

For example, John, who just joined, who has been in the program for two weeks, is already down 10 pounds. You know how much weight he's lost in the past four or five months of exercising? Zero pounds. In fact, I think if I remember correctly, he told me he gained weight.

And Karen, she's been in the program for a little over a week and she's already down five pounds. That could be you. And these were all people who were doing “the right thing? before they were exercising, they were trying to eat right, but they were missing some crucial pieces of the puzzle, and that was stopping them from getting results.

So what you're looking for is in this program, being leaner, building your strength, building your confidence, increasing your knowledge, and self-worth, and perhaps most importantly, power. I want to ask you, do you know how powerful it is to know exactly how to lose fat and get into amazing shape? As in no ifs, ands, or buts, I want to lose fat now and I know exactly what I need to do. I don't need to try keto, I don't need to do intermittent fasting, I know exactly what I need to do.

And let me tell you, I'm at 180 pounds now. It's the weight that I was in my early 20s. I'm at twen... I was about to say 20. I ain’t 20% body fat. You see photos of me on Instagram and see that. Anyway, 12% body fat, I'm just getting leaner. And guess what, I'm eating flourless chocolate cake, coconut ice cream, and all those other things.

So how would that make you feel if you could do that? Well, I'll tell you how, like a freaking superhero! And all you've got to do is go to the link, legendarylifeprogram.com/apply and apply to the program. Because we don't take everybody, we've got a great group of people already, and I'm not going to let anybody ruin that vibe.

But if you're a person who's ready to take action, you've been listening to this podcast or other podcasts. This has been on your mind for years. And you've already proven to yourself, “Hey, listen, I'm already in the gym. I'm already trying to eat healthy, but I know I'm missing something. How do I know? because I'm not getting the results.” Then go to legendarylifeprogram.com/apply and sign up to apply now.

Or you can just stay like you are currently, because opportunities are called opportunities for reason. Only the people who are ready to step up and take responsibility and own the fact that they're not bad people, but the choices they've been making haven't been giving them the results that they want, and they're ready to get the results because they know they're worth it.

It's totally your call. But I only work with people like John and Karen and all the other amazing people who've been in my program: Rich and Sara, Deanne, Marilyn, so many people who've been in my program because they were tired of the bullshit. They were ready to take back the power that they know they have deep down inside of themselves.

And if you want to do that as well, if you want to do any of the above items, no more messing around, no more dabbling, no more, “Is the key cutting out all carbs?” No, it isn't. “Is it intermittent fasting?” No, it isn't. It's the things that I teach in the program and it works for everyone. So, let's get to work if you're ready to make that happen. Go to legendarylifeprogram.com/apply. That's it. Hope you enjoyed this episode. Speak to you soon!