Podcast Transcription: My Fitness Journey of Excessive Exercise & Strict Eating (And The 5 Body Transformation Rules That Got Me Into The Best Shape Of My Life) with Ted Ryce

Ted Ryce: It can be so hard to look on social media and see profiles of people, posts of people showing how fit they are. And it can leave you with a little bit of FOMO. Like maybe you're not good enough to get in shape. Like maybe there's something special about those people and you're not special enough to get in shape. 

Like those people had it easier than you and they don't have the lifestyle that you have. Now, sometimes that's true. For example, with actors and some of the superhero actors, Chris Hemsworth, and some of the others, they literally get paid to get in shape.  

But maybe you thought that about me, maybe you saw the thumbnail of this podcast and said, you know, that guy he's probably got great genetics. He's probably got a great metabolism. He's probably got it kind of easy.  

And what I wanted to tell you is the story behind how I got into fitness and how I got into shape. Now, if you've been listening to the show for a while, you've heard this before and I apologize because we're going to go through it again. Cause I have a different spin that I want to share about my experience, a more updated version.  

And if you don't know me that well over the past 20, almost 23 years now, I've been privileged to work with many CEOs of multi-million-dollar companies, fortune 500 companies, busy professionals.  

Sir. Richard Branson called me a fit bastard when I worked with him, Robert Downey Jr. Before his first Iron movie worked with me when he spent time in Miami beach. Ricky Martin, I forget exactly how long ago I trained Ricky, but before a tour, I helped get him in shape.  

And that's how a lot of people initially knew me. A celebrity trainer to the rich and famous. 

And more recently, I've been able to interview some of the greatest minds on health, fitness, wellness, longevity, personal growth on my podcast. And it might lead you to believe like, well, this is a guy who's wow. He worked with celebrities. I mean, I don't even know any celebrities. Quite possibly you don't. 

Even if you're very successful financially and you may think, well, this guy has obviously had a very privileged life, but unfortunately the truth behind how I got started is not so pretty. And people think like “Hey, it must've been easy. You, you probably played a sport in high school. You're probably part of the popular kids. Maybe you were on the football team or the basketball team.” 

And the reality is I was a rebel in high school. I skateboarded and did karate, neither, which were cool. I also had a lot of adversity in my life. My mother died when I was 14, right. As I was going into high school, I ran away from home. My parents were alcoholics. And that was my dad and my stepmother. My biological mother had a severe mental illness and had to be institutionalized at times. 

Then as many of you know, my brother was kidnapped and murdered when I was 19 and he was just a nine year old boy, a terrible story. I'm not going to go into the details, but if you haven't read about it, Google Jimmy Ryce. 

And what a lot of people don't know is how I got into fitness was to deal with the tragedies after my brother was murdered, especially. I was left a drift, not knowing what to do with myself. I dropped out of school, I was studying neuroscience or wanted to study neuroscience. I had just begun my time in college. 

I had no degree, no experience, I worked in an orchid nursery and most importantly, I had no hope, I was so broken through because of what I've been through. My whole family was broken and I mean, in every way possible physically, emotionally, spiritually, financially, I didn't have any money. All the things that I believed about the world, the good things were all shattered. 

And I was in a deep, deep depression. And what got me out of it was focusing on my health. I started to make a really simple connection. Luckily, I had been involved in sports, like I was skateboarding and doing karate, although I never took it seriously and drank alcohol and smoked marijuana as much as I exercised. 

But I remember like I had some connection there, like, oh, well this is something that I felt fun, I felt like I had a good time doing, you know. In high school, I also took gym as an elective, but I did it to meet women and to feel less like a loser. That's how I started in fitness. 

And then now I revisited it, after my brother's murder, as way to put my life back together because putting your life back together starts with putting yourself back together. And one of the most fundamental ways that we can take care of yourself is through our health. And that's why I say that health and fitness saved my life. 

It's why I became a coach. It's why I became a health advocate, is why I started this podcast. 

And soon after I became that  fitness and health coach Miami Beach spending hours in the gym each day, training myself, training my clients. It always brings me back to that thing that Tony Robbins says “motion creates emotion”. And kind of interestingly, I was just listening to a podcast earlier, Andrew Huberman, uh, neurology, uh, not a neurologist, sorry, a neuroscientist at Stanford school of medicine. 

And he was talking about how motion actually does create motion by its effects on dopamine. And I'll tell you, this is such a fundamental thing because so many of us were looking for the motivation to do things. But what I've found is that we need to take action first. It can be such a hard thing to do, but that's why I come here every week on this podcast to help you make those shifts. 

Now, some of you are already exercising and some of you aren't. For those of you who are not exercising, maybe take some action right now, maybe drop down and do some pushups. Maybe do some squats, maybe do both, maybe hold a plank for a minute. Maybe do all three of those things that I just said. No, don't just listen and think about it. 

Just take action. Build the habit of taking action and you'll notice right afterward that your physiology leads to healthier emotions. This is one of the most important things of getting unstuck. It's what I learned, not just through academic studies from interviewing some of the world's best minds on health, fitness, personal development, but also in my personal experience, not just for me personally, but also in my professional experience. 

The thing though was that I got really into exercise, maybe a little bit too much into exercise. In fact, I took it up a notch from just working out in the gym and trying to get buff because I felt I still felt some deep insecurity inside of me from all the things that I had been through.  

And then I didn't mention other things. Like I was bullied and. More in junior high, less so in high school. Cause I was such a, I was a really bad kid in high school. People were afraid to mess with me. They didn't know what I'd be up to. Not everybody though. I got picked on a bit but less people for sure. And this insecurity drove me to seek out martial arts. 

So I started training Brazilian jujitsu. I learned a lot about myself. I became a more confident person not because I was kicking other people's butts, but I learned that I could get my butt kicked and I was going to be okay afterward. In fact, I got my butt kicked so much in Brazilian jiu jitsu. I tapped out so many times, that I learned, Hey, I can tap out and I can keep going. They can beat me by points, but they can never beat me psychologically. 

And through this combination of strength, training, jiu jitsu training, I got in great shape. I got my brown belt in jujitsu. Maybe one day, I'll get my black belt. We'll see. 

And I was finally feeling myself again. I was training CEOs and millionaires in Miami, famous people. My clients were getting great results and even Robert Downey Jr. even invited me to come hang out with him in LA. Unfortunately I was too insecure to take them up on that.I got so nervous when he asked me. But I was still doing pretty well.  

And then something happened. I realized that I needed to do, I needed to build my business. I needed to work harder because I was spending so much time with my self care and some of my self-care wasn't really self-care. It was more like an addiction. It was more like a coping solution.  

And I've talked about coping so much on this podcast. I've talked about the two ways of coping, one solving your problem. For example, if you don't let's, I'll just use my personal example. I really wanted to have a more successful business. I wanted to make more of an impact in people's lives, but I didn't know how to do that. 

And I wasn't successful at it. At least not at that time. And to deal with my frustration. I just went and worked out, but that's not solving the problem. That's emotional coping. These two ways of coping either. You're solving the problem. You're struggling with your business. You're frustrated because it's not growing well. The answer is to stay with that and to find a solution. 

I know that now, but at 24 years old at 26 years old at 28 years. Actually I started Brazilian jiu jitsu when I was 28. So it was in my late twenties and early thirties that I'm talking about now, even though I had some frustration in my early twenties as well, earlier twenties as well, but I knew I had to do something different. 

And so I finally made that shift over to okay I need to stop working out so much. My joints are aching, I'm having trouble sleeping, I mean, I ripped, but I'm starting to feel worse. I'm starting to break down and on top of that, my business, I need, I'm taking too much time to train and I'm not spending enough time growing my business. 

And you may relate to this. Maybe you weren't doing jujitsu, but maybe you've been putting more time on your business or growing your career, growing your business, getting your executive MBA. Having kids, maybe it's more relationships, uh, that have added some challenge to your life to get in shape, some obstacles to getting in shape. You have a family, you have a newborn, not sleeping well. So I knew I needed to change something. 

One of the things that I didn't realize then, that I now know looking back, is I had too many negative thoughts about myself and about how to get in shape. I also had a lot of bad beliefs, incorrect beliefs. Bad's not a good enough word or accurate enough word, they were incorrect. I had a low sex drive. 

I thought It was because of my age, but I was in my early thirties. That didn't make any sense. I thought it was, maybe I hurt myself with all the partying I did in Miami beach. I mean Hey, you know, I was training rich people and club owners, restaurant owners, celebrities. 

I've taken shots of Patron with Russell Simmons. I've had a conversation with Gary Bucy over dinner at The Forge restaurant in Miami beach. Don't even know if that's there anymore. But a very famous restaurant. And I thought maybe all that partying had done something to me. I mean, it makes sense, right. That can't be healthy. And certainly it wasn't. 

And I believed that I needed to eat a very low carb diet. I was crazy with my diet, crazy strict. And I thought, okay, if I did short, crazy workouts, intense workouts, that I didn't need to do longer workouts, because it was really about, you know, how hard I could go and what I did in between my workouts didn't really matter. So if I laid around, that was fine because, in fact, I didn't want to get up that much. Because if I moved around too much in between workouts, I would be burning off muscle. So I better stay on the couch. 

And as I began to back off the workout schedule with weights and BJJ and started doing more of the things that I'm talking about here, eating low carb and doing these short intense workouts, I got that. And one thing I didn't realize at the time, but as I made more money, I was also going out to eat more and I was drinking alcohol more to deal with my stress. 

Very common, actually more common with men, according to statistics, at least, although a woman wine culture is quite popular as well.  

And then more tragedies happen that really put things in perspective. In the span of a few years in my early thirties, my stepmother died of a heart attack. She was obese, she was an alcoholic and she left my father behind him. My father, who thought he was going to die before her, he was devastated. 

Ended up putting a lot of things on my life. A lot of things that I was working on hold to be there for him to support him emotionally. Few years after that my sister committed suicide. My father and I were the only ones left in my family and we were devastated and I hit rock bottom again, just like I did after my brother died. 

After that I knew I had to turn myself around again and it couldn't be just going to Brazilian jiu jitsu and beating myself up with exercise. I was going to have to do things differently. I knew I also had to keep growing my business because I, and my family, were struggling financially. My dad was struggling financially. 

He was struggling to work. He was struggling to deal with the loss of his wife and then my sister, oh my gosh. He had been through so much. I needed to figure out a way to be healthy, both physically and emotionally with my approach otherwise, and this is the key word here, folks, it wouldn't be sustainable. 

And so much of what we try isn't sustainable. In fact, someone told me today they went on an extreme ketosis. And they lost some weight and guess what? They gained half of it back, which actually isn't that bad because so many of us, we gain, we gain all the weight back and then some. 

But how about what if we could do something that could get us to where we wanted to be weight wise and it wasn't? 

We didn't have to feel like there was this emotional burden and restriction and giving up our favorite foods and having to kill ourselves in the gym. What if we could take an approach like that? That's what I was interested in.  

That's when I started to look for a better solution and then I literally spent thousands of hours delving deep into the latest research on fitness, fat loss, and especially as I was getting older, muscle-building on longevity. Because one thing that happens as you get older is that things that worked for you in your twenties don't work for you in your forties and fifties. 

And what I ended up learning was, uh, was hard on my ego. And it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that most of what I believed as I talked about earlier was just wrong. It wasn't right. It was incorrect. 

Especially when we added the psychological component to it. You can't cut out your favorite foods forever. You're going to lose that battle. And the truth is, if you're like me and you like traveling and you like eating in restaurants, then you need an approach that works with that. And if you have kids, if you have a business, if you have a busy career, spending hours and hours and hours in the gym, trying to out-train your diet is not the right way to go. 

And the last thing is that if you want to get into great shape, you also don't want to make sure that you have to take away from your relationships and your business or career to do it. Everything should be synergistic. Now, of course, there's some sacrifices involved, but everything should get better. 

And I know that seems like a lot to ask for, but I think that's what we should ask. In fact, my clients ended up making more money, their relationships got better as they took better care of their health. And one of the things that we learned is that self care or exercise or taking care of your health, it's not something you do after your to-do list is all checked off. It needs to be on your to-do list. 

“Oh, well, that sounds good, Ted, but I, you know that, that's just, that's a nice thing to say, but that's not reality.”  

Well, here's some reality for you. Getting sick will force you to take time off. Having your first heart attack will force you to take time off coming out, coming down with a diabetes diagnosis will force you to take time off. From your family, from your work, from your career, from your goals in life, from the things that you want to do 

Because I want to tell you here, even if you have a lot of aches and pains, there is a way to get in shape. I'm in pain every day unfortunately, from some of my mistakes from weightlifting and training jiu jitsu so hard, but guess what? I know how to work around it. There are ways to work around it. There are ways to get the energy back that you felt when you were younger. 

There's a way to feel 10 years younger. Everyone thinks I'm 10 years younger and I feel better than 20 years ago. Well, let's not say I do actually feel better than 20 years ago, but let's say in every way, except for the hair on my head, I feel better than I did at 30. 14 years ago. I also learned that I can do it and run a successful business and enjoy my life, do fun things, have great relationships. You don't have to give those things up. 

And some of the things that we'll talk about more in the near future is that I've tried some extreme diets. One thing I tried before I tried the extreme dieting approach was I tried to out-train my diet. And in 2016, I was doing double workouts. 

I was like, Hey, listen, I'm not seeing the fat loss results I want. So I know what I'll do! Real smart, right? I'll work out twice a day. Guess what? I suffered the most catastrophic injury I've ever had in my life. I had a herniated disc. I could not walk. 

Literally, could not walk this. Isn't an exaggeration. This is like, oh, you could walk, but you're kind of limping. No, I could not walk for two months. I went to therapy every day after I injured myself trying to do two a days. I could, I would drag my left leg and then I would have to lay on the ground. 

I would literally lay on the floor in the elevator on the way to, uh, the physical rehabilitation center that I was going to, and people were, Hey, are you okay, man? I'm like, yeah, I'm all right. But I had to get myself there somehow. 

Let me tell you that, that took away from my business. Couldn't even work for months. 

And then when my clients saw me, I was still limping. I was dragging my left leg. I couldn't even walk right. That was at the end of 2016. And guess what? I'm still dealing with it now, all because of that stupid idea that I had and took action on to work out twice a day. Luckily, most of you don't have time to do it. 

That's an example of working hard, but not smart. An extreme example, but a good one, I think.  

And after that I realized now I got to deal with my nutrition, but since I was such an idiot, I tried some extreme approaches, and ended up in the emergency room one night with panic attacks. And what I learned was some people get panic attacks when they drop their carbs too low. Might have something to do with the serotonin carbohydrates, creating serotonin in your brain.  

Nobody was really quite sure what happened, but I was having panic attacks. It was horrible. Cost me money, cost me time for my work. Hopefully you're not making dumb decisions like me, but I want to bring you back to what we talked about initially, if you've ever looked at me and said, oh man, that guy has it easy. He figured it out. It's easy. He's had this going for him and he's probably always looked like that. These are some of the things that I haven't talked about. Don't talk about it as much. 

Guess what? You think I do extreme approaches with my clients? No. Do you think I told them to work out twice a day? No. And if they bring it up, I tell them this story. I don't say, Hey, it doesn't mean it's going to happen to you. But what I am saying is a bad idea and it doesn't have to be there that way.  

There is something in between what you're doing now and that extreme approach, something in between something that a lot of high performers don't like, unfortunately, but a more moderate approach that gives you great results, but you gotta be more patient and you gotta be smart. 

You know, I eventually hired a coach to help me in 2019. And I'd been a coach for a long time. And I had wanted to, I wouldn't say I was the person that was like, no, I don't need no coach because I had always had coaches. That's how I got great at jiu jitsu. I became, not a world champion, but a Florida state champion, because I would work with, I won a bunch of tournaments, including the flirt Florida state championship, because I hired my jiu-jitsu coach to do one-on-one sessions. 

And guess what? It worked. I also hired people to tutor and teach me things. I went to seminars. 

But at the time I was spending money on material things, designer clothes, my BMW, and eating at restaurants. And I used to say, I just didn't have the money to hire a coach to get me to the next level. But in 2019, I took the plunge. I made the decision and took the plunge. Made it happen, got into the best shape of my life that I've ever been in up until that time.  

I got in better shape afterwards. But when I did it in Bangkok, which was where I was living at the end of 2019, or in Thailand, where I was for most of 2019 and hired him halfway through, I mean, it changed everything for me.  

And I kind of, at that point I didn't  even know what to do, but I was having trouble because I was in Thailand and I didn't know how to get in shape. I knew how to get in shape when I was in America. And I would go shopping at Whole Foods and Publix, which is the supermarket that we have down in Florida. It was easy. 

But now I'm in Thailand and I’m eating khao soy and pad thai and a bunch of other things that I don't even remember the names of, but taste absolutely delicious. And when's the next time I'm going to be in Thailand and I'm going to not eat the delicious food there, the mango and sticky rice, just because I'm trying to get lean. I wanted to do it all.  

I thought there was a way to do it and my coach actually helped me do it. And what I realized was there were kind of four rules to making this work. And I want to share with you the five rules of body transformation. And so if you've been struggling to get into the best shape of your life, I want you to listen up, maybe even take some notes. 

Because these five rules that I'm going to share with you they can get your results, even if you failed countless times in the past. In fact, especially if you failed countless times because those failures are actually experience. As I like to say, failure isn't the opposite of success, it's part of the path to success. 

So rule number one is I changed my limiting beliefs. 

No more extreme approaches, work smart, not hard. Hire a coach instead of trying to figure it out all on my own, even though all the information's online, I didn't know how to put that information together. And I'd been trying for years and this stuff wasn't able to figure out. Got little bits and pieces.  

Let me know if this sounds familiar, little bits and pieces, maybe a percent better here, 3% better there, but it was never able to change, transform myself and achieve the results that I knew I was capable of achieving. 

Number two, learn the truth about nutrition.  

Men lie, women lie. The number of calories in your ribeye steak or in your Ben and Jerry's Netflix and chilled pint of ice cream, those numbers, they don't lie. Nutrition, influencers lie, or they're just ignorant: Carbs make you fat, fat makes you fat, seed oils make you fat. Even if you cut calories from every other thing, if you eat even a teaspoon of seed oils. If you do everything right, but you have a banana, it has carbs in it, it's going to ruin everything. It's nonsense, totally wrong! 

But the numbers, the calories, the macros, learning how to use foods that satiate my appetite. I've talked about this satiety index many times here. So learning the truth about nutrition, learning, how nutrition really works.  

Number three, lift weights with progressive overload. 

Oh yeah. I lift weights. Okay, cool. But so many of you are doing the same weights that you did last year, which are the same weights that you were using the year before. 

If you want to make progress, you’ve got to progressively overload, progressively challenge yourself, and you've got to do more reps. You’ve got to do more weight, no matter what your goal is. Well, I don't want to get too big. Don't worry you won't, it's incredibly difficult to get big.  

And a lot of what you think is mass is actually just covered up by your body fat and you have way more body fat on you than you realize. If you're not, if you're not ripped, if you're not seeing veins on your abs, you got way more body fat than you realize.It's one of the most humbling experiences. So lift weights, build muscle, push yourself. You will actually get leaner.  

The rule number four, get in steps or do cardio.  

You don't have to do cardio. It has some health benefits when you push yourself a little bit harder. Steps are good too, but you need to move your body in between your workouts.  

That's what I should say rule number four is you got to move your body in between your workouts. 

If you're sitting in a chair for eight hours a day, five days a week, or maybe even seven days a week, those three hours that you spend in the gym, they're nowhere near enough. In fact, you get better results from just doing a 30 minute walk every day and doing shorter workouts, or maybe even two workouts instead of three. You’ve got to move. There's no way around it.  

Rule number five, manage stress.  

We talk about managing stress, but so many of us don't even think that we are stressed, but we have sleep problems. We have irritability problems. We get triggered by social media. 

We feel bad about the direction the world is going in, maybe the country is going in that stress folks.  

Stress affects sleep. Or if you're staying up having a good time that makes you more stressed the next day, or at least it can over time. Maybe one night out, that's just amazing spending it with your friends, and you're like, wow, what a great night out. But if staying up late on the regular is something you do, it raises stress hormone levels. We need to learn how to manage stress. 

If you've ever said to yourself, well, I'm not that stressed. And then you go on vacation and you feel better, then you were stressed. You just have a lack of awareness about it. And the problem with stress is that not only does it affect your sleep, just as sleep affects stress, but stress drives emotional eating. So does lack of sleep.  

Managing stress is key to breaking the cycle. If you're good at the beginning of the day, and you start your day right, but by five o'clock, after putting out so many fires in your business or your job, you just, you don't have any other energy and you need a drink after work, you're coping because of the stress. And alcohol actually increases stress too, because it affects your sleep. Not wrong to drink, but if it's your thing, you need to evaluate that, that is not how to handle stress appropriately. 

So I was like you, as you can see, I've made mistakes and gone to extreme with nutrition, with exercise, but now I get lean and stay lean while eating the foods I love. I have a workout program that makes me feel good. It gives me results. My joints don't feel beat up. I feel great. 

Not all the time. I mean, my dad died last year. Sometimes I feel pretty bad. 

But it's not because I'm destroying myself in the gym or beating myself up when I try an extreme approach, and then it doesn't work. 

I feel confident about the next 10 to 20 years, because I know I've got this handled. I'm actually getting better, especially as I'm pulling away from what happened last year. And I've got the energy and focus to run my business. 

I don't do martial arts every day, but I do it a couple of times a week. I go scuba diving. I started taking up kite surfing in Brazil. Although I'll tell you that was a little, it's a little bit more of an extreme sport than I realized. And most importantly, I’m showing up for the people that I love in my life. 

And I wish someone told me this 20 years ago, it's one of the reasons why I'm so passionate about what I do now. I wish someone told me calories matter the most for fat loss and tracking calories is the best way to lose fat while eating what you want. You don't always have to track, but you gotta get some idea of what you're eating, because right now you have no, no idea.  

How many calories were in the last meal? Was it 1500? You don't know? Was it 500? You don't know, was it 700? You have no idea. How many grams of protein you eat every day is super important for fat loss and looking your best. People told me protein was important, but I thought that meant steak and protein powder. Rib eye steaks, almost 50% fat, folks. That's not a great source of protein.  

Another thing I wish someone told me is learning what foods help with hunger is crucial because you know what, the calories in calories out thing, that's the mechanism through which fat loss happens, but the way it shows up for us, the way it shows up for me and you is in hunger. You need to know how to handle your appetite. And if you don't know that certain foods like croissants are terrible for your, for satiating your hunger, but foods like potatoes are great for hunger, and I didn't say French fries, and I didn't say potato chips, but say baked potato with some salt and pepper, maybe a little bit of butter, little bit of olive oil, whatever you're into. They're great for hunger. 

And resistance training with progressive overload is key to getting a lean and muscular body. It's not about doing the cool workout. You don't need the fancy drop sets or shoulder try sets or any of that nonsense. You need to make sure that you're lifting more weight or doing more reps and, or lifting more weight over time with the exercises that you're doing. 

And how do you do that? Well, you track your workouts. I hope you're seeing a key here: tracking your nutrition, tracking your workouts. I tracked my workout today. It's one of the most powerful things you can do. 

I wish someone told me, Hey, improve your sleep quality, fix your sleep because it's going to make it so much easier to have the energy you need into avoid cravings. 

And tracking your sleep with an Oura ring, if you're really struggling, can change the game for you. And I've got my Oura ring on right now, I wear it every day and every night. Only take it off to charge it. It tracks my steps during the day. It tells me what my resting heart rate is and how I slept the night before during the night.  

Also dealing with emotional issues is crucial. I don't want to go too deep with this, but this is really the key. So much of what we do is coping for something that happened to us many, many years ago, and we think we're in the driver's seat, but it's really the unconscious. And working on these with cognitive behavioral therapy, breathwork,  there are many other things.  

I had a conversation today with a friend of mine who came back from six days in the jungles of Peru. Drinking  ayahuasca. It's not that ayahuasca is the thing to do. In fact, for most people, I don't think it's appropriate at all, but what is appropriate is to deal with the deeper issues, because emotions get stuck within us. That's why you get triggered so easily.  

That's why you get so angry at yourself when you can be successful in making money, but for some reason, trying to handle your health, you're not successful. And you think you're a loser and it makes you question if you're a winner in other areas of your life, because if you can't win with your health, I mean, is this success in other areas of your life or is it even real? I had a client share that with me once. It was really enlightening to hear that.  

Also setting realistic expectations is huge. 

There's a thing called reward prediction error. We'll talk about this on another podcast, but basically it's, if you have an expectation about what the weight on the scale should be before you step on it, and then you see that it’s higher because there is some natural fluctuation up and down with a fat loss journey, it looks more like a stock market going up and down, hopefully, you know, trending down. But even with the trend down at sometimes is hard to deal with.  

But if you expect the ups and downs, you're okay. But so many of us, let me know if you resonate with this, you step on after doing “everything right”, and maybe you were doing everything right. But guess what? You still have some fluctuation. And then you're like, oh, you get a case to the fuck its. It's like, fuck this, forget it. I'm done! And you give up.  

These are the things that people don't talk about enough. They got us choosing foods that are healthy instead of learning about calories. Now, healthy foods are important. I'm not, I'm not… There are people who have lost weight drinking nothing but beer eating, nothing but off the menu at McDonald's, can't think of anything worse than that. The McDonald's diet guy. 

There's the Twinkie diet guy, Mark Hubbard, the professor of nutrition professor who lost 30 or 40 pounds drinking protein shakes and eating Twinkies and Little Debbie food cakes. But guess what? Calories are the king when it comes to fat loss. Yes. Your healthy choices matter from a micronutrient perspective, from a nutrient perspective, but calories are the key. 

What that means is not eat junk food or go on the McDonald's diet. What it means is make healthy choices, but understand if you're eating that, that a couple tablespoons of guacamole was 150 calories, and that was before your dinner, there was handful of nuts where 200 calories. And that was before dinner. That trail mix that was so healthy was 250 calories and it wasn't even a meal you're still hungry after. 

So choosing foods that are healthy is important, but if you don't understand the calories, then you're going to be lost and you're going to be like, I do everything right, I eat healthy foods and yet I'm still not losing weight, there must be something wrong with my metabolism, my hormones, my age, re-menopause post-menopause, low testosterone. The list goes on. It's none of those things, folks! 

Working too hard in the gym, thinking that you can out-train your diet. It's not going to happen. You're not burning as many calories as you think in the gym.  

Thinking that stress and sleep don't matter that much. Not saying you can't lose body fat if you're a bit stressed and sleep deprived. I was sleep deprived in Bangkok when I got super lean, but I wasn't that stressed. I was having a good time. I just happened to be taking calls at weird hours, but I was loving life.  

And buying expensive supplements, thinking that there's some supplement that if you just take the supplement is going to make things change. Doesn't exist! I've experimented with more supplements than you have, I guarantee it, there's no way you could out-supplement me. I still take a lot of supplements, but they're for my health, for a health perspective, not, and like an optimization perspective. I know none of them are going to help me lose fat. 

Following gurus and influencers and the trendiest things. I'll tell you a secret. The more popular someone is, the more likely that what they're teaching is not right. Because you know what, they're good at marketing. “No, but they got some great weight loss results.” Yeah. Okay. That's easy. 

Give someone a cabbage soup diet. They're going to lose weight, make them eat nothing. You make them get rid of all the carbs in there. So, they're just eating cauliflower and being sad. They'll lose a lot of weight. They won't keep it off though, unless they stay that way for the rest of their life.  

So listen, what I'm trying to say here is that after all the things that happened to me after all the roads that I went down, I still was successful. I still came out of it better than I went in. I wish I had someone like me telling me, setting me straight.  

And that's part of what I do here, because there's other things I could do. I could be in sales for a high ticket business coaching program for personal trainers. I could sell that so easily and I would make money and I would never have to do any podcasts. 

Wouldn't even have to find the clients. There's so many businesses online that are doing well and they need salespeople. In fact that's what I would do, if I weren't doing this, I would make my, make a couple of, uh, you know, make six figures, mid six figures, selling things and you know, not worrying about trying to change lives. But I'm here because I want to change your life. 

Because I know you can do it. And the best part is you don't need to go through what I went through and you don't need to do it alone. You can save yourself 20 years of trial and error and work with someone that's coached people like you and already knows how to get you there in a smarter and faster way, because you don't want to spend another decade trying to figure this out on your own. Especially if you're a high achiever, you have better things to do. You've got kids to spend time with, husband or wife, girlfriend, or boyfriend. 

And I don't want you to have another summer not feeling confident in your own skin and taking your shirt off at the pool, getting into your baby. Cause it doesn't need to be that way. And I'll tell you, most of all, you owe it to your family and your loved ones to get in shape.  

We say we do everything. I talk to people, they say I do everything for my kids. I put them in private school. I take them to sports. It's like, yeah. And you know what you're telling them, you know what? You're really showing them. You're showing them that mommy and daddy care a lot about you and we're, but we don't care enough about ourselves and we don't take care of ourselves. And you know what they're going to grow up to do. They're going to grow up and do the same thing. They're going to pay for their kids and do everything for their kids as their health falls apart. And the cycle is going to repeat, be repeated over and over and over.  

And I want to tell you something now. Sometimes we wonder, like, is all this work, all this like, oh gosh, you know, thinking about getting in shape, it's just so frustrating. It just, ah, is it really worth it? It is the number one thing that I've done in my life that I'm pleased about. I've had business success. I've had success with, uh, you know, many different things, many different achievements.  

Working with some of the coolest people in the world, interviewing, having a top rated podcast, all these things. But you know what? Focusing on my health, knowing that I'm looking forward to the next decade, because it's going to be amazing, because I'm going to have the ability to do all the things that I want to do. And I'm not going to be spending time in the doctor's office any more than I would need too, it's just incredible. 

Trust me. It's the best feeling in the world. Because something that happens to us as we get older, tell me if you don't resonate with this, you start to feel like, ah, I'm over the hill. I'm just a fat, you know, if you're like me bolder version of the person I used to be. I used to feel that way, now I don't. I still feel bolder.  Like, whoa, the hairline keeps disappearing, but you know what? I look in the mirror. I'm like, man, I look great. I feel great. 

And I can't control my hairline, but I can control how I take care of my body. And you can too. 

All right. That is it. I hope you enjoyed today. Have an amazing week and I'll speak to you soon!