Podcast Transcription: Why Clean Eating Isn't the Magic Fat Loss Bullet You Think (And What to Do Instead) 

Ted Ryce: Do you believe that you need to spend hours in the gym to change your body, and that if you only spent more time, if you only worked out a bit more, a bit longer, a bit harder, then your body would change? Today, we’re going to talk about why that isn’t true. And more importantly, I’m going to tell you what is true, what you need to focus on. Because I fell into this trap myself.

I used to believe that if I didn’t go to the gym for an hour, I should not go at all. So, if this is something you’ve said to yourself, you’re in the right place, you’re going to want to listen to this episode.

What is up, my friend? Welcome back to the Legendary Life podcast. I’m your host, Ted Ryce, leading health coach to entrepreneurs, executives, and other high-performing professionals.

And I want to tell you this: I’ve been in the industry for 23 years, and I’ve gone through so many transitions in that time. And one of the most powerful transitions that I’ve gone through is this idea that I used to have, that it was all about the time that I spent in the gym, it was all about the minutes, the quantification.

And that’s how I think Americans in general think about things. We want to know how much time is that? How much do I pay person? How much time do I get in return? It’s kind of terrible, because you can pay two different people the same amount. But if one gives you better results than that person, that’s better, wouldn’t you agree? And that’s what I learned with exercise. That’s what I learned with working out.

And so, my shift has become like this, I used to think, okay, if I can’t go into the gym and spend at least an hour in there, it’s not worth even going. So, I would skip the gym. Now, I still got results because of other things, and we’ll get into that. But I see a lot of people making the same mistake now.

In fact, one of my recent clients, Barbara, she is a partner at a big accounting firm. She’s a total rock star. She’s a mom, she’s a wife, she is totally crushing it in both her career and with her family. But with her health, that’s a bit different. She hasn’t spent the time on her health that she’s needed to, to give her the results that would make her feel good about herself, her body, where she is, her energy levels.

And one of the reasons, one of the beliefs, rather, that was holding her back, was that she believed she needed to spend 45 minutes, 60 minutes, maybe even more. And not only that, not only did she need to spend that amount of time working out, but she needed to go to a gym to do it. Because I mean, where else would you go?

And when she first signed up with me, we had a talk about this. I said, “Barbara, you don’t need to spend that much time in the gym. You don’t need to spend as much time as you think. In fact, the most important thing is how consistent can you be?”

And I said, “Barbara, let me ask you a question. Let’s say, we come up with a plan where you’re going to work out four times a week for an hour. And let’s say you agree to that plan. How are you going to feel when you miss those workouts?” And she said, “Oh, you know, when I commit to something, I really commit to it. And if I don’t do what I said I was going to do, I feel like a failure.”

I feel like a failure—even though she’s crushing it in her work, even though she’s one of the top accountants in the whole country and a partner in a big accounting firm, has a beautiful family, she feels like a failure.

And I want to ask you, do you relate to that? Do you set big goals with your workouts and when you don’t hit them, you feel like a failure too, even though you’re crushing it in other areas of your life?

I said, “Barbara, that’s a problem, because what happens to your motivation when you feel like a failure?” She said, “Well, I become less motivated.” And I said, “What happens after that?” “Well, I slowly start to just give up and I stop and I say, you know, I’ll take care of this when I have more time.” I said, “Exactly. That’s what we’re working on. You and I, we’re going to conquer this, but we’re going to conquer it in the right way.”

And so, the first step is to come up with a program that you can’t say no to, that you can do no matter what. That is the first step, and it’s the first step for every single person. And she said, “Okay, let’s do it.”

And what did that look like for her? It looked like two to three 15-minute workouts done in her office with minimal equipment, in between meetings or sometimes even during some of the meetings that she didn’t really have to participate in by talking, but she needed to be on the meeting.

I said, “Perfect.” I said, “how confident are you on a scale of 1 to 10 that you can do this every week?” She said, “Well, 15 minutes, of course, I could do that. Two to three times a week, I could do that. Let’s say it’s a 10, Ted.” I said, “Boom, that’s what we’re starting with.”

And I want to ask you right now, are you setting goals that are too big to start out with? Are you overestimating what you can do right now, and over and under estimating—oops, almost mess that up—under estimating what you can do six months from now. Because we want to start, we want the results yesterday, we’re so impatient. But this is the key. Because if we can build consistency, what is that? That’s a habit. Now we’ve got a habit of exercise.

Also, we set a minimum--what would you call it? Minimum Viable Workout, let’s say, an MVW. She can always come back to this minimum viable workout no matter how busy she gets. But we start with that as the foundation. And what does that do when she’s able to hit her workouts or even she does more than two or three times, because we’ve actually moved on from that.

Now I said, “Well, let’s hit it more times per week. We don’t have to increase the time, we can just have you hit it more times per week. If you’re going to be in your office five days a week, let’s do four or five times a week. How about that?” “Sure, I can do that.” Because now that we’ve established a foundation, she can build on it.

You’ve got to form the foundation. If your house is on a shaky foundation, but you’re choosing the color of paint and putting all these decorations and the big double doors, like it’s on a shaky foundation, it’s all going to fall apart, you’ve got to establish that foundation. And it’s got to be something that you can’t say no to. And once you establish that foundation, you can build on it.

I have a minimum viable workout, too. I travel with a band kit. I’m going to be doing this workout today. I’m staying in my cousin’s house, I’m in San Antonio, Texas. And it’s not in a remote area, but it’s actually a little bit outside of San Antonio, I don’t know where the gym is, haven’t even looked it up, because I’ve got my gym with me, that’s my minimum viable workout.

And if I only have 20 or 30 minutes, I know how to get a killer workout with that. In fact, I can get a better workout—And when I mean better, I don’t mean how tired I am, how sore I am, how fatigued I feel. I’m talking about my results.

I get better workouts, I get better results in 20 minutes a few times a week, than most people get spinning in our in the gym, five, six or seven times a week.

So, the second principle after we focus on consistency is you’ve got to be focused on the principles that move the needle.

And what is that? Well, it’s really simple. You’ve got to make sure that you’re focused on things that build muscle, resistance training that builds muscle, you’ve got to focus on resistance training. Whatever the time that you have during the week, if you don’t have that much time, it better be on resistance training.

And this is a mistake a lot of people make. In fact, I was talking to my cousin’s wife and she was saying, “Well, I went through a period where I was running all the time. And then I stopped running because I didn’t have the time.” Again, she was making that mistake of the consistency. And here’s the thing with running, it doesn’t build muscle.

In fact, we know from studies that if you focus on cardio and try to diet at the same time that 25% of the weight you lose is muscle.

So, if you’re running seven days a week right now or doing cardio seven days a week right now, no weight training, because of whatever reason, whatever ridiculousness that you heard online or whatever ridiculous idea that you have in your head about what gets results.

Let’s say you lose 10 pounds with that, but two and a half pounds is muscle and guess what? You lost muscle, your metabolic rate is lower, it’s going to make it easier for the weight to come back on.

So, the second principle here is you’ve got to focus on resistance training, focus on resistance training with whatever time that you have. It’s the biggest bang for your buck, it’s not high intensity interval training. It’s resistance training. Stop getting side-tracked. Stop falling for fads. Focus on resistance training.

And the third thing is let your diet do the work. I should say let your nutrition do the work. because I don’t believe in diets, not fad diets. So let your nutrition do the work. So many people, the other side of this is there’s someone listening right now, maybe this is you, you’re working out four or five, six times a week, maybe you’re working out every day and whenever you take...

And, first of all, you’re not getting the results you want. And whenever you take your foot off the gas pedal, you start losing those results, you start going backwards, you see your waistline starting to expand, that’s a person, or you’re a person who’s focusing on, you’re not letting your nutrition do the work, you’re having to work for it with your workouts. You’re working with your workouts, instead of letting your nutrition do the work. Is that you? That’s a huge problem, too. You’ve got to let your nutrition do the work.

One of the reasons that, Barbara, my client has lost 12 pounds in four weeks is because we’ve combined these three principles: number one workouts that she can be consistent with. Number two, focused on resistance training. Number three, letting her nutrition do the work. And the thing about nutrition is this, because a lot of people say, “Well, I don’t have the time to eat right?”

Well, that’s not true, either. And I’m not going to...That will be a post for another day. But you’re already eating every single day. You exercise maybe a couple times a week, but you eat several times a day. And every time you eat, it’s an opportunity to focus on to let your nutrition do the work for you.

So, we’ve looked at Barbara’s nutrition, and we made the necessary changes. And this, my friends, this is what causes the results. This is what causes the results.

So, what really matters is this: don’t get lost in the details of how long you think you need to exercise. Focus on the big needle movers, you’ve got to get in that weekly consistency with your workouts and your workouts, they better be focused on resistance training, if you want that loss.

The second thing is let your nutrition do the work. As I’ve said before, it’s so much easier to eat 500 fewer calories than it is to burn 500 calories with exercise, it’s always going to be that way.

And we’ve had handfuls of new clients that start losing fat right away without spending hours in the gym or doing strict diets. And we’ve also seen people who were exercising four or five, six times a week, seven times a week, and still not seeing the results that they want in their body.

What’s going on there? And what most people do is they make this mistake, “Oh, it’s got to be my metabolism, it’s got to be my hormones, it’s got to be my age, or maybe my genes,” and none of those things are true.

Now, look, if you’re 80, okay, if you’re in your late 70s, and you’re really unhealthy. Like my dad was 76 when he passed away, yeah, okay, he could barely get out of a wheelchair.

But if you’re still walking around, if you can still get up and get down off the floor, if you can get up out of the chair, then this is not your excuse.

In fact, I had a conversation with my cousin, 42 years old. And he’s like, “Man, I really think age is really kicking my butt. I really think I’ve slowed down,” because he used to play basketball. And I said, “Well, what are you doing for exercise right now?” He’s like, “Well, I’m not doing any exercise at all. No resistance training at all.”

I’m like, “Well, then why are you saying it’s your age? I don’t understand. You used to work out all the time and play basketball and now you don’t do anything, why the hell are you saying it’s age?”

That’s kind of like saying, man, when I went to work, I used to get paid, I get a steady pay check, but 10 years later, I don’t work at all. Man, I have no money.” It’s so ridiculous when we say it like that.

But that’s the things that, I don’t know, we come up with these ideas, we come up with these excuses. Stop making those excuses, because it’s about the consistency. Even if it’s just 15 or 30 minutes, you have the potential to get lean and muscular. And it’s not about Herculean efforts in your workouts. It’s about your workout consistency, being focused on resistance training, and dialing in your nutrition.

Those are the three things, my friend. And if you do those, you don’t need to spend that long in the gym, you don’t need to follow strict diets.

We’ll do another episode in talking about the myth of strict dieting. And so, what I want to leave you with this, I want you to think about right now, what can I be consistent with, no matter how busy my life gets.

And I want you to think about: am I focused on resistance training here? Am I doing the principles that Ted’s taught me in this podcast and three, am I really dialing in my nutrition? Or am I focused on intermittent fasting? Am I focused on just getting rid of carbs? Am I focused on just eating clean? Because my friend, those can maybe get you some results.

But if you’re talking about big results, if you’re talking about looking amazing, people are thinking that you don’t eat any dessert ever, but you do, people think you gave up all your favorite foods and just eat chicken and broccoli, but you haven’t, because you focused on the nutrition principles.

So, listen, that’s it for me today. But these are the things I want to leave you with. I want you to think about these things. And if this brought a smile to your face, if it helped you understand something a little bit better, and you think that someone would benefit from listening to this episode, please share it with someone you care about.

That’s it for me. Have an amazing weekend, and I’ll speak to you soon.