Q&As with Dr P #2
Doctor p, we're back with episode two of the weekly podcast with you. How are you?
Speaker 2:I'm very good, sir. Just, you know, ticking boxes, trying to trying to get ready for wintering as the stoics would say, get myself get myself mentally prepared for the cold, dark, horrible months ahead and using that to build some resilience. So yeah.
Speaker 1:Nice. Just
Speaker 2:just just trying to get out of holiday mode and back into work work mode now. But, yeah, both good and good. We
Speaker 1:we'd be I I find it easier to to to eat better or train better in the winter. Don't know what it is about everybody doing the opposite. It makes it better. Same as waking up earlier, like, know, having sleep better. Don't know what's going on there, but.
Speaker 2:Yeah, don't know. I think for me it's the same, it's because I think I value daylight. So like the earlier I get up and the earlier I get my work done and things, it allows me to get out and get some fresh air during the day without feeling the guilt of missing work hours. So I think, yeah, the same really. I probably get up earlier in winter than I do in summer, even though it's grimmer and more horrible, but maybe that's, I don't know, maybe that's part of the mentality that you just develop certain resilience.
Speaker 2:And there's something about, guess, like running ultra marathons and things like that for me. It's like, there's something about doing hard things, which gives you more satisfaction. So yeah, in the summer getting up and out of bed earlier, there's no real incentive to do that
Speaker 1:because it's not difficult, but it's nice
Speaker 2:and bright outside.
Speaker 1:No, exactly.
Speaker 2:Which might be a slightly sadistic way of looking at the world, but you know, if it works, it works, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly. I think, like last week, the podcast covered a lot of topics and people liked it and we spoke a bit about, well, we spoke in the past a bit about maintenance and most people listen, I think ninety percent of people listen will be on fat loss, ten percent probably need a transition to maintenance. So, main thing for people is so comments, frequent comments. I haven't lost weight in ten days. I haven't lost weight in seven days.
Speaker 1:I'm losing motivation. Right? So there's a big even knowing that diet culture and your dieting is one of the worst things you can do for your body to go up and down. What is it that gets people to realize that the slow approach is the only real one that works? Like from your professional experience, well-being athletes and stuff like that, I suppose everybody wants to make games fast, but it's not really how it works.
Speaker 2:I think that at the fundamental heart of it, it's about setting the right goal. So the fact of the matter is, and I have this conversation a lot with people when they'll say things like, Oh, I've lost weight before, and therefore that's the approach that they would use, or they've lost weight before and it was a more aggressive phase. But then the question I always ask them, which is kind of a bit of a head scratching for a lot of people is, well, then why are we having this conversation now as a coach? So if it's worked you, then why is it that we're having this conversation? So I think that the first thing really is to really define what success means.
Speaker 2:And if you can think about success as not being about weight loss as such, at least initially might be, it's about weight maintenance. Well, the only way that we're ever gonna maintain weight by definition and to create a sustainable approach to our nutrition is to start imparting the values, the beliefs, the behaviors, the nutrition approaches now that are by definition sustainable. Now, if something's sustainable, the chances are that it's not going to be as aggressive in a deficit. Chances are it is going be a slower and steadier approach. That's the point.
Speaker 2:I think if people could really think about what their goals really meaningfully are, and it's not for me to tell people what their goals are, but it's up to people to reflect upon their past successes and say, okay, firstly, was it really successful? And secondly, if it wasn't successful, why don't I just commit to doing something different instead of losing 10 pounds this time, then gaining 12 pounds back because that still puts you in a worse place in twelve months time, two years time, three years time. So I think for me, it's been very clear whether it's an athlete I'm working with, or whether it's my own personal goals, whether that's in business or weight loss client or whatever, it's been very clear about what my actual goals are and not just what the goal is, but is that really the goal I wanna try and achieve?
Speaker 1:You said a good point as well. So when these people come and go, well, this is what I did last time and you go, well, if it was so good, where you lost your weight, so these people lose thirty-forty pounds quickly. If that was such a good lifestyle you had, why did you throw it away so easily? What was it about that weight you reached that you weren't able to hold on to? It must have been horrible.
Speaker 1:It must have been confusing. It must have been too much of a push that you pushed all the way back to weight gain. So what you've done there is you've basically you've lost the weight realized actually, I can't the weight loss is fine, but I feel shit. I feel terrible. I can't do this.
Speaker 1:I can't do this anymore. And you'd rather gain all the weight back because you are rationalizing every week. I'm putting weight on and putting weight on. And you go, do know what? I'd rather put weight on because it's not nice being down that weight that I've reached.
Speaker 1:And the reason it's not nice is because they've taken such an extreme approach that they think that's the only approach that's left to maintain. The maintenance of weight is completely different to the freaking fat loss macros. You're not gonna be fat loss macros forever. And if you think about it, if you were to do it slowly, and everyone listening, you were to do it slowly, most of you have got on average say 20 pounds to 50 pounds to lose, like some people have more, some people have less. Let's say you've got 50 pounds to lose on average for the person who's overweight in The UK, right?
Speaker 1:That's fifty to sixty weeks of a moderate deficit and you'd lost that weight. And then you've got a maintenance for rest of your life. So in the grand scheme of your life, it's actually not long. So it's long because you're the time, so then it takes ten years and you're still not in the same position. So that approach is interesting.
Speaker 1:I was speaking yesterday to, I don't know if you heard of the Barmi Army, like the cricket organization?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, the English Barmi Army. Yeah,
Speaker 1:yeah, The CEO now, Chris, I think he's 30 actually. He took over the Barmi Army and wanted to get membership up and asking him questions about it, and he was like, yeah, what's really worked for us is steady, slow growth. I've always chased the big deal with Sky. I did a big deal with Sky and I thought it'd give us huge amounts of members, but it didn't. And actually, I prefer going slow and steady now, and it's growing nicely, than having these big, I put on everything on it.
Speaker 1:I hope this works out, please, please, please. And it doesn't, then you get shot. Hope is destroyed. And then you're in the dumps.
Speaker 2:Well, I think that's sorry, Scott. I think, yeah, think that's true of pretty much anything. It's like the more aggressive you are, the more stress you're gonna be under or the more pressure you put on yourself to maintain large deficits, the more pressure you put on yourself to grow a business quickly, the more investment you have in something. If the investment isn't the right thing, like you'll understand this as a business owner. If you're investing in the wrong things, it doesn't matter how much investment you put into that, it's not gonna solve the problem.
Speaker 2:And I think that people treat that to use the financial kind of bank balance stuff as a kind of metaphor for fat loss. But the people think by investing more and more money not being equating to the calorie deficit, that they're gonna lose weight quicker and quicker and quicker, and that's better and better and better. And it might not be, I think a bit of advice that someone once gave me is, if you wanna get wealthy, like don't listen to someone in business who's made it a hit with their first ever business straight off the bat. It's like people need to have had a series of failures. Thing is that separates those people who become entrepreneurs or the people that separates people who are successful in fat loss in my experience, is it's the willingness to learn from those experience.
Speaker 2:So I actually did a few years ago now, we wanna talk about times being short or quick or whatever. We've had a massive pandemic, which was what, two years ago now, it's only over two years. I know it was a difficult time for a lot of people, but that's gone over and it feels like it was like yesterday, we were talking about certain things and we had the first Octagon Challenge and all that kind of cool stuff that we developed. And that seems like it was yesterday. And that's the thing like, what seems like a long way off now isn't a long way off in twelve months.
Speaker 2:It was weird the other day I got like a, like I completely, I had my PhD viber like six years ago. And I was like, what? Like, it feels like yesterday. It's crazy. In fact, it might be seven years ago, seven years ago, think.
Speaker 2:And I was like, what have I done in that time? You're like, I haven't done anything. Then you realize that the slow, steady progress towards building a clinic and traveling, and I've lived in different cities and all of that stuff and the work we've done together and the work, all the projects I've worked on, I've worked with professional teams in that time and all this kind of cool stuff, but it doesn't seem like it's that long ago because actually in the grand scheme of
Speaker 1:And it wasn't one thing that did all of that. It was like each day kind of felt the same, maybe similar. There was one meeting on that day. There was a training session athlete on that day. It wasn't actually one massive huge day that created all of that.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And I think there's obviously watershed moments and watershed conversations, whether that's weight loss, performance, whatever business. There's these watershed moments where you can say, okay, that was a significant moment, but it's very easy. It's very easy to, like a lot of our community will have these light bulb moments where something flying and clicks and they understand what we're talking about. And it doesn't just become this kind of ethereal conversation that we're trying to manufacture into some meaning for ourselves.
Speaker 2:There's a light bulb moment that some people will have. And it's the same in anything. It's like, but that light bulb moment only comes from time, commitment, consistency, having different conversations. And then yes, you might be able to say
Speaker 1:I'm actually seeing things lightheartedly as an experiment, having a bit of fun. That's when you start noticing and realizing stuff. If you're too serious about I find that people are so serious about fat loss and about white rice versus brown rice. They can't see beyond this like really narrow point of view. But if you have fun experimenting and track your food and you track McDonald's, you track Five Guys, you track a meal out, you track alcohol just for the fun of it and you see what happens, you go, oh my god, oh yeah, yeah, that really is, I've had that once a week and that fish and chips is 1,500 calories, light bulb.
Speaker 1:I
Speaker 2:actually did, This might be worth doing next time we get together and have a big group meet up. Actually did, because I did a talk out in The US pre COVID and it was about design your own nutrition approach basically. And it was because a lot of people there were sort of fearful of carbohydrates and fearful of this and fearful of that. And diet culture in The US is even more insane and crazy than it is in The UK. Like hard for some people to imagine, but it really isn't some of the conversations about out there, it just kinda like, wow.
Speaker 2:But one of the things I did was kind of saying, okay, well, we talked about this idea of what worked and what didn't. I asked the audience, and then we've got a list of different dietary approaches. And then we went through and we said like, look, okay, well, what was it about keto? What was it about their equivalent of weight watches or slimming wheel? What was it that was good about those things?
Speaker 2:And what was it that wasn't sustainable about those things? And I think that if people could go through that and say, okay, let's extract some of the good and some of the bad. They probably have a pretty good framework of what sustainable should then look like. And once you can then just put a little sprinkling on top of that, of understanding that all of those things work just by eliciting a calorie deficit. If you could say, well, look, well, you know what, actually, I really like keto because the protein kept me feeling full.
Speaker 2:Right. Well, guess what? You keep more protein in, but you don't have to be miserable and not have carbohydrates the rest of your life. I really enjoyed, I don't know, like intermittent fasting because it was easy, it was quick to follow and it reduced my eating window. Okay, that was fine on certain days, but it didn't work on social occasions or when you were traveling or if you had you were hungry over morning, that's why it didn't work for you.
Speaker 2:Okay, well, what was the principle of that? Well, the principle was you had a structured eating window, structured meal times. I say this a lot and I'll repeat this ad nauseam until I make everybody sick of hearing it, But it's about understanding principles over processes. If you understand the principles of what worked and what didn't, and then you can sort of create a series of processes that work in every situation, whether you're on the road, whether you're at home, whether you've got whether you're single, whether you're a relationship, whether you're, whatever it is that has an impact on your eating behaviors, potentially seasons we've just talked about there. All of those things, if we can understand the principles over the processes and we can say, okay, well, let's make the process fit the principles, but the process can be context specific.
Speaker 2:Very few principles we need to adhere to, I think really.
Speaker 1:I think it's better and also to do focus on the principle means you can stop getting so confused with a thousand processes. Like you can understand the principle and not be bogged down in the micro stuff that actually really doesn't make much of a difference, just stresses people out. Getting a 100 different diets, different processes, it's like, you just need to be in a deficit to lose weight guys. Whoever you want to get in that deficit, just fucking do what you want. Eat what you want to start with.
Speaker 1:I mean, you don't have to be perfect health wise, you have to compromise on this as well. This is where those purists of clean eating purists are quite wrong in this. It's like how obviously, we'd all love to be eating home cooked meals fully tracked and with micronutrient intake, and we'd love to have all this type of, you know, the wholesome diet every day, but it's not for most people. The reality is it's not really going to be possible unless you've got all the resources and the time. And when you get to older generation, like I've had to make for my father now, had to go like, right, his partner is not going to cook him meals from scratch every day.
Speaker 1:She's bought him noodles. So I'm like, right. Let's replace the pot noodle with those high protein meals you can buy from Azadan, Tesco and stuff. Right?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay. He likes chocolate, but he's not allowed to eat ice cream anymore. Okay. Here's the 20 gram protein mousse. Mean, it's not ideal like to be eating processed foods all the time, but you know, that's the reality we have to work with.
Speaker 1:He's not gonna be eating wholesome foods because it's not gonna work, face the facts basically.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think one of the reasons I've become increasingly withdrawn from the fitness industry over the last, I guess the last twelve months, really, apart from obviously working with these guys and wanting to figure out ways to be more, these guys, you guys, working with these guys as in the podcast listeners, that's what we're trying to get out there. It is working with you guy. I don't know. It's weird talking in the first. I don't know what person tensor should be speaking on a podcast.
Speaker 2:Very surreal. But the point is that like, the reason I've become frustrated with things and I'm trying to do things that are more impactful, which is why I got involved with Turtle in the first place is because it's just, there's so much hypocrisy within the fitness industry. There's so much hypocrisy within like the people out there that people follow telling you they do things and they don't do it. And I always joke, it's like the best shape I've gotten in my life was probably done being the least bro bodybuilder ish ever, which was like last year when I was just training loads, eating what I wanted within reason, sticking to a consistent calorie deficit over twelve months. And like, yeah, I had a couple of glasses of rum every weekend and a big Sunday roast every Sunday and didn't feel any guilt or shame about it.
Speaker 2:The thing is the irony is that a lot of people in the industry who preach that stuff for clean eating or this diet or that diet, they don't do it. And that's the thing, they'll say they do that. And it's like everything, the thing that people shout about the most I find in the fitness industry and it is something to watch out for if you follow any fitness influencers is the thing they shout about the most is the stuff they tend to feel most guilty over. I'll give you an example recently, which has been grinding my gears a little bit. A lot of former bikini competitors coming out now talking about kind of like how damaging and how damaging competing in bikini competitions is for bodybuilding.
Speaker 2:And is physically, emotionally can be very dangerous. And they're talking about the healthy proponents of gaining weight the need to gain weight afterwards and to have a better relationship with food. And by the way, I agree with all of this messaging, but it's layered with an undertone, a very clear undertone of people justifying them losing control of their own eating behaviors, but they won't blame the sport. They won't blame the competition. They will just use it to justify their own mindset at any given time.
Speaker 2:And then same again, when then comes to dieting again, it's like, I've gained too much fluff now it's time to start dieting again. And it's like, there's some really good people out there that are trying to get a good message across. But ultimately whenever I see a fitness industry kind of message being portrayed, particularly when it's to do with diet, it's just sort of like a lot of the time it's people saying things that they think they should be doing or what they believe they should be doing. And actually most of the time, it's not what they are doing or not what they believe, it's just their kind of like Oh, yeah, you're bang on. Yeah, it's them vocalizing their own insecurities about whether they're doing enough and then they'll justify it in different ways.
Speaker 2:Like, I'm not here and you're not here really to tell anyone like, hopefully anything that's anything other than a few home truths from time to time, which, I'd hope we portray in quite a loving care in an empathetic way rather than just being I'd never want anyone to listen to this sort of information and feel like I was judging them for following those things because the thing is, anything other than the cleanest of clean foods. So I think like, we have been in there in the trenches and seen it from that end. And so that anyone who is listening to this, if you have followed, I guess, other regimes now, it's not to say, oh, it's silly to follow those things because the marketing is very good and the sales is very good. And the people who promote these things are very good at selling these ideals. But at the heart of everything is it sort of being able to kind of go, well, I guess it's the point we made before.
Speaker 2:It's like, actually all of this stuff might have got me an amazing twelve week transformation at some point or an eight week transformation, but did it actually transform me? And by transform, what I mean is not just physically, but mentally, did it improve your relationship with food? Did it increase knowledge, your knowledge and education on food choices? Did it improve your relationship with food or did it increase the fear that you have with foods? Because all of this stuff falls under the banner of sustainability.
Speaker 2:And if you can't have a good relationship with food or you feel guilt for eating certain foods, yes, there's always gonna be a I think the way I would describe it is particularly people who are new to tracking, it's kinda like you feel like you're bit under interrogation and the lights really bright, but with time and experience, and when you get confidence in that you can have a bit of variety, that big bright spotlight just gets turned into like a little dimmer switch. It just becomes something where you're more aware of what you're consuming, You cut the BS on, like what you have eaten and what you are overeating on and not justifying, overeating and going, I don't eat that much. It's about calling ourselves on our own, I guess on our own ability.
Speaker 1:At the end of the day, the numbers will always show in the end. Some people will be like, I'm definitely in a deficit and gained 10 pounds of fat. It's like, look, it doesn't matter what you think, But the truth is you've gained 10 pounds of fat. You have not been in a deficit, you've been in a surplus. That's all that needs to be said.
Speaker 1:It's not judging you. It's not saying you're an idiot. It's not saying bad stuff about you. It's just the fact is whatever you've been doing equals surplus. So we need to change something.
Speaker 1:And it's not an attack on you. It's nothing to do with us. It's just the fact if you can work from a fact without an emotional charge for it. And just, you know, this is classic, know, even in business, now you have like an idea, and someone will go, luck the idea, thanks for the idea, but it just flat out won't work. That's a fact.
Speaker 1:It's feasibly possible to do it. And it's like that person taking it personally and going, oh, yeah, the difference is them looking at the fact and going, okay, I see the numbers, thanks for the facts facts and move on. And that's how we should look at the data you collect really, isn't it? It's like you look at your data, your muscle growth or your performance, and you look at the data go, right, well, I'm not running faster in the last eight weeks, I've been training and And you you don't go, oh, I said bullshit. You go, well, that's a fact.
Speaker 1:So something needs to change.
Speaker 2:Well, it's it's interesting. It's interesting you should say that. I was having a conversation with someone the other day. Someone who was quite like, I wouldn't say like a top level runner, but good level competitive runner who had got into running over lockdown as kind of like a weight loss thing, had followed certain nutrition approaches, which weren't exactly what I would say is ideal for performance and weight loss, but they've done well given the constraints of their nutrition and training. And it was interesting because what they'd found was without following any structured training program, without really following any structured nutrition program, they started to notice like let's say their five ks time was coming down.
Speaker 2:And then when it wasn't coming down anymore, that started to demoralize them because again, they'd attached an emotion to the number on the watch in terms of their pacing, rather than using that number as an indicator to say, right, well, what is the expectations I should have considering I'm a full time mom of two who runs in their spare time, who doesn't have a structured training program. It's like, why would you expect to be able to run faster week on week on week? And then you take it to its logical conclusion, which is, would you expect in the same with weight loss? Would you expect people to just lose weight forever and ever and ever till they just disintegrate into nothingness until they transcend human body and spirit and become a part of And that's the thing, regardless of where you are or whether you're losing weight or not, or whether you're an athlete, at some point we have to accept a healthy level of constraint on what we're physically capable of. But we can't accept that physical constraint on what we're capable of until we've identified why it is that's causing that plateau in the first place.
Speaker 2:And that's what happened is that this person I was speaking to had basically not followed the structure and training plan, was getting frustrated because the data wasn't improving. And instead of going, oh, right, right, maybe now it's time to speak to a running coach or maybe it's time to figure out what's wrong with my performance and educate myself. There's the whole adage that you can pay in two things, you can pay in time or pay in money. And if you don't wanna pay in money, it will take your time. Like with most things in life, it's why we always say like, that even if you're not losing weight, if you're learning the skills and habits and techniques and tools and documenting your process, that's not wasted time.
Speaker 2:That's the thing we talked about before about leading to that sort of watershed light bulb moment. All that stuff still counts. We just don't necessarily acknowledge it because, well, it's not sexy to acknowledge that I learned what protein was today. Well, how does that impact me? In ways that you can't imagine until you have your light bulb moment, that's the reality of it.
Speaker 2:Eating structures don't matter for me. Okay, well, until you do it consistently and all of a sudden you do something consistently and then you don't realize that the accumulation of that and lots of different other behaviors means that you'll have like, oh, you've had one good day, then it's one good week, then it's one good month, then it's right, well, is sustainable. And that's what people
Speaker 1:don't And
Speaker 2:the main thing really, that was a bit of a segue, but the main thing really is to focus on like, take the data, the emotion away from the data and try and understand what the data means. Before we attach an emotion to it, let's understand what it means. So in the case of that client I was talking about, well, if you've not run faster, okay, well, have you done any specific interval training? Have you fueled for performance correctly? Have you considered getting some performance testing or physiology to see if there's any restrictions there?
Speaker 2:Have you had your biomechanics tested for running or you're running efficiently? And all that stuff can be learned entirely through trial and error, but the more you're gonna use trial and error, which we profess and we preach, the longer it's gonna take to get to the outcome. But that's also why I exist as a coach and we exist as a business, Is it's to help people take those shortcuts and to try and take that emotion away from the data. So regardless of what someone's goal is, like use the business analogy, like over the last few months, because I've been building certain things, I've accepted that my business is losing money. It's now got to a point where it's like, I've been okay and comfortable with that because that's part of the process is investing.
Speaker 2:Like I said, you've got to invest time or you've got to invest money. And actually it's usually the same thing because if you're building other things and working on the projects, it usually means you're not actually doing tasks that earn And it's whether you're willing to make that sacrifice and take that risk that really matters and understand that it's not something, whether it's business, whether it's weight loss, it's not just gonna happen overnight. You're gonna have to invest in it. And there's gonna be times when it's a little bit stressful and there's gonna be times when it's frustrating. And there's gonna be times when the bank balance is going down or the weight's going up.
Speaker 2:And there's gonna be times when you think you're winning and it's great and you're on top of it. And then all of a sudden, you get a tax bill or a bit of equipment breaks that's expensive that you need that your business is pinned around or there's a supplier issue or whatever it is and then you're down a bit. But the longer you stay in the game and as long as you're using that data as a guiding process of how we should be spending our time or using that data as a way to say, okay, well, what is it about my current approach that I can change? And for a lot of people who haven't lost weight over, say, like to bring it back to the sort of initial question, if a lot of people haven't lost weight for a week or ten days, and it's genuinely they haven't lost any body fat, then again, it might not be. I know you shared a video on the real talking about of me just yammering on about why weight fluctuates and stuff.
Speaker 2:There's the physiological reasons why weight will fluctuate. I might just had one client start a medical treatment and her weight's gone up five kilos in the space of three days. That ain't body fat increase, There's lots of different hormonal and medical reasons why that will be the case. But the point is that, as long as we understand the processes and then we've got a good little kind of I know we talk a lot about journaling and we have the journal and the one big thing and stuff, but if people don't feel comfortable with their emotions, at least document your processes and your systems. Like this is how you structured your eating.
Speaker 2:This is how you did this. This is how you did that. And then it all then takes is just tweaking one variable at a time. The
Speaker 1:variable thing is like what you were saying earlier about you pay for a service of coaches. So if you think of your life as a set of dials, you can go up and down, you're basically paying a coach to tell you which dial to move. Like, you know, if your heating is gone, if your house is too hot, there's no emotion. It's like house is hot, turn the fucking heating down, I'll turn dial down. Yeah, it's like, training and stuff, it's like, do I turn the dial up and frequency and the coaches will basically spare you from turning 100 dials to figure out what's the right dial.
Speaker 1:And then it comes to macros and training, like, you turn the call to acid dial and the macro dial and you get 90% of your results. You can mess about the other dials if you want, but you can see forever. It's like a DJ, the music's too loud. The DJ is not going to go, Fuck, why is the music too loud? He's going to turn the fucking dial down.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean? You don't have to add a story to the thing all the time. When you was interesting, I was reading this book about it's a very different book on leadership. And it talks about leadership as an emotional state versus logical all the time. And whilst we've got the logic and the macros and the calories, if your emotional state is not anxious person 20 fourseven and stressed out, you have to sort that out as well.
Speaker 1:Because no matter how much data you got, if you're an anxious person about everything you're eating, you have to sort that route out. And that route is basically coming from diet culture mainly, where you think you can't eat chocolate bars, it's going make you explode in fucking 50 pounds of fat. So unless you somehow understand your like you were saying, the journaling can help you understand your emotional processes, but you have to become a leader in your own body basically and trust yourself with steps forward.
Speaker 2:It's interesting as there was some podcasts I was listening to business related stuff, but everything's sort of translational because fundamentally, whether you're trying to sell a product to somebody, basically, or you're trying to lose weight, you're trying to figure out the behavioral drivers behind those processes, right? And everyone's got their own little variation within that. So we're talking very generally here, but most people it's like, why is McDonald's so successful? It's because people pay for it not to be shit, They don't pay for it to be a Michelin star restaurant. They pay for the security and the comfort of something.
Speaker 2:They know how it's gonna taste wherever it is in the world. You're gonna get your WiFi there, the burgers are gonna taste the same. You know it's not gonna be awkward having to order something in a different country because it's the same everywhere. And unfortunately, as a social animal, whether the nature of how we've socialized has changed through social media rather than within communities, is that quite often people crave that safety. They wanna be in the middle of the pack.
Speaker 2:They don't wanna be at the edges of the herds beaten by the lion, right? We crave that and we crave that safety. And the problem with that is, is that that means that we're kind of hardwired to seek comfort. And unfortunately, the element of what you were saying there, like behaviorally is a lot of the people that sell things, they tap into this insecurity. It's like, they tap into the insecurity and the fears, but that's kind of at loggerheads with our desire for comfort.
Speaker 2:So this is, but the difficult thing to sell is because their expectations have been shifted by diet culture is that you can lose weight and be healthier in a comfortable way. You don't have to be extreme all the time, because that's what people should crave. But then it's almost like when it is too easy and it's not too difficult, it's almost like then that makes them feel uncomfortable. So they then gravitate back to what they were doing before, like overeating and things. And it's like, that's what I mean, like behaviors are at the driving point of everything we do.
Speaker 2:And for some people that's true. And then for other people, it's just that they're so scared of doing something consistently because they're scared of failure. But what's the default thing to do is to gravitate back to the middle of the herd and just keep doing what you were doing, which I might get annoyed at myself once a week for gaining weight, or I might get frustrated once in a blue moon because I don't look the way that I look when I compare myself to my friends or family or whatever it might be. But there's a safety within that because within culture at the moment, within society at the moment, the normalization of obesity, and I'm all for body positivity in the sense that I'm all for body positivity in the sense that it's great that people should be accepted and that we should understand why people gain weight and understand why that can lead to health conditions. But we can't just ignore the fact that it's like a ticking time bomb for people's individual health and the health of a nation as a whole.
Speaker 2:And that's not to blame anybody for that. But if we can understand those kind of group behaviors and why it's the more people who are a certain way, the easier it is to gravitate that because that becomes normal. And if we're gonna try and do abnormal things, then we have to be aware that we might have to feel like a little bit uncomfortable. We have to be the kind of like hero in our own lives a little bit and say, no, I'm gonna take control of this. And it is gonna be a little bit uncomfortable, but it doesn't need to be quite as big and scary and aggressive and as terrifying as people think it is.
Speaker 2:And I think that's why people get apprehensive is because they get themselves really hyped up and motivated for this really big effort. And then they start and it's like, that's not that hard, but also I'm frustrated because my weight's not coming down very quickly. And they get caught in this kind of conflicting mindset between their perception of what needs to be successful and the reality of it. And again, to loop it back around to what we very started at the very beginning, we need to make our perception and our reality match up, otherwise we get disappointment. That's where disappointment lies, is when our perception and our reality don't meet properly.
Speaker 2:And then we end up feeling like, Oh, well, should have lost five pounds in this time, rather than, Oh, I should have lost a pound in this time because that's what the numbers have been geared to. And if they haven't, then we just take the emotion out of it and then we just begin that reflective process again. So I think it's good to cliches like get comfortable being uncomfortable is fine, but it's also like just getting comfortable enough. You don't need to hammer yourself. You don't need to kill yourself.
Speaker 2:You don't need to be losing three pounds a week to define yourself as success. And on the other side of it, if you are one of these people who does repeatedly try and diet and fail, try and figure out what it is that's pulling you back into the safety of that, the safety of those eating patterns, because that's where the deeper psychological behavioral stuff comes in. Like, why is it that after a day at work, you drink a bottle of wine, or why is it that you have four takeouts a week because you're too tired to cook? You know, that sort of stuff then becomes becomes where it yeah. It would have been, you know, it's
Speaker 1:living We're just pleasure. I think Donald did an awesome explanation. He said, we're pleasure seeking machines at the moment. But he said, would you like to be a human that's like tie your brain is tied into wires, and they're give you all this dopamine and serotonin flat out so you feel amazing. You've got all this pleasurable feelings in the mind, but your fucking brain is stuck in some kind of tube, right?
Speaker 1:It's like, you don't want to be like, are you going to just be a pleasure monster just for the sake of That's what you're really telling yourself, like I want pleasure, I want comfort, I don't want anything else, but actually you might as well just be without machine. Because if you're going to go in the real world and actually try things out, you're going to have pleasure, a bit of sadness up and down. That's the norm, that's the best way is up and down. But if we just want pleasure, I mean, what's the point? What's the point really living just sit in your house and eat chocolate on the chair and there you go, but it's our life like.
Speaker 2:And that's an interesting point to be made. But also I think this comes into the fact that like, there's nothing wrong with pleasure seeking in my opinion. It's the nature of the pleasure seeking that's the problem. It's trying to understand that the longer that we can delay gratification, the greater the response is. And it's more beneficial to like the analogy I was using this like training for a marathon.
Speaker 2:No one enjoys training for a marathon. No one really enjoys running a marathon unless they've got some weird issues. But it's this sense of accomplishment of doing difficult things, which is really where when you look back at your life and you say, what's the things you're most proud of or the moments that make you the most happiest. It's usually the things that have come after a period of real hard work and hardship. It's not the immediate gratification stuff.
Speaker 2:So I think that like, there's a lot of people like Andrew Huberman and people like that, they were just kinda like, don't seek pleasure, don't do this, don't do that. Don't get addicted to dopamine and stuff. Like, yeah, right, I get that there's the adage that like the more instant pleasure we have, the more we seek it. Which is why, that's how drug addiction happens and behavioral addiction happens to a certain extent. So I agree with that sentiment, but I also don't think that we should just have to live this monk life.
Speaker 2:And I know, I follow some principles of stoic philosophy, but like, we don't have to live this completely stoic existence all of the time and put that pressure on ourselves the other way.
Speaker 1:You said a good point. Said, what is the reason for seeking pleasure? For most people it's to see how they feel right now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:I'll seek pleasure and I don't need it, but damn right I like pleasure. Like doing things that I enjoy. But if you're in a position where you said you turn into wine because you want the pleasure to escape the now, you turn into eating to escape the uncomfortability of now, the anxiety you have of trying things. If that's the reason for turning to pleasure, you are just you're hiding, you're not answering the route. You know what
Speaker 2:Well, argument to that would be, is that even pleasure seeking or is that self medicated? Because that's not the same thing, you know? You know, that's, yeah, I mean like Well,
Speaker 1:pleasure is dangerous in the sense that if it's you
Speaker 2:too
Speaker 1:over the crack in the cracks.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I mean, like we only have a certain amount of, again, this is where you start getting from like the psychological to the technical, the neurophysiological. We only have so many different types of like neurotransmitter and they are released at different times. So like, the pleasure from food can be replicated in certain different habits and behaviors that we have. So yeah, it's just like me, it becomes a bit semantic all at times.
Speaker 1:It becomes a habit or the neck, dopamine. Well,
Speaker 2:it's like the alcohol one's a really interesting one because alcohol is called depressant people think it's because it like makes you depressed and it's like, not necessarily, doesn't necessarily everyone drinks, it makes them depressed. But what it does do is it kind of, for people who are stressed or anxious or worried, it's a depressing, it depresses central nervous system activity, which is kind of, if you're a stressed and anxious and worried person who can't relax, well then guess what? Chances are alcohol is gonna be like a really big, I always say it's putting a band aid on a broken leg, like a band aid if it was American, a plaster on a broken leg, but that doesn't make sense in The UK because you would put plaster on a broken leg. But that's why I use band aid. But it's sort of like you're treating the cause, you're treating the symptoms, not the cause.
Speaker 2:So I would always encourage people if they are finding they've got these repeated negative behaviors that are and they can look at it and track it and look at the data And it's clearly detrimental whether we want this is where a bit of self honesty comes into it. And this is where we can, I always say this, it's like, we're like guide dogs, we're not pushing you in a wheelchair? Like, we can guide you in the right direction, but you still have to do the walking yourself, right? Yeah. It's like, you have to be self reflective enough to say that this behavior, you might not be like, I'm gonna use alcohol as an example.
Speaker 2:You might not be addicted, you might not have alcoholism. Like it's a truly awful disease. I lost an uncle to it recently. It's a truly awful thing, but ultimately, if you're still, whether it's watching TV shows late at night, because you're not dealing with the stresses of the day and it's a distraction, whatever it is that you're using to accommodate for, accommodate the right word, compensate for or distract or whatever it is away from the things that are driving your behaviors. We have to still be self reflective enough to not just kind of, I guess, justify our own BS sometimes.
Speaker 2:And I'd say like the more intelligent clients that I work with, and most of the people on Tuttle I've come across are good, solid, intelligent, educate, smart, hardworking people. Like you have a good outlook on life, who are engaged, who like have the intellectual capacity to be more than successful in weight loss. But that comes with the unfortunate characteristic of the human condition of being able to justify a lot of our own nonsense and not be able to take the emotion out of it. And like we all do it, I do it all the time. Like I know I'm making bad decisions, but I still make them and then try and justify it afterwards.
Speaker 2:It's just that with time and experience and practice, and again, with journaling or even just like mental self reflection at the end of the day, sometimes we have to just draw a line in the sand and go, all right, come on, Paul. You know that wasn't the right thing to do. You know that you haven't done the things that you need to do to be successful today. So, yes, yes, be upset, be angry, be whatever. But ultimately, if you wanna change the thing, then change the thing.
Speaker 2:Let's not just lie to ourselves about it. It's like I say, it's with clients of mine, it's almost like the more intelligent they are, like people who would be seen as intelligent, highly educated jobs, it's almost harder for them because they're very good at justifying negative behaviors in the context of other things. Whereas other people, normies like myself, I know I've got PhD, but I don't consider themselves to be hyper intelligent at all. But like, I'm aware of when I'm calling myself for my own BS. I might still do it, but at least I'm aware of it, right?
Speaker 2:So I think that for a lot of people, if you are struggling with this, it's not about beating yourself up. It's about saying, okay, what's, you know, I think you said it a while ago on, like, one of the first the first workshops you did with us, which was like, you know, the difference between your difference between reasons and what was it? Reasons and excuses are your values. So if you can think about what our values are, and then it's like, actually, was that a reason to overeat on that day? Was it a reason to not exercise?
Speaker 2:Was it a reason to go off the reservation for two weeks, go renegade as I always say? Was that a reason or was it an excuse? And sometimes it might be a reason and you might go, you know what, I was traveling or it was a wedding or about a really stressful time and weight loss just isn't a focus of mine right now. But let's be honest about that. Like if you're struggling with weight loss because there's lots of other stuff going on, let's deal with the reasons.
Speaker 2:Why and not feel guilty about it. Like not everybody is ready to lose weight right now.
Speaker 1:Of course, priorities, isn't it? I noticed the day I went to a shop and I was like, I'm trying to drop some facts, want to go back into running, I need to drop like 10 pounds or something to be more like, I feel better running, a bit lighter. And I was just like, I'm gonna get a leaner and I was in the shop and I just picked like, went for a chocolate bar, whatever. And I was like, yeah, it's obviously not that important to me to lose weight right now or to begin. So like, I'm just gonna have this chocolate bar.
Speaker 1:And I understand why it's because really, I kind of want to drop some fat and get leaner, but it's not that important to me. Yeah. I was like, that's the reason why I'm out eating this chocolate bar when I didn't plan to eat it. And that's fine. Like, it's fine for me to understand that.
Speaker 1:It's like, sometimes I'm like, I'm to read now. I'm like, are you going to read now to escape doing what you need to do? And you're going to rationalise it by saying you're going to learn more things, or is your escape the reading? I'm like, I'm trying to escape right now to read, and then that's not the reason I should be reading, I'm just trying to not do the task at hand.
Speaker 2:And we all do it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we've got all different ways. Some people go for a run, some people drink alcohol, some people go and pray to God, some people whatever it is, the objective thingy is different, but really, it's the same route that drives it. It's an escape.
Speaker 2:Yeah,
Speaker 1:no matter what, some are worse than others, obviously, but
Speaker 2:And the thing is with that, it's just trying to find a way to then keep the goal and as not stressful way as possible in focus. So big obvious ones for people to lose weight is they might be fine in inverted commas being overweight, but it's when they then get a real big challenge to their health or they notice something like you know, that certain blood markers are elevated because of, you know, and then it becomes like reality, you know, that the manifestation of their own healthful behaviors has become a problem. You know, it's like, for me, the I I get joy out of doing hard things and, like, I get frustrated at not completing certain events. And, last year, I had, an absolute nightmare in an ultra marathon. And it might sound like a bit of a might sound a bit disingenuous to compare, weight loss to run ultra marathon.
Speaker 2:It's like different ends of the spectrum, but the emotions I got from that were really negative and it really put me off. Like I was in a really bad place for a few days afterwards. I trained for months for this and then something silly happened. But then, you know, I was happy to gain some weight after that to get my health back because my body had been under stress. But since I started running again, it was like my joints hurt more because I'm heavier and I've got a very specific weight at which I can't run a certain distance because I can just feel it in my hips and my knees and I feel heavy.
Speaker 2:So that for me was the necessity in triggering something which is part of a bigger goal. Now that's the point really is that it doesn't matter what it is we're trying to achieve. Like, there's got to be enough of a necessity or a focal point to say, like you said there with the chocolate bar, it's like, am I really that bothered about this right now? No, cool. Well, I'm just gonna eat this and get on with my life.
Speaker 2:It's just an Whereas another time when there's a real reason to achieve said goal, whatever that might be, then you would have put the chocolate bar back down. Right? It's like, I don't actually need this. You know, it's important to me right now. And yeah, I think once got enough of those reasons in place combined with the right, we're dealing with the stresses in life and strains in life to put yourself in a good approach, to be able to put work into yourself and be able to know a lot of clients of mine, especially again, the hyper intelligent ones will tell me health's a priority of theirs, but it's probably actually, if they were to list it and be meaningful, it's probably about tenth on that list behind business and work and other stuff as well.
Speaker 2:And even like they were being honest, it's like watching Netflix episodes, go to bed earlier. Oh no, I was watching this series, right? So you put watching TV above your health. And if that's the case, and you're honest about that, that's when it's like, I probably need to really, I don't think it's that people truly believe that. I think it's just that people get into these habits and it's only when they sit down and think about them, they then start to realize that actually, you know what?
Speaker 2:If I was to take the emotion out of this, like I am literally putting watching Netflix or whatever it is above my health. And when you actually contextualize that and realize how ridiculous that sounds when you write it down or say out loud, that's part of what my job as a coach is, is to talk to people and then for them to say things out loud to hopefully make them understand that they say one thing overt like openly to me, but actually in practice, there's a conflict there which they need to resolve because they say things like, I wanna be healthier, I wanna be fitter, but really on their priority list, it doesn't fit into their top five or six things. Until it does, and you're honest about that, and you can really try and find the reason to do that, then it's always going to be that case because there's always going to be another stressor at work. There's always gonna be another family function. There's always gonna be another out of whatever in your life that is gonna knock that health down as a priority.
Speaker 2:But I would guarantee you, if you ask most of our members what their priority is, what they value most, most people would say it's their health. Yeah. Actually, I'd say most people in Western society don't live their lives like health is their priority.
Speaker 1:They don't value the health until they have to value the health number one. Yeah. They've problems and then it's too late.
Speaker 2:And that's, but I think it's one of those things, it's the immediacy thing as well, isn't it? Not a problem until it is. I don't know who said that to me, I know it's a widely used experience. It's like, yeah, it's not a problem until it becomes And unfortunately, with the health stuff in particular, the longer we leave it, the harder it gets for a lot of people, until it gets to a point where they then become so entrenched in their old habits and behaviors, and they don't seek the right support and they don't have the confidence to do that. And I like to say, like a lot of people, like it does become a genuinely positive catalyst.
Speaker 2:I've had clients of mine, it's only when they've got to a point where it has hurt their health, that it's triggered a significant desire to change. And then hopefully that creates momentum. But unfortunately The
Speaker 1:thing is as well, get worse slowly. No one becomes obese in a week. You're either slowly getting worse or you're slowly getting better, as long term things. I know there's in between loss, you're dieting faster going on training regime for eight weeks smashing and then you drop off, there are people that do it quicker. But if you really think about it, you either got the mindset of slowly, incrementally getting better, slowly, or you're going get worse.
Speaker 1:And when you get to fifty, sixty, 70, and you go, Fucking hell, I haven't done much wrong, my health is like, your average steps a day was 2,000. You have done no resistance training for thirty years. You haven't really looked at your calorie intake at all. All you would have done is to have just kept a bit of a check-in your calories, walked a bit more than one or two sessions a week of your training, and you would have been in an ungodly better different position today than you would have been
Speaker 2:Interestingly on that and to finish on a science note today to prattled on for nearly an hour, I think. There was a study released recently where they looked at age related muscle loss. What they found was that even in endurance athletes, they lost a lot of muscle fiber as they got older. And the reason for that is because it seems to be the age related muscle loss tends to happen preferentially in like type two muscle fibers. So for anyone listening to this type two is the muscles that do all the heavy lifting and the explosive stuff like sprinting, lifting weights.
Speaker 2:So if there's ever, ever, ever a big shiny arrow signpost to just lift some stuff, even it's body weight, whatever, like, that's it. Forget wanting to look like a cover model for health and fitness magazine. Like if you don't wanna lose muscle and end up, you know, spending the last six months, know, I'd hate to catastrophize and stuff, but I don't know, maybe it works for some people. But, you know, if you don't wanna spend the last three months of your life in hospital in a bed because you broke your hip because you've fallen over, because you're not strong enough, like, you know, do your damn strength training. Right?
Speaker 2:Take medicine. Take your one twice a week.
Speaker 1:Like, do you mean? Yeah.
Speaker 2:It doesn't take that much either. It really doesn't take that much. It doesn't take that much.
Speaker 1:It's surprisingly low actually, what you have to do, but we can talk about that maybe next week.
Speaker 2:We will, let's do that then. Yeah, let's do a science y one next week.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sounds well, nice one, Doctor. P, was a good chat. Hopefully everyone enjoyed and you have a good day. Get on with your day, Crack on and let us know when you get on. But, P, we speak next week.
Speaker 1:Yep?
Speaker 2:Yes. Thank you again, Scott.
Speaker 1:You're welcome. No problem. Bye. Have a good one.
Speaker 2:Bye. Bye.
