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 The way that we've been communicated to you when it comes to health and fitness,
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 has been all wrong.
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It's good to know workouts and how they affect my body and what works for me.
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But that's not the main conversation.
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The main conversation is, welcome to the school of greatness.
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My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur.
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And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness.
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Thanks for spending some time with me today.
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Now let the class begin.
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 There's a lot of information out there about how to be in the best shape, to be healthy, to lose weight, and all these different fads and all these different styles.
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If you could boil it down to like a few core components of how to really be the healthiest version of yourself,
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 Eliminate all the noise about health and fitness in the world.
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What would be those core components for you?
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Yeah, what a great question I think I want to start with that the way that we've been communicated to you when it comes to health and fitness Has been all wrong and what I mean by that is We assume that we're or at least we act like we're robots where you can input
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 Directions and orders and it's the mechanistic aspects of diet and exercise that'll get you long-term success The mechanistic aspects are important, but humans are behavior based emotional creatures and nobody talks about that.
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Nobody focuses on that It's all about you know, how to cut calories how to exercise right the best workouts the best diet Here's the best supplements.
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The problem is we're not obese because of
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 I mean, we are doing the wrong things, but that's not the root of why so many people are suffering from obesity and health issues.
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The root really has to do with our behaviors.
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The root has to do with we've built the wrong or at least placed our values in the wrong places.
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And really, if you want to go to the core of it, the core is we tend to enter into the pursuit of health and fitness
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 from a self-hate model, from a self-critical model or self-criticism, right?
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I don't like the way I look, or I'm out of shape, or I'm obese, or I don't look as pretty as this person, or as ripped as this person, so something is wrong with me, let me go get better.
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Absolutely.
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I'll tell you a story where this really was illuminated to me.
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And by the way, this took me a long time to figure out.
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I mean, I've been doing this now,
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 for almost two and a half decades now, and I'd say the first 10 years, I didn't really fully understand this.
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It took me a long time.
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My passion for helping people is what got me to the right places, because although I was effective at helping people lose weight and get in shape, they would get out of shape, they'd gain the weight back, they'd fall off the wagon, and I had to ask myself, am I really doing a good job?
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I'm failing.
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Yeah, I can get people to lose weight, but then they gain it back,
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 What's going on here?
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I mean and the fact is we don't have a weight loss issue In modern societies.
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We have a keep weight off issue Millions of people lose weight every year and then they gain it back 90% or more This is within a year or two and if you extend it out longer than that, I'd say probably close at north of 95% Gain it back.
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So the problem is not losing weight.
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The problem is why aren't people able to kind of maintain
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 Relationship with exercise and nutrition that allows them to do it for the rest of their lives, right?
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So I'll tell you a story you know extreme.
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It's you can't sustain extreme It's very few people right can extend like okay I'm gonna eat a thousand calories a day and I'm gonna train for four hours or whatever it is to lose the weight You can't maintain that for life.
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Yes and into to kind of paint it a little bit different, right?
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So years ago I was at this dinner
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 And it was a dinner with, it was at a tech company.
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So I was really the only fitness, right, quote-unquote fitness person at the table, and we're all hanging out and introducing ourselves.
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We were the spouses of employees or whatever.
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And you know, once I say, oh, I'm a trainer, of course, people start making comments like, oh, you know, I'm only having one piece of bread, or am I, so already people are a little self-conscious, but I'm used to that.
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And so once people got warmed up, we had great conversations.
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And there was this woman sitting across from me, and after a few drinks, she got a little loose, and she said, you know,
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 Sal, she says, I had a good friend who exercised regularly, who ate right, and then she got breast cancer and died at the age of 50.
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And she says, you know what, after that happened, I just said to myself, to heck with it, I'm just gonna enjoy my life.
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I'm just gonna eat what I want, and I'm not gonna exercise.
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And that really struck me because you can't find a single thing
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 that will improve every aspect of life.
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Okay, every aspect, how you are at work, how you are as a partner, as a father, or a mother, energy, mood, like this is all proven, okay?
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There isn't a single thing that can improve your entire life, like just becoming more fit and healthy.
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Yet, here's a woman that's telling me that
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 She wants to enjoy her life, so she's not going to do those things.
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And I thought to myself, that is very strange, but I've heard it so many times.
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What's going on here?
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And I thought about that for days.
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It really stuck with me.
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And then it dawned on me.
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People go into exercise and go into trying to change the nutrition from a place of self-hate.
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So let's break that down for a second, right?
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You look in the mirror and you say, oh, I'm fat.
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I don't like the way I look.
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I'm gross.
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I'm not sexy.
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I'm not attractive.
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I'm inadequate, whatever.
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 Very powerful short-term motivator, by the way.
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Very powerful short, terrible long-term motivator.
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And here's why.
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If I'm doing this from a place of self-hate, exercise becomes a punishment.
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 I now value the pain and the cathartic release of punishing myself when I exercise.
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What does that mean?
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That means my exercise and my workouts become inappropriate.
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I work out too hard.
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I go too extreme.
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I don't recover.
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Yeah.
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And I treat it like a punishment.
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Oh, yesterday I went out with my friends.
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I'm going to go sweat it out today.
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I'm going to go beat myself up.
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Diet becomes restriction.
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 People offer you a cookie and you say, I can't.
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I can't have that cookie.
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Very interesting thing to say because of course you can.
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What do you mean by that?
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What you've done is you've separated yourself into two separate entities.
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The child that has no discipline.
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 And then the tyrannical parent that needs to say, you need to work out, you need to eat right, whatever.
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So exercise is a punishment, diet is about restriction.
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It's no wonder people need to stop to enjoy their lives, right?
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So let's look at the reverse.
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What if somebody looked in the mirror and said, you know what?
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I haven't been treating myself very well.
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 I deserve to be cared for.
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I deserve to be healthy or to be healthier.
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You know what I'm going to do?
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I'm going to start taking care of myself like somebody I care about.
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This is what self-love is, by the way.
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And when I say self-love, I like to define it because people confuse love with a feeling, that warm, fuzzy feeling.
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That's part of love, but that's not what love is.
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Love is an action.
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 When I say self-love, what I mean is taking the actions that will help you in the truest sense and being honest with yourself.
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So if you do that and you enter into exercise and nutrition from a place of self-care and self-love, well now what does exercise become?
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Self-care.
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And it becomes appropriate.
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Yes, and it's appropriate.
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Now I go to the gym, I'm tired, I'm stressed.
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 Rather than trying to beat myself up so I crawl out of the gym because I need to punish myself, I'm going to go and I'm going to take care of myself so I can feel better.
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Diet becomes nourishment.
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It's no longer restrictive.
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You also develop balance because although most of the time eating cookies is not self-care, sometimes it is.
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Right.
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Sometimes you're sitting with friends and
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 You're enjoying your conversation and somebody made cookies.
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And so, you say, hey, you know what?
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This is fueling or feeding the relationship part of my health.
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So, I think I will have a cookie.
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You know, by the way, the other way, the self-hate model is why the rebound is so extreme.
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People typically don't just stop a diet.
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It's not like they go from strict diet to going back to kind of eating how they did before.
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They typically go off their diet and then rebound in a massive way.
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 They don't have one cookie or two cookies.
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They hold the whole box man or a whole pizza.
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I know that feeling right?
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It's it's rebellion really what it is It's rebelling from this self hate because you can't help hate yourself for too long And if you do and it becomes orthorexia, which is unhealthy as well.
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So what's orthorexia?
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it's a dysfunctional eating pattern where you stress so much about eating perfectly and
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 Everything has to be absolutely perfect the right macros the right calories Where eating healthy now becomes unhealthy and you see that in the fitness fanatic space right quite a bit, right?
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So you have to enter into it By by being honest because real love is honest and having the self-care Attitude now, there's more to it
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 But that's gotta be the root.
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And if that's the root, then you start to develop a balanced, good relationship with exercise and nutrition.
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Because the truth is, if you enjoy exercise, if you enjoy eating in a healthy way, you'll always do it.
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 Now, when I say that, people go, well, how's that possible?
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How can I enjoy those things?
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When something's painful or restrictive or limiting me.
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Right, well, you can do it when exercise becomes self-care.
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By the way, proper exercise, here's a little tip for people when they say, well, how do I know I'm doing the right workout?
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There's a lot of different things you wanna look at, but a good, appropriate workout, by the way, let me define that for a second.
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In terms of results, in terms of whatever your goal is, fat loss, strength,
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 stamina, fitness, there's a right dose.
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So it's like a bell curve.
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So like over here, too little, my body's not gonna change.
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Over here, too much, and all my body can worry about or be concerned with is healing, right?
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But I'm not getting any of the beneficial adaptations because it's too much.
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And this is different from person to person, right?
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What's appropriate for me, someone who's been working out consistently for two decades, very different than it would be for a beginner, or very different than what it might be for a professional athlete.
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 Appropriate the appropriate dose is gonna give you the best results.
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What does that feel like?
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You have more energy at the end of your workout than you do at the beginning.
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You're not drained and exhausted No, you leave your workout feeling invigorated.
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You feel phenomenal.
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You should not crawl out of the gym You should not leave your workout feeling like you just saw you just survived
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 War or a battle unless you're some like extreme athlete that's like that's part of your training boot camp for a period of time But not all the time correct and usually when that's the case Lewis what they're training is the mental aspect Yeah, so if you look at like high-level
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 Military service people or athletes, when they push themselves to that limit, first off, they're at such high levels anyway, to get the right dose for them is very different.
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But number two, they're trying to train their mind to withstand whatever.
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But for the average person, this is, don't worry about this.
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Unless you get to that level and that's what you wanna do.
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But let's not worry about that.
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You should feel better.
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And there's a couple reasons why this is important.
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One is you probably trained with the right and appropriate amount of volume and intensity.
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So your workout's probably the right length.
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 You probably did the right stuff.
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But also what that encourages is this wonderful relationship with exercise.
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Where you're not like punished by the end of it and drained and you can't do anything the rest of the day, but you feel like you have more energy.
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Yeah, I don't dread doing it.
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I look forward.
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I remember when I first figured this out as a trainer.
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When I first became a trainer, and again, it took me about 10 years to develop this, whatever you want to call it, wisdom or experience.
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 I would have clients that would cancel because they were tired or they got bad sleep or they didn't feel so good, their joints were stiff or whatever.
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So they call me and say, hey, Sal, I can't make my workout because I'm tired.
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I got bad sleep.
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Once I figured this out, I would get clients that would call me and say, hey, Sal, I'm not feeling so good right now.
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Do you have time for me to come in and see you?
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 That's when I knew I had put it together the right way.
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Like, okay, now people are seeking this out to feel better when they're not feeling so good.
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And what we want to understand with this is this is not a short-term pursuit.
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There's goals that happen along the way.
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And by the way, if you do this right, the side effects of what I'm talking about are you hit those goals, the side effects.
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 But if you do this the right way, what we're looking at is a relationship with it where this is something that you'll do for the rest of your life because regardless of the context of your life, it improves the quality of your life, regardless.
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High stress, low stress, new baby on the way, job changes, hormones are out of whack right now for some reason, my health isn't as good, I got a lot of energy, I feel good.
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Whatever's going on, this now becomes something that just improves the quality of your life.
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And if you could get to that point,
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 than your goal.
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And so the goal is really, can I do the things that encourage the behaviors that lead to balanced, successful long-term relationship with exercise and diet that lead to good health?
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That's the key.
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So what I'm, correct me if I'm wrong, but what I'm hearing you say, it's not about being disciplined.
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It's about shifting the behaviors around while you're doing the exercise and the nutrition so that the discipline becomes more enjoyable.
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 Yes.
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And more consistent.
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Yes.
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Now, discipline is a skill, though we do want to define that because I think we often look at discipline and we confuse it with motivation.
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When you're motivated, you don't need discipline.
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Motivation is a great feeling.
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We all fall in love with it.
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I love it too.
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But like all feelings, it comes and goes.
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 And if we rely on motivation and we marry motivation, we fall in love with motivation, what happens when the motivation goes away is we don't know how to continue.
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So discipline is, the way that I define it, is a skill that you develop over time.
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And it takes time to develop.
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And it's a step-by-step process.
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But as you develop the skill of discipline,
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 then your consistency's there no matter what.
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And the things get modified and changed as the context of your life changes.
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But there is, and I can go over this if you want, there is a very specific, effective way to develop the skill of discipline when it comes to exercise and nutrition.
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What is that?
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So, and what I love about what I'm about to say is this allows for the differences in each individual.
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 Because one thing that the fitness industry does poorly is communicate the individual aspect of how we react to diets and exercise and what keeps one person consistent and happy may not be what keeps another person consistent and happy.
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So what I'm about to say really can apply to everybody.
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So to put it in a nutshell, you want to ask yourself, okay, what's one thing that I can do
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 that is going to improve my health and fitness, that is challenging, has to be challenging, otherwise it has no meaning, but is also, this is the context, realistic forever.
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Challenging yet realistic forever.
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I say forever because usually when people do this, they're in a motivated state of mind.
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I'm gonna work out for two hours a day for the whole year.
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Yeah, you ever make goals when you're hyper motivated and then the motivation goes away?
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You're like, oh my God, that's great.
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So you wanna ask yourself, what's one step I can take that's realistic,
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 forever, yet challenging so that it's got some meaning.
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There's no wrong answers.
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What's yours?
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So, oh gosh, I can't remember what mine was years ago, but I can tell you what's on there.
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What's a now, or what's a... Boy, let me think of something that... Okay, so...
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 I now have incorporated a spiritual practice into my health and wellness, and it started with five minutes of prayer once a day, and then it moved to prayer before dinner, and then it moved to prayer before bed, and then it moved to now I'm gonna attend
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 Service once a week, right?
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So but I had to do this the smaller steps first and built into it Yes, and so there is no wrong answers.
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I've had clients where the first step was I'm gonna drink an extra glass of water Yeah, yeah, or I'm gonna add a salad or I'm gonna walk for five minutes after breakfast or whatever But what you find when you do this is well, first off you take that step Do it until it feels like it's something that is a part of your life.
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It's not hard anymore Yeah, you enjoy it's this is what I enjoy doing.
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This is who I am, correct?
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Yeah
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 Then you ask yourself that question again and you take the next step.
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And what ends up happening is each step tends to become bigger as you build confidence and build discipline and the space between the steps gets shorter.
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So you start off kind of slow.
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 But it's definitely this snowball effect.
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And I've seen this time and time again with clients where somebody would hire me and say, I'm not doing anything with diet, I'm only working out once a week, I'm only, you know.
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And the early trainer, me, would have been like, no, you gotta work out more than that.
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You gotta try and motivate and hype them and get them excited.
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 The later version wiser version would say perfect.
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Let's start with that knowing that once we did that and we were good at it and they enjoyed it and they developed a good relationship around it that eventually they come to me and I always like clock where they would they come to me and say hey I'd like to do another day a week.
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What does that look like?
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Or hey, I'd like to look at my nutrition.
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Where should we start?
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Yeah, I'm starting to feel good.
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It's starting to feel like it's not so overwhelming.
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Can I do a little more?
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 Yes, absolutely.
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So when you follow this process, this is how you develop this long term forever relationship with exercise and nutrition.
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And now where does it end?
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It depends on the individual.
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But in my experience, the average person, and I say this because I want people to be really, really understand realistically what this looks like, because social media has painted
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 Lots of extreme pictures of what this looks like we look at the extreme fitness individual or the super successful whatever and we think okay Well, if I can't do that, then then why do this at all or maybe that's what I got to do That's not the case.
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You can go very very far with a good relationship and balanced relationship with nutrition, which we could talk about and Two or three days a week of exercise.
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That's it.
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I
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 That is sustainable.
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I have found that to be for the average non fitness fanatic person.
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So fitness fanatics different.
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We love it But the average person two or three days a week along with this kind of balanced Self-care model with nutrition is very sustainable forever and the results of that are like what does that look like?
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generally fit
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 generally healthy, a relatively lean body fat percentage.
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You're not gonna get super shredded and ripped.
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You're not gonna, you know, get on stage and win a trophy, but that's okay.
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Most people don't care, but you will get a generally fit, generally healthy, generally lean body doing this.
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And it's very sustainable and the quality of your life improves.
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And this is something that you enjoy.
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You just enjoy and you do it for the rest of your life.
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What is the biggest,
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 Health challenge right now.
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Is it all the different?
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Is it one specific disease that people have is it obesity?
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Is it you know, just what is the biggest challenge and risk that we face in general as humans?
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Yeah in modern society So we'll talk modern because it's different right?
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There's two the first one is confusion around nutrition and what
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 what the most impactful changes someone can make are versus what are either inconsequential or unsustainable.
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And then the second one is strength and muscle.
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We're seeing this rapid loss in strength and muscle in our general population, which is resulting in some big issues.
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Cognitive issues, insulin sensitivity issues, and then of course it leads to obesity as well.
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But let's start with diet.
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 There's so much information around diet a lot of confusing information around diet, but really the big key is And this is it's more complex than this but to put it simply but 95% of our health issues related related to diet Could be solved by simply not overeating.
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I know that sounds silly right and very simple That's kind of a simple explanation, but it's quite true if you look at the data
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 high sugar, saturated fat, like all these.
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Processed foods.
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If your calories are appropriate, you really get rid of a lot of those negative effects from those.
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So the question is.
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How many calories should we be eating a day?
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What's like a healthy range?
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You know what's funny about this?
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Your body is actually pretty good at telling you how much to eat.
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The problem is, I know people watching right now are probably like, what are you talking about?
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That's not true.
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It is, the problem is,
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 We eat foods about 70% of our diets are made up of foods that have been engineered carefully Engineered to make us overeat and there's a lot of money in science that goes into doing this ultra processed foods are Very powerful at making us overeat snack foods with salt and sugar and yeah just a combination of things that I mean everything from the texture to the mouth feel and
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 Tastes so good.
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Yes, just how it affects your body.
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So they've done some really good studies on this.
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They've done studies where they'll take groups of people and not too many controlled studies in diet.
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So these are really good.
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They actually put them in a lab and they say you guys over here eat as much as you want.
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You guys over here eat as much as you want.
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This group over here has whole natural foods.
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This group over here has ultra processed foods and they even control for the macro.
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So proteins, fats and carbs are pretty similar.
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Then they take the groups and they switch them.
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 Okay, on average and now we have multiple studies to show this people will eat about 600 more calories a day From eating ultra processed foods.
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So to give another example if I were to put Five or six plain boiled potatoes.
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No salt.
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No butter.
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Nothing just plain boiled potatoes in front of you And I told you to eat them in 30 minutes be really hard for you after the second or third potato You'd be gagging you'd hit power potatoes.
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Yes, just plain right, but if they gave you a family-sized bag of potato chips Oh, yeah
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 which has... Crush the whole bag with like 2,000 calories or something.
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Which has similar amounts of food in it, actually more calories because of the oil, you'd be able to eat them.
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That's the power of ultra processed foods and how palatable they are.
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So I used to do this with my clients, simply telling people the following, eat as much as you want, just avoid ultra processed foods.
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You would typically see a 10 to 15 pound weight loss.
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Wow.
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Just from that.
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If you're eating whole foods, there's only so much you can eat.
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 You hit palate fatigue faster.
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It's far more satiating.
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You just eat more appropriately.
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Our bodies, there's this myth that we're wired to overeat.
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We're just wired to just eat like crazy and just become obese.
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That's not true.
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We're not wired to do that.
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Overeating was just as bad for us thousands of years ago as it was today.
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I mean, you could have digestive issues.
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You could have died from that.
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 Our bodies are pretty good at regulating.
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This is more complex than what I'm saying, but these particular foods make you overeat.
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Simply avoiding them and even telling yourself, I'll eat as much as I want of fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, meats, you know, foods that have one or two ingredients, right?
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 You'll find that your your average calorie intake will probably decrease by about five to six hundred some people even more a day a day Wow on average and that you lose weight.
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That's it.
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Yeah, that's it And then if you want to take it even a step further if you add to that Here's a couple behavioral things that you could do that make that even more effective whole natural foods I'm not gonna limit myself and I like saying this because when we're in the mindset of limiting ourselves It plays a lot of tricks on us and it's really hard.
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So don't limit yourself to see it all natural foods And then here's a second one
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 Don't eat while distracted.
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In other words when you eat don't be on your phone Don't watch TV.
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Just sit down and eat your meal Why that results in about 10% reduction in caloric intake just from doing that alone.
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Why is that?
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We're not in tune with our bodies signals of satiety.
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We're not focused and present on the food, right?
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So we're distracted and we just keep eating and eating and eating
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 Yes, we actually eat faster doing it that way as well.
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So what happens is the signal of satiety doesn't get registered quite as quickly when we're distracted also being distracted could cause Emotional changes stress anxiety whatever which also can create bad relationships with nutrition like like one of the worst things you could do is like eat while watching stressful news or something like that and
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 Eat more you'd be stressed out.
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Absolutely, right?
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So so that's that's the second one So, you know and they sound so simple, but they make such a huge impact On people a third one you could do even and here's this was another really easy one is when you eat your meals Eat the protein first.
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Mmm over the vegetables everything just eat the protein first.
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They need everything else Why is that protein is in comparison to carbohydrates and fats very satiating
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 So it produces a lot of satiety, right?
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It satisfies you.
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And the second reason is, and we now have what are called CGMs, right?
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Continual Glucose Monitors.
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The data on them is coming back and it's pretty clear that if you eat protein first, the spike in blood sugar.
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Yeah, it's blunted.
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 Now why is that important?
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A spike and then subsequent drop in blood sugar tends to promote cravings.
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It tends to make us want to eat more to get that blood sugar back up.
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So eating the protein first tends to result in, through the satiety and through the blunting effects of blood sugar, tends to produce better satiety and make us eat less.
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 So those are three things right there, Lewis, that if people just did those three things and didn't say to themselves, I gotta restrict, I gotta cut, I gotta whatever, they would find over time that they would just start to lose weight and they would eat more appropriately.
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That's not working out more, that's not moving your body more, that's just through nutritional eating.
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Yes, and to speak about moving more,
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 The burning calories approach to weight loss is a losing... Really?
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Total losing strategy.
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Oh, yeah, the data on that's very clear.
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Burning calories manually, our bodies do a terrific job of adapting and of... Storing fat, you're saying.
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And slowing down its calorie burn.
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We have a range within our current lean body mass, okay?
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We have a range of calories our bodies can burn.
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So there's like more efficient, less efficient.
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 Burning calories manually at first your body's burning more calories But eventually your body knows how to make up for that and make you burn less calories.
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So the studies on Tons of exercise for weight loss are pretty clear.
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It's a terrible approach really now It's not to say you don't get health benefits from moving more you still get health benefits, but from a weight loss perspective It's a terrible strategy.
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Now.
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There are some forms of exercise one in particular
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 that can boost metabolic rate.
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What's that?
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Strength training.
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Lifting, yeah.
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Strength training is very effective.
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There was a study done with modern hunter-gatherers, the Hadza tribe of northern Tanzania.
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So they live the way that humans lived thousands of years ago, right?
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So they don't have electronics, they hunt, they gather.
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In comparison to the average Westerner, they're very active.
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 Scientists went studied them and through some pretty sophisticated testing tested their metabolic rates How many calories are they burning every single day?
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And what they found was they were burning Generally same amount of calories as the average Western couch potato.
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Really?
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Yeah, and now you think at first well, that's crazy They're moving so much, but actually it makes sense our bodies would not have if we burned 6,000 calories a day as hunter-gatherers We wouldn't be here
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 6,000 calories in a hunter-gatherer society is hard to come by.
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So our bodies learn to adapt.
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Now strength training, on the other hand, tends to have a different effect.
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The main adaptation with strength training is to build muscle, the side effect of which is, and if you fuel, you have to also feed your body appropriately to do this, but if you feed your body properly and strength train, the tendency is for the metabolism to boost or to go up.
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So you can see through this process,