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Hey radicals, before we start the episode, quick reminder that I am running a flash sale for Cyber Monday at radicalpersonalfinance.com/store. 00:00:38.240 |
Use the coupon code cyber50 to receive 50% off all of my premium courses available at radicalpersonalfinance.com/store. 00:00:51.120 |
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by emailing me joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com, I'll give you a 30% discount. 00:01:01.200 |
My hourly rate, I'll discount it from $300 per hour to $200 per hour for personal coaching and personal consulting work. 00:01:08.440 |
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Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insight and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now, 00:01:21.040 |
while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less. 00:01:24.080 |
Today on the show, though, we're not going to talk about money. 00:01:27.360 |
We're going to talk about that rich life, but in a non-financial context. 00:01:31.640 |
Specifically, we're going to talk about weight loss, fat loss, more importantly than weight loss. 00:01:37.360 |
Today's show is part one of a two-part series. 00:01:39.480 |
Today is called 50 Pounds and Counting, where I'll share with you a little bit of my story where I have lost over 50 pounds in the past months and some of the lessons that I'm learning along the way. 00:01:51.160 |
Let me just take a moment to frame this show properly for you so that you understand, so that you can decide whether this is a good investment of your time to engage in today's content. 00:02:02.680 |
As we approach the end of 2019, this is a time of year when many people think about the success that they've experienced over the past year, and they lay out some of their ideas for the success that they hope to experience in the next year. 00:02:16.480 |
And for many of us who are fat, every year we think about how fat we are, and we'd like to be less fat. 00:02:25.400 |
And in that process, though, it can be difficult to understand exactly what to do. 00:02:30.520 |
And I want to share my personal experience with you, especially if you are a pretty fat person, to help you with just some things that I have found helpful. 00:02:40.520 |
And I do this because it fits my personal philosophy. 00:02:43.960 |
One of the components of my personal philosophy is we as individuals need to be open with what we're doing as individuals so we can help other individuals and not always from a place of expertise. 00:02:58.120 |
I'm not an academically educated nutritionist or a doctor or a personal trainer. 00:03:04.440 |
Now, I'm a widely read layman, but I'm not an academically educated person. 00:03:13.920 |
I'm working on it, but I have a belly and love handles and am overweight. 00:03:25.480 |
I have lost 50 pounds or more, and I know what it's like to be fat for all of my adult life. 00:03:35.920 |
And I understand the psychology of that experience, and I also understand how nice it is to be less fat than I once was. 00:03:44.040 |
And from that place, I want to just share a little bit of my experience in hopes that it might help you, most importantly, if you are very fat. 00:03:54.720 |
Now, I can't even be 100% sure that I won't get fat again. 00:03:57.560 |
All of the data and studies indicate that the vast majority of people who get less fat become more fat down the road. 00:04:03.480 |
Now, I've got a strong plan and very strong motivation not to be there, including even recording this show on subjects that are difficult for me to talk in public. 00:04:11.200 |
I don't like to talk in public about things that I'm not really good at. 00:04:15.000 |
It hurts my pride, but I'm doing it partly to be on the record publicly in front of 25,000 people to say, "Hey, this is what I'm experiencing, and I will not be fat. 00:04:25.960 |
I'm going to become totally not fat, and I will be totally not fat for the rest of my life." 00:04:31.520 |
I will have a flat stomach for the rest of my life and never be fat again once I fully get rid of all this fat. 00:04:38.040 |
That's my personal commitment, and I'm happy to make it publicly. 00:04:40.840 |
But of course, we all know that I could fail. 00:04:42.880 |
So I'm not an expert, but does that mean that if you're fat, you shouldn't take a few minutes and listen? 00:04:49.640 |
This is a major fallacy, and this is a huge just personal pet peeve of mine, that because 00:04:56.600 |
of the increased access to experts, many of us have adopted the philosophy that we should 00:05:01.320 |
spend all our time listening to either self-described or ascribed experts. 00:05:08.120 |
The problem is some experts can be useful, but some experts really not. 00:05:13.720 |
In the money space, I thought a lot about this because when I started talking publicly 00:05:19.380 |
on the microphone, I had to deal with, "Am I worth listening to?" 00:05:23.720 |
Because I wasn't a millionaire when I started. 00:05:25.280 |
Still not a millionaire, doing my very best, still not there. 00:05:29.640 |
I have a show every day where I talk to you and I say, "How to become financially independent 00:05:34.360 |
I ain't there, working hard on it, making good progress, understand how to get there, 00:05:41.120 |
And so you think, "Well, I should listen to experts." 00:05:43.320 |
But the problem is some experts are useful and some experts are not. 00:05:47.360 |
Now I think we should study experts, but a lot of times you can't relate effectively 00:05:55.320 |
If someone's deeply in debt and they're struggling with overspending, studying Warren Buffett's 00:06:01.440 |
wealth plan probably isn't going to help that much. 00:06:05.720 |
Warren Buffett has never experienced compulsive spending or emotional shopping. 00:06:11.320 |
Warren Buffett has been rich from the time he was 10 years old. 00:06:19.320 |
I read Snowball a number of years ago, I guess that was his officially authorized biography. 00:06:24.360 |
But the dude had tens of thousands of dollars in high school from paper routes. 00:06:31.600 |
So that's really useful because you want to study that as the ultimate model of wealth 00:06:35.480 |
building and the ultimate investor, et cetera. 00:06:37.820 |
But it's hard for him to give advice based on personal experience that would help somebody 00:06:42.520 |
who's deeply in debt, struggling with credit card debt. 00:06:45.480 |
Better for you to ask your neighbor who has paid off their credit card debt how they got 00:06:50.640 |
And then once you get out of credit card debt, then say, "Let me study somebody who saved 00:06:55.440 |
Let me study somebody who's bought a few investment houses." 00:06:57.600 |
And along the way, study Warren Buffett and see what's applicable to your life. 00:07:00.760 |
And that's one of the most frustrating things, especially when it comes to being fat and 00:07:04.520 |
weight loss, is that sometimes people give advice that's just totally disconnected from 00:07:10.240 |
your personal experience and they don't understand what you struggle with. 00:07:16.840 |
And so I'm not trying to build any kind of brand. 00:07:19.640 |
I just want to share with you some of what's been working for me. 00:07:24.720 |
If you're super fat, I would encourage you as somebody who's gone through all kinds of 00:07:28.240 |
diets, who's been a yo-yo dieter, who's been fat, who's been less fat, who's been more 00:07:32.640 |
fat, who's been less fat, I'll share with you some of the success that I've had recently, 00:07:37.280 |
how some of the success that I've had recently has come more easily than it ever has before 00:07:42.400 |
and has been more sustainable than it ever has been before. 00:07:49.280 |
First, few minutes of backstory on my story so that you can understand where I'm coming 00:07:58.320 |
All of my life that I remember, I have been overweight. 00:08:04.640 |
And almost all of my life, I have never understood why. 00:08:09.520 |
And that to me has always been a point of frustration. 00:08:13.320 |
I can vaguely remember at one point in my childhood where I didn't have a big fat stomach. 00:08:20.240 |
But by the time I reached middle school, I had a big fat stomach. 00:08:25.400 |
Now there have been times where I could clearly identify why I was extremely fat. 00:08:30.580 |
One of those times, for example, would be middle school. 00:08:33.660 |
The first time in my life where I ever ate industrial processed food was when I started 00:08:40.280 |
And they would have things like pizza Fridays. 00:08:42.560 |
Well, as a family growing up, we almost never ate pizza. 00:08:51.760 |
We never went out to eat to McDonald's and got milkshakes. 00:08:54.200 |
But now they had a milkshake machine where I could buy a milkshake. 00:09:02.160 |
Then in between eighth grade and ninth grade, I got super motivated because of being so 00:09:07.520 |
And I lost about 60 pounds following an Atkins style low carb diet at that time, which worked 00:09:13.680 |
wonders for my confidence as an eighth grader, worked wonders for my personal self-confidence 00:09:23.520 |
During college, I don't remember all my weights during that time. 00:09:26.400 |
I think in middle school, I was 270, dropped down to probably 220 or so, but I was still 00:09:31.160 |
And then in college, I also ate junk my first year. 00:09:35.280 |
Access to the cafeteria and all the junk that was in there, I got as high as 320 pounds 00:09:39.600 |
and lost weight, worked out, did different things, up, down, up, down, up, down, et cetera. 00:09:46.280 |
But basically since college, so going on, I'm almost 35, so basically 15 years-ish, 00:09:55.040 |
Sometimes as low as 280, 270 for a time, sometimes up 300, 320, et cetera. 00:10:00.080 |
It's basically always been around that set point of 300 to 320 pounds. 00:10:04.760 |
And what's always been annoying to me is I've never quite understood why my weight seemed 00:10:10.640 |
Because an honest analysis, an objective analysis of my food intake would indicate that, in 00:10:23.240 |
I have read widely in the areas and I've wondered, "Why on earth would my weight be this high?" 00:10:30.040 |
Growing up, we never ate standard American diet, processed food. 00:10:38.040 |
I don't know, 5% of the time she would buy a lasagna from Sam's or some kind of prepared 00:10:43.640 |
But for that vast majority of time, always cooked from scratch. 00:10:48.120 |
I was so sick of salad when I got married that my wife and I just stopped eating salad 00:10:52.080 |
for a few years because I had so much salad growing up. 00:10:57.460 |
But even my wife and I, we always cook from scratch. 00:11:03.440 |
There have been a few times in my life where I knew I was eating a bunch of junk. 00:11:06.520 |
Middle school, early years of college, there was a time where I used to eat a bunch of 00:11:10.080 |
fast food, which is obviously junk, and I got really fat there. 00:11:16.360 |
And so what's always annoyed me was, "Why on earth would I be so fat?" 00:11:19.880 |
I would keep food diaries and calorie counts, et cetera. 00:11:24.120 |
And I wondered, "Is there some kind of hormonal issue? 00:11:26.720 |
Is there some kind of weird, wacky thing that's wrong with me?" 00:11:33.080 |
Now along the way, I've never been unhealthy, which one of the big misnomers is that fat 00:11:37.400 |
necessarily equals either health or non-unhealth. 00:11:41.840 |
And in my opinion, or my observation, understanding, they're probably not directly correlated. 00:11:50.800 |
And in fact, some people become very unhealthy when they lose weight. 00:11:53.840 |
It's my understanding that fat is often used to absorb and to store a lot of toxins in 00:12:00.000 |
And so one result that some people experience when they start losing fat is their fat cells 00:12:04.600 |
release all these toxins that have been previously been bound up by the body and it causes problems. 00:12:08.360 |
Those problems can be from acne to more severe substantial problems with mercury being released 00:12:16.600 |
And so sometimes skinny people are far less healthy than some fat people. 00:12:20.440 |
But by all objective markers, I've always enjoyed really good health, which is a real 00:12:24.760 |
benefit, a real privilege, just a real blessing. 00:12:32.080 |
Even all the biological markers, the blood pressure, the cholesterol, all that stuff 00:12:37.600 |
I have the highest rated premier life insurance for whatever that means. 00:12:43.560 |
I've got long-lived grandparents, essentially no disease in my family, which has really 00:12:47.880 |
been a blessing to have that kind of health along the way. 00:12:53.920 |
In addition, being fat has really never hindered me all that much. 00:12:57.280 |
I've always been able to engage in all of the physical pursuits that I've wanted to 00:13:06.920 |
I'm not that agile or nimble on a soccer field. 00:13:10.280 |
I've never been particularly agile or nimble. 00:13:16.000 |
But I've really never been hindered by anything. 00:13:20.200 |
So for the most part, I've largely just simply set it aside. 00:13:23.920 |
But along the way, I'm simply sharing this to know that, to share with you that if you're 00:13:27.640 |
somebody who says, "I'm fat," and you're frustrated by that, but you're not quite sure what to 00:13:32.880 |
And I find it so frustrating when everyone has ideas and everyone has tips. 00:13:35.800 |
And for me, one of the most frustrating subjects in the world of study is to try to work your 00:13:39.720 |
way through, suppose it, what it means to live healthy. 00:13:44.640 |
If any of you, there is so much opportunity for someone to cut through all the nonsense, 00:13:49.960 |
but I'm a reader, I'm a studier, and I'm a fairly educated person. 00:13:55.000 |
And I find the subject of health science to be the most frustrating, annoying subject 00:14:02.720 |
I have read books and found competent, seemingly knowledgeable, skilled doctors who would say 00:14:22.040 |
I read "PH Miracle" by Dr. What's-His-Name years ago. 00:14:26.760 |
I've read, and I remember back when I used to listen to Tony Robbins and Tony Robbins 00:14:34.440 |
But early in his career, he was a fruitarian. 00:14:41.320 |
I think he still teaches veganism, vegetarianism, and PH stuff. 00:14:45.200 |
I used to buy Tony Robbins greens from him to change my blood alkaline balance. 00:15:02.440 |
And it's so frustrating when you go through this and you can line up these 20 different 00:15:06.960 |
people who all seem so smart and so knowledgeable and they've all got the perfect answer, but 00:15:11.280 |
they all say exactly the opposite of what everyone else says. 00:15:17.520 |
I still don't even know where to go on any of that stuff. 00:15:26.200 |
And all along the way, I started studying the science. 00:15:29.640 |
I found out how thin so much of that research is. 00:15:39.080 |
When you're fat and you feel like, "Okay, I'm an intelligent person. 00:15:46.200 |
And you're fat and yet you can't seem to get anything to work. 00:15:54.960 |
So over the years, I've largely just set it aside and ignored it. 00:15:59.200 |
But recently, a few things did happen that changed. 00:16:04.280 |
If you can pick something useful from it, fine. 00:16:22.360 |
And in considering that, obviously with that being one of those milestone birthdays, I 00:16:31.040 |
Number one is simply that if you look at people, it becomes harder and harder for people to 00:16:37.920 |
The body changes, metabolisms change, et cetera. 00:16:40.040 |
And I guess I did realize that, "Joshua, if you're ever going to change, it's not going 00:16:46.200 |
It'll never be easier than it is now anyway." 00:16:47.640 |
I always believe that anybody can change no matter what age. 00:16:50.560 |
But it's never going to be easier than it is now. 00:16:51.840 |
And obviously, it would have been easier at 25, but whatever. 00:16:54.080 |
Now today is the first day of the rest of my life. 00:16:55.840 |
So it's never going to be easier than it is today. 00:17:00.240 |
Another thing though, there's been some big changes for me personally over the last few 00:17:05.680 |
I'm going to pause for just a moment and share this, especially as something I've learned 00:17:13.520 |
But I didn't expect to experience such dramatic changes in my own personal maturity as my 00:17:22.880 |
I was always a fairly mature person, even when I was younger. 00:17:31.520 |
But and that's partly just due to the good training that I received from my parents. 00:17:35.780 |
But I still had a lot of the struggles, the juvenile struggles that a lot of people had. 00:17:39.040 |
But over the last five years, my life has changed dramatically. 00:17:43.080 |
I don't know necessarily what to ascribe that to. 00:17:46.920 |
Part of it could of course be chronological age. 00:17:49.640 |
And I believe that there's simply something due to the chronological passage of time that 00:17:55.880 |
But I personally am unconvinced that that accounts for all of it. 00:17:58.920 |
I think for me, a big component has been being married and being a father of several children. 00:18:10.720 |
I've wrestled a lot with it, looked for kind of academically studied answers, never found 00:18:16.400 |
So I just have anecdotal experience from my own experience and my observation. 00:18:22.480 |
And I don't mean that in some kind of dumb way, but just it's made a dramatic impact 00:18:28.760 |
If I think over the last five years, the last five years have been some of the most fastest 00:18:33.560 |
and biggest personal growth years of my life. 00:18:38.360 |
So I can chart times where I've grown personally. 00:18:40.880 |
But the last five years have been some of the biggest personal growth years. 00:18:43.560 |
And yet the last five years for me have been some of the lightest intentional personal 00:18:51.000 |
Stopped reading most self-development literature, stopped reading most personal development 00:18:57.080 |
And I personally am convinced that a huge factor, not the only factor, but a huge factor 00:19:05.780 |
Because it's forced me to change in ways that have been transformative for me. 00:19:11.880 |
I could give dozens of examples that I've charted in my own life, being a fairly self-aware 00:19:17.760 |
But as I observe, I have very good friends of mine who are exactly my age. 00:19:26.020 |
They're on the more modern life course than the life course that my wife and I are on. 00:19:30.800 |
Unmarried still at 35, unmarried, no children, etc. 00:19:34.560 |
And to me, the difference in the trajectory of our lives, they've largely just seemed 00:19:41.200 |
Kind of just stuck in this perpetual adolescence where they're still struggling with the same 00:19:50.920 |
And I think a big influence, a positive influence for me has been children. 00:19:54.000 |
Now, I don't think that that's necessarily a... 00:19:58.040 |
Singlehood is not a death sentence to perpetual adolescence. 00:20:02.640 |
People who are really focused can become mature and forward-thinking. 00:20:07.580 |
Marriage and children don't by definition produce that. 00:20:09.920 |
And you can be married and have children and just not advance, right? 00:20:14.640 |
But for me, it's just been a tremendous catalyst for positive change. 00:20:20.600 |
I simply don't struggle with any of the stuff I used to struggle with. 00:20:23.400 |
And it's not due to fixing it with self-development. 00:20:28.360 |
One of these days, I want to start a success course. 00:20:32.100 |
Because one of the things that's happened for me is the vast majority of success literature 00:20:35.960 |
and personal development stuff that used to just light me up has become totally irrelevant. 00:20:41.520 |
I read it and it does not connect with me at all. 00:20:44.740 |
And I can vividly remember how when I was single, it just, "Wow, this is so great." 00:20:52.420 |
And maybe there's people out there who do success for married men, but I don't know. 00:20:58.600 |
There's a totally different experience of life. 00:21:01.540 |
And part of that, though, did relate to just my personal confidence. 00:21:04.760 |
The weight largely became meaningless in terms of external approval. 00:21:10.540 |
But it did become very meaningful that I really fear having fat children. 00:21:23.880 |
And thankfully thus far, we don't have fat children. 00:21:27.500 |
It would really bother me to have fat children. 00:21:39.180 |
If not having fat children is that important to me, then how can I be a fat father? 00:21:49.460 |
Really I've always been blessed to not have a fat wife. 00:21:52.000 |
But if I don't want a fat wife, then how can I be a fat husband? 00:21:57.360 |
It's gnawed on me, but not have quite known what to do over the years. 00:22:01.200 |
Then of course also, there's all the normal fat person stuff of clothes and wardrobe and 00:22:09.620 |
But then a big thing also is I've got significant ambition for some areas that I want to work 00:22:18.660 |
And it's really bothered me to have this image of myself standing on stage and being fat, 00:22:27.500 |
You'll notice that I always speak directly to men. 00:22:30.420 |
I know there are women who listen to my show. 00:22:32.300 |
Great, I'm glad to have you if you're a woman. 00:22:39.380 |
And one of the things that bothers me to no end is it's very hard for men these days to 00:22:44.940 |
find masculine spaces where men can speak like men and can be treated like men. 00:22:55.460 |
I've grown so annoyed with the mass feminization of my own home society and home culture. 00:23:05.620 |
And so I just have no interest in creating feminine spaces or being involved in feminine 00:23:13.260 |
But yet one of the things that to me is interesting is that if I want to talk to men, I want to 00:23:22.320 |
And one component of commanding respect from men is not being a weak, fat slob. 00:23:30.700 |
It's possible in some areas to command respect from men, even if you are a weak, fat slob. 00:23:36.100 |
But you will command far more respect from men if you're not a weak, fat slob. 00:23:41.900 |
And it just really bothered me because being a weak, fat slob has never been who I've ever 00:23:50.700 |
I've always been a little bit fat, but not sloppy fat, not hugely fat. 00:23:55.020 |
Most people say, "Joshua, you're a little bit fat, a little bit overweight," but never 00:23:59.220 |
But it's really bugged me, really, really bugged me. 00:24:02.820 |
And more importantly is that I just started to feel this deep conviction that it's just 00:24:07.900 |
simply not honoring to God, especially being a Christian, being as loudmouthed as I am, 00:24:13.260 |
I just developed this deep conviction that this is not honoring to God. 00:24:18.020 |
And that was the thing that ultimately changed my mind, was coming to just a conviction that 00:24:23.700 |
it is not honoring to God for me to be a weak, fat slob. 00:24:30.580 |
And I don't know how to articulate that for you. 00:24:35.060 |
I don't think that God is first and foremost judging you for being fat, but what right 00:24:44.420 |
I've never really been a glutton, but still, same thing applies. 00:24:47.540 |
How can I be a glutton and talk about character? 00:24:51.660 |
Because no matter what, when you're fat, people wonder, "Are you a glutton?" 00:24:58.460 |
Certainly maybe somebody has some kind of problem or some issue or whatever where, that 00:25:06.700 |
How can I talk about discipline, about character, about fortitude, and me be a weak, fat slob? 00:25:13.140 |
And it came to a point where the Lord just pricked my conscience. 00:25:17.620 |
And the thing that was different than ever before with yo-yo dieting, whatever, just 00:25:20.540 |
for me, I came to the conviction, no matter what, I don't know exactly what to do. 00:25:30.260 |
But whatever I need to do, I will do it to not be a fat slob. 00:25:46.140 |
And the only way I can articulate, I can't be certain that I will follow through. 00:25:55.820 |
But unlike the previous 15 years of wondering about that, I just came to an absolute unshakable 00:26:03.100 |
dedication, an absolute conviction that no matter what, I would simply do whatever it 00:26:14.580 |
So I still don't have flat stomach, but I became convinced that no matter what, no matter 00:26:20.700 |
And no matter how I got to eat, no matter what I got to do, I'll do it for the rest 00:26:34.060 |
Those were some of the factors that influenced me. 00:26:36.700 |
But I don't know how to coach someone else to get there other than just to share my story 00:26:42.140 |
and say, you got to think about it yourself and come to your own position. 00:26:46.380 |
So where I started was with a ketogenic diet. 00:26:51.380 |
Now being a widely read layman on these subjects is my opinion and observation that probably 00:26:57.620 |
the most effective weight loss protocol was a low carb and/or ketogenic diet. 00:27:14.700 |
But my observation is that there's lots, there's been very high levels of success. 00:27:18.220 |
Due to my success in losing weight on a low carb diet in the past, I figured I will do 00:27:25.180 |
I started eating a ketogenic diet and I didn't even have the slightest bit of temptation 00:27:34.860 |
And so for the first couple of months I was on a ketogenic diet. 00:27:37.420 |
I don't know the exact weight that I started out because I didn't have a scale. 00:27:41.460 |
There's a lesson in that that's important that I haven't had a scale for the last couple 00:27:45.540 |
I remember traveling, living in an RV and a scale just didn't seem like a valuable use 00:27:48.540 |
of space in an RV and then traveling across the world. 00:27:50.740 |
And when you got 50 pound suitcases to move your family, a big scale doesn't seem like 00:27:56.340 |
So I don't exactly know where exactly I started, but probably in the range of 300 to 320 pounds. 00:28:06.860 |
I do know I've gone from a size XXL shirt to a size large shirt. 00:28:11.060 |
Well tiny bit snug, but it'll be not snug in a few days unless I can pop my muscles 00:28:18.340 |
And I know that I've gone in about six inches on my belt. 00:28:21.100 |
So there's real evidence and down 50 pounds, six inches on my belt and from a XXL to a 00:28:27.240 |
So I did a ketogenic diet for the first couple of months. 00:28:29.860 |
And I will say this, of every diet that I have read about and/or tried and/or studied, 00:28:35.420 |
I'm convinced that a ketogenic diet is one of the most doable long-term diets. 00:28:41.420 |
I'm not here going to get into the science of it just to be a silly waste of time, but 00:28:49.260 |
It's really livable, but you can live really luxurious living on that kind of diet. 00:28:53.420 |
I'll talk in a moment about diets, but because I think it's a big deal is having something 00:28:59.920 |
But after about a month and a half of ketogenic dieting, somebody asked me, "Have you ever 00:29:05.940 |
And I started being a researcher, I started looking into it and I was pretty shocked at 00:29:12.140 |
The carnivore diet, just the very simple concept is that you basically eat meat and nothing 00:29:18.580 |
You eat like a carnivore, meat, eggs and dairy. 00:29:21.060 |
And what's noticeably absent is any form of carbohydrate, any form of grain and any form 00:29:30.180 |
And as I would guess, it sounds to you, that sounded super shocking and super unhealthy 00:29:38.820 |
I started to dig into people's experiences and stories on eating a carnivore diet. 00:29:47.980 |
I started, I stumbled across Jordan Peterson's interview on the Joe Rogan podcast, which 00:29:54.500 |
is probably the most famous story that's out there of a carnivore diet because of Jordan 00:30:01.860 |
Then I stumbled across his daughter, Michaela Peterson's story, just a crazy story that 00:30:05.380 |
she had of tremendous health issues and how ultimately she experienced tremendous improvement 00:30:12.580 |
in her health because when she finally went to eating only meat, in her case only beef, 00:30:19.220 |
I started finding all these people's stories. 00:30:23.140 |
So since September 1, I started eating an exclusively carnivore diet. 00:30:27.580 |
Since September 1 up until yesterday, Thanksgiving Day, I only ate meat and eggs and had a tiny 00:30:34.400 |
bit of dairy here and there, not a scrap of vegetable, not a scrap of bread, not a scrap 00:30:43.100 |
And for me, meat and eggs and a smattering of dairy here and there, for me, that has 00:30:52.940 |
Now obviously it's been good for my fat loss, which is great. 00:30:57.980 |
When you're eating zero carbohydrates, that seems like a really good way to lose fat. 00:31:04.020 |
It's also been good for ... talk about that in just a minute. 00:31:16.980 |
Along the way, I have done some exercise, a moderate amount of exercise. 00:31:21.380 |
I don't know how to judge my athletic performance without carbohydrates. 00:31:26.260 |
I do know this is a big debate in athletic spaces, which I have no interest in weighing 00:31:31.020 |
I have felt much more athletic now than any time in the past, but because I have no baseline 00:31:35.540 |
to drive it on in terms of how much my muscles or my body thrives on carbohydrates versus 00:31:41.280 |
no carbohydrates, et cetera, you can try that. 00:31:45.580 |
There are athletes who need carbohydrates for optimal performance. 00:31:49.140 |
There are athletes who don't use any form of carbohydrates for optimal performance. 00:31:56.220 |
All I know is I feel great, and I have done a lot more athletic performance than any before. 00:32:03.540 |
I do quite a bit more exercise now, which has been good, and ramping that up even more, 00:32:07.540 |
especially as it's easier now that I have lost quite a bit of fat. 00:32:11.640 |
One thing that is hindering, when I was younger, I used to be able to run easily even though 00:32:17.620 |
But as I've gotten older, it's been much harder to run in terms of the impact on my knees, 00:32:21.540 |
and I felt worse when running and whatnot from being heavily, really fat, which obviously 00:32:27.060 |
is pretty obvious, but it's one thing to know it intellectually. 00:32:32.460 |
So now that my body weight has declined, it's becoming easier to do many of those things. 00:32:37.140 |
I want to share with you just a couple of things about the carnivore diet for you to 00:32:41.940 |
First, I don't know, just as preamble, is this the healthiest thing long-term? 00:32:45.740 |
I think there's a lot of evidence that actually probably is, or at least that it is extremely 00:32:52.300 |
The thing about not eating vegetables sounds super weird, and as a vegetable lover and 00:32:56.260 |
a lifelong vegetable eater, I'm not convinced it'll always stay on the carbohydrate diet. 00:33:01.160 |
But it seems apparent to me that there are at least some people out there who even vegetables 00:33:06.660 |
make them sick, hardcore cases like Michaela Peterson. 00:33:10.640 |
But I'm not saying skip vegetables for good health. 00:33:15.200 |
What I do know for me is that I have felt great even without eating vegetables, just 00:33:22.420 |
I've felt great, feel great, have great things in my head, didn't really have any sicknesses 00:33:30.620 |
I don't feel necessarily all that much better from eating just meat than I would have with 00:33:38.120 |
So I'm not personally opposed to vegetables, but I think it's worth testing out. 00:33:42.140 |
Here's what has been a big benefit to me about the carnivore diet. 00:33:46.100 |
I have found that eating a pure carnivore diet has been one of the simplest and easiest 00:33:55.020 |
to stick to diets that I have ever done because it is so exceedingly simple. 00:34:02.380 |
Now I've done ketogenic diets in the past, and I think ketogenic diets can be extremely 00:34:07.940 |
successful for weight loss and for good health, including vegetables. 00:34:12.900 |
I think I'll probably go back in the future to eating some vegetables here and there. 00:34:17.060 |
I don't know what I'll do long term, what to figure out once I reach my weight loss 00:34:20.300 |
goals and figure out what's required to sustain that. 00:34:25.100 |
But I do know that a lot of times figuring out all those details can be tough. 00:34:31.180 |
And when you're trying to count your macros and count your carbs and figure out, okay, 00:34:34.740 |
well, how much of this can I have and how much of that, it can be really challenging. 00:34:38.980 |
Whereas the carnivore diet is the ultimate simplicity. 00:34:47.220 |
Eat different kinds of meats to start with at least. 00:34:50.660 |
There's the whole nose to tail carnivore movement. 00:34:52.980 |
Eat nose to tail, eat whatever kinds of meats you can. 00:34:55.620 |
Eat when you're hungry and stop when you're full. 00:34:59.320 |
And don't put anything, don't put any bunch of sugary junk on your meat. 00:35:03.140 |
And that diet is one of the ultimate in simplicity, which means that it's so simple that it can 00:35:12.020 |
I have, so since September 1st all the way through Thanksgiving Day yesterday, I have 00:35:20.300 |
And one time I ate a small bowl of peach cobbler. 00:35:25.020 |
It was a couple of weeks ago and I was feeling a little deprived, looking forward to Thanksgiving. 00:35:32.300 |
I've never in my life gone three months on a crazy strict diet and only ever cheated 00:35:39.180 |
Now your experience may not be mine, but I've found it one of the easiest diets to stick 00:35:43.420 |
to because the rules are so elegantly simple. 00:35:46.380 |
The other thing that's been wonderful about it is how easy it is to stick to, especially 00:35:51.500 |
when traveling and in almost any circumstance. 00:35:54.720 |
If you just say, I just eat meat, everything becomes simple. 00:35:58.100 |
You go to a restaurant, if they have steak, you order steak. 00:36:04.300 |
Or you order whatever kind of meat they have, it's just meat. 00:36:07.640 |
And if there's not meat available, you don't eat. 00:36:10.900 |
One of the huge benefits that I have found from experience with eating a low carbohydrate 00:36:15.740 |
diet and a ketogenic diet, once your body gets into ketosis where it stops burning the 00:36:20.740 |
sugar in your blood for energy but starts to burn ketones for energy, it is so helpful 00:36:27.860 |
Where basically your appetite completely changes. 00:36:30.980 |
Instead of being hungry all the time, like you are on a low calorie diet where you're 00:36:35.740 |
eating small meals five times a day and you're just constantly hungry, it's frustrating as 00:36:40.020 |
a big man, you're just hungry all the time, you're irritable all the time, you can't stick 00:36:46.620 |
Now it takes some time to work into, but your appetite moderates. 00:36:50.140 |
And that is awesome because it makes fasting a whole lot simpler and a whole lot easier. 00:36:56.980 |
Where at this point, I usually still, because of years of cheating at social gatherings 00:37:02.580 |
and things like that, if I know I'm going to be someplace where it's going to be hard 00:37:05.580 |
to exercise self-control or I know they're probably not going to have good options, I'll 00:37:11.420 |
But even so, because your appetite so totally changes, it becomes easy to skip a meal or 00:37:20.980 |
And that radically transforms your experience with trying to stick to a diet. 00:37:27.500 |
That to me is one of the most understated benefits of being in ketosis and basically 00:37:32.020 |
living in ketosis because it, again, it feels like a superpower. 00:37:37.060 |
When everyone, I've flown a bunch over the last couple of weeks and in an airplane, I 00:37:46.940 |
When everyone else is scarfing down the chips and the whatnot, you just feel, "I don't need 00:37:53.980 |
I drink black coffee or I drink carbonated water and I don't eat. 00:37:59.060 |
And again, from a lifelong fat person who has always loved to eat, that is awesome. 00:38:06.460 |
It feels really, really good to not be just stuck eating all the time. 00:38:12.860 |
Now there's a big debate in the carnivore ketogenic diet world whether or not calories 00:38:19.860 |
I think they probably do because there have been times where I've eaten excessively meat. 00:38:24.820 |
I've eaten excessively and I haven't lost much weight. 00:38:30.260 |
I do think calories matter, but what I believe is that if you eat a low carbohydrate diet, 00:38:36.140 |
you're going to lose more weight and it's a lot easier to eat a low calorie diet when 00:38:39.340 |
you're in ketosis than when you are hungry all the time. 00:38:47.920 |
But for me, that ability to fast has been really useful. 00:38:51.140 |
One of the biggest problems that I have had over the years with diets is trying to figure 00:38:55.420 |
out how to eat in a way that would fit my ideal family schedule. 00:39:00.500 |
So growing up, we were always a three meal a day family. 00:39:03.500 |
And growing up, we always, as a family, we always had breakfast together. 00:39:10.620 |
My mom, usually my dad would be away at work, but I'd be home with my mom. 00:39:13.220 |
And then of course we were in school and didn't have lunch together and we always had dinner 00:39:17.740 |
And I saw the value of that growing up as a child. 00:39:20.340 |
And so in my family, it's always been the same way. 00:39:26.180 |
I love breakfast food, can happily eat it all, love that. 00:39:35.980 |
It's seven breakfasts together a week, seven dinners together a week. 00:39:42.060 |
And I've never wanted to be the weird, the odd man out, just not eating. 00:39:46.500 |
But the carnivore has given me the ability to do that, where at this point I've stopped 00:39:51.580 |
I know for many people, when they stop eating breakfast, contrary to what we were taught 00:39:55.380 |
in the early 2000s about breakfast is the most important meal of the day, I've become 00:39:59.020 |
convinced that's probably not true, that a lot of people, when they stop eating breakfast, 00:40:04.140 |
So for me, I've stopped eating breakfast and I drink black coffee in the morning, start 00:40:08.620 |
my first meal around, well, sometimes noonish, although many times I've gone just to the 00:40:15.740 |
One of the things, just interesting diets I've tried over the years, and by the way, 00:40:22.980 |
I'm just sharing my experiences to encourage you and say, give it a shot. 00:40:27.980 |
But a long time ago, after I read Jacob Lund Fisker's book, actually, Early Retirement 00:40:32.620 |
is Extreme, he alludes to something, I think, Orie Hoffmeiler was his name, a guy wrote 00:40:37.580 |
a book called The Warrior Diet, which advocated for eating one time per day, but eating whatever 00:40:44.940 |
And his idea, his defense of it was that basically, you know, warriors are hunters, you don't 00:40:51.940 |
You go out, you hunt all day, you're hungry, and then you feast at night. 00:40:54.620 |
And so his basic diet was eat one time per day at night, and eat one time per day at 00:41:02.780 |
night, and start with a salad, then eat whatever you want, eat whatever you want, eat as much 00:41:06.940 |
as you want, eat even dessert if you want at the end of the meal, eat whatever you want, 00:41:12.820 |
And basically, the idea is if you're eating one time per day, you can't actually overeat 00:41:16.740 |
just eating one time per day, because it's really hard to take in that much food at once. 00:41:20.780 |
I used to do that when I was a financial advisor when I was single, and I lost some weight 00:41:25.180 |
at that time, and I found it to be an incredible boost for my work, because I saved a lot of 00:41:34.260 |
The problem that I found with it was one, I was hungry a lot, because I was still eating 00:41:39.660 |
Two, it was bad for my social calendar, I did a lot of social lunches and entertaining 00:41:45.220 |
And then number three, when I got married, I wanted to have breakfast with my wife. 00:41:48.300 |
And so, reinstituting that meant going back to eating multiple times per day. 00:41:53.500 |
Well, since I quit eating carbohydrates, it became much easier for me to fast and to eat 00:41:59.100 |
one meal a day or eat during a compressed eating window of four to six hours per day, 00:42:09.580 |
So let me just wrap this up with saying, that's been my experience. 00:42:13.100 |
I've lost 50 pounds, again, double XL to large shirt size, six inches into my belt. 00:42:18.220 |
And I have found this past, I don't know, four or five months, six months, I guess, 00:42:23.300 |
not six months yet, but probably three to five months, I have found it to be one of 00:42:27.340 |
the best and easiest things that I've experienced that's led to weight loss, muscle gain, and 00:42:37.900 |
I think that the carnivore diet is going to be the biggest diet trend of 2020. 00:42:45.780 |
The stories that people are sharing are tremendous. 00:42:48.060 |
One of the things that's been wackiest to me to read about, and again, all this stuff, 00:42:52.260 |
the carnivore diet by definition, by all accepted academic research, sounds very bad and unhealthy. 00:42:58.860 |
And there are lots of articles and whatnot against it. 00:43:01.800 |
But what you find if you look into it is you find tons and tons of stories of people for 00:43:08.120 |
And one of the things that I'm most fascinated by is tremendous improvements reported by 00:43:14.660 |
If you go out and you look for stories on the carnivore diet, one of the themes that 00:43:17.740 |
you hear again and again is people saying, "Oh, it cured my depression, cured my anxiety, 00:43:23.820 |
That was one of the things that Jordan Peterson talked about on his show on Joe Rogan. 00:43:29.660 |
I've seen that corroborated by the personal experience of other people as well. 00:43:34.620 |
And so I didn't have mental problems before, but I do feel great. 00:43:40.060 |
Yesterday, I decided to go ahead and eat Thanksgiving foods. 00:43:43.060 |
It was the first sugar I've had and first carbohydrates I've had, and I felt like junk. 00:43:47.900 |
Now, how much of that is due to carbohydrates versus the enzymes in my stomach being adjusted 00:43:53.460 |
But all I know is I was happy today to go back to fasting and happy today to go back 00:43:56.660 |
to just eating meat because it's been a great thing for me. 00:44:01.940 |
So I want to close out this personal narrative with just three major points. 00:44:10.420 |
Well, as you can tell, I'm not trying to defend the carnivore diet as the ultimate way of 00:44:20.520 |
All I know is I think it's a good way, and I see lots of people defending it, and I think 00:44:24.500 |
that their arguments are as good as anybody else's. 00:44:26.900 |
But of course, you have a night and day conflict with the vegans. 00:44:32.060 |
The vegans and the carnivore are hard to get any more not vegan than me. 00:44:36.100 |
I can't imagine any diet that's more offensive to a vegan than the one that I eat. 00:44:41.020 |
So my point is to share my story, but to use it as potentially an opportunity to encourage 00:45:05.900 |
You do something, you do something, and fail. 00:45:09.620 |
And if you're frustrated because you've failed on every diet you've ever tried, I just ask 00:45:17.220 |
The only way you ultimately fail is when you quit. 00:45:23.000 |
If you've tried 10 diets, if you've tried 20 diets, if you've tried 30 diets, and you've 00:45:27.420 |
done them and you've lost weight and you quit, just don't quit. 00:45:30.780 |
I observe that there are two kinds of people in the world. 00:45:34.500 |
There are kinds of people that take what they've gotten and they sit down and just take it. 00:45:38.460 |
And there are kinds of people who say, no, I'm going to keep doing it. 00:45:43.020 |
And I'm speaking from a place of psychological exuberance. 00:45:51.700 |
You start to see muscles come out where only flab was before. 00:45:54.040 |
You start to see a lot less fat where there was a lot more before, and it's encouraging. 00:46:04.660 |
So just recognize that there are lots of people who've been where you are. 00:46:08.700 |
If you're fat and you're frustrated and you're thinking, okay, well, January 1, I'm going 00:46:13.140 |
If you've been there and you're frustrated, don't quit. 00:46:19.060 |
Now, try whatever you think is going to be effective. 00:46:21.540 |
If you think eating a fruitarian diet is going to be effective, go for it. 00:46:24.540 |
I don't think it's going to be effective, but too much sugar, bad for you, et cetera. 00:46:29.660 |
If you think eating a vegan diet is going to be effective, go for it. 00:46:33.500 |
I think it's going to have all kinds of health problems and whatnot, but hey, that's not 00:46:42.340 |
If you want to try what has been helpful for me over the last months, and there are many 00:46:48.660 |
It doesn't get any simpler than just to say, eat meat. 00:46:53.820 |
Meat, eggs, and a little bit of dairy here and there. 00:46:55.380 |
You want to be really safe, eat only meat and eggs. 00:46:58.400 |
If you've got all kinds of health issues, just eat beef. 00:47:05.380 |
One of the things that's so nice about the carnivore diet is it's so satiating. 00:47:09.860 |
So I drink black coffee in the morning, around lunchtime, two o'clock, whenever I get hungry, 00:47:14.940 |
I have eggs and bacon, and then for dinner I eat beef. 00:47:21.860 |
I can eat that way happily seven days a week, and it's been great. 00:47:28.340 |
I need to get a little bit more fat on my diet. 00:47:30.020 |
I do find that if I don't get quite enough fat, I probably need to get more fat, but 00:47:35.100 |
figuring out how to get that with good animal fats is challenging. 00:47:40.140 |
If you're getting to the end of 2019 and you're reflecting back on the last decade and you're 00:47:43.740 |
fat and you don't want to be fat anymore, do whatever it takes to reach out to somebody 00:47:53.780 |
One of the things I love seeing, I love the work that Diamond Dallas Page does, where 00:47:58.100 |
there's so many super fat people who get his stuff, and there's this wrestler and he does 00:48:02.940 |
this yoga and dieting thing, and there's so many wonderful transformation stories. 00:48:09.260 |
If you're frustrated and you're annoyed and you're fat, don't quit. 00:48:13.940 |
Do whatever you've got to do to reach out to somebody to try something. 00:48:18.280 |
Go on YouTube and just start doing nothing but filling your brain with transformation 00:48:22.500 |
stories, watching people go from fat to skinny. 00:48:26.400 |
Go on Instagram and subscribe to Instagram channels of people going from fat to skinny, 00:48:32.620 |
and start listening to real people, just like I've shared my story here. 00:48:39.700 |
Just one fat guy, one less fat guy to another. 00:48:49.500 |
Whatever you think will work for you, don't quit. 00:48:52.780 |
Be the kind of person that when the doctor tells you it's terminal, go get a second opinion. 00:48:57.140 |
Don't be one who takes what you or anyone else says about you. 00:49:00.500 |
Be the kind of person who doesn't quit, no matter what. 00:49:04.800 |
Number two, I wish I'd tracked a little bit more. 00:49:06.740 |
I will release a standalone and less personal show on this subject, but I should have had 00:49:12.520 |
It was a major mistake that I didn't have a scale and wasn't weighing myself. 00:49:14.980 |
In the same way that it's stupid to not track your finances, it's stupid to not track your 00:49:25.380 |
I wish I'd gone and done detailed measurements from day one. 00:49:28.060 |
I didn't want to do it because for me, that would have felt, that felt like, I didn't 00:49:32.700 |
make it a priority because that felt like, "Okay, I'm going to go on a diet again. 00:49:38.460 |
Having been on and failed on so many diets or been on and done for a while and then quit 00:49:42.380 |
and then gotten fat again, it just felt like doing it. 00:49:46.540 |
Whereas for me, it just came to a place of no matter what, I don't care what the scale 00:49:51.700 |
All I know is that this way of eating should in time produce results and so I'm just going 00:49:57.020 |
I had absolute determination and so that was why I didn't start tracking. 00:50:01.220 |
But I do wish now that I'd taken more pictures and done that. 00:50:06.060 |
I would say this, consider trying carnivore diet. 00:50:08.180 |
If you've struggled with fat loss, go into a little research. 00:50:10.740 |
Sean Baker, who's a big guy in this space, just wrote a new book on it. 00:50:16.140 |
In tomorrow's episode, you'll hear Jack Spirico talk about his low-carb journey. 00:50:21.900 |
I invited him on because he's fantastic on this, doing a lot of good stuff and a ton 00:50:29.140 |
So try a low-carb, a ketogenic diet and then consider going all the way with carnivore. 00:50:34.660 |
Go watch some YouTube videos, find some stories. 00:50:37.380 |
Meatheals.com is one website that I think Baker maintains. 00:50:43.620 |
I think the carnivore diet is going to be the biggest trend of 2020. 00:50:46.460 |
We'll check back in a year and see if that's the case. 00:50:48.460 |
But of course, here I am trying to help it be a good trend. 00:50:52.180 |
I have no intention of quitting and I don't want you to quit either. 00:50:57.820 |
It is insane that in 2019, so many of us die from easily curable diseases. 00:51:09.860 |
So many heart issues and all this stuff, these things are curable. 00:51:13.340 |
And yet so many of us die from this stupid stuff. 00:51:22.540 |
Hope this has been helpful and encouraging to you in some way. 00:51:25.620 |
Just simply wanted to share it as fodder for your mind. 00:51:30.620 |
And we'll get back to financial planning on Monday. 00:51:34.900 |
Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. 00:51:36.420 |
I hope I helped you with some ideas and some encouragement and inspiration to help you 00:51:39.540 |
achieve your goals faster, living a rich and meaningful life now while building a plan 00:51:46.580 |
Number one, I teach a number of premium courses found at radicalpersonalfinance.com/store. 00:51:52.420 |
Courses that I have designed and written to help you solve some specific problems. 00:51:56.260 |
Go and check those out at radicalpersonalfinance.com/store. 00:51:59.780 |
Those courses contain ideas and strategies not otherwise released here in the free podcast. 00:52:05.380 |
And you can find those at radicalpersonalfinance.com/store. 00:52:08.880 |
Number two, I offer a limited amount of private consulting and coaching work. 00:52:13.740 |
If you'd like details on how to talk to me privately regarding the details of your specific 00:52:17.780 |
situation, email me joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com and you will be able to get in touch. 00:52:22.460 |
I'll share all those details joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com. 00:52:25.780 |
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Follow me on those platforms if you are active there for some additional content not found