E126 - The Fitness Industry In 2026: Body Image, Burnout & Broken Standards | Kayla Itsines

0:00If you have a business and you can somehow showcase a transformation whether it be the transformation of your mind, the transformation of your body, the transformation of your business, the transformation of your business. If you are comparing yourself to the top fitness people in the world, you're going to think that you don't actually look that good. So you always look in the mirror and like, I remember just thinking I was fat, like I just wasn't lean enough. People ask for this magic pill, but it's actually the journey that teaches you all the lessons that you need. So then when life gives those lessons back to you, you can then tweak and adjust because you've gone through it once before.

0:49The way that I got my job, I don't know if I've ever told this story before, but I didn't even have a resume. So I walked in, I've opened the door and there's a... quick pause guys i need to tell you something it's that time of the year where everyone's on the winter arc hype where they're building their physique which they plan to reveal at some point in the summer of 2026 but i hate to be the guy that says it most of you are going to end up getting fat you'll be overeating you'll be following some sort of a program which isn't actually going to be getting your results you're going to be improvising on the spot no doubt you won't be tracking there'll be no structure just random exercises with minimal progress seen on a week-to-week basis.

1:27Pretty frustrating, right? Well, that's the whole reason why I built the Thirst app, to help busy people like yourself find a system they can actually stick to over a long period of time. We have thousands of transformations for men and women who just plug into the app and get the exact plan they need for their goals, show up to the gym and just put in the work, all for less than an hour of their time. You get access to over hundreds of programs and hundreds of different meal plans, everything which you could possibly need to get yourself in shape. So if you actually want to stick to something and see results without taking things to the absolute extremities, click the link in the bio.

2:06Let's get on with the video. What's up, guys? Welcome back to First Things First. Caleb, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. How's your weekend been? It's been hectic, but so amazing. So I just did Dubai Active, big boot camp, big strength session and had so much support. It's just another level here. Is that what your thing is now, strength? Yeah, I've moved into strength, definitely. I still love the other types of training, but strength for sure. And I feel like really, I really feel the benefits of it. You're one of the, I'll call you an athlete, an influencer. You've been in the game for a long time now.

2:41Thanks. You're like one of the OGs. Everyone says that. Yeah, there's not many people who've, I feel like a lot of people come and go in the fitness scene. you know they have a little streak and then whether they just become irrelevant or maybe they just burn out with the fatigue of having to make so much content they kind of just like i don't want to do this anymore and they stop but you've yeah or they find like their their true passion i know um our mutual friend james smith he posted fitness contents for years and years and years and he came out recently and just said i've had enough like i'm not passionate about that anymore what i am passionate about is business and mentoring and he's sort of taking this other direction which is so nice but for me my passion has always been fitness growing up I didn't know what I wanted to be I hated when we got to like the end of school and they were all like you know you have that day where everyone has to stand up and say I want to be this and I want to be that I want to be a doctor or an engineer and I was like I never knew what I wanted to be but I knew I was good at sport and I knew I was good at coaching so then I naturally fell into it and it's just been that ever since like it doesn't feel like a job yeah I made uh it wasn't really a mistake but fitness was my thing and then when I moved here I kind of moved away from it a little bit and then after a couple of years this is when I was doing more lifestyle travel like mingling with people who weren't necessarily in fitness which was good for the brand and branching out from fitness but then I was like I kind of missed doing the fitness thing do you yeah I love it it's the thing I'll never get bored of doing what do you like about it like do you like the mental game of it do you like the like hustle of it do you like the results like the the results for sure the feeling whilst i'm training i'm zoned out listening to music yeah um and even though like my style of training is extremely repetitive i just never get bored of it just love it is it because of that me doing the podcast flipping the podcast on you now actually it's me interviewing now but is it actually because of like do you get motivation from physical results nothing's more visual oh yeah sorry that's what i meant yeah sorry like visually seeing the results that's why you keep going yeah yeah so for me that's it is and it isn't i think that's why i've been like doing what i do for so long and like i can i'm able to do this high intensity training for so long it doesn't it wouldn't have sculpted my body aesthetically how some people's bodies are but for me it was just like it felt like basketball training i played basketball felt like that like i just love feeling fit and feeling strong like i like being able to do chin-ups yeah i feel like What do you feel like every woman should be able to do?

5:17I think every woman can do the stitch of this. I'd be really careful what I say. I think that when I meet people, their goals are to do a pull-up or a chin-up. That's like their goal. And I'm talking about females. And the first thing they say is, I can't do it. I've just never been able to. They'll talk about their weight or they talk about their height or they talk about how weak their upper body is. and it just takes a few moves and a few weeks and you're able to do it. I believe everyone can. Yeah. It's the same with even just push-ups. I don't feel like they really just try hard enough to actually make it a priority.

5:57They'll do one and they'll be like, oh, that's so hard, just can't do it. But you have to practice something over and over again to be able to succeed. It's in business, it's in life, it's in your family being a parent, you're going to stuff it up. And then if you start repeating the same things over and over again, being consistent, and being disciplined everywhere in your life, you'll be able to do it. That's the same as exercise. I think people are like, they fail once, like, oh, damn it. They don't apply the same principles to, but they apply to everything else. Did you study fitness at university?

6:29I left school and then immediately studied a PT. We had a PT course in Australia. So I did my PT course. And then I was - How old were you then? I was 18, about to be 19. thinking, I remember thinking everyone else knew what they wanted to be and I didn't. And then I was walking down the street, had finished my PT course. I was fully qualified, had no idea. And I saw this like back in the day, back in the day, there was a piece of paper with like a ripoff number and it said like PTs wanted and I called the number and it turned out to be a female fitness only like clinic gym. And so the way that I got my job, I don't know if I've ever I told this story before, but this is like rogue.

7:09I didn't even have a resume. So I walked in, I've opened the door, and there's a man walking out with waters. He's got like things of water. So I've opened the door, I've let him out, and then I've waited for him to pack the waters, the more waters onto the thing, and he's come back in. And I walked in, I said, oh, hi, so sorry. And she goes, you're hired. And I was like, what? She goes, you can't teach that. She's like, you're so polite. I was like, oh, but how do you know if I'm a good PT? She goes, I know you'll be good. and I was like that was my first job that's how I got it holding the door open for someone and I think people need to realize this was before fitness was a thing online oh yeah online coaching didn't really exist no I just I had just got Instagram Instagram was new you could only upload photos there was no Instagram stories you didn't you couldn't hear someone's tone of voice you couldn't hear it was just literally that caption meant everything yeah I think my first upload went up in 2012 and it was a pair of shoes.

8:05Mine was on my dog. I was like, oh dear. And then mine was something else so rogue and random. I think it was a tree or something. And my cousin messaged me and goes, you know, you have followers, right? And I said, what does that mean? And she's like, people can see your photos that you're posting. I was like, no way. And that was like the start of Instagram. Yeah. Which is crazy now. Did you start posting pictures of you at the gym? How did it get started? I originally started posting photos of me at the gym and my client transformations. So, transformations were the biggest driver of clientele to the business.

8:42Even though it wasn't even a business, I was doing PT in my parents' backyard, literally. But it was the transformations. And people love a transformation. If you have a business and you can somehow showcase a transformation, whether it be the transformation of your mind, the transformation of your body, the transformation of your business, the growth, it's all transformation. That is what sells. That is what grabs people's attention. You think it still works today? Absolutely. We talk about now about social media, about taking people on a journey. You can't just surprise people now saying surprise drop.

9:11Maybe you can if you're a really, really admired and advanced brand, but now it's all about that storytelling. But it's the transformation and the progress that you see. Yeah. And it doesn't have to just be fitness. Yeah, because it's so competitive now. Oh, so competitive. So you have to hook people in by showcasing you and your personality and your brand and how much passion you have. However, that can flip when you try and sell your business, for example, and this is like a learning that I had, is everyone talks about growing your personal brand. You have to grow your personal brand. You have to grow your personal brand.

9:46But if that is your only thing that you have, how do you sell your brand if your name is attached to it you have to forever work within that brand because they're not going to buy it unless they buy you because you've built up that personal brand and as long as you have another brand on the side that's okay but if it's only you yeah i think one of the reasons why things went well for me and i'm sure they went well for you is because you actually had that experience coaching people in person you actually had like the PT qualification. Oh, absolutely. Which a lot of people now do not have. Yeah, a lot of, I find that, and I hear that even from friends, they have businesses which, um, in which they coach people, but they have never actually one-on-one been with someone in a gym.

10:30And when I'm with women, especially that's so important because you sit down with them and you get to hear their stories and you get to see them put up this sort of like front where they're like, oh no, my life is so perfect. And then it's so slowly unravels and you get to understand that they're a mom and they've got four kids and they're going through a divorce and things are hard and they can't show up to their sessions because of these reasons rather than you know them just saying sorry I cancelled yeah for me it was I always I needed to see them train like I needed to see like what their intensity was like because so many times I could I could tell just by talking to them on zoom or whatever or skype back in the day I was just like I was like, I know you don't train hard.

11:11I'm not going to say it, but I'm like, I can tell that you don't train hard. And then you see them in person and then you can push them a little bit more. Yeah. But I think like, that's what keeps me going. I think that's what is so rewarding. I don't know if you've ever had this, but I always used to, my clients used to have to do a few things. They have to be able to do a chin up and they used to be able to have to do a box jump. And I remember the box jump thing. I used to have a foam box because I know what it's like to rip off your shins when you're jumping on a wooden box. So I had this foam box and they always go, I can't do it.

11:38Anyway, I used to say to them, hold my shoulder, press down on my shoulder and jump up. And that first landing that they had their face every time, I'm like, I wish I could capture the moment that they're like, I did it. That kept me going for so long. It was like my favorite thing to get a new client because I was like, let's do a box jump because I like the feeling of them feeling good. How long were you doing the one-to-one PTs for before you started off with the e-book? um I do not remember the timeline of that Lani you were doing Lani was my managers was my first one of my first clients so I was doing one-on-one pts and then I would start group sessions I'm looking over at her I'm like making sure this is like fact-checking this right because it's so long ago I started group sessions um and I would charge a dollar a minute and if you brought a friend it would be what was it twenty dollars each and if you brought another friend it was like fifteen dollars each so it would always be cheap for them I wanted to make sure like it was cheap for them and then I made it might have been like a year and a half and then it just started getting momentum and more and more clients kept coming to my parents house and then then it was the ebook because people started reaching out it was all because of Instagram yeah people started reaching out from Melbourne and Perth and then Europe and I was like whoa like Europe they're like can we do what your clients are doing with your transformation and so I was like oh no so sorry if you ever come to Australia like let me know and then I was like no we need to put this into like some sort of guide.

13:02And here's where like it all sort of went sideways. The guide was so advanced. And because people were asking me, what are your clients doing? And I said, I'll put it into a guide, like exactly what they were doing. So the first 12 weeks are like, it's like the equivalent to like doing a high rocks. Okay. I was like, you want to know what my clients are doing? This is what it is. There was no beginner. It was like, this is what I'm currently doing with my clients. If you want to know, like if you want to buy it's up to you and I never thought anyone would purchase it I was like this isn't going to go well like there'll be like 12 people and it was hundreds of thousands millions of women doing bbg and I was like holy crap what is happening absolutely insane from like being in Adelaide my parents backyard to then like being called over to New York and go to Germany and go to Dubai and I was like well I've never even traveled the first time I ever traveled was for work what was the bbg what does that stand for stand for bikini body guide okay well big booty girl i just feel like i think collectively we all just changed the name so that came from the name came from i worked at a boot camp called bikini body boot camp like working for a business and then people knew me from that so when i put it together i didn't really think because i was like this isn't going to sell so like whoever is from the bikini body boot camp like you know me as the trainer he's like the bikini body guy that you can take away yeah if you can't train with me and now it's sweat yeah and i remember i was late to the ebook game because i was doing the the one-to-one pts i was charging like 30 pound an hour and then i had this friend in london don't even know about him ross dickson no he was like one of the he had a huge following back in the day still does now but he was like one of the the earlier guys who was just pushing the ebooks and then I would go like hang out with him and train with him and he would tell me like how many copies of the ebook he was selling I was like excuse me like I'm slaving away doing my one-to-ones and he was making literally just do one post and it's like just printing money yeah and it is this was obviously before like the apps came onto the scene yeah so then that was why I was like right okay I need to change what I'm doing because this is not working out and how did you what was the changed like what what did you immediately start youtube yep yeah because in i feel like i couldn't get myself across the way i wanted to on instagram and this was i think it was around about maybe just before or around the time they started to launch the video so they'd launched videos right um but i was pretty useless on camera and i felt like i just wanted to take my time with talking about fitness and what you mostly like exercise execution and mistakes that people were making and a lot of questions people are asking me so I just would make long form content to address that as if I was speaking to a client did you feel like it immediately worked um I had to play around with the way that I would put the video together and what exactly I would talk about so I was doing a load of random different things I haven't thought like oh maybe I should just vlog I wasn't good at vlogging.

16:09But then there was like a series I did common mistakes that people make when training each muscle group. And then one of them took off and got like 100 ,000 views. I was like, okay, this is what I'm supposed to do. Okay, great. So then that's when that took off. And then I got into the online coaching. So good. And then after that was the app. Yeah, wow. Yeah. So good. How did you start with the with that was it was it sweat to begin with it was oh yeah so the it as soon as it became an app it became um it was originally called sweat with kayla and then very quickly just became sweat because i realized that sweat with kayla again like i said before about that personal brand i was like well i'm not good at everything i'm not a yoga person i'm not a Pilates person.

16:58Right now I'm currently doing plyometric training, doing HIIT training. So I was like, we need to bring on an A-team of trainers. And so Sweat with Kayla quickly became Sweat, which was a platform for women to be able to train however they want. And it still is like that today, which is amazing. Is that your idea? Yeah. Well, I didn't want to be, because what was I going to do, Sweat with Kayla? And then it was, do you do yoga? Do you do Pilates? I'm like, no. And people are coming in from everywhere and they don't know my story and I can't retell it every single time on Instagram. So I'm like, no, I don't.

17:27Like I need to create something that, sorry, I need to create something that is for everyone, for every woman. So that's what I did. Great name. Dude, it is the best name. Did you have like any problems to get that name? At the start? No. I remember originally me saying that out loud and someone saying, yuck. I'm like, what do you mean? They're like, yuck, sweat. I was like, what do you mean? That's like what you do when you train. And like, that was weird back then. But a lot of things were weird back then. Yeah. So I feel like I, Got lucky. How does it work with finding the right developers to build this app that you wanted to make?

18:03I'm sure that's... How do I answer this question?

18:10How do I answer this nicely? It's all about learning. I think the biggest mistake that you can make is trying to do everything yourself. and I think that if I could give advice to anyone in the future when building apps and I think it's different very different nowadays but then it would just be do a little bit of research get a few more quotes see what they've actually produced but like I said we were the one of the first ever female fitness apps even the first female theme so it hadn't really it hadn't been made before I guess no so we're like stuffing around and not knowing anything about code anything about apps like now it's easy back then you're building an app for half a million to a million dollars now you can offshore and build an app for i think it's 30 000 pounds like correct me if i'm wrong but that's insane yeah i would have loved that well a lot of them are now all like white label it's like everyone's using basically the same app but just like different pictures and workouts correct and why not if you can do that if you can get your content what that it's the same is the guides.

19:16You can get your content out fast. You did the PDFs. You get your content out fast, you now do the apps, the white-labeled apps. Why not? It's do your content. It's just someone else is doing the hard work in the backend. And I guess, yeah, that's true for anybody who is looking to build something, whether it's an app or it's like a piece of software. Your advice would be ask around, get quotes of different people and actually see what their track record is like and what they've actually done. You'll be able to see some of these app developers have built some incredible apps. If you can see their portfolio and you've used those apps before, at least you feel safe in the fact knowing that this, because it is, and the app developers will tell you and people that own those companies, if you try and do it a cheap way, you're going to get things that break.

20:02And then it's really hard when you don't understand code, you're kind of giving someone else power and if it breaks you have to pay otherwise you have to rebuild it all over again so like you can get shackled in that way so it's like be very careful well the absolute worst this is what i've experienced as well because i've got my own app is when it doesn't work and you've got thousands tens of thousands of users who are logging in to do their workout if it's not working properly you there's just a shit storm and then everybody's Because you're kind of the face. Yep. They all come to you and like, why is this not working?

20:39Correct. That 100 % happened to me. Yeah. That was the first thing that ever happened. Again, I just don't know what I was thinking when releasing the app. I, like the BBG guides, thought that no one would be interested. And it was too many people interested at once. And it crashed. and there were 20 something thousand complaints of the crash in about 24 to 48 hours with one or two actually i think it was just one customer care person wasn't one it was one yeah so learning so how do you prevent that from happening again oh that like exactly what i said It's like doing your research, prepare. Now, like, I don't know how, I feel old when I say it, but I'm like, now we have tools to determine, data to determine how many users you potentially might have, how many team members you might need for this.

21:39Like, we've got AI. We didn't have that back then. We're like, oh, one person could answer all those emails. And then when, like I said, when that crash happens and everything goes to shit, you've got one person in 20 ,000 emails saying, I can't log in. That's mental. How many people do you have on the team now? I mean, obviously there'll be the developers with the developer side of things, but in terms of like your whole ecosystem. With - within Sweat, I would say maybe 60, maybe more. Yeah. Depends what we need. And was it - was it all you to begin with? Did you get bought out and then you got back into it?

22:18Correct. So, um - Because I'm curious to hear about this story. I need some - I don't really tell - I don't really tell this story. Why? Yeah. It's private. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, but I can tell you roundabout the story. So, I think the goal when you have any company is you build it up and you sell it. And that is so many people's goal. 99 % of people, when they have a company, their goal is I want to build this company up. I want to sell it. And for me, that was never my goal. I built this company and it was like literally a child to me. and the women were like sisters to me. And so when the opportunity came to sell it, I was so, I don't think I've ever, my mental health has ever been so poor.

23:03Like I was so nervous. I was so anxious. I was excited by the opportunities that it was going to bring. However, just selling, literally felt like selling a child. I don't know how to explain it. And so then when it was sold, what's meant to happen is, and I don't know if any other founders feel like this, but you're meant to get this feeling of, oh my God, like money hits your bank account oh my god it's done and like that dollar amount no matter what it was meant nothing because i was like now what yeah now i've sold a brand that and i've lost control like essentially and you put your the control into someone else's hands which is fine nothing happened but you just don't know and then i think when the opportunity came to purchase the company back, I just jumped.

23:51Like I was like, and I get my baby back. And that's when I felt the happiness and the sigh of relief, which is, should be the opposite. So I just knew I wasn't ready. And it's not like I would never sell it, but I just wasn't ready at the time. Yeah. I think that's a good lesson for people who, uh, they're building their business and they do have that goal or initial goal, just wanting to exit because then what's going to happen after that? Yeah. Maybe some people are going to be happy just okay it's done I can enjoy the money but I'm sure many would they would maybe miss the grind or like you said they missed their baby yeah and especially I think my my advice which is I which I said before is if you're going to build a personal brand and your brand is your name when you sell it you have to remember that it is still you that has to be they've bought you so you must still work and if you don't you lose control yes I don't like being told what to do yeah well imagine if I bought you and then I could use your name your face your tone of voice your personality anything personality your youtube I could say or do anything you're just a puppet you'd hate that yeah I would not like that you would hate that yeah um I'm not saying that's what's happening I'm just saying this is advice to people who are thinking of building up a brand with their name attached.

25:13Yeah. So that's still your priority at the moment then? Yeah. Nothing else going on? Yeah. Like there's lots of stuff going on, but I think that my learning was to stay invisible in the other stuff. So grow invisible brands, be involved with brands that are invisible or property development that is invisible and then that you're invisible and then just grow. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, concentrate on sweat that people can see. And it's still doing good. It's still good. It's still great. Even with all the other competition out there, how are you managing to stay on top? Well, we're women's only. So, like, if you can imagine, if you put all the fitness apps in the world in front of you and then you just go, only women, that really niches out a lot of the apps because a lot of apps want to be able to include everyone.

26:01So, we're just for women. And I think we are just really, really strong. There are competition for sure. But I think we welcome that and we love that. The more influencers and the more trainers there are helping people, the better. And some of those women that have those apps are my friends. They're killing it. Love it. They're amazing. So with the array and diversity of the programs that you have on the app, which are the ones that the women tend to use the most? Strength. Strength and Pilates right now for sweat are huge. The other ones are one of the most highly requested, which I would never think about because I'm not in it, is perimenopause and menopause, which I'm just like, my brain can't wrap my head around because I haven't experienced it.

26:51And like when people were saying, have you got anything for pregnancy back in the day? I was like, no. Like I've never been pregnant. I'm not going to put a workout program out there. Even though I've done my course, I'm doing a course and being pregnant is very different. It wasn't until I actually became pregnant, then I did the pregnancy guide and then, sorry, the pregnancy program and then post-pregnancy, the post-pregnancy program. You have to experience, I very much feel for me. Yeah. I don't know if that's the same for you, but - Yeah. Well, I mean, I've not been pregnant before, but - Well, I hope not.

27:21But it's like when I was, I could never coach people to compete or lead it to a competition. Correct. If I'd never competed before, because it's just, it's, it's a full on thing, a psychological journey. It's a mental battle and it's pretty damn demanding on your body. Not, well, not me to flip the script, but I do have a question for you. Yeah. Can, because I'm so interested in this right now, just watching some of my friends go through the journey of competing. How does that affect like your mind when it comes to like your body visually seeing it and your mind when it comes to food? Um, so the weirdest thing is because you are literally in the best condition you've ever been in, but you never think you're good enough.

28:07So you always look in the mirror and like, I remember just thinking I was fat. Like I just wasn't lean enough. Like I wasn't shredded enough to compete with the people that were going to be inside of me. Right. So that's a weird thing. And then this really kind of happens. It depends how aggressive you are with the deficit. but for my first one I was just so worried about not being lean enough that I probably went over the top with reducing the calories and doing the cardio which was just the walking so probably like four weeks out I started to like resent people who were just going out and living normal lives and just eating at restaurants and having fun and going out I was just like it was like I would just like look down on them and think that I was superior because I was making all these sacrifices And then it's weird how like in the evening, all I wanted to do was watch people eat food, do these food challenges.

29:00So I was like, it's like this guilty pleasure of watching people eat like amazing food. And then I would like write down a list of all the foods, which I wanted to eat after the competition. And what happened after the comp? I couldn't stop eating for three weeks. Really? So there was, I have like the majority of my whole career going to the gym, a very good balance it's very flexible i can eat what i want i don't have to go crazy with cardio or anything like that and i can have find this happy medium but the moment you take it to the extreme with just like so much training so much cardio and just restricting yourself that you you just i don't know but like when you finish the competition you can't stop yourself from eating it's like you you need to have either another goal or you need to like gradually reverse diet and would you say that that would be i mean i just i don't think it's the case for everyone but you see this happen a lot that people they end up having these horrible eating habits yeah in a relationship with food after doing a competition because they've restricted themselves for such a long period of time which they probably don't need to do if they just planned and prepped properly like well in advance all right guys quick pause here i've got a question for you are you in shape are you not in shape is there work to do most likely if so i have the tool for you which is going to help you out massively it's the thirst app this is something which i personally use myself when it comes to my training and my nutrition i have all the programs in there which i use on a regular basis and for those who are just looking to lose a bit of body fat the Same thing goes for women as well.

30:41A lot of people don't realize that I used to coach for a large chunk of my life. So all of my coaching experience has been put inside of this app. I want you to learn as much as possible about how to get yourself in shape. There's exclusive videos in there telling you how to do it, how to execute exercises properly, the foods which I eat, and a newly added nutrition section where you can track your meals and your daily macros. is pretty much this pocket-sized version of myself, which I'm going to carry around with you all day, every day. So if there's something which might interest you, which it definitely will do, I highly suggest to check out the link in the description, head over to the Thirst app, get it downloaded.

31:18You will not regret it. Let's crack on with the episode. What I think is really interesting that you just said is that is, obviously I only work with women, so I hear women say the exact same thing about dieting and competing. And although I've never done it, I think it's really refreshing to hear that you also felt that way. Because when even yesterday, oh, I'm sorry, on Saturday, there's a muscle show on. And the men on the stage, they look so, I didn't see the women's one, but the men, they look so confident, they look so happy, they look so impressed with themselves. And it's nice to hear that you said, well, actually, I was in the best condition, but felt.

31:56Yeah. Yeah, that's so. You're mentally in a very weird place. Yeah, it's weirdly nice to hear. Which is why I think after the second time I was like, I don't, some people really enjoy the process. Like Ryan Terry, for example, he'd been competing for like, God knows how many years. He just fucking loves it. And I'm like, you're weird, man. Like, why do you love doing it so much? But I mean, he's, this was like, he was competing, but he wasn't winning as well. So that's just like crazy how he continues to do it. But now he's won the Olympia three times in a row. so it's like okay it's kind of it's paying off now but for me I don't like the extremes would you say that has changed your mindset on goal setting you know like you said you it feels like you needed to have set another goal after to then have not gone on a complete yeah I think the weird thing is is like I would like to maybe do it one more time just to see how far I could push myself because I don't really have a goal at the moment it's just like I just kind of want to look good and I know exactly what to do to look good enough I don't have to go crazy with the training I can do I can push myself but not need to go crazy with overdoing it I don't need to go crazy with restricting myself to maintain a healthy level of body fat and also like looking good if I want to I can tweak a few things to drop the body fat but you would have never been able to do that if you hadn't gone through that aggressive journey so that's your learning you go through this massive, this journey.

33:26And that's why it's like so hard with these quick fixes and like people ask for this magic pill. But it's actually the journey that teaches you all the lessons that you need. So then when life gives those lessons back to you, you can then, and I think this applies to everything, even in relationships, you learn those lessons and you can slowly like tweak and adjust because you've gone through it once before. Whether that quick fix, you learn nothing. and it's i have experienced what it's like to be on very low calorie intake and when i see other coaches put their clients on like really low calories i know that's gonna really do some damage like they just will not be able to stick to it in the long run sure will they get results if they actually stick to it yes of course they're going to lose weight they'll lose fat but they're probably gonna lose some muscle at the same time yeah but the coach has not thought about this in the long run they just want that transformation that's what the coach wants they don't care about what's going to happen after that so then they made the transformation the client is happy or they at least they think they're happy they said okay thank you and then they they're just fucked after that absolutely they gain it all back and probably gain more because they just they cannot stop eating and then they're like what the hell has just happened So I would like it if coaches were actually thinking about the mental health and the long-term effects of what it is that they're telling their clients to do and teach them how to do something consistently over a long period of time.

35:02Because the best results do come from people who are actually, they're putting in the small efforts every day, not just this really short, intense period of time. One more question for you, sorry. So you're obviously, I'm a female in a female space. Would you call yourself, I would just say you're like a male in the male space. You got a lot of guy friends who are obviously into fitness. Do you feel their mental health is better now in 2025 or worse than 10 years ago? like you can even speak to yourself do you think that 10 years ago when instagram social media first started your mental health was better or now in 2025 when it's a saturated market of health and fitness people everywhere i think the bar is a lot higher in terms of like what is a good physique i think because you can see more because of social media because this you're being shown so many crazy physiques that you could have a good physique, but if you are comparing yourself to the top fitness people in the world, you're going to think that you don't actually look that good.