The Catalyst to Losing 300+ Pounds | Ethan Suplee EP 381

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation show.

0:10I firmly believe that taking charge of your mindset allows you to be in the driver's seat of your life and unlock your potential. And that's why I'm thrilled to share that my new book is out right now. It's called The Greatness Mindset. In it, you'll learn how to build a plan for greatness through powerful exercises and toolkits designed to propel your life forward. This is the book that I wish I had 20 years ago. It's everything I've learned in the last decade with the research and the science to help you unlock your mind. Make sure to go to lewishouse.com slash 2023 mindset to pick up your copy of my book, The Greatness Mindset, today.

0:52When you look back, what do you think the thing is that drew you to eating as a bad habit? I've tried to do like self psychoanalysis on this and I get to a point where I'm five years old I go to visit my grandparents in Vermont and their reaction to me and if I look at a picture of myself as at five years old today I see just like a normal healthy kid with maybe some chubby cheeks right. their reaction to me was like oh my god what are your parents doing to you you have gone to crap and my favorite food was lasagna which my grandpa would always make me yeah and he had it cooking as i arrived i could smell it and i'm there visiting them for the first time without my mom or dad in vermont like super excited their reaction is this and then they basically were like we're not you can't have a second helping of lasagna so in that day was the first time that i snuck food and it was clearing the table and eating food off their place at the same time like clearing it and like yeah the next day they weighed me first thing in the morning which i've never been on a scale before and i'm being weighed and then it was like okay we're going on a one mile walk that is for your benefit.

2:19And this did a number of things. It developed the sneaking food habit. It developed the habit of wanting to eat privately and the idea that people witnessing me eating was not good. And it also created a weird barrier to me just naturally wanting to be outside inactive because at five I was very active running around but when it was enforced when it was this point of like a punishment almost yeah this is we're not consulting how willing you are to do this we're not saying is there something you'd like to do outside we're saying you must go March a mile to their mailbox and a mile back and like this is not for fun this is for because you have gotten so overweight that really pushed the idea of physical activity into another punishment type thing where I just didn't want to do it anymore so it was kind of this wild confluence of new mental structures that I built where it was like well I'm gonna sneak food now and I'm gonna not do activities how How insecure were you about your weight when you got older and started recognizing it or seeing maybe someone make fun of you or realizing like, oh, I can't go on a hike with my girlfriend or my friends and do these certain activities?

3:47Did you feel insecure about it ever or was it more of just this is who you are? I definitely felt insecure about it. I also got into a lot of fights as a kid and was like, you know, there were a few times in elementary school where like some preschooler would say like wow look how fat he is and that obviously wasn't going to fight a little preschooler and you come to learn like well avoid little kids at all costs because they just say they see something and they just talk about it and I didn't that made me terribly uncomfortable but if like another 10 year old said something like that to me we would just have a fight and then people would know like oh he's like not a nice guy in that circumstance.

4:30We're not going to say that to him. How did you get into acting and being such a successful actor while also having this kind of insecurity or knew that you stood out in a different way than most of the other actors in Hollywood? I grew to really dislike anything done from a point of authoritarianism. It just was not for me. So if it's like you're going on a diet or you have to do sports or you have to study, I was not into it. And I noticed a couple of things. I was never like a class clown, but we had an actor in my school and so much more attention was paid to the fact that he was an actor than any of his physical attributes, any of his other accomplishments in school.

5:16It was like this, this distraction, this like, here's who this person is, but like, here's this weird identity that actually has nothing to do with him that we're all going to focus on that and and there was something kind of magical about that like I can't like kill people with jokes that's just not what I do but what if I had that create this other identity that would distract people from how fat I am and talking about that or poking fun at me or even wanting to talk to me about it because like I'll just show them this and it got you out of school because this dude would leave school for weeks at a time and go hang out on sets and like guess what's on a set craft services on a set and free food all day and you get a trailer like you can fill your pockets with food and go back to your trailer and eat it like it's this wonderful place it was like unlimited food supply oh my god and then there was also like always gonna be like some grip who had a prescription to Percocet that you could like give a wink to.

6:22And by the way, it always started legitimately. Like my feet hurt, my ankles and my knees hurt. Like these are real things. You're on set 18 hours a day. You're doing it. None of it is just irrational. It's all irrational, but it's also very easily rationalized, if that makes sense.

6:51Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of The Daily Motivation, and I hope you have an amazing rest of your day. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to click the link in the description. That will take you to the full episode of our main podcast on The School of Greatness. And if you are loving The Daily Motivation, please follow us over on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review over on Apple podcast right now. And if you want more exclusive content and ad free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our greatness plus channel on Apple podcast right now. And if you want to get even more inspiration from our world-class guests and learn how to improve your life and take it to the next level, then make sure to sign up for the greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter.

7:41Again, have an amazing day and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.