841: Adam Bornstein | The Real Skinny on the Weight Loss Industry

23:35It's a dirty word. There's a reason for that. It doesn't take a lot of time. There's not any gross upsell. I don't want your credit card number and all that crap. Many of the guests on the show subscribe and contribute to the course. So hey, come join us. You'll be in smart company. You can find the course at jordanharbinger.com slash course. Now, back to Adam Bornstein. So a lot of people, what they would do is they would go, okay, I don't eat breakfast. I don't have any calories until, like you said, 2 p.m., and then I can eat until 7 or 8 at night or 10 or whatever the window is. It's funny.

24:06I laughed when he said intermittent fasting because that was trending so hard for so long. It was it had like a better part of a decade where early in 2010, it was like every fitness guy was only the edge case fitness guys were doing it. And then towards the end of the teens, every fitness person was doing it like every Cross Fitter was doing it. But it was so annoying because friends of mine, for example, who I go, hey, I'm coming to Phoenix, man. We got to go out and we don't you know, I know you're sober now. We don't have to have a drink. And he goes, ah, so not only am I sober now, but I'm doing intermittent fasting.

24:38So I don't eat anything after 6 p.m. And I'm like, well, I land at 545. It's going to be like 645. Can we eat then? No. So I'm like, well, I don't really want to go out to dinner with you if you're going to stare at me and not do anything. And so we did that. And it wasn't that interesting because I was eating and he's like, ah, I can't watch you eat that. Oh, I'm going to go for a walk. Look, call me when you're done and I'll come back and we can talk at the table. And I'm like, this sucks. Like I'm on a dinner date with myself. I flew in to see a friend and he can't even sit here because he's intermittent fasting.

25:10So it does, it screws with your social life. And it seems like at the end of the day, the reason people lose weight on intermittent fasting is in part because maybe they were eating way too much for three meals. Now they only eat two meals. Surprise, surprise, they lost a couple of pounds. Right, and that's so much of the health changes are not the scientification of ideas, right? Humans, it's funny. Like we're brilliant creatures, but our brains sometimes are wired in a little messed up way. There's a lizard brain. And I mean, science says this isn't true, but there's a lizard brain in there somewhere, right?

25:43Well, there is. But like a perfect example is our brains react to novel things as opposed to boring things. And social media is the greatest example of this in all time, right? We can't help but stop and look at the car crash, right? Because it's novel. It's different. It's eye grabbing. And I talk about this like fMRI studies when you show people something new or different or seemingly crazy. We stop and pay attention. When we show something boring or like seemingly too simple to possibly work, we completely ignore it. So we are like victims of a system of our own wiring because the type of things that are going to gather our attention.

26:23And again, you can make this akin to the health industry now where like the crazier shit you say. It's why a lot of people hate health, right? Like I have this love-hate relationship where I want to help people, but I don't want to play this game. I just want to tell people like, do these five things, make them apply to your life. And like, hopefully you never need me again. I've said for 20 years that my job in health is to like be so good that people like never need me again, right? It's to get fired. Because if you do your job, like you know what to do. And if you want the accountability, if you want the support, that's another aspect, right?

26:55Sometimes compliance is just about knowing that you've got someone there with you, which is totally great. I have my own support system. But the information itself shouldn't be under lock and keen. It shouldn't be changing the type of things that change your body. Us as humans have not physiologically changed much. Why are we going in the wrong direction over the last 50 years when our bodies are fundamentally the same? Yes, food environment is different, but it's these diets, it's these behaviors, and it is this way that we manipulate people to break their mindsets, create a terrible relationship with food and overcomplicate everything.

27:28And I'm just tired of it, right? Like if you want to look at intermittent fasting as a way to do something, don't worry about how many hours you need to fast, right? Don't even worry about fasting at all. Habitually look at other areas in life where you see that like burnout would happen and why does burnout happen? And I talk about in the book, right? A perfect example is work. Burnout and work has increased over time. And a major factor, not the only factor, but a major factor is that the workday no longer has boundaries, right? It It used to be nine to five. So what happens is the stress of always needing to be on, right?

28:00The expectation that you always need to check your email, right? It is just like it is a 24-hour work cycle, just like it's a 24-hour news cycle. And that creates feelings of anxiety and stress that make work harder for a lot of people. Diet's the same way. We're open kitchen 24-7, right? We don't in our minds think, well, I should start eating at this time and I should stop eating at this time. and anything outside of those parameters, I probably shouldn't eat because eating shouldn't be a 24-7 thing. So I say, forget the intermittent fasting, but like have open kitchen, closed kitchen rules.

28:35And like there was a fascinating study that did just that. I love studies that are so basic, done with humans, not lab rats and mites, and just like get long-term outcomes. And in this study, what they did is they told people, don't change anything about your diet. What I want you to do is move your breakfast back 1.5 hours. So if you ate breakfast at seven, you'd be eating at like 8.30. And take your dinner, let's say you eat dinner at 7 o 'clock, and move it up 1.5 hours. And so you're eating at 5.30. That's it. These people lost significant amounts of weight and kept it up for years because that one change created boundaries where, yeah, like if you break it every now and then, don't worry about it again.

29:11The whole idea is you can't screw this up. Our bodies are very, very resilient. We catastrophize things. But like create a boundary and eat within that boundary, whatever the boundary is. But how is that not intermittent fasting, Adam? It sounds like the same thing with a different name. No, no, no. Because like intermittent fasting presupposes the fasting is the magic. Oh, I see. So you become obsessed with, I need to fast for 16 hours. I need to fast for 20 hours. The big thing right now is alternate day fasting. I need to fast every other day. Or they make you stress about calories. Like two days a week, you can only eat 500 calories a day.

29:43And I'm saying you don't have to count calories. You don't have to count numbers. The idea, again, make it so easy that it's hard to fail. So for me, my rule is I don't take dinner time. I take when I go to bed, right? Because like I can't move up my dinner time an hour and a half because my kids are still in school. They're going to come home and be like, dad. And I'm like, sorry, guys, missed dinner. Yeah. Too bad you had soccer practice. Can't eat with dad now. Have fun eating on your own, sucker. It's about making it practical, right? So I start breakfast at a time that works for me because I want to eat with my kids.

30:13So it's not based on when I woke up. It's based on when I want to eat with my children. And I say two hours before I go to sleep. I'm not going to eat anymore. So again, like instead of playing by someone else's rules, play by your rules, but create boundaries that make it easier for you to not be your own worst enemy. And intermittent fasting gives you these rules, these times, these restrictions that literally they're people who are like sitting there, like looking at their clock and it's like 1.52 and they're like, I got to wait another eight minutes. And I'm like, it doesn't matter. Stomach's growling into the microphone.

30:45Right. But the stress and the anxiety of dying is why we obsess over all these behaviors that do not really make that big of a difference. I know you're tight with Tim Ferriss. You worked with him for, I don't know, like a decade or something. And one of the ways that I met him, I thought he was such a freaking weirdo. And I can say that because we're buddies now, but I thought he was such a freaking weirdo because we were at this event and it was like, I don't know, 11.58 PM, right? And I'm in a conversation with, it was like a hoity-toity event. I'm talking with like an NFL player and an actress or whatever.

31:20And we're having fun. And he walks up and he's like shoveling granola bars into his mouth at like a speed that is highly uncomfortable to watch. I go, what are you doing? And he's like, oh, I'm Tim. I'm like, I know who you are. This is just, it's an honor to meet you. But what are you doing right now? Like this is just, it's painful to watch you eat a kind bar at Blitzkrieg speed. And he's like, well, I only have three minutes left before my fast starts. Or no, sorry. It was like three days left until my cheat day ends. It was one of those things. Right. And it was so funny. And I don't think he does anything like this at all anymore, but it was really comical.

31:56And I remember everybody was talking in the conversation was talking about this for so long because we'd never seen anybody do the work to eat six granola bars in four minutes or however long it was. It was just ridiculous. And essentially you bring up Tim, right? Yeah. I talk about Tim that like I did work with Tim for a long time. And a lot of the things that I learned from Tim have nothing to do with health and fitness. We probably disagree on several things. But the best thing I learned from Tim is kind of a paradigm that helped me create a more effective way for food healthy. And it was a question that Tim would ask me all the time from a business lens.

32:29Right. And it was like, if this were easy, what would it look like? And it's a really, really difficult question to answer. But when I looked at health, when I looked at the health industry, it was like, if this for easy, what would it look like? And the answer is kind of like everything different than what diets tell you, right? Because I found like behaviorally, there are three huge barriers, right? You've got cost, you've got convenience, and you have complexity. Diets tell you that you need to buy really expensive foods, which don't necessarily have any benefit. They make the plans super complex, like having to shovel down, you know, 18 granola bars before your cheat day, hence, right?

33:03And they make them very, very inconvenient, right? Where it's like, some will tell you you have to eat six meals a day. Some will tell you you have to eat one meal a day. Some will tell you that you have to measure your macros. And it's not to say that none of these things can't work. It's just to say that they are so complicated and inconvenient that it makes it less likely it will work for the long term. And I want to stop that, right? Like if things were easy, you could eat takeout. You could have dessert, right? You could not stress about every single thing that you eat. And I would argue like that's the position that people need to come from.

33:37Like health shouldn't be about this game where we're trying to get you to buy a solution. That's an interesting point that I had a note about, right? Because a lot of the marketers, and that's just what they are, right? Selling diets and exercise and stuff like that. Correct. People keep changing things and making up new stuff, terms, whatever, in order to, well, confuse things or confuse you in order to sell stuff. That's why we see like scientists hate him. Three weird tricks that result in a lower waistline within 24 hours. And those are dumb, extreme examples that I bring up. And most of us can see through those.

34:14But what we don't necessarily see through is, look, this is a diet that all the celebrities are on. It's the one they don't tell you about. I'm a celebrity trainer. My name is Jordan Harbinger. I'm going to show you how to lose X weight. And it's all about it. And it's always trending, right? It's like the guys in the movie 300 that everybody was like, damn, look at those six packs. It's like, here's their workout and their diet. But it's not really that. Those guys were probably all on different diets with different trainers. They just had to come in looking crispy for the role. And different drugs.

34:44And different drugs. Yeah, different steroids. Lots and lots of drugs. You guys have played the Hollywood game for a while. Lots of drugs. That is the majority of these changes are not natural whatsoever. But like you sensationalize that answer, but it's true. And like, if you ask me, you don't even have to pick up the book for this one. If you are taking information from someone who is fundamentally pushing a message of fear in order to get you to act in general, run. Like the research, even new study that came up last month about this, about the, you know, and there was one another like a week ago about Fitfluencers, about like the top 100 accounts on Instagram, like 60 % of them make people feel worse about themselves.

35:27And then this is associated with body image issues, food image issues, becoming more unhealthy. Right. And like 50 % of those top 100 trainers, none of them had like any credentials whatsoever. And the message was about fear. And again, it is great marketing. The two primary emotional drivers of marketing, and I know this because I'm a marketer, are fear and greed. Fear and greed will drive people to purchase or act more powerfully than any other emotion, even the good stuff. and if that is the messaging of the people you're taking, they're trying to make you afraid of shit, oh man, that is like as big of a red flag, and if you just were to avoid the people who are trying to get you to fear and react and live in fear of these things, I'd argue you'd be way better off because you're not gonna fall prey to so many of these things that just really short-term fix, long-term failure.

36:19You see it when you know an area better. It's like watching the news, and you go, wow, I know a lot about, I don't know, tanks, right? And I don't really, but like, let's say you do, and you hear something on the news and you go, that's totally wrong. But then you watch the rest of the newscast about things you don't really know that intimately. And you're like, wow, I'm so worried about all these other things. And if you think about it, what if they're as wrong about all of those other things as they were about tanks, the thing you knew a lot about. There's probably a term for this that I'm not getting that I don't know about, but that's kind of what I see with marketing.

36:52So internet marketers will say something like, the technology is so complex, but we automate it for you. And if you don't know how business or real estate investing or whatever works, you buy this course thinking like, oh, they're gonna simplify it for me and they're gonna do this and that and the other thing. But if you talk to somebody who's like a real real estate investor, they're like, you buy properties and you manage them. And then when that gets to be too much, you hire managers to manage them for you. You don't need all this special software that finds the deal. Like all of that is just hypey nonsense that's sold by some shyster who knows that if he goes, yeah, you just buy properties and manage them well, and here's how you find good deal.

37:30Like that's too simple. So they want to make it really complex and weird because it appeals to your greed because you're going to make money, but also it appeals to your fear. Like, I don't think I can do this unless I have somebody guiding me because it's so complicated. And I think you wrote about this in the book. You said, when we learn new things, we get a dopamine hit. And I didn't actually know that, but it makes total sense. It's why I like documentaries and why people watch crap on YouTube. So selling new and complex BS diet and fitness info, it actually gets us a little high in real fitness advice, like, hey, diet and exercise and maybe get some sleep.

38:05It's just too boring for most of us to care about on an emotional lizard brain-ish level. It's not interesting. And it sucks, right? Because we associate complexity with effectiveness. But if you talk to anyone who is like the best at their craft, they will tell you the reason they are so good is that they mastered the basics, right? And if you are good at something, you could probably look at this and be like, well, I can do the basics so well that I am capable of doing some more advanced things, but only because I have mastered the basics. And diets do not care about the basics, right? I'm happy.

38:43I told you this before. One of the most basic things that people can do if you feel hungry, and again, this is going to sound so crazy, like it can't possibly work, is just take longer having your meal. I say in the book, try and take at least 20 minutes to have a meal. I don't care if you eat longer. It doesn't really matter. Most people think, oh, if I'm going to spend an hour eating, I'm going to eat way more. That's not what they find. People who eat, take longer to eat their meals, eat significantly less. And here's why. The average person takes nine minutes to scarf down a meal. We're all pretty much guilty of this because we're in a rush or we're eating in front of our computer or we're eating in front of our phone or the TV or listening to a podcast.

39:21We're distracted. I feel seen slash attacked. Yeah. Yeah. We're distracted and we eat really rapidly or we're trying to feed our kids at the same time, right? I'm waiting for my kids not to kill each other, start throwing food at each other. And it's just like, I've got three minutes. I got to eat my meal so I can enjoy this. And then it's like, all right, off to go get them ready for bed or bath time, whatever it is. Hunger works in a very interesting way in that, you know, your stomach has essentially a satiety center. All right. Boring word for it's going to send a signal to your brain to tell you it's full.

39:50But this ain't the freeway. It takes about 20 minutes for your stomach to send a signal to your brain. So a lot of us eat so quickly and then keep eating thinking that we're not full simply because our body hasn't had enough time to digest and send a signal. I see. This is why I feel uncomfortably full, but not right after I'm done eating. Exactly. And this happens to most people. I'm like, what happened? I wasn't hungry. Right. It just, you needed to give your body more time. And then, right. So if our stomach is essentially there being like the navigator, it's the skipper, right? It's the second May, first May.

40:24Your brain is the quarterback. It's the captain. So your brain is trying to take in other signals to tell you like, hey, stop eating because we're trying to survive. your brain wants your body to be healthy, but you have to give it a chance to succeed. So they have looked at what happens when people eat a meal where they can't see the food on their plate versus when they can, right? So essentially, are you paying attention to what you're eating versus are you not? Because the real life example is you're watching TV, you're scrolling your phone, whatever it is. When people can see what is on their plate, the brain is sending that signal like, oh, this is enough to make you full.

40:56The people who were blinded, couldn't see the food, right? Eating without being able to see what's on the plate, ate more than the people who were able to pay attention. So if we pay attention to what we eat so our brain can see what's on the plate and we slow down so our stomach can tell our brain no more, that alone saves people a significant amount. Some studies show up to hundreds of calories per meal, which could be hundreds per day, which could be thousands per week. And it isn't rocket science, but I had 500 people do the plan that's in the book, which is all habit-based change. It's not like you're not counting calories.

41:31And the hardest thing for them to do was take 20 minutes to eat a meal. I bet. That sounds painful. I don't even know where I would find 20 minutes to eat a meal. Right. With kids. I'm not saying it's easy. And that's why the point of the book is like, I give people tools, but it's like, you don't have to do all of these. The idea of being 100 % with your diet is such a myth. Instead of trying to be 100%, the goal is just don't be 0%. Don't be 0 % and you will be healthier. So if you can apply one tool, you are better off. You put two, three, four, whatever. The idea is just don't go 0 % because most people go 0 % and stay 0 % for months at a time.

42:05And they come up for air and then they go to another desperate, extreme, restrictive diet, lose a little, gain more. And this just keeps on compounding. But the real compounding is how you feel about yourself, how you feel about your body, how you feel about your life. And if you don't think these diets are breaking people outside of the physical, you're kidding yourself because we all care about our health on some level, right? I truly, especially like, I don't care if I have a six pack. I love eating dessert and I have frosted flakes from every single night. I want to live long. I want to be healthy and I'll be around for my kids.

42:37And I don't have the energy to like run my businesses and do things. That's it. And that's most people. But the things that you need to do to achieve those goals are nowhere as complicated of what you're like, you're given to like live this extreme lifestyle that you don't even want. This is the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, Adam Bornstein. We'll be right back. If you like this episode of the show, I invite you to do what other smart and considerate listeners do, which is take a moment and support our amazing sponsors. All the deals, discount codes, and ways to support the show are all at jordanharbinger.com slash deals.

43:10And you can always search for any sponsor using the AI chatbot on the website as well, jordanharbinger.com slash AI. Thanks for supporting those who support the show. Now for the rest of my conversation with Adam Bornstein. It is interesting. It's almost like psychological warfare, right? We're constantly bombarded by things. We fall back into our old habits because we're confused. Then our brains are seeing novelty as reward. So we're looking for the new thing. I had a friend, I guess, ex-business partner, and he had a new diet probably every two or three days. Obviously, he was overweight and he never stuck with anything.

43:44And he would break his diet and eat like a whole large pizza for one meal. And it was just really annoying and sad because he would tell you all about this new thing. And it was always ridiculously complicated. I mean, it was never like, okay, I'm going to eat half portions today. It was always like, well, I've got 78 ,000 moving parts. And it's like, maybe just like go for a walk every day instead. And he could never do it. And it was deep shame with him, right? And the shame cocktail that we're all being fed with the marketing is probably a big reason why many of us are not able to lose any weight successfully.

44:18You give this great analogy in the book where if you had a job and they said, okay, we're going to ask you to do everything different about how you do work. And also you can't take any days off. And we're going to extend your workday by two hours. And you can't use a computer to do this anymore. You got to use an abacus or whatever, instead of like Excel, you would look at them sideways and walk out the door. Cause you're, what are you talking about? And yet when you have to do a diet, it's like, so you got to do everything except you got to do it standing on your head and you got to cut your portions in half, but you can only eat during the summer solstice or whatever.

44:54It's impossible. But we look at that and we go, okay, I can do this. I could do this. I got the willpower to do this. It doesn't make any sense. And it doesn't work. And I will bet you there's probably going to be, if there's not already, a summer solstice diet. That's how stupid the industry is. It's just so ridiculous because we can take any hook. And I saw it, right? Some people have asked me like why I wrote a book, right? Why in 2023 am I writing a diet and health book when I have audience, I have all this. And And part of the motivation is, you know, I love writing books. But part of it is when I went to sell this book, the publishers were like, well, what's the hook?

45:31And I'm like, well, the hook is that like, run healthy. And like these books, no offense, guys, a lot of them that you're putting out are bullshit. I bet they love that answer. Right. We're not helping people. Like I care about helping people. It's what I've done for 20 years, right? I don't care. I don't need credit. I help people behind the scenes. I help people in front of the scenes. I help people. The hook is, man, like the data is right in front of us, right? at 40 % obese, 75 % obese or overweight. Some people stress anywhere between like 10 to 12 times per meal about what they're going to eat, right?

46:00Because they worry about what they're going to eat, how they feel, and they internalize guilt. And like, this is wrong. It is so wrong. And I'm like, guys, like, let's just help people, right? They're like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's really good. But what's the hook? It's the one thing you're going to tell them to change. And I was like, you know what? At some point, someone, and I don't know if it's going to be me, someone's got to write a book that fundamentally gets publishers to look at this differently so we can actually stop producing so many diet books. We can just have a few that help people and let it be that because there are other people with other books that can like help people feel better about themselves or leave this dieting game.

46:30And it was kind of my North Star, but it's crazy because like the more you look at the system, right? Even the publishers, the publishers want to make money and they see that like the books with this sensationalized thing sell more. So then when I'm like, no, this book is going to be great. It's going to help people. And they're like, well, show me a comp of a book that didn't have a hook that was a bestseller. And I get it because part of the reason I had a New York Times bestseller in 2013 and I stopped writing after that and I had this idea to write this book, but it took me forever to report it and research it and do it the right way.

47:00But part of it was like, I was guilty of it too a decade ago. I had the intermittent fasting book and I overstated claims and I thought it would help people at the time and it didn't. And I felt really, really bad about it because it was part of it at the time, but I saw like I was actually contributing to the problem, right? And I was playing the game and I knew partially why I was. Even when it came to selling this book, I couldn't sell the book with the title that it is, You Can't Screw This Up. What I really wanted to call it was The Comfort Zone. But what I had to title it in order to sell it was The Takeout Diet.

47:29Oh, yeah. Okay. Interesting. Yeah. Because one of my foundational principles here is like, I loathe the fact that every single diet is like either A, you can never eat takeout or B, when you go to eat takeout, never touch the bread basket. Don't get the chips. When you order your entree, cut it in half and set half of it aside and ask your server to take the other half away and don't ever touch dessert and never like drink alcohol. And a lot of these things are choices, right? If you don't want to drink alcohol, that's fine. If you don't like dessert, that's fine. But like that's not sustainable.

47:59That's not enjoyable. That's ridiculous, right? Like for a lot of people going out to eat is a treat and And diets make us fundamentally in opposition of our food environment. Right. Like take all the fun out of the thing you used to love doing forever. We're constantly fighting it, right? More people eat out than ever before. Some of this is a byproduct of COVID. And yet more people are unsatisfied after they eat a meal because they live in the shame and guilt. And like those two things should not coexist. So instead of just constantly fighting against the food environment, why can't I just like we teach people to coexist?

48:32So I sold this book knowing that when I was going to submit it, I was going to submit it with the title of the comfort zone, which they didn't want to take. But I had to sell it under a different packaging because that's the industry, right? We can talk about the book industry forever, the marketing industry, the supplement industry. It's like it has to be packaged up a certain way. And I'm like, all that is doing is perpetuating the problem, whereas the goal of all this should be to help people. I can't say it enough, and it sounds like goody-two-shoes, and most listeners probably don't know me from a hole in the wall.

49:00But man, this has been my battle for a long time. That's why I had to write this book. I had to stubbornly write this book. Someone has got to do something to just call out the industry, point out, throughout the book, I'm pointing out all these different diets that are just complete fucking nonsense and be like, it doesn't have to be this hard. It doesn't have to be this miserable. And you don't have to abandon everything that you think you love in order to be healthy. I was talking to a mutual friend of ours, Jason Pfeiffer, who's been on the show. and he works, he's the editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur Magazine.

49:32Is that right? Yeah. That is correct, yep. Yeah, I wasn't sure if he was an editor or editor-in-chief. EIC, the big boss over there. He's the big man. He runs the show. And he worked with you a long time ago at Men's Health, which back then was under this brand Rodale. And they always had these sort of in-house published diet books. And it was always like abs for summer. These diet books are not written by experts at all. They're just written by like staff writers and they have the hook that you mentioned and it's marketed like crazy and you get a coupon with every issue for that year of men's health and it's just like a profit center for the publisher.

50:09And Jason told me, he's like, oh yeah, I couldn't believe that they would pump out these diet books by writers that were not experts. The rationale for the diet was just completely made up. Nobody knew if it would work because it wasn't really tested. It was just a machine. He said it. And people are supposed to read these things and then devote their health and the rest of the year to this diet. It's just absolutely insane. so that element of marketing and dieting and publishing was crazy to me but you're right the publishing industry itself is probably a whole different type of conversation because I have a friend who's a really good writer he wrote a really interesting book I sent it to a friend of mine who's an editor a big time sort of big time editor over at a big publisher I said how does this guy get a book published and she's like I don't know I don't have time to read it.

50:54And I'm like, I did. It was really good. And she goes, yeah, I don't know. I'm not, it's not really my area. And then I go, well, if this guy who already wrote a book can't get it published, I'm never writing a book. And she goes, no, no, no, you should. And I go, well, why? I don't know what I'm going to write. This guy already wrote something good. He can't get it published. Why would I get published? She goes, well, look, your friend needs a book proposal. And I go, oh God, I'd have to do one of those two. She goes, oh no, you don't need to do that. And I'm like, I'm so confused. This guy has a book, but he doesn't have a proposal.

51:19And so he can't get published. I don't have a book and I don't need a proposal. And she's like, no, we'll just have somebody write a book for you and market it under your brand and you'll do great. But this guy who actually has a good book, he doesn't have a marketing machine behind it other than us. So we're not interested. And I was like, wait a minute, that is like the opposite of what I thought books were supposed to be. I thought books are written by people that had something to say. And it's almost not true anymore. They're by and large written by people who can just make a million dollars for the publisher off the book.

51:46And that's the rationale for even creating it in the first place. So if you're on a reality show and you can make some shit up about that show and your life, and it's even remote, mildly interesting, doesn't really matter. 90 % of the copies will never get read. Then you have a book and you get a million dollar advance dot, dot, dot profit. And it's like, that's why it's probably why most books suck because nobody reads them. And how many great ideas and never see the light of day. Right. And it's very easy to say, and I'll be honest, but Hey, maybe my book sucks. I don't think so. Like if you asked me to pick, I always say like choosing between books is like Sophie's choice, but there's no Sophie's Choice here for me.

52:18This book is my favorite one I've written because it's the most honest is the one that I feel will just stand a test of time. Right. But like I tried to pitch this book in 2017 and my book agent who was phenomenal told me he's like, it's not good enough. Right. So I've had people I surround myself with people, which is a good thing in general, who keep you honest. I waited till it was ready. And he was like, this thing is freaking awesome. And still the friction was there. And that's frustrating for me. Right. Like industry shouldn't be determined by who has the biggest marketing machine. Yeah.

52:46Industry should be determined by where are the best ideas that create the most greater good for all or for the people who need it most. And yeah, the publishing industry, by and large, and there are exceptions to this, but by and large is driven by marketing and exposure, not ideas. And that's not a good place to be for society. So you try and create ecosystems that allow these forward thinking people, the people who are trying to do good, like have platforms. Much of my work has now been behind the scenes trying to do this because I saw like the machine itself was broken. So I had to go build my own to go and like give people distribution and a platform because so many of the people who had helped the most and get away from this dogmatic, obsessive stress were like, people hate health for a good reason.

53:31But no one shouldn't care about their health because what allows us to live this gift that we call life, it's what allows us to connect with people and like do the things that we'd love to do, it's just become so convoluted and gotten away from like what it needs to be. I want to get back to some of the diet stuff. I know you and I were talking a couple weeks ago now and you had said scientists have essentially created food that has end run our brain into thinking we want more food even when we're full. You talked about satiety. What is happening with food aside from bigger portion sizes, which I think we have all sort of come to accept as fact, what is happening with food where the technology has exceeded our ability to kind of get past it i've read somewhere again maybe your book that the the biggest sweetest thing a hunter-gatherer would have had thousands of years ago was like a carrot right probably a little sweeter you got you got the berries yeah all right things like that yeah but the things that has happened and this goes back to what you're talking about earlier right in the 80s you had like the the no fat movement and we poured sugar into this.

54:32And this wasn't the first time, but it was kind of a tipping point, if you will, of when food manufacturers went and like Snackwells is the big one at the time was like, oh, wait, we can manipulate food and we can manipulate it so much that people just keep eating it. And people are surprised when the author Michael Moss has written about this, where he talks about the bliss point, which I mentioned in the book. And the bliss point is this sweet spot of salty, sweet, and fatty that makes us insatiable. And these foods are now make up 60 % of what are in grocery stores. Now, the mistake is to think that you can't eat any of these food, right?

55:13Because the poison is in the dose. Our bodies are resilient. The example I say is like, if you were to work out one time every month, would you think you'd be in fantastic shape? And the answer would be no, better than doing nothing. But once a month, not doing it. If you eat a couple bad meals per week, it's not going to have any impact, right? In life, I said like most people will eat three meals a day, right? Seven days a week, 21 meals a week. If you had three shitty meals and you were 18 out of 21, so you're roughly 90%, you're going to be in phenomenal shape, right? But we don't think that.

55:45We have like the one bad meal and they're like, fuck it, slash those tires and we go off. But what happens is we eat these hyperpalatable foods and they make us almost a bottomless pit. And there is this fantastic researcher at the NIH named Dr. Kevin Hall. And what he did was this fascinating experiment where he would take people who are eating like a whole food diet and not tell them what to eat, how much to eat, just basically buffet style, eat this food. And then they would give the same amount calorically of the foods, but also tell them eat as much as you want of things like chef Boyardee and mac and cheese.

56:22Again, the ultra processed foods. And without telling them how much to eat, without manipulating anything, and these were in two weeks stints where it was the same people, the people on the ultra processed foods ate 500 calories more in a meal. Oh, wow. And then the craziest part is they would then switch them back to the less processed. So I'm not saying all processed things. These are the ultra processed foods where you are adding in sugar, fat, salt unnaturally. So sugar, not bad. Fat, not bad. Salt, not bad. Adding it in unnaturally to foods in a specific amount. These people ate 500 more calories per meal.

56:58Switching back to these foods that are like minimally processed or not processed at all, they suddenly stopped eating 500 calories less. Just like that. Again, no guidelines whatsoever. And scientists are still trying to figure out, we do not know yet, exactly what it is that like, Is there a way to essentially turn this off? But when we eat these foods all the time, it's easy to see why it's so simple for people to be overweight because the food industry, the food environment is now filled with so many. And it's even why I argue like sometimes you're actually better off going and eating takeout, right?

57:37Going and getting some sushi, eating some of the favorite things you want because it's these ultra processed foods that are most likely the most problematic thing in general instead of like all of these individual villains, right? The sugar, the fat, the carbs, like independently. So that means if you look at anything independently, sugar is not going to make you fat. A gram of sugar is four calories. No one's getting fat off four calories, right? Carbs, it's the same thing. Most carbs have fiber, which leaves you full, right? Fiber is one of the biggest cheat codes in all of dieting. You eat fiber, you eat less.

58:07End of story. That means you can eat whole wheat bread. You can eat pasta. Like the things that people tell you, you can eat potatoes. Potato is literally the most filling food that we have, period. It's crazy to think how many people are afraid to even eat a white potato. But it's something that will leave you more full than almost anything else. But it's these ultra processed foods, the things that are chemically engineered, that we don't need to completely avoid, but probably need to limit the most. I also read, and I think again in your book, that when we avoid certain foods, we end up eating 133 % more calories than before.

58:43Which I was like, does he mean 33 %? Because 133 % more than twice as much when we're avoiding certain foods. That's insane. So if we're saying avoid carbs, we're really just doubling up on the calories by eating more meat or something. And who hasn't done that? Who hasn't been like, they swear off pasta and bread and rice and I'm going to eat no white foods, right? So I have a short rib thing instead. Yeah. Yeah. And then a couple of weeks go by and you're like literally at the bottom of a bucket of pasta and you're like, what have I done? I'm such a horrible human being. But like, again, we are we are simple creatures, but sometimes, you know, you can almost laugh about it.

59:17We want what we can't have. Right. And when we fundamentally tell ourselves that something is completely off limits, it changes triggering, basically wiring in our brain to make us desire it more in a much more effective way is to not put things completely off limits, because it's just going to increase the compliance of behavior. If you tell yourself you can eat dessert, and you tell yourself to enjoy dessert, and you savor it, and when you have it, you don't feel guilty, cravings actually decrease, right? This is what the idea of like, of gratitude, and being present as all about, like when people who are in the moment, experiencing things differently than people who are clouded by other emotions.

1:00:00And yeah, the idea of just like cut everything out is so funny. We want to talk about express lanes. We wish we had an express lane from our stomach to our brain, especially as parents, so we could fill up. The express lane to eating more of the foods that you want to eat less of is telling yourself you can never have it. Right, and then you're power chugging ice cream in the parking lot of a 7-Eleven. Exactly. Or so I've heard, or so I've heard. Allegedly, hypothetically speaking. Yeah, hypothetically. let's wrap with some bad diet red flags because I think in the beginning at the top of the show, we kind of talked about timeframes or like, this is a six week diet that's going to get you down to X.

1:00:38Like you're going to lose 25 pounds in 25 days or whatever. A lot of these, what do you call it? Front loaded diets, I guess you would say a lot of it's water weight, I understand. And also if something stops working after a certain period of time, that's sus, right? That was, it was a battle with the publisher. They're like, tell them how much weight they're going to lose in four weeks. And I'm like, I will do no such thing. I will provide you with a plan of certain amount of weeks so that you can have the training wheels, right? So you can crawl, walk, run, right? The great example I gave in the book is that like, if you really want to make sense of nutrition and fitness, just look for examples in other areas of life outside of nutrition and fitness where it's not so damn manipulative.

1:01:19If you want to learn how to swim, is it a good idea to start in the deep end? Yeah. Nobody's like, you know what? Do a cliff dive into a riptide that's how you're gonna learn that that's the only way you're gonna learn to swim kids right you put your like toe in the shallow end so you know like the water is safe you learn how to tread water things that fundamentally are super complex right you're like there's no way i should be able to do this run from right and like when you put this time stamp and this is what some of the diets we talked about it earlier it's like you will lose 15 pounds in four weeks.

1:01:51Okay. What happens after the four weeks? You gain 25 pounds. Right. Exactly. The reason people put these boundaries or the parameters and set expectations because that's when it stops working. And that's fundamentally a problem. And again, it's just manipulation because you see, oh man, 15 pounds in two weeks. That's great. Right. It's like the eight minute apps. What happens when they come up with seven minute apps, right? Everyone's just trying to keep on pushing. No, I say, right. It is like we're moving the goalposts to get people to buy. But that usually just means that a right to your point, like the slow and steady, like wins the race.

1:02:32If you were to lose like half a pound, or I would say like healthy weight loss isn't done in days or in weeks, it's by month. Healthy weight loss is truly one to two pounds per month, like at most. But at the end of the year, if you've lost 12 to 24 pounds, no one's going to be upset. No, that's great. And it's such a sustainable way because, again, it can be takeout, it could be dessert. But like we create these false expectations. That means we're chasing something that we don't want to chase. And we're willingly entering into something where they're telling us that it's only going to work for a certain number of weeks.

1:03:05Right. And we just said we have to stop that. Back to what you said on 24 pounds in a year, 12 to 24 pounds. People and this happens in business, fitness, pretty much every area of my life, I can sort of attest to this. You really overestimate what you can do in a year and you really underestimate what you can do in five or 10 years. If you look at a business, you're like, I'm gonna double my business this year and that's really hard to do. But if you wanna double your business in three years or five years, it's just a huge amount of time to make incremental gains that add up to something. And the comparison is we overestimate what we should do in a month of nutrition.

1:03:46Yeah, there you go. And underestimate just how much we will accomplish in a year if we do something that keeps us more patient. Because I'll leave you with one final thought. There's a study that I referenced. It was the New England Journal of Medicine, one of the most prestigious journals. And they wanted to do like the diet Super Bowl, right? They stack up all the big diets. It's the low carb and the low fat. And we're checking out vegan and more meat-based. What is the one that's going to get people to lose the most weight? And you sit here and this was like a hyped up study and you get the results and they find out that the most effective diet was all of them.

1:04:17They were all equal. And the only thing that really determined the results was their compliance and sustainability. So I say like when you're picking a nutrition plan, it's kind of like picking a business partner or significant other where it's like if you can't see yourself being with this person for a year or five years for a lifetime. What the hell are you doing wasting a month or two months on it? Because like you don't need those bad relationships in your life because there's so much more collateral damage. You don't have to pick a dietary camp. You have to pick up behaviors that you feel you can sustain.

1:04:52You don't have to do them all the time. You don't have to cut everything out. But the thing that you will sustain is what will allow you to win and also, more importantly, have your sanity, allow you to be social, allow you to not freak out and have these fucking moments allow you to enjoy food and enjoy situations. And like that to me is, is real health. That's the goal of the book. And that's really what people need to know. You don't have to buy into a dietary camp. You kind of got to figure out like what you can sustain. Adam Bornstein. Thank you very much, man. Really appreciate it. Thanks so much.

1:05:22Of course, I've got some thoughts on this episode, but before I get into that, here's a sample of my interview with someone with decades of experience in protecting people at every level, from the top levels of government to victims of spousal abuse. Violence is a reality. If you're not prepared for its possibility, you'll be caught off guard by its eventuality. Learn how to hone your sixth sense for danger. Discover how to spot the red flags that signify someone's a likely abuser, con artist, or predator. Here's a bite. 16 years ago, when I was 20, I got into a taxi cab in Mexico City, and it turned out to be a fake taxi.

1:05:59And the guy was driving me further and further away from my destination, further and further away. And my brain went through this process. It said, no, it's probably going to be fine. I know he said he was going to ask for directions, but he's a cabbie. He should know that. No, no, no, no. But I mean, I've never been kidnapped before, so that can't be what's happening. And then I remembered some guy on Oprah in 1994 or something like that when I was a kid sitting there with my mom who said, never go to the secondary location. And I only realized a decade and a half later when reading in the book, The Gift of Fear, that that was you.

1:06:32Everybody with a normal functioning mind and body system does have intuition. And what we have in varying degrees is our willingness to honor it and listen to it and learn about it. It's our most extraordinary mental and physical process. The stomach lining, as an example, has a hundred million neurons, a hundred million thought cells. That's more neurons than there are in a dog's brain. When you hear the word our gut, you know, I had a gut feeling. It's a very accurate description of what's going on. And these two brains in the gut and in the skull communicate with each other through the body.

1:07:08And so the whole mind-body system delivers intuition to you, which is knowing without knowing why, knowing without having to stop at all the letters from A to Z on the way, just getting from A to Z automatically. It doesn't really matter how a thing should be. It only matters how it is and how it is in terms of reality in this moment. And reality is the highest ground you can get to. That's the place where you can see what's coming. I'm so glad to hear that story and that makes my day. That means a lot to me, particularly as I'm about to hear, I hope, how well you prevailed because I know we're here having the conversation, so you did well.

1:07:45I slid behind the driver's seat and he reached over toward the glove box and I grabbed him and threw him back to his seat because I figured he had a nice... For more, including the most important thing we can do to cut potentially threatening people out of our lives forever, check out episode 329 with Gavin DeBecker. Interesting what he said about cravings and calorie restriction. You kind of suspect that that's the case, but I had no idea that calorie-restricted diets make us crave those foods more. I just thought I was hungry, which, I mean, is there a difference? I don't know. Binging that leads to eating disorders potentially is something that's a little scary.

1:08:20I never really thought about that. I didn't realize that restricting leads to tension, which can snap back like a slingshot and cause binging. Again, I really just thought, oh, when you're dieting, you get hungry sometimes, but it totally makes sense. You do have to be careful with that stuff. I recently lost 40 pounds, as you all know. Well, 40 pounds of fat, I should say. I gained muscle on top of that. And it was a lot of discipline, but I didn't starve myself. I really took it easy. That's why it took like 10 months to do. I probably could have done it in three and just hated life the whole time, but I didn't want to do that.

1:08:49I did it in 10 months. It was just a little bit of lifestyle adjustments and a hell of a lot of turkey breast. I think it really is important to, yes, restrict a little bit of calories if you're eating a crap load like I was, but you still need to eat the foods that make you happy. There's just, it's no way to live life otherwise. You just don't need to eat the whole slice of cheesecake for breakfast, maybe. I don't know. I should speak for myself. My diet was not great, obviously. Many diets are the equivalent of trying to bench 300 pounds on your first try because willpower, and that's just not going to work.

1:09:19As Adam said, a plan that exhaust you mentally will break you physically. And that couldn't be more true. 80 % of people who lose weight won't be able to maintain it. That's a sad indictment of the dieting industry. And when you fail on a diet, your self-worth goes down. You feel a loss of control. You get in that screw it moment and you tend to just throw things away for a while, throw your discipline away for a while. And I think it really is easy to get caught up in results. We don't think of ourselves as healthy until we're done with the diet, right? I had to reframe this myself. I was losing 40 pounds of fat And it was demotivating to be down 20 pounds and go, yeah, I'm down 20 pounds, but oh gosh, I have 20 more pounds to lose until I'm what, happy or something that doesn't make any sense.

1:10:00I'm looking at a six pack of abs or a four pack as the case may have been. And I'm thinking, well, I'm not fit because I can only see my abs when I'm standing up straight and flexing or whatever. It's like so dumb or they don't show up on days after I eat a bunch of salty meat. and it was just moving the goalposts and it was super demotivating. And yeah, I just strongly recommend to take it one day at a time and do your best with it and restrict slowly over time. Sometimes I think with the online diets and the fads, your brain knows the diet is BS, but you just wanna believe because you wanna believe in the potential.

1:10:34It's like a lottery ticket. You wanna believe that what you're doing and what you're aiming at is possible and you get that dopamine hit from that. But yeah, that dopamine hit is not giving you a healthier heart or a healthier body or making your pants fit better. All things Adam Bornstein will be in the show notes at jordanharbinger.com or you can just ask the AI chatbot. Transcripts are in the show notes. Advertisers, deals, discount codes, ways to support the show, all at jordanharbinger.com slash deals. I've said it once, but I'll say it again. Please consider supporting those who support this show.

1:11:04I'm at jordanharbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. And the best things that have happened in my life and business have come through my network. I'm teaching you how to do the same thing for yourself in our six minute networking course. It's 100 % free. It's not gross. It's not schmoozy. You can find it on the Thinkific platform at jordanharbinger.com slash course. These drills are designed to take a few minutes a day. I wish I knew this stuff 20 years ago. Dig that well before you're thirsty, folks. You'll be in smart company where you belong. And you can find it all at jordanharbinger.com slash course.

1:11:35This show is created in association with Podcast One. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Millie Ocampo, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for this show is you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. The greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about. And if you know somebody who's interested in this fitness stuff or is a dieting yo-yo, driving themselves nuts, share this episode with them. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn.

1:12:05And we'll see you next time. Thank you.