Your Best Year Yet: 3 Life-Changing Fitness Hacks to Ignite Your 2024 Transformation

0:00If I inflicted pain upon myself and it was positive pain for a workout, I could flip this kinesthetic switch. I called it my pain switch and I would flip that pain switch. I can now push it harder. I realized, why can't I apply that same thing to nutrition? This is an opportunity, an opportunity to move more, an opportunity to move tomorrow. And that's not having this transactional relationship again, because what you don't want to do is say, welcome to the school of greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness.

0:35Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

0:43Welcome to this special masterclass. We brought some of the top experts in the world to help you unlock the power of your life through this specific theme today. It's going to be powerful, so let's go ahead and dive in.

1:01for people that don't have that type of discipline how can they be consistent on the nutritional intake over a lifetime and make it their lifestyle and not just a diet yeah i mean it's such a basic good question that people always want to bring it back to like tracking and things like that i think that that doesn't that that works tracking works but You're talking about it at a deeper level, right? Because I experienced the same thing. I can have the most steadfast meditator monk that I'm talking to, and they will still battle with this, right? Really? And it's some to the point where we have so many things that are just available at our fingertips that are just...

1:45Temptations. Not in alignment with how we've continued to evolve as... You know, it's like we just, technology and food production and the food industry is growing at an exponentially faster rate than how we are changing, right? So we have these things that are available that just simply shouldn't, and outside of putting yourself in a locker and like away from these foods, a total echo chamber, like you are fighting temptation all the time. And we have to recognize that there's only so much power in your prefrontal cortex. There's only so much willpower. So much willpower. Yeah. Like it's a finite resource.

2:19So with that, you have to kind of change your way of thinking. And the way that this occurred to me like three years ago or so, when I had a really, really bad like sinus infection. And I've always had some kind of recurring sinus infections ever since I was little. But I had one that was really bad and I couldn't taste or smell for like two months, right? And that was something where I realized like, why am I still craving these certain foods? I can't even taste them, right? And it was like this aha moment where I'm like, this is clearly a mental thing because something sweet hits your taste buds.

2:47It's not just the taste of it. It's what it's doing in the brain. So changing your relationship with food, changing your relationship with struggle has been a very big thing, right? So for me, I always had this kinesthetic awareness thing with my workouts, right? With workouts, it was like, if I inflicted pain upon myself and it was positive pain for a workout, I could flip this kinesthetic switch that was like, I called it my pain switch. And I would flip that pain switch. And you know, as an athlete, that's sometimes just what you do. And it happens inadvertently. Sometimes you visualize it, but visualization is huge.

3:19So for me, I'd visualize flipping the pain switch. The switch is off. I can now push it harder and push it past my normal aerobic capacity, anaerobic, whatever. I realized, why can't I apply that same thing to nutrition without becoming robotic, but becoming very, very aware? And so I've changed my relationship with how food makes me feel. So like, and that's taken a lot of work. What do you say to yourself? what's the conversation the inner dialogue the the mental strategy you use to do that as simple as it sounds whenever I would eat something for about two or three months I would simply say like food is fuel food is fuel and that sounds very because you don't want to take the fun out of it I still love food right so with when you do that if you have to train yourself to believe that like okay if I'm eating this sugar that's okay but remember it's fuel and I should use it right or if I'm and that's the thing here I'm gonna eat it make sure I move my body, go for a 10 minute walk, walk up some stairs, move it a little bit, just get it out.

4:16When you change the relationship with food, you're not abstaining, you're changing the reaction. And I should never have a bucket of ice cream and then just sit around. It's just the thing, right? It's like, you gotta do it. Eat it in the morning, eat it for breakfast, whatever. And then go move all day. Exactly. So that relationship, I mean, it gets much bigger than that. But that relationship with food is everything. And so many of us have a distorted relationship with food. And for me, I've been on opposite ends of sort of the spectrum. When I was younger, I was practically, as a runner, I was practically eating disorder category the other direction.

4:55I have to be as light as possible. Oh, I don't want to eat that. I don't want to get fat. And then it kind of went the other way. It was almost like masochistic where I'm just like, I don't care. I'm fat already. Let's just go all the way. Okay. Now, it's kind of like fine a little bit of that middle ground. But the pendulum probably swings much more towards how I was when I was younger. Got to stay lean, got to stay this. But I also have recognized that food is still reward. And we were constantly told that food shouldn't be treated as a reward. Don't reward your kids with food. I call on that.

5:24The reason is because food has always been a reward. It's always been a reward for us. You get the hunt and you get the food. You go gather and you get some food. It's simple. What you have to do is you just have to, once again, change the relationship with the feelings attached to food. Recognize that those feelings are there, but do something with them rather than just let them be and consume you. If I am going to go and eat that ice cream, then I'm aware of what that's doing in my body. And I'm not going to let that turn me the other direction and get depressed and go eat more. I'm going to say, you know what, this is an opportunity, an opportunity to move more, an opportunity to move tomorrow.

6:02And that's not having this transactional relationship again, because what you don't want to do is say, I'm going to eat some pie and now I'm going to punish myself by going on the treadmill. That's the exact wrong thing to do, right? But you do say, okay, I'm going to eat this pie. Great. I've got full glycogen tanks. I'm going to go work out. I'm going to get the best workout of my life. Having kids has really made this apparent because kids are constantly, I want a snack. I want a snack. It's like they have five stomachs. I don't understand. And like, how do you, like if they're reaching for like a Lara bar or something that I would still consider healthy but has a decent amount of sugar from dates and stuff, right?

6:37Like, kids just crave these things. And how do I teach them that you, yeah, you can eat that, but we should really get out and move. You know? And you know, it's kind of like how I translate it to them is, hey, it's fun to feel good. It's fun to feel good, right? Like, you've got this energy from that bar. Doesn't that feel good? Like, let's get out and let's use that energy. Let's go have fun. And now it's to the point where my kids are like, can I have a LAR bar? I want to go outside and play. I'm like, this is awesome. Without actually molding them in any weird way, I've helped them light a spark to understand that when they eat this, and at a young subconscious level in their brain, it's probably forming something that's beyond what we even know in research, where maybe they taste something sweet and now they naturally want to move, versus saying like, oh, shame, guilt, I shouldn't have eaten this, it's terrible.

7:27No, we're going to go have fun, we're going to play. But I teach them that with not just sugar, I teach them that with fats too because I think it's also fundamental to learn that all food is fuel, but be in touch with how it makes you feel. So how I retain that discipline is the exact same way. How do I feel? What do I feel after I eat this? Did I feel crappy? Okay, well, then that's probably a pretty good articulation of what that's doing in my body. And with that, it's really turned into this intuitive eating. And that's like, I guess, I mean, it's a great segue to talk about how fasting has worked, right?

8:01Because fasting has allowed me to have more flexibility with my diet in the confines of still like appropriate discipline because I can flip that switch on and off a lot easier. Fasting, not fasting. Fasting, not fasting. And you're one of the, there's a few things I want to talk about here before I get into fasting. One is the mantra, it sounds like you had, the mental switch, the mantra of food is fuel. So is that something you would think about right before you were making a decision of what to eat? No, usually while eating it while eating it. So it wasn't helping you make a decision of like, okay Here's a candy bar.

8:38Am I gonna decide this is is this gonna help me and fuel me a positive way or a negative fuel? That's too willpower-y. I'm sorry that takes too much energy You would still eat the candy bar if you needed or if you did while I well yes And granted this was happening three three and a half years ago so candy bars weren't really in the equation anymore. Right. But that being said - Because of an apple or whatever. Yeah, or something like, because I would still crave fruit or whatever. But yes, exactly. It's like while I'm consuming it, it's like really trying to teach my body and understand like this visualization.

9:08You know the power of visualization, obviously, just yourself and the guests you've had on. It's like that visualization with eating something can be just as powerful. So you would say this as you're having a bite of the apple or whatever it might be, be having an internal conversation, food is fuel, and then having a positive relationship with something that might be looked at as negative before. Is that what I'm hearing you say? Precisely, yep. And training your body to appreciate the food and to say, okay, I'm gonna go act and move my body after I eat this and it's going to help me, it's not gonna hurt me, and I don't need to be shameful about eating this.

9:43Is that kind of the process? Yep. Because a lot of people that eat something and they feel good because it tastes good, even then they feel shameful. Yes. And that doesn't help them. Because then they have more of that to have the good feeling and then feel shame again. And the cycle continues. Because what is happening here is much different than what's happening here. And in our world, we get this instant gratification from food, especially the translation of, I see a direct correlation with my time scrolling social media and my addiction to my phone, direct line item correlation to how much I crave snacking and things like that.

10:18It's the same firing, you know, right? It's like that same dopamine itch that needs to be scratched. And just in the same way I get addicted to looking at my phone or checking my email, that usually correlates with how much my addiction to food is at that point in time. But you don't just say, like, I am going to resist the urge to check my email, I'm gonna resist the urge to check my email. Sometimes it takes, like, what is the response? Like a lot of times, you know, you'll check your email first thing in the morning, you'll get a negative email and it hits you then. You're like, this is how I'm starting my day?

10:49This is what I'm gonna do? Screw that and that's your catalyst. But with food, you eat a Snickers bar and it feels so good up here. You feel like you're doing the right thing. It's amazing. Everything is telling you in that immediate moment that this was a good decision, Louis. You did the right thing. And your belly afterwards is like, oh, why is it digesting weird? And now I feel lethargic. And you go out and you move and you try to do something with it. And yeah, you're gonna have some fuel but you're going to be like, you know what? It's crazy enough that didn't feel as good as when I had that apple.

11:19And you start creating this internal like checks and balances, if you want to call it that. When was the moment that was the make or break moment for you? That you said enough is enough or never again or I got to start this journey the real way, like I'm going all in. When was that moment? There was a period in 2002. I had fallen in love with this girl when I was 16, and we were really, really good friends. She says we were best friends, and she had zero interest in me romantically. You were in the friend zone. I was in the friend zone, fine. 16 years old. 16 years old. What was your weight like then?

12:01I was heavy, but I wasn't quite as heavy. Like at 200, 250, 300? You know, I wasn't, even then, It's like I wasn't getting on scales often. I certainly wasn't 500 pounds. I actually have a picture of us from when we were 16 and we were hanging out. And I'm a heavy guy, but I'm not morbidly obese. We became romantic in 2002. And there was just a moment where I was like, oh, if I'm going to make this work, If this really has a shot at longevity, I got to change because she likes to do stuff like take a hike and spend the day at the beach and go to museums. And I can't do that, you know. So that was kind of it.

12:53It was like I want to have this relationship with her, so I must change. It was a bizarre kind of counterintuitive conversation that I had with her too because having it, I was scared like if I have this conversation, she'll know how that I'm overweight, like that I'm obese. As if she didn't know. It was like this thing. If I show her that this is something I want to change, not just like this masculine thing of like I'm showing weakness, It wasn't that it was, this is the hardest. This is, this thing is so unconfrontable. I never think about it. I push it away. It's, it's almost become something subconscious.

13:36So if I bring it to the forefront and I say, let's address this, that's a very, uh, scary and narrow path to walk because failure, I figure life is failure at that point, you know? Yeah. So that was 2002. Did you start going all in? Was it dabbling a little bit and kind of lost weight, went back off the wagon? What was that like for the next 18 years till now? I went all in and I'm a sober guy too. So I went all in in a very, in a similar fashion to achieving sobriety, which was admit that I'm powerless and turn my problem over to somebody else and go like, I am incapable of figuring this out right now.

14:25I'm going to do exactly what you say until we get to the point that I can take over. and she was like great here's what you're gonna do I've went and found a guy who has a liquid diet you can do it for up to two months why don't you do that you don't have to do it for two months you can do it for one month you can do it for two let's see how this goes and I crushed that two months liquid diet 80 pounds wow two months this is not like drinking cokes all day liquid diet This is no sugar liquid diet. This is like, I mean, the calories were so low. It was like three weird protein shakes with some green powder and a ton of supplements that were, I think, mostly fiber and some vitamins and as much water as I could drink.

15:13And that's it. 80 pounds, two months. 80 pounds. But that's still in the 400 zone. Yeah. But I will say this. of all the weight I've gained and lost, I never dipped back into those 80 pounds. Never once. So that, that I, it was such a prize that I've never gotten close to like back into that zone. And I followed that up with, um, I don't even know what the diet's called. It might've been like a blood type diet or something. And it was kind of on that where I realized like, well, I'm going to I have to try different diets, and I try to basically every diet that exists. What worked the best for you?

15:57The easiest thing was keto. Because I just didn't have to think about anything. You eat lots of meat, it just eliminates certain things, and eat as much as you want of other stuff, right? Yeah, and that worked to a degree. As I had less and less weight to lose, I found that I had to like mess around with what I was eating because I you know when I first started was like you can eat bacon and Swiss cheese all day long like okay well that's easy and I would and I'd lose weight and I'd be like this is a magical diet I'm putting mayonnaise on everything and I'm losing weight how is this possible um you know my little salad would have four cups of salad dressing on it and you know no sugar but like a ton of fat yeah um and that did work and i was able to do it and it was super easy for traveling you just rip the bread off stuff and eat steaks and you know it's actually i think uh designed to be easy to get around the world and eat this way um once i got really close to there were there were two periods there was a period in 2012 where I was super into cycling, and I got really lean, much smaller than I am now.

17:12Was it like 190 or something? I was just about 200, but that's tiny for me. And you think about 200, that's still, you're a big dude, but that was really, really small for me. And I just noticed that if I was eating only fat, I was suffering on the bicycle. Like I wasn't as efficient on the bicycle. So some sugars, gels. Carbs, yeah. Some carbs entered my diet and like I would fly up hills, you know, which was really cool. Then I had a bad accident. My wife told me that I wasn't ever going to make a living riding a bike. You know, I thought we were rich and that I could retire and just ride my bike at like 35 years old forever.

17:57That was not the case. She said I had to go work again. And so I went back to acting and the bike kind of fell away and I started doing like CrossFit and rowing machines. I could crush a full marathon on a rowing machine, no problem. And then at some point I was kind of having trouble finding work and kept hearing like, well, you're not the big guy, the heavy, lovable guy anymore. So there was a point where I was like, okay, I'm just going to eat and lift weights and see what happens. And I ate whatever I wanted for about a year and lifted weights and got pretty near 400 pounds again. Wow. Yeah.

18:39So you gained 200 pounds within a year. Close. Well, no, it was really from like 2003 years. It was three years. Yeah. 2013, 2016. How long did you pause from acting? 2010 and pause is not quite the right word i did a few pilots that didn't get picked up sure um but i was putting no effort into it it was like if they called me and said please come do our pilot i would do it right but i'm not going on auditions you're not no i was really just riding my bike when you've been in how many movies you've been in in tv shows i've never counted i actually I have no idea. 50 plus, you think? Yeah. At least, right?

19:20Yeah. When you've been in that many movies or shows, do you have to audition anymore? Yeah, sure. You still have to audition? Yeah, definitely. Really? Even if they've seen all your work, they know what you can do? Yeah. I mean, sometimes it's just a matter of the director wanting to see if you're exactly what he wants for this specific project, or now that I'm physically different, what is that going to look like? you know but yeah yeah i still have to audition what was the when you look back what do you think the the thing is that drew you to eating as a as a a bad habit or an addiction or a mind-numbing process that was a part of your life for so long was there a number of events was there moments Was there something that connected you to that?

20:12I'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 right this is out of hand we need to get this under control 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 just stuffing in a few bites because i was not allowed to like i reached for a second helping and got my hand patted like five yeah that's off limits you you eat what we tell you to do and then the next day they weighed me first thing in the morning which I had never been on a scale before and I'm being weighed and then it was like okay we're going on a on a on a one mile walk that is for your benefit and this did a number of things it developed the sneaking food habit that developed the habit of wanting to eat privately and 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 and active 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 on this it was like 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 going to sneak food now and I'm going to not do activities.

23:04How 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? Did 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 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 i'm obviously wasn't going to fight a little preschooler and 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.

23:46And 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. We're not going to say that to him, you know. Yeah. So 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? There was like, in school, I didn't really like school either. I grew to really dislike anything done from a point of authoritarianism.

24:34It 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. which is really bizarre because now I love nothing more than a diet I find for myself and studying something I'm interested in and finding a sport to be interested. Like I can become obsessive about these things and do them 110 % if it's my own determination. But from a point of authority, it just didn't fly. 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.

25:18It was like 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 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 too? Well, that's super sexy and attractive. Yeah, yeah, but I could 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 what if I do this?

25:59So there was 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 got 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 and you know like your my and by the way it always started legitimately Like, my feet hurt. My ankles and my knees hurt.

26:38Like, these are real things. You're on set 18 hours a day. You're doing this over and over. Like, none of it is just irrational. How do people get to consistency where they're not in blame mode? They're not in beat-up mode when they fall off track, when they miss a workout or a meal that they know is healthy for them? and how can they actually make it their identity and a lifestyle as opposed to something they do once in a while? My running coach, his name is Jeff Cunningham. He's based on Austin. And he has this thing that he says, it's better to be consistently good than occasionally great. And you can apply that to fitness, to your goals, to your diet.

27:26where you see a lot of people fail is they go 180. They decide today's day. I'm cutting everything out. I'm going, they attach to it. They attach to a training style or a diet. Today I'm going all keto. Today I'm going all carnivore. Today I'm going vegan. Today I'm just doing CrossFit. Today I'm just training for a marathon. They eliminate everything else they were doing that was possibly working for them because they flip at 180, they go all in on something, and then they realize it's not sustainable. They burn out. They don't enjoy it. There's no passion. There's no fun. So how do you become consistently good rather than occasionally great?

28:11Maybe I flipped 180. I started a new training program and a new diet, and I lasted for five days. Those were a great five days. But then for the next 360, nothing. So how do you become consistently good? It's a small implementation of changes that compound over time. And what happens with consistency is it compounds to become greater and greater and larger and larger greatness. So maybe next week I'm going to add one extra run into my week. Let's see how that feels. Maybe next week I'm going to eliminate soda or processed foods. Just see how that feels. I'm going to change my breakfast. I'm going to change what time I go to sleep.