VIRAL Gym HERO： Body Positivity Is A Lie ｜ Dave Danna
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Summary
Dave Dana is an accountant and grad student in South Carolina and aspiring supermodel. In this episode, we talk about his weight loss journey and how social media has played a major role in his journey. He also talks about the challenges he faced in college and how he was able to overcome them in order to become a better version of himself.
Transcript
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I want to talk to my guest, who's a real inspiration, Dave Dana, an accountant and
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grad student in South Carolina and an aspiring supermodel. Dave, thank you for coming on the
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show. Thank you for having me. It's my pleasure to be here. Who has reached out to you thus far
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to encourage you on your journey to lose weight? This week, the biggest one was Arnold Schwarzenegger
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who retweeted me and also wrote a tweet thread and replied to one of my comments, giving me some
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lifting tips and some tips in the gym. But there have been numerous other accounts,
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Zuby as well as others. But honestly, more touching to me and having more of an impact on me have been
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just the hundreds of normal people who have reached out on social media, Instagram, Twitter,
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Facebook, and just shared their stories, shared how I'm helping them, which is truly humbling.
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It keeps me going. It motivates me. And we're all fighting those inner demons. We're all trying
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to get through this crazy world and just hearing people, what they're dealing with, how I'm helping
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them, how they're helping me. I mean, I can't keep up with the DMs. So to be honest, it was amazing to
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have someone like Terminator reach out. And I mean, blew me away that day. I definitely didn't get much
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sleep. But beyond just sort of the celebrity endorsements, I've been blown away by just the
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hundreds and thousands of people who have come out of the woodwork and out of social media and just
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been incredibly supportive, especially given the, you know, incredibly toxic nature of a place like
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Twitter or social media in general, especially because I'm just mostly posting gym selfies at
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a Planet Fitness. And I don't really know what I'm doing. You know, I'm not an expert. I'm still
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learning. You know, I have lost a lot of weight, but I've got a lot more to go. And I hadn't set foot
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in the gym, you know, until last year. So a long way to go and a lot to learn, but it's been
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incredible so far. What motivated you to say, okay, today's the day or tomorrow's the day that
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I'm going to go to the gym? So last year, I turned 30 years old, started thinking a little bit more
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about becoming a husband one day, a father, having kids. And I got on my scale one day and it gave me
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an error message because it only went up to 400 pounds. And so I was over that amount. And just
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thinking about being a role model for my future kids, wanting to see them grow up, just being a,
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you know, being around for the future. I didn't want to have to have my parents bury me, you know,
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nobody wants that. And it was sort of a wake up call just to not, not even be able to see a number
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on your scale, right? Like how fat do you have to be for the scale not to work? Well, over 400,
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right. Cause that's, I didn't know it had a limit. I just, you know, it sat on the bottom
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that had a limit. So that was my wake up call. And then ever since then, you know, I, uh, I don't
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know what I'm doing, but I've just tried things when I didn't work, tried new things and just always
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kept in the back of my mind that like, this is, you know, so I can be a good husband, a good father,
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you know, a good member of society and so that I can be around, you know, for a long time. And I really
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didn't think I could do that getting an error message on my scale. And that was, that was June of 2022.
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And that was my wake up call. What do you think motivated you to become so large?
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I think there's a number of factors that come together. I think a lot of it had to do with
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mental health, which we don't speak about enough, especially as men. Um, I think a lot of it had to
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do with sort of the constant consumerism, the constant consumption of the society we live in.
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I think a lot of it had to do with probably a little bit of workaholism. You know, I got out of
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college, my career went well, and I found myself working more and more, a lot more stress, a lot
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more anxiety, but also, you know, a lot more money than I've had before, not rich by any means, but
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you know, fast food when, with a salary is a dangerous combination, especially in a society
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that rewards constant consumption, that rewards more, more, more. And I also think we live in a time
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where we have a lot of big companies working with big government to not necessarily be promoting
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things that are healthy, but that may make more taxpayers and more consumers. And, you know,
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a lot of what I've done to lose the weight has been sort of take a step back and try to figure out
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what really is truly important, you know, and that's working on not just my physical health,
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but working on my mental health as well, making sure I'm making time for family, for friends,
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for faith, for community, not just for work, which reduces my stress, reduces my stress eating,
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stepping back from some of the constant consumption, and trying to make sure that I'm
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getting outside, you know, engaging a little bit more with my faith, engaging a little bit more
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with nature. And that really, I think, has put me in a much stronger position mentally, which then
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feeds into your financial health and your spiritual health and, you know, everything else that goes
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along with it, and physical health, of course, as well.
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Such an important point that the consumption, it's not just about the food, it's about a culture that
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encourages constant consumption of everything. I had this thought, it was around the beginning
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of COVID, when no one knew what to do with their time, because we were all locked up. And I thought,
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okay, my bars are closed. Some of my cigar shops are closed. Some of them are still open at
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speakeasies, but that's, I don't want to out anybody. But I thought, well, hold on, that's,
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those are my hobbies. My hobby is that I go to cigar bars, and I have conversation, and, you know,
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there's a little bit more to it than that. But it's a hobby centered around consuming something,
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consuming the cigar, or consuming the drink. And I thought, do I have hobbies that are not
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about consumption? Do I play music every now and again? But I realized, I didn't really have very
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many. Our culture seems to have replaced hobbies and leisure activities that don't necessarily
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need to involve your buying things with just consumption. And society has entirely turned
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away from the spiritual life, which obviously does not, religious practice does not require you
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to consume things. And in fact, much religious practice is aimed at turning your desire away from
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consuming things. Was there a spiritual component at all in your decision? Yes, definitely. I grew up
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Jewish, and I had sort of stepped away from that. I live here in the Deep South, not a whole lot of
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Jews down here. So, but I wanted to, again, as I got older, as I thought about one day having a family,
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being a husband and a father, I wanted to at least get somewhat more connected with my faith, with God,
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with my Jewish community. And you're right, a lot of Jewish holidays and Jewish practices involve
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dietary restrictions or even fasting. And to me, just once I started thinking about it,
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remembering how I grew up, I was like, actually, there's a lot of stepping back from consumption.
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There's a lot of abstaining from various things that is very important to Judaism. And that wasn't
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part of my life. In fact, gluttony and overconsumption were throughout my life, my financial
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life, my physical life, everything was just always at the edge, always doing 110% and even extending to
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things like my career or education. And I was feeling that that was going to burn me out and burn me,
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I guess, right into an early grave. And I needed to take a step back and reevaluate some of those
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things, especially as I turned 30 and couldn't even weigh myself.
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You know, the first time I ever consciously fasted as I was reverting to the church,
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I thought, there's no way. I can't go a whole day without eating. And you know,
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our bodies are made to fast regularly, actually. And by the end of the day, by the end of just one day,
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I thought, wow, I rely on a handful of pretzels or a glass of seltzer or whatever. I rely on these
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all day long, not to feed any actual physical need that I have, but just to do something with
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my hands, to take a break from my work, to distract myself. And I think it's perfectly fine to have
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affinities for products and brands and things like that. I mean, I have my favorite clothing store,
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you know, and I have my favorite, whatever, cigar brand or something. But it would seem that that
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becomes a big problem when that becomes the essence of your identity. When your identity is not grounded
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in God, ultimately, and my religious tradition, my community, and my family. And only then do you
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start talking about you like to shop at whatever, you know, Banana Republic or something.
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You know, but it seems like our culture has just totally flipped that.
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Yes. Instant gratifications and constant dopamine hits. You can see them from the food we eat to
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social media to everything else. But there's no sense of building something from the foundation of
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taking your time, of doing it appropriately, of using what had been working in the past. We've
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gotten rid of all that and we're doing it all now. And it has to be instant. It has to be right
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now. It has to be constant. And to me, that was just felt in every aspect of my life. It was getting
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more toxic and more unhealthy. And I didn't, I just didn't feel like I had much left to give if I
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kept down that path. I needed to, I needed to turn and try something, you know, radically different.
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But yet at the same time, that radicalism was just pretty basic, normal things that my grandparents
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or great grandparents probably would have recommended, you know, without some of the technology.
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So you've been doing this for about a year and it's really great to make a resolution. And frankly,
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it's difficult, but it's not all that difficult to go to the gym for day one and maybe even day two
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and possibly day three, but day four gets to be a little bit harder. Has there been a time
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over the course of this year when you've thought, eh, all right, enough of that?
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Yeah, there has after about three or four months, the first like 20, 30, even 40 pounds comes off
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pretty fast, especially when you're up above 400 pounds. Um, and so, but after that, I hit a bit
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of a plateau where just like walking on a treadmill and like not eating fast food wasn't enough. I had
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to really buckle down and do more. And for those two or three weeks where I was mostly at a plateau,
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that was the closest I came to giving up, um, or to just bailing on it. And I did two things there.
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One was, that was the first time I think in years that I've really prayed and really thought
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about my faith more deeply. And the second thing was that I went to the doctor for the first time
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in, I don't know how long since my mom made me as a kid and we got my blood work done. This was in
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September of last year for the first time. And we saw some numbers that were not great pre-diabetic
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range, high blood pressure, um, and, uh, you know, cholesterol that was a bit too high and combining me
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looking inward and upward religiously with some like science backing it up from the doctor saying,
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Hey, these numbers aren't good. That really got me back in the gym. I go, you know, I wake up at 4am
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Monday through Friday, so I can get to the gym by 4 30. I do it before my, uh, work starts before grad
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school. And so after that point, I have built, made sure to build it into a routine because every
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morning you're not going to have the same level of motivation I had on day two, but once it becomes
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a habit, once it becomes a routine, um, it's a lot more manageable now. And I think back to that
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sort of couple of weeks, I won't say it was a moment. It was longer than a moment, couple of
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weeks of weakness where, you know, there might've been some unhealthy eating. And I just think about
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what I received in that time of reflection and prayer. And then what I got handed to me from the
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doctor within a two or three week period. And that's enough, um, you know, to make sure I keep
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going. It was sort of a reaffirmation that I had started along the right path, but you know, I need
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to lose 200 plus pounds, right? I'm at 80 right now. I was at 30 or 40 back then. That's, I'm not
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even halfway there. Right. So I got, I have a long way to go and it has to be something that becomes
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not just a diet or not just, um, exercise, but a lifestyle, a habit, you know, something that I can
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build and do for decades. I have to ask you on, on diet. Sure. I, I have a hobby horse that I have,
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I've, I've, I never bought into diet fads in my whole life. The one that got me, my wife,
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sweet little Alisa convinced me of this. She has convinced me seed oils are of the devil.
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The devil himself has a seed oil factory somewhere between the seventh and eighth circles of hell.
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And that this has infected all of our foods and made us all really fat and unhealthy. Now I suspect
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that obesity owes to many factors beyond seed oils, probably just over consumption of calories and
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a sedentary lifestyle and all the rest. But have you found that it's not just the calories,
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but it's different types of food are more or less conducive to weight loss?
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Absolutely. I think every person my size has gotten sort of like standard diet advice for the last 30
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or 40 years, eat a ton of salads, do a ton of cardio, track every calorie, make sure you're in
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a calorie deficit and you'll lose weight. And to be fair, I do think you'll lose some weight. I think
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you'll be miserable and you'll fall off the wagon and you'll gain it all back. Um, but I do think that
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getting a lot of the sugar and refined carbs and seed oils out of your diet is what I have found to
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work and be sustainable. I don't necessarily buy into any specific fad, eat this, not that,
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but I do think cutting out general category is like so much highly processed, so much pre-packaged.
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You know, if you're getting the food handed, you know, through your car window and they made it in
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less than 60 seconds and you're eating it alone in a parking lot on your lunch break, it's probably
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not something you should do regularly, that type of stuff. And I do think that cutting back just to,
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I mean, I still eat meat. I eat red meat. I eat eggs. I still eat vegetables. I, you know,
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both, both sides of those are controversial, right? I eat some fruit sometimes, but it's a lot more
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natural. It's a lot cleaner. It's a lot more home cooked and it's a lot less, uh, fast food,
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junk food, pre-packaged food. And I feel like that's more what people would have eaten, you know,
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a couple hundred years ago. And it's a sustainable way to lose weight. Whereas if I buy diet food,
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which is like a lot of very low calorie, you know, plant-based salad types of food,
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I will lose weight, but I will also be miserable. I'll probably have some brain fog and I'll fall
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off the wagon. So I've tried to find something that's sustainable and more natural and more
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healthy without going the route of, I only eat meat or I never eat meat or, you know, like some of
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the very, the very, you know, like I'm sure those work because again, you're doing like an extreme
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elimination diet, which usually will cause some weight loss, but I'm not sure they're sustainable
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for me. And I am Italian and Jewish. So like this, you know, there's some carbs and stuff that comes
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into the food sometimes, right? You're not, you can't get rid of that. I mean, you'd be divorcing
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a part of your cultural heritage. When I moved to Nashville, I've never, uh, really struggled with
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my weight all that much. You know, I've, I've never, the biggest I ever got was because Daily Wire was
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maybe going to make a movie and they needed me to gain 20 pounds, which I did. I gained 20 pounds by
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eating pizza. I cut my body fat in half, but then I forgot to cut. So then I was just kind of chubby
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for a little while. But, but I did find when I moved to Nashville, I gained 13 pounds in four
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months, which for me, I'm just not a big guy. So 13 pounds is pretty noticeable. And I thought,
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what the heck happened? Why is that? And it's because I wasn't really walking around anywhere. I was,
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you know, I'm, I'm now in the Southern suburb and I was eating biscuits and just the fatty
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Southern food all the time from all these local restaurants and everything. And my wife just
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started cooking more, you know, once we had our first child, you know, and sort of was getting
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back in the groove of cooking more. And it's not that I ate really all that much less than I previously
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did. It was just much less sugar, much less grease, much less processed kind of food. And it all went
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away. And it did get me thinking like, huh, maybe there is just something in the typical American
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diet that kind of makes you fat. Yeah. I don't count my calories. I don't count my carbs. I'm not
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explicitly trying to cut out seed oil, but the diet I've adopted in effect cuts out a lot of carbs,
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a lot of processed food. I'll probably eat 75% of my seed oils. And for me, that works better than
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trying to explicitly, you know, kill myself by cutting out every gram of sugar and every drop of seed oil,
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or trying to log everything I eat or drink into an app. Again, it is, it has to work long term for
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me. And I would prefer to find something that does that rather than do a crash or a fad or something
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that I think will work short term and get maybe impressive three month results. But then three
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years down the line, I'll be back to where I was. So before I let you go for anyone who's watching or
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listening right now, who, you know, maybe wants to lose some weight, feels they've, things have spiraled
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out of control a little bit, but they don't know a damn thing about the gym. Sort of like me. I
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don't know. I don't know anything really at all about the gym. Day one, you're there for the first
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time since the Clinton administration. What do you do? I didn't do this until probably week two,
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but once I did it, I stopped feeling that intimidation and anxiety as I walked into the gym.
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Because again, I was walking into the gym at over 400 pounds alone, having never stepped into one
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before. And what I would recommend isn't an exercise, but it's talking to someone. Find the
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most like buff guy there and ask him what you should do. And then if the gym offers like trainers
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or something like that, I would also engage with them. But I go at four or five in the morning. So
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they're not awake yet. But I, everyone in the gym who you think is judging you and who is, and who
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you're intimidated by is actually incredibly friendly from what I found, at least here in the deep
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south and incredibly helpful. And not necessarily that all their advice is great, but getting a few
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basic ideas of do this and then that try this and then that. And one other thing that I would add a
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little bit more practical is take it slow. It's a marathon, not a sprint, take the weight light and
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just focus on form and learning one thing at a time, rather than how much weight can I push up for
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how many reps? I know that's popular with like gym bros online, but like, I'm not there yet.
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So just talk to people, learn from them and take it slowly. And don't be afraid to ask questions and
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and real. I mean, I know I'm saying it a lot, but like, that's really the key to me is the people who
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I thought were watching me and judging me just wanted to help. And we're incredibly supportive
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and gave me a lot of good advice. As long as I kept in the back of my mind that I'm going to take it
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slowly, I'm going to keep the weight low. And at three or four or 500 pounds, what's really
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important is that you're getting moving for 30 to 45 minutes per day, getting your heart rate up,
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getting your blood pumping, sweating. You're going to burn calories. Every time you stand up,
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you're lifting three, 400 extra pounds, right? So the weight's not that important right now.
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And then a couple of months down the line, a year down the line, you can dial it in and specialize,
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but you're going to burn a couple of hundred calories just by going to the gym and being active.
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So the more relationships you can build there and the more comfortable you can feel
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long-term, that's what's been successful for me.
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Well, I love that advice because that's the most intimidating thing is the gym bros because
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you just think, man, I'm never going to be like that. They're judging me. They're probably mocking
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me. But one, in my experience, the gym bros I know are some of the friendliest people on earth.
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And two, man is a social creature. And so you're not going to do very much of anything on your own
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as a little island. You've got to engage in the community, avail yourself of the wisdom of your
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peers and people who have been doing it a long time and the wisdom of the ages. Really,
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really inspiring stuff, man. Dave, thank you for coming on. Where can people find you?
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I appreciate that. I'm on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, Dave E. Dana on all of them,
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Awesome. That's great. I probably won't see you in the gym, though.
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If anyone's going to inspire me to go back to the gym, it might be you,