The Michael Knowles Show - VIRAL Gym HERO： Body Positivity Is A Lie ｜ Dave Danna

00:00:00.000 I want to talk to my guest, who's a real inspiration, Dave Dana, an accountant and

00:00:05.500 grad student in South Carolina and an aspiring supermodel. Dave, thank you for coming on the

00:00:11.660 show. Thank you for having me. It's my pleasure to be here. Who has reached out to you thus far

00:00:18.840 to encourage you on your journey to lose weight? This week, the biggest one was Arnold Schwarzenegger

00:00:24.940 who retweeted me and also wrote a tweet thread and replied to one of my comments, giving me some

00:00:31.380 lifting tips and some tips in the gym. But there have been numerous other accounts,

00:00:36.760 Zuby as well as others. But honestly, more touching to me and having more of an impact on me have been

00:00:42.840 just the hundreds of normal people who have reached out on social media, Instagram, Twitter,

00:00:48.580 Facebook, and just shared their stories, shared how I'm helping them, which is truly humbling.

00:00:53.740 It keeps me going. It motivates me. And we're all fighting those inner demons. We're all trying

00:00:59.820 to get through this crazy world and just hearing people, what they're dealing with, how I'm helping

00:01:04.920 them, how they're helping me. I mean, I can't keep up with the DMs. So to be honest, it was amazing to

00:01:09.600 have someone like Terminator reach out. And I mean, blew me away that day. I definitely didn't get much

00:01:15.620 sleep. But beyond just sort of the celebrity endorsements, I've been blown away by just the

00:01:20.120 hundreds and thousands of people who have come out of the woodwork and out of social media and just

00:01:24.520 been incredibly supportive, especially given the, you know, incredibly toxic nature of a place like

00:01:29.660 Twitter or social media in general, especially because I'm just mostly posting gym selfies at

00:01:35.120 a Planet Fitness. And I don't really know what I'm doing. You know, I'm not an expert. I'm still

00:01:39.680 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

00:01:43.960 in the gym, you know, until last year. So a long way to go and a lot to learn, but it's been

00:01:49.060 incredible so far. What motivated you to say, okay, today's the day or tomorrow's the day that

00:01:57.180 I'm going to go to the gym? So last year, I turned 30 years old, started thinking a little bit more

00:02:03.440 about becoming a husband one day, a father, having kids. And I got on my scale one day and it gave me

00:02:08.640 an error message because it only went up to 400 pounds. And so I was over that amount. And just

00:02:14.880 thinking about being a role model for my future kids, wanting to see them grow up, just being a,

00:02:21.000 you know, being around for the future. I didn't want to have to have my parents bury me, you know,

00:02:26.700 nobody wants that. And it was sort of a wake up call just to not, not even be able to see a number

00:02:33.180 on your scale, right? Like how fat do you have to be for the scale not to work? Well, over 400,

00:02:37.440 right. Cause that's, I didn't know it had a limit. I just, you know, it sat on the bottom

00:02:40.420 that had a limit. So that was my wake up call. And then ever since then, you know, I, uh, I don't

00:02:45.820 know what I'm doing, but I've just tried things when I didn't work, tried new things and just always

00:02:50.240 kept in the back of my mind that like, this is, you know, so I can be a good husband, a good father,

00:02:56.560 you know, a good member of society and so that I can be around, you know, for a long time. And I really

00:03:01.160 didn't think I could do that getting an error message on my scale. And that was, that was June of 2022.

00:03:05.440 And that was my wake up call. What do you think motivated you to become so large?

00:03:12.640 I think there's a number of factors that come together. I think a lot of it had to do with

00:03:17.140 mental health, which we don't speak about enough, especially as men. Um, I think a lot of it had to

00:03:22.000 do with sort of the constant consumerism, the constant consumption of the society we live in.

00:03:27.800 I think a lot of it had to do with probably a little bit of workaholism. You know, I got out of

00:03:32.200 college, my career went well, and I found myself working more and more, a lot more stress, a lot

00:03:36.900 more anxiety, but also, you know, a lot more money than I've had before, not rich by any means, but

00:03:42.240 you know, fast food when, with a salary is a dangerous combination, especially in a society

00:03:47.240 that rewards constant consumption, that rewards more, more, more. And I also think we live in a time

00:03:53.960 where we have a lot of big companies working with big government to not necessarily be promoting

00:03:59.720 things that are healthy, but that may make more taxpayers and more consumers. And, you know,

00:04:05.140 a lot of what I've done to lose the weight has been sort of take a step back and try to figure out

00:04:10.700 what really is truly important, you know, and that's working on not just my physical health,

00:04:15.200 but working on my mental health as well, making sure I'm making time for family, for friends,

00:04:19.760 for faith, for community, not just for work, which reduces my stress, reduces my stress eating,

00:04:25.360 stepping back from some of the constant consumption, and trying to make sure that I'm

00:04:29.760 getting outside, you know, engaging a little bit more with my faith, engaging a little bit more

00:04:34.200 with nature. And that really, I think, has put me in a much stronger position mentally, which then

00:04:40.000 feeds into your financial health and your spiritual health and, you know, everything else that goes

00:04:44.380 along with it, and physical health, of course, as well.

00:04:46.320 Such an important point that the consumption, it's not just about the food, it's about a culture that

00:04:50.860 encourages constant consumption of everything. I had this thought, it was around the beginning

00:04:55.680 of COVID, when no one knew what to do with their time, because we were all locked up. And I thought,

00:05:01.180 okay, my bars are closed. Some of my cigar shops are closed. Some of them are still open at

00:05:05.960 speakeasies, but that's, I don't want to out anybody. But I thought, well, hold on, that's,

00:05:10.800 those are my hobbies. My hobby is that I go to cigar bars, and I have conversation, and, you know,

00:05:17.220 there's a little bit more to it than that. But it's a hobby centered around consuming something,

00:05:21.180 consuming the cigar, or consuming the drink. And I thought, do I have hobbies that are not

00:05:27.000 about consumption? Do I play music every now and again? But I realized, I didn't really have very

00:05:32.680 many. Our culture seems to have replaced hobbies and leisure activities that don't necessarily

00:05:39.860 need to involve your buying things with just consumption. And society has entirely turned

00:05:48.800 away from the spiritual life, which obviously does not, religious practice does not require you

00:05:54.520 to consume things. And in fact, much religious practice is aimed at turning your desire away from

00:06:00.480 consuming things. Was there a spiritual component at all in your decision? Yes, definitely. I grew up

00:06:06.060 Jewish, and I had sort of stepped away from that. I live here in the Deep South, not a whole lot of

00:06:09.840 Jews down here. So, but I wanted to, again, as I got older, as I thought about one day having a family,

00:06:15.380 being a husband and a father, I wanted to at least get somewhat more connected with my faith, with God,

00:06:19.560 with my Jewish community. And you're right, a lot of Jewish holidays and Jewish practices involve

00:06:25.800 dietary restrictions or even fasting. And to me, just once I started thinking about it,

00:06:30.600 remembering how I grew up, I was like, actually, there's a lot of stepping back from consumption.

00:06:34.180 There's a lot of abstaining from various things that is very important to Judaism. And that wasn't 0.87

00:06:40.740 part of my life. In fact, gluttony and overconsumption were throughout my life, my financial

00:06:45.800 life, my physical life, everything was just always at the edge, always doing 110% and even extending to

00:06:52.440 things like my career or education. And I was feeling that that was going to burn me out and burn me,

00:06:58.560 I guess, right into an early grave. And I needed to take a step back and reevaluate some of those

00:07:04.080 things, especially as I turned 30 and couldn't even weigh myself.

00:07:07.760 You know, the first time I ever consciously fasted as I was reverting to the church,

00:07:14.160 I thought, there's no way. I can't go a whole day without eating. And you know,

00:07:18.340 our bodies are made to fast regularly, actually. And by the end of the day, by the end of just one day,

00:07:25.640 I thought, wow, I rely on a handful of pretzels or a glass of seltzer or whatever. I rely on these

00:07:37.080 all day long, not to feed any actual physical need that I have, but just to do something with

00:07:43.780 my hands, to take a break from my work, to distract myself. And I think it's perfectly fine to have

00:07:49.680 affinities for products and brands and things like that. I mean, I have my favorite clothing store,

00:07:55.940 you know, and I have my favorite, whatever, cigar brand or something. But it would seem that that

00:08:00.960 becomes a big problem when that becomes the essence of your identity. When your identity is not grounded

00:08:07.080 in God, ultimately, and my religious tradition, my community, and my family. And only then do you

00:08:13.240 start talking about you like to shop at whatever, you know, Banana Republic or something.

00:08:16.800 You know, but it seems like our culture has just totally flipped that.

00:08:20.440 Yes. Instant gratifications and constant dopamine hits. You can see them from the food we eat to

00:08:26.220 social media to everything else. But there's no sense of building something from the foundation of

00:08:30.900 taking your time, of doing it appropriately, of using what had been working in the past. We've

00:08:36.140 gotten rid of all that and we're doing it all now. And it has to be instant. It has to be right

00:08:39.740 now. It has to be constant. And to me, that was just felt in every aspect of my life. It was getting

00:08:45.360 more toxic and more unhealthy. And I didn't, I just didn't feel like I had much left to give if I

00:08:51.180 kept down that path. I needed to, I needed to turn and try something, you know, radically different.

00:08:56.220 But yet at the same time, that radicalism was just pretty basic, normal things that my grandparents

00:09:01.940 or great grandparents probably would have recommended, you know, without some of the technology.

00:09:06.360 So you've been doing this for about a year and it's really great to make a resolution. And frankly,

00:09:11.280 it's difficult, but it's not all that difficult to go to the gym for day one and maybe even day two

00:09:19.340 and possibly day three, but day four gets to be a little bit harder. Has there been a time

00:09:25.180 over the course of this year when you've thought, eh, all right, enough of that?

00:09:30.580 Yeah, there has after about three or four months, the first like 20, 30, even 40 pounds comes off

00:09:37.160 pretty fast, especially when you're up above 400 pounds. Um, and so, but after that, I hit a bit

00:09:43.560 of a plateau where just like walking on a treadmill and like not eating fast food wasn't enough. I had

00:09:48.580 to really buckle down and do more. And for those two or three weeks where I was mostly at a plateau,

00:09:54.500 that was the closest I came to giving up, um, or to just bailing on it. And I did two things there.

00:10:01.120 One was, that was the first time I think in years that I've really prayed and really thought

00:10:05.100 about my faith more deeply. And the second thing was that I went to the doctor for the first time

00:10:10.680 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

00:10:15.840 September of last year for the first time. And we saw some numbers that were not great pre-diabetic

00:10:21.000 range, high blood pressure, um, and, uh, you know, cholesterol that was a bit too high and combining me

00:10:27.240 looking inward and upward religiously with some like science backing it up from the doctor saying,

00:10:33.780 Hey, these numbers aren't good. That really got me back in the gym. I go, you know, I wake up at 4am

00:10:39.920 Monday through Friday, so I can get to the gym by 4 30. I do it before my, uh, work starts before grad

00:10:45.580 school. And so after that point, I have built, made sure to build it into a routine because every

00:10:52.120 morning you're not going to have the same level of motivation I had on day two, but once it becomes

00:10:56.960 a habit, once it becomes a routine, um, it's a lot more manageable now. And I think back to that

00:11:02.620 sort of couple of weeks, I won't say it was a moment. It was longer than a moment, couple of

00:11:06.180 weeks of weakness where, you know, there might've been some unhealthy eating. And I just think about

00:11:10.160 what I received in that time of reflection and prayer. And then what I got handed to me from the

00:11:16.620 doctor within a two or three week period. And that's enough, um, you know, to make sure I keep

00:11:21.180 going. It was sort of a reaffirmation that I had started along the right path, but you know, I need

00:11:26.380 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

00:11:31.920 even halfway there. Right. So I got, I have a long way to go and it has to be something that becomes

00:11:36.320 not just a diet or not just, um, exercise, but a lifestyle, a habit, you know, something that I can

00:11:42.580 build and do for decades. I have to ask you on, on diet. Sure. I, I have a hobby horse that I have,

00:11:50.280 I've, I've, I never bought into diet fads in my whole life. The one that got me, my wife,

00:11:57.160 sweet little Alisa convinced me of this. She has convinced me seed oils are of the devil.

00:12:03.520 The devil himself has a seed oil factory somewhere between the seventh and eighth circles of hell.

00:12:08.360 And that this has infected all of our foods and made us all really fat and unhealthy. Now I suspect

00:12:14.760 that obesity owes to many factors beyond seed oils, probably just over consumption of calories and

00:12:22.520 a sedentary lifestyle and all the rest. But have you found that it's not just the calories,

00:12:28.140 but it's different types of food are more or less conducive to weight loss?

00:12:32.860 Absolutely. I think every person my size has gotten sort of like standard diet advice for the last 30

00:12:39.780 or 40 years, eat a ton of salads, do a ton of cardio, track every calorie, make sure you're in

00:12:44.800 a calorie deficit and you'll lose weight. And to be fair, I do think you'll lose some weight. I think

00:12:49.100 you'll be miserable and you'll fall off the wagon and you'll gain it all back. Um, but I do think that

00:12:54.760 getting a lot of the sugar and refined carbs and seed oils out of your diet is what I have found to

00:13:02.220 work and be sustainable. I don't necessarily buy into any specific fad, eat this, not that,

00:13:08.160 but I do think cutting out general category is like so much highly processed, so much pre-packaged.

00:13:15.820 You know, if you're getting the food handed, you know, through your car window and they made it in

00:13:19.620 less than 60 seconds and you're eating it alone in a parking lot on your lunch break, it's probably

00:13:23.620 not something you should do regularly, that type of stuff. And I do think that cutting back just to,

00:13:29.120 I mean, I still eat meat. I eat red meat. I eat eggs. I still eat vegetables. I, you know,

00:13:33.280 both, both sides of those are controversial, right? I eat some fruit sometimes, but it's a lot more

00:13:38.460 natural. It's a lot cleaner. It's a lot more home cooked and it's a lot less, uh, fast food,

00:13:44.060 junk food, pre-packaged food. And I feel like that's more what people would have eaten, you know,

00:13:48.900 a couple hundred years ago. And it's a sustainable way to lose weight. Whereas if I buy diet food,

00:13:55.360 which is like a lot of very low calorie, you know, plant-based salad types of food,

00:14:01.000 I will lose weight, but I will also be miserable. I'll probably have some brain fog and I'll fall

00:14:06.440 off the wagon. So I've tried to find something that's sustainable and more natural and more

00:14:11.420 healthy without going the route of, I only eat meat or I never eat meat or, you know, like some of

00:14:16.320 the very, the very, you know, like I'm sure those work because again, you're doing like an extreme

00:14:20.620 elimination diet, which usually will cause some weight loss, but I'm not sure they're sustainable

00:14:25.180 for me. And I am Italian and Jewish. So like this, you know, there's some carbs and stuff that comes

00:14:29.260 into the food sometimes, right? You're not, you can't get rid of that. I mean, you'd be divorcing

00:14:33.840 a part of your cultural heritage. When I moved to Nashville, I've never, uh, really struggled with

00:14:40.780 my weight all that much. You know, I've, I've never, the biggest I ever got was because Daily Wire was

00:14:44.800 maybe going to make a movie and they needed me to gain 20 pounds, which I did. I gained 20 pounds by

00:14:49.640 eating pizza. I cut my body fat in half, but then I forgot to cut. So then I was just kind of chubby

00:14:53.620 for a little while. But, but I did find when I moved to Nashville, I gained 13 pounds in four

00:15:02.040 months, which for me, I'm just not a big guy. So 13 pounds is pretty noticeable. And I thought,

00:15:08.440 what the heck happened? Why is that? And it's because I wasn't really walking around anywhere. I was,

00:15:12.940 you know, I'm, I'm now in the Southern suburb and I was eating biscuits and just the fatty

00:15:19.620 Southern food all the time from all these local restaurants and everything. And my wife just 1.00

00:15:25.240 started cooking more, you know, once we had our first child, you know, and sort of was getting

00:15:31.520 back in the groove of cooking more. And it's not that I ate really all that much less than I previously

00:15:38.120 did. It was just much less sugar, much less grease, much less processed kind of food. And it all went

00:15:47.020 away. And it did get me thinking like, huh, maybe there is just something in the typical American

00:15:51.320 diet that kind of makes you fat. Yeah. I don't count my calories. I don't count my carbs. I'm not

00:15:57.540 explicitly trying to cut out seed oil, but the diet I've adopted in effect cuts out a lot of carbs,

00:16:04.100 a lot of processed food. I'll probably eat 75% of my seed oils. And for me, that works better than

00:16:09.340 trying to explicitly, you know, kill myself by cutting out every gram of sugar and every drop of seed oil,

00:16:14.820 or trying to log everything I eat or drink into an app. Again, it is, it has to work long term for

00:16:21.380 me. And I would prefer to find something that does that rather than do a crash or a fad or something

00:16:27.480 that I think will work short term and get maybe impressive three month results. But then three

00:16:31.400 years down the line, I'll be back to where I was. So before I let you go for anyone who's watching or

00:16:36.140 listening right now, who, you know, maybe wants to lose some weight, feels they've, things have spiraled 0.63

00:16:41.620 out of control a little bit, but they don't know a damn thing about the gym. Sort of like me. I 0.81

00:16:46.460 don't know. I don't know anything really at all about the gym. Day one, you're there for the first

00:16:52.200 time since the Clinton administration. What do you do? I didn't do this until probably week two,

00:17:00.660 but once I did it, I stopped feeling that intimidation and anxiety as I walked into the gym.

00:17:06.100 Because again, I was walking into the gym at over 400 pounds alone, having never stepped into one

00:17:10.280 before. And what I would recommend isn't an exercise, but it's talking to someone. Find the

00:17:16.920 most like buff guy there and ask him what you should do. And then if the gym offers like trainers

00:17:23.760 or something like that, I would also engage with them. But I go at four or five in the morning. So

00:17:27.400 they're not awake yet. But I, everyone in the gym who you think is judging you and who is, and who

00:17:34.760 you're intimidated by is actually incredibly friendly from what I found, at least here in the deep

00:17:39.340 south and incredibly helpful. And not necessarily that all their advice is great, but getting a few

00:17:46.720 basic ideas of do this and then that try this and then that. And one other thing that I would add a

00:17:53.360 little bit more practical is take it slow. It's a marathon, not a sprint, take the weight light and

00:18:01.080 just focus on form and learning one thing at a time, rather than how much weight can I push up for

00:18:08.100 how many reps? I know that's popular with like gym bros online, but like, I'm not there yet.

00:18:12.060 So just talk to people, learn from them and take it slowly. And don't be afraid to ask questions and

00:18:18.740 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

00:18:23.100 I thought were watching me and judging me just wanted to help. And we're incredibly supportive

00:18:27.840 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

00:18:32.360 slowly, I'm going to keep the weight low. And at three or four or 500 pounds, what's really

00:18:37.240 important is that you're getting moving for 30 to 45 minutes per day, getting your heart rate up,

00:18:42.040 getting your blood pumping, sweating. You're going to burn calories. Every time you stand up,

00:18:45.700 you're lifting three, 400 extra pounds, right? So the weight's not that important right now.

00:18:49.280 And then a couple of months down the line, a year down the line, you can dial it in and specialize,

00:18:54.500 but you're going to burn a couple of hundred calories just by going to the gym and being active.

00:18:58.940 So the more relationships you can build there and the more comfortable you can feel

00:19:02.300 long-term, that's what's been successful for me.

00:19:05.040 Well, I love that advice because that's the most intimidating thing is the gym bros because

00:19:10.520 you just think, man, I'm never going to be like that. They're judging me. They're probably mocking

00:19:14.780 me. But one, in my experience, the gym bros I know are some of the friendliest people on earth.

00:19:20.420 And two, man is a social creature. And so you're not going to do very much of anything on your own

00:19:27.500 as a little island. You've got to engage in the community, avail yourself of the wisdom of your

00:19:32.700 peers and people who have been doing it a long time and the wisdom of the ages. Really,

00:19:37.660 really inspiring stuff, man. Dave, thank you for coming on. Where can people find you?

00:19:42.240 I appreciate that. I'm on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, Dave E. Dana on all of them,

00:19:47.220 and I'll pop up.

00:19:48.820 Awesome. That's great. I probably won't see you in the gym, though.

00:19:51.980 If anyone's going to inspire me to go back to the gym, it might be you,

00:19:54.780 but I'll certainly see you on Twitter.

00:19:56.020 I appreciate that.

00:19:56.180 Thank you, Dave.

00:19:57.200 Thank you.

00:19:57.300 Thank you.

00:19:57.360 We'll be right back.

The Michael Knowles Show - April 02, 2023

VIRAL Gym HERO： Body Positivity Is A Lie ｜ Dave Danna

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