it's embarrassing to be fat in your 30's?
In this video Eric Roberts reacts to a viral clip that shames overweight men, arguing that shame is an ineffective and often harmful weight‑loss strategy. He cites meta‑analyses and individual studies showing that public shaming leads to avoidance of health behaviors, increased eating, and lower long‑term success. Roberts explains that the real barrier to fat loss is mental – low self‑efficacy, guilt, and emotional triggers – not lack of knowledge about diet and exercise. He introduces evidence‑based behavior‑change tools: building self‑efficacy through "stacking small wins," using Motivational Interviewing techniques, identifying and planning for triggers, and reframing identity from "lazy" to "healthy." He illustrates these concepts with personal anecdotes (losing 11 lb after a beach‑shirt moment) and client examples, emphasizing unemotional, data‑driven coaching over shame. The video concludes with a call‑to‑action for his 8‑week fat‑loss challenge, where coaches apply these principles in a personalized plan.
Recently, this video is going viral.
No, because what do you mean you're 20 to 35 years old and you're fucking fat and out of shape? That shit is embarrassing, dog. You need to grow up. If you are a grown-ass man and you're walking around with 25, 40, 100 pounds of excess body fat and you're just not actively doing anything about it, there is literally zero excuse. I was 60 pounds overweight when I was 20 years old and that shit was humiliating. Constantly doing the fat boy shirt pull, constantly afraid of taking my shirt off in front of people. And it doesn't even take a grand commitment. Like, eat like a fucking adult, walk an hour a day, go to the gym 3 times a week. Fucking treat yourself with some respect, for the love of God. You look like hell. Ain't nobody gonna respect you either if you look like that. Sorry, it's a law of human nature. Take care of yourself, man.
And people have a lot to say about it in the comments. So I figured I would give my 2 cents as somebody who's coached over 25,000 clients through their fat loss transformation in the last 10 years. And first, before anything else, I want to say I don't know Michael is his name personally. So, everything I'm about to say is not geared towards him. I think a lot of people do these react videos and they try to attack the person who made the video. That's not what I'm going to do. I'm going to just simply talk about the topic or the concept that he is bringing to the table. Which in the way I interpreted it was shaming yourself into losing weight and/or being real with yourself to lose weight. And I see a couple sides to the argument here. One side of the argument is quite simply that kind of motivation or ideology quite simply works for some people. And I think whether you agree with it, I agree with it, or whatever we think about it, I don't think you and I are able to judge what does or doesn't work for some people, because if it works for them, it works for them. I also think he is speaking to a very specific individual, and the way that he made that video was almost to attract that very specific individual and then distance himself from the individual he does not want to talk to or be associated with, which I think on his part was a strategic move for the audience that he wants to build. Because remember, there are billions of people who are on social media, so sometimes all types of creators whether they're fitness, whether they're beauty, whether they're mindset, personal development, they try to attract a very specific person. So I personally think he was doing that. All of that being said, is that the way that I would personally approach helping somebody get into shape? No, it's not. And there's a couple of reasons for this. When we look at the actual scientific literature of behavior change, which I can put some on the screen here, I can drop it in in the description of the video below as well. A lot of the literature is very simply put: shame doesn't work. And science tends to back that up. Now again, there's going to be outliers. Everybody's an individual and different things work for different people. But when you look at the science, people think calling somebody lazy or telling them they need to get their shit together is going to light a fire under them. And it was interesting because one study looked at over 200 different studies on this topic, and the research showed when somebody was shamed about their weight, about their workouts, about their nutrition, they were more likely to avoid the gym, avoid going to the doctor and keeping up with their health markers, avoid staying on track with their diet. They would end up eating more, not eating less. And so from that huge meta-study, it would prove that shaming most people into losing weight is going to do more harm Then good. There was another study that was done that kind of followed people through being bullied or picked on or shamed, whatever you want to call it, about their weight. And that proved people who had that happen to them were 2.5 times more likely to stay overweight and not make the behavior changes that need to be made to lose weight. And another interesting study took somebody who was actually in a lab, and I believe they read a shameful article about weight, and they ended up eating more food right after. So that shame caused the exact thing they did not want to have happen. And beyond even just the literature and some of the research, when you shame somebody, something worse happens, and it piles up, which is they tend to shame themselves a lot more. And I think that damage that, that causes is something a lot of people don't understand or realize unless you've been in a position like I've been fortunate to be in for the last 10 years and just coaching tens of thousands of people working through the mental aspect of things. Because that's another part of this, which at this point with social media, with AI, with the internet, pretty much everybody knows what to do. You got to eat in a calorie deficit. You got to eat protein. You got to work out. You got to lift weights. You got to get walks, sleep, water. Everybody knows what to do. So why aren't we doing it? Why do we still have an obesity problem in the world? Well, it's because of what goes on in between your ears, your mindset, and the mental work of things. You can know exactly what to do, but if it's shame, if it's guilt, if there's things going on in your brain that are stopping you from actually taking those actions, it doesn't matter how much you know or don't know, you're not going to do the things you know you're supposed to do. And that's why a lot of people struggle. And so this shame leads people to think, I'm just lazy, I'm not going to be able to do this, there's something wrong with me. And this goes way more in depth than just a meal plan or a workout plan, because there's something called self-efficacy, and it's basically your belief and conviction that you are to be able to do something. Something is going to actually happen for you. It's a little bit different than self-belief. It's similar but it's more geared towards the outcome. You are confident and know for a fact it's going to happen. An example I like to use is imagine if you were playing the lottery and you knew the winning lottery ticket. If you knew you had the winning lottery ticket, what are you going to do? You're going to go cash it in. You don't care how you get there. You're going to Uber. You're going to walk for days. And days and days, no matter what, you will do whatever it takes to go cash that ticket. Self-efficacy is like that. If you don't believe something is actually possible for you, if you are too consumed with shame and guilt and negative talk about yourself, no matter what, no matter how much motivation, no matter how many videos you watch, no matter how much you ask ChatGPT for a meal plan, you don't believe it's actually going to happen for you. So why would you stay on track when things get really hard? Why would you push through the low motivation if you don't believe it's going to happen for you anyway? Why would you go the extra mile for when you travel to look up the restaurants around you and still make sure to hit your calories and skip out on the extra drink? Because remember, all of this would be you delaying gratification in the moment, whether it's food, whether it's drinks, whether it's sleeping in and skipping a workout. Your brain is going to say, why would I miss out on this dopamine and instant gratification right now for something that I don't believe is actually going to happen anyway? And that is one of the main reasons why people will consistently struggle with their fitness and their diet and their weight loss, because their self-efficacy is so low. They don't believe it's going to happen. So when these forks in the road start to present themselves where you can either go left and fall off track or go right and stay on track, people really only see that as one option, which is go left and go off track, because neither of the roads are actually going to lead to the outcome and the progress and the result that they want. And again, there's been research to show the people who grew their self-efficacy the most lost the most weight. The people who lost their self-efficacy the most lost the least amount of weight. And so knowing this and that shame is a less effective— not, not ineffective, because again, it may work for some people— but knowing it's a less effective strategy, I would always tend to lean towards the more effective strategy for the majority of people who are trying to see results. And so knowing that, how do you build the self-efficacy? Because unlike potentially what shaming would do, which is just telling somebody you're overweight, you got to get your shit together, those sort of things, those are just words. And maybe for somebody, it would change their mentality and change their behavior. But what the literature shows, and there's a really, really good book about this, and if there's any fitness coaches, personal trainers who are watching this, I highly, highly recommend you read this book. It's called Motivational Interviewing. In this book, in the ideology of motivational interviewing, it talks about stacking small wins to prove to yourself that this is possible. For you, because you're not gonna just talk somebody into building up their self-efficacy. And I think that's the other part of this where people also get this wrong, which is they hear, oh well, I shouldn't shame somebody, so I'm just gonna talk really nice to them. No, because that is also not going to change their action. And I also think there's a side of this where people go way too far and they over-coddle people and they're not real with people and they're just telling them all these great things all the time, but then their actions are never changing along with that. So there's a saying like, be kind, not nice. You have to be real with people, but being real with people doesn't correlate to shaming people or guilting people or talking down on people. And so we build self-efficacy through actions, which could be something as simple as if you're really struggling with your diet right now, your action could just be Drink one protein shake a day. And I think a lot of people have trouble understanding this concept, but I hope I'm able to lay it out for you. You might hear, I'm going to drink one protein shake a day. Well, Eric, that's not going to get me results. Hold on. You're thinking about it in a very small echo chamber where maybe just drinking the one protein shake won't get you all the results you want from that one action. But let's say you're not drinking the protein shake right now and you start drinking it every single day, 7 days a week. A whole week goes by. And you've done that one thing consistently. Do you think you're going to have more belief in yourself or less belief in yourself? Typically more. So now you do that one thing and then let's say you stack on top of that. All right, I've done this drink a protein shake every day for 7 days. Now I'm going to make sure no matter what, I'm going to get 30 grams of protein at breakfast. And because you now have more self-efficacy, more belief that you can actually do something, you also stick to that for 7 days straight. So now you have these 2 things put together. And then let's say you stack on top of that, all right, well, now I'm doing these 2 things. I believe in my ability. I made a promise and I kept a promise to myself. Now from there, I'm gonna go start tracking my calories and making sure I'm within my calorie goal 5 out of the 7 days of the week. And you do that for a week or 2, and these little things will start to add up where you're building on top of it. And now you're stacking all of proof. You can look back at the last 7 days and say, well, I did drink that protein shake every single day. I did get that 30 grams at breakfast. I told myself I was gonna stay on track with my calories 5 out of the 7 days, and I did do that. All of this proof is now leading to way less guilt because you're on track. You didn't have to shame yourself into staying on track. You actually pushed yourself in a positive way to stay on track. And then the self-efficacy you have from that is gonna lead you to say, well, shit, if I've done this and I've done this and I've done this, I can also do this. This is possible for me. And I also think this goes into another important concept which I believe a lot of people get wrong, which is slip-up, falling off track with your diet, missing a workout. The literature also shows in behavior change, the people who were able to sustain a long-term behavior change, whether it be drinking, whether it be smoking, whether it be eating habits, they were able to do one thing that separated them from the people who were not able to sustainably change their habits long term, and that would be identifying triggers and making a plan for those triggers. Let me tie this into fitness and weight loss. Let's say you're doing good with your diet, everything's going well, and then the weekend hit. You fall off track, you don't track your calories, you go over your calories. Most people will then use that as a reason to shame themselves to guilt themselves. I'm a failure. I ruined all my progress. I suck. We said that's not the most effective way to create change, whereas the person who does create long-term behavior change, they take that and they say, okay, number one, one or two days off track isn't going to ruin my progress just because one or two days on track doesn't ruin my progress. But then number two, why did I fall off track? Notice the trigger. Well, I know on the weekends my schedule is a bit different. And I didn't have breakfast. So because I skipped breakfast, I was super hungry later in the day, and I didn't care what I ate. I was just starving, and I was out, and I had fast food. And then once I had the fast food, I wasn't fully satisfied. So by the time dinner came around, I was still starving, and I went out again. And so I overate, or I drank some alcohol, or I did this. You, you just notice the trigger, assess why it happened, and then make a plan for that next. This is something we do with our clients because nobody is perfect with their journey. I think a misconception people have is let's just say you were to become a client of ours and sign up for coaching with us. You're not going to be perfect. Just because you have a coach doesn't mean you're never going to fall off track. But what we do with our clients is when that off track happens, we approach it from a very unemotional and educational perspective. We're not going to go to you and say, why did you fall off track? Don't you care about your goals? Don't you want to look better? We're going to approach it and say, cool, This happened. It's all good. We'll get right back on track. But why did this happen? Let's go through the day. What happened the night before? What happened the morning of? How can we then change that for the next time moving forward? Think about it like your job. If you make a mistake in your job and you're training and you're learning at your job, are they going to just like fire you immediately? Like the one mistake you made? Probably not. Maybe they will, but probably not. They'll say, hey, this is a mistake. Here's why it was a mistake. Here's what we're going to do next time to fix that and change that. And then moving forward, you're not going to make that mistake because now You know, but if you're so emotional about it, it's gonna be— your vision will be so blurred that you're not able to view it in an unemotional way to then make the plan for it, make the necessary changes for it in the future to stay on track. That's another reason why self-efficacy and less shame are important, because you'll be able to fully assess without any emotion. The emotion is what ruins most people, and emotion is very strongly correlated to that shame, because when you're trying to shame somebody, You're almost trying to bring that emotion out of them. People think it's going to be the emotion of motivation, and I'm going to get my shit together, which by the way may happen for a brief period of time. But as you and I both know, the feeling of motivation is short-term, just like the feeling, the emotion of happiness is short-term, of sadness is short-term, of frustration is short-term, of excitement is short-term. All of these things are short-term emotions. So if you're trying to build something around around an emotion, inherently that is going to go like this. It's going to be up and down. Whereas opposed to when you can build strategies and behavior changes based off unemotional plans and strategies and ideologies, it's much more likely to stick long-term as well. And again, I think a lot of people will say, you know, oh, well, here, that's soft. Or it's being soft on somebody. At least the way that we coach our clients, you can be real. You can hold people accountable. You can hold yourself accountable. without the shame. It's just like, for example, I just finished in a 6-week calorie deficit and I lost about 11 pounds. And the— and this is going to be a full circle story actually. The reason I started the calorie deficit was because I took my shirt off in Mexico. I was at the beach, and when I took my shirt off, I was looking around at all of the other men who were there, and quite transparently, they were in much better shape than me. So I was looking at them, I was looking at me, and I was like, I'm the fitness guy. I'm supposed to in good shape. I don't have the best physique in the world. I'm never gonna have the best physique in the world. But it was the first time in my adult life, aside from being a teenager, where I didn't feel comfortable in my body. And so for me, I didn't shame myself. I wasn't like, you suck and you're supposed to be a coach and, and, and what the fuck, this is fucking embarrassing, and this and that. Like, maybe I felt a bit of that, but it really— what it was was, okay, Eric, you've let yourself go a bit too much. Yes, you were trying to bulk and build muscle, but that went too far. You gained too much body fat, so it's time to get your shit together. But never was I like, you suck, or you should shut down your coaching business, or you shouldn't do this. It was just more of the matter-of-fact reality, unemotionally, without shame. And then guess what? That got me right when I got home to start a calorie deficit. I'm down 11 pounds. I feel much better. And that stemmed from an unemotional reality of the situation. If I was so emotional about it, who knows what I would have done? Would I have stopped making content because I felt like a failure? Would I stop trying to help our clients because I felt like a failure? Would I just spiral and be like, well, you've already fucked this up, you might as well keep going? Like, there's so many things that could happen in a negative way when all these emotions get into play. And so looking at it from an unemotional perspective and saying Here's what happened. Here's how I can adjust and fix it moving forward. That I have found for myself and all of the clients that we approach in our coaching program to be the most effective way to create real change. And I think one of the final things I'll end with here for my thoughts on this topic would be behavior and identity. There's a couple of concepts I want to hit on with this, which is number one, talking about the unemotional stuff. There's a difference between if I was to coach one of our clients telling them, hey, you missed 2 workouts versus you're fucking lazy, you missed workouts. One of that is just, here's the behavior that I am observing. You know, why is that happening? What's going on? Getting curious to help fix the problem versus you missed 2 workouts, you're a lazy piece of shit. In my opinion, and what I have seen coaching people, when somebody just says, well, I'm lazy, I'm being lazy, we get this all the time. We'll have moms who sign up with us who have 3 kids and they work full-time and they take their kids to after-school and do all these things and they're like, well, Well, I'm just lazy and I can't get my workouts in. You're not fucking lazy. You're the farthest thing from lazy. And it's interesting because when they tell themselves they're just lazy, it's almost like they give themselves a cop-out to not do what they know they need to do. It's almost an easy way out. And I don't even think most people realize they're doing this, but they're like, well, I'm just lazy. I can't do it. Again, that goes back to the self-efficacy part of it, and it goes back to the emotional part of it. If you identify yourself as just a lazy person, well, how would you ever stay on track if that's how you view yourself and that's your level of self-efficacy? Anytime a difficult part in the journey comes up, that's what you identify yourself with, so that's what you're going to do. Versus when you can just name the behavior, name what's going on in an unemotional way, and then just make a plan for it moving forward. I can't tell you how many times I was coaching a client who missed 2 workouts, and as opposed to me being like, you missed 2 workouts, you suck, you're being lazy, why aren't you following the plan? I'll just get curious and be like, hey, what happened? Like, what's going on? Everything's all good. I'm not mad at you. I'm not judging you, but like, what happened? Well, I'll be honest, Eric, like, work has been fucking crazy. My kids just started school again. I just feel like I'm all over the place. Okay, well, what if we just switch from— we were doing 4-day-a-week workouts for 60 minutes. What if we switched to 2 or 3 days a week for 30 minutes? Would that be like more realistic for you? Oh my God, yes, that'd be so much better for me. That would fit my schedule perfectly. I didn't know I was allowed to do that. I thought that was failing. No, of course not. I can change the workouts and we can make this happen. And we change the workouts and they stay on track. And what happens then? They build self-efficacy again because now they're on track. They're hitting their workouts. They made an adjustment to the plan. They noticed a trigger. They made an adjustment to the plan and they planned ahead for it. And now they're changing their behavior. So now when their life gets crazy busy again with something else, because that's what life does, nothing's ever perfect. They're not gonna tell themselves, well, I'm just lazy. They're gonna say, all right, well, this is happening. I got to do something to kind of fix it. Here's what I could potentially do to fix it. And that's how you create behavior change. And so I would challenge you to think about how you are viewing your identity, because humans, our brains will map to the identity that we have. And this is why I say it's almost like going to sleep. What do you have to do before you actually go to sleep? You have to lie down, you have to close your eyes, and you have to pretend that you are sleeping. You have to act like you are sleeping. You have to think you're sleeping, and then you eventually go to sleep. So if you're somebody who's struggled with weight, struggled with changing your body, you have to identify and act like you are this healthy person before you may actually look like it. Because if you identify with a healthy person— I'm somebody who, I don't skip workouts. I'm somebody who I don't beat myself up. I'm somebody who I get up early and work out. When you change your identity, your actions will change to that. Versus, I'm lazy, I suck, I can't stick to my diet. Your actions are gonna map to that. And this may sound like foo-foo, but this is how— tell me if I'm wrong— this is how it works. And so I think to sum this all up, if shame works for you, that's awesome. You know, kudos to you. Whatever works is what works, and I'm not here to judge any of that. But I just think if we want the most effective strategy that is based in literature and science-backed information. It's behavior change, it's self-efficacy, it's proving to yourself that this is possible for you through these small, seemingly small wins. And that's the last thing I'll say is when you realize these small wins are actually the big wins, because when you stack all of these small— everybody's waiting for the moment where they lose 30 pounds or the moment they like somehow flip a switch and they're super consistent with their diet. Like these people who you think— we all know those people who are very consistent. They're always in the gym. They're always working out. And they think like those people are just gifted or they're just born that way. It's not true. Number 1, they took actions that proved to themselves that they were that person. And now, because of those actions they took and the proof that they have, they now identify As that person. So, it reinforces this cycle. I'll use myself as the example. Working out for me, I don't have to— there's no effort that is involved. I have been working out at least 4 days a week, 5 days a week since I was 16 years old. I'm 30 right now which is crazy to say out loud. But 14 years of proof. I'm just— I'm somebody who works out. Now again, I have slip-ups. I just told you I gained some extra body fat that I didn't want to gain. But But working out is just who I am, and it's so easy for me to work out. I still have days where I'm not motivated, but it's never enough to not go work out. And so when you build this proof, you take these small actions over time, that's how you will change. And that's the very last thing I'll say, I promise. Behavior change takes time. And so if you're somebody who related to this at all, I hope you found this at the very least interesting and/or helpful. Curious to hear your opinion, because this is just my opinion from my, you know, personal experience. And I do think I have a more well-rounded experience just because of what I've done the last 10 years. And this is basically all I've done the last 10 years. But I'm curious to hear your opinion as well, so feel free to drop the comments in the comment section below. And, uh, last but not least, if you resonated or liked, uh, my style and approach to how I approach behavior change and coaching people and those sort of things, uh, you can click the link in the description of the video below to learn more about how you could potentially work with myself and my team. We have something that I do which is our 8-week fat loss challenge where you'll get paired up with a one-on-one coach. They will build you a personalized workout and nutrition plan, and most importantly, they'll hold you accountable. They check in all week and will help you with a lot of this mindset work because like I said, I said earlier, that's really what all this comes down to, is what's going on in between your ears. And so when you change your mindset and you change your behaviors, that is when you will see true sustainable long-term change. And so if you're interested, you can click the link below. Hope you enjoyed, and, uh, we'll chat next time.
