How An Internet Entrepreneur Went From A Fat Keyboard Slob To Conquering SEALFit Workouts.

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Foreign.

Hey, folks, it's Ben Greenfield. And I usually promise that I'm going to bring you some kind of a fitness expert or exercise professor or physician or world's leading expert on nutrition onto the podcast. But for today's special episode, I decided to do the exact polar opposite and basically get somebody on the show who is a self proclaimed ignoramus when it comes to fitness, but has actually written a book about fitness. So he's in a very unique position, but I did actually read his book and it's quite interesting and there's actually some pretty, pretty cool gold nuggets in there that have to do with fitness and getting a better body and looking better and losing fat and all sorts of cool stuff. So my guest today is Chris Brogan. Chris, welcome, Ben.

If anyone's even still listening after that, it's going to be such a great show. I'm so happy to be here.

So before we even jump into your book, and I'll reveal the name of your book in a second, what is it that you do because you're not a fitness guy? Like I just said, right?

You know, not officially. I mean, I sweat a lot and I fall off of things in the gym a lot. And, you know, I hurt my body the same way everyone else does. But no, my day job is I run a company called Owner Media Group, which publishes a business magazine called Owner magazine. And one of the things I said right in the launch of doing Owner was that in helping people kind of grow their capabilities and connections and sort of get them equipped for success in their business, I believe that fitness and health is part of that. So we launched a sister magazine called Bossfit, run by my far more educated girlfriend and love of my life, Jacqueline Carly. Bossfit is fitness and health for the busy professional. But I'm only, even when I write over there, I'm writing from the perspective of absolute idiot. And here's what I know.

Can we back that up a second? Because in your book you talk about Jacqueline Carley and she's kind of like, she's a big deal on fitness kind of. Can you tell us a little? Just a little? I don't want to turn this whole podcast into about your girlfriend, but can you tell us a little bit about her and how you guys kind of connected since you weren't really into fitness?

Yeah. Well, it's kind of funny because before we were even together, she had reached out to me. Her Twitter name was Itarella. And so one day she tweeted something to me, and I was like, she seems fit.

Her name kind of gives it away.

Yeah. You know, I was like, hey, I'll ask you things. And so she actually was really kind and gave me, like, some ideas and some plans and just for free, just kind of, like randomly being nice to me, I think, because she had a crush on me and whatever, but I wasn't exactly on the market, and so. But I. What everyone does with free advice, which is like, filed it under I'm never going to do this. And she probably felt like anybody who ever feels like they fell for the trap of being asked for free advice, gave it with really heartfelt intention, and then the person threw it in the trash, and she was like, oh, man, jerkass. And just went from there. Right. So I think we were off to a really auspicious start. So when circumstances in my life changed and when things came about and we were actually getting ready to start dating, I mean, I was the heaviest that I've ever been in my life. And she still, for some unknown reason, found me attractive. And she had gotten out of being a competitive bodybuilder at that point, but she was still giving fitness and health advice and all that. And when we got together, all kinds of weird things happened where she had just finished her master's in nutrition, and she decided she's going to go after a PhD in mind body medicine and all that. And she also decided, for no good reason, she was going to leave her corporate job, start figuring out entrepreneurship, launch a magazine for me and with me, and also do her PhD, and decide to go back into competitive bodybuilding, because any one of those wasn't going to be enough, evidently. And so that's kind of what kickstarted me, was because all I kept thinking was, my girl is going to be, like, 7% body fat and really jacked and have huge arms, and I probably need to try to catch up at least a little bit. And that's kind of part of what got me there. And then the other part is because I ran something called Owner Magazine, I thought if I'm teaching people how to own their choices, it'd be pretty stupid for me not to be able to own the distance between my fork and my mouth. And that's really the big impetus that got me started.

Yeah, that's funny. That's kind of how I got into triathlon was my wife ran for University of Idaho, and I had to figure out how to run just so that I didn't look bad running next to her. And from there, I ended up totally geeking out on it and going way past her into an Ironman and all this jazz. But, yeah, it was one of those deals where I just didn't want to be embarrassed standing next to her. In this case, running next to her, or far behind her, as the case was. So you wrote this book. And first of all, for people listening in, I'll put the show notes for this post up@BenGreenfieldFitness.com starthere. But@BenGreenfieldFitness.Com starthere got Chris's book, and it's called just start, lose weight, get stronger, and finally succeed at your goals. Now, Chris, in your book, you say that you wrote this book because your friends asked you for it. And I'm curious why your friends were asking you to write this kind of a book.

This is the best part of the story for me because, again, I have zero credentials. You can't. There's almost no page in the book that doesn't some way say to you.

You actually do say that a lot throughout the book. You're like, I have no business writing this book, which I kind of got a kick out of, because there's actually a lot of fitness pros writing books that should be saying that.

Well, so let me stress that I absolutely know that. And it's really funny. Like, I'm not in your world at all, except as an observer. And I love watching the fights. I mean, there's some guy as we're recording this that's sort of blowing up all over Facebook right now because he's arguing that high and lifting weights is bad and whatever, and he's just going to blow the lid off it. And everyone's kind of like, shut up. And then the other half of them are fighting. I'm fascinated by this microcosm. So anyway, my friends asked me because there's a real vast difference between looking at a, let's just say Jillian Michaels person or Jack. I mean, Jack went from being a real fat girl who ended up having eating disorder problems who ended up having Jack. Your girlfriend, Jacqueline? Carly. Yeah. She had to. She had to go through this whole eating disorder thing. She was a Real big girl. And so when you look at her now and you look at like, you know, she has bigger, more strong looking delts and biceps than average people do, it's hard for you to kind of connect with her. But everyone who's known me for the last bunch of years, I do a lot of public speaking, I'm out in a lot of big venues and all that, they've seen me for who I am. They're like, you know, charismatic fat guy. And, you know, they saw the transformation sort of in front of their eyes. So they're like, well, I know that guy. And he's like a regular guy. He's not some Ben Greenfield. So, like, I could figure him out. Well, that's what I think they're getting into. I think that the thing that turns people on is like, well, if that fatso could do it, I could do it. Which is not what you get when you look at like almost any other fitness book out there because you see some dude with like, you know, 12 pack abs and you're like, I just kind of have the one pack so far.

So you, you start off in the book by saying that you need a story that defines you. Like throughout the book you've got. And we're going to get to all these kind of, I don't know if they're like Chris Broganisms or whatever, but you've got some really interesting perspectives in the book that I don't, I don't see a lot. And starting off, you say that you need a story that defines you. What do you mean when you say that?

You know, it's amazing how many times everything in our life is so disjointed and so it's easy to throw it back out again. What we say is sort of an easy way to look at it is we all day long make this kind of set of choices. We just don't think about it. I'm the kind of guy who. Or I'm not the kind of person who. You know what I mean? So, for instance, if you're not the kind of person who can say no to a cake, then you eat all the cake. You see, if you're the kind of person who is really strict with their regimen when they're supposed to be and has another plan for when they're going to allow themselves a treatment, then that's who you are, you know. And so I really think that, you know, in defining that story, one of the, one of the things that I did, for instance, was I've Always had a hard time calling myself an athlete. The only few times I was involved in organized sports, I fell out of them pretty quickly. And, you know, so one thing I thought was, I'm going to define myself as a warrior. And I don't mean that I intend to go to war and kill people or whatever, but I really found, for instance, a connection with SEAL Fit, which is this kind of mix of CrossFit and calisthenics that Mark Divine made.

I just, just finish Seal fit workout like 20 minutes ago.

Yeah, I like it. I mean, what I like about it. I mean, there's two things I like about it. One is, so it's so funny, I go to this gym where it's like about a $50 a month gym, so it's not exactly the Purple Planet, but It's also not CrossFit where you pay 200 bucks to go three times a week with sweaty people. And so these people I'll sneak into my $50 gym or $59 or whatever it is and do CrossFit in there anyway. So when I'm in there doing SEAL Fit, like, I used to think that people would make faces at me or whatever. No one could care. They're all doing the same thing. So I don't know, it was just a way to better define myself. So I like to define myself as, you know, a king and a warrior and that's kind of the story. So I say things to myself in my head like, kings don't do this, or this is not what a warrior would do. And those kinds of.

That works for eating as hell. That works for eating. It's almost like playing a movie in your head and you are like the character in the movie. And I do that a lot too. And it's silly because I used to be into like fantasy novels and reading about knights and dragons and warriors and stuff like. And I will still get pictures like that in my head of, you know, me like the, the Conan style dude on the horse, like charging with the muscles and everything when I'm working out, right. And it sounds like a stupid story, but sometimes that actually motivates you in seeing that story is what you need when you've got a big chunk of metal on the floor that you have to pick up.

Yeah, no, I mean, I was reading. I read a lot of books about sort of military indoctrination and things like that. I'm not one of those, like, pretend to be military guys, but I am very fascinated by what it takes to forge somebody into something more El and one recent one I read was like an entire year of boot and whatever with the US Marine Corps, which I think of as pretty solid dudes. And there was this guy. The rules have changed a lot in the 70s. They could punch you in the head and stuff and swear and say all kinds of mean things. Now they have to be a little more gentle, but still kind of turn out a decent warrior. And one of the things that the guy kept shouting at people when they would pick cake up for dessert in the mess hall, because it was at the mess hall, was they're like, that's not warrior food. And he'd knock it on the floor. And I started using that sentence in my head all the time, like, that's not warrior food. And that's kind of helping me make some choices because I would love to eat all of the world's Reese's Peanut Butter Cups so that you wouldn't have to.

Yeah. Or Batman food. That's another one that works. It's not Batman food.

It's not Batman food.

So you also talk about willpower, and you say, willpower is stupid. Why do you say willpower is stupid?

Willpower to me. And sometimes it's a matter of semantics, but willpower to me is like the weakest muscle in your body. It's like one of those under your armpit muscles that sort of kind of supports your tricep but doesn't really do much. And I think that when I say that, a lot of times people use willpower to say this. I want to do this thing. But look at me exerting my will so that I won't. Like, that's the fastest thing in the world to deplete. What I do is I try to make discipline the truth. So I go for streaks. And I say, I've already got 100 days of not doing that. That's because I'm never going to do it again. And that's a streak. And the big, vast difference in your between those two sentences. Well, I really do want that cake, but I'm not going to eat it because I'm a really good person is way different than, I don't eat that cake. That's not what I do. Cake's not on my diet. It's a whole different thing. I mean, I was talking to a guy about that today where. In which I said, you've got to stop saying the word diet. You've got to start saying, this is what I eat, because it's just not going to help.

Right? So basically, when you see something you're going to eat, instead of saying, I'm not going to eat that, or I don't want to eat that, or I'm going to try not to eat that, you just think to yourself, I. I'm not the kind of person that eats that.

Exactly.

And that kind of flows pretty well from that whole story thing anyways, right?

Yeah, absolutely. Because, I mean, I think that the big trick is that we are trying so hard to sort of escape something. And, I mean, that's the thing. No one follows a flag that says, stop doing this. You know, everyone follows a flag that says, let's go towards this. I mean, you know, a revolution isn't like, get away from that guy. It's more like, we think we can be the future. And so we need a revolution. Not so much. I'm not going to do that anymore because that still gives too much magnetic power to whatever that was.

Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Okay, so there's this Instagram account called instagram.com nothinglost and that's your account, right? Nothing lost.

I hope so.

Okay, good, because somebody's posting pictures of you there. If not. And I'll link to your Instagram accounts in the show notes for this podcast, but you post a heck of a lot of pictures of your yourself, like at the gym, standing in your gym shirt, gym equipment, like all of these gym Chris Brogan pictures. Why do you put so many pictures of yourself? And you talk about this in your book, too. What's the deal with the pictures?

So there's a couple things that I'm doing with that. One is that I'm sort of demonstrating that I'm there a lot. And that's important because I'm kind of amazed by people who say they work out five times a week. And I just see amazing pictures of the wine and cheese platter. And. And I'm just like, oh, that's so cool. Because my gym doesn't serve wine, but I'm glad yours does. The other is I have this sort of marketing opinion in general, which is that the more people see your face, the more they're actually going to find you at some event or something and say hi, which is helpful. Then the other is that I'm looking to actually give some level of motivation to other people. And in turn, I follow almost 500 people where. In which I'm looking for motivation from them as well. So when I see their selfie on a day where I was thinking I was going to lay in the bed still, I might jump up and do something. And the other thing is, I love it that I'm sort of doing it wide out in the open. I'm a big fan of the fact that when you come and take a look at my brooding, sexy self pictures or whatever, that I'm also saying I'm still working at this. This is still a work in progress. None of these are my after picture. And so I love that process. And then I guess the other thing is that all those pictures of myself quite often come with some sort of message that gives you some sort of thought that's gone into the process of lifting. So for instance, one of them is I wrote that I had lost a little bit of my progress, but trying to muddy up my program and whatnot. And so try and never to use this stumble as an excuse to quit. So I'm always also trying to say, you know, even when I mess up, I'm still here and I'm gonna do more. And that through that process, I want people to kind of get that feeling of like, hey, this is, you know, it's never perfect, but we're all. We're striving for kind of constant steady forward motion.

Yeah. And it's so much more powerful, too, than this concept of posting onto Facebook or Twitter what your workout's gonna be. I realized this actually pretty late in the game. Like last year, I realized that you get this satisfaction when you post what your workout's gonna be that can almost make you less likely to complete the workout, because a little part of you says, okay, me posting that I'm gonna do this is almost just as good as doing it. And I don't remember where I read this, but it was basically highlighting the fact that you almost have to be kind of careful with posting your goals or posting your workouts, because sometimes it can give you the same satisfaction as having completed it and maybe make you a little less likely to complete it. So what I do now is I'll post a photo or video or something either during the workout or after of kind of like the aftermath, whatever mess was created, you know, after the workout. And. And to me, it helps out a ton because it's evidence that I was there. And, you know, obviously you're doing that too with your Instagram account. Most of your pictures, I'm looking at them here. Like, it's just like you at the gym doing your thing. You're obviously sweating. And I don't think you're taking these pictures before you actually start your workout. Maybe you are. I don't. Maybe Just go to the gym and take a picture and leave.

No, you know what? There's days I really wanted to. There's days I was like, you know, I can just get in here and get this. But I try to even, you know, in some way or another, demonstrate that I'm pretty sweaty. Like I'm looking at from like the end of June or whatever. And I've soaked the shirt, you know, because one of my coaches just basically said, if you're not soaked all the way to your socks, you didn't do anything today. You didn't care what I lifted. I just had to be soaking wet without a swimming pool involved. That's right.

And sweat has that nice anti aging effect too, of course, which is the hidden bonus of sweat. You talk about how losing weight is an hourly experience. What do you mean by that?

Well, it's kind of amazing. We do this with a lot of parts of our life. And that's the other thing. I learned a lot in the gym over the last year. And plus, it's just that a lot of what I learned in the gym relates to business. And so we'll say, you know, I'll say to somebody, what do you intend to make in a year? And they'll say to me, a million bucks. And I go, oh, that's great. That's 184. That's 84,000amonth or whatever it is. And they go, oh. And then they start thinking about what it's going to take to make 84,000amonth. And I say, that's 22,000 a week. How are you going to do it? And so like, when I say that, you know, you know, your health and fitness and everything's an hourly event. That Reese's peanut butter cup that you ate, that you said, well, no one even saw me eat, it strangely shows up on your waist. Still, it turns out, I wish it was not. I wish that any food that you didn't see me eat didn't count. I'd be slender because I'm like swiper in Dora the Explorer. I can eat fast and invisibly if I have to, but it doesn't work that way. And so one of the things that changed in my process was that if I stumble, if I eat something bad, if I make a choice that I'd rather not have made, I make up for it in the next hour. And I try to make sure that I drink a lot more water, for instance, to kind of lubricate and flow and whatnot. I try to Adjust the rest of my caloric intake for the day to account for that dent and so on. So I try really hard to make sure that there's no wasted moment. There's no, like, oh, well, I'll pick it up tomorrow. Because the minute you do that, everything breaks. Like, everything goes horrible.

You talk about this in the book too, how, like, your hour long workout is basically 4% of your day.

Yeah.

And so it's, it really is what you do a lot, a lot of those other hours. And I think it was J.J. virgin, who I recently had on the podcast. She's like, during a workout, you're not burning fat. Right. You're burning sugar. So you're bumping up your metabolism and you're burning carbs. But it's the other 23 hours of the day that you're actually burning fat. And, you know, I love that concept that losing weight really is kind of like an hourly experience. It's not just like this, this whole, like, get in at the gym at the end of the day, sitting in a chair for eight hours a day or whatever.

Yeah. I mean, one of the ways I'm trying to get at that, I mean, there's a lot of people who are using some form of fitness monitor these days, like a Fitbit. I've got a Fitbit on. I've got the one that's supposed to burn your wrist off. And I love it. And I'm not surrendering it until they give me a new one. But what I like about it is there's something in there that says, how active were you per hour? And right now mine looks like a guy ready to flatline. It's just like, nothing, nothing, nothing. Worked like crazy. Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. And I'm like, oh, I need to make a jolt every hour. I would love to see that thing burst every hour. And that's going to change so much, you know, compared to that I went to the gym. Righteous feeling. It's like, oh, well, you know, I can't say stagnant the other 23. So I guess I'm going to allow for sleep, but I'm going to make sure that the other time that I can do some work. Ben, I'm going to do it. I'm going to try to stretch it across the day even a little bit more because I think it'll burn even more.

Yep. I have this rule that on days where I know I'm not going to work out, I have this rule and it's every hour I have to do 30 burpees. So by the end of the day I've just, you know that that takes about two minutes. So I'm getting two minutes of anaerobic workout every 60 minutes. And by the end of the day I feel just as good as if I've done, you know, a full on hardcore workout. So, yeah, I mean, I love, love that concept and it kind of relates to something else you talk about in the book and this you bring up in relation to travel. You talk about time quilting. Can you explain what you mean by time quilting?

Oh yeah. I mean, I really love that process and I use it for all my business. It's amazing how many times we waste time. And I always, I have this trite little quote that's totally true, which is that we always consider time such that, you know, there's an infinite amount of it and we treat it accordingly and we always consider money as if there's a finite amount of it and we consider that accordingly. And it's obviously the opposite. We can always get more money, but we can't get more time. So when I'm traveling, you know, one of the things that I'm doing is I'm looking for where can I, you know, squeak in like a brisk walk. If I've got conference calls, I'm going to make sure I do them walking as fast as I can or whatever I can do that doesn't really, you know, make it awkward for the other person when I get, you know, your 30 burpees is exactly right. So I'll do push ups, I'll do air squats, I'll sneak into the bathroom and do air squats on the toilet. If. As long as it doesn't sound like I'm doing something gross, which I stole from Ferris who said that I think in Four Hour Body where he was like, you know, I hide everywhere and do exercises. And I thought that's brilliant. And I bet so few people are going to do it. I'm just going to do it. Oh yeah.

I'm even that guy who occasionally sneaks into the family bathroom at the airport just so I can do a quick workout in the bathroom. I think it's only been once that I've walked out and had a really upset mom outside waiting for me. But usually it works out okay.

Yeah. And the other thing I do is, you know, I make sure that I handle all the nutrition things when I'm traveling. I make sure that I'm not going to mess up by having not brought my own stuff with me because Holy cow. People make a lot of great excuses at airports, for instance, or why they have to eat the peanut M and Ms. At the minibar. And I also try to bring some smallish stuff. I wish to God I could bring a kettlebell everywhere I go, but it turns out that's not a great plan. So I bring some resistance bands, maybe a jump rope sometimes, or a lot more often I bring a yoga mat, even if I'm not going to do yoga, but I'll use it to just make sure the floor is what I want it to be. And, you know, there's so much. I love books like Power to the People and all that, where it's like there's so many body weight things you can do.

The Pavel Zazolini book.

Yes. Wow, that's a good one. Such a great name. Such a great job of pronouncing.

I practiced before.

Do it again. Pavel who?

Pavels Azazolini. It works better if you've had a drink beforehand.

That's slick.

Yeah, I totally agree. In my bag, it's usually the suspension training strap that I'll use in the hotel room. I throw an elevation training mask in, which is freaking awesome for hotel stair repeats where you just, like go up and down the stairs with this elevation mask on. And you look like a firefighter, too. It's kind of. It's kind of heroic. Or you freak people out that the hotel is on fire. And then a power lung in my travel bag. So when I'm driving my rental car and kind of stuck in traffic or whatever, if I'm in la, I can do power lung breathing while I'm sitting in the car. But, yeah, pretty much anywhere I go, same thing. And I'd never really heard the concept of calling it time quilting or taking these scraps of time and using them to get, you know, fitness done. But I love that kind of concept and that. That phrase. So it doesn't look like you trademarked it, so maybe I'll steal it.

It's all yours. Go for it.

Cool. So another thing that I wanted to ask you about was for you working on the computer, which I take it that, you know, as. As somebody who's. Whose job is kind of, you know, you're basically an Internet entrepreneur, more or less.

Sure.

It sounds like. Do you have specific ways that you've hacked your office, kind of change the environment in which you're working to either help you stay more fit or help you stay more healthy while you're working?

Yeah. You know, it's funny because all these people show me their great, like, $4,000 standing desk or whatever, or their desk treadmill and all that. I'm always like, hey, good for you. Because, you know, it's better. I get that. But I bought, you know, off Amazon, I bought like a $79 laptop stand that musicians like Skrillex or somebody would use. And it just fits your laptop and a little slidey outy thing for a mouse that I never use. So I just put drinks on it and I use that and I use the kitchen countertop. And turns out that also works. And so I do that. And I live in a loft, so it's just like one big square room except for the bathroom. And there's a climbing rope because I have a 16 foot ceiling, so I can kind of do that in between. I've got reservoir resistance bands out. So here's one trick is like, if, you know, if you don't have an infant in the house or whatever, I've got resistance bands out. I've got a kettlebell sitting right there. I've got dumbbells sitting on another table so I can grab stuff and do sets in between my work because the stuff is out and saying, touch me. And that's another time quilting thing. So I might be on a phone with somebody talking about something. I might push the speaker button and do a whole bunch of shoulder presses or something that I need to get done. And they don't know, they don't care. They don't hear me huffing and puffing. So I just get it done. And then it just kind of keeps, you know, time under tension is this thing that people say would be great. There's always this weird. Like, you encounter this more than me. But people say stuff like, if people could do more time under tension, it would be great. And then they have all these reasons why no one's gonna do it. I just find, again, if you just sort of, you know, pepper it throughout the day, it's gonna work a lot better.

Yeah, exactly. Actually, while we've been doing this podcast, I'll bring it up by the mic so you can. I don't know if you can hear it, it's oiled pretty well. But I've got this grip strengthening device because I'm prepping for Spartan races right now, and I found that my weakness is when I get like halfway through, like a traverse wall or a monkey bar set, my grip starts to fail. So I use one of these little grip strengtheners when I'm podcasting now. And I'LL just do my right arm until it just goes, you know, crazy burn. And then shift to the left arm and. And, yeah, it just sits there on my desk and I squeeze it and. I bet you didn't know I was working out when we were talking.

I did not.

Yeah, so. But I was. I was paying attention to. I promise. So you've got this book. Just start here, lose weight, get stronger, and finally succeed at your goals. But what I didn't know, and what you mentioned earlier in the podcast was that there's an online magazine that kind of lays out some of these concepts as well. Is that correct?

You know, it's not written by me at all. I mean, I write, you know, one article out of the bunch. But what we did was we gathered up. This is the weirdness of being me is that all these really nice people who have something to do in the fitness and health industry all were willing to work with Jack and I, Jacqueline, Carly and I on putting together this thing called BossFit magazine. And it has nothing to do with my theories because it's everybody's take on stuff. But we come up with how to advice every month around some theme that would relate to a busy professional's kind of life. So we talk about travel, we talk about corporate wellness, we talk about ways to hack it in different ways because sometimes people aren't necessarily.

Bossfit mag. Yeah, bossfitmag.com you got lots of articles here about sex. Oh, that's the month kiss can make you sick. Is your Libido on fire? 5 exercises you can do for better sex. This is the Sex Month issue.

This was the Sex Month.

Okay, that makes sense then.

We had so much fun doing that, by the way. The only problem is that every time we put out a tweet about it, you get a lot of followers that you don't want because they're all weird robots.

Who writes all these articles? Is this all you and Jack or just.

No, there's like 20 or so authors, so. Dr. Terry Simpson, who's a. He's really fun because he's. By day he's a lap band surgeon, and by night he's a culinary medicine expert who teaches you not to need the lap band. Julia Ledowski, who's a power lifter and also a competitive physique athlete with Jack. I wrote one this same sex month that was sort of like sex. Yes. And it talked about, you know, exercises I thought would help.

Is your training ruining your sex life? I like this 1. The five reasons you skip sex because you're too sore from your last workout. You skip sex because you're worried it will impair your recovery. You cut sex short because your muscles are too sore. You can't have sex without pain because of an injury. You never have time for sex because you're too busy working out. I think I've qualified for two of those criteria in the past.

Well, I mean, there's times, man, you do a really good heavy sweat.

I've had an ab workout before where I've skipped sex because I'm like, my abs not gonna be recovered tomorrow if we have sex.

Sorry, honey, not in the mood. Oh, my belly. Yeah, so I mean, we had fun with that. That issue was hilarious because there were a lot of questions that came back and I mean, some of the people are like, you know, Tom Terwilliger who was like Mr. USA back in the day and all that and, and just fascinating responses and I loved it more than I thought I would to see what people came up with. It was great.

I'm going to add this to my feed reader, bossfitmeg.com, i'll put a link to this in the show notes too cool. Well, Chris, anything else that you want to share with folks? Any last tips, tricks, secrets that you've found in your non fitness expertise?

Well, one of the things that I wrote a lot about in just start here, which I say this is what's lacking in most of the fitness and health books that I've read growing up is all about the mental game. And I wrote a lot in there about mental toughness because partly it's because it's Jack's PhD, so I've been reading over her shoulder a lot. Partly because I've been interviewing all kinds of guys like that, like Mark Devine from the Navy Seals and Tim Grover who coached like Michael Jordan and people like that. I've been talking to a lot of people who make mental toughness part of it. And I found that that all my gains and real success started coming when I worked really hard on my mental game. It had nothing to do with what I ate and like doing deadlifts. It had everything to do with putting my mental game in such a great shape that I could take it on. So I mean, that's the one big thing is that even if you're like an absolute expert and people who listen to you must be because you're like at some crazy other level, that's what my book offers that some people aren't. Is that whole like get really smart. And the other thing I did a little different is I just made it ridiculously prescriptive. Like I just said, just start here. And that's why I named it that, because I figured there's so many books kind of like you could do this or you could do that. Mine just says start here and then you could figure it out afterwards what's going to work or not for you.

Yeah.

Cool.

Lots of good pictures, too. I'll put a good before and after picture of you as well as the book up in the show notes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com and by the way, speaking of Mark Devine, for those of you listening in, this particular podcast episode is going live, I think, the morning that I start Mark's Kokoro camp. So if you're, if you're listening in, say a little prayer for me. So I'll be out there doing a little mental toughness workout of my own for about the next 56 hours. So, Chris, thanks for coming on the call, man.

My utter pleasure. Ben, it's really an honor. Thank you so much for having me.

All right, folks, check out the book. Just start here, lose weight, get stronger, and finally succeed at your Goals over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com starthere and thanks for listening.

Visit BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness, nutrition and performance advice.

Sam.