41: James Fell says "Treasure Your Body!"

Welcome to the Mutually Amazing Podcast. I'm your host, Mike Domitrz, with the Center for Respect. The episode you're about to listen to was recorded when this show used to be called the Respect Podcast, so you might hear that mentioned during this episode. Well, let's get to the show. This week we have James Fell, an author and public speaker speaker on the subject of personal transformation. His bylines include the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, and others. His next book is titled The Holy Shift Movement: How Lasting Change Can Happen in an Instant, coming soon. In fact, by the time this is out, the book will be out, uh, so you can check that out. James, thank you so much for joining us.

Oh, you're very welcome. Um, is it okay if I correct you now?

I caught it right afterwards. I caught it right after I said it. I I thought I saw an F and there's not an F there. It's the Holy Shit Movement, correct?

Uh, actually moment. The Holy Shit Moment.

There we go.

When someone has a sudden enlightening experience.

All right, excellent. We'll talk about that towards the end. So thank you for that correction. I appreciate that.

No problem.

Your website is Body for Wife. So how do you address concerns about 2 aspects? One, making our— is making our bodies for what our partners want? That's question number one. And then we'll go into the second one in a moment. So we'll just start with the first one. When people hear that, body for wife, and they see you as what they assume identifies as a male, and they go, well, wait, isn't this our bodies for us, not for just for others? So how do you answer that?

Occasionally people get the wrong idea about it, but most people understand that it's a joke. And I have explained it a number of times. There's the history is that long ago when I wanted to propose to my wife, I decided, well, I'll get in shape first. You know, this is just a good impetus to change. But I never believed that this was something that was a duty that I had to do in order to win her love or anything silly like that. The term comes from years ago. I used to work out with all these guys that were on the Body for Life program, which is one of the most popular weight loss books ever written. And it just came out as a joke one day that they were all doing Body for Life, and I just said, I'm on the Body for Wife program. And they laughed and here we are. Like, it's just, it's, it's just an inside, old inside joke among friends. I never actually considered that my personal fitness and desire to have the body that I do really had much of anything to do with pleasing my wife.

Great. And I knew that from you and I talking previously, but I wanna make sure our listeners understood, 'cause the second half of this, I think you've answered some of it already, which some of our listeners might be thinking is, well, is this very heteronormative? It's body for wife. He's a guy, you know, so is this an inclusive approach, what we're about to discuss?

You know, they say write what you know, and I am, I have written a number of, of articles that are relationship-oriented. And one of the things I say is that, you know, I, I apologize for the heteronormative language that I'm using here, but this is based on my own personal experience of what I know. I am a, firm believer in letting people to love and be with whomever they wish and identify the way they wish. And, I've written many articles that relay that information. But, for me, it's just there's so much personal anecdote in what I write and communicate that it's just my own personal perspective that people may or may not identify with.

Sure. And is there a problem, do you think, with the lack of respect for people's bodies and their health?

Absolutely. Uh, we are an incredibly judgmental society about the way people look. Fat shaming is rampant. That being said, I think a gradual shift is taking place. We're having the conversation now, at least, that, you know, years ago people made fat jokes all the time. And people laughed about it, you know, the whole your mama so fat type of thing. And now people are saying, wait a minute, I mean, maybe that's not so nice, maybe that's not so funny. What can we do to change the messaging here? And it's, it's slow to uptake, but at least I feel like we're making progress to be less judgmental about the way people look. And as well as understanding That the way a person, you know, the amount of body fat that a person carries, as an example, it's not fair for us to judge that person because so much of it is societally constructed. It has so much to do with the environment that it doesn't mean that they're a bad person or a lazy person or anything that it's— we've seen an explosion in obesity rates over the past few decades that has far more to do with the food environment than anything else.

Well, and I think a good example of that is if every— anybody's ever watched an Ironman triathlon and they've gone there to support a spectator or they've participated in one, and, and I have, cuz family members of mine have been in Ironmans. My sister Rita has done Ironmans. And you're sitting there and you're watching somebody that by societal standards would look like a large individual by the stereotypes of societal standards. And they're going right by the person who looks like they have no body fat, who looks like they've been training for 20 years, and they're going right by 'em. And people watch this and they go, how is that possible? Because they have such these stereotypes that that all-muscle body must be in better shape than this body who looks a certain way and doesn't fit the stereotype.

Oh, you're absolutely right. And that's actually one of the encouraging things that I see taking place the last few years, especially I'm seeing it with a lot of women where we are, we do judge women more harshly. their bodies, and we do have a tendency to place more value on women looking a certain way. I'm seeing a shift where a lot of women are rejecting that in favor of performance. They're treating their bodies as performance machines to see what they can do rather than putting any type of focus on, you know, taming those trouble spots, that kind of toxic mentality of, of You know, you've gotta get rid of saddlebags and cellulite and, and all that type of garbage mentality. And instead just saying, I wanna see how fast I can run, how much weight I can lift, how far I can swim. Those types of shifts in mindset that are far more mentally healthy as well as physiologically healthy.

And what's interesting about this is you can get both perspectives. You're right, our society is notoriously fat shamed. And at the same time, there's a thin shame too, which is this weird, you know, double— I don't know— system that's going on in regards that if a guy looks in the mirror and looks too thin, he's sitting there going, I need muscle, because men are supposed to be this big muscular mass.

It's really interesting the way that the media perpetuates that. If you go and look at fitness magazines and you look at the ones that are oriented towards women versus the ones that are oriented towards men, the male one— the women ones have messaging that are all about reduction, being smaller, leaner, thinner. It's all about removing.

Tightness. You see that all the time in women's magazines. It's this idea of being tiny and tight.

Yeah. And with men, it is the exact opposite. Everything is about adding. It's about adding muscle, you know, even adding to your penis size. And even when it says about seeing your abdominal muscles, it's not about losing weight. It's about getting abs or getting ripped. That type of mentality permeates it depending on what the gender is.

Yeah. And so what it leads to is you look in the mirror and And you— we can all fall prey to it. Like, I know people go, oh, uh, you know, once you realize this, you don't fall prey to it. But society keeps throwing it at you, so you can even know it and still fall prey to it. I think that goes back to our original question, is what are the most common ways that you see people disrespecting their own bodies and their health?

Fad diets is the biggest one. There, there's a never-ending slew of whatever the, the latest dietary nonsense is that, you know, it used to be Paleo was the big thing. And Paleo, if you look at the Google Trends for it, it's on its way down, whereas Keto is, is on the way up.

Everybody's talking Keto right now. I mean, in my own world of talking to people about health and all, Keto is what everybody seems to be trying, and I've tried elements of it. I'm curious, what do you think of the Keto? I mean, it's key that you follow it precisely. With Keto, it can be dangerous.

I am not personally a fan. Scientifically, I don't think that it is really that healthy as a long-term strategy, and there's a lot of evidence to support that. When it comes strictly to weight loss, it can be valuable for some people because when it comes to losing weight, the most important thing is adherence, and one of the things that can be very helpful with adherence is is low rule complexity. If you have a very complex diet with— that has all these different rules, it can become very difficult to stick to. There are people out there that, for them, problematic foods are high in sugars, high in carbohydrates. And if suddenly they just adopt a very simple approach to eating where I'm just going to cut as many carbohydrates, as many sugars as I possibly can, then it can mentally make it easier for them to stick to that eating strategy. Unfortunately, we see a lot of very cult-like and disordered eating behavior that can become associated with it, and some people fall off the wagon hard. From an athletic performance standpoint, keto is not good at all when it comes to very high-intensity exercise. The people that are involved in high-intensity lifting or sprinting type of activities, you need carbohydrates to fuel that type of activity.

Well, it's interesting. So this summer I tried something that was very close to it, just because I am one of those, what you just described. I'm the person who struggles with the high carb, the sugar. For me, it's that late night sugar. So I thought, oh, I'll go to this. And it worked brilliantly in some ways. And that was, that's the danger of that fad. You get caught into that, right? So when I wasn't trying to lose weight, I did not have a body frame that necessarily needed to lose weight, but I did. And then your brain goes, ooh, look how, wow, I wasn't even trying to lose weight and look what it did. And you, you buy in. But then you start to realize, wait a second, my energy seems a little off, my brain seems not as sharp as it's been. And you go, something— there's— this doesn't work. But, but it's weird how you wanna buy in because of the one result, even though it wasn't the result you were looking for necessarily.

And often those very early results are a result of water loss anyway, because when you deplete carbohydrates, you, you end up losing a lot of water. And you— so it shows up not just on the scale, but on the way you look.

Oh my gosh, yes. Your chest is popping out and your stomach looks tighter and it's only been like 3 weeks and you're like, wow, I've never had my shirt fit like that. You know, but—

Yeah, this is a miracle diet.

Right, right. And you go, no wonder why everyone loves this. Yeah. You know, so we, we fall into that and these are the diets now, but I think your point is just, you know, be clear, try maybe stay clear of any fad diet. What do you think is the best overall approach then if you're gonna stay clear of all that? What's the healthiest approach?

I think people get a little bit too wrapped up in the way that they look and what the scale says, and too much focus on comparison with others. That you look at the COVID of a magazine and those bodies have this sort of societally constructed perfect ideal that we— that so many of us can't help but compare ourselves to. And it's such an unrealistic Photoshop standard that's being set. Instead, if we look more from the perspective of finding physical activities that we enjoy and endeavoring to get good at them, working on being a better runner or a better cyclist or a better weightlifter, or for my wife and kids, the thing that they're extremely passionate about is karate and just Getting into that community and having a very positive reinforcement from each experience where you feel good, where it doesn't feel like it's destroying you, but it's lifting you up. And then looking at it from the perspective of, okay, how do I fuel this physical activity appropriately? What is the type of high-quality food source that's going to make me better at this activity that I love doing? And If you take that mindset, you're going to end up experiencing changes in your body that you're most likely, including the way it looks, that you're most likely going to be pleased with. You're going to say, hey, you know, I'm happier with the way that I look. And then focusing on the positive changes rather than this mentality of, well, I'm still not good enough. I'm still not as lean as this other person. You know, my muscles aren't as big as this other guy's. Uh, that, that You know, focus on the positive accomplishments rather than the fact that you're still not looking like this, this other person that probably it's their job to look that way. They spent months training for that photo shoot and then they still got Photoshopped.

Well, and I think the tougher one is the real person you see. You know, you're somewhere and you see someone who's not the model who looks like that. And you go, oh, geez. And that almost hits people harder because that's a real person. And you think, well, if they could do it, why can't I do it? Oh, and they have a job and they're a parent and they're— and they look like that, you know? And I think that's where the guilt kicks in.

Well, but everybody's, everybody's different. There's, there's tremendous genetic variety. There's medical conditions. There's, uh—

I love that you're bringing this up.

Yeah. Past life trauma. There's medications, there are so many different things. You know, genetics plays a tremendous role.

Yeah. Though, the one example, I'm gonna hop in here 'cause I get excited about this one. The one example I wanna give is I was in the gym a couple years ago and a friend of mine in the gym, we're direct opposite body builds. So, I'm the tall, skinny, not, you know, there's not a lot of mass as far as, and he is the short, stockier mass guy, right? So, he walks in and I'm on the rings doing some, movement. He's like, how the heck are you able to pull that off at our age? Or that kind of a thing. He is on the bench press pushing something that I'm sitting there going, oh my gosh, how are you hitting those numbers? You know, and that we're, we're cheering each other on but having fun with it. And the trainer's like, hey, you two, just remember, the ostrich doesn't become a penguin and the penguin doesn't become an ostrich no matter how much they work out. And, and it was a brilliant line of that's the mistake we fall into. We think, well, you're doing that, I should be doing that, versus Well, that's cool you're able to, and that's cool you're able to.

Exactly. And I think that we have a tendency to be drawn towards activities that we excel at. And I think I was a terrible runner growing up. I was always at the back of the pack, but I had this feeling that if I really worked at it, I could become passable at it. And it took a long time and it sucked. Becoming a good runner was hard, I got to tell you. And eventually, I qualified for the Boston Marathon. So, it was something that, for me, genetically, I think that there was at least some underlying talent back there that I had the ability to just suffer through and keep going. Yeah.

And I think that drawing that is always the tough part because I think sometimes there's activities that we enjoy and there's activities we don't that we're also good at. And that's the trap. The trap is thinking, I gotta do that one because I excel at that, I win every time I do that, but you don't enjoy it as much.

Yeah, and really, the— you have to look at it from the perspective of life is too short to, to look at physical activity as a constant sufferfest. Um, you know, I'm 50 years old now, and I've been making some changes to the way that I do things because I want to preserve my body and not do things that leave me in pain. And, you know, I, I don't have as many years ahead of me as I do behind me, I figure. So I'm just gonna do stuff that makes me happy and doesn't hurt too much and, and gives me the results that I want, and forget what society or other people think that I should be doing.

I love that. And then speaking of society, what role do you think the media— now we've talked about the magazine world, that imagery What role do you think the media has in addition to that, that magazine world of what we see in the models?

Well, I think a big part is the, the quick and easy mindset that gets perpetuated. The weight loss industry is extraordinarily corrupt, and, and it wants to sell these miracle fast weight loss solutions because the reality is it's slow and takes a tremendous amount of effort and nobody wants to hear that. And the media gives a lot of attention to, you know, the latest fad diet or the latest fad exercise program that perpetuates this myth that it's something other than steady caloric restriction. And that they always want to know about what the new, the new silver bullet solution to weight loss is, or the new scapegoat that is allegedly making people fat. So that's part of the problem. And then, of course, there are the unrealistic beauty standards that we are seeing more inclusiveness now in terms of, you know, so-called— I'm not sure what some people think about the term plus-size models. Some are for it, some are against it. But the reality is we are seeing a wider diversity of people being models and I don't want to say the term sex objects, but you know what I'm saying, being seen as desirable, which I'm a big fan of. I mean, I think everybody has the right to feel desired and sexy regardless of what their body shape is because there's people that— not everybody likes the same thing. And some people like a wide variety of body shapes. But still, when it comes to the latest big-budget movie, the celebrity trainers come out in force and help these celebrities get in just ridiculous, you know, action-figure-looking shape for this role.

Yes. Yeah. And when we talk about that and the perceptions people have, I always like to tell people, hey, Find the part you like. Like, focus on the part you like. You know, we have so much to our bodies. There's got to be something you like. And it— and if somebody— we'll go to in a moment— what if somebody says there's nothing? But I think there's always something, right? So if you think, well, that part's too small or that part's too big, well, what part do you like? You know, and focus on that. And I think it's true of our partners too. I know people that their partners have changed a lot over— they've been married for 20 years and the body that the partner has today looks It's very different than the body that partner had 20-some years ago. And you think, okay, but which parts do you like? Like, don't focus on the parts that have changed you don't like. What parts do you like? And just focus on that, treasure that.

And the same goes for the physical activity that they choose. When I started running quite a while ago, I picked it up because I figured it was going to be good for helping me with weight loss and it was going to be good for my health. But what I didn't realize was that a few years later when I became a writer was how meditative it was and how helpful it was for my career that so much— I almost always prefer to run alone so that I can just let my mind wander. And so much of what I come up with for articles and books that I write and as well as idea generation and just achieving a sort of sense of peace and zen or whatever happens while I'm out for a run and just letting my mind wander. It can take time to discover what it is that you like about certain activities. Sometimes, you kind of have to struggle through and suffer a bit. You're not automatically going to fall in love with a physical activity right away, that it can take some time to— To figure out what it is that you find this little spark of doesn't suck, and you nurture that into a small flame, and then eventually it can grow into a bonfire.

What are some examples of activities that you think a lot of people don't think about? For instance, I'll give you an example. At our age, so you and I are very similar in age, at our age, a lot of people think running, swimming, biking, like they think those are the natural ones. Now, the one a lot of people don't talk about is strength training, which is really critical because as you get older, that bone mass is going to be everything if you take a fall. And if you're strength training, you're going to be way farther down the line than if you're cardio training. If, you know, when the body gets weaker, both are important, but you need both. What are some things you think people miss out on that they fall into the trap of, oh, I just need to do this?

Well, just to address that question, yes, they, uh, the first part is that yes, they are both quite important. I wrote an article about this for the Chicago Tribune a little while ago. The aerobic training— you're running, you're swimming, you're cycling, just using those typical examples— are really good for your organ health. And then the resistance training, which doesn't have to be lifting weights— there's a variety of different ways to do resistance training— are more about keeping you spry, I guess, keeping you independent. So bone strength is very important so that you don't break bones, but actually with strength training, you don't have the fall in the first place that breaks the bone because your muscles keep you from falling over. You're able to— it keeps you more independent as you age where, you know, you can walk on those slippery steps because you can take a good firm grip on the handrail, and you can carry your own groceries, and you can get up out of chairs and out of bathtubs and all those types of things, that it keeps you independent. So, in conjunction, the 2 things work remarkably well together. But I think that there are so many different things that people don't even think about as options that, you know, for example, people who— I live in Canada. There's a lot of people that don't like to run in the winter and they find treadmills boring. Well, you could try cross-country skiing as an example. There's— my wife, I got into shape and I tried to get her into weightlifting. She didn't like that. Running was never going to happen for her. But she's a very intelligent woman. She graduated top of her class from medical school. And the thing that she fell in love with was karate because it involved So much mental stimulation and so much memorization that became her thing. And that's what our kids got into as well. I think that just Googling a list of types of sports that people could just surf the net and say, I don't know, would I like that? And asking the question, would I like that? Well, if it's practical for you to give it a try, give it a try because you never know what you're going to fall in love with.

Yeah, dancing can be a blast, and that can bring you great cardio, and there can be resistance depending on what kind of dancing, uh, that you're doing. And, and we talked earlier about, just briefly, I said, hey, find the parts you like, right? Treasure the parts you like of your body. What are some other ways that you think can help people be less judgmental of themselves, harsher of themselves?

I think if they focus on the positive changes about what they can do that they couldn't before, Rather than on comparison with others. You know, compare yourself to your former self. That is a great way to approach it because no matter what it is, there's always going to be somebody stronger than you, faster than you, more muscular than you, more ripped than you. It's just, you know, there's, there's always going to be someone who can, can do it better.

I love this. Dan Sullivan calls in business the gap where you were to where you are today. And we often forget to look back and treasure that gap. Like, holy cow, the difference is— instead, we're looking ahead going, oh, I need to get here. But we don't just pause and go, look where I've gotten to. And it's so powerful. Today it just happened. I, I got back in the water and started swimming about a month ago for the first time in my life, where I was really training regularly 3 days a week, and then did a meet this weekend, and then got back in today and did the yardage. And right away I said to myself, oh my gosh, a month ago I wouldn't have done half this. And it felt good to just know I can easily do this now. But that treasuring that gap made it that much more fulfilling versus getting in the water going, man, after that meet, I realized how far I have to go still, which would've been depressing versus, wow, look where I'm at already. You know, find— it's mining that gap that from where we were to where we are today can bring so much uplift.

Oh, you're absolutely right, Mike.

What are changes you think that are needed at the societal level, James, for improving our health and the way we feel about our bodies on that deep foundational level?

Well, I think that, uh, from a very big picture perspective, we do have a problem with, um, the way that, that the food industry is funded and the amount of, uh, commercials that are allowed that, that target treat food towards children. That the reason why obesity is rampant has been a fundamental shift in the food environment. So I think that governments need to be more directly involved in preventing the runaway food consumption by— because we've got a lot of money, government money going towards subsidizing calories that are not necessarily good for us and allowing food industries to have too much influence over what it is that we eat and how much we eat. So that's the really big picture perspective. But I think that we need corporations, and some of these corporations are doing so because they're reacting to the societal groundswell, to be more accepting of the tremendous wide variety of body types that are out there. And we're seeing some pretty good examples of this. We're in the infancy stage of that. You know, there's not just— you either have the perfect body or you don't. That's kind of the way it used to be. Whereas now, as you know, we've got a lot of different messages getting out there that's saying that it's a micro percentage of the population that can look like these models. So let's have a more accepting and understanding of what it is that the wide variety of people actually look like and perform like. And not be so judgmental of people that don't fit this, this quote-unquote ideal.

Yeah, and that's so, so important. I love that you shared that. What got you here? What drove you down this path, James?

Uh, in terms of body acceptance?

Yes, the whole, the whole movement. What brought you into fitness and caring about the fitness of others and yourself?

Well, I mean, I got into shape myself and then it was something that I was passionate about and I was also passionate about writing. So, that was merging those 2 things together is that, well, I really like writing and I really like health and fitness. So, after getting an MBA and working in business for a dozen years, I decided on this career change a dozen years ago. And, I wouldn't say that I was really guilty of fat shaming when I was early on, but I did buy in a little bit into the rah-rah, you can do it, anybody can do it, just do it kind of mentality a bit. And then after a few years, I had an important encounter with a, with a man, uh, Dr. Yoni Friedhoff, who runs the blog Weighty Matters. And he works with, um, so he is an obesity researcher and a family physician. He was a fan of my writing. He reached out because of an article that I wrote in the Los Angeles Times, and we became friends. And it was just through his influence that I began to learn more about fat shaming and how detrimental it is to people's psyche and how the opposite of helpful that it is, that, that it actually creates worse mental and physical health outcomes, that I really woke up to how bad and toxic it is, including in the fitness industry. You have a lot of you have a lot of fitness experts who engage in fat shaming. And I realized I don't want to be one of those guys. I really want to help people. And if the way to help people is by being more compassionate and understanding of how we got here and how to help them, that, you know, that's going to be the approach that I take. And so I've become a voice for, for the body acceptance movement.

Well, thank you for doing that. I appreciate that. And your upcoming book, for everyone, again, we said at the beginning, but, uh, tell them about the title and where they can get it because it's going to be out by the time this show airs.

It is called The Holy Shit Moment: How Lasting Change Can Happen in an Instant, and it is about the science of the life-changing epiphany. And there is some stuff in there about body acceptance as well because there's some weight loss stories in there, but I want people to understand that, uh, that You know, whatever type of massive flash of insight that you have, if it is about your body, that it's about having self-compassion for yourself and not looking at your body as something that you're disgusted with, but something that you're inspired for what it can do. Probably the best way for them to get it is to visit my website, bodyforwife.com. And there's a books tab right there. I talk about my book a lot on my website. It won't be hard to find.

All right, fantastic. Thank you so much, James, for joining us today.

Thank you, Mike. It was a real pleasure.

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