83: How do you feel about your body? Leigh Peele shares with host Mike Domitrz ways to respect...

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. And this week, we've got Lee Peel for you. Lee is a writer, researcher, and mentor who helps people get to the best version of themselves with body composition or mindset. So, Leigh, thank you for joining us.

Thank you so much for having me, man.

Absolutely. I want to dive right into that. What does that mean, the best version of themselves with body composition or mindset? Body composition, I think of fitness, uh, strength training, those cardio heart work. Mindset obviously speaks for itself. Is that what you're referring to?

Yeah. You know, it's not about a collective agreed version, right? But essentially the best version for the individual and whatever that may be for the individual. And so, a lot of what I do is help people kind of unpack not only how to get there technically and physically, but also how to work with the emotional mindset aspects of it. What it is they want or how it is to get to what they want.

And a lot of that does relate some— well, sometimes, not always, but sometimes can relate to body image.

Sure.

And body acceptance. And right now, and in the media and entertainment, it's being discussed more, but there's still a lot of unhealthy examples of it out there. We see it in social media. Is it possible to coexist with people pushing the healthy feel, the healthy look, the healthy bodies that look a certain way, and body acceptance at the same time?

I absolutely believe in the utopia of that. Right. I believe that they can coexist. I believe that it's complicated, or it's complicated mostly by a lot of misunderstanding of the science meeting the sociability. And sure, we have a social science as well to that, but I think that one of the biggest issues in getting to that common ground and to getting into that realm of thinking is just really understanding how one achieves whatever it is they want to achieve.

Uh-huh.

In regards to their body composition, whatever it is that they wanna be. And I'm one of those people that, that truly celebrates autonomy and, and respecting that autonomy. So whatever it is you wanna achieve, believe— understanding the scientific ways, the, the strategy ways to go about achieving that, and then ultimately applying that and, and trying to have some sort of success in that. I find that when we know how to get somewhere, when it stops all being a mystery, Uh, that, uh, the frustration aspects of it, they don't wane because we still have, you know, procrastination and other things. But I find that it, it, it gets a lot less, and, and therefore confusion and, and, and blame or self-guilt or all of these kinds of things, they, they go away, or at least they're, they're a lot less. They're a lot more minimized.

So let's look back on— let's say we have a lot of body image out there examples That are the 4% body fat, you know, the 5% body fat. And that's what we see out there. So how does somebody coexist in a world where fitness is shown as every muscle's cut and defined? You know, there's just this lean look to everybody in imagery for the ideal versions. How does that coexist with somebody who says—

Yeah.

I'll give you the example my trainer used to say. I'd be working out with a friend of mine and we have opposite body images. So, as far as body types, I'm the stick. All right. And he, and he is the, uh, the shorter stout. All right. And so—

He's the bulldog, right?

Yes. And so, our trainer would look at it, both of us sometimes say, wow, you do that. That's amazing. And he'd look at me and go, well, I can't believe you're able to pull that off because we're the same age. And he'd go, look, you two, one of you is a penguin and one of you is an ostrich and you're not going to become the other. So, so how does somebody who's a penguin or an ostrich, how do they compare to the one who looks like a tiger? You know what I mean? Like, how do you avoid that comparison?

I, you know, I think to some degree, there's, there's a lot of mindset work that one has to do to kind of understand the realistic— one of the things that I do with a lot of clients, um, a lot of how and what you just expressed, a lot of achieving a certain type of body composition is understanding your base. You know, it's understanding where you're starting from, height, Genetics, the kind of to some degree physical athletic ability, whether or not you have any pre-existing exi— conditions. All of these things play, you know, some sort of role into that. And I think being really honest about that is— is important and saying, this is what I can achieve. This is what I can't achieve. And one of the things that I— I have a lot of people do is fighters, for example, or people that perform or do things in weight classes. Um, have a lot of examples of their height and size and then their weight. And one of the things that I, I do is this, is I say, okay, you know, if you wanna be X amount of lean or if you want to, to have this level of body fat or if you're trying to hit this goal weight, I, I, I'll shoot them like a usually Google stacks of, of, of fighters or people that have made weight classes. And I'm like, that is how low you would have to get.

Uh-huh.

And this is how much body fat you would have to have or this is how much muscle mass you would have to carry in order to achieve that kind of look. And by the way, You're 5'11 and, you know, you're 5'2 and this is the kind of variant difference of how people look. And sure, um, their height isn't always a predictor of an exact type of look, but it, it can be one for the most part. So, you know, I, I get really real with them and I, I get very honest and, and I have them dig deep into what it is they think they want and what it is they think they don't want and how much of it, you know, 'cause there's nothing wrong with the one, the person that has 4%.

Yeah.

You know, there's nothing wrong with the person who, to them, it comes incredibly easy and it's just their regular rhythm of life.

Uh-huh.

Or the person that worked really hard for it. But there's also nothing wrong with the person that has 20% either and, you know, when we look at the epidemiology research and we— we look at correlations and— and, you know, versus causations of what our health problems are and where that actually lives, it's a complex murky gray water. It's— it's— it is not, hey, guess what? Being as low body fat as possible means you're healthy. And there— there— it—

Uh-huh.

There's a big gray there. There's a lot of arguments to having a little extra body fat or a little weight on you, especially if you were going through some sort of event, some sort of acute illness event in which that you were sick. So I try to just keep it honest. I keep it real and I really allow the individual or I work very hard to allow the individual to shut off the Pinterest pages or the Instagram influencers or the whatever it is that they've been seeing for a bit and focus and zoom in. What do you really want? Okay, this is what's possible for you. 'Cause I find that it's the worst when people are in that place of comparison, when they are the penguin trying to be the ostrich or the other way around and not understanding where it is they're coming from, but celebrating the beauty of the space that they're in.

Yeah, well, I think that's the challenge, right? Especially as you age. For example, I was a swimmer growing up and I mean, not anything special, but I also had a body build that had very high metabolism. So, I could literally, and we were actually assessed on what we were eating at the time, I could eat 8,000 to 10,000 calories a day and have 4% body fat. Now, we were working out 4 to 5 hours a day, you know, 2 hours at practice in the morning, 2 hours in the afternoon, plus weights and running. And so, you had this incredible work ethic that was built with that. But as you age, you stop that level of activity. That's— there's— you're not gonna live at 5 hours of training a day, not most people with family and everything. There are exceptions to that, of course. And you're— you also slow down. And so, it's the comparison of yourself.

Yeah.

Of your past self that can beat yourself up too. And I recently, as an example, a year ago, I went to a very high-fat diet for about a month. The results were amazing as far as my body. First time I could see definition back, like in my abs, that I hadn't seen in forever. But I didn't enjoy the way it felt. I didn't like the things that I had to— and I've had to realize, I don't want to— if that's what it takes, I'm okay not being there.

Yeah, yeah. And I think a lot of people that I'll work with, you know, we'll talk about the past and what worked for them. Because a lot of what I do is I could like— I could turn anyone into a lab rat and get them to achieve whatever body composition we wanted to achieve, you know. If their autonomy was completely robbed and I could just control everything they did, it's a cinch. It really is. You know, it's when you involve the free-living society, it's when you involve the world. And a lot of what I help Uh-huh. People do is— is strategy of it.

And—

and like you said, you know, maybe I can achieve X, Y, and Z with a certain type of diet or a certain— even a certain type of training program or what have you, but if it's not something that's gonna fit into your life, if it doesn't fit into your world, it's kind of like— you know, I always equate people, I'm like, it's like— it's like trying to marry or date someone that, you know, it just doesn't work and you're trying to force it and you're trying to make it work, but it just doesn't work and ultimately something's gotta give and all that's gonna be at the end of it is resentment and hurt feelings.

Uh-huh.

And the same, the absolute same thing exists with food and with training programs. So strategy and the— the method of what it is for some people, it's— it's, you know, moving a little more in a daily set. For others, it's working with the timing of— of meal intake. And ultimately, it's also being really honest about what that takes. You know, having that kind of— God for you moving from that type of activity level and— and then not. And the ability to eat pretty much— wow— and anything you— you could want. Yeah, I've— I've trained swimmers and— and it's— it's incredible what they can pound in. It's— it's almost angering. It's angering for most people to see it from the side, but it's a lot of work. It's— it's a— I— it's an insane amount of work. So to go from that into being like, oh, okay, well, the best I could do now is— is hopefully some sort of low-carb or keto manipulation strategy, it— it doesn't work. You have to find some sort of balance or middle between that and figure out the strategy of what does work and ultimately what it is you want.

Uh-huh.

I mean, you know, if you even want a certain low body fat and how much that's even being true to you.

Right, exactly. And I always like the word when people say, what do you want? For me, I like to say vibrancy because it's the holistic— for me, it sounds holistic versus just strength. Well, if you have strength, but your heart's not healthy, what good is that, right? So—

I totally agree, yeah.

Vibrancy in theory should be, you have the strength, you're taking care of the heart, you're taking care of the lungs, you know, ideally. Now, a lot of this, as you've brought up, does come back to food. So do you, why do you think people have such struggles with their relationship with food? Is there an issue of respect in there and how we view food?

That could be a whole podcast. It could be the whole 25 right there. Um, you know, it's, it's, it's hard when we move from, and, and I think that I really love to look at the social view of over time and how we've, we've spanned things. And we moved from periods of time and it wasn't that long ago that, you know, food was rationed. Food was not available for all of— and there are places in the world in which that is absolutely still the case. But we moved from a place in which that we have very little food available or we have to ration food, and a giant Stombach novel is not as far away as we realize that it is, to moving to a place in which that we have— I have a friend that visits us from Australia, and she looks at our milk section in our grocery stores and she's like, my God, you have so much milk. I don't even Yeah. Why would anyone need all this milk? We have all this availability, palatability, specialized taste, and you know, I'm not one that demonizes food in any way, shape, or form. I'm— I'm one that believes that life is short and— and we should eat to the largest area of our health that we can but also the largest area of enjoyment. And I— and I think it's just really, really hard when you have all of these emotional issues to unpack, health issues to unpack. We have— we have all of these—

Yeah.

Circumstances in life that need coping and that need aid and food is a great— it's a great coping mechanism. It's a— it is a great way to bring some sort of joy and fulfillment into your day and it's also a necessity. We need it. It's energy we need in our bodies and you mix that with palatability and it can start to get complicated because we move from enjoying something and it fulfilling us to maybe abusing it or enjoying it too much and then it creates a very complicated relationship with that item. And the thing that makes it different from alcohol or, uh, too many sex partners or any other addiction-type issue with technology, that the thing that's different about that is we have to have food. Uh, and, and so a lot of what I try to, to do is try to help people have a healthy relationship with that food and, and try to have a better understanding of what it is that works for their lives and what it is that, that doesn't.

There's one that I think a lot of us struggle with out there, and that is sugar. And then, if we cut the sugar, then suddenly salt is what we want. There's this—

Exactly.

I've noticed that in myself. If I cut sugar, suddenly chips are really, really good, even though I wasn't wanting chips before. So, it's this battle of salt and sugar. What are— what's the mindset shift that's needed? What are skills we can take into that to help us shift the mindset? Because I know it's a mindset issue. I've had friends who can look at it and go, it's like poison to them. And so, they don't want it anymore, where they used to want it. I'm like, how do you get to that place where you see it and it looks like poison? I've tried to play the game with my mind, like, see it as poison. I don't. So I'm curious, what does somebody do to get there?

Yeah, for me, and, and this isn't to cut on anyone who utilizes, you know, this tactic or whatnot, I, I think it's comparable to some degree to abstinence and, and, and certain, um, other things, uh, in, in addiction research. You know, essentially it's accessing obsessive-compulsive thoughts. I mean, that's, that's what we're doing. And, and the reason of desires and palatability fulfillment. I mean, that's what it is that we're doing. So I am not one to do an all or nothing. There are periods of abstinence that you can use if you're trying to, you know, shake up habit change or reintroduce things. But what I try and do with my clients and what I try to do with myself— I mean, I had periods of times in which that all I wanted to eat was sugar or all I wanted to eat was certain things. But I think it's ultimately— and I really do think this is true— I think that it is ultimately believing—

Uh-huh.

And the desire and the ability of wanting to be healthy and wanting to live and wanting to live a long time and be healthy in that manner and have a balanced diet, but the demonization that we have of sugar or of, you know, for vegans it can be meat and I'm a vegetarian by the way, so that's not a criticism, or for this group it can be X, you know, fat's bad here and carbs are bad there, sugar's bad there. I don't believe in the demonization of it. From a physiological standpoint, for example, sugar is amazingly efficient.

Uh-huh.

It's an amazingly efficient fuel source. We need energy and it's— and it's an incredibly efficient fuel source. I don't think that it's wrong that we ever crave it or we ever utilize it. It's just how we work it in and how we utilize it. And I think when you make your peace with what it all does, when you understand it from even a biochemistry aspect and you get what it all takes place for and that, okay, you need your vegetables and you need your proteins to do this repair and you need these things to provide this fuel and this source, and when you really look at it for its individual thing, You can kind of step back and be like, okay, fine. None of it's off-limits. None of it's taboo anymore. I can have it all. It's all in front of me. I'm— the grocery store's 24/7 and I can have it all and do it all. Now that it's not some sort of taboo rebellious system, you know, that much happens to a 14-year-old kid when you tell them they can't drink or smoke. Once it's done, it's just this thing that it is. What, again, do you really kind of want? And I've had clients and I'm like, go ahead.

Uh-huh.

Have your whole calories in a whole day. Go ahead. Have it all in cookies. Do it. Have it all in cake. Do it. I tell them. I— I tell them, do it for a week. Do it. They eventually are like, yeah, no, I want some protein. Yeah, no, I— I want— I— I want some vegetables. Like I really do. And I think the hardest person is the individual that has never truly enjoyed vegetables or that has never truly enjoyed the other food. That is the— the worst person, the hardest person to work with. And then it's for them, I— I really try to help them indulge in testing their palate and retesting their palate and— and retrying these types of foods and trying them first battered and fried, you know, and then—

Right.

And then trying them sautéed in heavy butter and salt, you know, and kind of moving it down into the— where they can take a bite of a red pepper or raw broccoli and they're like, no, I really— okay, I'm starting to actually like it. You have to like the food. I mean, you have to like it. And sometimes it means starting off with, you know, it covered in bread and fried and with ketchup and it moves down in that— in that way. So I really try to just be like, go for it. You know, go into the whole barrel of food sin that you absolutely can. Dive in. You know, just— just do your thing. Understand your activity level and then try to not gain any sort of fat mass while doing that and you can maintain body weight on 2,000 calories of Twinkies. You can. It doesn't feel good, but you can do it and eventually you're going to decide on your own that you don't want that anymore and that there's something to it and I— I find that very liberating. I do. I find it very liberating instead of making it this taboo thing where we have, oh, your gut is going to eat Eat you if you do X, Y, and Z. Yeah, well, it doesn't work a lot in other research in healthy behavior. I don't see it working in food, you know, shame and robbing of autonomy and making people feel bad and putting tax on it. It's an idea. I'm not saying it's not an idea, but it's not one I found that's worked.

First of all, I love the phrase food sin. That was great. All right, so now if somebody's listening going, What are some specific steps I can take to feel better about my food choices and my body, right? Of any size. And I think that's a struggle for a lot of people. And it doesn't matter which end of the spectrum you're at, right? I said that I'm very thin. I'm that sort of stick build. And for men, that's not the epitome that society says, right? But I can, I can still love my body. But some people are like, no, I can't, because that doesn't look like that. Or for some people are going, but I'm way larger than the scale says I should be. Than society says I should be. So how do people learn to love their bodies at any size?

I am such a person that comes from the school of The Emperor's New Clothes. You know, I, I was the individual that—

I—

that was one of my favorite books growing up. And then I'm, I'm always the person that's like, oh, everyone's agreeing with this. And it's like, the guy's not wearing any clothes. Like, what are you— it's, it's— he's naked. And that, that is such of my mindset. So for me, I, I think that There is a degree in which that you have to go, sometimes society isn't necessarily right about things. And we have to kind of allow ourselves to agree that while it takes a village and why I am a believer in sociality and believing a social creature, we do have to kind of shut that off a little bit because people are really wrapped up in what it is that they want and what it is that they believe is right. And it really has nothing to do with you. And the only level of societal creatures I think that we should really agreed to being is respectful and autonomous appreciation societal creatures, meaning we don't go into the movie theater and we don't scream fire and we don't try to hurt someone and we do the best we can to be the manneristic neighbor. Everything else though, keeping up with the Joneses and the societal aim of, well, this is the right body fat and this is the kind of person you should look like and this is the type of style that you have to have. I'm not a subscriber to that kind of mentality. So ultimately, I think you really have to turn to yourself and you have to just really analyze who you are and why you are who you are. Why do you like the things that you like? Why are your role models the role models you have? How much of that is influenced by something you think that you should like versus something you really do like? There's a lot of times that I'll be talking to a client or we'll be working out something And I go back to this— there's a scene in a movie, it's a rom-com, it's Runaway Bride with Julia Roberts and Richard Gere. It seems like it should have no deep life lessons whatsoever, but the whole point of the movie is that she doesn't know who she is. She doesn't even know what kind of eggs she likes. She doesn't have any sort of understanding of who she is. Everything has been manipulated from one relationship to the next, and that's why she keeps not marrying people and running away. And I kind of asked them in a roundabout way, I'm like, what kind of eggs do you like? You know, what, what do you like? What is it that you really enjoy? What is it that you vibe off of? And by the end of a lot of our quote unquote body composition work, what people really end up finding is themselves in it. And the body lines up kind of where it's supposed to. I'm not saying it doesn't take strategy and it doesn't take hard work, but once you understand who you are and what you like, it's just a matter of point and shoot. It becomes college. You know, it becomes— it becomes achieving a goal. It just simply becomes putting one foot in front of the other and doing the things that you need to do because now you're not confused. It's not a convoluted situation. You're not quite sure if you're battling this because you want to have a dress outfit for a high school reunion or if you're trying to keep up with your friend Bob who's like, hey, yeah, looking a little lean there. You know, it's— it's— it's nothing about that anymore. The voices, everybody else's opinions, they just disappear.

Well, that makes sense. So what do you think along those lines is— I mean, what you're pretty much saying is take out the noise, right? Because that's getting into our head. It's like porn. I've, I've talked to parents about this. If your kid had never seen porn and the first time they're naked with a partner in a mature, healthy situation, all they're going to be doing is admiring that naked body in front of them, every inch of it, every ounce of it. It's the greatest gift ever. They're going to be thinking, this is awesome. If they've been watching porn though for 3 years, they're judging that same naked body. Based on what they thought the naked body should look like. They're judging their own body based on what the body should look like, instead of being in the moment with the bodies that are. And so, I think what you're describing is dead on exactly with that, with food, with body.

Just like porn. Yeah, it is.

I'm gonna use that from now on. Right? It's body image porn, right? It's food porn. We hear food porn before. So, what do you think are the most harmful things you see people do in the pursuit of body composition?

I think to some degree you just nailed it right there. Um, you know, we're watching too much porn. We're watching, we're watching too much porn in our, in our Instagram feed and, and things like that. It's, it's, it's the comparison is the thief of joy, you know. Um, and it's not that I'm not someone, you know, I want to make it clear, I help people achieve really amazing goals and, and even really high and complicated goals from, um, you know, bodybuilding trainers, uh, that, that do stage competitions to fighters that have to make weight. But ultimately, it's it's it's about their decision. It's about it being it's your decision. It's your dream. It's your goal. That's that's the point. So it's the comparison game, and and it's allowing your neighbors chatter, be it a Facebook friend on social media or literally next door. It's you know, and it always gets me when when people people will be like, oh you know so and so made this comment at me. Today, you know, they made a comment about my body, or, you know, a client will say that, or a friend will say that in general, you know, so-and-so said I was looking X, Y, and Z. I am just not the person to care. In fact, when someone says stuff like that, I'm just like, you're rude. That's just rude.

Right.

It's just rude. It's a rude thing to do. Who does that? You know, I'm always surprised that people do that, and I'm certainly surprised that people allow it to affect them, because the first thing I think when you do something like that You're rude. So I don't really care what you think because you're a rude person. Um, and, and I think having just a lot of self-efficacy and a lot of belief in yourself and ability is, is really important. So let go of the comparison. Yeah. Let go of the chatter and certainly put down the body porn.

Yeah, absolutely. So a lot of people on that journey of trying to figure out their health and myself included, read a lot of books and then we follow this book and then that book. And so what about the people who have that shelf of books? Maybe have left them more confused. For me, I find it interesting. Like I see— I feel like I'm learning from each one. It's not one or nothing, but I feel like I'm learning with each one. But what about those who feel confused? Like which plan am I supposed to be on based on the books?

Yeah, it's— it's interesting you say that because I'm— I'm someone that because I— at the level I am with my education of— of energy and, you know, the biology and the chemistry of how everything works in the body, I can read Uh-huh. A kind of, if you will, bad diet book and take something good from it because a lot of what even bad diet books can teach us has to do with how free-living society needs things to work and there can be a lot of strategy and applicable things and knowledge to take away from that. But I'm coming at it with a very skeptical and critical eye and generally speaking, I'll be honest with you, you'd be hard-pressed to find me reading any sort of diet books these days. You know, I just mostly read studies, but I think with the average person reading diet books, I think that the thing that's really hard and really scary for them, one tells them energy doesn't matter. One tells them calories don't matter. One tells them, you know, carbs is bad. Another tells them that, you know, wheat is gonna destroy their gut. The other tells them that fat is gonna clog their arteries. Like you can't— you can't really win and I've always told people, you know, it's— it's great to read and it's great to try to improve our knowledge, but when it comes to the body, it— it is It is more of a technical process. It's— it can be emotional, but it's more like trying to read a bunch of books on how to build an engine or how to get an engine to run. You don't really— there are many ways to kinda go about a process like that, but it's ultimately a very technical thing. It's a very technical process and you really want, in my opinion, the best diet book you can ever have is usually a textbook. It's usually, you know, I tell people, you really wanna understand, you know, diet and training and metabolism Uh-huh. Read like the Advanced Nutrition and Metabolism textbook that— that is released at your local college. It's used— you can get it for $30 and it's one of the best books you can ever read on a diet. And I— and I think it's understanding the technical energy thermodynamics, the stuff that— that makes the process of our bodies work. That's not changing. Now you might have bad genes. You might have varying amounts from day to day of how much energy you use. There's no static to it. It's— it's— it's— it's— it's never a static motion. It's always an evolving Yeah. But ultimately, you know, energy is not destroyed. It's— it's just all around us. It transfers from one thing to the next. You consume it. You expel it. That's just not changing. And if you can embrace that concept and just try to work the strategies of life, it doesn't matter if you use keto or Paleo or low carb or high carb or vegetarian or whatever. It doesn't really matter. But you've gotta believe in the energy aspect of it and you've gotta believe in the fact that You, the, the best shot you have is trying to keep the energy at bay, you know, at the forefront first, and then the strategy of how it works in your life second.

All right. We're going to pause. I'm going to pause there just due to time. You have a book, right? So, so I can see some people going, wait, isn't she an author? So, uh, how does your book not add to that noise?

It, it does that. Um, you know, I don't have a, and, and technically just for the record, there, there is an ebook, but you know, my, my major book is dropping Okay. So, you know, like, well, you know, I have an ebook but I have that. But yeah, my goal is not to create any sort of dogmatic or fear-based type of nutritional lifestyle. My goal is to help people really achieve what it is they wanna achieve by addressing the science first, addressing the science of what it is that we have to do in order to manipulate body composition, whatever direction that may be, your choice, your autonomy, and then trying to weed out the noise and say, yeah, this is Why these things work, or this is why this works. I don't have an agenda. I don't have a paleo cauliflower pizza that I'm tied to in a company that I'm trying to sell. I'm not shilling for sugar either. I'm not anti the dairy organization. I'm just trying to to put out the best of literature review and science research that I can, and try to help people achieve the body composition that they can without. Ultimately without hating themselves in the morning or being frustrated or not being able to interact with their friends or family or not knowing what to do because they have to cut X, Y, and Z out and never eat it again. You know, or if they need to do that because that's the only way they're gonna survive, they at least understand that they're calling that shot. You know?

Right.

It's— it's just— it's just ultimately it's giving people the power back and that's what I think is really important.

Love it, and I thank you so much for sharing all your brilliance with us today. Such a great conversation. Who knew we'd be talking about body composition porn? And food porn. So there you go. So thank you so much, Lee. Appreciate it.

Thank you for having me.

Absolutely. For all of our listeners, you can find Lee at leepeel.com. That's Lee as in L-E-I-G-H, Peel as in P-E, two E's, L-E dot com. So that'll all be in the show notes also. So for all of our listeners, you know what's coming up next. That is question of the week. This week's question is. Mike, what if I'm in the heat of the moment? And I want to stop and my partner's like, we can't stop. I can't control myself right now. What do I do? Well, if that person says, I can't control myself, know that that's not your responsibility to fix them or whatever they are struggling with in that moment. That's their situation. So if they're going, I can't control myself, you need to be able to say out loud, well, that's not my fault or my problem to solve. You need to take care of that. And I, you don't need me to do that. Right? So that you know that you're not responsible for pleasing them, for making them happy. That's not your responsibility in that moment. You need to be able to honor your boundaries. You need to respect yourself and respect the other person. And saying no to someone is not disrespecting them at all. In fact, it's respecting them because you're being honest because you don't want to do this. And that's super important to understand. We'd love to hear your questions, your thoughts, and your ideas. And the best place to leave those with us is on our Facebook page at facebook.com/MutuallyAmazingPodcast. Of course, you can always contact us on our website at mutuallyamazingpodcast.com. Remember to subscribe to this show so you automatically get it every week. And if you could take one moment to leave a review, that really helps other people find the show, which we are greatly appreciative of. So thank you so much for joining us. May you make today and every day a life full of mutually amazing relationships.