15: Killing the diets and taking down Weight Watchers with Will Armijo

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Welcome to the Becoming Bulletproof podcast. I am your host, Tracy o'. Malley. I'm a mom to millennials, an author, Enneagram expert and multi million dollar entrepreneur, and master performance and business coach. I've gone from rock bottom to building a bulletproof business and life. If you're looking for the unfiltered transparent truth and ethos, an extra kick in the ass, you will discover that here. Each week, I'll be bringing you success stories of high level entrepreneurs as we discover how they became bulletproof and created their empire. You'll learn the story behind the glory along with Enneagram inspired truths so you can ignite your own purpose profits and build your legacy. It's time for you to become bulletproof. Buckle up. Let's go.

FOREIGN.

Hey there and welcome to the Becoming Bulletproof podcast. I am Tracy o' Malley and I am so excited for this interview because this is one of my best friends in the world and he actually, you know, for anybody that's followed me for any length of time, you have not just seen, seen the things that I've done really, really well. You've also seen me go through some challenges in regards to my health. And you know, for somebody that takes very, very, very good care of themselves, when all of a sudden you're blindsided by a health crisis and nobody can figure out what's going on, not only is that scary.

It can get expensive. Going down that rabbit hole of doctor after doctor specialist, you don't know who to trust. And pretty much even the strongest person, which I think I'm one of the strongest people I know, can feel a sense of hopelessness. And that is never a fun place to be. And I had to use every tool in my toolbox to get through that. But one of the best things that happened and honestly, I think my friend here, Will, who I'm going to introduce in a second, he was a big part of really telling me, trace, something is wrong. Something is wrong. So my friend Will Armijo is the CEO and founder of willpowered and he is here to help us kill the diet. And as somebody that has pretty much dieted or had disordered eating since she was five years old, he is speaking my language and he's got, I mean, he's more than a pretty face, y' all too. So you've seen the little graphics. You see how handsome he is and charming. But as equally, he is brilliant, educated, smart. He's got a story behind the glory for sure of what he does. But it was I met Will God, I met you six years ago now, that's crazy. When he was, you know, fresh out of his master's program and working a corporate gig and building Will Powered in the pockets of his life, I met him through a network marketing company, which was the blessing of it all that we were able to meet each other that way. But I remember him telling me, I'm going to retire from this job, I'm going to do this. And this was long before there was a coach on every corner and nutrition people were doing the booty pop and saying, let me build your online program and give you macros and all that shit. He was not only building the infrastructure of a business, but he also has the knowledge in the nutritional aspect based on his own story, his own history with that, which we'll get into. And here we are. Gosh, five years later and Will Powered is going to be globally known, like all over the world. He is here to take down Weight Watchers, y'.

All.

Weight Watchers is a. Gosh, was it 4.6 million active users with Weight Watchers yet? The obesity problem is growing at a rapid pace. So, yeah, they're making money and they've got a great business model, but it's not actually helping people. And Will's goal is to help people to be intuitively eating. So we're not moving on from diet to diet to diet, where we have success short term and then we end up with bigger problems later, which is, you know, some of the things that he really addresses, which I respect, love and I am part of Willpowered Nation, so.

It'S working well for me. But back five years ago when I was facing my own health crisis, at the time he was starting willpowered and I was kind of like this beta test. I was like, I'm going to be your most compliant person. I'm going to crush this. I trust you. You tell me what to do and I'll do it. And I followed what he was telling me to a T and nothing was working.

I couldn't lose more than one or two pounds, which wasn't necessarily the goal. I just wanted to feel better, to be honest with you. And I couldn't lose weight. The waistline was getting bigger, which is not normal for me, and went and got blood. He's like, trey, something's not right, something's not right. Go explore things at a deeper level. And just somebody hearing me, because I had hired trainers in the past who basically said I was full of shit and not compliant, which was a crock. But Will see He could see me, he heard me, and he understood me, which is all any of us want, especially when we are facing something like this. And so it was Will and doing willpowered back then, even five years ago, and I'm still doing it five years later.

That really led me to aggressively find answers, another podcast for what came out of that. But it was Will and his knowledge and his experience that really.

Honestly saved my life in a lot of ways. So, Will. Hi.

Hi. Oh, my God. That was, like, the best intro ever.

You are so great at what you do. This whole thing about intuitive eating, it's becoming a trendy little thing that people are throwing around, yet nobody is really educating people on what that looks like. So I know that's your passion. I know that you want to help kill the diet. I know that you talk about Weight Watchers, and yes, they have a good. You respect the hell out of them as a business model and all the things, but the things they didn't take into account. Right, and we'll talk about that. So willpower today is very different than it was five years ago when it was me and you sitting across from each other at a coffee table at a. Over a cup of coffee. Right.

Drastically different. And, you know, I just want every. Everybody listening stay on, because we are going to throw you some value that you have no idea what's coming your way. I am at. Just like she said, I am out to take down the big boys. I'm not scared to say it. And I'm gonna tell you guys some things that need to be said. So you're absolutely gonna love what I say. And I love that you brought up Weight Watchers right off the bat. You know, I will. I will. I will tell you guys right now, listening Weight Watchers did a very good job at helping people lose weight. Now, when I say that and it goes into your ears, you're gonna say, oh, wow. Well, that's probably why they're number one. But here's what nobody can do. They can't help people keep the weight off. That's what we're not thinking about. It's easy to say, you know, I'll even throw you guys a stat.

I just got goosebumps when you said that.

Well, that's the truth that we're sold. You know, we saw a study done on 5,000 people, and they basically said, every diet will help you lose weight. Every single diet. We have thousands of diets. Right? So think about what Tracy said about obesity. Seven out of 10 people in the United States are considered overweight. Not just overweight. Overweight and unhealthy. Obesity is rising. Disease is rising. Childhood obesity is rising. Childhood diabetes is rising. So the point is, is that all these diets, all these supplements, everything out on the market, all these training programs, everything, every single diet you guys come across, I'm telling you guys listening, every single diet, keto, carb cycle, macros, Weight Watchers, doesn't matter, every diet you will lose 10% of your body weight. Every single diet. I'm going to tell you why. Because every single diet puts some type of caloric restriction on you. That's what it does. It's energy in and energy out that can help you lose weight. It does not mean it's going to help you lose fat. It does not mean it's going to help you get healthier. And it does not mean it's going to keep the weight off. But we want quick. So when we hear lose weight, we are in. But what we're not asking is will I lose this weight and keep this weight off? So now I'm going to go into the rest of the study. The rest of the study showed that within one year of any diet, any single diet on the market, within one year you can expect to lose 10% of your body weight. So for those of you listening, I want you to sit down if you have to hit pause and I want you to put your body weight into your calculator and put in 10 to 15%. That's realistic number to lose in a year. That may even make you happy. Wow, I'd love to lose 15% of my body weight in a year. Well, guess what? Any diet you could get, there's free diets. You can do it, it's absolutely free. But nothing will teach you how to keep the weight off. Because if they were to teach you how to keep the weight off, you would never come back to pay for their product. So they can't teach you how to keep the weight off. They can just teach you. They can tap into your psyche and teach you how to lose weight right now. Because that's what we want. We're not asking how to keep it off. So anyway, I'm going to go on to the next topic. But what that study concluded is after one year. You guys listening? 10 to 15% of your body weight within a year, any diet you want. There's free diets all over the Internet. After one year, 75% of people gain back the weight they lost within that year. 7 out of 10 people studied, over 50007 out of 10 people will gain back the weight they lost within 5 years of starting the diet. 65% of people weighed more than when they originally started the diet five years before. We're not even thinking about what our body weight was five years ago. All we're thinking about are what our body weight was five months ago. You know how many people yo yo diet go up, go down, go up, go down, go up, go down. The study proved that diets do not work.

Okay? So I am a former yo yo dieter and I know you are too, and I want to talk about that because it's one thing, you know, if people looked at you and even the last year and a half of, you know, they're going to Google you or they're going to go on your socials and see what the last year and a half look like. They don't know the whole story behind you and your history with this and why, you know, like it is an emotional thing for you too. And that's why you are boldly saying, I'm going after Weight Watchers because, yes, it doesn't work long term and it doesn't educate people. So when it came to you and your journey on that, what was that about for you?

Yep. So the read. The whole reason that I fell into nutrition in the first place was when I was between 10 and 12 years old. I was, I grew up in a little town and I was basically, I was an only child and I was basically being groomed to be a baseball player. I was one of the only left handed pitchers in my hometown. I was decently good. My dad played baseball in high school, my mom and my dad are left handed and it was just like kind of this storybook thing that it was meant to be. Well, I also grew up overweight as a kid. So when that kind of hit on my shoulders that, hey, you can be a baseball player, you have all the assets to be one man. They make millions of dollars. I can take care of my family. I can get out of this town at a young age. This is just what happens. And I said, okay, well, if I want to be the best athlete, I'm going to have to look like the best athlete. So I need to lose some weight. So it was that in conjunction with, you know, when you're that age, you just want to fit in, you want to hang out with the popular kids, you want to do this and that. So naturally I wanted to lose some weight so that I could look good so that, you know, the girls would like Me, I wouldn't get made fun of and I'd be a really good athlete. So at the age of about 10 to 12, I started to adventure into the world of dieting. And the first diet that I ever did was the Atkins diet. And I did it in secret. I didn't tell my parents because my parents weren't overweight, they didn't have a weight problem. So I, and I was an only child, I had nobody to go to. So this was a self taught trial and error. And I started with Atkins diet and then I would go with my mom to the grocery store because there was no social media really back then. So I would go with my mom to the grocery store so I could look through the magazines. So I would look through Muscle and Fitness, Men's Health, Men's Journal, I would look through all these things and I would read what people are doing. And most people in there said, I'm eating egg whites and oatmeal, I'm eating chicken and broccoli and I'm taking this magic protein powder and this is why I have this ripped six pack. So then I started saving up all my money when my parents would give me money to go to the movies and I would go buy protein powders at gnc. So what ended up happening to me is over the course of my high school, I tried every form of. I became obsessed because I did just like I said at the beginning of this podcast with the stats, I did see my body changing because I was just establishing portion control. That's all I was doing. It didn't matter what diet it was, I was establishing portion control. So I just wasn't over consuming food. So I just naturally, as a young kid, I started to lose a little bit of weight. So when I saw that my body, my physical appearance was changing, I became obsessed. It was like a perfect time in somebody's life, develop an obsession or a passion with something and it became nutrition, supplements and working out. And I became obsessed at 12 years old. And the one thing, and then I'll let you go on to the next thing, but the one thing that really, and this I'm going to be able to relate to a lot of people here. No matter how much work I did, I still did not look like the genetically gifted kids around me, especially the athletes. I just, I, I wasn't walking around with a six pack or these big biceps or I always had body fat on me. No matter how hard I tried, no matter what diet I did, no matter what, no matter how much running I did or working out. I never quite looked like those kids that were genetically gifted. And it just never made sense to me. So it sent me down this rabbit hole to try to figure out and understand how can I look like that? Because if I could look like that, then I can perform like that. That's kind of how the whole thing started.

Well, I love that you bring this up because that obsession did lead you, and that's actually how we met, was your obsession. Like you're a mad scientist. You really, really are, and you're genius on understanding the human body, but you had to kind of beat the shit out of your own in order to do that. And when I met you, you were in the height of an obsession around bodybuilding. And then, let's see, like, you were obsessed with how many different ways your body could look. Maybe it was an obsession. I don't know, maybe it was just, you know, market research. But, I mean, I remember seeing you bring your lunch and the Tupperware and all the bullshit that, you know, so many do. Was that.

Part of the obsession? Because you, you had, let's just be real, you had those washboard abs. And, you know, and not only that, you helped other people. I mean, your own dad was standing on a stage in front of, you know, 15,000 people with, at what, 58 years old with a 12 pack rocking it. So you not only knew how to do it for yourself, but then you. This is kind of how willpowered was starting, is you were able to show other people what that could look like 100%.

What happened just quickly for everybody. As I went through high school and college, my number one focus was playing baseball. That's all I cared about was I was eating and training to be the best baseball player. What happened is my baseball career took a sharp left and I went the completely opposite direction. So after baseball, I was freed up. When I got done playing baseball, I was freed up to do whatever I wanted. I had no rules and restrictions on how much I could train, what I could look like, how flexible I needed to be, how much I needed to run. So the natural progression at that point in my life was to go into bodybuilding. It was a natural thing because I was so obsessed. I knew so much about nutrition, I knew so much about training and supplements that the next natural thing was, well, get your body in the best shape that you possibly can with 0% body fat ripping muscles, step on stage, because you've been obsessed with changing your body since you were 12. So when I got into that industry, I realized it was a very dark industry. I realized the industry was very heavy into drugs and it was very into eating unhealthy foods and using drugs and training to actually manipulate what the body looks like and a lot of unhealthy practices when it came to carbohydrates and when it came to manipulating the body. And what I realized is, and just to give you guys a little background on how and why I started willpowered, was because I started hiring these coaches because that's just what people told me. Well, if you want to make it in this industry, you got to hire coaches because they know something you don't. And when I started hiring coaches, I realized two things. One, they had no clue what they were talking about. They were not actually educated. They were passing along diets that they, they had received in their past. And their, their, their lack of, of the customer experience is what really bothered me. So that's actually what mode, what inspired me to create my own coaching system. So I could only create a coaching system based off of what I knew. And actually, I wasn't ever very smart in school. I was just obsessed with the human, but with nutrition and changing the human body chemistry, all those other classes, I'm like average student, barely getting by. But what happened was in college when I had that obsession for the body, and after college, when I developed the obsession for bodybuilding and then I got into that whole sport, I started coaching people because I said, well, these people aren't being coached the right way. So I think I can help enhance the customer experience by coaching myself because I've had such a bad experience with coaches. So what happened was I started teaching people to diet the way that I was dieting. I started helping writing people's diets for them. So I would write all of your meals out. I would tell you what to eat, when to eat. You would check in with me. I had a very good system and I just knew how to change people's bodies. So that's where that obsession with my body came to. But just to keep people entertained in this conversation, I will tell you guys one thing. There was a point where I would not walk past a mirror with my shirt off at night because I was, and I'm telling you guys, I was. I'm just going to give you a little visual. I'm five ten. At the, at the time, I weighed 240 pounds and you could not pull the fat off my body. You could not anywhere. You could not. And I grew up fat as a kid, so I looked Like a walking statue, little hulk, right? I was so obsessed with my body image that at night I would not walk past a mirror because my body would be holding five or six pounds of extra water weight and it would be washing out some of my abs. And I felt that I looked fat in the mirror. And I would not walk past the mirror. I would not go to the pool with my shirt. I would rarely take my shirt off at the pool. It was bad. I would not go to birthday parties, I would not go out. I would not celebrate things because I was so worried that if I didn't eat my meal at 2:30 and I didn't take it with these pills, then I wasn't going to. I was chasing something that wasn't real. So that's kind of what happened. And then through that transition in building willpowered, I had to ask, I had to tell myself this. I had to tell my. And if any of you are entrepreneurs, if any of you are pursuing a passion or anything you love, I had to ask myself this. I am really good at what I do. I'm really good.

You're the best, by the way.

Right.

Right you are.

At the point I said, I don't believe anybody can write a diet better than I can, I don't believe anybody can. At that point in my life, I really sat back and said, man, I have like 12 years of experience. Like, I literally have 12 years of experience. I don't think anybody can write a diet. But then I had to ask myself, my, I had to ask myself this question. What separates me from everybody else? And what kind of impact am I making in the world? Not just in my bank account, because my whole goal was gotta leave my job. I'm gonna get out of the corporate world. I'm gonna do be my own boss. My, both of my parents don't have college degrees. I'm gonna get a master's degree. I'm gonna, I'm gonna start my own business. But then I had asked myself, what kind of impact? How am I impacting the world? Number one.

How am I impacting that and not just my bank account? So I had to ask myself the elephant in the room question, which is really hard for a lot of trainers or nutritionists to hear. And I had to ask myself, what do people do after the diet? If I can write the best diets in the world, why are people coming to me getting the best results they've ever had their entire lives and then coming back six months later and saying, will I gained weight back? I need to get back on your diet. That became a problem to me because I actually wasn't. I was good at what I did in the moment, but I wasn't impacting people for the rest of their lives. That's when I changed everything about what I do and why I am where I am today.

I remember that moment that you and I had that conversation about the new direction and you felt such a sense of responsibility.

Because if we don't repair this, we repeat it. I say this all the time. And if we don't repair this diet cycle bullshit. You told us the statistics at the front end of this. 75% are going to gain it all back and then some. And that does a number not just on our emotional wellness, but all the health problems that come with that. And I remember this moment for you where you were like, I have to do more. Like I have to help people for the long haul. Right? And you know, intuitive eating, it sounds great. We all want to do it, but it's not like, like you said, we all want it quick. And I myself am one of those people. I mean, I've been one of your students for five freaking years. And it's only honestly the last, I'd say eight months that I'm on lock with it because there is so much emotion tied to it. And so I remember when you did this and you're like, okay, I need a support system to be able to do this, to properly educate people. Unless I can be awake 24 7, which is impossible and not good for your own health. You started bringing in people to help you with this, to have willpowered Nation, which it's going to be willpowered global before we know it to really help people after the diet, after the intro of getting them conditioned. Because if we don't stay conditioned in what we're supposed to do, it's just a matter of time before we go to old patterns and behaviors or if we don't understand our motive behind it even. Which I know you have performance coaches in your team and integrative wellness practitioners and you know, people who have been part of willpowered for years that are support staff. So when you realize that, fuck.

I'm a great at writing a diet. So now how do I educate them long term for the rest of their life? So they're not coming to me. And I get that too, like doing what I do with emotional wellness. It's very much the same, but different.

If I don't give people tools for the long haul, I don't want them to Come to me six months later and say, my whole thing freaking world just fell apart because I quit doing what you told me to do. Right? And so I too, and I think we were both at the same time, like, how can we stop this cycle for good, for people and really empower them with these tools? So when you realize this holy shit moment, what am I going to do differently to be able to do this for people? What did that look like for you?

Right. Well, at first I started to become angry because I was, I was looking at the industry as a whole and I was like, this is a billion dollar industry and it's built on dependencies. Every single company sits in a boardroom and says, how can we create dependencies on these people? Because that is where our cash flow is going to come. And I had to sit down and said, I had to sit down and say, how can I be so different? Because let's just start with intuitive eating. I'm going to tell you right now, intuitive eating is the easiest thing to sell because all you have to say is, think about what you're going to eat and then eat intuitively. It's not that hard. So when I started doing the research into it, the first thing I did was I started googling it, right? And there's all these books on Amazon about Intuit, all these doctors and these writers. And I said, well, the first thing I'm going to do because it took me 15 years to realize how intuitive e I. Trial and error for 15 years. How do these people know how? They wrote it in a book. So I bought the books, I read the books, and they were all shit. Every single book was shit. And I was like, the whole book basically says, think about what you're going to eat before you eat it. That's literally the whole book. And I was like, these people are what? These are doctors, These are reputable people. This is crazy. You can't just tell somebody how to be an intuitive eater. What I realized is you have to teach them how to become. It is a path of self discovery. So when I realized that, I knew I couldn't just write a book, I couldn't just create a PDF that people could download. I'd have to create a system, I'd have to create a program, a humanized digital experience. Something that is online, something that is accessible to people, something that is education based. Because here's the thing, guys, if you do not become educated on why and how you are doing what you're doing, you cannot be a leader. And I need to create leaders. Because if I create leaders, you know who it's going to impact? Your spouse, your kid, your family, your co workers. That's how I'm going to make a difference, is to empower and educate on why and how you got the results you got. Teach you how to remove the dependencies that diets create so that you can do this on your own. So that you can then pass that down to your kids, to your spouse, to your friends and to your family. That is how we make a bigger change. So I had to sit down and say, how can I teach people to be intuitive eaters? And I'm going to tell you guys right now, I had to come up with three. Well, I did come up with three principles on how to do this and I'm going to share these with you guys. Three principles that we educate and coach people on over time. Number one is Viktor, absolute obvious that all of you have experienced, you've just never done it long enough to teach yourselves how to do it on your own. Portion control. That is the foundation of it all. It is why Weight Watchers is a billion dollar company. It is why keto works. It is why carb cycling works. It is why everything you have ever tried worked to a certain extent. So I'm going to make this very simple for you guys. I'm sure you guys know the answer to this. If you overeat, you gain weight, you, you gain fat. If your body has too. Food is energy. If there's too much food coming in, the body stores it as energy. That's obvious. If we eat too much, we get fat. Well, here's the other thing. If you eat too little, if you eat, if you under eat. And what do we all feel like we want to do when we want to get in better shape? Fit in the bikini. We want it for the photo shoot in the wedding. When you want to get in better shape, your natural tendency is to eat less. When you, if you eat too less, two things happen. One, your metabolism, your body's smart. I mean, you got a smart machine that you're running in right now. If the intake is too low, it lowers its metabolism because it's like, okay, well if you're going to feed me a little bit of food, then I'm going to lower my metabolism. Here's a statistic that I'm going to share with you guys. Studies show if you reduce your intake, your body, what your body need, requires to survive. So let's call it 1500 calories a day. If you reduce your energy intake by 50%.

You have a 95% chance of binge eating. They've done this on thousands of people. They reduced their intake by 50%. You have a 95% chance of binge eating. So I just want everybody listening to sit back for a second and ask themselves, has there ever been a time where you cut back on what you were eating and then you had a binge eating episode at some point? Because I know I've done it like a hundred times. I know almost everybody listening. If you do not have perfect genetics, you have gone through an episode of binge eating. Now, I want you to think of that cycle. If you under eat and your metabolism lowers and you under eat enough to binge eat, what is binge eating? Binge eating is overeating. So if you overeat, what do you do? You store fat. If your metabolism is lowered, then whatever you originally overate now has a greater impact on fat storage because your metabolism is lower. So then when you binge eat, what do you do? You eat less. So you go back into lowering the metabolism and then doing what again, Binge eating. That is essentially, yo, yo dieting in a nutshell.

I pretty much wrote the book on that. So I know that this, like, even if you're listening right now and you're like, huh, huh? And you're just dismissing it like, this is an epidemic, honestly, you guys. And this is what's robbing us of our health. Not just the whole looking good in a pair of jeans and shit like that. Like, this is robbing us of our health. Because at some point the machine is going to be like, well, what the fuck are we doing now? And it's eventually going to stop working the way it was designed to. And I love that you're teaching this like, this is so important. I know a lot of you are like.

Yeah, 90%. That's crazy. It's true. Every time I've restricted a binge came 100% of the time. Not 90% for me, it was 100% of the time.

Right? So the elephant in the room with this right here for you guys, listening is, okay, I get it. Portion control is obvious, but I don't do it. I don't know how to do that. Right? So Weight Watchers point system tracking calories, everything that you've seen be successful at some point. The whole purpose is to establish portion control. So what we use in our program is we use macro tracking. Now I'm going to tell you right now, macros are a form of dieting. They should not be done long term. They are a means to an end. The only. I want you guys to think of it this way. It's like teaching a kid to ride a bike. If you take the training wheels off too soon, what happens to the kid? They fall right over. Boom. You have to leave the training wheels on long enough so they understand how to balance, how to turn. They can ask some questions, why do I feel this way? Blah, blah, blah, blah. So we use macros like training wheels. We leave them on for a certain amount of time and then like you would take the training wheels off for a kid riding the bike. We don't just take the training wheels off and tell you to go. We're holding your shoulders so you can feel balance, ask more questions, and then we let you go. That is why I didn't just write a book. It's why I don't just talk about it on a stage. It's why this is a program for that specific reason only. So we give you the dependency and then we remove it on our own terms and coach you through not having the dependency on macros that teaches you portion control. Now, guys, I know you might be thinking, oh, okay, I get it. That's just the foundation. The two things that people are not teaching because they don't know how to teach them. The two secrets, the two things that have disrupted our entire culture, that has disrupted the supplement industry and that is causing the most problems in the world today is inflammation in the body. And overly toxic humans. Toxicity and inflammation, they go hand in hand, but we separate them for a reason. Inflammation is what none of us prepared for. Weight Watchers didn't prepare for it. The supplement industry didn't prepare for it. Nobody prepared for the impact that inflammation has on the world right now. Almost all autoimmune diseases are caused by inflammation. And for those of you listening, 90% of people with autoimmune disease are women. 90%.

I believe that.

Okay, all autoimmune diseases stem from inflammation. Heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, arthritis, stress, stress, inflammation that is the leading cause of all symptoms you feel. So if you're listening and you have stomach issues, constipation, bloating, brain fog, skin issues, inability to lose body fat in inflammation. A diet will not fix that. A diet will not fix inflammation. I'm telling you right now, which is.

Where we started, where, like that's what was happening in my body. Like I was following a very well rounded diet, eating plenty of food, all the things, and that inflammation piece was what was happening in my body and we're like, oh shit, oh shit. What do we do with that? What do we do with that? I want to go back to the training wheels a second because, you know, not only do you educate people, you have a beautiful community which is unmatched. I think you have like a 90%.

Engagement rate within your community, which is unheard of. I've built large, you know, communities before. That's not an easy thing to do first and foremost and to keep it that engaged for so long. But something that it's interesting watching because I've been a part of this for so long watching when you pull the training wheels off, the panic that sets in for some of these people that have spent a lifetime on dependence of these kind of things and how you gently and with so much love and encouragement help them through that. You know, just like a child when you take the training wheels off a kid's bike, they keep looking back to make sure you're holding the seat right. And in willpowered. When you do take the training wheels off, you get some, some of those kids will powered kids looking back like, well, I'm not sure this is going to work if you let go.

Right.

Exactly. And I mean think about that. Every other company, every other nutritionist, every other diet program, why would they ever want you to learn to do it on your own? So my point behind that is you've been conditioned since childhood, a conditioning since childhood to have the dependency. You cannot break this overnight. You can't. It is impossible. No matter how much willpower you think you have, you are not going to break those conditionings overnight. You have to recondition. It's just like when they talk about habits. Best way to get rid of bad habits is to create new habits, better habits that replace the bad habits. It's extremely hard just to stop doing something, just to just get cold turkey stop. It's hard. So when you've been conditioned from childhood about food, about carbs, about, you know, I mean the government at one point told us to all drink milk. Like all of you should drink milk and then all of you should eat protein. And then all of then the food pyramid and that like, and all of that has then proven itself wrong. Like a generation later it gets proved wrong and then they just change it up.

So interesting that you said that about like the conditioning because I think in the world we live in today, it's just like we want to press a button and have like the magic wand waved and it's there and you know, I'm about the emotional fitness. And I know you're about like all this other fitness, you know, for our health and that. And to undo conditioning of decades will not happen overnight. And so with that being said, I mean, I will like to say I'm one of your best students. I will just say that I'm the best because I can. And we're here right now, so I will. And even me, who's probably one of the most.

What's the word?

Compliant people, I do the things that you tell me to do because I trust you. And even me, I can kind of go off the rails from time to time, too. So when you're saying it's not going to happen overnight, I know what that looks like for people. And like I said, this last eight months, for me, it's on lock. And I feel better than I've felt probably my entire life.

And.

And knowing what you and I both know, what I went through, like, for me to be able to say that today is a miracle. And I was compliant, I was coachable, and I listened to somebody who actually knows what the fuck they're doing, and Will is that guy. So for somebody that's listening right now and they're like, okay, he's speaking my language. I want that. But people want to know, okay, but what's it gonna. What's the time commitment like? I want changes yesterday.

I know how to get changes today. Right? Like what we said, we can reduce it by 50%. And then, you know, the binge comes and we're tired of the cycle. So for somebody who's tired of the cycle and is actually like, yes, I'm committed. What does that look like for that person?

Well, I would love your coaching here. I would love your coaching right here in this topic. I'm going to tell you why. First. You got it. For those of you listening, you got to ask yourself. It starts with, what are your goals? Right. I don't even know if I like the word goals. And I'm going to tell you why. In my industry, specifically, if I sat any of you down, what are your goals with this?

I don't like goals either. I like motives. I like motives better than goals.

This is going to be perfect. I want to lose £20. I want to have a wedding coming up. I want to fit into my bikini for summer. I want to fit better into my clothes. I want to have more confidence. What do you associate it all with? I want to lose weight. I want to change. I want to physically change. Those goals are temporary goals. You Will, I will not work for you if your goals, let's call them goals, for the sake of this conversation, are temporary. You're perceiving them as a game. A game has an end date. Look at any game. Basketball game, football game, baseball game. Any game that you play has an end. You are perceiving If I lose 20 pounds, you create the length of the game yourself. It's why you shop around for us coaches. You're trying to figure out what that length at the end of the game, how long do I want this game to be? And in any game you want there to be a winner. You want to win. You want to win the game in whatever timeframe you're shopping for. And then you start to hear people that are good, that are showing you how to win the game, how to cheat the game, how to have the cheat code. Take my pill, Take my supplement. I'm gonna help you win your game faster. So now you shop around for these different coaches. You are now getting sold on these different products or these different pills or these potions that are gonna help you in your mind, win or lose the game. Now, let's just go optimistic here. Let's say you win the game. You win. You wanted to lose 20 pounds, 30 days, and you won the game. Great job. Great job. Then what happens? What happens after the game? What happens when every people finish a game, especially if they win, they celebrate. So now you go off. Now you go off. Now you're completely different mindset. The game's over. Okay? Now you decide you want to start a new game. So you just start playing these games with yourself, with your health. You're playing games with your health. Whether you win or lose, you're constantly playing these games. And that's what allows the things to slip in and, and for you to pull your credit card out. It's why infomercials work. Okay, you want to keep playing the game. So what I wanted, the point I want to get back to is your health is not a game. You cannot sit there and look yourself in the mirror and say, my health is a game. It's not. Because you will always be thinking about your health until the day that you die. This is an infinite game. Your health is an infinite game. That is why Tracy can sit back and call herself the best student and that she listens and that she's compliant because her health has turned into an infinite, an infinite scenario. It is not temporary anymore. So when you see your health as not being temporary, you're investing in the long term. You cannot be distracted by shiny objects because there's no end goal. Nobody can act. Your perception is different. You can't be sold on doing something quickly because you're doing this for the rest of your life because you don't want to die early, because you don't want to suffer from disease, because you want to live a long, strong, vitality driven life. So I would love your input here on the perception before we even talk about what my program does or how long you should expect. Because your expectations, your expectations are only driven by your past experiences and what. And, and, and that is going to ruin your perception of the time frame of my program. Because my, the timeframe should not matter. It should not matter if it's an infinite game. So I would love, I would love your. Because you're a professional in this. I would love your perception and your coaching to the people listening on how to even perceive the goals when it comes to health and wellness.

Well, I gotta say, when you said that, you know, you look in the mirror and when you said like, my health is a game, I got choked up. And people are playing Russian roulette with their health for the sake of vanity. And I am not immune to this. I still, this is a conditioning that I have to. I'm almost 50, y', all, and I have to work at this every single day because my conditioning for 40 something years was vanity metrics. Vanity, vanity, vanity. And when you said that, I got really choked up inside because I was playing Russian roulette with my own health. And yes, there were some outside forces and things that were making this harder. But at the end of the day, I had to take really fucking radical responsibility that I was a big part of this. I was a big fucking part of this. And that's a hard pill to swallow. And we'd like to blame it on genetics and all that bullshit. No, at the end of the day, if it's to be, it's up to me. And you know, I've lost some very, very important people in my life this last year that were playing Russian roulette with their health. And I guarantee you, before they died, they wished for one more thing and that was more time to get their shit together. And so what Will says.

Like, I'm really emotional about this because this is not a fucking game, you guys. And we only get one shot down here. And we get this beautiful miracle of a machine that we get to live in and that's our body. And every day, even though I still battle the mirror every once in A while, you know, human nature, you know, I help people with the path of self discovery back to their emotional health. And Will really helps people with the path of self discovery in their physical health. And you know, it's human nature to look in the mirror and our eyes automatically go to the parts that we don't like, right? Automatically we don't look at our sparkly eyes or you know, our bouncing and behaving hair. And Will's got great hair by the way.

And same thing with our emotional health. We go to work to beat the shit out of ourselves for these things about our emotions that wreak havoc on our life. And it's really important to have compassion. And this is where the perception changed for me when it came to my health. And believe it or not, it wasn't coming out the other side of a health crisis, a very severe health crisis where like I was almost dead. Like I'm just going to be really honest with you, it's only been the last year when I was even, even coming out of that I was still trying to fuck the system. I really was because of that decades work, many decades worth of conditioning. And it wasn't until exactly what you said, I looked in the mirror and said this is not a fucking game. This is not a game. I am here to do great things in the world. I know that. And the only way I'm going to be able to do that is if I'm at my optimal health. Because everything works better, my brain, my heart, my emotions, everything. And it was about a year ago I said enough's enough and was 100% compliant.

But it takes that look in the mirror and saying if it's to be, it's up to me. I'm taking radical responsibility. I am not. I mean I keep data as far as weight and measurements only for data purposes. And I also track things like what time of the month it is and where was I like if I travel, like travel days can affect that. And it's only for data reasons, not to beat the shit out of myself and use it as a weapon, right? Because I think a lot of you are using a number as a weapon on yourself or a wall and an excuse of why you just go off the rails. I was one of those people and it wasn't until I said this is only for data. Everything else is about compassion and honor, right? It's not self care and self love because this is really important even for you and your community. Will you know, when we talk about self care and self love if you grew up the way I did. Love meant it had conditions, right? And care meant neglect and abandonment. And if I'm doing self care on myself, I'm neglecting and abandoning myself because that's what I, my perception of what care meant. But there's no.

There'S no way around what the word honor means. Honor is black and white, right? And so as you look in the mirror or you want to take on this thing where you say enough's enough, my life's not a game, my health isn't a game anymore. And every decision I make today is a self honoring one honor. And that means it's not conditional on what a number says or what the mirror tells me, or even how I slept last night, right? It's like, I will do what's best for my health. I will honor the health. I will honor my emotional wellness today. And sometimes that means saying no to shit that I really, really like, like buttercream frosting. Sometimes, sometimes that means I say no to certain friends that are no longer good for me. Sometimes that means that when the kids want to go out and hang out, I'm like, yeah, I'll hang out with you. And we're just gonna enjoy each other's company. And it doesn't have to be based on a fucking meal. Like, how about we do that? How about we move our bodies and have a great conversation? And once I really decided that everything was based on self honoring, everything changed in my health, in my emotional wellness, in the people that are in my life today. There's a very small, select few, but it all came down to my health. Wasn't a game, my life isn't a game. I'm tired of playing this bullshit. It's exhausting y', all. And I know that. And I honestly, I've spent probably $200,000 on diets and plastic surgery. Let's just go there too. I mean, I've done all the things in 40 something years and I'm tired of it. And you know, intuitive eating is pretty damn great. Like, and it's, it's like, I.

I'm going to be really honest with you. Since the age of five, I have thought about food every single day and every meal was a stressful one.

Because it's like, is this right? Is this good for me? Will I lose weight? Will I gain weight? Will I feel like shit later? Like every single thing was, it was stressful, which, that causes more inflammation in your body which causes, you know, to you go into fight or flight, which has you restricting which then has you binging, which then. And the cycle continues. If you don't repair this, you repeat it over and over and over again. And if you repeat this enough, your body will completely shut down and it may not be able to. Like, it's by the grace of God that I'm still here and that I had a second and even third chance because I tried to screw with it a little bit when I knew I made it, I really did.

But don't take it for granted. You're more than the reflection in the mirror. You're more than a size on your jeans.

And you know, like you said earlier about people, keep moving the finish line. I was the queen of that, too. There is something to be said for whatever happens with this body. I'm doing the very absolute best efforts I can with putting absolutely the best things in it, surrounding it with the right things, you know, all the things. And ironically, when you're doing it from that come from and that motivation, you want to know what happens. My body fat is probably lower than it's been in five years. I feel better than I've ever felt in years. I'm sleeping better, the jeans fit. And it was never about that. It's not been about that. And I don't have stress around food. So I'm telling you guys right now, don't wait as long as I did. I mean, but I had a lot more to uncondition myself with. But, like, it's really, really important that, like, you take really radical responsibility. This isn't an autoimmune disease, because I could have used that card. I could have blamed it on that. And I'm going to say one more thing about that. When I knew what I was dealing with as far as autoimmune and all the other slew of things, people watched me and they're like, you are getting healthier a lot faster than most people. And I think sometimes, and I'm sure that you will attest to this, that people hold on to a label of an autoimmune disease and they're kind of married to it. And although those were realities for me, I was not going to buy into that's how it's going to be forever. These are manageable. You can put them in remission and you can operate at a very optimal level in spite of that. But you have to let go of the attachment to them as well and be willing to do emotionally and physically whatever it takes to honor the process.

100%. That was beautifully said and I think and I'm so glad that we went down that rabbit hole because the original question you asked me is dependent on what your perception is of your health. Because if you just simply have an expectation to only lose 20 pounds, I will not help you do that. There's a million things. Just don't eat carbs for 30 days, right? You can lose £20. It's not. Losing weight is not an issue. Keeping fat off and optimizing your internal health is the key. And I will tell people, you might be listening to this going, wow, well, I want to feel this way, I want to think that way. I want to be in that shoes. The things aren't working for me. I'm going to make this very simple for you guys. You do not need my program to make you successful. Nobody needs to invest in a program or a coach or whatever. I'm going to give you the three, going back to the three principles that you can do on your own. Now, I'm going to tell you before I say these things to you, my program just helps you walk through these things. But I do believe that people can do these things absolutely on their own. There are people that are completely self empowered that will do the research and man, they're gonna crush it. That's what I want out of this. But there are a majority of people who need help through the process. That's all I'm here for, just for that. That's what my program, what the whole thing is here for.

Well, and you have the community too. The community is beautiful.

The community is important because most people around you, it's not just about changing your diet, but just like Tracy had said, it's about changing the people and the environment you're making. When you make a lifestyle change that doesn't just involve food, it involves people, it involves environment, it could involve elevation, I mean, whatever, but it's full circle. You got to have all the pieces of the puzzle to change your actual lifestyle. So the three things, number one, you guys heard me say it earlier, portion control. You could find any means out there to help you understand your body's portion control. That's not the hard part. I want you to think about inflammation, everything Tracy just talked about, autoimmunity, stress, etc. Inflammation and toxicity, those are the two biggest factors by far. I want you to think about it this way. If your body is overly inflamed or overly toxic.

And the reason I'm explaining this to you guys is because I don't want you to sit here and think that you Got to eat chicken and broccoli for the rest of your life. You can actually, I call it the transformation cheat code. You could cheat this whole system. You can have the fun foods, you can have the frosting, you can have the cheesecake, you can have the glass of wine when you want it. That's actually built in. That is what I'm not giving up life. A lot of life is about experiences and I'm not. I've sacrificed a lot of them to have a six pack and be the most self conscious and insecure person I've ever known.

Exactly.

So life is about experience. And I do not believe you should give up experiences. And I'm going to tell you this is going to make sense to you. If inflammation and toxicity is low, then what you are doing is you are putting your body into a position to do what it was designed to do. There is a reason that me and whoever that's listening on the other end. If we drove through McDonald's tomorrow and I said, order what you feel is the most toxic meal on this menu we pulled over in the park, I want you to imagine we're sitting there in the parking lot. You get the steaming hot McDonald's thing in your lap. And I said, right, eat it. And you eat it. You do not die. Now we all know that it's full of toxins, it's full of shit, it's full of chemicals, but you do not die. So I want you to walk here. Want to do a little magic school bus ride right here. What do you think happens when that food goes into your body? It goes into your intestines. What do your intestines do? They detox. Then what happens? Things go through your liver and your kidneys. What do they do? They detox. Then you sweat. What do you think comes out? What do you think sweat is? Sweat is detoxification. When you breathe in pollution in the air, how does it not get into your bloodstream? Because your lungs detox it. You are walking around in a detoxifying machine, the best one on planet earth. If your body is overly toxic through the things you do in your environment. Not just talking about food pesticides, additives, colorings, I'm talking about lotions, perfumes, household cleaners. Now those things aren't things you're going to change overnight, but I just want to give you an example.

And emotional stress, Emotional stress is as toxic as some of that other crap too.

Absolutely, absolutely. When you over inundate your body with toxicity, toxicity is directly related to inflammation. So now you have excessive inflammation in your body. It's why I said earlier, you suffer the symptoms. You have the brain fog, you have the constipation, you have the bloating, you have the skin issues, you have the inability to lose fat. I mean, studies show toxins store in body fat. So it's a lot of reason why people have a lot of visceral body fat around their stomach. So when you're overly toxic, your body cannot detox at the rate that the toxins are coming in. So if you have, if you're overly toxic, your body being so smart has to give you signs and signals, hey man, you were a little over toxic here. It has to give you a sign or a symptom. That's why you feel discomfort, it's why most people have, if you're listening, low energy and then all the other things, brain fog, all those things I explained. So if you can eat for low inflammation and start to remove toxicity in your eating and your day to day activities while establishing portion control, think about what we talked about before, those three things. Establishing portion control, reducing inflammation, reducing toxicity. You can now live a very flexible lifestyle because if you eat a bowl of pasta with some wine, nothing can actually happen. The only time it happens, the only time you suffer symptoms is because you're overly toxic and overly inflamed from the things you do on a day to day basis. So when you remove the things in your day to day lifestyle that are inflammatory and toxic and you're not under eating and you're not overeating, you're putting yourself in a prime position to live a very flexible lifestyle on your own terms without ever having to live by the rules and restrictions of, of a diet. That is the transformation cheat code, what I like to call you can absolutely do that on your own. You have the power to do it. All my program does is helps you walk through that entire process. That's it.

And for the first time in my life, I feel I've achieved that. And as somebody that could absolutely do it on their own, I didn't. And that's the problem is we could, but most of us won't. And besides having you and your amazing coaches that work with you, the community, but it's the continuing education as well. If it wasn't in my face every day, it would be just a matter of time before I go back to my old conditioning. So if you're listening out there and you want to try it on your own, chances are you already have. And I get that this hands down not just knowing you and you being my friend and all the things like this has changed my life in a way. It's given me so much emotional freedom around food and fear around food that I've carried for almost five decades now. For the first time in my life, I actually don't stress out when I do have the buttercream because it's never a binge anymore. It's never a binge anymore. It's like, hey, I just made this kick ass buttercream frosting and, and it feels really good to have it. And my body doesn't respond like it used to when it was inflamed all the time. And so he's not full of shit when he says you can live a very flexible, experience filled life around food and alcohol is not my thing anymore. But like, Will loves a glass of whiskey from time to time and he will do that. And his body is not like going into chaos. So if you feel like your body's in chaos, if you feel like you have tried it all or you can't lose weight and the things that used to work aren't anymore, I guarantee you, you are at a high level of toxicity in your body. You're probably inflamed almost 100%. I would tell you you're inflamed. And I would say this thing, this program, this journey with Will and his team will absolutely change your life. Give it, give it a shot. 100% unconditional commitment to it. Not, not an emotional commitment or I always say this, Will, like I'm a high involved person, but I'm a very low attached person. Like I'm highly involved to the process. I'm very low attached to what that looks like. Right. And the journey that that looks like. So when I obviously trusted you specifically this last year, I'm highly involved in the entire process. How that turns out, what the body looks like at the end of it is none of my fucking business. Because I am involved in the process that's honoring. And so for those of you listening out there that you know you're looking in the mirror and you know you haven't honored that beautiful gift you've been given of a body that allows you to do what you've been called to do in your life. Please reach out to Will and his community and where can people find you?

Yeah, absolutely. So people can go to our website. It's willpowered powered.com. you are more than welcome to reach out to me on any social media. Willarmijo on Facebook, you Could search willarmijo or I am willpowered on Instagram. We have a full staff of coaches. You can reach out to us. Like I said on the website, we will get back to you within 24 hours. Reach out to me however you want, but we are always giving content. And you know what, guys, it is a long journey. And that's why I do believe that in a very flexible lifestyle, this is an infinite journey. And we make sure that the customer experience is the best experience you will ever have. And it's flexible, it's not restricted. It's community and educational driven. We have a 30 day, a 30 day program that you could come, you could test this out for 30 days. We have a 97% completion rate over 30 days. So we make sure everybody gets through the whole 30 days within the first five days of starting the program. We'll give you 100% refund if you do not believe that we will get you the results in 30 days. Just after you experiencing us for five days, we'll give you 100% refund. That's how confident we are. And we've worked with over 4,000 people since we started. Mmm.

It's so good. It's so good. I'm so grateful for you. And if you have been a yo yoer your whole life like I have and you're tired of the fucking diets, let's just all kill the diet together. With Will leading the Army, I believe 100% that Weight Watchers better be scared because Willpowered is coming. And thank you for that aha moment of yours, that holy shit, elephant in the room moment of saying, like, it's, it's not enough that I can write a good diet, but I actually have to help people do this for the rest of their lives. And being humbled enough and taking your own radical responsibility to know that I'm not serving them if I can't serve them for the long haul and for the greatest good. So I honor you for that. I love you for that. I love you for your friendship and your wisdom. Thank you for pouring into all of us the last hour. It's been amazing.

Wow, thank you, Traci. I'm so honored. To be honest, I'm so honored to talk to all of your guests and be on your podcast. And this was one of the best podcasts that I have done. We dove down some really good topics and I know people are gonna find some value and I cannot appreciate you more. And thank you again for having me on.

All right, you guys, if you're listening and you loved what you heard. Please take a screenshot, tag both Will and I on the social so we know it landed on your heart and we can continue to bring you more of what you actually need to live the life that you want. Love ya.

Cool. Thank you.

Thank you for tuning in to the Becoming Bulletproof podcast. If you learned a thing or two from our show today, it would mean a lot to me if you shared it and tagged me so I can hear exactly what landed on your heart. This will help me to bring you even more episodes with the topics and guests you want. Please head over to itunes and leave an honest and loving five star review. If this made an impact on you, you can find me on Instagram at traceyomalley and I have tons of free resources for you@traceyomalley.com as always, if you are wanting to ignite your purpose, profits and build your legacy, it's time to stand on the front line of your life and do the work. Let's become Bulletproof.

Sam.