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Hey everyone, it's Mikki here. You're listening to Mikkipedia. This week on the podcast, I speak to Aram Gregorian, the straight talking coach behind Four Weeks to the Beach. Aram is refreshingly honest and his approach cuts through the noise of modern fitness culture. He has built a loyal following by calling out quick fixes, influencer myths, and the glorification of self-neglect and replacing them with evidence-based practical strategies that actually help people change.

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So in this episode, Aram and I dive deep into the realities of sustainable fat loss, the emotional roller coaster of dieting, and why the basics, sleep, food quality, and consistency are often overlooked. We also tackle the trap of chasing aesthetics over health, the truth about fasting, and why regaining a bit of weight after a diet doesn't mean that you've failed. So if you're tired of magic pills, not looking at you, happy mammoth, and motivational fluff,

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This conversation is the anecdote. For those of you unfamiliar with Aram Gregorian, he is a nutrition and mind tech coach and the founder of Four Weeks to the Beach, a coaching platform built on cutting through wellness industry hype with honesty, clarity and science. With certifications from Precision Nutrition and Nutrition Coaching Institute, Aram blends a no-nonsense approach with deep empathy for the real world challenges people face. In addition, of course, to his

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role as coach in Four Weeks to the Beach. He is also the host of the Real Coaches Summit which is a conference that brings together coaches to learn from their mentors in this space and that happens annually. And he is also the co-host of the Other Side Lifestyle with Jim Hallinan and they just have some real life, real world conversations over there that

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really delve deep into some of the things that Aram and I just touch on here today. And I have got links to Aram's fourweekstothebeach.com, his podcast, The Other Side Lifestyle, his Instagram handle and the Instagram handle for Real Coaches Summit. So anyone in the coaching space who wants to find out more information and get early info as to when the next one is running, go along and give Real Coaches Summit a follow.

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Before we crack on into today's podcast though, I would like to remind you of two things. The first one is my Unlocking Fat Loss Success webinar is free and it is being run Wednesday, 16th of July at 1pm and 7pm New Zealand time and it's being recorded. So many of the things that Aram and I talk about today, I am covering off in that space and giving you the opportunity to ask me some questions. So go to my website, makiwildon.com and sign up to that. Again, it is free to you.

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And also just to remind you as well that the best way to support this podcast is to hit the subscribe button on your favourite podcast listing platform. That increases the visibility of Micopedia and amongst literally thousands of other podcasts out there. And while you're at it, tell a mate too. Alright team, enjoy the conversation I have with RM Gregorian.

03:18
Thank you so much for taking time to speak to me this morning. I said this to you actually on your Instagram that whenever your stories come up, I screenshot at least half of them because the manner with which you sort of share information, you know, it's blunt, it's practical. You're very, you're sort of anti BS, which I find a rarity really in this time in social media, not the...

03:46
anti BS, but that you do it in a way that isn't necessarily raising conflict. You just sort of saying it how it is. Yeah. I mean, my, my audience is mostly women. And I think one of the problems that I see a lot in the space, especially from the female coaches that I see is there's a lot of soft talk and a lot of ideology, but then there's very little practicality. And I think it's probably because coaches that are women coaching women, maybe don't want to come off as caddy or they don't want to upset somebody.

04:16
or they don't want to placate the sensitivities of certain kinds. But I'm at a point now in my career where if a 45 year old woman doesn't get the truth at some point, she's going to spin her wheels for another five or 10 years. And I don't think that's fair to her. you know, by filtering yourself or by taking this very soft approach, it just doesn't get to the point fast enough. And I think there's enough of that going on to where

04:46
As long as we're not being offensive and as long as we're not dismissing people's problems, which I never do, I think it's fine to be blunt and direct because that's what people are missing. Yeah. And we were just having a very brief chat before I hit record. It does feel like in this nutrition space, it has become more political, that you cannot sit like, you're not allowed to say, for example, that there are good and bad foods. And to be fair,

05:13
I don't know whether or not what you think about good or bad foods, but I would say there actually are good or bad foods. There is absolute rubbish that you can put in your mouth that is not going to do... mean, it might make you feel good for about five seconds, but ultimately it's filled with things which it's just not potentially aligning with your goals is how I'd put it. But almost every time that I might write a post about that, there is absolute pushback against this idea that we should be categorizing or labeling things as good as...

05:43
good and bad. And I just think that in itself is a super unhelpful ideology. depends on the lens that you're looking through, right? If somebody has a good relationship with food, or a healthy relationship with food, or a reasonable relationship with food, they can look at a burger and they can look at a salad and they can see two different sides of the same coin, right? It's both food

06:10
But one meal is going to get you closer to your goal and probably make you feel pretty good physically. And the other meal might make you emotionally feel good and help you celebrate an occasion or ritualize a night out with your husband or your friend. So they serve different purposes. And I think when you understand that food can be fuel, it can be entertainment, it can be a stress coping mechanism, it can be for hedonistic pleasure.

06:35
It can serve whatever purpose you want it to serve. So I don't think that's necessarily a bad quote unquote thing to call food good or bad. It just depends on how that person's gonna receive it and how much context are you able to talk with because on social media, unfortunately, people are getting snippets of ideas and snippets of the ideology with not a lot of context. So you're basically seeing the tip of the iceberg and you don't really understand where people's ideology is coming from.

07:03
And very often it becomes argumentative for very little reason because people just want to be heard or they want to be part of a club or they want to be part of a group of thinkers as opposed to just saying it how it is, which is, yeah, I mean, we all know that if we eat candy bars all day long, the outcome is not going to be favorable. And conversely, if we eat nothing but salads all day long and don't ever allow ourselves a candy bar, that's not favorable either. So.

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almost 100 % of the time, the answer is somewhere in the middle. I know, and you're right, actually, people don't love the gray. And I guess maybe they just, they come to, yeah, it is interesting to me that people's mindset, and maybe it's like, we probably live in a bubble, and we know that this is how social media operate. But I think a lot of people come to social media, Instagram is the example I'm using, because it's the one I'm on most, looking for black and white answers and expecting to find them.

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despite the fact that once they get a black and white answer, it's not like they're going to do anything about it anyway. They're probably just going to search for something else which might give them a more favorable response to the question that they were sort of looking to be answered in the first place. Well, and that's why whenever I get questions in my DMs or people message me or ask me stuff, I always ask them like, do you have enough time for me to actually be able to explain this? Because sometimes the questions that they ask require some deep thought.

08:28
and then require a lot of context based on what their experience in life is. like today I got a very easy question, right? Somebody asked me, you know, what are my feelings on low volume, high intensity training for lifting weights to grow muscle? And I said, if you're doing one set of failure per muscle group per week and you're an absolute beginner, you'll probably grow some muscle because your muscles never received that level of stimulus before.

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But if you've been lifting for 20 years, you're gonna need a hell of a lot more than one set to failure per muscle group per week to get any meaningful change. So again, like that's a five minute conversation as opposed to what happens on Instagram, which is a 90 second reel or a 60 second reel or a quick word post. And then most people aren't gonna really read the caption or take the time.

09:19
And like you said, everybody's looking for this very black or white, what is this one thing that I'm missing that I've been missing my whole life? And once I find this holy grail answer, my fat will fall off, the muscle will pile on, and I will all of a sudden be the bikini model I've always wanted to be. And I think anybody with any rational level of thinking and experience knows that it just doesn't work like that. Aram, you mentioned just at the outset that your audience is predominantly sort of, you know,

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woman 45 plus, I think, or around that age group. So I'm just going to backtrack a little bit. Like, can you give us a bit of your background? Like, how is it that that is your audience? it because that's the majority of people seeking the information you have, or how have you sort of like developed in the industry yourself? So I was an in-person personal trainer for about a decade prior to being online.

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When I moved from the East Coast of the United States to the West Coast of the United States during COVID in 2021, I moved. I had to basically start my business brand new because I didn't have any in-person clients here in California. And I poured all my energy into creating what I thought to be just very practical, helpful, thought-provoking food for thought content. And it started to become very shareable. And I think the people that resonated with it tended to be women.

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because it was soft enough to be validating to their problems, but direct enough to give them a solution to the problem. Which I think, again, it's very hard to communicate in that way. I mean, look at me. I'm five foot nine, I'm 215 pounds, I'm heavily tattooed, I'm pierced. look like a, like if people pass me on the street with my pit bull and my Doberman, like people are crossing the street. Like I look like a scary person.

11:12
And I don't discount that that's how I get viewed very often until I open my mouth and until I start to have a conversation with somebody I'm seeing as somebody completely different. And I think because I speak with authority and because I speak directly, it's no different than like when you look at Gary Brekker, right? Like Gary Brekker is a complete hack and most of what he says is bullshit, but he says it with such conviction and he says it so loud and so matter of fact that he captures his audience.

11:40
I do the same thing, I just do it, I don't open my mouth unless I know I'm right. And I know I'm right because I have evidence, science, and anecdote to back up what I'm saying. So I'm never gonna make a claim to anybody about anything unless I know definitively that that claim makes sense for that person. That's why when we're talking to this broad audience on Instagram, we're not gonna be able to please everybody and we're not gonna be everybody's cup of tea because somebody might get triggered by something we say and somebody might say, well,

12:09
counting calories was disordered for me and it did lead me down a path of an eating disorder or it exacerbated my emotional eating issues or, you know, by saying that cortisol doesn't create fat gain, well, that negates the fact that I'm all stressed out and I'm gaining fat at a rapid rate after 45, after perimenopause. But if you stop to think about the mechanisms of why these things occur and you explain to somebody, well,

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If cortisol is up and stress is up, does it stand to reason that maybe you might be eating a little bit more impulsively and maybe because of those extra calories, that's why you're gaining weight versus just the cortisol itself? So when you take the time to understand and listen to the person's problem, and I think that's because I've always given people their due attention on Instagram, women tend to just receive that message very well for some odd reason from somebody who looks like me.

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versus hearing that same message from a woman where it might almost seem undermining. It's like, well, I have all the same problems that you do and I'm in perimenopause and I have no problem losing weight. Right? Whereas I'm recognizing that there's a physiological disadvantage and you certainly are going to have an uphill battle, but it's not impossible. So I try to empower with education and that type of messaging as opposed to saying like, well, I can, I'm not going to, don't have a menstrual cycle. I'll never have, I'll never have perimenopause or menopause.

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But I understand what hormonal decline feels like. I went through what's called andropause, which is the equivalent for men in my early 30s. And I had to be on testosterone replacement and I was gaslit by the medical system and I had to find my own solutions and finally got on hormone replacement therapy. And I understand how hard it is when you're doing seemingly everything that you used to do and your body's almost working against you and that's what it feels like. So

14:05
I don't discount that women have a much harder road, but it doesn't mean it's impossible. And that you think that's the overarching message that anybody with any credibility should be talking about is yes, you can do this. Yeah, actually. to your point of, well, you know, what I see out there on social media, that there are a lot of men who are not unlike you, who do have large female audiences, probably for that reason, like because of the

14:33
the sort of authoritative and practical nature with which you share information, but also to your point that women are just weird sometimes. you know, like we do respond in a nonsensical way to other women for, you know, it might be a sort of competitive type thing, or your point about the undermining reminds me of someone commented on a post that I'd written once that, you know, it might be your hormones, but it could also be your habits. And that was not very well received by

15:03
several women who said, how would you know you're not in perimenopause and all the rest of it? which I then, well, I mean, I'm quite flattered because I'm close to being 48. you know, I'm not, you know, but it was, it was that almost that people take it a lot more personally, I guess, if it comes from someone who they might almost relate to, but not quite, I don't know. No, I agree. I think there's, and there's so much emotion wrapped up into this stuff, right? Especially for women.

15:31
Their body size is something they're sensitive to. Their shape is something they're sensitive to. The number on the scale is something they're sensitive to. And this is all archaic belief systems that women have been shown through social media, through modern media, what they saw in the house with their mothers or with their friends or how, I mean, I'm sure you've seen the movie Mean Girls. And just the amount of weight references in that movie, I haven't seen that movie in probably a decade and I watched it the other day.

15:59
And I was shocked at how many body image and weight references were in that movie. And this is a movie about high school girls. So, and it's now happening at a much younger age. I mean, I don't, I'm not on TikTok, but I hear what happens on there. And I hear about girls in the before they're even nine, 10 years old going on diets already. So clearly this stuff is out there and it's creating this sense of urgency that I have to be a certain size.

16:28
Or if I don't conform to this societal standard of what my body's supposed to look like because this is what their expectation of me is, that I'm not gonna be worth it, and I can't get the job, and the guy's not gonna like me, and the girls won't accept me. Which is really all bullshit because we all know that once you get to a certain point in your life, you don't care what anybody thinks. And that's when you finally become the most at peace. Now, I don't also wanna negate that having aesthetic goals is okay.

16:56
There's nothing wrong with that. I think we also live in a time where like, you know, there's the anti-diet coaches that are like, well, I'm never going to put you on a diet and you can be healthy at any size and blah, blah, blah. It's like, well, if you have a woman who's 250 pounds plus and she's 45 % body fat and she's got a high hemoglobin A1C and her cholesterol is bad and she's starting to collect the symptoms of all these metabolic diseases, would it not?

17:24
stand to reason to help that person lose some fat so she can have a better quality of life and some, you know, a better chance for longevity. Like you can certainly be whatever size you want, but if that size is creating problems for either your mental, physical health or both, then there are solutions to that problem that you don't have to live under those conditions. Yeah. And do you think around that it's the, you know, that sense of urgency that you just talked about, which is why people are going to things like

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hormone boosters or ozempic type foods or detoxes or you know, sort of get their, they sort of fall prey to the types of quick fix approaches that women are targeted towards. that the urgency you think is potentially causing? That's human nature though. There's nothing though. These products are created because there's a market for them. Right? mean, how am I?

18:21
I've done performance enhancement drugs a couple different times in my life and nothing, nothing meaningful for any meaningful amount of time, but long enough to experiment with them and see what they'll do. And now granted, I have a background in it. I understand pharmacology to some degree. I have a great resource of people that I can lean into who know things better than I do. So I'm very fortunate that if I choose to take that road, I can do it in the safest way possible and mitigate risk as much as possible. And how can I,

18:51
who spent 10 weeks on one of the hardest, most potent steroid substances in the world, ever judge a person who's gonna get on Ozempic or who's going to try it. I understand why they do it because anybody that's ever gotten results, I got some of the best results of my life in 10 weeks with what I wanna say was actually very minimal effort, which was crazy. I put on six pounds of muscle after 26 years of lifting.

19:20
PR'd my bench press, I PR'd my squad as a 41 year old man and I looked like an action figure. And it was because of this drug. Now I was running a very low dose of it. there's, can see, mean, psychologically like, wow, I do this thing. I work about as hard as I did before, not much harder. And I get this amazing outcome. Like that's a very attractive offer. I'm just going to tangent. So with that, like,

19:47
Like did you, when you came off, if you came, I assume you came off, just because you mentioned it in sort of in past tense, did you lose, do you lose muscle coming off around or did you, you able to sort of protect that? I did, I lost probably. So if I gained six, I probably kept three of it. Now, obviously it's not all, it's not six pounds of muscle. There was probably a little bit of water in there. There's a little bit of glycogen, but I definitely lost. mean, the strength was grossly diminished. mean,

20:14
I went from squatting in the 500 pound range to now like I'm back in the low 400s, which is, that's a pretty meaningful drop off, you know, like that's, that's, it's a hundred pounds of weight coming off. So it's an artificial boost and, but I also knew what to expect. I wasn't going to get upset. Like when I came off, I expected to lose muscle and weight. I expected to lose strength. I expected my body composition to change and I knew all this stuff heading into it. Whereas I think when people try the cleanse,

20:42
or they do the detox or they get on the GLP-1 or they try some very extreme diet, they expect to keep all of the result that they had despite the intensity or the extremism of the protocol, which is completely unreasonable, right? Like anybody that's got any experience in this field knows that if you do something extreme and it happened and the result occurs in a short period of time, the likelihood of you keeping all of those results is very unlikely and it's very low.

21:12
But most people are setting themselves up for disaster from an expectation standpoint because they do expect those results to hang around. And they expect to just go back to normal living, whatever that was for them, and still be able to maintain those results. But what I always tell people is like, the reason why coaches like you and I and good professionals are preaching the long game is because you're going to learn a habit-based system along the way. And if you install these habits and you create these lifestyles and you never

21:41
deviate from them or you deviate from them very, you know, minority of the time, the likelihood that you'll keep all your results is very high because it's rooted in your system. Like, you know that I eat four meals every day. Every day I go to bed at 930. Every day I take a minimum of 7,000 steps. I train three days a week, no matter what. If I travel, I know how to eat out. If I travel, I know that I can get groceries at the local grocery store.

22:08
I'm set up with these systems no matter where I am, but it's because I learned them over the course of time as opposed to what is the 12 week challenge teach me? What is getting on the carnivore diet teach me? What is getting on the keto diet teach me? What is fasting teach me? These things are great if you understand what they're doing for you and how long you should be doing them for and have an exit strategy afterwards. But if you're doing them as the sole way of controlling your own eating behavior,

22:37
then think you're doing it for the wrong reasons and you're setting yourself up for that disaster to occur, which is I'm not going to be able to keep these results after this protocol is over. And I love the way that you position that as systems because I often like to think about things like rules. I don't know if that's, that's probably not a right word for it. People don't, they don't love that word like rules, but actually there's a lot of freedom in that because it just takes that everyday decision making out of it because

23:03
You know that this is the rule that you live your life by. So you don't have to make that decision every time you come up against something which may have otherwise caused you to choose differently. But again, I guess this is the context and nuance. It's the same thing as sort of good or bad foods, is that there are people who would say that having food rules is a bit draconian and almost teaches, you know, puts people down this disordered path. They don't really sort of look.

23:32
Look at the bigger picture, I suppose. But again, context and nuance, I suppose. Well, what's the opposite of rules? Chaos. Yeah, yeah, good call. mean, who, who, who? So again, living somewhere in the middle, do we have to have absolute rigidity with those rules? No, we just need standards and frameworks in place to control our behavior, to have some measurable level of standardization so that it can be replicated.

23:59
despite whatever circumstances occurring in our life. And that's really what it is. Because if you think about it, a human being develops from the time that they're born until the time they're 20 because they have rules. Because adults are imposing structure on them that they otherwise wouldn't have on their own. And what happens after people graduate college or university, they're out into the world on their own and they lose all their structure unless they have a job that they have to show up to at a certain time.

24:25
And especially now there's so much entrepreneurship and you you and I are doing that, right? Like if we got up every single day, we can get up at whatever time we want. We can, we can eat whenever we want. We can do whatever we want and we're not obligated to a clock. But even with my schedule and my structure, I still have routines and rules because I like to be organized. I like predictability. I like being able to plan ahead even just for a day or maybe even half a day.

24:53
The problem with most people, especially when they have children and they have a house to maintain and they have a partner at home, they have all of these different things that are pulling them all in these different directions. So without rules, it's complete and utter chaos. And the reason why I'm so habit forward with all my clients is like, I need you to have a system in place because I know that despite your best effort to control all this stuff, you won't be able to. You'll blow a tire out on the way to your kid's soccer game.

25:21
and then your husband's going to get fired from work and then your mother-in-law is going to get sick and break her leg. And if you fall apart because of all this stuff happening in your life constantly because stress is never going to go away. And if you don't have some bare minimum standard on self care, you're going to completely let it go. And then you're going to resurface 20 years later, 40 pounds heavier, wondering how it all crumbled and it crumbled because he never had a structure in the first place. I feel like people put diet and exercise, they,

25:51
I mean, it is priorities, right? People have to prioritize their own diet and their training or exercise, but often people look at it as a nice to have, not a must have, I guess, when they're in the absolute thick of life. And I think when people realize how much it contributes to their quality of life and how much better their mood is going to be and how much better the digestion is and their cognitive function is,

26:19
and their sleep is and their stress resilience is, when you're doing it for those reasons, why would you ever stop? If the only goal you have to walk into the gym for is to burn calories, that's a moot point. If the only reason why you're eating healthy is to lose 30 pounds so you can go on vacation in six months, well, once that vacation is over, you're back to whatever your normal was.

26:42
But if your goal is to amplify your quality of life and make sure that you feel really, really good every day and you're a better parent, you're a better employee, you're a better partner, you're a better friend, why would anybody ever not do those things? I mean, and you don't have to be 100 % all in all the time. We all know that as long as you're exhibiting some intention and you're thinking somewhat proactively, you'll be fine, right? A bad meal of

27:12
hyper palatable tasty food every once in a while is not the reason why people get fat. And if you miss a workout, nothing bad's gonna happen. So these things, as long as you understand that there needs to be some balance in place, then you've got it figured out. mean, again, depending on what your goal is, if you wanna be 16 % body fat as a female, you're gonna have to go through a little bit more sacrifice than somebody who is okay with being 25 % fat.

27:39
So it just depends on what the goal is. And I think everybody has kind of the same goal. Everybody wants to be a little less fat, and everybody wants to be visibly a little bit more muscular and look like they're somebody who lifts weights. And what does that mean? It means you have to have enough muscle to show, and you have to be at a degree of body fat percentage that will actually show the muscle that you've built. And for some people, that can be a six month project. For other people, that could be a six year project.

28:07
And there's no predictability and there's no science to back up our claims whatsoever because we can't even make claims about that. Because if I give somebody the best plan in the world, it still hinges on them executing that plan. And we also know that they're going to run into a million and one challenges along the way, right? The car breakdown, the job loss, the parents, the elderly parent care. All of these things are going to be reasons why they don't get meal prep done.

28:36
why they missed the gym, why they don't get their steps in, why they slept like shit and made bad decisions the next day. These are all gonna happen. But if you take the timeline out of it and just say, hey, I'm gonna commit myself to doing this for the rest of my life, no matter what it does for me. Right, like everybody goes to work not expecting a raise. They just expect to get a paycheck. Well, the paycheck of taking care of yourself is a better quality of life. So if you just show up and get that paycheck,

29:05
as opposed to I'm not going to show up unless I get that raise. Well, nobody's doing that, right? Like your return on investment for children is not very high because it's a lot of stress with not a lot of reward. It's like intermittent reward, ton of stress. Who's in a marriage right now where they can say they're in pure bliss and it was like the first week that they met? Nobody. And unless you're actively working on that marriage to keep it exciting and to keep it like you're dating, it's going to start to get pretty mundane.

29:34
Self-care in its own right is pretty mundane, but the reward from doing it, I think, is worth it. Yeah, I totally agree. I wonder how much of the problem that people have is, and whatever that problem is, but they're just sort of either in denial or they're just, I'm not quite sure what the word is, but they feel like eating well and being in shape.

30:02
should actually just be easier than what it is. So the amount of effort they feel they need to put towards it isn't really in alignment with the actual effort it takes. I think this is the problem is that they're like, well, I eat, so therefore I should know what to eat and it should be easy. And I move, so I should be moving in a way that leads me to my goals. I don't know. think there's an expectation mismatch there too.

30:29
I think everything that we do when it comes to nutrition and fitness is a tool for a job. And if you understand the job, you understand what tool to use, right? So like cardio is a tool, weightlifting is a tool, meal preparation is a tool, understanding how to use food delivery apps is a tool. Getting groceries delivered when you're busy is a tool. Like everything is a tool and if you understand how to deploy those things, you no longer expect outcomes, you're just kind of process-based. And I think when you can get somebody to be

30:59
appreciative of the process and the work without worrying about what the outcome is going to be, then they don't look at it as work anymore. I look, and again, it takes, I'm sure you've probably heard through all of our education, we always used to hear like it takes 21 days to develop a habit, which I think is bullshit. I think it probably takes closer to like 60 to 80 days to develop a habit and you have to be doing it like every day. So

31:24
What are the habits that are going to get people to at least some baseline level of health? think prioritizing protein, vegetables, and fruit at every meal of the day with at least three meals per day, because I think that times out throughout a person's waking cycle. I think dedicating at least two to three days a week to some form of strength training. I don't care what it is. Like if you're brand new, walk into a group fitness class. I don't care. At least it's better than what you were doing, which is nothing.

31:53
allocating 40 to 60 minutes a week to some type of cardiovascular work to put some stress on the heart. Right? We need to, the same way we stress our muscle during weightlifting, we need to stress our heart cardiovascularly so that it adapts to higher levels of stress, becomes more resilient to it, gets the cardiovascular benefit of it. We need to have some type of a bedtime because if we don't, then one day it could be midnight, one day it could be eight, like there's no regularity to it, which is going to disrupt the circadian rhythm.

32:23
which is going to start to make all sorts of problems for our natural hunger and fullness cues. I mean, there's documented evidence to suggest that people that don't sleep well don't know how to regulate their appetite, their cravings are out of control. And especially for women who are dealing with cyclical menstrual symptoms on a month to month basis, you don't want to pour fuel on that fire. So if you're not sleeping well and you're in the middle of a menstrual cycle that's a little bit erratic for whatever reason,

32:51
Now you're talking about a perfect storm of problems and you might go an entire week and a half completely off the rails. And by the time you get out, you might be in a surplus for a week and a half. So I think once these bare minimums are understood and you realize that it doesn't really take that much effort, because let's be honest, anybody that's doing it will tell you three hours in the gym is not that much time. Total, total over the course of a week, right? 16 minutes chopped up into 20 minute chunks of cardio is not that much effort.

33:21
or spending an hour and a half total over the course of three ingredient preps throughout the week to bulk prepare protein and starch and vegetables or buy some of these things pre-cut and pre-cooked and just throw them into containers. And you can do that in 20 minutes after the kids are in bed. It doesn't take that much time, but you have to have the intention to actually do it. And the only way that people are to have the intention to do it is if they value it. And if they don't value it, they're not going to get it done.

33:50
Yeah, 100%. And I guess that whole thing of the time is one of the biggest barriers that people perceive that they have without thinking that in fact, if they did all this stuff, they'd probably find they have more time because they have more energy and they feel better. They're actually able to do more. it's connecting the dots for someone who hasn't connected it before. It is much more challenging for that person to act to know. You almost have to suspend disbelief until you actually get into the habit of it, I guess.

34:20
Yeah, like I'm a shitty runner and I didn't do cardio for essentially 10 years of my life. I was too worried about body composition and hypertrophy and I wanted to grow muscle mass and look like an action figure and mission accomplished. But I also neglected a massive health marker and you know, my blood pressure was in the one to fifties. My cholesterol was high and I was, you know, being on TRT, that doesn't help either. So I, you know, when I turned 40, I'm like, okay, something has to change. And it's not easy for me to go.

34:48
spend 15 minutes foam rolling and stretching to get my body ready for then a 20 or 25 minute run. And I don't like it, but I'm starting to enjoy it more the more I do it because I'm equating it to a benefit of longevity, which is important to me. I want to live as long as possible to enjoy the life that I have. Whereas in my twenties and thirties, I didn't give a shit about being alive. That's why I drank all the time and I did drugs and I did a bunch of stupid shit when I was younger because I didn't value my life. And I think the problem from a psychological perspective, we also have to understand that

35:18
A lot of people really aren't that happy. They're not that fulfilled. They don't have a ton of purpose. Even though they have children and they have jobs and spouses and all this stuff, if you asked them if they were actually happy, they wouldn't be able to give you an answer that was definitive because they're probably not. And what incentive does that person have to take care of themselves if they're not even happy at a baseline level? They don't. And I know exactly what that feels like. There was times where I put myself into some very hairy situations and I don't know how I survived, but

35:48
Every time I did, I was like, oh, maybe that was the wake-up call. And it wasn't. I I've ended up in the hospital shit two times from drug usage. And you would think that after the second time, you would learn something, but I didn't. But it wasn't until I actually had purpose and fulfillment, and I enjoyed the fact that I liked my life. And that's when it became valuable to me. That's why I like.

36:13
I don't mind getting up to go do cardio on a Sunday morning on my bike for 20 minutes because I know it's feeding a bigger purpose and I know it's going to allow me to enjoy my dogs and my business and my clients for a longer period of time. So as much as the physiology of this stuff seems complex, it isn't. What's really complicated is the psychology of it.

36:38
People have to spend a lot of time looking in the mirror and looking inward and asking themselves what's actually important to me, what are my values, what are my standards, why am I doing any of this in the first place, who am I doing it for, am I doing it out of love or to get love from somebody. These are important questions to ask and this is like the woo-woo stuff that people don't wanna do because it's hard to feel feelings and it's hard to check in with yourself. Because the macros and the calories and the sets and the reps, that shit's easy.

37:07
Like you and I can teach somebody that in an afternoon on a Zoom call. But to find their purpose, that could be a five-year experiment. That could be a five-year exploration. And it has to be an intentional thing with not a lot of expectations tied to it because self-reflection may not produce anything whatsoever. Right, like things like meditating and journaling seem like another tedious task.

37:35
But they could be the reason why somebody unlocks all of their potential for results. How did you unlock your potential Aram? Like what were the strategies that you used? Or was it a light bulb moment? Because sometimes it can be, right? Like actually sometimes things can be light bulb moments for some people. I was, I want to say there was some luck involved. I started early enough in my life to where I never not did it.

38:01
You know, I'm not married. don't have kids. I don't have those struggles, obviously. So my stress levels are just a hell of a lot lower than most people's. Outside of my business and my career, like I live a pretty selfish life. You know, I say no, I say no a lot. Like I live in San Diego, which is a very, you're in New Zealand, right? Are you in the South or North Island? North Island. Okay. So you're, you're more like tropical. It's nice. So again, like think about it this way.

38:28
you can always be outside, can always be drinking a cocktail, you can always be enjoying something by the beach. And when you're being asked to do that kind of stuff all the time, at some point you're like, I don't, I can do this whenever I want. I don't need to, I don't have a draw to go do it. Whereas like when I lived on the East coast of the United States and it was winter half the year, every time it was nice out, was like drinking time and eating time. And

38:54
Again, I started to eat well and I started to move my body and lift weights at 15 years old and I never had the disruption that most people have because a lot of people do live active lifestyles because they were in sports when they were kids and they were active during college because they were very body conscious, obviously trying to find a mate and do all this stuff. And then they get married and then they have kids and then they start their career and they're just completely single point focused on this stuff.

39:19
and everything else gets pushed off to the side, including themselves, and especially women stop making themselves a priority because everybody else starts to come first. So I don't want to say I ever had a light bulb moment. I would say that I started to become more mature on my journey and I stopped expecting changes to occur constantly because I realized the adaptive nature of the human physiology just doesn't allow for that to occur. Like you can't just

39:45
keep doing the same thing and expecting a better result. You have to keep progressively overloading everything. So every habit that you have, if you want it to improve, you have to progressively overload it. If you want to get better at cardio, you have to push yourself harder. If you want to get bigger muscles, you have to push the weights harder. If you want to be leaner, you have to push the deficit further. All of these things have to stack on top of each other, but without a foundation, you got nothing. And I spent, shit, 10 years of my life building a foundation.

40:14
And I had no disruptions, right? Even with heartbreak and job loss and financial sorrow and moving across country, like that never really disrupted my routine because the routine was what held me together. That's what I always came back to. And I think for most people, their average behavior is just not good. So when their life falls apart, they fall hard and they stay down for a long time. Whereas for people like us,

40:40
because we have these foundational habits in place and we've had them in place for so long, it's our foundation, that's the worst we'll ever get. And I feel, and I guess to what someone might say to that as well, then so much easier for you because you've been doing this for years. It is, but it is. And I have to admit, I have to admit that it is. Like, listen, I don't have a bad relationship with food. I don't have a negative, but there are certainly times that I'll pick myself apart. Like I know

41:09
And I'll talk about this constantly. It is easier for me. Of course it is easier for me. But just because it's easier for me doesn't mean it can't be simple for you or it's impossible. I have a woman coming on my podcast in a couple of weeks. She has 10 children. She runs two businesses. She's an active bikini competitor and she watched her husband shoot himself in the head. Holy mother of God.

41:37
And she's been widowed for five years and she developed her two businesses because her husband died and stopped becoming the primary breadwinner. And I look at this woman and I'm like, how is it that with 10 children, no help at home, no parents around to help with the children, she does everything herself, how do you make it happen? And I just, had a quick conversation with her through DMs.

42:01
And she's like, my routines when it comes to taking care of myself are the only reason why I can even show up for my businesses and my kids. If I didn't wake up early and have my food prepared and went to the gym in my garage before my children are awake and did all this stuff on my own, I wouldn't be able to be a good mother and juggle all this chaos. I wouldn't be able to show up for two businesses and run them successfully. And when I look at that, I see what human beings are capable of.

42:31
Right? Because when you look at stories like hers, people will look at her and there'll be some people that will be wildly inspired by her and other people will be like, well, fuck her. It's like, how could you possibly look at a woman like that and not be like, wow, this is amazing? And I know that I can, if I just emulated even a little bit of her effort, something would change in my life also. So I think there's people that are growth-minded individuals who look at life with the lens of opportunity. And then there are people that are just fixed.

43:01
small-minded individuals who see nothing but challenges and nothing but closed doors and they're gonna stop they're not even gonna run the race before the gun goes off they're just gonna stand there and watch everybody else do it and you can't force that individual to change like I even for us as coaches maybe 20 to 30 percent of our clientele base will get results maybe if we're lucky

43:25
The other 80, 70, 80 % will stay exactly the same or revert back after they leave us to bad patterns and habits. And there's nothing we can do to force that. We can be the best coaches in the world. We can offer all the education, empathy, support, inspiration, all the visual resources, the educational materials, everything. But it's like leading a horse to water, right? Like we can't do anything. If you don't want it, and if I want it more for you than you want it for you, it's never gonna happen.

43:54
Yeah, and I guess, and to your point before, coming back to what they value, Like the diet and exercise plan is super easy. And I do find it's a constant conversation that I have with people. Once, if they reach somewhere where their motivation dips or, you know, whatever happens, that means that they're no longer acting in a way that aligns with their goals and they just somehow can't get it together. And I do wonder, Aram, whether you find this too, is that

44:23
That is that people call it deep work, right? It's the deep work that they need to do, but it isn't just about them anymore. They now have to reflect on relationships, on the things outside of their immediate control, which might mean difficult conversations or even thinking in a way which they wouldn't have allowed themselves to think because that's the work that needs to be done. if it's, because it's way more than just diet and exercise for most people.

44:52
I had a client that left my coaching practice probably a couple, I would say a couple of weeks ago now and she's a coach herself. She's in the healthcare system. Great person. Like mom of two, awesome relationship with her husband, very, very active mom. Just does a lot of things right. But the one thing that I think she didn't know how to do well was live in maintenance. For her, it was always this idea that I have to be in a dieting phase. I want to get this number on the scale down. And, you know, I told her, I said,

45:23
I'm nervous letting you leave my coaching because I have a feeling you're gonna continue to try to diet. And she kind of promised me, she's like, well no, I'm gonna spend the summer in maintenance, I'm gonna enjoy my weekends, I'm gonna enjoy meals out with my children, I'm just gonna lift weights, blah, blah. like, okay, cool. So I flip open Facebook the other day and I'm looking through the stories and I see that she puts a screenshot of her calories up and it's like 300 lower than what I had her set up.

45:52
So I text messaged her because I can't keep my mouth shut and I'm an asshole. And I said, hey, I see that you're dieting again. And she like gave me like an LOL. So I responded to her with, you know, the rolling eyes emoji. And I said, I knew this was gonna happen. I've seen this movie before. And I basically said to her, I said, how full of shit do you have to be as a coach to work with women who are struggling with these same things that you're struggling with?

46:21
and you can't even lead them by example. Because you're reverting back to a dieting phase, because you're so body conscious that you can't stand to be 138 pounds, which most of the women that you coach would kill to be that size. So if you're gonna be a coach and you're gonna be a leader that leads other women, live by your own examples. And I said that to her and I said, I'm not saying this to you as a coach, I'm saying this to you as your friend and I'm saying this to you as a colleague, because if you're gonna be in this industry, lead by example.

46:51
And she said something about like, well, it seems like you're shaming me. said, you can take it however you want. If you feel ashamed of that behavior, then that's an indication that something is not right. I'm not shaming you. But if you perceive that to be a shameful thing, that's a perspective that you need to examine. Right. Like, I don't like the idea of triggering. If you as an individual feel triggered by something that somebody said or did,

47:20
then you have to examine your own behavior. If that's triggering to you, that doesn't mean that that person is bad or say they said something wrong. It means that the way that you perceived it showed something about yourself that you didn't like. That's an opportunity for growth as far as I'm concerned. So I think people need to become a little bit less sensitive to the words that come out of people's mouths and they need to take responsibility for the feelings that they have. So if a feeling that you have

47:49
feel shameful, then examine why you feel ashamed. a feeling, if something that somebody says is triggering you in some kind of way, examine why that is. Don't be offended by it. Use it as a growth opportunity. Use it as a learning opportunity. That's an awesome thing. Like if I took things personally my whole life, I would have never moved out of my own way, ever. And I had a lot of tough love thrown at me. It wasn't even love sometimes. Sometimes it was just straight up criticism and just people being mean.

48:18
But it taught me things because I was able to take it completely subjectively. Like I know these people aren't trying to hurt my feelings, but they're at least communicating an opportunity for me to change something about my behavior that's going to allow me to be a better person that's more growth oriented. So that's probably one of the biggest reasons why people don't experience results. They don't change. I had a woman that reached out to me for potentially coaching her.

48:47
She's like, I'm a little nervous. You seem like you're very direct and like, yeah, I am sick. Well, I don't know if that's going to be a good fit for me. I'm do you want to be coddled or do you want to be told the truth? She said, well, I want to be told the truth, but I want to I want it to be done with empathy. And I said, I will do it with empathy, but it's going to be very direct. And there's going to be times where I'm going to say something you don't want to hear. But if that that those are the moments, that's the growth. When you get told something that you didn't want to hear.

49:16
And instead of getting offended, you take it with an opportunity mindset. Holy shit, can something good happen from that? As opposed to, I'm gonna run away from this because this feels icky and you're mean and it's not fair. unfortunately, life is not gonna cater to all of your needs and wants all the time. And your body is not gonna cater to all your needs and wants, right? Like some people have to diet at a thousand calories.

49:43
because they've spent most of their life under eating and under muscle and over fat. And if that's the way of your physiology, then so be it. I don't have any choices, neither do you. So instead of looking at life as like, oh my God, it's so unfair and this sucks, be like, I have the power to change something myself. I have the ability to change my behavior. I have the ability to learn a skillset. And if I know that I'm empowered to do these things, isn't that a better way to live than hiding behind your conditions?

50:13
or hiding behind your metabolism or your age or your gender or your financial situation. Isn't it nice to know that you have the power to do something about it? Yeah. Aram, how often do you see that fear of maintenance in your female clients? it's almost... Yeah. What do you put it? I've got some thoughts and I'd love to hear yours. Because maintenance is ambiguous.

50:37
maintenance doesn't produce a result. Maintenance is the maintenance of whatever you have. And if you're not happy with what you have, then people don't want to be there. But here's the thing, if you don't know how to live with maintenance, what are you going to go back to when you're done dieting? That's huge. And no one ever seems to practice maintenance. Anyone who diets are either they're on a diet or they're off a diet, which looks very different from maintenance, right?

51:03
I mean, love, I mean, to me, maintenance has a lot of opportunities. You can get stronger, you can get faster, you can improve your cardiovascular health, you can improve your digestive health, your food quality, you can work on reducing certain biomarkers that are blood markers that you were worried about. There's a ton of opportunity during maintenance. You can recomposition your body at maintenance. There's all sorts of opportunity at maintenance, but people always wanna know, like, what's next, what's next, what's next.

51:30
Well, I don't know, show me what three months of you just living like an adult looks like, and then I'll be confident to put you in whatever achievement phase you want to achieve. And we also have to tell, we have to almost convince people that you can't just live in this perpetual dieting state. Because why, and if anybody in their right mind actually understood what a diet, most people when they diet, pedestrians that aren't being coached, right, your average person who diets,

51:59
They diet three days out of the week and then four days of chaos. Or they'll diet Monday through Thursday and then it's Friday through Sunday is an absolute carnival. So that's not dieting, that's like restricting and then overeating and restricting and overeating, that's a shitty cycle to live inside of. As opposed to if you're actually really dieting, you wanna get out of that diet as fast as humanly possible. I mean I've only really dieted I think twice in my life and I was not happy.

52:27
Are you dieting now, aren't you, on a slight mini...? I wouldn't say I'm dieting. I would say I'm cleaning up my behavior. Yeah, okay. Because I have a tendency to get a little loosey-goosey if I smoke pot at night. That's right. And I have a little bit of a tendency to... You know, it's not like I'm jumping on the phone and ordering pizza, but if I have stuff in my pantry and it's appealing to me, I'll just over-consume it.

52:55
Because in those moments when I'm stoned and my inhibition is down, I don't care. So that's really the stuff that I'm just becoming a little bit more accountable to the goals and standards that I have. And it's because I have a thing that I want to look good for in July. And I think having those types of micro goals is also a good thing because it allows people to lock in for a shorter period of time, show themselves what they're capable of. But again, my behavior is not bad on average.

53:25
Like I live my life in a much better way than most people do. But I think people have to understand that, like you said earlier, just because you're eating well doesn't mean you're owed this result. Or just because you finally started going to the gym a couple times a week doesn't mean you can expect this amazing physical transformation to occur. It's like, where were you? What did you change? Now we have to set a realistic expectation of what those changes are going to bring about.

53:53
And then are you actually able to maintain that behavior for the rest of your life? Because what got you from A to B is not going to get you to C, it's definitely not going to get you to D. So have to be able to maintain that A to B behavior. And if you want to get to C, you have to layer in the behavior that's going to get you to C. And that's what people don't want to recognize. It's the same analogy we can use with the person who wants to get the raise. Well, just showing up to work is not worthy of a raise. Just having kids doesn't mean you're going to have a good

54:22
kid if you're not a good parent. Like going above and beyond means that you might get the result that you wanted. So going above and beyond with your nutrition and your fitness, then you might get a better result. But just doing the bare minimum is going to give you the bare minimum. Do you get surprised by the content that people get pulled or sucked into in social media?

54:44
You're a smart person. How on earth did you think that that was, you know, going to be legit or that this was a real thing? Like I'm, I'm not constantly surprised by smart people doing dumb things, but I'm, it happens on the, on the daily actually. Well, you got to think, right? Like I don't know anything about politics. So when it comes to, when it comes to like politics or religion or stuff like that, like I'm completely ignorant in that stuff. When I hear certain things,

55:12
I take them at face value also. mean, I have some logic and reason, and I like to think that I have some deductive thinking skills. So when I hear something that sounds outlandish, it's, okay, I can probably dismiss that to be stupid. But I think because there's a level of desperation when it comes to physical change, when people get that shiny object syndrome or they hear something that sounds almost too good to be true, they want to believe it.

55:41
They want to believe that after, you know, a detox that they're going to lose six pounds or if they adopt, if they buy this supplement, it's going to create this amazing amount of change because they're hopeful that it's going to do that. I think if people were to like, you know, people are skeptical to buy a car after going to the car dealership and they're going to shop around and price compare, they're going to do all sorts of stuff before they just hop into a vehicle. But

56:10
A woman can be surfing Instagram at 10 o'clock at night and she can see one of her friends post an MLM product and all of a sudden she's pulling out her credit card and buying it because she's in a vulnerable mental state and she's in an emotional mental state and she's not using logic and reason. And that's really what it comes down to. I think very smart people when they're using, when their decision making is emotionally or logically driven, it's very easy to make silly choices.

56:38
That's what it is. It's just you're in a vulnerable state, you're in an emotional state, and those heightened emotions are the reason why you're making poor decisions. I mean, I've done it. I've done it plenty. Like, I've made really bad decisions in emotional states. I've made really bad decisions in heightened vulnerable states because I was either intoxicated or upset or heartbroken or I didn't like the way that I felt about myself or I had...

57:05
several nights of bad sleep, which we know leads to bad decision making. So I think people just need to like take a breath before they make a decision and honestly audit. Like does that really make sense? Do I really think if I spend 99.99 on this supplement that all of a sudden like we also have to like, if somebody has a fat loss product, don't you think that person would be a trillionaire? Like I'll give you a perfect example. I see

57:36
I see penis enlargement advertisements all the time, all the time. And for like a half a second in my mind, I'm like, whoa. Really, inch and a half, you don't say. But then like my logical brain kicks in and I'm like, there's no way on earth that there's any science to support that that's actually real. So I just dismiss it. But I think people...

58:01
still believe that there's still some magic. Like now, GLP-1s are pretty close to miracle drugs. They really are. And I wholeheartedly believe that they're probably the best thing that we've ever had as far as the potential quick fix to obesity or to fat loss. But it comes at a price. It's no different than a steroid, right? But with a steroid, there still has to be some effort involved. You can't just take an anabolic substance

58:30
not go to the gym and then expect muscle to grow. You still have to stimulate muscle by training it. Now granted, the effort you exhibit may not have to be as extreme, but with a GLP-1 drug, you can just start taking that GLP-1 drug and start losing weight. I'm interested just to have a chat to you about this because I see real value in them for the right people. To your point about building habits, if that's the thing that allows them to actually build the habits,

58:59
where beforehand they were so consumed with food noise or overeating or whatever, then I'm all for it. And those are the use cases that I've seen here in New Zealand. What's it like for you in San Diego? What is the vibe? So there's certainly an insurance umbrella policy that some people are using cash pay to just buy it out of pocket, and it's expensive.

59:28
I mean, you're talking about like two or three months supply might be somewhere around a thousand dollars, which isn't cheap. It can get covered by insurance if you have, if you qualify for certain conditions. I think like if your BMI is high enough, if you have things like type two diabetes, if your blood sugar is high enough, if your cardiovascular disease state is high enough, you'll qualify to get it covered by your insurance company.

59:57
But most people are buying it out of pocket now and they're going to like cosmetic surgery places or they're going to wellness clinics and they're buying the compounded version of it as opposed to the pharmaceutical grade version of it, which is about the same thing. I mean, it is technically a peptide, right? Just like insulin is technically a peptide. So there are workarounds and you can certainly find stuff that's not quite as good as the real thing, but it does kind of the same thing.

01:00:26
Again, I'm all for it if people are well informed, they understand the risks, they know that they should still be consuming enough protein to retain muscle mass, they know that they should still be lifting weights to retain muscle mass, and they know they should still be working on their habits because at some point, well, I don't want to say at some point you're going to get off it because some people are going to be on it for the rest of their lives. Let's be honest. I mean, there are a lot of people now that are tight trading down.

01:00:53
and then just keeping a very low dose of it forever. And it has been shown some promise when it comes to cognitive function long term. It's been showing some promise as far as people with compulsive behaviors, so like gamblers, addicts of any kind are starting to get some relief from those problems. So it does have some pretty astounding benefits, but again, right tool for the right job. If you're 135 pound woman who wants to get in shape for her Cancun vacation in six weeks,

01:01:23
Is that the right reason to take it? Because you could be actually taking off the shelf for the woman who's 300 pounds, who's slipping into a deeper disease state and now she doesn't have access to it or these companies can't produce it fast enough and the people that do need it can't get it versus the people that do have the money to buy it. They can just get it off the shelf whenever they want. Yeah, no, I completely agree. What I don't love is looking online with actual health professionals like dietitians.

01:01:51
running things like Ozempic programs, which aren't about the GLP. They're about eat these foods, which act like GLP. And I'm like, you really need to, you should know better than that. Although I'm not someone who will put a real, oh no, I've probably done it a couple of times actually. So I never say never, but I won't put a real up necessarily and really call out influencers. Do you do that Arama? I haven't really seen a lot of your content really like going hard on one particular person or you call out ideas and you call out.

01:02:21
those, you know, which I think is really valid and we should as health professionals. But to call that a person is not my vibe, I guess. There are some people that do it well, like Joey Munoz, think, is somebody who does it well. James Capola does it constantly, but his mental health is being impacted. I mean, I know James pretty well. I know that like all the call out culture in general, if you really think about what it does, the net effect of it, it almost creates

01:02:49
a negative effect because of it. Like, if you do it every once in a while and you call out the ideology, then I think that that's fine because you're basically just saying, hey, listen, like, this is not a great idea and this is why. But if you start attacking people or individuals who have differing belief systems than yours, then what you're doing is you're propping yourself up on the shoulders of others. And I find that that to be a cheap way to get views.

01:03:16
cheaply to get attention. I can give you my point of view without having to shit on somebody else's. mean, listen, if I spent my entire day on social media just calling out people's ideas that I don't agree with, that would be a full-time job. Because there's a lot of things that I don't agree with. There's a lot of stuff. I'm very opinionated and I keep my mouth shut. The stuff that people see is 1 % of what I think.

01:03:42
You know what I mean? Like if I read like and that's why the other day when I put that question box up, if you had no fear of being judged to be able to tell somebody the truth, what would you say to them? And I love the responses that I got because it was really honest stuff that was coming out. Do you know who Bill Burris, the comedian? No. So check him out. He's he's a red haired guy. He's bald now, but he's very opinionated. He's very matter of fact. He says a lot of controversial shit that people don't like to hear.

01:04:12
He talks about the Catholic Church constantly, which I think is funny. He talks about politicians being assholes all the time. And I agree with almost 100 % of what he says, but he does offend a lot of people. But he's a comedian, like his job is to entertain and be controversial. For us, I think our responsibility to our audience is to be the conduit for science communication. Now, granted, I'm not a PhD, so I don't really know

01:04:42
I'm not great at reading research, I'm good enough. I'm gonna leave that to the people who are the professionals. There are plenty of science communicators that are much better at it. I'm just gonna get the trickle down effect from what they determine and I'm gonna disseminate that to my audience in the best way that I can. So I don't profess to be a high level science communicator. I just know the basics and that's what I'm gonna stand on for the rest of my life until they find out something different which they're probably not going to.

01:05:09
And that's where I'm gonna live. know exactly what I'm good at. I know what I can get away with saying. I know that I can push the envelope just a little bit. But I also don't wanna step on people's toes and people's belief systems. Because at the end of the day, I don't wanna argue. I don't have enough time in my day, nor do I have the mental, because I do get upset. When people disagree and then they wanna argue in the comments section, that's a very deep exchange of energy that takes up a lot of time.

01:05:38
And it's usually unproductive because it doesn't teach the audience anything. It creates division. It creates a lot of hatred. And I don't want to contribute to the polarization of this stuff. Like I'm going to stay usually pretty net neutral. I mean, I'll say some controversial stuff here and there, but it's never going to be like, don't eat this food or don't do that. Like do whatever the hell. Like at the end of the day, you're an adult. If you want to

01:06:08
jump into a pool of Ozempic, do it, I don't care. If you wanna never eat a vegetable again because you think those phytochemicals are gonna kill you, don't, I don't care. I'm at a point now where if somebody wants to do something, I'm either gonna tell them the risks of it and support them while they do it, or I'm gonna remove myself from their life and let them do whatever they want. You have agency. I mean, I'm a recreational drug user. Who am I to tell you not to do things?

01:06:33
Yeah. there's been plenty of times in the last five years of my life that I've stayed out until four in the morning doing cocaine. Like how am going to sit here and morally object to what it is that you want to do? Until five o'clock in the morning. God, right. Oh, Yeah. Well, that's what cocaine keeps you awake and allows you to drink for a lot longer. Again, right tool for the right job. But again, that's why I'll never be a hypocrite. Like I'm just like,

01:07:02
It's almost like when Michael Jordan used to get shit from people for staying out gambling and drinking. It's like, I'm an athlete, I'm not a role model. Just because I'm in the limelight or just because I have 47,000 followers doesn't mean that you have to take everything I say as gospel. At some point, use some of your own critical thinking and some of your own deductive reasoning skills. Take what you need for my messaging, leave what you don't, and that's totally fine. That's how adults should think.

01:07:31
I'm not going to look at everybody's messaging and be like, oh my God, that's it. Like, that's the holy grail that I've been missing. I'm going to say, okay, I like that. I don't like that. And I don't have to, but I'm not going to sit there and like argue with people about it. Yeah. No, I appreciate that. And I, it's funny, I had a moment of someone policing my social media in the weekend because I just happened to put up a couple of comments on things I didn't agree with during the pandemic and also our ridiculous government and just political system. And I had this, just this.

01:07:59
exchange and it wasn't an exchange of messages because I stopped messaging after the first two. I'm like, your choice to follow me or not. And she was like, we're health professionals. This is unprofessionally putting this up here. And in my head, I'm like, you must be new here because I've been doing this a lot. I mean, a lot over the years. Like, it's not like this is just a new thing for me. but it's, it is interesting what people feel the need to police you on. And I don't know what they think they're going to.

01:08:26
achieve to be honest, other than that they get it off their chest, which is really nice. It's good for them. Yeah. And hey, like if that person's day got better because they were able to voice their opinion on your social media, great. Awesome. Like I hope your day got better at the end of the day. Like I care, but I have, I have problems too. I have, I have rent to pay. have elderly parents. I have relationships I want to maintain. I have dogs I need to take care of. I have bills to pay. Like

01:08:54
At the end of the day, I'm not going to spend my time arguing with you about stuff that's not going to make any difference. A guy had a girl come at me telling me that I was insensitive to the disenfranchised people that can't afford food in the United States. I'm like, they're not my population. If you are poor, you're not my demographic. I'm not speaking to you. Poor people don't give a fuck about fat loss. They're just like, I was poor most of my life when we first came to America from Russia. We had nothing.

01:09:23
I was living on food stamps and my parents were scraping together pennies to keep the lights on. Do you think my mother was worried about what her waistline looked like? That was the last thing on her mind. So this person who's like policing my content to make sure that I'm being inclusive of the disenfranchised United States that can't have access to fresh food, that's not who my content's being created for.

01:09:47
And if those people asked me for advice, I would probably give them advice to eat frozen vegetables if that was available to them and eat canned meat because that was their only good source of protein. And I would do the best I could, but they're not, they're not buying coaching. They're not the people that I'm making content for. So at some point, like we can't please everybody. And that's not our responsibility. Our responsibility is to do the best we can with what we have. And I think that's the best that we can do. Like, why is anybody getting mad at you?

01:10:16
Like you have an, your opinion is your opinion. It's not right or wrong. Like I may, they may not agree with it, but you know how easy it is to just say, Oh, she's an asshole. Cool. Move on with your day. totally. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. If you think I'm an asshole, then don't follow me. Yeah, I know. Um, what are your, who are the people that you follow or your mentors or people that have informed how you, how you think I suppose, cause how you think ultimately leads to how you coach.

01:10:47
Anyone in the industry and not, I suppose. So, you know, mean, the conference that I host every year for Coaches with Real Coach. So I would say that anybody that I put on stage is somebody that I've directly learned from. So like I had 24 speakers the first year. The people that I can really definitively say were like,

01:11:08
mentors to me was Jade Tita who was in female metabolism. He's amazing. Yeah, he was one of my first Jade was somebody who I learned a lot from when I first started. You know, I credit a lot of my knowledge base to Nutrition Coaching Institute, which is NCI, who was run by Jason Phillips. So I always give Jason a lot of credit for a lot of the initial stuff that I learned. Casey Jo Arvidis, is a psychology PhD, who I've learned a lot of like the health mindset stuff from.

01:11:37
like just a reasonable coaching side of things. When it comes to like the science based stuff, I would say Brandon D'Cruz is actually a very smart guy. Jeff Black's a very smart guy. Austin Stout's a very smart guy. Jace Lopez is a very smart guy. I mean, like I said, anybody that I, if I put them on stage, it's probably somebody who I trust. And I am a very harsh critic of people.

01:12:08
If I don't vibe with somebody or don't like them, usually it's for a very, I'm like a dog. You know how they say dogs are a good sense of character? If your dog doesn't like the person that walks in your house, you should be wary of them. I'm very much like that. If I don't wanna have a beer with somebody or hang out with them afterwards, it's probably a pretty good indication I'm not gonna vibe very well with them.

01:12:33
I think Lane Norton's a great source of information. Alan Aragon's a great source of information. Brett Contreras is a great source of information. It's not hard to find good science out there because they're not saying anything stupid. They're not saying anything sensational. They're not saying anything wild and crazy. They're just saying, yeah, it's going to be slower than you think and the basics are going to work and there's no secrets out there.

01:12:59
secrets that you're missing or it's just you're just probably not being consistent enough or you're probably eating more than you think and That's really it. I mean I can certainly like I Don't know if you've ever read this book, but I thought I actually thought this was a pretty good read Burned by Herman Ponzer. Oh, yeah, in fact I did and for what it's worth I spoke to Brandon about his work on my podcast a couple of weeks ago

01:13:25
Because him and Lyle McDonald, yeah, they did a huge like, very scientific, but then of course I'm not quite as smart as Brandon, so I couldn't go down in the weeds the way that Lyle did. But we had a very good conversation about that. yeah, it's a good book. Again, like I'm not going to take it as gospel, but it does a really good job of breaking down human metabolism for people, like just the adaptive nature of the metabolism and how it doesn't break and how it just adapts up and down.

01:13:54
You know, do I believe in the constrained energy theory? I don't, because I think if you exercise more, you're going to burn more calories. It's just that's just the way it works. There's a human being can't like most average people will never do enough exercise to see that ceiling. Yeah. And fact, the way that you said that is just like, it is so like common sensical because you've been in the trenches working with people for what, 20 years or 15 years or whatever. So it's like, well, of course it works.

01:14:20
But that doesn't mean that you're not interested to understand more about the thoughts of and the research behind Ponser and the rest of it. Yeah, like Eric Trexler, who works with Herman Ponser very closely, Eric Trexler is one of the foremost authorities on human metabolism. But none of us have it all figured out. That's the truth. And I think if anybody looks at us as the end-all, be-all of anything, you need to understand that if you're following you or me, look at who we follow.

01:14:49
and learn from them also. That's why I always put people on my page and I share content of other people because I respect other people's work and I want other people to see it. And it's like, well, don't just believe me, believe these other people too, because they're doing good work also. And I think that the swimming pool is very large. There's eight, what, eight billion people in the world and most of them that are adults want to be a little less fat and a little bit more muscular. So it's not like we're ever going to run out of business and it's not like we have to sit there and

01:15:17
and fight with one another about what we believe or what they're doing versus what I'm like. I'm not threatened by other coaches. I like I love the fact that there's other coaches doing good work because that means if you know something that I don't know, I want to learn about it. Great. Like that means that you found out something that I didn't have any idea about. And that's, know, I actually talked to Brandon the other day and I'm like, dude, I I'm wildly impressed by the way that you communicate science. I'm going to pay you to teach me some shit I don't know.

01:15:47
And he sent me like a price list over. got some call schedules for the next few months and I'm just going to nerd out with them. And I'm just going to spend like an hour on zoom and I'm just going to bring case studies and talk about nerdy stuff with them about, you know, alpha and beta fat cells and just go down the rabbit hole stuff that doesn't matter to 99 % of the population. You know, like, like Lyle, Lyle, a lot of people don't like Lyle and Lyle's an asshole, but Lyle's a very smart guy. You know, just like, but

01:16:15
You have to take it with a grain of salt. Does he know everything? No. But is he really smart about the stuff that he knows? Yes. And does it make anecdotal sense? Has he seen it work in hundreds of people? Yes, that's good enough for me. I don't need it printed in some science journal for me to try it. I'm not one of these people, like if it's not science-based, I'm not gonna do it. There's plenty of people, think about it this way, when I was 15 years old,

01:16:44
and people were talking about stretch, mediated hypertrophy, the length and position is what people were teaching me when I was 15. I didn't know what the terminology for it was, but now fast forward 20 years later, now they have research on it. And it was true. So they were 20 years, these bros in the gym were 20 years ahead of the science. So all this stuff about like gut health and hormones.

01:17:10
It might seem like bullshit now, but maybe 20 years from now, it'll be real science. So who am I to say don't do it? Yeah, no, I 100 % agree. So can you let people know where they can find you like podcast wise on the internet and of course with your coaching summit? Yeah, so most of most I mean, I'm on Instagram every day, it's at four weeks to the beach, the number four, the number two.

01:17:37
My podcast is called The Other Side Lifestyle. So if you want to hear the very unfiltered version of how my brain works, that's where we can do that. And the coaching summit is realcoachesummit.com. It's a yearly event. It's not just for coaches. I mean, it's called the Coaches Summit, but plenty of laypeople go and they get a lot out of it. It's just a fun way for people in the industry to come together. There was actually some people from Australia that came last year. It's like New Zealand.

01:18:06
Hey, listen, don't discount it. You have a year to plan ahead, so you should come. But yeah, I mean, I'll answer DMs. don't pitch coaching very often. If people need me, they can hire me. If they don't want to, they can just ask me questions. I'll never turn my back on anybody or tell them no. And I appreciate the opportunity to share my thoughts with your audience, because to me, is what this is all about. Informational exchange, conversations, differing points of view.

01:18:36
aligning on some of the same commonalities. That's what this industry is all about. I totally agree. You're always very good in your DMs. We don't always agree, but you don't have to. It's always so good to get different perspectives. And you're such a good talker, which I expected you to be as well. I really enjoyed the conversation, Aram. I'll put all of those links in the show notes.

01:19:05
We'll know how to find you at Four Weeks to the Beach, which is a great name, by the way. Love it. Thank you. Yeah. And I'll return the favor. I'll send you a podcast link as well. We'll get you on ours. Oh, that'll be amazing. Thank you so much.

01:19:27
Alrighty, hopefully you enjoyed that conversation and I have to say I on the daily screenshot Aram's thoughts around fat loss and diet and exercise and mindset because I find them so refreshingly honest and sometimes you just got to share the truth right and he does such a good job of that. As I mentioned in the intro I have all of the links as to where you can find Aram in the show notes so you can connect directly through either his website

01:19:56
or on Instagram. Next week on the podcast guys I am stoked to bring to you the conversation I have with my mate Darren Ellis where we're going to discuss a lot about strength training and fat loss and training in general. Until then though you can catch me over on Instagram X or threads @mikkiwilliden, Facebook @mikkiwillidenNutrition or head to my website mikkiwilliden.com and sign up for my unlocking fat loss success webinar. Alright guys you have the best week see you later.