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Welcome to episode 332 of Behind the Shield podcast.
As always, my name is James Gearing and this week I'm extremely excited
to welcome Ethan Supply.
Now you probably recognize Ethan for his roles in My Name is Earl, American History X,
Remember the Titans, but he has also gained a lot of recognition recently
for the incredible transformation he's made with his own health.
So he was very, very heavy at one point, lost a huge amount of weight,
ended up gaining it partly to get some of the roles that he used to play
and then now has reclaimed it again.
So, so much great information on his nutritional journey, on his fitness journey,
on the psychological elements and so, so many more.
So you're really going to enjoy this conversation.
Before we get to the interview, please just take a moment,
go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the show,
leave feedback and leave a rating.
The five star ratings really do make this podcast more visible
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And then as I mentioned every week, this is a free library for you, the audience.
You can use it individually, you can use it in your department or your company.
All I ask in return is that you pay it forward and share these incredible
men and women's stories because there are people all over this planet
that need to hear them.
So with that being said, I introduce to you Ethan Supply.
Enjoy.
So, Ethan, I want to start by saying thank you so much for agreeing to come on.
I know that Byron Rogers is on your show and he connected us,
but welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast.
Hey, thanks for having me.
Brilliant. So where on planet Earth are we finding you today?
Los Angeles, California.
Beautiful. Now, how is that looking amidst the COVID crisis that we're in at the moment?
You know, all these things are relative.
I think that, you know, I understand the state's reaction to the initial
kind of non-understanding of what we were facing.
And then certainly when New York got kind of sideswiped by it, I understand.
But we've just shut down again due to an increased number of detected infections.
And then the news will kind of cite along with that a height of hospitalizations
and give those two stats together as though they're correlated.
But when you look into it, a lot of the or some huge percentage of the hospitalizations
are due to people who were not who were expressly not going to the hospital during the first lockdown.
And kind of the lockdown ended and they all were like, well, we got to go to the hospital now.
And so some massive percentage of current hospitalizations have nothing to do with COVID.
So, I mean, look, I don't know.
I don't think that Los Angeles is really quite as susceptible as to this as New York,
certainly, because we don't have public transportation kind of in the same way that New York does.
And we're not all living on top of each other.
But, you know, we definitely have a mild case of it, I think.
Yeah. Well, it's been interesting for me because I've had friends
literally all over the world.
I was talking to a fireman in Sweden about, you know, we're kind of demonizing them at the moment,
how irresponsible they are and all this stuff.
And hearing it from a Swede, you know, they just kind of stood in the middle of the road.
They were like, yeah, well, we will social distance and, you know, wear masks where appropriate.
But we're not going to shut down the entire economy either.
And when you look at it, apples to apples, you know, they have had relatively similar numbers to us per capita.
And we shut the entire country down. So, you know, as a medic, as a fireman, we get to see behind the scenes.
We get to see how many people die anyway. And it's not belittling any deaths.
We get to see how overrun hospitals are in inner cities 365 days a year.
So, you know, what was being portrayed in some of these news stations on social media
versus what is actually the truth, I think is, you know, there's a disconnection there.
But I think what we're going to talk about is the true life saving element.
Like we have an obesity and ill health epidemic in this country that no one seemed to really want to put any effort into helping prevent.
So, you know, that's why I'm excited to talk about a factor that people can control in their lives.
Yeah, right. This is this, you know, I think there that we could we could take any point of view we want.
But and that I think in the reality is that the the the deck is kind of stacked against you in the current landscape of how Americans eat
as far as like health and fitness go. But but that it's all possible to do.
And to to take to get up and do something about it is is righteous, in my opinion, or it has been for me, at least.
No, and I agree 100 percent. So I would love to start the very beginning, because I know your your story goes very, very early, doesn't it?
So where were you actually born? And then tell me about your family dynamic.
How many siblings and what your mother and father actually did for a living?
I was born in New York in the 70s and my mother and father, my mother and father met in college in Pittsburgh.
They were drama majors at the Carnegie Mellon University, which has a big drama department.
And then they moved to New York and they were stage actors for for about 10 years prior to me coming along.
And and when I was born, they they didn't like the lifestyle for raising a kid.
You know, they would be out touring shows most of the year, usually different shows, I mean, almost entirely different shows.
And so weren't actually able to spend a lot of time together.
And so they kind of quit doing that. My father became a painting contractor and my mother became a housewife.
And we moved out to Los Angeles not long after. And and then my sister was born.
And and that was that was it. There were four of us.
Brilliant. Now, you mentioned in some of your own podcasts even that the the weight gain happened pretty early on.
So do now, you know, looking back and discussions with your parents,
do you attribute any kind of poor nutritional choices in your first formative years for contributing to that?
Or was there truly like a hormonal or some other metabolic challenge that you were going through?
You know, I've I've I've analyzed this a lot.
And and honestly, when I get down to the root of where I can locate my problems starting,
I was about five and my grandparents lived in Vermont and I went for a summer to visit them on my own.
It was the first time I'd been away from my parents.
And I went off on this trip to hang out with my grandparents and I kind of arrived to them.
And I remember them. And and prior to this, I'd had no attention on my body.
I never thought of it. And I had this big reaction from them kind of.
Not freaking out, but they were just startled and with my weight.
Now, when I if I look at a picture of myself when I'm five today, I don't even I look at that kid and I'm like,
Jesus, that's what they were freaking out about, because I wasn't I wasn't obese.
I wasn't even chubby. I just had maybe, you know, a couple extra percent of excess body fat,
which I think is actually pretty normal for for kids.
They they kind of put on a little weight and then grow tall and put on a little weight, you know.
And and I'm not diminishing. There is an obesity crisis amongst children today, too.
But it wasn't that. So my grandparents put me on a diet at five.
And. Restricted my food and made me weigh myself every day and were very hell bent
on getting me to kind of discover that there was this problem with my body.
Now, my reaction to this was to begin sneaking food,
which I kind of carried on for the rest of my life.
And and it became super detrimental later in life when I even would,
you know, want to lose weight, but was kind of stuck in this pattern of eating alone,
not letting people watch me eat and being kind of, you know, eating food became like this
bad thing I was doing to myself and I would do it privately and I would.
And it just got out of hand. And so, you know, by the time I was 10,
I was legitimately overweight. And and then I was just made by my parents to go on diet after diet.
And I continued to sneak food.
And and then by the time I was an adult and on my own, it was just this battle that was kind of insurmountable.
I learned nothing, relatives, and, you know, I was just like,
yeah, this is unfair and this is unfair, but next time it's just nothing.
You know, it's cruel when you put the facts into the front是啊 of your life,
what is the content of your life?
Not to just say, what is the demon DNA to you?
You need to realize that you need that identity to survive your life here,
so obesity and it seems like there was an element of shame like there was even
the field your five-year-old mind which obviously is still developing that there was the the
irresponsibility attached to eating and i can see how that would have completely skewed your
perspective of that experience from then onwards yeah you know i i think it's very tough for me
because at the end of the day i i believe that the only power for us to change or improve ourselves
exists within us and i and i could apply that anywhere in life and that's just true for me
but i do look back to being a kid and going you know it really sucks that my reaction to this
thing that i think they were well intended by was so far in the other direction that it kind of
screwed my life up if that makes sense i don't know how to solve that issue at five years old
yeah so so moving on from that then what did your eating look like in your school years
that you know resulted in such a rapid weight gain i just kind of you know it wasn't even so
much eating at school i definitely would eat at school but but i was always kind of income
uncomfortable uh eating in front of people so the majority of my eating would happen at night at home
you know uh and and i got quite good certainly after i was 10 because uh when i was 10 my father
like gave me this ultimatum like if you get to 200 pounds i'm controlling what you eat i'm going
to put you on a diet and that happened i got to 200 pounds and and he gave put his best foot forward
at like governing my food and um i just would you know as i cleared my plate i would be grabbing
food in the kitchen and stuffing it in my mouth and swallowing it and i just got very very good
at kind of sneaking food um whenever i could uh it i think it it wasn't really i mean it was all not
it wasn't a good scene but when i when i became autonomous when i had a car and i and i was working
and i had some money um it was really it got really into like the dangerous area because i
would just you know um eat fast food go to drive-thrus like constantly that was like the
main source of food for me yeah i've had that exact same observation with my bonus boy my stepson
and luckily he has kind of found himself in the i wouldn't even say fitness space more bodybuilding
but sensible bodybuilding at the moment but watching and looking at the rappers that are
in the the rubbish bin outside when i go to take them out um there is a lot of fast food and i
think that a lot of us did that one day when you are earning money and you have a vehicle you're
like oh shit all these things that were quote unquote treats or you know a rarity i can literally
go and have every day and some people have the metabolism to be able to get away with it at least
till they get a little bit older and some obviously don't and that that causes a rapid rate gain in
the uh the teenage years yeah and you know even as a kid um i wasn't ever really uh doing what i was
telling my parents i was doing but but if they believed that i'd had a successful week of dieting
often the the reward for that was a trip through a drive-through or you know to jack in the box or
mcdonald's or whatever it might be um and and so it was this kind of bizarre thing of like we're
going to withhold food and then reward the withholding of food with more food and then
you know it there was just a lot of attention placed on food and and how i ate there was
very little uh attention placed on my physical activity and i was very inactive i didn't
participate in sports i basically just avoided pe in school um it was it was not great i also
never really understood the function of food i never knew what protein did for you i never knew
what carbohydrates did for you i never knew the function of fat i never had any real idea of what
of what my body required to exist and and what putting excess fuel in it did um i knew generally
that basically everything i ate was to be considered uh excess or bad um but i and you know i just
it just all had this connotation to it that wasn't based in real educated um information right now
aside from from the relationship with food itself i had a author on um yohan harry who detailed a
whole bunch of areas it's more on the mental health side and addiction side but one was on a study
and i'll be very quick with this um with a group of morbidly obese people they put them on basically
drips for all the nutrients that they needed and they lost a whole bunch of weight and then one of
their star pupils as it were fell off the wagon and ended up eating well long story short it came
out that literally about 75 percent of this group had some sort of childhood trauma and especially
for the women in the group the obesity basically was a defense mechanism so they were not attractive
because some of these you know predators that have been their lives had abused them so you know that
the the link between some sort of childhood trauma and obesity i think is one that's not discussed
very much you already identified you know the one element psychologically were there any things
looking back additionally to that that you can attribute to it no and i've thought about that a
lot i don't have anything more than just you know and and and i suspect whatever it was with me had
probably begun prior to my trip to visit my grandparents you know at five you're not totally
cognizant of what's going on at all times i think you know with the bro at least as far as adults go
um so i don't know if i was already a little bit too much for my parents to deal with and i was
being sent for the summer to give them a break or do you know what i mean but but i i can't i can't
cite any actual trauma you know that i would actually you know not really attribute to yeah
okay well you mentioned about not being um you know attracted to p and i think that's one of the
the things that adds another layer for you know some of these kids that either are very physically
frail if you like or you know the other side obese is that you do get that tribal element of
and that camaraderie within the the team sports in school so that adds another layer of isolation
but i heard you mention skateboarding was that when you were still at the school age or was that
older um skateboarding i mean i i i liked the culture of skateboarding i tried to skateboard
a couple of times but i was never a proper skateboarder um that was uh you know i kind of
you know i kind of started to have a really rough time at school when i was 11 12 years old and
started to you know ditch school at 13 and by the time i was 14 i just i just stopped going all
together and um and i definitely was like all my friends were skateboarder and and the aesthetics
of it i liked and the music associated with it i liked but i was never really a skateboarder so i
wasn't even getting that kind of uh physical gratification out of life you know yeah well what
about career aspirations so you're working your way through the school years what were you hoping
to be when you graduated or or didn't graduate either way yeah i had this idea at around 10 that
i would be a doctor and i remember kind of sticking with that and doing and and kind of being
interested in biology and and all the science courses i found to be fascinating and then by
the time i was 14 i had no aspirations at all um and a buddy of mine was an actor and due to that
i went with him to work one day and he kind of it was this kind of marvelous thing that he got to
just like avoid school together which i thought was awesome and so i thought well this would be a good
job for me just simply because it got me out of school um but it took me a couple of years to
actually start pursuing that right so what was it that that made you so good i mean you've been in
some of the the best films you know that i've ever watched i mean american history x and remember
the titans or some of these other ones so lead me through your your acting skills side the skills i
don't know i i think it's just my guy i i i do try and practice the ability to assume different
points of view um you know as of today it's mostly in philosophical terms but i think that that's also
quite useful as an actor um and so i i might have some slight innate ability to do that but i think
that that's kind of the whole game of acting it's just to be able to assume a different point of view
yeah yeah i do stunts on the side and i'm i'm the only role i'd ever be able to fulfill successfully
in the acting world is a piece of plywood i'm just absolutely awful at acting so i'm always curious
um well you've been quite open about you know the addiction as well so as you were starting to get
these roles at what point did um you know did substances other than food start coming into your
life pretty pretty quickly i mean i mean they and they actually even started um properly before that
uh prior to even working as an actor but i i i was using drugs and alcohol right right up until um
2001 and i was uh either 23 or no probably 24 at this point and i and i and i then finally got sober
but you know it was uh from like 94 to 2001 so like i had a six seven year run of of working
and being um you know pretty pretty decently down the drain of a drug addict yeah well and you hear
so many tragic stories and i'm gonna ask you if it's okay to to kind of recall one of them as a
lot of people listening are in the first responder community we have you know seen either the the
addict that's already passed away is nothing we can do or we've we've managed to catch them with
narcan or something and managed to pull them away from the depths but you actually had an
experience yourself having to do cpr yeah that i i don't even know if narcan existed then i i mean
i i had never heard of it and and maybe the paramedics had it i have no idea but i was um
um you know in the 90s there were doctors you would go and visit you would kind of pay them
off for a prescription for pills and you and you would uh and i was in visiting the doctor and
getting my drugs from him and the guy who i was there with went to use the bathroom and it was
one of one of these buildings where the bathroom is out in the hole and it's shared with the other
offices on that floor and it just happened to be that that floor was just the doctor's office and
across the hall was like a some kind of a talent agency and somebody from the talent agency there
was like a commotion out in the waiting room and and then the nurse ran in and said somebody has
collapsed in the bathroom and so we ran out and it was my buddy and he had od in the bathroom and
somebody from the talent agency had found him and run into the doctor's office and and and the doctor
i i believe um partially scared that he was about to have get caught in the midst of you know
basically being a drug dealer um he collapsed and so he was like freaking out and and then my buddies
here od and i had to do cpr on him until the uh the paramedics came uh that friend since od
not not too much later than that i mean he he didn't die in that instance he he he was okay
he the paramedics came and he spent a couple hours in the hospital and then he got out and
maybe a year later he od and didn't make it but but that was like i hadn't heard of narcan at
that point yeah and i think that's the problem is addiction has so many faces whether it's opiates
whether it's alcohol social media gambling you know food and you know sadly they're always labeled
at that oh you're you know you're obese you're an overeater or you know you're you're a cheater or
you know whatever label it is and and very very little uh time is ever spent analyzing well why
is this person leaning on food on opiates what are they escaping what which void are they trying to
fill and i i think if we shifted focus to that we would save a huge amount of lives yeah i agree
right well did that experience jolt you in any way or or was it something else that finally led
you out of your own personal addiction yeah no that that experience unfortunately did not jolt me
um you know i i i it was actually a couple of years later that i i was morbidly obese i had
really really declined liver function um uh my lipid panels were insane and uh my ankles had
started swelling and then the swelling was moving up my legs and i went to a doctor and the doctor
said this is congestive heart failure and and i remember and and the doctor was like i don't even
have to check i can tell you're using drugs and you should maybe consider stopping and i didn't
and i and i spent the next couple of days doing drugs and the swelling just kept moving up my
legs it was a very very odd thing you know like my feet were swollen and then the next day my feet my
ankles were swollen and then the next day my feet my ankles and my calves were swollen and then the
next day my knees were swollen it was a really odd thing and i just was going to bed every night
thinking well i'll probably die tonight and i just didn't really care it wasn't um it wasn't
something that was a terribly upsetting thought to me and i woke up one day thinking what a shitty
way to live um i'm gonna even if i don't survive whatever's happening to me right now i'm gonna
i'm gonna get off these drugs and and i did um i i wasn't thinking at all about it wasn't like
i'm gonna save my life i don't even think i was up to feeling that way i just didn't want to drop die
in such a pitiful manner if that makes sense yeah well looking back i mean you know like you said
not being you know not not recognizing a huge amount of trauma per se why do you think the value
of your own life was so diminished by the time you got to that point you know i really think that
drugs can numb you out to stuff and for me um in the beginning and and i guess this just was
persistent that the the experience of doing drugs was so much better than the experience of life
without drugs that um it just kind of was like not even a question of like do drugs or don't do drugs
it was it was like um you know so i but by the time i got to that point i was just so addled
by them that i think you know it just runs you down and you start to not care about anything
and and what worked as far as getting you off after so many years of taking them
you know i think that confronting the fact that i really wasn't capable of because i you know
in that time period there were many times that i would go like i'm not going to do this anymore
and i would go clean for a couple of days and be miserable and and and you know not able to sleep
and and jittery legs and my skin didn't feel right and and and then i would just start doing
them again and so i think the the point when um when it when it really kind of clicked was the
point when i had to really look at the fact that it was beyond my control and and i really needed
to not be responsible for myself for a minute and to recognize that i was incapable in that moment
of being responsible for myself and i had to go and seek help and and there are a lot of
you know great resources for people in need of help to get help and and and uh and
and you know i've i would say i'm in a much different state today than i was back then
it's been almost 20 years and and and you know i think with time and learning how to avoid
the pitfalls of life and really confronting what's going on in the moment and
uh you you can build up kind of more of a tolerance for life than you have in that fragile
state of like two days sober if that makes sense you know it does yeah day day in the in the first
month i would never go you know on a wine tasting trip and expect to stay sober but as of the last
and expect to stay sober but as of the last even 10 years i can go with my wife to tuscany and
well i don't know if we're even able to do that today but you know in the past prior to the world
ending as it has um we go to tuscany and she does wine tasting and i sample their olive oils
because all these vintners make olive oil too um and it and it's not a problem and i don't feel
really drawn to it anymore but that took a lot of time and a lot of effort and not listening to
myself in the beginning and really getting my under me before i started to take back some of
that responsibility i mean it's amazing you know it's it's so rampant in you know the associated
professions that listen fire police ems dispatch and it may not be in the face in the the guys
that the guys are opiates a lot more often it's going to be alcohol but you know many of us find
ourselves in the same place there's sleep deprivation there's obviously you know some
of the things that we actually witnessed there's you know failed relationships and and you know
i've got a very very close friend that did rehab twice and failed twice and then it was the third
time and he was literally going to take his own life if it didn't work and thank god the right
combination of people were there at the right time and now he's two years sober and leading a
sober kind of crossfit group that meets every week so i'm so glad that you yeah but but there's
people like you being so courageous telling their story that i think opens the doors for a lot of
people that think they should be shamed into the shadows which is so far from the truth
yeah well i i did i did i did have to um go to rehab a couple of times and i will say the first
the first time the first two times it was not really my idea and um and and this is kind of like
this is almost the same kind of mindset i think is is true for weight loss and and but but the day
i woke up and said i'm gonna do this and i can't do it by myself and i need help that was kind of
the day that my life started turning around and the the real tricky thing about it is is
i definitely think there were external inspirational things but there was not a single point where
somebody having a conversation with me could get me to the point of making that determination for
myself does that make sense no it does yeah i mean you have to be ready yourself and i think that's
that's the problem with a lot of dialogue about addiction about obesity all these things is what
i think is one camp will be like oh it's the individual they should take you know just take
control of their life and stop eating so much and then there's the other side is kind of almost the
i guess the the victim mentality it's always someone else's fault it's society's fault
but the reality is just like with the covid thing it's the middle ground like yes there has to be
an element of responsibility but if you create an environment of people to fail then that
self-realization is going to be far less likely but if we create an environment where our school
kids are taught about the human body and given nourishing food and taught how to cook the chances
of that next generation you know struggling with their weight is a lot less whereas if you're like
you and i grew up with pretty much the same age you know if it's pizza and hot dogs and burgers
every day at school and you never learn about the human body you're kind of set up for failure in
my opinion yeah i agree i i think it's a it's a it's a really tricky thing to navigate yeah well
so you overcame the drugs i want to get to you know to the weight loss and the incredible
transformation just before we do that you know a lot of the roles were for bigger people you know
and remember the titans you were you were you know one of the uh the football players how how
success excuse me how successful were you being the size you were in the casting yeah that that
added another factor and that was something i really didn't think about um going into it but
i will say the the day i decided to lose weight i was over 500 pounds um i had i had weighed myself
maybe six months prior on a on a freight scale because scales didn't go that high and i and i
clocked in at 536 and i had not gone on a diet since then and so i i assume i weighed more than that
um and and you know i i i just was like done with it you know listen i could i could at at 300 pounds
i'm still overweight and the big guy so i i feel like there was a huge space and certainly years
and years after that initial decision where i was still able to fill that role in hollywood um
and you know even today i think if i put on a shirt that's a size too big i i don't look at
myself and see a fit guy and see a fat guy and so i don't know if that's the same perception that
other people have but um i'm 260 pounds now i've got a very very low body fat percentage but i'm
still as far as you know the bmi is concerned i'm overweight um but i i kind of i did go too far into
an extreme and by the time we arrived at like 2012 i weighed 200 pounds and uh and was also very very
lean and and and felt uncomfortable at that size um and made the decision not long after that to
gain weight intentionally uh but i enjoyed lifting weights at the time and i thought i would stay
healthy and just eat whatever i want and i went back up to about 400 pounds and uh and then i tore
my bicep at work and had to have this operation and the doctors assured me that it was like an
outpatient thing they knock you out you do it quickly and you come out and then they weighed
me and they were like oh you're actually so heavy you have to go into the hospital and this is a much
bigger deal of a surgery because of your weight and my wife at that point was like listen i never
gave you a hard time about your weight i supported you getting thin i supported you gaining weight
again but this is bullshit i don't like this whole like you just have to be healthy so whatever that
is that you don't have to go to a hospital for an outpatient procedure that's the way you have to be
and so and so i started dieting again with the intention of staying muscular and and i've done
a pretty good job of that yeah well this is how tall are you six one yeah so for a start the bmi
is absolute bullshit coming from an exercise physiology background if i'm not mistaken it was
created for um life insurance you know scales but yeah i mean i know of people with you know i mean
single-figure body fat but giant powerful you know athletes that are absolutely always morbidly obese
on the bmi bmi is the biggest crock of shit so anyone out there listening to to to measure up
to that it you know it's assuming that all humans are made linearly as far as height and weight so
but with with your first journey i think that's fascinating you went from 500 pounds to 200
i know cycling factored in so tell me about that journey yeah i i well it wasn't quite as
uh much of a straight line as i made it out to be so i i started dieting in 2002 towards the end of
2002 and and then uh i did my name is earl i started doing my name is earl in 2005 and over
the course of doing my name is earl i put on about 100 pounds so about the end of my name is earl
i'm now close to 400 pounds again and you know i found myself when that ended with a ton of money
and and not a huge desire to jump right back into another television show and uh i just got on a
beach cruiser one day you know a really fat tired bike and and we lived kind of in a canyon and i
rode up to the top of the hill and i was able to do that and i thought wow i really enjoyed that
and it was exercise i'm going to keep doing that and i kind of graduated to a mountain bike and
then graduated to a road bike and and i got to the point where i was riding about eight hours a day
six days a week you know i went and rode the tour de france during the tour de france in 2010 or 11
and and um you know i rode up mount von two with lance armstrong and just did these crazy cycling
trips and that's all i cared about for a long time and and i didn't eat a lot of food and i got
really really thin and um and then my wife said to me one day like hey you think you're you can just
retire and ride a bike and it's not true you can't do that you have to go back to work and so
and then i started to like find other ways of exercising but i did find that i enjoyed exercising
now looking back on that because i was thinking about this isn't a couple of your other episodes
um i kind of i was on the other end of the spectrum as you i was the very very frail small child
my mom used to read me the ugly duckling every night one day you'll be a beautiful swan just be
patient um but you know i always had the kind of body dysmorphia from the opposite side and i heard
you saying you know that people didn't pick on you that much because you you know you'd fight them
well mine was the reverse i couldn't they'd whip my ass every time so um but what really was a
change in my life is i did the whole bodybuilding thing you know put on a little bit of muscle looked
kind of athletic but it was when i just didn't give a shit anymore but when i became a firefighter
because now my focus was to be a firefighter to be able to pull someone out of a building be able to
throw the ladders and drag the hose and pull the you know the the victims out so it gave me a purpose
and then all of a sudden training shifted completely to not what i looked like but what i can do and
now a byproduct was you know there was an aesthetic side and that's that's great but it was about
being able to save a life was that same thing kind of applicable to you on the bike because you finally
realized that the you know the leaner you were the better a cyclist you were that you know the more
you could perform on this sport that you now found yourself loving yes certainly there were
there were these there were group rides and even races in los angeles and and i remember
there there i don't even know if they do this anymore i assume they did because they had been
doing it for 20 years or something but it was the uh the nickel chain that was the
the nickels canyon ride on on sundays and you would all meet up and there'd be like a hundred dudes
doing this bike ride sunday morning at like seven or eight a.m and you'd ride kind of through west
los angeles and then go up a canyon and race across moho and and come down so polvada and the
first time i tried to do that ride before we even got to the canyon they were all gone and i wasn't
i wasn't even really playing catch-up and uh and i remember thinking like how cool it would be if
i could just even hang with the slower guys on that ride and then i just found other group rides
and you know i was never the fastest guy but i but there was something about like not wanting
people to wait for you too long at the top of the hill and if we're talking about you know climbing
four five thousand feet in a day uh on a bike that's a lot of uphill um and so you just you know you
you start to realize that the the thinner you are the the more you're going to be the longer you're
going to be able to last the more the harder you're going to be able to push um and it definitely
played into that i didn't go into it thinking i want to be super thin but the obsession with
actually being thin um certainly was born into me in that time period um just because that's how
people riding bicycles looked yeah and i think that's something that's been lost kind of like
the way again we were raised that you want to you want to you know look good then you got to go in
the gym and you got to do your three sets of 12 and you know take your creatine your protein powder
and all these things that we were raised you know believing that's what makes someone healthy but i
had a conversation with someone the other day who's who's struggling you know with their weight at
the moment and they were kind of downplaying the fact that they were hiking instead of going to
the gym and i was like well that's exactly what you should be doing then because you don't enjoy
the gym you do enjoy hiking so hike whatever whatever passion you find that should be the
focus from the movement side and then hopefully that will help motivate you as you start chipping
away at your nutritional choices to to then use whatever your love is as the the motivating factor
to start eating better and changing you know your strength and endurance and mobility i couldn't
agree more if you can find something you actually enjoy doing that doesn't require a lot of like
external effort to get you to do it then you've you've won half the game yeah absolutely well i
heard you mention about casting and then i can kind of relate because when i was in california
not as not even as an actor i was a glorified extra basically but i got a bunch of my firefighter
friends into the world world trade center building the nicholas case the world trade center movie
excuse me and when i collated all these firefighter friends of mine they almost didn't use me because
they said i looked to quote unquote californian now from an englishman i was like what the fuck
okay what do you mean but again it was a hollywood stereotype of you want the you either kind of like
a redheaded the 19 over 1890s caricature of a firefighter with a giant mustache or you were
port reagan italian looking so i kind of got to see how actually unimaginative many of these
casting directors can be now how did that factor into you going back to the industry as a svelte
cyclist as far as you trying to get new roles for yourself i just kind of you know it wasn't like
it was just this thing of for for about a year i was just saying no like do you want to go audition
for this or meet with people about this and i just was saying no and then might have even been more
than a year and then my wife kind of sat me down and was like you have to go work and and uh and
i started saying yes and so i did you know mostly pilots i did a few different pilots that none of
got picked up none of them got picked up and so that's just kind of par for the course too like
you never know with television i didn't really do any movies when i was that thin um but in the
process of like returning to work and kind of putting the bike away i still was interested in
exercise so i went and tried different types of exercise and and found that i actually enjoyed
lifting weights and so and that i could get kind of the same burst of endorphins or whatever it is
the feeling of of physical and mental clarity from an hour in the gym that i was like you know
spending eight hours a day experiencing on a bicycle and so i kind of traded those two things
and started just lifting weights right but it was it was it was there was nothing really that came
out of that time a few episodes of a tv show called wilfred where i was very thin but there's just a
like a gap where all of my work was in pilots that nobody saw yeah because i've had a few people on
that you know they were the high school or college age and they were you know force fed almost
philosophically to to make them the biggest linebacker you know or whatever role they were
playing at the time um and it you know there's some people that i've had on here that literally
had to physically remove themselves from that environment because it was contributing to the
real health whether it was a toxic environment mentally or physically um so with you not seeming
to to have the same success prior to you know to the weight loss how did that pressure factor
into you gaining weight again i i went and did um the wolf of wall street and then another movie
uh jesus i'm blanking on what the other movie was called it was with jonah hill and james franco
true story and i did those two movies kind of back to back in new york and i and i was lifting
weights and just being really uh i was doing keto but like this kind of like accidentally low
calorie keto because i noticed that i wouldn't lose weight unless i was on top of restricting
carbohydrates also restricting food and i in this movie and going like i don't people don't know who
i am at this size i'm oddly uncomfortable and i'm just i'm just kind of sick of it i'm gonna take a
dieting and and just eat and you know and i did and then did the role start again then when
when you got bigger i wouldn't i don't know if they start again i did i did i did i did a job that
has proven to be my favorite job of all time called uh chance a television show called chance um
with hue lori and uh and i was bigger then and i certainly wouldn't have gotten that job if i
hadn't gained some weight right so then you know now we're talking you're 260 you're definitely
into you know into the weightlifting side but tell me about that second kind of push back to
a weight that you wanted to be that you felt healthy at well at the at the end of the first
season of chance i tore my bicep and had to get surgery and then had that whole conversation with
my wife where she was like look i don't care but i don't want you to have to go into the hospital
because the surgery is so much more dangerous than it has to be and um and so that was when
i went like okay i'm gonna figure this out i'm gonna still be a big dude but i'm gonna be a fit
healthy big dude and i started doing keto again but i was kind of watching um and i was losing
weight um and i started tracking my um lean body mass through dexa scans and i noticed that you know
40 sometimes 50 percent of my weight loss was in lean body mass and i wasn't happy with that and so
i i got really into nutrition and and like actually looked at bodybuilders because you know bodybuilders
have to lose just fat and retain all the the muscle that they've worked so hard for and i basically
went on to a bodybuilder diet but you know i found that really any of these diets work but if you want
to like target fat loss you got to be a little bit more specific than just restricting food
yeah well i think there's another um you know misconception out there you know what you said
with with losing just mass in general that that if you have lean muscle mass that is going to
raise your metabolism it's going to raise the demand therefore it's going to allow you to burn
more fat yeah that's right i mean that's part of it i certainly get to eat more uh today than i did
at 200 pounds by a lot now you mentioned trying all different types of diets and i think that's
very important i think that one of the issues that again our generation have was that you go on you
know qvc or whatever version in whatever country there was and be like oh this is the diet you need
and buy my 12 dvd set or you know even better i'll send you the food myself in a box um what did you
find nutritionally ultimately was the right choice for you personally um nutritionally for me high
protein moderate carb low fat is kind of the state that i'm most comfortable at that i've even gotten
to a point where on like maintenance i don't even have to like think too hard or measure too
diligently if i'm going to eat something that's not a regular part of my diet i might measure it or
you know have to look up its its nutritional values but for maintenance i've kind of gotten
to a place where i can maintain that and for cutting i get a lot more strict um but that that
diet i feel great i have energy in the gym i lose weight when i need to i maintain when i need to
so it has become something that is a lot easier to do i never really tried to maintain my weight
with keto i often was maintaining my weight on keto which was depressing because i was only ever
doing keto trying to lose weight um and i just didn't i just you know for a long time i was within
that kind of um dogmatic diet culture of like you find a diet and you start to espouse that it's the
only diet that works and you believe that carbs are poisoning people or or whatever it might be
i've done literally every diet and i've been convinced all the time that that's the only diet
that works and it just today i think it's all bs i think all of those diets work the there's
a principle underlying that is thermogenesis and and if if you're eating in a caloric deficit
you're going to lose weight and if you arrive at that caloric deficit because you've removed carbs
or you've removed everything but meat or you're a vegan or you're you know drinking apple cider
vinegar lemonade drinks then you're going to lose weight and if you're eating you know 5,000 calories
worth of bacon every day when your body is depleted of carbohydrates and no longer holding
on to the hydration that your muscles store you're not going to lose weight anymore you know yeah
well i've had them you know a gamut of people on the show um you know some from the vegan camp some
from you know the the carnival camp and everything in between and i've observed you know other podcasts
where people are like arguing tooth and nail well this study says this and this study said this and
you're you're eating habits are stupid and now you're an asshole and and i'm standing in the
middle again looking around going but you both agree don't consume processed foods try and get
clean holistically raised meat and you know all these things so there's no you're not disagreeing
i mean obviously the vegans aren't agreeing on the meat side but you know the it i think where all
those circles intersect all the successful different eating philosophies they all agree on
several areas and that's a great place for people to start and you can put a foot in each of the
you know different realms if you want to go plant-based for a while or whatever it is
but start with just looking at the things that everyone agrees you know we we probably shouldn't
be in vegetables that are covered in chemicals you probably shouldn't be in meat if you are
they're pumped full of hormones and antibiotics just to keep these sick animals alive long enough
to slaughter them yeah i i agree with all of that my fear is that i don't want to ostracize anybody
from the idea i don't want to create a gateway for people who want to lose weight or get healthy and
i think that and this might not even be what you're saying but in los angeles we certainly
have a culture where like the the health food stores quote unquote health food stores are so
astronomically expensive compared to the normal stores i think that like the the basic of what
you're saying is like don't eat stuff that's got a lot of ingredients and that's pretty simple like
meat like a steak has one ingredient it's steak it's beef right and uh an apple that's the
ingredient it's an apple um once you start to get into highly processed food with a lot of ingredients
yeah it's a weird thing but i i worry that somebody i don't i don't think there has to be
monetary component to getting healthy and i i think that certainly it is cheaper to eat processed
foods and so there is that abundance out there but i think you can find that it doesn't have to cost
a lot of money to be healthy yeah and it's interesting your perspective because what i i
find two reactions depending on which city the person's uh sitting in so i you know i'm i'm of
the camp that actually you can eat equally as healthy for the same amount of money if not cheaper
but i'm sitting in o'calla center of florida where we're surrounded by farmland so i can go to a
farmer's market buy you know relatively clean food um and and it's comparable if not cheaper than
the shitty processed food however if you're in the middle of new york city in middle of la middle of
london that might be a slightly different dynamic but i'm not in any way shape or form saying
whole foods is the way you should go because that's a middle man that's taking a big old chunk
but i hope that you said i hope one day an apple will just be an apple again not an apple covered
in god knows what pesticide and i think that you know the steak will be back to a cow roaming the
fields instead of being jammed in a in an industrial you know complex somewhere yeah me too i mean i
uh the idea that there used to be hundreds of thousands of meat processing plants that were kind
of local and now there's like a handful of them owned by four companies and you know because of
that yeah it becomes this depressingly massive industry that you lose the idea that you could
even be eating biodiverse foods from a farm that's kind of harmonious with nature that said
that said yes los angeles there's even they they they they've they've kicked the piss out of
whole foods by creating a store called air one that that is like the rodeo drive of whole foods
and and i just go like you know all these wealthy people who are drinking you know artisanal
water captured at the source and you know are are just utterly consumed with with the idea that
you know uh their their chickens got a massage before they were killed you know or whatever it
is i i just don't want to create any kind of an obstacle for people because you know it's easy
i'm an actor i could just go like i had my food prepared by somebody and brought to me and i have
a trainer that's working me out and that none of that's true and i don't want to create some
situation where you know some kid who's who's eating government cheese feels like he has no
escape route yeah well i had um joel salatin on do you know who that is so he if you watch food
ink and forks over knives he's the kind of quirky looking farmer that has the overalls and the floppy
hat but he's i mean he's written numerous books he talks all over the world um but he has a you know
just a i say holistic he has an original farm and the farm's the way we used to hundreds of years
ago where he rotates his his cattle through the different pastures then the pigs follow them and
then the chickens peck you know the the worms following them the grass grows you know like a
foot long so just just the way nature's supposed to be and he you know we had a great talk about
this covet thing and he's saying just like you mentioned you know if you have only four processing
plant or plant companies in the nation and and these conditions that these animals are in well
you're you know you're setting an environment that creates some of these horrendous bacterias and
viruses now you've got all these workers that are shoulder to shoulder processing and then when they
have some sort of infection that entire system closes down you know so i think we should be
subsidizing back to the local farmers and if you have an la and new york then the surrounding
you know either states or counties can then produce more and send them into the city so they can also
access that but the fact that like you said there's a class system on the quality of our food is
completely unacceptable yeah it's not good i and you know there's like even the ideas of efficiency
there's a great book called anti-fragile and and it's got some some concepts that are so profound
and you know the idea is that we are anti-fragile and we actually do better when when we come up
against something that pushes back a little bit and so if we create some system for efficiency
the system actually becomes quite fragile and that's not good so at the end of the day you
have covid come through and you actually see hunger which in a nation of obese people for the
first time in however many decades we have people who are hungry and they're waiting online for food
in america where we throw away some ghastly percentage of our food so it's like none of
these systems are ready to take on and deal with anything actually that's going to push back against
them and and yeah obviously the the biodiverse farm is a much more rational way to go and and
i i assume there are probably a lot of people who would be interested in in doing that as their job
but you're kind of incapable of doing that because the regulations set up are against you they're
for the for massive companies who are kind of controlling all of this and and you know i even
read a story recently where they slaughtered hundreds of thousands of pigs and and then just
buried them because there was no processing plant because the processing plant was closed because of
covid yeah well exactly and you know you said about just just the enjoyment of a career i mean
i grew up on a farm you know until i was 18 19 and it wasn't a you know a ranch it was a horse farm
and that was a vet but um you know it's the most amazing childhood and really was and to think that
someone could either a work in a farm you know and and you know just slaughter whatever needs to be
slaughtered from that particular place and i know joel does a lot of his chicken processing even in
the outside it's more like a lean to than a building versus standing in a factory surrounded
by you know as he puts it i mean even the dust itself all the you know the particles from all
the different processes how unhealthy that is and you just think from a humanity point of view
supporting a local community where it doesn't have to be shipped thousands of miles and and
creating a much more resilient infrastructure it makes sense on every single level the only
thing it doesn't do is make a very few mountain people very wealthy right you know it's a tricky
spot it's a tricky spot but i i do i do think that it is possible to uh to get leaner without
having to be wealthy to do it yeah it's maybe maybe not as easy but it's possible right well
transitioning a little bit because the way i view podcasts i think is is a hugely empowering you know
medium and listening to joe rogan and tim ferris and some of the ones that really turned me onto
them it makes me realize how it circumnavigates all the filters like when all this bullshit is
being played on the tv at the moment about covid and i'm listening to you talking was it your
brother-in-law you were chatting to the epidemiologist yes yes yeah so there we go you
know you see you get this common sense middle and i made a very concerted effort to seek out
guests that already had or some new ones to put common sense middle of the road educated information
out there so tell me about your journey into becoming a podcaster uh my buddy kevin connelly
him and i were getting on a plane to go to on a trip to uh i think japan or something like that
about 10 years ago and maybe not quite 10 years ago maybe six years ago and uh and he said to me
what are you going to do for 14 hours and i said i'm going to listen to this historical podcast on
the mongolian empire and he was like what what is that and he had never heard of a podcast before
and i i showed him uh the the hardcore history um podcast and i downloaded the podcast app for him
and he wound up listening to it on the flight the whole thing and and then got off the plane and
and re-listened to it during our trip in japan you know anytime we got in a car he was listening
to that and and he was utterly fascinated that that was just free on an app and uh you know
cut to a few years later and he's like obsessed with podcasts and tells me he's going to build
a podcasting studio and says to me like please come and podcast and and you know we have these
kind of uh group texts chains where all their friends are on texting things and and i of course
am a contrarian and and and you know i i i find about as much um i i find that professional
wrestling has more truth than any politic political position or political camp or anything
and and i'm not even like a fan of professional wrestling and so i'm always just instigating
shit on these on these text chains and and like and i'm not really that bad at it either and and
kevin was like please do that on a podcast and i said are you crazy bro i'm not gonna go
get myself cancelled from hollywood because it comes out that i think voting is a joke or something
like that and uh and and he kept after me like please do a podcast please do a podcast and
and finally i said you know i i would be willing to do one on health and fitness because
you know i i do that every day and i i've actually read a fair amount about it and i'm interested in
it and there's lots of people i'd love to talk to about it and and at first he was like no that's
boring i want to hear you get into fights with people uh philosophically or politically or
something like that and i was just like i'm just never gonna do that it's not even worth it because
i don't even feel that my values and morals apply to anyone else they're strictly my position uh
they're not something i'm ever trying to convince anybody of um and so finally he was like okay just
do your health thing and it's been successful so so i'm having fun with it now when i think what
really struck me you interviewed uh jean gourd um and i had him on the show as well obese to beast
on instagram and he was you know kind of downplaying i know you do the same kind of disclaimer on yours
too well i'm not a scientist or a doctor but i think that's just it i have had way more um
um response from firefighters police officers you know members of the military who tell their
powerful powerful story of you know depression addiction near suicide whatever it was than i
ever have from a psychology talk a psychologist talking about it you know those personal stories
are very powerful so just because you know you're not an elite trainer or you know a cardiologist
um i think that's actually a plus now to be you know to have lost weight but not really understand
the process is one thing but i think people like you and john that have actually been through it
that have stumbled you know that have you know lost weight gain weight lost weight whatever it was
even with you being honest with the addiction side as well there is so much more value
than being talked at by a quote unquote expert yeah i i don't disagree with you and and and i
and i love to talk about it you know it's again i'm not trying to convince anybody of anything i'm
not i'm not even trying to say like people should lose weight but i can recognize that
some people want to and feel like it's impossible and so i i'm willing to be an example of the
possibility of it and and have conversations with people who have gone through it and have
different points of view on how it can be done because who knows if like i don't think my diet
is certainly right for everybody it's not like it's only right for me because i've really mastered
setting goals for myself and and i think that's really important too and often overlooked on day
one when i'm 500 pounds i certainly didn't have the same goals that i have today i just needed to
lose weight and so i think the diet i did then which was a liquid diet was perfectly valid
i wouldn't do that today you know what i mean yeah no exactly and i think that's the thing if
you're for example the firefighter that's found themselves deconditioned which happens a lot and
i try and be very uh very fair i guess to present the ownership side but also the the environmental
side there are many many elements of the first responder the shifts and the seat deprivation
and you know the knock-on effect on the hormonal system that really do create an environment for
failure when it comes to their own health and it really takes a lot of work for us to to to stay
on top of that but i think you know listening to you and let's say john and let's say two three
other people now you can collate all those stories and then you can start finding a game where those
lines intersect that you think will be applicable to you and find your own you know person x journey
to experimentation because just like you said it might be the third fourth fifth combination of
this exercise and this kind of eating philosophy that finally works for you yeah exactly and and
allowing ourselves to figure that out that's the other problem i have with the kind of um
the camps that we see diets in today because like if again if you have if you if you tell somebody
this is the only or this is the best way to do something and they don't have success with that
what is the motivation to try the the worst way to do it do you know what i mean or or not the
best way if there's one way to do something then you just do that but if if it's clearly doesn't
work for everybody then it's not the only way to do it yeah exactly and let's say that the only
the only exercise that works is the one you stick to i mean that's a very very true thing so you know
like you said before with with hiking with cycling with weight training now whatever you find exciting
find that find a way for that to work for you and it might change like you said you might do crossfit
love it and then you know transition to something else i mean who knows what it is but if you begrudge
the way you eat or you begrudge the way you exercise it's not going to last
that's exactly it yeah i i i did try crossfit i just think i'm a little bit too old or i've
i did too much damage to my knees yeah well i've had a lot of people from there i've done it for
14 years now um but it's totally coach and ego specific you know and i don't mean that to pick
on the coaches or ourselves but it is a great way of fostering resilience especially for tactical
professions because it does take you to a pretty horrific place when you do you know when you are
able to sensibly up the intensity however if you are not guided the right way if you are not
suppressed until you address imbalances in the body it absolutely can be an environment where
you can get hurt if you're not led the right way yeah yeah right well i want to transition to one
other area because i think your perspective would be quite interesting and then go to some closing
questions but having done american history x which obviously addressed the uh the element of white
supremacy and then remember the titans which is you know i would say kind of the polar opposite
even if it's a slightly disneyfied version of the story what is your perspective on the racial
tensions at the moment are they as bad as we're being told and then you know if if there's
anything you have identified that we should do better as a society in general it's a really
really interesting time um when i was a teenager i was really really into i don't know what wave it
was but some wave of ska in the late 80s early 90s in los angeles and you know we were
you know we were from what i could see the only group of people who were uh overtly anti-racist
and would go and seek out the nazis in orange county and have fights with them and and i and
and so like getting to do movies that that talked about this which i thought was a real problem
and address it in that way meant the world to me we find ourselves uh uh today um where we have
richard spencer and an avowed white nationalist and you know an overt racist and uh robin de angelo
who wrote the book white fragility largely saying the same thing and so the idea of what a racist
is today like i don't even know like if it's a dude who is screaming you know racial epitaphs
yeah okay or a guy saying like i'm a racist yeah i'm not down with that guy but if it's everyone
which is i think robin de angelo's point and richard spencer's point you know these two extremes
kind of wound up in the same place i go like i don't even know what you guys are talking about
you know like i i'm not down with essentialism the whole point is to be anti-essentialism and
and i feel like i'm getting the message that we cannot escape that essentialism that that
um our our skin or some attribute about ourselves is the most meaningful or can tell us everything
we need to know about a person i'm in total disagreement with that um i i think it's uh
you know so i i don't know i don't know what to do better i think you just got to be decent
to everyone and kind to everyone and like and and advocate against um police brutality and and and
and advocate for kind of communal responsibility and you know uh i see a very very small group
who's screaming to defund the police and then i see instances where the police are going like okay
we're not going to do anything and the problem is that the majority of the people don't realize
that they're no longer going to be protected by the police and in my ideal utopian i go like yeah
there would be no law and no police and and and everybody would be responsible for themselves but
like everybody's got to agree on that otherwise you have people who are going to get utterly run
over by other people and and so i look around and i just go like you know we have uh homicides
we have uh homicides getting out of control in new york uh and they've been on the rise and they were
so low for so long and and uh people who are advocating for democracy without realizing that
we've arrived in this place today because of democracy and so what are we doing now where
it's just the loudest voices are now in control versus the majority of the people um i don't i
don't i don't have a solution to any of this it doesn't seem good i don't think it's racial i
think it's closer to a class problem than it is to a race problem yeah it's been so interesting to
watch you know from my perspective within the first responder profession knowing you know the
majority of police fire you know whatever uniform personality you want to put in that box leave their
families every day leave their families to go and protect complete strangers and these people that
we're seeing abusing that power abusing that uniform the good police officer of the world
don't want those pieces of shit in their department they don't want to work with them you know they
they they're a disgrace and if it's a department where lack of training lack of accountability
shitty hiring practices have contributed to that then yes we as a profession nationally need to
address that but i think on the other side you know listen to people like morgan freeman saying
we need to stop defining each other by color and as i forget her name but there's a um a female
older lady who's a i think she's a psychologist but she talks about when you look at the history of
and when we even defined ourselves at race i believe it goes back to the kind of spanish
inquisition times if i'm not mistaken so that whole concept like i mean you hit it the nail on the
head it's created this this this facade of division and then you've got these squeaky wheels on each
side that are shaking the bush and once again in the middle everyone else is suffering police
officers that sacrifice their lives for people of all colors and creeds are being you know held over
the coals and then innocent members of community are getting either their livelihoods burnt down
in riots or now are victims of violence because of the pushback from law enforcement yeah i i
i cannot know the experience of another person all i can know is my experience and i can try very
hard which i which i find i i do put effort into trying to empathize with and understand other
perspectives but i i don't at the end of the day kid myself that i can know what they are but i try
but i know that there was an aspect of my physical self that i felt was less than the rest of people
and and it inhibited me uh in my life today i still feel um introverted physically about myself
and how i fit into the world but i don't for a second think that that can change by uh society
or by telling people to change how they view me the only way that that changes is by me changing
my mind about my personal worth in society um and again we're talking about uh physical attributes
that i had the power to change so that's that's a knock in in the the direction of like again this is
this is not an immutable characteristic um i just i don't i don't think that these things you know
clearly biologically they don't matter and so the fact that we're putting so much emphasis on them
today from literally both sides to me feels like a step backwards yeah now what's interesting to me
and i talk about this a lot is you know there's again there's this this kind of uh facade once
again that the person in the governmental building at the top of whichever country you're listening
to is going to change your country and there's a real disconnect from the responsibility of each
one of us in our communities to walk outside our front door and do something good in the world now
i was very fortunate to find a profession where i was able to do good in the world but i was also
paid to do that with the podcast and i've just finished a book as well which i hope is going to
have you know some sort of impact these are things especially the podcast just like you mentioned
that are free like you you put it together and anyone with access to the internet on planet earth
can glean from the incredible men and women that i've been lucky enough to have on the show that
you've had now and many of the people that have been through kind of mental challenges that
altruism that feeling of giving back that waking up with a purpose you know greater than yourself
also has a very healing element to it have you kind of experienced almost like your personal growth
from realizing now the impact that your podcast is having on the audience yeah certainly there's
yeah certainly there's i was very hesitant to talk about this and in 2011 or 12
uh i had some paparazzi follow me around on a bike and take pictures and there were some stories
about how terrible i looked having lost weight and like loose skin and the downsides of weight
loss and all of this and at that point i was like fuck it sorry probably shouldn't be swearing i was
like no you can you can't live here i was like i'm not going to talk about this i'm not going to
participate in it you guys can say whatever you want and i'm just not you you know i'll just be
an object to you um and this time around i controlled the initial photographs that were
public and uh and then i controlled what was said about it through the podcast and i found through
doing it i feel more and more open and relaxed uh about discussing it i think two things it's made me
view it in a different way almost not totally different like i haven't done
any about faces but i can see it more broadly or more externally and also it's i think it's
something that will help keep me accountable you know um when it's just me and my family then i
only have to be accountable to myself and my family but having an audience where i'm discussing these
things i am now something to some degree accountable to them too yeah no i agree completely i think you
have to walk the walk and when you put it out there publicly it's like well shit i'm kind of held to
that now but that's also element of walk in the walk and i think that you know you're not up there
to be a quote unquote inspiration but when you're transparent when you're honest when you are
showing that it was a roller coaster ride up and down um you know that's what people connect to
because that linear line that we talked about before sorry it's my german shepherd in the
background hey um that linear line that we uh you know we talked about before doesn't exist
you know so the one of the cancers of society is you know we talk about the paparazzi but also is
the consumer the reason why those shitty magazines are there at the checkout of the grocery store is
because people are still buying them so that to me again is that community thing people need to put
that shit down turn on a podcast whether it's you know the history podcast or a fitness one like you
know american glutton or whatever it is but we have to push that entire change and get away from
the instagram shaming two-dimensional bullshit and support the people with real life stories
because that's how we change the world in my opinion yeah i totally agree brilliant all right
well i'm going to transition some closing questions i know we're getting close to the time
um you mentioned anti-fragile are there any other books that you love to recommend
oh i mean as far as uh diet goes i i think the my two favorite you know there was like a del davis
30 40 years ago who was who was great and interesting but as we've gotten so much more precise
and so much more scientific and there's two dudes who are out there today writing books one is mike
israel and and my favorite by him is renaissance diet 2.0 and then there is lane norton who wrote
uh fat loss for life and those two books are fantastic um you know i i read a lot so like
science fiction i just read the three body problem which is three books um by a chinese dude you know
and i mean like properly they were written in china and so it's a whole different perspective
on science fiction and and those are great books and yeah anti-fragile i like those are those are
those are my book recommendations for today excellent what about movies favorite movies and or documentaries
um my favorite movie is i don't know probably something like lawrence of arabia or
once upon a time in in in america um or like the godfather part two i love those big epic really
long movies uh favorite documentary i don't know dude i've been watching generation iron a lot lately
brilliant it's a good movie too all right what about um a guest is there someone that you
recommend to come on this podcast to talk to the first responders military and associated
professions of the world and it doesn't have to be anyone connected with those professions
i i would suggest a guy named tom kyer i've had him on my show twice he is uh he he he is just a
an awesome awesome dude in fact i played a character inspired by him on the television
or chance and he's kind of um you know my my mentor in a lot of in a lot of ways in a lot of
in a lot of areas he's a badass dude and i think he'd be a great fit excellent thank you so much
for that suggestion um all right so the last one before we make sure everyone knows how to find the
podcast and reach out to you online what do you do to decompress uh i lay in bed i watch tv i don't
have a lot of time to do that i i like to go to the beach with my kids or go on a walk outside
with my wife fantastic and do you have any sort of mental practice or or meditation no i i have
a buddy who's into that and i'll occasionally go over and do that with him and i've tried the
wim hoff uh breathing method which i like a lot but no i i like to get out of my head um
as much as possible brilliant now just just just when you're on the bike did you find yourself
getting out your head there because i mean that's that's eight hours a long time
yeah i i would find myself too in my head if i didn't have a fun ear pod in and have some music
on and when i had a little bit of music and and you know i always wore it in the ear away from
traffic and and going up a hill yeah that was like totally meditative and you know just the
cadence when you're pedaling it would become very meditative brilliant all right so then for
everyone listening firstly american glutton how can they find the podcast it's on all the podcasting
apps i i have an apple phone so i i get it through apple but i think it's on spotify and
and all those i don't know all the apps to be honest with you but you can get on on any major
podcasting app brilliant and even the website when you google american glutton whatever program you
use for that is very very user-friendly that's what i've been listening to it through oh great
yeah i didn't even know you could listen to it on our website yeah i believe so i think that's what
i've been listening to so um all right and then as far as online if you want to follow you or
reach out what's the best way on instagram i'm ethan supplee and on twitter i'm ethan supplee
brilliant well ethan i want to say again thank you so much i mean you were so
generous to to kind of reach out and allow me to connect with you but your your story is powerful
and your story is real it's human and i think that a lot of people listening seeing people like
yourself that have you know decided to not just decide that's the wrong word have have created
an environment for them to transition from one you know health state to another is extremely
powerful and it's something that everyone needs at the moment so i just want to say thank you so
much for being so generous with your time oh thank you i really appreciate it thanks for having me