Why is losing fat so hard? The psychological hurdles of weight loss | Dr. Anthony Balduzzi | Better Man Podcast Ep. 046

Dean Pohlman: Why is weight loss so hard and how can we make it easier? In this episode, I interviewed Dr. Anthony Balduzzi. To better understand the psychological factors that make weight loss so hard, Dr. A is the founder of the Fit Father Project, the leading online brand for men’s weight loss, and they’ve helped over 50,000 men transform their lives through lifestyle change.

Dean Pohlman: So my big question is essentially this If we all know what it takes to lose weight eating well, exercising, basically taking better care of ourselves, then why is it so hard? Why do so many men try and fail? So in today’s episode, we are going to explore this in depth, including why weight loss is almost always hard, but why we have to avoid the victim mentality.

Dean Pohlman: Why a lack of alignment makes it hard to lose weight. The exact process to making it easy to lose weight, which is planning, preparing and choosing specific behaviors to implement and much more. Anthony is a good friend of mine and I really enjoyed doing this interview. As we bounce ideas off one another. If you’re interested in losing weight and making that as easy as possible, this is one episode you won’t want to miss.

Dean Pohlman: And as always, I hope it inspires you to be a better man.

Dean Pohlman: Welcome to the Better Man podcast. I’m your host, Dean Pohlman, founder of Man Flow Yoga. And here we are redefining what it means to be better as a man successful but also true to himself, physically fit, but also mentally and emotionally healthy, improving in all areas of life, but recognizing that it means nothing without deeper, more meaningful connections.

Dean Pohlman: Join me in the Better Man podcast as we explore the practices, the beliefs and the processes that enable us to strive for our goals while also comprehensively caring for our own health and well-being. I hope this show inspires you to be the better version of yourself. What’s up, guys? It’s Dean. Welcome to the Better Man podcast. Today I am rejoined by Dr. Anthony Bell from the Fit Father Project.

Dean Pohlman: Dr. Anthony Bell Doozy is a natural path. Doctor, you went to medical school, did his boards, and he has helped over 50,000 men lose weight. Today we are going to try and talk about some things differently than we’ve done in the past. We’ve actually done two podcasts before, and today we wanted to talk about weight loss on the emotional side of things.

Dean Pohlman: We also wanted to get into some of the Transformable, kind of revisit some of the transformational events in Anthony’s life that led him to the character growth that we often discuss on this podcast, Looking at how trauma and how these things, these tragedies can help us actually come out of them for the better. So, Anthony, thanks again for joining me.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: I’m happy to be here with you, Brother.

Dean Pohlman: All right. So something that I have been thinking about a lot recently is why weight loss is so difficult. People have such difficulty with weight loss. They have such difficulty with many of the things that go in to weight loss. They have difficulty with getting into a habit of exercise. They have difficulty with thinking about living. A healthy lifestyle is something that is enjoyable instead of like a chore or like.

Dean Pohlman: And then and then even maybe even more difficult than that is more difficult than working out regularly is changing eating habits. And I wanted to talk about some of this because if the only thing holding people back from weight loss was the right information and the right practices, then like there would be nobody would, you know, 50% of America would not be overweight or were heading toward that number.

Dean Pohlman: I don’t think we’re there yet, but we’re getting close to that. So I what is it you know, what’s talk about some of the emotional aspects of weight loss? What are coping mechanisms that people have developed that lead to that lead to having an excessive amount of weight? And let’s let’s try and dive into some of that, because I think that’s so much more of an issue than just having the right information.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: I couldn’t agree more, brother. Okay. So I’d like to approach this from a very high level and then we’ll kind of work our way down. What does it require for us to maintain healthy bodies and a healthy lifestyle? Well, it requires some consistent actions in a couple of categories. Consistent actions with food and nutrition, with exercise and moving our bodies and with sleep and like restoration, circadian rhythm, like, we’ll just take those three broad categories.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: You need to be sleeping, right? You need to be eating right. You need to be moving right, or at least doing some things in those directions. And each one of those areas has its own unique challenges when it comes to the exercise. A lot of people have time constraints in their schedules or they don’t know the right kinds of workouts to do that will fit fit their life in the timeframe, or they have pain in their bodies that they feel like they have limitations or they’re so far gone that it just doesn’t feel motivating or energizing at all to go spend more energy that I don’t have to go exercise right now.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: On the nutrition side of things, I think there’s similar issues. There’s pressures with people’s schedules, like not having a routine, not knowing quick, healthy meals to make not having clarity on what kind of foods to even buy. So there’s a clarity issue. But on the deeper side of things, food is interfacing with our entire neurochemical system. We’re always looking to feel happier and better.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: Whether we whether we’re conscious of that or not. We have this nervous system that is attuned to go towards things we perceive as pleasurable. Some things are short term pleasurable, some things are long term pleasurable, and we want to avoid pain. And food in particular is one of the most powerful ways that our body change and alters neurotransmitter levels.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: Serotonin and dopamine. These things respond to the different kinds of foods that we do consume, our craving patterns that are developed. And also food becomes a massive area of coping mechanisms for people because we have a Western culture where we’re more busy and stressed than ever. There’s financial pressure, there’s pressures with our kids. So this food category ends up being like a pressure release valve for many people.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: It becomes like a way to cope and stress. Like when people listen. This podcast, I’m sure people have experienced like eating way too much late at night because you’re like the days over, I did it. Now I can just have a huge meal, just like unbutton my pants and just chill out. And it feels so good to just gorge out on those foods.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: But what this is actually doing is rewiring certain patterns in our brain and altering neurotransmitter levels. So the tough thing here is that what.

Dean Pohlman: Is what does that break that down? Because you just said a lot of big sciencey words, but what is it? What does that mean in like general terms?

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: Okay. So there’s areas our brain that respond. We have a reward, centers of our brain. One of these is around the limbic system. These are areas of our brain that respond to emotion, memory, fears, likes, dislikes, very primal areas of our brain. And when we eat very high carb, high, palatable, high sugar, high salt, high fat foods, it releases serotonin in our bodies, which is a neurotransmitter that makes us feel connected, happy, relaxed, and safe, which we all want to feel likes the nervous system perspective.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: It’s like it’s a comfort food. Why do they call it a comfort food? Because you eat that mac and cheese. It’s like getting a hug from mom, except the hug is coming through, chemicals being squirted in your brain. Okay?

Dean Pohlman: Or they get used to doing this as a way to make them feel good. Yes. And the more they do it, the more that in grains this you know, when we are searching for things to make us feel better, the more that we do those activities, the more likely we are to remember, Oh, you know, make me feel good.

Dean Pohlman: I will go do that. I will feel good. I’ll get what I want.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: Yes, it starts like that. And then it becomes such an unconscious pattern that you’re almost reaching for these things before you even, like, conscious of what you’re doing it. It’s like this becomes a subconsciously ingrained pattern because it gets repeated and because ultimately we do want to, at a subconscious level, to have a feeling of connection, not be afraid to feel good and relaxed.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: And there’s many ways we can do this now. The situation is absolutely exacerbated with our modern culture, with the phones that many of us are addicted to, that are also preying on our dopamine levels, which is a different neurotransmitter that’s not as much about comfort and security and connection. It’s more about reward and craving. And so we’re constantly learning to crave more because we’re getting the next hit of dopamine through scrolling.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: And whether or not we’re addicted to social media or if it’s other things in our life, sports betting, you know, whatever it can be, anything that you’re into, it’s constantly preying on your neurotransmitters. And oftentimes people are using food as a way to rebalance or the cravings for foods becomes its own category that we’re chasing. So what I’m trying to say here is that there’s obviously societal pressures that are kind of like making it harder to neurochemistry.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: Food is the most foundational thing that we have in our human system to make us feel good and balanced. They’ve done a lot of these rodent studies showing that the same reward centers light up when rats do cocaine is when they get hits of sugar. And the same thing in the human brain. You could do functional MRI scans and see the same areas that hard drugs light up soda, sugar.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: So do some of these things. And we have an industry that’s trying to sell us hyper palatable foods. Right? You know, it’s not like food, like a certain percentage of foods being sold because it’s healthy and it’s good for you. But that’s a small category relative to the interior aisles of a grocery store, which is largely to get you to eat more and consume more, not with it.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: And a lot of these things are designed to hijack your neural circuits. They don’t keep you full. They’re hyper palatable, lots of salt, lots of fat, combinations of things that don’t have a lot of micronutrients. The vitamins, minerals, micronutrients keep us full. So it’s a shit storm in this nutrition category right now in this exercise category. The irony is it’s one of the best things for actually balancing your nervous system and improving neurotransmitters like endogenous Leigh You get endorphins that are released When you train Caplan’s that are released, you start to feel better and more energetic as you train more.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: But in the beginning it’s hard. It requires like getting out of this hole and really breaking old patterns. And then in the final category I want to get into and then we’ll probably go deeper. Where you ever want to go with this is sleep, right? We are we have an epidemic right now where people are not sleeping well because we have so much artificial light in our environment or disconnected from the normal circadian rhythm cycles.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: And when we are sleep deprived, guess what that does massively impacts our whole neurotransmitter system, which impacts those other two areas, makes us less excited to exercise and more likely to turn to hyper palatable foods. And it gets us on this whole roller coaster. We’re like little crackheads on this like roller coaster, trying to get doses of these neurotransmitters through unhealthy sources and the promises of a healthy life and how you can make that shift.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: And we can talk about that. I definitely have a method that works for many, many people, is that you can have an internally generating machine where you’re eating foods that are actually like balancing your neurotransmitter levels. You’re moving your body consistently, you’re sleeping well, and then you feel good from the inside and not relying on so many external factors now to get there is a true hero’s journey.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: But what else are we here to do? I don’t know. Like we’re here, right? And we’re here to conquer things that we feel like are holding us back. And this is obviously a massive problem. And because it’s a massive problem, that means it’s not an individual problem. It means this is a systemic problem. Everyone’s caught in this current.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: Just some people have figured out how to get out and some people who are younger who are listening to this just have enough physical resiliency and maybe they don’t have a bunch of kids yet, so they don’t know what’s coming down the pipeline. But these currents are strong.

Dean Pohlman: Mm hmm. I think that one of the most profound things that you said, and that is that this is systemic. This is not an individual issue, which hopefully absorb absolves helps to absolve the feeling of responsibility or of total responsibility from people who feel like because they’re struggling with weight loss, like it’s all their fault, like there’s something inherently wrong with them.

Dean Pohlman: You know, they’re failures because they they can’t they know because they’re struggling with this. And I think it is important to recognize there are so many systems set up that make it difficult to to lose weight. Like we talked about a lot of them already. We talked about the way that, you know, food is marketed. We talked about you know, we talked about how much stress we have on a daily basis because it is harder to make more money.

Dean Pohlman: It is harder to get ahead than it was before. We are also have higher expectations than we did before, which means that not only do we have to make more money, we have to make even more money to be able to support these aspirations that we now have due to these unrealistic expectations we’ve created for ourselves from watching social things on social media and being able to see, you know, super successful people and all the things that they’ve been able to achieve.

Dean Pohlman: So there are a lot of things. And also like when you think about fitness, you know, we think about people working out. It’s it’s very often what you see, what’s getting the most traction or what gets the most views are people who are in the hyper fit state, right? There are people who are professional athletes or people who spend three, 4 hours a day working out or they’re just like 24.

Dean Pohlman: You know, they’re just like, they’re just young. They’re coming out of like like me. When I first started, Man Flow Yoga, and I was coming out of being a collegiate, I was coming out of being a collegiate lacrosse athlete. I wasn’t really good shape. I was jacked, know, I’m still pretty in good shape. But like, even but, but then at at that time, like, I was in really, really good shape because I was young and I was an athlete.

Dean Pohlman: And if we’re looking at that as the, Oh, this is what you will be if you work out or you’re doing it wrong instead of, you know, looking at fitness as a way to empower your body to, to, to feel the way that you want to feel, to be able to do the physical things that you want to do and to be able to just have longevity and overall health.

Dean Pohlman: Then, you know, there’s a lot that’s just being portrayed and there’s just a lot of systems, there’s a lot of culture that are kind of just showing us these as inaccurate, unrealistic, and also, you know, just unsupportive systems for living a healthy lifestyle. So it’s not the individual’s fault. There is all of these things that are working, working against you.

Dean Pohlman: So I think.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: That’s kind of a plus on that first check because I think you’ve really well said. There’s the cultural influence, there’s the internal neurochemical influence, there’s your very real presence, stresses and challenges and limitations in your very own life. So basically the scene is set. We are playing the game on hard mode. It’s just how it is we are in hard mode right now and the important thing to realize is that is just the case.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: We’re all in hard mode. We didn’t choose it. It just is this way. Now that doesn’t, I think that absolves us of the fact if we feel guilty like we should be able to do this easily. Yeah, we shouldn’t. It’s hard mode, but it does not absolve us of the fact that we are the hero of this story and nobody is going to fix this and save us then us.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: I think this is the other slightly dangerous thing about our culture right now is we are seeking answers outside of ourselves. And what I mean by that is like we’ve have a medical industry that, you know, even as a doctor and a physician that has largely created a culture in itself of delegating your health to someone who’s going to manage it for you, who is going to give you X, Y, Z medications, who’s going to think about worry about these things for you?

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: The path of transformation, first off, comes with a taking of ownership and radical responsibility for I am going to be the one that needs to change my relationship to these things in my life and to drive my energy forward. That’s not to say you can’t get a band of brothers support an amazing program like Man Flow or Fit Father, and you can’t hop on with other people.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: But you still have to really understand that you are the hero and you are the driver because the converse of that mentality is a victim mindset. And we know from all the positive psychology research, the number one thing that leads to the greatest level in happiness is feeling like you’re a victim, like you’re not a positive change agent.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: But if you can be like, okay, this is hard mode, I know I need to be extra powerful in this. I know I need to get extra amounts of support. I need to be extra sharp. I need to actually care about the stuff to not just do it half ass, but really dive in and learn. I need to look at my inside thoughts as well as my outside habits, and I need to like actually pour a lot of energy into this.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: Like that’s the facts. If there’s anyone listening to this, if you succeeded with an area of your life like massively, it’s because you cared a lot. It’s because you deeply studied it and it’s because you poured your energy into it with a lot of focus and power. That’s what’s necessary to break out of the gravitational pull of this tough culture.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah, I think that’s a I think that’s a great add on. You know, I think that kind of going back to what I said, I think that it’s important to the most important part of what I said is to recognize that everybody’s struggling with this and that this is not like this isn’t like a character default. This isn’t there’s something wrong with you.

Dean Pohlman: It’s hard and it’s hard for everybody. And I’m glad that you you clarified that. I do think that victim mindset is I do that. The victim mindset is it’s kind of like in a lot of ways, the victim mindset is very similar to two to bingeing food at night or using drugs or, you know, think of any other coping mechanism that that hurts us in the long term victim mindset makes us feel good.

Dean Pohlman: And the moment it absolves officers of some responsibility and it makes us like, Oh, I feel not as bad about our situation, but if we continue to stay in that and like that’s our justification for when we feel the pain of our reality is just to go to. Well, it’s, you know, it’s not my fault. And I’m not able to, you know, to fix it because I’m the victim here.

Dean Pohlman: I think what’s also really interesting about the victim mindset is so many people don’t there’s different iterations of the victim mindset. Like the victim mindset doesn’t always present itself as like, I am a victim, right?

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: Like, very subtle.

Dean Pohlman: It’s very subtle. But like, there are so many things that people, you know, like you’ll hear people talking about, you know, avoiding the victim mindset. And then like 2 minutes later they’ll be embracing the victim mindset. And you’re like, I don’t know if you know that’s what you’re saying, but like, you’re just you just contradicted yourself strongly with with what you’re saying.

Dean Pohlman: So, you know, for for me, I kind of want to go back to what’s let’s talk about food. As you know, that first thing we talked about. So what are what are some of those you know, we talked about that people know or we know that there is information available about what proper foods to eat. So what is going on in people’s heads when they’re sitting down at night?

Dean Pohlman: They have healthy food in the refrigerator, but then they also have unhealthy food in the refrigerator and they know that that they should have the healthy food. But then they have the unhealthy food. Yeah. Like what? What is the what are the emotions that are going on? What are the previous previously learned patterns that make it so difficult to make the healthy decision?

Dean Pohlman: Like what’s going on there?

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: If you’re perfect, I think we’ll get into that moment and then I want to even rewind that day even to earlier in the day, because I think that moment is is contingent upon what happened earlier in the day. But in that moment, I think we can all like, let’s just imagine that inter-state of conflict that we’ve all experienced where we have this sense from like the higher logical aspects of our our mind, where we’re like, we know what we should do or what we want to do, but then we’re like, it just seems so hard.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: I have to, like, cook that damn chicken breast. I can just throw the pizza in the oven like you start thinking about all the excuses. And then there’s that temptation aspect, I think is, guys, we’ve certainly all felt like temptation in something. And then the voice starts going, Oh, maybe just this one time, or I’ll start tomorrow, or It’s okay.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: You had a really big day or it’s not that bad. You got the low fat version of that. You know, whatever the mental justification hook that gets you to the point where you actually say, okay, this is my decision. It’s like the angel in the devil on your shoulder are both speaking in that time. Now, if we want to break that down to less of a metaphysical way and a little more into the reality, what’s happening is your higher prefrontal cortex, the logical, rational, you know, problem solving area of your brain has an idea of where you want to go.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: That’s like the direction. But your deeper limbic brain that is that is craving security, that wants more comfort, that doesn’t want to be in pain, that does resist some amount of change. These are these emotional circuits we talked about that areas not aligned. And there is an amazing psychologist you may know by the name of Jonathan Haidt, and he is really brilliant analogy of the elephant, the rider in the past.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: And I think it’s worth us talking about.

Dean Pohlman: So I do have this hypothesis. Yeah, I just like I talked, I read that book like I reread that book a month ago. We were talking about like if I reread books or not. And that was actually one that I just reread.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: Caught Well, whether or not someone’s familiar, I think it’s worth kind of going through this. He he talks about this analogy of how change happens and he says that there is a rider riding a giant elephant and they’re walking down this path and the rider is the smart guy. You know, he knows where they want to go and he’s directing them, but he’s tiny.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: Like, how can he actually move the elephant? The elephant is our deep emotional brain. This is like massively powerful. May need some direction, but can actually bulldoze through something. And if it doesn’t want to budge or wants to go in a different direction, it’s like the rider doesn’t have a choice. Like he’s going for a ride, even if he says he wants to go right, elephant goes left, he has no chance.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: And then the path is kind of the environment that you’re walking down. Is it smooth? Are there trees in the way or they’re big obstacles? How how much is how easy is the path to navigate? And what what hates hypothesis or what he basically says is that to actually create long term change, all three need to be aligned.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: And the first main thing that people have misalignment in when you’re feeling that angel and devil on the shoulder is the elephant, that part of your mind that’s craving comfort and security is wanting to go in a different direction is not fully aligned right now with why this is actually what you want to be doing. You have a rider that’s saying Go right.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: The elephant is saying go left. And there’s probably a good chance that maybe you didn’t meal prep. Maybe you don’t have easy healthy food. So there’s enough obstacles in your path that the path isn’t smooth. So the way to change is to work on all of those things. We have the rider problem pretty much figure it out. Everyone has an idea of where they want to go, but now there’s this deep work with helping realign that limbic brain, the elephant.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: And we do some of this in our program with the mission statement, work in the Journal and Reflection, and we can get into that. And then we also help you kind of like modify the path by smoothing it out, making sure there’s not as many obstacles, making it easier, putting signs up to help guide you. Now, that moment, though, that we have that these are like underlying psychological currents that run in all of our minds in different domains.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: Anyone who’s struggling with health probably can relate to that on some level. But that is also a moment that is is kind of riding the momentum of what just happened at noon and what just happened at 7:00 in the morning. What I found in like it is kind of like the beautiful blessing of this life is like we wake up and we kind of have a fresh day.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: It’s like a new life. If we’re going to really extend this video game analogy, we got a new life, you know, new life level one, where you get to go reset a reset. And what we start to do early in the day creates a certain kind of momentum pattern that carries on to our decisions later in the day.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: It’s all like kind of building upon itself. We’ve all had days where we got up. We actually hydrated, we got a workout in or something, We ate a healthy breakfast and it’s so much easier to like later in the day to continue that positive momentum. On the flip side, we got up, we were groggy, we didn’t sleep well last night.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: We get the coffee and then we just don’t know what we’re going to have for breakfast. So we just have like a bagel and cream cheese and like a side of some cereal. Our blood sugar is in a tailspin. We go to work and we’re feeling a little frustrated and behind. And then lunch we order out some crap food and we now we’re feeling like a little bloated.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: And we’re feeling bloated and whatever. We don’t want to really make the good decision. And now, after this long, stressful day, we get home at dinner and we have to decide between whether we’re going to bake some salmon and asparagus or if we’re going to just pop in the microwave thing that we have. What’s that? What’s going to happen?

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: Right. I mean, there’s this this current of momentum. We’re all kind of like we talked about the societal current that’s guiding people. This is like our own personal momentum current that we’re creating in the morning, in the beginning, every day. So I’m such a huge proponent in our programs, especially as we’re helping people re change these forces to to help them win the morning and to create this positive momentum current.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: So at the very least, you feel like you have a little window on your sales. And not to say you’re going to be perfect, but it makes it a lot more likely that you’re going to be guided in a good direction.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah, so creating that. So not only are you doing things in the morning that are going to help you make easier decisions later in the day, because if you’re doing things like, you know, if you’re just if you’re eating a breakfast, that let’s just be specific here. If you’re eating a breakfast that is higher in proteins and.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: Fats, yeah.

Dean Pohlman: You’re you’re going to feel better. You’re satiated, sated, satiated, whatever. And that means that you’re not going to, you know, 2 hours later, you can be like, oh, wow, I really need some sugar right now, which is going to derail the rest of the day. But also you are you’re kind of showing yourself like, hey, I did it.

Dean Pohlman: Like I did something, I did something healthy and I, I can do it. And for me, something that that really stood out as you were talking that I was thinking about is a lot of people who who struggle with living a healthy lifestyle is a lot of things or something that’s very common to them is they don’t have the internalized experience of other habits that give them the results that they want.

Dean Pohlman: And what I mean by that is they don’t understand. They don’t maybe they logically have read, maybe they have the knowledge that says that if I eat a better breakfast, I will not binge later on. But maybe they have not personally experienced this enough that if they have this healthier breakfast, then they won’t have it. Like there’s a difference between like having the knowledge and like having actual.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: Direct experience.

Dean Pohlman: Experience and having that that kind of that that, that subconscious.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: Aha moment of alignment and realization. Well, what you just said was actually like profound. And I hope that people really understand this because the only way that our brains create new neural pathways in neural grooves is through our direct experience. Okay, look, if we read something in a book or learn it second hand that can peak our curiosity, it can start to create mental models and greater levels of understanding.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: But it’s not emotional because it’s not lived. And what creates change in these areas of the brain, the elephant areas, the emotional limbic areas as when we align action with emotion and these things combine into like realization, right? It’s like this is a lived experience. I did this. I see the result in my own life and I feel this certain way.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: And here’s the deal. When you’re having that feeling, that feeling has this neurochemical basis, it’s because these areas of your brain are squirting serotonin and dopamine in these neurochemicals, and it’s actually rewiring new patterns. So it’s like almost like you’re laying down new grooves through the own practice in your dojo of doing it. So winning the morning is just so essential because it’s your chance.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: I consider it like a prayer in a sense, not in a religious sense, but it’s it’s the alignment of thought, emotion and action all in one direction that you want to move. And when you do that, you’re creating a new neural groove. And then it makes it more likely that you’re going to succeed. And now that might not mean you’re going to be perfect for the rest of the day, but more likely, and if you stack up more likely, then it becomes more and more likely.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: It’s like exponential. And then at a certain point it just becomes intrinsically motivating because you found out that you lost £10 in this last month, you no longer need to have the third cup of coffee and you’re just feeling a lot better. So yeah, it’s direct. Experience is necessary and that requires again, how does so how do we even start to get that direct experience?

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: You have to have a clarity of some habit to start like, So what is your exact morning habit? I’m sure you have a morning ritual of the kind of smoothie or shake that you make something you would do with movement and hydration, but you have a clear routine that like we can get into some habit psychology. Now there’s a hook, there’s an action, there’s a reward.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: Like you have this built into your life. What I ask for guys listening to this is if you do not have a dialed in meal number one ritual, like, you know exactly what you’re going to do. It’s nutritious, it’s healthy. Not a lot of thinking makes you feel good and you enjoy it. Like that’s your biggest opportunity to start create this direct experience hook in your day that gives you positive momentum.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah, And you have to repeat these these habits that you’ve planned enough.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: Yeah.

Dean Pohlman: So the point that your brain now realizes, oh, I get what I want from this behavior. Yes. And, and you don’t have to do the behavior that you previously did like. I think a really good example is let’s, let’s you’ve you probably experienced it this week, but let’s say it’s like 2:00 in the afternoon and all of a sudden you’re thinking, I need a cookie.

Dean Pohlman: I want a cookie right now. Like, I want something sweet, like I want something or or like I want I want that leftover pizza. Like, I don’t. I don’t care. I’m hungry. I want that leftover pizza. And if all you’ve ever done, when you have that craving is go straight for it, then you don’t know that if you were to instead not listen to your body and instead of having the, you know, the cookie, you said, Oh, my body wants sugar, apples have sugar, I can have a piece of fruit instead of a cookie or I can have a banana.

Dean Pohlman: And instead of thinking like, you know, I want pizza, but then realizing like, oh, I want carbs because I’m hungry. And then you could have like, you know, a healthy lunch with some carbs instead. And if you do that enough, you realize, Oh, I don’t need to have that other thing I have taught myself now through my experience and by doing it enough times that I can do behavior B instead of behavior A.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: Yes, I.

Dean Pohlman: Still get the same result.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: Nailed it, but nailed it.

Dean Pohlman: But that takes that takes so much.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: It does. It takes us.

Dean Pohlman: It takes so much as it takes so much effort, but.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: It actually takes more planning and commitment than effort. And what I mean by this, it’s the planning, right? Because now we’re talking about the path we’ve arrived at, the path we’ve talked about the elephant and the rider. So what we have our fit father members do when they come into the meal plan is like we have them pick their go to snacks, their go to lunch is like, what are the healthy foods you love?

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: And the categories of proteins, fats, veggies, carbs, etc. and like get those around the house. So when you know your go to snacks are I actually like apples with almond butter or I actually like this kind of protein bar or beef jerky. And those are they’re in that moment of craving. You already have a tool available. You are absolutely screwed if you don’t have a tool available and you don’t have any other option besides the cookie.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: If all this around is cookies and you haven’t preplanned and you don’t have a substitute, how can you get direct experience there? You just lost a chance to get a rep in the dojo. But if you have that around, you get the opportunity right? So this is where the path it becomes like a practice. And the cool thing is it’s most hard at first.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: It’s one of those games that like is most hard from the beginning. And then starts to get easier and easier. So those early early days and weeks and I’d say particularly like the first month is so critical to be doing like active inner elephant mindset work along with getting your reps in, with prepping some new things, buying some new foods, throwing some things out.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: I like to think of it as like immersion of learning a new language in the sense where it’s like you move to a country, you don’t know the language, you just have to like throw yourself in. I think the people that do succeed most often are those that like take this holistic approach and are working Elephant Rider and path, you know, with with a good amount of like ferocity in it and which means where does that energy come from?

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: It has come from your understanding of why this is so important to you, which means this whole y concept of like, why is this actually important that you break these patterns? You got to have that deep inner motivation as the basis of all of this.

Dean Pohlman: Mm hmm. Yeah. So it just kind of summing some of that up, it is coming up with it is the kind of the planning process of coming up with I’m going to do this this month or this week. I’m going to do this, I’m going to do behavior A And then the second part of that is, okay, let me get all the things that I need so I can do behavior a yes, so that when the time comes up and I’m looking at my previous behavior, let’s go behavior.

Dean Pohlman: P Because previous behavior, I’m going to choose behavior. A Instead, Yes and yes. And so like, and I also do want to say to people, the one one reason why this is so hard is because I want you to think about all the things that you already have going on in your life. Like can anybody if anybody is listening to this right now and you’re thinking, yeah, you know what?

Dean Pohlman: I’m like, I’m not really tapped right now. I feel like I feel like my life demands about 75% of my energy. Mm hmm. Like who? How many people can say that? Like, I don’t know. One and 100, Like most people are. Most people, I feel, are giving their 100% in life like they’ve, you know, for you know, if you’re if you’re part of a fit father project.

Dean Pohlman: Right. You’ve got a family to take care of. And even if you’re not the father, you’ve got a job. You’ve got maybe you’re a dog, dad, maybe you’re a cat, dad, maybe you know, you’ve got relationships, you’ve got community obligations. Maybe you’re taking care of other maybe you’re taking care of your parents. So, like, think of all the things that you have going on.

Dean Pohlman: And now on top of that, you’re also asking yourself to eat healthy, exercise regularly, sleep better. And so let’s talk drinking. I think. So there’s this cool, you know, you and I like books. You know, you had to you did med school. You had to like reading for me. I one of my favorite books is called Tiny Habits.

Dean Pohlman: It’s by BJ Fogg. He’s a behavioral scientist at Stanford. And he has this he has one big differentiation that we need to make is aspirations for goals and is aspiration is I want to lose weight where is like a specific actually it’s aspirations versus behaviors. Aspiration is I want to lose weight, whereas a behavior is I will eat a salad for lunch.

Dean Pohlman: There’s a difference. One of them is one of them is something that I would strive. I like to strive for this, but there’s you can’t do an aspiration. It’s something that you might work towards, but it’s largely not very specific. A behavior is something that you do in order to reach an aspiration. So for me, you know, I, I don’t I’ll give this an example in terms of like business, because a lot of I’ve worked with some people, they’re like, what are your business goals?

Dean Pohlman: I’m like, my business goals are like as much as possible. And they’re like and they’re like, Well, I want you to have like the super aspirational number. I’m like, That doesn’t matter. Like, what are the what really matters is the actions that we’re taking to get there. Like, the goal is irrelevant. It doesn’t matter. The goal is as high as it can possibly be.

Dean Pohlman: But real is really important is the behaviors that are going to get there. Right. And so BJ Fogg has this concept called Behavior Swarm. And basically you take an aspiration and you write down, let’s say ten, you write down ten behaviors that are going to help you get to that aspiration. And then from those you isolate the ones that are most impactful and the ones that you are most motivated and most able to do.

Dean Pohlman: So you’re looking at the things that are going to make the biggest impact and are relative to everything else, the easiest for you to do. So instead of looking at this big, this big, you know, this big intimidating problem, like I will lose £10, now you’re looking at it like I will eat a salad for lunch. Cool. I can eat a salad for lunch.

Dean Pohlman: I can’t just go lose £10, but I can either salad for lunch because I have access to all the things that I need to make a salad. Maybe I’ll work from home because I like salads, so it’s not going to take me too much motivation to do so. Now we are looking at specific behaviors that are going to help us reach to reach this aspiration.

Dean Pohlman: And when we look at something like, okay, I just need to do behavior A instead of, wow, there’s this whole mountain of things that I need to do in order to live a healthy lifestyle so it becomes much less overwhelming. Yeah, so that’s there.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: And then you’re getting reps in the dojo.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah, right. You get the reps, you get this feeling of success, like when you do it, you’re like, Oh, I can do this.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: And you have clarity because you’ve committed to charity is doing right, and then you feel like you’re because I think we obviously sometimes feel like paralyzed and we don’t have a target to aim at. But the salad target is so great because it’s so clear and it’s something you can repeat in no matter what happened yesterday, you always have the target to aim at the day.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: It’s like, okay to miss shots as long as you have another opportunity to.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: Are you open to me channel about bandwidth to like two plus on this for a sec.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah. So you’re here for me to talk. Cool.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: So bandwidth is a really interesting thing. I we all fully relate to it.

Dean Pohlman: Which is also a new word if you don’t know what bandwidth means. It’s a really cool way of saying your free time.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: But yeah, it’s I’d say it’s, it’s your overall total capacity. Right? And like if 100% is the amount of energy I man, I’m loving this video game analogy if 100% see like your energy resource that you have as your character.

Dean Pohlman: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. So sidebar, what did you play video games when you were younger and which ones aren’t you?

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: Closet. Closet nerd. We’re not going there.

Dean Pohlman: Not yet. You know me a.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: Little bit on this. I’m motivated on this bandwidth thing. All right? So? So we have energy. We have this energy resource that is our bandwidth. And we’re we’re really like tapping into it a lot. And it can be daunting to add more things. And when it comes to changing your health, I talked about those categories in nutrition, exercise and sleep.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: Exercise is interesting because it’s one of those things that in the short term can actually be too taxing on your bandwidth if you’re doing zero exercise and the idea in your schedule so tapped out, the idea of setting aside more time to go do this can be really daunting at least in day one. The irony is that over time, the more you do exercise, you actually get more bandwidth.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: So if you can get it in a little bit, your bandwidth bar does increase. But I say this to kind of absolve people of this initial feeling that they need to go crush it with exercise if they’re trying to start losing weight. Nutrition is the massive leverage point because whether you’re eating unhealthy food or healthy food, you’re still going to have that meal.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: And it’s just a matter of what have you swapped in during that time and the impact, the differential energy impact on your bandwidth of unhealthy food versus healthy food is astronomical. It is so massive. You have a you have a meal that’s just like not good for you that does not regulate your blood sugar, throws off your GI tract, make your neurotransmitters out of whack.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: You feel like crap afterwards. It makes you less productive like it is zapping your bandwidth. And I want to understand this reframe is that when you install at the very least healthier foods in the in the first two meals a day, breakfast and lunch, or if you invent a fast just your first meal of the day that is adding to your bandwidth, it’s like this special little thing that you’ve added in where now your bandwidth capacity has increased because you’ve done this, it doesn’t take more time.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: You’re doing the same things. People are still going to eat food. It’s just a substitution, not adding anything in. You’re just making a more powerful choice. And then the other thing I will say is like, this is its own can of worms. The sleep thing is massive. Like if someone here knows that they’re not sleeping well, it’s like the biggest tax on your potential bandwidth the next day.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: And it absolutely bleeds in and cascades into all these other areas. So anything you can do to help regulate your sleep is going to regulate your mood, regulate your nervous system, and actually like your body processes, carbs, phenomenally when you’re in a well sleep state. So it actually changes evil and your insulin sensitivity parameters. Yeah, I guess I just really wanted to make the reframe that at least on the nutrition side of things, it doesn’t necessarily take more of you.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: It does take a little bit of planning on one or two days. It requires you to like get clear on what you’re going to do. It could be as simple as a salad target, could be as simple as a go to breakfast, like a power smoothie and can you actually buy the ingredients. But once you have that, that’s been with adding, not subtracting.

Dean Pohlman: Mm hmm. Yeah. And yeah, I think that’s you said it right. I would. And regarding sleep, I was at a health and wellness conference. This is just a funny story and just to give you like and I now understand like, okay, sleep is probably more important than like, all of these things. And I was sitting in front of a panel and I was not on the panel.

Dean Pohlman: I was watching a panel now talking about the importance of sleep. And they’re saying, well, we know that sleep is more important than diet and exercise. And he said, We know this. And then he said, Now raise your hand if you think that extra exercise is more important. And so I was like raising my hand. Like, I’m I have internalized that, like my exercise is more important than sleep.

Dean Pohlman: And if you ever need to get motivated to sleep more. Have you read Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: Have it.

Dean Pohlman: Now? It’s so that was a life changing book. Like I think that book is. I think that book is up with the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and all of those other just like, you know, those self-development books that are just like, you know, like top tier, Why We Sleep helps you understand just how important your sleep is.

Dean Pohlman: And also, I would say, you know, a lot of people get 6 hours of like, I get 6 hours a night. That’s great. There’s actually a massive difference between 6 hours, just 6 hours sleep a night and seven and a half hours. Your sleep cycles are 90 minutes.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: You get another sleep cycle.

Dean Pohlman: In and that one extra sleep cycle is when a lot of the synthesis happens, like moving, you know, actually you learning things from the previous day. This kind of like shifting from a temporary storage bank to like your permanent like hard drive with all of your. So anyways, sleep is massively important and if you ever need to get motivated to sleep more because you should read Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: I think that’s a great plus. And like even just the process you went through there, I’m getting a little philosophical, but when you feel like you have a should that you’re not meeting, it’s because your reasons are not strong enough. And the ways to get stronger reasons is to get the evidence and connect this to why it’s so important.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: So when you read this book, having not read it, I’m sure you learn that sleep is is so critical for memory, for metabolism, for mood, for sexual function, cardiovascular health, Alzheimer’s, prevent all this stuff. Right. And then you see, like, do I care about these things? And you’re like, Yes, massively. I need to be sharp for work. I want to be a great parent.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: I don’t want to be fat. I want to make more money. And when you see that sleep is tied to all of this, now you’ve made new neurosis associations, the elephant that the rider wants to go to better sleep. The elephant is now a little more aligned and now you got to pave the path. What does that mean?

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: Put the phone down, you know, get some sleep at night, start taking some magnesium. And then the ironic thing about exercise is it doesn’t prove your sleep. They, too, they tie together. When you exercise more, your sleep gets better. When you sleep better, you feel more motivated to exercise. So they’re complementary. But you could certainly feed someone a healthy diet and sleep, deprive them and they can be absolutely wrecked.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: But you could also have someone get a lot of sleep and eat a relatively unhealthy diet and still be decent. So sleep more important in the sense that when you miss it, it’s kind of like oxygen. Is oxygen the most important element? Well, yeah, because you die very quickly, but like so is water. Even though you could go longer without it.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: So.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah, like you see Arnold Schwarzenegger, like deadlifts or squats, he’s like food or water. Yeah. You need he need both. You know, as long as I’m talking about exercise, I think this would be a cool thing to talk about because I have you know, there are so many people in the Man Flow Yoga community who have a lot of resistance to exercise.

Dean Pohlman: They have, you know, maybe they had just bad experiences with exercises when they were kids. Maybe, you know, they they had like a horrible experience with their class. Like, think of, like the worst 1970s gym class you can. And that’s like what they had. And I’m just curious, like in your experience, what are some of the what are some of the reasons or the experiences or the belief systems that cause people to maybe have this kind of this icky feeling about exercise?

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: Yeah, I think like when someone’s not in a fit state, like they don’t trust their bodies, they don’t have physical confidence. There’s fears around hurting themselves. There’s fears around guilt and shame about looking silly about not being able to do things like if this is some primary psychological stuff, like most people don’t like to do things that they’re not good at.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: And guess what? When you’re starting to exercise like you’re probably not good at it. So again, your reasons for why to even start need to be massive. And then I’d also suggest that it’s a really cool to choose to start exercises that you enjoy. And that’s why I think it’s so cool about Man Flow Yoga is you’re taking primary foundational postural stuff that people are doing and like helping them get better at these basics, helping them attuned to the breath as well as the synchronized motion, so that you feel more peaceful and you get immediate benefit.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: So it’s a gentle way to exercise that also can become very intense as you have your harder workouts and flows that are just badass. Now what I think with with all reflect on our fit father workouts, which are certainly different than man flow. Our approach is like metabolic resistance training, which is a combination of weights in circuit fashion with cardio.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: So it actually feels similar to a Man Flow Yoga workout. You’re just doing your squats, deadlifts, rows, shoulder press, push ups, whatever would dumbbells and doing them very fast. It’s higher intensity with exercise, there’s a tradeoff between intensity and time. So you can have a very intense short workout that gives you a benefit for a long period of time.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: Or you can have very long, low intensity workouts that also gives you benefits. And the way we help our members is basically like you pulses a few times per week, you’re going to and we help you explain to you the phenomenal benefits you’re going to get after a single 30 minute session. You benefit for days afterwards. Do you have time to post that in a few times per week?

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: Most people say yes. And at first, I’ll be honest, when a lot of people, any kind of exercise program, especially higher intensity, it’s not always fun at first. But what is fun for the human spirit is conquering things. What is fun is progressions. What is fun is showing up to be able to do more than you could do last time.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: What is fun is the feeling. After the workout, you’re like, Oh my gosh, I actually want to quit there. But I didn’t and I feel phenomenal now. It’s like we’re shedding this layers of fat in the fat, I guess is like it’s both physical and it’s kind of like metaphoric. It’s the it’s the stuff that’s kept us stuck.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: It’s the inertia. And we need to push through like it requires pushing through to a certain extent, and there’s ways to do it very gently. You could follow a good fit father diet and just do Man Flow Yoga and like lose weight and not say your workouts are only gentle, but you could do very gentle yoga workouts with good nutrition and daily walking and lose 100 patterns.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: We’ve seen people do it, but you can also get into the game of being like, I’m going to commit to a structured experience for this amount of time, like our beginning 30 day program and then hit it and just be like, I know I don’t feel like doing this, but I’m committed to this. And then you go, Fine, after 30 days, you’ve made such massive improvements and it starts to become intrinsically motivating.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: And guess what? Who likes to work out fit People like to work out. Why are fit people going to the gym? Because it ends up being fun. It’s fun to look good. It’s fun to feel good. It’s fun to push yourself, but it’s not always fun in the beginning when you’re moving from fat to fit. And if I guess if you understand that as part of the process that it’s sometimes hard when we’re learning new things, but ultimately becomes very rewarding.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: Even that just knowing will mean, okay, I’m on the map. This wasn’t like something I was really looking forward to, but I know this is in my best interest and you’re kind of in my sense, purifying yourself as you’re going through and building some momentum. Now, if there’s work that you hate, you’re not going to keep them up long term.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: So you can even just straight up find exercise that you do enjoy from day one. Maybe like playing pickleball, Maybe you like hiking, biking, swimming, you know, maybe you hate lifting weights. So don’t do it and just do, you know, body weight exercises. So there’s that aspect to.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah. And I think what’s important to remember with all of these things, with exercise, with, you know, with eating better, with maybe instead of being on your phone for a couple of hours at night leading up to bed. But getting off the phone, reading a book, God forbid, having a conversation with your partner, you know, doing those things, it actually there is an adjustment.

Dean Pohlman: Like you’re not do it one day and then feel better the next day. It’s you. You might actually feel worse for a few days because you are not getting those short term immediate rewards that you’re getting from, you know, the the the lever of whatever unhealthy habit it is you’re doing to get those immediate rewards. So like, you’re not getting those immediate awards from, you know, from eating for you’re not getting those immediate rewards from scrolling on your phone.

Dean Pohlman: So so they’re, I think, something that important to understand is that if you’re going through changes where you’re trying to implement a healthier lifestyle, there is an adjustment period like it’s not going to feel good. Initially. It could. There are you know, there are a lot of things that make you feel good immediately. I think that, you know, getting a good night’s sleep is going to feel a lot better than not, you know, doing a Man Flow Yoga workout, Most people finish it feeling, oh, I feel better than I did when I started.

Dean Pohlman: But I think there’s this there is an adjustment period and you might you might also not realize how good it could feel to.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: You can’t how could you realize.

Dean Pohlman: Right if you there, you know, experience with it, then you don’t know. I remember I was you know, I was I was posting a couple so I think I had my Maley was born. Oh God, I don’t know what I do on my birthday. It’s, it’s a it’s March 25th is the day after I proposed to my wife, which is ironic because two days after we had our our, our son’s birthday is June 17th and our and our in our wedding is June 15th and then in our.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: May and June is prime time for you guys.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah. And then Mary’s birthday is April 25th and we got engaged April 23rd. So I like to joke that, like, our children ruined our emotional, our relationship and date specific format as well. Yeah. So bad joke. Anyways, I brought that up because, you know, I was posting about how I was getting back into things after Malawi was born.

Dean Pohlman: I was at the hospital for, you know, about a week as as one usually does. And I was getting back home. I was like, okay, I haven’t had my cold plunge in a couple of weeks. I haven’t exercised in a couple of weeks. I haven’t you know, I’m not doing my walking. I’m not eating the way that I want to.

Dean Pohlman: And commented and they said, like, just give yourself a break. You know, you’re it’s you just had a baby. And in my mind, my immediate response wasn’t, you know, oh, I should give myself a break. It was, oh, you don’t understand that. Like, these things feel good. Like when you’re doing these things regularly, you feel better. You know, fitness is not living.

Dean Pohlman: A healthy lifestyle is not something that I do because I know it’s good for me and and like, you know, it’s something that I suck up and do. It’s something that I know feels rewarding. My body feels better, I feel better about myself, I sleep better. I feel more successful. Like you do all these things not because you just you think you should, but because you have the experience that says, Oh, like my life is better when I do these things consistently.

Dean Pohlman: You’re just so much how.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: You’re drawn to it now. But at first it sometimes requires us pushing towards it because we have to push out of the resistance patterns. And you have such strong neural grooves, direct experience associations that this is the stuff that you love. It, you feel like your best self. And I think above short term, superficial rewards. What we all do want is a feeling of feeling good, of congruence, of alignment, and whatever thing we have on our mind of like what is actually good for us, we want to like go towards health.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: And I think this is on a mental like even a cell, even a single celled bacteria has pumps in it to pump out toxins. If you put toxins in an environment and they get into the bacteria, the bacteria can pump it out. And like, so what I’m trying to say is from that perspective, we all, as an organism, even the smallest ones, want to thrive in some sense that they’re just say the human can’t be massively self-destructive because can.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: But we do desire, you know, our health and well-being. And when we get to taste that and we understand the process for that and we have some experience with it, we want to move towards it naturally. And yes, things don’t feel good in the short term, but those superficial rewards that we get from the quick hit, a dopamine of the sugar cookie, we all know those fade so fast.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: You know, especially guys like let’s talk about ejaculation. Like that’s the experience of like there’s so much drive to get up to this peak moment of climax. You have it and then you’re like, Oh, you know, it’s like back to normal or like, you know, that was cool. But like that, that, that peak experience of pleasure is then like gone.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: And we go back to baseline. I’ll tell you this, and if you are pushing right now in your life towards these things, you know are good for you, the feeling of alignment that you get from doing the thing that you said you were going to do and pushing through even when it was hard. Like I think that’s hitting on deeper areas of our being that I would say like in my experience, like border on like the spiritual, this is congruent, this is integrity.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: And the rewards you get from those values are so much deeper than the superficial stuff. We need both. We need to have pleasurable food that is healthy, that tastes good, and makes us feel good in the short term. But we also need this deep current of going through this hero’s journey. Like every movie that we’ve ever loved, the main character didn’t get their ass kicked.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: They always get their ass kicked. It is the hero’s journey. Like you must go through the fire, the belly of the dragon of the whale, whatever they say to come back the other side. And maybe you can start to see yourself as on that spectrum. If you’re feeling like you’re in a little bit of a struggle right now in this is a worthy fight.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: Because on the other side of this is what you could create and what you do deeply want to experience. And that’s more alignment and more expression, more flourishing and like what else is there to do with your time other than that?

Dean Pohlman: Yeah. So I want to I do want to ask you about, you know, because it sounds like to me the big thing that you’re getting at is in order for all of these things to be easier, we have to get to creating this feeling of alignment with yourself. Your your, your, your self with a capital S. Yes, sure.

Dean Pohlman: If you understand what that means. And if you don’t, just just Google it, just Google it and your goal to be healthy. And you know, before I ask you about some other practices to help get there, because we’ve talked about, you know, proving we’ve talked about how you can plan and create and take actions and take kind of, you know, kind of create specific plans and do specific behaviors in order to kind of proved yourself, okay, this is like this is a different experience than I thought it would be.

Dean Pohlman: What are some other I want to ask about? What are some emotional practices that can be done? Like what are some introspective things that can be done to get there? And I guess let’s just go there right now. I was going to ask if there’s any other things that you want to address that make it hard for behavior change.

Dean Pohlman: But I think we did a pretty good job with that. And I’ll just let’s just go jump straight on to what are some of the more emotional, personal, you know, introspective practices that we could do to, change some of the relationships that we have or change some of the relationships the way that we think about living a healthy lifestyle, right?

Dean Pohlman: Eating better, sleeping more.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: Exercising cool. I like to relate this to I think there’s stuff we can do on a daily basis that’s kind of like brushing your teeth, and then there’s stuff you can go to on a more like once in a while, but pretty intense, which is like going to the dentist and getting a deep cleaning. And I think if someone hasn’t had like a deep cleaning aspect of this type of work, that’s the first place to start.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: And you’ve been through our Fit Father program and you know, the beginning mission statement work. I want to quickly reference like what that journaling stuff entails so someone can take these concepts and like start to apply us today. One of the first things we like to do is like get a sense of like where you want to move.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: So describe your ideal outcome and desire. Like if we could like snap a finger and everything was possible for you in 30 days or from one year from now, what does that desired outcome? Ding Like put it into expression so you least see what your aspiration is. Now we need to obviously get out of aspiration into a goal, plan and behaviors.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: But first it’s important to know what is the clear picture of your aspiration. Now, once you have that picture of that aspiration, which is like, what do I want to create and experience in my body in 30 days or one year from now, whatever time frame you want to set? I also think it’s important to write down what your core values are outside of health and fitness.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: What are the things that you actually consciously believe are important in your life? For many guys, it will be their family. It might be pursuing interests and hobbies. It might be their faith to spirituality. It might be becoming the greatest version themselves. It could be values like honesty and integrity. It could be values like funny and humor, like whatever that is right down those core values.

Dean Pohlman: Hey, Anthony, really quick.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: Yeah.

Dean Pohlman: For someone who struggles with doing that because like, I don’t think I did any sort of self work like this until I was in my mid-twenties, I don’t think I did anything like this, you know, earlier than that. And I think a lot of people in their even their fifties and sixties have never really taken the time to thought.

Dean Pohlman: They think about this. I think it’s even harder to think about these things in the age of I’m bored, what’s on my phone? Yeah, it’s really hard to have the mindfulness to be able to do that. So aside from kind of journaling, you know, journaling is one way to do this. What are some other ways that people can access the the depth of the mindfulness required to do these exercises successfully?

Dean Pohlman: Why did you do it with a person? Could you have them ask you questions?

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: Or literally you could totally do it with like any kind of talk therapist like, okay, the modes in because we’re looking at gaining clarity and expressing that outwards. You can do that through the mode of a conversation. So that could be with a dear friend, helping pull something out of us through verbal prompts that could be through writing.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: Like we are kind of talking about here, you know, how do we express? We either or we speak like these are ways we kind of concretize things down so you can choose whatever medium. But the point is, is like, we must turn inward into this reflective state and ask ourselves some questions. So either someone’s asking those questions or we’re asking ourselves questions.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: And I think what is helpful to kind of like set the tone in the mood if you’re not there, is go on YouTube, get some peaceful music that you like, maybe non lyrical, get the vibe right and just sit there with a sheet of paper or with someone who you care about who can ask you some things. These questions maybe that we’re about to cover or will cover is you just got to you got to get deep into this because the way our minds work is we need to bring stuff from like the lower subconscious surfaces.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: We need to bring that up into the conscious. And a question is a prompt to help us like go fishing a little bit. And so it helps bring things into greater awareness. The key thing is like when we’re doing these brain patterns, this neural patterning and like looking at the emotional side, we’re looking at building and seeing the connections between all things.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: You know, we all have a sense that stuff we’re doing and our behaviors are not isolated, they’re connected. And so what I’m kind of getting at so far and teasing this out whenever medium is relevant, is for you to start to see and ask questions about what are your current behaviors? How were they tied to your core values or where you want to go?

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: Are they serving you like are they not serving you? What is the cost of the trajectory that you’re going right now? What is the possible benefit of changing your course? What what are you committing to? What are your excuses or what kind of things have you said in the past? There are limitations. Are those excuses 100% true? If they’re not, where is the untruth?

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: What do you actually committed to doing in terms of tangible behaviors in the next 30 days, in the next week? Like these are just a series of questions. Now, the cool thing about actually buying someone’s program and this will be now the shameless plug is I’ve figured all this stuff out and we’ve had 50,000 guys go through these types of questions and like, you could certainly like just take what I said here and already have a powerful journaling exercise.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: But the beauty of like a container of commitment and I think a reason why people are also very successful is Man Flow Yoga, is that they sign up for something and it’s all right there. It’s like all you really have to do is commit and then follow along. So maybe this is a good opportunity for you if you want to do this deep work and then you don’t have to figure it out on your own is to commit and follow along with a process of something that’s already been done.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: Like that’s the easy mode, like pay 100 bucks, join something, go through this entire process, and now all you have to do is just respond to questions instead of figuring it out. But I guess, you know, back to your point, it doesn’t have to be through journaling. I don’t journal that much now these days, although a journal the ton, but I do journal in the context of these very deep experiences.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: When I want to see things more clearly, it’s powerful. And then on a on a daily basis like how do you write your original question was like, how do you build more emotional connections? This stuff is like once you unearthed and done a lot of this digging, then it’s like the small practices of one day behaviors of having that good morning stuff that’s reaffirming, getting that work around that you said you’re going to do.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: But at the end of the day, it could be just a moment of pause and awareness by asking yourselves what worked, what didn’t, what was successful, What am I grateful for? Like, I hope that people are starting to see that it’s not just what I said there, it’s the whole process here is getting things to be more present in your awareness.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: It’s moving from unconscious behaviors and just doing things automatically and being stuck and stuck in a rut to seeing things more clearly and then to analyzing and then making new choices like that is the power of the human mind. It’s it’s why we have all of our power, because we have the ability to look at things, process them, and either choose the same or choose different and keep more stuck because they’re in unconscious patterns of not bringing things into awareness.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: So it takes the space to have these type of reflective exercises. Another thing that’s very powerful in connecting is to be in a community of like minded people, like whether man flow community or fit for the community. You can actually get so much from witnessing and being along with other people’s journeys, interacting with other people, sharing the fact that things are hard on certain fronts and helping and serving other people.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: There is this weird part of our being, and I don’t think it’s just unique to me. But like in service, when we get to help other people, especially with something that we know is personally important to us, it fills our cup up as fast as anything else we have. So you don’t have to do this alone. There’s this other community aspect I know that may seem generally vague.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: I wish I actually don’t wish there was a pill to do all this stuff because it kind of defeats the whole human experience. Part of this. Like this is deep work. It requires questions and examinations. And if this is your beginning into the foray of this, welcome to the game. This is what’s required to succeed long term.

Dean Pohlman: So I’ve seen you know, I’ve seen a lot of people do this and and man for you. But we have a we have a we have a kind of process which we just implemented. If you’re a relatively new member, you will have come across says and basically it’s it’s called my why for MF why and it has to do with really getting deep and getting to the real reason why you want to start.

Dean Pohlman: Why do you want to start doing yoga consistently? Like what’s the ultimate driver there? And I’ve also seen in the Fit Father Project Facebook group and the Brotherhood, I’ve seen people post things as well. They’re, you know, they they they talk about their motivation. And a lot of the time what people get wrong is they’re they’re too vague and they’re too surface level.

Dean Pohlman: So someone says, I want to be I want to do Man Flow Yoga because I want to be more flexible. Great. You have scratched the very, very surface. Why would any of us care about flexibility for the sake of flexibility? And then when you get deeper, you understand flexibility. Okay. Longevity. Okay, longevity. Why is that important? Okay. Why do we want to live a longer life like, oh, you know, now we’re now we’re actually like going somewhere.

Dean Pohlman: And so I think that, you know, a lot of people get this wrong because they don’t go deep enough. My question for you is, how will you know? If you’re getting deep enough, what will you feel? You’re going to feel.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: Emotion because you feel emotion because you feel like the sense that this is actually really connected to that capital as self, like the deepest part you that cares about something. And and it’s and it could still be a very personal thing that I really want a to live a long life or it could be interpersonal you realize that I want to do man flow yoga so that I have the mobility to actually like play with my kids because it absolutely hurts my heart when I just bend over and I’m hurt and I can’t run around with them anymore like I used to.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: Or, you know, it’s emotional inside. They’re coming from a place of like, alignment in, like, benefits oftentimes from fear and pain, like from avoiding some kind of pain. But you will feel something, You’ll feel something. And it’s typically not your first answer. It’s typically asking that why a couple more times. And I also think it’s important to know it’s like, in my opinion, you don’t always just have one y, You have many whys that build up your total why, and there’s whys in all these different categories, like you want to be more flexible, but I also want to be more present.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: Like you can have a motivation in all these other areas of our lives. Like we all have a couple categories life. We have this family and friend relationship life. We have what we do for work, vacation, making money, life. We have our interests and what we do and we’re just messing around on free time, life and the more you can actually take these different buckets of your where you spend your time and have those y reasons connect in each of those, it’s awesome.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: Like you’re going to have be so much more robust because you’re not just in siloed in one area, you’re more spread out and laterally across all areas of your life. And the truth is, if someone really looked at it, the reasons they do Man Flow Yoga probably influences all those different areas. That’s like my reasons for doing Man Flow Yoga.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: How does it relate to your fun recreation bucket? Or maybe you like to play softball with your friends and you know it’s just going to make you so much better. And that actually gives you a feeling of still being a beast in that you’re not over the hill and that when you hit the ball and you run to first base and your friends are like, Damn He’s still got it, like that makes you feel really good about yourself.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: That can be a reason why. And relates to the Friend Bucket, which is totally different than longevity, which is totally different to the fact that you want to feel better when you’re at work and your posture doesn’t hurt and you know you have more energy, which means you’ll be more productive and make more money and provide for your family.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: Yeah, all this is a tapestry and these are new neural connections. This is not just like psychology. Psychology is then embedded in the actual structure of the brain in the mind, like neural circuits in memories. They work these. These experiences, they emerge from the actual structures that we’re patterning. The more connections you can make, the stronger this will be.

Dean Pohlman: Hmm. Yeah, I think that’s I think that’s a really good point, because I’ve done, you know, I’ve done these y exercises with myself another, another, another way to describe. It’s called seven Ys. So it’s kind of like the seven whys. You asking yourself why seven times and you keep, you know, answering your you keep questioning your why with more whys.

Dean Pohlman: There’s a lot of lies in what I just said might seem confusing. If you google the seven whys, you will understand what this is. And I think it’s important to understand that depending on your answer, your y could be taken in like you could. You could you could come to like all these different areas like you mentioned. So like you could ask yourself, why do I want to work out?

Dean Pohlman: And you could get to the your ending answer could be because I want to be a badass, right? Like for me, why do y why do I jump in a freezing tub like multiple times? Re Because I’m not I want to be a badass. Why do I have to wait? It’s because I want to be a badass. Like, that’s the big reason for me.

Dean Pohlman: But I could also look at it like, why do you why do you do all these things? And I could take it the other direction and say, because I want to be I want to be a strong like I want to be a strong good example for my family. I want my son to look at me and be proud.

Dean Pohlman: I want my my daughter to look at me and be like my boyfriend will think twice, you know, like this. Now, this is a relatively new feeling, but by the way, having a daughter like, I just felt like this massive strength, like rise, like my chest. So like, I think my pecs are like, growing as a result, even without any push ups.

Dean Pohlman: So if you’re wondering what a daughter having daughter feels like, expect growth. I’m sure you’ve had the same experience, right?

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: Yeah.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah, that’s the thing. So anyways, that is all to say that I think it’s important that you brought up like there are different aspects of different kind of fields of reasoning that you’re going to experience as you’re doing this. So I kind of want to take this into part two, a little different than we did before. And I want to ask this just in your experience with people who are losing weight, I think this would be a good, good to do this.

Dean Pohlman: So first question is, what do you think is one habit, belief or mindset that has helped the most when it comes to losing weight?

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: Mm hmm. Yeah. I think it’s like really trying to win the day and analyzing each day as each day is each day. Weight loss is an iterative game. You know, we’ve we’ve talked about this actually on our conversations before. Like, like I think you quote Kelly start often like you don’t win fitness but with weight loss, the only way to lose weight is not to have the perfect day.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: Once it’s to have good days stacked up over a long period of time. Some will be perfect, some won’t. So if your mindset gets down to that, then it also gives you some permission to like release. If something didn’t go good the day before. Like you didn’t eat the right dinner, you did overeat, you fell prey to some of the habit.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: P When you were trying to do behavior. A Like that’s okay, fresh day. Get back on the horse. Keep moving forward. It’s just forward. Pacing good is good enough when it comes to weight loss and in trying to win the day, which comes down to winning the morning and then having a plan in place, and then you build positive momentum.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: And if you stack that up long enough, you’re literally on the process of transformation without doing any other conscious work. It’s just starting to happen.

Dean Pohlman: Hmm. It’s a great answer. What do you think is one thing for weight loss that is overlooked or undervalued by? A general population who are trying to lose weight.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: The importance of focusing on fluids and hydration as like the structure of your nutrition plan. Like we know that nutrition as it relates to weight loss is certainly like 80% of the battle. What I mean by that is if you just go out and walk and you eat right, you can lose a lot of weight and you can lose it in a very healthy way.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: And nutrition is not just about the food. We overemphasize food because it’s food and like we love it and it’s it’s exciting, but the fluids are really, really important for helping you feel and for helping your system work well and not enough people. A lot of people, most people that come to our programs are chronically and massively dehydrated.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: So increasing the amount of fluids that you’re drinking, prioritizing fluids early in the morning and using your water as a as a way to, like, create structure around your day. So a lot of our members get a stainless steel water bottle or a big thing, and it’s like 32 ounces or something and they’re trying to get at least two, but probably three of those 46 that see that that’s what a badass would have had us, would have 46 bodies.

Dean Pohlman: Barely. I could barely hold this. My hair. Yeah, my my barber has a gallon one like a gallon yet He just carries around. They make.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: It okay. So. Yeah. So that’s sweet, right? So the reason that’s so powerful is not just that water is good for you and helps you feel better, but it’s also a constant reminder and affirmation that I drink water because it’s good for me. I know it’s good for my body. And you’re doing this little decision all the time.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: So just being more aware of fluids is going to help you massively and honestly, if you’re drinking a lot of stuff that’s not water, a lot of sweetened beverages, diet sodas and other things, it’s probably because you need to go through this process of recalibrating your taste buds from other kinds of foods that have been kind of like downregulated, too, and get to the point where water becomes one of the most important things for you to do in self-care.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah, guys, you got to be okay with drinking water. I see a lot of people who say like, I don’t like the taste of water. It’s just just get used to drinking water.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: So it’s a little lemon and if you absolutely must, But your taste buds change over time, like when you’re drinking, when you’re eating a lot of eating and drinking, a lot of like sweet and stuff, whether it’s artificial sweeteners, not good for your gut microbiome or even natural sweeteners like stevia, erythritol, other things like that, like still constantly throwing that stuff out your tongue is going to make it so that a lot of people like a jacked up taste perception.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: The cool thing is that can change and that can change within a few weeks of like getting on a healthier plan. Again, not overnight, but very, very good.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah, that’s a good point. Like, I know when I go out there and I go out to dinner a lot and I’ll have some foods and I’m like this, Why is this so salty? Because I cook all my own food for the most part. So yeah. For me there are a lot of foods are just like way saltier than they need to be.

Dean Pohlman: But if you start cooking your own food, you start, you know, having foods that don’t have as much flavor. You’re like, Oh, this is nice, this is a nice amount. And you don’t need as much of a stimulus to like, Oh, this tastes good. Mm hmm. Yeah. All right. Number three, what is the most important activity when it comes to losing weight?

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: Probably meal prep are probably whatever your nutrition plan is, like the paving the path. Like once you’re clear enough about the fact that this is important to you, that you have an intention to eat healthier, like whatever you can to make it easier so that your go to meals and your go to nutrition is simple. So if you like, what is your breakfast going to be?

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: Decide that? Is it some kind of egg recipe? Is it some overnight oats, is it a protein shake? Have all those ingredients right there by the blender as a heart like or if you know that you like chicken steak, salmon sweet potatoes, rice, greens, green salad mix like by those things in bulk spend 1 to 2 hours, prep them in bulk, pave the path for your success.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: Because I think a resounding message from our conversation is that the only way to create this deep inner transformation is through direct experience. And the only way to have direct experience is to, like, actually hit the wraps and the way to hit the wraps is actually like, have the plan of doing it. You don’t like grow from missed reps here.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: So in this case, like getting the reps in is having the food plan and such simple things you can do to like pave the pass. You don’t need to think about it. You don’t need to have willpower. You know, I think the nutrition plan, plus maybe some meal prep is pivotal. Yeah.

Dean Pohlman: And ultimately what you’re getting at when you with all of that that you just said is that this makes it easy. Like you’re making it easy on yourself. You are planning in advance, you’re prepping your environment, you’re getting everything you need so that when it comes time to make the decisions like, Oh, it’s all right here, I know what I’m supposed to do, cool.

Dean Pohlman: I’m going to do that instead of your bandwidth. Yes, Yes. Instead of getting to this point, you’re like, Oh, God, I have to make this from scratch. Oh, no, I need to run to the grocery store. Oh, no, I don’t have what I need. Oh, I’m like, I’m tired, you know, So.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: That’s draining your band. That’s right.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah. Like big part. So, yeah, a huge part of all this is like making it as easy as possible. Yeah. All right, next question. What is the most what’s the most stressful part of losing weight?

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: Well, it’s probably you know, it’s probably like the initial period where, like, you’re shaking things up in your external routines, like you’re actually trying to change behaviors, but you also don’t quite yet have that inner fire conviction and mindset. So it’s like that initial period, you don’t have the solidity, the internal and you’re also changing the external. Like that can be a lot.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: It’s a lot of new, a lot of change. There’s uncertainty in the basis of any change when you’re moving from point A to some kind of unknown, there’s a little bit of uncertainty and perhaps that can be stressful as you go further along the journey. For some people find it stressful when they hit inevitable weight loss plateaus and after you get through the honeymoon phase of weight loss, which for if you’re very happy, can be many, many months.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: But if you’re if you don’t have that much to lose, could be a couple of months. Then your body starts to hit kinds of stalls. And then it could be a little frustrating because weight loss is not completely linear. You drop a few here, you’ll gain a few here, but you’re just now looking at the trend line down and.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: Now we’re talking about the anatomy and trajectory of a weight loss journey. At a certain point, like you need to change your measuring sticks. You need to understand how your body’s adapting as as the phases go on. And so it is challenging you and expanding you mentally as well as physically in every step of the game, whether you’re one month in or one year in.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: So Stressful may not be the right word, but it certainly has a lot of like energy and internal experience to it that needs to be processed and navigated.

Dean Pohlman: Mm hmm. Yeah. As you were talking about that, I was thinking how there’s there’s massive upfront action.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: Yes.

Dean Pohlman: To doing this. But then once you’ve done that, it’s not as you’re not doing as much crazy work. Like, yes, there might be like this massive upfront action, but you just do that once and then it’s like just maintenance work and then maybe every few months you realign and you do the massive work again. But like it’s just do that big part first, use that motivation to get use because motivation is things get easier when are things are easier to do, when there’s less, when more ability when we gained ability to do something, it doesn’t take as much motivation.

Dean Pohlman: So if you have any motivation at all, use that to take the massive start to get the framework in order. And then once you have that, it doesn’t take as much motivation and it will feel much easier to do the maintenance work because you’ve created more ability, etc.. And that’s something that I, I don’t know why I brought that up just now, but the that’s something that I really like about the tiny habits thing.

Dean Pohlman: We talked about this one of my favorite books on behavior science, and it was this massive shift for me was, understanding that when something is easier to do, it requires less motivation. When we start something, we have more motivation to do it. So if you can use that initial surge of motivation to create heightened ability to do something, you’re going to make it easier on yourself because there’s less motivation required when you have more ability.

Dean Pohlman: No, no, I thought that was like a life changing concept.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: Bravo and analogy to not to not to go too long on this, but the analogy that seems so relevant in my mind is it’s like it’s like launching a rocket into space. We have to escape gravity. Yeah. So it means total loss, stored up energy, and you gain that stored up energy through all this deep emotional work we’ve done, like getting clear on your why, connecting to your reasons, like actually committing buying the program.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: You need some kind of space X or NASA’s to like, have a plan. And to help you be clear about a target to aim at and then you frickin launch. And it takes a lot at first. But as you keep on going up, going up, gravity weakens and now you’re actually into orbit. And when you’re in orbit, you get the benefit, you’re in space, you’re floating around seeing some cool stuff and like, and the more you’re in orbit, you get like a stronger correlation to that orbit.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: And then there’s only small course adjustments, right? I’m drifting a little bit, just blasted a little bit back on track. And it seems it seems very relevant now.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah That’s great. All right. And my last big question here is, what do you think is the biggest challenge facing men when it comes to weight loss?

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: I think I think there’s a certain current of the male psychology that is not all guys experienced, but many do, where there’s a bit of a stubbornness, a bit of an ego, and a bit of like a lone wolf mentality. It’s the idea that we kind of have a culture where masculinity is tied with like rugged self-reliance. And Doug is wrong.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: I think there’s part of that that I do resonate with. Like, you’re here, maybe you have a family you know, you’re the hero of your journey. You must go forward and like conquer things and create that. And I think that works in a lot of domains. But then again, I think we have guys that are good. If we go back to the very beginning of this conversation that are stuck in super strong currents with really like ingrained bad habits that are freaking treading water, just yelling like, I can do this on my own, I can do this on my own.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: And then there’s guys like you and me that are legit, like good hearted lifeguards are like, But dude, I got the ring right here. Like, let’s get you out of here. And I think, yeah, I don’t know what it necessarily takes to get a guy out of the treading water and into like a community where they can really flourish and take all that fire they do have and channel it.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: But it’s oftentimes a scary health situation. It’s oftentimes like finally getting fed up. Enough’s enough. But I think the biggest limitation is between the ears and in the heart. You know, it’s like you said, it’s not a lack of information. It’s a lack of structure. It’s the strong currents. And then a lot of guys, just like they have lone wolf mentality.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: And it takes a while to to beat them out of that. And when they do, you can still take that badassery that you do have except just like channel it under the and under the instruction of some kind of sensei. And now you’re the badass samurai. And in time you learn all this stuff, you leave the dojo and you’re out on your own, you know?

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: So, like, it’s cool.

Dean Pohlman: That the lone out the lone as the lone badassery concept is something that, as you were saying, that I was like, Oh, that’s me, that’s like so many of things. So many things in life like, Hey, I have this framework for it. Not I’m good, I’ll just come up with my own. I know you spent ten years doing it, but like I’ve got the internet and like in three days I’m going to have something better.

Dean Pohlman: And it’s taken me a long time to, like, look at those things now and be like, Oh, no, that’s okay. Like, I don’t need to come up with this myself. I’ll do what you’re doing because you’ve already have a process for this. So yes, you could come up with a process for yourself, but oh my God, it’s going to be so much easier if you just do it with somebody who’s already got the blueprint for you, especially if you just like, you know, And if you don’t think it works, just just go read like they’re, success stories.

Dean Pohlman: Like, Oh, okay. 8000 people say it worked. Okay. It probably works, right? You know, so, yeah. All right, cool. So does this conversation Sounds good for you. Good to you. Man Flow Yoga. We always have a special deal going on for Fit Father Project to help you get started. But after the release of this podcast, there will be a limited period of time I think it’ll be three days when you can get an even bigger amount of savings on the Fed Father Project program.

Dean Pohlman: And this is going to be on the is this is going to be on the introductory program F30 Next.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: The foundational stuff that basically gets into the mindset, the nutritional meal plan, the workouts, kind of really coaching like our core, everything I described like the plan for that. That’s what the deal is on core.

Dean Pohlman: So this is, you know, people if people ask me for help with weight loss, this is what I send them to. I have some stuff in the member’s area that does some strategies with this, but it’s nowhere near as comprehensive as what doctor does with the Fit Father project. So if you’re asking me about resources for losing weight, this is what I direct you to.

Dean Pohlman: We’ve done a lot of work with that father project over the last year, maybe longer. We had this weird period where I emailed you and then you took six months to respond and then I took four months to respond to that and then were like, Hey, we should work together. And it turns out that we have a ton of alignment with what we do.

Dean Pohlman: And this is just a really, really easy, you know, complimentary systems. So if you’re already doing Man Flow Yoga and you need extra help with weight loss and this is your guy, so go to whatever link we have in the description here for the podcast. I think if you also just go to ManFlowYoga.com/… wait up it goes the other way around right we’re going to FitFatherProject.com/MFY – How how does this work and my brain’s not working.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: Yeah it’s probably the link I think it’s Man Flow Yoga and fit father project there’s a yes below.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah there’s got to be a link below. We don’t know. Just check the description. We’re we’re both sleep deprived dads. We don’t, we don’t know what’s happening. So cool. I hope you guys take me up on that offer. And again, this is, this is my top resource for, for weight loss. So. So yeah. Anything else you want to add?

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: Anthony Yeah. The one thing I’ll say is, is for people coming from Man Flow Yoga to FFP, like we show you how to like continue to integrate the exact stuff you’re doing the Man Flow Yoga into this additive lifestyle. These are by no means like competitive things. You continue doing your man flow stuff, you start our nutrition plan, you get through the deep inner work stuff like it’s all become super integrated in and it’s phenomenal.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: So you can mix in our workouts with with jeans and all the things you’re doing here. So just really integrated. It’s a privilege to to mix and meld our communities. I know there’s a lot of guys who are still listening to us now who deeply resonated with this, and I hope I get the opportunity to be in contact with you and to help you directly with your goals.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah, and we do actually have an exclusive Man Flow Yoga program that is only available on Fifth Father Project. So that’s a pretty cool one if you want to check that out. So cool. All right. Well, Dr. Ray Anthony, Mr. Bell Doozy, thanks for joining me again, as always. It’s a pleasure. It’s been great getting to hang out with you and podcast, but also getting your silly gifts and text messages and and sharing our lack of sleep and baby experiences together.

Dean Pohlman: So thanks again for joining me on this episode.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi: You’re welcome, bro. Thank you.

Dean Pohlman: Cool. All right, guys, I hope this inspires you to be a better man, and I look forward to seeing you on another episode soon. Bye bye. Right, guys, I hope you enjoyed that episode. Just a reminder that if you are listening to this episode around its release date of May 11th, 2023, then you can get a special 30% savings on the Fit Father Project introductory program.

Dean Pohlman: As long as you sign up by the end of the week, go to the link in this podcast description to learn more and sign up. If you enjoyed this podcast episode and you haven’t already left a review, please consider doing that. Now we’re getting really close to 100 reviews on Apple Podcasts. I’d love to see us hit that milestone.

Dean Pohlman: If you can help me out, I’d really appreciate it. Lastly, one of the best ways to implement what we discuss here on the Betterment podcast is by getting into a habit of consistent exercise. One of the best ways to do that is by signing up for the Man Flow Yoga members area and APP. We have a brand new Getting Started series to make it as easy as possible for you to sign up, follow a set path of programs and get noticeable results in just weeks.

Dean Pohlman: You can learn more at M-F. Why that TV slash join? All right, guys, I hope this inspires you to be a better man and I’ll see you on your next episode. Thanks for listening to the Better Man podcast, guys, if you haven’t already, please subscribe that way. New episodes are automatically downloaded to your device as soon as they’re released.

Dean Pohlman: It also helps with the success of the show and I greatly appreciate your support. If you want access to the show notes, including exclusive content and links to all the resources mentioned as well as info on video recordings of the episodes, visit Manolo Yoga Dotcom. If you have any feedback or comments on the show, I’d love to hear from you.

Dean Pohlman: Just email me at [email protected] or send me a message on social media and I’ll do my best to get back to you. Lastly, if you haven’t already and you’re curious about why this podcast was started, head to ManFlowYoga.com/join to learn more about the band flow yoga app and members area Fitness has the power to be a major catalyst in personal growth transformation and Man Flow Yoga will help you work toward your fitness goals.

Dean Pohlman: All you have to do is follow a program, open the app, press play and do your best as you follow along to a workout three times or more per week. Start a free seven day trial today by visiting ManFlowYoga.com/join. Thanks again for listening and I’ll catch you next week for another episode of The Better Man podcast.

[END]