Jocko Underground: Is Taking Weight-Loss Drugs "Cheating"?

>Join Jocko Underground< https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe Weight loss drug and discipline “Am I cheating myself by using a weight-loss drug?” Belt test fees in jiu jitsu “My new BJJ school charges $70 for a belt test—should I see this as a red flag?” Discipline cycles vs. laziness “How can I tell if I’m slipping into laziness when discipline wanes, and how do I stay truly on the path instead of lying to myself?” Working at a nonprofit with doubts “Is it moral or ethical to keep working for a nonprofit whose mission or practices I don’t fully believe in, even though I help vulnerable people every day?” Leadership, influence, and ownership “If I’m the only one who clearly sees a looming problem, how do I take ownership, persuade my team to act, and prevent failure without damaging relationships?” Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is the Jocko Underground Podcast, number 180, sitting here with Echo Charles. We've got a bunch of questions from you all, and we will try and answer those questions, give you some guidance, give you some courses of actions to follow. And that's what we got. Let's get into it.

• 0:14Speaker 01

  First question.

• 0:17Speaker 01

  I want to start by thanking you for your positive influence. In order of importance, I'm a father, long-term partner, and a site supervisor in a biogas plant. I've recently started using terzepatide, a weight loss drug. As I'm, I am classed as obese and have failed time and time again at losing weight. I'm struggling with the feeling that I'm cheating, that I should have just persisted, I should have kept persisting, and that I could have lost weight naturally as I have in the past. I lift regularly, but have always struggled to control my eating habits. However, since starting, I've lost 12 pounds. I have more energy to help out my partner at home.

• 0:59Speaker 01

  I'm less distracted at work and, and I no longer focus on dieting. And I'm about to restart Muay Thai and Jiu-Jitsu training.

• 1:06Jocko Willink?

  Hell yeah.

• 1:09Speaker 01

  What are your thoughts on this? Did I make the right decision to kickstart a positive movement? Or did I take the path of least resistance?

• 1:20Jocko Willink?

  You know, first of all, like, being obese is a medical problem, and it causes all kinds of other medical problems. And it'd be great if you could have done it without the drug, but you, I'm assuming you've tried everything and you've still failed. You might have some kind of metabolic condition, right? You might have some kind of thyroid things, some kind of slow metabolism, like, I don't know. I don't know.

• 1:47Jocko Willink?

  But, you know, depending on how old you are, how actually obese you are, and what other medical conditions you might have.

• 1:55Jocko Willink?

  Dude, this, this might be a very good call at this juncture. Uh, I know in the past, people would get medical surgeries to lose weight.

• 2:05Jocko Willink?

  Um, this seems like a much safer op- option than, than getting a surgery. And, you know, you gotta figure, people are having some real issues if they gotta have a, like, a surgery. You know, cut open your stomach and go in there and, you know, do medical procedures inside your body with, like, there's all kinds of risk there, but people do it. And have done it because they had such a hard time losing weight. So, it seems like, you know, you've exhausted other attempts to do this naturally and

• 2:39Jocko Willink?

  um, I would rather have you, like, losing the weight, getting some help

• 2:48Jocko Willink?

  medically than have you continue down a path of, you know, being obese and all the other medical problems that that causes.

• 2:58Jocko Willink?

  I would say, let's focus on making sure we get our health back in check. Let's have a plan of like, okay, at this point, we're gonna get off the drug. I don't know much about these drugs. I know that they're kind of all the, all the rage right now, you know, in the, in the world for people trying to lose weight. I don't know if they're addictive, you know, or if, if, you know, is it one of those situations where you come off the drug, now you go, put all the weight back on type thing? You're nodding your head, Echo, is that the case? Yes. Oh, really? Yeah. Okay, so we gotta be careful of that. You know, maybe that's where you have to kick your discipline in. And you, you get a little jumpstart with the drug, but then, you know, let's try, get off that drug.

• 3:40Jocko Willink?

  And, um, hopefully, you can get a pathway to the future when you don't need it anymore. Yeah, and remember, I'm not a doctor. I'm not even a, you know, I'm not, I don't have any medical uh, experience other than combat trauma. Sure.

• 3:59Jocko Willink?

  But I do know people that have struggled immensely with weight loss. And like I said, I'd rather have you get down like to fighting weight and have the opportunity to stay there. Then to spend the rest of your life in an unhealthy situation. Which is going to have all kinds of compounding problems across the board. So I don't think you're cheating. I think you're, uh, you gotta do something right now to get your, get it squared away. So that's kind of where I'm at.

• 4:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think you're right. And, um, you know, as far as cheating goes, it's not cheating. The only time you cheat is if you're A, competing with someone and B, there's rules to it. And when you break the rules, you cheat. That's kind of it. Real simply, but.

• 4:38Jocko Willink?

  There you go. Echo with the simplicity.

• 4:40Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, I think in regards to this, yeah, yeah, for sure. Um, you know, and I get it, you know, we, I think a lot of us from time to time, we put in kind of these rules in our head, like, you know, or these, at least these virtues in a way where it's like, no, no, no, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm not gonna use some drugs to help this or whatever, you know, like you can make those rules for yourself and I understand that or whatever. But I think what you said is more important where if it's like, hey, if this is helping you in a way that you were failing, then hey, man. And you got, of course, you gotta measure the downside, all this other stuff.

• 5:14Speaker 01

  I, the thyroid thing and the genetics, like, like this ailment, you know, a lot of times people who are obese, they'll say like, oh, I have thyroid thing or have a whatever, when they don't really have it, or they don't know. It's pretty rare. Um, but it, it does happen, but it's not good practice to say, oh, it's probably my thyroid or whatever. If you didn't go medically test that and get it professionally diagnosed. Um, because a lot of times mentally it can serve as like this kind of excuse, you know? Which is the core of all of this weight loss stuff. It's like, he says, struggled to control my eating habits. That was his, his words.

• 5:56Speaker 01

  It's, it's a behavioral problem. Like that's what it like, you know, when the decision comes time to make that decision. He behaves the incorrect way, time, time, time again, you know? Consistently over time. So these drugs, from what I understand, just had a fresh conversation about these drugs many, many times, but the fresh one was with Dr. Luke and he was like, hey, they are working. They're straight up working and Mihal was part of this conversation. It was actually very funny. I'm gonna use his words. But anyway, so Dr. Luke's like, yeah, they're working. They're working to basically to control your behavior with food and it's starting to come out with other stuff as well. Now, when you get off of them,

• 6:36Speaker 01

  your behavior goes and normalizes back to like what it was, but the drugs are are helping in that way. Um, there are side effects.

• 6:45Jocko Willink?

  So what did Mihal say?

• 6:47Speaker 01

  Okay, Mihal. And he put it perfectly, by the way. So, um, he was like, he was more talking, Mihal was more, um, referring to, uh, you know, how like sensitivity issues, right? Like body positivity and you know how you like, you can't tell an obese person you need to just eat less, right? It's because it's like, it's not PC or whatever, right? So instead, this Mihal now, he's like, yeah, it's funny how before we couldn't just say to obese people, eat less. You can't say that. Now we say, lift up your shirt, pull out one of your fat rolls, stick this drug in there and then eat less.

• 7:26Speaker 01

  No, but we can say that because literally that's what the drugs do. They make you not want to eat as much. You know what I'm saying? They they modify your behavior to, um, you know, to eat less and then subsequently lose weight. And then the good news about any kind of behavior modification, it leads to other good behavior modifications. So like, my sister is one of these. She lost like 90 pounds or something like this, just because one behavior kind of led to this kind of progress. You know how progress like elicits dopamine where you want like more, you know, you wanna. So she would, she, they got a dog. She started walking the dog for like 45 minutes, right? You gotta walk the dog. Can't just leave it inside. So that's all she did. I'm just walk this dog.

• 8:06Speaker 01

  After a few weeks, her clothes just are looser. So she's like, oh, let me weigh myself. I feel like I'm kind of skinnier for no apparent reason. Just because she got this new dog and she has to walk it. Boom, she's down like however much pounds, right? However, many pounds. And she's like, oh, my gosh, I'm kind of on a roll here and I didn't even know it. So let me start paying more attention to what I, you know, see how many more pounds I can lose. See how it just leads to one, you know? So that's the benefit of any triggering thing that modifies your behavior, whether it be some drug or otherwise. See what I'm saying? Cause really at the end of the day, it's what you do. It doesn't matter like, like the chemical stuff or whatever, your behavior is going to control all that part of it.

• 8:48Speaker 01

  How your body, how do you, how your physiology responds to it? You see what I'm saying? So if you can modify your behavior in the correct way, right? You're gonna, you can do it. So, hey, man, take the drug. As long as you can deal with the side effects and you understand, just like I said, if you get off of it, just hey, pay attention to that kind of stuff, you know? If you want this thing to keep going, you gotta pay attention to that kind of stuff, you know? I think that's a lot of time the, uh, the issue is we don't pay attention to this kind of stuff. We just kind of like, oh, I feel in the mood for this. I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna do it. You see what I'm saying?

• 9:17Jocko Willink?

  No good. No good. All right. Well, get on it. And modify your behaviors and make sure you track them so that when. So that is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground Podcast. So if you want to continue to listen,

• 9:39Jocko Willink?

  go to jockounderground.com and subscribe and we're doing this. We're doing this to mitigate our reliance on external platforms. So we are not subject to their control and we are doing this so that we can support the Jocko Podcast, which will remain as is free for all, as long as we can keep it that way. But we, but we are doing this so we don't have to be under the control of sponsors. And we're doing it so we can give you.

• 10:11Jocko Willink?

  More control, more interaction, more direct connections, better communications with us.

• 10:17Jocko Willink?

  And to do that, we are, we're building a website right now where we'll be able to utilize to strengthen this legion of troopers that are in the game with us. So, thank you. It's jocko underground.com. It costs $8.18 a month. And if you can't afford to support us,

• 10:37Jocko Willink?

  we can still support you. Just email [email protected] and we'll get you taken care of. Until then, we will see you mobilized underground.