158 Transform Your Body, Learn to Eat, and Unplug Your Life with Abel James

"Food is something so much different that what most people think it is." - Abel James If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes and more at www.lewishowes.com/158. Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

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

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 158 with the fat burning man, Abel James. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:33Lewis Howes?

  Welcome everyone to this episode, number 158 to the School of Greatness podcast. Very excited about this. We've got my buddy Abel James on the show. And for those that don't know who Abel is, he's a widely successful podcaster who's got the show called The Fat Burning Man, which I've been on as well and shared my story about how I lost 28 pounds in 28 days with eliminating two simple things in my diet. And Abel has just come out with a new book called The Wild Diet. Get back to your roots, burn fat and drop up to 20 pounds in 40 days. And I'm excited about this. There's a lot of great stuff in this book here.

• 1:12Lewis Howes?

  And in this episode, we're really talking about the secret is simply getting back to our wild roots and eating the way we have for centuries. So, you know, I cover a lot of things about health and fitness and wellness on here as I believe when you master your health, you can actually have the opportunity to become great in your life. When you don't master your health, that's something that's always lagging and it's holding you back mentally, emotionally, physically to achieving greatness and achieving your purpose. So want to dive in with this. Again, very excited to have Abel on. He's got a different perspective, a different look on fitness based on his own experience and why he got into fitness. We'll talk about here in just a second. So without further ado, let's go ahead and dive into this one with the one, the only Abel James.

• 2:01Lewis Howes?

  Welcome back, welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness Podcast. I've got my man from down south, Abel James on. What's going on Abel?

• 2:09Speaker 01

  Life is good. How's it going Louis?

• 2:11Lewis Howes?

  It's going good, man. Yeah, we're just talking about your travel in the world and riding in Bali and RVing all around the country and it sounds like you're living the dream right now.

• 2:19Speaker 01

  It's good times, except for our truck catching fire on the way to Burning Man.

• 2:23Lewis Howes?

  What? So like, like smoke and flames or just like?

• 2:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I wish that were a joke, but it's been, yeah, it's funny whenever you do, you know, adventurous stuff, adventurous stuff comes to you too. And so there's been a lot of that. It's been really good, you know, life training and great for a piece of humble pie when you need it.

• 2:42Lewis Howes?

  Oh my goodness. So what happened when the, it went on fire?

• 2:45Speaker 01

  Oh man, it was so like, we were, we were like two hour, I think it was two hours outside of Reno in the middle of nowhere, just going up this like huge incline and we were hauling with a Ford truck that I just bought. We're hauling this 35 foot toy hauler, like RV conversion and we had just taken it in, there was an oil problem and so the light came on, you know, probably 40 minutes after we were driving out there and they're just like, oh, don't worry about it. We probably just like didn't flip a switch or something like that. And 10 minutes later, smoke starts billowing out of the front of the truck and yeah, flames start. Fortunately,

• 3:27Speaker 01

  we had a fire extinguisher in the RV, but man, it was nuts.

• 3:32Lewis Howes?

  So what happened? You popped open the hood and started putting out the fire or what?

• 3:36Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:37Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 3:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it was, uh,

• 3:40Lewis Howes?

  It's just you and your wife, right?

• 3:41Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah. And the crazy part is like, if it had really like gone up, we're towing our house. We're towing, like we just downsized everything we had into this tiny little trailer. And actually, I don't know if you know this part of my backstory, but when I was in Austin, like same thing happened. Some guy was out with a cigarette, like in an apartment next to mine and I lost everything in a fire. And that was like, one of the big reasons I named it Fat Burning Man. It was like all these crazy puns, but then it catches fire on the way to Burning Man. I mean, it's, it's too good.

• 4:12Lewis Howes?

  That's crazy, man. So is that a sign that you should continue going to Burning Man? Or that you should stop and just leave? Was it a great experience at Burning Man?

• 4:21Speaker 01

  Burning Man, I think if you want to understand America, Burning Man gives you a pretty interesting perspective on what's going on. I might just kind of leave it at that.

• 4:31Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's pretty interesting. I've never been, but I've like a hundred friends who've all gone and swear by it and say it's incredible.

• 4:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally. It's it's got its own thing going on, that's for sure.

• 4:41Lewis Howes?

  It's a different world for like a week, right?

• 4:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:43Lewis Howes?

  You basically live in a different world.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  It's Mars.

• 4:47Lewis Howes?

  That's crazy. The people act like they're on Mars.

• 4:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, some people act like that all the time. And that's, that's the secret is that you can really have a lot of people who go to Burning Man don't, don't do this, but you can just kind of live that way all the time, you know, with that, with that sense of freedom. And I think actually, one of the interesting things about it, when Alison and I got there, we got to it in the middle of all of our other crazy, you know, adventures in different countries, cultures, uh, good and bad stuff. And, we got there and everyone else was just like, ah, man, nothing's like this. And I'm, we're thinking of all the places that it's kind of like.

• 5:23Lewis Howes?

  Like, we just experienced this two weeks ago.

• 5:24Speaker 01

  Right. It's kind of funny because it is its own like, you know, festivals and concerts. I mean, everyone gets a taste of what that's about. And uh, it's, it's funny because my folks now were empty nested and after that happened, they became musicians. And so they, they hang out with all these musicians in, uh, down south in Florida and like some of them are deeply ingrained in the festival culture, if you know what I mean.

• 5:48Lewis Howes?

  Of course, yeah. I mean, you know, just 20 minutes away. I'm from Venice and it seems like it's just a constant festival.

• 5:56Speaker 01

  Right.

• 5:56Lewis Howes?

  People talking about the next festival and living that way and, you know, doing all that stuff, but uh,

• 6:00Speaker 01

  You trip over festivals in Austin. That place is great.

• 6:03Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, exactly. I was just there this last week and uh, you know, a couple of weeks away from South by, which is going to be madness for the month of March.

• 6:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally.

• 6:10Lewis Howes?

  But you're not there now. You're in, you're in Arizona. You're in your RV and where are you going to next?

• 6:15Speaker 01

  Peru is where we're going right after this. So yeah, this will be the first South by I haven't been to in like five or six years. I used to play it all the time. Playing South by is like, as a musician is the worst thing ever. Because like, the entire town is gridlocked and somehow you have to deliver gear with no parking. It's just, yeah, so we're going to Peru instead.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  And then we're coming back in my book, The Wild Diet is coming out on April 7th. So we'll be doing a whole actual like media tour thingy and probably some music dates too, around the Northeast. And then I think Nashville will be for a while and then Florida and New Orleans, Texas. We'll, we'll be having some fun.

• 6:56Lewis Howes?

  Now, I want, I want to talk about the book, The Wild Diet and overall healthy lifestyle in general, but I didn't know you were a musician before. And you're, you're a guitarist, you're a singer, or what are you, what's your thing?

• 7:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's funny because like actually Fat Burning Man and the whole like podcasting blogging thing was me. I played like 250 shows in a year, actually like a couple of years like that. And I burned myself out, you know, I just, you know, at some point I had played with a lot of, you know,

• 7:27Speaker 01

  venues and big names or whatever and stuff like that and recorded with them. And it was just one of those things where you do a lot of things in life and you can see where the momentum is, you can see where your own passion is. And for whatever reason, at that point, I decided

• 7:43Speaker 01

  that I wanted to kind of start up something new outside of music. And I was thinking to myself like, where are my advantages, the unfair ones especially? And, uh, you know, I've had this voice for a long time. And I've done radio stuff.

• 7:57Lewis Howes?

  Voice for radio.

• 7:58Speaker 01

  Right. And, and perfect face for it too. And so I did that and a while back and really enjoyed it, you know, it kind of comes naturally to me because part of being a musician is being an entertainer. And so like when you play a, you know, I, I played a gig in Austin at like Lance Armstrong's old bar. Uh, and I played for like three hours. A lot of the times would be the gig. And so most of that time, you're just kind of like,

• 8:27Speaker 01

  Entertaining the crowd, you know, talking into a microphone. And so like doing something like a podcast or an online show is a really like easy transition. But now it's, it's been enough time that I allowed myself to not have that crutch of music because that's actually what my first book was about too, was basically how, how music is its own language. And it's always meant a lot to me. And so I wanted to see what would happen without it for a little while. And now we're coming back and it's, it's crazy.

• 8:57Lewis Howes?

  So how long did you go away from music from playing on the road?

• 9:01Speaker 01

  A couple of years and I haven't really done road gigs since, but as I was telling you before the call, it was really cool how this happened. But there was this, you know, every once in a while, someone will send you a really genuine, awesome thank you note for your podcast, right? And it's just like, it makes your day. And I got one of those from a guy named Denny from Nashville, who said he was a musician and he's just like, thank you so much, Abel. And it was just, you know, a paragraph or two, but it really meant a lot to me. He said he lost like 40 over 45 pounds and he's really like living it. And then at the end, I saw that he was, you know, a musician with a Tim McGraw band. And I was like, wait a second, like, I'm pretty sure I've heard of them.

• 9:44Speaker 01

  And so I talked to him, I got him on the phone for a little bit. And I'm just like, you know, man, he said, basically, a lot of the band started listening to podcasts like ours.

• 9:53Lewis Howes?

  On the road, right?

• 9:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, on the road, just trying to stay healthy on the road. And it's really easy to listen to podcasts on the road. It's a lot of, I'm sure a lot of people right now are in their cars.

• 10:05Speaker 01

  And so basically, we just had this back and forth. I had him on the show and people loved it. They said, funny, funny enough to me, because like, to me, he was one of the biggest like celebrities in a way. He's been the bandleader for Tim for like 20 years and he's just, he's a legend.

• 10:20Lewis Howes?

  Is that like the lead guitarist or what is that?

• 10:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's a bandleader, lead guitarist, and basically the guy who keeps everything from falling apart. When there are, you know, stakes that high, it's, it's unprecedented that he's been, you know, the, the bandleader of that group for so long. But he's kind of the man behind the man and just like the sweetest guy. But he told me that they started listening to, you know, our shows and

• 10:48Speaker 01

  Implementing a lot of those lifestyle factors into their own lives and you know, Tim started working out, the whole band went sober, they lost like, I think Tim lost 40 plus pounds and a lot of them, I met up with them and when they came through Austin and they were like, oh my God, Fat Bernie Man. It's like, you guys gotta be kidding me.

• 11:09Lewis Howes?

  They were like fans of you and they're playing in front of like a hundred thousand people every show or something.

• 11:13Speaker 01

  And that's what I said because Denny got like, this is the funny piece of like feedback that I got from him. Cause like before the show, he, before my show, before we recorded it, you know, it's just my stupid little podcast and he's all nervous and I can tell.

• 11:28Lewis Howes?

  No way.

• 11:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I'm like, dude, you play to stadiums like every night. And he's just, he's like, it's a totally different thing, man. But because of that, I think people could kind of hear how real he was in his voice. He didn't have anything to sell. You know, he didn't even have a book to pawn off on anyone. He was just there because he, it meant a lot to him that, that, you know, celebrities and, and basically the general public have access to sources of information outside of like the ABCs, NBCs, you know, the bought and paid for type advertising model that's only, that, you know, is difficult to trust a lot of the time. They like the independent stuff. And so a lot of people were just like, man, you

• 12:10Speaker 01

  should have people like Denny on way more often because he's so real. He's just like a normal guy.

• 12:16Lewis Howes?

  I just thought that was so cool.

• 12:17Speaker 01

  But yeah, then we went on, we just started playing music together and accidentally recorded a whole album like in a weekend.

• 12:24Lewis Howes?

  Shut up.

• 12:26Lewis Howes?

  So you were singing with Tim McGraw and the whole band or?

• 12:29Speaker 01

  No. So Tim is basically his, his whole family is awesome and involved in like the Tim McGraw side of things. And so they're the touring band and they have been supporting him for, for years, most of them and for Denny even, you know, longer than that. And then the rest of it is basically just like all these legends from Nashville, like the bass player.

• 12:55Speaker 01

  Bonnie Raitt came up to him after a show that he played and said that he was badder than God.

• 13:01Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 13:02Speaker 01

  And so it's like, um, people who have played with Elton John, Billy Joel, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, uh, Creedence, I mean, like, these guys have just kind of played with everybody. And, uh, a lot of musicians are like that. And that's a really interesting thing that I kinda was, was reminded of is that because of that, a lot of musicians top out at six figures and usually low six figures, no matter how big you are, um, and, and how good your, your sessions have been or whatever, uh, because there are thousands of people who are like just as talented who will do it for free, you know?

• 13:38Lewis Howes?

  Right, right. And you just get the day rate or whatever, or the, the, the show rate.

• 13:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 13:42Lewis Howes?

  As a band member, right?

• 13:43Speaker 01

  So, so the business side of all of that is really interesting to see how like, there's the whole A-list celebrity side, and then there are the musicians, musicians also in, in the band, which is kind of, uh, a, a different organism, but, um, obviously has to work really well together with everything else that, that goes on.

• 13:59Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I understand that. My brother is a jazz violinist and he's constantly-

• 14:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I remember you saying that.

• 14:03Lewis Howes?

  He's constantly hustling in the business side of things, uh, you know, landing licensing deals and TV stuff and movies and all these different things, just trying to build the business. But he also goes on tour and play, you know, he played with Les Paul for 10 years and, um, you know, some of the greatest-

• 14:19Speaker 01

  Talk about a legend.

• 14:20Lewis Howes?

  Right. And he played at his funeral. They had like a hundred people at his funeral and they asked him to come play with him and Slash and like a couple other, you know, musical legends.

• 14:29Speaker 01

  That's so-

• 14:30Lewis Howes?

  So I understand that whole process. I mean, I'm like, I'm not in it myself, but I understand it, uh, from an outsider's point of view.

• 14:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:37Lewis Howes?

  But, um, so let's go, let's talk about healthy lifestyle because, you know, for a musician, for anyone who's a driven entrepreneur, for an athlete, whoever may be, someone who's got a extreme passion and vision and they're up to big things in the world and they're doing multiple things, where they've got a family, whatever it may be, anyone who's driven with a lot of things on their plate, uh, has decisions to make about their health and has decisions- To make about what they actually eat that's on their plate, let's say.

• 15:10Lewis Howes?

  I want to talk about this wild diet thing that you've created and how you kind of learned your philosophy. You said you were kind of burning yourself out from being on tour. And then you wanted to dive into really understanding health and your fitness levels. And I want to talk about kind of what is your philosophy about it all? And what are the basics to your wild diet?

• 15:33Speaker 01

  Sure, man. Yeah, so there's, there's basically industrial food. And if you imagine, you know, all of these, these, these, straight out of a horror movie, you know, most of the cattle that we have here, I don't know if anyone who's listening has been by a a cattle farm recently and of the industrial variety, but I can tell you in Arizona, close to where Allison's folks live, we have to drive by those things all the time. And that is not where you want your food to be coming from. Industrial dairy farms, it doesn't really matter what animal it is. That's unfortunately, where the majority of our food comes from is these enormous farms where these animals are not treated like anything living should be treated.

• 16:18Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 16:19Speaker 01

  And, and it's really easy to kind of go and buy the package that says something is all natural or, you know, good for you and whatever, or free of something that you know is bad or has something that's supposed to be good in it. It's really easy to kind of fall into the marketing trance of just grabbing whatever's available to you. But basically what I try to, to walk people through in the book, through stories of my, my own life, pretty much in, in traveling the world and living on the road and also my mom's a holistic nurse practitioner. And so she's for a long time been healing people with herbs, specifically me, like a lot of people don't know that when I was a kid, I almost died because I had a temperature of,

• 17:03Speaker 01

  I think my mom said it was like 106 for far too long. And they, they basically pumped me full of every antibiotic they could to try to keep me alive.

• 17:13Speaker 01

  But it wasn't working. And so it was through my mom actually meeting someone who was into eastern practices and herbalism who introduced her to the whole, you know, plant medicine side of things and healing with herbs, spices, teas, tonics, you know, bombs that you can make at home from the wild foods in your backyard. So that's kind of been something that I that I tried to inform this book that that basically it's there's one side, which is the domesticated everything and the industrial, which works fine if you're going to make a car or something like that. But our health doesn't work so well there. And then there's the other side, the wild side,

• 17:54Speaker 01

  which is basically things that have been around for a long time or thrive in their natural environment, the closer that we can eat to coming like basically eating food that comes from that world, like think a small thriving organic farm, the better off we'll all be.

• 18:13Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha. Okay. I want you talk about feasting and fasting and how they can improve health. So how can how can we feast and improve health and also fast?

• 18:25Speaker 01

  I start the book with a short story, basically of me going to dinner with with my wife and about 20 other leaders in the health movement. It was at some, you know, conference thing in Florida. And basically, I go through all of the things that we ordered, which was like, you know, steak, two big salads with like avocado and cheese and a charcuterie board. And, you know, we polished off a bunch of wine and champagne and everyone looks around. They're just like, how in the world do you two eat so much and stay so thin? And that's kind of what

• 18:59Speaker 01

  what other people see and are so puzzled by a lot of the time, especially health people, because they're not, they may understand fasting and kind of how that works, but they don't necessarily see it applied to daily habits. And that's so.

• 19:15Speaker 01

  Like, I guess I'll just explain what I'm doing right now, because I do this pretty much every day is I'm recording, I don't know, six or seven interviews today, right in a row. I haven't eaten anything. But in the mornings, I usually have a bit of coffee or tea with some fat in it. So it could be, I'm a big fan of heavy cream, the grass-fed heavy cream, and coconut oil also works and things like that. Occasionally, I might have a smoothie, like a green smoothie, but made of vegetables, basically like a blended up salad.

• 19:48Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 19:50Speaker 01

  But primarily, I'm under-eating during the day. And then at night, closer to sundown, we eat a big meal. And that's, that's where we eat the cooked food. So it's kind of like raw foods during the day and then cooked food at night. And that, in a lot of ways-

• 20:04Lewis Howes?

  Why is that, why is that powerful?

• 20:07Speaker 01

  So, there are a lot of benefits to eating less often. They used to think that, I know a lot of people have heard of the caloric restriction, basically when you starve yourself for really hard, for a really long time, you might live a few years longer. So after that, research came out and kind of bummed everyone out. They, they had this other round of research that was around intermittent fasting, which basically said that you could get the same benefits of restriction by just eating less often that you do when you starve yourself. And so I found something really interesting. Like, I've always been a productivity

• 20:48Speaker 01

  wonk and loved trying to see how far we can go while still maintaining health. And I found that when I ate in the morning, especially when I ate something carby in the morning, I would get hungry within like an hour or two after that. And when I looked into the research- I found it was actually through fasting research when I was kind of entertaining the idea years ago that I found that basically there's this, there are different biochemical mechanisms within the body, but cortisol is the thing that wakes you up in the morning and it's high in the morning. And when you have enough food, protein or carbs that gives you a surge in your blood sugar and then in your insulin, it can interfere with basically

• 21:32Speaker 01

  your leptin and ghrelin, your hunger and your, your cycles of being satisfied and full. I found that basically in the mornings, I didn't, I didn't get hungry until I ate. And so I wanted to see like when I would actually get hungry if I didn't eat. And as long as I'm drinking enough water and hydrating well, which I, that's the secret really is most people don't do that. And it's, I'm never caught without water or something that's, that's going to hydrate me. But usually I don't feel hungry. I don't really need a meal or any sort of sustenance until three, sometimes even 6pm.

• 22:11Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 22:12Speaker 01

  And that's allowed me to, I mean, it saves so much time. I have this whole book in this, this whole portion of my book that talks about, and I actually make fun of Tim Ferriss with like the four hours, because if you can reduce the amount of meals that you're cooking to say one a day or one big meal a day that could even be leftovers, then all of a sudden this, all this time that people are spending, not just making their food, but thinking about like where their food's going to come from, driving to a place or going on Yelp and like poking around. If you can avoid some of that and still feel great, it's, it's pretty awesome. And it's what we've been doing every day for a few years.

• 22:53Lewis Howes?

  Basically don't eat during the morning or afternoon. You might have some raw things or some coffee with cream in it type of thing, like heavy cream.

• 23:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:01Lewis Howes?

  Lots of water and then you'll just have a dinner meal.

• 23:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And now if we're going to go out for a really long hike or an adventure, like you want to, you obviously want to make sure that you're getting enough fuel every day. You want to make sure that if you're going out in the cold or you're going skiing, like food is something so much different than what a lot of people think it is and operate by in this society, which is, you know, this, this is something that I need to hack into not making me fat. And it's, it's much more about, um, so one of the reasons this works is because when you start to whittle down the refined carbs in your diet, a lot of people who have been eating bread, bagels, cereal and other whole grains, thinking that they're healthy, um,

• 23:48Speaker 01

  a lot of people have been duped that way. Uh, and I was as well. I, I talk about that in my book a lot. When you get away from that packaged, uh, grain type food, and especially the sugars and the preservatives that are, that are in that and move toward, um, primarily meals that are veggies first and then meats or proteins and plenty of fat, you become fat adapted and that allows you to run off of your body fat stores, um, throughout the day and the meal the night before, as opposed to this constant roll, roller coaster that most people are on of eating carbs, getting hungry and then eating more carbs to kind of like stay, keep up with that. And you, you as an athlete, I'm sure can really relate to that because that's one way that you're taught to fuel.

• 24:33Lewis Howes?

  Yes. Well, I mean, that's, that's my other question. It's like, what if you're training pretty hard or you do a hard workout in the morning or a hard run? Is that a sustainable diet where you don't really eat much until dinner? Or it's like going out and doing, uh, you know, uh, hiking or something like that. You're going to need some extra energy, right?

• 24:51Speaker 01

  Right. So with anything, you want to kind of like start small and it might be, you know, skipping a breakfast or two every week, um, or, or once a week, something like that, maybe even less, but trying if basically not force feeding yourself every meal. But as, as far as the carb thing goes, um, actually I just had a, a talk with Vinnie Torterich, who's also out in your neck of the woods.

• 25:16Lewis Howes?

  Angry Strainer?

• 25:17Speaker 01

  That's him. Yeah. And, uh, he was talking about how he went out for a, he's a cancer survivor and also a, a very good endurance athlete. And he went, went out for a 14 hour hike just on the bacon and eggs he had at 2:00 AM before the hike and didn't fuel at all. Aside from that, it's kind of as proof that being fat adapted, uh, is something that, uh, your body is, is very comfortable doing. In fact, when you look at, you know, way back into the, Inuit Eskimo days and some people kind of like talk about paleo that way. Uh, our bodies are really well adapted to eat a heck of a lot of fat and not much else. You could argue that you could eat a lot of carbs too, uh, or a lot of protein as well,

• 26:02Speaker 01

  which you can, but uh, there seems to be a lot of advantages, um, not only to your body, but to your brain of fueling a lot with fat. And so that's, that's a big theme in our recipes is you get most of your satisfaction and flavor from the healthy, fresh fats that you have in your diet, not the sugars and the refined carbs where, and additives that it usually comes from.

• 26:27Lewis Howes?

  I mean, why does sugar and bagels taste so good?

• 26:29Speaker 01

  I know, right?

• 26:30Lewis Howes?

  Gosh.

• 26:31Speaker 01

  Not even fair.

• 26:33Lewis Howes?

  Now I heard that you lost 20 pounds in 40 days eating bacon, chocolate and butter. How is that, how is that possible?

• 26:39Speaker 01

  So that's kind of what I was talking about. I love, um, doing experiments on myself and kind of seeing how my body reacts. And it's not like I was slogging around being fat for a long time, but I was trying to follow the recommendations of my doctor, which was like basically the best in the business in DC when I was a consultant living that lifestyle. And you know, slowly but surely I, I put on fat, I lost muscle and I was hungry all the time, like things were not going very well at all. And so I, um, this was around the same time that I was reading up on old bodybuilding manuals and like the cyclical ketogenic diet and some of the other like crazy diets

• 27:20Speaker 01

  of like 36 eggs a day that the, the guys were doing in like the sixties and the seventies. You know, when they, those guys, um, if, if they thought it would help them like build muscle or lose fat, they would eat cat poop. I mean, they, they'll do anything. Um, and so I, I was entertained by like all of those kind of fringe styles. And so I thought, all right, well, let's just see what happens if I do not cat poop, but, but high fat, you know, like butter, um, grass fed bacon, eggs, you know, not, not Atkins style disgusting food from McDonald's or whatever that some people do, but, uh, you know, good, high quality fats and then just ratchet down the carbs, see what happens with my body.

• 28:04Speaker 01

  And, uh, it was, it was crazy. It was like, Not only did I lose 20 pounds in almost a month, but like I looked five, 10 years younger. Like my skin started to get all like tight against my face again.

• 28:19Lewis Howes?

  Mostly eating the bacon and the butter and the fats.

• 28:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, and also vegetables. I mean, so you get the majority of your calories from fat because fat is a lot more energy dense than other foods. It's about twice as energy dense as carbs or protein. And so if you're, if you're fueling primarily with things like coconut oil, or I actually, I'm a big fan of eating coconuts and their meat themselves and avocados. And also like, so lots of vegetable, a lot of people hear fat and they think red meat bacon. And that's kind of a joke, right? That you can get away with eating bacon, which you can, but not plate, plates of it, right? Like it's not, it's more of a flavoring agent and something that makes your house smell really good than like a staple of your diet.

• 29:07Speaker 01

  So it's, it's important to say that too.

• 29:09Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha. Interesting. Um, is there too much butter? Can you have too much butter?

• 29:15Speaker 01

  I don't think so, but I'm a dairy fiend and I come from a family of dairy farmers and we've been, yeah, we've been handling dairy for a long time. That said, a lot of people cannot handle dairy that well. And it's, if you take it out, a lot of people will lose weight, get less inflamed. So it's like, it's definitely something that's worth checking out. What you want to do really is find out what you can get away with, you know? If you're like play to your natural advantages. So for me, I can run marathons, but I'm a lot better at short distances, right? Just like I carry more muscle more easily. So it makes more sense for me to do a couple of squats and put on a bunch of muscle.

• 29:55Speaker 01

  Then like try to run 30 miles a day and try to get as skinny as possible, you know? So like, kind of do this, do a similar thing with your diet. I can't, I'm allergic to, or at least I have problems with olives, which sucks, but that just means that I can eat every other food. You know what I mean? So like, find those things that you can't get away with, take those out. So for a lot of people that is dairy. But, um, like my brother, for instance, always had a problem with, uh, with the dairy. That we would get it at home, the milk, the yogurt, the whatever. And it wasn't until he worked on his organic farm when he was like fresh out of college that

• 30:36Speaker 01

  he started eating fermented raw dairy, like cheeses that they made and yogurts. And also like the, even the heavy cream and the milk, he could drink it without any of the problems that he had from being lactose intolerant, getting pasteurized milk from the store. So there's something to be said for trying out like the real stuff, the best, what dairy really should be, uh, which is not, you know, basically what, what I described, that horror film of the industrial farms is not where you want your dairy to come from because that stuff's straight up poison, you know?

• 31:15Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, man, it's tough because I love dairy. But sometimes I feel like it affects me and other times I feel like it doesn't. So maybe it just depends on the source I'm getting it from.

• 31:24Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 31:24Lewis Howes?

  Like you said, and making sure it's not from like the gas station, you know?

• 31:31Speaker 01

  Cheese whiz is not the same.

• 31:33Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 31:34Speaker 01

  You know, like, like a fine brie from your local farm. It's just, it's a shame. And that's one of the other things I try to outline in the book is that somewhere along the line, we went from having, you know, if, if anyone's seen The Hobbit, all the foods that are like locked up in his little treasure chest of the best foods on earth, the cheeses, the cured meats and all of that, all of those delicious, like natural foods that, that actually were from farms have been replaced by crap that has the same name. So like you go out and get cheese, you're not really sure what you're getting unless you look really hard for the right stuff.

• 32:10Lewis Howes?

  Interesting. You, you basically give the secret to fat loss in one sentence in the book and you say, stay away from sugar and processed grains, especially in the morning. Now, what do you mean by, is this all sugar because there's no fruit as well? Or what does that mean?

• 32:26Speaker 01

  Fruit is something that is essentially nature's candy and a lot of animals, including humans back in the day, would use fruit, the enormous amount of it that usually came in like the fall as a way to fatten up before winter when it got cold. And also things like apples will keep for a long time, which, you know, the industry has started to use against us. But basically, fruit is something that should be seen as a treat or something that you use to flavor.

• 33:03Lewis Howes?

  Like a Snickers bar.

• 33:04Speaker 01

  Like a Snickers bar that's straight from a garden, right? Like, and once you get your palate back, essentially, most of us have blasted our palates with industrial salts and chemical flavorings and stuff like that. So if you're addicted to Diet Coke, for instance, your palate might not be able to notice right now the difference between, you know, a regular strawberry and one that's super fresh and really good. But I can, I can say that after doing this for a few years and really becoming a foodie in a lot of ways, once you get away from that, that, basically the processed food that's a napalm bomb for your palate, you really wanna, you're encouraged to stick to,

• 33:45Speaker 01

  like a fresh apple tastes so much better to me than a bite of a cake that might be served at, you know, someone's office party or someone's birthday. It's, it's like when you really learn to appreciate fresh foods, things can taste so much better than you're used to and so you get satisfied on things that you don't expect.

• 34:04Lewis Howes?

  But the sugar just tastes so good, you know? It's interesting though, when I cut off, I, you know, I did an interview on your podcast and I talked about how I went off sugar for two months and in the first 30 days, I lost 30 pounds without sugar and I think I didn't know gluten as well.

• 34:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:24Lewis Howes?

  But the sugar was really, like I started to appreciate after the first month and the second month, I started to appreciate fruit in a different way because I wasn't just having candy bars and milkshakes every day anymore.

• 34:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 34:37Lewis Howes?

  And I was really appreciating the foods I was eating and it's definitely a different taste. So you have to, you have to move, move into that direction to really understand it. But.

• 34:46Speaker 01

  And at some point. You know, it's hard for us because we, especially our generation, has been raised on some of the most industrial food there is. And so like, our comfort food isn't necessarily like grandma's oatmeal, whole grain oatmeal, right? It's more like Easy Mac or like Cheese Whiz or Domino's Pizza or something like that. And that's just, it's not even fair.

• 35:14Lewis Howes?

  Boston Market, man.

• 35:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, right? Yeah. And it's not even fair because those, I mean, those foods are designed to be as addictive as possible. So just know that it's like the Matrix, right? Like which pill do you want? The one where this is all an illusion and you just get to taste your delicious steak and who cares where it came from or whether it's real or not? Or do you really want to kind of like do the work that it takes to get a hold of this? Because otherwise, you're just going to be hijacked by all these foods that are, God, it's the most pernicious stuff there is, you know, like the things that we're subjected to even on the billboards, like the way that they tug at our cravings all day is unprecedented

• 35:59Speaker 01

  and no wonder we're having so much trouble.

• 36:02Lewis Howes?

  Exactly, yeah. Now, I'm curious, there's really two reasons why, there's two different styles of healthy in my mind. It's the ego vanity healthy where you look really good. And then there's the healthy, like you can run forever, you can lift really hard and heavy and you're got a lot of energy throughout the day. Walk us through how to have both. You know, I think there's most guys listening and maybe women, they want a flat stomach or a six pack. And they want to be, they want to have a toned body, they want to look healthy, but then they also want to have the energy throughout the day. So they feel like they have, I don't know, they're just a finely tuned machine every moment in the day so that every moment is optimized. So what is the process? Let's walk us through

• 36:46Lewis Howes?

  from the morning you wake up to the time you go to bed. The process of having both, having your six pack or the flat abs, you know, having the body percentage you want, but also having the energy throughout the day. Walk us through what you do from the morning to night, both what you eat, what you put in your body, your physical workouts and the emotional mindset that you have throughout the day as well.

• 37:11Speaker 01

  Cool. Yeah, that's a great question. So I'll just talk about my example and I want to just put this little disclaimer upfront that everyone needs to find their own thing. I have, you know, fought long and hard to find out what my things are, what I enjoy, what I can get away with, what my, what suits my body and mind really well and my habits. So I'm just going to talk about that, but know that it's up to you to kind of find your coolest little things. So for me, I start every day with usually about an hour of my own time that I reserve to do the things that are most important that day, that I know that I probably won't do otherwise.

• 37:51Speaker 01

  And that's, I've found from a compliance standpoint, it's, it's a lot better for my mind when I can use my physicality, not just during one gruesome workout, you know, once or twice a week or something like that, where I'm just dragging through and really fighting it, but work out like a little bit, get that easy win and something physical to get your heart racing early in the morning, every day.

• 38:16Lewis Howes?

  So not a super hard workout early in the morning, but

• 38:19Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 38:20Lewis Howes?

  Some movement.

• 38:21Speaker 01

  Some movement. And I, what that looks like for me is usually within about 20 minutes of me waking up, I do qigong, which is like tai chi type movements and sometimes some yoga, some mobility type stuff. Actually, I broke my foot about six, eight months ago. And coming back from that, you know, I had to totally revamp my whole workout and be very intentional about what I built into my habits. And so what that looks like is basically, I'm like, well, I can't do anything with my feet, so I guess I'll just go inverted. So I started doing handstand pushups and getting a handle of more balanced mobility work.

• 39:03Speaker 01

  So I do that every morning. The Qi Gong followed by meditation, which is something I've been doing for years. And it really, that combined, especially with gratitude, some sort of exercise in gratitude and expressing thanks every morning has been just so life-changing for me. And the people around me who have started to do it as well. I think it's something that sounds all woo-woo and pretty lame at first, but once you start doing it, you'll realize it's the best thing you can ever do. So the quick workout in the morning, something to get your blood pumping. I almost always take the dog for a walk outside. And if you don't have a dog, pretend you do and go outside. Get some sun.

• 39:46Speaker 01

  There's a lot of benefit to your hormones in getting sun early in the day, which allows, basically it aligns your circadian rhythm with the seasons and with the sunlight, which is what you want. You want to get tired as the sun goes down and when you have your big feast at the end of the day. So like I said, I generally don't really eat in the mornings. So I'll have, one of my rituals is either making tea or coffee for myself. Also, I make my own tonics from herbs and that supplement, that kind of like complements my supplements as well. So I do a round of that in the morning and then I get straight to work usually.

• 40:29Speaker 01

  But what that means to me is engaging the creative side, which is for me, writing, songwriting, writing books, blog posts, usually playing instruments. To answer your question from way earlier, I sing, play guitar, I play saxophone, a little bit of keyboards, and mostly I try to engage my brain in the creative side of activity and allow the thoughts to come out without being interrupted. So I don't check my phone, email, anything. Everything is off until usually noon, sometimes three. Sometimes I wait all week and just do one day of tech.

• 41:06Lewis Howes?

  No phone calls, no phone at all.

• 41:09Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah. Pretty much none. I might talk to my assistant sometimes or my family, but I have become, it's taken me a long time to work up to this. But basically, when we sold everything and started traveling the world, you know, I thought it would be, I told my assistant, like, you know, I'll be back in three weeks or something, then I'll check some email. But I got to the point where there was so much from so many different directions, you know, people who wanted to work with me, people who were sending me really genuine messages that I knew I wanted to respond to. And all the social media, you know, stacked on top of that. I was like, man, you know, it's been really nice to kind of write my book

• 41:50Speaker 01

  and, and read other people's books and go to dinner with people I like and, and just kind of live my life outside of that whole response oriented reactive lifestyle that a lot of us are like confronted with now. And so basically, I never came back, like, I'm coming back on the grid and I'm going to be doing my podcast again. I've already started recording it, but it's all in these batches. So there's like, today, like I said, I'm doing like seven interviews tomorrow. I have that for the next three or four days. And then I have my media done for the next, you know, quarter or even half the year. And I found that the being super intentional about how you build your days and how you build your weeks can really allow you to do that.

• 42:36Lewis Howes?

  Amazing. Okay.

• 42:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, it's been cool. So if you continue through the day and I'm doing work in the middle of the day, which is more of the, you know, entertaining the muse. So if you're writing a song, you know that you can't force that out all the time. But, you know, when I was working-

• 42:52Lewis Howes?

  I call that strategic screwing around.

• 42:54Speaker 01

  I like that. Yeah. Yeah. But basically letting your pen move on its own. Sometimes that's where the best ideas come from. And then when you really do need to force something out, I would always listen to like dragon force and put on some like crazy death metal or something and just jam out a spreadsheet or whatever else you have to do. And then- So I get through most of the day without without food. Occasionally, um, I'll do like a green smoothie like I was telling people about before, which is basically a lot of greens, like kale, spinach, arugula, if you want something spicy, uh, and then combine that with your favorite, you know, protein powder or some nuts, some chia. Uh, it's mostly greens with almost no

• 43:36Speaker 01

  sugar in it, uh, is the main thing to remember, uh, which, yeah, it might be a little bit of blueberries or strawberries or something like that. But usually it's, it's not really any fruit. If I do eat fruit or sweets, it's at night. Um, because, so if you get to the feasting portion of all this, eating a big meal at night, eating a big meal anytime makes you all lethargic. As anyone who's, you know, come back from a lunch meeting after eating the wrong thing knows, it's, it's rough.

• 44:03Lewis Howes?

  You want to, you need an afternoon nap.

• 44:04Speaker 01

  You need a nap. Yeah. But if you skip lunch or have something, you know, small or just, you know, you're running on the fat that was in your coffee or something, then, uh, the nighttime, you know, I, it used to be, I would have trouble sleeping, uh, you know, counting sheep until 11, midnight, and then, you know, waking up all night. When I started moving to this type of eating style and, and, uh, lifestyle, I start passing out at like nine, eight thirty sometimes, and it's awesome. It's the best. Cause I wake up at like five or six the next morning, you know, with like plenty of sleep and just ready to rock my next morning thing, which is when I get

• 44:47Speaker 01

  most of my work done. And I realized, especially as a musician, nothing good really happens after nine PM. Like, if people are honest with themselves, what are you really doing after, after that time? Um, for some people who are reading, like, maybe that's good or learning something or whatever, but most people, that's the time that's, that's squandered. And so it's an easy opportunity to kind of like replace that with some real quality time that you get the next morning for a big workout, or if you always wanted to learn a language, or, you know, start your business. That's the time when everyone else is sleeping, that you're sipping your tea, you know, no, that's one of my favorite things is just waking up at four AM. Before the sunrise and just like sipping tea and writing or listening to music.

• 45:32Speaker 01

  It's a, it's something that so many of us don't take advantage of that could totally change, you know, your happiness.

• 45:38Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I mean, I, I interviewed a guy named Eric Thomas on the podcast and he talks about, he gets up at 3am every morning.

• 45:43Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 45:44Lewis Howes?

  Spends three or four hours before, like no one is allowed to interrupt him for three hours or something like that.

• 45:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:50Lewis Howes?

  And he says, he just, everything is done before people wake up.

• 45:53Speaker 01

  Isn't that awesome? Like, think of how much of an advantage you have if you can do that.

• 45:58Lewis Howes?

  It's crazy. I mean, with, it's a challenge because I love to go out late and have, you know, dinners with friends and stay up till 11, 12 and I travel a lot. And so it's, you've really got to be able to set yourself up to win for that lifestyle.

• 46:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:11Lewis Howes?

  But it's something I see myself moving towards whenever I have the opportunity to do that. If there's not an event or something happening where I want to stay up, um, just because of the benefits like you talked about are profound.

• 46:24Speaker 01

  Well, and that's, that's another interesting thing, right? Cause like, and I'm glad you mentioned it because if we go back to that story that I mentioned with all like the health experts thinking that we eat like this all the time, that's a mistake to think like that. Cause when I go to an event, yeah, I'm all, I'm out all night with everyone else too. But that's because I wasn't pushing it all week. And I don't think you were either, right? It's like the people who you see rocking it at events a lot of the time are the ones who are sleeping all through the week. Like the habits that, that people don't necessarily see and would like not to believe. My advantage, the, the way that I have so much success is because I get more sleep than almost anybody else.

• 47:00Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 47:01Speaker 01

  Like that's, that's legit and that's true. And, um, and it's not the sexy, sexiest thing to talk about or think about, but it's the most honest thing for most people, I think. If they want to correct their own lives, it's, it's getting more intimate with, how are you treating yourself?

• 47:16Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 47:16Speaker 01

  You know?

• 47:17Lewis Howes?

  And I think it's about when you sleep too, because if you're sleeping all during the day, you're kind of messing up your patterns of when you're supposed to be sleeping.

• 47:24Speaker 01

  Right.

• 47:24Lewis Howes?

  If you're staying up late and then you sleep until two after, in the afternoon, it's probably not the best, most effective and efficient way to do it.

• 47:31Speaker 01

  Man, I used to have a gig that I'd play at like midnight or 12:30, we'd go on. And so I'd get home from work at like 5:00 PM, 6:00 PM. And then I was just like, do I, do I sleep now? I can't sleep now, like what happened? And then you have to go on and, and just rock it at some crazy reggae club all night. You know, and then, then you can't, you have to stay and talk to people. So yeah, I've, I've lived the other side of things too. And, and that's, if there's any way you can avoid the night shift, that stuff is terrible. I mean, you just never, you always feel like you're in La La Land, kind of like you're living in a, in a bad dream. Cause you're never quite there.

• 48:08Lewis Howes?

  Right, right. That's tough. Man, that's tough. Well, I want to, I want to wrap things up here in a second. I want to make sure everyone gets a copy of your book because I love the process you have here. You really set a philosophy in place and you have a lot of, you know, recipes for what you can make for yourself throughout the day and the night. Then you, at the end, you give some great stuff. You talk about how you should live like you're camping. And I really want people to, to get this, just to have this last chapter. You talk about eating for athletes and the wild diet for athletes and all these different things. So I really love your philosophy. I mean, you know, there's, there's, the thing is there's lots of health experts out there. There's a lot of fitness people, people that do cookbooks, things like that.

• 48:54Lewis Howes?

  And a lot of them, I'll be honest, are very similar. And especially nowadays, I feel like people are talking more about this style of diet. And everyone has their own twist on it. But I really love what you've done. I love what you've created and I love your philosophy behind it. And, and obviously we've had some great times together and I want people to check this book out. It's called The Wild Diet. Get back to your, your roots, burn fat and drop up to 20 pounds in 40 days. I'll have it all linked up here on the show notes. A couple of last questions for you. One is what are you most grateful for recently?

• 49:30Speaker 01

  Oh, that's so good. I think it's the ability and the, the realization that we really can create our own day, our own habits. Cause it's so easy to let life get away from you and what we just did, you know, is kind of like. I heard a great term for it is going declaring email bankruptcy essentially.

• 49:52Speaker 01

  Basically, we did that with our whole social media, our whole email and even with with some of our family and friends were just like, look, our, you know, our phones won't work for the next few months, which which was true. We we lived off the grid. So it's man, it's it's imagine that you just came back to your own life and you can whip up whatever tomorrow you want. I mean, it sounds super corny, but if you do that, you can just whip up whatever, you know, is your favorite day for the rest of your life. And so even if it's starting small with a little thing that you can, you know, weasel in there for five minutes at 7:35 tomorrow morning, just like, take a second, write it down and make a small promise to yourself and then fulfill it.

• 50:35Lewis Howes?

  I love that. All right, I've got one last question for you. And before I ask it, I want to acknowledge you really quickly because the thing that I acknowledge about you, Abel, is that you're always positive. You're always bringing energy of positivity, no matter what task or relationship you're involved in, no matter what aspect of your life you're in. Whenever I see you or read your stuff or watch a podcast of yours, or when we meet in person, you're positive. And I feel like that positivity is a quality that not a lot of people have with everything they do. So one, I want to acknowledge you for that. Two, I want to acknowledge you for creating and designing your life the way you dreamed of it and making it happen, you know,

• 51:19Lewis Howes?

  as a musician, and then transitioning going from like, not feeling you had to stick to something, but being able to allow yourself to take on new things, new skills and learn to master them, allow yourself. I mean, for me, going off the grid for two or three months and not checking things seems a little scary right now. Yeah. So for you to be able to do that and be completely cool and confident and.

• 51:42Lewis Howes?

  You know, have everything figured out or allow things to be figured out along the way to do what you want and not have the pressures of society or, you know, online marketing or whatever it may be, or feeling like you need to stick to your podcast even though it was so popular. I really acknowledge you for allowing yourself to be comfortable designing things the way you want it to be and being positive during that process because I think it's really cool, the example you set for so many other people on how they want to live the life that they dream of as well. So, thank you for that. I acknowledge you for all those good things, my man, and keep it up.

• 52:14Speaker 01

  Thanks, Lewis. I really appreciate that.

• 52:16Lewis Howes?

  Of course, yeah. Uh, final question. It's what I ask everyone at the end. It's what is your definition of greatness?

• 52:24Speaker 01

  I'll try not to do whatever I said last time, but, but I think it's the, the ability to be happy with yourself every day, not, not forever, but for every day. Because you kind of, no matter who you are, that morning ritual that I was talking about before, you forget every morning. So you need to remind yourself through moving the way that you think, maybe, you know, writing a, a loving note to someone you really care about, whatever that means to you. Um, do it and, and that I think is, is greatness. That is success.

• 53:00Lewis Howes?

  Abel James, you are the man. The Wild Diet, I'll have it linked up here at the end, but thank you so much for coming on, my man.

• 53:06Speaker 01

  Thanks, Lewis. This is fun.

• 53:10Lewis Howes?

  And there you have it, guys. I hope you enjoyed this episode with Abel. If you did, please go back to the show notes where we've got all the links, the resources, the information on how to connect with Abel over at lewishouse.com/158. Again, that's lewishouse.com/158. Also, guys, we're doing something very cool in the next couple of weeks that I'm launching that I'm so pumped on. I've been working on this for a few months, me and my team. It's kind of been a little behind the scenes, secret project, if you will. So here's what I want you guys to do. I want you to go to lewishouse.com again, slash 158. And there'll be a little, uh, option to subscribe to my free newsletter. I want you to opt in there. If you have yet to subscribe, I know a lot of you are on my newsletter list,

• 53:55Lewis Howes?

  reaching close to 100,000 people, which is amazing. But if you haven't yet to subscribe, please subscribe there. Again, LewisHowes.com/158 and sign up for the free newsletter because in the next couple of weeks, I'm going to be releasing something that I think you are all going to love. It's something I've been excited about. It's a passion of mine for the last few months. So I am pumped and I don't want to give away too much because it's going to be pretty cool and I think we're going to do something really interesting in this space. So again, LewisHowes.com/158. Again, thank you guys all so much for coming on. If you enjoyed this, make sure to share it with your friends over on Twitter and Facebook and tag me in a picture over on Instagram @LewisHowes.

• 54:37Lewis Howes?

  Let me know where you are listening to this in the world and you guys are incredible. Thank you all so much for all that you do. You know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.