261 The Truth About Burning Fat and Losing Weight with Yuri Elkaim

"The best diet for you is the one you don't even think you are on." - Yuri Elkaim If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes and more at http://lewishowes.com/261 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 261 with New York Times bestselling author, Yuri Elkhane.

• 0:07Lewis Howes?

  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 back to the podcast. Very excited about our guest today. He's been on before and he's coming back again. Now Yuri is a New York Times bestselling author and renowned fitness and nutrition expert, who's helped more than 500,000 people, that's right, a half a million people to great health and fitness. At 17, he developed an autoimmune condition called alopecia, which attacked all of his hair on his body. He played professional soccer. He was a head strength and conditioning coach for men's soccer at the University of Toronto. He's also a father of three boys and his new book is out called The All Day Fat Burning Diet. And the five main things that you're going to learn from today is why you may be eating right and exercising,

• 1:15Lewis Howes?

  but not losing any weight and how to change that. Also, if there is a perfect diet, how to find the optimal diet or lifestyle for you, what the common fat triggers are and how to eliminate them, why your sex drive goes down when you are really stressed and much, much more. I hope you enjoy this episode. Again, lewishowes.com/261 to get all of the show notes and dive in more. Let's go ahead and dive in with this episode with the one, the only Yuri Elkhane.

• 1:51Lewis Howes?

  Welcome back everyone to the podcast. Excited about today. Got my buddy Yuri Elkhane on. How's it going Yuri?

• 1:57Speaker 01

  It's going great. How you doing buddy?

• 1:59Lewis Howes?

  Doing alright, you know, things are moving along in a powerful way. So I'm excited to have you on. And we had you on before, which was a great episode. We'll have that linked up in the show notes here for people at the end to check that one out. But you've got a new book out called The All Day Fat Burning Diet, The Five Day Food Cycle Formula That Resets Your Metabolism to Burn Up to Five Pounds Per Week. Now, I'm going to ask you this, since I ask all these health experts that I bring on.

• 2:30Speaker 02

  Is there the perfect diet? And what do we listen to when there's so many different people saying all the different things that you can do in terms of diet, in terms of exercise? How do we know which is actually right for us to keep us healthy and living a healthy, happy, long life?

• 2:47Speaker 01

  Sure, yeah, so no, it's a very valid question. And it's, I'll start off by saying this book isn't for everyone. It's definitely not for, um, I wrote this book because I've helped a lot of people over the years and I've also not been able to reach a lot of people, um, for whatever reason, you know, they don't know about me or they've just been confused by their stuff. But there's been a lot of people who have, that I've noticed, really do everything they can. They exercise, they eat well, and they just hit a, there's just like a sticking point where they just can't seem to lose the weight. There's almost like a plateau, or maybe they've lost weight, put it back on, lost weight, put it back on. They seem to hover around the same area and nothing they do seems to work. So they feel like there's something wrong with them.

• 3:28Speaker 01

  And I realized that like, I'm not a huge fan of, I don't actually consider this a diet. For me, like even my first book, The All Day Energy Diet, for me, it's always been about a lifestyle. And the advice that I give to people is like, listen, the best thing you can do is you just have to try different things and see what works best for you in terms of like, does this feel good? Does it work? Can I sustain this? And the best diet for you is the one you don't even think you're on. Because at the end of the day, most diets don't work because they're so focused on deprivation that people end up rebelling against the system. And there's other, there's other reasons why a lot of other, a lot of, a lot of diets

• 4:12Speaker 01

  don't work, but it's, um, it's a big thing. And I really try to get, you know, like, we have to understand that we are guinea pigs. We're kind of in this journey of self experimentation. The same goes in business. I mean, you and I are both entrepreneurs and it's like, okay, we're going to try this strategy. If it doesn't work, well, does that mean that all business strategies don't work? No, we just try a different path. We just try a different one until we find the one that works for us. And then we kind of go forward with that. And that's the same thing. The same approach we want to have to to health and diets and exercises. Find that path that's going to work best for you. I'm not a fan of CrossFit, but that's just for me. Other people, they're like gung ho into it and that works for them. Awesome.

• 4:55Speaker 01

  So you need to find what's going to work best for you and your lifestyle.

• 4:58Speaker 02

  So how do we know how to find that?

• 5:01Speaker 01

  I think you really just have to try things. So for instance, if you, um, you know, if you've tried one approach, a dietary approach that has worked really well for you. And assuming that it has health benefits, for instance, let me give you an example. So a lot of people have done Atkins. Uh, actually, this is crazy. In the 1990s, we had this huge surge, this, this, the huge surge in the low carb craze. And at one point, there was, um, it was said that in that decade, at any given point, 18% of Americans were on a low carb diet. And that's, that's including the population of kids and teenagers who, for the most part, don't diet. So that's, that percentage is usually probably, probably a bit higher considering it's mostly for adults.

• 5:44Speaker 01

  So a low carb diet will help you lose weight, but it has serious long-term ramifications on your metabolism. For instance, it's going to, it's going to suppress your thyroid function. And our thyroid is our master metabolism gland. So if that goes down over time, you know, maybe it doesn't hit you right away, but in a couple of months, a couple of years, you just start slowing down. Your body has a tough time losing weight and you're thinking like, what did I do? What's going on here? And that could be part of the problem. The other thing with low carb diets is that, yes, you'll lose weight, but it's mostly water weight. Because for every gram of carbohydrates, your body's going to hold on to four grams of water. So as soon as you lose the bread and the pasta and so forth, you're going to lose a lot of that water.

• 6:24Speaker 01

  So you have to be able to distinguish between, okay, this result is what I want, but is it giving me, is it hurting my health in the process? So I think there's a little bit of sophistication that has to come into that as well in terms of whether it's, you know, checkups with your naturopathic doctor, or just kind of looking at, if you're a little more knowledgeable about your body, symptomatically, looking at like, are things working? Do I feel good? And, um, and, and maybe doing, you know, occasional blood tests just to make sure that everything's okay. You know, if you wanted to really get kind of granular.

• 6:57Speaker 02

  Gotcha. Uh, and if, and if people don't have the, you know, that are not wanting to do a blood test, but they want to try something else. So they want to see what works and what feels right for them. What are some of those steps?

• 7:09Speaker 01

  Well, the first thing is, is to look at, I mean, you want to model, it's tough. I mean, you want to model people that emulate you, right? So for instance, if you know other men, other menopausal women who've done well on this specific diet, then maybe that's something you want to consider if you're a menopausal woman. For instance, a lot of the paleo research, not that there's really been a lot of research, but the research scientifically on paleo has mostly been done on men. And what we've found, and this has been confirmed with a lot of naturopathic doctors that I've worked with, is that what they've seen in their practice is a lot of women who go paleo end up having a very tough time and do a lot of damage to their hormone because, to their hormonal makeup,

• 7:52Speaker 01

  because for them, they need in some cases, higher levels of carbohydrates. For instance, women are a little bit more susceptible to thyroid issues. So if we cut out carbohydrates or keep them at a very low level, then that might work for some men, but for women, maybe not the best idea. So you want to do a little bit of research in terms of what has worked for other people, for instance, in my shoes, and is this validated by science? Or is this just another gimmick that's, you know, just put up on the bookshelf?

• 8:24Speaker 02

  And you've got a solution about the all-day fat burning diet, right?

• 8:29Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 8:29Speaker 02

  Well, you're also talking about all these fat triggers.

• 8:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, so what I've realized over the years is that, as I said before, it's losing weight is not as simple as cutting calories and exercising more. If it was, I don't think we would be seeing the overweight and obesity epidemic that we are. So what we're recognizing is that what's happening inside of our body metabolically, like hormone, at the hormone level and at the cellular level, is the real reason why so many people have a tough time losing weight. In fact, their body is, I'll put quote unquote, "threatened" into holding on to that weight. So the six fat triggers all come back to the base foundation of why we can't lose weight. And that's because if you're having a tough time losing weight,

• 9:16Speaker 01

  at some level, your body feels threatened. And it goes back to our hardwired DNA. If our body way back in the day felt that... It was threatened in terms of, you know, we were being attacked by a lion or we weren't, you know, we had, we had no food coming in for a couple of days. What it would do is it would shut down because it needed to think about survival. So when survival becomes the most important thing to focus on, sex drive plummets. Pretty much everything else just goes by the wayside. That's for, that's, that's why, for instance, when you're stressed out, testosterone levels go down because there's a, a shunt that happens at the hormonal level in the adrenals that moves hormone production from testosterone to cortisol,

• 10:01Speaker 01

  which is one of our stress hormones. So at the, at a very basic level, if our body feels stressed, and I'm not talking about just like worry about stuff, but stressed in the sense that there are things happening that put us out of balance, that level of homeostasis for too long, that is perceived as a threat. And when that happens, our body, our adrenal glands are going to pump out cortisol. Cortisol is a stress hormone that is neither good or bad, but it's, it's becomes an issue when there's too little of it or too much of it. So when we have too much of it, our body, the, the message to our brain is, hold on, something is not right here. We are in a state of survival. We, we must survive somehow. We need to shut things down. We need to hold on to fat because fat is very energy rich,

• 10:46Speaker 01

  nine calories per gram instead of four, which is provided by carbohydrates and protein. And it's, it just makes sense from kind of a survival perspective, but that's not serving us in today's day and age. So I talk about these six fat triggers as six big culprits that are inducing more stress on our body, which increases inflammation and cortisol, which forces our body to literally hold on to fat like a baby does his blanket.

• 11:12Speaker 02

  Okay. And what do we do about these fat triggers?

• 11:18Speaker 01

  Well, first of all, we have to know what they are. So I can talk about a few of those.

• 11:21Speaker 02

  What are the most common ones?

• 11:24Speaker 01

  So I would say the biggest one is really understanding that most of us are eating foods that are creating inflammation in our body. And the two biggest ones are gluten and dairy. So.

• 11:36Speaker 01

  You know, it depends on who you listen to, but some people are like it's all or none. Like you're either gluten free or you might as well just have some, you know, like it's either black or white. The reality is like, again, you have to find what's going to work best for you. But I feel that if we can really minimize those two foods to a great degree, it's going to do our body a huge service because when we're eating gluten and dairy, they contain proteins like, well, gliadin in gluten's case or casein in dairy's case, which are very problematic in the body. So they seep into the bloodstream. Our body identifies them as foreign objects or foreign invaders and mounts an inflammatory immune response. And when that happens, again, that's a stress, so our body pumps out cortisol.

• 12:17Speaker 01

  And as a result of that, we hold on to fat, specifically with cortisol around the belly more so. So we want to really move away from eating foods that contain gluten. So if, again, if we're thinking about like breads, cereals, pastas, let's move to at the very minimum, non-glutenous grains, right? So quinoa, brown rice, gluten-free breads, if you have to have your bread, stuff like that. Switch to an almond milk or a coconut milk instead of the dairy,

• 12:43Speaker 01

  and you'll be much better off. So that's really important is to think about how do we cool the inflammation? So on the flip side of that is essentially just eating more anti-inflammatory foods, which for the most part is vegetables, fruit. Those are the two big ones. Obviously, there's other legumes and some animal products that are decent as well, but really focusing on getting a lot more plant foods into the diet to really cool that inflammation, because that is really the base of the problem. So that's the first fat trigger. Another big one, so a lot of people, again, a lot of diets just focus on the food, the diets. What I've found over the years is that you really have to attack, not attack, I don't know if attack's the right word, but you have to approach this from a multi-pronged approach.

• 13:28Speaker 01

  So I talk a lot about exercise because exercise is massively important. And maybe I'll touch upon that in a second, but one of the big fat triggers that we're seeing now is... Sitting, but also too much exercise.

• 13:45Speaker 01

  And so

• 13:46Speaker 02

  Working out too much.

• 13:47Speaker 01

  Working out too much. Now, let me, let me caveat that by saying, let me be honest. If you work out too much, you're not going to become fat. Okay, let's, but what it's going to do to your body is it's going to break you down. And like, we're both professional, we're both former pro athletes. And I don't know about you, but I don't know many pro athletes beyond thirty five that are still crushing it. Right. It's just, it's just too much. It's like driving your car a million miles. Like, what kind of resale value are you going to get? Like, nothing. You couldn't even give it away for free. So it's the same thing with, with exercise. There's a lot of workout programs. There seems to be a trend nowadays where the advice is to go hard or go home, like insane intense workouts, five to seven days a week. And yes, those will produce results. But you cannot sustain that for long.

• 14:31Speaker 01

  You can't, you can't do that for more than a couple of months.

• 14:33Speaker 02

  It's like, you know, CrossFit, I loved CrossFit for four years. And then I was just like, man, I am burnt out. Like, it is just wearing on me.

• 14:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:41Speaker 02

  It became a lot. And I was like, I just feel like I want to start doing some other types of movements and flexibility and just mixing it up. Because even though I loved it for a while, it was just like, man, I just feel like it's, I'm injuring myself. I'm doing all these things that aren't sustainable. And I, I found myself going in there being like, okay, I need to hold back and not push as hard because that's what the coaches are saying. And that's what everyone else is doing. And I'm competitive, so I'm going to. But I started just going in there, holding back. And I was just like, why am I in here if I'm going to hold back on my workout, when I want to make sure I go full out in whatever it is, whether it's yoga or basketball or something, but not having to hold back when I do it, but just figuring out how to do something sustainable.

• 15:21Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. Absolutely. So, and what ends up happening with that is that you just feel less motivated to work out.

• 15:28Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 15:28Speaker 01

  Because now you're just beaten down. And that's where the things, that's where things start to go down south, right? It's, it's not the, the too much exercise is making you fat. I mean, too much exercise is going to create a little more inflammation from increased stress over time. But it's, it's the wearing down in your body that over time is going to really repel you from exercise that can become a problem. On the flip side, sitting, we know is just kind of like the new smoking. Most of us are sitting like six to eight hours or even more a day. And there's a lot of research coming out of numerous universities, like Vanderbilt University. Which is showing that even if you work there thirty minutes a day, it doesn't counteract the effect of sitting all day. And you know, we live in this culture where we think we can just go to the gym and have this like cardio confessional.

• 16:14Speaker 01

  Where you know, we sat all day, we didn't really do anything and then we're just gonna go to the gym and kill ourselves. Unfortunately, that's not the way it works. So we want to think about during the days, how do we incorporate movements? Like, I think we should be working out less by moving more. So how do we incorporate movement throughout the day? So instead of sitting eight hours straight, get up every twenty minutes, move around, do some body weight squats, take the stairs. Little things like that over time will compound and make a difference. Plus, they're gonna keep you feeling better. And I know you've got like a kind of a pseudo standing desk and you know, you're totally into this. Um, it really, really does make a difference. Cause if you feel stiff and sore all the time, whether it's from too much sitting or too much exercise, the last thing you're gonna wanna do is move around.

• 16:57Speaker 02

  Right.

• 16:58Speaker 01

  So we need to break that momentum.

• 16:59Speaker 02

  And it's also a compound effect if you're sitting and sore and stiff, you know, for years, it's gonna be hard to break that cycle.

• 17:06Speaker 01

  Yep, absolutely.

• 17:08Speaker 02

  It's, you know, even just stretching a few minutes in the morning and the afternoon and just taking a walk is really helps gonna break that up. So it doesn't compound over time.

• 17:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's all about momentum. Like whether we're talking about eating habits or exercise or anything else, it's all about momentum.

• 17:22Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 17:22Speaker 01

  And you just have to understand that the start of anything is gonna be somewhat painful. And by painful, it's like uncomfortable.

• 17:30Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 17:31Speaker 01

  But it becomes easier with time.

• 17:33Speaker 02

  Okay, what's another big fat trigger, Manny?

• 17:36Speaker 01

  Another big one, let's talk about deadly belly bugs, AKA.

• 17:41Speaker 02

  Sounds nasty, like bed bugs in your belly?

• 17:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, not quite, so they're not bed bugs, but they're essentially bad bacteria. So I think more and more people are starting to understand the importance of gut health. And I, I think inflammation is something that is, it was on the cover of Time Magazine years ago. So I think it's, it's, it's starting to become more received as, as a big problem. Gut health is gonna be the biggest trend moving forward in all aspects of health. With respect to weight.

• 18:10Speaker 02

  Talks about probiotics and all these things, right?

• 18:12Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly, and that's part of the equation. So we've got, our gut has, you know, millions of different types of, um. Or microorganisms. And the problem is that based on the fact that we eat a lot of like sugar, refined carbohydrates, use antibiotics at some point in our lives. These are all things that are going to kill off a lot of those good bacteria and allow the bad bacteria to proliferate. So from a fat loss perspective, I want to talk specifically about fat here. There's an interesting thing that happens with bad bacteria. They give off as a byproduct, something called lipopolysaccharides. It's kind of like their poop, if you want to think of it that way. And this byproduct is a waste product. It's essentially a toxin seeps into the bloodstream.

• 18:57Speaker 01

  It's actually been shown scientifically to not only increase the size of our fat cells, but increase the number of them, which is not a good thing in terms of, you know, wanting to lose weight. So not only are we kind of offsetting our gut health by having more bad bacteria, but if we don't keep them in check, they're now becoming a problem in terms of new fat cell creation, which is not a good thing because if we're doing other things that are going to force our body to hold on to fat, now there's more storage lockers for that fat to go into. So we really want to keep gut health at the top of our mind in terms of like really making sure that we're healthy. So using things like probiotics, right? Really, really simple things to do on a daily basis. Reducing our intake of sugar is going to be huge as well because sugar feeds the bad

• 19:42Speaker 01

  bacteria and things like candida and yeast as well. So that's something we're going to hear a lot more of in terms of, from a weight loss perspective, the importance of gut health. Interesting thing, there's, there's been some, a couple of studies that have been done on twins. This is really fascinating. And identical twins, one twin overweight, one twin normal weight. And what they've done is they've actually taken fecal implants. So they've actually taken poop and implanted it from the overweight twin, and they've done this both in humans and animals, from the overweight twin into the normal sized twin. And simply that implants of feces into the normal weight twin started to force him or

• 20:24Speaker 01

  her to gain weight, which is fascinating. And it all comes back down to the bacterial strains we have in our gut. So what we know is that there are certain bacterial strains that are associated. With overweightness and then there's other bacterial strains that are more favorable or more associated with just having a normal, healthy weight. So it's very interesting to see what's coming out of this whole area of research on gut health.

• 20:50Speaker 02

  Are you saying, are you saying there's ways that we can change the, I guess, the bacteria strands in our, in our gut or?

• 20:57Speaker 01

  To some degree, yes. Um, I mean, depending on where you live, like in the worlds, you're going to be exposed to different soil organisms. So naturally you'll have different organisms in your gut. But when you look at the beneficial bacteria, so we're talking about things like lactobacillus, acidophilus as an example, or any of those lactobacillus bacteria, any of the bifidobacterium, those are all really good. And this is, this is actually something really important to consider with respect to probiotics is that when you're taking a probiotic, you want to really make sure that you're getting multiple different strains, not just one or a select few. So it's not just about, hey, this thing has 10 billion CFU, but it's got 10 billion and 20 different strains, which is really what you want to

• 21:42Speaker 01

  look for.

• 21:43Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 21:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:44Speaker 02

  Interesting. All right. Well, those are some of the fat triggers and there's a few more that you haven't talked about that are, that are covered in the book that people can go check out there. Um, so what's the, the solution to, to, you know, burning this fat or getting rid of the fat and, and really making sure you're living this healthy life? And then you got this five day process. What does this consist of?

• 22:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. So again, going back to the understanding that if our body is inflamed and stressed out, it's not going to be able to release weight. So we have to look at, okay, how do we reduce that? Um, and there's obviously a couple of different ways. What I found really effective over the years, and we've done this with thousands of our clients now, is a special way of approaching food that honors our body's natural rhythms. So, uh, let me give you an analogy. I'll give you two stories. So. Go back to Paleolithic man, walks on the earth, does his thing, doesn't have access to Starbucks, doesn't have a refrigerator. And what that means is that he's not able to eat 24/7 like we have access to nowadays.

• 22:45Speaker 01

  So back in those days and our wiring, our biology is still the same as it was back then. We were exposed to an environment where some days we had more, some days we had less, some days we had none at all. And nowadays, we've been led to believe that we have to be eating all the time in order to keep our metabolism happy. Because if, you know, God forbid, we should miss a meal, our metabolism is going to shut down or we're going to start fat. And there could be nothing further from the truth. The research shows that if you have one meal a day or six meals a day, it makes no difference on weight loss, assuming total calories are the same. Yep, not at all.

• 23:19Speaker 02

  So it's not going to affect your metabolism if you're not eating every four hours or three hours or something, right?

• 23:24Speaker 01

  No, not at all. And here's, here's the reality, if you're eating every one to two hours, two to three hours, here's what's really happening. When you eat, you break down the food, it raises your blood sugar, right? Some foods more than others. When our blood sugar rises, our body says, you know what, this is not a good thing. We have to keep it in balance. So it releases a hormone called insulin. Insulin is a storage hormone. It's one of our only storage hormones. So it takes that sugar and stores it. So just that alone, we don't want to store all that, we don't, we don't want to be in storage mode all the time. Because if we are, how are we going to be burning fat? The other thing with too much insulin is that it naturally increases cortisol. So if we always have high insulin, we're going to have high cortisol.

• 24:04Speaker 01

  And if high cortisol is at the foundation of this body's stress response, then our body is constantly in the state of stress. So eating all the time is not the answer. So the other analogy is, I was recently in Barbados with, with, with our kids and we're in, in the ocean. And my, my oldest son Oscar is like at the shore, kind of like kicking the waves and punching the waves and stuff. And I'm looking at that, I'm like, wow, this is a really interesting juxtaposition because you have these waves, which are, have this beautiful natural rhythm and you've got this little four year old trying to punch through them. And it just made me think, I was like, what would happen if you got caught in the riptide and got pulled out to sea? And I tell him, I'm like, listen, if that if that ever happens, here's what you do. Just go with the current. It'll bring you right back to shore. Swim

• 24:49Speaker 01

  parallel to the shore, it'll bring you right back in, instead of fighting it. And it made me think, I was like, you know what? Our body is the same way. We are part of nature. And we have started to live over the past, let's say, half a century in a way that is completely opposite of our natural rhythms. So for instance, instead of punching the waves, why not ride with them? And surfers know this all too well, is you want to ride with the waves. And if you don't, then you're not going, it's not going to work. So how do we do that with our diet? How do we do that with our body? So that's why, over the last couple of years, it's hard to experiments with different ways of eating clean, real foods, but in a way that just honors our natural rhythm. So for instance, I don't

• 25:32Speaker 01

  know if you've ever woken up, Lewis, and one day and said, you know what? I don't really feel like having breakfast today. You know, or some days you're like, wow, I feel like I'm famished. I want to have a big breakfast.

• 25:42Speaker 02

  That's most days for me.

• 25:45Speaker 01

  And that's totally fine, right? But if we bought into this dogma, which tells us you have to have breakfast, or you cannot have carbs later in the day. And if you do, you feel guilty and shameful about it. That's a terrible way of living. So with our five day food cycling formula, I have a quick little analogy, or a little poem that I like to use, which is some days high, some days low, some days yes, some days no. Which basically means, we're going to stagger our calories. We're going to have some days where we have higher higher caloric consumption. Other days, we're going to have lower caloric consumption. Other days, we'll have kind of regular consumption. And other days, we'll actually have nothing at all. So we'll do a one day fast. So we've put this together in a beautiful five day program, that we've worked kind of underground with with a lot of our clients for the past

• 26:29Speaker 01

  couple of years. And it's worked like gangbusters. And what's amazing about it is When I was putting this book together, last December, I said, okay, I want to really put this to the test. And I'm like, I want to put this out. This is going to be a published book. I want to make sure that, you know, this is actually producing the results that we've seen with our online clients for so many years. So we had 720 beta testers take part in this, and we did it in December. So literally like this time last year, we took people through a 21 day challenge, or a 21 day beta test. And I said, we're going to start at the beginning of December, and we're going to finish it on December 26. And people were like, you're crazy. Why would we do this during the Christmas holidays?

• 27:11Speaker 01

  And I said, aha, am I crazy or am I brilliant? Because if I can help you lose weight in the most challenging time of the year, what would happen in January, or what would happen in the springtime? So we had 720 men and women take part. And I talked about this in the book, the average weight loss in 21 days, the average weight loss was 10 pounds. Wow. And we had during the holidays. Okay. And we had about 15, I think it was 15 to 20% of those people lost close to 30 pounds. We had a number of them lose 30 pounds or more. One of our clients, Patrick, unbelievable success story. Here's a guy who's like stressed out, working like, you know, from all hours of the day, traveling all over. He's got a two-year-old son at

• 27:55Speaker 01

  home. And he's like, he finds out about this beta test and this book we're putting together. And he's like, finally, something that actually makes sense for me. Because we kind of started to explain what it's all about. He's like, wow, this, you know, it sounds awesome. And he would get up at 3:00 in the morning. And I'm not advising everyone to do this, but he would get up at 3:00 in the morning, get his work out in. He would have like, it was just incredible what he did. By the time 6:30 rolled around, he was on his way to work with his wife and stuff like that. It was really cool. So anyways, he had tried all sorts of other diets in the past. Nothing worked. And in fact, he had gained weight over the years because of all this stuff that he was doing and all the excess stress

• 28:33Speaker 01

  from work and so forth. And he loses 30 pounds, 12 inches off his waist. And the only negative, he said, was that none of his clothes fit anymore. So you know, it was just one success story after another similar to that. And obviously, everyone's different. Some people had less weight, less weight loss, others more. But the common thread, the most exciting thing for me was that almost unanimously, people said, this is the most sustainable way of eating I've ever come across.

• 29:02Speaker 02

  So is this the five day, you know, process? Is this something we do every five days? Is it something we do once and then we let it go? How does it work?

• 29:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, so basically over the 21 day plan that I have laid out in the book, and similar to what the beta testers followed is we just repeated the five day cycle.

• 29:20Speaker 02

  Gotcha.

• 29:21Speaker 01

  So we have five days.

• 29:22Speaker 02

  One day it's low carb, one day you feast, one day you fast, regular, you know? And you just go through that process as opposed to saying, okay, I'm going to starve myself for five days and then have a cheat day.

• 29:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:33Speaker 02

  Or I'm gonna, you know, eat 10 times a day, every single day and do these things. It's like you're, you're mixing it up almost constantly. You're, you're like, it's like muscle confusion for your body or your, your stomach or something.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And it's, but also to the point where it's not putting your body into a stressed out state. Cause if you were to fast for a week or even for a couple of days, your body's like, whoa, what's going on here? Um, so doing it very strategically, and we've really cracked like a beautiful formula here that's worked so well for so many years and for, for a thousand of our clients. And, um, there's so much research. I mean, there's tons of, uh, all the research and the sciences in the book. And I'm like, I don't need to go into nitty gritty details. But you know, if you're, if you're listening to this and you're thinking like, okay, well, is this like another like thing, another gimmick? It's just a different way of, of eating that actually honors your body. So if you don't feel hungry some days, you know what? It's fine. If you feel famished other days, you know what? Enjoy that.

• 30:29Speaker 01

  And we show you how to do that and we, we help you through that process. Really, you asked me like, how do you find, you know, the right approach for you? Um, well, it's really about kind of going through a system like this to understand that it's okay if you have carbs later in the day. It's actually better than if you have them in the morning.

• 30:47Speaker 01

  And just really kind of overcoming a lot of the myths and helping people navigate through the confusing world of how to eat well in a way that resonates with their body.

• 30:55Speaker 02

  So who, you know, who is this before this process, this 21 day process or this lifestyle? And who is this not for?

• 31:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, it's, you know, it's really for anybody who has tried everything else before with limited success. And that's really who this book was written for.

• 31:11Speaker 02

  If you're already healthy and got your lifestyle down, then you don't need this, is what you're saying.

• 31:15Speaker 01

  To, you know, to be honest, I would, I mean, this is the interesting thing about this is that this is how I eat on a regular basis. For the most part, and I'm not a guy who has to lose weight. So I understand the benefits, the immense benefits of intermittent fasting. So I fast once a week. It's incredible. I also understand that if you fast too long, you're going to start to suppress thyroid function and leptin function. So I have a healthy refeed, which is our one day feast once, once a week as well. So for me, I don't follow the five day cycle. As it's laid out specifically in this book, because it's a little more weight loss geared. But what I show people how to do in the final chapter is how to make this your life. So for instance, after the 21 days, what do you do? Do you just keep repeating this forever?

• 31:59Speaker 01

  Well, in some cases, some people may want to do that, but for others, for instance, for me, I don't want to do a low cal day, a low calorie day. So I'm just going to have four days that I'm in a cycle. And for me, I have Saturdays tend to be my best feast days. So I'm at home, I have more food. So I'm just going to dictate that on Saturdays, I'm going to have my feast days and maybe on Mondays, I'm going to have my fast days. So that's kind of the schedule that I've approached it with, whereas others are a bit more like just telling me what to do exactly every single day. So we've given people the flexibility to figure out what's going to work best for them beyond the initial 21 days, so that they can actually make this part of their life. And even if they don't follow the five day formula to the T, even if they just took some of the concepts, like understanding that.

• 32:44Speaker 01

  A one day fast is massively beneficial for health and fat loss and just did that for the rest of their life. Once a week, they would see incredible results. So it's, it's a really, really cool process for, for anyone to go through.

• 32:57Speaker 02

  I love it. Well, the book is called the all day fat burning diet and it comes out December 22nd, but you can preorder it now on Amazon and Barnes and Noble and everywhere online, correct?

• 33:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. And actually what we're doing right now is if you guys go to alldayfatburningdiet.com, we're giving away like the, like everything but the kitchen sink. So you're getting a ton of stuff. Uh, plus when you preorder, I think the book is about 25% off now on Amazon. So when you preorder the book, you're going to get all the, and there's, I think we're giving away a $500 worth of bonuses for free when you get the book. So go to alldayfatburningdiet.com, you'll see all the bonuses there and you can preorder the book and it's, um, yeah, it's coming out December 22nd. It's pretty awesome.

• 33:38Speaker 02

  Amazing. Well, Yuri, I appreciate you. I acknowledge you for your consistency, man. You're, you're just so consistent with your, your message and with your research and with serving people to be healthy and sustainably healthy for their life, that it's an inspiration and, uh, acknowledge you for all the work you're up to and supporting so many people. So thanks for that.

• 34:00Speaker 01

  Well, thank you very much.

• 34:02Speaker 02

  I'll ask one final question, which you've answered before in the past, but it's what's your definition of greatness?

• 34:07Speaker 01

  Definition of greatness. I wonder if it's going to change from my previous answer. Um, I, I think it's, you know, again, I'm going to take this back from my days as a soccer player. It's leaving the fields and knowing regardless of what the scoreboard says that you gave everything you could.

• 34:22Speaker 02

  I love it.

• 34:23Speaker 01

  Just doing that on a day to day basis.

• 34:25Speaker 02

  That's perfect answer. Uh, thanks so much for sharing your wisdom and for, for coming on again. I really appreciate this.

• 34:32Speaker 01

  You're welcome. Thanks for having me, buddy.

• 34:36Lewis Howes?

  There you have it, gang. Thank you for tuning in today. I hope you learned something about your health and how to optimize your health. Again, we're always bringing you the best information, people, and resources to optimize your body, your life, your health, your business, your spirituality. We're bringing you the best each and every week. If you enjoyed this episode, or you know a friend who would like this, make sure to send them to lewishouse.com/261. Subscribe to the podcast if you're new here over on iTunes. Again, just type in School of Greatness and subscribe to that little button right there. Also, share this out with your friends. You can do it right from iTunes, or on Stitcher, or on SoundCloud.

• 35:18Lewis Howes?

  So whichever platform you like to listen on, make sure to share it out from those platforms. And sign up for our free newsletter. Each week, we send valuable tips and resources and information over at lewishouse.com. Thank you, guys, so much. I love you, guys. Thank you for all your support. Big things ahead. Make sure to finish the year strong. It's coming quickly, 2016, and we've got some big things happening. I can't wait to share them with you. You guys know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.