ETHAN SUPLEE | What It's Like To Lose 300lbs & Adele's Transformation | Modern Wisdom Podcast 184

Chris Williamson 0:00 So you were, um, 200 pounds at ten years old, right?

Ethan Suplee 0:03 Yeah. By 2000, that was 536 pounds. So I don't see why anything you say about my feelings about myself-

Chris Williamson 0:14 (laughs)

Ethan Suplee 0:14 ... should be able to alter my feelings about myself, but we've gotten into this space where the group can dictate how people view themselves, and not only that, the group must dictate how people view themselves.

Chris Williamson 0:34 What's your T-shirt say?

Ethan Suplee 0:37 Uh, it says, "I killed my clone today."

Chris Williamson 0:40 What's that a reference to?

Ethan Suplee 0:42 Um, there's a- there is a, uh, martial arts guy, I- I- I did a television show called Chance with, uh, a fellow countryman of yours, Hugh Laurie, and I played this character where I was like, um, basically my first official badass character. And the- the character was based on a real guy who is actually a military and martial arts instructor. He teaches like the elite military dudes how to fight with knives, like that's his job. And so in playing, in- in meeting him and spending time with him, I trained with him a bunch, and he had this whole philosophy about kill your clone. So every day you meet the clone of yourself from 24 hours in the past, and you have to fight to the death. And if you've improved yourself by 1/1000 of a percent that day, you will kill your clone. So the point is to kill your clone every day. So this shirt is, uh, saying that today I- I did that, I killed my clone.

Chris Williamson 1:52 That's so sick, man. I'm gassed.

Ethan Suplee 1:54 (laughs) It hurt. It hurt

Chris Williamson 1:55 It hurt for today's episode, dude. I've just finished training. I nearly did this podcast without shorts on. I keep on nearly forgetting to put shorts on but I put shorts on, we're here, I've got shorts on. Um, is- what's that guy's name? What's the...

Ethan Suplee 2:09 Tom Kier. Tom Kier is the real-life guy that I p- he's- the character that I played was based on Tom Kier. Um, if you ever saw a movie called The Hunted with Tommy Lee Jones and Benicio Del Toro, it's about special forces guys who are good with knives. He like created all of that knife work. He's a, he's a true badass dude.

Chris Williamson 2:31 Fuck, yeah. So is it like Krav Maga type stuff or even more...

Ethan Suplee 2:34 I think it's even s- a step in- in the more hardcore from Krav Maga.

Chris Williamson 2:39 When you get more hardcore than Israeli military.

Ethan Suplee 2:43 You're hard- yeah, you're gnarly.

Chris Williamson 2:43 That is some serious-

Ethan Suplee 2:46 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 2:46 ... serious shit. So do you think that's the pivot now for your acting direction, the sort of big, badass, kinda gruff in- it's- it's always in the action film, it's the dude that's got two 50-cal machine guns in each hand, you know, the belts of- of ammunition. Do you reckon that's kinda the pivot direction?

Ethan Suplee 3:06 This is- this is all the pivot I want to happen. Who knows if it actually happens? But yes, I'm in. Give me two 50-cals and belt-fed machine guns and all of that, and I'm fucking in. Are we allowed to say fucking?

Chris Williamson 3:19 You can say fucking as much as you want, my friend. Yeah, that would be, because I mean you're not going to do sweet young uncle very well anymore.

Ethan Suplee 3:28 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 3:28 I don't think you can do that.

Ethan Suplee 3:30 Yeah. I hope not.

Chris Williamson 3:32 You know?

Ethan Suplee 3:32 I don't wanna do it. I've done it quite a bit.

Chris Williamson 3:35 Yeah, you know, like you can't just play the best frie- 'cause he's- who's that guy? Like, oh, it's just- that's just like Uncle Bob in the corner. It's like, hmm, Uncle Bob looks like he wants to kill someone.

Ethan Suplee 3:46 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 3:46 (laughs)

Ethan Suplee 3:47 It's what- it's such a weird thing be- too because with acting, I feel like I, uh, I can play that kind of innocent, sweet, kind of dumb buddy or brother very well. And I've done- I've done it a lot. But like as a little kid, I never, uh, physically matched this, but I loved action movies and- and shoot-'em-ups and stuff, you know? So my dream would be for sure to do something like that. Uh, I've- I've not gotten to do it, but I would love to.

Chris Williamson 4:16 Bro, it's happening. It's happening so hard. And I'm gonna be there. Me and Michael Malice are gonna be there with a huge, huge tub of popcorn. Well, Michael won't 'cause he's still counting calories.

Ethan Suplee 4:26 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 4:26 But, um, I'll be there with a huge tub of popcorn. Mike will be there with a diet drink, uh, it might be refeed day, you never know.

Ethan Suplee 4:33 Right. And then he'll have bubble gum-flavored ice cream.

Chris Williamson 4:36 (sighs) That guy, man.

Ethan Suplee 4:38 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 4:38 Do you see that he's doing... What was it he told me? He's doing a Creme Egg Challenge. Did he tell you about this?

Ethan Suplee 4:43 Well, I- I don't know. I don't know about this.

Chris Williamson 4:45 E- every week I get a message on Signal from him that's like, "Dude, am I one of your countrymen yet?" And he's ordered every different type of British jam that he can get. Did you see his cereal?

Ethan Suplee 4:55 (laughs) Yes.

Chris Williamson 4:55 The thing when he was doing all that different cereal?

Ethan Suplee 4:57 Yes.

Chris Williamson 4:58 What on earth? Malice, I know that you're listening, man. Like I love you, but I- I get worried because someone- someday someone's gonna send you something in the post which is 45-year-old, uh, like confectioneries or something, and it's gonna kill you, and I don't want that to happen.

Ethan Suplee 5:14 I don't want it to happen either.

Chris Williamson 5:16 (laughs)

Ethan Suplee 5:16 But goddamn, he's gonna have fun.

Chris Williamson 5:19 He's gonna go out in style, man.

Ethan Suplee 5:21 I so glad to hear he's gonna have a good time.

Chris Williamson 5:21 Yeah, he's eating a- a- a fossilized chili from the 5,000 years ago or whatever it is that he's managed to find on eBay.

Ethan Suplee 5:29 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 5:29 The guy is a savage. Um, so look, man.

Ethan Suplee 5:31 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 5:31 What are you- I- I wanna know about sort of your fitness journey, um, starting at when you were at your heaviest and taking you 'til now.

Ethan Suplee 5:39 Right. My fitness journey has been a bit of a roller coaster. Um, I- I mean if we go back to like five years old, at five years old, I think if you looked at me today, I would not look like an overweight five-year-old. I had chubby cheeks. I definitely had a- a bit of excess fat, but I wasn't fat.I went to visit my grandparents and they were like, "Holy fuck. This kid's lost, this, k- his parents are doing nothing for him. We're putting him on a diet." And so I kind of developed this, um, h- way of eating very early on, which was, I, I would sneak food because at five, food was restricted, and if I wanted a second helping of food, I'd have to eat it in the kitchen very quickly before anybody could see. And so then I just kept getting put on diets throughout my life, but I was very good at cheating at diets 'cause I didn't want to be on a diet. It was kind of like this authoritarian thing of like, "You're on this diet now." Yeah. And my mom, bless her heart, was always very excited when the nutritionist or whoever it was would say like, "Oh, you understand, it's not that he eats too much, it's that he's eating this food that is poisoning him. If he could just handle candida, he wouldn't be fat anymore." Or I remember as a kid, there was a, a period, I don't even know what the diet was called, but where it was like, white foods are bad. As long as he doesn't eat anything white.

Chris Williamson 7:12 (laughs)

Ethan Suplee 7:12 And it was literally like, white potatoes are bad, and white cabbage is bad. Red cabbage is fine. You know?

Chris Williamson 7:19 Oh, my god.

Ethan Suplee 7:19 Like apples are bad. Oh, no, no, not apples. Green apples are bad. Mayonnaise is bad. Cottage cheese. Anyway, and then there was a subsequently years later, a red phase where it was like, anything red is bad. White cabbage is good, red cabbage is bad. Anyway, fucking chaos, right? And so by the time I became kind of autonomous and started working as an actor and had money, I was like, the greatest thing you can do is hit a fast food drive-through at 2:00 in the morning. I didn't really like eating in front of people. And so at that point, my weight skyrocketed. Um, by, uh, 2000, I was 536 pounds. Now I say 536 pounds because I'm fairly sure I was heavier than that at some point. But, um, I, I had weighed myself once 'cause that, you can't, you don't have a scale that can tell you that weight at your house.

Chris Williamson 8:19 Mm-hmm.

Ethan Suplee 8:19 So I went to a place that had a special scale, weighed myself, left, and was like, "Well, fuck it. I mean, that's the number. I, what do I do?" And I gained weight from there too.

Chris Williamson 8:31 Jesus.

Ethan Suplee 8:31 So I have no idea what I actually got to.

Chris Williamson 8:33 You were, um, 200 pounds at 10 years old, right?

Ethan Suplee 8:36 Yeah, 10 years old I was 200 pounds, and that's when my parents started putting me on diets. Prior to that, my grandparents had put me on diets, but after 10, my parent, my, my father was like, "Enough of this. We're gonna start-"

Chris Williamson 8:51 What, what age were you at, uh, 536?

Ethan Suplee 8:55 536? Probably 21. Um, and not long after that, I met a girl. The girl never brought up my weight once. She was hot, and I had been with girls that I didn't really care about before that, that you meet at a nightclub and, you know, I wasn't... I never thought about future with girls. And so suddenly I'm with this girl and, and, and I'm starting to think about like, wanting to have a long-term relationship with her. And, uh, and I realized that the things that she enjoyed doing, um, I wasn't necessarily cut out to do. Uh, she liked hiking and spending days at the beach and going on trips to Europe and walking around all day, and I was like, "No. Europe, you sit at a cafe and you just eat, and then you, you know, you have a car hired to take you somewhere else."

Chris Williamson 9:55 (laughs)

Ethan Suplee 9:55 Like, you don't walk around. Uh, you know, I'd never taken public transportation and she's like, telling me about how great the train systems in London and Paris are, and I'm like, "Uh, yeah. That, I'm not, I'm just not gonna do that." So I started to think about weight loss and that's the first time I decided that I needed to lose weight. It was about maintaining this relationship with the girl. And I, I had the most bizarre situation where I had to ask her for help, and in asking her for help, I was scared because she had never brought it up, and it was almost like, "I have a secret. I have to tell you this secret."

Chris Williamson 10:34 Like, she might not know. (laughs)

Ethan Suplee 10:35 She might not know that I'm overweight and I need to lose weight, right?

Chris Williamson 10:39 (laughs)

Ethan Suplee 10:39 I'm 500 plus pounds, and I really had this like, fear of like, "If I tell her that I'm overweight, she'll know. How will she ever be able to look at me the same way again?"

Chris Williamson 10:51 Yeah. (laughs)

Ethan Suplee 10:51 "I don't wanna ruin this."

Chris Williamson 10:53 Yeah.

Ethan Suplee 10:53 Um, and I finally broke down and said like, "I don't know what to do. This is crazy. I gotta let you in on this secret. I'm 500 pounds."

Chris Williamson 11:02 (laughs)

Ethan Suplee 11:03 "Uh, I'm, I'm, I have some excess weight. Could you help me take it off?" And she was like, "Oh, yeah, we can do that. No problem. Here's this diet." Like, "Let's just do something extreme. Here's this... I've, I'll figure it all out. You don't think about anything," and like, found this diet, which was, um, a, a liquid diet of like, protein shakes and fucking handfuls of supplements, vitamins and, and fiber and shit like that, and a ton of water. No, no solid food. Which by the time I got through that, I lost 80 pounds in two months, and that 80 pounds plus the next 20 like, so that 100 pounds?

Chris Williamson 11:46 That's massive.

Ethan Suplee 11:46 I never gained weight back into that. That was weight that I kept off since 2000.

Chris Williamson 11:51 Just chopped off the top, the very top of that. Yeah.

Ethan Suplee 11:54 Boom. I never... Now w- when you get down into like, under 400 pounds, I've been back and forth a couple of times. Um-... and that was really a lot of trying to figure out what diet I was gonna do. Like, you know, I'm a sober person, my wife is not, and, uh, I'm not, like, some kind of, like, an abstinent, abstinence fiend or anything like that. It-

Chris Williamson 12:19 Have you, have you always been sober?

Ethan Suplee 12:21 No. I've been to rehab a couple of times, and so sobriety is something I need to do rather than want to do. I have no, uh... it's not something I necessarily enjoy, other than the fact that I know it allows me to have the life I have. Um, but like, when I look at, uh, my addictive nature with food, having given up drugs and alcohol, there is something kind of... uh, I don't wanna say easy because I don't wanna disrespect anybody who has tr- trouble with that, but the idea that you just are either doing something or not doing something is... that level of responsibility seems easy to me. You cannot do that with food. Food, like it or not, if you have trouble with it, there is gonna be some situation where you have to eat or you die.

Chris Williamson 13:11 Exposed to food, yeah, exactly.

Ethan Suplee 13:14 Yeah. Um, so it's been a, a long, hard journey figuring that out. I started, um... I lost weight, I then did a job for a number of years called My Name Is Earl, I gained weight back. I, after that, I started, became obsessed with cycling. I lost a shitload of weight. I got actually thin, um, was not comfortable with that, decided to lift weights and put muscle on. Did that, was loving that, then was like, "I work better as a fat guy," so continued to go to the gym, but ate everything in sight and got really big, close to 400 pounds again.

Chris Williamson 13:53 I bet you were strong at that point though.

Ethan Suplee 13:55 Yeah, I was lifting weights every day, but I wasn't lifting weights in the way I do now. I just went to the gym and picked up whatever heavy, like, you know, how heavy can I go on the bench press? Oh, I can do 405? Like, I'm just gonna do 405 then. That's what I'll do. And I wasn't even, like, really doing... I just lifted until I couldn't lift it anymore and then that's, done with that, you know? It wasn't the smartest, like I w- it took me a long time to like, get smart about all of this.

Ethan Suplee 14:25 Um, I got really big again, but also m- much more muscular. And then, uh, I was doing that show I mentioned to you with Hugh Laurie called Chance, um, and I, I was really big, very strong. And for the second season, I was like, "What would this be like if I took a little bit of the fat off, but kept the muscle?" So I did that the second season. I'm in better health and better shape. And then after that show ended, we did two years of that show, I was like, "I wanna lose weight but still be a big guy 'cause I'm comfortable, more comfortable being kind of big." And for, for a year, I did keto, trying to maintain muscle mass, and I would notice through, I would get DEXA scans and notice that like, 30 to 40% of the weight I was losing was lean tissue and I was getting smaller, but my muscle wasn't staying as big. I was losing strength, which was a bummer. So I just got really scientific about it, increased my protein, which in doing that, you can't... it kind of defeats keto.

Chris Williamson 15:35 Is that right? Does enough protein knock you out with ketosis?

Ethan Suplee 15:38 Yeah, um, I, I, I eat about 280 grams of protein a day, and the amount of fat that I'd have to eat in order to not have any of the protein go through, um, glucogenesis in the liver w- w- would just be astronomically high and you wouldn't be in a deficit, a caloric deficit. And so y- you know, yes.

Chris Williamson 16:04 So it's, it's very difficult then to use ketosis to lose weight whilst maintaining muscle-

Ethan Suplee 16:13 (laughs) .

Chris Williamson 16:13 ... because the requirement that you have on your fat is proportional to the protein, and if you drop your protein down so much, inevitably your muscles are going to atrophy.

Ethan Suplee 16:22 I th- uh, listen, if you tried to do keto, I'm sure there's a version of you doing it and not damaging your muscles. You could probably do that. But when you're looking at losing 100 pounds of fat, which is roughly what I wanted to lose, that's just such a long period of time of weight loss that it is gonna be hard to maintain all that muscle mass. So I, I get into these things where people are like, "You're dead wrong about keto." And I'm like, "Look, I'm not knocking keto. Keto, I fucking lost a ton of weight, and keto might be perfectly fine for a person who's fit or who wants to lose a couple pounds and maintain all their muscle. That might work." But when you're talking about doing it for years to lose huge amounts of weight, you're gonna sacrifice lean tissue. You just are-

Chris Williamson 17:19 Mm-hmm.

Ethan Suplee 17:20 ... um, without enough protein. And if you raise your protein high enough, (laughs) you're not gonna be in ketosis.

Chris Williamson 17:26 You gotta have your fat to then keep you to not be knocked out ketosis, which then puts you over the deficit. Okay, yeah.

Ethan Suplee 17:32 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 17:32 It's, uh, it's very, I haven't, it's something I haven't done. I remember messing around with it when it became cool, like maybe s- sort of eight years ago and, uh, I have such low fat in my diet all the time, just naturally I don't tend to eat fatty foods, and it, it really didn't agree with me. I don't operate tremendously well, uh, so, but I totally get it as well. Mikhaila Peterson, I was recently on her podcast, and that girl eats beef, salt and water.

Ethan Suplee 17:58 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 17:59 She's got the, the maddest diet on the planet and um, a lot of the people that follow her stuff are either on beef, salt and water or some version of keto is kind of like the overarching theme of that-... and a-

Ethan Suplee 18:12 I would just, uh, my, I, listen, I'm not even against it, I'm not advocating against it. I'm just saying, I would be willing to bet she came to it at a place where it wasn't like, "I need to lose 100 pounds of fat-"

Chris Williamson 18:25 Yeah.

Ethan Suplee 18:26 "... and maintain my level of fitness." So, I just think it's like w- uh, you know, if you're going to be doing something that puts you in a deficit for years, you gotta look at what you're, uh, focusing on.

Chris Williamson 18:41 Mm.

Ethan Suplee 18:41 That's all. And-

Chris Williamson 18:42 So what did you, what did you settle on? After all of that, playing around with all different diets, what, what did you settle on to keep the weight loss sustainable?

Ethan Suplee 18:50 Low fat, high protein, moderate carbs.

Chris Williamson 18:53 What were your macros or your cals at, around about?

Ethan Suplee 18:56 Uh, I mean, for maintenance, I'm like 3500 to 4000 calories a day. For maintenance. Uh, my deficit is around 2500, and the first thing I do is go, like, "How do I get 260 grams of protein? 260 to 280 grams of protein today." And then the next thing that I work out is carbohydrates. And it changes, you know, almost month to month it's gonna be different, a little bit. And depending on, you know, if it's my day off, I'll lessen my carbs and increase my fats a little bit. But fat is definitely the, the, the guy getting short-changed. And I will sometimes go so low-fat that I gotta take a handful of omega-3s just to hit my fat markers.

Chris Williamson 19:45 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Ethan Suplee 19:47 You know?

Chris Williamson 19:47 I th- I feel like I'm, so I have double cream and coffee on a morning, in a desperate attempt to remember to get some fats in, 'cause if I don't, I'll be so far under and so I think-

Ethan Suplee 19:56 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 19:57 ... similar to you. So I mean, that, uh, w- without getting sort of super technical into it, A, if three and a half to 4000 cals was maintenance for you, and your deficit was 2500, that's a fairly aggressive-

Ethan Suplee 20:12 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 20:12 ... cut. That's a pound and a half to two pounds a week.

Ethan Suplee 20:17 It's what I'm trying to do, on a cut, yeah. I'm trying to hit, like, 1% of my weight per week.

Chris Williamson 20:23 Fuck, man. What did you feel like, mentally, cognition? 'Cause you've gotta perform. You gotta go out there, you gotta do a thing. You know, I can, as long as I've not got a podcast to do, I can sit behind the laptop, do the emails, send a message, r- read some books, prepare for a guest, do whatever I need to do. Like, you've got to be A game, biggest blockbusters, up against like Hugh Laurie, Leonardo DiCaprio. Like, they're bringing the fucking fire, you know? Like, you can't be rolling in going, "Well, I'd love to be at a ten out of ten, guys. But actually, I'm in this 1000 calorie deficit, so I've only got sort of seven in, out of ten in the, in the tank."

Ethan Suplee 21:02 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 21:02 What were you doing there?

Ethan Suplee 21:04 I- I've done every version of diet while working, and I've even done, like, you know, the fucking really stupid diets that's like everybody eat 600 calories a day for two months. And, you know, you're gonna be lightheaded every time you stand up, you're gonna be constantly cold, like, you're not gonna have any energy at all. And it's not, it's not really worth it, trying to do something like that at work, for me. So, so now, when I go to work, if I'm doing intense 15, 16 hour days, I try to do maintenance. I- I do maintenance calories. Um, and I always take my own food. I don't mess around with the, the catering or craft services at all, because y- there's just no telling what's in any of that stuff. And, and if it's a packaged food, I, I try to not eat a lot of pre-packaged food anyway, um, that I haven't packaged for myself. Um, but yeah, it's, it's, it's rough doing a, a, an extreme diet while trying to work. It's, it's rough doing a diet and tr- and going to the gym, and having kids, and, like, having a house that I have to participate in also, you know. But, I've found that, um, the difference between the diet I'm on now and the diets I've done in the past w- were mainly, 'cause when I, when I was doing keto for years, the idea that I had was that it was just carbohydrates. And by the way, it took a couple years to get to the idea that it was all carbohydrates, 'cause leading up to that it was just gluten. So-

Chris Williamson 22:45 Or white food or red food or-

Ethan Suplee 22:47 ... gl- yeah. And it was this idea that it w- it had nothing to do with me and my personal responsibility, it was this evil food that was poisoning me. And shifting my mind around, because, in fairness, the first three or four days of eating carbohydrates, I gained nine pounds, and was freaking out, like, I, I-

Chris Williamson 23:08 So when you switched from keto to counting calories and macronutrients, added carbs back in, you gained...

Ethan Suplee 23:17 Nine pounds.

Chris Williamson 23:18 Wh-

Ethan Suplee 23:18 In three days.

Chris Williamson 23:19 Which to you must have been-

Ethan Suplee 23:19 And, by the way, I was in a cut. It was a cut, it was, I didn't go from keto to maintenance to a cut. I went from keto to a cut-

Chris Williamson 23:29 Yeah.

Ethan Suplee 23:29 ... and I gained nine pounds in three days.

Chris Williamson 23:30 And all the alarm bells went off, the-

Ethan Suplee 23:33 I just was sitting there, dude, going like, "How long am I gonna do this? Like, am I gonna gain 30 pounds hoping that (laughs) I lose weight?" Like, it was crazy. Uh-

Chris Williamson 23:44 Shit, man.

Ethan Suplee 23:45 Yeah, it was a lot to g- it was a lot to overcome mentally. I shouldn't have been getting on the scale every day at that point. I should've gone, like, "Gimme, I'll, do it in a week I'll get on the scale and see what happens." 'Cause-

Chris Williamson 23:55 But again, like, this is the benefit of hindsight. You know?

Ethan Suplee 23:59 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 23:59 There is someone listening right now who's on a long-term, multi-month, multi-year cut, who's got a lot of weight to lose, and they're thinking, "I might try and g- go to counting calories and macronutient profile instead of doing keto," and they're gonna have what happened to you, but not stick it out.

Ethan Suplee 24:20 Yeah.Yeah, I mean-

Chris Williamson 24:22 So by telling them that, you've, you know, that is, that is golden information. But you have to earn it-

Ethan Suplee 24:27 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 24:27 ... in the, the fire that is the crucible of personal experience, right?

Ethan Suplee 24:31 Yeah. And, and, you, it's, it becomes such a mind fuck, because depending on what diet book you've read or what your group of friends are doing, you, you become religious about these ideas about food. And, and, I've event- you know, there's a movement in LA ab- about lectins, which is just maybe a broader word for nightshades, I guess. I, you know, I remember as a kid hearing about nightshades being bad, and now it's lectins. Fuckin' ta- take a look at what lectins are in. Lectins are in everything. You can't find a food that, uh, you know, a vegetable that doesn't have lectins in it. And so I'm going like, "What are you guys talking about? Now plants are toxic? Now vegetables are toxic?" Like, this is crazy. But if it's working for you, I say good for you. I just don't ... I, I think, like, the, the trouble I have with it is going, it's this type of food. It has nothing to do with me, it has nothing to do with my habits and behavior. And then when I tried to change it up, three days of weight gain, I was going like, "Whoa, this is insane. Eh, eh, this clearly doesn't work."

Chris Williamson 25:42 And it's the evil food narrative kinda comes back in again.

Ethan Suplee 25:45 Yeah. I made it through those three days. Day four, I lost two pounds. So I'm still seven pounds up in my cut, and, uh, and I just was like, "I gotta try something different." Because what I'm doing, I'm losing 40% lean tissue every two months when I get my Dexa scan. And, and, I, that's all ... I just didn't wanna do that, you know? Over the course of, uh, 100 pounds, that's 40 pounds of muscle that I've lost. Um-

Chris Williamson 26:16 Hard-earned muscle.

Ethan Suplee 26:17 Hard-earned. I mean, I mean, listen, dude. I went from 200 ... just about 200 pounds to just about 400 pounds in the gym lifting weights every day. I've put on a shitload of muscle in that, in those years of lifting weights and eating everything in sight. And I had fucking giant traps, and my thought was, "What would it be like if I just took the muscle off? I'll be a fucking bodybuilder." I was so excited. And then I went to keto, and like, I, I, I probably gave up 30 pounds of muscle. And I ... Listen, I don't know that I need 30 pounds of muscle from where I am now. I have, uh, 230 pounds of lean tissue right now. So 250 pounds, that is, like, you're getting near to, like, bodybuilder size. Eh, I mean, you're ... I'm, I'm probably technically bodybuilder size now. Once I get to, like, 7% body fat, hopefully I'll, I'll look (laughs) more like a bodybuilder. But, like, uh, I do have that thing of, like, what is my goal? And I wanna do the thing that gets me to my goal th- the best. I don't wanna do a thing because I have this, uh, preconception that's not necessarily scientifically sound that I can't eat gluten or I can't eat-

Chris Williamson 27:40 (laughs)

Ethan Suplee 27:40 ... uh, fuckin' bell peppers or whatever it is, you know what I mean?

Chris Williamson 27:43 No red foods, no orange foods.

Ethan Suplee 27:45 Ee, ee, yeah.

Chris Williamson 27:45 Yeah.

Ethan Suplee 27:45 That's just ... I think that's ... it becomes disingenuous. And so now, I can basically eat whatever I want. Um, and the ... uh, I will say, to go from keto, which became very easy for me. Chicken, eh, I, and, like, there's c- couple different modes of keto. If I'm doing a fuckin' I don't give a fuck keto, I'm eating hot dogs without the buns and dipping 'em in nacho cheese sauce, right? Which today, I'm going like, "How the hell did I do that?" That's, to me, seems poisonous now. And if I was doing a very strict version of keto, it would be chicken thighs and broccoli covered in olive oil. And I learned eventually that even doing that mindlessly, I wasn't losing weight. So I'd have to do that in moderation to really lose weight. And the weight I was losing was also lean tissue. Um, so to-

Chris Williamson 28:42 So l-

Ethan Suplee 28:42 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 28:42 ... let's, let's take it, like, high level, then. So you can go back to the year 2000, you're 536, and you can send a nice big email drafting out a diet plan and a training regime. What do you send to yourself?

Ethan Suplee 29:00 Str- oddly, I think the thing my wife found me, who was my girlfriend at the time, uh, the liquid diet. I think at 536, that's perfect. I think that y- because there's something about my level of responsibility, where I'm so overwhelmed by food at that point that the taking it down to, like, just be responsible for drinking this shake three times a day and eating this handful of fiber or whatever the hell the vitamins were. Um, that's it. That's all you have to do. Don't think about counting calories. Don't think about, eh, you know, removing, you know, omega-6s and increasing omega-3s. Like, don't think about that. Just be responsible for this. And then the, the problem I had was once ... 'cause you can't really do that forever. That's not a way to live. Um, once you kind of get through that and you have this sense of responsibility over this thing, it's the increasing it. This is what I think about with carnivore folk, and I'm stoked that carnivore works for people too. But when I look at carnivore, I go like, "That's a s- that's an extreme reduction." Be responsible for, uh, beef, salt, and water.

Chris Williamson 30:17 (laughs)

Ethan Suplee 30:17 Fine. But eventually, I think you wanna b-... build out on that. So once you kind of get your feet stable and you go, "Okay. This isn't hurting me, I'm not allergic to any of these things, I'm not having an adverse effect, let's dip our toes into vegetables and see how do we feel when we eat red peppers and how do we feel when we eat cucumbers." And if you don't have a bad reaction, you know that those are safe foods and you've now built into your arsenal of things you can be responsible for, and, you know, let's see what happens if we have a bowl of rice and then work out an hour later. How do we feel in the gym? You know what I mean? I think there's levels to all these things. I- I, again, I'm a relativist. So if it works for you-

Chris Williamson 31:05 Mm-hmm.

Ethan Suplee 31:05 ... then fucking keep doing it.

Chris Williamson 31:06 At the end of the day, the only thing that we're bothered about is the results, right? So, okay, so you're saying there might be some people listening, in fact I'm absolutely certain that there will be some people that are like, "I have a lot of weight to lose." A potential good starting point would be this liquid diet. What was the, what was the shakes and then where would you move yourself onto there, and when?

Ethan Suplee 31:26 I- I think if you have hundreds of pounds to lose, that, uh, that doing something radical and extreme like that isn't such a bad thing. First of all, you have so much stored energy that, um, y- you're not in risk of damaging yourself by going extremely low calorie, right? And also, if the way you and I diet today, if you map it out, you go, like, if you have hundreds of pounds to lose and you're losing them very, very slowly, it's gonna take years and years and years which, I think you do have to confront the fact that if you've gotten to the place of hundreds of pounds of excess stored energy, that you are gonna be looking at something that is a- a lifelong alteration of eating habits. That's fine, but you wanna kind of get t- you wanna get to goals as quickly as possible because you wanna build that foundation that keeps you going, I think. So doing something radical and extreme to start it I have no problem with, and I would advocate to do that again. It's figuring out the usefulness and workability of the next diet when you do start eating again, and the- the problem I kept running into was this kind of belief system that had to go along with any diet I was doing. So it was, you know, gluten is bad and that's the trigger or that's the thing that's causing me to store excess fat so I'm gonna get rid of that. And I- I would just say, like, get rid of those ideas and if you don't like gluten or you have an adverse effect from gluten that is objective, fine, cut gluten out. There's a diet for you. If you don't like fat or you h- have trouble digesting fat or you don't feel good after you eat it, there's a diet for you. If you like fat, there's a diet for you.

Chris Williamson 33:25 Mm-hmm.

Ethan Suplee 33:25 But I think it's more important to be aware of what you're actually experiencing versus, you know, somebody selling you on lectins are bad or gluten is bad or, you know, GMOs are bad, or pick your poison. I think there's a- a school of thought that, uh, that would point a finger at any kind of food group, you know, from vegans to carnivores.

Chris Williamson 33:47 Okay.

Ethan Suplee 33:47 There's, that spectrum is full of-

Chris Williamson 33:50 So a- avoid the ideology.

Ethan Suplee 33:52 I think so.

Chris Williamson 33:52 Avoid the church of gluten-free or the church of keto or the church of carnivore or the church of whatever it might be, and focus instead on energy balance; what's going in, what's going out, am I losing weight, am I checking the scales regularly, am I tracking my food. Um, what's your streak on MyFitnessPal? What's your longest streak?

Ethan Suplee 34:10 Oh, man. I, that- that was actually what I used at the beginning because I- I was writing everything down and there was so much math that I- I would write, I would, like, double check my math every day and sometimes it would be wrong and I'd then w- be like-

Chris Williamson 34:27 Lazy shit.

Ethan Suplee 34:27 ... completely fucked. Um, I think I had, like, three or four months of check-ins on MyFitnessPal at one point, which was great.

Chris Williamson 34:35 Yeah. That's a serious one.

Ethan Suplee 34:36 And I think it does become, you know, in a cut certainly, I write everything down every day still just to make sure. But, like, on maintenance, I- I'm not even really looking. I've learned over the past year and a half or so what that- what that looks like, what it feels like, um. And- and that's the other thing I'd say to anybody who's- who's thinking about going to calories and macros, it is an adjustment. Figuring all this stuff out is an adjustment, but kind of, you kind of get the hang of it real quick. I would also suggest anybody who's doing keto to spend a week writing down their calories. I bet they'd be surprised at how many calories are in a tablespoon of olive oil, you know, and what- what kind of energy that's providing them with.

Chris Williamson 35:28 Dude, that coffee that I talked about in the morning which is like a shot of double cream in a coffee is like 7% of my daily calories-

Ethan Suplee 35:39 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 35:39 ... and it's the size of a couple of cubes of sugar. But i- it's- it's mad. So I wanted to ... Oh, f- actually, before I do that, where are you at now? What's weight and body fat at now? Have you got an idea?

Ethan Suplee 35:51 Yeah. 260, 13% body fat.

Chris Williamson 35:54 Bro.

Ethan Suplee 35:55 Which is good. And this is, by the way, uh, with Calipers, I'm at 9%. This is a DEXA scan which I always like to talk about because, um, I just think it's a more hardcore test.

Chris Williamson 36:11 Is there any residual, um, visceral fat? Is there any sort of long-term, uh, organ- organ sort of fat which is taking more time to get off? Because I was learning today about, um, brown- brown adipose t- is it brown adipose tissue and white adipose tissue?

Ethan Suplee 36:32 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 36:32 I was literally reading about that this morning so that I could, I could drop that knowledge bomb for you right there. (laughs)

Ethan Suplee 36:36 Yeah, that, that is, that is an amazing knowledge bomb. Yes, my adipose tissue, uh, I don't know that they're telling me whether it's brown or white in the Dexa scan, but I do know that I am on the high end there. But we're talking not about a huge amount in, i- i- in comparison. Like the adipose tissue, I think I'm at like four pounds or th- three something, which to me I go like, "That's nothing." But if you think about what it is, it's this, uh, very, very thin sheet of fat that's surrounding all your organs. So I don't know if that's just the last place your body takes fat from that I've built it up-

Chris Williamson 37:24 That's when you know, man.

Ethan Suplee 37:25 ... so big.

Chris Williamson 37:25 That's when you know you're lean, when you're pancreas lean. When you can see, when you can see it secreting hormones, that's when you know that you've nailed it.

Ethan Suplee 37:33 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 37:33 But dude, that's, that's sick. And the next goal is sub 10%?

Ethan Suplee 37:38 Sub 10% is the next goal. This cut will take me to sub 10%, the cut I'm doing now.

Chris Williamson 37:42 Fuck, man. That's sick.

Ethan Suplee 37:44 Yeah, which I'm stoked about. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 37:45 I'll say. And then, mass phase.

Ethan Suplee 37:49 Then mass phase, which I haven't done. I mean, the, the mass phase I did was completely mindless, and it was 100 plus pounds of massing, um, which is so upsetting because-

Chris Williamson 38:03 (laughs)

Ethan Suplee 38:04 ... (laughs) you know? I just didn't do it right at all. It was just-

Chris Williamson 38:06 But you've gotta... The thing about anyone that does a bulk, and this is even the hardest of hard gain teenagers at 17 years old taking mutant mass, like you have to lose that at some point.

Ethan Suplee 38:18 Yeah. Yeah. But I wasn't even thinking in those terms. I was just thinking, "I, I wanna put on weight because for work, I think work will like me more bigger."

Chris Williamson 38:29 Mm.

Ethan Suplee 38:29 "But I like lifting weights, I've go- I like exercising, so I'm just gonna do both." I wasn't thinking in those terms at all. Like, the terms I'm thinking in now are, "Can I put on a pound and a half of muscle-"

Chris Williamson 38:43 Yeah.

Ethan Suplee 38:43 "... and then lose the 10 pounds of fat that come with that?"

Chris Williamson 38:47 Mm.

Ethan Suplee 38:47 Like, th- you know, I'm thinking about it scientifically. It will-

Chris Williamson 38:50 Bro, you're gonna... You are going to absolutely love a well-adjusted mass phase with some good output, your training is gonna feel better, libido's gonna be better, everything's going to improve. And I've been telling Malice this over and over again, man. Like, it was me that told him on this podcast, "Ask your coach about a refeed day, because I feel like you might be pushing the deficit a little bit hard, um, you're struggling with your training output." And the red pill that he's gonna get fed, and that I feel that you're kind of on the, on the way to, to eating as well, is that when you start to do that, when you start to build those calories back up, it becomes like you, you stay the same condition and it starts to fill out and you're like, "This is sick."

Ethan Suplee 39:38 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 39:38 "My lifts are going up, I feel great, I'm sleeping well, I'm full all the time." Like, it's just... It, it is awesome, man. So I'm super... I'm stoked to see what happens-

Ethan Suplee 39:48 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 39:48 ... when you start to do that.

Ethan Suplee 39:50 I can't wait. I will say, just on maintenance, 'cause I- I've been doing maintenance for about three months now. My whole quarantine has been maintenance until June 1st, I started my cut. I, I felt physically incredible. Like, I was... It's been so awful not to be able to go to a gym-

Chris Williamson 40:11 Yeah.

Ethan Suplee 40:11 ... because I'm really strong and have all this energy, and like, it's a little bittersweet that I'm starting this cut and gyms will open eventually soon and I'll be on a cut, you know? But-

Chris Williamson 40:24 Yeah. "I was strong two months ago, I swear." (laughs)

Ethan Suplee 40:26 Yeah, yeah. I- i- in my basement, you know?

Chris Williamson 40:29 Yeah. (laughs)

Ethan Suplee 40:29 Lifting my kettlebell, I was an animal.

Chris Williamson 40:31 Yeah, honestly, I promise. Um, so I wanted to bring up something that I think is quite timely, which is the difference in the public response to your transformation and the public's response to Adele's transformation.

Ethan Suplee 40:45 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 40:45 What are your thoughts on that?

Ethan Suplee 40:47 Um, I want to back up for one minute to say that it, it, it, it, it is stark from what I've looked at in the news, and even comments I've gotten on social media, and even conversations I've had in life. Um, and it's kind of heartbreaking that I've gotten only seemingly only accolades. You know, every, for every 200 comments on social media, there's a guy going, "You're still fat," and I'm like, "Okay, I can't win with you."

Chris Williamson 41:19 "You're a dick."

Ethan Suplee 41:20 Yeah. Nothing I will ever do will be good for you, so I'm... You're not my guy. Um, and to s- hear anybody say anything... Look, I, I look at pictures of Adele at any point, and I think she's a pretty girl, an attractive girl. But I see the most recent... I think there's only one picture I've seen of her recently where she's like, she is ecstatic and she is glowing and she is doing a "Look at me" picture, right? And I'm like, "She's not nearly as happy in these other pictures." She's winning awards and she's fucking, uh, uh, hot, she's dope singer, like all this, and she looks clearly happy, but she is not as stoked in those earlier pictures. So I'm... How can you d- be anything but, like, stoked for this girl and, and go, like... I wanna pat her on the back and say, "You did great." The fact that anybody can tie any kind of, um, psychological bullshit that only exists within themselves onto her and say that she's harming people or whatever I think is ridiculous, you know? She's a girl who had a goal, who made her goal, or got as close to it as she possibly could. I have had that. In 2012 or '11-... when I was obsessively bicycling and I got what I felt like was too thin, there were stories that paparazzi would follow me around riding my bike and take pictures of the loose skin on my legs and write, like, "the downside of weight loss" and "look at how terrible he looks." Like, I had ... I experienced that. Um, so I- I- I don't know what it is, uh, I certainly wasn't as confident in myself then, so I kind of would see these stories and go, "Yeah, they're right. I- I don't look great. I'm," uh, they're right. I couldn't argue with them. And this time I was releasing pictures of myself going like, "I fucking ... fuck you if you think I don't look good. I know I look good."

Chris Williamson 43:31 First off, if anyone has the balls to come up to someone who now looks like you and say that, they're a very brave person, you know?

Ethan Suplee 43:38 Yeah. I will crush you if you wanna-

Chris Williamson 43:40 Yeah. Look, I've got-

Ethan Suplee 43:40 ... fucking bark shit to me.

Chris Williamson 43:40 ... two 50 cals, right? I've got one 50 cal in my left hand, another one in my right, and I've got a belt-fed machine gun chain of bullets around my ... don't fuck with me.

Ethan Suplee 43:49 Yeah. Yeah. I- I don't ... I- I think girls have it harder than guys do as far as the aesthetics go, you know? Which is, uh, maybe that's publicly, because I know, like, guys with each other, like, me and my friends are constantly picking each other apart, you know, and talking about bizarre things that really shouldn't matter, but they do matter to us, and, you know, how- how ... does your bicep vein rest at the exact center of your biceps or is it cocked over to one side, and how do we fix that, you know? There's no-

Chris Williamson 44:26 We all know, we all know each other's pain points as well, right? Like-

Ethan Suplee 44:30 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 44:30 ... you know the thing you can say to your buddy, like, everyone's got that one lad friend who's going a little bit thin a little bit early in life.

Ethan Suplee 44:39 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 44:39 And you know you can always be like, "Dude, just put something on your head. Like, the- the shine off the top of it's killing me."

Ethan Suplee 44:43 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 44:43 Or you've got, like, the guy that's a bit short or the guy that's a bit whatever, you know, they do that, and I wonder ... I don't know, man. I- I- I was fascinated watching the Adele situation unfold and the layers upon layers of people saying, "Congratulations, Adele. You've done really well. This is great. You're a role model for people to lose weight." Then there was the reaction that was, um, big girls don't think that just because Adele's lost weight to conform to society's beauty ideals that you need to lose weight as well, you're beautiful too. Then there was the, like, third layer of people that were saying, "How dare these people say that she shouldn't have lost weight. This is ..." And I'm like, this is like Dante's Inferno.

Ethan Suplee 45:27 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 45:27 We're just descending through all the layers of hell here. Like, there are certain things that are unarguable facts. Obesity is an all-cause mortality risk. Fact number one.

Ethan Suplee 45:42 Yeah, full stop.

Chris Williamson 45:43 You- you die sooner, of everything, if you're fat.

Ethan Suplee 45:47 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 45:47 So, anybody that says you, singer, in the public limelight, should sacrifice your health, literally sacrifice your life (laughs) , your mortality, your risk of everything, to be a role model for other people to also shorten their lives, that- that sort of blew my mind. But on the flip side of that, uh, when- especially when I contrasted that with your journey, I'm like, "Wow, there is something going on here between is it because of who you are? Is it because of the industry you're in?" I don't think so. Is it because of your gender? I think it is.

Ethan Suplee 46:26 Probably.

Chris Williamson 46:26 I think the v- I think the vast majority of it is that guys have a bigger Overton window, like a- a larger leeway of guys can kind of get real thin, guys can get real fat, and it's kind of just like well you're just still a bloke, you know? There is-

Ethan Suplee 46:42 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 46:42 There is no beauty standard for men. There's like a hotness standard, but you're supposed to have, like, a long hair coming out your nose that you haven't seen f- once in a while, which gentlemen under the age of 30, these random things are going to begin happening to you where you're-

Ethan Suplee 46:58 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 46:58 ... just gonna find, like, an elephant hair in the middle of your forehead and ... time's a cruel mistress. Um, like, all this stuff's gonna happen. But you're right, like, there's this- there's still sort of this beauty standard for women, even as you get old. Like Dame Judi Dench, you know, being graceful as she gets towards later age and stuff like that. And I don't know what it is, man. I don't know. What I do know is that I was real disheartened by women's response to Adele.

Ethan Suplee 47:27 Yeah, me too.

Chris Williamson 47:29 I-

Ethan Suplee 47:29 And men, but it's some men too who are-

Chris Williamson 47:31 Some men.

Ethan Suplee 47:31 ... you know, male feminists who are like-

Chris Williamson 47:33 But yeah, man, it's so-

Ethan Suplee 47:34 ... just looking to please some group by saying-

Chris Williamson 47:37 They- they were playing-

Ethan Suplee 47:37 ... the right thing.

Chris Williamson 47:38 ... the plee- please the women game, yeah, but, like, girls and guys were supportive of you.

Ethan Suplee 47:44 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 47:44 The vast majority of guys that I saw commenting online were either commenting on women slating Adele or complimenting Adele.

Ethan Suplee 47:52 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 47:53 But then the girls' side of stuff, there wa- I wasn't seeing much vitriol from men. I was seeing a lot of vitriol from girls. And it's like, hang on a second, are we not supposed to be backing our own team here? Like, you need to gas up the people who you want to do well in life. Like, Adele is an amazing role model for girls. Yes, maybe that makes someone who is overweight uncomfortable at the fact that Adele was showing me that you can be both successful and overweight. But now you have someone who is showing you that if you are overweight, you can be in a healthy range. Not because of society's beauty standards. Forget that. Like, I'm not playing that game. I'm playing the game of you will live longer and by the judgment of her photo, and as you identified yourself, this glow that she had, potentially be happier.

Ethan Suplee 48:47 Yeah.I, I think that the, I think there's, there can be a lot of things that are true at the same time. Which, for me, uh, there does become a level of subjectivity to health. So, yes, if we are urging towards long-term survival, not being overweight benefits that. Sure. But at the same time, I go like, "What business is it of mine how people choose to live?" You know? So I'm like, you wanna drink, you wanna do drugs, you wanna drive your car too fast, you wanna do reckless things, you, you wanna get coronavirus, I don't really care. Don't fucking mess with me-

Chris Williamson 49:35 Mm-hmm.

Ethan Suplee 49:35 ... and don't do unsafe things to me, and we're good. Uh, and I know there is some argument that talks about the burden on healthcare with obesity, that it suddenly does become an effect, uh, larger numbers of people, and I go like, "That's too abstract for me." If we're talking about individuals, how an individual chooses to live doesn't really matter to me, and I won't criticize them. Uh, I've noticed, um, uh, quite a bit recently of young girls who, when I was a kid, uh, you would never see an overweight young girl in kind of a midriff shirt showing her belly. You wouldn't see that. And I see it today, and the, the girls seem to have... I, I choose girls because this is tr- I have four daughters (clears throat) and I'm just more aware of their friends and like what girls are doing than I am with young guys. There is a higher sense of confidence, certainly, or a less of a shame around being overweight, which I think is a good thing, because I don't think... I, I think that it's, for me, there was something about, um, being introverted and, uh, most of my f- eating was, which I do consider to be harming myself, self-harm, was being done privately because I was ashamed of it. And I didn't ever have the confidence in myself to try and change that until I met a girl who didn't seem to care about it at all. And then I went like, "Fuck, I'm worthwhile."

Chris Williamson 51:22 (laughs)

Ethan Suplee 51:22 You know? I'm gonna do something about this. And it was kind of this kind of magical, uh, confluence of events that led me to be able to do that. So I wouldn't posit my ideas on Adele, but I, you see it quite a bit in people who become successful and then lose weight. And it's a, you know, it could be part of that like confidence boost. When I r- I have, uh, tens of thousands of private messages on Instagram, which I will never get through all of them, it's just not possible, and every now and again I'll open it and I'll pick one at random. And more commonly than not, it's somebody saying, "You made me less ashamed as a fat person, uh, because you seemed to be very successful and were a very confident fat person," which is not necessarily true. I was not a super confident fat person. "And now that you've lost the weight, you've inspired me to also do that." That's like a double whammy-

Chris Williamson 52:28 Yeah, man.

Ethan Suplee 52:29 ... of fucking don't I feel good about myself. You know?

Chris Williamson 52:32 Dude, that's so amazing.

Ethan Suplee 52:34 It's amazing because I don't think people should be going around ashamed about their bodies. I think that's not necessarily good. And what my ideas are about health for myself, and even if I think about what I think is right for health for other people, I don't wanna put that on them and say that anybody should or should not lose weight. However, I think more often than not, people have the idea of wanting to do something and then feeling incapable of doing it. And so, to say like, "You can do it, it's totally possible, it's some hard work, and here are these points of inspiration which you could draw from," I think is only a good thing. So I, I get very torn in, in many directions with like, of course Adele should be patted on the back. She's fucking did something she wanted to do. She didn't do that because somebody said she was gonna sell more records or because her boyfriend threatened to leave her.

Chris Williamson 53:38 You don't sell more records than Adele.

Ethan Suplee 53:40 No.

Chris Williamson 53:41 She's already sold all the records, yeah.

Ethan Suplee 53:43 There you go. She's, she got to a point in her life where sh- sh- whate- for whatever reason, and who knows what they are, she decided to do this, and she did it, and she's happy about it, and we should only applaud her. We shouldn't build our psychosis into her motives or anything else. I think it's not fair. Um, and I don't know if the men are m- more, uh, give her more affinity for this goal because m- men are genui- generally or statistically more attracted to thin women. I have no idea what it is, but I see the same thing as you. It's very, very disappointing.

Chris Williamson 54:24 It's just layers to it, which you said. And it's not just, this isn't just like three or four things being true at once. This is like 10 things.

Ethan Suplee 54:32 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 54:33 10 different things being true at once. And as we know, people struggle with complexity. It's significantly easier, especially on Twitter, you know, Twitter doesn't have the room, uh, actually does not have the spatial capacity for nuance.

Ethan Suplee 54:48 No.

Chris Williamson 54:48 You have 360 characters, something like that. You can put across like-... Adele is fat, Adele is thin, Adele shouldn't have got thin, Adele should have got ... Like, you know, you, you can only do a small number of these, uh, of these stories that you put across. But man, like, I think if you have got messages like that that said, "Not only have you given me confidence to be successful at the weight I'm at, but then also to make that transition into being someone who is a, a more, uh, normal BMI," wow. Like, that's-

Ethan Suplee 55:21 Tha- that for me is the highest compliment I could've gotten because I don't think people are gonna be super successful at achieving a goal, a physical goal, out of shame. I just don't think that's true. Um, shame could be early impetus or whatever, I don't know exactly, but I don't think long term success will come out of shame. I think you need to have confidence in yourself and your abilities and work more from that position. I don't know that, um, a lot of these girls who are body positive have never thought, "I'd be happier ..." Look, for me, at the end of the day, I just wanna fit in an airline seat.

Chris Williamson 56:05 (laughs)

Ethan Suplee 56:05 I just want to not have to ask for an extension.

Chris Williamson 56:08 Yeah.

Ethan Suplee 56:09 You know? And, and there's no part of me that thinks they need to make airline seats bigger. I think those are built for averages. Now (laughs) as society gets bigger, maybe they will eventually. But like, even today, the averages say that that's the seat, so you don't need to make a bigger seat. I would rather just have a body that fits in the average seat. That's all. You know?

Chris Williamson 56:30 Well, I think there's, there's two, um, approaches when you see that happen. There's one, one person who says, "Good for you," and, and I want to use that, and another person who says, "Oh my God, this identifies my shortcoming. As long as Adele or Ethan remain overweight, that justifies my being overweight."

Ethan Suplee 56:52 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 56:52 If they're able to do it, oh, ball's in my court now.

Ethan Suplee 56:57 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 56:58 You know? Like one less fat person is one less person on team fat.

Ethan Suplee 57:02 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 57:03 And one more person on team ...

Ethan Suplee 57:06 I think unfortunately that we move, uh, we seemingly move into the realm where, um, the group kind of sets the truth and there is less and less individual truth. And so like, uh, if I like, uh, if I like strawberry ice cream, and I think it's the greatest ice cream, nothing you say about strawberry ice cream can alter my feeling about strawberry ice cream.

Chris Williamson 57:42 (laughs)

Ethan Suplee 57:42 So I don't see why anything you say about my feelings about myself-

Chris Williamson 57:48 (laughs)

Ethan Suplee 57:49 ... should be able to alter my feelings about myself, but we've gotten into this space where the group can dictate how people view themselves, and not only that, the group must dictate how people view themselves. And I go like, "You've lost me. I can't play that game."

Chris Williamson 58:08 Mm-hmm.

Ethan Suplee 58:09 I can only know what's true for me. I cannot say what's true for you. I will not say what's true for you. But I know what's true for me. And, uh, you can offer a bunch of evidence that may alter my view of what's true for me. That's possible. And I welcome you to do that because I'm always looking for new ... Fucking if I had just stuck with keto, I wouldn't have the muscle definition that I have now. I just wouldn't. Um, and I'm so happy that I ... I'm really pleased with my body right now. Uh, that could be, sound like the most fucking materialistic, vain thing to say, but I work my ass off and have been for 20 years on having a body I'm happy with, and I'm like just finally going, "Check me out." You know what I mean? Like, it takes the right lighting, but with the right lighting, I've got a six-pack. That's fucking wild, dude. You know what I mean?

Chris Williamson 59:06 Bro, sub 10%, you're gonna have cum gutters, ab veins, the full works.

Ethan Suplee 59:11 I can't wait. I can't wait. Like that is exciting. You know what I mean? Um, and that's just for me and my wife, I guess (laughs) . Although I doubt she's gonna be coming in those days.

Chris Williamson 59:19 Yeah, I, I mean, what, what an investment, what an investment by her as well, you know?

Ethan Suplee 59:24 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 59:24 One little, one little suggestion of a diet, and then before you know it, sort of decade goes by and then you've got like the 21st century bearded incarnation of Rambo-

Ethan Suplee 59:36 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 59:36 ... in bed next to you, you know? Like, fuck this. This e-

Ethan Suplee 59:38 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 59:38 That's easy, man. What a glow up.

Ethan Suplee 59:40 Well, and she, an- and to, to her credit too, I was kind of going along just like a couple years ago after I, I had been going to the gym and gaining weight and all this, and then for the second series of the show, Chance, I decided to lose weight, and I was just really hiking, and at one point, she was like, "You're spending a lot of time out there hiking in the hills behind our house. Um, why don't you work on abs?" She says to me. And I'm like, "Oh, abs. Okay. That's interesting. Okay. I'll do that." And it became this intense focus, you know? Um, but she definitely bounces me around, and it was literally just her going, "I bet you could go to the gym for an hour rather than spending five hours hiking around in the hills." And she was right, ultimately.

Chris Williamson 1:00:29 Dude, wives, unfortunately, they just tend to be. Don't ... I mean, I wouldn't-

Ethan Suplee 1:00:34 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:00:34 I wouldn't know. I'm, I'm hopelessly, hopelessly single, which isn't being helped by either this mustache or by lockdown. But, um, it is what it is. Dude, man, this has been awesome. Uh-

Ethan Suplee 1:00:43 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:00:44 I feel like we coulda gone on for- for ever. So you got your podcast, American Glutton.

Ethan Suplee 1:00:48 American Glutton, which is so much fun. Um, yeah, and as soon as we're allowed to work, we'll see what that is like. Belt fed machine guns.

Chris Williamson 1:00:57 Dude, I'm so ready for that, you know?

Ethan Suplee 1:00:59 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:01:00 So ready for it. Look, um, links to Ethan's socials, his fantastic podcast, American Glutton, which you should absolutely go and check out, will be linked in the show notes below. If you enjoyed this episode, feel free to give me a message. You know where to find me, @chriswillx on all social media. Man, thanks, Ethan. This has been sick.

Ethan Suplee 1:01:17 Thank you. It was a pleasure. Uh, let's do it again sometime.

Chris Williamson 1:01:20 I'm in.

Ethan Suplee 1:01:21 All right.

Narrator 1:01:25 (instrumental music)