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

Ethan Suplee is an actor & a podcaster. Ethan's fitness journey has been a rollercoaster - from 200lbs at 10 years old to 550lbs in his 20's and now 260lbs at 13% bodyfat, all while starring in some of the biggest films in Hollywood including Mr Name Is Earl, The Wolf Of Wall Street & American History X. Expect to learn Ethan's thoughts on the response to Adele's weight loss photo, his advice for anyone looking to lose lots of weight, his lessons from decades of dieting and much more... Sponsor: Get my free Ultimate Life Hacks List to 10x your daily productivity → https://chriswillx.com/lifehacks/ Extra Stuff: Follow Ethan on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/ethansuplee/ Subscribe to American Glutton - https://americanglutton.net/ #ethansuplee #weightloss #adele - Listen to all episodes online. Search "Modern Wisdom" on any Podcast App or click here: iTunes: https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/modern-wisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: modernwisdompodcast@gmail.com

Chris WilliamsonhostEthan Supleeguest
Jun 15, 20201h 1mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 2:46

    “Kill Your Clone”: the 1% better philosophy behind Ethan’s shirt

    1. CW

      So you were, um, 200 pounds at ten years old, right?

    2. ES

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

    3. CW

      (laughs)

    4. ES

      ... 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.

    5. CW

      What's your T-shirt say?

    6. ES

      Uh, it says, "I killed my clone today."

    7. CW

      What's that a reference to?

    8. ES

      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.

    9. CW

      That's so sick, man. I'm gassed.

    10. ES

      (laughs) It hurt. It hurt

    11. CW

      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...

    12. ES

      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.

    13. CW

      Fuck, yeah. So is it like Krav Maga type stuff or even more...

    14. ES

      I think it's even s- a step in- in the more hardcore from Krav Maga.

    15. CW

      When you get more hardcore than Israeli military.

    16. ES

      You're hard- yeah, you're gnarly.

    17. CW

      That is some serious-

    18. ES

      Yeah.

  2. 2:46 – 4:16

    From “sweet buddy” roles to action-badass aspirations

    1. CW

      ... 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?

    2. ES

      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?

    3. CW

      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.

    4. ES

      (laughs)

    5. CW

      I don't think you can do that.

    6. ES

      Yeah. I hope not.

    7. CW

      You know?

    8. ES

      I don't wanna do it. I've done it quite a bit.

    9. CW

      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.

    10. ES

      Yeah.

    11. CW

      (laughs)

    12. ES

      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.

  3. 4:16 – 5:31

    Food oddities, Michael Malice, and a detour into diet-culture absurdity

    1. CW

      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.

    2. ES

      (laughs)

    3. CW

      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.

    4. ES

      Right. And then he'll have bubble gum-flavored ice cream.

    5. CW

      (sighs) That guy, man.

    6. ES

      (laughs)

    7. CW

      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?

    8. ES

      Well, I- I don't know. I don't know about this.

    9. CW

      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?

    10. ES

      (laughs) Yes.

    11. CW

      The thing when he was doing all that different cereal?

    12. ES

      Yes.

    13. CW

      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.

    14. ES

      I don't want it to happen either.

    15. CW

      (laughs)

    16. ES

      But goddamn, he's gonna have fun.

    17. CW

      He's gonna go out in style, man.

    18. ES

      I so glad to hear he's gonna have a good time.

    19. CW

      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.

    20. ES

      (laughs)

    21. CW

      The guy is a savage. Um, so look, man.

    22. ES

      Yeah.

  4. 5:31 – 7:19

    Childhood dieting and the birth of secrecy around eating

    1. CW

      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.

    2. ES

      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.

    3. CW

      (laughs)

    4. ES

      And it was literally like, white potatoes are bad, and white cabbage is bad. Red cabbage is fine. You know?

    5. CW

      Oh, my god.

  5. 7:19 – 8:55

    Fast-food freedom, isolation, and reaching 536 lbs

    1. ES

      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.

    2. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    3. ES

      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.

    4. CW

      Jesus.

    5. ES

      So I have no idea what I actually got to.

    6. CW

      You were, um, 200 pounds at 10 years old, right?

    7. ES

      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-"

    8. CW

      What, what age were you at, uh, 536?

  6. 8:55 – 10:53

    Meeting his future wife: the relationship that sparked the first real change

    1. ES

      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."

    2. CW

      (laughs)

    3. ES

      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."

    4. CW

      Like, she might not know. (laughs)

    5. ES

      She might not know that I'm overweight and I need to lose weight, right?

    6. CW

      (laughs)

    7. ES

      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?"

    8. CW

      Yeah. (laughs)

    9. ES

      "I don't wanna ruin this."

    10. CW

      Yeah.

  7. 10:53 – 11:54

    The extreme liquid-diet phase: rapid loss and a permanent ‘top-end’ reset

    1. ES

      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."

    2. CW

      (laughs)

    3. ES

      "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?

    4. CW

      That's massive.

    5. ES

      I never gained weight back into that. That was weight that I kept off since 2000.

    6. CW

      Just chopped off the top, the very top of that. Yeah.

  8. 11:54 – 13:14

    Sobriety, addiction, and why food is the hardest substance to ‘quit’

    1. ES

      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-

    2. CW

      Have you, have you always been sober?

    3. ES

      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.

    4. CW

      Exposed to food, yeah, exactly.

  9. 13:14 – 14:25

    Roller-coaster years: Earl, cycling obsession, lifting, and intentional re-gain for roles

    1. ES

      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.

    2. CW

      I bet you were strong at that point though.

    3. ES

      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.

  10. 14:25 – 18:42

    Keto vs muscle retention: DEXA reality checks and the protein problem

    1. ES

      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.

    2. CW

      Is that right? Does enough protein knock you out with ketosis?

    3. ES

      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.

    4. CW

      So it's, it's very difficult then to use ketosis to lose weight whilst maintaining muscle-

    5. ES

      (laughs) .

    6. CW

      ... 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.

    7. ES

      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-

    8. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    9. ES

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

    10. CW

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

    11. ES

      Yeah.

    12. CW

      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.

    13. ES

      Yeah.

    14. CW

      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-

    15. ES

      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-"

    16. CW

      Yeah.

    17. ES

      "... 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.

    18. CW

      Mm.

    19. ES

      That's all. And-

  11. 18:42 – 22:47

    The sustainable system: low fat, high protein, moderate carbs + tracking

    1. CW

      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?

    2. ES

      Low fat, high protein, moderate carbs.

    3. CW

      What were your macros or your cals at, around about?

    4. ES

      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.

    5. CW

      Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

    6. ES

      You know?

    7. CW

      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-

    8. ES

      Yeah.

    9. CW

      ... 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-

    10. ES

      Yeah.

    11. CW

      ... cut. That's a pound and a half to two pounds a week.

    12. ES

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

    13. CW

      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."

    14. ES

      Yeah.

    15. CW

      What were you doing there?

    16. ES

      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-

    17. CW

      Or white food or red food or-

  12. 22:47 – 28:42

    Switching off keto: the 9-pound ‘gain’ in 3 days and diet ideology traps

    1. ES

      ... 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-

    2. CW

      So when you switched from keto to counting calories and macronutrients, added carbs back in, you gained...

    3. ES

      Nine pounds.

    4. CW

      Wh-

    5. ES

      In three days.

    6. CW

      Which to you must have been-

    7. ES

      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-

    8. CW

      Yeah.

    9. ES

      ... and I gained nine pounds in three days.

    10. CW

      And all the alarm bells went off, the-

    11. ES

      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-

    12. CW

      Shit, man.

    13. ES

      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-

    14. CW

      But again, like, this is the benefit of hindsight. You know?

    15. ES

      Yeah.

    16. CW

      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.

    17. ES

      Yeah.Yeah, I mean-

    18. CW

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

    19. ES

      Yeah.

    20. CW

      ... in the, the fire that is the crucible of personal experience, right?

    21. ES

      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."

    22. CW

      And it's the evil food narrative kinda comes back in again.

    23. ES

      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-

    24. CW

      Hard-earned muscle.

    25. ES

      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-

    26. CW

      (laughs)

    27. ES

      ... uh, fuckin' bell peppers or whatever it is, you know what I mean?

    28. CW

      No red foods, no orange foods.

    29. ES

      Ee, ee, yeah.

    30. CW

      Yeah.

  13. 28:42 – 35:39

    If you could advise 536-lb Ethan: radical simplicity first, then build a food arsenal

    1. CW

      ... 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?

    2. ES

      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.

    3. CW

      (laughs)

    4. ES

      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-

    5. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    6. ES

      ... then fucking keep doing it.

    7. CW

      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?

    8. ES

      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.

    9. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    10. ES

      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.

    11. CW

      Okay.

    12. ES

      There's, that spectrum is full of-

    13. CW

      So a- avoid the ideology.

    14. ES

      I think so.

    15. CW

      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?

    16. ES

      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-

    17. CW

      Lazy shit.

    18. ES

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

    19. CW

      Yeah. That's a serious one.

    20. ES

      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.

    21. CW

      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-

    22. ES

      Yeah.

  14. 35:39 – 40:31

    Where Ethan is now: 260 lbs, ~13% body fat, and the push to sub-10%

    1. CW

      ... 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?

    2. ES

      Yeah. 260, 13% body fat.

    3. CW

      Bro.

    4. ES

      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.

    5. CW

      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?

    6. ES

      Yeah.

    7. CW

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

    8. ES

      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-

    9. CW

      That's when you know, man.

    10. ES

      ... so big.

    11. CW

      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.

    12. ES

      Yeah.

    13. CW

      But dude, that's, that's sick. And the next goal is sub 10%?

    14. ES

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

    15. CW

      Fuck, man. That's sick.

    16. ES

      Yeah, which I'm stoked about. Yeah.

    17. CW

      I'll say. And then, mass phase.

    18. ES

      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-

    19. CW

      (laughs)

    20. ES

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

    21. CW

      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.

    22. ES

      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."

    23. CW

      Mm.

    24. ES

      "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-"

    25. CW

      Yeah.

    26. ES

      "... and then lose the 10 pounds of fat that come with that?"

    27. CW

      Mm.

    28. ES

      Like, th- you know, I'm thinking about it scientifically. It will-

    29. CW

      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."

    30. ES

      Yeah.

  15. 40:31 – 57:06

    Adele vs Ethan: why praise turns into backlash, and the role of shame in change

    1. CW

      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.

    2. ES

      Yeah.

    3. CW

      What are your thoughts on that?

    4. ES

      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."

    5. CW

      "You're a dick."

    6. ES

      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."

    7. CW

      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?

    8. ES

      Yeah. I will crush you if you wanna-

    9. CW

      Yeah. Look, I've got-

    10. ES

      ... fucking bark shit to me.

    11. CW

      ... 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.

    12. ES

      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-

    13. CW

      We all know, we all know each other's pain points as well, right? Like-

    14. ES

      Yeah.

    15. CW

      ... 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.

    16. ES

      Yeah.

    17. CW

      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."

    18. ES

      (laughs)

    19. CW

      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.

    20. ES

      Yeah.

    21. CW

      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.

    22. ES

      Yeah, full stop.

    23. CW

      You- you die sooner, of everything, if you're fat.

    24. ES

      Yeah.

    25. CW

      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.

    26. ES

      Probably.

    27. CW

      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-

    28. ES

      Yeah.

    29. CW

      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-

    30. ES

      (laughs)

  16. 57:06 – 1:00:34

    Individual truth, self-ownership, and celebrating hard-earned progress

    1. ES

      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.

    2. CW

      (laughs)

    3. ES

      So I don't see why anything you say about my feelings about myself-

    4. CW

      (laughs)

    5. ES

      ... 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."

    6. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    7. ES

      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?

    8. CW

      Bro, sub 10%, you're gonna have cum gutters, ab veins, the full works.

    9. ES

      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.

    10. CW

      Yeah, I, I mean, what, what an investment, what an investment by her as well, you know?

    11. ES

      Yeah.

    12. CW

      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-

    13. ES

      Yeah.

    14. CW

      ... in bed next to you, you know? Like, fuck this. This e-

    15. ES

      Yeah.

    16. CW

      That's easy, man. What a glow up.

    17. ES

      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.

    18. CW

      Dude, wives, unfortunately, they just tend to be. Don't ... I mean, I wouldn't-

    19. ES

      Yeah.

  17. 1:00:34 – 1:01:38

    Wrap-up: American Glutton, future work, and the ‘belt-fed machine guns’ callback

    1. CW

      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-

    2. ES

      Yeah.

    3. CW

      I feel like we coulda gone on for- for ever. So you got your podcast, American Glutton.

    4. ES

      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.

    5. CW

      Dude, I'm so ready for that, you know?

    6. ES

      Yeah.

    7. CW

      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.

    8. ES

      Thank you. It was a pleasure. Uh, let's do it again sometime.

    9. CW

      I'm in.

    10. ES

      All right.

    11. NA

      (instrumental music)

Episode duration: 1:01:38

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