The Power of Why in Weight Loss with David Greenwalt

eorge grombacher 0:00
Hey what’s up? This is George G and the time is right welcome today’s guest strong and powerful David Greenwald. David, are you ready to do this?

Unknown Speaker 0:21
I am. Thanks so much for having me excited to be here.

george grombacher 0:24
excited to have you on let’s go. David is a certified wellness coach. He’s a fitness expert. He’s an author, his company, leanness lifestyle University helps its students lose excess fat for the last time, David, tell us a little about your personal life’s more about your work, why you do what you do.

Unknown Speaker 0:45
So I’m in my late 50s. I’ve been doing what I do for quite a long time. But I’ve had a I always I don’t have any idea why. But there’s something in my DNA that has been extremely interested and passionate about fitness since I was quite young. When I was in my late 20s, early 30s, I was a 235 pound power lifter, I mostly Well, I’m only 510. So I was mostly heavy, because I wanted to be but I also, you know, kind of use the powerlifting as an excuse to eat a pound bag m&ms as a pre workout, you know, so. But, but all throughout that, you know, all throughout that period, I did bodybuilding, I did powerlifting. So I had experience with cutting and getting lean. But I myself was you know, quite heavy. Finally, when I was about 32, which was 1997. For me, I was watching TV through the bottom of my feet laying on the couch on my back. So on the TVs past my feet, you know, you can imagine them supine, laying on my back, looking out the bottom of my feet. And I notice my gut is almost above my feet. And I’m laying on my back. And I thought David, David, David, David, come on. Now. That’s, that’s enough, I’d had quite a stint at powerlifting I, you know, I was a state level, bodybuilder powerlifter. But I’d done powerlifting for quite a while there. And I hadn’t done bodybuilding at that point for about 12 or 13 years. But, but anyway, so I said, Alright, that’s enough. And over the next year or so, you know, I kind of started my own journey. And, you know, I thought I had kind of the calories in calories out, I’ve got, you know, I can just do this and, and I kind of did kind of didn’t have some success. And then you know what, it was a rocky road. But I figured it out for myself. And I came at it from a very science evidence based perspective, you know, what I did, and what I ended up doing to kind of finish it off is I did a bodybuilding show in 1998, which again, I hadn’t done one in 12 years, and I said, I’m going to do this show. And through that I really came at it from an evidence based perspective instead of kind of myths and legends and wives tales or whatever you want to call them that I saw so many other body builders doing. And then I wrote an article I had a I had a fitness business at the time with over 100,000 customers. And so I wrote an article kind of for them for me for them about that process of getting ready for the show getting lean, and I titled it competition becomes a leanness lifestyle. And I really started looking at it like what was I doing to get lean? That mostly I shouldn’t or couldn’t do for life. It was in the early days of email, early days of the internet, the internet, the email was just coming in. And that’s when I first started to share what I learned, and the approach that I took with clients. So it was back in 98, wrote a book put that out, started an online coaching program in 1999. And I’ll hush and you know, see where you want to go from here. So that’s kind of that’s kind of the base of my experience. Nice.

george grombacher 3:58
I appreciate that. So you no longer do the pound bag of m&ms is pre workout. David. Correct. Correct. Haven’t done that.

Unknown Speaker 4:08
Since, you know that 9798 99 era. And yeah, quite quite a quite a difference. You know, since then, I had a mistaken belief in the first edition of my book that I wrote 99 And it went through four revisions and the final revision that’s still out there was done in 2002. But the first in the first edition, I said and then I corrected myself and future I said unless we’re extremely gifted, we can get lean, but we can’t live lean. I really had it in my head that you had to be I have like some gift to be able to get the fat off and stay relatively healthy lean, not bodybuilder lean, but just relatively healthy lean. And I was flat out wrong. And I corrected myself in the future editions and I said I I was wrong when I said that. And let me tell you why. And let me tell you that a data does so. And then over these 23 years online, I would say I was even more wrong about when I first said that, and it absolutely can be done. But not with the standard messaging that’s out there. You know, that standard, eat less exercise, more calories in calories out, that messaging is absolutely not going to work for most people. There’s a sect of people, as we know, we all know, my dad, when he quit smoking. He said, he smoked for 20, some years or whatever. And he said, I’m done smoking, and he was done. I mean, he was done, he didn’t take another, another puff. So there are people that can do it. But that doesn’t reflect the majority.

george grombacher 5:51
Appreciate that. So, so you have for a long time. And I appreciate that, that I, I have had beliefs at one point in my life, and we take in new information, we get a little bit wiser. And we recognize that you know what, definitely wasn’t right about that one. And it’s not necessarily easy to do. So I appreciate you doing that. That it can be done by by everyone, everybody can have. Essentially, whatever body they’re interested in, I had on a note that I was going to write about for a long time, and I threw it away yesterday, literally, I was gonna write about that these are unrealistic expectations or standards of bodies that that people can have. And I just thought that’s just not true. I think that everybody is capable of having a healthy, strong body that is similar to some of the things that we see on the internet and television.

Unknown Speaker 6:51
Yeah, I totally agree. You know what, and what I would say for kind of the everyday, the everyday person out there who doesn’t have necessarily aspirations of being a top, top, top, whatever, they just want to be healthy, they just want to be relatively fit, they just want to be able to do the things they want to do they want to get off medications feel better, be a good example for their kids, and whatever, all of the the aspirational kind of feelings based things that people want, they absolutely can get to any healthy weight they want and they can live there. Now to what degree can someone create an Adonis physique is going to vary, you know, where you’re like, oh, everything’s proportioned perfectly, and look at the shoulders compared to the waist and look at this compared to that. But that’s really far less consequential for the everyday person who just says, I just want to have, I want to just have a relatively good level of fitness and just be at a healthy weight, or, you know, somewhat lean and look like I, I do care, because I do care, I want to look like I do care about my health and fitness and that kind of thing. And I will say 100% of people can achieve that.

george grombacher 8:11
I appreciate that. So what what is the starting point? Is it deciding, I want to get off medication, I want to have enough energy to play with my kids, I want my clothes to not fit loudly.

Unknown Speaker 8:24
Yeah. So for most people, they’ll have kind of loosely, vaguely, not very clarified the reasons that they want to get off X amount of weight. And they may not know exactly how much weight and some people will say I don’t care what the weight, how much weight I lose, I just want to feel I just want to have a certain feeling a certain look a certain whatever. So I think that, you know, for the you know, for, for most people having at least that initial spark desire kind of loose goal in their head, that’s, that’s going to be required, we’ve got to have something that says, hey, I want to change from where I am to some better place or some different place. So there’s there’s going to be that once we have at least a goal and a reasonable goal. But reasonable doesn’t mean that it has to be five pounds in three months. Let’s say you’ve got 5080 100 pounds, whatever you’ve got that you want to lose, it could be someone with 15 pounds, it doesn’t mean reasonable doesn’t mean we have to have it so slow. That it’s like well that’s reasonable five pounds in three months. That’s that’s really slow and could be very demotivating for a number of people because we’re just not seeing enough progress there. But once you’ve got a reasonable gold makes sense for you in place. Almost the next thing is we should drill into why? Because a universal truth. For me in my experience and working with people is when the why is strong enough that we’ll find a way. And when it’s not we find an excuse. And I haven’t found an exception to that. Every person’s path and journey will be somewhat different. Not so distinctly uniquely different that we can’t figure them out, I would say you’re not terminally unique. You know, there are things thankfully as, as they are true in medicine, where while we are all different, when we go see a primary care physician, and we need whatever care we need, we’re different enough where they have to kind of go through a puzzle, and figure us out, but we’re not so different that, you know, a medical doctor looks at us and goes, I have no idea. You may as well be a giraffe. I don’t you know, so we have things that are, you know, that fit all of us reasonably closely enough where we can kind of start there. But then, you know, we’re going to need to, you know, kind of drill down into the uniqueness of each person’s journey where they’re starting from where they’re wanting to go. But we’ve got to figure out why. And most people if you ask them, What okay, you say you want to lose 30 pounds, 50 pounds, or whatever x of the Xs. Why? Well, I just want to feel better. Okay, well, if we leave it there, when tomorrow comes, and we’re supposed to roll out of bed and prep for the day, and maybe get in 2030 minutes of exercise, what are supposed to do, it’s gonna be rough, because you’ve got all of these external obesogenic environment factors working against you. And the thing you’ve got working for you is, as I’d like to feel better. And that by itself, is not likely to be strong enough to overcome those opposing forces that are always there in our modern environment working against us. So we have to, you know, kind of fight fire with fire, we have to come in it, we have to come at it stronger than people think, from that wide perspective. And when we do that is kind of the second step. So we’ve kind of got a goal, we at least know we want to change, we want to, you know, do some we want to go from a size, whatever gene to this gene, or this dress to this dress or whatever, we’ve got a pair of pants or a dress hanging in the closet, we’re like, I’m going to get back into that. Okay, great. That’s a kind of the goal. Why? Why does that matter to you? And we come at that very intentionally, you know, in my program with my clients to help them drill, drill, drill, drill, and get get as deep as we can with that, so that there’s an incredibly powerful driving force. And what we say is we need willpower driving willpower, sorry, we need y power and driving willpower. We need y power driving willpower willpower alone. A lot of people think, you know, I know what my problem is, I don’t have enough willpower, I just my Willpower Sucks. And that’s not true. You could ask, you could pull your listeners, you can ask, you know, anybody that works for someone else, just as an example, when was the last time you were late? For work? And most not most not 51% is most 99% are gonna say hadn’t been late in the year, or they’re gonna say I was late one time in a year. And it was because the blah, blah, blah, something really major happened. And then you could ask them, George, you could say, Well, are you not late? Because you love your work to death? And maybe like, no, well, are you not late? Because you’re always in a good mood? No, are you not late? Because the kids are never sick? No. Are you not late? Because you’re never sick? No mean, all the life things that can throw us for a loop are always there. Yet these yet people who think they’re broken, don’t have any willpower are never late for work. Wow. I mean, that’s willpower. But here’s so why is that? Because there why, for showing up on time, is incredibly strong. And so that’s kind of why I say we’ve got to have y power driving willpower instead of just relying on willpower.

george grombacher 14:09
Love it. That is a really, really, really great analogy right there.

Unknown Speaker 14:14
You know, I’ll be honest, I pulled my my clients a few years back and I had said, what are some mate what are some things I thought I thought I had an answer that they were going to give in my head. I thought they were going to say x I thought it was going to go this direction. And I polled my, my student members at the time and I said tell me something you’ve done that’s big, something you’ve accomplished, that’s big. And you know, and what did you What did you have to do to get it? And I got all those replies of people that you know, you know, went to medical school, did this did that went on PhD, whatever, whatever the thing was job related, education related, whatever it was. The thing that was you know, obviously driving it was incredible. Why power because every single one of them, were doing it on no sleep. They were trying to raise their kids, they had no money they were living by, you know, I mean, it was just what they had to sacrifice to accomplish whatever it was outside of weight management, whatever it was that they accomplished, it was big and meaningful, and, and just impactful to their life requires incredible sacrifice, incredible willpower. And there wasn’t a single person where it wasn’t driven incredibly, by why power, because if you were to ask for the time, why are you doing this? They would, they wouldn’t have said, you know, I’d like to be a medical doctor, I guess. I mean, they could just say it because of this, and this and this. And, you know, and, and so it became, you know, real, real clear. It seems to be recovered, it was partly reinforced, and then just became even clearer that. It’s why power driving willpower. People have overcome incredible challenges, and they do it every single day. So no matter who’s listening to this, you’ve already accomplished amazing things. No matter how seemingly inconsequential, you might think it is not that if someone’s a medical doctor, or whatever, they think it’s inconsequential. They don’t. But there’s a lot of people that think I haven’t really done anything major. But yes, you have, if we really look at it, you’ve done things that require incredible willpower. And when you did, it was driven by white power. I love it. It’s just universal.

george grombacher 16:28
So I believe that at least one of your programs is 18 weeks. Tell me a little bit about that.

Unknown Speaker 16:35
Right, the very first word, we’re an educational based platform. So you know, we kind of say lifestyle, education, evidence based lifestyle education, for permanent weight control is kind of how we come at it. We come at it in a progressive kind of bite sized, you know, approach. And the first course, so to speak, is called lifestyle. 180. So if you think of like, you know, the coursework you took in high school and college, there was algebra 101, it was English, well, you know, so lifestyle 180 kind of falls in line in line with that. And the 180 is, is a play on, we’re trying to turn our body and our life around, you know, believe it or not, when I was first thinking of the name many years ago, for the first course, I almost called it lifestyle 360. And then I went, Wait a minute, we’re, we’re going to start we’re going to finish where we started. We don’t want to do that. So lifestyle 180, we want to go halfway around, we want to turn our body life around, and it’s 18 weeks. So lifestyle. 180 kind of goes into that. Honestly, George the reason it’s 18 weeks is because again, doing this for so long. When I first started it, I was like Let’s do five or six weeks, I can teach you everything you need to know about nutrition and exercise in five or six weeks on where do you go best of luck. Thanks so much for stopping by, have a great day. And the recidivism was too high it if people did learn, people did get weight off. Initially, people did get confidence in that six weeks, and I was able to get all the basics of nutrition and exercise taught, here’s your plan, let’s go, you got to eat less and exercise more, onward we go recidivism very high. And honestly, way back when I love it now, but way back when I didn’t want to create an 18 week course. I said it’s gonna be incredible, a ton of work, to have all the curriculum, to have it all this and that and progressive and 18 weeks versus six, holy cow, it’s three times the work and then it’s got. And I you know, I was talking to a friend and I said, I don’t want to do this. I said it’s going to be tremendous work. I said, but I have to. And I said I have to because I I’m not okay, with people leaving, leaving too early, getting all of the basics, but not having the additional emotional fitness support was such a huge part of this. So I ended up creating a lifestyle one ad then it goes on to, you know, lifestyle to 18 which is kind of like the next 18 weeks, then it goes on from there. It’s all it’s all of course, you know, personal choice of the person you know, it’s up to them. There’s no ongoing, you know, where someone has to stay or, or whatever. But we start with 18 weeks because even if you’ve just got 10 or 15 pounds to lose, we are if you follow the program you are for sure gonna get the goal if you have that, you know, but then what? Well, then we we have maintenance, you know, and getting the goal isn’t living at goal and everything we do is about getting it off one more time for the last time when I haven’t met anyone unless they’re a wrestler trying to make weight or you know, someone who wants to lose the weight and then regain it. You know, if you’re in a weight class based sport, you know, great, we get it. But other than that, you know, people have a great fear over losing it again and then regaining it. And sometimes that’s a showstopper for people where they’re like, I don’t even want us Start, if I’m going to regain it. And so everything we do is about that. And that’s why the initial course people go, Oh my gosh, why not six weeks, you know, because six weeks I can teach you the basics of nutrition and exercise, but it’s not long enough to get you the other missing components and the continued support to continue the journey.

george grombacher 20:22
Dating weeks because that’s what it’s probably going to take to lose weight. For the last time, one. Lose weight one more time for the last time. That is that is solid as well, David, I love it. Well, David, thank you so much for coming on. Where can people learn more about you and how can they engage with Linus lifestyle University?

Unknown Speaker 20:44
The easiest way is you know, I had I known 20 Some years ago when I said competition becomes a leanness lifestyle. If that was going to be such a mouthful for all of us to have to continue to say and figure out is it two ends and two s’s or what you know, so for the website, I just made it l l university.com. And I’ll just make it simple everything you know, social links, email, whatever, it’s all there, Ll university.com. Would be the place for people to go to to ask me a question or learn more, whatever. Excellent.

george grombacher 21:15
If you enjoyed this as much as I did show, David, your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas, go to L L University. And check out the great resources that David has put together. And if you’re like so many of us who are struggling to or wanting struggling, wanting, desiring to feel better, live healthier, lose weight, whatever it might be. Check it out. Thanks again, David.

Unknown Speaker 21:42
Thanks so much for having me. And until

george grombacher 21:44
next time, remember, do your part by doing your best

Transcribed by https://otter.ai