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Scot: Have you ever looked in the mirror and thought, "This isn't me"? Maybe you told yourself, "I've got to make a change," but then life gets in the way, like work and stress, pizza.

Dr. Smith: Pizza.

Scot: We've all been there. Today, we're talking about that exact moment, the turning point when you finally decide that you're going to take control of your health and make it stick.

This is "Who Cares About Men's Health," with information, inspiration, and different interpretations of men's health. My name is Scot. I bring the BS. With me is Mitch, the guy who proves you can teach a guy to care about his health, actually. And Dr. John Smith, the MD to my BS. Even though he's a doctor, he is just a regular guy first and he goes through the same challenges we do.

Today, it's something that hits home for a lot of guys: weight loss. And here's a twist. Our very own Dr. Smith, who you might think has it all figured out because he's a doctor, has had his own weight struggles as well.

So, John . . . And for this episode, you're John and not Dr. Smith, because you're just a regular . . .

Dr. Smith: I'm John every episode. Let's get that straight.

Scot: All right. Well, you're John to me this episode because you're a regular guy, you're not a doctor. You've been on a kind of a health journey, and you've lost a lot of weight. Is that right?

Dr. Smith: Yeah, I'm down about 60 pounds.

Scot: That's incredible.

Mitch: Congrats.

Scot: And we haven't talked about it on the podcast publicly, and we wanted to take an opportunity to do that because these turning points are great sources of information and inspiration for people that are struggling with the same thing.

So give us an idea where it all started for you. And let me guess. I bet you it was the residency. Is that where it all started, or was it before that?

Dr. Smith: I mean, we could go back all the way to medical school. I had knee surgery before I started medical school, which didn't help me lose any weight. And so I went into medical school rehabbing an ACL reconstruction. I had a little bit of extra weight there. Not quite as heavy as I would eventually get to.

And then through medical school, there was some ebb and flow, but not a ton. Just a few pounds here and there.

Then residency hits, and you're at work all the time. You're working nights. Your food choices become less quality. Let me give you an example. I worked at a hospital as an intern, which is your first year out of medical school. You have an internship generally that you do. And I worked at a hospital where they fed us . . . it was unlimited food while you were on shift.

I got to know the ladies in the cafeteria, and I found out they had chicken wings in the freezer. And so I would oftentimes call down at the end of my shift and say, "Hey, can you get me a dozen wings before I go to sign-out?" which is where you kind of transition to the day team, to the folks taking over at night. "Mr. Johnson is looking like he's not as healthy as he should be," and you kind of turn things over to the new team and give them the updates on people they need to be concerned about or people that are doing well on the overnight shift.

And so I would just be sitting there crushing wings while everyone else was giving their reports to everybody else. Yeah, so it wasn't the healthiest time in my life.

Scot: Did you struggle with your weight before that? I mean, has that been kind of an ongoing theme for your life? Or was there definitely a point where you were like, "Eh, this isn't great"?

Dr. Smith: I mean, I was pretty healthy. So if we back up, through childhood, I played sports growing up. I played competitive soccer and basketball. And then I went on an LDS mission when I was 19, and I gained about 70 pounds there. I went out at about 135, 140 pounds. I went to California. I got fed In-N-Out Burger. I got fed everything for two years and came home at about 205.

It was funny, I went back and started playing soccer with some of my old buddies that I'd played with and one of them was like, "Who's that fat dude over there?" I found this out later. And then someone was like, "Oh, that's Smith." And he's like, "Dude, who ate the guy?" So I definitely bulked up there, and not in a healthy way of bulking up.

And then I dropped that back down to about 185 and played club soccer in college. So that helped me get fit again.

Then I tore my ACL, and then I went to medical school, and that brings us to the point where we were in the story.

Then over residency, the residency program that I was in also fed us a couple of meals a day. You had kind of meal tickets. You could go down and get food and beverage. And so I got up to about 260 at my heaviest.

Scot: So kind of some yo-yoing your whole life there, it sounds like.

Dr. Smith: Yeah, a little bit. And then residency was that turning point where I hit 260. Then I graduated residency, and we moved from New York, where I did my residency, to here, Salt Lake City. And for a couple of years, I kind of just maintained that.

COVID hit right after that. When we moved here, it was the end of 2019, early 2020. And so, during COVID, I kind of maintained that same weight. About 18 months, maybe 24 months ago, I just said, "I can't do this, man. My joints hurt, my body. I want to be able to move, and I don't move the way I want to move." And so I decided to kind of change some things in my life as far as health goes. That's when I kind of made the decision to make a transition.

Scot: I mean, the joints started hurting. That was one of the things that made you say, "I need to make a change." Were there some other things that happened? And was it more about appearance? Was it about health? What was kind of going on there?

Dr. Smith: I mean, I can give you the full share here. There was a turning point. I went to a water park with my kids and one of my best friends growing up, who's an absolute . . . He's a buffoon. I love this guy to death. There is nothing that's out of bounds when we get together. We're able to just kind of tear into each other. But at the end of the day, if he called me during this podcast, I would immediately say, "Guys, I've got to go." He's that kind of a friend.

And he snuck a picture of me with my . . . I had my son. I was holding my son, who was maybe a year old at that time, and he posted it as his background photo on his Facebook, whatever the banner is behind your . . .

Scot: What?

Dr. Smith: Oh, it was beautiful. Like I said, dude, nothing is out of bounds when we get together, right?

And he at'ed me on there, so I start seeing all these things pop up. I pulled up this picture and I was like, "Oh my gosh, I look like a beached whale holding a child." And that was one of the turning points where I was like, "Dude, I've got to do something."

I mean, it wasn't the most flattering angle either. He was up-shooting me. He wasn't doing me any solids by any stretch of the imagination, but that was one of the turning points.

And the other turning point was . . . My wife, she's pretty healthy. She eats healthy, she does things, and she's never been one to push things and be like, "Hey, you need to get healthy." But she's like, "Hey, when you're ready to make it, I'm happy to help you make food choices or cook different things. I'm happy to cook for us and have the kids eat different things, if that's the case." And so she was always really supportive.

And she goes, "Are you thinking about it?" I was like, " Yeah, I'm thinking about it." She goes, "Well, you're not in the stage to do anything?" I said, "I'm thinking about it."

So she always makes that joke now with me. She's like, "You thinking about it?" And so that's her kind way of saying, "Hey, buddy, you should probably check things out."

Those were really some of the turning points where I saw that. Also, I started playing soccer again with some folks when I got back here, and then things kind of opened up after COVID and I realized how out of shape I was, how big I had gotten, and how much my body didn't appreciate the extra weight.

Scot: So there was a little bit of an emotional thing going on. You didn't like what you saw. I mean, that can definitely impact your emotions. You talked about your knees. What were some of the other things that you struggled with? Were you struggling with lack of energy or any of those sorts of things?

Dr. Smith: I've got six kids. I was always tired. I don't know that me being more tired or less tired . . . Because I'm still tired even though I've lost weight. So a lot of those things . . . I mean, those were the main things that hit for me. But I was tired. I was more sluggish. I didn't have the same energy I have now for sure.

Scot: Got it. And it sounded like you had a little bit of support, which is great. Your wife was there for you. That definitely helps. And that's tough for us guys to sometimes ask for, but it doesn't sound like you had to ask.

Dr. Smith: No. I mean, she wasn't rude about it either. My wife is very much the kind of person that's like, "Hey, I know . . ." We're very open. We have good communication. So it works where she can say things to me that don't hurt my feelings, but I realize it's coming from a place of love.

Scot: I'm noticing some themes here, Mitch. I don't know if you're noticing these themes. We've done some of these previous episodes, right? And yes, there can be a turning point, but oftentimes there are a few turning points. We don't make that big change after the first one or the second one or the fifth one. Sometimes we need a few of these to kind of move us into action. It sounds like John had kind of the same situation.

Dr. Smith: Very much so.

Mitch: Yeah. And it's like we've talked about before when we talk about . . . I think we had an episode with Nick Galli about motivation and this idea that sometimes you need something extra to push to make you commit and want to do something. It's not just like, "Boop, today is the day that I'm going to start doing it." You need those kinds of experiences to build up, that kind of self-reflection. And sometimes you do it through journaling or whatever. And sometimes you do it because a whole lot of things happen all at the same time.

Scot: So just to be clear, what was kind of then . . . Leading up, you had a few of these little kinds of turning points. The picture, the way you were feeling, your wife. What finally was the, "Yep, I'm ready to do it. I'm done thinking about it"? When were you able to say, "I'm done thinking about it, honey"? Which probably made her so happy.

Dr. Smith: I think the biggest thing was I came home after I had played soccer one night, and I was just like, "Man, I can't do this anymore. I am so exhausted. My body hurts." And I think that was the biggest turning point. If I wanted to keep doing this, I've got to change something.

Scot: Yeah. I mean, we know physical activity is good for you. That type of playing soccer with friends is good for that emotional support as well. And it didn't sound like you were really enjoying it that much at the weight you were at.

Dr. Smith: Well, I wasn't able to do what I knew I could do and move. Yeah, it was like, "I've got to change this."

Scot: Yeah, it's just amazing how many emotions that can bring up as well.

All right. Game time, when it came time to do it, when you were done thinking about it and it was do-it time, where did you start?

Dr. Smith: I mean, you can always say you begin at the beginning, right? And so, looking back, obviously you can see that through the trees a lot easier when you're already down the path. But what I decided I would do is I would cut out things that I was eating. And what I decided is that I would cut breakfast out of my regimen.

I know that's the big taboo, right? The most important meal of the day. But what I realized is that, at breakfast, I was eating two breakfast sandwiches that equaled 800 calories, or I was eating a breakfast burrito that was 750 calories.

By doing that, I decreased my caloric intake for the day. I just started the day with a flavored beverage. Shameless plug, the Zipfizz. Send me some stuff. I started buying Zipfizz from Costco because it was cheap. I could get them on sale for about 80 cents a vial. And I was using those to satiate myself, make myself think I had something. And it also has some B vitamins and caffeine in there to kind of get things rolling. It made me feel like I had something, and that was cutting 750-ish calories a day.

And if you look at it, 3,500 calories is one pound if you look at the math of it. So if I did that every single day for a week, I was losing a pound a week. So I would cut 500 calories a day out of my diet, which would help me lose a pound a week just by not doing anything else. And that's where I started.

I still ate everything I wanted to, and I still . . . for the most part, if I know I'm going somewhere, to a restaurant, or I know there's a birthday party where someone's going to have pizza, obviously I attuned myself accordingly. But that for me was what I needed in my head, was just, "Hey, it's just one step at a time."

We were talking off air about the saying of one play at a time or whatever, those types of things. And in my mind, that worked for me to just say, "Hey, if I cut breakfast out five or six days a week, I'm still going to lose about a pound."

That's where I started, and I've continued to do that now because it's become a routine for me, and it does help me to kind of curb things I eat.

Mitch: I want to just say that you had mentioned this kind of strategy you took a couple of weeks ago. I can't remember if it was on air or off air. But I've been struggling with my own weight loss recently, and I just started looking for those little things I could cut.

I was told that my medication worked better if I had a big protein-filled breakfast, and I was kind of shooting myself in the foot with having these gigantic breakfasts, just praying that my meds would work better.

And just cutting it back down to a coffee and maybe a yogurt to kind of help get things rolling, I have actually seen weight loss in the last couple of weeks for the first time in months. And so kudos and thank you for that tip.

Dr. Smith: Hey, I'll take the credit, but I think . . . I mean, the big thing for me is this "calories in, calories out" game. I don't care who you are. The thing is a lot of people aren't willing to be honest with themselves on how many calories they eat.

I literally took stock of the calories that I ate during the day, and I was like, "Holy crap, I'm eating 3,300 calories a day." And if I'm going to lose weight, I probably need maybe 2,000 if I'm exercising, or 2,100. And if I really want to lose weight, I've got to drop that to 1,800 or 1,900 to really help additional weight loss.

And so that's the thing that a lot of people say. "Oh, you do this, you do that, carnivore, or the Mediterranean." I mean, pick your favorite diet. Again, when you look at it, the "calories in, calories out" game is really the thing that your body needs.

Now, you've also got to feed it what it needs. You need protein, you need sugars, you need fats. You need these things in moderation. And when you give your body that, your body can run on that.

But we overeat a lot, and our portion sizes are just crazy. And that's the other thing that I realized. I've cut a lot of that down. So when I do eat, it's a much smaller portion than I was eating before.

Scot: I mean, that comes to the thing that "men eat," right? We're supposed to eat a lot of food. I know I take a little guff . . . Not as much anymore. When I go to a restaurant, for example, and I order something, they bring you so much food. I just immediately tell them, "Put half of it in a to-go box. I'm just going to eat the half here." I mean, that's how I kind of manage my calories. And also, I just feel better. If I eat the whole plate of food, I can feel crappy.

For somebody who is struggling with this, the "calories in, calories out" is a pretty common argument. The easiest way to control that is through what you eat. You should be exercising for your health, but exercise burns relatively few calories if you're really trying to lose weight.

And the other thing is you might cut out breakfast, and that might not be enough for you because your caloric intake might be higher. Dr. Smith said he figured out what he was eating, and he figured out what he needed to eat to lose that weight. So he was at 3,300. He needs to be about 1,800, which I've heard you don't want to go much lower than that as a man for calories because you can have health issues. And he did the math.

So, for you, the math might be different, but I think that's the big lesson right there. That's awesome.

Dr. Smith: Thanks.

Scot: What was the hardest part in this process?

Dr. Smith: Oh, man. To be honest, getting the routine started, right? That first month is the hardest part, especially when everyone at the office is like, "Hey, we're going down to get breakfast sandwiches," or, "We're going to get breakfast burritos. You want one?" And I'm like . . .

Scot: Just an emotional think, yeah.

Dr. Smith: I'm like, "I'll just have this drink." It becomes a difficult thing. And I think that was the hardest part.

Once I started doing it . . . The other thing that's nice is having people around you that know that's what you're doing. And so once they see you do it, they kind of stick up for you and do it. They're like, "Hey, man, we're headed down. I know you don't need anything, but if you change your mind, let us know."

Scot: That's nice.

Dr. Smith: They're looking out for you, but they also know what you're trying to do. And so they're very supportive. And I think that helps too. Once your friends and other people know, they're like, "Oh, hey . . ." It made it much easier too.

Scot: Was there a point where you're like, "I'm giving up. I don't know. Nah, this is fine. I want that breakfast sandwich"? And if so, how did you push through that?

Dr. Smith: I allow myself days to just be hungry, right? So I play soccer in a men's league, and the games are at 11:00 at night sometimes. These ungodly hours, right? So there will be mornings where I'll wake up and my body is hungry.

I also listen to my body. That's the other thing. If I wake up and I'm hungry, I'll eat breakfast that day, but I won't eat lunch. I'll still curb those calories. But if I wake up and my body is telling me, "Hey, dude, we need something here," then I'll feed it. I'll be judicious about what I feed it, but I'll still feed it. And then I'll cut those calories somewhere else. During the day, I'll have that Zipfizz for lunch, right? And so that's the way that I did that.

I mean, my biggest backslide, you would say, would be I took a trip with my wife. We took kind of an early 10th anniversary trip over to Europe, and I ate like a frigging hog over there. I probably gained . . . I'm not even kidding. In two weeks we were there, I probably gained 8 to 10 pounds. 

Normally, I don't eat breakfast, right? And so, over there, it was like, "Hey, your stay here comes with an English breakfast." And so I'm going down and I'm having breakfast with my wife in the morning, things like that. So during that week, I did not adhere to the program, and I paid the price for it.

Scot: But I would imagine you'd pay that price again because it was kind of a special situation.

Dr. Smith: Right. And so I knew when I got home, I'd have to buckle back down to get rid of that weight. So that was the other thing.

And then getting back into the habit of what I did was easier because I was in familiar surroundings. I was at work doing the same routine that I did before.

The other thing is you go on vacation, your routine is gone. And I think that's part of it that helped me too, is I'm very much a routine guy, and I'm happy to eat similar things and do similar things, which helps.

Mitch: How long did you have to go without breakfast? You had talked about sometimes you feel hungry, but how long did you need to go before you weren't hungry every morning?

Dr. Smith: I think if I'm honest with myself, I wasn't really hungry in the morning that often. I mean, if we're being flat-out honest with each other, like I said, there are days when I'll wake up and I feel that my body . . .

And hungry is a tough concept for me because I don't know that I've ever been hungry in my life. I grew up in a middle-class family where we had enough where I wasn't hungry, right? I don't mean to nitpick that, Mitch. I'm not trying to be a jerk on that, but I think my body telling me, "Hey, you should probably eat right now," is more, looking back, of what I feel and less so of, "Hey, dude, you're hungry."

And so I think if I look back and I'm honest with myself, I have the self-control to go, "Dude, you don't need to eat that." At that Super Bowl party when there's tons of food and I just go, "Oh, dude, I'm going to totally destroy that French onion dip right now for about 700 calories," I didn't need to do that and I could have told myself, "Hey, dude, you don't need that."

And so, for me, it was then the self-control. That's one of the biggest parts, I think, for a lot of folks too, is any workout, anything you do, you've got to have self-control, and you've got to do it and then be accountable to yourself or have an accountability partner to get where you need to go to the next level.

Scot: What for yourself were you accountable to, then? I mean, you're absolutely right. You have to have that anchor. "I would love that French onion dip. However, this is the reason why I'm not going to do it." I mean, gaining a few extra pounds sometimes isn't enough. Was that enough for you, or was there something else?

Dr. Smith: I think once I got going, it felt good. And that was my reward, right? Seeing that I dropped five to seven pounds, I was like, "Oh, hell yeah. Let's go. I feel good." And even that five to seven pounds feels different.

You go talk to the orthopedist, and they'll tell you for every pound you lose, you decrease the strain on your knees by four pounds just because of the mechanics of how our bodies work.

So playing soccer, I took 30 pounds off my knees with that seven, eight pounds, right? So I did feel a difference in my joints sooner than my stomach actually being smaller. I felt the difference.

And so I think that also helped motivate me, like, "Oh, man. I mean, I'm only down 10 pounds, but, dang, man, I feel pretty good."

Scot: And I've seen some research that shows if you lose weight, that also will impact your blood pressure. If you have high blood pressure, every 10 pounds lost is 10 off your blood pressure or something like that. 

Dr. Smith: Yeah, I don't know that it's 10, but, yeah, it definitely helps a lot of those things.

Scot: So you're helping that as well. That's really cool.

Dr. Smith: I felt like I slept better. People with sleep apnea tend to be heavier and have a larger neck size. And so I think as I dropped weight, I also slept better. I don't know if it's that I stopped snoring as much. I never asked my wife that. But I felt like I was sleeping better after I lost 15, 20 pounds as well.

Scot: Before we move on, I'm going to throw in I stopped eating breakfast as well for some other reasons that we could maybe talk about in another episode. One of them was weight loss, but there were some focus and concentration issues that I kind of tracked back to maybe my breakfasts might be causing.

And I think I was like you. I was afraid of quitting breakfast because I used to eat a big breakfast, but really, I wasn't hungry like I thought I would be. And what I told myself is, "You're just going to drink water whenever you're hungry until noon," and that's helped a lot.

You should be drinking a lot of water to begin with. So if that's helpful to somebody, the water strategy worked for me.

All right. So how has life changed? How has weight loss improved your life? Whether it's energy, confidence, just going through daily life, your emotional health, whatever.

Dr. Smith: I think it's helped all around. I mean, all of those things you just mentioned. I think I'm happier because I can now move my body and do things that I couldn't do before. I feel better. I feel lighter emotionally. When I see photographs now, I go, "Oh, man, I look way better than I did before." Even my badge at work is the chubby dude, and now I'm the skinny dude. And people are like, "Is that you on your badge?" I'm like, "No, I stole somebody else's badge. I stole the chubby guy's badge from next door." All those things are there.

My wife is always a big supporter, and she's like, "Hey, you're doing good. You look great. I can really see the difference." And so she's very helpful with that as well, and that helps to get that positive feedback there. And even when your kids start to notice, like, "Dad, where'd your boobs go?" and that type of thing. So all those things kind of compound and are there.

Mitch: Were there any other unexpected kind of things that came up? Maybe how you interact with your patients?

Dr. Smith: I had a lot of my patients recognize . . . Because I see people for, say, testosterone management every six months. I see some people on an annual basis for medication refills for, say, urinary function. And they came in and they're like, "Man, doc, you look like you've lost weight. What have you done?"

And so it's opened up a conversation for me to be like, "Hey, what are you doing?" And they're like, "Yeah, I've been thinking about losing weight. What do you recommend?" It's been an opportunity for me to hopefully help them change their health for a better way. I don't know that I expected that when I started.

Scot: Yeah, that's a cool story. Are there any other benefits that you just didn't really kind of count on that came along?

Dr. Smith: I think it's given me more motivation to actually work out and get stronger. I think I've mentioned on air a couple of other times I've started to work out three times a week in addition to the dietary stuff. And so I think it's given me kind of a desire, again, to get back in shape.

I mean, I'm not working out super hard like I would have when I was playing sports in college or anything like that, but it's very similar. You get kind of that bug of, "Man, I want to look better, I want to feel better." I've noticed the "feel better, look better," and I do enjoy it.

Scot: I've found too that you can start chaining like that. Whether it's with diet or whether you start exercising, pretty soon you do one or the other and you're like, "Well, I've been exercising, maybe I should clean up my diet a little bit."

Dr. Smith: Exactly.

Scot: Or, "Hey, I've been really eating well, maybe I should exercise a little bit more." Those good habits, I think you start feeling so good, and you see the progress, and you're like, "Hey, how can I get more of this?" And then maybe a little bit more sleep or whatever. I think everybody's a little different, but that's cool. I like that.

Well, Dr. Smith, thank you so much for sharing your story. Very inspirational. And again, remind us, how much weight did you lose from your . . .

Dr. Smith: I'm down about 60 to 65 pounds, depending on the week and what the scale says.

Scot: And what are we heading towards? What's the goal?

Dr. Smith: I'm probably looking to get down another maybe 15 pounds. I'd like to get down into the 180, 185 range.

Scot: Is that based on anything other than that it sounds like a cool number? I mean, is it based on research saying that's a good healthy weight for you? Is it what you were in high school, so you want to get back to that, or what?

Dr. Smith: Well, I was 135 pounds in high school, so we're not getting back to that at all. That's a hard no. The thing for me about getting down to that is kind of BMI as well as I felt like I was strong at that weight when I've been there previously, and it felt like a good weight for my body.

It's not ideal as far as if you look at . . . My BMI is still higher probably than the BMI scale would say, but I feel like it's a reasonable weight for me to get to that would provide me the benefit of . . . Getting down to 185, 190, would be solid as far as how I know I've felt in the past, and I think that's the driver on that.

Scot: Yeah, we know BMI . . . I mean, it's flawed, I guess, but it is a good kind of . . .

Dr. Smith: It's a good barometer.

Scot: Yeah, a quick glance indicator. And we do know that there are relationships between decreasing BMI and increasing health metrics. If you really wanted to drill down, you could get a body fat analysis that will really tell you. When you get rid of that adipose material, as they call it, fat, that can really benefit you as well from a health standpoint, from a metabolic standpoint.

Dr. Smith: Absolutely.

Scot: All right. Very cool. Anything else you want to throw out before we kind of do our final thoughts?

Dr. Smith: I would just say do your best. Allow yourself some opportunity to not be perfect at it. I still eat breakfast with my kids now and again. I still go to breakfast sometimes where I try to augment things. There are days where I do that, and then I also eat pizza for dinner. It is what it is, right? You can't let that just override your life. You have to live your life, but you do your best.

And I think that's the thing that I've allowed myself to do, too, is to have some of those days where it's like, "You know what? I'm going to just do this, and it's okay."

Scot: Mitch, takeaways?

Mitch: So as a fellow road to 185, who's also struggling with his weight . . .

Scot: That's where you want to be too, huh?

Mitch: Yep. There are a lot of similarities in our stories. It's nice to hear that there is someone out there that is not kind of the . . . I don't know. We've been doing these TikTok episodes, and it seems like one influencer after another is like, "Just put cinnamon on stuff, and you'll lose all this weight." It's nice to just hear, "Hey, let's do a nutrition journal to find out where your calories are. Let's do some math. Let's figure out what you can do that works for you, little steps that you can do and start to build up a momentum."

It's one thing to hear about those types of strategies. It's another thing to talk to someone who has actually made a whole lot of progress. So I appreciate that. Thank you.

Scot: And your takeaway led to my takeaway a little bit. I was struggling with exactly . . . Because I've kind of been sprinkling them throughout, if you didn't notice. That's what I like to do. This notion of focusing on the right things comes back to the Core Four.

The TikTok influencers that we've been talking about the past couple of episodes, "put cinnamon on your stuff if you want to amplify your fat loss," that's focusing on absolutely the wrong thing. If you pay attention to something that's not going to work, then you're not paying attention to the thing that's going to work.

I think it does come back to this "calories in, calories out." Take an honest assessment of where you're at, and figure out what you need to eat and how you're going to get there. And if you need some help from a healthcare provider or nutritionist, then by all means seek that out, because these things are the things that we know work.

All right. John, thank you very much for sharing your story. It's not about being perfect. It's not about one big change at a time. John has proven that. He's just made kind of a couple of small changes that have made a big difference.

If you would like to share your story or have any insights, thoughts, or questions, we'd love to hear from you. You can reach out at hello@thescoperadio.com.

Thanks for listening. Thanks for caring about men's health.