Ep. #519: Ethan Suplee on Losing 300 Pounds and Getting Jacked

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So again, if you appreciate my work and if you’ll wanna see more of it, please do consider supporting me so I can keep doing what I love, like producing podcasts like this. Hey there, and welcome to another episode of Muscle for Life. I am Mike Matthews. Now today’s guest is Ethan. And you may not recognize his name, but you have almost certainly seen his face because he has appeared in quite a few big movies and TV shows such as Mallrats, Without a Paddle, American History X, Cold Mountain, Remember the Titans, My Name is Earl, Chasing Amy, and Many, many more.

And during much of this time, much of his time acting, he has been big. Ethan tipped the scales at nearly 530 pounds at his heaviest. And as he jokes in this interview, he basically had the fat guy who can act niche cornered in Hollywood. And while that was health. Full to his career and his bank account.

It was not doing his body any favors, as you can imagine. And so about a decade ago, Ethan realized that his life was likely to come to a painful and humiliating end if he didn’t make a major change. And so he got a wild hair and then. Through crash dieting, Keto, martial arts, and cycling, he managed to get all the way down to 220 pounds.

He lost 300 pounds. But, as impressive as that was, Ethan still wasn’t happy. He didn’t have much muscle, he didn’t like how his body looked, he felt small and weak and just uncomfortable 300s.

Now, fortunately, Ethan eventually found his way to me and my work, as well as the good work of others in the evidence based fitness space. And he learned about proper meal planning, macronutrient balance, heavy weightlifting, and other fundamentals. And you fast forward to today, and you would not even recognize him as Louis the Lineman from Remember the Titans.

Just go check out his Instagram, and you’ll see what I mean. Ethan Suplee. S U P L E T E N. E. Check out his Instagram, and then Google Louis the Lineman and marvel at his transformation. That is the same guy. I mean, now he looks like he’s ready for the next Mission Impossible movie. Now what’s more, Ethan is using his celebrity and his story to help spread the word about what he has learned about proper nutrition and training.

And he’s talking about this on his Instagram that I just mentioned, as well as his new and immediate hit podcast, American Glutton. So if you want to hear Ethan’s inspiring story about how he went from super fat to fit to really fat to really fit, this podcast is for you. Ethan, thanks for taking the time to do this.

This was very serendipitous, I guess could be the word that we’re doing this interview. It’s very different than what I normally do. Your entree into the fitness space is also very different for you as well, and it’s a wild story. So I’m excited to talk about it and I know that it’s going to resonate with a lot of people listening and they are going to be inspired by it because it is just inspiring and it’s just a fun story.

You’re a good dude. And it’s. Cool to see good things happen to good people.

Ethan: Yeah, thank you. I’m totally blown away. A little bit overwhelmed by the reaction I’ve gotten and that the podcast is getting and it’s exciting and it’s fun. And I initially thought, you know, if I could talk about this, cause I have lost weight in the past and lost a lot of weight, but I didn’t really talk about it.

I just did it. And then that was that. I thought if I talk about this and it helps a single person, then that’s a valid pursuit, you know? So…

Mike: Yeah. And this time around, was it different in that you didn’t just lose weight, but you like completely transform your body composition? Had you done that previously or was this?

Ethan: Well, I mean, but it was a drastically different transformation.

I spent end of 2009 through mid 2011 riding bicycles. And I mean like amateur racing and going to France and following the tour to France and riding every stage of that and like legit cycling. I became very, very lean up top and I had giant legs and, you know, I got down to 220 pounds, I think was my lowest then.

I’m 260 now.

Mike: How tall are you just for people who…

Ethan: 6’1

Mike: Okay.

Ethan: 220. I was sub 15 percent body fat on a DEXA scan. Then I was very lean, but I was not comfortable. I didn’t feel, you know, and then I was riding bikes. And the minute I stopped riding bikes every day for eight hours, that just went away, you know.

Mike: Yeah, I mean, I’m sure that was hard to adjust just with your appetite alone because you can’t just go from eating the amount of food that it required to do that to not overnight. You can’t just turn that off.

Ethan: True, but I was like a legit sicko and I would program really unhealthy diets where there would be weeks where I would only allow myself to consume food while riding a bike and then I would get home and just basically not eat for the rest of the night, occasionally have something called carbolite, which is like carbohydrate free fucking sorry for swearing.

I swear a lot.

Mike: I used to swear more on it and then enough people didn’t like it. So I was like, all right, I’ll cut it down. So I understand. But the occasional swear word is not a big deal.

Ethan: Yeah. Okay. Good. You know, I was very uncomfortable being that thin. It’s bizarre to say that thin at 220 because 220 is pretty damn big.

Mike: Yeah. You hear that and you think that you were, I mean, approaching linebacker territory.

Ethan: Right. But I had literally no muscle mass up top. But I had gigantic legs.

Mike: Yeah. One of the guys who works with me was really into cycling. He competed when he was a bit younger. And when he first came, he was not competing anymore, but he was just riding a lot.

And same physique. I would joke that he was like a centaur. Yeah. That’s what I felt like. Like these massive legs and no muscle mass up top. Yeah.

Ethan: I got down to like a 36 waist and the actual waistline was loose. But it was, no matter what size pants I got, they were skinny jeans on my quads and like barely fit on my calves.

It was really bizarre.

Mike: Like leggings. Everything is just leggings. Yeah, basically.

Ethan: And then I even looked at getting like bell bottoms, but that was just absurd. Like, you know, those weird, like

Mike: you got to wear the goofy bodybuilder pants, dude. That’s it. That’s all.

Ethan: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But those would have really been leggings.

Mike: Yeah, well, no, no, because you can get the really baggy one right the same bad pants Yeah, exactly the American flag kind of baggy bodybuilding pants. Yeah, start wearing the fanny pack.

Ethan: Yeah, you know the other kind of weird thing about that was there was some press coverage of that but it was not entirely negative, but there was a good amount of people who would, like, I had a few times paparazzi follow me while I was riding, and they wouldn’t get, like, a cool action shot of me, like, coming, bombing down a hill, you know, going around a turn.

They would wait until I stopped, try to get angles of, like, the loose skin on my legs. I was really big, so there is loose skin, and that is a part of it, but… The majority of the articles, at least the ones I saw and remember, were like, the downside of weight loss. Which really made me not want to talk about it.

You know, because if that’s the angle we’re going to take, if what I’ve done isn’t going to be celebrated, it’s going to be like, here’s all the… Adverse effects of doing what I did.

Mike: I mean, also what you were doing was so extreme that many people wouldn’t be able to relate to it. Also, you know what I mean?

If you’re like, yeah, sure. I just ride a bike eight hours a day and you know what I mean? Like, Oh, cool, dude. Good for you. That’s interesting. The paparazzi is that just kind of driven by market. Like that’s what was selling. That’s what the tabloids wanted. They wanted to spin it negatively or.

Ethan: I don’t know, man.

You know, it hurt my feelings a bit just because like, I’d gone from at my heaviest 530 probably 530 plus Wow to 220 with like athletic body fat proportions Mm hmm. I had a resting heart rate of 35 beats a minute like I was an athlete and the coverage wasn’t just Hey, he did something awesome. They don’t know I’m riding eight hours a day cause I’m not talking about it.

And they’re not following me around for eight hours a day, but they would kind of stake out this one coffee shop. I went to a lot like midway in a bike ride and you could probably see me there five days a week getting a coffee. And they got a ton of pictures of like loose skin on my legs and it was like negative stories.

And that was a drag. So I wasn’t super open about it. I had nothing to say. And then this time around, I think I benefited from the fact that I feel way more comfortable with myself because I’m, I’m closer to a size. I’ve spent a longer period of my life at than I was then. I release the pictures I want to release.

You know what I mean? Like, I’m not… They did get some pictures of me getting in and out of my car the other day, but they’re fine. They’re not trying to make it bad. But the pictures that… People started putting out there are pictures that I took that I was comfortable with, you know?

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. Like what’s on your Instagram, which I was saying before we got on here is growing.

So I checked, uh, Ethan’s Instagram. So it was, we have a mutual friend and my brother in law and so his name’s Mario. And so Mario was like, Tommy was like, dude, it’s, you need to see what Ethan has done. This is crazy. So he shows me your Instagram, Ethan. And that was, I mean, shit, not even a week ago. I think it was a few days.

I don’t know. I looked at it like max five days ago and it was at 80, 000. And today I went back to follow you and it’s at 250, 000. And you’re saying that your podcast. Which is called American glutton?

Ethan: American glutton.

Mike: Okay. And so the first episode in, has it even been a week yet? And it’s broken 50, 000.

Ethan: Yeah, it hasn’t been a week yet.

Mike: That’s wild. That’s awesome. The amount of just positive attention that you’re getting. It’s interesting that it’s so different this time when what you did before was extremely impressive and was actually very healthy. Like, yeah, you may not have liked that you weren’t jacked enough, but you did lose more than half of you took your body weight, you know, down by like 60%.

And I’m sure improved your health in every way, even though what you were doing was probably about this far as you can push the body without like getting into truly dangerous territory. I guess there’s something to be said for muscle, right? I don’t know. For being big and strong. It’s just the thing.

Ethan: Yeah, man. You know, I think that’s part of it too. I think I look more the way people want me to look.

Mike: Really themselves. And that’s, I’m just speaking from my experience in my work that like a lot of people, if they’re interested in fitness, they want to be big. They want to be strong to talk about guys in particular.

They want to be big. They want to be strong. And many of them would. Yeah, sure. The abs are cool, but first and foremost, they want to be big and strong. So when they see big and strong Ethan that immediately resonates, right? Maybe more, uh, even if it’s just on a subconscious emotional level than where you were at previously.

Ethan: But it also is super helpful to me because it disguises a bit of the loose skin, which is, I went through every kind of like alternative wrap yourself in seaweed and salt and it’ll tighten your skin up. And I did everything I could, but at the end of the day, skin is an organ and it’s built to be elastic.

But once it stays stretched out, it thinks this is not. We’re no longer being stretched. This is how big we need to be. And so it grows to that size. So there is loose skin and the muscle helps fill it out. Take down some of the effects of that. You know?

Mike: Yeah, that totally makes sense. I’ve written about loose skin and unfortunately there isn’t that much you can do other than doing exactly what you’re doing, which is build muscle, just improve your fitness and see how it goes.

If I remember correctly, a couple supplements that have a little bit of evidence that they could help a little bit, but there definitely is no magic bullet or quick fix. This was interesting to me when, when Mario brought this up to me, because we had spoken a number of years ago about what you wanted to do, and I, I can’t take any credit for what you’ve done, but it immediately caught where I was like, do I have anything to do with this transformation?

Because if so, then I love that .

Ethan: Yeah, I, I mean, I really think you do. I wouldn’t put it all on your shoulders, but that was the first look. I am an expert at losing weight the wrong way. And when I say the wrong way, I just mean like, I have a goal in mind. And rather than looking at maybe the more difficult course that takes longer to get to that goal, I’m just going to cheat as much as possible to get to that goal as quickly as possible.

I have done that a lot.

Mike: So just hardcore crash dieting.

Ethan: Yeah, man, I’ve done every kind of diet that puts you into like sub thousand calories a day and being as big as I am.

Mike: That’s ridiculous. Yeah.

Ethan: I’ll muscle through that for months and exist, you know, I’ll be up kind of miserably. And then I’ve even been able to do like maintenance periods afterwards where I’m not just immediately gaining weight again. Do you know what I mean? Like still staying in a caloric deficit, but increasing a little bit.

Mike: When you were doing that, did you understand the mechanics or do you just know? Yeah. If I eat very little food, my weight goes down.

Ethan: I didn’t understand the mechanics the same way I do today. And I think the conversation I had with you. Was the very first kind of brush with, Oh, there’s some science here that I’m missing. We had that conversation and then I didn’t actually start then. That was a few years ago. I continued doing what I was doing, although I did at some point go.

Oh, I’m doing this too quickly. I can take my time. And I kind of relaxed on that. But it was a conversation with you. It was Dr. Mike Israetel’s book, and then even Lane Norton’s book too, where I got a real broad picture on how carbohydrates, fat, protein really work, how What retaining muscle does that kind of the scientific principles between about energy conservation and energy burning.

And I went, Oh, I’m not going to get my goal if I continue doing what I’m doing. And so I really drastically changed my diet about a year ago.

Mike: And what happened between that time and now in terms of your body composition? And at what point did you get serious about weightlifting too?

Ethan: I’ve been lifting weights for years on and off. I got really serious. And when I say really serious, I mean, I didn’t even really get really, really serious until about four or five months ago. I was just lifting weights with the idea of. You know, I am in a caloric deficit. I want to gain my body into thinking it’s got to hold on to this muscle.

Mike: So it’s kind of like exercise less so than training, like it maybe wasn’t as, as organized or systematic as it is now.

Ethan: Yeah. I started tracking my workouts and basically doing like standard hypertrophic workouts. Okay. And that was with real, real dedication. And to be honest with you, I’ve basically other than maintenance periods been in a deficit. I haven’t done a bulk. I haven’t gained a single ounce of muscle.

Mike: Well, you can gain muscle in a deficit. It just depends on where you’re at physiologically, right? There is a point where the stimulus of training isn’t enough to overcome the impairments of being in a deficit. So, depending on where you were at when you. revamped your diet? You may have, unless you know you haven’t. I know I haven’t.

Ethan: I’ve lost, since I really, really got serious, I’ve lost about 20 pounds of fat and about 5 pounds of muscle.

Mike: And how has your strength changed in that period?

Ethan: I honestly don’t fuck around with One rep max

is pretty much ever.

Mike: Sure, sure. But any rep max really like, you know, put 225 on the bench and can you bench that for more reps now than then or less or.

Ethan: Yeah, I can do more now. So my strength is increased.

Mike: That’s great.

Ethan: Yeah. I tend to, as a matter of fact, this last cycle. After the last deload maintenance period I took, I actually began with 225 and I would do, and listen, I work out all by myself. So I’m going to say these numbers and you could think like you’re doing too much or whatever, but this has just been what’s workable for me.

I’ll do. Five sets of 10 at 225. And then every week I bump it up by 10 pounds.

Mike: Yeah. I mean, a simple linear loading pattern like that is great. It’s the easiest way to make progress until it doesn’t work anymore is the simple way to put it.

Ethan: Right. And again, I mean, I really look forward to hitting. Sub 10 percent body fat on a DEXA scan so that I can then do a bulk and actually try to build muscle.

Like I cannot wait to do that, but I am really just concentrating and it’s and I’ve gotten much better like the last three month period between DEXA scans. I lost under a pound of muscle and I was like ecstatic because up until then, every time I saw a drop in lean tissue, it would crush me.

Mike: Something to consider there is when you lose water and glycogen from your muscles, right? Glycogen form of carbohydrate. If you haven’t come across that term yet, that registers as loss of lean mass on DEXA. Absolutely. Okay. And that’s why I asked about your strength. You can’t get stronger and lose muscle. Simultaneously.

Ethan: Okay. So maybe that’s not real loss then.

Mike: If you’ve seen your whole body strength continue to increase, let’s say as you’ve gotten stronger on your squat deadlift and bench press, that’s an easy way to look at it.

Then you are not losing muscle. You might be losing again, what registers as lean mass, but it’s not. Lean muscle tissue where you would see that is if you’re losing strength as well. And then where you mostly see that is with intermediate and advanced weightlifters who are dieting down to very lean levels.

Like let’s say someone’s getting ready for a bodybuilding show and they’re doing it naturally. They can expect to actually lose some lean muscle tissue because of just how long you have to remain in a deficit for. And you have to, I mean, you have to fuck your body up. Like your body’s not meant to ever be at 5 percent body fat.

So just some, a positive note is if it were me coaching you, for example, I would say just based on that alone, like you’re not losing muscle in the sense that how you’re looking at it, even though your muscles actually, like if they lose some water and lose some glycogen, they’re going to get a little bit smaller.

Because that adds to size. But again, I would bet money that you’ve actually gained some lean muscle tissue. I mean, maybe not as much as you could have if you would have been in a surplus, but based on the results that you’re seeing, I would say it’s very positive and you’re clearly doing the most important things, right?

Ethan: Yeah, the difference in my appearance in such a short period of time, doing it this way versus what I was doing, which was basically keto, and when I would get motivated to lose weight, it was a very calorically restricted keto, the difference in appearance as quickly as I’m seeing it is just bizarre.

Mike: Let’s talk about keto. Very popular right now. I’m sure that’s why you tried it. Cause you’re like, Hey, if this is the thing, this is the thing. And how was your experience losing fat with keto? I mean, I understand you also now are doing. Things a bit different in the gym, but you know, I often hear from people who are either doing the keto diet or considering it and are afraid to eat a good amount of carbs every day because they think that it’s going to impair fat loss or sometimes they think it’s, it’s better for health.

I’m sure it’s drastically different. The experience.

Ethan: I’ll say two things for me, keto and I had different versions of keto. I had a very lazy, unhealthy keto that I would do where I was rationalized eating, you know, bricks of cheese and salami all day, which I wouldn’t really lose weight doing. And then I would go like, I’m going to get my shit together and just do chicken thighs and avocados and some veggies, right?

When I would do that. I would lose weight really, really consistently. My energy was pretty good. Like, I actually found it to be an easy diet because I wasn’t hungry. It didn’t require a lot of thought. It didn’t require any thought. You know what I mean? Like, I could go to any restaurant and get a steak. I could go get a grilled piece of chicken somewhere and that would be my meal.

But I was losing muscle. I don’t think. At an equal level of losing fat, but it was pretty darn severe, like…

Mike: Hmm, it was something you noticed.

Ethan: Oh yeah, I just looked the same, but smaller. And I just continued to look the same, but smaller. And you know, and I was going like, how long is it gonna take to get the line down my stomach? Or some kind of shadow, you know, and I can… I actually stand in my bathroom right now that has like the perfect spot lit overhead light. I have an 8 pack under that light, you know what I mean? Right now, I still feel like that’s a cheat, but I was nowhere near that.

Mike: Lighting is half of Instagram, come on.

Ethan: Right.

Mike: Of fitness Instagram, lighting is half the game.

Ethan: Listen. My goal is I want to be spot lit head on and be shredded, which I, I don’t know that that’s even really possible. Like all those guys have overhead lighting is so important.

Mike: Yeah. And then crazy tanning too, but I think where the look that you’re talking about before it starts to get actually a problematic. I would say to put a number to it is probably something around six or seven percent body fat where you can do that naturally and you can do without fucking your body up. You might not enjoy maintaining it, but that’s where you’re pretty much pinching skin everywhere around your body.

Ethan: Yeah, I’m going to be really Frank, I’m never going to get there. I’m not like, I don’t even want to get there. Honestly, I’d like to hit 9 percent and then I’m going to do a bulk.

Mike: That’s where I think just my experience working with lots of guys, that’s a sweet spot where you have abs, you look good, you look athletic, but you don’t have to be too OCD about.

Your food and your calories in particular, and you have some wiggle room and you can go enjoy yourself, uh, if you want to go to a restaurant and you don’t have to try to get in two hours of activity a day, you know, it starts to get a bit ridiculous. If you want to maintain below that, where you start approaching that kind of stage look, you know?

Ethan: Yeah, all I would say about the diet that I’m on now.

It’s actually quite a bit more food, which is really surprising, but by a lot, it’s actually maybe double or triple the amount of food I was eating before.

Mike: What are your calories and macros currently look like?

Ethan: I’m around 2500 calories a day. Okay. And I’m doing pretty extreme macros where it’s like 50 percent protein, 35 percent carbs, and 15 percent fat.

Mike: And why all the protein out of curiosity?

Ethan: I read somewhere that it was like 1. 2 per pound. I just liked that number. And when I factored in that number, it was around 300 grams. And it just kind of put me there. It’s pretty close to that. You know, listen, I’m not. I write everything down, I’m calculating everything, and it’s not exact every day, but it’s pretty darn close to that.

Mike: Yeah, which is, again, you don’t need to be perfect in this game. You just need to get the most important things mostly right most of the time. That really is the, and just be consistent and inevitably life’s going to get in the way here and there. It doesn’t matter. They’re blips. So long as you just, again, keep, uh, mostly on track.

So that’s great.

Ethan: Yeah. And another thing that I just thought of that I’ll just be completely open and honest about is when I first began this, I was so used to eating twice a day that I was trying to do that. And it was actually too much food to eat twice a day physically. And so then I split it up into three and then even into four meals.

And then again, I would get to the fourth meal and be like, fuck, I owe 120 grams of protein in this meal. And I would eat it all in that meal. And then I would get this insanely bad gas. And I, I looked into that and I found out that, yeah. And Mario actually helped me with that, that it was like your body literally unable to process the protein. So that’s a big sign of that.

Mike: Yeah, there is a point for sure where, yeah, no 50 grams. Yeah, sure. No problem. But if you look at some of the research on protein digestion, absorption, people ask me that I say around the hundred grams and especially I mean for a woman who weighs quite a bit less it’s going to be less but for someone your size.

And even me, I weigh 195. So for someone between me and you, I would say a hundred ish is probably where you’d want to cut it off. And then splitting up your meals also is better for muscle gain over the long term. Having those three to five servings of protein per day is superior than one or two. So you’re going to benefit from that as well.

Ethan: I increased my protein to higher than I had to have it for that reason that, hey listen, dude, I’m a fat, lazy guy. That’s the reality. I don’t find it easy to get six meals a day. I know I should, and I do. I try to, but I do also hit the end of the day where it’s like, I owe a bunch of protein and maybe, you know, and, and I’m also like getting up and taking aminos at the end of the night.

But I just know if I’m hitting above it, I’m getting as close to perfect as possible, if that makes sense.

Mike: Yeah, totally. So you had mentioned earlier that at your biggest, you were 500 plus pounds. I’m just curious. What’s the, the story in terms of like, when did this become an issue for you? Did your weight become an issue for you? Like.

Ethan: Like a real problem where I went, like, I need to do something about this. On my own wasn’t until 2001 or maybe even 2002. So I was like 24, maybe, and I was with my wife. We weren’t married at the time, but, and it had never really come up so much before that, where there was like stuff I wanted to do with someone and my weight was holding me back.

Like I just didn’t ever want to go on a walk with anyone. Like that wasn’t, you know what I mean? Like, I just was like.

Mike: Yeah. If you want to go for a walk, don’t call Ethan. He’s not going.

Ethan: Yeah. You guys are going on a walk. Yeah. I don’t want to do that with you. So go for your walk. I don’t give a shit. And then there was just stuff like that.

Like my wife and I in Paris and you spend so much time on your feet and I’m like miserable. And I think that was kind of the doorway. And then I had a, like a brutal conversation with a guy and I hadn’t ever had that before. And I just went like. I don’t want to do this anymore.

Mike: What kind of conversation was that?

Unless you don’t want to talk about it, but I’m just curious.

Ethan: No, no, that’s fine. I talked about it on my podcast. I’m totally fine with talking about it. It was another actor who I was supposed to work with. And then the movie fell apart. And then we just randomly bumped into each other at an airplane. And we were on the same flight to, from LA to Frankfurt.

And he kind of changed seats and came and sat with me. And basically was having this conversation that was really kind of, I didn’t really understand it at first. And then over the course of several hours, it was. You’re going to hell because you’re not emulating Jesus Christ in your life. And I, and I,

Mike: and you only have like five hours to go until you land.

Ethan: Right. Yeah. It was just one of those things where I, at the end of it, I was so shaken because listen, if you called me a fat ass in a bar, we’re going to fight. Like, I don’t care. You know what I mean? Back then, I don’t want to fight anyone today, but when I was a kid, like, I’ll just fight you. I don’t care.

If you make me feel weird or uncomfortable, that’s what my reaction is going to be. And I couldn’t do that with this guy because he wasn’t calling me a fat ass. He was coming from a place of concern. I wanted to tell him to go fuck himself, but I couldn’t even do that. And then it was that coupled with, I think, this girl who really loved me.

And I kind of was like, is she going to keep loving me if I can’t do all this shit with her? Go spend a week walking around Paris. There’s no way I could have pulled that off. Now, I had been to Paris lots of times and I just would take a lot of breaks. And, you know, she was kind of like this hustly gal who I just didn’t think, I thought this is going to run its course.

She’s not going to do this forever. So I think that was really the motivation.

Mike: That’s interesting because, you know, I’ve had a discussion about this with my wife recently, just that point of, it’s interesting to hear people’s stories and what are the events that were like the turning points and when you would think that, you know, I’m sure you look back now, not that you have any regret or whatever, but does it seem a bit odd to you or you’re like, that was pretty obvious.

Or, or no, I’m actually genuinely asking where you go, because you had a moment where you had like some foresight, you saw a future and you said it was almost like a, a probabilistic calculation. You’re like, all right, probability is this is not going to go well. I just don’t see this working. Was that like the, that was the first time it really kind of crystallized for you.

Ethan: It was now, let me say I’m a sober person and I have a pretty extensive drug history. The only thing where I go, like, it was so obvious I could pick 20 instances throughout my life where I go, like, why wasn’t that the moment that I made the change? And then I just come to my kind of understanding of things today where.

You know, I’ve been sober for a long time and people have come to me to say, like, I need your help getting so and so sober or we need to get so and so on a diet. And I just go like, look, if that person wants help and they come to me and ask me for help, I will help anybody, but I just have not seen a lot of success in presenting the idea to someone.

It’s gotta be their idea. And so when I sit and go, why didn’t I come to this reality or this understanding? On the 30 times that I should have, I have no idea. And I have thought about it, but I just think that’s the way people are built. That like, unless it’s this magical confluence of events, there’s nothing anyone can do to flip the switch.

Mike: I know. And it’s something that I think about myself personally. It’s, it’s something that I try to work on personally. I mean, it’s hard to do because we seem so hardwired that way, but you know, I have my own version of stories or my own versions of stories like this, where I, you know, I could say. Yeah, as clever as a person I think I am like, why didn’t it was so obvious. Why did it take the time that it took, but at the same time, I feel like we all, we can improve. And I feel like we can improve in this way as well. And it’s something just an area of interest of mine personally, where I’m very Personally interested in trying to make good decisions and trying to gather good information and trying to have good values and good attitudes and beliefs that of course then lead to behaviors.

And so that’s why I ask. ’cause it’s just, I find it interesting when viewed through that perspective. ’cause I’ve had my own experiences along those lines. And some cases maybe I had some decent reasons. Even if I were to lay it all out, you might be like, Um, I can, I can see that that’s not so black and white.

It’s a little bit tricky other times. Not so much where it’s like, yeah, no, that was actually just moronic. I don’t, I don’t know what else to say.

Ethan: You know, I think part of it for me too, was shockingly, I was a successful actor. I had no trouble, you know, meeting and talking to and having relationships with girls.

I was making a ton of money. There just wasn’t a lot of things coming up that were. Getting in the way of life because of this and it wasn’t until I had a situation where I was so happy in the situation and I could see that not lasting because of this. You know, like my wife loved me and she continues to.

We’re still together. We have a bunch of kids and she has helped me more than any other person. And puts up with all my craziness and actually wanted me to do a podcast so that I wouldn’t talk to her about diet anymore because I’m just totally obsessed, you know? And then she’s like, I’m sick of hearing you talk, go talk to other people.

But you know, it was this thing of like, All this shit that I was quote unquote achieving or getting or all the stuff I had at the time up until that point, I didn’t really value. It was kind of worthless to me. It wasn’t something that I thought I could lose. And if I Did it was almost inconsequential.

And then I was in a situation where I was like, this is ideal for me. How do I make this more ideal? Like, what can I do in this situation to make it better for everyone? And this was losing weight and getting healthy. You know, partially it was like, I want to spend the rest of my life with this girl. How long is that going to be?

Is it going to be 10 years or is it going to be 40 years? You know,

Mike: Yeah, no, I can totally understand that. I mean, there’s, it’s almost like a qualitative element, whereas before, if you’re talking about money and just women dating or sex or whatever, that’s much more quantitative. It’s almost just transactional.

And I can see that where it’s like, yeah, whatever, dude, I lose some money. I make some money. I lose some women. I get some women who cares. But with what you have now, it’s much more about the quality and you go, well, shit, this is special. Like, I can’t just get this again.

Ethan: Yeah, no. Yeah. This would be something that if.

If I did something to lose this, I don’t know what the point is anymore, like, it’s like game over. You know,

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You mentioned about being a successful actor, and I’m going to mention in the intro, some of the stuff that you’re best known for, but how did your transformation? So I’m first, I’m curious about the cycling saga. How did that impact your work? And then now coming forward to now, I’m super curious how that has impacted it and..

Ethan: So I was really heavy through the nineties and the first year or two of the aughts, and I did a ton of movies and I, you know, had basically no worries and then got together with my wife in 2002. And decided to make a change. And so the first diet I did was a liquid diet where I think I was at like 600 calories a day.

I lost 80 pounds in two months. Wow. Yeah. And like, I actually think that there’s. That at the size that I was, I think that’s perfectly reasonable thing to do.

Mike: Oh, I actually don’t disagree. There’s a case study of a dude who started, I want to say in the four hundreds and he ended around where you’re at now, and it essentially involved him eating nothing for about a year.

They gave him intravenous nutrients to make sure that, but he drank water. He ate no food for a year.

Ethan: Yeah. Being a sober guy, I often will think about, you know, how much easier really it is to give up drugs and alcohol just because it’s something you’re doing. And then it’s something you’re not doing. And you cannot do that with food.

Like you can’t just give up food. If you’re having an unhealthy relationship with food, the answer isn’t stop eating, but it’s amazing that there’s a guy that did.

Mike: Yeah. And it really, it’s just because he had so much fat to lose. So his body had so much in the way of energy reserves. He was able to do it.

So just to your point, the one condition where it can make sense and it was medically supervised as well, but the one condition where, yes, I do agree that if somebody is very overweight and is like, let’s kickstart this, let’s get this going that a very low calorie approach, it just makes sense. It does, and it can be done healthily.

It’s not necessarily an unhealthy thing. Now, if you’re at your weight now and you’re like, Hey, uh, so what if I just ate 600 calories a day so I can see more of my abs, then that’s where I’d be like, eh, probably not a good idea my friend.

Ethan: Right. And that’s where I’ve, I’ve been trying to talk to people about what their goals are because at 400 pounds at 530 at, at these kinds of weights. Like if your goal is just like, I can’t even exercise now. I just need to be smaller than I think that’s a valid diet. And I think it works on a number of fronts that it shows you a. big result pretty quick. It’ll get you moving and it’ll be something tangible and valid that you want to hold on to.

You know what I mean? So if you understand how the body works and you understand that you’re setting yourself up for potential adipose hyperplasia, if you then just start eating again, it could get worse. If you understand that, then I think, you know, at those big sizes, I think it’s perfectly fine to do that.

Yes. But now I’ve also found hunger. I’m like, I’ve known in years eating the way I’m eating right now. And if I go too long without eating, it’s overwhelming. So I could not do that.

Mike: Yeah. Your appetite changes as it should and as it needs to, even if it’s for nothing other than the fact that muscle is metabolically active.

I mean, it has more uses for food now than just storing it as body fat, which you already had plenty of in the past, you know? Right. So with your. career. So it’s interesting that when you were making all kinds of movies and I would assume that your size probably worked in your favor because not only are you a good actor, but you’re a big dude and there’s like, if that’s needed, that’s needed.

Ethan: I was kind of that guy for, for a number of years, you know, I wasn’t the Jack Black fat guy or even the Chris Farley fact. I was much bigger than those guys. So I kind of had that market cornered and then coming into like 2003, 2004, I still was finding work having lost a good amount of weight. I was now still the fat guy, but I wasn’t just insanely fat, you know what I mean?

I was kind of like average fat, right? I then in 2005 did My Name is Earl. And in the beginning of that, I was at like my lowest ever. I don’t actually know what the numbers were, but I think there could have been a day where I was like sub 300 pounds for a day where I was like 295 or something took a big shit that day.

And also no real muscle definition, but I was working out like crazy and I was finding things that I enjoyed doing. I was doing a lot of kickboxing and jujitsu and wrestling and stuff like that. And I was super into. MMA and like that was my exercise, you know, I didn’t do a whole lot of exercise outside of that But I went four or five times a week to the gym and I was doing basically keto at that time So I was still losing weight and then over the course of my name is Earl I kind of gained some weight back in 2010 or 2009 when

My name is Earl ended. I’d made a bunch of money and I wasn’t really thinking about, it wasn’t like I got to go get another job right now and I had gained some weight. So I just was started riding bicycles and that kind of became the thing that I was super into for a couple of and I lost a ton of weight.

And then I went back and To work and did some pilots and actually was just uncomfortable in my own skin at that point.

Mike: And did that negatively impact your acting, your work?

Ethan: I think so. Yeah, I think so. But I also, there’s like one or two pictures of me at the time and I just don’t, I even look at them now and I truly look skeletal in my face.

Like I don’t look healthy and I, I do think it. negatively impacted me. And it was kind of coming out of that, that I started lifting weights. So that was like 2011, 12, where I started lifting weights. I actually did a competition on a rowing machine in, it was either like the end of 2011 or 2012. And you get like a card on a concept to rowing machine and it’s got a little computer chip and you upload it.

And I, I think I was like, Ninth or 10th in the world in my weight category, uh, at a 30 minute effort, which was pretty impressive.

Mike: Yeah, that is impressive. Rowing is hard.

Ethan: Yeah. I did a full marathon, 49, 000 meters on a rowing machine.

Mike: Uh, i’ve done like 20 minutes before.

Ethan: I had, I had great cardio stamina back then.

I do not do much cardio today.

Mike: Yeah. Well, I mean with all the writing you’d expect that, right? And with Like you said, your resting heart was in the thirties. That’s like top tier athlete level. Yeah. I was a beast. And so fast forward to today. So now you’re 260. You’ve gained a lot of muscle, a lot of strength, and you are not doing as much cardio.

Ethan: No, but I gained a lot of fat too. I did a TV series called chance years, like 2016, 2017, or 2017, 2018, maybe. I was big. I was 350, 375.

Mike: Oh, wow. So how did that happen? So you went through this whole transformation and then why did you regress?

Ethan: I wasn’t working. Well, first of all, I wasn’t comfortable. I like felt uncomfortably small.

I mean, listen, dude, my entire life I was a big dude and now 220. I literally felt tiny and and it just messed with my head. Yeah. And it was affecting work. And I literally said to my wife, I’m going to gain some weight. And she said, okay, do whatever you want. And then I gained a lot of weight, you know, 150 pounds and I was working out through all of that.

It wasn’t like I just sat and ate pizzas. So I think. I guess that’s technically a bulk.

Mike: I guess, depending on your lifting weights during that period.

Ethan: Yeah.

Mike: Okay. So you certainly gained some muscle along the way.

Ethan: Yes, I did for sure. Because I, in this cut, I’ve revealed much more muscle than I had at two 20. You know, obviously.

Mike: Well, there it is. That was your first bulk. The next one. You’re probably going to target less weight gain, but Hey.

Ethan: Yeah. It was not a lean bulk. It was just a pizza and chicken.

Mike: That’s called a dirty bulk in the bodybuilding world.

Ethan: It was a dirty bulk. That’s for sure. I have some pictures of myself at like.

330 where I was, I actually have a, a picture of myself in the bathroom with my shirt off where I am so impressed with my traps and I’m like, look at me, I look great right now. And I was truly, truly comfortable at 330. I was like, I’m killing it.

Mike: That’s great. And it’s, it’s interesting to hear that. It’s something that, you know, with a lot of the conversations I have, I, that’s just a perspective that I’ve, fuck I’ve emailed my email inboxes.

Over 150, 000 emails sent and received. And so, and it’s still something that I haven’t, I don’t know if I’ve heard before, but I can totally see that where you get used to a certain size and you’re like, this is, it’d be like me going down to a hundred pounds or something. That’s, I can totally get that where you just feel like a strong wind is just going to blow you away.

Ethan: It was so wild because I could stand on my feet all day and walk anywhere and walk up hills and like all of that was cool and I would look at that and go but like but yeah I can do this stuff but I just was like I’m but I’m tiny and I’m not Tiny it was something I couldn’t hold these ideas at the same time in my head The reality is not it was like, you know, you hear about people who are like This is the wrong body and I’m like I relate to that.

I know what that feels like I was like what

Mike: felt like a big dude in a small body.

Ethan: Yeah, it was really weird.

Mike: That’s very interesting. How do you feel now?

Ethan: I feel great now. I mean, I’m not going to lie. I feel a little small. I feel a little thin, but I don’t look at myself and think I look sickly. And I certainly don’t feel like a strong breeze could blow me over.

Like I don’t feel like waifishly thin, you know, there, I have a pair of pants, which have no business being as loose as they are. But it’s fine. I’m not freaking out about it. And I’m still, I haven’t hit my goal. I know what my goal is. I’m aiming for it. And then I am going to do a very, very slow, very clean, you know, I’m going to do a really long maintenance period first and lock everything in place and then do a slow bolt.

Mike: Yeah, that makes sense. And you’ll enjoy it. You’ll notice. A pretty significant difference fairly quickly in your workouts. It’s nice to have the endless energy kind of feeling that comes when your carb intake has been up there for, you know, for me, it starts kicking in probably two or three weeks is I don’t really start to notice it.

Now what you’ve done and all the attention they’re getting, I’m just, where do you see that? Impacting your work because now you’re becoming a different type of, and now stereotype is not the word you look now at you and you’re like this big, strong dude. Now you have a beard. That’s a very different, gives a very different first impression than previously when you were very overweight, are we going to see you running around with guns?

Like,

Ethan: yeah, listen, I did a movie where I’m running around with a gun. I did it middle of last year. So. I was probably 20 pounds heavier than I am now, but I was still in good shape and I was so excited for that to come out. And I actually think it’s like, like a really important movie for right now, because it is about how the kind of the political divide cannot communicate with one another.

Like the two groups are, are actually living within different realities. And so there’s going to be no way to. For them to do anything together, you know, I don’t know if it was stupid of them, but the marketing for the movie, they started playing trailers for the movie on CNN in between the first democratic debates.

And it’s a movie where people do get killed. And so people got very upset and there’s guns and some violence in the trailer. And then that following weekend, we had two mass shootings, one in Texas and one in Ohio. And then we came out of that and Monday Trump said something about gun control, which.

upset his base so much that he then scrambled them and like pointed their attention at our movie and so his take was they’ve made a movie where they’re saying it’s okay to kill my people which is It’s totally not what the movie is. And so we had this really rare, weird thing of kind of both teams hating us,

Mike: which of course drives a ton of attention.

Ethan: It got so much attention. And honestly, when Trump hated the movie, I thought this is going to be the biggest movie I’ve ever been in. I could see marketing saying the movie, the president doesn’t want you to see, you know, like I was like, we couldn’t have asked for more than Trump to be tweeting hate about our movie.

And then universal pulled the movie. I mean, they pulled it the weekend. The Last Fast and the Furious, which was like Hobbs and Shaw, I think, was number one at the box office. Way more people get killed in that movie than get killed in our movie.

Mike: Yeah, I mean, the whole series is predicated on just non stop, nonsensical violence.

Ethan: Yeah, I was shocked. Everybody’s hating on this little trailer for a movie that’s not a tiny movie, but not A Fast and the Furious movie. The Fast and the Furious is out, hundreds of people are getting killed in the Fast and the Furious and you guys are mad at our little movie? Like what the, what’s wrong with you people?

Mike: Is that trailer still online? Can people go watch it? Because I’m sure people are wondering.

Ethan: You can watch the trailer on my Instagram account. I think it’s been pulled from YouTube and most places have pulled it, but I do have a trailer on my Instagram account.

Mike: We might as well tell people where they can find you on Instagram.

This is a perfect plug moment.

Ethan: Yes, because I desperately need more traffic on Instagram right now. No, I’m kidding.

Mike: You’re only gaining 10, 000 followers a day. I mean, or more, I don’t even know, to 20, 000 a day.

Ethan: Uh, I am at Ethan Suplee on Instagram.

Mike: And for people listening, it’s S U P L E E. That’s the spelling of the, of the last name.

So, so yeah, no, that’s, that’s interesting. Yeah. Crazy times. I mean. And those types of decisions, I’m sure it can just be one person and they make decision and it just is what it is, you know?

Ethan: Yeah, I’m still pretty bummed out about it because it was kind of a nice, you know, now it, it doesn’t matter, but this would have come out in October.

We had a release date and I was at kind of an in between from the last movie I had done, which we actually shot a couple of years ago and I was a bit heavier and then there would have been this movie. And then. How I was in October, I was probably 15 pounds, maybe even 20 pounds still heavier than I am now.

And I was like, that’s kind of a good gradual introduction. You know, I think people were very surprised when I went from, you know, the last movie I had out was motherless Brooklyn and I was three 30 in that movie. And so 60 pounds and most of it being fat loss, that’s a shocking change.

Mike: Yeah, absolutely.

And your final unveiling is just going to be that much more shocking, I guess. Yeah. I mean, so much so that you go back far enough because of with the beard, you’d have to take a double take. Like, wait, is that the same guy?

Ethan: Yeah, no, a ton of people did not believe it was me. Yes. The final unveiling will be one of those like, you know, GQ shots where I’ve got like baby oil dripping off of me, you know, just out of the frame, I’m holding two 80 pound dumbbells so that everything’s popping.

Yeah. I can’t wait.

Mike: Full body pump. Yeah. Bucket list.

Ethan: I’ll have that physique for exactly two hours.

Mike: Yeah, but you actually have it forever because now it’s immortalized, right? That’s right. So you just always point to it. Yeah, but my GQ cover though, right? Well, this has been great one last question to wrap up what are your fitness goals like so I’m assuming now It’s a lifestyle for you.

I’m sure that you’ve kind of come to that point. I would guess right?

Ethan: Yeah I mean listen in fairness Some form of exercise has been a lifestyle for me for a long time. There were times where I was less diligent and there were times where my diet was not dialed in. And there was, by the way, a lot of information I didn’t have.

I think if there’s one hope I have, and I’m sorry to sidetrack, I know we’ve, we’ve probably going over time, but No, no, no, I have been dieting not consistently, but the first diet I was ever put on was almost 40 years ago. I was five years old and I didn’t until this year really have an understanding of how the body work.

What fats purpose was, what carbohydrates purposes were, what proteins purpose was. Dude, what’s a calorie? Yeah, exactly. I, you know, I’ve done a lot of explaining recently that the calorie isn’t the thing. The calorie represents what your body has to do to use the thing you’re eating.

Mike: Yeah, it’s potential energy, right?

Ethan: Right, exactly. I just, I hope that we can get, and you know, look. I absolutely love listening to Mike Israetel talk. I think he’s so funny and so perfect for a bodybuilder. I want everybody to be able to understand what he’s saying, and it took me a while to understand what he was saying. You know what I mean?

Mike: Yeah, I’ve had him on the podcast and we had a good time.

Ethan: I love that guy. You know, I think in some of these books, they lay it out pretty easily, but the other thing is, like me for so many years, I wanted somebody to say, if you just stop eating sugar, you’re going to look like a normal person, or if, you know, we’re going to take your blood and we’re going to tell you five things that you’re sensitive to, and if you just don’t eat those five things, everything will be fine, and, you know, at the end of the day, while that might work for 0.

01 percent of the population, I think the vast majority is looking for something That is kind of unrealistic and I say that and at the same time, I think if your goal is just to lose weight, any diet that you stick to, you’ll lose weight.

Mike: So long as your calories are restricted. Right? No matter how you get there.

Ethan: Right. But like keto, I think the way keto is laid out, if you follow keto, like as it’s laid out, your calories are going to be restricted and you’ll lose weight. Yeah, naturally. Yeah. But like I came to, you know, Kind of dissatisfied with a lot of these things, one, because none of them were magical and two, because I either wasn’t being totally clear with myself of what my goal was, or I thought I could achieve it doing something that I couldn’t achieve it doing.

And so, you know, I think it’s really important to, like, pay attention to guys like you and guys like Lane Norton and guys like Mike Israetel and people who are super knowledgeable. I hope that people stick around long enough to understand what you guys are talking about, you know, because it’s like super valuable information.

And look, if I go from the past 40 years of dieting to very close to exactly where I want to be today, that’s a long time. And it didn’t have to take that long, but I think at some point you do have to confront the fact that it does take a while. You know what I mean? Does that make sense?

Mike: Yeah. I mean, that’s the truth is, uh, depending on what you’re trying to do, if we’re talking about transforming your physique.

Yeah, it absolutely. I mean, it’s something that I have been preaching from the beginning is there are no. Miracles in this game, but there is consistent and reliable progress and improvements. And that’s, that’s why taking that viewpoint of this is a lifestyle, not some quick fix or not something that I’m going to dread every day of until it’s done, then that already puts you in a kind of a winning mindset because then you can, if things are getting better and this becomes particularly true, you’ll see this and you’ll experience this as you get more.

Advanced in your weightlifting career. And as progress is harder and harder to come by, where any progress is progress that becomes the mentality. You’re no longer going to be adding 10 pounds to the bar every week. It’s just not going to happen. And so there is that point of having realistic expectations in the beginning, which you were just mentioning of, okay, what are you doing and what can you realistically expect from it?

And then understanding that it is going to take probably a bit more time than you wish it would take. But so long as you can come to terms with that, you can get there. And oftentimes once you get going, you find that it’s not as bad as maybe you thought it was going to be like, Oh, it’s going to take three years for me to have a great body, which let’s just say for the average dude starts lifting weights three to five years to have the type of body that most guys want.

And that’s three to five years of doing it right. You know, paying attention to again, doing the biggest things mostly right most of the time, but by accepting that in the beginning. And again, like. Where that doesn’t bother you, you’re now leaps and bounds ahead of most guys in the gym because most guys, they don’t even understand that let alone what to do.

So no, I totally agree with everything that you’re saying. And it’s great that you’re using your platform as a celebrity to push this information out there because guys like me and Lane and Mike and Eric Helms, and there are quite a few good guys in the evidence based fitness space. We are. In a relatively obscure niche, we’re not mainstream like you.

We don’t have millions of people who watch our movies and our shows and we do the best we can. I mean, for me, it’s via books and articles and podcasts and videos, and I reach a lot of people, but someone like you, you’re just in a position to reach many, many more people. And the type of information that the people you can reach, the type of information they normally get is utter shit.

Ethan: Yeah, that’s a good point. I don’t personally want to trash any diet because I do think you could figure out a goal and pick any diet out of a hat and go, well, here’s a goal that could fit that diet. You know what I mean? So I think there’s going to be some validity to any of them. However, what I do hope to do.

Advocate for is anyone saying this is the only thing which I’ve seen over and over again living in Los Angeles, kind of the epicenter of quote unquote health, something will float around and it will be like, well, if you’re not doing keto. You’re doing it wrong. Yeah. And I just don’t think that’s true. I think it took me a long time to understand the diet that I needed to be on.

And I’m, I’m on it now and I’m so happy. I couldn’t be happier with my diet. I don’t think everybody has to have my goal though.

Mike: Yeah. And, you know, you look at it though, your diet, quote unquote, I mean, really, you just mean that as an eating regimen. It’s really just, it’s a first principles approach to eating.

You’re like, cool. I understand energy balance. We have a century of research behind this. Like we know how the metabolism works. I’m going to. eat with that in mind. Okay. I also understand now how protein and carbohydrate and fat works in my body and what my body does with these things and why it needs different amounts of them.

Cool. I’m going to incorporate that into my eating regimen as well. Oh, and I also now know about some of my body’s nutritional needs. I know the importance of fiber, for example, that many people, they don’t. Eat very little fiber, especially soluble fiber. I understand the importance of eating fruits and vegetables and micronutrients.

And so that is your quote unquote diet. And that’s very different than, Oh, well, yes, sugar is the boogeyman. You just cut out the evil toxic sugar molecule and make. No other changes in your life is going to be transformed or carbohydrate is the boogeyman or lectins. Yeah. Yeah. So it’s a very different, and it comes to the point of, this is a good way to approach any activity I believe is to start at the first principles, really try to understand the basics, the mechanics, the fundamentals, how does this work?

Because that’ll give you a very. good bullshit detector right out of the gates. You’ll quickly be able to see things that contradict like the basic established rules and you can go, yeah, I probably shouldn’t go in that direction. You were mentioning a lot of different diets had different uses. Take the carnivore diet.

One of these things that’s a thing right now, just eating meat, nothing else. I think depending on whose protocol you follow you, maybe you can like add some, I think salt is okay.

Ethan: Ooh, is salt really somebody does it without salt? I’m not doing that.

Mike: You’re right. You’re going to need a certain amount of sodium for sure.

And whatever it’s, it’s mostly just a meat only. I think again, maybe there’s some of you can include some dairy or like some animal protein, but it’s mostly just a meat centric diet. And of course you go. Okay. That does not make sense. Given what we know, or given, let’s just say the overwhelming weight of the scientific evidence as to the importance of fiber and of different nutrients that are not in meat.

And then you’ll find all kinds of pseudoscientific rebuttals to that as to why that’s not the case. And, but. It does not hold water where that diet can make sense though is elimination. So if somebody is having weird problems, maybe it’s psoriasis, or maybe it’s, they always have gut issues and they just don’t know what’s going on.

Okay. Let’s start with eliminating everything that you’re eating. Let’s bring it down to something that is very unlikely to piss your body off. And that actually meat is a good, and let’s get your body some protein. So you don’t lose a bunch of muscle. And then let’s start adding foods back in that makes sense and see that that’s an elimination diet.

You know, many people though, they just stop. They don’t do the X part. They just eat nothing but meat.

Ethan: Right. I keep seeing it’s carnivore month. I literally keep going. Well, I hope they don’t just go back to eating normally on February 1st. I hope they figure out whatever they’re looking to.

Mike: Yeah. Often it’s weight loss.

I mean, it is.

Ethan: Right. That wouldn’t be something I would consider for weight loss. It would be to try to handle some other problem. Totally. For me, but that’s for me.

Mike: I wrote a long article and it cites a lot of research and I recorded a podcast on corn over diet. And that really is, I believe the scientifically honest assessment of that.

Diet is if you have major issues and it’s time to really start looking into the foods you’re eating. And cause it is very true that some people do not do well with some foods like you and I can eat eggs all day and be fine. Someone else can experience quite a few unpleasant reactions to eggs. And it’s hard to discover that when you’re eating 15 different foods, you know, maybe even more in your regular diet so…

Ethan: yeah, by the way, you cut out eggs, eggs are in a lot of stuff that you wouldn’t even know they’re in.

Mike: Totally true. So anyways, man, I really appreciate you taking the time to do this, and I think it’s great again that you are helping hoist the banner and getting it out there more broadly, and it’s great to see all the attention that you’re getting.

It’ll be fun to see. I look forward to, is there any chance that the movie is? Is it gone forever? Do they, maybe they bring it back later and they say, Oh, well, maybe when things aren’t so politically heated or

Ethan: I heard that it was possible. I mean, I can’t imagine they’re going to take a hit on it because it wasn’t cheap to make.

So I think it could come out, but I haven’t heard any kind of timeframe for that.

Mike: Well, we’re going to see you running around with guns one way or another. Now that You look like a special forces, uh, Punisher Terminator.

Ethan: So yes, I look forward to running around with guns.

Mike: Well, let’s wrap up with, let’s see, you mentioned your Instagram.

You can please, or anything else that you want to mention? Okay. Your podcast, American glutton. Everybody should go check that out. Is there anything else that you want people to know about anything up and coming? That is interesting or?

Ethan: No, it’s really just the podcast. I’ve been focusing on lately, you know, talking about.

Um, food.

Mike: That’s it. Awesome, man. Well, hey, thanks again for doing this. It was great to, we haven’t spoken in a while. This is our first conversation in a while. So it was fun. I really enjoyed it. Thank you for having me. Hey, Mike here. And if you like what I’m doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives.

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