Ethan Suplee on Diet Culture and Learning Moderation

Right now, it's slightly difficult to talk about weight loss because I've been obese and now I'm not obese and I celebrate not being obese. I am much better off with the way I have structured my life because of having lost weight. But I can't tell anybody else to do that and I don't even really want to. If somebody wants to be overweight, if that's a trade-off they're willing to make, that's fine with me. But I think for the most part, most of the people I've spoken to, they don't want that. A lot of people seem to have goals that generally line up with mine and then in talking to them, now there's this diet culture monster in the room where even that is attacked because there's a whole new set of values that are born that must be enforced. At some point, there's got to be the recognition that we don't all necessarily have to want the exact same stuff. There's also so much biological variability. The things that would work on another person just don't work on you. Including diet. Arguing about diets is another great one. I really like talking about diets simply because at the end of the day it's so much safer than politics because there's no military backing up a diet system. You talk about politics and it's like, we have a fucking military to force you to do the shit we want you to do versus the other military that's going to force you the other way. But diets, it's like veganism versus carnivore. If we're just talking about weight loss, the other thing, some of these things get into the minutia of health. If you've got a guy who's got 200 pounds to lose, why are we focusing on the minutia of health? I don't know that that's the right goal. If the goal is just weight loss, I don't think these are the same conversations. Yeah, I think the variety ... There's so many different things that need to happen to a person to force them into action. What do you think is the key things? Is it inspiration? Sometimes, is it that you don't want to die or you don't want to be sick any longer, that you're fed up? Is it being inspired by a guy like David Goggins or Cameron Haynes or someone like that? For me, for the very first time in my life, I was thinking about the future in a way in terms of what I wanted out of life versus just what makes me happy right this second. I was seeing a girl who I'm now married to, we have a bunch of kids, and I couldn't have a better life. 20 years ago, if I described to you the life I wanted in that moment, I've way surpassed that. That's awesome. Congratulations. Thank you very much. I have to take a step back occasionally and go check you out. Look what you did. Yeah, that's amazing. That's amazing. 500 pounds, I was not thinking I can be a dad, I can be a husband, I could teach little kids how to do stuff. This was not part of my ... I could take my wife on a hike, I could go to the beach with her and not sit under a towel in the back because I'm scared of people looking at me. These were not the thoughts I was having. That spark of motivation of like, what do I want out of life got me just so far because after an extreme diet, when you've crashed your metabolism and you then ... By the way, your body is fighting against your tooth and nail doing these things because your body thinks you're starving to death. Right. It's trying to slow everything down. You're slowing everything down. Over long periods, you're not just consuming fat, you're consuming fat and lean tissue. It's fucking tough. All your hormones are fucked up. I forget the name of the hormone, but there's a hormone that makes you hungry. This is skyrocketing when you're on an extremely caloric deficit diet. Then you go to just eating like a normal person and you're watching what other people eat and you're eating this and you're fucking putting on weight again at a rapid pace and going like, this doesn't make sense. I thought I was cured. I lost all this weight. I watched a really fascinating TED Talk by a guy named Mike Isratel about five years ago, four or five years ago, and in it, and I had tried ... I was dead convinced that I was allergic to carbohydrates. I was like, I'll never eat a carbohydrate for the rest of my life. You thought you were allergic to carbohydrates. I was convinced that everybody ... Yes, that everybody was gluten intolerant, that the way that we made bread in America with all the ingredients was just poisonous to the human body. I was totally convinced of this. I watched this TED Talk by Mike Isratel, and in it, it's called the Dietary Landscape of Healthy Eating, and he just goes over like, just be moderate. That's it. Just try to figure out moderation. Nothing's poisonous. Nothing's awful. Salt, if you have no salt, you can die. If sodium disappears from your diet, you can die. If you have too much salt, it can kill you. There's an amount. Yeah. Five grams, I think, at one time, and this was ... I believe this study was done on small bodies, can kill you. It can be fatal. Is that poisonous, or is it necessary? It's both. This is food for me. The way I was interacting with food, the idea that I'm a machine, like you're a car guy. You're not going to put diesel fuel in your gas car. You're not going to do that, because it's going to break it. I had to start really thinking about food in these terms and going like, I just have a bad relationship with food, a relationship that is giving me an outcome I don't want. How do I change that? Utterly. Catch new episodes of The Joe Rogan Experience for free, only on Spotify. Watch back catalog JRE videos on Spotify, including clips. Easily, seamlessly switch between video and audio experience. 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