Easy Wins for Fat Loss - with Andy Morgan

Intro to Andy Morgan

Andy Fossett: [00:00:00] Alright. Alright. Welcome to the, was is it, Get Mad Bros? Was that it? 

Andy Morgan: [00:00:04] Yeah, it's Getting Mad Hoes gone wrong. 

Andy Fossett: [00:00:07] And so now we're the Get Mad Bros. And by we, I mean, Andy and Andy. So I'm Andy Fossett and I am with my friend, Andy Morgan, who also happens to live here in Tokyo and knows a thing or two. So Andy, will you just very briefly outline a thing or two that you know.

Andy Morgan: [00:00:28] Would you like the sensible introduction or the funny introduction? 

Andy Fossett: [00:00:31] Let's go funny first and then sensible. 

Andy Morgan: [00:00:33] So I consider myself Andy One and I've trained everybody around us to call me Andy One. And your Andy Fossett is officially Andy Two in Japan. And there's quite an important reason for that. And that is that he essentially copied my life. So if you know anything about Andy Two here, then you know, a little bit about me. would you like to explain yourself please? Cause I'm still a little bit upset. 

Andy Fossett: [00:00:58] I don't know how you can call it a copy when I am older than you, but the point being the thing that confuses people is that we both have one of the best four letter names going

Andy Morgan: [00:01:12] Truth.

Andy Fossett: [00:01:13] Yup. Yup. We are both extremely good looking. We both live in Tokyo. We both have fitness-based online businesses.  we both moved to Japan,  more than 10 years ago initially. We both lived in Osaka. We both came here the first time for martial arts. Is there more? I don't know. There's a lot, there's a lot 

Andy Morgan: [00:01:37] We were both speaking at the same conference a couple of years ago in Austin.

Andy Fossett: [00:01:42] That's right. That is true too. 

Andy Morgan: [00:01:43] And that was because we're both part of this one online community called the Dynamite Circle. Yeah. 

Andy Fossett: [00:01:51] Yeah. So that is basically the story of how I have a Talented Mr. Ripley-ed your whole life. And, before you know it, I'm going to steal all your friends and family.

Andy Morgan: [00:02:02] So I like to joke that Andy Two here is the more successful version of me. So if I knew what I was doing, I would be Andy from GMB . And, I'm not, I'm Andy Morgan from rippedbody.com. I've been writing now for nine years that came out of a frustration, from seeing my friends in the gym in Japan get ripped off I felt, by the fitness industry, frankly, because the level of information that was around at the time nine years ago, especially in Japan was really low. The stuff available in Japanese. 

So the fitness landscape can be really confusing even if you speak English but in Japanese when the financial incentives to get something translated, that does not end in, "Buy this supplement or purchase this abdominal stimulation belt," or something like that. They're not there telling people that they don't need certain supplements , most supplements. They don't need to do anything, but you know, the basics hard training, be consistent, sleep well,  eat your vegetables, manage stress. Eat fewer calories than you need if you want to lose weight, right? 

These things you can't charge for. And, because you can't charge for them, that leads to an information gap. And so I started a blog hoping to try to bridge that information gap in Japan. That blog, I did it in English and in Japanese. It was originally called rippedbody.jp. " Ripped" does not translate. It just, it means torn. We changed that to Athlete Body for the Japanese site. So that's athletebody.jp. That's going to be quite a popular website now, in Japan, and rippedbody, I changed that into a.com.

The English language articles were always, or rather at the time, were far more popular than the Japanese translations of those articles. And, yeah, I've just been writing and online coaching ever since then and I just try to do my bit to keep helping. 

Andy Fossett: [00:04:04] Yeah. And so when Andy says that his website is fairly popular in Japan, what he really means is it's probably outside of, very large corporate things like a Yahoo or something. It is possibly the most popular, independent, health-related fitness related website in the Japanese language. 

Andy Morgan: [00:04:26] Yeah. It's got a lot of respect and that's down to the hard work of, Ken who, joined me at the start. He's a translator and just an all around super sharp guy. And then Nato who Ken identified as being like the next one to try to hire, and he's super sharp as well. And it's their work really. The quality of the writing has just attracted people and  they're better than me. Their work is better than my English articles, I think, so they deserve the credit for that. 

Andy Fossett: [00:04:55] Yeah. and that's really cool. It's also, I think just evidence that, so GMB this year, we passed the 10 year mark, which, patting myself on the back a little bit, but I do think that a little bit of longevity and being able to teach something online for a certain amount of years shows that at least part of what you're doing is working. And getting to continue doing that gives you more practice, getting to do it more right.

Being successful at something gives you the opportunity to practice it more. because more clients come to you, more people ask you questions, you get sharper applying your trade. And so I do think also your longevity is a testament to the fact that you also keep learning and that you and your team just have a ton of experience in breaking things down in a way that is useful to them. And it'ss like you said, it's filling that information gap, but it's not doing so in a way that is too superficial or is just pointing towards buying more things. 

And I think that we're talking about the Japanese website, but also in the English language, you also have a very good reputation as somebody who is extremely honest, speaks with a funny accent yet does get very good results for your clients. And I will also shoe in here that when I meet people that want to be coaching clients in almost anything online that want to do personal one-to-one coaching online, I always refer them to your article about your system that is on Growth Lab.

Yeah. And we can put a link to that in the podcasts, but if you do any sort of one-to-one coaching online Andy's got a very savvy system for managing that, and he manages to give very good individual coaching to a higher volume of clients than just about anybody I know. So that's just another example of him putting in the reps and having the experience in what works and how to get results.

So let's talk about what kind of results you specialize in, because I think that's really important. GMB has the things that we teach and, the things that we specialize in getting people moving better and, freedom of movements, less restrictions, and you specialize in.

Andy Morgan: [00:07:06] Sure. So I specialize in work with men. These are guys who have been going to the gym. They've usually got some results and they've reached a plateau. They've perhaps started to look into their diet. They've been online and got some bad information and they've gone down this path of getting jerked around by the supplement industry.

And then they've realized that actually they didn't quite need the supplements. They needed to learn about say, calorie balance and macro nutrients. So that's the protein, carbohydrates and fats that make up the calories in your diet. And they're looking for something a little more detailed and a little more, how can we say, complete?

And that's where I, that's where my customer base is. So frustrated but serious trainees. I say serious, they're serious enough to read my, what may be considered long winded articles by our current 15-second attention spans. Of those people that come to the website, a certain small fraction decide to reach out for coaching.

I've just built up an experience of working with those kinds of people. There's quite a niche, not niche. Right? You said you guys say niche. And, it's fun. But even though I work with quite a specific niche, I field questions from people who are on all stages of their fitness journey.

The majority of people are not quite at the level where they would benefit from coaching yet. But I've answered thousands, tens of thousands of questions over the years, right? So, I've got a very good idea about what people get stuck on and I make it my mission to build a website that helps educate people so that they can break through those plateaus and so that they aren't feeling perpetually stuck. And maybe at a certain point, they'll decide they want to reach out for coaching. Maybe they'll buy a book. 

It doesn't matter to me because if the website is good enough, if I keep improving it until I'm happy, which I probably never will be, it will be shared because it's good. And then that small, small fraction of people that decide to hire me is hopefully, always going to be there. So it doesn't matter if for every one person I worked with online, for every one person that hires me, there are a thousand people that don't, right?

Andy Fossett: [00:09:44] Right. 

Andy Morgan: [00:09:45] I think that's a great thing, to be honest. And you talked about volume. Like I work with a higher number than you've known. It's not that high. It's about 40, per month, which can be higher by some standards, but it's not a huge amount. Like I know the details of everyone and what they're going through.

Andy Fossett: [00:10:05] And that's what I mean is, there are people that can technically handle more clients and they put everything into an app and they get the email and they look and they scroll through and say, "Oh yeah, it's that guy again." And they can do this, but you're able to keep a very tight relationship and understand each person as you're doing this too, which I think is like you said, it's probably about maximizing the level that you can do that at. 

Andy Morgan: [00:10:29] I certainly try to, it gets easier to understand someone the more interactions you have, obviously. So I do try to work with people with a long-term mindset. And I work with people over email, which is, I love writing.

I like working in email. I like writing long detailed emails rather than text message like back and forth. I like, okay, I'm writing an email. I'll wait a day. Maybe two days, you'll respond. I'll read through, you've got your detailed thoughts and then I'll give mine. I like that. It's like letter writing back in the day, almost like…

Communication and Context

Andy Fossett: [00:11:05] Thoughtful communication. And I think that this is something where, not to get too geek into the business side of things, but Andy and I do talk business a lot. So, this is the kind of things we talk about, writing these in-depth articles, something that comes somewhat, I wouldn't say naturally, but it suits your personality because that's the kind of communicator you are and the kind of thinker that you are.

And then you've managed to tie that also to the service that you provide and be able to do that in a way that's really authentic for you and that the people that are attracted to your writing are also going to be attracted to your service, which I think is really good. 

If anybody comes across your website and that they like it, if anybody listening to this comes across, rippedbody.com and says, "Oh, this is really cool."  You probably want to get in touch and talk to Andy. 

Andy Morgan: [00:11:54] Thank you for the kind words there, I just hope that you'd want to read another article as a first step. I really don't, I'm not on here to try and sell anyone anything. 

Andy Fossett: [00:12:03] I don't mean for coaching. I just mean as somebody to continue learning from, because I think that you do put out a lot of very good informational articles. This is all partly just to set up some of the things that we're going to talk about is that you have a very information dense style of explaining things. And it's very well researched and you've collaborated on books with extremely brilliant people.

Andy Morgan: [00:12:31] Yeah. So there's one thing that is really important to bear in mind that a lot of people forget, and that is many answers are context dependent. It depends on you where you are currently in your journey. And everything that goes with that. 

And when you type into a Google search, "how much protein should I eat?" Or, "how many meals should I have in a day?" It doesn't necessarily, actually, those ones are fairly easy, even though I've written several thousand word articles on each, it doesn't really know about you.

Andy Fossett: [00:13:03] And so Google has some very scary AI and they know a lot more about you than is comfortable, but they don't actually know your context for answering the questions that you type in usually. 

Andy Morgan: [00:13:14] But the people that get popular are the ones that give simple, straight answers, they're not the ones that will caveat what they say. And so I would urge you to, when you're looking for an answer, I would urge you to bear in mind that if someone is explaining context, they're doing it from a good place. And it's probably a signal that this person is trustworthy. 

Andy Fossett: [00:13:45] Yeah. So context and nuance are really hard to get across in the 280 character social media kind of world that we live in now. But when you find people that consistently do frame things with context and present nuanced ideas and talk about if the answer starts with "it depends" a lot of times, I think that's usually a very good sign.  At GMB we have our Eating Skills program. This is a very habit-based action-based, and also personal values- based approach to being able to control eating.

Physique, Nutrition & Supplements

Andy Fossett: [00:14:18] But I think some of the things that you talk about a lot tend to be very technical diet stuff, especially since you're working with people that are at a pretty high level and trying to dial in their physique. So let's first just get one thing really solid, if physique is your goal, it's nutrition, right?

Andy Morgan: [00:14:38] Yeah. 

Andy Fossett: [00:14:38] Okay. So that is something that I think a lot of people , they hear it again and again, but they don't want to believe it. And I just don't think that we can emphasize enough that if you are trying to make changes to the way you look, especially size of your body, almost everything you're really going to do that's effective is going to be based on the kinds of things that you're eating and also the way that you are treating your body and health otherwise, like sleep and that kind of thing. Right? 

Andy Morgan: [00:15:09] Yes. 

Andy Fossett: [00:15:09] Great. So let's get into it. You said earlier that so much of the bad information or very surface level information is based on selling supplements. And I know that you don't recommend people take a lot of supplements, but you also mentioned protein and I look on your fridge and I see the biggest tub of protein I've ever seen in my life. 

Andy Morgan: [00:15:33] Yeah.  Actually,  I am a fan of getting your protein intake from food. So I usually have a  hand-sized or slightly bigger than palm- sized portion of protein for lunch and dinner. And that is about right if I consider that I don't have breakfast and I'll have a protein shake before I work out, double scoop of that. And that's it. That's why I have the protein. So don't give me shit for that. But essentially,  if you are currently struggling right now with your physique, supplements are not going to make a difference, they are how can I say it? You don't Polish a Skoda and get a Lamborghini.

Andy Fossett: [00:16:11] Okay. So Andy also likes high-end automobiles. So a lot of, I have to try to translate things into my mind. Cause I don't know anything about cars, but yeah, I think that's really an important thing is that supplements are something that I like to call, a last 5% or maybe even less, 10% kind of strategy. If you are 90% of the way to where you need to be, that's where things like supplements and not the regular foam roller, but the one that heats up and vibrates where those differences like that comes out when you're 90% of the way there.

If you're not there, it's really just, I wouldn't always say wasted money, but it's not taking you really a step, any appreciable step closer to your goals.

Andy Morgan: [00:16:57] Right? I think I'd like to see supplements in terms of see, we can talk about it. Protein powder is a powdered food, a multivitamin mineral. The research is a little bit mixed, but you can see that as an insurance policy on a good diet being one that is rich in a variety of fruits and vegetables.

But it cannot make up for a poor diet because there are nutrients that we cannot pack into a pill, currently, that we get from animals and, 

Andy Fossett: [00:17:25] Right. And there is the argument that, well, you can't get enzymes from a multivitamin, then you can take an enzyme like tablets, and then you can like, you have to take 50 kinds of supplements to try to recreate broccoli, just eat the damn broccoli.

Andy Morgan: [00:17:39] Yeah so there's that. There's then fish oil, if fish is low in your diet. Then there's, if you're in a certain population that sort of risk of a certain deficiency, then.

Let's say you are the Dark Knight in Monte Python, you've lost your left arm and your right and both of your legs and you are bleeding a lot. It might be good to take some iron pills.  Creatine, never a bad thing. And, caffeine can help with endurance and help you get out a couple more reps, perhaps from your workouts and, help you with pain tolerance through hard training.

I like to take a caffeine tab before my leg days.  If you are doing hard strength training, then that's perhaps something to consider that. But really supplements. They're not the answer. Now what I do is what I do with my fairly geeky readers and clients. The answer for you listening, probably not honestly, do you need to chase down a rabbit hole where...? 

I was literally writing a chapter in my, rewrite the third edition of my book on diet adjustments yesterday, where I'm talking about the optimal ratio where you're going to add calories, the optimal ratio in terms of the macros. When you're going to add calories, is it to adjust your diet for a bulking phase and how that ratio differs when you're in a dieting phase. And I drew myself some little pie charts, just to make it pop off the page.  And then I've got this really nice, like kind of flow chart of " if this, then that, if this, then that, if this, then that," and do you need to go to that length right now? Probably not. 

Habits, Tweaks & Easy Wins

Andy Morgan: [00:19:16] The point I was trying to make there was, there are going to be wins that you can make in your day to day that do not have to involve calorie counting or macro counting. And even though my website is geared up for that, that's not where I recommend people start. And that's where the new course that you're introducing, these habit-based changes, I think, is really useful for people. This is like the necessary pre-step. Sometimes people go in there dive off the deep end and they haven't done anything and they're like…

Andy Fossett: [00:19:51] I'm going to change everything. And then a week later, why didn't these changes stick, right? Yeah. It's happened. I've done it with a billion things before. I'm sure you have, we all have. 

Andy Morgan: [00:20:00] There are so many small tweaks that we can make that aren't necessarily easy to make, but they will make a big difference. I like to think of them as easy wins and one easy win that many people can make is cutting down alcohol.

Now I know that might not be nice to hear especially if you like it. I like a beer myself. I've come across several people who they were obese, unfortunately. The reason that they are obese, and I don't mean morbidly, but I mean like a 30% body fat kind of thing, is because of their alcohol habit, it just tips them over the edge. At the end of the day, they'll have a couple of large glasses of whiskey and then bam. That's the calorie amount that they would have needed to lose weight. And now it's just tipping them into positive energy balance. And over time it's just  pushed them over the edge. 

Andy Fossett: [00:20:55] It becomes a habit. And I think that this is a really important thing, because most people have very little concept of how many calories they consume. And I think that on your website, you, of course probably you have calculators probably and formulas for figuring out everything.

And I think that is, for me, something that I've done before, but something I never really want to do again. And I think that most of the people listening to this are not interested in getting that detailed. 

So I think it's important to understand that, okay alcohol is not saying alcohol is bad. As some people will say that's fine, but it's a thing that becomes a habitual, extra, additional caloric intake that you probably don't need. Same thing if you're drinking two Cokes with lunch every day or something. It is additional calories that you don't need that becomes a habit.

And you make your set point where you are expecting to have these additional calories every day. So if you want to keep those things, then you really do need to start counting and find other ways to reduce it. 

Andy Morgan: [00:22:02] And then that gets harder. So let's say you are trying to lose weight, but you've got this-- I'll keep it with whiskey because it's quite simple--but any spirit or any drink, really? If you have that  two large whiskeys at the end of the day habit.  If you're then going to make up for that rough 200 to 300 calorie consumption there. You need to find a way to remove that from food, but unfortunately food is what keeps us feeling full. And if you have to sacrifice food for liquid, then you’re likely to get more cravings. And then that can tip you into the point where you start breaking your diet. 

Andy Fossett: [00:22:42] And a lot of people assume that they can outwork these things by training. But if you look at two or 300 calories from a drink, really, what is that?  Is that something like that's more than an hour of walking?  

Andy Morgan: [00:22:56] Depending on body size . Yeah. yes. 

Andy Fossett: [00:22:58] Right. 

Andy Morgan: [00:22:58] Yes. 

Andy Fossett: [00:22:59] Yeah and you might think, Oh, well, I hit it hard with the kettlebells or whatever.

Andy Morgan: [00:23:02] Brisk walking. 

Andy Fossett: [00:23:03] Right. 

Andy Morgan: [00:23:03] You don't hit it hard with the kettlebells for a full hour. You have breaks. No, no. H-I-I-T ,the I in HIIT means interval. 

Andy Fossett: [00:23:10] Interval. Yes. And so this is the thing is, so we're not saying quit all alcohol. But we are saying, or Andy rather, I guess is saying that, it is an easy win. It's just an easy win and maybe not cut out completely, but cut down even. 

Andy Morgan: [00:23:26] If you've got 14 drinks or maybe you could make that. Okay. Now you're going to have four, so that's okay. So now you're only having 10 drinks and then maybe that's  10 drinks. That's 200 calories each. I think I've overshot it. Say, 150 calories a each. This is difference of roughly half a pound of fat loss, that you could get a week in addition to, or if you were caloric maintenance, then you know the difference between losing half a pound a week or not nothing.

Andy Fossett: [00:23:59] Yeah. And this is just very simple mathematical stuff, but it's the kind of thing that people don't really want to hear, which is why we spent 30 minutes setting up, the first beginning, the first half of this podcast to really say some of these things that are very simple, because when you hear them, they may seem too simple or you don't want to do them, but  I just can't stress enough that if this is a thing that you want to change, that these things are very important. 

So let's go on. What are some of the other easy wins for the people that maybe don't drink or have already cut down on alcohol or just absolutely refuse. 

Andy Morgan: [00:24:36] I think a big thing is managing your food environment so that it's working for you, not against you. That can be a telling those around you, what you're trying to do and why it's important for you. So that could be a spouse, your partner, your roommates, your friends. And so then they're understanding of your why and why it's important to you and hopefully they will be helpful when it comes to the situations where you could potentially be led to overeat or over drink otherwise.

 Another way of managing your food environment is the environment at home. Making sure you have those things that you can easily snack on a really, calorically dense, say chocolate or peanuts or something. And you put those, if you have to have them in your house at all... if you live by yourself, I wouldn't have them in house, but if you have to have them in your house cause you live with others and put them at the back of the cupboard or in a hard to reach place whether that's high or low. And then put other things that you might potentially snack on that are healthier, so less calorically dense foods that are going to be more filling. Fruit, put a fruit bowl on the counter.

Andy Fossett: [00:25:46] Oh my goodness. Fruit. 

Andy Morgan: [00:25:48] Things like that. And when it comes to your weekly shop, plan it out. So if I don't have a bag of pre-mixed salad in the fridge, then my choices now are going to be the box of cereal, plus the chicken breast, because the chicken breast alone is not going to be enough.

Andy Fossett: [00:26:08] I love fruit loops and chicken breasts. It is one of my favorite meals. 

Andy Morgan: [00:26:16] It starts with planning your shop and then it's having the right foods in the house. And then it's organizing those foods around the house and just making the choices that you need to make easier to do. So they become almost automatic.

Andy Fossett: [00:26:32] And this is again, it's. It can be hard to build new habits or to make changes. So if you do your preparation, like if you do your shopping in a state where it may be in a rare state where you do have some control or when you are not stressed and anxious, right? Then you can buy the things that you need or want to be eating and not buy the things that you don't want.

But if you wait until you're hungry and stressed out and you only have 15 minutes to get home and stuff like that, and that's when you go to the store, you're going to buy the crap that makes you feel good and that you don't have to think about. 

Andy Morgan: [00:27:08] Exactly. You definitely don't want to go to the grocery store when you're hungry and preferably you want to make one of those old things that we called a shopping list on a piece of paper. 

Andy Fossett: [00:27:17] Shopping list!

Andy Morgan: [00:27:18] When was the last time you saw us home with one of them? Another thing, if you are say having, some snacks in front of the TV, take the serving that you want from the large packet and take it to where you're going to sit. So don't take the full family sized bag of Doritos to the couch. Take the portion size from the Doritos bag, put that Doritos bag back and then take that portioned bowl to the living room. 

Andy Fossett: [00:27:48] So we actually have a rule in my house with my family too, that, we don't put packs of food from the grocery store in grocery store form on the table. They stay in the kitchen. It has to be transferred to a plate or a bowl or something before it can be, in the actual eating area, because well, one, it just makes the eating experience much nicer.

But the other thing is we can be a lot more conscious about how much we're eating and making sure, that more than calorie control for us, it's making sure our daughter eats enough vegetables. So it can be, in the positive as well, if there's something that you want to be eating more of, it's another way to make sure that you're getting adequate vegetables or, the right amount of protein or whatever is to prepare that and put it on the plate and then move it to the area that you're going to be eating.

Solutions for Social Settings 

Andy Morgan: [00:28:37] Now you might be in an office environment. That's where you have, I don't know, it's a big office. There's a birthday every week, there's cake, and you feel pressure. Or you might have a snack corner that you have to walk past every single time. And you're trying to lose weight.  

There are points where it's easier to just abstain rather than try to moderate. And one of those things is social environment. So for example, I'm English. We like to go out and have a drink. . However, we all have usually a friend who doesn't drink and we know they don't drink. And so we don't buy them a pint. We don't include them in the round. It's just accepted because that's what they've stated. That's how it's always been. 

But when there's a friend who's trying to drink less that generally doesn't go well, because everybody wants right now to be the exception because they don't want their gift of giving alcohol to be turned down in the moment. It's " Oh, it can always start tomorrow."

And that could be the same with the birthday cakes. And if you're having to make the decision every time you move past that snack corner that you're not going to have a snack, that can be very draining or whether you are going to have a snack. So you can just say to yourself from the outset, "Nope. I don't snack." 

And also when it comes to say birthday cakes or in Japan, where we both live, it's common for people to come back off holiday and they'll bring a box of treats and they'll put one treat on everybody's desk. Pre-packaged like snacks. You can just make it clear that you don't do that. But thank you. But you'll take it home for your daughter or husband or wife or whatever. 

Andy Fossett: [00:30:20] Yeah there are ways to do this in a way that's not rude. And, one of the best things that I've heard from, our friend Steve Kamb, he always just says that he makes a rule about things.

So it's hard to say, "Oh, I'm not eating cake today." We feel like we're letting the person down, but it's a much easier to say, "Oh, I just have a rule that I don't eat snacks after lunch" or something like that. It doesn't matter what the rule is, but it's a lot easier to say, I have a rule about this then, "No, I'm not going to accept your gift of a piece of cake." 

Andy Morgan: [00:30:50] Absolutely. I was talking about this in a completely different scenario with a buddy Alberto who you know. He's now built up a massive Instagram following 150 to 200 K I don't know it's silly, but he answers all of his DMs and he's driving himself crazy, his messages right. 

Now I stopped doing that a long time back because I knew I didn't want to be on my phone. I wanted to be present in the moment. And my laptop is my work phone and my phone is my play zone. And. One thing I do is I say, "Hey, I'm sorry. I made a rule for myself. I don't answer DMs. But if you have a question, I will answer every day those that are posted into the comments on the website." And nobody's giving me shit for that because I'm very upfront about it. And you can do a similar thing when it comes to these choices.

Andy Fossett: [00:31:37] And I think the social aspect of things especially with food is a very difficult. And anytime that you can engineer this into it, it can just take a ton of stress off.

Andy Morgan: [00:31:46] The non-alcoholic no calorie beers, I think can be quite useful for certain people who don't want to "confess" to their friends that they're not drinking. They can be the ones to go up to the bar to buy the round and then just say, "Hey, by the way, I'm just on the no alcohol beer tonight. Just make sure you put that one in front of me." Slip him five bucks or whatever the going tip is. And then that's sorted for the night. Just little things like that. You could swap thinking of calories with drinks, avoiding calories in your drinks  can be huge for some people. So going from sodas to diet sodas .

Andy Fossett: [00:32:21] Alright, so these are some very easy kinds of tips that we've talked about. And the fact is that there are lots of simple things you can do that can keep you from having to buy $200 a month worth of supplements, right? You don't need to do that. And things that you can do that will make more of a difference in the way you feel, the way you look, all of these things.

And a lot of it is really just about learning what makes the difference for you and doing those things consistently, right? 

Andy Morgan: [00:32:56] Yeah. 

Other Tips and Quick Wins

Andy Fossett: [00:32:57] Okay. Real quick. Are there any other quick wins that you recommend for most people? Again, you have a very savvy and detail oriented group of people that you coach, but I know that you've answered so many questions. What other sort of this is the 80%, 80% of people could follow this advice and see very easy results kind of thing?

Andy Morgan: [00:33:19] Sure. If you're trying to lose weight, which a lot of people are, it can take awhile for the signal that you’re full to really register and if you chew your food more slowly, that can help. And chewing food more slowly can be vague, but you could do something as silly sounding as chew every mouthful of food 20 times, and do that for a week and see if that can train in a habit of chewing your food for longer. You can have a big glass of water before you consume a meal. You can focus on the lean protein so like a chicken breast, something like that. And vegetables, the leafy vegetables. I'm not talking about French fries, potatoes.

Andy Fossett: [00:34:03] Fried okra, that's a good vegetable for weight loss.  

Andy Morgan: [00:34:06] If you can put those things first, that can help you feel fuller and help you eat less when you're eating out. And also on that point of eating out, you don't have to feel guilty about leaving food on your plate. It benefits nobody if you get fat or don't achieve your goals or stay fat because you ate the food on your plate or the remainder of it because you ate more than you needed. The food has already been ordered and cooked, leave it.

And also remember that restaurants often they're not judged that much on quality, but also portion size is a big thing. And if a restaurant has a reputation for being tight stingy, like  small portion sizes, that can be a bad thing. So they do tend to over-deliver on the portion sizes. And unfortunately, if you are trying to diet, or if you are smaller than the average person,  if you always clean your plate, because that's what your mum told you that you must do-- and everyone's mum probably did right-- then that's probably not doing you any favors either. Now I'm not saying do it when you're at your mother-in-law's house or your grandma's house or whatever, but when you're eating out, just be conscious of that.

Andy Fossett: [00:35:19] Yeah. And the other thing too is just to always remember to the staff at the restaurant, do not care. They do not care what you eat, how much of it, as long as you pay your bill and tip like an adult, they're going to be happy. They're not judging you based on how much, "Oh, She didn't touch her dessert. She must be on a diet." They do not review your performance of eating the food after the meal. 

Andy Morgan: [00:35:44] If you do want to think of it in terms of like morals here and ethics, how else are you going to send a signal to the management and the chef that the portion sizes are too big, other than to leave food there. It's really the best thing all around that can be done.

 A couple more things. Eat more vegetables. I hated salads. I've forced myself to get used to them with low fat dressing, because I just knew it was a way of helping me control hunger. I don't find them to be the tastiest thing, generally speaking. But I found the right dressings and combinations where now I am used to them and I quite like some of them, and that's been a big help, but you can train yourself to start enjoying those flavors. And also hunger is a great condiment. 

Andy Fossett: [00:36:33] Right, I think that's actually a really key, as you can train yourself to enjoy things that you never thought you would enjoy. And you may never think that a green salad with low fat dressing is just the tastiest thing on the planet. But you can definitely train yourself to enjoy it somewhat. That's not a ringing endorsement, but heyy, it's better than hating it or thinking it's completely bland. 

Andy Morgan: [00:37:00] For sure. Absolutely. And then the last, I guess the last thing that comes to mind is: be okay with hunger. Learn to be okay with hunger, just because your body's sending you a hunger pang doesn't mean your muscles are falling off or your  body's suffering for a certain nutrient. 

It's just, it's a signal that you're in a calorie deficit now. Your body's trying to tell you to eat more food, to bring you back up to maintenance. It's a good thing, but hunger pangs they come and go. You can get used to just letting them go.

Andy Fossett: [00:37:33] Yeah, I think that's super important. And I think that this is also a thing with people that are involved in fitness activities get really weird ideas about this, that if they go hungry, that they are starving their muscles and they're going to lose their gains because they're literally atrophying with every rumble of the top of the stomach. And that's simply not true. Just because you work out does not mean that you need to be constantly full. It's usually not the case. 

Andy Morgan: [00:38:02] Yeah the people that are in the best shape at the point that they were photographed, of course, at that point they were chronically hungry for months, especially the last month or six weeks, to get down to exceptionally low levels of body fat. And where, like you're butt is starting to lose fat as well. Like that level of lean, not just some blurry out definition here, very lean.

Yeah, we're 

Andy Fossett: [00:38:30] talking like, not just single digit, but below 8% body fat kinds of levels where they're very cut, ripped body, even yes.

Andy Morgan: [00:38:42] And people. You know that they kept their muscle mass didn't they.

Yeah. Yeah. 

Andy Fossett: [00:38:47] Yep. I think that it's just really important to remember is that you do not need to constantly feed yourself to prevent wasting away. So I think that's plenty to be said about that. So is there anything else that you think is just important for people to know?

Andy Morgan: [00:39:03] Important, but not easy would be sleep, which you mentioned earlier. If you’re, unfortunately, if you wake up in the morning, you have to wake up with an alarm and it's a struggle to get out of bed, it's a sign that you're not sleeping enough. And the dose of that makes the poison, the lack of sleep makes the poison when it comes to the hunger that you can expect, the impact on the recovery from your training, therefore your ability to hold onto muscle mass. Stress levels as well. Obviously mental fog during the day, your ability to train hard consistently if that's what you want to do. Your willingness to be consistent with your training. 

Andy Fossett: [00:39:51] Absolutely. That's very underrated. 

Andy Morgan: [00:39:54] All of these things like it's underrated because. There is no profit to be had in telling people to sleep more. And yeah, people come up with these sleep gadgets and all those kinds of thing. Because people now know that you can't hack your sleep. Just get in bed, keep dark cool room. Make sure you're not sweating. Earplugs if necessary. Maybe a noise machine on the app on your phone if you do have issues with sound disturbing your sleep. Just try to make sure you get enough.

But the thing is, no one wants to hear that, Andy Two, but they don't want to hear it because everyone's after hacks to get more out of your day and they don't want to hear that actually the six hours that they're getting isn't enough. You need to invest another hour into this but there's no way around it I know of.

Andy Fossett: [00:40:42] It's another thing where our lifestyle creeps over years and years, the amount of sleep most of us get has been a habit that we have been forming for decades. Changing that is something that is difficult because we've built our lives around a certain amount of hours and things happening at different times, but really putting a few weeks into consistently trying to go to bed a little earlier and get a little more sleep can make a huge difference. 

I actually think it's probably one of the most valuable lifestyle changes I've made in my life was a few years ago. I went from about six and a half hours average to about eight and a half hours average over about six months. And it changed a lot of things. It was huge for me. 

Andy Morgan: [00:41:28] What changed? 

Andy Fossett: [00:41:29] The biggest ones were, I stopped being tired, stopped being anxious and really just my stress levels dropped.

Andy Morgan: [00:41:36] Interesting.

Andy Fossett: [00:41:37] Incredibly, I was very high strung, and I was just happier, honestly.

Andy Morgan: [00:41:42] Your stress levels dropped interesting. That was with work, that was family. That was so you think, Oh, interesting. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. 

Andy Fossett: [00:41:51] And part of it also is I had to rearrange a lot of things to be able to get more sleep and stuff like that. It wasn't only the sleep that did it, but the combination of lifestyle changes and getting more sleep, turned me into, I think, a healthier and happier person.

Andy Morgan: [00:42:06] Right and you make a good point there. You do have to rearrange things and sacrifice certain things. Like I get up, three or four days a week to go enjoy my friend at the gym, so that we can be at the gym for 6:00 AM. So that means getting up at 5:15. And of course, if I'm going to get my 8 hours, then that means going to bed at 9:15.  

Andy Fossett: [00:42:26] alright, Ryan and I also are very grandpa, like in our early sleep schedules. So I won't judge you too harshly. 

Andy Morgan: [00:42:34] And you got to make sacrifices. You've got to be like, "Okay guys. I will not be going to the bar after dinner," or "it's time for me to go now." That's something that a lot of people will find unusual, but ultimately, I love getting up early cause I'm super productive. I have a lot of focus.  I get my best work done in the mornings. 

Andy Fossett: [00:42:52] Yeah, I think a lot of people are like that. And so it's definitely something to play with. So I want to wrap things up and I think we've talked about actually like a pretty big variety of things, but I feel like one of the biggest takeaways for me is that a lot of this is just so individual and really about knowing what you want and what's important to you. 

If it's really important to you to drink, then that's something that you can manage with other things. But for most people, it probably is not as important as being healthy, or if you need to lose weight, losing weight or whatever. And just understanding context and focusing on the things in your context that will actually make a difference for you. All right. 

Andy Morgan: [00:43:36] Good summary. Yeah. 

Andy Fossett: [00:43:38] All right. Cool. Well then that is it. Thank you for listening. 

Andy Morgan: [00:43:41] If you got this far, thank you for listening to me. And from now on, Andy Two is how you should refer to Andy Fossett. If you could do that, that would bring me immense joy. Thank you.

Andy Fossett: [00:43:53] All right.