No Excuses Show Kickoff

Annoucer 0:01

You're listening to Shut Up and Choose. The no bullshit, no excuses podcast for people who swear they want to lose weight, but keep choosing everything that stops them. And before we continue, if you're gonna bitch and moan and act like a fucking pussy the entire time, skip this one. Listed by Jonathan Wrestler. This dude from 140 pounds with no shots, no diamonds, no pills, and not one single fucking membership slide at the gym. Just real promises live fit real life. If you're tired of gaming, you're tired of the bullshit, and ready for somebody to finally call you out and tell you the truth, you are in the right place. This show punches all of them right in its flat face.

Jonathan Ressler 1:36

So

GLP-1s Work But What Learned

Jonathan Ressler 1:37

let's cut through the bullshit surrounding us zemping and GLP1 drugs, because I think we're pretending something revolutionary happened. When in reality, we took the same diet culture we've been selling for the last 50 years, that same shit that's been sold to us, pharmaceuticalized it, put it into a syringe, and convinced everybody that they finally solved the problem. I mean, think about it. That's what they've been doing for decades. We've all been desperately searching for something outside of ourselves control what we eat because, God forbid, we learn how to make better choices. We went from low fat to low carb to Atkins to Weight Watchers to keto to intermittent fasting to counting calories to counting macros for eating during certain fucking hours of the day. Every one of them came packaged differently, but the basic promise was always the same. Give us control of your food decisions, and we'll tell you what to do. Don't eat this or eat more of that. Stay under this number, but don't eat after this time. Carbs are bad, fat is bad, sugar is bad, breakfast is essential. Breakfast is killing you. Eat six times a day, eat once a day. Apparently, nobody knows what the fuck they're doing, but everybody has a system that they would love to sell you. Now we've reached what I believe to be the ultimate version of it. We don't even need to give rules. The people don't have to get rules anymore. We they just give you a drug designed to dramatically reduce your appetite so you don't want as much food in the first place. And guess what? It fucking works. I'm not gonna sit here and tell you a Zembic doesn't work because that would be stupid. Semaglutide works, trzepatide works, people are losing incredible amounts of weight on these drugs, and some people are experiencing legitimate improvements in their health. I have no interest in arguing with reality simply because it makes my position easier or better. But I have a question nobody seems particularly interested in asking. What did you learn? If you lost 50, 70, 100 pounds because medication dramatically changed your appetite, though congratulations, you lost weight. I mean that. But losing the weight and learning how to live at that weight are two completely fucking different things. And we need to stop pretending they're interchangeable. So here's the question I want you to sit with us for this entire episode. If your medication disappeared tomorrow, would you know how to eat? Not while you not while your appetite is suppressed, not while food suddenly seems like less interesting. I mean when you're fucking hungry again, when you walk into the Italian restaurant and there's warm bread sitting right there in front of you, or when you're stressed out on a Wednesday night and the kitchen is 10 feet away. When you're on vacation, I just came back from vacation, believe me, I know. When you're at a party, when someone puts your favorite dessert in front of you and your brain says, fuck it, I want some. What happens then? Because if the answers that you go right back to the same behaviors you had before the medication, then we need to have an uncomfortable conversation about what we're calling success. You didn't eliminate the problem, you found an incredibly effective way to control one part of it. And there's nothing wrong with using the tool. A mistake is believing the tool automatically taught you a skill. And that's what this episode is about. I'm not here to tell you to throw away your Azempic or cancel your Ragovi prescription or ignore your doctor. I'm here to challenge this insane idea that because we finally found a more powerful way to lose weight, we somehow solved the behavioral problem that caused millions of people to lose and regain weight over and over again in the first place. Because whether your rules come from a diet book, an app, a fasting clock, some fucked up point systems, or a prescription, I want to know what happens when those rules disappear and there's nobody left standing between you and the food except for you. That's where your choices matter. And that's where the real fucking conversation begins. Now, before someone listens to the first five minutes of this episode and decides, you know, Jonathan is on some crusade against some Zempic, let me make something perfectly fucking clear. GLP1 drugs work. I'm not debating that. I'm not denying the science, and I'm not going to twist myself into some ridiculous position where I pretend people aren't losing enormous amounts of weight on these drugs because it happens to fit my argument better. They work. That's it. They work. They suppress appetite, they can make you feel full sooner or stay full longer. They can quiet some of the constant thoughts about food that drive people nuts all day. And when people are less hungry or they feel satisfied with less food and eat substantially less than they used to, guess what happens? They lose weight. Some people lose an absolute shit ton of weight. And for people dealing with diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular risks, and other medical issues, these drugs have a legitimate medical benefit that go way beyond fitting into some smaller gene. So this isn't an episode about whether Ozempia is good or evil, or whether pharmaceutical companies are good or evil. You know, I think they're fucking evil, but we're gonna have to discuss it. Whether somebody take Mogovi somehow cheated their way into losing weight. I couldn't really honestly, I don't give a shit about any of that. If you lost 80 pounds on a GLP one, you lost 80 fucking pounds. I'm not taking that accomplishment away from you. But I want to separate two things that everybody keeps throwing into the same bucket because they're absolutely not the same thing. Losing weight is one accomplishment. Learning how to manage your weight is another. Getting smaller and learning how to stay smaller are two completely different accomplishments. And I think we're confusing the first one with the second one because the first one is incredibly easy to measure. You stepped on the scale of 310 pounds, six months later, six months later, you weighed 250. There's your result. 60 pounds gone. Nobody can argue with that. But what does the scale tell you about what you learned? Does it tell you you learned why you were eating when you weren't hungry? Does it tell you you learned how much your food? Does it tell you you learned how much food your body needs to feel satisfied? Or that you can go out and to dinner and order whatever the fuck you want, enjoy it and stop eating when you've had enough? Does it tell you you learn how to deal with the stress without opening the fridge? Does it tell you you stop thinking about food as good and bad? Does it tell you that you can eat something indulgent on Saturday night without turning Sunday into a free-for-all because you already blew it? No, the scale tells you exactly one thing. You weigh less. And again, that's fucking great. I'm not taking anything away with that. If you were carrying extra 100 pounds and now you aren't, I'm thrilled for you. Your knees are thrilled for you, and your heart is thrilled for you, your closet is thrilled for you, but none of those things answer the question I care about. What happens when the eating gets hard again? Because while the medication is doing exactly what it was designed to do, you're playing the game under different conditions. You aren't experiencing food, hunger, cravings, and fullness exactly the way you did before. That's the point of taking the medication. So I'm not interested in criticizing the tool for working. I'm interested in what you're doing while the tool is working. Are you paying attention to your choices? Are you learning what satisfied feels like? Are you changing behaviors that got you to three or four hundred pounds? Are you figuring out why you need the food the way you did, or building a way of eating that you could live with, whether you're taking the medication or not? Or are you just eating less because you don't feel like eating as much? Because those two people can lose the exact same 80 pounds and end up in completely different places. One person used the medication as an opportunity to build skills while losing weight. The other person lost weight because the medication controlled the thing that they've never learned to control. Same weight loss, completely different outcome. And that's the distinction where this conversation gets interesting.

The Forever Plan And Exit Ramp

Jonathan Ressler 9:22

So now we get to the part of the conversation I think deserves. Now we get to the part of the conversation I think deserves a lot more attention, and that's the forever question. The medical community increasingly talks about how obesity is a chronic disease, and the argument follows that if it's chronic disease, there's nothing unusual about treating it with medication chronically. In other words, you might take a GLP 1 for years or potentially for the rest of your life. And that's fine. I'm not even going to fight the argument because I don't think there's a much more useful conversation, because I think there's a much more useful conversation sitting right underneath it. If you're going to start a medication that could become a permanent part of your life, you should understand what permanent really means and decide whether you're comfortable with it. Because I'll take this forever sounds pretty simple when everything is going well. You have the prescription, your insurance covers it, you can afford your portion, you tolerate the medication, you're losing the weight, and you feel fucking great. Under those circumstances, forever doesn't sound particularly scary, but life has a nasty habit of changing the terms. What happens if your insurance company decides next year that the weight loss drugs aren't covered under your plan anymore? Or if your employer changes insurance companies, what happens if your copay goes from something completely manageable right now to an amount you simply refuse to spend every month? And for even forget the insurance for a second, what happens in five years from now? You're just fucking tired of taking it because maybe you don't want a prescription controlling part of your life. Maybe you start experiencing side effects that you're no longer willing to tolerate, or maybe your doctor recommends a change. There's a hundred reasons someone can start a long-term medication today and not be taking it five or ten years from now. It doesn't mean that you shouldn't take it. It means that you should have a plan B. And this is the part that I think gets completely lost in the celebration surrounding these drugs. We spend an enormous amount of time talking about how much weight somebody lost, or how quickly they lost it, or what dose they're taking, what insurance covers, which drug produces the best results. I want to know what the exit ramp looks like. I want to know what the exit ramp looks like, even if you never use it. If you're planning to take the medication indefinitely and you're completely comfortable with that decision, great, fantastic. Then own the decision. Understand the cost, the commitment, the medical conversation you're having with the doctor, and keep going. But I plan to take it forever, should never become an excuse for, therefore, I don't need to prepare for anything else. We all buy homeowners insurance without planning to burn the fucking house down, right? We build emergency funds without planning to get fired from our jobs or um just because you're preparing just because you're preparing for something doesn't mean you expect it to happen. It means you're smart enough to know you don't control every variable in your future. And your weight, honestly, deserves the same thinking. So while the medication is helping you, so while the medication is helping you, build the backup system. Figure out what portions work for you or what foods keep you satisfied, or figure out which situation caused you to eat mindlessly, or how to handle restaurants, or vacations, holidays, stress, boredom, stuff, all the other places where food becomes something other than fuel. Because someday you might need those skills. And if you never do great, you lost absolutely nothing by developing on them. That's my point here. I'm not I'm not telling you to stop taking the drug. I'm asking you whether you have a plan if the drug stops taking care of your appetite. Because for because forever is a medical strategy, but it shouldn't be your only strategy.

Diet Culture Repeats With New Packaging

Jonathan Ressler 12:58

And you know what's really fucking fascinating about the weight loss industry? We've spent decades announcing breakthroughs, and somehow America keeps getting heavier. Every generation gets its miracle, every generation gets a thing that's gonna solve obesity. And we all get told, forget everything you've heard before, this one is different. Remember when fat was the enemy? We stripped fat out of everything. Fat-free cookies, fat-free yogurt, fat-free salad dressing, everything. You could walk through a supermarket filling your cart with food specifically marketed for weight loss and still eat an unbelievable amount of highly processed shit because it had two magical words on the package, fat-free. Then carbohydrates became the big asshole. Suddenly bacon was practically a health food, and fucking banana required risk assessment. Bread went from being something humans had eaten for thousands of years to the reason you couldn't butt your pants. Couldn't button your pants. Then came the points. Now food wasn't food anymore, it was math. You had a daily budget. Everything had a number, and you could spend a little food allowance, however you wanted, as long as the numbers worked. Then keto showed up and took the low carb idea even further. Get yourself into ketosis and everything changes. People started testing their piss, measuring ketones, putting butter in their coffee, interrogating restaurant service about whether there might be three grams of sugar hiding in the salad dressing. As if that wasn't enough, then fasting became the answer. Now the problem wasn't necessarily what you ate, the problem was when you ate it. Breakfast went from the most important meal of the day to something you should apparently avoid until noon. We didn't change the session, we changed the clock. We had meal replacement shakes, cabbage soup, grapefruit diets, detoxes, juice cleanses, frozen meals, bars, powder, supplement, macros, eating with. We had so much shit. And by the way, I'll be the first to admit, I did them all. We had enough systems to fill a fucking library. And every time the packaging changes, we convince ourselves the fundamental idea changed with it. But it didn't. The weight loss industry keeps finding new ways to answer the question people desperately want answered. What can I use to control my eating? That question is a fucking trap because every time you ask it, somebody's waiting with something to sell you. Here's your meal plan, here's your app, here's your shake, here's your points, here's your eating window, here's your fucking injection. And now GLP1s arrive. And technologically and medically, yes, this is a huge advancement. We have medications capable of producing levels of weight loss that the cabbage soup diet sure as shit wasn't producing. And I use that sh word shit, anybody that's been on it, you know exactly what I'm talking about. But culturally, I see something incredibly familiar. Here we go again, looking for the thing that finally makes the decisions easier. And maybe instead of endlessly asking what the next big thing is gonna be, we should finally ask why we keep needing the next thing because there'll be another one. There's too much money involved for there not to be another one. Five years from now, there'll be newer drugs, different combinations, different delivery methods, different protocols, and someone telling you this version changes everything. And maybe it will, but there's one thing no company can package and sell you, and that's your ability to make a fucking choice. That's the part nobody wants to hear because it isn't sexy. There's no launch date, there's no prescription, there's no before and there's no before and after commercial promising you'll transform your life in 90 days. It's you standing in your kitchen at 9.30, deciding whether you're hungry or whether you're walking towards the pantry because you've done it every night for the last 15 years. It's you ordering the cheeseburger because you fucking love cheeseburgers and deciding you don't need the fries today. It's you eating the fries tomorrow and deciding that doesn't mean you blew anything. It's you realizing food never needed to be controlled nearly as much as your decisions needed to become much more conscious. So maybe we've been asking the wrong question for 50 years. So I tell you, stop asking what can control my eating, and start asking, how do I learn to control my choices? Because the first question has created a trillion-dollar industry. The second one might finally make you stop needing it.

Weight Loss Versus Real Weight Management

Jonathan Ressler 17:21

So you have to remember that weight loss isn't weight management. Weight loss happens when you consistently consume less energy than you use. Here's another thing we stop needing to pretend is complicated. Weight loss and weight management are not the same fucking thing. Weight loss, very straightforward. Over time, you consume less energy than your body uses your weight goes down. We can argue about that all the way. We can argue all day about the best way to create that deficit, whether it's low carb, low fat, fasting, you name it. Or standing on your fucking head on Tuesday, but your body doesn't negotiate with physics. If you consistently consume less energy than you use, you lose weight. Weight management, on the other hand, is where the shit gets interesting because weight management doesn't happen in a laboratory or an app or inside some perfect little meal plan that someone handed you. Weight management happens at 7.30 on Saturday night when you're sitting in your favorite restaurant, you already had two drinks, the bread was great, your entree just arrived, and everybody at the table wants dessert. Weight management happens on vacation when you spend 8,000 bucks taking your family to Italy, and you sure as shit aren't going to sit there eating grilled chicken and steamed broccoli while everybody else is eating pasta and gelato. It happens at Thanksgiving, Christmas, your birthday, your kids' party, your anniversary, the company dinner, the wedding, the barbecue, the Super Bowl party, the airport. When your flight gets delayed, there's three fucking hours and there's nothing open but chilies. That's weight management. And then there's the stuff that nobody puts on Instagram before and after pictures. You had a terrible day at work and you're pissed off, or you're lonely, or bored, or exhausted. You had three glasses of wine and suddenly order a pizza at 11 o'clock. Sounds like the greatest idea anyone ever had. Or let's say it's Friday night and you just don't give a fuck. That one matters because everyone loves talking about motivation when they're motivated. Nobody talks enough about what you do when you're tired of caring. That's where your skills show up. Can you go to a restaurant and eat something you genuinely love without turning dinner into an eating contest? I know for me, for a long time, that answer was no. Can you go on vacation and enjoy every fucking thing you want to enjoy without coming home 12 pounds heavier? For me, that was a definite no until I learned to control my choices. Can you have dessert because you want dessert and stop work and stop when you've had enough instead of deciding you need to finish it because tomorrow you're gonna be good again? Fucking man, I'm so guilty of that. Can you recognize when you're standing in front of the refrigerator because you're hungry? Because you're hungry, and when you're standing there because your day sucked. Can you have a shitty Tuesday without using foods and you drink a couple cocktails without deciding the the night? Can you drink a couple of cocktails without deciding the night no longer counts? Those are skills, and none of them show up in the scale. That's why I get frustrated when somebody points to weight loss as proof they've solved their weight problem. I mean maybe you have. I hope you have. But the scale, that can't tell us that. The scale going down proves you lost weight. It doesn't prove you learn shit. You can follow a perfectly structured program and lose 100 pounds without ever learning how to navigate an unstructured day. You can eat pre-packaged dog shit meals for six months and lose weight without learning how to order dinner in a restaurant. You can eliminate every food you love and become dramatically smaller without learning how to live in a world where those foods still fucking exist. That's why I care so much. That's why I care so much more about what happens after the weight loss than I do about how quickly someone loses it. Show me Tuesday night six years from now. Show me the vacation, the Christmas dinner, a horrible work, you know, week at work. You horrible week at work. Can you still make enough good choices to keep yourself somewhere near where you want to be? That's weight management. You don't need perfection to do it. In fact, perfection is a is just fucking useless because real life will destroy your perfect plan every time. You need competence. You need to know how to make a better choice when a perfect choice isn't available. Losing weight happens during the program. Managing your weight happens when there is no fucking program. And if your strategy can't survive restaurants and vacations and holidays and alcohol and birthdays and boredom and all that shit, you don't have a weight management strategy. You have a weight loss strategy. There's a massive fucking difference.

The Confidence Trap After Fast Results

Jonathan Ressler 21:54

There's something else that's happening with GLP ones that I don't think we're talking nearly enough about, and I call it the fall. Confidence problem. You lose 40 pounds, maybe 50, maybe even 80. Suddenly, clothes you haven't more than 10 years fit you again, or you walk into a room, people notice, friends start asking you, What the fuck are you doing? Your spouse tells you how great you look, your doctor is thrilled out because your numbers are all improving. Your face looks different in pictures, all that shit. And psychologically, something really powerful happens. You start thinking, holy shit, I finally figured this out. Of course you feel that way. Every piece of feedback you're getting tells you the problem is being solved. The scale says it, the mirror says it, your clothes say it, your doctor says it, the people around you all say it. But I want you to be careful about what conclusion you draw from those results. Because there's a difference between getting a different result and become better at producing that result yourself. So let's say before taking the GLP ones, you could sit down at dinner and absolutely starving and eat a huge plate of food, go back for seconds and start looking around the kitchen an hour later for something sweet. That was me. Now you take a medication, halfway through dinner, you're fucking done. You don't want seconds. Dessert doesn't sound particularly interesting. Two hours later, you aren't even thinking about what's in the pantry. That's an enormous change. But what changed? That's the question. Did you become dramatically better at resisting food? Or did food become dramatically easier to resist? Those are two very different things. I'm not saying one is morally superior to the other. I don't give a shit about earning your weight loss. There's no metal waiting for you because you suffered more than somebody else. If something makes losing weight easier and improves your health, phenomenal, fantastic. Easier isn't cheating, and harder isn't somehow more noble. But you need to recognize what is doing the work because eventually you're going to make decisions based on what you think you've accomplished. Imagine someone spends a year on GLP1 and loses 75 pounds. During that year, they're eating smaller portions and snacking less and leaving food on the plate and thinking about food less and maybe not even going back for seconds. After doing that for a year, it would be incredibly easy to think this is who I am now. I don't eat the way I used to anymore. Maybe. But there's another possibility. Maybe you were doing all those things because your biological experience of hunger had changed dramatically. That doesn't make the results fake. The 75, the 75 pounds are fucking gone. The smaller pants are real, the improved blood work is real. Every health benefit you gained is real. The potential mistake is assuming every behavior you observed during that period now belongs to you permanently because behavior gets a shitload easier when the pressure is pushing. Because behavior gets a hell of a lot easier when the pressure pushing against it gets weaker. It's easy to leave half a cheeseburger when you generally don't want the other half. It's easy to skip dessert when dessert sounds kind of uninteresting. It's easy to stop snacking late at night when the thought of eating doesn't keep popping in your head. The real question is whether you've been paying attention while all that is happening. Do you know why your portion's smaller now or do you recognize satisfaction before you're stuffed? Do you know or recognize what foods keep you satisfied for longer? Because if you have, because if you have, then you're getting something incredibly valuable out of this experience beyond weight loss. You're gathering information about yourself. But if the only thing you know is I can take the shot and I don't eat as much, and then think that you should be very careful. But if the only thing you know is I take the shot and I don't eat as much, then I think you should be very careful about declaring the problem solved. And this is where I want to ask what might be the most important question of this entire conversation. Did you change your relationship with food, or did the medication temporarily change your relationship with hunger? Because from the outside, those two things can look exactly the fucking same. Smaller, same smaller portions, same weight, loss, same compliments, same new clothes, same number on the scale. You only discover the difference when the conditions change.

Use The Quiet To Learn Skills

Jonathan Ressler 26:09

So if you're listening to this and you're currently taking a Zempik or a Govy, Zipbound, or some other GLP mode or compound, I don't want you walking away from this episode thinking I'm telling you to stop. I'm telling you almost the exact opposite. If you have something making this easier right now, take advantage of the fucking opportunity. Because think about what you have right now. For maybe the first time in years, maybe decades, food isn't screaming at you all day. You're not walking around constantly thinking about what you're going to eat next. I know I used to. You can eat a smaller amount and feel satisfied, and you can look at food that used to destroy you and suddenly think, yeah, I'm good. That gives you an incredible opportunity to pay attention. Don't waste it. If the drug turns down the volume on hunger, use the quiet to learn something. I mean, I'll be the first to tell you I didn't take any LGLP ones. I they're not for me. I don't know what the long-term effects are. But if you're taking them, good for you. Start learning what actual physical hunger feels like. I mean real hunger, not just it's noon, so I should I should eat lunch. Not, well, everybody else's, or not there's donuts in the conference. Oh, I'm guilty of that one. Then learn the other side of it. Learn what satisfied feels like before satisfied becomes stuffed. Most people who have struggled with their weight for decades know exactly what stuff feels like. I know I did. They know the feeling where you lean back from the table, loosen your fucking belt, and oh, I ate too much. That's not the signal you to lose. That's not the signal you need to learn. The useful signal happened 15 minutes earlier. There was a moment when the food stopped tasting quite as incredible as those first few bites. You know, I have the four-bite rule, by the fourth bite, you're done, but we'll that's an episode for another day. There was a moment when the physical hunger was gone. There was a moment when you could have stopped eating and felt perfectly fine. Start looking for that moment and start looking at your portions without turning portions into another fucking diet. I'm not asking you to pull out a food scale and weigh six ounces of chicken. Fuck that shit. I want you to notice how much food it takes for you to feel satisfied. Maybe you'll discover you spent 20 years eating twice as much food as you needed to simply because it was twice as much was sitting on the plate. Practice leaving food behind. I get it. That sounds ridiculously simple until you watch how uncomfortable it makes some people. We've been trained since childhood to finish what's on the plate. We paid for it. Somebody cooked it. There's starving children somewhere. Whatever the fucking story you learn, you spend decades treating an empty plate as the signal the meal is finished. Fuck the plate. Your body gets a vote. If you're satisfied, stop. The remaining food can go into the refrigerator or go home in a box or go in the garbage. Eating food your body doesn't want doesn't become virtuous because throwing it away makes you uncomfortable. Then I want to start paying attention every time you want food when you know damn well you aren't physically hungry. And that one, this one is huge. What happened five minutes before you walked in the kitchen? Were you bored? Were you stressed, lonely, procrastinated? Did you see food on TV? Did your spouse start eating something? Did you walk past the pantry and suddenly remember, hey, there's cookies in there? Don't judge it. Just notice it. You're trying to understand your own fucking operating system around food. And please, for the love of God, learn how to eat the foods you love while you still have this opportunity. If you love pizza, eat fucking pizza, but pay attention. Can you eat two slices and enjoy the shit out of them? Really, the third and fourth slices aren't going to make the experience twice as good? You can eat the cheeseburger without automatically needing the largest fries available. That was a big problem for me. Can you eat a dessert without deciding dessert needs to continue dessert needs to continue until every dessert in the building is gone? I mean, that's where you learn something that's more useful than what foods you're allowed to eat. You learn enough. And you've learned how to practice what happens when you overdo it because you fucking will. There'll be a dinner where you eat too much, there'll be a vacation where you drink more than usual, there'll be Thanksgiving and Christmas, there'll be birthday where you have the cake, and then inside the second piece looks pretty fucking good too. Fine. Your next decision still counts. You don't need to punish yourself. You don't need to skip breakfast or cleanse or fast for 18 hours, and you sure as shit don't need to announce it. You blew the week and you'll start again Monday. You ate too much. Big fucking deal. Make your next choice. That skill alone can change everything because so much long-term weight gain doesn't come from one indulgent meal. It comes from the ridiculous chain reaction people create after the meal because they think that they failed. So use this period if you want a GLP1 as an experiment. Pay attention, learn your patterns, learn your hunger, learn all that shit, learn how foods affect you, and learn how to, most importantly, learn how to have the shit you love without needing to turn it into the Last Supper. Your GLP1 can give you a window where some of this feels easier than it used to. That's a fucking gift. Use it. Because the biggest opportunity here isn't simply seeing how isn't simply seeing how much weight you can lose while taking the medication. It's seeing how much you can learn about yourself while you are. And all that, it that brings me back to the entire reason that I wrote the book Shut Up and Choose in the First Place.

Stop Chasing Systems Start Choosing

Jonathan Ressler 31:34

I don't think most people need another fucking system. I think they've had enough systems to fill three lifetimes. Most people who have struggled with their weight already know more about dieting than the average person ever will. Ask somebody who's been a fat fuck for 30 years about carbohydrates, and they can give you a lecture. They know what protein is. They know vegetables are good for them. They know grilled chicken breasts has fewer calories than a bucket of fried chicken. No one's standing in the drive-thru at 11.30 at night because somehow, because somehow they missed the breaking news that broccoli is healthier than french fries. Knowledge, it's not the problem. The problem is taking everything you know and turning it into choices you can make repeatedly in a life that refuses to cooperate with your perfect fucking plan. That's why I don't want you chasing perfect choices. I want you making better ones, small choices, conscious choices, repeatable choices. Choices that don't require a spreadsheet or a scale or an app or a menu or 17 pieces of fucking Tupperware lined up in your refrigerator every Sunday night. Because whatever you're doing has to work in your actual life. It has to work when you're standing in your kitchen on Tuesday morning, and it has to work when you're sitting at Ruth's Chris on Saturday night. It has to work when you have absolutely nothing going on, and it has to work when your schedule is completely fucked. I want you capable of walking into all those situations without needing someone else's rules to tell you what happens next. Maybe tonight you order the steak and the load of baked potato. Great. Maybe you decide you don't need the bread because the potato is what you really want. Or maybe tomorrow you want the bread too. That's fine. Maybe you have dessert. Maybe you have three bites and you realize you've had enough. Maybe you eat the whole fucking thing because it's incredible and you wanted every bite. None of those choices determines what happens next. That's the part diet culture completely fucked up. It convinced you that individual foods have enormous moral significance. You're good because you ate the salad, or you were bad because you ate cheesecake. Monday through Thursday, you behave yourself. Friday you screwed up. Saturday became a disaster. Sunday became your farewell tour. And Monday morning you climb back onto the fucking wagon. There is no wagon. There's only your next choice. That sounds insultingly simple, and that's exactly why people overlook it. They want the plan or the rules, they want someone to handle the answer because rules create certainty. Choices require you to actually pay attention. But think about how much freedom comes from no longer needing every food decision to be perfect. You can eat pizza without having a cheat day. You can eat salad without pretending you're suddenly back on track. You can go for a week. You can go away for a week without needing to decide whether you're on your diet or off your diet. You can have an amazing dinner Friday night, wake up Saturday morning and make a completely unrelated choice for breakfast. You don't owe yesterday anything. And this is exactly where I want someone taking GLP1s to end up to. I don't care whether the medication helped you get there. I don't care whether you lost the first 80 pounds with a GOVI or Zeppound or a Zeppelin or sheer fucking stubbornness. I care whether you're developing the ability to make choices without needing every circumstance around you to be perfect. Because your circumstances will never stay perfect. Your schedule will change, your appetite will change, your stress will change, your health will change. Everything changes. Your life five years from now will look totally different from your life today. But your choices, they travel with you. That's why shut up and choose is never about finding a perfect way to eat. I don't think one exists, and I stopped giving a shit about finding it a long time ago. I want something far more useful. I want you to be able to look at the options sitting in front of you, understand what you want, understand what you're trying to accomplish, and make a conscious fucking decision. Sometimes you'll make the smart choice, and sometimes you'll choose the cheesecake. Neither one of them requires you to start over on Monday. You make the choice, you own the choice, then you make the next one. Do that enough times, and you'll stop needing your entire life organized around losing weight. That's the goal. Stop looking for another system to control you. I mean, as crazy as it sounds, just fucking shut up and choose.

Doctor Advice And The Final Question

Jonathan Ressler 35:51

All right, so I know I went off on a little rant there, but I already know I'm gonna get emails after this episode. Jonathan, what about the people who medically need these drugs? What about diabetes? What about people whose doctor believes they should be on a GLP one long term? My answer is incredibly simple. Listen to your fucking doctor. I'm a guy with a microphone. I'm not your endocrinologist. Nothing I've said in this episode has means you stop taking medication your doctor believes you need. That isn't remotely the point I'm making. The point is that medication and behavior skills aren't mutually exclusive. I have no idea why we act as though we need to pick a team here. You can take a medication that improves your health, reduces your appetite, and helps you lose weight while same while simultaneously becoming better at managing food. In fact, I think that's the smartest fucking way to use it. If you're going to take the medication for the next 20 years, great, fantastic. The skills benefit you for the next 20 years. If you eventually stop taking it under your doctor's supervision, those skills become even more important. There's no downside to becoming more capable. So learn your hunger and your satisfaction, how much food you need, and what situations trigger mindless eating, and learn how to enjoy the food you love without turning every indulgence into a three-day event. But learn how to make a choice without needing everybody to tell you whether it's good or bad. The medication doesn't prevent any of that. It can give you an easier environment in which to practice. And no, this isn't anti-medication. It's anti-dependence without awareness. Use every legitimate tool. I'm telling you, use every legitimate tool available to you and your doctor. But while you're improving your body, improve your ability to manage it. Your goal should always your goal should always be more capability, not less. So I know I went long, but I want to leave you with one question. And I don't want you to answer quickly because I think your honest answer tells you almost everything you need to know. If your GLP1 disappeared tomorrow, what would you do differently at dinner tonight? Think about that. If you know the appetite suppression wasn't going to be there next week, would you still feel prepared? Could you sit down in front of food you fucking love, eat it, enjoy it, and recognize when you've had enough? Could you manage your portion without weighing it, measuring it, counting it, or waiting for something else to tell you when to stop? Could you recognize satisfaction before you're stuffed? Could you live through a brutal day, walk into your house stressed out of your fucking brains, angry and exhausted, and recognize what happened at work today has absolutely nothing to do with what needs to happen in your kitchen? And when you eventually and inevitably fuck up, because you will, could you handle that too? Could you go out Saturday night and drink too much or eat too much, have dessert, and wake up Sunday morning with no guilt, no cleanse, no starving yourself. If you can do those things, fantastic. Keep doing them. But if you're listening to those questions thinking, I honestly don't know, good. Because now you know exactly where the work is. And none of that means you need to stop taking your medication. It means you have an opportunity right now to build something the prescription cannot build for you. And that's capability. The ability, the capability to make choices, the ability to walk into any restaurant, any holiday, any vacation, any shitty day, any kitchen, and know that you can make a conscious choice. That's what I want for you. Because the needle can change your appetite, but it can never make the choices for you for the rest of your life. The only way you can do that is if you consciously choose and make the decision to finally shut up and choose.

Annoucer 39:34

Thanks

Closing And Where To Connect

Annoucer 39:35

for listening to Shut Up and Choose. If today's episode slapped you with some truth, good. That means it worked, and you've dropped the pussy in the tube. Make sure to like, rate, and review, and connect with Jonathan on Instagram at ResslerChooses. On YouTube at Jonathan Ressler, and online at JonathanRessler.com. No gimmicks, no excuses, no bullshit. Just make a choices. Starting the second units on this episode. Jonathan Two.