No Gimmicks, Just The Truth

Announcer 0:02

You're listening to Shut Up and Choose, the no bullshit, no excuses podcast for people who swear they wanna 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 Hosted by Jonathan Ressler. This dude dropped 140 pounds with no shots, no diets, no pills, and not one single fucking membership swipe at the gym. Just real choices that fit real life. If you're tired of gimmicks, tired of the bullshit, and ready for somebody to finally call you out and tell you the truth, you are in the right place. Cravings, stress eating, late night sabotage, travel traps, holiday chaos, this show punches all of that right in its fat face. Stop dieting, start choosing. This is Shut Up and Choose. Now, here's Jonathan.

Why Real Weight Loss Feels Boring

Jonathan Ressler 1:19

Hey, welcome back to Shut Up and Choose, the podcast that cuts through the noise, the nonsense, and all the bullshit that the Instagram influencers, all the weight loss gurus online, and all those other fucking idiots out there that are telling you how to lose weight and giving you systems. It's all a bunch of shit because they don't real- know what real weight loss looks like. You wanna know what real weight loss looks like? It's boring as hell, and I think that's exactly why so many people keep failing at it. Because we've been sold this completely distorted version what losing weight is supposed to look like. We see those 5:00 AM workouts. Fuck that noise. The perfectly portioned meal prep containers lined up across the counter. Get the fuck outta here. The protein shakes, the grocery cart filled with the foods nobody's excited to eat, the sweaty gym selfies. Fuck the gym, and I'm only saying that from a weight loss standpoint. It's great for other things, but that's, again, a conversation for another day. But fuck the gym and the dramatic before and after pictures. It looks like losing weight requires you to completely rebuild your life around losing weight, but that isn't what real weight loss looks like. Real weight loss is Tuesday night at 9:30 when you wander into the kitchen 'cause you're bored. You open the fridge, stare it down for like 10 seconds, and then close the fucking door. It's ordering the burger you wanted and realizing that you don't automatically need the fries. Or it's like eating three slices of pizza instead of four because honestly, three was enough. It's like leaving food on your plate even though you were raised to clean the whole thing. Those moments, they're not exciting. Nobody sees them and nobody's congratulating you. Nobody gives a shit that you almost grabbed another handful of chips and decided you've had enough. But those are the moments that matter. Weight loss doesn't happen when everyone's watching. It happens when nobody is, and that's what nobody wants to tell you. Real weight loss is usually slow. It's repetitive. There's nothing glamorous about it. Some days it barely feels like you're doing anything at all. But when you stop looking for the dramatic solution and start changing the boring little choices you make every single day, something happens. Those choices start adding up, and eventually your body has no choice but to reflect them. So somewhere along the way, we decided losing weight needed to become a fucking occupation. You can't simply eat differently anymore. Apparently, you need a food scale, an app, 17 plastic containers, a Costco membership Cabinet full of fucking supplements, a gym membership, and four hours every Sunday afternoon to cook chicken breasts you're already sick of before fucking Wednesday. You're probably sick of them as you're cooking them. Then you need to get up at 5:00 AM because some asshole on Instagram told you successful people wake up before the sun. You drag your ass to the gym, spend an hour doing shit you hate, come home exhausted, drink something that tastes like chocolate-flavored drywall, and somehow convince yourself this is your new life. A- And for a while, you can do it. That's the problem. Almost anybody can tolerate something ridiculous for a few weeks when they're motivated. You can meal prep, and weigh your food, and swear off bread, and hit the gym six days a week, or carry those stupid fucking Tupperware containers even into restaurants like you're transporting a human organ. But I want you to answer a much harder question. Are you willing to live like this for the next 20 years? Because if you're not, what the fuck are you doing? If the behavior has an expiration date, there's a pretty good chance the results have one, too. You're practicing temporary behavior and expecting permanent outcomes. Then when you finally get tired of organizing your entire life around losing weight, you say you fell off. You didn't fall off. You've just built something that you couldn't possibly live with.

The Gym Is Not A Free Pass

Jonathan Ressler 5:09

And then there's the gym, and I know this pisses people off, but the gym is a shitty primary weight loss strategy. I'm not saying exercise is shitty. Exercise is fantastic. Lift weights, build muscle, improve your cardiovascular health, and get stronger so you can move better and protect your body as you get older. There's 100 great reasons to exercise. But if you think spending an hour on a treadmill gives you some magical advantage over the choices you make during the other 23 hours of the day, you're kidding yourself. People will spend an hour trying to burn calories and stop for a 700-calorie coffee on the way home because they earned it. They'll crush a workout Saturday morning and use it as permission to turn Saturday afternoon and Saturday night into an eating contest. Then Monday morning, they're standing on the scale and wondering why nothing happened. The treadmill isn't the problem. Your expectations are. You're trying to use exercise to compensate for choices you keep making around food, and for most people with significant weight to lose, that's a terrible trade. Go to the gym because you want a stronger body or because you want better endurance or because you wanna be able to get off the floor when you're 75 without needing, three people and a piece of furniture. But stop expecting the treadmill to negotiate with your dinner. And stop believing weight loss requires you to dedicate half your life to weight loss. It doesn't. You already make hundreds of decisions about food every week. You don't need another job. You need to start making some of those existing decisions differently. And that's the part that nobody can sell you in their little shiny box because you order the same meal and eat less of it. Maybe you stop eating when you've had enough instead of when the plate is empty, or maybe you realize being bored at 10:00 at night isn't a medical emergency requiring Doritos. And maybe you still eat the foods you love, but you stop treating every opportunity to eat them like they'll never be available again. That doesn't require two hours. It requires a choice, and then another. Weight loss should fit inside your life. Your life should not have to fit inside your weight loss plan. Because eventually, the motivation disappears, or work gets crazy, or you travel, or you go to dinner, or someone has a birthday, or you just have a shitty week. Life does what life always does. And if your entire strategy only works when your life is perfectly organized around losing weight, you don't have a strategy, you got a temporary project. I'm interested in what you can still do when life gets messy, because that's the shit you can keep doing after the weight is gone And here's where the weight loss industry really has you by the balls.

Temporary Diets Create Temporary Results

Jonathan Ressler 7:46

They know you don't wanna lose weight. You wanna have lost weight. You wanna skip the entire process and wake up six months from now 50 pounds lighter. And because they know you want the result faster than you wanna change your behavior, they keep selling you faster ways to get there. 30 pounds in 30 days, no carbs, no sugar, no eating after 6:00, drink these disgusting shakes, eat these meals, follow this detox, take this supplement, fast for 16 hours, fast for 20 hours, eat like a caveman, eat like someone who lives on a Mediterranean island, don't eat fruit, eat nothing but fruit. Every few years the rules change, but the sales pitch stays exactly the same. Do this extreme thing and you'll finally get the body you want. And here's what makes the whole thing so fucking effective. A lot of these diets will make you lose weight. Of course they will. If you suddenly eliminate half the foods you normally eat, dramatically reduce your calories, and completely change your eating habits overnight, the scale's gonna move. That isn't magic. That isn't evidence you discovered the secret your body's been hiding from you. You're eating less. The problem isn't whether you can lose weight doing it, the problem is what happens when you stop. That's the question almost nobody asks when they start a diet. They're obsessed with how quickly they can lose 20, 30, 50 pounds. Nobody wants to talk about what Tuesday dinner looks like two years from now, and nobody asks whether they're willing to follow these rules at Christmas, on vacation, at restaurants, during stressful weeks, and when they're tired of thinking about food all the fucking day. They only wanna know how fast the scale will move. And speed is seductive because slow progress feels like nothing is happening. You lose a pound and you're disappointed. You lose eight pounds in the first week on some ridiculous plan and suddenly you think you found God, so you keep going until you don't Eventually you want the bread or the pasta. You wanna go out to dinner without interrogating the waiter about every ingredient. You get tired of preparing separate meals or tired of saying no. You get tired of organizing your life around food choices. Then you eat something you weren't supposed to eat and immediately decide that you blew it. Now the diet's over. And because the diet taught you how to follow rules instead of how to make choices, you go right back to the same behaviors you had before you started. Then the weight starts coming back, and here comes the most fucked up part. You blame yourself. You say you have no discipline. You can never stick with anything. You tell yourself you failed again. No. You got exactly the result your strategy was designed to produce. You used temporary behavior to create temporary weight loss. You were never taught how to eat pizza without eating half the pizza. You were taught pizza was forbidden. You never learned how to go out for dinner and make a reasonable choice. You were taught restaurants were dangerous. And you never learned how to handle dessert. You were told sugar was poison. I, I kind of agree with that, but I'm not saying I don't eat sugar, but it's kinda true. There's a massive difference between avoiding choices and learning how to make 'em. That's why I don't give a shit how impressive your diet is for 30 days. Show me what your life looks like after 30 months. Can you eat food you love without losing control? Can you go on vacation without gaining 10 pounds? Can you have a bad meal without turning it into a bad weekend? Can you eat differently without feeling you're constantly on a diet? That's the test, because losing weight is worthless if you spend the next 10 years losing the same 30 pounds over and over again. So stop being impressed by speed. Fast weight loss, yeah, I get it. It gets attention. But sustainable choices keep the weight off long term. I've had mine off now for over three years, and I eat plenty of donuts and shit that everybody would tell you is terrible for you. And remember, if your plan only works while you're following the plan, it never fucking worked in the first place Now this is another part that people hate because it isn't sexy enough.

Tiny Choices Add Up Every Day

Jonathan Ressler 11:48

You keep looking for the big thing, the diet, the program, the workout, the meal plan, whatever. The thing you're supposed to eliminate, whatever it is. You keep thinking there has to be some massive change between the body you have right now and the body you want, and honestly, there usually isn't. There's a shitload of tiny choices, and because each one seems completely insignificant, you keep making without thinking about them. You can eat four slices of pizza instead of three. What's one slice? You order the fries with your burger because they come with it. What's the big fucking deal? You finish the last six bites on your plate even though you were full six bites ago. Why waste food? None of those moments feel important, and that's exactly the fucking problem. You're waiting for weight gain to come from some massive, obvious decision, and it usually doesn't. Nobody wakes up one morning and says, "You know what? I think I'm gonna gain 80 pounds over the next five years." It happens quietly. A little more here, a little extra there, eating because you're bored, eating because it's there, eating because everyone else is eating, finishing something because you paid for it, ordering the side because, hey, it comes with a meal. Turning one dinner out into an appetizer, entree, drinks, and dessert because apparently you sit down at a restaurant and all common sense has to leave the building, and then you repeat those choices. That's where the damage happens. And the beautiful part is the exact same thing works in reverse. You don't need to suddenly become a different person. You don't need to eat grilled chicken and broccoli for the rest of your fucking life. You don't need to declare a war on carbs. You start changing the little decisions. You still order the burger, but maybe you don't get the fries every time, or you still eat pizza, but you stop when you've had enough instead of when the box is empty. You can have dessert when you really want dessert instead of automatically having dessert because someone put a menu in front of you or you open the fridge at night and realize you're bored instead of hungry and close the fucking door. Does any one of those choices make you thin? Of course not. That's another place where people fuck themselves. They want every good choice to produce an immediate reward. I skip dessert. Why didn't the scale move? Because your body isn't a fucking slot machine. One salad didn't make you thin, just like one cheeseburger didn't make you fat. One good day won't transform you. One bad dinner won't destroy you. Your body reflects what you repeatedly do. That's why I keep coming back to choices. They seem small because they are small, but small doesn't mean meaningless. People love saying 80 or 85% of weight loss happens in the kitchen. Fine. Pick whatever percentage makes you happy. I don't give a shit. I say 85. Here's the percentage I care about. 100% of sustainable weight loss happens to the choices you can keep making when nobody's looking. Not when you're fired up on January 2nd or your fridge is filled with perfectly prepped meals. Not when your trainer is yelling at you, standing next to you. I'm talking about Wednesday night when you had a shitty day and DoorDash is open on your phone. Saturday night when everybody wants a dessert. Sunday when there's leftover food in the fridge. Those moments are your weight loss program and nobody's coming to make those choices for you. That should be incredibly good news because it means you don't need another fucking plan. You need to start paying attention. The body you want isn't hiding inside of some complicated system you haven't discovered yet. It's sitting on the other side of thousands of ridiculously small choices you've been treating like they don't matter. They do matter. They're the whole fucking game.

Stop All Or Nothing Spirals

Jonathan Ressler 15:19

So stop trying to be perfect. Get good at the next choice. One of the dumbest things we've ever done with weight loss is convince ourselves that a day can somehow be ruined by food. Think about how fucking ridiculous that is. You wake up Monday morning, you're doing great. You have breakfast that you planned. Lunch is good. You're drinking water. You feel like you finally have your shit together. Then somebody brings donuts into the office. You eat one, and somehow within 30 seconds your brain turns one fucking donut into a declaration of nutritional bankruptcy. Well, I already fucked up today. No you didn't. You ate a donut. That's it. But now you decide lunch doesn't matter as much. Dinner definitely doesn't matter. Maybe you grab dessert because you'll start fresh tomorrow. One donut didn't fuck up that day. The five decisions you made after the donut, that's what fucked up the day. That's the insanity of all or nothing thinking. We've been trained to believe that weight loss requires perfection, so the second we're not perfect, we give ourselves permission to stop trying. And people do that constantly. They eat too much Friday night and they decide they- Get back on track Monday. Somehow Saturday and Sunday have been granted diplomatic immunity from consequences. They go on vacation and decides that vacation means every meal needs to look like their last meal before prison. They have pizza for dinner, think, "Well, today's shot, so, eh, we might as well go for ice cream." Why? What the fuck does pizza have to do with ice cream? Nothing, except you created a rule in your head that says once you make one choice you aren't happy with, the rest of your choices no longer count. That mindset will fuck you harder than any individual food ever will because the people who successfully change their bodies aren't people who never make shitty choices. They're people who stop turning one shitty choice into permission to make six more. That's the skill. Not perfection. Recovery. You ate too much for lunch? Fine. Dinner is still a completely separate decision. You had dessert last night? Great. Breakfast didn't do anything wrong. You crushed a giant restaurant meal Saturday night? Sunday morning doesn't require punishment, fasting, or some ridiculous two-hour workout. It requires you to make the next reasonable choice. That's it. And this matters because your life is never gonna become perfectly organized around weight loss. You're gonna have birthdays and holidays and business dinners and stressful weeks and unexpected meals and nights when you drink more than you planned, times when you eat something because it tasted fucking amazing and you decide it's worth it. Good. That's called having a life. The goal isn't to eliminate those moments. The goal is s- to stop allowing those moments to make decisions for you after they're over and that's where people get trapped in the diet cycle. They think they need to get back on track. I, I hate that phrase. There is no fucking track. There's only the next choice. You don't need Monday. You don't need tomorrow morning. You don't need January 1st. You don't need to cleanse anything or compensate for anything or punish yourself for anything. You need another decision. That's why perfection is such a shitty goal. Perfection teaches you nothing about what to do when you're not perfect and eventually you won't be. The real skill is becoming incredibly good at resetting immediately. You make a choice you don't love? Acknowledge it and move the fuck on. No guilt, no dramatic restart, no three-day death spiral, no, "I'll start again Monday." The next choice is the restart and eventually something else happens. The excitement wears off Nobody talks enough about this part either. The first few weeks of losing weight can feel great. You're focused, the scale is moving, your clothes are fitting differently. Maybe somebody notices, and you really feel momentum. Then you hit the boring middle. The scale doesn't move for a few days. Nobody complimented you this week. You're eating pretty normally. There's no dramatic challenge happening. You aren't waking up every morning feeling like Rocky. Good, 'cause that's where you find out whether you change your behavior or whether you're temporarily performing a diet. You shouldn't need weight loss to feel exciting. It needs to become normal. You need ordering a little less food to become normal, or stopping when you had enough becomes normal, or having pizza without turning into a weekend-long binge fest, making that normal. Making a shitty choice and immediately making a better one becomes normal. That's when this starts becoming sustainable. Stop trying to win every meal and trying to win every day or prove how disciplined you are. Get really fucking good at one thing. Make the next choice because your last choice, it's already gone. You can't change it. The next one, that's still yours.

The Three Second Choice Challenge

Jonathan Ressler 20:01

Now I want you to do something with everything that I've been talking about, because listening to this and agreeing with me doesn't change a fucking thing. For the next week, I want you to pay attention to the choices nobody sees. That's it. I'm not asking you to start a diet. Don't download some fucking app or clean out your fridge or throw away the bread or swear off sugar or announce to the world that, tomorrow morning, Jonathan Ressler, has you starting some new fucking program. You're not starting anything. You're just paying attention. 'Cause I guarantee you there are moments every single day when you make decisions around food without consciously deciding anything. You've made them so many times that they've become automatic. You walk in the kitchen to grab something, or you finish what's on your plate, or you order the side, or take another handful or seconds. You eat because someone else is eating. You eat because the food is just sitting there. None of that feels like a decision. That's what I want you to catch. For seven days, when you find yourself reaching for food, ordering food, or getting seconds, whatever, give yourself three seconds. Three fucking-- Ask yourself one question, "Does this choice move me toward the person I'm trying to become or away from that person?" We talked about this last week. Then answer it honestly. Notice what I'm not-- I'm not asking you, "Is this food good or bad?" I'm not saying, "Is this allowed?" I'm not asking how many carbs are in it or how many calories, or whether some asshole on TikTok thinks you should eat it. I'm asking whether this particular choice in this particular moment makes sense for you. Sometimes the answer's gonna be, "Fuck yeah, I'm eating it." Good. Eat it. If your favorite restaurant and you want the cheesecake, have the cheesecake. Enjoy it. Stop acting like cheesecake has supernatural powers over your body. The point isn't to say no to everything. The point is to stop saying yes to everything automatically. The distinction is huge. Maybe you want dessert tonight. Well, fucking have it. Maybe tomorrow night you realize you, you don't really want dessert. Everybody else is ordering it, and you're about to order something because that's what you always do. There's your moment. That's the time. That's where you make it. Three seconds. Maybe you're standing in front of the fridge at ten o'clock at night, and you ask yourself if you're hungry. And be honest, maybe you are. Then eat something. But maybe you're just bored. Maybe you're stressed or tired Maybe watching television without chewing something feels strangely incomplete because you've paired those two things for 20 years. You don't need to diagnose yourself. You need to notice what you're doing. That's the challenge. I want you to become aware of how many calories enter your body without you ever making a real decision to eat them. The handful while you're cooking, the bite off somebody else's plate, or the food you finish because there isn't enough left to save, the appetizer you didn't really want, or the second drink you ordered because everyone else ordered another round, the fries you ate because they came with a sandwich, the extra slice because there were two pieces left in the box. Those are exactly the choices people dismiss because each one looks insignificant, and individually they are. The handful didn't make you overweight. Neither did the fries or the second slice. But repeat those unconscious choices hundreds of times every month, and now we're talking about something completely different. So for seven days, I don't want you chasing perfection. I don't even want you keeping score. I want you to catch yourself. That's the entire exercise. You're gonna miss some choices. You're gonna make choices that you know don't move you toward your goal. That's fine. This isn't another test you can fail. The win is becoming conscious before the choice instead of analyzing the damage afterwards. 'Cause most people spend all their time looking backward. Why did I eat that? Why did I order that? Why did I finish that? Why did I do this again? Wrong fucking direction. Catch the choice while it still belongs to you. That's where your power is. Once you start seeing these moments, you're gonna realize something that changes the entire way you think about losing weight. You have a lot more opportunities to change your body every day than you ever thought. They're just smaller than the things that you were looking for. So here's what I want you to understand before I let you get out of here. You don't need another fucking diet. You don't need another Monday's restart. You don't need a meal plan, a harder workout, a cleaner refrigerator, Or another list of foods some jerkoff on the internet decided you're no longer allowed to eat. You need to stop ignoring the tiny choices because they don't feel important enough. That's where this entire thing lives. Everybody wants transformation. Nobody gets excited about leaving four bites on a plate. Nobody brags about walking past the pantry, and nobody takes a picture because they ordered the burger and skipped the fries. There's no applause when you realize you've had enough and you stop eating. But those boring moments are where your life changes. I know because I spent years looking for bigger answers. At over 400 pounds, I didn't need a more complicated solution. I needed to stop pretending the little choices didn't matter. And when I finally did, I lost over 140 pounds. I didn't become somebody who never eats pizza, and I didn't suddenly fall in love with steamed broccoli. I fucking hate it, just for the record. I didn't build my life around the gym. I never went, still haven't gone in three or four years. But I did learn to make different choices often enough for my body to start reflecting them. And that's what I want you to take from this episode. Stop waiting to feel ready and stop waiting for motivation or for the perfect plan. Your next opportunity is coming today. It might happen ten minutes after you finish this episode. Nobody will know, and nobody will be standing there telling you what to do. And that's the fucking point. Because when nobody's looking, the choice is completely yours. So make enough of those choices differently, and eventually you stop needing the diet because you changed the person making the decision. That's real weight loss.

Book, Coaching, And Next Steps

Jonathan Ressler 25:31

Now, if what I said hit you between the eyes and you're thinking, "Okay, I get it, but how the fuck do I start doing this consistently?" I wrote the answer down for you. My book is called Shut Up and Choose. You can grab it on Amazon. It's not a diet book filled with meal plans and bullshit rules about what you're allowed to eat and not allowed to eat. It's the framework I used to lose 140 pounds and completely change my relationship with food without giving up the foods that I love. But if you're tired of trying to figure this out by yourself, you can book a 60 Minute Choice Reset with me. This is where you and I get on the phone and take a look at your life, your food, your habits, your schedule, your excuses, your patterns, the decisions you keep making even though you already know where they're taking you. And I'm not gonna hand you some generic fucking meal plan you could download for free. We're gonna identify the handful of choices doing the most damage right now and figure out how to change them without turning your entire life upside down. One hour, your life, your choices, your bullshit, and a clear plan for what to do next. Because you don't need to become perfect. You need to become better at choosing. So grab Shut Up and Choose on Amazon or book your 60 Minute Choice Reset, and stop talking about the weight you wanna lose and make the next fucking choice. Stop making excuses and finally just shut up and choose

Announcer 26:57

Thanks 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 attitude. Make sure to like, rate, and review, and connect with Jonathan on Instagram @jonathanresslerfatloss, on YouTube at Jonathan Ressler, and online at jonathanressler.com. No diets, no gimmicks, no excuses, no bullshit. Just smarter choices, starting the second you hit stop on this episode. Shut up and choose. Now, go make a better fucking choice