Useful Links

• Beachbody Programs
• The Sitting Solution

Transcript

Zack Arnold: Hello and welcome to episode 30 of the Fitness and Post podcast. If you’re wondering why I kind of sound a little weird, it’s because I get sick too. I have a bit of a head cold right now, and I’m actually getting over having bronchitis for over a week. So, in my interview today, if I sound a little weird or a little congested, or you hear a cough or two, it’s because I’m just getting over being sick, and I’m just kind of getting back into the swing of things.

Joe Leonard: You’ll edit out everything I say that that that isn’t good, right? Yeah, yeah. If I can find somebody

Zack Arnold: That knows how to edit, of course.

Joe Leonard: If I’m boring.

Zack Arnold: Yes. Well, we’ll we’ll ask somebody how. Absolutely. Yeah. So I’m I’m sitting here today with Joe Leonard, the lead editor on the show Empire, and I have the the pleasure of doing it in his office, which was a really really long commute for me, because Joe and I actually share a wall. So Joe,

Joe Leonard: Unfortunately for you,

Zack Arnold: Yes, unfortunately for me,

Joe Leonard: For the extraordinarily loud sounds coming out of my room.

Zack Arnold: Yes, Joe is a big fan of having a lot of really loud music, and I wear headphones when I edit, so he never hears me ever, and I hear him about 14 hours a day. So yeah, we’re like the odd couple, basically. So you’re

Joe Leonard: Considerate, and I’m I’m not really something like I need to work on that

Zack Arnold: Exactly. That’s exactly what I mean. It’s anew’s

Joe Leonard: Resolution. Yes.

Zack Arnold: So the reason that we are chatting today is it’s actually funny because it’s been much easier getting most of my other guests on the show. Even though you and I share a wall because we’re both so stinking busy, but we finally had a chance to do this. And you’re here today because you’re actually joining my next challenge group.

Joe Leonard: I am,

Zack Arnold: Which is super super exciting for me because it’s not very often that I actually get to work with people in person because I sit in a small dark room all day long, just like you do, and I’m doing all these challenge groups online with people all over the world. So to have a true real life guinea pig on the other side of my wall is very exciting.

Joe Leonard: It adds some accountability because I actually I will have to dodge you if I if if I’m not yes if I’m off program yes I will actually have to go out of my way to avoid seeing it.

Zack Arnold: Right, exactly. So what I want to do today is just kind of talk about this. This is the very, very beginning of the challenge group. We haven’t even officially started with stats. We’re just getting set up, but you and I have almost identical lifestyles. Yes, and I’ve been through this fight for years and years, and I know that in your own ways you’ve been through it too. But this is kind of square one with really digging in and trying to make a major change to your lifestyle and trying to get healthier. So the first thing I want to just talk about is all the bad stuff. Talk about all the obstacles and what it is over the course of the last 10 or 15 years, that kind of brings people in our position to this level, because oddly enough, you and I have actually also worked together on Glee, which is a complete coincidence. And you and I were on a panel together, which is where you and I met originally. So it’s all very bizarre the way that that our lives are kind of intertwined and have gone this way. So just kind of give me just a little bit of an overview of just kind of where you are as far as your your daily schedule, and talk a little bit if you want about just your family schedule and just kind of why why you decided it’s time to try and make a change.

Joe Leonard: Yeah, well, for for years I’ve been trying to balance out my work stress and my work lifestyle of just being, you know, sitting all day looking at screens with running and you know trying to get a few workouts in each week to just kind of balance things out. And oh, it’s always been a struggle just to do that. Recently, I became a dad, and so I have a one-year-old daughter. She’s one next week, and so this past year or two, really, leading up to you know leading up to becoming a dad, and also just continuing to have extremely high workloads, it’s it’s caught up with me in a way that that the the time that I, you know, finding the time to get workouts in, finding the time to eat right, finding the time to kind of take care of myself, it has gotten harder and harder, actually. So yeah, I’ve I’ve made some I’ve started to make some changes. I started working on a stand up desk last year because I was actually having shoulder pain. Believe it or not, just from like sitting and kind of crouching and my shoulders turned in, and so enough. I I was editing enough that I actually started. I had an impinged shoulder impingement, an editing injury, which was super painful actually, and it took a little while of rehabbing it and changing the way I was working, just to kind of get to the place where I wasn’t in pain, just you know sitting down and editing. So I’ve, you know, I’ve definitely been trying to figure out ways to to take a healthier approach. To balance things out, it’s just a hard job to balance things out, and you know, having had kids, that it’s it it also is hard as well to kind of set aside time where you know where where you’re getting the exercise, etc. So I’ve I’ve been I’ve started, but this is a big this will be a big structured step forward, I think, and yeah,

Zack Arnold: Yeah, and I can certainly attest to the whole having kids thing because, as anybody that’s listening to this show knows, I have a five-year-old and a two and a half-year-old, and I had a bit of a running start just because I’ve been athletic since I was maybe 12 years old, so I had a lot of information to begin with, and I just kind of lost all that and lost the motivation, and more importantly, lost the time once I had the kids. And it’s not really until you have kids that you realize how important this stuff is, because when you’re in your mid to late 20s, you’re working 8090, hours a week, you’re getting more credits, you’re doing more work, you’re getting paid more. Like this is awesome, right? At least I’m a workaholic, so it was awesome for me. But then you have kids, and you look back, and you’re like, I don’t want to work 90 hours a week anymore, and eat a bunch of junk and feel like junk because then I’m not going to be there for my kids, and I’m not going to have energy. And your daughter’s not even running yet, man. When she’s got legs,

Joe Leonard: She’s she’s walking very. She’s walking very quickly. Oh,

Zack Arnold: Great! We’ll see. You’ll meet in advance. My kids weren’t even walking in a year, but man, they they move fast, and you realize how little energy you actually have.

Joe Leonard: Yeah, I’m already following her around all over the place, but I know it’s going to get more intense.

Zack Arnold: Yes, it does. It gets more intense, and you realize that you’re setting an example for them as well, and all of that is built into the way that I design these groups because I’m a father and I’m working long hours, so I get that. So I’m not trying to get everybody to do the same program. I’m trying to get people to do things that work for them. Sure. So let’s walk through a typical day for you, and it’s gonna oddly enough look just like a typical day for me. Well, you’re you’ve been beaten brutally bad on this show. I’ve I’ve got I’ve definitely had the easier side of the schedule where I’ve had about a month that was really brutal, but you’ve had several months that have been thankfully

Joe Leonard: This month doesn’t look like it’s going to be as brutal for me because I only have one episode that I’m doing at the moment. So this hopefully that will give me a chance to kind of actually get a really solid start to this whole thing.

Zack Arnold: That’s good that the time is perfect.

Joe Leonard: Yeah. So my daily schedule.

Zack Arnold: Yeah. Let’s just walk in literally from the point that you wake up. Sure. Roughly what time you do dealing with family, dealing with commutes, dealing with how many hours a day you work. Just because I want people to understand that this can be done, no matter how bad your schedule is. Because our schedule. I hope it sucks. Yeah, our schedules

Joe Leonard: Suck. So all right, here I wake up at around 530 or six with my daughter. That’s about when she gets up these days, and I spend the morning till from maybe 530 until 8o’clock or 830 I hang out with her, which is great, and you know now she’s walking, so I’m, I’m going around the going around our house, following her around, hopefully catching her when she is about to fall on her head, and and then I hand her off to my wife, jump in the shower, get dressed, get in the car, and basically sit in traffic for an hour plus, I live not very close to Beverly Hills where we’re working, and and so it’s a bummer to to just sit in the car, but that’s that’s what we have to do. And so I get in around 10 o’clock, maybe if I get out the door by like 830 or nine, I get in around 10 or 1030 and I will work on the show from 10 o’clock until at least seven or 8o’clock That’s a really

Zack Arnold: Really good short day to get out at seven or eight for my for either of us.

Joe Leonard: Yeah, I’d say that’s like that’s that’s the ideal. Usually it’s about a 12 hour day, so usually I’m leaving at nine or 10, and sometimes I have to stay later than that, or come earlier and sort of skip the morning with my daughter. But that’s that’s about right. So then you know, on a usual day, maybe I’m heading home around eight or 9o’clock and getting home around 930 10. That’s that’s like pretty much a solid day. And you know I’ve in the mornings I I have breakfast usually before I I get in the car a cup of coffee on the way in you know a salad or something for lunch and then who knows what I eat for dinner it’s it basically is like either either I get something at work, or make something when I get home, or pick something up on the way home. That’s that’s pretty common, and then just exhaustion sets in, and I’m usually asleep by like midnight.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, by midnight, right? That’s not a good day. It’s like, oh man, my head hit the pillow by 12 o’clock. Yeah,

Joe Leonard: I’m usually so tired these days.

Joe Leonard: Yeah, that I’m like in bed at 1130 like trying to read a book and can’t concentrate. Right. Yeah. No, those

Zack Arnold: Are all you know very very common symptoms of just kind of this workaholic lifestyle. And I’m glad you brought up food as well, because food is a tremendous tremendous component of the program. But also, it’s to me it was the switch that finally did it for me. It made me realize that this could be done, regardless of the amount of time. Because I had spent years focusing on just the exercise component and saying, “Well, if I don’t have time to exercise, then I just I can’t focus on my health right now. And the next time I have time, then I’ll focus on my health. And it was kind of an all or nothing approach. And then a little bit over a year ago, I kind of hit the the on switch for my diet and realized what a tremendous difference it had on the way that I feel and my ability to think and my ability to focus and concentrate and be good at what I do, and that’s where everything changed. And that’s something that on this show, it’s a catch 22 because from a financial perspective, we never have to pay for anything because they’re handing us menus every three hours, saying, “What do you want to eat? What do you want to eat? What do you want to eat? And for the most part, we have halfway decent choices. Not all of them, sure. But you know, it’s it’s not like they’re feeding us McDonald’s and Burger King. We’re getting you know good meals from reputable places and good places in Beverly Hills. But the the problem with that is that you don’t really know what you’re eating. You don’t know what it was made with, and the reason that restaurant food is good is because they add a lot of stuff to it to make it taste really good, and you don’t know what those things are. Sure. So as you know, what I’ve done is I’ve adopted this policy where usually no more than one time a week I will actually order from the menu, but what I’ve done is I’ve gone to the producers and I’ve said to them, “Listen, if I’ve been allotted a certain budget every single week for being able to order food, I would just like to be able to use that budget and choose the food that I eat and go grocery shopping and prepare my own meals. And that has been an absolute game changer. It’s the second time that I’ve done this, and it’s made a huge, huge difference because I know exactly what’s going in my food. I can keep track of what’s going in my food, and it changes the way that I feel. And this is something that I just I don’t hear about ever anywhere. And I think it’s not so much that people wouldn’t be interested in it because I know that you’ve said before, and a couple other people have said like, “Oh, that’s actually an interesting idea. I might actually want to try something like that. But we just don’t feel empowered as editors, as though it’s something that we can ask for. And that’s one of the. I didn’t even try to change.

Joe Leonard: I didn’t actually even know you did that.

Zack Arnold: Oh, you didn’t? No. Well, there you go. And

Joe Leonard: I am a little surprised that they like that they do that. So that’s cool that you figured that you figured that out, and that they’re doing that. You know they are cool with that. That’s great.

Zack Arnold: Well, I guess the the caveat to that is that they didn’t think it was a great idea, and they didn’t want me to do it, and I just made it clear that it wasn’t really an option. Cool. For them to say to me, “Well, you have to choose from the menu of things that we’re going to feed you, or you have to be on your own, said. “That’s not really an option, said if this guy on the other side of the wall from me is going to have this amount of money in food given to him every week, I should be giving the exact meal, right? That

Joe Leonard: Makes sense.

Zack Arnold: So just cover that amount in my groceries, and I’m going to make my own food, and nobody has to has to worry about me. It’s great, right? And it makes a huge difference, which is why I’m the guy that’s always stinking up the place with my George Foreman grill in the kitchen, because I’m and it literally takes me less than 10 minutes. I’m eating fresh steak, fresh chicken, fresh turkey. I’m making fresh vegetables. takes me less than 10 minutes, and I know exactly what goes into my food, and I just feel way way better because of it. And I never have that afternoon crash that I for years I had to have a nap. It just was part of my schedule. Where for half an hour I locked my door. I told somebody I was going to quote unquote be on the phone or whatever it was, and I just slept because I couldn’t function. And I found that that really wasn’t about my fitness level. That was about what I was eating. And once I started to clean up the food in my diet, that went away, and now I have completely steady, steady energy all the way from the time that I wake up around six or 630 with my daughter until about 1030 o’clock at night, and I don’t really have those ups and downs because I’ve cleaned things out of my diet. So that that’s something that I’m I really want to advocate more because people just don’t think that’s an option.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, and I’ve it’s kind of like standing desks. A few years ago, nobody thought a standing desk was an option.

Zack Arnold: Yeah. and I kind of, at least for me, said, “Well, it’s not an option. It’s just-it’s what I need. Like I’m not going to come to work every day if you say I have a sitting desk. That’s just not what I do. So, like for example, on my last job, it wasn’t a facility that was providing the equipment, like we have New Edit, and they have these desks that have hand cranks that go up and down. And we were with a company that didn’t, and they had to build a metal mount for the desks that we had. And I said, “This is awesome, thank you, but I wasn’t going to come to work and sit all day because that’s literally bad for my health. It’s like saying, “Well, is it okay if we pump coal?” Mind us in your office? It’s like no, and if you do, I’m not going to work here. And I see sitting the same way because sitting is now being proven to literally take years off of our lives, and I’m just not going to accept that I have to sit at my job.

Joe Leonard: Yeah, no, I think there’s definitely an attitude that you kind of you’re you’re always so desperate for work, especially starting out as an editor, that you kind of can’t complain, or you-it’s just discouraged. But certainly, you know, there’s a real lesson in there about being assertive and and standing up for yourself, like whatever your needs might be.

Zack Arnold: And I think that if we were to put together a writer like the the stars have on the show where we have to have this and that and that and that and that and that, that’s a totally different thing. But I feel like I’m just looking out for my basic needs, and the two most basic needs are how active can I be in my office, and what kind of food am I putting into my system, and I want to be eating good food, and I want to be able to stand at my desk. So outside of that, you know, punch me, kick me, throw me on the ground, work me 80 hours a week. As long as you’re paying me what I’m worth, fine. That’s part of the job. Sure, but don’t force me into a corner where I have to go against my beliefs. Well, I think

Joe Leonard: It is changing. It’s more acceptable now to ask for these things than it was even a few years ago because there’s so much information out there now, and I don’t. I don’t feel like there was a lot, like a few years back, like when I was first starting Glee, like four or five years ago. It wasn’t, I didn’t. There wasn’t really an option. I don’t think. Maybe there was, but I don’t even think I knew other than Walter Murch. Like I didn’t know of any editors who did stand up when they worked. So, but it is. It has changed, and I think the attitude towards it’s changed a little, which I’m I’m glad about. Right. So of the things that you’ve seen so far, and I know that you haven’t had too much time to get set up because we’re literally just starting. But what are some of the things that you’re seeing that are really brand new and interesting? Like, oh, I never would have thought of that, or I’m excited to see how this works, like I’m, I’m excited for the apps in general, like, and I don’t know, like, I, I geek out on this stuff anyway, but I’m excited to see kind of how that’s gonna work and just like how the leaderboard’s gonna work. It’s like, the some of that that stuff is really fun. I think that you have set up, and we’ll be, you know, I think as as a guy, I don’t know if this is just a guy thing, but I think there’s a nice like there’s a fun competitive thing in there that kind of helps engage me in some ways, in a way that you know if I was just you know, and also the fact that it’s a group as opposed to like just something like a personal goal, that stuff’s really interesting to me. The exercise programs, I guess. I guess what strikes me the most so far about everything is just that it is kind of you’re you’re really trying to take a a holistic kind of approach to it, where it’s it’s it’s what you’re putting in your body. It’s it’s you know how much exercise you’re getting, what kind of exercising you’re doing, what you’re what you’re doing when you’re not exercising. You know, it’s it’s really a comprehensive approach, and and of of all of that, I think the thing that I’m I’m most that that’s going that’s the most difficult, but also the most interesting is you know the the nutritional aspect. Just tracking that stuff has always been very tough for me to like really track what I’m putting in my body. I’ve gotten better at it, but definitely that’s going to be a challenge for me. And then the exercise programs, just like changing, you know, trying to do like a P 90x kind of thing or whatever. I which I really haven’t ever done. I’ve always been pretty much a you know jog, you know, two and a half miles, three three and a half miles, and you know stretch, lift a few weights kind of workout guy. So we’ll I’m I’m actually I’m intrigued. I’m curious how I’m going to do with with more structure and with other programs because I haven’t I just haven’t really done that in the past.

Zack Arnold: Well, I’m glad you brought up the whole thing about exercise programs because yes, that is something that I emphasize, but something that I’m really trying to emphasize even more is not exercise so much as activity, because when you have hour schedules, like for the month of months of November and December, I was getting the brunt of the workload that you had gotten for months before. I was just living here for 1416, hours a day, trying to catch up with three episodes at once, and I didn’t do any hard to

Joe Leonard: Do anything then. Yeah,

Zack Arnold: I mean, there’s just no way when you have two kids because you literally wake up, you have your kids, you get in your car, you’re stuck in your car. For me, it’s for a minimum of 90 minutes. You get here and then you work here for 14 hours. You literally can’t exercise.

Joe Leonard: Right.

Zack Arnold: But what I’ve learned to do is integrate activity into my day, no matter how busy I am, because I’m standing, I’m in front of. Desk. I have a treadmill in front of my desk, and I now built an entire gym in my office. And you can’t see it because it literally fits under a coffee table. But I have kettlebells. I have resistance bands. I have push-up stands. I have a like an apple box that I can use for like jumping up and down and stuff, or doing you know like tricep push-ups and stuff like that. And it’s more about taking activity breaks and coupling them with it’s what’s called the Pomodoro technique. I don’t know if you know about that, but the the basics of that it started out in the ’80s were they say that you take a 25 minute work schedule, take a five minute break, do another 25 minutes, do a five minute break. You can get a timer on your phone for like 99 cents, and I’ve modified it because 20-five minutes usually isn’t enough to really get much of anything

Joe Leonard: Done. You end up in the middle of a scene, and

Zack Arnold: You’re like, I don’t want to stop. But there was a recent study that just came out saying that the ideal break for productivity is actually 50-217 So I was doing around 50-minute breaks or 50-minute work stints and then taking like a 15 minute break, but I would always make sure of those 15 minutes, five of it I would be swinging a kettlebell or doing pushups or doing body squats or whatever it is, and that made a tremendous difference in my energy levels. Even though I literally went over a month without getting one concentrated amount of time to do exercise, so that’s one of the big things that will really be emphasized is activity over exercise. But when it does come to an exercise program and you do have the time to do it, you’re basically using the the 70 style of exercise, which is I’m going to jog for a couple hours a day, I’m going to stretch, right?

Zack Arnold: Right. and the great thing about these Beachbody programs or any other program that’s out there, because I’m-I don’t say it has to be Beachbody. Those are just the ones that I know work for me, and I’m not going to suggest things I haven’t used myself. Right. But there’s such a variety of exercises and types of exercise that, for example, if you just jog for two miles a day, all you’re doing is you’re doing a low-level amount of activity at the same heart rate, and you’re not pushing yourself, which is not helping to rev your metabolism, and it’s not helping you burn more calories, or more importantly, create more energy. Whereas when you do a form of high-intensity exercise, you will push your heart limit higher, your heart rate limit, and your heartbeat will go higher. But instead of just burning, say, 300 calories during exercise, you’ll continue to burn more calories over the course of the next 18 to 20-four hours because you’re doing something at a higher intensity, and that means more energy, and that means more weight loss, and it also means it’s more fun. So that’s why I advocate these when you have the time, and they give you an entire workout schedule and calendar, and say this is what you’re doing every single day. And they provide like nine to 15 different workouts, so you’re not doing the same thing over and over and over. But what I hadn’t built into our challenge groups before was the sitting solution, which I’m now making required for everybody because I realized that some people legitimately just can’t find time to exercise, and I’ve been one of those people before. And I realize I need to find a way to solve this problem because if I’m going to go a month or month and a half without exercise, I’m going to go backwards and I’m going to start getting worse again. I’m going to have less energy. Like I don’t know if you’ve heard any of the past podcasts, but I’ve had a lot of pretty major mental issues with depression and ADD and stuff like that in the past. And if I don’t get any form of exercise or activity, that stuff comes back.

Joe Leonard: Yeah.

Zack Arnold: But even if I do just the activity breaks and I don’t exercise, I maintain. I don’t get stronger. I don’t get faster. I don’t get leaner. But I don’t go backwards.

Joe Leonard: Right.

Zack Arnold: And this is the first time that’s ever happened to me, or during the months of November and December, I never went backwards. I just didn’t go forwards, and I was fine with that because I still felt good. So that’s a really big thing I’m trying to advocate: is just getting more activity. Not saying exercise has to be a separate activity away from everything else. Got it. All right. So one of the most important things that I want to talk about now is goals because that’s a really big component of these challenge groups. So what I want to talk about are your goals. I’ve been in the place before, like you said, where one of the components of this that’s interesting is the competitive aspect and the group aspect. Because if you just stare at a blank wall and say I want to lose 15 pounds in 90 days? The chances are extremely likely. I think research says over 90% that you are not going to reach your goal. Sure. So you are now speaking to the world because I have millions and millions of podcast listeners. Hello. So for all seven of my listeners, I want to talk about your goals and where you are hoping to get in the next three or four months, because hopefully somebody else might be listening and saying, “Well, I thought I was busy, but this guy working on Empire-that’s pretty brutal. So if he thinks he can do this, I want to try it too. So let’s talk about where you want to be in three or four months.

Joe Leonard: I I think I think that my goal is to lose 15 to 20 pounds in the next three months. I’ve you know it’s I’ve had. A stressful enough last two years that actually I’ve gained about 15 or 20 pounds. So it’s I’m really just trying to get down to a a more ideal weight where I’m more comfortable and my body feels better, and and also find a way to maintain it and potentially lose more weight after that, but like, really just kind of get into a routine, like at a more ideal weight. Like, you know, right now I weigh like 210 pounds almost, and my ideal weight is somewhere around like 181 85 So that’s sort of what I’m shooting for, and we’ll we’ll see you know how easy or hard it is. But I haven’t had a ton of trouble losing weight in the past, but I also haven’t been as busy or had a child in the past either. So

Zack Arnold: Yes, having the child that’s the component that changes everything. Because I was like, I never gained weight, and I never had trouble losing it if I did. But wait a second, what’s different? Oh, it’s the kids. Yes, yeah.

Joe Leonard: So that’s one of my goals, and I think I think the other one’s kind of mental and and a routine, like a goal in terms of finding a routine that’s healthier and finding a a routine that helps balance out the stress, so that you know when I’m in high stress situations and working a lot, I’m dealing with it in a different way than I than I have been. Which

Zack Arnold: Is all the screaming and yelling, and there are multiple holes punched into the walls in this office. I’m trying to fix that.

Joe Leonard: I’m a I yeah I’m a really angry, scary person.

Zack Arnold: Yes. Well, it’s funny because Joe’s actually the polar opposite, and for the first time ever, like a week ago, I heard him yell because he was upset about something in the show, and I’m like, “Is that Joe? Joe never raises voice. I’m like, “What was that? So it’s it’s funny. I make I make jokes, but he’s actually very docile and very soft spoken. So I was quite surprised. I was like, “Oh my God, Joe! Yeah, yeah,

Joe Leonard: That was sort of my that that I had kind of a moment a a moment where I I lost control. Doesn’t happen often, I guess. You know, in stressful situations, it’s it makes sense. And when you’re tired, you know, you end up just like kind of stuffing calories and and food into your, and and and you know, and all of the above. Like, you know, there’s also a component for me where, you know, involving alcohol, where, you know, just in general, like that becomes a crutch as well, where that’s a release from like the tension of the day, and you know, and so for me, it’s it’s important to like to sort of re recalibrate there so that I’m getting more from my activity and from my diet that I don’t feel like the need to kind of blow off steam by having a beer with a friend or or whatever. So, so that’s that’s definitely a piece, a piece of it as well for me.

Zack Arnold: Now, one thing that I talk about in the starter document, and this is something I basically stole from Tony Horton, is something called the three Ys, W H Y, like not the 3y’s W I S E. So the 3y’s and this is really important when you’re looking at a goal because it’s very very common, especially during the month of January, for somebody to say I want to lose 15 to 20 pounds and I want to do it three to four months. It’s a very common goal. Yeah, but the important thing is, well, how do I actually stick to that? What is the information that I need, and what’s the motivation that’s going to keep me there? So I talk about the three Ws, which is basically like peeling an onion, and the idea is that you have to get to the deeper level of why it is that you want that goal in the first place, because the time is going to come when you have a choice of well, do I want to eat this six pack of Krispy Kremes, or do I want to skip this workout, or do I want to have this extra glass of Jack, or whatever it is? And if you just say, well, yeah, I want to lose 1520, pounds, but whatever. I’m I’m gonna go crazy, right? But when you peel deeper and you do the three Ys, that makes it much harder to go away from your goals because your goals become much deeper. So basically, what you’re doing is you’re saying y3 times. So what I want you to do is basically look at the goal that you gave me, which was I want to lose 15 to 20 pounds in three or four months. But I want you to start peeling it like an onion. And the example would be if I had your goal, well, I want to lose 15 to 20 pounds in three or four months. Why? Well, because if I were to lose 15 to 20 pounds, I’m probably going to have more energy. I’m going to be less sluggish, and I’m probably going to be able to concentrate a little bit more. All right, why? Why is that important? Well, if I have more energy and I’m less sluggish, and I feel better, that’s going to make me much better at my job. That’s going to make me better in the room. People are going to enjoy working with me more, and I’m going to just feel better. Okay, why is that important? Well, if I really want to get to the root of it, the reason all that is important to me is because I want to be there for my kids and I want to be a good role model. And when my daughter jumps on me at six in the morning and wants to go run upstairs and play dolls, I don’t want to be a zombie.

Zack Arnold: Sure. so now when I look at the Krispy Kremes. I say, well, I don’t want the Krispy Kremes because I want to be a better father. So let’s. And your answer may I may have just stolen your answer.

Joe Leonard: You kind of did, but that’s all right. But

Zack Arnold: Let let’s go through and specifically do your three whys because once you’ve done that, it’s much harder to go back on your goals and make poor choices.

Joe Leonard: Sure. I think I think the first why is just to in a certain sort of way? It’s actually has to do with like self confidence and feeling like I have energy. So you know, just feeling more comfortable, like you know, in my clothes, basically, like being feeling more comfortable with just just how I how I’m present, if that makes to be totally superficial about it, and I but I think that the the second why why that is important to me, and why that would even be part of it is is actually it it goes back to like kind of feeling better, like feeling healthier, feeling, um, and and and yes, like having more energy, being sharper, being better at my job, being able to do my job quicker, you know, being able to do it better, and ultimately the the last why is definitely because of my daughter. I mean, ultimately, I don’t I don’t know that it is a day to day thing, but for me, like long term, I want to be health. I want to maintain a healthier lifestyle, so that I’m healthier, like 10 years from now or 20 years from now. That’s kind of the deep, the deepest I can, you know, why that I have, and it’s one that you know is a new motivation, like in my life, because I’ve honestly never been able to think more than three or four years in the future, and not that I can now, but I definitely want, I definitely want to be healthy, you know, 10 years from now, and and I know that it’s going to be harder and harder to, to um, to sort of set a new lifestyle and a new routine.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, and that that was one of the things for me growing up that I look at now is that my father, who has the same build that I do, which is fairly slim and trim at about my height. He weighed fairly close to 300 pounds at one point because he was a workaholic just like I am, and he’s still alive. So I say was. I should be saying he is. He’s still a workaholic, but he he’s not heavy anymore. But he had this giant beer belly, and he ate horrible foods, and he was under a tremendous amount of stress because he worked all the time. And I looked at that, and when you’re 789, years old, that’s just your dad. You don’t get it, right? But then I started getting older, and I was eating all this junk, and I was working hard, and I was in my teens, in my early 20s. And he looked at me, he’s like, you know, this is all going to happen to you too. And I said, “Well, no, it’s not. You’re so full of it, Dad. Come on, right? Like I can have Doritos and Dinty Moore beef stew for three meals a day. I’ll be fine, right? And then I had my first kid, and it all hit me like a ton of bricks, and I started gaining weight like crazy. And I said, “Oh my God, it’s all happening! And he was right about everything, and he’s right about the hair too. I haven’t figured out the hair problem yet. Most of my hair’s gone. Had a great head of hair. That was my other

Joe Leonard: Goal. At the end of this, I would like to have more hair. Yeah. Sorry, that’s not

Zack Arnold: Part of the challenge group because if it were, I’d have hair. But I, I, I started to see it happening to me, and it scared the living shit out of me. And I said, I don’t want to go there. And I’m on the trajectory to literally weigh 250 to 300 pounds by the time I’m 40 years old, and I’m not going to let that happen. And it was that scary moment realizing that I have a son who’s six months old, and I’m starting to see it happen, and I’m not going to give him that same example. So that’s kind of one of my main motivations, where I just I don’t care about having the quote unquote Beachbody, and I really think it’s unfortunate that the company is named that because it turns a lot of people off. It has nothing to do with their philosophy and the way that they design these programs. And even Tony Horton said he’s like, I hate the name of this company. It’s like it just it has nothing to do with our philosophy and what we do for people and how we change their lives. But I’m sure when they started this company 1012 years ago. It was a different philosophy.

Joe Leonard: You know, it must it must work like marketing wise. Yeah, I mean it’s it’s

Zack Arnold: A great marketing name if you’re not trying to market to post production professionals. Sure. I don’t want a beach body.

Joe Leonard: We don’t go to the beach. No editors don’t go to the beach. We we

Zack Arnold: Don’t see the sun, so we don’t need a beach body. But there’s just so much. More to it that is about lifestyle and making good daily choices and understanding how to be more active and but you know neither of our goals are about I want to look good on the beach this summer because we’re redditors we don’t care about that but you know the the tools that we use to get there are are super super important and there are just so many things that like you said you saw all the new apps and all the programs, and most people just don’t know the stuff is out there because we don’t have the time to look for it. And I just decided that it was time to bring together the stuff that I learned for years, and then just start to learn at an exponential rate more than I have been because I’ve been building this program. So now it’s like my duty to learn all the new stuff that’s out there, and I learn so much every single day, and to bring it all together and see if it actually works for us. That’s the whole point. Will it work for us? So I figure if I can, over the next four months, get you feeling better and you in better shape, and do the same for myself with the schedule that we’re on, with the level of stress that we have on such a high-profile show, there just aren’t a lot of circumstances where it cannot be done. So I’m I’m a big like lofty goal setter where you know you I’m sure people have heard the maximum. Well, you know if if you shoot for the stars, you’re at least going to make it to the moon, right? Like so you may not make it to your ultimate goal, but where you are so much further ahead because you set that lofty goal. So I’m just hoping that if you and I can show that it can be done, there aren’t a whole lot of job circumstances where you can say, “Well, my job’s really busy and I can’t do it. It’s like this is pretty nuts at this show. This is pretty freaking crazy. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen. I mean, I don’t know if Glee was crazier than this or not. I

Joe Leonard: Think it was similar. I think it was similar, but you know, first season’s tough on these shows, and and you know it’s it’s crazy. Like some of the, I mean, I’m sure there are reality editors who are out there working. You know, when you work, you’re working you know, 24 hours a day for for several weeks or whatever.

Zack Arnold: Or feature editors too that work on these giant A-list features. I know features

Joe Leonard: Just going forever too, so that’s a different challenge. You’ve got like, you need to, you need a something that you can stick through, you know, an entire year of working on the same project, and and you actually really need to be stay fresh there too. Right,

Which

Joe Leonard: Which you’re seeing the same thing over and over and over again.

Zack Arnold: Yep,

Joe Leonard: You gotta you need something to like clear your mind and and and

Zack Arnold: That to me that’s why it’s so important that you don’t get yourself in the mentality that I’ve been in many many times of I’m just gonna wait until hiatus and then I’m gonna clean up my diet and then I’m gonna pick an exercise program like it just doesn’t work because if you’re any good at what you do at all, hiatus never lasts anyway, and that’s happened to me before. Where you’ll say, “All right, I know that I have a hiatus. I just two more months of eating junk and not exercising and feeling like crap. Well, as soon as hiatus hits, I’m going to change everything. Right? The first thing you do on hiatus is you sleep for like a week because you’re so wasted, and then all of a sudden you start implementing all these things, and then you get a call. Hey, are you available? Oh crap! I was going to get healthy, but now I’m going to go ahead and I’m going to take the show because I want to work and I want to support my family. And the mentality just doesn’t work. And I know in production they have this mentality too, but in post it’s just rampant. It’s like, well, I’ll just I’ll do all this crap now because I know that hiatus is coming soon, and that time just never comes. So it’s all about how do you adapt the lifestyle that you do have to make those changes every single day on a regular basis, and not just wait for these chunks of free time.

Joe Leonard: Yeah.

Zack Arnold: So any more words of wisdom before you officially jump into your group? I know you got a show to get back to. I’m pretty sure I do too.

Joe Leonard: No, looking forward to to the challenge and to seeing, you know, just to the experience of being in this group and seeing how it goes. And I’m curious, you know, what whether you have any exercises for my commute.

Zack Arnold: Exercises for the commute. I actually do have a few. I have a few good ideas. Should I

Joe Leonard: Just get out like it’s halfway? Halfway, I should get out.

Zack Arnold: Well, with this, I don’t know about you, but with the speed that I move, I literally could get out, do a five-minute stretch break, get back in my car, and then move forward 50 feet. I do the canyon roads in the morning, and I just sit. It’d be great if we could bike to work. Oh my god! That’d be awesome if I

Joe Leonard: Actually lived anywhere near where we’re cutting.

Zack Arnold: I biked to my job for a year when I I actually worked very close to here, but I lived close to here. Now I live in the valley, but I lived in Culver City and I biked three or four miles from Culver City to Beverly Hills. Best year of my life ever.

Joe Leonard: That sounds great.

Zack Arnold: But I didn’t have kids, you know. It was also hard. It was it was hard coming home at night because when you get home at midnight, or you know, you leave at midnight, it’s a little bit harder. But yes, I definitely miss those days and miss being able to take my bike to work. And I did it for one year, and I absolutely loved it. And now I sit in my car for 90 minutes a day. But yes, I do have a couple of tips. Aren’t too many of them, but there are two or three exercises that I do in the car just to kind of keep me going. So yes, I can even share those.

Joe Leonard: Excellent. I have no other words of wisdom. I’m excited.

Zack Arnold: Cool. All right. Well, thanks so much for doing this, mr. Leonard. And I have a feeling that we’ll be checking in in three or four months when we’re done to to see how things are going.

Joe Leonard: Yeah, it’ll be future future us will have new things to say.

Zack Arnold: Cool. All right. Well, thank you, sir. I’ll let you get back to your show.

Episode Credits

This episode was executive produced by Kanen Flowers. We are a member of the THAT STUDIO podcast network.

The music in the opening and closing of the show is courtesy of Dorian Cheah from his brilliant album ARA.