Episode Highlights

• Ken’s background as a filmmaker and animal advocate
• How Ken will spend years on a single project, how that has affected his health, and why he decided it was time to focus on his health to be a better filmmaker
• Ken discovering the power of walking and how powerful it can be for losing weight
• How being overweight made it incredibly hard for Ken to shoot docs in the field and how it was a warning sign to make a change
• Ken discovering The 10-Day Detox Diet and deciding to eliminate sugar from his diet
• Ken’s strategies for dealing with traveling and conventions
• Ken’s experience detoxing from sugar and how it is akin to detoxing from heroine, but how after 5 days he felt like he could take over the world
• How just changing his cooking methods helped Ken effortlessly lose weight
• How Ken starting making ‘lifestyle choices’ rather than choosing ‘diets’
• The specific things Ken did that DIDN’T work (e.g. Weight Watchers)
• Ken’s recipe for his morning smoothie that helps him lose weight
• How making an investment in your health now is like a 401k

Useful Links

• Ken’s Website The Dog Files
• Dr. Mark Hyman’s 10-Day Detox Diet
• My review of the book ‘Rich Food, Poor Food’
• The documentary film ‘Fed Up’
• The Calorie Myth
• Nutribullet
• Shakeology
• Brain Octane Oil

Transcript

Zack Arnold: I’m here today with Kenn Bell, the creator of the website and video series The Dog Files and Dog Files Media. He’s a documentary director, and he’s frankly just a bit of an everyman as well: director, writer, producer, editor, cinematographer. I’m sure at some point he’s been a runner and he’s been the janitor. And in the world of documentaries, you kind of have to do all of it, and I can I can feel that pain very much firsthand, and I I know what it feels like to go through that. So you name it, and Ken has done it. So Ken, welcome to the show today.

Kenn Bell: Hey, great to be here.

Zack Arnold: So as we’ve talked about, and as anybody that listens to the show regularly knows, we obviously do like to talk about post production, but it’s really more about the focus on trying to find a way to live and be healthy while still working a busy schedule in the world of filmmaking, post production, just the world of being sedentary in front of a computer or whatever it is. So I want to talk a little bit about what you do on a daily basis, what your schedule looks like as a producer and filmmaker and director, and then just kind of go into some of the the struggles you’ve been through in the past with your health and some of the things you’ve done to overcome them, and hopefully along the way will inspire a few more people to to go ahead and take the same direction. So let’s just go ahead and start, and let’s talk a little bit about what you do. And what I also want to point out ahead of time is that not only are you a documentary filmmaker? But you’re doing projects that really make a difference in the world, and those are the things that I really gravitate towards. So it’s not just well, I make movies for a living. I said I’m doing things that make a difference and help people and help animals. In your specific case, so talk a little bit about what you do for a living.

Kenn Bell: Yeah, you know, I guess it was about seven years ago. I started the dog files. I was basically sitting around doing a lot of client work, a lot of corporate work. I basically had nothing where I did it all, where I had the final say, where no one told it, no client came in said change this or change that. I mean, one of the biggest frustrations I’m sure everyone has is they never tell the electrician and the plumber or the construction worker what to do? But if you’re creative, they will tell you how to design that logo. They will tell you how to edit that piece. They will tell you how to film it. They will tell you everything, and they’ve never done it once in their lives because everyone innately believes they’re creative, and that is one of the biggest issues I think with actually being a creative. I wanted to do something that I could, and and I’m a perfectionist. Not that I ever get anything perfect. I just always strive for it and never really get there. I don’t think. But I wanted to do something that that I could be in control of. Now I couldn’t make a major motion picture. I don’t have 50, 100 200 people. I don’t have millions of dollars. But I had recently adopted a dog, and he really changed my life and and and just added this element. It’s hard to even describe what he did to my life. I said to myself, you know, I could do something as good as Animal Planet, you know, I because that’s basically your only frame of reference for some, you know, something on television about animals. I think I could do as good, or I think I could do better. And so I sat down, I came up with the website, and I started doing the video series where we went across the country and we filmed people that were helping animals. Our motto quickly became showing the world that dogs deserve our love, care, and respect. I kind of thought that was obvious, but when I went across country and I met all these people and I saw all this dog fighting going on and abuse and horrible things going on. I realized, wow, we’ve come very far as a civilization, but we haven’t gone far enough. And that’s just the United States. We’re doing pretty good compared to a lot of the rest of the world. I mean, they just had a meat festival, a dog meat festival, in I believe it was China a few weeks ago. 10,000 dogs or more killed and eaten. So, so there’s so there’s so I decided to get into that. I did one episode called Hero Dogs 9/11, which is basically just FEMA photographs, which we all own because it’s government has them. And I found FEMA photographs of the search and rescue dogs in 9/11. And so I made a really beautiful, nice episode out of that for the dog files, and then I got contacted by a production company, and they wanted to do an hour show about it. That show finally, I was one of the directors. I was executive producer. That show finally wound up on Animal Planet. I believe it’s on every year on Animal Planet. Started out Animal Planet Canada, and now Animal Planet USA, and then from there, the ASPCA saw it, and they contacted me two years ago to do a documentary for them, which is they started an animal behavioral research center in New Jersey, where they’re the number one reason dogs are returned after they’re adopted when they’re returned to shelters is because of they of the fear that they have, and the fear either makes them nip or bite or hide in a corner or in a closet or pee on the ground, and people return dogs. So they wanted to spend a few years doing an actual study to try and determine what was the quickest way to get rid of this fear, so that they can put the knowledge out there to the whole country and the world and. Actually, make a difference. So when they contacted me for that, I was like, I mean, that’s right up my alley, obviously. And so that was pretty phenomenal.

Kenn Bell: As in all documentaries, when we worked on the contract, they wanted to make sure I was at least available for four months of filming. Last December was two years, and I went there to shoot still. So that’s always funny when companies think that documentaries are shot so fast. So two years in, I was still actually shooting on the dock. I’m in post. It’s edited. We’re waiting for some okays. Have to do color correction and some sound work on it. But we’re pretty much there. And and I’m moving on to whatever’s going to be my next. Funny

Zack Arnold: That you you you know mentioned the the four month thing versus the two years, this is totally tangential to where our conversation is going. But I know there are a lot of filmmakers here, and I’ve told the story before. But with my documentary film, Go Far, when I was just starting, I had no idea how to make a movie, how to make a documentary, how to raise money, and I went to a seminar put on by Film Independent, which is a big organization out here in Los Angeles, and I went. It’s all these panels all day long with professional documentary filmmakers, and there was somebody that stood up. I wish I could remember who it was or what the panel was about, but it’s the only line I remember from the whole day of panels. And they said, “Everybody here is thinking of making a documentary, and I bet that it takes you five years from today, if today is when you’re starting for you to finish the film, and I laughed out loud. I’m like five years. Yeah, right. I’m going to be done way before then. Well, just for the record, I just released my film, and I’m at year seven and a half, so I can relate to the four months versus two years story. And anybody else out there that works in documentaries or independent filmmaking, I’m sure can relate to that as well, so I love that you brought that up, and the the reason that I think it applies is because the amount of time that is required to be an independent filmmaker and being a documentary filmmaker takes a lot out of you as far as your health is concerned. So let’s use that to segue a little bit into kind of your back history of health or lack thereof. I know that you’ve done a lot of yo-yo dieting and just kind of been through the ringer for years. So just kind of take us through your journey over the past-I don’t know-510, years, wherever that journey starts, where you really realize that it’s time to put health in the, you know, in the viewfinder. But then you went through the process of just going up and down.

Kenn Bell: Yeah, you know, to go back even further to put it into context. I mean, I was born. I was over nine pounds when I was born. You know, I always dealt with weight issues my entire life. At about 18 or 19, I dropped like 50 pounds, and my life changed. And I saw things that you don’t see when you’re 50 pounds overweight, a lot of people don’t understand that. That don’t have this issue, how people change around you. You see it, you notice it. People think you’re a little crazy or something, but they just they’re not looking at looking for. And and I saw it completely, but then I found myself just yo-yoing over my life. Hell, if you didn’t see me for two or three years and you saw me, you’d go, okay, this is the Ken that lost 50 pounds, or this is the Ken that gained the 50 pounds back. It wasn’t the one that gained the 50 pounds back because I’d gain 60, and then I’d lose 50, and then I gained 70, and then I’d lose 50, and then I’d lose 80. I’d gain 80, and just that vicious cycle of the yo-yo dieting. Back when I adopted my first dog Max about 11 years ago or so, I guess it wasn’t right then, but I realized that bringing him to the dog park got me no exercise because I just stood there, and you know there were other dogs there, and he was he was attacked by another dog, and so I finally said, “All right, we’re just going to walk. No more dog parks. We’re just going to go for walks. And then I guess it was five or six years ago, I discovered the power of walking. So basically, I would just go out once or twice a day. Usually, I lived in New Jersey, right by New York. So because of weather, I usually just out went out one once a day. I now live in Orlando, so I no longer have to go to the mall in the winter time to walk five miles, which I used to do. But it changed everything about me. The walking, just moving, I could do it for a long period of time, so it actually meant something. I’ve never been a jogger. I can’t go out and run three and four miles, but I can walk five miles. It just changed everything. I noticed my I would check my resting heart rate, and it’s usually below 50. It’s like 4849 which is like they say athlete territory. Which you know when I check friends that don’t walk, they’re like 8090, Even about a year or two ago, two of my friends that thought, you know, big deal, you’re walking, not a big deal. They noticed how I was changing. They noticed how I was dropping weight, and so I took them to the mall because it was in the winter time. And I said, you know, one way through the mall is a half a mile, so let’s do it 10 times. And they’re like, ah, this is easy. Well, by the second mile, maybe a mile and a half, they were like I was passing them the opposite way. And by the second mile, I saw them sitting down, and they were done. So I think I kind of proved to them that walking isn’t the poor man’s sport, isn’t the easy sport, but it’s something that’s really healthy and it doesn’t really do a lot of wear and tear on your body. I found you still have to rest, you still have to give yourself a break, but that really started to help me a lot. Still, though, I would lose the 50 pounds or 6070, pounds, and I’d gain it back. And I found myself at 350 pounds. I found that where I really noticed it was when I was filming. When I was filming something, and you want to jump around and you want to grab all these shots. You know, I’m doing a lot of documentary work. It’s I’m not lining up a shot with a crew and having someone do it five or 10 times where we get different angles. Something is happening, and I need to get the shot, and they’re not going to do it again. I’d find myself having a hard time getting up.

Kenn Bell: Then I found myself not getting down on the ground anymore to get a better shot because it hurt getting up. You know, just those that that was the real like sign of, wow, this is this is going in a bad bad direction, going in a really bad direction. So I decided I needed to do something, and after doing all this different dieting, I last year I came apart. Now what happened was I was 350 I dropped down the 250, and I went back up to 300. And then I found a diet called the 10-day detox diet. It’s Dr. Mark Hyman. I’m looking at the book right now. I’m a huge fan of Dr. Mark Hyman. I’m very, very familiar with his work, and he’s he’s great. So that’s a great resource. Yeah, and you know, we it’s it’s funny because there’s been you know there’s one thing I get a lot of hell about. There’s this thing on the internet where everyone always says don’t do, don’t take religion as science, but some people take science as religion. You know, and I grew up in the 70s and 80s when sugar and caffeine was the worst thing you could ever have. You know, it was just horrible. It was bad. Fat was bad. That was the other thing, fat. Get rid of fat. Get rid of fat. Now, if you look up all the statistics, you look up all the studies, and everyone everyone’s talking about now, salt’s not really bad for you. Go ahead, have salt. Caffeine, I mean, you know, not a big deal. Fat, the exact opposite now, right? Have fat, have good fats, and lower your carbs, which was kind of kind of an interesting thing for me. Like everything just changed. Like what happened there, but that’s just that’s just science going through the things, and you have to go on what’s available now. I understand, but it did a lot for me because when I went on this 10 day no sugar detox, I lost the one thing that was killing me. I’d go on a diet. I do good all day, but I’m an obsessive person. You know, when I you were talking about learning how to make documentaries. When I learned how to make documentaries, I obsess over it. I listened to, I watched film, I watched DVD commentaries, I watched film would at the sound off. I I I would go back and see how was that shot done. Okay, this is you know slow it down. Okay, that’s how the shot was done. That’s how I learned to do it, and you know it was the same way with this kind of stuff. You know, I wanted to figure out every little thing that that worked. And what I found was that when I was when I dieted regular, I ate really good all day, and then at the end of the day, I’d have a physical addiction, a physical addiction that I had to have sugar. Now I always kind of thought it was fat. I had to have fat because I liked cakes and cookies, and I wasn’t a giant, you know, like ice cream guy or something like that or candy. But I had to have something, and you know, I you know going back to like I said about obsessive. If I’m in the house, I’m single. I’m sitting here alone. Well, when you’re overweight and you’re alone, whatever’s in that freezer or refrigerator, you’re eating, and you would eat one of those little Weight Watcher 100 calorie ice creams. But there’s four in there, and I would eat all four, and I would ruin my dieting. And then at a certain point, my body would actually battle to the point where it would just overpower me, and that would be the end of the diet. And then I just start eating junk again, and I’d gain the weight back and gain more back. Now, what I found in the last year on this diet was I dropped at 50, so I’m at 250 again, and still my resting heart rate is down in the 40s. So from 350 to 250 I still want to do another 50 pounds, but I don’t have that urge anymore at night. Taking the sugar out now, I still have some sugar. I’m not 100% at my age. I’m in my late 40s.

Kenn Bell: You can’t have. I used to have like a cheat weekend. You can cheat the whole weekend and diet all week, and you lose, and it wouldn’t affect you. If you cheat on the whole weekend at 49 years old, you will take another week just to get rid of that weight that you gained. You can’t do it, but you can do a meal, or like I don’t kill myself when I go on the road for a day or two filming. I do my best, but if I’m gonna have something, a piece of cake, just have it and get it over with. The idea is to go back always to ground zero, which is the 10 day. Detox type plan, which is very little sugar. I don’t have caffeine anymore. Whenever I go to, you know, it’s funny. You go to Starbucks, you go to somewhere, get a cup of coffee. It’s hard to get iced coffee that’s not caffeinated. I found that’s a pretty interesting thing that you can’t get it. So I don’t do that. I don’t do that. My bread intake is a piece of flatbread that I have to settle that urge, but I still am so low in the sugar that when I do have something that’s sugar, it doesn’t bring me back to that place where I’m addicted to it again, or I feel now. Obviously, if I went, I found I had to go to a convention two or three months ago, and it was six days. Try and stay on a diet when you’re at a convention, it’s nearly impossible.

Zack Arnold: Well, I would remove the nearly from that. That’s that’s it’s impossible. That’s

Kenn Bell: Where I’ve and that’s and that’s that’s where I’ve gotten to. I said, stop hating yourself, and just live life for those six days. You know, try and grab some more fruit. Try and do a few things. Try and get up and and and get a walk in if you can or something like that. But don’t kill yourself, because as long as the day you come back, you go switch right back into it. It really won’t affect you, and that’s probably the hard part for most people is to go right back. Last weekend I was in Chicago filming for two days for United States Tennis Association, and I can’t. I had yes, I had the breadsticks, and I came home the next day, and I was right back on the diet. What you will find one of the interesting things with the detox is the first four to five days. Now I’m I’ve never used drugs, but like if that’s what it feels like to be like detox from like heroin or something, I wouldn’t doubt it because I was miserable for five days. I literally sat on the couch and watched TV. I felt so bad because I had gone from having sugar in everything because you know in all those diet Weight Watcher meals they put add in sugar and take out fat. So I went from no sugar and no caffeine and no bread, no pasta, no starchy vegetables. It was just unbelievable. Then on day five, I woke up like I could take over the world, like I had gotten rid of that. And when I do six days on the road like that, and I eat normal, I feel that when I get back on my diet, I feel like two days of not feeling that good. Like, and then like on the third day, bam, I’m back, and I’m like, oh, thank God, I’m back in that feeling. I got to get that feeling again that I got on this diet originally, and it does, and it will come back. So I’m pretty happy about that. So now I don’t have that issue anymore at night, where I ruin the whole day’s dieting by eating junk at night, and it seems to be working really well. And I still do my walks. I walk two and a half miles in the morning with my dog Remy Max died a few months ago, and then I do and a mile and a half at night, and we get out there. And I get out there. I try and get out there early, but I’m a late person in Florida. You want to be outside early because it gets hot in the summertime. But yeah, so I still get the walks in. I’m still dieting. To me, this is going to be the way of my life, you know. I’ll worry about eating more when I get to the weight I want. I the dream would be to hit 199 for the first time in my life since I was 20 years old. When I hit 50 next year, maybe I shouldn’t be telling everyone my age, but

Zack Arnold: Well, too late. You did. You did it already. It’s

Kenn Bell: A young 50. It’s a young 50.

Zack Arnold: I’m not cutting it out.

Kenn Bell: You know, and and to try and maybe get down to 199 That would be really pretty spectacular. But I know that I’m in better health. I know that I’m. I’m never listen. I’m a big guy. I’m never gonna be. I’m never gonna look like Wolverine looks in the movies, and it’s never gonna happen. But I feel better, and I feel healthier, and the food makes me feel better, and I feel more present. I. It’s not. I don’t want to make people think it’s like you feel like you’re high because it’s not that much, but you just feel like you’re more centered. Like I can deal with problems a little better. I don’t freak out as much. The anxiety is a little bit less, and I feel it when I go away and I eat bad. I don’t feel good, and then I come back and I get back on it and I feel better. So you know I’m gonna keep going on that. And I and after those 10 days for the detox, I switched it up. Like he said, I did some changes. I brought in a piece of flatbread. I changed up the smoothie in the morning. I wasn’t digging. I I love avocados, but I wasn’t liking it in my smoothie. So I took avocado out. You know, I took one or two things out, but I still pretty much have it. I added a little bit more fruit than I was having because this diet doesn’t want you to have too much fruit because of the sugar. So I followed it exact for the 10 days, but then I made just a few little changes. And and at lunch I have like hard-boiled eggs, a salad. I mix it up. I probably to this day don’t have as much vegetables as I should, and at dinner, the one thing that really changed is I recently moved to Orlando from New Jersey, and in I lived in the same place in New Jersey for 10 years, and I realized when I moved, I had never used the stove. I used the microwave for 10 years, and one of the things that the diet tells you is. Don’t eat anything that comes from a box. Don’t eat processed stuff. It’s just not as good for you. Maybe maybe it’s not you know a death sentence, but it certainly isn’t as good for you as eating real food. So when I started this when I started the detox in in January and I dropped 50 pounds since then, I started cooking. And so every night I have a piece of I have a piece of meat, turkey, chicken, or steak, and you know six ounces, and then I throw in mushrooms, onions, peppers, broccoli, cauliflower. I throw it all in there. Maybe throw in some almonds, and I cook it up. It’s a great meal. I feel full, but I don’t feel that feeling when you eat out, or you eat all those carbs, and you just feel like you’re dead, I feel like I could eat that meal, and then I could go ahead and do something. Which is, if I ate a regular meal, I’d have like pasta and bread. I’d be like, that’s it for the day. I’m go, I’m laying on the couch and watching TV. So I do that, and then I can. I found a snack at night. I take a piece of flatbread, I put some almond butter on it, throw a few almonds on it, roll it up, and I have something at night if I want it. But many times I find I don’t even want it. Sometimes I find myself not even hungry for breakfast because I guess I’ve created a stomach that’s a lot smaller than it was. But yeah, so so far it’s going really good. I tell anyone I just had someone, a Facebook friend, her and her husband started it, and there on day 10 today she lost eight pounds, and she’s like, “I’m going to continue because she says I feel great, and that’s the key.

Kenn Bell: You know, the key the key is you’re going to make mistakes, you’re going to screw up, but if you always just go back to ground zero, if you always go right back, you’ll be fine. It’s it’s the people. It’s when you don’t go back is when you gain all the weight back and everything like that, but again, taking out so much of the sugar-probably 90-5% of the sugar I used to have every day is gone now. Taking out that sugar for me, maybe it isn’t for everyone. Clearly showed me that I had a sugar addiction.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, and I think that’s that’s a really really good place to to jump in because I think a lot of people don’t realize, and if you’ve been listening to this show for a long time, you know that I sound like a broken record. But sugar is an addictive substance, and science has proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that it actually activates the pleasure centers in your brain eight times more than heroin. So when you say that you went through withdrawal, you were going through withdrawal. It’s not something that you made up in your mind, or said, “Oh my God, this is ridiculous! It’s just food. It’s just sugar. You’re going through withdrawal, no different than trying to quit smoking or quit heroin or anything else, and you’re going to experience the same symptoms. And there is tons and tons of science to back this up, so it’s not conjecture, you know, theory. So it’s all the information is there. I mean, it’s very, very clear. And Dr. Mark Hyman is one of the leaders in the field of really showing that sugar is an addictive substance. Why it’s addictive and what to do about it. I mean, one one place for people to start if they’re saying, “Well, I don’t want to, you know, read a whole book or actually do the whole diet. Just watch the documentary “Fed Up. I’ll put a link in the show notes. This is actually one of the the shows. It’s a great doc. Yeah, I have that on the the Fitness and Post store. So if anybody wants to check that out, it’s a really really good documentary all about the food industry and very specifically about the way that sugar is processed in your system, how it works to become addictive, and how it’s marketed to you. And the reason why, like you said, in the 70s and 80s and 90s, everybody was eating it in all of our foods, and it’s still in over 90% of our food supply. But we were told that, oh my God, you can’t have any salt, you can’t have any fat, you can’t have any caffeine, and those things are changing. But what people often do is they make the mistake of just swinging the pendulum from one extreme to the other. And what they don’t realize is there is actually a lot of salt that is bad for you. If you get iodized table salt, you can’t have a lot of that. But if you’re doing a nice crystallized Himalayan pink sea salt that they literally took out of the Himalayas and put in a bottle, that still has all of the minerals and yeah, I

Kenn Bell: Use I use rock salt.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, exactly. So that’s actual salt. When you’re getting something from the salt shaker that’s in the Morton’s container, that’s bad stuff. It’s iodized. It’s highly processed. It’s the equivalent of Wonder Bread just for salt. So when you say, “Oh, I can have salt now, you got to be really careful. Same thing goes for fat and caffeine. Where if you’re getting your mocha latte caramel frappuccino and you’re saying, well, caffeine’s not bad. Yeah, but the 400 calories of garbage that’s in it-that’s still bad. But if you’re having a black coffee that’s caffeinated, caffeine in and of itself, in moderation, is actually considered a smart drug and can actually be tremendously beneficial for focus and for motivation. And the caffeine, in and of itself, is fine. And the same goes with fat. If you’re saying, “Oh, fat’s good, I’m just going to have a big stick of processed butter, or I’m going to have fried foods now. Once again, it’s that pendulum swinging to the other end of the spectrum. It’s all about understanding and learning what are the good fats that I should be eating. Avocado. If you just sat there and looked at the food label, like if you looked at the nutrition information. On an avocado. This is actually something that I do. I have a blog post that I’ll link to. That’s a book review of the book called “Rich Food, Poor Food, and what it does is it shows the nutrition labels between a box of you know Weight Watchers Oreo cookies and avocado. But if you just look at the labels without knowing the product, you’d say, “Oh my God, this thing with all this fat and calories, this has got to be horrible for me, but this other one is very low in fat and low in sodium, and it’s only 100 calories. This is the good one, and then you look at the ingredients and you look at the product, and you say, “Oh, maybe the avocado isn’t as bad as I thought it was. So it’s all about educating yourself on the good fats, because I I’m always very careful when people like, “Oh yeah, salt is back and fat’s back. It’s like, well, you got to educate yourself first, and it sounds like that’s something you’ve absolutely done.

Kenn Bell: You know, it’s it’s funny. I lost 50 pounds eating an avocado every day and a six ounce piece of steak. You know, if that doesn’t tell you something that that there’s obviously something to this. You know, one of the things that Mark Hyman talks about is that sugar is eight times more addictive than heroin to mice in studies, which is kind of kind of amazing. And you know, I’ve always been one of I’ve always because a lot when you get into health, there’s a lot of pseudoscience, right? There’s a lot of do this or do that, or and is there really any science behind that? I don’t I don’t know. So one thing I was always very hesitant about was everyone screaming about diet soda being bad for you, and in the book, it was the first time it was explained to me like reasonably. I like reasonable. I’m never. I’m not a black and white kind of guy. I know there’s everything is spaced out in grays, you know. And and with anything I do, I never want to be too far on one side or the other? I want to find somewhere where it’s like makes some sense. And what he said in the book was simply, your body doesn’t know the difference between diet soda and regular soda. It will react the same way. So if you’re addicted to sugar, which you probably I could tell you the only reason, the only way to really know if you’re addicted to sugar is one: do you have those urges that just pull you off the diet at the end of the day, where you have to have something sweet, and then doing the diet and seeing if you feel a lot better. So, so basically, it does the same thing to your body. So, if you’re addicted to sugar, diet soda will kick that addiction back in because you know when you start drinking it, you start having it with all your meals. I never thought I would be the kind of person that has water all day, and you know when I go out to Starbucks, I have a decaf coffee. One of the things that that actually half my time at Starbucks is working on my computer, and other half is watching people walk out with the biggest drink full of such junk and and like big whipped cream on it, and it’s basically more probably more calories than I have in a day, and I’m still shocked to this day. You know, like that people like have this thing. It’s just how is that? I don’t even understand how it’s refreshing. It must be, I mean, it must be more sugar than I have in a week.

Zack Arnold: Well, it’s it’s refreshing to them in the way that heroin is refreshing to an addict, where all of a sudden it gets in your bloodstream, and you’re like, oh, okay, now the anxiety is going away, and now I have my fix for the day. It’s no different. It’s just that the vast majority of people don’t have the education to know that that’s actually what’s happening. And also with diet soda, the other thing that people don’t realize is they say, well, you know, if you’re saying sugar so bad, if I have the diet coke rather than the regular coke, well, I’ve eliminated the sugar. So what’s the problem? All you’ve done is replace the sugar with a processed, synthesized chemical version of sugar, which would be an aspartame or a sucralose or other form of artificial sweetener. Which number one has been proven to actually have a higher glycemic index, meaning that it spikes your blood sugar even more and spikes your insulin response even more. But what it also does is it completely screws up your digestive system and your gut biome, which is basically a fancy way of saying like the the gut bacteria that you have and the balance of good bacteria versus bad bacteria. So now not only are you just addicted to the artificial sweetener, but you’re now destroying your digestive system, which regulates your immune system. It regulates your moods, your serotonin intake. There are entire books on just the gut biome and how it affects your health. So if you’re thinking that replacing the diet soda, like that’s the thing that’s going to be the difference, it’s no. You just got to get rid of the soda altogether, I don’t care what shape or form it’s in; it’s got to go.

Kenn Bell: Yeah, it definitely has, and I kind of believe that the the feeling of being more centered. I kind of believe that is because I don’t have those peaks that I used to have when I had all that sugar, that up and down. You know, I don’t even understand it completely, but I know that your blood sugar goes through the roof and then it drops back down, and I don’t have that as much now. Well, as much I’ve had that barely at all. You know, again, I tell everyone like I don’t, I don’t want to scare people off from the diet either. You can cheat on it once in a while. You’re a human being. You know, every every week or two weeks, I go and have something that I just remember I like 15 years. Ago, you know, I go to that place that makes spectacular donuts, you know, and have one of them, but I don’t have it every morning, and that’s the difference. I don’t, I don’t, you know, I don’t do it constantly, and I don’t have three of them, you know. I, I have, I have one, and I leave. I know I can’t trust myself. I can’t bring home a box of cookies, but I can go to the store and buy one.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, and that’s that’s the real the real key, I think, and probably the the big difference maker between a lot of the yo-yoing that you did and now why this is more sustained is that it’s not about a specific diet for a specific period of time. That’s all about deprivation. It’s about creating lifestyle choices and saying, well, I’m not depriving myself of all these things for 90 days so I can lose weight. You’re saying I’m changing the kinds of foods that I actually enjoy eating, and I’m on a different long term path. And that long term path is not going to be derailed if I eat a donut one morning a week because that’s what I enjoy. But if you’re on a 90 day deprivation diet and you’re in day 43, and all of a sudden you eat that donut. You have so much guilt, and you say, “Oh my God, I have failed. I was supposed to not eat any of this stuff for 90 days, and I’m not even halfway through. And I failed. I give up. I’m done. This just doesn’t work for me, right? But what you’re doing is you’re saying, “I’m just changing the way that I eat and the way that I live my life, and these are now my lifestyle dietary choices. Not I’m going on a diet, and that to me is the real key that I found because I’ve gone through my own types of yo-yo dieting, and I’ve never been terribly overweight, but I’ve been skinny fat, and that’s kind of a term for you don’t look fat on the outside, but on the inside, you know your stress levels are through the roof, your cortisol levels are a mess, you have bad cholesterol, which

Kenn Bell: Is probably most of skinny America, actually, you know, most of the people I know that don’t that sit on the couch and eat whatever they want, but they’re skinnier probably that.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, and and they’re just as unhealthy and sometimes more unhealthy than people that are overweight. I don’t want to make that as a general comment, but it is possible to be 150 pounds and be rail thin and be more unhealthy than somebody who’s 200 pounds that has a low resting heart rate and has a low cholesterol and feels good and has the energy. So it is possible to do that, but people make the judgment that well, you’re skinny, so you’re healthy, and you’re overweight, so you’re unhealthy. And it’s like you said, it’s so much more gray than it is black and white. Because I hate black and white as well. I think you and I, if we lived in the same area, you and I would become very good friends because we’re definitely on the same page with all this stuff. What I’d like to do now is talk about some of the things specifically that you did during the yo-yo dieting that didn’t work. Because I know you’ve mentioned you know the different things you’ve done in general and what worked and what didn’t. But can you give me at least one example of one very specific choice of diet you made, or whatever it was, or product, like you said, the Weight Watchers things. If there’s something that you looked at and you’re looking back and saying, “Oh my God, this was such a disaster! I lost 50 pounds, but then I gained 70, I just want to give people some idea of something that you did that absolutely didn’t work that sent you on the path you’re on now,

Kenn Bell: I’ve always said I’m an expert at losing weight, but not at keeping it off. I never, until this time, went on an actual diet plan from a book or from TV or something like that, because it was all pretty obvious: was to eat better, eat more vegetables, eat less fat and sugar. You know, obviously, everyone knew you’re supposed to eat less sugar, but you also didn’t know where they were hiding it too, and and so I went on, you know, deprivation diets where you you you you eat a lot less calories and the weight comes off, and then you hit those plateaus. You still hit the plateaus doing it this way. You hit those plateaus, and sooner or later, you know, something happens where you you just stop and your body says I need that stuff and it forces you back. It feels like it’s many times it felt in my life like it was a different entity telling me no no no you have to, and I am totally convinced that our mind and our body want us to do nothing and I believe my theory is, and this is a theory with no education behind that at all. No science education is simply that the safest thing to be when you were a caveman was to sit in your cave and do nothing, because going out past that hole in the wall and anything can kill you. And I remember doing a year of Taekwondo, and I lost 50 pounds. And even the the leader brought me up front, and everyone clapped. And then I sprained my ankle playing basketball, and I never went back. I never felt better in my life than what I was doing when I was doing the Taekwondo. I never felt better than when when I was thinner. People acted differently. I got more work. I got more dates. Why would I want to be overweight and to not feel good and the the good? And yet you constantly go back to that. And I just believe that old saying: “Move it or lose it. It’s a battle. I’m gonna win, and and I’m just. Going to keep going forward. I do not. I’ve seen too many people. I’ve seen too many people that get old and they don’t move, and then they just sit there. I don’t want. That is my my number one fear, is losing my mind and losing my health. I want to move. I want to constantly learn. I don’t want to just sit and watch the television all day and get mad at the world, you know. And so my the deprivation didn’t work. Everything worked. Weight Watchers worked losing the weight. You know, if you need to lose 20 pounds, maybe Weight Watchers is fine for you. But it was eating out of boxes. One doctor would argue with me that I talked to. He said, right now, don’t losing the weight is more important in your health than how you lose the weight, you know you can determine you know how you eat later, but lose 50 pounds. Believe me, but it would come back because because what I believe for me specifically was the fat and and deprivation. Now I’m listen. I’m still losing weight, so clearly I’m not eating as much as my body would want me to eat. I just believe it’s the sugar thing. You know, it’s the sugar thing. Eat the healthier stuff, and you feel better. Stay away from box food. Stay away from the sugar. Give it a shot and see if the sugar thing works for you. Because I’m sure that it’s not everybody, but I think it’s a large amount of people. I bet it’s 3040, 50%

Zack Arnold: Of people.

Kenn Bell: Yeah, that have a have an addiction to sugar-that sugar is the risk.

Zack Arnold: That number is at least double that, and there’s actually a lot of science behind it that shows that the vast majority of people in at least in our society, specifically that are eating the quote-unquote standard American diet, they’re they’re addicted to sugar and processed foods. So it’s way, way, way, way higher.

Kenn Bell: And I also think that no one’s moving anymore. I mean, I have relatives who have kids who literally don’t know their neighbor down the road. Now, half of my childhood was great because I roamed around the woods and played and built forts and got in the, you know, and baseball games down the road. And the other half is like, well, I met a bunch of people that punched me in my face and stole stuff for me, and but in the end, I wouldn’t take it. I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t get rid of that for anything. But a lot now is spent on the computer watching television, and especially with kids playing video games. I’ve been there. I’ve spent much time in one year of my life playing video games, and I gave my Xbox. I actually, I actually still have it, but it’s in my closet. It’s been in my closet for like eight years now, because it’s it’s too much. There’s too much. When I was a kid, there were three to four stations, man. And if you didn’t catch that movie, you didn’t see that movie again, you know. And there was the 430 movie. Maybe you’d see, you didn’t even realize that Planet of the Apes. They actually had to cut the movie down to fit into an hour and a half, but it was very rare. There was there wasn’t that much on TV. You could do other things. Now we literally have a. I could literally sit on my couch and be entertained for every moment for the rest of my life without a second to spare between the web and between the 80 different hundreds of different channels and the movies and internet articles and I mean I struggle a lot with my iPhone. I spend way too much time getting those little dopamine hits of articles and people talking to me on Facebook and Twitter, and then I don’t get work done. You know, so I’ve actually been turning my phone off for a few hours when I’m doing some other things. Don’t even have it. Could be next to me. Just turn it off, and then you’ll find yourself getting into other things. But you know, so there’s all these things we’re dealing with that that we didn’t have 30, 40 years ago. So we’re not going to really know the outcome of all these things. I would argue, you know, find a healthy way to eat, eat healthy, lose the weight, and move. You got to move, and a lot of people aren’t going to jog. You know, I see these people. I lost weight and I did a marathon. Never going to happen in my life, and that’s fine. But I will walk four or five miles a day, you know, and I will have a healthy heart because of it. But you’ve got to do these things. If you, it’s basically you do it or it’s over. You know, and you give up. And we all know people that have given up, and they don’t look happy at all. So I and

Zack Arnold: Most likely, most likely, they’re not going to last nearly as long either. Which is is one of those great motivations for making these changes. Is when you’re 20 years old, nobody’s going to sit you down and say, “Well, you need to go on a sugar detox diet, and you need to be really careful about your choices because you’re invincible and you’re going to live forever. But all of a sudden, you get to be you know your age, 4950 and you’re thinking, well, based on my past health, I keep going down the road I’m going. Maybe I got 10 years left if I’m lucky. Maybe I got 15 if I’m really lucky. But then, if you start making the right lifestyle choices, you may buy yourself another 2030, years. That to me is a pretty great motivation. One thing that I want to go back and mention because it really just kind of-I promise I won’t jump on my soapbox. But you mentioned the thing about the talking to your doctor and your doctor saying to you, “It’s really not important how you lose the weight. It’s just that.” Lose the weight, and I could not disagree with that statement more. And obviously, you’ve proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that that statement is wrong too, because the big problem is that not only did you gain the weight, but you always gain back more than you had actually lost. And this is a very common problem. And this is because basically, what’s happening in your system is that you’re resetting your hormones, right? And there’s a book called The Calorie Myth, and the Calorie Myth goes through hundreds of pages of science. But it’s actually it’s not just like you’re reading a science journal and you’re thinking, “Oh my God, that would be so boring. It’s really entertaining and eye-opening, and it explains why calorie counting doesn’t work, but more importantly, why doing the type of deprivation diet you’re talking about, where if it’s a Weight Watchers diet with processed foods and it’s just calorie counting, you might lose the weight, but long term, not only are you going to gain it back, but you’re actually going to maybe gain back 1015, 20% more. There’s science behind that, so I would recommend anybody that’s been through that check out the calorie myth and read it because it will explain why that’s happening. And once you have the education, once you swallow the red pill, you’re like, “Oh, I get it now, and that’s where the change starts. Is once you understand it.

Kenn Bell: Yeah, you have to, and and and with the Weight Watchers, because you’re not going to do the Weight Watchers meals forever. You’re just going to go back to what you originally did, and I think that’s the key, because at least with the the 10 day detox, it taught me a different way. Like now, I’m the exact opposite with my microwave. It is rarely on. Maybe to heat up some vegetables once in a while. It is rarely on. It’s you know. It’s it’s quite shocking how it’s the opposite of when I lived in New Jersey and I had the microwave use it for 10 years every day. The detox diet actually said, “Okay, we’re not just going to lose weight, but we’re going to switch you to a better way of eating that you can continue. You know, when you if you’re done, when you get to the point where you don’t want to gain any more weight, add some more of this good stuff in. Now at least you know this is the stuff that’s the that’s best for you. You know, I mean, I have a a shake in the morning, right? Has blueberries. I my my thing after my 10 days, I throw in a banana. It has a little sugar in it. You know, it has almond butter, pumpkin seeds, chia seeds, hemp seeds, walnuts, unsweetened almond milk, and water and and ice. And then I put it on my NutriBullet and I get it going. And I didn’t even know what these seeds were six months ago. All I know is that I feel a lot better now. And when I have that shake in the morning, actually, I the first thing I do, I get up, feed the dog, take him for two and a half miles in the morning when it’s cooler here. I get back and I’m soaked in sweat. He falls down on the ground. I take a shower. I make my drink, and I and I feel spectacular, and I’ve had no coffee. To me, that was important because I hate the feeling when you have coffee for a long time and then you don’t have coffee. That hangover feeling in the morning that you can’t wake up, and and that’s why I didn’t want caffeine anymore because I don’t want that feeling. And I feel like I had a cup of coffee in the morning by going for the walk and drinking this drink. I don’t. I don’t actually need. Actually, I made the mistake of buying like 100 of those little one packs of coffee. You know those little one things.

Zack Arnold: The Keurig.

Kenn Bell: I bought them like a week before I went on this diet, and they’re still sitting there. And just recently, the kitchen was remodeled, and I took the coffee machine and I put it in the closet. So I mean you know I still once or twice a week I’ll have decaf at Starbucks or something like that but other than that I don’t need it and that’s really I mean there’s two reasons for coffee right the smell the feeling in the morning having that and then the caffeine but that that caffeine side that energy side I don’t need it as a matter of fact when I have had a cup of coffee, a regular cup of coffee. It doesn’t do anything to me. I don’t feel anything because I think I’m already up there because of the other food that I’m eating.

Zack Arnold: Well, and I also know that at one point you had actually incorporated Shakeology into your diet as well. I don’t know if that’s something you’re still doing anymore, but I know that that was something you worked with for a while. So, what was your experience with that?

Kenn Bell: Yeah, I didn’t. I didn’t. I used. I was. That’s when I had started to do some smoothies. That was before this diet. I didn’t feel anything. I didn’t. A lot. I’m one of those people. Like everyone says, I did this thing and wow, I felt better. And that’s never happened to me in my life. I’ve never changed my food and felt differently because of it. Other than the fact that probably like everyone, when you eat it like a McDonald’s, you know that tasty food that you eat. You don’t feel like you want to do anything afterward. You go, ooh, wow, wow, in my stomach. Hmm. You know, clearly that’s not a great sign. So that changed me. But I never really felt anything. And on that, and the drink, I didn’t. It didn’t do anything to me. So it didn’t really affect me in one way or the other. I do have when I have my shake, I do put like half a scoop of like protein powder in there, you know, not the whole thing, just half in the morning. It’s kind of funny. The shake is like 567, 100 calories in it, and I still lose weight. You know, that’s just my, you know, it’s kind of yeah. And it’s not

Zack Arnold: About the calorie count; it’s what the calories are that make. Such a big difference,

Kenn Bell: And and I don’t even pay attention to the calories anymore. And I used to be like everything. Look at the calories. What is it? No, I mean I’m still an obsessive stand on the scale guy. I will be for the till the day I die, but when I step on the you know people like don’t step on it because you’re going to get you’re going to feel bad if you didn’t gain any weight. It’s like listen, I I I understand that you know, every seven to 10 pounds you go through a plateau. I get it. I know that sooner or later I’m going to step on it, and bam, three will be gone. So that doesn’t really bother me. But I mean, so those are those are the things. I just found that the I liked the idea with that. I knew exactly with the shake I’m making now. I knew exactly what’s in it. I mean the items I said that’s what’s in it and a little what was the other last thing little coconut butter and MCT oil table a teaspoon or tablespoon of that so I put all that in the morning that might be the thing giving me yes if you’re

Zack Arnold: Doing MCT oil specifically the one that I use is called Brain Octane Oil it’s from a company called Upgrade Itself that to me is as close to the limitless drug as I have ever been, and it’s something that I use religiously every morning, either in a smoothie, which is actually pretty similar to yours, or I’ll use it in coffee. I’ll I’ll make bulletproof coffee, not every day, but depending on what I’m doing for the day, I’ll kind of alternate back and forth. But I never feel like I need it. I never wake up and say, “Oh my God, I need my coffee. It’s more all right. Well, based on today, do I need to be a little bit more high performing? Can I be a little bit more chill? But without fail, it’s two tablespoons of the brain octane oil. And for those that have never heard of that and are thinking, “Oh my God! Like, are you putting gasoline in your coffee? It’s actually just a form of coconut oil that’s an MCT, which stands for medium chain triglyceride, and it’s very specific chain because there are different chains. Like you’ll have an eight chain, 10 chain, 12 chain. Triglyceride is just a form of fat. So if you’re getting regular coconut oil that you just get off the shelf, it’s going to have some medium chains. It’s going to have some long chains, and it’s not going to be pure. And this is just highly purified. So it’s only an eight chain MCT, and that is something that’s rapidly metabolized by the liver and immediately converted to energy, and specifically energy for your brain. And the first time I had it, I swear to God, it was like that scene in Limitless, where all of a sudden there was more color, I was more vibrant, and I’m like, oh my god, I have all these cool ideas, and I was so creative, and I was like, I am awake. Where did this come from? And it’s not even remotely the experience you get from caffeine. So I think that a lot of the effect you’re getting is from using the MCT oil or the coconut oil. So I’ll put a link in the show notes to the Brain Octane. I’ll put a link to to the Shakeology as well. And the reason that I recommend Shakeology, I don’t think it’s the best product on the planet. I don’t think it’s the be all and all. If you take Shakeology, all of your problems are solved, and you don’t have to do anything else. What I like about it is that it’s a good place to start if you don’t know where to start. Because if you look at the shake that you’re having now, which is the pumpkin seeds and the flax seed oil or the flax seeds and the chia seeds, like somebody’s going to look at that and say, “I don’t know where to start. I don’t know why I would use that? Like it’s it’s really intimidating to a lot of people. It’s knowing the proportions and and the shakeology to me. That’s just something. It’s like oh okay, I take a scoop of this stuff, I put it in water or milk, I put some frozen fruit in, I mix it up, and it what it does is it gives you that experience of oh wait, I can actually feel better. All right, then you start moving, and you maybe you stay with the Shakeology, maybe you go to other things. But to me, it’s kind of like that first kick start. But then you get to the point where you are, where now you’re really mixing and matching all these different raw ingredients, and that’s a really powerful place to be.

Kenn Bell: Yeah, and and you know this diet, you know when you first go and buy all the stuff, it’s like this is a little expensive because you know I mean, it. I was shocked when I bought steak and I tried to get grass-fed beef, and I’m like, $8 for a for like a five-ounce piece, 16 bucks for two of them. It’s like wow. But the hemp seeds, chia seeds, pumpkin seeds, you know, they cost a little money, but they’ve also been sitting in the jar now for like three months, and I use a tablespoon a day. So once you get over that first hit of spending more money, listen, McDonald’s is cheaper, but in the end, you know the argument is in the end, is it really cheaper?

Zack Arnold: Exactly, and that’s the huge argument: is that McDonald’s is cheap, buying regular quote unquote USDA choice steak is super cheap, but that’s because you’re not actually even eating meat anymore. There’s so many things in there that aren’t meat that are so bad for you that it’s not even like eating real food. And yes, it’s it’s something you’re paying for up front. But the analogy that I’ve used in the past is it’s like a 401k for your health, where when you’re putting money in your 401k that money’s just gone. Like you might as well throw it in the toilet. But then all of a sudden, magically, when you’re older, it all comes back to you, and you’re like, “Holy cow! All this money is here that I can now use. Right? Your health is no different. If you’re going to be spending that dollar a day getting that $1 Big Mac or whatever the deal of the day is at McDonald’s, your bank account’s going to look better because of it. But then all of a sudden, you’re going to hit that point where you’re six. And you’re going to look into your health 401k, and you’re going to say it’s empty. There’s nothing here. What am I going to do, right? And that’s why I really believe that in making the investment now in your health will pay off in so many dividends later on. But you’re right; it’s tough when you look at a bag of chia seeds or you look at a Big Mac. You’re like, oh my god! Like, are you kidding me? It’s all about the long term, not the short term.

Kenn Bell: Yeah, and and listen, obviously, to a starving person eating McDonald’s or eating any kind of fast food is a step in the right direction, right? But that’s about it, right? At that point, when you’re not starving anymore, you have we you have to move on to something better. And I think from everything I read, they’re really feeling it now, McDonald. It’s really hitting, hitting. It’s about time.

Zack Arnold: I mean, based on everything that they’ve done to to culture and every, I mean, it’s not like all this are things they just didn’t know. It’s not like they were providing a service to society. They said, “What’s the absolute minimum viable product that we can put on the market that tastes like food but doesn’t actually contain anything nutritious whatsoever, and give it at the cheapest amount possible and sell the most. That’s been their objective, and now they’re paying for that. And now finally, food companies are starting to see that too. And because of, I think, largely because of the internet and the fact that people like I and other people doing this have a voice, they’re realizing, wait a second! People don’t want to eat all this junk anymore. We might actually have to do something about this because when I was a kid in the ’80s, the only thing that I had to educate me about food was television. You know, and you see the cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs guy and the Froot Loops and the Tony the Tiger, like, oh well, fortified with vitamin C. Oh well, Frosted flakes must be healthy, right? That was my education. You can’t do that anymore. Like these food companies just can’t get away with that because of all the information online, and it’s finally starting to hit them, and it’s finally starting to hurt them. And I think we’re really going to see a big change over the next two decades, no different than we saw in the change in the tobacco industry, and that’s really exciting to me.

Kenn Bell: Yeah, you know, I one thing going back a little bit as a as a kid, an overweight kid, like I was always subjected to that one thing. And anyone out there that’s skinny who’s done it, this is your lesson to not do it. I love being told just stop eating, just don’t eat it. You know, and you see that a lot on television. It’s it’s a tough thing. I’m in the middle here. Like I don’t want the government to tell me, you know, I like when Bloomberg tried to get rid of a certain size soda because it’s like, believe me, if someone wants double the size, they’ll buy two. You know, I I’m not a big fan of that. At the same time, I know that I could not stop. You know what I mean? I was addicted at a young age. It was a vicious cycle. At a young age, I would come home from being picked on for being overweight in school, and the and the only thing that was there that made me feel better was crappy food, and I ate that, and it made me feel better for a few minutes. And it and it just it’s a vicious cycle that goes back and forth and back and forth, not knowing what does that, you know. I always thought when people like saying, “Well, people that are depressed, you know, eat more, and I’m like, “Well, I’m not really depressed. And I’m like, “Well, wait a second. My idea of depression is sitting in bed and crying for two weeks. That’s not all people. Maybe it’s simply that I had a bad conversation with a friend on the phone, or someone didn’t call me back, and next thing you know, I find myself finding whatever I can in the refrigerator to eat. Now I know that’s not everybody’s experience in life, but you know that thin person that didn’t have that experience in life can’t stop smoking cigarettes. You know, and and they can’t, and and or they have this addiction or they have that addiction. The the difference between all the addictions, is you don’t need a cigarette to live, but you need food to live. So tell the person who’s addicted to smoking two packs a day, you can only have five cigarettes a day. See how good that goes, you know. And it’s and it’s and it’s not it’s not the same thing. So this is something, and I and I kind of believe that I may have found it here with the sugar was the thing that was bringing me back constantly to the refrigerator, whereas now I’m not. Now I know that when I’m at someone else’s house, I’m still tempted. You know, when when when you go to some houses and you see all the food, like how many different boxes of cookies can you own? And it’s like shocking that there’s people that still I I know people that still have takeout every night coming to their house like such bad food every night, and and I know I’m a freelancer and I have some time in the morning and at night to do these things. I know it’s much tougher if you have a nine to five or a nine to nine to do these kind of things. You know, I mean, I know it’s much easier for me when I don’t, because I’ve had both types of jobs. So I would just say you have to pinpoint these different things. Maybe try the 10 day detox and see if this is the thing that makes it happen for you. You know, because it may not. It may not be. But hey,

Zack Arnold: Well, you’ve hit the nail on the head when you say. You know, I think I may have. Figured it out with it being the sugar. You didn’t maybe figure it out. You nailed it. I mean, that’s there’s no question that the number one component of the obesity epidemic that this entire country and world is dealing with right now is simple sugars and processed foods and the processed flours. And there’s no question that is the root cause. There’s a lot of other things, but that’s kind of where it starts, and I love that you brought up the 10 day detox diet. That was a great place that we went today that I didn’t even expect. So that’s fantastic. And I’m

Kenn Bell: Not being paid for that, by the way. No,

Zack Arnold: Of course not. No

Kenn Bell: Affiliation.

Zack Arnold: Yeah. So and I, you know, I’ll put a link up to the the book so everybody can find it. It’s something I haven’t been through myself, but I’m absolutely going to look into it and learn more about it. I know a lot about Dr. Mark Hyman. I’ve listened to a lot of his podcasts, read his website, read his interviews. I haven’t done the specific book myself, but I’m going to look into

Kenn Bell: It. And and you know, don’t don’t I tell people don’t you don’t have to read the whole book. Get the plan, get the food, read the first chapter or two, and you’ll find over the 10 days you’ll go back and you’ll go okay what’s going on here or why this or why that and you’ll go and you could pick out different things but don’t let that be another form of procrastination that I have to read the whole book before I start it you don’t and most

Zack Arnold: Likely once I start to implement it you’re going to see such great changes you’re going to say oh now I want to continue reading so it’s it’s it everybody just says all or nothing oh my god if I don’t finish the whole book, I failed, and I haven’t done it right. Just start. Just do a little bit. Feel, you know, take that tiny snowball, put it at the top of the mountain, push it down, and see what happens. Like that. That’s the way that I approach. And he

Kenn Bell: Got it. He got it. He he got a one thing that helped me a lot is he put out a cookbook with 150 recipes. So you know, I and you know, listen, I’m a simple guy. I break it down to like three recipes I like, and I change them up, and then I switch it around a little bit. When I’m when I’m bored, I move things around. I could it’s easy to kind of find like, well, I’m really bored with what I have for for lunch, so okay, let me bring this in, you know, let me bring in some salmon, you know, and stuff like that, and get rid of the eggs for a week, and and just switch it up, and then switch back, and and that’s the key. Don’t get don’t be bored. The 10 days, it’s going to be like almost the same thing every day. But after that, just make sure you mix stuff up and you have a little fun with cooking again. Which I find nice to actually sit there for 20 minutes and cook up a meal. I kind of appreciate it more than throw it in the microwave for two minutes. It’s a

Zack Arnold: Very healthy way to do it. It can actually become a very meditative, relaxing experience. It is for me. It’s something that I look forward to when I do have time, which is not often. But when I do, I actually enjoy the process of cooking or learning a new recipe. So we’re at the point where we’re running a little bit over, which I’m totally fine with because this has just been fantastic, and I don’t literally don’t want to cut out a single word. But lastly, before we go, I just want to make sure that people know how to find you, how to find the really, really inspiring work that you’ve done, and just learn more about what you do for a living and the projects that you’ve done.

Kenn Bell: Sure, you can go to thedogfiles.com. D-O-G-F-I-L-E-S. I have all my episodes there. I’m working on some new stuff. You could contact me on Twitter at Kenn Bell K E N N B E L 2n s2 Ls, or at Dog Files. Either one. Be on the lookout for the ASPCA documentary in the fall or winter. Might wind up being 216 because everything we have to do with it. And I’m always always looking for interesting projects. I try and do stuff that actually makes a difference. It’s really nice. I kind of wandered into this territory, and I really like the feeling I get when I actually do something that might change people. I’ve had people from across the entire world contact me and tell me that they play my dog file episodes in front of their students, and it has changed people’s attitudes toward animals, and that’s that’s pretty amazing. That’s

Zack Arnold: Powerful, and I’m really hoping that this podcast will do the same thing for people that are listening and saying, “Well, you know what? I’m 300 pounds right now, and I’ve yo-yo dieted. But listening to this guy has made you realize that there is another way it can be done. So not only are you inspiring people to take better care of animals and do all the work that you’re doing there, but I really hope that now your personal journey is going to inspire people in this industry or anybody listening to say, you know what, it can be done. So Ken, this has just been absolutely fantastic. I’m so glad we are finally able to make this happen. So thank you so much for being on the show. No, yeah,

Kenn Bell: It’s it’s been great, and hopefully I could come back when I hit 199 Oh yeah, that’s my goal.

Zack Arnold: You hit 199 I guarantee you’ve got a spot on this show, my friend.

Kenn Bell: All right, sounds good.

Episode Credits

This episode was edited by Curtis Fritsch, and this show is 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.