Hi, it's Mark Sisson. Welcome to the Primal Blueprint Podcast, where we deliver a variety of fresh content to help you live awesome.

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Hey, everyone.

Drew Manning is back on the podcast today.

Fit to Fat to Fit.

He is a New York Times bestselling author of Complete Keto and also the book Fit to Fat

to Fit, which was a really interesting journey, which I'll let him describe to you if you

aren't aware of it because it was a really fascinating experiment that he did. Drew has been seen on shows like The View, Dr. Oz, Good Morning America, and more. Welcome back to the show. Elle, it's always a pleasure to be with you. Thanks for having me back on. Oh, man, one of my faves. So let's, well, let me start with this. For the people that don't know you

and haven't listened to previous episodes, tell us about what this fit to fat to fit experiment that

you did many years ago was. Essentially, it's you were a trainer that was fit and you didn't know

what it was like to be fat and your clients were like, dude, you don't get don't get it tell us what you did yeah so that's kind of it in a nutshell most people know me as the fit to fat to fake guy which is funny because some people don't even know my name drew there's like oh you're the fit to fat to fit fit okay and i'm totally fine with that so back in 2011 i had this crazy idea that entered my mind that said you know uh, what if you got overweight on purpose? Would that give you a better understanding? And I know that sounds crazy and ridiculous, but you got to understand from my perspective, I had never been overweight a day of my life. I grew up playing football and wrestling. So it was always in shape. And for me, it was easy. You just do the work. You put down the junk food and it's not that hard. And I couldn't

understand why it was so hard for my clients. Like they would struggle and I would get frustrated with them. And I would be like, you guys, why are you struggling to, you know, put down the junk food and go to the gym? Like, it's easy for me. Why isn't it easy for you? So anyways, they told me, like you said, you don't really understand, Drew, what it's like to be overweight.

You know, for you, it's always been easy easy but for me and for us it's hard and i took that to heart that that time when i my ex-brother-in-law told me that and i i was like well you know what can i do and this like i said this idea entered my mind and it was like a light bulb went off i'm like oh gosh, what if I actually do this? It felt like it was a calling for me at the time. And so I decided to embark on this journey where for six months, I stopped exercising, which was really hard for me because I was obsessed. I stopped exercising, ate a standard American diet, which we can get into what those foods were. But I gained 75 pounds in six months.

It was the most humbling and one of the hardest things I've ever been through my entire life. I learned so many valuable lessons, especially on the mental and emotional side of transformation, which I didn't know anything about. I'm like, you guys, it's just easy. Just eat less and work out. Like, why are you struggling until I did this experiment? Yeah, my to stop. Yeah, my eyes were open.

I'm like, oh my gosh, I had no idea how powerful the emotional connection to food really

is.

And the concept of emotional eating, I just thought people just lacked willpower and discipline

to do it.

And so for me, going through that experience and humbling myself and having empathy

for those that struggle is really

where I started to create my brand and that's how I differentiated myself from, you know,

the other thousands of trainers out there was by doing fit to fit. Now, luckily, I got back to

...