Million Pound Mission University: LearnTrueHealth.com/university
https://www.learntruehealth.com/university
Million Pound Mission University
https://www.learntruehealth.com/million-pound-mission-university
Adam Schaeuble, PHD (Previously Heavy Dude) is back with a very exciting project. Once again, Adam unleashes his superpower to create a community. He brings together experts online to educate us on the “right tool for the right job at the right time” in our quest for weight loss and true health. Tune in and find out more about Million Pound Mission University.
[00:00:14] Ashley James: I am so excited for today’s interview. We have back on the show, Adam Schaeuble. He earned his Ph.D. as a previously heavy dude. He originally was here with us in Episode 212, and it was so amazing to hear his story of personal transformation and of helping his entire town lose thousands of pounds and then go on his mission to help people all around the world lose a million pounds.
Man, Adam, you have such great traction going on. How’s it going?
[00:00:50] Adam Schaeuble: Ashley, first off, thank you so much for inviting me back. I have to tell you something really cool. A year and a half ago was when we did that first interview — I believe it’s September or October — that was the first big-audience interview. You’re the first person that said, “Yes, Adam, I want to share my platform with you and help you get your message out there.” It’s just been like rocket ship momentum ever since you said yes. So my friend, first off, thank you so much for helping propel this growth that I’m seeing.
[00:01:21] Ashley James: Absolutely. I love your mission. I believe in it. I’m definitely one of your fans. I love how you take a holistic approach to create a healthy body we want and help people to implement. Really, it’s all about whether rubber hits the road with you.
I definitely recommend listeners go back and check out Episode 212 where we dove into Adam’s story. But to reiterate, how many pounds did you help people lose in your town?
[00:01:57] Adam Schaeuble: I went on a journey where I went from 327 pounds down to sub 220s, so I lost over 100 pounds. People are starting to ask me to help them, and I found the boot camp in my hometown of Bloomington, Indiana, and we did thirty-five thousand pounds in five years and just rocked it. It’s awesome.
[00:02:15] Ashley James: There are great before-and-after pictures. But it’s more than just weight loss. You helped people to transform their lives mentally, emotionally, spiritually. This so resonates with our listeners because this podcast is about helping us to transform our whole lives so that we have physical health, emotional health, spiritual health, or energetic. We have better relationships.
If you’re trapped in a body that is unhealthy, and if you feel stuck in life with some excess weight, then the weight necessarily isn’t the root cause, but we have to get to the root cause by helping us to make these great lifestyle changes. I know that you love to focus on that.
One thing I’ve been impressed by is that you are an expert obviously in helping people to gain healthy weight. You’re a great personal trainer, motivational coach, and health coach, and you also love to bring in experts that help people in different areas.
You’re bringing in all these experts, much like this show. You’ve put together a program that I’m really impressed by, and I was so honored that you invited me to come to speak at your program. Can you tell us about the Million Pound Mission University?
[00:03:35] Adam Schaeuble: Yeah. Ashley, one of the concepts I’m working hard on is I talk to people every day, just like you do — people that are in the trenches trying to change their life. There is a lot of confusion going on around all the experts like us who go on podcasts and have podcasts.
I actually did a whole podcast about this I called “Overcoming Fitness Podcast Overwhelm.” This is a real condition. It’s going to be like texting thumb and stuff like that. This is going to be a condition moving forward in our society, where people have a goal.
Maybe they’re like, “I want to lose fifty pounds because that’s going to help me reclaim control of my health.” But they listen to one podcast on Monday. It’s more like a paleo-based podcast, and they start paleo on Monday. But then they hear the Weight Watchers podcast on Wednesday, and they switched to Weight Watchers, and then intermittent fasting on Friday, and they’re bouncing around full of confusion.
What adds to it is that a lot of these experts are arguing with each other back and forth over whose program is the best, “My program is better, and that program, if you do that thing, then you’re going to die of a heart attack for sure.” And so we’re bickering amongst each other as a lot of these experts. Right now, keto versus vegan is a big deal. People are really getting nasty about it.
It’s like we’re missing the point of the people that we’re trying to help. It’s not keto versus vegan. It’s keto, vegan, paleo, Weight Watchers, CrossFit, yoga, and whatever against being unhealthy. That’s the battle.
I know you’re of the same mindset. I am more of a, “Let’s find the right program of the right fit for this season of your transformation,” because I’m not Team Keto guy. I use the ketogenic diet when it makes sense to me, but I can also go vegan. I can also do a clean eating plan. I can do intermittent fasting. It’s the right tool for the right job at the right time, and that’s what I’m trying to promote with this educational event I put together called Million Pound Mission University.
We’re bringing in experts from all the different walks of the transformation game. We’ve got paleo experts. We’ve got Weight Watchers experts. We have anti-anxiety experts, neurolinguistic programming experts. We work on the mind. We work on the transformation protocol. We work on the different nutritional and physical options.
I just feel like I want to create a space where we can bring all these different experts to be experts and not competing against each other. It’s all towards that common good of let’s give people the tools that they can select from when it makes sense and then implement to reclaim control over their health, and that’s what it’s all about.
[00:06:24] Ashley James: I love it. Listeners can check out Adam’s Million Pound Mission University by going to learntruehealth.com/university. I’m going to make it easy for everyone to remember the URL. So learntruehealth.com/university, and of course, the links to everything that Adam does is going to be in the show notes of today’s podcast at learntruehealth.com.
Since you launched the university which was about a week ago, you have had some amazing feedback. I know you just started basically. You just launched it. You have a dozen or more experts in your university so far. As you’ve been doing these interviews with these experts, what lessons have you learned? Can you walk us through and teach us some things that you were just really taken aback by and excited by?
[00:07:16] Adam Schaeuble: I get freaked out with every interview. I’m so passionate about learning just like you. That’s why we’re such good friends, Ashley. We’re both very passionate about learning and then teaching people what we learn.
Right now, I’ve got eighteen lessons loaded up, and we’re adding more every single month. But somebody Alexa Schirm from the Simple Roots Radio podcast, she did a presentation about the effect of environmental stress on our hormones, body fat gain, weight loss, how those things impact us, as simple as whether we eat standing up or sitting down, and how that can impact our fat gain or fat loss. I started telling everybody. I’m like “Do not stand up. You need to be sitting down. Do not drive while you eat.” All these things. Just picking the brains of experts like that is amazing
And then you did some great work. I already have some great compliments on your topic when you talked about how to use NLP — neurolinguistic programming, which is a phrase that I love to say and not screw up — and how to combat anxiety with that. People are already taking this for a week, and I’ getting feedback on, “Dang, Adam, this really is working. This is making a difference.” We really focus on implementation.
Ashley, when I brought you on, I said, “This isn’t a podcast interview. This isn’t us talking about your life story and background.” We’ve done that. This is you going for thirty to forty-five minutes on a topic and just teach, give homework, and challenge them to implement this. You totally delivered. You had some great downloads and all that stuff. But again, this isn’t like a video version of podcasts. This is a real teaching and learning experience of the people that signed up. That’s what the goal is, and that’s the goal that we’re achieving so far. Great feedback. Implementation has been great in its first week, and I can’t wait to see what happens a month or six months down the road.
[00:09:27] Ashley James: Absolutely. Now, to take you back to what you just mentioned that you were excited by — I have a naturopath who goes down a checklist. Every time you go to see her, she gives a checklist of things to make sure you’re doing the foundations of health. I’ve talked about some of her foundations of health before. One thing she always makes sure, especially women, young mothers, that you’re not doing the eating while standing. So many mothers will eat their dinner while standing over the sink because they fed one kid, they’re about to feed the other kids, the husband just got home, and they’re sitting there shoving food in their mouth. I’ve caught myself doing that as I’m putting the leftovers away, eating while doing that. You’re standing and eating because “I didn’t get to sit down and have dinner. I was busy cooking, cleaning, and feeding everyone else,” and thinking, “I’m probably eating less standing up.” That little voice in my mind goes, “This is probably healthier. I’m not sitting down to have a meal, so I’m probably eating less. This is probably better to stand and eat and graze as we run through the house.”
No, it isn’t. Can you tell us a bit about why driving while eating, standing while eating, or eating at our desk, or eating in front of a TV going to negatively impact our hormones and our weight gain?
[00:10:56] Adam Schaeuble: The way Alexa described it to me is that basically, we’re igniting one of our two nervous system responses — our parasympathetic or the sympathetic. It’s that fight or flight, or the rest and digest. We want to be in rest and digest when we are eating, that way we can digest the food properly. It makes sense, right?
These all start to click when she described it this way. I’m like, “This makes sense.” When we are driving a car, 90% of the time, we’re in fight or flight because that is how we travel. That’s our basic primal instinct. To get from Point A to Point B, we use that fight or flight response.
If we’re sitting there shoving even healthy food, the calories will be shuttled off more towards fat storage because when we’re in fight or flight mode, our body is like, “We’re going to need those calories later for survival.” Instead of a relaxed state, sitting down, she even recommended not watching TV. Listening to something is better. Reading something is better, or just sitting and relaxing.
What I’ve been doing, I try to get myself in as relaxed of a state as possible right before I eat. I’ve been doing these mini meditation sessions, even if it’s two or three minutes long, to bring my heart rate down, center myself, and really put myself in relaxation mode, and then I eat my meal. Sometimes I listen to a podcast like Learn True Health with Ashley James. It seems like it’s making a difference from a digestive perspective. I don’t feel bloated after I eat, which is crazy. Just sitting or standing, the difference that makes, it’s unbelievable. The science makes sense to me.
[00:12:45] Ashley James: That reminds me to come back to as we grew up. Maybe you grew up in your household praying at the dinner table. Maybe you went to a friend’s house, and their family prayed at the dinner table. I lived at Kripalu for a little bit, which, I believe, is one of the largest yoga residential centers in the United States, and it’s in Berkshire, Massachusetts. I highly recommend going. It’s a total trip.
It houses about two hundred people at a time, and it was an old Jesuit seminary in the Berkshire, so it’s really beautiful. They have this huge dining hall. It’s all vegan, organic, wonderful and super delicious food. I’d look around, and people would be sitting there in silent meditation with their food, they’d be praying with their food, and sometimes they even give their food Reiki. Their hands are not touching their food, but more like a healing touch. The hands were hovering over their food as they were meditating for a few minutes, praying, and just centering themselves. I look around, and it’s like, “Oh, my gosh. This is so cool.” People were taking this time to be with their food and center themselves before they began to eat.
I’ve seen these military movies where they’re like, “Eat your food now and taste it later. Come on, soldiers.” That’s me. I’m like, “Go, go, go,” and then it’s gone and your brain doesn’t even have a chance to catch up with you, so you still feel hungry. I heard once it takes 20 minutes for the brain to recognize that we’ve had enough food, and so if you shove food in your mouth really fast, then you could be overeating for 20 minutes basically before your brain goes, “Whoa! Give way. We’ve got enough calories now. We’re fine.”Coming back to what you said about the stress response, I believe that when we’re in the fight or flight mode, our body is creating more insulin to fuel the muscles so that we can run away from the bear. If we’re eating while in that mode, then insulin is the hormone that helps us to create fat. When insulin is present, we are more likely to store energy as fat.
That’s very interesting. We need to get into that state where we’re in rest and digest mode, where we’re in the parasympathetic nervous system response of being calm and centered, taking some deep breaths, sometimes even chewing the food, putting the fork down, and pausing. That’s almost a ritual of self-love — to take that 30 minutes to eat our food for ourselves, listening to some music and being calm. It’s an activity that we can do to love ourselves.
I’ve had some people in the Learn True Health Facebook group; we talked about the importance of chewing food and what it does physiologically because none of us chew our food enough. There was someone who said it changed her digestion. She started chewing her food again. Chew it for ten, twenty, thirty times a bite, and it completely changed her digestion. I thought that was really neat — something as simple. We all know to do it, but do we do it?
[00:16:20] Adam Schaeuble: It comes back to that word — implementation.
[00:16:23] Ashley James: What’s another difference? You mentioned implementation. We come into your Million Pound Mission University. We learn from all these experts, but what’s going to help us implement what we learn, and what’s going to help us to figure out what path is best for us?
[00:16:47] Adam Schaeuble: One of my superpowers that I’ve discovered recently is that I am good at creating community. It now makes sense when I think back. This is what I did with my hometown. When we said we’ll lose thirty-five pounds, I created community, accountability, support, and implementation. I cultivated that environment.
I’ve done that with different online platforms. This is just that next one that I’m going to infuse and make it a bit different than the normal online summit that you would attend, where you get great information, you get entertained, but the implementation is very low, and I want to correct that.
We’re doing monthly round-table discussions via Zoom chat so that we can get people on there. I’m going to connect with people and go, “Which lesson resonated with you?” We’ll go through maybe, “It’s Ashley James,” maybe “It’s Sean Mulroney” — who knows what really connects. Then I’m going to go, “What is your first action step? What are you doing in line with this inspiration? How are you making progress in this? How can we get you in action heading towards that goal that you want to achieve?.” There will be some strategy. There will be some implementation.
The other cool thing is that all my professors — that’s what I’m calling my instructors, so Professor Ashley James — are invited to attend as well. These people that are getting hundreds of thousands of downloads, I’ve got eighteen of the top health podcasters in the world right now that are hard to reach. It’s not always super easy to reach somebody. Danny Vega has fifty thousand Instagram followers. If you send him an Instagram message, he may get it, he may not.
But if we bring him in, and you can talk to him in a small group — I’m keeping this at 25 people or less with the chats, and we’ll do multiple options per month — but connecting with your professors, connecting with each other, and then me as a ringleader of implementation, making sure that we are truly coming up with action steps out of these lessons, implementing those, and just checking in on a monthly basis to create that community. I think that’s the special sauce that comes with this event.
[00:18:59] Ashley James: Wonderful. Can you share any more tidbits that you’re excited to learn as you did your interviews?
[00:19:07] Adam Schaeuble: One of my buddies that I’ve interviewed for the podcast is Dov Baron. I keep on teasing him. He’s a motivational speaker, so I’m like, “Dov, I’m going to come up with these shirts that say #InDovWeTrust.”
[00:19:26] Ashley James: That’s interesting. I have a friend; his name was Dov — we pronounced it ‘Dove.’ It means bear in Yiddish. In Dov we trust — what does he specialize in?
[00:19:40] Adam Schaeuble: He specializes in helping people find their purpose. He’s a big business public speaker guru. I brought him in, and I gave him a very specific mission with his lesson. I said, “Dov, there are millions of people out there that know that they need to get healthier, and they want to get healthier, but they just don’t have that fire to get started. I need you to help them find the fire.”
He said, “I’m on it, mate.” He’s British. He always says when I try to do my impersonation, I sound Australian.
[00:20:16] Ashley James: Yeah, that was very Australian.
[00:20:20] Adam Schaeuble: [laughs] Dang it! Epic fail. So I turned him loose, and basically, he walked us through an experience of imagining that we are at our funeral. Two scenarios: everybody was there saying the things that we hope to hear about us, and then another scenario of people saying the things that we hope no one would ever say about us. He’s like, “If we have to take those two principles, that pain and pleasure principles, and use that to ignite the fire, the pleasure principle, that’s the thing that we are striving towards. That pain, that’s the thing that keeps us from quitting because we do not want people to say that about us.”
With him, he gives the example of somebody saying he was full of BS, or that he was a quitter, or that he was a sham as that pain principle as to why he has to keep impacting people. He has a goal he set out there to make a massive impact in the public speaking space, business space, and he won’t be denied because he knows on his final day, he does not want anybody to be able to say any of those negative things about him not being legitimate or being an impactful person and somebody that people can rely on to deliver great information.
He sure as hell did that.
He had me fired up. He just gets going. I’ve already had several people comment on just what a difference that made, to just think about it in those terms. He got emotional. He brought himself to tears talking about the disappointment that he would feel if somebody said all these negative things at his funeral. That is the type of emotion that we have to elicit to get our butt up off the couch and into motion, to sign up for a 6 a.m. boot camp class, or to have the willpower to avoid eating the things that we know we shouldn’t be eating. That was a super impactful one.
We had another great NLP presentation. It’s Matt Brauning. He’s got a great podcast as well. He did an exercise specific to cravings, which is another huge thing that we all deal with. He actually ran me through the NLP process with some visualization, and it’s great because it’s a video. One of the things I love to do, and you know this, is I love to make fun of myself.
I looked like a weirdo up there. My eyes were closed. I’m doing all the things they tell me to do, like visualizing pizza, sardines, and water. He had me flip-flopping the pictures and doing all these NLP stuff, and it’s just amazing. We’re getting some great response to that as well, mainly from people making fun of me from the video though.
[00:23:19] Ashley James: No, that’s great that he did some modalities work with you. Have you tested it? Since he did this, have you tried to be around pizza?
[00:23:30] Adam Schaeuble: Not yet. But just the–
[00:23:32] Ashley James: Thought of it?
[00:23:33] Adam Schaeuble: I could think about pizza, and my mouth starts to water. Now, it doesn’t. That’s possibly progress already.
[00:23:42] Ashley James: Absolutely. So you chose sardines and water as your ‘away from.’ The more repulsion you have with the item that you chose, the better. If you’re like, “I can take it or leave it,” that’s not enough repulsion. You need something that’s going to make you want to run and hang your head over a toilet. But, yes, it’s very effective. I’m glad he teaches the like to dislike for those who are like, “I’m very motivated, but I can’t let go of chocolate,” or “I can’t give up…” whatever the food it is that they can’t give up because they feel it has too strong of a hold on them.
My friend did potato chips. It was so funny that she chose food that would make her upchuck it. I think it was liver and onions. After the like to dislike, even hearing a crinkling of a bag that sounded like potato chips made her run to the waste bin.
[00:24:49] Adam Schaeuble: Oh, my gosh. It’s incredible.
[00:24:50] Ashley James: It calms down. That won’t be the reaction you have every time. It calms down, but it still becomes a complete “away from.” She was 100% addicted to potato chips — it’s been nine years, I don’t think she has been able to touch them.
My husband, the same thing. He was addicted to ice cream, and he was so repulsed by ice cream after like to dislike. He could not walk down the aisle at Albertsons where ice cream was for an entire year. That was ten years ago that he did that like to dislike, and now he can take or leave ice cream, but it doesn’t have a hold on him. That’s why it’s such a powerful tool to do these modalities work. I’m really happy that that’s part of the Million Pound Mission University for those who want to be able to have control instead of feeling the food is controlling them.
[00:25:48] Adam Schaeuble: I got to mention one more presentation. It’s rocking people’s worlds. I have my friend Sean Mulroney come in from The Obesity Revolution. If you guys have never heard Sean tell a story, this guy is in the fight for his life literally, like every day fighting with obesity. He gave a lecture on mental obesity, which is overcoming the obese mind and him being able to flip the switch — as high as almost 800 pounds, and now he’s down in 600s. He’s inspiring other people.
He’s got this little tribe of people that he works out with in St. Louis. I visited him a few months back. It’s incredible, the battle that he’s going through, but his process hat helped him flip that switch of feeling sorry for himself, feeling like the world was all against him, a lot of projection, a lot of blame to owning a situation at almost 800 pounds, taking control and ownership over his health, and taking active steps. He’s got so much going on with fluid retention and swelling. He had 100 pounds of water in one of his legs. That’s how bad his swelling is.
Just an incredible story, extremely inspirational. That’s another one that brings a lot of people to tears. Not everybody needs to lose hundreds of pounds, but we all deal with that mindset switch that needs to be flipped to reclaim control of our health. Whatever level or whatever extreme you’re at, lectures like that are going to make a big difference.
[00:27:31] Ashley James: Absolutely. I’m excited to watch that. I can’t wait to jump into the Million Pound Mission University and check that out. That is awesome. That happened to my dad. He was morbidly obese for many years. After my mom died, he just became so depressed, losing the love of his life, and then something happened. I guess we were watching a TV show about weight loss surgery, and a little light switch clicked in his mind.
He said to me, “I can just tell my brain that I’ve had the surgery. Let’s skip the surgery part, and I’m just going to tell myself that my stomach is the size of a golf ball.” He persistently did that for over a year. He chose healthy foods. I couldn’t believe it. He went from bingeing massive amounts of foods because he was trying to fill the void inside him. He would get upset at me if I served him too much food. I cooked him an egg and asparagus, and he’s like, “That’s not the size of a golf ball. Don’t you get it? My stomach is now the size of a golf ball,” and he did it. He went all the way back down to — I’ve never seen him at that healthy of a weight. I didn’t recognize him.
That was interesting to see. When the mindset does shift, that’s where everything starts because from your mindset comes to your actions, and from your actions come your results.
I know it’s just new. You launched it just over a week ago. Tell me some of the feedback that people have been giving you — that your students have been giving you so far.
[00:29:21] Adam Schaeuble: People are super excited about two main things. You go to the website, you go to the link that Ashley talked about, and you’re going to see all these cool names, these awesome topics, but the impact of the lessons, you really feel. And, Ashley, you can testify to this, I was very specific about this isn’t a broad brush session. It’s like you’re giving a TED talk. You got somebody you need to implement, or you need to impact, and you have to give implementable action steps. People are feeling like, “I can tell that you hold their feet to the fire to give actionable homework.” I’m like, “You’re a professor. You got to give some homework.” They’re really enjoying that.
Mainly, people that are jumping in are podcast listeners. Podcasts, a lot of times they’re entertaining, and we get inspired, but those that follow through that action behind the message isn’t always there, and this is just totally different. So people are enjoying that, and everybody is super psyched. We’re doing our first round-table discussion in a couple of weeks, and they’re just pumped up. People are diving into those sign-up spots to get in there, interact with some of their heroes, but also a lot of the fellow members are starting to interact, and I think that we’re going to create some nice accountability and connection there, and people are just super excited.
It’s almost like you’re doing a study group or office hour sessions. You get to talk about the lessons that you learned, and we’re going to share a lot of stories of how things are impacting us so far. That’s why I didn’t want to do one of the round-tables the first week. I want people to be able to implement a few weeks and start to feel the impact, and we’ll be able to share those stories in a couple of weeks.
[00:31:13] Ashley James: Excellent. You have helped people lose thirty-five thousand pounds — even more than that. In your town, you have helped people single-handedly. You were working with people with individual and also in groups, but you have face-to-face time with people in person have helped that people lose that much weight. So thirty-five thousand pounds, and you said it was in five years?
[00:31:44] Adam Schaeuble: Yes.
[00:31:45] Ashley James: That is incredible. Do you bring your experience and the actionable steps that you used to help those people lose weight? Do you bring that to the Million Pound Mission University as well?
[00:32:01] Adam Schaeuble: I’m dripping my content. I want the spotlight to be on you guys, but I’m also putting my stuff in there. I put in a whole lecture about how to escape the black hole of fitness doom. That was the topic that we talked about the very first time that you interviewed on your show.
I did a big lecture on that with some actionable steps. We’re going to drip a lot of that content in each month to give people new things to take actions on.
People are asking all the time, “How did you get all these people to lose all this weight? How do you help people with Million Pound Mission and all that?” One of the things that I feel works is I’ve walked that path that a lot of people are walking, whether they’re frustrated about their health and ready to make a change. I realized that they feel like they’re out of control, and they’re willing to put in work. They’re willing to put in the effort. They just don’t know which direction to walk.
I try my best to provide clarity and saying, “Here’s the path. Here’s where you’re at now. Here’s where we want to get to, and here are the action steps that we can take.” And now, the good part is, I’ve got a whole lot of energy, and hopefully you guys can feel that coming through your earbuds right now. But I’ve got a ton of energy, and I’d tell people, “Borrow my energy until you build up your momentum.”
Eventually, you’re going to have to be able to match energy with me, so that’s something to give you a goal to shoot for, but you can borrow my energy, enthusiasm, and motivation to kickstart this whole thing when you plug into things like the university here, and we get your momentum going.
Eventually, you’re matching energy with me, and then you’re just way above and beyond excited about where you’re going, and that momentum is yours. That is the gift that I want to give everybody, that feeling that you’re in control of your health and you’ve got momentum on your side. That’s why I do everything that I do, Ashley.
[00:33:58] Ashley James: I love it. Those questions that pop in and out of my head is, all those people have lost weight following you. Were they on the same diet, the same program, they’re all doing CrossFit, they’re all eating paleo, or was everyone doing their program, and you were helping them to stay focused?
[00:34:21] Adam Schaeuble: A little bit of both. With my hometown, it’s a little bit different because I own a gym and I’d be able to control their fitness environment. But with their nutrition, we develop a lot of different modalities, from vegetarian/vegan to clean eating, to strict paleo, gluten-free, keto — all that. Again, as I talked about earlier, it’s the right tool for the right job. If we need a hammer to pound a nail, I’m not going to use a screwdriver.
That’s where there’s a lot of confusion, where all these Team Keto, Team Vegan, and Team CrossFit, they battle back and forth who is the smartest and who is the best. I feel like that’s a waste of air. It doesn’t matter if that’s not the right tool for the job. With our home base, I had people come in morbidly obese, and I had people come in that were former pro athletes, and they were in the same class working out together. We just modify up or down, whether it’s a bodyweight class, a yoga class, an equipment station, kettlebell rotation type of thing, but we had modified a little bit there.
Now that we’re transitioning more to online programming and things like Million Pound Mission University and my online communities, that has been more about me almost — I try to get you to visualize. Like when you need help with your investments, you go maybe to a financial adviser, and they manage your investment portfolio.
I’m kind of a fitness portfolio manager, like a transformation strategist basically. I’m like, “What are you struggling with? Here are my tools to address that situation. Let’s hone in on the right diet program, the right fitness regimen, and let’s hold you accountable to that on March 4.” I like to operate in 28-day cycles. We take a stair step every 28 days, and we readjust as we need to, shift around the portfolio a little bit if we need to. But it’s very broad brush, and it’s more about adding in accountability, adding in community, and always just making sure that we operate from a rock-solid battle plan, and that’s how we help people reclaim control of their health.
[00:36:41] Ashley James: I like it. How do you help people to figure out what diet is best for them?
[00:36:48] Adam Schaeuble: I’ve got a little tool. I’ll send it to you. I call it the Nutrition Plan Filter, where it’s a process in the coaching, but you can use it as a standalone tool as well. But you go through a process of thinking, “What have I done in the past?” We can’t discount something that we did. Let’s say you did Weight Watchers; you lost 30 pounds, but you gained it all back. You can’t just shove that, “I gained it all back.” It may not have been the “diet” that was the issue; it may have been something else, like you’re on vacation and then never got back to it, which is not the diet’s fault.
We look at which nutritional protocols they’ve had success with. We make a note of those. Then we list all the nutritional protocols that we have interest in. Maybe you hear a lot about keto, and you want to learn more about that, so we’ll add to the list. Then we work through a process of crossing things off, starting different things, and we work our way down to where we say, “This is probably the best fit right now.” That’s what we work with, but that’s a little pressure situation.
I truly believe that we should not put pressure on ourselves like if you decide going vegan is the best nutrition plan for the next 28 days, it’s not like ‘vegan or bust’ or “If I don’t do this, then I’m a failure because I’ve tried everything else.” This is the mindset a lot of people have, and we need to extinguish that.
I tell people, “We’re going to experiment with this for 28 days. We’re going to take great notes, and we’re going to do the best that we can to execute this nutritional protocol.” At the end of the 28 days, let’s see what happens. Maybe we lose 5 pounds; maybe we gain 5 pounds; maybe nothing happens; maybe we feel great; maybe we feel terrible. But we’ll never know until we implement strategically for 28 days and then assess the results. It’s an experiment; there’s no pass/fail. Let’s see what happens. “Let’s absorb what is useful,” as Bruce Lee says, and we move forward from there. That’s the overarching approach that I take.
[00:38:54] Ashley James: I like it. During those 28 days, at the beginning you do body measurements, go on a scale, and then you don’t touch the scale for 28 days? How do you have them know it’s working?
[00:39:10] Adam Schaeuble: It depends as far as the measurement stuff. I do have a lot of people that are kind of addicted to the scales. A lot of people weigh themselves every day, and we’ll actually make adjustments to their nutrition plan every day, depending what the scale tells them, which is like, “We don’t want to do that, people.”
If I’m dealing with that sort of person, I’ll say, “Just weigh in once a week. Just weigh in on Sundays. Here’s the protocol. Let’s do our check-in. We’ll do some pictures. We’ll do some measurements. We’ll do the scale.” I like once every two weeks. So every 14 days, we do a little checkpoint, and the speech that I give people is, “Let’s say once every two weeks, I was going to have you do a push-up test to see how many push-ups you could do in a minute. Let’s see at Day 14, you do your push-up test, and you do 20 push-ups, would you change what you’re doing with your nutrition depending on how that test went?”
No. That will be ridiculous.
Then I say, “Then we’re not going to make any shifts when you step on the scale either.” We’re not going to make any dramatic, “I’m down five pounds, but I expected to be down eight pounds because my friend lost eight pounds.” We’re not going to change anything around based off of what that scale tells us either. It’s just a data point. That’s how we have to view it.
At the end of the 28 days, we might shift something, but it’s not because the scale told me something. It’s all of the data collected together as a whole. We assess how we’re feeling, how we’re sleeping, how’s our digestion, how’s our stress levels, how’s our body fat, how’s our physical performance, what’s the weight doing, what are the measurements doing, how are the pictures doing. It’s all of that stuff instead of one, single, very hard to be consistent with data point.
If we’re going to think about that clearly also, if we are retaining water, the scale is almost irrelevant. If we’re sore, if we have sodium, our hormonal cycles — that can shift that scale five, six, seven, eight pounds in a day. That’s the data point that most people are judging themselves on. That’s crazy.
I’m big on that holistic approach of, “Let’s look at all of the data, have that experimental mindset, and we’ll just take this 28-day stair steps at a time, low pressure, but being consistent with moving forward and keeping positive momentum.”
[00:41:42] Ashley James: I love it. Is this something that you’re going to teach moving forward at Million Pound Mission University? Are you going to hands-on help these students to do these, to implement this ongoing-ly?
[00:41:54] Adam Schaeuble: Yeah. It’s a continuing month-to-month program, so my goal is to keep adding new lessons, but also, like you just said, implementing my processes in there so that people are being taught how to set up these 28-day cycles. It’s like my battle pan workbook, how to use tools like the nutrition filter, and going forward, how to implement those if it makes sense.
But again, those monthly round-tables are going to be me being the ringleader of implementation and accountability. A lot of my clients, they kind of joke, and they tell me that they’re paying me to keep them out of their head. So if I hear them beating themselves up, if they’re not proud — especially me, I’m 6’3″; I’m 225 pounds. I’m not a small person, and they see me as one of those TV drill sergeant type people, where they think like, “He’s gonna yell at me. He’s gonna all be mean.” Honestly, the only time I ever really get fired up and yell at somebody” is if they’re not being proud enough of themselves.
I’ve got people that are doing tremendous, but they’re in their head, “Ugh, I’ve only lost thirty pounds, Adam, but my goal is fifty.” I’m like, “You’ve lost freaking thirty pounds. This is incredible. You have to be proud of that and not be caught in that ‘I’m not there yet’ trap that we all do.”
I’m constantly telling people to turn around, look at where you started from, measure that distance — not the distance between where you stand and where you want to be — that will keep you moving forward. We’ve talked about that before. A big part of my job description is pulling people out of their head, or maybe even retracting their head from their butt region every once in a while.
It’s what I do. It’s what I’m good at. If people want to buy into those methods and if they’re willing to take a little bit of pressure off themselves, we can get some pretty amazing results, and I feel like my catalog results in my hometown, the online clients, really speaks for itself.
[00:44:10] Ashley James: Absolutely. I like that you do this 28-day increments where you increase it. You’re speaking my language. I’ll go to the gym with the end goal in mind, but that’s three years from now. I’ll go for three days in a row and then it’s like, “Ugh, nothing is working.” I’m totally in my head.
Whereas if I went to the gym for the next 28 days, that’s the only thing I’m focusing on, and then I get to reassess and then go, “Great. Now, I’m going to add more reps and maybe another kettlebell,” or whatever but just sticking with something. It’s a long enough of a time that you start to get the habit of it and start to get momentum. But it’s short enough of a time that they don’t get lost. They don’t get bored.
I’ve done this. Like you said, one day I’m on Weight Watchers; next day I’m vegan; the next day I’m paleo. I’ve totally done that. I’ve done over thirty-five diets, and that was a few years ago. I stopped counting. But obviously since doing the podcast, I get inspired by every guest, and I would like to try their diet.
I went to become a health coach. I went to the Institue of Vinegar of Nutrition. We learned a hundred different dietary theories in 365 days, so you bet, I tried every single diet. Not for more personal experience to understand, but you get to the point where it’s a little dizzying, where we stop listening to the intuition of our body because we’re hearing all these other experts. “This person lost weight with keto.” “This person lost weight with vegan.” “This person lost weight with Atkins.”
It seems like opposing diets. One scientist says, “We should eat no meat because the meat will kill us. We’ll die.” This other scientist says, “Look at all these proof that we have to eat meat or else we’re going to die.” What are we going to do?
And so I love that you bring clarity to the situation, as I do as well love to bring clarity for people to help them own their success, get out of their head, be able to focus on food is nutrition, that it’s a form of self-love. The food is our medicine, and I like that you have this “stick with something for 28 days before you judge it.” Give it enough time to do its work, and then that reassessment once a month is great too. It helps us to stay accountable. That’s wonderful.
Adam, I would join Million Pound Mission University just for your expertise. We need to do a little bit of “Come to Ashley” talk here because this is the same as the person who beats himself up for only losing thirty pounds. You need to do a little self-checking. Your info is so awesome that all these other speakers are like icing on the cake, but I would come to your Million Pound Mission University just for you.
You help people lose thirty-five thousand pounds; that is absolutely outstanding. You know what you’re talking about, and I love that you were so heart-focused, that you are so in love with every single person that is there to help. As I said, I’m a big fan of the work you do, and I’m excited to see how many lives we can help transform through the Million Pound Mission University.
I can’t wait to have you back on the show like a year from now where we can do a recap and see how many people have had transformations because of what you’ve put together.
So listeners can go to learntruehealth.com/university to check out the Million Pound Mission University. Definitely enroll, jump in. Adam made it incredibly affordable, and it’s all about results-based stuff, so it’s mindset stuff. It’s emotional/mental health; definitely a lot of physical health. But you’re also going to get Adam, which I think, you are the most important resource that Million Pound Mission University offers because of your level of experience and the amount of care that you bring to every single person.
Can you tell us what you would like us to walk away today? What lesson or idea would you like all of us to leave this episode with today?
[00:49:22] Adam Schaeuble: I’ve mentioned a few times, and first, thank you so much for what you just said. That makes my day. I borrowed some of your energy to launch my podcast career, so that means a lot coming from you, my friend.
We’ve talked about implementation. You guys have heard us say something today that you would not be listening to this interview still if you didn’t have something that was getting you going. An hour in, people aren’t still tuned in. I’m not going to listen to an hour-long podcast to hear people’s voices. So if you’re still with us, something fired you up. Something has you plugged in. Hone in on that thing, and say, “In the next 24 hours, what is one simple action step that I can take to implement?”
Visualize this stack of dominoes a mile long. The first domino is the smallest one. The next one is twice the size. The next is twice that size because that’s how dominoes work. I just learned that’s the physics of it. If you push over a domino, that domino can knock over a domino twice its size. That’s how we build momentum.
What is the tiniest domino that you need to flick over to create momentum in the right direction to achieve that thing that you’ve gotten fired up about today? Within the next 24 hours, if you guys want to ramp up the personal accountability on this, most of you are on your phone listening to this right now. Set an alarm 24 hours from now on your phone — on iPhone, you can add some text in there. I want the text to say, “I am worth it.” That alarm goes off in 24 hours. I want you to do something because you are worth it.
[00:51:12] Ashley James: I love it. For Androids, we can go into the calendar and add a little appointment — “I’m worth it.” I’m going to tell everyone around me to do so. There’s this meme that keeps circulating Facebook. I laughed till I cry every time I see this meme. It’s just text. A woman is asking a salesperson, “How many loads of laundry can this dining room table hold?” The man says, “Ma’am, this is a dining room table.” She goes, “Yes, what’s the point?” It’s because many of us use our dining room table to hold things that aren’t food.
We’ve been Marie Kondo-ing our house. If you haven’t heard of Marie Kondo, go to Netflix, watch the entire season of Tidying Up. Our house is crazy right now. We’ve done 12 or 15 loads of ‘to donate’ to the thrift store. We’re rocking it.
However, the downside is I have let everything under the sun pile up on our dining room table, so we stopped eating at the table. Now, we’re eating at random places in the house, like me standing up by the sink. This has been a recent development. I’m worth it. Today, I’m going to clear up the dining room table. We’re going to get back to eating at the table again.
It’s funny. I’ve told the listeners this made a huge difference to the health of our whole family when we started eating at the dining room table — it really did — and it got disrupted. I went unconscious there, and now I get to come back. I’m going to clear up that dining room table. We’re going to stop eating standing up or by the computer. We’re going to start eating again at the dining room table.
So thank you, Adam, for helping us to choose something that we want to transform in the next 24 hours, like that little domino that is going to make a huge impact as it starts to topple over the bigger dominoes until our life is completely transformed.
Adam, it’s been a pleasure having you on the show again. Can’t wait to have you back about a year from now for you to tell us the amazing impact that the Million Pound Mission University has had in the lives of all its students. In five years, you were able to help your town lose thirty-five thousand pounds. I can’t wait now that you’ve been unleashed on the internet. You don’t have the constraints of a geographical location now. You have the entire world. So watch out, world. Here come’s Adam and the Million Pound Mission University.
Listeners, please go to learntruehealth.com/university and check it out, and follow Adam on Instagram. He does lots of these live — almost daily. I see you all the time with blue blocking glasses. Adam is a role model for me. He’s right in the blue-blocking glasses because he’s like, “I don’t care what I look like. My melatonin production is not getting inhibited by this being on a screen at night.” Very cool — he’s got blue-blocking shades, and he does these awesome live events on Facebook and Instagram. You can ask him all kinds of questions.
How can listeners follow you, Adam? Is it Million Pound Mission? How do they follow you on Instagram and Facebook?
[00:54:45] Adam Schaeuble: The best place, especially my live stuff, number one is Instagram @millionpoundmission. That is my jam. I’m a little bit addicted to Instagram for sure, especially from a podcasting perspective. And then Facebook, I’ve got a redirect to my Facebook group. It’s a free Facebook community, but I go live in there a lot. If you go to DefeatTheCheat.com, that will opt you in to check out my Facebook community, and that’s where I hang out. The two places I love to be.
[00:55:20] Ashley James: Awesome. Adam, we’ll see you in the Million Pound Mission University, and we’ll see you live on Instagram. Thank you so much for coming here today. It was such a pleasure.
[00:55:29] Adam Schaeuble: Thanks, Ashley. I appreciate it so much, and again, everybody, if you have not done this yet, please go on iTunes, leave Ashley a glowing 5-star review and mention this episode, and I greatly appreciate that.
[00:55:43] Ashley James: Are you into optimizing your health? Are you looking to get the best supplements at the lowest price? For high-quality supplements and to talk to someone about what supplements are best for you, go to takeyoursupplements.com, and one of our fantastic true health coaches will help you pick out the right supplements for you that are the highest quality and the best price. That’s takeyoursupplements.com. Be sure to ask about free shipping and our awesome referral program.
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