Adam Bornstein: Ditching Diet Culture, Mindset Changes, and Expanding Your Comfort Zone

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Adam Bornstein
Ditching Diet Culture, Mindset Changes, and Expanding Your Comfort Zone

Adam Bornstein is a New York Times bestselling author who is rewriting the rules of nutrition and fitness. He is an award-winning journalist and the founder of Born Fitness. The former Men’s Health fitness and nutrition editor and editorial director of Livestrong.com has seen a lot of trends come and go, and then something became clear: diet plans are designed to make you screw up. He wants to change that with his latest book, You Can’t Screw this Up, released in May 2023.

Adam is an old school legend in the health and fitness industry. We love that he is working to simplify complex behavior and his new book helps people ditch diet culture and build better habits with actionable advice. Adam also writes and produces Arnold Schwarzenegger’s daily newsletter and we get to hear about what goes into that enormous undertaking.

For more info about Adam, check out his website, follow him on Instagram, and definitely sign up for Arnold’s Pump Club.

Points of interest in the episode: 

06:50  Adam’s background – researcher, Men’s Health, Livestrong
08:30  Adam left Livestrong to do his own thing and now works with everyone from LeBron to Arnold Schwarzenegger
10:09  Working with Arnold
16:20  Arnold’s newsletter, Pump Club
21:30  Daily content creation
25:36  Know your audience
26:26  Kelly and Adam came up in the muscle magazine era of fitness information;  Tudor Bompa; Donald Chu
29:08  Cutting through the noise
30:55  Adam broke his back twice – and the PT changed the trajectory of his life
33:30  Why Adam’s wrote his newest book, You Can’t Screw This Up
35:10  The 3 Cs: Cost, Convenience, and Complexity
35:45  Tim Ferriss likes to pose the question “What would it look like if this were easy?”
36:39  Often mindset is what stands in the way of a sustainable diet
37:00  What is takes to be healthy is not what we’ve been told, i.e. restrictive diets
44:59  The average person feels anxiety 7 times every time they prepare or eat a meal
47:33  You can have the thing you love and build healthier habits around it
47:59  Discomfort vs. expanding your comfort zone
50:06  People conflate suffering with health
52:00  Learning how to eat at restaurants which doesn’t have to blow your diet
56:25  Eating slowly
62:30  The +1 mentality
72:00  Adam’s socials

Full Transcript

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