231: Sculpt, Swipe, Repeat: The Fitness & Dating Guide for Modern Men
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Show Notes:
Welcome to “Sculpt, Swipe, Repeat: The Fitness & Dating Guide for Modern Men”! Dive headfirst into the unique intersection of fitness and dating with your host, Robbie, who’s been on an incredible body transformation journey himself. In each episode, we’re spicing up the world of fitness with captivating stories, expert insights, and actionable advice.
In today’s episode, we have the pleasure of introducing Eoin Dobbin Catto, a fitness coach who’s changing lives one rep at a time.
Get ready to unravel the surprising ties between your gym routine and love life, uncover the truths about calories, and discover how to properly work your arms, not just your ego. If you’re a modern man striving for a summer-ready six-pack and a dating game to match, this is your ultimate podcast playground.
Let’s get started!
02:27 – Robbie’s Transformation Journey: How Fitness Shapes Dating Life!
04:43 – Unveiling Eoin: Fitness Expert & Life-Changer!
07:24 – Is Getting in Shape the Ultimate Goal for Young Men? Robbie Deciphers Why!
10:33 – Summer’s at the Doorstep: Prepping up and the Declining Trend of Dating Apps!
10:33 – The Catalyst of Robbie’s Incredible Fitness Transformation!
19:27 – The Fitness Dilemma: Is it Harder to Gain Mass or Lose Fat?
21:14 – “Lack of Activity: The Modern Epidemic” – Eoin dissects how it’s making us overweight and indolent!
22:37 – Eoin’s Three-Point Fitness Focus: Areas to Watch Out For!
24:56 – Robbie’s Winning Weight Loss Strategy: “I Cut Down on Sugar and Bread”!
27:34 – A Lotto Winner’s Tale: The Surprising Connection to Your Weight Loss Goals!
29:03 – The Fuel Factor: Eoin Demystifies Calories!
29:42 – The Striking Similarity Between Bodybuilders and Hunger Strikers: Eoin Explains!
30:36 – The Social Experiment: What If You Stop Talking to Girls for 10 Years?
33:42 – The Fitness Face-off: Skinny Fat Runner VS Bodybuilder!
34:47 – Eyeing a Six-Pack by Summer? Eoin Reveals How!
52:40 – Eoin’s Breakfast Bypass: How Individualized Diet Plans Work!
56:02 – The Bulking Season Trap: “Smashing Pizzas and Chugging Milk!”
57:30 – “Are You Working Your Ego or Arms?” – The Proper Way to Lift Weights!
01:05:37 – Power Up Your Energy and Shape.
Link
Connect with Eoin at @eoindobbincatto on Instagram for a Free Training Program!
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Transcript
Eoin Dobbin Catto [00:00:00]:
See dudes, like, smashing big two liter drums of full fat milk and pizzas and bulk and bro.
Robbie Kramer [00:00:05]:
She just wanted to be friends because I was fat.
Eoin Dobbin Catto [00:00:08]:
You can very often put your business ahead of yourself at the expense of your health and your social life and all these other things.
Robbie Kramer [00:00:13]:
If you’re unfuckable because you’re that much overweight, I mean, good luck.
Eoin Dobbin Catto [00:00:17]:
The skinny underweight. Drinking too much, partying too much, not treating myself well. Robbie couldn’t eat Mexican food every single night when he wanted to lose 50 pounds, so there was some level of sacrifice. You did an incredible job. Did you do that on your own?
Robbie Kramer [00:00:32]:
Welcome to the Interconfidence podcast, where we bring you men’s dating and lifestyle advice that doesn’t suck. I’m your host, Robbie Kramer, a former collegiate golfer turned poker pro turned finance guy who became obsessed with learning about male female attraction and dynamics, and passionate about teaching men how to improve and optimize their love life. Tune in each week and we’ll bring you the latest and greatest strategies on how to get more dates, how to build a thriving social circle that brings the best men and women into your life, how to become a better networker, and how to design a lifestyle that makes all your buddies jealous. If you’re new to the show, I recommend you download my first Date Protocol. It’s the best piece of content I have. It’ll help you optimize your first date and subsequent dates. And I like to connect with my listeners personally, so if you want to grab a copy of that, please send me a direct message on Instagram. I’m at Robbie Kramer. Now let’s dive into this week’s content. Yo, guys, welcome back. Summer is coming. Or for some of you, summer is already here. I’m in La. I thought I was going to go to a nice climate when I escaped Ukraine from both the winter and the war, but it’s been raining cats and dogs and snowing here, so whatever. Fuck my life. We’ve got an amazing guest today. That’s owen dobbin. Owen, welcome to the show.
Eoin Dobbin Catto [00:01:47]:
Robbie, thank you so much for having me. Dude, it’s a pleasure.
Robbie Kramer [00:01:51]:
Yeah, man. And you are a fitness expert. You also recently joined our IC community, which I’m super stoked to have you both as a member and an amazing contributor to help us fatties hopefully get in shape. And I include myself in the fatty definition. I have a little bit of weight to lose. So I’m really excited to have you on the show today to talk about what guys can do to prepare for summer, how we can get in peak physical fitness, and just how we can kind of just feel better. Apply accountability to this area of our life, which is so important to give a quick background on my fitness journey and how it ties into dating. Because I know some of the guys who watch this are going to be like, oh, I’m good for fitness. I don’t need to, right? No, listen, because I think this plays a major role for me. It was a huge inner game thing. I was kind of like the chubby kid in middle school. And I remember I asked a girl out in 7th grade and she said, well, I didn’t even have the balls to ask her out. I asked her out via a friend. And the reaction I got through the friend was she just wants to be friends. And I made up a big story that she just wanted to be friends because I was fat. And looking back, that probably wasn’t true because of other factors, but that’s still the story I made up. And I held onto that story. So I didn’t ask another girl out until the end of my junior year of high school. So there was like a 7th grade till like 11th grade, like a four year period where I was just terrified of showing any sort of attraction or interest in a girl. And then those inner game issues lasted well through even when I started to get into dating and pickup. And I became a coach for another pickup company when I was about 24, 25 years old called Pickup 101. And it was finally by the time I was like 28 or 29, I was doing this stuff and I was improving. I was getting dates, but I still wasn’t getting the sort of quality of the women that I really wanted. And it wasn’t until I kind of worked on my huge inner game issue, which was around weight loss and was around how I looked and how I felt about how I looked that really things started to change for me. So if you’re listening this and you are in peak physical fitness and you’ve got a six pack and you feel great about yourself, then, hey, maybe there’s not a ton of value here, but we’ll see. But if you’re anything but that, which is like 99.9% of the population, I think we’re in for a treat. So anyways, Owen, introduce yourself. Tell us brief background and how did you get into your sort of journey of becoming a fitness expert and a coach and you’ve got a community kind of similar to mine as far as I know for sure.
Eoin Dobbin Catto [00:04:45]:
Robbie yeah, so much good stuff that you touched on there as well, which I’m sure we’ll touch on further into the podcast. But to give you the elevator pitch. Yeah. My name is Owen Dabbin. Funny enough, actually my full name is Owen Dabbin Cattle. And I had a funny little story that I told myself as well when I was younger that Cattle wasn’t a cool name. So I recently only started using my full name in the last few years. So just to jump on your point of little stories that we tell ourselves, that was a strange, funny one that I had told myself for years. I’m 28 years old, I’m Irish, and like you said, I’m an online health and fitness coach. I have a community similar to yours predominantly helping young adults around the world. Most of them are Irish people, but they are around the world to improve their physiques, their routines, their energy, to look and feel and perform at their best, but not at the expense of social life and the other stuff that they like to do. I also work with a handful of higher earners and entrepreneurs, which is like my kind of passion project. Just building routines and optimizing energy levels and getting them in peak physical shape so that they can scale their careers and businesses and essentially earn more money but also take back some time for themselves and their health and their fitness and live a more balanced life. Because I’m sure you can resonate as an entrepreneur, it can be difficult to put yourself ahead of your business and you can very often put your business ahead of yourself at the expense of your health and your social life and all these other things. Although I don’t think you struggled with social life, but in terms of health, it’s definitely an easy one. So similar to what you do. Like you mentioned, my kind of education and implementation is delivered via accountability, the community element and support, essentially giving people what they want. And my background was similar to yours in a way. It was seeking more confidence. But for me I was like the skinny underweight, drinking too much, partying too much, not treating myself well for I’d say the vast majority, actually all of my teenage years and my early twenty s. And then just realizing that, okay, I want to make something of myself, I want to get in shape. Then I got in shape and I was like, oh, I can get myself in shape. Okay, maybe I can make a business out of this. Maybe I can now try and scale that business and move online. And yeah, the first domino was getting in shape and it paved the way for the rest of the dominoes and yeah, here we are catching up. Yeah.
Robbie Kramer [00:07:25]:
I think getting in shape is one of the most important sort of life hurdles a young man probably should take on first, right? Because it’s really hard to start a business and grow a business. It’s not that easy to build a social circle and have an amazing dating life. All these things. There’s many variables involved. But in terms of getting in peak physical fitness, it’s really just you, right? And it’s all about being industrious, which means working really hard, I think, unless I butchered that definition. But what requires someone to get in shape is really fucking hard work. Because your diet has to be solid and you’ve got to exercise, right? And there’s no one who’s stopping you from doing that, right? Even if you have no gym, no money. You can do that in your own living room, right? And you see that actually at prison a lot. Like, guys go to prison, the first thing they do is like, well, what else can I do? I’m going to get fucking jacked, right? Maybe because they need to protect themselves, whatever. But if you can master your own body, that is such a platform to then use and say, okay, I’ve mastered this part, which is a lot of inner game stuff, right? Because to master your body requires all of these things to happen that stop you from being lazy, stop you from not having a plan, stop you from not being able to move forward. And then you can take those learnings and you can apply them to other areas that are more complicated, right? And I feel like if you look like a total fat schlub, no one’s going to respect you or take you seriously. When it comes to business stuff, I mean, you can kind of fake the funk there, and there’s many successful, really overweight people, but it’s certainly a handicap, right? And when it comes to dating, if you’re unfuckable because you’re that much overweight, I mean, good luck. You could learn every funny sort of tactics and strategy to meet women, and there’s really not going to matter if they’re repulsed by your look. I kind of put the cart before the horse by trying to learn dating and pickup before learning how to get myself in shape. And I wasted, I think, four or five years doing that. I think if I would have just started with like, all right, let’s lose the weight. And I had about 50 pounds to lose when I got into pickup. I was working in an office in San Diego. Gained a bunch of weight just from that because I wasn’t walking and golfing every day like, when I was in university. And then basically my life was just like, go out to bars, try to pick up girls, go to work, eat late night Mexican food, and I just got fatter and fatter. I gained weight very quickly with that routine. And then I read all the bullshit online, like, oh, it doesn’t matter how you look. You can do well. And like, sure, I got laid, but it certainly wasn’t nearly to the level that I could have. Plus, so I had all those inner game issues. I think a good place to start is the fact, like I said earlier, summer is coming. And I think a lot of guys have noticed that dating apps are becoming less popular, right? Like, in the winter, there’s a lot more girls on the dating apps. It’s a lot easier to go on dates. Like, the only thing to do in New York City during the winter is like, go on dates. That’s why it’s, like, a great place to improve your social skills in your dating life. But in the summer, people start hanging out with their friends, they go to pool parties, it becomes very social. So day game becomes a much better strategy when people are actually out walking around and if you’re just trying to fake the funk and do the online thing, you’ve drastically seen a lowering of leads. I think you’re a single guy. Maybe you can speak to that. Have you noticed that?
Eoin Dobbin Catto [00:11:29]:
Yeah, I have given up on their dating apps because it’s just not like you said, they’re kind of going out of fashion. And let’s be real, if you’ve got a six pack and you can put some topless photos on your Tinder profile, you’re going to get matches, you’re going to meet girls, but it’s not necessarily the people who you want to connect with. And I think to your point there as well, I think that it goes beyond just the six pack. Right? Because that’s obviously what people see. But it’s also like the character traits that you develop if you get yourself in shape, because it does take hard work, and it takes you shown up in the days that you don’t feel like it, and it takes that consistency. And it does take you, like, sacrificing certain things. Like Robbie couldn’t eat Mexican food every single night when he wanted to lose 50 pounds. So there was some level of sacrifice. And I think it’s those character traits and the skill set that you require or acquire from going through that kind of transformation that you can just then plug into building a business or plug into almost anything else in life. Those are really good traits and skills to have. And I think then, obviously, with the rise of online dating and through COVID and that kind of stuff, it was like the guys at the six pack were cleaning up. But I do feel that that is now dying out. And I do feel that, yeah, if you’re going to be at the pool party, you’re going to be in competition with the other guys who are at the pool party. And if there’s half of the guys who are in great shape and half of the guys who are not, it’s not to say that you can’t do well as the guy who’s out of shape, but you’re stacking the deck against you.
Robbie Kramer [00:13:23]:
I avoided pool parties like the plague. I remember when I lost weight. I’ll show you my fore and after this is from 2011, but the first thing I did after I lost weight was I went to Vegas and I went to a Vegas pool party. What’s that?
Eoin Dobbin Catto [00:13:42]:
I’ve been to one of those, too, back in the day. Yeah.
Robbie Kramer [00:13:46]:
Can you see this?
Eoin Dobbin Catto [00:13:49]:
Yes. Man, I’ve seen this transformation before. By the way, I don’t think I’ve ever congratulated you on it, but you did an incredible job. Did you do that on your own?
Robbie Kramer [00:13:59]:
No, I did not. Thank you, by the way. And I wish I was in this good of shape. Now, I mean, I’m almost in this good of shape. I probably weigh, I think here I’m 75 kilos. Now I’m 80. And after living in Europe so long, I’ve converted to the metric system. But like 180 pounds, I think. Here I’m like 175, and I’m five foot ten or 178 CM. But yeah. Do you think it’d be useful for me to kind of share what allowed me to get there for sure?
Eoin Dobbin Catto [00:14:33]:
Am I right in thinking there was a bet involved?
Robbie Kramer [00:14:36]:
There was a bet involved, and that’s the only thing that worked for me because I had tried every diet, tried the Atkins diet, low carb, you name it, I’d try it. And I would do what everyone kind of did, which was I’d get excited for the first few days. It would feel like this fun new thing. And then around the two week mark, it started feeling really hard. And then I would typically kind of be totally off the diet by the end of the month and probably gained a few pounds in the process. So my trend from age when I started really trying to lose weight, which is around probably the age of, like towards the end of college, my trend was upwards to the tune of like 50 or 60 pounds. Because I was normal in college. I wasn’t as skinny as I was in the ending in the after photo, but I wasn’t as fat as the fat fuck that you saw. That was slow weight gain from trying and failing at diets. And the only thing that worked for me was I had a buddy, and he was like, dude, we’re both fat. I’m going to go on this crazy weight loss bet, which was also a poker bet. He was like a professional poker player, and he did a prop bet proposition bet where saying, like, he had to beat this guy in basketball tennis, and he had to get to a certain weight loss or he was going to lose like $100,000. And I’m like, Fuck, that will work for me if I have that stick. They call it carrots and sticks. Either if you do something well, you get a carrot, or if you do something bad, you get a stick, you get beat. I think it’s like a donkey analogy. But I knew if I had that stick and I could lose money and an amount of money I couldn’t afford to lose, I’d lose the weight. Because I knew that would kind of get that accountability would work. So I’m like, okay, I’ll join that bet. I’m only going to bet 5000 because that was the amount of money I couldn’t afford to lose. But that’s what allowed me to lose. I lost the weight in 100 days. It was certainly helpful that we were kind of like living together and we were buddies, so he was kind of training me, and I was maybe like a couple of weeks behind on his journey. So I do want to give a lot of credit to his sort of mentorship and pushing. I think that was insanely big. But he was only around for the first month, the last two months, where I lost the remainder of that 60 pounds, I was on my own. And the bet, I had all the motivation from month one. And then the new habits, the workout habits, the eating habits, the diet, and then it was just kind of cruise control and the weight just kind of flew off. So I’m curious how my journey relates to what you typically see as best practices. Maybe we can do a couple of different case studies. Why don’t we? If you think that’s a good idea, take a guy who’s like maybe how fat? I was like 40 or 50 pounds overweight, who is close to being unfuckable, because at that weight, I was pretty close to unfuckable by any girl who is relatively cute. Right, and then maybe you take a guy who’s maybe at my level now, which is I’m in decent shape, but I’m not excited to take my shirt off, versus someone who like you, who you’re going to take off your shirt and people are going to be impressed. So I feel like maybe those two case studies might be helpful because I feel like most guys will kind of fall into one of those categories for sure.
Eoin Dobbin Catto [00:18:14]:
Yeah, there are two good categories as well because they kind of COVID everyone. You’re either completely unfit and out of shape and you need to make that first leg of the journey. Or the other thing that I see a lot of is people who are pretty fit, who’ve gone to the gym for years, but they’re missing like, that last 20% to have the wow factor. Right. So they’re always like, they look pretty good with a T shirt on, but they’re like, maybe a little bit disappointed when it comes to summer, and they don’t have the six pack, but they’re like fit, healthy guys, too. Totally. And I’ve been the guy who was underweight, and I’ve been the guy who was then in shape, so I’ve kind of gone through that journey. I haven’t gone through the losing a lot of weight, but it’s exactly the same process just in reverse, and I’ve done it with tons of clients. The reality is there’s a lot more people overweight than underweight. There’s actually more people die of obesity than starvation in the world these days, which is crazy, right? But 80% of the people who come to me and I would say come to most online coaches, it’s for losing body fat. And they’re probably in that first demographic, the people who have like, maybe 2030, 40 pounds to lose. So there’s a few.
Robbie Kramer [00:19:29]:
What do you see as harder? Someone who’s really skinny, like you were trying to gain mass or someone who’s fat trying to lose.
Eoin Dobbin Catto [00:19:40]:
I think it’s really individual, Robbie. Everyone is so individual. I can give you an example of one of my clients. I won’t give you his details, but he’s a guy who’s been in the gym for ages, and he works a stressful job, and he’s trying to grow and get bigger and put on muscle mass, but he works a stressful job, and when he gets stressed, some people stress eat, right? He does the opposite. When he gets stressed, he doesn’t have any hunger. He loses his hunger. So for him, it’s more difficult to gain weight, whereas somebody in exactly the same scenario as him may stress eat, and they may have the opposite effect of stress. So it’s really individual. Both can be challenging, for sure, and there’s even that middle ground in between of maintaining what you’ve got, which for me personally is actually the most challenging bit, because I work really well when I’m like, okay, I’m locked in, I’m doing this. And then it’s like, okay, now I’m going to maintain, and I get a little bit sloppy. And then two months later, I’m like, okay, I let myself go a little bit. And that’s happened to me numerous times. And my version of letting myself go, because it’s my job, but other people would say, you haven’t let yourself go, what are you talking about? But for me, it was like, I know that I slipped up a little bit, but for the people in question so most people will want to lose weight. And you made a good point earlier about when you put on the body weight and you mentioned that you’d stop golfing and you’d stop walking around as much. And that is one of the biggest factors at the moment. It’s just that people are not active enough. And we have sedentary jobs, we have laptop based jobs. Everything is so convenient. Press of a button, your Uber is here. Press of a button, your food is delivered. Not even to your building, to your door, right to your door. Everything is just at the touch of a button, even in terms of, like, going and walking and coming home with bags of groceries. For a lot of people, that doesn’t exist anymore. It’s delivered to your door on time at a certain day. So the first thing is that we’re not moving enough, generally speaking. And the second thing is that we’re eating a lot more and that we’re not having to go and work for that food. The two things, and this is really oversimplifying it, but the two things that count for anyone, no matter who you are, is you should probably move more and eat less. And that sounds so basic, and then you get into the intricacies of that. So say the guy, the first guy, for example, who’s overweight, hasn’t been training, hasn’t been in the gym. If you come and slam him with like, seven days of gym work, a week. He’s going to last about a week, and then he’s going to be like, no, this is not for me. It’s too much. So my process for working with clients like that is really there’s three areas to look at. We look at training, how often do you want to train? How often is actually realistic for you to go to the gym? And if that’s three days a week, and that’s what you would see as a big win, awesome. Let’s go every second day and have a day rest in between. And let’s build a program which you’re training all of your body parts. So lifting weights is obviously going to be the most important thing that you can do for building muscle and building a physique. The second thing is nutrition. So it’s like, okay, where are you falling down? And like you said, the knowledge is there. People know. It’s not like you have to look at a big triple cheeseburger or an apple and go, which one of these is healthier? People know, but it’s like a lot of it is emotional eating or just from being overly stressed, or it’s bad habits, or it’s just comfort. It’s like, this guy’s got a girlfriend. They chill out on a Saturday night, and they don’t go out to the bar, so they chill and get takeaway, and then that becomes a habit every Saturday night. So it’s really identifying what are the poor habits, what are the triggers that are making me eat the way that I’m eating, and then trying to deal with those and address them. And the other side of it is actually having some flexibility. Like, I ate ice cream every day last summer for, like, 97 days on the bounce and still stayed in shape, which is kind of ridiculous when people hear that, but it was like, 10% of my food for the day, and the rest of my food was pretty good. And I moved a lot and I exercised a lot. So it’s finding the kind of balance of, like, okay, what do you want? Do you want to eat out every Friday night? Because if you do well, then the rest of the week you’re going to have to eat a little bit less to go out and have your big meal out. Your chipotle on a Friday night, right, your chipotle date. So there’s a lot of different things to consider, and then it’s just really a case of, like, building a nutritional plan that works for someone as well. So, like, you also mentioned you tried all of the fad diets. Don’t eat this, don’t eat that. And when you actually lost the weight, did you just eat less of everything? I’m actually interested as to what you did diet wise.
Robbie Kramer [00:25:04]:
Yeah, so I cut all, like, bread and sugar and also tracked my calories, and it was a really aggressive plan because I had the bet and the looming thing and the idea of trying to do a longer, more lifestyle, sort of like a long diet that fit my lifestyle that actually felt a lot harder. And I was also in a place where I wasn’t really working, basically, I had, like, a girlfriend, but we were kind of on the fritz, and I was able to focus, like, 100% on fitness, which most people cannot. Literally, all I was doing every day was, like, golfing, playing ice hockey, going to the gym, meal prepping, and trying to win this bet. And I kind of put the rest of my life on hold. My business was kind of like on the fritz, and I was like, Fuck it, I’m not going to worry about it. But by the end of those 100 days, I had some credit card debt and I had some problems. My relationship ended, which was that was fine. I think it needed to end anyways. But if you look at the three big areas of life, which is your health, your wealth, and your relationships, if you focus too much on one and you let the other ones kind of fall out the window, well, you’re going to see a big uptick, but you’re also going to see some breakdowns. And that’s kind of what happened to me. So I don’t know if my journey was the healthiest or even replicable for other guys, but that’s what I did. And then the maintenance mode after that, that’s where I had to kind of tweak everything. And I agree that that can be the more challenging part because it’s like once you hit that goal and you celebrate, it’s so easy to just kind of slip back into old habits and gain all the weight back. I was looking at a stat the other day that said the participants on that show, The Biggest Loser, I think from one season to a few years later, every single person except for one had either gained all the weight back or gained more. And only one person out of, like, the 20 or 30 or whatever, they have actually kept the weight off, which is shocking, right?
Eoin Dobbin Catto [00:27:36]:
Yeah. And you know the other interesting stat that’s the same as that? It’s the lotto winner stat, where, like, ten years later, almost every lotto winner has blown all the money. And it’s exactly the same thing. They didn’t take the time to build the skills that they needed to keep the body weight off. And that’s really where it comes down to the longer term approach. Now, what you did can work, and it does work, but only if you have one special ingredient, which is essentially what me and you do for a living, part of what we do, and that’s accountability, because you will do it when there’s something at stake. You will do it when somebody else is going to be on your case saying, why did you not do that? Or when you feel you’re going to. Let somebody else down, or when you feel you’re going to lose a big chunk of money that you maybe don’t have, you’re going to do it. If the pain of not doing it is great enough, then you will do it. It’s why paid things work and free things don’t. Generally speaking, free things don’t work. You can give all of the information in the world to people, but very few people will actually action it because it’s not just the know how, it’s the implementation. Okay? So the know how and you mentioned calories there, and just I’m going to pull it back a little bit in case someone’s listening in. It doesn’t really understand. But calories is essentially just the fuel of the human body. It’s the very same as you put gas in your car. If there’s no gas in your car, then your car doesn’t go. However, if there’s no gas in the human body or no calories, you actually have stored calories, and that is your body fat. So when your fuel tank is empty, for want of a better kind of phrase, you’re going to start utilizing that stored body fat and any diet that.
Robbie Kramer [00:29:31]:
Basically what about the people that say, well, but you’re also going to use your muscle and then I’m going to become a skinny little twig?
Eoin Dobbin Catto [00:29:37]:
Yeah, well, if you do it right, you won’t, but if you do it wrong, for sure. So if you think about, and this is a really extreme example, but if you think of a hunger striker, right, that’s somebody who stops eating, full stop, and loses everything, body fat, muscle tissue, even their bones and stuff start to degenerate over a long enough time period, right? But if you look at someone who stands on a bodybuilding stage, they could have the same level body fat as somebody in their last week of life on a hunger strike. But they’re two completely different people, right? They’re completely different, even though the amount of body fat that they have in relation to the rest of them is the same. And the way that you preserve your muscle tissue is by lifting weights, heavy weights, like getting strong, because your muscles are only the human body is adaptable, right? Everything we do is adaptable. You talk to a thousand girls. Your body is so used to talking to girls, right? You’re adapted to being a social creature and talking to girls, right? If you stop doing that, if you don’t talk to anyone for ten years and you come back and you head to Europe, right, and you head to London and you try and chat up some chick, how is that going to go? Probably not so well, right? Because you’re going to lose the ability to do that. It’s exactly the same. The body just wants to keep you alive. And if you are not using your muscles, it’s going to say, why are we keeping these around? Why are we expending resources on keeping this here when there is no function and the body just wants to keep you alive in a long enough time frame and reproduce. Right. Keep your gene pool alive. So if you’re not using your muscle, well, that’s just a complete waste of tissue that your body is supporting, feeding where it could be doing something else. Right? So when you preserve your muscle mass, you need to actually use it. Like, that’s how you preserve it. You lift weights and you’ll see that bodybuilders. So a lot of bodybuilders, when they get to those low levels of body fat, they actually lose their ability to get an erection because their body has justified that. Okay. Because we lift weights so much, that’s our priority. That’s even more of a priority than reproduction. Right. Which is really interesting. Right?
Robbie Kramer [00:32:04]:
Shocking. Yeah, shocking.
Eoin Dobbin Catto [00:32:06]:
Yeah. And some guys can take like months to recover from it and then obviously, like, the use of steroids and stuff in bodybuilding as well can amplify that.
Robbie Kramer [00:32:15]:
And they probably get hooked on the little blue pills.
Eoin Dobbin Catto [00:32:19]:
Yeah, man. Look, everyone has their own choices to make and you do what you got to do. It’s not personally for me, but I know people who do it, and it can be done to an extent safely. As safe as, I guess, going out and partying heavy on the weekend, I don’t think there’s a huge difference. But at the end of the day, it comes down to like, if I want to maintain my muscle mass, I need to lift heavy weights and I need to maintain my strength. And that’s where the training comes in. So if you are the person who’s trying to lose body fat and you’re training three days a week, it’s important that you do the same thing those three days. So on a Monday, you do say, a full body workout, or Wednesday full body, Friday, full body, whatever. But then the next Monday you do Monday’s workout and you either do another rep or a little bit more weight or at least the same. It’s like you have to provide the same stimulus to keep the progress that you have. And then over time, the idea is that as you continue to get stronger, you can actually put on muscle in a dieting phase. It’s possible to finish a dieting phase with more muscle than you started. So it’s not like, okay, I’m going to lose my body fat and I’m going to lose all my muscle. If you do it wrong, if you do no weight training and you just walk around, you’re basically telling your body, we are a walking machine. We don’t need heavy muscle to be a walking machine. Right.
Robbie Kramer [00:33:44]:
That’s what you see with a lot of those people who try to lose weight by running marathons and they just become like these skinny fat.
Eoin Dobbin Catto [00:33:55]:
Look at anyone who’s a great runner. They’re small, they’re light, they’re skinny, they’re pretty lean, but they don’t have a lot of muscle mass. You look at somebody who is a bodybuilder, it’s the polar opposite because they’ve trained for something different. So when it comes down to body composition and how you look, the training is a huge part of the muscle mass that you keep with calories. Right? So as I was saying, that is your fuel and maintenance. All the term maintenance means is that you’re maintaining your body weight and you’re maintaining the number of calories. The number of energy coming in as is going out is the same. It’s at maintenance. And if you eat at maintenance and you lift weights, you will maintain your physique. If you eat a little bit less than you need, you’re going to start using up stored body fat. So for anyone now who’s like, I want to have a six pack by summer, you need to find a way to get yourself into a calorie deficit where you’re consuming less calories than you need and your body is going to start utilizing your body fat to make up the difference. Now this is where it’s like, okay, now this is the lifestyle thing versus just cutting everything out. What you did worked because you cut out like bread and sugar for a lot of people. They won’t be able to keep that up and they will do what you’ve done before where they do it for two weeks and then they bounce back and then they go through this cycle of stop, start, stop, start, stop, start, because they want it fast. They’re like, I need to just do it now. Monday I’m starting. But the reality is the amount of time bounced between stop, start, stop, start. If that had just been a consistent six or twelve month period, they would be in a way better place and they’d actually have the habits and the behaviors. Now there is a place to push things. So like, I have a client who’s just come on board with me and he’s done incredibly well with a sustainable approach in the first six weeks. And he’s done so well that we’re like, okay, let’s push it a little bit. Why not? Let’s pull the calories down, let’s see how you get on. We can always pull back up. But he’s aware that this is like what we’re going to do now is a little bit less sustainable. But it’s like we’re doing it for six weeks, we’re not doing it forever. And we can kind of move back up if we need. But there is a really important part of just like general walking and stuff as well because walking itself is not going to waste muscle mass. It’s just not giving your body the signal to put on muscle mass. So if you have those kind of three areas where it’s like my general activity, how much I move, your ice hockey, your golf, your activity. Like one thing that I program with all my clients is an active recovery day. And it’s different for every client because they have different interests. So it might be a my tie session, or it might be a golf session, or it might be a hike with friends. And I encourage people to tie that activity in with a social kind of thing as well, so that they’re not shutting themselves off from the world and they can actually do it with their friends and maybe get some other people on board. And then they’re getting that social accountability as well as having the accountability of me. So those are the three areas. Those are the three areas to tick, eat less food than you expend, but also you don’t want to eat so much less that you feel shit. Because what are the two main reasons diets fail? People feel like shit, they feel tired and they’re hungry. If you feel shit and you’re hungry, how long can you operate like that? So you need to find the balance where you’re eating less than you need, but not excessively less. And I think just if people are like, okay, but what does that mean? A really good rate of weight loss is anywhere between going to try and do this in pounds now, because you guys are I’m going to go metric. People can switch like two kilos a month, which sounds like such a small amount, but if you lose two kilos a month for six months, that’s twelve kilos. That’s considerable. And if it doesn’t feel that difficult and you pick up a lot of good habits along the way, then you’re in a great place. So like, the weighing scale is another one that people have like this terrible relationship with. But if you use it and just use it as a guide that you’re in the right direction and don’t beat yourself up when it fluctuates or goes up and down, it can be really helpful. Sorry, there’s a lot in there.
Robbie Kramer [00:38:23]:
No, that’s great. I actually want to tell you what my current plan is because I think it pretty much matches what you said and hear if you think there’s any holes in that plan. Because what I was doing probably for the last year and a half was I’d gain a little bit of weight because my tendency when I don’t have a strict sort of maintenance thing is I love pasta, I love desserts and that sort of thing. I love salty, savory foods. And then I’ll notice I’ll creep up a little bit in weight and then I’ll go back on the keto diet and I’m pretty adept to a keto diet. I can do it. I like it. And what I do like about the keto diet is you can well, I don’t know, maybe this is a misnomer, or maybe it’s because I’m also doing it with intermittent fasting. So I think my caloric deficit is happening when I’m on keto. But I’m eating like I’m crushing avocados. I’m eating a lot of fat. I think some days my caloric intake might be higher, but I think over the long run, even though I’m on keto, I’m definitely at a deficit. So basically what I was doing was like, eat like shit, do keto for a couple of months and just maintain, right? But now I’m to the point where I’ve just been on keto for like, three months and I feel like I’ve hit a plateau and I’m also getting sick of keto. And someone in the group actually posted a cool video and it was essentially similar to what you were saying, which is like, let’s do something that isn’t going to radically change your lifestyle. Right? Because I need to be social, right? I go out with friends and have a few drinks. Being on keto sucks because you can’t even really go out to restaurants because everything is so hardcore, especially if you’re dating, if you’re single and you’re going on dates with girls and you can’t drink or you can’t do normal social processes. I don’t expect any of my clients to follow that. I can do it because I’m married, right? But it needs to be something that’s a lot more lifestyle friendly. So what I’ve been doing is I think I’ve got a calorie counter I put in my tracker that I want to get to like, 170 pounds, so that’s lose ten pounds. And it’s got me on like, a losing one pound a week sort of deal or like that’s equivalent of two kilos per month. I think my maintenance caloric is between 2000 503,000 calories, so right now I’m at like, 1900 and I can eat whatever the fuck I want. I’m trying to stay away from processed garbage foods, and my wife and I cook all the time, so that’s relatively easy to do. But what I really like about this is it’s very easy. I don’t have to really limit what I’m doing. I don’t have to do hardcore keto. And I can simply just make sure I track my food when I get to the caloric allotment I’m done for the day. So that’s my plan. Also, I’m trying to add in weight lifting, which is a habit that I’ve had for on and off in the past. Like, I haven’t lifted weights probably in the last like, two or three months consistently. I’ve been golfing and kind of just doing that. But I agree, I need to kind of add that in to keep muscle mass. So do you see any holes in that strategy? Does that sound like a pretty good that sounds good.
Eoin Dobbin Catto [00:42:00]:
Yeah, man, for sure. When you go on the internet, there’s so much tribalism these days, like, everywhere, but especially in the nutritional world. Like, there’s the keto camp, there’s the vegan camp, there’s the carnivore camp, and honestly, I’m not in any corner. Any of them can work for the right person. Keto absolutely works for a lot of people, but I would say for the vast majority, it’s not really a feasible option for the reasons you mentioned, especially if you’re a guy who’s gone out dating socializing. It’s kind of hard to live on avocados and those types of foods and not be able to have a drink or not be able to go out and have pizza or these kind of like social norms that we like to do. I’m absolutely not against any diet, but just for me personally, I wouldn’t be able to do a keto diet, I wouldn’t be able to do a vegan diet, and I wouldn’t be happy doing them personally. And that’s the good news. You don’t need to tie yourself to a camp. And what you’ve described there is exactly what I would recommend. So like, if you’re about 500 calories under what you need, say your maintenance is around two and a half thousand and you’re at 1900, so that’s like 600. That’s fine. If you’re about 500 under what you need, that should I mean, give or take. Everyone’s a little bit different, but they say that a pound of fat is 3500 calories, right? So that would equate to a pound of fat a week because that’s 500 calories a day. You’re probably a little bit above that if you’re 600, but if you can do that consistently and you feel good and that’s one of the things I check in with my clients on each week. It’s like, of course we check pictures and we check like, body weight, but we also check rate your hunger out of ten. And if you were one being starving, ten being really satiated. If you’re like consistently a two and a three, you need to get more food in because you’re not going to be able to be hungry for twelve weeks. You might be able to be hungry for two weeks, but not for twelve. If you’re really shot with energy and you’re trying to pull calories down, it’s like you can’t keep burning the candle at both ends. So it’s kind of finding the spot. And if you tick off three weeks of 1900 calories and you feel good and your body weight is coming down and you still have that flexibility, then that’s absolutely perfect and what you can do as well. So there’s loads of strategies as well. And I know guys who are listening to this podcast might be thinking about, I want to get in shape, but I’m also going out on dates, I’m also meeting girls, I’m also trying to build my social circle, my social life, my social skills. It’s hard to do that without food and drink, right? It’s a big part of how we socialize. So really easy example here is like, say somebody who and most guys, most guys, if they’re walking 10,000 steps a day, gymming a few times a week, there’s very few guys who need to eat less than two and a half thousand calories to kind of maintain their body weight. Most guys are going to be able to eat that amount of food. So if you’re eating like, say, 500 calories less than that on average a day, that doesn’t mean that you actually have to eat that number of calories each day. It doesn’t mean that you have to eat, say, 2000 every day. And you alluded to this already with the keto diet. When you were losing weight, you were overeating some days, but the majority of the days you weren’t. So even the days where the calories were high, it’s like if I spend too much money two days out of the week, but I make more money in the other five. If I finish the week in the green, it’s all good. And it’s the same with your fat loss. So if you’re someone who goes out on a date, say every Thursday and every Sunday, right? Good dating days that are not clashing with weekend plans on Fridays and Saturdays. So if you’re a guy who goes on a date every Thursday and every Sunday, and you maybe go out and have some food and two or three drinks or whatever you do, you can simply just account for those as being higher days. So say your target is 2000 calories per day, seven days of the week. That’s 14,000 over the course of the week. So instead you can just count in Thursday and Sunday as 3000 calorie days. They’re higher calorie days. And then the remainder. I’m not going to do the maths because I’m going to butcher it. The math. You guys call it the math, don’t you?
Robbie Kramer [00:46:46]:
Math.
Eoin Dobbin Catto [00:46:47]:
Math. We call it math. Okay, so we got 3000 calories on Thursday, we got 3000 calories on Sunday. That’s 6000 total. Which means the other five days we’ve got 8000 to play with, right? And you divide that in and you find what’s right. Maybe you have an extra 500 on Thursday and an extra 500 on Sunday. And then that’s easy math, actually, because then there’s 1000 that you have to make up. So you take 200 off the other five days. It’s essentially a budget, right?
Robbie Kramer [00:47:21]:
I’m curious, what’s your take on intermittent fasting? And my experience with it is I have an app that tracks it. It’s very gamified, which is like the app will make you feel like you’re doing something hard and you get rewarded for it because it’s tracking the 24 hours clock and you see this fasting window going. And also, I mean, this is maybe bullshit, maybe not, but there’s some studies that show that between our twelve to 16 and 16 to 20, the fast, you’re like burning nothing but body fat, right? And then those feelings of hunger, it’s like you kind of feel like, oh, that’s my body eating the fat. So when I lost, I lost a little bit of weight about a year and a half ago, when I first started dating Maria, we were spending the winter in Mexico and it was just us. Like, we didn’t really have a whole lot of social plans. And it was a great place to kind of do a combination of Keto plus intermittent fasting, plus I made a bet with her where if I didn’t lose the weight, I owed her $5,000. Yeah, I ended up losing nine kilos doing Keto plus intermittent fasting plus the bet. Right, the accountability, all those three. And I lost the weight within like two and a half months. Just crushing Mexican food but not eating the tortillas, of course. And I think what allowed me to be in that caloric deficit was the intermittent fasting. And it was that kind of gamified process of it that I liked. And also I knew that if I indulged on those other days and we went out and partied, I could just fast for two hardcore fasting days on Monday or Tuesday, where I only ate in like a four hour window. So I found that to be suitable for my lifestyle and I kind of like adapted it to that. So any problems with that approach? Do you like that approach?
Eoin Dobbin Catto [00:49:22]:
I personally really like that approach. Yeah. I used to do 16 eight because it just suited me. So 16 hours window, and I would eat between like depending on I’ve done it a few different times, but maybe between 02:00 p.m. And 10:00 p.m. At night. So basically what that would look like would be I would just wake up in the morning and I just have a couple of coffees throughout the first few hours of the day, get my work done. I found it was really good for productivity because you just kind of do.
Robbie Kramer [00:49:52]:
The coffee have to be only black coffee? Like, I heard if you eat anything, then it fucks up the fast. So would you take like a cappuccino with a little bit of milk or would you just go straight black coffee?
Eoin Dobbin Catto [00:50:06]:
Yeah. So I’ve done both. So what’s actually happening with intermittent fasting and why it works well isn’t really the fact that you’re fasted, it’s more so the fact that you’re not eating, which I know sounds like it’s the same thing, right? But it’s more so if your eating window was 12 hours, the likelihood of you eating more is like three times higher than if your eating window is 4 hours. And the other thing is, when you’re fasted for 16 hours, you’re hungry, but your stomach hasn’t been used, so you can’t really come and hammer it with like a full day’s worth of calories. And it kind of means that when you do eat, you’re satisfied a little bit faster. I used to think that fasting is so good for gut health and this and there is studies that all prove that, but it’s like on more extended fasts, it’s like 30 hours, 36 hours, where you’re completely emptying your system of everything and it’s just like water and stuff. So what I would say is that you’re not going to do any damage to your fast by having a cup of coffee with a bit of milk or whatever, or like even a cappuccino. But maybe then you’re like, oh, but I taste the milk and I want food. And maybe mentally it will derail you a little bit, but in terms of why it works so well and a lot of entrepreneurs are big proponents of intermittent fasting, and it’s not surprising sorry.
Robbie Kramer [00:51:38]:
To cut you off. Just to add in, I’m right now at hour 15 of a fast. Like, I stopped eating at 630 last night and now it’s 09:30 A.m.. So maybe my math is wrong, but maybe I’m at 16 hours or no, 15, right? Nine plus twelve. What the fuck? I don’t know what I’m at. So no, I met yeah, I’m at 15 hours. Three. Three plus twelve is 15. Okay, there we go. But I feel good. I had a cup of coffee when I woke up and walked the dogs. And I always feel like around between the 14 to 18 hours mark of a fast, I have a lot of mental energy. Like, I feel sharp, I feel focused. And even if I go and work out during the end of a fast, I feel like I can actually lift more. I even tracked it when I was doing that, the diet I mentioned in Mexico, I could lift more weight towards the end of a fasting window than after a normal eating period, which I found really shocking.
Eoin Dobbin Catto [00:52:43]:
Yeah. And that’s interesting, man. And this is the other thing. I have some clients who fast and who skip breakfast, and I have some clients who would disown me as a coach if I asked them to skip breakfast. So, again, it comes to finding what works for the individual. Now, I am also a big believer that if those clients gave it a go and actually lasted long enough, that they would adapt. Because I bet for you, the first time you ever did a long fast, it was like, pretty weird and torturous. And now it’s just normal. Now. You’re used to it, it works well. It suits you. And for me, it always suited me because it was like a double barrel thing. It was like, well, I don’t even have to worry about breakfast. I don’t have to worry about food. I can wake up and I can get straight into my laptop. And what you mentioned there, that focus or being tuned in, is that’s your body going, hey, dude, we’re starving. Biologically, we need to eat, right? This is your biology telling you we need to eat. And you’re on the alert because your body notices that there’s something wrong. But your body doesn’t know that you’re doing a fast. It just knows that you haven’t eaten in 16 hours and it’s going, dude, if this happens for another ten days, you’re gone. Maybe not ten days. So all that stuff is so hardwired that you’re actually on the alert because your body thinks you should be out hunting for food, but you can then channel that into going to the gym or channel that into your work or channel that into whatever it is that’s important. So it comes down to context. What I wouldn’t do is prescribe intermittent fasting to somebody who’s, like, struggling with, say, emotional eating or, like, binge eating, because it can reinforce that. Restrict, restrict, restrict. Binge eat, restrict, restrict, restrict. So there’s caveats to all these things and it’s like, is this the right strategy for the person? For Robbie, this sounds like an awesome strategy for me, the same. I’m like, I can happily get stuck into a couple of cups of coffee and work and just forget about it, really, and then have that little mental challenge of, okay, kick another hour or two out here, go for a walk, take my mind off it. Whereas for other people, they would really be in their head about it and it would maybe reinforce that they would be binging. They might fast for four days and then sit in their house and eat everything for, like, three days. So it’s like being careful with how you use those powerful strategies. But I do think it’s a powerful strategy. I’m a fan.
Robbie Kramer [00:55:23]:
Cool. I appreciate the confirmation there. Makes me feel good. What about for the guy who was kind of more in your boat? Like, let’s say you’re a little bit underweight, you’re a bit embarrassed to take your shirt off because you feel like you’re just too skinny, right? Summer is also coming for you and you obviously need to put on muscle. So what’s the process there? Would you recommend kind of the flip side of what I’m talking about, where you’re going a little bit above your caloric, sort of maintenance, plus adding in, like a very specific sort of gym weightlifting component?
Eoin Dobbin Catto [00:56:05]:
For sure. Yeah. But there’s a slight difference in fat loss. The priority is the nutrition, because no one’s going to complain if they lose fat too fast, right? They lose body weight and fat too fast, who’s going to be upset about that? But on the flip side, if you’re trying to gain muscle mass, what you don’t want to do is just eat everything around you and get fat, because that can happen quite easily. And that’s also a trap I’ve fallen into where it’s like bulking season, bro, right? You’ve definitely got a bulking season meme somewhere like gaining season or bulking season, right? And see, dudes, like, smashing big two liter drums of full fat milk and pizzas, bulk and bro, right? But what happens is you just get fat and after two months or three months, you call off the bulk and you start cutting the body fat again because. You feel shit about yourself, you feel sluggish, you put on a lot of fat. So you do want to be in a slight surplus or have slightly more calories coming in. Again, probably like 500 more than you need, but you could even be like 300 more than you need. So if you can kind of figure out, well, look, I’ve been eating two and a half thousand calories for the last week or two, my body weight hasn’t moved. I can pretty confidently say that that’s my maintenance. I’m going to add like, 300 per day on top of that and then make sure that you’re lifting weights properly, because that’s the only lifting weights properly and working your muscles is the only way to give your body the signal to put on muscle. Like, you can eat perfectly, but if you don’t lift weights and it’s not just moving the weights from A to B, if people are like, well, how how do I lift weights properly? Some words that you can Google are tempo, control, contraction. If you Google those three words, tempo, control, contraction, and then just put weight lifting after them, that will explain some of the basics. It’s basically the speed that you’re actually moving the bar at. You’re, not just firing it out and using momentum. And you see dudes with, like, 40 pound dumbbells swinging their hips, and it looks like they’re kind of like trying to have it’s kind of like I don’t know, it’s like some sort of weird standing sexual maneuver that they’re doing as they curl the biceps up, right? Like the chicken dance. It’s like, dude, how much are you actually working your arms? And how much are you working your ego, right? Whereas dropping the weight down and taking the ten pound dumbbells and doing them super slowly so that your arms are burning is going to get you a much better result. So that’s the thing. Focus on your training.
Robbie Kramer [00:58:56]:
I had a guy, come on, who gave some advice on the podcast many, many episodes ago, which stuck with me, and he was like, if you can do one thing in the gym or two things, he said, squeeze the bar as hard as you can with whatever you’re doing, like the dumbbell or the bar. Go fast on the way up and really slow on the way down. If you don’t fuck that up, he’s like, mostly you’ll be okay. Would you agree with that?
Eoin Dobbin Catto [00:59:21]:
Yeah, for sure. And it’s because so let’s take the bench press, for example, because we’ve all been on the bench press. Every dude in the world who’s walked into a gym, it’s probably just gone. The bench press. I know how that’s supposed to kind of look, but when you press the bar off, right, and you’re lying in your back, if someone’s listening in, I’m showing Robbie that I’m lying on my back with my arms straight, and the bar is out in front of me. If I just drop the weight down to my chest, I’m doing zero work. Gravity is bringing that weight down anyway, whereas what your buddy said, who was on the podcast, is if you go super slow and you’ve got 60 pounds on the bar or whatever, 100 pounds or whatever the weight is, and you’re going, three, two, one, I use a three second count. He said super slow, I use a three second count. That’s my thing. To my clients. Resist gravity by 3 seconds every opportunity you can when you’re lifting weights. So with the bicep curl, it’s as you’re lowering the weight back down. And the reason for that is you can load your muscles a lot better on an eccentric. So imagine if you’re like holding yourself up in a chin up bar and you’ve got your chin over, you can lower yourself down, but you might be able to pull yourself up. But if you think about it, that’s actually the same movement, right?
Robbie Kramer [01:00:38]:
Right.
Eoin Dobbin Catto [01:00:39]:
So why can you only do it one way? Because we can handle more weight eccentrically. So if you just let gravity take that weight down, you’ve lost out on like 75% of the work the muscle could have done. You curl it up and you go all the way back down, up, and then you see people doing it. They take it even one step further where they curl the weight up, and then they let it fly down and back and build a bit of momentum and then swing it back up. So they’re basically just swinging it around. And then they leave the gym in a pool of sweat, and they’re like, Damn, bro, what a workout. And it’s like, dude, you got your heart rate up. You basically did like a standing dumbbell cardio workout.
Robbie Kramer [01:01:21]:
Dude, my dad does that. It’s so funny. He’s extremely well, what’s the word? He’s very committed, and he’s got a lot of what the fuck the word? When perseverance. Or he’ll go to the gym like four or five days a week, and he fasts every morning, but when he’s in the gym, he’s doing exactly what he described. He’s doing this when he’s doing what.
Eoin Dobbin Catto [01:01:51]:
Would you call this?
Robbie Kramer [01:01:52]:
Like a shoulder press. Yeah, right. And he’s going like this. I’m like, dad, you’re getting no benefit. You’re getting a cardio workout. Right? And he’s doing that a lot. But I always have to remind him, yeah.
Eoin Dobbin Catto [01:02:07]:
And look, you can’t know until someone has told you, you know what I mean? Especially the problem is when you go into a gym and you don’t know anything, you look around and you go, well, I’m going to look at the guys who are in good shape, and I’m going to do what they do. But unfortunately, and you will know this, genetics, some dude can go in and literally touch a dumbbell and start to grow muscles. And other dudes walk in there and train for five years and they look the same. There is a genetic component. Everyone can get better. But you look at some of the guys in the NBA, no matter how hard me and you train we’re never going to look like one of those dudes. You look at people like Arnie, right, everyone knows Arnie no matter how hard me and you train and how much juice we smash because trust me he did that too. We’re never going to get there because we’re just genetically not like him but we can all get better. But what happens is the people who are genetically gifted never have to figure this stuff out because they just touch a dumbbell and they grow anyway. So they can go in and do the chicken dance and do everything else. And you go in and you see them you’re like okay that dude is huge. He’s jacked. He looks like he knows what he’s doing. And then you start chicken dancing and then some other dude comes in and sees you doing it and sees him doing it and goes ah chicken dance. That must be the the secret game right? It’s a funny one.
Robbie Kramer [01:03:38]:
I like what you’re saying because I think the biggest sort of takeaway at least on my side and you’ve really helped me kind of understand and piece together some of these thoughts is that if you’re doing most of the stuff right, you’re going to succeed. There’s a sliding bar between accountability and how hardcore you want to be. If you want to be really hardcore you’re going to need a shitload of accountability. But if you’re going to be a long slow lifestyle, easy process then you might not need as much accountability. And I’ve always been such a hardcore accountability guy because that’s really what worked for me but I never tried sort of the strategy I’m trying now which is just do what you’re saying to do and lose weight over a very sustainable period of time. And I love that because it coincides with it just makes sense because I think I was too hardcore about it. I want to give a shout out to one of the guys in the group. I won’t use his name to embarrass him but we put him on some hardcore accountability and this was his before and after we put him on a bet and I think he lost. I don’t know how many kilos do you think or how many pounds this looks about 40 definitely dude. Yeah.
Eoin Dobbin Catto [01:05:01]:
I mean the tired from a photograph but yeah that’s a very impressive transformation. I think I know who that is too.
Robbie Kramer [01:05:07]:
Oh yeah. You know? Yeah good for him. The accountability definitely works and yeah I mean what would you say for someone who’s listening to this who maybe wants some accountability, wants some coaching, anything you can offer them. Obviously they can join the IC community. We’re both in there. We can help you out but for guys who are also maybe looking for more support or your program, where can guys find that and learn more about it?
Eoin Dobbin Catto [01:05:41]:
Yeah, for sure, ma’am. Well, look, anyone who wants to reach out firstly and just ask some questions and further understand that’s the first thing that I do with anyone is actually just understand where they’re currently at and where they want to go and actually if I’m the right person to help them. Because being the right person to help them and having the right approach is super, super important because sometimes someone can come and they’re like, look, dude, I want to do this. I want to smash trend, and I want to eat nothing but broccoli and chicken for the next X amount. I’m like, dude, I’m not your guy. So that’s kind of the first thing in terms of where I can be found. I’m going to have to spell my name, dude, because you know how it is. No one can spell my name.
Robbie Kramer [01:06:25]:
But if you I’ll just share my screen.
Eoin Dobbin Catto [01:06:28]:
Yeah, if you share my screen, you’re going to see me it’s own darbin cattle. E-O-I-N. Irish spelling of own darbin. D-O-B-B-I-N cattle. C-A-T-T-O There you go. Beautiful stuff. If anyone’s listening on Spotify, they can get it there too. But yeah, you’re going to see me all over Google anyway. Instagram is probably the first thing that comes up, so you can contact me there. And there’s a few, like YouTubes and podcasts and all sorts of stuff like that. So feel free to jump on there and check it out. I actually have a training as well for anyone who is anyone who’s in that bracket of high earner entrepreneur, someone who’s looking to build routines, optimize energy levels, and get into peak physical shape. There is a specific training for that that can be helpful for everyone, but particularly for people in that group. And I will have that linked in the link in my Instagram bio so you can go in there and check out the free training.
Robbie Kramer [01:07:32]:
This is your health and fitness page, right?
Eoin Dobbin Catto [01:07:35]:
Yeah, that’s the other page. I think you have the other one, too.
Robbie Kramer [01:07:38]:
Okay. I felt like an asshole because I was like, wait, I’m following you. But this was your other one?
Eoin Dobbin Catto [01:07:44]:
Yeah, I’ve had multiple Instagram pages over the years, so there’s always like there’s another one that I’m locked out of. I won’t say the name because it’ll just cause confusion, but it’s another fitness based one. But I managed to get myself locked out of it.
Robbie Kramer [01:08:00]:
Well, sorry for cutting you off there. What were you saying?
Eoin Dobbin Catto [01:08:05]:
Nothing majorly important.
Robbie Kramer [01:08:07]:
You’re telling about your program.
Eoin Dobbin Catto [01:08:11]:
There’s a free training there in terms of the program. There’s a few different programs that I offer, and I really cater to the person in question. So anyone who has any questions, just shoot me a message. Reach out obviously, if it’s anyone within the IC community, you have the direct line to me there anyway, so feel free to reach out and we might do some things together. Like we mentioned Robbie. So yeah, there is that free training on just optimizing energy levels, getting into peak physical shape, building routines for people who want to earn more money, take back time for themselves, but also live a kind of more balanced life in the process. There’s a free training via the link in my Instagram, so you can kind of go and check that out as well.
Robbie Kramer [01:08:52]:
Yeah. Again, for anyone listening, that’ll all be in the show notes as well, for sure.
Eoin Dobbin Catto [01:08:57]:
I don’t want to put people through the hardship of trying to spell my name.
Robbie Kramer [01:09:00]:
It’s hard enough to pronounce when you see it, you can’t even say it because it’s like, what?
Eoin Dobbin Catto [01:09:10]:
I honestly am so surprised when somebody so here’s a really funny one. I actually made friends with two Argentinian guys the other day who owned a restaurant in this city in Barcelona, or close to Barcelona. They’re really cool guys and they immediately got my name. Perfect. Two Argentinian? Yeah.
Robbie Kramer [01:09:28]:
Wow.
Eoin Dobbin Catto [01:09:29]:
Because they’re into rugby and there’s a famous rugby player called Own something and they’re actually like ex pro rugby players. So they immediately when I said the name, they were like, oh yeah. I was like, how does that make sense to you? I’m like, why are you not confused?
Robbie Kramer [01:09:46]:
That must have been a breath of fresh air for you. Finally, it’s like, finally someone didn’t butcher it.
Eoin Dobbin Catto [01:09:53]:
For sure.
Robbie Kramer [01:09:54]:
Well, dude, it’s been so great having you on and I appreciate all the amazing wisdom you’ve shared. So looking forward to more topics or more discussions like this within the community and doing like those weekly check ins or whatever we’re going to kick off in there.
Eoin Dobbin Catto [01:10:12]:
Yeah, man, for sure. Definitely. I think can I also say there’s so much value in your community just in terms of the accountability, but on various levels. I don’t know how much you actually talk about and put out there, but just on the different calls and the different elements of life, the areas and people with differing expertise and stuff, there’s insane value in that community. So if I can bring a little bit more, that would be brilliant.
Robbie Kramer [01:10:40]:
Thanks, man. I appreciate that feedback. And really the value is from guys like you, guys like Amir, who is like an amazing you were on the career confidence call yesterday. There’s a lot of really awesome dudes with a lot of valuable expertise and everyone’s just sharing their value and we’re all benefiting from it. So I’m just trying to get the right guys in there all the time. So it’s awesome to have you. You’ve been such an amazing contributor. You’ve only been in there for a couple of weeks, less than two weeks, so I’m excited to see where this goes.
Eoin Dobbin Catto [01:11:17]:
I’m glad I haven’t been kicked out yet. Thanks, Mik. Appreciate it.
Robbie Kramer [01:11:22]:
Yeah, man. And thanks, guys, for listening. We’ll see you next time. I hope you enjoyed this week’s episode. If you’re new to the show and digging our content, please leave us a five star review on itunes, Stitcher, YouTube, wherever you listen or watch. But if you’re not really digging it, go ahead. Just don’t leave us any review at all. That’d be great. If you’re feeling a little bit stuck or you just want to optimize and step up your game, we’ve opened up a few spots in our inner confidence community. We’re accepting applications. If you want to join our select group of men and experience the radical power of accountability, cross everything off your sexual bucket list and just become a beast who gets more stuff done. To learn more and apply, go to start innerconfidence.com.
