Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: In this episode, we react to a discussion about the most common misconceptions about nutrition and health. And later on, we take a look at some recent findings that suggest that wearables like Fitbit and Apple Watch may make it more likely for people to stick to their workouts.
Hello, welcome to the Go Like I See it podcast podcast. I'm James Keys and joining me today is a man whose strongest takes cannot be contained by your speaker box. Dunde Ogolana. Dunde, you ready to put on your bow tie and show them how you do it today?
[00:00:44] Speaker B: Yeah, man, you put a lot of pressure on me for people that are listening to us for the first time.
[00:00:48] Speaker A: So let's see if I step up.
[00:00:50] Speaker B: To the plate and.
[00:00:52] Speaker A: All right, let's see, man.
[00:00:53] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:00:53] Speaker A: God, I got to put the pressure on you, man. You thrive under pressure. So that's what I'm trying to do.
[00:00:57] Speaker B: Yeah, man. Well, and I'll say this for the audience that can see us on YouTube. I'm wearing a hat because I'm having a bad hair day. So I apologize as a middle aged man for wearing a baseball cap on a show.
[00:01:10] Speaker A: You don't feel professional enough to be a podcaster.
[00:01:14] Speaker B: Yeah, I do have a two tone collared shirt on to make up for that shortfall.
[00:01:19] Speaker A: All right, all right. Now before we get started, if you enjoy the show, I ask that you subscribe and like the show on YouTube or your podcast app. Doing so really helps the show out. Now recording on January 6, 2026 and Tonde, we saw a recent piece in CNBC which attempted to knock down what the author, Harvard trained oncologist Ezekiel Emanuel, believed to be the six biggest myths in nutrition that many people still believe. Briefly, the myths he's knocking down were that all snacking is bad. People need to eat more protein. Fiber supplements work as well as whole foods. Low fat dairy is always better. All fats are bad, and a person can exercise off calories. So those are the six. So of those six, you know which of the biggest six biggest nutrition lies, as even as they put it in the article, stands out to you the most?
[00:02:05] Speaker B: I would say snacking.
That all snacking is bad because.
[00:02:10] Speaker A: So that he's saying that that's a lie, that all snacking is not bad. And so why does that one stand out to you?
[00:02:17] Speaker B: Just because of the different things that we've been taught, I'd say through our culture and from the media and all that stuff over recent decades. I mean, you know, I've intermittent fasting and certain things like that led me to believe that snacking and things like that in between meals may not be that productive. And then the other thing I think is he does a good job at that section of the article. And that's why it stuck out to me. Differentiating the idea of snacking on ultra processed stuff like potato chips and things like that versus whole foods. And in this case, I don't mean whole foods like given a promotion to the grocery store. I mean foods that have not been processed. So things like nuts, berries, bananas, stuff like that. So the point I'm making is that once I read it and looked at snacking in that way, like, because it's funny, when I was reading this article in preparation, I was actually eating pistachios. So it was one of those where I was like, yeah, the thing he says that nuts have certain natural fats in them that are healthy.
So it was just a reminder that, yeah, I'm better off snacking on these pistachios than I would be on the lay's potato chips that are in my cupboard as well. So it's the idea of snacking not being bad. But again, what are we actually putting in our bodies? That's why that one stuck out to me.
[00:03:36] Speaker A: Well, yeah, because it basically is saying that because the.
Because the snacking has been oftentimes associated with ultra processed, quote unquote snack foods, that if snacking was. Was centered around nuts and fruits and not sweetened nuts and sweetened dried fruit, like in their more natural state, minus any roasting or something like that, then the taboo of snacking would not even exist in the first place.
I found the one that was the most interesting to me though, to be the one about all fats are bad. Because that's been kind of like we've. In our life, you know, we're Both in our 40s, we've seen this arc, you know, like to the extent of. I remember when we were in my 20s and they're coming up with substitute fats, you know, olestra and you know, all this other stuff where it's like, hey, this is a fat you can eat and your body won't digest it and it'll just run through your body and it's giving people diarrhea, but they're feeling good, they're like, hey, man, I'm not getting any of this fat. And it always struck me as a little bit extreme, you know, because it's like, well, that seems that all fats are bad. Would seem to be, it seems, is the kind of thing that's an oversimplification that it's like, hey, we might be missing something there or. But this battle still persists, you know, in terms of we look at being overweight as a bad thing. And what's overweight is, okay, well, you have too much fat. So it's like, oh, well, if I'm eating fat, then I'll put on fat. It makes kind of surface level sense. But when you go back further, when you look at, you know, kind of these, these macronutrients and so forth and how each one has a role and a purpose, then it makes more sense. And so in the same way, what you're saying with the snack foods as far as, okay, well, the idea maybe all snacks are bad is an oversimplification. It's like, okay, well, it depends on what you're snacking on. Well, the fat thing is kind of the same thing that's being attacked there is saying, okay, well, not all fats are bad, but certain types of fats are really bad for you and will be producing weight gain and other types are health promoting. And then. But kind of in that same mode, it's like, well, maybe our issue isn't just the fats, but it's also the ultra processing, the trans fats, which. Or what he's saying is like the ultra processing and the sugars and stuff which will actually your body will use to make fat inside of you, you know, versus whether you ate the fat or not. So a lot of these seem to come from kind of an oversimplification that existed, you know, kind of a rule of thumb that then it's more context, more information. It's like, well, actually that's not 100% true, but those rule of thumbs tend to be maybe easy to follow or not easy to follow in practice, but easy to conceive, easy to understand. And, and so they persist. And so that's kind of. It's along the same kind of lines.
[00:06:12] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I think what you said, what stands out to me is the word artificial. And obviously I can't help but make a connection in my brain to the modern, what we think of as artificial intelligence.
[00:06:25] Speaker A: Oh my God.
[00:06:26] Speaker B: And the idea that our culture. No, but that's where I'm going somewhere with this, which is our culture.
I don't know when this happened in the American story, probably Post World War II, with some of the industrialization and the ability to do things quicker. So I would say like the idea of a microwave that instead of making a meal at home, that take Might take someone two to three hours to cook and prepare and all that.
Now you can give people by the 1960s and 70s, either a quote unquote TV dinner which is already made and just stick it in the oven or a microwave and you could have your meal ready in 15 to 30 minutes or less. That allowed us to become more productive and spend more time at work and do certain things like that.
[00:07:08] Speaker A: But what, it's American way, man. That's what I'm saying.
Yeah.
[00:07:14] Speaker B: It's about productivity.
[00:07:15] Speaker A: So.
[00:07:15] Speaker B: So it made us more productive in certain ways, but it's totally anti productive from our health experience. You know, the idea of the type of food that we're eating. And, and I guess that's what I'm getting at with the idea of snacking and highly processed foods, things like that versus whole foods. And one of the, one of the things I found interesting in the article was they had a study, they cited that I think they said they fed the test group of people. One had whole foods only for two weeks snacking on and one had ultra processed foods only, but they took in this exact same amount of calories. So hypothetically, if they took in 10,000 calories over that two weeks from both.
[00:07:53] Speaker A: Sides from those sources.
[00:07:56] Speaker B: Yeah. And in two weeks the ones that did the ultra process gained two extra pounds of weight than the ones who were eating the whole foods. And I found that fascinating thinking in only a two week period. There's that level of change in the human body.
[00:08:10] Speaker A: And remember we did the show on how ultra processed foods change how your brain works. Because that's what I'm talking about is like those people wanted more food when they consumed the same amount of calories from snack foods of ultra processed versus the same amount of calories from whole foods. The people who ate the snack food ultra processed stuff, they were hungrier when it came to eating other stuff, but.
Oh, go ahead.
[00:08:33] Speaker B: Yeah, no, that just to finish off. That's why it got me thinking like about artificial. And not to go on a totally different discussion here, but that's why I started thinking about artificial intelligence. Like what are we not thinking about as a society thinking as we run to artificial intelligence? Yeah, like delegating intelligence to some other entity because it's better for me, I'm more productive. Because ChatGPT helps me answer a complicated question faster.
It's kind of like the microwave versus cooking a full meal.
[00:09:02] Speaker A: And I'll go beyond just productivity. A lot of it is also convenience.
A lot of it is also just being able to distribute Food, you go before the microwave and you have like the introduction of canned foods, you know, and how that allowed, you know, whether it be World War II or whether it be just distributing a large amount of food and calories that's not spoiling, it's not going bad over a large space. So you can end up with. You go from a billion to 8 billion over 100 years or whatever it'll be, or 120 years. It allows you to feed a lot more people. But what we gave up, so to speak, was health. And that reminded me of when we. Remember when we did the book Sapiens and it talked about how the agricultural revolution basically traded the ability to have many more people for having healthier people. Because agricultural societies where. Because they were eating these grains, they were eating them all the time, they were just less healthy from a. And less physically capable than. And they had other problems, bat problems and stuff like that first came up after the agricultural revolution, after the introduction of that versus the hunters and gatherers, which, you know, had better longevity, not just live longer, lived healthier when they were living longer. So it's like these trades of these, these trades that we make as humans as far as whether you, like you said to be able to work more or just to be more convenient or. And then you're pointing out with artificial intelligence just to think less.
These trades that we make. A lot of times it goes back to. I mean, you appreciate this as a financial services guy. It goes back to the idea there's no free lunch. You know, everything that you do has costs and. Or trade offs. The other one I wanted to touch on with you real quick though was the. You can't work off. You can't exercise off excess calories.
Because I know that you and I both, I know you, you know, you're very diligent with your workout. And we're gonna talk about that in our second part of it of today's show. But and then myself also, you know, just something that we both, you know, are interested in to continue in the workout piece. But that's kind of one of those things I know from. From earlier was like, okay, well, I'll get a good workout in and then I'll go to the all you can eat buffet.
And then it's all good because I ate a bunch first.
But your reaction to that one in particular, that just that I guess. Were you surprised that that's still a myth? You know, like. Because even, you know, you understand when you work out, you burn 300, maybe 400 calories or, you know, 200 calories or whatever. But when you eat like a hamburger is way more than just one, is way more than that. So your thought, I wanted to get your specific thoughts on that and because you know, like, that's not necessarily the purpose of the exercise. While exercise has a lot of benefits, burning off extra calories is not necessarily how it's gonna work for you.
[00:11:42] Speaker B: Yeah, no, it's, I think that's true and I think that's part of, that's why this stuff is complex. And I can appreciate that most of us in our society, you know, it's almost impossible to understand all this because unless you really get into nutrition and how the body works and how it burns calories and what different types of inputs help it burn or what type of different. There's different types of calories, right? There's the empty calories versus this and that. So then it's, then it's, that's what I'm saying. Then it's, it's a lot harder to grapple with these concepts because it, it, you know, and this is not to say people are dumb or anything. It's just like we naturally as humans like to flatten kind of nuanced things because it makes it a lot easier just to comprehend it. So the, the simple math equation in our mind sometimes is, well, if I go jog, you know, for 10 miles or I go lift weights or I do something, If I burn 500 or 800 calories in that workout, then I can afford to eat 500 calories.
And you know, if without all the nuances you could be looking at going to the snack machine and getting, you know, a Cinnabon or something like that, and if it says it has 300 calories and in your mind you're thinking, okay, well I'm still net positive on my calorie burn, but that type of calories is probably going to do way more damage to you long term. Not just from a weight thing, but also things like cancer, all that kind of stuff, versus if you had 300 calories of leafy green vegetables or you.
[00:13:16] Speaker A: Know.
[00:13:18] Speaker B: Well, you know, the grass fed, non hormone injected, you know, piece of steak or something like that. So that's why I think a lot of this is complex, is because it just requires a certain level of education and subject knowledge. As you enter the door about this.
[00:13:36] Speaker A: Topic, I'd say you're correct, but I would go a little further and I think that what the issue is that there is a lack of translation. The body speaks A different language than what we think in. We think in our human languages and we think in our organizations as far as food groups and all this other stuff. The body speaks in the language of hormones. And so, yes, like you, you eating this Cinnabon, you have the calorie load to deal with, but you also have what that's going to do, what, what kind of signaling is that going to do for as far as your body's hormones? When you work out, when you exercise, there's different types of exercise and there's different types of hormone responses that you get from that. And, and this is, you know, getting into also as far as what you eat, as far as all fat, why all fats aren't bad, or why different types of fats or different types of calories, sugars and stuff like that affects you a different way. And it's because when there was this whole calorie in, calorie out paradigm that only that was, that was what people said was all that there was, it failed to understand, okay, well, this will do this to your insulin hormone, or this will do this to your cortisol, or this will do this, all these different hormones. If we actually had, if we had the ability to understand that a little bit more, and we do to some degree, you can understand when I work out, for example, when I lift weights and stuff like that, and I talked to, you know, my family about this everything. Like, there's one thing about the resistance as far as, oh, okay, yeah, I want to get stronger, stuff like that. But actually what I'm trying to do actually is make sure that I trigger the right hormone signaling. Like, I want my body to respond in this certain way. So how do I get my body to respond in a certain way was like, I got to get my hormones to my body's, how my hormones, how I communicate with my body. So if I want. And so working out is one there. But then also what you eat, when you eat it, you know, you eat something super sugary or something like that late at night, shoot your insulin up at night, that's like the worst thing possible as far as, you know, your body managing itself, because that's telling your body one signal, hey, we need to load up on energy because something's about to happen. And then you go to sleep, your body's like, what am I going to do with all this energy? I got to put all this energy away, store it. How's it stored in fat? And so the body language, you know, is oftentimes something that, because we don't think of that stuff kind of intuitively, you know, you can learn about it. But that's where that disconnect is that you're talking about is like we just, we're not thinking in terms of how, how what I'm doing is signaling to my body. We're thinking of it in terms of, okay, well I, I'll do this. And then, then I've already done one thing, so I'm all good. So any last thoughts before we wrap this, wrap this one up?
[00:15:59] Speaker B: Yeah, it's interesting because as you're talking, the idea of holistic comes to mind. And the idea, I think we've seen this in medicine. You know, the holistic doctor is someone who is, who is trying to take account for all the things. Let's say you're talking about that and, and versus, and I, and I'm not criticizing, you know, our medical thing. I understand that the necessity for specialists, you know, cardiologists and neurologists and all that. But I think that the way that our system has dealt with people in the healthcare has been too much of the. Well, this thing over here is just on its own and not recognizing, not.
[00:16:35] Speaker A: Looking at, and how they all touch.
[00:16:38] Speaker B: Each other in a sense. And so like with me with my heart issues in recent years, learning that my liver producing cholesterol is really what's dealing with what's causing the plaques in my arteries, which makes it harder for my heart to pump blood and oxygen around my body. So what, what I think is really a cardiovascular issue is actually an issue with my liver and further.
[00:17:01] Speaker A: But you can go a step further and say, well, why is my liver doing that?
[00:17:06] Speaker B: Yeah, well, part of my reason was drinking brown liquor. So there's. Yeah, so that's what I mean is it's. But it's a holistic look. So me drinking alcohol at a certain pace created all these other issues that led to me having a heart attack when I was 46. So that's, that's an interesting example of how all of this stuff affects other stuff. And I think that because we, I think it's kind of like we look at the world like, because everything is about culture. So we are. Come from the culture of the industrial age, right. The last 150 years. So we look at everything still kind of like mechanical.
[00:17:42] Speaker A: Well, and also drilling down for expertise as opposed to getting a big picture, which is a cultural kind of view, which you can make a lot of progress and stuff by drilling down more and more expertise, more and more expertise, more and more in a specific area. You can build a nuclear bomb but you, it also, you lose something with that type of focus, you forget that.
[00:18:02] Speaker B: You'Re drilling down on still affects something way over here. Yeah, that you know, so, and I.
[00:18:07] Speaker A: Know there's been a lot with this just I'll add this before we leave where this like with sports and athletes and so forth and you know, like the, the thought of the isolation like oh well this, this, this muscle is messed up. So we got to just treat, treat this muscle. And there was oftentimes a neglect of okay, well hey man, if something's wrong on your left foot, then you might end up causing a problem somewhere else because you're going to compensate for that and then you're going to end up with something wrong with your right foot or you're going to end up with something else going on. And so I think with sports the idea that these things are related and one thing going wrong or you doing one thing wrong here could cause something else to cascade. Is there also, you know, is how we're starting to have more of an awakening we in our society as far as how these things interrelate. And so you know, I commend this oncologist as far as trying to get this stuff out there because it is attacking kind of these flatter paradigms that have existed and just saying hey, like this stuff is, it doesn't have to be overly complex but maybe the, the, the, the way that we're looking at it, the kind of approach that we're taking on this stuff has led us into some, some corners, into some narrow areas that aren't serving our, our health outcomes overall. And you know that that's, that's part of the continual discovery process because maybe you do got to get more specialized knowledge for the, you then to be able to step back and say actually we need to take a more holistic look with our specialized knowledge. So but I think we can wrap this up.
[00:19:32] Speaker B: So after all that I'm going to go to ChatGPT and ask it what it thinks about our conversation.
[00:19:38] Speaker A: So I'm sure it'll encourage the artificial how amazing it was. But we'll wrap this part up. We'll have a second part of our discussion today and we look forward to talking with you then.
All right, Tunday, I want to jump right into our second part of our discussion. Briefly, we saw in an article in Conversation, the website, the Conversation that laid out some research that suggests that wearable fitness trackers, in whatever form, whether it be the smartwatches or the dedicated fitness trackers wearing those and the interfaces that they have and what they do can help people stick to their workouts significantly. Like three times as many people are three times as likely to stick to them or seven times as likely to stick to them and so forth with kind of the programs that are built into there. What do you, you know, what do you think of this, of these studies or the study that particularly that was cited there, or the studies in general about fitness trackers being, you know, people more likely to stick at their work with their workouts? Is this just marketing, you know, on the sneak for people to buy fitness trackers, or do you think, you know, there's something to this?
[00:20:42] Speaker B: I was going to give you a straight answer. So you brought that last part out.
Of course. Of course, with industry, I'll have to be suspicious that they want to sell more of their products. So, yeah, I'm sure there's part of that there. But my overarching initial answer was gonna be, yeah, actually, I think that there's truth behind the idea that fitness trackers. And I'll put a picture of my Apple Watch as. Or put my wrist up to show everyone that's watching the YouTube show that I am wearing an Apple Watch now. So my point is just saying not to toot on myself or Apple, but the idea that I can anecdotally discuss this because it's something that I have seen since I bought this Apple Watch.
I'm a little bit more conscious, uncertain of these things than I was. And I'm someone that already was already culturally conditioned through how I've lived my life to. To exercise and be conscious about my own physical health.
So I would say, yes, I think that they. That there is truth to that. And I also think, yes, the industry.
[00:21:43] Speaker A: Wants to sell more a little.
[00:21:46] Speaker B: Two things can be true at once here.
[00:21:49] Speaker A: Well, no, and this stood out to me because I can see how. And I have an Apple Watch as well, and I can see how that changed my own behavior. And like you, I was a person that worked out already.
But once I got a fitness tracker, once I got the Apple Watch a few years back, what I noticed is that because I was like, okay, I'll use this thing, you know, when I take a walk or when I do my lifts or whatever, I'll let it track me. And like, the first time I did it, first, like, month I did, I saw, okay, I got like 17, 20 workout. Maybe I had like 21 workouts or something like that in that first month. Between walks in, you know, which is low, low, you know, just a walk is, you know, kind of a stress kind of thing and then actually intense exercise. So between the two, I had about 21. I was like, hey, maybe I'll try to go for, you know, between the two, go for. It was the next month was like a February. I was like, hey, I'll go, I'll do 28 in 28 days. And then. And so it actually not in a, like it didn't make me do anything, but it made me want to try to push myself a little bit because this thing is keeping track of all this stuff and I can see, you know, what I'm doing and what my average is, my heart rate and all this stuff. So it became like a toy that I was playing with to, you know, as far as all my extra. The things that I wanted to do anyway. And maybe I do it a little bit more because of that. So I think though the nuance here probably matters. It probably. And I read the study or I read the article on the study and kind of looked at the background of this. It seems like there's two factors that really matter because it really gets into it. As far as you're talking about behavioral change and behavioral change just having something, having a little extra toy is itself going to change the behavior. So I think it's whether the type of person that you are is a person who is maybe, you know, setting goals for yourself already. And then this allows you to then set goals with yourself in that arena and actually track your progress on these goals. So if you're that kind of person, it definitely, I can definitely see how it could play out. And then also what was discussed in the article is how it can give you reminders or you can have these programs set up then and have people that maybe need a little bit of a push. It can help them as well. So I think that they offer a lot of opportunity, you know, for you to help yourself. But it still, it still requires you to do it and to some degree it still requires you to want to do it. Like there's no substitution for just good old fashioned want.
[00:24:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:04] Speaker A: And so if you're not bringing that to the table, it seems like you're still going to be.
This isn't going to be some panacea. They're just like, oh, I got the watch, Bing, I'm in the gym.
[00:24:13] Speaker B: I think that's a great point because to just the conversation we just had in the first part of this discussion was kind of the Idea of the microwave. Right. And I think you're right that we need to be careful always in humanity reminding ourselves that there's no secret sauce really to solving all these problems with one stroke. And so it's kind of like the stock market. I tell people sometimes you're not going to look at one indicator and that's going to tell you everything you need to know. Whether an investment is good or bad. There's a kind of an ecosystem of information and you're making an educated assumption when you're making those kind of decisions. And so I think with this body stuff it's very similar. We need to remember that there's not one silver bullet that's going to solve it. And I think you bring up a very valid point that this helps people that are already maybe in the mindset of going a certain direction might help them to pursue that with all the other distractions we have in modern life versus someone who has no desire at all to exercise or look at their health a certain way. And as you're talking, you know what, actually the analogy I thought of is actually audible the audio books. Because I've complained to you in recent years, right. That I can't read a book like I used to 10, 15 years ago. I think my brain has changed from all this online stuff. I can't focus, sit down for an hour and just focus like I used to. And then also some of it is where I'm at in my life as a middle aged guy with a business and a family. It's a time issue. So because I have the desire to still want to learn and, or maybe listen to good nonfiction stuff as a way to deal with my downtime. Audible has helped me as a person that wants to continue being exposed to books and literature. But in the modern world it's not as easy as maybe it was when I was younger. And I feel like she's fitness.
[00:26:02] Speaker A: Like you can do it, but it also allows you to do it at times when you may not have been like if you're doing something.
[00:26:07] Speaker B: Because I can listen to an audible.
[00:26:08] Speaker A: Dishes.
Yeah, yeah, like, and exactly. Doing, doing like you said, like you're busy and stuff like that. It's like, okay, well I got it. I got all this stuff around the house to do now. So I. But I can actually listen to a.
[00:26:19] Speaker B: Pop in my headphones and listen to.
[00:26:21] Speaker A: A book, you know, and so the.
[00:26:22] Speaker B: Same thing, James, I would say is I didn't realize.
[00:26:24] Speaker A: But you have the what to though, to your point, you have like, you Gotta do it. You're trying to figure out.
[00:26:28] Speaker B: Your comments made me. That's why your comments made me realize that the fitness app itself isn't what is. The person still has to have the habits or the desire. They just may be in a position where they can no longer because of life circumstances like me with reading books, they just can't go to the gym as much. Or like you said, instead of.
Here's a good example.
I stopped going to the LA Fitness, which is only a mile and a half from my house. It's not far, but it's a 10 to 15 minute drive with the traffic lights. And then I got to get in there, I got to get kind of warmed up and go and then I got to come home. So that's 30 to 45 minutes I'm saving just by me buying some dumbbells.
[00:27:03] Speaker A: And putting of non workout time. That's the key piece. It's like I want to do a 30 minute workout. It's going to take me an hour and ten minutes, you know?
[00:27:09] Speaker B: Yeah. And so one of the things, when I first got my Apple watch, I've only had this for about a year and a half. So still newer in my life. I'm not one of these people that's been wearing this thing for 10 years. And I remember, you know, one of the things I've learned is that sitting for long periods of time just isn't good.
[00:27:25] Speaker A: Right.
[00:27:25] Speaker B: It's good to stand up periodically. So when my Apple watch was asking me, when I was setting it up and programming it, it asked me, do I want to put a reminder to stand every so often. So in my mind I just said, yeah, why not? If I don't want to stand every hour because I got to sleep. So let me say out of 12 hours a day, I just want to stand at least one hour at a time. I just picked that randomly. And you know what's funny, James? Because I got this stupid standing desk.
My watch will bother me and it'll vibrate and I'll look and it'll say time to stand.
And I'll be like, oh. And I'll stand up and I'll just start for five minutes standing and then.
[00:27:59] Speaker A: I'll sit back up.
[00:27:59] Speaker B: And what's cool is it that dopamine hit at the end of the day. It'll tell me you reached your goal. Congrats. Yeah, little circle thing. And that makes me feel good. Like that's what I'm like. It's like, all right, that helps that that pushes that Makes me feel like I did something good. And I want to feel that feeling tomorrow.
[00:28:14] Speaker A: That was. That was the next piece I was going to go to actually is the positive reinforcement it can give you when you do succeed or when you do. Like sometimes I set goals for myself and then I'll see like, oh, I want to get my. When I'm doing this kind of a workout, I want to make sure I keep my heart rate or my average heart rate at this. Like if I'm doing a swimming workout or doing a sprinting workout, those. You'll have a really. I can get a really high heart rate with those. And. And then I'll be okay. Well, when I'm lifting, I want to get my break, have my breaks be shorter so that I can try to get the heart rate up a little higher. And again, all that's the opposite when I'm walking, it's like totally different. It's none of that stuff that's like recovery, active recovery. But like when I hit those goals or if I get, you know, like, oh, you know, Apple has that ring thing and it's like, oh yeah, I get all my rings or something like that. I was like, yes, you know, that's a good day, man. So that the ability to. And it's not like, like if without that, it's not like you can't have that, but to actually have it being measured by quote unquote, a third party and then telling you, hey, yeah, you did hit your goal. There is something to that as far as that. And so while the want to is a piece, I thought that the. The way that it can actually allow you to kind of change your own behavior, which you just kind of indicated with the standing thing and then. Or how you can, you know, design it to. Whether it be the Apple or the other other brands of it that you can design it to remind you when to work out or you know, all this type of stuff.
It does. It does give you the tools that if you wanted to kind of change your behavior, you could do it. And actually the piece will happen in the show notes talks about that. And like there's. There's other pieces that are required to. For behavior change and they kind of go through them. But the watch is. Or the watch or the track tracker can be set up to help you with that to. To. To hit those marks so you can actually try to be. Change your behavior, which is what they observed with the ability for these people and that are being studied so many more of them than the baseline to continue doing their, their, their fitness regimen after six months or after 12 months. And you know, and it's like, man, a significant, statistically significant portion of people were still doing stuff even compared to the control group. And it's like, well, that's something. So the other part about this story though, I mean we've seen this, we're not, this isn't the first time this idea has been raised. And in fact we've seen even politicians talk about like oh hey, maybe our government officials talk about like hey, maybe we should make everybody wear a smartwatch. Or we've seen insurance companies, health insurance or whatever being like, hey, you know, you can, you can wear this thing and kind of, you know, like we, let's talk, we'll talk saving you money if you want to wear this thing. And we get to see the data and so forth. So do you think, where do you think, you know, like the kind of the impetus for this type of thing should, should be coming from? Do you think this is something that maybe governments or, or private businesses maybe should be looking at and trying to maybe cajole people to be unhealthier or do you think that those type of, you know, do you think that that should be a hands off type of thing and it should be remain more personal.
[00:31:12] Speaker B: Look, I don't think there's an environment that exists where the government is hands off on things it doesn't want to have its hands on. So I would say people that are.
[00:31:23] Speaker A: Small government, right, they say they are at least.
[00:31:29] Speaker B: Let me just speak for me and not 300 million people is yes, I think I would say this. It's nuanced anytime we want to say should the government get involved. So let me start with that and not just say yes blanketly, but I would say I'd lean into the idea that yeah, probably if the if, because here's what I'm going to say, I'm going to say it from this angle. The government, large corporations, what do they have the power to do in a society is affect the culture, right?
[00:31:57] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, that's a really good point.
[00:31:58] Speaker B: We talk about things like the use of the tax code to direct where we culturally how we spend our money. So I've bragged a lot on this show and different discussions about how I use things like bonus depreciation, buying certain assets and then deducting against future income. And I don't pay a lot of taxes using legal loopholes like that.
So I was thinking about it as I was just preparing for today, James and I thought, you know, the government could do that. Instead of always treating my class, the entrepreneur class as holier than thou and the employee class as the ones that, you know, get the s end of the stick in terms of taxes.
What if the government said, hey, in a way to start promoting preventative health care and people being healthier from the start so they don't show up to a doctor or a hospital messed up by the time they're in their 60s.
We're going to give everybody up to $25,000 if they invest in home gym equipment, a peloton, whatever it is, a dollar for dollar tax deduction. So somebody making 100 grand a year that might not feel like, hey, I can go buy a fifteen hundred dollar buy, you can do this. Well, if you can spend five grand this year and take that off your taxes, maybe that, that'll incentivize your behavior.
[00:33:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:33:12] Speaker B: You know what I mean? And so that's all. I'm just giving this idea that we could think and imagine new realities if we wanted to, but we don't.
[00:33:19] Speaker A: It's a really good point because I would have much hesitation for businesses to compel people to do this, to force people to do this, for government to force people to do this. But I think it's a really good idea that if this type of approach can make people healthier and we're in the, it's in our interest to, you know, from a societal standpoint for people to be more interested or invested or able to have better health outcomes, then incentivizing people as opposed to compelling them would be a powerful role or powerful thing the government can do or private companies can do incentivizing them. Of course, the issue that you run into with this type of thing is okay, well are they going to then start wanting to see everybody's numbers and see everybody's stuff, which I think is a very legitimate concern. And you wouldn't want, I wouldn't want that. At least, you know, I wouldn't want the, if I want to wear this thing. And I mean some of that, you know, you're trusting whatever fitness company you're dealing with, anywhere, whichever fitness tracking company you're dealing with, you have to put a level of trust if you're going to let them know your heart rate at all times and when you all this other type of thing where you are all that kind of stuff, you're putting a level of trust in them already. But I think that beyond just being able to look at the, whether we can force people to do something. There are other ways to be creative and say, okay, well, let's make it so that people want to do this even beyond. So I remember just in the 90s, you had all these campaigns that were. Now they're funded from lawsuits against tobacco companies, but these lawsuits, the tobacco companies pay all this money, and then they use this to advertise nonstop people not to smoke.
And that was very effective at reducing smoking. So, I mean, even if it's just ad campaigns touting the benefits of these things, getting people to. To buy in more from a cultural standpoint, all of that stuff can be very helpful. And it can be the role of the government. If it's going to do. If it's going to be involved in that, it could be the role of the government to help promote that kind of change. And the benefit of the government supposedly is that the government can do things that will help people without necessarily always having to have something in exchange. You're going to private companies, you're going to have a harder time getting that kind of ethos through. But for the government, this is the kind of thing that they should be able to do to. And not necessarily be saying, okay, well, what's in it for me? What's in it for me is this is a government of the people, by the people, for the people, and the government should want better for the people. And if this is a way to do it, it can find ways to lean into it that don't involve making people do something. It doesn't always have to be that, like you said. Can I add any last thoughts before we wrap this up?
[00:35:53] Speaker B: Yes, I do.
As you finish that eloquent speech there, I want to remind you that this is a country for the corporation, by the corporations.
[00:36:04] Speaker A: That's right. Speech is. Speech isn't words. Speech is money.
[00:36:09] Speaker B: So the fact that corporations can now pay for the government they want means that if the government does this, they're just going to get lobbied by corporations to still do whatever they want to.
[00:36:19] Speaker A: Say what's in it for the corporations? Say what's in it for me? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:36:23] Speaker B: And I'll finish with this, though, on a serious note. That's why I started my thing with kind of starting to preface and say I would support it. But yeah, anything with the government is nuanced. But I think you put a nice bow on the conversation when you said, you know, if the government can just create incentives and not compel people, that is. And I think that's in a society like ours, if we don't want to have a true authoritarian system where the government does come and say you have to do this. And I think that's an example of during COVID the government didn't say people are going to go to jail if you don't get a vaccine. What the government said to people who were employed by the government was if you don't have a vaccine, don't come to the office. Right. Like, you may lose your job, but you still were free not to get a vaccine. So if, if, if you incentivize people, we also need to Prepare that not 100% of the population is going to get on board with this.
[00:37:16] Speaker A: So part of this, that's why it's a means of coercion. But also it's hard to make that comparison though, because that's an emergency situation versus there's no, this isn't an emergency situation. So in an emergency situation, conceivably you give a little more deference. In a non emergency situation, there, there's no difference. It's like, hey, you lean the other way. But I know we got to wrap this up.
[00:37:39] Speaker B: Yeah, I would say this is as non emergency as climate change. Meaning it's slow and it's happening. No, but I mean serious, it's slow and it happens over time, but our health has gotten much worse over the last hundred years. So yeah, you know, so I mean.
[00:37:51] Speaker A: And the taxpayer does end up paying, paying more for that. And so there is an interest. But yeah, figuring out a way to do it to make it a thing to do that people want to do as opposed to trying to come in with some coercion, I think is important, is an important part of that. So. But I think we can wrap this topic from there. We appreciate it for joining us on this episode of Call. Like I see it. Subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review it, tell us what you think. Send it to a friend. Till next time. I'm James Keys.
[00:38:14] Speaker B: I'm Tundere.
[00:38:15] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk soon.
Sam.
