Impossible FM #008: Green Coffee Bean Extract, Raspberry Ketones, Dr. Oz BS and 3 Things That Are More Effective Than Bogus Supplements with Vic Magary

I put in a sound effect here like a, whooshing sound or something and then.. <whooshing sound> Yeah, just jump right in.

Hey everybody welcome to Impossible FM – the show where we talk about pushing your limits and doing the impossible in fitness, gritness, business, and life. I’m your host Joel Runyon, welcome to the show. Let’s get started!

Hey everybody! Welcome to the show. Today on the show we’ve got Vic Magary from vicmagary.com. Welcome to the show, Vic!

VIC:
Hey! What is going on man? Always awesome to talk to you, Joel.

JOEL:
I should say welcome back because we do interviews… they’re not even interviews anymore, we’re just like hanging out on….

VIC:
<laughter>

JOEL:
….On the phone. Today we are going to be talking about 3 aspects but first of all, you guys might have seen this. This just happened probably last week. Dr. Oz he got called before Congress as part of a study to see how supplements are represented in the media, to put it lightly. I thought he was gonna be called in as an expert, on like, “okay, here’s why supplements are great.” But basically what happened, he got kicked around a little bit. He got kicked around by a bunch of people in Congress. It’s about the first thing that Congress has done right in, ever. So that was surprising on multiple fronts.

VIC:
Yeah yeah yeah, I know what you’re talking about. I saw all the media hubbub about Dr. Oz doing his little testimony thing and essentially getting lambasted by the inquiries. And you know what, all I can say is that, thank goodness. Somebody’s finally out there getting justice on trying to pull wool over the eyes of people regarding weight loss and the effectiveness of particular substances and supplements, is what I meant to say there.

JOEL:
It’s just funny because he came on and they kinda thought, you know, there’s a little bit of questioning within the fitness community about like, why are they bringing in Dr. Oz on? Because he’s kinda one of the shady guys and we weren’t quite sure what they were going to do there. Basically they brought them on and said, why do you pass off these drugs or these supplements as miracle supplements when there’s no scientific basis out there for some of the stuff that he’s pitching. And I’m not at all opposed to supplements in general but some of the stuff that he’s pitching is stuff that kinda makes you sit back and like, hey what? I don’t even know what that is! How do you come up with stuff like that.

VIC:
Yeah, the green coffee bean extract or whatever, yeah.

JOEL:
Raspberry ketones..

VIC:
If you search the internet you can find short clips of him using specific words like miracle, like you mentioned. Like magic. Every time you do that, it’s so misleading especially whenever you combine it with the trust factor that people are gonna automatically have because he is in fact, a medical doctor.

JOEL:
Yeah, we were taking a look at his Wikipedia page, and this is a little bit of a rant, but the thing that makes it more annoying than anything is that he’s an actual… he’s just not some guy with like, like you said, doctor slapped on his name. He’s an actual doctor. Like he’s really smart.

VIC:
Oh yeah, yeah. We’re not talking like, oh I’m a Ph.D. so I’m gonna have everybody call me doctor. No, this guy is… let’s just break down his quick education thanks to Wikipedia. Graduates undergrad from Harvard. And then, goes to the University of Pennsylvania and not only does he get a medical degree, he gets an MBA in the same frickin’ year. How many do you know can pull that off at an Ivy League school? To get both and MD and an MBA in the same year. This is a smart guy. This is a guy who knew exactly what he was doing when he started to market, because there’s no other way to say it. He’s turned to market these supplements that have no proven effectiveness.

JOEL:
And it’s funny because he says… if you watch the testimony, I have a couple of links to the testimony. Which if you try to watch him answer questions, it’s really really funny because he’s great on TV when he’s got a teleprompter and he knows exactly what he’s gonna say. But when they’re saying, hey, how do you actually justify saying that this is a miracle drug? He’s like, well, I am an entertainer and I had to use flowery language in order to keep people entertained and make sure people continue to like the show. And it’s like, I said this earlier but if you use the world miracle next to any supplement, general PSA: if you use a miracle next to any supplement, you’re a liar. Straight up.

VIC:
<laughter> Yeah. Straight up.

JOEL:
Doesn’t matter how smart you are or whatever. if you use miracle next to a supplement, you’re a liar. And it was just funny because he kept going back to this idea that, well I got to use flowery language and sometimes you know, it’s a little more flowery. He kept using flowery for some reason. It’s more flowery than I liked, I still use the supplements, I give them to my families and I know there’s not really that much scientific backing or any scientific backing behind some of the supplements that I’m talking about but I still really believe in them and I think they’re really great. And he still stood by it. It was amazing. I’m kinda like, man, you got some balls on you to come to Congress and be like, you know what, yeah you’re right there’s no scientific backing but despite all my education I’m still gonna go with the thing that has no proven record at all.

VIC:
<laughter> Yeah old Dr. Oz there was probably wishing that while he was out there collecting degrees, he put a lot of gree(?) on there as well. But it helped him heal with the onslaught of questioning a little better.

JOEL:
Aaah that’s funny, the PR one. Geez. Man. Well we’re ranting, we’re kinda taking it apart a little bit. But what’s the real problem is that people actually believe him. It’s not like, okay, it’s this guy and we can make fun of him. But he has a talk show that is watched by millions of people and they listen to this stuff. And it’s not just him, it’s a microcosm of a broader issue where people look at these different supplements out there, which is an interesting name anyways. The name is supplements. It’s not a replacement. It’s a supplement to go along with everything else. It’s not just a.. you take this and it fixes everything. But people listen to this stuff. Then like, okay, I’m just gonna keep eating pizza and ice cream and I’m gonna take these raspberry ketones and all of a sudden I’m gonna watch the fat melt away miraculously. And it’s like a… it’s a real issue. That it’s amazing to me that it’s not a bigger deal or people like him are being ripped to shreds all the time.

VIC:
Well I think at the heart of it, what we have here, and you know, let’s call it what it is. It’s greed. It is profit. It’s what it is. And some people will literally say anything to sell a product irregardless if it’s gonna work or not. Now do I think that he would do that if it was causing actual injury or illness, no, probably not because then you’re gonna have to deal with lawsuits and they’re gonna take all the money you just made. But it’s essentially zero-sum game, that if you take this, you’re not going to acquire some sort of illness or injury, but at the same time, it’s not really gonna help you. I’m kinda lying on that part but I’m really getting fat on my back account.. a lot of people are gonna do it.

JOEL:
Yeah. I think that’s the one aspect of the supplier side of it but I think the other aspect is the consumer aspect is that there has to be a demand for these supplements otherwise people wouldn’t be selling it. And I think that comes from just the overall, the desire for there to be a quick fix.

VIC:
Yeah and I think we can approach that in one or two ways. One, we could make the argument that that is just natural. That is human nature to want the path of least resistance to get the results we desire but then I think on the other hand we can also make the argument that it is much more of a modern society issue where we expect everything instantaneously because, hey, guess what, I wanna transfer funds from my bank account, I can get online and do it in 30 seconds I don’t need to go all the way down to the bank anymore. You know, we can run that example after example where we do have instant gratification so much in modern life, that yeah, people want it in their weight loss too and you know what, that’s just too damn bad, it doesn’t work that way.

JOEL:
I looked at the stats the other and I just got mad. It’s like 63%, I think, the CDC? Americans are overweight and 30% are obese. Like, medically obese. And you know the reason we get to the problem in the first place is because of the current healthy lifestyle, quote-unquote, that most people are kinda fed to, is like, hey, this is what you need to be doing, you may have tons of grains, that is the biggest thing you have to have. And then after that, you can meats and vegetables and everything else. That’s the standard operating procedure that most people are following and they’re getting themselves into trouble in the first place because they’ve got this bad advice out there that is… even if you aren’t eating ice cream and pizza all the time, you’re just having big heaps of cereal for breakfast, you’re still having issues losing weight or you know, getting to wherever you wanna be from a healthy lifestyle’s perspective. And then you’re saying hey, I’m trying to do all these things that are… they say it takes time and whatever and it’s just not working.. so maybe there is a shortcut because this doesn’t seem to be working because they’re fed the standard American diet and that’s just no good.

VIC:
Well I think another issue we have along that lines is dogma. You hear people say all the time, you know you wanna avoid politics and religion in conversations where you could also throw diet in that I think. People get so dogmatic that they refuse to change their views. And that becomes a real issue. It becomes a real issue because people don’t wanna look at the facts where, hey you know what you’ve been starting your morning everyday with cereal, skim milk, and a glass of orange juice for the past 10 years, and you are obese! Do you think maybe if you experimented with testing at least, just trying to alter your diet for a period of time that would be long enough to show results, which would really had to not to be that long. I’m talking 1 week, 2 weeks. Most people are going to see a pretty significant result if they just alter their diet to what we know and love is the Paleo diet. Lots of vegetables, some meat, fish and eggs and small amounts of fruit, nuts and seeds. It works time and time again.

JOEL:
That’s the one thing that I keep coming back to. It’s always like, self-experimentation. It’s trying new things. Just see what happens. A lot of people won’t blink at experimenting like that with a drug or supplements or whatever, but when it comes to experimenting with real food…. like what do you mean I need to eat less grains? Or actually changing specific pieces of their diet? It’s much more difficult. It’s an interesting concept if you suggest a supplement, a lot of people will go out and buy it like, relatively quickly. If you suggest to stop eating grains, you have to have like, mounds of research and case studies on why you should do it. And there are. But it’s amazing how much more information, how much more statistical backing to have to change people’s minds on something like that.

VIC:
Well I think we also have the issue of a immediate gratification in another format. And I can tie this into why people so often mistakenly look to exercise as their primary means of weight loss. What happens whenever you exercise? It feels fricking great is what happens. And it feels great immediately as long as you are exercising appropriately for your current fitness capacity. Someone who’s very obese maybe they’d just go out and take a walk. That walk is gonna feel great to them if they’re not used to it. That is gonna feel amazing. Instantly. Same thing as if they are going to eat a Bic Mac. it is going to immediate feedback that it feels great right then and there at that time. it feels amazing. But what happens when you eat a cup of broccoli? Nothing. Nothing. You have no endorphin release, you don’t feel anything that is especially raising you up to a level of a high, for a lack of a better word. You don’t get that with real natural foods. Maybe a little bit with a very perfectly cooked steak, yes there is a great deal of enjoyment there, but not the same way as eating a damn Hershey bar. You know? It’s not the same level of getting high, for a lack of a better word. And that instant gratification plays in once again.

JOEL:
That’s interesting because it almost starts to flip itself on the script if you eat clean long enough. All of a sudden you’re gonna have a negative reinforcement coming from that Hershey’s bar if you’ve haven’t had sugar in 30 days. You’re gonna have that Hershey’s bar, aaaand, I’m sick. I feel bad. Never want to eat that again. But yeah, definitely at first, there’s no immediate response to eating a cup of broccoli. You’re like, “oh, I had broccoli.” I guess that’s a good decision. I should pat myself on the back about that but.. you know. I don’t really get too excited about broccoli. So one of the problems here is that everybody’s looking for a quick fix but they’re doing so in the wrong place. So people are looking into supplements, they’re looking into celebrities who can just say, hey, this is what I trust and this is what I’m gonna go do. We’ve got basically 3 things that you can do that.. if you’re looking at burning fat, improving your body composition overall.. There are 3 things that are gonna move the needle a lot quicker than any supplement you’re gonna take. The first one is one of my favorite exercises. You kinda look like a crazy man sometimes if you do this out in the middle of the day, but it just sprint intervals. Basically, find a good section either at your road or street or if you can find a track, do it there. I just found a track here in San Diego that overlooks the ocean and it’s amazing. So that might be the place where I just go hang out for a half-hour, an hour, at a time. But basically where sprint intervals where you’re running really really hard for 30 seconds on and then taking a short rest or doing some longer intervals there but as far as a fat burning perspective, you’re gonna be burning a lot more fat than if you just sit back and take some green coffee extract.

VIC:
<laughter> Yeah, that’s for sure. Few caveats there. First and foremost, you have to make sure that sprints are appropriate for your current body composition. And what I mean by that is someone who is obese, probably not the best choice. Just due to the jarring, high impact movement to the joints, lower back, knees, hips, ankles, all of it. So you just wanna make sure that you are at a current body composition where your body can handle the sprinting. That’s one important point. Another thing that can alleviate some of that impact is to do your sprints on hills. Whenever you’re at an incline, particularly a fairly steep incline, your foot just doesn’t have to travel as far to get to the ground anymore so the impact becomes greatly reduced, also again depending on the incline, people tend to stay a little more on the balls of the feet, again reducing that impact. So there are ways to still get that high intensity and that’s really what we’re looking for here. That high-intensity exercise that can be altered while still using the sprint training that maybe a little safer on the joints for some people.

JOEL:
And hill sprints will have the added benefit of making you wanna throw up afterwards!

VIC:
I love it! <laughter>

JOEL:
<laughter> The second one we wanna talk about, and we’ve talked about this before – is diet. You can call it Paleo if you want, but it’s really just eating real food. Getting back to eating real food that your body can digest that’s nutrient-dense and helps you perform optimally. So you’re looking at meats,vegetables, nuts, fruits and some seeds. And it’s amazing when you lay it all like that and you take the word Paleo away from it… Because a lot of people get caught up in, oh well, do cavemen actually eat that? You know, what was the exact composition, what was you caveman macros when he was running around hunting saber-tooth tigers. When you take the name away from it and you just let it out – meats, vegetables, fruits, nuts, and seeds… it’s not really anything crazy and all of a sudden you’re eating food that don’t have junk in it. They don’t have added sugar, they don’t have added preservatives, and if you leave them out, they’re gonna go bad. Like if your food can’t go bad, you shouldn’t be eating it. That’s like a really good rule to go by.

VIC:
I think that’s an excellent rule to go by. If it doesn’t spoil, you shouldn’t eat it. I have a few others: if it didn’t grow from the ground or formerly have a heartbeat, you shouldn’t eat it. If the ingredient list would make a spelling bee champ sweat, you should not eat it. Those are some go-tos that I use, particularly whenever you have someone who is averse to terms like Paleolithic diet.

JOEL:
The “if it doesn’t go bad” one is a really really good one because if it doesn’t go bad.. basically if food goes bad, it means that bacteria is eating it, it’s decomposing, all that fun stuff. If bacteria won’t eat your food, why are you gonna eat your food? Doesn’t even count as food anymore. So that’s like a really a mental game you wanna play. I don’t know… I don’t really know what that is anymore. It’s a food item. I was actually… completely tangential story. But I was flying to South Africa a couple of weeks ago. On the flight over, they give you your airplane meal or whatever. I opened up the butter and I was gonna put that on whatever I had and I looked at the butter container and it didn’t even say butter on it. It wasn’t butter, it wasn’t margarine, it was, like, buttery substance is what it was like. That was the name! I put a photo of it somewhere and I was like.. aaaaah I went from spreading it on whatever food, to like throwing it… hiding it in my tray or whatever. As far away as possible. There’s items out there that are not even foods anymore. They are like food items or food stuffs. And I was like, man! I can’t believe I’ve been putting that in my body without even thinking about it. And so that’s one of the things I’ve been doing lately. It’s getting back to reading my labels. Gets into your last rule there, you know, the ingredient label makes a spelling bee champ sweat… probably shouldn’t be eating it.

VIC:
Yeah. If there’s unpronounceables there, don’t eat it.

JOEL:
Unpronounceables. I like that.The last.. not quick tip, but the thing that’s gonna have a massive impact, whether or not your performance, how you feel, and also your ability to lose fat or really just, you know, get to whatever goals you want, is sleep. And this is one of the things that I’ve had problems with personally just because I like to think I’m a workaholic and work all the time. And when you do that, you have the lights on, you get the glare from your computer monitor, all of the sudden you find yourself up, 1 or 2 in the morning and you’re like… oh, my mind’s racing, it’s hard to wind down. I don’t feel like sleeping, I feel like I’m unproductive when I’m sleeping because you’re not doing anything. You’re literally unconscious for 8 hours and it’s okay, I could be doing so many things during that time. But the last month or so, I’ve been really focused on just making it more of a priority in general. And what I found is when I kick my butt during workouts and I’m moving more throughout the day, all of a sudden it’s way easier to prioritize sleep at night because.. I sit down in bed and I’m out. Versus having to stay up or having to take melatonin to fall asleep or whatever. All of a sudden you’re naturally tired and you’re naturally ready to sleep. And you wake up and you’re ready to do it all over again and you’re way more effective.

VIC:
Yeah and I think a good point to make about all of this fat loss in general is what we’re trying to do here, regardless if it’s the diet, regardless if it’s the exercise protocol or regardless if it’s the sleep, fat loss really comes down to a large extent, if not the largest extent, to hormone manipulation. Hormone optimization is probably a better way to say that. So when we have our diet, what’s the main hormone, and this is the most important hormone whenever we’re talking about fat loss, that is insulin. We are really trying to avoid that sharp insulin spike that we get when the blood sugar spike happens. Whenever we’re talking about the high intensity interval training.. here we have the human growth hormones that can kick in and that can aid in fat loss. And now if we have sleep this is gonna aid things such as testosterone and also Ghrelin. Ghrelin is a hormone that is very applicable to appetite and how hungry you get. So it’s all about these little hormone manipulation, or like I said, better term would be optimization and that’s really what it comes down to for fat loss. It’s not about counting the bunch of calories. It’s about getting back your body to where it’s supposed to be functioning properly.

JOEL:
And it’s amazing. You know, most Americans, probably most listeners’ situations.. everybody’s hormones are so jacked up from the foods they’re putting in their bodies, the stress they are going through. All these different things… just getting them back. Just resetting everything, has it’s massive, kind of rejuvenation for people where, instead of just feeling tired and worn out and everything they’re doing doesn’t have any effectiveness to it, all of a sudden, it takes less effort and you can do more that you were doing before. And it has nothing you do with how much you’re wanting it or how hard you’re trying. It’s having to do with how you treat your body. How you’re letting your body perform optimally.

VIC:
And yeah, I think that it ties it back to the quick fix mentality, and maybe since also we started railing on the poor medical doctor at the beginning..

JOEL:
He’s not that poor. I’m not gonna feel too bad for him.

VIC:
Yeah that’s true. He’s definitely not that poor. But I think a lot of people knee-jerk reaction is that, whenever they suspect, oh my hormones are outta whack. Their knee-jerk reaction is well, I better go to the doctor. And I’m not saying you shouldn’t go to the doctor. All I am hinting at or suggesting here is that, well perhaps maybe you should try, for let’s say for a week or 2 weeks to get your diet in line. Stop eating a bunch of crap. To get your sleep in line. To start exercising. And once you’ve checked those three major blocks, and you’re still not feeling well and your hormones are… you know, you still suspect that your hormones are an issue, then sure absolutely, see your doctor. But if you’re lifestyle stuff’s not in line, you’re setting yourself up for a lifetime of being dependent on prescription meds and no one wants to live like that. The best information is gonna come from yourself and that’s the reality of it and that’s why we always talk about this self-experimentation. But you have to use a lot of common sense with that. I mean, think about it. Doesn’t it just make sense to eat real food, exercise in a manner that’s enjoyable and challenging and allow for adequate rest and recovery. Does anything else sound more common sense than that? I mean, we’re not talking about magical jungle berries or green tea extracts.. I mean, just.. get rest.

JOEL:
But the scientist found this berry in Brazil and it’s only in Brazil and so people can feel good in… it’s almost laughable. We are making jokes about it but it’s almost laughable when you get down to it. It’s like, you know it’s not that hard and if you take time to slow down, think for yourself, and don’t even believe us. You don’t even have to believe just. Just give it a show and say, I don’t believe them but I’m gonna find out for myself. Just try it for yourself. Know how you feel before, know how you feel at the end, take photos of yourself, try different things and find out what works best for you, and you’re going to find, I guarantee– that if you eat real food that Vic said earlier, you can read all the ingredients on it.. You’re gonna find way more results from that than you will ever get from green coffee, raspberry ketones, or whatever the heck else is coming on the midday doctor show that you’re watching. That’s all I got for this episodes. It’s a little bit of a rant, hopefully it was pretty helpful, had some insights in there as well. Anything you wanted to add, Vic?

VIC:
No, just stick to the basics. Don’t get hoodwinked by the proprietors of the instant gratification solutions because they will not work. And is this supposed to be the plug where people are going to find more info about me?

JOEL:
Yeah. I was just gonna ask about that.. but.. go, go right ahead.

VIC:
I appreciate that my friend. vicmagary.com. That is V-I-C-M-A-G-A-R-Y dot com

JOEL:
And.. do you wanna talk about your program?

VIC:
Sure. Right now I’m doing a program called the Fat Loss Action Academy. And the difference with this program is that so many times we acquire just information and it either stays on our hard drive or it goes in the corner if it’s a book or a magazine, and we just forget about it. With this program, members have to actually update their food and training journals daily, and if they go 48 hours without updating, I personally email them. It’s not some auto-responder hack that goes out. It’s not some VA assistant working in some Third World country. This is me telling them, hey, get your butt in gear, you agreed to this program, get in there and update. And I’m telling you what, people are updating. It is going really well. It’s a 6-week program, I’ve got about 20 members and the results have been amazing.

JOEL:
So that’s FatLossActionAcademy.com.

VIC:
Correct, sir.

JOEL:
Awesome. And if you guys.. you know, that’s a program Vic’s… Vic and I actually worked together on a bunch of different projects as far as, you know, different resources to get you started. So I have links to those in the show now as far as we’ve got a NO Excuse workout, you can get started for free. You’ve got Ultimate Paleo Guide which is a great Paleo resource, if you guys are interested in that way of eating. But also check out what Vic is doing at VicMagary.com and FatLossActionAcademy.com. That’s a specific course, you have to sign up for it. It only open it’s doors for every 6 weeks or so right?

VIC:
Exactly. Yeah, it is a 6-week block. I don’t have it exactly pinpointed when the next block will be open but you can anticipate that probably early August of 2014 will be the next iteration. And for free resource, people can go to Fatlossforfree.com if they’re hankering to get on the ball fast and furiously with some good exercise and diet guidance.

JOEL:
Cool. And I’m sure you will be letting people know who signed up for Fat Loss For Free when the next Action Academy will be.

VIC:
Absolutely. Yes sir.

JOEL:
Cool, man. As always, it’s great to have you on the show. Good to chat and riff a little bit. And let’s do it again soon!

VIC:
Absolutely. Thanks man.
Hey everybody, thanks for listening to the Impossible FM podcast. For more tips, blog posts, podcasts, videos, and a whole lot more, check out impossiblehq.com. Until next time, I will see you guys next Monday morning, right here behind the mic, at 8:00 AM Eastern Standard time. Until then, get out there, go do something that pushes your limits, and do something impossible.