This podcast is for you, the Modern Man. I'm Dr Anne

Truong, your host. I'm an intimate health medical doctor

and best selling author of the book, Erectile Dysfunction Fix.

I'll do a deep dive into sexual health and performance and how

it affects men of all ages and backgrounds. So let's get

started, and be sure to visit my website at

sexualhealthformenpodcast.com for more information and

resources from the show. See you on the inside.

Hello there, Modern Man. In today's episode, I am honored to

have Eric Edmeades. I was on his podcast. Enjoyed it immensely.

So Eric is a renowned health and wellness expert, and founder of

the transformative Wildfit Program. And the reason why I

have him here is because he is an expert in teaching you how to

rewire your habit, and to get the result that you need to have

in your life that you want and live the life that you want and

create and engineer it. And so, Eric, welcome to the podcast.

Hey, thanks for having me. I'm glad that we get

to have part two of our conversation.

I know, I know, and so let's just dive into it. And

one of the challenges that I see commonly in working with men

with erectile dysfunction is that, hey, they know they have

ED but they want to have sexual performance, and then we will

work with them and giving them the roadmap of stuff that they

need to do, but it seems like a barrier to get to that outcome.

So I wanted to ask you, what can men do to eliminate the barriers

and then rewire that so they can get the outcome they want?

Yeah, it's kind of a complicated thing from a

psychology perspective. Men, I mean, all people, but men in

particular are kind of reward are built for like, immediate

reward. So if you give a man a strategy, and that strategy

might work in three or four weeks, the reward is so far out

that it's hard for them to relate the reward to the

behavior. Which is why a little blue pill, like works right now,

very, very directly in focus. So we've really had to deal with

that a lot in our programs, because, of course, what we've

been working with is helping people change their relationship

with food. And no different than what you're asking is we have

all these people that say they want to lose some weight, they

want to reverse their diabetes, they want to curb their

autoimmune function, they want to get off their medication.

Same problem is that, well, if you do this for like, say, six

or seven weeks, we can make some real progress, but six or seven

weeks is like, way out there. Oh, I think that there are some

things that we've done that really have worked. I mean, we

have, I think, about 85% of the people who start our programs

actually stick with them for the full 90 days, which is really,

really helpful. And so some of the key things that we do to

help people with this. One is perspective. It's really

recognizing that humans have a really fascinating and powerful,

transformative capacity to time travel. And what I mean by that

is that we have the ability to imagine a future that doesn't

yet happen, and that ability allows us to emotionally engage

with potential outcomes. And if we really train ourselves to do

that properly, it changes everything. So if you take a 16

year old and you really emotionally engage them with the

idea of retirement and poverty. Versus retirement and wealth,

they will start investing. But no other teenager does right?

But if you really emotionally engage them in those two

separate outcomes, the potential pain and the potential pleasure

combined to create a hey, I want to start investing right now. So

to a degree, I think the same thing happens here. Something

that came out of our interview, when we talked, I really like

it's important what you were saying is, like a guy dealing

with, say, erectile dysfunction. I mean, once you get past the

shame, and it's a difficult thing to talk about, and it's

embarrassing and all kind of stuff. There's another much

bigger problem, and that is that it is, as we talked about, it's

a canary in the coal mine. It's a warning. If you're struggling

to get it up, you might be going down. And I think that one of

the things that I'd be working with with a client, in that

sense, if a client came to me and said, Hey, I've got this

problem, and I have a medical solution, or I have a lifestyle

solution, I'm okay, let's play that out. The medical solution

might solve the problem tonight, and maybe you'll have a good

time, but then dead right? Like, maybe not tonight, but if you're

having this circulatory problem, you have a major problem. So

what I would like you to do right now, so I'd like you to

imagine sitting in the doctor's office where they've just done

maybe an angiogram, where they've just looked at you,

they've taken your blood, and they're telling you that you are

a ticking time bomb, that it could be any minute. It now that

your children are growing up without you, and get them to

really understand the consequence of that, conversely,

to go to the other side and say, Look, I know the pills solve the

problem for right now, but how would you like it two, three

months from now, where you never need those pills again, where

you are operating at peak performance, and it can happen

that quickly. So it's, it's kind of this, like, I think Tony

Robbins calls it a Dickens pattern. You got to take show

them Christmas past, show them Christmas future. You got to

give them those two perspectives in a really emotional way, not a

logical way.

So that's what you mean when you say emotional

engage. Because I was going to ask you that, what does that

mean emotion engage. So you kind of tell them, have them imagine

a future if they didn't do this, and a future if they did do

this. What does it look like for them?

I'll give you a really tangible example. Last

year, we released our book post diabetic, and it's because so

many of our clients ended up reversing their pre and type two

diabetes. It wasn't something we intended to do, but it happened,

so we ended up writing a book about it. Now we've had tons of

doctors coming to us and going, Look, I now understand, or I

always knew, many of them didn't, but that it can be

reversed, but I can't get the client, I can't get them to do

the stuff. Same thing you're asking me, right? I mean, they

want the medication. They don't want the lifestyle solution.

Why? Well, because the medication allows the

responsibility to place somewhere else, and it's faster

or whatever. And the lifestyle thing means some sacrifice, and

maybe I can't eat ice cream so often it's painful. So compare

two different conversations to the doctor. Here's one. Well, it

turns out that you might be now pre diabetic, and so if you

don't make certain lifestyle changes, we're going to have to

start prescribing you with metformin and that will keep

your blood sugar under control. That's the conversation that

they have with them. There's no emotional engagement. There's

no, it's just facts. On the other hand, what if the doctor

said, Hey, listen, your last test came back, and you're pre

diabetic now, and that means you're heading toward type two

diabetes. And what you might not know about that is that you're

likely going to lose your eyesight because of circulatory

difficulties, sticky blood. There's a very good chance

you're going to face amputations of fingers, toes, maybe even

hands and feet. You're going to have circulatory problems that

are caused nerve damage. You're going to start physically

damaging your body. Your chances of having a heart attack are up

through the roof this way. And by the way, this is the number

one risk factor for the development of cancer, so I can

give you some medicine that would hide all of that from you

until you're dead, or we could make a lifestyle change. Now, of

course, I'm being a little emotive here, but that's kind of

the point.

I love that. And also a diabetic have 40% chance

of more ED than non diabetic. So another thing to talk to men

about as well, too. So you're creating an image of what's

possible, and then create an image of if they didn't do that,

and have them imagine that. And that is how you can shift their

thinking. And is that how you eliminate the barrier to what

they need to do?

Yeah, that's one of the barriers. And if you

think about it, it kind of fits with a little bit what Simon

Sinek would say, is start with why. Like, if the person doesn't

have a big enough why, they're not going to take action,

they're not going to take the hard route, they're going to

take the easy route. So that's one shift in perspective. Then

the next thing that's really key here is incremental changes. The

big mistake that so many people make in this situation is they

go, Alright, you've got this problem, here's your 52 point

plan on how to fix it, starting today. Like, no, if you want to

fix your ED function problem, here's what you got to do. You

got to cut this food out. You got to add this food in. You got

to go to the gym. You got to give some leg exercise. You got

to go in fresh air. You got to make sure you're getting enough

sunlight and make sure you're getting enough sleep. Like,

sorry, no, if they weren't doing that on Monday, and you suddenly

tell them on Monday they have to start doing on Tuesday. They

don't have the time budgeted for that. They're not going to do

it. But what if you instead said, okay, look, we want to

turn this situation around, both for your own pleasure and

enjoyment of life, and also because, well, it's bloody

danger. So we want to turn it around. And here's here's what I

want to do over the next 21 days, I want you to make 21

changes. So tomorrow, tomorrow, all you're going to do is you're

going to take a 10 minute walk. That's it. You're going to take

a 10 minute walk, eat what you would normally eat, do what you

would normally do, but take a 10 minute walk, get the sun on your

skin, get the fresh air, and make sure that your walk has

maybe some steps or hills, just to get your legs pumping a

little because your big quads and your glutes and those big

leg muscles are so key to your production of testosterone. So

just a little walk, you might start to feel a little lift.

Then on day two, on day two, what I'd like you to do is, I'd

like you to maybe curb back some of the processed food, right,

and see what you're doing is you're giving them a manageable

bite size, incremental possibility for change. And by

doing that, you've kind of got the frog in the hot water, like,

if you say, hey, I need you to lift 500 pounds today to solve

your problem. I'm like, I haven't been training for 500

pounds, but if I get you to lift five pounds, then tomorrow you

can lift six and so on. And then the next one, Anne, it's so like

this is huge for transformation. One of the most fundamental

components to behavior change is progress and the celebration of

progress. So if you ever read atomic habits, fabulous book, a

big fan and and it stimulated a lot of conversation about what

creates a habit. And I will say I loved so much about what is in

that book, but there was one thing that maybe I missed it, or

I didn't read it right, or it's just a different way of

thinking. But when you start talking about the studies that

say, is it 15 days? Is it 21 days? Is it 61 days? How many

days does it take to have it? What I suggest at that point is

that we're asking the wrong question. We're suggesting that

a habit is purely a time created event. And what I want to

suggest is that habits are not created by time. They're created

by emotional intensity. So if I do the same thing every day for

61 days, but I have no emotional response to it, or, even worse,

a negative emotional response to it. On day 62 I'm not doing that

thing. I'm done my trial period is over. But if I do something

one day, but I celebrate the hell out of it. I mean, I really

have a fun like my silly example of this is imagine a rookie

athlete who's playing in the championship game and scores the

winning goal, and the team celebrates them, and the city

celebrates them, and they celebrate them. What happens is

their brain goes, I love this. How do I create this again? And

then immediately, brain goes, well, I know what I had for

breakfast today, and that is now championship breakfast day. I

didn't need 61 days of that breakfast for Truong. I'm a

habit. I needed one day of tremendous emotional intensity.

So what we recommend to clients at this point is that they

combine these two things, progress and celebration. You

become the Sherlock Holmes of progress. So if you've got

somebody who's dealing, say, with ED, maybe they're not going

to see any real progress for, say, three, four weeks, maybe

five weeks, I don't know. You can tell me lifestyle wise, I I

don't know where it'll be, but let's say it's that long. But

isn't there other progress before that that they could

notice, like, is it possible that they notice that they're

sleeping a little better because they made some changes? Is it

possible that they noticed that they have a little spark that

they didn't have a week ago. And you see if you can get them to

start to notice, hey, my cravings, my cravings seem more

manageable just after just three days without sugar. I just not

even that's really interesting. Those micro progressions should

be celebrated because they will stimulate the motivation that

will keep them on track to the 21st day when they're finally

getting a serious result.

I love that. I absolutely love that. So combine

progress, mini progress, bite side progress with celebration.

And when you say celebration, is it them celebrating with their

family member or in a group setting?

All of it and any of it. Like, celebration is a

beautiful human emotion, and it's the ultimate reward. It's

like, Yes, I'm amazing. I did something great. We did

something great. That's like, the ultimate in self esteem is

celebration of oneself, right? So I'll give you a silly example

of this, but I used to run these leadership programs where I

would take people up Kilimanjaro. And I did that

because it was a great metaphor for life. Like you're in a week

of climbing that mountain, you're going to have just about

every emotion that you would have in your normal life. So

I've done the trip many, many times, but on about the fourth

or fifth one, we're doing the mountain from the other side,

and we're coming up the Kenya side, and we've never done that

before. And from that side, you can see the mountain the whole

time. When you come up the other side, the mountain's hiding. You

don't really see it. This side, you see it. So now we've been

walking, Anne, for like, a day and a half, and it's not getting

any closer. But it's like those people who go to Vegas and go,

oh yeah, I'll just walk there. No, you won't think it is. So

we're walking and I'm like, and the mountains not coming any

closer. Any closer. It's not coming any closer. And guess

what's happening to motivation?

It's decreased.

Yeah. So suddenly my guide, he sees that I'm kind

of having this I'm going, geez. And he comes up to me, goes,

Hey, Eric. I go, what? He goes, turn around, look back. And so I

turn around, look back, and holy shit. Like you camp, like we've

come so far. And he goes, Yeah, and we started celebrating. And

you see, the problem for many people is they have one outcome

that they want, and they weigh up everything they're doing

against that one outcome. I want to lose 50 pounds. Well, until

they've lost the 50th pound, they won't celebrate. Hell no.

Celebrate every pound.

I love that. So celebrate just the minor

achievement. And so you were asking, Well, how long does it

take for a man to restore a function? If he does micro

progress every day, at four to six weeks. It's actually pretty

quick.

Yeah. That's what I figured, right? Not a bad

guess.

Yeah

I made that guess is that's also how long it takes

to reverse in most cases, pre and type two diabetes, which we

know there are definite relationships. There are

definite relationships.

Absolutely, because it's all about metabolic

disease, right? Changes in your body, inflammation, endothelial

inflammation, and it takes that long for it to start reversing.

And even with diabetes, you know, it's still diet, exercise,

sleep and stress management, which is what we teach our men

for restoration. But I love breaking up in little pieces. So

guys, when you're listening to this is just break up things in

little pieces. You can achieve it. And we have seen men just

doing good progress. It's even just 1% progress a day, and

following a Good Morning Wood smoothie and doing penis pump,

Kegels, and testicles massage. We have seen men that have ed

for years waking up with morning wood with just those simple

little steps. And of course, they're changing their eating

habits as well.

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So what do you suggest when they have a little bit of setback?

Let's say, Okay, well, didn't do that. Life was busy. I went on

vacation, family visited. I didn't do what I was supposed to

do. What shift should they think about to get back on for

progress again?

People are really funny about the way they think

of time. So it's like, okay, everything's going to be

different this week. I'm going to be really, really productive.

And I show up for my work on Monday, and then Monday comes

along, and then something interrupts my pattern, and then

I get involved in something over there, and Monday is not really

working. And you get to about like, noon on Monday, and you're

like, it's not going to happen on Monday, but I'll start fresh

on Tuesday, right? I'll start fresh on Tuesday, and then you

show up for work on Tuesday, but there was a bunch of stuff that

happened, and you had to take care of all this and that, and

oh no, no, I'll start on Wednesday. And then if you get

to Wednesday and it happens again, you're like, what this

week's a write off. I'll start again on Monday. And people tend

to think like that, like they it's like they forget that

humans invented the idea of these seven days of the week,

and it's like, somehow we have to start on a Monday. No, what I

want to suggest is this, the faster and more regular your

course corrections are, the more quicker you're going to get the

results you want, and the easier it's going to be to make that

change. So using a simple phrase, failing fast, is the

answer to that. And so what you recognize is that instead of

going I'll start again on Tuesday morning, maybe I'll

start again this afternoon, or maybe I'll start again at the

top of the hour, or maybe I'll start again at the next half

hour, right? Like the shorter those increments are. And

there's a neat way of thinking about this. When I was a kid, I

went to this boarding school, and we did these really

extensive canoe trips through northern Canada, across lakes

that are the size of small European countries, like major

canoe trips. And we had to do this is there's no Google

arginine stuff back then, you we were using maps and doing all

the compasses and all this stuff, right? And what would

happen is, routinely, we'd sit there and go, Okay, we're going

to go from here to here, and then at some point we're like,

Dude, we're off course. And then we get to the next place and go,

we're off course. And then the next we're off course. Yeah, but

we still got there, because the recognition we were off course

wasn't a failure, it was an adjustment. And it was like, Oh,

we're off course. Well, we have to get back on course. And we

don't go, Oh, we're off course. Well, we'll get back on course

on Tuesday. We'll get back on course right now, the minute

we've noticed that there's a problem. And so those quicker

course corrections really change everything. So if there's one

skill that I'd love to give to everybody, and then I work on it

myself all the time, but it's like the skill of, hey, I'm off

course, and I want to make a decision right now when I'm

going to be back on course. And with some stuff, it isn't right

away, like I noticed in wildfit, we talk about metabolic seasons,

and so I might be in a carb season. I might go, No, I've

been in a carb season a little longer than might be ideal, and

it's time for me to go back into what we in wildfit Call spring,

which would be to go to sort of a clean keto model for a little

while. I might recognize today. I might go, Oh, what? But I

might look at my fridge and go, I recognize right now. I'm set

up for that season. All right, I'm going to make that course

correction on Monday. There is a time for that, but there's also

a time for saying. I'm going to make this course correction

immediately. I'm going to do it right here and right now. And

right now. And so, for example, if you've told your client, it's

time to haul out the pump and do your exercises, and they're

like, Oh, I'll start that on Monday. No, that's not, no. When

to do it is the minute it popped into your head. Take action now.

And course correct now. Become a professional course corrector.

Become professional course corrector. I love that.

So how do you get to overcome negative thinking? Is like, I

can't do it. I'm not that person. It's too hard. My whole

life and I've never really achieved anything. I'm just

gonna live with it. Because I hear that a lot. It was like, I

guess I just have to live with it, with the ED, because I've

tried many things that fail before. What and how do they

shift that?

There are a few different approaches you could

look at, and some are things that you might be able to do as

their professional, and then there are some things that maybe

they need to work on. One thing, frankly, is to entertain their

failure. So they say to you all the stuff you just said, so

you're my client, and you go, Look, I've never been the kind

of person to stick to the habits, and I've never been able

to stay on the diet, and I just don't go to the gym and just

like, just give me the pills, right? And so at that point,

you're like, Okay, we can do that. We can totally do that. I

get it if you're if you're not that kind of pre but I just, I

want you to know what that means, so we can get you the

pills and you can enjoy a relatively active sex life, but

I do want you to know that doing that is it's only fixing this

one symptom, which is, I know the symptom you're most

concerned about at the moment, but I want to remind you that

this symptom is a sign that your circulation isn't working. So

this means you have a heart problem. So I know you think of

it as a penis problem, but it's actually a heart problem. So I

can give you this pill, but what that means is it's kind of like

it's going to help you this weekend, but then you might be

dead next week. And maybe that sounds alarmist to you, but the

fact is that if you can't create enough pressure, if you can't

create enough circulation to get that thing to happen, then your

brain isn't working properly either. And so you really want

to think through where you're at. Now, let me ask you

something. If you next week have a really massive heart attack,

and you're sitting in the hospital afterward and they're

telling you, look, you've done some permanent damage. Look,

you're going to have to make these lifestyle changes. Are you

going to really wish that you and I went the lifestyle way

this week instead of the pill way? So it's kind of a little

bit like what we started with. It's like you have to speak to

them in a storytelling kind of a way that has them emotionally

associate with the giving up that they're doing. I've done

some sports coaching over the years, and I was coaching the

Lebanese National Basketball team for the world fascinating

exercise. And I remember at one point speaking to somebody

going, well, I just, I am this way. I just am this way. I can't

do this thing for me to do. And I go, Okay, no problem. Then you

won't be a champion. Then what? And I go, Well, I know that your

skills are there. I know that you're one of the best. But the

trouble is, is that the champion level is about consistency. So

if you're saying we can't do this thing, then that's great.

You can settle for being good. And good is great. I mean, it's

fine if you're not ready for outstanding then. And of course,

what happens is, as I start arginine for their mediocrity,

they're like, no, no, hold on. And so in a sense, sometimes

aligning with their giving up is what wakes them up to not want

to give up.

I love that. I love that because all of us want to

do better than we are, right? And if we say, okay, you can do

that, but you're just gonna be good, mediocre. And, well, I

don't know. I'm not mediocre. I love that, because I hear that a

lot, because I hear from the guy, oh, I don't cook. I don't

like to, I always like to eat meat. I can't give that up. I

can't go low carb. Tastes horrible. I don't like the gym.

I look at the gym and I just make, gives me a headache. Like,

you can, okay, you can shift it and say, Well, you can continue

doing that. You just not gonna be able to perform in the

bedroom.

And the next way, the next side is like, we're

going down that failure path. But then the other version is to

say, Look, I get this is a whole lot of work. I understand that.

But here's a couple things that I know. You can take little blue

pills, and you get to stand up and feel like a man, and

everything's great. But we both know that it doesn't feel the

same that way. And we both know there's an emptiness in it when

it's artificial like that. We both know. So I want to tell you

about a client of mine. A client of mine who felt very much the

way you felt, but decided to give it a try. Started going to

the gym. It was hard. Didn't want to do it. But then started

kind of liking it, kind of started enjoying going to the

gym. And then with going to the gym, the eating got a little

better, and some just it's over six weeks, just tiny changes,

nothing major. Nothing major. And then one day, he woke up in

the morning, and it was a good situation, for the first time in

like 20 years. Like a good situation. And I'll tell you

what he was smiling when he saw what was going on, but who was

really smiling? His wife. And I got to tell you that nothing has

been the same for them ever since, and what he doesn't have

to do? Pre plan love making with some stupid little blue pill

because his body responds. I don't know if you want that, but

if you do.

I love that, I'm gonna have to borrow that

narrative and say it in that sentence. That actually, the

story you told, actually happened in one of the patients

I worked with. Where he had ed for 10 years and their marriage

is on the brink of a breakdown. Literally, they were gonna get

divorced if he wasn't gonna be able to function.

I got the story from you because you shared it

on my podcast. So I was just, I was just giving it back. But I

was showing, like, yeah, if you do it, but remember, it can't

be, well, I had this one guy, and he had the problem, but then

he fixed it, and then he got wood and everything. No, it's

got to be, like, storytelling. It's got to be, you got to,

like, get the client to, like, emotionally experience these two

futures, because you know how it is. When somebody, say, somebody

who smokes or vapes, and they sort of tangentially think about

the fact that they might get cancer one day. There's no

association. But I'll tell you what the minute they're in an

office looking at a scan on the thing, and they see there's a

mass in there, and now we're talking about chemotherapy,

suddenly they wish 20 years ago that they were able to come to

this moment. Well, I'm saying as a doctor, as a coach, in my

case, I can take them to that moment and have them experience

it as if it's real and maybe shocked to change in now.

I love that. And on that aspect, why is it so hard?

Let's just focus on men. Maybe men's a little bit different

than women. I don't know why. I don't know. Why is it so hard

for us to change our habit and it's easy, it's almost like easy

for us to make an excuse. So I didn't do that because of

multiple things, or whatever. Why is it so hard, and why is

men may be different than women?

I think that this is actually an area where men

and women are fairly similar. That really we all kind of

struggle to course correct. We can all drift. We can all drift

off, and then have a hard time. And then we think on January

1st, we're going to set some resolutions and fix the whole

thing, and we don't. Right? So let's figure out why that is. I

think that there are two major factors at play, and there's

many others, and we could probably do a six part video

training series on all of the influences. But the two big

ones, the one is has exactly to do with this, the level of

emotional engagement with consequence. Humans are not very

good at time delayed consequences. If you think about

it as a hunter gatherer, you do something and then it has a

consequence, and you learn very quickly. You learn really

quickly. Like a good example, I spent hours making all my

arrows, and I went hunting, and then I saw a bush pig disappear

into those bushes, and I fired one of my arrows in there, and I

missed. And now I can't get the arrow because it's too thorny in

there, and I spent so long making it, and I suddenly go, oh

shit, don't fire arrows into that kind of shrubbery. I've

learned quickly. I'm not going to make that mistake again,

right? So there's an immediacy to the hunter gatherer lifestyle

that isn't in our presentation. The minute we started doing

agriculture, we started doing things for the future, and we're

not as good at that. Our brains aren't as good at that. So

that's kind of one challenge that we have, and that has to do

with, as I said, it's like our brains aren't really centered

around that. And then the other component, which is kind of just

makes it even worse, is that, well, it's almost like, if we

remember that life was really unpredictable, like we take

living into our 70 if you get to 25 years old, you're going to

get to eight going to get to 80. Like we take it for granted

these days, life is safe, right? But I think go back to our

grandparents and their grandparents, life was not safe

like 200 years ago. There's no anesthetic. 200 years ago,

there's no antibiotics. Like even 200 years ago, life was a

lot scarier, never mind Hunter gathererly. So what that meant

was, if you were alive on Tuesday, whatever you did on

Monday must have been good, so and if you are alive on

Wednesday, whatever you did on Tuesday must have been good. And

if you did it on Tuesday and Wednesday, it definitely must be

good. So the challenge is, is that today, you can do a whole

lot of disastrous shit on Monday and still be alive on Tuesday,

and your brain goes, well, that was pretty good. I did six hours

on Netflix and I'm still alive. If you didn't hunt or gather,

you may well be dead. We got to bring consciousness to it. We

got to bring consciousness to it and say, Hey, I recognize that

I've got this Paleolithic system. I realized that the

compass is not wired very well for civilization, and so I need

to bring my consciousness to the conversation.

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Wow, I never thought about it that way. Is that why we are,

things we do if we have an immediate effect, we love it?

And we don't, it's Kind of like dieting, right? You eat well,

but you haven't seen the scale change in like, a week. You just

get you just get frustrated. You just stop the routine. Is that

what our brain is kind of wired for?

Yeah, and, like I said, we're looking at the wrong

goal. Somebody takes ozempic and they lose 30 pounds, and they

go, Oh, that was good. Oh, really. Well, there's a faster

way to lose 30 pounds. Get a chainsaw and cut your leg off,

then you've lost 30 pounds real fast. And the point is that when

somebody does it, and listen, I'm not saying that there isn't

a role for pharmacology here, but what I'm saying is that the

goal wasn't to lose 30 pounds. The goal was to get healthy. And

if losing 30 pounds meant losing 15 pounds of muscle, then you

didn't really achieve the goal at all. But in our very short

timeframe, in our very demanding results now kind of a world, we

all want the shortcuts.

How do we circumvent that now that we're

kind of wiring our brain for that shortcut? How do we kind of

rewire our brain for the longer reward, in the longer duration

for the reward?

So I think the one way to think of this is that

we definitely operate with two levels of consciousness, at

least. And the one is, let's say, higher consciousness, where

you're actually in charge. And then you've got your say,

subconscious behavior or unconscious behavior, where it's

just things that you do, and you don't have to think about it.

Some clear examples, like your heart beats completely

unconsciously. You don't need to think about that. You can't even

do anything about it. Like your heart's just going to be heart's

just going to be you can't slow it down, you can't speed you can

slow it down or speed it up by thinking about stuff, but you

can't just go heart change. We're breathing. Breathing is

something that is semi conscious. It happens

unconsciously all the time anyway, but you can consciously

override it. You can hold your breath. You can breathe harder,

you can breathe faster, and you can do breathing exercises. So

when we think of life in those terms, there are some things

that are just going to happen automatically, and there are

some things that we have influence over. So eating is a

good example. We can eat completely subconsciously. You

can sit down and eat an entire plate of food and have no memory

of it. You can go to the movies. You can get your popcorn. You

can eat the whole damn thing and not even notice that you ate it,

right? We know that we can do that. That is an old

evolutionary throwback, because, frankly, being super conscious

of eating was dangerous. Because you see, if you and I are out

walking in nature and we stumble upon some berries like, oh my

god, Anne, these berries are amazing. I mean, like, these are

the best berries ever. We're so focused on the berries that

something eats us. So instead, we eat the berries like this.

And you wonder why guys like to sit and eat and watch TV. It's

just an old Paleolithic pattern. It's the way our our genes

develop. We're good at that. Now the problem is, is that our life

is full of traps. It's full of pleasure traps, and if we don't

bring our consciousness to those pleasure traps, then our

unconscious mind will let us run these disastrous behaviors that

will lead us nowhere or lead us terribly. And so what I'm really

talking about, to a degree, is a little bit like what Victor

Frankl wrote about in Man's Search for Meaning. When he

talks about like between stimulus and response, there's

this moment, and that moment is the ultimate human freedom. It's

the injection of consciousness. Is the way I think of it. So as

an example, you come over to my house, you're wanting to be on a

diet, and I serve Haagen Dazs ice cream and apple crumble. And

so in that moment, you're like, oh my god, Haagen Dazs and apple

crumble. You're like, I have to eat that. So you see it, you

want it. You eat it. And most people are are like that. They

might have a moment where it's like, Yeah, but you're on a

diet, yeah, but it's apple crumble. And it's done. What we

want to try and do is wake people up to have a slightly

bigger glimpse of consciousness in that moment. A slightly

bigger awareness in that moment, so that they can take over, so

they can switch off the autopilot and get conscious

about it. We have this part of the brain, I think it's called

the anterior cingulate cortex, and that part of the brain

controls executive function. That's that's where, when you're

in charge, that's the part of the brain that's lit up. And

what's crazy, as I understand this, is that if you resist

yourself, that is to say, you resist what you're wanting, like

you're wanting to eat the arginine an apple pie, but you

resist that want. You send blood to the cortex. You send blood to

that part of the brain, and you grow it like a muscle. So that

means every time you do what you should do. And every time you

don't do what you shouldn't do, you are building self esteem and

building executive function. So when you're talking about a

client, who you want them to make a bunch of micro

installment, micro course corrections, micro changes, so

that six weeks from now they can perform. Then what you want to

do is tie that performance to those tiny, micro decisions that

they're making. And so it's like, in a real sense, it's

like, okay, are you going to go to the gym today? I don't know.

I don't know where my gym clothes are. Okay. What I want

you to do is, I want you to imagine six weeks from now,

you're standing in the bedroom and you're at full attention.

Now, can you find your gym clothes you want to create the

pattern interrupt that makes them think about the reward they

want out there because their paleolithic brain is only

thinking about. If you think about it, they're like the gym.

What are they thinking about? The immediate consequences, the

loss of time, the shitty effort I have to go find my gym, like

gym clothes, and then I gotta go to the gym that I it's not I

don't like it there, and then I gotta lift weight, and that's

uncomfortable and painful and difficult. So everything about

this is is not nice, except six weeks from now, that could be

nice. We have to get them to move their consciousness out

there.

Yeah, I love that. Move your consciousness to that

outcome, because what you're describing even with me, I go to

the gym like four or five times a week. And every time the first

15 minutes, my brain is telling me, Oh, my God, you're too

tired. You got 10,000 things you gotta do. Your neck is hurting.

You shouldn't be exercising and here I am on the treadmill. The

first 15 minutes, I just block those thoughts out of my brain.

My brain is telling me you're too tired. Let's go, get out of

here, get into your car and go home. You have 10,000 things to

do, but I know that, and I do the conscience like you said,

No, you're not gonna do it. You're not gonna do it. Just

take one step forward, one step forward. But even that's

happening to me, even with just going to the gym four times a

week, every day, consistently, and your brain is still trying

to talk you out of it every time.

And here's what I would suggest, is that you start

off at phase one where you can't even talk your body into doing

it. Like you just can't. So now you got to negotiate, and one of

the ways you might negotiate is say, Look, I'll tell you what.

You just have to go for 15 minutes. Just for 15 minutes,

that's all you got to do. And the body's like, Well, shit,

then fine, we'll go for 15 minutes. All right. So now

what's key is, at the end of that 15 minutes, you should go

into the car, and you should put on your best celebration of

music, and you should dance it out. You should actually

celebrate it like you hit a home run, like you scored the

touchdown, like you got the try. Whatever sport is your metaphor.

You should celebrate it like it was real. Your body goes, Well,

shit now, I like that celebration. And the next day,

your body goes, Are you up for your 15 minutes? Now you start

extending your 15 minutes to 30 to an hour or whatever. But

you're now in the next phase where your executive function is

overpowering the resistance, right? It is overpowering the

resistance. What I want to suggest is that there's another

level and the next level, and it comes largely from really paying

attention to the progress and macro and micro celebration,

like celebrating the little things and celebrating the big

things. I will tell you that the next level that you go through

is you can't talk yourself out of it. And that's what happened

to me. I hated going to the gym. I hated going for workouts. I

didn't like it at all. And I talked myself into it. I forced

myself into it. I got myself doing it. And then I celebrated

like crazy. I took pictures all the time to see what was

changing on my body, and I put on serious muscle, and I love

the look of it, and it felt great. And then one day I hurt

my shoulder. Go see the doctor. He's like, Dude, you got to the

racket sports. You got to be a little careful. You hurt your

shoulder. So what you got to do is no working out. What now? The

me of two months earlier, and I'm like, Yes, I win. No working

out, right? The me of that stage was like, Huh? I'm working out

anyway, but I'm going to work out my legs, and then I'm going

to talk to my trainer and say, Look, I've hurt my shoulder. My

doctor doesn't want me to do any workouts. What can we do that

won't hurt my shoulder? And I worked out every day while

healing my shoulder. And I'll tell you something, it felt

good, and I bet you my shoulder even healed faster.

Absolutely. So you adjusted instead of saying, oh,

okay, I guess I'll just stay home and get eat or just not

exercise.

Right. But it wasn't even, but Anne, It wasn't

even that I adjusted. It was that the me had changed, that

even the doctor couldn't talk me out of going for the workout.

Like I had transcended to the next level, where the workout

had become non negotiable. I, even with a sore shoulder, I'm

still going.

Yeah, absolutely. And we can actually learn

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thing, using that executive function.

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So wow, you have shared so many pearls, really rewiring your

brain and eliminating barriers. I've learned several things that

I'm actually kind of institute in our coaching program for men

with ED. So before we end, how do you define an attractive man,

the provider, the vision that you see that a man should be

like in 2025 at this time?

Wow. Actually, I have to be careful. If I answer

this wrong, I could get canceled. And I don't mean from

you, I don't mean from you. I am a bit of a traditionalist, and

what I mean by that is that I believe that it is a man's

responsibility, and it's a tricky responsibility, but it's

to walk what I consider to be a very fine line that is the

boundary between chivalry and chauvinism. And the tricky thing

about walking that fine line is that the line is changing all

the time. And so what is defined as chivalry in one generation

becomes chauvinism in the next one. And so this is why we often

see, say, older men getting in trouble with the newer age

thinking because they were walking a different line, and

then society changed. And I'm going to use a shocking example,

but Sean Connery, I want to be really clear. I don't agree with

what he said, but you can find on YouTube an old interview with

him where he's talking to Barbara Walters, and Barbara

says, Well, Sean, I seem to remember hearing you an

interview, say that sometimes it's, it's acceptable or maybe

even necessary to smack your wife, and he's like, Well, it's

never preferable, Barbara, but, but sometimes a woman just, she

just doesn't know when to stop, and she just goes on to explain

it like, and you're like, holy crap. But what's fascinating is

today, we hear that, and it's fundamentally shocking. In the

80s, we heard and it was like wrong in the 60s, and we heard

it, we went, that's not ideal. So it's changed the whole step.

And if you watch his movies, the original Bond movies from, say,

the 60s, look at the way he treated women. That was chivalry

back then grab them by the arm, pull them in the room. What we

have to do as men, I think, today, is walk that line and

understand how it's shifting, and we have to also not

surrender too much. We're in a place where we're being told

that masculinity is toxic, rather than maybe there are

aspects of men. Like, I'm always amazed when people talk about

toxic masculinity. I'm like, Well, can you please explain to

me toxic masculinity, but describe it in a way that makes

it specific to men, because it seems to me, every behavior that

you're describing is just is the same with toxic femininity. Like

what you're really talking about is toxic behavior, and you've

decided to make it only about men. What I believe is that what

a woman really wants from men, and this is not true of every

woman, and not true of every situation, and certainly there

are cultural changes going all the time. But it strikes me that

what a woman really wants is safety. She wants respect, she

wants security, she wants certainty. And if we can present

those things to her, if we can create those things for her,

we're going to put her in a place where she can really

experience her own definition of femininity for her. And so when

people talk about, say, like a surrendered wife. I saw Charlie

Kirk the other day, they said something. He said something

about he got in trouble like they were bringing up all the

things he said. And he said, your wife should surrender to

you. And of course, I understand that. But what he meant by that

is not that she should surrender to you and you should treat her

like a prisoner. What he meant was, is that what some women

really want is to actually be able to surrender their

security, to be able to say, I trust that you've got our

destiny. I trust that I can sleep at night because you're

beside me. My wife, Kirsty, she's just as feminine as

feminine gets, but she's powerful. She's not, when I say

that she's surrendered to me, don't believe me. She will not

surrender on something she doesn't want to surrender on.

But she is also surrendered to me. She allows me to create the

masculine sense of certainty and safety around our house, and I

really respect her for doing that. I also respect her for

standing up for herself when she feels like she needs to do that.

One of the reasons she can do that, though, is because she

knows that I create a safe environment for her to do that.

And so I don't think I've answered this as clearly as I

could.

No, I think you answered very clearly. Actually,

I love your definition. I like to ask our guest that

definition, and I think the way you explain it, it's really not

just 80s or 90s or I mean, I think it's present and future in

really being a provider, provide safety for women and to have

them feel respected, I think that just cause said the same

thing for men as well respect and communication. And I mean

for how women should treat men, right?

Exactly men really want. I think, in my

opinion, anyway, what men really want is respect, admiration.

Which I think should be mutual, and peace. The biggest thing is

peace, and that's obviously an area that's really challenging

sometimes for men and women, because they have different

communication styles. But I can tell you that for men, peace is

a big one. And then I want to add one more thing about this,

and as it relates to being a father, is that, especially a

father to daughters, I have three of them, and I can tell

you that my view of parenting and my view of being a father in

terms of masculinity is that twofold. One is that it is my

job to raise powerful, independent children that

absolutely know that they are going to be completely okay when

I die, but that they're going to miss me horribly when I do. It's

that balance between I want them to love me and I want them to

appreciate me, but I also want them to know that they're going

to be okay. And then another component to that, for me, it

relates to my favorite parenting quote about this is like, it's

not our job as parents to prepare the road for our

children. It's our job to prepare our children for the

road. And I see way too much of the former going on at the

moment. We're trying to create equality of outcomes for all of

our children. We're trying to protect them, bubble wrap them,

and so on. I believe that we need to challenge our kids, and

that is a distinctly. I think mothers can do it. There's no

question, but I do believe that it's a very masculine thing to

do with your children. I was shocked to read this the other

day, and that children's outcomes are really fascinating.

If a child grows up without a father, they're much more likely

to end up in prison, they're much more likely addicted to

drugs, and they're much more likely to end up pregnant or

getting somebody pregnant. If a child grows up without a mother,

their odds of ending up in prison, pregnant drug addict and

so forth, are precisely the same as if they grew up with both

parents. Now that's not any kind of statement against mothers.

The truth is that I think that mothers are of primary

importance in the first three years. If you have to choose

between two of the parents you need that mother those three

years, but I believe at four, that father starts becoming

absolutely imperative for the well being and the raising of

the children, and the outcomes seem to do that. And I'll just

finish with one last thing on that just because it's so

passionate to me, I love my girl so much. One of my objectives as

a dad is I want to make it damn near impossible for them to find

husbands. And what I mean by that is I want to set a standard

of masculinity and a standard of protection and a standard of

care that they will only accept that same standard.

Well said, I truly believe that my daughter right

now is dating someone that's very similar to her dad. And

we're starting to see those similarities. Like I wonder

where that come from. Who else? Your dad, who you grew up with

the day you were born. So what you said really resonate with me

as well. Having said that, Eric, thank you for being on the

podcast. How can our listener find out more about you and your

program.

Sure. I mean, I'm on Instagram under my own name

at Eric Edmeades. If people are curious about changing their

relationship with food, and I can tell you that everything we

do there is super complementary to what you're offering. So the

Wildfit Program is unbelievably effective. We have the food

freedom challenge, which is a two week food psychology program

that will really help people create the habits that will

allow them to make the change. And then one other thing that

might be interesting is we have developed an assessment. It's

called the Evolution Gap Assessment. And what it does is

it assesses something called evolutionary mismatch, which is,

hey, our biology evolved for one environment, and now we're

living in this other environment, and it's causing

stresses in our families, in our homes, in our work, in our

money, in our health. And so this assessment helps you to

look at your entire life against your evolutionary biology and

then create a prescription for you, for areas of improvement

where you can close the gap and make things better. And that

tested, that evaluation is at gapfinder.com and it's currently

available completely for free because it's in beta. I mean, if

somebody is listening to this podcast in 2026 it's not free

anymore, but right now it is, and that's at gapfinder.com.

Okay, so we'll put that in a show description as

well. So check out Eric website. Find out more about his. Is it

called Wildfit? Yeah, Program, and really dive deep into his

teaching on rewiring your brain so that way you can achieve your

goals. Because he's only covering .001% of what he

teaches and his knowledge, and we're hearing, I'm learning

several things that I will change myself as well. So thank

you, Eric, for being on the show, and we're definitely gonna

make sure that we'll put all your asset on there, and I look

forward to just becoming live actually, very soon. Thank you

so much.

Thank you.

Okay, Modern Man, you are not alone and you don't

have to suffer anymore. ED can feel isolating, frustrating, and

even defeating. The endless guessing, the quiet shame, the

weight of not feeling like yourself is exhausting. But

here's the truth, you are not broken. You are not alone. You

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out the course at getwoodnow.com. I'll see you

there.

Thanks for listening to the Sexual Health for Men Podcast.

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