Daniel Sullivan of The Diesel Physique On The 5 Things You Need To Do To Achieve a Healthy Body Weight, And Keep It Permanently

Pick up some dumbbells. Increasing your total lean muscle mass increases your metabolic rate, which allows you to eat a healthy caloric intake, stop starvation dieting, and build an hourglass figure while losing body fat

So many of us have tried dieting. All too often though, many of us lose 10–20 pounds, but we end up gaining it back. Not only is yo-yo dieting unhealthy, it is also demoralizing and makes us feel like giving up. What exactly do we have to do to achieve a healthy body weight and to stick with it forever?

In this interview series called “5 Things You Need To Do To Achieve A Healthy Body Weight And Keep It Permanently” we are interviewing health and wellness professionals who can share lessons from their research and experience about how to do this.

As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Daniel Sullivan.

Daniel Sullivan is a Certified Personal Trainer, Nutritionist and IFBB Professional Bodybuilder. With experience training elite professional athletes, musicians and actors, Sullivan and Nutritionist Shanda Sullivan founded the My Diesel Physique Challenge to help everyday people achieve their health and wellness goals. The online fitness and nutrition program has changed countless lives with nutritious meal plans, workouts, coaching and a supportive community — all for just $11 per week. Learn more at www.mydieselphysique.com.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive into the main focus of our interview, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory?

Like a lot of kids, I started out in sports when I was very young and, around eight or nine years old, I started to work out with my dad. But things really changed for me when my mom was diagnosed with cancer. The doctors gave her a 10% chance of living, and she chose to fight back with nutrition. We started eating a lot healthier as a family — and it worked. My mom survived without chemotherapy or other drugs. I witnessed first-hand how a healthy eating and an active lifestyle could actually save a life.

What or who inspired you to pursue your career? We’d love to hear the story.

My mom was and remains a huge inspiration for me. Being a personal trainer and nutritionist is about so much more than making my clients look good. I want them to feel amazing, and live their healthiest and best lifestyle because I saw from my mom just how important that is.

None of us can achieve success without some help along the way. Was there a particular person who you feel gave you the most help or encouragement to be who you are today? Can you share a story about that?

My dad was not only my coach throughout my life, but he also taught me how to be a coach. He coached every sport I played — from preschool to high school — and taught me that every challenge is an opportunity. He taught me to pray everyday and work to become a kinder, gentler person in the process of achieving my goals. And that’s a pursuit that continues to motivate me to this day.

Can you share the funniest or most interesting mistake that occurred to you in the course of your career? What lesson or take away did you learn from that? Can you share your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Why does that resonate with you so much?

My motto is “1% better, every day.” I think a lot of people believe that they need to make extreme changes in their life to achieve their goals. And they fail because those changes aren’t sustainable. But imagine if you just tried to be 1% better every single day? Everyone can do one thing just a little bit better over time and, in a year, you’ll have met your goal and then some.

What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now? How do you think that might help people?

Our team is in the process of developing an amazing, new My Diesel Physique app. Our goal is to make it even easier to live the My Diesel Physique lifestyle with weekly videos, workouts, meal plans, and a supportive community of challengers from around the world — right in your pocket. And that’s just the first iteration of the app. We have some really cool developments that will be coming online soon that will completely change how you think about online fitness and nutrition.

For the benefit of our readers, can you briefly let us know why you are an authority in the fitness and wellness field?

I am a certified personal trainer, nutritionist and International Federation of Bodybuilding and Fitness Professional (IFBB) Bodybuilder. The Diesel Physique team also includes my wife, co-founder and nutritionist, Shanda Sullivan, and organizational and structure coach Nathan Edwards. We are a full-service team that is dedicated to helping as many people achieve their health, fitness and life goals.

OK, thank you for all of that. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview about achieving a healthy body weight. Let’s begin with a basic definition of terms so that all of us are on the same page. How do you define a “Healthy Body Weight”?

I tell our challengers all the time that it’s really a personal definition. How do you feel now? Are you comfortable in your own skin? If not, let’s work on it. It’s also personal because how you feel today might not be how you feel six weeks later. Your goals will change as you learn to live a healthier lifestyle. We have so many challengers who lose 20lbs and hit their “goal weight,” but then are shocked when they stick with the habits they learned and they’ve lost another 15lbs or are achieving things they never thought they could do before.

How can an individual learn what is a healthy body weight for them? How can we discern what is “too overweight” or what is “too underweight”?

Everyone is different. Listen to your body, and it will tell you what you need to do. Many people don’t realize that doing too much can actually cause them to gain weight. If you’re not seeing progress with whatever you’re doing now, there’s a problem. For those who want to get scientific and detailed information to work from, we recommend a DexaScan. I actually do a DexaScan every four weeks when I am preparing for a competition. The scan will provide you with actionable musculoskeletal data, including whether you are considered medically underweight or obese, and we can work from there to develop a program that will work for you.

This might be intuitive to you, but it will be instructive to expressly articulate this. Can you please share a few reasons why being over your healthy body weight, or under your healthy body weight, can be harmful to your health?

Being overweight or underweight can wreck havoc on your body. Many people are surprised to learn the negative effects can be more severe for those who are underweight because you are likely deficient in critical nutrients. In both scenarios, your blood flow is impacted which can also affect your heart.

In contrast, can you help articulate a few examples of how a person who achieves and maintains a healthy body weight will feel better and perform better in many areas of life?

Your self-confidence, energy, mental clarity and creativity will all rise. I can tell immediately when I’m bogged down from a big cheat meal or not having enough rest. When you take care of your body, your body takes care of you.

Ok, fantastic. Here is the main question of our discussion. Can you please share your “5 Things You Need To Do To Achieve a Healthy Body Weight And Keep It Permanently?”. If you can, please share a story or an example for each.

1. Break up with your scale. Instead, take weekly progress photos to track changes in your body composition. Scales don’t measure fat loss and leave us feeling unmotivated when the numbers inevitably rise from building the lean muscle you need to burn fat. The psychological effects of this alone lead most people to quit regardless of visible fat loss when they look in the mirror.
2. Learn about macronutrients and how they fuel your body. Knowledge is power. Understanding the purpose of protein, carbs and fats will allow you to create a perfectly balanced meal plan to fuel your body and achieve your goals. With this insight, you can lose body fat while still functioning at your absolute best with increased energy and strength.
3. Pick up some dumbbells. Increasing your total lean muscle mass increases your metabolic rate, which allows you to eat a healthy caloric intake, stop starvation dieting, and build an hourglass figure while losing body fat.
4. Enjoy your favorite foods in moderation. Extreme diets are impossible to stick to. Having balance in your diet removes that restrictive, “all or nothing,” mindset and allows you to make long-term, sustainable changes. Your daily meal plan should include dishes you look forward to eating. Our challengers eat tacos, pizza, barbeque, soups, cereal, ice cream — you name it — and they achieve their goals with healthful ingredient swaps instead of restrictive rules and recipes.
5. Choose more nutritious ingredients. There are more healthful and nutritious ingredient options for just about every ingredient out there. Integrate these into your favorite dishes while practicing portion control to eat the foods you love while maintaining your healthiest weight and body composition.

The emphasis of this series is how to maintain an ideal weight for the long term, and how to avoid yo-yo dieting. Specifically, how does a person who loses weight maintain that permanently and sustainably?

Avoid extreme restrictions. Living a healthy lifestyle is all about balance. Instead, swap out some healthier ingredients in the meals you love. This removes the mental barrier restrictions create that creates the yo-yo effect.

What are a few of the most common mistakes you have seen people make when they try to lose weight?

It’s never a good idea to cut calories to an extreme or to avoid carbohydrates. Our body needs both in order to function. We also see a lot of extreme cardio. That’s bad on so many different levels. It’ll hinder your fat loss and can lead to injuries.

What errors cause people to just snap back to their old unhealthy selves?

Any extreme restriction or rule is not sustainable. It is inevitable that you’ll become fatigued and revert back to your old habits. Plus, you’ll lose self-confidence which can be the worst outcome of all.

What can they do to avoid those mistakes?

Be prepared. Write out a daily meal plan for yourself, prepare your meals in advance and take them with you to work, school or when you travel. This gives you one less thing to think about throughout the day, and will help keep you on track when your schedule is thrown a curveball. The last thing you want to be is hungry without a solid meal on-hand.

How do we take all this information and integrate it into our actual lives? The truth is that we all know that it’s important to eat more vegetables, eat less sugar, etc. But while we know it intellectually, it’s difficult to put it into practice and make it a part of our daily habits. In your opinion what are the main blockages that prevent us from taking the information that we all know, and integrating it into our lives?

The fear of failure and self-sabotage are unfortunately very common. We see a lot of people who don’t believe they are capable of making permanent changes to their lifestyle. That’s why we preach “1% better.” When you think this way, you’re not overwhelming yourself. Instead, you’ll slowly build up confidence and the resilience you need to be successful — and to live the life you truly want to live.

On the flip side, how can we prevent these ideas from just being trapped in a rarified, theoretical ideal that never gets put into practice? What specific habits can we develop to take these intellectual ideas and integrate them into our normal routine?

I start every single day with three positive affirmations. I also pick out something I like about myself in the mirror. It’s the simple practice of uplifting myself on a daily basis. Focusing on your mental health is the first step to changing your lifestyle for the better.

Ok, we are nearly done. You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good for the greatest number of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

With thousands of challengers across the United States and around the world, we are starting a movement that is not only helping people achieve their health and fitness goals, but also bringing more self-love into the world. Our goal is that every challenger finds a sense of peace within themselves and within their daily lives. I think we are all fighting a mental battle and we want to give everyone the tools they need to find self-love, peace and pride in themselves.

We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we both tag them :-)

Arnold Schwarzenegger is a fellow IFBB Pro, but I admire him for so much more than that. He overcame and achieved so much throughout his life. And he inspired so many people. One of my favorite stories is about how much he believed in himself. He would break into the gym to workout and even went AWOL from basic training to compete in a bodybuilding competition. Of course, I don’t endorse committing a crime for your passion, but there are so many stories from his life where his tenacity made all the difference. When he came to the United States, he worked hard to transition from bodybuilding to acting, and harder to become Governor of California. Whatever he set his mind to, he achieved — and many people benefitted from his career and leadership.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

Join the My Diesel Physique Challenge online at www.mydieselphysique.com and follow me at @the_diesel_physique on Instagram.

Thank you for these really excellent insights, and we greatly appreciate the time you spent with this. We wish you continued success.