Painkillers Nearly Killed Him, Then He Saved a 630lb Stranger | Chris Powell

But during that time, I actually ended up herniating a

disc in my back, and I ended up getting hooked on painkillers.

Oh, man.

And I was one of those statistics.

back in, mid 2000s, remember it was like, oh, I got hurt and the doctor's

like, "Hey, here, take four to six a day as needed for pain." And it wasn't

like one of those little orange bottles.

It was like the big one, right?

And, I realized that it helped me manage the physical pain, but it also helped

me manage the emotional pain and that's when it went from Vicodin to Percocet

to Oxycontin and two years in I lost everything and I was living out of my

car and sure enough, I ended up hopping from couch to couch for a while and, woke

up on the friend's couch in California one morning with this epiphany that

I got myself into this mess and I'm gonna have to get myself out of it.

Intro Band: Lean in closer. This is your time.

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Every voice. Every scar.

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Mike and Scott.

Let's talk.

Oh boy.

Michael Lindstrom, Scott Leese, What's Your Story?

Another episode.

I'm pretty excited about this one.

We get to get, we get to get coached a little bit on this next one.

I need some coaching.

Yeah, we need some coaching, especially when

it comes to that pillar of our life called health and fitness.

Yeah.

So Chris Powell, Chris is, I've known this

guy from afar for 15 years.

Actually met him in a studio.

Scott Passamore, mutual friend, he could talk about that in a minute.

Had him on talking about something, about fitness.

They had a little gym by the way.

I think it's still there in that studio.

He's in there doing like burpees and pushups and Scott and all these

stuff and I'm out there promoting my book with Dan Lear and I got to

meet him and say hi, but just like your Ru Kim's social media friend.

but since we started the podcast six months ago, every single person I've

talked to "You gotta get Chris on.

You gotta get Chris on.

You gotta get Chris on.

" So man, thank you so much for coming on, man.

I really appreciate it.

Absolutely.

it's a pleasure.

Yeah, we start every, podcast with a simple question, man.

What's your story?

Take us where you want us to take us.

How much time we got?

Okay.

I'll give you the abbreviated version real quick.

born here in Arizona, quickly moved, to Idaho, California, Pacific Northwest,

so grew up in that region, but then came back to go to Arizona State University.

had a wild ride along the way.

Wild and ASU go in the same sense too often.

I then quickly found myself, on national television, helping individuals transform

their lives while I was initially heading it down a very different path.

And so I found myself in physical fitness and actually initially

I found myself on the local news here as the morning fitness guy.

Then I got swept up into Hollywood and helped people transform

their lives around the world.

And, it brings me here to the couch hanging out with you guys.

Yeah.

I appreciate that.

What was the first big break when you got that phone call going, "Hey,

we want you to be on this particular show, whether it's national otherwise,"

where you look that milestone in your mind and say, "This was the

one that put me to the next level."

Oh, gosh.

there's a big story that leads up to that break.

I would say my first break though was when I walked into KTVK News Channel

three in 2002 I was modeling clothes there for a buddy of mine, but all I

needed to do was get through the doors.

And as soon as I got through the doors, I actually had

segment ideas planned out - Wow.

And I said, "Hey, while I'm here," I was like, "Who's a producer I can talk to?

" I just had to get past security.

Pointed me to this one, woman's desk, and I walked over, they

said, "Hi, my name's Chris Powell.

I'm here doing a segment for Hugo Boss, but I just got a degree in exercise

science from ASU and I've got some ideas.

I've been watching the show for years.

I got some ideas.

I just wanted to go ahead and throw them out there and see if you give me a shot."

And she looked at me, she went, " No one's ever just asked me for a segment.

I don't know, you wanna come back in two weeks?" I was like, " I'll be here." That

fast.

That's amazing.

If you ask

- Mike Lindstrom: Yep.

as the saying goes-

Yeah, sure.

Closed mouths don't get fed.

Yeah, ask and you shall receive.

I just asked and so I can't tell you how many times I tried to talk myself

out of it and then I just walked in there with the pieces of paper and I

just asked for it and sure enough, I got the gig and, one segment turned into

two, turned into 10, turned into 20.

And before I know it, I started getting emails from individuals

around The Valley because I'm doing these health and fitness segments.

Yeah.

And so more and more questions coming in about weight loss.

But what was really interesting about the emails that I was getting

was a lot of people that were saying "I'm 300 pounds, I'm 400 pounds-

Wow.

…I'm 500 pounds, I don't go out at night," and

talking about just all the suffering that they had been going through.

And I was thinking like, "I'm here in Arizona, I'm out all the time, where are

they?" And they, one of them even said, "I pride myself on being invisible because

I shop at Walmart at midnight because I don't want… I'm so tired of people

pointing fingers, and laughing at me."

And, it really started to pull at me because I was in health and fitness,

a degree in exercise science, right?

Yeah.

So I was all about performance and everything like that.

And as I started to read more and more of these emails that were coming into

me and emails, this is early 2000s but they really started pouring in and I

just couldn't stop thinking about them and there was one in particular and

it was a gentleman who was 630 pounds.

Oh my gosh.

And he, but he was one year older than me.

I was 24 now at this time and he was 25 and he said, " The

doctor just left my house.

I haven't left my house in two years.

The doctor just left and he said, I'm not gonna see 30.

This is not the life I imagine for myself.

I wanna, I always wanted to get married.

I wanna have kids." He's like, "I don't know how to ask this, but

I'm asking you for help." And,

- Mike Lindstrom: Man.

I could not stop thinking about him and he lived about 10 minutes

from where I was living at the time and for about two weeks I was thinking

about it and I just thought, he left his address and I got in my car and

I drove to his house and I just, I didn't even know what I was doing.

I just had to, it just, it was something that was pulling at my heart and, sure

enough, I knew he was gonna be there.

He han left in two years.

So I introduced myself, walked in the house, he was surprised and we sat down

and we talked 10 minutes in, we are laughing, we're talking about South Park,

we're telling jokes and I'm like, bro, like we, we became instant friends and I

said, "Dude, I don't know where this is gonna go, but I'll be back on Tuesday."

Wow.

And I showed up every other day for two years and he ended up losing 400 pounds.

Wow.

He became my best friend and it was just the most incredible ride.

In fact, as he was losing the weight, he said he wanted to share his story.

So I would bring him on News Channel 3 with me and Scott would interview him

and his name was David and he became a local star and we would be out walking

and people would be honking their horns and he was just a local hero.

Guy lost 400 pounds.

I can't imagine.

So it was, an incredible journey and, what's

interesting though is during that time, and we'll get to the whole TV-

Yeah.

…show part.

but that was, where things were really started taking off.

But during that time, I actually ended up herniating a disc in my back, and I

ended up getting hooked on painkillers.

Oh, man.

And I was one of those statistics.

And back in, mid 2000s, remember it was like, oh, I got hurt and the doctor's

like, "Hey, here, take four to six a day as needed for pain." And it wasn't

like one of those little orange bottles.

It was like the big one, right?

And, I realized that it helped me manage the physical pain, but it also

helped me manage the emotional pain and that's when it went from Vicodin

to Percocet to Oxycontin and two years in I lost everything and I was living

out of my car and David had already lost his weight and we'd become such

good friends and he saw me going downhill and he transformed his life.

Yeah.

and sure enough, I ended up hopping from couch to couch for a while

and, woke up on the friend's couch in California one morning with this epiphany

and just, after losing everything and just being hooked on painkillers for a

couple years, just a big epiphany of the fact that I got myself into this mess and

I'm gonna have to get myself out of it.

And I was so busy pointing the finger at the time and, it was just, it was

everyone else's fault and, so I ended up getting in my car, drove back to Phoenix

and on the way I stopped at a tattoo parlor and I got the Roman numerals, one

threw a million tattooed down my side and I thought, "I don't know how I'm gonna

do it, but I have to live for something bigger than myself" because in that

epiphany I just realized how selfish I was being and again, I was playing the victim.

I was so busy pointing the finger and so I said, "I'm, gonna own this and now I think

the only way for me to get myself out of this is to live for something bigger

than me and now I can't get out of it.

" So it's the Roman numerals, one three million, I said, "I'm gonna, I'm

gonna check them off as I can make a positive difference in people's lives."

And that was my mission.

And I was talking to David at the time going back and forth, he said, "Hey,

I was talking to my dad. You can come live on our couch. You just stay with

us." So David, the guy who everyone saw-

Wow.

…how I changed his life, what people don't realize,

he opened up his doors to me.

They let me sleep on their couch for six months while I got back on my feet.

Wow.

And when I did, and I could finally afford rent for myself, David moved out with

me and we lived together for two years.

[[laughing]] After that, I was, I'm sober.

I've been sober ever since.

That's awesome.

And, it's just been the wildest ride.

And what happened is that, sorry, this, this is a

This is great!

What's my story?

Here's my story.

This is great.

In this time, David, we actually got him like five

different skin surgeries, had his eyes done, got the teeth done.

I'm from all the best doctors in town, right?

Jay Schwartz for the-

Yeah, yeah.

…eyes, and Btalata did the teeth, Mazaheri did all of his skin.

And I'm so like, the guy, and he looks like a model at this time.

David looks like a freaking-

Wow.

And so now everyone's on a quest, me and all these doctors,

to get him dating [Sound] because he's never been on a date before.

So we're having so much fun and he posted his befores and afters on, you're probably

not gonna know this, you guys are so young, but it's a site called MySpace.

Yeah.

You don't remember MySpace.

We were just laughing, I was on MySpace.

[[laughing]] I was on it.

We were all on MySpace!

I was on MySpace, man!

so, he posted his befores and afters on MySpace and it went viral.

And before you know it, David and I were on Oprah and 20/20 and it was just like

- Scott Leese: Man.

It was crazy.

We flew out to Tokyo and did a Japanese game show.

and they were just fascinated with his weight loss and this friendship that

we had and it was during that time there was a show was getting really

big on NBC called The Biggest Loser.

I remember it very well.

I watched that show.

And I had a friend in Hollywood who calls me up

and she said, "Dude, I just saw everything you're doing with David.

That was incredible.

I saw you guys on the Today Show." She said, "Hey, my CEO wants to talk to

you because everyone's interested in these weight loss shows." So I ended up

talking to this guy, from a production company in LA he said, "Come out to LA.

Let's just… show us how you do what you do."

Yep,

"Create a show and we'll do our best. We could go out and try to

sell it." And so I, after three trips to LA over the couple months, we ended up

creating the concept for a show and it was totally different from Biggest Loser,

but it was in the weight loss space.

It was like to tell the deep story, like the emotional journey-

Yeah.

…of transformation.

And, didn't hear anything from the production company.

I'm just… radio silence for three months.

I get a random phone call out of the blue.

It's the CEO.

He goes, " Hey, dude!

what's up?" "Well, what's up?

Nothing much.

You tell me.

" Chris Powell: How are you?

It's been a while.

He goes," Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we've been busy selling your

show." He's a storyteller, so he's really good at this stuff.

He goes, "Eh, we've been busy selling your show." "Oh my gosh, that's incredible.

I'm honored to have been a part of his team to create a

show…" the host was gonna be a celebrity fitness trainer, right?

And so just to have been a part of that, it was an honor.

And, he goes, "Yeah, it was a bidding war between A&E and Bravo and we ended up

selling it, guess who?" I said, "No clue.

I don't even know how this stuf works." He goes, "ABC." I went,

"Oh my gosh, that's so cool.

Go team!" He goes…

[[laughing]] "You're not getting this.

Yeah, you're not getting it!

You're not getting it.

"What do I need to get?" I stopped and I went, "Wait,

who's the host?" He goes, "You are.

" and David's right there, I go…

[[laughing]] And I said, "Wait, so what does this mean?" He

goes, it means pack your bags.

You're leaving in five weeks." I went, "Oh my gosh." Hung up the phone, packed

my bags, I went, "David, get ready." And, sure enough, ran out to Hollywood

and five years, 76 transformations-

Wow.

And it was just, it was a really wild ride.

Wow.

Yeah.

So that's how the whole thing happened.

That's how the whole show started.

That's incredible.

Yeah.

So it's funny that you talk about getting that phone call.

We had Mark Kerr on here was talking about when he got the call back

finally from The Rock when he said, "Hey, we're gonna do this movie."

And he's "Man, I've been waiting years for this call." So it's just

funny how patience, passionate persistence, I call it, right?

Yeah.

That passionate persistence paid off.

So you, David, you guys are still like buds.

you guys are… Didn't you post something on, social media recently with him?

I saw a picture.

Well

- Mike Lindstrom: Was that?

Da- David passed-

Ok, 'cuz-

…last year.

That's what I saw then.

That's why I wanted to ask you that question.

There was something that I did see that, that hit me.

Yeah.

Okay.

And so he, for a while he ended up, even when the show

started to happen, he was actually supposed to be my coach on the show.

So I had to convinced the network and the production company to bring

him on as a coach and, when I ended up leaving, he became a trainer.

He got certified to be a trainer, started dating the front desk girl.

Wow.

Which is the sweetest, she was the sweetest thing ever

and things were good and he started falling back into his old habits.

Oh, man.

Even though he and I had actually lived together for two years

at the time, but we had been on this journey for six, seven years together.

Yeah.

And he kept the weight off and he started falling back into

those old habits and as he was gaining, he ended up, even in communications

with the production company, everything slowly backing out of the whole

opportunity, but that emotionally-

Sure.

…was devastating for him.

Yeah.

And so he ended up going through a rollercoaster.

He gained a lot of the weight back and then he turned around

and lost the weight again.

Wow.

And he ended up getting married to another girl

and he actually became a father-

Wow.

A stepfather of some children, but then she left him and

he gained the weight back again.

And so his body just having gone through-

that's a lot of stress-

It's a lot.

It wasn't gaining and losing 50 pounds.

Yeah.

It was gaining and losing three to four hundred pounds.

That's amazing.

A couple times and his body just, it just didn't have it in it anymore

and he ended up passing away last year.

It was, it was, it was recent.

It was this last year.

It was just last year.

thank you for sharing that.

Yeah, absolutely.

What is the biggest thing that you think people just

don't understand when it comes to health fitness, eating, dieting,

like what are people missing?

I mean, now you got drugs.

Oh yeah.

You take the shot.

You get microdoses.

Everyone's always looking for the quick fix.

I read a stat recently, in the last, however many decades it's

been that they've had the New York Times bestseller there's always been

a diet fitness or some bestselling book in the top 20 every single week.

Yeah.

And you're thinking it's real simple.

You burn more than you take in.

It's called a deficit.

Like it's simple.

It's simple, but it's not easy.

It's not.

so what's the misconception?

because you're coaching people not just about the physical part of it.

Sure.

it's this.

it's 80 / 20, right?

Everything starts here.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Everything starts here.

And I, I didn't understand that.

Even when I first started working with David, coming fresh out of school,

obviously it was nutrition and movement and we're gonna carb cycle you and

we're gonna focus on, I was using all these different techniques as far as,

the training goes and the nutrition.

Yes, he implemented that, but he implemented that because he felt,

friendship and connection and compassion.

That part was missing and so there wasn't a void that he was-

Right.

…turning to food for anymore because we were buddies and he, we

had that connection and so it fulfilled a part of himself that he felt was missing.

Every transformation I've done, yes, we use nutrition and exercise and

sleep to accelerate the results and to, change the human body physically,

but if this isn't in the right place and if their heart isn't fulfilled, if

they've, if… I wouldn't say fulfilled.

If they don't have a thorough understanding of who they are and why they

do the things that they do, you cannot control because, from the neck down-

Yeah.

…the body operates on principles that have been established

over hundreds of thousands of years.

Yeah.

And however, the moment you throw the humanity of it in there,

it's just, it changes the whole thing.

And so I think here's the thing though, the fundamental

principles still apply, right?

And so even with GLP-1s and these a- amazing peptides, which

again, I'm not against them.

Of course, in the fitness industry, I was incredibly threatened at first and

I was like trying to poke holes in them.

The research is incredible.

The literature continues to get better for a lot of people.

They're not for some, but for a lot of people and especially for the folks

I've worked with for decades, it is finally an opportunity for them to

be able to focus on the fundamentals without the hunger and the food noise.

It will quiet it because they're battling this over here and in the meantime, they

have to focus on eating right and sleeping and doing all these different things.

Now we can finally quiet that battle down so they can put all their energy

into one thing and into establishing the foundation, because once the foundation

is set, now we can titrate up and down with under medical supervision, of course.

But then if they do decide to come off these weight loss drugs, you know,

when they've lost the weight, time to come off, they can titrate down off of

it and they've established months of - proper habits to do it the right way.

Going back to, what is it that, that ultimately changes: "Hope."

Hope.

Hope changes.

that's belief that you can actually do it.

I spent, again, decades working with people that had given up hope.

They, and they had tried and failed so many times that they reached a point

where it just, they just gave up.

And so it was on, it wasn't on me, but I was blessed with the opportunity to

show a lot of individuals who came from a really dark place where they had lost

hope how to believe in themselves again.

And I did that by breaking down all of the massive commitments that they

kept thinking they had to make in order to get where they wanted to go

and we'd break it down to just keeping one promise to yourself and that's

what really builds the momentum.

You break it all down to what we call a power promise.

And if you can keep that promise every single day, then

you can start to stack them.

you start to build that momentum and that belief in yourself and you think,

"If I can do that, what else can I do?"

And then we stack it and we stack it and we take our time.

We don't try to do this in 90 days.

We take years to do this and that's how you can see any ordinary individual become

extraordinary by shrinking it all down-

Yeah.

…to something that's so doable every day.

Yeah.

And that's how I've always done what I've done.

Yeah.

So you probably, because you don't know this about Scott.

Scott had that battle with scripted pills and such overcoming that.

Mmmmm.

Well, we were talking a little bit before the show about

some of my health issues and stuff.

I left that, part out, not just because we ran out of

- Mike Lindstrom: Yeah.

Ran out of time or whatever, but, yeah, you started

talking about that and I'm like, I know exactly what that's like.

I was-

Yeah.

…in its grips for a couple years.

Yeah.

And a lot of my closest friends went upside down.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But that whole

thing is such an important thing and we always talk

about, everyone knows, oh, you gotta have a purpose, you gotta have a

why, something at stake, you know?

Mm-hmm.

To me, they're all in the same kind of breath, If

you have a sense of hope, whether it's family, kids, your future, a

vision of something that you want-

Yeah.

it's hard to really get this right if you don't

have that sense of that hope.

Yeah.

I know you're really big on social media and you spent time,

the early part of y our career with traditional media, and now

you're really big on social media.

DId you attack your social media game the same way that you were just talking

about this, small goals, on commitment, stack these things on top of each other

because, social media is hard to crack.

It's noisy as hell.

it certainly is.

And it's been a really interesting journey for me coming from traditional

media, because what happened is that even when MySpace came out, right?

And then Facebook and then Instagram, because I had a presence on traditional

media, my social media initially started to grow without putting much into it.

And for the longest time, I was way more focused on traditional media because

that was, that's where you were seeing, this is where I could actually get a

message across was with traditional media.

especially if your social is growing on autopilot a little bit.

Yes.

You trick yourself into thinking, I'm doing

pretty good on social media."

That, that's exactly it without putting a lot of effort into it.

Yeah.

And then when the show ran its course and the contract

was up in 2015 and all of a sudden-

Now what?

…there's no more traditional media, it was like, oh,

and at the, at that time, more and more eyeballs were moving from traditional

now over to social media and that was becoming, essentially that's where

you were able to get a message across.

That was the platform.

And so it was transitioning, jumping over and learning all new tactics, and

all completely different strategy and it's taken years and I still haven't

cracked the code, the algorithm, right?

And some things work and something, but it's changing all the time and,

rewind 10 years ago, I would do a post and I have 30,000 likes and now, I get

a post and I'm happy if it's got 300

right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's pretty wild, even though I might have twice the

following, it's just everything's different and it continues to change.

And so that's, I think that's the only truth is that you're

never gonna figure it out.

just stay flexible in it and keep working toward it.

Stay consistent, right?

That's it.

Did you learn from that in, in terms of I need to have

more of a multi-channel approach?

Yes.

Like you only did traditional media at first, contract runs out,

oh shit, that vehicle is dead, right?

Now I'm in social, so now you, I'm sure you've got referrals

and word of mouth and social.

As you try to grow your business and get the word out there, you've got to focus on

all these different kind of paths, right?

1,000%.

that was actually the I'm glad you brought that up because that was probably one

of the biggest eye-opening experiences you know, whereas before I could simply,

I could show up on a network show and do my thing and I'd have a ton of

eyeballs and it would drive a bunch of traffic wherever we wanted them to go.

And now it was like, okay, now I'm in control of this channel, but that's not

necessarily a bad thing because before also, let me tell you, when you're

in traditional media, the platform, the network, they call all the shots.

Yeah.

Whereas all of a sudden now, gosh, I've got a few hundred

thousand followers at this point and it's growing or maybe got a, got a

million, you know, and they're here for me and they're always watching me.

And so now it was exciting and scary at the same time because it was like

quick, you have to figure out the systems in order to actually create

and start generating content on a regular basis because that, there's

a business that's a full operation

- Mike Lindstrom: Yeah.

Behind creating content and putting it out on social and then,

oh, now it's not just Facebook anymore.

Now it's Instagram.

Now it's Snapchat.

Now it's TikTok, now it's YouTube, now it's X. And it's okay, now how

can we obviously branch out into, creating content once and then pushing

it across these different platforms.

Again, there's some frustration in that-

Yeah.

…because it's like, actually I wish I could

just talk to one audience.

Yeah.

But at the same time, I don't know, you guys probably remember it,

but when Facebook went down for two days-

Oh yeah.

It was like

- Mike Lindstrom: Freak out.

"Oh wow. [[laughing]] Hold on. No, I'm glad these

other ones are still going."

That's right.

So it's diversify, diversify, diversify.

And if you can start building on multiple platforms, now we're talking and it's

also a whole new level of safety for you.

So it's don't

- Mike Lindstrom: Yeah.

all of our systems are not just focused on one platform.

They're focused on a channel or like basically creating content

and then diversifying that content across multiple platforms.

Do you, do with, with the content that you produce, is

it like channel specific or do you produce content and then funnel it

out to all the different channels?

Produce content… I then funnel it to the different

channels, but based on what is the best practices for that channel.

Mmmm.

So for example, obviously a caption on X needs to be

really short, punchy to the point.

On Instagram, I have my, most engaged following on Instagram and Facebook.

So Facebook, a little bit of an older audience, definitely more storytelling.

and I can really connect with my audience that way.

With Instagram, same thing, a little bit more storytelling, a

little bit younger, but at the same time, just slight nuances for each.

But the content itself is the content.

Say we're gonna talk about-

Yeah.

…the benefits of walking.

then what we'll do is we'll create all the content and then we'll create

snippets based on the platform and captions based on the platform.

Yeah.

Yeah.

'Cause one thing that I've noticed with my own business and my

content is I'll create a piece of content and then distribute it to different

channels, optimized for each channel.

Yep.

Totally different types of clientele come from

each particular channel.

Right.

LinkedIn will bring me, consulting Instagram will bring

me coaching and that type of thing.

Nice.

Do you have the same kind of situation with your business?

okay, Facebook, older clients, all these people want bIg

transformation experiences.

People from Instagram want something different.

Yes.

A little bit.

I do wonder if because of my already established brand in the weight loss

space there is a lot of that same, the underlying, I'd say my audience

is majority women, about 80% and many of them are looking for weight loss.

Not significant weight loss like they saw on my show.

Some individuals, but most of them just looking to lose 20 to 60

pounds, and that seems to be almost consistent across all, except LinkedIn.

Yeah.

Where LinkedIn is, oh, would you like to do a speaking engagement?

Yeah, yeah.

You know, or,

Right, right.

Or a corporate wellness retreat [[laughing]] kind of thing.

but the other platforms, they actually all tend to be a little bit, a similar vibe.

TikTok, definitely younger, you know?

Are

you on TikTok a lot?

Not as much as I probably should be.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that-

That's always the one that's kind of…

I was late to the game on TikTok.

I know a lot of my friends have been on it forever and I just jumped on it last year.

Yeah.

But I'm not real super active with it.

I'm not… I need to be more active and I'm really working

on en- engaging in TikTok a lot more.

But learning the platforms, that's a full-time job-

Yeah.

…to itself.

Yeah.

The-

Oh my God.

The old algorithm thing.

We laugh about that all the time.

Yeah.

Oh, man.

Well, how do you handle haters when you get social media?

'Cause you put yourself out there, man, you're gonna get haters.

Yeah.

How do you handle that?

It used to really hurt.

Really?

It used to really bother me.

Yeah, because

I

- You know, you'd rate it and go, "Oh, wow."

I am a people pleaser and it's something

I've really been working on.

I've been aware of that for years and it's something that, again, you

gotta name it to tame it, right?

And so I was aware that I was a, I've been a people pleaser for a long time

and it's put me in some tough situations.

Especially though it hurts when people don't like me because I've

spent my life trying to be likable, trying to get people to like me.

What are they not like?

- I mean, you're a likable guy.

I watch your stuff on what are people saying?

I can't imagine.

You know, well, it's two-

You're doing good things.

Well, and people hate what they don't feel

like they can be or become.

So I've never met you before.

I'll figure out what I can hate about Chris right now.

Yeah.

Fair enough.

He's energetic, he's positive, he's fit.

Yep.

He's making a difference in people's lives.

And if I was of a certain type of personality-

Yeah.

And I'm not fit, I'm not making a difference, I'm not energetic-

Yeah.

…et cetera, I'm not positive, I can project

and be like, "Fuck that."

Yeah.

Yeah.

"Fuck that guy."

Fair, fair enough.

[[laughing]] Yeah, okay.

[[laughing]] Good point.

There you go.

[[laughing]] So you just got your answer.

[[laughing]]

I mean, there's certain, there's certain-

By the way, thank you for the compliments.

There's certain people, who think and behave that way.

I mean,

Yeah.

I get negative stuff.

Yeah.

Sure.

And, I have to flip it around and be like, okay, who are they?

What are they dealing with and doing?

But, It's- It doesn't mean it's easy.

Clown face.

Clown face.

I love it.

Because I sit there and I'll take it, I'll take it, I take it.

And then there's moments where I'm like, I gotta punch back.

Yeah.

And I'll do a little clown emoji like, hey, you're

a clown or whatever, right?

Mike's like, "What are you doing, dude? What are you doing?" I'm human, man.

I'm human.

I've written them and deleted more than you can count.

So for sure.

You ever do Pomface?

You ever done that one?

No.

rip it up.

It's

good.

I just never hit Enter.

The best part is like he did like this one guy, it was last

month or whatever it was, I don't even what the hell he, who's he ripping on?

Bill Cundiff.

Billy Cundiff, he's like the nicest guy on the planet.

Former kicker from the Cowboys, you can go on this guy's Instagram, you

can see he's like an Eagles fan, so okay, there you go, no wonder

he hates the Cowboy guy, whatever.

And all he does is keep talking and he just goes clown face-

oh my gosh.

Clown face, clown face.

He got three clown faces in a row and then finally we just delete him.

[[laughing]]

it's, yeah, it's hard not to let it get to you.

I ended up getting a lot of it though, especially with, and nothing against

it, but the body positivity movement, especially when we went from the weight

loss shows into body positivity where it was just, a lot of people they came

after me because I was, on my show I weighed my participants on truck scales.

Mm-hmm.

You know, and I was the host of that show and the head coach of, taking

people through the weight loss journey and some individuals, even though we really

tried our best to be sensitive to honoring the, what the journey was like and

- Mike Lindstrom: Yeah.

And ultimately make the individual the hero of the story.

And if you watch the show-

Yeah.

that was the premise of the show is that someone comes

from the darkest of dark places-

Yeah.

Yeah.

…to becoming an absolute hero and they did that, but still a lot of

people wrapped me up in the world of that,

How do you get, overcome that?

'Cause my son was 15, he just brought this up, the other day.

He says, "Dad, I know what you do, coaching and this, that and

the other, but if we know this person is overweight, and what this

movement is saying is that's okay.

We should accept them for who they are." But his question was

authentically, "There's other things that happen when you're overweight,

you're, you have higher blood pressure, you're not healthy, inside."

Oh, yeah.

but there's gotta be a line where someone like you

as the coach goes, "Guys, hold on. That's a limiting belief."

absolutely.

That's BS right there.

Yeah.

You're telling yourself a story-

Yes.

…to make yourself feel better about your identity and

I'm here to break that identity.

So how do you handle that?

Here's the thing and this has always been my approach.

I have never forced fitness or wellness upon anyone.

I only help people who come to me and ask for help if they've had that realization.

If they're sitting there saying, "I love my body the way it is. I love being 400

pounds," whethe r they're being… The thing is, a lot of times I can feel the

pain and the suffering that they might be-

Yeah.

You know, and they're creating a mask, but that's not on me,

that's out of my scope of practice.

That's a psychologist's job.

Right.

But I am here and I only appear as the coach

when they say, "I want more.

I want more for myself." I can say, "I can help you believe in yourself.

I know the path.

I can take you there.

I see you."

Yeah.

"I see you for who you are and I can get you to where

you wanna go. Let's go." But if they're so busy saying, I love me.

I l this is who I am," great.

Yeah.

There's nothing wrong with that.

Sure.

and you get to choose.

the only time I have a problem with it is, like, "I love me and this is okay,

and by the way, everyone else out there, this is the way I eat, this is what I

do and this is the way it should be."

If you try to project that onto other people, be like, "Whoa, whoa, hold on now.

This is unhealthy.

Right now, because you have obesity, you have, higher risk of blood sugar,

heart attacks, stroke, diabetes and multiple forms of cancer.

I mean, you could just list off all the things that come with obesity, right?

Yeah.

So the second leading cause of preventable death.

Yeah.

So it's one of those interesting situations.

So I only appear for those who-

Yeah.

Yeah, because my job as a coach is to do just that.

So I don't try to force it on anyone.

That's not my job to make that change.

so it's up to the individual.

Yeah.

Who are some of the other coaches that you're working on that show?

Oh, as far as other coaches?

There was just one, my ex - wife.

[[laughing]] So [[laughing]] that was it.

That was it.

Oh, but, our team-

Yeah.

We had psychologists, we had doctors, we had-

They were not necessarily on the show.

They were behind the scenes.

Correct.

Correct.

Yeah.

But we had a full blown medical team.

Yeah.

And they were incredible.

And so what would happen a lot of times as people are going through the journey

of transformation, things would come up, Every 50 pounds lost is like another layer

of protection that you're stripping away and a lot of times trauma from the past

would come up and in those situations then it's my job, not even as a coach anymore.

I'm here to support you as a friend and I'm gonna go ahead and bring

you to Rachel Grodner, who was the lead psychologist who can now-

Right.

…give you the tools that you need to work with you through this.

And a lot of times we would actually bring them into a full team of other

licensed professionals that could help that individual through that trauma.

Yeah.

And then I could work with them as we would just help

them continue on their journey.

And the, there was some incredibly beautiful moments of people overcoming

a lot of pain and suffering that they've hung onto for years that

I was able to witness firsthand.

Yeah.

It was, it was really beautiful though.

So cool.

Yeah.

So cool.

before I wrap up, we always have you promote.

You got anything coming up?

Any events, anything-

Oh my gosh.

…how do we find you?

Social media?

Okay.

"@RealChrisPowell" across all channels, just "@RealChrisPowell."

And, so I've actually recently, in the last few months, I took a job as

the Chief Transformation Officer of a company called Thrive Lab which is cool.

They're medical providers.

It's a nationwide network of them and it's wonderful having that kind of

medical support, whether it's hormone replacement therapy, they offer

peptides with GLP-1s and everything.

but it was really cool because the founder, he said, "I don't want to be

just like a typical drug mill out there, we're offering this medical support.

Come in and help us build the programs underneath it with nutrition,

training, stress management-

Yeah.

…sleep hygiene so we can really support people the right way."

Yeah.

So it's a really cool thing that we got going on.

yeah, so we've been working with ThriveLab for quite some time and couple

big launches coming up here pretty soon in just the next couple of weeks.

And nothing you can speak to yet?

Not yet.

No?

Not yet, but stay tuned.

So we gotta get you back on, man.

Yes, yes.

I can see why Passmore told me this, he goes, "I can see

why you're like a resident guest of these shows." [[laughing]] 'Cause

you're very good at what you do, man.

Well, thank you.

You have a great energy and that's what people want.

When they come to you, they want certainty, they want happiness,

that's the feeling, it's rapport.

They want hope.

[[laughing]] They want hope.

They want hope.

And you're giving it.

He's a dealer in hope.

Yeah.

I appreciate that.

Yeah.

Thank you.

I like that.

You gotta name it to tame it.

Name it to tame it.

Name it to tame it.

It's one of most powerful things we can do as humans.

Yeah, that's absolutely.

hey man, I appreciate you taking the time.

I know you're a super busy guy, kept coming on our little tiny

podcast compared to a national show, but we really appreciate that.

So signing off, Mike Lindstrom, my man Scott Leese.

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