What happens when a former Marine and accomplished attorney decides to take control of his health after decades of weight struggles? He discovers the secret to sustainable weight loss—and now he’s sharing it with the world.

In this episode of the Healed & Cash Flowing Podcast, I had the honor of speaking with Ben Slay, a Marine veteran, attorney, and now, a health advocate helping others achieve permanent weight loss without yo-yo dieting, dangerous medications, or deprivation.

🎖️ The Wake-Up Call That Changed Everything

Ben’s story isn’t just about losing weight—it’s about reclaiming life. After 30 years of weight struggles, multiple failed diets, and a health scare that landed him in the ER, he knew something had to change.

But even after doctors warned him about his risk for heart disease and stroke, it wasn’t enough to spark transformation.

So what was?

A family invitation to a Marine Corps Ball in six months—and the realization that he couldn’t fit into his dress blues.

That was the tangible, specific goal that gave him the motivation to make real, lasting changes.

🔥 Why Most Diets Fail (And How He Found a Smarter Way)

Ben had yo-yo dieted for years, but the results never lasted. Why?

Because most diets:
❌ Restrict calories too aggressively, leading to muscle loss (which slows metabolism)
❌ Don’t address food addiction and the processed food industry’s role in making us addicted to sugar
❌ Fail to create sustainable lifestyle habits, making weight regain inevitable

Instead of another fad diet, Ben developed a scientifically-backed, sustainable approach that helped him lose 110 pounds—and more importantly, keep it off for six years and counting.

His philosophy?
🛑 No crash dieting.
🛑 No prescription meds or injections like Ozempic.
🛑 No going back to the same toxic foods that caused weight gain in the first place.

Instead, he teaches:
✅ How to eat whole, nutritious foods without deprivation
✅ The importance of maintaining muscle mass for long-term fat loss
✅ How to reprogram your cravings so you stop desiring unhealthy foods

🛑 The Food Lies Keeping You Stuck

One of the most eye-opening parts of our conversation was how the food industry deliberately makes processed foods addictive.

🚨 Did you know?
💰 The tobacco industry secretly bought food companies in the 1980s and used the same addictive strategies they perfected with cigarettes to keep us hooked on ultra-processed foods.
🥤 High fructose corn syrup, artificial oils, and refined grains weren’t just added for taste—they were designed to keep us eating more.
🤯 Many "healthy" foods are actually fueling obesity due to outdated government food pyramid recommendations.

Ben’s solution?
✔️ Stop relying on "willpower" and start understanding how your body has been conditioned
✔️ Replace toxic, processed foods with real, nutrient-dense options that actually satisfy you
✔️ Detox your body from harmful heavy metals & additives that sabotage metabolism

⚡ Why It’s Never Too Late to Take Control of Your Health

Ben didn’t start his transformation until he was 69 years old.

Now at 75, he:
🏃‍♂️ Runs three miles daily
💪 Lifts weights & swings kettlebells to stay strong
🪂 Skydives every year for his birthday (yes, really!)
👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Plays with his grandkids without limitations

His journey proves that it's NEVER too late to transform your health—and that age isn’t an excuse.

The key? Finding your "WHY"—a reason that is so meaningful to you that it overcomes any obstacles.

💡 Want to Learn from Ben? Here’s How to Connect

I lost 110 lbs and kept it off for over 6 years and teach on Permanent Weight Loss (Fat loss) - no yo-yo dieting, no injections

👥 Join His Free Community: Ben Slay’s Weight Loss Achievers Group → Find it on Facebook

📲 Try His App: Get personalized food recommendations & meal planning support

Instagram: @bbsley

Transcription

Hello, Ben. Welcome to the Healed in Cash Flowing podcast. How are you?

Hi, Kat. How are you doing? I'm doing great. Thank you.

I'm doing really good. We're glad that you're here. For those that don't know you yet, can you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do?

Sure. I'm an attorney and served as a judge advocate in the Marine Corps as an attorney. Six years ago, I was very overweight. I wanted to get back into I dressed blues uniform for the Marine Corps birthday Ball, which is annually in November, November 10th. A relative asked me to go to that ball in May. That was like six months in advance. And I would need to lose 76 pounds to fit in that uniform once again. And that six months gave me enough time that I was able to do it, and I learned how to do it. But the key is not just that I lost weight to fit in that uniform once again, but that I've learned how to keep it off permanently over six years now. And from my all time high, and I had yo-yo dieted prior to that for years, I was overweight for 30 years. I'm down 110 pounds from my all-time high, from 293 to 183, where I am today. And I can help people be able to learn how to where they don't yo-yo diet, where they have permanent weight loss that's healthful for them.

That is amazing. Congratulations. That's an amazing-Thank you.

I love that.

I guess we have that relatively bank for asking you to that bowl, right?

Exactly. Yes, I'm very thankful. My wife's cousin invited me to it.

That is amazing. Let's talk about what happened where you are. You used to be a former Navy SEAL, and you're an amazing shape, what happened between that and becoming a judge in between?

Sure. I was in the Marines, not a Navy SEAL, per se, but we trained as Infantry Officers. I trained to go to Vietnam in the summers of 1970 and '71 in the Marine Corps, ROTC type of program called Platoon Leaders Class. When I was commissioned and graduated in the summer of '71, they said that the President was withdrawing Marine units, would not replace them. So I never got sent to Vietnam. And it was then I learned about the law option, and the Marine Corps basically paid me to go through law school. I went to Baylor Law School in Waco, Texas, Then when I graduated from law school, I went on active duty for a little over four years total as a Judge advocate, which is an attorney in the Marine Corps. I did some judging as a matter of fact, in summary, court marshals, and got to work on both sides of the doc, defending and prosecuting cases, and doing administrative cases for the commanding general and that thing. It was a very broad and It's been an interesting experience. I'm very glad to have served in the Marines.

Yeah. Well, thank you so much for your service. I know it's a lot of sacrifices. You're welcome. You're a successful person at this point. You're doing something that you wanted to do. You found a way to make it work?

Right, I did. Of course, in the Marines, you're encouraged to be physically fit all of the time. They give you lunch breaks where you can go out and do your three-mile jog during the lunch hour and that thing. And I stayed in good shape. But when I got out as a practicing attorney with private law firms on the outside and so forth, I tended to work long hours. You don't eat You're snacking on foods, that thing, and the weight started creeping on. Before I knew it, I was 60 to 70 pounds overweight within about six or seven years after I got out of the Marine Corps, and I basically stayed at that weight or heavier for 30 years. As I said, I did some yo-yo dieting. I learned how to lose a little weight, but then it would either come back or I'd never got below a certain plateau. By the time my cousin asked me, my friend asked me to this Marine Corps ball, I was 76 pounds overweight, and again, hadn't been able to fit in that Marine Corps uniform in 30 years. That was my motivation to be able to do that.

Now, part of that background is with anybody that's overweight like I was, 70 or more pounds up to 110 pounds, it comes at a metabolic price and at a physical price. In other words, a year prior to that, I ended up in the emergency room with a very high blood pressure where the top number was 107 Excuse me, 170. And the doctors told me that I was at imminent risk of a stroke or heart attack. And you'd think, well, that would cause me to want to change. It didn't. And And as I look at experiences of other people, there doesn't necessarily cause you to change, because when you think of, well, I want to have good health, it's too nebulous. It's not specific enough. And so in my experience and what I found in the literature, it has to be something very specific. For me, it was a goal of fitting into a uniform. It might be a different goal for somebody else. And I wrote a book about it as well, about this journey. And one of the quotes that I put at the beginning of the book is by Viktor Frankl, who wrote the book Man's Search for Meaning.

And in his book, he says, If a person can learn Their why. If they know what their why is, their why for doing something, and it's strong enough, they can put up with any how. And I had my why, but I think before you even reach that question as to what your why is, I think you have to reach the answer, what your what is. What is it I want to do? Very specifically. And once you have that what, once you know what you want to do, then you can find and put up, then you have your Why. My why, I have eight grandchildren, one on the way. I have family to want to be the best father, husband, grandfather I can be to all of them. And that's my why. And I can put up with anyhow. And I learned what it is that it takes. And it's not deprivation. And one of the reasons I gained weight and did yo-yo dieting, lost and gained, that most people find when they gain weight, is in a typical calorie restrictive diet. They say eat less and exercise more. 25% of that weight loss is muscle loss.

So that when you get to your target target weight, you have 25 % less muscle. And muscle burns more calories. It's at a higher metabolic burn rate. But when you've lost that muscle, if you eat normally for that weight because you don't have that muscle, you're going to gain weight. That's one of the reasons people yo-yo diet. And for what it's worth, too, my program does not use prescription pills. It does not use Ozempic or any injections. And what they I found that with these injections like Ozempic, as I mentioned, normally you lose 25% muscle loss. With Ozempic, you lose up to 40%. They talk about people having Zempic face and things like that because they lose their muscle tone, 40% muscle loss. Plus, there are other side effects, published side effects that are just very harmful. What my program does, what I've been able to learn is how to do it safely, effectively, no prescription pills, no injections, and eating a good diet, where after the period of dieting, if you will, is over, it transfers into a Mediterranean diet, which has been proven to be a healthful diet for years. Many people are safely on the Mediterranean diet.

It's not a fad diet or anything like that. That's the ultimate transition for a lifestyle change. Now, because I'm in this sphere of nutrition, I receive a lot of advertisements from people that are selling a protein supplement or a program or this that, and you may notice, you may have seen this. A lot of them say, Do this, and then you can still eat your favorite foods. Well, I disagree with that because it was your favorite foods that got you in this position in in the first place. High starchy foods, high calorie sugars, high fructose corn syrup, added sugars and processed foods, vegetable oils, seed oils, things like that that are toxic to the body. If you keep eating those toxic things, whatever position you were in before you began, you'll end up there, too. So there are some things you do have to eliminate. But once you eliminate them, you won't crave them anymore. You'll be able to look at and say, Hey, I know this is not healthy for me. I don't want to eat this. And what I do, I take a package of Oreo cookies that I bought. Oreo cookies used to be one of my trigger foods.

They were my downfall. I loved Oreo cookies, and you can get them with all sorts of coloring in them now. They have orange ones for Halloween and things like that. And I would take it and say, Hey, to an audience, these look good, don't they? You would like this, and then I pour rubbing alcohol, isopropyl alcohol, that you put your body on them and say, Do you want them now? They'd say, Well, no. Rubbing alcohol, that's poison. I'm not going to eat these pills that have been doused with this poison. And then I make the point, well, you know what? Even before I doused them with this rubbing alcohol, they were toxic to your body. You just didn't realize it. But when you make the transition, when you realize that these are now toxic, you're no longer hungry for them. That's what I hope to do in the transition, a mindset transition, to help people realize these foods are toxic, and they're just not good for you. There's nutritious, natural foods, whole foods that you can eat to avoid those. That's what I'm trying to teach, that thing. I have taught others.

Thank you so much for sharing that. It's a little a nice background as to the right way to do it and why it's important, especially as we age, muscle is so important for us. At the beginning, you mentioned that when you were in the Marines, you will have that break, that lunch break, and you can have that three miles, which is incredible. You're eating healthier and you're moving more. Did you notice right away the difference when you left the Marines and now you're working in a secular regular, regular job? Did you make the connection or you just went right into working?

I went into working, but I made the connection, Hey, I don't have time for this anymore in the lunch hour, it's not being encouraged. I have to have so many billable hours in the day. We tend to put off things that are helpful for us, things that are good, that we know are good. And I just put it off and said, Well, I don't have time for that anymore. And that was really the wrong choice. I should have stayed with it, but I didn't. For years and years, I was overweight. As I said, I had high blood pressure, very high blood pressure. At one point, I was prediabetic. I had what was called metabolic syndrome, high blood glucose, sugar, you name it. I really couldn't jog. I was too heavy to jog anymore. I had knee problems as as a result of that. And now that I've lost the weight, I jog three miles nearly every day. I do push-ups every day. In fact, I've invented some equipment that helps doing push-ups that assists with doing push-ups. And I lift and swing kettlebells. And they say that one of the most important muscles or the most important muscle in your body for longevity and not aging and staying when you get young, are your ham string muscles in your legs.

And most people don't really develop those. Well, I found that if you do kettlebell swings, and you may be familiar with what they are. Yes. I have a 35 pound weight. You swing it between your legs, and then you swing it up above the horizontal level, and then it goes back down through your legs like hiking a football, and you're squatting, and it puts a lot resistance on your leg muscles. And so I find I have tremendous benefits from that as well. It really helps me with respect to feeling younger and staying younger. And I'm 75 years old. I certainly don't feel it. I feel better now today than when I was 45 and 70 pounds overweight. I can do more things now at 75 than I could do that Occasionally, after I lost the weight five years ago, I started skydiving as a bucket list event, and I've done it every year since then. So on or around my birthday month, that thing. And I really enjoy it. So I skydive and I can do anything, play with the grandkids on the grass, throw a football for half an hour, that thing. And And by the grace of God, I'm in much better shape.

You might say, well, I had good genetics and this and that. I really didn't. My father had his first heart attack in his early '50s. He ultimately died of a heart attack in his disease. My mother was overweight all of her adult life that I knew her. She was diabetic, had insulin, and ultimately passed away from breast cancer. God bless her. And what I'm saying is I'm not something unusual that is unique to me and my genetic makeup. In fact, far from it. But I've learned what works. I've learned what the body needs. And by the way, I have a background, I'm also a patent attorney. To be a patent attorney, you have to have a degree in a hard science. So I actually went back to school and got a chemistry degree from Texas A&M Corpus Christi. And with an emphasis on biochemistry and organic chemistry and learning about nutrition and the body's metabolism. When I learned these things, I've learned how to apply them from a scientific nutritional background as well, so that even though I'm a practicing attorney, I have this chemistry background to be able to quantify it. I've put that information in my book as well.

That is amazing. I love what you have done because I was going to ask you how you got all this knowledge, the weight was just a byproduct of a huge lifestyle change for you.

Yes, correct. My lifestyle change was that of the typical American on what they call the standard American diet, SAD. There's something very interesting. If you look at photos of Americans on the beach or at a concert or rock concert, whatever, in the 1960s and 1970s, you can hardly find an overweight person. And today, the statistics are that 70% of Americans are overweight, 40% of Americans are obese, and I can define what those differences are, and nearly 10% of Americans are morbidly obese. Means more than 100 pounds overweight, that thing. And what's happened? Why did things change from the '60s and '70s? What was the change that made... Were the children of the '60s in the '70s somehow more conscious of their food or eating better foods or this or that, or less hedonistic, less gluttonous? And the answer is no. It's just the food supply has changed And why did it change? Well, there's actually a reason for it, and you can pinpoint it. And that is President Eisenhower had a heart attack, and a lot of people were having heart attacks, and there were studies that were being done, how to prevent heart attacks.

They said, Oh, cholesterol is what's causing these heart attacks, high cholesterol. If we get cholesterol out of our diet and substitute grains and that thing, the US Department of Agriculture came out with a food pyramid based on studies that were done, something called the Seven Countries Study, which was a fraudulent study, by the way, and I can go into that. But what they did was they came out with this food pyramid, and on the bottom of the pyramid, they showed grains and breads and pastas and so forth. They said the average American should have 6 to 11 servings of grain per day. At the very top of the pyramid was fats and oils. They said you should have very little of these fats and oils. You should eliminate them from your diet. You should look for fat-free food, eliminate butter and that thing. In fact, they even, to this day, they sell a brand of margarine called I can't believe it's not butter. But it's not good for you. These things are artificial. They're made with toxic oils. When I say toxic, the body doesn't know how to really dissolve them or metabolize them. And this food pyramid was completely wrong, giving them all these grains.

And I'll tell you what, if you a rancher, somebody's a rancher, and they have cattle that they want to take to market, what do they do in those 6-9 months before they market those cattle? They give them grains because they know that the grains are going to cause them to gain weight. In fact, in any study that's done, if you just give grains, and then they started processing the grains and taking out the wheat germ and the kernel, and they're highly processed, and they have all these sugars that go along with it, high fructose corn syrup, and they've taken the wheat germ out of it. They've taken the natural oils out of it. This food pyramid, which was promoted in the schools, it was part of the school lunch program. It was part of everything that any doctor would tell you, Oh, you have to eliminate these oils from your diet and fats from your diet. Bacon is no good for you. Those things are actually very good for you. That's what people lived on for years before this transition in the '80s and '90s, where they started gaining weight. To put it in perspective, I've mentioned the percentage of people that are overweight, but the The average American male today is 30 pounds heavier than the average American male in the 1960s

The average American female is 26 pounds heavier than the average American female from the 1960s. And that's just the average. And so something has gone wrong. And what it is, it's the difference in what the scientists have told us is good for you It's not good for you. So you have to take control. You have to understand that they're not giving you the best advice they can. They're giving you the advice to promote their own self-interest. And then once They say, Well, if you do eat the fats and this and that, and you have high cholesterol in your blood system, you have to take statin drugs. Statin is one of the best selling drugs in America or highest selling drugs in the sense that it creates tremendous profits for the drug industry. Statins are actually something that takes the cholesterol out of the system. Do you know what the brain is mostly made of or what it really needs to function properly is cholesterol. It needs these natural fats and cholesterol. We're giving them statin drugs. And what's happened to the incidence of Alzheimer's? You know, 60, 70 years ago, you hardly Have you ever heard of Alzheimer's disease.

And now today, depending on what you look at, one in six to one out of seven people over the age of 60 is going to have some form of Alzheimer's. And it doesn't have to be. I mean, all of these things have a nutritional answer. And that's something that I can help people with that I've studied. Now, is it a quick fix? Yes and no. It's a 90 day fix. In 90 days on this program, I Can you guarantee that somebody will lose 10 % of their body weight, men and women. And there are significant health achievements that go with losing just 10 % of your body weight. And think of it. So 90 days, that's three months, 13 weeks. And all the studies say if you lose 1% of your body weight a week, that's safe and effective. If you lose more than that, it's harmful to the body. You shouldn't be involved in any program where you where you lose more than 1% a week. Over 13 weeks, you should be able to lose 1% a week, 10 to 13% of your body weight. That's my guarantee. You follow the program, you'll lose 10% of your weight.

A person that's 220 pounds, they're going to lose 22 pounds. They'll be 188 by the end of that 90 day period. If not, I'll give the coaching and support and assistance for another 90 days to get them there so they can see that 10% improvement. And if there's still more to go, then they've learned the tools, they've learned the lifestyle change to know what to do. Now, I've talked about something, too. You have to have a little bit of a mindset change to get the start. You have to believe that you can do it. Number one, you have to have that belief. This is worthwhile. I know I can do it. I know I can achieve it. But as I said, it's a mind Body problem. But the interesting thing, too, is they say, Change your mind, it will change your body. But I say also, If you change your body, you'll change your mind. For example, right now, my thoughts at 183 versus being 2: 90, are completely different. I have totally different thoughts. I have helpful thoughts. I don't have depressive thoughts. I have things that make me want to get up in the morning and get at them and get to work.

So when When you change your body, you're going to change your mind just as well. So that's one of the transformations that I have been able to help people with and want to help others with that have yo-yo dieted for years and maybe have given up. Kat, there's a study that the CDC put out recently, and it shows people in any given weight group, and it asked them how many of them during during that period of time, during the last year or so in that age group, have dieted. For all of them, it's 50% or a little bit higher. In any given period of time, 50% of the people are on a diet. Now, it tells you a couple of things. Number one, diets don't work, or if they did work, they wouldn't be continually redieting and have people in every age group dieting all the time. But there was one significant thing, and the article didn't go into it or ask or explain why. And that is for people over 60, the number of people that are dieting in any given year falls off sharply. And I was wondering, why is that? Is it because people over 60 don't have weight problems or have lower weight problems than others?

And the answer is no. I think the reason is, is because by the time they're 60, they've been overweight for years, probably, and they've yo-yo dieted, and it's like I think the reason for that is they say in their own mind, I've been there, I've done that, I can't lose weight. I'm just going to be heavy and I'll live with it. I'll enjoy my cake and ice cream, and I'll die as an overweight person. They've given up. And what I want to say is, I started this journey when I was 69, is that you can have a significant difference in your life. I don't care what age you are, If you just realize that you can do it, don't give up. If I can do it, you can do it. And I'm nothing special. I'm nothing unusual or anything like that. And with a few eating changes and lifestyle changes, you'll make it easy. And you don't crave the sugars. By the way, there's a reason that it's so hard to diet, and that is with all the processing they put into the foods, they've made them addicted for a very simple reason. They want to sell as much of it as they can.

And There's a reason for that, too. In the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s, the cigarette companies, as you know, were getting sued, and they decided to go to a different model. And what the The tobacco companies were doing, like Laurelard, tobacco, is they bought food companies like Nabisco and General Foods and things like that. They turned their scientists who made the nicotine products as addicting as possible, they turned them loose on the food products. It was a deliberate attempt to make the food very palatable, that is, very tasty, have the right mouth texture, as they call it, so that it feels good when you eat it, that thing. In other words, when you bite into French fries, they're not soggy. They have the right amount of texture and hardness. You can crunch a French fry, and they are very tasty. In fact, they even put sugar in the ketchup, that thing. But that's one of the reasons, too. Our food supply had been taken over by the tobacco companies or a lot of the food companies to make these foods that did the victim, and they were very successful at it, unfortunately, and we are the victims of this process.

Once we realize what's happened to us and open our eyes and say, Hey, I'm going to take responsibility for my life in my health. It doesn't come from a doctor's pill or an injection or from a bottle. It comes from natural foods. There are other things, too, they need to do. Our bodies, and you may have read about this, have been inundated with heavy metals. There's aluminum. It's a heavy metal. It's toxic to our body. They also say that that causes Alzheimer's disease, too much aluminum in the body. There's fluoride in our water. They're reassessing all of that right now. Is fluoride really good for you? Does it prevent cavities? What's the harm that it's causing for the body? There's arsenic in the pesticides. There's cadmium. We know there's mercury, like you've heard of mercury and the tuna and things like that. And those things remain in the body. And so what I've learned also is there's a way to detoxify your body. You have to be able to detoxify your body from these heavy metals metals because they cause metabolic changes that make it easy to gain weight. So part of my program is detoxifying the body of these heavy metals that have built up and accumulated over the years, safely and effectively.

There's several ways to do it through a compound called zeolite, which is a natural volcanic ash. They put it in a liquid form or a pill form, that thing. And the The carbon from this volcanic ash binds with the heavy metals and helps eliminate them from the body. Natural green leafy vegetables, a lot of them will help eliminate these. There's a supplement called Burberine. You can buy it over the counter. Burberine is very common. Burberine also helps eliminate these toxic heavy metals. I can help people do that. That's one of the things that causes people to gain weight.

That is amazing. I love the overview, and I love also the inspirational factor of, yes, things may have gone haywire. For you, you didn't realize that you were overweight or realized, but you know you can do anything about it. Then you have given us a really good, well-rounded view of the side effects of being overweight. It's not just the weight, it's not just looking overweight, but it's also how it deteriorates the quality your life and also your health. I love the fact that you're saying it's never too late because you started at 69. Also, that it's possible to reverse many of the damages in the time. A lot of people will be starting their New Year's resolutions. They'll be looking at, I want to get back into a dress or an outfit. So I think the work that you're doing is so amazing. Somebody is listening and they're hearing all these things about the food how it has changed. What would you tell a person that it's been addicted to all these foods for a very long time and they're trying to figure out, how do I start?

Sure. Good question. I would be glad to share my experiences with you. As I mentioned, I've written a book about it. It's for sale on Amazon. It's called Ben Slay's Permanent Weight Loss Method Revealed My Name, Ben Slay is my last name. If you just Google Ben Slay, you'll eventually find that book. But you know what? It's not just a book. That book has everything in it. But most people can't just read a book and do it. If reading a book was sufficient to lose weight and keep it off permanently, we wouldn't have this problem. I mean, there's 10,000 books out there on dieting and weight loss. There's so much information, Some of it's contradictory, so you have to know what really works, what is the true science. But it's not just the book per se, and I'll put this in perspective. There was an article in the magazine Fast Company that was written a few years ago, and it was called Change or Die. And what the article was about was about doctors that had visited with patients that had some medical condition. Like I mentioned, I had very high blood pressure. The doctor told me I was at imminent risk of stroke or heart attack and told me I had to change.

That didn't cause me to change. But there's a number of people doctors have given an ultimatum. They say, you're going to have to change your lifestyle or you won't be here a year from now. And they followed up with these people a year later. If they were still alive, 90% of them did not change. They They didn't do it, even though they were told this is a life-threatening condition. And then they took another group, a control group, if you will, that was told the same thing. They had very similar conditions, that thing. And the doctor said, Change or die. But with this group, they provided coaching, support, and accountability for that year. And with the coaching, support, and accountability, over 70% of them had changed. So from 90 % that didn't change to 70 % that had changed. Now, what was the difference? The difference was the coaching, accountability, and support. So what I provide is not only a book, but the coaching and support and accountability, that thing, to help people do this. And I've developed an app also that I can help people give them when they go a restaurant and they want to know what foods are good.

This app knows what the menu is for that particular restaurant. There's 200 or so restaurants that are on a national scale, knows what the menu is, and it will give you suggestions for what you should eat. If you're going grocery shopping, it will give you suggestions. What do I need to buy at the grocery store today over the next three days or whatever the case may be that's going to be helpful? It takes the guesswork out of that. It provides the coaching and accountability and support. That's what people really need to help them make these lifestyle changes. As I said, if it's not a lifestyle change in all of these ads that say, Do this and that, and then you can go back and eat your favorite foods, that's a lie. It's just not true. But you won't want to eat those favorite foods anymore. The foods that were formerly your favorite foods, you'll be able to avoid them. Yesterday, for example, I went to a company Christmas party, and they had the most delicious-looking chocolate cake for dessert with chocolate sauce, drizzled on it and some sugar pastry, white flour or sugar on the side.

And I was able to avoid it. Not that I'm anything great, but I just don't eat those things anymore. One thing I found, too, this was not part of my journey, but I guarantee you it will help you or it will help anybody with it. A little over two years ago, I gave up drinking all alcohol, and my life is so much better now. Again, what we're looking at is not just weight loss, but we're looking at overall health and longevity. I know people, a lot of them say, Well, one glass of alcohol, it's good for me. It's got resviratrol in it, which is an anti-aging substance and anti-inflammatory, and that's good for me. You know what? I'm not going to argue with people that want to have one drink of alcohol a day, but studies have shown if you take two drinks of alcohol per day, it really adversely affects the liver function. And that is your basic master organ in your body. If you're liver is not healthy, you have what's called an alcoholic or non-alcohol or fatty liver disease. Everything isn't working. One way you can tell that, if somebody has a beer belly, if they have a beer gut, and by the way, I've been able to lose the weight.

I'm just going to stand up now. I don't know if you can.

Yeah, we can see.

I've got a flat stomach. The point is, you've got I have to work on that beer belly as well, and it can be done because I had it. I was grossly overweight. It's something called visceral fat. There's a measurement for that. They say Take your height, I'm 6 feet tall, 72 inches. They say your waist should be no more, it should be 50% or less than your height. It's 72 inches. Half of that is I should have a waist measurement that's 36 inches or less. Mine is now 34, so it's less than that. The point is, that's another measurement of health because what's called the basic metabolic index, the BMI, which basically tells you if you're overweight or obese and so forth. That may not be accurate in the case of weightlifters or somebody like that, but the waist measurement is a very accurate measurement. If your waist is more than 50% of your height, it's not good. You need to get that in order as well.

That is so good. I am so grateful that we had this conversation because you gave us so much knowledge and also cautionary tales of what not to do and look out for in so many resources. What is the best place for people to connect with you?

Oh, good question. I have created a Facebook group also, specifically for this. It's called Ben Slay's Weight Loss Achievers Group. It's a Facebook group. If you Google my name, Ben Slay, S-L-E-Y, and Weight Loss Achievers Group, is one of the Google groups. You can join it. There's no charge or anything. It's free. All you do is click on it and I'll approve it. And we can discuss things. I post health articles about it, weight loss articles. And as I said, really, when I talk about weight loss, you should really think of it in terms of fat loss, because if you lose weight but also lose muscle without building that muscle, it's going to lead to this yo-yo dieting. And as I said, I have these gentle resistance exercises with weights that will really help. And I'm not a gym rat or anything like that. You don't have to do more than about 15 minutes of lifting resistance weights, doing pushups, that thing a day. In 15 minutes. And also Another thing, if you walk, just walking, you don't need to jog, just walking 30 minutes a day, the benefits from that are tremendous. But you can contact me again if you go to Facebook.

I'm on there. You can DM to meet Ben Clay, and I'll be glad to talk with you and share with you what it is that I offer. If you want to go further, that thing, I'll be glad to help and do that.

Fantastic. We'll make sure to add that Facebook group link to the show notes and also the blog post that accompanies this episode. We'll also have a link to your book because I feel it's going to help a lot of people. I want to thank you today for your service again, for your dedication, and comment you for going back to school and giving even more education so you can help more people. That is very amazing.

Well, thank you, Kat. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. It's been a pleasure to talk with you today and look forward to talking some more.

Absolutely. Thank you so much for being here today.

Thank you.

There you have it, guys. You have an amazing wealth of information. Now you know that it's not just about looking good on the outside, it's also taking care of your inside. All the resources are going to be listed on the blog post and also on the show notes. Do not miss it. Remember that I love you, that I'm waiting for you, and I'm going to see you super-duper soon.

Thank you. Thank you, Cat.