The Health Feast

What do you do the morning after you quit?

That’s the question at the center of Steve Kamb’s new book, How to Try Again. Steve founded Nerd Fitness and has spent 17 years helping people try again in their health and fitness journeys.

In our conversation we discuss:

• Why Steve wrote a book for the person who already gave up, and how failure went from something that happened to something you are
• His four steps for trying again: pause, accept, change, try
• Why doing the wrong thing harder is worse than treading water
• How to tell acceptance from avoidance (avoidance usually sounds like “next week”)
• Why normal is never coming, and where strategically half-assing it comes in
• Being an insecure overachiever, and why self-compassion was the most important lesson Steve had to learn while writing the book
• A scenario I gave Steve: Sarah, 45, two kids, joined a gym in January and hasn’t been back in three months
• Looking back like a detective, with curiosity instead of judgment, then moving forward like a scientist, with a small experiment and an end date
• What’s worth tracking, what to stop tracking, and when the half-assed version is enough
• Chaz, his inner critic, and what a pretty good day looks like for him now
• The story of the quilt his grandmother gave him

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
2:23 A book for the morning after you quit
5:52 Why failure became an identity
9:05 The Museum of Failure wall
11:57 Share from a scar, not a wound
15:58 The four-step framework: pause, accept, change, try
18:15 Treading water vs. doing the wrong thing harder
21:09 Acceptance vs. avoidance
25:13 “Normal” is never coming
27:57 Strategically half-assing it
29:33 Giving up vs. quitting
33:09 Self-compassion and the insecure overachiever
39:27 Sarah’s story: detective, then scientist
45:21 Experiments with an end date
48:39 What to track, and what to stop tracking
52:46 When is half-assed enough?
1:01:36 Meet Chaz, the inner critic
1:06:04 A pretty good day: wayfinders vs. warp speed
1:09:37 The quilt story
1:17:44 Words to live by

Find Steve: his book How to Try Again at howtotryagain.com, and @stevekamb on Substack, Instagram, Threads, and LinkedIn.

The Health Feast is where health stops feeling like a chore and starts feeling like a joyful and abundant feast. Hosted by Dr. Rak Jotwani, board-certified in Lifestyle Medicine and Internal Medicine. New episodes every week. If this episode was useful, leave a review. It is the best way to help the show reach more people. Live well and RAK ON.

This episode is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and does not replace a conversation with your own physician or healthcare provider. Always consult a qualified professional before making changes to your exercise, nutrition, or health routine. The views expressed are those of the hosts and guests only and do not reflect the views of any employer or affiliated institution.

Liam McClintock left a career in finance to build FitMind, the meditation app I have used for years. He went back to school for a master's in applied neuroscience. Then he became a Buddhist monk, gave away his savings, and spent three years training under a master teacher, planning to stay for life.

Seven months ago he came back, and in this conversation he explains why. There is a message he wants us all to hear. Most of us were taught two ways to handle an unwanted feeling: suppress it or express it. Liam teaches the third option, releasing it, and makes the case that it is a trainable skill, that it should feel good, and that the more you relax, the deeper it goes. Near the end, he leads a live guided release.

In this episode:

• Suppress, express, or release: the third option nobody taught us
• The shock study, and why sitting with your thoughts is a trainable skill
• The four R's: recognize, release, relish, remain
• Three years as a monk, and why he came back
• Why loving-kindness beat the breath, and why the more you relax the deeper it goes

Find Liam: the FitMind app (free and donation based): fitmind.org
And his book, Fit Mind: 4 Steps to Lasting Bliss can be found wherever you buy books.

The Health Feast is where health stops feeling like a chore and starts feeling like a joyful and abundant feast. Hosted by Dr. Rak Jotwani, board-certified in Lifestyle Medicine and Internal Medicine. New episodes every other week. If this episode was useful, leave a review. It is the best way to help the show reach more people.

Live well and RAK ON.

This episode is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and does not replace a conversation with your own physician or healthcare provider. Always consult a qualified professional before making changes to your exercise, nutrition, or health routine. The views expressed are those of the hosts and guests only and do not reflect the views of any employer or affiliated institution.

Optimism is not a personality trait. It is a muscle, and muscles grow with reps. My friend Charles Inniss, a physical therapist turned optimism coach and author of Up Your Optimism Game, returns to the Feast to break down the 24 mental muscles behind joy, confidence, and peace of mind. Charles gives you a five-minute daily workout to build them.

In this episode:

• The 24 mental muscles, and the three that count as core
• Doom scrolling as pessimism cardio, and how to reprogram your feed
• "How do you want to be?" Picking an emotional goal, not just a career goal
• Affirmations that feel like lying, and the four keys that make them believable
• The strengths resume, live, plus the five-minute daily mental workout

Chapters:
0:00 Intro: the voice in your head
2:28 The men's group question: who trained us to be this way?
3:48 Pride goeth before the fall
9:25 Mental muscles: the premise of Up Your Optimism Game
12:10 Doom scrolling is pessimism cardio
21:28 The pit, and three words: joy, create, connect
25:09 How do you want to be?
27:57 Wrecking your mental health to fix your physical health
31:53 The skeptic: gratitude fatigue and affirmations that feel like lying
36:08 When does hope become denial? Growth vs protection
41:15 Chop down the blaming tree
46:01 Rak in the chair: the strengths resume
51:09 The five-minute mental workout
56:19 Strengths glasses and the forgiving wimp
1:06:09 We see the world as we are
1:07:57 Joy through the journey, game night, and a thank you

Find Charles: charlesinniss.com (which includes a link to the his book on Amazon).

The Health Feast is where health stops feeling like a chore and starts feeling like a joyful and abundant feast. Hosted by Dr. Rak Jotwani, board-certified in Lifestyle Medicine and Internal Medicine. New episodes every week.

If this episode was useful, leave a review. It is the best way to help the show reach more people.

Live well and RAK ON.

This episode is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and does not replace a conversation with your own physician or healthcare provider. Always consult a qualified professional before making changes to your exercise, nutrition, or health routine. The views expressed are those of the hosts and guests only and do not reflect the views of any employer or affiliated institution.

Two doctors, no filter. My friend Kaveh Hoda, MD (gastroenterologist and host of The House of Pod) and I get into why the loudest voices in health are usually the least trustworthy, what supplement companies never have to prove, and the three questions I use with my patients to reorganize a whole health life. We recorded this over a year ago for his show, and I am finally releasing it on mine, because when something is true, it stays true. And because it is Kaveh, we laugh the entire way through.

In this episode:

• Why the loudest health advice grows fastest, and why real medicine sounds boring
• "Expensive urine" and what actually shows up in liver clinics
• The three most important questions: experience, growth, contribution
• Why habits fail when your life keeps changing
• The carnivore diet, the manosphere, and why fiber is your friend

Chapters:
0:00 Intro, the certainty trap
1:49 Why the loudest health advice wins
3:58 Supplements, false hope, and expensive urine
9:11 The three most important questions
10:27 Question 1, what do I want to experience?
17:49 Question 2, how do I want to grow?
22:46 The exercise and weight loss trap
25:53 F3, community, and loneliness
34:57 Question 3, how do I want to contribute?
39:35 A foodie's case for eating more plants
54:57 The carnivore takedown

Find Kaveh: The House of Pod, anywhere you get your podcasts, and on Bluesky @KavehMD.

The Health Feast is where health stops feeling like a chore and starts feeling like a joyful and abundant feast. Hosted by Dr. Rak Jotwani, board-certified in Lifestyle Medicine and Internal Medicine. New episodes every 2 weeks. If this episode was useful, leave a review. It is the best way to help the show reach more people.

Live well and RAK ON.

This episode is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and does not replace a conversation with your own physician or healthcare provider. Always consult a qualified professional before making changes to your exercise, nutrition, or health routine. The views expressed are those of the hosts and guests only and do not reflect the views of any employer or affiliated institution.

Fitness trackers are everywhere, watches, rings, bands, all promising better health. But research suggests they can backfire.

A Harvard/Mass General Brigham study found over a third of Americans now track their sleep with a device, and researchers found these devices can fuel guilt and anxiety when the numbers come in low. There's even a word for it: orthosomnia, an obsession with a "perfect" sleep score that wrecks the sleep itself.

Dr. Amitha Kalaichandran knows this from the inside. A residency she calls "genuinely toxic" left her with disordered sleep, rising cholesterol, and anxiety she couldn't name, despite being a physician trained to read data for a living. It took her years of integrative medicine to close that gap, work she wrote about in her book, On Healing.

Now she's built Evra Health, a company with a goal that's almost radical in tech: not to keep you on the app, but to help you need it less.

Here's what we get into:
Why more data can make you feel worse, not better. Why your health app quietly runs on shame. How she trained her own AI to call dessert an occasional treat instead of flagging it red. What a 12-city book tour taught her about the real gap in healthcare. What she learned trying hypnosis and therapeutic MDMA. Your tracker isn't supposed to be your judge. It's a data point. Nothing more.

CONNECT WITH DR. AMITHA
Website: evrahealth.com
Book: On Healing, at onhealingbook.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/amithakalaichandran

CONNECT WITH DR. RAK

Website: https://rakyourlife.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rakyourlife
Podcast: https://rakyourlife.com/podcast

Timestamps
00:03 Cold open: is your fitness tracker making you sicker?
02:25 The stats: orthosomnia and technohypochondria explained
05:19 The dumb watch trend, and the report card problem
07:30 Red, green, and the shame built into app design
10:10 What has to exist between a number and a lasting habit
13:51 When Amitha first realized data needs meaning
15:44 Residency, sleep debt, and a genuinely toxic culture
18:19 Reversing her own cholesterol without medication
20:26 Why the book is called On Healing, not curing
22:31 Hypnosis and therapeutic MDMA: what most doctors won't discuss
25:09 The book tour that led to building Evra
25:36 Inside Evra: what it actually does for a user
33:44 Training the AI to never flag food as bad
35:04 Building a tool that isn't designed to be addictive
39:20 Why Evra measures outcomes, not engagement
42:14 Why change has to come from an intrinsic place
46:09 Fixing healthcare as this generation's moonshot
50:59 Life philosophy: trusting and letting go

There's someone new in your life. They help you write, plan, think through problems. They're available at 2am, when you can't sleep, because they never get tired of listening to you.

You know it's not a person. But your brain isn't always so sure.

One in four Americans have already used AI for their health. A third of people under 30 use it like a therapist. A Harvard study found daily users are 30% more likely to show signs of depression.

That's an association, not proof. But it's the question that's been sitting with me: are these tools making us healthier, or reaching for something that quietly makes us worse?

Dr. Aaron Neinstein is an endocrinologist who's spent his career building technology inside healthcare. We trained together in residency almost 20 years ago, taking care of ICU patients side by side, long before either of us could've guessed where this was headed.

Aaron tells me about the night he almost brushed off his dog swallowing a thread — until ChatGPT told him, at midnight, that it was an emergency. It probably saved her life. We talk about where AI is closing real gaps: the oncology visit patients walk into with zero prep, the colonoscopy prep calls that never used to happen, the ambient scribe that finally let him look at his patients instead of typing notes.

Then we get honest about what it's costing us. Aaron's sleep has slipped 90 minutes a night for four months. His guitar has sat untouched. I told him about my own late nights on Claude Code, and the spirals I've caught myself in that I now recognize as rumination dressed up as productivity.

FREE RESOURCES

What is a plant-based eater's best friend? A good sauce. Start with the Sauce Library, a free collection of whole-food sauces and dressings that make anything taste incredible. It comes with Health That Flows, a free 5-day email series built around the same approach that helped me lose over 80 pounds and reverse my own chronic diseases. One idea a day. Nothing to overhaul.

Get it free at https://rakyourlife.com/experience-life/

CONNECT WITH DR. AARON

Website: aaronneinstein.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/aaronneinstein

CONNECT WITH DR. RAK

Website: https://rakyourlife.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rakyourlife
Podcast: https://rakyourlife.com/podcast

Timestamps

00:03 – Cold open: the tool that never gets tired of listening
02:22 – The stats: 1 in 4 Americans, and a Harvard depression study
04:39 – AI as healthcare's "get out of jail free card"
09:36 – Colonoscopy prep calls and cutting cancellations in half
15:49 – The ChatGPT message that saved Aaron's dog's life
25:09 – Rak and Aaron confess: losing sleep to Claude Code
27:19 – Inside Aaron's AI chief of staff
35:16 – Why there's no universal truth in an AI's answer
39:54 – AI as sophisticated rumination, Rak's honest confession
44:26 – Setting guardrails before your bad moments arrive
55:08 – Sycophancy, and what a good therapist does differently
1:00:41 – Life philosophy: enjoy every sandwich

1:02:18 – How Dr. Aaron makes his own life a health feast

We live in a post-truth world. Anyone can say anything and call it a fact.

Strawberries cause cancer. Beans destroy your gut. Beef tallow is the new health food.

This is what happens when attention is more profitable than accuracy. When influencers sell confusion and call it health advice. Rip Esselstyn has been watching this happen for decades. He is not an influencer. He is the real thing.

What we get into: why the carnivore wave is built on bro science and not evidence. The truth about carbs and why 95 percent of Americans are eating what Rip calls carbage. His father's landmark work reversing heart disease at the Cleveland Clinic. Adam Sud's transformation from 350 pounds and addicted to reversing 15 conditions in eight months on rice, beans, and oatmeal. His 90-year-old mother's Guinness World Record dead hang. And why every nourishing meal is an act of self-love, whether you feel it yet or not.

Inappropriate application of a method is no reason for its abandonment. If it did not work before, that does not mean it cannot work now.

This is about freedom, not discipline. Once you feel it, you will not want to go back.

FREE RESOURCES

What is a plant-based eater's best friend? A good sauce. Start with the Sauce Library, a free collection of whole-food sauces and dressings that make anything taste incredible. It comes with Health That Flows, a free 5-day email series built around the same approach that helped me lose over 80 pounds and reverse my own chronic diseases. One idea a day. Nothing to overhaul.

Get it free at https://rakyourlife.com/experience-life/

CONNECT WITH RIP ESSELSTYN

Website: https://plantstrong.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ripesselstyn
PLANTSTRONG Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goplantstrong
Podcast: https://plantstrong.com/podcast

CONNECT WITH DR. RAK

Website: https://rakyourlife.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rakyourlife
Podcast: https://rakyourlife.com/podcast

TIMESTAMPS

00:00 Intro
02:25 The cultural swing back to meat and dairy and why it is not rooted in science
05:38 What went wrong with the plant-based products of 2013 to 2019
09:41 The strawberries claim and the state of nutrition confusion
15:54 His father's journey at the Cleveland Clinic reversing heart disease
18:03 Why Rip started eating whole food plant-based at 19
18:54 From triathlon circuit to firefighter and how the movement grew
24:47 Building a support system and why setbacks are not failure
32:08 Turning intention into routine with the Plant Strong food line
37:19 Building a best-for-you brand in the CPG space
43:11 Vital Signs a new gathering for healthcare providers
46:46 The 2026 monthly health challenges
47:28 His mother's Guinness World Record dead hang
51:10 Reframing health as a celebration not a punishment
55:05 The Plant Strong Podcast and moving beyond fad diets

You set the alarm for 6am. Clothes laid out the night before. The alarm goes off, you hit snooze, and by 6:18 you’ve decided today is a write-off. You’ll start again Monday.

That moment is not a willpower problem. It has a name, and once you see it you cannot unsee it.

Dr. Michelle Segar is back on the show. Her work inspired the name of The Health Feast. She has spent 30 years at the University of Michigan studying why exercise habits fall apart, and she just published the first study of its kind on all-or-nothing thinking in exercise.

Here’s what we get into:

• Why skipping a workout can feel like relief, and what that relief is quietly costing you
• The difference between “I can’t do five days, so I won’t start” and “my plan broke, so I did nothing”
• The perfect workout trap, and how fitness culture trained us to think pass or fail
• POP in the moment: Pause, Open up your options, Pick the joy choice
• Building a movement menu so you can flex when life gets in the way
• The story of what I did within an hour of my wedding, after months of forcing myself to run

You do not need a better workout. You need a more flexible, more forgiving relationship with movement. This conversation shows you where it starts.

Live well and RAK ON,

– Dr. Rak 👊🏽

Timestamps

00:00 – The 6:18 AM scenario
02:28 – What's happening in your brain when you skip
03:27 – The study: how it started and what they found
09:06 – Rigid idealized criteria explained
11:59 – How fitness guidelines backfire
19:38 – The cancer patient who wouldn't walk around the block
22:51 – Why skipping feels like relief
25:56 – Novice vs. expert exercisers
32:51 – The brain's cost-value calculation
38:47 – When failure becomes identity
40:05 – The trap of comparing yourself to your past self
52:49 – The solution: where to start
56:37 – POP: pause, open options, pivot
01:03:04 – Building a new identity through small choices
01:08:10 – Fitness culture as a cult and how to deprogram

Dr. Michelle Segar is a motivation scientist at the University of Michigan and one of the leading voices on how people build health behaviors that actually last. Across 30 years of NIH-funded research she has chased one stubborn question: how do we help people stay active inside the unpredictability of real life, instead of quitting the first time the plan breaks?

She is the author of The Joy Choice and No Sweat, and her work has informed the World Health Organization and the US National Physical Activity Plan. Her latest research is the first study of its kind on all-or-nothing thinking in exercise.

• Website: michellesegar.com
• Book: The Joy Choice, No Sweat
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michellelsegar/
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  Disclaimer: The Health Feast is provided for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice or professional services. We recommend you consult your medical doctor or other qualified healthcare professionals before making lifestyle changes. The opinions expressed are our own and do not necessarily reflect the views of our employers.
  

You eat well. You move. Maybe you track your cholesterol, your VO2 max, your labs.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth. Almost everything we use to measure health is a proxy. An association. A stand-in for the thing we actually care about.

And the thing we actually care about is simple. Can your body still do the things you love? Will it keep doing them as you age?

That question is what my guest this week has spent his career answering.

Scott Fulton lectures on aging at the University of Delaware and sits on the True Health Initiative Council. In his new book, Function, he builds the framework medicine forgot. Not how to manage disease, but how to measure whether your body can actually do what your life requires of it.

In this episode we explore:

• Why most of what we measure in medicine is a proxy, not a direct answer
• The five domains of functional health, and the blind spot hiding in the one you ignore
• Why fitness can coexist with fragility, but function cannot
• The simple at-home tests that tell you where you really stand
• How Scott’s wife rebuilt her bone density in 16 months
• Why doing a little bit every day beats chasing the optimal program
  

Whether you’re in midlife and want to stay ahead of this, or you’re a little older and want to know where you really stand, this episode shows you what’s possible and what to do next.

Timestamps

00:00 – Why your health metrics might be lying to you
01:38 – Drowning in hype, starving for truth
04:12 – Proxy vs. direct measure: why the difference matters
07:28 – The problem with the VO2 max obsession
09:52 – The fear underneath every health conversation
11:45 – What an engineering and failure-analysis mind sees that clinicians miss
15:12 – Fitness can coexist with fragility. Function cannot.
18:46 – The word “fragility,” and what it really means
21:23 – The five domains of functional health
23:30 – Blind spots: the domain quietly failing while you optimize the rest
30:52 – The user guide: five domains, three tiers, 44 self-assessments
38:57 – Why the low quartile is your biggest opportunity
44:25 – The house of cards: why one weak link brings it all down
45:33 – How Scott’s wife rebuilt her bone density in 16 months
56:30 – Scott’s words to live by
59:38 – Making life a feast: try something new, plan to fail

Scott Fulton is a longevity authority and aging educator who came to this work not as a clinician but through engineering, systems research, and failure mode analysis. That background shapes everything about how he thinks. He is the person who walks into a broken system, figures out what to measure, gathers data you can trust, and uses it to fix what’s wrong.

He lectures on aging at the University of Delaware, is a member of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, sits on the True Health Initiative Council, and is past president of the National Aging in Place Council.

His new book, Function, lays out a framework for measuring functional health span, the five domains that determine whether you can keep doing the things you love as you age. It’s built around 44 self-assessments you can do at home, drawn from standard tests refined over decades of population data. He is also an Ironman triathlete based in Charlottesville, Virginia.

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Disclaimer: This is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and does not replace a conversation with your own physician or healthcare provider. Always consult a qualified professional before making changes to your health routine.

Hey there- Dr. Rak (“rock”) here. When it comes to training and working out, I used to think more was always better. More workouts. More intensity. Less rest.

Several years ago, I became addicted to Spartan obstacle course races, and it has really fueled my training. Early on, I was aiming to train six days a week, often pushing through pain, and I kept getting hurt. Pulled muscles. Knee pain. Cramping in my calves one week before a race I had trained six months for. I thought the answer was to do more. It turns out I had it completely backwards.

Coach Nick Smoot is back on The Health Feast, and this time we are talking about the half of training almost nobody pays attention to: recovery.

Because you don’t get stronger when you train. You get stronger when you’re not training. And if you’re not recovering, you are leaving every single gain on the table.

We get into:

• Why your body can’t tell the difference between a hard workout and a hard day at work
• Why walking might be the most underrated tool you have
• Why the couch is not the same as recovery
• And Nick tells a jiu-jitsu story that will change how you think about working hard.

Whether you are grinding and going nowhere, or you love someone who is, this one is for you.

0:00 Intro
1:54 What recovery actually is
4:11 Two types of athletes: under-recovery vs. over-resting
5:30 Sleep: the greatest recovery tool you have
10:24 Your body can’t tell the difference between training stress and life stress
12:34 Why walking is the most underrated recovery tool
18:04 Why sitting on the couch is not recovery
26:39 How to fuel for training -- and when protein timing actually matters
37:13 Training when sick: the above-the-neck rule
41:12 Rest is not weakness -- it is part of the work
45:10 The jiu-jitsu story: 75% consistent beats 100% burned out
48:23 Coach Smoot’s closing message

• Instagram: @smoot_fit
• Substack Newsletter: smootfit.substack.com
• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/smootfit

The Health Feast is the podcast where health stops feeling like a chore and starts feeling like a joyful and abundant feast. Hosted by Dr. Rak Jotwani, a board-certified Lifestyle Medicine and Internal Medicine physician. New episodes every week (or two). Subscribe on your favorite podcast app, join the conversation on YouTube, and if this episode was useful, leave us a review and share with others! These are the best ways to help the show reach more people.

Live well and RAK ON.
Dr. Rak
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Disclaimer: This episode is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and does not replace a conversation with your own physician or healthcare provider. Always consult a qualified professional before making changes to your exercise, nutrition, or health routine.