Ron Funches joins Joe Rogan to discuss his 120-pound weight loss journey—treadmill inclines twice daily, protein shakes, and battling cravings like cookies—while reframing jealousy as motivation from comedians like Patton Oswalt. They critique COVID’s impact on comedy venues, with Funches adapting via voice acting and a September 5th live-stream show, contrasting it with Japan’s disciplined pandemic response. Funches’ marriage and son’s autism journey reveal art’s transformative power, while Rogan laments societal divisions fueled by politics and China’s corporate dominance. Both praise bodyweight exercises over gyms and Funches’ upcoming projects—Netflix’s Hoops, Disney+’s The One and Only Ivan, and Quibi’s Nice One—concluding with mutual encouragement to push creative boundaries. [Automatically generated summary]
I have my trainer about three days a week, sometimes two days a week, and then on top of that, and we'll do, you know, just different circuits, back, chest.
You know, whatever, whatever.
Legs.
And then the other days, I'm always just trying to make sure I hit the treadmill twice a day for two miles on an incline.
Yeah, I try to, you know, because it's just it's so easy to go the other way.
And you caught up in what other people are doing and what you think you should be doing, which I battle all of that, too.
So I don't ever try to act like, oh, I'm just like, oh, everything's great.
It's like, of course, I go through shit all the time.
But like, I think I choose to support my friends.
I choose to support...
Positive things because that's what I can control and that's to me fighting against that negative as opposed to like just joining everybody in the fray.
Oh, I mean, because we all, like, you know, we just want things, you know?
So, I wanted a Netflix special.
I want to be a lead in a show.
I want my own show, you know?
And I already do a lot of great things, but, and that's why I have to balance it all, because I'm like, oh man, I'm in such a great position.
I I do so many wonderful things.
What always helps me, actually, is talking to people like you or talking to people like Bert, talking to any comedian that's been doing it like 20 years plus when I'm at like 14 now.
And when I talk to them and then they are like, oh, hold on, slow the fuck down, man.
I was on stage or not about to go on stage rather at the improv once and there was this lady who was on stage and she you could tell she's real recent and she was just eating it just eating shit up there and me and the DJ were just like and I just looked at him I go it's a long way to the top if you want to rock and roll And then the DJ played that song as I went on stage.
Yeah, exactly Yeah, the best at it so far I've seen is Andrew Schultz Andrew Schultz has adapted the best because he's really figured out a whole new kind of a format He's figured out how to do these 10-minute chunks on a particular subject.
Like rapid fire with images behind him and his style of comedy.
No one will ever allow me to do this show anywhere else.
The only way it would have ever worked is to have no one telling you what to do.
The thing about those feelings that you get when you see other people doing stuff and good things happen to them, you're like, I want that, I want that.
That's fuel, man.
That's the key is how you harness that fuel.
You can pour it all over yourself and light yourself on fire, which a lot of people do.
Sure, there's comedy I love more than others, but I've always learned to go like, well, that's not for me.
You know, I respect their craft.
I respect the way they put that together, but that was not for me.
But I always looked at it like rap, where it's like, man, you look at like the old Death Row Records, or then they always were sharpening each other by how good each individual was.
And I look at comedy the same way, where it's like, oh, if I see an amazing set, I'm not like trying to steal that joke or trying to that, but I'm going like, oh, fuck, I got to raise my game.
For me especially, because I was still always looking at it as like, oh, I'm the young guy on the total pole here, and it's cool that...
It's one thing, the original room is awesome, but when you're on these main room shows, you know, like, oh, they're putting me on here because they also think I'm a part of a draw.
And so be on that wit, you guys, but being younger in the game than you guys and being like, oh, fuck, I have to follow Ali, Joe, Joey Diaz, you know, Whitney.
I have to follow them all and then I don't have the credits.
That these people are going to care about.
It was the thing I've learned to crave.
Because when I got them, I was like, they are on my side because I'm fucking good.
I was there once and I brought you up and you said something along the lines of, Joe reminds me of that teacher that got arrested for having sex with a senior or something.
One of the best things about the quarantine is being able to do this podcast and have guys like you on and have all of our friends come here and just sit down and just at least spend time together.
Yeah, no, that is what I miss the most, is just being in the back, seeing my friends, and those are things we took for granted so much as well, because I'd just be like, alright, well, I'll see you tomorrow, and now I don't see nobody ever.
When we were shutting down in March, and I was thinking, like, you know what, man, I'm just gonna buckle down, work out a lot, write.
You know, come June, whenever the fuck this is over, I'll come back guns blazing.
You know, and then when I realized that there was going to be a second lockdown, and then there was going to be no return, and here we are in August, and there's no sight.
It's not going to happen.
It's not going to happen until 2021. There's no way.
I was like, fuck.
Like, this is terrible.
that I would have to worry about comedy clubs going under.
It's crazy. - Yeah, no, I mean, I was in the exact same boat.
I mean, most of us were, we were just like, okay, well, I can last, I'll put it together, just treat it like I'm in a short-term prison sentence and just work out and get my GED and just get it all together.
That second lockdown happened and something happened in my brain where I was like, okay, I'm going to have to just...
Because before I was like, oh, no Zoom shows, nothing like that.
I don't like how it's fucking with my rhythm.
I don't like how I'm not getting feedback...
But after that, I was like, you know, I just kind of have to adapt and go with the flow and hope things change and know that things change in time no matter what.
But if this is how it is, I got to stop fighting it and start just like, you know, finding my lane in it.
He's like, dude, it's like a UFO! I'm actually, I've been talking with Chris Titus, because he has his own little production studio.
I shouldn't call it Little, because he has his own production studio.
I don't have no fucking production studio.
He has his own big-ass production studio, and he's been shooting his own specials, and he's doing a reunion of the Titus show through it, and so I reached out to him, and I'm going to do a live stream show where we'll have 10 people in the audience, and then we'll be live streaming it out on YouTube on September 5th, if people want to get RonFunches.com.
I mean, that's one of the reasons why I like where I live in the Valley.
I've always been outside.
When I started comedy, I started comedy in Portland, Oregon, but I lived in Salem, Oregon, and I would just make that 45-minute drive because I did like going into a thing, doing my job, and then leaving that there, coming back home.
When you get on that stage and light that place up, you don't have to hang out.
You don't have to be one of the people that parties and drinks.
They don't give a fuck.
They know you're funny.
I mean, I've seen you murder.
When you can lay it down the way you do, you just accept it.
It's just how it is.
It's a beautiful thing, really.
It's like the art form of comedy.
We all know how hard it is to get to that 14-year spot like you're at.
And there's a lot of people that have 14 years and are not as funny as you.
For whatever reason, psychologically, they've not figured it out artistically, they're not true to themselves, whatever it is, they've never found that.
And I think, I bet having a child and having that intense responsibility, you know, when you're starting out, you know, being an open-miker and also having a child, like, woo!
And I've talked about it with the other comics that I know that are parents because we'll make fun of the laziness of other comics because they'll be like, oh man, I got to do this set at midnight and then I got a meeting at noon.
How am I going to do it?
And I'll just be like, well, before I came to this set, I helped my son with his homework.
I got to get him up on the school bus at 6 a.m.
And then, you know, so like, I don't have any fucking sympathy for you.
That strikes me hard because I've always believed that in my comedy from the day I started.
I was always like, oh, I can never let my life Get far away from my persona that I present on stage.
I can, you know, always be turning ourselves up to 11 or whatever.
But I go from just my experience and my love of comedy, I go, oh, when people get too far from their persona in any general way and they're lying to you, it just starts falling apart and it starts showing in their act and it shows in their life.
And I've always...
That is what gives me material, because I just talk about whatever is active in my life, as opposed to being like, well, this is who I am.
Because if I did that, I'd have been stuck when I was 23, just being like, I'm the fat stoner guy, you know?
Which is one point when, you know, that's what I'm learning as you get into it, people start caring less and less about like, oh, that's a crazy ass joke he wrote, and they want to know more about like, who are you?
I don't know if you know this, but they have some of the greatest kickboxers of all time.
All came out of Holland.
Real weird.
A few guys went over to Thailand, started training in Thailand, and fighting in Thailand, and they brought it back to Holland, and then Holland became this gigantic kickboxing epicenter.
Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm a big pro wrestling fan and that's the thing that's been making me angry because it's just as much as I miss comedy.
I used to go to my wrestling shows with my friends and my buddies and...
Now I'm watching the Japanese wrestling that I love and seeing that they have full crowds all sitting there in masks, just hanging out because they are good at handling their fucking business.
That's when you're just sitting here and you're like, oh, well, we're all falling apart and it's just how it is.
But then you start looking over at other countries and you're like, well, no, they figured some shit out.
I think I know about nine people, and so many of them have different symptoms.
I know people that got it, and they just got a mild headache, and they felt like shit for a day, and then they were fine.
And then I know other people, like Michael Yeo, who was on death's door.
When people ask me about that, there's extenuating circumstances.
If you listen to Michael's story, he was worn the fuck out.
Flew all the way to New York, did shows, did morning radio, did TV, flew all the way back, then got in a car with his family, drove to Vegas, hung out with his wife's mom's family.
Hung out there for a while and then drove all the way back home same day and then had auditions the next day and then auditions the day after that and then boom it hit him.
He was exhausted and low vitamin D. Vitamin D seems to be one of the big factors, gigantic factor.
There was a recent study that Dr. Rhonda Patrick sent me yesterday that I have to go over.
But one of the things that she said was that in a series of studies they did where they showed people in the ICU for COVID, more than 80% of them had insufficient levels of vitamin D. And out of the people that were in intensive care, only 4% had sufficient levels of vitamin D. Gotta take your vitamin D. Do you take vitamin D? Yes, I do.
Actually, it's a whole complex of shows where people from other countries meet people in America and they get married.
They have to get married within 90 days once they move to America.
But then also, we've been watching The Other Way on the recommendation of Eric Griffin where Americans move to other countries for their significant others.
My process is usually from, like, if we're talking about from the start, I kind of work on this little grid where I just break it down into love, hate, and fear.
And then I just kind of Get stoned or just sometimes not stoned at all and I'll just play some instrumental music and I'll just write about what I'm scared about what I'm Pissed about what I'm in love with and then I Didn't take those topics and try to figure out jokes about what's going on in my life.
So instead of like, oh, I'm writing this joke about this, it's like, okay, I'm writing about my wife because I fucking love my wife, or I'm writing about my son, or I'm scared about COVID, or I'm scared about this, or, you know, the more specific I can get about what exactly I'm scared of, or I'm afraid of, you know, or what I'm in love with, and just the more specific I can get, the better the jokes are.
And so it's a lot of work that way and then sometimes at two in the morning I'll just be stoned and something will pop in and I gotta go chase down a notebook.
That put in the work part is what, you ever read Steven Pressfield's The War of Art?
It's a great book, a real small book too.
I used to, I'd buy stacks of them in the old studio and I'd just hand them out to guests, like especially comics.
I'm like, trust me, just read this.
Because one of the things it's about is about establishing the laws of your work, like the way you work.
You're a professional, and you show up every day as a professional, and you sit in front of that computer or that notebook, and you call upon the muse.
And whether or not the muse is real, if you do the work, it acts as if it's real.
I've been talking to myself lately just like then that's what's been keeping me with my health and my writing and my meditating and whatever is just like figuring out who I am and what works for me and then being like you follow those fucking rules.
Whenever you break your rules, shit doesn't go right.
Even though it might look cool, it might look amazing, it might be like, oh well this time if I break my rule, it looks like it's gonna be dope and I'll get a bunch of money.
Never works out.
So just don't break your fucking rules.
And I'm just...
It's hard, but I've been working on that.
It's just like, oh, I gotta eat well.
I gotta work out.
I trust my intuition.
I'm the leader.
I'm the fucking boss.
I don't let other people lead me.
I lead, even if I don't know where I'm fucking going.
Have you had that issue with representation, like agents or managers trying to tell you what to do or guide you into a way that you didn't think was you?
I have many friends that have really bad managers that give them terrible advice to take projects that are just short-term financial gain for the sacrifice of long-term career options.
It's like you don't get a lot of real managers anymore.
You almost have comics who have two agents.
You have your agent, agent, and then you have your manager who's kind of acting as an agent instead of acting as a manager because they're all desperado.
Or maybe they don't really have faith in you, so they just want that money.
They don't really think that you're going to be that person who has a long career or that you could keep accelerating.
Yeah, I feel like, yeah, my manager's always been there.
She's always kind of seen me two years ahead of where I've been at.
I have that story about recently, but I remember when I first was in Portland and there was this commercial that reached out to me and they wanted me to play a roach in a fucking bug spray commercial.
And I was broke as fuck.
And she was just like, no.
She's like, because we don't know what you're going to be in the next couple years.
You want to like walk away from everything you do going, that was great.
I enjoyed that.
That's what I wanted to do.
Like a special, thank you, good night.
You want to go, we did it.
We nailed it.
High fives all around.
That's how you want to be able to achieve those moments and get those feelings.
And I think, I know this is unrelatable to some people that are listening to this, but I think that way with everything, and maybe you don't have a manager for whatever your goal is in life, but you kind of have to think about it as your own manager.
You gotta think, like, what do I really want to do?
And are the steps that I'm taking, or the things that I'm doing right now, are they moving me closer to that?
And if not, what the fuck do I have to do different than what I'm doing?
I don't understand people that say there's too many hours in a day.
Like, what are you doing?
I want a hundred lives.
I want to live a hundred separate lives so I can just do different.
I literally don't do things because I'm scared I'll get too into them and then I will have less time for all the other shit that I'm already obsessed with.
I mull over the decision for an extended period of time because I know once I make the decision, I'm all in.
I started playing video games on Twitch and doing these little comedy nights on Twitch where I show old videos and make fun of people because that's part of things that I miss was that...
Not just watching comedy.
I miss being in the back of the room, making fun of this punchline or this tag, and then being like, oh, that's good.
I miss that, so I've been doing that on Twitch and playing games with people, but it took me a long time to decide to do it because I was like, oh, once I do it, anything, stand-up, acting, whatever, if I choose to do it, I go full force.
Leaning into what's solid when shit's all falling apart.
That was actually, like, we got engaged before it, of course, but I was like, oh, I'm pretty sure.
I was a little gun shy because I've been I got married when I was in my 20s and Obviously that didn't work out too well and I had my son and I remember leaving my home there and I was like This will never happen again.
I will you know and it still will never happen again, but I was still a little gun shy But so like oh well we're in the good times we go to nice we go to fucking Wherever and sure we'd hang out at home or we just she'd go on set with me It's a minnie movie in Oklahoma and we still have fun And so I knew she was a good woman I knew that I could trust her, but especially when the shit goes down and everything's going bad.
And she's out there like, okay, well, what do we do?
What do we need to pull back on?
What can we, you know, purchase less of?
And then I thought I might have to go out of the country for this role for a few months.
And I was like, oh shit, I'll leave my son with her.
And I had no worry.
And I was like, even, you know, when he was with his mom, I would be worried, you know?
A friend, my friend Johnny, had a very similar situation.
I don't, yeah, I don't know.
I know how adamant the people that make vaccines are that vaccines don't cause autism.
And I know it's a fiercely debated issue.
And in fact, Dr. Peter Hotez, who is an expert in vaccines, who actually has an autistic daughter, Is adamant about the fact that there's apparently different environmental factors that contribute to autism.
And they think all of it takes place during the womb.
The question's always been, are there more now because fathers are older, mothers are older, environmental factors, or that we're diagnosing it now, we didn't diagnose it before, we didn't understand it before.
I mean, the first time I even heard of autism was Rain Man.
Remember the Dustin Hoffman movie?
That was the first time I ever heard about it.
I didn't even know what it was.
I never met anybody who had autism, so I saw that and I was like, huh, what's going on there?
I never thought about it, never had any second thought about it at all until my son was diagnosed.
I had to become much more aware about it.
It's still a thing that I get hit with because I'm just a dummy because I'll be like, okay, my son's got his high school and he's doing well and he's going to his classes and then they have to actually sit there and they go like, okay, you know, he's getting a certificate, but you know this isn't a real, he's not a real high school graduate.
And I'm like, oh, oh, what?
You know?
No!
He's a high school graduate and I want my son to go to college!
And then I have to sit back and go like, oh wait, fuck.
We have a different road.
We have a different life.
And actually, this lockdown and everything has really been helpful in going through that and just being like, well, everything's fucking weird and different.
Because I'd always been like, well, no matter what, my son wants to go to UCLA. So I'll pay for him to go to UCLA, even if it's just life classes or whatever.
But...
Now I've been thinking about more like, okay, let's just figure out a way for him to be more independent on his own, physically, financially, whatever he can do.
He might not go to college.
He might go to college.
But, you know, again, if I make my show, I'm like, well, he's got to be a consultant on this show.
So he's been in school since he was 2. Just doing different, you know, from pre-kindergarten therapies through voice therapy.
And I just think it's been that constant.
Right now he's getting a lot of social skills therapy where he was before everything got locked down.
He was doing this thing called the Miracle Project, which is awesome.
They just take kids with different backgrounds and teach them social skills, take them on different outings.
And my son was doing a play, which unfortunately got canceled because of it.
But they sent us a tape of the rehearsal.
And it was dope because it was the day I found out I wasn't getting this role.
It was on my vision board of, like, I want to fucking get this role.
And I didn't get it, and I was pissed off and doing the same thing.
Like, fuck Hollywood.
They don't understand.
They don't understand how good I am!
And then I just watched my son and all these other autistic teenagers do their own production of a play.
It's the silliest thing I've ever seen.
My son is singing the Spongebob theme song.
Another kid is singing a Drake song.
And just...
Seeing them go from being these awkward in their shell, looking down, looking at the floor, and then the moment that they're actually interested in something.
When my son hears this song play, or they know it's their turn to say their line, them light up and fucking just nail their line and be fucking great at it.
And I was like, man, that's what art is.
That's what I love is...
I don't give a shit about money about it.
I mean, it's nice to pay my bills, but I like this feeling that I get from it and of watching my son get to do it.
Yeah, I mean, sometimes you need to be exposed to different things just to put it into perspective.
Just how fortunate we are and how fortunate, you know, how easy we really do have it and how good we really have it.
And sometimes, you know, when you have ambitious goals and you have, you know, your eyes are on the prize, you got a vision board and you're like, fuck, why isn't this happening for me?
Sometimes you got to see some struggle.
You got to see people that just aren't doing that well to realize like, oh, I'm all right.
That's one of the best things, I think, about COVID initially.
I mean, it just took too long and it's been too fucked up now.
But initially I felt like One of the good aspects of having this thing where you're forced to stay home and everybody's worried about a disease is like you realize like, hey, family, friends, loved ones, this is what's important.
All this other bullshit is like when the world is falling apart, the love that you have for your family and your friends, that's what's important.
But then, you know, it's overwhelming until you just go to the basics of it.
That's something I always believed from when I was very young, and I think it's something as a young African-American man, pretty early, where you just go, nobody's got my fucking back.
Which is in turn why, like, I see what we see in that social media of us eating each other and going at each other, especially anyone that is considered of any stature.
I mean, I see it happen to you all the time, right?
With people coming at you for one thing or another.
I laugh about it because I'm just like, it's just fucking Joe!
Yeah, and I even talked about in that same clip And we wound up putting the full version of it online because someone had taken like a 50-second chunk of it.
But I even talked about those people that do make a living at it.
A lot of money.
There are people that do it.
Yeah.
But I'm saying for a lot of people that waste, if you want to do something else, like if you're trying to do something with your life, you can find things that will waste all of your time.
Well, I mean, I like streaming and I like playing games, but it's also the reason why I do the comedy and I do other things is because...
I think at the very base of it, there's no stability of trying to make your living off of someone else's product, right?
You're playing someone else's game.
It's not yours, you know?
So at any moment, that can be taken away from you.
And so on that small level is what I believe in what you were saying completely.
But I think the reason why people attack so much is because The people who we're told are supposed to be our leaders are obviously not, and then people are just looking for leaders.
So if you have a big platform, they're just like, oh, you're a leader.
I had people do that to me.
When the whole George Floyd thing was happening and Breonna Taylor was happening, one guy in particular just kept...
When are you going to talk about it?
When are you going to make a post about it?
And what he didn't know is I was going through my own personal shit.
A friend of mine had committed suicide that very week in a home that I had lived in three years prior.
And I was fucking...
Dealing with that and dealing with my own life.
And so I was like, you know, who gives a fuck when I talk about anything?
You have no obligation to talk about anything.
I have no obligation.
And so it pissed me off.
But then I thought about it and I go, oh, he's not fucking mad at me.
In business, you see the way that these so-called independent enterprises refuse to speak on certain things because there's just so much money involved.
Did you ever see that thing where the World Health Organization guy won't talk about Taiwan, won't even mention Taiwan?
He's in an interview, because China does not recognize Taiwan.
They believe Taiwan is a part of China, and Taiwan thinks it's independent.
So the woman interviewer was asking this guy who works for the World Health Organization, Taiwan has done a wonderful job of handling this, and he's like, Click.
He just disconnects.
And then he comes back.
Like, you could see him reach over and disconnect it.
She goes, well, we seem to have disconnected.
He goes, but now we're back.
So what I was saying was that China, well, China's done a wonderful job.
You know, there's no need to talk about that any further, so let's keep going.
So he would not even say the word Taiwan.
And, like, this is the World Health Organization.
Like, you won't say the name of an actual country?
Stanley was the first known private individual to manufacture mass quantities of LSD by his own account between 65 and 67. Only in two years, he produced no less than 500 grams of LSD, accounting to a little more than 5 million doses.
This Phil Spector case is one of the creepiest Hollywood cases ever.
I remember when he got arrested, and then I didn't really know who he was, and I did a deep dive into who he was after he got arrested for murder, and apparently that was his thing, like pulling guns on people.
But when you see him in the trial with all his crazy wigs on, you realize this crazy motherfucker was involved with some of the biggest bands, some of the best music, and he was a psychopath the entire time.
I saw two things get announced yesterday for the projects maybe that won't get made, but Three Men and a Baby remake, and then a potential Fresh Prince reboot, but a drama, not a comedy.
My house was one of my first major vision board things.
I put that when I didn't have a house, living in my apartment.
And what it does for me is just kind of...
It focuses me.
It gives me a direction instead of just being this guy who doesn't have his hands on the rudder or the oar or whatever the fucking thing that steers the boat.
And so I was like, oh, I want to get this house.
And so in order to get the house, I had to stop just like...
Not paying attention to my money.
I had to stop just buying random sneakers every week.
I had to start being like, okay, I need to build my credit.
I had to pay these old bills from when I was 20 and didn't pay those off because I didn't think I'd ever have fucking money.
So who cares if I skipped out on this rent?
You know, I had to go back and undo all these things so that I could get to that ultimate vision of getting the house and then we end up I haven't had my house for two years now.
I fucking love it.
I put that I wanted to be on Reno 911 in there, and I taped that.
I don't know if I got cut out or not, because it's a six-minute Quibi thing.
But a lot of things I put on my vision board end up happening.
If I wanted to move in a lot of ways in my life, the same with dealing with my ex-wife and things like that, I had to go to therapy.
I had to start I wasn't trusting anyone.
I was like, anyone who wants to hang out with me is just because I have a little bit of money or because I've been on a couple of shows or doing that, which is so ridiculous.
I was like, no, most people don't even fucking know me, you know?
But some people did, and sometimes that would happen.
People would be hanging out with me just because they thought I could introduce them to a fun party or someone else cooler than me.
And I had to...
Stopped looking for that and being so worried about that and I had to go and do just a mindset.
I think...
This rapper, I also really like, Waka Flocka Flame.
Many people talk about this.
I just changed my mindset from a survival mindset to a thrive mindset.
Like, oh, I am okay.
I am fine.
So I can go ahead and just take care of this business.
I'm going to get more work.
I'm going to get more jobs because I've proven myself.
It was probably a little bit after the weight loss, but the weight loss kind of gives me the motivation for it.
My whole life has been motivation for every other step I take.
I came from just being a college dropout with a son when I was 20. He was diagnosed with autism when I was 23. I didn't have any money.
My ex-wife was more of an albatross around our thing.
I have full custody of my son, so it was just like...
I gotta figure this shit out.
And once we had a little apartment and everything, I was like, okay, well, I fucking figured this shit out.
I get my health together.
And that was a big one because my doctor even told me, she was like, you know, there's so many people.
I tell all the time, just diet, exercise, diet, exercise.
You need to lose weight.
You need to get better.
You're going to die.
I tell this to the people all the time.
And you go, you know how many of my fucking patients have done anything about it?
And then she says, you.
That's it.
You're the only one that I know, that I've talked to about this, who's just done it through diet and exercise.
So you have a—and she was just like, you have a strong fucking mind.
So I took that to heart, and I was like, well, fuck, if I can do that, if I can lose 140 pounds, fucking throw—you know, I would work out, throw up, and, you know, I'd give this more to my trainer.
He would just be like, all right, you throw up, let's— Yeah.
It's so true what your doctor said, and it's so interesting.
When you think about the goals that people have, like one of the major goals, if you asked Americans, like what do you want to do besides be successful, have a family, have a career, they want to lose weight.
But what I said at the beginning of this podcast, you've done one of the most difficult things a person could do, because you didn't just lose weight.
You lost a fuckload of weight, and you kept it off.
And that, to me, is so...
It's such a...
It's the craziest thing.
It's not like gaining weight.
Gaining weight requires you got to eat all that food.
You got to really get after it.
If you really want to gain weight, man, you got to fucking put on that.
You got to be there to eat.
You got to get it done.
People have no problem with that.
But the not eating, you're literally asking someone to not do something.
And then the exercise is maybe even harder to do than to not eat.
Those are two really difficult things to do that you need to do both of them in order to really get your health in order, in order to really lose weight.
Trick is to walk through that door, especially with exercise.
It is just like a door.
And that's what my wife said to me.
She was like, oh, you went from...
She's like, you were a guy who didn't exercise, and now you're a guy that exercises.
She's like, there's no part of you...
That gets up and goes, oh, this is hard.
Why am I doing this?
It's just like, this is what you do because this is what you do.
And the hardest part is making that transition because you go through that first three weeks and you're just like, I fucking hate this.
Why the fuck am I doing it?
You're looking at, you know, back when we could go to gyms, you're looking at other people going, oh, well, they're fucking attractive and this and that.
I am very fortunate in that I got into exercising and working out very, very young.
I've never not done it.
But for me, if I don't do it, I don't think right.
I'm just...
And I think it's also, it has to be, because I've been doing it so long, that my brain has this requirement to burn off this energy.
And that also, the kind of exercise I do is so intense, there's so much aggression, that if I don't do that for a few days, that shit stores up, and then I'm not the nicest person.
I don't like me.
If I don't work out for four or five days, I don't like me.
I'm not that nice.
I can get edgy real quick, but if I work out every day, I'm the nicest person.
It's like real simple.
The body has requirements.
The mind has requirements.
If you don't give it those requirements, it starts to malfunction.
It's something I've thought about since I was very young, just as our society, that we've kind of mislabeled a lot of words like work and play and what those things mean, and I feel like A lot of things that we consider work aren't work at all.
They're busy work.
They're like a waste of time.
They're just you spending time in a place for a set number of hours.
Whereas what I consider real work is getting yourself better.
Exercising, reading, meditating.
To me, that is work.
That is how you actually get better at things.
And that's just kind of how I look at it.
This is my job.
I work in entertainment.
Even if I didn't work in entertainment, it wouldn't matter.
But the fact that I do, my main jobs are, fuck, stay ready, keep material going, make sure I fucking look good and just have a positive attitude.
And if I keep it that simple, everything else is fine.
No, once I, you know, again, my mola decision and I make it.
So once the decision was made, it was more like, okay, it's out of my hands.
I will do what my trainer says and that's it.
And that's been the crazy thing because he'll then, like recently, he'll talk about other clients and he'll be like, oh, you know, you wanted him to do this.
He didn't want to do it, so he didn't do it.
And I go, oh.
I never comprehended that I could tell you no.
I never even thought that I could be like, yeah, I know, I'm tired, fuck it.
I thought, oh, I'm paying you, this is your job, so I just listen to you.
But I think that way, it's just me having a good attitude about it.
Once I was in it, I was in it.
And then later came the thing of like, oh, I have to mentally now undo like the fact that I still want these things.
You know, it was easier to just, OK, well, I'm not doing it because I need to protect my health and I'm going to die.
But once I got down to a healthy way, it was like, OK, now we have to deal with the mental aspect.
I went to like Overeaters Anonymous for a couple of classes.
Yeah, so I think they just need to get their shit changed and get their shit together.
It doesn't match up because they read you these things like, oh, I reached my lowest moment.
I lost my family.
I was living in a train.
And I was like, well, no, I can't relate to that.
My lowest moment is that I took a bite of a donut and then put it on top of the trash and then came back and got it and then had to put it deeper in the trash.
You put your hands behind you as you drop down, and as you drop down, your heels go up, and then you push up and come back up to here, and then do it again.
It's all, I mean, you know, shit gets weird, but life's, for me, it's been so much better.
My life is gravy compared to my childhood and things I went through.
You know, single mom and she had abusive relationship and all this other shit and just never had structure or knowing, you know, a lot of things were up in the air in my household.
And now that I'm I literally do what I want to do for my life.
I know my passions.
Sure, I don't get everything I want, but it's like, man, I can never...
And I get to work with my fucking heroes, you know?
And I never lose sight of that.
When Wanda Sykes is like, oh, you're fucking...
Why aren't you in theaters yet?
You're fucking...
You know, I'm still a fan first.
And so it's easy for me to be happy for people because I'm like, fuck, this is dope.
And success to me just begets other success.
I don't look at it and go, oh, I couldn't get that.
It's just about maintaining that positive mentality.
And that is really...
Putting out positive vibes, like what you're doing, really does change people's lives.
It really does.
You know, I mean, maybe you don't feel it yet, but I guarantee you there's a lot of people that look to you for that positive inspiration.
They look to you for just happiness.
And they just, like, you give that to people, man, and then they get it.
It's like a little seed you give them, and it grows inside of their body.
I just got an email from this guy I'm doing this thing with.
And I didn't know too much about him.
I knew he was referred to me by this other guy.
We're doing this project together.
And then he sends me this email basically after we're done with this thing.
Hey, man, I just wanted to let you know, like, I didn't tell you this before, but because of you and listening to your podcast, I used to have this terrible job.
I quit my job.
I moved to this new place.
I started from scratch.
I started doing jujitsu.
I lost weight.
I got a way better job.
Now I have a family.
I'm married.
I have a kid.
I'm a different person.
And it's because of listening to your podcast and realizing that you can change your life and you can do the things you want to do.
You just got to push yourself and feeding off the energy of hearing someone say that that's actually done it and recognizing there's no difference between you and me.
There's no difference between me and the next guy.
It's just I've done it and you can too.
That's what people need to hear.
You see someone like Kevin Hart and you go, that guy's an alien.
Yeah, as much as you like to see some people succeed, there's a certain amount of satisfaction in knowing that you bypassed all the pitfalls that other people have fallen into.
As much as you can get out of people's success, man, look at someone who you know that's just sabotaging their life left and right, and you can learn from that too.
One of the things that you were talking about that I think is so important is taking ownership of your fuck-ups.
Taking ownership of the things you did wrong and trying to rectify that.
And when you have that, you're going to have just a dystopian perspective on everything.
And that's what you have with people today.
And I just want us to come out of it.
I really do.
And when we come out of it, man, I hope we look back.
Just appreciate where we are.
If we get to a point where we can all gather and go to comedy clubs and go to restaurants and movie theaters and normal shit like we used to do, sporting events, you can go see pro wrestling live, all that shit, man, I just hope we really enjoy it.
I did a weekend at the Houston Improv, but I was like, man, I can't catch COVID. I gotta get out of here.
I did, you know, one weekend.
And I did all the right things, kept the fuck away from people, wore a mask, did my shows, got off, get out of there, didn't take pictures, didn't hug anybody.
Yeah, I went through the same mindset because I had a couple of gigs on the docket still.
But I went through that same thing.
Like, oh, I want to do stand-up so bad.
I want to perform.
I want to feel that feeling of people applauding when I enter a room.
But I just fucking...
Yeah, that same paranoia.
Like, oh, what if I give it to someone and, you know, I'm healthy and that's fine, but I give it to someone and they give it to their grandma and their grandma dies because they went to hear me do some dumb bullshit jokes?
But at a certain point in time, like, what do we do if this is normal forever?
What if COVID doesn't go away and this is just the deal?
This is just how things are.
Then what do we do?
Do we decide then?
Well, fuck it.
Let's just have comedy clubs.
People are going to get it.
They're just going to get it.
There is no cure.
There's nothing you can do.
Do we just live like this?
I don't think so.
That doesn't sound good.
So the question is always like, are we living like this because we're waiting for them to develop enough hospital beds and waiting for them to develop some sort of a treatment that's responsible that really does work well?
Is that what's going on?
I mean, we're all hoping for a vaccine, but if there's nothing, if it doesn't happen, let's just imagine.
It doesn't.
What do you do?
At some point in time, we're going to have to say, fuck it.
We're going to have to get back to work and get back to life.
There's more than one version of this disease right now.
More than one.
There's one in India that's so different from the one here that if they develop a vaccine for the one that's in North America, it won't work for the one that's in India.
And it's possible that this thing is going to morph like the common cold or like a lot of other viruses and spread all over the place.
Well, if they don't have a disease prevention, if there's no way other than keeping your body healthy, keeping your immune system strong, We're not going to live like this, man.
We can't just live like this forever.
We're living like this temporarily.
This is the idea.
So we have to, like...
That is a possibility that we need to take into account.
Especially if you, because people consider the size of Japan that it's not like super populated, but if you consider that most of the population in Japan is in just very dense areas, like Tokyo is everyone right on top of each other.
They just wore masks, and they only had a thousand deaths.
It's pretty amazing.
I have a buddy of mine who's a political commentator, and he was like, you need to look at this.
He sent me this article explaining all the things Japan did.
Basically, they follow order.
They're polite.
If you go over there, I've only been to Tokyo once, but it's like...
Amazing how different their culture is, like how polite they are and how they avoid, you know, like on the streets, like everybody, there's no garbage everywhere.
I love the concept of, you know, I'm the grandchild of immigrants.
My family all came over here from Europe.
I love the fact that these people, where we're like the ancestors of these people that decided wherever they were, they just didn't want to be there anymore, you know?
In everyday white people that I talk to, there's a little bit of fear of this black anger of people being like, not only Black Lives Matter, that we want reparations, we want everything back, which will also be great, it'll be fun.
But to me, what's so beautiful about America is this...
Level of forgiveness that's built into our structure to the fact that we can have that history, that, you know, horrible history, and then there's no other country that freed those people and then they'd live there right next to their oppressors, you know?
And then...
And there's forgiveness.
And there's balance.
And there's like, oh, well, we just want to continue to be a part of this lifestyle.
And we want to succeed and have our own freedoms like you.
We're not trying to then take over and now white people are slaves.
It's this beautiful thing that there's this forgiveness there.
And also, the amount of creativity that comes from that culture.
Just stop and think of that, right?
Like, through pressure, diamonds are created.
And just look at the black American community and think about all the...
Different forms of art that not just originated with black Americans, but were mastered by them to a point where like like even rock and roll Yeah, like Jimi Hendrix is the greatest guitar player of all time I mean you go and look at stand-up comedians.
I mean there's there's so many Musicians, so many.
So many artists.
So, I mean, that's the crazy thing about art, right?
Like, so much of art is this dynamic expression that comes from pain.
Yeah, I mean that's to me the beauty and the alchemy in art is to take your traumas, take your pain, and then to turn those things into your successes and the reason why you have finances.
They're in a bad spot, but they're also in a spot where there's a potential for growth.
When you see these Black Lives Matter protests, the thing that gives everybody hope is that people are together walking down the street in unity.
And that they recognize that this is a unique moment to make things better.
This is a unique moment to take a stand, to talk about things, to recognize that there's problems, and out of the brutal murder of one man, this eruption that has existed all throughout, not just North America, but it's spread throughout the globe.
It's a crazy time.
And through crazy times, oftentimes on the other end of it, you get a better world.
I choose to look at those positives because police brutality is not a new subject.
You know, oppression is not a new subject by any means.
But the reaction to it, the...
The amount of allies, the amount of times where I see...
I get so excited when I see all these young white allies, these people, these millennials that people kind of make fun of, and they're the ones in the fucking streets.
The first.
They're the first going to be like, no, this is bullshit.
We don't do this anymore.
And I love that.
To me, that's tremendous progress.
There was a million man march years ago.
Years ago, when I was a child, there was marches about this type of things.
And...
Before I was a child, you know, that's the thing I talk about.
Yeah, my mom was out on those marches getting bit by dogs and sprayed by fire hoses.
And now we've reached a point where I sit at home playing video games and I send my white assistant out to protest for me.
Other than that, I'm in a Netflix show called Hoops and a Disney Plus movie called The One and Only Ivan, both coming out August 21st, if people want to check.
Oh, Quibi would love it if I mentioned my game show!