Dr. Anthony Balduzzi of Fit Father Project: Why Simplicity Always Beats Complexity When Building Sustainable Health Habits

As a part of my series about “5 Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Dramatically Improve One’s Wellbeing”, I had the pleasure of interviewing weight loss specialist Dr. Anthony Balduzzi. Dr. Anthony Balduzzi, NMD is a health and weight loss expert for busy mothers and fathers. After watching his own Dad lose his health and pass away at the young age of 42, Dr. Balduzzi founded the Fit Father Project and the Fit Mother Project to help other busy moms and dads get and stay permanently healthy for their families. Dr. Balduzzi holds dual degrees in Nutrition & Neuroscience from the University of Pennsylvania, a Doctorate in Naturopathic Medicine, and is also a national champion bodybuilder. Above all, he’s most proud of the fact that he’s helped over 10,000 fathers & mothers lose over 150,000 pounds through his Fit Father and Fit Mother programs.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share with us the story about how you first got involved in fitness and wellness?

My journey into health started at a young age — right after my father died from cancer. He was 42 years young when he passed; I was 9 at the time.

Watching my dad lose his health at such a young age taught me one of life’s greatest lessons — namely that health is the foundation of everything we love in life. Health is the foundation of our ability to raise our families, pursue our passions, connect with others, and enjoy our lives to the fullest. When we lose our health, we quickly lose all of that.

After Dad died, I made two sacred promises. First, I promised to learn how to stay strong and healthy so I could take care of my mom and little brother. Second, I promised that, in time, I’d help others do the same for themselves and their families.

Since making those promises, health has been the cornerstone focus of my life. I studied nutrition and exercise for countless hours — completing dual degrees in Nutrition & Neuroscience from an Ivy League university. I became a certified personal trainer and avid bodybuilder competing on some of the world’s most prestigious competitions, and I eventually attended medical school to take my knowledge of health and wellness to the next level.

After my medical training, I founded the Fit Father Project and the Fit Mother Project websites in memory of my father to share everything I’ve learned about health & wellness with the specific goal of helping other busy moms and dads lose weight, build muscle, and finally get healthy for both themselves and their families.

I’m proud to share that since founding the Fit Father Project and Fit Mother Projects, my team and I have helped over 10,000 busy moms and dads in over 90 countries lose over 150,000lbs in our programs — alongside millions of others who read our blog and watch our YouTube channels every month.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?

Absolutely! I will always remember one of my first clients named Vijay from who had struggled with his weight and health for nearly 3 decades. Vijay joined our Fit Father Program as a last-ditch effort to get off prescription medications and turn his health around.

Before joining my program, Vijay presented me with a list of very specific demands for his participation:

1. He refused to exercise on the program. No cardio. No weight training.
2. He refused to give up eating bread each day.

I agreed to Vijay’s terms, and developed this simple 3-step plan for him:

Each day we had Vijay fast until noon — only drinking water and green tea.

Before his first meal, Vijay would walk 30-minutes to pick up his favorite Subway sandwich.

For dinner, Vijay agreed to enjoy a Tandoori Chicken & Veggies dish from a local Indian restaurant.

In 9 months of sticking to the plan, Vijay lost 80lbs, and true to his word, he never stepped foot on a treadmill.

From working with Vijay, I learned a few powerful lessons that I share with all my clients today.

First, nutrition accounts for 80% of your weight loss results. Second, for the purposes of health and longevity, doing simple daily activity (like taking a 30-minute walk) is far more important than completing “formal workouts.” And, perhaps above all, no matter how hard you may try, you cannot out-exercise a bad diet.

Since coaching Vijay, I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to share these lessons with literally thousands of men and women — ranging from Hollywood actors, Fortune 500 CEOs, Olympic athletes, and everyday moms and dads looking to live healthier.

The core principles are always the same. I focus on creating simple, sustainable health plans that help my clients create results that actually last.

Can you share a story with us about the most humorous mistake you made when you were first starting? What lesson or take-away did you learn from that?

Early in my career, when I first started helping my clients lose weight, I used to design incredibly complex eating and exercise plans based on the latest medical research.

The big problem was that the plans I designed were so “air-tight” (read: incredibly complicated) that nobody could actually follow the plan! My clients’ results suffered as a result of the complication until I learned this essential lesson: when it comes to creating health results that last, simplicity is the key.

A simple health plan that’s easy to execute will beat a complicated plan every time. Yes, tracking your proteins, carbs, and fats can be important. Yet, developing simple and sustainable habits is the true key.

Can you share with our readers a bit about why you are an authority in the fitness and wellness field? In your opinion, what is your unique contribution to the world of wellness?

I believe that authority is the natural byproduct of creating powerful results for a lot of people. My clients and program members don’t care about my degrees or how many research papers I’ve read; they care about the results my team and I help them achieve on our programs.

Over the past 8 years, I’ve focused exclusively on helping busy moms and dads in their 40s, 50s, 60s, & 70s lose weight and get their health back once and for all.

There are too many “one size fits all” types of diet plans and workout programs. Frankly, those generic types of approaches fail most people.

My Fit Father and Fit Mother Project teams are specialists. We specialize in designing simple, sustainable and specific health programs for busy moms and dads 40+. My team and I have written over 700 articles across our websites, shot over 500 videos, and participated in countless podcasts, summits, speaking engagements. And through our unwavering focus and dedication to our clients, we’ve become the authority in our field.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

There truly isn’t enough space to list all the names. That said, I’ll begin with thanking my dad for inspiring my mission, my mother (Linda), step-father (Jim), and wife (Paige) for encouraging me through all the countless late-nights I’ve spent working and studying.

I also need to thank my early business mentors — Brendon Burchard, Michael Hunter, and Yanik Silver — for showing me how to take my work and passion online to share it with the world.

Ok thank you for all that. Now let’s move to the main focus of our interview. We all know that it’s important to eat more vegetables, eat less sugar, exercise more, and get better sleep etc. But while we know it intellectually, it’s often difficult to put it into practice and make it a part of our daily habits. In your opinion what are the 3 main blockages that prevent us from taking the information that we all know, and integrating it into our lives?

In my experience, here are the 3 main blockages that prevent people from achieving lasting health results:

Blockage #1: When trying to improve their health, most people prioritize the wrong things (in the wrong order). Here’s the correct order of operations to get healthy:

• Fix your sleep first — a minimum of 7 quality hours is the goal. Sleep is an essential regulator of our key metabolism and hunger hormones (mainly insulin, growth hormone, leptin, and ghrelin). Research shows that people who follow diets on poor sleep lose less weight than those who sleep adequately, and the weight they lose largely comes from muscle instead of fat. Pro tip: it’s best to avoid phones and technology after 9pm as the bright screens (blue light) disrupts natural melatonin production.
• Next, focus on your nutrition and remember that healthy eating is far more important than exercise. To make healthy eating sustainable, find a meal timing setup that works with your busy schedule, and stick to it daily. Eat primarily whole, unprocessed foods that only have one ingredient, chew your food well, and stop eating when you’re 80% full. Pro tip: eat probiotic-containing (fermented) foods as often as possible (e.g. kraut, kimchi, kefir, etc.).
• Third, move your body for at least 30-minutes daily — it doesn’t matter if it’s a morning walk or playing a sport. Consistent daily activity is essential for proper circulation, blood sugar control, and regulation of your hunger hormones.
• Finally, once all those other elements are in place, schedule a few formal exercise sessions. Again, only do activities that you love and gravitate toward, so you’ll actually enjoy the time you invest in exercise.

Blockage #2: Never rely on willpower. It’s overrated. Fix your environment instead.

Too many people make the mistake of relying on willpower to “resist” snacks and junk food. If you know you’ll stress eat the entire bag of chips after dinner, don’t buy the chips in the first place. Keep the willpower battle out of your kitchen and only buy healthy snacks that you know are congruent with your goals.

Likewise, if you know you’re far less likely to exercise after a long day of work when you’re exhausted, schedule a short 30-minute workout in the morning. Lay your workout clothes out at the foot of your bed the night before to make this habit even more automatic.

Remember that willpower is a finite resource. Every decision you make throughout the day drains your willpower reserves. Your health plan cannot rely on willpower; it must be centered upon simple, turn-key habits mixed with some strategic pre-planning (e.g. smart grocery shopping, meal preparation, scheduling workouts).

Blockage #3: Lack of a supporting healthy community and accountability.

As we began discussing in the last tip, the influence of our environment (home, office, etc.) on our healthy habits is absolutely massive. To get and stay healthy long-term, we need to engineer healthy environments around both ourselves and our families.

If you want to live healthier, get your spouse and family committed to health too. In the majority of cases, families get healthy (and unhealthy) together; that’s why our team’s focus on fathers, mothers, and families is so effective for creating lasting results.

Practically speaking, get yourself and family plugged into a supportive community that shares your values of health, positivity, and self-improvement — whether that’s a local gym, church, or an online community like our Fit Father Project and Fit Mother Project websites.

Can you please share your “5 Non-Intuitive Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Dramatically Improve One’s Wellbeing”? (Please share a story or an example for each, and feel free to share ideas for mental, emotional and physical health.)

Lifestyle Tweak #1: Take a 15 to 30-minute “sunshine walk” each morning.

Most people know that sunlight on our skin is essential for helping our bodies produce Vitamin D3. That’s true and important; yet, it’s actually the direct sunlight in your eyes that helps you’re your brain regulate its natural circadian rhythms and energy-hormones. Direct sunlight triggers your brain to create serotonin, which is then converted into melatonin later in the day.

That’s why one of the simplest lifestyle tweaks is to take a 15 to 30-minute walk each day before 12pm. Expose your skin to sunlight for Vitamin D3 production and glance at the sun while walking to get the beneficial effects brain effects on your neurotransmitters and circadian rhythms.

Lifestyle Tweak #2: Incorporate regular fasting.

Put simply, our human bodies are built to fast. From an evolutionary biology perspective, our ancient ancestors did not have constant food access. As such, our bodies developed the metabolic machinery to create some profound health benefits while fasting — including:

• A dramatic surge in growth hormone — supporting fat loss and organ regeneration.
• An increase in autophagy — a process in which our bodies recycle old, damaged cellular components.
• A short-term increase in metabolic rate.
• A stimulated growth of new neurons.

If the benefits of fasting could be bottled into a supplement, it would be the most effective product on the market. Practically speaking, fasting can be done daily by simply compressing your eating window down into a 4–8 hour timespan; fasting can be done weekly by simply doing a “dinner-to-dinner” 24-hour fast 1–2x/week; fasting can also be done more intensely with 3–7+ day water fasts.

* Important: Although fasting has profound health benefits, it’s not necessarily safe for everyone, so always consult your doctor before beginning a new diet or exercise routine (including fasting).

Lifestyle Tweak #3: Breathe deeply through your nose (not your mouth).

Many people don’t know that there is a big physiological difference between mouth breathing and nose breathing. Simply put, nose breathing stimulates your body to naturally release nitric oxide, which improves circulation. Deep, slowly-paced nose breathing also activates the “relaxation & digestion” (parasympathetic) branch of your nervous system, which is optimal for health when you’re not exercising.

Lifestyle Tweak #4: Keep a morning & evening gratitude journal.

Research from my alma matter, The University of Pennsylvania, shows that gratitude is one of the most powerful emotions for physical and phycological well-being. In fact, Dr. Martin Seligman’s research reveals that simple act of writing a letter of gratitude and sharing it with another person dramatically increases the gratitude giver’s happiness. What’s most amazing is that the positive impact on their happiness is greater than any other intervention the researchers studied, and the positive effects lasted for an entire month.

In a very real sense, practicing gratitude is a highly effective and reliable “happy drug.” No prescription required! Each morning and evening, take five minutes to reflect on three things in life you’re grateful for. In the evening, also include three amazing things that happened that day. Once you practice this habit for several weeks, you’ll notice that you are happier, more positive, and more engaged with your life and relationships. You get bonus points for sharing your gratitude practice and reflections with others.

Lifestyle Tweak #5: Start a “Meal Prep Ritual” to pave the path to healthy eating success.

The biggest reason most people fail to eat healthy is that they fail to prepare for healthy eating success. It all really boils down to willpower and a bit of math. Each week you likely eat roughly 21 meals (7 days per week x 3 meals per day). Think of those meals as 21 “decision points” where you have to exert willpower and conscious choice-energy to make good food decisions and actually create meals.

Now, imagine how much easier your healthy eating (and life) would be if you had those 21 meals pre-prepared (with your favorite healthy foods) in your refrigerator ahead of time. Wouldn’t it be easier to eat healthy? Of course it would! When meal time rolls around, you’d simply open the fridge, grab a meal, and enjoy. There would be no thinking or willpower required.

That’s the power of meal preparation. Take 2 hours on Sunday and you can prepare your entire week of healthy eating success. For a simply “how-to” video on meal prep, you can watch this.

As an expert, this might be obvious to you, but I think it would be instructive to articulate this for the public. Aside from weight loss, what are 3 benefits of daily exercise? Can you explain?

Benefit #1: Exercise makes you smarter by increasing cellular signals that actually builds new brain cells, improve memory, and prevents cognitive decline (Alzheimer’s and dementia).

Benefit #2: Exercise helps you live longer by increasing mitochondria density, raising anti-aging growth hormone, and extending telomeres (caps on DNA that protects its ends from deteriorating).

Benefit #3: Exercise makes you happier and more emotionally-stable by releasing endorphins and enkephalins which are natural pain-suppressors and anti-depressants.

For someone who is looking to add exercise to their daily routine, which 3 exercises would you recommend that are absolutely critical?

First, I believe the most important type of exercise is a daily 30-minute walk — ideally in the morning for early sunshine (circadian rhythm balancing) and Vitamin D3 synthesis.

Second, I’d recommend a simple yoga and stretching routine like the 5 Tibetan Rites that’s focused on opening the hip flexors and mobilizing the spine. Most of us sit way too much, which causes muscle tightness and spinal degenerations that leads to back, hip, and neck pain (this simple stretching routine will help fix that).

Finally, I’d Metabolic Resistance Training (MRT) — like this workout here. Essentially, MRT workouts are a circuit of the best strength-training exercises (like rows, squats, shoulder presses, and pushups) in a circuit-training fashion with little rest in-between exercises. A simple 35-minute MRT workout can boost your metabolism for over 24-hours.

There are so many different diets today. Can you share what kind of diet you follow? Which diet do you recommend to most of your clients?

Because my team and I are so focused on simplicity and sustainability, we’ve developed our very own Fit Father and Fit Mother Project meal plans. The core principles behind our nutrition approach are as follows:

• First, set meal timing in stone in a way that works with your schedule. The ideal meal timing setup for you may be intermittent fasting, or it may be eating a balanced meal every 4 hours, etc. The key is to find the meal timing setup that works best for you and set it in stone, as meal timing creates the proactive structure for your entire nutrition plan.
• Next, standardize your healthy breakfast/first meal of the day to make your mornings more streamlined. The reality is that so many of us are busy in the morning — rushing to work or getting the kids ready for the day — that we often turn to quick convenience foods (like breakfast sandwiches, bagels, muffins, juices, high-sugar smoothies, cereals, etc.). Simply put, high-carb breakfast foods are the worst choices for your energy and fat burning. Instead, we recommend you create a “go-to” healthy breakfast that you enjoy every single day. This particular meal should be high in protein, healthy fats, and fiber. Low sugar, high protein smoothies (e.g. protein powders, almond milk, chia/hemp seeds, cacao powder) and/or sunny side up eggs with some greens or fruit are both great options.
• Have one big salad loaded with protein each day — for either lunch or dinner. By simply making one of your main meals a big salad, you can ensure you’re getting the key fiber, vitamins, minerals, and healthy fats your body needs. Plus, it’s very easy to get a healthy salad while traveling on business/vacation as most major restaurants now carry a healthy salad option.
• Never exclude any macronutrient. Keep proteins, healthy carbs, and healthy fats in your diet. Yes, super low-carb ketogenic diets work in the short-term and do have health benefits, but we find that they are too restrictive for most people over the long-term. Instead, we prefer a balanced macronutrient approach from Day #1 that still avoids low-quality carbs and sugars (breads, cereal, juice, added sugars) — while still allowing for a wide variety of healthy foods.
• Finally, focus on hydration with low-sugar drinks. High quality water, organic green tea, and black coffee (can be sweetened with stevia and/or unsweetened almond milk) are the best drinks for health and weight loss. Avoid almost all juices, sodas, and high-sugar smoothies as drinking liquid calories is one of the easiest ways to gain weight and throw your blood sugar levels (and energy) into a tail-spin.

Is there a particular book that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story?

The Great Work of Your Life by Michael Singer

In his book, Signer showcases the lives of 11 great humans — ranging from Gandhi to Harriet Tubman — in order to reveal that core message that we all have unique gifts to share with others that are born out of our unique life experiences. I believe the “great work” of my life is to teach health in a way that’s simple and sustainable so that I can help other create the conditions in their lives to thrive. I also believe that reading this particular book will help anyone find and follow their unique path in life.

You are a person of enormous influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

I believe one of the most important movements today is helping our children live healthier.

I cannot overstate the long-term health consequences our children are (and will continue to) face by eating processed foods, gaining weight early in life, spending too much time on cell phones, and not sleeping properly.

In the west, our children are being afflicted by diseases of “excess” (weight gain, diabetes, depression).

In developing countries, our children are being afflicted by diseases of deficiency (malnutrition).

I want to do everything in my power to help change that. My team and I have plans to eventually launch The Fit Family Project — providing education and inspiration to help children get healthy and set themselves up for future success. As a society, we need to do everything in our power to make healthy living the “default option” for our future generations.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Do you have a story about how that was relevant in your life?

“Health is the greatest gift, and contentment is the greatest wealth.” — Buddha

A healthy body creates the soil for a balanced, peaceful mind, as the mind and body are inextricably connected.

Cultivate a healthy body through proper eating, sleep, hydration, and exercise, and you will naturally develop inner peace, strength, and equanimity in all situations.

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

I would love to have a private meal with Sadhguru from Isha foundation. His wisdom has foundationally shaped my spirituality and understanding of the life process we’re co-creating together. Sadhguru’s teachings introduced me to the wisdom of ancient yogic practice that has helped me cultivate the subtler energies of my life. In my opinion, Sadhguru is one of the best living examples of a man living his dharma and helping millions around the world do the same. Watch his videos on YouTube. I highly recommend that.

What is the best way our readers can follow you on social media?

I’d recommend everyone interested in connecting my team and I follow us at these links:

For the Fit Father Project

• Blog & Main Site: https://www.fitfatherproject.com
• YouTube Channel: https://youtube.com/c/fitfatherproject
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fitfatherproject/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fitfatherproject

For the Fit Mother Project:

• Blog & Main Site: https://fitmotherproject.com
• YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/fitmotherproject
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fitmotherproject
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fitmotherproject/

I look forward to connecting with you! :-)

Thank you for these fantastic insights. We wish you only continued success in your great work!