BUCK: For the last five, six months, actually, I’m trying to get to the gym a bit more because, you know, it turns out that covid, for some of us, when we were not allowed to — and I mean not allowed to — go to a gym and were just encouraged to order in food to keep the restaurants going, I gained a solid 20 pounds during a covid. It was not good. I was do five hours of radio a day, Clay. So I slowly tried to turn things around, and then it was going too slow, so I decided I’m actually gonna try to get after it again. So, I’m down about 12, maybe 15 on a good day. So it’s going good.

CLAY: That’s pretty good.

BUCK: Yeah, down about 12.

CLAY: Is it mostly what you’re eating, right?

BUCK: It’s a… Like they always say, it’s probably 70% diet, 30% activity. I’ve definitely doubled my activity in terms of overall output every day.

CLAY: Your fiancee is in really good shape. My wife is in great shape too. It’s kind of embarrassing to be the fat guy next to the woman in shape.

BUCK: I woke up Sunday and the fiancee was… I woke up, I was all groggy, and she was coming back from the gym. I hadn’t even woken up yet. I was like, “It’s 9:30 in the morning.” I was like, “Honey, it’s Sunday.” She’s like, “Yes?” I was like, “Didn’t you work out every other day this week?” She’s like, “Yes.” (laughing) Damn it. I need to get it together. But here’s the point I’m trying to make, Clay. You and I know… You know we have that infamous photo with Tomi where beyond the scope of looked a little post-covid. You know, wasn’t our best moment. You know, had some baggy T-shirts about to go. But, you know, we —

CLAY: Burn those polos. Not a good look.

BUCK: We got ripped. We got ripped for that one, rightly so. But, you know, we’re both making our… Here’s the thing. We’re all just doing the best we can with what we’ve got all the time, right? Whether I want to be getting more sleep, I want to be reading even more than I currently do. You know, it’s funny how many people think that they really — they read on a consistent basis. And then when you ask them, you’re like, okay. Well, if you’ve read one book in the last six months, like, how many pages a day…?

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: You know, you start to do the math, you realize you’re actually not reading consistently. Same thing with going to the gym, right? Like I work out. And, you know, that was me right after the pandemic. I work out. Yeah, once a week. Congratulations. That’s really not gonna do very much. So now I’m at four or five pounds. I bring this up, because the struggle is real. I’ve been through the struggle. I’ve been at a high weight of probably 225, which is where I got during the pandemic. I’m six feet tall. You and I are about the same height.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: I got up about 225 and in recent memory I’ve been as low as 185. Could see abs a little bit. No big deal, Clay, no big deal. But that was like four years ago. That was a while ago.

CLAY: So I’m, like, fairly… I’m 175 to 190 most of the last decade, and I’m closer to 190 right now than I am 175. So I’d like to be 175, but that’s like a range for me. And you bring this up because, in all honesty, the worst thing that the government could have told people to do during covid — and I’m not even kidding — is go stay in your house, apartment, condo, whatever, put on Netflix, order in as much food as you want, you can’t go to the gym, don’t go outside. Because the number one thing that everyone could control, if you got covid, was obesity was by far the number one factor that people can control in terms of being in incredible danger when you got covid.

BUCK: Yeah. So here’s the thing. There’s the unrealistic expectations, and this where people talk about body shaming and all this stuff. You know, very few people, male or female, you know, have visible abs, and really… I mean, I was told once by a Navy SEAL in his thirties, he’s like, “If you meet a guy over 30 with abs, like, how much do you trust him?”

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: Now, he was kidding. It was a joke. ‘Cause I’m gonna get all these, like, 60-year-olds sending me their photos to ClayAndBuck.com. Was making a joke about it, but the point is it doesn’t really matter. There’s the aesthetic component of this for everybody, right, where it’s, “Okay. You know, you want to try to look nice,” and then there’s the straight-up health side of it.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: Then there’s the, you let it… You know, you’ve let it go to a place where you’re gonna have greatly increased — and this is #science or, actually, real science, forget the hashtag. Greatly increased likelihood of diabetes, greatly increased likelihood of heart disease. The real stuff, the real killers out there in terms of health risk, a lot of it… Like the BMI. And look. I get it. I like cookies too much. I like brie the way that other people eat rice cakes.

Like, the point is I understand that it’s not easy and we understand that, you know, people have — are busy and they got everything else. But we should all aspire to try to be healthy. It’s not saying we all need to have a six-pack or we need to have, you know, whatever the ladies… You know, different things are in vogue these days. Apparently different shapes and sizes are always changing. But it is about being healthy. And Bill Maher actually talked about this on his show. What’s amazing is that on the left, you’re not allowed to say this.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: This is really bad news. Listen to this.

There’s a disturbing trend going on in America these days with rewriting science to fit ideology. We’ve gone from fat acceptance to fat celebration. pic.twitter.com/r0zmqtamUl

— Bill Maher (@billmaher) August 6, 2022

BUCK: Morbid obesity is unhealthy. Not a single doctor in the country of any merit or intelligence will say otherwise. There are now morbidly obese models. There are people that are holding this up, and the left, by the way. Notice — why is this, Clay — just the left attacks Bill Maher for this?

CLAY: Well, it seems to me, Buck, that it’s primarily coming out surrounding women, because I think most men still aspire to be ripped, right? You want to be athletic-looking, you want to look like a bodybuilder or, you know, a bad ass. Most of us don’t, but that still aspiration is out there for men, it seems. They turned this into… I was walking past Victoria’s Secret the other day —

BUCK: Yep.

CLAY: — and they turned Victoria’s Secret from aspirational, incredibly beautiful models, right? They don’t look like most people. They’re freaks of physical nature. I used to compare Victoria’s Secret models, Buck (chuckles), to, like, NBA draft picks in that their body types are just extremely rare, superheroes, whatever you want to call it. And now they just got fat people in underwear in the windows. I’m like, I don’t get it.

BUCK: And they’ve gone to this point, and I think it’s interesting ’cause the left and the radical feminists and there’s an ideology behind this. It’s no longer everyday folks. It’s no longer, “Hey, like, this is what the average person looks like in these clothes.” That was what it was like for a while. Now it’s, you know, somebody is at a point where their BMI means their likelihood of dying at age 60 is up 10X or 20X. That’s “beautiful.”

CLAY: Bill Maher said it really well, Buck. He said, “When’s the last time you saw a fat 90-year-old?” Just think about that as we go to break. How many fat 90-year-olds are out there? It’s probably pretty good evidence you should lose a little weight.