Shane and two neighbors are competing to burn the most calories in June. He's on pace for 35,000 and has had zero rest days in 30 days. He monitors neighbors' workout alerts like enemy dispatches and worries daily about dying in the pool.
Where this was said
At 1:03:38 · chapter starts 1:01:40
Shane is visibly more muscular since Matt last saw him ten days ago, which leads to the calorie competition revelation [1] — Shane Gillis "Shane and two neighbors are competing to burn the most calories in June. He's on pace for 35,000 and has had zero rest days in 30 days. He …" 1:03:38 [2] — Shane Gillis "35,000 calories burned in June: Shane is on pace to burn approximately 35,000 calories in June as part of a month-long calorie-burn competi…" 1:03:54 . Shane and two neighbors agreed to whoever burns the most total calories in the month of June wins. Shane is on pace for 35,000 calories burned, has had not one rest day in 30 days, and checks his competitors' workout alerts obsessively — 'I check my enemies every day.' He had at least one 3,000-calorie day, which he half-jokes is why he worries about having a heart attack in the pool. He acknowledges the competition is unfair because his neighbors have regular jobs that limit their workout windows while he can block out multi-hour sessions. His conclusion: rest days might be completely unnecessary, and he challenges exercise physiologists to prove otherwise while insisting he is definitely very healthy and will not die.
Shane is on pace to burn approximately 35,000 calories in June as part of a month-long calorie-burn competition with two neighbors.
Shane had at least one day where he burned 3,000 calories in a single day, which he says nearly caused a potential heart attack scare.
Shane has exercised every day for 30 days straight with no rest days during his calorie competition, challenging conventional rest-day wisdom.
Self-help fails because people are sold one universal cure by the hyper-responders who had a transformative result from it. The real problem is context: every method works for the right person at the right time, which is almost never you just because the author says so.
Spencer Greenberg was once so socially anxious his heart pounded just approaching a stranger. His therapist gave him homework: go to a bar alone, talk to 5 strangers. Starting with asking for the time, he worked up to asking men for hugs — and his anxiety fell dramatically in 6 months.
A person who flies regularly but obsessively checks weather forecasts before every flight is not doing exposure therapy — they're teaching their brain that flying is only safe with the ritual. Safety behaviors prevent the brain from ever learning that the feared thing is actually fine.
The worry-time technique assigns all worries to one scheduled slot (e.g. 5 PM). Every time a worry surfaces, you write it down and ban yourself from engaging with it until that time. When 5 PM arrives, most worries feel trivial and the act of batch-worrying exposes how little it actually accomplishes.
In a randomized study of 20 habit techniques, 'habit reflection' stood out: recall a past habit you successfully built, write down what helped you succeed, then apply those same strategies to your new habit. It works because it's self-adapting — it uses whatever worked for YOU.
The tiny habits technique — always having a minimal version of your habit you can do when life gets in the way — keeps the mental machinery of habit formation from breaking. Paradoxically, people given a tiny-habit fallback option were MORE successful at the full habit, not less.
Fears and worries act like playground bullies — they want to ambush you. But when you deliberately seek them out and choose the time of engagement, they lose their power. The volitional act of starting the fight on your own terms is one of CBT's most underappreciated insights.
Most downtime defaults are things you regret immediately after — phone scrolling, binge TV. 'Glad you did it' activities meet the same need for rest but leave you feeling like you spent your time well. The switch from a bad screen to a documentary, a book, or a walk costs almost no extra effort but compounds into identity over time.
You rarely control your first reactive thought. But you can train your second thought — the response to the trigger — by asking whether your initial reaction is the most helpful one and replacing it with something equally true but more constructive. Over time, that second thought becomes automatic.
We use essential and analytics cookies to run Vuci. To understand how the site is used: Privacy Policy.
Install Vuci on your phone
Add it to your home screen for a faster, app-like experience.
Install Vuci on your phone
Tap the Share button, then “Add to Home Screen”.
A new version is available
Reload to get the latest Vuci.