9 things to drop from your life today

Let's Say Hello

[00:01:19.270] – Allan

Hey, Ras. How are things?

[00:01:21.390] – Rachel

Good, Allan. How are you today?

[00:01:23.420] – Allan

Well, just moving.

[00:01:26.170] – Rachel

Yeah.

[00:01:26.960] – Rachel

Yeah, well, moving. We're going to take a month off.

[00:01:29.420] – Allan

So trying to get a lot done. In fact, we're actually going to do our portion of three different episodes this week, and then we're going to do. Four episodes next week. And so I only have one of those four recorded right now, so it kind of gives you an idea of what it's like to try to get ahead. So we'll have what they call in the can, like seven or eight episodes.

[00:01:51.530] – Allan

Once I leave, I guess seven, and then I'm out. And so the whole month of September, this one is going live on the 29th, so, yeah, I guess it's going live next week. Okay. Yeah, that's how confusing it gets when. You try to get way ahead.

[00:02:08.320] – Allan

But we're still doing the bingo on Facebook. So if you go to the Facebook group, 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/group, or you can just go directly to the bingo sign up page at 40plusfitness.com/bingo, then. You can go and sign up for the bingo. But you are going to need to be in the Facebook group to play bingo because that's where you're going to post your card. And so on your card each day you can do one square, and you want to do a line, an X and a blackout. So get as many of those done in a month as you can at the end of September. Then there's the cut-off, and you have until October 1 to post your card completed card.

[00:02:47.140] – Allan

What you did during September, it is on an honor system, but at the same time, this is an opportunity for you to maybe do some things for your health and fitness that you hadn't considered doing before. So there's some fun tasks and some.

[00:02:59.620] – Allan

That are going to be a little. Bit more challenging around nutrition and fitness but there's 24 squares you got to fill out there's one free in the middle, and so that's 30 days to get 24 squares filled out to get us a blackout. And there are prizes, so if you get a line, there's an opportunity for prizes. If you get an X, there's an opportunity for more prizes. You get a blackout, then you get the best prize pack of all. So there's a reason for you to keep with it and stay consistent. And hopefully this will help you stay a little bit more motivated during the month of September while I'm on vacation.

[00:03:31.890] – Rachel

That sounds awesome. Sounds like a lot of fun.

[00:03:34.240] – Allan

How are things up there?

[00:03:35.780] – Rachel

Good. A while back, I mentioned I was tapering for an upcoming race, which was the other weekend, and we had such a fun time. We did a marathon relay. So I had a team of five. I was one of the five. I did my five mile leg, and it was just a super fun weekend. There was a ton of kids out there for cross country teams were doing the relay as well, so it was just a riot, and it was a super fun experience. So I totally recommend if nobody wants to run a full marathon, see if they have a relay, grab a couple of friends, and maybe do some miles together. But it was just a riot.

[00:04:13.810] – Allan

Well, 5 miles for you. That's like a sprint, right?

[00:04:16.160] – Rachel

It is, yeah. It's a good day for me.

[00:04:19.810] – Allan

You get through, and you're like, I should still be running.

[00:04:22.080] – Rachel

Yeah. And it was really for fun. We were not super competitive. Not super competitive about it. But I'm going to just say that my face hurt so much worse than my legs. I was laughing so hard the entire weekend. And although I did race well, I did hit a pretty good time for myself, and my legs were a little sore from racing. My face hurt far worse from laughing so hard. It was just a riot. Fully recommend it.

[00:04:47.310] – Allan

Glad you had a good time.

[00:04:48.410] – Rachel

Yeah. Gosh yeah. Good people. Good times.

[00:04:51.250] – Allan

All right, are you ready to get into today's episode?

[00:04:54.180] – Rachel

Sure.

Interview

Today we're going to discuss nine things that you should drop from your life today. Now, I've never been a huge proponent of trying to eliminate certain things that you do. I'm always a bigger fan of adding things in. I found if you eat real good food and you feel good, you don't want the sugar, you don't want the processed stuff. And so it's kind of one of those things where I'm telling you that these are the things that you want to exclude from your life, but if you can replace them with something healthy.

It's a double win.

So the first one on my list.

And I don't think this should be.

Any surprise to anybody, is smoking and tobacco products. One of the reasons I listed this one first is it is probably the hardest thing for you to stop doing. But beyond that, I've seen firsthand what the cancers associated with smoking and tobacco products do to the human body. I watched my grandfather have bits of his throat and tongue cut out. And I watched my father in law basically drowned in his own blood because he had lung cancer. So this is no joke. Smoking has so many bad things that it does to you. It's something you need to get off of as soon as you possibly can. Try some of the stuff that's out there. The gums, the patches, the I don't know, hypnosis products, anything. Just do what you got to do to get off of that stuff.

The second one on my list is sugar.

And when I'm talking about sugar, I'm not necessarily talking about the sugars that come from natural foods like carrots have.

Some sugar in them. Fruit obviously has sugar in it.

That's typically not the problem. It's the added sugars and they get snuck into just about everything on the shelf. It's really kind of crazy if you start looking at the foods that we eat and you start logging this stuff.

To realize how much sugar is in.

Things just to make them more palatable. So the more you can cut sugar, you're probably going to lose some weight. And if you'll go to fortyplusfitness.com, scroll down a bit, you'll see where I have some challenges. One of those is a sugar challenge. It doesn't cost much, but it's a.

Really good 28 day challenge to help.

You cut down your sugar.

And that's going to have all kinds.

Of health benefits for you.

The next one is related.

It's processed foods.

Most processed foods are engineered to taste.

Good, to make you want more of them, to make you eat more. They're not processed in a way to make them more healthy.

Quite literally, it's the opposite. They want you eating more.

They don't really care about your health.

They may use terms like healthy or whole. All kinds of things, green labels, things like that to make you think that.

A food is healthy for you.

But if it's processed, it's not. And that's just a marketing gimmick. So cut out the processed foods and your health is going to improve considerably.

Sitting for long periods of time is another one.

And most of us are in jobs where we do have to sit for.

Most of the day, but we're still.

Sitting a lot more than we need to. So I'd strongly encourage you to have walk breaks. There's a process of work called the Pomodoro method where you work steady and focused for 25 minutes and then you take a five minute break. My recommendation would be for that five.

Minutes to actually be movement of some sort, get your body moving.

It's going to re energize your brain. It's going to make you more effective. It's going to make things a lot better. You're going to be more productive. But just sitting there for hours and hours and hours is not doing your body any favors. So if you can get up, if you can take a phone call while you're standing, get an adjustable desk. If you can just find ways to be moving a little bit more each day and sitting a little bit less.

The fifth one on my list is negative self taught. Now, I've talked about this topic a.

Good bit over the past five or six months for sure.

And what's happening here is our bodies.

Basically receive food, they receive water and.

Liquids, they receive movement.

What that does for the body and negative thoughts and our environment. And so if you've got negative self.

Talk, you're telling your body you're in.

Trouble, you're telling your body to be unhealthy. It may not seem that way, but negative self talk beats you down and keeps your body from recovering. It keeps your body from doing the things, raises your cortisol, which causes you.

To cut out muscle and to store fat.

And so the negative self talk is something that's very, very damaging to you.

So I'd strongly encourage you to get a journal.

I've said this so many times on the show. Get a journal.

And when you catch yourself doing negative self talk, write about it.

Write about what's going on in your life, why you wrote that statement.

And then as soon as you write.

That statement out, as soon as you think that statement, you write that statement out.

It's your job to refute that.

You're not a bad person. You don't always mess up. You find yourself using those words. You're probably using negative self talk and.

It'S not helping you on your health and fitness journey.

The 6th one is toxic relationships. And I get this is a little.

Touchy, but if you've got people in.

Your life that are making it harder for you to be healthy, they're making.

Your life harder, you don't need that.

That's not helping you. And so if you can end a toxic relationship, it's going to free up space for you to invite somebody else that's much more valuable to you, that's going to be better for you into your life. So try to cut out toxic relationships.

Which leads me to number seven, which is social media.

Social media is the current birthplace of almost all toxic relationships.

Now you get on one of these.

Social media platforms and you write something, someone's going to say something negative, they just are. And then that can escalate into a.

Whole myriad of other things.

So the less time you spend on social media, the better off you're going to be. And the social media that you do consume should be valuable to you. It shouldn't just be out there looking for problems, listening to what other people are having to say about you in your life. Yes, it's cool to share how you're doing, but share it with people that care, you can come to 40 Plusfitnesspodcast.com.

Group and join the 40 plus fitness group. And that's a group of people that.

Are going to treat you right. That's a group of people that care about health and fitness. We're all over 40, so this is not kids running around yelling at each other and causing all kinds of grief. There are no anonymous accounts in the group. I approve each and every one that comes in and I will kick them out if they are abusing what we do there.

So avoid social media where you can.

And if you are going to do it, find good places where you can consume things that are valuable to you.

Okay?

Number eight is alcohol. And I know we've all read it, oh, well, two drinks is actually probably healthy for you. No, that's a doctor doing a study that already has a predefined idea of what they want the outcome to be because they actually just want to go.

Have a drink and feel good about it.

Alcohol does not serve you. It dehydrates you. It does no value when they show you the studies about resveratrol and all.

That stuff, the amount you would have.

To drink to get the dose necessary to get those improvements, if they even happen for humans, because it's really rat studies, it's enormous. You would never be able to drink that much alcohol. And even taking the supplements probably isn't.

Getting you where you want to be. So again, if you're going to drink.

Obviously in moderation, but it's not helping you. And if you're interested in improving your.

Health and fitness, that is one of the things that you should drop. And then number nine is unnecessary medications. Now, if you listened to the show.

Last week, episode 60 Four with Dr. Levy, she wrote the book on that. She's a doctor of pharmacy, and basically she does audits of people who are on various different medications. And as we get older, how we react to different medications changes. So having an audit done or just a review done of what you're taking and trying to figure out if any of those might be unnecessary would be.

A good way for you to cut those back. Every medication has drawbacks. It has side effects. It just does. There's no safe, 100% safe drug out there. So if you're taking them, you're probably.

Then going to have to take other.

Drugs to deal with the side effects of the drugs that you're taking. So if that's the case, try to find another plan. Try to get off of some of them. If you're improving your health, a lot of the medications you're taking might become unnecessary. So if there are unnecessary medications, talk to your doctor, get a professional, get a doctor or a pharmacist to go through the list and see if there's any redundancies things that could probably cut out. There are some reasons for there to be redundancies at time. But for the most part, if you're taking one drug and it's not working for you, you should stop taking it and consider something else if that's what you need. But you got to talk to your doctor and you got to know what you're taking, and you got to have that conversation.

To recap, my list of nine things to drop from your life today,

1. smoking or tobacco products.
2. sugar.
3. processed foods.
4. sitting for long periods of time.
5. negative self-talk.
6. toxic relationships.
7. social media.
8. alcohol.
9. unnecessary medications.

The more of these things you get out of your life, the better you're going to feel, the healthier you're going to be, and you're going to be much more likely to thrive without these things in your life. So if any of these are in your life today, it's worth putting in the work necessary to get them out so you can live a healthy and long.

Post Show/Recap

[00:14:18.850] – Allan

Welcome back, Ras.

[00:14:19.900] – Rachel

Hey, Allan, you know, like you, I prefer to add things versus drop things. But as I'm listening to you talk about all these things that we should really eliminate from our life, I'm like, yeah, it's a good thing to cut out things like smoking, sugar, sitting. These are all pretty big things that we could maybe stand to reevaluate in our lives. See where we stand.

[00:14:41.040] – Allan

Yeah. And sometimes it is easier to add something, and that makes it that you're going to do less of these other things. Just something to think about. If these things are in your life, they're holding your health back. They just are.

[00:14:53.550] – Rachel

Well, I want to start with sugar right off the bat, and I just mentioned this because a couple years ago, when I was reevaluating my diet, I went towards the keto style of eating, and I was eliminating sugar, and my mind was blown, Alan. I was just shocked at where sugar is in all the foods. It's just hidden. When you think of sugar, at least when I was thinking of sugar, I'm thinking candy bars, pop. That's the easy ones. But there's a lot of sugar in the yogurt we might eat or the creamer I might put in my coffee, or it's even in ketchup. And some other weird things that you wouldn't think about. So taking the minute to look at the labels was super eye-opening.

[00:15:36.590] – Allan

Yeah, I'm preparing. We're going to do it when we get back in October. There's a chili cook-off. And so I'm preparing the chili for 0ur team this year. And so I've been experimenting with the different spices and how to put it together. And one of our teammates, being helpful, wanted to send me a recipe, sort of like, this is the one that'll win. So, yeah, I'm going to do someone else's recipe for my chili cook-off. No, but they all use the canned stuff. This recipe, it called for brown sugar.

[00:16:07.880] – Rachel

Of course.

[00:16:08.650] – Allan

Just throw half a cup of brown sugar in there and everybody's going to love it. And others are throwing in chocolate bars. It was a couple others that threw in sugar. And everything's coming out of a can. Everything that they're putting in there is coming out of a can. I'm like, soak your beans. Yeah, this is not Texas chili, by the way, but soak your beans and then just do mean it.

Yes, it takes a little bit longer to make your own tomato know, it just does. But when you do it, you know what's in it. I'll be able to tell you there's nothing in this. When I get done and I make this thing, there won't be anything out of a can in my chili.

Everything is going to be the raw spices. Everything's going to be the raw vegetables and the meat. And so there's not going to be a bunch of processed stuff or chemicals or sugar in my chili. It'll be something that even if you're keto, you can get past the beans. You can eat it. But it has to be made with hamburger or should be made with hamburger.

What their intent is to make it all fair, and they need beans to kind of bulk that up a little bit. Because just hamburger meat, chili is just okay, but just a little bit of beans to get some fiber and a little bit of bulk in there. But no, it's like you're right if it's in a box bag, jar or can, you need to read the label.

[00:17:29.570] – Rachel

Oh, gosh, yeah.

[00:17:39.970] – Allan

Probably avoid it anyway, but read the. Label first while you're still standing in the store. And then ask yourself, is this something that if I really cared about myself. That I would feed to someone that I care about?

[00:17:39.970] – Rachel

Or is there a better option?

[00:17:41.590] – Allan

Yeah, or is there a better option? There are a lot more of them now. You walk down the aisle and no sugar added peanut butter. Peanut butter should just be peanuts. It really should grind up some peanuts. That's all peanut butter is, is just ground up peanuts. When they start putting sugar and they start pulling out the actual oil from the peanut and putting vegetable oil in. There, you've got to ask the question why.

[00:18:05.240] – Allan

And that's to make it cheaper and to make it more palatable so you'll eat more of it and buy more of it. And again, there's no reason for there to be sugar in peanut butter. But they put it in there.

[00:18:16.270] – Rachel

Yeah,

[00:18:18.600] – Allan

There shouldn't be a no sugar peanut butter. There just shouldn't be sugar in your peanut butter. But we got to read the label. Sugar comes in a lot of different names. If it has an -ose ending, it's probably sugar. And so they'll put different ways to put it in there so they can put it further down the label.

[00:18:36.990] – Allan

High fructose corn syrup is one of the big ones that you'll see, but tt's glucose, it's cane sugar, it's agave nectar. It's all these different things. They're all sugar. And what you want to do then you see all these on the label. They're way down in there. But if there's more than one or two of them now you got to go up there and look at the numbers. Sorry if you don't like numbers, but look up at the numbers and see how many grams of sugar is in this thing. And if it's not fiber, it's mostly sugar.

[00:19:09.230] – Allan

Even if it doesn't say the sugar directly, that's added sugar, it could still be a simple carb that's going to act just like sugar in your body. So you take the total carbs and then you look at the fiber, and that different number is net carbs. And so if you're trying to manage your carbs and manage your sugar, that's where you're going to see it. And then you start looking through the ingredients list. Hint, if there's more than five, put it back. But if they're going to have two or three different types of sugar in it. That's exactly what they're trying to do, is to hide the sugar in this product.

[00:19:42.860] – Allan

So you just don't know how much is in there because they're obligated to put it in order of volume. So ketchup? Yeah, the top ingredient might be water. And then tomatoes and then sugar. And you're like, okay, so the third ingredient in this is sugar.

[00:20:06.000] – Allan

Again, some of the things I see online, I just have to turn it off. I literally just have to say, okay, I'm out. And so that's why I put social media on there, because

[00:20:14.930] – Rachel

That's a good point.

[00:20:14.530] – Allan

There was a woman adding sugar to her Pepsi.

[00:20:15.230] – Rachel

What?

[00:20:15.840] – Allan

Yeah. Her question was, how many spoons or tablespoons of sugar do you put in your Pepsi? There's an individual adding sugar to sugar,water, to make, I guess, more sugary. And I was like, I can't. I just can't. But that's out there. And so people are doing these things. They're filming themselves do it and stop. Just please don't. I went past that post.

[00:20:52.450] – Rachel

Good.

[00:20:53.170] – Allan

And I shut my laptop. I was done because I couldn't. But I held my tongue, I held my snap back of how completely unsmart that was.

[00:21:05.960] – Rachel

Crazy.

[00:21:07.030] – Allan

Yeah, but it's out there. It's out there. People are so addicted to sugar. They will put sugar on sugar and it's just stop, please.

[00:21:18.300] – Rachel

That's got to be the worst I think that's probably the worst thing. That's why I wanted to chat about it for a second. I think all the different varieties of sugar and all the myriad of products that we eat every day, it's insidious and it adds up so fast and we just don't realize it until we begin to look. So, yeah, it's important to start paying attention to that.

[00:21:40.510] – Allan

I agree. Sure.

[00:21:41.790] – Rachel

And then the other thing you had mentioned was sitting can't sit for too long. I've heard people say sitting is the new smoking. We've heard that for a few years now, too. And in the running community, I don't think sometimes runners may not realize we go out for our three, four, five mile run in the morning, and then we spend the day at work. We come home and we're tired because we got up early to run, and we spend the evening on the couch watching TV. And like, well, you kind of are undoing all the great work that you just did that morning. And so if you pay attention to your lifestyle, if you spend too much time sitting, it might be time to, again, reevaluate what you're doing in the evenings.

[00:22:22.690] – Allan

And it's really about movement, because this is not you should stand up all day long either, because that has health ramifications. Too I remember because there were a lot of women standing in the pharmacy business. I was in the pharmacy business when I was in college, and they would gave problems with their varicose veins and other issues because they were standing in one place for a long period of time.

[00:22:44.930] – Allan

It's really about movement. So the opposite of sitting is not standing. The opposite of sitting is moving. Okay? Your glutes need to be engaged, which. They are not when you're sitting. And so the opposite is moving. So getting up and walking around, getting up and maybe doing a couple of jumping jacks or some body squats or just something, the opposite is not standing. So if you get one of those adjustable desks, adjust it.

[00:23:10.210] – Allan

I would basically set the timer on. My phone for 30 minutes, and every. 30 minutes, I would adjust my desk. Up or adjust my desk down. Sometimes I would sit on one of the balance balls if what I was working on didn't require me to be worried about this. And I had a wobble board and. All these other things, and people walk in my office, it's like, what in the heck are you doing in here? Looks more like a gym than it does an office. And that was by design.

[00:23:36.100] – Allan

I wanted to be able to move. I had a yoga mat. I have a yoga mat in my office.

[00:23:40.790] – Rachel

So if I feel like I need to move around, I've been sitting for a little while. I can get down on the floor on the yoga mat and do some bird dogs, do some crunches, do some hollow holds, just different things to basically get my body moving and engaged and not just sitting still.

[00:24:00.090] – Rachel

Oh, I think that's important, to find different ways to move throughout the day, and then especially in the evening when we're sitting there watching TV. We always talk about this, too, Allan. When the commercial comes on, get up and go do something for me. I'm doing laundry in the evenings, so when the show ends or something. I can go downstairs, maybe walk up, go back downstairs. I kind of do some chores in the evening just to get stuff done and kill two birds with 1 st, basically.

[00:24:27.750] – Allan

Or try like the Starrettes do: just sit on the floor.

[00:24:32.910] – Rachel

Oh, yeah.

[00:24:42.910] – Allan

You're going to squirm you're going to move around. If you try to sit on the floor and watch TV, you're going to squirm around a little bit. You're going to be moving the whole time because it's kind of uncomfortable to sit on the floor for a long period of time without moving around. When we sit in a chair, we're just in this comfortable, supported place that, there's not a lot of reason, especially on a couch, not a lot of reason for us to do much moving except to reach out and grab your beer, I guess.

[00:25:02.190] – Allan

But it's just getting down on the floor that's going to open up your hips. It's going to make you move around a bit, and then yeah.

Then pop up onto the couch for a little while and then get up. Yeah, walk into the bathroom or walk over to grab your laundry. And you can stand there and fold it while you're watching the television program. And then sit back down if you're still watching. But there's lots of things you can.

[00:25:24.790] – Allan

Do to watch your show wind down. And still get some general movement in it. We're not talking about getting on a treadmill and running for a half hour while you're watching TV. This is just casual, gentle movement, and your body's going to appreciate that.

[00:25:39.920] – Rachel

Oh, absolutely. These are all great things to consider or try and figure out how to eliminate them out of your day to day.

[00:25:47.150] – Allan

All right, well, I'll talk to you next week.

[00:25:49.680] – Rachel

Sounds great, Allan. Take care.

[00:25:51.280] – Allan

You too. Bye.

[00:25:52.350] – Rachel

Thanks. Bye bye.

Music by Dave Gerhart

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