Let's Say Hello

[00:01:56.470] – Allan
Hey, Raz. How are you doing?

[00:01:58.510] – Rachel
Good, how are you today, Allan?

[00:02:01.390] – Allan
I'm doing good. My daughters flew down to Bocas to see us. They both decided they wanted to try to make the trip together. So they're both here now. They're about the same age or really quite literally less than a year apart. And so the two of them just really get along well. And like spending time together as much, if not more, than spending time with us. So they just saw it as an opportunity to come down here and have an adventure together.

[00:02:25.780] – Allan
And my wife being kind of a diligent, wonderful wife and mother, that she is reached out to them and said, what do you want to do when you're in Bocas? And because our son had seen a sloth when he was down here, that was one of their requests. And sloths are wild, which means, it's kind of hard to schedule

[00:02:48.580] – Rachel
Good points.

[00:02:50.350] – Allan
But that said, she reached out and this is such a wonderful community that everybody's here to kind of help each other out and help everything out. So it just happens that there's a guy here who has adopted basically two rescue sloths. One of them is two years old and the other one now is six months old. And so he's he's taking care of those. And we arranged to go visit him during the feeding time for the young one. And so the girls and Tammy we were able to feed them and hold the slok and sort of hold it. It's on this little teddy bear. So it's cuddled up to the teddy bear. So you're holding the teddy bear and then you go to feed the sloth and it reaches over its little paw and wraps it around your finger while it's while it's feeding. And so, yes, that was two-toed sloth, which was not very popular in on the islands that wer habitate here.

[00:03:49.090] – Allan
Then interesting, we went to dinner later at a place called The View at Oasis and they happened to have a three-toed sloth right there in on their property.So we're able to go get a picture with the three-toed slaw, which was not in as good a mood as the two-toed sloths were.

[00:04:08.200] – Rachel
Oh boy!

[00:04:09.340] – Allan
It was a day full of sloth, which is exactly what our daughters wanted. So, yeah, it's pretty good. Pretty special time.

[00:04:15.910] – Rachel
That sounds so fun. What a lucky opportunity that they got to see that then.

[00:04:20.470] – Allan
Yeah. I guess there's three species. There's the three-toed and the two-toed and then there's a pygmy sloth. Never seems a pygmy sloth, but I'm told it's just a smaller version. But you can actually now that have had a little bit of time to look at them. I know now I can actually visually tell you rather one's a two-toed or three-toed just by looking at its face.

[00:04:43.540] – Rachel
Oh neat.

[00:04:44.200] – Allan
Yeah. So yeah I learned a lot and got to hang out with some sloths.

[00:04:48.220] – Rachel
How awesome. What a fun time. That sounds really neat.

[00:04:52.270] – Allan
How about yourself?

[00:04:53.680] – Rachel
Good. It's spring for today anyway. Or recently in Michigan. Anything can happen. We actually are expecting maybe some snow later. But spring is sprung and up here the daffodils are blooming and my lilies are coming up and all of our frogs are returning to our pond. And I even saw some turtles out. I did a couple of long runs this weekend, so I saw the turtles out. So it was fun to see all the wildlife and all the flowers popping up. It's beautiful here.

[00:05:24.370] – Allan
Tis the season for outdoor long runs, right?

[00:05:27.470] – Rachel
It really is. The weather is so ideal. It's just perfect for 50s, even 60s. It's just perfect for many, many miles.

[00:05:37.270] – Allan
Awesome. All right. Are you ready to talk to Dr. V?

[00:05:41.140] – Rachel
Yes. Let's do this.

Interview

[00:06:39.100] – Allan
Dr. V, welcome to 40+ Fitness.

[00:06:42.010] – Dr. Vuu
It is a pleasure to be on the show and thanks for having me.

[00:06:45.010] – Allan
Your book is called Thrive State: Your Blueprint for Optimal Health, Longevity and Peak Performance. And I think as you kind of look at this, you think about the word thrive I. I love that word, I mean, it's what you want. It's what you wake up in the morning and everything that you pretty much do in your whole life. Everything you've ever done in your life was really about thriving.

[00:07:08.680] – Dr. Vuu
Indeed, that's what we all desire. And I look at my nephew, I look at my nieces, I look at the children. And I'm a new dad. As kids, we have that innate feeling within us to just be the very, very best versions of ourselves. And I think throughout life we might pick up some habits. We forget who we really are. And in that forgetting, we probably build up some bad habits to lead to poor health. But for us to get back to thriving, it's really a process of remembering. And I'm sure we'll get more into that a little bit later.

[00:07:40.730] – Allan
Yeah, and one of the things you got into in the book that I think is really important is where we are in life is kind of like a continuum. The thrive state is on one side and then on the other side is this stressed state or the surviva state. And in my case before I got started in all this and it was a story not dissimilar from yours, I'm sitting on the beach saying, OK, I got this great career. I've done all these things that I'm supposed to do, and I'm supposed to be this person who's worked my way up. And I'm C suite and I'm doing the things I'm supposed to be doing. And I'm freaking miserable and I'm unhealthy and I'm unhappy and I'm in toxic relationships in my whole life sucks. I thought I'd be happy. I thought I made the C suite, I'm supposed to be excited being a vice president and sitting in board meetings and.

[00:08:34.800] – Dr. Vuu
Yes.

[00:08:36.060] – Allan
No.

[00:08:38.390] – Dr. Vuu
I hear ya. There is a quote that was attributed to the Dalai Lama. And he said basically what he found most interesting about humanity was man because he would sacrifice his health in order to make money and then sacrifice his money to recuperate his health. And I find so many of my clients, myself personally and many, many people out there in the world kind of almost suffer the same fate. It's when we start to listen to all the things that are supposed to make us happy, supposed to bring us success. We forget that as children just coming into the world, we are completely enough. And we have a state of joy and we learn things throughout life that says that you might not be enough being who you are. You need to attain this sort of job or or work in this type of area. Your bank account needs to look like this. Your house needs to look like this. And these are the things that are supposed to make you happy.

[00:09:43.530] – Dr. Vuu
Don't listen to your intuition because it's these things. And eventually, just like you and me, I've been in my story, I became this position that was really at the top of my game, doing a lot of minimally invasive surgeries, bought a fancy house, bought a fancy car, got all the things that I thought would make me happy. But at that point in my life, I was not only overweight, I was diabetic, I was hypertensive, I had prescription medications and I was really living the lifestyle that was not in thrive. Put me in what what I called the survive state.

[00:10:18.390] – Dr. Vuu
And that actually turns to biological processes in your body to make you have this chronic diseases. Now, fortunately, when you wake up from that and when you can start to build a life where you are realigned with who you're meant to be as a human being, all those things start to align and your physical health aligns. And I was able to actually reverse all those conditions in six months.

[00:10:40.320] – Allan
Yeah, I like that quote, but I also like the one I saw it was in a Cracker Barrel in Mississippi and it said, I want to be the person my dog thinks I am. All your dog and all your dog really wants you to be able to do is that is to walk down the beach and throw the ball, throw the stick. Or in my case, though, the coconut. Just kind of be that person that's out there willing to play and have a good time. But but you've you've got to have some juice in the tank. You've got to have something more than what you have, like in a boardroom or even in a medical profession.

[00:11:13.590] – Allan
There's got to be some joy in your life to do that. There's got to be some physicality in your life to be able to do that. And so as we kind of look at the stress state and we kind of look at the survival state and that continuum that we talked about, what are some signs that we might be in trouble. Because we're all somewhere on that continuum. But we need signs to tell us where we really stand.

[00:11:38.250] – Dr. Vuu
That's a great question. Before I answer that question, I just want to bring up the whole concept of this stress and survive state, right? Basically human beings are made up of the individual unit of cells. The cells make up tissues, make up organs. Those organs together work together in systems to create who we are as human beings. So it all comes down to the individual cells. Now, these individual cells, what directs their behavior? So when these cells are at their very best, we actually get healing. We get great immunity. We get peak mental, physical, emotional performance. We get along longevity because these cells will last a long time. So when we're talking about optimal health, longevity and performance, it's really the state of optimal cellular function.

[00:12:24.720] – Dr. Vuu
Now flip it back the other way when the cells are not optimally functioning. Imagine your lung cell is not able to extract oxygen. It only extracts, I don't know, 70 percent of the oxygen it normally does. Every other cell in the body is relying on that lung cell to be its very best. And if you're only extracting 70 percent, then the other cells only get 70 percent of the nutrient needs. And guess what? Those other cells perform a really good function that the rest of the body needs as well. So what happens if the cell is in a suboptimal state? Over time, you're going to start to break down systems. And when systems break down, that's when you get those signs and symptoms that you and I are talking about. That's when you get chronic disease and that's when people with covid-19 don't do so well because they are in distress.

[00:13:11.310] – Dr. Vuu
So what are some of those signs? Basically these signs are really the effect of our cells not optimally functioning. And they could be fatigue, they could be brain fog. They could be having patches and excema around your body. It could be joint pains or pain. It could be forgetful memory. It could be chest pains. It could be a loss of sexual function. So those are all typical signs. I call them signs of just feeling like crap. So you start to feel crap and you're not feeling like you've got the energy. You've got aches and pains. And you're not functioning very well. Those are signs.

[00:13:50.460] – Dr. Vuu
The good news is this going from a stress state to thrive state is actually what happens is, there's something I refer to in my book called The Bio-Energetic Model of Health. That just means our cells in our DNA are constantly listening to the energy that surrounding. It's energetic and epigenetic environment around the DNA that actually dictates how our cells behave. It is this energetic environment that dictates whether our cells go into a thrip state or goes into a stress state. And fortunately, what controls that bio-energetic state is largely controlled by our lifestyle, our choices and what we give ourselves on a moment to moment basis.

[00:14:32.820] – Allan
Yeah, I think that's one of the cool things that's really kind of coming out of the whole genetic/epigenetic conversation. Is that we're a system and basically what we do and how we live our lives and the things we even what we think are basically inputs to this system. They're basically information. So food is information, movement is information. And those are just two of the bio energetic elements. Could you talk through each seven, each of the seven?

[00:15:03.080] – Allan
Because there's five, what I would call internal kind of internally focused. And then there's two that you said were kind of externally focused and I think all seven of them are important. Obviously, we can't talk about all seven. But if you could just briefly go through the seven so we know what we're talking about here.

[00:15:19.790] – Dr. Vuu
Yes, great question, Allan. So the bio-energetic state is the following. We said that there are all these different inputs now. In fact, there are probably every single energetic input gets transmuted into some kind of energy right? We're all energetic beings. Energy is always interacting with each other. But to remember a million inputs will not make our lives any easier. So myself as well as epigenetitsis Steven Cole from UCLA. One of my colleagues have come up with seven of you.

[00:15:50.120] – Dr. Vuu
Focus on these seven and you focus on these things really well. Your risk of getting chronic disease is very, very low. And also your propensity to live in longevity and having the peak performance is super high. And the seven are this. They are sleep, nutrition, movement, stress and emotional mastery, thoughts and mindset, relationships, and finally purpose, all these are energies that actually have biochemical messengers that talk to our DNA that actually puts us in a state or a stress state.

[00:16:26.800] – Allan
I noticed you didn't say career success.

[00:16:30.580] – Dr. Vuu
Not in there.

[00:16:31.930] – Dr. Vuu
Not in there.

[00:16:33.790] – Allan
I thought it was really interesting what you are calling the BEEs. You use the term the BEEs.

[00:16:37.670] – Dr. Vuu
They're actually Bio-Energetic Elements.

[00:16:40.470] – Allan
I kind of like the BEEs. There's 7 BEEs.

[00:16:43.000] – Allan
It was interesting that the first one you put in there was sleep, because I think a lot of us think, well, no, well, maybe we want to talk about nutrition or no, I'm a I'm a personal trainer, so I should obviously talk about physical exercise. And then, we get into the whole concept with the the blue zones. And they didn't mention sleep. They mentioned that they walk a lot, that they move a lot, that they have great relationships and they eat certain foods. Very seldom does someone put sleep at the front of that list. But you did. Can you kind of explain why and why sleep is so important?

[00:17:18.820] – Dr. Vuu
Sleep is I put it there first, because when your sleep is off, your whole biochemistry in your body is off. So you could try to each way out of it or exercise your way out of it. But it just doesn't work because our bodies follow a rhythm. This thing called this circadian rhythm and our circadian rhythms dictate how our hormones flow throughout the day. And if you're not regular, particularly in your sleep, your circadian rhythms are off. So then your hormones are off. And when your hormones are off, it's going to throw all the good things that you're trying to do it, throw it out the window.

[00:17:56.590] – Dr. Vuu
I've had people who try to lose weight and done everything right, but just didn't sleep very well. Once they change the sleep, the weight came off. There's actually a lot of chronic diseases associated with people sleeping less than seven hours a day. There are cardiovascular disease, dementia, certain cancers. So sleep is really, really important only because it drives our circadian rhythm and our hormone levels. So we need to focus on that.

[00:18:25.150] – Dr. Vuu
So how then what's the best hack for that? A lot of people that ask me, well, we can go into a lot of different techniques and tools, but if you can go to sleep and wake up at the same time every day, go to sleep when it's dark and wake up when there's light and do that the same time, every single day, you train your body into a regular circadian rhythm.

[00:18:45.970] – Dr. Vuu
I just find that with busy entrepreneurs, people living at home, a lot of crappy blue light and weekend warriors. You're working during the week and you're sleeping well during the week. But weekends are partying and your sleep is off. That's what throws people off when you can go back to a regular sleep cycle again, go to sleep and wake up the same time every day. That's going to do wonders for your health.

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[00:20:42.310] – Allan
One of the things I did, which for me was huge, and I maybe I don't talk about enough or maybe I didn't really think about it as much until I was reading your book, Thrive State. I realized that one of the things that I naturally went to with my sleep was trying to go to bed early enough that I could just naturally wake up early enough and not have to worry about it. And as a result, I got into the practice of not setting an alarm.

[00:21:11.170] – Allan
And so for the past five years, unless I absolutely have to be up for a flight. So, I've got a four o'clock in the morning flight. Then I'll go ahead and set an alarm to be up at four o'clock so I can make that flight, but otherwise go to bed. And everybody will think this is crazy. But at 8:30pm, go to bed at 8:30pm, get your stuff done, have your little relax time and then go to bed at 8:30pm and then go to sleep and I'll sleep four or five good sleep cycles and that's going to work out to somewhere around seven and a half to maybe eight hours, maybe eight and a half, depending on this and that.

[00:21:49.150] – Allan
But I wake up and yes, for me it tends to be about 4-4:30 in the morning with no alarm. I just wake up and I say, OK, have I had enough sleep cycles? And if I don't feel like I have, I go get another one. And so sometimes at six o'clock before I roll out of bed, a late morning and but I feel great. I feel like I'm rested. I feel like that night was a great investment of time.

[00:22:12.070] – Allan
So losing two hours of Netflix at that night before actually was an okay investment to make to actually feel great when I wake up in the morning, can you talk about some of the things that we should do to kind of improve our sleep and why? Because I think a lot of folks don't actually understand the full sleep cycle and why it's so important to make it through the whole sleep cycle. And then what are just a few little quick tips of things that people can do to make sure that they're getting that kind of quality sleep?

[00:22:43.600] – Dr. Vuu
Great question, Allan. I find right now, because of the advanced technology and people's schedule, they're not intuitively listening to your body, just like you've trained yourself to do to go through the sleep cycle. So a lot of times people have their alarm set. And when they're and if you happen to be in the middle of your sleep cycle, not fully awake, you're going to wake up feeling very groggy, very, very drowsy. So just to let your listeners know, a typical sleep cycle lasts about 90 minutes or so.

[00:23:10.240] – Dr. Vuu
It's really important. Naps are great during the day if you need to get naps. But I wouldn't get a nap longer than 20 minutes because again, when you wake up in the middle of a sleep cycle, you're going to feel very, very groggy. But what are some techniques? Well, people have some crazy schedules, but people are also on their phones. They're on the laptops and watching TV. And there's some really bad blue light that comes out which lowers your melatonin levels.

[00:23:33.100] – Dr. Vuu
And, you know, even if you're able to fall asleep at a regular time, you don't get really deep sleep because melatonin is necessary for that. So I give myself a technology curfew at 7:00 pm. I don't check my phones and turn off the TVs and whatnot. So that's something that's really great. Another thing is a lot of people kind of have junk light at home as well, and they've got their alarm clocks on. They've got a lot of electronics around the room and possibly light was coming in.

[00:24:01.900] – Dr. Vuu
That's going to affect your sleep as well. So if you are living in a city, one great thing is to have blackout curtains. Another great thing to have is maybe a device that has white noise that's going to cancel out a lot of the noise that that's out there. And then it's really good to have good sleep routine, right? So the hour before I go to bed, I'm making sure I'm not checking any email. I'm not doing anything to get my brain wired.

[00:24:32.230] – Dr. Vuu
I'm telling my body, OK, it's time to wind down now. It's time to be grateful for the day and to set myself up for the next day. And part of my sleep routine includes a little bit of journally, a little bit of stretching, a little meditation. And I'm good to go when I need to sleep. And then a good sleep routine at night also means you have a great routine in the morning. And I like to get early morning sunshine.

[00:24:57.430] – Dr. Vuu
When you first wake up, if you go get some sunshine right there, right when you do that in the morning, it's resets your circadian rhythm. So it's great for sleep, including a little bit of exercise every single day is going to allow you to sleep better at night as well. So those are some great tools. There's a lot of supplements that are out there. Be wary of some, but I find some really natural, very safe type of things that people would take as magnesium or glycine that will help you sleep as well.

[00:25:24.070] – Allan
Just be careful when you go into the magnesium, start slow. It does another thing besides help you sleep.

[00:25:31.960] – Dr. Vuu
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. If you take a little too much. You're going to be visiting the restroom.

[00:25:36.100] – Allan
Yeah. I think when you talk about naps, I love this. One of the reason I picked this topic, because sleep's actually one of my favorite things in the world, and I love it every once in an afternoon nap and when I take the nap, but I'm a little different there. And you even said in the book, if you want to go longer, get a full sleep cycle in. So it's kind of the whole deal. Just like I would go to bed, I try to get the room dark and cool. I get the white noise going. I have an app on my phone that plays this fan sound and it's like a signal to me that it's my brain clicks and hears that sound. And unfortunately, small boats here kind of make a similar sound. So if we go on a long boat ride, I get a little drowsy. But what I got to take my nap, it's like I lay down and I say, okay, I'm going to sleep a sleep cycle. And it's a full 90 minute nap, but I make sure that I've got the time available to do that.

[00:26:26.500] – Allan
And I agree, because I've had my, you know, something happen in the middle of the night. Everybody knows this, if something wakes you up in the middle of the night, you're disoriented and you don't feel good. And then, yeah, you're aggravated and maybe a little irritable and maybe a little grouchy. You might say something to your spouse you didn't intend to say, but you can get solved and you go back to sleep.

[00:26:47.260] – Allan
But yeah, going through a full sleep cycle, very important because it gives our body that opportunity to get all the the hormones going the direction they need to be going. That's when all the good stuff happens while we're asleep. Yeah. And not the good stuff that we want to miss. This is good stuff we need and for sleeping. Well, we're getting that good stuff.

[00:27:07.230] – Dr. Vuu
One hundred percent.

[00:27:08.860] – Allan
Now the other way we we communicate with our body is obviously through what we eat. Most of the conversations are going to be about making sure that we're we're eating the right way. And that kind of drives people to diets.

[00:27:23.110] – Dr. Vuu
Yes.

[00:27:23.830] – Allan
Eat this diet, eat that diet. And in the book, you talk about how it's it's not really about the diet, but more about finding an eating style that's appropriate and nourishing your body and putting the right information in so you can actually be in a thrive state.

[00:27:40.750] – Allan
Can you talk a little bit about eating styles? And then just generally, because you put in the book The Thrive State Food Blueprint, which I think is brilliant. By the way, if you put that out there, that's good stuff there.

[00:27:52.390] – Allan
But no, it really can you can you kind of talk a little bit about that that blueprint, because quite literally, you go through it. It's really easy. It's charts, it's images. It's like you go through it. And if someone put that on the refrigerator and the shopped to that and live to that, I mean, their nutrition would be spot on every single meal. And I think that's just great. Can you kind of talk a little bit about that?

[00:28:14.770] – Dr. Vuu
Yeah, sure. Well, when it comes to eating, I find that the topic could get very, very heated because you've got different type of diets, quote unquote, out there, keto, vegetarian, vegan, carnivore and I've been in the crossfire of people just getting very belligerent over defending their diets. And that's pretty amazing.

[00:28:41.680] – Dr. Vuu
I think you mentioned something that is really important, which is being very intuitive. I mean, we look back and we just see how humans have evolved and and what humans have been eating all along. And we know if we can stick as close to that as possible, we will thrive. But I have to say this. There is no one eating style that's going to be the same for everybody. Your nutrient requirements are going to be different depending on your age, depending on your genetics, depending on your lifestyle and how you're living. So you have to listen to your body. But I think a very intuitive and great way to start is in my book, where I talk about the Thrive State Blueprint.

[00:29:21.820] – Dr. Vuu
That just means being very, very smart. It's really a primarily plant-based. I say, you know, 50 to 75% of your plate should be clean vegetables. Try to go organic if you can, because there's a lot of pesticides, herbicides and things and GMOs that are out there. They're not good for your health. But try to eat as many vegetables as you can. Non-starchy because look, diabetes is a very, very prevalent and people eating a lot of starchy ones. What are the starchy ones? We're talking about rice. We're talking about potatoes and things like that. But eat some non-starchy vegetables.

[00:29:57.370] – Dr. Vuu
Eat the color of the rainbow because every color suggests that it has some vital nutrients, that it's going to be great for your health. So that's really the majority of the plate.

[00:30:09.070] – Dr. Vuu
Then have a good protein source. Now, again, the better fuel for your body is going to cost a little bit more. But the investment now is much, much better than the investment you're going to make with higher insurance premiums or medications and things like that down the road. So what a good protein sources. Well, grass-fed, grass finished meats, pasture raised meats, sustainably raised fish. I go with that and then make sure your diet also has a good amount of healthy fats. And where do they come from? They come from nuts. They come from avocados, coconut oil. Those are great, great sources of good healthy fats, olive oil is a great, healthy fat as well.

[00:30:47.470] – Dr. Vuu
So if you incorporate just the clean eating and you just listen to your body, that's great. Now, I don't mind if you choose one of these other eating styles that I discussed out there, but recognize that each of those eating styles has its limitations. You have to listen to your body. For example, if you're a vegan, you're going to be low in omega 3s, vitamin D and B12, and just make sure you're you're going to be working with somebody who understands that because you need those nutrients.

[00:31:14.380] – Dr. Vuu
I was vegan for about six months and initially I felt great because I went from the standard American diet of fast food as a doctor to eating not that junk, but my body started to feel a little bit of fatigue. I started to notice a little bit more hair loss, and I went back and started to include clean meats in my diet. And I feel so much better doing that.

[00:31:37.510] – Allan
I think one of the struggles that is out there and I've interviewed over three hundred people on all sides of the spectrum, even paleo carnivore vegan all the way across. And the one core thing that's in the middle of the reason their diet is the best is because it's clean, because it's whole food. And you're kind of like, well, they know they eat bacon. Okay, well, yeah, some of them actually do eat bacon, but so is the standard American diet. So it doesn't make it's good or bad. It just means they're not eating the quality of foods. Or the right quantities of the certain types of foods, but excluding an entire food group has its consequences and you just have to understand what that is.

[00:32:16.900] – Allan
So, when you're making that investment in the food that you put in, because, again, food is information just like all of the other BEEs, they're information coming into your body. And so the when you give your body high quality, nutrient dense food. That's a good communication that you want to thrive, that you want to be healthy.

[00:32:38.330] – Allan
And I like one of the things that we didn't get into with all the BEEs is that it's not just like these silos of how to be healthy. They all actually interact with each other. So if you're getting good sleep and you're eating well, then you want to move a little bit more and maybe you feel a little bit nicer. And you can actually, instead of yelling at your wife in the morning, you can kind of have a nice conversation with her and you have a better day. And then that improves other parts of your relationships in your life. And and so I just I really like the concepts that you have in the book there.

[00:33:12.560] – Allan
I define wellness as being the healthiest, fittest, and happiest you can be. What are three strategies or tactics to get and stay well?

[00:33:21.340] – Dr. Vuu
Well, great question. I'll go off on a tangent and talk about some of the Bio-Energetic Elements that aren't just in every health coaches textbook. Everybody knows the physical stuff, right? Sleep, nutrition and movement. All right. That's covered. So if you do that, that was the initial three things that I did and I was able to reverse my disease. But if you really, really want to thrive, there are some things that are outside the physical realm, more the emotional, mindset and then also spiritual realm that actually puts us in the thrive state.

[00:33:54.680] – Dr. Vuu
So let's let's tackle some of those. What one? Our emotions are actually information, energetic information for ourselves, so one of the things I love to be able to tell people to do is just be very mindful of how you feel. And there's a great technique. If you're feeling negative or bad, I'll teach people a little technique here. But we've got emotions like anger, hate, resentment, fear. All those emotions are low vibrational, negative emotions that bring up stress and stress hormones in our body.

[00:34:26.770] – Dr. Vuu
So those emotions eventually lead us to increase inflammatory molecules like a IO One, IO Six, TNF Alpha. All that raises inflammation will lower our immune system, puts you at risk of getting chronic disease. And this is the exact same thing, people who end up getting covid who do very badly, they've got a low, Bio-Energetic State, very, very similarly. So those fearful emotions will drive those processes. On the other hand, emotions like love, like connection, like joy and and the strongest emotion out there, gratitude. Are actually antiaging medicines. All those things that I just discussed in terms of increase inflammation and decrease immunity, those positive emotions do the exact opposite. So if you could tap into those emotional states more often, you're telling your body we are safe, it is time to grow. It is time to heal. So it's important to be mindful of our emotions and have some techniques to to save us from stress. So we could talk about stress relief techniques in a second.

[00:35:34.910] – Dr. Vuu
But I'll teach people a short little half that I do. It's called Create Space and ACT, for Awareness, Choice, and Take action. So if you're feeling a negative emotional charge, come up in your body, you can just take 10 slow, deep breaths in through your nose and out through your mouth as if you're blowing through a straw. What that would do is you might be experiencing negative emotion, but as you take those 10 deep breaths, you're tapping into your parasympathetic state.

[00:36:04.760] – Dr. Vuu
You're going to calm down all your bodies. Those emotions are going to die down a little bit. And then you do the ACT: Awareness – Okay, I'm really angry at this person zooming in front of me on the freeway. That's a crazy thought. Why am I so angry today? Is this is there other things going on in my life because I can start to choose and focus my thoughts? Oh, yes. How then would I like to feel?

[00:36:32.060] – Dr. Vuu
So the next part, C – choice, having a new intention of how you want to feel and how you want to show the world. You can choose that in that space where you're in the parasympathetic mode. And finally, once you choose an intention saying, you know what, I want to not be angry now because I know those emotions are harmful to my health, I want to show it with joy. I want to show up with gratitude.

[00:36:56.630] – Dr. Vuu
So what's the next action I could take? And then when you come out of those 10 deep breaths and you choose your next action, you can be this new version of yourself. So that's a really cool technique, just to create some space, not react to that stimulus, but respond in a way that you choose with your new intentions. So that's a really cool way to do that.

[00:37:16.250] – Dr. Vuu
That was just one technique you ask me for three. I don't know how much time we have, but you can dive in.

[00:37:21.710] – Allan
Let's let's get it done. Yeah, man, these are great. This is great. Keep going.

[00:37:25.320] – Dr. Vuu
OK, perfect. Now, the next thing is having a sense of purpose is actually antiaging. So if you take a look at statistics, purpose is actually something that makes the average American live seven years longer. Having a deep sense of purpose also extends these things called telomeres. And for your audience, if they don't know what they are, they're kind of like these things that protect your DNA from from from getting degraded.

[00:37:52.550] – Dr. Vuu
And it actually keeps your cells from aging and dying early. So it's a great longevity tool. People with a deep sense of purpose preserve their telomeres. If you have a deep sense of purpose, you also lower your risk of the number one killer in America cardiovascular disease, such as heart attack and stroke, and if you happen to be hospitalized, a deep sense of purpose also makes you have fewer days in the hospital. So it's really important.

[00:38:16.540] – Dr. Vuu
Now, some people will say, well, I don't know what my purpose is. And they get little stressed out getting your purpose when your purpose is actually something that is not. So it's not something you need to find or discovered. It's something you really remember because your purpose is really just you. Your purpose is just you being you like a dog's purpose is for it to just be a dog and be happy.

[00:38:42.010] – Dr. Vuu
So if you could tap into the people, the things that bring you joy, that bring out those positive emotional states, that's who you are as an authentic person. And then you could share yourself with others in the world, then really that's your purpose. Pablo Picasso says the meaning of life is to find your gift and the purpose of life is to give it away. So really, share yourself with the world, share your joy with the world. That is another great tool for health and vitality.

[00:39:14.050] – Dr. Vuu
And I would probably conclude with the very last thing. And really my mantra is you are your best medicine. With my Bio-Energetic Model of health, your thoughts and your mind control the bio-energetic environment of your cells and your cells are constantly listening moment to moment to moment. So you can always choose what actions you're taking, the thoughts that you're focusing on. You can't always control the thoughts you're thinking, but you can control what you start to focus on.

[00:39:46.050] – Dr. Vuu
You can control what you make. The meaning of something is so make life be empowering to you and know that it is your choices, your actions, your habit. It is you that is your best medicine.

[00:39:59.830] – Allan
Awesome. Well, Dr. V, my purpose in life is to help hundreds of thousands of people get healthy and fit and live with joy in their lives. And you've helped me nail that today. So thank you for that. If someone wanted to learn more about you, learn more about the book, Thrive State, where would you like for me to send them?

[00:40:18.060] – Dr. Vuu
Well, Thrive State is going to be out April 6th, so it'll be out already. You could find that at thrivestatebook.com. If you want to find out a little bit more about me and the content I'm putting out there, I'm on Instagram. LinkedIn, take top at Kien Vuu M.D. And my website is keinvuumd.com.

[00:40:39.150] – Allan
OK, you can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/483 and I'll be sure to have links there. Dr. V, thank you so much for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

[00:40:49.360] – Dr. Vuu
It's a pleasure being on the show. Thanks for having me, Allan.

Post Show/Recap

[00:40:56.230] – Allan
Welcome back, Raz.

[00:40:57.640] – Rachel
Hey, Allan. Oh, what an interesting interview and personally, I love that word thrive. That's such a good word to get the most out of anything you're doing. Get the most out of life. I love it.

[00:41:11.080] – Allan
Yeah. When he when he did, the comparison of stress/survive state versus the thrive state. You know, it was kind of one of those things where you have to recognize it's a continuum and sometimes you're so in it, you don't recognize that you're not on the end of the continuum you want to be on. But we're having this conversation, so obviously anyone that might be listening to us at this point in time obviously cares about moving up that continuum to the thrive state.

[00:41:45.190] – Allan
In the book Thrive State, Dr. V gives us those seven Bio-Energetic Elements of this way you can do with some kind of a self audit, if you will, of where are the things where I'm really focused and doing well and where are the things where I can improve. And then, of course, he gives you some guidance on on how to do that.

[00:42:04.150] – Rachel
Yeah. Of those seven inputs, you know, you've talked a lot about sleep and nutrition and movement and your podcast over these many years, but the ones that hit me are stress mastery. I like how he put that term stress mastery because we all have stresses in our life. You know, things happen at the home. Things happen with family stress. We often have stress at our job. So it exists whether you like it or not. And so we need to figure out how to master that, how to respond instead of react. And I thought that was a good thing to think about.

[00:42:40.750] – Allan
Yeah. One, yes, dealing with stress. And obviously I decided that I wasn't going to work corporate anymore. That I was going to go ahead and say, okay, I'm going to jettison that and try to find a place with a little less stress. So I would say hanging out on a Sunday with sloths is probably about as stress free a day as you can have.

[00:43:07.690] – Allan
I encourage people to consider that self care and way. It's all of it. It's managing your attrition. It's managing your movement. It's trying to sleep better. It's having better relationships. It's all of it. And you can't have health without joy and you can't have joy without health.

[00:43:28.810] – Rachel
Right.

[00:43:29.050] – Allan
And so those those things are tied together in a way that we're beginning to understand. But it's it's so powerful. You read the blue zones. You know, we had Dr. Day on and he talked about some of this and we've had a lot of longevity people. And it's all about purpose. It's all about connection. It's all about those those intangibles in our lives that we often take for granted because we're too busy building our career or doing our long runs. And we realize that's that's part of it. We can become very one sided. So it's worth looking at all seven of them and kind of almost using that as a self audit to just say, OK, if I had to rate myself, how do I feel like I'm doing on this one element? And if there's some elements that are lagging, they need your attention.

[00:44:19.780] – Rachel
Absolutely.

[00:44:21.070] – Allan
It's probably not worth doubling down on the ones you're doing. I'm going to move more or I'm going to I'm going to eat better. It might be worth you actually spending your time to say I'm going to spend a Sunday hanging out with family rather than doing your movement and maybe not worrying so much about your nutrition on that day if it's hard, because that's just gonna put stress on you. So just kind of figuring out that balance of are my actions conducive to balance across all seven of those?

[00:44:52.000] – Rachel
For sure. And balance is another word I like a lot because we can be pulled out of balance. Work sometimes requires extra attention or a stage in our kids lives might require extra attention. And when these things come up, then we're kind of forced off kilter. We're forced out of balance. And it's it is often a struggle to maintain that balance. But if you do like I tell my friends and clients, you do the best you can with what you have and that moment and realize that it's these are just chapters in life. And you'll get back into that balance. You'll be able to trade one thing for another and get back to it. I like that word, too.

[00:45:38.680] – Allan
All right. Well, Rachel, how about we go ahead and call it a day?

[00:45:42.610] – Rachel
You bet. Enjoy time with your family.

[00:45:46.600] – Allan
I will. Thank you. And you have a great week. We'll talk next week, okay?

[00:45:50.830] – Rachel
Thank you. Bye bye.

Patreons

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Another episode you may enjoy

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Let's Say Hello

[00:01:31.880] – Allan
Raz, how are things?

[00:01:34.070] – Rachel
Good. Allan, how are you today?

[00:01:37.140] – Allan
I'm doing all right. I had had a really, really good weekend with just a little bit of not such good thing. I lost my phone again.

[00:01:44.850] – Rachel
Oh, my gosh.

[00:01:45.710] – Allan
We'll talk about that in more detail later. But yeah, same scenario shorts out to Bluff coming back in the golf cart lost but not the same outcome, though. The phone survived with no damage. And a nice taxi driver that we actually know here on the island found it. And so we were able to retrieve my phone, but not without a little bit of frustration. And we'll get into that in more detail in a minute.

[00:02:13.040] – Rachel
Sure. Well, I'm glad it has a good outcome. That's a good ending, then.

[00:02:16.910] – Allan
Yeah. How are things up there? Way up there in Michigan?

[00:02:20.900] – Rachel
Good. Things are good up here. On Friday, I got my vaccine. I got the Johnson and Johnson one and done covid vaccine. So I took the weekend just to relax, make sure I didn't have any adverse reactions to it, which I didn't. Just a little fatigue and I'm feeling pretty good. So I'm pretty excited. Some of my family has been vaccinated. The other family members are getting the other vaccines where you need two of them, but we're just that much closer to having a little bit more normalcy. So looking forward to that.

[00:02:55.250] – Allan
Yeah, they're not they have vaccinations here. They don't have as many as they planned to have. And they didn't order enough to vaccinate the whole country. So I'm not going to take a vaccination from Panama. One, there's there's citizens there are a lot older and a lot worse health than me that need it. And then, it's Panama. And so, you know, I'm not going to I'm not going to get it here, even though I could sign up and eventually being 55 would come up on the list.

[00:03:27.380] – Allan
I'm going to wait. My my wife and I are planning to come back to the States in September. And so we'll get tested before we get on an airplane. Don't worry. That's a requirement. Now for us to go to the States, we're going to have to have a test before we leave. So we'll get tested here and then we'll head back to the states and I think September time frame and then go ahead and get it there. We'll be in the States for at least three weeks. So if we have to get to the two stage one, we'll get one when we first get there. And then we'll get a second shot right before we leave.

[00:03:57.620] – Rachel
That would be great. That would be fantastic.

[00:04:00.860] – Allan
All right. So let's go ahead and get into this show, which is about mindset, which is yours and my favorite topic when we're talking about health and fitness. So here we go.

Are you prioritizing yourself?

Today, I want to get into a mindset. Topic that is actually probably one of the most important obstacles that many people face when they're looking to get healthy and fit, and it's not something that goes away without a little bit of work.

And so the question comes up is, are you prioritizing yourself?

Are you probably prioritizing your health and fitness? And it's it sounds like a simple thing, but it's actually a very deep, deep emotional mental adjustment to to have that kind of mindset where you are prioritizing yourself. So I want to dive into it a little bit. But before we go too far, we can start with something as simple as a little quiz. And so there's only three questions to this quiz.

So don't think we're going to be on here for a long time. It's not but three questions. And I want you to rate yourself from a one, which is this is completely untrue to a six – this describes me perfectly. OK, so again, one is the low end of the scale is completely untrue. Up to six, this is a good description of you. How how you actually feel, how you think.

OK, the first one is: I put others wishes before my own or else I feel guilty.

The second one is: I give more to other people than I get back in return.

And then the final one is: I'm so busy doing for the people whom I care about, that I have little time for myself.

All right, now add up those scores and think to yourself about what that number means, and I'll tell you what it means if that number. Is higher than, say, five or six, you might have a problem. You're not prioritizing yourself and what you're basically doing is self-sacrificing. You're taking others and saying they're so much more important than me that I can't do the things for myself that are necessary for me to be healthy and fit.

And I'm not going to jump into the whole airplane put your mask on thing. But this is a concept that unless you break through this effort of prioritizing yourself, if you are a self-sacrificer or you're really going to struggle to get healthy and fit and stay healthy and fit because it's never going to be the priority you need it to be.

A lot of people love those simple rules of the 80-20, and I try to tell people 80-20 is perfect when you're in maintenance mode. 80 at 20 is great. You can stay healthy and be healthy. The problem is for most of us, we're not already healthy. We're not at the weight we want to be at. We're not as strong as we need to be. And as a result, we need to put in more than 80%. If you don't prioritize yourself, that's just not going to happen.

So the first thing we have to look at when we are having this conversation is to actually think about the inner voice that we have, that voice that that tells you how you feel about something that's happening. So an event happens, maybe your alarm doesn't go off and you're late for work. You're going to be late for work. What does your inner voice tell you about that event? And that inner voice is the story, it's the story of our lives from an internal perspective. It often doesn't actually reflect reality.

And I want to take you through and this week, or at least for the next few days, I want you to think about some of the words that that inner voice is using, some of the things that you probably think. And the best way to kind of break that down for me is this phraseology called “absolute words.” And so I want you to pay attention to that inner voice over the course of the next day or two and maybe a little longer and see how often you use words like have to, need, must, ought to, should.

If you find yourself using those words a lot, those are absolute words. That means that your inner voice is feeding you something and saying this is an absolute necessity. You have to do it this way. And if that's the case, then you're not going to change. You're not. Whatever you think you have to do, you will do whatever you think you should do, you will probably do. Whatever you need to do, whatever someone else needs or you think is needed. And then obviously the word must if you must do something, it's something you've got to do and therefore you do it.

If you're not using those absolute words for your own health and fitness, then you're likely using them for other things. And if you are, that's a clear indication that you're not prioritizing your wellbeing. It's just not happening because these other haves, musts, ought tos, and shoulds are getting in your way.

So what's an easy solution for us with regards to these absolute words?

Well, one, when you catch yourself doing this, using those words and it's not toward you, it's not something that you are doing for you. Like I can say, I have to work out today. Obviously, that's not a bad phrase. It is an absolute. The absolute is about me taking care of myself. But if I say I've got to get the food for the kids, I must take them to the ball practice. I must do this and then I must make sure I get this report done at work. If I have all these other musts in my life, it'll be very hard for me to make sure that I go through it. So if I catch myself using one of these absolute words.

Again, there have to, need, must, ought, and should.

If you find yourself using those words with relation to someone else or something else besides your health and fitness, you need to stop and take a step back. And reevaluate if that is an absolute. In many cases, it's not. The world is not going to end if you don't do something that you had to do, that you should have done, that you ought to do, the world might not end. And so taking a moment to take that half step back and evaluate that statement that you just your inner voice just told you that is getting in the way of you being healthy and fit.

It's time to rephrase that and going through the practice of where your is telling you, you know, you must be home by 6:30pm so you don't have time to work out. Well, do you have to be home by 6:30pm. Just ask yourself that question. What happens if I'm not there? Then dinner's not ready at 7:00pm. Dinner's ready at what, maybe 7:30pm? Maybe your spouse can assist you by making dinner tonight. Maybe you go ahead and you order from a food company that delivers healthy choices and you order food in for the family.

So in many cases, when you catch yourself using an absolute word that is not geared towards you being healthy and fit when you really, truly need and want to prioritize yourself in your health and fitness, you've got to change the script. You've got to stop evaluate whether it's true. And I'll tell you, in most cases it's not true.

You're not going to get fired for being five minutes late for work. You're just not. Now, you might if you're constantly late. But for most people out there, a lot of the absolute words we have in our head are actually not true. They're stories that we're telling ourselves. They're stories that we're living to. And as a result, we're not getting the health and fitness that we deserve.

So I just used the word there, and I'm actually getting to a point in my life where I really kind of love words and those kind of things that they mean and what they bring up and how we relate to them. And so I'm using the word deserve.

And I can say with absolute clarity, you deserve self-care. You deserve to be able to take care of yourself. You deserve to be healthy and fit. So what does self-care actually look like?

Well, first and foremost, it includes self-love. I've asked many of my clients if they love themselves enough to do this for themselves. And it was funny because one of the first clients I ever had, her name was Sandy. She said she wasn't sure. Now, the problem came up and Sandy didn't follow through with everything we were doing, despite seeing good results at first. And I break it down to that point, she did not have the self-love necessary to make a change, to do the hard thing.

And so self-love is that expression where you care about yourself as much as you care about anyone else. It doesn't mean that you don't love other people as much because love is not this finite thing that we have that if I give this to this person, I don't have any left for me. That's not how love works. Love is infinite. And so you should be exploring yourself and understanding that if you don't start from my point of self-love, the commitment's never going to be there and you're not going to see the results. So if you find yourself having these kind of conversations where you're not liking yourself and that inner voice is actually a butthole. You need to work on your self-love. You need to actually sit down and start talking yourself through why you're worthy, why you deserve this, why you would love yourself. And I'm 100 percent sure you're going to come up with a ton of great reasons why you should love yourself and then you should love yourself.

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The next thing that comes in is you need to be frank and honest and you need to be frank and honest with not just other people. You need to be frank and honest with yourself. If the inner voice is, like I said, being a butthole, be honest about it. Understand, I have kind of a crappy self-image right now. What are the things I can do to improve that self-image? What are the things I can do to make that inner voice nicer?

Eliminating some of those absolute words is a good first step for that, but you've got to have this inner honesty. You've got to be honest with yourself and understand what's going on. And then, yes, you have to be frank and honest with the people around you. If you're going to do something for yourself, it often means that there's things that you would have been doing for someone else that you're now not able to do. They're going to live. They're going to be fine. But change in your life often means change in others.

I talked in my book, The Wellness Roadmap, about understanding the baggage that you have when you're traveling and how that can affect your path. Now, what I didn't say in there, but it should have been implied is you still need to have a vehicle. You still need to be moving forward. Your pace might be a little different, but you still have to be frank and honest with the people around you that the changes you're making are important to you and should be important to them, because in 99.9% of the cases out there, your why is them? You want to be healthy and you want to be fit for your kids, you and you and your grandkids. And you want to be there for your spouse and you don't want to be an obligation later in life to them because you want to be able to take care of yourself and you want that opportunity to be the person you're supposed to be.

And they should want that for you, too. So being honest and frank with them as far as what you need to be successful, is going to go a long way towards not having them resenting you for going to the gym every day or resenting you because you're not baking as often as you used to bake. Those types of things. So being frank and honest with yourself and others is a very important step towards self-care.

The next is consistency and frequency. You can't do something once and say, OK, that's my self-care for the month. It just doesn't quite work like that. Yes, going and getting a mani-pedi for some people are getting a massage is a great luxury for many and doing it once a month might be plenty. It would be for me. But to actually do what's necessary for you to be healthy and fit, it needs to become a part of a lifestyle that is frequent enough that it will elicit change. So if you're going to say lift weights, you can't lift weights once and say, well, gee, I don't understand why I'm not muscular. I don't understand why I didn't put on much muscle or because you didn't do it enough. Okay? So there has to be a frequency to it that is enough to stimulate a change in your body, to stimulate change in you.

And then the consistency part just means that doing something over and over and over is where you're going to get your real results. I had that conversation with Dr. Pontzer not long ago, and we talked about how you're not going to be able to lose a ton of weight really, really quickly without your body reacting to it at some level. And, so that reaction, which your body is going to do to change up your metabolism, that's going to happen. It's going to happen for all of us. Our bodies were made to do that so we can survive. But the consistency of doing the little things over and over and over, over time is where you kind of make this.

I was having a conversation with my clients the other day. And one of the things I said to them was the Grand Canyon was not built by something major coming through there and digging it out. It was that slow trickle of a small river over many, many years, millions of years, that made the Grand Canyon what it is today. And so you need that little trickle. You need that consistency to see monumental changes in your health and fitness.

So if you have a long journey to take before you're healthy and fit, you need the patience. But you also need that consistency. You have to keep showing up and you have to do it enough where your body recognizes the stimulus and reacts.

And then the final bit on the self-care, what it looks like. It's about an investment. If you're not willing to invest some time, effort, and money into yourself, you're not likely to see the results that you really want to have. Now, the biggest investment is going to be time and effort. You're going to have to make change and you're going to have to spend some time doing this. It's not just going to happen. As I mentioned before, we have a frequency and we have a consistency that has to happen. For that to happen, you have to invest time and effort towards making these things happen.

And then the money part can be a little bit of money. It can be as little as you're investing in some good quality shoes, or it can be as big as saying I'm going to build a home gym and I'm going to spend thousands of dollars to do that. For most people, the investment is somewhere in the middle of that. A small gym membership isn't all that expensive and it's hiring a trainer. When you look at the results that you get often isn't that expensive. If it's going to get you down the road faster.

My wife is working on building up a bed and breakfast, and the guy that was working it was him and his son. And he said, I've got these two other guys to come in and help. And she's like, sure. And the whole thing was by investing a little bit more each week, she's going to get the job done faster. So now she's got four people working instead of two. So the work's getting done faster. And that's what you have to think about with regards to where money can play a role in helping you with this whole thing.

So to kind of wrap this all up, if you did that quiz, that self-sacrificing quiz and you scored, twelve, if you scored thirteen or if you scored eighteen, then you have a self-sacrificing problem. And if you find that your inner voice is not your best friend, you've got a priority problem. Those are two internal things that you really have to get a grasp on.

And a couple of the ways that you can easily see this happening beyond just doing the quiz I talked about is to look for how often you're using those absolute words. They are using absolute words to define what you're supposed to do for someone else and not for yourself, something that would pull you away from doing something for yourself. Those are those trigger words. Those are the things that will tell you where you need to address your time and effort and you need to go and take that step back and analyze what that actually means. Is it actually true in most cases you're going to find it's not.

And then finally, self-care takes an investment. You have to love yourself. You've got to be open and honest with yourself. You've got to be consistent. You've got to put in a frequency of things happening so you can see change. And that typically takes an investment of time, effort and/or money.

So I hope you took something valuable from this lesson. If you did, I'd love to talk to you about it in more detail on the Facebook group. You can go to https://40plusfitnesspodcast.com/group, and we can have a great conversation there about your inner voice, about whether you are prioritizing yourself so you can get the health and fitness you deserve.

Post Show/Recap

[00:24:26.720] – Allan
Rachel, welcome back.

[00:24:28.460] – Rachel
Hey, Allan. Yep, mindset is one of my favorite topics of discussion. That was a really good episode you laid out for us.

[00:24:37.700] – Allan
Thank you. The interesting thing was that I recorded this episode last week and then this week and I lost my phone. And I have to say, there are no perfect people. And I think a lot of things you'll see on social media and Facebook will have you believing that there's something wrong with you and there's something right with everybody else. And particularly as we get into the health and fitness field, I'll just tell you, we're not perfect either. None of us are. And, I'm sitting there really, really angry with myself and the language that was in my head, was not kind. It was not kind at all.

[00:25:22.550] – Allan
Losing my phone the same way twice in really less than three months time. And this is not a cheap phone. This is a 1300 – $1300 phone. Really had me upset. So I'm walking the through the jungle right back to where the howler monkeys were, where I took the video and then that's why it fell out of my pocket was I didn't seal it in my pocket properly, went right back to those howler monkeys and they were just looking at me like I was the monkey.

[00:25:54.500] – Allan
So I just realized, OK, you know, as I walk, I've got to forgive myself. I slipped up. I made a mistake. I got to forgive myself. I've got to think about, Okay, you're letting this happen. This is a theme: going to Bluff, riding in a golf cart, wearing swimming trunks. Losing your phone is now a theme.

[00:26:16.370] – Allan
I have to think about that. I have to make sure I have a plan to make that not happen again. But that has to start with self-love. That has to start with the forgiveness of it. So just be aware that you're never completely on the other side of this, prioritizing yourself and finding self-love and doing those things. It's always a work in progess. You always have to manage that relationship and be aware when it's slipping up, when you're arguing with yourself.

[00:26:44.380] – Rachel
That's so true. Absolutely. And that was a very frustrating time for you, I'm sure. But it's good that you take a minute to assess the situation, kind of troubleshoot problem solve. And hopefully the next time you go find some howler monkeys to take pictures of, you won't you'll be better secure with your phone.

[00:27:03.860] – Allan
Yeah, well there was a lot of things I got on the front end and, and even then once it happened because I wasn't of sound mind, I guess the best way for me to say I was, I was very frustrated, very angry.

[00:27:14.930] – Rachel
Sure.

[00:27:15.380] – Allan
Myself. And it was, I was all that went inside. I wasn't thinking. So there were things that I could have done that would have made my search maybe easier. I found my phone on the Find My iPhone kind of thing. So I knew about where it was. And I just wanted to get there as fast as I could. And so as a result, I didn't think about, well, why not put find my phone on Tammy's phone? So while we're driving, if it starts moving around, we might see that. It didn't cross my mind till we were driving. And the interesting thing about an Apple account, when you try to log into it from another device, is it always wants to send you a code. Now it's going to send that code to one of your Apple devices. I happen to use a Mac, so if I had been sitting at my desk, I could have got her logged in to find my phone there. But because we were already halfway to where we were going, I couldn't actually use Find My iPhone on her phone. I could log into my apple account, but then it wanted to send me that code and I'm like, well, if I had my phone with me, I wouldn't need this code.

[00:28:20.840] – Allan
So I was not real happy with Apple either. Someone just has an iPhone. I don't even know what they do. But I guess they don't find their phone from another device. Anyway, that was my day. Or at least it was it wasn't my day. It was a part of my day.

[00:28:37.940] – Rachel
And that's just how it happens, though. And when life hands you these weird situations, it's easy to get flustered and all of your common sense and all of your reasoning and logic sometimes just goes right out the window until you can just take a minute and breathe and solve your own problem.

[00:28:55.100] – Rachel
Yeah, mindset is a tricky thing. And I guess when I was listening to what you were saying about having an inner voice and being able to prioritize your own health and fitness, it brought me back to the days when I was overweight. And not a lot of my friends knew me back then. But after I had two kids, I had a little bit of extra weight. And it's hard as a mom, for many moms, or moms with the small kids that you can't just leave the house, you can't just leave your kids unattended to go for a walk or run or do something.

[00:29:30.110] – Rachel
And so when I was at that point in my life, I would put the kids to bed at night. My husband was home and so I would go for a run around the neighborhood. I also had workout videos, VHS, aging myself here, but I had workout videos. And so when the kids would lay down for a nap, I would put in a 30-minute workout video and workout in the basement. And so was it an ideal situation? No, but that was the best that I could do at that time to put my health as a priority.

[00:30:02.900] – Rachel
And I did have weight to lose. I did have some things that I need to take care of so that I could be a healthier, happier person for my kids. So you just find these weird ways of getting around these situations that life just throws at you?

[00:30:17.990] – Allan
Yeah, I like to tell my clients quite often that life doesn't get in the way, life is the way.

[00:30:24.710] – Rachel
It is.

[00:30:25.550] – Allan
You're not going to get around it. You can't sit there and say, I'm going to wait to do this until I'm not as busy, or oh I screwed up. That will never happen again. I'm like, well, how often does that happen? Every time?

[00:30:39.830] – Allan
And so the point of this is, one, there's not another day. Every day you put off doing the right thing for yourself is lost forever and you're not going to get that time back. If you're looking at it and you're thinking, Okay, I need to prioritize myself but my kids and that's valid. You can't just leave a two-year-old and four-year0old alone in a house and go for a run around the neighborhood.

[00:31:09.770] – Rachel
That's right.

[00:31:10.760] – Allan
Even if you can still see your house from there, some people would call that irresponsible. So you've got to come up with another solution. Now, what does that take? Well, it could mean that you hire a babysitter when you go train. And I know not everybody can afford to do that, but that's an investment. Maybe it's that until your kids are old enough to somewhat be autonomous and be left alone, you invest in a treadmill. So you're like, okay, I've got a two-year-old, a four-year-old. I buy a treadmill. And for about the next ten years, I'm running on the treadmill when my significant other is not here to take care of the kids. And that's your investment in yourself. And so you've got to be willing to make that investment.

[00:31:52.730]
It's time, it's effort, it's money. And it can look like a lot of different things. But it's got to be a solution that you find because you have self-love, because you have to solve this problem. You can't just ignore it and say, oh, I'll wait till my kids are 12 and 14 before I start. Because it won't get easier.

[00:32:13.340] – Rachel
No, it doesn't. And you really have to remember, I know you didn't want to use the analogy of putting the air on when you're going down on an airplane, you put the air on you before you help the people next to you. But that's exactly it. You can't pour from an empty cup. You need to be full and happy and strong yourself, and you need to be healthy. And the more healthy and happy you are, the better person you are for those around you, your family and your friends and your coworkers and everybody else. And it's just so important. You are so important. And you really do need to put yourself first as best as you can.

[00:32:51.890] – Rachel
And often it's striking a balance. Sure, you've got family responsibilities, work responsibilities and all sorts of things, but you are so important to so many people and you should take yourself make yourself the best priority you can.

[00:33:04.400] – Allan
Yeah, it's you know, and it goes it goes even deeper than the being there for them while they're kids. I mean, we're in this I guess the term they use the sandwich generation and the concept is that many of us will be taking care of children at the same time we're taking care of our parents.

[00:33:21.860] – Rachel
Right.

[00:33:23.480] – Allan
Because people are having children later in life, they're putting it off and they're having them later in life. And as a result, they're beginning to have to take care of parents at the same time that they're still taking care of their kids. Now, I can tell you that only one of our boys has a daughter and she's older. It's from a prior relationship. So it's not his. But he's been in the kid's life since she was 10 months old or something like that. So she's dad and he's adopted her and all that.

[00:33:52.970] – Allan
But our other kids are already in their late 20s, early 30s, and they're not even thinking about kids in many cases. So, yeah, I'm going to probably be in my sixties before our daughters really start deciding that they're going to start afamily. And if that's the case, I don't want to be the 80-year old that she's just sending kids off to college. And now I've got to take care of dad.

[00:34:21.320] – Allan
You know, that's. That's not who I want to be, and so this self care is not just this selfish thing, it's really thinking about holistically who you are as a person and where you fit in to this whole scheme of a family and realizing that the healthier and stronger you keep yourself, the less of a burden you are on anybody in, the more you are able to help.

[00:34:45.880]
And so I can just imagine my daughters , look, hey, I'm fine. I'm 80 years old. Send my granddaughter down here to Bocas for six weeks. Come on down, bring her down and maybe we take her back up. But yeah, she can come down. I've got to be able to run on that deep sand and Bluff Beach. And I've got to be able to do the things that she wants to do and keep up with her. To be that individual that can be that caregiver without requiring caregiving myself is really the way I kind of like to couch this. You know, I want to be able to wipe my own butt when I'm 105. It's a funny way, I like to say it, but what it really means is I want to be able to run in deep sand with my granddaughter when I'm 80.

[00:35:36.940] – Rachel
Yeah. For sure.

[00:35:38.230] – Allan
That kind of thing. So, as we get into this, just realize that you have to love yourself. You have to do this every day you give away and don't do it is a day lost and you really need to turn this around. It's really about getting aware of that story in your head and trying to make it a different ending.

[00:36:02.410] – Rachel
Yeah, that sounds great in it. And if anyone listening has any questions or doesn't know where to start, reach out to Allen's Facebook page or email or anything, we would love to guide you and how to make these choices or how to figure out how you can make fitness a priority in your life. We'd love to help you with that.

[00:36:21.160] – Allan
You can go to https://40plusfitnesspodcast.com/group and join the awesome Facebook group that we have out there. There are weekly challenges and we're always having discussions about things that are going on in the health and fitness world. And there's a lot of fun, too. It's not just this and that. I post the pictures of the of the beach there and I believe I put even some pictures of the monkeys that kind of made a monkey out of me. I wouldn't have had those videos if I had found my phone. Those videos are alive and well and you can go out on a group and actually see them right now if you'd like.

[00:36:58.870] – Allan
So anything else you want to go over, Rachel, before you know that?

[00:37:02.680] – Rachel
That was great. Thanks so much.

[00:37:04.510] – Allan
All right. You take care and we'll talk next week.

[00:37:06.760] – Rachel
Yep. Take care.

Patreons

The following listeners have sponsored this show by pledging on our Patreon Page:

– Anne Lynch	– John Dachauer	– Margaret Bakalian
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Thank you!

Another episode you may enjoy

Wellness Roadmap Part 1

Less...

Let's Say Hello

[00:01:26.870] – Allan
Hey, Raz. How are things going?

[00:01:28.970] – Rachel
Good. Allan, how are you today?

[00:01:31.190] – Allan
I'm doing okay. It's been a busy week, but not nearly as busy as your week. You've got some pretty exciting news.

[00:01:38.340] – Rachel
Yeah. I just got my RRCA running coach certification. So now I am officially a running coach and I'm pretty excited about it.

[00:01:48.320] – Allan
Congratulations!

[00:01:49.400] – Rachel
Thank you. Thank you so much.

[00:01:51.080] – Allan
That's pretty cool.

[00:01:52.170] – Rachel
It is. It was a great class. I learned a lot and of course I knew a lot because I've been running for 20 years. But it was really a good class and very informative. And so now I feel very ready to be able to coach somebody.

[00:02:06.710] – Allan
Perfect. All right. Well, let's get into our conversation today, which is also about your favorite topic running.

[00:02:13.790] – Rachel
Yay, okay!

Interview

[00:02:38.210] – Allan
Bryan, welcome to 40+ Fitness.

[00:02:40.880] – Bryan
Thank you. How are you, Allan?

[00:02:42.410] – Allan
I'm doing great. I just finished reading your book, The Ultimate Guide to Running with Your Dog: Tips and Techniques for Understanding Your Canine's Fitness and Running Temperament. And I got this book. I sought this book. When I saw it, I was like, okay, there we go. One is I know that I need to start building up my own cardiovascular fitness. I love going into the gym and lifting heavy weights.

[00:03:07.760] – Allan
My dog can't do that with me. He can hang out and watch. But I love lifting weights. I need to do some more cardio and I have this new dog I'm going to talk about. We're going to talk about him a little bit. But he has all this energy. He's he's just about a year old. And so I'm like, I need to go do something with him. I need to keep him busy because he's a chewer and he's a little destructive. And so there's some behavior, things I want to deal with.

[00:03:36.230] – Allan
But just also the energy. He's obviously a fit dog but needs to be active. And so I would give him that opportunity, but rather than me, go out and do my runs and then come back and do something active with him. I just thought it would make sense if we could do it together. So when I saw your book on running with your dog, I was like, yeah, this is this is something I want to get into

[00:03:56.570] – Bryan
Awesome man! I think you found the right spot then. I think that's a that's an interesting thing. We've run dogs for people who are marathons and it is a different kind of running so that you've already sort of made that observation that it is going to be a little bit different because there is a preference to kind of go want to run on your own and for whatever reason, people like to run, whether it's to check out, to listen to a podcast or listen to music and get ampped. Whatever that is, it is different because it is about the relationship between you and the dog on top of being healthy and physically fit.

[00:04:26.020] – Allan
Yeah. I kind of brushed on the topic of reasons that you want to run with your dog. Could you dove into that a little bit more? I mean, dogs need structure and they need something and running can be a part of that. Can you give us kind of the lay of the land? What what benefits is our dog going to get from a running regime with us?

[00:04:48.100] – Bryan
Of course. There are a number of reasons that people kind of contact us or contact us to run their dogs. And they usually fall into two categories. It's the physical side. They're overweight. Maybe they just had an injury. They're recovering from something like that or sort of the mental side. And that's why you see it manifest as anxiety, destructive tendencies, hyperactivity. Those are the two basic camps that it kind of falls between.

[00:05:14.920] – Bryan
But, I think going out and going for a run is a solution for a lot of dogs, but I'm very clear to say that it is not the solution for everyone. So there is a bit of understanding who you are as a runner, what your goals are as a runner, and if that links up and fits with what your dog's capacity for that is and really checking your ego. I know you talked about lifting a lot of weight. There are days when, you know, you can push it just like runners and dogs are just like humans. There are days you have good days running, you have bad days running. And being able to be self-aware, identify those things is going to put you in the best position to do that successfully long term.

[00:05:53.620] – Allan
OK, so when we I mean, I kind of get, because it's it's kind of a mantra in the fitness environment. By burning some energy, you're burning some calories and, you know, for managing the calories we're giving our dog and we're running our dog a little bit. You know, they're staying healthy. They're they're maintaining the appropriate weight. And we can talk to our veterinarian about what our actual foods should be and how often and how much they should eat.

[00:06:19.650] – Allan
But on the behavioral side, can we dove a little deeper there? Because in the book I was like, you know, this this solves a lot of problems. People will get a puppy and it's cute and then it's destructive. And then it's doing other things that we don't necessarily want it to do. And you can train the dog. Obviously, with enough work and effort, you can train a dog. But running is going to do some things that make that whole effort much better.

[00:06:46.050] – Bryan
Yeah, I think it helps to step back a little bit and think about sort of what was the purpose for dogs when they originally kind of became companions for people. Right. Originally they were useful on farms or doing work. They had jobs and that was sort of the they earned their keep. Right? And it wasn't just like what it's become over the last sort of like 50 years where we just kind of take care of them and love them. And it's our job to provide the things for them.

[00:07:12.180] – Bryan
Like people didn't have maybe the funds there were, I think in the book somewhere I wrote as well about. And if I didn't, I meant to. Dogs like leisure dogs that were for sort of the the upper class people and people that had dogs that were sort of middle class. They needed them to do work. You couldn't just afford to feed a dog. They needed to go out there and help you round up cattle. And they needed to help running out with the what the firefighters or they had jobs and slowly over time, that's kind of gone away.

[00:07:45.330] – Bryan
But that instinct and that desire to work, it's still within them. So what we've noticed is when they do go for a structured run and might say that unleashed with you intentionally for 30 or 60 Minutes, and you can go further than that. But that's sort of for the purposes of the conversation, within the context of what our company does 30 to 60 Minutes, we can see a change in them sort of on the run and you can see the anxiety or whatever is manifesting that that they are not getting they're not getting enough exercise, they're not getting whatever it is you can see it on the run switch in them from, okay, we're out here having fun.

[00:08:25.140] – Bryan
I'm zooming across left and right, trying to sniff every tree, trying to bark at everything. And they get so laser focused on the run because that is their work to them. And I think it's calling to that like internal like bygone era of what they used to do. So it's really phenomenal to see when you can get into a groove with your dog and then just like how effortless they can really bang out those miles once they have sort of gotten trained up.

[00:08:49.590] – Allan
Yeah. It's funny, in the book, you talked about how dalmatians were used to basically run in front of the firemen so people knew they were coming in and clear out of the way. You know, every picture I've ever seen of a dalmatian, they're sitting in a fire truck. So, yeah, they kind of lost their job somewhere along the way. And now we need to give them some structure, some function, and then that kind of just becomes their their job. And they begin to identify as though this is this is my duty. This is my thing. I do. And that gives them that purpose. And therefore they can burn off the energy. Feeling productive.

[00:09:27.100] – Bryan
Right.

[00:09:29.310] – Allan
Now there are some breeds that you don't want to run. And there are also some times when you might not want to run a dog or any dog or even or maybe just some breeds. Can you kind of get into a bit of which dogs should not run? And then again, if there's times and weather and things like that that where we don't want them to run, that we understand that as well.

[00:09:52.830] – Bryan
Yes. And there are three general groups that have sort of broken it down to and they're all with their own qualifiers. I think to set the tone off the top, I would say all dogs can run. It's just a matter of how us finding out how we can do that safely and for how long and how fast. Right?

[00:10:10.380] – Bryan
So the first group that is sort of a full stop under twelve months. Which is actually very sort of a tricky conversation to have, because that puppy energy is real, man, and they got the dogs want to get after they start they're super cute in the beginning and then they get a little destructive and then they just need to amp up to go. And the idea is like, well, I'll just take the dog out. We'll get them tired. Like running seems to be able to do that. But the letting them out to go and run around a dog park and taking them out and throwing the ball is a very different activity and running style than going out on a sustained run for 30 minutes, where you're pounding the pavement. It's that repetitive activity. And that's because for the pups especially, their growth plates is still growing, their muscle is still being packed on, their ligaments are being stretched out in their joints are actually really susceptible to being misshapen if you do that kind of impactful running.

[00:11:04.340] – Bryan
So if you take your dog out on a run one time for a couple miles, not going to do any harm. But if you're going to do that, if it's a part of your lifestyle, that's when things become problematic. So, Bryan, the person says, yeah, you can take your dog out and take them on a short little trot around the block and just introduce it. I think that's more than fine and healthy. But to do the kind of running that Bryan, the business owner does, that's a bad fit and we will not do that.

[00:11:27.860] – Bryan
The second group are dogs that are called braciaphalic. The best way to picture that is smoshed noses. Most of those dogs are like pugs and bulldogs and things like that. And those people sort of like self select out. They're not really looking to run their own dogs. They just kind of tell, like this dog doesn't want to run. And any time I do, it looks like he's just like had it because of that snorting and chortling and all that sounds.

[00:11:52.370] – Bryan
But the one we have conversations about are boxers. And I know we talked about this a little bit. Boxers are incredible athletes, physical specimens. They are super athletic, but they also have the smushed noses. And I think, again, this is where I answer sort of in two ways back to the original point where it does determining how fast and how far boxers have a need to have such specific attention paid to them while you're running that it's not good for us as a company to run them.

[00:12:24.350] – Bryan
So our decision has been it's not the best fit for us. And it's not that they're not a good fit for us is that we're not a good fit for them. Actually, we can't get them. Give them the individualized attention, because everything that we do is on leash here in Washington, DC. Those are just the laws. And we do pack-style running just as a function of business. So going out for a run with your boxer is more than fine.

[00:12:50.330] – Bryan
I think what you need to look at are the extremities are going to be sort of a little tighter. So you're not going to get above, you know, sort of that eighty, eighty five degrees. Like you want to make sure that the temperature is like sort of perfect. You want to be in that like 40 degree to like 70-75 degree range. And then you're also going to be making sure that you are paying attention to the non-verbal cues, because everything that we're doing with these guys is nonverbal.

[00:13:13.940] – Bryan
You want to make sure that you're watching their tongue. The tongue is the first indicator. If they are in control of that thing, you're fine. Keep going. When there even if it's out of the mouth and it's darting back and forth, the moment you see it sort of lagging and out to the side and you can tell they're just trying to move that tongue out of the way so that they can bring air in. That's when you have to slow down, start the walk and maybe call it a run.

[00:13:35.420] – Bryan
And that can come a lot sooner because that's the function, the mechanism by which they don't call themselves. So what we can do, what we can't do on the on the business side of things, we can't sacrifice the run for the other dogs. And because it's not fair to them to cut their run short because one of the others can't keep up. And it's not that physically boxers can't keep up, it's that we just can't take them out solo. So I think Buster a fantastic run and I think that's one that I get questions for a lot.

[00:14:04.370] – Bryan
And then the last one or the geriatric dogs. And that one is actually really interesting to see because there are some dogs that have come to us in the eight and nine year old range that a lot of families are like I think is kind of had a shot. He's got a gimp, he's got a limp or whatever, and there's some that have been active their entire lives and have started running with us when they were six or something. And they're still running with us until they're twelve, thirteen years old and obviously slowed down a little bit. Or maybe you don't go quite as often, but they can still do it. And it's sort of like how we are as humans. If you spent a lifetime taking care of yourself, eating well, resting, building your body so that it is strong as you age, you're only going to be able to continue doing those things in some capacity, right?

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[00:16:26.490] – Allan
Basically, if I have a dog and I have two, and so the first one I'll talk about is, is Angel. OK, so Angel is a German shepherd. She's about nine years old. We got her as a rescue. And when we first got her, she already had some problems with her knees. So we went through knee surgeries with her. She also has a spinal problem in the bottom of her spine. So some nerve damage there. So she's got some issues. And I wouldn't see her running for some of those reasons, plus like I said, she's nine years old. So not something that I feel like… Obviously I could walk her more spend more time on the beach with her. She won't chase the ball to save her life. She just looks at you like why you throw that, know what you're doing. But another dog gets a ball and suddenly she wants to take the ball from the other dog so she can play. She can have some fun.

[00:17:18.030] – Allan
And we just recently got a another rescue. Didn't really intend to have another dog, but he needed a home and so he has a home and he's about a year old. Best we can tell. He's probably a mix of a maybe a boxer and a pit bull. So it's not a complete smashed nose of a boxer, but it's kind of in the middle of that build of a good, strong, muscular dog right at about a year old. And he just has more energy than the sun. And I know I've got to do something with him. He will chew things up. I've already lost a pair of water shoes and my wife has lost some things. So we need to give him some deal. So he's short hair, but we live in Panama. So, you know, warning runs would probably put us in that 70 degree weather.

[00:18:11.700] – Bryan
Yeah.

[00:18:12.170] – Allan
But obviously, I couldn't stay out too long with him because that would start to warm up. And I just have to be very careful and watch him. So I appreciate that. So all that kind of makes sense to me now as we went through this.

[00:18:22.400] – Allan
Now, the other thing I liked in the book was, one you give you, give a lot of practical advice. So, you know, you're going to want to kit up, you're going to have the right leash. You're going to want to have some supplies and things brought with you, water for you or for the dog, different things. And then just the skill of running with the dog, which is a whole new thing for me to learn, which I love. But the core thing I got in the book and I was like, OK, so now I want to do this run. You even include guidelines. Over the next six weeks, let's let's get your dog ready to go from, as you said, doggy couch to 5K. And in looking at the program, it kind of fits almost exactly how I would train someone, albeit I think the dog will accelerate through this a little bit faster than than we might. Could you talk about your your prep that it's like a six-week program to kind of get your dog into running shape?

[00:19:18.620] – Bryan
Of course. And I think you nailed it. You nailed it on the head there. It is sort of based on what we have done as runners and getting to 5K for us to definitely what I modeled it after. And I've found that a lot of the things work into and you are also right that dogs pick this up so much quicker and they can bounce back a lot quicker than you. So I think it's so deliberate. I thought it was better to write it sort of in this way where it's maybe a little long for most sort of as to not discourage those that weren't seeing the results of like a four-week program.

[00:19:52.400] – Bryan
Right? So I thought people can look at their dog and modify it and sort of scale it up if they needed to, because they're going to have those sort of next steps. If they're saying, like, actually, my dog is sort of chewing up this two-minute walk four-minute run in week three, like Tic Tacs, I think we can sort of maybe bump it up a little bit quicker. So that's kind of why I modeled it after, like a six-week thing, which is like, OK, that's a reasonable amount of time that you're going to commit to doing this. But if you need to, you can always bump it up a little bit quicker because you're going to have that written there. Whereas if I had written it over like a four-week, you know, maybe somebody said, well, what do I do in between here? This is a big jump. My dog is not ready, but it seems like perfectly capable of doing what's here. So I think that's why I ended up doing it sort of that extended out.

[00:20:36.950] – Bryan
Was there anything specific about sort of the plan? I'd be happy to flush that out for you?

[00:20:41.750] – Allan
Well, what I thought was really good about it was you committed a given amount of time to each workout, so spent 30 minutes. You go out with your dog. It's a walk, run, walk kind of program, which is very common in the couch to 5K. It's what Jeff Galloway did his one of his major programs for running. And so as I was because I was kind of looking through it, I was like, OK, this is a little bit more ambitious than I think a person would want.

[00:21:11.120] – Allan
But that's actually part of maybe the coolness of all this is knowing that your dog has that resilience, you could do your own 5K for a human. And do the half-hour and then that becomes your structured half-hour now, once you get your fitness up to a point with your dogs, the dogs can be able to keep up with you. The dog is going to be able to recover as fast, if not faster than we do, especially those of us over 40.

[00:21:36.320] – Allan
So I just thought it was a really good program in the book to be able to go through and say, OK, here's some structure. If I'm just not quite sure. But then you did touch on something. I think that's also equally important. Pay attention. Your dog's going to be giving you some nonverbal cues that we're going too fast. Or it might be telling you, hey, ratcheted up, dude, we've got miles to cover.

[00:22:00.560] – Bryan
Yeah. Something you brought up there. Why I did it in time increments as opposed to mileage. I know there's a few others out there and there's no shortage of basic information about sort of things like this as well. Why I did it for a duration as opposed to a mileage is when like us, if we can institute routines and sort of make things follow up, plan for them, they're only going to benefit from that because they know, hey, we're going to be out here for this amount of time every other day or three times a week or whatever it is that you decide is the best start for you guys. Right?

[00:22:35.780] – Bryan
And I think instituting that commitment to the routine is also going to help them mentally prepare for what they're about to go do. So I think it twofold. If you go out and we're just going to do it for a mile and the dog is not going to actually make it a mile, well, that's bad news and you're going to feel like fighter. So it's almost like hacking your systems inside of you internally that can help you stay committed to the plan.

[00:23:00.380] – Allan
Yeah, well, because if I told Buster, hey, we're going to run for a mile and we're going to walk for a mile, the buster is not going to have any idea what I'm talking about. But if I go out there with Buster and I'm walking for, you know, for my two minutes and Buster's cool with that, then I'm like, OK, Buster, let's go. And then we run for two minutes. Then he knows that's what we've done and we make that cycle. So for that whole week, that's my three runs. He gets comfortable.

[00:23:24.450] – Bryan
Exactly.

[00:23:24.950] – Allan
And then it's like, OK, we walk for two minutes now, we're going to run for three. He figures out, OK, we went for three. Now if I had a big fast dog, maybe and I'm a big fast runner. If I was, maybe I'm covering, you know, a mile or more, you know, in that in that time that I'm running, maybe I'm not maybe I have a smaller dog or slower dog or the dog that needs a little bit more patience and pace. And so we're not quite putting in the miles the way you would think. But a good 30-minute workout three times a week is going to be beneficial to you and obviously now beneficial to your dog.

[00:24:03.470] – Bryan
Exactly.

[00:24:05.500] – Allan
Bryan, I define wellness as being the healthiest, fittest, and happiest you can be. What are three strategies or tactics to get and stay?

[00:24:13.480] – Bryan
Well, one's self-awareness, listening to your body. Finding out what like a long-term ache and pain is. Sometimes we're not always feeling our best when we get out there. And I get that. And listening to something barking at you continuously, go get it looked at. There's no sense in sort of beating yourself down and making it a longer-term problem.

[00:24:32.680] – Bryan
Second is getting rest. I think that's one of those ones that everybody kind of says, it's sort of like when people talk about eating and gains are made in that in the gym. Right? For your stomach or in the kitchen for your stomach. Right Everybody wants those abs.

[00:24:45.790] – Bryan
And then especially given what we do, drinking plenty of water, staying hydrated for both you and the pup, honestly.

[00:24:52.090] – Bryan
So drinking water, getting rest, having the self-awareness to just listen to your body, I think are the best thing you can do for your health.

[00:24:58.330] – Allan
All right. Well, Bryan, if someone wanted to learn more about you, learn more about the book, The Ultimate Guide to Running with your Dog or DC Dog Runner, your dog running company, where would you like for me to send them

[00:25:12.430] – Bryan
They can find the book. It's on Amazon. It's at Target, it's Barnes Noble. I think it'll be in a number of pet stores as well. And then dcdogrunner.com is a great resource. I'm always happy to just have conversations with people about dog running. If you like pictures of very cute dogs on runs, DC Dog Runner, I guess it's DC_dog_ runner on Instagram, actually. So any of those places are great and just connecting with people is something that I enjoy doing. So any questions? I've answered many questions in the comment sections or indirect messages. I'm always happy to sort of give my opinion. I talk about being a generalist and I haven't run with your dog necessarily. But I can definitely give you all the tips and techniques for understanding your canine fitness and running temperament.

[00:25:59.920] – Allan
The book is definitely a really good resource. It's something that I'm going to pay attention to as I start trying to put together a program for Buster and myself. So thank you so much for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

[00:26:12.820] – Bryan
Of course. Thank you for having me on.

Post Show/Recap

[00:26:19.240] – Allan
Welcome back, Raz.

[00:26:20.440] – Rachel
Hey, Allan, what a fun conversation you had, and that sounds like a really good book.

[00:26:25.780] – Allan
It is a good book. He talks about some of the tools and things that you would have and he talks about just how to get your dog, get to know your dog so you can run with your dog. And just some of the things that we discussed before and after the conversation there, he I still don't feel confident that I can run with my dog.

[00:26:48.040] – Rachel
Oh, no.

[00:26:48.940] – Allan
It's not the book's fault is is this the dog's fault? He has no understanding of most anything. And while I know he's trainable. It's just. I know he's going to cut in front of me. I know he's going to see a cat or a bird and want to take off. And so I would just say if you're and you've got some experience with this, but if you're going to start running with your dog, it's a slow process. And I know he puts a kind of a couch to 5K for doggies version in there. That's if you're already a pretty strong runner.

[00:27:26.120] – Allan
You've got good balance, everything's optimal and you have a good place to train your dog. Around here, I really wouldn't have anything that I would feel confident other than running up and down the beach would be about the only place I would feel safe. And then it would be a trial and error of trying different leashes and just doing different things to a point where I would feel comfortable that he wasn't going to take me for a spill.

[00:27:52.310] – Rachel
Right. And that actually probably would be a good place to start training him. And I do have a little bit of experience. When I first got my dog, Stella, she was about a year old. She was a rescue and she was picked up as a stray, which means she had no manners, no commands, no behaviors, and certainly no experience on a leash. So when I hooked her up to at leash for the first couple of times, she pulled like a fish on a line. It was awful, a lot like fishing. She would be in front of me a couple of feet and zigzagging all over the road, smelling it things, looking at things. And then she would come to an abrupt stop. And I did a couple of Supermans over her with getting a little bit of road rash. She tripped me a few times and that's when I started to do some research.

[00:28:40.130]
We put her on a gentle leader collar, which I really recommend for new time, dogs that need to get used to walking and running on a leash because that puts all of the control on you. Their neck muscles are really weak and a gentle leader goes around their nose and above the upper part of their head, like behind their ears and their neck muscles are really weak. So if you want to start change direction, stop any commands, they'll feel it. They'll feel it really quickly. You'll have a lot of command that way. And we use that with Stella. We went on a lot of walks and it took a lot of practice and a lot of commands and they're learning how to walk on a leash and the command for walking and Stella knows the command for run. So she knows a different way to behave when we have her on a leash.

[00:29:36.140] – Allan
Yeah, that that took considerable patience. This was not a I'm going to go out and start running with my dog tomorrow. This is we're going to go out and we're going to we're going to do a little bit of running here and I'm going to teach that and a good tip on that leash because I've I've got one of those retractable, which is something you definitely recommends you don't have if you're trying to run with a dog.

[00:29:57.110] – Allan
He will see something and forget that he has this leash on and just take off and a dead run. And unfortunately, when he gets two to three steps in, he's already full speed and I'm not going to let go of the leash. So he does a 360 and then looks back at me like what just happened? And I'm like, still on the leash, dude.

[00:30:21.980] – Rachel
Yeah. And that takes total practice. And I and I retractable leashes can be really dangerous for you and the dog because it's easy to lose grip of that plastic handle. So now with Stella, I have her walking on my left. That way I'm facing traffic and I'm on the road and she's on my left side. So she would be and the inside of the shoulder that way she can't dart in front of a car or into traffic, which she wouldn't. But because I've trained her. But I'm on the side facing the traffic. And so I have her directly on my left. I want her head where my knee is. That way she won't dart in front of me and trip me like she has in the past. And that way I have a tighter rein. On her leash is a shorter leash and I have a little bit more control over it as well. So they can't dart out in front of you. And like you said, the leash goes the full length and then they get a rude awakening and you have your arm ripped out of your shoulder.

[00:31:23.960] – Rachel
So if you have a shorter leash on your left, that would be one thing to try. Although I know a lot of dogs out there who can run ahead of a runner and they'll stay ahead of a runner without stopping and without pulling. But it just depends on the personality of the dog and their relationship with the owner.

[00:31:42.350]
Yeah, no, Buster, I'm going to say we're not into the best of terms right now. He's not been the best dog. Likes to tear up Tammy's plants and she gets angry and unhappy wife, unhappy life. So. Yeah I definitely know, I need to get him out there and get some exercise. It might just be and this is another thing that Bryan talked about, which sometimes just running your dog is quite literally what everybody else does, and it's just playing fetch and let the dog get out and just free run and play fetch with it, because that's the temperament of the dog and how that dog's going to get healthy, stay healthy and be active.

[00:32:27.700] – Allan
And what I found with dogs is if you start running down the beach on your own, the dog's going to run along with you. So, if you can and make sure you're obeying any kind of leash laws and things like that. But basically giving that dog the freedom to kind of play with you, if you will, might be a better choice for me than trying to be a road racer with him right now, because he's just too rambunctious. And I wouldn't feel comfortable looking out for taxis, looking out for him and all of that. So, yeah.

[00:33:01.240] – Allan
It's a good book if you're interested in learning how to run with your dog or learning if your dog is the right kind of dog to be run because not all dogs are. It's a really good book for basically knowing your dog well enough to know if he or she could be a runner. And if they are, it gives you kind of some guidelines on equipment and things like that. So you can do it safely. But as always, anything you're going to do running wise or otherwise outdoors is know your environment, be safe, bring water for the dog. You got to carry your water and maybe the dog needs to carry some water and figure that out.

[00:33:44.500] – Allan
Just as you're going to do this like any new thing, go slow, have patience and now patience for two, because it's not just you, but you also have to have patience that the dog is going to get where you need them to be so that you can have safe and productive runs.

[00:33:59.920] – Rachel
Yeah, that sounds great. Sounds like a great book. Very helpful tips in there.

[00:34:04.150] – Allan
All right. Well, Rachel, I will talk to you next week.

[00:34:07.210] – Rachel
Sounds great. Take care.

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Let's Say Hello

[00:02:03.700] – Allan
Hey, Raz, how are things going?

[00:02:05.890] – Rachel
Good, how are you today, Allan?

[00:02:08.800] – Allan
I'm doing great. We're not really going to have much of a preamble for this one because I want to get right into the meat of this. I'm going to have my favorite running coach on the show, Rachel Everett.

[00:02:21.070] – Rachel
Thank you. Thanks so much. Thanks for having me back.

Interview

[00:02:25.840] – Allan
So, yeah, to the last time you were on, we talked about training for running, just getting started running. And for most people, that's going to take the form of something like a couch to 5K type program, where they're just building up some basic endurance to be able to do a little over three miles, probably not in the overall training. They might not make it to three miles, but in a race, they would feel confident that they could keep going and complete the 5K, which is a 3.1 miles.

[00:02:55.390] – Allan
Today we're going to talk about running longer distances after 40, which is a different beast.

[00:03:03.550] – Rachel
A little bit.

[00:03:05.890] – Allan
A little bit. It's something that a lot of us do because we we we master the 5K at least, you know, we realize that we're not going to be able to run any faster than we are. So we forget PRs in the 5K and we start looking to longer distances as that next challenge that's going to keep us excited about running. So, you know, we'll talk about some of the basic distances when someone saying, OK, I've run the 5K, what's kind of the things that they could see coming up and training for that, they would be in a really good position to to reach out and do?

[00:03:45.040] – Rachel
Well after the 5K is the 10K and then the half marathon. And I lump those two together because they have very similar key points in training that we can talk about today.

[00:03:57.070] – Rachel
But before we get to the 10K, I want to celebrate the 5K, in that you've made it this far and you should celebrate your accomplishments because not very many people run 5Ks, but the 5K is actually a special kind of race in and of itself. It's a challenging distance. You can improve your time. You can find different races to support. You can do them all the time. You can do one or two a month or three or four a month if you're so inclined. So the 5K is really kind of like a perfect distance for running in that it will maintain your weight, it'll improve your health. And there's still a lot of joy that you can get out of the 5K for sure.

[00:04:38.530] – Rachel
But when you're ready to run longer distances after 40, the 10k I fully recommend is the next step.

[00:04:45.250] – Allan
Yeah, and the other thing that I think is really cool about the 5K is when you're in 10k or even marathon shape, the 5K can still be a fun run. It can be a part of the training. So, you take you do a 5K and you use that as your speed or you run. That is an interval set. So you're trying to run faster and then, trying to use that as that.

[00:05:08.350] – Allan
Or, when I ran my first marathon, it was the Blue Angels Marathon. The Sunday after that, they had a 5K over the bridge into Pensacola Beach. So since I was already in town, I didn't live in Pensacola at the time. I was like, I'll just stay over one more night. And instead of just getting up in the morning and driving, I will go ahead and get up and I will do a slow 5K as a way to get my muscles moving because I was pretty certain with the first one I was going to be I was hurting. And I kind of was.

[00:05:45.040] – Allan
But it was good to get out there and kind of do that that short distance. I mean, at the time, relative to a marathon, the shorter distance just do it casually. In fact, I was running along at one point this woman passed me, she was pushing a stroller. So, yeah, I wasn't in any hurry. And I did it. And then then I was good to go for my five-hour drive home.

[00:06:07.840] – Rachel
Oh, wow!

[00:06:09.610] – Allan
If I had just gotten in the car right after the marathon and tried to do that drive, I wouldn't have recovered as well. And we're going to talk a little bit about recovery later. But to me it was a good way to flush the legs, get some more blood going through what we call active rest. So you can take these 5Ks and make them really cool.

[00:06:32.740] – Allan
And the other thing that's really interesting about most 5Ks is there's usually a pretty cool charity associated with the 5K. A lot of the 10Ks is do too. And sometimes there's 5Ks and 10Ks in the same race or at least the same day. And sometimes there's even marathons, half-marathons, all kind of paired together. It's just a pick your distance kind of deal. And a lot of times they do have charities. But what you'll find with the 5Ks is that there's a lot more participants. And as a result, those can raise quite a bit of money for charity. They're typically not that much I mean, you pay something like I guess right now it's probably somewhere but 30 to 40 bucks in that range for most of the 5Ks.

[00:07:16.970] – Rachel
Yeah.

[00:07:17.240] – Allan
You get into some of the longer races because of the costs associated with the time distance that you're covering, they can get a little bit more expensive. Plus, for most people who are doing marathons, there's not five or six marathons going on a month in your general location. You're going to be traveling to many of these. So and that's also a big cool part of the whole half-marathon, 10K is to go someplace you've never been and make a weekend of it.

[00:07:42.080] – Rachel
Oh, absolutely. I do love to play in races around vacations or maybe vacations around races. Either way, it is nice to get out of town, that's for sure.

[00:07:51.320] – Allan
Or even work trips, because that for me that was a big part of it, me saying, okay, I happen to be working in Washington, D.C. when the Marine Corps marathon was going on. I also did I also did a 10K there. And so, yeah, I just happened to be there and I'm like, okay, I'm flying in already. I'll just fly in a day or two early and I'll just do this little race.

[00:08:13.870] – Rachel
Awesome. That's wonderful.

[00:08:16.040] – Allan
So yeah, there's lots of opportunities to do these, these runs. And so, Rachel, if someone is considering running longer distances after 40, what are some of the key things that they should consider?

[00:08:30.170] – Rachel
Well, right off the bat, I would suggest you talk to your spouse and your family and friends and share your goal to run a 10K or a half-marathon. Like I said, we're going to lump both these two distances together. And the reason why I say that is because you're going to be spending a little bit more time on training for this longer distance than you had done for the 5K. And what that means is there's going to be a slight disruption of the balance of responsibilities at home.

[00:08:57.800] – Rachel
You're going to have to balance your responsibilities at work and you may not have as much time to spend with your friends and social engagement. So you're going to be spending some time on training and that might kind of disrupt the balance of your normal daily life. So share your plans with your friends and family for sure. Yeah, I know.

[00:09:19.430] – Allan
When I started training, I basically had a membership at a gym. I couldn't run around D.C. because it was just all concrete. And I didn't feel good running on concrete ever. I never have. I've never liked running concrete, but so I just went to the gym and I'm like, okay, I'll do, you know. 20 minutes on the treadmill. They limit me to 20 minutes on the machine. So I go to machine and do 20 minutes and then I've moved to a different machine somewhere else and do something else. And so I was doing elliptical, I was doing stepper, I was doing all kinds of stuff and so up about 20 minutes at a time and I built up to a point where I was doing that for four hours and the only way I could really do that was to leave work at six o'clock. And so to be able to do that, I had to be at work at eight o'clock and work my ten hours and not take a lunch to get my training in.

[00:10:09.890] – Allan
And so I had to talk. I even had to talk to my boss because it impacted my work schedule if I wanted to get that training in. And so that's basically what I would do. I would do four hours for three days of the week and then Friday would Thursday be my day off. And then Friday would be another kind of medium speed day. And then Saturday and Sunday were my long runs. But I had to do my Sunday run early in the morning. My Saturday was kind of free. I could do it when I want to. But yeah, I had to have a conversation with my significant other at the time and say, hey, I'm going to be doing this run. And that means I'm not going to be at the house for potentially three or four hours on a Sunday.

[00:10:54.080] – Rachel
That's right. Yeah.

[00:10:55.550] – Allan
While I'm going and doing this thing and what's your schedule look like and just trying to make all that fit.

[00:11:00.650] – Rachel
Yes. And when you have kids and school and other outside responsibilities, it does get kind of tricky. That's why you want to have the buy-in of all the important people in your life.

[00:11:13.040] – Allan
Now, the second one you have on here is is pretty interesting because I think a lot of people think to run longer distances after 40, you just run more.

[00:11:23.120] – Rachel
Yes. And most runners like that. Most runners like to run more, but there's actually more to it. And when you're moving up to a 10K or a half-marathon, many of the training plans you'll find will include specific drills like speed drills, hill repeats. They will also include cross training. You don't want to spend all of your time running and and hurting all your joints and just damaging your body. You just need to give your running muscles a break every now and then. So that's why there's cross training built into plans as well as rest days.

[00:11:58.190] – Rachel
So a lot of training plans will have you bike or swim and a rest day is not necessarily sitting on the couch and binge watching TV all day, they might have to do some act of rest and that could be just taking your dogs for a walk or just getting around the house, doing chores around the house, yard work, whatever. As long as you're staying busy, you don't want to sit too long.

[00:12:19.930] – Allan
Yeah, I know. When I was doing my training, it was it was kind of one of those cross training things where I was like for a marathon distance. I needed to be able to move for four hours. That was kind of my target time was to finish the race within four hours. And that's how I trained. I trained to keep my body going. I recognized that there would be hills. And so you got to run some hills, although I was in Pensacola, so there actually weren't that many hills for my first one. Big Sur was an entirely different matter.

[00:12:54.220] – Allan
But, you know, you you know the course, particularly if you know the course, that you're going to be trying to run understanding, okay, there's a hill and this is you know, this is what people are doing. And so if you're talking to people that know the race, they'll be able to tell you, yeah, there's actually a section of it that's in sand and that's really, really hard to run in.

[00:13:16.840] – Allan
And you have to do that for a period of time that's going to really where your legs out if they're not stronger than you would think you would need to be to run on asphalt.

[00:13:25.880] – Rachel
Oh, so true. Yeah. If you do have a goal race in mind, if you've picked the place where you want to run your first 10K or first half-marathon, it is good to check out some of the race reports and see a description of the race to see if there's a lot of vertical gain. If if there is a trail or like you said, sand. I've run a couple of races in the sand. So if you know what to expect on race day, those are things that you can practice during your training to make sure that you get some extra hill repeats in there or practice on the trails in the parks around your home or something.

[00:13:58.780] – Rachel
So that type of specificity is important as you do get closer to race day and at the other cross training things are other ways that you can build up your muscle, strength and endurance as well as your cardiovascular system without beating up your legs by running day in and day out.

[00:14:16.870] – Allan
Absolutely. So now the third one you have here on our list is clothing. One I would say with clothing, I think we're actually going to talk about this a little bit later. But there's a there's a lot of options out there, some that are very bright and shiny, fluorescent so people can see, which is important. And while people will tell you and it's true, running can be the cheapest sport there is because you literally have all the equipment right there with you right now, you don't even have to buy shoes. You can run barefoot if you want. Most people will buy shoes. And I advise people to invest in at least one good pair of shoes to start with. But let's talk a little bit about what should people be considering with apparel, particularly when they're trying to run longer distances after 40?

[00:15:13.870] – Rachel
Well, I'm going to start with the shoes again, because the proper fitting shoes is probably the most important gear that you can possibly have. So take a look at the bottom of the running shoes that you've been wearing and see if you can see signs of wear and you'll see the lugs, the little knobs on the bottom of your shoe. They'll wear down in certain places. After some time, you'll feel the foam on the inside or the insole that you have in the shoe just doesn't feel quite as bouncy and cushiony as you had felt when you had first put them on.

[00:15:44.380] – Rachel
And that means the shoes have worn. There's kind of a rule of thumb. Your shoes can last anywhere between three and five hundred miles, which sounds like a lot to a new runner. But you'd be surprised if you're wearing them and walking the dog or walks in the park as well as during training. The shoes get beat up pretty fast and even the foam needs about 24 days to recover after you pound them down on a run. So shoes are so critical.

[00:16:11.710] – Rachel
I know that they are expensive because I buy a lot of them myself. But I can tell you too that they are a lot cheaper than visiting the doctor and rehabbing an injury because you stuck in the same shoes. So make sure you invest in the proper fitting shoes.

[00:16:26.980] – Allan
Yeah, I'm a pronator and so the outside of my feet, that part of my shoe will wear down when I'm running. I went to a running store when I was training for the marathon. I said, okay, I'm going to be doing some running and training for it. And this I was getting into it and the guy goes on, he says, okay, I want you to run down the street here and then run back to me.

[00:16:50.830] – Allan
And then he kind of sized me up and you said, okay, you're a pronator. And so he he kind of he said to measure my foot. You've got very wide toe set. So you to. I Toback's and you need something that's going to provide stability, and so he recommended a couple of different brands of shoes, I tried them on and found one that I liked that I didn't have to mortgage my house for.

[00:17:18.650] – Allan
And I think the other two things I would add with shoes is one. One is more expensive. Doesn't necessarily mean better.

[00:17:26.670] – Rachel
Right.

[00:17:27.330] – Allan
OK, that's one thing is, you know, just get just look for better and you can pretty much go online to the running magazines are running really good running sites and they'll review the shoes every year. So you can go in there and kind of get an idea because they'll tell you, this is an overpriced shoe. Don't pay $500 for this running shoe, $120 is probably about as much as you would have to spend to have a really good running shoe, maybe even less than that in some cases.

[00:17:55.410] – Allan
And the other thing is, I would say wear the shoes that you're going to run in to train it. Don't have a race pair and a training pair. Replace your shoes regularly, but have shoes that you break in and feel good with in training because the things you do in training will reflect how you do in the race as long as what you're doing in the race is the same thing you did in training.

[00:18:23.490] – Rachel
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And don't pick out shoes by color. They're all kind of crazy colors these days. And that's okay because then people will see you.

[00:18:33.600] – Rachel
And similarly with their apparel, with your dry-fit shirts and shorts and socks and everything. This is where you're going to want to pay a little bit closer attention to what you're wearing. Now, when you were training in the 5K, you might have been running for 20 to 30 minutes at a time. And now as you're training for a 10K or half, that might extend into maybe 30 or 40 minutes at a time. And you might also even have a little bit of a walking warm-up and maybe walking cool down.

[00:19:06.810] – Rachel
So you're going to be spending a lot of time in these clothes. And what you're going to want to watch for would be chafing and blisters on your after your socks and your shoes. So with chafing a lot of the tags and the neck of your shirt or in the back of your shorts that can irritate the skin around your neck and on your back, the seams that go around your shoulders or around the bottoms of your shorts or even on your waistband, they can get irritating as well and really irritate your skin causing chafing, which hurts a lot. You don't want that.

[00:19:42.900] – Rachel
And you won't recognize that when you're training, when you're only running for maybe 20 minutes at a time, you may not notice. But when you're wearing that same shirt or that same pair of shorts for 30 or 40 minutes, you'll start to feel this friction, which is why you want to have clothes that fit well and that have that dry wicking quality so that when they do get wet, they can dry a little bit faster and not irritate your skin quite as much.

[00:20:08.310] – Allan
Yeah, I had all kinds of blister problems. And I can just I can you know, it took them longer distances and really I didn't have a solution that got a lot better stuff today than they had when I was running. But moleskin is your friend. So if you do find that you're doing some training and you get a hot spot on your foot, go out and invest in some moleskin that will save your skin and keep you from blistering.

[00:20:31.530] – Allan
So if your shoes giving you a hot spot, just be aware of that and you might have the wrong size shoes, as we mentioned before. So you might need to be fitted with another pair of shoes. But beyond that, moleskin can be your friend. If you just start noticing the hot spot and you notice it early enough, a little bit of moleskin can go a long way. And then the other thing I'd put out there, just as a general advice, don't wear a tutu.

[00:20:56.508] – Rachel
Tutu's are fun. Skirts are fun.

[00:20:59.640] – Allan
Skirts are probably fine. I don't know. I don't have any experience running. But we were doing a we were doing it but run it was a warrior dash. And the guys, we were kind of joking around about different things are going to wear. So we were going to wear these football jerseys. The girls wanted pink and they voted pink. And so they got pink. And then they also wanted us wearing tutus. So we were all wearing tutus. And I'll try to find a picture of that and put it in the show notes you can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/480 and I'll see if I can have a picture of us in the tutus. But yes, chafing I didn't have I couldn't carry my arms high enough to not shave on the on the tutu. So I don't advise running with a tutu.

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[00:23:17.190] – Allan
So, Rachel, then you talk about we talked I talked a little bit about this, the optional gear, the other things that you would potentially want to have with you or be have on you to help you while you're going through and doing your runs.

[00:23:31.530] – Rachel
Yes. So when you're spending more time on the road, chances are you're going to be getting up early at the crack of dawn, maybe running later at night and reflective gear and lighted vests, any sorts of lights that you can put on your shoes, your visor, a vest. Those are all going to be really important, especially if you are spending any time on the roads or where there's traffic. There's no shortage of lights that you can get from any sort of running or a big box athletic store. That's super important.

[00:24:03.120] – Rachel
But the second thing is, is that, again, now that you're spending more time outside at all, different times of the year, you want to have clothes that are going to be weather appropriate and comfortable. You never know if it's going to rain on race day. So you want to make sure that you have the running the rain gear, that you want to have to keep you as comfortable as possible while you're running in the rain or in the snow like I do up here. Go through the apparel section of your local running store and ask for input from the salespeople for maybe what type of gear that you can get for these different types of scenarios.

[00:24:40.800] – Allan
One of the things that I think is really important, if you have any form of medical condition or things like that, make sure you have something on you that's going to tell someone that that's there. So like, if you're allergic to certain medications or just anything else that someone should know about you, if they find you. Just have that on you. So some ID so someone can contact someone. If they find you and they're taking you to the hospital, you're going to want that on you if you're not conscious and not that that's going to happen to you. But you're going on this run. You don't necessarily want to carry a bunch of stuff. So you're not running with your purse or maybe not running with your wallet, but you need some identification and maybe some taxi fare in case you just got a little too far out of and have to take a taxi back, but just kind of be situationally aware of what your needs are.

[00:25:38.070] – Allan
If you're doing an out and back run as you're trying training run, you do have to make that back. And so just kind of being aware of that and having with you what you need is going to make that a much safer run

[00:25:50.250] – Rachel
For sure. And when I when I personally run long, I actually do carry my driver's license and maybe a few dollars just in case I need to buy a water at the gas station or something. So I'll stick that in a Ziploc bag so that I don't sweat all over it and stick it in one of my pockets somewhere. Yeah, there's a lot of road ID type bracelets, medical bracelets. If you do have a serious allergy or something, have your stuff with you and as well as ID.

[00:26:18.900] – Rachel
The other part of the gear that you might consider too, is some sort of a hydration item. When you're running a 10K and definitely a half-marathon, you're going to be spending a lot of time on the road. And although races have aid stations, in training you're not going to find those same aid stations quite as handy. So there are handheld water bottles, which I have plenty. And there's and I also frequently wear a hydration vest where I have a bladder in a backpack for longer distances and more water. So it's a point where especially in the summer when you get dehydrated, you're going to want to have water or electrolytes with you. So this would be one other item that I think would be very handy.

[00:27:00.030] – Allan
Yeah, one of the things I used to do was I would set up my own aid stations before I did my run so I would drive the route that I was going to run, in particular, if it was going be an out and back or something like that. And I would set up my own laide stations and I'd have water sitting there, you know, at each just a little, you know, little bottle of water.

[00:27:19.770] – Allan
And so I guess I came up on a location. I have that bottle of water. I'd scrunch it up and stick it in my pocket to keep going and not leave the plastic behind. But, yeah, I created my own aid stations. And, that's why I actually encourage people, if you're going to do some training, training on a loop other than when you're trying to do, you know, maybe hills or repeats or something. But if you can try to find a lap, you know what you're doing shorter laps of. Let's say you wanted to go do a 5 mile training run. If those can be half mile or one mile laps, that's going to give you an opportunity to have that regular aid station right there where you started.

[00:27:59.610] – Rachel
Oh, absolutely. That would be ideal. That would be perfect.

[00:28:03.150] – Allan
So let's dove a little bit deeper into nutrition and hydration.

[00:28:08.070] – Rachel
This is a good topic, Allan, and I really think that we could spend probably a whole podcast talking about it, because, as you know, there are going to be carb-burners out there as well as the fat burners, which I am. I follow the keto-type of eating. Nutrition is still a really highly individualized situation that really you just have to experiment with and see what your body needs to run long distances or fast, as well as what you can tolerate, whether what your stomach will tolerate. Because as you're out there for longer, your stomach may not like the things that you've been eating and you might have a problem. So this is a big topic.

[00:28:55.190] – Rachel
Let's start with hydration, you're going to want definitely water and or electrolytes with you, especially in the summer. If you find that you're that you sweat a lot and you're a salty sweater and that that little white grip is left on your face or on your arms, you're sweating out a lot of salt.

[00:29:12.140] – Rachel
So in that case, you're going to want some electrolyte products, Nuun and Ucan are really great electrolyte products. Even Pedialyte is a proper electrolyte product. And you want to mix that up with water on occasion just so that your stomach doesn't feel like you just had the sugar bomb dropped on it. Although there's no not a lot of sugar in Nuun or Ucan, just the sweetness of it can irritate your stomach. So alternating that with water is very helpful.

[00:29:41.960] – Allan
Yeah. You know, I think that that was that was one of the big wake up calls for me is I was running my first marathon, I think it was in the spring. And then by the time I was running my third or fourth, we were getting into the winter months and. I was running this, and it was it was in Mississippi, it was a long flat course, but it was cold, really, really cold. And I actually got more dehydrated running that race in the cold than I did running the marathon in Pensacola in the spring.

[00:30:19.110] – Allan
And so, you know, it was warm and humid for that first one. And then for this other one, it was really cold. I wasn't expecting it. I occasionally ran by an aid station thinking, I'm not thirsty. But I realized after the run that I didn't hydrate properly. And so, you know, making sure that you're staying hydrated and in your training runs, there's no one there to look after you.

[00:30:45.230] – Allan
So you're responsible for you, making sure that you have what you need and what you do and what you do in your training, again, must be something that you consider doing in the race. So don't change up your fuel. Don't change up your hydration. Find something that works for you. That's why you're training so you can learn your body and learn what you're capable of. And then in the race, that's when you're going to try to push yourself. You want to be doing the same thing so that you have a base for what you're trying to accomplish.

[00:31:17.570] – Rachel
Yeah. And this is a good point to add. Again, maybe having a hand-held hydration water bottle of some sort is also a reminder for you to drink periodically. It's really interesting between heat and cold running, your body is just as thirsty on both occasions. However, in the summertime, it's obvious that you're you're sweating, you're feeling thirsty. The air is dry and it's almost as much of a habit as it is a physical need to drink in the summertime, whereas in the winter you don't feel quite as thirsty, just like you had experienced.

[00:31:52.370] – Rachel
But your body is thirsty. It's just not recognizing that the same kind of sensations as you feel in the summer. So it is important to drink whether you're on a hot day or a cold day. And if you had that handheld water bottle, that might have been a good reminder to sip at every mile or a couple of miles or something.

[00:32:12.830] – Allan
Absolutely. So, Rachel, number six on your list, I think, is maybe one of, if not the most important thing for people who are running longer distances after 40. That's recovery.

[00:32:26.900] – Rachel
Yes, more recovery. And then when you think you've done enough recovery, do some more recovery. This would be a good time to really prioritize foam rolling and stretching after your run. I mean, mark that on your calendar and make it an item on your calendar that you do foam rolling and stretching after your run. It's really important to loosen up those tight muscles, especially as you're adding more miles to your training program. And then if you add strength training, biking, swimming, and other activities or on a day that you did speed work or hill repeats, you want to do more foam rolling and stretching to loosen all those muscles that you just tightened on a run.

[00:33:08.690] – Rachel
And in addition to foam rolling and stretching, this might be a time to experiment with some compression gear, like there are calf sleeves and arm sleeves that can help promote circulation. There are socks that go all the way up to your knee that help promote circulation and ice baths and water baths are another recovery tool that you can experiment with.

[00:33:33.980] – Allan
A lot of times people will not listen to their body and they'll push and they'll push and they'll be like, well, this is what my plan is. And so they had a plan and the plan was, okay, it's Sunday, it's my long day. But they're not really recovered from what the work they've done that week. And they get out there on their long run. And the next thing they know, they're hurting in a way that they can't run anymore.

[00:34:05.420] – Rachel
Mm hmm.

[00:34:08.870] – Allan
Your body is incredible. It's capable of doing so many incredible things. But if you don't let it recover. The way it needs to that wear and tear, and that's one of the things that a lot of people struggle with running is it is a repetitive activity.

[00:34:28.490] – Allan
If you're doing it on concrete, I hated that because when I was heavier as a runner. So every impact on concrete for me was just huge. And I would run as litefoot as I could, but at one 195 pounds, there's a lot of hitting on my legs. And so I just had to be really, really careful to make sure that I wasn't overdoing it, or else I would have injured myself and potentially been out.

[00:34:58.640] – Rachel
Well, that's a good point. And, you know, we've been raised with the no pain, no gain mantra. If it's not hurting, it's not working. But this is the time to really put that aside, especially after 40 when we are getting into these longer distances, pain becomes a different kind of signal. And, you know, your body is adapting as you're doing more miles and cross training and doing all these different things.

[00:35:21.740] – Rachel
Your body is going to have the DOMS, the delayed onset muscle soreness that you often feel when you're doing a new activity. That's fine. A little bit of ache or soreness that's normal because you're doing all these new things, then pushing your body in a way you haven't done before. However, there's a really fine line where that becomes a pain and that is a signal to take a minute and reassess the situation. I have seen a lot of runners have a pain, which is very subjective, but it shows a stress fracture. And that stress fracture, if you don't listen to it, will become a real fracture and then you'll be spending a lot more time on the couch than you'd ever wanted to before.

[00:36:03.080] – Rachel
So there could be muscle tears, you could have tendon injuries, and it could be just inflammation. But you don't have an x-ray machine or an MRI. So this would be the point where you go to a doctor and get a proper diagnosis. And the sooner you get to the doctor, even if it's a minor pain, you'll get one, the reassurance that it's nothing more than DOMS or a muscle ache that you need a day or two off or you'll get the treatment for a more serious condition and you'll get treated faster so that you can get back on the road faster.

[00:36:33.470] – Rachel
So pain is a signal that something is wrong and you need to do something about it.

[00:36:38.060] – Allan
Yeah, there's another version of recovery I kind of want to get into, because for a lot of people, particularly when they start trying to run longer distances, they'll find that they get this little ache right under their ribs. I would typically get it right on my right side, right up under my ribs. We called it a stitch. And for me, there was a particular strategy as I was. It was because I didn't want to not finish the run. And that was not enough. I was in pain and I didn't like it, but it was not a kind of pain that I knew I should quit running. So if someone gets something like a stitch or something like that, what's what's the recovery method for them to to be able to still complete the run and get and not and know they're not hurting themselves.

[00:37:23.630] – Rachel
Sure. I've got inside stitches before. It's been a while, but I would I would stop and walk it off and do some deep breathing techniques, try and stretch out your abdomen, do some stretches, try and loosen up those muscles, practice some breathing, deep breathing to calm down a minute and then see how that responds. But what was your technique?

[00:37:45.530] – Allan
It was it was basically just slow down the core of it. What I knew was that my diaphragm was not aligned with the way I was running and so it's just creating kind of a for lack of a better word, a cramp in there because things were getting tight and I just needed to slow down and let my breathing resume. You've got to get past the ego. You know, we're over 40 now. I had way too much ego back then. It was always just to me, devastating that I'm like, I've got to slow down and let this go. But I just knew it was not something that was going to go away on its own. I needed to slow down and let my body recover and kind of get its mojo back for lack of a better word so that I could complete the run.

[00:38:36.080] – Rachel
That's absolutely perfect. And it's actually a bigger point there, Allan, because running longer distances after 40 means you do need to slow down your 5K pace will not be the same case that your pace that you run a 10K or a half-marathon. So pacing yourself slowing down is a good way to to run safely and injury free, especially over 40.

[00:39:00.590] – Allan
Yeah. One of the things I like about the longer distances is that they become a thousand times more social.

[00:39:09.740] – Rachel
Oh yeah.

[00:39:10.640] – Allan
You know when you run a 5K for some reason or another, most people that want to have a good time, they're just running all out. There's like no conversations in the first two-thirds of the pack of a 5K. The walkers in the backyard or they're having a blast.

[00:39:28.080] – Allan
But when you get into the longer distances, people kind of let go of the fact that we're racing something and it's more about completing the distance than it is about beating yourself or beating someone else. So it becomes a much more social thing as you start doing longer and longer distances. But you have one on here that I think's actually really, really cool, because a lot of times when we're trying to train running seems like a really lonely thing. And it's kind of hard to explain. It's like, no, you'll have more conversations on a marathon because you're running for four, maybe five, maybe six hours.

[00:40:07.020] – Allan
That's one of the most social days of your year because you're making all kinds of friends as people are running slower or faster, walking or whatever is going on in that race. But you you recommend that people join a run club?

[00:40:19.890] – Rachel
I do. And there are run clubs probably associated with the running shoe store. There could be just groups of people in your in your city or town that you live in. And the RRCA has a listing of run clubs. That's rrca.org, where you could look up different run clubs in your area. And the best thing about a run club is that you're going to find like-minded people trying to do the exact same thing you are. You're going to find other people trying to get faster at the 5K or maybe doing their first 10K or first half-marathon.

[00:40:53.850] – Rachel
And you will find people that are at your pace. And it would be so much fun to meet people at the run club nights or different days depending on your schedule. And running with people at a similar pace is really fun. It's entertaining is a great way to meet people.

[00:41:10.260] – Allan
And I think that you just touched on something that's really, really important is the longer runs are really are about pacing. To finish a longer runm you have to understand a pace and understand the pace, you have to practice the pace. So having someone else, maybe somebody who's even a little bit more experienced than you and you go into a run and you're like, okay, we're going to do an 11-minute mile for four miles.

[00:41:36.720] – Allan
And so having someone who understands how to to do that versus we're going to say sprint out and leave you there and then you'll see him at the finish line, you know, later, you know, having someone there. I think one of the coolest things is, you know, if you and Michael couldn't find a run club, you started what we did.

[00:41:58.950] – Rachel
Yeah, we did. Because everywhere that we have moved so far, there's always somebody who also likes to run. And so why not get together and run together and enjoy some conversation and the scenery at the same time while also getting fit. Run clubs are a great way to meet people and also push your speed because there's going to be somebody faster than you. There's also going to be somebody slower than you. But it'll be a good way to be pushed and see what other people can do.

[00:42:27.810] – Allan
Yeah, and it's actually really cool to have people that are fast or news. So when you do the race, they're there to cheer you when you finish.

[00:42:33.860] – Rachel
Yes, yes, yes.

[00:42:37.380] – Allan
That was what was so cool. And I ran with was Redbud. Yeah. You guys are Redbud. You were Pea Ridge in Florida. That was so cool. I ran with you guys on that one run and everybody finished before me I guess because so many people stand at the finish line yelling my name. That's so cool.

[00:43:00.510] – Rachel
Yeah. It's nice to have a bunch of people supporting what you're doing. It's just so encouraging and very motivating. Cool.

[00:43:07.710] – Allan
All right, Rachel, so now that someone's considering running longer distance after 40, can you kind of just go over a quick recap of the seven things that they should be paying attention to?

[00:43:18.330] – Rachel
Absolutely.

[00:43:19.350] – Rachel
First of all, share your plans with your friends and family and get their Buy-In and support because you're going to be spending a lot of time on the road. Make sure you find a training plan that works for you. There's a ton of training plans out there from the couch to 5K, which they have the 10K. Jeff Galloway, Hal Higdon, if you're having problems finding a training plan, hit me up. I could probably give you some advice on how to choose a training plan for your abilities.

[00:43:44.520]
Proper apparel shoes will always rein king. You need to have good shoes so that you can stay healthy and start to look at the shirts and shorts and other apparel that will keep you comfortable for these longer distances. As far as optional gear goes, reflective gear, lighted gear, weather-appropriate apparel as well as hydration items would be nice to have as soon as you can afford that or find a need for it.

[00:44:09.180]
And nutrition and hydration is very individualized. We could have a whole podcast that talks about this. The best thing you can do is experiment with the products, the food products and drink products that agree with your stomach and training days always try and training and don't forget to do recovery and then maybe some more recovery. Prioritize foam rolling and stretching, just like you do every other training session. Make sure you take your rest days when you're training plan says to take a rest day, but that's an act of rest, not a sitting on the couch all day kind of a day.

[00:44:43.520] – Rachel
And lastly, find a run club, get inspired and motivated by other people in your town and join other people in the same goals that you're trying to accomplish as well.

[00:44:55.220] – Allan
All right. Well, if you have a run that you want to do and you see it on the horizon, you want to start training for that, I'd strongly encourage you to reach out to Rachel. Rachel, your site is strong-soles.com. And you have a strength training course there that will help someone with their cross-training as they're trying to get to these longer distances.

[00:45:20.540] – Rachel
Yep. On the first page of my program on my website, strong-soles.com, scroll down to the runners' workout that'll be emailed to you directly. And if you have any other questions, there's a contact page on the website as well.

[00:45:35.550] – Allan
Awesome. So you can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/480, and I'll be sure to have the links there. All right, Rachel, this was a great conversation. I hope you have a great week and we'll talk next week.

[00:45:49.790] – Rachel
Thanks, Allan. Thanks for having me on again. Take care.

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Another episode you may enjoy

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Let's Say Hello

[00:02:05.170] – Allan
Hello and thank you for being a part of 40+ Fitness Podcast. This has been quite the interesting week. According to my cable company, we had solar flares which put the Internet as being rather spotty over the course of Monday and Tuesday. And as a result, Rachel and I were not able to record the intro or the discussion for this episode, which is a shame. However, next week you will have both Rachel and I on the podcast as we talk about running again.

[00:02:36.580] – Allan
So I hope you will join us again next week on episode 480. But we do have an interview with Dr. Gundry, and I know you're going to enjoy this episode. And unfortunately, again, no discussion afterwards. But if you have any questions, why don't you join us on the Facebook group? You can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/group. Rachel and I are both there, and we would love to interact with you more about this episode.

Interview

[00:03:57.730] – Allan
Dr. Gundry, welcome to 40+ Fitness.

[00:04:00.550] – Dr. Gundry
Allan, thanks so much for having me on.

[00:04:02.650] – Allan
So your book, The Energy Paradox and a lot of your books have the term paradox. I like that word, too. What to do when you get up and go has got up and gone. And when I first read that, I couldn't help but think back to a cartoon when I was a kid and they had that little cowboy dude, but there was a cheese commercial. So we're not talking about cheese today.

[00:04:27.850] – Dr. Gundry
We can if you want to.

[00:04:29.690] – Allan
No, we're talking a lot deeper than that. We're talking about what's going on with our nutrition and our energy and things that we can do to improve our well-being and our health. And a lot of that's going to start with managing our gut, managing how we actually get energy into our body and how we keep energy production in our body. So it is really fascinating. And I really wish that you had written the summary on the Krebs cycle for my personal training certification and the fitness nutrition one that I did because I read yours and I was like, okay, why couldn't they just say this?

[00:05:08.590] – Allan
It was just so well done that I was like, OK, this is for anyone that wants to understand how nutrition works in the body, how energy production works in the body. Get this book. Because this is an education. And it's very well-written and very easy to understand. I get into this stuff, I geek out. But this was not a geeky book. This was a practical. This is how it works. This is why it works this way. And this is what you can do to fix it. So I really appreciate that.

[00:05:38.680] – Dr. Gundry
Well, thanks. There is a lot of geeky stuff in it, but supposedly I'm pretty good at taking geeky things and making it useful and practical.

[00:05:47.690] – Allan
Well, even the Krebs cycle, like I said. Now I want to start this out because like everything in our lives, it seems more and more we're finding that our gut is the center of the universe. We like to think we live in our brain. But I think more and more we're finding that's not actually where our center of mass is. And it's definitely not where the center of a lot of things that are going on in our body starts.

[00:06:12.850] – Allan
So when we talk about the gut, I think a lot of people know kids forget health. I look at the prebiotics and probiotics. And then you brought up a new term postbiotics. Can you actually just talk about all three so we can kind of have an understanding of how those all interact and what they mean to our overall health?

[00:06:31.630] – Dr. Gundry
Sure. I think by now most people understand or at least have heard the term probiotics. An easy way to explain them are they are the friendly bacteria that we need in our gut. And I call them gut buddies. But and many people associate probiotics with, say, eating yogurt. Let's just use that as an example. Then there are prebiotics and these essentially are fibers. They are nondigestible fibers. We can't eat them or break them down that our probiotics, our gut buddies want to eat. And one of the things I've told all my patients you have that you could take all the probiotics in the world, but if you don't give them prebiotics, their food, they're not going to grow.

[00:07:24.190] – Dr. Gundry
And I have an office in Palm Springs and I use the example. I suppose I sold you grass seed here in Palm Springs when you came back a month later and said you sold me bad grass seed. It didn't grow. And I said, well, what do you do next? So I took it, throw it, threw it out in the yard with sand in my yard. And I said, Well, did you water it? No. Did you fertilize it? No. Well, of course it didn't grow. And it's the same way with probiotics. You've got to give them the things they like to eat.

[00:07:55.270] – Dr. Gundry
Now, the reason you want to do that is twofold. Number one, the more you give them the eat, the more they basically keep for themselves and grow little gut buddies.

[00:08:07.540] – Dr. Gundry
But more importantly, the science now of postbiotics is probably one of the most exciting fields in medicine and health. So postbiotics are what I basically call are the bugs farts. They eat the prebiotics and then they make compounds, most of which are gases and some small short-chain fatty acids like butyrate that are a communication system between our gut microbiome, between our good guys and our brain cells, our mitochondria in all of our cells. And there is actually a what's called trans-kingdome language that's spoken between probably our most important organ there is our gut microbiome and all of our energy producing organelles, the mitochondria.

[00:09:05.620] – Dr. Gundry
And it's so important that many people think that this discovery and it's ongoing is is as important as breaking the Enigma code in World War Two. And for those of history buffs, the Germans' code was nearly impossible to break and we couldn't figure out what was going on. The Germans could go anywhere and no one would know what how they were doing it. So breaking that code, breaking that language, changed the war and breaking this code, finding that there is a language that the microbiome talks to our cells is startling.

[00:09:43.880] – Allan
Yeah, I mean, it would make sense that there's some way that our body is relating to that microbiome because when it's ill. We're ill. And so if it's doing well, it needs a way to tell us that. And so by creating those short chain fatty acids and creating certain compounds, we know, or our body knows that intrinsically that it's eating well, that we're feeding at the fiber that it needs, that there's enough of the good stuff there and not it not much of the bad bugs that are in there.

[00:10:18.310] – Allan
And obviously, the bad bugs are putting off different compounds and chemicals and causing all kinds of disrepair. And our body doesn't like disrepair. It likes to get inflamed and deal with that problem. And so by making sure that we're feeding our probiotics prebiotics, they're going to communicate the right messaging through our system. And so our mitochondria knows, okay, we can fire on all cylinders, we can make more of us, and we're going to be in good shape because everything's good, we're eating well and we're doing the things we're supposed to do to keep that system healthy.

[00:10:56.110] – Dr. Gundry
Yeah, that's exactly right. Hippocrates said it 2500 years ago, all disease begins in the gut and it's like, holy cow. He didn't have all these fancy blood tests that I have to look at leaky gut. How do you know all this? But he did. And he was right.

[00:11:15.280] – Allan
Yeah, well, and I think we all intrinsically know it too, because we go through about, we did this in college and it's like you're studying for your finals and you're eating nothing but pizza for a week and you felt like crap and you thought maybe, okay, it's just because I'm not sleeping and I'm not sleeping and all that. But much kind of you kind of knew intrinsically that that that bingeing on pizza for a week was not really what your body needed.

[00:11:43.900] – Dr. Gundry
Not a good idea.

[00:11:45.250]
It keep you alive. It was cheap and they delivered. And at that time that was about all they delivered. So that's what you did. And now we know that with good nutrition, we don't have brain fog. We have plenty of energy. And a lot of the other problems that we see, the chronic diseases, they go away. I've always found, people will come and I know this due to their come to your office, say, what can I do for this problem? And a lot of times what I've found is it's what can you stop doing versus what can you do.

[00:12:18.820] – Dr. Gundry
Oh, that's exactly right.

[00:12:20.110] – Allan
And so in the book you discuss seven energy disruptors. And I just thought that people could put that on the refrigerator and get rid of those seven things, their life would be a thousandfold better. Could you go through those seven energy disruptors?

[00:12:37.840] – Dr. Gundry
Yeah. The number one energy disruptor is the widespread use of antibiotics, either by ourselves or the antibiotics that we give to most of the animals that we raise to eat and broad spectrum antibiotics. Actually, we're we're a wonder drug. In the 1970s, I remember when they came out, I was in medical school and they were a lifesaver because we didn't have to figure out what bacteria we were trying to kill. We could just shotgun these broad spectrum antibiotics and kill everything. And wow, that's great!

[00:13:17.620] – Dr. Gundry
Unfortunately, we didn't know that these things were killing the entire gut microbiome as well. It was like dropping napalm on a tropical rainforest and that goes on. Still, antibiotics are just so widespread, doctors give them out like candy. When anyone has a sore throat or a runny nose, which is a virus in most cases, which antibiotics won't work on.

[00:13:43.390] – Dr. Gundry
And about 50 years ago, it was discovered that low-dose antibiotics given to animals like pigs and chickens and cows would make them grow fatter and faster. And, wow, great! Now, no one bothered to think that those antibiotics would remain in the flesh of those animals. And so when we eat any factory-raised or chicken or pig, for instance, or even farmed fish, we are getting a dose of antibiotics that again kills off our microbiome. And once we decimate our microbiome, watch out, everything falls apart, quite frankly.

[00:14:24.280] – Dr. Gundry
The second thing is glyphosate. The active ingredient in Roundup and several other of the new herbicides. Glyphosate was patented as an antibiotic, which ought to give us pause. It was not patented as a weed killer and it will kill bacteria. And we have been told that, don't worry, glyphosate works with what's called the shikimate pathway and humans don't have a shikimate pathway. And so you're safe, but our bacteria have the shikimate pathway, and so glyphosate disrupts our microbiome.

[00:15:04.440] – Dr. Gundry
Number two, it's now been shown that glyphosate will actively cause leaky gut, regardless of whether it destroys the microbiome. Third, glyphosate interferes with receptors for thyroid hormones and interferes with vitamin D production, and it also interferes with adrenal gland function.

[00:15:25.260] – Dr. Gundry
So glyphosate used to be used on GMO crops. That's how it was devised. But in the past 10 years, it's now mainly used as a desiccant on conventional crops to make them easier to harvest. Desiccant just means kill them and dry it out. So it's used on all of our corn, all of our wheat, all of our oats, all of our soybeans, all of our canola. A lot of our flax seeds now have it. And so people are looking for non-GMO, but that's actually deceptive because it's now used on mostly non-GMO food.

[00:16:04.770] – Dr. Gundry
So it's fed to our animals. They then bring glyphosate to us. It's fed us in almost all of our products. It's in all of our wheat products. It's even in a lot of California wines. It's everywhere. So it is really an antibiotic against the Earth, in my opinion.

[00:16:25.140] – Dr. Gundry
Third environment, the same subject, environmental chemicals and the chemicals that we use primarily in plastics. BPA, the most famous of these endocrine disruptors, is supposedly banned, but it's replacement's like BSA looks to be the same problem.

[00:16:46.170] – Dr. Gundry
There are phthalates in most of our plastic wraps, and I've written about this before, but it's getting even scarier. We now know that exposure to phthalates, like in our carpet, like in our clothing, actually disrupts our sexual hormones so much that we now see our sperm counts, for instance, are down 50 percent over what they were 10 years ago in men and women who consume a lot of chicken during pregnancy actually give birth to boys who have shorter penises than women who don't eat a lot of chicken. That chicken is full of phthalates. So scary stuff indeed.

[00:17:32.330] – SPONSOR
This episode of the 40+ Fitness podcast is sponsored by Ucan.

[00:17:36.950]
On the podcast, we often talk about low carb and ketosis as a way of managing your metabolism and how managing your blood sugar is key for weight loss and avoiding metabolic dysfunction. But how do we fuel a hard, long workout?

[00:17:50.690]
I remember having a conversation with my trainer about low-carb, keto and fast workouts. He was skeptical. I was getting stronger. But on my heavy days, especially when I was doing more than six reps per set, I would get winded and need longer rest than programmed.

[00:18:06.200]
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[00:18:36.020]
I wouldn't touch a pre-workout, but Ucan superstarch checks off all the boxes to give me the energy I need without the downsides. I'm also a fan of their electrolyte powder, Ucan Hydrate, go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/ucan and use the code 40plus to save 20% on your entire order. Make Ucan superstarch your competitive advantage at 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/ucan.

[00:19:07.500] – Dr. Gundry
Overused pharmaceuticals is number four, and this runs the gamut from NSAIDs like Advil, Aleve or ibuprofen. These are like swallowing hand grenades. They actually cause giant gaping holes in the lining of our gut. And pharmaceutical companies knew this when they were first made in the 1970s. That's why they were prescription only. And you could only get a prescription for these things for two weeks because it was known how dangerous they were. Now, of course, they're the largest over-the-counter medication there is.

[00:19:43.950] – Dr. Gundry
The second really troublemaker are the antacid drugs, which are what are called proton pump inhibitors, Nexium, Prilosec, Protonix. These are the second widely prescribed drugs. And now over the counter, these were miraculous when they first came out. And I remember when they did prevented ulcers. And I used to operate on ulcers as a surgeon, but they work by inhibiting proton pumps.

[00:20:16.320] – Dr. Gundry
And here's the amazing finding. They not only work to stop gastric acid production, but our mitochondria work, generate energy by pumping protons. That's what happens. And so if you're swallowing a proton pump inhibitor, a blocker of proton pumps, your mitochondria in your heart don't work, your mitochondria and your brain won't work. And that's why now there's very strong evidence that use of these drugs actually really set you up for congestive heart failure and dementia. And there's a warning on the label saying, please do not use these for more than two weeks. And that's why the warnings there. But nobody listens.

[00:21:02.400] – Dr. Gundry
Also, these things allow bacterial overgrowth of bad bugs in your gut because acid in your stomach is actually one of the ways that we regulate what bugs get into us.

[00:21:15.150] – Dr. Gundry
Number five, probably my most controversial saying is fructose. And the book goes into how fructose, which is half of table sugar, it's high fructose corn syrup. It's in fruit. Fructose actually is one of the best ways to stop mitochondrial function, to prevent energy from being made. And in my first book, years and years ago, I said give fruit the boot, in general. Have fruit in moderation only in season and use low fructose fruit. And that's particularly the berries and kiwi or and passion fruit and pomegranates. Those are the low fructose fruits. The highest fructose fruits are apples, mangoes and grapes. And I know you're in Panama, so stay away from those mangoes.

[00:22:12.960] – Allan
I actually do.

[00:22:15.600] – Dr. Gundry
Now, number six is junk white or blue light special. And we're not all going to Kmart. We are bombarded with blue light throughout our day and night. They're in our lighting there, in our computer screens there in our smartphones. And blue light is actually designed to activate our hunger hormones and activate staying awake. And it was actually to make us go eat when sunlight was long in the summer. Now we're bombarded with this. It sets us up to look for sugary junk food and it sets us up to not sleep.

[00:22:59.610] – Dr. Gundry
And one of the key foundations of the energy paradox is sleep is actually when we do our repair work on our mitochondria, it's like the reason we do repair work on roads in the middle of the night is because there's not much traffic in the middle of the night. And it's the same way we have to have downtime for our mitochondria. And that happens during sleep. And we're one of the most sleep-deprived nations in the world now, a lot of it because of blue light.

[00:23:31.470] – Dr. Gundry
So I really recommend people make sure that all of their screens have a blue switch when nighttime that lowers the light. Werar blue-blocking glasses once you go indoors and now we even use them for working on computers. There are several good companies that I recommend that I have no relationship to.

[00:23:54.840] – Dr. Gundry
Finally, EMFs, electromagnetic frequencies. These are everywhere now. I never used to think that this was a major issue until I started finding patients who clearly were sensitive to even low levels of these radio frequency waves and these were intelligent people, let's just put it that way. They weren't crazy in talking to space aliens. And interestingly enough, when they had people who specialize in this, look at when… For instance, one woman was having migraines almost constantly when they found when she was having migraines, it was actually when a naval vessel off the coast of Santa Barbara was transmitting signals and she actually had to move from Santa Barbara to get away from this.

[00:24:47.950] – Dr. Gundry
We had another woman. Here's the wildest story in this. Her husband was given a automatic defibrillator to shock his heart if he had an abnormal rhythm and the defibrillator was always sending off signals, communicating to a particular hospital, what was going on with him the minute he got his defibrillator, she found she couldn't sleep. And everybody said, it's all in your head, don't be ridiculous. So I said, well, look, you know, we have ways of turning off this transmission on the defibrillator and we do it all the time in surgery. And I said, well, just go back to your cardiologist, have them turn it off and report back. The minute that thing was turned off. She started sleeping again. So we have canary's who are very sensitive to this.

[00:25:42.730] – Dr. Gundry
So those are the seven deadly energy disruptors.

[00:25:47.380] – Allan
Yeah. And some of those are a little easier for us to avoid. Some are not. But where you have control, take control. This is really important. And it's easier to get rid of something than it typically is to add something.

[00:26:02.380] – Allan
But your program, the Energy Paradox Program, it's like a six-week kind of staged program. And I'm always going to say the foods are where we want to start with this. So in the book, you make it really easy because you have five dos and four don'ts as it goes to food. As a part of the Energy Paradox program. Could you take us through that real quick?

[00:26:24.320] – Dr. Gundry
Sure. The first thing you do is add prebiotic fiber to your diet, and this is actually pretty doggone easy to do. You can add tubers, say yams and sweet potatoes, rutabagas, radishes. Asparagus is a great source of prebiotic fiber. The chicory family, radicchio, Belgian endive, chicory itself. You can even buy inulin powder, which is basically flavorless. It has a little bit of sweetness and you can grind up flax seed, a great source of prebiotic fiber as well as psyllium husk. Another great source. So that's number one.

[00:27:01.570] – Dr. Gundry
You want to have foods that actually enable your gut buddies to make post biotics and some of the best post biotic generating foods are the allium family. So onions and garlic and shallots, leeks. Cruciferous vegetables, actually, which are sulfur containing foods, are really important for making one of the most important postbiotics, which is hydrogen sulfide, which is the rotten egg smell. And rather than being a poisonous gas that we once thought, it's actually essential for mitochondrial energy production.

[00:27:39.850] – Dr. Gundry
The next thing is you want to have resistant starches. And by that name, these are starches. These are chains of sugar molecules that are resistant to our digesting them. And so more of these starches arrive lower into the intestines where our gut bodies are waiting for them to eat, a trick that I think is just so useful for everyone. So you could take, for instance, like a sweet potato and you can make it more resistant than it already is to digestion by baking it or cooking it and then cooling it and then reheating it. In the process of cooling is when these starches actually are made more resistant. In fact, the most resistant starch has been found is the purple sweet potato. The purple sweet potato, if you cook it and cool it, it'll have about 50% of its entire sugar load would be resistant starch when you're done with it. So it's the thing that kept the Okinawans alive and thriving. One of the blue zones

[00:28:49.630] – Dr. Gundry
Eat fruit in very little moderation and eat low fructose fruit. And in general, you don't give fruit the boot whenever you can.

[00:28:59.320] – Dr. Gundry
And then get melatonin and phospholipid-containing foods. It turns out the melatonin is not just a sleep hormone. It is actually the most important antioxidant for your mitochondria there. Is it so important the mitochondria will even manufacture melatonin for themselves? But there's a lot of cool high melatonin foods that most people aren't aware of. Pistachios are number one, they have more melatonin than any other food, mushrooms are right behind that. Even coffee has melatonin. One of the surprising research that I discovered was that red wine and olive oil, which everybody knows has some great polyphenol properties, also are great sources of melatonin. And it may be that the French paradox and the Mediterranean diet is actually because of the melatonin in these foods and wine rather than resveratrol, for instance, or olive oil.

[00:30:02.090] – Dr. Gundry
So those are the big five.

[00:30:05.090] – Dr. Gundry
The big four of don'ts is, first of all, leave the lectins. I guess I got famous by telling people to avoid lectin-containing foods. Briefly lectins are plant proteins that are one of the best ways to cause leaky gut ever devised. And they're present in whole grains. They're present in non-pressure, cooked beans and legumes. Their present, peanuts and cashews, they're present in the nightshade family like tomatoes and regular potatoes and bell peppers, for instance. So leave the lecterns.

[00:30:43.090] – Dr. Gundry
Number 7, stop the sugar already. I mean, we are just overloaded with sugar and it's incredibly well hidden. As I show in the book, whenever you're looking at a label on a package, do not look where it says sugar because that's a lie. The labeling laws were changed to hide the sugar. Read total carbohydrates minus the fiber, and then that will actually tell you the amount of sugar in that product. And when you start doing that, it will scare you to death. And just a fun fact. There's four grams of carbohydrates in a teaspoon of sugar. So take that total carbohydrates, divide it by four and you'll see how many teaspoons of sugar you're actually eating. And it's actually shocking.

[00:31:36.900] – Dr. Gundry
So I like to use protein early in people's diets because protein is very energy sucking in terms of you lose about 30 percent of all the calories and protein in the process of digestion. But these ultra high protein diets and I'm talking about the Carnivore diet, which is just Adkins reinvented. I mean, come on. These actually starve your gut buddies for the fiber that they need. And so many of the popular keto diets are doing exactly the same thing. All this high fat and no fiber is a disaster waiting to happen because you literally starve the guys that are really going to keep you in great health.

[00:32:25.550] – Dr. Gundry
And finally, don't eat Frankenfoods with Frankenfats. Even though trans fats are legally banned in the United States, there was a loophole. They don't have to be declared in institutional food stuffs. So if you're running a restaurant, if you're having a school lunch program, you don't have to list trans fats on the label. They're legal. Plus, the second legal loophole is if you have less than a half a gram of trans fat per serving, you don't have to put it on the label.

[00:33:04.280] – Dr. Gundry
And this is how trans fats are still sneaking into us. And finally, frankenfood, about 70% of a typical American diet is now ultra-processed food. And we've broken down proteins, carbohydrates, and fats into quickly absorbed molecules that hit our mitochondria simultaneously, like rush hour in L.A. and our mitochondria grind to a stop in terms of making energy. And it's one of the big reasons everybody's so tired right now.

[00:33:39.890] – Allan
Yeah, and I love how you how you put that in the book. The the Lucy and Ethel at at the food conveyor belt worth the watch on YouTube. It's hilarious. But yeah, if our body is used to producing energy a certain way and then we're not feeding it that way, we're setting it up to fail, just like Lucy and Ethel.

[00:34:03.250] – Dr. Gundry
Watch there the Lucy show, the famous candy wrapping scene.

[00:34:08.600] – Allan
Yeah, it's hilarious. I remember that well, because I was a kid and it was hilarious. And it's even funny today. But, like I said in the book, you made all of this really simple. And there's just so much. And I think just what we covered here so far in the podcast, I think it's pretty easy for folks to see. Wow, I got to go back and listen to this again, because it's just so much information for us to improve our health and energy.

[00:34:36.340] – Allan
I define wellness as being the healthiest, fittest, and happiest you can be. What are three strategies or tactics to get and stay well?

[00:34:45.520] – Dr. Gundry
So one of the things that I really talk about in the program is, first of all, it's what I tell you not to eat. That's far more important than what I tell you to eat. And like you mentioned before, getting rid of a lot of the foods that we take for granted is healthy is one of the most important things you can do.

[00:35:07.090] – Dr. Gundry
The second thing is the more I can convince you to limit your eating window from the time you started eating in the morning to the time you stop eating in the evening, the more I can compress that to about six hours. In the book, we have a six-week program to get you down to six or seven hours. We don't have to jump in with both feet. We're going to go one hour at a time.

[00:35:36.370] – Dr. Gundry
But the evidence is so strikingly overwhelming in animal studies, in rhesus monkey studies, in human studies that the more we can compress our eating window, the more energy we're actually going to have. And the longer our health-span, the longer we are healthy and the longer our lifespan is. And it's really exciting that we have that much power over our fate just by changing the eating window, what I call cronoconsumption in the book.

[00:36:13.990] – Dr. Gundry
The third thing is people are obsessed with the fact that they got to walk about 10000 steps every day or they have to have an hour of exercise every day. First of all, the 10000 step idea was actually made up. It was fabricated by a Japanese pedometer company that wanted to sell pedometers. There's actually no basis in in fact. In the book I propose energy snacking, and particularly in covid, everybody, I realize you have a gym, but most of us can't get to the gym anymore, at least now.

[00:36:57.450]
So we need to have periods of short little time, frames of one minute walking up and down the stairs can actually improve your energy and cut your appetite compared to like 10 minutes of taking a walk. You can do a plank while watching television for a minute. And if you can't hold a plank, put your knees down and start there. There's so many ways jumping jacks. One of the things that anybody can do, and I really urge this while you're brushing your teeth, do deep knee bends, do squats and you got two minutes a day, you're not doing anything else. Just up and down. And it's these are little snacks of exercise that you can do. So those are three easily obtained things.

[00:37:47.460] – Allan
I love those. I love those a lot.

[00:37:50.430] – Allan
So, Dr. Gundry, if someone wanted to learn more about you, more about the book, The Energy Paradox and the things you're doing, where would you like for me to send them?

[00:37:59.250] – Dr. Gundry
Well, so you can come to. We've got several websites: drgundry.com, gundrymd.com is my supplements and food site, you can find my podcast at the Dr. Gundry Podcast wherever you get your podcasts. I've got two YouTube channels. You can find me on Instagram. And boy, if I don't show up on your computer, I'm doing something wrong.

[00:38:25.260] – Allan
All right, well, you can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/479 and I'll be sure to have all those links there.

[00:38:32.010] – Allan
Dr. Gundry, thank you for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

[00:38:35.460] – Dr. Gundry
Allan, thanks so much. And keep doing the good work that you're doing.

[00:38:39.360] – Allan
You too.

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Another episode you may enjoy

Mitochondria and your health with Dr. Lee Know

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Let's Say Hello

[00:02:09.900] – Allan
Raz, how are you?

[00:02:11.220] – Rachel
Great. Allan, how are you today?

[00:02:13.290] – Allan
I'm doing ok, I'm doing okay. I went out for a good long walk this morning and I think my electrolytes are a little low so I'm going to have to start working on that and make sure that I'm doing what I'm supposed to do. And so I think in a few minutes here, when we get off this call, I'm going to fix myself some of that Ucan Hydrate, their electrolyte product. And I might do a little Facebook video, a little video of that so people can see what it is.

[00:02:48.480] – Allan
I forget the flavor I have in my pocket right now, but yeah, I think I'm going to do that because I just feel like my electrolytes are low. So my energy might be a little low today. And I apologize if that's the case. But…

[00:03:00.510] – Rachel
Nice. I like Ucan. It's a really tasty product. Is that too sugary sweets and flavor. And it sits well in my stomach too.

[00:03:09.630] – Allan
Well it actually has no sugar in it. That's the other side of their hydrate product. And even their other products. It's a super starch. The energy. It's a super starch. So it doesn't spike the blood sugar. And it's not a lot of calories either. That's side of it. You know, the standard you can powder was like eighty calories. But it's enough that it kind of feels like it is, you feel that energy going into a workout and then with the electrolytes, it's just a good tasting flavor.

[00:03:39.090] – Allan
I love the lemon lime. I think I've got a different flavor here today. But anyway, it's. Yeah. So it's real good. It just gives me what I need. Really easy. Just put it in my little shaker bottle. Go and nice. There we go.

[00:03:52.650] – Rachel
That sounds awesome.

[00:03:54.270] – Allan
All right. Are you ready to get into today's episode?

[00:03:57.420] – Rachel
Yes, that sounds great.

Interview

[00:04:40.140] – Allan
Dr. Pontzer, welcome to 40+ Fitness.

[00:04:43.080] – Dr. Pontzer
Thanks for having me.

[00:04:45.330] – Allan
I was reading your book and I looked over at my wife and she was sitting on a couch and I said, “I love reading books by anthropologists.”

[00:04:57.180] – Dr. Pontzer
Yeah.

[00:05:00.230] – Allan
Even if you didn't tell some of the stories about lions and fires and all the other things that are in this book. So I'm not going to let the dog out of the bag right now. You guys need to get this book to read those stories. But if you even if you didn't have those Indiana Jones moments, if you will, this was just a fascinating book.

[00:05:22.630] – Dr. Pontzer
Thank you so much. It was really fun to write.

[00:05:24.880] – Allan
I read a lot of books. I just got into this and I'm like, OK, OK, OK. And now I get why he says that. OK. And I'm like, wow, I didn't know that. And holy crap!

[00:05:42.530] – Dr. Pontzer
That's great. That's really great.

[00:05:44.410] – Allan
When you said blows the lid off of how we really burn calories because the little book rack is actually going to talk about is called Burn: New Research Blows the Lid Off of How We Really Burn Calories, Lose Weight and Stay Healthy. And you did. You blew my lid off anyway.

[00:05:59.680] – Dr. Pontzer
Cool. Thanks, man. Thank you.

[00:06:01.540] – Allan
OK, so let's dive into this because I, I will go on to My Fitness Pal and I'll go in there and key in I'm 55 years old and I'm five foot 11 almost and I weigh about two hundred and five pounds and I'd like to weigh 190. And so it'll spit back a bunch of numbers at me and say, OK, you need to eat twenty-one hundred calories per day in these proportions. And then I go in, I do my thing and I'm like I got on an elliptical machine and elliptical machine I like because it says 750 calories per hour versus the one that said six hundred calories per hour.

[00:06:39.610] – Dr. Pontzer
That's right.

[00:06:40.160] – Allan
And then I eat what I eat and I put it in the app. I'm like, OK, yeah, I had this, I had that. And I have one serving of nuts. I had one serving of that. And then it tells me in six weeks you'll reach your goal, because you're eating this way.

[00:06:57.310] – Allan
And somehow every day it's like chasing the end of a rainbow. It's just. It's on the next horizon, it's on the next horizon. Can we talk a little bit about these things like the Basal metabolic rate, BMR, our activity level, and why that math? What's going on there when we're trying to figure out our expenditures, trying to figure out how we can burn calories to lose weight, why that's not quite working out for us.

[00:07:26.170] – Dr. Pontzer
Yeah. Gosh, where to start. So, you know, I think it boils down to the way that we think about our metabolism. Right? So the way we've been taught to think about our metabolism, it's nobody's fault unless you're in this line of work, in which case it is your fault, I suppose. My line of work, I should say. But we've been taught to think about our bodies like simple engines engineered and built to be a rational and easy to understand.

[00:07:53.200] – Dr. Pontzer
And you can rev your engine higher with exercise and burn off more fuel. And, you know, that kind of really simplistic I like to call like an armchair engineer's version of how your body ought to work. Yeah, but by that logic, by those assumptions then everything you just said is totally sensible, totally within its own logic. Totally true. And you can't fault the internal logic of it because it's the story that's been told for decades.

[00:08:18.280] – Dr. Pontzer
And so, of course it kind of holds together. The problem is that our bodies aren't engineered. Right. They're evolved. And your metabolic engine is not some simple thing that you can just you can step on the accelerator or step on the brakes. You don't have a lot of control over it, actually. Instead, your metabolism hasn't been evolved to help you fit into your bathing suit better.

[00:08:45.010] – Dr. Pontzer
It's been evolved to make sure that you survive and reproduce. And so, your body is doing your metabolism is doing all the sort of sleight of hand behind the scenes that you're completely unaware of. Right? From how well you can take how you track the food you eat to how well you can get a handle on the energy you burn off. And so all of those complications that are mostly unseen to you because your metabolism isn't really about just diet and exercise, about everything makes the story that you told just totally fall apart.

[00:09:16.570] – Dr. Pontzer
And I think that's that's the experience that people had. Like you say, oh, I'm going to do this. I'm going to expect these results and gosh, why isn't it happening? And it is because the the the way you thought it was going to work to begin with was not accurate.

[00:09:32.290] – Allan
So there was this like really smart guy called Isaac Newton that wrote these laws and to the day they stand. And so there's the law of conservation of energy. And so the thoughts are whatever you put into the system has to come out of the system where it stays in the system. And then I guess to some extent, my math anyway was then, of course, you've got Einstein saying energy equals mass. So if you're putting extra energy in your body, then it becomes mass at some level until it becomes energy again.

[00:10:07.660] – Allan
So, it's not that we're broken. Yeah, and I think the way you kind of put it in the book and you got into this concept of constrained daily energy expenditure.

[00:10:20.940] – Dr. Pontzer
Right.

[00:10:22.010] – Allan
And that's really what's holding us up. Right? Because we are burning the energy or at least we feel like we are because, the machine said seven hundred fifty. But even if I say, OK, then I'll just I'll go with the lower number. Six hundred. Yeah. Which again might not be the right number, but it's a number I burn that I did that I got on there and I pushed myself. I know I had to burn calories to do it because I couldn't do it without burning calories. Where's the math going. Wonky.

[00:10:50.810] – Dr. Pontzer
Yeah, right. So what you're describing is the way that people even in the field of metabolism have been thinking about this for over half a century. And it's based on this idea that the all the the tasks you do every day we can to add them all up together. And that's going to give us like your bill at the end of a shopping trip, going to give us the total calories that you burn that day. But what it doesn't tell you, right, because it's completely missing from that equation is the fact that the more exercise you do, your body's response to that and goes, oh, OK, so we've got we spent this much on exercise or it's not really a day to day kind of adjustments, more like over weeks or months, kind of just, oh, I'm going I've changed my lifestyle now.

[00:11:33.200] – Dr. Pontzer
I'm exercising this much now I'm spending this much energy on activity. I'm going to spend less on all the other tasks. So most of what your body does every day, even if you're an active person, is not exercise. Most of what your body does every day is immune function and brain function and reproductive function and digestion and all these sort of unseen tasks. And so you reduce those a little bit and you basically make room for the six hundred calories you just spent on on your elliptical.

[00:12:01.010] – Dr. Pontzer
And so it doesn't actually bump up the total number of calories you spend every day instead of your body's working to keep the total calorie you spend every day within a narrow range, kind of like in the same way that, you know, your body keeps body temperature within a narrow range. If you go out on a cold day, you don't know. You're not a reptile. You don't drop to 20 degrees Fahrenheit. No, your body works hard to keep you warm.

[00:12:22.700] – Dr. Pontzer
And if you just keep it right at ninety-eight point six or thirty-seven degrees Celsius, whatever you prefer, your blood sugar levels are kind of the same way. They can fluctuate up and down. But they're kept in a narrow range, unless you're unless you have diabetes. And so, you know, that that kind of homeostatic we call it maintenance of your daily energy expenditure within an area. And that's one of the really kind of exciting things that's come out of the work over the last ten or so years I've been doing and some other folks as well.

[00:12:52.970] – Allan
Yeah, we used to measure calories when we wanted to kind of do it scientifically. You either had to be in a room where they could they pretty much could measure all your breathing or at least some level have an apparatus on your face. So you're breathing into it so that they can measure the cardio, the carbon dioxide. And that's another little tidbit you had in the book that I actually knew beforehand. But when we lose fat, we're losing most of it through our breath.

[00:13:20.810] – Dr. Pontzer
from carbon that you ate. You lose, you lose it all through your breath. Mostly breathing it out as carbon dioxide.

[00:13:26.000] – Allan
But they've updated the science. And that's where you were a big part of actually executing that in some really remarkable situations of how we actually burn, how our actual metabolism works. Can you talk a little bit about this? Got double you call it double,

[00:13:41.600] – Dr. Pontzer
Doubly labeled water.

[00:13:42.770] – Allan
Doubly labeled water. Okay it sounds like Evian almost got a challenger.

[00:13:47.830] – Dr. Pontzer
I wish it was as cheap as Evian. That's actually super expensive. But yes, as you said, I'm an anthropologist. I'm trained in the field of human evolution and how our bodies evolved. And, of course, know humans have been evolving for two million years since before we Homo Sapiens as hunter-gatherers. And so from my perspective, if you want to really understand how the body works and you want to understand how humans are in a lifestyle that's similar to the ones that we used to live, of course, we don't have a time machine, but you want to find a culture that hold on to those some of those same traditions.

[00:14:20.240] – Dr. Pontzer
Right? And so we wanted to go and look at energy metabolism in a hunting and gathering population. This is back about 2007 or 2008 that we were putting this together first. And we were sure that we were going to find exactly what, you know, what you were saying before, that if they're more active, they're going to burn more calories. And we just we're trying to document how much more. But nobody had at that point.

[00:14:43.370] – Dr. Pontzer
Nobody had ever measured total energy expenditures, total daily energy expenditures in a hunter-gatherer group. For exactly the reason you described. You have to have somebody typically have somebody in a laboratory to do that. But what the study labeled water measurement, you can use this really cool isotope tracking technique. Some of the hydrogen to replace the deuterium. Some of the oxygen is replaced with this isotope called Oxygen 18. And you can use those to sort of trace your body's flow of water through your body, as well as the production of carbon dioxide that you breathe out because some of the oxygen that flow through your body actually come in as water and leave as the Os in the CO2 that you breathe, that we actually track that over about a week or 10 days of time. So it's a really cool technique. It's been around for a couple of decades, but it's expensive. There aren't many labs that do it. And nobody had ever done it for hunter gatherer group before.

[00:15:34.070] – Dr. Pontzer
So we were so excited when my colleague Dave Raichlen and Brian Wood and I went to northern Tanzania to do this with the Hadza community there. And they're a modern community like any other group on Earth right now. But they are hunter-gatherers. And so they cut a whole lot of these old traditions that are way to to sort of see what that lifestyle is like, how it affects our bodies.

[00:15:54.260] – Dr. Pontzer
And, you know, we know they're super active and they get about five times our physical activity every day than a typical American or typical European or anybody in an industrialized, urbanized setting. And we were so sure that we were going to see really high energy expenditures with them, with this doubly labeled water technique. We just kind of wanted to document how much higher it was. And in fact, when we got the samples home without them analyzed, it turns out that even though there's really, really physically active, they're burning the same number of calories every day as folks in the US and Europe and other industrialized countries.

[00:16:27.590] – Dr. Pontzer
So that was a total totally mind-blowing to me and has sort of shaped my research over the last 10 years trying to ollow that weird finding and find out. Actually, it's not so weird that you see other places. Do we see it throughout and just try to understand what that means and how your body can possibly adapt to lifestyle like that and to keep energy expenditure the same.

[00:16:51.200] – Allan
I would tell you as a personal trainer, I would say 99.9% percent of my colleagues love the calories in calories out model because we sell exercise. You know, for the most part, someone says, I want to lose weight, I'll exercise you. And so it's an easy sell because they believe they need to exercise more to lose weight, but the body is going to adjust because of it.

[00:17:11.450] – Dr. Pontzer
Mm hmm.

[00:17:11.960] – Allan
And so you've actually proven that scientifically now that that's what happens to our immune function, maybe down regulates our reproductive system down, regulates maybe even the size of some of our organs go down as a result. That's not something necessarily measurable in weight, but it kind of is what it is. Our body adapts to what it needs to eat to stay alive, just to be here tomorrow when when food is scarce or when you're overworking, it needs to be able to keep you moving long enough to get that next kudzu or next to antelope or whatever. Or chase off some lions so you can have what they just killed.

[00:17:53.660] – Allan
So you brought up a term in the book that I thought was really important because the other side of the argument, I'll get a lot of people, doctors and nutritionists and everything and and I've seen it work. I was I mean, at some level is they'll say, we could be a carnivore, we could be a vegetarian, we could be a vegan, we could be whatever. And people will tribalize on those on those terms, on those ways of eating.

[00:18:17.990] – Allan
What you found with the Hadza is that they are effectively operating opportunistic omnivores. They're going to eat what they're able to get because, you know, it's not like they go open up a fridge and say, we got some zebra in here. I think I'll cook that up tonight.

[00:18:37.670] – Allan
It might be it's going to be easier for us to go get some honey today and we're going to eat a meal of honey. Which anyone who's keto would say, oh my God, you're going to die. You're going to have diabetes. They don't have diabetes. They don't have heart disease

[00:18:53.170] – Dr. Pontzer
They're incredibly healthy. I mean, wonderful models of health. You wake up in the morning and you get you're out there getting food out of the wild landscape. They don't have any, I should say. They don't have any crops, any machines, any domesticated animals or plants. So any way to store their food or electricity. Right. So they're off every morning to get plants or animals to eat. And, you know, women rack up like twelve thousand steps a day. Men get like nineteen thousand steps a day. It's an incredible amount of physical activity. But yeah, the diet is sort of what they are not, they are not tribal in their diet. The way that sort of you know, it's become fashionable to be here in the industrialized world where you have this, you're spoiled for choice, you know, and you have the opportunity to be tribal if you like to. They don't have that opportunity. There was ever is available.

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[00:21:21.780] – Allan
And so it's like then and they're not walking nineteen thousand steps just to get to the 7-Eleven, right? They got to do something. When they get there, they climb a tree or they got to dig up some roots. They eat a lot of tubulars. They eat honey. They eat animals that they kill or that they can scavenge off of other people and other kills. So it's just kind of fascinating that they eat what's there and they still stay relatively healthy because, I imagine zebras are red meat. It's a leaner meat than a cow. Yeah. Because they don't fatten zebras up for any particular reason.

[00:21:57.180] – Dr. Pontzer
Right. The Hadza diet is great because you get to make everybody upset when you talk about their diet. They're not vegans for sure. They love to eat meat and they eat it when they can get it. And they like fat for that matter. They can eat it, but they eat a ton of plants, too, and eat sugar. Right. We've done the analysis. The sugar is that, honey. It's just water and sugar, like it is like when you buy it at the store here. So it's a real mix and it changes day to day and it changes month to month.

[00:22:26.310] – Dr. Pontzer
And there they are. Not the exception that we look in the ethnographic record at other hunter-gatherer groups, too, that most of them, of course, sadly now are in villages, that kind of stuff. But we have the historical records of what these people were eating. And it's no surprise it's just like cuisine around the world is diverse today. Cuisine around the world is diverse for these traditional folks as well. You know, paleo folks love to point out Arctic populations, the Inuit and yeah, that's right. If you live up where no plants grow. That's right. You make a living without eating any plants. And if you live in places that are warm and temperate and have lots of plants to grow and honey, you eat that, so everybody can you can cherry pick anything if you want to say, oh, this is my model of a paleo diet and just tell me, well, that's fine. You do that.

[00:23:16.020] – Dr. Pontzer
I can find you a group that eats all plants, you know, and that's what they do. And they're all equally healthy. So the idea that they're sort of just one paleo diet or one natural diet just drives me crazy. As an anthropologist, one of the things I love about studying people all over the globe is this sort of the yin and yang, the sweet and salty of the differences and the similarities. Right?

[00:23:40.200] – Dr. Pontzer
We're all the same. We're all humans, we have all the same motivations going on. And yet the way that we meet all those needs is so different and the cultures are so different. So to have to kind of rewrite some history of us that says, oh, it was only one way or only this way or it just doesn't, just such a disservice to how cool humans are, I think. And how diverse we are.

[00:24:00.720] – Allan
Yeah. But we wouldn't have survived if we didn't have that capacity at some level.

[00:24:06.300] – Dr. Pontzer
Absolutely!

[00:24:06.810] – Allan
To go for periods of time without food and not die. To not have a blood sugar crash and go into a coma because we went two days without actually being able to find food. We have to be able to go without food for a period of time and still function. Yeah. And we have to be able to go ahead. And when it's time and we find the food, we eat what we got, we eat what's there. So if you're climbing up a tree and your lunch is made, it's just honey and honeycombs.

[00:24:33.930] – Allan
I mean, that's that's your lunch. You know, it took a lot of work. It took time. It took effort and a lot of calories getting there. And then you're there and then you enjoy the honey and. Yeah, then I guess you take some home so, you can trade or do something with it, but and someone's going to come home. And that's another thing I really kind of liked about their culture. One of the reasons they're probably so healthy is just their attitude and the social bonds they have with their kinfolk and the people around them in their tribe. And so they're just there and they're they're taking care of themselves or taking care of each other. And they recognize where they are in the world, at least from the perspective of if they don't help each other, they're screwed.

[00:25:18.870] – Dr. Pontzer
Yeah, sharing that community ethos is so strong. And, you know, and it's one of those things that make us uniquely human. Right? I mean, no other species. You can't find any other species where half of the animals get one kind of food and half the same animals get another kind of food and they come together at the end of the day and share it doesn't happen. Doesn't exist at all. So hunting and gathering, which was what now that is the human strategy for millions of years, is so interesting and so key.

[00:25:46.500] – Dr. Pontzer
And it at its core is that we're going to be these socially connected people. Right. I think that's what's so hard about Covid. For example, konbit is just such a killer because it says you can't be a social as you'd like to be in it just now. It's really hard.

[00:26:00.660] – Allan
And I've said this many, many times. I wish, I wish, I wish. And I know it's a scientific term that came up with and they're using it. But socially distancing was not what we need to do. We need to physically distance.

[00:26:13.170] – Dr. Pontzer
Yes. Yeah. And a really good point.

[00:26:15.420] – Allan
And so I know, but I actually went back and I saw where they had started. Using the term social distancing as a strategy many, many decades ago, this is not new. I mean, it's been in the books. That term has been in the books for a long, long, long, long, long before anyone thought of Facebook or anything like that. But we don't need to socially distance. We need to physically distance when it's appropriate and hopefully now with the things that are going on, we're going to move past all that. But we've got to keep our immune system healthy and we've got to do the other things that are necessary for us to thrive as humans. One of the things that's going to come up is like, OK, if my personal trainer making me exercise these do this stupid HIIT workout or the stupid, he's going to say, OK, I need you to do I want you to do 30 minutes of cardio, four days a week.

[00:27:06.310] – Allan
There's other benefits to that. And we can get into that for sure. But if it won't help me do what I want to do, which 90 percent of the people approaching a personal trainer, the first thing on their head is I want to lose weight, or at least I want to lose body fat, don't necessarily want to lose weight, but I call it weight because that's what everybody calls it and that's what the scale calls it. And that's the easiest measurement tool I have available to me, the most cost effective tool I have. So we'll just say I want to lose weight. Why should I still do exercise?

[00:27:36.370] – Dr. Pontzer
Yeah. So all those adjustments your body makes to exercise, to take, to spend less energy on everything else, to keep your energy expenditure the same. Turns out that those changes are we think and this is really this is kind of bleeding edge science right now. I don't think we're working on right now to know exactly how this all works out. But it seems like those changes that down regulation of other stuff is the one of the big reasons exercise is so good for you.

[00:28:03.830] – Dr. Pontzer
And so it helps actually put together a bunch of phenomena that people have noticed over the years and it kind of knits it all together. So we know, for example, that if you exercise a lot, people who exercise a lot tend to have lower levels of inflammation. But what is inflammation? Inflammation is your innate immune response to an attack, to a pathogen or to a cut or something like that. And you need some of it.

[00:28:25.480] – Dr. Pontzer
You need some immune response or you'll do very well. But too much is too much. Right. You want to you want the fire department to come when you call them, but you don't want it at your house all the time. So that's what inflammation, chronic inflammation is like. Stress reactivity. You need some stress reactivity to be normal and healthy. You don't want to have big surges of cortisol and adrenaline every time you know something happens.

[00:28:52.720] – Dr. Pontzer
Reproductive hormones. Yes. You want to have met a healthy level. Nobody wants any kind of dysfunction, of course. But it turns out that the levels that we typically have of testosterone and estrogen in places like the US and Europe in industrialized societies are much, much higher than they are in groups like the Hadza that are physically active. And by the way, they had to have just a fine time having getting pregnant, having families. That isn't an issue. So we're not talking about where you supposed to where there are issues. We're talking about just having it at a healthy level.

[00:29:24.880] – Dr. Pontzer
All of those individual phenomena have been noticed before. And what I think the constraint energy expenditure does nicely is say, oh, OK, this is the framework. Right. It's an energy framework because I'm spending more on activity, on exercise, because I'm doing the HIIT workout, I'm getting stronger. My heart's getting stronger. That's all great. I don't maybe see the number on the bathroom scale change very much. But what I also don't notice. But what is really good for me is all the other amazing stuff is doing for me because of that adjustment. Right. So this isn't a don't bother exercise in story. This is a here's why you have to keep exercise story even if you're not getting the weight change you wish you had.

[00:30:02.080] – Allan
Yeah. And I think that's just really, really hard for people to wrap their head around is, I want this thing and yet those other things sound great, but I think

[00:30:14.230] – Dr. Pontzer
It sounds great. But I'd really like to look.

[00:30:16.330] – Allan
I'd like to look better in my casket. Again, it's just one of those things of saying this. And the other thing I found is really interesting is the people who exercise are healthier.

[00:30:32.800] – Dr. Pontzer
Yeah.

[00:30:33.760] – Allan
Not necessarily that they've lost the weight, but it's sort of that kind of that backwards to the energy model is they never really had a need to store extra energy anyway. And so when we get on the other side of that, then this is kind of one of my takeaways. And I may be reading a little bit too much into it, but is if it if it took me three decades or even two decades to put on that extra 30 pounds.

[00:31:01.150] – Allan
And I try to say, OK, I'm just going to just kind to bless that elliptical every day of the week. And I'm going to you know, I want to keep seeing those 750s just plop, plop, plop. And initially it works. You know, I'm eating better and I'm seeing some some things or at least I'm eating less. But then I get three weeks and I'm hungry. And I'm like, OK, so now I'm hungry and I'm fighting hunger and hunger, it wins. So that's always it always wins that argument.

[00:31:31.360] – Allan
So for the folks that are fighting that struggle, to me, it seems the solution that you've kind of based on what you are finding, we really need to ratchet up the patients with our body.

[00:31:43.390] – Dr. Pontzer
Yeah. Yeah.

[00:31:44.620] – Allan
To let it do the things it needs to do. And if we're eating natural things like because they're not calling a Pizza Hut now at ten o'clock at night and saying, you know, deliver two pizzas there, they're eating real food.

[00:32:00.430] – Dr. Pontzer
Yeah, that's right. I mean, you know, the stuff that gets us into trouble and this is some really cool work by a guy named Kevin Hall and other groups have worked on this, in the lab, when you can control people are eating and really watch what they're doing. What are the foods that get you into trouble? It's it doesn't seem like there's any particular nutrient that's the villain, okay, eating too many carbs.

[00:32:20.080] – Dr. Pontzer
Yeah, sure. Too many of anything's bad. Too much fat is also bad. So what we did eat too much. Well it seems to lead people to eat too much is when they eat these really ultra-processed over-engineered foods. Right? That are literally built in the laboratory, in focus group tested to make sure that you eat too much. Right. That's how they make their money. And actually, that's a pretty cynical take on it. I'm not trying to vilify food industry, for that matter.

[00:32:44.950] – Allan
We should now. It's more than the model. They're blatantly telling you this now. I mean, I remember a Super Bowl commercial. And it was a Pringles commercial, which is just processed potato flour. I mean, it's just… Anyway, so they had one that was pizza flavor, OK? And then the guy says he had another one.

[00:33:05.440] – Allan
His friend had chicken. Yeah. So they put the chicken one on the pizza one and they ate both of them at the same time. And the chicken pizza and barbecue had barbecue and they put all three of them. And so they've gone beyond the you can't eat just one, bet you can just one to eat three, stack them up, find multiple flavors that you like paired together or triple together. They're not even hiding. They're not even hiding them.

[00:33:34.270] – Dr. Pontzer
Yeah. And I mean it is delicious but it gets into trouble because you know what we're finding is that, that and I should say we, I mean we literally there this is people who are looking specifically at diet. But your brain does an amazing job regulating how many calories come in and how many calories go out, even if you're gaining a couple of pounds a year, which is the kind of that is the American obesity epidemic is a couple of pounds a year.

[00:34:03.700] – Dr. Pontzer
Even if you're doing that, you're still matching your brain is still matching (think about this) intake to expenditure to within like point zero five percent. I mean, an incredibly amazing amount of precision there. So then how does it get even a little bit off track, because that's what obesity is. Your brain's going a little bit out of whack matching intake and expenditure. And, you know, it looks like it's these ultra-processed foods that completely blow up your reward system. Right? And your brain is like, oh my God, this is amazing. They don't have fiber. They don't have protein because that's expensive. So they just are full of sugars and fats, oils usually. And and so they don't have any of the of the indicators that your brain usually uses to tell you that your full like fiber and protein, they reward you like crazy. And so you want to bring in more. And so guess what?

[00:34:56.860] – Dr. Pontzer
Your brain is just a little bit just a little small error all the time, more and more and more. If you're eating that. Those are the big killers. And what I love about this is one of the best pieces of evidence that that's what's going on here, is that if you look at the hundreds of genes that have been associated with high BMI, with obesity, nearly every one of them is active in your brain. Right?

[00:35:22.060] – Dr. Pontzer
So it isn't your your fat cells that are out of whack or your liver cells that are out of whack or your stomach. It's your brain cells that are not out of whack. They're poorly, they're a poor fit to this weird modern food environment we've made, so that's the crux right there. Like you're saying, how do you lose the weight? Well, if you just crash diet, your body's going to respond.

[00:35:44.270] – Dr. Pontzer
If you hit the gym like crazy, your body response, you basically had to take these foods, engineered them back out of your life. And that's pretty much how you have to do it.

[00:35:52.400] – Allan
And then have the patience to let that play out. Because, again, like you said, that fractional difference is your brain and your body start to recollect and say, hey, I got way too much me here. This is actually not good for me to keep going. I need to get rid of some of this. Your brain will originally eventually turn on and say, okay we're getting what we need, we're full, and in your body will then respond. But it's going to be that gradual, have patience with the process.

[00:36:22.820] – Dr. Pontzer
Yeah. And some folks are going to find know the trick is, can you find a diet that you're eating healthily, you're getting all your micronutrients, your weight is either where you want it to be or go in the direction you want it to be. And you feel full because you say hunger is always going to win. So if you're feeling hungry, it's not going to work. And so, it's not a diet book. I don't feel to get the impression this is the next diet to eat.

[00:36:48.200] – Dr. Pontzer
You know, that's not the idea here. The idea is what are the principles? How does your body work? What's the owner's manual look like? So you can take charge of this thing? And, the principles seem to be if you eat more fiber, eat more protein, you know, those are ways to feel full on less. And some people are going to find that in a Carnivore diet where a lot of the protein is what saves you. Some are going to find that a plant based diet where the fibers let's say you you know, I mean, there's lots of ways to do it.

[00:37:11.570] – Allan
Yeah, well, I think it could be a diet book. So go to Africa, make your own make your own bow and arrow. Make your own stick. They've got roots and tubulars. And and then. Yeah. Walk nineteen hundred steps per day to go kill. I don't know a giraffe.

[00:37:29.080] – Dr. Pontzer
Yeah. Right, right.

[00:37:31.310] – Allan
That'll do.

[00:37:33.250] – Dr. Pontzer
Yeah. Or cook your food with no seasoning. That's another thing. Right? I mean have they got a little bit of salt. That's it. You know they don't really they're food sadly their food is not delicious. I kind of wish it were. Honey is delicious. The honey. How much honey can you eat my lord. You know. Anyway.

[00:37:51.470] – Allan
Oh perfect. So Dr. Pontzer, I define wellness as being the healthiest, fittest, and happiest you can be. What are three strategies or tactics to get and stay well.

[00:38:02.810] – Dr. Pontzer
That's a great question. I would say get outside because if you're outside, you're probably moving. You're probably breathing clean air. It lifts your mood. So get outside, stay connected. Because I think that's the social aspect of this. The social connections are really important and then don't trade diet for exercise or vice versa. Those are two different tools or two different jobs. And so you got to kind of do both. So I got a squeeze in for I did.

[00:38:30.800] – Allan
That's perfect.

[00:38:32.150] – Dr. Pontzer
That's what I'd say.

[00:38:33.200] – Allan
OK, if someone wanted to learn more about you, learn more about the book Burn, where would you like for me to send them?

[00:38:39.920] – Dr. Pontzer
Well, the book is a good place to start. You could also check out what we're doing in the sponsor lab here at Duke. Look us up on the Duke website, or if you want to find out more about the Hadza and for that matter, if you want to help the Hadza, because one of the things that we really try to do with our work is to give back is check out the Hadzafund.org, you can find out more about their culture, more about our work and ways you can donate and help give back if you like.

[00:39:08.120] – Allan
You can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/478 and I'll be sure to have those links there. Dr. Pontzer, thank you so much for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

[00:39:17.660] – Dr. Pontzer
It was so much fun. Thanks a lot.

Post Show/Recap

[00:39:24.330] – Allan
Welcome back, Raz.

[00:39:26.160] – Rachel
Hey, Allan, what a fascinating interview. I have to say that this whole theory about calorie expenditure kind of blew my mind a little bit.

[00:39:36.330] – Allan
Yeah. I just love anthropologist's. I just do. The ones that go out there, the Indiana Jones kind, because he had some really cool stories and in the book about his adventures, particularly in Africa with the Hadza tribe. But he just saw some things there that, you know, you wouldn't you wouldn't see anywhere else and you would experience someone else. And so just to really cool experiences.

[00:40:02.220] – Allan
And then, yeah, when he sat down with them, they went in with the hypothesis and he did real science, which is crazy, real science, where you have a hypothesis. And when your hypothesis is wrong, they acknowledge it and say, hey, we were wrong, this is what's actually going on. So, yeah, the hypothesis was that these guys were burning thousands and thousands and thousands of calories every day. And as a result, that's why they were so freaking skinny. But the reality of it was, no, no, they're not. Their body is is finding equilibrium at a lower overall BMI. I mean, I'm starting at BMI, but basal metabolic rate BMR.

[00:40:48.630] – Allan
And so basically what happens is that your body slows down other functions, eliminate some of it needs to for periods of time. And so, we've seen this someone who starved for a long period of time, they start losing muscle mass. But you see it, if a female athlete, particularly one who does endurance running, gets her body fat too low, keeps her energy levels too low, she stops menstruating.

[00:41:15.180] – Rachel
Yeah.

[00:41:16.200] – Allan
And one of the fascinating things that he talked about in the book was that the size of a person's spleen will go down. So you're quite literally using energy from your spleen and that's your immune system. And so therefore, you're not your immune system isn't functioning as well as it should. So your reproductive system can slow down and stop your your immune system can slow down and stop. And all because it wants to keep your brain alive, your heart alive, your liver alive, and you alive. And so it's a requirement. It's necessary if you can't get enough calories. No matter how hard you need to work, your body is going to find balance.

[00:41:58.030] – Rachel
Yeah, that is incredible. It's amazing to think that a hunter-gatherer tribe like the Hadza that he studied and people here in the United States even have similar caloric expenditure where you can only go so far. You can like he said, you can't crash diet and you can't hit the gym hard enough. I mean, there's a point where it doesn't make sense.

[00:42:22.510] – Allan
Yeah, but but one of the core points to take away from that is not so much just what our bodies are doing, but to understand that the calories that we're burning are not for the right reason our immune systems are overactive. Our systems are over. We have many systems that are overactive because of how we treat our bodies, what we put in them, and so, we are burning a lot and we were burning more calories, but we're burning it being sedentary.

[00:42:54.900] – Allan
So it's not that we're exercising to have those extra calories burned. That's not where his average is coming from. It's just coming from the fact that our body is going to burn about the same, whether it's doing it for the right reasons or the wrong reasons.

[00:43:10.260] – Rachel
It's just an incredible experiment.

[00:43:12.930] – Allan
And so for me, the core takeaway and, we've talked about this a lot lately is that you. Yes. You can't lose weight relatively quickly. If you go on on a diet, the diet's probably going to work for a period of time and then it might not. And when it doesn't, then there's the frustration. Usually there's the retaliation. So, oh, that didn't work. Well, I'm go ahead and just have that bottle of wine I didn't have last weekend because my diet stopped working.

[00:43:42.630] – Allan
And then there's the other part of this is just the dealing with hunger. And we just we don't deal with hunger very well because food's just everywhere. And, you know, I think one of the core things for me, and you see it you see in the commercials is they have the Snickers commercial where, you know, someone's starting to get what they call hangry. And as a result, they're kind of angry and hungry and it all comes together.

[00:44:12.250] – Allan
And what's the solution? The solution is to throw sugar at it, throw throw a Snickers bar at it, and that's going to solve your your hangry problem. But, that's not how this works. And as a result, I think one of the core takeaways for me was that if we really want to do weight loss responsibly, we've got to look at weight loss as a slow, long process and so slowly whittling away by eating whole foods, nutritious food, being hungry sometimes and maybe not eating as often as we do, those are all going to be strategies that will help us lose the weight we want to lose.

[00:44:53.130] – Allan
But it's going to take time. You just have to be patient. If you if you want to lose weight, you can't out exercise a bad diet. And it's really also not in your best interest to under eat what your body requires.

[00:45:06.780] – Rachel
Absolutely. There's a point where you need a fuel for…

[00:45:11.340] – Allan
All right. Well, it looks like Rachel has some connectivity problems today, so she's dropped off. But I'll talk to you next week, Rachel.

Patreons

The following listeners have sponsored this show by pledging on our Patreon Page:

– Anne Lynch	– John Somsky	– Margaret Bakalian
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Thank you!

Another episode you may enjoy

The longevity plan with Dr. John Day

Less...

Let's Say Hello

[00:00:48.630] – Allan
Hey Raz! How are things going?

[00:00:50.850] – Rachel
Good. How are you today, Allan?

[00:00:52.980] – Allan
I'm doing OK. You know, it's been some busy times. The 12-week program is going on, and I'm just loving that. I just I draw so much energy from those guys. I can't tell you enough how much fun it is to just be working with people and then, the gym open. And it's been a slow growth. But, I was sitting there on Sunday and just thinking about the month (we record a couple of weeks in advance) and accounting stuff. This was not a bad month.

[00:01:34.050] – Rachel
Oh, good.

[00:01:35.370] – Allan
In February we reopened on the first. This was not a bad month. Tt's not a great month because we don't have the tourists, so the drop-ins were about one-seventh of what we would normally see for drop-in revenue. But the the membership was strong. And we've got a lot of new members and faces that we didn't have last year before we closed. So I feel pretty good about where the gym's going and how that's growing. And I was thinking it kind of a blessing for this slow growth because it happened and it was still generally a good month. And it wasn't overwhelming at the gym. I think that was kind of the cool thing.

[00:02:18.450] – Allan
But, like everything else, we've got to be careful with Covid as we start getting bigger. I had one night I was working a shift and we had seven people and they were all in the free weight section. And so it was just a little crowded back there. And I was like, okay I can't let anybody else on this side of the building. If someone wants to go and do some some of the cardio equipment or on the other side than they're more than welcome to go in there. If someone comes in and they want to lift weights, I'm going to make them sit on the bench and wait. Just to make sure we didn't get things too crowded in there.

[00:02:50.520] – Allan
We don't really have a capacity limit. But I kind of learned that we kind of do have a capacity, just everybody being two meters apart.

[00:02:58.560] – Rachel
Right.

[00:02:58.950] – Allan
We just have to be responsible about that. So, if you are going to the gym now, the gyms have reopened. Just be cognizant of the two meters. Wipe down your machines before and after you use them and just use good hygiene around this. And for the most part, you're probably going to be successful at not getting it.

[00:03:18.690] – Rachel
So for sure. Absolutely. That's great. Good to hear that.

[00:03:22.380] – Allan
How are things up north?

[00:03:24.120] – Rachel
Good. We actually had a break in the weather, which was nice. And over the weekend I had a little win myself. I actually surprised myself. I did a 10K, which is not a huge thing for me, but I was challenged in the month of February to set, in FKT, a Fastest Known Time within this community I participate with online. And so I chose my normal 10K route to do my time. My FKT and my prior time for this route has been about an hour, four minutes and hour, six minutes or so, and we've had snow. So that kind of is a difficult thing to get through. But we had this break in the weather and the sidewalks are clear.

[00:04:10.200] – Rachel
So I set out to do my 10k and I thought, okay, I don't know if I can do this, but I'm going to pretend it's a race day. And I set out and I ran smoothly and the downhills. I ran relaxed on the uphills. And when I got home and turned off my watch, I had a fifty-eight minute forty-seven second 10k. So I actually beatmy proposed time of a su-hour 10k. So it was a win.

[00:04:38.550] – Allan
Awesome!

[00:04:38.850] – Rachel
Thank you. I was really surprised. So it was a good day.

[00:04:44.010] – Allan
Awesome. That, that has to feel really, really good.

[00:04:47.100] – Rachel
It does. I've been really focused on training for my fifty miler that's coming up this summer and so that means a lot of slow miles. So I'm not used to running fast. So again, that's another reason why it was kind of a surprise for me.

[00:05:01.350] – Allan
And, you know, sometimes that's kind of the way these things work is you're not expecting it and you just have a really good run.

[00:05:08.790] – Rachel
It was.

[00:05:09.000] – Allan
But you've got to be out there running to have a really good run.

[00:05:12.000] – Rachel
That's right. You got to do it.

[00:05:14.040] – Allan
Good on you.

[00:05:14.370] – Rachel
Thank you.

[00:05:15.450] – Allan
Not letting the Michigan weather keep you indoors.

[00:05:18.330] – Rachel
That's right.

[00:05:19.540] – Allan
So you're trained and that's. And then show. So good job.

[00:05:22.910] – Rachel
Thank you.

[00:05:23.570] – Allan
All right, are you guys ready to talk to Brad?

[00:05:25.790] – Rachel
Yes, let's do this.

Interview

[00:06:21.080] – Allan
Brad, welcome to 40+ Fitness.

[00:06:23.700] – Brad
Allan, I'm so happy to be here. And I have to say that was one of the best warm chats of any podcast. We are on fire right now. The listeners have no idea what's coming. So brace yourselves, everyone. If you're listening at 1.7 speed like me, turn it down to 1.0 because we're going to hit this stuff hard, man.

[00:06:43.010] – Allan
Yeah, we I guess Brad and I kind of have a lot in common with the kind of people that we like to talk to. And so with his podcast and my podcast where we're talking, it's maybe even talking to some of the same people. We just we just realize we're both going to be talking to the same guy. And it's a pretty fascinating book. So stay tuned to this podcast for a while. Go check out Brad's podcast, because we're going to be bringing on Dr. Pontzer. It's going to be an awesome conversation, but this is also going to be a tremendous conversation.

[00:07:12.380] – Allan
Brad, you and Mark wrote the book Two Meals a Day: The Simple, Sustainable Strategy to Lose Fat, Reverse Aging and Break Free From Diet Frustration Forever. And I have to say, I had followed a OMAD, I've known about OMAD for a while and I've known about time-restricted eating. And so you guys are approaching this from a perspective of being told we have to have six meals a day to lose weight is fundamentally flawed.

[00:07:42.140] – Allan
We should give our body time to not eat, to not feed. And two meals a day is one of those sustainable ways. When I look at OMAD, I don't think I could do, OMAD because I don't think I could eat enough calories in one meal. But looking at two meals a day and thinking of it as an eating window, whether it's six hours or eight hours, I quite easily could have a moderate-sized meal and then a big meal, get all the nutrition I need and do that and allow my body 16 to 18 hours to kind of do all the other cool stuff that the human body can do for itself.

[00:08:22.460] – Brad
Yeah, well said. I think we've been programmed since we were kids to be dependent on dietary carbohydrates as our primary source of energy. And anyone can reference this. If you've ever felt terrible after skipping a single meal and then you have the afternoon blues and you're tired and cranky and you finally go and binge on way too much junk food when you get your hands on something and when you go to the supermarket and go shopping. So the idea here is that we want to continue to honor this evolutionary model of how humans are meant to operate.

[00:09:00.560] – Brad
And we're meant to have stored body fat as our primary source of energy. And that's why we store so much of it and are so good at storing it. And this is going back for millions of years where the human never had regular meals until recent times, recent generations. And so by sitting down to these regular meals like clockwork, we've transitioned away from being fat burners to being carbohydrate dependent.

[00:09:27.350] – Brad
And it's really easy to reprogram the genes. It doesn't take that long. Your body's ready and willing to become better and more competent at burning body fat and being able to skip meals. And I think most listeners who are into this health awareness know all this and can nod their heads. And they've heard that fasting is great and intermittent fasting is the latest buzzword. It just passed keto on the Google search terms as the the most popular diet search term. But here's the thing, we take the trouble to go in the book and say, look, you can't just jump into this and expect all these wonderful benefits if you don't engage in fasting properly.

[00:10:06.350] – Brad
And so if you try to go and skip breakfast because you read this book two meals a day and it says, hey, I'll only eat two meals a day, it's way better than eating three, you're going to have what we might call a stress hormone bath, because if you're dependent on carbs for your energy source. And then all of a sudden you restrict them because you heard about the keto diet or you want to skip meals and lose weight in this ill-advised manner, what's going to happen is you're going to get your glucose, your sugar, no matter what, because that's what you're used to burning.

[00:10:36.740] – Brad
And so you'll do it through this stress response that we call gluconogenesis, which is converting lean muscle mass into glucose to fuel that ravenous brain that needs to burn glucose primarily throughout the day. And so the approach here is to transition in a smooth and comfortable manner. So there's no more struggling or suffering or all these deprivation, mindset, and physical symptoms that we associate with dieting, because that is the failed approach that we can all agree is it doesn't work.

[00:11:10.820] – Brad
And so now we have an agreeable, doable, and sustainable strategy that's not painful. It's just about making good choices and understanding what the body's meant to burn as a preference.

[00:11:25.520] – Allan
Yeah. As humans, we love simple. Everybody loves a simple rule. If this then that. We like the ability to wrap your mind around things that are simple. What a lot of us don't understand is that the human body is extremely complex. And that our body developed strategies to accomplish things outside of norms. So there would be a normal way, things would be. Normally I would like to be able to walk around and there's a fruit tree. I grab some fruit and I eat it. Oh, and there's a little woodland creature. And I bash it in the head. Now I've got some meat or I go catch some fish and I eat some fish and that's my day. I'm moving about a good bit of maybe probably walking around a little bit of a fast action because that critter is not going to just stand there and the fish is definitely not going to just hang out and say, here, grab me.

[00:12:23.580] – Allan
So there's a lot of work involved in getting my food. We don't have that today. So, where we had these simple ways of things were working for us. We've developed other ways. And so what I'm kind of getting at is you bring up a concept in the book that I think it's really important for people to understand is that we have metabolic flexibility. Our bodies develop this capacity to look at fuel in different ways, depending on what our circumstances are and when we're feeding ourselves carbohydrates all the time. It's basically energy in and then what a little bit of energy we can put out is great, but the rest of it's becoming excess body fat. And we're maybe not even tapping into that body fat because we never really gave our body an opportunity to even consider that because we fed more carbohydrates before that ever happened. Can you talk a little bit about metabolic flexibility and how that closed-loop system actually helps us maintain a really good, just basic health?

[00:13:30.840] – Brad
Yeah, thanks. So what I described at the outset is really metabolic inflexibility, where you are dependent upon these regular doses of carbohydrate and other food as your energy source. So metabolic flexibility implies that you can really take or leave a meal at a certain time because body fat is always there and able to be burned for energy and keeping your focus and your mood and your appetite all stabilized throughout the day.

[00:14:01.440] – Brad
And people who are a little bit familiar with the ketogenic diet, the goal there is to restrict carbs to the extent that your body starts making this alternative internal fuel source called ketones, the liver makes ketones as a byproduct of fat metabolism when carbohydrate intake is really low and liver glycogen is really low. So you're prompted to make this wonderful fuel source that burns more cleanly than glucose and your brain preferentially burns ketones. So you're in this kind of heightened state of alertness and you feel great and you have less inflammation and you get all these benefits from the ketogenic diet.

[00:14:37.020] – Brad
It takes a lot of structure to do so because once you start consuming a little bit of carbs, you stop making ketones. But just as you teed this up, we have so many different ways that we can burn energy and sustain ourselves and even function at peak levels without having these super-duper, nutrient bomber drink juices that you need to drink in the morning to get your antioxidants. The body manufactures antioxidants internally, and the internal antioxidant response is possibly more powerful than anything you can consume in a bowl or in a smoothie.

[00:15:13.800] – Brad
So just by fasting, we get all these health benefits. We have a great anti-inflammatory response. The immune system works better. Our cellular repair processes work better when we're not eating because we can devote the energy to these other things. That's why animals fast when they're sick and humans should, too. So, this metabolic flexibility concept goes to not only getting good at burning body fat, but also if it's time for your child's 12th birthday at Chuck E. Cheese and you decide to throw down some breadsticks and a hot fudge sundae afterward, that your body can process that load of unhealthy junk food and you'll live to see another day and you'll wake up the next day and let's say engage in a fasting period to get back to your baseline of fat burning so that you can handle not only dietary imperfections, but also be skipping meals. So that's the flexibility part of the equation there.

[00:16:11.520] – Allan
We're not recommending Chuck E. Cheese, but by all means,

[00:16:14.670] – Brad
This show is not sponsored by Chuck E. Cheese.

[00:16:17.040] – Allan
Not at all. I understand you go there with your kid. It's there. It smells what it smells like.

[00:16:25.740] – Allan
One of the things you get into the book that I think is really important, and this is where I'll be having a conversation with the new client and they'll be like, okay, I want to lose some weight. And this is kind of my go-to (I haven't looked at it from this direction). I always just talk about eat whole food, just whole food, and that solves 99.9% of the problems. In fact, whether I'm talking to a vegan or a carnivore or anybody in between, the one thing they all agree with is eat whole food. You know, they may disagree on whether it needs to be all plant-based or needs to be all animal-based. But in the end, that's what they're after.

[00:17:06.480] – Allan
In the book you looked at from another perspective, you called them the three big toxic modern foods. Could you talk a little bit about those?

[00:17:13.500] – Brad
Yeah, you just remind me now that there is something we all agree on, because for years before the emergence of this carnivore movement, which I'm really fascinated by and have seen some amazing healing stories from people eliminating plant toxins. But previously we all agreed that the wonderful, colorful fruits and vegetables are the basis of a healthy diet, even if you're a vegan, even if you're a paleo person. And now even that's called into dispute. So it's like, oh, yeah, we still agree that whole foods are better than processed foods.

[00:17:42.990] – Brad
I guess unless you're pitching your energy bar or your powders and potions and things like that. But yeah, good point. So whole food would be a great starting point. And then I forgot your question now.

[00:17:57.120] – Allan
Oh, it was the three toxic modern foods.

[00:17:59.820] – Brad
Yeah, the three toxic modern foods. I think it is a great place to start because a lot of the research now is revealing that the magical, wondrous benefits of the various diets are mostly what the person is eliminating rather than the amazing transformational powers of going on a vegan plant-based diet.

[00:18:21.930] – Brad
In fact, we pretty much trying to be polite and not cross into the boundaries of the faction building and all that. It's a high-risk diet because you're eliminating a whole bunch of nutrient-dense foods. Same with carnivore. People have all kinds of criticism for that, saying that it's unbalanced and you're going to drop dead of colon cancer and a heart attack.

[00:18:46.050] – Brad
All those challenges aside for a moment, if you just get rid of junk food, you're probably going to experience an incredible health transformation. And that's where a lot of these leaders of whatever it is that they're touting can kind of attribute this amazing success stories. Is that any transition away from the standard American diet, which Dr. Loren Cordain cites research that 71% of the calories that we consume today in the traditional diet are completely absent from our evolutionary experience.

[00:19:22.260] – Brad
So they're processed modern foods that are nutrient deficient and calorie-dense things like grains, things like sugars, and refined industrial seed oils. So those are the big three right there. And I probably should put it up at number one, the refined industrial seed oils, because those are sometimes overlooked. People all know that sugar is overconsumed. And we got to cut back on our sugar. The paleo ancestral movement knows that we call refined grains sort of in the same category as sugar because they're quickly converted to glucose as soon as you ingest them. They don't have many nutritional benefits whatsoever. And so we have grains, sugars, and the industrial seed oils, which are the bottled manufactured oils like canola, corn, soybeans, sunflower, safflower, etc. and then the prevalence of these oils in processed foods of all kinds, frozen, packaged. You can look on the box of anything that's pretty much of a manufactured product and you'll see these oils included in there, even salad dressings, condiments, things that seem innocent. The oils are thrown in left and right.

[00:20:31.800] – Brad
And then, unfortunately, almost all restaurant food starting from junky, fast food, of course, where you're getting your fries in your burger and what have you or getting stopping at the gas station and getting some quick fare off the shelf. But even at medium to fine restaurants, they are most likely cooking these wonderful meals. You're paying a good money for the entree in the refined industrial seed oils. A lot of people call them vegetable oils.

[00:20:58.740] – Brad
That's a challenge because when you're out there, you can't go back in the kitchen and see. But you can ask and inquire, can you please cook my omelet and butter or something besides vegetable oil? And if you don't succeed there, you might want to find a different restaurant because this stuff is the most toxic thing that's in the food supply. As soon as we consume them, we experience an immediate disturbance in healthy cellular function, especially in the cardiovascular system.

[00:21:24.030] – Brad
So the big problem here, too, is that the ingestion or the inclusion of these oils in the diet renders your fat burning capabilities dysfunctional because the the agents are integrated into healthy fat cells. And so they become difficult to burn because you have this chemically altered component into your body.

[00:21:46.050] – Brad
If you have trouble burning stored body fat, guess what's going to happen when you try to cut back on dietary carbohydrates? It's going to be difficult, if not impossible, because you're going to be dragging ass in the afternoon and you're going to need some quick energy because you're not kicking into fat burning.

[00:22:03.450] – Brad
And that's, I think, where a lot of people have suffered and failed with devoted dietary restriction. I mean, we interact with these people for the past decade where you we'll be putting on a live event or retreat. And I see people coming up to Mark Sisson with tears in their eyes saying, Mark, I got your book three years ago. I've done everything you've said to the letter and I can't succeed. And I feel terrible. And a lot of it's because of the chemical ingestion that's throwing off your your metabolism.

[00:22:30.630] – Brad
And then you don't have this wonderous gateway to the fat-burning lifestyle where you can fast you can enjoy meals, you can get up from the table, you feel alert and energized and all these wonderful things. So the seed oils would be the number one thing to really scrutinize and get rid of immediately. And then with the grains and the sugars, we know that these agents have addictive properties. The great work of Gary Taubes, Dr William Davis, best selling book, Wheat Belly, talking about the addictive properties of the gliadin and protein in modern-day wheat and gluten.

[00:23:04.950] – Brad
And so this stuff is also nasty because when you try (and I'm making air quotes here on the video), when you try to cut back on sugar, you have a very difficult time. So what we advocate is, look, take a few weeks. Twenty-one days would be a great benchmark to have a complete restriction of grains, sugars, and industrial coils from your diet.

[00:23:26.520] – Brad
And that will help you up regulate. The fat burning gene, so that you can manufacture energy internally and feel okay without slamming down meals and snacks all day long, and so this kind of devoted, cold turkey approach seems to be the way to go because these foods are so addictive.

[00:23:49.280] – Brad
Now, is that going to be difficult? Yeah, it's going to be tough for many people. But a lot of times we hear people saying, stick it out, hang in there. Yeah. The keto or the low carb flu is really tough and you feel terrible. But don't worry. Three weeks from now, you'll feel okay. And I strongly reject that ideal, because if people are struggling and suffering with a dietary transformation, something is flawed with the approach. And so instead, if you agree to ditch these big three toxic modern foods, what you can then do is transition over to beautiful, delicious, lavish meals that sustain you and nourish you.

[00:24:29.340] – Brad
In my own personal example, 13 years ago, when I switched over to a primal ancestral style eating, I traded in this giant bowl of cereal that I'd had every single day of my life. I used to be an endurance athlete. I was burning many, many calories every day. So I'd have this giant horse trough bowl of cereal with five different kinds, of course, all the healthy kinds of cereals. But I'd have nonfat yogurt on there and sliced bananas and berries and a ton of calories.

[00:24:56.210] – Brad
So I traded that for a gigantic omelet that I made every morning. And I would use five or six eggs and saute the vegetables and have sliced avocado and salsa and cheese and bacon. And it was incredibly delicious and it sustained me for many hours, but it wasn't giving me that carbohydrate bomb. But that made my transition smooth and easy and enjoyable rather than, let's say, trading in that cereal bowl for a fasting period of four hours. I honestly couldn't have couldn't have done it.

[00:25:25.010] – Brad
And that was a healthy person without metabolic damage that a lot of people are bringing to the table. So if you can replace the processed food with nutrient-dense foods, it's in most cases you're going to feel great. There's not going to be any suffering involved and you'll be looking forward to your next nutritious meal and then build that momentum to where at a certain point in a natural and graceful manner, you'll probably be able to skip. Like I was finally able to skip that omelet every single morning because six months later I felt great and I wasn't super hungry as soon as I woke up.

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[00:27:37.590] – Allan
Yeah, I think the kind of the worst part of this is the food that's good for us doesn't have a marketing department, but the food that's bad for us does. And so you're going to see things on labels like heart-healthy, like you would with cereal. And then, of course, you're going to see this salad dressing you just bought… Not Mark's brand, Mark's brand is avocado oil. It's good stuff. But other brands, you'll see that they'll say they've got olive oil or they've got that.

[00:28:04.620] – Allan
You'll look at the actual label. And they do have that in there, but they've also got the seed oils in there. So it's in there. It's insidious. It's in everything. So the challenge becomes now I'm asking someone to go into their kitchen and throw all that stuff out. And for, I would say the vast majority of people in the United States, particularly, you're asking them to pretty much throw out their entire pantry, clean out their entire fridge, and in many cases go through their freezer and go through all of that stuff and that you start to realize how much… It's like 71% of our total calories is coming from this stuff.

[00:28:48.720] – Allan
So when the kitchen purge to me is one of the probably you know, as I talk to people, that's one of their most intimidating events. How does someone wrap their mind around I'm throwing away all this food?

[00:29:02.520] – Brad
Yeah, I like how you framed that.

[00:29:03.240] – Allan
And I can do the food in air quotes.

[00:29:07.080] – Brad
Yeah. Michael Pollan calls it, quote, edible food like substances rather than food. This processed 71% junk. But I like how you frame that question because maybe we should do it backwards. So, first we go shopping to the natural foods supermarket and we get the sustainably raised eggs and meat and seafood and then whatever fresh produce you like or things that are on the approved list. And so you have that like, let's say waiting in the wings in your in the back of your car, and then you go throw everything away into the garbage can in a five minute binge of of cleaning out that house.

[00:29:43.530] – Brad
But yeah, I can see that we're locked into routines and have difficulty with big change. But I think the restocking of the pantry with nutritious foods and maybe browsing the 40 recipes in the back of our book. And if you just flip through it and in a minute's time you'll see, wow, this stuff looks great. It's delicious. It's varied. And so there's so much you can do. And there's so many cookbooks now that are honoring the low carb or the ancestral approach.

[00:30:13.260] – Brad
And so there's no shortage of ideas. And for Gourmet's, that's great. They can go and look at the thirty-one ingredients and prepare a recipe that takes two hours. But for busy people or a lot of times, I encounter like my male peers aren't so gourmet in many cases. We wrote a couple of cookbooks called Keto Cooking for Cool Dudes and Carnivore Cooking for Cool Dudes, and we purposely made it not precise. You just throw in a little bit of this little bit of that, put some sardines in the skillet, crack a couple egg yolks, mix it up and you know, you can get these superfood meals without much time or energy or scrutiny.

[00:30:53.370] – Brad
And so that's the big one, is nourishing yourself with wonderful, delicious foods and doing it immediately so that there's not this lull where you don't know what to eat. You're fidgeting around and then you kind of reach for a really bad choice because your body's commanding you to consume calories. And that's no joke. I mean, a lot of people are starting out with a lot of discipline, motivation, willpower. And then it cracks because as we talked about offline, the human brain and the hypothalamus when it's hungry, there's nothing that can I mean, you're going to be pushing people out of the way to get something to sustain you.

[00:31:31.020] – Brad
So we have to do this in a strategic manner. And setting up those good meal habits is the big one, like I discussed with my omelet or whatever you want to put as the example.

[00:31:40.930] – Allan
And I think that's one of the keys. You know, when we talk about two meals a day or time-restricted eating, this is not like you immediately just jump in and say, okay, I had dinner tonight at seven o'clock and I'm not going to eat again until two o'clock tomorrow. That's typically not how this works. There's a transition period to doing time-restricted eating. And I like one of the things that you guys use used an acronym called WHEN which is When Hunger Ensues Naturally.

[00:32:12.090] – Allan
So it's kind of listening to your brain because invariably your brain's right. If it's telling you you're hungry, you're actually probably hungry. And if we try to not listen to it, then it's just too easy to fall back on old habits. And there's McDonald's. I'm driving by my windows down on a beautiful day. And I could smell it. If you're not answering yourself when you have control, now, you're in a situation where you probably don't.

[00:32:42.310] – Allan
And so how does someone go through? Because I know you guys have a plan in the book. You also have the recipes, which thanks for mentioning that, by the way, because I did want to make sure those are in there, too. How does someone go about approaching getting to two meals a day?

[00:32:58.510] – Brad
Yeah, good question. And I think when it's a really easy strategy to get your mind around and it's not intimidating or fearful. So when hunger ensues, naturally, we have to make sure that we really are talking about hunger.

[00:33:13.360] – Brad
And I think what we have today is boredom, prolonged periods of stillness with our lifestyles, especially working on the screen. And a lot of these things can mess up our metabolic function to the extent that we think we're hungry. But we might just benefit from going out and running two flights of stairs and returning to that default fat burning state that requires a little bit of movement throughout the day. There's research showing that if you sit still for as little as 20 minutes, you will experience a noticeable decrease in glucose tolerance and insulin resistance.

[00:33:52.090] – Brad
So in other words, you stop burning fat really well and you start to lose a little bit of cognitive function. The oxygen delivery, the blood circulation, everything kind of goes down because the body does not like to sit still for long periods of time. And so when you feel that decline in energy, we associate that with hunger perhaps. And then we go get an energy bar out of the drawer and we get a little boost for however long and then another drop and we go on this roller coaster all day long.

[00:34:22.390] – Brad
I'm kind of jumping without answering the question fully, but we do have to include those lifestyle elements into this picture. It's not just about your food choices, because if you're sitting there all day long in a chair not trying out this wonderful stand-up desk craze or thinking that you're too busy to take a one or two-minute break every 20 or 30 minutes, you're going to have real trouble adhering to a dietary transformation, especially getting rid of those carbohydrate foods that provide quick energy.

[00:34:56.590] – Brad
So back to trying to answer that question and integrating this concept of when hunger ensues, naturally, this implies that whatever fasting periods you're going to engage in, you're going to feel comfortable. You're going to have stable cognitive and even physical function in the absence of that meal. And that includes perhaps a workout some days where you can wake up in the morning, go through, even if it's a light workout, like a cardiovascular session at fat-burning heart rates, you want to feel good and strong .And that you're not needing, desperately needing calories to complete a 20 or 30-minute workout, maybe an hour workout or maybe a 20-minute high intensity workout where, of course, you have the energy stored in your body to complete it. But we have to kind of play it out in a natural and comfortable way.

[00:35:49.900] – Brad
Once you clean up the diet and get rid of those three toxic modern foods, we don't want to talk about anything. You can drop off this podcast right now or you can close the book at page seventy-one or whatever if you're unwilling or you haven't accomplished that goal. Because that's the gateway to a fat burning lifestyle. So once those foods are out of the picture, you're making good choices and you're having these nutrient-dense meals, then you can kind of tiptoe in this direction to say, okay how about if I wake up and wait around until hunger ensues naturally?

[00:36:26.920] – Brad
And that will be kind of a checkpoint as you do this exercise and see how long you can comfortably last before your meal, which is the exact opposite of the cavalier approach that you just mentioned, to say, okay tomorrow I'm going to suck it up and I'm going to wait till 2:00 p.m. and that's going to be a 16 hour or an 18 hour.

[00:36:47.230] – Brad
We want everything. We want you to kind of back into everything. So if you are keeping a food journal and you like that accountability, you write down when you eat after the fact because that's when you were hungry and you decided to eat, as opposed to saying, I have to make it till a certain time, otherwise I'm going to drop off the A-list on my plan here. So simple, sustainable, like we say, and doing it at the right time when you really feel you're ready.

[00:37:15.940] – Brad
And so let's say you wake up and at eight thirty in the morning your stomach is growling. And the reason your stomach is growling is because the prominent hunger hormone ghrelin is making it growling. So growling is an actual it's not just fun and games, it's an actual biological response, triggering hunger. And a lot of times the circadian rhythm is a strong influencer of this. So if you start skipping breakfast as part of this lifestyle transformation, you may experience these spikes in hunger in the morning because your body's used to eating at a certain time of day.

[00:37:52.120] – Brad
Maybe it's 2:00 in the afternoon when you always have your energy bar and soda break in the break room. And so you might experience hunger spikes, even though it's more circadian than that you're actually out of energy and you need food. So we have to learn to be more nuanced and more intuitive and see what our body is capable of. And you'll probably find that you're way more metabolically flexible than you even dreamed of, even right now. And then after three weeks of dietary restriction, getting rid of the junk. Oh, man. It's going to open up an amazing world of possibilities.

[00:38:25.370] – Brad
You and I know about these extreme enthusiasts where people will go on five-day fasts every quarter and twenty-four hour fasts once a week. And it seems like unimaginable to the average person. But when you get down to it, we're all pretty good at this stuff. We're all humans. If you have the ability to be patient and, you know, keep those junk foods out of the diet, you can really awaken some good fat-burning potential.

[00:38:56.420] – Allan
Yeah, there was this time and I've told this story on the podcast a couple of times, but I was I had some property and I went out there to do some work and just got up in the morning. I wasn't hungry. So I eat when I'm hungry. I don't even think about it unless I'm hungry. Then I'll eat for the most part. I might have a meal in the evening because only because I know if I don't, then I'm going to want to eat much later. And from a timing it doesn't make sense. But for everything else in my life, I'll just eat when I'm hungry. So I went through and I went out to my property and I finished the work. So I drive my tractor back onto the trailer and I'm going to leave the property and my truck got stuck. So I call AAA to come pull me out when he comes out there about an hour later, you know, which is what they've kind of promised. He was on time.

[00:39:41.290] – Allan
He went to pull me out and his truck broke. So, he had to call for a part. And so I just went ahead and grabbed. The reason I had this property was I had some fishing ponds. I'll just go do some fishing catch and release stuff. So I'm out there fishing. And it took him like four hours to get his truck fixed. He finally gets me out and then I'm driving back and I'm thinking to myself, it's six o'clock already. And I had a pretty tough morning work doing the work I was doing. It was not easy work. And I wasn't even thinking about food.

[00:40:15.020] – Allan
Before I got into what I'm doing with keto and fasting and just paying attention to the food I'm putting in my mouth versus eating what is there, I would have been chewing off my arm. But I had that flexibility we were talking about, I had the freedom that provides to basically say, I know when I'm actually hungry and I know what I'm not.

[00:40:41.900] – Allan
And it's it for a lot of people, it's kind of an interesting feeling because they think they're always hungry and then they actually feel full when they eat because they're eating, like you said, the highly-nutritious, high-quality foods. And they know what it feels like to actually be hungry because they let themselves actually get hungry before they eat again.

[00:41:04.910] – Brad
Right. And it's it is a wonderful feeling to experience hunger and then go satisfy that hunger with a great meal. And a lot of us are hugely disconnected from that because we just sit down because it's lunchtime and we're going to go have a business lunch. And then when we get home, of course, we're going to honor the the the dinner time and the family gathering. And all that stuff's great. And when we wake up in the morning, of course, we got to get some food before we rush off to our busy day.

[00:41:34.610] – Brad
But to rethink this and kind of open up the floodgates to a different alternative lifestyle and different choices like that. And then to realize that missing a meal is a positive checkmark in the direction of metabolic flexibility. So we can kind of relax, especially I know a lot of health-conscious people, they're trying to cover their nutritional bases every day and make sure that they eat enough protein and make sure that they get their superfood, antioxidant smoothies and all this stuff.

[00:42:04.730] – Brad
So to kind of recalibrate that a bit and realize that fasting is probably the biggest thing you can do for an immediate health boost, it beats any superfood ever known to mankind. And so skipping a meal is no big deal. It's a positive step in the direction of health. And then you can kind of turn eating into one of the great pleasures of life as it's intended to be, rather than another stop at the gas station, as if you were a race car and just need to refuel all day long, which is basically the story for most people that it's just fuel and calories, a lot of times empty calories, but you need them otherwise you're going to feel like crap at three p.m. at work and you're not going to get all your work done before five.

[00:42:54.050] – Allan
Yeah, we leave a second breakfast away. We don't need a second breakfast. You might not even need the first one.

[00:43:00.320] – Allan
There was another concept in the book that I thought was really important that I wanted to bring up because a lot of people, we're busy, we've got a lot going on in our lives and we're looking at the clock and we're thinking, you know, I wanted to get out of here and go get my workout in, but I just don't have that hour.

[00:43:16.940] – Allan
I need to stay in the office for another half hour to get some work done. And then, yeah, I got to go pick up the kids and we got to go do this. And my life is just this out of control kind of thing. But you have this concept. We talk about micro workouts. And I think so many people are stuck on the I have to work out for thirty minutes every day or an hour every day, or I might as well not do it. Can you kind of talk about micro workouts and how we can make those are part of a healthy lifestyle.

[00:43:46.160] – Brad
Yeah. Thanks, Allan. This is I got a big smile on my face because this is, I think, one of the greatest breakthroughs that we've seen in fitness in this century. I know the century's young. We got a lot ahead of us.

[00:44:00.710] – Brad
But really, the fitness industry as a whole has been stuck. It's been mired in this no pain, no gain, struggle and suffer mentality. And most of the programing is based on this idea that if we crush you hard enough, you can high-five your workout partner at the end. We can put you on the commercial and you'll order this expensive indoor bicycle or join the gym or continue with the package with your trainer who's urging you for more reps. And so for the people that are really into fitness, it works fine.

[00:44:33.510] – Brad
I used to be a professional triathlete, I trained all day long for a decade of my life and I loved it and I traveled around the world and I mixed with other athletes who also loved riding our bicycles one hundred miles through the mountains. And that was all fun and games and great stuff for us. But so many people have been marginalized by the traditional approach to fitness. And you walk in the gym, you know, 63% of people are intimidated when they look over to the free weight room. And another 27% are intimidated when they look in the window at the bootcamp class where the lady is screaming and urging you for more and more jumping up and down. And you're like, wow, I'm not even in shape enough to conceive of doing something like that to my body.

[00:45:13.880] – Brad
It's true. It's catering to the fitness extremist already. So for the average person who just as you described, is busy, might not be a fitness freak, maybe they didn't feel like an athlete when they were a kid and they're just on the outside looking in. This concept of micro workouts can appeal to everyone who wants to be healthier, not necessarily a fitness freak. Just have that baseline level of physical competency to get through life with more enjoyment and less risk of injury, especially as we get older. Falling is the number one cause of injury and death in Americans over age 65. Falling. Not, pick something else. I mean, come on falling? You're kidding me?

[00:46:05.680] – Brad
But that's what happens when we go into steady and prolonged demise. And so the micro workout conveys this idea that in a minute's time or two minutes' time, you can do a miniature little burst of explosive physical effort wherever you are. You don't need a lot of implements or contraptions you can do right now in your work cubicle drop for a set of 20 deep squats or however deep you can take them.

[00:46:32.590] – Brad
And even if you're a fit person, when you get to 17, 18, 19, your legs are going to feel it. So in one minute's time, you can get a nice miniature little workout and the benefits are tremendous. One of them is it breaks up these prolonged periods of stillness that are so harmful to our metabolic and cognitive function. So even a minute's bursts of running up a couple of flights of stairs, like I said before, or doing a set of deep squats.

[00:46:57.970] – Brad
I have a rule. I have a pull up bar over my closet door and it's like a supply closet. So every time I go in there to get a another Post-it pad or whatever it is, I do a set of pull-ups that might happen once a day. Big deal. It's not going to mess up my big workout that's planned for tomorrow. Maybe I'm recovering from something and I don't want to push myself too hard today, but a single set of pull-ups is nothing to write home about.

[00:47:25.750] – Brad
I don't have to write it in my fitness workout log or anything, but if you talk to me 365 days from now and I say, yeah, this is my daily pattern and oh by the way, when I throw the garbage out, I have to go through the side yard and sitting there in the side yard is a hexagonal deadlift bar with a moderate amount of weight on it. Nothing to write home about again to the muscle heads. But let's say there's two hundred pounds on that bar. And my rule is every time I throw the garbage away, I do at least one set of deadlifts and then I go about my busy day. Maybe sometimes I'll get into it. I have some free time and I might do three or four sets and make it something that's a little bit more significant.

[00:48:05.740] – Brad
But this very low bar to jump over, to enter the world of a fit, healthy, active person is what we need to progress within the overall approach to fitness. And I think the micro workouts are so fun. It can be something that you enjoy. If you have core competency, or technique, you do something as simple as possible, like doing a squat or running up your flight of stairs, walking back down, running up again.

[00:48:32.200] – Brad
And of course, we're so busy we can't devote any more than that. That's fine right now. But as it becomes part of a daily habit and you start sprinkling these things in over time, the amazing thing happens is that, I call it like flying under the radar, but building your fitness, but without that huge risk of breakdown, burnout, illness, and injury that occurs when you immerse yourself into the mainstream approach to fitness.

[00:49:00.550] – Brad
That's the person that signs up for the personal trainer package on January 1st. And by April Fool's Day, their shoulders aching and they're going to go get an MRI and they've finished their package and they're burnt out and they're fried and they don't like it anymore because it was too physically grueling. So this is a way to kind of tiptoe to even really fit. Just from sprinkling in these little sessions that don't bother you, so they're arguably safer and less downside risk than a devoted fitness regimen. And furthermore, the emerging science in exercise, physiology and general health study is that the obligation to just move more in daily life is ranking above adherence to a devoted fitness regimen for all manner of health and disease protection.

[00:49:52.140] – Brad
Because we're so still and sedentary that even the fitness freaks, there's this idea called the compensation theory of exercise. So it's a scientifically validated phenomenon where they've studied people that do adhere to a devoted fitness regimen. So let's say that's that neighbor of yours that rolls out of there before it gets light to go to their spin class every morning at six a.m. and they're really, really into it. But then they go on the subway, they commute, they sit at a desk all day, they come home and they binge on digital programming. So they're still in sedentary for hours and hours every day.

[00:50:35.760]
They showed that this population of devoted fitness enthusiasts who are otherwise sedentary had the same level of metabolic disease risk factors as people who didn't exercise. And you can think, look, even extreme fitness person who's training an hour every single day, that's seven hours a week. There's one hundred and sixty eight hours in a week. So if those other 100 plus hours, of course, we need to sleep.

[00:51:00.660]
So we got to take a third of that and be still. But if you're engaging in all these sedentary lifestyle patterns, the exercise is not going to help you. And instead we just have to move more. Mark Sisson coined this term JFW it stands for just effing walk and that would be the centerpiece of a more active lifestyle. And you can get more health and even fitness benefit from walking more versus going and punching your gym ticket even more and pushing yourself really hard once in a while or an hour a day.

[00:51:34.620] – Allan
What I like about those is that it's something you can fit around your normal workday. So you're sitting at your desk and you want to get up to go to the restroom or go get some water or something. And so you just sit there and say, I'm a pop out 5, 10 squats, bodyweight squats. And the other cool thing about him is because these are these are things that you're adding to your day. You can really put a little bit of forethought, forethought to them and say, I want these to be functional exercises, not just something like a spin class where I know I'm burning calories, but quite frankly, you're saying squats, fundamental movement. You talked about deadlifts with the hex bar, fundamental movement to build strength in your legs, strengthen your core. You know, all of these things that even pull ups, there's some function to being able to climb going upstairs.

[00:52:26.820] – Allan
All of those are functional movements that you're building into your day that might otherwise not include any workout at all. So I just like how that can be a part of every day. You can just have those triggers. You can be doing squats while you're brushing your teeth, so there's so many opportunities for you to to do these types of things in your day and not having to think that you have to dedicate an hour or it's wasted. I just like that concept.

[00:52:56.370] – Brad
Yeah, I was just talking to someone the other day about this and they're expressing a bit of interest. How do I throw this in? I spend a lot of time at night watching my TV shows, he said. I said, well, make a rule then. If you're going to binge watch, at least in between every episode drop for a set of twenty pushups or squats or whatever. Put some rules in place because I think, hey, I listen to a lot of podcasts. I fill my mind with these great ideas. Do I execute on every single one of them? No, I don't, because I'm just too busy or whatever my excuse is.

[00:53:27.690] – Brad
So in this case, what worked for me really well, Allan was I wanted to kind of raise the fitness platform from which I launched my formal workouts because I've been a long-time fan of sprinting. I'm obsessed with high jumping. Now I compete in the old man's Masters high jump track and field.

[00:53:46.800] – Allan
Now, 55 to 59 is not old man. I refuse to accept that.

[00:53:50.630] – Brad
I'm slotted in that division, whatever you want to call it, man. So I go out and do these awesome workouts, let's say once a week and they're pretty tough. And when I get to the track I'm all pumped up and I'm competitive and I feel great. But of course I learn over the next 36 to 48 hours and I kind of pushed it too hard there. And my calves are screaming and I'm in pain now and I'm really tired. And so what was happening was I wasn't approximating that big challenge very frequently because I couldn't I had to rest and recover and the go hit it once a week again.

[00:54:23.860] – Brad
And so what I designed was this morning, routine of flexibility, mobility, core strengthening, just a fun little thing that's predicated to help me with the muscle strength and mobility I need for sprinting and jumping, I'd say. But I threw this in and decided to do it every single morning. Again, not that strenuous, but it chips away at my fitness without interrupting my busy day. I'm on a streak now of over four years, where I have not missed a single day of this wonderful morning flexibility, mobility, strengthening routine. And it started out as something really modest because I wanted to have that low bar to jump over to tell myself I'm going to commit to doing this. I'm not going to miss a day. And again, it's not too much trouble. I'm not dripping in sweat at the end, but to have it as part of my lifestyle, where I don't even have to think about it now and I get through this, it used to be a 12-minute routine and now it's a minimum of thirty five minutes.

[00:55:25.390] – Brad
I know that's not doable for many people, but whatever you have to commit to. So if you can say, hey, I'm going to give the first five minutes of my day and I'm going to do the yoga sun salutation sequence, you can see that on YouTube. It's the foundation of a yoga class where you stretch and then you compress and then you sweep and you do these movements. But if you can say that you do that every single day, we'll count that in this micro workout category and then everything else flows from there because now you've built into place this rule that this is now part of your lifestyle. It's not negotiable. It's going to become a habit.

[00:55:59.500] – Brad
And then you'll set yourself up for more success doing these little these little tidbits that we described about, you know, lifting the deadlift bar when you go through the garbage can. So I want to make sure the listener can take away something that's so simple that they might even scoff at how easy it is to implement this new commitment of five minutes a day or let's say you put a sticky note on your computer or your office door and say 40 squats before you leave the office every day. And if it's 4:57 p.m. and you're clocking out at five, I don't know if it's a home office or you're leaving whatever and you haven't done it, then you've got to do 40 right there. No big deal.

[00:56:40.090] – Brad
But if you do 10, you know, on the on the 90 minute break, you set your little timer, then it's nothing. And so we have to put rules in place because it's easy to let these things slide. And if the goal is really modest, boy, that's when I think we can build that momentum. And that's what's happened in my life with my morning routine.

[00:57:02.080] – Allan
Brad, I define wellness as being the healthiest, fittest, and happiest you can be. What are three strategies or tactics to get and stay well?

[00:57:09.850] – Brad
Whoo! Number one is to implement that morning routine and make it five minutes. Don't even go beyond that until you get into a good groove. So that one I'm really strong. It's been a life-changing thing for me, especially because I'm not a template, regimented guy. I answer to myself, I work for myself, I work from home. And so I can do whatever I want every day. But this thing is really anchored my day. And the fact that I can do that and tell the public about it, I believe it helps me become a more focused and disciplined person in every other way for the rest of my day and all the distractions that I face. So the morning routine, number one.

[00:57:54.970] – Brad
Number two is ditch those big three toxic modern foods, do it for twenty-one days. And what you'll discover is you'll habituate away from this nibbling on sugar and grain-based, high-calorie snacks. Your body will actually feel better, even though you're giving up what you think are these precious things that you can't do without and that you deserve so much. After working that hard day, of course you deserve a pint of processed ice cream with chemicals in there. Even hippie trippy Ben and Jerry's products have vegetable industrial seed oils and some of the flavors. I couldn't believe it when I saw it on the side of the box. So ditch the big three.

[00:58:36.460] – Brad
And then you asked for three, right?

[00:58:38.080] – Allan
Yes.

[00:58:39.130] – Brad
Number three is don't take on too much, so just do the first two.

[00:58:43.890] – Allan
Oh, I like that. All right, Brad if someone wanted to learn more about you and Mark Sisson and your book, Two Meals a Day, where would you like for me to send them?

[00:58:53.650]
Oh, thanks. We have this cool landing page called TwoMealsaDayBook.com, and you can get, it's called preorder bonus items. But even as the book has been released just before the show came out, you can still get our cool preorder bonuses. There's an audio summary, a recipe PDF, and a discount coupon to go shopping for healthy condiments at Primal Kitchen. And then if you go over and visit BradKerns.com, you will be regaled by wild and crazy videos like my morning routine, you can learn what I do and watch me break the world record and speed golf, don't worry if you only have a minute and thirty-eight seconds, that's all it took for me to play the fastest hole of golf ever played.

[00:59:33.240] – Brad
And I'm trying to promote all these healthy lifestyle practices that we live and breathe every day. But I also think it's important to put in a vote for having fun and having a lighthearted approach. So you'll see me kind of being silly. Same without my BRad podcast. I like to inject that sense of humor and not taking ourselves too seriously as we try to improve our lives and optimize in so many different ways.

[00:59:58.050] – Allan
You can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/477 and I'll be sure to have all the links there. Brad, thank you so much for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

[01:00:08.010] – Brad
Thank you, Allan. Great show. Keep up the good work.

[01:00:10.710] – Allan
Thank you.

Post Show/Recap

[01:00:16.090] – Allan
Welcome back, Raz.

[01:00:17.830] – Rachel
Oh, Allan, what a neat conversation, Brad seems like a really energetic guy.

[01:00:22.990] – Allan
He is a very energetic guy. And for those of you that don't know what speed golf is, that I went right over your head. But basically, speed golf is a sport where you hit the golf ball off the tee and then you run to the ball and they basically add your strokes to your time of the run. And so the secret is to run it really, really quickly, to quickly hit the ball again, but be generally accurate because you don't want to be running all over the golf course and then get the ball in the hole. And he managed on a par five basically to get a par four, a birdie. And he did it in just over a minute and a half. I don't know that I could even just run from the tee to the hole in that amount of time. But I just know when I played golf the walking, because I'd be on one side and then I'd be on the other side, then I'd overshoot the hole and then I'd be over here and then I'd be over there. By the time I got through the hole of golf, I'd already walked the whole golf course.

[01:01:23.800] – Allan
And so so that probably not the sport for me. I'm not a sprinter. I'll be the slow go. But yeah, basically that's that's one of the sports he participates in now. And he's a hoot. It's fun to watch people do crazy stuff like that. But just yo actually meet someone who's got the world record at it. It's kind of awesome.

[01:01:48.490] – Rachel
That is a riot. What a funny sport. I just love it.

[01:01:53.350] – Allan
We got into a couple of important things. I mean, obviously with the two meals a day concept is something that I feel a little bit more confident I could do rather than the one meal a day. And it's only because I don't know that I could eat enough calories at one sitting comfortably and to make sure that I'm still getting all the nutrition. The second meal would… I'm going to have to do that so effectively when I eat, I intuitively end up eating two, sometimes I have three meals in my eight hour, six hour window, but easily two meals would work out very well for me.

[01:02:29.920] – Rachel
Sure. Yeah. It seems a lot more doable and easy to plan out too. I like that concept.

[01:02:36.370] – Allan
And then we got into the toxic food stuff. And yes, we've talked about sugar on this podcast. Actually, I think maybe even my second episode, episode number two was about sugar. We know what sugar is doing to us. We know for the most part what bread is usually doing to almost all of us. And then the seed oils is an area where I probably don't talk about enough. And in the worst part of it is, the labeling on foods, all the seed oils are going to have heart-healthy on their label, because they're not saturated fat and unfortunately they're still horrible, horrible food for you to be putting in your body.

[01:03:24.950] – Allan
But they managed to get to a point where they're marketing, the healthy thing, it just breaks my heart. Eat healthy canola oil. And I'm like, no.

[01:03:38.840] – Rachel
It is really confusing. And that was hard for me too when I started keto, because you think of an oil that's derived from a plant or a seed, I mean, that sounds perfectly healthy. What could possibly be wrong? And then when you add the label on to it that says that it's heart-healthy, what could be wrong? The government said that it's healthy. So how do you weed that out? It's taken a long time to unlearn some of these habits.

[01:04:06.160] – Allan
Yeah. It does it just that that kind of stuff just drives me nuts. If you want to eat heart healthy, you're going to eat a lot of grains. You're going to eat a lot of those seed oils. And then the worst part of it is if you're going to try to go low fat otherwise and what are they going to do? They're going to put sugar in the food to make it palatable. So you're getting the trifecta of the bad toxic foods, just trying to follow the guidelines that our government is so kind to put out there for us.

[01:04:38.540] – Rachel
It's so crazy. Now, what kind of oils do you like to use when you're cooking? We've we found good success with coconut oil. It's easy and it cooks well. And it's got a good flavor.

[01:04:50.090] – Allan
I use I use avocado oil. Some I like to use I like to use coconut oil, particularly like if I'm going to make something that's more of an Asian style restaurant. So like, let's say I'm going to stir fry some chicken and some vegetables and then I want maybe I'm going to try to make it into more of an Oriental flavor or I'm going to put some coconut and curry. I'll use the coconut oil in that. If I'm going to make something that's going to be more of like a meat sauce or something like that, I'll use I'll just use the hamburger and I don't drain it.

[01:05:22.940] – Rachel
Right.

[01:05:23.600] – Allan
Those recipes are like drain the oil.

[01:05:25.584] – Rachel
No.

[01:05:27.680] – Allan
Throw away half your food.

[01:05:30.110] – Rachel
Yeah. Don't don't replace that with more oil. That's good stuff.

[01:05:33.350] – Allan
We're going to throw away half the egg because we don't want to eat the yolk. We're going to throw away the fat because we don't want fat. And I'm like, no, put that in there. It's delicious. It's what makes hamburger taste good. When you take all that oil out, it tastes like dirt. So I'll do that. And then, like, if I'm going to use like an olive oil, I'll use it as a dressing. Or I will sometimes, like if I've cooked a sauce once I'm done cooking the sauce and now it's just kind of warm, heat it ready to go. I'll slather in some olive oil at that point to give us a little bit more umph.

[01:06:09.780] – Allan
And then I, I love cooking with butter. I love cooking with butter. I'll get the Kerry Gold or good quality butter. We've got two or three brands down here that are grass fed cows from Panama and I assume they speak Spanish. They make butter and that's it's a good butter. I'll cook eggs with that.

[01:06:34.250] – Allan
Sometimes when we're going to have bacon and I cook the bacon in the pan, I might use the grease, some of the grease and bacon and just cook it with that. I'm not afraid of saturated fat because what I have found is saturated fat makes my HDL go up. And the ratio of total cholesterol, the HDL improves when I'm eating saturated fat. If I take out the saturated fat, my HDL plummets, my LDL goes down maybe a little bit, but not enough to matter as far as the doctors are concerned. And my HDL is still relatively high. So my ratio of high total to HDL is terrible. So, I want to have the best markers I can have. I'm not worried about the total because I could eliminate all of my HDL and still be over the number. And even when I did statins, my cholesterol was still over 250.

[01:07:42.320] – Allan
And I can't get any lower. So, it is what it is. I just accept that so. I'll use I'll use saturated fat, you know, I eat fish regularly, so I'm getting some omega three oils from the fish.

[01:08:02.270] – Rachel
Good.

[01:08:02.660]
Sometimes I will take krill oil. If I'm not getting enough fish, I'll go ahead and take some krill. Well, and get some more in there. Most of what I'm eating are grass-fed beef. So there's some good fats as far as I'm concerned. Good fats in there because it's grass-fed, grass-finished. So that saturated fat is actually not bad for me. Eggs and pastured eggs. That fat I don't think is bad for me. And then cooking wise avocado oil, olive oil once it's already cooked because I'm not going to cook with olive oil and then just plain old butter.

[01:08:36.560] – Rachel
That sounds great. That's about what we use in the at our house as well. The coconut oil, avocado, occasionally olive, but not often. And of course we also have butter. And I also have a little can of ghee, which I use that on occasion as well. So that was that sounds good. Yeah. The other thing Brad mentioned, which I have to say I kind of geeked out about, was micro workouts. I really liked his idea of well, he mentioned doing a minute here, a minute there, push ups or squats and and lifts and whatnot.

[01:09:09.110] – Rachel
I tell all my friends that if you're struggling with motivation, you're not feeling it. Do half a workout or go out for one mile. You don't have to spend two hours at the gym. If you just take five or ten minutes and get a little fresh air, do something that gets your heart rate up. I mean, that's enough to move for that day.

[01:09:28.010] – Allan
Yeah, there used to be this kind of mantra that you needed to have your heart rate up in the cardio zone for at least twenty-four minutes. And apparently there was a study, but the doctors, now they've done the science and they're kind of like now you're going to get the same benefit doing five 5-minute workouts, as you would, doing a 24 or 25 minute workout. So just anything that's going to get your heart rate up for just even five minutes is going to be beneficial.

[01:10:02.440] – Allan
And actually, one of the other things I really like about microworkouts is that there's something that you can spread movement throughout the day. If you go to work and you think I'm going to sit at the desk for a solid four hours, then I'm going to have lunch and then I'll sit at the desk for another five hours and not move during that period of time other than an occasional toilet break or get some coffee. You're sitting still and, you know, whereas if you when you got up to get that coffee, just did some jumping jacks or, you know, some bodyweight squats or a couple of push-ups and then move around, your energy level is going to go up and you might find you don't actually need that coffee,

[01:10:50.410] – Rachel
Right? Yeah. Just get your blood pumping, get a little fresh air. And that might be enough to energize you for the rest of the afternoon.

[01:10:58.300] – Allan
And there's another part of the micro workout theme that I like. So sometimes we wake up in the morning and we're lik I really don't feel like running. I don't feel like it. Then we put we force ourselves to do it. But I got to do it. I got to have my streak intact. That got to do it. And we get out there. And this very unfortunate thing happens is that our bodies were actually fatigued.

[01:11:21.710] – Allan
We had not recovered properly from our workouts and because maybe because we weren't feeling right, maybe because we weren't sleeping right, maybe because just doing too much, too soon. We're not recovered. And because we didn't listen to our body, we're doing more harm than good. So, looking at it from a micro workout, you get there and say, I really don't want to do this, but then you say, I'll do it for five minutes.

[01:11:47.780] – Rachel
Yes.

[01:11:48.650] – Allan
And if after that five minutes you're not feeling it, stop. Please stop. Your body was talking to you and you were ignoring it or trying to override it with reason. Please do this when the body really did need recovery time so that if you get out there for five minutes, you've got the benefit of that five minutes and you're not overtraining. And then a lot of people, you just start it like I started my route and I ran out two minutes and I agree that I'm going to turn my back two minutes or sometimes you just realize I want to keep running. I don't actually want to stop now and you get your full workout in because that's what you needed to do.

[01:12:32.630] – Allan
So microworkouts kind of have two functions. One is that you're breaking up the work into smaller portions, which sometimes makes it easier to fit into a busy day.

[01:12:41.060] – Rachel
Right.

[01:12:41.600] – Allan
And then the other thing is micro workouts can kind of be that strategy to get you started. I'm at least going to do five minutes and then if I'm done, I'm done. And you can listen to your body, as you put it, through the paces. And I just know when I ran a lot, I hated the first two or three minutes of running. I hate it. You start going and it's like man, this sucks. Then something clicks on when your body warms up and then it feels good.

[01:13:15.140] – Rachel
That's true. Some of us like to say the first mile is a liar and that you feel that this isn't right. I got to shake out the cobwebs. I'm not feeling it today. But then once you get that first mile under your belt, sometimes the to the second and third or however long you're out there, they just fly right by. So, yeah, for sometimes the first miles is a liar. Sometimes it's the first five minutes of a workout that's a liar.

[01:13:38.960] – Rachel
But yeah, if you could just do something it's better than nothing. And like Brad mentioned if you're sitting there watching TV at night, do some pushups during the commercials and then do some sit-ups during the next commercial. I mean, just these little movements throughout the day, it's always better than nothing at all.

[01:13:57.350] – Allan
Absolutely. And with the commercials the way they are today, I mean, the 30-minute program has eight minutes of commercials.

[01:14:05.810] – Rachel
Just about, yes. Pretty much.

[01:14:08.840] – Allan
You don't have to watch too much TV and you've got an hour of workouts done yet. Half an hour anyway, watching a couple hours of TV. You got half an hour right there, just watching two hours of TV. So if it's a popular program, because when they first start out, they don't. And I see this because I watch stuff on Netflix and I'll see a show the first year it came out. And, they have basically five to six minutes of commercials.

[01:14:38.390] – Allan
And then by the time they get to their fifth or sixth season, that's it's up to over eight minutes of commercials now because I'm flipping through these this shows, I'm like, how could I just watch five shows on Netflix and an hour and all those damn commercials that I'm not having to watch.

[01:14:55.130] – Rachel
Right? For sure.

[01:14:56.750] – Allan
Netflix is a little different as far as if you're going to be doing them because they don't have the advertisements, the commercials. But, okay, you know, you watch half the show or watch the show and then do the work before you start that next episode.

[01:15:13.760] – Rachel
That's right.

[01:15:17.810] – Allan
Alright, Rachel, anything else you want to go over before we cut out?

[01:15:20.390] – Rachel
No, that was great. Great conversation.

[01:15:22.700] – Allan
All right. Well, let's we'll talk next week.

[01:15:24.800] – Rachel
You bet. Take care.

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