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Let's Say Hello

Rachel Discussion

Interview

Text

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Post show with Rachel.

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Patreons

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

– Eliza Lamb	– John Dachauer	– Super Anonomous
– Ken McQuade	– Leigh Tanner	– Tim Alexander

Thank you!

Another episode you may enjoy

Your perfect repeatable week for health and fitness

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Let's Say Hello

Rachel Discussion

Interview

Text

Post Show/Recap

Post show with Rachel.

Music by Dave Gerhart

Patreons

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

– Eliza Lamb	– John Dachauer	– Super Anonomous
– Ken McQuade	– Leigh Tanner	– Tim Alexander

Thank you!

Another episode you may enjoy

Your perfect repeatable week for health and fitness

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Let's Say Hello

[00:03:34.870] – Allan

Hey, Ras, how are you?

[00:03:36.420] – Rachel

Good, Allan, how are you today?

[00:03:38.840] – Allan

I'm doing okay.

[00:03:40.790] – Allan

We're right on the verge. Well, if you've listened to this podcast before, we've talked about Panamanians and the way they like to protest. And they'll block roads, and they don't just block a road or a bridge for a day or two.

[00:03:54.890] – Allan

Sometimes when they get to these kind of things, they block them permanently for weeks. And what happens is that then things that would come to us over thenroad can't get here and so they can't deliver stuff. And then as the result, we run out and people scramble and figure a few things out. But as that goes on week after week, it gets worse and worse. So today I got up, I walked around just looking for things. There's no yogurt on this island at all, which is a staple for our breakfast. We've got eggs. So they figured out the egg problem.

[00:04:30.700] – Rachel

Good.

[00:04:31.220] – Allan

We're running out of bread. They've done something to get a different type of bread, but we're still running out of that now because again, weeks and weeks, there's no orange juice. So we're running out of things. And like gasoline, propane is also very short. And so that's where the struggle is. And it's just like, just sometimes it gets a little frustrating for sure because. It'D be so much nicer if I could just walk to one grocery store. And it have the things I need. And then I can just walk home. But as it stands now, I have to make a circuit of it and walk all over town. This place has milk, this place has eggs, this place has this. But then you get into a store, it's like everything else you wanted. And then that place doesn't have the bread and it doesn't have the coffee. So it's like, okay, now I got to find another place that has the coffee and maybe has bread or I might have to buy a different kind of bread or something else. And so, yeah, it's just this thing that's out there that you struggle through.

[00:05:30.800] – Allan

But we're in a third world country, and this is their country. It's not mine. I just wish it didn't have the downstream effects it has because tourism has completely dried up. And that means that most people send their workers home. When their workers don't work, they don't make any money and they can't feed their family. And this is not a savings type of people. They pretty much live paycheck to paycheck. Even if they had extra money, they would just go spend it.

[00:06:01.320] – Allan

They don't think in terms of the future the same way that a lot of us might think, oh, we just put that money aside. No, they're going to buy something that they needed or wanted for a while, but at the same time, because we're set that way. You can buy a slice of cheese, you can buy a single egg. Oh, gosh, you can buy a single piece of bread if you want. And so if you just have enough money to buy lunch, you can buy lunch. But when they do these blocks and there'S no money and no one's making that money, they're at home. Without the money, they can't necessarily feed their families. And so it's been going on for weeks, and I understand why they're doing it.

[00:06:39.550] – Allan

Hopefully, the government will come to resolve the issue that's going on. It has something to do with the mining contract and it's gone to the supreme court. But every day you just go in the grocery store and it's one more thing that they don't have. And so there's just going to be a point here where there's no gasoline. And there's no propane and people can't cook their food. And we're all just grabbing the last things that are in the grocery store because that's all they can get. That'll be a shame. But that's kind of where we're at right now, so it's a little frustrating.

[00:07:12.340] – Rachel

It is very. I really hope they resolve their stuff soon and realize how many people they're hurting in the process.

[00:07:19.850] – Allan

I don't even think it hits their mind. They just know this is how you get the government to respond. And they just block a road. They just flat out block a road and say, okay, no one's going through this road. No goods or services are going through here. So sometimes they'll let people through.

[00:07:36.210] – Allan

You can walk around the roadblock. If you get out of a car and walk to the other side, some taxis and whatnot, or busses, they can arrange for someone to be on the other side to bus you from there, take you from there so people can move that's not the easiest way, but, yeah goods are stuck and so they're blocking food, they're blocking gasoline, they're blocking propane. Eventually, here, grocery stores will run down on stuff, except just basic, basic stuff. Like, okay, here's a can of tuna, here'S some oil, here's some rice, here's some beans, but they're running out of the other stuff. And then when you don't have any propane, you don't have any gasoline. Everything else stops. Everything else.

[00:08:18.640] – Rachel

My goodness. My gosh. Well, I hope it resolves soon.

[00:08:21.970] – Allan

I do too. But. How are things up there?

[00:08:24.610] – Rachel

Cold.

[00:08:27.250] – Rachel

As you can tell. We're in the middle of winter. It's snowing. It could be icy. At least we have blue sky days today. I mean, it could be worse, but.

[00:08:35.170] – Allan

It just makes it feel colder.

[00:08:38.320] – Allan

I can see the sun, but I can't even feel any heat off of it.

[00:08:41.690] – Rachel

Exactly. Well, it was 20 degrees earlier this morning, so, yeah, cold is cold, but

[00:08:47.740] – Allan

that nuclear. Shouldn't I feel a little.

[00:08:51.030] – Rachel

I wish. Yeah.

[00:08:53.770] – Rachel

But we're managing. Everything's fine up here. Getting ready for the holidays, getting ready for a vacation. Just getting ready to wrap up this year, actually.

[00:09:01.610] – Allan

Yeah. It's kind of fast, isn't it?

[00:09:03.390] – Rachel

It is

[00:09:04.750] – Allan

kind of crazy.

[00:09:05.920] – Rachel

Yep. It'll be New Year's before you know it.

[00:09:08.370] – Allan

All right, are you ready to talk to Peloton, Ben?

[00:09:11.620] – Rachel

Sure. All right.

Interview

[00:10:03.950] – Allan

Ben, welcome to 40+ fitness.

[00:10:06.280] – Ben

Thank you so much for having me on. I'm really excited to have a discussion with you today.

[00:10:10.580] – Allan

Yeah. So the title of your book is called Raise the Bar: How to Push Beyond Your Limits and Build a Strong Future You. And I think a lot of times we get older and we think, okay. Well, I have these limits. Oh, my knee, oh, my ankle, oh, my hip, I've got this job, I've got kids, I've got this, I've got to run. Do that. And as a result, we kind of pocket, if you will, or back of the stove. We push all this stuff that is important. We know it's important, but we just say, okay, I can't. And the word I can't becomes kind of the lexicon of our language.

[00:10:49.330] – Allan

Okay, well, I can't do that because of this. And there's always a because. There always will be a because. And so you had a quote in the book. You started out, this is actually, I think, the second sentence of the book. So I didn't get very far before I was like, okay, I'm going to like this guy Ben. And it was, “all too often, we grow up to define ourselves by our limitations.” I actually made that little quote thing, and I posted on my facebook right. After I read it. I liked it that much.

[00:11:17.380] – Allan

You know, because if we'Re going to talk about raising the bar, we're going to talk about doing anything hard in our lives, good in our lives, because everything that's good is actually kind of hard. We have to raise the bar. We have to raise our performance. We have to do a little better than we're probably doing right now. But if we let those limitations sit out there, they will eat us up.

[00:11:37.660] – Ben

Yeah, I think that's very true. I think every biggest growth opportunity in my life so far has always been through a moment of challenge or an opportunity where I've pushed myself out from a comfort zone or the outside forces have put something challenging in front of me. And I've learned and developed and grown through that process. And so I think as you go through life, as these external factors become probably more increased through kids and more responsibilities and priorities, we tend to, as you say, almost start to doubt ourselves or on a time basis, on an ability basis, on a confidence basis. And I think a big focus of my book is giving people structure to understand that they do have the capabilities to still be doing those things into their mid to late to longest years possible, and also to set them up for success. I used to work in finance, so my brain is very much logical and structured.

[00:12:42.630] – Ben

And so I think the combination of my background of ex finance guy or finance guy into a health and wellness expert means that my approach to fitness and wellness is very structured in the sense that I like to give people a toolkit to use to then tap into whenever they need it. And that's true at any point in someone's life. And a big emphasis of the book is around keeping yourself physically and mentally fit for whatever life throws your way. Because all of us are going to be going through challenges of some sort throughout our lives. Some people suffer grief or go through health challenges or there's lots of things that go on in our lives. I think, most importantly, if we can be ready physically and mentally to tackle those and navigate through those, we're going to navigate through them and come out the other side stronger. Whereas if we don't prepare ourselves physically and mentally for those, they could become an even heavier weight to carry around with you for the rest of your life.

[00:13:48.260] – Allan

Yeah. well, one of the things you got into the book, and as I was kind of, you were going through your story, which is actually kind of fascinating, you'd be surprised there's quite a few parallels in our past. I went through accounting and CPA in school, too, but that was not my first choice. Just like finance wasn't necessarily your first choice, but you talked about how, an I think our aspirations, we were younger, are kind of untainted because, well, of course I can be a professional football player and of course I can be an astronaut. That's what they told me. They told me if you work hard and you do the things and you're in the right place, right time, you can have those things.

[00:14:29.270] – Allan

So we aren't as tainted with our past setbacks as we are when we're older. But one of the tools that you did provide in the book that I thought was something we really need to think about. Because when you get older, I can tell you, you go to the gym. You got all the spunk in the world, I'm going to do the workouts. I'm going to do the thing, and then the knee starts hurting a little or you're ten times sore tomorrow. I actually have a story where I couldn'T get out of bed the next day. I did a workout, and it was really just a benchmark workout. It wasn't even the workout, it was just the benchmark workout. I couldn't get out of bed. I had to call in sick for work the next day.

[00:15:09.330] – Allan

So we have these setbacks, but your approach to setbacks, I think, is very fresh. And I would like for you to talk a little bit about how do we regroup and pivot and do what we've got to do when we face one of those big things.

[00:15:22.070] – Ben

Yeah, I think the first approach that I've always loved to take is really focused on having that growth mindset. I think it's a term or a concept that's been spoken about a lot but I think many of us slip into this world of having a fixed mindset where basically you don't really give anything a go because you're fearing failure before you even start. Whereas a growth mindset is focused all around. Every experience or opportunity is a learning opportunity. And so even if you, in your mind, fail at something across that process you'Re still going to be learning a hell of a lot, which could set you up for success for the next time you come around to it with regards to workouts. And as you get older, your body becoming just slowing down a little bit and it becoming a little bit more challenging mentally and physically.

[00:16:10.450] – Ben

I think what's most important for me and from a lot of the clients I've worked with across the years, is, again, going back to that toolkit of setting you up for success. Like, can you structure your day in a way which makes sure you, one, commit to the workout so you don't not do it in the first place, but two, you then have a recovery regime that's set up and ready for you, so you're making sure that you're putting that love back into your muscles after working them out, too. And so there's lots of different chapters within the book, but I think having an awareness of everything available to you is a really important factor to begin with. And I broke down in the book all the different areas of wellness, but also understanding when to tap into them. Is really important, too, because I think sometimes in wellness and fitness, there's a lot of noise and there's a lot of people telling you should be doing this, and this is the best way to do it.

[00:17:07.500] – Ben

In reality, we're all different. Right? So my approach is slightly different of here are all the options that I believe are a good tool to be using in your repertoire and test them. Do your due diligence on what works for you, what doesn't work for you, and then across the years, go on a journey of discovery with your health and fitness to find out what really is beneficial for you and your body and your mind. And most importantly, don't try and get it all done in one day. I think what's really, you listen to a lot of these fitness influencers and they're like, I get up go to my boss, I have this crazy breakfast, and then do this and do that. And I think anyone who just lives a life where you've got a lot of other things going on like that, is just straight away overwhelming. So my approach typically is try and at least tick off, like, one thing to begin with. And then as you start to build those habits, as you start to build your confidence, that one thing then will lead on to other positive habits in your day.

[00:18:09.370] – Ben

But I think if you can kick start your morning in particular, with at least either a healthy breakfast, which is going to feed your gut, make you feel good, or go and work out, get outside, get out in fresh air working out and moving your body is going to look different for everyone. But I think, importantly, finding what works for you, finding what feeds your soul, makes you feel good, is key in that.

[00:18:33.680] – Allan

Yeah, one of the core components of that, and it's what I noticed across your story, you got into this a little bit later in the book, was that you always kind of fell back on one core thing and that was the values, the values that you had for yourself. As I've kind of started looking at motivation and how that plays, I think that's the holy grail. I think when you actually put value in the health of your body. When you put value in the quality of your life, it made you make decisions and do things that were completely against the grain of what most people would do.

[00:19:12.690] – Allan

Like, particularly when you went from finance, well paid job, all the accolades, all the stuff to, okay, now I'm going to pedal on a bicycle, over a tv, on the Internet, that fell back on some pretty deep seated values for you that went beyond just winning, because that'S what finance was, was winning. This was something entirely different.

[00:19:38.800] – Ben

100%. I think you mentioned, I go into one of the chapters in the book about the importance of understanding your values. And I think the main thing that I like to say within this section is, like, the first step of self development is self awareness.

[00:19:54.230] – Ben

And so I think a lot of us go through life evolving our values by almost imitating other people or getting influenced by lots of people throughout our lives, which is one part of it. But I think what's most important is there's no truer happiness than if you can show up every single day as your true self. And so I think spending the time to sit down with yourself and think.

[00:20:16.660] – Ben

What is most important to me? How do I want to show up in the world? What do I believe in? And doing that consistently, it really gives you that confidence to then move into spaces that you may not think you could have done before. Like you mentioned, as I transitioned from finance to fitness, I'd been spending years testing whether this industry was right for me.

[00:20:40.250] – Ben

I've been surrounding myself with people within the industry. I've been coaching classes as a hobby. But I think most importantly, the things that really, truly mattered to me at that time were looking after my health, fostering strong relationships, helping other people, like having huge gratitude around that, and having an influence on other people, and building a legacy for myself and so I think that I went on a discovery during that period and a bit of a deeper dive into. Okay, so what really matters to me.

[00:21:12.230] – Ben

And what that ended up looking like was I wanted to join a business that was really helping people. I wanted to do a job that had a huge passion for through music and health and fitness. And what's really interesting, I was diagnosed with skin cancer during that period so I think that almost forced my hand a little bit into that space. But I think the takeaway from this chapter that I'd love for people to take away listen to this podcast is, I don't want anyone to have to go through a cancer diagnosis to be forced into assessing those values like I wish I had done it before. So then I was set up for success and didn't have to go through mental and physical challenges that I did. Yeah, I think ultimately, when it comes down to hard things or challenging moments, if you can truly stand up and just stay true to your values, stay true to who you are, you're going to go to sleep at night feeling a lot more in control.

[00:22:13.630] – Ben

And I also love to say we can only control the controllable. So if you can finish the day being like, I did everything I possibly could to be myself, I owned everything I said, all the actions that I did today, I believe and I trust in then in my eyes, that's one of the quickest ways to building confidence within yourself and building a healthy and happy life.

[00:22:36.610] – Allan

Now, in the book, you got into resilience and you took a pivot. And I'm glad you did because it wasn'T something that most people talk about when they think about resilience. And I think they think about resilience as they think about the kind of the phrases like grit and determination and just grinding it out.

[00:22:54.310] – Allan

So it's just this harsh, hard thing that we build over time. But you pointed to the fact that support is a key component of being truly resilient. Can you talk a little bit about that?

[00:23:09.710] – Ben

Yeah, I think it's vital to understand that we can't do things alone. Like everything that I've done in life that'S been a big success, I've always been supported by a team of people, or friends or family or I think to believe that you're going to go out there on your own and do whatever you want to do, whether it's like build a multimillion pound business or achieve great sporting success, or it'S very unlikely that you're going to be able to go there and just go solo.

[00:23:39.050] – Ben

And actually, what I found is that I've personally got to places quicker because there's normally people within the industry or that, you know, that know a little bit more about something so that you can learn quicker and get inspired by those that have been there before and learn from other people's mistakes. I think what's really interesting is I worked in private equity, which is a very fast moving business within finance. And I was very young, comparatively, to be in this industry. But it pushed me in a way to build such resilience, because I had to learn really fast. I had to learn how to be around CEOs of companies, I had to learn how to be at board meetings. And discuss things in financial details in depth. And I had to learn a hell of a lot around business strategy and financial modeling.

[00:24:34.670] – Ben

And if I hadn't pushed myself and moved into that space and surrounded myself by those people, I would never have had that opportunity. And if I'd just gone on my own mission to get to that spot, I never would have even got anywhere close. And so I think there's so much power in surrounding yourself by people who inspire you, people who challenge you, because I truly believe, and what I found throughout my life is that at any point in time, you are typically the average of the five people you spend the most time with or you're interacting with on the most regular basis.

[00:25:12.530] – Ben

And I think it's important to have a mixture of people. I don't think you need almost people that you can rely on to ask questions to and inspire you, but I really, truly believe you need people to lean on in times of need as well, who are maybe a bit more emotional. And it's good to have a bit of diversity within that solid group of people that are around you.

[00:25:33.820] – Allan

Yeah, you talked about your parents in there, but another one I'd like to bring up, that you had a coworker a female coworker, and her skill set was the analytics and the numbers, and your skill set was the smiling and talking to people and the two of you kind of put that together to form really a strong team that was capable of each of you filling up some of the things that you weren't as strong at while you built those. You didn't just say, okay, you do all the numbers, I'll do all the talking, and you just leave it there. You still kept working on learning how to do the numbers while you were doing it. This was just the bridge, just the support that you needed to push yourself through and be successful on the other side.

[00:26:17.850] – Ben

Yeah, definitely. And the first step with that was me admitting to myself that I needed to work this out. And I think I was speaking to someone the other day and they said, what'S the biggest myth that it's like shouldn't be believed? I think the term fake it until you make it. I just don't love that term at all because it's probably the worst bit of advice you can give anyone. Actually, I think my advice would be to be true to yourself, be honest to yourself, say, you know what? I actually don't know what I'm doing here, and work with the people that you trust to support you in that moment.

[00:26:55.380] – Ben

And then very quickly, most of us if we put the time and effort into something, we will learn and we'll grow and develop into the space. And that's what I ended up doing myself. But I'm still at a stage where my strengths lie in another area. So I truly believe that we should lean on our strengths. But don't forget about the weaknesses, because at some stage, you're going to get caught out if you just focus on your strengths. But, yeah, I think delegating and also understanding that there are people, we're all going to be slightly different and have different strengths and weaknesses is important.

[00:27:30.510] – Allan

Yeah. So one of my strengths is lifting. I can get really strong if I put my mind to it. I can have strong endurance, but it takes a lot more work. And so I could be an awesome grandfather. But if we go to the zoo, my grandkids might just run me to death if I don't train myself to be the grandfather that can keep up with the grandkids. When I did a tough mudder with my daughter, she was a level one crossfit coach, and I wanted to do a tough mudder with her. If I didn't work on my strength, endurance, grip strength, all of it, she would have left me in the dust.

[00:28:08.090] – Allan

And I would have respected it. I said, sure, you go on. I'm slowing you down. But I went into that race saying, no, I'm not going to have to say that. So I pushed through weaknesses I had. I had to lose weight, I had to get stronger. I had to improve my endurance. And all that was just knowing, okay, these are my weaknesses. My mental strength, my tenacity, my willingness to push myself was always there. I just had to apply it.

[00:28:33.750] – Allan

And so it was understanding your values. Understanding what you want to accomplish, and then just kind of like you did over and over in your life, just put your head down and say, this is where I'm going. I might be in last place right now, but I won't be when this race is over. And I think that's true resilience when you'Re asking for help, when you're true to yourself and you persevere because you don't see failure as a potential and you do what's necessary, even if it's asking for help to get there.

[00:29:05.220] – Ben

Yeah. And I think on top of that, I really, truly believe that as we go through life, if you stop learning your brain will just slowly slow down very similar to your body. There was a great analogy that I got told once where if someone breaks their arm, you have your arm in a car for, like, six weeks, and because you keep your arm in the same position for that long, the calcification of the bone, it never actually gets back to where it was before.

[00:29:31.640] – Ben

And so if you think about if that's just over six weeks, if we as individuals are not moving our bodies or sitting down too much, like slowly but surely, that's going to be our bodies and our mind. And it was an analogy that blew my mind because I thought with all the clients I work with it'S never too late to get started, but if we don't get started soon, then it's going to become even harder. And so I suppose to a lot of your listeners, what I'd say is, whatever age you are, today is the best day to get started with your health and fitness journey. Because for me, I'm inspired and my biggest motivation now is so I can move around with my grandkids when I'm in my 60s 70s 80s. That sounds quite strange because I am in my 30s, but that's my main driver, my main motivation. I don't even have kids right now.

[00:30:23.720] – Ben

But that's my main reason for still getting up and going to the gym and improving my mobility and flexibility and whatnot.

[00:30:34.080] – Allan

Yeah, well, I want to be able to wipe my own ass when I'm 105. So there's that.

[00:30:39.150] – Ben

That's the goal.

[00:30:42.190] – Allan

And it is you set a goal, you set who you want to be. You set your future, and you start working towards that, you're potentially going to have setbacks, you're going to have things that are going on, but you do the best with what you can, where you are, with what you have.

[00:30:55.240] – Allan

And one of the tools you put in the book that I think is really valuable for helping someone kind of put their starting point on paper, if you will, is to do an audit of your well being. Can you talk a little bit about that audit and how to go about that?

[00:31:10.870] – Ben

Yes, I think this is going back into the combination of my finance and fitness background. So for those that know, obviously, within a business, a business will have to audit their financials every quarter. So what they're doing within that process is they're submitting how their business is doing. What's the business health at the time. From a financial perspective, from a progress and growth perspective and essentially, they're providing figures to their shareholders to say, this is where we're at, this is where the business is moving forward. So I believe that we should be doing this on a regular basis for our health and wellness.

[00:31:51.150] – Ben

And so within the auditing or well being pillars, I try and break this down into movement, into nutrition, into rest. And also mental well being. And I think within the book, I break this down into lots of different categories and give people things that have really benefited me and also lots of the clients that I've worked with across the years. And I think essentially what this auditing and wellbeing is all about is having a check in with yourself, whether it's every quarter or every month, and just saying, all right, where am I at today?

[00:32:24.580] – Ben

Because what's gone on before, I can't change. But what is going to go on going forward, I can change. So let's have an understanding of where I'm at today. Which areas can I improve on, and what are the steps I can take to make an adjustment to these areas so I can support myself to live a happy and healthy life going forward? I think sometimes in life, we're on a train of just going through life and everything's moving super fast, and sometimes it'S really good to just have a moment to check in with yourself. And that's what this concept is all about. And then, obviously, providing them the toolkit to go out there and make the changes within their life.

[00:33:02.080] – Allan

Yeah, and some of the eye opening things that you might find from this audit is, okay, well, how well am I sleeping? And then you realize, well, it's crap. I'm not sleeping well at all. I'm staying up too late. I'm doing things that aren't helping me go to sleep and I don't feel rested in the morning but I just keep hit some coffee, hit a doughnut and go. And you know, that's not serving your health, but that's what you do because that's what you've always done. You look at your fitness and you may say, when was the last time I actually worked out?

[00:33:36.040] – Allan

And you're like, well, okay, I went for a walk, but really the last time I worked out, maybe that was last July. You're like, okay, I got some things to work on, so it'll help you see things that you can work on, but I think it'll also give you these opportunities to see your wins. And so, similar to the way your father was when you were playing football when you were younger, you were playing very well and you were scoring three goals in a game, but he always found something for you to focus on, to improve on. And you had the resilience and the strong mind to say, okay, well, the only way I can solve this problem is to score four goals next time. And it's not that we have to go that way with our health and fitness, but obviously I think all of us know that there's probably some low hanging fruit.

[00:34:19.260] – Allan

So the first few times you do this audit of your health, of your wellness, you're going to find things that you should be focusing your attention on and there is a finite amount of time and things like that that you can do. So this will also kind of help you prioritize where you should be spending the time so that you're getting the most out of it.

[00:34:38.250] – Ben

I totally agree with you. There is some easy hanging fruit there. And I think sometimes within health and wellness it's really difficult because like I mentioned before, there's a lot of noise. And so what I've tried really to do within this chapter is break down things in a really simple way and again, give people the awareness and not put the pressure on them to be like, right if you do all of these things but understand that it's accumulation of these things that's going to get you to living a healthy and happier life and says maybe one week you might work out three times and then the next week you won't only work out once.

[00:35:15.250] – Ben

But it might be getting better in other areas. And so a lot of our health and wellness comes down to stress on the body and within that, we have good stress and we have bad stress and so for me, it's about tapping into this toolkit to work more on the good stress and less on the bad stress and work on the energy givers in life and move away from what I call in the book, the energy takers. And so, yeah, I think it's important to have awareness of what's available to you and then start testing things for your body, because we're all slightly different.

[00:35:48.430] – Allan

Yeah, well, when you were going through your cancer treatments and getting yourself healthy again, you weren't killing it on the bike, you weren't doing all these hard workouts anymore. You struggled with that, obviously, because that was a part of your values, was someone who does these things and the people around you and everything, that was a core part of your life. But you knew, okay, until I solve this, this is number one. Till I solve this, then the rest of those things don't really matter. I could be the fittest corpse out there, but it's not going to do me any good. I got to heal. And then there were other times where. Yeah, you took a detour or went off path for the wrong reasons, and it took you a while to find your way back. So I think, again, this self awareness that you get from something like this audit lets you kind of put together. And help you redefine why you're doing what you're doing.

[00:36:42.610] – Allan

And basically, yes, sometimes you're not doing the optimal thing because it's just not the right time to be doing that thing. You need to be doing something else.

[00:36:52.870] – Ben

I think what's really important to note there on my cancer journey was physically, I couldn't do what I'd always done. And throughout my life, I'd always relied on fitness as my go to for my mental health, my physical health. And when that got stripped away from me, it made me go a bit deeper into the other areas of wellness. So I start to focus a lot more on my nutrition and I start to focus on my sleep, hygiene and my rest and recovery.

[00:37:21.960] – Ben

And I think sometimes we get caught up in wellness being, you got to just go to the gym, but there's so much more to it and I think really what is at the top is sleep, hygiene and sleep quality, I really believe is one of the most important things to our health and well being. And so that is the first thing that you're not getting right or you're not trying to improve, then sometimes all this other stuff is almost not a priority.

[00:37:51.110] – Ben

And the same with nutrition. If you're working out five, six times a week, but then you're going and eating fast food every single day, it isn'T going to serve you. And I really believe that what we're putting inside our bodies, whether it's nutrition or whether it's like products that we're using or environments we're surrounding ourselves, it actually has a dramatic effect on our health and wellness. And so all of these things, let's say you're injured or fitness, is still new to you, or you haven't been in it for a long time. There's other areas within the wellness space that you can really tap into as your kickstart, into improving yourself, into building you into that stronger fit of you.

[00:38:31.990] – Ben

And hopefully, as you start to build those habits into your life, you're going to build the confidence to just start integrating more and more.

[00:38:38.790] – Allan

Yeah, well, the problem was we were able to get away with it when we were in our teens, and our body'S not quite as forgiving for us to not get the sleep, not get the right food. We're seeing the results of that over time, and as a result, we just have to be a little bit more diligent. There's a question that I ask every guest, and I think this question is going to probably resonate with you as well as anyone I've ever talked to based on your book.

[00:39:02.000] – Allan

But I define wellness as being the healthiest, fittest, and happiest you can be. What are three strategies or tactics to get and stay well?

[00:39:10.830] – Ben

Yeah, I think that it's difficult to nail down three, because like I said there'S a lot of things as option to us but I think just going simple terms like getting your body moving on the regular is going to be really important for both your mental and physical health. I mean, I've worked with millions of people over the years via the peloton platform, but also as like one on one clients.

[00:39:34.160] – Ben

And I've seen dramatic changes to people's mindset, people's physical look and also mental well being, just by moving their body on a regular basis. I think if you're not doing that right now, that's definitely something I'd encourage you to do. And it can literally start by, like we mentioned at the start of the podcast, just getting outside for a walk and then giving yourself a goal every single week, whether it's working out three times a week to start with, and then building that up into longer workouts. And then finding what works for you. I think number two is focusing on nutrition and focusing on feeding your body foods that are going to really benefit your gut health, foods that are going to be good back to you. And what I mean by that is foods that are nutritious for your body and that it isn't that hard for your body to break down. So for me, that is high quality proteins, carbs of some sort, but generally sort of like carbs are high in fiber and then lots of leafy greens and vegetables and fruits. And I think trying to move away from processed food is really key.

[00:40:46.740] – Ben

I think something that I've worked with a lot of clients on is we are influenced when we walk into a supermarket by so many things that it makes our brain just go wild. And I think sometimes we don't really know. And so a big tip for me when you're looking at food is understanding what is in our food. So taking an opportunity to start looking at labels doesn't need to be militantly. But just by understanding what you're putting into your body every single day from a calorific point of view, but also from a chemical point of view, is a big stepping stone to improving your health. There's a lot of, lot of ingredients in a lot of the products that we have in our supermarket. So the quicker you understand what they are and what they're doing to our body, probably the quicker you're going to stop eating them. And I know it's not easy, finances are challenging thing with regards to food.

[00:41:38.420] – Ben

And time, but I think we can sometimes coast through that space in our life. And really, you wouldn't put crappy fuel into a Ferrari or something that you really love, or you wouldn't water a plant with things that are going to kill it. So why are we feeding our bodies with things that are not making our body and mind function that well? And then thirdly, I think focus on rest. Rest is such an important part of our overall well being practice. And the first step of rest is sleep. If we can improve our sleep quality. Something that I discovered through working in finance was, doesn't matter how long you sleep necessarily, but it's actually about the quality of your sleep. And so I won't go into too much detail, but we have cycles in our sleep patterns. And so if you can get enough deep and rem sleep in within your night, that could be more beneficial than if you sleep 9 10 hours of not that good quality sleep.

[00:42:37.900] – Ben

And a big part of that is understanding how your practices before bed set you up for success, to make sure you'Re sleeping right, not being on your phone, not eating too late, not looking at screens too late or wearing blue blocking glasses or blue light blocking glasses. And just understanding like, how can I set myself up to success here to make sure that I get a solid amount of quality sleep that's going to regenerate my body for tomorrow, but also keep you mentally in a good place as you wake up tomorrow.

[00:43:10.250] – Allan

Thank you.

[00:43:11.000] – Allan

Ben, if someone wanted to learn more about you and learn more about the book, Raise the Bar, where would you like for me to send them?

[00:43:18.030] – Ben

So I have a website so my website, www.benaldis.com, spelled aldis.com. You can also find me on Instagram. So it's Benjamin Aldis on Instagram. And yeah, if anyone has any questions I'm hugely passionate about health and wellness. I've worked with, as I said, millions of people across the years. I currently work for a business called Peloton, who they have online fitness content. We do bike classes or spinning classes. We do tread classes. We do strength yoga, meditation. So the options are endless with regards to the fitness stuff.

[00:43:56.680] – Ben

If anyone has any questions at any point, I'm more than happy to answer them, help them along the way. This is my lifelong mission to try and help people. So thank you so much for having me on.

[00:44:07.950] – Allan

Thank you. You can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/621

[00:44:12.900] – Allan

And I'll be sure to have the links there. Ben, thank you for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

[00:44:18.010] – Ben

Thank you so much for having me.

Post Show/Recap

[00:44:19.570] – Allan

Welcome back, Ras.

[00:44:20.990] – Rachel

Hey, Allan. What an interesting interview and what an interesting job he has writing for Peloton. But I do like a lot of what he and you discussed about mindset. I mean, it all starts with our self limiting beliefs and questioning what we think we can't do. It's a big thing.

[00:44:40.490] – Allan

Yeah. Well, again, his quote was, all too often we grow up to define ourselves by limitations.

[00:44:46.850] – Rachel

It's true.

[00:44:48.200] – Allan

Yeah. When I read that sentence, I'm like that'S every single person over the age of 40 who wants to lose weight or get more fit is that they start out with the things that they can't do. Well, I can't do this. I want to lose weight. I want to do that, but I can't do this.

[00:45:07.330] – Allan

I've been kind of fooling around on Facebook a little bit last month as you're listening to this, just posting things I call weight loss logic. And I posted one today, is I want to get rid of the fat on this butt, But.

[00:45:19.730] – Rachel

But yes.

[00:45:25.510] – Allan

And that's pretty much it. It's like you want something, but you put something in between you that you think, okay, well, this will stop me from doing it, and it may stop you from doing it the way that you thought you would. Okay, so this kid, Ben, and I'm going to call him a kid because he's just now getting into his 30s, but he wanted to be a professional football player.

[00:45:48.520] – Allan

Now, in his sense, football is soccer the way we do it in the United States. But basically he had every aspiration and from every indication, being younger, that he had the capacity to do this. So he was training and pushing himself, and that drove everything in his life. His aspirations, across everything. He put it all on the line for that thing and then he was notified. Basically, the way it works over there. Was that he wasn't going to get called back.

[00:46:18.810] – Allan

So he knew the writing was on the wall. You're not good enough to make it to the next level, and that's hard to hear.

[00:46:27.530] – Rachel

It is.

[00:46:28.330] – Allan

And so he could have quit. He could have just said, okay, fine. I'll just do something else and move on with his life, which he kind of did, but he got into finance and worked through. But when he got back into a situation where fitness was in his life again, he realized, I've got to keep this in my life. And there was some of it, a conflict of, okay, fitness was going to require him, finance was going to require him to travel eventually for what he was doing, what he was trained to do, but he loved doing these classes.

[00:47:06.080] – Allan

And he just the thought of, okay well, if I move on with this career, I won't be able to do this other thing. So he gave up a lot to get into this, and he went with a company. Granted, he did his due diligence on it. He was a finance guy, a low risk guy, but he did his things on, who are these peloton people and what is this going to mean? But it was a big bet because he was leaving that finance job to go take this other thing that could have amounted to nothing but being a nice looking guy with a british accent. It was kind of a no brainer. He was going to actually be good at this.

[00:47:49.110] – Rachel

For sure.

[00:47:50.200] – Allan

Tall, lean guy with a big smile. Yeah. Doing the class, I could see one or two women maybe being attracted to sitting at their screen, pedaling their bike just a little bit faster. But, yeah, I mean, we look at a limitation and then the question you have to ask yourself, and we've talked about this on the show before, when to quit.

[00:48:13.160] – Allan

And the point is, sometimes you do, sometimes you just say, okay, I'm not going to be an ultramarathon runner. I know that physically my body would just break eventually if I tried to do it consistently, if I tried to say, okay, this is just who I'm going to be. I'm going to be one of those weird guys that does 140 miles, 200 miles, crosses some part of the world nobody should actually be at for over a weekend just because I can. It's a limitation.

[00:48:40.410] – Allan

And my body physically won't be able to do that or isn't able to do that.

[00:48:43.720] – Allan

I'm not beat up by that. I'm just saying, okay, well, what can I do, right? I can be the most freaking grandfather you've ever seen. I'm going to be on the floor rolling around with the kids. I'm going to be out in the field kicking the ball. I'm going to be out there rolling around with them, playing with them.

[00:48:59.390] – Rachel

Sure.

[00:48:59.760] – Allan

And when I take them to the zoo, I'm not sitting on a bench waiting for them to finish, and I'm able to pick them up and carry them around and wrestle with them and do all those things. That's my aspiration.

[00:49:12.290] – Rachel

That's important. Okay. It's important.

[00:49:14.450] – Allan

Now I could say, okay, well, I tore my rotator cuff, so I should probably be kind of careful and just get your body ready. Get yourself ready.

[00:49:23.270] – Rachel

Yeah.

[00:49:24.250] – Allan

Well, there's a pivot. Not a.

[00:49:26.620] – Rachel

Exactly. There's those physical things where I'm not going to be a pro baseball player or softball player. It's just not an aspiration. It's not something I'm built for. It's not something I'm interested in. But I've got other things I'd like to do. I'd like to grow old gracefully and like you, I'd like to be involved with grandkids and as well as friends of my peers and doing the things that they do. But kind of like what you guys had talked about towards the end of your discussion, taking an audit of your well being. I mean, where are you right now in your life? Are you interested in being a pro football player, Allan, at this point in your life?

[00:50:04.020] – Rachel

Probably not.

[00:50:06.130] – Allan

I wouldn't say no.

[00:50:10.450] – Rachel

Yeah, but you've got other priorities.

[00:50:14.450] – Allan

I wouldn't say no. So, yeah, if they came to me. And said, okay, look, it's probably not going to be the big contract, but here'S $500,000 a year to come out here and let us beat up on you for a year, I would probably take it.

[00:50:31.130] – Allan

I'd be a tackling dummy for half a million dollars. But I think a lot of times we get in there and the journey feels hard.

[00:50:39.390] – Rachel

Right.

[00:50:39.980] – Allan

It feels hard.

[00:50:41.200] – Rachel

Right.

[00:50:42.000] – Allan

And that's a time when people start to waver.

[00:50:46.680] – Rachel

Right.

[00:50:47.260] – Allan

And they start looking for the comfortable way. Okay, I have limitations. My knee hurts, my ankle hurts, my shoulder hurts. Or I would, but I've got to cook for the family and this is what the kids eat. So, yes, my staple is Mac and cheese. Well, you're not going to lose the weight you want to lose. If you're eating Mac and cheese three or four times a week or fast food three or four times a week. It's too hard. You've stopped yourself. So you've taken what you perceive as a limitation and you've stopped and you can'T blame anybody else. You have to take responsibility. That that's you. You limited yourself.

[00:51:32.490] – Rachel

Yes. I think that there's almost two concepts here, Allan, in that self limiting, like what I hear in the running world, well, I got bad knees, so I can't run. Well, do you really have bad knees? Did your doctor say your knees are so bad you can never run? Maybe there's something you can do to be able to run healthily and safely. But I also want to add, just toss in there self sabotage because we're talking about losing weight here. If you say, well, I want to lose x amount of pounds, but I can't give up alcohol or I can't give up Mac and cheese, then that's just self sabotage. Right there.

[00:52:06.090] – Allan

It is. But it is coming from that perspective of limitations. It'S just too much. It's too hard. I don't like to do it. I don't want to do it. I want to keep eating out every night. And so they're like, how do I lose weight? And I would be like, very carefully. You can, but you've basically put yourself in a roped in course that is going to make this very difficult to do and it's not going to fit the norms of when people walk into a restaurant and they put a plate of food in front of you and you eat it.

[00:52:43.640] – Allan

Your life's not going to be like that. If you want to lose weight and eat out all the time, you're going to have to set some rules, set some standards and do things a little bit different. Meaning asking for the to go box before you even get your food so you can put half or two thirds of it in that box to take home with you because you have no business eating 1200 calories for that meal when 600 is enough.

[00:53:08.320] – Rachel

Right?

[00:53:10.170] – Allan

And so if we set a limitation for ourselves, or there is an actual because sometimes people do go, the doctors love to say it, you stop running. Don'T walk on the sand, don't do what doctors get paid to do. They get paid to stop the pain. They get paid to help you feel like you're getting better. They don't actually get paid to get you better. They give you a solution. You don't want to run, don't run. Don't walk on the beach. That's going to hurt your knee. It might, but I was like. Okay, doc, what do I got to do so I can walk on the beach? I did not come all the way down here to live here, to not walk on a beach.

[00:53:52.540] – Allan

So don't tell me not to walk on a beach. Tell me what I got to do so I can, that's a different, you see that click there? That click is okay, you can tell me. And there could physically be a limitation. So I know, okay, first, six weeks after surgery, probably walking on the beach.

[00:54:09.050] – Rachel

That's right.

[00:54:09.740] – Allan

Okay. he might have a point.

[00:54:12.750] – Allan

But at the same time, I would never accept that I could never walk on the beach again.

[00:54:19.200] – Rachel

And like Ben said, with his experience with cancer, he had to take some time off. He had to reevaluate what he was capable of doing during the time he was dealing with his cancer treatments. And we all go through these phases in life too, where you need to take an audit, you need to say, well, what can I do today in order to achieve my goals in the future?

[00:54:38.920] – Allan

Yeah, and that's the other value of the audit is because you can sit down and say, okay, granted, I just had my knee operated on and I'm sitting here on the couch because I can'T really move around as much as I would like. Doctor still wants me to walk around, but he by no means wants me out running every weekend or lifting weights or doing these other. Right, but what can I do? Well, I can work on my mobility, yes.

[00:55:03.330] – Allan

I can go and figure out how to do, how to make and prepare really good food that my family loves that is healthy for us. So taking a cooking class, going out to a farmer's market on the weekend and learning about my food, maybe it's working on balance. That's not going to hurt my knee if I'm standing on 1ft and just trying to work on balance or mobility. While you may not be able to do something because it is a valid limitation, the question is, are you putting the limitation in front of yourself because it'S convenient and it means that you would have to go and do something uncomfortable and then that's holding you back. Or is it real? And if it's real, this audit is a good way for you to say no, well, I can't do this right now because of this that's real.

[00:55:54.050] – Rachel

That's really neat.

[00:55:55.000] – Rachel

And staying in the present right then is really important. It's interesting that you mentioned Ben was in his 30s. Did you say he was 40?

[00:56:02.580] – Allan

He is now in his 30s. When he was talking through the book, of course, this is a young man who was going through his teens and then 20s as he got into his career. And so as I started to talk to him, not knowing again how long happened between what he was talking about in the book and what he was.

[00:56:21.200] – Allan

I was basically assuming he was probably in his late 20s, but he said he's already past 30.

[00:56:27.370] – Rachel

It's just interesting to hear a guy, a person thinking about his future in the similar ways that you and I do. Allan, being that we're in our 50s even, you know, he's working towards developing a healthy lifestyle now so that he could live a healthy lifestyle in the future. And kind of taking that audit along the, we, we go through all these different phases in our life. And at the end goal, though, is to be able to have a healthy, high quality of life in our 50s, 60s, 70s and beyond. And so all that hard work that we're doing right now, or like he's doing in his 30s and 40s, that's setting us up for success in the long term. It's a long process.

[00:57:07.080] – Allan

And I think that's what he's looking at if you look at your career, most people have a career and they expect for it to last 40 years or so. We all kind of go into it with the idea, okay, I'll graduate from college or whatever, and I'll start my career. I'll work for 40, 50 years.

[00:57:24.430] – Allan

You may do double that because some people will go in and say, okay, I'll work the time in the military and then I'll do that and I'll go do this other career, and then I'll retire from that and that'll be my retirement. So they're looking at 50 years, maybe 60. But most people think in terms of 40 to 50 years. Okay, so he's starting out as a peloton instructor in his late 20s. If he goes 40 years, he'd be 69 years old.

[00:57:49.590] – Allan

Okay. And if he wants to keep doing peloton or whatever, he wants to stay fit and healthy, he actually has to talk to you guys while he's doing this, or you don't hear his british accent. But the point being is like, yes, if you're in the health and fitness industry and you want to stay in the health and fitness industry, well, you kind of have to stay alive.

[00:58:10.980] – Rachel

True.

[00:58:12.090] – Allan

If you want to do things and be a wonderful grandfather, wonderful grandmother, if that's who you want to be, then you got to do the things to make sure you're still here and capable. When your grandkids are around. If you want to remain independent and capable well into your older years and have a health span that's as long or closer to as long as your lifespan, then you got to do those things.

[00:58:34.820] – Allan

And so it's a joke. I want to be able to wipe my own butt when I'm 105, but it's not a joke. It is. I fully expect that I'm going to live a long, healthy life and I want to be able to take care of myself.

[00:58:47.190] – Rachel

Absolutely.

[00:58:47.980] – Allan

I do the things I need to do to make sure that I'm that person when that comes around.

[00:58:53.040] – Rachel

That's awesome.

[00:58:54.120] – Allan

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

[00:58:56.490] – Rachel

Great. Take care, Allan.

[00:58:57.970] – Allan

You, too.

[00:58:58.750] – Rachel

Thanks.

[00:58:59.520] – Allan

Bye.

[00:59:00.200] – Rachel

Bye bye.

Music by Dave Gerhart

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Another episode you may enjoy

Get fitter, faster, and stronger with Krista Stryker

Less...

Let's Say Hello

[00:03:28.930] – Coach Allan

Hey, Ras. How are you?

[00:03:31.460] – Coach Rachel

Good, Allan. How are you today?

[00:03:33.590] – Coach Allan

I'm doing okay. Tammy went back to the States. We recorded these a few weeks in advance. So Tammy's going to go do a surprise visit for her mother for Thanksgiving, so she's going to see her boys. I'm not sure if summer is going to make it up there or not, but she's definitely going to see her boys and probably her granddaughter and her mother and all that and spend some time with them. Wonderful. Her mother was a little bummed out. It's like, I'm not going to see you this year, and DA DA DA. So we said slow here, and it's slow here because people are afraid of what not to be afraid of, which is there's stuff going on everywhere, and if you let people scare you, then you're scared. But that being said, things are slow here. So we decided, okay, go ahead. Head on up there. So it's just me and the dogs. So it's a boys weekend or boys week. The dogs just hanging out nice and dogs.

[00:04:29.350] – Coach Rachel

That sounds awesome.

[00:04:31.190] – Coach Allan

How are things up there?

[00:04:32.780] – Coach Rachel

Good. I'm super excited to share that I just completed the Dr. Stacy Sims Menopause 2.0 class. She has an online class. It was about 20 hours long, although I wasn't timing myself. It just seemed like it was a lot. But it was a really great class, and I needed it for the CEUs that you and I need to get for our NASM certification. So it was a perfect class at the perfect time, and I learned a ton, so I'm pretty excited about it.

[00:05:02.360] – Coach Allan

And you're living it.

[00:05:03.970] – Coach Rachel

I am living it, which made it so much easier to digest. I'm like, yeah, I know exactly how that know how that feels. Exactly. Yeah. It was perfect.

[00:05:15.620] – Coach Allan

Well, good. Congratulations on that.

[00:05:17.320] – Coach Rachel

Thanks.

[00:05:18.310] – Coach Allan

All right. So are you ready to talk about your perfect repeatable week?

[00:05:23.190] – Coach Rachel

Sure.

Episode – Your Perfect Repeatable Week

Today we're going to talk about your perfect repeatable week. This is a concept I recently heard or heard something similar to a business related style podcast, and I got to thinking about the lesson and what it was about, and it really hit me that this is actually very good for our health and fitness as well as our business. So want to share this concept of the perfect repeatable week with you and see if you can use this to maybe create the thing that's going to help you make the most change this next coming year. So the perfect repeatable week brings about a few different things that are really, really important. The first is about consistency. So we want something that is going to allow us to be consistent. And when you think about consistency, the way I really want you to think about this is realize that the Colorado River and depending on when you read what they say, it could have been 70 million years ago or 6 million years ago. But at any rate, there's still a lot of consistency. That river has formed the Grand Canyon just by being consistent, running, running over all of that time created one of the most amazing spectacles on the planet, the Grand Canyon.

So one of the things that the perfect repeatable week does for us is it creates consistency. The second thing is it creates a level of discomfort. Okay? We humans spend way too much time in our comfort zone. We're never willing to go out of it and for good reason. That's how we've survived as long as we did. The ones that did the things that were stupid, that were outside of the norm, well, they often didn't come back. So the ones that did the comfortable thing, just enough of the comfortable thing and just enough to stay just on the edge, well, they didn't die and they managed to survive. Okay? But when you're looking at change, comfort is the enemy. We have to get a little uncomfortable if we want change. So that's one of the other things that your perfect repeatable week does is it pushes you just outside your comfort zone. Not too far, but just enough that you can get the benefits. And the other thing about your perfect repeatable week is that there's nothing inherently special about a day or even a week. However, we tend to structure our lives around a day and that can make it really, really hard to be successful in the long run because days are different and we'll talk about that in more detail.

So there's three key things that make your perfect repeatable week kind of special. So let's talk about the principles behind your perfect repeatable week. Well, first starts with your. And the thing about your is this is yours. This is not mine. This is not someone else's. This is not an influencer on Instagram or someone you're seeing on YouTube. This is what works for you. This is what you, it's built around you. So what you can make your week do is what you make it do. So you think about what you need to do within a given week to meet your health and fitness goals. Your health and fitness goals. So this is all built around you and your lifestyle. It's not anybody else's. And that's a really cool principle behind this. Your perfect repeatable week. The second is perfect. Now the term perfect is conditional. Someone who is a professional athlete, well their perfect is going to look very, very different from mine and going to look very, very different from yours. Yours is going to look very different from mine. So it's conditional on who you are. So first off, don't think perfect is perfect for everyone.

That we're looking for this perfect model that would fit everybody. That's not we're after here. We're after what would be perfect for you. Again, back to your, because the second thing about perfect is that we want to start where we are now. We don't want to think about, well, gee, if I were perfect, I would be running 100 miles a week and I'd be doing this and I'd be doing that. We're not looking at that. We're looking at starting from where we are now. What would be perfect based on where I am now and what I can do now. So what you have and where you are are key components to defining your perfect. And then the next is, well, I may not always hit this goal, but at least by having a target that's a little bit further than I think I can reach, I'm going to get close. And if I'm getting close, what does that look like? Maybe I'm not running or walking the 40 miles on a perfect week like I would. Maybe I only got 35, but that's still pretty darn good. So this is about trying to set this stretch goal and knowing that if I can occasionally hit perfect and sometimes hit really good, I'm doing pretty awesome job and I'm going to get where I need to be because again, I'm pushing myself outside of my comfort zone.

The next part of your perfect repeatable week is the repeatable part. So the reason I like to break this down this way is what can you do week in and week out? Okay. What this requires you to do is it requires you to be consistent. So I'm not thinking about, well, gee, I'm off work this week, it's this week and I'm off work this week. So of course I can do more than I could last week when I was working all the extra hours to make sure I could be off this week, really off this week. So obviously I can't do this every week. But if I'm doing the things I can do every week, then I'm being consistent. So what's repeatable what makes sense? And that's the second part. What's realistic, I can't say that I'm going to work out twelve times every week if my work schedule doesn't allow that to happen. If in general, I know, okay, I'm working eight to five Monday through Friday, so I know I can work out before I go to work. I know I can do a little bit of moving around during the day, like during my lunch break.

I can do some walking. I know that I can do some things during the week and during the weekend to make this all work. And if I do those repeatable things, I create consistency. So that's the key there is repeatable equals consistency. If I do repeat it, okay, then we talk about week. Of course, week being seven days. And a lot of times the reason I like the week is sometimes the day can be limiting. It is 24 hours, and sometimes I'm working 16 of those. And if I look at it from that perspective. I'll never be successful because a perfect day would not happen all the time. But a week gives us a little bit of flexibility. And the other thing is days are different. So my Saturday often looks very different from my Monday. My Sunday looks considerably different from my Friday. And so as you look at your days now because you're looking at a week you can find ways to make bits and pieces fit in that make sense. So days that I'm off, maybe I can do better. Maybe I can do things to make the days that I'm working or on better.

So batch cooking, things like that, what can I do? And then sometimes you just need a day off. Think about it. If you're trying to train or lift or do anything seven days a week, eventually you're going to burn out. So the advantage of a week is it lets you look at this holistically and you can say, okay, if I know that I need to predominantly eat less than a certain number of calories, if you choose to count calories you may say, well, it's really hard for me on a Saturday, only eat 1800 calories. I can easily do it Monday through Friday, but Saturday is a little bit difficult. So if I look at it and say, well, I really only have to eat 2000 calories a day to make my calories work for what I want, well then I calculate it. Okay, what is 2000 calories times seven? That's 14,000. Okay, how do I distribute those? Well, maybe more of those are distributed on Saturdays and Sundays when I'm more active and a little less on the days when I'm a little busier and not as active because again I'm more distracted and it makes it easier.

So I can fit this stuff in in a way that works. And I can take days off when I need to take days off. And I can really push myself on days that maybe I'm not doing some things so I can get things done that make it easier when I'm doing the other thing. So I know that's a lot, but I want to just back it up because again your perfect repeatable week gives you the tools to be consistent. It gives you the tools to get outside your comfort zone as often as you can and stay out of it as often as you can. And because it's a week it allows you a lot of flexibility in how you apply this. So an example if you will, would be a perfect repeatable week for me might be something like Sunday. I do batch cooking. I put some lunches and dinners in the refrigerator and more and others in the freezer. Okay. So now what I've done is I've made it very easy for me to make sure that my food is set for the week. I can pull it out of the freezer when I need to so I'm not pushed when I come home for work.

I can also do my grocery shopping on Sunday. So I go to the grocery store, I pick up the things I need. The reason that's perfect for me is if that's when they run the sales on the meat to clear it out, because tomorrow Monday, they're going to get a new shipment of meat. Then I can go ahead and I can take advantage of those savings. I go in, I buy early morning, I buy the meat, I go do the grilling. That afternoon, I cook the other things I need, I do that batch cooking, and I'm done. Okay. When I have my work week, well, my day starts around 07:00, so I know if I get up early Monday through Friday, I can schedule time to do my workouts. So I can put in a little bit of time each day to get in my resistance training, my balance training, my mobility training. And then on Saturday and Sunday morning, I can go out and do a little bit longer cardio stuff. So build a little bit of stamina, longer walks, enjoy my day, be a little bit more active so I'm able to take my week and build it out that way.

So I'm not saying, well, gee, today I didn't get stamina work in. Oh, my gosh. Well, no, I got a whole week to build this stuff in and put it in my schedule and put it on my calendar. So I've built this out, and because I want to get better and better, I'm constantly looking for ways to improve so my perfect repeatable week doesn't stay the same over time, it often changes. Okay, so how do we do this? How do we really put it all together? Because all I've really given you with your perfect repeatable week is a standard. You've set a standard for yourself. This is how I want to live my week. This is how I want to do my week. And if I do it well, this is my perfect. Okay, so the way I like to apply it is to basically look and say, okay, on a scale, and you can do a one to ten or one to seven, whatever fits. On a scale of one to seven, how did I do? A perfect week would be a seven. A horrible week would be a one. Well, chances are you're not going to have a lot of ones.

And chances are you might not have all that many sevens either. But as we go into the holidays now, you might find there's some weeks that you can just blow this out of the water. I intended to do this, and I did more great. Okay. On something else, I thought I was going to do better, and then I didn't. Okay, again, we're not totally after perfect, but we do have a target. And if I'm staying on the top end of that scale. Most of the time, I'm going to see change. So each week, I can go through my perfect week, and I can rate myself. How did I do relative to my perfect? Your perfect? How did you do? So you rate yourself, and then you look for what you can learn. What did I learn this week that I can apply and be better in future weeks? And in some cases, you may find, well, you know, I thought my perfect was basically eating whole food five days a week and then letting my Saturdays and Sundays be a little bit more flexible. But what I found is that if I go ahead and push myself outside my comfort zone, I can actually eat predominantly whole food all week long, that I don't need the snacks as much as I thought I did.

And if I do need a snack, it's easy enough for me to get some nuts, have a small salad, or some protein if I'm prepared. So I can actually ratchet up my perfect week as I improve my health and fitness. So I hope that you can see how you can take your perfect repeatable week, build out your model, schedule it, put it into play, and then start rating yourself based on it. And then as you improve, ratchet up that perfect a little bit. Hope this is helpful for you. I hope to hear from you.

What does your perfect repeatable week look like?

Post Show/Recap

[00:19:20.030] – Coach Allan

Welcome back, Ras.

[00:19:26.030] – Coach Rachel

Hey, Allan. I love the concept of a perfect repeatable week because it really limits your vision to one week to one week. That's all you need to worry about. Not a year from now, but just one week. And especially right now, this is probably the busiest time of my year. Probably everybody else's, it really helps you plan things and still have some sort of a focus on your own personal health and fitness. And that is so important.

[00:19:54.830] – Coach Allan

Yeah, it's just too easy to get too busy. Well, I was busy doing this, I was doing that. This was a priority. That was a priority. Family this, family that, friends this, work that. And some of us, I don't know, me always going into the holidays, I would be working my butt off so that I could actually take a whole day off because there's too much going on. And so it's just that thing of, okay, I'm working so hard, and I got to get all this done and family and friends and all this other stuff around this time of year, and it would just be chaos. So, yeah, this whole idea of kind of looking at your week and saying, okay, what would be the best thing? But not just this week. I mean, this week is different than last week, obviously, and this week is different than a lot of weeks, but we have weeks that are the same as the week before, the week before that. And we still come up with excuses to not do what's necessary to be done. And so this is just a point of saying on a normal week, sometime in the middle of April, when there's nothing else going on, it's like, what does that week look like?

[00:21:07.860] – Coach Allan

And why don't at least probably 40 or so of the other weeks of the year look very similar to that? And so if you can figure out what works, then here's your opportunity to kind of build a blueprint for this. And I just think that's important, for sure.

[00:21:25.610] – Coach Rachel

As a runner, I'm no stranger to consistency and following a training schedule, usually a good training schedule might be ten to 14 weeks, depending on what you're going to run. So you basically have an outline with a training plan. But in terms of just general health and fitness, I think that if you take a class at the gym, like with me, I have run clubs several nights a week. That's my repeatable week that's on the calendar. I don't schedule anything over it, and that's just what I do. And then just because of where my husband and I are in our life, we know what nights that we can cook at home versus what nights we're out with work or doing other things. So I can control what we're cooking at home, what we're eating at home. And that's a pretty basic way to manage our health and fitness. And then with the holidays, things go sideways. And sometimes you just need to put what you can do the best you can when you can.

[00:22:26.350] – Coach Allan

But I'm telling you, if you go into a week like that with no plan right, it will go sideways. It has to. There's no other way for it to go. You didn't plan for it. Yeah. You didn't plan for it to come out better. You didn't do anything besides just say, well, I'm going to wing it. Well, winging it puts you in the ditch. It just does. And so that's the advantage of this, is saying, I know what a great week looks like, and trying to aspire to be as close to that as possible, even when things aren't optimal, is going to put you on the right side of this equation more often than not, for sure.

[00:23:02.560] – Coach Rachel

And you can plan that for us. We recently had Thanksgiving. Christmas is coming up. If you have other holidays, birthday parties, family events, that goes on your calendar, because those are important days in your life and your family's life. And so then you work around that. Well, when can you squeeze in a trip to the gym or a run with friends? Or when can you plan a meal? And you have a whole week, Sunday to Saturday, to plan that out. So put all your important things on there, but certainly put on there the important things that you need to live a healthy lifestyle.

[00:23:38.330] – Coach Allan

Yeah. And some folks might get upset. I use the word perfect. Well, I've even done an episode saying nobody's perfect. And it's true. It isn't perfect. So maybe a better word for you would be ideal. So maybe instead of the word perfect, if you find yourself cringing over the use of that word, maybe the better word for you is ideal. This is your ideal repeatable week. And it follows the same pattern of this has to be something you know works for you, will get you where you want to go. It's something you can repeat. It's your week and it's your time. And it's written in a time where you're not saying, well, okay, Sunday is different than Monday. So therefore, if I can't do it on Monday, there's no sense in me trying to do it on Sunday. Hockey Puck of course you can. Sunday can be different than Monday, but your Sundays generally might be about the same week in and week out. Your Mondays might be about the same week in and week out. And if they are, that's awesome because that gives you the opportunity to create that repetition that gives you the consistency.

[00:24:44.450] – Coach Rachel

Oh, that's perfect. But I also liked your rating system, too, because it makes you look back on your week. And if you didn't hit your marks, like whatever run club or whatever meals you wanted to cook at home or whatever your journey is, look back and say, well, why didn't you hit those marks? If it was because you had a sleepless night with a baby or grandchild or something, then you have to give yourself grace because you can't work out if you're sleep deprived, but it gives you ideas. Well, maybe you made too many excuses because the weather's too cold or it's too rainy or something, or a new.

[00:25:20.630] – Coach Allan

Series dropped on Netflix and you've been.

[00:25:26.390] – Coach Rachel

If only we scheduled our TV habits like we did, our eating and workout.

[00:25:30.890] – Coach Allan

That can be a part of it, too. For a lot of people, the television is time, family time. It can be or it can just be. That's a way that you really enjoy unwinding in the evening. Sure, fine, throw it in there. It's a part of your week. It's a part of unwinding relaxing, and you can just say, okay, I'm going to give myself 90 minutes of television time this many times per week. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that if it's not disturbing your sleep and it's not keeping you from doing the other things that you need to do, but when you're like, okay, well, I spent 15 hours on Saturday and Sunday watching Netflix, so I didn't have time to work out. I didn't have time to batch cook. So McDonald's it is, and so what? Well, no, that week didn't turn out the way you wanted it to. Then it gives you some food for thought.

[00:26:21.770] – Coach Rachel

Yeah, what can you do better next time? Or what can you fix so that you're not stuck with grabbing snacks out of the cabinet or fast food or something. There's always something to be learned, and if it can't be helped, it can't be helped. Things happen, but whatever you can plan and control, the better for you. So I love it. I love the idea of planning your perfect week and seeing how it goes.

[00:26:43.960] – Coach Allan

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

[00:26:46.320] – Coach Rachel

Great. Take care, Allan.

[00:26:47.690] – Coach Allan

You, too. Bye.

Music by Dave Gerhart

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Another episode you may enjoy

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Less...

Let's Say Hello

[00:03:34.070] – Allan

Hey, Ras. How are you?

[00:03:36.860] – Rachel

Good, Allan. How are you today?

[00:03:38.100] – Allan

I'm doing good. I'm doing good. I posted on my Facebook the other day it was kind of a joke, but not really a joke. And it was a principle of nobody starts a diet in November.

[00:03:50.900] – Rachel

Right. This is a terrible time to start, Allan.

[00:03:54.690] – Allan

Yeah. Who's going to start in the middle of November and then six weeks later is a much better time to start?

[00:04:02.060] – Rachel

That's right. Yeah.

[00:04:05.070] – Allan

And I got some good feedback and some good from folks on that, because they recognize it's like we do these little logic things in our head that really if you just took a step back and says, is that how I would do it? No, it's like, well, the check engine light came onto my car, but I really just want to wait till January 1 to take a look at that, that's not how we would approach it. So it was just kind of one of those things. And I'm going to probably be posting a lot of those. So if we're not friends on Facebook, come check me out. You can go to the Facebook group at 40 Plusfitnesspodcast.com group. But I also have friend people on my Facebook, so I post some things there. I post some things to the group. So if you're interested and want to have a little bit of fun, check both of those out. Cool.

[00:04:50.220] – Rachel

That sounds fun.

[00:04:51.500] – Allan

So what are you up to?

[00:04:53.390] – Rachel

Actually, funny you should say that. I'm kind of planning my New Year's goals. I got to wrap up this year. No, but actually, at the end of the year, I do like to have something to do between Thanksgiving and New Year's. It's the busiest time of year, and this is no different. I'm doing tons of things. I got lists for my list. But I always like to have some sort of an activity between Thanksgiving and New Year's. And this last year from 2022, I had a run streak. So we did a 1 mile minimum streak between Thanksgiving and New Year's. It was I can't remember, 38, 37 days, however many days it was. And I'm trying to figure out what I want to do this year. And the reason why I like to start at the end of the year, just like in your post, is that I need the distraction because holidays are stressful, they're busy, and sometimes we get so focused on all of the other things that we don't have time to take care of ourselves. So having some sort of a movement goal reminds us that we need to take time for self care.

[00:05:59.300] – Rachel

We need to take time to exercise and do the things that are good for us. So I don't know what I'm going to do yet for the end of this year or for my New Year goals for next year. But I've got something planned, figuring something out.

[00:06:10.740] – Allan

Yeah, well, I break it all down month by month. And so December is no different for me than any other month of the year. January, February, whatever. It's the month. And so what I do is before the month starts. So I've looked at what I want to do for the year, and as I get into the month, I'm like, okay, what do I need to do this month to move myself in that direction? It doesn't have to be a huge move. It's just what is it? And so I have all of those, and it goes across personal, professional, health, fitness, Lula's, my online business and stuff. And so I'll have all of these things that I want to accomplish. Some of them are relatively mundane. Like, I really do need to write a statement of policy or statement of position for Lula's on a lot of how things are done, basically. So basically how things work, and so someone else can do it if I'm not doing it. Because right now I'm the only one that knows how to do most of the back office stuff. And so it is what it is. I need to write that down.

[00:07:12.410] – Allan

I need to publish it in some way that someone could follow me if I don't want to do it anymore or I can't do it anymore. So some of that is that simple. It's like I just need to start writing these things. And then as I get into the month, it's like, okay, what do I want to write this month? Which policy? What's my movement goal? What are the other goals that I have in my life? And then each morning I wake up and I go through a thing, and there's a lot of affirmations and gratitude and all that, and then the goals, and they pop up. And because I know what my monthly goals are, I can then go into my to do list today and say, okay, what on this to do list actually does those things and what does not? And so a lot of times I'll have a list of all my to dos and they're dated and they're in order of importance or time of the day that I need to get them done, because there's some things I do each day that I need to do in the morning, and some things I can do later.

[00:08:08.800] – Allan

But I'll take a task and I'll say, you know, that's not really an important task right now. And I'll put it over under the parked list, and it just sits over there. And about once a month, I go through the parked list and delete a lot of those because again, it wasn't really built that goal, whatever. It wasn't really something that's going to move me. The to do was not going to move the needle for me. And it sounded cool. It was the shiny object of, hey, I should buy those new shoes. And then I get a month away and I look at back and I'm like, okay, well, why did I want those shoes? And are they really going to move me forward? And, oh, they're not going to last here in Panama. Stupid purchase. Yeah. And then they're gone. I might park them and say, no, I know I'm going to be doing a little bit more mileage next month or the month after, and so maybe I do want the shoes for that. But a lot of times, yeah, they just get written off because it really wasn't something that was going to move the needle.

[00:09:06.680] – Allan

So if you find yourself overwhelmed, break things down, figure out what your big rocks are, what the important things are, and that becomes my monthly thing. That's great. And I have an annual thing and then a monthly thing. And then literally every morning, I wake up and say, okay, what am I doing today that does one of these things? I love that, and sometimes they don't. I had an intention of writing an article to advertise, and with everything that's going on here, okay, what's the sense of telling people what the best beaches are in Bocas if we don't have the guests coming into the country the way that they would or could? So I'm not writing that article because I'm not going to put the time in to write something that isn't going to move the needle for the business or do what it needs to do. So it's not valid anymore. I'm moving it over into the parked items. I'll reevaluate it in December or January, and maybe I write it then, but I'm not writing it right now. Perfect.

[00:10:05.670] – Rachel

That sounds like a good plan.

[00:10:07.360] – Allan

So if you find yourself a little overwhelmed with the change that you want, the things that you want, just start with the big thing. Okay, I know I need to lose two inches off my waist. Well, you're not going to lose two inches off your waist today.

[00:10:23.290] – Rachel

Right.

[00:10:24.790] – Allan

Or maybe even this month. But what can you do consistently this month that's going to help you do that? And then each day you do that thing. Perfect. And so it's really a trickle down of breaking your bigger rocks into the bite sized pieces to keep it workable. And then, you know, you wake up in the morning, you look at what you got to do that day. Is it on my calendar? Yes. My movement is on my calendar? Yes. Getting this done is on my calendar. And then I go do it. And if I don't have the time in the day to do it, I have to prioritize and push some of it to tomorrow or park some of it, because, again, it just isn't going to do enough for it to be worth what everything else on my list is doing for sure.

[00:11:05.340] – Rachel

You can only do so much.

[00:11:07.430] – Allan

All right, well, you ready to have a conversation with Dr. Greger?

[00:11:10.640] – Rachel

Sure.

Interview

[00:12:13.070] – Allan

Dr. Greger, welcome back to 40+ Fitness.

[00:12:16.470] – Dr. Greger

Thank you so much. Glad to be back.

[00:12:21.070] – Allan

I've watched your videos over the years and I'm just fascinated with how you can teach so much information in a three to five minute video. And then here you come out with this book and quite frankly called How Not to Age: The Scientific Approach to Getting Healthier as You Get Older. And I'm just going to call it right here. This is the most comprehensive health book I have ever read in my entire life, and I doubt anyone's ever even going to come close to matching the depth of what you put into a single book. Some would argue it might be a few books, but given the length of it. But this is really good stuff if you love understanding health and understanding how our body works. Dr. Gregor here, he's your friend. He's done the work, he's done the research, and he's put it together in depth. And it's all there from my perspective, again, because the end notes are there, but you have to go to a separate website to follow them through because otherwise the book would be twice the length that it is. Because I believe there were like over 8000 endnotes, and you probably referenced no less than maybe 300 or 400 videos along the way that could go deeper.

[00:13:38.090] – Allan

But this creates a lot of rabbit holes, particularly for those that love the science of health and fitness. So I'm going to say it was not a hard read, but it was a read.

[00:13:50.250] – Dr. Greger

Yeah. This is for all the longevity nerds out there. There's meat on them bones, and beyond.

[00:13:57.620] – Allan

The meat, there's actionable. Things you can do today to improve your health going forward. And so I love that because I'm all about action. And so let's dive in a little bit because again, there's so much again, I can read a book. A standard health and fitness book these days is about 250 pages, and I can read that in about 6 hours. And usually it's because I know most of what they're going to say because they're saying the same things that everybody else says. Your book is nearly three times that length, and you're not saying what everybody else is saying. You're going in and saying, well, this is what they looked at and this is how you can apply it. And so you do a lot of that. So I want to get as much of that in as I can in the limited amount of time we have, because I think I could actually probably talk to you for about three straight days without sleeping, and we could probably still not cover everything that was there. Like I said, you've won. The game is over. The competition is over. For what we know right now, based on the science that's been done today, this is the most comprehensive book you can buy.

[00:15:05.090] – Allan

Okay, so you talked in the beginning of the book, you brought up the I think there's eleven pathways of aging, and I want to dive into a few of them because I think sometimes there's a little bit of confusion when we start talking about certain things. So the first one that I want to get into is the AMPK. And where people may not have heard of that before, but they've probably heard of autophagy and how we can use fasting as a mechanism for reversing aging, improving our health. Can we talk a little bit about how that process works, just a little bit, and then how we can get into autophagy? Because I think there's multiple mechanisms you brought up in the book, but I think there's some misconnection of, oh, well, I can just do intermittent fasting and I'm into autophagy and I'm doing great. Okay, again, there's some misconceptions out there because it's old. If you do intermittent fasting, you're getting autophagy. If you're getting autophagy, you're slowing your aging. So can we just kind of dive into that a little bit? Sure.

[00:16:09.910] – Dr. Greger

Yeah. Autophagy is the kind of primary system for cleaning the body from the inside out, clearing out the cellular debris that may be contributing to aging. Some food components can suppress autophagy, like acrylamide, which is a compound concentrated in French fries and potato chips, whereas others, like spermidine and the antioxidants in coffee, can actually help your cells kind of take out the trash. So to boost this antiaging pathway, I encourage readers to consider, on a daily basis, 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous aerobic activity. Unfortunately, 20 minutes does not quite I mean, is wonderful for health, but not enough to boost autophagy similarly, fasting. See, the issue with fasting is fasting. Autophagy doesn't optimally ramp up to like 48 to 72 hours of fasting, which is really too long to go unsupervised. That's not just kind of legalistic mumbo jumbo. Our bodies go into kind of sodium conservation mode when we fast, but should that response break down and we continue to lose sodium, the symptoms we might experience are like fatigue, dizziness, something that could be dismissed until it's too late. So that's why prolonged fasts should really be only done under kind of medical supervision, but they actually kind of test your electrolytes and make sure your body's doing what it's supposed to be doing.

[00:17:42.480] – Dr. Greger

And so the studies suggesting that, oh, 12 hours of fasting can boost autophagy yeah, in mice, that's because mice's metabolism is so much higher. A few days of fasting can actually kill a mouse. They can lose, like, 40% of their body mass after a day or two of fasting. But unfortunately, yeah, in humans, it takes a little longer. But again, we don't have to walk around starving all the time. We can 60 minutes of aerobic exercise minimizing our intake of French fries and potato chips, trying to get about at least 20 milligrams of spermidine, and by incorporating spermidine rich foods in our diet. So that's tempeh, which is a fermented whole soy product, but any mushroom will do. Peas and wheat germ. So adding wheat germ to my diet was something new after this book because I wanted to get the spermatine to boost autophagy. And also, drinking three cups of coffee a day, either regular or decaf, can boost autophagy, thanks to glorinic acids.

[00:18:44.190] – Allan

Well, you've definitely got me to thinking, and I'm going to reestablish my big ass salad every day.

[00:18:51.850] – Dr. Greger

Excellent.

[00:18:52.320] – Allan

Yes, we're having some difficulties with delivery where I am right now, so it'll be a little while before I get the wheat germ, but that'll be something. I'll probably sprinkle a bit of that on my salad just to go along, but, yeah, big ass salads coming. Okay, the next one I want to get into, because there's a lot of talk about this, which there should be, because I think this is probably the biggest problem we have as people is inflammation. How does inflammation lead to aging?

[00:19:21.730] – Dr. Greger

Aging can actually be thought of as kind of part of an inflammatory disease. In part, a single measurement. Inflammatory markers like CD, CRP, ser, active protein, or Il six, interleukin six, can predict both physical and cognitive performance, as well as remaining lifespan in elderly individuals. Thankfully, excess inflammation can be kind of extinguished through changes in diet. There is something called dietary inflammatory index, which ranks each food in terms of how pro inflammatory or anti inflammatory it is. And those eating lower on that dietary inflammatory index, meaning less inflammatory diets are more likely to age successfully, which is defined as living independently with no major chronic disease, no depression, no pain, and with good overall self perceived social, physical, and mental health. So to help slow this aging pathway, I can encourage people to consider, on a daily basis, reducing both dietary and endogenous exposure to something called to these inflammatory advanced glycation end products. We can do that. That's a whole nother aging pathway. But basically we restrict ourselves to low glycemic lead foods so we don't have high blood sugars and make these AGS endogenously. And we reduce our intake of AGS which are found most concentrated in kind of high protein foods exposed to high dry heat.

[00:20:50.700] – Dr. Greger

So rather than grilling or barbecuing or frying or baking meat, we would like steaming, stewing, soups, that kind of thing would produce fewer of these inflammatory AGS. Also we reduce senescent cell inflammation. That's another whole antiaging pathway. These so called zombie cells spewing inflammation. As we get older, we can clear those out. I have a whole chapter on that. Boosting autophagy actually helps clearing out some of that inflammatory cellular debris. And you know what? One of the most interesting things in that chapter I ran into is applying an emollient skin lotion. So actually our skin layer, we actually have a breakdown in our skin barrier as we get older and that can increase systemic inflammation in our body. And they found that rubbing hairless mice with vaseline actually cut down inflammation. So they gave it a try with people and randomized people to try just every day applying a little full body molly and skin lotion and actually saw a decrease in inflammation which was so shocking, it's like, well, that's easy to do. So that's something I've incorporated into my diet and not in my diet, god into my daily routine.

[00:22:01.520] – Allan

Don't eat hand lotion.

[00:22:03.510] – Dr. Greger

Gregor said I should be eating and then avoiding the pro inflammatory foods. The pro inflammatory foods and increasing the intake of the anti inflammatory foods. So the pro inflammatory food components, saturated fat, endotoxins, which got new five GC sodium. So actually salt is pro inflammatory. People don't think about that. And then, so basically it's minimizing meat, dairy, tropical oils like coconut oil, the palm kernel oil, all these kind of junk food oils and as well as salt, I mean, one kind of lousy breakfast can double your creactive protein levels within 4 hours before it's even time for lunch. And then the anti inflammatory foods on the other side of the kind of balance sheet legumes, which are the beans, slippies, chickpeas, lentils, berries, greens, sodium free tomato juice or sodium free tomato paste. These processed tomato products without added salt, turmeric, ginger, flaxseeds, garlic, cinnamon, cocoa powder, dill beverages, chamomile tea, green tea, as well as kind of anything basically that contains fiber. So fiber rich foods, anthocyanin rich foods. Those are those brilliant kind of purple berry like pigments also found in, like, red cabbage or purple sweet potatoes, as well as salicylic acid rich foods, which is the kind of component, the antiinflammatory component of aspirin, not just found in willow tree bark actually found throughout the plant kingdom, most concentrated in, actually cumin, the spiced cumin, but found in a whole bunch of plant foods, and that also has an anti inflammatory effect.

[00:23:38.950] – Allan

And I think one of the cool things here is if you begin to eat less inflammatory foods, other good things are going to start happening for you. Like, your joints aren't going to hurt as bad. You're going to have more energy because your body is actually allowed to use that energy for you to do the things you want to do versus trying to heal, because that's what the inflammation is there for. And so just eating an anti inflammatory diet actually has these really quick turnarounds for you to feel better, look better, and move better. Now you hit on one, and as soon as I saw this written out, I was like, okay, now we're going to spar. We're going to spar a little bit, because I kind of like having a little bit extra muscle on my body. And so there's this concept called mTOR, and it's complex, I'm not going to lie. It's a very complex set of rules, but it's basically how we build muscle with mTOR. There's a little disconnect in my head I got to get through is having more muscle mass and being stronger, particularly as measured in grip strength, has been shown to help with your mortality.

[00:24:47.470] – Allan

However, having too much mTOR, which is part of the process for getting protein to turn into muscle, can also be problematic. Can you dive a little bit into mTOR and help me put that together? Yeah, no, absolutely.

[00:25:00.900] – Dr. Greger

So mTOR is an enzyme recognized as a major driver of aging, perhaps more so than any other single anti aging strategy. mTOR inhibition suppression disrupts a panoply of degenerative processes, explaining why the mTOR blocking drug Rapamycin is the most effective drug ever devised for targeted aging. No other drug has been able to show it works in every single species, even starting in middle age. But the problem is, the drug has some downsides. So then we turn to non pharmacological approaches. How are we going to slow this kind of pacemaker of aging enzyme? And we do that through the restriction of certain amino acids such as methionine and leucine. And how do we restrict those? Well, you can do full dietary restriction, and you're going to decrease your amino acid intake or eat the same number of calories, but just reduce overall protein intake, and that'll cut down. Or you can keep the protein intake the same, but just switch from animal sources to plant sources, most of which tend to be lower in methionine and the branch chain amino acids like leucine. And there's kind of a YinYang with AMPK. So anything that boosts AMPK can drop mTOR, like the barberries and vinegar and all the stuff I go through in the AMPK chapter.

[00:26:24.450] – Dr. Greger

And then it's really about reducing one's protein intake down to recommended levels, which is 0.8 grams for healthy kilogram body weight, which translates to about 45 grams a day for the average height woman, 55 grams for the average height man, and then choosing plant based sources whenever possible. Now, as you noted, mTOR plays a role in muscle protein synthesis. So the question is, well, wait a second. Do we have this kind of balancing act between aging and muscle mass? Thankfully, no. All we need is sufficient levels of mTOR activity to build muscle mass without excess levels. How do we do that? Again, recommended dietary protein intake over age 65. There's actually no benefit from adding protein in terms of muscle mass, muscle strength, or muscle performance. How are we going to maintain muscle mass into old age? One way and one way only? Well, there's actually a bunch of things that contribute, but the most important one is resistance training, right? Strength training. That is how we're going to keep our muscles. Particularly if you're doing something like caloric restriction or something critically important to maintain muscle mass. And we do that through exertion. Putting strain on our muscles and then adding extra protein in older age does not add that.

[00:27:46.180] – Dr. Greger

Add extra muscle mass. That's whether you're sarcopenic, you have excessive muscle mass, whether you're frail, et cetera. Excess protein does not help at those ages.

[00:27:55.950] – Allan

And one of the other ones I wanted to get into is oxidation. And the reason I want to talk about this is there are billionaires walking this planet right now that are selling antioxidants. That's true. And you're like, okay, well, if I take an antioxidant, then I'm going to be cool. Right. And I don't think that's quite the answer. Can we talk about oxidation and why some of these seemingly good things aren't necessarily doing what they're supposed to?

[00:28:26.050] – Dr. Greger

Yeah, this is one of the most interesting chapters to write in terms of that kind of nerdy part one section about the eleven aging pathways. So oxidation. So there's this mitochondrial theory of aging, which is kind of standard stood the test of time in terms of the dozens of aging theories out there. It explains basically the spread, why some animals live so much longer, in fact, 1000 times longer than others. The animals with the lowest rate of free radical production within their mitochondria, the little power plants within their cells live the longest, full stop. So we can slow the pace of aging by slowing the rate of this free radical production in our mitochondria. And there's really only two ways we can do that. Antioxidants don't work because it's actually the damage to our mitochondrial DNA happens so quickly, so close to the source of free radical production. Antioxidants just can't penetrate in time. But there's two things we can reduce. One is exercise. Again, nailing critical factor of exercise. And number two is methionine restriction. Cutting down on the amino acid methionine by eating healthier. Also in terms of so that's just for in terms of longevity.

[00:29:37.040] – Dr. Greger

However, oxidation does play a role in our health span as well. For that, we can cut down on prooxant foods, boost our antioxidant rich foods. Kind of similar to the inflammation story and actually kind of similar. Foods, right? The prooxin foods are the ones rich in cholesterol, salt, saturated fat and sugar, where the antioxidant foods are the ones berries, spices, as well as something called Nerf Two Activation, which is kind of our first line of antioxidant defense. On the second line is this kind of symphony of antioxidants we can kind of take from plant foods and kind of hijack them from our own needs. But our first level of defense is really our antioxidant enzymes that can detoxify free radicals and we can boost those through something called NRF Two Activation. And the two ways to do that one is green tea and one is cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, collard greens and so to slow the saging pathway, exercise, restricting methionine, where you can do that through protein restriction activating NRF Two eating green and drinking green. So eating your kale, drinking green tea and then eating berries and other naturally vibrantly colored foods because the colors are actually the antioxidants herbs and spices like the cinnamon, cloves, garlic, ginger, margarum packed with antioxidants and then cutting down and added salt, sugar, saturated fat and cholesterol.

[00:31:12.000] – Allan

Latent foods, well, and all those you talked about, they make the food exciting and fun and taste good. So win win. And the exercise, of course, you've got my vote there because it does just a lot more. You feel better, you're stronger, you're faster, you built up a body that's capable of doing the things that you want to do. Now I'm going to dive into a few foods that some people will avoid for various reasons that they don't necessarily have to, but they at times avoid them that are really actually I mean, we can talk about superfoods, but I actually only want to use that title because it's been so overused and falsely so in many, many cases. But some of these foods actually are, in a sense, exactly what our body needs, but a lot of people don't eat enough of them. So the first one I want to talk about is beans. What makes beans?

[00:32:06.150] – Dr. Greger

Ah, beans. That's the centerpiece of all Blue Zones diets. These areas around the world with exceptional longevity as their chief source of protein, have some source of legumes which are not just beans, but also split peas, chickpeas, lentils. And so if you're talking about what are the kind of healthiest foods to eat, according to the Globe Burner Disease Study, which is the largest study of risk factors in human history for death and disease, the greatest lifespan extension would be achieved by eating more legumes. That's what they calculated of all the different food groups, eating more beans. If there's one thing we can do to live longer in terms of our diet, be eating more beans. And so though that's on a kind of per serving basis, but actually on a gram for gram basis, the food most associated with longevity is actually nuts. And so I also recommend like a palm full of walnuts a day, one of my kind of antiaging eight foods, but, yeah, definitely legumes. There's a reason why they associated. Like, if there's one question you had to ask in populations around the world in terms of assessing dietary quality, how many legumes people eat is the number one dietary predictor of survival in populations around the globe.

[00:33:26.130] – Allan

Now, you talked about nuts, and I think this is another area that people are kind of afraid because they hear, okay, nuts have a lot of calories and an almond, 16 calories or whatever. And so they thought that there's a calorie load to nuts, and therefore they'd be maybe better off eating something else. But there's a lot to be said for the nutrition, particularly the fats that we can get from nuts.

[00:33:52.310] – Dr. Greger

Well, yeah, I mean, a gram for gram basis, compared to any other food on planet Earth, consumption of nuts is associated with the longest lifespan, and you can get the maximum benefit for just that palm full, half of ounce of nuts a day, half to a full ounce maximum benefit. You don't seem to get more benefit eating more. In fact, you don't want to overdo it over a cup of nuts a day. You can actually get too many oxalates. Peanut butter does not appear to have the same benefit. Technically, not even a nut. And of all the nuts, probably walnuts are the healthiest. So, yeah, kind of a palm full of walnuts every day is the way to go. Improving artery function probably the primary cause. For example, in the PREDIMED study, those randomized to boost their intake of nuts had about half the stroke rate. And so you can think of that the other way. Not eating nuts kind of doubles your risk of stroke. So the cardiovascular protection from nuts is probably what is resulting in most of the longevity benefit.

[00:34:51.250] – Allan

Now, another nut that you don't necessarily want to overeat but is okay to have regularly is Brazil nuts.

[00:34:58.650] – Dr. Greger

Oh, yeah, well, yeah, I mean, even one high selenium Brazil nut is actually too much one a day, a single nut a day in terms of inflammation. So, yeah, that's something you really want to moderate because you can actually get solenosis. You actually get kind of selenium toxicity. It's known as the selenium is known as the essential poison because it is actually essential trace mineral, but you can actually get too much of it. And most concentrated dietary sources, brazil nuts. So, yeah, I would really hold back, I mean, in how not to Die, I talk about the study showing that four Brazil nuts once a month actually dramatically lowers cholesterol levels. But unfortunately, people read that to be, oh, four Brazil nuts a day. No, you could actually get a selenium toxicity. Even though I emphasize this, this is once a month. Pick a day of the month, your favorite day of the month. And like, okay, on the 13th of every single month, I'm going to eat four Brazils. Period.

[00:35:50.840] – Allan

That's it.

[00:35:51.700] – Dr. Greger

Unfortunately, people did not listen. Actually ran into people who got problems, who started getting, like, peripheral neuropathy, started losing sensation, and got tingling in their feet because they're getting too much selenium because they're eating too many Brazil nuts. So, yeah.

[00:36:09.430] – Allan

The sad part is, Brazil nuts are my favorite nut. But that said, I buy them in the shell. Oh, I have to go through the trouble actually cracking that shell. It's not easy.

[00:36:23.050] – Dr. Greger

Those are some hardcore shells. Oh, my God. You want grip strength. Yeah, I got your grip strength right there.

[00:36:29.740] – Allan

Exactly. But if you buy them in a bag shelled, it's just so easy to do like you do with everything else.

[00:36:36.530] – Dr. Greger

So that's actually a good idea. No, that's a good idea. We shall be like sitting by the fire with the nutcracker and just digging out little pieces.

[00:36:46.610] – Allan

If you can't crack it, then go do some exercise and come back when you can.

[00:36:51.330] – Dr. Greger

Yeah. Oh, my God. Those are hardcore.

[00:36:53.320] – Allan

Yeah. All right. And then actually my favorite besides cruciferous vegetables, I eat cruciferous vegetables every day, but leafy greens are my next favorite. That's why I was saying the big ass salad. So let's talk a little bit about leafy greens and what they're doing for us. Yeah.

[00:37:10.350] – Dr. Greger

So dark green leafies earn their place in the antiaging aid as the vegetable most associated with longer lifespan. So cruciferous vegetables, which certainly can be green leafy, but not necessarily something like cauliflower, is also cruciferous. They boost the first line of our gut defenses as well as boosting detoxifying enzymes lining our airways to help reduce our risk from air pollution. It's actually a leading killer of humanity. So particularly if you're in a city, live by a highway or something, cruciferous vegetables will help you deal with that kind of diesel exhaust. The longevity benefit, though, actually may come from the nitrates, the metabolic slowing that comes from nitrate consumption. Particularly athletes think of like beet juice. For nitrates, we're actually the most concentrated source. Dark green leafy vegetables also beets bee greens. And those nitrates actually slow down your resting metabolic rate, something you typically only see with something like severe caloric restriction. But instead of walking around starving all the time, big ass salad to the rescue. They can also improve age related declines in muscle mass. Age related declines in artery function. So you give people like a cup of cooked spinach worth of nitrates, you get a significant improvement in maximum power from the quads.

[00:38:25.900] – Dr. Greger

I mean, you can bulk up on muscle mass just reading spinach. And we think it's because of the nitrates. Although it's interesting, the magic of nitrates require the presence of certain good bacteria on your tongue to actually activate the nitrates. Otherwise they don't work. And those bugs are killed by antiseptic mouthwash. So you don't want to use an antiseptic mouthwash or an alcohol containing mouthwash and you can actually foster the growth of those good bugs by tongue scraping and regularly eating those nitrate rich vegetables which act as a prebiotic and keep them going. So that antiaging strategy only works if you got the right bacteria on your.

[00:39:07.180] – Allan

Tongue and probably all the way through your system because we are actually just one big biosystem of a lot of.

[00:39:14.230] – Dr. Greger

Things, not just most of our cells are not human.

[00:39:18.290] – Allan

Exactly. Now, sometimes I get really mad about how, for lack of a better word, our government gets in the way of us living healthy lives. One of the ways that you kind of detailed in the book is this kind of weird thing, the way they do things. And so what it is, is you think about the volume of food that you eat. So it's this big volume of food that we eat during a day, if you think about it. And then we're going to focus on one or two pills that are going to change our life for us and not focus on all that food we ate. The medical system doesn't train it. It's not followed. It actually doesn't make them any money. So they don't care to know about it or teach about it or talk about it. You're just told eat better and move more and you're good. But we're not, we're not healthy right now as a society. And one of them that came up was supplements because if you hear something's good and it's like, well, I don't really like that food or I don't have access to that food readily, it's not easy because I got to cook it.

[00:40:29.850] – Allan

Go figure. Is that the dietary supplements that we want to take to help improve our health? And I actually had someone I was talking to who's in this field and he and I were talking back and forth. He says we should get together someday and talk about our medicine cabinet and what supplements we each take. And I said, Well, I take one. And I said it's some zinc and magnesium that I take before I go to bed just because it helps me sleep better. That's the supplement. That's the one. And I live in a sunny area so I get plenty of vitamin D. If you're not in a sunny area or certain times of the year, you might need to supplement on that. If you are eating predominantly vegan or vegetarian, you might need B two. But you can do blood tests to know that stuff. The problem is that we have this industry that might not even be putting that stuff in the pill that we're taking. And the law that actually made this happen, you told me about it in the book, was the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act that came out in 1994.

[00:41:36.430] – Allan

And again, I want to go punch someone in the chest. Yeah.

[00:41:44.930] – Dr. Greger

Supplement industry is very powerful industry and people think of like Big Pharma. But actually Big Pharma owns many of the biggest supplement industries. So it actually is big pharma. And they got a law passed thanks to kind of duping people, and it'd be like, government is coming for your vitamin C. So we got to pass this law. So people have this incorrect belief that supplements must be approved for safety by some government agency like the FDA or something, before they're sold to the public, or the very least must have like a warning if there's some kind of side effects or something. And some even believe that supplements actually have to be shown to be effective at some level. None of that is true thanks to that law. So what that law did is it removed the burden of proof for quality control, basic quality control, safety efficacy from the submit manufacturer. So all of a sudden, it was great for the submen industry. They went from a $4 billion industry to like a $40 billion industry. Used to only be a few thousand products on the market. Now there's tens of thousands of products on the market, just absolutely skyrocketing.

[00:42:54.970] – Dr. Greger

But we don't have those standards. So you get some over the counter medication, for example. You like, buy some Tylenol or something. It actually must meet standards for safety efficacy, quality control. Meaning if it says it has this many milligrams, it has to have this many milligram, right? But dietary supplements, all dietary supplements are exempt. So it doesn't have to contain what it says on the label. It doesn't have to contain any of it. It contains something contaminants that aren't listed on the label, like house plants.

[00:43:26.430] – Allan

House.

[00:43:28.930] – Dr. Greger

Actually. And this is right, this is not some just like, see me shady internet thing. They went into GNC. Walmart. This was a New York Attorney General. I mean, just like mainstream supplement and they just tested well, what's actually in these things, right? That was one of the things that came out, was just like house plants, just powdered house plants, like the cheapest possible filler they could think of and had nothing of the so called active ingredient. But then I talk about how, look, we hope it's just house plants because there's some really toxic contaminants, particularly in kind of erectile dysfunction and weight loss supplements often contain kind of these illicit hormones. Things have been banned for good reason, but just keep popping up on the shelves just because things are so poorly kind of enforced. And so now we have about estimates about 50,000 Americans every year are harmed by dietary supplements, usually kidney and liver damage. Now, look, you could say, look, Big Pharma doesn't just harm but kills over 100,000 people. Side effects of drugs. Absolutely true. So we absolutely have to make sure the pros outweigh the cause. Unfortunately, we can't do that with dietary supplements.

[00:44:39.910] – Dr. Greger

And so, look, if there is some supplement that you really want to make sure is what it actually is. There is a certification pathway, something called USP certification. It'll have a little USP seal. Now, that doesn't say it's good for you or it isn't bad for you, but it just verifies. That what says on the label is actually what is in the capsule. So you're actually getting what you're paying for. One of the supplements that I've been using on the road for jet lag, because I travel a lot, is melatonin. The problem is there's all these contaminants found in typical melatonin supplements. So actually go through a Canadian pharmacy, which isn't exactly legal, but very easy to do.

[00:45:21.160] – Allan

We won't.

[00:45:23.030] – Dr. Greger

So in Canada and in Europe, melatonin is sold kind of like prescription only. So it actually has to rise to all those standards, actually has to have what it says it has and not have contaminants in it. And so you can get kind of a prescription only melatonin. Any doctor should write you a prescription, but you have to get it from one of those places. But then at least you can get some contaminant free. So there's kind of a ways around it, but it's just so sad that the snake oil is still being sold and sometimes doesn't even have any snake.

[00:45:54.620] – Allan

In it at all. Right. But there's real food and most of this, what a concept. All of it you can typically get from whole food.

[00:46:05.650] – Dr. Greger

You're a radical, I tell you, man.

[00:46:07.800] – Allan

Look at this guy.

[00:46:09.510] – Dr. Greger

Wait a second. You mean we as a species survived before? There are pill bottles sitting on the shelf.

[00:46:15.200] – Allan

Yeah. There's no witch doctor giving me a.

[00:46:17.690] – Dr. Greger

Prescription for years without all our supplements.

[00:46:22.830] – Allan

Yeah. So if you feel like you need something, I mean, there are times you're going to need some vitamin D. And.

[00:46:28.330] – Dr. Greger

If you live in pregnant women, need to get folic acid. If you're an alcoholic, there are certainly scenarios in which supplementation with nutrients is useful. But buyer beware, unfortunately.

[00:46:44.610] – Allan

All right, Dr. Gregor, I define wellness as being the healthiest, fittest and happiest you can be. What are three strategies or tactics to get and stay, you know, according to.

[00:46:57.200] – Dr. Greger

The Gold Burden Disease Study, again, largest study of disease risk factors in the world, funded by the Bill Melinda Gates Foundation, the number one cause of death in these United States is the American diet. Bumping tobacco smoking to number two. Cigarettes not only kill about a half million Americans every year, whereas our diet kills many more. So the single most important decision we make three times a day is kind of what to put to the end of our fork. And so if there was just like the absolute simplest things, it'd be like if you could just add three foods to your diet and just remove three things from your diet. The three things I would add right off the bat beans, greens, berries. And the three things I would remove first, before anything else, are the trans fats these partially hydrogenated oils, processed meats like the bacon, ham, hot dogs, lunch meats, which cause colorectal cancer. And then number three, be liquid candy, the soda, sugar sweetened beverages. If we just get rid of those three, add the other three, you'd be a long way there. I mean, I really want to emphasize, yes, I get way into the weeds in this book, but it's simple, basic, common sense lifestyle factors can literally mean the difference of an extra decade to your life or not.

[00:48:06.960] – Dr. Greger

And what are we talking about? Regular exercise, not being obese, not smoking, eating more fruits and vegetables, like the basic, basic basics already right there. You got a decade, a whole extra healthy decade. Now, you want to tweak stuff? You want to push that a little farther, fine. I got a book, but it's important. And that's how I conclude the book is like, okay, let's take a step back. People. Don't get overwhelmed. Some really simple, important, basic stuff to nail first before worrying about all this other stuff.

[00:48:39.670] – Allan

And not only are you going to add a decade, it's going to be a better decade.

[00:48:43.180] – Dr. Greger

Exactly.

[00:48:44.470] – Allan

Doctor, thank you so much for being a part of 40+ Fitness. If someone wanted to learn more about you and learn more about your book, How Not to Age, where would you like for me to send them?

[00:48:54.330] – Dr. Greger

Send them to Nutritionfacts.org, where all my work is free and you can go to local public library and get the new book, which is out now, or your favorite bookseller. I don't get a penny from any of my books. All proceeds from the sales of all my books are all donated directly to charity. I just want you and your loved ones to enjoy the longest, healthiest life.

[00:49:17.120] – Allan

Thank you, Doctor. And thank you for being a part of 40+ Fitness. Keep up the good work.

Post Show/Recap

[00:49:30.120] – Allan

Welcome back, Ras.

[00:49:32.380] – Rachel

Hey, Allan.  There's a lot to unpack there. But first, I've got the 60 minutes of exercise. I drink a ton of coffee, and I love nuts. It's my favorite snack. So I'm basically immortal. At least today. That's right.

[00:49:48.890] – Allan

Nobody wants to see that. But no, I think the point being is that science can be very misleading if it has a bias. And you can't look at anything and not have a bias. It's built into the way your brain works. If at some point someone told you that milk was bad, you're going to have a hard time reading studies where it says milk is the best thing for you. It's a struggle. There are individuals that have read something in the past and that's just drilled into them.

[00:50:24.060] – Rachel

It's stuck, and it's stuck.

[00:50:25.760] – Allan

And so this is a book where because what he does over at his website, Nutritionfacts.org, is he does these quick little videos and he pulls up a study or he pulls up a concept, and he says, okay, so is red wine healthy for us. And he goes out and looks at all the studies, and some of it he sees it's like, okay, well, this was a rat study. I'm not a rat. Although some things we learn from rats are applicable, but not all. And so he says, okay. And then what you realize is, okay, the amount of wine that you would have to drink to have the same dose as this rat is 100 glasses of wine each night. Oh, dear. Probably not going to happen.

[00:51:10.580] – Rachel

Not good for you at that point.

[00:51:13.190] – Allan

And so there's those little bits. And so now what's happening is you have a supplement company that's selling a supplement that they say, this is equivalent of drinking 100 glasses of wine without the alcohol or all the delirious effects of having that much alcohol, and it might not even have that in it. Okay? Now studies, if they're doing a study, they do a little bit of quality assurance to make sure, okay, if I'm giving someone turmeric or cumin or something like that, I want to know what's in there. And so they do some work there. But supplements you might buy on the market may not be the same thing that you're seeing in that study because it's not sourced the same way. And that's why he was know, he sources some supplements outside the United States because he trusts the compounder, putting it together. But most of us, that's outside the realm of what we're capable of. Know, contracting with someone outside the United States to prepare a supplement for you. For most of us, we're just not going to do that. But he has a lot in this book about things that will age you.

[00:52:20.990] – Allan

And so at the beginning of the book, he starts out with the eleven pathways of aging, and he goes through those. And we talked a good bit about each one. And then in the end, he sort of did go through and say, what are the eight things that are practical, applicable? And I think he was kind of excited that when we got into the book and got into this conversation, that's where I tried to take the whole thing. You have to do a little bit of the work to understand, okay, when he's talking about AMPK or autophagy or mTOR oxidation, because when you're talking about these other foods and other things, these are the pathways that they affect, and in some cases more than one, because there's overlaps. And understanding how that works will kind of help you put this all together. And the basis of pretty much the whole book is if you're eating processed food, you're aging faster than the rest of us.

[00:53:11.520] – Rachel

That's a good point.

[00:53:12.700] – Allan

Yes, it's right there and there's no if, ands, or buts. It can say healthy on the label. It's aging you faster. It just is.

[00:53:23.430] – Rachel

Well, we absorb our nutrients better from the actual food itself. And not all these fortified items in boxes.

[00:53:31.080] – Allan

But even if we didn't even if we didn't, it's just the fact that there's a way that nutrition works on the way that we were adapted as animals through evolution. And it's literally we were not sitting there just eating one food all year round. We were eating a large variety of different foods because it's hard to fill up on blueberries. You're still going to eat as many blueberries you want, but you're going to want other foods, and if they're available, you're going to eat them.

[00:54:01.420] – Rachel

Well, that's the thing. It's about eating a diverse all the colors of the foods, like they say, all the leafy greens you talked about, big ass salads, which I'm sure is more than just spinach. And lettuce throw it all in there and just eat something different and unique every day as best you can to make sure that you're getting all these different nutrients.

[00:54:23.660] – Allan

Yeah. And that's really what it comes down to, is feeding your body good food, good movement, good rest, good sleep, good stress management. When you're doing these things, your body has these ways of protecting you, of healing you. And those things all the things being healthy helps you live longer. Go figure. And some of the stuff, when you look at the science, it's like, oh, well, actually, this is worse for you than what I thought the worst thing was. That doesn't mean go do the second worst thing. It just means that pay attention. You can sit there and well, you know, so what? I eat McDonald's every day. It's like, well, someone smokes two packs of cigarettes every day. So what? You're like, oh, that's terrible.

[00:55:16.550] – Rachel

Well, yeah, I suppose.

[00:55:20.550] – Allan

Well, of course McDonald's wants me to live. No, they want you to eat more McDonald's. They don't really care. They want you to eat more McDonald's. And that's their sole job. How can I get you to eat more? And that's what they do. They're not trying to kill you, but they're not trying to keep you alive, either. Yeah, that's not their.

[00:55:41.690] – Rachel

I just like we talk about all the time eating a wide variety of different foods, getting a number of different types of movement of exercise throughout the week, and just doing all the things that are important to maintaining our good health and fitness.

[00:55:57.320] – Allan

Yeah. Again, treat your body well, and it'll treat you well.

[00:56:01.270] – Rachel

Absolutely.

[00:56:03.570] – Allan

All right, well, I will talk to you next week. Great.

[00:56:06.600] – Rachel

Take care, Ellen.

[00:56:07.490] – Allan

You too. Bye.

[00:56:08.460] – Rachel

Thank you.

Music by Dave Gerhart

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Let's Say Hello

[00:02:33.730] – Allan

Hey, Ras, how are you doing up there?

[00:02:35.960] – Rachel

Good, Allan. How are you today?

[00:02:38.050] – Allan

I'm doing all you know, I okay. I live in Panama and it's beautiful. And, yes, I live on a Caribbean island that doesn't get hurricanes. And, yeah, that means I can wear shorts and tank tops every single day of the year. This is my work uniform. This is my day uniform. This is just kind of how I'm dressed most of the time. That's great. But I'm not going to say this is just a total paradise. Everything's great every single day. They're having a strike or a protest in the country. And the way they like to do them here is they like to block off roads and make everybody else's life as miserable as possible so that the government has to respond because everybody else is not living their full life. So they've had the country shut down now for a couple of weeks. A few weeks, wow. Which means probably if you paid attention about a year and a half ago, I guess that we had the kind of the same thing where I was talking about not having eggs, not having bread. Well we don't have eggs on the island, we don't have fuel on the island.

[00:03:49.290] – Allan

There's some pluses and minuses to cars not having gasoline, so there are fewer cars on the road. But at the same time it means that we don't have the things that we would normally have. And when it's available, typically it gets bumped up in price. So where a gallon of gasoline would normally be about $4 a gallon here in normal times it's anywhere from eight dollars to thirteen dollars. People are reselling it. So you walk up there with a jug and they'll sell you some gasoline. And so right now we're in this mode where some of our supplies are starting to kind of dwindle down a little bit. We've still got food, we've still got water, we've still got the things that we need to make it. But at points it just gets a little frustrating that you can't go to the grocery store and buy a dozen eggs. I eat a lot of eggs. It means I have to change my behavior, I have to change my eating. Which is kind of something we're going to get into today. But how are things up there?

[00:04:57.550] – Rachel

Good. Over the weekend I did something very different. I've never done this before. A friend asked me to pace during a half marathon and the pace group that we were leading was the 1235 minutes mile group. So we were pacing an entire half marathon at that pace, 1235 minutes. And I'm surprised. I've never paced, I've never run consistent like that for an entire half marathon. But we did and we were just about a minute and a few seconds faster than we should have been. But we were pretty close. I feel like a minute is pretty darn good for pretty good miles. So it was an interesting new experience. So it was a lot of fun.

[00:05:42.180] – Allan

Well, good for anybody that gets into running. If you join a run club or something like that, that's one of the benefits is sometimes they'll put together a structure like that to make you run. And even if you don't, finding a buddy or a friend that is a better runner than you and saying, okay, this is what we're going to run. I remember I was in Washington DC years and years and years ago and there was a guy that was working with us, he's a little freaking rabbit, but not kidding, but he goes out and says, well I'm going to run the ten K, you want to run it with me? And I'm like, sure. Now I basically outweighed this guy by a good 45 50 pounds, and I wasn't huge, I was like, 195. But he's a little bitty guy. And so he goes out there and says, well, what do you want to do? I says, yeah, I'll run it, but I said, I'm probably going to do it at about eight minute miles. He says, okay, I'll do that with you. And I'm like, okay, but I know you run a lot faster.

[00:06:42.780] – Allan

He's like, no, that's fine. Eight minute miles, I can do that. I'm like, okay, cool. So we go to line up, and if you line up for a race, realize that you get used to these, you know, that the faster runners want to be at the front and the slower runners need to be at the back. So you get into the practice of knowing your pace and for the type of race and knowing, okay, I need to be two thirds back or all the way back. This guy's just wanting to inch forward, inch forward, inch forward. I'm like, Dude, no. I said, I'm not going to get in front of faster runners. Eight minute miles. So the guy keeps inching forward and I watch him, and then he finally, he just leaves. He gets up right up in the very front, like, right at the start, and like a rabbit, he's out the gate. Of course I finished my race. I think I was 801. I think my actual time splits were 801 on average.

[00:07:30.810] – Rachel

Fantastic.

[00:07:32.610] – Allan

I got passed by a blind guy, but I wasn't going to mess up my slip. But I get through, and the guy's there at this point, he's pretty much already cooled off and he's ready to do another one. I go through and he says, how was your race? I said, yeah, I did 801. He's like, okay, good. And I said, so what were yours? He said, about a 603, of course. Why did you even say you were going to try to do an eight when you knew you couldn't physically allow yourself to run that slow? And so again, I thought we would go and we'd pace and we'd run together, and we weren't going to. So one of the advantages again, of getting involved with a run club or having a run buddy that's running the same pace as you is that then you can help each other stay accountable and involved and engage and keep your pace so you don't overdo it.

[00:08:27.490] – Rachel

You could practice those faster paces when you're chasing somebody. I like to have a rabbit, too.

[00:08:33.570] – Allan

I wasn't going to chase a 603 rabbit maybe when I was in the army for 2 miles. That would have been a fine rabbit to chase, but ten K I know. Wasn't going to do it, but anyway, awesome. Oh, good. So you enjoyed the pacing?

[00:08:53.390] – Rachel

It was it was a neat experience, yeah.

[00:08:56.410] – Allan

Cool. All right, well, are you ready to talk about food and freedom?

[00:09:01.350] – Rachel

Sure.

Interview

[00:09:44.170] – Allan

Alana, welcome to 40+ Fitness.

[00:09:47.770] – Alana

Hi, Allan. How are you?

[00:09:49.770] – Allan

I'm doing very well, thank you. Your book, it has three of my favorite words in it freedom, Food and Fitness. The name of the book is Freedom with Food and Fitness. And so really kind of a good conversation to have right now because I think particularly now, we just finished Thanksgiving. And so this is the season of eating. This is the season of, if you will, gluttony and also internal abuse because we eat things and then we get mad at ourselves or feel guilty or feel shame. We have these feelings about food and fitness that we just carry with us in a very uncomfortable way as we go through this whole season.

[00:10:36.490] – Alana

Absolutely. And it's also the season of unsustainable weight loss. It's the season of crash diets and beating ourselves up.

[00:10:44.480] – Allan

It's both because we think, okay, well, I did something bad, I have to fix it. And we kind of get drawn into this whole world, and I'm in the fitness and health space myself, so I see it every single day of just the mental gymnastics, if you will, that I see people go through to try to figure out why it isn't working for them. Like someone will actually say, I saw this post today was I'm not eating the food. I'm basically staying within my numbers. I'm doing this, I'm doing that, but my weight is not going down. What can I do? And then you have the calories in, calories out, for lack of a better word, Nazis that come out and basically say, oh, well, you're obviously overeating, or, oh, you're obviously not moving enough. You should just do more movement and you should just eat less. And they're telling you in the post, I am doing everything I possibly can and I'm failing, and all you're saying is just do it more. It's a really hard message to just sit back and say, this is happening every day. Thousands of conversations over and over and over, and we don't seem to be learning the lesson.

[00:12:11.050] – Alana

No, we don't. And that's because the diet and weight loss industry is a multibillion dollar industry that has made a huge profit on our insecurities. It's just we feel like we're the ones who have failed and that we fail over and over again. But the thing is, we're not getting the correct information about how to actually feed our bodies and how to actually move our bodies, for us to be at our peak. And by peak, I don't mean that we're all ready to go do a fitness or a bikini competition. I mean feeling good in our bodies and not having nutrition and fitness be something that feels so punishing and so difficult. It shouldn't be hard. It shouldn't be hard at all. And that's why I'm an intuitive eating coach. It's in the title. It's being intuitive, listening to your own body instead of all of these rules and these conflicting messages, and every diet to do something different. And then we have misinformation, like calories in, calories out. Yes, from a physiological standpoint, but that's also not the entire picture. That's not everything.

[00:13:20.270] – Allan

Yeah, so there was this I don't know if you know who. I guess his last name is Gillette, or maybe his first name, but he was the comedian. He and his partner would do this magic show, comedy show thing, and he had gotten kind of obese, and he's working Vegas, and he'd gotten kind of obese, and then he lost 100 pounds. And he lost 100 pounds just eating potatoes. He literally just ate potatoes, and he lost 100 pounds. And so now, basically, people are saying, well, if I just eat potatoes, I'll lose the weight like he did, and I'll keep it off. He's a pretty smart guy. What he understood with eating potatoes was that, okay, yeah, this is somewhat of a fad. But for him it was. If I force myself to just eat potatoes, I know I'm going to get tired of potatoes, and then I won't eat as much again. I don't prescribe to that. But it worked for him. And so there's this fad diet that comes out, and it says, hey, just eat potatoes, and you could lose 100 pounds. And then he gets interviewed on all the shows, and it's more publicity for people to say, okay, yeah, I'm going to look at this potato only diet.

[00:14:36.630] – Allan

Why is it that these fad diets, they blow up, they get really huge because, again, there's a success story there. Why do they fail? Because they worked for him. Why aren't they working for me?

[00:14:52.110] – Alana

It could be a variety of reasons. Number one, I find it hard to believe all he ate was potatoes because there's definitely a nutritional deficit, if that's what he's doing. There's no healthy fat for his brain function. There's no protein for muscle development. I don't recommend this at all, and I know you don't as well. I think these fad diets get airtime because they're so outlandish and novel, and people also want the quick fix. They want the sensationalized results. They want 100 pounds. No one wants to hear that someone lost ten pounds over the course of eight weeks doing things reasonably and sustainably. They want really quick, really flashy, really novel. And to your point, before I say why it didn't work, it might not work for somebody else. To your point about why it did work for him. There is an element of something that we talk about in intuitive eating called habituation. So it's when you have the same stimulus over and over and over again, eventually your response to that stimulus decreases. So the example would be he eats potatoes, potatoes, potatoes. Eventually he'sick of potatoes. He doesn't want potatoes anymore. So what we do in intuitive eating is if you have a fear food, let's say you're fearful of cheesecake.

[00:16:15.630] – Alana

It's high calorie and sugar and fat, and you think it's going to make you gain weight, so you always try to avoid it, but that ends up with you inevitably binging an entire cheesecake. You want it so much. So we go through the process of habituation, and I tell clients, have a little bit of cheesecake every single day for a month. And you will notice the pull for the cheesecake on day one is a lot more intense than the pull for the cheesecake on day 30 because you've been having it over and over and over again. And people, they're like, how can that be? I'll want cheesecake forever. I love cheesecake. It's my favorite. So I tell them, think about are you married, Alan?

[00:16:50.390] – Allan

I am.

[00:16:51.730] – Alana

Okay, so first time you said you loved your partner, there were probably butterflies, and everyone was so excited, and it was so novel and wonderful. And now that you've been together for however many years, it's like they say they love you and you're like, yeah, I love you too, and you probably mean it still, right? I've been with my husband for ten years, and I still mean it. I still love him. But it doesn't have that same butterfly inducing, exciting feeling, at least not in the same intensity as it did the first time versus ten years in that's habituation. Why? It's not going to work for somebody else. Variety of reasons. I mean, people eat emotionally. People want to eat different things when they're emotional. Your body's going to crave what it needs nutritionally. That's why intuitive eating is actually a healthful practice. Your body's going to tell you you're going to crave steak when you need iron, things like that. So for you to force yourself to eat one kind of food with one nutritional profile, your body's going to crave other things. And once you allow yourself to go off the potato diet, you're going to binge those things because you've been restricting them for so long.

[00:18:00.170] – Allan

I call it the purple elephant, and it's like, don't think of a purple elephant. And it's like, what's in your head right now? It's like the thing you weren't supposed to think about. And we do that to ourselves exactly every time we start thinking about, well, I'm on this thing and this diet, and therefore I can't have these things, that's all you think about. I remember when I tried paleo. Okay. And Paleo works great for me. My body responds very well to the Paleo style of eating, but there are foods on that list that I would typically want in volumes like bread and beer and stuff like that. I remember having a dream about bread when I went into that because my brain was just so wired on bread. That was a top of thought thing. And I was like, okay, I know I don't need bread. I know I don't really want bread. But what am I telling myself when I tell myself I can't have something? The rebel side of my brain is like, well, I'm going to make you think about this every single day of your life until you eat bread.

[00:19:14.670] – Allan

And so I think there's that aspect of this whole thing of when we do that. So with a lot of my clients, I'll actually tell them, I'll be like, well, I want a pop or soda or whatever you call it, wherever you are. And I'll be like, well, you're a grown ass woman. Have a soft drink. But at the same time recognize that you're making a choice as an adult. You're not a kid, you're an adult. You have a smart part of your brain that can look at it and say, why am I doing this? What's my emotional state? Why do I feel like I need this? Versus because we know we're not getting any nutritional value from that soft drink that our body actually needs. We may be craving it. So the question is back down and say, okay, is this an emotional thing? Am I trying to get through a stressor? Am I using this in a different way than I would use food? We're going to talk about that in a minute. But it's kind of that whole concept of, okay, is this really helping me? And I think that's where a lot of these fad diets kind of come in, is like, okay, is this going to give me what I need?

[00:20:19.430] – Allan

Is this diet really going to me and nourish me and make me feel whole, or am I going to be miserable until I'm done?

[00:20:28.970] – Alana

Right? I think that last sentence that you just said is something that I want listeners to take away is, do you want to be miserable the whole time? Because whatever diet you choose to be on or no diet at all, your food regimen, if you will, you have to be doing that for the rest of your life in order to maintain whatever results you're looking for. So if you're on Keto, congratulations. You have to be on Keto probably for the rest of your life in order to maintain the results that you have right now. Because if you go back to old eating habits, you're going to gain the weight back.

[00:21:02.020] – Allan

I think that's the key. I do think that's a key. I do want to state that, because I do think you can temporarily go on a sprint and you can temporarily do something, but it's the going all the way back to who you were and not recognizing that. Wait, when I eat whole food and I feed myself and I let myself get full and I'm mindful of what I'm eating, when I do these intuitive eating things, I'm suddenly satiated. I'm full, I'm comfortable. I like this. Don't go back to eating the way you ate before. When you get back to you think you got to a goal or you feel better about it, there's no real reason to go back if you feel really good eating the way you're eating. And I think that's the disconnect when we use the word diet. Diet actually the word, you know, this basically means the way you eat. It was never intended to be used as a specialized concept of temporary eating. And I think that's where a lot of people lose it. But you could sit there and say, I know beer does not really help me.

[00:22:06.120] – Allan

If I'm a little bit overweight or feeling uncomfortable with myself or my energy levels are low, I know that's not going to serve me as a grown man. I can make the decision, I'm going to have a couple of beers with my buddies and I'm going to be okay with that. But at the same time, I also know if I go periods of time without drinking beer, I feel better, my energy is level better, I sleep better, my stress levels are better, everything's better. And so I think that's the kind of the disconnect when we use that term diet, and particularly the fad diets because they tend to exclude a lot of things that we really need.

[00:22:40.130] – Alana

Absolutely. And I would say if somebody is going on a certain diet and then going back to their original way of eating, they've put a Band Aid on a bullet wound. They haven't addressed the mental and emotional issues that are causing them to have a broken relationship to food in the first place. And that's what I deal a lot with my clients about, is what are the thoughts that you're having that are creating these emotions that are causing you to binge eat in front of the pantry? We have to address that emotional pain or lack of stress management or emotional management or trauma or whatever it might be, because it's never just about the food ever. It's always about some sort of underlying issue that you're not addressing and using the food as a mask or using exercise or lack thereof as a mask. So you have to really get down to the nitty gritty and do the deeper work.

[00:23:39.590] – Allan

One of the things you got into here that I thought was, I think this is key, we're going to say the term intuitive eating, and immediately I think people are going to be like, well, wait a minute, I already overeat, I already binge. I already do these things. How can I trust myself. And diet culture tells us you can't. You have to eat a certain way, you have to do a certain thing, because you can't be trusted with cheesecake.

[00:24:12.690] – Alana

Right? It's all about relearning how to listen to your body's cues. So we're all born as intuitive eaters. When we were children, we ate when we were hungry, we stopped when we were full. I have a three year old son and I see him leaving half a cupcake on a plate, and any one of us who's been through diet culture would be like, oh, my God, I would have ate that thing in one bite. It's like my cheat day to have a cupcake. But for him, it's just like, I don't really care because he knows he can have it whenever he wants. And that's really the beauty, the magic. And the thing about intuitive eating that I don't think people fully understand until they've been going through the process is you actually crave those junk foods, quote, unquote, less, once you become an intuitive eater, because it becomes more about, what can I add in to my diet that's going to make me feel good? Instead of, what do I have to take away because I'm on this diet? But it's, what can I add in? Can I add in more water? Can I add in more veggies and fiber and protein?

[00:25:15.790] – Alana

And listen, I love pizza just as much as the next person, but one of the things I ask myself before I sit down to eat a meal is, how am I going to feel after I eat this? And if I eat one slice of pizza, I'll probably be fine. I would try to pair it with, like, a salad with grilled chicken or something to kind of round out that meal. But I know if I sit down and eat two, three slices of pizza, I am not going to feel good. I'm not going to feel good in my body. I'm going to feel bloated and sluggish. So it's asking that question, how am I going to feel? But the other thing that we need to do to start learning to listen to and trust our bodies is honing in on those body cues. Do you actually know the signs of hunger? Aside from a growling stomach, which is really late stage hunger? Can you pick up those nuanced cues? Do you actually know when you're full or do you, when you have a cheat day, just plow right through that fullness queue because you think it's your only day, you can have that food.

[00:26:18.970] – Alana

When we use external tools like calorie counters and the scale and what people say we can and cannot eat, we can't listen to what our bodies actually do need, and it's different for everybody. So learning to listen to those body cues, I think is super important, combined with this question of how do I want to feel in my body after I eat this thing that takes a.

[00:26:45.270] – Allan

Ton of self awareness and it takes a lot of patience. I'm a huge fan of Journaling. Not necessarily that you're going to sit down and write down everything you ate. You can write down all the calories and all the macros and do the math. And now you basically have this huge accounting system like General Motors. You're spending hours trying to figure out all this stuff and stay within ranges and numbers and all that. And I just think that's not the way human being was meant to eat. I don't think we were walking through the forest saying, OOH, blueberries. I think I'll walk past those because too many carbs. I don't think that was even a thought. It was like, oh, blueberries, I'm going to eat all the blueberries because I know they're not going to be here in three weeks, but we eat all the blueberries. And then now guess what? We're back to hunting and foraging, eating roots and other things that we would just eat. But I think you're onto something. You talked about something there that I think is really kind of a big part of this is we have to be aware of what our body's telling us.

[00:27:44.280] – Allan

And too often we're not even listening.

[00:27:49.830] – Alana

That's right. We're listening to what other people are saying we should be doing. We're listening to the quote unquote experts.

[00:27:57.590] – Allan

Yeah. And then sometimes we're not listening to anything. I don't know how many times I've had a conversation with a client and they would say, I had a nice meal, I felt good, and then my kids were done. And so I ate everything that was on their plates that they didn't eat, like your three year old. It's like they would throw down the half a cupcake because, well, it's there not even thinking how that feels, whether they were already full, why were they doing it. And usually it's just this is easier, this is quick. I'll feel good, I'll enjoy it. And they're just not having that conversation. So how does someone go about that? How do I go about saying, okay, look, I need to be in the moment, I need to be aware, I need to be mindful.

[00:28:42.790] – Alana

It's really just a practice. It's really just learning to stop in the moment when you're about to do an action and just think to yourself, is this going to serve me? And if it's not, maybe choosing something different. But I think you're right in terms of we go through our day a lot, almost like zombies are almost on this autopilot where we do things where we don't even question why we're still doing them. So I think that's part of it. And I also think we're trying to always numb out, especially in today's society, there's so much on social media and so much that we're consuming that we use it because we don't want to feel our actual feelings. We're using. TV and food and drinking and drugs and gambling and porn and all of these things to try to not feel our feelings. And I have a lot of clients that emotionally eat because they don't want to feel whatever it is. So part of my work with my clients is thought work is cognitive behavioral therapy. Again, as I said before, it's what are the thoughts that are going on in your head and what emotions are those causing and what outcomes or actions are you taking as a result of those emotions?

[00:30:00.490] – Alana

Like, are you grabbing that cup and eating it because you need the dopamine hit because something went bad at work today that you don't want to process in the form of journaling or with a therapist or whatever? Are you just stuffing it down with food? That's one of the principles of intuitive eating, is coping with emotions, with kindness. And that's something that we don't do very often because we weren't socialized to a lot of us were told when we were younger to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and don't cry and don't be a sissy. And the negative emotions mean that something has gone wrong. But there are ways to process emotions so that they complete the stress cycle and they do dissipate so that you don't need food to cope with those emotions.

[00:30:45.480] – Allan

Yeah, I was at dinner last night with some folks at a friend's house and someone had made a pumpkin soup and so this woman brought it up and she said, are there carrots in this? And the woman that she asked didn't hear, so she just went on and started eating the soup. And then she came back later and said, yes, there's carrots in this. And someone says, well, do you have a problem with carrots? She's like, I don't like carrots. And they said, well, you don't like carrots? She says, no, because I remember as a child sitting at the table for a long, long time with carrots in front of me, and my parents would not let me go to bed until I ate the carrots. And so this woman had a relationship with carrots that I was glad she was aware of it, but she had pretty much decided that she would never eat carrots willingly, although she did eat the soup because I guess it was delicious. So there was that. But there was a relationship there that she was aware of, and I was glad that she was aware of it. I wasn't in the conversation, I was just the fly on the wall listening.

[00:31:55.520] – Allan

But it was just that understanding that there's more to food than just the calories and the macros and everything else. We have memories, we have traumas, we have all these things that have gone on in our lives that tell us how to eat. They're not telling us what our body needs.

[00:32:16.010] – Alana

Absolutely. That story just reminded me of a client who she had anorexia for 20 years, and in the year that she worked with me, she actually finally was able to move over into the category of in recovery. She made so much progress with me, and I'm so proud of her. But she had this story in her head that she was safer when she was thinner. She was in a safer body. She felt safer. And I had to ask her one day, I said, have you ever thought about the validity of that story today for you? Because today for you, your anorexia has nearly killed you. Is this really safe for you anymore? And she was like, wow, I never really thought of it that way. I think sometimes we have these stories that we make up to make sense of what's happened in our lives, and we hold on to those stories and repeat those stories over and over again over the years. They begin to sound like facts, and we don't even challenge them after a while. But you might be holding on to a story about yourself or about food from 2030 years ago that doesn't really apply anymore.

[00:33:22.380] – Alana

And you really have to challenge those thoughts and ask yourself if you're willing to let go of some of the stories that you've been holding on to or challenge them the way a lawyer would challenge somebody else in court. Hold up the facts of that story.

[00:33:39.510] – Allan

Yeah. Now you brought up something in the book that it's a topic that I've known about and I've thought about because I don't want to push someone to think that they need to be perfect. I'm a big fan of just progress. Just do something a little better. It doesn't have to be perfect, but it's orthorexia and this is basically kind of the other side of the coin of just not giving a damn about your health and your fitness. This is like maybe caring a little too much. Can you talk about that a little bit?

[00:34:16.130] – Alana

Yeah, that's where I was. And orthorexia as you said, it's an obsession with, quote unquote, clean eating and having a real anxiety and fear around foods that are deemed unhealthy or junk foods. And when I was in my twenty s, that was one of the things that I most certainly had. I was never diagnosed with it, and it's not in the DSM Five for diagnosable eating disorders as of yet. I know they're working on that. But I think sometimes when we want to reach a goal weight, when we want to be as healthy as possible, especially since our culture has become so obsessed with wellness, it could become an obsession. And for me, I've always been a perfectionist and in certain ways a maladaptive perfectionist. And I in my 20s, was seeking perfection through being a certain goal weight, and I wanted my body to look a certain way. But I think kind of going back to our conversation of calories and calories out. It's not that simple. I wanted six pack ABS, and that's very difficult for someone with my genetics. That's just not how our bodies are shaped. And we gain weight in our middles first in my family.

[00:35:32.190] – Alana

And I could have the six pack, I would have to get my body fat very low. I would have to eat very regimented whey. And for me to have a goal like that would mean to have a very real fear of anything that would not allow me to reach that goal. But it got to a point, obviously, when I developed an eating disorder, where I had to say, is this goal really worth it? Is eating this clean all the time really worth it? And the answer was no for me. And I actually just spoke with, I don't know if you know her, Marie Wald. She's the host of the Make Bank podcast. And she used to be a competitive bikini person. And she was saying that she had no social life when she was prepping. She felt, like, horrible all of the time in her body. And then when she was done prepping and done competing and she would eat, quote unquote, normally again in between shows, she would gain all this weight and feel so bad about her body. And I've heard similar stories like that before. I read a book called oh, gosh, madeline Moon's book, the Confessions of a Fitness Model, I think it was called.

[00:36:47.640] – Alana

Same Story. She would compete in these bikini competitions, and it was just this mental and physical struggle to reach peak perfection. But was it perfection? Is the question that's what I posed in the book as well is. I think the chapter is called The Dangers of the Perfect Body or The Myth of the Perfect Body.

[00:37:06.020] – Allan

Yeah. And I think that gets a little weird, if you will, or OD when we get over 40. And because a lot of us, I think, guys more maybe than women, we still think of ourselves like our 20 year old self. It's like, I want to go out and do the things I did when I was in my twenty s. I feel like I should be able to do those things. I think I should look like I did when I was in my 20s, when I had the six pack and had the things going on. And what I've come to realize is that my body right now won't hold on to that much muscle mass. And therefore, from a BMI perspective, or whatever you want to call it, I'm never going to be 29 again. I can be very fit. I can be very strong. I can do everything that I want to do, but I'm not going to get down to the 31 inch waist again. It's probably just not going to happen. But that's me being real with myself and understanding my physical limitations and also just understanding my lifestyle of, well, I still want to be able to go out with my friends and do stuff.

[00:38:10.860] – Allan

And if I'm going to have these detours, if you will, I'm going to go do these things. To me, I don't want the guilt. I don't want the shame of saying, well, okay, I don't have the 31 inch waist. I'll be happy with 34 and still going out and having fun with my friends.

[00:38:27.250] – Alana

Right. It's that balance of the perfect body. But what would you lose if you tried to gain that perfect body? Because it takes so much work and effort and mental and physical anguish that it's not worth it for me. And I think that's a question that the answer to, which is different for everybody, I suppose. But you can absolutely be healthy and not look the same way that you did when you were in your in high school and society glorifies the young. But we're all going to get older. Our bodies are all going to change. Women are going to go through menopause and the whole host of body changes that come along with that. And it's something to be appreciated and respected and embraced at the same time, that you could still be eating mostly nutrients, dense foods and moving your body most days and drinking your water and sleeping and managing your stress. You can be healthy without looking like the 20 something model. And that's something that I addressed in my TEDx Talk, is this fallacy and this very one dimensional view of what health is supposed to look like.

[00:39:37.690] – Allan

Yeah, and I've gone through that with my clients, too. It's like you don't have to look like a CrossFit athlete to be fit if your level of fitness is just I want to be an awesome grandfather, and when we go to the zoo, I want to be able to keep up with the grandkids. And if they want to go get in the park and roll around on the ground, I want to be able to do that, too. And so it's that kind of mentality of, okay, what do I need to be able to do? And I still see that. Like, there was a post on Facebook today. Again, a lot going on on Facebook today, I guess, but the guy was posting, what can you do? This is a 40 plus fitness level thing, as most of us were. All of us are in our older. He's like, what can you do? And so you've got people. Well, I can run a six minute mile. I'm 52 years old. And of the guys like, Well, I can. And I'm like, well, I can do everything I want to do. And he didn't like that answer, because I wasn't bragging about what I could do.

[00:40:36.880] – Allan

I was just saying if I want to be able to do it, I train around the things. I train my strength, my mobility, my stamina, my balance to be able to be the person I want to be. And beyond that, if I have a little bit more strength than I need, well, great. If I have a little bit more stamina than I need, great. But I know I can go anywhere I want to go. I can do anything I want to do. Can I do what I did when I was in the military in my twenty s? No, probably not. But I can still do a lot that I enjoy doing, and I can do everything that I need to do. And so to me, that's enough. And I think it's that line of saying, what's enough? Physically, health wise? All of it? Yeah.

[00:41:19.050] – Alana

What's enough for women especially, it's challenging not only what is health, because I ask my clients a series of questions toward the beginning of my program. Is healthy being physically afraid of a brownie? Or is healthy not having a piece of your son or daughter's birthday cake because you're too afraid of it? Is it really healthy to spend every single day at the gym without giving yourself a rest day? So not only questioning what health actually is, authentic health versus diet culture's version of health, but also what is your definition of beauty, what is your definition of worth? Because we tend to inflate all of those things together. Fitness equals health, equals worthiness equals beauty. And that is what society has served us up and that's what we've been socialized to believe. But as autonomous human beings, like you said to your client, you're a big girl. You can have the beer or the bread or whatever you want. We are allowed to subscribe to this version of health and beauty and worthiness if we want to, or we can choose to opt out. And if you opt out, yes, of course you have to contend with the fact you still live in a thin obsessed society, but you get to write those rules.

[00:42:36.900] – Alana

You get to write those rules in a way that allows you to do all the things you want to do, as you said, and also still feel good in your body.

[00:42:43.160] – Allan

Yeah. And you're not subjecting your children or grandchildren to this level of anxiety about a piece of cake or a brownie. They're seeing you live a happy, healthy life. And that's what we want. We're not going to break the diet culture paradigm. We could do it for ourselves, but we can also do it for people around us by being the example of the person who's not anxious about, oh, well, they've got this, I can't eat that, I won't eat that kind of thing.

[00:43:14.430] – Alana

Yeah. And that's definitely something. As a mom to all of your female clients over 40, we can say one thing to our children, but they always pay attention to how we act. And I have a lot of clients, I ask them about their family history and I say, well, did your parents ever put you on a diet when you were younger? And I would say a good half of them say, no, they didn't put me on a diet, but they were so hard. Like, my mom was so harsh on herself. Or my mom always used to go to Weight Watchers meetings, or she would eat something for dinner that was different than the rest of the family, or she would always pinch the fat on her arms or whatever. And when we see those things, it's generational. Eating disorders are generational. When we see those things when we're children, it's, well, I want to be like Mommy, and Mommy doesn't seem to like her body unless it looks this way, and that's what makes her feel like a good girl. So that must mean that that would make me a good girl if I was thin, too.

[00:44:17.480] – Alana

And that's how it starts.

[00:44:19.290] – Allan

Yeah. Now, this transition, if you will, to where you're starting to trust yourself, you're starting to do these things. It's not just something you pick up and you say, okay, well, Alana was right. I'm on the podcast. I'm going to start intuitive eating. It's not an easy thing. This is an intense internal piece of work. In the book, you included about, I think, 15 tips that will make the transition a little easier and a little bit more sustainable. Can you share a couple of your favorite? I have a favorite that I'll talk about in a minute, but what are some of your favorite tips that you have in the book for this transition?

[00:45:03.950] – Alana

I'm all about practicality, and you read the book, so, you know, these tips are just like, really things that you can implement the day that you read them. I'm not here to wax poetic to anybody because it sounds great, but then you're like, how do I actually implement this? So my favorite first step is always to just get rid of the scale and delete your calorie counting app, like MyFitness pal. Because if you're using external tools to determine how much or little you should be eating, you cannot actually honor any hunger and fullness cues that you're getting in your body. So that is, like, step number one. And I will say again, as somebody who would weigh herself every single day before anything else, before even a sip of water, I was so scared to not step on a scale one day and not know how much or little I could eat that day, because that's how I would determine it. But it's always scarier before you do it. The day I actually decided to not step on the scale, it was actually a relief. It was a breath of fresh air, and anxiety is fear of the future.

[00:46:08.970] – Alana

So once it was already happening, it wasn't that scary anymore. It just was. So I would definitely say that. The other tip I really enjoy, and I think it's actually a couple of different strategies in the book that fall under this umbrella, but this idea of meal planning, not in the rigid way that diet culture tells us. Like, whatever you meal prep, you have to have because it's in your macros or whatever, it's just taking an hour or two every Sunday or whatever day you have off and prepping a couple of options for breakfast and lunch or something. You don't even have to do dinner and do a couple of snacks, but just having some pre prepped, nutritiously, dense food readily available at the go. Because I think we get in the habit of eating on the go, going to the drive through, waiting till we're starving, that we don't have time to make the food. So we just gobble up whatever prepackaged garbage is available to us, instead of saying, oh, I made these yogurt parfaits for snacks. Like, they're right here. I can just grab one if I'm really hungry. So meal prepping as a flexible, gentle way to ensure that you have nutrient dense, balanced meals available to you, I think is super key.

[00:47:24.500] – Alana

And I have a ton of tricks in the book about how to meal prep so that it doesn't take 6 hours, it should take an hour to max. And I have some strategies for that.

[00:47:36.290] – Allan

My favorite was your tip number six, transition tip number six, which was freeze leftovers or fresh foods for later. And the way you put it together, there's two things that you went through. One was, okay, so someone gives you this big, huge brownie and, you know, okay, I like the brownies. I think you talked about it having brownie and fudge and chocolate chip and a whole lot of other stuff in there. And you love it, you want it, but, you know, okay, it's not in my best interest to eat all of it at one sitting, which I'd probably do if I just left it on the counter. And I keep looking at it every time I walk by it, but you cut it up into bites or pieces or whatever, and then you freeze the rest of it. And so it's like any night you want, you can go in there and say, I'd like a little bit of that, and you have a little bit of it. You feel the satiation of, oh, that was really good, but you're not eating the whole thing. And similar to what we talked about earlier, like with the potato thing, it's like because it's there, you now don't have this scarcity mindset.

[00:48:39.410] – Allan

It's like, oh, I always have something sweet, something savory, something I like, and it's put aside for when I need it, for when I want it. And so I don't have to feel like I have to eat it all because I know it's not going anywhere. It's my freezer, and it's going to be there. So it's there. So I think that ties in that the other side of it was I was thinking. I used to go out and I'd bring food home from the restaurant and it's like, okay, I'll eat that for lunch the next morning. And then I'd find myself at lunchtime and I'm like, well, I just had that last night, and that's just not fulfilling right now. It's not what I want. Yes, I could force myself to eat it. It's still good food, but it's like, yeah, if I just took it home, packaged it up, put it in the freezer, then I give myself the option to say yes or no to that particular thing, and I don't feel like I'm tied to it. Like, the clean your plate mindset that we were passed on when we were kids is like, if I want it, I'll have it, but I'll have it when I want it versus the other way around.

[00:49:47.930] – Alana

Exactly. And you put that so well. And I love the freezer hack, too, because as you kind of hinted at, it takes away that Last supper mentality, like, oh, I have to have it all now because for me, I don't waste food. I have a problem with wasting food, and for me, it would be partially, oh, I have to eat them all now because they're going to go stale and that's going to be a waste. But if you put it in the freezer, it doesn't happen, they don't get stale. So it's this way to take the pressure off and to not have that Last supper mentality.

[00:50:20.690] – Allan

Yeah. And so, like, tonight, my wife's going out with friends, they're going to have a slumber party. So I don't know if a 55 year old woman can actually go on a slumber party, but that's what they're doing. And so every time she leaves town, it's like, well, this is the time for me to cook what I want without worrying about what she wants. So it's almost always liver and onions for me because that's one of my I love liver and onions. No one else on the earth? Well, there's a couple of us, but most people don't. My wife doesn't. She says she loves smelling it, but she has no way she's going to eat it. So I'll cook it. And then what I found is sometimes I'll put it in the fridge, and then the next day, I don't really want it. And I hate again like you. I don't want to waste it, and I don't want it to go bad. But I have to admit, sometimes I just can't make myself eat it. But the idea of tonight, I cook it, I have it, and then the rest of it I put in the freezer, and then that's there for me.

[00:51:12.710] – Allan

Whenever I kind of want my fix, it's there. So I like that tip and I'm definitely going to follow it.

[00:51:20.650] – Alana

I love that. Thank you.

[00:51:22.650] – Allan

Alana. I define wellness as being the healthiest, fittest and happiest you can be. What are three strategies or tactics to get and stay well.

[00:51:34.110] – Alana

Always approach nutrition from a Place of abundance. So what can you add in to your diet that's going to leave you feeling good? Is it prioritizing more protein? Is it throwing in healthy fats, fiber, water? I say journal. Journaling, I'm with you. I think when we get down about our bodies, sometimes having a gratitude journal about what we are grateful for and happy about in our lives can help pull the focus away from our bodies as this esthetic thing that we have to make perfect. So coming from a Place of Abundance, journaling and I would say emotional management. Emotional management and thought management, learning how to really listen to the voices that you hear in your head, learning how to challenge the validity of them and purposefully choosing whether you want to release them or keep them. If there's something that's serving you, great.

[00:52:39.460] – Allan

Thank you. If someone wanted to learn more about you and your book Freedom with Food and Fitness, where would you like for me to send them?

[00:52:49.270] – Alana

They can go to my website, freedomwithfoodandfitness.com. They can visit me on Instagram at freedomwithfoodandfitness. And the book came out just about two weeks ago now, so it's available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble or wherever you get your books.

[00:53:05.210] – Allan

Thank you. You can go to 40 Plusfitnesspodcast.com 6118 and I'll be sure to have the links there. Alana, thank you for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

[00:53:16.430] – Alana

Thank you, Allan. This is awesome.

Post Show/Recap

[00:53:20.030] – Allan

Welcome back, Ras.

[00:53:21.890] – Rachel

Hey, Allan. I love the concept of intuitive eating. I feel like I'm a pretty good intuitive eater myself now, but certainly that is not something that comes easy. I mean, we have so many rules in our life about when we should be eating. And we're know if you have kids like when I had kids, I kind of got stuck eating what they were eating. So I didn't really have the autonomy to choose because I certainly wasn't going to prepare multiple different meals. But it's not easy to be that intuitive.

[00:53:52.980] – Allan

Yeah, it's not. When you do it, then basically what you do is you turn on all these automatic switches and our bodies, our minds, everything around us was wired for that. We were wired to have regular, consistent, almost everything. And then we could focus intently on what was different because typically what was different was dangerous. So we wander out into a field and we're used to seeing this field look a certain way and act a certain way. And suddenly we get out there and things are not that way. We realize something's in the field that wasn't there yesterday and it's changed things. So certain animals are no longer there. It looks different, it feels different. Our bodies are wired to feel that, to sense that, to not like that. And so when we look at food, we kind of get into ruts. We kind of get into things we like that comfort. We like that thing. And so there's a lot of structure without the intention behind it.

[00:54:59.650] – Rachel

Exactly.

[00:55:00.460] – Allan

And so what we're saying here is, again, I think it's great when you can get to the intuitive part, because then you're just walking around the forest and into the field and doing the things that you do on a daily basis, and it feels good and it feels normal. But to get there, we've got to do some mental training. We've got to get ourselves to a point where we're eating the right way and we're feeling it. We're taking the time, and we're doing these things. And that typically, in my opinion, takes some rules. So you can't just jump into and say, well, I'm going to do this intuitive eating thing. At some level, you got to say, well, what does that mean for me? What am I going to eat that's going to make me feel good? Is that going to be consistent? Does that fit my lifestyle? And so many times people will say, well, this is what I'm going to do. I'm only going to eat this food. I'm only going to eat it this often. And that's where this whole concept, which kind of got into the whole keto thing, is like, once you start keto, you always have to do keto.

[00:56:04.330] – Allan

Well, that's not entirely true for a lot of people. It is, though. I mean, for a lot of people, they go onto keto, they lose weight, they go off of keto, they go right back to the way they ate before they went into keto, and now they're not. Now, I happen to do it in a very unusual way because I talked to a nutritionist that was very heavy into food, actual food, not all the bars and all this. So it was a paleo style that I started eating. Now, the foods I gravitated to meats and vegetables, well, they put me into ketosis because I don't know how much spinach you have to eat to get out of ketosis, but I don't want to know because I've eaten a lot of spinach and not gotten out of ketosis. And so I can't even imagine how much I would have to eat of a leafy green before I would go out of ketosis. So for me, I just happened to be eating a lot of leafy greens and a lot of protein, usually in the form of beef, chicken, or pork and eggs. And I went into ketosis, and it was great for me.

[00:57:18.170] – Allan

It worked very well for me. Now it does not work for me all the time, and there were times it did not work, and then I got out of it. And so what I would say is intuitive eating is understanding with the environment that you have, what's the best that you can do with what you've got. Then when you get into it, you realize that you don't need the three or. Four servings that they bring you when you're sitting down at dinner.

[00:57:41.640] – Rachel

Right.

[00:57:42.290] – Allan

And the concept, the rule you had, the rule you had was eat everything on your plate.

[00:57:47.260] – Rachel

Oh, yeah, that's how I grew up.

[00:57:48.870] – Allan

Okay, we did. But when you walk into a restaurant and they're basically handing you four meals right? Okay. No, that rule is no longer valid. So find rules that serve you, get rid of rules that don't, and then try to make the rules. Just become a natural way that you approach things. That's intuitive. It's intuitive. When I walk in, I look at a plate and I say, oh, my God, that's four servings of pasta. It's three servings of protein, and it's four servings of pasta. And I can look at it the plate, and know that's what I'm looking at. I mean, it took two waiters to carry it to my table. You just look at it? No, this is a lot more food than I need. So I eat it slow. I focus on the protein and the vegetables. I have a little bit of the pasta because it's good, and then when I'm full, I stop.

[00:58:48.390] – Rachel

Well, that's right there is one of those cues that's important to pay attention to, is that feeling of being hungry versus the feeling of being full and.

[00:58:59.130] – Allan

Not being afraid of either, right?

[00:59:01.500] – Rachel

Yeah, for sure.

[00:59:02.580] – Allan

Some people are terrified when they're hungry. It's like, oh my God, I'm out of food, I'm going to die. Like, no, you live in a world of abundance. When you recognize that you live in a world of abundance, you can eat just about anytime you want to.

[00:59:15.730] – Rachel

Well, that's an interesting point too, Alan, because back many years ago when I worked in an office, I had to hurry up and get the kids fed, get something in my mouth before I took my daily commute to get to the office. And then when I got to the office, like everybody else, I had a pretty flexible time frame when I could have lunch. But basically you have lunch around eleven or twelve or thereabouts, and then when you get home, you got to get the kids fed. So you're eating around dinner time, or your time for dinner is what, five or 06:00 or something like that. And so you get into this rut of you're eating breakfast, lunch and dinner, but you're not thinking about whether you're hungry enough to eat that. Well, now, at this stage of my life, I can wake up in the morning and decide, well, I'm not really hungry today, so I'm going to put off breakfast until I am hungry. I'll do some chores or do my run and come back and eat when I'm hungry. But we're stuck in these ruts of these times of the day when we are just conditioned to be eating a meal and then not really feeling hungry at any particular time.

[01:00:22.440] – Rachel

And then because you're eating the meal, because it's dinner and it's in front of you and it's on your plate, you're finishing it whether you're feeling full or not. Those moments of being intuitive and being mindful and feeling the feelings about what you're eating is important, but it's not easy to get to that point.

[01:00:40.030] – Allan

No, it's not. Which is, again, why I think certain rules can be valuable. You can plate your dinner in the kitchen, so you're not dipping the spoon in to grab another serving of mashed potatoes and gravy. And so you just sit there and say you say, okay, I'm going to plate my food. This is the size of a plate that typically satiates me. I'm going to put two thirds of my plate is going to be protein, and one third of my plate is going to be protein, and two thirds will be vegetables. Okay. And maybe you want to have a starch, maybe you don't. Maybe you say, okay, I'm going to have a glass of wine with this. So there are certain rules that you're going to have, and those rules can be very helpful to keep you on track. But then there's just the point where you walk in and you're like, okay, I know my plate. I know my plate size. I know I'm usually feeling I feel pretty good when I eat that amount of food. I feel gross when I eat two or three of them on Thanksgiving, which is coming up, but it's just that whole thing of realizing or I guess it's just over.

[01:01:50.050] – Allan

I'm looking at the date this is going live. Thanksgiving is over. You're probably just now feeling good after five days of Thanksgiving and all the leftovers, but we do that, and then we don't take that information and say, okay, well, I don't want to feel that gross again, I'd like to find that point of what does a plate look like and what does it feel like. I went through precision nutrition, and that's basically how they teach portion sizes, is when you can understand the size of a portion, they usually do it relative to a body part. So your fist or your hand or something like that. And so it's just that recognizing how much food typically makes you feel satiated.

[01:02:33.830] – Rachel

Yeah, that's another mindset.

[01:02:36.850] – Allan

Slowing down and feeling it and enjoying the food is another part of this. But to start out with, you just make a rule. Okay, here's my plate. Yes. Their plate is a ten inch plate. My plate is an eight inch plate.

[01:02:50.630] – Rachel

That's a good .1.

[01:02:52.170] – Allan

Third of my plate is going to be protein, and two thirds is going to be vegetables. They may have a starch or something like that, and I may have a little bit of it, just almost like it's a condiment. Just a little spoonful on the side there that I'll enjoy. If I really love it, maybe that's the last thing I eat. So I'll eat the rest of it, and then that's the last thing. So I get it or I go ahead and just get out of the way, eat that little bit, and then go on with my plate. Whatever the rule is, however it works for you. But after that, once you get that into your system, it's not like you have to see the rule printed in front of you every day. And you have to say, okay, this is the rule. Because unfortunately, again, things are going to come up and those rules might be invalidated for periods of time. And then where are you? And so you want to be intuitive so that you can pivot and manage yourself. When those things aren't available, those rules are difficult to follow or impossible to follow.

[01:03:49.370] – Allan

But even then, I tell my clients like, okay, you're going on this business trip. Look up a couple restaurants in the area, look at what your schedule is going to be, and look at what makes, you know, one of my clients like, well, there's a Whole Foods. So in the morning I'd get up and I'd walk to the Whole Foods and I'd get something for breakfast. I didn't have a refrigerator in my room, which meant that I couldn't go do a shopping for the day and know that that food was going to be okay that evening. And I didn't want to walk over there in the evening based on the time I got off. So I'm eating a lot of crap that I wouldn't have eaten because I got stuck. And so is the whole point of, well, okay, can we manage around that? How do we manage around that? And maybe there is some situations where, okay, I'm just going to have to eat a little bit of crap for a few days, but I'm going to eat a big ass breakfast because I got control of that, and then I'll eat less of that in the evening because I know I don't need it.

[01:04:49.450] – Allan

And so it's just rules and intuitive, I think, when they're put together and managed properly are the way you're going to get through this and find your way, because there isn't a way, there's your way. And that's one of the things about this freedom part, is that you're not trying to be somebody else. You're not trying to live someone else's life, you're not trying to follow someone else's example. You're finding a way of eating that fits you, serves you. You're eating the foods that fit you and serve you, and you're doing it in a way that just feels more natural to you. And that typically is going to have to start with some rules until you figure all that out, and then it can become much more automatic.

[01:05:29.510] – Rachel

Yeah, that's absolutely perfect. Alan I just want to highlight, too, that, like you said, we were also different. You and I both found keto is our kind of preferred way of eating, but we don't eat it that way 100% of the time either. But someone else might enjoy the whole vegan vegetarian aspect. I hate when people feel attacked when they choose a way of eating and somebody is making fun of them for choosing that. You just need to find what works for you and be happy that you found your favorite way of eating. Certain foods agree with us. Certain foods don't. And I think that people just should experiment and find what really works for them.

[01:06:09.990] – Allan

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

[01:06:13.910] – Rachel

Great. Take care, Ellen.

[01:06:15.470] – Allan

You too.

[01:06:16.320] – Rachel

Thank you.

[01:06:17.230] – Allan

Bye bye.

[01:06:18.270] – Rachel

Bye.

Music by Dave Gerhart

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