Episode

[00:02:53.760] – Allan

Hey, Raz. How are you?

[00:02:55.660] – Rachel

Good, Allan. Things are getting exciting up here. We've got a lot going on this month. Got a couple of trips to see family, all of our big birthdays. We have a lot of July birthdays in our families. We've got a lot of parties lined up. July is our busiest month, I think, of the summer. But things are going good.

[00:03:15.340] – Allan

Good.

[00:03:15.800] – Rachel

Yeah.

[00:03:16.600] – Allan

So happy birthday, I guess. It's not really a birthday, but this is kind of a landmark episode.

[00:03:26.730] – Allan

This is episode 600 podcast. Now a couple of different things. Obviously, I'm going to talk a little bit about the podcast today. So this won't really necessarily be a. Health and fitness thing, but I just wanted to kind of give folks an idea of how things work behind the scenes and how they can be a part of it and help us keep this thing going.

[00:03:49.050] – Allan

But I've actually even had there were some bonus episodes out there that didn't count towards episode numbers, but they weren't really episodes, they were just me making an announcement and putting it out there early on. So there actually have been more than 600 items released as part of this actuallypodcast, but actual 600 episodes.

[00:04:11.940] – Allan

So kind of wanted to talk a little bit about the story because a lot of people don't necessarily know they found this podcast at some point over the last several years. They started listening. They're still listening, and that's great, but new people are finding us every day. And so you may not know the story of where this podcast came from.

[00:04:33.180] – Allan

And why it's here, or a few other interesting tidbits, but I started this podcast predominantly because I had made some significant changes in my health and fitness and I had people asking me about it.

[00:04:50.160] – Allan

And one of the challenges I had when I was trying to figure my path out was that there wasn't anything out there.

[00:04:57.860] – Allan

There were no online personal trainers focused on people over 40. There were no podcasts in the health and fitness space for people my age. Everything that was out there was pretty much CrossFit, a lot of nutrition stuff. So the vegans had their ones, some runners had some podcasts, but again, none of these were specific to who you are when you're over 40. And I just thought that was bizarre that I couldn't find answers to this thing. And even when I did searches, or even when I went and said, okay.

[00:05:30.000] – Allan

Well, what about 40 Plus Fitness? And I actually keyed that in 40plusfitness.com and keyed that in nothing, someone owned it. Someone owned the domain, but when they weren't doing anything with it, and I'm like, this is just kind of crazy. So I did start the podcast and.

[00:05:48.590] – Allan

I did a lot of work before I launched it. What a lot of folks don't know is this wasn't actually my first podcast. I had one before that was about internal audit. The problem with that was I would work twelve to 14 hours a day in internal audit, and then I was trying to produce a podcast about internal audit, and that was a little much.

[00:06:13.660] – Allan

Yeah, and I didn't know anything at the time when I launched that podcast. I think I got like 600 downloads on one of my first episodes and I just thought that was terrible. I'm like, there's 70,000 internal auditors out there and only 600 of them listen to my podcast. I didn't realize 600 was actually a pretty good number, particularly when you're first starting out.

[00:06:37.280] – Rachel

Sure.

[00:06:37.810] – Allan

So that said, I did sign up with a coach to help me launch the podcast the second time. And so I went through the process that he had laid out. It was a big group thing.

[00:06:50.400] – Allan

I had friends that we became an accountability group within this thing and putting this all together. So I literally started planning the podcast like June of 2015, and started putting together ideas for how the show was going to work and then lining it all up.

[00:07:10.560] – Allan

I built a Facebook group and a Facebook page and started getting people to like that page. And I was putting some stuff out there. Not a lot, but just enough to try to get people involved before I launched the podcast. Because at that point, pages were really kind of valuable. People were seeing the posts from pages.

[00:07:28.020] – Allan

So if I had thousands of people that like my page, thousands of people would see my posts. And I thought, okay, this is a good way to kind of launch this podcast. So I launched the podcast December 6 of 2015.

[00:07:39.670] – Rachel

Wow.

[00:07:40.310] – Allan

And part of the timing of that was I wanted to have a certain number of episodes out before January 1. And I wanted to make what at the time was actually a pretty big deal called New and Noteworthy on Apple. And I wanted to be New and Noteworthy on Apple on January 1, and. I actually was number one in New and Noteworthy.

[00:08:06.330] – Rachel

That's awesome.

[00:08:07.770] – Allan

So it's pretty cool. And that kind of helps spur people finding it, because people would get their Christmas phone and then they'd get on there, they'd put that podcast app on, and then the first that it pop up is New and Noteworthy. So if you said, okay, Health and Fitness, New and Noteworthy, there's my podcast.

[00:08:24.470] – Allan

And so I was new. I wasn't necessarily noteworthy yet, but I was new.

[00:08:32.790] – Allan

And then when I first launched this my format was very different than it is today. It was predominantly a solo show. I wanted to do five episodes a week, make each of them about 15 minutes, and it was just go for a walk, be walking, be moving while you're listening to this podcast, because it was one of the things of people our age weren't moving around enough. So if I could just encourage them to move for 15 minutes a day, that's so much better than what they would have been doing otherwise.

[00:09:06.990] – Allan

I felt like that was a win. Now when I started doing interviews for. Parts of the show, because I realized. Okay, I can't talk five times per week, every week and be interesting. I had clients I was training. So there was a science session, there was a client session. There's a lot of other stuff in there. So it wasn't just me talking the whole time, but there were themes to each of the days and that went on for I'm guessing somewhere around eleven or twelve weeks and I was really burning out because that's a lot of episodes.

[00:09:45.830] – Allan

And then I did an interview of a guy, he had three different books. I said, well I'll interview you once for 45 minutes and break it into three episodes. So I literally staged and had the conversation three different books I had read and put them together and I was like, I really like this interview. I didn't like having to try to keep it to less than 15 minutes because if someone starts talking, I don't want to tell them to shut up.

[00:10:12.930] – Rachel

Right?

[00:10:14.850] – Allan

At any rate, so I decided I would drop it back to three and I'd be a little bit more liberal about how long the episodes were. But even then I wanted to do more interviews and reading the book and trying to do three interviews in a week was just a lot, so I dropped it down to one.

[00:10:33.680] – Allan

Now here's one of the interesting things that came about from all of that though was the years that I had hundreds of episodes come out, I didn't have more downloads per episode. I may have had more total downloads that year, but not per episode. Whereas when I dropped it to once a week, I actually peaked out on the volume of people that listened to each episode.

[00:10:57.420] – Allan

And so what I found is if someone comes on and say they missed three or four days, what they're going to do is they're going to pick and choose one. They're not necessarily going to say, I'm going to listen to all three of these, some people will, but they'll pick one and then they'll listen to that one and they may not listen to the other two. So it actually was a diminishing return to just having more episodes done and now I'm able to focus a lot more on the quality.

[00:11:22.090] – Allan

So I do dive in a lot deeper in the conversations and I'm able to do that because I can dedicate more time to planning each of these podcasts.

[00:11:30.920] – Allan

Now I've changed the music a few times. One time the original music I had was out there and then I decided I want to change it and I changed it. And then the guy who sold me the license or ran the license through the company called Pixaby sued me, didn't really sue me, but claimed copyright on YouTube, meaning that he claimed rights to my show. And that meant if at any point in time I was monetizing the show through YouTube, he would get that money, not me.

[00:12:04.310] – Rachel

Wow.

[00:12:06.010] – Allan

I messaged the dude directly because I had the evidence that I had actually paid him because that was a voluntary thing anyway, was to pay someone for that music. I did voluntarily and I kept sending the declines. I declined that. This is copyright but the way YouTube was set up, I had the burden of proof. So if they said it was theirs YouTube just accepted it. And then they were the arbitrator, they were the judge, they were the jury.

[00:12:39.310] – Allan

And so I just decided, OK, I want to change it. And so I can't remember the exact episodes, but it's been a little while now. But Dave Gerhart. You can find him at www.steeldrummer.com. He's doing our current music. It's kind of a Caribbean vibe, which I like because it's the steel drums. So we're running with that right now. And that's our current music. I don't have any intention of changing it anytime soon, but that's there.

[00:13:08.110] – Allan

And then of course, I changed the format another time when I brought Rachel on. So, Rachel, you came on in September of 2020.

[00:13:17.680] – Rachel

My goodness. Well, it's been a while.

[00:13:21.890] – Allan

It has, but the whole point being is you decided you were going to work on your personal training cert, and co-hostso we were talking back and forth and somewhat mentoring you through that process. And then when you passed it, it was like, do you want to come on and be a co host?

[00:13:40.950] – Allan

And part of the reason I wanted that was you and I are different. We do different things from our training perspectives. You're female, I'm male. I just felt like it give the show a little bit of balance when we talk about the different interviews. And so I think it has. And we've get a lot of great feedback from people that are glad you're on the show and insight you bring. So I think that's been a huge addition to the podcast.

[00:14:11.550] – Allan

Now I'm going to shift and just talk a little bit about how we do this whole big crazy thing of a podcast. And there might be some bits of this that you didn't even know, Rachel.

[00:14:22.840] – Rachel

Probably

[00:14:23.560] – Allan

Because I'm the producer in the background doing a lot of this stuff. So basically the way the podcast works is it's a bunch of bits and pieces. Okay? So each little section and you may not be able to pick them out as sections exactly, but they're each their own music file. Own file. So it's an MP3 file of some sort.

[00:14:43.790] – Allan

And so what I do is I start out I have a Trello board. So Trello is this application that basically lets you kind of keep lists and keep organized. So you have a list and then you can put an item on that list, like a note card.

[00:15:02.160] – Allan

And then what I'm able to do is each of those columns, those lists are where we are in the process. And so as I start the idea for a podcast, like, maybe I see there's a book that's going to be published, I have the author's name and they're under the contact. And then we'll go through that whole process and I'll kind of talk about how that works in a minute. And then I'm just able to move the cards across as we go. So as I get into production and then closed, each card has a place.

[00:15:30.220] – Allan

And then within the cards, I can put the order so I know which episode, which date, and I can just put information in there about the book and everything else. So it's all in one place, but it helps keep me organized so I know, okay, where am I with current episodes? So I can tell you, I just recorded episode 603 a couple of days ago.

[00:15:52.180] – Allan

I'm going to record episode 601 tomorrow and then the next day 602. And so I can kind of tell. I've got a lot of reading to do.

[00:16:03.750] – Rachel

Oh, gosh, yeah.

[00:16:05.590] – Allan

And tomorrow I'll be reading a lot, but that's cool. And then sending over show plans and doing that to get them on the interview.

[00:16:14.550] – Allan

Obviously, guests are an important aspect. I want to have good quality, a good variety of guests. So we're talking about a lot of different issues that affect our health and fitness. A lot of people ask, well, where do you find your guests? I get over 100 emails every single day.

[00:16:35.280] – Rachel

Wow.

[00:16:35.950] – Allan

Of someone that wants to be on this podcast. And some of them will even go out and find my phone number and text me. They will WhatsApp me. They will email me, they will fill out a contact form, all the different ways that you could get in touch with me these folks find ways to do that.

[00:16:55.990] – Allan

And say, hey, I want to be on your show. And I'm like, great, what are you going to talk about? It's like just health and fitness. Nope, no, you're not. So there's hundreds now. Sometimes these guests are excellent. Tony Horton, his agent reached out to me. There's been others that I'll be like. Yes, I absolutely want to talk to this person.

[00:17:21.550] – Allan

But 99.9% of them are a definite no. And when you think I'm getting 100 or more emails every day, okay, I only have one show per week, so. It becomes pretty clear that I can't get that many interviews out.

[00:17:39.940] – Allan

And again, I'm really looking for the quality. So over the years, I have developed some good relationships with some publicists. So there's a few of them that as soon as I see their email in my box, I know this is golden, and I'm going to want to talk to their guest, to whoever they're supporting. So there are a few of those that I do have a good long term relationship with, and it's the same when I send them a request, they definitely jump on it pretty quick because they know I'm going to give a good interview for their clients.

[00:18:09.540] – Allan

But most of my guests come from Amazon. Yeah. What I do is I go out on Amazon and I search for a topic or sometimes just generic health or health and fitness, and all these books come up. And then if you look on the left hand side if you're doing on a computer, you'll see these filters and you can go filter. And one of the filters that's out there is books that haven't been published yet, upcoming books, so you can see 90 days, 30 days, and then upcoming books. So I click on that upcoming books and then I get a kind of a list of books.

[00:18:44.890] – Allan

Now sometimes people do this kind of silly thing where they basically write the same book and they publish it on. Amazon like a hundred times. It's an ebook, like a workbook or something like that. They'll do, but they'll name it a hundred different things and throw them all out there. So they're all showing that they're going to come published soon and they clog up that whole search.

[00:19:06.590] – Allan

So then if I need to, sometimes I'll go over to that same set of filters and you can filter on hardbound. What I've found is the big publishing houses are always going to have a hardbound version, so they tend to be the higher end guests.

[00:19:21.030] – Allan

And so then I'll kind of have a list and I'll go through and add them to my trello of potential upcoming guests and I'll line them up based on their published date and everything else. I'll say, okay, I'll start reaching out now.

[00:19:32.710] – Allan

What I do is I go in and find out who the publisher is and then I Google the publicity for that publisher and I get their email address and then I send my pitch to their publicity department.

[00:19:46.170] – Allan

And for most of them, because again, this is an upcoming book that they would love to promote and have podcast interviews come out while the book is when the book goes live, I'm in a position to do that. So they'll then kind of work on my behalf to get the guests booked.

[00:20:04.140] – Allan

They send me an electronic copy of the book. Now, I used to get the hard copies, but they send me an electronic copy and once I have that, I send them a link to book on my zoom. And I use a little app called Tidy Cal, which is like Calendly, if you've used Calendly, but it's done by a company called AppSumo and it's a one time payment and then it works just like Calendly. And you don't have to pay for it every year because I do have different booking types and so I would have to pay for the calendar type book, calendar every year. I think it was $144 a year. Versus I paid once for Tidy Cal and it works just as well.

[00:20:47.630] – Allan

And so, yeah, they'll book their interview. And then what I do is, once. I see when the interview is like I said, I've got one that's coming. Up tomorrow, another one that's coming up Thursday. I'll go ahead and do reading the book. I'll send over a show plan. My show plan is just basically a set of bullet points to give them. An idea of what I'm going to talk about, what we want to talk about.

[00:21:08.870] – Allan

So if at any point in time you've ever heard a guest say, I have no idea what that is, or I don't remember,

[00:21:14.200] – Rachel

oh, no.

[00:21:16.950] – Allan

I told them what we were going to talk about. And even before we go online and when we start the recording, I kind of ask them if they have any questions about the plan. So they knew the questions. They knew I was going to talk about it, but they just didn't pay attention.

[00:21:32.230] – Allan

But that's neither here nor there. I do try to make sure the guest is prepared for the conversation. And then, yeah, I do record the interview on Zoom.

[00:21:40.770] – Allan

Now, when I get through with that interview, I now get an audio file from Zoom where I've recorded, and I get a video file, and then I get two audio files, one with their channel and one with my channel. So there's actually four different files that I work from.

[00:21:56.980] – Allan

So the first one is the full recording, and I put that in a folder for Rachel to listen to, so that's the interview she's listening to is just a full audio of both of us that I put in her folder. I take the video file and I put it in my admins folder for her to make clips for YouTube or Facebook and things like that. And I'm just terrible about not posting those regularly enough. But I have them. They're out there. She's working on them, and so they're out there, so I have them.

[00:22:29.070] – Allan

And then I take the two audio files that are different channels, and I put that into a folder that's my production folder for that particular episode. Okay, then what I'm going to do is I will record the intro and the outro. So that thing you hear me say on episode of the 40 Plus Fitness podcast, we're going to meet such and such and discuss their book, such and such. You can find the full show notes for the say I've memorized it because I've done it a lot.

[00:22:59.140] – Rachel

A few times.

[00:23:00.300] – Allan

A few times.

[00:23:01.770] – Allan

But the point is, then I make those files. So as you kind of see, now there's two files for the interview. There's now two files, intro and outro. I'm bringing in the music that we play at the very beginning, which I call the show music at the front, and then at the end, the outro for the full version of the song, the steel drum thing that Dave did. And so basically, I have those files.

[00:23:31.370] – Allan

And then each now, Tuesday morning, Rachel and I get on Zoom and we record our part. So there's usually a hello section, and then there's a discussion section. And if you get on the Facebook Group, I'm going to actually put the videos of those together. So, like, Rachel and I will come on and kind of have a quick little conversation about where we want to go. And then we'll have our hello section, and then we'll have our discussion section. And basically I've recorded those for the last interview we had. And I'll go ahead and share that on the Facebook page. I mean Facebook groups, if you go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/group, that'll take you to the Facebook group and you'll see a video of Rachel and I going through that little bit of the production.

[00:24:19.150] – Allan

But from our production recording, I have now two more files to add. And then of course, if I have a guest on, I have to record the bio. So I'll go out on Amazon and find out how their bio is organized out there. Some of them will send me a bio because they're publicists put together all this collateral and material. So sometimes I'll use that. But that usually almost always agrees with what's in Amazon. They don't rewrite all that stuff. So I'll read that, but that takes a little while because I screw that up about a dozen times.

[00:24:56.270] – Rachel

Oh gosh.

[00:24:57.170] – Allan

Well again, I don't want it to sound like I'm reading, but it probably does. And there's going to be words, particularly when I'm dealing with doctors and scientists, that I'm going to mispronounce a few times. So I try to get it all right, or at least as close to right, where I'm just like, okay, that's cool. So now that goes into the audio file.

[00:25:17.840] – Allan

So now I end up with on average usually about nine files that then are there. Now what I do is I have to download that as a zip file and then I share that with my audio production group. And so each week they go in and they put it all together. Now there are some weeks I get a little behind because they need 48 hours. So I get a little bit behind sometimes I'll do it myself and just get it done. It takes me probably about 2 hours to do that myself versus they can get it done probably a lot faster. And I'm not involved.

[00:25:56.090] – Allan

When they get done, they email me and say your file is ready. I download that and then what I do is I upload it into an application called Happy Scribe. And what Happy Scribe is, it's an AI that does a transcript. So this AI does the full transcript of the show and it's fairly good. I mean, it's not perfect. So what I do then is once it's uploaded and done that way, I send that over to my assistant and I tell her, okay, this one's ready to review. She goes in and she puts the because the timestamps are already there, but the AI doesn't know who's speaking. It just knows it's probably a different voice.

[00:26:36.070] – Allan

And it's again, pretty good about that, particularly you and I. Rachel knows you're you and I'm me.

[00:26:43.305] – Rachel

Neat

[00:26:43.710] – Allan

So it keeps this part. I've had some guests that sound too much like me and as a result it can't really pick up who's who. But if that's the case, again, she goes in and puts the names and makes sure the timestamps are all set up. And once that's done, then I kind. Of have what I need for posting.

[00:27:01.020] – Allan

So what I have to do then is I have this audio file and I have the transcript. I take the audio file and I have to add some tags to it. So the picture that goes along with it, so you see it on your. Pod catcher, whatever you're listening to podcast, you see the logo for that episode, the notes of what you see on your app, that all has to be written up and ready. And then of course, other information like my name, your name, those things that are in that audio file. So it picks up what it needs when it goes out there.

[00:27:38.390] – Allan

I use a company called Liberated Syndication or Libsyn for short, and they're basically where I host all the audio files. So the audio files go out there. And then what they do is they release it. And so Apple goes out there and picks up off of them, as does Google, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, Amazon, Audible, all of them go out there. So this thing kind of basically syndicates my files, all those files out as a podcast.

[00:28:10.750] – Allan

And then I have to create a post on my website. So the website 40 Plusfitnesspodcast.com is basically a blog. It's a WordPress type site that is hosted. I use Deluxe Hosting as my host. They're really good for just small companies, small business kind of stuff, and you. Get a good amount of hosting space and throughput it works really well. But it's important to make sure that your podcast host and your music or the actual music file are hosted on different platforms.

[00:28:44.250] – Allan

So basically I'm not slowing anything down. It can pick up regardless of where we are. But if you try to put it all on one, like if I try to put it all in Deluxe Hosting, it's all my eggs in one basket. And they're not set up for podcasting, whereas Libsyn is. And there are a lot of new players out there in the game and some are good and some are not. But I've been with Libsyn since the beginning and so it worked very well for me.

[00:29:17.490] – Allan

And so then basically as I go through, I'm posting the transcript out there links to the book, all the different things that you see. If you go out there and look at the show notes, I get all that post out there and then I'm pretty much done just all that scheduled. And then if I do some promotion, I will put all that out there. And say, okay, here we are, here's the episode, things like that. And that's it pretty much soup to nuts.

[00:29:44.080] – Allan

Now the interesting thing is, if you think about. It, this is 600 episodes. I put about 10 hours of just my time. So I've got people helping me, but. I put about 10 hours per week of my time into just about every episode. All the things yeah, so if you. Take that 10 hours times 600 episodes, that's over 6000 hours that I've dedicated just to this podcast in seven and a half years.

[00:30:16.630] – Rachel

That's a lot. It's a lot of time, Allan.

[00:30:20.810] – Allan

It is a lot of time. It is a lot of time. But to me it's valuable time because I'm able to bring some great information forward, have some conversations that people need to have, teach some concepts that no one else really is talking about. And I think that's where I really struggle with a lot of this, is that if there was someone else doing this the way I'm doing it, then I would probably stop doing it.

[00:30:49.630] – Allan

But most people don't stick. The average podcast that's out there goes live and maybe gets seven, maybe 15 episodes, and then caput, it's gone. Some people do get bigger, and some people do keep going, which is great. But they're usually in their own little niche, their own little thing, and it doesn't really have anything to do with you. And so that's why I do what I do.

[00:31:16.780] – Allan

And right now, reading a book about menopause why are you reading about menopause? Well, I'm reading about menopause because it's really important for most of the women that are listening to this podcast, because you're either almost about to be perimenopause, you are perimenopause or you are menopause. You're one of those three right now if you're a woman over 40.

[00:31:40.350] – Allan

And so I want to make sure you have the best, most current information. And, yeah, I've been talking about it for seven and a half years. Is there anything new under the sun? I learn something new every time I read a book.

[00:31:52.950] – Rachel

Every time.

[00:31:53.570] – Allan

Every time I read a book, there's something in that book. And so this is just another one. I want to make sure that that context and information is out there. So, yeah, we've done 600 episodes. That's over 385 guests.

[00:32:07.920] – Rachel

Wow.

[00:32:08.570] – Allan

And almost every one of them wrote a book that I read. It's a lot of books. The episodes are longer than 30 minutes, particularly today. But if you just said, okay, the average episode was 30 minutes, then that's 300 hours of listening, time of information and stuff that you can find. So you can do a search on my podcast. If you're on Apple or something, like some of these apps, they only show you like, the last 100 episodes or last 300 episodes. All 600 of them are available for you to listen to. So you can go to our website, 40Plusfitnesspodcast.com/podcast, and you'll see that there's sort of the different pages for all the posts.

[00:32:56.340] – Allan

You can click on the biggest number over there. I don't know how many that is, and that'll take you to the first episode. And it's horrible.

[00:33:05.930] – Rachel

Oh, jeez.

[00:33:07.380] – Allan

it is horrible. But it was me getting started, and as I say, progress over perfection. I got started. I got a little bit better. I invested a little bit more money here and there to make sure that this is growing and giving information.

[00:33:25.360] – Allan

And we've had about 3.6 million downloads of this podcast since I launched it. Some are a lot bigger than others, but most are getting 5000 – 6000 downloads per episode, and they're getting those within the first two months. And then after that, they have kind of what I call long tail, because we get about 10,000 downloads per week. And so you can kind of see how this thing goes if you're getting 45,000 to 50,000 downloads a month and there's only four or five episodes, it's not just those episodes. People are listening to the back episodes too, which is great. It means that I'm relieving some value out there for people to find, and I really like that.

[00:34:09.920] – Allan

So I don't have any real intentions of stopping this. I want to keep doing it as long as I possibly can but I do want to ask for just a little bit of help.

[00:34:22.850] – Allan

First off, you could leave a rating and review for the podcast. I haven't asked anybody to do that in years. But if you do like the podcast and you want people to find out about it, go leave a rating and review it's right there. There's three little dots or something right there on your phone. You can click on that and leave a rating and review. And that does tell the people that give you that app, be it Apple or Google or whatever, that you like the show. And that means they're much more likely to show it to someone else when they start looking for shows, you can tell someone about the show.

[00:35:01.550] – Allan

There have been times when I've been sitting there talking about the show and someone says, well, what's a podcast and how do you listen to them and where are they? And I'm like, okay, let me see your phone. And I literally pull up the app and I search for my podcast and I hit subscribe and I say, There you go. There's the last four or five episodes. And you can listen to whenever you like. It's right there on your phone. So you could do that, just tell people about it, or you can go.

[00:35:28.540] – Allan

To 40plusfitnesspodcast.com and if there's any books that you're interested in. So let's say I'm having a conversation with Dr. Hirsch about Menopause, and you're interested in her book, The Menopause Types. You decide that's an interesting book rather than going directly to Amazon yourself. If you go through my website and click on that link, there is a small affiliate commission, 2 – 3%, but it's still a little something. Let's say you decided you want to buy a car on Amazon, you could click on that link first, buy the book and the car, and I'd get a nice little commission check out of that.

[00:36:10.150] – Rachel

Sure.

[00:36:11.910] – Allan

But yeah, as you're doing your shopping and you think, I want to go on Amazon if you have that cookie. I mean, they're not using cookies anymore, but whatever it is, if you click on my link and go over there and then do your shopping, it will help the podcast. It'll give us a little bit of money.

[00:36:27.260] – Allan

You can go over to Amazon and get the book. So you can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/book and that'll take you to the. Wellness Roadmap on Amazon and you can buy my book. It's still valid. It's still evergreen. I even talking to someone who read it just this week and she's like, I can't believe you wrote that five years ago. You could have written it today. And it's just as valid as it was then. And I'm glad someone actually recognized that because that's what I was trying to do then. And so it is still a good book.

[00:36:59.590] – Allan

And then, yes, there's always working directly with me on my site, 40plusfitness.com. There are challenges, there are programs. So if you want to just do something, there's a sugar challenge, there's a functional fitness challenge. If you're interested in working more directly, you can get in contact with me there.

[00:37:19.450] – Allan

And then, of course, Rachel, you have some places you'd like to send people?

[00:37:24.580] – Rachel

Sure. I think the easiest place to find me would be on my website, which is Strong-Soles.com. That's souls, as in the souls of your shoe. S-O-L-E-S. Strong souls.com. And from there, I've got a contact form if you want to ask me any questions or give me some feedback on the 40 plus fitness podcast. But also there's links to my two socials on Facebook and on Instagram. Those are the only two platforms I'm on. It's plenty for me, so you can reach me in any of those places quick.

[00:37:55.910] – Allan

I do this podcast for you. And so if there's a topic that you just want more information on, something you're dealing with specifically, or someone your family is dealing with specifically that you'd like to know more about, reach out to me. Like I said, I do searches for guests, and I'm looking for specific topics at times. So if you come and tell me here's an issue that I'm dealing with, and I'm looking at your podcast and there was not really any one thing out there for it, would you be interested in finding somebody to talk more about this thing? I'll be glad to do that.

[00:38:39.350] – Allan

I need a new guest every week. And while I do get hundreds and hundreds of solicitations, most of those are just trying to sell some corporation that they're a part of. They're not actually trying to inform you about anything. So if there is a topic or something you're interested in, just let me know and I will do what I can to try to find somebody to talk about that particular topic so you'll have some more information, better information, and have a good starting point for your education going forward.

[00:39:10.220] – Allan

So with that, I'd just say thank you so much for being a part of 40 Plus Fitness. We've been doing this since December of 2015. We're going to keep doing this. Because I'm only doing one a week. We're not going to hit 1000 for another 7.8 years. So we won't be celebrating 1000 anytime soon. But we will keep going. We will keep recording, we will keep looking for awesome guests and I will keep reading the books and making sure I'm asking the right questions for you.

[00:39:44.990] – Allan

But I appreciate you very much. Thank you for being a part of all of this. And if you have any questions, just let us know.

[00:39:52.530] – Rachel

Awesome. Congratulations, Allan. Congratulations on 600 episodes and a lot of great information that people can actually use.

[00:40:00.480] – Allan

Yeah, thank you. I appreciate that.

[00:40:02.360] – Rachel

You bet.

Music by Dave Gerhart

Patreons

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

– Anne Lynch	– Ken McQuade	– Leigh Tanner
– Debbie Ralston	– John Dachauer	– Tim Alexander
– Eliza Lamb

Thank you!

Another episode you may enjoy

Introduction to the 40+ Fitness Podcast

Less...

Let's Say Hello

[00:03:21.070] – Allan

Hello, Ras.

[00:03:22.360] – Rachel

Hey, Allan. How are you today?

[00:03:24.790] – Allan

I'm doing all right.

[00:03:26.300] – Rachel

Good.

[00:03:29.870] – Allan

If you kind of followed the news outside the United States, then you know that there's a lot of countries, particularly countries that have a large proportion of their people that are living right at or below the poverty line. And Panama is one where they have some individuals here that are really rich and there's a lot of individuals that are pretty much hand to mouth. What they make today, they eat today kind of people. And so with the way prices and inflation has been going up, it's making it really difficult for these folks. And so there's basically strikes/ protests going on around the country. And what that means is their favorite way to protest is to basically just shut down roads. So all across the country you have various industries that are completely going on strike. Transportation is one of the key ones. And then, yeah, they block all the roads. So what that means is that fuel, for example, isn't getting to this island because it can't get through the roadblocks. And what that means is that our power is run by generator. They're due to run out of power today. In fact, while we're recording this, my power might just go out.

[00:04:51.040] – Rachel

Oh, no.

[00:04:53.090] – Allan

But I do have a backup power. My computer is plugged in and charging, so I should be able to finish the podcast in the dark. But if it happens, it also means that people traveling around the country are getting stuck. So they get one place and then they run into a roadblock. And then before they can really turn around and come all the way back, there's another roadblock behind them and they're literally trapped on the road. It's making travel very difficult, making plan, anything. So Tammy is due to take our granddaughter back and it's like, well, I can't chance the bus because we might get stuck and spend a couple of days on the side of a highway with no services. She's concerned about that and so she's got to reconfigure her travel. They're going to have to fly to Panama City and hope that they can get to took them in the airport because that road has been blocked off a few times too. And then, yeah, I've got a trip in August, so I'm hopeful that they take care of some of this stuff and get some of these things out of the way.

[00:05:54.200] – Allan

But it is what it is. It's kind of tense, but it's not like burning down cities and stuff like that. That sometimes happens. So at least at this point, it's relatively peaceful. And yeah, there have been a few fist fights because if you're sitting on the road trying to get somewhere and you've been stuck for hours and there's just people just sitting on the road, it can kind of upset some people. So there have been some fights, fist fights and things like that, but nothing major so far. But I think as it gets going, it could blow up and be bigger. Wherever you are, be safe. It's not that this won't happen in the United States. So just realize take care of yourself, take care of your family, and the best thing you can do is take care of your health and make sure that you're in good shape that way because you just never know what's going to happen in the world for us. The Chinese proverb, may you live in interesting times. I'm there, baby.

[00:06:59.170] – Rachel

Yeah. That is very interesting. Well, I hope it gets to be a little more peaceful. I hope things resolve soon.

[00:07:06.240] – Allan

Yeah. Because the meat market where I buy most of my meat, she says she hasn't gotten a shipment. She doesn't know when she's going to get in the shipment. So we could easily run out of food on the island. In addition to running out of fuel, we capture our water. So it's been raining, so we're going to have water. But the food thing might actually start to be a problem for us. But I'm sure they'll figure something out.

[00:07:30.480] – Rachel

But my fingers are crossed.

[00:07:32.950] – Allan

How are things up there?

[00:07:34.390] – Rachel

Good. For this early morning podcast, I had to get up a little bit earlier than normal, so I got to see the sunrise this morning and enjoyed a wonderful morning run and have a coffee sitting here with me while we chat today. And I'm just in a good place. It's going to be a good day.

[00:07:52.640] – Allan

Yes, it's going to be a good day. And the reason we're recording this early is we want to have a little extra time. And so we pushed our recording to a different day and then all of the conflicts and things that I had, this was the only time we could record. But this is a special episode because this is going to be one of our question and answer episodes and we want to have these more regularly. So if you have questions about anything, you can join us on our Facebook Group at 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/group. And in the group occasionally I will post for questions like I did this time.

And then you also, Rachel, you posted in your page, Strong Souls. Strong Souls?

[00:08:34.820] – Rachel

Yes, Strong Souls.

[00:08:36.770] – Allan

I don't know why I can't stick that in my head. I know it's you. When I see the post. I said, okay, that's Rachel.

Weight Loss Questions

[00:08:45.770] – Allan

This week we are going to discuss frequently asked weight loss questions. We had a few people that did submit some questions, and then some of the other questions that I put in here were questions that I get all the time from my clients or questions that I've seen regularly either on the group or just in other forums.

[00:09:05.630] – Allan

So I wanted to talk about those. So today we're going to talk about weight loss questions. Now, the first question comes from Melissa, and I believe Melissa is a client of yours and she's in your Strong Souls page group. She posted the question, what should be the number one thing to focus on? And she said macros, water, exercise. I'm going to add calories because a lot of people ask about whether they should do calories in, calories out and all of that. And you're not going to like the answer to this, Melissa, but the answer is it depends.

[00:09:43.150] – Rachel

Yeah

[00:09:44.750] – Allan

it depends. I've seen people be extremely successful just by focusing on their calories. They do the calories in, the calories out, and the formula just seems to fall in place for them. They eat a little bit less, they lose some weight, and they feel good. So there's that. If you decide you want to try to do some macros based stuff like keto or low carb, then obviously now you're focused on the macros a little bit more. We all know that drinking enough water is important to stay hydrated and sometimes full. So you start feeling a little hungry, drink some water, you kind of lose that.

[00:10:27.980] – Allan

You get that fullness sensation and the hunger kind of goes away. So if it's binges and kind of urges and things like that, water can be a great tool. And then exercise. And we're going to talk a little bit more about exercise. There's another question on this later, a few questions on this later because we talk about exercise. But exercise should not be your weight loss plan. It seldom works. Yes, you're increasing your calorie usage, but there are reasons why sometimes your body still won't lose the weight. So exercise is important. It's important for a lot of reasons. It can be a tool, just a tool in your tool chest that makes losing weight a little easier. And mentally it probably helps a lot because I've noticed as I get people moving, they suddenly start paying a lot more attention to the other things that can make them healthy. They actually start eating better because it's kind of like, well, I went for that run this morning and now I'm in the drive thru at McDonald's. That feels kind of weird. And so you start maybe eating a little bit better, you start working out, you get more energy, and you have more energy now cooking, batch cooking, doing the things to have healthy food, putting a little bit energy, more energy into that you're able to.

[00:11:47.340] – Allan

So from my perspective, you have to pick a strategy that you know will work for you that can be focused on macros, that can be focused on calories. And then the water and the exercise are tools that you carry along with you regardless of the way you choose to do this, that then become ways that you can make sure that the weight loss is consistent. And yeah, if you find yourself plateauing, well, put a couple of hit workouts in your month and that might be just the thing to trigger it. But the other thing I'd caution is, I think sometimes when people do macros, they forget the calories count.

[00:12:24.430] – Rachel

Right.

[00:12:25.730] – Allan

And I've got lots of friends in this industry that are keto, and they've been keto for five years, six years, seven years, and they are still obese. And I can kind of tell them why they don't like the answer, but the answer is that they're overeating. Their macros are fine. Their body knows how to use the fat for energy. They're just eating too much and they're not moving enough.

[00:12:54.040] – Rachel

Okay.

[00:12:56.030] – Allan

Both yeah. Go ahead.

[00:12:57.550] – Rachel

So that's where I was going to go, too, is one of the things I like to say, is, if you can measure it, you can monitor it. And with the apps nowadays, like Fitness Pal and there's a number of different food diary apps you can use, I think that we are not fully aware of how many calories we're eating and in what macros specifically, it's just easy for our mind to think, yeah, we're only having a half a cup or a quarter cup of nuts. When you really go down to measure it, you're eating a full cup or something or cereal or a glass of milk or whatever it is that you're eating. We just have this way of not really recognizing the true volume of what we're eating, and in that case, we're not really recognizing the true number of calories that we're eating. So that's what I would have suggested. If you can measure it, you can monitor it and then find your weak points. If you start measuring what foods you're eating and paying attention to any trends, you might notice that maybe you're having too many carbs in a day or too much fat in a day or too much of something else in a day, in which case, if you're eating too much of something, then you're lacking in something else.

[00:14:08.280] – Rachel

So it's really good to keep some sort of a food diary and observe any trends in your habits and see what you can do better.

[00:14:16.320] – Allan

Yeah. And just what you said. Your example of half a cup of nuts that then turns into a full cup of nuts, let's break that down. A serving of nuts is about 2oz. Ounce or 2oz. So you could be having anywhere from four to eight servings of nuts. And you look on there and it's like, oh, well, it's 160 calories for a serving of nuts. Well, guess what you just did. You ate 800 calories of nuts.

[00:14:44.090] – Rachel

I'm good at this. I know this trend very well because this is what I do. I'll measure my food, a quarter cup of nuts, and it looks like a little bit of a hill in the palm of my hand. I can fit this much ounces of nuts in my hand. And so then I put the measuring cup away and I start pouring the nuts in my hand, and the pile gets a little bigger and a little bigger. Oh, it's just a few more nuts. It's just a few extra calories, but it snowballs it can be a lot more calories, and it's just easy for our minds to kind of overlook that. So it's important to measure and monitor.

[00:15:18.390] – Allan

Yeah, because an almond is about 16 calories,

[00:15:22.610] – Rachel

so they add up really fast

[00:15:24.450] – Allan

really fast. A couple extra in there, and over time that's more calories. And so, again, they both matter. Your body is going to react to different foods, different ways. Certain things are going to be inflammatory for you. Inflammation causes you to weight more. Even though it's not fat, it causes some other problems. And you do retain water and all this stuff with inflammation. So you're going to weigh more. You just naturally are just having a balance to this and looking for what does work for you is going to be the key for this.

[00:15:59.810] – Rachel

You know, a good point on the inflammation. Right now it's the middle of summer and we should be chugging water like it's going out of style. We're sweating a lot. If we're working outside, we need to replace that. But if you're eating a lot of carbs and drinking a lot of water, you're going to feel a little bloated. You could see that scale change a little bit, and you just have to recognize that you're drinking a lot of water for a reason. It's important to have this in you, and it might cause a little inflammation. It might cause you to bloat up a little bit. And so just don't be so hard on yourself if you're going on a run like I did this morning, I sweated buckets, but I also drank a ton of water when I got home. And so if I step on the scale, it's not going to reflect what I'm really doing on a day to day basis.

[00:16:45.300] – Allan

Yeah, I typically ask my clients to weigh themselves first thing in the morning, get up, do your little potty break, and then step on the scale. And typically that's the lightest weight we're going to weigh that day because overnight we've kind of dehydrated a little bit. We haven't drink any water, we haven't eaten any food. And then if we just went to the bathroom, we've gotten rid a little bit.

[00:17:09.650] – Rachel

Yeah, right.

[00:17:10.560] – Allan

Okay, now you weigh yourself, and then I also recommend that you not weigh yourself every day if you're someone who's going to kind of get yourself a little put back. Because what could happen is on day one, you lose a pound and you're really excited. That's a whole pound in a day, that's great. And then the next day you gain half a pound. The third day you gain a pound, and the fourth day you lose a pound. Now if you sat there and weighed yourself every day, you had a loss and then you had two gains. And for a lot of people that early in there, they're going to sit there and say, oh, my God, I'm gaining weight. I wanted to lose weight. And then what they do is if you weigh yourself out every four days, you've lost a pound and a half in four days, and that's good. You're targeting about a pound to a pound and a half, maybe 2 pounds in a week. You're three quarters of the way there, baby. You're there or three quarters of the way there for a max loss of 2 pounds. You've done really good, and you should be proud of that.

[00:18:16.420] – Allan

But if you let yourself get disgruntled or want to quit because the scale didn't go down every day, because guess what? It won't ever go down every day unless you just start cutting off body parts, if you're cutting off body parts, then absolutely, you can lose weight every single day until you can't. But that's kind of the whole part of this is to say, okay, I have to be reasonable about it. How does my mind work? And don't necessarily weigh yourself every day. Weigh yourself for trends. Don't track your food every day if you don't feel like doing it, track it for trends one day and say, okay, I'm going to track what I'm eating. I'm going to weigh it. I'm going to look at it. I'm going to make sure that I got all my servings right. I've got my calories right. My fitness pal is great for that because it's a very big database. But some of the items on the database aren't 100% correct. They do need you to pay attention, because I couldn't tell you what 100 grams of steak looks like.

[00:19:19.820] – Rachel

Oh, gosh no.

[00:19:20.730] – Allan

but that's not what you pop up 100 grams of steak, and they make out like that's a serving. I'm like, okay, I look at steak by ounces, and I know that the palm of my hand, just the palm, is about a serving size of steak. So for dinner, I might sit down and have two servings of steak, and I know that's what I'm having, because about the size of two palms. If I'm going to have chicken, I know that's my full hand. Okay, fish my whole hand, 5oz. 4oz for steak, 4oz for pork. And when you start getting that down, you know what it looks like. You talked about the palm of your hand and the almonds. Yes, that's exactly what we're talking about. You start understanding what a serving is just because you spent a little time studying it, what it looks like. And so with some of my clients, instead of doing my fitness pal and tracking, I just say, send me photographs. Just take a picture of your meals and send them to me, and then if I see something, I'll say something. But for them, they'll think, okay, well, that was a serving of chicken.

[00:20:23.140] – Allan

I'm like, when you went to that restaurant, they gave you three servings of chicken. You thought that was one serving of potato. No, that was probably three servings of potato. And so you got to get that and understand that. But however you go about that, that's really important. So it does depend and you just have to find a way of eating that really works for you. And these other tools, get them in your tool chest and it will happen.

[00:20:50.910] – Rachel

Yes. Perfect.

[00:20:52.190] – Allan

All right. Now, the second question is kind of related. Is low carb better than low fat?

[00:20:59.260] – Rachel

That's a good one.

[00:21:00.600] – Allan

So I'm going to let you start on this, Rachel, because you do you and what you do works. So I want to hear your side of it first.

[00:21:09.160] – Rachel

Well, all of us are different, so again, I'll wave the flag of it depends on who you are, but for my personal opinion is that low carb is better than low fat. I think we need the healthy fats in our diets because they deliver so many important nutrients and energy that we don't get. But it's the carbs that I definitely keep an eye on, because not all carbs are good for you. And it's not just bread carbs that we think of, although those are the ones that we tend to overdose on, and I use that word specifically. We have cereal grains at breakfast and toast and sandwiches with giant submarine sandwich buns at lunch and then dinner rolls for dessert and cakes and things, cookies for desserts. We get so many carbs each and every single day and they all taste good, but they actually do nothing for us. There's very few nutrients in these types of products. So when I think of carbs, I think of the carbs that I'll get in the fibrous fruits and vegetables that I choose to eat. So my opinion is you just got to keep an eye on those carbs and just don't overdose on them.

[00:22:27.590] – Rachel

I'm not going to say everyone needs to go keto or any such thing, but I am saying again, if you measure it, you can monitor it. And I just think that we get way too many carbs in our day to day diet than we need. We can't use all the energy and then it just turns into fat later on.

[00:22:43.570] – Allan

Yes, I do also tend towards low carb with most people because what I found is you can feel satiated longer with fewer calories.

[00:22:55.310] – Rachel

Absolutely.

[00:22:56.250] – Allan

But where I would caution on either of these is realize how smart the food industry is and when we start having these things like low fat, when low fat came out, all the products hit the market. Low fat, you walk into a grocery store now, sometimes it is hard to find full fat yogurt.

[00:23:16.630] – Rachel

It is. And I'm looking

[00:23:18.830] – Allan

and literally, you go to the milk place and it's like they'll have one little space for the whole milk and then skim milk and semi skimmed milk, low fat milk and all of that and all the other stuff where they're taking out the lactose so you'll find more milk that's not whole milk than milk. And so just be cautious that they do that. And then now with low carb, as that started, really kind of getting some traction, you're seeing the same thing. They're making products that are higher in fat and lower in basic carbs or a lot more fiber. So your net carbs are lower, which fiber is good, but a lot of what they're putting together is not food. And so it's easy to get trapped into the well, this is a keto friendly snack. This is a keto friendly meal. I go in there and there's a TV dinner, and it says keto man. And there's your toss it in microwave. It's processed stuff.

[00:24:21.240] – Rachel

It's still processed

[00:24:22.490] – Allan

and your body is not good. So the true answer is whole food. Now, rather, that has a lot more fat in it. It should have the right fats in it.

[00:24:34.430] – Allan

So you're trying to get your omega threes. You're trying to get the healthy fats from nuts and seeds and olives and avocados and those types of things, and you can find what works. The reason low fat is a diet thing at all is because fat has more calories than carbs, but it also has a higher energy requirement to use it. And it stays in your system longer, so you stay fuller longer. Protein has the same number of carbs calories as carbs, but it's going to stay, takes a lot more energy to burn it and use it. That's called the thermal effect of food. And it's going to stay in your system longer and you'll stay fuller longer. So a high fat, medium protein food stuff is going to take longer. You're going to burn more energy burning it than you would with carbs. Some carbs will hit your system like a sugar freight train.

[00:25:34.840] – Rachel

That's right.

[00:25:36.170] – Allan

And your blood sugar is going to spike up. You have all this energy. You're going to feel great, but you're not burning it. So what's going to happen immediately thereafter is your insulin is going to kick in. It's going to pull it out, it's going to put it where it puts it, which if you haven't burned it out of your muscle and liver, it's going to put it in fat for short term storage, it thinks. But we know it stays there a lot longer. And then you're going to sugar crash. And so you had that high carb, low fat breakfast. You had the juice, you had the cereal, and it's fortified. And it's fortified, so it's healthy. And then your blood sugar plummets at 10:00 and you find yourself snacking. And if you didn't bring a healthy snack to snack on you're at the vending machine or yeah, and then boom, another sugar rush. And then lunch comes and you can kind of see how this roller coaster of up and down with your blood sugar is not serving you at all.

[00:26:34.200] – Rachel

Yeah, absolutely.

[00:26:35.340] – Allan

Now, low fat makes it easier to be sustained for longer. When you get to where your body is comfortable burning a good amount of fat, it'll start looking at your body as food. I've got body fat here. I've got enough energy to last the rest of my life. I never have to eat again. And you might actually find that you're not as hungry and you forget to eat. I know that sounds weird in the culture, but you can forget about food. You cannot think about food. 24/7. But it does take understanding what real food is. And just because you go low carb does not mean you're not eating vegetables. Okay? And it does not mean you're not eating fruit. I want to put that out there. There are ways for you to include fruit in your diet and still be low carb or keto. There are ways for you to make sure you're getting adequate vegetables and a good variety of vegetables and the fiber and things that they bring. I just did an interview. It's going to air in a few weeks. When we talk about this, we talk about this very thing. Food is medicine and how having what we would call more of a plant based diet is actually better for you.

[00:27:48.200] – Allan

And guess what? You can be plant based and low carb.

[00:27:51.950] – Rachel

Well, you also mentioned real foods, real fruits, real vegetables, real protein sources, things that didn't come out of a box or a jar. And since you mentioned that, too, if you're eating like that, then you're also keeping an eye on sugars. And that, I think, is even more hideous than anything else, because if you're looking at a low fat or a low carb food or low calorie food, what they do is they put a ton of sugar in it, and there's probably 30, 40, 50 different names for the word sugar. And it just is hidden in all these foods. And you don't realize how much sugar you're getting throughout the day. And if you start reading labels and watching for how many sugars are in a product and not even added sugars are the worst, but just all of the different sugars that are in products, you would be so surprised how much sugar you're getting in a day. And that's probably worse than anything else.

[00:28:47.370] – Allan

Yeah, I'm running a sugar challenge. I set it up, kind of, to run Evergreen now. So if you want to take the Sugar Challenge, you can go to 40plusfitness.com/sugar. It's a low cost program. It's 28 days. It'll teach you how much sugar you're eating. It'll teach you why you don't want to be eating that much sugar. And I set goals for various levels of sugar. And it's interesting. People will come back and say, there's no way I can keep my sugar below 25 grams. And, like, people do it all the time, and they lose weight and they feel great. But the thing is, this is, you don't know how much you're eating, but the average person, I want you to think average person is eating 152 pounds of sugar per year

[00:29:38.460] – Rachel

and no one thinks that. And because it's hidden. It's hidden in all these foods. And you just don't think it's not just candy bars, it's not just ice cream, it's hidden, it's in pasta sauces and pizza sauces and just all the things that we add to our foods. It's ridiculous.

[00:29:56.130] – Allan

Yeah. So if you're interested in cutting your sugar back or paying attention to it, I think this is a really good challenge to take you through 28 days to get sugar out of your life, or at least get it down to a manageable level, and you're going to feel a lot better for it.

[00:30:11.730] – Rachel

I think that'll be great.

[00:30:13.230] – Allan

Okay, so the next question in our weight loss questions is what exercises are best for weight loss?

[00:30:20.330] – Rachel

That's a good one.

[00:30:21.310] – Allan

Okay. And I'm going to go ahead and push this one also over to you, Rachel.

[00:30:25.270] – Rachel

Really? You're not going to believe what I'm going to answer.

[00:30:27.810] – Allan

You're the runner. You're the runner.

[00:30:29.930] – Rachel

Yeah.

[00:30:30.720] – Allan

Come on, run those pounds off, lady.

[00:30:33.720] – Rachel

The best exercise, the absolute best exercise is the one you're going to do. Honestly, just find something that you love to do and start doing it. Walking, running, hiking, going to the gym, lifting, hit classes. If you're going to do it and stick to it, you have some consistency, then it's going to work for you. But everyone is different. Everyone has different preferences, everyone has different abilities. But there are some exercises that are probably better and more calorie burning than others. But honestly, if you're not going to go do it, then what good is it?

[00:31:08.870] – Allan

As I said in the first answer to the first question, it was, okay. Exercise should not be your strategy for weight loss to start with. Okay. You're not going to burn enough exercising to do any sizeable weight loss. I think a Snickers bar has, what, 350 calories?

[00:31:29.640] – Rachel

Sure.

[00:31:30.160] – Allan

I'm guessing. Okay, if you eat a Snickers bar, you'll eat that Snickers bar in less than two or three minutes.

[00:31:35.740] – Rachel

Right.

[00:31:36.560] – Allan

In most cases, people are not savoring a Snickers bar, they're scarfing the Snickers bar. Okay. And you eat that Snickers bar, it's 350 calories. It will take you an hour of moderate exercise. So that whole fitness class, that whole hit class you did where you sweated your butt off for an hour, that's just the Snicker bar.

[00:31:57.040] – Rachel

Yes.

[00:32:00.570] – Allan

Go ahead.

[00:32:01.520] – Rachel

What I like to say is you cannot run away from your diet. You can't. And as a runner, I'd rather run than do anything else every day, but I can't outrun the diet. It's just impossible.

[00:32:15.770] – Allan

And so, yeah, I agree with you on doing the exercises

[00:32:18.950] – Rachel

it's important.

[00:32:20.320] – Allan

Like to do, that's important. But also, I want you, as you start thinking about your overall health and fitness journey, to think about exercise as a different way. We use words like exercise, workout, that kind of stuff. I prefer to think of it in terms of training, and so it's trained to be who you want to be. So when you're 80 years old, do you want to be frail and weak? Do you want your bones to be brittle and weak? And I think for most of us, the answer would be no. I want to be able to wipe my own butt when I'm 105. Call me weird, but I want to be independent, and I want to live in a good, long, healthy life. So exercise is important for that, and that includes weight training. So I have strong muscles and dense bones, and so I think resistance training needs to be in there. I think having stamina work, which can include running, biking, hiking, classes, all of that is great for building stamina. And then you can also work on other things like balance and mobility and agility and other things for what you enjoy in life.

[00:33:33.920] – Allan

Now, exercise does burn calories, so it can be a tool that will help. And what I've also found and I said this before, was when people start exercising, they start paying attention. When they start paying attention, they start eating better, they start trying to get better sleep. They try to work on stress management. And in many cases, exercise becomes a part of their stress management process. I used to love not love, but if I got really stressed out at work or really angry at work happening a lot, I would throw around really heavy weights in the gym. It's like suddenly I'm going beast mode in the gym because I need to get that negative energy out of my body. And I'm not talking to anybody. I'm just in there. Okay, I got the bar loaded. Deadlifts. Kill it. I can put 20 more on there because I'm just that mad. And the thing about exercise that I also want to caution is sometimes exercise can be counterproductive to weight loss. When I was training for marathons, I ate more, and I didn't realize how much more I was eating. And I was eating runner food, which at the time was pasta.

[00:34:52.280] – Rachel

Oh, boy.

[00:34:52.980] – Allan

So I was the pasta theme. I was eating pasta every day, carb up and be able to run further and faster and all that. And I would put on weights. I'd start training, I'd be about 185 pounds, and then boom. By the time I was running the marathon, I'm over 195. They have a category for that called Clydesdales. So, yeah, I'm standing there with all these skinny people about to do a marathon, and they're all looking at me like, dude, you don't need to be doing this. You need to be doing something with of course you're lifting weights, your body might retain water, you're going to put on muscle. And so all those things will say, maybe you're not going to lose weight because of your exercising. But if your training is important enough for what you want to be, the weight loss will come. And that's the other side of it. Exercising, stress management, sleep, those are ways to manage your health. And a healthy body realizes it doesn't need the body fat anymore. There's nothing scary going on. If you're feeding your body the standard American diet, you're sending out a constant signal, we're going to die.

[00:36:00.710] – Allan

We're eating poison because there's nothing else to eat. And there is. It's all over the round, the outside of the grocery store. When you start putting whole food in there and you're doing these other things, your body starts feeling healthy. And then it says, you know what, I don't need to hold on to this extra bit of body fat. I can safely let it go. Okay.

[00:36:22.610] – Rachel

The other thing is, ads are made in the kitchen, right? We've all heard this, and it is important. And as far as if your focus is on weight loss, the kitchen is where you want to start. But exercise enhances that weight loss. If you're out there moving and have an active lifestyle, you are going to shed a few more calories maybe than what you're taking in. But it's something that it goes hand in hand. You've got to watch and do the other. The other thing with exercise, specifically with running, like I like to do, and most of my clients are athletes, are runners, we learn really quickly what not to eat really quickly. The stomach ailments that runners get are really fun. And so you learn, like you mentioned the drive thru at McDonald's or something. If you go for a run after having that, you might end up with heartburn, you might end up with the runners tracks. I think again, you start to realize, well, this food isn't serving me. It's not helping me not only in the weight loss health realm, but it's also not helping me be better at the exercise that I'm choosing.

[00:37:27.720] – Rachel

Running, lifting weights. I'm sure you've been in the gym feeling, oh, I probably shouldn't have had that for lunch, as you're trying to lift the weight, I think the two things go very well hand in hand.

[00:37:39.110] – Allan

Yeah, I prefer to exercise faster, so typically if I'm doing anything I didn't eat that day, or like, I'm going to do the tough mudder, I'm going to have a breakfast. I start the tough mudder at ten, so I'm probably going to get up a little early and I'll go have a breakfast. And it'll probably be what I normally eat, lots of eggs. So I'll have some eggs for breakfast and depending on where I am, maybe bacon with that. But for the most part, it's just going to be eggs. And so it'll be the weird guy who walks in and says, okay, I want five to six eggs and then I'll eat them all. But then I'll digest them, and they won't be in my stomach. They'll probably be somewhere around my small intestine or large intestine before I start the run. And it's something I eat every day, almost every day. So I know my body tolerates it. And then I'll do my tough mudder. I won't eat during the Tough Mudder because I don't have to. I don't have to feel it that way. But I know, and it's somewhat happening now, is that I'm not losing weight because I'm training for a Tough Mudder.

[00:38:46.910] – Allan

I wanted to lose weight. I started trying to lose weight, and I did lose some. I lost a bit, but I haven't hit my goal. And now I'm realizing I may not. And I'm okay with that because I know that I'm in a condition to be able to complete the Tough Mudder, and that was the goal. So it's setting your mind and understanding that if you have these competing things, you have to take a step back. And I would never prioritize weight loss over fitness. I would never prioritize weight loss over health.

[00:39:26.190] – Rachel

Perfect. It's important.

[00:39:29.550] – Allan

All right, the next question is, I haven't changed my diet, but I stopped losing weight. Why?

[00:39:36.930] – Rachel

Oh, my gosh. Are we at a plateau?

[00:39:40.710] – Allan

We may be at a plateau. I think some people call the plateau way early. Well, if you're weighing yourself every day and you go two days without losing weight, I'm at a plateau. What am I going to do? Now, the way I like to think of plateaus is this, if what you're doing is good for you, good for your health, and it may not be like a plateau. It may just be a ledge on the side of the mountain. So you've been climbing this mountain and doing really well and feeling really good about what you did, and now you get up onto a ledge, and it's flat or maybe even feels like it's going sloping down a little bit. Well, if you stop there and say, I'm not climbing anymore, then you're not going up the mountain anymore either. So you have to walk across that ledge. You got to spend some time there until you get to the point of the mountain where you can start climbing again.

[00:40:40.290] – Rachel

Yeah.

[00:40:40.980] – Allan

Okay. So you're doing the right things, and sometimes just all you need to do is just hang in there, keep moving forward, keep eating the way you're eating, keep training the way you're training, keep doing the things you've been doing for your health, and then your body will get past this set point, past this plateau. I can tell you that's for a lot of people, it's really hard. Well, it is, because you just don't see that progress, which is why I'm also a big fan of not just measuring weight loss as a metric, measuring other things, like your waist circumference, your hip circumference, looking at your blood work. I mean, if your A1C is dropping and you're no longer prediabetic or diabetic when the doctor is saying, I can take you off of your blood pressure medicine, or I can lower the amount of medication that you're taking for blood pressure, that's a huge win, okay? And if you can fit in a smaller dress size, even though you weigh the same big win, who cares, right?

[00:41:43.680] – Rachel

Exactly.

[00:41:45.030] – Allan

So there is that and then there are other things you can do to jump set this. Okay? So the plateau is important for one core reason, and this is why your body likes consistency. Your body wants to stay the same, same is safe. Change is scary, and we feel that way about everything else we do. Our body feels the same way. So you'll notice that your heart rate resting heart rate stays about the same. Unless you train up, it'll change a bit. Your blood PH stays the same. It's in a certain range. Your body temperature stays in a certain range. Those are healthy ranges. Your body wants to keep your blood sugar within a safe range. And so your body is constantly fighting to make those things happen. And all these processes throughout this very complex system, multiple systems on top of systems, is going to cause your body from time to time to want to stop losing weight, just like it would stop everything else. It wants to stay the same. So you're going to have these set points that are going to happen. Everybody has them, everybody hits them. And then just for one reason or another, the scale does not want to budge.

[00:43:08.260] – Allan

Now, what we didn't realize is we also had set points on the way up, and some of those we blew right past, and some of those we saved. Someone will tell me, for five years, I stayed at 230 pounds and they were like, then it's like someone hit a switch and I'm at 269 and gaining, I got to do something. I'm like, yeah, okay, so you had a set point and you broke that set point and now you're at another set point going up. This is a great time to say, okay, let's go back down. But there's a set point. So you have to start working your way down and you might get back down to that 230 and find, yeah, that's another set point I'm going to struggle to get past. So just recognize those are normal. Your body's not angry?

[00:43:51.750] – Rachel

No. I think that we hit a lot of plateaus, like you had mentioned, because we don't give what we're doing enough time to work. We're not very patient people and we want to see overnight success. So first sit in, like you said, sitting, and do what you're doing for a while and see if results come after that. But then when we do hit a plateau again, or we're not making any progress, maybe it's time to switch it up. Maybe it's time to do something different. Reevaluate remeasure what you're doing food wise and exercise wise and really dive deep into what you're doing to see what can you do to change. And I do want to point out, too, that a lot of people decide that this is a good time to cut calories, and cutting calories may not be the answer.

[00:44:39.600] – Allan

Yeah, I agree with you. I think it's really important to kind of reiterate one of the things you said. This is a good time to start measuring. And what you may find is you've let some carbs slip in there, you didn't really realize what was happening, and now your body's acting like it's in maintenance and it's running in maintenance. It's not wanting to lose that weight. So that's really important. This is a good time to get the scale out, get the measuring cups out for a few days, pay attention to what you're eating and what your portion sizes are and kind of rebate yourself. So then the next step would be yes. What tools and what things have I used that have done this for me in the past? So some people it can be. I'm going to implement an additional hit class this week, and I'll do that for the next three or four weeks and see if that helps me break this plateau. It could be unless you mentioned water. It could be. Okay, I'm really not drinking enough water. I'm going to start drinking a little bit more water and see how I feel.

[00:45:42.690] – Allan

And then again with the measuring, if you find okay, yeah. Let some carbs in there. Tap them back down. Get them back down. Increase your fiber intake. Increase your protein intake. Good, too. You might need to lower your fat intake. So you might have your macros nailed down, and you're in ketosis, and you're still not losing weight. As I mentioned, I have friends that have been doing keto for years and still obese. Start thinking about what the food you're eating is. They like to make those keto pizzas and the keto pies and the keto cakes and all that, and those are regular things they're eating. Almond flour is still a processed food. Okay? And while it's not going to give you the insulin spike and the sugar spike and all of that, your body is still digesting it and using it. It's there. And so you just got to think about how whole food am I? And am I doing the right thing? Am I eating enough vegetables? Am I getting enough protein? And if the fat's out there and just you're eating a ton of fat, your body doesn't really need to burn body fat because you're doing that.

[00:46:51.990] – Allan

It could be that you cut back on a macro like fat, and maybe you bump up your protein a little bit, and that could be the change that makes it happen. But it's normal to be at that point, and you need to sit in it, and you need to walk across that ledge. You got to get back to the mountain climbing. You're still moving forward, and that's the other side. If you know what you're doing is good for you, you're still moving forward, even if you don't see it on the scale. So keep doing what you're doing and then reevaluate to see if you need to do something perfect.

[00:47:27.290] – Rachel

Yeah, absolutely.

[00:47:28.420] – Allan

All right. And we have one more question, and this comes from Hope in our Facebook group. How do you lose weight around the mid section? And I hear similar questions like this. How do I lose weight in my hips or my neck or my arms? Like the behind the arms, the tricep area, they got the wings and that type of thing. So Rachel I'll let you kind of jump on this one a little bit.

[00:47:54.350] – Rachel

Yeah. I wish I had the answer. That question probably make a million bucks off of that. But fat doesn't come off that way when you're eating well and exercising a lot, it just sheds evenly all over your body. So you really can't target one specific area with weight loss, but you can target specific areas in the gym with weight training.

[00:48:19.650] – Allan

Yeah, you're absolutely right. We can't really target this, but we can look at what are some reasons that this happens, particularly for women. So for men, it's a natural thing for us to store body fat around our body, but then it'll predominantly be in the stomach area as we're gaining weight that we really don't need. So once we start getting past the healthy BMI, the body fat is likely to accumulate in the stomach. And I'll say if you eat a lot of bread, you drink a lot of beer and maybe even some other alcohols, that's where it's going to want to store that fat. So a lot of it can be the foods and the drinks that you're choosing to put in your mouth that could be causing the fat to be there. Other issue, and this is where it more affects women. Is it's hormones baby. Hormones are going to tell your body where to store fat. So when you're young and your estrogen was awesome and your progesterone was awesome, your body said, well, stored in the butt and stored in the boobs, because that's what guys like. That's going to help us procreate and get their attention.

[00:49:34.750] – Allan

And that's where our body would tend to store that fat. As our estrogen goes lower, as our progesterone goes lower, our body says, well, you're more like a man now. I'm sorry. That's what it says. And so it's going to start wanting to store the fat more in the mid section. So if you're in perimenopause, some women and I'm not proposing this at all. I'm not diagnosing at all. Okay. I'm not a doctor. But some women will go on hormone replacement therapy. And that does help them not put as much fat in their mid section because. Again. The hormone replacement is telling them they're a younger woman and so they can replace the hormones safely if they work with your doctor. There's a particular window when it's really safe to do this and other times it's not. And you may have some other medical issues where it's not right for you, but that's one way that you can look at this problem and say, okay, I can delay the problem or prevent the problem there. The other thing is just realizing that you're going to lose the weight in the mid section when the body is ready to get rid of that weight.

[00:50:39.070] – Allan

Again, hormones, so you can cut your calories, you can do everything else to lose weight. The mid section should go down over time. Now you might find I lose the body. Like me, I lose body fat, my face, my arms and my legs first. The mid section will be darn last to benefit. Regardless of what I do, I'm going to have that in the middle all the way until I get down to really low body fat. So I just know that's where it's going to be and there's not really anything I can do about it. It's a visceral fat. So even going into a plastic surgeon and saying, hey, look at this, they're like, can't help you there. I could do a tummy tuck, but I can't really pull that fat out of there because it's all around the liver and we really don't want to play with the liver. So short of surgery, short of hormone replacement, it's really just about trying to get yourself healthy. Not drinking beer, not eating certain carbs that are going to cause body fat gain. And that, over time should shrink your midsection. But there's really no way to spot lose outside of surgery.

[00:51:59.940] – Allan

And again, if it's a mid section fat, then most likely even surgery won't really do you any big good. And no one should think surgery is an answer to a problem like weight loss. Again, there are people that need bariatric surgery and things like that, that's fine. If it's something you need to do for your health, by all means do it. But as far as just trying to lose the body fat in the mid section, just do healthy stuff and your body will drop it as it needs to.

[00:52:32.920] – Rachel

Yes, for sure.

[00:52:34.210] – Allan

All right, so that's the end of our weight loss questions. Rachel, I appreciate your time today going through this with me. I really appreciate your take on most of these, all of them actually. Anyway. Okay. So if you have additional weight loss questions, go to our group at 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/group. You can ask your questions there. Rachel and I, we pretty much live on that page.

[00:53:04.030] – Rachel

Yes, we're there.

[00:53:05.300] – Allan

If you post something on there, you're going to get an answer from us. And if you're struggling with something and even if it's not weight loss. We're talking about weight loss questions today. But if you have exercise questions, if you have running questions, if you have lifting questions, if you have sleep questions, stress management questions, anything to deal with health and fitness and over 40 years old, we want to have you in the group, and we want to add those questions out there. And if we get a good collection of questions in other areas, we'll have another episode like this.

[00:53:36.700] – Rachel

Sweet.

[00:53:37.160] – Allan

And share your questions, and we'll answer them in more detail then.

[00:53:40.540] – Rachel

That would be fun.

Post Show/Recap

[00:53:41.730] – Allan

All right. Well, Rachel, it's great to see you again today. This early. Finish up your coffee.

[00:53:46.850] – Rachel

Thank you.

[00:53:47.270] – Allan

You've already done your run, so you're going to have an awesome day.

[00:53:50.340] – Rachel

It's going to be an awesome day.

[00:53:51.840] – Allan

All right, so you, too, have an awesome day, and we'll talk to you next week.

[00:53:56.520] – Rachel

Take care.

[00:53:57.350] – Allan

You, too. Bye

[00:53:58.390] – Rachel

bye.

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Another episode you may enjoy

Why calories don't count – Dr. Giles Yeo

Less...

Let's Say Hello

[00:00:46.220] – Allan
hey, Raz. How are things going?

[00:00:48.630] – Rachel
Good. How are you today, Allan?

[00:00:50.960] – Allan
I'm home. We got home yesterday is a lot of travel, a lot of 4700 miles driving two different countries. We were all over the whole East Side of the country. And so it was just a lot. I'm exhausted. I'm tired, and I started my training today for my tough Mudder. So right at this point, I'm like, I need a nap and I just need a nap. And so, yeah, it's good to be home. This is home now. I really I felt that way. I was in the United States, and I was like, you know, Bocas is my home.

[00:01:30.510] – Allan
And getting back here, I was like, yeah, this is where I want to be sleeping in my own bed, that kind of thing. So it's just good to be back. And now I can get back into a rhythm, back into what I like to do, focus on me, focus on my wife and my dogs and just living our lives and doing the things we do here, back in the gym, working out, no excuses. Just go, go, go. But at the same time, just having that comfort of knowing.

[00:01:59.760] – Allan
Okay, my bed is literally just one third of a mile that way. So.

[00:02:07.000] – Rachel
That's good. Glad you had the chance to visit all your family. I'm sure it was very rewarding to be on vacation and visiting with everyone. But, yeah, there's certainly nothing like the first night back at home in your own bed.

[00:02:19.670] – Allan
So If haven't answered your email or your Facebook questions or messages. I apologize, but the traveling really made it a lot more difficult for me to keep up with things. And so I fell behind a lot of things. And it taught me a lot about how I am not the same guy I was ten years ago when I could go, go, go, go, go and then get up and go. I need more downtime. I need more recovery. So that's one of the things here that I learned on this trip.

[00:02:51.560] – Allan
So future trips won't be quite as ambitious.

[00:02:54.940] – Rachel
Oh, wow. Yeah. Good thing to learn. That's for sure.

[00:02:58.220] – Allan
Well, how are things up there in Michigan?

[00:03:00.330] – Rachel
Great. I am such a good mood today. Mike and I had a much shorter vacation over the weekend. We had another runcation. We took our camper up north, a little part of Northwestern Michigan, and we ran a half marathon in the Sleeping Bear Dunes campground area. And we just had a fun time. The weather was perfect for running. The Hills were horrible. We survived, and we just had a wonderful time over the weekend. And again, just like you, it's nice to be home.

[00:03:32.980] – Allan
Good.

[00:03:33.970] – Rachel
Yeah.

Episode

[00:03:34.750] – Allan
All right. So today we're going to talk about getting your colonoscopy. There are two things that happen. As you get close to 50. You're 50 is you get your AARP invitation in the mail. I think I was 47 when I got mine, and then you're supposed to get your colonoscopy. There's kind of write a passage to your golden years, if you will, or you're happy years or whatever we want to call it. If you got into this, you've just turned 50 and you have family history up with cancer with particularly colorectal cancer.

[00:04:17.870] – Allan
And so for you, this was a day one. Get it done. Don't worry about it. Don't even think about it. It's not like I'm gonna put this off for a little while because I think I'm low risk. You just like, Nope. 50 get it done. Almost on your birthday. And your birthday wasn't .

[00:04:34.490] – Allan
And then you actually were doing some reading and found that now they're trying to move the date. If you have history, they're trying to move that screening date to age of 45.

[00:04:44.730] – Rachel
Right. You know, it's interesting. I go in every year for an annual physical. And I have done this for many years. And on my 49th annual physical, 49th year, they said I had to wait until I was 50 to have the colonoscopy. And it used to be age 55. And so when I got my annual physical shortly after my 50th birthday, I just was past July, they said, time to sign up. And I said, sure. And they said, by the way, the age has moved down to 45.

[00:05:14.200] – Rachel
And I thought, wow, that's really interesting that they're moving the age down in these increment brackets. But once I did a little research, I figured out why and what the American Cancer Society has found that even though the number of colorectal cancer diagnosis has gone down in a certain age group, it actually has increased for the 55 and younger age group, and it's increased only by 1% year after year. But I think that's part of the reason why they moved it down to 50 go to 45 right now.

[00:05:47.000] – Rachel
But even though that's the case, I still needed to check with my insurance to make sure they would pay for it, or at least know what it would cost me if I had to pay anything extra out of pocket. So it's definitely something you need to talk to your doctor about and also your insurance company.

[00:06:01.400] – Allan
Yeah. Now we're talking about colorectal cancer. There's a reason we're doing the screening, and I think we all know the C word. We get scared of it because it happened so much. It's one of the top leading causes of death, particularly in the United States. Right behind, I think heart disease and diabetes is right in that circle of the top three that you're probably going to deal with at some point. And unlike heart disease, which a lot of people will have an episode and then it'll be treatable and they'll treat it for decades.

[00:06:37.830] – Allan
In some cases, cancer has your number shortly after you realize that you have it over almost 60,000 people per year die of colorectal cancer.

[00:06:50.810] – Rachel
Yeah. According to the American Cancer Society, again, they were estimating in 2021. There would be 104,270 new cases of colon cancer and 45,230 new cases of rectal cancer in the United States. And right now, there are more than 1.5 million survivors of Colorectal cancer in the United States. And like I mentioned, the reason why the death rate has gone down for that is because of screening because of things like the colonoscopies. But as well as the new advances and different types of stool testing that can also catch it early, so early detection.

[00:07:36.400] – Allan
And that's the point. The earlier we detect it, the easier the treatment is, the more successful the treatment is. If we're catching it late, and you mentioned earlier when we were doing our pre talk, is it's one of the kind of cancers that you might notice a little bit of issues with your bowel, you might notice a little bit of issues with the fact that you can't seem to empty your bladder. There are other reasons, guys, for that prostate, which again, another screening you might want to go take a look at.

[00:08:03.850] – Allan
But if you're noticing some changes and that's one of the things in talking to different doctors, much of self diagnosis or at least being aware of a problem is being aware of self, of being aware of how things are working now and then not just saying, oh, that's a part of getting older. It can also be a symptom of something else. So the screening, they're giving you some preset dates and that's for the insurance to pay. I did a little bit of research because I thought I'm traveling in the United States.

[00:08:31.510] – Allan
I won't have time in my schedule to stop and do the three day purge and roll, which we're going to talk about in a minute here. I didn't have time for that. I get one here, and I haven't priced one here because it actually would be relevant to you guys anyway. So I thought, what if I was going to go ahead and do the sample version? You'll see the advertisements of the little box that arrives at your house and you put a little poo in a little container and send it back to them.

[00:08:58.830] – Allan
I did some pricing on that to look it up and they go ahead and say, okay, $30. And if you file with your insurance and then we'll deal with that billing stuff later. The $30 is just an administrative charge for the company that's facilitating getting the testing. But then I said, okay, if I'm going to just pay cash, they do give $100 discount. But it's still about $700 to get this test done, which is not cheap. But again, it's cheaper than the colonoscopy. So if your insurance company isn't going to cover it or you're going to end up paying out of pocket because you have a higher deductible insurance policy.

[00:09:36.060] – Allan
I did a little bit of research in what I was seeing were numbers right about the $3100. It can be a little more than that, a little less than that. Obviously, if you've got biopsies and other things that need to happen at the end, which we'll also talk about later, I guess the cost could go up for you, because again, now you have a medical thing you're treating versus just doing a standard routine screening. So, yeah, we're looking at about $1,100 if you wanted to pay cash for this or $3100, if you have a higher deductible, that's probably about what's going to come out if you're paying like an eight or 20 kind of thing, and you're looking at the 20% of that.

[00:10:13.560] – Allan
So still some money. And you got to think about that with your health care as we get older. We got a budget for the screenings. We got a budget for those things because we've been young and foolish thinking we're going to live forever. And maybe someone who's almost never hits your deductible well, over the age of 50, you're going to find more years that you hit it. And over 60 more years that you hit it, then you don't. So just be recognizing that as you're getting older, having the finances to focus on taking care of yourself and getting these pre things down like a screening, not putting it off because $700, that's a car payment as like, just do it.

[00:10:55.560] – Allan
You pay $1200 for a phone. Just do it right.

[00:11:02.120] – Rachel
It would be a great thing to add to your monthly budget just to keep a little nest egg of money for these types of screenings, because I can guarantee you that this little cost for screening is going to be a whole lot less than what it will cost for different surgeries. Or if you get cancer than the radiation of chemotherapy that often comes with it definitely blow up and be a lot more expensive. So screening here, add that to your budget is definitely well worth the investment.

[00:11:31.980] – Allan
And this is the location where you're past the digestion of food. But at the very time, if you're having difficulties here is going to work all the way up your digestive track, and it's just going to affect other parts of your life that you don't really want to mess with. So get the screening done. So you're getting the results you need and you're getting the healthy and you're getting the treatment early, which is the key to surviving this. If you do have something, let's keep moving forward.

[00:12:01.130] – Allan
You've signed up. It's like signing up for a race, but they don't give you a number. They just show up in comfortable clothes, but there's a pre process because the proctologist doesn't want to just go in there.

[00:12:18.040] – Rachel
Yeah, yeah. The average person can have up to about 14 or 16oz of stool in the colon at any given time. And so the whole purpose of this prep is to clean it all out. And what was interesting was that my prep, which could be different than anybody else's, and it probably will be if you've had a colonoscopy. I imagine it'll be different than what you've gone through. It just varies from doctor to doctor, and it took a little bit longer to prep for this. Then I would have it expected about a week out from the surgery.

[00:12:50.110] – Rachel
The first thing I had to do was cut all my medications and vitamins, even which I was kind of surprised by that. I didn't ask any questions. I can go a week without taking vitamin E and fish oil and whatnot? It's not that big a deal, but certain vitamins, like iron keeps you constipated or can cause constipation. So those in different prescription medications had to be cut. I'm sure that there are a few medications that if you need to take them, they would let you take them.

[00:13:20.400] – Rachel
But again, that is something you need to discuss with your doctor. Seven days out, I had to quit all my vitamins. I don't take any prescriptions, and then five days out, they want you to go on a low fiber diet already, so they want you to tone down the fiber that you have in your daily diet.

[00:13:38.630] – Allan
They're talking keto.

[00:13:41.320] – Rachel
Yes. Which is easy for me because, yes, I am keto. I don't have bread, I don't have pastas or rice or a ton of fiber. I do eat vegetables, so that's definitely a good fiber and a half. But yeah, I don't have a high fiber diet to begin with. So that was an easy cut for me as well. So then where it gets really interesting is then the day before that you start the prep, you need to be on a liquid diet. So a clear liquid diet at that because you can't have anything that's blue or red or purple, because that could die some parts of your colon and make it think that there could be blood in your stool when it's not or in your colon.

[00:14:26.480] – Rachel
So I had to drink some chicken broth, some beef broth. I had a clear electrolyte drink water. I was allowed to have black coffee, no dairy, because that's also a constipating item. So a liquid diet, lots of water the day before I started the actual solution part. And that wasn't difficult either. Again, being keto, I think that gave me an advantage because I didn't really feel a lot of hunger. I'm still drinking a ton of liquids. My stomach was very full. I was getting nutrients in the broth and in the electrolyte drink.

[00:15:05.110] – Rachel
So I was totally fine with that. That wasn't a problem. So not too difficult so far.

[00:15:11.170] – Allan
Yeah. So you got to give up your red wine for a few days, you gotta give up your red wine, you got to give up your heavy foods and regular foods. And then I think for me I would probably just fast. I don't know that I would feel like I needed the broth unless it was just to have some kind of flavor. And so if I were to do it, I would say, okay, I'll do some one, maybe a little bit of bone broth here and there. But for the most part, I just say, okay, water and electrolytes and coffee, probably some coffee. For two days

[00:15:50.100] – Allan
I can fast, and I might be a little hungry, but that's fine because I would look at it because I know what the next stage of this grand journey is. And I would just say, the less that has to come out, the less trouble I've got. So it's like if you do that right, then that's going to make this next phase easier.

[00:16:11.450] – Rachel
Yeah. Now this is the hardest part of the whole procedure. That is the most uncomfortable part, but that painful. And this part can also vary from doctor to doctor. So my test was going to be at 10:30 the following morning. So that's important to note, because you have to drink the prep solution in two sections of it and two occasions before the test. So for me, this is where it got oddly specific, but remembering that my test was at 10:30 the next day. So the night before, the day before the exam was my liquid diet.

[00:16:52.400] – Rachel
And at 05:00 in the evening, I had to take a set of laxatives that was prescribed by the doctor and the laxatives just like to get everything flushing out of your intestines. There's not a whole ton of stuff in my intestine to begin with. I'm not sure how effective the laxatives were really working for me anyway, but I took the laxatives as prescribed by my doctor at 05:00. But then at 06:00 is when I had to start drinking this prescription solution. It's a gallon mix, which is sodium chloride, sodium bicarbonate and potassium chloride.

[00:17:29.840] – Rachel
Now, if you think of that, basically, it's salt water.

[00:17:36.290] – Allan
It's electrolytes. It's salt water. But it's electrolytes too. So like I was saying, if you start flushing out a lot of fluids to keep your electrolytes up and literally, that's going to actually pull fluid into your muscles, into your body and into your blood. And that's why something they'll tell you if you have high blood pressure, you might not want to eat a lot of salt because that will raise your blood volume, which would raise blood pressure. So depending on your circumstances, they might give you a slightly different cocktail there, but it's generally electrolytes.

[00:18:07.570] – Allan
They're going to make sure that you don't crash from sodium or potassium deal. You're going to have enough electrolytes to be good with the flush. That's about to happen.

[00:18:19.970] – Rachel
So I needed to start drinking this at 6:00 the night before my exam, and I was only going to drink half a gallon at this time. And so at the rate you drink it, it's supposed to be 8oz every 15 minutes until that half gallon is gone. So over the course between six and eight at night, I was drinking about 8oz of this drink every 15 minutes. And really, it wasn't terrible until it was terrible. So 8oz of water every 15 minutes or a half a gallon over the course of 2 hours really doesn't sound horrible.

[00:18:57.780] – Rachel
But for me, I got a really small stomach and at the end of that half gallon, I was stuffed. I was stuffed like I just ate two Thanksgiving dinners in a row. I was so full, I didn't think there was any room for me to keep drinking it. And the other challenging part of it is that you're drinking ocean water, you're drinking salt water and it tastes terrible. And so one of the tricks, one of my friends suggested was to take a hard candy, a piece of a hard candy like a lemon drop or a Mint or Jolly Rancher or something like that.

[00:19:30.670] – Rachel
Put it under your tongue. Drink the solution with a straw. So you're not getting a whole mouth flavor of salt water and drink it as quickly as you can through the straw, which worked really well until it didn't. But for this first half gallon, I got it done. I was stuffed to the gills. And because I started at six, it took me to eight and I was full. But then at the end of the half gallon at 09:00 and then again at 10:00, I was to date two gas tablets to prevent the gas from developing in my stomach.

[00:20:05.350] – Rachel
I never felt gas. Maybe it was the gas tablet. I don't know, but that was my first day of prep up till 10:00 at night, and I was stuffed and exhausted.

[00:20:17.530] – Allan
One of the funniest things have you ever played football, particularly on the offensive line, is when the quarterback goes behind the center and the center has gas. It's hilarious for us offensive Line man, it's not so much fun for the quarterback, so I imagine it wouldn't be so much fun for the proctologist.

[00:20:34.920] – Rachel
probably not.

[00:20:35.880] – Allan
Probably the reason why you're taking the gas pill.

[00:20:38.670] – Rachel
Probably. I never felt it. But I did what the doctor said to do, and I finished it off. So sadly, this is where it gets more uncomfortable. None of this is painful, it just is getting uncomfortable. So the next day at 4:30 in the morning, I had to wake up and start drinking the second half of that half gallon of prescription solution. It was early in the morning. It tasted terrible. It was not a black cup of coffee that I had rather have had in the morning, but I started drinking it and at this point the lemon drop candies were losing their effectiveness, and the salty water was even saltier.

[00:21:18.870] – Rachel
Probably because I didn't shake it up well enough or something, and it just got to me. And sadly, I threw up the last second to last 8oz of the solution and I wasn't even able to guzzle down the last 8oz of solution. So I got a little bit down in the morning, but I couldn't finish at all. And so then you're not allowed to drink anything but 3 hours before the procedure, you can't drink anything you're done. So again, that was the uncomfortable part of it, but not painful.

[00:21:49.780] – Allan
Okay, well, I would probably take a nap because doing this thing all the way until 10:00 at night and then being up at four to start all over again, I'm like, no, no, you don't understand my sleep. My sleep is the most important thing and my health journey right now, and I won 8 hours. And so I would probably would have asked that question when I was reading it. I would have given them a call and said, Look, I don't see 8 hours of sleep in here and we're doing this for my health.

[00:22:20.340] – Allan
So how do I adjust this to get my 8 hours in? Granted, I have never tried to drink that much salt water before, but I could just tell you from a water perspective, I can easily drink a half gallon of water in 2 hours. That wouldn't have a problem with that at all.

[00:22:41.220] – Rachel
That's good.

[00:22:42.540] – Allan
So yeah, for me it'd be like, okay, I'll start at 06:00. I'll finish at eight. I'm going to go to sleep. I'll be up at four. That'll probably be up about eight times to pee anyway, then I'll wake up around four and I'll drink that a half gallon over the next 2 hours. And then, yeah, go ahead and take another nap, because what am I going to do for 3 hours? We can't drink or eat anything. I'll sleep. Okay. So now you've done all this. Probably didn't sleep very well.

[00:23:11.230] – Rachel
And here's where it gets interesting. Is that what the solution does is that it's moving through your colon. You're not really absorbing the liquid in the water that you're drinking. It's actually flushing out all of your colon. It's like you're hosing down your entire colon with this liquid solution. So after about the first half gallon or so it started to kick in and I was spending a lot of time in the bathroom partially because of the completely liquid diet. My bladder was working over time. But then when you drink this prescription solution, your colon is working overtime.

[00:23:47.130] – Rachel
So I spent a good part of my evening in the bathroom, and I did get a couple hours of sleep, but it wasn't rested sleep because I was getting up to go to the bathroom. Still, I guess looking back in hindsight, I think I might decide to pull in all nighter in this case and just sit with the book in the bathroom and just let the prescription do its job because it wasn't great sleep. And I probably got up about once every hour or so to flush out my colon.

[00:24:18.050] – Rachel
And then the next morning at 4:30, that's when it really started to kick in, and it didn't even take as long as the time period to get from my stomach to my colon and out. It was just go, go, go. And in fact, I wasn't sure how I was going to make it from my house to the hospital the next morning without needing to have a bathroom stop at the gas station or something. So that's the whole purpose of the solution is literally to hose out your colon.

[00:24:45.720] – Rachel
And I'm not kidding about the hosing out part.

[00:24:48.180] – Allan
Yeah, I can understand the all nighter thing. I'm glad you said book, because the whole taking your phone to the Ioo. Like a lot of public bathrooms when you're traveling. And so I'd walk in and people be in their stall talking on the phone. Oh, no. I hear them with a click, click, click, click. I'm like.

[00:25:09.510] – Allan
No, no.

[00:25:11.150] – Rachel
Yeah, that's a private time right there. Oh, goodness.

[00:25:16.920] – Allan
Okay. So we're on our way to the hospital. This is kind of one of those Logan's run thing because just like when you're in labor and just like, let's get to get there quickly because we don't know, I'm going to make it.

[00:25:28.200] – Rachel
That's right. Yes, I had my daughter drove me today. You have to have your driver because you're going to be sedated and you can't drive afterwards. So you need to have a driver. My daughter got me to the hospital. We got checked in. And even though I had drank all this electrolyte and as well as the prescription solution, I was very dehydrated, and they had a hard time finding a vein that would stay open for the IV. That got me it's couple of times until they got a good one.

[00:25:58.140] – Rachel
So that was kind of interesting. So I got checked in at 9:30. The procedure was at 10:30. I had my IV going. They got another bag of electrolytes to keep me going and got into the procedure room. And they said, You're about to take a nap and we'll be done in about half an hour. And I'm telling you, I had the best nap of my entire life. I was counting down to ten and I might have got to seven and I was out like a light.

[00:26:30.570] – Rachel
so I had a great nap and got back to my room and woke up and they got me a cup of coffee. And by the time I finished my coffee, I was fully awake. The sedation had worn off, and I got the good news that they did not find any polyps. And that's what they're looking for in the colonoscopy is if there's any polyps anywhere in my colon or rectum, and that's where they would take any out. If they had found any, they would take out the polyps.

[00:26:58.050] – Rachel
And they would do a biopsy to see what they were.

[00:27:01.480] – Allan
And that's where the detection goes on a standard one, which fortunately you had they didn't find anything notable. They all clean. All go. Now it's just a function of you getting yourself back in order and then getting yourself home and all that. So I think one of the things you talked about in your notes was wear comfortable clothes.

[00:27:23.370] – Rachel
Yes.

[00:27:24.800] – Allan
Throughout the whole thing. Just sweat clothes. If it's too hot, then just wear something loose and easy to wear a mumu. I don't care, but just comfortable clothes, something that makes your life easier. Rest when you can rest. But then if they were to have found something, now you're into this new stage. So they've gone in there. They pulled the polyps and they're going to do some biopsies. They'll be able to give you some information. And this is when you start triaging with your doctor, you form a medical team, if you will.

[00:27:58.040] – Allan
And you've got to take a leadership role, even though they're the expert, you have to take a leadership role in how you're going to address this from the perspective of your health.

[00:28:09.680] – Rachel
Yeah. And also, just like, what every cancer out there, what would happen to you will just depend on what they find. So a couple of polyps here and there, they could take them out. And that could be the end of it. Or if it was a tumor like my uncle had had, that might require a different type of attention. There could be surgical procedures involved if they decide they want to take out pieces of your colon. Totally possible. And then there's a cocktail of radiation and chemotherapy that could be given, and it all just depends on the exact type of cancer you have and the extent at which they find it.

[00:28:52.720] – Allan
One of the things about cancer, though, that I want to kind of put out there is that there are the different types. Some move very, very quickly. The metastasize really, really quickly, and you don't have a lot of time that you have time, others metastasize much slower or won't metastasize at all. So knowing a lot more about the type of cancer you have and what's going on gives you kind of a timeline for the decisions that you need to make. One doctor's decision or opinion won't necessarily be another doctor's opinion.

[00:29:25.650] – Allan
And you might love your doctor to death. But this is a point for you to realize you're the CEO, someone has brought you some information. But before you go in and start doing anything drastic, you might want to get another doctor's opinion in there. And we've talked about this over and over again. Some doctors are going to be a little bit more surgery prone. Some are just going to say, why don't we do a little bit of this chemo drug and see if it gets smaller?

[00:29:53.740] – Allan
Some of them may, I don't know. They may recommend some dietary changes and things like that because it's just not at that point where they feel like you need have to do something right now. They've removed the polyps. And so at that point, they're gone and the other was a problem. But it's obviously not anywhere else. So let's wait a year and do another one and see what we've got happening here to make that decision. Cancer is one of those things where it can flare up, but it's just your body hasn't had a chance to kill it yet.

[00:30:26.340] – Allan
And so there's just different things out there. I've had doctors. We've talked about prostate cancer. We've talked about other cancers, and the reality of it is the doctors over the years have learned a lot, but each doctor has their own little bias for whether they want to do a surgery where they want to do another treatment, what they've seen work. But you have an opportunity. Rather, it's something that you need to do quickly, or if it's something you have some time to do. You have time.

[00:30:52.240] – Allan
Either way, it's not an e jerk. Just let's go do what this doctor says. Do a little bit of reading, talk to us, get a second opinion, maybe even a third opinion, and just figure out what the most appropriate decision is for you. Some of these surgeries are not something that you're just going to get the surgery and you're good. There's surgery, there's chemo, there's all kinds of stuff, radiation. And you talked about your uncle. They went on for years. He went on for over a decade of different treatment protocols to try to do something.

[00:31:24.030] – Allan
And so just recognizing that this can be a long journey or it could be a short one. And some of the folks that I've talked about, particularly prostate cancer, those decisions that you're making have other adverse effects to your body. So a surgery in your colon? Well, it's not where you're getting your nutrients from. It's a part of the channel and chain that's making that all happen and things and changes you do in one part of it can adversely affect the way your whole digestive tract works.

[00:31:52.710] – Allan
And that's your second brain. So I'm not going to say this is complicated as brain surgery, but the ramifications of some problems there, it can be detrimental.

[00:32:05.610] – Rachel
Right. Definitely get second and third opinions for sure. When your car breaks down, you can take it to a mechanic. But if you have a hot Rod or Lamborghini, you go to a Lamborghini dealership to get it fixed. So similarly, you want to choose your oncologist. Don't go to any guy who is the local oncologist at the hospital. You find the person that specializes in colorectal cancel or whatever other kinds of cancers that you're going to be dealing with. You go to the specialist and you get that second opinion and you find out what is the best treatment for you based on your existing medical conditions and the exact type of cancer that you have.

[00:32:44.560] – Rachel
But the good news is that the death rate for colorectal cancer has dropped because of screening like the colonoscopy and with stool tests, and you could definitely have a good chance of survival. Your survival rates increase with early detection. So when it's your age like it is for mine at 50 or for any of those 45 year olds out there, don't be afraid of being uncomfortable by taking a stool test or being uncomfortable for the couple of days of the liquid diet that I had to do a colorectal test.

[00:33:19.740] – Rachel
Get that peace of mind by doing the screening that you should have at that age bracket and early detection 100% gives you the best survival rates.

[00:33:29.320] – Allan
And I know I would have done it. I don't know if you did it. Did you weigh yourself before you started the process and after the process?

[00:33:37.220] – Rachel
Yes, I did. And I was one tiny pound difference from day to day.

[00:33:43.870] – Allan
And then you start eating again. And you're full of it again.

[00:33:48.500] – Rachel
Exactly. Yeah. Like I said at the beginning, 12 to 16oz of stool, and it was legit, right? Yeah. So it was not a difficult test. It was not painful, a little bit uncomfortable, but right now, I don't have to go back for another colonoscopy for ten years unless something else goes sideways. So I'm very happy with the knowledge that my colon looks squeaky clean.

[00:34:14.970] – Allan
You hose it off of the fire hose.

[00:34:17.420] – Rachel
I sure did.

[00:34:18.610] – Allan
All right. Well, Rachel, anything else you want to talk about before we call it a week?

[00:34:25.060] – Speaker 2
No. Just go get screened, please.

[00:34:27.760] – Allan
Yes, please. All right. Well, we'll talk to you next week.

[00:34:30.590] – Rachel
Take care.

[00:34:31.160] – Allan
You too.

[00:34:32.000] – Rachel
Thanks.

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This episode of the 40+ Fitness podcast is sponsored by Naked Nutrition, what does getting naked mean for supplements? It means no unnecessary additives. It means premium sourced ingredients without fillers. So you don't need to compromise on your diet or your goals. That's what Naked Nutrition offers.

Back in 2014, a former college athlete didn't understand why protein powders and other supplements had so many unnatural ingredients. If they're supposed to be health supplements, why can't you understand the ingredient list? Naked nutrition was started with five single-ingredient supplements, including the best selling Naked Whey, which has only one ingredient whey protein from grass-fed California cows and the bestselling Naked Pea, a vegan protein made from one ingredient raw yellow peas grown in the U.S. and Canada.

The company has grown to offer over 40 products, but the vision of sourcing the best ingredients using a few of them is possible and being transparent so you know exactly what's going into your body is the same today as when the company was founded.

Whether you're working towards losing weight, having more energy or improving your endurance to become a better runner, what you put in your body directly impacts how you feel and the results you get. Naked Nutrition is committed to shortening the steps between their farms and you. Get naked. Visit naked nutrition. Today, it's nutrition with nothing to hide. Use the discount code 40plus and get 10% off your first order. nakednutrition.com.

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

– Anne Lynch	– John Dachauer	– Margaret Bakalian
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Another episode you may enjoy

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SPONSOR

This episode of the 40+ Fitness podcast is sponsored by Naked Nutrition, what does getting naked mean for supplements? It means no unnecessary additives. It means premium sourced ingredients without fillers. So you don't need to compromise on your diet or your goals. That's what Naked Nutrition offers.

Back in 2014, a former college athlete didn't understand why protein powders and other supplements had so many unnatural ingredients. If they're supposed to be health supplements, why can't you understand the ingredient list? Naked nutrition was started with five single-ingredient supplements, including the best selling Naked Whey, which has only one ingredient whey protein from grass-fed California cows and the bestselling Naked Pea, a vegan protein made from one ingredient raw yellow peas grown in the U.S. and Canada.

The company has grown to offer over 40 products, but the vision of sourcing the best ingredients using a few of them is possible and being transparent so you know exactly what's going into your body is the same today as when the company was founded.

Whether you're working towards losing weight, having more energy or improving your endurance to become a better runner, what you put in your body directly impacts how you feel and the results you get. Naked Nutrition is committed to shortening the steps between their farms and you. Get naked. Visit naked nutrition. Today, it's nutrition with nothing to hide. Use the discount code 40plus and get 10% off your first order. nakednutrition.com.

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

– Anne Lynch	– John Dachauer	– Margaret Bakalian
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