Introduction

On episode 664 of the 40+ Fitness Podcast, we answer your questions about:

• Intermittent Fasting
• Ketosis
• Ideal Weight
• Diametrically opposing information from experts
• Training for power as we age.

Episode Notes

Music by Dave Gerhart

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Another episode you may enjoy

Introduction

On episode 663 of the 40+ Fitness, we meet Shane Warne and discuss how you can resolve pain without medication or surgery.

Hello

[00:01:22.870] – Allan

Hey, Raz. How are you?

[00:01:24.670] – Rachel

Good, Allan. How are you today?

[00:01:26.920] – Allan

I feel good. As we're recording I finished that launch of my new program, and it was good. I feel good about the process and what we did, what I was able to do, and where I am right now. I'm coming off of that, though. It's like, now, so now I'm getting back. I got to get back in my routines. I got to get things normal again. And then, yeah, because things happen. They're always going to happen when you don't want them to happen. But I think our water pump went out, so we have no water in our house today. Oh, jeez. So as soon as I off this this morning, I've got to go back over to Lula's and try to get the rest of my day worked over there, which I was not intending to do, so that we can make sure we get that pump replaced, because we've got all six of our rooms. They're checking in tomorrow. It's a group of vets that's here to basically do all these charity clinics for spay and neuter and other things. And all six rooms. They're going to this group of vets, and it's been on our books for a long time.

[00:02:27.610] – Allan

And then, yeah, the water pump goes out the day before, and so we got to get that fixed today. So I'll be headed home here shortly to supervise getting that fixed. But how are things up there?

[00:02:41.520] – Rachel

Oh, beautiful, actually. The fall is just starting to show signs. Some of our plants are starting to… The leaves are starting to turn colors. I would like to say that the weather is cooling off, but it is not. But I know it's coming, so just getting ready to enjoy the fall season.

[00:02:57.720] – Allan

The trees are saying something, but-They're You don't believe them.

[00:03:02.230] – Rachel

They're ready. I'm ready, but we'll see what happens.

[00:03:04.670] – Allan

But you know the work that's coming because you guys start doing that syrup stuff.

[00:03:09.660] – Rachel

That'll be later. But yeah, we're keeping an eye out for that, but that'll be later in the season.

[00:03:15.310] – Allan

We're gearing up for it. It's coming.

[00:03:16.980] – Rachel

Yeah, getting ready. All right.

[00:03:20.600] – Allan

Well, are you ready to talk about pain with Shane?

[00:03:23.070] – Rachel

For sure.

Interview

[00:03:40.220] – Allan

Shane, welcome to 40+ Fitness.

[00:03:43.090] – Shane

Thanks, Allan. Good to be here, mate.

[00:03:45.460] – Allan

Yeah. So you and I met through an organization that's called Online Trainer Mentorship, and you're there as a coach. I'm there as a mentor. One of the things that's interesting to me is as you get older like I am, you start realizing realizing there's a lot you don't know. And the older you get, the more you realize, the more you don't know. So I just know when it comes to pain management, I know a few things, but I don't know everything. And I know I don't know everything, which is why I wanted to bring on someone like you that this is what you do all day, every day, is help people in pain get their movement back. And I think your slogan is from pain to freedom, or I saw that somewhere on your social media. And so I'm glad to have you here, because as we get older, there's more pain if we're not doing things right.

[00:04:35.690] – Shane

There most certainly is. Just to follow up on that comment you just made there as well, I actually had one of my followers on Instagram message me yesterday, tell me what he liked about my messaging in some of the comments on posts was how humble I was, because I told someone when they asked me questions, I'm not really 100 % sure. This is what I would do to go and find out. So there is way too much going on with the body for anyone to say that they know everything. I'm quite happy to admit when I don't know anything, because if I can't admit what I don't know, how am I ever going to know what I need to learn? So I think that's a really important aspect of that. But to your point, yeah, this is what I do. I help people get out of long term chronic pain, so that they can get the freedom back in their life. And for me, freedom means a few things, right? Freedom from pain itself. But freedom to do the things that bring us joy, because we only get one shot at life. At the end of this, it's whether there's an afterlife or a reincarnation, or whatever, we're not going to remember it.

[00:05:43.830] – Shane

This is life. So we might as well make the most of it that we can. And that includes doing the things that bring us joy. And for me, that's lifting heavy weights. It's going to jiu-jitsu, and it's treating my body very poorly doing those things and hurting it. But for a lot of other people, It's just playing with the grandkids, getting down on the floor and doing those things. One of my clients, Ashley, it's getting in the hoop and doing aerial arts that was taken away from her for eight years. So that's what freedom is to me. It's a freedom to just to do the things that we want, that bring us joy. But then a little bit further to that, it's the freedom to do whatever you're doing without thinking at the same time, how is this going to make me feel tomorrow? And that's a huge, huge It's a huge thing, because I've been there where everything… I have multiple pains all the time, and I didn't realize how much of a difference it made to me. But at almost 45, life has a childlike quality to it, again, because when I'm doing the thing, I'm immersed in that.

[00:06:52.170] – Shane

That's all I'm thinking about doing. So I'm really getting the most out of it and not thinking, how am I going to feel tomorrow? Is this going to hurt me? Is this going to make something And that, to me, is why having a functioning, healthy, pain-free body… I mean, pain-free doesn't mean we're never going to hurt. Obviously, I still get injured and things like that. But the most important thing is having a pain-free body, a body that does the things we want it to do, allows us to just have a better quality of life, and do the things that we want, and get the most out of it, and do those things with the people we love to.

[00:07:32.020] – Allan

Because that's the thing is person in pain is probably going to not do things that they think will hurt them or it will make them feel worse. And so they miss out. They miss out on a lot of things because they just don't want to further the pain. So yes, if we can improve things and they're effectively pain-free, they can do so much more and have a much more fulfilled life doing those things. Now, I went through for this conversation, and I picked out four key areas where I'm dealing with clients all the time that basically say, Well, I got this. And my role as a trainer, because most of them are trying to also lose weight, is to basically say, Okay, well, let's figure out, from my perspective, how to work around it. What can we get done without hurting this, without exacerbating this? And so from a strategy perspective, it's half That's the answer. And I acknowledge that. You should. We've got to figure out this low back pain. We got to figure this knee pain, because if you don't resolve those, always going to be in that pain, and you're never going to want to do that thing.

[00:08:45.180] – Allan

And as a result, you're not going to live the fuller life. Now, I can help you from a health perspective. You lose the 30 or 40 pounds, and you feel great. We get you moving in ways that you can and feel good about. You get stronger from that. But some of these things can severely limit how far you can go in improving your health and fitness. The first one I want to talk about, and this is probably the most common one, is lower back pain. So if someone has lower back pain that they're suffering with fairly regularly, what are some basic things that you would encourage them to consider as they move forward to resolve that or at least reduce the pain they're feeling?

[00:09:23.350] – Shane

One thing, and this isn't actually something that I do, but obviously you brought it up, and it's one of the things that you help people with. A lot of the times, if someone is quite a bit overweight, their body, all their joints, everything is just dealing with having to carry around this load that it wasn't really designed for. So that may literally be the solution. Get moving, lose So I get the body functioning, strengthen it up a bit. That may actually be the long term solution. And for a lot of people, those simple things actually are. For people that have tried those things, though, and done the conventional I've got a sore lower back, so I've strengthened my core. I've lost some weight, I've strengthened my core, but they're still having issues. They're generally the people that I work with. I've had pain for quite a while. I've tried the conventional things. What I find is, lower back pain comes down to… There's two things that I will assess. So every time I bring on a new client, I'll do a physical assessment, do it via Zoom. There's usually a few things, but two non-negotiables are the The hip mobility, and in particular, how much their leg rotates in their hip.

[00:10:36.050] – Shane

And then the next thing is, how does their spine segment? Can they move their spine at the individual vertebrae? And there's two very specific things. I heard Steffie Cohen, she did a master's degree in low back pain. When she was going to college, she was, I think she was a 25 times world record holder power lifter, was going to college, hurt her back, no one could help her. And this was literally the place where people are learning to help people like that. And I heard her on a podcast with Tim Ferrace once say that about 85 % of lower back pain, there's actually nothing mechanically wrong with their back. One of the things that happens with our back is if we get a perceived problem, or a little problem, or even a perceived problem by our nervous system, Our nervous system will protect us. And it protects us just by seizing the muscles up around that area of the spine where that perceived problem is. What we then do is we get scared, we brace our core, and we stop moving. So we've got a lot of muscles that run up and down our spine, that control our vertebrae, the multifidae, loads of muscles in there.

[00:11:54.180] – Shane

But what happens is if we are actively bracing our core and staying still, or staying braced and staying upright all the time, we don't really use those muscles. All of our tissue have little sensors in them that are effectively a communication module that's talking to our nervous system, so our nervous system knows what it's doing at the time, which is why if I close my eyes and move my arm, I know where my arm's going. I know what it's doing. And that's how our body knows what it's doing, where it is. But like everything else in our body, if we don't use it, we lose it. So if we stop using those tissues that control our vertebrate, those signals stop being sent. Now, this isn't going to happen in a day or a week. It might happen in months or even a few years. But at some stage, there's a whole section of spine of a few vertebrate where that signal has stopped being sent to the nervous system. So the nervous system one day realizes, I don't know what my spine is doing. What the nervous system does is a And the reaction to that is it tenses up all around the spine because it's like, I don't know what my spine is doing.

[00:13:06.190] – Shane

I better protect it just in case, and then it seizes up. So that's actually a super common reason for back pain is just tightness around the spine because the body doesn't know what it's doing. And we can test that by checking whether you can move your individual vertebrae or not and segment that vertebrae. And that will be step one, is actually getting access to that tissue. Then we start using those muscles, the muscles start working again, start sending signals, the nervous system now feels safe, and then the pain goes away. That's a fairly lengthy process, if it's been years and years and years that you haven't used the tissue. The next thing is the hips. So One really big cause of lower back pain is simply immobile hips. So obviously the hip is like a ball and socket joint. Really simply, for the hip to work, there needs to be enough space in the capsule of the joint itself to allow for the hip to move around. Because unlike a normal ball and socket joint, obviously, that a bone is in a symmetrical thing, the femur has a bend on the end. So as you got to lift your leg, that ball in this ball and socket starts moving around in the joint.

[00:14:27.050] – Shane

The problem is, if you have limited space in the joint, That femur is going to hit on the acetabulum, so the ball is going to hit on the socket in this ball and socket joint. That's a really big problem if that happens, because then you've got bone rubbing on bone on the inside in the middle of your joint. The good thing about that is that your body knows that's going to happen. Once again, the tissue in the joint is sending signals up to your nervous system all the time. So you got to move your leg, then your nervous system realizes, wait, if I let it move, that bone is going to rub on the other bone. So it wants to stop us doing that. So it just tightens up everything around the hip to stop that moving. What muscles are each individual going to tighten There'll be quads, hamstrings, glutes, hip flexes, lower back. That all pertains to that hip. So over time, that prolonged tightness on the hip and lower back is going to cause issues. So We can test how much space is in the socket or the capsule of the hip by testing rotation.

[00:15:38.300] – Shane

So how much can you internally and externally rotate your leg in your hip? So that'll be So that's one of the two things I test. How well does your hip rotate, and how well can you segment your spine? Generally speaking, I'll find an issue with both of those things with most people, and then we work on those. And then when We can then increase the rotation in your hip, therefore increase the space in that ball and socket joint. You now have a freedom of movement. Your body has no need to actually protect you from yourself. So it stops creating the tightness. The tightness goes away, so does your pain. And that's step one. We then want to strengthen up that tissue because it's tissue you haven't used in years and years and years. But that's step one.

[00:16:25.570] – Allan

Okay, cool. So now the next one, this is a hard one because Because all pain is nerve-originated. But the sciatica tends to give people a huge problem. It's not a small pain, and it's not a pain that necessarily comes on and goes away. For a lot of people, once their sciatica starts hurting, they hurt all the time. And a lot of them end up going to medication. So what are some things we could do to know what might be causing the sciatica problem? And we could do about it.

[00:17:01.730] – Shane

Yeah, it's an interesting one. So sciatica, technically speaking, sciatica actually starts in your spine. So you've got a nerve being trapped because you've got a bulging disk or something like that in your spine. And then that nerve runs down your leg. For most people that say they have sciatica, what they really have is they just have tight glutes, and that is putting a constant pressure on the sciatic nerve in the glute, and then that runs down their leg. And there is a very distinct difference between the two causes. But in most cases, I have found that… Because I actually had sciatica myself 10 years ago. My right hip. The first time I got it treated, I went to my physio. She's amazing. She dry-needled my glute, and the glute spasmed and released, and instantly the pain was gone. That was it. It was just tightness of my glute. But then in a couple of weeks time, it was back. And that was the process I went through. We all know that merry-go-round of releasing the pressure and the tightness and the pain for it to come back. So what I was doing was effectively dealing with the symptoms.

[00:18:21.880] – Shane

So that's what I find… So this is back to the lower back pain and the tightness in the hip. I actually find in most cases, if we People with that sciatic pain, they've also got exceptionally tight hips. They have very limited rotation in the hip. They have very limited space in that capsule. So the body is literally just protecting us from ourselves and creating a tightness to stop our leg moving in ways that the body knows it's unsafe. And that continual tightness on that nerve is what's actually causing the pain. So if we can, once again, create enough space and get that hip working properly, the body no longer has to protect us from ourselves, will no longer create that tightness, and the tightness goes away, and when the tightness goes away, so does the pain. You do want to get that tested, obviously, because if the pain is coming from your spine, and It's literally your nerve being pressed on in your spine. You want to go and get a test and a scan on that to see what's going on. If that's not an issue, then it's most likely just your hips and your glutes.

[00:19:29.200] – Shane

And either way, even if it is coming from your spine, releasing your hips or getting your hip to work properly so that you don't have all this tightness around your glutes and hamstrings and lower back is massively going to impact how much pain you're going to be having there anyway. Because if you can imagine, if your hip doesn't move properly, flexion… So hip flexion is if I lift my knee towards my chest. Most people cannot get their leg up to about 90 degrees of their hip because they're restricted in movement. But every single time we put on our shoes, we need better movements than that. Every time we use the dustpan and brush, every time we get out of bed, every time we go to the toilet, me sitting down right now. So if my hip doesn't move, well, my spine has to. There's no other option. So by having hips that don't move properly, I am putting pressure on, or I'm asking my spine to move, where it probably won't have or shouldn't have to. So if I do have an issue from sciatic there, the more I can get my hips to move, the less pressure and stress my spine is going to be under on a continually daily basis.

[00:20:53.800] – Allan

Now, the next one that this is extremely, extremely common is knee pain. I don't know how many clients I've had that come to me and say, Okay, I can't squat. A doctor told me not to squat. And I'm like, Well, you actually squat every day when you go to the bathroom. But let's not go there right now. When you do the squats, tell me what you do. And then usually, it's the one-half squat. And I'm thinking to myself, No, you want to go full range of motion because if you don't get down below parallel, you're using quads to break and then restart the movement. And that's probably what's causing your knee pain. If you can let your glutes fire, you're probably going to have less of that. Now, that is the one thing that I know from years of training is losing the weight and getting your body where it can move through the full range of motion in a squat, even if it's just a bodyweight squat, is usually good enough to stop them from feeling that knee pain. But in the cases where you're dealing with knee pain, because this is chronic at this point, what are some things that you see that could cause it and that they could do some things about?

[00:22:06.220] – Shane

Once again, obviously, hip is going to play a role. Hips and ankles. So if anyone comes to me with chronic pain, the first thing I'm going to do is assess every part of their body that is remotely connected to where that pain is, because a lot of the times where the pain is isn't necessarily the actual problem or the cause. It's where the symptom is. So I need to assess how the body moves and to determine where I think the actual problem is. So effectively, the knee only goes where the ankles and hips tell it to go. The knee is not figuring out anything of its own. So if my ankle If my muscle doesn't rotate or move properly, if my hip doesn't rotate properly, then all the different movements I'm doing, if I'm squatting and my knees maybe will be caving in or whatever, then I'm putting just a constant stress on my joint that it wasn't really designed for. Now, once again, in a week or so, it's not going to be a problem. But years down the line, that's going to cause a problem. So the first thing I'm going to do is check all that.

[00:23:11.320] – Shane

Let's assume, though, that there's no issues with hips and ankles, and then we go to the knee. So one thing that people, almost no one I ask or speak to has ever looked at how much their knee rotates and how much their shin rotates in their knee. For a properly functioning knee, your shin has to rotate, plain and simple. So back to the space in the hip, the same thing happens with the space in the knee. The knee capsule itself, as I flex and bend my knee, if I don't have enough space in that capsule, there's not enough space for that movement to happen. I'm going to have not necessarily bone pushing on bone, but we've got tendons and ligaments and everything in there, and it's causing a lot of stress if there's no space. So we want to have enough space in the joint so that as I'm flexing and bending my knee, the two heads of those bones can actually move around without rubbing on things. So we can test that by the rotation of knee. So that's the first thing that I would do. Can your knee rotate or not? It should rotate a little bit internally and then a bit more externally.

[00:24:26.160] – Shane

If it can't, that is literally step one, because if you don't If you don't have enough space in the joint, you are going to have problems no matter what, because it's just not functioning properly. And it's just putting too much pressure on all the tissue in the joint itself. And then outside of that, it's training it through its full range, and full range of motion. So a lot of my training will start with getting the range of motion that we deem that your body needs, so that other parts of your body don't need to compensate. And then the second Second thing is training the connective tissue of that joint. Once we've got those two things done, then I will progress on to muscle strengthen and whatnot. Generally, as a rule of thumb, the way to target connective tissue is I need to target and strengthen and train the tissue while it's at its completely lengthened position. So I don't have to do this with a squat to start with. I can literally sit on the floor So grab my shin, and then passively, so I'm not using my leg to do this, I'll just pull my shin in or my heel as close to my butt as I can.

[00:25:41.760] – Shane

And I'm just going to go as an acute angle as I can get before pain exists. So I never want to be doing this through pain. And I'll get to there and I'll isometrically load that tissue because I want to start using all the tissue, all the connected tissue that runs over the in front of that knee, and I want to train it at its fully lengthened position. So I'm sitting on the floor, so my body feels safe, my nervous system feels safe, and then I'll isometrically load it, which means I'm contracting the muscle, but there's no movement happening. So if you can imagine, I'm sitting on the floor, I've got my hands wrapped around the front of my shin, I've pulled my heel in towards my butt, I will hold my hands on my shin and start putting pressure from my shin into my hands. So I'm effectively trying to straighten my knee, but there's no movement happening because my hands are holding it tight. I'm going to start super, super light. I'm going to do it at a five % intensity. So just starting to use the tissue, because I want the tissue to start being used at its fully length and position, and then we'll progress from there.

[00:26:55.080] – Shane

So we'll progress in intensities in durations of time. Then we'll get to some eccentric work But the safest way to do it is to sit there in as as as as as as as as fully flexed position as I can, and then isometrically load the tissue into there. Because realistically, rule number one there also is I want to get the space. But the reason I want to start using all this tissue is tissue requires nutrients and proteins to repair, plain and simple. We know that we have protein because it's the building blocks of everything. But I need the tissue to be used for the tissue to get the nutrients. When I use that tissue, that's what's causing the nutrients to actually go there. So as I sit in this position while I'm using it, you'll feel maybe a little bit of heat, a little bit of change there. You'll feel the nutrients, you'll feel some blood. And that's all the goodness and building blocks are required to go there, which is the reason why staying away from something that hurts is maybe an absolutely necessary part in a rehabilitation process. But if that's the only thing we do, it's a really big problem, because it means the actual tissue that needs the help isn't getting any nutrients to repair because you're not using it.

[00:28:18.440] – Allan

Okay. Yeah. Now, the other one, and this was one that got me. I didn't get this, but I had a client that got it. It hit him fast. And suddenly, he's in that position. And his doctors couldn't do anything. His physio couldn't do anything. And obviously, it made it impossible for him to really train anything other than machines and legs with machines. And he was trying to lose some weight, and he knew he needed to move, but he was in so much pain with this. It was frozen shoulder. And from the reading I've done on frozen shoulder, this is a pretty common thing for women over 50 to get a frozen shoulder. So this is not just something that happened to one… Yeah, I've had lots of clients, but I don't have one client that's had experience with it, but it's happening to a lot of, particularly women over the age of 50. If someone finds themselves starting to struggle with frozen shoulder, what are some things they can do to try to maybe limit how frozen it gets or improve their mobility or their movement with their shoulder at all? Because he was completely stuck.

[00:29:31.670] – Shane

Yeah, this is a rough one. I've had frozen shoulder myself, but once again, this was many, many years ago in almost a previous life. I broke my collarbone playing footie, like rugby league in Australia, and I had to get it operated on. There was a problem with the wound, so I had to literally keep my arm still for four weeks without moving it. This is before I knew anything. So I did what I was told and then ended with a frozen shoulder. But that came on acutely after four weeks. It took a fair bit of training to get rid of it. I haven't worked with anyone with frozen shoulder before, so there's only so much I can say here. But yeah, I think for women, they don't deal with enough as it is. They get menopause and now they might get a frozen shoulder. Just another thing in the list. But realistically, we're talking about a restriction in the joint capsule. So the rule of thumb is the same as the, if I want to see a joint move properly, I need the joint to rotate, because how much, in this case, my humerus, my arm, rotates internally and externally in the shoulder joint itself, will dictate the amount of space I have in the joint.

[00:30:53.080] – Shane

So what I would be doing without a shadow of a doubt, is I would be working on internal and external rotation of the shoulder. So the same way that I mentioned how I would get set up with my knee flexion, I would get into as much flexion as I can. I'd hold super still and then isometric If I were to physically load that tissue. I would do exactly the same thing with my shoulder. So generally speaking, it'll more than likely be an internal rotation issue more than external. So there's a position called a sleeper position. So you You'll lay on your side with your arm out in front of you. And say I'm sitting on my arm, I'm laying on my right side, I'd get a phone roll or yoga block, a little pillow for my head so I can be comfortable while I'm doing this. And then I would passively internally rotate my arm. So passively just means a stretch. So I take my left hand, put it over my wrist, and then get into as bigger internal rotation stretch as I can on that, say, right shoulder in this case. Once again, I'm doing this pain free, so I'm not stretching through the pain.

[00:32:10.150] – Shane

I'm getting to the point of pain and then backing off a little bit. So I want to be as far as I can go before that pain starts. And then with my other hand, I'm going to hold super still. I'm going to hold myself still, but I'm going to isometrically load it because I want to start using the tissue as soon as I can, but as safely as I can at the same time. So if my left hand is over the top of my right wrist, I would then try to rotate back into my hand. Once again, I'm going to get up to an intensity of probably about 60 or 70 %, or before pain starts, whichever one comes first. If I get to five % and that's where pain is, then I'll drop back down to two %. I just want to have some sensation. And I'll do that for… It depends on the intensity and the time and how it feels. But up to probably 30 seconds. And then once again, I'm going to hold my arm still as I try to rotate back the other way. But both of these contractions are happening isometrically, so there's no movement happen.

[00:33:10.960] – Shane

And then over time, I'll be increasing that. My goal will be to increase the intensity up to that 60 or 70 %, but still holding super, super still. I would definitely be doing this with someone else, if you had a frozen shoulder and you weren't sure, because this can be something that's quite concerning and worrying. And there's a big difference between being uncomfortable and a pain that's actually bad. And learning the difference between the two can play a huge role in pain management, because obviously the nervous system is all constantly trying to protect us. And a lot of the times pain signals, it's just our body telling us that there's something wrong. So understanding the difference is really, really important. One, to make sure we're doing enough work to make change, But also to make sure that we're not doing too much work to make it worse. But that would be where I would start. But also neck, scapular and spine movement are going to play a huge role there as well. And that's where I would start if it happened to me or if I brought a client on board.

[00:34:22.230] – Allan

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

[00:34:29.680] – Shane

The first one for me, particularly from obviously pain-free viewpoint, is move every joint through its fullest range of motion at least once every single day. I have what's called a morning routine. It's a functional range conditioning morning routine. Takes five or six minutes, and it goes through my neck, scapula, shoulder, elbow, wrist, spine, hips, knees, ankles, toes. Takes roughly five or six minutes, and I treat it like it's brushing my teeth for my joints. I don't particularly enjoy brushing my teeth, but the few minutes it takes me, it's well worth it. And this is what it is. It's literally just moving our joints through its full range of motion. It's bang for buck from a time perspective. It's getting, once again, all the nutrients and proteins to all the tissue that we can through those joints. So that would absolutely be number one. Get a a daily routine to get your body moving. And in my case, it's individual joints through their fullest range of motion. The second strategy is the same way that we train our muscles, and that we also want to train Our joint space and the connected tissue by joint space means to do your joints rotate properly enough to indicate that you have enough space in the joint itself for the joint to move.

[00:35:57.980] – Shane

Because if all of your joints have that, Your body no longer has the need to create tightness to protect you from unsafe areas, and then train the connected tissue as well. As I mentioned with the knee, it's training it at its length or to its length, as opposed to just doing half movements. And then strategy number three is, there's a lot of roads that you can take to get to the same destination. One person's perfect thing, find the thing that you enjoy doing. The most important thing is is that you're moving, that you're getting some exercise, you're staying fit, you're staying healthy. You're never going to do that if the exercise protocol you've been given is something you don't enjoy doing. So find something that you enjoy that will get you moving on a regular basis, because if you don't do that, the other stuff doesn't matter anyway, because you're just not going to do it.

[00:36:54.700] – Allan

All right. So Shane, if someone wanted to get in touch with you, learn more about what you're doing, where would you like for me to send them?

[00:37:01.000] – Shane

I run everything through my Instagram profile, my Instagram page. So that's Shane Warne, S-H-A-N-E-W-A-R-N-E_fitness. Everything's in there. So if you give me a follow, on there. You can reach out and say hi, or I'll reach out and say hi before you do, possibly. So I do like to just introduce myself to people as they come on board. But everything's there. I try to portray on there all the different exercises and things that I do, how I like to help people. So it's a really quick, simple way for people to go and have a look and see all the exercise and things I do, and also just allows me to have a chat to people there as well.

[00:37:43.930] – Allan

Awesome. So you can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/663, and I'll be sure to have a link there. Shane, thank you so much for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

[00:37:55.650] – Shane

It's been a pleasure. Thank you.

Summary and Discussion

[00:37:59.330] – Allan

Welcome back, Raz.

[00:38:00.800] – Rachel

Hey, Allan. That was a really fun discussion. I understand I get it, lower back pain and sciatica, or knee pain, and even a frozen shoulder. Very popular areas of injury or concern. But I think there's a lot of this information about pain. We were talking about that pain is a signal. It's telling your body to do something. But the misunderstanding comes in when people feel pain, they want to stop everything. They want to just protect that joint, do no movement. And it sounds like that's exactly the opposite of what we should do.

[00:38:32.800] – Allan

It can be. When I tore my rotator cuff, I kept training. I couldn't do any pushing, but I kept training. And it allowed me to continue to move my arm through the full range of motion so that after surgery, my recovery was a lot faster. And I have a similar story. When I was young and I was playing volleyball, I turned my ankle really bad. So we had an X ray, and it was not broke. This is not broke. Okay, But three weeks go by, and it hasn't healed. So I go back, and I go to this time, go to a sports doctor, and he's like, It's broke. He just looked at it and says, It's broke. And then he did the X-ray, his own X-ray, and said, No, it's not broke, but he said it would have been better if you broke it. Oh, no. And so then I go across to his PT because I hadn't gone to PT before. They were just like, Stay off of it for three weeks. And so I come into the PT and elephant foot, my My ankle's as big as my head, and I go in there and the guy sees me coming in with the crutches.

[00:39:35.610] – Allan

He's like, Why aren't you wearing that brace in your shoe? I'm like, Dude, I can't get my foot in a shoe. What are you talking about? He's like, Well, you will when you leave here. So they got me down, and this little brace thing was actually just set to seating your shoe and compress the joint. But he said, You need to be walking around with this. You need to be walking, and that's going to help heal that ankle. And I really do believe that a lot of the limited mobility I have in that joint right now is because that first doctor told me to stay off of the ankle, and I did for the first three weeks. Then I like, I don't believe that doctor anymore. I'm going to go to an actual sports doctor. And when I did that, he sent me to the right person and the right person to solve my problem. But we need to move. The joint needs to move meant to heal. That's all a part of it.

[00:40:33.340] – Rachel

Well, it's interesting. You were just talking about a joint being inflamed, which takes up a lot of space, which prohibits the joint from getting a full range of motion. But instead of putting it in a sling or another immobile boot, like I've been in a boot for my foot before, moving it helps move all of that stuff around and brings in the nutrients that it needs for healing. It's not very I would have.

[00:41:01.210] – Allan

No, because, again, if we have, like what Shane was saying, we have limited range of motion right now, and moving on the periphy of that, that's where we feel that pain hit. And again, if we're eating and we've got other inflammation going on in our body, so you're eating bad foods, you have leaky gut, too much sugar, those cause inflammation throughout the body, and particularly in these joints now that are already restricted in volume, a size, and movement range. Now you're putting more inflammation in there, too. That's just taking up more of that space. It's creating consistent, constant pain because now you're at the end of the range of motion everywhere. And so movement is important because that's going to allow the nutrients to get in there. That's going to allow the inflammation to go down. And then also watching what you eat and making sure that you're eating a lower inflammatory diet will help reduce the overall inflammation in your body, and that will allow you to heal properly. So it's all interrelated, and it's sad that, I think we've talked about this, this doctor focuses on this and doesn't realize that holistically, it's all related.

[00:42:19.360] – Allan

It's all one system. We're one animal. It's a lot. We're one body. Yeah. And so you can't just say, I'm going to work on shoulders, and I'm going to work on ankles, and I'm going to work on this. You got to work on You got to work on your nutrition. You got to work on your movement. You got to work on your stress management. And if you're doing those things, then your body will get better.

[00:42:39.090] – Rachel

The other thing I just wanted to mention real quick is that I appreciate Shane's, one of his techs Like he mentioned was to move every joint through the full range of motion every day, and I think that's important as well. If you do it at night, that little bit of stretching might help you sleep better. If you do it in the morning, that little bit of motion might help you get active better for the start of your day. I just And it's important to know which muscles are tight so that you can loosen them up a little bit. I think that was a great tactic.

[00:43:06.070] – Allan

Yeah. And the other side of it is, again, if you're moving a joint and the movement itself isn't causing any pain, it's going to help get nutrients there. If there is pain in the joint and you start moving, one of the interesting things that happens is it's the same nerves that are messaging back and forth. And so if you're telling your muscles to move, that's It should be dampening the pain aspect of it a little bit. And you might notice that the pain reduces a little bit as you're going through that movement. And so that's part of that inner relationship of the way all of our body works. And so Yeah. Anything you can do to keep a full range of motion, get your body moving, get nutrients going to those joints that don't get enough, because it's really hard to get blood flow to your legaments and tendons. They don't have. Oh, right. And so they're dependent on you doing this. And then all the fluid that's inside a joint, when you're moving, you're getting that fluid in there, moving around, warmed up. And that's always going to help you have better range of motion and feel better.

[00:44:13.220] – Rachel

For sure. That was a great discussion.

[00:44:15.850] – Allan

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

[00:44:17.940] – Rachel

Take care, Allan.

[00:44:18.940] – Allan

You, too.

Music by Dave Gerhart

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Another episode you may enjoy

Introduction

On episode 658 of the 40+ Fitness Podcast, we meet Philip Pape and discuss how we can manage our hormones through nutrition, movement, etc.

Episode Notes

Allan [00:03:00]:
Hey, Raz. How are you?

Rachel [00:03:04]:
Good, Allan. How are you today?

Allan [00:03:06]:
I'm doing pretty good. I'm doing pretty good. We launched the, the workshop this week, so that's going on. And it's gonna it's gonna I mean, I'm so excited. Right now, you know, we're recording this beforehand, and it's just really been just kinda developing it and putting it all together. I'm really, really proud of this workshop. I really am. And so that's going on.

Allan [00:03:27]:
And in that workshop, I'm making an announcement. I'm revamping my program. Okay? And so the new program that I'm launching now is pretty darn special, and there's some bonuses associated with it now that is it's pretty much guaranteed it's gonna get you the results you want. So

Rachel [00:03:48]:
Awesome.

Allan [00:03:48]:
If you've been thinking about I gotta do something, I gotta do something, and you put it off till September because, you know, school and everything else, this this is the time. This is the time to reach out and let me know that you're interested in learning more about it. But, yeah, it's the bonuses just by themselves are are are so special, making this so much more valuable that this is the time. If you're going to do it, do it now because I can't keep these bonuses. So I stopped this launch, but that's it. So reach out to me if you're interested. Coach@40plusfitness.com, And, we can talk about the program and whether it's a good whether it's a good fit for you. But That sounds awesome.

Allan [00:04:29]:
I'm really excited about it.

Rachel [00:04:31]:
Great. Glad to hear it, Allan. Excited for your clients.

Allan [00:04:34]:
Yeah. And we're also working through the the music to figure out the new music, or we're gonna do new music. There were some votes in a Facebook group. If you're not a member of the group, that's the best place to go because that's where I'm doing the voting. Go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/group. That will take you to the group request to enter, and then I'm gonna have a a new post because I initially put 5 songs out there, and I got the initial batch of votes. And so we have we can keep the new music keep the music we have if that's what you'd like, or there's I'm narrowing it down to the top 3. So the new video that will be out there starting today is gonna be just the top 3 of the previous voting.

Allan [00:05:19]:
So there's still an opportunity for you to be involved in helping us make this a really good place to be, music you enjoy listening to on the kickoff part of this show, and then at the end, the full full version of it. So I'm interested to see what you think. So I'm I'm excited people are coming out there and and into the music and and liking them and and making comments about what they like and what they don't like. So it's pretty cool. That's kinda cool.

Rachel [00:05:44]:
Yeah. Very cool. That sounds awesome.

Allan [00:05:46]:
Alright. So what's going on in your corner of the world?

Rachel [00:05:49]:
Not too much. It's actually been quiet. Last weekend, Mike and I were camping, and at the campsite we were at, there was no cell service. Couldn't send a text, which means I couldn't receive a text, couldn't get online, couldn't check my socials. It was 100% peace and quiet. I could not have been happier.

Allan [00:06:10]:
Excellent. Excellent. That is yeah. The the digital detox is is something I think people overlook and and might actually be a little afraid of, being out of contact and out of connection. You know, I live I live in a 3rd world country. So, yeah, stuff goes down, power goes down, internet goes down. But I relish those moments. And that's when I reach over here and I grab one of these, a paper book.

Allan [00:06:35]:
They still make these. They still print these. Can you believe it? And that's yeah. I'll sit down and start reading, because I can't do it. You know, most things, you have to have the Internet for it to even work. You know? You don't have the apps on your on your computer much anymore. So Yeah. I can't get my work done.

Allan [00:06:51]:
I may as well learn something new

Rachel [00:06:53]:
and

Allan [00:06:54]:
enjoy my day. So I pick up a book, and I love it too.

Rachel [00:06:58]:
Nice. Very nice. It's wonderful.

Allan [00:07:00]:
Awesome. Are you ready to have a conversation with Philip Pape? Sure. Our guest today is the owner and head coach at Wits and Waits Nutrition Coaching. He is the host of the Wits and Weights podcast where he cuts through the noise and deconstructs health and fitness with an engineering mindset. Known as the physique engineer, he helps individuals in their thirties and forties and beyond transform their physiques by building muscle, losing fat, breaking through plateaus, and optimizing their hormones and metabolism without restrictive diets, excessive cardio, boring workouts, or sacrificing their valuable time and lifestyle. With no further ado, here's Philip Pate. Philip, welcome to 40 plus fitness.

Philip Pape [00:07:43]:
Allan, thank you so much for the opportunity. Great to be here.

Allan [00:07:46]:
So I'm doing a little bit of research on you, trying to figure out, okay, who is this guy? And I come across your page, and it it says you're the physique engineer. So let let's let's dive into that a little bit. What's that one?

Philip Pape [00:08:01]:
That that's one of those self made monikers, but, my background is actually in engineering, software engineering, project engineering, engineering management. And I talk about on my podcast all the time taking the principles of engineering and applying them to nutrition, to training, and to developing our physique. So it's evidence based, but it's like how do engineers think? How do they design? How do they break things apart and use data and feedback to, you know, ultimately get better results? So that's that's what it where it comes from.

Allan [00:08:28]:
Yeah. You know, I worked I I worked for a company. I worked for software companies, but I also worked for some physical engineering companies. One of them was in oil and gas. And it was it was always fascinating. I always enjoyed the conversations with engineers across the board. They just have it they do. They have a different way of thinking.

Allan [00:08:46]:
They're looking at a problem, and they're saying, okay. I've I've gotta solve this problem. And so it is a different way. I remember I was out on a floating platform in the middle of the South Asia Sea, and we had these there were these ropes. They were 18 inches in diameter, so really, really big thick ropes, and they were holding the 2 pieces together. And so the the deal was they were supposed to be going through this pulley system, all 8 ropes, and the pulleys weren't turning the way they were supposed to turn. And as a result, it was wearing the ropes, and one of them broke. And they go ahead, and they contact the manufacturer and say, okay, we need another one of these little ropes.

Allan [00:09:27]:
Just replace the rope that just broke. And we're like, that's that's not how rope making works. We have to make one long rope and cut it into 8 sections so they all have the same tensile strength. If you put one rope in there that wasn't made with that batch, then you won't have the same. So they're like, okay. Well, then we need to order 8 new ropes. And so but in the meantime, they're like, we can't just let this platform just sort of flop around out there because it's also responsible for drilling, so it had to be stabilized. So they decide, well, the only solution we have is to tie this thing in a knot.

Allan [00:10:04]:
Can you imagine the engineering that's required to be sitting on a floating platform and take an 18 inch rope and tie it into a knot? So again yeah. And then, of course, the engineers, when I when I worked at 3 Comm, they would as soon as an engineer would leave, the new engineer would come, and he needed more RAM. So we were looking at the RAM purchases, and we're like, okay. Something's not adding up here, and what we realized was happening was the engineers were all pilfering the the RAM out of his out of the new computer when someone left. You know? They would leave, and all the engineers would just seize on all that RAM that they had and leave the new guy coming in with not enough RAM so he wouldn't make the request for RAM. Every new guy was requesting RAM even when he was using the same machine. But

Philip Pape [00:10:46]:
Got it.

Allan [00:10:47]:
And so now we couldn't just look at serial numbers when we were doing inventory. We literally had to open up every machine to see how much RAM was supposed to be in there and whether it had more RAM than it was supposed to. So yeah. You you

Philip Pape [00:11:00]:
know, it's funny. There's so many there's so many funny engineering stories I I could say, but, like, people do not understand what goes into the things that we make and that they depend on oftentimes for their lives. Like, in an airplane, there are so many computers. Right? And the computers have to be hardened against cosmic rays because a ray from the sun could flip a bit in the computer and cause the software to fail. Right? It's like little things like that. And so when I look at the human body, I'm like, that's actually pretty easy to, like, train and eat well and, like, do the things we talk about here in comparison, so, it kinda takes the pressure off and,

Allan [00:11:35]:
you know But and it does but it does follow that because, like, I'll I'll have the conversation with someone. I'm like, okay. Food is information.

Philip Pape [00:11:42]:
Mhmm.

Allan [00:11:42]:
Your body takes what you eat, the quality of it, the quantity of it, the nutrients that are in it, and it starts making decisions based on the programming your body has. And so you're either feeding it good information that food is plentiful, there's plenty of nutrition, or you're feeding it bad information that food is scarce or the quality of our food isn't isn't what it's supposed to be. And, nowhere is this really more apparent than hormones because our hormones are the messengers that kinda carry that whole thing out. As we get older, I think it's pretty clear for women because they they get into perimenopause, which can last up to 10 years, menopause, which is gonna last for the rest of your life. So they see that change as almost an abrupt end and restart at some level. I mean, it depends on the perimenopause. It can go longer. With men, it's it's it's a little bit more of a slowly gliding in thing.

Allan [00:12:39]:
We don't even feel it. The water's boiling, and we don't even know. Let's talk about a little bit about those changes and what they actually mean for us from a health and fitness perspective.

Philip Pape [00:12:49]:
Yeah. Like you said, hormones, they're what they're one of those misunderstood things, kind of like gut health today. Right? There's a lot of misunderstanding, misinformation. Before I get into that, like, we use hormones as this doomsday scenario, especially at women that I work with where once you hit 40, right, or once you hit perimenopause everything just declines and it's a new phase of life where where nothing works, my metabolism's broken, I don't have the energy, like, it's almost a defeatist kind of thinking because we we give so much credence to the hormones. Now we're gonna talk about what actually changes. I like to flip that around, like, like, reframe it and say, this is a huge opportunity in a wake up call to actually optimize our lifestyle knowing that when we do that, the things that we probably should have been doing since we were in our twenties, but our bodies, like, didn't give us a feedback that we necessarily needed it back then. It can mitigate largely mitigate many of those changes. And so I always like to say, start there and say, women, men, doesn't matter.

Philip Pape [00:13:46]:
If you're making the choices you need to make, the hormone situation is much less of a variable unless, you know, you have a medical condition or something like that. But it is true, like, women, peri and postmenopause are seen in decline in estrogen in progesterone. They get all the symptoms that we can't relate to, like hot flashes and mood swings, weight gain. Guys who are married, you've gotta be, very empathetic to your wives, you know, oftentimes on a cyclical basis. Right? And the when you don't have things like strength training and the other stuff we're gonna talk about in place, for women especially, it leads to things like more visceral fat storage, more bone density loss, more muscle mass loss, and it's faster for them than it is for men. And that's where the, like, you know, frustration often comes from. And then they have DHEA. They have growth hormone.

Philip Pape [00:14:36]:
Both men and women have testosterone. Right? So we see all of that, Allan, from women's perspective, and the industry loves to play off of that and, like, sell products for menopausal women. Right? We know that because of that, but we'll get into what you can do instead where you probably don't have to worry about, you know, replacement therapy as early as you might think and and all of that. Men, it's testosterone. I mean, it it really does come down to that. We're actually pretty simple. It just starts to decline for some men sooner than others, as well as DHEA, and it could affect your mood. It could affect your sex drive.

Philip Pape [00:15:07]:
It could affect your muscle mass. And so if you have symptoms, I would suggest getting or even if you don't have symptoms, I would suggest getting a number early on, like, in your thirties as a baseline so that you can see where it trends over time. And if you have to deal with it later, you'll have the information. So, yeah, that's the big picture, Allan.

Allan [00:15:23]:
Yeah. And I I think that couple things that I'd like to bring out there is that, a lot of a lot of folks don't know this, but both men and women have testosterone, produce testosterone. For women, it's it's much less, obviously, but it does it does impact their capacity to lift weights and how they feel. It affects their libido and all those different triggers and things that it does in our body. You can stop producing it too. Men will slowly so so for women, it's menopause. For men, we refer to as andropause. But we're we're all going through this, this aging curve.

Allan [00:15:59]:
And if we we don't do anything, we're just we're just free riding. Wherever this thing's gonna take me, it's gonna take me. But it's always downhill. So Yeah. And we we need to do something. So I'd like to start that conversation kinda talking about nutrition because I I think that there's an underappreciation for how much nutrition actually does for us or against us. I think we know. We eat too much.

Allan [00:16:24]:
We we gain weight, but I I think that's the line where people kinda just say, okay. That's all you really need to know, but there's more.

Philip Pape [00:16:31]:
For sure. I be I think of nutrition as a few different things. You mentioned gaining and losing weight. So there is the energy balance piece, and oftentimes, that has a greater impact on our hormones than necessarily what we eat. You You know, people like to go straight to hormone supporting foods, and I like to start from are you even eating enough and supplying the energy you need, especially if you're lifting weights and you're training. Right? So energy balance is important, calories are important. Then we have our micronutrients and that is where yes, healthy fats, you know, having enough fat, especially for women is important. Having enough carbs is important.

Philip Pape [00:17:07]:
See a lot of people are on low carb diets and will find that maybe a moderate to high carb diet might support their hormones better and in the older age age group, which again is a big source of misinformation in the industry. And then we have our micronutrients micronutrients and fiber to kinda round it out having that diverse diet that supports your gut. Our gut health becomes more and more critical as we age, and guess what? The gut is very closely attuned to our hormones, both the direct hormones in our intestinal system that affect things like hunger and cravings. You you hear of GLP 1. Right? That's it's one of those the peptides affects that hormone, but also are linked to our pituitary gland, our adrenal system, all the other hormones, cortisol, stress, everything else. So nutrition has a much bigger impact than we think, but I think if you are supporting your goals and listening to the feedback as we talked about earlier, like an engineer, if you're gathering the data on how does my stomach feel? Do I have bloating? Do I have gas? How's my hunger? How's my performance in the gym? We can tie that back to the food choices you make without having to cut carbs, cut this, cut that. So that's where I would start.

Allan [00:18:09]:
Okay. Let let's talk a little bit about protein because I do think that, you know, there's concern about eating too much protein. There's concern about not eating enough protein. Where do you stand on that?

Philip Pape [00:18:23]:
Most people aren't eating enough. I think I think you stand there too. Right? Like, the evidence doesn't show that you could really eat too much protein, to be honest. And if you did eat that much protein, I'd love to see your diet because I don't I don't think it'd be super sustainable. You'd be basically just eating pure chicken breast all day. Yeah. So I don't think you can have too much. I think most people are under consuming, probably half, and I'm sure you've talked about the guidelines.

Philip Pape [00:18:45]:
You know, the RDA guidelines tend to be willfully inadequate compared to what especially aging individuals, especially women need to support muscle protein synthesis and at least preserve muscle if not build new muscle tissue. And so it's in that, like, 0.7 to 1 gram per pound is usually the number we throw out.

Allan [00:19:03]:
Yeah. It's it's kind of the funny thing is is these standards will be out there, and you'll see it on the on the sheet, you know, on the back on the back of the label, and you'll say, okay. Well, this is what I'm supposed to be doing, and this is where I'm supposed to be, and this is what the government says. No. That's what the government says you need just to stay alive. Yeah. That's not an optimal way to live your life, is by government standards because it obviously not gonna serve you in the long run. I think one of the other things that's that's key with this because, again, I think one of the reasons people struggle so much with protein is the other information that's out there that they're now they gotta try to avoid.

Allan [00:19:40]:
Like, you know, I I don't I don't want the cholesterol. I don't want the saturated fat. And if I eat the saturated fat, then my cholesterol is gonna go up and and all that good. So tell us a little bit about that area, what your thoughts are there.

Philip Pape [00:19:53]:
I so there's a a whole bucket of things like that. Seed oils, saturated fat, you name it. I think if you have a diverse diet that's, like, 80% of whole foods, you're probably far beyond what most people are in terms of having the right balance of things in there. I will say there are you can have too much of things like saturated fat. You can definitely go a little bit overboard if you have a very high meat based diet. And if that's the case, you probably look at data and if your lipids are are higher than they should be, maybe that's an opportunity. But I don't like to fear monger with any of this stuff. Definitely seed oils, artificial sweeteners, like, they can be in your diet, you know? Again, you have to listen to your feedback, your biofeedback, and you have to see what it's doing for you.

Philip Pape [00:20:38]:
But, man, if you're lifting weights, if you're eating lots of protein, if you're if you're getting the energy, those things become much less of a concern, in my opinion.

Allan [00:20:45]:
Yeah. I I think 80 20 is is a good place to be for a general maintenance. But I say if you're trying to make some substantial change in your life, you're gonna need to go a little harder than that, at least for a period of time. Get your body clean. Get your body moving. Right? Because and you mentioned it earlier. It's like if we're eating the wrong foods or things that our body really actually doesn't know as food, if it's messing with our microbiome because of the things that we're eating, we're not getting enough fiber, we're not getting enough protein, we're gonna put ourselves in a state of inflammation, in many cases chronic inflammation. And that's got that's that's a cytokine storm.

Allan [00:21:25]:
You know? That's that's the cortisol going up. And cortisol is catabolic, so it's gonna make it very hard for you to put on muscle. And it's gonna be very likely that you're actually putting on fat in the one place where we don't want to put fat, which is our belly. And for women that are in menopause, that's some of the change. Is that stress and everything that's going on your body, that's where that fat's gonna end up now that you're wired slightly differently than you were before you went into menopause.

Philip Pape [00:21:52]:
Let let's let's talk about this a little more because I like that you challenged me a bit, and I can communicate a little bit better where I'm coming from here. So most people are consuming 60 to 70% processed foods in this country. Right?

Allan [00:22:04]:
Yeah. If I

Philip Pape [00:22:04]:
can get you to consume 80%, that's gonna that gets you from your 20 to 80%, you know, efficacy, let's say, minimum effective dose. But you're right in saying that we eat a lot of things that just don't work for us as individuals, and the only way you can do you can tell what those are is something like an elimination diet. It doesn't have to be extreme. But, you know, kind of backing off on certain things that you may find are trigger foods or think are trigger foods. And believe it or not, that could include something like broccoli. Even though we think of that as a perfectly healthy food, some individuals have a negative reaction to it. So I agree, Allan. There there's, like, a spectrum.

Philip Pape [00:22:40]:
It depends on who your client is and who we're talking to as a population. What I find is people will go right to the 1% solution first, and they'll just start cutting everything out, but they don't get enough protein, and they're not lifting weights, and they're not sleeping at least 7 you know what I mean? And and that's where we get into the kind of my approach is more let's let's let's do the big rock then the medium rock then the small rock, but I don't disagree that there are inflammatory foods and you don't want to eat more ultra processed foods and more triggering foods in than you should.

Allan [00:23:11]:
Yeah. Because sometimes it works like this. You sit there and you you it's, you know, girl scout season, and you you eat a whole sleeve of Thin Mints. Yes. It's happened.

Philip Pape [00:23:23]:
What's what's the what's the chocolate and coconut ones? Yeah.

Allan [00:23:26]:
Yeah. It's happened. And and but what happens then is because your body started tasting the sugar, it started thinking something sweet was gonna come with all the minerals and vitamins that would normally come with something like that. And you get through, and your your body's like, well, I didn't get the nutrition I I really thought I was gonna get. I want more. Now we're interpreting it more cookies, but that's not what our body was actually telling us. It's like, okay. There's there's supposed to be some vitamins and minerals in this stuff you're eating.

Allan [00:23:58]:
So where is it? You know? So I do think that we just we we do have to recognize that, you know, what 80 20 really is is not Girl Scout cookies. You know? Okay. So my calories for the week, you know, 20% of it was Girl Scout cookies. It's still generally trying to make sure you're giving your body the nutrition it needs.

Philip Pape [00:24:19]:
You know, it's interesting in that case, so I'm I'm gonna reverse engineer it.

Allan [00:24:23]:
Uh-huh. There you go.

Philip Pape [00:24:24]:
And if if somebody were to be eating that way, let's say it was a client of mine and they were tracking they'd be tracking things like hunger, they're also tracking the amount of fiber they get. Something's probably gonna be off in in that equation, like, they're they're not gonna feel great with their digestion or they're gonna have more hunger because they're eating this ultra processed food that doesn't fill them up. And so if you kind of account for the whole picture, the satiety, the fiber, you know, some micronutrients you're tracking, it it tend I find it tends to work for a lot of people that way as opposed to trying to force it necessarily. Yeah. It it's the same it's the same end result, Allan, is is what I'm getting at and I I totally agree we have to have the micronutrient diversity. Right? We have to have the fiber, the satiety. I want you to feel satisfied but not emotionally, you know, not not through emotional craving satisfaction, but through, hey. I'm full.

Philip Pape [00:25:13]:
My digestion's good. I can wake up in the morning after a restful night of sleep, and I can hit the gym and get all the reps. If anything's missing from that equation, then then then maybe there's a a problem there.

Allan [00:25:23]:
Alright. So let's move to the gym. We're gonna be working out. We wanna we want to lose most most folks would be in the state of saying, I wanna lose weight, and I'm adding more bat to my my belly. I know my muscle mass is going down, so I know the £20 I gained in the last 2 years. I know that's not muscle. I'm not gonna argue, and I'm gonna lie to myself that it's muscle. I know it's fat.

Allan [00:25:48]:
And I know if I'm losing muscle and I'm gaining fat and I'm getting heavier, that's that's not a really good route that you wanna take towards old age. What types of movement and how much should we be considering as a plan or at least a starting plan to get going?

Philip Pape [00:26:07]:
Number 1 for me is always gonna be building muscle, strength training, resistance training of some kind. I don't care who you are, how old you are, what limitations you have. You know, I I knew a guy, Kevin McShann, who is in wheelchair. He lifts weights. Like, you pretty much don't have an excuse. But more importantly from the positive perspective, lifting weights is so health centered more than people give it credit for. Hormones, yes. Right? Lifting weights can increase growth hormone and testosterone.

Philip Pape [00:26:35]:
We also know it improves your metabolic health. We also know it counteracts, frailty and loss of bone density and all of that. So oh, and it increases insulin sensitivity. Like, again, another thing people aren't all always aware of that it muscles are soup sync for glucose. So you can have a little bit more variety in your your diet, you can have the carbs, and you're supporting your activity. So that's the activity I'm gonna start with number 1. Number 2 would be just general movement. I think people need to be off their butt for a decent part of the day.

Philip Pape [00:27:06]:
Whether that's walking I'm not too specific about it other than getting enough activity because you know cardio is not gonna kill your gains you can walk as much as you want Just get up because being sedentary in sitting is its own risk factor, its own factor for mortality and disease. So lifting weights, moving, and not being sedentary are a good place to start.

Allan [00:27:28]:
Yeah. Now one of the things that I think a lot of people lose in this whole math is is they go with the concept that more is better. And when we're talking about hormones, that's not always the case.

Philip Pape [00:27:41]:
Okay. Is that a question? Sorry.

Allan [00:27:43]:
I sort of a question. I didn't ask it like a question, but I just

Philip Pape [00:27:45]:
I was I was giving you the space. Yeah. You could edit up

Allan [00:27:48]:
the the

Philip Pape [00:27:48]:
whole thing.

Allan [00:27:48]:
But but you kinda get the idea. So so tell tell me your thoughts on that, you know, the volume.

Philip Pape [00:27:54]:
So more in terms of training for Yeah. Hormones. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. No. For sure. No.

Philip Pape [00:27:58]:
I'm a huge fan of, like, time efficiency and and efficiency of movement here. That's why I love compound lifts. Right? That's why I love big, full functional natural movements like the squatting, pressing, lift, you know, picking things up with your deadlift, hinging, you know, overhead, etcetera. But not just because they use the most muscle mass and let you lift heavy weights, but they're super time efficient. You know, you could do a couple of those or 3 of those in a session that last 45 minutes and do that 3 times a week. And for most people that gets you into the range of, you know, the 5 to sense 5 to 10 sets per muscle group per week that's like the minimum for for busy people. Beyond that, you know, 3 or 4 days having a little bit of extra in there is great but a lot of people overdo it with the cardio. Right? They're doing 3, 4 days, an hour plus on whatever elliptical running stair stepper and then they might lift 2 days or they might not be lifting at all.

Philip Pape [00:28:55]:
And that could definitely backfire in terms of cortisol when we talk about hormones. Yeah. Too much stress, not recovering enough, having too much muscle tearing when you're doing, like, loaded cardio, like we see in CrossFit, boot camps, things like that. I could go on, but, like, it is a good balance of mostly lifting, some walking, a little bit of cardio, and getting plenty of sleep and rest.

Allan [00:29:16]:
Yeah. I think the sleep and rest is is kinda one of the key components there. We, more is not necessarily gonna be better. So beyond movement and nutrition, those are the 2 core areas I think we should be focused to get rolling once we get that kinda stabilized. What are some other areas we can be working on to improve our our hormone profile and and feel better and feel younger?

Philip Pape [00:29:40]:
You mentioned belly fat before, which is a big concern of women, especially, you know, they even have a term. They just call it menopause belly. Yeah. And men have the beer gut. It's really the same phenomenon. It's either hormonally related or stress related from hormones. And in in women's cases, the estrogen has a kind of a fat storage effect. And the ways to mitigate that are stress management and sleep.

Philip Pape [00:30:05]:
Right? It's it's not gonna be rocket science. Alan probably talks about it in 600 plus episodes, probably 300 of those episodes. I'm sure you've said, like, you guys just gotta sleep. We we have seen plenty of studies that show sleep deprivation, which is typically less than 5 and a half hours or so of sleep, can lead to greater visceral fat storage. So your fat distribution changes. Also, cravings go way up. Your hunger hormones go up. Right? Leptin ghrelin change so that your body says, I need to eat because you're not giving me the sleep, so I'm gonna make up for it over here with the food.

Philip Pape [00:30:36]:
So just getting more sleep and managing stress can go a massive way toward mitigating some of the hormonal, you know, issues.

Allan [00:30:44]:
And, you know, we we we talk a little bit here about losing weight, and, you know, typically, I don't like talking about it from weight. But I've I've in 9 plus years of of doing this, what I've found is I can't just say fat loss because no one no one's gonna no one's gonna pay any attention if we're just talking fat loss. But this is what we really wanna try to do. If we're carrying excess fat, it's producing estrogen. That's one of the other things that fat does. It's not just this benign thing that's hanging on our body, making us look and feel bad. It actually does produce estrogen. So, guys, that's where those moves are coming from.

Allan [00:31:20]:
You know, it's the it's your body basically saying, you know, I got all this extra estrogen, all this extra fat, and the fat's just producing this estrogen. And you see, you not only you have less testosterone if you're not training and trying to get rid of that body fat, your body's actively trying to find new places to store it. I mean, your chest is one of those.

Philip Pape [00:31:43]:
Yeah. I mean, rather I guess rather than try to, like, address hormone issues directly, we address these lifestyle things that cascade to help in your hormones, and some of them have, like, a big bang for your buck. Right? Like stress. I mean, chronic stress is just so high these days, and the older we get, we have families, we have life obligations, women who are the you know, taking care of their household. Lifting weights can counteract that. In fact, lifting weights is the number one factor for improved sleep quality as well according to some studies. But one hack that I really like is lifting in the morning. I used to be ambivalent about it or kind of neutral, and I would say, look.

Philip Pape [00:32:19]:
Just lift weights when you can. And some people would even say that lifting later in the day is slightly be more beneficial. But what we find is whatever time of day you lift, if it's consistent, you'll adapt. But secondly, doing it in the morning has shown to be beneficial for cortisol, especially in older individuals just because it, for lack of a better phrase, kinda burns off the cortisol or it it it sets you up for proper movement early in the day like we're supposed to, and then your cortisol kinda ramps down and then gets you ready for sleep later on. So just a nice little hack there.

Allan [00:32:49]:
Yeah. Excellent. So what are some things we should avoid if we're trying to manage our hormones better?

Philip Pape [00:32:58]:
Okay. So I was I wasn't gonna go here. I don't know what you think, Allan, about just toxins in the environment and plastics and personal care products and all that. Like, I used to be one of those, like, I filed in the woo category. I'm just curious of your thoughts on that before I go down that path.

Allan [00:33:14]:
Well well, it's a it's a couple different things. Okay? Everything that goes into our body is is information. But beyond that, our liver is is maybe one of the most intelligent things in our body besides our gut and our brain. And the reason is that the liver liver has to fix everything. You know, it has to fix everything. And so if we've got these toxins in our body, the liver has to process it. Okay. When you drink alcohol, the body has to process that first.

Allan [00:33:45]:
So it shifts all resources to doing that, meaning it's not doing your body's not necessarily doing other things that it should be doing. So that's that's one break in your whole metabolic process is the toxins are messing with the systems that keep you alive and keep you healthy. The other side of it is because the the liver is such a smart organ, it knows that while you're over here putting on extra fat, that's a really cool place to shuttle that stuff off to and just say goodbye to it. You know? And and if if you have a kind of a history of gaining more than you lose each time you lose weight and gain it back, it just that's what it's gonna do. It's a a repetitive process. Let's just store it there. Let's just store it there. And so you you end up with, and I I just had this interview with a doctor not long ago, sick fat.

Allan [00:34:34]:
You end up with the body that has very large fat cells and a lot of toxic crud in them, and that does that causes dysfunction of those of those fat cells. So it is it is hard, if not impossible, to avoid all of these toxins. You know, it just it just is. But to the extent that you can know, okay, I I know that, like, weed killer, glossphate glossphate or how whatever what it's called.

Philip Pape [00:35:06]:
Like a glossphate. Yeah.

Allan [00:35:08]:
Yeah. I'm like, we know. Okay. Yes. It it it does a great job of killing weeds and us.

Philip Pape [00:35:15]:
It's an endocrine disruptor. Yeah. Exactly. It goes right to the hormones.

Allan [00:35:18]:
You know? And and so I think I think there's there is a a balance, and and this is probably where the 80 20 rule makes the most sense because, you know, if you aren't paying any attention to what's in your skin care products, your hair care products, of course, like, I just use shaving cream, but or

Philip Pape [00:35:37]:
Plastic containers, you know? Yeah. You're clean. Right?

Allan [00:35:40]:
Or where you're drinking your water from, you know, and and how that's handled. Even just our municipal water supplies and what could, you know, possibly be in those. And so there I think there's just a lot of opportunity there for us to think about, can I clean up these things a little? Because if we can reduce the amount that we're exposed to, we give our body a better shot at Yeah. Hitting it and and and keeping up with it and keeping us healthier longer.

Philip Pape [00:36:08]:
Yeah. I agree. That's why I brought it up because nor normally, again, talk about the bigger things. You mentioned alcohol. I could have gone there, like, reducing alcohols only has upside for hormones. We talked about overtraining. We talked about getting enough sleep. So I was like, where where is the other thing that people are curious about? And I was thinking of that because we've seen just in my generation alone, fertility rates skyrocket and, you know, what perimenopause coming on earlier and you're like, what's going on? And and there are some links with some of these endocrine disruptors in the environment.

Philip Pape [00:36:36]:
And it's it's not a woo thing, like, there's everything is manufactured and there's so much plastic and and chemicals used. Like you said, it's just being aware and kind of being educated, but not fear mongering. Just

Allan [00:36:49]:
Yeah.

Philip Pape [00:36:50]:
Shifting, nudging, nudging yourself to make better informed decisions.

Allan [00:36:53]:
Yeah. Because I mean, you know, like, we could sit there. If if we really listened to what they say, then we would think, okay. There's no way I'm eating fish. I'm not gonna eat fish because there's microplastics in the ocean, and I don't wanna consume the microplastics. And the reality is, yeah, there are microplastics in the ocean, but also the the core and and and mercury and everything else. But the core is there are some fish that are longer lived fish that eat other fish that are higher risk. So, you know, have some swordfish now and again, but it shouldn't be a normal staple for you all the time.

Allan [00:37:30]:
Sardines are a better choice because they're not the kind of species that's eating other fish. They're not a species that are gonna be alive long enough to get as much exposure. So there are better there are better choices from time to time. But it's, you know, you need the omega 3. So don't, you know, don't pooh pooh your health over one thing because of another thing. As scary as it might sound, you know, microplastics and, you know, mercury and Yeah. It's the dose. Have some fish.

Allan [00:38:01]:
Have some fish, cheese.

Philip Pape [00:38:03]:
It's it's the dose it's the dose and the exposure. Right? Like Yeah. Diet soda gets a bad rap, but, again, I think if you're if you're if you're drinking in moderation, it's really not gonna affect you. And then same thing with, like, dyes and things like that. People are wondering about whey protein, for example. I get questions all the time, like, what brand of whey protein? I said, just pick the brand that has as few ingredients as you're hap you're comfortable with

Allan [00:38:23]:
or Yeah.

Philip Pape [00:38:23]:
Or as many as you're comfortable with but at the fewest because, yeah, if you're eating, you know, 8 scoops of protein powder every day, and it's the kind with artificial sweetener and red dye and everything, maybe there's some cumulative effect that you're not gonna like down the road, and better safe than sorry kind of, thought on that. You know?

Allan [00:38:39]:
Yeah. And and I I you're you're completely right. It's like people will ask me. It's like, you know, what what whey protein do you do you usually use? And I'm like, I don't usually have to supplement protein because I eat.

Philip Pape [00:38:54]:
There's that too.

Allan [00:38:54]:
For sure. You know? I eat protein, and, and so I don't really have to do that very often. When I when I choose that I need to do it or I wanna do it, then, yeah, I'm gonna go with the purest I can get because and this is kind of a little known thing, is that whey whey protein is a byproduct. Okay? And and so the dairy people, they don't need it. They don't want it. They should throw it away before we decided we were gonna start using it for protein. But it's all just accumulated. It's it's not like there's a you know, this guy's making better whey than that guy.

Allan [00:39:28]:
For the most part, it's all they're all buying the same way.

Philip Pape [00:39:32]:
Mhmm.

Allan [00:39:33]:
And they're putting in their product. They're adding their own flavors and preservatives and colors and and all that type of thing so that they could sell you strawberry and chocolate and mocha, whatever. And then we can put it in bars and sell it to you that way so you're just basically eating candy to get to your protein number.

Philip Pape [00:39:54]:
It's true because when when you sell somebody did you know they actually sell pure whey? You could just get that and then kind of flavor yourself in a smoothie. Well, I don't like how that tastes. I'm like, well, okay. Now we've got a problem here. Like Yeah. You know, there's Well,

Allan [00:40:05]:
that's why I I'll buy the I'll buy the grass fed, grass finished way. And in a, you know, usually in a big bin, you know, there's a few companies I trust that they're not gonna, you know, the labels are what they say they are. And when you look on the back to the label and you turn it around, it says whey. It's the only ingredient. Exactly. Okay. And the other thing you can look at is, okay. So here's a scoop, and the scoop is 36 grams.

Allan [00:40:33]:
And how much protein do I get?

Philip Pape [00:40:36]:

36. Right? Might be 35 with you know? Yeah.

Allan [00:40:41]:
You know? So there there are ways for us to reduce the exposure. There are ways for us to improve the quality and quantity of our sleep. There are ways for us to reduce our stress load through stress management and, getting negative people out of your life. And I think one of the biggest ones, and I'd like to get your take on this a little bit, is the effect that self talk has on our hormone profile.

Philip Pape [00:41:10]:
Oh, man. I mean, self talk goes directly to mood, right, and to mental health. In fact, I know we're gonna get to, like, 3 strategies to get and stay well. One of those I was gonna allude to was the positivity in your life. And and I use that kind of at a high level because I think everyone has different challenges. Right? Some people are more optimistic. Like, I have an optimism bias and so I tend to, like, think things are gonna go well and so I I I kind of embrace that future identity idea. Some people just everything the sky is falling all the time.

Philip Pape [00:41:43]:
Right? The sky is falling all the time. And so we do know that there's a direct link with the endocrine system with, you know, things like endorphins even just in the short term with it's not the self talk just in isolation, it's what the self talk then leads to. It it leads to kind of a lack of control, an external locus instead of an internal locus. Right? The lack of choice and empowerment and agency that's all associated with self determination. And, like, yes, I can go from here to there on my own volition. Maybe I need some support. That's great. That's fine.

Philip Pape [00:42:14]:
In fact, I encourage it. But, yeah, that that that's where I'd say the link occurs. And so Atomic Habits. Right? Everybody knows Atomic Habits by James Clear. I think in there, he talks about reversing how we think of what we do and and our behavior change instead of thinking, I need to do this to become this person. We think, I'm this person, so I'm gonna do this. And that's kinda like reframing the self talk into a positive identity. Yeah.

Philip Pape [00:42:38]:
So I think it's huge, Allan.

Allan [00:42:40]:
Yeah. Well, that's that's the that's the be, do, have kinda mindset where what are the people who do who are like this? What do they do? Just start doing those things, and then eventually, you will you'll be that person.

Philip Pape [00:42:53]:
Yeah. It's huge. So there's a woman in my group coaching. She calls me the positivity bully. That's what she's been calling me lately with in in all, like, positivity. Right? She but she's gotten to the point where she knows if something comes out of her mouth that's like a fixed mindset statement, like, I am this, she's immediately like, wait wait wait a minute. That's not the way I meant to say it, and she'll reframe it. So I'm like, I got you trained.

Allan [00:43:17]:
Yeah. It's working. It's not in the way.

Philip Pape [00:43:19]:
But it really is that. It's like reframing everything. And going back to being an engineer, like, one of the things engineers do is they don't have failure in their vocabulary. Everything that happens is just something that teaches you what to do. So even from a day to day, like, could either have an all or nothing mentality where I'm a failure and then boom I'm off my program or this happened, what do I learn from it and what do I do differently? And if I am having trouble doing something differently, there's another opportunity there with friction or reward system or whatever it is that encourages me to to make it easier on myself.

Allan [00:43:53]:
Well, Philip, I define wellness as being the healthiest, fittest, and happiest you can be. What are three strategies or tactics to get and stay well?

Philip Pape [00:44:01]:
Alright. So fittest has gotta be strength training. I just have to like, everybody's gotta do that, man. I don't I don't there's no excuse, for hormone health, for, mental health, for self identity, all of that stuff we just talked about. So I would say, you know, lift weights, build that muscle, be the fittest person you can be till you're 95 and like I say, you croak doing a deadlift when you're 95. That's what I wanna do. That's fittest. Healthiest would be from a nutrition standpoint, I think starting from the big rocks like I mentioned earlier.

Philip Pape [00:44:31]:
I mean, I I love everything Allan says here getting into the all the details we need to nail down eventually. Protein and fiber, I think is a good starting place. If every meal has that, you're you you've made a step change, and then from that point, you can start to to go down the the tracking and the micronutrients and everything else. And then from happiest, I think we kind of alluded to it. It's getting positivity in your life. That's people who are positive, who support you. They may not get you. They may not totally understand you.

Philip Pape [00:45:00]:
That's fine. We know how family is. But it's kinda getting rid of the toxicity, getting rid of the negatives. And one one great way to do that is listening to podcasts like Allan's, joining groups online who who have the same goals, and, you know, consuming consuming positive content rather than say, for example, the political news these days.

Allan [00:45:21]:
Yes. There is that. Thank you.

Philip Pape [00:45:24]:
I can't help myself because it is entertaining, but, yeah, it could be too much.

Allan [00:45:28]:
It is. It it's it is too much, but alright. So, Philip, if someone wanted to learn more about you, learn more about wits and weights, where would you like for me to send them?

Philip Pape [00:45:39]:
Send them to the podcast, wits and weights, and then they can just reach out to me at witsandweights.com. Alright.

Allan [00:45:45]:
So you can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.comforward/658, and I'll be sure to have links there. Philip, thank you for being a part of 40+ Fitness. Allan, thank you for the opportunity. Welcome back,

Rachel [00:45:59]:
Raz. Hey, Allan. That was a really fun interview. Philip sounds like a really interesting person and an engineer, a physique engineer. I sometimes it takes, like, a different way of thinking to figure things out. I I appreciate his, ability to do that.

Allan [00:46:16]:
Yeah. You know, whenever I'm working with someone, even when I was working with my just to myself Mhmm. I needed processes in place. I needed some things to make it easier, you know, to remove friction from what I wanted to do. And I didn't have a coach at the time to help me do that. So it was like, okay. What do I do to solve this problem? Because if I wanna do this, I have to solve this problem. So it was sometimes adding friction to things that I didn't wanna do and removing friction from things that I did wanna do.

Allan [00:46:48]:
And very much you start talking to engineers, friction can be a big part of any, anything that they're doing. And so that, you know yeah. I I I totally agree that you need to have some system that that you can rely on that's working for you and developing a good system for yourself. So that can be a challenge. But, once you get it done, it's it's it's actually really, really nice.

Rachel [00:47:10]:
Oh, absolutely. And it it's our lives change over time as we age. Like you had discussed, our hormones just get out of whack. I'm going through menopause and everything is different. And so, like, everything that I used to do in the past needs to change to address the way my body is working today, and and I think everybody that's aging is gonna go through similar situations. Maybe you're prone to heart disease or diabetes, or maybe you're prone to anemia or any other thing. So then there's no one size fits all. Everybody's gotta kinda troubleshoot little problem solving on their own issues and figure out how to deal with it.

Allan [00:47:51]:
Yeah. Well, there is no one size fits all, but there are some commonalities that we all share

Philip Pape [00:47:58]:
Mhmm.

Allan [00:47:58]:
You know, things we we should do and things we shouldn't do Mhmm. If if we wanna live healthy, you know, fit lives. And so, yeah, there there are some some similarities, but there are, yes, also some differences in how each of us apply those things.

Rachel [00:48:14]:
Mhmm. And on the things that we should do, you spent some time talking about strength training and how important that is at probably every age, but most importantly over 40.

Allan [00:48:24]:
Yeah. I would say don't don't don't strength train a kid under 10, but because they're growing and there's other things going on. But for everybody else, strength training should be core to what we do.

Rachel [00:48:36]:
Oh, absolutely. And then, like I had mentioned earlier, as as we do age and all of these things in our lives change, no matter how well you eat and no matter how well you exercise, if you can't manage stress and sleep, that's gonna just upset the balance of everything. It's 2 steps forward and one step back.

Allan [00:48:56]:
Yeah. Well, you know, stress stress is something that is basically, you know, in a normal situation, stress is good. I mean, you know, if there's a bear, the stress helps you. Like, if you're if you're about to step out into a highway and there's a car coming, and all of a sudden you get this surge of energy fight and flight, and you're able to jump back and not get hit by the car, that's that's that's good. I mean, you want that. You don't want to be relaxed, sloth, watching the car hit you. You you want that capacity to jump back and do the thing, that you wouldn't necessarily be able to do otherwise. But we live in a world of chronic stress.

Allan [00:49:34]:
So there's stressors that are always there. The bear is always there. The car is always there, and we can't we can't stay there. So we we have to implement things that are going to allow us to manage our own stress. And then where sleep is concerned. Yeah. It's it's the cycle that helps us do everything. Like, everything is built on that.

Allan [00:49:53]:
So if if you're not sleeping well and you're not going through full sleep cycles, you're not getting what your brain needs. You're not giving what your hormones need to cycle through because they're all set up on an on a cycle, a a daily cycle. And so that circadian rhythm is there to tell you, okay. And and so we know if you're not asleep between 10 and 2, that's a core time that your body would be doing the things Mhmm. That it needs to do. And, you know, a lot of people say, oh, I won't go to bed until 11 or 12. It's like, okay. That might be a problem if you're not feeling it.

Allan [00:50:29]:
If you feel like you're getting older faster than you should. You've got you've gotta get better sleep.

Rachel [00:50:34]:
Better sleep for sure. And then it was always nice to hear you discuss things to avoid. I mean, certainly the toxins in the environment, that's easy. We live around too many plastics and too many chemicals like our, Roundup and stuff like that. But you also mentioned alcohol, and that's kind of a controversial topic there.

Allan [00:50:54]:
Well, it can be, but it shouldn't be. I mean, let's let's face it. Okay. Most people that are using alcohol consistently, like on a almost daily basis, it is their regimen for stress management. It's, you know, and I understand that. I've been in a similar situation. I was working really hard and I was stressed in my job. You go back to the hotel, there's the hotel bar.

Allan [00:51:17]:
And it's nice. You have a few drinks, you forget about your day, and then you crash. The problem is that that doesn't really solve the stress problem. You just increased the cortisol problem. Again, the stress was still there. You masked it. You didn't solve it. You didn't reduce it.

Allan [00:51:36]:
And then as far as sleep, if you have alcohol in your system, you're not going through proper sleep cycles. You're not getting restful sleep. So you might be unconscious for 8 hours, but you did not get 8 hours of quality sleep. And so from that perspective, it is harming you more than it's helping you in all cases. And, yeah, okay, fine. Go have a couple drinks with your friends every once in a while. That's not a problem. But if you're using it as a coping mechanism, you really have to rethink that strategy because

Philip Pape [00:52:09]:
Oh, yeah.

Allan [00:52:09]:
It's it's not doing what you think it's doing.

Rachel [00:52:12]:
No. Gosh. Even maybe 10 or 15 years ago, it was kind of normal for the wine industry. You'd have a glass of red wine at dinner because it's supposedly good for you in some way. And and nowadays, there's just no way. I could not have a glass of wine with dinner and and sleep well. I just know that I'm up for a bed and I just sleep if I do. But, yeah, it's different, especially as you age.

Allan [00:52:38]:
Yeah. And so this is what we have to look at is is as we're trying to do this, you know, we're providing this information to our body, the quality of our sleep, the stress management, the strength training, the eating properly, the avoiding chemicals. All of those things are information in your body to get better, to heal, to feel better. And the way it does that is through hormones. And so if you can do the right things for your body, no matter your age, you're optimizing your hormones for what it is for where you are at that point in time. And as a result, you're going to get better results. You're going to feel better. You're going to be healthier.

Allan [00:53:21]:
You're going to lose weight. All those things that you want to do Mhmm. Just have to dial those things in. When we're older, we have to dial them in just a little bit more than we did when we were younger. But, yeah, it it you know, doing the things that your body needs you to do and avoiding the things that you shouldn't be, that's all a part of this challenge and how we get where we need to be.

Rachel [00:53:42]:
No. That's perfect. It was really great conversation.

Allan [00:53:45]:
Alright. Well, I will talk to you next week.

Rachel [00:53:47]:
Great. Take care, Allan.

Allan [00:53:49]:
You too. Bye.

Rachel [00:53:50]:
Thank you. Bye bye.

Music by Dave Gerhart

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Introduction

On episode 656 of the 40+ Fitness Podcast, we welcome Gwendolyn Bounds and discuss her book, Not Too Late: The Power of Pushing Limits at Any Age.

Episode Notes

Pending

Music by Dave Gerhart

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Introduction

In process….

Episode Notes

Music by Dave Gerhart

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

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Another episode you may enjoy

Introduction

On episode 654 of the 40+ Fitness Podcast, we discuss how to measure success in your health and fitness.

Episode Notes

• I’m a big fan of having data
• Things we shouldn’t measure:
  • Things we don’t have control over.
  • Comparing ourselves to others
  • Things that don’t matter
  • Measuring everything
  • Things that are more likely to disappoint us.
• Things we should measure:
  • Investment (time, effort, and money)
  • Things that make us more healthy and fit
  • Things we have control of (40 plusfitness.com/goals)
  • Where we are now versus where we were before we started
    • Not where we were in our 20s.
  • Wins, even the little ones
    • Wins are not only outcomes
    • Wins are successful efforts
• Gratitude

Music by Dave Gerhart

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Introduction

On episode 651 of the 40+ Fitness Podcast, Rachel and I help you design your perfect running program after 40.

Episode Notes

Running Safety

– Importance of using bright, obnoxious colors for visibility

– Tips for running at night, including running facing traffic and wearing bright, fluorescent clothing

– Joining running clubs for added safety

– Informing others of your running route for added security

Resistance Weight Training vs. Cardio Training

– Prioritizing running if training for a race

– Considering doing weights before the run for off-season training

– Suggested strategy for combining both in the same workout

Running Streak and Caution Against Obsessive Behavior

– How to maintain a running streak safely

– Caution against potential obsessive behavior and overtraining

Listening to Your Body and Consulting a Doctor

– Importance of listening to your body

– Necessity of consulting a doctor before attempting a running streak or increasing running frequency

Importance of Running Shoes

– The significance of investing in good running shoes to prevent injuries and protect the body

Starting a Running Program

– Advice for new runners to start with a walking program

– Recommendation of the Jeff Galloway Run-Walk-Run method to control fatigue and soreness

– Importance of setting intervals on a watch or phone for run-walk sessions

– Benefits of intervals in promoting recovery

Running Frequency and Recovery

– Suggested frequency of running to start

– Importance of rest days and active rest days for recovery

Essential Practices for Successful Running

– Positioning proper warm-up, cool down, hydration, and nutrition

Training Plans for a 5k Race

– Typical duration of training plans for a 5k race

– Ideal timing to prepare for a fall race

Recovery Activities

– Crucial recovery activities like compression gear and massage tools

Myth Busting and Running Benefits

– Rachel's emphasis on the physical and mental benefits of running

– Dispelling common myths about running

– Addressing concerns about running being bad for knees

Music by Dave Gerhart

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