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Category Archives for "general"

December 12, 2023

Your perfect repeatable week for health and fitness

Apple Google Spotify Overcast Youtube

We all know that consistency is important for improving our health and fitness. On episode 620 of the 40+ Fitness Podcast, we discuss a strategy for getting that done called Your Perfect Repeatable Week.

Transcript

Let's Say Hello

[00:03:28.930] – Coach Allan

Hey, Ras. How are you?

[00:03:31.460] – Coach Rachel

Good, Allan. How are you today?

[00:03:33.590] – Coach Allan

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

[00:04:29.350] – Coach Rachel

That sounds awesome.

[00:04:31.190] – Coach Allan

How are things up there?

[00:04:32.780] – Coach Rachel

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

[00:05:02.360] – Coach Allan

And you're living it.

[00:05:03.970] – Coach Rachel

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

[00:05:15.620] – Coach Allan

Well, good. Congratulations on that.

[00:05:17.320] – Coach Rachel

Thanks.

[00:05:18.310] – Coach Allan

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

[00:05:23.190] – Coach Rachel

Sure.

Episode – Your Perfect Repeatable Week

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What does your perfect repeatable week look like?


Post Show/Recap

[00:19:20.030] – Coach Allan

Welcome back, Ras.

[00:19:26.030] – Coach Rachel

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

[00:19:54.830] – Coach Allan

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

[00:21:07.860] – Coach Allan

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

[00:21:25.610] – Coach Rachel

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

[00:22:26.350] – Coach Allan

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

[00:23:02.560] – Coach Rachel

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

[00:23:38.330] – Coach Allan

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

[00:24:44.450] – Coach Rachel

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

[00:25:20.630] – Coach Allan

Series dropped on Netflix and you've been.

[00:25:26.390] – Coach Rachel

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

[00:25:30.890] – Coach Allan

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

[00:26:21.770] – Coach Rachel

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

[00:26:43.960] – Coach Allan

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

[00:26:46.320] – Coach Rachel

Great. Take care, Allan.

[00:26:47.690] – Coach Allan

You, too. Bye.

Music by Dave Gerhart

Patreons

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

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

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July 25, 2023

Episode 600 – Behind the Scenes at 40+ Fitness

Apple Google Spotify Overcast Youtube

On episode 600 of the 40+ Fitness Podcast, we take you behind the scenes.

Transcript

Episode

[00:02:53.760] – Allan

Hey, Raz. How are you?

[00:02:55.660] – Rachel

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

[00:03:15.340] – Allan

Good.

[00:03:15.800] – Rachel

Yeah.

[00:03:16.600] – Allan

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

[00:03:26.730] – Allan

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

[00:03:49.050] – Allan

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

[00:04:11.940] – Allan

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

[00:04:33.180] – Allan

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

[00:04:50.160] – Allan

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

[00:04:57.860] – Allan

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

[00:05:30.000] – Allan

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

[00:05:48.590] – Allan

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

[00:06:13.660] – Allan

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

[00:06:37.280] – Rachel

Sure.

[00:06:37.810] – Allan

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

[00:06:50.400] – Allan

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

[00:07:10.560] – Allan

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

[00:07:28.020] – Allan

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

[00:07:39.670] – Rachel

Wow.

[00:07:40.310] – Allan

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

[00:08:06.330] – Rachel

That's awesome.

[00:08:07.770] – Allan

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

[00:08:24.470] – Allan

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

[00:08:32.790] – Allan

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

[00:09:06.990] – Allan

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

[00:09:45.830] – Allan

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

[00:10:12.930] – Rachel

Right?

[00:10:14.850] – Allan

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

[00:10:33.680] – Allan

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

[00:10:57.420] – Allan

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

[00:11:22.090] – Allan

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

[00:11:30.920] – Allan

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

[00:12:04.310] – Rachel

Wow.

[00:12:06.010] – Allan

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

[00:12:39.310] – Allan

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

[00:13:08.110] – Allan

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

[00:13:17.680] – Rachel

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

[00:13:21.890] – Allan

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

[00:13:40.950] – Allan

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

[00:14:11.550] – Allan

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

[00:14:22.840] – Rachel

Probably

[00:14:23.560] – Allan

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

[00:14:43.790] – Allan

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

[00:15:02.160] – Allan

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

[00:15:30.220] – Allan

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

[00:15:52.180] – Allan

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

[00:16:03.750] – Rachel

Oh, gosh, yeah.

[00:16:05.590] – Allan

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

[00:16:14.550] – Allan

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

[00:16:35.280] – Rachel

Wow.

[00:16:35.950] – Allan

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

[00:16:55.990] – Allan

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

[00:17:21.550] – Allan

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

[00:17:39.940] – Allan

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

[00:18:09.540] – Allan

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

[00:18:44.890] – Allan

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

[00:19:06.590] – Allan

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

[00:19:21.030] – Allan

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

[00:19:32.710] – Allan

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

[00:19:46.170] – Allan

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

[00:20:04.140] – Allan

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

[00:20:47.630] – Allan

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

[00:21:08.870] – Allan

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

[00:21:14.200] – Rachel

oh, no.

[00:21:16.950] – Allan

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

[00:21:32.230] – Allan

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

[00:21:40.770] – Allan

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

[00:21:56.980] – Allan

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

[00:22:29.070] – Allan

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

[00:22:59.140] – Rachel

A few times.

[00:23:00.300] – Allan

A few times.

[00:23:01.770] – Allan

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

[00:23:31.370] – Allan

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

[00:24:19.150] – Allan

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

[00:24:56.270] – Rachel

Oh gosh.

[00:24:57.170] – Allan

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

[00:25:17.840] – Allan

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

[00:25:56.090] – Allan

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

[00:26:36.070] – Allan

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

[00:26:43.305] – Rachel

Neat

[00:26:43.710] – Allan

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

[00:27:01.020] – Allan

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

[00:27:38.390] – Allan

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

[00:28:10.750] – Allan

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

[00:28:44.250] – Allan

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

[00:29:17.490] – Allan

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

[00:29:44.080] – Allan

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

[00:30:16.630] – Rachel

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

[00:30:20.810] – Allan

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

[00:30:49.630] – Allan

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

[00:31:16.780] – Allan

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

[00:31:40.350] – Allan

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

[00:31:52.950] – Rachel

Every time.

[00:31:53.570] – Allan

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

[00:32:07.920] – Rachel

Wow.

[00:32:08.570] – Allan

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

[00:32:56.340] – Allan

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

[00:33:05.930] – Rachel

Oh, jeez.

[00:33:07.380] – Allan

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

[00:33:25.360] – Allan

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

[00:34:09.920] – Allan

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

[00:34:22.850] – Allan

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

[00:35:01.550] – Allan

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

[00:35:28.540] – Allan

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

[00:36:10.150] – Rachel

Sure.

[00:36:11.910] – Allan

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

[00:36:27.260] – Allan

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

[00:36:59.590] – Allan

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

[00:37:19.450] – Allan

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

[00:37:24.580] – Rachel

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

[00:37:55.910] – Allan

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

[00:38:39.350] – Allan

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

[00:39:10.220] – Allan

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

[00:39:44.990] – Allan

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

[00:39:52.530] – Rachel

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

[00:40:00.480] – Allan

Yeah, thank you. I appreciate that.

[00:40:02.360] – Rachel

You bet.

Music by Dave Gerhart

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How to balance work, family, and fitness with Art Trapotsis

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Having time to be excellent at work and spend time quality time with family is hard, throw in fitness and it can seem impossible. In his book, Everyday Athlete, Art Trapotsis shows us how to find that balance. 

Transcript

Let's Say Hello

[00:03:26.310] – Allan

Hey, Ras. How are you doing?

[00:03:28.190] – Rachel

Good. How are you today, Allan?

[00:03:30.150] – Allan

I'm doing all right. I'm doing pretty good. Of course, I'm getting ready to get on an airplane to travel back to the United States for four weeks or so. It's about four weeks to spend time with family, and then I'm going to take an actual vacation. This one actually by myself in Mexico, so I'll be gone for about five weeks. Traveling around and seeing family and doing this and that. But I did drop the tough mudder. It wasn't in the cards for me this time, and I've accepted that. But that just means I could spend more time with my mother.

[00:04:05.890] – Rachel

Sure.

[00:04:07.210] – Allan

Win-win

[00:04:08.950] – Rachel

Great. Trade off. Perfect.

[00:04:11.290] – Allan

How about you?

[00:04:12.620] – Rachel

Good. Same thing. I'm actually getting ready to get on a hydroplane myself. That's how we're going to get to Isle Royal in about a week or so, and we'll have eight days on the island, so I will be unplugged for about eight weeks. I'm looking forward to that.

[00:04:28.060] – Allan

Yeah, that's going to be exciting. You just mentioned before we got on the call the weather is changing a bit, and so plans are changing, and it's kind of evolving thing as you get going and imagine even being on the ground, you kind of have to have that concept of we need to be able to pivot when it's time to pivot and roll when it's time to roll.

[00:04:48.250] – Rachel

You have to be flexible. Some of the days that we're going to be out there might have longer hikes than others. We have a limited food supply. We're packing in what food we have, packing out all the trash. So, yeah, you got to be flexible and be ready for weather changes, landscape changes, animal changes. We don't know what to do.

[00:05:09.720] – Allan

Just remember, you only have to be able to outrun Mike. You don't have to be able to outrun the bank.

[00:05:15.430] – Rachel

So true.

[00:05:18.070] – Allan

Although he probably still runs a little bit faster than you.

[00:05:20.450] – Rachel

He is he's very speedy,

[00:05:22.400] – Allan

but he's got more meat on his bones. Go get it

[00:05:25.930] – Rachel

right? Yeah. Just looking forward to it.

[00:05:28.910] – Allan

Well, are you ready to have a conversation with Art?

[00:05:31.190] – Rachel

Sure.

Interview

[00:06:11.210] – Allan

Art, welcome to 40+ Fitness.

[00:06:13.640] – Art

Thank you so much for having me, Allan.

[00:06:15.590] – Allan

So your book is called The Everyday Athlete: How to Balance Work, Family and Fitness for Life. And there's a lot to unravel in that title for a book, and we're going to do some of that today. But this is a big thing. It's really hard for me to explain because I know I'm a coach and so by the time someone is coming to me, they've already somewhat hot committed, if you will, to say, I'm going to do something for my fitness, I'm going to do something. And they're listening to 40 plus Fitness. So we're somewhat there. But the whole balancing thing, a lot of us missed that.

[00:07:01.190] – Art

Yeah, I initially thought that there were three sort of separate buckets with work, family and friends and then fitness. But one theme that kept emerging when I was doing research for this book and interviewing people was that without fitness, it's really hard to succeed in the other two areas and to feel balanced. So fitness is sort of interconnected with everything else that we do in life. And we can't just think of it as a silo that we put on hiatus when we're focusing on work or family.

[00:07:33.150] – Allan

Yeah, I actually did that when I was younger. I think we all, a lot of us, fall into this trap. We get into our late twenty s and thirty s and we're like, okay, I'm putting in the hours and I'm getting promoted at work. And so it's almost like the more I pour of myself into my job, the better my career goes. And now you're competing with everyone else at work and you're winning those competitions because you're putting in the time. And so I ended up at 37 years old, sitting on the beach in Mexico, by all accounts fully successful. I'm a vice president of a Fortune 500 company and my life is wonderful. Except I know I had fallen out of a volleyball game the day before I went to play sand volleyball and it was four on four, it wasn't even twos. And I played one game and I subbed out. And I'm thinking to myself, I never would have subbed out in my entire life. I would have been the last guy to sub out. I would have done it just to let people play. But I would not have subbed out because I needed to.

[00:08:39.310] – Allan

But I did. So the next morning I'm sitting on the beach and I'm like, why am I so pathetic? I've got all this great stuff at work, but I didn't have it at home. I didn't have it in my health and fitness. And so it really was that disconnective balance that I was so one sided. And I fought that for eight years. I'm like, how do I rebalance? And it took me eight years to figure it out. And for me, what it was was this idea that everything that I had been successful at in my life, I committed to. And the only way I was going to find balance was if I equally committed to all three things.

[00:09:18.470] – Art

Did you feel unbalanced during those eight years?

[00:09:21.210] – Allan

I did. But I kept trying. You know. It was like this Yoyo thing where it was like gravity almost and I kind of equate it to I don't know. I've seen movies where two planets are coming together and you got the gravity going one direction and the gravity going the other direction. And I would start getting pulled one direction. And then all of a sudden work would be there. I'd turn to face work and I'm back the gravity well, yes. And another year later, yeah, I got another promotion. I worked so much harder, and then I write back being spit back out, like, wow, that didn't work. I'm still not fulfilled. And so, yeah, it was a really hard thing to do because it meant breaking a lot of who I was down and saying, okay, why am I the way I am? And then it meant breaking up relationships, it meant cutting back at work, and it meant finding the time to do those things and really just figuring it all out.

[00:10:21.800] – Art

Yeah. So I was a competitive cyclist earlier in my life, and when I got a real job, went into the real world, got married, started to have a family, and became less competitive. But I noticed that there were quite a few folks in my circle of friends that were still remaining competitive with cycling, and I was wondering how they were doing it. So I started to interview some local masters athletes to put on my blog. And as I spoke to more and more people, I became really fascinated because I was like, oh, there's quite a few folks who sort of figured out how to manage all three aspects of their life. And I started to weave together some common themes and create this book, The Everyday Athlete. And one of the big things that came out of it was time management. I mean, just learning to be flexible and taking advantage of available time when you get it to sneak and exercise whenever you can, even if it's just a 30 minutes run or weight lifting session. It doesn't have to be some massive two to four hour endurance ride, which is sort of the norm if you're a cyclist or any endurance world.

[00:11:39.230] – Art

So that was one of the themes that came out of the time management piece.

[00:11:42.830] – Allan

and that was definitely part of it. And to me, again, it was about the committing to the fact that I had to have that balance or I wasn't going to be complete. And then from there, everything just sort of started falling in line because once you truly commit to something, you have to do it. You don't have a choice anymore. And I knew I was at that point, I knew I knew I was. You said something earlier, though, that I think is really important, and it was that if you don't have fitness, it's maybe even impossible to really be fulfilled or balanced in those other areas. And for me, the biggest part of that is what exercise does for us, and not just physically for our bodies. Because I think people know, okay, well, if I exercise and burn more calories, that makes weight loss or weight control a lot easier. But really the special sauce with exercise is what exercise does for the brain. Could you talk a little bit about why that's so important? Because, again, if it's going to make everything else better, I'd like to know why.

[00:12:45.000] – Art

Well, there's a lot of data to support that. The fact that fitness in your life creates a ripple effect. So you go out for a 30 minute walk at lunch during your work day. You come back and you feel a bit more productive, and there are chemicals associated your brain that sort of stimulates more engagement at work with whatever it is you're doing. In the book, I referenced a book called Spark which talks about they perform some studies with students who had a break or perform physical fitness during the day. And those students were better students over the course of the year because they were just more engaged and they've learned better. So I sort of extrapolated on that and took that into the workplace.

[00:13:34.430] – Allan

Yes, you actually have programs at your workplace that people can exercise and take time off. And you're really flexible with all that because you know as an employer actually pays you for them to be that way.

[00:13:49.590] – Art

Yes, we installed we moved to a new facility about three years ago, and one of the layout pieces was, okay, we need to put a gym in here to make it as easy as possible for people to get some exercise. So we've got showers, we've got a gym. We created a wellness program with monthly activities that are totally voluntary. Nothing is forced upon anybody, but they're pretty fun. Just in a couple of months ago, we had our annual walking challenge where if you have a Fitbit or an iPhone or something, recorded your steps and it became sort of a little bit competitive. But it also was kind of fun because now you see people going out at lunch and getting in their steps and walking with their colleagues and recording it on the weekends, and all those folks just seem a bit more engaged when they get back to the office.

[00:14:40.520] – Allan

Yes, sometimes a little bit of competition can really spark some interest and get people doing a little bit more. That's awesome. Now you hit a concept in the book that one, I know it's going to resonate with Rachel kind of big because this is something she does. But you titled the book Everyday Athlete. And so we're not just talking about the person who's competitive or thinking about going masters, Olympian or something. This is just the person that wants to be able to hike on the weekends like something beautiful. They want to be able to ride their bike, play tennis again, or just do things, be a great grandmother, just that awesome person that keeps up with grandchildren at the zoo. Can you talk about the value of calling yourself an athlete?

[00:15:29.220] – Art

Yeah, I think that there are so many hurdles in the way of folks finding a way to get the fitness in their life. And I think and I propose this in the book, that if you think of yourself as an athlete, you're training for a 5K or 10K or a marathon or something. And if you just started to think of yourself as an athlete, then you start to adjust your behaviors a little bit. Oh, I think I'll go to sleep a little bit earlier tonight. Maybe I won't have that extra piece of cake. But also it becomes just more ingrained in your daily life. You think about your whole day with your meetings and your eating schedule and sleep schedule, like, oh, there's also a component there that involves me getting some exercise, and I need to do that because I'm an athlete. And I think getting over that hump of thinking yourself an athlete can really just make fitness more ingrained in how you are as a person.

[00:16:25.860] – Allan

Yes. The way I really ramped myself up was that my daughter was a CrossFit coach, level one CrossFit coach. And so I was looking back at her, she's 20 years old, and I'm thinking, that was me at 20 years old, I was an athlete. And then I'm thinking to myself, well, why wouldn't I be thinking of myself as an athlete today? Why would I be a spectator in my daughter's life going forward? And I wasn't comfortable to retire the cleats, if you will not done. I wanted more. So I said, okay, I'm going to train to do a tough mudder, and I'm going to do it with my daughter. And by committing to doing it with my daughter, it went well beyond that. I didn't want to just do it. I wanted to not hold her back. I wanted her to be able to run her race, and I want to be able to keep up with her. And I wanted us to finish that thing together, and I didn't want to be wrecked doing it. It was, okay, well, I have something now that I'm training for. And when I started the training, it's like, well, okay, I do have to feed the machine.

[00:17:30.290] – Allan

My body is a tool to do what I want to do. And if I do the right maintenance with it and I do the right training, it will respond, and it will reward me with a beautiful experience with my daughter. And it did that whole concept of I went back to being an athlete, and there are times I'll tell you, I still struggle with that because I can't do it all the time. I can't be that athlete all the time. Even LeBron James, he has an off season. And so in the book you talked a little bit about off seasons. We're not going to play basketball every day all year. We're going to have off seasons. Can you talk about why having off seasons is important?

[00:18:10.310] – Art

Yeah, I mean, there's a concept called periodisation where over the course of a year you slowly build up and develop what we call sort of base fitness. And as you approach your event, if you have an event in your calendar, you might convert some of that base fitness into more intense workouts. So you're kind of building the pyramid and the top of the pyramid is your event day. And when you reach the top, there's always a necessity to take a break. And if you have, let's say, two events during the course of the year, you want to filter in some rest time. It could be a week or two weeks. But eventually as you get around to, let's say, the winter season, if you're a cyclist, you might want to consider taking off a full month and just sort of not stopping exercise, but scaling back the volume, the intensity. And then that also resets your brain. Okay, I don't have to be on every single day of the week or every week to get workouts in. I can back up a little bit and it recharges you for the next season. So you don't have to go hard all year long at some point.

[00:19:20.620] – Allan

And I think that's really important. There's a balance to that. Like I said, that's what this book is really about. If you know, it's like, okay, well, Christmas time and Thanksgiving time is when I'm going to be spending time with family. And I don't want to be spending even though I could, I don't want to spend 4 hours every day training and not be able to drive over the house until 02:00 because that's when my training runs going to be done. Everybody's going to be there at noon and here I come straightening up at 02:00. And that's not really cool. So I'm taking that off season and saying it's okay. It's okay to relax, it's okay to enjoy these other things. And then that recovery that refresh it's across not just your body but your brain and everything. You can go into your next season, your on season, and start really pushing for higher and higher goals.

[00:20:10.730] – Art

Yeah, it's okay to give yourself a break and be gentle with yourself. You don't have to drive yourself into the ground all year. So you mentioned the holiday season and for me, like, that's the time where I sort of push aside some of those longer training sessions and focus more on the family piece and spending time with family during the holiday period.

[00:20:33.480] – Allan

Yeah, and family of the three, to me that's the hard one. Now I don't know why work, for some reason or another, was like I said, that little black hole that just sucked me away from everything else in life. But once I got back to the family part and I see it a lot with my clients. Particularly those that are the caretakers. And particularly when we're in this sandwich kind of generation of where someone's were still taking care of our children while we're taking care of our parents and that pull on us to be there for our family all the time just seems to be something that can kind of really derail the fitness and even sometimes our careers. How do we get around the family? Not like break up with the family, but how do we make that work when the family has such a huge draw on us?

[00:21:28.130] – Art

I think it starts with communication and basically expressing to your significant other and to your family members, like what you value and what's your priority to you. So if getting in the run on the weekend is really important to you, then you don't sit down and say, hey, honey, I want to go out and do a huge ride this weekend. I'll see you later. It's more like, hey, what does the family want to accomplish this weekend? We have some commitments here, some chores here. Can we carve out a little bit of time for me to go off for a run? And I think having that communication is so important because if it's not there, then the other department will always feel some sort of resentment or you're leaving them hanging with the rest of the family activities to organize and create. So the communication is like the first piece and there's a lot of little things we can do to improve communication, like having a family calendar and sort of sitting down and saying what I just said, where you look at the weekend, what do you want to accomplish and what do you want to do for fun and do you want to have the family dinner?

[00:22:39.590] – Art

So that is a really important piece in our household.

[00:22:43.170] – Allan

Yes. I think the way you put it in the book was really great was that you had little kids. This is not like you're talking about just send the teams off to spend time with their friends and you go do your run. This was okay. We've got little kids. One of them has got to go to this practice. One of them has got this game. And so it's like, okay, based on the times available, I'm going to have to get up and from six to nine I'm going to go do my ride or my run and get that done. So then I'm done and then I can take this one to the game. And then while we're at the game, you can take and do your run and then we meet back. And now we're together as a family having our dinner. And we made everything happen that needed to happen and we had the balance between us and the conversations between us and the trust that, yeah, she's going to follow through, I'm going to follow through because it's not just, I'm going to get my running. It's like, you know, I think I'm going to go play some golf with the guys.

[00:23:39.640] – Allan

I got a call. No, we commit. We do the right thing. And that communication and trust means that they're willing to give because you're willing to give. And in the end, if you're not taking care of yourself, then you're not really going to be 100% for your family. As we mentioned earlier, how key fitness is to all the other dynamics.

[00:24:00.120] – Art

And sometimes it isn't even about the other person. Let's say also going out for a run or getting in some fitness. It could be done wanting to disconnect by doing some gardening or meeting up with some friends for coffee. It's whatever it is that your significant other things of is like, disconnecting and re-energizing them. So I think it's just having a respect for whatever your partner feels like they need to do to stay balanced.

[00:24:28.290] – Allan

Yeah, my wife would be the I'm going to go spend some time with my friends kind of person. She's not going for a run, but I totally get you there. But yeah, we're different people, and we have different needs, and with the respect we have for each other, that we just we make it work. But I don't have the little kids. It's just the two of us, and our only little kid is Lula's, our bed and breakfast.

[00:24:51.590] – Art

Well, I'm just checking in that your partner has some time carved out for themselves, like, oh, do you need some time to disconnect and do what you would like to do?

[00:25:03.670] – Allan

Yeah. All right. It does. Understanding that and as I said before, I didn't have that balance, and I didn't have that skill because I think the communication between a significant other is a huge skill that a lot of us go into marriage without really ever having. We go into relationships without really having and or practicing. And once you kind of practice that skill, it's very powerful.

[00:25:29.530] – Art

Developing the emotional IQ.

[00:25:32.510] – Allan

That's it. Yeah, that's the word right there. Now, one thing I always recommend, and a lot of other people recommend, is do something you enjoy. So if your fitness doesn't have to be, okay, I got to get you in the gym, I've got to do three sets of eight on that leg press, and then we're going to move over to this machine, and we're going to do three sets, eight. For a lot of people, that's intimidating, scary, and they're not going to enjoy it. And if they're not going to enjoy it unless I'm there asking them to do the next set, they're not going to do it. So a lot of people encourage, just do something, enjoy. So it's like, take a group class, take a Zumba, go out and join a running club or a walking club or a biking club. Why is this group training? Why is that so valuable? What's the draw? And why are so many people interested? And why is it so much more fun, I guess would be the question is what are all these values that group classes do that we wouldn't do ourselves?

[00:26:30.170] – Art

Well, part of it has to do with the motivation piece. Sometimes it's just really challenging for you to get your own butt off the couch and then to go out and do that ride. But if you know that there's five or six people waiting on the coffee shop for you to also go for that ride, then it just gets you a little bit more of an edge to get out there and do that. And in our area where I live in our neighborhood, we have weekly group rides. There's something going on every day of the week and it's super motivating because, you know, on Monday, if it's a recovery day, there's a recovery ride. The folks around here are called the Muffin Ride because it meets up at a coffee shop after the Muffins. And I think that that's got a lot of folks in our area off the couch and motivated. And many of them have events on the calendar now where they're doing centuries 100 miles rides. And these are folks who were not engaged that level of athletic fitness just a few years ago. So the group ride or whatever group activities you want to do, it goes a long way from foundation.

[00:27:38.040] – Allan

Now, a lot of people will look at that and they'll say, oh, well, I'm going to go try to ride with people that are doing 100 miles races and more. And it's like, well, I physically can't do that right now, so if we're going to go do a training ride, see you, they're going to leave me in the dust. But you also mentioned a concept that you call the no drop mentality. And so occasionally some of the groups that you train with will use this or have this. Can you talk about what that is and how that could help someone who's maybe just a little intimidated to get started?

[00:28:12.450] – Art

Yes, the no drop ride. So when you get dropped on a ride, it means that you've fallen off the back of the group and basically have been left for dead and no one's waiting you and you're riding by yourself. So there's number rise throughout the week or the month where we announced a no drop ride. Words basically at the top of the hill, we'll wait for everyone to gather and you never felt like you're left behind. There's always someone looking out for you and it's at a pace that usually everybody can hold and it really lowers the barrier to entry because it's like, okay, let me show up as a no drop ride. I know I'm going to make it all the way home on this 25 to 30 miles loop, and I'm not going to be left to figure out how to get home. So with that, we've actually drawn in quite a few newbie cyclists and they've loved it. And over the years they've gotten better and they've gone on to some of the harder group rides that become very competitive. But I love the no drop rides. My favorite one to do, especially on Sundays.

[00:29:14.970] – Allan

Yeah, the concept, to me, it's two sided and the two sides, this one is as a group, I think it's just really great that you're having this inclusivity of saying we want to introduce more people to the sport, to this thing. And the way we do it is by making them feel more comfortable and more included. And I can tell you, in a gym environment, a lot of people feel intimidated. They walk in there and they see the big guys over by the free weights. They're kind of like, I'll just hang out over here by the treadmill, don't mind me. But the reality is a gym environment, most gym environments are no drop mentalities. The guys you see over there are those heavy weights. They're happy to see you there. They won't walk over and tell you and welcome you, but they're glad to see you there because by you paying a gym membership, you're helping pay for that equipment they're using too. And so most gyms are going to have a no drop mentality. They're not going to let you fail just and laugh at you. They're not going to do that. They want you to be successful.

[00:30:13.640] – Allan

They want you to be long term gym members just like them. And eventually you might be over in those free weight areas and they'll be glad to help you in any way they can. But then there's the other side of this equation, and that's the mindset that you bring to the game. I know if I got into a ride, I'm not keeping up with you. There's no way. And I don't mean that as a slight. What I mean is I can't lose my battle, my sport, by competing with you. I'm competing with myself at this point in my life. And so my comparison is to Allan yesterday. I want to be as good or better than the Allan I was yesterday. And it's not just in sports, it's just not fitness. It's family, it's work, it's everything else. What am I doing today to be better tomorrow? And so I think if you look at a no drop mentality, not only is important if a group has it and makes you feel comfortable, it's kind of building in yourself that I don't actually care if I get dropped. I'm not comparing myself to the best riders in this group.

[00:31:24.200] – Allan

And if I do get left behind, then I'll figure it out. But I'm going to come back and I'm going to get better and so at some point, I might be that good, but I'm not going to compare myself to them. I'm going to compare myself to who I was yesterday.

[00:31:38.690] – Art

There are so many folks that I've ridden with and went running with, and I was involved with triathlon over the years that started off very intimidated. Didn't want to put the spandex on the Lycra, but.

[00:31:57.390] – Allan

It just shows how great you look. Maybe you don't feel like you do. Yeah.

[00:32:03.160] – Art

No, but I think it takes someone to say, here, let's go for a short ride on the bike path. That's just get you comfortable on the bike or the run or even a swim. And then, hey, let's show up on the 20 miles no drop ride this weekend, and we'll go together. And over time and I've been doing this now for over 25 years, many of these folks are much stronger than I am now. And they just developed it's like their inner competitive cyclists came out, and now they're phenomenal athletes. So it's been a pretty fun process to do that.

[00:32:42.410] – Allan

Well, as we said earlier, I think everybody has an athlete in them. Our human body was built to be athletic, to hunt, to fish, to forage, to move, to play. We were built for this. And so it's there. It's just a function of bringing it out. And it starts with the mindset, it starts with the doing. And if you can find these groups and find the way to do the training where you feel comfortable, but then you push that comfort zone, then you get better. And I think that's one of the keys. And what I really liked about your book was it just kind of pulled that altogether to say, if you want this balance, it's within your grasp. And it's not just a concept of having it all, which I think is what a lot of people think balance is, but it's the understanding, the compensation with all of them to fit them together in a way that fits your lifestyle.

[00:33:38.130] – Art

Yeah. And also that it's a journey. You're not going to have balance every single day of the week. It's something that we're always moving towards. And even the folks that you think have life completely dialed in, they don't. They're always trying to figure it out.

[00:33:56.350] – Allan

But they're instagram famous.

[00:33:59.310] – Art

Exactly. So we're all in the same boat. I've interviewed over 100 folks through this book of all walks of life. And every single person I interviewed, no matter how successful they appear on the outside, or how successful they appear as far as athletic prowess, everyone struggles. Everyone. So I think if we can keep the fitness piece in our life, as we grow our families and build our careers, it will make us at least feel like we have life in check. And that's what my proposal is in the book.

[00:34:38.380] – Allan

Yeah. And I would say, being over 40, if you can reintroduce fitness into your life, it's going to enhance those other things just as well.

[00:34:48.730] – Art

I totally agree. There's quite a few folks who were competitive in high school, or maybe not even competitive. They just did some sort of sport in high school. Maybe they played in college. And then there was nothingness in their late 20s or even into their 30s. And then they feel like, okay, I need to get back into doing something. And when they do that, it's like a switch turns on and the rest of their life starts to fall in place.

[00:35:19.210] – Allan

And it's not even that you are an athlete when you were younger. Because I remember I was 29 when I ran an ultra 50 miles ultra. And I was standing in the morning meeting, and they have these briefing the day before briefing. And so we're sitting in the briefing room and I'm standing next to this really old guy. I mean, at the time I'm looking, I'm like, okay, he's ancient. He was 68 years old. So we started talking and I started looking around. I'm like, everybody here is way older than me. And like, what's going on? What bizarre world am I in? And he said, he says most people don't actually even ever start running until they're in their 40s. Most ultra athletes were not really necessarily even athletes when they were younger. They got into their forty s and running was a way for them to destress and get in shape. And then they just kept adding miles. And here we are lining up tomorrow for a 50 mile run. And I just thought that was so compelling. And then you see the results of the run. It was a twelve hour cut off.

[00:36:24.710] – Allan

There were 28 of us that started the run. I think 18 of us finished. And the guy who came in first was 29, and I was 29, and I came in next to last. And then when I finished, they're on the radio and there's one guy left and like, is he going to make cut off? They're like, it's going to be close. And then they said his name. And I'm like, that's that 68 year old guy. I was standing next to a briefing yesterday. So I'm standing at the finish line watching this guy finish this race. And so this is a guy who didn't start running until he was in his forty s. And here he is competing with himself, but competing in the 50 mile run. And he finished it just under time. And so at that point, I knew anything is possible. You can come back at any age and you can do this at any time. So it's not that you had to be an athlete. The athletes there, it's always been there. And it's just a function of pulling it out and using it now, using your fitness, because it's going to enhance everything.

[00:37:27.550] – Art

Well, one thing that I'm glad you just told that story. Because one thing that resonated with me in one of my first triathlons, I was maybe around 25 years old and there's a couple of older categories that started in a way behind us, about ten minutes behind us. And in any triathlon usually put your age on the cap. So with a marker you can see the age of the person. So here I am in the final leg of 5K, 25 years old and I'm going to a pretty good clip, maybe like a six minute mile pace or something. And up comes behind me is this gentleman and he's fast and he's blown by me. And I look at his cap, it says the number 47. I'm now 47. I see his number 47. I was like oh wow. He actually started like eight or ten minutes behind me. And the thing that resonated with me was when we got to the finish line, his wife was there and two of his kids were there. And I just thought this is amazing. And that's what really motivated me over all this time, my career and family, that you can keep doing this, you can keep doing it, still be competitive and have the whole thing.

[00:38:46.520] – Art

So that resonate me. And I just love that you kick my butt there.

[00:38:52.390] – Allan

Good, good. And hopefully he's still running, but hopefully he's still doing that.

[00:38:56.700] – Allan

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

[00:39:04.890] – Art

That's a great question. So number one, I think consistency, try to do something multiple times a week. I'm going to say at least five times a week. That's one thing. Number two, I'm gonna say this now because I have a lot more years of experience on my belt. Sleep. Sleep is so important because then you're ready to go the next day 100%. The third thing is having the ability to disconnect. And when I say disconnect, just disconnect from work, disconnect from your phone and just letting your mind sort of recharge. And you can do that in a form of meditation, reading a book. But I think that's really important to just overall wellness.

[00:39:53.410] – Allan

Thank you. I love those. Thank you. Art, if someone wanted to learn more about you or learn more about your book Everyday Athlete, where would you like for me to send them?

[00:40:03.370] – Art

You could go to artrapotsis.com and you could also find me on Amazon or Barnes and Noble. If you search for the Everyday Athlete.

[00:40:15.490] – Allan

You can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/553 and I'll have a link there for that book and for your website. So thank you Art. Thank you for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

[00:40:26.600] – Art

Thank you so much, Allan. It's a lot of fun.


Post Show/Recap

[00:40:36.350] – Allan

Welcome back, Ras.

[00:40:37.990] – Rachel

Hey Allan. Art I think might be my new best friend. There's so many great things in your interview but the first thing I wanted to mention was a quote and I don't know if I got it exactly right in my notes, but I believe the quote was, without fitness, it's hard to succeed in the other areas of life. And I just wanted to take a minute to recognize how important it is to be healthy and to be fit in your day to day life. It's so important.

[00:41:07.130] – Allan

Yeah. I missed this myself. I got well into my career and I was in a sedentary job, so I had all the fitness I needed to be an accountant, but I didn't have the fitness to be the other things that I wanted to be in my life. And so as my health was declining, I recognize that my performance was going to decline during the longer days. And sitting at the desk all those days and all that, I was not at peak. I mean, I was doing enough, and it was enough to be where I was. But I think about what all the other things I could have accomplished in my life if I had the energy and the stamina and the capacity to do those other things, and I didn't, but I didn't even recognize it. It's kind of one of those things that you're sitting in this water and you don't really recognize the temperature of the water. I'm not going to say what that comes from, because people get mad every time I say it. No, I don't do that. But the whole point being is we lose sight of our own surroundings because we're so in it.

[00:42:19.230] – Allan

And so if you find yourself not thinking outside of your environment, you might think what's going through is normal. This is just what we all normally hurt. We all normally can't do things we all normally break, and that's not true. There's a big variation of the aging curve, and we get to make some decisions, and we get to make those decisions each day. But yeah, we won't perform as well if we don't take the time to train and get our body as strong as we can get it.

[00:42:51.100] – Speaker 3

Well, that's a really good point right there, Allan, is that when we're young, we have used on our side, and it seems like, being that I'm 51, I can look back and say that the younger people, including my younger self, we had energy to spare, we had some level of fitness to spare, and then as we age, that level of energy is not the same. I would always say if I could bottle the energy my kids had, I would make millions. But the fact is that as we age, things happen. And you guys discuss too, the balance, having balance between work and family life and fitness. If you think of those three things, those three major concepts, family, work and your health and fitness, it is hard to be an expert at everything all at the same time. But there comes a day where you really do have to focus on that health and fitness level, because if you're not healthy, it makes everything so much harder. Work becomes harder. Running around with your kids or grandkids is immensely harder, and then you're missing out on some really wonderful activities.

[00:44:02.580] – Allan

Yeah, it's really important.

[00:44:05.310] – Rachel

But the other thing, the reason why I really do love Art, and you mentioned it as you were talking, is that, yes, I do love calling my clients athletes. I love to think of myself as an athlete, even though I am not Olympic level. I'm not contention for anything super like an elite or professional athlete. But when you do think of yourself as an athlete, your perspective on everything changes. When I go out for a run in the morning, if I don't get enough sleep, I don't have quite as much fun in my run, or I can't go quite as far as I want. And if I'm training for a race, sleep becomes even more important. And the same thing is with my food. If I eat poorly over the weekend, I can't have my long run. It's just I don't do it quite as well, and it's not as enjoyable. So once you start thinking of yourself as an athlete, things do change.

[00:44:55.850] – Allan

Yeah. I spent so much of my early life kind of doing the flip flop of use the word early on when we were talking, before we came on as academic, thinking of yourself as an academic, or thinking yourself of this, and you tend to get this tunnel focus. At least I did. And so it was like, yeah, when I left high school when I was in high school, I was an athlete. That's all I thought of. I didn't think of high school as even an academic pursuit. It was something I had to do to be on the football field, the track, the tennis court. I did those things, but I was an athlete. That's why I was in high school. And then I got into junior college, and it was like, okay, well, now I have to be an academic, and I have to just be an academic. And so I was so focused on the academics that when I then had to make a pivot in my life, it was like, I've been working so hard in one area, I didn't want to do that anymore, and I pivoted all the way back to athletics.

[00:45:58.980] – Allan

In fact, the reason I went infantry in the military was they showed all these videos of all the things I was capable of doing. And when I passed the Azab, the score, my recruiter said, do anything. You can literally do anything in the army you want to do. And so I just told him, I said, Drop everything that says engineer, mechanic, anybody that fixes or does anything with their brain. Just turn that one off. They came up with field medic, arterial surveyor, which was math, and then infantry, and they showed the infantry guys, and they're all just running around all the time. And I'm like, that's what I want to do. For two years, quite literally, it was signing up and just saying, what can I do for two years to earn some money for college? And I did two years of infantry. And I'm not going to say it didn't use my brain power, but it didn't use it to the power of thinking of academics. It was, I'm learning everything I can about this field of study, which is how to kill people, but physically I was focused on being the brood, being the most physical person I could be.

[00:47:14.850] – Allan

And then I left out and went back to college. And in college, it was probably the only time I felt like I had balance because I was except for family, because I was got married and so I was basically at college lifting and then work, and there's rinse and repeat every day and there was no other time. So quite literally, yeah, I was taking a full load, working full time and getting in the gym 2 hours every day. That was my entire life. And so I've never until about now been in a position where I've said, okay, I can manage to balance. And so I understand the challenge of all of this. I'm fortunate now that the kids aren't home. So there's not that. There's my wife, my dogs. They are my home and my family right now. And then I'm going to go visit family. I'm beginning the research of where the gyms and all the towns that I'm going to be at. I know there's a YMCA in my mother's town, and it's like $5 a day to work out there. Maybe cheaper if I pay by the weeks off the sea. At least it was the last time I was able to work out.

[00:48:28.100] – Allan

The last couple of times I've been there, it was closed because of covid, but that's kind of where I'm looking at, what can I do to keep my fitness on track? And I'm realizing cardio might be a better option for me during this next month. I'll just have to look at it. But I'm more in a position now to have balance than I ever have been in my entire life. That's where I'm at. And not everybody can do that. But the closer you are to balance, the better all of this fits together so that you don't feel like you're losing anything, you don't feel like you're giving anything. It is a compromise and there are going to be points in time. As Art said, when you're training for something or there's a family thing or there's something going on at work, that you need to focus on a project, but you need to think about the after the project or after the thing, because you got to get back to more of that balance. And if you don't do that audit, that self audit, it's very easy to lose sight and find yourself again, very one sided.

[00:49:34.010] – Allan

I know I have a tendency toward that, so I'm going to spend a lot of time with family. For me, also, being an introvert, that energy is energy spent, but I still need to be able to focus on clients and focus on my health. And I know what's going to happen as soon as I come back to this island, my being a lone, fitness, going on long walks thing is going to happen.

[00:49:59.350] – Rachel

Yeah.

[00:49:59.850] – Allan

So I'm going to need that. So just looking at how I'm going to maintain balance, particularly during these changes, is really important. I think that's kind of a message I took away from that, for sure.

[00:50:10.170] – Rachel

And I think part of having that balance or finding that balance is also being flexible. I know that when my kids were younger, I would get them up for school, go do a quick run, make sure they got on the bus, and then I could finish the rest of my day. And just like you said, now that my kids are college age, I don't need to worry about whether or not they get on the bus. I can schedule my runs at any time. When you travel, you're going to find some time to do walks in the morning and enjoy the cities that you get to visit. And it's a lot of change, but you could still make that a priority wherever you are in life and whatever responsibilities you have, and it is really important to focus on that, because I like to tell my clients this, too. You can't pour from an empty cup. You need to take care of yourself before you can take care of other people. And so if that means a quick ten minute walk or a ten minute run in the morning, you're going to feel energized, and you're going to feel a little less stressed and a little more happy, and you'll be able to be more patient as a parent or with a loved one.

[00:51:16.220] – Rachel

So it's just really important that you are flexible and try and squeeze in whatever fitness you can whenever you can.

[00:51:23.050] – Allan

Absolutely.

[00:51:24.250] – Rachel

Great.

[00:51:24.840] – Allan

All right, well, since Rachel and I will both be traveling this next week, and she won't be able to carry the recording gear in her equipment because she just doesn't care that much weight, and she also wouldn't be able to connect to Zoom, there's probably that as well. But we're not going to be recording hello sections for the next two episodes. We're actually going to record our after show sections right now, so there's no reason for us to say three hellos when it's the same day, it's ten minutes apart. So I just realized we will skip the hello sections in the next two episodes, but we are going to record our afterthoughts for each of those two episodes in just a few minutes. So, Rachel, I'll talk to you in a few minutes, but everyone else, I will talk to you next week.

[00:52:12.450] – Rachel

Take care.

[00:52:13.460] – Allan

You too. Bye.

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Another episode you may enjoy

Less...

February 28, 2022

What history tells us we’re doing wrong with our health and fitness

Apple Google Spotify Overcast Youtube

A lot has changed in the past 200 years. And while we're living longer, we're not necessarily living better. On episode 527 of the 40+ Fitness Podcast, we discuss what some of those changes mean to our health and fitness today. Those lessons can help you see where progress is not as it seems.

Transcript



Let's Say Hello

[00:01:11.770] – Allan

Hi, Ras. How are you doing?

[00:01:13.680] – Rachel

Good. Allan. How are you today?

[00:01:15.680] – Allan

I'm doing well. It's kind of an interesting week. I'm in the process of doing the build out for the new gym. And so we're getting into the new space. And obviously as you start doing construction and things like that, you learn things about the building you just rented. And so there are leaks and there's this and that. Just things to work through.

[00:01:37.430] – Allan

And then my wife, Tammy, we were supposed to spend some time together this week, go out to dinner and all because we're recording this over the Valentine's week, and she got a last minute opportunity to go see a specialist for nose and throat (she's had some sinus issues) in David, which means, okay, she's got to take a boat and then take a bus, and then it's a five-hour trip over. So she goes over and she's over there and I'm like, okay.

[00:02:03.870] – Allan

And then she says, well, yeah, they called me. They did get me in at 05:00pm tomorrow. I'm like, okay, well, you could have done tomorrow. But anyway, so she spends the night and then her appointments can be for us later today. And then she spends the night, comes back tomorrow.

[00:02:18.520] – Allan

And like most times when Tammy leaves and things look reasonably open, like we had three rooms open. So really low volume here for us to kind of just say, OK, there's basically three breakfast to do in the morning. One check out easy stuff. Actually, we had no check. I'm not supposed to have any check out this morning. But then all of a sudden we have two couples booking. I'm like, okay running around because I don't she usually goes picks them up and this and that. So I'm trying to manage all that and run that. So it's a little bit of juggling. But it's good juggling because it's growth and it's opportunity, new people. So, yeah, it's good. It's just kind of busy.

[00:02:59.530] – Allan

And I do have some other news. I have signed an agreement and affiliate agreement with Keto Mojo. And this is my favorite glucose keto blood monitor. And the reason I like these guys so much is that the keto strips are the cheapest you're going to find on the market. They're really expensive if you want to do blood ketones all the time, regularly. But the Keto Mojo makes it much more cost effective to do it if you want to do it every day. And the machine they have does both the glucose and the ketones. And they have their own proprietary little formula for kind of how you're potentially optimizing your glucose ketone levels. Now the new one there's, the GK Plus. It actually syncs with your phone. So you have an app on your phone and you take the readings. You don't have to write anything down or put anything like a spreadsheet. It just literally just goes right to your phone. And you've got charts and diagrams and the whole bit. It's actually really cool. And they just came out with this GK Plus. I had their old monitor. When I saw they had the GK Plus, I immediately bought it. And so I've been using that for about a week. And this thing, it's literally like having someone standing there telling you how to do it because you turn it on and it tells you, okay, put the meter thing in. And you put the meter thing in. It tells you it's in, all right? And then it says, okay, now put the blood and you stick yourself and you put a little bit of blood on there not much actually, probably less than on the last ones.

[00:04:31.950] – Allan

And then boom, it counts it down from nine all the way down. And then it gives you your reading. And like I said, then it can sync with an app on your phone and you've got that data right there. So it's a really cool thing. And the other thing that's cool about it is they're giving anyone that follows my link a 15% discount off the meter. Any of the meter kits, they got like a couple of different kits, like a starter kit, like a Deluxe kit. They can't do that on the strips because the strips are already really well priced. So they can't give you the 15% of the strips, but they will on the meter. So if you go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/mojo. So 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/mojo, that will take you to the site. If you purchase either one of the two major kits, like the starter and then the Deluxe. If you purchase one of those kits, when you get to the checkout, they'll apply a discount of 15%. So it ends up being a really cost effective meter with really cost effective strips. And like I said, it works like a charm. I love this little thing.

[00:05:39.600] – Allan

I'm using it every day now because again, the strips are inexpensive and it's so easy to use. So I'm keeping up with my ketones because I'm just now kind of cycling back into ketosis after the Superbowl and monitoring where my ketones are, because again, as I'm looking at starting to try to build up my fitness level, I want to understand if I have a bad day in the gym. Was that because my glucose was a little low? Is that because my ketones weren't where they needed to be and that kind of thing? And I also use their urine strips, even though, again, I don't think they're going to be included in the discount. But those are all available. You can go to 40 plusfitnesspodcast.com/Mojo. It's going to give me a slight little kickback on that. Not much, but it's going to give you a 15% discount, which I think is really cool.

[00:06:25.920] – Rachel

That is fantastic. What a great partnership.

[00:06:28.770] – Allan

So, Rachel, what's going on with you?

[00:06:30.940] – Rachel

Good. Things are good. You know, once a year I take a visit to my hospital where I visit the high risk breast cancer clinic. I've mentioned in the past that I've got a high risk, high family predisposition to breast cancer. And so I see this particular doctor every year, and every year, it's like a breath of fresh air to hear that I'm ticking all the right boxes. My doctor mentioned that I get enough exercise. Obviously, I eat well, of course, I eat the foods that they suggest we eat to have a healthy, reducing our risk cancer type diet and don't smoke, don't drink in excess. And I'm living the right lifestyle that should reduce my risk for developing breast cancer. And the other interesting thing is that now that I'm 50, I am eligible for breast MRIs in addition to a traditional mammogram. Although based on my age and my lifestyle, the doctor feels like it's not a really good cost risk benefit. So I probably am going to put that off for a little while longer. But the other benefit to this appointment, again, probably because I'm 50, they connected me to the hospital's cancer genetics Department.

[00:07:53.670] – Rachel

And so I have an appointment a couple of months out because everybody's backlog these days. But I have decided to pursue genetic testing to see if there are any predispositions to breast and other cancers. So I'm pretty excited to take that route. So it was a great visit. I'm glad I went. And I feel pretty good with my health right now.

[00:08:16.280] – Allan

Yeah, well, there definitely are some genetic snips, I think is what they call them that give you that predisposition to that Angelina her mother and had family history. So she went kind of radical, which a lot of people talked about, which is good. You have those conversations. We're not into October right now, but it's just don't wait until October. There's no reason to wait until October to do the right thing for your health. So glad you got that opportunity. And it will be interesting to hear how your foray into the genetics? Because obviously, the science is always getting better around some of these things. So it'll be interesting to hear what your geneticist doctor or whatever, whoever you're dealing with is going to be able to tell you what information and how things look for you on that side of the equation.

[00:09:10.170] – Rachel

Absolutely. Yes. I'll keep you posted for sure.

[00:09:13.010] – Allan

All right. So let's have a little bit of a history lesson. What do you think?

[00:09:17.540] – Rachel

Sounds great.

Episode

Today, I wanted to take a moment to give you a little bit of a history lesson about health and fitness, particularly in the United States. Interestingly enough, in the last 200 years, we've managed to extend our lives almost double. In 1860, the average lifespan for someone was 39.4 years. Take that in context to what it generally is today. And we're looking at an average lifespan of about 78.9%. So effectively doubling the life that we have on this Earth. And there's a lot of reasons for that. But lifespan does not equal health span. And I want to talk in more detail about what that means is living longer does not mean living better, and in fact, it actually probably means living worse. And so I want to take a few minutes to kind of talk about those things, how they relate, and some of the things that have changed over the course of the last 200 years that have made these things possible. So let's talk a little bit about lifespan. How have we managed to double our lifespan in just the last, really, 200 years? Less than 200 years, really. The first is babies live. In the past, more babies were lost to early death, infant death, birth death at birth.

Those things were happening on a fairly regular basis. And it was relatively hard to get a family member baby up to the age of about 15 and still be alive. There were a lot of diseases, a lot of things going on, and then just again, just the loss at birth. We fixed a lot of that. We have a lot more technology around medicine that allows us to have the babies live longer and in many cases, live full, productive lives. So that's been one good thing for increasing our lifespan. Probably the biggest overall mover in lifespan. The second would be basically safer conditions. We're aware of a lot more toxins, things that are not safe. We've changed the way we do construction. We've changed the way we build cars. Cars today are much safer than they were when they first came out. And just everything else, as far as a general lifestyle puts us in a safer position to survive longer. And now, again, labels on things typically, you know, there's a story for a reason why you don't eat the Silicon packet. And there has to be a sign on it for you to not eat that Silicon packet because you're not supposed to eat it.

But someone eventually did or obviously did, or they wouldn't have to put the sign there. So again, there's a lot more safety encouraged in the workplace, in the home and consumer products, and all of these different things that have made life longer. We've invented medications and vaccines. So the invention of penicillin, which I'll get into in more detail, the invention of certain vaccines, which I'll also get into in a little bit more detail later, they've actually allowed us to live longer. Fewer people are dying of polio and smallpox and measles and that thing. And then, of course, when someone gets sick, they get an infection. We have medications to keep them alive, and we're able to do that. And people are living longer as a result. And again, just general medicine. We're able to do heart bypass surgeries and things like that and remove tumors and do things like that that we weren't able to do 200 years ago, even 100 years ago. And as a result, people are living longer. And then there's generally food security. In the past, thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people have starved due to not having enough food to feed their family.

We have much more food security today, which is allowing us to grow healthier. Babies have healthier lives. Unfortunately, the type of food we now use is actually detrimental to our overall health and our overall lifespan. But no one's starving to death today. In a general sense, very few people on this Earth starved to death today versus 100 years ago and 200 years ago. So a lot of things have happened in the last 200 years to extend our lifespan. And so as a result, in the past, they would have more babies because fewer babies would survive as a percentage. So law of average is if you have ten kids, you can expect a few of them to survive. Now, we know that's not necessary. We don't have that problem. So people aren't having multiple babies. They can have one or two and generally understand that those two have a very high probability of making it to adulthood. So lifespan hasn't been increased incredibly, but that creates some problems for us on the other side. Health span. So when we look at our overall health and particularly the Western economies, some of the things we find is that we're overweight and obese.

The overweight obese category now makes up the majority of people in Western countries, particularly United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and Australia. So if you start looking at that, you realize, okay, if almost 70% of people are overweight and obese, we are not helping our health span while we might be living longer. That's leading to some pretty significant problems in what we call now lifestyle diseases heart disease, high blood pressure, autoimmunity cancer. These diseases were not a huge problem 200 years ago for various reasons, but predominantly because of the foods and the types of foods that we eat, the lack of movement, different things that have happened. And I'm going to get into that in a lot more detail coming up. But just realize we now suffer from lifestyle diseases that really were very rare 200 years ago. And so the other side of it is, though, we also by living longer, we subject ourselves to more opportunities. So someone may have died an accident on the farm at the age of 30. Now they're not working. The same individuals are not working on farms. They have much safer jobs. They're living until their 60s. And that's just given them more time for certain lifestyle problems to catch up with them on a Healthspan.

So we've increased our lifespan, but we haven't necessarily done as much to improve our health span over that same period of time. And there's a lot of reasons for it, and I want to dive into those today. So what has changed in the last 100 and 5200 years? Well, probably the biggest is convenience. We do a lot less physical work. Tools, machines, everything else. All of that has made our lives easier. So when you look at it 200 years ago, if you were going to travel to the next town, you would take a horse. Okay, well, riding a horse, if you haven't done it before can pretty much wear you out, depending on how long you ride and what the course is like, that you're riding on the path or the road or whatever. Being on a horse takes a lot more physicality than a lot of people think. If you're not used to riding a horse, you're likely to be sore after you've ridden a horse for a while. Then there were cars, but the first cars were cranked cars and required a little bit of effort to get started. They were a little bit more work to drive.

We didn't have power steering. We didn't have those other things going on. So there's a little bit more even with a car, there was still more work than a current car. A current car, you can literally start it with a push of a button or start it before you even get in the car. You can literally drive away without using almost any effort at all sitting in a seat. And when you're going the speed you want to go, you can literally push a button and it will stay at that speed until you tell it not to. And now with autonomous cars, you don't even have to do that. You tell the car where you want to go and it just takes you there. So less and less effort. And then the other side of it, well, why even get in a car when there's takeout and delivery? So recognizing that we've had conveniences thrust on us, we've taken advantage of those conveniences because it makes our lives easier. But easier does not necessarily improve health span. So the next big thing that's happened and one that's just really circling back around as being a problem is an understanding of the dangers of over consuming sugar.

In 1800, the average American consumed £22.5 of sugar per year. Now, that may seem like a lot when you look at what a five pound bag is, but let's compare and contrast that with what's going on today and realize most of the 1800 food was not processed at all. It was literally coming from fruits and vegetables. Today, that's not the case. So by 1919, we're going to see some changes in the way food is done. By that time, we were eating £99 over four times as much 100 years later. And even today at 2000, we got up to over £150 per year. That is a ton of sugar. That's a whole person worth of sugar. Now, it's trailed down in the last few years, and mainly because of an outreach of people to understand how bad sugar is. So people are cutting back a little bit on their consumption, but we're still well over £140 per year. So in contrast, we're looking at almost a seven fold increase in the amount of sugar we're eating relative to what our ancestors ate as late as the 1800. Now, one of the reasons that we eat more sugar is processed food, just a few little tidbits.

Oatmeal was invented in 1854. Now, the interesting thing about oatmeal is up until that time, it was horse food. So all this joking about taking horse meds, the real joke back then was who's eating horse food? But once it was accepted that people were willing to eat horses, the cereal market was born. So in 1877, they started making cereals. And in fact, most of the major brands you recognize today started in around that time, shortly after that time, or in the early 1900, those large companies, they started making cereals, then perfecting recipes, competing with each other, combining and forming these global companies that sell tons and tons of this stuff, a lot of it with a lot of extra sugar. And it's all high calorie, low nutrition. I mean, they add nutrition or they try to make it nutritious, but in a general sense, they have to go after taste. And so food science today is about taste and texture. It's not about your health. And so recognize that these food companies are making products they know you'll eat more of. They want you to eat more of them. And they've even done some things that really are uncool to make sure that you continue to consume a lot of these products.

But processed foods are not your friend if you're looking at health and fitness because they're not designed to help make you healthy. They're not designed to be like real food. They're designed to make you buy more, to make it taste good, to make it appealing so you buy more. Another thing that's happened in the last 200 years is we've moved to a format of industrial farming. So large farms of animals, be it cows or chickens or whatever, are raised together in very, very tight spaces, being that close to all these other animals illnesses get passed around relatively quickly. So antibiotics are introduced on a fairly regular basis. And then, of course, they want the largest possible animal they can get for the meat or basically to make sure that they're getting volume. So they're injecting these animals with hormones to make them grow faster. So the effect of all of this, the lack of space, the antibiotics, the hormones and everything else that they do these animals makes them very sick animals. Eating a sick animal does not make you healthy. So even though you think you're getting a better cut of the animal or you're farming at a better pace, the reality of is most of these animals are very, very sick and they're not healthy for you.

So let's talk about plants, because then everybody says, well, let's move to plantbased nutrition. And that would be better, right? Well, not necessarily. So fertilizer was originally invented in slightly before then, and then it was adopted as a normal thing. So we're talking about there were fertilizers probably back as far as we know, people were growing things, but we're talking about chemicals. We're talking about synthetic fertilizers, these kind of these inventions of if we add this to the soil, the plant grows faster. And that was adopted early 1861. And all the way through World War II became kind of this growing trend of using more and more of these chemical synthetic fertilizers so that the crops had a larger yield. Those fertilizers are causing some problems I'll get into in just a moment. Next, they had to develop these plants to be able to be transported. So if I'm going to try to get this avocado to you that is grown in Mexico, it has to last a little while. If I'm going to take apples that were gotten in, say, Washington state, and I need to deliver them to Florida, I have to make sure that they're transportable so they've bred the plants, the fruits and vegetables, to be more durable, not necessarily for better health, but just durability.

How is this thing going to look when it arrives at its location? And then another thing that they do to make sure that these plants are just right when they get to your grocery store is they pick them early, so they will pick them before they ripen. And then they use this technology to keep them from ripening until they get to the location. They call it delayed ripening technology. And they use this ethylene gas that they'll spray on these plants to ripen them up quickly right there at the store or right at the warehouse for that particular vendor. So they're not in the ground nearly as long as they would be if they were normal plants. If you just planted a heirloom tomato in your backyard that hasn't been farmed lately. Those plants will grow slow. They will grow a little. And when they're done and they're ready and they're ripe, they've drawn as much benefit out of the ground the minerals and the vitamins that you need that they possibly can. Whereas when you pick them early and they're ripening at the store, they didn't have nearly as much time to pick up that stuff that you need.

And then again, with the fertilizers and all the other things that are going on, they're growing very quickly and not necessarily for the right reasons, and you're not necessarily getting all the nutrition. So plants that we have today, fruits and vegetables we eat today are not as nutrient rich as plants were when our great grandparents and our great great grandparents were farming. So just realized that we're not getting as much value for the calorie as we would have in the past. And then, of course, with plants, there's the weed killers, like roundup glyphosate. Okay, this was introduced in the 19s 70s. And even though that more and more they know that this is a cancer causing element and it's in our foods. And when we eat the foods that are made with these things, if they're not cleaned properly, and even then, maybe not, then we're getting these getting this glyphosate in our body. This chemical is in our body as a function of these things. Next, I want to jump into light pollution. Now, it seems like a mild thing, but most folks don't realize that actual household lights are not something that's been around forever.

Incandescent lights were invented by a guy named Humphrey Davy, but it was Edison that kind of made these things more popular in the 1880s. And so most houses didn't have electricity for a long, long time after that. So most houses were lit by gas lighter, candles all the way past well into the 1019 hundreds. In fact, almost half the houses didn't have electric power. So you're looking at lights not being a part of the indoor or at least unnatural lights not being a part of our normal environment, really in less than 100 years. So for our bodies to adapt to night time light, that can be a problem. The next area I want to jump into as toxins. Tens of thousands of toxic chemicals are released into our environment and homes every single day. And over 800 of those are known as endocrine disruptors. Now, an endocrine disruptor basically means it messes with your hormones, in particular your sex hormones. So if you're feeling kind of blah, you're a little bit maybe feeling a little bloated, it might be that you're being subjected to too many endocrine disruptors. And your estrogen is messed up, your testosterone is messed up, and it's causing you some problems.

So where are we getting these toxins? All these toxins are out there. This is not necessarily plants pumping a lot of it in the air, although they are. It's also in your home. So if you have furniture that has flame retardants in it, the pesticides you're using in your yard, the Pharmaceuticals that we flush down our toilets that end up in our water. And on and on and on. We are subjected to tens of thousands of toxic chemicals every single day, and those are adversely affecting our endocrine system, our health, the function of our liver on and on and on. So the subjection of these toxins, which were not available, not out there 200 years ago, is another problem that's affecting our health span. And then the last one I want to talk about is stress. We live in this new 24/7 news cycle. The news is always there. This was not the case 100 years ago. Even when the TV was on, there was one news or two news casts per day. When I was growing up as a young adult, I know they had the morning news, and then they would turn off and talk about other stuff.

You'd come home, there might be a 04:00, 05:00, and 06:00 and then 11:00 news, but they'd give you one news cycle each day. It might change a little bit from the morning to the evening. But most people sat they read the newspaper in the morning, and then they watched the news that night, and that was about it. Now news hits us every single day, all day, all the time. We have notifications on our phone, notifications on our computer, and then add social media, the toxic relationships, the things that are going on there. And then just the fact that the news media is on the social media feeding you the stuff, the headlines all day and all night, it's there constant, constant, constant. And then, of course, we have to add tribalism. And this takes all of that, the 24 hours news cycle, the social media. And this literally takes up a factor of ten. The tribalism that's going on in the world today, particularly in the United States. And now we're seeing in other places like Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and elsewhere. This tribalism is exploding our stress levels, and that's really adversely affecting our health.

And so I put these in an order. As far as we're talking about our food, our food is messed up. It's not what it used to be. We're not training or working out as much as we used to or at least doing things physically as we used to. We don't have good quality food. And then there's light pollution. Cell phones did not exist, and now they do, and they're in our hands 24/7. We've got watches that buzz and beep and moan, so we're not sleeping as well. We've got all these toxins that our liver and our body is having to deal with, and we're not functioning very well with these toxins. And then, of course, the introduction of stress your job, whether you're going to keep your job, lose your job. People used to live knowing that they're going to work. They have a job for the next 35, 50 years, and nothing is going to take that away from them. That's not the case today. Too much is changing too fast, and it's really struggle for most of us to keep up with that. So with all this bad stuff that's going on, what do we do?

How do we take the fact that our bodies were not designed for the lifestyle that we live today? How do we take that step back and solve this problem? The first step in solving any problem is knowing you have a problem. So the first thing I want you to do, listening to this podcast is come to the realization that these things are affecting you, even though you might not believe that they are. They are. And so it's important for you to recognize that first and then take some actions. Now, in my kind of mindset, my opinion, the first place to start is food. It's the easiest for you to change, and it's the one that's probably going to move the needle the most for most of us. And the answer for food is get the highest quality, real food you can afford. So when I say high quality, I'm not just talking about organic, which, yes, is more expensive in the grocery store. I'm talking about food that didn't have to be transported across the world, meaning it was locally grown, it was fresh. You didn't have to go anywhere. So, you know, stayed in the ground until it was ripe, and then it was picked and then it was sold to you.

You can do this at farmers markets. You can do this at coops you can look for in your grocery store locally grown product that's typically going to be better for you than what you find in most standard grocery store aisles. The other is frozen foods. Surprisingly, a lot of frozen foods, organic frozen foods were grown all the way to ripeness and then flash frozen, so they were then able to be distributed. That's a better model than the distribution and then ethanol, Ethylene, gas. So look for foods that are going to give you the highest quality that you can still afford. And farmers markets, local farms, buying half a cow with your friends, whatever you need to do, find ways to get the highest quality real food that you can possibly afford. And that's going to move the needle the most for most of us. The second is movement. You have to make movement a priority. And the easiest way to do that is to stop leaning on basic conveniences. If you live within a mile of your grocery store, in all likelihood, you could walk to that grocery store to do your shopping most days and walk back.

You don't have to buy 15 bags of groceries. You can go to the store by a couple of bags. So you get some fresh vegetables, some fresh meat, everything fresh. Go home, Cook up meals, and then two days later, go back. Yes, it takes time, but that investment of time is going to improve your health significantly. So make movement a priority. It doesn't have to be exercise, but just make movement a regular part of most of your days and try to pull some of those conveniences back. I don't own a car here. I live on an island. Quite literally, the furthest thing for me right now is 15 km. I could walk there if I had to. So as you look at the way you're living and the things you're doing, look for those conveniences that are not serving you unless they need to serve you. So yes, of course, if you need to get somewhere quickly, an automobile is the best way to do it. If you don't, can you walk there? Can you walk there? Can you take a taxi back or a bus back? Can you walk there and walk back? Take those opportunities to add more movement to your day stress.

Now, stress was the biggest one for me and it took a long time, but finally I started saying I have to prioritize this and it was the last thing I addressed. I wish I had addressed it earlier. Choose When You Let News and Social Media In So if you wake up in the morning and the first thing you do is check news and social media, you're already setting yourself up for kind of a frustrating day. Something bad is going to hit you in the face every single time you do that. Now there might be some nice things. You might see a little cat video and this and that make you laugh. That's great. But just recognize that you control your consumption of social media. And so choose when you're going to let that end and do it in bite sized pieces. It does not need to be a 24 hours cycle. And if you find yourself at 200 in the morning checking social media, you already have an issue. Okay? And then the final thing is on stress is check yourself and see if you feel like you're getting wrapped up in this tribalism stuff.

It's really easy because the headline is built to set you off. It's built to set you off as a yes, that's good. Or it's built to say, oh my God, they're doing that again. Every single one of those headlines is built to do that. It is a tribal, one sided message focused on an ideology that's intended to upset the other ideology and get both ideologies reading that copy. So check yourself. If you find yourself getting drawn into this stuff on social media or just when you're reading different things, recognize when it's happening, take the step back and turn it off. You don't need this. Do some meditation do some things that help you relax and get over this, particularly if it's in the evening, if you know that it's going to affect your sleep, which is the next one. Sleep is huge, very important. I'm not going to put it over food, but I'm going to put it way up there. But I'm just going to say this is probably one of the hardest things for most people to address because you either feel like you sleep well or you don't. But I'm going to say you need to have a natural nightly ritual, something that's going to relax you, something that's going to let you unwind, something that's going to communicate to your body.

It's time to go to sleep. And that means getting away from unnatural light, like screens and light bulbs and other things, TVs and literally just saying, I need some time to unwind. And this can be a warm bath. This can be listening to music and can be reading fiction in a paper book. It can be just meditating, it can be a lot of things brushing your teeth can be a part of and it should be a part of your nightly ritual. So just set yourself up with a nightly ritual that communicates to your body. It's time to let go. Move away from the unnatural blue light, move back to the more Amber, flame based lights like candles, and let yourself relax before sleep so your body can get a good restful sleep. I know this is harder said than done, but it's really important. And then the final one is toxins. And again, toxins are all around you. So consistently take a moment and audit your lifestyle. The Environmental working group has resources@ewg.org. They've got this really cool app that you can put on your phone and it literally lets you look up consumer goods.

Just scan the barcode. So you go to EWG.org and go on your phone. You can look up EWG or Environmental working Group pull down their app. It literally lets you look this stuff up so you can see what's in the products that you're using. So your cleaners or your shampoo or your body wash or your makeup or any of that. It may be introducing toxins into your system, including some of those 800 or so endocrine disruptors we talked about earlier. So to recap this, the first step in fixing your health and aligning your health span with your lifespan is to understand that there is a disconnect, there is a problem. The first step is getting good, high quality real food, the highest and best quality you can afford. And that preferably means organic, fewer pesticides, fewer hormones and locally grown. So there's not the artificial things that they tend to do with the food and where possible, heirloom and some of those and a proper rotation of crops where they're getting all the nutrients your body needs. Again, highest quality, real food you can afford. Movement. Movement has to be a priority. Walk if you can, ride a bike when you can, don't lean on the conveniences of having a car for something as simple as taking a little jaunt over to the convenience store, the grocery store to buy something you need.

If you can take the time, walk there, walk back, ride a bike there, ride a bike back. Those things are going to help you feel a lot better. Be healthier, more fit, and align your health span with your lifespan. Anything you can do to manage stress, which means not letting some of it in in the first place. Tribalism, the 24 hours news cycle and social media are all within your control. You control those inputs into your brain. You control those stressors. So if you let them in, they're going to mess with you. Don't let them in. Choose the times, particularly in the evening. There's no reason there's nothing on the Internet, there's nothing on the television that's going to adversely affect you before you wake up in the morning. 99 point 99% of the time. So let it go. Let all that go. Find a distressed way to spend the evening. So that the final thing here. Sleep. You're getting great sleep. Have a good nightly ritual that pulls you away from those things and get your body ready for a good restful sleep. And then finally, toxins. So do an audit of your lifestyle.

What are some things that you're doing that are adding toxins to your life? I talked about the website or the app from Environmental Working Group, but also just other things like if you smoke or if you drink alcohol, those are toxins and so they're adding to your toxic load. So think about the toxins in your life. Do that lifestyle audit and do what you can to reduce those toxins. So if you do these things, you will make sure that your health span is more in line with your lifespan and you'll spend less of your life unhealthy. And in the end, none of us really wants to live longer if we can't live better. So focus on aligning your health span with your lifespan and you'll be happy, healthy and fit. Thank you.


Post Show/Recap

[00:41:28.850] – Allan

Welcome back Ras!

[00:41:30.590] – Rachel

Hey, Allan. You know, way back when I was taking the NASM certified personal trainer course and test, they had said that at that time, 66% of Americans older than 20 are overweight, 34% are obese. And it was such a high percent to me that it was just really it just stuck with me. And then they went on to say that, of course, the World Health Organization thinks that lack of physical activity is probably a culprit of that, which I kind of agree with as well. But based on your history lesson, that is certainly not the only reason that our country is overweight or obese.

[00:42:12.650] – Allan

Yeah. A couple of things come to mind. One is it's worse now that textbook was not that old. But every year the number gets bigger on both sides, the obesity and overweight. So the number is getting bigger. And we're not being given necessarily all the data we need to resolve that, because you're absolutely right. The movement aspects of it are a park, but it's like part of a car. You're not going to get anywhere with the chassis. You need the wheels and everything else you can look at and say, okay, this is part of the problem, but you could take and fix part of the problem and not really fix the whole problem. It's all of it. It's nutrition, it's movement, it's stress management, it's sleep. Yeah, it's all of those things. And the frustrating thing for me is that I could pull 100 people off the street and say, if you needed to lose weight, what would you do? What would you do? What are the things you need to do? And so it's like if you put them out there, like the squares where you can fill in more than one, okay, everybody's going to know it's diet.

[00:43:32.290] – Allan

And the term they would probably use in the survey would be exercise, better sleep, stress management, take a pill. And a small percentage would click, take a pill, of course. But they all know you change what you eat, you move more, you try to get better sleep, you try to manage your stress. Those things are going to help you lose weight. Now, they may say exercise is the most important and we can go back and forth. I've had doctors tell me sleep is actually maybe the most important. And I personally believe the food is the most important, but we can go back and forth on that. But I think everybody generally knows those are the things you have to do.

[00:44:12.260] – Rachel

Right.

[00:44:12.680] – Allan

The problem is this is the guidelines and things that come forward. And we've seen that in history, is that it gets skewed. It gets skewed by politics and people being involved. And so the nutrition rules that we've been given, the things we think we're supposed to do, they're politicized. And as a result, they're not right. They're wrong. And in many cases, they're so horrifically wrong that we now have an overweight and obesity, 70+ percent of Americans are overweight or obese. It's like 39% of Americans are obese. That's insane.

[00:44:56.180] – Allan

And it's based on data that was skewed. And even if new data comes out, the guidelines barely budged. And if they do budge, like they recently decided to drop saturated fat or cholesterol from being the bad food, the bad guy, but they didn't announce it and say, oh, well, guess what? You should actually probably eat eggs and bacon for breakfast. No, they didn't. They just quietly shoved it to the side. No harm, no foul. And there is harm, and there is a foul, but it's this quiet back away that occurred two or three generations later, and we're suffering the consequences of that.

[00:45:40.330] – Allan

Now, what does that mean for the go forward? And unfortunately, we are repeating history again, and we will continue to do so until we learn from history. So with Covid and this frustrates me more than anything. So if I get a little rowdy, I apologize and I have to bleep some of my language out, which kind of happens. I apologize.

[00:46:03.170] – Allan

But you do not hear the leaders anywhere explaining to you the best thing you can do for this disease is to be healthy in the first place. And so anything you do to improve your health and fitness makes you a better combatant against this virus. This virus kills the weak. I'm sorry, but that's what happens. It's people over 85. It's people with comorbidities. That's who it's killing. It's not killing generally healthy people. Now, if you see someone who thought was healthy and they died, you probably can look around. And if they did some workouts, they might find some other things that just weren't visible on the outside. We know people who have type II diabetes, but they look completely healthy. We know people who have heart problems, but they look completely healthy. We know people who have lung issues, but they look completely healthy.

[00:47:07.070] – Allan

And so it happens. And yes, it can be hit or miss if you're already healthy to know those things. So a good check up and making sure you're dotting your I's and like you said, checking off the boxes you're supposed to check off. We have this within our power if we do the bare minimum, which okay, so per the World Health Organization, you keep your sugar down here. Per the government guidelines, US guidelines, if you move intensely for 75 minutes per week, that's enough. Okay. But that's low bar thinking.

[00:47:44.660] – Rachel

It is.

[00:47:45.450] – Allan

Yeah, I'm just going to get by.

[00:47:49.310] – Rachel

I agree.

[00:47:50.750] – Allan

It's the same thing as like if you sat there and said, oh, well, here's this chart. And as long as my BMI is 29 and not 30, as long as my waist is 39 and not 40, I'm okay. And that's low bar thinking.

[00:48:06.820] – Rachel

That's a good point. I think that's absolutely right. I think the information or the guidelines that are out there are just that just guidelines and not necessarily the right things. And I think my main takeaway would be to consult with your doctor and get some more information or…

[00:48:30.170] – Rachel

The Standard American Diet is an old diet. It's been around and it's hardly changed over the years. But maybe it's time to experiment. Maybe it's time to try a plant Forward diet or a low carb/keto-type diet or the Mediterranean diet. I think it's worth changing or switching things up to see if that benefits you in any way.

[00:48:52.570] – Allan

Well, the standard American diet has drastically changed since the 1950s. As we talked about the introduction of cereals, we talked about the introduction of carbs, and as a result, people started eating more of those things. They were cost effective. More sugar was available, it was cheap, it was easy, and it was delicious. So more of that was being eaten. And then there's more processed food. So it's calorie dense, nutritionally weak.

[00:49:23.010] – Allan

And we kept doing that and kept doing that. And then they're like, well, why the heck are we having heart attacks? And they asked the wrong guy. They literally asked the wrong guy. And everybody got in line. And the corporations that were benefiting from it, they paid off scientists. They did the things they had to do to make sure they were on the bottom of that pyramid to make sure that they were the ones that got the most juice out of the whole thing and noone will back away completely from it. You can look at the Canadian guidelines, relative, the US guidelines, and kind of see the divergence. Canada is going in the right direction with nutrition. The United States is not going fast enough.

[00:50:06.830] – Allan

And as a result, we are suffering this crisis. And we have to learn from this. We have to learn that the guidelines and things that are put forward to you while rudimentary and right can be great. So Covid, wash your hands.

[00:50:22.620] – Rachel

Sure.

[00:50:23.570] – Allan

Try to avoid touching your face and stay away from sick people.

[00:50:29.360] – Rachel

Yeah.

[00:50:30.100] – Allan

Those are excellent. But then as soon as the vaccine was introduced, they stopped talking about that. Up until that point, that's all they talked about those three things. It was like over and over. I actually walked around and took pictures of different sinks I was washing my hands in. It kind of became a thing. And that was it. Just remind people, wash your hands more often. And then beyond that, all they had to say was, we noticed the data says the people who are older and have comorbidities are the ones that are dying the most. You can look at a chart, it's easy as you see it, and it's like, okay, so if you have a comorbidity, that is a lifestyle disease, like diabetes, like heart disease, like being overweight those things, you can do something about it. If you're listening to this podcast, then you know you can because I've said you can. But beyond that, you wouldn't be listening to this podcast if you didn't know there was an answer.

[00:51:27.400] – Rachel

Right?

[00:51:28.420] – Allan

You're wanting to change something. So to change something, you got to do something. And all I'm saying is from this whole prospect is learn from history. You are your advocate, you are the right person to take care of you. And you know in your heart exactly what you need to do. You need to change the way you eat. You need to change your movement, improve it, do more.

[00:51:49.120] – Allan

You need to look at this all holistically and say, what do I need to do to make myself healthier? And that is going to make you more resilient. And that's going to help you beat this. Yes. You can go get vaccinated. And I encourage you, particularly if you're in a high risk group, go do that. Yes. Stay away from sick people if you need to. If you can. Do what you have to do to protect yourself, for sure. But the most important thing you can do to protect yourself is to just be healthier. Get your vitamin D, get outside, move around, find joy in your life, sleep well, eat well, do the things you know that are going to make you healthier and happier. And that's going to help you get past this.

[00:52:33.900] – Rachel

Absolutely. Like I mentioned in the beginning, I work really hard to maintain as healthy of a lifestyle that I can because I want to suppress as much as I possibly have under my control, the chances of me getting breast cancer. That is my biggest health fear, because that's what I've been dealt for genetics. And so I work really hard at that. But that translates to everything. I'm also working hard to reduce my risk for diabetes and heart disease and survive illnesses, whether I get shingles or the chicken pox or even Covid. So I feel like the healthier my body is, the healthier I'll be able to respond. And I think that's the key takeaway that everybody should take home today.

[00:53:19.070] – Allan

Yeah. Because when I went into the hospital here and got tested, because Tammy tested positive first for the next day, because you have to go in the morning. It's like a two hour window for testing. So I went in the next morning, and I got tested, and I'm sitting out there, and the doctor calls me over, and he said. “positivo”. I'm like, “okay.”

[00:53:39.780] – Allan

And he's like, no. I'm like, okay, I got it. I'm going to go home. I'm going to stay home for a couple of weeks, and then I'm going to get over it. But he's looking at me. He's like, no, I know what he's thinking. You're 56 years old and you have Covid. You're going to die, right? And he's like, no, Positivo. This is solemn Positivo. And I'm like, okay, I know this is not good news, but okay. And then I just said to him, I just go home. And he's like, no. He says, you have a ride? And I'm like, no, I was going to walk home, and I think that hospital is something like about maybe a mile and a quarter.

[00:54:23.680] – Rachel

Okay.

[00:54:24.390] – Allan

No, maybe 2 miles. Maybe close to 2 miles from my home, from Lulu. I'm just going to walk home, and then I'll be there, and he's like, no, you have to go in the ambulance.

[00:54:34.990] – Rachel

Oh, gosh.

[00:54:38.570] – Allan

Right. Well, I had Covid, so in their minds, I was done. My blood oxygen never went below 95.

[00:54:47.160] – Rachel

That's good.

[00:54:48.420] – Allan

Most of the time I was sitting right around 97, 98. I was never in any danger. I was never anything. I was fatigued and lost taste and smell and I still don't have my smell back. But that makes me capable to do a lot of jobs around Lulu's that most people wouldn't want to do.

[00:55:07.490] – Rachel

Oh, gosh.

[00:55:09.350] – Allan

But all that said, and I don't mean to joke about it because I know it's a very serious thing, but I ate well, I slept well, I managed stress. And while during that period of time because of Covid, because everything else I couldn't do the things I always did, I had put on some weight and so I was at a higher weight than I would normally like to be within the normal ranges that I bounced around. I was maybe about 5 or 8 pounds over what my normal roof was for a feasting period of the year. But that makes sense because I stretched a normal feasting of like 4 months into 16, of course. But that said, even when I feast, I tend to eat really good food, I go for the higher quality stuff, I eat a lot of vegetables, I eat meat, I don't eat a lot of processed stuff, I don't eat a lot of bread and other stuff.

[00:56:08.050] – Allan

When I'm on my feastt, I tend to eat a little more of it. But now I'm back in a famine and I don't. It's just meat and vegetables, that's it. But that's the point. If you want to learn from history, history tells you that the guidelines that are out there are not what you necessarily need to be following and in many cases they just don't go far enough.

[00:56:31.010] – Allan

So find your lines. Yes. If you're not getting the 75 minutes of intense exercise or 150 minutes of moderate exercise, set that as your next goal. A lot of people sit there and say due to that 10,000 steps you're looking at, I'm only doing two. Now that seems like a huge well then just make a five. Just start with something.

[00:56:50.540] – Rachel

Right.

[00:56:50.960] – Allan

Set it at 5000, start with something. And then when you get to five, look at ten, you get to ten and say, Well, I wonder what 15 would feel like.

[00:56:58.780] – Rachel

Yep.

[00:56:59.520] – Allan

And that's how you get there. But if you just sit there and say, oh, well, I'm at ten, I'm just going to stay at ten, and then that's not enough to help you get to your goals, you'll give up on it. So just realize that those guidelines are fine. The rules of thumbs are simple because we love simple. But life is more complex than that. Our biology is much more complex than that. So take the time, but be your own advocate and don't just settle for what the government or what the standards say you should do. Do what you know you need to do for yourself.

[00:57:35.220] – Rachel

Yes, I think that's great. Great takeaway, Allan.

[00:57:38.370] – Allan

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

[00:57:41.250] – Rachel

Sounds great. Take care.

[00:57:42.620] – Allan

You too.

[00:57:43.500] – Rachel

Thanks.

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Sponsor

This episode of the 40+ Fitness Podcast is sponsored by Organifi.

Organifi is a line of organic superfood blends that offers plant based nutrition made with high quality ingredients. Each Organifi blend is science backed to craft the most effective doses with ingredients that are organic, free of fillers and contain less than 3g of sugar per serving. They won’t take you out of ketosis, if that’s your way of eating.

Your body is an amazing organic machine. The food we eat and drink is information for that machine. This includes adaptagens. These are compounds that balance hormones and help you deal with stress in a healthier way. If you’re feeling tired, these compounds give you a boost of energy. If you’re stressed, they help you return to a natural state of calm. They literally help you adapt to the stress of life.

This is why I’m a big fan of Organifi Green juice with essential superfoods and a clinical dose of Ashwaganda. It helps reduce stress and support healthy cortisol levels. It mixes well with water or your beverage of choice and it tastes awesome! This has become a part of my morning ritual.

Organifi offers the best tasting, high quality superfood beverages without breaking the bank. Each serving costs less than $3 per day. Easy, convenient, and cost effective.

Go to www.organifi.com/40plus and use code 40plus for 20% off your order. That's O R G A N I F I dot com forward slash 40plus and use code 40plus  for 20% off any item.

Sponsor

This episode of the 40+ Fitness Podcast is sponsored by Unidragon.

As the holidays approach, you might be looking for a unique gift that will entertain and delight. Unidragon has you covered. They make high-quality wooden puzzles. But these aren’t like regular puzzles with the standard style pieces. Their unique design is something I’ve never seen before. They’re works of art.

We all know that as we age, we risk a loss of cognitive strength. But with neuroplasticity, we can train our brain and slow decline. Puzzles do just that. Plus these beautiful puzzles are something you can do with the whole family, be it your significant other or your grandchildren.

Each month, Unidragon comes out with a new design. And most of them have multiple levels of depth and difficulty. These make great gifts, but you might just enjoy buying them for yourself.

I received the medium-sized Playful Parrots puzzle. It came a beautiful wooden box. You should have seen my wife’s eyes light up when she saw it. I fully expect to buy more of the Unidragon puzzles for ourselves and our guests.

You have to check them out at unidragon.com and use the promo code 40plus to get 10% off your order. Gift-giving problem solved. That’s U N I D R A G O N dot COM and 4 0 P L U S for 10% off.

Say Hello

[00:03:54.880] – Allan

Hey, Ras. Welcome back!

[00:03:56.810] – Rachel

Hey, Allan. Yeah. Thanks.

[00:03:58.340] – Allan

It's been two whole weeks.

[00:04:00.230] – Rachel

It has. I've just had the most wonderful vacation. I feel so relaxed. I feel so refreshed. And really, my heart is just full. I really enjoyed spending so much time with my friends back where we used to live. It was just the most perfect vacation.

[00:04:14.770] – Allan

Good. We've been here. Tammy was diagnosed with dengue fever

[00:04:23.850] – Rachel

Oh, no.

[00:04:23.850] – Allan

So, she got sick. Got sick just as we were really starting to open up the bed and breakfast and got sick. Really sick, like high fevers and all kinds of weird symptoms. Went to the doctor. He said there are three types of dengue that you test for. There might be more than that, but she had two of them, so she's an overachiever when it comes to those types of things. But she went through it and she's recovered.

[00:04:50.650] – Allan

Other people we're hearing around here haven't been that lucky. They're sick for weeks and months. So she's doing okay. She's still a little fatigued, but it was just touch and go there with her fever and getting her tested. It was not Covid. She went in for the Covid test and wasn't Covid. And then she went in to the doctor a week or so later, and it was dengue fever, but she's doing better now. And so that's the good thing. But just kind of weird times you're living in a tropical paradise and then dengue fever because there's mosquitoes,there are everywhere.

[00:05:27.590] – Allan

But, yeah, that's kind of been my week. Plus, we launched the Crush the Holidays Challenge, and that's been huge fun with the daily videos and all that kind of stuff. So that's going on right now, and I'm just having a blast. I haven't really done a whole lot of new coaching with new clients or anything like that. And even though this isn't what I would call a full coaching program, it's really just sort of a group thing as we go through together. It's been fun to get back into it after taking kind of a break with my vacation and then trying to get Lulu's open.

[00:06:03.120] – Rachel

Wow. Wonderful. I'm glad to hear that the Crush the holidays is going well. It sounds like a lot of fun.

[00:06:08.520] – Allan

Yeah, it will be. It has been. We have the Panamanian holidays at the beginning of November, and then you have the American holidays, Thanksgiving and whatnot at the end of November. So there's a lot going on everywhere. But this is just a good reminder if you're falling off your track sometimes having accountability, having people around you can be a really good thing.

[00:06:32.750] – Rachel

Oh, absolutely. This is the season to get all your buddies together and make some really good health and fitness goals that you can stick to, at least through these next few months.

[00:06:42.510] – Allan

Absolutely. So, are you ready to talk about digital life? The toxic digital life?

[00:06:49.160] – Rachel

Yes. Let's do this

Episode

The other day, I got into an argument on Twitter and, well, I guess you know how that went. The thing about these things is that you never really get them to understand or believe what you believe and they'll never get you to understand or believe what they believe. Very seldom do we change anybody's mind. So show of hands who spends too much time on their phone or computer? Well, my hands raised, and maybe yours is, too for me, it's on the computer. I don't like being on my phone all that much, actually, most of the time, my phone is still plugged in at my nightstand for most of the day.

Unless I go somewhere. The only reason I have a phone at this point is for WhatsApp? It's the application we use down here to communicate and message. And really, that's the only reason I have it is I can't use WhatsApp without having a smartphone. So I have that phone and I use it for that and very seldom. And I'll use it for my sleep and things like that, which we'll talk about in a minute. But I spend very little time on the phone. I spend a great deal of time on the computer now.

Part of that, obviously, is because I work on the computer. My clients are on the computer. My podcast is on the computer. I am recording this on a computer. And so the question that you have to ask yourself is with all the digital time I have for work and the things that I need, am I spending time on there for things I don't really need? And what is that doing to my health and fitness? And maybe just maybe you could do well with a digital detox.

So first, let's talk about why this is a problem. Why what's going on on our computers can be a big problem for us. The first thing I want to talk about is our brain. Now our brain was designed to look for movement. It was designed to look for things that are out of line. And so if you look at the way most of what's going on with social media, you scroll down the page, you see images, you see videos, things that are drawing your attention, and all of that is on purpose.

If we were out in the wherever forest or in the Woods or in a jungle, movement meant that there was something going on. It meant that there was an animal. And we need to know is this animal a predator or food. And so immediately we're drawn, our attention is drawn to it, and we're focused on it, and we're looking at it now. If it's a person, we have to decide, is this a friend or a foe? Because in tribal environments, sometimes people you don't know, the others, they're dangerous.

And so we need to know if there's movement, exactly what's causing that movement. So our brain is naturally drawn to these things, video and audio and all the different things that are going on. So it's very easy to draw our attention to these things. And one thing that happens in the brain that's responsible for making that happen is a dopamine response. So we see something that's interesting. There's a dopamine response. And so getting on Facebook saying, those likes, seeing those shares, seeing everything that's going on, that interaction, that movement, that stuff is all a dopamine hit, and it's easy to get addicted to that dopamine hit and want it more and more.

Which is why people are spending so much more time on social media and social media is getting so much better at getting us in and keeping us. In fact, they want you on their platform every waking hour if they can make that happen. And I kind of think that's what meta is all about for Facebook, but I'll get into that in a minute. The second reason that this is important is it's about distraction and things are happening that really shouldn't be happening, like texting and driving, because again, those dopamine hits are coming from those dings, they're coming from those likes, they're coming from those responses, the comments many people find it very hard to set their phone down and focus on any one task.

So this can be very distracting, which takes away not just from performance, like if you're doing things with work or trying to do homework or things like that, it's quite literally taking your attention away from things that could be problematic, like driving. And then there's the problem of this distraction being basically a time suck. And what I mean by that is, I guess a good example would be I was having a conversation with a friend and she asked me if I was on Treehouse, which is an audio platform where people can get together.

There can be a forum. There can be basically kind of a group person or one person talking at a time. They can bring on guests. And so it's kind of for lack of a better word, an audio chat room. And what I found was that when I got on Treehouse, it was just a time suck. I would sit there listening to various conversations, and they could be interesting. But in reality, they weren't as valuable as I needed them to be. And they were taking me away from things that I needed to be doing.

Facebook has an algorithm that is built to keep you engaged. It's built to keep you on their site, keep you on the platform. And I think the meta thing he's working on, that Zuckerberg is working on over there at Facebook. I think it's going to be just as addictive. It reminds me a lot of Second Life, which was kind of a multiplayer game type of environment that had a lot of promise that's actually still around, but not used nearly as much as it was when it first came out.

I think he's going to basically try to marry those two things together so that the interface is a lot more inclusive, a lot more in. You're going to feel more like you're on in Another World, an automated and augmented world, and it's going to have a lot of the features that Facebook has. And I really think that's going to be kind of a scary, scary thing for a lot of people, particularly if they get sucked in and don't want to come out. So a little dystopian, but it is what it is.

It's a distraction.

SPONSOR

This episode of the 40+ Fitness Podcast is sponsored by Organifi.

Organifi is a line of organic superfood blends that offers plant-based nutrition made with high-quality ingredients. Each Organifi blend is science-backed to craft the most effective doses with ingredients that are organic, free of fillers and contain less than 3g of sugar per serving.

In our 24/7 always on world, going without sleep seems to carry a badge of honor. But that’s not how your body sees it. Sleep is when all the wonderful things happen inside your body. Hormones reset, and healing and restoration happens. You know how much better you feel after a good night’s sleep. Getting good quality sleep is a priority for me

This is why I’m a big fan of Organifi Gold juice with ingredients like Tumeric, Reishi Mushroom, and ginger, it’s designed to support rest, relaxation, recovery, and repair. It’s a delicious and nutritious warm, golden tea. I use water, but you can also use milk or a milk alternative. This has become a part of my evening wind-down.

Organifi offers the best tasting, high-quality superfood beverages without breaking the bank. Each serving costs less than $3 per day. Easy, convenient, and cost-effective.

Go to www.organifi.com/40plus and use code 40plus for 20% off your order. That's O R G A N I F I dot com forward slash 40plus and use code 40plus  for 20% off any item.

Next is sleep, your computer, your phone. They all put off light and we know that blue light reduces melatonin production and melatonin is the hormone. We need to start feeling sleepy and just go to sleep. And so if you're doing anything that's limiting your melatonin production, you're not going to sleep as well.

And so getting on your computer getting on your phone is going to be a problem. And even if you're using the blue blocker glasses or using the features that now come on computers and phones to change the lighting on your computer. It's still basically going to have some you're not getting back to candlelight and sunsets and all the things that our body was used to. So there's going to be an effect. And then the other side, as we talked about the dopamine hit. But oftentimes if you get onto these platforms and you're dealing with an issue that's political or medical or this or that it's very likely.

And that's how they keep you on the platform, that there's going to be an adrenaline spike. Someone's going to post something. And as I mentioned at the beginning of the show, got on a Twitter site, and then immediately you realize, okay, I'm angry. I'm frustrated. My heart is racing, my head is racing. I'm no way ready to go to sleep. And so these things can be very disruptive to your sleep. And if you're having issues with sleep, the less time you spend on your phone, probably the better.

Finally, is stress. Social media strives on tribalism right now. We've just recently gone through some court cases and very strong polls by political parties on both sides of this thing. And it was just back and forth, back and forth. And you could just see if you followed enough people and you paid enough attention, the disparity, the gap in this tribalism, and what was going on around that and how stressful that was for a lot of people. And the thing about social media is because you're not sitting in a room, having a conversation with someone, it's very easy to dehumanize someone.

So when someone is discussing something with you on Facebook, unless you know them personally, very likely, they have dehumanized you and don't even think of you in the light of the way they would if they were sitting face to face with you. And that's really changed the way people communicate on social media, which can be very stressful because they're going to be amplified considerably amplified. The other thing that happens on social media is that it's seldom based on real life. People will say things, do things, post things that just aren't them.

They're living a life or they're presenting a life that's not real. So we have these filters, and I'm sure you're aware of those where you can make yourself look a little prettier, cut out some lines, do this and that I see some of them. They don't even look human anymore. But they put them out there. And so you see someone and you think, wow, they look so great. What they're doing, look at their skin. They look so great. It might not even be real. Okay. And so stressing yourself out about that can be a problem.

And then the other side is everybody feels like they're an expert. Someone will sit there and post a post. I fell off a ladder. What should I do? And everybody's trying to be their doctor put ice on it. This is bad. It's like go to a doctor, go to go to the emergency room if you need to do not try to self medicate, falling off of the ladder. But people believe they're experts. This is what they did. And that's how it's going to work. And the reality is they're not experts.

And everybody's going to chime in and you're going to hear some people say one thing and some people say another, and some of it is just quite frankly, scary and dangerous. So don't fall for that. Don't be a part of that. If you get on these things and someone's asking for help, you can tell them what your experience was. But first and foremost, get the medical attention that you need. And then there's just the trolls and the bots and the data miners. And so it's just this constant trove of people trying to egg you on, trying to cause issues, trying to get you going and also trying to steal information from you so they can steal money from you.

I just realized that social media could be a great thing, but for the most part, there is a lot more bad out there than there is good. I'm sorry, but it's just how it is. And then the final thing I want to talk about why digital detox is important is because it affects your posture. If you see people who are on their phones a lot, you'll notice, particularly while they're on their phone, their chest is collapsed, their shoulders are rounded forward and their head is craned forward.

So they're in this kind of rounded upper body thing, and most of them because they're spending so much time in that way, they're sticking. They're becoming more like that. They're having some issues with their posture. So here's a test I want you to try either. If you have a flat bench available, it works, or you can do this on the floor. But lay on a flat bench. Just lay on the flat bench and your head and your shoulders and your upper back and your lower back should your butt and your legs should all touch the bench.

There should be a slight curvature to your lower back, but everything else should naturally follow an alignment. And a lot of people you'll notice if you lay down your head doesn't necessarily want to touch that bench. That's an issue where you've been on your computer or on your phone too much. If you don't have a bench, you can do it on the floor. If you're familiar with what a snow angel is, where you lay on your back and you'd raise your arms over your head and you basically move your legs and your arms, making a circle with your arms and making kind of a triangle with your legs.

That's a snow angel. Try that on a flat floor and see how that feels. And for a lot of people, it's a little uncomfortable because your head again doesn't want to touch the floor or your feet don't want to touch the floor. And so you just see that there's some general misalignment of your body when you're trying to lay there flat. We've gotten comfortable with couches and beds and things like that to kind of remedy some of the stuff. But the reality of it is if we just spent less time on our phone, we would have better posture, we'd be taller and we'd feel better and look better.

Okay, so now the disclaimer. It is really cool to have all of the world's information at your fingertips. If you have a question how to do something, you can look it up on Google or YouTube. It saved people probably millions of dollars over time, billions of dollars over time because they're able to do things that they wouldn't otherwise know how to do, because they can look it up and they find a YouTube channel and they figure it out and then they do it themselves and they didn't have to pay somebody to do it.

It's cool to have that information at your fingertips and then being able to watch a movie or a documentary or a TV show when you want to. That's really cool. Some distractions are worth it. And so if you want to watch a good movie, watch a good movie if it's available to you 24/7, and then having access to your favorite music and podcasts, this one included, hopefully, is just one of those great things about having access to digital environments that you wouldn't normally have. If I had to mail you a CD of this episode every week.

It would be problematic for you to be a listener because we'd have to pay for the CD. We'd have to pay for the shipping and all the burning and all of it. Whereas I can post it very cost-effectively, and you have it available on your podcast or your iphone, your Android device, or wherever you listen to podcasts. It's there almost immediately. And that's really cool. And then the ability to connect with people as we're getting into the holidays, you may not be able to visit everybody.

I know last year with Covett, everything was going on. A lot of people weren't visiting or able to visit family members. So we got on Zoom and we spent time with family members doing Zoom calls. And so the ability to send an email, send a text, get on a Zoom call or Facebook FaceTime. All of those are really cool technologies that we should enjoy. And so I'm not saying that you should not have a phone, you should not use it. I'm just saying we should be a little bit more careful about how we're using it and understanding when we're in a toxic usage stage and when we're using it appropriately.

Okay, so now I want to get into a little bit about how we can now make this progress. How can we get away from the toxic aspects of this and get more into the value usage of the phone and the computer and make sure we're finding the right balance for our health and fitness. Okay, the first thing is the self-awareness. So ask yourself this question. How do you feel about your phone if you're disconnected from your phone for 30 minutes? Is that a problem? If you're disconnected from your phone for ten minutes?

Is that a problem? If you feel very uncomfortable about being more than arms, reach away from your phone. Something's going on. If you find yourself on Facebook or checking your email or your text messages 10, 20, 30 times a day, you might want to consider that there's something going on there. Okay, you can do a screen time report on your phone again. When I run them. It shows me using my phone, probably somewhere between six to ten minutes per day, and most of the time that's just for me to set my alarm and turn it back off.

Maybe check out WhatsApp here and there if I'm walking around. But I spend very little time on my phone, I spend an exceptional amount of time on my computer. So doing a screen time report will give you an idea and a measurement criteria to know if you're starting your cutback and doing it right. And then think about the things that you do on Facebook and ask yourself if time was money or health or fitness. Is it worth the investment? Is it worth the time I'm trading the health benefits I could get or the fitness benefits I could get for the time I'm spending on Facebook?

An argument on Twitter is not. So just recognize that there's value to distraction. There's value to the things we're doing. But at the point, we need to do that kind of cost benefit analysis to think of where we're spending the time, because that's going to help you understand what to cut and how to cut.

SPONSOR

This episode of the 40+ Fitness Podcast is sponsored by Unidragon.

As the holidays approach, you might be looking for a unique gift that will entertain and delight. Unidragon has you covered. They make high-quality wooden puzzles. But these aren’t like regular puzzles with the standard style pieces. Their unique design is something I’ve never seen before. They’re works of art.

We all know that as we age, we risk a loss of cognitive strength. But with neuroplasticity, we can train our brain and slow decline. Puzzles do just that. Plus these beautiful puzzles are something you can do with the whole family, be it your significant other or your grandchildren.

Each month, Unidragon comes out with a new design. And most of them have multiple levels of depth and difficulty. These make great gifts, but you might just enjoy buying them for yourself.

I received the medium-sized Playful Parrots puzzle. It came a beautiful wooden box. You should have seen my wife’s eyes light up when she saw it. I fully expect to buy more of the Unidragon puzzles for ourselves and our guests.

You have to check them out at unidragon.com and use the promo code 40plus to get 10% off your order. Gift-giving problem solved. That’s U N I D R A G O N dot COM and 4 0 P L U S for 10% off.

The next stage of this is to set achievable boundaries. Okay, one easy boundary that absolutely everybody should do unless there's an emergency reason or reason you need to have your phone on at night is to put your phone on airplane mode after 09:00 p.m.. That will help you sleep. You can read a book, a paper book, but make sure it's fiction, so it's not going to get you all engaged. And again, pushing up those dopamine levels and getting your brain moving. An enjoyable fiction book reading that in the evening versus being on your phone.

And if your phone's on airplane mode, the dings, the whistles, the pops, those aren't happening. So that Pavlovian Paul to get you back onto Facebook, isn't there? So consider that another easy achievable boundary is to say, I'm not going to have my phone at the table during family meals or at parties. So many times when I leave to go out with my wife, I don't even take my phone. I just leave it because she's got her phone. So if we need to call somebody, we can.

There's nowhere on this Island I can't walk. We're going to be with friends on the island, so it's not like there's anybody else that I need to have a conversation with at that point. So I just don't even take the phone. So sometimes going to dinner, sometimes going out with friends, I just leave my phone at home. I know that's a big step, but taking the step of at least not having your phone at the table during family dinners can go a long way towards having you a lot more present in the moment and a lot less distracted.

And back on Facebook, remember years and years ago when I first started seeing this was going to be a problem. I'm driving down the road and I see this truck with four guys in it and all four of them, including the driver, are looking at their phones. They're texting. And I was like, what's going on and the reality of it is we're not present most of the time. We're not here where we are, most of the time, we're spending a lot of time being somewhere else, and we need to fix that.

So set some boundaries, set some little tricks and things like that where times you're not going to use your phone and start trying to stick to that. And then from there, set a stretch goal. What I mean by that is if I say I'm going to leave my phone on airplane mode from nine on. Then I leave my phone on airplane mode, and then maybe I say as a stretch goal. I know when I get up in the morning I'm going to check emails, but then I'm going to go for my workout, my walk, maybe not taking my phone with me.

Now, I like having a music playing. I like having a podcast, but if I just said once per week or twice per week, I don't take my phone with me, and therefore I listen to everything else. I'm paying attention, I'm doing something else. And so helping to set those little time windows tighten those windows gives me more time off the platform. Now, is that going to detract from my ability to respond to important emails? No. Am I going to do it when I'm expecting an important email?

Probably not, but for the times where I know that it's not critical for me to have my phone for a personal reason or a business reason. But just because I have it, that's a good time to consider putting it on airplane mode and moving on again. We talked about the time suck things. What are the things that you're doing that really aren't adding value to your life and paying attention to those? Because there's this videos button. If you're on Facebook on the browser, there's a button for videos and everyone see it's a red light, and that's just the effect you click on that red button to basically turn it off and it opens up the videos.

And sure enough, here's highlight plays from football games or some crazy street chase or something like that. And before I know it, I've spent 1015 minutes watching that stuff. It just drew me in. Watching an incredible football play to me is really exciting. And so I'm sitting there watching these football plays again, not doing the things I should be doing because they got pulled in so kind of setting some boundaries and some stretch goals about not pushing that button. So I'm not finding myself watching those videos is another great way to have less screen time and get more done.

The next thing is to get back to nature. One of the concepts that I'm really trying to push myself on when I do my walks out is to realize I'm not going to see a sloth. If I'm looking at my phone, they're up in the trees. And so if I'm paying attention to the world around me, I'm likely to see a lot of cool things if I've got my headphones on and I'm listening to a podcast or an audiobook. I'm probably not going to hear the bird song around me, and I might miss something really cool if I'm looking at my phone, I may not see the sloth in the tree that I'm walking past.

So just recognize that if you're out and get yourself out in nature, there's going to be plenty of things to be looking for, the natural things that we usually did look for when we were in nature, living in nature. So just recognize that getting back to nature is going to help. And then one of the cool things is when you can find a place that doesn't have service. We lose service about 5 miles out from town. And since we hit that gravel road, I know I'm about to lose service.

So when we go out to dinner out there, it's like totally cool because nobody has cell phone service. So we're all hanging out talking. So it's a really cool situation. And I think I told you a few weeks ago about doing a camping trip and we were way out of cell phone signal for everybody. So people we talked, we spent more time together as together versus looking at our phones and talking about things. One downside of me not even taking my phone there because I knew that was going to be the case was I didn't get to take some pictures I would have liked to take, but a lot of my friends took some pictures, and that's cool.

But you kind of get the idea. Get out someplace where having your cell phone is less important. And I think you're going to enjoy it a lot more. And then we talked about posture. And so I want to finish up a little bit with that on the houses. If you notice that you have some posture issues. And I kind of gave you that test of laying on a bench, flying on a bench and seeing how that feels, you can also look in the mirror and see if your shoulders are slouched, your chest is collapsed or how your head aligns with your spine.

If you've got some issues there, then go get some work done, go get a massage, go see a physical therapist, and maybe even get a chiropractor to adjust you to start fixing that posture. Now, once you get your posture fixed, then you have to use that and realize, okay, I paid this person money to fix something that I broke. And do I want to go break it again? And the short answer should be no. But hopefully you're not creating a cycle of on the phone all day.

Go to a massage therapist or a chiropractor once a week. Probably not going to work out for you in the long run, financially much cheaper for you to just decide. Okay, I'm not going to spend as much time on my phone, and I'm going to do a lot more to make sure that my posture is better. And so doing the strength training exercises, particularly the physical therapist, would give you or that I could give you will help you make sure you're maintaining good posture and therefore not having those problems that come with being on your phone and on your computer too much.

So in summary, most of us are spending too much time on digital technology. We're not prioritizing our time. And so it's not really aligning with our health and fitness goals. If you're missing workouts, you're saying you don't have time, but you look on your screen time on your phone and you're spending an extra 4 hours per day on your phone. Guess what? You had time. You just prioritized differently, being on Facebook or playing words with friends or whatever the thing is, today was more important to you than your workout.

But was it so I really want you thinking about your best interest and aligning your priorities with that interest. And I don't think social media in the long run is going to be one of those priorities. And then you're looking at it. You see it if it's your posture, if it's your stress levels, if it's your sleep, you know that this is adversely affecting your health and fitness. So it's time for you to start doing something about it. Now. I had Dr. Dela Toro McNeil on not long ago, and he talked about change.

And so to do change to change this because getting away from the toxic digital stuff, you have to want it, you have to believe you can do it. And then you have to make the change. So I talked about that self awareness and putting achievable boundaries in place. And then setting stretch goals. You have to push. You have to make this change because Facebook and all the others, their job, their whole way of life is to keep you on their platform. So it's a battle. It's a battle for your time.

It's a battle for you. And so for you to win the battle, you have to be in charge of you. You have to be the boss of you. So go set good goals and make it happen.


Post Show/Recap

[00:36:53.250] – Allan

Welcome back, Ras.

[00:36:54.790] – Rachel

Hey, Allan. Boy, did you open a can of worms with the digital world we all get sucked into?

[00:37:02.040] – Allan

We do. Even I do. I raised my hand. I'm just as guilty, I think, as most others, but it's one of those things. And you'll have this conversation with someone. I'll say, okay, how about you go ahead and start doing a little bit of training or you do this. And, like, there's no way they're like, I have these half hour moments in my life that I just scarf down lunch and dinner. But other than that, from six in the morning until twelve at midnight, I'm just go, go, I can never get things done.

[00:37:32.640] – Allan

And I'm like, okay, well, look at your screen time on your phone and how much time did you spend on Facebook and that kind of pause. And it's like, okay, what's your Netflix or Amazon Prime video binging like. And they're like, oh, I only do that on the weekends. I'm like, really? And they're like, okay, I might watch a couple of episodes during the week on a week night. I'm like, okay, how many week nights? Three or four. You're kind of like, okay. So the reality of it is you're spending 5 hours per week per day doing this digital stuff and you don't have time to work out.

[00:38:09.450] – Allan

So that's just a prioritization problem. I don't have time problem.

[00:38:14.790] – Rachel

Yeah. It's amazing how once you open up those apps on your phone, that time just seems to get away. You're scrolling and scrolling and you think you're just looking at it a few minutes here, a few minutes there. But that all adds up really fast. And to be honest, I haven't looked at my screen time. I think I'll have to look at that on my phone once I figure that out. But yeah, it's just so easy to get sucked into that. But you mentioned that the key is to be self aware, to be aware of how much time you're spending online.

[00:38:48.950] – Rachel

Totally important. But also, I think to be aware of what you're using social media for. And every time I hear people bashing it, I kind of just cling to it a little bit because really, social media is the only way I interact with my family. My personal Facebook page, for example, is all about family. I don't have a whole ton of friends on Facebook. I do certainly have a lot of running friends, but really, it's the easiest way for me to see my family on a regular basis because we're all spread out across the United States.

[00:39:20.960] – Rachel

So to spend less time on that part of it, I don't know.

[00:39:26.460] – Allan

Well, there are apps. There are apps that you can set. They're originally probably intended for children because you wouldn't place your child and say, okay, you can be on your phone for 2 hours or 1 hour, and then it lets them have the time the 1 hour. And if you sit down and you put it on your to do list and you know, okay, in the evening after dinner, we finished dinner by 730 from 730 to 830. Okay, I can do the Facebook. I can do those things, and then your phone will turn it off.

[00:39:58.930] – Allan

Now you can obviously go into the settings and delete that app and go back in if you needed to. But there's another app that I use that I think is wonderful. And it's called Social Fixer. And the one I have actually is like an add on extension for Chrome because I do everything on my computer. I don't really do it on the phone. And what it does is it takes your feed and it'll put it in chronological order because Facebook is going to show you everything and keep showing you everything.

[00:40:31.450] – Allan

Every time someone goes to comment on it, every time somebody does something. What this does is it puts every post in chronological order, meaning that if you posted something yesterday, I wouldn't see it unless I scroll down far enough to get through all the posts that happened today. The reason that's valuable is if you're only following people that add value to your life, you're not seeing the same post over and over and over again. And now the new comments and people what people have said and all that stuff if that's not interesting to you.

[00:41:01.880] – Allan

And there's different settings on this thing, like scrolling it. So after it Scrolls like, after 75 posts, it just stops the feed. So it's not an infinite feed. I get down to 75 posts. I realize I've already been on here way too long because I've worked through 75 posts on Facebook. And at that point, I'm like, Is it really worth me going any further to see any more?

[00:41:27.510] – Allan

And it also lets you eliminate certain posts that you don't want to see so you can click on and say you don't want to see any political posts. It does a fairly good job of going through and saying, if someone says something uses like, I hate to say it, but I put the word Biden. I put word Trump in there. If someone puts that in one of their posts, I don't even see it.

[00:41:47.400] – Rachel

Oh, I like that.

[00:41:51.310] – Allan

I can eliminate most of that stuff. And now what I'm seeing is exactly what you said. It's my friends and family, clients, people I care about it's, what they're posting out there. And I'll get out there in the morning, spend a little bit of time. But every day my wife is like, “did you see this post?” No. Sure didn't. I haven't been out there. And I think that's part of it is once you start cutting into that addictive algorithm thing that's going on, then suddenly you just realize it's like, okay, I've seen the post from my mom posted, the ‘rescue the cat' posts, or most of what she does on Facebook.

[00:42:27.610] – Allan

I've seen what my sister posted, and those can go from very good to psychotic. And then I see what my wife posted, and after my daughters and our sons. And after that, I'm kind of like, okay, what's this next layer of time I'm going to invest in doing this. And once you start doing that, it's like, you want to spend less and less time out there.

[00:42:49.230] – Rachel

Absolutely.

[00:42:49.790] – Allan

And then what I found is that I can get the messenger app on my computer. And if I want to do, then I just focus on messengers. If I want to see what's going on with my daughter, I message her, “hey, what's going on?” My mom, “what's going on?” I don't have to get on Facebook. It's just like a separate little app, and it's on my desktop. So I'm not even on Facebook. If I need to message and talk to somebody.

[00:43:10.010] – Rachel

Oh, absolutely.

[00:43:11.130] – Allan

If you want to get in touch with me, messenger is probably the best way to do it if you're not on WhatsApp? But those are the two messaging apps that I have open all the time, so I don't have to be on Facebook to do what I do.

[00:43:23.400] – Rachel

That's nice. That's really nice. I think it's important for everybody to take a minute and determine what they want to get out of social media. And like you had mentioned, set a priority as to how much time you want to spend there? And is it really taking into account whether or not it's really worth that time? Are you getting out of it as much as you are thinking you are? Or is it all those constant dopamine hits like you had mentioned the likes and the follows and the shares and all that nonsense.

[00:43:52.210] – Rachel

I think like you had mentioned asking yourself if the digital world is somehow better than the real world and to really determine whether it is or not.

[00:44:07.590] – Allan

Yeah. And unequivocally, it is not.

[00:44:15.470] – Rachel

No.

[00:44:15.470] – Allan

There's no decision there, no real decision. To say you'd rather spend time chatting with people on Facebook than actually sit down with them in person.

[00:44:23.370] – Rachel

Right.

[00:44:25.550] – Allan

I get it. You can't be in your pajamas or in your boxers or wearing your comfy clothes if you're going to go out and spend time with your friends and your family, but at the same time, it's not better. It's in no way better.

[00:44:38.740] – Rachel

Well, you mentioned taking a walk and getting back into nature, and I spend a lot of time outside running, and Mike and I do a lot of races outside with our friends, and we don't always get pictures of what we're doing. We don't always post every training run or what's going on, but we do get a lot of value of just being outside. And in fact, on this vacation, I rarely took my phone out.

[00:45:03.390] – Rachel

I just wanted to make sure everything was safe at home with the kids. But other than that, we spent a lot of time out and about, and I didn't even bother looking at my phone, and it was really relaxing. It was just a peaceful, relaxing vacation, and I'm sure that's part of it.

[00:45:19.920] – Allan

Good. All right. Well, I guess, Rachel, that's it for today. I'll talk to you next week.

[00:45:25.890] – Rachel

All right. Take care.

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Another episode you may enjoy

Less...

October 25, 2021

The art of quitting

Apple Google Spotify Overcast Youtube

There are points in your health and fitness journey when you have to make a decision, keep going, quit, or pivot. How you approach these decision points can make all the difference.

Transcript

Let's Say Hello

[00:00:44.630] – Allan
Hey, Raz, how are things going?

[00:00:46.730] – Rachel
Good, Allan, how are you today?

[00:00:48.710] – Allan
I'm doing all right. Kind of getting back into the groove of being back in Bocas and things like that and social events and things. We had a fundraiser. We had a fundraiser for the local guy that takes care of all the cats. So we have street cats and street dogs. And so this guy, he's always kind of played a part in making sure that the cats and some of the dogs get fed. And then when they have a litter, he's always trying to catch the kittens and get them spayed neutered.

[00:01:19.070] – Allan
And so he's trying to catch cats and do all that. And so everybody calls him Papa Gatto, and he was doing a fundraiser. So just kind of go there, hang out with friends and buy a T shirt. I think one guy, one of the local guys here who's really talented, he was doing the tattoos. He's a tattoo artist, amongst other things. And he was donating the proceeds from all his tattoos he did that day, and he doesn't do it, like with the little gun thing. He has a little pin thing that he does by hand.

[00:01:53.930] – Allan
So he draws things by hand on people really talented. But, yeah, so they're doing a fundraiser. So it's just kind of being back into the theme of the island. And we're getting ready to get into busy season. So we're seeing more tourists, and a lot of people are popping up and opening restaurants, some that have closed, and then some that were just never there before, because this is kind of the season to do it. And there's one thing on this island that was kind of a big thing, particularly for the young backpackers.

[00:02:28.310] – Allan
It's called Filthy Friday, and it is exactly what you think it is. Hundreds of people going to like a disco tech with a DJ. And basically it's a pub crawl, if you will. But they hop from island to island. So typically, like, three places that used to be three places I don't know how they're going to run it now, but there used to be three places, so they all get together at one place. And then there's a series of boats to take them to the second place, and then a series of boats to take them to the third place.

[00:02:57.230] – Allan
And then it's over. So it starts at 03:00 in the afternoon and runs until they drop them off around six something, and then they can just hang out and enjoy themselves. It's terrifying. I would never do it because there's just too many people in a space. Actually, I kind of get hives every time they got a Billboard at the near the airport advertising there and there's like hundreds of kids standing on this deck and there's like, no room to move. They're all just standing like face to face now, pre covid that gave me the heebie jeevies.

[00:03:31.730] – Allan
This is that packed in with that many people, not my thing. But it is sort of one of those things that when that's going on, it draws a lot of people to the island. So you see a lot more young backpackers and people on the island. So it just kind of gives it more of that touristy vibe when you have that going on. So even though it's not something I would ever want to do or care to do, it's good to see that we're getting back to kind of a normal here.

[00:03:59.270] – Rachel
That's right. It sounds wonderful that restaurants are opening and all these activities are taking place again. It's nice to hear that things are changing a little bit.

[00:04:08.510] – Allan
Yeah. Now it doesn't mean it won't go backwards at some point, but at least at this point, they didn't expect to reopen. In fact, we were doing classes in the yoga studio, and they took over the studio because the yoga teacher quit because we couldn't pay the rent while we're closed. And then when they wanted to reopen, it still wasn't tenable for us to run our classes. So we had to move out. She moved out and closed up. The people that were doing this filthy Friday, they took over that space and they turned it into a big liquor store, but something to keep him going until he was able to get it.

[00:04:43.770] – Allan
His other business is more lucrative. Business reopened. So it's just good, even though the folks that come to that don't spend a lot of money on the island. It's just good to have them here because it gives violent kind of that healthy vibe.

[00:04:56.190] – Rachel
That's awesome. Sounds like fun from a distance.

[00:05:00.390] – Allan
You guys go over there. I don't mind seeing them walk up and down the street, walk right by the gym and go party butt off. But at the same time, it'll just be good to kind of see that starting to happen here.

[00:05:13.470] – Rachel
Sure.

[00:05:14.370] – Allan
How are things up there?

[00:05:15.870] – Rachel
Oh, good. We're in the middle of October. The weather up here in Michigan is sometimes beautiful, sometimes frightening. The leaves are changing colors and dropping, which is always beautiful. And we are getting a little bit of rain today. We're going to hit 80, so that's kind of unusual. And sometimes in October we might see a few snow flurries, although that hasn't happened yet and probably won't after not for at least another week or so. But that's the fun part of October. But while I'm mentioning it, I want to remind everybody that October is also reserved for breast cancer awareness, and for all the ladies out there to make sure they schedule their mammograms as soon as they get the chance.

[00:05:59.790] – Allan
Absolutely do that. We've talked about screening, we've talked about cancer a good bit, and we'll keep talking about that. But the screening that you need to do it's critically important if you want to stay healthy. I did have one aside, though, that I want to do. This episode is going live on the 25th. And so we're less than a week away from Halloween. And so now there's going to be all this candy in your house. And if you have a sweet tooth, that's an issue. And so I did a little bit of reading on this because I did want to talk about it.

[00:06:30.810] – Allan
I thought I might end up being actually doing an episode on it, but then realize there's probably not enough content to do a whole episode, but a couple of tips that I found one of these I got from US News and Roll Reports articles five, six years old. But they made a few recommendations. So you get this candy. They recommended some things like make cookies. So you take the chocolate or cookie or whatever it is a candy bar, a piece of candy, and you make cookies and you put these in the cookies while you Cook them.

[00:07:02.010] – Allan
So they kind of make it part of the cookie. And then rather than eating them and just adding more to your candy, put those away as holiday cookies. And then you have ready made in the freezer gifts for when Christmas actually rolls around. So you get the Christmas tins, you Bake the cookies, put them in there, and you can repurpose those candies rather than eat them.

[00:07:23.730] – Rachel
Nice.

[00:07:24.390] – Allan
Another one was to basically donate them. And I had a couple here Ronald McDonald's House or even the troops, even though I know we're not as heavily involved overseas. Now, there still are troops overseas that you can actually donate your candy, too. So they'll take your candy for you and just ship it to them. You can look that stuff up online. I'll have a link to this US News and Roll Report article, and hopefully some of those links are still the same. The other is to look at opportunities for things that are coming up.

[00:07:53.370] – Allan
Like, for example, my daughter's birthday is on the 14 December, and so she was younger. I could take the candy and put it in a pinata for her birthday.

[00:08:04.170] – Allan
Okay. And the kids would have a pinata. That candy would go into the pinata. And there you go. And then the final one was bring it to work. And again, that depends on where you work and how those folks will feel about the fact that you're trying to offload your candy on them. Some people will love it. Other people won't. But, yeah, just taking it to work. Now, again, if you're going to put it on your desk, realize that that's going to be an issue. Maybe because it's sitting there and you might end up eating more of it than you'd like to.

[00:08:30.570] – Allan
So take it to the break room or something like that where this public area where they can get to it and you don't see it all the way. But one of the best tips I saw while I was doing my research was this when you're buying Halloween candy, buy something you don't like. I always made this mistake. I'd go out and buy the Snickers because the little bite sized Snickers and Milky Ways and things like that. And then the what is it? The Hershey's chocolate, the dark chocolate, because that was my favorite.

[00:09:01.830] – Allan
And then, of course, if you don't give out the candy, you're stuck with the candy. You can do one of these other things. But if you buy a candy that you don't particularly like for me, it'd be black licorice can't stand this stuff can't stand it at all. So if I had black licorice, that would be a perfect candy corns would also be one, although some people love them. I'm not one of those people that love them. So again, candy that I wouldn't use a lot of people the black and Orange peanut butter kind of candy.

[00:09:31.710] – Allan
I actually like those, which is sad because they're horrible, but I know they like them. So just kind of thinking in terms of if you're buying this candy as you're in the shopping, obviously, you don't want to be the house that gets egged because you've given out substandard candy. But just buy candy that you don't like that most people other people do like, and then you're less inclined to sit there and nibble and pick on them during Halloween and then having them in your house afterwards.

[00:09:56.790] – Allan
You're less inclined to deal with those. So have a strategy. I talk to my clients all the time when you go into a situation that you are familiar with, which this is it happens every year about this time. Have a strategy for how you get through this. If you know that you have a sweet tooth and you know that this is something that strips you up in the past, have your strategy so you can work around it.

[00:10:19.290] – Rachel
That's great. Great tips. Definitely.

[00:10:22.170] – Allan
All right. Are you ready to get into the episode on The Art of Quitting?

[00:10:27.870] – Rachel
Sure.

Episode

Today I want to talk about the art of quitting. Now, I know that sounds kind of odd to be talking about quitting when we're talking about health and fitness, because we as a people, particularly in the United States, we really appreciate perseverance. We appreciate those people, those stories where people have gone above and beyond and accomplished things way beyond the realm of what's possible or seemed possible at the beginning, like the movie Rudy or the book Rudy or the story of Rudy who tried to get on to and play for Notre Dame and actually did get on the field during a football game with the team through Perseverance.

And we love that story. There's also the children's book The Little Engine that Could by Waddy Piper. And again, it's a story about Perseverance and going at it and having the right attitude and sticking with it until you get something that seemed impossible done. We love those stories. But there are also stories that kind of push back the other way, like in Greek mythology, with Cispus pushing that rock up the Hill that's invariably going to roll down the Hill again. So no matter how much Perseverance that he puts into that effort, he's going to end up right back where he started.

Or we're watching Rocky four, and Apollo is fighting Drago in an exhibition match, and Rocky knows the next punch is going to basically kill his friend, but he doesn't throw the towel in. And a lot of people were upset about that in the movie. I was upset about it watching the movie. It was a very emotional point in that movie. And in a sense, we fought Rocky for not quitting, not throwing in the towel. And we know that that was because Apollo wanted to continue the fight all the way through to the end, and it ended up costing him his life.

And so there's these stories that we have about Perseverance and then about quitting. And they both have a place, particularly when we're talking about health and fitness. So I want to talk today about some times when quitting is actually the right answer that you're better off quitting something than sticking with it. Okay.

Sometimes when you quit, it just opens up opportunities and we're going to talk all the way through this as you look at how quitting might actually help you get to the results you want faster. So for this discussion, we're going to talk about big things. We're not going to be talking about quitting little things like quitting sugar, quitting this or quitting that. Obviously, you know, there's challenges and structure and things and strategies and tactics and things you're going to implement that will work and not work. And some of those strategies and tactics you just throw away because they're obviously not working.

But we're going to talk about some big things in the health, fitness and joy categories because in reality, this is literally life and death. Now, maybe not right now but some of the decisions you're making are going to decide which side of the aging curve you're actually on as you go forward in life. So we're going to talk about is the five key health and fitness drivers, the five key health and fitness drivers. And those are nutrition, which includes hydration, sleep, stress management, fitness and avoiding toxicity.

And that can be chemical, biological, or emotional. So we have those five key health drivers, and today we're going to go through those five key health drivers and look at some scenarios where it might make sense to not stick. It might make sense to quit. Okay, now, here's the other caveat as we get into this discussion, because I'm going to be throwing out some examples. And I want you to understand that sometimes the decision that you need to make is different than the decision I might need to make.

So as we go through this discussion, I'm going to go back and forth a little bit on that so you can kind of get a flavor for how to do this analysis, if you will.

So first, I want to talk about a few reasons why you should probably stick to what you're doing. If your strategy is sound and you just need more time. So everything's working, it's generally working, and you just need to give it more time for you to see the results that you want to see

That's probably a good reason to stick if it's working, but not as fast as you want it. Now, what there might be instead of quitting is just alternatives that you can add on to make it better. And we'll talk a little bit about that. And then another reason to stick is there really isn't another alternative. This is really the only way that's available to you based on who you are, what's going on in your life or anything else. We'll get into that as well. But what are the reasons that we should quit?

If the thing you're doing isn't serving you, you should quit and try to find another way. If you know, in your heart of hearts that there actually is a better way. You were just trying this as an opportunity and it's not working for you, and this other way would be quicker and easier. It's probably time to quit. And also we want to make sure that quitting won't hurt us, and that what we are doing is helping us. So if there's something you're doing that's not helping you, then quit and we'll talk about that as well.

So what I'm going to do for the remainder of this podcast is I'm literally going to go through each of the five drivers, and I'm going to give you a couple of examples, and then we're going to kind of talk through a little bit. Is that a good reason to quit? Is this something you should quit? And I'm going to give my opinion on it from my perspective. Realize, again, your answers could be entirely different than my answers. So your circumstances would be entirely different than mine. And you should think through these scenarios to kind of get an idea of how this process goes.

So the first key driver that I want to talk about is nutrition. So here's the scenario. You are three weeks into the carnivore way of eating. You even quit coffee and tea. And while you've lost weight, your energy level has bottomed out and you're constipated. So is this a stick, a stick and pivot or a quit? Now, obviously for some people, the carnivore diet is fairly extreme and it's very difficult to do long term for a lot of people.

Now, other people thrive on that kind of diet and that's fine. But if you're having issues with your energy level and you're just not feeling like you're losing weight the way that you should and you're dealing with other biological problems like constipation, it's time to think about that. For some people, it's obvious that you need to quit and maybe do something different. For others, it might just be a stick and pivot. So maybe you're not getting enough electrolytes. Maybe you need to implement something else like better sleep or something else to help you make sure that you're keeping your energy level up.

And then obviously with the electrolytes that I spoke to that can include magnesium that can include potassium and sodium. And in many cases the introduction of magnesium might help with that constipation. So you can kind of see as you go into this concept of I'm trying a way of eating carnivore and I intend to do it for a long time, but I'm starting to have difficulties with it. You can answer the question of OK, is this something I can just pivot, try some add ons and see what works, or do I really want to quit this?

And in many cases I would say if this was something you really wanted to do, try the stick and pivot for a little while and then if that doesn't work, quit. Here's a second scenario for nutrition. You cut your calories much lower than you used to eat. It was working for a few weeks, but you're hungry all the time and you find yourself binging at night, stick, stick and pivot or quit. Now this one is a little bit more difficult because a lot of people will want to follow the calories in calories out model.

And the reality is for a time that can definitely work. But over time your body is going to adjust to try to find Homo stasis based on the amount that you're eating today, based on the exercise you're doing today, it's going to find that balance. And so the question then is, is this low calorie going to work for you long term. For some people, just pushing through a little while can restart the weight loss. But you may need to do a couple of pivots. You may need to have a couple of days where your calories a little higher just to keep your metabolism, keep everything flowing so your body is not locked into 1200 calories a day thing.

Maybe just having a couple of days where you're up closer to 18 or maybe 2000 might be enough for your body to adapt and adjust to a point where it can continue to lose weight. That would be a stick and pivot. But for a lot of people, just cutting calories isn't enough. They need to focus on what they're eating when they're eating as well to try to figure this out. And so sometimes you just have to quit that low calorie and figure out a different way.

So I hope that made sense as I went through the nutrition piece of this, that there are different answers for each of us based on what we're dealing with, where we are in our lives and what's working and what's not. So there is stick, there is stick and pivot and there's quit, and you have to look and figure out which one makes the most sense for you. And many times, as I mentioned earlier, sometimes stick and pivot is the right answer, and then if that doesn't work, then you quit.

Let's move on to the second key driver of health and fitness and joy, sleep.

And this is one of my favorites. Okay, so here's the scenario. The first scenario. You usually go to bed at 10:30, and you've recently hired a personal trainer that can only work with you at 05:00 a.m. This only gives you 6 hours of bedtime and less than 6 hours of sleep. You know, you need more. Stick, stick and pivot or quit? Now, this is a tougher one because for a lot of people, their time is locked, and they're very deep into getting a lot done and being productive.

And the concept of sleeping more is often difficult for us. It feels like we're giving up feels almost like we're quitting something, but in a sense, getting more sleep can help you have more energy, get more done, be more productive, and definitely have fewer mistakes and issues. So the question then here is we've got two endpoints to the sleeping night. Now you could try to go to sleep earlier, but that might mean giving up family time. That might mean giving up time with your significant other time that you love to spend together.

Obviously, if you've made dinner, we've got to wash dishes, we got to get things cleaned up. So there's probably a limit to how far you can push your bedtime up and then on the other side, yes

You've hired this personal trainer that really only had that 05:00 window. Is there a way to move that training period to a later period or different part of the day, or is it better for us to go ahead and maybe find a different trainer if we really want to continue with the personal trainer that we have or that we're with a personal trainer? And those are tough decisions. I'm not going to say there's an easy answer here, but the reality of it is the bigger you make your bedtime opportunity, the more you're likely to sleep, the more you're likely to sleep, the better off your health and fitness are going to be.

So this is a tough one. It's probably a quit something, but we've got to figure out what that is for you and then you've got to decide how to make that happen. Here's a second scenario. Lately you find yourself waking up in the middle of the night, unable to go back to sleep. You pull out your phone to look at social media. You feel this helps you calm down. But the report on your phone shows your screen time is way up. Stick, stick and pivot, Quit?

Now, I have some pretty strong opinions about this to me. You've got to quit the Facebook, the social media stuff. You got to quit that in the middle of the night. The lights off your phone are actually keeping you up. The excitement and the dopamine stuff that's happening when you're on your phone is keeping you up. Whether you feel that way or not, it is. So the reality of it is you could do something better with that time and still be winding down. You can listen to a fiction audiobook and have the lights out.

You can actually get a hardcover printed book and turn on a candle, light a candle and read that book. You can go ahead and decide to go into the bathroom and take a warm bath with some lavender and some other scents that really help calm you down and get back to sleep a little bit faster. So I would say you quit the Facebook and then you implement something else in that place. Obviously laying in bed awake at 2:00 in the morning for hours is excruciating. But you've got to get your sleep.

You've got to figure out a way and getting on the Facebook is not going to be the answer most of the time. Now, how you do that? How you discipline, keep the discipline to do that? I can't help you there right now, but I can just say if you value sleep as much as I do, you won't turn on your phone, you won't turn on your computer, you'll figure out a way to calm yourself relax whether it's breathing, meditation, a warm bath with some oils, or reading a book, listening to an audio book.

Any of those things will be better for you than opening up your phone. So I hope that makes sense on the sleep side. You're going to have things, if you're going to try to improve your sleep, there are things you're probably going to have to quit. Screen time is a huge example. Having short sleep windows with early alarms. Another thing that you need to work around to get the sleep. You've got to be in bed and that requires you to push your windows around and have some discipline around that.

So I hope that helps you on the sleep front. If you've got some questions there, we can talk about it.

So the next key driver or key driver is stress management, and this is another big one for me, but I really only have one example. I want to walk through here. You've started setting aside 30 minutes to meditate each day, but you find you spend most of this time thinking about the things that you need to do. This leaves you even more stressed. Stick, stick and pivot or quit?

Now, this one is kind of also a little interesting to me, because a lot of people will just quit. They'll say, okay, I don't have time for this. I know meditation would be great for me. I enjoy it when it's working, but it's not working most of the time. So I want to quit. I'd like to give you an alternative. Instead of trying to meditate for 30 minutes, just try to do five, just five good minutes, clear concise minutes, letting your thoughts happen, letting things happen and relaxing and getting into it.

Now, eventually, you might be able to add a little bit of time to that. But obviously giving up five minutes is not a huge deal in the grand scheme of 24 hours, and it will feel more attainable. So you're not overwhelmed with the fact that you're losing a half hour out of each day to do this task. It won't feel as much like a task when it's only five minutes. And who knows, maybe you go a little bit longer even though you didn't plan to because you were able to relax and get into the right state of mind, helping your stress, helping you feel better.

And that's going to kind of be a positive feedback loop. So in this case, I would say stick and pivot until 30 minutes feels right, and maybe it never will. But at least you've given it a shot.

All right. Does that make sense? Okay.

The next key driver is fitness. Okay, so here's the scenario. Your fitness tracker shows that your progress is stagnating you're halfway to your set goal and hitting certain milestones. Now it looks like you won't make those milestones. So you've made progress, and you are making good progress. But now things are stagnating. You're not seeing the growth that you were seeing before, you're not seeing the strength gains or let's say we're talking about the number of steps or how fast you can go or your time or any of those things that you would want as a personal record or just some kind of measurement criteria for your fitness.

And now you're stagnating. And that goal is beginning to look unattainable at the beginning, it looked like you could get there, and now it's not. So do you stick, stick and pivot or quit? Well, I think quitting this particular time is not the right answer. You still have that goal. That's not going to go away unless you just completely changed the goal. But rather than sliding the goal post or the time to attain the goal post. This might be a good time to stick and pivot.

Maybe you just need to do something to change up your training. Maybe you need to take some rest. Maybe this is a recovery problem, and maybe this is a nutrition problem, so all of those can factor into your basic performance. So it's worth looking at. Is this a time when I change up my training? Is this a time when I change up my nutrition? Is this the time I look at other aspects that might be affecting my performance? And if I'm not approaching my goals as quickly as I wanted to just see if adding some of those differences, fixing tweaking some of those things gives you the benefits gets you removing.

I found times where someone was doing a back squat, for example, and their back squat was starting to Plateau. So they got to a certain strength, a certain capacity, and then they just seemed to slow down and they were really upset because they did have a goal of, say, being able to squat their body weight for reps. And that's admirable. That's perfect. That's a great kind of goal because it shows a level of strength relative to your weight. That's really important. So now they're not getting there.

They're looking at they're halfway to their goal, and they're just not quite getting there. So what I'll often do is I'll program other ways for them to work with the weight. That's different for some clients. I'll have them on the leg press because they're mentally challenged, not necessarily physically challenged. It can be challenging mentally to get underweight, particularly when that weight is approaching your body weight and feel like you're in control. So I'll put them on the leg press for other people. It's about their form and how they're pressing and what they're doing.

I may move them to a completely different exercise, like a front squat, which changes the angles of everything and gets them working in a different way. And then when we transition back to back squats, they find that they've either in the first scenario increased their leg strength significantly or in the second one, they now actually have better form and are able to perform the exercise better. So in both of those cases, the changes we did, those pivots are giving them the added capacity to be able to do more, and they start seeing that progression happening again.

So that's a situation where I think a stick and pivot can be really good for other people. They might just want to stick and keep grinding at it, and sometimes they're successful. Just push a little harder, do a little more, and they're there. So just recognize that there are options as you're looking at fitness. So here's the second scenario. You're doing a fitness class, and after an awkward movement, you feel a tweak in your knee. There are only ten minutes left in the class, stick, stick and pivot or quit?

Now, this is a tough one because a lot of fitness classes have you on your feet moving around both forward and backwards and side to side. And so there's a lot of opportunities there for you to injure your knees. If you're not careful with your form and how you're placing your legs and not locking out. And there's a lot of things that can go wrong. If you've already felt a tweak in your knees, then it's highly possible that you've done something to one of the tendons and leguments to flare it up.

That's what that pain is. And continuing and trying to grind out through that class is more likely to hurt you than not. It's definitely not going to help you. You're going to have to slow down. Most likely you're going to be ginger on that knee and you're not going to get the full benefit of doing the class. Now, does that mean you completely quit the class? And that might be no, it might be. Yes, it really depends on the nature of what you've done. But if you feel like all you've done is a little twist and maybe you'll be fine, just slow it down, go into just marching in place.

If you want to continue moving for the remainder of the ten minutes and not walk out in the middle of that class or actually towards the end of that class, then maybe the pivot is just you down scaling to a point where you're still moving and still getting work done and everything is great. I at one point in a CrossFit class hurt my back, I tweaked my back, and so I just quit. I tried to go a little bit further. I'm like, no, this is not working for me.

I can't do these movements as well as I want to. I can't use the form I want to and it hurts. I stopped, I quit, and that turned out to be a really good decision because I didn't do exceptional damage to myself. I had done some, but it was really just a strain instead of something that could have been much, much worse. So recognizing your body's limitations, knowing when it's time to quit, when it's time to stick, or maybe just stick and adapt a pivot. Those are good.

Now, these questions about stick, stick and pivot and quit when you start talking about fitness are really hard because we have two things happening. We have this drive for ego that a lot of us share, and then we have this drive to laziness that a lot of us have. If you feel like you're quitting just because it's getting hard or you're slowing down as a pivot just because it's getting hard, that's not necessarily a justified reason. Again, exercise is helping. You can do it. You're not harming yourself.

So in this particular case, there's not really a good reason to quit. But if you find yourself where you're pushing yourself past your boundaries, what you're capable of doing, and you risk injury. It is definitely time to quit or downsize to enough where you know you're not in harm's way. So again, that's a harder area, but it's one that if you want to stay in the game, which is key, you have to obey fitness rule number one, thy shall not hurt themselves. So managing how you do this and staying within that sweet spot of not letting ego get in the way and not letting laziness get in the way, that's going to be a key here.

So the fifth and final health driver is avoiding toxicity. So here's the first scenario. You're wearing a smartwatch and this could be Apple Fitbit, garmin, whatever. And you notice your heart rate goes up when you read posts from certain persons on social media, stick, stick and pivot or quit? Now, I know every one of us has some of these people that they turn social media into a battleground. They're always posting material that is just hard for you to stomach. They're a good friend, but some of the positions they take, some of the things they put on social media just really aggravates you.

They cause you stress, they hurt you. And maybe you've even had a few conversations with them there, and they've always ended up poorly. Is this a stick? Is this a quit or is this a stick and pivot? Now, for most of the time, because of social media, my position is just go ahead and quit. Don't respond to their posts. In fact, maybe you can even do the function that allows you to unfollow them. You're still their friend on Facebook. You just don't see their posts. And if it's more egregious and it's a problem, then you just block them on social media.

You tell them in person, I can't deal with your social media. So I'm going to block you, not the personal friend, but I don't want that on my feet. I don't want that in my life. So you quit in a sense, my social media, something that maybe I haven't talked about in here is that I break my Facebook up into two profiles. So if you actually went out and searched for me, you would see that I have two profiles on Facebook. Now, one is my business profile, and that's where I interact with you.

If you want to be my friend, you look up AllanMisner.CPT. And that's my work, my training profile. And that's where I have conversations with clients. I have great friends in the industry, and I enjoy the conversations there. And I don't worry about the political posts. I don't even pay attention to them. And then I have my personal personal, which is family and friends. I would say 99% of those folks I actually have met in person and have personal relationships with. And so yeah, some of them are going to post some things that whatever I don't agree with, but I only check that really to pay attention to friends and family and see what's going on here on the island.

I don't spend a lot of time on my personal personal Facebook because there's just not material out there that I'm all that interested in other than staying informed about what's going on with my family, some of my friends and what's going on on this island. So that's the only time I check back on that profile. And maybe once a week again, I saw that that was toxic. I saw a lot of toxicity in that, and I came up with a pivot and that pivot works very well for me.

You can also again do the other pivot where you're not actually blocking someone, but you're not following them or other settings within your Facebook, where you can control your feed and you're seeing the things that you really want to see without dealing with this much toxicity. The second scenario I want to talk about in the health driver of avoiding toxicity, you decide to read the label on your personal care products, and I'll tell you right now, the Environmental Working Group has a great app to help you do that.

It's go to www.Ewg.Org/apps and this site when you go there, you can literally scan the barcode with your phone, your smartphone, and it'll tell you whether this stuff is toxic or where it rates. So let's say now you've used that app and you've looked at your personal care products and you notice that your favorite shampoo and conditioner rank very poorly on this rating scale. And so now here you are. You love this condition of the shampoo. It works great. It makes your hair feel look good.

Everything is awesome when you feel when you're using this product, but now you find out it has some problems. It has some allergens in it, maybe some carcinogens, that type of thing. Do you stick, stick and pivot or quit? Now, the thing about toxicity is it tends to be cumulative. Rather, it's chemical, biological or social or relationship stuff. It tends to be cumulative. If you're in a toxic situation, it doesn't get better if you just reduce the amount of toxicity that you're taking in, it's still cumulative.

It's still adding in. So for many of these things, you need to get away from toxicity. And I would say the answer is going to be quit. It's very seldom that you can pivot on those types of things, but there are exceptions. So if this brand of shampoo and conditioner that you're using is a good brand and that particular type of product is the problem, maybe you move to another product that they have that's hypoallergenic or has less of these things in it, and that's a better option for you to continue to use a brand that you enjoy and works well for you.

But cut back on that toxicity. But in a general sense, I would say most of the time the answer related to toxicity if it's a product or a relationship is to quit. Now, that's easier said than done. But I have done it, and you can, too. So I hope this all made sense. I tried to come up with some examples that would show you on either side of the stick or quit model, and then some that were in that stick and pivot range. As you can tell, this isn't as simple.

And since there are thousands and thousands of things that you do every day, there's a lot going on. There's a lot for you to consider as you look at this. So for that reason, I would say, focus on the big rocks. Think about the things that you do or don't do that would move the needle. If you know there are things that you're doing now that just adversely affect you, like smoking. That's a no brainer. It's a quit. So there are things you're doing that really it's time to quit.

There are other things that you're doing that are actually for good, but they're not giving you the results. That's the time to reassess. And as you're going through this analysis, I think it's really important for you to keep your why and your vision in sight, because the things that you're doing should always align with that. If they don't, then it's a quit. So the why is the reason you're doing this? Why are you working on your health and fitness now? And when you come to that, it's this emotional, deep thing.

It becomes so important to you that there's no other option. You're not going to say no. Okay, so when you're doing these things, it's the question of am I doing it the right way? Can I pivot? And then if it's not working, find a different route.

Now, the vision is where you ultimately want to go with this activity, with what you're doing, with what you're eating, fitness, nutrition, all of it. All those things are driving you towards some vision of yourself. And so you're building these little habits, these little mile markers that are measurable as you're going through this process. And as you look at what you're doing, if you're not seeing the progress to get to that next mile marker, that's time to evaluate. And when you evaluate things, you have to get rid of things you can tweak.

And that's called the pivot. And then things you just bear down and keep doing because they are working. You just have to keep at it. So if you're interested in exploring these things a little bit more, whether you should quit, whether you should stick and pivot or quit, I'd encourage you to join us on Facebook at our Facebook group at 40plusfitnesspodcast.Com/group. And there you can go ahead and ask questions. Maybe you have something you're dealing with and you just like the sounding board of hey, what do you think?

What are some ideas here? Because maybe quoting doesn't really make sense to you, and maybe sticking to it doesn't make any sense. We've got to find that middle ground of the stick, maybe stick and pivot. So there might be these other alternatives that I can share with you in that forum. So again, go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.Com/group. Go ahead and start a conversation there about your particular situation, and we can try to figure out the right alternatives for you.


Post Show/Recap

[00:42:11.650] – Allan
Welcome back, Raz.

[00:42:13.390] – Rachel
Hey, Allan. You know what I love about the concept of sticking with something, sticking with it and pivoting or just quitting it altogether is that you have to make an assessment and make a decision. And while I absolutely hate the word quit, it's really hard for me to quit anything. Sometimes that is absolutely the right decision.

[00:42:35.650] – Allan
Yeah. And maybe you find another word for it. For me. It's like, okay, sometimes I just need to be upright with myself that I'm pushing myself further and harder than I should and just taking that half step back or just overall, just quitting. You're in a toxic relationship, you really have to evaluate that relationship and say, is it worth me keeping? And sometimes the answer is no. As we were going through the pandemic and being locked up, one of my friends that she was a client even here on the island was having a lot of issues and was lashing out at everybody.

[00:43:18.850] – Allan
So it's like, no, I'm going to call her on her BS, and I'm just going to say, chill out and she didn't like it. And so we're not really friends anymore, which is fine. We still sort of see each other on the island anyway, but I'm cordial I'm not going to be a problem with it, but I don't need that negativity in my life. So I quit. And it's hard and it's hard but you have to think about this holistically of your stress management and your fitness.

[00:43:48.670] – Allan
I think it's easier. We can talk about the fitness side because quitting sometimes it just makes a lot more sense when we were talking about this. And you talked about marathon training as we get into the heart of marathon season, there's a lot of legs putting on a lot of miles and going through a lot of pain.

[00:44:10.070] – Rachel
October is the best time to run a marathon. The weather is probably the best it's going to be, at least in the north here. But marathon training is no joke. And there comes a point where you might be hitting those peak weeks where your mileage is going to be the highest it's ever been. Your speed drills and tempo work will be the highest it's ever been, and you're going to be hurting. And on the one hand, that's the intention of a peak week is to put your body through the wringer.

[00:44:39.290] – Rachel
But then you come off of those weeks, and you're backing it down into the taper and relaxing and recovering until you hit the marathon until the race day. But there's also that fine line where you could be digging yourself into a hole if you're injured. And if you've got that little knee pain or maybe a little pain in the quad or the hamstring or something. Sometimes runners are egos get to us and we go out there because we have to do the training. We have to go out there and run.

[00:45:10.550] – Rachel
We have to follow the plan. Otherwise, we won't succeed on race day. And unless you're paying really close attention and stop when you're hurting yourself, then you're not going to make it to race day. And sometimes our egos just shade that we just can't see ourselves in that light. It's really hard.

[00:45:29.390] – Allan
Yeah. It's kind of the interesting thing I noticed when I was doing that type of stuff, even when I do the tough Mudders and Spartans and things like that is there's so much freaking adrenaline going through my body. Quite literally I will do a lot better on that run than I trained for if I didn't train enough. What I found was I tended to over train. I tended to spend more time running longer distances than I really absolutely needed to do. For me technically, I kind of evaluate like this.

[00:46:03.530] – Allan
If I could run 8 miles without stopping, I could do a marathon because the rest of that race is mental.

[00:46:12.230] – Allan
and so as you're going through the training and you're thinking, okay, I'm in my peak weeks and I'm hurting and I'm going to start my taper. I just recommend people take five days off. In five days, you're going to be able to and drink plenty of water, make sure you get in your electrolytes, do all the things that you need to do to allow your body to recover. And over that five days, which you'll probably find is all the muscle aches and pains go away, which kind of removes a lot of static.

[00:46:41.990] – Allan
And now you can actually feel pain in other places, like joints and things like that. And if you're feeling the pain in the joints, that's not something that's going to go away. And it's not something you can train through. Muscle pain, you can train through. You can recover a lot faster. Those joint issues, you're not going to be able to, but a lot of people because they put so much stress on their body, they have both. And therefore they can't really isolate where they're hurting because they're hurting everywhere.

[00:47:13.610] – Allan
And so just realizing that it's not a quit, it's a pivot. My plan was set and then I'm like, okay, but if I'm going to be ready for the race or at least be able to complete the race, I have to take that little step backwards. I have to take that recovery time.

[00:47:33.590] – Rachel
Yeah, absolutely. It's time to pivot the plan. It's time to stick with the plan, but make a pivot and do the recovery that needs to get done. See a doctor. If you find an injury that you just can't pinpoint or need help figuring out the difference between a strain or an injury, and then if it's time to make that decision to DNS or do not start, it's imperative that you take care of your body because our runner ego is really strong and we want to line up and gut out a race no matter what.

[00:48:09.170] – Rachel
We signed up for it. We paid for it. We told all of our friends and family about it. We're going to be there no matter what. But like you had mentioned in your discussion, go back to your goal, because if you're running a marathon, you want it to be a great day. You want it to be a celebration of all the hard work you've just put in there. You don't want to run yourself literally into the ground and making an injury far worse than it already is.

[00:48:35.930] – Rachel
There's always going to be another marathon you can pivot and sign up for on another day when you're healthier and ready. So it's time to make those really hard decisions and they're hard.

[00:48:49.610] – Allan
They are. One of the ways I like to kind of give you a visual of how this whole process works is to think about each type of training that you're doing each time in nutrition or stress management. Think about those as like channels. You got your sides. I'm running. So this is a race. I'm going to be running a race, and I need to have this amount of stamina and speed and all that to be able to complete the race. And so then somewhere in that channel is your roof.

[00:49:19.490] – Allan
And somewhere in that channel is your floor. And as long as you're between your roof and your floor, you're doing what your body needs. If you start pushing up against that roof, which a lot of your hard weeks, that's what that's about. Let's push our roof up. Let's try to get our roof higher. Let's raise the roof. I guess.

[00:49:39.950] – Allan
Anyway, you're trying to raise that roof a little bit, okay? And if you push too far past it, you have the potential to injure yourself and break. So you've got to find that line and you've got to really listen to your body when you're at that point. So find your roof. Don't let your ego push you too far past that roof too often, occasionally. Okay, you overdid it. So your recovery is much more important, but in a general sense, you didn't break. So that's good. You're right there at that point of stressing and getting outside your comfort zone with that roof, the other side is the floor.

[00:50:13.310] – Allan
And that's just where you say, okay, I hurt so bad. Now I'm just going to quit. And again, you had a goal. You had a reason why you had something you were really after. That didn't change. So if you let yourself just fall through that floor, then the term again, not a term everybody likes, but it's laziness is keeping you from accomplishing your goal. So find your floor and always stay above that. Find your roof and only push that roof when you're in a particular point of training where it makes sense.

[00:50:49.130] – Allan
And then you've got to tap that ego down so that you're not breaking yourself. So find your square and find your sweet spot. And wherever you are in your training, you're going to have times when you're down in recovery. And guess what you're not doing. If you're in recovery, you're still above your floor. That's on your training plan. Not doing anything is still in your box. Not feeling like I need to be doing something, even though the training plan says to not do something, don't do it.

[00:51:16.010] – Rachel
Yes. The question you asked earlier, too, was, is this serving me? Is what I'm doing right now helping me achieve my goal? Or could it be hurting me or keeping me from achieving my goal? And it's a good question to ask when you're trying to decide whether you should stick with something pivot or quit it altogether. I think reminding yourself, is this helping me is a good question.

[00:51:40.430] – Allan
And that's where I was when I did my alter the 50 miles way back when it was okay. I wanted to do it. It was just felt like, okay, the percentage of people on Earth that can run 50 miles at one time at that point was very low. Almost nobody did it. Marathons were seen as this crazy out of the box. How would someone do that? Why would someone want to run twice as much see if you can?

[00:52:08.570] – Allan
And then I did.

[00:52:09.890] – Allan
And I noticed that one of those things realize, okay, that served the point. But I thought maybe I was going to run 100 or do something like, no, my body was very clear with me. You are not going to run 100 miles in a day, ever. Just don't even think about it. I knew where my box was. I knew where my roof was, but at the same time, I knew that just being in that high of a box on that channel in the long term would not have suited me.

[00:52:42.770] – Allan
It was cool. It's something I can talk about and enjoy. It's actually still out on the internet's. Internet was coming around in 95. I think so they published the results on the Internet. It was the first time my name was on the Internet, and so it's just kind of one of those things of saying, okay, I did it, done it. What's next? And finding another challenge, another thing that would keep me excited. And then staying in that box. Every time I've gotten outside of that box, I've either put on a lot of weight or I've broken something, so I kind of know where my box is and it's like, okay, if I'm going to be healthy and fit, I have to stay in my box.

[00:53:22.310] – Allan
And defining that box is the real challenge of all of this. Being comfortable. Pushing the roof when you need to is also a big part of this. And it's not easy. It's honestly not easy, but you have to listen to your body or get a trainer involved and listen to your trainer because they'll be able to see what's going on and tell you, okay, what are we measuring here? What are we doing? How do you feel? Some of it can be very subjective, but a lot of it can be what's your HvR HRV how are you recovering? The shorter, faster runs?

[00:54:00.230] – Allan
How's your speed going? Are you getting the times and the splits that you need for that? And if you're not, then maybe you're not recovering enough. And maybe there's something and a good trainer will see that. Whereas if you just have a program that you purchased or got downloaded for free off the internet, you have to do that for yourself. And that's really hard when there's an ego involved. And there's an aspect of, oh, I just not do this today involved staying in the box. That training is a lot harder, but find a way to stay in the box.

[00:54:33.770] – Rachel
That sounds great. Great points. Stick with it, pivot or determine whether it's time to quit. Really good rules with them here.

[00:54:42.170] – Allan
All right.

[00:54:42.890] – Allan
Well, Rachel, that's all I have for this week. I'll talk to you next week.

[00:54:46.670] – Rachel
Take care.

[00:54:47.690] – Allan
You too.

[00:54:48.710] – Rachel
Thanks.

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Transcript

Let's Say Hello

[00:02:27.190] – Allan
Hey Raz, how are you doing?

[00:02:29.260] – Rachel
Good Allan. How are you today?

[00:02:31.720] – Allan
I'm actually really really busy. Trying to get things together. You know we've got a trip scheduled. I got it all plotted out. We're going to get to see all of our kids, our parents and a lot of our friends. And we're going to have small side fun trips inside the states. Still hoping that covid and LAMBDA or whatever the variant is that happens to be the flavor of the day isn't a problem when we get there. But we've planned the trip.

[00:02:57.640] – Allan
It's going to be over thirty seven hundred miles of driving. And, you know, so the flight to Mexico, a week in Mexico, then up to the U.S. and a big old circle across the whole middle Midwest and southeast of the United States to see family because we are we are spread out. I'm just glad there's no one further west than that, because that would have been insane. But we are we're going to do it. It's going to be fun.

[00:03:24.220] – Allan
We did it last year about the same trip. Really. So this one's backwards going I think we're going any kind of an opposite direction or starting from a different direction and actually doing the same loop, but from a different place. So it's going to be a slightly different drive, but a real cool trip and looking for that. But I've got to get so many things done before I do that. So I don't want to because I don't want to work on this one.

[00:03:47.920] – Allan
I want to take this one off.

[00:03:49.420] – Rachel
That sounds good. It sounds like a good plan.

[00:03:52.210] – Allan
So how are things with you?

[00:03:53.680] – Rachel
Good, good. Enjoying the summer get got a good harvest out of our garden so far and we've got a couple of camp out and running trips planned for the fall if they don't get canceled for covid. But things are good right now.

[00:04:07.270] – Allan
Awesome. I'm just so looking forward to getting back to the states and having some oysters, brussel sprouts.

[00:04:14.020] – Allan
All the things I can't get down here. It's just unfortunate. It's not during crawfish season. So I will miss the crawfish, but I might try to see if I buy some frozen just for the sake of saying I had some. But looking forward to it. So let's go ahead and get into the show. OK?

[00:04:28.450] – Rachel
OK, sure.

[00:04:29.740] – Allan
OK, Rachel, today's show is a little different and I wanted to take just a moment because I don't want someone to miss something or to be wondering, is Allan really going to talk about the podcast for two hours?

[00:04:43.840] – Allan
And the answer's no. The answer is no. I'm not going to talk about the podcast for two hours, but I am going to talk about it because I do think it's worth celebrating. What we're going to do is we're actually going to start this episode with the seven things I've learned about health and fitness from five hundred episodes of Forty Plus Fitness. And I made it into an acronym because you guys know I love my acronyms and I called it systems.

[00:05:06.700] – Allan
And so I put your wellness systems just the name of these seven things. And really, in my opinion, if you can if you can get these seven things going, you're going to skyrocket. You're literally, your rubbers on the road you're on. You're going to move. You're going to get some great things done. These seven things that you really just have to spend some time on, and so really as you go through this, I think this should be your favorite episode bookmark it on the show notes or whatever you need to do to go back, because this really does put together a quick framework.

[00:05:40.060] – Allan
The Seven Things is about 30 minutes. And quite literally, literally my notes on that were like three or four pages just just to get through that, because I had so many things I wanted to say and I think I got most of them in there. OK, and then after we talk about that. I'm going to get into what's gone on in the past six years, the starting of the podcast, the whole history of it, because there's probably a lot of things about the history of this podcast that a lot of people don't know.

[00:06:11.570] – Allan
Some things we accomplished and then where it's going, you know, what goes into making it, because for a lot of people, this is like this black box that, you know, OK, how do you do a podcast? And it's like we got to record something, but then where does it go and how does it happen? And I literally walk through all of that and all the people that help me make that happen. And then I get into the book that I wrote and why I wrote the book, The Wellness Roadmap, which is kind of my putting together at that point, which was 2017, all the things I had really kind of learned about health and fitness.

[00:06:46.250] – Allan
And so as I said, I was still learning. So that's why I think if you take the wellness systems and you marry that to The Wellness Roadmap book, you've got a pretty comprehensive guideline to how you can live a healthier, more fit life. And then finally, I get into the online personal training, which was not my original intent before I started the podcast. Once I started the podcast, that's what I was going for, is to have this online business training people, helping them get healthy and fit, helping them get off their medication, helping them lose weight, whether it's 30 pounds, 40 pounds or more, just being there to help people where they are.

[00:07:22.880] – Allan
Because I was a busy executive and I didn't have a coach available and I couldn't go to the gym regularly, I couldn't go to a coach regularly. So I was like, how do I make this happen? How do I make this sustainable? And an online coaching program seemed like the right thing. Just there weren't any of them available at the time. It wasn't available. And I was like, this is kind of crazy that no one's doing this.

[00:07:47.660] – Allan
And only people I hear doing it are elite athletes. So someone's trying to learn snatch or something like that. And it's like, OK, you're going to do this lift film yourself, send it to me in this professional coach, rather than them having to spend tens of thousands of dollars to fly over there. They pay them a good bit of money, but they looked at it on a video and gave them critiques. And so that's that was the only online coaching that existed when I started this.

[00:08:12.980] – Allan
There was probably some smatterings, but you couldn't find it anywhere. So and there also weren't any podcasts for people over 40 in the health and fitness field. So all those kind of marry together and say, OK, this is how I can get a message out and then this is what I can do. So in listening to what's going to happen here, you'll actually then also hear from my clients to kind of understand what online training is about, to understand what they've accomplished and how they feel about all this.

[00:08:38.390] – Allan
So a good opportunity. And what I like about the client testimonials is if after you listen to the seven things, you're going to see how these folks put these things in place. So not only is it me just telling you this is how it works, this is them telling you how they did it and what the results were. So it's a real cool montage. I call it the the testimonial mix tape of things that happen for these for these folks.

[00:09:04.700] – Allan
And I quite literally just reached out to every client I've had in the last year and said, hey, who wants who wants to come out here and have this conversation? And there's there's nine wonderful people that have had great results. Some are newer into it. Some have been around for a while. But, you know, they share their experience. So if you're on the fence and not sure that online personal training is for you, it's well worth listening through this because this will give you a lot of ideas.

[00:09:30.020] – Allan
You're going to hear you're going to hear messages that resonate with you. And I'm going on vacation, as you heard in the in the hello. I'm going on a trip and I'm going to take time off. I'm not going to be on boarding a bunch of clients. I'm not going to be worried about all that. Even though I never have a bunch of clients, I only have a handful at any given time, no more than a handful or so.

[00:09:51.290] – Allan
And the goal is really to take some time off. But if you want to do this, if you want to come in, messaged me on Facebook, email me Allan@40plusfitnesspodcast.com get in touch with me. There's also contact details on the website so you can go to the website, 40plusfitnesspodcast.com and just get in touch with me. Let's spend some time talking about it and if you don't get in touch with me real soon here, it's probably going to be October before I can start working with you because I really don't want to have a huge workload.

[00:10:20.870] – Allan
This is family time. This is me time, and I'm going to do that. So I've never done that. I mean, it's like in so long since I got married, which was eight years ago, I haven't had a time where I just took off and disappeared. And so I'm going to work really hard. I will be there for my clients. So if you're client don't worry, I'm still going to answer. I'm still going to be there.

[00:10:43.700] – Allan
I'm still going to do my client stuff. But that's you know, that's not where I spend most of my time. All my podcast will have been done. So I'm not planning on doing much of that either. So, you know. We'll get this done one way or another, but I just wanted to let you know that I am taking some time off to refresh, revive, listening to my own voice, say to me what I need to do and actually following that advice.

[00:11:11.240] – Allan
And then I'll come back and I'll hire a coach and we'll get back on the podcast and I'll continue to try to bring you the best guest that I possibly can week in and week out.

[00:11:19.040] – Rachel
That sounds awesome. Well, congratulations again, Allan, on your 500th episode and enjoy your vacation. You certainly deserve some time off for sure.

[00:11:28.070] – Allan
All right. Well, I hope you guys all enjoy this episode. Thank you.

Episode

I'd like to share with you the seven health and fitness truths I've learned over 500 episodes of 40 plus fitness I call this your wellness systems.

1) S – Start inYour Head – Mindset.

Everything starts with good mindset. If you keep listening to this podcast all the way to the end, you're going to hear some of my clients talk about their journey with 40 plus fitness and some of the things that they've gone through.

And you're going to hear a lot of them talk about mindset. One of them even called me like a psychologist. I, for the record, not a psychologist, but they recognize that sometimes they're their own worst enemy. And if we don't get out of our way by clearing our mindset, getting the right mindset, we're not going to get where we need to be. You'll also hear them talk about things they learned or being concerned about things, that's another part of this to change, you have to be open to change.

You have to open your mind to learn things and potentially unlearn some things. And you'll hear that not everyone believes in themselves. So we have to get rid of those limiting beliefs. We have to overcome them and we overcome them through mindset practices. I hope you'll listen to the end because it will solidify how important most of the things that we're going to talk about mindset in health and fitness are.

To change your mindset, you have to set your GPS.

G is for grounding, and that's where you set your vision and your why. You're why has to be really, really emotional and your vision has to be clear enough so that you know that you're moving in the right direction. P personalize things, know where you are now, and and set yourself up for having the goals in place, the smart goals, so that you can take those steps in the right direction and know that you're progressing and then the S in GPS stands for being self aware. What obstacles are ahead of you and what pace should you go? Knowing yourself, knowing what's happened to you in the past is going to allow you to see what could happen to you in the future. And so you have to look at where you are and you have to get your your head right. And you do that by setting your GPS. And if you have a well set GPS, it makes this a lot easier down the road.

So. How do we do this? Well, oddly enough, mindset is less about what you do. It's about slowing down. It's about being present. You have to get clear about where you're going, where you are, why you want to be there, and then you set your pace. And you can only do that if you slow down and put those pieces in place. Too many people want to come in and start with strategies. They want to come in and start with a diet.

What diet should I be on? What exercises should I be doing? And that's the wrong question. The first question you have to ask is, is my mind set where it needs to be for me to be successful in the end? So S. start with your head, mindset.

2) Y – You.

And this whole journey is about you. You have to do the work, you have to drive the car. There's no Scotty on the Enterprise that can beam you where you need to be.

You've got to get in the car and you've got to drive there and you have to do it for yourself. No one else can do this for you. Even if you hire a coach, even if you get the best diet in the world, you have to do it. You have to act. So you first and foremost stands for you have to do the work.

And the other part of you is that you are unique. So what works for me may not work for you So you have to do a self-experiment to find out what your solution is. We call it n=1, and that's in the sampling language where the sample size for our test is N=1. So you are the one. You are the one you're working for. You're the one that needs to do this. And so through practice, trial and error, you're going to learn things that work and you're going to learn things that don't.

So you keep what works and you ditch what doesn't. Now, how do you do this? I'm going to say, oddly enough, again, you might also be the problem, most of the people have knowledge. They know what to do. They just haven't done it. They haven't put it in place and they haven't been consistent. They lack the determination and the discipline to stick with it. So you might need help. That self-awareness we talked about in the s setting, you're setting your GPS.

You have to be self aware. You have to know, OK, is there something I can do on my own? And if you struggled in the past, you're going to struggle again. And that's something for you to strongly consider as far as either hiring a coach or having an accountability partner. So you have to decide when it's the right time for you to do this, because you have to do the work and you have to stick with it and you have to find what works for you.

And if you don't do that, you're not going to be successful. So all of this starts with mindset. And then you.

3) S – Sustainable Lifestyle.

If you ate nothing but bananas for a month, you'll lose weight. But then what? If you went on a 30 day no sugar challenge, you'll lose weight, but then what? The problem with most diets is they're not made to be sustainable, they're not sustainable ways of eating. Nobody's going to want to stay in Weight Watchers for the rest of their lives.

But that's how their program is set up. You go in for your way and you count your points and you go and go and go and go. Now, my clients learn that you don't actually have to be on 24/7, 365, but you know where the road is. And you know, when you're taking a detour and you know that you have to get back on the road, that's sustainable. It allows for those moments when you have to do something off plan and then you can get back on plan.

OK, and for a lot of people, when they go off plan because they don't know where their road is, they don't get back to it soon enough and they gain all the weight back. And you don't want to do that. So how do we do this? Well, the first thing you do is you make the road very easy to drive. If you have very good expectations and you pick a pace that makes sense for you, you'll get there.

I had a potential client reach out to me one time and we were chatting on email and she told me, I need to lose 70 pounds. And so I said, OK, how long would you like to take to lose that 70 pounds? Now I'm thinking in my head that's at least a year long project for most people, maybe a little bit longer for her. I don't know. She was a little older. And so I said, OK, you know, what's your thoughts on that?

And she said, well, my daughter's wedding is in two months and I want to lose 70 pounds before her wedding. Now, could I have helped her lose 70 pounds before her wedding? Probably not, but we could have gotten really close. But then what would have happened? She would have gained it all back because she wouldn't have set herself into a sustainable lifestyle that was built on habits that she could keep for the rest of her life, we would have just put her on a killer diet, had her busting her butt.

if she started to plateau, we would push harder. We would go lower. And that's not sustainable. That's not how we build a program that works for you. You have to find a sustainable lifestyle, a way of eating that you can eat almost all the time with the occasional detours. So maybe you want to go spend a weekend or a week at Disneyland or Disney World. And that's your splurge week. Fine. Go that's your detour.

The road is right there when you get back the next Monday and you have to get back on it. But you do that because, you know, there's a sustainable lifestyle and you've built a road, but you know where it is and you know how to stay on it when you need to.

Sponsor
This episode of the 40+ Fitness Podcast is sponsored by Haka Life Nutrition, the maker of GLX3, you know, the benefit of Omega-3 reduced inflammation, which helps with joint pain and heart health.

And, you know, you're probably not getting enough from your diet, but then you read about the mercury in fish or how the fish oil supplement you bought at Costco or Wal-Mart might be oxidized and rancid. Not good. Then you look into a plant-based solution and find it isn't very bioavailable or krill oil, which is much more expensive and isn't really sustainable. GLX3 is very different. It's from sustainably farmed green lipped mussels in New Zealand.

The 17 omega-3s found in green lipped mussels include ETA, which is not found at any fish oil. What is ETA? Not to bore you with the science, but it has been shown to be very effective at reducing inflammation and pain. Haka Life Nutrition has paired this oil with New Zealand olive oil and vitamin E to make a very unique Omega-3 supplement. I think it's brilliant. Mussels are at the bottom of the food chain and have a short lifespan so they aren't as susceptible to mercury contamination and they don't starve out other species when they're farmed in open water.

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4) T – Training.

This one is actually shifted quite a bit for me in the past six years. I used to really think that function was everything. I would see people doing things that weren't functional in the gym, you know, just getting big and bulky. And that wasn't really doing them a ton of good. I would see people doing things that 3weren't really changing their body and again, just really not functionally good. But I've come to realize over the last six years that I am kind of unique myself.

And a lot of people aren't like me. A lot of people aren't driven to go to the gym and get sweaty every day and do those kind of things for particular fitness purposes. So they wouldn't do it. They just would not go to the gym straight away. And so what do we do? Well, start with something that's enjoyable and a lot of people need to do that. That can be going for a walk in nature. It can be getting on the floor and playing with your grandchild.

Things that are functional can also be fun, but don't necessarily think you have to do a bunch of stuff you don't enjoy just for the sake of function. Now, later on, which you're going to find, is that you need to start looking at the relevance of your fitness. So it's great you can get on the ground and play with your granddaughter and get back up, but your grand kids are going to get bigger and you're going to need to be able to lift her and move her around and do different things with them.

So, you know, you're going to need to get stronger. You also know as you get older, certain things are going to happen. You're going to lose some muscle, you're going to lose some bone density. Those can be some problems that will keep you from doing the things that you love. So maybe putting in some training that will help you maintain strength, that will help you maintain bone density are worth it. Now, I've said often on the show, and I've said it often in many places, that I want to be able to wipe my own butt when I'm 105.

So that means my legs need to be strong enough for me to stand up off of the toilet after I squat down. I have to have the dexterity to turn around and do the business. I have to be able to take care of myself. And to do that, I might have to do some exercises that are just not all that fun for me. But they are relevant to who I want to be and they bring me joy because they allow me to do things that I enjoy.

So if you're struggling with a fitness program, it's easy go ahead and start with something you enjoy. And then as you're building your fitness, start looking for those relevant things that you need to do the things that you enjoy doing or that maybe you're no longer able to do. I've seen clients that wanted to go back and play tennis, go back and play tennis. So it's doable. All of this is doable. You can go back, you'll hear one of my clients later on talk about how he's doing things he was doing he could do ten years ago.

He feels younger and that's part of what training and losing weight can really do for you. So as you're looking at training and if you don't like going to the gym, if you don't like resistance exercise, if you don't like sweating, at least start with something you do enjoy that's going to give you some fitness benefit and then proceed from there.

5) E – Eat Real Food.

This is one of the most important ones out there, they're all important, don't get me wrong, but this is where so many people screw up.

There's food and then there's stuff we've been told is food, and I'll say in the grocery store, 99% of what's in there is not real food. They don't call it a food store, they call it a grocery store, and then that's probably why they want to put other stuff in there. That's not real food. So what is real food? Real food was alive at one time, typically when you buy real food, there's no ingredient list required.

You know, if you go and you buy a chicken leg, you know, you just bought a chicken leg, if you buy a chicken breast, you know, you bought a chicken breast. And the only thing they have to tell you is skin on, skin off, bone in, bone out. That's all they really have to tell you. Are you buying a chicken breast fillet or are you buying a full chicken breast? That's all that's really out there.

Now, any other thing that's on that label where they're selling you, the chicken is seller stuff they just want. That's marketing stuff. So all these other things that are on there typically are just meant to market to you, you know, all natural vegetarian, chicken, whatever. OK, but real food was alive at one time. Typically real food does not come in a box bag jar or can. Now there are some exceptions. Frozen vegetables, frozen fruits.

Those were those are fine sardines and tuna and salmon come in a can. Those can be fine. So, you know, just realize, yes, there's some violations of rule. But I would say 99 percent of the time, if it's in a box, bag, can or jar, it's not real food and you should stay away from it. And that typically means the perimeter of a grocery store or better yet, go to your farmer's market. The better it lived, the better you will.

OK, now plants just grow. Now, they need to be nurtured. They need to be taken care of. But they've done so much with our plants through GMO, through crossbreeding, through all this different stuff that they've really and the way they're farming them in the soil, they've depleted the soil. So plants today aren't as nutritious as they were at one time. So look for opportunities to buy plants with no insecticides that they were ripe when they were picked.

And the easiest way to do that is to focus on organic and go with local and in season fruits and vegetables. That's the best way to do it. It can be a little bit more expensive, but go to the farmer's market, you'll find some deals, go to the grocery store when they're doing their clearance deals, talk to the person and produce and ask them, you know, when they put fresh stuff out, when do they change it out and take the older stuff out?

You can probably find some deals that way, but look for the organic whenever you can, because that doesn't have the insecticides on it. And typically it's non GMO, OK. Meat was an animal or egg or something like our fish. Look for animals and fish that were free, that were not farmed. Make sure that if you do buy them, try to go with organic because then they won't have the hormones to make them gargantuan and they'll have limited antibiotics, OK, they can give them some antibiotics when they're sick.

But unfortunately, with most of the farming out there, the animals are always sick. So they're always giving them antibiotics. It's almost like a precursor, almost like a vaccine. They're going to give them this this antibiotic just to keep the animal healthy, keep it alive. And that's just that. So try to avoid those things. When you are buying food, sometimes you do need to buy something that's slightly processed. So an example would be hamburger meat is ground.

That's technically a processing. But if you're buying good quality, it's the same. So look for non processed or minimally processed foods and just realize that most food goes bad. If you leave it on your counter for a week, most real food is going to go bad. So yes, you can find it in the freezer section unless some of these things will last longer, like chicken breasts you can buy in the freezer section, fruits and vegetables in the freezer section.

Most things, if you leave them out on your counter for a week, they're going to they're going to go bad, whereas you can buy a box of Twinkies and leave it in your cabinet for decades. And it's going to be the same. It's not food. OK, and then finally, artificial colors, sweeteners and preservatives are not meant for human consumption. They just aren't they weren't in real food. And when you see natural on the label or natural, it's a natural color, natural flavorings, that type of thing.

All that really means is that it exists in nature. That's not necessarily how they made it or how they got it. OK, so a lot of these things that they put in, the stuff they call food is basically the FDA hasn't really studied it. So they just say, OK, based on what we know, it's generally accepted as safe. And are generally recognized as safe grass and that part of that about that is we don't know, it's just OK, we don't think there's anything wrong with it.

Let's experiment on the human race and see what happens. And so a lot of these things, you know, there was a big outcry about saccharin stack and still on the market, there's things they know about red dye number, whatever. They know it's bad for us, but they don't take it out of food. They label it as a carcinogen. And that's the funny thing is a lot of these additives are on the carcinogen list. The FDA just doesn't know that they're bad enough to cause cancer, but they do know that they're cancer causing.

So just recognize that all this fake food may seem cheap, but it's really messing with you. So it's worth investing a little bit more and eat real food.

6) M – Moderation Threshold.

OK, now a lot of people may not know this, but the 80/20 rule that we hear so much about is called Pareto's Law. And what it really says is when you're doing something, a business is running or you're investing or anything else is that you're getting 80 percent of your results from 20 percent of your effort.

And the principle in that is that if you focus on what those 20 percent things are and you eliminate some of the other things, you can potentially improve your performance, be it athletic, be in business or whatever. That's the Pareto's Law. But in the diet culture, they've taken 80/20 to basically be this idea of moderation, where if you're on 80 percent of the time, you're going to do well. And that is not true for most people, particularly people over 40, OK?

It's wrong for several reasons. Let me go through a few of these. OK, first, most people aren't really good at gauging 20 percent. I was talking to a client and she was like, I'm really, really good during the week. So I plan my breakfast plan, my dinners, I have my precooked meals, everything's on. And then I get to Friday night and we go out to eat and I have a few glasses of wine and then I have dessert and then I blow the whole weekend, she said.

So, you know, I'm at 80/20. I feel pretty good about that. And I'm like, no, you're not at 80/20. You've messed up three days and you've done well for four. So you're more at 57/43. I mean, you're barely past break even. So that's why you're not seeing results. OK, so most people think 80/20 means taking the weekend off and then doing well during the week, but that's not anywhere close to 80/20.

Another problem that comes up with this approach of 80/20 is that they'll take that one step forward and then they'll take a step back. So an example would be, let's say you can go on to a 500 calorie deficit for eight days. And if we go calories in, calories out, a pound is about 3500 calories. So you're going to lose just a little more than a pound. But then you go way over for two days, like we say, with the wine and the desserts and then whatever goes on those other days.

And then there's also probably going to be some additional water because you're eating foods that are inflammatory. And so what ends up happening is you gain that pound or maybe a two pounds back so that step forward and a step back and you're a week down the road and you've actually accomplished nothing is really disheartening. It's really hard to keep motivated and stay determined and be persistent and consistent when all you see is a pound gone and a pound back. And that's what's causing it.

The other issue with this is that weight loss is more than that. Calories in, calories out. It's more than how much you eat. It's it does has a lot to do with the food choices you make. Are you getting the right macros for what you're trying to do? Are you getting the vitamins and minerals that you need so that you're fully nourished? So that your body feels safe, so your body feels comfortable to let some of that weight go, if your body feels like it's starving for something, you're going to eat more until you get what your body feels like it's missing.

So making sure you're getting good, nutritious food all the time is going to help you move forward. And if you're trying to do the 80-20 and you're not getting the nutrition for 20 percent of the time, your body is going to want to overeat a lot more. And that's going to that's going to fade away after you've done your 20 percent off. Also, 80-20 keeps your addictions going. So if you're addicted to sugar and you know you're addicted to sugar, you know, sweet tooth, you can say I'm a sweet tooth.

I love the sugar. If you know you're addicted to sugar, 80/20 can't work for you. Would you would you tell an alcoholic to drink 20 percent of the time and not drink 80 percent of the time? How well would that work for them? You wouldn't say we're doing the same thing with sugar. It's like I'll have my 20 percent on my sugar, but then you stay addicted. You still have that addiction and it just makes it so much harder to make this a sustainable lifestyle.

So if you want to make a change, you've got to get closer to the high 90s. And high 90s sounds like a lot, but it's one cheap meal per week, I mean, per month or you could take a whole day off per quarter. And so that's not a lot of time. But if you're trying to lose weight, you need to be in the high 90s. OK, 80/20 might work for you once you get to maintenance.

So when you get to a goal weight and you feel good and you're putting on muscle and you're getting stronger and things are working for you, 80-20 might be just fine. But when you're trying to lose the weight, you need to be in the high 90s. It's really the only way moderation is going to work for you at all.

7) S – Serve Yourself and Others

We need relationships, we need purpose, and we need passion, it's why we exist.

It's why we're on this earth. We need those to be whole. But you can't sacrifice without serving yourself in so many people, particularly moms. They were bred on this and dads, too, because, you know, I was working. I just had my thoughts where I had to provide I had to have, you know, this wealth and I had to be able to take care of my family. And so I was sacrificing self care for something else.

And we all do it at some level. And so the first step in serving yourself is self care, making sure you're doing the things your body needs. And second step is then nurturing relationships. If you have a good relationship, you nurture it, you take care of it, you water it. If you have a bad relationship, you prune it, you cut it away. Now, that's not always possible, but you need to be thinking about how the relationships in your life are impacting you and your ability to perform self care.

So this can be stress reduction or stress management, getting good quality sleep, having a gratitude practice, trying to find joy in your life, and then on inspiration, getting out and doing things that are exciting and fun for you. Life is meant to be lived. It's meant to be fun. It's meant to be full of joy. And the big part of the wellness model that a lot of us skip over because we're too busy with the weight loss and the exercise, we skip over actually enjoying ourselves, making the journey fun.

You know, if you looked at a trip and you were going to drive from California to Texas, you might dread that trip as a long drive. You know, for me, I'm about to travel back to the United States to see family and our total driving mileage. If you just plot it out on Google Maps is thirty over thirty seven hundred miles. OK, we're going to do that in a little over three and a half weeks. So that's a lot of driving.

But we're going to we're going to get to see our whole family. We're going to see everybody in our family, parents, grandparents, children, grandchildren, all of it. We're going to be able to do all of that. And that's why this is important to us. We want to have those moments now. What are some other things that are going on? Well, I have to stop sometimes. So I've picked stopping points to places that my wife and I have never been in the hopes that we can go do something together and have some fun ourselves.

So we'll potentially stop in and Memphis will potentially stop in. There's a little town in Ohio and then there's another little town in Georgia that will stop in and have a nice afternoon or dinner, do those types of things. So make sure you're doing things for yourself as well as helping others. We need the relationships. We need good relationships, and we need the passion and the promise and everything in our lives. So live today, but do it in a way that's healthy. Do it in a way that brings you joy and do it in a way where you can feel good about the journey.

Summary – Your Wellness SYSTEMS

S – Start in your head mindset. It really is that important. This is the first thing if you don't get this right, you will struggle.

Y – You have to do the work and you have to find what works for you. It's a journey. It's an experiment. It's something you have to do.

But you have to do it. You have to be active. You have to make these things happen. They won't just happen. You can't buy a diet book and lose weight. You have the to the diet, but you have to do it something that's going to work and you need to do something that's going to work for the long term, which is the next.

S – find your sustainable lifestyle. This is not a short term fix. You don't do it and then you're done.

It's all a part of a journey that's going to get you to a better place and then the next best place and then the next best place. And you're going to always be doing this, but you want something that's sustainable. So it's not this, lose it and gain it and lose it and gain it and lose it and gain it. That's not fun. That's not sustainable. You need a sustainable lifestyle to carry you through the whole journey of the rest of your life.

T – is for training. OK, you make it fun. Make it fun. Absolutely make it fun and then make it relevant. So find the functional things that are going to make your life better. They're going to make you able to do the things you enjoy doing for as long as you want to do it. My grandfather stopped playing golf when he was 80. He loved golf. He lived on a golf course for most of his life and here he was unable to play golf.

And it was really because he didn't do anything to keep his fitness and he lost what he loved. And maybe you feel like you're losing something that you loved or have lost something that you love. Try to get yourself back into a fitness mode that gets you there. So train fun, but also train relevant.

E – Eat Real Food. OK, that comes from a bag, jar, can or box. It's probably not real food. And I recognize I say that different every single time I say it, but it's true. Eat real food. That's what our bodies were designed to consume and get our nutrition from. So get the best quality real foods you can find.

M – Moderation Threshold. 80-20 won't cut it, if you're trying to lose weight. You need to be in the high 90s to be successful. The higher in the nineties you are, the more successful you're going to be. The more often you do that moderation thing, the slower your pace. So maybe in your sustainable lifestyle you do need a slower pace because you're not going to hit the high 90s.

Maybe you're just going to hit the 90s. Maybe you are going to be in a high eighties. Knowing yourself and putting yourself in the right place means you can set your moderation threshold to go the pace that's right for you. And then the final

S – Serve Yourself and Others. It really kind of in that order, make sure you're doing the things that you need to do for yourself and make sure that you're living the life you should.

All right. Let's start this off with a little bit about the history of the 40+ Fitness Podcast.

Some of you probably been listening since the very beginning, but many have not. And it found us along the way. I actually started working on this podcast in June of 2015. And what a lot of people don't know is that I actually had a podcast before this one called Internal Audit Mastery. That one I did 15 episodes and I was only getting about six hundred downloads per episode because I really didn't know the industry. I thought I was doing terrible when in fact I was actually doing quite well.

But I burned out and decided to go ahead and drop that podcast. And then a few months later, I decided to go ahead and start working on the Forty Plus Fitness podcast. So I started working on it in June and we launched our first episode in December, actually on December 6th, 2015. Now, as I was getting ready for this podcast, because that's you know, you're talking about a whole six months. What was I doing during that six months?

Well, I was I was doing coaching. I signed up for coaching with podcast Paradise. I signed up for a mastermind. And I was investing and growing the Facebook page, which was great for the launch. But Facebook shortly thereafter killed pages unless you want to pay to play. But I did build a really nice page and had that all built up. Now, we were launched on December 6th and my goal was to make a category called New and Noteworthy on Amazon Apple.

I wanted to make new and noteworthy by January 1st and I actually made that happen. Since then, I've attended two podcasts, movements and Keto Fest twice, and I did that in order to make the podcast even better. I met a lot of really cool people, learned a lot about podcasting, learned a lot, a lot about the business, learned a lot about nutrition, and that really gave me a lot of information. To make the podcast much, much better as we've gone along.

In fact, I can't even listen to the first few episodes without cringing. I've gotten a little bit better at this. So when I first launched, my goal was to have five episodes per week and each day would have its own theme. And then I even brought on clients. I started out with Sandra and she dropped out of training early so I didn't get the full 10 weeks with her. Then I started working with John, who I went to high school with, and his wife Tammy.

And I worked with them for a few weeks, 10 weeks, and they had great results. So it was really good practice. It kind of was proof that what I was doing was going to work for not just me, but other people. And I did that. Those five episodes per week for about four months. And let me tell you, it was it was a killer. I then broke that down to three and I was less stringent on how long those episodes took, which made a little easier.

But then I just decided, OK, I've done enough, I've learned enough, I've got my reps in and now I'm just going to do one per week. And I started that the beginning of 2018. I decided I wasn't even going to do bonus episodes. I used to do one a week and then I'd throw in some bonuses. But during 2018 I was working on writing my book and I just decided I didn't have time to do three a per week so I dropped it down to eight to one per week and that's served me very, very well.

I enjoy doing that. And then on Episode 451, which was September 14th of 2020, we brought on Rachel Everett, I refer to as Raz on the on the podcast. She's now my co-host. And you're going to get some inside the scenes stuff. If you're on the Facebook group, you can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/group, and Rachel and I are recording some of this episode that you're going to hear today, we did a live to kind of show the setup of how this all works, how we put these things together.

OK, so that's kind of the history. The podcast has been around for about six years. And in that running, we were the first podcast out there for health and fitness for people over 40. I'm now happy to say there are several, but we were the first and we have been running the longest and we're also the largest. We get with over 500 episodes. We've had over 2.5 million downloads and every episode now gets at least 5000 downloads, a very few that fall below that line and some that are very much above that line.

And then the other thing is I've had on 311 guests out of those 500 shows, so it's still a solo shows a lot of other stuff that's gone on. But that's a lot of interviews when you consider that I actually read all of their books. I read every one of those books to make sure that I'm pulling out nuggets of value for you each and every week. And I make it easier on my guests because they know where we want to go.

They know we want to talk. And we're talking about what's in their book, which is really, really great. One of the and now I want to kind of shift and we'll talk about what goes into making a podcast, because I know when I first got into it, I thought it was just as easy. You know, there's audio files just put them together. But to get the sound, to get everything going, to get the right tone, to get the right people, to get everything working, there is there are quite a few moving parts. The question I get the most when people ask about the podcast is, how do you find your guests?

Well, I have a little inside secret that I'll share with you. I go to Amazon and that's where I love to get my guests. I will go on there and I will look for upcoming books that are coming out. And if the topic looks interesting, the title is interesting. I read a little bit about it, a little bit about the author, and I say, OK, this would be a good fit. You can actually sort Amazon and find books that are coming out in the future.

And so that's what I'll do. Or if I have a particular topic that someone wants me to talk about, you know, you've asked on the Facebook group or you've messaged me directly and said, hey, could you cover this or help me with this? I will actually reach out for people to do those discussions. But really, one of the other ways that I get it, it's kind of amazing when you start getting a little bit bigger in this industry, you start showing up on certain lists is I get over 4000 direct inquiries each year.

For people that want to be on the show, either their publicist is reaching out for them or they're reaching out. And to put that in context. I really only have about 40 guests per year. So you're looking at about 100 to one shot of being the guest that I'm going to bring on. But that said, through direct solicitation, Denise Austin's PR person reached out to me. Tony Horton's PR person reached out to me. And so I get a lot of direct inquiries and I basically can't even read them all because there's about a 10 day it's kind of crazy, 10 to 11 a day, sometimes more.

But I basically put those all in a folder. And then if I'm hunting for a guest, I might scan back over the last several and see if I see something that was interesting. Another place where I find topics is in forums. So I'll be on my fitness pal or I'll be on our Facebook group or a lot of other will Facebook groups sometimes read it? And if I see a question that's really interesting or a topic that's really interesting, I'll dive in.

But my favorite my favorite way to get topics is when you ask me a question. If you messaged me or you ask a question, the Facebook group, I can come up with a topic that's just for you, because guess what? It's not just for you. It actually is for everybody. So if you have questions, you have topics you want me to cover, reach out. Now, some people will then try to give me particular guests to go after.

And I and I often do. But there are certain guests that are just not interested in podcasts unless you're Joe Rogan. And they're just they feel they're bigger. They are on the TV markets. They feel the TV is a better exposure for them and they really just don't want to give a podcast the time of day. And so there's some I'm just not going to be able to get and I just have to live with that. There's some I thought I couldn't get.

I reached out to Dr. X at one point and he didn't want to be on the show. And then, I don't know, a year later I reach out again. And he came on the show. So I will keep trying. If I see a book that's interesting, a best seller, if I see something you've asked me about in the past, I find a book on it. I'm going to cover it. So that's really how I get guests.

Now, someone asked in the Facebook group, do I always agree with the guest and have there been any something else going on? And I might just as this I love having on guests that have different opinions than me because I always learn something. Sometimes I learn them right, but I always learn something. So if I feel the guests can bring value to the to the podcast, I'll definitely have them on. I had an agent reach out to me one time, a PR person, and they wanted to they reached out about a book and the title of the book, the subtitle and everything about the description was that you could eat anything you wanted.

You just had to pay attention, a little bit of attention to your portion sizes and your calories in, calories out, and you're going to lose weight. And it was true. You're not going to keep it off. So when I mailed them back and I said, you know, I'm going to ask these kind of questions because everybody's tried calories in, calories out and failed at it. So why do they think it would work now? I never heard back from that PR person, so they obviously didn't want to get into a contentious situation.

So they didn't. And then I was reading one book by an author that I had actually reached out to. And when I got this book and pretty much he was just regurgitating the probably the textbook he had in college that was based on the standard American diet, the the government guidelines for what we should be eating. I canceled the interview. I just said, no, I am not going to get him on here when he's talking about eating basically the food that my plate or whatever they want to call it these days, the government standard for what to eat.

I was like, no, that's that's not going to fly for me. And I don't like the guy. So I definitely didn't want to get into a confrontation so I just canceled and didn't have that interview. And then I'd had guests on that I brought on and I gave them some questions, some points ahead of time, and they wrote out their entire answer and you could tell they were reading. It was really painful. But she had some good content.

She had some good information. So I kept that podcast. And then one time I did have a guest on and we were talking about a topic, that one I wasn't really comfortable with. But I thought, OK, I learned something and I did unfortunately something was wrong with my recording equipment and it didn't record my side of the conversation. So there was really no way for me to use what was there. And her side of the conversation was really messed up.

I could hear her, but it wasn't quality and I wasn't going to put it on the podcast. And I just told her I had to cancel. And because, again, the content wasn't something I was completely comfortable with, I just opted to not do that one. I went on to a different topic and a different guest. So there have been some times that interviews don't go the way as planned when I had Dr. Fong and Jimmy Moore on my podcast together for the first time, the first time they'd ever been on someone else's podcast together.

It happens to also be one of the biggest podcasts that we've had ever released. It did over one hundred and fifty seven thousand, I think, on YouTube alone. It was huge when I had them on the UPS, driver pulled up in his truck and our dogs went ballistic. Three of them just as loud and they would not stop barking. He was walking up and walking back. And so I had to stop, pause and go. And then another time on that same episode, we got to the end and I pushed the end of the recording and we kept talking.

We just kept talking. And Dr. Fong just I mean, the gold that was coming out of his mouth was just awesome. And then he was talking and he said, Did you catch that on tape, too? And I'm like, no. So what I did is I summarized what he had talked about in that episode. So you still got it, but you just didn't get it from Dr. Fong. Now, I used to interview using Skype and a thing called Ecan call recorder.

That was the way when I first started. And then there was some rumblings that Skype was changing their model of the way they work. And as a result, Ecan might not work. And I really couldn't take that chance. There was an up and coming company called Zoom. This is way before the pandemics. This is way before anybody really even knew who they were. It was a point where they were getting customers one by one. They literally called me and I got on a demo with them to discuss the software and discuss where that was going to work for my podcast and whether I want to use it for other things.

But I use Zoom and you can record the calls. And if I'm going to do something that solo or the bits that are just me talking, then I'll use GarageBand and it's free on my Mac computer and it does really well. When I first started doing my recording, I was using audible. And so if you listen to the early ones and then I mean not audible. I'm sorry, audacity. I was using audacity when I first started and I actually got a review that my voice was a little tinny.

And so I looked into other recordings. I started recording on GarageBand and it's much better. I use an audio Technica 8R twenty one hundred. It's about ninety nine dollars on Amazon. I own three of them. Some of them I like to travel with. I'll have one when I travel if I need to do any recording on the road. And then I have one here in my recording area, my desk at the gym and I have one at home on my desk.

So I have these around so that I have a microphone and a plug right into the computer. So it's not any other kind of soundboards and all of that other kind of stuff, I kind of try to keep it simple. OK, when I first launched, I had a professional company go ahead and do my intro and outro music. I gave them, I picked the music, got it. I paid I think I was using Ben Sound.

So it was just I had to acknowledge him somewhere in the show notes, which I did. You'll see that. And I paid them a good bit of money to go ahead and build me out the instro and outro because I want it to sound professional when people are going. And as I said, I wanted to make new noteworthy. I wanted to make this a professional podcast. And so I did do that investment really like those guys. But then because I've gotten more comfortable recording, because I'd gotten more comfortable with sound editing, I actually did the stuff.

I picked different music and paid for it. And this time I do it. I did it myself. I recorded it myself and I like it. I've asked on Facebook group if anybody really wants to change it and I didn't get much feedback that anybody did. So I've just kept it and it works. You know who I am, you know what's going on. And you know when the show's over. As far as sponsorships, I have started doing them a little bit more regularly with the downturn of covid, I lost a lot of my clients.

They just couldn't afford personal training during a period when they weren't making any money or were making a lot less money. And so I lost some clients and I needed to pay the bills. I'm still the breadwinner here, so I started taking on sponsorships. In the way that basically works is I have some resources that I go to, some I try to go to directly. Some come to me directly. But I go out and find companies that I actually believe in their products.

I think what they're selling, the services or the goods that they're selling, I can believe in them and I will go ahead and I will try the product. In fact, I'm trialing a product right now from time line that's called I forget it might appear. Yeah. it might appear. And it's basically food for your mitochondria. And so I've been trying theirs. And later this week I will record a short bit for that prerecorded sponsorship and I will put that and I'll send that over for their approval.

Once they approve it, then they've they've paid for a certain number of episodes and then that will go into each of those episodes. So when you hear a sponsorship, if the product's interesting to you, use the link that I give or and use the coupon code when you buy it. That's the only way they're going to know that I sent you there. So if you go to the link that they send you to, we know you went there.

If you buy it, use the coupon code. They know you bought it. And that's one of the really cool ways you can support the show. If you're needing something and we're talking about on the show, it really does help me if you're if you're using the sponsors. OK, now, when Rachel and I do our sessions, we usually do those on Monday afternoon. We will record that hello segment and the discussion segment. We do that on Zoom.

I record those actually. Again, if you go to the Facebook group you'll see back about a week a couple few weeks ago. You'll see where we did kind of a live of us doing exactly that recording, one of those sessions. And so it's, it's cool because I'll do the interview or I'll do the solo episode and then I'll share that with her and then she'll listen to it. We'll talk about some points we want to go into and then we'll do the recording part.

And that all takes us however long, you know, usually less than thirty minutes. But we end up talking about other stuff because we're friends. Anyway, I do that on Zoom. OK, so when I'm all done with this I have several files. OK, I have the interview file, I have the intro file, I have the, you know, the voucher stuff, all those different files, a sponsor file. So I'll end up anywhere from nine to thirteen files.

I send it off to a company called Bare Value. I think they bought the company I originally started with. When I launched, I was using a guy named Gabriel, didn't really have a name for his company, but he's I think he sold his client list or he got absorbed by bare value. Anyway, I load the files up for them. They do the audio processing, so they put all those files together. They level them out, they make them sound good.

And if somebody said something they shouldn't, then I can ask them to bleep it out. They put that put all that together for me and then send me a message. Let me know that that files available. Once the files available, I download it and then I upload it into a site called Happy Scribd. Now Happy has an AI, so they basically spit back a translated version of my a transcribed version of that, all those of that full episode.

OK, I take that then and I message my VA, Angela. So Angela's in the Philippines. Thank you, Angela. If you're listening to this, I really appreciate you. I could not do this without you. Angela will go through and she will clean it all up and she'll put the speakers on there. So it makes it really easy for me to then post it when it's time. So I end with full transcription of the full episode.

And then she's also been helping me with doing something because I do capture the video version of the recording when I'm interviewing the guests now. So on the interview shows there's a video and Angela has been helping me with the cutting those up into little clips. I share some of those on the Facebook group. So 40PlusFitnessPodcast.com/group. You can see some of those guests, see some of the videos, just like Golden Nugget little clips, you know, usually two or three minutes, four minutes long, something like that.

And then I've also started a new YouTube channel, 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/clips. And so you can go out there and see some of these are just kind of high points of the conversations I've had with these guests. Give you an idea and you can see how it was a zoom call. Basically, now I put it out there. Angela cleans it up, makes it look nice. Does a little stuff with a cover and all that makes it really nice, so you can check out those clips either on the Facebook group or out there on clips.

So now I have the audio file and I have the transcript. I take the audio file and I loaded into a site called Libs. Libsyn is the largest podcasting host out there. And you want to put your podcast on a host separate from your website, because most websites, most Web hosts are not built to stream sound but Lipsyn is. That's all Lipsyn does, is stream audio and video clips. So I use Lipsyn. And they were the largest.

The best that the only one I'd ever even considered going to. There are other ones that are good too, but I trust Lipsyn implicitly. They make it really, really easy. So I put the file on there and then I have to write a little bit and do a little bit of stuff, put a little bit more content like the covers and the things that you see. And then the information. If you look at what's, you know, the show notes things and all that, I put all that in there and then lipsyn, literally pushes that everywhere.

They build a feed and then they push it everywhere it needs to go. So the feed is built to go to Apple, Google, Amazon, Pandora, all of them. So anywhere you're listening to this podcast, it's Lipsyn helps me get it to you each week. And then I go to, I have my website, 40PlusFitnessPodcast.com is hosted on a service called Deluxe Hosting. They've been doing it for quite some time. I was with someone else, but they sold their shared hosting to this company.

But deluxe hosting is actually even better than the one I was working with. I love these guys. They're real quick to help and help you out. They do a lot to really get us going. And then it's basically from that point I put the show notes in there. So basically the transcript I just post, you know, copy paste it all in there, make the post, make sure there's a link to the book which if you want to buy the book, if you go through my link, I get a little help from Amazon.

They give me a little kickback. It's like I think it's two to four percent. So it's not a huge amount, but it's just a nice little bit to kind of help cover some of the basic costs. And then as far as promotion, Lipsyn will post on my Facebook page, my Twitter and my LinkedIn. So that's automatic. And then on the Facebook group and via email, I sometimes send out stuff to let you know that it's there.

I'm actually not really good at promotion. I should be better. So it is one of my weaknesses. I should promote the podcast a lot more than I do. After that, I got into writing a book, so I got laid off in December of twenty seventeen, at the time I had about five clients, so my goal was to previously was to continue to work, do my thing and just have some clients build the podcast up. And then at age 55, I would retire.

Right. That was the plan. Well I got laid off December of 2017, which was about three years earlier than I was intending to leave. So I decided, OK, I need to write a book that's probably the best route for me right now. Not having a job and being home. I have some time. And so I went ahead and you listen to the last five episodes of 2017, I did five special episodes, the 26th to 31st.

That was actually the outline for my book. I literally wrote the outline and I recorded five episodes of what I wanted to have in the book. So it was really condensed version of my book that I did over five episodes. I hired a company called Scribe to coach me through writing a book. I'd never done it before, I'd never published. And so rather than chase publishers and try to get them, you know, do a draft and try to send it to publishers and do that, because I wrote a novel back in the 90s and I did all that.

And you hate getting those rejection letters. And I just really didn't want to go through a lot of that. And I don't want to hire an agent. So I hired Scribe, a really cool company that helps you publish books. They were one of the first in the field and they are probably still the biggest. But there are other companies that do that. But I just needed some help with publishing the book. Now, the one thing that Scribe really didn't do a lot for was the marketing of the book.

And that's why I joined the author academy and they helped me with the promotion of the book and kind of making sure that it aligned with what I do as a business. So I already had the book written and was getting ready to publish it when I joined Author Academy to start working on the marketing. And I hired a friend and his name is Joel to help me do the editing for the audio book. So I had the text from the from the book and then I went through and did a read that was painful.

But I read the book and I recorded it and gave it to Joel and he put it together to get it in the format necessary for getting an audio book version. And so the book went live November of 2018 and it's available hardback paperback Kindle Audible. You just search for The Wellness Roadmap on Amazon and you'll find it. And then I started submitting myself for awards. I was a finalist at Author Academy Awards. You may remember Dr. David Friedman in his book Food Sanity.

He won. I had him on for Episode 331. Well-deserved. David is a good friend now and he deserves that. His book was awesome. And his speech during the awards ceremony was pure gold. So I'm happy to have come in second place to David. And then I did win America's Best Book Award for Health and Fitness. So award winning book. I'm really proud of that. And so it's really that was a really good two years for me with regards to writing a book and then getting some awards and some credit for it.

So now I want to talk a little bit about 40 plus fitness online personal training. Now, as I mentioned, I started the podcast at the point where I did know that I wanted to be a personal trainer. I had gotten my certifications earlier, really to train myself. I was traveling so much. I just really didn't have the time to go to a personal trainer. And I knew I needed some of that, some of the things that they would be able to teach me.

So my goal was to work on it for five years and then at 55, retire. But the layoff came about three years early. So I was out and about and I decided to go ahead and start training people. I already had a few clients when I got laid off, but I became an NSAM certified personal trainer, then went on and got the corrective exercise specialty. And then I've gone on to add fitness nutrition and behavior change from them.

I also went and earned my certified functional aging specialist from FIA, and then I'm a level two online personal training coach with OTA, which is a group that that trains online personal trainers. They've got the best program out there. And I've gone on to get the level to cert, which is the highest cert that they have available. And so for over five years, I've been doing challenges, some free and some paid. I have some do it yourself programs.

I did one on one training and I did group training. So I was doing a lot of these different things and I learned a ton. You know, I've had hundreds and hundreds of people come to my programs. And as a result, I've learned a lot about online training. I've learned a lot about training in general and a lot about what goes on when we're trying to lose weight when we're over 40. Now, I'm but, you know, all the things I've done, I when I sat down and I was going through OTA 2 really my online personal training 2, and as I was going through that, I built up a new program.

I said, OK, I'm doing some group clients and I love that. I'm doing some one on one clients. I love that. But I saw weaknesses in both of those models and I said I can do this better. So I really took all those concepts, all those things. And I came up with my 12-week GAS Program. Now, this program, paired with a legacy program for people that want to stick around, is a program that is very limited and it's a small group.

I'm only going to have 12 participants going at any one time during the 12-week program. And it takes all those. And it's just really, really cool. And I don't want you to take my word for it. I'm really excited about it. But I want you to listen to what some of my clients have to say.

Why did you decide now is the time to hire a trainer or coach?

[01:11:44.690] – Client 1
You know, I was trying to do things to better my health, and I just couldn't figure out a plan. So I would try like a low calorie diet and I would track and try to do that for a few days. Something would happen that I would just give up and think, oh, maybe I need to do something else. Same thing with working out. I was working out, but I try to find what should I be doing? I would do that for a little bit, not really knowing if that's what I should be doing. So I just felt like I didn't have a plan. So when I reached out to you and talk to you about a plan and this is what we're going to do and I'm going to be here to answer any questions, we're going to reevaluate if we need to make changes. I just felt like, OK, now I have a plan.

[01:12:39.170] – Client 2
I chose to hire a coach or trainer because I felt like I needed more guidance in my exercise activities. I wasn't doing enough and I needed specific help with parts of my body, and I wanted to know for sure that I had good form.

[01:12:57.230] – Client 3
Well, I want to take things to the next level. I reached a point in my fitness journey where I felt like that I needed some more professional guidance after about five years of doing things on my own. I was ready to get some guidance that helped me get to the next level.

[01:13:16.970] – Client 4
I was interested in online training because I'd never done it before. And I'm not a gym person. I don't care too much for going to gyms. I've gone a few times and it's not really my thing. So I've actually had a personal trainer come to my house in the past for yoga practice and another one we did Pilates and then when I heard about online training, I thought, wow, I wonder how that would be. I wonder how that would work. And so I was interested and I'm totally blind. So in the personal training sessions here at my house, the trainer would like if we were doing a yoga pose, a trainer would get in the yoga pose and I could check her feet or her hands or her shoulders or whatever, and then practice to pose myself. And I wondered how would this be for me and my particular case? How would that work online? And so it was an interesting concept. I wanted to explore it.

[01:14:24.020] – Client 5
I've been floundering for, what, five to eight years, just kind of up and down in the same ten pound range and not being able to find anything that would help me break through that. So I needed help.

[01:14:38.450] – Client 6
Well, I had listened to the podcast and I've tried all sorts of stuff by myself and I kind of knew a lot about a lot. But I just wanted someone to help kind of focus my energies or, you know, focus on the big rocks that I should be concentrating on and kind of slap me on the back when I'm bothering and keep me on the straight and arrow.

[01:15:05.890] – Client 7
I basically decided to do it because I felt that I couldn't do it on my own. I didn't have enough knowledge or experience to keep up with it on a regular basis.

[01:15:18.970] – Client 8
Well, I've always I've been working out for most of my life and I got to a point where I thought I needed help. And I recognize your podcast well over a year ago. And I knew I wanted a coach. So I contacted you. And at that time I was training for a bike ride bike race and you gave me all the information. But we also agreed that you weren't a fit for me at this time. And while I was training and at that time, it was like for four months or so I was training for this bike race. You contacted me via email to see how it was going. And it always meant a lot to me that after I finished the race, I wanted to pursue something else and I needed help with, you know, the program that you have gas. I just really connected with that for exercising. I've never had a coach, a personal trainer show me how to do the things. So you were able to help me with your programs and give me what I needed while I was traveling. I'm an airline pilot and I spend so much time on the road, and that's what I needed, is more of guidance.

[01:16:37.390] – Client 9
Because I didn't have the confidence anymore that I could do it myself. I knew I needed professional guidance.

Why did you go with Coach Allan?

[01:16:48.670] – Client 1
I've been listening to Allan's podcast for years. I just felt like he had a lot of experience working with people just and I just felt like once I talked to him that he had a plan and he was going to help make my goals happen. And I just felt comfortable.

[01:17:19.120] – Client 2
When I saw Coach Allan was online, I thought that was a neat idea. And some of the things that Coach Allan said were really great. You don't have to reschedule with your trainer, which my other trainer was notorious for, and you can do the workouts 24/7. So I thought it would be a good idea. The other reason for it too, is that Allen works with people who are over 40 and I'm just way over 40.

[01:17:47.770] – Client 3
I really liked what I heard on about six to nine months worth of podcast that I'd been listening to on a weekly basis. I felt like that Coach Allan provided a good balance between work and expectations and did not promise what I consider to be unrealistic outcomes.

[01:18:12.920] – Client 4
His book, The Wellness Roadmap. That book was the most fascinating book I ever read. It was actually the first fitness book I ever read, anything like it. And when I heard that book from the start to the finish, I read it several times and I thought, I need this coach. I need to find a way to get on board with this coach. So I emailed him and we talked. He asked me questions. I fill out an application. And that was the beginning of where I am now. It was amazing. I'm so glad that he accepted me. It was his book.

[01:18:55.570] – Client 5
My husband actually listens to. And he heard that you had this program. And he was he suggested that, hey, this is something different, why don't you try this? And so I went ahead and I looked into it and I just said, yes, that would be good because it would give me the accountability and it was different than what other approaches I had been doing.

[01:19:19.330] – Client 6
I love to listen to a podcast when I work out or when I'm doing anything. And I kind of fell into the 40 Plus Fitness podcast, and I just like your message. It resonated. It made sense. You know, the things you were saying made common sense to me. Didn't sound like some crazy let's, you know, do this and have success in ten days or something like that. It just seemed like a good, healthy, balanced approach.

[01:19:44.080] – Client 7
When I spoke to him, I felt very comfortable with him. I felt that he was going to guide me and I had this kind of preconceived notion like a personal coach was more like a drill instructor, and I didn't feel that at all, I felt like he was there to guide you. I started with the idea of weight loss, but he was more of a guidance in terms of improving overall health, and that's what I got out of our initial conversation. And I think it kind of spoke to what I really wanted, which was improving my health in general.

[01:20:19.860] – Client 8
I chose Coach Allen because I was always searching for something. You know, I've always worked out and I recall in my car driving, I was just searching for I believe it was a podcast for health and exercise. And I listen to just one episode and then I put it into my favorites. And then I continued on listening to a lot of the episodes and I connected. I had this connection with Coach Allan somewhere where I wanted to be in my life and with my journey of health. And at that time that's I looked up on his website, I downloaded his book, I listened to the book, and then I contact him.

[01:21:04.140] – Client 9
Because of the reputation I heard from others who had been coached under him and also because of the research I did myself listening to his podcast.

What are some of your wins? What are you most proud of from the GAS Program?

[01:21:20.760] – Client 1
I have lost some weight and I've lost some inches. And but more than that, I feel like it's more of a lifestyle now. So if I do go off my eating plan when I go on vacation, I know that I'm going to start back up and I look forward to getting back on plan and I don't go to bed feeling guilty or bad like I used to in the past of, you know, oh I ate the wrong thing, oh, I didn't do this. I just feel so much more confident about things my health these days.

[01:21:57.810] – Client 2
I'm most proud of the fact that I haven't given up, even though sometimes I have some valleys that I get into and some ruts that I have to get out of. I love Allan's road map analogy and so it seems like I can get on the detours, all right. But Allan is inspirational and when I've ever talked with Allen, I'm always really ready to get going again and it sustains me for quite a while. I did lose weight. Right now I'm working on losing it again, but I just am very inspired by Allan and I feel like I won whenever I have a full week that I've done some exercise in a day and when I've stopped eating sweets and started really counting things and leaving out sugar.

[01:22:48.780] – Client 3
Well, I've lost a good amount of body fat as well as gaining strength. Definitely do feel like I've been able to take things up a notch and I look forward to continuing to do that.

[01:23:06.170] – Client 4
When I listen to Coach Allan's book he was talking about, used to be and I have used to be, I used to be a dancer, I used to walk a lot. I used to practice yoga and various things in life, stopped those activities. And I had actually become kind of like a non mover. I wasn't motivated. And so what I'm most happy about is I move now. Yeah, I don't dance because my feet got injured. I can't do that again.

But that's OK. I'm doing other things. I've built up my strength. When Coach Allan gave me my first program, I thought, wow, that's easy. That's like wimpy. OK, I have to do some squats, I have to do some overhead presses, I have to do some side lunges and counter push ups or knee push ups and I thought I can do that. It's not hard at all. Like I stood on that band, tried to put press up over my head and I couldn't do it, not even with a ten pound resistance band.

That was a shock to me because I used to be a lot fitter. And as I worked at it day by day, slowly, slowly, I've gotten stronger. And so I'm really happy with that. I'm proud of that. I'm also proud of my nutrition. I eat better. I eat good food, healthy food. I don't drink Pepsi anymore. I'm proud of the learning I've done to learn about fitness and even to share things with my family, the little things that I've learned that I think they might be interested in.

I'm really happy I can do that. So I'm very proud of what I've accomplished.

[01:24:55.670] – Client 5
Well, yes, definitely weight loss. But even more than that was we went to get a DEXA scan, which shows your body fat percentage and from the initial one to the next one. Well, I had been working with you. I had lost in body fat, but my muscles had actually gained a little bit. So I thought that was great in the lady who is doing the Scarers. Wow. Whatever you're doing, keep it up.

[01:25:28.220] – Client 6
I think I'm most proud of when I started the program, my A1C was above nine and the last two times I've had it tested, it's been six and I've dropped one of two of my meds and if I would focus a little bit more, I would be able to drop the other one. So I'm kind of just working on dropping meds. And over the time I've known Allan and interacted with him, I started at 265. I'm currently like 235, so I'm down about thirty pounds, but I still have a ways to go.

[01:26:05.300] – Client 7
I think I'm most proud of the fact that I not only lost forty five pounds, but I also got rid of some of my blood pressure medication and my blood pressure was better regulated. So I would say that that was like a double one. And I also have a lot more energy. I feel like I gained some years more than anything. I feel like, I'm 10 years younger, if you will, because I can do the things I was doing 10 years ago.

[01:26:37.900] – Client 8
Well, my wins are what I've got is of commitment. And when I put myself to something, I know I'm going to be committed on completing that. But what I also learned is I can't do this on myself. So I need some guidance. And with guidance of a coach or an accountability partner, that's what I need. And that's what I'm most proud of. The journey that I've started.

[01:27:03.900] – Client 9
My wins are that I lost a little over 40 pounds, which I did not expect in my wildest dreams. I have a new perspective on the fact that it's not just weight loss at all. It's about your health as you get older and maintaining your muscle mass and maintaining your flexibility and and being able to do all the things that you want to do as you get older. That thought had not really it important to me before until I had coaching.

Do you feel good about this investment of time, effort, and money? Why or why not?

[01:27:45.810] – Client 1
I do feel good about the investment of all of those because I feel like this has been an investment in my health. As I get older, I have a plan, I'm sticking with it. I feel good about those things that I'm doing and before I didn't have a plan. So I just feel like working with Allan has helped me with that. And it has been a great investment.

[01:28:16.350] – Client 2
I feel good about the time, investment and money because I think that it's very flexible. I can do what I need to do whenever I have time. Sometimes I wish I could take more time to have Allan watching me, but I think that's my problem and not Allan's. I enjoyed the things that I do, and it's actually quite a bit less expensive than what I was doing with my regular other trainer who was in person, I could get one week of training, I mean, one hour of training with her, whereas with Allan I can train nonstop if I want to and then were rewarded with the calls that Allan offers so that we can be on top of what's new and he can be on top of what we're doing. And he shows that he cares even though he's got a few of us to care for, and even though mostly we're online and not in person.

[01:29:15.580] – Client 3
Yes, I do feel good. I think it is worth the investment. It's definitely gotten results. And I like the interaction. I like the ability, the accountability and the ability to get answers when I need them. And so I do think it's definitely worth the investment.

[01:29:37.940] – Client 4
Absolutely. It's been the best investment I ever made because it's an investment in me and actually in my family and in my loved ones and my friends, because it's made me a different person. I've changed things for the better. I'm happier. I'm more positive. I'm motivated. I love what I'm doing with Coach Allan. I wouldn't change it for anything. And I'm so glad I did it. And I hope Coach Allan, just 5000 more podcast.

[01:30:08.540] – Client 5
Yes, I do. Sometimes you just need some help or you need someone to help you have accountability and guidance on what to do next. And we're talking about health here. This is determining how you're going to feel in the future as well as today. And that's important. I want to be the little old lady there have been schooling, what in the world is she doing now? And that's where you are.

[01:30:36.890] – Client 6
I do think it's been a good effort of my time and money because it's not that much money when you when you think about it and you know, your health, if you don't have your health, you're screwed. You know, you could have all the money in the world and no health. And, you know, you're the guy from Apple. I can't remember his name, but so that was really I wanted to invest in myself. And it's been great. You know, I feel even when I slip up and I'm like, right now I'm kind of in a little bit of a slump. I feel like I have all the tools to just ride the ship and keep moving forward a second that I don't get in a panic mode or I don't get into the woe is me mode. It's like, well, are you doing what you should be doing, yes or no? And if the answer is no, then make some corrections and keep moving forward. So for that, you know, I've got that great mindset going where it's like there is no finish line, it's just life.

[01:31:35.960] – Client 7
It was definitely a good investment of my time, effort and money, all three. The time and the effort, I wish I had done this sooner because I think I would feel that much better if I started earlier. But that's definitely been a great experience and a great investment because the payoff has been tremendous.

[01:31:18.800] – Client 8
I do feel good about the investment and the reasons why is I did a lot of research in regards to hiring a coach and I did hire a coach prior to this for a cycling event. And I need the guidance. So when I put time and money into it, it gives me that much more to fulfill my goals that I need to succeed.

[01:32:18.800] – Client 9
I absolutely do. I get the chills when I think what would have happened if I had not gotten in touch with you or if the things I had lined up in order to get your coaching, if those things had not happened, I am afraid to think where I would be right now today.

Is there anything else you'd like to say about the 40+ Fitness GAS Program?

[01:32:42.650] – Client 1
When I started, I was really concerned about the group calls because I thought, I don't know if I'm going to, you know, have the same kind of questions or people going to be even interested in what I have to say? But when I did sign up, I thought, OK, I'm going to make sure that I ask questions. I'm going to do the group calls, even though I'm uncomfortable with it. And that was the biggest surprise for me because I really like the group calls. So I can't say that's a negative because I really do. I just, you know, they ask questions that I have the same interest in. And even if not, I feel like I learned so much. And I do like how you do the you know, whatever's on your mind at the beginning of the calls. So that I think is good. But everything else, I just feel like you're there when I'm having a rough time, you say just set up a call, you'll answer any questions I have or even through the app, I'm able to just reach out or you reach out to me.

[01:33:44.570] – Client 1
So I feel like there's a good conversation there. And then, like I said, I was really surprised with the group. I wasn't sure how I was going to feel with all that, but that was a pleasant surprise.

[01:33:56.030] – Client 2
I think people ought to really consider 40 plus fitness training if they're over 40 because Allan is not 20 something or even 30 something and he understands the body as it's beginning to relapse into old. And if you don't want your body to relapse into old and you should join up with Allan and work with Allan because he's with you all the way on this, given that he's in the same age group and he knows what he's doing and he's had his own successes and failures, that he's had to work through the failures and has had a lot of wins. So it's it's a great thing and motivating to work with Allan.

[01:34:38.840] – Client 3
Well, I really appreciate Coach Allan. I appreciate the efforts he puts in. And it's definitely something that those looking to take things to a different level should be considering.

[01:34:50.990] – Client 4
I listen to 40 plus fitness podcasts every day. I listen to my favorite ones over and over and learn something every time I listen to them, even on repeat lessons, I think they're so valuable. I love them and I love that book. It's a great book. If you haven't read it, please read it.

[01:35:11.030] – Client 5
Yeah, I've been doing some things that I never thought I would, and some of the program aspects of the program were things I kind of heard about. But I thought, oh, that's not for me. And yet I'm finding those things are actually what's working for me. So and then the other things I just thought I would never be able to do, I'm actually doing now so.

[01:35:35.780] – Client 6
Well, I really enjoy that, you know, I can reach out to Allan any time. If I text him or message him, he gets right back to me. And, you know, it's almost like having your own personal psychiatrist because, you know, he just he really talked to you through some stuff. And it's been a good relationship.

[01:35:56.690] – Client 7
I think the biggest thing that drew me to it and looking back at the program after I'm done with it, is that the accountability and the support from other people, just knowing that everyone's in the same boat you're in, we're all just trying to get better. The accountability of reporting to everybody, hey, I did this this week. This work, this didn't work. It keeps you to the program. It really keeps you motivated because motivation alone, trying to stay motivated, It's difficult. With the program, It gives you all those things and the things that you're struggling, that's when you'll talk to someone and the kind of pep you up and tell you, hey, I had that same issue or, oh, this is what you can do to help that out. There's always something there to support you and keep you moving forward. You don't really have those moments where you're giving up because there's really no one there to support trying to encourage you.

The program really did do a lot of that for me. I don't think I would have done it on my own. I know I wouldn't have done it on my own. I've been on diets many times and it just diet doesn't do it, it's all of it together. So having that support, guidance, the knowledge to do what's right and knowing what works.

[01:37:19.920] – Client 8
40 plus fitness has been a pivotal part of my health journey, let's say. And one of the reasons it is, is because as an airline pilot, I'm on the road a lot and I can always find a gym. I can always find exercising. I can always go for a walk or run or whatever the case may be. But what I find really hard is getting organized with food and just prepping. And I think as someone who's traveling, I'm going to be completely honest. It is a hard thing to maintain nutritional goals while you're traveling.

And what I will say about that is, is you got to put in time. You got to put in effort, you got to do your homework and you got to prepare. And the guidance that I get through Coach Allan is he's put me on a program and there's so much information that I'm able to gather, motivation that I'm able to gather in order for me to prep, because it's always been hard being on the road to travel. And also I'm able to get the exercises I need via the website and the apps for me to be motivated and have accountability throughout my process in my health journey.

[01:38:38.940] – Client 9
I would like to say to anybody who's on the fence about considering getting a coach to jump in because Allan provides a money back guarantee. You do have to want it and work for it, but take a chance and put yourself all in. And the results are the benefits of it are amazing.


Post Show/Recap

Post show with Rach

[01:39:07.620] – Allan
Welcome back, Raz.

[01:39:08.820] – Rachel
Hey, Allan, you know, your seven tips systems that you put together were probably all of the key points that every person should consider and their health and fitness journey. There's a few that stood out, but that was pretty much all the most important things that people need to know.

[01:39:29.970] – Allan
Yeah, I just sat there and I was, you know, what do we put into this episode? Because I didn't want it to just be let's talk about the podcast, because I don't think that does six years of work. Justice to say, oh, here I did this and here I did that. We did those things and I had help all along the way. And that was really kind of a theme I wanted to get out of there.

[01:39:51.360] – Allan
I hope I did, was that everybody needs help at some level for some things. And it's hard sometimes to ask for help. You know, you think, OK, if I didn't do if I didn't pay my audio processor to do this because I can do it then because the whole testimonial piece, I put all of that together so I can do the audio editing and cutting and processing and all of that, I can't make people on the phone sound better, but that is what it is.

[01:40:19.170] – Allan
But, you know, we should ask for help. And that was really, you know, in going through all of that was a core theme for me, was don't be afraid to ask for help. But I couldn't just make that the show, you know, ask for help, ask for help, ask for help. I knew I needed to do something more. And that's why I sat down and spent a good bit of time thinking about, OK, what did I learn?

[01:40:41.480] – Allan
what was this all for? Talking to three hundred and eleven guests and reading over three hundred books and having these doing a lot of research and having these conversations and working with my clients, hundreds of clients over that time. What stood out as the keys to all of this. And that's why I wanted to share that. And I do call it your wellness systems. It's just really one system. But I needed another s and they're just the acronym fell.

[01:41:10.380] – Allan
But, you know, I thought, you know, sharing seven things that were really important was a key learning moment, key learning point and really a good summary of six years of podcasting.

[01:41:24.450] – Rachel
My gosh, six years. Congratulations on that, by the way. That's amazing. And this being your 500th podcast is just incredible to me. And I've listened to probably almost every single one of your podcasts and every single one I've learned something. But one of the key things that I find, like in your SYSTEMS acronym, but also that I found in your podcast, is the Making Health and Fitness a part of your lifestyle. Make it sustainable.

[01:41:54.120] – Allan
Yeah, too often will people think, well, I did this diet and I lost some weight and then something happened. You know, I slipped up a birthday party, had a piece of cake, something happened. And as a result of a planned or unplanned detour, as I talk about it in the wellness roadmap book, is, you know, you're always going to have detours. You know, birthdays come around every year. And, you know, I was talking to one client and he has X numbers of cousins and children and family members.

[01:42:29.160] – Allan
And so I was like, so basically based on that number of family members, you're having a birthday party twice a month. You know, every time you have a birthday party, you're going to go off the rails for three days. Well, you know, you just lost one quarter of your whole month off the rails and he said that is if I get back on in three days, you know, sometimes it's a week, sometimes it's a month.

[01:42:57.090] – Allan
And so you want to find those ways that are just it's just your path. It's just it's grooved in to the way you live your life. And that's, you know, I kind of equate it to this. If you get into the habit of running, you change your behavior and you change your identity. So Rachel identifies as a runner. If you do cross fit, you identify as a cross fitter. If you eat a certain way, that way of eating, you call yourself that.

[01:43:26.370] – Allan
You're a vegetarian or an omnivore. You know, if you eat clean, if you're clean eater, a lot of those things actually become a part of your personality. They become how you relate. And they also then reflect the people that you hang out with, you know, a carnivore and a vegetarian hanging out together could happen if they're both adults. But for most people, no, different tribes, different tribes, they're not going to relate and they're not going to enjoy going out to dinner together.

[01:43:57.420] – Allan
And so you start to revolve around the people that fit your lifestyle and if you continue to hang out with other people, it hasn't become a sustainable lifestyle because if you can't beat it back and say, no, I've got to get back on the path, you know, because this is who I am. And so, you know, you might if you went on a trip, you might not run for a week and that would be almost torture.

[01:44:22.500] – Allan
But you should get back, you're lacing up your shoes. You know, the first 30 minutes, hour, two hours you get, you're lacing up your shoes and you're back on the path. And so and in many cases, even the trips you plan, you plan to have running time and so that's you know, but that's the core of it, is that you've built a lifestyle where you said, OK, who am I and what do I do?

[01:44:48.720] – Allan
And the running has become who you are.

[01:44:51.870] – Rachel
And here's to there's two thoughts in all of that, Allan. And there's two things, is that you've developed your podcast, you wrote the book, and you have a wonderful community on Facebook where you've made it just that. You've made it a community where people can be exposed to other helpful people. You know, there's a lot of people on your Facebook page that aren't runners and you yourself are not a runner so much as I am.

[01:45:18.090] – Rachel
Maybe, but but it's still a community where we can look to each other for information and support and encouragement, which is half the battle right there. But the second thing I wanted to mention, too, is with the same thing with your podcast and your book and your Facebook community, I think that you've taught a lot of people how to get back. You mention it, you call it a detour in your book. You know, like you just said, it happens to all of us all the time.

[01:45:45.360] – Rachel
But if we keep the I'll start the diet on Monday kind of mentality or if we decide to quit because we had one day of bad eating and we just ruined everything and we just want to quit, you know, that is just self sabotaging. But you've taught us how to just be kind to ourselves, except that we celebrated a birthday party or had a holiday weekend or whatever and then get back to it as soon as possible. If you make it a bad meal, it's better than you're making it a bad weekend or a bad month of eating, for example.

[01:46:19.320] – Rachel
So I think that's one of the best things that have come out of your podcast and your book and your Facebook community.

[01:46:25.830] – Allan
Thank you. Because, I mean, I'm planning this vacation and the place we're going is an all inclusive resort. And so I'm yeah, I'm literally going to be having dollar bills in my pocket to take the waiters. And I'm not going to care for a week. I'm not going to care. I'm going to I know I'm going to blow up like a whale. I just do. And then I'm going to enjoy like I said, I'm going to enjoy.

[01:46:48.930] – Allan
When I get in, I'm going to have oysters everywhere I can have them. We finally get there because we're in New Orleans. We're going to be in Miami. We're going to be in Pensacola. I'm going to eat a lot of oysters. And I'm going to find brussel sprouts and I'm going to eat brussel sprouts. And, you know, the things I don't get or don't normally eat, I'm probably going to eat and enjoy the heck out of them, you know?

[01:47:11.610] – Allan
And after that's over, when I get back on that plane and I land in Panama City, I'm going to have a plan. You know, I'm right now, I'm researching hiring a coach for myself, an online coach myself. So they'll put me on a program. I'll have the accountability. I'll do the things that I need to do. And I'm working my way of thinking about what is that next little thing I want to do to just keep the fire lit.

[01:47:38.430] – Rachel
Right.

[01:47:39.240] – Allan
And so I'm no different than anybody else. I still have foibles. I still screw up from time to time. And as I said on my Facebook, if the air is human, I'm a humanist human out there, you know. So that's that's really what this podcast is. It's trying to take health and fitness and say it's not about flex Fridays, it's not about competing with anyone else. It's about just doing the thing to make yourself better tomorrow.

[01:48:04.430] – Rachel
Right. You know, the other piece of advice you mentioned is that 80 20 rule. You know, I didn't even think about it until you mentioned it. When I think 80/20, I think you take the weekend off. But that's not 20 percent of my week. So that's another mindset.

[01:48:24.430] – Allan
it feels like it from a time perspective. It went by really, really fast if you were having a good time. And so, yeah, that week that weekend went by very fast.

[01:48:33.450] – Allan
It feels like twenty percent of a week, maybe even less, but It's not.

[01:48:39.060] – Rachel
you know, it that just goes to show that even with all of your podcasts, even after all these 500 episodes, I still learn something that I never gave much thought to before.

[01:48:51.330] – Allan
OK. I hope we have 500 more but at doing 52, one per week that's good nine years or so down the line. So we'll see.

[01:49:03.540] – Rachel
I think you can cover a whole ton of topics between now and then.

[01:49:07.910] – Allan
There's so much to cover.

[01:49:09.320] – Rachel
There really is.

[01:49:10.880] – Allan
All right, Rachel. Well, I'll see you next week.

[01:49:13.110] – Rachel
Yup. Take care.

Patreons

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

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