Let's Say Hello

[00:01:34.290] – Allan

So, unfortunately, we're not going to have Rachel on the show this week. But she'll be back next week, I promise.

Interview

[00:04:58.400] – Allan

Dr. Ellen, welcome to 40+ Fitness.

[00:05:01.130] – Dr. Ellen

Thank you, Allan. It is so awesome to be here.

[00:05:04.170] – Allan

Yeah. As you got into your story and some of the things that you've done, it's really kind of fascinating because I'm not going to say there's parallels in our lives, but it's like you were a fitness trainer and then you kind of went on and started doing coaching and doing a lot of things online and offline and just kind of building a practice, if you will. Your book is called, Rock Your Midlife: Seven Steps to Transform Yourself and Make Your Next Chapter Your Best Chapter. And I like the title well enough. But there was a quote in the book, and I have to read this quote out loud because this is pretty fascinating and really touched me in a way that I'm like, okay, this is why I do what I do. And it's this, at midlife, you're gifted with an entire second adulthood to know and love yourself on a deeper level to figure out who you are and what you want. And I just thought that's magic. If people would wrap their mind around that one quote, their midlife, the after midlife, after 50, after 40 age, suddenly they're like, hey, this isn't a downward thing I'm facing. This is an opportunity.

[00:06:17.710] – Dr. Ellen

I love that you started with that quote from my book. And thank you. I'm glad it touched you because you were sharing a little bit of your story. And I think we're both finding that I'm having a gas. I mean, I'm almost 60 and I feel fabulous. Why it's so important that there are people like yourself who are telling people, this is how you can be healthy. I've met so many people who are at the healthiest in their 40s, their 50s, even their 60s, and then deciding who do I want to be when I grew up? Because I know my story and I think a lot of us, we were like, climbing this ladder of success, but it was up against the wrong freaking building. You're clawing your way up, you're sweating, you hate going to work every day. And what you can do at midlife is take everything that you've learned, really get to know yourself, what you love to do, what your talents are, the genius you're here to share with the world and create an incredible next chapter. I think that's what we're really here to say, that we're changing the pace of midlife.

[00:07:12.070] – Dr. Ellen

It's not about crisis, it is about difficulty transformation, often with people. But you can really create an amazing 20,30 decades.

[00:07:22.750] – Allan

As I got into my journey because I was in my early, late 30s when I realized I had a massive imbalance in my life. And I was so focused on career that my relationships were sour, my family life was sour. Everything else in my life, fitness and health, everything else, I was just not even scoring zeros across the board. And then career 100. And I was like, So this is not working for me. But it took me about eight years of hitting this, trying this. And I realized one of the problems that I had the whole time through was that I was focused on an outcome of weight loss, thinking that was kind of what I needed to do. And I think most of us approach this problem of midlife. It's weight loss. And most of my clients say, hey, I need to lose weight. But the reality of it is that's a byproduct or a side effect of you actually just getting your life in order. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because you brought up that concept in here. We're focusing on the wrong problem.

[00:08:33.220] – Dr. Ellen

Right. The reason we focus on way, honestly is it's such a specific, easy metric to look at. Like, how do you measure happiness, right? Like, that's really subjective weight you get on the scale. And people are like, wow, I lost 10 pounds. I feel good about myself, but as you said, and I have a lot of clients coming to me too. The first thing they want to do is lose weight. And we start with looking at their life because the reason that they're having that threesome with Ben and Jerry's or that Chardonnay Cheddar cheese have it in the evening is because they're not enjoying their lives. And so by the time 5:00,6:00 hits cocktail hour is like the thing that makes them feel good. So during the day, we're experiencing so much stress, especially right now with so much uncertainty and the pandemic still happening. So what happens when we get these cortisol rushes all day long? All cortisol is the hormone of fight and flight. So we're feeling stressed out, we're feeling tired. We're not very happy. And rather than saying, hey, what do I need to do to manage my stress, to create a life that I love, to find purpose and meaning? We're leaning into dopamine.

[00:09:38.020] – Dr. Ellen

Dopamine is the chemical of reward. It's the sex, drugs, rock and roll, food, alcohol, gambling, shopping, all of those kinds of things. And so again, like with weight, it's easy. We lean into the dopamine. I'll just have this threesome with Ben and Jerry's. Instead of looking at my life and going, okay, what's not working? What do I need to feel more fulfilled? And so when I start to work with people, it's so interesting. We start to work from the inside out. The self talk, the self compassion, the self care, all of these things about treating yourself well and feeling like you're enough. And then come 5:00, 6:00, they're not interested in the food because they're feeling good and they're feeling energized all day, and they're giving themselves what they need throughout the day. But again, I think we're leaning into weight because we think that that's the solution. And I think there's so much in the media about these quick weight loss solutions. You'll feel good about yourself. And particularly for women, our self worth is so much based on our appearance. And when we're happier, we don't feel confident, when we don't feel very good about ourselves.

[00:10:43.070] – Dr. Ellen

But I also tell people, too, that weight needs to be an outcome, not the goal, because we don't have control over it. I've seen people, I'm sure you have as well, who are eating right, who are moving their bodies. And the scale isn't budging. They feel a Plateau. And what happens is if we make weight the focus of our journey, when the scale doesn't go down, even when we've been doing the lifestyle change, we feel bad about ourselves. And then we're just like, screw it. I'm going to go ahead and just eat whatever I want in this vicious cycle of beating yourself up and being good and then not good. And I just work with my clients. It's just like, get rid of the diet books, get rid of the weight mentality, and let's focus on health and happiness.

[00:11:27.190] – Allan

Yeah. I remember going to the gym when I was actually doing things right. And so about every third day or so, I would be on the elliptical just burning up a sweat, doing some hit training or something like that. And there was this one woman, and she'd been coming in there for roughly the same amount of time I had. She'd been in there five, six months. And every day she came in and got on the elliptical and just killed herself for the whole hour and a half I was in the gym. So one day I'm finishing up my hit training. It's 20 minutes, and then I'm done. And she just says, what are you doing? You're losing weight. You lost a lot of weight over the course the last little bit of time. And I said, well, I stopped actually paying attention to weight. I actually started paying attention to other things and things I enjoy doing and making myself be myself. And you have a seven step program that is in a big part. I think I stumbled into it. It took me eight years. Someone now can buy your book Rock at Midlife, and you pretty much have given them seven direct steps that will take them the same path.

[00:12:36.970] – Allan

Can you talk about the seven steps and briefly what each step does?

[00:12:41.170] – Dr. Ellen

Yes. And I went through it myself, too. So I've lived it. I've lived with my clients, so I didn't just get there overnight. But the first step is authenticity. And authenticity is so important because if you don't know yourself and if you're not being authentic, there's no way that you can create a midlife. The next chapter that's going to feel fulfilling and good for you. Because if you're being someone else, if you're wearing a mask, if you're trying to live someone else's story or agenda, you're going to keep running into those walls. Why don't I feel good? Why am I not enjoying my life? So what I do is I take people through this is stuff that I've worked on through my PhD and through years of working with positive psychology. Lots of journaling questions and prompts. People can ask lots of various tests that people can take. Like a lot of my clients, I have them take the VRA test, which is a test that looks at various character strengths. It's free. You can get it online to really see what am I really good at? What do I really love to do? What have I always been curious about?

[00:13:46.360] – Dr. Ellen

What did I want to be when I was a kid and sort of just really getting to know yourself, just like you would get to know a good friend. And I think a lot of people don't really take the time to figure out what do I love to do? For me, I had an older sister who is a very accomplished musician and artist, so I kind of didn't do that in my own life. But I always wanted to do more art, more music. So I just bought a ukulele. I just got myself some pencils, and I'm drawing and rediscovering these kind of varied parts of ourselves. So the first step is authenticity. Really get to know who are you? And it's also about embracing your flaws. We're not all good at everything and figuring out what am I really good at? What do I need some help? What do I love to do? What lights me up? And it's a really great initial Breadcrumb on this quest to make an amazing next chapter. That's step one. Step two is to love yourself and really learn to treat yourself like you would a good friend. And this I grew from my studies of self compassion, which I was fortunate enough to study with a woman named Kristin Neff.

[00:14:54.850] – Dr. Ellen

She's kind of a pioneer in this area. A lot of people like question, how do you love yourself? And this self compassion is really the how of loving yourself. And so it's really all about learning to treat yourself like you would a good friend. And when I start working with people, I have them think about when a friend that you love goes through something, how do you treat yourself? I'm sorry, how do you treat them? And then how do you treat yourself when you go through something? And the whole idea is to start to put yourself in those sort of befriending shoes or pretend that you had a wise friend and ask, how would she treat me? And then do that thing. So that's step two, loving yourself is such a game changer, because when you love yourself, you attract what's in your best interest. So you go to the gym, not because you're punishing yourself, but because you want to be healthy, you want to have a healthy life. Personally, I love to exercise. I don't know where we got on this whole bandwagon of exercise is punishment. I woke up this morning and I went cross country skiing first thing in the morning.

[00:15:57.720] – Dr. Ellen

It was a blast. So you start to eat right, take care of your body, get in relationships that are positive, do more things that light you up because you love and care about yourself. So that was a game changer for me. I'm curious, have you practiced much self compassionate for men? It's kind of a different ball of wax.

[00:16:13.580] – Allan

It was. And I'm going to say this word if it bothers you, if there's kids, cover their ears. But I literally thought of myself as a fat bastard. That was literally the words that were in my head as I was going through the beginning of my journey. And that was the wake up. The wake up was, who am I? And I woke up, I was actually I was hungover and I was in Malaysia. And I've been working on this for eight years, this and that, and then just failing over and over, I was back in the same spot. And I just remember waking up and thinking, why can't I do this? Because I'm so good at everything that I have ever wanted to do. I wanted to be good at football in high school, I was good at football. I tried out for the tennis team. I made the tennis team. In College and high school, if I wanted to make a grade, I made the grade. If I wanted to pass the test, I passed the test. When I wanted to get a job, I got the job. I almost had no failure. And I was like, why did that always happen?

[00:17:14.910] – Allan

And then it's not happening in this facet of my life, what is different? And then I realized I woke up. I'm like, nothing's different. The only difference is I'm not treating myself well and I'm not committed. And if I were committed, I would treat myself like someone I love. And the way I kind of equate it is, if you told your spouse that you were going to be at the airport at 05:00 in the morning to pick them up, guess where you are at 05:00 in the morning? And if you treated your spouse the way you treat yourself, you always do that. You never do that. If you use those words, you can't do anything right what you're saying in your head to yourself. But if you ever said that to your spouse, you're probably facing a fight or a divorce. We can't divorce ourselves. So if we really think about self compassion and love, then we stop using those words. We catch ourselves when we're doing it, and we say, I would never, ever say that to a friend. And if a friend ever said that to me, it would really hurt my feelings.

[00:18:18.870] – Allan

So as soon as you can start getting past those words, then you can open up to the possibilities of who you're really supposed to be. That's where we get to the next few steps, where you're talking about getting energy and reprogramming and empowering yourself and doing those things. But until you get past this point, because I think in my opinion, a self love, self compassion piece you have to do this step.

[00:18:45.430] – Dr. Ellen

And it's a beautiful story. And it all starts with that self talk. And the interesting thing is that self critic, as you said, I think you said the fat bastard. We developed that inner self talk before we're ten years old. We developed this inner critic because our caregivers criticize us, right? They tell us to finish everything on our plate and keep our room clean and get good grades. And if we don't do these things, we are in danger of not being loved and cared for. So when we get to be adults, we internalize the voice of our early caregivers. That inner critic becomes very real in our lives. And we think and this is an interesting thing that I realized in so much of my research is that we think that we need the inner critic to motivate us, like you said, to get on the tennis team and to get that job and be successful at work. But the research really shows that the self criticizing actually undermines motivation. Because when you criticize yourself, you shut yourself down, you generate cortisol, you feel bad about yourself. Whereas with self compassion. We want to do those things because we want to be happy.

[00:19:51.970] – Dr. Ellen

And actually, self compassion is very energizing. And unlike self esteem, which for a long time, psychologists really emphasize self esteem, self compassion actually is not contingent on anything. You can love yourself and support yourself regardless of how well you do at the gym, at your job. It's a muscle that you can build that constantly grows. That's why it's such a focal point of my work and the book that if you don't love yourself, you can't create a next great chapter. And it really comes down to being kind yourself rather than critical. To be mindful when you're struggling and suffering. So to stop and notice and say, oh my gosh, that was a tough time right now, particularly the kind of days that we've had. I've talked to so many clients and friends who have had so many losses. And with Covid it's been really difficult, extra challenging to stop and say, what do I need right now? And treat yourself like a good friend. And also to understand this concept of common humanity that we all make mistakes, we all fail. It's part of the human condition. So I'm so glad that you have been discovering this yourself.

[00:20:55.810] – Allan

Yeah. So now the next, the third step you have is about energizing yourself.

[00:21:02.290] – Dr. Ellen

Right. So if you want to have a next great chapter, you've got to take care of your body. So in this chapter, I really just summarize my 30 something years in the health and wellness field. So diet, it's not complicated. The media wants you to think that you have to go on some crazy diet and eat really weird foods or cut certain things out. But it really comes down to eating more plants. So really personally, I try to get between seven and ten servings of plant foods every single day. Plants are so important, they help to reduce inflammation. If you are trying to lose weight. Plants contain fiber, which is the part of the plant that we don't digest. They fill you up without filling you out. If you're going through menopause, those plant fibers can help you with menopause symptoms. And it's really in my work, I've really found if people add more plants in, it crowds out other things. So eat more plants. Don't eat anything your grandmother wouldn't have eaten. So really sticking to whole foods, foods that aren't processed, staying away from things like added chemicals, added sugar, and then eat until you are satisfied, not stuffed

[00:22:11.510] – Dr. Ellen

So if we did those three things, if we ate more plants, ate more whole foods, really didn't stuff ourselves, we would really be healthier and get to a healthy weight. Certainly with movement, I recommend at least 25 minutes a day. I think at midlife, less is more. We still need to build muscle. At midlife, we start to really lose our muscle mass after 30. If people don't do strength training, their muscle mass really erodes at a very quick level. It's also one thing I found so interesting in my book is that women at midlife need more protein. So the protein requirement in general is .8 grams/kg. At midlife, we need one to one and a half grams per kilogram. So we actually need more protein to support that muscle mass. The lower estrogen levels we think about bone loss, but we also can have muscle mass loss due to the estrogen. So the bone building is really important. Stretching is also really important to do that with your exercise and of course, cardio. And as far as nutrition, D is very important. You live in Panama, so I'm sure you get plenty of D.

[00:23:18.520] – Dr. Ellen

But here where I live in Vermont, I take vitamin D every day. Most people living in the north are deficient in vitamin D, but 50% of people are. So it's super important for your immune system, for bone health, for even how your mind functions. And then I think rest is really important. It's so important to rest between workouts, giving your muscles time to heal and grow stronger. It's also really important to make sure that you are managing stress and resting during the day and also getting 7 to 8 hours of good sleep and of course, also staying hydrated. So things we've heard before. But I think again, just having really simple, smart goals for yourself, maybe getting an accountability buddy, hiring some help, someone like yourself who can help people get that accountability and hit the mark is so important. But taking care of your health is really important. A lot of people are just blaming it on I'm getting old, I'm getting tired, I'm gaining weight. But you really can reverse any kind of health challenge that you're experiencing at midlife. So that's number three and number four is to reprogram your brain. So I think at midlife we do start to not be quite as sharp.

[00:24:29.860] – Dr. Ellen

I know myself sometimes it's hard to remember everything. I think part of that is that our minds are so full of so many things and we're not as mindful as we could be. So we're not just focusing on just doing what we're doing while we're doing it. So mindfulness is really important for your brain. It's interesting to note that at midlife and at any point in your life, you're always making new neural connections. So your nervous system, your brain, your neurons are always making new connections. So if you've experienced issues in your life, whether that's trauma, depression, memory issues, you can reprogram and rebuild your brain through things like mindfulness, through taking time and writing things down, which helps commit things to long term memory by really doing more of what lights you up, what's important. And of course, exercise is super important for your brain. And eating right is also important for your brain. Your brain is one of your most nutrient hungry organs in your body. It uses about 20% to 25% of your calories every day. So taking care of your brain means taking care of your whole body. There certainly is a brain body connection.

[00:25:44.450] – Dr. Ellen

And also a lot of interesting things I talk about in Rock your Midlife, about the microbiome. I don't know if you have come across some of the research which is this. We have an organ that's not really part of our body. It weighs about 4 pounds and it's made up of microorganisms. So bacteria, viruses, fungi, parasites, a lot of them are very good for our health. They help with our digestion. They actually can help with your immune system and with your mood. And you can build a healthy microbiome again, eating more of those plants, eating less sugar, having less alcohol, less additives, and then also eating what's called probiotics. So you're eating some healthy organisms yourself, so you can take a probiotic supplement, or you can also eat things like sauerkraut, kombucha, yogurt, which contain these microorganisms. So that's step four is reprogramming, working on your brain.

[00:26:40.930] – Dr. Ellen

Step five is about empowering yourself. So for me, your empowerment really starts with that step one, authenticity. So knowing that this is who I am and this is what I'm meant to do in the world, it's all about having power from within. So often we look from power from without, so we look to other people, we look to our job or organizations to make us feel good.

[00:27:05.340] – Dr. Ellen

But empowerment is really drilling down and saying what makes me happy? What do I want to do in the world? What are my geniuses and what are my strengths? And also I combine in Rock your Midlife this idea of authenticity with the law of attraction, which is simply this idea that, like attracts like. So the energy that you put out attracts energy to you. So if you are positive, if you're working on yourself, you're practicing that self love and that self compassion, you're going to attract opportunities and people in your life who are going to feed your soul and feed what you want to do in your next chapter. If you're walking around complaining and feeling bad about yourself in your life all the time, then that's where you're going to be stuck. It doesn't mean that you need to be a Pollyanna. And difficult things happen. And we need to hold ourselves when we're sad, when we're grieving, when we're frustrating, but we need to not sort of push those emotions down, but really take care of the difficult emotions. And then we can sort of get to this neutral ground with things like gratitude.

[00:28:14.540] – Dr. Ellen

And then we can really work on more of those positive emotions, like joy and happiness. And so that empowerment is some emotional up leveling, as well as really being yourself and putting yourself out in the world in the most powerful way you can.

[00:28:29.140] – Dr. Ellen

And then moving to step six. So I love step six because what happens is after you've done step one through five, you start to change. It's like you've been that Caterpillar, and then all of a sudden you're like, oh, my gosh, I'm coming out of my Chrysalis. I'm the butterfly. My wings are drying. The only problem is the people in your life might see that and think that you're still the Caterpillar, and you're like, no, no, I'm a butterfly. Can't you see? Like, I'm colorful and I'm flying and I'm eating nectar. And so in this chapter, which is called Rehab Your Relationships, I give people three specific techniques to really work with the people in your life. So the first thing with that is really to get your people pleaser. And you're a good girl. A lot of us have people pleasers. It kind of goes back to what I was saying before about early caregivers, wanting everybody to like us.

[00:29:20.850] – Dr. Ellen

So really saying yes when you mean yes and know when you mean no. Putting yourself first, it doesn't mean that you're selfish. It just means you've got to put on your own oxygen mask right before you can support other people. I teach people something called the nonviolent communication. So specific techniques to communicate with people, which really involves getting your needs met and then also setting boundaries. So really, I have people go through an exercise where they create a personal bill of rights, where they really decide, this is what I stand for. This is my bottom line. And if you cross it, these are the consequences. And I think we don't do that a lot. I don't know how good how it is with men so much because I work mostly with women, but having a bill of rights and just deciding this is what I stand for, whether it's with work, whether it's people that you're in intimate relationships with. But it's super important to get your needs met, to set boundaries and to really work on those relationships.

[00:30:21.130] – Allan

I think with me, like you talked about men, and I think the reality of it was that I was so focused in one facet of my life that those relationships were gone. Any of them that I still had were the toxic ones that just seemed to cling on because they'll cling on till the end. And I was like, okay, I have to get rid of the toxic people in my life, particularly the ones that I can, because there were some that I couldn't because they were like my boss. Get rid of some toxic things and then start looking and seeking out the people that bring you joy, the people that you know are good people for you, the people that are going to support you. Jim Rohn says you're the sum of the five people you spend the most time with. And 15 years ago, if I would have put that list together, wrong people. And so now I make a point of spending the time, my time with the people that I care about the most, and I know care about me. And so they're lifting me up versus tearing me down all the time.

[00:31:31.230] – Allan

And so even as a guy, you might not think about it a lot. But if most of your time is spent with your drinking buddies at the bar after work and you guys are just tearing down beers, buying each other rounds, and that's all good and fun, but that's your path. That's who you're surrounding yourself with, and that's going to leave you stuck. So you've already done these things. You're trying to beat us butterfly. Maybe not a butterfly for a guy. Maybe we're moths, I don't know. But you've become something better than that and it's time for you to move on.

[00:32:06.650] – Dr. Ellen

That's awesome that you did that. It's difficult, though. I know myself before I made these changes, I left 25 year marriage and substances were a part of our social life, and now I'm so much more judicious. I mean, I might drink occasionally, socially, occasionally have a glass of wine, but my new man in my life may be on say, we practice kind of yoga together. We go cross country skiing, we got a tandem bike, and we have a tandem kayak. And I think that's really the relationship thing is so important because often when I start working with people, I'm sure you noticed this, too, Allan, is that people are really scared. If I make these changes, what's it going to do for my relationships? If I lose the weight, how am I going to go out to that restaurant and order things and say, well, I don't really want to drink, I don't enjoy doing this anymore? Or what's going to happen with my primary relation, my marriage? If I lose weight and I get in shape and I change my lifestyle and my husband or wife stays the same, what's going to happen? Am I going to lose friends?

[00:33:04.060] – Dr. Ellen

And so that's a difficult question that I think a lot of people when they're sort of thinking we're sort of at the beginning of the year and people are thinking about change, and I think covid made people really reevaluate their lives. A lot of thinking, gosh, if I change, what if, what if this happens? And what if that happens? And that's again, I talk about this a lot before the steps, talking about getting unstuck and immunity to change. Often we have something deep seated. So I'm sure it was hard for you to think about, gosh, if I change my life, if I'm going to get up at 05:00 in the morning and get to the gym, well, that means that I can't go out for those drinks with those guys. And if I say, Gee, I really want to start finding new friends, what's going to happen with those relationships? But I know myself when I cleared away some of the old relationships, new relationships is space for new relationships. And there's lots of really amazing people out there who can support you and love you, who want to have a healthy lifestyle. But there's a lot of fear, I think around.

[00:34:00.670] – Dr. Ellen

And that's something that I also, when I work with people looking at this immunity to change. I've had a lot of clients who don't do the self care because they want to be available 24/7 for the grandkids. And they think, well, if I join the gym or if I take that yoga class or that self development thing, then I won't be available to babysit all the time. And they don't even realize that they've got this underlying belief feeling like, well, I won't be needed then. So sometimes you have to really look very deep. And I think this weight loss spiral keeps people in a very stuck place where they never have to look at what would happen if I really did change, what would really happen if I stopped dieting? And I just said, you know what, I'm going to start focusing on my lifestyle and really make some deep changes.

[00:34:46.070] – Allan

Let's talk about the 7th step on this. And then I do want to jump in and talk a little bit more about fear, because I see that a lot.

[00:34:53.230] – Dr. Ellen

Sure. The 7th step is enlightenment. So enlightenment spirituality is really all about connecting with your passion and purpose. And we're all here for a reason, and there's a lot of problems in the world. So we all have talents and gifts to share with people. So this is really all about how to connect with your soul and your spirit. You might want to rediscover religion that you experienced when you were younger or just experience a new spiritual path. So I give people a lot of specific things they can do to create a spiritual practice, to create a relationship with their soul. I like to say that you are a soul having a human experience, maybe flip that around, said thinking, I'm a human, I have a soul, and I kind of go to Church on Sundays, and I experience it to see what's it like to connect with your spiritual self. I mean, for me, a lot of that is doing various yoga practices, certainly being out in nature, nothing to me connects me more with all that is than just being outside and seeing the birds and the snow and the trees. So lots of specific things that people can do, because I think when we get to the midlife, we're wiser and we want more of that type of connection.

[00:36:08.520] – Dr. Ellen

And hopefully we've created more space and time. And we know that so many people at midlife are quitting their jobs. Right. They're just thinking about gosh, you had that same experience saying that, I don't want to do this anymore. It's not making me happy. So the big piece of being happy is finding your passion and your purpose, connecting with things like gratitude, so I really dig deep into spirituality as well as sort of the positive psychology behind things people can do to really be happier, more joyful.

[00:36:38.960] – Allan

Yeah. Now with fear, you had two acronyms, and I think these kind of sum it up of the kind of the two sides of this. And the first acronym was false evidence appearing real. And the second was face everything in rise. And the two sides that I see there is the first one is most of the fear we have is not rational. And it's more of like a worry, something like you said, the what if, what if this were to happen and then you're afraid. It's like, well, I don't want that to happen, so I just won't do this. Or the other side of fear is just a point where you sit there and say, you know, I've put up with being this way or being unhappy, and I deserve more. And you talked in the book about how there was, like you of happiness down to midlife. And now we're in this bottom of the trough. And as soon as we recognize that, then the fear should start to dissipate because of the opportunity, like I said, the opportunity to go back up the other side of that view of what we see over the course of most people, not everybody but most people is that opportunity to find the same kind of joy we had when we were children.

[00:37:53.330] – Allan

So can you talk a little bit about fear and a little bit how we can overcome fear?

[00:37:58.070] – Dr. Ellen

That's a great question. Yeah. Well, the first thing is to understand the neuroscience behind fear. So we have this living brain, which is our amygdala that's in the back of our brain. It's the primitive part of your brain that is there to protect you from danger. It doesn't care if you're happy, doesn't care if you're fulfilled. All he wants to do is keep you from being eaten by a Saber tooth Tiger. So it's great if it's 100,000 years ago where, yeah, you could get eaten. You had to protect yourself. There was danger around every corner. But in today's world, if you're listening to this, you're not in any danger of getting eaten right now, right. Where you're perfectly safe. But we have to understand.

[00:38:39.900] – Allan

Well, the lady at the PTA meeting might shoot my head off, but that's about as bad as it's going to go.

[00:38:44.800] – Dr. Ellen

Yeah, exactly. We've got this part of our brain that is really trying to protect us. And then we've also got what's called the default mode network that runs down the center of our brain, which is constantly scanning the environment for what could go wrong in self definition. So again, your brain is just looking around, and this part of our brain evolved again hundreds of thousands of years ago when we were in tribes. There was a lot of social comparison where you had to figure out where do I fit? So maybe somebody was good at cooking and somebody's good at hunting and somebody's good at healing and somebody's good at creating clothes. So we all have to sort of figure out where we fit. But now we've got this crazy social comparison where we literally can be online with millions of people comparing ourselves to other people. So we're constantly scanning the environment for what could go wrong? My check could bounce. I could lose all my money, or I could lose my job or I could lose my marriage. So we're constantly worrying about that. Worrying about where do I fit in, what's my status? So the first thing is to really just call it out.

[00:39:49.910] – Dr. Ellen

Just fear is really in your mind. So what I like to say is name it you tame it. Just say, this is just fear. This is just my brain. And a lot of times it shows up. The worry shows up in rumination, which rumination comes from the root of it is ruminants, which are I live in Vermont, so I don't know you probably don't have a lot of cows in Panama

[00:40:10.070] – Allan

there are some

[00:40:12.590] – Dr. Ellen

we've got goats and cows and sheep and ruminants chew their cod. Right. They chew the grass and then they chew it again. So it's chewing things over and over in your mind. Again, the neuroscience we do this because if I think about my problems all the time, if I think about 04:00 in the morning and I'm worrying about, like, my boss and I didn't get this assignment on time and what's going to happen to me? We think if we worry about it, we're going to solve it. But Ironically, what happens is it keeps us stuck and out of problem solving mode because all we're doing is chewing the problem over and over again in our head. So the first thing is just to name it, just to call it out and say, this is just fear.

[00:40:51.350] – Dr. Ellen

It's just part of being human. May be giving yourself a little self compassion because you're having this thought mindfulness can be really helpful. Learning how to focus your thoughts. Whether you start a meditation practice just you just have to be long. Just watching your thoughts for five to ten minutes a day or finding ways throughout the day to sort of focus on your breathing. Calm yourself down. So the first thing is name it you tame it and then feel it you heal it. So where's fear showing up in my body? So emotions are felt experiences in your body. So often fear will show up maybe it's a tightness in your throat because you don't want to speak your truth. Or you might feel it around your heart because it involves a relationship or often it's in our bellies. Right? We're afraid. So name it you tame it and just let it come and go. And then a couple of other tricks that I like to use, see if you can change fear into excitement. So fear and excitement or anxiety and excitement are very similar in terms of the physiology. So when we're excited or we're anxious, our pulse might go up, we might sweat, we might flush.

[00:41:56.360] – Dr. Ellen

But if we turn that into excitement, like when you're in a roller coaster. Right. You're like, this is scary, but you know that you're safe. So see if you can just flip it around and say, you know what? For me, I love public speaking, but it also creates a lot of anxiety. So I turned into excitement. I'm really excited to speak today to share my truth and my passion for midlife. So change it in excitement if you can. And then I think my favorite technique is just focusing on breathing. So even the Navy Seals use this four X four X four X four breathing. They call box breathing. So what happens is when you breathe in for four, hold it for four, exhale for four, hold for four. It calms down your physiology. So what happens is you turn off that fight and flight, that cortisol, and you fire up your rest and digest. So simply doing a few minutes of deep breathing or simply breathing in really long exhalation, the long exhalation really helps to help you reset your physiology. There's so much that we can do. Listening to music is another powerful thing.

[00:43:08.300] – Dr. Ellen

So if we listen to music, that either you could listen to Rocky. Right. If you wanted to turn that fear into excitement, or you might listen to something that kind of calms down your nervous system. That's really helpful. And essential oils are really great. So those are just a couple of techniques. But I talk about fear a lot in the book because frankly, it's something that keeps so many people from moving forward. If you look at the research, it's so interesting that children, they have their fear animals, they get over it. Right. If you see an animal that's fearful, they go through their stress and then they reset. We don't do that as much at midlife. Right. We stay in this chronic stressful situation, which, of course, is creating a ton of inflammation and is really at the root cause of so much of our health. So maybe for motivation, see if you can really work on your fear and anxiety and your chronic stress as a way to help yourself heal and feel great in the coming year.

[00:44:03.500] – Allan

All right. Now, for a lot of us, this is never going to be a straight line. So even if we go through the steps and seems kind of linear because there are seven of them and some of them might take us a little longer, I think we all know that. But eventually, as with all things, issues are going to come up. And one of the things you said in the book that I thought was really interesting because I used to say this about my brother that he was happily miserable. But you used the term comfortably uncomfortable. And that kind of touched me because I was going to go one of those moments that you're saying for a lot of us, we don't want to get outside our comfort zone. Now in the book, you had 21 tips for getting unstuck. Can you just share some of your favorites?

[00:44:47.810] – Dr. Ellen

Sure. I would say it's interesting. There's so many things you can do. One of the greatest things to do is create a new habit. So if you take a look at the research on breaking habits, making habits, it's better to replace a habit that is not serving you with a new habit. So I'll give you an example. Let's say, for example, every day at 03:00, you get hungry, which is kind of your cue to eat. You go to the vending machine and you have a candy bar and a soda. And then the reinforcing reward is you kind of get a little bit of a lift from your fatigue so you could create a new habit. So instead of that habit, you can go ahead and stock up and have snacks in your desk, things like healthy portions of nuts, fruit, maybe sugar free yogurt and water to stay hydrated. And so when 03:00 hits, you get that hunger sort of fatigue thing going on. Instead of walking to the vending machine, you grab your healthy snack, you grab your water bottle, and you go for a 10,15 minutes walk. And your reward is that you feel energized, you feel good, but it's not this kind of energy that comes from sort of the sugar caffeine high and then crashes.

[00:46:03.440] – Dr. Ellen

So creating a new habit is a really great thing to do. Another unstuck thing I love to do is declutter. Declutter a drawer, declutter a closet, declutter your garage. It is so freeing and energizing to declutter some aspect of your life, and it creates space for something new. It creates a sense of accomplishment. I think we all love to do it. So just put something on your calendar for some time that you're going to do a little bit of decluttering.

[00:46:32.330] – Dr. Ellen

Another thing is to just do something new. So go somewhere new, drive to a new place at work, read a new morning newspaper, make a new friend. Just create some newness in your life. Create a new hairstyle, change your hairstyle, change your hair color, wear a color you don't normally wear. But just doing anything new, I think, again, we are creatures of habit. It's so interesting when you look at the literature, something like 45% of the things we do every single day are automatic. Things like we tie our shoes, we make our coffee, we take our shower, either first thing in the morning or at the end of the day. You've got to shake it up and try something new.

[00:47:12.230] – Dr. Ellen

I really also like rising with the Sun, super energetic to really get into the circadian rhythms where you are living. So I get up usually with the sun. I love watching the sun set and the sun rise in the morning. You actually have more energy when you're kind of on those vibes with the sun. So just really just trying to do some new things. And I give 21 tips in my book, so if you're feeling stuck, just do something new. Getting accountability buddy, is really awesome as well. So having somebody who's also trying to make some changes in your life, learning something new. So I think I was saying earlier in the episode, I just got myself a ukulele, and so learning to play the ukulele, I'm creating those new things, those new brain neural connections in my mind, which are so awesome. Make a bucket list. That's another awesome thing to do. Make a bucket list. Actually, we don't even have to call it a bucket list. We can call it the next chapter list, right? So it's not about things I want to do before I leave the Earth, but things that I really want to do in this next chapter, I think we have space and time.

[00:48:21.960] – Dr. Ellen

Kids are empty nests. Maybe we're downsizing a little bit from our work. We're downsizing our home. But don't just fill it up with the same old, same old. Do something new because there is really a million things to do in the world and everything is so accessible right now. So get really conscious about it too. Maybe a little bit less television. I think it's so tempting to fill our days with TV. So maybe being a little more judicious with your media time and really picking something that you want to learn and do this year.

[00:48:50.810] – Allan

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

[00:49:01.610] – Dr. Ellen

the first thing I would say, progress, not perfection. So we haven't really talked about perfectionism. I talk about it a lot in the book. Rock your midlife. But perfectionism will just kill any wellness strategy because let's say, for example, you set this goal and you say, I'm going to work out every single day or I am going to eat this perfect diet. I've got this diet plan. I'm going to follow it. If you are a perfectionist, if you mess up what happens? You give up. You're just like, okay, I didn't do it right. I feel bad about myself. And I see this all the time with a lot of the people I work with are recovering chronic dieters. We see this. They go on these diets, they do it perfectly. They fill out their Journal, they do all the things, and then all of a sudden they blow their diet. They have one dinner out, or maybe they have a little bit of alcohol and inhibitions go down and they have slip up and then they go right back to the same old crappy, standard American diet, same thing with workouts. You miss a workout and then all of a sudden you miss too.

[00:50:06.960] – Dr. Ellen

And then you stop working out completely. So focus on the progress that you're making. Focus on the fact that I'm going to just carry an Apple in my bag and when I need a snack, I'm going to eat that or I'm going to start a walking program and I'm going to walk for 25 minutes every day. Maybe you'll do 45. And I love this idea, too, of set smaller goals to say, I'm going to just do three push ups. And while you're down there, you'll do ten, but you've got to sort of start out with small things that I love. You're probably familiar with Mel Robbins, who talks about the five second rule. Another great way to get over fear is just count to five and just do it. Do something small and focus on the progress you're making, not perfection. And when we're talking about goals, it's so important to set smart goals, which I'm sure Allan, you help your people set smart goals, which stands for specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time sensitive. And these are things that you have control over. A lot of people set goals like, I'll lose 25 pounds. Well, that's not a smart goal and you don't have control over.

[00:51:10.290] – Dr. Ellen

But you have control over something. Like every day after lunch I'm going to take a 20 minutes walk or something I've been working on. One of the things I struggle with is eating late at night and my fiance and I are really trying hard to eat earlier in the day and just say, okay, we're going to not have anything after 08:00 and I'd like to move it to seven. But setting a smart goal, maybe even like three nights a week, we're going to have dinner at 07:00 and we're going to stop eating by 08:00. So set smart goals. And then I would say a thing too is and this is something that I focus so much on in my work and my book. Have fun. We've got to get away from this punitive attitude around weight loss. When I started my career 30 years ago as a registered dietitian, people would come into my office and I would say, Why are you here? And they said, well, my doctor told me I had to see you. And then I would ask them, what did you have to eat last night? And they would say, Well, I knew I was coming in to see you.

[00:52:11.730] – Dr. Ellen

So I had a double stuffed crust pizza, an ice cream or a steak. And they didn't want to be there and they weren't at the stage of readiness to make change. And it was all because you've been bad. So now we're going to punish you by eating this diet that is this draconian, 1200 calories or 600 calorie diet. And you're going to be miserable. Healthy eating is really fun. Like my partner is an amazing gardener and I am so inspired by what he grows and what I can Cook and we love to work. I don't even want to call it work it out. I mean there's nothing we like better than getting on our town and bike and going to the next island and biking for three or 4 hours. You're exhausted but it feels fabulous. I love doing yoga and I love lifting weights and I love eating healthy. So just get away from this attitude that being healthy is some punishment for your earlier sins in life. And I guess at a fourth, no matter where you are at, if you are breathing more is going right than wrong. You have like 32 trillion cells and all they want to do is keep you alive.

[00:53:21.650] – Dr. Ellen

So thank your cells. I like the dog barking to emphasize that right. Thank your cells. Treat your body. Weld stop beating your body up and learn to love yourself, practice and self compassion with my research really showed is that it really will help you with your body image. Focus on your function and feeling good. Don't worry so much about how you look. I think we also need to focus too on you can be sexy and beautiful. I'm at 60 and I feel more beautiful and sexier and healthier than I've ever felt in my life. I'm slowing down a bit but I think I'm gorgeous and I love my life and I'm having so much fun.

[00:54:01.470] – Dr. Ellen

Thank you, Dr. Ellen, if someone wanted to learn more about you, learn more about the book, Rock Your Midlife, where would you like for me to send them?

[00:54:09.720] – Dr. Ellen

Just go to themidlifewhisper.com and I'm easy to find. That's my website and I'm the only midlife Whisperer in the universe as far as I know. Also you can just go to Amazon and put in Rock Your Midlife and the book will come right up for you.

[00:54:24.730] – Allan

You can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/525 and I'll be sure to have links there. Dr. Ellen, thank you for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

[00:54:34.330] – Dr. Ellen

Thank you, Allan. It's been such a fun conversation. I'm looking forward to more conversations in the future.

[00:54:39.640] – Allan

Absolutely.

Patreons

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Thank you!

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Let's Say Hello

[00:01:16.030] – Allan

Hey, Ras, how are things going?

[00:01:18.110] – Rachel

Good, Allan. How are you today?

[00:01:20.140] – Allan

I'm doing okay. It's been kind of a weird couple of weeks. I don't want to go into it in too much detail because there's still some things I'm working on that I can't really reveal out loud right now because if I don't get what I've got to get done, done, then I don't need anybody knowing about it. So, yeah, a lot's going on, good and bad and just kind of working through some things, but otherwise healthy, doing well. The gym is doing okay. Lula's is doing okay.

[00:01:51.320] – Rachel

Good.

[00:01:52.140] – Allan

We're just plotting along.

[00:01:54.430] – Rachel

Nice. That's awesome. Good to hear.

[00:01:56.120] – Allan

how are things for you?

[00:01:57.470] – Rachel

Good. Burying myself out of the snow, but I am excited because I'll be taking a vacation down in Florida very soon. So I just ran a half marathon over the weekend in the snow, and next weekend I get to run a little over a half marathon on the beach. So I'm pretty excited.

[00:02:15.910] – Allan

Just watch out for that lip and the sidewalk, okay.

[00:02:18.930] – Rachel

Right. I know.

[00:02:20.710] – Rachel

I'm telling you, I'm already nervous about it, but, yes, I will definitely be paying attention this time.

[00:02:27.550] – Allan

All right. Well, you're ready to have a conversation with Dr. Davis?

[00:02:31.050] – Rachel

Sure.

Interview

[00:03:17.890] – Allan

Dr. Davis, welcome back to 40+ Fitness.

[00:03:22.030] – Dr. Davis

Thank you, Allan. Glad to be here again.

[00:03:24.730] – Allan

I didn't realize it's been over three and a half years since we talked about your book, Undoctored. That was episode 251. If anyone's interested after listening to this, that they want to go catch another episode with you. It's episode 251, so you can go back and find that there. But we talked about Undoctored, and I really liked the book. I liked the concept of it, and I've used that in talking to people about how they manage their healthcare and help manage themselves. But today we're going to talk about Super Gut: A Four Week Plan to Reprogram Your Microbiome, Restore Health, and Lose Weight. And when I heard Super Gut, I was thinking about a superhero with a beer gut. But that's not what we're talking about.

[00:04:11.110] – Dr. Davis

Right. It's kind of a goofy name, I know, but I'm kind of the King of goofy book titles. But it's a serious book. I think it's got a lot of fun stuff in it, too. But it's a very serious book that I think really packs. I'm very mindful, Allan, that it's not just descriptive telling you how the microbiome has gone wrong and all the nasty things, but I want to make sure that people are given solutions also. So people who read this book, it's very prescriptive also.

[00:04:42.440] – Allan

It is. And that's what I wanted to get into as we got into this is it's a full week program in the book, and each week kind of has its own purposes, but the whole concept of SIBO and CIFO and all the other stuff that's going on with your microbiome, this is not a simple if then this puzzle that we are trying to solve, this is a 16 sided Rubik's Cube, if you will, of symptoms and things going on. And that's why it's been so difficult for doctors to diagnose this. And most of the times it just gets kind of lumped in with, oh, you've got IBS, and it just becomes this nebulous thing of, well, let's try that, or let's try this. And then you have the FODMAPs and you got that, you got this. And it is just for a lot of people, trial and error, and you kind of line it all up and say, okay, here's some things, here's some tools, here's some approaches to how we can solve this problem. But you also do a really good job on the front end, in my opinion, of helping us understand why we're experiencing the things we're experiencing.

[00:05:50.950] – Allan

Because a lot of us thought the gut is the gut and the brain is the brain and the liver is the liver. And they, I guess sort of need things because the liver is going to get food from the gut and the brain is going to get food from the gut. So we know there's some relationship there, but I think we've always kind of simplified it. And you brought up some things in the book that just were fascinating because I've talked about SIBO before, but I always just thought, okay, yeah, it's food particles and getting into your blood, but it's actually much more toxic than that. Basically, the bad fungi or bad bacteria we have, they actually get into our bloodstream and cause a whole mirror of things. It's called metabolic endotoxemia, and it's caused by these lipopolysaccharides LPS. Can you kind of talk about that whole process? Because I think as soon as we start to understand that having the bad bacteria is a huge problem, if it's getting up into our small intestine and then the fact that it's not just little food particles or other things going in, it's bacteria we're eating.

[00:07:08.240] – Allan

It's bacteria that we have coming up through the bottom, the whole thing. Can you just kind of just summarize that for us?

[00:07:15.950] – Dr. Davis

A lot of us have suspected this thing called leaky gut for many years. But I finally got validated with good science in 2007 by a French and now Belgian group, Dr. Patrice Canyon and his team. They showed that the microbes in the GI tract, there are trillions of them, of course, Alan right. And they live and die in the space of a few hours. They don't live very long. So there's rapid turnover of trillions of microbes. And when they die, a lot of the debris of their little cell bodies enters the bloodstream. And as you point out, that's called endotoxemia, because the walls of these microbes have something called endotoxin. Endotoxin is extremely toxic to humans. If you inject nanogram quantity, you can kill somebody. So it doesn't take much. But there's been an across the board increase in endotoxemia in modern people because of what we've done to the microbiome. We've dramatically disrupted the composition. We've lost microbes that did important things for us, and we've allowed proliferation of unhealthy microbes to take their place. But also, as you point out, then, ascend many people in my estimation, one in three people, Allan, over 100 million people.

[00:08:31.640] – Dr. Davis

This is bigger than the pre diabetes type two diabetes epidemic. It is a silent but very widespread epidemic where microbes have proliferated and descended up into the Ilium to a denomin stomach. So you can imagine 30ft trillions of microbes living and dying rapidly and their debris entering the bloodstream. So it's both a cause for numerous health conditions as well as a fact that makes many conditions worse. And as you point out, it's something that's not being addressed by the great majority of mainstream physicians.

[00:09:10.610] – Allan

As I thought about this, we've talked about antibiotics before. I'm on the show quite a bit. It used to be you'd go to the doctor, you'd have the sniffles, and the doctor would say, well, here, even though I know it's probably a virus, you're not going to be happy unless I give you something. So here's a prescription for an antibiotic. And that sort of became the norm for a while. But that is sort of like dropping a nuclear bomb on the village, isn't it?

[00:09:37.490] – Dr. Davis

Absolutely. Most of us by age 40 have taken 30 courses of antibiotics. And yeah, you don't really recover from antibiotics. Many people do not recover a normal microbiome you're left with because if you kill something, it doesn't just reappear. People used to think that rats came from a pile of rats, right? That's not true. You have to have rats to make rats. And so if you lose important microbial species, you've lost them probably for life or at least for a long time. 

[00:10:09.720] – Allan

And I guess we know we still have some individuals out there, tribes and whatnot people that still live basic lifestyles very similar to what we did when we were Hunter gatherers, because they're Hunter gatherers and they're not taking the antibiotics and they're not eating and drinking the diet sodas and the eating of that. How different is their microbiome to ours?

[00:10:37.670] – Dr. Davis

It's fascinating. Several research groups have done this work, and I give them a lot of credit because this is not an easy thing to do to get the stool specimens from people living hunter gatherer lives. And you can imagine what an odd request that must seem to them. But the stools have been analyzed from the anomaly in the Brazilian rainforest, the Matzo in the Highlands of Peru, the hazard in the Savannah of Tanzania, the Masai in Kenya, the Malone and East Coast of Africa. So primitive groups, as you point out, are Hunter gatherers, don't eat modern food, don't take antibiotics, and don't have exposure to such things as emulsifying agents and ice cream. So they have very different microbiome. They have microbes we don't have we have microbes they don't have there's very little overlap compared to modern people. But the interesting thing is if you compare the microbiome composition of all those primitive or Indigenous populations, even though many of them are on different continents, have never met each other, they have very similar microbiomes, which has been interpreted by these groups to mean that they must have the microbiome handed down through the generations, so called Stone Age microbiome.

[00:11:53.040] – Dr. Davis

And it is very different. What's not clear is how much do we mimic? Should we try to mimic? Do we need more Prevotella like they have? They have a species called Prevotella. They have something called spirochetes. They're loaded with spirochetes. The only spirochetes that modern people have is the one that causes syphilis. And we have to remind ourselves also these people who have a different microbiome also have no constipation, no hemorrhoids, no colon cancer, no ulcerative colitis, no Crohn's disease, no Erobile syndrome, virtually unknown to have autoimmune conditions, no coronary disease. In other words, they have other problems, right. They've got infections and injury and worm infestations because of their lifestyle, but they don't have the so called I always find this amazing, the anthropologists actually label the diseases we suffer from, like type two diabetes, hypertension, coronary disease, Alzheimer's, dementia, etc. They call this diseases of civilization? Well, there's got to be some important lessons. If these Indigenous people have virtually none of our diseases, they have different diseases. Those diseases that they suffer from, like malaria, dengue fever, we're pretty good at dealing with that. The modern healthcare system is pretty good at dealing with that.

[00:13:14.080] – Dr. Davis

But modern health care stinks for taking care because for a number of reasons. But one of the reasons is they're very profitable because they're chronic treatments. If you have pneumonia and you need antibiotics for a couple of weeks, that's a two week profit opportunity. If you have high blood pressure, that's a lifelong profit opportunity. That's why there's so much focus on the diseases of civilization.

[00:13:38.150] – Allan

Well, and they just get bigger and bigger every year. I see the reports. The percentage of people that are obese or overweight, it goes up every year. It doesn't go down despite people knowing that eating whole food and not over indulging in ice cream and those kinds of things is going to be better for you. It's just really a struggle living in a modern environment and not having some of those problems. And you talk a lot in the book, and I want to just mention it, is that we start building our microbiota through being born, coming through the cervix and being born, and then later with breast milk and all of those types of things. And a lot of that has stopped happening. And because we're over 40, it's not like we can go back and redecide how we were going to be born and bred. We are who we are now. You have a four week super gut program, and it's very broad. I mean, it goes through a lot of different things that you have to think about with regards to managing what you eat, how you live, what you do. It's not the shortcut we think.

[00:14:51.440] – Allan

Why can't we just get a fecal transplant? Because that's the thing. Can you kind of go through the steps of your four week super gut program and why each one of those steps is important?

[00:15:06.030] – Dr. Davis

So people don't get overwhelmed with this. I think of cultivating your microbiome is just like having a garden in springtime in your backyard. So if you have a garden, let's say you lay out 10×10 plot. You've got to prepare the soil. You pick out the rocks and stones and debris, and then you plant seeds, and then through the growing season, you water and fertilize it. The intestinal microbiome is very, very similar. So we clear the soil, prepare the soil by not getting exposed to things that disrupt your microbiome. There's a list, as you know, such things as minimizing antibiotics. There's a time and place for antibiotics, but as you point out, not just in case kind of usage, other drugs, statin, cholesterol drugs, those horrible class of drugs that make a lot of money for big Pharma, does almost nothing for the public health. Nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs like Ibuprofen, Naproxen, diclofenac, massive disruption of the microbiome. The most fine agents in common foods, like salad dressing and ice cream, synthetic sweeteners in diet sodas like aspartame. So we kind of clean up our garden by avoiding those kinds of things. There's a long list in the book.

[00:16:21.440] – Dr. Davis

Of course, it's not unmanageable. One of the things we all do is we go back to real food. We don't buy the crap that's got 35 ingredients that are unpronounced. We buy avocados and eggs, a pork chop, and then we plant seeds. The seeds come in several forms. The best seeds are fermented foods like Kimchi, fermented sauerkraut, fermented veggies. And you can do this on your kitchen counter. It's virtually no cost. It's delicious. But people have forgotten that fermented foods are so healthy for you. In fact, they view fermented foods with suspicion or disgust because it may be like a cloudy soupy mix with your veggies. But once you learn how to do this, it's virtually no cost. It's delicious. And it's one of the most powerful ways to seed your GI tract. By the way, the seeding process, based on some very interesting research out of Stanford by a husband wife team, Erica and Justin Sonnenberg, showed that frequent consumption of fermented foods has dramatic changes in your microbiome. But oddly, it's not the microbes in the fermented food. No one knows why. If you eat a lot of fermented foods, the microbes that take over in your GI tract are not the microbes in the fermented food.

[00:17:42.010] – Dr. Davis

For the most part, it's other microbes. Where did they come from? Were they latent in small numbers? Did you acquire them from your environment? Nobody knows. But there's a dramatic shift and increase in healthy microbes with consumption of fermented foods. Probiotics also. But unfortunately, commercial probiotics are really kind of primitive right now. They're getting better, and there's a lot of problems with them. There's an emerging short list of probiotics that I would recommend only because not that I have any relationship with them, but they have specific features, like the strain is specified, you can't take a probiotic unless the strain is specified. To illustrate, you have E. Coli. Your listeners have E. Coli. I've got E. Coli. But what if you ate lettuce contaminated with E. Coli from cow manure? You could die of kidney failure and sepsis. So same species, e. Coli. Different strain. So strange differences can make a life death difference. So you must know the strain. And another problem with commercial probiotics is they often don't include what are called Keystone species. That is, species so much like plankton in the ocean. If plankton disappeared, whales and jellyfish, so many animals filter feeders would just die off because plankton are Keystone species.

[00:19:02.290] – Dr. Davis

That little those little creatures support tons of other creatures. Well, you have the same biological phenomenon in your GI tract. And so when you take a probiotic, you want to make sure there's at least a handful of these so called Keystone species. But probiotics can be helpful. And lastly, that's the seeding of your GI tract. And, of course, that's where we also throw in some of our fermentation projects, where we make some really cool yogurts. Particularly, it doesn't have to be yogurt. It could be other fermented foods. But my favorite microbe in the world, Lactobacillus rotori that I think introduces an age reversing effect, including ladies go berserk for this. They lose their skin wrinkles starting within four to eight weeks. And then we water and fertilize our garden. That's the things that microbes like to eat. These are mostly so called prebiotic fibers, polysaccharides, polyphenols, a lot of healthy things in mushrooms and onions and garlic, as well as some commercial preparations. And that causes healthy species to Bloom. And so it sounds like a lot, but I try to break it down week by week so that this week we're going to talk about diet and cleaning up your garden.

[00:20:12.470] – Dr. Davis

This week we're going to talk about seeding your garden. This week we're going to talk about water and fruit to try to break it down so it's manageable.

[00:20:19.410] – Allan

And I think it's really important to think of these in that order because it's fine if you start throwing the food and water in there. But if you don't have the seeds, it might not do you what you want to do. If you haven't cleaned your garden first, then you might be growing the species you don't want to grow or the strange you don't want to grow. And you're not really solving some of the bigger problems. Like, why is this in my little intestine anyway? Because it doesn't belong there. And so kind of dealing with some of those things early on. I do want to dive a little bit deeper into your week one to prepare the garden or prepare the soil, because I think for a lot of us, this is really where we're going to see a big shift in how we look and feel. Because if we're doing these things, it's like this is a list of try these things and watch how well you feel. Watch what happens to your weight. Watch all the little things that you want to use to measure health. These are going to move the needle. Every single one of these will move the needle for you in one way or another.

[00:21:27.810] – Allan

I sent you over a list of the ones you talked about in the book. Could you kind of just go through each one? And why is it important for us to either limit that or eat that way?

[00:21:38.190] – Dr. Davis

Let me pull up your list.

[00:21:39.820] – Allan

Okay. 

[00:21:40.740] – Dr. Davis

Okay. Here we go. So sugar, sugar is something we absolutely avoid. That is added sugars because sugars cause a Bloom in all kinds of nasty species. People don't know that three days, let's say you go on an all expense paid vacation in Mexico, all inclusive, and you can't resist all the margaritas that you can drink, right? Well, it takes three days of that kind of sugar exposure. You've already got irritable bowel syndrome, because what the sugar does is it feeds the microbes. It also feeds fungi. So fungi like the various Candida species, candida tropicalis, candida global Alpaca malassesia. There's about 200 different fungi that live in the human GI. They love sugar and oddly, fungal overgrowth. Somehow these microbes, these fungal microbes release some kind of factor that affects your brain and causes you to crave sweets. So it's an odd, vicious cycle. Fungi produced in metabolite that causes a sweet tooth. You eat sweets, you feed the fungi. So you've served your purpose to the fungal world that's sugar, the synthetic sweeteners like aspartame, saccharine and sucralose. Very good evidence that they massively disrupt your microbiome, even if you're a slender, active, non diabetic person.

[00:23:05.870] – Dr. Davis

By using those synthetic sweeteners, it gives you the microbiome of an obese type two diabetic. And that microbiome thereby pushes you towards weight gain, obesity and being a type two diabetic, major disruption.

[00:23:18.720] – Allan

Now, you recommended other things like stevia and Monk fruit and things like that. So if you want to move to a lower calorie, you want to look at some of the more natural choices, right?

[00:23:30.630] – Dr. Davis

Absolutely. So we just have to be a bit more discerning in our choice of sweeteners. So as you point out, stevia and Various forms mung fruit. Alulos erythritol is pretty safe. And we still can make all kinds of great stuff like cupcakes or cheesecake. We're going to use non grain flowers, by the way. Also, because of the massive disruption of the GI tract, that's the whole course the theme of my Wheat Belly books as well as the Undoctored books. I didn't want to dwell on that too much because it's covered in other books. But as you know, growing wheat and grain free is a huge advantage in health, despite the fact that they are the centerpiece of all official government guidelines and diet. The worst possible advice you can possibly conceive of is cut your fat, eat more healthy, whole grains. It would be as bad as people saying, Allan, you know, smoking a pack or two of cigarettes is not go ahead, it's good for you. No, it's not. Right.

[00:24:28.290] – Allan

They did because for a long time they did. And I think it's probably the same mechanism for why grains are such a prominent thing in our government's guidelines for food. It's a great way to get a lot of calories then, but not necessarily going to help your microbiome.

[00:24:51.790] – Dr. Davis

Now, we try to eat organic whenever opportunity and budget permit. We don't really know how effective that is. We are all filled with herbicides and pesticides. Unfortunately, if we tested all your listeners, for instance, for glyphosate, the Herbicide and Roundup will all test positive blood, urine, hair, skin, everything. So it's kind of hard we can't avoid. Unfortunately, we can only minimize. And so choosing an organic whenever possible, it makes a contribution. We filter our drinking water because most cities chlorinate or chloraminate. I'm in Milwaukee, where they use chloramine, they're very proud of that because it lingers much longer, so much so that you can't even boil it off. You have to boil it for three to four days before it starts to be reduced. So it's very persistent. But these are antimicrobials. They kill stuff, and they also disrupt the mucus barrier and thereby caused shifts in the composition of the microbiome species composition. Of course, avoiding wheat and grains, that alone is a huge advantage in health. That was the whole base of the week belly books. Of course, people lose weight because you no longer exposed the insulin raising effects of the envelopectin a. You rid yourself of the glycoprotein'derived opioid peptides that are potent appetite stimulants.

[00:26:16.520] – Dr. Davis

You get rid of the potent bowel toxic effects of wheat germaglutin, which is completely indigestible. But as it courses from mouth to toilet, it is extremely destructive, inflammatory to the human GI tract. Short list of things wrong with wheat and grain. And of course, it's gotten worse because farmers and agribusiness scientists have selected strains for their purposes. So not because they are evil, but because they wanted strains that were resistant, for instance, to pests like molds and insects. So they selected strains of wheat that were enriched in wheat germaglutin, bowel toxin and phytates, which are great pest resistant compounds. But they're also binders of magnesium, calcium, zinc and iron. And you poop out those minerals in the toilet. That's why, for instance, iron deficiency anemia is very common among people who eat grains. And then we limit alcohol because alcohol likes to entice fungi to proliferate. It doesn't mean you can't have glass. Mine just means don't overdo it. And then nonstrough anti-inflammatory drugs. These are dispensed like candy, of course, even over the counter. So a woman might take, for instance, Motorin for menstrual cramps. Or somebody might take the proxy from knee pain.

[00:27:36.070] – Dr. Davis

For one thing, Allan, I can't tell you how many times I put patients on dialysis for kidney failure from those drugs, how many times I've had red blood thrown up in my face because they had a bleeding ulcer. How many times people passed black, partially digested blood in their stool from bleeding, intestinal, ulcers. These are nasty drugs, even though they can be over the counter. But they also disrupt the microbiome. There are other ways to deal with pain that don't disrupt the microbiome. That's a whole other conversation, of course, but you can do without them very easily. And, of course, antibiotics. If you're sick and you can't breathe and you have pneumococcal pneumonia, you need an antibiotic. But as you point out, you just got a cough and a viral tracheop bronchitis, you don't need an antibiotic. So you want to really question any physician who tries to prescribe an antibiotic when it's not really clear whether you have a bacteria infection or not.

[00:28:31.840] – Allan

Yeah. And I think you do a great job in the book of simplifying this each day be thinking about something that you're going to incorporate and use. But really in the simplest sense, and you say it in the book is eat real food, single ingredients, and avoid things that you know are not going to be serving you, like alcohol, the medications, the antibiotics, those types of things, because you need that microbiome to be healthy so you can be healthy. And if you start getting to the point where, as we call it, leaky gut is happening, it's because the mucous membranes not intact. It's because other things are going on. And now you're introducing toxins into your body that are going to recap it across your whole health, not just your gut. So you might feel fine and not have any kind of bowel symptoms, but still, it's your gut that's the cause.

[00:29:31.870] – Dr. Davis

Absolutely. It's funny. If anyone ever has a few free minutes, take a look at all the studies. For instance, in irritable bowel syndrome, and you'll see they ask questions like this. What proportion of people with this very common condition shared by 60 to 70 million Americans called Irritable bowel syndrome, where you have usually diarrhea and cramps and Bloating? Well, if you look at those studies, you'll see that people with IBS or irritable bowel syndrome, typically 40% to 84%, it varies with each study, how they chose their participants have SIBO. But then look at the healthy control group. You'll be shocked at how many of the healthy control group it's not uncommon to have 24% of a healthy, controlled people also test positive for siblings, for small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. So it's everywhere. And I show people how I came to that figure. I wrapped that figure of over 100 million people in the US with SIBO. Of course, similar situations outside the US, too.

[00:30:34.990] – Allan

Well, if you're eating sugar or the non caloric, artificial sweeteners and emulsifying agents, like you said in your ice cream and drinking your local water, yeah, you probably have done some damage down there. And it's worth doing some things to make that environment a lot more hospitable to the good bugs we want in our gut.

[00:30:58.750] – Allan

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

[00:31:06.580] – Dr. Davis

Well, you know, I saved the best for last in the book because as you point out, if you do things out of order, bad things can happen. So if you say, I'm going to start with the prebiotic fibers because it's too much, the probiotics are too expensive, or I don't want to deal with the SIBO, you can actually make yourself ill if you do it out of order. So I presented a very specific order for your safety and for greater effectiveness. But I saved the very best for the last. That is pinpointing microbes that most of us have lost. And my favorite, as I mentioned, is Lactobacillus rhetoric. 96% of people have lost it due to all those factors we talked about when you re implanted. And we do it with yogurt fermented in a very specific way. Please don't let your leaders get confused. This has nothing to do with store bought yogurt. Store bought yogurt is garbage. It has almost nothing in it. Because when you ferment yogurt or any other food, bacteria don't have sexual reproduction of course. They have what's called asexual reproduction. They don't have Mommy and Daddy microbes. They just double.

[00:32:15.010] – Dr. Davis

One becomes two, two becomes four. Like that. Well, if, let's say, Rotary doubles every 3 hours in commercial yogurt fermentation, they ferment for 4 hours. Nothing happens. That's why you see ingredients like gel and gum, xanthan gum, guar gum added to thicken it up because there ain't nothing in it. So we're going to ferment for 36 hours. We allow the bacteria to double twelve times. It's just like that kid's Riddle. Which would you rather have? A million dollars or a Penny that doubles every day for 30 days? Kids always say, I want the million dollars, not knowing that the Penny will become over five and a half million dollars by day 30. But if you look at the curve, the money doesn't really start to increase $0.01, two cent, $0.04, right? Go nowhere. But it's our I'm sorry. It's day 26 27 where you start to get those really big millions of same thing happens in bacterial reproduction. If a microbe doubles every 3 hours, it's not about our 33. We start to get really big numbers. So 36, we performed a test called flow cytometry on our yogurt. We're getting around 260,000,000,000 counts of microbes per half cup serving.

[00:33:31.220] – Dr. Davis

So people eat this half cup or so of the reuteri yogurt. It's rich and very tasty, and skin starts to lose its wrinkles. There's a thickening of dermis, dermal collagen. There's an acceleration of healing. There's a restoration of youthful muscle and strength. There's a preservation of bone density. It's one of the most important things ladies can do to preserve bone health and prevent osteoporotic fractures. It deepens sleep. I'm a chronic Insomniac Allen. I used to sleep three, 4 hours a night. I have to force myself. I now sleep 9 hours a night straight through deep, vivid drains. It suppresses appetite, puts you in absolute control over appetite and impulse. And because it works, this microbrotride, by stimulating oxytocin release from the brain, it stimulates empathy, a desire to understand other people's points of view, desire for human connection, and a reduction in social anxiety, of course, occurring even pre-pandemic at a time of record social isolation, divorce and suicide. That's one microbe. So that one microbe makes a delicious yogurt. And so we do this with other microbes. So we purposefully reimplant specific microbes like Lactobacillus reuteri like bifida bacterium like Bacillus.

[00:34:58.300] – Dr. Davis

This sounds like a lot. It's actually a heck of a lot of fun. And you can get it's amazing what microbes, how they influence our behavior, our internal dialogues, our skin, not just whether you have gas or bloating, whether you're going to have Parkinson's disease or multiple sclerosis or whether you can't lose weight and we're going to become obese. Microbes are the answer.

[00:35:24.860] – Dr. Davis

So the answer to your question. Three things. So one would be aware that you can reimplant lost microbes. We don't know all the microbes, but that list is growing virtually every day, by the way, Allan. Two, though it's not directly influential on the microbiome that dietary change of banishing all wheat and grains, particularly modern wheat and grains that have all kinds of problems. In Richmond, wheat germaglutin and phytates, they're glyphosate laced. So getting rid of grains and vitamin D. I advocate that people take certain nutrients because they're lacking in modern life. So, like, for instance, magnesium, we take magnesium because we all drink filtered water. We have to if we drink from a river or stream, it's got sewage, it's got farm runoff. So we have to filter our water.

[00:36:18.700] – Dr. Davis

But water filtration is very effective at removing all magnesium. And when you become magnesium deficient, as all modern people are, unless they are supplementing, it leads to higher blood pressure, muscle cramps, higher blood sugar, heart rhythm disorders, osteoporosis, et cetera. So we have to replace magnesium. And so it's not because I want you to take a whole bunch of stuff. It's because modern life has caused it. But I didn't realize that whole list of nutrients we advocate, vitamin D, magnesium, Omega three fatty acids and iodine all also have very important microbiome implications. For instance, Omega three fatty acids, fish oil activates a very important enzyme that lines your intestinal wall called intestinal alkaline phosphatase. And that enzyme helps deactivate that endotoxin we talked about that comes from unhealthy microbes. I'm not sure I answer your question.

[00:37:17.110] – Allan

No, you did. This sounds like a lot. It is. But he really outlines us really well in the book. He has the recipes for the yogurt and the Kiefers and all the things he's been talking about. So he makes it very easy for you to start this protocol to go through and understand and know what's happening and why maybe you feel a certain way at a certain part of the program. So it's really well put together there.

[00:37:41.020] – Allan

Dr. David, if someone wanted to learn more about you, learn more about your book Super Gut or Undoctored or any of the Wheat Belly books, because there's a few of them in the series. Where would you like for me to send them?

[00:37:52.750] – Dr. Davis

I made the mistake, Allan. Every time a book came out, I'd have a wheat belly Facebook page. We have Wheat Belly blog. I finally consolidated everything. It's going to launch in the next couple of weeks, I should say it's going to launch in December so that people listening to your podcast can see it when you do. That new site is called drdavisinfinitehealth.com that will kind of incorporate everything, including a new blog. We'll bring all that content. There's 2000 articles on the blog. So a lot of stuff in there. I also have a membership website where we actually do this, like you and me talking via Zoom. I do that every Wednesday night, usually with about 70 to 100 people. And we talk about these microbiome issues, other health issues, two way interaction. People get a lot of hand holding, so that's all going to be drdavisinfinitehealth.

[00:38:49.050] – Allan

Okay, you can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/524, and I'll be sure to have the links there. Dr. Davis, thank you so much for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

[00:38:59.950] – Dr. Davis

Thank you, Allan. My pleasure.

Post Show/Recap

[00:39:09.350] – Allan

Welcome back, Ras.

[00:39:11.210] – Rachel

Hey, Allan. It was nice to hear from Dr. Davis again. I know he was on your podcast before, so it was good to have him speak again on another topic about the super guts. But there's a lot to talk about here. But for starters, I think a lot of us know that antibiotics can destroy our gut, and they're still very heavily prescribed. And sometimes you have to take a course of antibiotics to heal from a cold or illness of some sort. But I guess I didn't realize that there are other things that can destroy our gut, meaning alcohol and other drugs, like statins he had mentioned and other things. So it was a really eye opening discussion on that.

[00:39:52.980] – Allan

Yeah. There's really only one thing to feed your gut, and that's whole food, pretty much anything else that you put into your mouth isn't food. And as a result, there has to be a downstream effect. It's sort of like you have a river and you're like, okay, I can throw live fish in the river, and that's cool. I can Overstock it. But generally I can stock a river just by adding new fish. And not just species that will eat each other, but just fish. And you can kind of stock something like stock upon or stock a river. But then you start saying, well, no, now I'm going to go in there and I'm going to throw Coke cans and bottles, and I'm going to throw this other stuff in there. And now you're polluting the water, and we have to think about our internals and the gut all the way from the mouth to the butt as our river. It's our health river. It's our second immune system or our main immune system, if you will. It's a second brain. And so every time you throw crap in there, you're harming yourself, and there's no other way around it.

[00:41:01.850] – Allan

People say, garbage in, garbage out. And I'm like, no, it doesn't come out. It just stays in there. You're poisoning yourself. And sometimes, like, you said with an antibiotic, it makes sense. You've got a bug that you have to kill. There are some bad ones out there that can kill you if you don't do the right things and take the right things, get through the whole course, and hopefully that course does what it's supposed to do. As soon as you finish that, though, it's time to start restocking the river. It's time to go in there and say what are the things I need to do to clean up the water? I need to make sure there's food for the fish that I'm going to put in there and I put the good fish in. And so it's kind of his process of walking you through the planting of the garden, sowing and feeding and nurturing and then planting and doing those things in a way that builds a good flora. And he does sell kits, all the process for how you can make your own yogurts and kind of really get geeky on. Okay, exactly what do I want to put in here?

[00:42:09.410] – Allan

Maybe not completely necessary, but when you're thinking about if you're really struggling, if you've got IBS and you're struggling and you take an antibiotic course and things just go south with all that stuff. Now, granted, whatever you took the antibiotics for is okay, the infection is gone now, but now you've got to do something and you might have to go through and really be meticulous about how you're repopulating. And most of the things I've read up until this book were really just eat some yogurt, some kefir, and go on with your life. And what he's saying is you might want to be a little bit more diligent and a little bit more direct and a little bit more specific for how you do these things. Because one of the things that we have to think about is now we're well into 2nd 3rd generation of antibiotics. Penicillin was invented in 1928. And so we're fairly long and how now we've been using antibiotics to kill off species in our gut and then so there's probably species in our gut that no longer exist.

[00:43:20.990] – Rachel

Yeah, it's sad to think that.

[00:43:23.450] – Allan

And so the best you can do is the best you can do. It's like an overused knee. If you were really bad on your knees when you were younger and now your knees are hurting you, there might be some limits to how much you can repair the damage that was done. But there are things you can do. And I think that's what this book is really about with regards to the gut is to really take a methodical approach. He has a very good approach there. When you're talking about bacteria, the names get long and I don't even try to say them out loud, but he walks you through to say these are the strains of what you want to start with. This is how you want to make sure they have the food they need. But again, whole food, most of it is going to be build the good gut with whole food. And then you start worrying about adding the plants, Adding the flora.

[00:44:22.170] – Rachel

Sure. He mentioned kombucha and other sauerkraut and some other fermented foods and then paying close attention to the type of probiotics that you might find at the store to make sure that they had some sort of account or type of the bacteria that are in those prebiotics. And just to pay attention, you mentioned taking onions, garlic and mushrooms or other good fibers that the gut bacteria likes to eat. So just like you said, whole normal foods.

[00:44:58.520] – Allan

Now, one of the big things we'll say is with yogurt and things like that, the vast majority of them are not going to have enough. All they have to do is say there's some in it and then they get to sell it as what it is. He's talking about taking that same yogurt you buy in the store and adding this bacteria and letting it sit for longer than they would. They're going for a few hours. You would go particularly maybe for a day or so, two days, three days maybe, and let the bacteria multiply, multiply, multiply. Then you're really adding an opportunity. And the other side of it is, I have to believe that your stomach acid is probably going to kill a lot of these things going through you. So just recognize when you're talking in terms of billions, just like baby turtles, only a small percentage of them are probably going to make it through. But that's an approach. And it's not that you have to go do a fecal transplant or anything crazy like that, but just recognizing that what you feed grows. And if you're feeding the bad bacteria with sugar and processed foods and bad attitudes, Then they're going to be the ones that live, and then they're going to be the ones that propagate and they're going to be the ones that move up into your small intestine and cause SIBO and irritable bowel syndrome and all of those problems.

[00:46:21.690] – Allan

Those are, whether we want to admit it or not, Predominantly self inflicted Based on our lifestyle and what we're eating. And maybe, yeah, we got sick and we took some antibiotics and set ourselves up for that. But in a general sense, we can beat that back down if we're methodical about what we're doing.

[00:46:39.540] – Rachel

Yeah, this sounds like a really helpful book to have handy in case these types of things are happening to you right now.

[00:46:45.950] – Allan

Absolutely.

[00:46:47.130] – Rachel

Cool.

[00:46:48.160] – Allan

Alright. Well, I'll talk to you next week.

[00:46:51.010] – Rachel

Sounds great. Take care.

[00:46:52.510] – Allan

You, too.

[00:46:53.320] – Rachel

Thanks.

Patreons

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

– Anne Lynch	– Eric More	– Leigh Tanner
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Thank you!

Another episode you may enjoy

Undoctored with Dr. William Davis

Less...

Let's Say Hello

[00:02:25.690] – Allan

Hey, Ras. How are things going?

[00:02:27.980] – Rachel

Good. How are you today, Allan?

[00:02:29.950] – Allan

Doing all right. Doing all right. Tammy took a weekend off with a friend to go to Boquete, which is another task town here in Panama. They were having some kind of festival, so she didn't know that when they booked it. But then she was going to go and we had our deep cleaning at the gym. So for me, it was a very busy weekend running Lula's and pushing the team at the deep clean to get that all done and walking back and forth between the two because I think they're about a third of a mile apart. Get up in the morning and get everything going. At Lula's, everything's good. Then walk over to the gym, get things going there, walk back to Lula's, make sure everything's where it needs to be, and then back to the gym, make sure the crew is doing everything, help them a little while, then back to Lula's.

So, yeah, I did all this walking one third mile increments back and forth. But we got everything done, got the gym clean and reopened this morning. So that's all good. And Lula's is doing well. We've got some guests that are having a good time and check in, check out. Things are going well.

[00:03:39.320] – Rachel

Good. Glad you got your mileage in, too. That's awesome.

[00:03:42.610] – Allan

How are things up there?

[00:03:44.890] – Rachel

Good. I mentioned a while back that one of my non fitness resolutions for the year was to read a book, a non health and fitness related book. And I just finished The Radium Girls by Kate Moore. Have you read that one yet?

[00:03:58.840] – Allan

I have not.

[00:04:00.620] – Rachel

It's a good book. It's an easy read, but it's also a difficult read. But back in the twenties, these girls were painting, using radium and watch faces for the military. And then we at that time didn't know that radium was as dangerous as it really is. And so these girls developed all these terrible health problems from eating radioactive material.

[00:04:25.990] – Allan

I thought you said this was fiction. Is this actually a historical fiction or actual fiction?

[00:04:31.120] – Rachel

Okay, it's a historical, legitimate book. And in fact, it wasn't until 2011 that a monument was put in Ottawa, Illinois, where one of these radium facilities were to memorialize these girls. Because really what they did was sadly the earliest days of learning what radioactivity was, how to measure it and what it does to the body and so a lot of what we know today about radium and radioactive material is from the work that these girls did, sadly. But it was a good book. I definitely would recommend it.

[00:05:07.760] – Allan

Good.

[00:05:08.630] – Rachel

Yeah.

[00:05:09.090] – Allan

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

[00:05:11.790] – Rachel

Sure.

Interview

[00:06:00.190] – Allan

Lisa, welcome to 40+ Fitness.

[00:06:02.750] – Lisa

Thank you for having me.

[00:06:04.230] – Allan

So the book is the Core Three Healthy Eating Plan: Discover the Simple, Sustainable Way to Lose Weight, Feel Great and Enjoy Your Food Freedom. I like those last two words, food freedom, because I think so many of us, the relationship we have with ourselves, the relationship we have with our body and the kind of the way we look at food and the way we classify food, it really sets us up to kind of almost have this master-servant relationship. And it's not a good one. It's a mean master because food doesn't care about you. It's either going to serve you or not. It's about the nutrition you get because that's one of the things. As I started going and different times that I've been eating, it's like, well, how do you avoid eating this or doing that? I don't even think of that. When I walk in a grocery store, I don't go in the middle aisles because there's no food there. It's like, why would I walk down the diaper aisle? I don't need diapers.

[00:07:03.670] – Lisa

Maybe not yet, right?

[00:07:07.390] – Allan

I'm almost 56 years old. I'm two days away from my 56th birthday as this one comes out. So no, the kids are done. In fact, my daughter just turned 29, and we have another daughter who's 28. Those are our babies. Our babies are 28 and 29. So, no, our days of worrying about diapers is sort of over, at least from this perspective. Now, there might be some grandparenting situations where I'm in the diaper aisle, but on a normal day, I don't find myself on that aisle. I don't find myself on the crackers aisle. I don't find myself on the chips aisle. I don't find myself in the candy aisle. They're just not places that I find myself. So I really appreciate the word food freedom. I think that's one of the key takeaways that I got from this. And you had something else. I wrote it down, but I'm going to use it because that's me not being on this.

[00:08:02.840] – Lisa

Yes. And even while you're looking for that food freedom, I just want to say too, is kind of used a lot, sometimes even misappropriated. And it's very important to understand when we're talking about food freedom, what we're really referring to. And that's just the unconditional permission to eat. That you could eat without any stipulations, without any caveats, without any compensation later and without any punishment. And a lot of times I hear and I do honestly cringe, and I try not to cringe, but people say, oh, that was so bad that I ate that I need to go for a five mile run tomorrow morning to burn that off. And I just think that, sure, exercise and exercise does burn fuel and burn calories. But by looking at, first of all, exercise that way, you're looking at it as a punishment and by thinking that you need to punish yourself for enjoying food, it just doesn't bode well. And I think that does set people up for this very dysfunctional, chaotic relationship with food and connection to it. And it kind of sets the precedent for other issues down the road. So that's why I thought it was very important to touch upon that.

[00:09:10.400] – Allan

Yeah. And what I think is, again, why I think that's important is that because of the way things have worked out with what the foods that are available and the way we think about foods and what we've been taught about foods and the calories in calories out, let's do this diet. Let's try that diet. We have distorted looks at food, and we're going to talk about that in a minute. But this is not something that's intrinsic to us now. It would have been as Huntergatherers, because what did you get today? Well, I got a rabbit. Well, what did you get? I got some blueberries. Hey, let's sit down and have dinner.

[00:09:43.450] – Lisa

That's delicious.

[00:09:44.330] – Allan

Yeah. But we've lost that talent or whatever it was that that's how it worked. And we were okay with it. And you put in a book, just pull this little quote, wellness is a skill. We've got to relearn these things

[00:10:01.820] – Lisa

totally. And that's what I really wanted to touch upon that specifically and highlight that. And I use that when I counsel clients one on one, too, because people just think there's a magic wand or a magic potion or give me a meal plan and I'll follow the plan or give me an exercise plan and I'll follow it and all of these things. But it's a skill that you have to practice. If anybody could just go on a diet and lose weight, but to really sustain it for long term and to reap all the benefits, that's something you have to practice. It doesn't just land in your lap. It's not just, oh, I'm going to pick up this book and my life is going to be changed. I mean, that's the hope. Right. And I hope this book does change people's lives, but there is some work that goes into it, but it's very rewarding. Anything that's worth in life achieving, we have to work towards.

[00:10:54.390] – Allan

Right. And the first thing and I'm glad you put this first, because I say this over and over. It's kind of a mantra when I'm working with someone is you have to think about how you look at yourself, your relationship with your body, your relationship with your mind, how you think about yourself, that voice in your head that tells you different things. And sometimes that voice is actually mean. If we don't start with ourselves, then really a lot of this other stuff just wasn't really going to stick. And so I'm glad you started with your relationship with yourself. Can you talk about some signs that someone would know that they have an unhealthy relationship with their body?

[00:11:39.410] – Lisa

Sure. And I think that's very important. I think a lot of people don't even realize that they don't have a healthy relationship with their body and with food. And so when you look at what makes a healthy relationship with your body, it means that you show signs of respect. It's almost like a relationship with another person. What is the fundamentals and the foundation of any health relationship? It's trust. It's respect, it's enjoyment, and it's feeling satisfied that you're getting something in return for what you're giving. And it's just like mutually beneficial. And so it's really important that you think of you and your body as a team and you work together. And it's not this constant needing to change or fight against it or deny and deprive and again, punish when you feel like it's not living up to either your expectations or society's expectations. Because let's face it, that's a big part of the reason people struggle with specifically body image issues is that there's that comparison to this person, this celebrity, this person on social media, this friend or neighbor or family member. And it's really hard not to compare. But the more you do that, it gets to the point of no return, diminishing return, because you just kind of feel worse and worse and worse and worse.

[00:12:58.460] – Lisa

And it's hard to get out of that phone. So I start off with talking about healthy relationship with your body, because if you don't have a healthy relationship with your body, inevitably it's going to affect your relationship with food. And if you don't have a healthy relationship with food, that's going to affect how you eat. So you can know everything there is to know. And believe me, coming not that I know everything there is to know at all. There's still so much to learn in the world of nutrition, but you can everything there is to know. But if you don't have that ability to listen to your body, trust your body, trust food. It takes knowledge, hunger, and fullness. So many people do mindless eating and they overeat and portion issues and they don't realize that they're looking externally. But it's got to start internally or intrinsically and we need to practice that. So when you have this unhealthy relationship with your body, some signs and symptoms are maybe you avoid social situations because you're afraid of putting on a bathing suit or you don't have anything to wear. Or maybe you do spend a ton of time trying to find ways to change it or alter it.

[00:14:08.140] – Lisa

Maybe you spend a lot of your paycheck trying to do the same. Maybe it interferes with your relationships in life or with putting yourself out there with getting a new job or finding a romantic partner. If you feel like almost that it affects your mental health, you feel down, you feel depressed. So those are just a few of the things that might come up if you don't have that healthy relationship with your body. And it brings on a lot of negative thinking, a lot of negative feelings. And those feelings and thoughts turn into very firm beliefs. And you don't realize a belief is just reoccurring thoughts. So you might believe that you're not good enough or you don't look good enough or you're not going to find someone that you can love you back and love you just as much as you love them because of your body. But that's stuff that you implanted and it's not your fault. But I think it's very empowering to know that that might not be true. It's just stuff that you've told yourself and told yourself or maybe other people have told you, which also is another whole conversation.

[00:15:11.190] – Lisa

But now all of a sudden you believe that to be the case and you haven't really given yourself a chance. So it's very important to work on that relationship with your body, especially for really everything, especially wellness, fitness and overall health.

[00:15:26.810] – Allan

Yeah. The way I like to look at it is if this was your friend, so you're sitting next to your best friend on a park bench and you notice that your friend is down and they're like, what's going on? It's like, well, I'm not really happy with how much I weigh and with my weight, my health. What conversation would you have with your best friend? How would you word it? What words would you use? And my guess is they'd be encouraging, they'd be coming from a place of love. And really, yes, you can acknowledge that they've got some work to do, but it's not acceptance in the way that you would say, okay, we're just going to live this way. It's like, okay, well, what's your plan? How can I help you? What do we need to do to make this work? So it's coming from self love. It's coming from that position of help, of being there, and we need to do the same thing for ourselves. We need to step up and say, I love myself and I want this to happen.

[00:16:29.750] – Lisa

Yes, I love that advice. And I've given that, too, for people that have a really tough time with negative self talk, and it's just constantly putting themselves down or putting a lot of pressure on themselves and just feeling like they never live up to that. I'll say, what would you say to your friends? Sometimes I hear, well, I would just and I hope none of my friends will do this right now, but sometimes I'll just tell my friends something to make her feel better. And I don't necessarily, but I still think that's important for ourselves. Even if you don't believe it in that moment, even if you're not really feeling it, you have to still talk to yourself and practice that positive self talk and those positive affirmations, because over time it's not going to change overnight. But over time, they will replace the negative thoughts, and that can be the only thing in your way. Sometimes people are like, oh, I don't have the motivation to go to the gym or I don't have the motivation to eat healthy, and I don't have the motivation to do all these things for myself. And they don't realize the biggest obstacle is themselves and their thinking patterns.

[00:17:34.410] – Lisa

And that's why I love psychology and I'm not a psychologist, but I believe that food can be very psychological and health and wellness can be very psychological. And that's why I really wanted to incorporate that in the book, because it's not something I see all the time is diet talking about the psychology. It's okay to want to lose weight, but you really have to focus on your relationship with food and your body first. It's paramount.

[00:18:00.020] – Allan

Yeah. And that's why I'm glad you put this in here, because I do read a lot of diet books and a lot of them are just like, okay, here's what we're going to eliminate, here's what we're going to include. And this is how you're going to eat. And here's the plan. And it's 28 days and you're going to lose to 12 pounds and you're going to feel great and you can like, well, you skip the step. You skip the big step of not knowing ourselves and our relationships and why we got where we got. Because if we don't address that first, then we're going to come back around after we finish this wonderful diet and we're going to start punishing ourselves again, we're going to start doing the things that we used to do. We're going to fall back on those messages.

[00:18:38.990] – Allan

Now, the next step then is looking at your relationship with food. And in the book you identified four distorted eater archetypes. Can you talk about those four? Because I think anyone that's ever had issues with food and with their weight is going to find one of these that just like, oh, that hit me in the gut because that was me.

[00:19:02.850] – Allan

And I think that's important for self awareness.

[00:19:05.560] – Lisa

Yes, absolutely. Part of the reason I did that was because I wanted to resonate and I wanted it to feel relatable. And it's also not uncommon to identify with more than one. And that's not an accident. There is a reason for that. So what I ended up doing after writing this chapter and really thinking about the things that I see in my practice is I was able to come up with a lot of the most common traits I see when people have these distorted or dysfunctional or even disordered views of food. And it ended up just falling into these four groups, these archetypes, like you said. So we have the erratic eater, the dependent eater, the judgmental eater, and the obsessive eater. The erratic eater might have a very hectic lifestyle. They might even thrive under stress, having a very busy schedule. Food could often be an afterthought. There is probably very little structure in the day. And for that reason, some of the pitfalls could be overeating later in the day or not eating enough, not eating enough food groups, not eating mindfully. And so that was a very important part of this, because I want people to say, oh, this is me, these are my issues, and this is how I can resolve or remedy them.

[00:20:32.280] – Lisa

And all four of these, too. I'm jumping ahead a little bit. But all four of these also, they're not all negative. It's okay that you're not someone that eats all day long and you don't constantly have food on you and you're not maybe like thinking about food until your body asks for it. That actually can be beneficial, because maybe in that sense you don't just eat for any reason. You're not someone that's, like more of a dependent eater. And that's the next archetype. The dependent eater is somebody who's almost the exact polar opposite. Food is a focal point. There might be thinking about dinner before lunch even comes. Plans and traveling plans and holiday plans and any social events might all revolve around food. There might be more emotional eating. There might be more eating for not just emotions and comfort, but stress to sort of enhance any type of experience. Like you go to the movies, you might not be hungry, but a big bowl of popcorn would make the movie more enjoyable. So you get the popcorn. So again, like the Erratic eater, yes, there's clear pitfall, but also that's not a bad thing either, to enjoy food.

[00:21:44.020] – Lisa

It's just the amount that you're doing it. And if you don't have anything else to look forward to, you don't have any other coping mechanisms to deal with emotions and stress. That's when it becomes problematic. That's when people can feel like they are overeating. And weight gain, of course, is one side effect of that. But other issues, too digestion issues and high cholesterol, high blood sugars. So all of those can also follow suit. And then we have the judgmental eater. This is the type of eater that I find has the most experience on diets. They kind of go from a cereal dieter. They just go from one diet to the next, always looking for the next best thing. And that's not anyone's fault. They're just looking for something that they can feel is working for them. That gives them some kind of hope, that makes them feel productive again, like they're doing something about their weight. But what happens is they end up kicking up on some of these what I like to call food rules. Where this is good, this is bad, you can't eat this at this time. You can't eat fruit with anything else.

[00:22:45.760] – Lisa

It's got to be by itself. No eating after 06:00 p.m.. And I included that in the book, too. I kind of break down those food rules. The most common ones I hear. Why they are quite kind of I don't want to say, like fully irrational, but some of them are kind of irrational and they come from places that make sense, but they just get just blown up and they snowball into these actual fears that people develop too, around food and then everything else unravels after that. So the judgmental eater, they might even do some food policing, not just of themselves, like oh, don't eat that or don't eat that. Or if you eat that, there's consequences. They might even do it. Project those judgments onto others as well. So those are some pitfalls of the judgmental eater. And like I said, they're not all bad. That comes out of them. With a judgmental eater, you might be somebody that knows a little bit more. You might know all the ins and outs of healthy eating and balanced eating and what foods are going to be more health promoting and what aren't going to be as health promoting.

[00:23:46.510] – Lisa

So that can work in your favor. You just have to know how to use that, what to do with it, and have more of a flexible approach with food as well. And then the fourth and final type is the obsessive eater. And this is someone who just spends an exorbitant amount of time looking at food labels, researching diets, feeling afraid. This is when the food fears come out. The obsessive eater really is meant to be the type of eater that's most at risk for developing a full blown eating disorder. And I had a big Disclaimer, and I wanted to make that very clear. This is not a book for anyone with an eating disorder. This is not to diagnose anyone with an eating disorder, but eating disorders are very prevalent and continue to be. And a lot of people that have them tend to go for diet books. I don't want to use this word term specifically, but it's kind of like the low hanging fruit a little bit with diet books is the ones who have the most issues with food might be the ones reading. And that's why I thought it was so important that I make that very clear that this might need a higher level of care intervention, because it's kind of running that thin line between what's distorted and what's actually distorted and what's actually an eating disorder.

[00:25:07.190] – Lisa

So those are the four main types. And then in that chapter, I do specifically focus on those strategies like mindful eating, which, let's face it, nobody's going to eat mindfully all the time. It's just not happening. We can't unless you have absolutely nothing in your day other than to sit with your food and pay attention to it and check in with yourself, it's not going to happen. But we eat mindlessly when we're not paying attention, when we're distracted, and we also eat mindlessly for a distraction. Some people will eat so that they can distract themselves from something else. And so those are the two different ways that that mindful eating can exist. And it's really important to address that, at least to be a less mindless eater, not a fully 100% of the time mindful eater, but a less mindless eater.

[00:25:53.290] – Allan

Yeah. And I think you'll find when you are focused more on your food, it tastes better, you know, when you're full and you stop. So it solves a lot of problems that we would otherwise have of picking something up and eating all of it versus going through. Like I said, I saw a few things on myself. I used to like Girl Scout cookies, the Thin Mints. And I say, okay, well, what's the serving of Thin Mints? You look on the box, and I think it's like three cookies or something like that. So I take the two or three cookies, whatever it was, put the package in the freezer, go sit down, eat the three cookies, get up, walk back to the freezer, get another three cookies, and put the package in the refrigerator. And then by the third trip, I'm just standing in the freezer, right with the freezer open, eating the rest of the pack of cookies. I was judgmental, but I set a rule for myself. And then I immediately say, okay, well, I'll have another serving. And then at that point, I was like, well, screw it, Allan, you want the rest of the cookies?

[00:27:01.310] – Lisa

I hope I'm saying it right. But if you're going to eat standing up in front of the fridge, you might as well pull up a seat, something to that effect. And it's just funny because I think everybody is at some point finds themselves doing that, eating over the counter, eating from the refrigerator, or eating a small serving or what they hoped would be enough. And it's just not. And there's other reasons behind that. But sometimes it's okay to just I ate a little bit more. But that's okay. Maybe I needed it. Maybe I need to get it out of my system. Maybe I'm done with the Girl Scout cookies for now. And I can put that to bed

[00:27:36.160] – Allan

because the box is gone. So, yeah, at that point.

[00:27:39.590] – Lisa

One way or another.

[00:27:42.050] – Allan

Yeah. And they only do that once a year at that point. Okay, now you have the plan, the core three healthy eating plan. Can you just give us an overview of how the plan works and why you think it's, because I saw a lot of great things in there. I'm like, yes, okay, so I understand the structure of it, but can you go through it and then explain the structure and how it works?

[00:28:05.510] – Lisa

We talked a lot about the psychology, but I really wanted to Hone in on the physiological parts of it. Can't talk. Sorry about that. And the science behind it, because it is very much a science based approach. And again, one of the things, one of the issues I've noticed over the years, counseling clients who try different plans is it's just not personalized. And that's very important when you are finding a plan. There are no two people exactly the same, and we all are going to have at least slightly different nutritional needs. So I really wanted to respect that bio individuality. So the premise of the plan and one of the reasons that three is in the title is because I touch upon three major macronutrients. Literally anything on your plate that you are eating is going to fall under a carbohydrate, a protein and a fat. And they're essential because our body needs them for different types of functions. So I go into the importance of carbohydrates and specifically higher fiber or fiber rich carbohydrates, and explain why fiber is very important in your diet, why it's very beneficial to focus on slower digesting food in general.

[00:29:22.040] – Lisa

And I really circle in the what I think really helps people with health in general and even weight loss and even gut health and immune system is blood sugar stability. So I try to loop that in and make it very clear that the plan's premise is to eat to stabilize blood sugar. And as a result, you can feel not only more energetic, better mood, but also notice that you are potentially losing weight if you have weight to lose, which is a whole other conversation. So then I go into protein. And again, why protein is important. I find people fall into two major categories. Either they don't eat enough protein or they eat way too much protein. And so I thought it was important to touch upon that it is a little bit more of a higher protein diet. And then I go into fats and the types of fats to pay attention to, specifically the anti inflammatory fats and the fats that are not bad and not to avoid, but the ones that can potentially be more pro inflammatory. And the other part that I really wanted to emphasize and really make clear is that there is no food off limits, that the healthiest diet is an all inclusive diet.

[00:30:37.490] – Lisa

Carbs, specifically, are the most demonized. There is a war against carbs. I see that in most diets, they cut them out one way or another. They're cutting out carbs, whether they're telling you you can eat grains or you can eat so much fruit or, you know, just eat more meat and fat. And the keto diet is 5%, I believe, calories from carbohydrates. That's very, very low carbohydrate. So this is a low carb, but it's not very low. And then what happens is you are given a very clear formula that you can use to personalize it to find out how many carbs can I eat? For my specific goals, how much protein should I be focusing on? And fast. But again, even though there is a plan in there and you're given amounts and there's even tons and tons of food charts where it will list out the types of carbs, proteins and fats, what I consider to be one serving and how many servings to have in a day, I do want to emphasize the importance of flexibility. And some days you might feel a little hungrier, and some days you might be okay to eat a little less.

[00:31:49.460] – Lisa

And that's also part of listening to your body. So you are given a clear idea of how much to aim for every day, but it's also very flexible. And then, of course, it is a higher fiber diet, like I mentioned. And I do talk also about the importance of some plant based eating not only for ourselves but for the environment, because I do think that's becoming increasingly important right now is the welfare of our planet.

[00:32:15.810] – Allan

Right. Now, you also included a requirement in there. I guess I should call a requirement a recommendation. But to at least try to get 3 hours of exercise per week. And you had an acronym in there to help someone who is exercise challenged from a motivation perspective. And I love acronyms, so that's why I had to include it in this episode. And the acronym is MOVE appropriately. Can you tell us what the acronym Move means and why each of those are important?

[00:32:56.190] – Lisa

Absolutely, yes. There's a whole chapter on exercise, and I'm not that person that some people are anti exercise, believe it or not. And exercise makes you hungrier, it's not going to help you with weight loss. I believe exercise is very beneficial for a lot of reasons. Weight loss can be a bonus because we're not exercising just for weight loss. It's definitely not a punishment. In fact, the chapter is that it should be a reward and a celebration, not a punishment. So it's very important to understand that. And I think indirectly it can help with weight management, because if you're someone who is stress eating, it can help you with that. It can help you manage that stress level better. If you're someone that's not sleeping well, guess what? It can improve your sleep, and that can be helping with what you put in your body during the day. So there's a lot of indirect benefits. So I thought it was very important to touch upon that. And strength training I'm all about, I think combination of cardio, strength training and more mindful movement is really important, especially for body image. So looping back in that first part of the book.

[00:33:52.980] – Lisa

So Move is supposed to be an easy way to, like you said, get people motivated to kind of make it more simple and more approachable. The M stands for Making it More Sociable. So it's important to have we often want to do things in life and everything is more fun when we do it with people. And not to mention being with people and having more plans with people that don't revolve around drinking. And not that eating out is bad, but eating at a restaurant, it's nice to have other things you can do together. So why not kill two birds with 1 stone and make it something that's more fun for you by recruiting some friends and family and people that you enjoy? The second part is to have obtained the accountability to have somebody there. We often do things the most successfully when we stay honest with ourselves when we have somebody looking back at us and saying, have you been doing this? Where are you at with these goals? I know you really wanted to work on this, so let me remind you of that. And that can come in the form of a personal trainer and a person.

[00:34:57.060] – Lisa

But not everybody has access to personal trainers for different reasons. So it could even be like a Journal or an app or just even a friend or family member who is also wanting to feel healthier and get in shape and improve their fitness levels. So those are the first two very important parts. And then the third part is to make sure that you find something that you love. So it's really important that you aren't just doing the treadmill because you think that's how you're supposed to lose weight. People become overwhelmed. They don't want to go to the gym because they don't like the cardio machines. They don't like the weight training. They don't even like being in a gym period because there's a lot of pressure. Maybe there. So walking is an example where if you enjoy walking and you're at nature and you can listen to a podcast and you can listen to good music on your phone, you want to make sure it's something you like doing. If you do not like doing it, you probably won't keep up with it. So it doesn't have to be one specific thing. There are plenty of ways to move your body and to actually enjoy it, and then you want to ease into it.

[00:36:05.620] – Lisa

So I hear a lot from people who come to me as clients one on one and say, I just started this new workout routine and I'm going to the gym seven days a week, really, seven days a week, every single day, not even one day in between? And my response is always, that's great, I'm so happy you're doing that. But how sustainable is that? And I'm afraid I want to encourage you to keep going because you're clearly in that mindset, which is amazing, but I don't want you to burn yourself out. And that burnout is such a thing with everything we do in life, especially with taking care of ourselves and fitness. So ease into it, create some small goals. That's another reason why I said those 3 hours, because I think it's fair. I think it's achievable. I think it's something that most people aren't overwhelmed with, like 30 minutes, five days a week, or even a little less than 1 hour, three days, 1 hour, three days a week. So I just feel that when you make it very small and achievable, then we're more likely to want to do stuff. And that's again, bringing back in that like psychology, behavioral science.

[00:37:13.710] – Lisa

And so it's important that you sort of ease into it slowly. Don't jump in with both feet, because you might find that after a short period of time you're like, this is too much. I have other stuff in my life that I need to do in the gym routine. This exercise routine is not going to fit into my lifestyle. And that's a shame.

[00:37:34.410] – Allan

And the other thing about that 3 hours when we talked about it, I think what's important to know is that it doesn't have to be an hour long three times a week or 45 minutes four times a week. It could be I'm going to park further away from the office and I'm going to walk up and that's a five minute walk. Okay, you've logged five minutes. You're going to walk back to your car. That's another five minutes. You do some of that at the grocery store. You say, okay, I'm going to walk over here. And then you stop at the park and you have a nice little 15 minutes walk during your lunch hour. All those little bits, they add up. It doesn't have to be this grueling 1 hour that you're just dedicating and losing your life, feeling like you're losing your life or not being a good parent or spouse. You're just investing 3 hours per week. However, it needs to be spread out, taking a voice call, you're going to be on a conference call, just taking a walk while you're on a conference call. You might be able to get your whole 45 minutes in just during that conference call if you don't have to participate.

[00:38:35.830] – Allan

So there's lots of ways to make this happen. I love to make it social. I love the account obtain accountability, because that's really how we make things stick because sometimes we won't do it for ourselves. But if someone else is counting on us to be there at the park after work, then we're at the park after work most of the time. And the two those kind of join each other a little bit because you have a social buddy that you're meeting to go to the park and walk. You got the social aspects of it and you got someone counting on you to be there. And I agree with varying it up and finding the things that you love, because that's really to me, fitness is about being fit for task. So if you want to be a hiker and you love going out in the nature and doing hikes, well, then going out and doing hikes is maybe the workout you need. If you can't do the hikes, at least do some walks around your neighborhood because you know you're making your hikes that much more enjoyable because you've got the fitness level to do it.

[00:39:32.290] – Lisa

Exactly right. And I think the other part of it, too that I really want to emphasize because I see this being a big deterrent, is that people who and I don't know if you find this too with the people you work with, but people that do get engaged in exercise, the motivation I would say the predominant driving force is I feel like weight loss, calorie burning. And I think that's the biggest reason why people do not have a healthy relationship with exercise, which I talk about healthy relationship with food, healthy relationship with your body. And so I thought it was very important to touch upon this because it really does affect everything. And I see that being the biggest issue. And if all you're focused on is the calorie burning, then sure, five minutes isn't going to feel like a lot. It's not going to feel like it makes a dent. 20 minutes even isn't going to feel like it makes a dent, or even worse, you give up because you're not noticing the results enough with the way you look and not paying attention enough to the real benefit, which is even five minutes can boost your mood, can increase those feel good neurotransmitters that can make your afternoon so much easier at work.

[00:40:34.690] – Lisa

It can actually and this is all science based, and I do include some studies in here of why I recommend those 3 hours. It could also increase creativity. So if you're really stuck on a project and you can't get past or you can't type out that email or you can't figure out what to say or something that you're trying to create, going for a little walk around the block can really boost that. It gives you a break that can really boost that. And then guess what, not only are you doing better and performing better, but you're logging those hours of exercise too, which is going to help in so many other areas. So just know that every little bit we're not just saying that to trick you into exercising more. It really does make a big difference. Just that little bit of movement can make you feel so much better. And again, for me, one of the biggest reasons I wanted to talk about it is because I think it drastically improves the way you feel about yourself and your body image and feeling your confidence to make other changes in your life.

[00:41:27.450] – Allan

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

[00:41:40.710] – Lisa

I love that question. And I think most people would expect me to start talking about like certain foods to eat. But, you know, I do touch upon a lot of that in the book. And I think it's very important to focus on what you're eating and how you're eating and the why behind your eating, which is something we didn't talk about today. But I fully think the intentions are the most important thing. Why are you eating those foods? But I'm going to go in a little bit of a different direction with my first big tip, which is to stop trying to make everyone happy. You're never going to feel your best if you're trying to make everyone else feel their best. And I think it's important to consider respect everyone else's feelings. Obviously, we all want to be decent humans to each other and respect each other. But you also have to put yourself first. If you try to make everybody else happy, you're never going to be happy. And that's going to affect other areas of life. Like you're not making that time to get movement and you're not making that time to grocery shop and prepare meals and focus on foods and eat mindfully because you're doing so many things to make everyone else happy, that's going to take its toll.

[00:42:45.290] – Lisa

So I really think that's super important, especially myself as a mother with a business and kids. Once I go down that path, it's really, really hard. Nobody wins because you're never going to make everybody happy, unfortunately. So that's my number one. My number two is to practice self awareness. I think it's so important to be aware of what you're doing. If you have a specific goal, if you want to feel your best, you want to be your healthiest, you want to improve your cholesterol levels, your blood sugar levels, or lose weight, you have to be aware of your habits and behaviors. What are you doing every day that's getting you there? And what are you doing every day that's not getting you there? And just kind of even if you have to Journal it for a day just to write it all down. So that awareness is incredibly important, especially that emotional awareness. Check in with yourself. How are you physically feeling today? Because whatever you do from eating and exercising standpoint, if it's not addressing some other needs, you're still going to feel like something's missing there. And then my third one is that self compassion.

[00:43:49.770] – Lisa

Nobody is perfect. We're not going to do everything that we always want to do. Some days are going to be easier than others. You might have a week where you felt like this was a great week. I got in my exercise. I feel as though I was listening to my body. I was able to do some food journaling. It was just a good week. And then some weeks are going to be a mess. And as we head into, well, I know it's not going to be the holidays, but when holidays come up, when vacations come up, when family events that are not planned come up, it's going to make things harder. And if you beat yourself up, if you make yourself feel bad for feeling bad, because that's what we do so well as humans, as we make ourselves feel bad for feeling bad, you're just going to again spiral. And it's going to be hard to get out of that funk and start making those positive changes you want to make. So I'm all about the compassion, and I'm going to cheat and add one more thing in there, which is just to have that cheating on just to have that gratitude in your life.

[00:44:45.230] – Lisa

I think that it's hard to feel positive all the time, and I think too much positivity can quite honestly feel toxic sometimes. But having that gratitude, counting your blessings, being grateful for the little things in life can instantly boost the way you feel about yourself, your mental health, and your physical health as a result.

[00:45:02.430] – Allan

Great. Lisa, if someone wanted to learn more about you or the book The Core 3 Healthy Eating Plan, where would you like for me to send them?

[00:45:11.250] – Lisa

Thank you so much. It's being sold at most major retailers online. So you have Amazon, Barnes and Noble. You can go right to the Simon and Schuster website. And then you can find me at my group practice. I'm in New York City, New York nutrition group. Or you can follow me on social @LisaMNutrition.

[00:45:35.400] – Allan

Great. You can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/523 and I'll be sure to have the links there. Lisa, thank you so much for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

[00:45:45.990] – Lisa

So much fun being here. Thank you, Allan.

Post Show/Recap

[00:45:55.090] – Allan

Welcome back, Ras.

[00:45:56.770] – Rachel

Hey, Allan. What a really neat book and a fun discussion you guys had. I'd like to start off with food freedom and what a nice concept that would be to give yourself permission to eat.

[00:46:09.850] – Allan

Yes. You know the whole point. Almost every diet, almost every single diet is some form of punishment, if you will. You can't have this food. So it's like what food can I have and what foods can I not have? A few of them will say, okay, well, you can eat everything you want, but you still have to log and do that. But that's still hard because. Okay, well, I have to keep up with all of this versus just saying I want some simple rules, but most of them are going to tell you, maybe even an entire food group or several different types of food groups you have to avoid and not do. And when you're not in total control of your schedule or where you live or where you are, that can be very hard. I'm in Panama. We have access to all the tropical fruits. All of them. I can buy fresh pineapple, papaya, mango, banana. All of that is just readily available every single day here. So if I was keto all the time and be like walking by the fruit stands every day because there's four or five of them between even here in the gym, they're all over the place.

[00:47:17.440] – Allan

So if I can't have fruit occasionally, then there's a struggle. And so the question you have to ask yourself is well, one, we got to get past the first pit, which we'll talk about in a minute. But what is food for me?

[00:47:35.050] – Rachel

Right.

[00:47:35.740] – Allan

And once you define food for yourself and so for me and what I define food predominantly is it was alive, it was running around or it's a product from something that was running around or it was growing in the ground. But at some point or another, it resembles something we know was alive. So that means I don't eat pancakes and syrup, I don't eat triskets and stuff like that. For the most part, I try to avoid things that are in a bag, box, jar or can, because most of them you can't trace back to it being alive. I can know that flour came from wheat, but it doesn't look like wheat. It's just a powder. And so from that perspective, I know it's ultra processed. I know it's just going to turn to sugar when it gets in. Things that are made out of wheat are delicious, don't get me wrong. But you have to find your line, you have to find those things that are going to work for you. And when you do, then anything that's within that realm is food. And there's a tremendous amount of freedom when you're not having to make decisions every single time you run into the grocery store and you walk in and the very first thing you see is the produce section.

[00:48:59.660] – Allan

But you're like, okay, that's going to require cutting and cooking. And I don't really want to mess with that. Yeah, there's some prewashed salads and wow, they even put the dressing right there with it. I could run back and grab some chicken, grill that up real quick and have a really great dinner. Or I walk right through that produce section, right over to the aisle that sells the Hamburger Helper and look on the box. It says, okay, for this to feed six people, I need to have 2 pounds of hamburger. They run back there, they grab 2 pounds of hamburger, they got their Hamburger Helper, they start to walk out, they get to the counter, oh, they're selling my favorite candy bar. They grab a candy bar, then they check out. Their home, yes, 30 minutes. They've got a cooked meal, the chili Mac for dinner, and the two of them eat six portions between them. And for a lot of people, that's there all the time. So they're following one of the distorted eating principles that Lisa talked about and there is that they're erratic. They don't really have a plan. They haven't really defined food.

[00:50:06.900] – Allan

And not defining food then means you have no freedom. You eat what is available, you eat what is convenient, you eat quickly. Instead of going into the grocery store, you just stop at McDonald's, you're on the phone, you're texting your significant other. Okay, I'm at McDonald's. What do you want? You know, and it's quick, it's easy, and you're already eating their fries before you get home.

[00:50:37.310] – Rachel

That doesn't do anything for you. Eating that type of food and choosing healthier options takes time. It takes planning. And like you said, you got to eat what's around you. But also you need to find out what works for you. What makes you feel good.

[00:50:54.570] – Allan

Yeah. So once we get there and we know, okay, these are the foods that serve me. These are the foods I enjoy occasionally, yeah, you can go ahead and order your dessert. And you're fine with that because you've done the groundwork to have a good relationship with food. You've done the groundwork to have a good relationship with yourself and your body. And when you do that groundwork now it's like, okay, if I occasionally want to have some cake, I can have my cake. But I know what my general rules are. Once you kind of have that mapped out, and then you start putting plans in place, strategies and tactics and say, okay, my cupboard is full of this. If I get really hungry and I want something, well, here Brazil nuts right here on my desk. So you have a freedom of saying I eat when I need to, and when I'm hungry, I eat the foods that I want to eat. So I'm not a victim of food.

[00:51:50.090] – Rachel

You know, the other thing she mentioned to that wellness is a skill and that it takes practice. And I really wanted to mention that because it does take time to figure all this stuff out. It's not like you can go and buy a book and here's the diet that I'm going to follow, because I know this is going to work for me. It's not like you can choose an exercise regimen. I know this is going to make me lose weight and be a healthier person. It takes time. We need to learn these things and implement them and try them. And there's going to be some wins and there's going to be some failures. But it's something that is a skill and it does take practice.

[00:52:25.140] – Allan

It does. Pretty much every diet works until it doesn't. Almost every exercise program is going to help you get better until it doesn't. And so there's this basic Bell curve. Whenever you get a book and they're like, okay, I want you to follow the Mediterranean diet. Here's how you do it, and here's your movement principles, and you follow that book to letter. For 80% of us, the vast majority of us, it's going to work for a period of time. There's a Bell curve there's outliers that basically aren't going to respond, but most of us are going to be able to do it. And sometimes we have issues. Something comes up. Now I'm staying over at my mother's, taking care of her. And so I don't have access to what I had before. And she doesn't like the food I Cook and I have to Cook for her. So now it's like, well, do I Cook two meals or how do I put this together? That's that figure out this thing. I said, okay, my mother is not going to eat this, and she's not going to eat that. But she wants this and she wants that so what do we do?

[00:53:25.120] – Allan

I'm like, I make a modular meal. I do some batch cooking on Sunday. So I have my proteins and my vegetables ready, and then she's going to want to starch and she's going to want a dessert. Then I have those available to her. As soon as we finish, I'm like, you're going to eat a protein and you're going to eat vegetables and you're going to have a starch. And that's what we're going to have. No, I'm not going to deep Fry and no, I'm not going to buy the TV dinners and stuff like that. Occasionally. Yeah. If you want a TV dinner, I'm in shopping on a Saturday, and I go in and say, hey, can you give me one of those Hungry Man? I'm like, sure, here you go. You can have Hungry Man first. Sunday afternoon, I'm going to be eating some of the batch cooked food that I made, and we're good popping in microwave. Four minutes later, she's got her molten lava cherry bomb cake thingy. It's fine. But just recognize that. Yeah. There's a skill involved in putting together strategies and tactics, because a lot of people will start with the strategies and tactics.

[00:54:27.240] – Allan

Like, oh, I'm going to go on the Mediterranean diet and I'm going to start walking every morning for 45 minutes, seven days a week, and that works until it's snowing on Saturday and like sleeping and probably pretty dangerous for me to be out. Are you still going to go? And if you miss one day, is that your excuse? Is that the crack in your ice that says, oh, well, there's still some snow on the ground, so I'm not going to do it on Sunday either. And now on Monday, you're off, you're not doing it. So there's a skill to it, and it's setting up reasonable expectations for yourself based on that. And the other side, we talk about food freedom or exercise freedom and all that. It's just recognizing that nothing ever goes exactly to plan. As Tyson has said, everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face. And so it's kind of having that expectation that things might not go the way you want them to. And you have to forgive yourself for these interruptions, for these detours, for these things happening, and do what's reasonable through self compassion and self love to get yourself back on the path, the most reasonable and expedient way possible.

[00:55:46.430] – Rachel

Yeah. She also mentioned that knowing what your relationship is with yourself and with food like we've talked about in the past, having a mindset is really the starting point. And that she even mentioned you need to respect yourself and love yourself and enjoy yourself to be successful in any of these endeavors.

[00:56:05.880] – Allan

Yes, I wish that was a book. I have a series of four books, guys. And the first book is just going to tell you how to Fallen Back in love with yourself. The second book will start talking about falling in love with food. And then we'll start talking about exercise and diet and sleep and other stuff because so many people want to skip to chapter three. What's the eating plan? What's the eating plan that's going to work for me in 21 days. And I'm like, no, spend the first month, maybe even the first year just saying, who am I and how can I fall back in love with who I am, who I was and who I will be? Because you can always look back and you can find things about yourself that you really are proud of that you did and were capable of doing. You can look at yourself today and find things that you're very proud of about who you are and who you've become. And then when you look ahead, as one of my clients said, she wants to be that little old lady that everybody is like, how does she keep going there's this way about looking at yourself with compassion and hope.

[00:57:21.770] – Allan

And many of us lose. We don't have that hope. Our hope is sort of this wish. It's not really what the word hope. It's like I wish I were thinner. I wish I could do these things. I wish my knees and ankles didn't hurt. Those are wishes. And a wish feels like you don't have control, whereas hope is inside you. It's like I have hope that I can get stronger. I have hope that I can rebuild my immune system. I have hope that I can take care of me and live a long, healthy life. So I'm hopeful that I'll be then I'm not me, but her, that little old lady that everybody's like, well, she just doesn't slow down. So the first part is falling in love with yourself. Full stop. That's the end of the book. Don't go to the second book until you finish this book. You're going to miss the plot. The big part of the plot starts in this first book of the series, and you don't go to the second book of the series and start reading it because you haven't gotten the fundamentals. And then the same thing happens with food.

[00:58:36.130] – Allan

How do you really feel about food? What are your limitations? What are your capacities? How do you really feel and think about food? And she put in some great archetypes in the book for you to really just sit there and say, you know, am I erratic? Am I really structured? Am I someone who's dependent on food? I use it as a crutch, the pint of ice cream at night to set myself up for getting past the stress of the day. Or is it worse? Is a point where I'm right on the edge of obsessive and maybe even struggling with an eating disorder. And so until you break those things down and say, okay, do I love myself? And then how do I feel about food? And what's my relationship with food and just realizing that it's nourishment, it's enjoyment, it's fuel, it's building materials and all those things. And it's information. It's information for your body. And so it's very important. Just like you need to have self compassion, you need to be compassionate with food and say, okay, what's going to nourish me, what's going to build me better? What do I enjoy but the ways I can make it?

[00:59:53.880] – Allan

Maybe you don't like Brussel sprouts. Tammy never liked Brussel sprouts until we found a way to cook Brussel sprouts that she actually liked them. It took her a while. So just recognize that you take your time and you find that relationship. And honestly, that building the skill thing you talked about. That's what this process is that so many people want to move on before they have the skills. It's like walking out on the NFL football field and thinking, okay, I got a chance of not dying out here. That linebacker is going to lay you out because you don't have the skills and not that you'll ever have the skills to be an NFL running back. But that said, if you are working on the skills to be the best you then you will be. But you've got to get the skills first. And that is that self love, self compassion, having a great relationship with food and then strategies and tactics.

[01:00:52.890] – Rachel

Absolutely. Just perfect. Be patient. You'll get there.

[01:00:57.060] – Allan

Yeah, definitely take some patience, because it's not a straight line. It's never a straight line.

[01:01:02.630] – Rachel

Never.

[01:01:03.320] – Allan

But every day you can take a breath is a day you can move in the right direction. So you woke up, you're listening to this. You want this. Take that first step. Just take a step today. Talk to yourself about love, compassion. How do you really feel? And then when you feel like you've gotten to a point where you're good with who you are and where you're going, then you start talking about your relationship with food and do those two things. Really, then the plan makes sense. Then her plan. I'll just step in here's a plan. I'm going to stick with this plan. And when that plan works and then maybe it stops working, you still fall back on that self love and self compassion and relationship with food. And then you tweak and you pivot and you find the way. So we talked in that episode about quitting. And sometimes to quit is a good thing, but sometimes it's quit and pivot and sometimes just grind it out. Just keep doing it. But until you get to a point where you're not blaming yourself, you're not gorging on foods that you know you shouldn't eat just because you want to punish yourself.

[01:02:11.590] – Allan

In a sense, until you get past that kind of behavior, then you're not going to be able to pivot effectively. You're not going to be able to deal with a Plateau. And those are going to set you back and they're going to happen. They always happen. So recognizing that you have control over who you are in the future and then starting that journey.

[01:02:31.930] – Rachel

Yeah, all great information. Sounds like a great book.

[01:02:36.400] – Allan

It is a good book. Yeah. Absolutely. But like I said, just read the first couple of chapters, get to working on that, then go back to the book and worry about the plan.

[01:02:46.710] – Rachel

Absolutely.

[01:02:48.270] – Allan

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

[01:02:52.130] – Rachel

Great. Take care.

[01:02:53.530] – Allan

You too.

[01:02:54.360] – Rachel

Thank you.

Patreons

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

– Anne Lynch	– Eric More	– Leigh Tanner
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Thank you!

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Let's Say Hello

[00:02:22.870] – Allan

Hello, Ras. How are things going?

[00:02:24.960] – Rachel

Good Allan, how are you today?

[00:02:27.150] – Allan

Doing pretty good. It's really been really busy here. Of course, we knew we were going into busy season and it's like ebbs and flows. So we had a bunch of people at New Year's, and then it kind of let up. And where Tammy is looking at the schedule and saying, wow, we're wide open. There's nothing and all of a sudden reservation reservation. And so it's really cool. Except it just means that, yeah, it's like right now tomorrow, three rooms checking in and we weren't expecting that kind of thing. You're on. It like we thought we had a day off or we thought we were going to have some time and like, no, if it's up there, it can get booked. And then I'm trying to figure out some of the back end stuff of how do I get the TripAdvisor thing to work with the Facebook thing with the Google thing with our reservation system back and forth and trying to tie all that stuff together. So I'm trying to get that a little bit better organized. So people when they come in, they're like, okay, I don't see any reviews. Well, I want you to see some reviews.

[00:03:24.260] – Allan

I want you to see some current reviews because we're a little different than the previous owners were, as far as how we're running it and what we do and how we've upgraded it. So really just making sure that they're not. Don't get me wrong. The previous owners did a great job. They have great reviews. But you start looking around and it's like we've done so much. Tammy's done so much to make the place look great and operate great. That when someone comes in, we want them to understand that there's a different way we're approaching this and a different level of service that we provide here at Lula's. That's been very busy. And then the gym has been relatively busy. And so it's been go go go go. And since New Year, literally since New Year's Eve. Boom, this is go out of the gate. So haven't had much time to look up and do much else. But it is what it is. Busy can be good. And then we'll probably block out a week or so in May and take some time off just to catch our breath before we go into this kind of the lull of the season.

[00:04:33.500] – Allan

But at some point, I think we're going to have to take a deep breath and relax for sure.

[00:04:38.710] – Rachel

Definitely see a time off here now and then. That's good. Glad to hear everything's going well with Lula's. That's so exciting.

[00:04:46.230] – Allan

Yeah, it is. How are things up there?

[00:04:48.590] – Rachel

Good. Actually, the opposite of you. It's quiet now. My kids are back to College. They had a very nice long break for the holidays, and now they're back in school. So I've had some extra time here to work on my other New Year's resolution to start reading books. So I'm reading a book for entertainment, not about running or health or fitness or anything. So it's kind of nice to have that change.

[00:05:13.510] – Allan

Every once in a while I'll sit down and do some of that. I've got three books I ordered and had because again, there's no bookstore here. I'd ordered a few books to come down. Some of them are like, these old classics. It's like you were supposed to have read this somewhere in College or high school or something. I was like, You've never read that? No, I've never read that. That was like I had to read it. And I'm like, we didn't have to. But now I want to know. So I'll go back and read those. And then there was the show, the Man from High Castle. It was on Amazon, I think. So I watched all those and then I was like, I knew it was a book. I was like, I want to go read the book and see how close the book is to the series because I typically like the books better than movies. I don't know about you, but I tend to like books better than movies. And some books are entirely different. Like, if you see Forrest Gump the movie, the book is an entirely different story.

[00:06:13.150] – Rachel

That's interesting.

[00:06:13.790] – Allan

It's the same story, but it's almost like the character is different. And I would even say, Dare say, a little less likable, but that's just my impression of it. But again, when you read a book, it's a little bit more what's going on in your head versus what the actor wants to put on the screen, the director on the screen. So I like to read the books to see how close they are to what I saw or vice versa.

[00:06:39.680] – Rachel

Sure. Awesome. Well, enjoy those reading. If you have the time.

[00:06:45.970] – Allan

I am a little head on my interviews, four or five interviews in there, and I've got three or four more that are kind of on deck. As soon as they get their interview book, then I'll be on to those. But I am trying to kind of pace myself now to say, okay, I'm not going to do more than two interviews a week. There's no reason for me to do more than two interviews a week because I can tell you three is a lot and five is too much. And that's what I did before we got to New Year. So never again in a week. But I will drop it down and try to get to two a week here and there and just keep myself ahead because we are pretty much ahead now and recording, which is kind of a good place to be other than it is. Some of these interviews happened two months ago and trying to remember what we talked about. All right. But we are going to talk to Julie Wilcox. Are you ready for that?

[00:07:37.060] – Rachel

Yes. Let's do that.

Interview

[00:08:36.850] – Allan

Julie, welcome to 40+ Fitness.

[00:08:39.970] – Julie

Hi, Allan. How are you? Nice to be here. Thank you.

[00:08:43.690] – Allan

One of the things I love about life is that if we really take our time and we think about it, we can develop a win win attitude. We can develop a win win relationship. And for a lot of people, when it comes to food, they don't think that way. Their brain is in this. I've got to win over food, or food is going to win over me. But you're bringing a plan. And your book is called The Win-Win Diet: How to Be Plant Based and Still Eat What You Love. So you're approaching this from a very good mindset of I can win and have good food and still enjoy it with a win win instead of a win, someone's got to win. Someone's got to lose.

[00:09:26.830] – Julie

That's exactly right. Yeah. The win win actually operates on several important levels. You get to reap a laundry list of health benefits while also alleviating climate change. You get to eat an incredibly healthy diet while not having to sacrifice entire food groups or foods that you love. And lastly, as you mentioned, you can personalize your diet. You don't have to conform to a fat or fit into something that's made for the masses, not for you. And how your body actually works optimally.

[00:10:04.450] – Allan

Yeah. I've tried different ways of eating over time because I'm doing this podcast. I did things for my own health, and I was like, okay, this doesn't work for me, and I would figure it out pretty quickly, but it didn't. And that's one of the things I've talked about on the podcast for a long, long time is that each of us has to eat to our own. We have to know what serves our body. We have to get rid of foods that don't serve our body and then find our place. In a sense, we're always going to have labels because as humans communicate at all, we have to put a label on the way we eat. Are you a carnivore? Are you an omnivore? Are you a vegetarian? Are you a vegan? And then there's some space in between those. And that's what I like about this is your approach, it goes into four levels, and I'll admit it's not on the carnivore keto side, for sure. But I've had vegan Ketos on, so you can do that as possible. So I'm not saying it's not there, but you're helping people go a little bit more plant based, which there's a ton of evidence.

[00:11:10.300] – Allan

You look at Mediterranean style diets, the dash diets. And then you realize that plants provide nutrition that we need and the more of them we can get in our diet, probably the better with fiber and all the other things we talked about that help you feel satiated and full. You're getting the protein and you're getting some healthy fats. Then it all kind of comes together. So in your approach, in the Win Win diet, you have four levels, and I'm going to say they're sort of stacked because as you go in, they're a little bit more restrictive at the next level, next level, next level. And it's flexitarian, pescetarian, vegetarian, and then vegan. Can you talk through those and why you structured those in that way?

[00:11:55.690] – Julie

Sure. So I think those four diets really suit a wide variety of preferences and needs out there in the world for pretty much anyone. And within those diets, there's actually a range that you can also personalize. So just to define each one of those eating patterns, Flexitarian reduces their meat consumption and eats fish, eggs and dairy, as well as plenty of fruits, vegetables, nuts, whole grains, seeds and plant-based proteins. And all the diets share those plant foods in common. They're trying to increase the consumption of those plant foods and decrease the animal foods. The pescetarian diet doesn't eat any meat, but they do eat fish, eggs and dairy. Vegetarians eat no fish or meat and eggs and dairy, and some eat only eggs or dairy. And then finally, we have the vegans, which don't eat any meat at all. So really, there's a lot of room for personalization customization along the spectrum between the diets within the diets. So that's why I decided to choose those four. Other plant based diets, like fruitetarian, for instance. I don't think that's something that appeals to all that many people. I mean, I don't know that many people who only really want to eat fruit.

[00:13:33.470] – Allan

Well, Besides, maybe ritual, but the thing is in each of these approaches, because I don't want to use the word diet. I think that's a bad word. Actually, it's a four letter word, anyway, is that each of them allows you you're teaching them how to get an adequate amount of protein. They're getting less of it from processed foods. They're getting more fiber in each of these than they would if they were eating a lot more meat. They're moving with the flexitarian, more chicken and poultry, and fish. And then with pescetarian, they're going more to the fish. All of them are going to have some form of eggs and maybe dairy. But it's a tolerance thing because you can get vegetarian, as you said. Okay, I'm vegetarian, but I don't do well with the dairy. And so I just eliminate the dairy. And now I'm egg vegetarian, which I forgot the word for that.

[00:14:39.510] – Julie

That's ovo vegetarians. The ones that only have dairy are lacto.

[00:14:41.740] – Allan

Okay, there we go. So see, there's a place and I think where a lot of people have made a mistake, and I have, too, is that I would say it's an all or nothing. So I would literally just take and be eating the way I was eating and jump to pescetarian in my perspective. And I just jumped to pescetarian, and it was a train wreck. It's a complete train wreck. You're staggering it down. And you've got this into a series of transitions. And each transition is six weeks give or take because it's individualized and then a two week kind of stabilization. You call it a honing and maintenance. Can you talk about that transitioning process and why that's important?

[00:15:28.650] – Julie

Yeah. The transition methodology that I developed essentially asks that you allow your body to adapt to these shifts, as you mentioned, to just shock the system doesn't really ever work how many weight loss stories have we heard only to then have the follow up that people have put the weight back on? Also, for chronic disease prevention and management. You want a diet and a lifestyle that's sustainable for the long term. So the way I've mapped out the transitions between the diets starts with focusing on portion control. So let's say if you're moving from omnivore to flexitarian, for instance, and you're used to eating two sausages in the morning with a couple of fried eggs, the first step for you would be to have maybe one sausage that's regular red meat, and then maybe substitute the other one with a Turkey sausage. If you're having, then a Ham sandwich for lunch with typically four slices of Ham, reduce it to two. Add some lettuce add some tomatoes or other veggies that you'd like to again start moving more towards consuming the healthier foods, the fruits, the vegetables.

[00:16:54.950] – Allan

And as you said in the book, avocado. So, yeah, put some avocado.

[00:16:59.910] – Julie

Avocado lover. And same for dinner. If you're used to eating a six ounce steak, try for three, add another vegetable, add a whole grain. Another thing that I talk a lot about, because in the world, there's a lot of hostility towards carbs. And, yes, refined carbs. We want to be very careful about and really not eat a lot of but whole grain carbs are wonderful for you. As you talked at the beginning about fiber. They're full of fiber, protein. They have lots of vitamins and minerals, and they're really essential for overall optimal health well being. Your digestion, energy, carbs are what fuel our muscles, our brains. So the idea to eliminate them completely is not really a sound one. So you really want to focus on the refined stuff, the processed foods, the sugary foods, the foods with trans fats added saturated fat.

[00:18:07.770] – Allan

As I say, bag box jar, or can be wary.

[00:18:13.290] – Julie

So in terms of that first two weeks for any of the transition, it applies across the spectrum. So if you're moving from flexitarian to pescatarian, then you would do the same portion reduction in the first two weeks, taking the meat down and substituting that with fish and plant foods. Pesceterian to vegetarian. You're reducing the fish in favor of eggs, dairy, vegetables, fruits, legumes, plant proteins. And when you're transitioning from vegetarian to vegan, you're starting to lose the eggs and the dairy. And you want to be careful along these transitions to make sure that you're focusing on what nutrients you might be losing in the process, especially between vegetarian and vegan. So vitamin D12, vitamin D, Omega three is our big ones calcium. So you want to definitely make sure that you're paying attention to getting those from the other foods. Also, it's important to understand that I'm not saying that everybody has to move from being an omnivore all the way to a vegan. I make it very clear in the book that you can stop at any point and you can go back if you want as well. So, for instance, I became vegetarian when I was 14 years old.

[00:19:32.600] – Julie

I saw a film on factory farming and science class, and I also had a sister that was vegetarian. And as we know, the people with whom we surround ourselves have a high impact on our eating habits and lifestyles. So I became vegetarian for about ten years, and it wasn't until my 20s that I realized I just wasn't feeling my best and I couldn't quite put my finger on it. It definitely had something to do with not having enough variety in my diet. I don't think I had as much energy as I wanted, and I started slowly eating fish again, and I've been a pescetarian since. So it can be different phases of your life. That one diet suits you more than another. If you're pregnant, that's a whole other set of things you have to think about. As you age into over 60. Let's say every phase of life, we have different issues to contend with. And so you really just need to listen intuitively to what your body is telling you and what it needs.

[00:20:39.870] – Allan

And that's what I liked about this is every two weeks you have to check in with yourself, go in there to do this, check in and see how this is fitting your life. And is it serving you? Are you feeling good? Do you feel like you're getting what you need? And do you feel like maybe you're ready to step a little bit further away? So you dropped one of the sausages and replaced it with a Turkey sausage. It's like, okay, are we ready to go in the next week and say, okay, every other day I'm going to have two Turkey sausages. And every other day I'm going to have two of the pork sausages and then walk your way down to a point where you're now a flexitarian and very little red meat at all. And if you feel better, if you feel good, then you did the right thing. If you're not feeling it, then you may need to walk back some.

[00:21:25.710] – Julie

Exactly. And so after the portion reduction, the next two week phase is meal frequency reduction. So if you're eating meat, say three times a day as an omnivore and you are trying to get to be a flexitarian, you reduce it by one meal in the first week, every day, perhaps, or a few times a week, and then in the second week, maybe you reduced to only one meal a day. So the idea of the meal frequency reduction is that by the end of the two week period, you're eating only one meal a day that has your transition food, because then the final two weeks before there's a honing and maintenance phase the last two weeks. But the last two weeks of the six week period is where you reduce the days on which you actually eat your transition food. So if you're eating it now four days a week, say one meal a day, then you work on taking two days away and the first week, and then the second week, another two days a week, and then you're down to zero, hopefully by the end. But then you assess yourself one more time and you say, Is this right for me?

[00:22:32.720] – Julie

Am I feeling okay now I have two more weeks to actually just be with this diet and see how it feels and make any adjustments that maybe I need.

[00:22:44.020] – Allan

But I think that self-awareness is really the important part of this because it might take you three or four weeks to get through one of these phases and really feel like, okay, I've got it nailed down, and I'm comfortable with the way I'm eating. I feel good or feel okay. And I'm ready to take the next step versus just saying, oh, no, it's two weeks, and I'm not sure you be kind to yourself. So show some self compassion and say, okay, I need a little bit more time to acclimate to what I'm doing, and then you can take that next step.

[00:23:17.450] – Julie

Exactly. And that's why, more specifically about the assessment sections, they're divided into three parts, and I ask you to really do a medical check, talk to your doctor, make sure everything is clear with your labs and your health status. In that sphere, I ask you to do an emotional and psychological check to make sure that you're really okay with those arenas. So it's a pretty comprehensive evaluation to make sure that you're feeling good and feeling better hopefully. The reason why people would theoretically be doing this is because they want to feel better and better.

[00:24:00.350] – Allan

Absolutely. Now, one of the things that's really hard for a lot of people is okay. When I'm cooking my own meals, breakfast may be the easiest unless you're in a hurry and wake up a little late and it's like, oh, no. And now I have to stop somewhere and have to buy food either at a restaurant or I'm in a real hurry, and I need to do some kind of take out or delivery. Can you give us some tips for how we can manage what we're trying to do now in those environments? Because sometimes those menus are a little hard for us to know. What are we getting here? And how would you recommend someone to go and do that?

[00:24:38.790] – Julie

I would recommend that you immediately scan menus for fruits, vegetables, lean proteins, whole grains. Ideally, you want to do your research in advance, so you want to have a few go to places where you know they have the foods that you'd like to be eating and having not only those groupings of food, but also portion sizes that are appropriate, because that's a big pitfall for people and especially when eating out or ordering in. So again, you want to learn what the proper portion size of any food is and make sure that you're curating your places and your meals properly that way. Word of mouth, talking to neighbors, talking to friends, family in the area is a great way to get ideas of where to go as long as they're on the same page as you are doing online research looking at menus. A lot of places now provide nutritional information on their menus. I'm not a big believer in calorie counting, and I think it's good to know generally what you're consuming day to day, but not really actually having to do the computations. That's a little bit more of a complicated conversation.

[00:26:06.140] – Julie

But if you do it once and you eat routinely enough, essentially, you'll know where you are and what you need to do there with the calories. I think asking questions is super important of your servers. Again, what are the ingredients in there? What are the portion sizes? Is it possible to make alterations? Can I have this? But not that? I think people need to really feel empowered to speak up and ask for what they want, and at least in the least asked questions so that they can make the decision if they don't want it and they can choose something else, you can always eat half. You don't have to eat the whole thing. I know that can be difficult, but if you set your mind up for that, take the rest home. Save it for the next day. Or if you're with someone or, you know, you have colleagues in the office that might want some or family at home. Since so many are working from home these days, take it with you. Hopefully someone will have it. And if not, put it in the fridge, freeze it. Of course we don't like to waste, but you can always get rid of it if you need to.

[00:27:14.760] – Allan

Well, one of the things I would do is if I knew I was going to a place and I knew the servings were going to just insane. I mean, okay, serving of beef is not 12oz or 8oz. That's two or three servings. So it would be like, okay, I'm going to take a container and I'm going to take my own salad dressing. And my wife kind of sometimes was a little upset with me for making a scene and doing these things. But I was really wanting to make sure I was eating better. I would bring my takeaway. And as soon as they bring out the food, I would cut the meat and I would put the portion I was not going to eat in the takeaway.

[00:27:50.950] – Julie

There you go.

[00:27:52.750] – Allan

Now, what's on my plate is my meal. And then I enjoy a nice meal and I don't have to think about it anymore. That's the way I approached it. So having a plan going in, I do I agree with you is really important in doing the research. A lot of restaurants are doing that. They're putting the information out there. They're making it available. They're flagging their foods, whether it's vegan, vegetarian, gluten free, all those different things. And if they're not, letting them know with your dollars is probably the best way to get them to change. So if the quality of their fish, the quality of their meat is not what you want it to be. Don't eat it, refuse to go there. And eventually they'll realize, oh, maybe I have to up my game to have you as a customer.

[00:28:38.830] – Julie

Right. And I just want to say that if you know also that you have a lifestyle that is going to require you to eat on the run, you can also prepare for that by making foods at home on the weekend that are good for transportation, that will stay well, that you can make a couple of batches of whether it's overnight oats or yogurt parfaits, dried granola you can always bring with the side of berries, hardboiled eggs. There are definitely a bunch of options that you can prepare for yourself at home because there's nothing better than knowing what is exactly in your food, making it yourself, knowing where it's coming from and being able to portion everything the way you should, just taking your control, your power back over that.

[00:29:32.410] – Allan

And it's probably cheaper too.

[00:29:34.460] – Julie

Yeah. Exactly.

[00:29:36.190] – Allan

Now one of the things that's coming about because veganism and vegetarian, these are not new things, but being plant based as a diet, as a dietary way of eating, a way of eating is getting bigger. It's a growing trend based on the science people are paying attention. And so now they're coming up with the substitutes so I can go into the grocery store. And there's the vegan burgers that are bean based or soy burgers or the vegan bacon, which to me, is kind of I don't know that I don't even understand. But then now the big ones impossible and beyond meat, which you can buy at McDonald's or Burger King, I guess. They're doing this because there's a market. But is this something that we should be doing? Like, should we just substitute our meat with impossible or beyond burger?

[00:30:38.030] – Julie

I think it's okay to do occasionally as you're transitioning when you're in a pinch. But I think people need to really be aware that those foods are comprised of a long list of ingredients that aren't wholly natural, and they contain saturated fat. They contain chemicals and just all different sorts of hybridizations of things. The best is to go as pure as you can. Make your own burgers with tofu or beans or vegetables. Again, you can get fewer forms of all of those they're processed a little bit just to get them to the supermarket. But you want to stay away from the ones that are flavored or trying to imitate something. So yes, the vegetarian bacon like rather just get a loaf of tempeh and slice it up really thin, throw it in the pan with some olive oil and use some smoky spices and make the flavor yourself that way. And I think that goes for any of those plant based proteins. The beauty of them is that they really absorb flavor beautifully. And so as frequently as you can use and learn about and stick with herbs and spices and making your own sauces out of natural ingredients, whether that's tahini or you want Asian style sauces with soy sauces and ginger, garlic, things like that.

[00:32:15.290] – Julie

You can do all that yourself, but using whole, pure, healthy ingredients, as opposed to things that have been manufactured on a mass scale that are basically chemically derived and made.

[00:32:30.000] – Allan

Yeah. And the cool thing is in your book, The Win Win Diet. You have recipes to help with the transition to each of these levels. So you're going to have some delicious food, you're going to enjoy it, and then at that point, find your spot in here. So you're eating healthier and feeling better.

[00:32:46.610] – Julie

Exactly. Yeah. I have 95 recipes in the book, and I think that's where I've been really successful in the field of nutrition, working with people and that once you start to actually eat the food that's delicious and you realize that it can be so tasty and amazing, you don't then need or want or crave the foods that, like meat, for instance, that maybe you should be eating less of or want to be eating less of. So I think a lot of it comes down to resources and having those recipes on hand and also having the meal plans to support them. So you understand how to put it all together again so that you don't have to be sitting there worrying about or counting your calories or your fat intake during the day because the meal plan is there for you and you do it a couple of times and then basically, you know, like this is the way I can mix and match, and I don't really have to think about anything anymore. It's delicious. It's healthy. It's whole foods, vegetables, fruits, seeds, nuts, all those great things that are going to fuel my energy that are going to help me sleep better that are going to enhance my focus, prevent and help me manage chronic disease.

[00:34:02.170] – Julie

There are so many reasons to start to embrace the plant based or plant slanted diet, and it's really not as difficult as people think. You just need to make these incremental small changes, and that's what I really try. That's the message I'm trying to get across in this book.

[00:34:22.210] – Allan

I like that Plant Slanted. I'm going to use that.

[00:34:28.110] – Allan

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

[00:34:36.810] – Julie

so of course, eating your plant based diet fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, seeds, legumes and plant based proteins. Sleep getting at least 7 hours of sleep a night. Exercise at least 30 minutes a day, about five days a week is about the minimum that I recommend. Those are three. I can go on and on meditation, self nurturing, really, just taking care of yourself to decrease your stress and anxiety, which of course, contribute to and drive a lot of poor food choices and cravings. Socializing, having a great group of people around you that uplift your mood that support your goals that help you when you're struggling. All those things are really important.

[00:35:26.550] – Allan

Awesome. You just regurgitated Buettner's blue zones again.

[00:35:34.290] – Julie

Love him.

[00:35:36.030] – Allan

Okay. If someone wanted to learn more about you and the book, The Win Win Diet, where would you like for me to send them?

[00:35:42.990] – Julie

They can go to Amazon or Barnesandnoble.Com and order it as a pre sale right now. It actually drops on January 18. They can follow me on social media. Instagram juliacockswellness. LinkedIn Julie Wilcox. Facebook Also Juliewilcoxwellness, I have a website, juliewilcoxwellness.com. I try to keep people updated on all of these channels. I have a newsletter that they can sign up for on my website, so those would be the best channels.

[00:36:18.290] – Allan

Great. You could go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/522 and I'll be sure to have the links there. Julie, thank you so much for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

[00:36:29.190] – Julie

Thank you. It was wonderful speaking with you. Thanks for having me on the show.

Post Show/Recap

[00:36:40.090] – Allan

Welcome back, Ras.

[00:36:41.620] – Rachel

Hey, Allan. Wow. What a fun conversation. And how can you not want to win and win with your diet what a really interesting interview about plant based or no plant slanted diet. That was pretty cool.

[00:36:55.250] – Allan

Yeah. Whenever someone says plant based, I think almost everyone's immediately vegan. And the reality is the whole concept of food and eating food is really a continuum. And it's a continuum of whether you're going to be more meat based or more plant based or a little bit more balanced. And then from that, there's kind of the tweaks of foods you're just never going to eat. So there are some people I sit there and say, I happen to love liver and onions. And in a few weeks we're going to talk to someone about why that might actually be good for you to have in your diet. But most people are going to sit there and say, no. Not going to do the organs. And I would say, then it comes to the mind of if you want to be carnivore and you're not going to eat organ meat, you're going to have to supplement because you've made a decision to be in a restricted diet, very restricted diet. And the only way you're going to get the nutrients you need is really to eat hoof the Horn. I mean, you got to eat the whole animal to make that work.

[00:38:08.280] – Allan

And it's kind of the same thing with other levels here where you're going flexitarian all the way down to vegan is you are eliminating something, or you're at least significantly reducing it. And you have to think about the nutritional ramifications of making that decision. So for vegan, you're not getting B twelve. There's no food, there's no vegetable based food, plant based food that gives you B12 enough B12 anyway to matter, and therefore your body can't create it, and therefore you don't have it. And that can be a big problem. So you may have to supplement if that's the way you're choosing to eat that far on that continuum, and the things you start deciding you want to eliminate, you have to figure all that out. And as we were talking earlier, you can want to eat a certain way. But if your body says no, then it's probably going to be no.

[00:39:09.350] – Rachel

Yeah. And we all know about the most common food allergies. There's peanut allergies, seafood allergies. And there's even some that maybe people haven't heard about. I think I might have mentioned on our podcast before that my mom is allergic to blueberries and other really dark skinned fruits, and my brother has to me the worst allergy. He's allergic to apples and Apple juices, which is in a lot of different products out there. And he also has a sensitivity to the pit fruits like peaches and nectarines, those things that have pits. So, I mean, not very many people have heard about those types of allergies. And again, like we mentioned before, you could tell me all day long that fish is good for me, which I can eat fish. But if I had a seafood allergy and couldn't eat it, well, then that's the problem. I can't eat it. So you're right about finding other ways to get those nutrients in and the fiber and the other vitamins and minerals and these different types of foods.

[00:40:09.020] – Allan

Yeah. And then some of it's just availability. Here in Bocas, if I decided I wanted to be vegan, now, there's lots of restaurants that I could go have vegan meals, but I can't necessarily walk into the grocery store and find Tempa or soy. I can find maybe some edamame, but I'm going to get really tired of eating edamame every day as my protein source.

[00:40:34.120] – Rachel

Right.

[00:40:34.800] – Allan

And if you have sensitivity, some people just really don't tolerate beans or they don't tolerate night shades. They don't tolerate a lot of those things. And if you have not just allergies but intolerances, you're really going to struggle to get the nutrients that you need. And some of the things you're eating are actually anti nutrients and pulling away from that as well. So the closer you can get to a balanced diet where you feel comfortable, you're kind of balancing out your ethical concerns or concerns about the planet and just recognizing, okay, I'm probably not killing the planet by eating a little bit of meat, and I might not be killing the planet at all. I don't know. You can show me a study. You can show me a statistic that tells me. Okay. Yes, one cow destroys the Earth, and I'd say, probably not now, millions and billions of cows and the process that we're doing, and obviously in industrial farming is terrible the way they treat the animals because they're a product. And I know that sounds horrible, but it is what it is. And if you want to eat those ways, you can. What I've found is a lot of people end up substituting and doing all this machinations to almost pretend they're not eating that way.

[00:42:02.110] – Allan

And I don't think that's any better. And as we discuss with Julie, it's like, yeah, some of those substitutes are probably worse for you than had you just said. Okay, I'm going to go ahead and eat some chicken and just be a flexitarian. I'm going to go ahead and eat a little bit of beef, but in real moderation, maybe once a week or twice a week thing, and you're flexitrian most of your food. Most of your nutrition and calories is coming from plants. Then you're moving. It may be a way that's more healthful for you, but you have to figure that out. As you said, everybody's going to be a little different what you eat. I don't eat what I eat. You don't necessarily eat everything. But you probably won't eat, right? Because I eat just about everything. I'm not afraid of any food. And if I know I need someone, I literally went to the Butcher where I buy most of my meat. And I said, okay, I want to see if you can get me some organic liver, give me some organic kidney, give me some organic heart and get me some thymus.

[00:43:05.620] – Allan

And I had to spell thymus, and she had to look it up to figure out what it was. Oh, it's in the neck. Yeah, it's really good. I didn't want to call it. Tell her sweep, right? I don't want to confuse her, but she's like, brain. I'm like, no, that's the one thing I don't want to eat because there's been some stories of people having issues with brains and stuff. I avoid eating brain, but that's just a line because I've seen if they don't take care of the animal, that's how they're going to get you. But, you know, if you're willing to eat anything, then you're going to be able to get the nutrition you need as long as you're paying attention and just not eating stuff. That's where people get in trouble. Is that elimination, right.

[00:43:48.180] – Rachel

Well, I love how she made it a four level kind of way to move, being flexitarian, pescetarian, vegetarian and vegan and then sliding to those different ways of eating as your body responds to it. But I also appreciated how she said to try something and sit there for a couple of weeks, like, just don't go from a to Z. Start with making smaller food swaps, or instead of eating meat five days a week, eat it for a couple of meals a day or a couple of days a week and just kind of switch from beef to chicken to fish and just kind of make these tiny swaps, but then sit on it for a couple of weeks to get your body used to that and see how it responds. And I really appreciate, too, because if vegan is too difficult or you're not feeling great being vegan, you can slide back up again and have a meal that has fish or chicken in it and slide back down again and see how your body responds, because at the end of the day, that's what's the most important thing is you feeling good and having enough energy to do what you want to do.

[00:44:55.230] – Allan

Yeah. Well, in a sense, with any of these things, when you go to a publisher, if you sat there and said, this is the four month plan, they would say, no, no one's going to buy a four month plan. But to be honest with you, two weeks was just enough for you to kind of kick the tires a little bit. You're not really even taking it for a test drive. So she encourages even go a little longer if you need to. So if you're going from full meat eater to flexitarian, then not just on a couple of weeks. But you may want to sit there for a good long time and just say, okay, I'm comfortable here. And now when I'm comfortable, I can consider going to the next level. When you take that next step. And she talks about that a little bit in the book. But she couldn't say the four months plan to figure out the best way for you to eat. And then the other side of it is, okay, so maybe you get yourself to a point where you're full vegan, okay. And you're going full vegan, and then you're out with friends and they don't have the vegan options.

[00:45:57.840] – Allan

But they have a deal where you can do something that's like vegetarian, and you take that step and say, okay, well, I'm going to have a vegetarian meal. You're not going to die. You're going to have your vegetarian meal, enjoy the heck out of it. And then tomorrow, when you fix your own breakfast, it's your normal vegan fare, and you're back to normal. And so just recognize that it's that strictness. It's that feeling like you've got this electrode fastened to you that if you do something wrong, it's going to shock you and your body might. I mean, I can tell you if you are eating vegan, and then you go out and decide to have a big eight ounce juicy steak. You might have some difficulties the next day or so where your body is trying to say, what the hell did you just do to me? That was a little too bizarre if you do that jump. But if you just say, okay, I normally would eat vegan, and some are predominantly plant based. And, oh, there's a little bit of fish. I'm going to have a little bit of fish.

[00:46:59.780] – Allan

And I'm going to go on about my day. So I get some protein because I had the fish and then I had the salad and I'm good. It was a meal. I think a lot of people kind of get lost. And once I define as something, then I have to eat that way. Or the gods of veganism or the gods of Carnivore are going to get it down on me because I see it every day. Like I'm on Facebook and someone being a group and they're like, Well, am I allowed to have this on the carnivore diet? And it's just so funny that they're asking people on the internet permission to eat a plant to have coffee. Can I have coffee on the carnivore diet? And I'm like, Are you really asking permission from people on the internet like, they're the rulers of carnivore? It works the same way. It works the same with vegan. It's the same thing if they cook my vegan meal on a plate on a pan that was cooked meat. Am I not vegan? And I'm like,

[00:48:00.370] – Rachel

Well, it's unfortunate that people are so mean about it. That people are saying, if you're going to be vegan, this is how you're going to eat till the end of time. And again, it doesn't have to be that way. You need to eat based on how you're feeling and what your energy level or energy needs are for that day. And what you eat today or ten years from now could be vastly different. And that's okay. I just don't see how people can be on top of each other like that and be so rude.

[00:48:31.970] – Allan

It's the tribalism. It was the whole reason I had that guy on to talk about tribalism. His first name was Allan. It was Dr. Buchanan. That's why we talked about tribalism, because I really wanted folks to understand that you get into this ideology. It's an us versus them thing, and they're using it now everywhere. If you don't follow their ideology, you're wrong and you're evil. And so they create this us versus them. And I would just say, don't buy it, don't buy into it. Just don't even identify with how you eat. If that's an Identifier, that might be an indication that there's a problem. If you just say, I eat real food.

[00:49:19.280] – Rachel

Yeah. End of story.

[00:49:24.570] – Allan

I know it was alive, and if I'm hungry for something, I eat it. And that might be like, I'm going to have a big salad with some. I found this product here called Black garlic, and I'm obsessed with it. Basically it gets really kind of sweet because the way they handle it, I don't know the whole scenario how it's made. I probably need to look that up because I'm eating something, and I don't really understand. But if you've ever had a salad and it has dried cranberries in it or something like that, like that and kind of get that texture of a cranberry in with your salad. So it's just a different texture in your salad. Like I'm doing that. I've got olives, I've got different spices and things that I'm putting in it. And then I'm throwing in. I'm just doing vinegar and oil, balsamic vinegar and oil on this big salad. But these things come in beets, and it's like they come in as just a different texture. So there's the beets, and then there's the lettuce, and then it's Rosemary that I put on there. And you guys will hear the episode on that not too long in the future, but some foods that she talked about in her book, and we'll get into that.

[00:50:33.950] – Allan

Like I said in a few weeks about these different foods. I've started adding them to my normal diet just to see how I feel eating that way. But I found these things, and it's kind of like now I don't need raisins or dried raspberry things that cranberry things that I would normally have on a salad. I do this. But again, you try something new and you learn something, and I have to do a little research to figure out how they make black garlic or whether it is because it can't just be a garlic. There's something they're doing to it that makes it this versus just being garlic. But it's delicious. And I'm pretty much having it about once every other day or once every day, maybe two days in the last week. But I haven't had that big salad with that. But you buy Lettuce, it's like lettuce and arugula and this. And I need to work through this before it goes bad, yes. Five times out of the last seven days. But no, it's just try new foods, try to learn something new. And if you want to kind of go down this plant based approach, then here Julie Wilcox is kind of giving you a guidance and talking you through the transition from one level to the next to make it sustainable and make it easier so that you can find where you belong.

[00:51:58.990] – Allan

And if you go a little far, you can take that step back. Or if there's a day or a celebration or something going on, and you're kind of like, well, I really want that. Then you go ahead and have it, and then you just recognize your body might not appreciate it as much as you did. And then you just know, okay. This is my like you said, there's a dish that you always have at Christmas time. If you found your body just said, okay, that's just a reality of December 26. It just is. And so that's how we want to live our lives is food serves us, not us serving our food.

[00:52:39.110] – Rachel

Yeah. What a great book. Great interview.

[00:52:41.850] – Allan

All right. Well, Rachel, I will talk to you next week.

[00:52:45.200] – Rachel

Awesome. Take care.

[00:52:46.550] – Allan

You, too.

[00:52:47.470] – Rachel

Thanks.

Patreons

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Thank you!

Another episode you may enjoy

Peak performance as a plant-based athlete with Matt Frazier and Robert Cheeke

Less...

Let's Say Hello

[00:02:20.850] – Allan

Hey Ras, How are things going?

[00:02:22.980] – Rachel

Good Allan, how are you today?

[00:02:25.030] – Allan

I'm doing all right. Made it through the new year. Getting into this year. We're recording this. We're just getting into the new year. But now we're into January. And so this is kind of a busy time for a lot of people that are trying to change things. This is kind of the season. January tends for a lot of people to be a season of change, a season of renewal or season of doing something different to try to make the next year even better. But I'm guessing that some of the folks listening to this also probably already quit some of the resolutions, some of the things that they started because that's kind of the long tail of this is that people just start dropping off week three, week four, week five. The gym's packed in January.

[00:03:10.830] – Allan

In fact, the first day we were open this year was one of the busiest days we've ever had. And you and I are talking. It's not even half over, and we've already had more guests and more people sign up in the first 4 hours of being open than we would normally have in a whole week. So, yeah, this is the time that people get started. But I'm just here to encourage you to keep going. Keep going. You're on the right track. If you're moving forward, you're on the right track. Keep moving.

[00:03:41.250] – Rachel

Absolutely. Please keep moving. I think about this time of year. It's quit day. There's a day for quit day. And I can't remember what it is.

[00:03:48.970] – Allan

I think it's in February. I do think it's in February, but I can just tell you from years and years of being a gym goer, it tails off. A lot of people will sign up the week before New Year. More people will then sign up in the first week, and then it just they blast for the first week, and then it just starts adding down, particularly, like I was always in early morning. I was either in the gym early in the morning or in the middle of the day.

[00:04:17.450] – Allan

So that's not peak time. I try to go. And there's not a lot of people there. And so what you would see is 05:00 in the morning as a workout time, typically on a typical day in a normal day of the year, there's three of us in there. And we all know each other. We don't know, maybe not even by name, but it's that head nod as you walk into the gym. We know it's the same three guys and one girl occasionally comes in and gets on the treadmill.

[00:04:42.230] – Allan

But that's it. And then this time of year, 10, 15 people in there at 05:00 in the morning for about a week or so. To me, it's the people that overextend. It's like, are you really going to show up at 05:00 in the morning every day for the rest of the year? And the short answer for most people is, no, that's not sustainable. And so they kind of took that non-sustainable slam of, oh, I'm going to eat salads. I'm going to do this. I'll pack my lunch.

[00:05:13.750] – Allan

I'm going to do that. I'm not going to go out. I'm not going to drink. I'm not going to over and over and then boom, one thing goes south. It all just crumbles because it wasn't sustainable.

[00:05:23.350] – Rachel

Oh, it's too much. It's too much to make such drastic changes across your entire life and expect to hang on to every single one. We've talked about it before. Just take one thing. One change. Make it 5:30 in the morning. Gym day, a couple of days a week. Do it at noon or at night, the other couple of days a week. I mean, spread it out. You don't have to make so many drastic changes all at once. Don't do it.

[00:05:46.440] – Allan

But you did something drastic. Polar plunge.

[00:05:49.900] – Rachel

Oh, yeah. My local run club, run caledonia run. An incredible group of really brave, adventurous people. They decided to start a polar plunge. We did it last year.

[00:06:03.540] – Allan

I have different adjectives. I have different adjectives.

[00:06:07.570] – Rachel

Yes. I can imagine. It's a little chillier up here than it might have been in other parts of the country or the world. But, yeah, we met after a run. We did a run together, and we did a polar plunge in our little Lake. Luckily, there was not very much ice this year. We didn't have to hack through it like we did last year. But, yeah, it was still chilly, still icy and snowy up here. But, yeah, it was super fun. Super cold. But it's super fun.

[00:06:34.210] – Allan

All right. Anything else going on?

[00:06:37.190] – Rachel

No, just excited. I love the new year. I love getting a new calendar. I love planning out my goals. I've got goals that will last all year, and I'm still pondering what I want to do, but I just love this. This is an exciting time of year for me, so I hope that other people find the excitement and hold on to that because that's what's going to keep you motivated throughout the year.

[00:07:00.250] – Allan

All right, well, let's have a conversation with Dr. Lahita.

[00:07:03.670] – Rachel

Awesome.

Interview

[00:07:51.620] – Allan

Doctor Lahita, welcome to 40+ Fitness.

[00:07:54.610] – Dr. Lahita

Thank you. My pleasure.

[00:07:56.370] – Allan

Now, I want you to step aside for a little while. Let me talk to Dr. Bob, because Dr. Bob is sort of more on my level of actually being able to explain these things in a way that I think is awesome. Now, don't get me wrong. Dr. Lahita is cool, and I really enjoy the science, the things I learned going through the book and the hard words and just kind of seeing it all pieced together and the science, obviously. But Doctor Bob he's my buddy right now.

[00:08:24.030] – Allan

I like Dr. Bob because he talks my language. And then your book is called Immunity Strong: Boost Your Natural Healing Power and Live to 100. Again, all of that is really important to me. We've gone through a few years where talking about the immune system is pretty much a daily thing. So I think a book like this is huge. Everybody needs to read this book because we have to be the Masters of our body. We have to be the Masters of where you put it  the city.

[00:08:56.830] – Allan

We have to be the ones in control, the government of ourselves. Thank you for writing this book.

[00:09:03.190] – Dr. Lahita

Thank you.

[00:09:04.300] – Allan

Now, when you look at the immune system and we'll see things in newspapers and magazines, and someone will say, Well, this works this way because of that. We were taught germ theory when we were in high school. Maybe some people even going into biology in College or at some level, we all kind of know. Okay, there's these parasites, bacteria and viruses, and they get in our system, and some of them are actually not too bad for us, actually, maybe even better for us. But some of them are actually pretty bad buggers criminals, as you put in the book, and they're not out to kill us. But sometimes they end up doing that and just trying to live their lives the way they do or live their existence the way they do.

[00:09:50.110] – Allan

Can you kind of take your first responders view of the immune system and just give us a general overview so that someone who is reading a newspaper article can kind of wrap their mind around it, maybe just a little easier when they start throwing out beta cells and T cells and cytokines and all those things.

[00:10:09.240] – Allan

Can you kind of talk about that in terms of how our immune system basically works?

[00:10:14.590] – Dr. Lahita

Yes. So I've been explaining the immune system for many years to lay audiences, and I found over the years that the best way to explain this very complicated system, which exists in all of us. And that's what's amazing and most people don't realize is we are so complicated. But the immune system is one of the most beautiful organ systems in the body. It's a protective network, so you can go to police departments or armies, and you can see the same kind of protection set up in many layers and tiers in society, as you see with our immune system.

[00:10:53.480] – Dr. Lahita

So we have basically two kinds of response. We have what we call an innate immune response, which I refer to as the SWAT team of the body. So when you have an injury or a bacterium enters you and it is not supposed to be in you, and we'll get into that in a minute. But like a virus, like influenza or a bacterium that goes into your foot because you stepped on a nail. This is all offensive to the body, and the immune system goes to the scene of the crime.

[00:11:24.270] – Dr. Lahita

And Interestingly enough, we have lymph nodes placed throughout the body in strategic locations. I like to refer to it as the TSA of the immune system. You have lymph nodes in your groin, around your neck, anywhere where there's a possibility even around the ears, where the possibility of a breach of your personal bodily security occurs. The immune system reacts and it reacts locally, first with the innate response and then about two to three days later with the adaptive immune response. Now, your listeners, I'm sure have all heard of antibodies, the proteins in the blood that are very specific at times and affect invaders.

[00:12:09.230] – Dr. Lahita

We call them neutralizing antibodies because they go and they neutralize the criminal. I think of the invaders of the body as criminals. I go into this in great detail in the book so that the criminals that are carried away by a police Department, if you will, specific cells designed to remove criminals and take them away either whole or in pieces to the spleen. The spleen, if you have one and if you don't have one, the lymph nodes then become the place where the criminals be they whole or in part are removed.

[00:12:43.300] – Dr. Lahita

This goes on every millisecond of the day in our bodies imperceptibly. You really don't know when this is happening unless you happen to step on a nail or slice your hand with a knife or you have a tree limb fall on you. Some major trauma. The immune system then jumps into action and plays a major role in keeping you protected and alive. So that's what happens. The foreign invaders are truly criminals. These are organisms, be they parasites, viruses or bacteria that the body has never seen before.

[00:13:23.200] – Dr. Lahita

Unrecognizable. And so they are called antigens versus antibodies. Antigens are foreign invaders. Now, antigens are very serious and can kill you if your immune system is challenged either by you overdrinking alcohol, by smoking cigarettes or by having an inborn that is a genetically inherited defect in your immune response, you can die. And there are other diseases like cancer, like diabetes, like a lot of other things that can challenge your immune system and make it somewhat dysfunctional. And hence the reason for the current vaccines being given to people either 65 and older, where your immune system is beginning to wane in its strength.

[00:14:10.990] – Dr. Lahita

We can talk about that in a second. But the other thing is that if you're on chemotherapy for either an autoimmune disease or some sort of cancer that you have, like prostate cancer or breast cancer, you are at risk because your immune system is having a heck of a time trying to deal with the malignancy. But it's now also being asked to deal with a foreign invader. And people with other viruses like hepatitis C or even HIV have a tough time because their immune systems may not be able to Mount an adequate protective response for their bodies.

[00:14:47.290] – Allan

Yeah. So again, I encourage everybody to get this book. If you want to learn how your immune system works and you're reading the newspapers and seeing the press and thinking, okay, none of this makes any sense to me. Get the book because he goes through it. It is fascinating the way you put this together. Like I said, I was blown away by how simple you made it seem. It's not simple, but you put together a really good analogy metaphor, if you will, of how this all works. So it can literally take away all the jargon and just say, okay, I understand my body has a police force.

[00:15:28.000] – Allan

There's different people on the police force doing different things. They're responding in different ways. Sometimes something's going to happen that's going to kind of confuse my SWAT team and my police force, and they might actually even attack my own body, like in an autoimmune disease. Like I said to me, it was brilliant, and I really appreciate that and want people to learn this. So do that.

[00:15:52.570] – Allan

I want to take the next step because you took the next step, which is something that is important to me, because as I get older, it's like, okay, how do I stay alive and beyond just doing some practical things that we'll talk about later, you brought up a concept of what kind of keeps a lot of people alive longer than others.

[00:16:12.030] – Allan

And it was the biological soul. But we have to give full credit to your wife because she came up with the term.

[00:16:21.050] – Dr. Lahita

She's a wonderful artist. That's why she came up with that term.

[00:16:24.890] – Allan

And I love it. So tell her that. But explain the biological soul and why that's important for us to maintain our health, particularly in this environment.

[00:16:36.130] – Dr. Lahita

Today, there are very few organs that span the entire body, including the brain. The brain shares characteristics with the peripheral. When I say peripheral, I mean, the rest of your body, your arms, your legs, your ovaries, your testicles, your heart, lung, et cetera. So there are very few organs that are that extensive. One other organ might be your skin, which is widespread and injuries to the skin can be very severe and actually kill you. For example, a bad burn of a certain percentage of your body. The immune system is throughout the body.

[00:17:14.490] – Dr. Lahita

So that is what is so important and it interacts with your body, your mind, your brain directs most of the immune system and your spirit. Now, I'm not one of these alternative doctors that does all of this Hocus Pocus stuff, but I'm a real immunologist. And I would say that she's onto something with regard to the mind, body and soul. The mind, if you're depressed, if you are stressed, if you have a divorce, if you sell a house and have to move out to some place, if you lose your job, all of this affects your immune system.

[00:17:54.820] – Dr. Lahita

And we know that from actual data, it's not something that is focused and made up by me. Whether you believe in God or have a religion or whatever, it doesn't really matter. The spirituality of your body, that's the essence of who you are as a person really runs what your immune system does. It really means a lot to be healthy, to exercise aerobically. That means outdoors, if you can, but to breathe oxygen on a daily basis in a big way and to really stress your body a little bit physically, not mentally, but the biological soul permeates everything it wants you.

[00:18:35.840] – Dr. Lahita

This soul wants you to live beyond the age of 100. And we have many people who are centenarians now. And the reason for that is good healthy living. People have taken up the idea that in order to live a long time, they have to do things like yoga, keep a good diet. Many people are vegetarians. Many people take vitamins every day. Many people take care of their bones with calcium and vitamin D and so on and so forth. We now know now more than we knew 50 years ago about how to stay healthy.

[00:19:10.610] – Dr. Lahita

And there are lots of things. And that's where the soul comes in, because the biological soul, which was the original thing I called the immune system. I called it the biological soul after she told me about this. And I said, wow, this is really amazing. This is true, because when you die, your soul dies. Your biological soul dies. Your spiritual soul, if you believe in that goes on and on and on into the ethers. But your biological soul is really there to protect you. And it does so in a very amazingly complex way.

[00:19:43.450] – Dr. Lahita

And so that's why I called it the biological soul. I think a soul is a duality in everybody spiritual biological. If you're an atheist, you can still be a spiritual person. You can go out and enjoy the sunset. You can enjoy the ocean or being in the middle of a forest with nobody but you and the animals. That's what I mean by spirituality. And the soul that we have. This biological soul is there to protect us implicitly. And another point is that we're not the only ones that have these biological souls.

[00:20:16.170] – Dr. Lahita

I mean, if you go to the average mouse or rat, which we experiment with, and by the way, this is where the data on the mind body soul came from experimenting with animals with regard to light cycles and stressing mice on treadmills and other things, and seeing that their resistance, their cell populations dropped, their neutralizing antibody disappeared, et cetera. So this comes from animal work, animal research, which is very basic and is about 30 to 40 years old. So we now can extrapolate it to human beings.

[00:20:47.150] – Dr. Lahita

And so that kind of without me going on and on and talking too much. When you read the book, you'll experience that kind of voila enlightenment about your own inner workings.

[00:20:58.580] – Allan

Yeah. And I think we all know we intrinsically know that there's this connection, this thing going on with us in the world around us, the people around us, and you see it all the time. Someone retires from their job. They are 65 years old, they seem to be in good general health. But two years later they're gone, or a spouse passes, and within two years, the other spouse passes. And it's just kind of that loss of connection, loss of spirit, if you will, that now their immune system has just decided to shut down and let them terminate.

[00:21:35.630] – Dr. Lahita

Right? Exactly. And that happens all too commonly. And it is important to understand what your body is all about and what's going on inside. You don't have to be a doctor to have an appreciation and respect for your system. And there are protective networks and other species, even flies, butterflies. When I go out now I look at animals differently. I look at plants which have their own protective system as well. We all have these biological souls, which may actually philosophically be the basis of religion entirely. Whoever the Creator was has imbued all of us, even the lowest species with protection, which is pretty amazing.

[00:22:23.150] – Allan

Now there is this one creature, if you will. It's a coronavirus we now call COVID-19, and there are various variations of it that have occurred over the last two years or so, and maybe even longer, much longer. As you said in the book, I would just say 1959. I think a lot of us thought this was just going to we would get the vaccine. Most of us would take the vaccine or we would get it survive, get it die. But at some point we were talking her immunity where we were talking about this being over.

[00:22:57.290] – Allan

And I don't think any of us, if you ask me in February, March of 2020, when I was shutting down my gym that I just bought in June, I reopened in February of this year, but at the same time, if you told me this was going to happen and last this long, I wouldn't have believed it. But now it's almost like, well, this might never end. I mean, we might always have COVID-19. I think we'll always have coronaviruses and rhinoviruses and those things because they just mutate come back as a slightly different variant.

[00:23:33.210] – Allan

We get it a cold again and we move on. It's a seasonal thing, mostly. But you get that the covid doesn't seem to follow the seasons as well as most of the things we've dealt with. And it seems to have its own little world going north and south and east and west and past here and past there. And this one's scary that one's not. Is covid endemic? Is this something we're always going to be dodging and dealing with?

[00:23:58.080] – Dr. Lahita

Well, it's not endemic yet. It will be shortly. It's pandemic right now because it involves and infects so many millions and millions of people. And this new Omicron variant, which came around around Thanksgiving holidays and is undoubtedly going to spread during the mixing of the Christmas holidays, results in another rush. Now, as I said in the book, these viruses up regulate and they down regulate because that's what viruses do now. Remember, viruses are not alive. They're particles. So they get into you and they use you to really replicate, to multiply.

[00:24:40.370] – Dr. Lahita

They don't have their own spirit. They don't have their own soul. They don't even have the soul of an earthworm. An Earthworm, at least has a nervous system and has an immune system of its own. The virus doesn't. So what our immune systems are doing essentially right now is they're learning to combat this virus as they do with every other virus. Once the virus is controlled by our collective meaning, collective being the world's immune systems with the help of vaccines, monoclonal antibodies and other now new medications that are coming out that I can talk to you about, these viruses will be controlled and will become endemic.

[00:25:22.820] – Dr. Lahita

But what do we mean by endemic? They're going to be with us forever because a coronavirus not the novel coronavirus, the COVID-19, but the regular coronavirus has been the cause of the common cold for the past five or 600 years in humans. And so it's around. And this virus is a first cousin to that coronavirus. So I suspect that we will get a shot every year with the inclusion of multiple variants and the beauty of molecular medicine now, unlike 1918, during the flu pandemic is we can look actually at the RNA that lives inside of this virus and we can tell where the glitches are, where the mutations are and how to overcome these mutations.

[00:26:05.630] – Dr. Lahita

Our bodies are doing the same thing. Our protective police network doing that via T cells and B cells, which you don't hear much about. All people talk about is neutralizing antibody. Well, neutralizing antibody comes and goes and it's not present in everybody. And some people have strong responses and some people don't. But I talk about that in the book that we have our own cellular immunity, which is long lasting. It's your ability of your police Department to know who the criminals are. It's basically be on the lookout for XYZ Bolo.

[00:26:39.830] – Dr. Lahita

The police use this term. Be on the lookout. And when you're exposed to coronaviruses, some of us have immune systems that already recognize it. Even the novel coronavirus. Many of us have immune systems that don't and they have to learn about it. Vis a vis vaccines. That's what a vaccine does. It teaches your immune system to recognize a foreign invader. So that was a long answer to your question, but I don't think we're at the endemic stage yet. We're still in the pandemic stage.

[00:27:10.860] – Allan

Okay, thank you for that. Now, I like practical, which is my thing. I don't want to necessarily depend on someone else to help me. If I can do something to help myself. And in the book, you shared some tips, some areas that we should focus on to maximize what our own immune system can do for us, because I think we've seen healthier people have better health outcomes with Corona. What are some things that we should be focused on right now for ourselves to have the best immune system possible?

[00:27:44.150] – Dr. Lahita

Well, aside from mitigating the current infection, which means wearing a mask, washing your hands, etc. For the way to really handle the coronavirus and to make sure you're in tip top shape. And this goes for older people as well. People that are in their 70s and 80s is to exercise every day in some way. And number two, if you can meditate even ten minutes a day to relax your brain, remember, the brain controls the immune system, and if you're super stressed, you're going to get a horrible infection, you will recover from it in all likelihood.

[00:28:21.260] – Dr. Lahita

But you may wind up regretting that you are so stressed out so that's important sexual relationships, intimacy doesn't have to have sexual relationships. But if you do, if you can great, it can be homosexual or heterosexual. But nevertheless, there are certain hormones that are elicited within our bodies that really promote immune function. I'll just mention two of them prolactin in women in particular and in men, but less so in men. And the hormone oxytocin, which comes about from intimate relationships. And those two neurohormones are very important to immune function.

[00:29:03.390] – Dr. Lahita

Now, we have communication molecules in our bodies called cytokines. That literally means cell communication. And we have chemokines that tell cells where to go. And most people don't know this. But in that complex police Department, which in real life in New York City, for example, they use two way radios to talk and say, Somebody's been shot. I need help. Well, in your immune system, the chemokines and cytokines are released immediately by your innate immune system. Certain cells T cells. And this tells your body that there's an invasion.

[00:29:37.990] – Dr. Lahita

And when the coronavirus comes in through your nasopharynx in your nose and through your mouth, that happens, there's an alarm that goes out, and your immune system not being familiar, will try to find the novel coronavirus in its library of criminals. And if the library of criminals doesn't include it, it sets up a new response so that if you're re challenged, you're recognizing this. So what the vaccine does is it teaches your immune system that this criminal is not unique and new. You can be infected with the coronavirus.

[00:30:14.340] – Dr. Lahita

Nauseum. People say, oh, I got vaccinated, and my test is positive. Well, that's okay. You got the virus residing in your nasopharynx. You can transmit it to somebody else. If you're not wearing a mask or you're sloppy, but you're not going to get sick and die. You're not going to be on the respirator because your immune system is already familiar. It recognizes this virus, and that's what's cool. It's really cool. That's the only term that I can think of to say this is a cool way to have your own body respond imperceptibly.

[00:30:44.820] – Dr. Lahita

I might add to your coronavirus. Now, one glitch there is that we all have what's called immunogenetics. We inherit how our systems work, like our hearts, our brains. We inherit how our lungs work from our forefathers, from our grandparents, from our great grandparents and so on. So if you're unlucky to have bad immunity through immunogenetics being not so great, that could be a problem and that we usually find to be very rare. And yet it does exist out there. And, for example, to give you an example of that would be a tennis player or some guy who's an athlete who gets the coronavirus and succumbs very quickly.

[00:31:30.060] – Dr. Lahita

And that's happened. We've seen these muscular guys who are in good health. They look like the picture of health. They get the coronavirus and three days later they're on a respirator, and then five days later they die. So you don't know. The biological soul is different in each individual, and it depends on a lot of factors. But in order to keep you healthy and to boost your immune system, exercise and I don't mean marathon running or triathlon. I mean simply jogging, bicycling, getting on the elliptical for like 30 minutes every other day.

[00:32:04.840] – Dr. Lahita

You don't even have to do it daily. Get yourselves in tip top shape, lose weight. This coronavirus is fat. We've known that it's been published this week last week in The New York Times. Fat is a wonderful substrate for the virus. It likes to live in fat. It hides itself in the fat cells. So get thin, lose weight. If you never did before, now is the time to do it. Once this thing becomes endemic, we're going to see it every year. We're not going to see as many cases, but we're going to see it from now until the end of time.

[00:32:39.430] – Dr. Lahita

So that's a long wind answer to your question.

[00:32:43.550] – Allan

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

[00:32:53.510] – Dr. Lahita

Okay. So I mentioned a few, but the way I see staying well is to exercise. Number one. Number two, there's moderation to everything. If you like to drink wine, great. Drink on the weekends. Have a glass of wine every day every other day, but don't have a bottle a day. If you're an alcohol drinker, drink very moderately. I think exercise is incredible for those who are religious out there. And I know in Latin America, religion is important. Prayer is extremely important and very strong force, very strong force.

[00:33:33.570] – Dr. Lahita

Even if you're not a religious person. Prayer, prayer is like a way of meditation, yoga. The Chinese have it in Tai Chi and Qigong. If you've been to China and you see the people doing Tai Chi every morning or Qigong every day, you see that they're extremely healthy. They keep themselves very thin. It's a good way to live. Again, if you're a jogger jog, you don't have to do, in fact, I say in my book that the data show that if you're a runner and you run marathons or triathlons, it's actually not a good thing because it does

[00:34:09.920] – Dr. Lahita

At some point you reach a curve where your immune system begins to be oppressed by over exercising. And then, of course, relationships is very important. Meditation is important, and of course, a good diet is critical.

[00:34:25.250] – Allan

Thank you. Dr. Bob, if someone wanted to learn more about you or more about the book, Immunity Strong, where would you like for me to send them?

[00:34:34.010] – Dr. Lahita

Well, they can pre order the book on Amazon. Now, if they want me, they can go to my website, which is doctorboblahita.com, and I'm there, and they can always write to me. Send me an email. Look at me on Twitter, I'm on Facebook, and I'm on Instagram. So I have many ways that you can see me. A lot of my TV appearances talking about the book or about the immune system are out there now, and I welcome people to come and contact me. And if I can, I will personally respond to them.

[00:35:07.060] – Allan

Great. You can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/521, and I'll be sure to have the links there. So, Dr. Bob, thank you so much for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

[00:35:17.840] – Dr. Lahita

Thank you. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate talking to you. And I hope the listeners have gained some insight into how our immunity works. And the title of the book is Immunity Strong. And I mean that Immunity Strong, the biological soul in its full force today during the pandemic.

Post Show/Recap

[00:35:43.170] – Allan

Welcome back, Ras.

[00:35:45.090] – Rachel

Hey, Allan, what a fascinating interview. I really need to read this book. I am fascinated about the immune system and all its complicated workings. This is a great interview.

[00:35:56.390] – Allan

Yeah, he did an outstanding job because I read a lot doing this podcast and just other things because this topic obviously interests me. Otherwise, I wouldn't be doing it for over six years. But the immune system is one of those things where it is so critical to us staying alive. And I remember this from when I was really young. There was a movie that John Travolta was in called Boy in a Bubble or something like that. And the kid didn't have an immune system. And so he had to live in a bubble his entire life and went through all the way to his teens because I guess his parents could afford to put him in a room in a suit and things like that, which a lot of people wouldn't have access to.

[00:36:40.210] – Allan

So that's just kind of one of those things of saying. Okay, what if you didn't have an immune system? Or now we're seeing more and more with autoimmune disease? What happens if you have an overactive immune system? And so if you're dealing with autoimmune issues or dealing with leaky gut or dealing with a lot of other things that all are related to your immune system, then this is a good book to get just so you can kind of pick up on what those words are, what they mean, what is a cytokine storm and what does that actually mean?

[00:37:09.400] – Allan

And what are these T cells and beta cells and all these different things that you hear about and more and more particularly with Covid. We're hearing these terms and so kind of at least understanding it so that you're making the right decisions for yourself and for your family and making sure that you're taking care of this system because it's not something you just stop taking care of and hope for the best.

[00:37:35.570] – Rachel

Right. Well, I appreciate how he broke it down and a really fun analogy using the term SWAT team and having TSA agents kind of monitoring things. And my other favorite term, BOLO be on the lookout so that your body has its own way to be on the lookout for certain invaders like Covid or any other flu and cold and other invaders.

[00:38:02.010] – Allan

Yeah. That's why when you'll hear something like they'll say, okay, because of the nature of this variant, your body, if you've already had it or you've been vaccinated, your body is better prepared for it when it happens, because it's got that Bolo going on versus a virus like typically a cold virus, it mutates so fast that by the time you get re exposed to another round of or another variant of even maybe the same cold, it is so very different. Your body doesn't respond to it. When we get flu shots, they're not giving you one flu shot.

[00:38:38.520] – Allan

I mean, it's not one thing. It's like three or four things that they think might be, because by the time they get it manufactured, they don't know who's going to mutate several times, but they're trying to get as close as possible to a few different types of variants that they think will give you that opportunity for your body to respond the right way.

[00:38:57.990] – Rachel

It's an interesting science watching how they monitor other parts of the world to determine what kind of threats we might have here. But you know what? That's kind of like you mentioned that's almost like being on the defense, like we're waiting for something to happen. We're being responsive. But on the other side of the coin, we could be a little bit more Proactive by paying better attention to the things that we do in our normal day to day lives. That kind of protect us from these types of situations.

[00:39:24.150] – Allan

Absolutely. And that's the takeaway of this is you can be passive and let science do what science does. They'll get your shots, do your thing, avoid people, lock yourself away. But if you want to live your life, which all of us do, then we can be Proactive in the way we approach these things. So instead of being passive, we're active. And that active is exercise, eating right, getting good sleep, stress management, having great relationships. If you listen to me for any time at all, what does that go back to?

[00:40:02.460] – Allan

That goes back to just being healthy. It goes back to weight loss. And we say weight loss is sort of a side effect, while a strong immune system is a side effect of living a healthy lifestyle.

[00:40:14.370] – Rachel

Absolutely. And to have a strong immune system means that we could manage all of these different types of illnesses a lot easier when the common cold comes around every summer or the flu every winter. Pneumonia. As long as we take good care of our bodies, our bodies will respond faster to these invaders, and then we won't have the side effects or the serious illness that often comes with these things.

[00:40:40.590] – Allan

Yeah. And the thing about this that I want to put out there that I think is really important to think about is this is not a point in time. It's just going to go away. We talked about covid being endemic, and what that means is that there's probably always going to be a version of this floating around somewhere, just not a lot of it. Meaning if you come back around and surge back up and be kind of dangerous. But we're always going to be dealing with flus.

[00:41:05.190] – Allan

We're always going to be dealing with colds. And there's many cancers that are forming viruses. And if you just think back, bird flu, H1N1, AIDS, like, every five to ten years, something kind of sparks up in the world. There's almost 8 billion of us right now. So something sparks up in the world that has the potential to be just another one of these things. Now, why does it not happen? Well, because some people have strong immune systems, and so it out. And so it's just kind of one of those things of saying you do have control, get vitamin D, get outside, get some Sunshine, get some vitamin D, make sure you're eating right.

[00:41:49.720] – Allan

Which means whole foods where you're getting good energy, good vitamins, good minerals, and then exercise. Basically, it puts a resilience in your body that nothing else can. It's a hormetic effect of push yourself and get stronger. And just that work, your body is getting better. And then stress management and sleep. Those are two hard ones. Don't get me wrong. I know, because I've been down that road before, and I know that sleep is hard because we have so much to do. And I know that stress management, which was the hardest and last thing I tackled as far as I was going, was, how do I do this?

[00:42:32.620] – Allan

And I did something pretty drastic that a lot of people can't do, but just having mitigating tools and knowing that's your issue and focusing on it. So a healthy lifestyle equals a healthy immune system and a lot of other downstream effects of weight loss, more energy, better everything.

[00:42:55.260] – Rachel

Oh, absolutely. That's absolutely perfect. Great tips.

[00:42:59.710] – Allan

All right. Well, Rachel, with that I'll bid you adue. And we will talk next week.

[00:43:05.680] – Rachel

Take care, Allan.

[00:43:06.770] – Allan

You too.

[00:43:07.670] – Rachel

Thanks.

Patreons

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Another episode you may enjoy

How technology will expand our lifespan and healthspan with Sergey Young

Less...

Let's Say Hello

[00:02:20.830] – Allan

Hey, Ras.

[00:02:21.950] – Rachel

Hey, Allan, how are you?

[00:02:23.680] – Allan

I'm good. So we did the recording of two episodes at once. Rachel and I were literally just sitting here five minutes ago wrapping up the other episode, I think, 519 that you just listened to last week. This episode, there's no real “Hello,” but we wanted to have this little “Hello” segment. So when I say welcome back, it doesn't sound so weird.

[00:02:46.090] – Allan

So let's go ahead and have this conversation with Dr. Willingham

[00:02:50.830] – Rachel

Great.

Interview

[00:03:18.910] – Allan

Dr. Willingham. Welcome to 40+ Fitness.

[00:03:22.090] – Dr. Willingham

Allan. Hi. It's nice to be here.

[00:03:24.480] – Allan

Your book is called The Tailored Brain, From Ketome to Keto to Companionship, a User's Guide to Feeling Better and Thinking Smarter. And as someone who's now in their mid 50s and hitting the second age in the second half of the 50s, I don't feel as smart as I did when I was younger. When I was 13, I knew everything.

[00:03:48.850] – Allan

Don't we all?

[00:03:49.850] 

Then I got into College and it's like, okay, I got some things to learn. And now I feel like, okay, if I don't use my brain on a regular basis, it could turn to fat. It's already 60% fat, but it's like it could just stop working one day and I just wake up and not know my name. So I think a lot of us know dementia is a real thing. Some of these are real. You're really losing it. And other times it's just okay. So I forgot where I left my keys. That's not really dementia, but I don't want to forget where I left my keys. And so thinking of ways that I can improve my not necessarily intelligence but memory and the capacity to function well or at least feel like I'm still not losing it.

[00:04:34.540] – Allan

I think it's really important. So I appreciate the opportunity to have you want to talk about a book like this.

[00:04:39.140] – Dr. Willingham

I'm really glad to be here to talk about those things because it does address them all.

[00:04:43.690] – Allan

Good. So now I think a lot of times we go into this and it's like, okay, I want to be smarter. I want to maintain my brain. I want to do some things and we're kind of given these studies because the easiest way to know what works is to actually study it and then come back with these results. And so we know you kind of do have to use your brain for it to continue to function the way you want to. And you can get smarter at certain things.

[00:05:11.730] – Allan

Like, if you studies you do Sudoko puzzles, then your brain is going to learn how to do Sudoku puzzles really well. And I had a guy on before, and he said, Well, if you really want to challenge yourself, try to write a Sudoku puzzle, and I did it's not easy to actually do it reverse engineer Sudoku puzzle, but I did it. And actually, if you go to the show notes for this episode, I'll include a link to that if you want to do that. [Note: I'm looking for this puzzle. I found the solution PDF, but not the primary puzzle I did in 2016.]

[00:05:41.230] – Allan

But sometimes what we see as far as the press and the headlines and this and that is not that it's wrong. It's just sort of the pseudoscience as you put in the book, and you had a really cool checklist. So why is all this stuff out there that isn't true, actually out there? And what are some ways and you have ten questions. But what are some ways that we can look at it and kind of know. Ok, this is probably not true.

[00:06:11.830] – Dr. Willingham

Well, I first published this checklist. It was when I was being a Forbes contributor. Or maybe it was even earlier than that. But the aim of it was to get people to sort of critically analyze information as it was coming to them. And I think the first place that you can look and be analytical is who is giving you this information? Where is that information coming from? And so you want to look at the source and to think, well, what might their agenda be? And I don't mean in a conspiratorial way, but in a way of what motivation do they have to say, “Oh, you need to try this elixir of life. It's going to add ten years to your lifespan?”

[00:06:53.070] – Dr. Willingham

Okay. So go see who makes the elixir of life. Who is this person? And do they have any association with it. That doesn't immediately negate that it's effective, but it's a starting point for you to maybe think. Okay, well, that's a little weird. I should dig a little deeper.

[00:07:14.710] – Allan

I have to admit, I'm just as likely to fall for these things as anybody else because some of it just sounds so cool. You're listening to this one podcast and this guy's like, oh, you've got to try this one supplement. It's going to make you so much more focused, so much smarter, you're going to be so much more creative. And so you go out and you pay the $90 and you buy that bottle of supplements.

[00:07:44.460] – Allan

I don't know. But I felt like maybe it was working. But then at the same time, I also know I'm not someone who's immune from the placebo effect with things like that. So can we talk a little bit about supplements, particularly as we look at things like neurohacking?

[00:08:05.720] – Dr. Willingham

Sure. Yeah. And that plays into this list as well, because one of the things you want to look at is to claim something that's kind of exceptionally broad. Is it going to help your whole brain to do the same? Because the brain is a really complicated organ. It would be kind of odd for something to really have a huge global effect that way. The other thing is what you described, which is a testimonial. Somebody says, oh, this is the thing for me, but there's not an evidence base that is being provided when somebody says, oh, this just made me feel better.

[00:08:33.830] – Dr. Willingham

The other thing is if you spend $90 on something, you've sunk some cost into it. And we don't like to think that we wasted those costs. We don't like to think that we wasted our investment regardless of whether it's monetary or some other form of investment. And so then we kind of become invested in a kind of a more extended way, right?

[00:08:53.900] – Allan

It's a cognitive bias at that point.

[00:08:55.450] – Dr. Willingham

Yes. Exactly. We have this bias, man. I really hope this works. And then, yes, placebo effect is real. There's a physiological underpinnings to it. There's a study that they did with psychedelics with microdosing. And in some cases, they had the people dose with their own microdoses of psychedelics that they were using. But in some cases, they swap this out for just nothing, not the people taking them, but the researchers. And then later did the big unveiling. And the people were very surprised to find that they had these experiences that they thought were because they were microdosing psychedelics.

[00:09:34.120] – Dr. Willingham

And there was nothing. There was nothing in the pill at all. One of them literally said, wow, you've actually found some way to put spirituality into an empty pill. So that's something that's coming from within. It's a physiology that's saying, yes.

[00:09:48.010] – Allan

And the micro dosing just to kind of be clear on that. If anyone doesn't know what that is is basically where you take a psychedelic. And instead of taking what would be considered like a full trippy-trippy kind of dose where you're really going off the deep end of these things, it's a piece of it, maybe a 10th or 20th of a normal dose.

[00:10:09.340] – Dr. Willingham

That's right. You're not supposed to really trip on like you would if you did a big walloping dose of mushrooms or something like that. So, yeah, you're just supposed to just kind of feel, I guess, a little lifted, you know, if you take them.

[00:10:23.860] – Allan

Yeah. And so that's really popular with coders in Silicon Valley and some of the other creatives out there that think, okay, I can walk into the workplace and not look like I'm tripping and still kind of get some benefits from this drug that I'm taking.

[00:10:37.490] – Dr. Willingham

Right now.

[00:10:39.120] – Allan

Another two things you talk about, which is again, it's kind of that fascinating science fiction. Oh, wow. If we could do this, we could talk to animals. Kind of thing is DCS, which is using current and TMS, which is using magnetics. They're very similar. And you talk about a little bit about how there's a little crossover between one and the other. Can you talk about those technologies, how they're being used and what you're seeing about them?

[00:11:07.270] – Dr. Willingham

The Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation is the one that strikes me as kind of holding the danger because it's one that people even just order a kit. Please don't go do that because the evidence base for it's, doing anything that people want it to do is not as sparse from what I can find. I had one neurologist who has a lot of experience with this. Just say, please don't go experimenting with your brain. You order them, you put electrodes on you set up your brain and some place that allegedly is going to achieve the outcome you want, whether it's feeling smarter or having a greater attention or focus or whatever.

[00:11:48.150] – Dr. Willingham

And if you go and look at boards where people aggregate and discuss these effects, some of the things they say are really kind of frightening. I lost my second language. I can't spell anymore. I can't find words and all that is anecdotal as well, but balanced up against the fact that there doesn't seem to be a lot of data to support it. I would kind of steer clear of that. I would go for a walk before I would put an electrode on my head and just kind of zap my brain and hope I was getting the right spot.

[00:12:20.170] – Allan

Yeah, because that's crazy because I'm like looking at you and I don't wear the same hat. We bought a kit. It's like, okay, we're talking about trying to fire off particular neurons, and those are not like big things. They're little bitty things we're trying to find and specify, and we're trying to do it. I guess looking in a mirror.

[00:12:45.070] – Dr. Willingham

The whole thing strikes me just a little bit of a clue, so I would not run and spend however much it is $40. Some of them are quite inexpensive, which might also be a bit of a red flag, I don't know

[00:12:57.300] – Allan

Or the Burns on your head.

[00:12:59.000] – Dr. Willingham

Or those Burns on the head that they talked about as well. I'm just thinking, yes, I'm going to try walking first and see if I get anything from that.

[00:13:06.700] – Dr. Willingham

The other one, though, that you mentioned, is Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation and you cannot go and order. This is a very pricey thing to do. And they have done some trials with these where they, for example, apply the simulation and people see very transient improvements in how they perform on certain cognitively challenging tasks. And then it's also something that is used for depression, and that is a prescription and a version of it, so that one shows more promise, and there's also a more controlled exposure. You can't order yourself TMS.

[00:13:45.850] – Allan

I think the reality of these things is that you have doctors. If a doctor's working with you to solve a problem and they're using these therapies then they're coming from a place where they do this. They do this every year, every day, every week, and as a result, they have some experience with it. They know what not to do things. And as a result, as a part of a protocol or a treatment, you understand that and say, okay, but if this is something you're trying to do on your own, neither one of these, even if it's accessible, is not necessarily in your best interest.

[00:14:22.200] – Dr. Willingham

Exactly. Again, this is a situation where practice actually does make perfect, just like you get better at doing crossword puzzles and more of those that you do. You're right. Clinicians are going to have a level of expertise and understand how to map the brain and target the right place for something like TMS. That would be. So it would be like trying to cut your own hair almost, you know, to really get to the right place and get the kind of tailoring that you want for it.

[00:14:46.330] – Allan

And then the final one is games. And this one was kind of interesting to me because I've always thought if I learn how to do Sudoku, learn how to maybe play chess or learn a foreign language or those type of things that those stimulations are, there's definitely got to be some benefit to it. But when you get on those games that are specifically for cognitive enhancement and I'll even confess, I went to a doctor and part of his protocol for talking about aging was that he was going to make us cognitively better.

[00:15:20.030] – Allan

And after I played the game that he had me play for half an hour, I just knew if I came back and played that game, I now know things I didn't know going into it the first time that I was probably going to do better at that game just for the sake that I've played it before.

[00:15:36.530] – Allan

People like these games, they feel like you're doing something. But what you've seen out there is that maybe they're not giving us the enhancement that we think they are.

[00:15:46.530] – Dr. Willingham

Yes, they are video games. They are brain games. There are all kinds of things that people said, oh, this is going to give you this kind of globally improved thinking, right? But there are some researchers who have really gone granular with the data from the studies that have been done on these things, and it's a wash. So you don't see what they call far transfer effects away from this precise skill that you're building when you do a crossword puzzle or play chess, for example, one of them just said to me, you play chess because you enjoy it, and that's the best reason to do it.

[00:16:28.790] – Allan

Kind of one of those things of doing the crosswords and just staying a little bit sharp with them because you feel good sitting there on a Sunday doing The New York Times crossword puzzle is actually relaxing. It's comfortable, which being relaxing kind of takes us to the next topic that maybe you feel smarter because you've taken time to destress.

[00:16:49.610] – Dr. Willingham

Yeah, that's a big one.

[00:16:52.550] – Allan

Because I could tell you. Well, I'll tell you when I'm stressed, my brain works like I'm in kindergarten again, it's almost like I become a dumber person. Sorry, but that's not to say it.

[00:17:07.490] – Dr. Willingham

I feel sort of like it's a washing machine in there. Everything is just going to switch around. I can't, like, just capture the thing I'm trying to capture because there's just too much going on. And it is true that stress does do that. This is a cognitive burden on you on top of everything else. And yeah, if you're sitting there and you're doing The New York Times Crossword on a Sunday, and especially if you get that thing completed without cheating at all, you know, you get this little reward and you feel pretty good about yourself and everything feels kind of refreshed. And you took time away from everything else around you just. And that is relief. It lists a burden out of your mind, honed again.

[00:17:50.030] – Allan

Now we own a bed and breakfast. And so this guy came up yesterday and he was in a hurry, and he threw this math puzzle at me real quick. And so here's the deal. Basically, if they charge something on a credit card, I have to charge them 5% to cover the fees. And so he said, okay, well, how much do I'm like $130? He's like, okay. He said, I'll give you $40 in cash. And I said, okay, that's 90 left. And then the 5%. And I said $4.50. But then I sat down on my calculator and I calculated it came up to $3.60. And I'm like, okay. And so I just charged him $3.60.

[00:18:23.410] – Allan

And after he walked away, I was like, okay, I was stressed. I was pressured, and I knew it was $4.50. But then I let my brain turn off because of the stress of getting this guy done quickly, because now I've got to get it in the system. Then I got to charge the credit card. I turned my brain off. Why does stress affect us that way? Like you said, washing machine or for me, it's just I'm an accountant by trade before I became this. And I'm like, the math was in my head. But I didn't believe myself. I had to recalculate and made a mistake and then still didn't pick up on it. After he was gone.

[00:18:59.650] – Dr. Willingham

Right there's, a famous book called, Thinking Fast and Slow by Kahneman (https://amzn.to/3FgA8HM), in which he sort of talked about these two systems. We have. One of them is our snap decision system, and the other one is the more deliberative long-term system. But that second one takes a lot of resources for us to really take time and think through things. And when we're under stress, we kind of just default to that other one that maybe is not as filtered or as deliberative.

[00:19:24.410] – Dr. Willingham

There's a study that they did where people who were overtaxed with a lot of multiple tasks at once, if they were given an option to get some money now or wait a little while, like, a half hour or something and get double the money when they were overtaxed that way, kind of similarly to what you were experiencing, they're just, like, just give it to me. Now. I just don't have time to think about this. And either way, at least I guess I'm getting some money.

[00:19:47.860] – Dr. Willingham

Whereas if you had been deliberative, you're just sitting there doing your New York Times crossword and nothing else you'd be like, yeah, I'm going to wait get double, right?

[00:19:59.870] – Allan

So we've talked about that neurohacking and how that Stuff's not going to work. And obviously the stress is something that all of us are dealing with probably more now than any time in our lifetime with all the things that are going on in the world and more every day. What are some things? And I particularly want to dive into a couple of them. But what are some things that we can do to improve our cognition and effectively tailor our brain?

[00:20:25.490] – Dr. Willingham

Well, you actually mentioned one, and that is an activity that makes you feel better, right? But in the book, across all of the facets of what we do with our brains, I looked at physical activity is a big one. And if you engage in it with somebody else or you get out in nature while you're doing it, you add some dividends to it as well. Now you've got me. I'm thinking like using accounting terms because you mentioned accounting, but those two things feed off of each other and everything that we're doing when we do those kinds of things is we're giving away a little bit of our cognitive burden, right?

[00:21:08.440] – Dr. Willingham

When you do things with your body, when you do physical activity, the physiology that goes on there is, yes, you get more oxygen to your brain. There are some molecules in your brain that you can get higher levels of them that will help you kind of refresh neuronal connections and things like that. But you're also kind of using your body, which if you're having adrenaline from stress and anxiety and things like that helps you kind of fizz that away as well. There are all these things that go on that intersect that relieve that burden in our heads and give us some space to be more clear in our thinking.

[00:21:43.320] – Allan

Yeah. For me, when I was in major stress mode at work, when I was in corporate, it was okay. I got to go throw heavy weights around, go to the gym and just pick up heavy things. My co-host, Rachel, she's a runner. So for her, if she gets stressed, she's probably going to put on her running shoes and go do something long. But if you're looking at the types of exercises that are best for improving cognitive, are there some that are better than others?

[00:22:14.090] – Dr. Willingham

It is really what you just described. I mean, some people really that deep bodywork where you just feel it so deeply, they get a huge benefit out of that. And others get benefit about from the forward motion, along with just kind of, I think being outside and things. I have somebody in my house who has to do both pretty intensively so that their mood feels better for them and they feel kind of more at peace inside their own heads.

[00:22:40.380] – Dr. Willingham

So that's the tailoring part is how much do you do and what kind what the studies do show is it doesn't have to be a ton. It can be pretty moderate kind of according to the recommendations of the public health folks.

[00:22:54.090] – Allan

Okay. So this could be just going for a walk, particularly in nature. It can be doing some yoga, Tai Chi.

[00:23:00.890] – Dr. Willingham

Tai Chi.

[00:23:00.890] – Allan

Okay. There you go.

[00:23:03.470] – Dr. Willingham

Exactly as we get older. It's kind of harder for us to do some of the heavy things, right?

[00:23:09.430] – Allan

Yeah.

[00:23:09.940] – Dr. Willingham

The kind of more strenuous things. I also am in my mid 50s, and that's just kind of been my experience. And so you make adjustments for that. But there are all kinds of physical activities that seem to be effective.

[00:23:22.340] – Allan

Yeah. So this is just another benefit to exercise. So take that to heart, not just looking and feeling better, but actually being a little bit smarter.

[00:23:33.090] – Dr. Willingham

Thinking better, feeling a brain that I think is more comfortable with this.

[00:23:38.270] – Allan

Cool. And then another big one that was in the book that I think we all know this is important, but it used to be really woo-woo. And now it's kind of more mainstream. But mindfulness, and a mindfulness practice. Can you talk a little bit about how that helps us and kind of ways that we can think about using mindfulness to help.

[00:23:58.310] – Dr. Willingham

Right. I came to that as somebody who was a skeptic of it for lots of reasons. And it's a bias that I brought to it. And so one of the reasons I wanted to look at it for this book was, you know, I want to see what the evidence looks like for this. And then I came away. I wrote this book during the pandemic, and I came away using things that I had read about because I was like, oh…

[00:24:24.530] – Dr. Willingham

So I'm a knife when it comes to this kind of thing. And there are practitioners out there who are probably just going, yeah. Duh, right? But for someone like me, it was very effective to learn about that and to find an evidence base for it. What I found was that when you start to get into spiraling thinking, especially sort of self focus and not in a good way. But if you do practices that click you out of that so that you're using kind of an executive function to order yourself around and make yourself do the responsible thing, and you're co-opting your attention network in a really conscious way so that you're directing your attention very consciously that gets you away from those thought processes that are kind of internally and negatively oriented.

[00:25:11.420] – Dr. Willingham

It's been really useful. Spiraling anxiety. I use a lot for that because of what's going on in the world right now. I would almost say for me, it's been kind of life saving in a way good.

[00:25:27.410] – Allan

Dr. Willingham, I define wellness as being the healthiest, fittest, and happiest. You can be what are three strategies or tactics to get and stay?

[00:25:35.420] – Dr. Willingham

Well, first of all, you can call me Emily. I should have mentioned that.

[00:25:40.130] – Allan

Now you earned that doctorate. I know that they do not just hand those out. There's a lot that goes into earning that Dr. So no, it's yours.

[00:25:51.120] – Dr. Willingham

I appreciate that acknowledgement. Thank you so much.

[00:25:53.980] – Dr. Willingham

I would say the three things that I took away from this book and that I am using are mindfulness that I really work on just clicking myself back into a moment. I think it helps me for a lot of things, including focus and memory and things like that.

[00:26:10.750] – Dr. Willingham

The other one is social engagement. I'm not an extrovert. So I'm not saying, especially right now that you should go to a big party and hang out with people. I mean, in a sense of that really kind of reciprocal sharing that you have with people with whom you're close and you help each other and you relieve burdens by talking with one another and recognizing each other's emotions and that kind of thing and providing that sort of support.

[00:26:38.650] – Dr. Willingham

And then the last thing is that physical exercise. I actually doubled my walking. I went up from I used to target 3 miles a day, and now I target five or six just because I kind of need more to keep things clear with the way the world is right now and the anxieties that you can have about it. So those are my three that I took away.

[00:26:58.630] – Allan

Great. Thank you. So, Dr. Willingham, if someone wanted to learn more about you, learn more about the book, The Tailored Brain. Where would you like for me to send them?

[00:27:07.500] – Dr. Willingham

They can find me on Twitter at Ejwillingham, and that's probably the best place to start.

[00:27:13.590] – Allan

Okay. You can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/520, and I'll be sure to have a link to the Twitter account you just mentioned. So thank you so much for that. Thank you for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

[00:27:26.750] – Dr. Willingham

It was really great to talk to you today. I appreciate you having me.

Post Show/Recap

[00:27:37.890] – Allan

Welcome back, Ras.

[00:27:39.510] – Rachel

Hey, Allan. What a really interesting conversation you had with Dr. Willingham. The brain is such a mysterious organ. It really is.

[00:27:49.050] – Allan

Yeah. As she got into the brain, this is one of the things I think that's cool about this book. If you're interested in learning more about the brain, was she literally mapped the brain out in a similar fashion the way you would actually look at a globe as you start thinking about how the brain works. So she's got the whole world. And then she's got continents and countries and cities and using those as a metaphor for describing the parts of the brain and how the brain works.

[00:28:19.180] – Allan

And there's things that she brought up. I'd always heard, okay, there's the lizard brain, there's the mammal brain, then there's the human aspects of our brain. And she said, it's a lot more complex than that. It's not like there's layers of brain that do these things. It's certain parts of the brain fire. And if something's not working, then your brain can adapt a little bit and fire from different ways. And while they are getting better and better at kind of imaging how the brain works, everybody has a unique, their own thing, brain.

[00:28:52.840] – Allan

And so the way it works for me isn't always the way it works for you and then spend a lot of time talking about intelligence and how all these things, the pills, the electricity and magnetism, the games and all of that. How those biohacks, neurohacks, if you will, don't really, ever bear out. They make you like the games. You can be better at the games. If you do a crossword puzzle, you get better at crossword puzzles, but they've not yet shown where you can take that and take that over to say, okay, you're a smarter person because you did crossword puzzles, or you're a smarter, better person because you play a game where you were doing something, tagging, butterflies, whatever.

[00:29:40.590] – Allan

So there's these things out there, but people will sell them to you. You can buy one of those brain zappers for a couple of $100. Run some electricity through your brain. Maybe you feel better and feel like you learned something. Maybe you learned that you could actually mess up your brain pretty bad running electricity through it like some of the stories she's had in the book. And so just recognizing that really, there's not these quick fixes these little things. And I tried one of the neuro enhancer things.

[00:30:11.330] – Allan

That was just basically, it was not meant for long term. I'm going to be a smarter person. It was just okay. You're going to feel sharper. You're going to be more alert. Nootropics. And blah, blah, blah. I tried it and I felt like maybe it was giving me a little bit of an edge. I was feeling better, felt like I'm thinking better, but at the same time, it just could have been that I was on placebo effect and I don't know any better. And then I just didn't want to spend $90 for this stuff because again, it didn't do that much, $90 worth. But I felt a little bit. But that could have just been there was a stimulant and I was like, I'm awake.

[00:30:54.850] – Rachel

Sure,

[00:30:55.990] – Allan

Really, when you boil this down with the premise of the total book is of all the things they ever shown that are measurable, measurable, intelligence, measurable, better brain lifespan, everything. It comes down to a few core things. Her favorite was exercise, but there was also sleep, nutrition and stress reduction. And I can tell you today through stress reduction, my brain works a lot better than it did when I was working a corporate job.

[00:31:32.770] – Allan

I can think circles around myself when I had that corporate job because I was chronically stressed all the time and I don't live that way now. And so my brain just works a little bit better. It's a little bit more creative. I mean, I can read a book in a day.

[00:31:53.030] – Rachel

That's awesome.

[00:31:55.670] – Allan

I mean, by reading in a day, I don't mean reading the whole day. I mean, I can literally now 250 page book read it in about four and a half 5 hours. And so yeah, standard kind of work day, taking breaks and a lunch. I get up in the morning, I start reading and 02:00 in the afternoon. I finished reading the book. I send the show plan over to the author and “Boom” done for the day. I had to be able to do that this week because I had five interviews

[00:32:24.830] – Rachel

For sure. Holy cow!

[00:32:26.610] – Allan

Yes, but exercise, nutrition, sleep, stress reduction. If you put those all together, what we're talking about is improving your health, improving your fitness. And so the moral of the story is healthy body, healthy brain.

[00:32:48.950] – Rachel

Yes. And be aware of those snake oil salesmen. Those get rich, quick schemes and train your brain schemes. It's just not proven out. But I think if I were to reorder those helpful tips, I'd start with sleep. Sleep is the most important time for your brain to rest and recover.

[00:33:10.220] – Rachel

And stress reduction cannot be emphasized enough and good food and good movement. I think those are the best ways to keep your whole body healthy, especially your brain.

[00:33:21.680] – Allan

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

[00:33:27.540] – Rachel

Great. Take care, Allan.

[00:33:29.100] – Allan

You too.

[00:33:30.030] – Rachel

Thank you.

Patreons

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

– Anne Lynch	– Eric More	– Leigh Tanner
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Thank you!

Another episode you may enjoy

Super wellness with Dr Edith Ubuntu Chan

Less...

Let's Say Hello

[00:03:55.750] – Allan

Ras, how are you doing?

[00:03:58.400] – Rachel

Good, Allan. How are you today?

[00:04:00.970] – Allan

I'm doing all right. It's been a hectic little week. Last week, I had five interviews. This week, I had Santa Claus duty. Dressing up at Santa Claus at Lula's. And so the kids came in. I think I've got another one on the agenda to do for the Rotary Club. And then both of our daughters got proposed to this week.

[00:04:25.550] – Rachel

Is that right? Congratulations. How exciting.

[00:04:29.950] – Allan

Yeah. One of them just turned 29 and the other is 28, and she'll turn 29 in July. So, yeah, they were getting around that age where I guess you start saying I'm old enough that I'm not a kid anymore. And I'm young enough that I can have kids. So they're right. And I think the sweet spot they should at this point, know themselves pretty well. They seem to like the guys they're with.

[00:04:55.570] – Rachel

Good. That's important. Wow that's so exciting.

[00:05:01.910] – Allan

That'll change.

[00:05:04.850] – Rachel

That's so exciting. What a wonderful time then for both of them. Very exciting. Congratulations to them both.

[00:05:11.330] – Allan

How are you doing?

[00:05:12.680] – Rachel

Great. I'm doing good up here. Enjoying the up and down weather up here in Michigan. Sunny days, a little bit of snow, little bit of rain. You never know what you're going to get. But things are good. I just wrapped up a week of my marathon training plan, had a great week, good runs. It's really been a lot of fun.

[00:05:31.090] – Allan

Well, good. You know, this is also a time of the year where you kind of have to watch your health because the changing weather and everything else kind of beats up your immune system. You're inside a bit more than you normally would be. So we're exposed to a little bit more of this and that. Obviously when those the main virus Corona going around, but cold and flu season and a whole bit. So take care of yourself. Eat well, get plenty of rest and follow the basic protocols.

[00:05:58.820] – Allan

Wash your hands. Avoid sick people.

[00:06:02.270] – Rachel

Yes. Do the best you can.

[00:06:04.910] – Allan

Do the best you can with what you got. All right. Are you ready to have a talk with Susan?

[00:06:10.590] – Rachel

Sure.

Interview

[00:06:50.830] – Allan

Susan, welcome to 40+ Fitness.

[00:06:53.810] – Susan

Allan, so good to be here with you.

[00:06:56.010] – Allan

So your new book, Rezoom: The Powerful Reframe to End the Crash and Burn Cycle of Food Addiction. And while I scored a three out of your range of how really susceptible I am, just a three with food, there's other things that I wouldn't score as well on. I think this is a really important concept because so many people think of food as just eat better, just eat better, eat less. And for a lot of people, their brain just doesn't work that way. And that's what I thought was really cool about your book.

[00:07:34.540] – Allan

It's like, okay, now let's actually call it what it is, even though clinically, I guess the Association and all those folks, they don't want to call it that

[00:07:45.050] – Susan

Yet. They're going to have to because it is. Right.

[00:07:49.370] – Allan

But the whole point is if we don't treat it the way it needs to be treated. We don't get better.

[00:07:55.500] – Susan

That's right. You can't treat a condition that you don't know that you have or that you refuse to believe that you have. So food addiction is very real. And that's one of the big thrusts of this book it's actually the title of chapter two, food addiction is real. If we don't know that by now, sort of, Hello next live. Look around. Right. And the thing is that I think food addiction these days is an intuitive obvious thing for people, right? Either they experience it or they see people they know who experience cravings, who experience repeated attempts to cut back with no lasting success, who experience unintended use this slippery slope where you intended to eat a little bit, and then you find yourself eating more and more and more who experience real consequences.

[00:08:43.710] – Susan

I mean, 130,000 people in the United States this year prior year, right. Had their leg amputated because of the way they were eating 130,000 people. Now, if that's not shocking enough, 55% of them will have their second leg amputated within two years because having one leg amputated wasn't enough of a cue to cut back on sugar with their type two diabetes. Right. So if you don't think that that's sort of hazardous use or using beyond the beyond, it just it is right. Food is so addictive.

[00:09:17.430] – Susan

So that's what this book is about. And it's about a different approach to managing the treatment or the recovery. Or like, how do you lose weight and handle food addiction in a way that actually works and is actually sustainable? So that's what the book is about.

[00:09:33.380] – Allan

And this is not just some textbook. This is how you treat addiction. This is the way we've always treated addiction. You've lived and breathed addiction, not just food, but other things in your life. And that's where you're coming from in this book. And I really appreciate the opening up the vulnerability that you had to have a book like this where you're saying, no, I'm not some hottie taughty PhD that's going to tell you how to beat addiction. I talk from experience of successes and failure.

[00:10:04.850] – Susan

Yeah, totally. And that's I think why food addiction was so obvious to me. I mean, I knew food addiction was real when I was 21 because I had gotten clean from crack cocaine and Crystal meth. I got clean. Finally, at the age of 20, I spent my teenage years doing drugs and progressing to harder and harder and harder drugs, culminating in dropping out of high school, prostitution and just repeated cycles of going out to prostitute and then going into the Crack house to smoke cracks. So living like that without a place to live except the crack house.

[00:10:36.930] – Susan

Is that's a pretty serious case of addiction? And when I got clean, I never went back to drugs or alcohol after that moment, I just got clean. And yet within a year, my weight had started to pack on. And I was eating in a way that just looked felt and was just like my drug addiction. And food was harder to kick, Allan. That's the creepy thing. Food was harder to kick. I was not able to just kick food the way I had drugs. I mean, obviously you have to eat to live.

[00:11:10.210] – Susan

But there were a lot of things that made food harder. And before I knew it, I was obese and really struggling with food. And my weight has been the story of my life. I mean, I could say, in a way, I started using drugs at the age of 14 already to start to manage my food. I already had a weight problem. I already had a food problem, and that's why I turned to stimulants like Crystal meth to manage my food and my weight problem. So it went all the way back for me.

[00:11:34.530] – Susan

So, yeah, I don't come to this. I do have an academic background. I have the PhD and all that. But that's not the high mountain top from which I speak. I speak from the gutters of, like, here I am eating a pint of ice cream with tears streaming down my face. Why am I doing this again? Kind of place. So I get it at a visceral level.

[00:11:51.750] – Allan

Yeah. And as I said, I went through and I looked at your susceptibility chart and took the quiz and I said, okay, I scored a three, which for food

[00:12:03.380] – Allan

That makes sense for me because..

[00:12:05.120] – Susan

Just so people know on a scale from one to ten, ten is highly susceptible to food addiction. So it's a measure of how susceptible your brain is to food addiction. And, Allan, you're just a three, which means food isn't your thing.

[00:12:16.170] – Allan

Right?

[00:12:16.420] – Susan

It either means you're not susceptible to addiction at all, or it means you might be susceptible to other addictions. But food isn't your thing.

[00:12:22.660] – Allan

Right. And so, like I said for me, it was okay if I just say I'm not going to eat dessert. I don't eat dessert, and it's not like I leave that table after I said no to dessert and stop by the convenience store and buy some ice cream to eat at home in private. Because I really sugar. I wanted that sugar. I was addicted to that sugar. I just said no because that was the visual of me being at the dinner table and no one else wants dessert.

[00:12:53.150] – Allan

Why is it so hard for us to beat food addiction?

[00:12:57.230] – Susan

Food is the hardest addiction to kick. And I say that both as a hope to die addict in every way. But also clinically speaking, food has some very unique things about it. First of all, it is socially pushed, like no other drug, not just accepted, but pushed and pushed and pushed. Which means when you're trying to, let's say, abstain from sugar, right? Good luck getting through Thanksgiving or Valentine's Day or whatever without people actually pushing it on you. So that's one challenge you have to eat to live, which you have to eat to live.

[00:13:37.900] – Susan

But you don't have to eat Donuts to live, right? This is one of the things that bright line eating does well, is it helps people figure out the line between what you're eating and not eating, right? When you're an alcoholic. When you're a crack addict, the line is really clear. Don't drink, right? Don't smoke crack. It's not ambiguous. Generally speaking, I mean, with alcohol, Benadryl or whatever. There are some slight NyQuil, whatever. But generally speaking, the line is pretty clear with food. It's a minefield. And I spent eight and a half years after I got cleaned from drugs, trying to figure out where the first bite was.

[00:14:16.660] – Susan

I couldn't tell what I was eating. That was tripping me up, right? And finally I came to sugar and flour. That's what it seems to be. Sugar and flour. It's essentially the processed foods. But if you just abstain from sugar and flour, that's a good demarcation point. But, Allan, I could go on, and probably I should. I just don't want to soliloquise here for ten minutes on you. But there are a couple of other really fascinating reasons why food is harder than any other drug. It is the hardest.

[00:14:44.400] – Susan

It's the hardest.

[00:14:45.140] – Allan

Please do. I want to get into this topic because again, I think if you don't recognize the problem, you'll never find a solution. And if you think just forcing yourself to try something, another diet, another thing, and you don't get to the root cause of why this is so hard, then you're never going to solve the problem, particularly not solve it long term.

[00:15:09.960] – Susan

That's right. And here we are, early January, right. All these people have made resolutions to lose weight is always the number one resolution, and we probably have people listening who've made that resolution before. Right. So here's another reason why food is harder than anything else to kick, and it has to do with something that I think most people lump together with food addiction. But if you think about it, it's actually an entirely separate problem. And so to illustrate, I have an analogy that I like to give.

[00:15:43.470] – Susan

I call it the acne analogy. Imagine the universe, this is just a little thought experiment. Imagine a universe in which drinking alcohol over time caused acne to develop all over your skin and not just acne, but really bad disfiguring acne and not just really bad disfiguring acne, but fatal acne. Acne that research suddenly showed would kill you 10,15, maybe even 20 years before your time. So you learn this, you know this and like people will, because alcohol is fun to party with. Right and relax with, you start to drink, so you start to drink.

[00:16:30.780] – Susan

And at first it's not a problem. You start to develop a little bit of acne, but it's not that bad. And over time you drank more, you develop alcoholism, and the acne comes on hard and fast. So years go on. Your body is now covered with really bad acne, and you know it's going to kill you before your time. You try quitting drinking over and over and over again. You finally succeed, you get sober, but the acne persists. You still have it. And now your job is to figure out what to do with this acne because it's terribly unsightly.

[00:17:06.270] – Susan

You don't want to live with it, and it's going to kill you 5, 10, 20 years before your time. So you go to search for a solution to the acne, and you find one. There actually is only one solution to the acne, and you start to adopt this solution. But the problem is, it's got a side effect, and the side effect is powerfully driving urges to drink alcohol. And so in your life, you get stuck in this loop of drinking alcohol, quitting drinking alcohol, trying to solve the acne problem being driven back to drink alcohol.

[00:17:46.110] – Susan

This is the relationship of food addiction and excess weight. The problem with excess weight is the brain fights prolonged weight loss by driving you to eat, even if you're still maintaining 100 or 200 extra pounds on your body. If you've lost weight over any significant period of time, your brain makes hormonal adjustments to force you to regain weight, and it drives you back to your food addiction. So this is the maddening loop that people get stuck in. And that is, in my opinion, the biggest reason that food is the hardest addiction to kick.

[00:18:25.970] – Allan

Yeah, the hormones are really a big part of this because if you're constantly hungry, then you're going to struggle to stay away from food and then staying away from food makes you constantly hungry. It's a bad cycle. Now, one of the things I really liked about your book was you didn't just jump into a diet or a program and say, this is what you eat. These are your because you did talk about lines, but we're going to get to that. But the first thing we have to get into and we're going to talk about this is that selfwork.

[00:18:57.430] – Allan

That self awareness and not just this casual self awareness of. Oh, great. I have a sugar addiction. It's a much deeper awareness of that at points in time. And I don't mean from a schizophrenia perspective, but we're different people in the fact that at some point in time, the voice in our head is telling us, Well, go ahead and have that doughnut. And then there's another voice in our head, it's the controller. It says, no, you shouldn't have that. And they might be going back and forth.

[00:19:30.630] – Allan

And when they are, we find ourselves now obsessed with thoughts of food because we told ourselves no. And we've also told ourselves, yes. Can we talk a little bit about this parts work and how there's different voices and then kind of go into a couple of examples, like the one I just started about how that works dynamically within our brain.

[00:19:50.450] – Susan

Yes. Totally. Well, just to say, first of all, this perspective on human beings is spreading rapidly because it's so effective. It's called internal family systems, or IFS and more easily called parts work. Like you just referred to it as. And what's so helpful about it is that it allows us to create change really rapidly by relating to these different sort of selves that we all seem to embody. And I'm not talking about dissociative identity disorder or multiple personality disorder. I'm talking about every healthy psyche has multiple parts to it.

[00:20:33.330] – Susan

And this notion goes way back there's Egyptian hieroglyphs that have a parts dialogue on ancient tombs. Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato all talked about parts. Socrates said it best. And actually it pertains to the food idea like that you just mentioned Socrates said one mind cannot both want and not want at the same time. Therefore, we are all at least two. And so just bringing up this idea that there's different parts of us. So in bright line eating, we invoke this parts notion to help people heal at really, really deep levels.

[00:21:18.670] – Susan

Anyone really who wants to be healthy. I would wager even a three on the susceptibility scale of food addiction. Like you, Allan will have developed some version of these parts, the food indulger part and the food controller part. The food indulger says some version of, hey, why not? It's a special occasion. It's an important day or I deserve it. Or I feel like eating or whatever and gives us license to indulge a bit, right? Whatever that means to us.

[00:21:50.750] – Allan

It'S the devil on this shoulder and angel on this shoulder, and they're like, oh, come on. No. You said you were going to do this.

[00:21:59.050] – Susan

And the angel is the food controller that's trying to manage it, right? The food manager, and we have different versions of it. Some people just have a healthy version that's like, you don't want to do that because you'll feel a little yucky tomorrow morning. And, you know, you're getting up early for a run, and some people have a really perfectionistic and wickedly critical food controller that's really mean or really sets up a high standard that's almost impossible to live to, right? Super perfectionistic. But anyway, most of us have some version of that angel on the shoulder.

[00:22:36.990] – Susan

That's saying, no. And what we get into in the book Rezoom is we also introduce people to their authentic self, their highest self. I don't mean self like, ego, self. I mean self, as in grounded, centered self. You know, you're there when you're calm, clear, connected, curious, compassionate, like, in that kind of place, you can make decisions for yourself that are really empowered and not really driven by either of those voices. I think that's a really interesting awareness from this perspective is you're not actually trying to create a world where you're always siding with the angel, with the food controller, you're trying to settle into a truer version of yourself that is actually a step back from the control, right.

[00:23:28.230] – Susan

Anyway. Yeah. It's something we get into in the book a lot is what's the inner work you have to do in order to sort of transcend the war, the polarization between the food indulger and the food controller, because for people who are high on the food addiction susceptibility scale, it has become a full on war.

[00:23:46.990] – Allan

Yeah. And I think that's the key. If you do this self awareness work and you really think about it and it blends into your Rezoom process of okay, why did this happen? What were the voices? Who was I talking to when I did this? And why did I react the way then? You know, it's like, oh, well, I was just being a food rebel because I've been so strict on myself for so long and drill sergeanty, if you will. That okay. I just kind of popped a gasket and said, Damn it, I'm having a piece of pizza didn't kill me, didn't really throw me over the edge.

[00:24:18.800] – Allan

But just enough where I said, okay, maybe I just need to be kinder to myself instead of being so mean and rigid and thinking of myself as bad just for thinking about the pizza because it's creating that dynamic in yourself where either the rebel comes out and you have all these different characters

[00:24:37.430] – Susan

sort of archetypes. Yeah.

[00:24:41.090] – Allan

Who was I when I made this decision? Who was I when this happened? And every one of them and I think this is really important that you say in the book, every one of them is actually looking out for your best interests.

[00:24:53.940] – Allan

They're just doing it from their own paradigm.

[00:24:56.460] – Susan

Right. Totally. And Allan, this is the thing. So on the food addiction susceptibility scale, I'm a ten. And that's not surprising. Maybe hearing my addiction background. But here's the thing, Allan, is for people like me who are much higher on that scale, we're talking seven, eight, nine, tens. Once you get into certain territory on that scale, it might actually be true that the best path to peace to food neutrality, where food thoughts aren't dominating your day to physical health and weight loss. The best path to that might actually be a path that involves some form of abstinence.

[00:25:42.050] – Susan

Right. I abstained from sugar and flour, because when I include them in my diet at all, it's the sort of classic example of addiction. It's the same reason I don't try to smoke one cigarette. I tried that experiment again about four years ago and thus started about two years of trying to quit cigarettes. Quitting restarting again. I don't need to run the one cigarette experiment. It goes badly for me, right. And I just got to say the one cookie experiment goes just as badly. So I don't run that experiment anymore.

[00:26:11.790] – Susan

But the key is that I'm not doing it from a punishing food controller place. And so the Genesis of this book was really how do we present a reframe on food recovery for people who've gotten trapped in a Yoyo dieting cycle or in a food addiction recovery cycle? Because there's a lot of twelve step programs that talk about abstinence from certain foods as well. And people often get trapped in a relapse cycle. And I had gotten trapped in that cycle again myself, after many, many years of peace and being in my bright body, which is like what I call sort of a right sized body without carrying around all sorts of excess fat and stuff like that.

[00:26:53.350] – Susan

I've been there for a long time, and then I got trapped again in a relapse cycle. And coming out of that, I've been out of that for a few years now. Coming out of that, I got the awarenesses that I put into this book. It's a reframe on the perfectionistic tendencies that can naturally go along with an abstinence framework. But the kicker is, for some people, the abstinence is still necessary, right? It still doesn't mean that trying to eat the one piece of pizza for some people is going to be the right thing to do, because if you've run that experiment enough times, you know that for you, it might not work.

[00:27:27.500] – Susan

So this book is for people who are in that category and who need a reframe to get out of the crash and burn cycle because it's very painful.

[00:27:36.330] – Allan

Yeah. Because the quicker you get back on the road, the less damage you've done. I don't want to say the easier, but it just makes it you feel more in control because you didn't completely crash. You're sort of easing yourself back into traffic and moving forward.

[00:27:52.310] – Susan

Totally and this book helps people who have brains more like mine to actually avoid the crash before it happens. Coming from a place of more healing, more self compassion. It's really the shame and the self flagellation on the way to picking up the excess food, right? That accelerates the tragedy of it. And so this book is sort of the prescription of getting off of that horrible cycle altogether.

[00:28:23.570] – Allan

Now, one of the things you do in the book, which I think is really important. I'm a big fan of commitment. I would not have been successful in changing my health and fitness if it didn't start with a commitment to myself. You've done something, I think that's pretty special is you're looking at it from making a daily commitment. So when you wake up because you do have that structure, you do have that abstract mindset. You have these bright lines. And so right now, four, probably you have more because there are others.

[00:28:54.970] – Allan

We'll talk about those. But there are at least four base bright lines. And we're not talking about a line in the sand because a line in the sand you can easily miss over and not see you're talking about bright lines for a daily commitment, you actually write out exactly what you're going to eat the next day each day, and then you're able to report back to yourself on your commitment that I follow through with exactly what I told myself I should do today. Can you talk a little bit about bright lines eating and what the four core ones are and then go into some of the others because I think those can be equally as important.

[00:29:32.930] – Susan

Yeah. So in bright line eating, there are four essential bright lines with the food, and two of them have to do with the substance addiction, right? No sugar, no flour. That's keeping the alcohol, the nicotine, the crack cocaine out of our system, no sugar, no flour. The other two handle the process. Addiction, the behavioral addiction to just eating. And they are meals. So eating just meals, no grazing, no snacking. And typically we start people off three meals a day. There are some exceptions, like people who had bariatric surgery recently can't eat that much food at one meal and that sort of thing.

[00:30:10.590] – Susan

But generally speaking, it's three meals a day and then quantities. So we actually bound our food with a digital food scale. Yes. I weigh my food. And it's so funny because I just had a visitor who is a one on the susceptibility scale, literally a one. And he was visiting my house and we ate all our meals together for a few days. And he just kept talking about how he's like, okay, you told me you weighed your food, but you eat more than I do at every meal.

[00:30:38.340] – Susan

This is like a full grown man. Right. So we're weighing our food not to make for tiny quantities, but actually to make sure that we eat enough of a lot of foods, because people who have a history of dieting typically will not eat enough at each meal unless you make them actually account for it. Those are the four bright lines. A bright line is a legal term. Originally, it just means a clear, unambiguous boundary that you just don't cross. Right. So this is like the bright line that the alcoholic puts up for alcohol, right?

[00:31:09.760] – Susan

I'm just not going to drink no matter what. And then the other things I would count more as habits or behaviors or tools or whatever, like writing down your food the night before. That is a practice that people start when they start doing bright line eating. And, yes, committing it right. In some kind of way. I often recommend people even commit it to someone else, which can be very powerful. Like, this is what I'm eating and then circle around the next 24 hours and say, yes, I ate only in exactly that.

[00:31:35.080] – Susan

And here's what I'm eating tomorrow.

[00:31:38.570] – Allan

Well, that's why we have a ceremony. When we get married, we wear a ring when we get married. That's the public commitment. And you're like, okay, here I am. I'm committed to this relationship, and that's deeper meaning than you just saying to yourself before you go to bed. This is all I'm going to eat tomorrow, and no one else on Earth knows. So it does hold you a little bit more accountable to what you're doing, which again, if you need that support is really important.

[00:32:05.210] – Allan

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

[00:32:16.910] – Susan

Oh, my gosh. Say it again. You define wellness as being the healthiest,  fittest

[00:32:23.570] – Allan

healthiest, fittest and happiest you can be

[00:32:25.990] – Susan

Healthiest, fittest, happiest.

[00:32:28.170] – Allan

In my mind, you have to have all three.

[00:32:30.710] – Susan

All right. Healthiest, fittest, happiest. So I'll just share from my expertise, right. Because I'm sure people come on here and can say all kinds of things. Anyone can sort of spout off on that. But from my vantage point, one of the big ones is going to be look at and honestly face the amount of food addiction that you actually have on board with the brain you've got right now. Like, assess it like, Allan, you took the quiz, right? People should take the quiz, find out what kind of brain they've got, because if you're a one, two or three, it's a whole different ballgame.

[00:33:08.270] – Susan

Right? You don't need to worry about a little bit of sugar. You can have that recover really quickly. And absolutely. Research shows that being 90% to 95% true to a food plan is enough, right? When you're higher on the scale, that little bit of sugar turns into more and more, and also creates a lot of psychological chatter where you're thinking about what you've eaten or not eating, whether you're on your plan or off your plan, how many miles, how many calories, how many pounds to burn off that thing that you just ate in?

[00:33:37.080] – Susan

That's a state of mind that is not. Well, that's not healthy, right? That's not happy. It may or may not be fit, but it's definitely not healthy and it's not happy. So there's one right there. Like take a look. And if people want to take the quiz, they can go to Foodaddictionquiz.com. Foodaddictionquiz.com. So acknowledge however much food addiction you have on board, because it really does change the landscape of the type of food approach that will work for you. If you're trying to be well, you're trying to be fit and you're trying to be healthy.

[00:34:09.320] – Susan

Everyone who's trying to be fit knows that you can't out exercise a bad diet. Right. And if the diet piece is the piece that keeps slipping in your wellness regimen, take a look at that. And Allan, I don't know if we're going to have time to talk about it, but I just want to say because this is a podcast for people over a certain age, right? Is that sort of theme?

[00:34:29.640] – Allan

over 40. Yes.

[00:34:31.080] – Susan

All right. Well, maybe let me just mention it now, if I may. When you're over 40 and especially over 50, your diet impacts your body differently. And this is true whether you're male or female. And the reason is lowering estrogen. And as your estrogen becomes more probabilistic and lower, this is true for men, too. Don't be fooled. It's not just men have testosterone, women have estrogen, men and women have both. And as your estrogen goes down, you stop getting the synergistic and protective effects it has on your insulin response.

[00:35:10.630] – Susan

And that means that your body now responds very differently to the junk food that you might be eating. You don't get away with it anymore, and that is the source of the weight creep in the middle that people experience past a certain age. Now, we did a research study that we published in a peer reviewed scientific outlet that showed that doing bright line eating, which means eliminating sugar and flour on our program. In the first two months, people at every age category lost an equivalent amount of weight, which means that this type of approach to eating turned a 60 year old woman's body into a 30 or 20 year old woman's body.

[00:35:48.300] – Susan

Which is shocking, but just saying the older you get, the more you need to acknowledge the amount that the degree to which addiction to certain processed foods might be playing. Right. So there's that.

[00:36:02.510] – Susan

The second thing I would say is really note your meal timing in relation to your circadian rhythm. So here's something that I used to experience. I'm a night owl by Constitution like wickedly so. Like, left to my own devices. I'm up till three, four or five in the morning and I'm sleeping past noon every day since I started eating this way, which I did 18 years ago.

[00:36:26.660] – Susan

I've been eating this way now since I was 28 years old. I'm 47 now it's 18 years that I've been eating this way. I now go to bed and I'm like eyes drooping full melatonin at 09:00 p.m. Like last night I went to bed, I went to sleep at 08:39 p.m. And I was up easily at five. But I'm not that way constitutionally. The difference is I started changing my meal time since I started eating breakfast, lunch and dinner. It turns out that the timing of your meal has as big or a bigger impact on your circadian rhythm as light exposure.

[00:37:05.430] – Susan

So don't be fooled. Any calories you're putting into your system after dinner, they're mucking up your circadian rhythm. So really consider returning to breakfast, lunch and dinner, or at least watching your meal timing as it relates to your circadian rhythm. That also had a huge impact on my mood by giving up sugar and flour and changing my meal times the way I have. I used to have clinical depression really badly and I don't have it anymore. And then the third thing I think is make sure that you feel deeply supported and connected in life.

[00:37:43.370] – Susan

I used to teach, so I'm still a professor at the University of Rochester, but I don't teach as much anymore because I do so much research and with this bright line eating thing. But I used to teach positive psychology at the College level. And a few years ago researchers discovered that human connection is more potent for well being than the combination of diet and exercise put together. That's how important it is to not feel lonely. It's so important to be well supported and connected. And if you think you're an introvert, just saying in the book Rezoom, we've got a category or a part called the Isolator, right?

[00:38:23.980] – Susan

Which is different than healthy alone time. Introverts and all people really need a healthy amount of alone time. Isolation is a different thing. Isolation is keeping yourself from support that would actually be helpful. And research shows that introverts and extroverts alike experience the same degree of uplift when they add something to their schedule, like lunch with a good friend once a week. Right. So introverts just need fewer people and fewer superficial connections, but a few deep ones are absolutely necessary. So however you roll, just make sure that you would answer, oh heck yeah.

[00:39:02.010] – Susan

To a question like right now in your life, are you feeling deeply supported and connected? Those are my three.

[00:39:09.510] – Allan

Thank you, Doctor. If someone wanted to learn more about you or learn more about the book, Rezoom or your program bright lines Eating, where would you like for me to send them?

[00:39:20.690] – Susan

I would say probably the first step would be to take that quiz, go to foodaddictionquiz.com, but also Bright Line eating (brightlineeating.com) and you can get started with Bright Line eating for just $20 a month. So if you just want to give it a try and see, you were mentioning hunger earlier. We publish findings in the Journal of Nutrition and Weight Loss. Two years out, people haven't regained any of their weight. It's shocking the results that we're getting around here.

[00:39:54.070] – Susan

But also within the first two months, people's hunger and food cravings have gone away completely on our program. On average, literally hunger and craving levels down to below one and a half out of five. Like little to no hunger or cravings anymore ever. So. Yeah, brightlineeating.com people can give it a try for just $20 a month. It's probably the best deal in weight loss.

[00:40:15.270] – Allan

You can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/519. And I'll be sure to have the links there. So, Dr. Thompson, thank you so much for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

[00:40:26.190] – Susan

Thank you so much, Allan. It's been a pleasure.

Post Show/Recap

[00:40:35.950] – Allan

Welcome back, Ras.

[00:40:37.580] – Rachel

Hey, Allan, what a really fascinating interview you had with Susan. I'm really excited to get the chance to talk about food addiction because it's something a little bit different than your standard dieting type situation.

[00:40:51.850] – Allan

Yeah, I've had people on we've talked about how food can be used as kind of this emotional bridge, if you will, a best friend, something that takes the pain away. And I've never felt that compulsion with food as using food to do that adrenaline absolutely. I'll do something crazy, like jump off a building or something like that.

[00:41:23.050] – Rachel

No, thank you.

[00:41:28.370] – Allan

Select certain number of people that are susceptible to food actually becoming a problem if they're using it for the wrong reasons. And you and I were talking before we got on here, you took the quiz that I took and encouraged people to get out there and try it. I was a three. You were a two, and it's this self awareness thing. What is your relationship with food? And you really have to break that down to a core component of what does food mean to me. Now, I know you and I, we think it's fuel.

[00:42:10.140] – Allan

We're going to go for a run. It's fuel. And there's food that I just love that I know I'll eat more of than I should or that I need, especially when I can't get them all the time and then they're available. I kind of go a little bit overboard on it, but it's not that kind of food. It's pretty much moved away from the sugars and that. But I never really was. I would say I might have been addicted to bread, but the only reason I say that is when I went paleo the first time I would have dreams about bread.

[00:42:54.670] – Rachel

Wow, that's interesting.

[00:42:56.580] – Allan

Like smelling it, like in my sleep someone was cooking bread and I could smell it in the oven and just dreaming about bread. And I thought, this is so weird. I quit bread a week ago and I'm dreaming about bread. So maybe there was a little something there with bread. I don't know, but talk a little bit about from your experience, because again, you're too. So that's not how you look at food?

[00:43:23.980] – Rachel

No. Like you said, I definitely look at food as fuel. And I'm aware of the addictive nature of my personality, and I say potential addictive nature. When I was a kid, my grandmother, who I love and adore and respect and was crushed when she died from breast cancer. She was a smoker. And whenever we went to her house, her curtains and her couches and the blankets on her couch, everything reeked of cigarette smoke. When we drove in a car, she would smoke in the car. And even in the dead of winter, it could be 20 below.

[00:44:03.840] – Rachel

I just needed that little bit of window down so I could get some fresh air to get some relief. That smell was just so overpowering and influential to me that I knew I would never want to smoke ever in all of my life. And to this day, I've never even tried cigarettes or any other thing that you might smoke. I've never done it because I was so repulsed by that. But people who smoke it's an addiction. It's like Susan mentioned, she had a more serious drug addiction than cigarettes, but there is an addictive part to that whole thing.

[00:44:40.170] – Rachel

And I can see how food can become similar, whether you're physically in need of having that sugar rush, because, you know, carbs and sugar can be very addicting. Or is it more of her personality? Like Susan mentioned, she had a drug addiction. She replaced that compulsion with food. So there's something to that personality component as well. But being aware of that, having that self awareness like you mentioned, food never crossed my radar as being something that I was compelled to have. I don't hide food in my pantry and eat it later in the closet.

[00:45:18.560] – Rachel

Although the one thing I will admit to is coffee. If anybody knows me, I am a definite coffee addict. I have it every day. But even with that, I know that I don't have to have it to live. If I woke up tomorrow and was camping, like when I go to Isle Royal next year and I can't have my pureed coffee pot with me. I know I could go a couple of days without having it. I know I'll have some consequences, but it's a different type of addiction than I think sugar or flour is, like Susan had mentioned.

[00:45:52.990] – Allan

And we've had guests on Rosie was on, and the woman Cheryl was Sharon. I've had a couple of guests on that really had emotional, deep issues with food and the way they thought about their body, the way they thought about their food. And it was that relationship with food that was the problem. And so as you go through self awareness of your journey in health and fitness, it's critical for you to have that conversation with yourself and say, what kind of relationship do I have with food?

[00:46:35.010] – Allan

And why would I feel compelled if I went to the grocery store to go down the cookie aisle when I know that the cookie aisle is just not going to serve me in what I need for what I'm trying to do? And so as you look at that, if you feel compelled or take the test to probably give you some information there. But most of us, if we take a moment and we're honest, we can say I am a moderation person or I'm an all or none person.

[00:47:05.760] – Allan

And I can tell you I am an all or none person. Even though I scored very low on that test, it was really because it was just related to food. And I can say no to any food, and I can have a little of something and then not have any more. But there are other things that I'm all or none. And when it's all, I mean all until it's all gone, that kind of thing. And maybe I used to be with that. Like I talked about Girl Scout cookies, and I'd buy the thin ments, and the box would be gone the first day.

[00:47:43.690] – Allan

even if I was trying to be good, I'd go to the grocery store and go to the freezer because we'd put them in the freezer and I would take a serving, which I think was like three cookies and I'd eat a serving. And then I'd go sit down. I'd eat the three cookies. I'd get back up. I'd walk there, I'd get another three cookies and go sit down. And then I'm just standing in the freezer eating the rest of the cookies.

[00:48:05.630] – Rachel

Wrap them up, finish off, can't eat any if they're not there.

[00:48:09.800] – Allan

Yeah. And so I had to come up with some strategies that worked for Girl Scout cookies until it was just a point where I no longer thought of Girl Scout cookies as something that I needed. I actually would give the Girl Scout money and not take the cookies.

[00:48:25.170] – Rachel

Sure, that's wonderful.

[00:48:26.380] – Allan

I just say, okay, you're trying to raise money. I get it. Back then, okay. Again, to kind of date. This is a box of cookies was like 250. Someone's telling me that they're like $5 because I don't stop by the booth anymore if I came out of a grocery store in the United States in February, which I haven't done in three years. But you walk by. They're there and wants cookies here's 250. No, just buy yourself a box or give a box away or whatever. And then I just move on.

[00:48:58.470] – Allan

So this is a very important concept, and that self awareness is critical. Otherwise you're setting yourself up to fail because this stuff is everywhere. It is the flour and the sugar is in every single thing out there. It's just almost impossible to avoid. And there are going to be times when you go in and you're like, okay, I want something to eat. And what's this? How is it prepared? It's breaded. It's like, okay, can you make it not breaded? And sometimes they can. Sometimes they can't.

[00:49:31.030] – Allan

But then even then, there's sugar in the sauce or there's this and that. It's really hard to avoid these foods. And if they trigger you, like, Susan said she tried to smoke a cigarette, just one. And then, boom, she was right back to smoking, and it was just really she knows she can't even have a little bit or she's going to go off. And if that's you, then you have to be honest with yourself. And yes, cold Turkey, you're out. There is no moderation. There is no trying it. There is no detour with this stuff.

[00:50:08.980] – Allan

It's all or none. And you have to get that into your head if you care about your health and fitness.

[00:50:17.230] – Rachel

Susan mentioned the word abstinence, and I just want to keep that word in bold prints right front and center, because for some people, abstinence is absolutely necessary. And for her, with her type of an addiction, personality or physical addiction to food, she cannot allow herself a bite of sugar or a bite of flour because that could send her back down the spiral to where she was overweight and unhappy. And I think that there are a lot of people out there that need to come to terms with that word abstinence.

[00:50:49.870] – Rachel

For people like you or me moderation, we can live with that. We can have a couple of Girl Scout cookies and then wait until next season when Girl Scout cookies are sold again. But for people who have more of an addictive personality or that physical need for food, chips are in the grocery store every day. Cookies are in the grocery store every day. And sometimes abstinence would be the tool, the main tool to break that habit. I just want to keep that front and center.

[00:51:19.770] – Allan

And there's a reason in these grocery stores in these convenience stores that things are where they are. If you want to walk down to the milk aisle, you're probably going to have to walk through an aisle that's going to have sugar laden foods or chips or something. And you're going to turn around when you stop to buy something like bottled water. And there's the chips. And it's literally set up that way you get up to the counter and there's on both sides, candy lining both rows. But it's done on purpose.

[00:51:51.850] – Allan

They study that stuff. They literally studied the traffic flow and optimize their sales. They're putting that stuff in your way. So you see it, and then you buy it. Yeah. So you have to know yourself. You have to go back to your commitment. And if you do that, then yes, abstinence. And it's that point of saying abstinence is the only way. And then you have that relationship with yourself, and you have to say, okay, I'm not going to cheat. And you wouldn't cheat on your relationship and say, oh, that person looks really fine.

[00:52:27.400] – Allan

I'm going to go do that. No, you don't. But you have to have the same self love. You have to have the same self awareness and not put yourself in those situations if you don't need to be. And most of us, if we're trying to lose weight, trying to get more fit, we don't need that stuff.

[00:52:46.150] – Rachel

Absolutely. Yeah. You said the other word that I would like to highlight and bold. And that's commitment. And whether you're committed to moderation or committed to abstinence or whatever it is, just be committed to yourself for sure and make the best choices for you.

[00:53:01.420] – Allan

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

[00:53:03.750] – Rachel

Take care.

[00:53:04.700] – Allan

Bye

[00:53:05.320] – Rachel

Bye now.

Patreons

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