Let's Say Hello

[00:03:17.230] – Allan

Hey, Ras, how are you doing?

[00:03:19.200] – Rachel

Good, Allan. How are you today?

[00:03:21.230] – Allan

I'm doing all right. Just got back from the United States and is usually the case, at least in the last few years when I travel, because I'm not traveling all the time. I got a cold. And so, yeah, I'm just now getting a little under the weather and hopeful that my voice will hold out long enough to do what I've got to do this week as a podcaster and recording and being on other podcasts and all that. But anyway, so I have a little bit of a cold. If I sound a little nasally, I apologize. And I'll probably a lot of my intros for the next few weeks might sound a little nasally because I've got to record those as well. But how are things up there?

[00:03:57.130] – Rachel

Good. Almost the same, though, because the news calls it sneezing season. We're in the peak allergy season right now, and although I've been getting the allergy shots, I'm due for one, and they've been working really well. You just can't escape the pollen and the irritants in the air. So, yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if you got a touch of the pollen while you were here in the United States and maybe your body's reacting. But yeah, you know that we did time of year.

[00:04:24.420] – Allan

We did do that. We went out with one of her uncles and aunts to a place, the bar. They were having karaoke, and we walked up and the sign said, this is a smoking bar. And I didn't even know those still existed.

[00:04:36.060] – Rachel

No, me neither. Interesting.

[00:04:39.220] – Allan

So, yeah, we literally sat there for two or 3 hours in a bar where everyone is at a smoking bar. Pretty much everybody that's at a smoking bar smokes. So it was horrific hell on earth. And so it might just be that my sinuses are telling me that was stupid things you do for the people you love. So it might be that or cold, but I'll take care of it one way or another.

[00:05:07.030] – Rachel

Yeah, getting my allergy shots tomorrow. I'll be fine soon, but yeah, it's beautiful.

[00:05:11.590] – Allan

All right, well, are you ready to have a conversation with Satyen? 

[00:05:18.030] – Rachel

Sure. 

Interview

[00:05:44.730] – Allan

Satyen. Welcome to 40+ Fitness.

[00:05:47.560] – Satyen

Thanks, Allan, for having me. Looking forward to chat with you today.

[00:05:50.480] – Allan

Yeah. So the name of your book is called Accelerated Evolution: The Revolutionary Transformational Method for Clearing Problems, Achieving Your Goals and Accelerating Spiritual Awakening That's Sweeping the World. I'll have to blatantly admit I'm not someone who's really gotten into a whole lot of the spiritual. I'm going to call it touchy feely. Okay. For just lack of a better word, I kind of grew up old school. You take care of yourself. You take care of those around you. You form a good community. You form a good family. And we kind of work through that. But I think I see more and more where traumas and things that people have gone through are adversely affecting the quality of their life today. And so I think any tool that can help someone achieve clarity and get through and get past some of these things is at least worth a listen. So I'm glad to have you on the show where we can have this conversation. Thank you.

[00:06:47.830] – Satyen

Allan, what you shared regarding old school, that is the foundation you got to take care of yourself. So what you just shared is exactly what accelerated evolution is about. It's about getting solid with yourself, then getting solid with your family, getting solid with your contribution to society and how you flow with everything. And most people try to focus on many things out there, but when you start focusing on yourself first so I think you actually might be further away, further down the road of this than you might even realize, my friend.

[00:07:18.810] – Allan

Perhaps. Perhaps. But I know I still have a lot of work to do to be the guy that my dog looks to as I kind of saw that written on a sign somewhere. I just want to be the man that my dog thinks I am. So you talked in the book, and I've seen this, they look at the blue zones and they look at a lot of other things about why people live a long life, a long, good life. And it usually comes down, one of the key ones that they'll talk about their movement and their sleep and all that. But one of the big ones and one that often gets passed up is purpose. And in the book, you call it Dharma, which because I kind of knew that was really more from yoga than anything else, but from where I caught it from. But can you talk about Dharma and purpose and why that's important?

[00:08:08.830] – Satyen

Certainly. And because I'm 56. Just recently, last week. Fitness and health has been really close to my heart. Wellness of being. I started out as a therapist, very young shiatsu therapist doing body work, massage, that type of stuff. And Chinese and Japanese healing arts. And then I dove deep into martial arts. That was my base and still is now 43 years plus. And so fitness and well being, I recognize, is multidimensional. It's physical. Of course, we all know about that. The physicality is our vitality. But it's also mental. If we got a lot of mental noise in ourself, self limiting beliefs, we're putting ourselves down. Or our mind is looping around negative thoughts like, I'm not good enough. I'll never make it. And those can be many of them can be unconscious. Right? Then we need to have mental fitness as well. We also need to have emotional fitness of being. When we're all overwhelmed, filled with struggle, filled with tension of the day, of the era, of the time, of everything that we've got going on, then we're not going to be emotionally free to have emotional freedom, the capacity to be light, buoyant, joyful, loving, gracious, magnanimous rather than irritable, intense and filled with anger and vitriol and judgment.

[00:09:27.250] – Satyen

And all of this, when we have emotional fluidity in our being, our whole health goes through the roof. And then spiritual health is a connection to our soul, our heart, a connection to our higher purpose. Dharma, as you said. Now, whether you're religious or not, to me, spiritual means recognizing and getting clear that we actually do have a higher purpose here. We have a purpose of contribution in some way. It might not be world level contribution, it could be just contribution in our neighborhood. Don't ever underestimate that you are here and that we are here for a contribution. And contribution to me, is the pathway to our spiritual essence. So to me, fitness and well being is physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. And when we awaken all that within ourselves, we become unstoppable. Our health and fitness goes through the roof and we become magnetic. Success comes to us rather than us chasing it.

[00:10:22.020] – Allan

Now, one of the reasons, I guess, my purpose, if you will, of what I do is trying to help people get healthy and fit. That's why I started this podcast. That's why I coach people online. And the main reason that a lot of people say that they're coming to me is that they lack motivation and they struggle with motivation or staying motivated. Sometimes they get started, but then they fall back and they just can't keep that motivation going. In the book, you share the prime theory of motivation. Could you kind of go through those five elements of the prime theory and why those are important and how they can help us?

[00:10:55.410] – Satyen

Okay, so I'm going to give you the essence of all of that motivation. Those five boil down to one. Okay? What it is, is there is a plethora of knowledge, we all know that, on how to get well, how to be fit. You can go on YouTube, you can see tens of thousands of exercise videos, all for free all of that. Why we're not motivated is we have three main reasons we're not motivated, and it's all unconscious. Number one is limiting beliefs. We have beliefs about ourselves. I'm too old, I'm too young, I'm too fat, I'm too thin, I'm not strong enough. I'm to this, I'm too that. And we gain these. We pick up these limiting beliefs from challenges in our life. When we were earlier and someone said, hey, I don't know if you can do that, and you say, you're right, you bought into it. I don't know if I can do that. Every time we bought into these lies about ourselves, we created a false image about who we are, a limited image. And then we start thinking out of that mindset. And you can see that in a lot of people and even in ourselves, that if we listen to those limiting beliefs, we'll remain a prisoner, a slave to them.

[00:12:06.550] – Satyen

So that's the first thing we got to get in touch with, how to heal and transform our limiting beliefs. That is one of the main areas that holds us back from being fully motivated spontaneously, naturally, without this. Gregarious willpower right. The other number two block we have to being fully motivated and inspired to be fit and well is traumas. Traumas are negative or heavy duty things that have happened to our lives that we couldn't process or deal with or absorb or digest in the moment. And so that intensity of that experience is suspended in our images, in our mind, thoughts that we have, emotions that we have, and body sensations. So traumas get lodged in our whole psyche, our body, in our breath, in our being, and we don't even realize we're walking around with these traumas. It could be emotional ones, things that were just not right, that were overwhelming for you when you were wrong, that you had to defend yourself with or brace yourself. And that unconscious bracing is still inside. Traumas also can be physical. I remember years ago in a martial art injury I had, I was always nervous to do anything with my legs.

[00:13:22.920] – Satyen

I sprained my knees, hurt my knees multiple times. So I had this trauma in my knees and I felt if I do anything and I didn't know I was holding myself back because of this fear of if I go a little too far, I might hurt myself. This is an unconscious trauma that holds us back from our full engagement with our health. So number one is limiting beliefs. Number two is traumas. And the third part that holds us back from being fully motivated and engaged are unconscious family loyalties. We have loyalties to our family members. My father lived till like this, till 70, and I'm going to live till 70. Or we see a pattern. One of the interesting patterns is seeing family patterns of health up and down and seeing how my clients mirror those family patterns. Why? Because there's an unconscious loyalty to the good and the bad that's gone on in the past. So we got to find those, excavate them and heal them. So in our body of work, accelerated evolution, what we do is we find what those limiting beliefs are. We find what those traumas are. We find what those unconscious family loyalties that are not healthy, there's some that are healthy.

[00:14:35.390] – Satyen

We find what are not healthy. And deeply, rapidly and very fast in a rapid way, we clear them, we transform them. What would have taken months, years in therapy or traditional methods we're able to do in minutes when that unconscious loyalty is healed, when the limiting belief is transformed to one of great belief in yourself. And when you've removed the traumas, that energy that was stored in you now goes into your vitality. Now you become an unstoppable motivation machine, but in a natural way, not in this Gregarious willpower which will only burn out.

[00:15:11.490] – Allan

Now one of the big areas and it was kind of, I would say the last area for me in focusing with my health and wellness was stress. I initially started movement because for me that was the easiest one to start and then I moved into managing my nutrition and then sleep and so I ended up with still in a very stressful job at the time and it was just the stress was chronic. It was always there, the bear was always chasing me. How can we use this method to address stress?

[00:15:44.600] – Satyen

That's a great question. Well first of all I want to just really get this across that stress is the real pandemic that's across society now that is in ourselves, that's lurking in our mind, lurking in our emotions, lurking in our body. And stress first of all is an accumulation of importance. I need to do that now, I'm not here so far. How am I supposed to deal with all of that? All these incompleted communications, all this stuff that we stuffed down in ourselves, things that we wanted to share but we don't feel we're going to be heard. We feel that we're not understood. We feel that we're not gotten or loved or appreciated or valued enough. This all causes stress. The craziness of the demands of work nowadays tends to be extreme. We're being asked to and even within ourselves to do far more work in less time with better results, with more efficiency. No wonder we're killing ourselves with stress. Stress causes all these stress hormones that just bring our body down. It makes us hard to get up at. We need more rest, more sleep and we never get it. So we're burning ourselves out.

[00:16:57.170] – Satyen

And when we burn ourselves out, many of us are burned out or close to being burned out or over running being burned out. We're burned out already way back. But we're caffeinating ourselves, drinking ourselves, sugaring ourselves to run on top of the accumulated stress. So first of all you got to get that it's killing us and you got to get real with us. We got to get real with ourselves and not just put it aside and say one day I'll get to it because that one day will never happen. It'll never happen. The way we deal with it with accelerated evolution is we find where that stress is and we go to it immediately. Rather than circling around with long histories and talking about my background and for hours and hours and maybe after the third, 4th, 5th session with the therapist, you get to the stress or ten in less than an hour. We can get to the core of why you're creating the stress in the first place and what you're doing to reinforce it. And we go right to it, we transform it, we open it, and the stress then turns into wisdom, like right in your mind, right in your consciousness, you get to the core and you heal.

[00:18:03.590] – Satyen

That's not just the stress you heal why you are getting yourself in continuously stressful situations? Because dealing with stress on the outside, relaxation, therapies meditation, contraction, relaxation, herbs or supplements to comet, that's all on the external. It's not dealing with the cause. The cause is the excess importance, the excessive importance that we put on things that we should really back off and smile a bit and enjoy a bit. But it's hard to do that when we're wound up. So that's why we like to heal people in one session rather than take weeks and months. Everyone's too busy nowadays. We need a method and a way to resolve really this death knell march that we're doing as a society off the cliff with stress. We need to recapture our energy and focus on what's most important in our lives, our health, our well being, our families, our joy, our happiness. Stress then becomes a motivation and inspiration, not something that destroys us.

[00:19:11.330] – Allan

Thank you. So now another area where I think a lot of people will see some value from this is because, again, they're hiring a personal trainer. They want to lose some weight. They know that they got there predominantly from overeating. And so this method can be used to kind of get to the root of that too, right?

[00:19:28.790] – Satyen

Absolutely. If we look at the conditions, like being overweight, being overweight, because we're eating more than we need to, and you can get all the advice on, hey, stop this, lower your calories. But what about your emotions? Do they want you to stop eating? What about your inner mindset that hurt young person inside or the one that's lacking love inside of yourself? And the only way you can feel love is when you're eating food and getting that rush and feeling that fulfillment in your belly and eating that sugar. So we know mentally it's not well being, but emotionally it's fulfilling us temporarily. Until then, we go, what did I do? And we go down that spiral again of beating ourselves up and judging ourselves and okay, now we're going to get vehement and get healthy again. This is a crazy cycle that so many people have been on. The root of overeating is because we're trying to fill ourselves with love and connection and fulfillment and freedom. And since we're not getting it the real way through human connection and wholeness, we seek it through artificial, superficial, unhealthy ways. And so what we do with accelerated evolution, we get to the core of why we are seeking these unhealthy ways of being full.

[00:20:48.640] – Satyen

We reorient that. We reprogram our subconscious, we heal our subconscious mind. And now we're geared and training ourselves to seek true fulfillment from relationship rather than from the stuff that knocks us down.

[00:21:03.940] – Allan

If someone were going to go through an accelerated evolution session, what would that process look to them?

[00:21:10.940] – Satyen

It's really simple. A coach, a guide, first of all, will ask you what's the main challenge you've got going on that you'd like help with? What's the main thing that's bothering you? So come with honesty and realness. Okay, this is the thing I want most transformed in my life. It could be personal, could be professional, could be health, could be your food, it could be your weight, it could be your exercise. Whatever is most clogging you up, bring that honestly and directly to the accelerated evolution guide. Then, rather than taking a long, long case history, they're going to now say, okay, they're going to get you to take a few breaths and relax and get in touch with the disharmony. They're going to get you to feel the problem, not just talk about it. They're going to get you to quiet and feel how that affects you, how that's limiting your life, how that's hurting you. And you're going to feel where it is in your body, how it feels. And then the guide is going to take you through this beautiful process that step by step guides you within, that you'll actually feel it within minutes, how the tension, the self hate, the loathing, the contraction inside yourself starts to open and become lighter and freer and spacious.

[00:22:25.620] – Satyen

Then ultimately you're actually going to be in this place of joy and true freedom and inner insight. Then the guide will say, once you've got to that place and you've released the tension and the trauma and all that limiting beliefs that keep you in that stutt state, this happens very quickly, very quickly. Then what happens is they're going to say, okay, now how do you want to live this in life? They're going to give you guidance, support and insight on how to live this way so that the new way you're being is translating into life in a good wholesome way. And that all happens in under an hour.

[00:23:01.370] – Allan

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

[00:23:09.490] – Satyen

Okay. Number one is to recognize that your limits are a portal to your strengths. Number one, make a list of where you feel unwell, where you feel not fully happy, where you feel that you're not joyful enough. Don't hide from that. Make a list of the top three areas that are holding you back that you feel bad about or you feel guilty or shameful or not on about, and get real with them. That's number one. Just three. Don't make a list of 100, just three. Is good.

[00:23:47.460] – Allan

My list would be pretty long, too.

[00:23:49.060] – Satyen

Okay, start with the top three. We all have that, right? But if you make a list of 20 things, you're going to get depressed, you're going to go, I'll never get to top three. Number two, make a commitment that you make a commitment that you're going to go through any method, any ways, any means. And if accelerated evolution is inspiring you, come and experience that. Make a commitment that I'm not going to let those things keep me down. I'm going to use those as a slingshot and a doorway, a portal to my fullness, because every accelerated evolution guide or anyone who goes through it, they get to recognize my limitation is actually a gift. That actually is a powerful gift inside. So you got to do that. That's number two. Number three, make a commitment to a new narrative of your life. You'll change so rapidly within a short period of time, you now have to let go of the old story of how you used to be, and now you got to create a new story for yourself without the old baggage of yesterday. The new story is, now that I'm clear of this, here's how I'm going to live my life.

[00:25:00.660] – Satyen

Here's my morning routine I'm going to give myself as a gift. Here's my eating routine I'm going to give myself as a gift. So you start visualizing a new path, a new life, a new way of being. So I'll summarize. Number one, get real with your obstacles. Number two, be willing and vulnerable, doesn't matter who you are, and commit to doing the work to transform those limits into power. And number three, create a new narrative, a new visual, a new vision of how you live your life that's congruent with joy and your highest harmony and your highest well being.

[00:25:38.360] – Allan

Thank you for sharing that. Satyen, if someone wanted to learn more about you and learn more about Accelerated Evolution, where would you like for me to send them?

[00:25:45.890] – Satyen

Well, we have a gift for everyone here, and that's a live experience of accelerated evolution. And so go to the URL, the website acceleratedevolutiongift.com. acceleratedevolutiongift.com. This will give you the direct experience of all that I'm talking about. Come to that session. You'll see it's all online. It's exactly guided by myself. And then have the transformative experience yourself so you know what I'm talking about. You know this is real and not some pie in the sky thing. And then I'd love to hear from you. You'll have information on how to chat with me and how to continue.

[00:26:27.640] – Allan

you can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/593, and I'll be sure to have the links there. Satyen, thank you for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

[00:26:37.540] – Satyen

Allan, it's been a joy. Thank you so much for your kind, caring, the good work you do in the world.

Post Show/Recap

[00:26:51.010] – Allan

Welcome back. Ras.

[00:26:52.460] – Rachel

Hey, Allan, that was a really interesting interview and a couple of things that stuck out in my head when he said limiting beliefs. I have heard that and I felt that a few times. Having recently turned 50, I'll be 52 this summer. Just once I let it slip out like I'm too old for this. As soon as I heard myself say, I'm like, okay, no, I am not too old to be doing what I'm doing. I just need to reframe that. I'm working really hard, I'm getting really sore, I'm getting really tired. There's a lot going on. But yeah, I can see how limiting beliefs can really change your mindset.

[00:27:29.990] – Allan

Yeah. Again, I didn't go through one of his sessions, so I really can't opine on what those sessions are like. You would have to experience it yourself. If this is something that resonates with you, by all means, get the book, read through it, and you can get a free session with them to see if this is something that would work for you. But the core basis of it is if you believe that your life is hell, then it is. And if you believe that you have ultimate capacity to heal and grow, then you will. And so there is this idea that our brains can do things that you just wouldn't even believe. I'll give you a perfect example interview that's going to come up in a couple of weeks with Dr. Tom Walters. And in his book he had a concept where he said, our brain tells us something or our body tells us something, and it's not even really true, but we just react. And so the example he gave was your back might like you had low back pain at one point. You might have low back pain when you get a cold.

[00:28:34.930] – Allan

And so I'm walking over to the office and I'm feeling kind of achy in my lower back. And it didn't occur to me that I had like, something subliminal. It must have been in my head because there's nothing wrong with my back. I didn't do anything to my back and there's no injury, but it just felt a little achy as I was walking over here. And I'm like, you know, he put that in my head.

[00:28:58.830] – Rachel

Yeah.

[00:28:59.870] – Allan

And so there is a mind body thing, and where the brain goes, the body can go. If the brain doesn't go there, the body won't go. And so if you believe in things and you really put your faith in things and then you work, it's still going to take work. It's not something even though he says 1 hour and you might be able to do amazing things in 1 hour. But the reality of it is if you don't believe that something's going to help you or you don't believe you can resolve the pain or the trauma or the stress or whatever, then you obviously won't. And so a big part of stress management a big a part of some of the things that are out there that are big hold back problems, the limiting beliefs, the eating, relationships with food, all of those are about the way you're perceiving the world. And if you can change your perception, you can change your outcome.

[00:29:54.280] – Rachel

Very much so. I feel like if you could just be open to what you're experiencing and maybe even take a minute to ponder what you're doing, whether it's a relationship with food or relationship, what you do for exercise, I mean, ponder for a second, like I said the other day, I'm too old for this. And truly, if I had stuck with that mindset, I wouldn't do a lot of the things that I do. And I'm really pondering that a lot these days. What can I do? I guess the flip side of that is my opportunities are almost limitless as to what I can do. An age is just a number. It's kind of irrelevant. It's not like your body shuts down at a certain age or something. But if you really did take the time to evaluate what's troubling you or what's not serving you and find a way to fix it, as long as you're open, I guess, to the ability to fix it, it really is a lot about your attitude and what you want to accomplish.

[00:30:55.420] – Allan

A perfect example would be cupping or acupuncture. For me, I just look at those and say, not for me, I'm not going to believe it's going to work. So therefore I'm not interested,

[00:31:08.950] – Rachel

why waste your time?

[00:31:10.380] – Allan

So I'm not going to waste my time. But on the other end, some people do, they get acupuncture, they get different things done that you'd be like, okay, maybe there's something behind it, but I don't see it. But they say, no, I go and get acupuncture once a week and it helps with my pain and I feel great, I'm like, awesome, keep doing it. So if it's working, keep going. If you're open to it, then be open to it. Because if you sit down with a session and any of those things and you say, I don't believe this is going to help me, then it won't. So just realize who you are intrinsically and look for solutions for your problems that make sense for you based on how you're currently wired. Now you can rewire yourself, you can change some of those things, but it's not something where you can sit there and say, I believe cupping is going to solve my problem.

[00:32:01.880] – Allan

If you really don't believe cupping, so you go through a couple of cupping sessions and it does nothing for you other than leave those purple circles. Okay, did it solve your problem? Well, no, because you didn't really go in believing that it would. And so just as there's placebo effect and the nocebo effect, those are real, those are real sensations in your brain. Things are happening, the wiring and so if this is something that appeals to you, then I think you should check out his book. I think you should check out that free session he offered.

[00:32:33.410] – Rachel

That sounds awesome. Yeah, sounds really great.

[00:32:37.250] – Allan

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

[00:32:40.550] – Rachel

Take care, Allan.

[00:32:41.750] – Allan

You too.

[00:32:42.600] – Rachel

Thanks.

[00:32:43.380] – Allan

Bye.

[00:32:44.200] – Rachel

Bye.

Music by Dave Gerhart

Patreons

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– Anne Lynch	– Ken McQuade	– Leigh Tanner
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Less...

Let's Say Hello

[00:02:44.470] – Allan

Hey, Rachel. How are you?

[00:02:46.540] – Rachel

Hey, Allan. Good. How are you today?

[00:02:48.630] – Allan

I'm doing all right. Kind of busy.

[00:02:51.470] – Rachel

Yeah. Busy is good.

[00:02:54.390] – Allan

Because we're rounding out the final bits of busy season here in Bocas. And so it's like a lot of moving still a lot of moving parts and this and that and just getting things just keeping things going and saying, okay, now I've got to spin this plate, and then I got to run over here and spin that plate. Just being pulled in a few different directions, but it's good. We've had a really good season at Lula's, and so I'm just really excited that that's going well. So just keep the plate spinning.

[00:03:28.830] – Rachel

That's awesome. Well, good. Glad everything's going well at Lula's.

[00:03:32.150] – Allan

How are things up there?

[00:03:33.620] – Rachel

Good. We are also kind of busy with the maple syrup boil still happening, still collecting. I got to do my rounds later this afternoon.

[00:03:43.260] – Allan

That is the funniest thing. Is that okay, you're keto and you're talking about maple syrup.

[00:03:48.080] – Rachel

Oh, my gosh. Yeah, it's funny. We tell everybody we have a lot, and actually, let's see, this year we'll have had about four boils, so we should end up probably close to about maybe four gallons, maybe not quite four full gallons of maple syrup. And you're right, we don't eat it. We share it. We give it to everybody. But the time outdoors is really special, and this type of little homesteading habit that we have of turning maple SAP into syrup is such a really neat, lost kind of art form. We like to share it with our friends, and so we like to have the kids come and see what it's all about. And it's just a really fun thing to do and to share. It's just fun.

[00:04:37.880] – Allan

Well, cool. All right. Are you ready to talk to Michael Taylor?

[00:04:42.820] – Rachel

Sure.

Interview

[00:05:40.110] – Allan

Michael. Welcome to 40+ Fitness.

[00:05:43.230] – Michael

Hello, Allan. Thanks for having me. I'm really excited about the conversation.

[00:05:47.070] – Allan

Well, I haven't shaved in a few days, and it's starting to itch. I'm going to be shaving pretty quick here because another thing that happens when I don't shave, being 57 years old, somehow or another, you don't seem to have this problem, but I have a lot of grays that come out. And your book is called, I'm Not Okay With Gray: How to Create an Extraordinary Life After 50. Being 57, and I said, that title just kind of kicks you and says, okay, that's what I want, other than I'm okay with the gray, just sometimes not okay with where that takes us mentally.

[00:06:26.010] – Michael

Got you. Interestingly enough, the way the title came about is I actually would be fully gray, but I dye my hair, right. And so a friend of mine and I were having a conversation about dyeing my beard, my goatee, and he said, man, why you dye your beard, why don't you just go gray? And I said, well, I'm not okay with Gray. And as soon as I made the comment, I went, wow, that is a cool title for a book. And so as an author, what I usually do, whenever I have a cool title that pops up like that, I make a little note on my phone, right? I said no. I'm going to write a book called I'm Not Okay With Gray. And fast forward a year and a half or so, and here I am promoting the book.

[00:07:07.210] – Allan

And it's a great book if you're someone that's kind of at that point where you're struggling with a lot of where you are in the world, there's a lot in this book to look at. And I think one of the reasons that this is really an important topic is we get to or around the age of 50, some of it's a little earlier, some is a little bit later, but we start asking ourselves those deeper questions, is it all worth it? Where am I going? And sometimes it's because our kids are no longer kids anymore, and they're off running and doing their lives. Sometimes we've gone through some pretty drastic changes that midlife will often either spur in us to do, or they just almost seem to happen because we're actually looking ahead instead of feeling stuck and looking backwards for the good or the bad. But one of the words, the word you used in this book as you kind of went through the subsections, and when I first saw that the table contents because I actually read all the books, and I'm going through the table contents, and I'm like, okay, he's using this word.

[00:08:16.350] – Allan

He's using this word. And then when I start actually reading what you had written, I'm like, you could not have used a better word because you think about the title, I'm Not okay with Gray, and that's like, okay, well, what are you going to do about it? Well, you can dye your hair. Okay, great. That doesn't change anything fundamentally in your life, but you use the word embrace, and I think that is such a powerful word. As I was kind of sitting there, I got chills now thinking about how important that word is as we look to change our lives and just what the word embrace means. So I wanted to dive into your head a little bit about that word because you obviously chose it. You're an author and a speaker. You chose that word on purpose. This isn't an accident. Let's talk about that word from your perspective.

[00:09:08.510] – Michael

Well, first of all, the title had absolutely nothing to do with hair color. The title really is about I'm committed to empowering men and women over 50, right? To change their mindsets about aging so they can make the rest of their lives the best of their lives. Okay, so the title, again, is kind of a catchy title, but in reality, it's really about changing our mindsets. And as a former atheist, there was a time in my life where I had absolutely no I was completely close to the idea that there was something bigger than me out there. Right. Well, I went on this amazing journey, found my own spiritual connection. But what embrace is for me, it's about incorporating, bringing into your awareness, new ideas. And so when I say embrace, there's so many talking heads and experts out there telling you, you should do this, you should do that. I'm not trying to tell you to do anything. I'm making a suggestion for you to embrace this idea, this different way of looking at things, so that if you're willing to do that, I believe you can change your life. But we have to be willing to embrace these new ideas, which can be difficult for some, but I don't think anything changes until we embrace new ways of thinking, believing and behaving.

[00:10:36.160] – Michael

And so that's why I focused on that word.

[00:10:38.570] – Allan

Yeah. And like I said, I think it's just a really a powerful word because you're not telling people a path. This is the path to the extraordinary life. This is what you have to do. Just do these ten things and your life will be better. What you're saying is the world is the world. Sometimes it's changing in ways that we don't necessarily agree with or want. We have to control what we can control, and we have to put into our lives what we want to have in our lives. And we've got to not have things in our lives that we want out of our lives. And so the idea of embracing things and looking for the good in them, I think, is really a powerful way of approaching this, because there are going to my elbow hurts, my knee hurts. Well, my hip hurts. And we could embrace that and we can talk about that all day, or we can really kind of get into deeper conversations about who we are and why we're here and what we're trying to accomplish with, like you said, the second half of our lives. Because if you're over 50 and you're listening to this, there's a high probability you might just live another hundred, another 50 years with medical science the way it is.

[00:11:50.660] – Allan

And wouldn't it be a shame to not live that second half even close to the first half when all of your horror stories, you sit down, you talk about all the hardships and the things you had in your life, and I think I had these things and they're in my life. And I can say the whole question, would you go back and relive your life again? And how would you change it? It's like, I don't even want to think about that. I don't even want that. If you told me I could keep living my life the way I am. Or I could go back and live it again. I'd probably just live it where I'm at. I'd be what I am.

[00:12:31.390] – Michael

Yeah, but here's the thing that I think a lot of people are missing. We live in a society and culture that loves bad news. Amazing we focus so much attention on what's wrong with the world. But see, my belief is that there are a lot more things that are right with the world that are wrong with it. And one of the things that's really right with the world is as a human being, we are moving into a lot of people don't realize that they're predicting in the next 20 years or so, the average lifespan is going to be 120 years old. People are going to be living longer because of technology, because of they're doing DNA sequencing and all these cool things. They're doing it with the technology. So the question becomes, if we're going to be living that long, how are we going to live the second half of our lives? And so my personal belief I'm 62. I'll be 63 this year. But honestly, man, I really feel like I'm still in my thirty s. And when I say feel like that, it's not just physically, it's just emotionally, psychologically, spiritually. I just feel alive.

[00:13:45.370] – Michael

And I know that that's what a lot of people are hungry for. That feeling of aliveness. And you'll never get that feeling of aliveness from how much money you have in the bank, how big your house is, what kind of car you drive. It's an internal process of connecting with our authentic selves. And so again, I have set an intention, I plan on living to be 100 years old at least. I just want to get the three digits, if nothing else, just from my own goal setting. Whatever I want to say I'm 100. That's kind of cool.

[00:14:25.570] – Allan

Yeah. But the problem is there'll be dozens and dozens of us standing right next to you because a lot of us are going to get there. But when we get there, I think this is what scares a lot of people is that we might not have taken care of the vehicle that's going to get us there.

[00:14:45.370] – Michael

There you go. There you go. And that's the thing. It is my belief that there is nothing on this planet that is more amazing than the human body. The human body, in my opinion, I call it the ultimate vehicle, right? And we sometimes forget that it is the only vehicle on the planet that actually gets stronger the more we use it. And so if we don't use it, it begins to atrophy. And so the people that are afraid of getting older, a lot of times it's because we're afraid of being incapacitated. We're afraid of being limped over with a cane or a crutch or whatever. So I'm saying, why not change our mindset? To say, you know what? I do want to live to be 100. And so what do I need to do to try to make sure that when I get there, I'm not incapacitated? Well, you have a perfect show. We got to take care of our health. We've got to take care of this. We've got to take care of this amazing physical body that we have. And so it's important for us to understand the idea that the body is perfect by design, right?

[00:16:01.960] – Michael

And we just have to be willing to do a few things to help it stay and run at its optimal level.

[00:16:09.030] – Allan

So in the book, you shared ten simple steps to take care of your physical body. Could you talk about a few of those, some of your favorite ones maybe?

[00:16:18.550] – Michael

Well, but let me tell you how I got on this health journey, though. This is a really cool story, okay? When I was 18 years old, I got my first full time job. I've always had a great work ethic and so forth. So I got this full time job. Well, at 18, I still wasn't willing to give up my partying lifestyle. I'd go out, I'd stay out at 3:00 4:00 in the morning, get up and be to work by eight. Well, sometimes I'd even spend a night in my car in the parking lot of my job because I'd stayed out partying all night. Well, one morning I wake up, I take a shower, and as I'm showering, I feel this little twinge in my chest. Disregarded. Didn't pay attention to it. I get to work, and I was working at a building supply center and I'm loading these two by fours into this rack. And all of a sudden it felt like you remember the Rambo knife? Rambo? The big knife that he had? Well, it felt like the Rambo knife went through my heart. And it was so debilitating that I literally just blacked out. When I woke up,

[00:17:34.350] – Michael

I'm getting rolled to an ambulance again, and I'm only 19 years old. 18 years old. And they roll me to the ambulance. I wake up, I look around, don't know what's going on. So we get in the ambulance. The guys hooked me up with EKGs or whatever, and the guy says, you can slow down. There's nothing wrong with his heart. So I get to the hospital, there's the doctor. Once again, they've got me hooked up with all the EKGs and everything. The doctor walks in and he says, well, tell me what's wrong. I say, hey, man, you're the doctor. You tell me what's wrong. Did I just have a heart attack? He said, no, you didn't have a heart attack. Asking me questions. And he gets to the point about, well, can you think of anything that you've done differently recently? And I said, Well, I hadn't been sleeping a lot lately. And he goes, oh, tell me more about that. So I started explaining to him how I was doing what I was doing. And basically what happened was my body was so tired, it literally shut down. And what happened is the muscles in my chest cramped around my heart so intensely that it gave the symptoms of a heart attack because it basically cramped around my heart.

[00:18:50.560] – Michael

And boom, it just shut everything down temporarily. And that's when I blacked out. Well, he gave me some muscle relaxers, and I slept for like, 21 hours straight. But the amazing thing about that is that after that incident, I had a really interesting conversation with myself. And that conversation was, wow, my body is smarter than I am. I wouldn't slow down. So it took the necessary steps to make me slow down. And that was in 1978. And after that, I saw the movie Rocky. I wanted to be like Apollo Creed, so I got me a little set of cement weights and started working out. And I've been working out ever since. So in answer to your question, the things that we have to do, I think from a physical standpoint, I would point to exercise. But for me, the most important thing that I've done in regards to my health is something I started 30 years ago, which was meditation. Learning to meditate was the most life changing experience that I've ever had because I've always been an overthinker. And, man, I used to get these thinking headaches I couldn't turn my mind off. And so I took some classes and I learned how to meditate.

[00:20:12.040] – Michael

And it has been just amazing. Again, I've been doing it for 30 years after that. I think an important part that we don't talk about, especially as men, when we talk about our health, is our emotional health. I didn't recognize that. I had a lot of stuff. I had a lot of emotional baggage that I had to be willing to unpack. And one way that I unpacked it was I gained the courage to go to therapy and I unpacked a lot of that emotional baggage that I've been carrying around for a long, long time. And then that's when the third part is making sure I take care of my body, getting annual physicals, making sure that I'm paying attention to how my body feels. I'm not a health nut by any stretch of imagination, but I'm extremely healthy. Again, at 62, I can still bench press over 350. I go to the gym three days a week. So obviously, exercise is a really important part of that. So those would be the three things that I would point to. First of all, when I start talking about health, because you mentioned health in terms of wellness, but also happiness.

[00:21:22.410] – Michael

And I couldn't have gotten to that place of happiness if I, number one, hadn't learned to meditate. Number two, hadn't dealt with some emotional baggage that was keeping me held down.

[00:21:31.950] – Allan

Yeah, and I think that's kind of the crux of all this, the way I phrase it is this I want to be able to wipe my own butt when I'm 105. So buried in that is, yes, I do want to live past 100, but then I don't want my body to not be there for me. I want to be independent. I want to be able to take care of myself. I want to be able to do the basic things that I need to be able to do to be a functioning 105 year old. I'm obviously not going to be doing tough mudders and all that kind of crazy stuff then, but I want to make sure that I'm doing as much as I can to enjoy the life that I have, and that's going to require physical fitness, health, and all these other things. And I guess one of the things that drove me there and I want to talk about this, this is a whole chapter in your book, so we could probably talk for hours on this, I think, yes, the books might even just be about this. But one of the topics in your book, and one I think that's really overlooked in the way that most of us approach our lives and a lot of times, yes, even when we're in our 50s, is we don't embrace joy, passion, and purpose.

[00:22:46.630] – Allan

And I think as a result, just to me, as I start thinking about it, it's like, well, what else is there? But, but, you know, at the same time, but back up. And I said, well, okay, that's I I didn't I never thought about things this way before. I kind of had my moment of what I'd say, okay, I woke up and I figured out that I was not going in the direction I needed to be going, and I had to fix something. And that's, again, part of why I define things the way I do is because I understand I could be completely healthy and pass the test. You do the blood test, I'm like, oh, your model of health. I was in college, I had a similar story to you. I was leg pressing, and I had these, like, crazy swimmers going on in my eyes. I almost passed out doing leg press, not advisable. And I went to the doctor, and he's like, oh, you're healthy as a horse, was the words he said. You're as healthy as they come. And I'm like, no, my body's telling me something. My body is telling me.

[00:24:01.290] – Allan

And what it was is kind of the same thing. I was going to college, I was working, I was lifting, I was just doing too much and didn't realize and wasn't listening to my body. I wasn't listening to myself. And I think when you talk about embracing joy, passion, and purpose, that's what I've come to understand is why I'm here, why we're here. Can you talk a little bit about that? And how does one go about embracing joy, passion and purpose?

[00:24:30.230] – Michael

Well, let me back up just a little bit. So when I was 23, I was living the American dream. I had the house, the wife, the 2.5 kids and all that. And by society standards, I was successful within about a six and a half year time frame. That dream turned into a nightmare that went through divorce, bankruptcy, foreclosure, a deep state of depression. I was actually homeless for two years, living out of my car, and during the darkest period of my life, I received a miracle. I was sitting up late one night because I was too depressed to sleep. And I was sitting at the edge of my bed looking across the room at my bookshelf, when I happened to notice that every book on my bookshelf had something to do with getting rich or making money. And as I looked at those books, this question just popped in my head. Michael, what if he took all the energy and effort you've used in trying to get rich and simply figure out how to be happy? Now, as simplistic as that question may sound, it literally changed and saved my life in an instant. Something in me shifted, and all of a sudden my depression lifted.

[00:25:41.970] – Michael

And I had this amazing clarity that I was going to be able to rebuild my life, and it was going to become extraordinary. And what I realized after that conversation was all my life I had been chasing money and stuff, and so I had gained all the money and the stuff that I thought would make me happy, but I was miserable. So then what happened was I stopped reading books on getting rich and making money. I started reading books on psychology and philosophy and spirituality and metaphysics. I went on this amazing what I'll call my journey of transformation. And it was through that journey that I gained the courage to go to therapy and began unpacking some of the baggage that I talked about. And so for most of us, or shall I say a lot of us, especially as men, we have been conditioned to believe that we really have three primary responsibilities, what I call the three P's procreate, provide and protect. What society didn't teach us as men is how to connect. And in order to connect, we have to be in touch with our emotions, who we are as human beings, and the feeling, the feeling, that's the critical piece.

[00:27:01.420] – Michael

Because for a lot of men, the feeling is the F word. We don't want to talk about feelings because feelings are for women. But what I've come to understand is in unpacking all of my emotional baggage, I have to be willing to get in touch with and tap into my feelings and what that meant. And so when you start talking about joy, passion and purpose, if we aren't willing to unpack our emotional baggage, it's difficult, if not impossible, for us to fully feel and experience authentic joy because we've got it covered up with all this other stuff. We've got it covered up with competition. We've got it tied into trying to look good. We wear these masks as men. We hide behind these walls of invulnerability. We as men, we've got all these defense mechanisms against joy because we're trying to do the things society says we're supposed to do as men with the stuff. And so I had to be willing to unpack all of that. And in doing so, what I discovered, first of all, was this intense, deeply deep, deep feeling of joy that everyone has access to if we're willing to go deeply enough.

[00:28:26.050] – Michael

But again, it's a journey that few people are willing to take. But when we do, we get to a point where we realize we don't have to have anything outside of ourselves to be happy. We don't have to have the wife, we don't have to have the sex. We just have to have who we are. And there's joy in that. And so this has been a 30 year process, a 30 year journey that I'm still on. But what I can say, Allan, as I speak to you today, I am happier now than I've ever been in my life. My life is filled with joy. My passion, which is writing and speaking, I get to do that as a living, which is amazing. And last but not least, I'm fulfilling my divine purpose, because I think every human being has a unique purpose, and it is our responsibility to figure out what that is. And the only way we'll ever do that is to be willing to do our inner work, take that inner journey to wake up to and discover who we really are.

[00:29:35.190] – Allan

Yeah, I was the corporate guy. I was the guy who worked his way up, vice president before I was 39, this kind of thing. And I was miserable, just completely miserable. I had all this stuff. I had all this stuff, and I had all the money, and I felt great. I mean, you say, okay, I made more money. I got a raise, my bonus comes, all this stuff is great. But I was just miserable because I wasn't being authentic to myself. I wasn't being who I needed to be, and I could be great at a job, but that's all that defined me at that point in my life. And there was no passion to it anymore. There was no anything. It was just a point where I was like, okay, this is who I am, and this is what I do. And I can be really good at it, and I can feel good when people acknowledge that I'm good at it. But it just really didn't bring me together until I realized that knowing just one thing that helped me and being willing to share that one thing with someone else in an authentic, open way, where

[00:30:46.210] – Allan

I can say I was flawed. I was broken. I was miserable. While my path won't necessarily be your path, this is where I went. And what I'm doing now is every time I'm faced with a Pivot, if you will, something has to change. I got laid off from a corporate job, and I went home, and I told my wife, getting laid off from this job, I'm not going back. I don't like those people. I don't like who they make me. I don't like what they make me do. I don't like laying people off. I don't like the job that I had. What I like is helping someone else change their health and fitness. What I like is reading a book like yours and having this conversation, knowing that someone else is going to hear your message, and it's going to help them. I think too often we're like, well, yeah, but I've got the kids. Yeah. I'm like, fine, figure that out. But in the end, until you're really focused on who would be the best you, you could be right now, and what can you do, you talked about reading books on happiness and joy and psychology and those types of things.

[00:32:04.600] – Allan

You didn't immediately go to, wow, my depression is over, and I'm there. It was a journey. It was a journey that you took, and I really appreciate that you shared that in this book, because it's just kind of one of those things to say, no, happiness is not an overnight success thing. Joy is not an overnight success thing. It's built. It's built through experience, and it's built through authenticity, and it's built from, as you acknowledge in your book, diving deep and actually turning out some of the muck that you've buried back there that we're not supposed to talk about. We're supposed to just suck it up and keep moving forward because we're men, and that's what we do. My new thing, I'm good at carrying things because that's around the bed and breakfast, that's sort of my thing. I carry luggage upstairs and downstairs. I carry water bottles upstairs and downstairs because I'm the best equipped to do that. But that's not my passion. Yes, we need water upstairs. I don't mind taking water upstairs, but it's just knowing that, okay, within the realms of what I have control over, these are the best decisions for me and the people that I love.

[00:33:21.950] – Allan

And you had a Venn diagram, so if anyone's struggling with this, you actually have the diagram in the book where you can go through and say, okay, what do I enjoy? What are people going to value? What are they going to pay me for? What would I enjoy? What am I good at? What would other people pay me for? And what would benefit the world? And when you find that intersection, which is not something you just find today, but when you find that intersection and you're working in that space, it's pretty awesome.

[00:33:55.050] – Michael

Yeah. Because your purpose will be found at the intersection of that which you love to do and that which other people need. So when you take what you love to do, for example, you love inspiring people with your message and doing the radio show, right? And people need to hear what's possible. People need to hear examples of the challenges and the things that we go through so that they can know that, okay, if I'm going through some stuff, he got through it, so maybe I can get through. So in essence, what you're doing is you're being in service to humanity. And it is in being in service to humanity that we have a feeling of fulfillment. You can't get that feeling of fulfillment because you get a fat check, right? Okay,

[00:34:46.910] – Allan

nothing wrong with it. There's nothing wrong with a big fat.

[00:34:49.680] – Michael

Check, but nothing wrong with getting a big fat check. And it feels great to have money in your checking account. So please don't hear me say that money is bad in any way. But I can assure you, after having all the money and losing it all and now regaining it, thank God. But the feeling of knowing that I've impacted somebody's life in a positive way, for example, somebody sends me an email saying how I literally changed their life with my book. You can't put a price on that. The feeling of connectedness. And so I think for men, because actually, 80% of my books are targeted specifically to men. Because I believe the greatest challenge we have in our society today is to redefine manhood and masculinity. And for men, that's a really difficult thing to do because we're trapped in this antiquated paradigm of masculinity that men are really holding on to even though it's no longer sustainable. But now men are starting to wake up and they're going, you know what? Maybe there's a different way. And so they listen to a show like this, or they read one of my books, or they do something that goes, oh, damn, I've been doing the man thing all wrong.

[00:36:11.530] – Michael

Because here's the key. I think this is the key that most men will balk at. Vulnerability is a superpower. When we can be honest and authentic and vulnerable with ourselves and with others. It's a superpower. It's what allows us to connect. See, because you can't be relational if you're unwilling to be emotional. And emotions, the expression of emotions, is a vulnerable place, which men really struggle with. But I can assure you, when we get comfortable there, there's magic that happens. I wish I could have put it into words for men who go, There he goes, talking about those feelings again. No, but there's a magic that happens when you connect with who you really are. And then you create a space to allow others to do the same. Because our hearts connect. And there's a part of us that connects to each other. And then it's a beautiful thing to see men get past all the toughness, the alpha male kind of macho attitude and go, you know what? Maybe I'm a little scared right now, or maybe I'm a little sad right now and I just need to share and there's so much healing in that process.

[00:37:43.750] – Michael

But again, men are really struggling with it. But the good news is, again, I started writing back in 95, and back in 95, there were very few men talking about this new paradigm of masculinity that I'm talking about. But now there's unlimited coaches and programs and men are waking up, I believe. So just being on your show gives me another reason for optimism that you're even having this conversation with me today. And again, it just fills me with hope.

[00:38:12.690] – Allan

Well, you can't fix what you're not willing to admit is broken.

[00:38:19.550] – Michael

Yeah.

[00:38:20.530] – Allan

You can sit there and say, yeah, someone gets in your car and, hey, dude, what's what's that ping? I keep I keep hearing a ping. No, you don't hear nothing. You don't hear nothing. Everything's fine. Car is fine. Well, you're never going to fix that car because you're not willing to admit there's just something wrong. And your internal dialogue, you're telling yourself about that ping every day, but you're just trying to ignore it. And until you open up and go to that voice and say, okay, let's talk about this ping. What's going on here? And sometimes you need help with that and sometimes you can do that conversation on your own. But you get into your head and you're like, why am I the way I am? Why are things the way they are? And most of us, I think, will point to something we did really well. When I had my problems, I'm like, why do I suck so much at this? I'm so good at everything else or all these other things. Why is this thing because it was my health, it was my fitness, it was my relationships. I'm like, why is it that I can be the best at this corporate job?

[00:39:28.920] – Allan

I'm like, literally, it's almost like it just happens for me now. I don't even feel like I'm working at it. It just happens. And why am I so good at that? Why? But I've been able to do the hard, hard things that other people can't do or they know there's very hard, and I was able to do those. And then it came down to a basic word in my head, and it was commitment and it was me waking myself up and saying, Allan, you just haven't committed yourself to change. And until you do, you're going to keep being this. And until I told myself, well, no, this isn't good enough for me. I deserve better. And then again, I think I was fortunate. It took me eight years to have that conversation, but I think I was fortunate in that I recognized that being flawed was not what was holding me back. The flaw was the ping in the car that could be fixed, but I had to be willing to accept the ping to get fixed, if that makes sense to you.

[00:40:42.000] – Michael

Sure. And here's the thing. And we'll use the metaphor that the human body is like a vehicle, because if we're driving a vehicle and the check engine light comes on, it's letting us know.

[00:40:58.930] – Allan

One time my wife is like, well, yeah, it'll go off. Just keep driving.

[00:41:04.210] – Michael

And that's what we do. Right. We just ignore it. Right?

[00:41:08.200] – Allan

Yeah.

[00:41:08.470] – Michael

Well, see, the human body is always sending us signals that something needs to be looked at. For example, high blood pressure is a signal. What am I thinking of? Cholesterol. High cholesterol. These are all signals that the body is saying something's wrong, so you need to take care of it. And so the key is, number one, identify that something's wrong. Make a commitment that you're going to at least investigate what might be wrong. And this is where men fall short. I've heard so many men say, for example, prostate cancer. Prostate cancer, unfortunately, is very prevalent with black males. Right. And so I was having a conversation with a friend of mine who happened to be black about having a prostate exam. Man, I ain't going to have no prostate exam. Why not? No, what he didn't want to say is he was homophobic and he didn't want a guy sticking finger up his butt. And I'm making fun of it. But the truth is, imagine how many lives could be saved if we could get men to understand that this simple procedure can save your life. That simple procedure could say, I mean, literally thousands of men die because they're afraid or embarrassed to get that simple test.

[00:42:45.350] – Michael

And so again, that's why we have to change that conversation. As men, we've got to get comfortable being uncomfortable. And one way to do that is by having conversations like this.

[00:42:56.970] – Allan

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

[00:43:09.840] – Michael

I'm a huge proponent of unpacking your emotional baggage. That's the piece that men deny. If we're willing to unpack our emotional baggage, I can assure you a lot of the other issues that we're dealing with will kind of take care of themselves. For example, a lot of people overeat because of something emotional. So if you unpack that emotional baggage first, then it sets you up to live a happier, healthier life. Second thing, huge proponent of meditation. Meditation, to me, it's high priority. And so a lot of people have this misconception about meditation, as though you're attempting to make your mind go blank. That's not meditation. Meditation is simply a practice, and mindfulness is the result of that practice. So when I learn to meditate, I simply learn how to be aware and mindful what I'm thinking, how I'm feeling, what I believe. So meditation to me, is high priority. And last but not least is exercise. The body is designed to move, so you got to do something. Even if it's just walking, it's designed to move. So make sure that you're utilizing this amazing thing called the human body by exercising it. Make sure you're eating right, taking care of it physically, and you're on your way.

[00:44:34.790] – Allan

Great. Michael, if someone wanted to learn more about you and your book and your other books, where would you like for me to send them?

[00:44:43.550] – Michael

Just send them to coachmichaeltaylor.com, nice and simple. And that's Michael. Michael. coachmichaeltaylor.com.

[00:44:52.750] – Allan

You can go to 40plusfitness.com 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/582. And I'll be sure to have a link there. Michael, thank you so much for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

[00:45:04.150] – Michael

Well, thank you so much for what you're doing, because again, it takes collaboration. It takes us coming together, especially as men, sharing this information to help men live healthier lives.

Post Show/Recap

[00:45:14.710] – Allan

Welcome back, Ras.

[00:45:16.350] – Rachel

Hey, Allan. I love his title. I'm not okay with Gray. I do love that because I'm not okay with my gray hair quite yet. But.

[00:45:27.750] – Allan

The interesting thing is, I think he may have said it on the podcast, or we may have said it when we were talking offline, I'm not sure, because he and I kept having a conversation afterwards. I do that every once in a while. But he really didn't mean gray from the hair perspective so much as what just people look at aging, and I think you can say, okay, well, I don't know. When I was in my teens and someone was over 30, man, they were way old. And the people that were over 50, oh, my God, they might just die any minute. My great grandmother, I remember she was in her 80s, and I was like, Holy crap, she's older than dirt.

[00:46:10.480] – Rachel

Right?

[00:46:10.790] – Allan

I think the phrase they used back then was, she's older than dirt. And it's cool because you have these stories, but I think things are just very different now in that we are aware that there's this aging curve, and we're aware that we can actually do something about it, and so this generation, the baby boomers, and then coming into X generation, we started looking at this very differently. The baby boomers started living longer because of modern medicine and everything else. And the next generation, we're kind of coming in and saying, well, I don't want to just live to a certain age. I want to thrive. I still want to have great relationships. I still want to enjoy myself. I still want to go out there and do sometimes kind of crazy things. And that's part of the living experience. And so I think that's what he really meant by the title was he didn't want to just fade out and disappear like a lot of people seem to seem to do and have done, and they probably still will do, but some people just don't live the last 20 30 years of their life. They just exist.

[00:47:30.750] – Allan

And that wasn't good enough for him. So he wanted more out of life. He wants a great career, he wants a great relationship with his wife, and he wants a great relationship with his friends. And so it's just a conversation point of saying, what are you doing today? To not just fade out.

[00:47:52.280] – Rachel

Right. Well, it's an interesting concept, too, that when we're young, we think we have all the time in the world to take all these elaborate vacations and do all these things, but by the time we get to our retirement age, what kind of shape are we going to be in to do all these things? So it's an interesting concept on aging in that, just like you said, when I was young, I thought my grandparents were super old, but now that I'm hitting 50, I'll be 52 this year. I'm like, hey, I got all this energy. I've got all this ability to go hiking and take all these fun vacations and see all these things. I want to be active and busy. I just don't want to sit around and watching TV all day.

[00:48:40.950] – Allan

That's what they did. You're not going to miss an episode of Jeopardy. And reality is, Jeopardy would probably still be on.

[00:48:50.190] – Rachel

Oh, gosh, yeah.

[00:48:51.040] – Allan

When we're in our 70s and 80s, sure, it'll be a different host, but it's just kind of one of those conversations of, okay, take a deep, deep look at yourself. Okay? And for men, sometimes this is just really hard, is to just say, okay, am I doing the things that I as a man, need to do? To not just provide, but to have the right relationships and to be taking care of myself and recognize that I'm not invincible?

[00:49:32.960] – Rachel

Right.

[00:49:33.480] – Allan

I can be broken. I'm a pretty darn durable person. I can get bumped around and beat up, It's just kind of odd. I remember my grandparents when they were my age, when they were my age, the conversations that older people would have is, well, how's your bursitis? And how's this? How's your varicose veins? Which stay tuned to next week. We'll be talking about that. What was that last week we talked about a couple of weeks ago? Yeah, but it's like, those are the conversations. What's your medical element of the week? And I don't really have a lot of those. I don't wake up sore. I don't wake up hurt. I don't have a joint. Yeah, I've torn a rotator cuff, but I tore that like I would have if I was in college. It just popped, it's done. And I was happened to be military pressing, fairly heavy dumbbells at the time. Not smart, but it was what it was. But I think that's kind of the point is you can turn your brain off to that stuff and think you're invincible, but you're not, right? It's hard for a guy, because, like I said, I don't have a lot of those ailments.

[00:50:50.260] – Allan

I don't have a lot of those problems. I don't have to worry about my A1C. I don't have to worry about a lot of different things. So I don't take any medications at all, and I'm generally healthy. And so the thing is, I know at some point I'm going to need help. I'm going to need something's going to happen. I'm going to get sick at some level, I'm going to get old at some level, and I am going to have to ask for help someday. Yeah. And so it's just the question of having the relationships and having the self awareness and the self dignity to know when that is and to not be stubborn about it and say, okay, I guess I'm just not eating pickles anymore because I can't open a pickle jar by myself. No, I'm going to find someone to help me open that pickle jar because I like pickles, and I'm not going to be ashamed of it at any stretch. If I can't open the pickle jar, I can't open the pickle jar. It's just that acceptance of we are going through an aging curve. Even if we're fighting it tooth and nail and we're doing all the right things, it's still happening, we just can do it on our terms.

[00:51:58.310] – Rachel

Well, that's the question. How long can you put that off? Like, how long can you be as active as you can be so that you're not struggling to open a pickle jar when you're 60, 70 or 80 years old? I mean, foreseeably, as long as you manage your health and like you do Alan, you move a lot, you eat well, you could put that limitation off for quite some time, as long as you position your life to do so.

[00:52:25.120] – Allan

But it's still, at some point, probably going to come. Actually, I'm working right now on getting a woman on. She's 102 years old, or at least she was when the book was written. And so I don't know how old she's going to be when I interview her, but I'm like, yeah, I can sit there and joke about being over 100, but just recognizing that, yeah, things are probably going to be a little different when I'm 100. And I might not be able to open a pickle jar and I'm going to be able to wipe my own ass. I can tell you.

[00:52:58.570] – Rachel

Priorities. Yes, priorities.

[00:53:03.610] – Allan

And so I think that's really, this book is just about understanding yourself, particularly as a man, because it was written by a man, and it was predominantly written for men because women tend to open up a little bit easier to their friends about how they're feeling and what's going on in their world. They're much more likely to ask for help than a man is, and they're much more likely to have people around them as as a social caring network than men are. And we men, we can fix that. We can we can make some decisions for ourselves and say, okay, you know, I'm going to start building deeper relationships. I'm going to start sharing things with my wife and with my friends that before wouldn't have shared or wouldn't have said. And so I started this probably around 15 years ago. So I tell people I was the fat bastard, and the bastard part was a big part of it. It wasn't just the fat part. I was that, too. But I decided that I would tell my friends every time I see them that I love them, okay. And for a man to tell, I love you, man, and not just that I'm drunk hugging you, I love you, man kind of thing, but just to really let them know that I care deeply about you as a person.

[00:54:26.310] – Allan

It's kind of one of those things where when you start doing that, it just has this reverberation, this resonance to your life that is significant. And so I just want to encourage you to be thinking about the relationships that you have and be thinking about how the things around you that are good how can we make more of those how can we have more of those experiences and the things that are not serving you? How can we move very far away from those things and just not have them in our lives? Or if we have to have them in our lives, how can we just make them mean less how can we make them have less of an impact on us? And so this is a really good book for that. If you're just thinking, okay, I don't want to fade out. I want to actually have a really exciting second half of my life. And if that's in your head, then this is a good book for you.

[00:55:21.750] – Rachel

That sounds great. Sounds like a great book and a really neat guy. Michael sounds like a neat person.

[00:55:27.210] – Allan

Yeah, he is.

[00:55:29.210] – Rachel

Good.

[00:55:30.120] – Allan

I guess I'll talk to you next week. Okay

[00:55:32.060] – Rachel

great, take care.

[00:55:33.160] – Allan

You too.

Music by Dave Gerhart

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Let's Say Hello

[00:02:21.050] – Coach Allan

Hello, Ras. How are you today?

[00:02:23.040] – Coach Rachel

Good, Allan. How are you?

[00:02:24.910] – Coach Allan

I'm doing all right.

[00:02:26.320] – Coach Rachel

Good.

[00:02:28.510] – Coach Allan

We record this a few weeks ahead. So we're still getting started on the Christmas season stuff. It's the parades and the Santa stuff and all of that. But this is going to go live. This is the first episode of 2023.

[00:02:45.910] – Coach Rachel

Happy New Year.

[00:02:46.860] – Coach Allan

Happy New Year. Exactly. And with New Year, a lot of people go in with their resolutions. Yes, I've had a lot of conversations with people because people are right now, they're doing again, we're doing this in December, so bear with me. But I try to help reporters. They want to interview someone or they want some material from a personal trainer. And the question always comes up this time of year, how do we stick with our New Year's resolution? So I've been having that conversation a few times at various levels, and that's really what I wanted this episode today to really be about was, okay, you've decided you want to do something, but I'm going to start out and just tell you that's not good enough. It's just not. And there's a lot of reasons, and you can listen to this episode and see a lot of reasons why what you're doing might not be working for you long term or short term or whatever, but I want to put that out there.

[00:03:50.730] – Coach Allan

Tammy had to go back to the States because her mother had a health issue.

[00:03:54.460] – Coach Rachel

Oh, no.

[00:03:55.770] – Coach Allan

She went back to the States, and her mother's out of the hospital now.

[00:03:59.600] – Coach Rachel

Good.

[00:04:00.320] – Coach Allan

And so she's going to have to go through treatment and things like that, and it's a permanent treatment. So, again, as we get into this episode, and particularly in the discussion after, this is where it all comes from. You start looking forward, and you start seeing your future if you don't do something. So, yeah, so a lot going on.

[00:04:19.190] – Coach Allan

I'm here by myself at Lula's, but right now, fortunately, we're very, very slow. I think we have one guest oh, nice. For about the next three or four days, which is good, because I've got a lot to catch up on with everything else. But yeah, I'm basically running Lulas by myself, and through Christmas, I'll be doing that. Now, Christmas will be busy, and I'll have, I think, 14 or 15 breakfasts and all kinds of stuff. So I'm going to be moving. I'll be moving a lot over the course of the holidays to get this stuff done.

[00:04:49.740] – Coach Rachel

Good.

[00:04:51.530] – Coach Allan

It's good we're busy. It's a good month. But how are things up there?

[00:04:56.480] – Coach Rachel

Good. A lot colder than what you got down there, Allan.

[00:04:59.950] – Coach Allan

It's cold enough.

[00:05:01.030] – Coach Allan

It was down in the 70s today. And wearing a sweatshirt to kind of show you how wimpy I am.

[00:05:09.090] – Coach Rachel

We got 25 up here, so as long as it's on the plus side, I'm okay when it gets to be negative that it gets really cold.

[00:05:16.730] – Coach Allan

But Mike can't ice fish unless it gets

[00:05:19.320] – Coach Allan

That is true. So that is the bonus. We do have ice. It's forming now, and he's looking forward to fish camp coming up in the next month or two, I think. But, yeah, he's recovering well, and we're doing a lot of resting, which is nice because it's the holiday season up here as well. So we're just kind of taking it easy, enjoying this cooler weather as best we can.

[00:05:41.950] – Coach Allan

All right, well, are you ready to talk about fitness goals?

[00:05:45.540] – Coach Rachel

Sure.

Episode: How to get going and keep going on your fitness goals

I did a little survey on our Facebook group the other day about what was holding people back, what was keeping them from meeting their health and fitness goals, or what their basic struggle was. And I got one resounding answer. The biggest struggle that most of us face when trying to get and stay fit is motivation. But here's the thing. Motivation just doesn't happen. It's not something that's going to show up for you when you need it. Instead, we need to rely on commitment. So commitment will carry us. And I've had this conversation many, many times, but I'm going to repeat it right here so you can kind of get an idea of what's going on. So a commitment starts with a very basic thing. It starts with a why. Why do you want to be healthy and fit? What's driving you to do this? And then the second part of commitment is, what does that actually look like? Do you know what fitness is like or going to be like for you? Do you have some end vision of what this will be? So let me tell you a basic story of how all of this came together for me, because I wanted to be healthy and fit.

I missed being athletic. I missed doing the things that I was doing. And I was very miserable with the fact that I couldn't do those things. So I had some drivers behind me. I had I had some reasons to do it, but they really weren't the right kind of reasons. And then I come along to a moment in my life where my daughter, Rebecca, I call her Becca had gotten into CrossFit and these obstacle course races and all this kind of stuff, and she was basically a mini me at this point. She was living the life that I used to live, and I missed it desperately. And so one day she said to me, hey, Daddy, I'm going to be doing this CrossFit thing. I want you to come watch me do it. And to be honest with you, man, that was a kick in the teeth for my daughter to say, hey, come watch me do this. The realization was I did not want to be a spectator in my daughter's life. I wanted to be a participant. I wanted to be actively engaged in doing things with my daughter. And if the things she loved were things I couldn't do, then I couldn't be that person.

I would have to be the spectator. And that just really wasn't good enough for me. So for me, I can actually point to the moment, I can point to that conversation, and I can point to waking up the next morning in a hotel room a little hungover, like very hungover, and just realizing that this was the missing element. Commitment was the missing element. I had never really committed. Now, if you're struggling to get to your why, there is an exercise to help you dig deeper, to really get to something tangible and emotional and real. And it's called the five whys. Okay, so if I ask you why you want to get fit, and you tell me, well, I don't want to breathe so heavy when I'm going up the stairs. And I did the little five year or eight year old toddler thing, a kid thing, and I said Why? You say, well, when I walk up the stairs and I start breathing really heavy, it's embarrassing. Why? Well, because I am not fit. And I'm like, okay, well, why is breathing heavy the problem? Well, the why would be well, everybody's kind of looking at me while I'm trying to catch my breath.

I'm bent over and I realize that as I'm sitting there just really trying to catch my breath, it's kind of making a scene at work and I think people are looking down at me. Why?

Well, I should be able to walk.

Up a flight of stairs, perform my job, do my thing, and not be superwinded. And so when you take that y down, this becomes I want to be able to perform better at work. So your fitness why? Could be very much different from why you think it's your why. You may think your why is that you just want to be more fit, but the reality is it's affecting your confidence, it's affecting maybe your work performance, it's affecting how people are looking at you. And so you can kind of see that there's this deeper emotional thing that's going on as you start to put this together. So for me, not wanting to be a spectator in my daughter's life, wanting to be a participant, okay, that was not at the surface level. At the surface level, I was like, well, I used to be athletic, I'd like to be athletic again. Great. Why? Well, because when I was athletic, I had enjoyed myself, I had a lot of energy. Why do you want that? Well, because that made me feel younger, it made me feel stronger, it made me feel like I belong and I could stick with people.

Well, why is that important to you? Well, because my daughter is doing this stuff and I want to be able to do it with her and not be a spectator. So you kind of see how I can take those five whys? And I can just drill, I can just start drilling down until I get to the core essence of what this is. I was an athlete. I'm not anymore. I want to be able to keep up with my daughter and do things she's doing athletic things. I need to be able to do athletic things. So you see the difference in just saying I should be an athlete. I was an athlete to now taking it down to this deeper, deeper level where it's now rooted in who I am as a person and how I want to live my life. I'll make the joke that I want to be able to wipe my own ass when I'm 105. OK, and why? Because I don't want someone to have to do it for me. I don't want to be embarrassed about how I'm living my life, and I don't want to be in a situation where I'm dependent on other people, particularly my family to take care of me.

I see myself as the caretaker, and I want to be that person then as much as I want it now. So you can kind of see how as you keep digging, you're going to get down to this point, and then as you start looking at your vision, there's a direct link to what this is all about. So some things may have happened in your life that have got you really thinking about this this year. So one is maybe your doctor told you there are signs of osteopnia, you're losing bone mass, and you need to do something, and you don't want to be that frail old person. Okay? Or maybe you're struggling with just everyday tasks. So there's a jar of pickles sitting there on the counter you can't open. And now you have to wait till someone stronger than you comes home to open that jar of pickles for you. That's not a place you want to be. Or you find yourself as I said, you go up a flight of stairs and you can't catch your breath. Or you find yourself struggling with your balance. And this is keeping you from doing things you love, like playing tennis, or like with my grandfather playing golf, he had to quit golf because he didn't have his balance.

And sometimes it's just something fun.

You know, there's people here on the.

Island talking about getting together and doing pickleball, and I'm like, well, that'd be fun. And so they're going to get the stuff together. At some point, I'm going to want to go out there and play, and I'm not going to want to be silly embarrassed. So I'll probably start doing some training toward my vision of being a better pickleball player. Again, never played it, haven't played it. I played tennis some when I was younger, assuming it's fairly close to the same game. So some of those skills will probably rub off a little bit.

But I'm actually going to do some.

Things to make sure that I'm misfit as I need to be to be able to enjoy some pickleball. So you can kind of see how now is your tying your vision, tying how you want to live your life, the things you want to do for fitness, they all tie into this thing, this whole thing of why do you want to do this and what does it look like and what does it mean to you? And all those different things that come together as a commitment and a commitment of living healthy and fit life. Now, as you get into the actions of things that you're going to need to do to get more fit, you got to line up the things that will tell you you're doing it. And that's where the smart art goals again, smart art, where there's an extra A in smart goals. And I talked about this in detail on episode 564. So I'm not going to go into much detail here. I encourage you to go check that out. If you're looking for ways to do your building blocks to get you from point A to point Z, you can't just do that.

You got to work through each one. And so smart goals are specific. They're measurable, they're attainable, they're actionable, they're relevant, meaning they tie to your vision and they're timely. So literally you sit down and say, what's my vision? How do I have a specific goal that's between here and there. It's measurable, it's attainable, it's time bound and above all it's an action. It's not something that I can say I'm able to do, I did, I will do, I have done that kind of thing.

It's going to be actionable.

So go back to episode 564 maybe after you listen to this as you're looking to put your smart goals together. Okay, now let's break down the process. You're going to have these different struggles as you get into dealing with motivation. So the commitment is really important, but you're going to have to look at this whole thing of who you are. So there's this whole self awareness layer under motivation. So people will say I don't have motivation and I say you are not committed. Once you're committed, the motivation is a ton easier, but you're just not quite there yet. So let's start with self awareness and what you need to look at. Now some of the people in the Facebook group, which you can go to, 40 plusfitnesspodcast. comGROUP if you want to join the group, some of them said they had difficulty starting and other people said they had difficulty to keep going. So I want to talk about those two things because they're slightly different spends on the same thing. Okay? When you're having trouble getting started, you're having trouble with initiation. You're unable to initiate. Okay? And so what's happening here is you're standing still or sitting still and you have no inertia.

There's nothing to push you forward. So what you're looking for is some motivation, some thing to push you to get you moving, okay? To start. That's important. Okay? The other part of it is the continuing to go. And this is a big play on consistency. If you're not consistent, you probably won't see the benefits of the work that you're doing. The once and done doesn't happen in fitness. It's almost never can. You just do one thing one time and you've reached some fitness goal. It just doesn't work that way. So once you start doing something, you need to be consistent with it to see the results down the line. Now how do we get started and how do we keep going? We've got this whole mindset now where we're committed to do this very important. Do that first, but then there's the next part and this is where it all kind of starts to come together. So to get started and keep going, you have to be accountable. You have to have accountability. This is a key tool that a lot of people skip. They're like, I want to do it. I'll just do it.

And maybe you try it, and then you fall, or maybe you just don't even try, and you never even get into it. So have you ever needed to do something but based on where you were, it just wasn't you weren't able to do it? Okay. And I want to take you through a story to kind of give you an idea of what was going on for me with this. Okay? So I was in Orlando, and I was on a panel while we were discussing audit stuff, fraud stuff, okay? So I had all these people I'm sitting on stage, I'm sitting in the panel. And the night before, I had been out with friends that I know because we all kind of went to these things together. So I'd run into the same people. So I was out with some people on you, and I'd gotten pretty much chewed up by some mosquitoes all over my back. And so my back was itching like crazy. But here I am sitting on stage, so I really can't do anything about it. I'm itching like crazy. I'm on the panel. And even parts of it, I knew I couldn't even reach.

If I tried to reach back there and start scratching my back, I wasn't going to be able to do it. So I waited. I kind of gritted my teeth, and I got through it. Now, as soon as the thing was over and I was able to finish answering questions and get off the stage and move away, I went over and I found a vacant spot in the convention center area. And there was a doorway. And I was able to start scratching my back, rubbing my back against the door frame, similar to how a bear would rub it back against a tree. I've never seen a real bear do that, but they do it in cartoons, and they do it on TV all the time. But I was scratching my back against a tree, against that door frame, and someone walks around the corner, and it's kind of embarrassing. But the base point of what I'm trying to get to is when people are watching you, you act differently. You stop doing things that you know you will be embarrassed for people to know you did. And you put off doing things. You hold back, you grit your teeth and get things done that you didn't necessarily feel you could do or you didn't want to do.

But you wouldn't do this in front of someone. That's accountability. That's how this works. It's in your head. Someone's watching, someone cares. I'm going to do this. Now. When someone's watching us, obviously we're doing something a little different, right? So this is accountability. And in your health and fitness journey, this is important and this is how you can think about it from a perspective of getting things done. So I'm going to ask you to remember a time, and this is the way back machine. So this is well before cell phones, okay? And you remember you were going to go for a trip. So you're driving, and your mother would say, you probably remember this, call me when you get there. Now, what did that do? It did a few things. One is it made you accountable to drive safely because you now knew that your mother was aware of when you were due to arrive at a certain place. And she cares, so she's paying attention. So you're probably going to drive a little safer, and you're going to go directly where you're supposed to go. Because if you're supposed to get there at 05:00 and you don't call your mother at 05:00, you know she's going to be worried about you.

So you get there. Now, we didn't have cell phones, so there was no real way, unless you stopped somewhere for a payphone to say, hey, I'm running a little late. But for the most part, you were driving until you got there. And you get there and you call your mom, hey, mom got here. Everything's cool. Good. You are accountable to your mother. You had respect for your mother. You knew she was looking. You knew what she was looking for, and you delivered. Now another one. And what I call there is I call that authority accountability. So you have a coach leader type of accountability where you're responsible. You feel responsible to somebody. They're looking out over you. They care about you. They're a leader. They're basically a leader or a coach, and they're there to look after you. Okay? Now, the other kind of accountability that's out there is a little different, but just as important and just as valuable, and we call that social accountability. So here's the story. Let's say, okay, you tell your friends, your friends all agree, hey, we're going to go watch the movie at 630. Now, back before cell phones, they want to watch the 07:00 show.

We're all going to meet at the movie theater in the game room at 630. Guess where you were pretty much before or after? Right around 630, you're at the game room. Why? Because you were socially responsible to these individuals. You wanted their social approval. You knew they were looking for you. They knew you knew that you were supposed to be there. They were going to be there. Okay, so this is now social accountability. So we have the two types of accountability. We have the leader coach accountability, which is sort of from a perspective of respect and authority. And then we have the social accountability, which is really about, I care what they think about me, and I want to be responsible to them, and I want to be liked and loved and respected as well. So those two tools are really, really valuable and you want to look at accountability from those two lenses. Okay. So you kind of get the idea that if you have both the leader, the leader coach accountability available to you and you have the social accountability to you, there's two different ways that you can approach this problem. So let's talk a little bit about the getting started.

Now what's a good level of authority or good level of accounting accountability? I kind of gave you the answer there, but what's the type of accountability that's best for getting started? That is the leader coach type because the leader coach type is going to be there to kind of push you. Like I said, you have inertia holding you back. So you're sitting still and you need something to push you. Now most of our social relationships, they're not in the pushing mode. They're not necessarily going to make you do things you don't want to do because again, they're looking at you socially as well. So they're not the best people to kind of push you to start. But a leader coach form of accountability is much better at that initial push, that initial go. And there's a lot of reasons behind that. You have the right coach, the right leader and the other side of it is typically you're also paying these people and if you're making the payment and you're committing to it and you're there, you're going to show up and the coach is going to get you going, the leader is going to get you moving.

And so as we start going, that breaks that inertia and now you're moving. So if getting started is your problem, I would consider looking for a coach or leader that's going to push you just to get you started. Okay. Now the other type of accountability, social accountability is really good on the keep going part. So the more people you surround yourself that are like what you want to be or are like minded enough and moving in the same direction you are because they want the same things for themselves, you're creating a social accountability network that's moving you in the right direction. Our Facebook group, again you go to 40 Plusfitnesspodcastgroup is a great way to put people in your life that are like minded and moving in the same direction you are. So there's lots of opportunity there for you to build that social network. Okay? Now there are two other ways to look at accountability that I want to talk about. So there is the extrinsic motivation that is going to come to us from other people. So remember we talked about the coach, right? The coach, the coach is going to ask you to do things and you're going to want to do it because you know the coach is looking and you know the coach cares.

So now you're doing things that's coming from an extrinsic perspective. So initially the getting started part that's really valuable, right? It gets you started. It initiates movement. It gets you moving. That's really good. Particularly if that's where you struggle most. Now if your struggle is on the going forward, then extrinsic motivation can work. But it gets a little tedious because again the coach is asking, you're saying yes, you're moving. Coach is asking you're saying yes, you're moving. So you kind of see where it just builds this kind of little loop and it's great. But if you're looking for the consistency to keep happening, you got to start moving towards a different style of motivation. It can't stay extrinsic. You have to move it toward the intrinsic or internal. So as you're looking at accountability, remember there's coach leader accountability which is some individual that you respect and respond to. And there's social accountability which are the people around you that you know care and you want to be a part of that social group. You're doing those two things. That's the accountability piece. Now the motivation piece is extrinsic. So all of that accountability is an extrinsic motivator.

They're pushing you to go and keep going. But where you're really going to get value out of this whole process. And this is a big, big thing. It's a hard thing but when it starts to happen you're going to feel it. You're going to feel the momentum of this stuff shift everything you're trying to do with your health and fitness goals. There's just going to be this fundamental shift in the way you approach things and that's when you can internalize the motivation. That's when it becomes intrinsic. Now as you do that now you're driven. And so what's happening is at first you didn't really want to work out. You said, I don't like to work out. I don't like to sweat. I don't like to use my muscles and lift weights. I don't like to do these things. Your coach is kind of moving. You your leader. Coach accountability is kind of pushing you to start. You start lifting, you start doing some things. You're like, I still don't like this, but I'm doing it. And then you have the social group that's like, hey, have you lost a little bit of weight? Hey, you're going to the gym?

That's awesome. Can I go to the gym with you? Can I be around when you're doing this stuff? Can I be a part of your life? You're bringing in and building this accountability network that's both coach leader and social and you've got that in your life now. You're still dealing and using extrinsic motivation to try to drive all of this behavior once you start to bring it inside. So you're doing and now you're getting and once you start getting, you're like, hey, I can lift more than I was able to lift last week or last month. I'm getting stronger. I'm succeeding in this thing that I wanted to do and I'm succeeding. Better than I even thought maybe I could. Okay? Once those things start falling in place you're like, well, I actually want to get stronger, I actually want to lift weights. How weird is that? That is intrinsic motivation when it's sort of this thing where you're like, well no, it's like your friend calls you and say, hey, let's go meet up and do this thing. And like, okay, let me get my workout in and then I'll meet you there. When your brain starts doing that and there's intrinsic motivation for you to still get it done, boom.

That's magic, right? So just to kind of wrap this all up and I want to put one more piece of information out there before we close up. But you've got to start with the commitment. Why do you want this and where are you going? Second, what are you going to do to get moving forward and to keep moving forward? And that starts with accountability. Accountability is the extrinsic motivation that you need to make this start happening. And then we got to push it and push it until we get to success, some form of success. Something that's going to say, okay, I get it, my body is responding, this actually feels good. And now I have this intrinsic motivation to do it and keep doing it. Okay, so now we're moving. Now the only other piece I want to throw in here before we close this out is that there's a thing called pace. And I get into pace really deep on episode 504 and so I'd encourage you to go there if you want to learn more about pace. But the reality of it is based on where we are and that's going to be in the self awareness piece, that's going to be in the commitment piece.

They're going to be limits and they're going to be capability. There's going to be things in your life that are going to tell you you're moving too fast, you're moving too slow. And I want you to listen to the voices that are driving you, but I don't want them to drive you to a point of injury and worse. Because again, if you stop because you're injured, you've got to start all over. OK? And that can be really, really hard, especially if you haven't really built the intrinsic motivation. And now that you have to take this break to recover, you might struggle with the fact that you do have to recover. So understand that pace is about what you can do with what you have. If you can sprint, it's time to sprint, it's time to get enough Ferrari and haul it, then do it. But if you've got a lot going on in your life or you're trying to work around an injury or an illness, then you're in a much slower vehicle and you have to accept that as what you can do with what you have. Okay? So pace is a hard one and I don't want that to ever derail you but just recognize that it's out there.

You can't go too fast but you also don't need to go too slow. So you got to find the right pace for you and that's where a coach can again really come in handy is they can get you started and they can get you started in the right way. Where you're working at the right pace you're avoiding injury and as a result you're getting that value out of the work which helps you move from an extrinsic model, an external model of motivation to an intrinsic model of motivation. Now I know I threw a lot at you and this is not easy stuff. It isn't. But you start with the commitment it gets a lot easier and then you hire the coaches. You do what you got to do to put the right people around you to get that accountability layer in there. And then you start understanding that motivation doesn't come first. It comes last. Once you get moving the motivation builds. Motivation starts externally and it comes internally. It moves in. So as you do better the motivation is going to come in and you're going to have it in you. It's just going to be a part of who you are.

So again commitment, accountability, extrinsic motivation, intrinsic motivation and you're off to the races. So I hope this was valuable to you. If you're struggling with this whole process of the commitment and the accountability and getting motivation to move inward to make all this stuff kind of happen I'd.

Really like to talk to you about it.

This is what I do all day every day. I help people build that thing to build their process, to build their lifestyle sustainable because it starts with commitment. It starts with that foundation and it moves inside and we help make sure you're moving at the right pace that you're getting what you need at the right time. And as a result you build something that works for you that will always work for you. And you'll know that model you'll have that tool chest. If you'll go to 40 Plusfitness.com Discovery we can get you on a call and we can talk about these elements and know. Now I know I'm not for everybody and I know I'm not the best coach for everybody so I'm not going to tell you yeah I'm going to be your coach because you called this, we got on this call. But what I will promise you is if we get on the call you will leave that call with a plan. Okay? That's the one thing I can promise you. I may not be the right coach for you but I want to make sure that that time spent is valuable because you'll discover what's important for you to be successful to take that next step.

So if you'll go to 40plusfitness.com/discovery we can go ahead and book a call and you can get this done and make 2023 your year.

Post Show/Recap

[00:34:02.330] – Coach Allan

Welcome back, Ras.

[00:34:03.870] – Coach Rachel

Hey, Allan. You know, I did see that post that you put on your 40+ fitness Facebook page and I was pretty surprised, but not surprised by the responses you were getting that people were lacking motivation. And coincidentally, I'm seeing the same frustration with a lot of our friends. Being that we are up to our knees and snow right now. Not many of us want to be outside for a lovely walk in the park. It's kind of brutal. So, yeah, motivation is just waning over the holidays. It's really hard to rely on that when you've got fitness in mind or health in mind.

[00:34:40.140] – Coach Allan

Yeah. Well, like I said in the discussion of this, you've got to find something with deep meaning.

[00:34:49.370] – Coach Allan

If you don't feel it, literally, you don't feel it. And it's probably not going to happen the way you want it to or it won't stick. So I've never seen anyone who is just passionate about weight loss. Like, no, like, yeah, I need to lose 15 lbs or 10 lbs or whatever.

[00:35:07.170] – Coach Allan

It's like, oh, man, that's such a brave goal. It's such a tremendous thing for you to be thinking about or caring about. And I don't mean that to belittle it, but just realize how little emotional attachment you have to losing 15 or 10 lbs.

[00:35:25.510] – Coach Allan

There's none.

[00:35:28.070] – Coach Rachel

Right?

[00:35:28.070] – Coach Allan

There's none.

[00:35:29.010] – Coach Allan

And so you're not going to have a drive behind you. You've got to find the things that are going to push you and then pull you. And so, you know, your why is going to pull you.

[00:35:42.590] – Coach Allan

Your accountability is going to push you.

[00:35:45.710] – Coach Rachel

Which is why I like how you started with the five whys and how to be, like you said, a toddler, and keep asking the question, Why? To dig deeper. And I do the same with my athletes, too. Why do you want to run a marathon? Why do you want to do these things and have these goals? You really need to dig deep into that because there's more underneath the surface.

[00:36:09.030] – Coach Allan

Yeah! Because mile 18 is going to suck on the first marathon and you have to ave a reason to pick up that foot again.

[00:36:15.340] – Coach Rachel

Right? It's important to have a why, and that's a great driving for us. And I think that's a good place to start is to really drill deep into your whys and then after that commitment. That's another one of my favorite words. You need to commit to those whys and then having the accountability. I think that accountability is probably one of the biggest factors for why I do what I do while I run so much is because I have the accountability of my run club and my run friends, and we each push each other to our goals and make sure we're doing things to stay able and ready for the next race.

[00:36:56.370] – Coach Allan

Yeah. So that's a social accountability. So you surround yourself with the people. But for most of us, it's going to probably be easier to start with the leader/coach type of accountability. Because what's going to happen there is that individual is going to get you focused and get you moving. And then if you start surrounding yourself with people like you that are runners, then it's easy enough at that point for you to say, okay, we're going to put together a streak during the holidays and then we all want to do this. We got to do at least as many miles or mile or whatever you're going to put the distance to qualify it. Everybody is seeing everybody else do their thing that's driving them to lace up those shoes.

[00:37:44.780] – Coach Rachel

Yes.

[00:37:45.830] – Coach Allan

Even if internally they're having that conflict of I really don't want to go out there. It's freaking 25 degrees, Rachel. What are you doing?

[00:37:58.570] – Coach Rachel

But having a coach, that's the other part that I think is so important is sometimes I know for me, I get stuck with too many options. I got too much going on. I don't know where to get started. I don't know how to get started. And just like you said, a lot of people have difficulty starting. So I like to have somebody tell me what to do. Tell me today I need to do X, Y and Z, tomorrow be A, B and C. To have that coach get you started, kind of kick you out the door. You don't have to think about it. You just do what the coach tells you to do and you're off and running. And there's a lot of benefits to having a coach.

[00:38:36.010] – Coach Allan

Yeah. When I was looking at doing some strength training for the Spartan, I hired a coach, a strength coach, and the basic purpose was, one, I was working a lot of hours and I just really didn't want to think about my workout. And I had the coach there as that he was going to be there. He hated when he actually when he blurted out 05:00 in the morning because he had another athlete that wanted to work out at 6:30 when he was training me. And he's like, she can only train at 6:30 and she was the same days as you. Do you mind moving years earlier? And I'm like, okay, what time? And he said, 05:00. I said you're on. And then he realized what he had just done was he was going to have to meet me at the gym at 05:00 every morning. And I was in there. In fact, I get there before and I literally have the weights already loaded. So when he walked in the door, I was ready to do my first set. There was some intrinsic motivation there for myself, but I had that accountability. And so for me, it was easy enough.

[00:39:42.620] – Coach Allan

I knew it was going to be there. I get there, I didn't have to think about the workout, I didn't have to think about any of it. After a couple of weeks working with him, I already knew kind of where he was going to go anyway, so I knew the weight that he was probably going to put. So I already had that loaded before he arrived.

[00:40:00.980] – Coach Rachel

Awesome.

[00:40:01.500] – Coach Allan

And I would do squats and I do leg press. And at the time it was kind of insane how much I was leg pressing, relative. And so it would take us 15 minutes to load the sled and 15 minutes to unload the sled. So like I said, I would start loading the sleds, I set up my squat and I'd start loading plates to the sled for the leg press. And then he would get there and after I finished the squat, then we would put the rest of the plates on. Or while I was doing squats, sometimes we'd be putting the plates on so that I could go right into doing leg press and then we would start taking the weights off. After the leg press, I would already be doing another exercise.

[00:40:41.120] – Coach Allan

So he kept me efficient, it kept me moving. If I was doing that by myself, it would be like, easy enough to sit there and say, well, I'm going to go a little light today so I don't have to load as many plates or I'm just going to skip the leg press because I don't want to spend the 15 minutes to load and then 15 minutes to unload this all by myself.

[00:41:00.290] – Coach Allan

So that was kind of one of the things. And so if you want to succeed at this stuff, you've really got to do all of it. Is there's not one perfect thing saying, oh, well, I have a coach, therefore I'm going to get there. If you don't have the why, it's probably not going to happen.

[00:41:16.280] – Coach Allan

And you have to start building the social accountability as a function of this whole thing because without that you're probably not going to hire the coach and keep that coach on for the rest of your life. So building the social network that's going to keep you going is also very important.

[00:41:35.550] – Coach Allan

And then the final bit is to take that motivation that you're getting from these external sources, the extrinsic motivation, and find a way to get it in you. And so it becomes more intrinsic motivation.

[00:41:50.430] – Coach Allan

Because you don't have to hype yourself up to run a marathon no anymore. It's like for you, it's like, yeah, I got these connections, I've got this accountability and you hired a run coach for one of the races.

[00:42:04.860] – Coach Allan

But the base point would be is you didn't need that to do the work. You were going to do the work and you were going to run the marathon. Those were given without any of that accountability because you've turned your motivation internally and you now are just, you're a runner, that's who you are. And you run because you're a runner.

[00:42:25.630] – Coach Rachel

It's my lifestyle at this point. And when you find what you love to do in the gym or outside of the gym, on the trails, wherever it is that you do your habit, you get to doing it so often that it just becomes what you do. It's how you plan things. It's how you manage your weekly schedule, and it just becomes part of your life.

[00:42:45.980] – Coach Rachel

And then in turn, it's the intrinsic motivation to keep at it. And, yeah, that's where I've been running for almost 25 years now, so it's pretty much not even a thought at this point anymore. It's just do. I brush my teeth and I run. It's what I do.

[00:43:03.850] – Coach Allan

A lot of times, I'll get this. Like, I'm not like you, Rachel. I'm not like you. I don't have that in me. I hate running. I hate sweating. I hate and I'll tell you, you really haven't gotten to the why, and you really haven't made a commitment, and you've got to go back to that.

[00:43:21.120] – Coach Allan

Yes.

[00:43:21.710] – Coach Allan

You got to go back to that, because here's the core, and I can tell you a dozen stories of me watching people who are older than me get sick, really sick, and really bad gruesome stuff, and they're gross stories. They're horrible stories. And what I saw in that was a potential future. It was a potential future where I'm not taking care of myself.

[00:43:49.690] – Coach Rachel

Right.

[00:43:50.540] – Coach Allan

And so I want independence well into old, old age. I literally want people to say, I don't think this guy's going to die. He's just got too much energy.

[00:44:01.950] – Coach Rachel

You're perpetual.

[00:44:03.450] – Coach Allan

Yeah, I don't understand. He's going to live forever. But I want people to know that I'm capable and able, and I'm going to take care of myself. I'm going to take care of the people around me. I'm not going to do the silly stuff that is going to basically make my last years terrible. So I have family members that I dealt with, tobacco issues, with cancers. Horrible, horrible way to go out and then don't think it's going to happen. It's just when. You live long enough and don't die of something else. You have basically planted the seeds if you smoked or if you still smoke.

[00:44:43.190] – Coach Allan

And even if it wasn't that, my mother and my mother-in-law both now have COPD, and it's like, okay, and they both had quit smoking at some point in their lives, but the damage was done. And now in their 70s, they're experiencing issues, and it's terrible, but it's kind of one of those things of saying, well, we knew all the way back in the 70s that this stuff was not in your best interest, and you didn't quit then. You waited until we were into the 1990s or 2000s, that's another 25, 30 years that you knew what you were doing was not in your best interest. You just kept doing it.

[00:45:24.390] – Coach Allan

And so that's where the why comes in. That's where that looking ahead and saying, why do I want to do this today? I want to do this today so I can wipe my own butt when I'm 105. I've got stories about that, too.

[00:45:37.260] – Coach Allan

And so as you just look at anyone who's older than you and they're struggling with things, they can't open pickle jar. They can't get up from the seat without pushing with their arms and leaning forward. And now they got to get rails in their bathroom so they can get in and out of the bathtub. And they're falling more often and maybe even hospitalized more often. You start seeing that. You're like, okay, well, is that your path?

[00:46:05.350] – Coach Rachel

Right?

[00:46:06.180] – Coach Allan

And you make a choice. You make a choice every single day. How you're going to live that day, that's all you get.

[00:46:11.510] – Coach Rachel

That's right.

[00:46:12.870] – Coach Allan

If you're making the right decisions, then you have a better opportunity to have a better future. And so for me, my intrinsic motivation does not come from, I've got a race coming up or this, that. Those help for short-term stuff. Like, if I want to get really strong or want to basically build up my stamina, then, yeah, schedule a race. I'm wired for that. If I've got something in front of me that's scary, I'll work to make sure that I'm in the best condition I can possibly be.

[00:46:40.020] – Coach Allan

But my day-to-day, how I look at my nutrition and my sleep and my stress management, then I'm looking at it from the, how long am I going to live, and how do I want to live that? What does that look like? And, you know, so I left corporate America. You know, I had a great job with making a lot of money, and I got laid off, and I very easily could have made a few phone calls and probably within a few months had another job just like that.

[00:47:07.370] – Coach Allan

But I was looking at my stress levels and saying, this isn't getting me where I want to be in 30 or 40, 50 years.

[00:47:17.820] – Coach Rachel

Right.

[00:47:18.750] – Coach Allan

And I know a lot of people don't think that far ahead, but you need to

[00:47:23.600] – Coach Allan

Yes. Just think five years ahead or ten years ahead. Where are you going to be? How old will you be, and what will your health be like? And as I've mentioned to you in the past, this cancer journey that my husband Mike's been on was kind of one of those out of the blue scenarios. We don't know anyone with kidney cancer. We don't know how he got it or how it started. But I can tell you for sure that he weathered the chemotherapy and the surgery as well as he did because he is as healthy as he is. And you can say that 50, I hope you're saying 50 is still pretty young.

[00:48:03.210] – Coach Allan

If you're listening to this podcast you're either pretty darn close to 50, or you're over it. And yeah, 50 does not need to be old. And it's so funny because my family acted old in their 50s. You know, it's just kind of a weird thing in the it's like 50s and 60s we're old people. And I'm like, okay, I'm I'm here. I'm kind of like, no. I mean, yeah, I dress up like Santa and climbing and out of a golf cart trunk, and they're throwing babies and dogs at me to take pictures. I want to still be able to do fun stuff like that. There was a girl, she's got problems with her knees. She's around our age, couldn't even walk. It was a two mile parade, and it wasn't going fast at almost any point in time. It took us 3 hours to go 2 miles, so it wasn't moving fast at all. She couldn't walk it, her knees. And she couldn't even ride her bike to do it because her knees were bothering her so bad. And so it's just kind of one of those things where, granted, sometimes this is outside your control.

[00:49:06.220] – Coach Allan

But if things are in your control, what you put in your mouth, what you decide if you're going to be a smoker or not a smoker. You decide the drugs you're going to take, you decide how you're going to move. You can decide how you're going to sleep. You decide how you're going to deal with stress. Those are decisions.

[00:49:23.340] – Coach Allan

And you can say, I don't have decisions. I don't have a choice. You do. You just don't want the choice.

[00:49:32.610] – Coach Rachel

Make the hard choice. Yeah, sometimes it is a hard one, and sometimes it's not fun waking up at the crack of dawn to go to the gym like you did at 05:00 a.m. Or when we go running at 07:00 a.m. Or something, but at 25 degree weather. But you feel good once you've done it and you're healthier for it, and that will help you get to that next five year goal or ten year goal, and you'll be better off in the long term. So if you can stick with it being uncomfortable, it's worth it.

[00:50:03.090] – Coach Allan

Well, and that's what this whole episode was about. If you listen to it and you're still listening, you care about your fitness, you want to meet your health and fitness goals. And I did the best I could in about I think it was about a 30 minutes spew. When I got done with, I was kind of like I feel like I just threw up a whole bunch of information

[00:50:24.710] – Coach Allan

But it was all good information and very useful. Start with the whys, be a self-aware, get some accountability, and go back and relisten if you need help or contact you or me if you want more help.

[00:50:38.380] – Coach Allan

Absolutely.

[00:50:39.470] – Coach Rachel

Yeah.

[00:50:40.000] – Coach Allan

All right, Ras, I will talk to you next week.

[00:50:42.690] – Coach Rachel

Great, Allan. Take care.

[00:50:44.060] – Coach Allan

You too. Bye.

[00:50:45.650] – Coach Rachel

Bye-bye.

Music by Dave Gerhart

Patreons

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

– Anne Lynch	– Ken McQuade	– Margaret Bakalian
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Thank you!

Another episode you may enjoy

How your inner being drives weight loss

Less...

Let's Say Hello

[00:01:09.940] – Coach Allan

Hi, Ras.

[00:01:11.110] – Coach Rachel

Hey, Allan. How are you?

[00:01:12.540] – Coach Allan

I'm well.

[00:01:13.590] – Coach Rachel

Good.

[00:01:14.050] – Coach Allan

You already knew that because I just told you no more than 5-10 minutes ago, because I will be traveling back from my daughter's wedding on the day that we would need to record this conversation, the hello and then the goodbye, the recap at the end. So we're doing it all together. And so nothing's really changed since the last time I said anything. So just know we wanted to still have this segment in here. So you got a little behind the scenes of sometimes we doubled down because one or both of us won't be available for a certain week that we needed to do some recording. And so, Rachel, I guess are you ready to start talking about inner being?

[00:01:53.580] – Coach Rachel

Yes.

Episode

I'm calling this discussion How Your Inner Being Drives Weight Loss.

This is a concept that I've kind of been coming around to over about the last year, because as I sit down and have interviews with various people and I talk to a lot of experts in weight loss and nutrition and movement and stress management and sleep and all of it. Every single one of them has a benefit that they list for being better at that thing. And it's almost always weight loss. And that's one of the reasons most of my clients come to me. They're looking to lose a little bit of weight, maybe a lot of weight, but they're looking for weight loss.

And they're really frustrated because they're doing things, maybe even things that worked before, and they're just not working, and they don't understand, because all the experts say if you do this, then that it's simple math, right? And we talked a lot of times. It's never really simple math when we're talking about the human body. But I wanted to come up with a concept that really kind of explained the way I wrapped my mind around how the body functions, because, again, I'm not a scientist, I'm not a doctor.

I haven't done all these massive studies. I've read a ton of stuff, and I've seen what works for me and what doesn't, and I've seen what's worked for thousands of clients and what doesn't, and it's always a different story, and it's a different story, but it has the same theme. And so that's what I want to talk about. I want to talk about this theme of weight loss, how this inner being you have is doing something inside of you, and you're telling it what to do without knowing what you're telling it. It's doing the right thing. It's keeping you alive, your intervening, that's its sole purpose is to keep you alive. And it's doing its job. It's doing its job very well.

If you're listening to this, you're alive. And so Interbeing is doing a great job. It's not doing the things you want it to do. And we can fix that. We can definitely fix that. So here's the scenario. You're doing everything right, okay? You're logging every calorie. You're doing everything. It's always worked before. When you were in your 20s, drop that 20 lbs, easy. When you're in your 30s, drop 10 lbs for a wedding, easy.

When you're in your 40s, you try this thing and it's not working quite as well, and it just stops working. And you're like, I'm doing everything I'm supposed to do. This is what the experts tell me. I go to the forums, and they say, hey, you're not eating at a calorie deficit. If you were eating a calorie deficit, you'd be losing weight. Oh, you're eating too many carbs. If you were not eating those carbs, you'd lose weight. And so you do those things. You do them and you do them religiously, and it works a little, and then it stops working.

You're like, well, what's wrong? I'll eat less. I'm starving all the time. But it's not working. What's going on? So in the body, there kind of what I call three levels of math, okay? And they all are right? They just need each other to complete the formula. OK? So the simple formula, the very simplest of the formula is the calories in, calories out model. And in this model, if you eat less than you burn, you will lose the weight. True, the law of thermodynamics is Blatantly. True, it exists, okay? But that's simple math.

That's plus and minus. And the reality is, both of those are estimates. So the estimate of what you ate, the estimate of what you burned, all estimates. So when you do math with estimates, you can't necessarily count on the results to be consistent, because you could be off on either one of those estimates. And if you're off on either one of those estimates, the math doesn't work. So we need exact math, but we can't have exact math on calories in or calories out. We just can't. We don't know. So the simple math will help us, but it won't solve the whole problem if it stops working.

Once it stops working. You know, you have a block in the fact that you don't have enough information, you're not doing the right things because you're relying just on the simple math. It's a good rule, it works, but then it doesn't. So we have to come up with the next rule. The next rule is more complex. So the first one, calories in, calories out, was addition and subtraction. Now we're getting into algebra. So this is where we're talking about our macros and we're talking about energy output and then how our body uses the macros to do what it does and the, thermodynamic effect of food and all those types of things.

So this gets a little, maybe a lot more complex, but we start saying, OK, well, I'll just focus on the carbs, I'll cut some carbs back, I'll make sure I eat plenty of protein, so I'm staying satiated. And that's what I'll do. And many times for a lot of people, that will get you there, that will actually get you to your goal weight, because you've set a goal weight that's within a reasonable range of where you are. Yeah, you cut that weight, no problem, and then you go back to eating the way you were and put the weight back on.

And even if you don't, it's like most people who've tried keto, I have a lot of weight to lose, do suddenly plateau. And they plateau not at their ideal weight. They plateau at a weight higher than that. And then they live the rest of their life thinking keto failed, or they live the rest of life saying, I'm going to keep eating keto because I love how I feel, but they don't lose any more weight.

Sponsor

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So those folks have figured out some of the algebra, but they may be ignoring the simple math, the pluses and minuses. So you see how putting those two things together gives you a more comprehensive model for how your body could work. And I want to be clear on could, because then there's the next level, which is the most complex of the math models, and that's hormones. Hormones drive every single thing in your body. They are the messengers, they're this and that. They make your body do everything that your body does on the inside.

Everything, okay? Them and enzymes and things like that. But generally almost everything you care about on your health and fitness journey is driven by a hormone or several hormones, all working in a symphony to make things happen or not happen. And that's some pretty complex math, okay? This is calculus stuff. This is like, this is the tough stuff. And even calculus would be on calculus, maybe, because there's still so much we don't know about this math, okay?

We're just touch scratching the surface as far as our awareness of how these things impact our body. And then they still even throw in genetics along with all this. And you can kind of see how this gets really complex. We can't necessarily control our genetics, but we can control our epigenome and how it communicates. But it's for the most part, again, it's the hormones and everything else that's making all this stuff happen, okay? And that's something that most of us can't wrap our minds around. And we won't. We just won't, not in our lifetimes. So what does that mean? Does that mean that we're destined to be trying these models and trying this and that and tweaking it and a little bit here, a little bit there. And that's the best we can do. And the short answer is, well, yeah, from what you eat and how you manage your life thing for nutrition, absolutely. That's all we can do. We don't know what we don't know yet. But I want to take a step back and say, well, why are some people successful and other people are struggling when they're doing the same thing?

And, you know, there's bio individuality and all that. That's absolutely true. Why is that? So what's going on? What else is going on? And I think that the answer is information. So what are you telling your body? What are you telling your inner being on a day to day, minute to minute, meal by meal, sleep by sleep day? What's going on in your life? So what I want you to imagine is that you have this inner brain, this inner being, this thing that's looking out for your best interest and it's telling the rest of your body what to do. Okay, so if this, then that. Okay, you see a bear, okay, drop those hormones. We got to get away from the bear. Or you know, something happens at work and you're really frustrated, drop those hormones. And now you've got this stress response. Or you see someone that you really care about and you go over and the two of you hug and you get this hormone drop and now you're in bliss. You're feeling great. OK, you see how those were very different situations that something had to happen inside your body and it happened based on information that went in.

You were either stressed or you were elated. And so those different feelings are having different things are going, they're triggering things inside your body. The inner being is reacting to this information. So the inner being can't see you can't hear it, can't do anything other than do the things that you tell this intervening to do based on your inputs. OK, so there are three levels of input I want to talk about. There's probably a lot more I haven't gotten to yet in my thought process of building all this. But the first one is nutrition, the second one is movement. And the third one is self care. Now, a few episodes back, I talked about the MNS checkpoint. I'm going to start probably calling that the wellness temperature check because that just rolls off the tongue a little bit easier than NMS or MNS. You get my point? Wellness would probably roll off a little bit easier. So I'm probably thinking of that direction to rename that something else. But those are the three core inputs that I want to talk about today. Okay? Nutrition, movement and self care. Nutrition. I want you to think about your inner being as this important thing that wants to keep you alive.

It's thinking about what's going on around you and you're giving it information. Now, if you're eating crap food with no nutrition, something's wrong. Why are you feeding this? Is this all there is something else going on? Is there something I'm missing? Why are we not getting a good mix and balance of foods? Why are we not actually eating things that I would actually recognize as food? Sure, there's calories and yeah, maybe there's some vitamins and minerals, but I'm not getting enough of everything or I'm getting too much of some things. So the way we eat, what we eat, the choices of food that we make, we're communicating to that invoice. So if you take this back to our ancestors, if they weren't eating it's because there wasn't food, food was scarce. If they were eating the same food all the time, food must be scarce except for this food. And so the body has to adapt. What if I'm not getting enough protein? I have to adapt. What if I'm not getting the right nutrients like B twelve and other things. I have to adapt. What if I'm not getting enough carbohydrates? I have to adapt.

So you kind of see how the food choices you're making are communicating to your body about what your food opportunities are. So choosing good high quality nutrition over the standard American diet is going to help your body understand there's plenty of good quality food. I'm safe. Okay, I want you to pay attention. That word, I'm going to say it over and over. I'm safe, I'm in a good place. OK, so let's talk a little bit about movement. So let's say you're very sedentary and you don't move a lot. Well, what are you telling your body? What are you telling that inner self? You're telling inner self, I don't have to do this stuff, there's nothing for me to do, I don't have to go anywhere. I'm doing. There's no food, maybe there's no nothing. And so there's nothing for me to worry about, nothing but nothing to do. And maybe food is scarce, maybe it's not, but I don't know. I'm sitting here on my butt not doing anything. She bodies like, OK, well, let's accumulate body fat only because we don't know if food's going to get really scarce because for some reason this person does not want to go out and forage and hunt for food.

So let's preserve our energy because we might need it. Maybe they're hiding from something, maybe something else is going on. And we'll talk about that in a few minutes. But you kind of get the idea of under movement, not moving under training. That's a problem because you're communicating to your body that there's a reason you're hunkering down, there's a reason you're not doing things. Okay, that's information. Now maybe you're doing too much. So you decide, I'm going to get on the elliptical for an hour every morning, I'm going to bust my butt, I'm going to do all this classes, I'm going to do all this stuff so I can cut this weight again. What are you telling your body? Are you telling it that you have to go because that's how you get food? Are you telling it that there's something wrong? Because movement in and of itself is good as long as it's not bad. And I'll explain that here with you. OK? Movement is a stressor, OK? You're moving your muscles, you're pushing your muscles, you're doing things. And that's a stressor. Now we usually call that a hermetic thing, stressor, because it's intended to cut you back a little bit so you can rebuild stronger.

So the whole point of lifting resistance, lifting weights or doing resistance training is to stress the muscle and then it builds back better. That works out great unless there's a whole lot of other stress going on in your life. So overtraining yourself, pushing yourself to the edge all the time is actually information and it's telling your body something's wrong. Something's wrong. I'm not safe. I'm not safe here. There's a reason they're moving this much. I don't know what it is, but we're not safe. So I have to go into this preservation set to be ready for whatever, okay? And that whatever is stressed. So self care comes in. It covers a lot of the stuff. So I can't go too deep on this, or this will go for a long, long time. But the main one on stress care, that self care that I want to get into, and we'll get into a couple more, but this is a big one, is stress. Now, the stress hormones, when they hit us, they're designed to do one of three things fight, flight, or freeze. When you get hit with stress, that's what your body wants to do.

One of those three things is going to happen, okay? That's what the inner self hears in her being here's, and it says, okay, this thing's happening. What's going on? I'm stressed out. What I do and if it's just a short term stress like, you did a weightlifting training, it's like, oh, they had to lift heavy things. So the information is, I just need to help that muscle rebuild. I got all the protein I need because they're eating a good diet. Mission accomplished. Go do these things. Okay? And that's inside your information. But if that stress keeps coming, it's like, oh, my God, we're going to die. Something terrible is happening. This person is, like, in a state of shock. I mean, they're like, we're all over the place. That's not good. So I'm not safe. I need to preserve. I need to be ready. And you stay in this mode too long, that's bad. Really bad. Information. So the body is stressed out. The body isn't going to do the things. Your inner being is not going to serve you very well if you're dealing with too much stress. Now, a couple of other areas that you'll want to look into is your sleep.

If you're not sleeping well, again, information. Why are we not what's going on? Why am I not getting the rest I need? Now I'm trying to do things without the rest I needed, and I'm not going to be good at it. And so the body starts to close down. Things like, okay, we got to preserve energy. We got to do something different. Again, sleep is information. Quality of sleep information. Stress management, stress information. Your environment. So if you're in a very toxic environment physically, so all these chemicals, all this stuff going on, you're giving your body information. We're in this toxic zone. I got to do something I got to preserve. I got to put those toxins in the fat. We'll deal with those later. If I can't process or do them all right now, it's too much. So let's save us, and then we'll figure it out later. Relationships. You're in a toxic relationship. You're telling your body all the time, the stress reactions, all this. There's just so much going on in your head that the information that's there is telling your body, you're not in a good place, you're not safe. And then the final one I'll talk about.

Like I said, I think there are a whole lot of other ones that I'll probably get into and understand a little bit better later as I'm kind of thinking through this exercise. But the other self-talk, what are you telling yourself with regards to how you feel, your health, your fitness, your weight loss, all of that? What are you telling yourself? So if there's someone in there telling your inner being, you suck at this weight loss thing, you're never going to lose the weight. You become your own worst enemy. It's like, God damn it, why did I eat that brownie? Your inner self would have kind of said, wow, man, these carbohydrates. And it's like the sugar, it's like, I feel great. And then here you are telling it, no, we're in a bad place. We're not safe. That was a terrible thing to do. That was poison. We should not have eaten that.

Do you see how all of this is information that's going into your body that's being processed? And based on what you told your body and how you lived your day, your body has to do something for you. This is preservation.

This is living. This is staying alive. So if you're not putting good information in, you're not going to like the results that you get. Okay? So if we want to make sure that we're getting good results, we've got to start putting the right information in there. Now, to do this right, you have to focus on health and fitness above weight loss, okay?

Focus on health and fitness first. The weight loss will come, I promise, once you've started putting the right information in, and that's a health and fitness focus. It's not a weight loss focus, things will be different. Nutrition, movement, and self-care, that's what your inner being is looking for. And when that's working, it's going to make the right decisions about your metabolism and your energy uses and how you feel and how you live.

It's literally going to change the way your body functions because you're giving it information that says, all is good, you are safe. And guess what? At that point, it says, we don't necessarily have to preserve. We're getting a good mix of nutrition. This person is moving every day. Sometimes they're pushing a little harder. We're going to have to get a little stronger, a little faster, a little better.

And we can do that because we have what we need. There's some stress, sure, but we're managing it. We're in a good place. The stressor happens and then they work on it. They breathe and like oxygen and get that stuff out, and they're doing the right kind of mind things to release all this negative energy. They're not talking to themselves negatively. They're not surrounding themselves with toxins beyond environmental or relationship based. They're literally telling the body, you're safe.

And when the body inner being feels safe, it will feel safe about letting the body weight go because that body fat is a protection. It's a protection from starvation and you're not starving. You're actually overeating many cases. So if we want to lose weight, we've got to give the right information to our inner being. We've got to tell our inner being, you're safe, it's okay, everything is great. And when the inner being starts getting that information, magic is going to happen and you'll lose the weight. But the reality of what you should be after is not the weight loss, it's the health and fitness. And the weight loss is just a side effect.

Post Show/Recap

[00:24:56.210] – Coach Allan

Welcome back, Ras.

[00:24:57.820] – Coach Rachel

Hey Allan. This is a topic I don't know that I've heard, discussed, or even thought about before, is the concept of your inner being.

[00:25:06.110] – Coach Allan

Well, like I said, it's just kind of a concept that's come to me over the last year or so when I've said, and I know I've said it many times on this show that food is information, right, movement is information. And I've said that before, but I had never really fully fleshed out what that actually means from an internal perspective. But we know sometimes we do the exact same thing with the thing we're supposed to do. I'm doing everything right. I mean, 1200 calories, I'm starving myself, I'm getting on the elliptical and just busting my butt every day and I'm keeping up with everything I'm supposed to keep up with and trying to fit this stuff in. And so I'm super stressed, and because I'm super stressed, I'm not sleeping well, and so it's like and then you throw in a couple things, like you step on the scale every morning, and if the scale doesn't tell you something that affects your entire day, okay, this inner being that you have, you're telling them your life is crap.

[00:26:11.360] – Coach Rachel

Yeah, I can see that.

[00:26:14.510] – Coach Allan

When the inner beings like, oh man, we're in trouble, we're in trouble here. She can't get the right food. She's not moving. She's sedentary, so she knows something's wrong. She doesn't want to go out. It's just hiding in the cave and not doing anything. Something bad's going on. If you get dehydrated, intervening is like, hey, we're dehydrated here, so I need to probably shut some stuff down. We're not moving and we're not getting enough food or the right kind of food, the right nutrition, all that stuff, it's going to start functioning different. And as a result, you're not going to reach the goals that you want to reach or the objectives we said the outcomes you want to reach because you just haven't convinced your body that it's okay.

[00:27:02.440] – Coach Rachel

Yeah, you know, it's interesting. Just start with the food part. Food is information. I have a tendency to be a creature of habit, and I'll eat the same things over and over and over again. Same breakfast or the same snack. You know, just go to the grocery store, buy the same thing. But, you know, if my body is getting bored with that or feels like we're missing out on something, then, yes, I can see how being a creature of habit could be a problem, especially if I'm not, you know, enjoying the seasonal fruits and vegetables or switching it up and getting a different protein source. I can see how the body may not respond as efficiently to that same input day after day. That's an interesting one.

[00:27:45.670] – Coach Allan

And that is if you want to try to get a variety of whole foods, but garbage in, garbage out, and that's all. It's with the food. It's with the movement. It's with the way you think about yourself. You're inner taught all of those things. They're all part of this matrix inside you that's intervening, that is just listening for what you're telling it. So you have the capacity to change the message, change the information, make it better information.

[00:28:13.990] – Coach Rachel

No, I've mentioned the past. I got a pretty fast biofeedback loop. If I eat something with too much sugar or too much refined flour, I'll pay for that later. But another big biofeedback loop that I have noticed in recent years is the way I can use self talk. And if I'm on a run, a tough training run or in the late stages of a long race, and I feel my legs are getting tired and I'm sweaty and my heart's racing and stuff, if I start worrying about how I'm feeling, it just feels tired and sluggish, and things start to slow down. But if I can recognize that thought and say, hey, I'm strong. I got this, the finish line is coming, I really do feel a big difference. I suddenly feel my chest go up. I feel really proud. I can slow my breathing down, which gets my heart rate down. So there's a big difference for me in how I talk to myself. That self talk is really important.

[00:29:16.210] – Coach Allan

Yeah. Because, again, inner being doesn't know. It's like, I don't know what Rachel's up to, but for some reason or another, she won't stop running. And I'm concerned that something bad is happening here. I don't know what we're running from, but she just will not stop running. And so it's just pain signals. All the other stuff is going on. And then when you turn around and tell it, no, we don't have much further to go. The end is near, so just bear with me. You may not understand this, but I find this fun.

[00:29:50.810] – Coach Rachel

Yes, I do.

[00:29:51.970] – Coach Allan

Okay. It is a stressor. I get it. It's a stressor, but it's a stressor that I enjoy. And so get me through this run, and we'll be rewarded for that. And. So it's just one of those things where, yeah, the way you think about these things, the way you put information in all of it, you should be really focused on it. So if you like, we talked about last week with goal setting, when you start thinking about your goals, okay, what are those actions that are going to result in good messaging back to your inner being? Okay, I'm going to get my 10,000 steps in a day. That's good information. The body is like, hey, we're out and about doing stuff. We need the capacity to do these things because this feels good. And then he's like, okay, I'm not going to eat as much sugar, and I'm going to cut out alcohol. Suddenly you're like, okay. Your body's like, oh, wow, we're getting better quality food. We're not getting all that sugar stuff. This is pretty good. I feel like I'm okay. I feel like we're safe. She's eating real food, and it's like, okay, I'll start letting some of this body weight go because I thought I had to hold onto it.

[00:30:54.640] – Coach Allan

So we didn't starve to death, right? Because blueberries run out. It's like I'm used to going into a field three weeks, blueberries, no blueberries. So breeding sugar, it's like, okay, great, there's all this sugar. But when there's nothing else, it's like, well, there must not be anything to hunt or anything else to find. And so we're stuck with blueberries, and blueberries go away. So I'm in trouble. I need to start storing fat because something bad is about to happen. And so it's just that making sure you're reassessing what you're doing, the actions that you're taking, when you find actions that are effective for you, those are your goals. And I'll get back into this soon is I would walk every morning for at least 30 minutes fasted.

[00:31:40.980] – Coach Rachel

Oh, nice.

[00:31:41.970] – Coach Allan

And then after each meal, go for a five to ten minute walk.

[00:31:45.840] – Coach Rachel

Nice.

[00:31:46.600] – Coach Allan

And those are messaging to your body that you're good. You're priming the body to say, okay, Insulin, instead of storing this as fat, we're using the muscles here, so let's chunk a little bit more of that into the muscles in the liver because we're going to be active now. And so that's a different thing. Rather than sitting there, sitting down on your couch, and then that sugar just gets in your blood, it's like, oh, well, let's go make some fat, right? And then the one in the morning, you're already burning fat, and your body is comfortable with it. It's like, okay, well, we're burning fat because we didn't eat overnight. We're sort of fasted. And it's like, okay, well, we're not moving. It's not moving too fast, so we can easily just keep burning fat to feel this activity. And it it does does. So it's really just about how you communicate with yourself, both mentally and with all the information you take in. All of it toxins your environment, where you hang out with what you say to yourself, your food. So I only mentioned a few of those things. But movement, nutrition and selfcare need to be top of mind.

[00:32:56.050] – Coach Allan

And when you find something that really is kind of fit in the groove for you, make a goal. And if you're consistent about it, over time, that becomes a habit. So getting up every morning and going for that walk will become a habit. And when it becomes a habit, it's good for you. It becomes a part of a healthy lifestyle.

[00:33:14.790] – Coach Rachel

Yes, that's perfect.

[00:33:16.470] – Coach Allan

All right. Anything else?

[00:33:18.180] – Coach Rachel

No, that's great, Alan. Good information.

[00:33:20.790] – Coach Allan

I'll talk to you next week.

[00:33:22.330] – Coach Rachel

Take care.

[00:33:23.160] – Coach Allan

You, too. Bye.

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Another episode you may enjoy

Less...

Let's Say Hello

[00:02:07.990] – Allan

Hey, Ras, how are you doing?

[00:02:10.060] – Rachel

Good, Allan. How are you today?

[00:02:12.250] – Allan

I'm doing all right. Just wrapping up things here. This is going live November 8. My daughter, I guess, got married. We're recording a couple of weeks, so I'm assuming the answer is going to be yes. And all the way to the end, of course, an event or something. So at this point, yeah, we married off one of our daughters and we should be arriving back into Bocas today and get back to running the bed and breakfast and opening up my studio and, of course, training my online clients.

[00:02:40.990] – Rachel

Very busy.

[00:02:42.370] – Allan

Yeah. And then we're just a couple of weeks away from launching the holidays challenge.

[00:02:48.480] – Rachel

Great.

[00:02:48.930] – Allan

So if you haven't signed up for that, go to crushtheholidays.com. And it's 35 days of coaching with mindset, and we talk about different things, about how we get past the temptations of these holidays, this eating season. And so if that's something you've struggled with putting on a little bit of extra weight during the holidays, I strongly encourage you to come check out that challenge at crushtheholidays.com and enjoy the challenge with us. Like I said, there's a Facebook group, there's prizes for participation and a daily lesson about mindset and, of course, accountability, because you can pick out partners in the group or message me in the group and just be a part of everybody holding themselves accountable to do just a little bit better, which doing just a little bit better is crushing the holidays.

[00:03:39.520] – Rachel

Sounds awesome. Sounds like fun.

[00:03:41.370] – Allan

So what are you up to?

[00:03:43.840] – Rachel

I'm exhausted and also accelerated probably 50 50 over the weekend. Mike and I did the calcresture, which was our 30 hours running event, and it was a low key event by a run club. So, like, no pressure to be running for the entire 30 hours. You could go do the loop, which was about 5 miles, and go have breakfast and come back or take a shower, come back. You had the 30 hours to do as many loops as you want. And we had a lot of family and friends up there join us. And the donations from this event go up to one of the research facilities up here in honor of Mike and in research of kidney cancer, which my husband is fighting right now. So the event raised $4,000 for kidney cancer research.

[00:04:33.730] – Allan

So awesome.

[00:04:34.990] – Rachel

It was fantastic. It was a wonderful weekend. Lots of friends, lots of miles, lots of fun.

[00:04:41.360] – Allan

And your family too. Close by Michael and it's like everybody was there and made a really close knit family affair thing. That's awesome.

[00:04:49.530] – Rachel

It was perfect. It was really wonderful to share all this time together. It was fantastic.

[00:04:54.450] – Allan

Great. Well, are you ready to have a conversation with Dr. Yeager?

[00:04:59.050] – Rachel

Yes.

Interview

[00:06:08.060] – Allan

Dr. Yeager, welcome to 40+ Fitness.

[00:06:10.960] – Dr. Yeager

Thanks for having me. I'm excited to have this conversation with you today. I look forward to it.

[00:06:16.060] – Allan

I am too, and for a very good reason. Is that your book is called How Am I Doing? 40 conversations to Have With Yourself. And every time I have a client that's trying to lose weight. I can tell you 99 9% of the time, we're in our own way to improving ourselves and making ourselves better. And these conversations that you put into this book, while it seems really simple, it's really a way for you to break away from those things. So the negative self-talk, the limiting beliefs, all those are built into this. And it makes sense because you're a performance improvement person. I mean, that's your primary role right now. You've been doing this your whole life. I know when you were talking to kids in the schools, it was the same conversation that you're having with professional athletes that have been in the league for years. And so I think as we get into how we're going to fix ourselves, we have to start with the head, we have to start with the mindset. These conversations, as I said, I think are critical for us to have as a part of self-awareness.

[00:07:18.340] – Allan

So as a model of getting better, you have to know where you are. You have to know where you're going, which, like an athlete would know. This is the level of performance I have to have to make it to the next level or to be able to win this game against the Lakers or whoever. Yeah, you know, you got to win that game, you know, where you have to be physically for the season. And so you have a direction and then you set some goals for yourself. But then when you get to that self awareness piece, these are the tools. Make sure you get there

[00:07:44.700] – Dr. Yeager

100% and use the term that I think is critically important for the work of this book. But I think in life in general is becoming more aware of self. So self, that introspective space, but also becoming aware of self in the context of others. Critically important. Who am I? Not just who am I individually, but who am I in different contexts, I think becomes really important. And it really is the cornerstone of what the book is all about.

[00:08:16.650] – Allan

Yeah, because I think a lot of times we have this outward projection of what we want people to believe. We have this inner projection of who we believe we are. And both of those can be vastly different from the person that we actually are.

[00:08:31.780] – Dr. Yeager

And Allan, they can be conflictual. Those two worlds and those two people, if you will, can come into conflict within the south who I believe I am and who I think that I am becoming and who others think I am or tell me who they think I am. Those can be conflictual spaces. And the book is about working through that conflict, prioritizing self in the context of others. And all of that starts with knowing myself, becoming more aware of who I am.

[00:09:03.940] – Allan

Now, you do that with a process called narrative therapy. And obviously asking these questions, you can imagine that's where we're going to go with. Can you describe what narrative therapy is and why it's so powerful?

[00:09:15.600] – Dr. Yeager

Yeah, I think there are a multiplicity of ways to approach therapy. The one in which fits best for me and I found fits best for my therapy, my clients, is narrative therapy. And really what narrative therapy is a way to get people's stories. If you just tell me stories about yourself, that becomes content. And my job is to listen to those content laden stories and search for a pattern and regurgitate almost, if you will, a process back to you. So, narrative therapy is really one of the cornerstones of narrative therapy that I utilize a lot is personifying our issues. So, for instance, many times people that are dealing with mental illness issues almost describe themselves as their issue. I am a depressed person, I am whatever fill in the blank as opposed to personifying that problem and putting it outside of you. You can almost say in narrative therapy in ways you personify it. If we were talking about anxiety was an issue you were struggling with, I would almost say let's turn that anxiety into a person. That anxiety comes to visit. And sometimes anxiety can be something that pushes us to be successful, but it can also paralyze us.

[00:10:41.550] – Dr. Yeager

So how do I approach understanding that anxiety in a way that it comes to visit? But I just like a person, I can tell that I don't want you here today. Right? So finding that ability to be in more control. I think the other piece that I would say about narrative therapy is recognizing that each of us is the expert on our lives. No one else is an expert on my life the way I am. So instead of me as a therapist sitting in a position of all knowing we don't know all, I am just learning about you. You are the expert on you. So getting people to understand that they are the expert on their lives and I am a facilitator of the change they are seeking.

[00:11:23.140] – Allan

A lot of times I'm having a conversation with a client and I don't even really have to tell them what to do. They already know. They have to just be somewhat comforted to know that they have the right answer to start with and somebody's there that listening, if someone cares.

[00:11:38.190] – Dr. Yeager

This is that process of you being the expert and me facilitating your change. One thing I would say, Allan, about therapy in general with narrative therapy is that if we recognize that we are the experts on our lives and we hope or seek some level of version of change. One of the things that I start off with people, players, everyone that I work with is asking them what does change mean to you when you say you want to change? What are you seeking to change? And what does that mean for you? For instance, in the therapeutic realm, what we describe as change is. We describe it in two ways first and second order change. First order change and I'm a metaphorical therapist, so I use a lot of metaphors. First order change would be like walking into your home or your apartment and saying, I want to change this. So first order change is saying, I'm going to paint all the walls a different color. I'm going to change all the furniture around and put new pictures up. So if you come into my house and you were there a week ago and I make that change, it will look quite different.

[00:12:43.410] – Dr. Yeager

Second order, deeper, more profound change is saying, I'm going to knock the walls down in this apartment or in this house and forever change the structure of my home. That's a level of second order change, which is a much more profound version of change. So I asked people first, before we endeavor upon this work, what change are you seeking? Are you seeking profound knock the wall down changes? Are you seeking to just change a few small pieces that will look different, but it will be changed nonetheless?

[00:13:17.210] – Allan

Dr. Yeager, who is the most important person in your life and why?

[00:13:21.410] – Dr. Yeager

I am the most important person in my life unquestionably. And that's not being selfish. That is just recognizing that I hold all of the information about who I am and how I came to be where I am and knowing and understanding that in a way that's not selfish, but that I have to prioritize the importance of me. That doesn't mean that there aren't moments that I choose to put others first, but at the core of who I am, I recognize that as being the most important person in my life. My wife is clearly and keenly important. My children are very, very important. But I say oftentimes to my wife, before I can be a good husband, before I can be a good father, a good therapist, I must first be a good Corey for Corey. That's the beginning, the precipice, the genesis of understanding myself as the most important person in this world. And then that allows for me to show up in this world as a better version of myself as a better father, as a better husband, as a better therapist is first, starting with knowing who I am and seeing myself as the most important person.

[00:14:32.790] – Allan

Yeah, I kind of look at it from the perspective of if you don't have your own candle lit, you're not going to be able to light someone else's candle with it. You got to protect your claim. You got to protect yourself.

[00:14:45.560] – Dr. Yeager

Like being on a flight, they go through the whole little spill. When you get on the flight, if the oxygen level in the cabin drops low, you're going to have the mask that drops down. But what do they tell you if you're traveling with a child? Put your mask on first. Well, why? Does seem selfish. No. Because if I am fumbling around trying to put my son or daughter's mask on and I pass out, now, all of a sudden we're both in trouble. If I can get my mask on first, then I can maneuver and manipulate and support them in a more meaningful way. That's putting myself first. That's not being selfish.

[00:15:23.950] – Allan

Yeah. I was in Puerto Vallarta not long ago, and I landed and there was an earthquake and come up to the resort just after the earthquake, and there's a woman, and she's really distraught. And I'm sitting there with her and I'm like, okay, I can tell you're really upset. What's going on? She said, well, when the earthquake happened, we had to leave the building, and my husband could not walk down the stairs, and so she had to leave him and go get help. And she didn't want to leave him, and then they wouldn't let her go back, so they sent two men up. Everything ended up okay, but it was just kind of one of those moments of, if I don't take care of me, I'm not going to be able to take care of her. And in fact, I might actually hurt her.

[00:16:05.070] – Dr. Yeager

Yes.

[00:16:05.760] – Allan

My wife, that is, in the future, because I put her in that kind of situation. And so I think as you start looking at this process, if you're not taking care of yourself, you're not taking care of anybody.

[00:16:18.040] – Dr. Yeager

That's right. And I think we've been sold a bill of goods as human beings that others should always come first. I think that's kind of what we're taught almost at a level below consciousness. We're almost taught to make sure, don't be selfish, be selfless and make sure that you put everyone else first. I think that's backwards. Right. To your point that taking care of self is really, in essence, taking care of others.

[00:16:45.240] – Allan

Yes. We're told, I think the way it goes, we're coming upon that season anyway, is it's better to give than receive? And that's a part of that messaging. But the whole point being is I could take a dollar and I could give it to you right now, or I could take that dollar and I can build it up to $10 or $100 or $1,000 and give that to you later. And so it's kind of making that investment in yourself is only going to benefit you and everybody else. So you have to make that happen.

[00:17:13.540] – Dr. Yeager

Yeah. Investing in self is critically important and not something that we're necessarily taught to do. So we have to really endeavor upon a process of being curious what the book is about, being more curious with myself, asking and answering questions that will help me push into better and deeper sensibilities around who I am and how I came to be.

[00:17:37.090] – Allan

Now, a lot of these questions will get very uncomfortable.

[00:17:42.640] – Dr. Yeager

That's good.

[00:17:45.340] – Allan

Yeah, it is good. You're going to get outside of your comfort zone. And maybe one of the ones when I read it, I was like, okay, this is hard one, and how much time do you spend looking in the mirror? And that answers changed for me over the years. There have been times when I didn't want to look in the mirror because I didn't like who I was. And there were times I looked in the mirror and I was very proud of who I was. And it's but it's not a solid state. It changes based on who I am, when I am. Can you talk a little bit about why that's such an important process for us? And like I said, maybe the hardest of all the questions that I went through, I was like, this one is really, really hard.

[00:18:26.440] – Dr. Yeager

Yeah. So you talked about that comfort or discomfort. I am a big believer, Allan, that any discomfort, pain, instead of it just being pain or discomfort for the sake of discomfort and sake of pain, we'll lean away from that because we don't want pain. We don't want discomfort. We want to be comfortable. But if you think back and reflect back throughout your life, some of the moments that were most uncomfortable produced the biggest growth that we have in our lives. So how do we reframe our thinking into a way that says, I'm going to welcome in this discomfort because I know that it's going to produce something. My kids, who are all, I'm 6'3, around 300 lbs, depends on the meal and maybe 310 is the good meal. All my boys were big boys. They would come to me when they're 8 9 10, eleven years old, and walk into my room and say, dad, my knees are killing me. So they're having growing pains. So I would say to them, that is an indication that you're growing. You want to be big like dad. So this pain that you're feeling, this discomfort that you're feeling, is solely an indication that you're growing.

[00:19:42.090] – Dr. Yeager

So it makes it easier to deal with that pain and discomfort. So if we think about engaging in this work of the mirror, it's not that you have to stand in the mirror for hour after hour, but finding the ability to be more comfortable with the person that looks back at you. You said it earlier that sometimes you would avoid the mirror because you weren't happy with the person that was looking back at you. Well, why is that? Because that man in the mirror knows all of you, knows every aspect of who you are, how you came to be. So it's uncomfortable to engage with that man in the mirror. But if we can find the ability to stand firm and be curious with that man or woman that's in the mirror, we'll learn a heck of a lot about who we are. And once again, the more I can learn about who I am or how I came to be, then I get to show up in the world a better version of myself. So finding that ability to stay in the moment, engage with self, be curious, and better understanding of us gives us an opportunity to better ourselves in our social networks.

[00:20:52.660] – Allan

Yeah. The times that I didn't want to look at myself was when I truly not being congruent to the man that I wanted to be.

[00:20:59.340] – Dr. Yeager

There you go.

[00:21:01.910] – Allan

It's a clear indicator if I didn't want to look myself in the eye, that I wasn't being me. I was doing things that were contrary to who I should be. And until I stopped doing those things and started doing the things that were building me to be the man I should be, that changed a bit. Now, I still haven't spent as much time looking in the mirror as I probably should because there's still things to fix. I mean, I never finished molding. I'll never finish fixing process. Yeah, it's a process. And so this is a really good tool. Like I said, it'll be uncomfortable. And I agree with you. Everything great takes effort and maybe discomfort, if you think about it.

[00:21:38.310] – Dr. Yeager

And this term that you use, I think, is a very important term, congruency. That's really what we're seeking in life is the ultimate version of finding ourselves as being successful, is moving with a congruent self. That who I think I am, who I seek to be. Is that congruent with my actions on a daily basis? If the answer is no, then I have to start to move in a way that says, I want to build that puzzle so the pieces fit together. Congruently. This is really what we seek in life. And the book, in my hope, is a move towards that congruency.

[00:22:16.120] – Allan

Now, one of the things that I think that's a lot of people apart is that it's how they face challenges. And so you have the question, what are the challenges you face in your life? And then you move that forward in that conversation to talk about lynch pin problems, can you kind of walk us through that thought process and how that would work?

[00:22:33.490] – Dr. Yeager

Yeah. So, for me, after football was done and the realization was that I wasn't going to be a multimillionaire playing football for the next 20 years, I was kind of lost. So I found a really good friend, and that friend was alcohol. So I began to have struggles with alcohol, and it would numb me and it would allow me not to engage with who I was or better understand myself. So it became a great friend to me, and that struggle ensued over the next number of years. But once I stopped drinking and figured out that this was really a big struggle in my life, I got the opportunity to look back and say, man, that was a huge lynch pin issue. That when we find that lynch pin issue, that's that cornerstone struggle that we have many times, there are a lot of issues that come off of that lynch pin. And if we can focus and fix and address that lynch pin, we'll find that many other things will start to fall in place. So when I stopped drinking, my finances were in a better place. When I stopped drinking, my relationship with my wife got much better.

[00:23:42.750] – Dr. Yeager

My ability to be there for my family and my kids improved drastically. So all of those issues improved off of that lynchpin issue. So asking our So what is my biggest challenge and better understanding that challenge may then allow for a number of things to fix themselves in my life if I address that lynchpin. So this is once again a critically important endeavor, but not easy. So the book is really simple, but that doesn't mean it's easy work. If you read the book, it's simple. A twelve year old can read through the book. So very simple. But the work that ensues off of the book and the questions and the conversations are challenging. But that's an important thing. We want to be challenged, I hope. And from that challenge, we better ourselves. Nelson Mandela said a quote that I live by. He said, in life we never lose. We either win or we learn. I think this is extremely important, that if we can reframe our thinking around struggle and say it's not a loss, I didn't lose. I got an opportunity to learn. And guess what? I'll make more mistakes as I move through life.

[00:24:57.700] – Dr. Yeager

But the hope is I won't continuously make that same mistake over and over because I learned from it. So seeing the world reframing some of these challenges, these lynchpin issues, in such a way that we can take a learn from that it betters us as we move forward.

[00:25:14.710] – Allan

Now, another thing that comes up a lot when I'm training is that people believe, or they have a belief about themselves. So I have a client, we sit down with a certain weight for her to do a certain exercise, and she says, this is as high as I can go. And I just get a smile on my face. I said, Give me six weeks.

[00:25:33.040] – Dr. Yeager

Yeah, that's right.

[00:25:35.510] – Allan

And I see it time and time ago. Like a client says, I don't believe a woman over 50 can lose weight. I hear those untruths all the time. And so it's your question is what untruths are you telling yourself about your current existence? Why do we have so much trouble seeing outside of our own lives?

[00:25:54.560] – Dr. Yeager

Well, I think that kind of our upbringing may set us up to struggle to see outside of ourselves, really in a profound and deep way. And one way in which to cope with that is to tell ourselves lies, to tell ourselves untruths. If you tell an untruth enough, you can convince yourself that it's not a truth. So there was a philosopher, an existentialist, that really talked about what is the existence of why am I here? What is life about? His name is Jean Paul Sark. And Sark worked on something that I utilize a lot and talk about a lot that's connected to this untrue. And it was a concept that he coined called bad faith, saying that we can tell ourselves these untrue stories over and over in a way that helps us kind of manage and manipulate life. So, for instance, if you're working at a job that you absolutely hate, you'll tell yourself the story that there's no other option. I've got to keep doing this job. I absolutely hate it, but it's how I pay my bills and my mortgage payment and whatever it is. So we tell ourselves this story that we know deep down is not true, but it allows me to manage and manipulate through the day to day process, but it's not true.

[00:27:13.620] – Dr. Yeager

So can we challenge ourselves and start to uncover and discover? What are these untruths that I'm telling myself? If you sit with yourself enough and say, so what lies am I telling to myself? You'll have answers to that question. Now the process really says, okay, now I'm aware of it. We have a choice. We can keep making those untruth statements and say, it's almost like the Matrix. Which pill do you want? I want to tell myself the lies, and that's what I want. Then I'll stay there. But if I take the other pill, I will uncover all kinds of options that I didn't necessarily think about or didn't really want to uncover. But now they're here. Now the truth is going to be able to battle with the untruths. And guess what? I can make some different choices. Now, that doesn't mean we always will. I may stick with the bad choices, but now it's not from a space of unconscious or subconscious movement. It's now into the consciousness. And what does that mean? It means now I can start to battle with cognitive dissonance. Now I have a battle that ensues about that new information enters, new truths enter my thinking.

[00:28:29.110] – Dr. Yeager

And now I get to say, yeah, I hadn't really thought about that. What am I going to now do about it? Am I going to choose to keep down that same lane or am I going to move in a different way? Now you have some options, and that's what we really hope for in life. The more we want a multiplicity of options, and that's what the book is hoping to point out, that we do have options. It starts with awareness, and then we get to do something about those. No new options.

[00:28:56.620] – Allan

Yeah, I kind of look at it. And you even talked about you being your own best friend a little bit in the book, but it was this concept of if your friend told you she's just not going to be able to lose this weight, you would not tell her. You're absolutely right. You're over 50. You're not going to lose the weight. You're going to turn around and say, yeah, you can. You're going to be the best cheerleader for that person. And so if you find yourself saying something that you wouldn't say to your own best friend, that's probably a part of the cognitive distance that's going on in your brain right now.

[00:29:25.990] – Dr. Yeager

So, Allan, you point out something that's really important. So we have this concept of self talk. We're always having conversations with ourselves. So as I'm talking, Allan, you're talking to yourself right now. What question am I going to ask next? Do I believe what he said on this?

[00:29:43.240] – Allan

I absolutely do.

[00:29:46.840] – Dr. Yeager

The self talk is continuously occurring, but if we tune in and become more deeply aware of the self talk, we may start to say, man, I'm really negative with myself, and I didn't realize I was even doing it. So if we start to think about personifying, this self talk, this negative tape that can be playing over and over in our heads, and if we take those negative thoughts and tell ourselves, if I had my best friend take that tape of Negativity and spew it back to me and say all those negative things back to me, would I remain friends with them? The answer is easily, no. I wouldn't remain friends with you if that's all you were doing was telling me these negative stories over and over. But we're doing that to ourselves over and over, Allan. So if we can better frame this misunderstanding in such a way that says, I don't want that Negativity over and over in my head, the first step of that is being aware that's even occurring. The next step is moving that negative conversation into a more positive space that I'm, okay, I'm going to make it through this.

[00:30:56.440] – Dr. Yeager

Every struggle that I've had in my life, I've made it through to this point because I'm here and I'll make it through whatever this struggle is. Now, I've changed that tape. I took that negative tape out and replaced it with a positive tape. Now I get to move in this world in a more positive fashion every day. And if that positive tape is plain, the chances that my outcomes in life are positive increase exponentially. So that's really what this self talk is about, and how do we frame it and understand it in a way that we can move it, as opposed to just having to be unconscious and playing negative thoughts all the time.

[00:31:36.550] – Allan

Now, I think for a lot of us, well, every one of us, change is scary, change is uncomfortable, and we've talked about a lot about discomfort, but everybody kind of wants to change, and they basically start cataloging. If you could change anything, what would you change about yourself, about your environment, about your job, about your relationships? Every one of us will probably be able to list three or four things about just about every one of those. But you asked the question, what do you most hope to change in your life? Can you talk about the significance of that question?

[00:32:12.190] – Dr. Yeager

Yeah. So again, I think to your point, there's tons of things that we would like to change. I want to change my wardrobe. I mean, there's a ton of things we can fill in the blank and nausea about the things that we want to change. But the work that I'm discussing in the book is saying, all right, so what is the most profound, biggest thing that I hope to change in my life? Because I think too often we get caught up in trying to address everything all in one moment. I just want to get everything better, but does it work? And then we get consumed with and overwhelmed with trying to do too much. So there's an African proverb that says, how do you eat an elephant? Well, the answer is one bite at a time. So this question of what do you hope to change most is taking the bite out of whatever, that struggle that you're having. Not trying to address every struggle and change every aspect of my life, but prioritizing what it is that I see as the struggle of the challenge that is most pressing for me, then I get to go about taking a bite out of that and working to change that, as opposed to trying to be overwhelmed with addressing all of these issues at once.

[00:33:32.920] – Dr. Yeager

And what we'll do when it feels like it's overwhelming, we end up doing nothing. I coach football and I coach offensive line. And one of the things that I tell offensive lineman, you have two guys that are coming at you. What a guy will tend to do is try to block both of them. When you try to block them both, you end up blocking neither. So it's connected to change and what we prioritize. Pick one thing, stick with that, work through that process, and that becomes a win. When I can work through that process, all of a sudden I have one small win. And if I can have one small win, I now convince myself that I can have two wins, and those two wins can turn to four wins. So all of a sudden, I get to change and build upon that one bite sized approach to change. And I think that's really my work, is to help facilitate the change process. I'm not going to change your life, but I'll help you facilitate your own process.

[00:34:34.540] – Allan

You have to be willing, yes, put in the effort to make that change. And questions, like I said, they're just a really deep dive into who you are in helping you build a plan and find the things that you need to change, to be congruent, to be who you're supposed to be. So it's a great, great tool.

[00:34:51.450] – Allan

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

[00:35:01.310] – Dr. Yeager

Three. You're going to make me narrow down to three? I'm going to struggle.

[00:35:06.490] – Allan

Remember what you just said? What's the big thing?

[00:35:09.570] – Dr. Yeager

Yes. There you go. Prioritization. Prioritization.

[00:35:13.770] – Allan

Exactly.

[00:35:14.960] – Dr. Yeager

So I think a couple of the most simple ones are even starting off with your sleeping pattern. How well do you sleep? Getting good sleep matters that if I get a good night's rest, I wake up more refreshed and find the opportunity to face the day in a more positive nature just from the very beginning. So I think getting good sleep is a cornerstone, one that's very simple. I think another one that we must develop is budgeting our energy, that I only have a finite amount of energy, so I can't give it all away all the time. And that's not being selfish, that's just using a budget, a process of budgeting my energy. Where do I choose to give this energy? Why am I choosing to give this energy to this project or this person? But it has to be in a fashion that we budget it because it's not endless. So where am I giving my energy? And why I think is an important piece. Journaling is another thing. Finding the ability, the research tells us if I have a struggle, a couple of ways that I can address that struggle are talking to someone, telling them what my struggles are, and then journaling.

[00:36:29.610] – Dr. Yeager

And both of those processes are ways in which we can get that negativity out. It's all bottled up inside of us. What we hope to do is get it out. So if I come to you, Allan, I'm seeking help and support, you're not going to be able to fix my issues, but if I trust that you'll listen and hear me and allow me to spew this out, I'll walk out of that session of that conversation feeling lighter. You didn't fix it, but I got to talk about it. I got to relieve pressure around that issue. So finding the ability to journal or talk to others, I think is extremely important. We have to give ourselves grace as well, Allan. We do well as human beings giving people around us grace. If you mess up or do something I don't like, I'll say, no, Allan, I don't worry about it, it's okay. But we won't take that same notion with ourselves to tell ourselves, it's okay. I struggled with that, but I'm going to keep moving. In life, we must be rivers, not ponds. A river is ever moving, ever regenerating itself. A pond can become very stagnant.

[00:37:39.570] – Dr. Yeager

So we want to keep moving. Finding the ability to keep moving. Last couple that I hit on, and I know it's more than three, I apologize already. How do we find the ability to stay in this moment? The only true thing that we have in this world is the current moment that we reside in. What happened ten minutes ago is gone forever, never to return. What will happen ten minutes from nowis Allan is yet to be seen. But this moment we know we have. So how do we find the ability to stay in the current moment? Practice gratitude. I'm happy and thankful for all that I have that has got me to where I am in this moment. And lastly, do we have the ability to focus and have an internal locus of control? That control is important, but not nearly as important as knowing that I own and control who I am and how I'm moving this world. So being clear on the control mechanisms and controlling the controllable things that we can, and not being as worried about those things outside of our control, where we tend to dump a lot of energy and we don't impact it, we can't move it, but we dump energy into it and it doesn't change anything.

[00:38:57.600] – Dr. Yeager

So use that energy to control the things that you can control. That's an internal locus of control. So I know I gave you like, seven, and I know you asked for three, but I tried to pick

[00:39:07.780] – Allan

that's all right. You got a whole offensive line coming at me. It's worth it. We do need to journal because we can't beat people up on the football field anymore.

[00:39:17.100] – Dr. Yeager

That's right, we don't have that outlet. Journaling is the new.

[00:39:23.290] – Allan

All right, thank you for that. So, Dr. Yeager, if someone wanted to learn more about you and the things you're doing and your book, How Am I Doing? Where would you like me to send them?

[00:39:32.710] – Dr. Yeager

So you can really if you Google Dr. Corey Yeager or go through any of the social media outlets, instagram, Facebook, Dr. Corey Yeager, Google my name. The book is on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, any of the major book outlets, you'll be able to find it at your local bookstore, community-based bookstore. So it'll kind of be everywhere. If you google Dr. Corey Yeager, you'll find me everywhere.

[00:40:00.490] – Allan

Okay, thank you. And thank you for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

[00:40:04.230] – Dr. Yeager

Hey, I appreciate it, man. It was a fun conversation, Allan. Thanks.

[00:40:07.470] – Allan

Me too. Thank you.

Post Show/Recap

[00:40:17.510] – Allan

Welcome back, Ras.

[00:40:19.170] – Rachel

Hey, Allan. You know, I could have listened to you guys talk for probably a couple more hours about different questions to ask. I mean, you guys pick some doozys about self talk and being self aware and all these wonderful things. Very useful.

[00:40:32.670] – Allan

Well, for one, I was able to cherry pick 40 questions, the ones that I thought would actually be the most relevant to the show overall. But that's good. It's that self awareness that is tripping all of us up. And there are different ways to get to self awareness. And, you know, like, I have the quiz. What's your health blocker? Quiz so you can go to 40plusfitness.com/quiz and take that quiz and it's a really simple little tool puts you in one of five categories for what's blocking you the most. And so there's tools. But this book is kind of like I'm just swimming in the top little bit of 2ft of water and he's down into the deep, deep depth. And so this is like the deep dive into who you are all the way down to your soul. And so when he asks the question, you're asking questions like, what are the lies that I tell myself? Or what brings me the most joy in my life? And initially you might just throw out an answer and then you start diving into it a little bit deeper. You're like, okay, I'm not being authentic.

[00:41:38.520] – Allan

I'm not living the life that I should be living based on who I'm supposed to be. Because most of us have this self image and part of the time and it's also a major reason why we struggle with our health and fitness is we're not living up to that.

[00:41:52.360] – Rachel

Right.

[00:41:53.510] – Allan

We have this idea of who we're supposed to be and we're not walking the walk. We're not quite there yet. And so this is a great opportunity for you to look deep and figure out what are those things that are really keeping me away from doing the things that I know would bring me joy and would make my life better and would make me a better person. Because it's in there.

[00:42:14.490] – Rachel

It is.

[00:42:15.340] – Allan

It's in there. And you just have to take the time to say, okay, what's there and why is it there and what can I do about it? And when you really get down to figuring out how you are today, that initially sounds like a very easy question. But it's so deep that this is not, like you said, literally every question in this book. You could spend a week thinking about. You can make this like an annual 40 weeks out of the year, spend the time going through the question and then spend that week really, really diving deep into yourself, okay, about what that question means to you. And then the better thing because I'm a very much of an action oriented person. What are you going to do about it?

[00:42:58.900] – Rachel

That's right. Well, you know, one of the questions you talked about was showing up for yourself and you discussed if you had a friend that said, oh, I can't lose this last few pounds or I can't do this. You would never agree with that. You would tell your friends, sure you can. You can do that. You would be the encourager. And so why aren't we doing this for ourselves more often? And similarly kind of in the same book, you know, as a mother, I used to prepare healthy meals for my kids because I wanted my kids to grow up healthy. And sometimes I let that slide for myself. Or maybe I don't cook the healthiest foods for my husband, but he does most of the cooking, I'll just tell you that. But why doesn't that skill set translate to ourselves when we are so giving and caring for other people? Why can't we do those exact same things for ourselves? It's a good question to ponder and to figure out how to fix that.

[00:43:51.810] – Allan

Yeah. And so, yeah, at the realm where I'm talking 30,000ft, looking down, it's just that you're a giver and you want to give to the family, and you want to do what's right for your family. And so you're looking at your co pilots, the people who are in the plane with you, and you're spending more time taking care of them than you are about yourself, forgetting that you're all in the same plane.

[00:44:15.600] – Rachel

That's right.

[00:44:16.530] – Allan

Or car.

[00:44:17.640] – Rachel

And that's important.

[00:44:18.720] – Allan

Yeah, in some cases. Some folks. I know this wasn't the case with you, but the people that are in that car with them aren't supporting them. They're taking and they're taking, and so you've got givers and takers. And so there's sometimes there's really bad stuff going on, and that's where these deep dives can be very, very good because you're just like, Why do I keep doing it? And sometimes you're doing it because that's who you are. And sometimes you're doing it just because you've been pulled into that and held into that. And you need to understand that at a deeper level to ever break through that. Because if the resistance is there internally and you don't deal with that, you're going to revert. If the resistance is external and you don't deal with that, you're going to be fighting that battle all the time. So it's really important to get in there and understand yourself and your situation and come to those answers. Because it's not a simple, oh, I just need to stop doing this. It should, but it can't. It won't.

[00:45:17.890] – Rachel

It's not always that obvious too, Allan we may not recognize the people that are sabotaging what we're trying to accomplish. Like you said, if it's not us sabotaging ourselves, we may not recognize those situations. So having this list of questions like Dr. Yeager put together in his book, it might be really beneficial just to sit down and give some of them a little bit of a thought process.

[00:45:41.860] – Allan

Yeah. If you're not where you want to be in the self awareness area, this is a great book to walk you through it. Basically, if you hired him at probably something that's going to be well into the big hundreds of dollars an hour for him to listen to Utah, these are the questions that he would ask. These are the big questions that you'd go into a session and he might spend several sessions really pulling out of. You the real answer to this question. And he does some of that in the book. So if you're someone who's going to wants to do this, I'd say, yeah, go ahead. And get the book. It's on audible.

[00:46:15.570] – Rachel

Cool.

[00:46:16.140] – Allan

So it's on audible. You can get the hardbound book and it's just a journey that you'll take with yourself. I know you're a big fan of journaling, as am I, and you're like, buy yourself a journal, listen to audiobook, listen to a chapter, and really think through that question. And don't stop until you've gotten to the end of the question and you have an answer. And here's the interesting thing about the human brain is by the time you get to the end of all the questions, if you were to start back at the beginning, you might even have different answers for those questions after you go through this, and in fact, you probably should have different answers for those questions after you've gone through a process like this.

[00:46:56.220] – Rachel

That sounds fascinating. Yeah, I think I need to get my hands on some of these questions.

[00:47:01.540] – Allan

They're in the book.

[00:47:02.800] – Rachel

All right, on it.

[00:47:05.210] – Allan

Alright, so I'll talk to you next week, then.

[00:47:07.110] – Rachel

Take care, Allan.

[00:47:08.190] – Allan

You Too.

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Episode

Today I want to share with you the seven weight loss mistakes that I see most people over 40 make. And these are really important because if you're making these mistakes, it's going to make weight loss much harder. So let's go through these seven weight loss mistakes and see if you're doing any of these. Okay?

Cutting Calories Too Much

The first one is cutting calories too much. A lot of people will drop their calories down to some drastic number in the hopes that they're going to lose the weight faster or begin losing weight again if they've stopped. And so I want you to think of body fat in the same terms that we would look at like our country's strategic reserves of oil.

OK? We keep those barrels of oil and gasoline. We keep that stuff in reserve because we know at some point we might need it. Okay? And what happens when you cut your calories too much is you're signaling to your body that you're going to war. And if your body believes that you're going to war, it's going to cling on to its energy reserves as much as possible, meaning it's going to hold on to that body fat. And so you actually are training your body to lower your metabolism and thereby not release that fat because it's afraid it's going to starve to death. And so while you're not really going into a starvation mode, that doesn't happen for many days. You are telling your body to function on less and your energy levels will go down whether you recognize it or not. When you work out, you're not working as hard, so it really cuts back on a lot of things and it keeps you from optimizing your health. So instead what I recommend is, yes, cut your calories a little. Your calories should never go below 1200. 1200 is the basics of what your body needs to survive.

Just with basic function, if you're down around the 1200 or below 1200, your body is going to struggle to function, right? It's going to turn certain things off and that's not a good thing. So if you just cut back your calories a little bit from what you would normally eat and then just move a little bit more than you normally move, you're going to create a slight deficit for a while. Your body will adjust. But you just rinse and repeat this. Instead of dropping down to say, 1500 calories, take a look at what you're eating today. And if you find that you're eating about 2000 calories, drop it down to 1800. And then just try to add a little bit of extra walking, a little extra movement into your day and see if that works for you. Give it a couple of weeks and see where it goes. But you have to make sure that you're not hungry because if you let yourself get hungry all the time, you're going to fall out of it. This is not going to work and it's not going to be sustainable in the long term. You're going to train your body to function on fewer calories and then you're not going to want to eat fewer calories because you're going to be hungry, and that's going to create a problem for weight loss.

Being a Scale Fanatic

The second mistake that I see people making is being a scale fanatic. Okay? Your worth is not determined by the number on that bathroom scale. It just isn't. That's not who you are. And the scale is measuring more than just body fat. So even if the weight is going down is not a good thing all the time. You could be losing muscle. If the weights going up, that could be a good thing, because now you're rehydrated instead of being dehydrated. So the scale is not you, and it's measuring more than body fat. And then the other things happen. You may step on the scale and weigh a pound more than you did yesterday. But I can tell you, I know you didn't eat enough food yesterday to gain a pound. That's 3500 calories. And you know you didn't eat 3500 calories. So if you let yourself believe that you're getting fatter, that's a huge mistake because it's not true. The other part of this truism stuff, when we're looking at this being a scale fanatic, is that it's never going to be a straight line. You're not going to consistently lose half a pound every day, each week.

It's just not going to happen. There's going to be spikes up and spikes down based on body water, hydration, and just things are sticking around in your system. Yeah, the poo is going through your system. If you didn't have your regular break, then maybe you have some of that in you. That's why you weigh slightly more or didn't lose weight. So it's not going to be a straight line. And so if you find when you step on the scale, that number is hurting your feelings, or that number is how you are now going to live your day, you really need to change your relationship with your scale. I don't recommend people weighing themselves every day if they feel they have an unhealthy relationship with the scale. I encourage you to weigh yourself about every four days, maybe once a week. Give it a little bit of time so you're seeing a trend over a few days and a week or four days, something like that, gives you enough time to make some course corrections. If you go through two weeks and what you're doing isn't working, then you might want to tweak it a little.

Not a lot, but a little. So don't be a scale fanatic. The scale is not the number you're interested in. It's body fat. And if you want to lose body fat and you want to measure that, start measuring your body in the places where you carry body fat. And that's when you're going to see that you are actually getting smaller. Might not show up on the scale, but then, you'll know.

Cardio and More Cardio

The third weight loss mistake that I see a lot of people making is they become cardio bunnies. They're cardio and more cardio. It happens every year in January. You go into any fitness place and you're going to see all these newbies that just joined the gym and they're all on the cardio equipment and that's all they're going to do. And then they're just going to do more of that and more of that until they finally fall out. You've probably heard the statement that abs are built in the kitchen and that's the true fact. You're not going to lose weight just by doing cardio. I mean, I've seen people come to the gym and stick with it and they're there five days a week on the cardio equipment.

And over a year you don't see any change in them at all. They're literally the same size as they were a year ago and they're doing the cardio. So the cardio is not going to get you there. What you eat and how much you eat is what's going to move your weight. It's what's going to help you lose the weight and lose the body fat. So we want to eat whole food and we want to make sure that we're getting adequate nutrition and we're eating just enough to stay healthy and lose some weight. Okay, so cardio is a tool. If you want to have more stamina, cardio is a great tool for that and it can help you with your weight loss goals, but it is not the way to do it. And just doing ever more cardio is not the answer to weight loss.

Drinking Your Calories

Weight loss mistake number four is drinking your calories. Now this could be juices, smoothies, protein drinks, alcohol. We drink a lot of calories and some people don't even want to count those calories, but they can be quite significant. One of the problems that happens when you're drinking calories is one, a lot of the things that we drink are calorie dense and not nutritionally dense.

So alcohol is just empty calories. That's all it is. You might enjoy it, but it's not helping you lose weight. A lot of people will take these shakes as a way of losing weight and their meal replacement shakes, but again, they're not going to satiate you long enough for them to be effective over the long haul. And what's going to happen when you stop drinking those shakes? You're probably going to put the weight back on again, even if it did work for you. So avoid drinking your calories whenever you can. Eat whole food, chew it up. Make sure your body is going through the digestion process because there's an energy cost to digestion. And if we are drinking our calories, it's already digested practically just goes straight into our system. And you want to slow the process down so you feel full longer and your body burns energy, digesting the proteins and the fats and the fiber. You want that. You want that slow steady burn of calories over time and not just the big hit dose of boom here it is.

Going it Alone

Number five, going it alone. Now there are people that can, there have been people that do but most don't.

Okay? Now that doesn't mean you're a bad person and it doesn't mean that you lack what you need willpower and motivation. But what you do is bring on a team. And when you have team members with you it makes your success better. It makes it easier. It makes it sustainable. It makes it a part of you. So having a workout buddy or a walking friend, hiring a coach, having these team members, having these partners and coaches they're all going to help you be more successful. They're going to help hold you accountable. And accountability is one of the most significant motivators out there. Some of us are self motivated and that's great. That intrinsic motivation is really good. But if you don't find yourself 100% intrinsically motivated to do your workouts every day, to do your movement every day, to do your eating the right way every time then you're going to struggle. But having an accountability partner is really really important and a lot of programs including my own are built on the structure of accountability. Okay? The other thing that going it alone means that sometimes you just don't know what the next step is.

I mean you know you're on a diet you're going to try this diet but how do you transition off of that way of eating after you've lost the weight and not getting it all back again? So having someone there to provide a little bit of guidance and support can also be very important on your journey. Otherwise you might find yourself chasing after all the snake oil salesmen that are trying to get you to do something else besides having a healthy diet. And that leads me to the next one.

Looking for an Easy Button

Weight loss mistake number six is using the easy button. Okay? There are pills, there are shakes, all kinds of things out there that are sold to help you lose weight because it's a multi billion dollar industry to help you lose weight. The problem is that most of the time these things don't even work and many times they're quite dangerous. There was a drug on the market called Finfloramine. Okay? So they call it FinFan and basically FinFan was a drug and it was quite effective but it was also quite effective at destroying people's hearts and the heart valves in particular. And the sad part of this was that there have been supplement companies selling weight loss supplements and putting some of these banned substances in their products so they would be effective.

And so when you start trying to go down this road of trying this pill or trying that thing just buyer beware. They may not have your best interests at heart. They want to sell product and if they can give you a product that shows it's working but in the long term it's hurting you. They're going to sell a lot of product, they just are. Okay? So just realize that these guys are out there trying to sell you something. There is no easy button. There just is no easy button.

Not Getting Your Mindset Right

And then the 7th weight loss mistake is not getting your Mindset work done first. Too many people approach this with a strategies and tactics first model. They're going to go on this particular diet, they're going to exercise this many days per week on the treadmill. They got it all planned out, all these strategies and tactics. But then they stop. And why do they stop? They stop because they didn't get their mind right first. So you want to start your process by thinking about your why. Why do you want to lose this weight? If it's not important to you, not important enough, not emotionally important to you, then you're going to struggle.

You just are. So getting your why together, being very specific about why this is important to you, to get off your medications, to be healthier for your children and grandchildren, to not be in a nursing home when you get older. Those are all very compelling why's that I and some of my clients use every single day to make sure that we stay on track. Okay? The other thing that Mindset brings to the table is it helps you have the patience and for you to have the right pace in mind as you go forward. Because too many people want to lose the weight fast. And fast is not good when it comes to weight loss. It's not sustainable and it's not something that's going to stick long term. So having the mindset that this is going to take a while and I'm just going to keep chipping away at it and this is the pace I'm going to be able to go because I've got all of these other things going on in my life and I can't just diet and exercise all day long. The folks that are on the Biggest Loser program, that's all they do for the whole time they're in the camp.

They just work out and they don't eat much and that's how they lose that much weight. But most of them go home and they don't have that structure and they have to go back to work and you have to get back to normal lives and they gain the weight right back. So having the patience and going at the right pace makes it sustainable for the long term. Also, Mindset helps you deal with Pitfalls and Saboteurs. Now I talked a little bit about Saboteurs a few weeks ago and we can talk about some of the Pitfalls, but every one of us is going to have something happen or some struggle. Someone brings donuts to the office and God forbid I ate one of them. We're going to have those without the right mindset, a lot of people will go completely off the rails and say, hey, I blew it. I blew it with the doughnut, so I may as well go eat lunch with the group, and I may as well have a terrible dinner and some drinks tonight. They ruin the whole day instead of having one bad incident. So having the right mindset helps you maneuver and get where you need to be, even when you have a slip up.

And then the other thing Mindset gets you to do is it helps you keep the weight off because now you're thinking in terms of developing a healthy lifestyle, and you're not thinking about a temporary diet. You're not thinking about this as I'm going to diet because my daughter is getting married in November, and I want to weigh a certain weight and be a certain size by November. You're not thinking in those terms. You're thinking in terms of, okay, my daughter's getting married. Grandkids might be coming up within the next three to five years. I need to be fit to be the best grandfather I can be, right? I want to be able to spend time doing active things with them. And so that's my motivation. That's my why, that's my mindset. And that has to become a lifestyle and not a diet. I'm not going to diet for three to five years. I'm going to have a lifestyle for three to five years. It's going to help me ready, and that lifestyle is going to stick with me for the rest of my life. So the right mindset work done first is so important to this process. I put it number seven, but it's really in my mind, number one.

Summary

So to kind of summarize these a little bit, the seven weight loss mistakes most people over 40 make:

• Cutting calories too much.
• Being a scale fanatic.
• Cardio and more cardio.
• Drinking calories.
• Going it alone.
• Using the easy button.
• Not getting your mindset work done first.

Now, in my opinion, and a lot of people believe this as well in this industry, a lot of them don't. They want to sell you something that's not going to help you. But I believe that a healthy lifestyle is what you should charge after, and that weight loss will end up being a side effect of doing the right things for your body. Movement, food, and stress are all information to your body. Your body is looking for information on how to operate for you. And if you're giving it the right food and you're moving the right ways and you're reducing your stress, the bad stress, your body is going to respond by making you healthier. And when it's healthier and it gets the information that this is going on good, you're getting a good communication in your body, then your body can sit there and say, you know, it's probably okay for us to get rid of this strategic reserve body fat that we have here, because we don't really seem to need it.

There's plenty of food. I'm satiated most of the time. We're moving, we're active, and we're getting enough. We're getting the nutrition our body needs. It's going to let go of that body fat. It will.

I want to finish with a quote by Michael Pollan. He wrote the book, In Defense of Food, and I think this kind of wraps up weight loss advice into seven words and one sentence. Three sentences, okay, but seven words. “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

Okay. So if you start putting the right food in your body and the right amount of food in your body, and you're moving and you're managing stress, the weight will come off. So don't fall for one of these seven mistakes. And if you are, it's time to make the change. So check us out. Come to 40plusfitness.com and see what's going on there. I have some challenges. I have my be fit for task program. Check it out at 40plusfitness.com/bfft.

Post Show/Recap

[00:21:09.110] – Rachel

Hey, Allan, your seven weight loss mistakes are really perfect. I think I've made every single one of them at some point or another, and we might as well start with number one. Cutting calories too much. I know that I have done that.

[00:21:25.200] – Allan

Yeah. No one really knows how many calories your body needs, but we do know that there's a lower limit. We know there's just some point where your body is not getting the nutrition it needs to survive. Now, where is that line? Well, Ansel Keys did a study in 1944 called the starvation diet, or starvation. They want to study starvation. They wanted men to lose 25% of their body weight. And so they cut their calories down to 1570. And these men went nuts. They were doing self inflicted injuries. They couldn't let them leave. They kept them locked up in the University of Michigan stadium. If they left, they had to go with a buddy, and they do the buddy system to make sure that neither one of them cheated, and they needed them to lose 25% of their body weight. It was insane. These guys went insane. And that's at 1570.

[00:22:23.780] – Rachel

Wow.

[00:22:24.830] – Allan

For a normal person. And the point being, though, is food today is very different. It's not just that you're not getting the energy that your body might need to function well. It's that you might not be getting the other nutrients that your body needs because you're just not eating enough food. And so, you know, yes, you can cut your calories down and lose the weight very fast. But the problem is other systems, other things start to shut down. And so people will talk about extended fast and things like that, and those can be done and managed. But almost every person that does an extended fast gains every one of those pounds back as soon as they stop the fast. So it's not an effective way to lose weight and keep weight off. The main point being is find the right level by experimenting. But don't just go on and say, well, this little formula says I should be eating this many calories. Therefore they didn't calculate that formula for you. They calculated the formula based on average people with normal functioning, this and that, wanting to lose weight. And there is no straight line to any of this.

[00:23:43.040] – Allan

There is no formula. Your body will burn more calories one day than it does the next and then more the day after. And there's no rhyme or reason exactly, other than hormones and the types of foods that you ate and when you ate them and your activity level, all those different things play into this. This is like trying to use plus and minus to deal with calculus. And there's a lot more operators out there in calculus than just plus and minus. So you can't just go at this and say, I'm just going to do the calories and calories out. It'll help you cut a little bit of body weight. It will, it'll work. It does work. The math makes sense in the short run. But if you're looking at making this sustainable and doing this over the long run, just cutting calories down to some very low number is not going to be sustainable. And unfortunately, as soon as you go back to eating the way that you ate, you're going to gain that weight back.

[00:24:43.470] – Rachel

Well, it's important to notice too. I mean, ages and ages ago when I used one of those food diaries, those online apps that you can use nowadays, I plugged in. I wanted to lose five or £10 and it set me at a 1200 calorie day for dieting. And at the time, I didn't know any different. Like I didn't know that 1200 calories was probably way too low. And I did my best to eat appropriately. But there's a lot of things wrong with this picture. It's just not enough calories. I was getting fatigued. I wasn't choosing the most nutrient dense foods. Number four is drinking your calories. Those diet shakes that you can drink are low calorie and they're supposed to be these meal replacement things, but those certainly aren't satiating. I mean, just a snowball of mistakes that happened and I really didn't get anywhere with it, to be honest.

[00:25:45.210] – Allan

And here's the point where I can empirically show you that the math doesn't work. Because that same company that puts out those same numbers who won't be named here, there's value to what they do, but it's not as valuable as a lot of people think is. They will tell you you had a great day. If you eat like this every day for the next six weeks, you will be down to your goal. Okay? But you notice as you weigh yourself, you're not losing that weight the same every day, or even every week, or even every month. There's declining results. And so what's happening is you're breaking the formula. And unfortunately, once you break that formula, what, are you going to recalculate the formula? Well, okay. Again. Now we're starting to get into calculus.

[00:26:43.230] – Rachel

Oh, jeez.

[00:26:45.390] – Allan

If you just try to cut your calories and that's all you're going to do. I can just tell you overall, that doesn't work for 99% of the people. It might work for you, but that's only if you're going to be doing it very smart. Cut a little, move a little bit more. That might and can be sustainable. But you're not giving your body the nutrition it needs. You are destroying your health. You are not helping yourself.

[00:27:11.580] – Rachel

Well, I think that you just hit the nail on the head is that you can't just cut calories. You can't just say, I'll eat less of a salad, or less vegetables with dinner, or less this and that. You really need to focus on what less nutrient foods you can cut out of your diet. Drinking less calories and pops or teas or extravagant coffees. Can you swap out a cereal, sugar laden cereal, or donut at breakfast or maybe some eggs instead? You really need to focus on the nutritional part of it and what nutrients your body needs versus the fun to eat stuff. It's an easy place to cut.

[00:27:52.650] – Allan

Yeah. And sometimes it's not about eating less. It just isn't. It's about finding the right foods that your body needs so your body can actually feel cared for. If your body is in a mode where it feels like there's no food because realize your internal organs. Your body doesn't have eyes. When you stop feeding it food, the signal it gets is there's no food. That's the one signal, no food. She's not eating. There's no food. Okay. You stop moving. It's like, oh, we're in danger. We're hiding. All these signals are bad signals. Whereas if you're out and about doing things and you're eating good nutritious food, the signals are all clear. We don't need to hunker down. We don't need to hold on to this extra body fit. We just don't. We're storing it because we're afraid of what might happen. That's the body's control and protection. So you start teaching your body, we're in a good place. I'm not stressed, I'm sleeping good. I'm getting movement, and I'm eating well. Your body will say, oh, okay, well, maybe we don't need this body fat, and it starts to shed it. And if you keep feeding at those signals good.

[00:29:14.670] – Allan

The side effect is it will say, okay, we don't need to store this much body fat.

[00:29:19.330] – Rachel

Yeah, I like that. I like that approach. The weight loss is a side effect. If you take good care of your body, then your body will do what it needs to do and you'll be healthier and more fit for it.

[00:29:32.940] – Allan

And then in the end, is being skinny the answer is weighing lesser, because you could be skinny and unhealthy. You could be skinny and frail. You can be skinny and diseased, or you can be healthy and vibrant and likely still be able to get to a comfortable body fat percentage that way. And so I will always err on the side of the healthy, improving your wellness over what you weigh any given day, for sure.

[00:30:08.820] – Rachel

My goal is not to be skinny or to be focused on the number that's on that scale. My goal is to be healthy and fit and able to do the things that I want to do to live a happy life.

[00:30:21.400] – Allan

Yeah, but the problem is, if I had written the title, the Seven Health Mistakes People Make over 40, no one would have paid attention. But I put that word weight loss, and suddenly ding, ding, ding, everybody's clicking everybody's.

[00:30:34.910] – Rachel

That is so true. We've all been there, though. Like I said, I gained a lot of weight with both of my pregnancies, and I spent a lot of time trying to lose it. And like I said, I have made every single one of these seven weight loss mistakes in that attempt to lose that extra weight. So if we could steer people to realize that these are mistakes, that cutting calories drastically is not the answer, that doing tons of cardio is not the answer, and to please don't focus on your scale all the time, 24/7. That is definitely not the answer. Then we've probably cut some corners that people can focus on what they can do to lose a little weight, but primarily get healthier.

[00:31:17.740] – Allan

Yeah. I just came up with a million dollar product idea.

[00:31:21.770] – Rachel

What's that?

[00:31:22.950] – Allan

Sneakers with scales in them.

[00:31:25.160] – Rachel

Oh, my gosh.

[00:31:28.850] – Allan

Bluetooth to your phone. Tell you what you weigh at any point in time in the day.

[00:31:32.410] – Rachel

Oh, my gosh. I don't want to know, Allan. I just don't want to know.

[00:31:38.270] – Allan

I just said that out loud on the podcast, so I'm sure it's going to show up on Indiegogo soon.

[00:31:42.900] – Rachel

Yeah.

[00:31:46.070] – Allan

All right. Well, Rachel, I know you've got your hike to do. Tell Mike I said good luck to both of you. Thank you. I wish you well on that. I'm looking forward to in a few weeks when we get back together for this, having that conversation and understanding how your trip went, the good, the bad, and probably some funny interesting stories.

[00:32:07.320] – Rachel

I'm sure there will be.

[00:32:09.590] – Allan

And then, of course, I'll be driving around the United States and enjoying my time there with family. So even though you guys are listening to this on September 13th, Rachel and I will probably about that time, be talking to each other again for around the first time in a few weeks. So it's been great talking to you, Rachel, and then I'll talk to you in a few weeks. For everyone else, it'll seem like I'm talking to you next week. So be safe, enjoy yourself, and we'll talk then.

Patreons

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

– Anne Lynch	– Eric More	– Leigh Tanner
– Debbie Ralston	– Ken McQuade	– Margaret Bakalian
– Eliza Lamb	– John Dachauer	– Melissa Ball
	– Judy Murphy	– Tim Alexander

Thank you!

Another episode you may enjoy

The 7 best weight loss hacks for people over 40

Less...

Let's Say Hello

Because Rachel is on an off-the-grid hike for 8 days, we won't be having the normal hello session on this episode.

Interview

[00:04:05.590] – Allan

DJ, welcome to 40+ Fitness.

[00:04:08.410] – DJ

Thank you for having me, Allan. Happy to be here.

[00:04:10.760] – Allan

Now your book, The Warrior Within: Own Your Power to Serve, Fight, Protect, and Heal, it kind of appealed to me, the one there's, the guy thing. But there's plenty of female warriors out there, so ladies don't tune out because this is for anybody that serves. And if you're a mother, if you're a grandmother, if you're a daughter in some capacities, you are serving, you are fighting and you're protecting just as much as any man or anybody else. So this is everybody and I really want to start telling you there's something you had in the book. And I'm like if I was going to say what is this book about and why this book is important, I would say this and this is from you. Anything that makes us mentally stronger and more true to ourselves is worth investing time and effort. And so reading a book, learning these lessons that you bring forward in the book, that's a great investment.

[00:05:06.610] – DJ

Yeah, well, that's why I wrote it. That's my hope. That was my goal, is to make sure that what I wrote was worthy of everybody's time, focus and attention. We live in a busy, hurry up world and I wanted to share the things that I know have impact, that I know can move the needle on the dial, getting to that level of life that we want to get to where we're a better version of ourselves, we're stronger, we're more resilient and we're more able to serve the people that we love and are with everyday.

[00:05:37.330] – Allan

And that's one of the topics I kind of want to get into early on here, is that I think when we become parents, particularly when we become parents, I think it's just something in your head just because quick, I'm a different person, I got to do something different here. But a lot of people also choose careers where they're serving as a teacher, as a firefighter, as a policeman in the military or even just being a leader in your community.

[00:06:02.530] – DJ

Right.

[00:06:03.080] – Allan

I think a lot of us get so involved in that that we miss one of the most important things and that's actually taking care of the warrior first.

[00:06:14.110] – DJ

Absolutely.

[00:06:15.040] – Allan

Can you talk about self care and why that's so important and how we can make that paradigm shift?

[00:06:21.610] – DJ

It's critical and I'm glad that you're bringing this up. And by the way, that list that you just fired off. All those people are populated throughout the book. Those examples, those real world impact moments of how these principles show up in the lives of educators, firefighters, people in health care. When we talk about this warrior concept, and again, it transcends race, gender, age, stage of life. So I want to make sure that that's clear. But I put very directly in the book, you cannot be a warrior when you're falling apart. It just doesn't work. Intentions, you can dismiss them. It's execution that matters. And when we talk about this in practical terms, it comes down to self care, taking care of the vessel of all this great service, which is us. And you are the only you that you will ever have or be in this lifetime. We have to act accordingly. And sometimes we wait for other people to take care of us. We wait for it to be convenient and never will be. We wait for something to intervene, to really pull us into that self care mode. And sometimes that thing that pulls us into it is a health crisis.

[00:07:28.690] – DJ

And that's the reality is we need warriors who can sustain in the good fight every day, serving other people well, having a good impact. What we don't need is martyrs. And martyrs are the ones that just go till they fall apart, stand back, look at the debris field and say, how the heck did this happen? And I work with these people and I love them, whether it's a firefighter or educator or people serving in the military who are given their heart day in and day out, but they're not holding anything back to keep developing and protecting themselves. And that is unsustainable.

[00:08:04.690] – Allan

And the worst part of it is we don't get to choose when we fall apart. It's going to happen when it's going to happen. So you might be most needed at that moment when you're most unable.

[00:08:17.230] – DJ

And that's the reality. And that becomes extremely painful for people who have dedicated their lives to impacting others in a positive way. We don't know when it's going to show up. Sometimes we get some indicators, but we really don't know when to make that change until something crisis level happens. And that's one way to learn. I don't recommend it. I went through that same experience myself. Yeah, it was an awful experience, but it also made me a born again advocate for self care. Because I know if you keep doing that over and over again, drawing from the well without putting anything back, not only is your warrior spirit going to be depleted and drained, but you are going to go into a place where you don't want to go, which is that complete apathy, burnout health crisis. And there are better ways to do things in life. And you can learn from my painful lesson when you read the book on how not to wait, but to take care of yourself. Every day in our tribal communities, we talk about medicine. I mentioned that in the book too, as something that goes beyond a pill or a vaccine.

[00:09:22.600] – DJ

Medicine in our tribal communities and our traditions was anything and everything that kept us healthy, mind, body and spirit. So it could be spending time with family, spending time alone, it could be getting enough sleep, exercise, funny movies, hobbies, outdoors, whatever it is. That's your medicine list. We have to incorporate that daily because also tribal, we look at medicine, it's not something we go to when we're already sick and out of balance. It's something we incorporate into our lives to keep us healthy and strong.

[00:09:51.550] – Allan

Now, when we hear the term warrior, I think, and you said this in the book very well, people think of this really strong, almost invincible, against the odds, us against the world, or against the army or against whatever. And we don't realize how much when you actually look at real warriors in action, how they're not ashamed or afraid and they have the courage to ask for help.

[00:10:26.950] – DJ

Yeah. And that's a tough lesson to learn because the reality is you have to ask yourself a question how bad do you want to serve others? And if it is a deep drive, that passionate drive, then you have to set yourself up for long term success. And that's part of that self care idea. And yes, warriors are strong, but they are not invincible. I write in the book very clearly, warriors are not bulletproof. In our tribal traditions, our warriors fought against incredible odds. They were out matched technologically, they were lied to, it every turn. They had all these different obstacles and they still found a way to rally and deliver what they needed to for their people, to protect and defend their people. And if we're going to do that in our roles today, we have to take care of ourselves in the best way we know how. And a lot of that includes support from the outside because we over emphasize this warrior role where it is somebody who always has the right answer, is always strong, never afraid, doesn't deal with pain, doesn't need any outside support or encouragement. And that's all garbage that gets us into hot water quicker than anything.

[00:11:40.750] – DJ

Warriors are strong, but they struggle at times. Warriors are brave, but they deal with fear. Warriors are courageous and action oriented, but they also fall down at times and need help. That's totally okay. As I said, you have to think bigger picture. We all need that. We're all human beings. So that's important to include in our resource list. Yeah.

[00:12:04.500] – Allan

Now, I know from experience in the military, and you can see this in movies, it's a little bit more overdramatized of okay, get on the radio and call in support. It's a pretty common thing in a lot of movies where someone had that drama of we're getting overrun. But in real life that can be something as simple as just asking your spouse to take care of the children for 20 minutes or so for you to just go have a mental health break it's knowing when you need that and asking for that help and not being afraid to communicate that I'm being vulnerable with it. But just saying. Hey. I can't do this on my own right now. I need your help. And that trust that you put in the person that's helping you, well, they're probably a warrior in heart too. So it's a symbiotic thing where you're letting another warrior come in and be there for you just like you're going to be there for them later.

[00:13:01.450] – DJ

That's it. And there's strength and vulnerability. That's the other thing I've learned as I've gone along on my journey is being able to think through a different lens, realizing that sometimes the ultimate strength is actually asking for help, saying, hey, I'm not doing this right, I need some outside support, I need a different answer. That takes great courage and that's sometimes we're all worse than me when we don't exercise that. But just being able to reach out and get that support, that is critical because the way that we're wired, it's really bizarre because the moment that we're going through struggle is the time that we need support the most. But it's also the time where we are most likely to withdraw and go into our bunker, go into our own teepee and just lock everybody else out. And I always share with people, I was taught traditionally we're a lot more like bees and ants than we are like eagles. We need each other. We're better when we're with each other. Or let me clarify that with the right people we become very important to eliminate that. But we become more resilient, we become stronger, we become more brave, we become a better version of ourselves based on who we're surrounding ourselves with at the time.

[00:14:15.050] – DJ

That's why it's critical that we're not only selective be picky on who you tribe up with, who you associate with as a fellow warrior because if they're out there doing that good work at times you're going to lean on each other. And I take great comfort in knowing I'm surrounded by that caliber of folk. The men and women that are in my life that I know will be there for me just as I am for them. That's how you become brave as a group. That's why I say in the book warriors never fought alone. Why? Because that's dumb. You are going to severely limit your capacity to deliver anything good into this world when you try to go solo or lone wolf, it just doesn't work. It looks good on TV or in the movie, but in reality it doesn't work like that and it gets us into trouble more often than not.

[00:15:04.270] – Allan

Even rambo usually has a little bit of help

[00:15:07.930] – DJ

a little bit.

[00:15:09.730] – DJ

It's still mostly him. But that's that imagery, though, that gets us into trouble. And we do that too. Even in our native communities, we over romanticize that warrior role and make it inaccessible. And it's like that warrior role isn't about perfection. It's not about having all the right answers. It's about being strong enough to get yourself up when you get knocked down and continue to serve other people to the best of your ability. But warriors cry. They make mistakes, they stumble, but what they don't do is quit. And so that's the deciding factor there in that dynamic.

[00:15:44.710] – Allan

Yeah. Now, as a personal trainer, I come across people and there's two basic excuses that I get from people when they come. And probably the one that I kind of poopoo away and say, okay, that's not really true, is the motivation part. And I'm like, you'll be motivated when you want to do this more than you don't want to decline. When that balance happens, the motivation will come. But the other one I can somewhat agree with, at least from a perspective of experience, of understanding, when you think, okay, I just don't have enough time in the day to do the things I need to do for the self care, for the this or for the that. And you put something in the book, and I think it comes back to that phrase you used a minute ago, being picky. Yeah. Can you talk about kind of the mindset of what you put in the book about how we can look at time management to make sure that we have the time to do what we need to do?

[00:16:46.690] – DJ

Yeah, great question. First and foremost, there is no time for anything in this world. There's no time to eat, to pray, to play, to work out, to hang out with our families. There's only time for what we make time for, and that is it. If our health and wellness are not at the top of that pyramid, I'll tell you what we've also probably experienced everything we're trying to do may fall short because how realistic is it to go into this world, into this life, into this warrior role and want to deliver 100% of who we are and what we can do on a half charge battery or less? I mean, that's like plant carrot seeds and hope when coconuts grow. That's pure wishful thinking, and it's not reality. And the thing is, with time, it's non renewable. That's the other thing that makes it so precious, is we have to put it not towards everything, which is the temptation of the world we live in, but towards the right things. And if we never learn to delineate which is which, we doom ourselves to chaos. And one of the biggest challenges is learning not just what to say yes to.

[00:17:50.210] – DJ

We're good at that. It's learning what to say no to so that we have clarity of purpose we're able to concentrate our power and focus on the things that really matter because to not do that, we're dividing and conquering ourselves, which is the worst thing a warrior can do in battle. We're spread too thin and my gosh, do we feel it. We feel like too little peanut butter on too much toast, going a million different directions and not doing well in any one of them. So time management is absolutely critical in a busy world, and saying no to certain things, I know, can be painful. But the good news is you're saying yes even louder to the right things. And we're the ones who have to do that.

[00:18:29.780] – Allan

Yeah. And that's important. Everybody is going to pull on your time if you let them.

[00:18:35.740] – DJ

That's true. We live in a world where everybody and everything wants a piece of your time and they'll take little bites here and there and it's almost like you're swimming with piranha. Eventually you got nothing left and you don't know where it went. So that's why you got to get out of that pit or that pool of water and be able to operate on your own and be conscious about the choices you're making.

[00:18:57.010] – Allan

So about nine years ago I did a Tough mudder and then I was going to try to do a Spartan about four years ago or so and I tore my rotator cuff and so it's kind of that setback. And I was training for another Tough mudder that was supposed to do and not much time. It's pretty soon coming up here and I hurt my back and I didn't hurt any training. I don't know exactly how I heard it. It's not cute, but you said something in the book. The phrase you use is what to do when the wolf comes. And it's like, okay, I'm 56 years old. Occasionally I'm going to have some form of injury. It's kind of almost part of it, I'll tell you. Mentally, it's tough. How do we deal with setbacks properly? Because I think all of us are going to experience them as we go. It's never just the happy sailing, everything is good, I'm winning all the battles kind of thing.

[00:19:53.370] – DJ

Yeah. And it feels great when we're winning. Right. But the guarantee is the wolf will come and the wolf is that really huge setback, that heartbreak, that loss, that devastating pain, where we really are kind of reeling and wondering how do I keep moving forward at this point? How do I even stay afloat at this point? And a big part of that comes from who we surround ourselves with, like what we were just talking about, who we tribe up with, who our fellow warriors are. We need to be able to identify that and it's better to know what that looks like before you go into that moment than trying to figure that out when you're there. So that's the first one. The second one is really having a strong relationship within yourself. To be able to ask yourself questions when you're going through emotional turmoil that comes with loss, pain, setback is being able to kind of have a self interview where you're able to talk to yourself. And when you're able to do that and sit down with your emotions, I know it can be scary, but I promise everybody listening. You will not ignite on fire.

[00:20:56.900] – DJ

You will not melt down. You will not die. I know it's scary to do that, because dealing with those emotions makes us more resilient and enables us to get through them versus running away from them, which I know is a temptation. I mean, I've done that in my life, too, where you run away from the bad feelings as long as you can. They still catch up with you. They just catch up with you when you're exhausted now and not in a good position to deal with them. So it's better to face it and deal with it. But being able to ask questions like, are these thoughts useful? Because a lot of times, man, we all do it. We ruminate, we kind of go over the same turf over and over again. We're not making any progress. Why did this happen to me? How is this fair? Why does the world work? Like, we start going through this Rumination process that doesn't serve. The second thing is we can start asking ourselves questions like, what story am I telling myself about what just happened? We all talk about are all familiar with PTSD. Post traumatic stress disorder.

[00:21:56.720] – DJ

But there's also a thing called post traumatic growth. Which there's a lot of great researchers who are working on this now. And one of the big takeaways seligman is one of them who identifies that one of the most important questions we can ask is. What am I telling myself about this story or what I'm going through right now? And is it a story of doom gloom? It's never going to be the same. I'll always be broken or have a wound, or is it this is a learning experience. Yes, this is hard. I can do this. I can do hard things, and I'm going to be better for it and be able to help other people maybe deal with their stuff, too. Same situation, two different stories. But we're the narrator, we're the director, the producer, the actor, so we can recreate it. And then the other question is, is this story real or is this just fear showing up? Am I just really in pain right now? And if so, that's okay. You need to take care of yourself. But when we're able to do that, we're able to assess where we are and then how to move forward.

[00:22:59.230] – DJ

We can't do that if we're just in panic mode or stay stuck in the paint.

[00:23:05.620] – Allan

For me, it was looking at it from the Holistic of this thing really defined me. And it's like, no, this is critically important. I'm not a professional athlete. I'm not getting paid to do this event. I was doing this event because it was fun and it was motivating and the training to know that, okay, I got to build myself stronger than I need to be, to be who I am today, to do the event the way I want to do it. And I was going in that direction, but when I think about it from the longer term, it's like, okay, no, that event, that point in time, doesn't define me. It's upsetting that I won't get to do it, but I still get to be me. I still get to have the future that I'm going to have. I still get to be the warrior tomorrow.

[00:23:58.450] – DJ

That's it.

[00:23:59.480] – Allan

And it won't do me any good to hurt myself worse today for the sake of something that isn't nearly as important as what I want tomorrow.

[00:24:08.110] – DJ

That's it. And you live to fight another day. This is such a great point, Allan. It doesn't define us. That one moment doesn't define us. It's really crazy to me, and not because we're all guilty of doing this, you run into one bad moment. You completely dismiss the track record that you build in your life, in your career, on your journey to get to that point in the first place. We took completely forget it. And that's one of the things I talk about in the book, is recognizing when you exercise courage, when you show discipline, when you face fear head on, is recognize those moments of bravery. Recognize those. Don't forget them. Don't blow past them. Because what happens is we're just looking forward all the time, which is important to look forward, but we never look behind us to see what it took to get here. And the reason why that's so important is when we remind ourselves of who we are and what we've done in the past, when we encounter that fear again or that setback, we can look at that reservoir of courage, and we can draw from it. We can say things like, I've been here before.

[00:25:10.690] – DJ

I've done this. I can handle this. I did it before. And actually, what I went through before was even worse, and I'm still doing this. So it's a process. And the other thing is, with the setbacks, we learn a lot about ourselves. One of the stories I tell in the book was about training for the Wing Open boxing tournament my senior year at the Air Force Academy. And I trained, I worked my guts out, and I broke my nose twice. The second time was two weeks before the tournament, and I broke cracked an eye orbital. So I was done. I was out. I was devastated. But I never looked at that as a defeat. I looked at it as a disappointment, but I never looked at it as a defeat. Just like, what you're saying with your injury, you can only do so much. And at that point, if you fall short, we can beat ourselves up for it or we can honor all that it took to get to that point in the first place. It's not always going to work out in our favor.

[00:26:07.510] – Allan

Yeah, absolutely.

[00:26:09.910] – Allan

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

[00:26:19.570] – DJ

I love this question. This is a journey where all works in progress, but if we have that as a goal, and basically I would summarize that as kind of being the best version of ourselves and we're constantly evolving, we're constantly transforming, or at least should be. But the way that I see that is, again, having a personal dialogue, having a personal connection, and constantly taking an assessment of where you are. Are you happy with where you are? And if not, what are you doing to progress in that area? So it's kind of like a heat seeking missile going towards a target. There's infinite micro corrections to get to the target, and that's part of life we have to constantly be assessing. Am I doing well in this area and this area? Can I work on this area a little bit here? I'm doing pretty good, but it's a constant assessment and it's an internal thing externally. Again, we have to surround ourselves with the right people. I can't stress environment enough. I had an elder tell me this years ago. He said our spirits are like sponges. They soak up whatever they're around. And we get to define what that is.

[00:27:27.370] – DJ

Are we listening to an eight hour news loop or are we hanging out with our friends who give us encouragement? Reading books that inspire our minds, going through health practices that strengthen our body and minds. We get to determine what we're surrounding ourselves with that's also critical to our success. And then the other thing is celebrating. Celebrating the wins. Gosh, we don't do that nearly enough and we wonder why we condition ourselves just to kind of be humdrum and just on to the next thing. It's like we need to learn to celebrate, do the victory dance. We had songs when warriors would come back from battle to celebrate that victory. We wanted it to be something that people remembered. And how often do we achieve great things in a moment and we just totally blow past and go onto the next thing? How can we be inspired to go onto the next thing when we're not even honoring this thing? It just doesn't work. So we need to learn to celebrate, reward ourselves. Give yourself a break. A pat on the back and make it appropriate too. You don't want to do a good workout, good 20 minutes workout, then have a full chocolate cake.

[00:28:42.630] – DJ

Yeah, it's like you got to balance it out. But even sometimes I find. For me, some of the best rewards I give myself is just permission or kind of an acknowledgment that in that moment I delivered. Just to be able to actually recognize that that's one of the best feelings. It's not about buying something or going somewhere. It's about being able to sit with yourself and have that internal conversation where you hear your own voice telling yourself, you did a great job there, you really delivered, you brought it, and that feels awesome. I mean, we need that. But however you celebrate, we need to do that more because we want to condition ourselves for the next success and the next. We don't want to condition ourselves to go into Burnout faster.

[00:29:27.770] – Allan

Perfect. DJ, if someone wanted to learn more about you, learn more about the book, The Warrior Within. Where would you like for me to send them?

[00:29:36.530] – DJ

Please go to nativediscoverycom. That's my website and it's got all the information on what I do, who I work with, information about the book and where you can get it. It will be available everywhere, also as an audiobook, but really excited to put it out into the world and strengthen the people that read it and appreciate that.

[00:29:58.810] – Allan

It's got a lot of great insights. So thank you for sharing and thank you for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

[00:30:04.700] – DJ

Chimmy Gwetschniji. Thank you very much, my friend, for having me.

Post Show/Recap

[00:30:15.270] – Allan

Hey, Ras.

[00:30:16.410] – Rachel

Hey, Allan. That was an interesting interview with DJ Vanas. I'm curious to know it sounded like he was a Native American.

[00:30:24.000] – Allan

He is, yes. And very much in the service area, military and now service to people. This is written from a very different perspective of caring about people and being the light for others, the example for others. That's very important to him and with his culture. And so yeah, going through the book you really get a sense that he's a lead by example person.

[00:31:01.250] – Rachel

That's so neat. It was really interesting. There's a lot of good things in your interview, but why don't we talk about having the courage to ask for help? I know that I struggle with that sometimes it is hard to ask for help. I don't want to be a martyr or anything, but I just sometimes feel like it's just better if I get things done when on my own. And I do want to help. I want to be a good mom to my kids. I want to be a good wife to my husband and a good daughter to my parents. And sometimes it just gets overwhelming.

[00:31:34.030] – Allan

Yeah, this is just my opinion, so I could be completely wrong and if I am, just ignore me. But I think men have a difficulty asking for help when it comes to physical things and getting things done on that side. A lot of men will say, okay, I'll fix it myself. And I don't mind. We'll spend a whole Saturday fixing something they could have paid a mechanic $50 to fix, but they just want to do it themselves, and so they will sit there and go through that time and expense of figuring it out to solve that problem. Now, women on the other side, I think it comes to more of the emotional trying to get help with the things that a mother should be good at or a sister or a daughter should be good at. They don't want to ask for help there. But the reality is, regardless of what your hang up is, it's really important to recognize when asking for help will move the needle.

[00:32:40.680] – Rachel

Yeah.

[00:32:41.990] – Allan

And we've talked about big rocks and little rocks and all that. Sometimes your big rock is to ask for help.

[00:32:48.410] – Rachel

True.

[00:32:50.150] – Allan

If you're thinking, okay, I could lose the weight myself, what you're saying is, okay, I lose 1 lb a month doing it the way I'm doing it, and I want to keep doing that. I'll get to my goal weight in three years. That's great if you stick with it for three years, whereas maybe just hiring a coach could get you there in a few months or six months. Same thing. If you want to run a five K, you could start training for the five K, but you might tell yourself, okay, well, we're getting close to the end of the season. They're going to do some fall runs up until Thanksgiving, Christmas, then it gets too cold here, and then it'll be March, April before I'd want to run again. So I'll train for a 5k in April.

[00:33:39.450] – Rachel

Yeah, right.

[00:33:40.320] – Allan

Okay. And knowing that most of that training is going to have to be done on the treadmill, or you could hire a running coach, and you could be running that 5K by November. You can be doing the turkey trot easy. And so just thinking in terms of how much a trainer will help you move the needle is a big thing. The other thing is asking for help elsewhere, and I think this is another area where I think women might have a more difficulty is to say, okay, you're the primary caregiver for children. You're the that, and you want to start training. Well, you can't be mom and train at the same time. And now maybe you're lucky enough to be in a place where they have a daycare at your gym, and you can drop the kid over there, and they can sit there and see mama working out over there, and they can watch their videos and things like that in the little play area, and that's cool. But if you don't have that, then you got to ask for help. Help. I need you to watch the kids for an hour each day while I do this training.

[00:34:45.330] – Allan

Because it's not entirely fair for you to say. I got to wake up at 04:00 in the morning so I can get my training run done so that the training done. So then I can come home and be mom and then go to work and come back and be mom and get everything done for house and home and do it all over again the next day. If something as simple as, look, I need you to get the kids ready for school four days a week, three days a week, and I got the other two. You can get three training days in each week. And for a lot of us, that's enough to move the needle.

[00:35:19.170] – Rachel

Oh, for sure, yeah. It's important to communicate with your spouse or whoever else you have in the household about trading that time off. I'll watch the kids this time so you can do your thing while we'll try it off, where you watch them, where I can go do my thing. And same thing with the chores. If you can't keep up with house chores, you split it up. It's just a matter of communication. But when you do hire a coach, you could, like you said, move the needle, but I don't have a clever way to say it, but the coaches have already done all the hit and miss. They've already done all the research and have seen experience. They can cut you right down to the bone of what you should be doing to move that needle the fastest. When I first started running, I was just learning as I went. But I did hire a coach just recently. The spring I ran a marathon, I was aiming for a PR, and I hired a coach who got me that PR. And so even her techniques, her knowledge, her experience got me to where I wanted to be.

[00:36:24.070] – Rachel

And I'm a running coach. I should know all this stuff, and I do. But sometimes you just need somebody else to hold you accountable, to do the right things at the right time. There's just a lot of value to it.

[00:36:37.070] – Allan

Yeah, and I did that with strength. I can train myself. I've done it before because I had to do it before. When you work 90% of the time, you're traveling 90% of the time. To put that in context, you're home three days a month. Oh, gosh, okay, so home three days a month. And there's no way for me to hire a trainer at the time because there were no online trainers, and specifically were no online trainers that were used to coaching people over 40. The only online trainers I knew were the ones that were like the nutrition coaches for getting yourself ready for contest prep or posing coaches who are getting people ready for their posing for a contest, a fitness or physique contest. And so there really wasn't anybody that was going to say, let's make an old fat man on fat. So that's what I needed, though. I needed something like that. So I went and got certified. I started spending time, I started making sure I stay in hotels with certain amenities, gyms and things like that. And I was able to do that. But I did put a stop. I made it something I had to get done within a certain amount of time, all those kind of things.

[00:37:46.550] – Allan

But when I hired the strength coach, I thought, okay, yeah, this will help me get a little stronger than I was before. No, I got as strong as I had ever been, even as a high level high school player, football player. I was squatting more at 51 years old than I was in high school wow. As an offensive lineman. So that's what my strength coach was able to do for me. And it was little things. It was these little things that he was able to just put into my thought process that pushed me a little harder, a little faster. And even at my age, I was trying to be the voice of reason. It's like there's no reason I should put that much weight on the bar, but I had done just a little less than that weight the day before, a few days before. So I was like, well, let's go. Let's see what happens. And I mean, I would push myself. It's not that you need to be the strongest person you've ever been. It's not that you need. But if you really need to move the needle on something to realize a coach is going to make that happen, that change will happen easier and better.

[00:39:04.220] – Allan

If you have someone there that understands what you're going through, can push you just hard enough and keep you in the game and doing it. So you're not making excuses to not do it. And there's all those things the coach brings. Like I said with my clients, it's like it's direction or guidance. It's support, and it's accountability, and that's what a good coach will bring you. But again, you have to ask for help if you want to go it alone. You might get there, but it might take you a lot longer. It took me over eight years, almost nine years to fix myself, and that was me doing it alone.

[00:39:48.010] – Rachel

Well, the interesting thing about a coach, too, Allan, is that we have the laser focus on what our athletes goals are. We don't have the same distractions that they have. They've got work and they've got family, and they've got outside obligations, and so it's easier for them to change their balance or to skip a workout or something. But as a coach, I'm looking at my athletes every single day. I want to see what they're working out. I will push them to do things, and I know when they do have crazy things coming up in their lives, we'll adjust. But again, we have that laser focused on what their goals are and can get them there. And then two, we've said in the past, you need to have some skin in the game, and when you hire a coach, you're paying for that service, and you're going to take full advantage of what you're paying for. So you get a lot of accountability and motivation just from that as well.

[00:40:45.650] – Allan

You sure do.

[00:40:47.410] – Rachel

Great. Interview.

[00:40:48.560] – Allan

All right. I will talk to you in a few minutes, but everyone else will talk to you next week.

[00:40:54.930] – Rachel

Take care.

[00:40:55.960] – Allan

You too.

[00:40:56.880] – Rachel

Thanks.

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