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Category Archives for "mindset"

July 27, 2020

in guest/interview , health , mindset by allan

How to survive and thrive when bad things happen – Dr. Jim Taylor

With all that's going on in the world, we need to have strategies and tactics to deal with the stress and anxiety. Dr. Jim Taylor gives us those tools in his new book, How to Survive and Thrive When Bad Things Happen.

Transcript

July 13, 2020

in fitness , guest/interview , mindset by allan

Perform better in life with Rocky Snyder

Most of us train our strengths and avoid our weaknesses. In Return to Center, Rocky Snyder shows us how we should be training for longevity instead.

Transcript

June 1, 2020

in guest/interview , health , mindset by allan
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1 comments

Cancer is curable now with Marcus Freudenmann

In the documentary, Cancer is Curable Now, Marcus Freudenmann shows us some alternative treatments for cancer that are showing great promise with less damage.

To learn more about some of the equipment we discussed on this episode, please go to Healthy To Be.

SPONSOR
This episode of the 40+ Fitness Podcast is also sponsored by Lumen.

Transcript

Allan (00:56):
Marcus. Welcome to 40+ Fitness.

Marcus (00:59):
Thank you for inviting me. I'm very excited to be here.

Allan (01:03):
You know, most of the time when I have a guest on, it's a book and that book, you know, will take me anywhere from six to 12 hours to read depending on how long the book is. You took all the information. I think I would have gotten from a book and you put it into a documentary that was less than two hours long. Congratulations for that. That was pretty insane.

Marcus (01:24):
Well, we live in a fast paced world and most people don't have that endless time to go through, but let's face it that way. Once you are intrigued, there is a workbook that comes with the movie and that is 460 pages. You can go much deeper.

Allan (01:48):
Okay. Yes. Okay. I did not read the workbook. I promise I didn't do that homework. But I did watch the documentary and had Dr. Gerson on to talk about her method. And I've had someone on this speak about that before. So I'm basically familiar with a lot of this and you know, we're over 40, I'm over 50. The C word, is one of those words that just kind of, every time he goes to see your doctor, every time you have a lab test you kinda expect it. It's going to come up at some point.

Marcus (02:20):
Hi. Yeah, I know that feeling. I'm over 60.

Allan (02:25):
And so, right now we're like, okay, what's going on in my body is there's this, there's just these things happening. I obviously have no, yeah, I don't feel like I have control over. But we're going to talk about that a little bit later because I actually do, but can we talk about what is cancer when someone gets a diagnosis of cancer from their doctor, what exactly is the doctor telling them?

Marcus (02:46):
Oh, well there's many different, well, it most of all shows that there is an imbalance in your system that your body can't control anymore. Or some would call it the final breakdown of the immune system. It's definitely immune system related disease and I would just simply call it an overwhelm. There's too many things your immune system should be doing and fixing and repairing and getting rid of. And it's overworked, it's tired, and it's like an army that slowly disintegrates and doesn't do what it's supposed to do because some of the soldiers are stopped then others are living in very unfavorable conditions. And I like to make those, you know, images, because when we think about you have a complete army of soldiers that defend you and repair and fix your white blood cells and they have just too much to do. And that's usually the reason why we move with age into a cancer state. But until you get the lump bump state, as they call it, it takes six to seven years. So it's not something that happens overnight. It's something that slowly grows. And there is many components that we know that support growth and many that stop growth. So it's something that we can control quite easily.

Allan (04:13):
Okay. So I'm gonna take your war battle and I'm going to carry that out. Now we're going to keep going with that one. Okay. So I see cancer and you, talked about this a little bit in the documentary, or a lot of people talked about this documentary and this was really one of the cooler parts of it was okay, so cancer's going to get in, for lack of a better word, a battle front formation. It's going to clump together. And so it's all going to, you know, the cancer cells are all gonna accumulate and they're gonna all be in one locate location. And then, you know, they'll tell you, you know, in the old, particularly in old times, supply chain supply line, if you're not getting the things that you need for your forces and your cutoff, that forces, it's just going to lay there and die. But cancer can actually develop its own supply line from our own blood system. Can you kind of explain how that process works? Because like I said, it was, for me, it was fascinating to say, okay, here's something that my body should just be beating out and saying, get out of here. You don't belong here. But it's clumped up, set a formation and now it's, getting its supply line set up.

Marcus (05:20):
Well it cancer has many attributes to defend itself and it's more or less a cell in complete survival mode. They don't need the environment anymore. And this is where the biggest discovery has been. A cancer cell has stopped dying so it tries to survive in unfavorable conditions. There was a study in Switzerland done which was quite significant. They took when they did surgery and removed a tumor, whether that prostate or the breast or any tumor that they removed, they always cut out a little bit more tumor tissue around so that they get it all, you know, like the, the typical sentence so that we get it all. And then there was a toxicological report done on tumor tissue and unhealthy tissue and the level of heavy metals, the level of bacteria, mold, candida, fungal overgrowth was tested in tumor tissue compared to the healthy tissue.

Marcus (06:28):
And the results were really significant. Tumor tissue usually had up to 40,000 times higher concentration of heavy metals of bacteria overgrowth. It's been, it's like the body collects toxins and puts them all together into a package, you know, to prevent it if you can't detoxify, and a lot of us have impaired detox pathways so the body doesn't know what to do with those toxins. So it stores it in a place and packages. And that's why usually cancer grows in fat tissue. That's well, what do you store those toxins? So when you look at brain tumors, for example, cholesterol, it's pure fat tissue. So there is many places that your body just starts to hog up toxins. And then within that environment, bacteria and heavy metals in combination get very close together. It's like a root canal filled teeth with a metal pin that is breeding bacteria.

Marcus (07:37):
And these bacteria transform, for example, mercury into dimethylmercury mercury, which is deadly in a very short time. In the same way you have heavy metal accumulation of arsenic or mercury or cadmium or whatever in tissue with that high load of bacteria, which then transform the metal into arsenic, for example. And that is where they end. Those breeding places of mutated cells happen. Cancer cell is just simply mutated and the mutation, the change that it stops dying and that's the apoptosis effect is more or less a survival mechanism of that cell, which is either in high inflamed areas or in areas of low oxygen or is an area that are totally poisoned and polluted and these cells then survive and become mutated cells, which is a cancer cell. So all of us, you, me at the age of five years old, up to the age of 80 years old, you know, we all have every single day many cancer cells that produced in our body based on the, that we are surrounded with based on the toxins in the air and the fish, you know, like mercury heavy metals, we know coal mining, all of those things.

Marcus (09:04):
They throw out a lot of pollutants and we all develop cancer cells. Now our normal immune system, our army would then clean up, and they would clean up in many different areas. So they eat mutated cells, they eat cells that are or destroy cells that are just intermediate. We always say there is like a progression state from a healthy cell to a cancer cell. There's many steps in between. And so those immune cells clean up and tidy up if they are working properly. But now imagine you have leaky gut for example. It's one of those prime examples. Leaky gut means when you eat, there is little perforations, little holes in your colon and in your small intestine where food particles and bacteria and undigested proteins are squeezed out into the bloodstream. So it's like a garden hose that is too old and gets little holes and sprinkles in all directions like a water fountain.

Marcus (10:12):
And that's the same that happens in our body. We have a few added components why leaky gut happens. For example, any kind of Roundup use that we have in all our normal sprayed vegetables, they cause leaky gut. Heavy metals cause leaky gut stress causes leaky gut. So there's many things. So when somebody has leaky gut, every meal, they eat huge amounts of bacteria and undigested proteins are squeezed into the bloodstream. That's an imminent threat to your body, an imminent threat to your whole health. So your body will use all the soldiers, all the army to clean up that leaky gut, the mess that is created and will ignore cancer cells, ignore infections, ignores bacteria, and Hheavy metals because that's not relevant right now. And that's how we occupy our soldiers instead of letting them do the right work. And there's so many, I would call leaky gut phenomenons, you know, food sensitivities, allergies, creams that we put on externally that are absorbed into the bloodstream that then go to the liver. There's so many components, how we suppress our immune system every single day. That it's just overworked. And that's when the cancer cells start to center, start to build clusters and start to grow. And once they are connected to the blood supply and good glucose sugar, then they are perfect in fermenting that sugar. And that's creating a belt around them so that the cancer cells are protected. So it's a very sophisticated survival mechanism that kills us.

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Allan (13:21):
Now, most of the time we go into the doctor and they're going to give us a diagnosis. They're going to say, okay, you have prostate cancer or you know you have breast cancer and they have a protocol and their protocol is, is typically nuclear war. We're going to do chemo, radiation, removable or all of the above. Can you talk about those standard treatments because, you know, I've had a few people on, we've talked about prostate cancer, we've talked about some other cancers and there's always a downside to almost every treatment protocol that's currently out there in Western medicine.

Marcus (14:00):
Yeah, it's, this is often the philosophical question, because what we believe in what helps. See if people believe in conventional medicine can do incredible things. I, I always, I'm very cautious to say doesn't work or it's not the right way to do because for some people it does. I think there is a strong belief pattern. If I know chemotherapy will poison me or that radiation is like and terminal and stops everything healthy from growing, then that will happen. So we have a lot of discrepancy here based on belief. But in general using poison to kill in a body that is already overburdened usually with poison or with toxins or with heavy metals or with bacteria, you know, bacteria, poop and pee. As I always say, they create neurotoxins as a waste product. So there is a lot that is already overburdened and if I didn't use more chemicals, it's sometimes a miracle how patients survive.

Marcus (15:13):
Even with that extra on-slaughter instead of cleaning up. See the biggest problem that we have and what you just mentioned, you have prostate cancer, you have breast cancer. We look at the disease and we focus on the disease. When I made the documentary and traveled around the world there was like always which treatments do we do? Which treatments are most effective? That was my main concern and I was focusing on that. And until I came to Dr. Rao in Switzerland, he said, Marcus, you're asking really stupid questions. Who cares about treatments. I was like 10 years of research. I thought I had it. I was freaking shocked when he just put me on the spot and said, you're really off the plot. And then he explained, he pulled three charts out and said, look at those three breast cancer patients. They all have breast cancer they are all around the 42-48 mark. The first client has cancer because of self-loathing, a series of trauma from childhood being abused.

Marcus (16:21):
She doesn't care for herself. Very high, acidic, very low oxygen, slightly obese, but no care for herself. That would constitute into already enough reason for her to have cancer. The other patient has a viral infection, Epstein Barr virus infection combined with mold toxicity and she lives in a very high EMF environment in a high rise where pretty much everybody has an EMF router plus the telephone pole is not far away. So she was really exposed and we know that mold in combination with EMF is very toxic. And then having EBV on top, plenty sufficient reason to develop breast cancer while the third client had actually really dental problems. She had three different metals in her mouth, which causes a galvanic reaction and released huge amounts of mercury into her system. Plus she had detox pathways in there that, you know, she couldn't get rid of toxins no matter what.

Marcus (17:27):
They all just reoccurred in her body but couldn't, couldn't be eliminated. So seeing that three identical cancers had three completely different reasons, was already like a big awakening. And then we looked at the treatment protocols and all three had a completely different approach to getting rid of those causes. And once we did, all three patients recovered. And that's, I think it was about 10 years ago when that happened. I never forget, I sit in that office and it was first time clear to me that we are not treating disease. We need to treat the patient who has the disease and remove all those things that surprised the immune system overburdened system that was clear. And I followed through with, we had, oh God over 50,000 people who watched the documentary and studied with us and I reported back and that's when it became clear that we need to completely go away from looking at the cancer. Just, you know, some people get cancer, those get fibromyalgia and another one gets depression. It just depends on where those toxins settle and where the problem establishes.

Allan (18:48):
Okay. Now in the documentary you talked about some alternatives. So if we realize, okay, if we're, we're not talking about just trying to remove a tumor or reduce a tumor or those types of things. We're actually talking about taking care of our health as a functional, you know, it's kind of a more of a functional medicine approach. You talked about a few different things in that documented like ozone treatment. Hyperthermia and PEMF. Could you kind of talk about those?

Marcus (19:21):
Yeah, there is many treatments that support the immune system. There's many treatments that remove some of the main causes. For example, when you look at ozone, ozone is antiviral, antibacterial, antifungal. It removes all of the biome and balances it out if you have an overgrowth of Helicobacter pylori or Klebsiella. All of those bacteria that we, we need, but we need a very small quantity in our body. And when they overgrow because the menu is wrong, then ozone will correct that. And it's been, you know, 30 years in Europe as a standard treatment for every kind of infection. And it's proven. In fact there's hundreds of studies, but it's not allowed in most of the world. So in Australia, doctors lose their license if they offer ozone, even in Germany, they are clamping down on it. So it's a treatment that is not welcome yet it is super effective.

Marcus (20:31):
And because it is so easy to do, we teach patients and clients how to use it at home. So it's a standard treatment that you can do at home. And you more or less help your body to get rid of infections, local infections, skin infections, bacterial infections. It helps healing with leaky gut. It's an amazing treatment and because you couldn't do it daily at home effects are really, really fast. So we have now since probably about two years, a lot of medical professionals, clinics and doctors that work with patients, sell them bundles or sell them equipment so that they can continue the treatment at home. If you go to a $30,000, $50,000 clinic in Germany and you go through a three week treatment, they give you a device home afterwards because they know that your chances of success are massively increased just by doing those treatments at home.

Marcus (21:33):
And that's the same with hypothermia. You know hypothermia is the natural healing response of your body. If you have a cold, a viral infection, a bacterial infection, what is the first response of your body?

Allan (21:49):
Fever?

Marcus (21:50):
A fever. Exactly. And the body stops the reproduction of the virus at 39 Celsius. I think that's 1.2 or 1.8 or something like that. So it stops the reproduction. The virus is just a string of RNA and that goes into a cell, and then that RNA or DNA will then tell your cell to replicate out of amino acids, a virus. So all of a sudden that one string goes into a cell and then replicates thousands of clones. Now that process is stopped immediately at 39 Celsius fever, which means your body says, Oh, we have a virus that shouldn't be in my body. It starts affecting cells.

Marcus (22:45):
Let's upregulate the temperature, and then we stop reproduction. That's the first step. Then you go into the next step, which is think about, you know Darth Vader and the soldiers. We all know them, the ones in white uniform, they're sitting on a long production line in your bone marrow and all of a sudden as soon as the temperature goes up, that's a signal that those new soldiers that are built in your bone marrow are released into the bloodstream. So as soon as you go into a fever, your body releases out of the bone marrow, thousands of white blood cells, killer cells, that are then cleaning up with that virus. And the infected cells. And that is usually a process that takes two days. And that's why when children get a cold or when you have your spring cold, it's coming for two or three days, then you have a short period of time and then it disappears again after you had your fever.

Marcus (23:51):
And that is the normal response of your body. And we recreate that with the hypothermia dome. So it's the same thing. We heat the body up in about 30 to 45 minutes to fever temperature. We stop all reproduction of virus and bacteria and then we heat the body further up so that it releases all those white blood cells. And there is another super effect that has been documented a thousand times and that's why it's used in conventional clinics now as well. It flags pathogens and floating cancer STEM cells with heat shock proteins. And I always say it's like when a cancer cell floats in our blood, it's invisible because it's a cell from our body. But if I heat the body up, then all of a sudden the cells that can't handle heat very well, which are cancer cells, they create heat shock proteins, they grow green hair and all of a sudden your immune system, all those new soldiers that are available look around and see all the guys with green hair need to be eliminated and they start attacking.

Marcus (25:01):
So it's triple effect that you get with hypothermia. And that's why it's the fourth pillar of conventional treatments in Germany and it's now used in so many university clinics to bring back a patient. Let's say you have chemotherapy and your white blood cell count goes down, well then they do hypothermia to bring your white blood cell count back up and then they continue chemotherapy. It also reduces the side effects. You need less chemotherapy to have the same effect because your cells are better supplied its an incredible system. So they use that and because it's illegal in America and Australia and New Zealand and England, well we teach people how to do it at home.

Allan (25:51):
And the cool thing documentary was that you can do this. There's localized and then there's a whole body. And so the treatment home I assume is more localized versus the whole body.

Marcus (26:04):
The other way around, the whole body is very easy to do at home, whereas the local hypothermia device is about $500,000. And they are not something people choose to do.

Allan (26:19):
Yeah, that's a little outside my budget. Okay, and then last one we talked about was PEMF.

Marcus (26:29):
I always say it's like a toothbrush. When you use it too long, it gets tired and then it stops, you know, those electric toothbrush. And then you put them into a dock, into a little stand and they recharge and there is no cable connected. It's just induced energy through magnetic waves. And that's pretty much the same thing. We live in a world that has a magnetic field around. And by moving through that magnetic field and moving through different forms of magnetic field, we are alive. Ourselves, have energy. It's an energy field that keeps us strong and alive. Now we can replicate this energy field and this recharge station with a pulsing magnetic field and those pulsing magnetic fields, they act in very similar ways. Like a recharge. All of your cells slowly lose, you know, that membrane potential.

Marcus (27:36):
They get tired, like we all do. Lack of nutrients, toxicity, exhaustion, all of those things contribute. Now, if I sit myself on a PMF device while watching, you know, a movie on a lazy boy, it doesn't really matter. It's like recharging every single cell. And if you keep doing the treatment for two, three, four days, you will find that your inflammation goes down, your gut starts healing, your energy levels goes up, your healing expedites, if you have open wounds, they start healing faster. It's a massive energy boost that we can give ourselves. And that's why most clinics in Europe and in America use PMF as a reach out full patients. When you think about having a cold, how exhausting that is. And we all know when you, when you have just a simple problem, how much it drains the body. Now think about you have tumors or you have infections or you have large inflamed areas. That is draining you of energy and the less energy you have, the less you can heal because the body needs tremendous amounts to detoxify, of energy, to detoxify, to heal, to repair.

Marcus (29:00):
And that's what we give it with that PMF machine. So it makes, I've sold one, I have to tell you, that was my biggest transformation. I sold one to a retirement village and after a few weeks the nurses called and said, Marcus, we do have a problem with the device. Would you mind coming by and I went there and she said, we exchanged the problem. Before we had moaning and grumpy and pain and tired. And you know, now we have parties in the corridor. We have people sneaking out at nights and going out for adventures. The whole dynamic change, dancing in the corridor, we would like to order four more machines. That was a very sweet, you know, testimony of how, especially elderly people really reach out with that device. And if you look at the demographic of people in hospitals and clinics that are run down, it's the same for them. It just gives them a massive boost.

Allan (30:04):
Now, one of the things that kind of resonated with me as we start talking about these other protocols is that, they are, I want to say life building versus destroying. So it's not the nuclear bomb, it's the how do we provide more resources for our troops, if you will. But there's a way for us to avoid the war in the first place, or at least while we're fighting the war for us to make sure we have a really good battle plan and a really good battle field position. And that's our lifestyle. Could you talk a little bit about that?

Marcus (30:40):
Yes. Let me very shortly say when you get diagnosed, and I think everybody stumbles upon that learning curve in a very similar way. We don't know before it's too late. There is a small demographic of people you know who care for mom and dad or who look after a relative who has been diagnosed with cancer. So they are what I call early status. They witnessed and do the learning curve at an early stage and they are also the ones that usually learn how to prevent. The normal general demographic needs to hit their nose on the world before they start waking up.

Allan (31:21):
Well, in all fairness, Marcus, that they're listening to this podcast, they're woke, they're ready, they're ready to have this conversation. They're there, they're looking after our health. So we're ready. So what are those things we can do?

Marcus (31:34):
The most important is in regards to you are set up, there is five main components. Number one is stress. Constant stress suppresses your immune system and that is really important. The second one is toxicity that we absorb and consume. And it starts from, you know, sprayed vegetables to Monsanto grown grain and corn and all of those things which just, you know, they are designed to keep bugs away. Then they also do that in your gut. So the, the affects of sprayed food and toxic food and preservatives and colors and flavors, they really make a massive impact. Then it's also what medication you take and the side effects of those medications. There is so many components. And for me that was actually always the most irritating part of the whole lot. You know, healthy lifestyle, doing exercise, eating right food and having the right nutrients and having enough oxygen.

Marcus (32:43):
It all is one big part. And what we've done is we created a mind map and that mind map takes you through all of those individual steps. You know, how are you teeth connected? How are they related to certain organs? How is your mind connected to the whole thing? What are different exercises that you can do during the day? How is oxygen connected to cancer? Oxygen is one of the key proponents for spreading angiogenesis for the building of cause. Cancer cells don't need oxygen, they ferment the food, whereas your healthy cells need oxygen. So how can we implement more oxygen into our life, feed all cells with more oxygen? And that mind map is actually very, very detailed. There's so many different components and you will have a very different set of combination of things that you miss out on as someone else. And that's why we made that mind map. And God, we had over 50,000 people go through that training and it really shows that everyone has a different set of reasons to be sick and out of their environment, out of their habits, how they grew up, and to look through that mind map and look through all the different departments. That's where it really becomes obvious, Oh, that's one of my blind spots or this is one of the reasons that triggered my disease.

Allan (34:11):
Marcus, I define wellness as being the healthiest fittest and happiest you can be. What are three strategies or tactics to get and stay well?

Marcus (34:21):
Three out of my many oxygen would be number one. Trusting the body that it knows what it's doing and not interfering with medication. I think that's one of the key factors, especially in present times where a lot of people don't trust their body and suppress fever with any kind of fever suppressing medication that is always very, very challenging. That's what we know, increases cytokine storms and causes a lot of havoc. So trusting in the body and allowing the body to really do the work it's designed to do and supporting it in ways that are very natural like exercise, outdoor sweating, sweat lodges. We've seen tremendous change by doing that and becoming aware of what surrounds you, becoming aware of how toxic your intake, your food intake, your surrounding your environment is. And that starts with EMF all the way to the food that you eat.

Allan (35:33):
Cool. So Marcus, if someone wanted to more about you, more about the documentary, Cancer is Curable Now or your truly healthy stuff. You're doin tons of stuff. Your site is really big, you know, spend a lot of time out there. If someone wanted to learn more about all that, where would you like for me to send them?

Marcus (35:57):
Trulyheal.com so it's trulyheal.com/40plusfitness. And I've put a page together where you have access to training that we provide internally to our students. So it's a six-part video training that takes you through every single thing that is important to look at. And you have access to the documentary, you have access to the research. It's all on those pages. It's quite a massive load of information. I always say it's the shortcut that I've been looking for. When my friend was diagnosed and we started to look, you know, you run into a thousand different information streams and you don't know which one is the right one. And what we've done in that training is actually give clarity to all the different things that we know and that we can combine into a very, very effective healing program.

Healthy To Be

Allan (37:02):
Well, I thoroughly enjoyed the documentary, so I know this is a really good site. So if you want to learn more about this, if you can't write this down right now, you can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/436. This is episode 436 or just go to the main podcast website and you can find the link there. Okay, Marcus, thank you so much for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

Marcus (37:25):
Thank you so much for inviting me.

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April 13, 2020

in fitness , guest/interview , mindset by allan
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Walk your way to better with Joyce Shulman

Joyce Shulman is the Cofounder and CEO of Macaroni Kid and 99 Walks and she strongly believes that walking is the key to improving your lifestyle. Today we're going to discuss her new book, Walk Your Way to Better.

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Allan (02:48):
Joyce, welcome to 40+ Fitness.

Joyce (02:50):
Thanks Allan. I'm thrilled to be here with you.

Allan (02:53):
Now. I am a huge fan of walking. I think it is one of the most underutilized ways of serving our body. And I say that that way because we're going to get into depth of walking is not just a fitness thing. And I really liked your approach to that. The name of your book is Walk Your Way to Better. And you know, as I was reading through the title I was like, Oh better. You know? And so you know, the words are in your head, health and all and wellness and fitness. And so I think there's a reason you stopped right there after the word better and didn't put the rest of it there.

Joyce (03:32):
Absolutely. So I agree with you. Walking is so simple and so incredibly powerful and I just don't think that we recognize or give it the emphasis that we should. So walking has been shown to improve your mind, your mood, and your body in really, really profound ways. So as you say, it's not just your physical, it's your mental and your emotional.

Allan (04:00):
You know, as you look at things like the blue zones that they're doing studies on and you kind of think about ancestral health and the way people were before we had access to cars and bikes and planes and motorcycles and everything else. We used to have to walk to do most of the things. We walk to go get our water, we would walk to go forage, we'd walk to hunt and we may even migrate. And so there were days of walking to get to a better area for hunting and gathering and doing things. We don't do as much walking now as we did that.

Joyce (04:35):
Absolutely. And I believe, and there are a whole lot of people that agree with me, we were just not meant to sit as long and as much as we're sitting, we're built to move.

Allan (04:47):
Yeah. And you were an attorney at one point. I was an accountant.

Joyce (04:51):
We sat a lot. Right?

Allan (04:54):
Sorry you didn't like accounting. But you know, it's just as we think about that, it's like, yeah, we take these jobs because they're going to give us what we need to take care of our families. But then at the same time, we're not necessarily taking care of ourselves, therefore we're not in a position to always take care of our families. That's kind of a bad, bad paradox to be in.

Joyce (05:16):
Exactly right.

Allan (05:18):
So why is walking so valuable?

Joyce (05:21):
So there's boatloads of research on walking on all of the benefits of walking. So I'll just hit sort of some of the top lines when you talk about walking. And I'm gonna leave the body and physical to last because, while it's super important, it's not even where I want to start. So walking has been proven to have a really great impact on your mood. It's been shown to be a valuable tool in combating depression and warding off depression. It's been shown to have an immediate impact on boosting and improving your mood and mindset. So great for your mind. Great for your mood and then for your mind walking has been shown to improve your decision-making ability, help give you energy. And there's a really interesting study that shows that a regular walking practice literally makes your brain bigger. And then just a couple of years ago, fascinating research out of Stanford University shows that a walk can improve your creativity, your ability to create new ideas and have fresh thoughts by up to 60%. It's incredibly powerful.

Allan (06:35):
Yeah. I know you said in the book you were talking about jobs and some of the other people we would think were these great minds and thinkers. They used walking as their creativity space.

Joyce (06:45):
Absolutely. Uh, Aristotle, Socrates, Benjamin Franklin was a big Walker. Darwin was a big Walker. Uh, so people who are under the kind of pressure to constantly be creating new ideas, processing new ideas, innovating. It's the most effective way you can do that.

Allan (07:08):
And then there are the physical aspects.

Joyce (07:11):
Yup. So a regular walking practice has been shown to reduce your risk of dementia, diabetes, osteoporosis, several types of cancers. There's one study that shows that a regular walking practice can add up to seven years to your life.

Allan (07:28):
That's huge. That's huge.

Joyce (07:30):
It's incredible.

Allan (07:31):
You know, I've seen a study before that said, if you just, you walk just five to 10 minutes after a meal, it helps you regulate your blood sugar.

Joyce (07:40):
We're meant to move. We are not meant to finish a big meal and sit in front of the television or in front of social media. We're just not.

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Allan (07:49):
And then beyond that, you had a, I mean, I've seen this other stat out there, well at least another aspect that you've talked about, how walking should kind of get rid of those emotional toxins. It also helps us get rid of physical toxins. Our lymphatic system is, it doesn't have its own pump system. It relies on our muscles or skeletal muscles to actually cause that lymph to move around. And that's flushing toxins out of our body. So if we're sitting still, we're letting ourselves get toxic.

Joyce (08:17):
And you know what's so interesting to me when you look at the last many years, remember the days when people would go in for surgery and then they would be told by their doctors to rest, right? Lie around. And all of that has changed. Practically, regardless of what the nature of the surgery is, as soon as they can get people up and walking, even little bits, they're getting them moving.

Allan (08:44):
Yeah. I had a friend recently, uh, he had a hip replacement and within a day they want him up walking on that hip, you know, just the thought of having them sawing through the bone, applying this metal apparatus, you know, this metal apparatus to your body. And then the next day they're not like, just lay there for six weeks and heal. They're like, nope, you have to be moving.

Joyce (09:05):
Right. And, and 20, 30 years ago they would've had that guy in bed for days.

Allan (09:17):
Yeah, or the wheelchair rest of his life. Yeah. So, you know, walking is something that we must do. It's not should, I mean, we've got to get past the should, the walking is a must. But when you start this conversation of, okay, we've got to walk, and then someone sits there and says, well you know, this is a very busy week for me. I've got to pull an extra shift, I had to you know, I took on extra training time. I've got extra the interviews and things to do this week. I've got, you know, of course my, my other regular stuff that's going on, you know, and I've got to read these three books. And so you kind of pile those and then you say, well where am I going to fit the time to do this walking? Why, why do we have difficulty with that, whereas if you said, okay, you need to take your kid to little league practice, that's a non negotiable. We just, we just do it, but we don't take the time for self care. Why? Why is that?

Joyce (10:10):
You know, there are so many reasons that keep us from taking good care of ourselves. And the first is something that you mentioned just a couple of minutes ago, which is around this paradox of us feeling like we have to do for other people and not take care of ourselves. The paradox of that is if we don't take care of ourselves, we are not capable of taking the best care of the people we love. So that's kind of counterintuitive you want to do for other people and you think that that's the way to do the best you can. The second is we're all just too busy. We have filled our plates to overflowing and we need to take some responsibility and some ownership around that and it's something that I'm working on personally to really try to grab hold of my calendar on a day to day basis and be sure that I am not filling it with things that are just making me busy. Busy is like a badge of honor now. Right. When you say to, when you see somebody you haven't seen for a while and you say to them, how are you the knee jerk? Everybody says, Oh, I'm so busy. And I think the last piece of it, especially for women is we're still being sent the message that taking care of ourselves is selfish and I just think we have to continue to work to try to change that message and change that paradigm.

Allan (11:33):
Yeah, I'm reading the Daily Stoic now. I went, I went through all of that last year. I was really proud of myself for doing that because it was, I've had this book for over three years and each year I get to a certain point and then I stop and I lose it. Last year was the first year I made it through the entire year and I'm reading through it again this year. It's called the Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday, And the funny thing is yesterday's lesson was to not be busy. To be aware of where you're spending your time and what is a a true obligation and what are those things that we just put on ourselves out of guilt and other means. And that's what I really liked about the structure of your book as you break it into 99 walks in each walk is not just a let's get out and walk today and that's your goal.

Allan (12:17):
And then tell me how it went. You're really diving into mindset and one of the things that you got into there that I'd like to kind of get into after you tell me about the structure, the 99 walks and why you put it that way was the making of time, you know, you actually have one of the walks where it's dedicated specifically to making time for this self care. So can you talk through the walks of how you put this together and how this is helpful. And then, you know, some of these that are lessons that you think are pretty valuable for us to go as we're, as we're looking at having a walking practice.

Joyce (12:50):
Absolutely. So the book, as you say, is broken into 99 short sections. Thought starters, research stories, all designed to give people something to contemplate, to think about, to percolate on. One of the things that I see in my own life and in the lives of my friends and the people I talk to all the time is there is a lot of really interesting information and content out there. And I think we're getting better at identifying it and reading it, but I don't think we're giving our selves the chance to really absorb and process it. And because I know how powerful walking is for the way your mind works and the way your mood improves. And of course all the physical, I thought, wouldn't it be amazing if I can share 99 things that I think are important for people to think about and encourage them to then take a couple of minutes to give themselves the chance to percolate and really absorb those messages. So that's, that's my goal. That's my hope.

Allan (13:52):
Well, I think you've accomplished that. That's why I was saying, you know, that's why I brought up the book, the Daily Stoic is because that's kind of my daily sit down, have something to ponder and then I'll meditate on it. I haven't turned that into a walking practice. But you got me, you got me really thinking about that. That's maybe that's how I go about this. But this is a similar structure of here's your daily lesson, give it some thought. And I really like a lot of the things that you get into. Like I said, finding time and then I actually, I quoted a quote out of you. Let me, let me look it up real quick. I've got it. I put it on my Facebook page because, my Facebook group, because I, it was kinda one of those things as I was reading it, I'm like, somebody needs to hear this today. I know someone needs to hear this today. And it was, you deserve your dreams. You deserve your dreams. And so that was one of the lessons as you're kind of going through is have big dreams and then realize you deserve them and should still be working toward them.

Joyce (14:51):
You just can never give up. You can't abandon your dreams, you can't abandon your sense of self. But I do want to talk for a minute. Let's circle back and talk a little bit about, making time.

Allan (15:04):
Yes.

Joyce (15:04):
Can we dig into that a little bit?

Allan (15:06):
Absolutely. Please.

Joyce (15:07):
So I do talk about that a fair bit in the book in a couple of different contexts, even because we are all so busy that we think we don't have time and a lot of people refer to it as finding time. How am I going to find time for the things that are important? And the first thing I always say to people is, it's not about finding time, it's about making time. It's about saying, this is important for me, therefore it's important for my family. If you need that to encourage you to actually take those steps forward and then you have to make the time.

Joyce (15:44):
So one of the stories I tell, and I won't, I don't want to belabor it, but my daughter was doing gymnastics and I would go and she really wanted me to watch her entire class. And I thought, this is being a good mom. I'm going to sit and I'm going to watch it. I'm going to support her. And then at some point I realized she was sort of performing for me. And that's not what that experience was about for her. That's not what I wanted that experience to be for her. So I started taking 30 minutes and going for a walk. So I would drop her off, get her settled, leave and go take my walk, come back and watch the last 15 minutes and all of a sudden I found 30 minutes in my day, twice a week.

Allan (16:23):
Yes, I've heard, I've heard of moms doing that, you know, taking their child to soccer practice and then just walking around the field.

Joyce (16:28):
You don't have to watch them.

Allan (16:33):
They're awesome. But yeah. And I think one of the keys of what you put forward there, is about the prioritization. You know, what are those things that we are doing that really aren't serving us. You know, sitting there watching really wasn't serving you or your daughter, whereas you going for the walk, you're going to come back at the end of her practice with so much more energy. She's going to be energized because of what she did. You're going to be energized for what she did and then the drive home is a much, I think probably it was a much more joyful experience.

Joyce (17:08):
Absolutely. Absolutely. Because to your point earlier, you are better able to show up for the people you love when you are in a better space, when you are taking care of yourself.

Allan (17:19):
And that's one of the things I really like about the 99 Walks in each one is you're going through a, you're sharing a lot of personal stories yourself and your stories included and it's really just kind of one of those times for you to wrap your mind around something, kind of let go, be mindful of what you're doing. Go out there with some intention and solve some problems and as you said in the book, there might only be a couple dozen of these that really resonate. There might be some that just completely don't apply. You know, as a guy reading the book, I was like, well, you know, a lot of these lessons, if I just read them out, right, wouldn't necessarily apply to me. But if I think about what the underlying purpose of that discussion is about, it applies to all of us at some point.

Joyce (18:03):
For sure. We're all suffering from decision fatigue, even if we don't know it. We all need to be mindful of the people we're surrounding ourselves with. We all have to be intentional about how we're spending our time so much.

Allan (18:20):
Now you've, you've put together this organization, it's called 99 Walks and it's, I went to the website. It's actually really cool. You're doing monthly challenges. You're building community. In a lot of sense. It's, it's more than getting people to walk more. I mean that's, it's awesome, but it's about connection. It's about eliminating some of that isolation and loneliness. We have, you know, you might have a thousand friends on Facebook or Instagram, but you still can feel very lonely. Can you talk about what your organization 99 Walks is doing and how it, how it's, how it's put together and how it's benefited you.

Joyce (18:55):
Yeah, you're so right about the loneliness piece. We have some proprietary research that 73% of American women experience loneliness and that dovetails with some national research around both women and men who put that number right about 70% so there really is a loneliness crisis going on, a very quiet crisis going on in this country because people don't want to talk about that. People don't want to raise their hand and say I am lonely because it makes you feel bad. It's something people are super self conscious about. But the reality is most people are wrestling with that. So I thought if we can create community and encourage people to get out and move in what is this incredibly simple but effective and powerful way. Just by lacing up your sneakers and walking out the door, we could really start to effectuate change. So 99 Walks is a movement to get, we are very focused on women in 99 Walks. So our mission is to get a million women walking. And we do that with a wonderful walk tracker and these monthly challenges. And we reward our members with what we call wearable inspiration, which is a tangible reminder of the goals that you have accomplished at the end of the month. Uh, and building this very powerful, supportive and wonderful community. And along the way we're trying to educate people as well.

Allan (20:26):
Yeah. And I think that's one of the key things here is this is about being, you know, kind of a healthier, better, happier person. Not because you're out there, you know, speed walking for three hours. But you're just getting out and you're in a community, rather you're walking particularly with people around you in your local area or you know, virtually by having friends online that you know, are going through similar things. It's just getting out for that, you know, that 5, 10, 15 maybe 30 minutes each day as a part of, or at least several times during the month as you set your goals to just trying to do that for yourself. That self care that we struggle with.

Joyce (21:04):
It's always, and you know this from the fitness world, it always starts with the mindset and the mood because when people start moving, you don't see physical changes or physical benefits for some period of time if that's your goal. But if you are really tapped in and paying attention to how you feel and how your brain is working, you'll realize that you feel better from day one of getting yourself moving. I assume you've seen this with clients and with other people, right?

Allan (21:34):
Oh yeah. Yeah. I have some clients here that prior to working with me had like zero exercise at all. You know they might walk around a little bit here over around town, but really not a lot. Um, and you get them into a program and the first day they're just, you know, they're just dad on their feet. They're struggling to do any of the exercises and then you're, you're sitting with them, you know, a month later, yeah, they're pumping out reps, you know, they're not getting winded. They're, they're smiling while they're doing some of the work. They're joking while we're going through some of the exercises and um, you know, so there is this kind of boost and it's not just a physical thing. It's really this emotional, they leave feeling better, not just about themselves, but just feeling better in general. There's a, just a wellness that comes out of movement. It's just really hard to explain until you've experienced it.

Joyce (22:28):
Exactly. That's exactly it. And then with 99 Walks, my hope is that we can encourage people who, who haven't had that feeling, who don't know how much better they can feel simply by moving their body and connecting with other people.

Allan (22:44):
And so start with the first walk. Just get that first one done? But by the time you get the 99 Walks in, I do believe that they're going to see some exceptional change in their lives from a mental perspective and a physical perspective. I define wellness as being the healthiest fittest and happiest you can be. What are three strategies or tactics to get and stay well?

Joyce (23:06):
Oh just three.

Allan (23:08):
We have to start somewhere and then we can add on later. But yeah, just three please.

Joyce (23:12):
Yeah, the first, and forgive me cause I'm repeating or I'm repeating myself and I'm repeating what we've been talking about, but it's being willing to invest in yourself and that means investing the time and making your wellness in that broad definition a priority. And the second I think is being willing to do the work. One of the things that I've come to really accept in my life over the last many years of hard work is that everything takes work. Whether it's happiness, people think that happiness is a destination and you can get there and you can just hang out. But the truth is happiness takes ongoing, consistent work to do the things that lead to happiness. Fitness, wellness, those things take work. It's a lot easier to pick up the fast food than it is to go home and wash the kale. It just takes work. And the third is, and this is really important, is surrounding yourself with people who are like minded in that way. I have a section in the book called people are like bananas, which is one of my favorite expressions, but it goes to the fact that you will inevitably take on some of the characteristics of the people with whom you surround yourself. So if you are surrounding yourself with people who don't take care of themselves with people who are not happy with people who don't prioritize wellness, you're going to take on some of those characteristics to your own detriment. Well, thank you Joyce.

Allan (24:50):
If someone wanted to learn more about you, learn more about the book and what you're doing over at 99 Walks, where would you like me to send them?

Joyce (24:58):
Well, the book is available on Amazon so you can just head over to Amazon and search, Walk Your Way to Better. I am available on social media and all the channels that Joyce R Shullman, and to learn more about 99 Walks and our movement, you can find us online 99walks.fit and the 99 Walks app is available both Amazon and Android.

Allan (25:20):
So they can get the book, they can contact a local friend and say, Hey friend, I bought you a copy too. We're going to do this. And when they get their book they can, they can start their 99 Walks. So Joyce, thank you so much for being a part of 40 plus fitness. Uh, if you guys want to get the links, you can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/429. So Joyce again, sorry. Thank you so much for being a part of 40 plus fitness.

Joyce (25:43):
Absolutely. My pleasure. Allan, thanks so much.

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in fitness , mindset , solo show by allan

The 9 keys to being fit over 40

It can feel like an insurmountable effort to get and stay fit when you're over 40. In this episode, I share 9 keys to getting you and keeping you fit.

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Hello and welcome to today's podcast. I am so glad you're here. Thank you so much for being a part of 40+ Fitness Podcast. Today we're going to talk about 9 keys to being fit after 40. You know, there's a lot of folks out there that you'll see and they, they seem really, really fit and they're over 40. You know, you have to ask yourself, what are these people doing that's allowing them to accomplish this? I was having a conversation with a guy at the gym, you know, we're both over 40. He's an excellent shape. He does the CrossFit style type workouts. And so I was, I was just asking him about it and what he was doing in his training and where he was getting his training materials from. They're always varied, different workouts.

And, he enjoys doing them and that's cool. And he's really good at it and he enjoys it and it's a different kind of fit than I am. I'm more of this strong, slow, I can carry heavy stuff. I can do all the things I want to do. And so we have a different mindset of what fitness is. And we get to talking about that a little bit because he was thinking he might want to get into competition. Now if you're not familiar with the CrossFit competitions, they're quite intense. Uh, and I was explaining to them, I said, you know, the last time I saw one of the, uh, the big ones, uh, the guys that were over 40, the masters level athletes, they were just in tremendous shape. I mean, the things they were doing was just actually quite insane. And we even got into that, why are they doing all of these insane things, over the age of 40, over the age of 50, that, you know, I would say even 20 years ago, no one would've dreamed someone over that age would be doing things.

And we see this every day and I do like sharing these in the Facebook group. If you're not a member, you should go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/group. I share all kinds of information, and if I see a 72-year-old woman doing a deadlift that's over her body weight. Yeah, I'm going to probably share that because it's pretty cool. But there's different looks and feels to fitness and I said it in the book, The Wellness Roadmap, and I'll say it again. Fitness is not a look. Fitness is about you being fit to task. So I think that's the first key for you to pick up on as we kind of go through this whole view of fitness is that fitness is not a look. A fit grandmother is someone who's able to be a great grandmother to her children.

She's able to do the things that they want to do. She's able to get out and be with them. She's able to provide for them. She's able to be the person she needs to be, that's her fitness. For someone like my friend Glen who wants to compete in CrossFit games, he is going to push himself a lot harder and that might not be entirely healthy, which is another whole other conversation we could be having. Being fit doesn't necessarily mean you're healthy. And that's why I call it wellness of having all three. So fitness is not necessarily a look, it's a way you feel, the way you're able to do the things you want to do. And to this point, I am there and will I always be there? I don't know. You know, like I said, I want to be the a hundred guy who is 105 who can wipe his own butt.

I want to be independent. I want to be able to take care of and help my family and my wife. I don't want to be dependent on others. And so my fitness regime is based around those things. So one of the big things when I go into fitness is do no harm. So as I'm lifting, I'm trying to make sure that I'm not hurting myself. I'm only making myself stronger or maintaining strength in certain areas. The other work that I do is about just trying to avoid injury and staying fit. So that's one thing. People who are fit are doing, they're not evaluating themselves relative to other people. They're not trying to compete against their 20 year old selves. They're doing what's necessary to be fit to task. The second thing is they have a focus. It's very easy for people to get into a kind of a routine, a habit, or they show up at the gym or they do their morning thing.

They do their run, they do their, maybe there's some lifting, but they just are kind of putting it all together. They walk into a gym or they walk into a workout either doing the same exact thing they do almost every time, or they come into the gym and they really don't have a plan at all. You'll see a lot of this now, it's a lot more common to go into a gym and see that half the people are sitting there looking at their phones. Now, if they're looking at their phones because they're trying to figure out what their next set is, or they've got a timer, then that's cool. But most of the time we know that's not what they're doing. They're texting their friend, they're doing this. Real fitness is going to come from application. It's going to come from being engaged in what you're doing.

Your muscles will improve better if you're focused on the movements that you're doing. So if you are a runner looking and feeling about your form and making sure that it's not breaking down versus just a mindless run, you're going to do better in fitness if you're focused on the form and the feel and the things that are going on in your body then if you're listening to a podcast or doing something else, listening to music. Sometimes that lack of focus is preventing you from reaching a level of fitness that you're interested in reaching. You know, when I go in the gym to work out, I actually like to go in there and when there's no one else there because otherwise my full introvertness comes out. And, you know, I don't talk to anybody during my workout. I don't like to talk to people during my sets.

I don't like to talk to people during my breaks. I don't like to talk at all during that time when I'm lifting. If I'm in there lifting, I'm lifting. So I actually go into my gym when no one else is there and do my own lifting. That allows me to have just complete focus on task. I don't have to do anything else. So that's the second key, focus. The third key is intensity. If you're not pushing yourself and being intense and purposeful and it's a little bit different than focus. Focus is staying engaged in what you're doing. The intensity means that while you're doing work, there's some effort to it. There's some, there's some push to it. You're finding that that line of discomfort, you're going outside of your comfort zone. So people who are really building good fitness are always right at the edge.

So there's an intensity to the work they're doing. Now they don't always stay at that edge and we'll talk a little bit about that. Then the next point. But they do have that edge, you know, they're the ones that are actually going to be very kind of happy about having a PR. Now when we talk about PR, that's a personal record. It doesn't have to be something huge and massive. But cutting 10 seconds off of your one mile walk can be great. That means you maybe, you extended your gate a little bit, you extended your speed, your pace, taking a different route and going up a, a route that has a Hill that makes that walk a little bit more difficult. There's an intensity to that purpose. So finding that opportunity to incorporate intensity into your work is going to make things a lot better when I'm working out with clients.

Now, you know, I'll get them in there and I'll add more weight and I'll be kind of pushing them while they're doing it. You know, a lot of folks they'll get in and it's hard. And they'll want to stop right at that line where it starts getting uncomfortable. And that's actually where some of the best stuff is happening. So having a little bit of intensity in the work you're doing is really, really important. The fourth point is balance. When you go into a work deal that you're going to do a workout, just, just recognizing that your, your body is an organism that can break. And it is an organism that needs to recover and rest and it's an organism that's capable of a lot of different things. But if you go in and do the same work, the same type of work all the time, you're not going to have balance in your fitness.

So if you're just going out and doing running, that's great. If you love cardiovascular training, perfect. If cardiovascular or stamina is something that's very, very important to you as a, what's your fitness should mean, perfect. But you still need to be working on those other things. You need be working on strength. You need to be working on balance. You need to be working on your mobility and flexibility. Those are very important as well. And if you're not putting balance into your fitness regime, you're getting very one sided. And that's, that's an opportunity for injury. And also means you're probably not going to be as fit as you could be because you really weren't focused on the other aspects of training. One really good way to make sure that you're getting balance is for you to kind of look at periodization. And what I mean by that is where you'll take time to say, okay, this is my running season and then I'm not going to run during my off season and give my body a time to recover.

All professional athletes do that. They have their season when they're on and they're working really, really hard. They play their season and then after their season's over, they have a recovery period. They have a time when they're doing something else. They're probably working on repairing injuries or probably working on, you know, mobility and flexibility. They're training other aspects of what they do. Not necessarily that directly in relationship to the athletic event that they're involved in. So making sure that you have balance in your training is also very important. Okay the next one, which I guess is number five is going to be patients. You've gotta be patient in this game for fitness. Our bodies will respond to stimulus. If you stimulate a muscle and you give it adequate nutrition and adequate rest, it will get stronger. But you've got to have the patients to know that that's not necessarily going to happen in a linear fashion and it won't always go up and it won't always be large increments.

You know, one of the, one of the difficulties in running a gym and working with people is that, you know, at first they're using smaller dumbbells and that's, you know, okay, cool. It makes sense. But the difference between say a five and an eight is significant in percentage wise. It doesn't seem like a lot that extra three pounds, but when you look at it from a, what you can do with five pounds versus what you can do with eight, it's a pretty big jump. And even when you get up to weights, like we're dealing with, uh, you know, 10 and 15 and 20, those are still huge, huge jumps in volume of work. And so it's really hard. A lot of times for new trainees or trainings that haven't been around to recognize that those jumps from 15 to 20 are huge and to have the patience to keep working through.

And sometimes you're not necessarily gonna get all the reps you want to get, but just kind of working through that process of saying, I'm going to get there. Maybe you're doing a body weight squat and you'd really like to start adding some resistance. Have the patients to really get the form down on the body weight squat, have the patients to get your strength up and to keep your form. And once you've built that strength, once you've built that mind body connection, that neuromuscular connection and your body's moving the way it's supposed to, all that's going to happen. But you have to have the patience to work through this process and then recognize again, strength gains, speed gains, distance gains, all the gains that you would see in the fitness game are not linear. You're not going to get better in a linear fashion.

There's going to be really great periods of time when things are going really good. There's going to be times when things level out. And that's just the normal state of the human body. We never function in a straight line. You don't lose weight and straight line, you don't get stronger in a straight line. None of that works that way. It's always going to be kind of up and down. You want to look at basic trends and you want to be smart about it. So have the patients. The next item is also very important as part of the three P's that I talk about in the book. The Wellness Roadmap. It's the persistence and consistency. So a lot of people will come in the gym, uh, in January, you know, new year's resolutions and they'll hop on that treadmill and they'll go for 45 minutes.

They're exhausted, they go to work, they come back the next day, they come back the next day, they come back the next day. Well, there are about three weeks in and they really haven't seen a move on the scale. You know, they give themselves an excuse to skip a day and they skip that day. And then by skipping that day, they didn't maybe skip the next day. And so they're, they're not persistent. They're not consistent, so they're not going to see improvement because they really haven't done anything long enough to give their body the stimulus to say, Oh, I'm a runner, or Oh, I need to be ready to do this energy output each day and manage that. All our people will go in and they'll lift weights and they'll get delayed onset muscle soreness. We call that Dom's for short. They'll get DOMS, it hurts. It hurts a lot. And that'll be enough for a lot of people to just quit.

They'll say, Oh, I don't like the pain, that hurt. Or worst case, you get a small injury, little tweak to a hamstring or you know, your shoulder starting to feel a little wonky. And rather than having the persistence and consistency to work around that injury, you know, you still can work your legs if you have a trouble with your shoulder, you can still probably work your back and maybe your arms, maybe your chest, but you don't, you know, you can work around a lot of these things if you're smart about it, but you still have to stick in there and do the work. Even if it's a situation where, okay, yeah, you kinda tweaked your shoulder or you're feeling a little bit sore in the elbow, maybe we avoid the weights for a period of time when we focused on a different modality.

Maybe it's time for you to do some high intensity interval training with a little more sprint work. We can do that on the exercise bike. We can do that on the elliptical. And we do that for a few weeks to kind of build some stamina while we're waiting for the elbow to recover. But that's persistence and that's consistency. That's still showing up for your fitness and you have to do that or you're not going to be fit over 40. Number seven is the third P in that I have in the wellness roadmap and that's progression. We want to make sure that what we're doing is adding value and there's going to be a point when your body gets to a given strength and you can go do a given weight. I see this in circuit training a lot. People will go up to the circuit training machines and they're always on the third peg for this machine, the fourth peg for that machine and the first peg for this one and the seventh peg for this machine.

And they go around and they set their pegs in the same hole every single time they do that machine. That's great that they're getting the exercise. I'm really happy to see them in the gym working, but the majority of the people that are doing this aren't getting any stronger in the initial peg hole that they put themselves in is not going to be the level of fitness that they really want. They're going through the motions. I don't mean any disrespect for this, but we used to call these Barbie workouts and that's where you'd see the young girls come in and they'd pick up the three pound weights and start doing curls. Number one, biceps of smallest muscle you could possibly want to work for any duration, and because they're not going to do much value for you. And number two, the amount of weight then resistance they were using wasn't going to do anything.

And their concern was that they were going to get big and bulky, not gonna happen, not gonna happen for a woman. And definitely probably not even going to happen for a man over the age of 40, unless you really put in some intense work and focus on muscle building. It's not easy for us to gain muscle over the age of 40. So don't be afraid that you're going to get bulky, uh, put some progression in there. Get stronger. This is only going to help you as you get older if you're working on runs, be smart about how you do your long runs in your short runs. So that you're building a slow progression to get yourself ready for the running season. I use the term gentle nudges and I mean that your progressions should be these normal little small increments. As I said earlier, we're talking about smaller dumbbells that can actually be very difficult to do.

So it's a function of recognizing I do some sets at 20, maybe I drop back to my fifteens for my second and third set. That's cool. You're still giving yourself those gentle nudges to allow your body to get stronger. If you're doing your runs, you're looking at adding some volume to a run, but never adding much more than 10%. Uh, that's kind of a rule of thumb. Your long runs should never be more than 10% more than any other time that you were doing. And we kind of use that in bodybuilding, weightlifting resistance training as well. But in a general sense, you want these gentle nudges that are going to allow your body to have the stimulus that it needs to get stronger. A gentle nudge of progression tells your body, Hey, there's more requirement here. We're going to have to work harder next time and your body responds positively to that by getting stronger.

The eighth one is recovery, and this is one that's really hard for a lot of people. More is not better. You know, I have a workout program that I do with some group trainings and we do a full body workout twice a week, and invariably every time I talk to somebody about twice a week, they're like, Oh, well I should do this program on the days I'm not training with you. No, you should not do this program. This is a strength program that requires the stimulus, the nutrition, and then of course, the recovery. The recovery is as important, if not more important than the work. If you could imagine that you did a whole bunch of work, say you were setting a foundation for a home and you spent all this time laying the concrete and you didn't let the concrete set before you started building on top of it, obviously your foundation is not going to be there because you didn't allow it to set.

And so when you're working, you're building muscle, you're cutting muscle down. You need to give it time to recover and to rebuild. So recovery time is very, very important overall across your workouts, making sure that you do the work and you have the recovery time. Two other functions of recovery are as you're doing work, recognizing that there's times when breaks are important. We see this in high intensity interval training where there is a break period that's allowing your body to basically recover a little bit. We see this in resistance training where we'll do a set and then we'll have a little rest period. It could be for a minute, two minutes. It's really just time to let your energy systems reset and be ready to give you maximum output for the next set. So those little bits of recovery.

And then the final one I want to talk about is sleep. Sleep is hugely important to balancing your hormones, making sure you're giving your body what it wants. Most of the good stuff that happens in our body happens when we're asleep. Our brain refreshes, our body refreshes. All these things are really, really good for us. So recovery and sleep, hugely important if you want to remain fit. If you push yourself and you don't allow yourself to recover, you're going to start dealing with cortisol problems. You're gonna start dealing with other things and you're not going to reach your fitness goals. You're just not. Recovery is as important as the work. And then you see, we just had, uh, seven points that were all built around work. And I'm giving you the one recovery, but want to be very clear. Recovery is hugely, hugely important. It's as important as those others. You have to make sure you're doing the work, but you have to make sure that you're getting the recovery your body needs. So listen to your body. Uh, never should it tell you to quit, quit, and never come back. But if it's telling you you need an extra day, if its telling you you need a little bit extra sleep, the sleep, the recovery are important. So listen to your body when that's what you're hearing.

So the final point is to wellness. As I mentioned before, a lot of people will really push fitness goals and they'll push themselves to a point where they're being unhealthy. They'll push themselves to a point where they're being unhappy. If you find yourself in the gym comparing yourself to other people, you're never going to be happy with that result. You just aren't, we, we are all built on our bell curve. There's going to be a percentage of us that are outliers. You know, I see it on Facebook all the time. You know, these guys going out there and bench pressing 450 pounds, they're older than me and you know, if I sat there and said, “Oh, I have to be bench pressing 450 pounds.” I would never make it. I'll never bench press 450 pounds. I know physically it's probably outside the means of what I ever was capable of doing. But even if I took the time to do the training, I'm pretty sure soon as I found someone who is doing 450 like me and I got past 450, there'd be someone else doing 500. And so the comparisons to other people are really going to break down your happiness. And so I want you to start comparing yourself to the person you were yesterday or last year. Those are better comparisons. Maintaining your strength as we get older is a win.

We're dealing with sarcopenia, we're dealing with osteopenia. Uh, we are losing strength every single year unless we're doing something to prevent that. So if you are maintaining or getting stronger in your lifts, that's a huge, huge plus. If you're getting better times on your runs or at least maintaining your runs, that's a win. There's a natural aging curve. And if we're doing things to break down that, that aging curve, that's a fitness win and we should be very happy about that. So don't compare yourself with others. Compare yourself with who you are, who you know you should be. And then as far as the health aspects of it, you should never let your push to fitness break down your push to health. They're both equally important. They're all happiness, health and fitness, all three legs of a stool. And we have to have all of them in equal proportion or just not going to be whole.

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We're not going to be well. So don't let fitness overrule those other two. You need to make sure there's balance in your life as well as balance in your work. So as you'd go through the process here, I'm going to recap just a little bit, but you know the keys to being fit after 40, they're not hard. It's just a function of saying you've got to do the work, you've got to get the recovery and you got to make sure it fits within the paradigm of who you are as a person.

So going through them really quickly. Fitness is not a look. Fitness is about being fit to tasks and case in point being 105 and being able to wipe my own butt. That's a good look for me cause I don't want to be the guy who needs help going to the restroom, but I'm not going to look like maybe someone else that you would say was fit. I'm going to be fit for task.

Second is focus. When you do work, focus on the muscles you're working. Focus on the form of what you're doing that's going to help you prevent injuries. That's going to help you get better results. The mind muscle is a huge, huge proponent of making sure that you're building fitness as fast as possible.

Intensity. You need to work hard, you need to make sure you're pushing yourself in a way that when you're doing the work, you're really engaged in that work and you're getting the most out of that work. So focusing on what you're there to do, making sure that you're engaged in it. And then the third one is intensity. You know, this, this is fitness is a push. It's taking you outside of your comfort zone. So there should be some intensity to what you're doing. It's great to do some casual walking here and there. That's great for overall health. It's great for potentially weight loss and other goals that you might have. But slow walking without really putting some intensity to it is not going to improve your fitness. It's going to just basically allow you to age on a standard aging curve.

The third is balance. You know, don't just train one dimensional. Don't just say I'm a strength person, which I could very easily say, I've got to do some balance work. I've got to do some stamina work and I've got to kind of keep those in balance to meet the goals of what I think I should be as, as a fit person. Okay.

The next is patience. Fitness does not just happen and it's not something that you're going to always have. There'll be an injury if you injure yourself, you need to be patient about the recovery. You need to be patient about the time it takes. You need to be doing the, the physical therapy that's necessary and not going out there and immediately trying to get back into the workouts you were doing. Have the patience to listen to your body and do what's right for you.

The next is persistence and consistency. We have to keep showing up. We have to keep working. We can't rest on past. You know, this is not a situation where we, we built up a nest egg that we can now live off for the rest of our lives. Fitness doesn't just stay with us. We have to keep paying in so we have to keep showing up and we have to keep doing the work. Uh, progression. Uh, if we're not progressing, if we're not pushing ourselves toward progression, we're very likely more to regress. That's the aging curve. So making sure you're working towards progression is very important.

The eighth, again, is recovery. And I can't stress this enough if you're working hard, if you're doing the focus, if you're doing the intensity, you're doing all these things you need. Also let your body recover when it's time to recover. So being smart about recovery is really, really important. And then the final is don't let fitness over. Well overdue wellness. Wellness is health, happiness, and fitness. So you want to have all three in your life, so take time for all of them and don't let fitness push you out of those other two.

before you get outta here, I wanted to take just a moment to invite you to our Facebook Group. You can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/group we have weekly challenges. I share all kinds of information there. It's sort of like a way to keep conversation that we have on this podcast going, so if you'll go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/group you can join the 40+ Fitness Podcast Group and be a part of a like-minded community. We help each other get where we want to be. We celebrate our wins. We have a good time. I hope you'll come join us. 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/group.

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

– Anne Lynch	– John Somsky	– Melissa Cardinali
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Another episode you may enjoy

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February 24, 2020

in health , mindset , solo show by allan

Avoiding and Dealing with Viruses

Today I want to talk about viruses because it seems to be a big bad year for that with Coronavirus going around the world really has some people shaken up and two different types of the flu that apparently are going through this year. So I thought this was a good time to have this conversation.

More...

If you've been a listener of the podcast for any time at all, you probably know that I'd moved to Bocas Del Toro, Panama and I now call this home. We've been here just over a year, well in bogus where I live. There's a very social expat community, most of whom are my age or older and it's fairly common for us to meet up with friends for dinner and be joined by new friends. As you can imagine when they find out that I'm a podcast host and a health coach the questions on health and fitness start and the stark reality of the aging curve hits me again and again. The weight gain, the aches and pains, the chronic diseases for most of us getting older sucks but it doesn't have to. If you're ready to make a change, it's time for you to join. 40 plus fitness online group training.

I'm reopening up 10 slots for the 14 day free trial and I mentioned this in a past podcast, but then afterwards realized I had not actually opened up the sign it signup page. I'll call it a senior moment. I forgot to take it out of draft mode. Well I fixed that and now I'm gonna go ahead and extend the free trial until February 29th or until the 10 openings are taken. This trial will show you that online personal training is for you. Basically I'm able to do some things as an online personal trainer that I would never be able to do in the gym. In the gym. You see your trainer for about two to three hours a week, usually maximum.

But in this case with online training, I'm in your phone. I'm an app on your phone. I'm on the weekly group conference calls. I'm in the Facebook group. I'm just a message away. So you have a coach available to you pretty much 24 seven to get you the answers, to push you, to help you, to hold you accountable, to be your partner in helping you get healthy and fit with the app. I can track your workouts, we can track your nutrition, we can set up daily actions that you use to become healthier by building the habits and eliminating bad habits that are holding you back. So if you're ready to check it out again, it's a no obligation, 14 day free trial. Get in, see what we're all about. If it's not for you, then then go. I mean get it, but I believe it is and I want you to check it out. So go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/trial.

Try it out. We spend a lot of time talking about mindset. We spend a lot of time talking about nutrition and we obviously, because I'm a weightlifter, we talk a lot of time about getting in the gym or working out from home to get the best fitness that you can get for yourself. So again, if you're interested in changing your aging curve, you're interested in being younger than you are, the best way to do it is with good nutrition, good exercise. And I'm there to help. So go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/trial and check it out today.

So today I want to talk about viruses because it seems to be a big bad year for that with Coronavirus going around the world really has some people shaken up and two different types of the flu that apparently are going through this year. So I thought this was a good time to have this conversation. Maybe even a little late. I probably had a push doing shows like this more towards November. But it, it has been a particularly bad year. So I wanted to talk about this, but before I get into it, I do want to put out that disclaimer. I am not a doctor. What we're talking about here is not medical advice. It's merely educational and entertaining, hopefully. So you can understand different ways to take care of yourself. Most of the things that I'm talking about here are probably things you actually already know, but it's just a good reminder to have this out there.

As I mentioned, there've been quite a few outbreaks this year and most of them have been viruses that are spread through the contact with the virus and then contact with your mouth or your eyes. Okay. And it's typically with our hands. So we're grabbing something, we're touching something, we're shaking someone's hand. Cause I think that's why the fist bump has become a lot more popular lately. So we're trying to save ourselves there, but just recognize that it typically means that something's coming contact with our hands. And then we've touched our face or our eyes in particular to spread this disease. So the first answer for dealing with or avoiding the dividers is have good hand hygiene. You know, you should be washing your hands regularly with soap and warm soap and water, warm water and soap and, and just basically making sure you get a good, good wash of your hands.

Sale

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5 Different Power Level Bands: 5 different colors and clear weight indications are for 5 different power levels: yellow 5-15LB, red 15-35LB, black 25-65LB, purple 35-85LB, green 55-125LB. You can use only 1 band or 2 different bands at one time to get the power level you want while doing pull-ups or daily workout.
GYM Assistance & Daily Workout: This resistance gym band kit is not only perfect for GYM assistance, like pull-ups, power lifting, push-ups, barbell assist and dumbbell assist; but also the best choice for daily workout.
Super-Portable with Free eBook: This resistance band set comes with a storage bag, light weight and takes little space in your bag. Detail free eBook can be down to your mobile phone, doing exercise in anytime! You can take it at home, to gym, office or take it on your trip. With it you can do resistance band workouts wherever you go!
Multi-Ways for Workouts: You can do workout using only one assist band or two different bands. Besides, you can do resistance band workouts using 1 band with door anchor, with 2 handles, with 1 anchor and 2 handles, with dumbbells, or with barbells. Just choose the way that fits you the best.
High-Plastic and Durable: All resistance bands from Odoland are made of heavy-duty material so as to avoid easy breakage or tearing. They are high-plastic and can be used for a longer time than other products in the market.

Too often we don't take the time to wash our hands regularly but during this time when you know, these viruses are around, this is the time of year to really, really focus on keeping your hands clean and keeping them out of harm's way. I also am a big believer during this season of hand sanitizer. Again, anything else that's going to keep your hands clean is going to help. I'll tell you a story. I was actually in Hong Kong when the SARS virus came out and it was interesting because one of the guys I was traveling to Hong Kong with, he was from Singapore. He was really, really terrified of the SARS virus. He did not want to go to Hong Kong. But you know, we had to go for this business trip. So we get there and the disease at the time was somewhat consolidated in an area called Calloun.

And you know, we were, we were not near Calhoun when we went for the visit. But then one ladies that was working there was really excited because she had found this great restaurant that she wanted to show us and it happened to be in Calhoun. So we actually took the subway to Calhoun. And in an Asian subway personal space is not a thing. They press up against you crowded really like startings and these in these cars, it's really kinda crazy. I'm a bit of an introvert, so when I've got tons of people around me like that, it's a, it's a little disconcerting, but I put my hands in my pocket so I wasn't touching the surfaces. Rode the subway over, had a nice dinner and rode the subway back. No problem. Again, it's really all about keeping your hands clean and keeping them away from your face.

You know, I see people wearing masks and, and that can be good if you're especially susceptible to disease, which as we get older, our immune system gets a little weaker. As we are young babies, obviously immune systems are what they are. They haven't gotten enough things to really be immune to anything. So there are times when you might want to take extra precautions. Wear gloves wear masks. But for the most part, you could still touch your eyes. It's really in my mind, keep your hands clean. If your hands are clean, you're very, you're less likely to spread this disease to yourself. The second is to manage your immunity. Now most years flu shots are a gas and then the other, they're doing a substance of, they're trying to figure out what the virus is going to look like this particular year.

They're trying to find a way to help us get through this season. So a lot of times these are hit or miss. But obviously, if you know you're going to be around people with impaired immune systems or you're going to be exposed particularly a lot then it's probably a good idea to go ahead and get one. But there are other things that you can do to help support your own immunity. The first one I'm gonna talk about is nutrition. If you're not eating good nutrition, whole food nutrition you're not giving your gut what it needs to keep you healthy. The gut contains most of our immune system, obviously not when we're talking about these types of viruses, but making sure that you're getting good nutritious food is going to support your immune system and make sure that you're in the best shape you can be.

Because a lot of times we're probably exposed to these viruses and we just don't get them because our immune system fights them off. A lot of these others, you know, now can say we won't get a disease won't get one of these viruses. But just recognizing that the stronger your immune system is, the better off you are. And diet is a big, big part of that. Exercise is also a very, very big part of keeping a strong immune system. Now the first thing to recognize is also that stress exercise is a stressor. So if you're putting your body through excessive exercise, you may actually be weakening your immune system. So this is probably not the time to be in the gym for hours working on a treadmill, just killing yourself. But recognizing that if you go through the process of exercising and keeping your body healthy that's going to help your immune system.

And then finally anything you can do to reduce stress. Anything we do that stresses ourselves the adrenals, everything that's going on in our bodies that is suppressing our immune system. Predominantly because right there when you're running from the bear, the stress you're not, your body's not worried about fighting other defenders away. It's worried about the Bayer. So your immune system gets suppressed when you're highly stressed. So anything you can do for stress reduction is going to help you. You help your immune system remains strong. So kind of recapping the immune system part, you know, diet, exercise and stress management and just getting good rest are all going to be very, very important to make sure that you're as healthy as you possibly can, which is a good way of supporting your immunity. All that set all the precautions we can do.

Obviously people are going to come to work with these diseases. In some cases they won't even necessarily know they have them depending on incubation period and the infection period of a particular virus. But if you happen to get sick my advice is to stay at home, manage your illness, get well, and then get on with your life. You know, this is a point where you want to go to the gym but just, just don't. You know, there's all these talks about you can work out and yes, you probably can work out but you're at the gym, you're touching things and you're, you're sneezing or you're coughing and therefore you're spreading this other people coming into the gym, you know, they're, they're likely to get it. And so you just are basically spreading it to everybody else. I know a lot of times workplaces won't less necessarily let you skip work, but trying to stay away from people trying to let this, this period of infection go away will allow you to deal with the virus.

And in fact, dealing with this virus needs to be your number one priority at this point in time, not your PR lift or this other thing you want to try to do with your health and fitness. Getting well from this virus is your priority at that point in time. Also listen to your body. I did have a friend when the H1N virus (I think is what it was called) came out. And he was just 30 years old. He got it and he actually passed away because he stayed home and got sicker and sicker. And by the time he went to the doctor, he was already facing some significant organ failure problems. And so recognizing that if you're not getting better over the course of a few days you need to go seek medical attention. They can, they need to help support your body during that period of time while your body's fighting the virus, but just listen to your body and try to stay away from people and get through this period of time.

Now if someone else in your household ends up with the flu or with one of these viruses you need to change your lifestyle. You know, well, my wife gets ill. I don't sleep in the bed with her when I get ill, I don't sleep in the bed with her. We go to different bedrooms and or I'll sleep in the living room if I need to stay away from people so that I'm not getting them infected. There's a particular period of time when I'm going to be infectious where she can get this virus and I don't want to get that or she has it that I could get this virus. So we change up our lifestyle a little bit for a few days until this period's over. And at that point practice very detailed hygiene issues where I'm washing my hands regularly, I'm using the hand sanitizer.

If I have to carry soup into her, I carry the soup in, I grab her other stuff out. Anytime I'm doing that, as soon as I get through, I'm washing my hands, I'm cleaning my hands with the hand sanitizer and just making sure that I'm, I'm really doubling down on my hygiene practices. So those are kind of some of the core things. Just understanding how these viruses are spread. They can, you know, viruses can live on surfaces for a good long period of time from hours to days depending on the virus. So understanding how these viruses are spread and it's typically going to be through your hands and touching other surfaces where the viruses are at. The harder the surface, the more likely it is to have a contact of a virus. So again, washing your hands, good hygiene practices are going to be kind of your first line of defense.

Managing and having a strong immunity is going to help if you're getting good nutrition getting proper exercise, dealing with stress and getting proper rest you're giving your body the best chance to fight these infections. And then again, recognizing where the disease as, if it's happening to you, trying to avoid spreading it. The more people you spread it to, the more they're likely to spread it to others. And then also if you know someone who has it just kinda managing your lifestyle, managing your hygiene during that period of time so that again, you're not getting it. So I hope this has been helpful. Again, I am not a doctor and I really was just sharing some of this information because I know it's kinda top of mind as we have the coronavirus and the flus out there. As, as we go through and go forward, I'm sure you know, the learn more about these viruses and hopefully, they'll be able to do some things to keep it from spreading. Much further, but it's really gonna come down to what you do for yourself. That's gonna make the most difference in your life. So I do hope you found this helpful.

Before you run off, I wanted to remind you about the 14 day free trial for 40+ Fitness Online Personal Training. It's 14 days, let you kick the tires and see if online personal training can work for you. It's worked for thousands and thousands of other people. I use it with my clients to get great success and I want you to try it to go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/trial and try out 40 plus fitness online personal training.

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– Anne Lynch	– John Somsky	– Melissa Cardinali
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Another episode you may enjoy

Adaptogens with David Winston

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November 25, 2019

in fitness , health , mindset , solo show , weight loss by allan

Setpoints

Setpoints. What are they in? How can we overcome them? I'm pretty sure almost every one of us has faced this at some point or another. We start a new way of eating or we start an exercise program. And in the very beginning, things are just wonderful. We're losing the weight we want to lose, we're gaining strength and we're getting where we want to be.

Things are just wonderful and then they're not. What we're doing just stops working and we just kind of stabilize at a, at a weight or at a range of strength and we're just stuck there, this plateau and these plateaus can last weeks, months and even years. If we don't understand them and do something to change to adapt because our bodies are really, really good at stabilizing they're really, really good at saying, okay, this is where we are.

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And there's basically three aspects to set points that I think people forget. They try to focus on just one or two of these. And they don't really get to the meat of what's going to help you break a plateau. This is your body, your environment and your mind. So I'm going to go through all three of these today and talk about why these affect your set point and what you can do about it. Okay. The first one's body, and it's kind of obvious, you know, the human body is meant to keep itself healthy. And to do that, it does a thing called homeostasis, which is basically balance. Now balance is really, really important in the body when we're talking about things like body temperature that has to stay within a very tight range or blood pH. It's like a very, very tight range. Or blood sugar.

Parts of our body basically adapt and they try to stabilize so that we can stay in a healthy state. And if it gets out of this state, then bad things happen. So how does that affect body weight? Well, body weight is also one of those systems. Our bodies were designed to store fat for famine. So we went through a period of feasting. Our body would allow us to put on this body fat for a future fuel for the times when food wasn't so plentiful cause our, our Hunter-gatherer ancestors didn't always have access to plentiful food. So they often would put on weight in the and, and in summer and fall when a plant matter and vegetables and fruits were much more abundant. And then when they weren't we would start to shed that body weight over the course of the next several months.

But if we started losing weight too fast, our bodies set wake would come in and say, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa. You can't burn through all the fat that fast. We need to slow you down. And so your system start to change. And systems are basically all the things that are going on in your body to include the hormones, the, the catalyst for transactions for w there are happening in your body, their chemical reactions vitamins and minerals. Because your body is just basically this series of chemical reactions. And so if you're starting to lose weight too fast and your body senses that your hormones are going to adjust a and your body is going to start functioning differently if you have a professional athlete, women will see this a lot with professional athletes at the elite level. They start training really, really hard and they get their body fat percentage down to a very low number.

They do this because carrying weight, particularly in an endurance sport is costly. It slows you down. So losing a few pounds as an elite athlete could be the difference between winning and losing. So the women will get down to an extremely low body fat percentage and as a result they'll stop their period because their systems are basically telling them this is not a good time to rear children. If we're in a famine period, we're not going to have children. And the same kind of thing happens within the systems of men to It's just easier to explain this one because it's so apparent what's happening. But our body is a function of systems and those systems are always seeking to find that balance. And so if you've been eating a certain way and you start losing weight you body might stabilize and that's okay.

We just to have to put some strategies in place to try to break through that before I go too far down that rabbit hole of the body and talk about those solutions. Let's talk about the other two aspects of setpoint. So the second aspect of setpoint is environment. Now, every day we're in, we're in an environment of, of different things and some of them are very easy for us to notice, like the temperature of the room or if we're in an elevation, we might notice that the oxygen level is a little low. So if we walk out in the cold as many of you are experiencing right now and you're not wearing enough clothing, you're very likely to start shivering. That's, that's your body's reaction to your, your environment and it's, and it's very noticeable. If you're trying to do an endurance event and you move from from one elevation up to a much higher elevation, you may find that your performance drops.

And again, you can usually attribute that performance drop to your environment. So there are things in the environment that are definitely noticeable immediately. And then there's things that we don't notice, the chemicals, the, the pesticides, all those things that are out there in our food, in our household products. And then just general pollution. So I want to talk a little bit about that. There's a few that you know, I think are really, really important. One is the plastics, you know bisphenol a is in so many plastics and if you're heating and using those or allowing those to get warm, it's very likely you're taking in that chemical, which is a kind of an estrogen in our bodies. So it creates problems for us particularly for trying to get stronger or lose weight. So understanding if you're being exposed to things like that.

What's in your household cleaners? What's in your skincare products, what's in your hair care products? All those chemicals that we're applying to our body or using in our home they have the potential to disrupt our systems and as a result, send us into a kind of a cascade against the balance in the, in the wrong direction. So if we're trying to lose weight or get stronger and I'm going to keep going back and forth on those cause I think they're both very, very important. And I think you can do both at the same time. You're going to want to start paying attention to your environment. Another part of the environment that we don't pay a whole lot of attention to is light and UV rays. If we're not getting adequate sunshine during the day, which again, during the winter that's, that's a little bit tougher, then our bodies are not going to react the way that they should.

Our circadian rhythm is just not gonna flow the way that it should, which is going to disrupt our hormones. It's going to disrupt, potentially disrupt our sleep. So we might find that if we're not getting the sun, we're not getting the vitamin D, we're not getting all the different things that our body needs. So getting good natural light during the day turning off the computers earlier at night, all of those are environmental things that could potentially be disrupting your, your systems and, and if you're not taking care of those, very likely it is jeopardizing your performance and your ability to lose weight and get stronger. The final aspect of setpoint that I'd like to talk about is the mind. And you know, the mind is probably the most powerful aspect of the, of them all. Because if you don't believe you can do something, you absolutely can't.

It's just, you're not gonna be able to do it. So if, if you're stuck and you feel stuck and you say, well, I can't lose weight, I always lose weight and then I gain it back, you know, that mindset is going to hold you back. So if we're going to police our mindset, we've got to look at two things. The first is the things that we're listening to, things we hear, the things we see, the things we read. If you're on Facebook, reading all these articles about obesity and the crisis and how you know, this is making you fat and nights making you fat, and it's all that stuff's driving you crazy and it's, it's actually stressing you out. Stop. Just stop. The best way for you to know what's going to affect you is to just try it. Whole foods, natural foods, people will tell you, you can try this supplement or try that thing or take this pill.

None of going to be a longterm solution for you. So what's your listening to? What's your, what's your reading? What's your seeing? Let some of that go, you know, focus on the things that will definitely move the needle for you. You're in a plateau right now, and if that's the case, you need some action. You need to find that big rock as we say, and, and go ahead and start working on that. But if you're on all these little goose hunts about, should I be taking vitamin D, should I wait? Should I be vegan or wait? Should I, you know, drink eight glasses of water a day? If you're running around looking at all those tactics, it's very easy to get yourself lost in them and not really see which ones might be actually beneficial to you. You can't throw 13 things that at, at this at once and understand what's going on in your body.

It's just the too much and you don't, you can't parse through that data. There's too many confounders. So slow down. It's cool when you like to read and understand health and fitness. Believe you me, I'm reading about a book a week in health and fitness and I'm much more as far as I go on the internet and read blog posts and things that are going on there so I can keep kind of stay abreast of what's going on. But as it comes to applying it in my own life, I like to keep it simple. So I'm not necessarily acting on all of these activities and all these things that folks are talking about in their articles or to me personally, I try something. If it works, they use it. If it doesn't, I, I throw it out. And then finally within the mind, there's the inner dialogue.

How do you talk to yourself? What's going on in your head when things aren't going your way? You're in a plateau or you know, for weight loss. And so you haven't lost a pound and maybe even you went up a pound last week. And what's your inner dialogue telling you right now? Is it being nice to you? Is it, is it forgiving you? Because the step forward for any stumble at all is three. It's three things. The first is you have to forgive yourself. And then you have to come up with a plan of action to go forward. And then you have to act. And if you don't do all three of those, you're, you're destined to repeat exactly what you just did. So don't beat yourself up so much. Try to have a kinder, nicer inner dialogue. And if you find yourself, you know, not hitting a PR when you go to the gym every time, that's OK.

You're going to have good days and bad days. The fact is you were there and that's better than most. So look for the good of what you're doing and try to have a nicer, kinder inner dialogue. It's going to go a long way towards helping you be successful. So we have the body, we have the environment, and we have the mind where, where should we spend our time if we want the most bang for our buck. And I'd say, if your mindset's off, I would start there. I really would because if you don't have a good mindset, a lot of this stuff is just not going to happen for you. You don't, when my book, I go through wellness GPS and in there I'm very specific that you've got to have self-love to do this. You've got to make a commitment to yourself. You've got to want this really, really bad.

And when you do, then you have to just wake up and you gotta say, okay, self-awareness. You know what, what is going to hold me back? What has held me back in the past? Have I lost 20 pounds and then plateaued and then just gave up. And you know, pizza party for everybody is if that's how you've approached it in the past, you need to put in some strategies to kind of think about, well how do I reverse that trend? How do I not cause then I'm going to hit a plateau. It's going to happen. There's no way around it that, you know, any kind of changed. Your body is just not going to be linear. It's just going to balance out. It's going to plateau. That's what our bodies are designed to do. So if we want to break it, we gotta change it.

And so at some point we, we know we have to adapt, our body adapted. Now we have to adjust, adapt, adjust, adapt, adjust. And that's the path forward. So starting with the mind, get that right first. Now, once you're comfortable that you have a good mindset for what's necessary to break this plateau. Now we want to focus on the body. What are the tactics and things that we're already doing and are there any other tactics that we should consider doing? For example maybe a, I've lost down to a certain weight and I, and I want to lose a little bit more, but I'm not. And I say, okay, well, you know, I, I noticed that I pay attention when I drink milk. I feel a little bloated. And now that I've been having more milk I feel bloated more often. And so maybe the, I've got a problem with milk.

And so I said, okay, well I'm gonna eliminate dairy products for three to four weeks just to see if, if that makes me feel better. And low and behold, what you might find is three weeks slit, well eight are you weigh less and then you go ahead and you have a glass of milk or some cheese and boom, a pound hits the scale. You're like, Oh got it. I have an issue with dairy. And if that's the case, you probably in weight loss is your goal. You probably want to start eliminating dairy and keeping it out of your diet or at least keeping it to a very, very low amount such that you're not hampering your results. So, and maybe what I'm finding is I'm just not getting stronger and so it's time for me to mix my program up cause it's got kind of plateaued on my, my squad, I've kind of to it on my bench press.

So it's like, okay, well I'm going to go ahead and do now is I'm going to do more a weighted dips. I'm going to get on that leg press, I'm going to start pressing some really heavy weight. And I'm gonna start doing some front squats so I can really get my core strong. And by doing those things for a period of time, I'll cycle back around and find out my squat has now improved. And so periodization is what we call that in the weightlifting world. And so if you're, if you're stagnant, things are not happening. It might be to change up just your lifting programs. Something as simple as that, but your body is going to adjust and I mean adapt and then you adjust. And so when you do that adjustment, now you're putting your body into a different series of events and your body will likely change.

So that's the body. Now, the last one, the environment, those things that you know are around you. Let's eliminate those. You know, make sure you're getting good sleep. Make sure you're turning off the computer early enough. Make sure you're getting enough natural light as much as you possibly can to keep your body in good function and in a good circadian rhythm. If there's chemicals around your house, consider changing those out, get some, get some cleaner cleaners. You know a lot of people around here on this Island particularly like to make their own cleaning solutions and their own care, hair care and skin products. So that's not uncommon for people to do that with essential oils and coconut oil and things like that. Lemon juice and you know, vinegar, they make a lot of their own stuff and so that can come out to be a lot healthier for you in the long run.

The more of these chemicals that you can eliminate for your life because that might be one of those kind of like final things. It's probably not going to be your big rock initially, but at some point it might just be the reason that you're plateauing. So take the time to go through all three of these. That self-awareness practice that we do in the, in the wellness GPS is exactly geared for you to take the time to do this. So if you find yourself stagnant, it's time to pull that GPS back out and go through it one more time. Get yourself really set, get that self-love going and then start getting into the self-awareness of what do you think is actually the problem that's keeping you on this plateau. And then now you're ready to set some proper strategies to go forward.

Patreons

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

– Tim Alexander	– Judy Murphy
– Randy Goode	– Debbie Ralston
– John Somsky	– Ann Lynch
– Wendy Selman	– Jeff Baiocco

Thank you!

Another episode you may enjoy

Breaking a Weight Loss Plateau

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