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The lies we tell ourselves
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- Judy Murphy
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I've seen many clients self-sabotage their wellness journey by telling themselves lies. On this episode I discuss the lies we tell ourselves.
Before I get into today’s topic, I did want to ask you for one quick favor. My book, The Wellness Roadmap, is up for an Author Academy Award. If you would go to 40PlusFitnessPodcast.com/AAA, that’s going to take you to the Author Academy Awards page. Scroll down to the bottom. You’ll see a place where you can vote. Don’t do the “Submit”, but go down to where you can vote. It’s going to be on page 6 – that’s the “Health” category. Find The Wellness Roadmap, the book cover. Click on that and you’ll be voting for The Wellness Roadmap. I really appreciate that. Again, that’s 40PlusFitnessPodcast.com/AAA. It’d really help me out a lot. Thank you so much for that. So now we’ll go ahead and get on with the show.
For today’s topic, it’s going to be a solo episode where I wanted to go into something that a lot of us don’t talk about a whole lot, but it is something that’s real in many of our minds. We lie to ourselves. We lie to ourselves all the time, and it can be something that can keep you from reaching the wellness that you want to have. As a recap, I define “wellness” as being the healthiest, fittest and happiest you can be, and you do have to focus on all three. And these lies that I’m going to cover today are part of your journey. If you’re telling yourself these lies, you’ve got to stop. I’ll get into some strategies about that towards the end.
I broke this into three different sections, the first being “Getting Started”, and then we’ll talk about “On The Journey”, and finally we’ll talk about “Success”. And I’ve got several lies in each of these categories that we tend to tell ourselves. So as we go through this, I really want you to do some deep thinking. This is part of the self-awareness aspects as you go through your Wellness GPS. If you’ve gotten The Wellness Roadmap, you know what that is, but basically we have to get to this point of self-awareness where we know what we’re doing and what we’re saying to ourselves, because if we don’t get there, we’re not going to make this journey. We’re going to struggle. And that struggle is going to keep you from getting where you could be getting.
Getting Started
So the first one that I hear a lot is, “I’ll get started tomorrow.” And that might be at the beginning of the month, at the beginning of the week, but in a general sense, it’s starting your plan any time other than right now. There is no better time than right now. So if you find yourself saying, “I’ll start my diet tomorrow. I’ll start my exercise program tomorrow” – you’re already lying to yourself. You’re putting off something that you probably could start today.
The next one is, “My genetics are keeping me from losing weight” or, “My genetics are keeping me fat.” You may also hear this termed “big boned”. It’s not always genetics. Yes, some of us are designed to carry more body fat than others. That’s just a natural part of genetics. But none of us are genetically inclined to be obese; none of us are genetically inclined to be morbidly obese. That’s not the case. Now, there are genetic issues with some people and there are illnesses that will cause you to gain weight. There are medications that you might be taking that can cause you to gain weight. Those are real. Those are things you have to deal with. If your thyroid’s not functioning right, you’re going to be bigger. That’s not your genetics. That’s not your genetic potential. We all have the genetic potential to be healthy, fit and happy; we just have to make sure we’re doing the right things based on who we are. So your genetics are not what’s keeping you where you are. You have the capacity to do better.
The next is, “I don’t lift because I’ll get bulky.” This is mostly things that women will say. They’ll say, “I don’t want to get bulky. I actually want to get smaller, so I don’t want to lift weights because I’ll get big.” And the reality is, one, you’re female, so to get big, short of performance-enhancing drugs, it’s not really going to happen. Two, you are never going to work hard enough to put on a whole lot of muscle the way body builders tend to. And third, finally, we’re all over 40, so our genetic potential, our opportunity potential to put on muscle is much lower than it was in our 20s and 30s. So straight off the bat, you’re not going to work hard enough, you’re not going to be taking performance-enhancing drugs, more than likely, and you’re old enough that you’re not going to put on significant muscle. But you should lift weights to maintain muscle mass, to maintain bone density and to maintain strength. All of those are very core to you being healthy, fit and happy.
The next one is, “I have a bad knee”, or a bad hip, or some other injury that basically you can’t work out. And this is almost never the case. I seldom see people who have an injury that they can’t work around, that they can’t do something with. If your knees hurt or you’re getting a knee replacement and the doctor says, “No leg workouts” – that’s fine. Can you walk? Can you use the elliptical? Can you use the bicycle? Can you lift with your upper body? There are still things that you can do with that injury to work towards the fitness level that you want to have. It just takes some forethought and planning, so that you can get the work done without injuring yourself further. But very few injuries that I found will prevent you from being able to work out at some level. A lot of times we’re telling ourselves these lies because we don’t want to work out. It’s not that we can’t, we just don’t want to. So, don’t let the injury stop you from doing some form of training. You can work on your mobility, you can work on your balance, you can work on your endurance. There are things that you can do; you just have to figure those things out.
And the final item in the “Getting Started” section that I want to talk about is, “I have to work out to lose weight.” One of the early interviews I did was with a gentleman named Todd, and I also profile Todd in the book. Todd lost over 323 pounds without doing any workouts at all. In fact, he couldn’t work out because of some physical conditions he had. As a function of being so heavy for so long, he literally would bleed through his calves if he sat down in a chair. He couldn’t physically do the workout. So what did Todd do? Todd took control of his life. He made a commitment and he changed the things he could change, which was his food. Now, Todd did go low carb. You don’t have to go low carb. You can find a way of eating that will help you lose weight if that’s what your goal is, but you do not have to train to lose weight. Training helps the weight loss process, so training as a side effect will often include some weight loss, but that’s a side effect of the working out, just as weight loss is a side effect of eating better. So, working out can enhance your weight loss, but it’s very unlikely that working out is going to be all you have to do to lose weight. Calories of energy output is very, very expensive for our bodies, relative to how easy it is to eat those calories back. You’ll see those little diagrams all the time of, this is how much exercise you’ll have to do if you eat that Snickers bar, this is how much exercise you’ll have to do if you eat that McDonald’s meal. You can tell the amount of exercise is insane for the effort and time it’s going to take for you to eat those calories back. You’re never going to out exercise a bad diet, so don’t think that you will. Don’t tell yourself that you’re not working out. You’ve got to focus on the food first.
So those are the “Getting Started” lies: “I’ll start tomorrow. My genetics are keeping me fat. I don’t want to lift because I’ll get bulky. My bad knee or other injury won’t let me work out. I have to work out to lose weight.” All those are not really good reasons; they’re lies. So, stop telling yourself those lies if you’re having difficulty getting started.
On the Journey
Next, “On The Journey”. A lot of us will say, “This time is different.” But you didn’t really change anything. Last time, what did you do? You went gung-ho for five days and then you had a cheat meal, and it turned into a cheat day and it turned into a cheat weekend, and then you didn’t start back on Monday. So, what is different this time than the times you did this before? I can tell you, for me the main difference, the one time, was when I made the commitment. If you haven’t made the commitment and you’re not making some substantive changes to your lifestyle, you’re not going to get what you want. This time is different if you make it different, but going at it the same way you did before is just insanity, so don’t do that.
And then another one is, “Damn it, since I had that cookie, the day is blown.” You go in in the morning and they have donuts in the office, and suddenly donuts in the office becomes a crappy lunch at a restaurant, and then it becomes after work Happy Hour with some coworkers, and that turns into a whole terrible weekend of things. Each event is independent, each decision is independent. The cookies have absolutely nothing to do with the martinis after work. Each of them were decisions that you made at that point in time. So don’t think that one decision blows your whole day and therefore you just blow it out. Don’t let those other decisions become components of the decision that you make. They’re independent decisions and you need to treat them that way.
“I earned a treat.” So, you go into the gym – and I won’t name the name of the chain – but there’s one that they leave Tootsie Rolls and cookies at the front desk. So you go do your workout, and then, “Here’s your treat”, as a way of you congratulating yourself. Or you went and you did a good workout in the morning. You showed up and your trainer maybe trained you very, very well. You felt like you had a really good workout, so that entitles you to have your favorite treat after dinner that night to treat yourself for that hard workout. That’s not gaining you any ground; that’s actually pushing you backwards. You might not feel that way when you’re doing it, but it is in fact doing it. So, don’t let a victory celebration become a bad decision.
“I can’t afford good quality food.” I hear this all the time – they say, “I can’t afford organic.” I’ll admit, organic food costs a little more in the grocery store; it does. It takes more time and effort to grow. They get smaller production because they’re not able to use the hormones. All those different things that are happening are going to make the food a little bit more expensive, based on that volume of food. But what I have found is the difference in quality. If you eat slow and you let your body’s hormones do their thing – the leptin and the ghrelin do their thing – they’ll tell you you’re full when you’ve had enough. When you’ve gotten what your body needs, they’ll turn off your hunger sensation and it won’t turn it back on as early. If you can get your body to listen to those things, eating higher quality food is going to give you the nutrition that your body deserves. I can tell you that higher quality food is going to be a lot cheaper for you in the long run, particularly when you start thinking about the expenditures and the things that you’ve got to go through, the pain and suffering if you end up with diabetes and some of the complications that come along with that. You don’t want that in your life. You don’t want to be obese. You don’t want to have all those other problems and the medical issues and everything else. The quality of the food does matter and it’s an investment that you should be making.
Finally on the journey: “Since my family won’t support me, I’m doomed.” The family wants to have cookies in the house or whatnot. I can tell you right now as I’m recording this, my wife went out and bought some M&M’s. I thought they were the peanut M&M’s when I first saw them. She said they’re the caramel ones. She loves them, which is great, but they’re not what I plan to eat. But I have a very hard time saying “No” to M&M’s. I actually do. I know that’s a problem for me, but my wife wants them – I’m going to let her have them. If I’m cooking for myself and my wife doesn’t want to eat the way I’m going to eat, then I just have to be a little bit more into my plan. Typically what I found is, there are foods that you can eat that they will eat, and then there are foods they’ll eat that you won’t eat. So, if you fix a protein, you fix plenty of different vegetables, and then you go ahead and fix them the starch and you make them the desert, but you just stay away from the starch and the desert, you can fill your plate with the kinds of food that you want to have and you can meet your goals. If you’re really into this, if you’re really committed, you’ll come up with a strategy, with a plan to work around what your family’s needs are. Segregate their snacks to a different pantry or to a different cabinet so you’re not in them and seeing them all the time, and that might help. Fixing your meals in a way that is modular, so that you can add the things that they want and you can avoid those things. Fixing the plates in the kitchen and bringing them to the table will make that even easier for you. So that’s the “On The Journey”: “This time is different”, when you haven’t really changed anything, “Damn it, since I had that cookie, the day is blown. I earned a treat. I can’t afford better quality food.” And finally for “On The Journey”: “Since my family won’t support me, I’m doomed.” All of those are lies. Stop telling yourself that. If you’re really committed to this, you can get through these things.
Success
And then the final section is “Success”. The first one in “Success” is, “If I lose X more pounds, I’ll be happy.” So for some people that might be five pounds, others 10, and for some it might be 25 or 30. Whatever that is, “If I lose X more pounds, I’ll be happy.” Weight loss is not going to make you happy. If you get yourself healthy and you get yourself fit, it’s a lot easier to be happy. But happy in and of itself is its own component of wellness. And yes, they’re all intertwined. A fitter person tends to be more healthy and happy. A healthy person tends to be more fit and happy. A happy person tends to be more fit and healthy. Those are general components of the three and how they interact, but one does not drive the other in a straight line capacity that way. You need to find things that bring you joy, and that will bring you the happiness. That happiness will help you feel better so you’ll be putting more effort into your fitness. And as you notice the investments you’re making on your fitness, you’ll start paying a lot more attention to the foods you’re eating, the sleep you’re getting, and your stress levels. All of that will work out to making you a much weller person.
The second one in “Success” is, “I’m a failure.” People will say this even when they’ve made significant success. I’ve talked to people that wanted to lose 60-70 pounds and they’ve lost about 35 pounds, but they’ve still got that 25 to lose and they feel like they’re a complete failure because they didn’t reach a predetermined goal. And sometimes those goals were based on things that were happening at the early part of their journey. So, they needed to lose 70 pounds or wanted to lose 70 pounds, and the first week they last four, and then they lost three, and then they lost two, and now each week they’re noticing maybe half a pound, and one week it goes up. They’re so fixated on the fact that the scale isn’t moving as much as it did before, they feel like they’re stuck. There are things they can do to get off of this plateau. You’re not a failure. You climb the mountain and you found yourself on a ridge, and now you have to walk across that ridge before you can start climbing again. That’s just a normal aspect of going up this mountain, and it’s something to expect. Plateaus are a normal, natural thing in our wellness journey. If you find yourself on a plateau, you’ve got to keep doing what’s been working for you and you’re going to start seeing results again. You can start working a little bit harder at certain things, get a little bit more restrictive on some things and see if that helps spur some movement in the direction that you want to. But you are not a failure on the basis that your momentum stopped. You’re not a failure until you quit. If you quit this climb and start going back down the mountain, then yes, you can call yourself a failure, but you’re not a failure because you didn’t get all the way where you wanted to go. You are a success by making it as far up the mountain as you have, and you just have to keep working.
And then the final lie that we tell ourselves as a part of the “Success” section: “I’ve met my goal, my journey is over.” A lot of people will do this. They’ll go on a diet and their goal was to maybe lose 10-15 pounds. They lose that 10-15 pounds, and then they go right back to eating the way they did before. And guess what happens? They layer that fat right back on, and in some cases faster and even more than they did before. That’s a normal way that people will do – they’ll do something, they’ll be very successful, but because they weren’t committed to it in the long term, they let it slip through their grasp. They go back to living the way they did before, fully aware that that’s how they got where they got. They know where that road takes them, yet they get on that road and they start going. So, when you meet your health and fitness goals, I’d strongly encourage you to take a moment to regroup, to assess yourself, and then sit down and pick something even better down the road. Find another goal, find another challenge. Find something that’s going to keep you actively engaged in your own wellness. You can continue to improve your wellness, you can continue to maintain your wellness, or you can let it slip away. It’s always a decision that you get to make, for the most part, so I want you making those decisions.
So I’ll recap – for “Success”, it was: “If I lose X more pounds, I’ll be happy. I’m a failure”, even though you’ve made significant progress, or, “I’ve met my goal, my journey is over.” Those are three lies that we tend to tell ourselves when we’re looking at success or we feel like we have been successful. Those are also lies. If you really want to get well, you want to be as happy, healthy and fit as you can possibly be, you can’t be telling yourself those lies either.
I hope you enjoyed this episode. It’s a little different than what I’ve done in the past, but I really felt like as I was talking to various people, I hear these comments all the time and I know they’re just lies that people are telling themselves. I want you to do this deep dive. You may want to listen to this episode again, and there’ll be sections of it that are going to resonate with you. If they did, feel free to send me an email. I’m at allan@40plusfitnesspodcast.com. We can talk about what’s going on with you. I’d love to help you out if I can in any way, so thank you.
If you enjoyed today’s episode, would you please take a moment to check out our Patreon page? You can go to 40PlusFitnessPodcast.com/Patreon and leave a small contribution to the show. It takes a lot of effort and a little bit of money to keep a program like this going this long, so I really do appreciate any and all support that you can give me. Go to 40PlusFitnessPodcast.com/Patreon and become a patron today. Thank you for being a part of 40+ Fitness podcast.
Also, The Wellness Roadmap, the book I wrote, is up for an Author Academy Award. If you could go to 40PlusFitnessPodcast.com/AAA, that will take you to the page for the Author Academy Awards. You’ll need to scroll down to the bottom. Don’t click that “Submit” button, because that’s not for you, but scroll down a little bit further and you’ll find the “Vote” section, and then there are separate pages for each category. I’m in the “Health” category, which is 7 of 16 pages, so you’ll have to do a little bit of scrolling to get over to the seventh page. Look for The Wellness Roadmap cover, click on it, and you’ve voted. Thank you so much for that: 40PlusFitnessPodcast.com/AAA. Thank you.
Another episode you may enjoy
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Get healthy and fit with commitment, strategy, habits, and tactics
Patreons
The following listeners have sponsored this show by pledging on our Patreon Page:
- Judy Murphy
Thank you!
As we look to the new year, our health and fitness move to top-of-mind. On this episode, I discuss how commitment, strategy, habits, and tactics can help you reach all of your health and fitness goals.
As we close out 2018, I thought it would be good for me to do an episode that was geared towards helping you be successful. As we go into a new year, this is often the time of year where people want to really start bearing down on certain goals – be it health, be it fitness, be it wealth – different things that we put on our plate that we want to accomplish in the new year. And if being healthy and fit is something that’s on your plate, which for most of it is, these four words that I’m going to share with you today and how they apply, is going to be very, very important for you to be successful.
The words
COMMITMENT
The first one is commitment. A commitment is so much stronger than any other thing that you’re going to do for yourself. You could say you have a resolution, you could start a diet, you can say you’re going to use willpower, do things to improve your willpower; but in a general sense, all of those are typically designed to fail. What you need is a commitment.
When you commit to something, you just do it. It’s much more personal to you. It’s much more ingrained in your psyche to be successful when you have a commitment.
Commitment is comprised of two things. The first one is your “Why”. Your “Why” must be deep and emotional, and generally fixed. What I mean by that is, it needs to be something that you truly, truly care about. If you don’t care about it –
If you’ve been following me for any period of time, you know that my commitment, my “Why” is my daughter. It started out as my daughter, then when I got married to Tammy, it’s now my wife and our children, and then
I don’t want to just be here for them; I want to be working with them. I want to be doing things with them. I want to be active with them. I want to be participating in their lives. So my vision is for me to be independent, fit and strong, to be able to do the things that they’re doing to be engaged in their lives.
So I put those two together: my “Why” – my children, grandchildren, my wife; and my vision is to be active in their lives, to be independent. That’s my commitment. My commitment is to do the work and do the things that are necessary to make sure that I am the person that I want to be for them. That’s my commitment.
STRATEGIES
The next word – strategies. Strategies are the things that we do to ensure that we’re going to be successful. And that only comes about if we really do a good deep dive exercise of self-awareness and looking at our lives and saying, “What’s realistic? What’s the most likely outcome if these things happen?”
So, strategies are the things that we do to keep us on track when something might have knocked us off. A perfect example for me is, every once in a while if I see M&M’s, particularly peanut M&M’s, I’m all over them. It’s very, very hard for me to walk past a bowl of M&M’s and not just eat them all. I know that’s a tendency of mine, so I just don’t buy M&M’s. I don’t have them in the house, I don’t have them in the cupboard, so I’m less inclined to do that thing.
Another one that I’ve talked about a good bit is, when I was going to an office, if I didn’t pack my gym bag the night before and leave it on the floor where I would almost practically trip over it on the way out, I would sometimes forget my gym bag or I’d forget to pack socks or shoes or something silly like that, and I’d end up missing a workout. So, for me to make sure that I am consistently going to the gym, I have to pack my gym bag the night before.
Now it’s a little different because I work from home, but I need to put my gym clothes out. Right after I finish recording this episode, I’m going to go down to the gym and do some work, because I already have my gym clothes on. They were the ones I left out for me to get into this morning when I woke up, so I have my gym clothes available to me and I’m ready to go work out. So, the strategies are the things that we do to help ensure that we stay the course.
HABITS
The next one is habits. Habits are the things we do without even having to think of them. One habit will be that you brush your teeth every evening before you go to bed. You probably brush your teeth every morning when you wake up. Habits are the way that you drive to work each day. Habits are the natural little things that you do in the course of living your day-to-day. The way we’re going to build a habit is by making it a part of each day regularly.
Just like brushing your teeth became like a ritual before bed – working out, eating well – those have to be habits. I talked about the strategy of walking around the grocery store. Now I don’t even think about going down any of the
TACTICS
And the final one that I want to talk about is tactics. Tactics are the things we do to get healthy and fit. I may ask a client when they first go in the gym and they want to start lifting, “I’m going to put you on a five by five program, doing these five exercises.” When I say “five by five”, that’s five sets, five repetitions of these five different exercises that basically give them a full body workout each time. So the tactic is the five by five.
As far as eating, some of my clients like to go low-carb. And when they go low-carb, that’s a tactic; it’s the style of eating that they’re choosing. They’re choosing a tactic of low-carb as a way of potentially losing some body fat, and yet fueling themselves.
So, as you look at the things that you would do, I want you to make sure that the tactics you’re using are the ones that are really going to move the needle. So the tactic of getting a B12 shot once a month – while it might boost your energy, that’s not a “move the needle” tactic so much as making sure you’re getting in a good amount of water each
The B12, or wearing an altitude mask, or all these other little crazy things that are out there, are not going to move the needle nearly as much. Now, there might be a point in your fitness and health journey where those other tactics make sense to add to your repertoire, but you want to focus your energy and your time on the tactics that are going to do the
PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
Now, I say commitments, strategies, habits, and tactics in that order for a very specific reason. The commitment lays the foundation for everything that you’re going to do. When you’ve made a good commitment, you have a good vision of where you’re going to go and you have a good “Why” that’s going to keep you going. So the commitment has to be the first thing, it has to be done right. Once you have a good commitment in your mind and you’ve written it down and now you’re going to practice that commitment, everything else will fall in place so much easier.
Now through self-awareness, through knowing the basic things going on in your life, you can start establishing the strategies that are going to lay the framework for how everything else is going to work. I’ll use myself as an example.
I said that I want to be independent and active with my children and grandchildren, and whatever they’re doing in their lives, I want to be a part of it. I know that if I want to live a longer life, I need to feed my body the types of food that are good for it. So my strategies have to be built around, how do I make sure that I’m getting good food? How do I make sure that I’m doing the right things to keep myself fit? And fitness in this context is very different than CrossFit fit or just wanting to be able to complete a particular task, like a race or whatnot. This is fitness to be the person that I want to be.
As we age we’re more likely to fall, and that fall is likely to put us in the hospital or kill us. I want to make sure that I don’t fall, so in addition to training my strength so that I can do the things I need to do, I need to train balance, so that I’m as balanced as I can be and I don’t fall as often. Those are two different things that I’m working on within my fitness, so I have to put the strategies in place to make sure that I do that.
Strategies I’ve talked about – leaving my clothes out so I know that I’m getting my workouts in. Strategies of making sure that I’m shopping for the best quality foods, going to the farmer’s market, or at least walking the perimeter of the grocery store.
Now, after you’ve done a strategy for quite some time, it becomes a habit. So going down into my basement gym and getting in a good workout each morning because I’ve put my clothes on – suddenly now it becomes a habit of, that’s just what I do. I wake up and I go down to the gym. And maybe I’m doing some strength training, maybe I’m doing some balance
My tactics are saying, “Buy a whole bunch of vegetables. Just look for everything that’s fresh and organic. Get the best quality vegetables I can get and fill up my cart with those. Going over to the meats, look for the high-quality grass-fed meats.” And that’s what I do. Whether I’m at the farmer’s market or at the grocery store, I’m looking for the highest quality. So my tactic is high-quality food. My tactic is I’m going to do strength exercises, which are basically lower rep heavyweight, and I’ll do some balance work on a regular basis as a function of my workouts. Those are the tactics that are going to get me there.
SUMMARY
You see how if I try to skip the order, I never develop the habits? If I don’t have the commitment, I’m never going to get to the habits. And so many people like to start this journey with the tactics.
We’re rolling into January, so it’s like, “I’m going to go on a diet.” What does that mean? It’s like, “Well, no candy or cakes for me.” They’ve got a tactic – they’re cutting out
Are they really going to have the commitment and the ability, the strategies to walk away and not eat the cake? Or are they going to make that a failure point in their plan and lose their diet? So, as you go through this, just remember, you need the commitment to make sure that all of this stays in place.
The strategies will be the ones that keep you on the road the most, keep you most effective. The habits are going to be the things that become automatic for you, which actually makes getting well very easy once you’ve developed healthy habits. That takes time, it takes effort, but if you have the commitment and the strategies in place, you can and will develop really good habits for your health and wellness. And then finally, the tactics. The tactics you choose need to be the best ones that are going to move the needle the most for you, where you are on your journey today. In that order – commitment, strategies, habits, tactics.
I hope that this has been helpful for you. If you have any questions at all about this – please, please, please, reach out to me. You can get in touch with me at allan@40plusfitnesspodcast.com. I love getting emails from you guys. Or you can go to the Facebook group at 40PlusFitnessPodcast.com/Group. Both of those are great places to interact with me. I love getting emails, I love having the discussions on the Facebook group, because that’s where other people can get the benefit of your questions and our comments and what’s going on there. So please do go check out the group or send me an email if you have any questions or want to talk further about this topic.
Alright. It’s that time of year when we all start getting a little bit more focused on goals, commitments, resolutions and all of that. So I hope you’ll take today’s lesson to heart as you do kick in for the new year and get your fitness stuff going on. It is very important for you to make sure that you’re committed to have the strategies in place, to develop the appropriate habits, and also to make sure that you’re finding the right tactics to make sure that you’re successful in meeting your fitness and health goals. This is the perfect time for you to hire a coach, and I would like to be that coach. As a coach you can have me for accountability, you have me to bounce any questions off of, you have me there to make sure that you get the most out of the time and effort you’re putting into the gym and into the kitchen. You can go to 40PlusFitnessPodcast.com/Programs to learn more about what I do with my coaching.
I have two basic programs – very simple “Do It Yourself” programs; or if you really want me with you along the way, you can join the group fitness or apply for the one-on-one. I do have some slots open for one-on-one clients at this time. So if you’re interested in really kicking things up a notch, meeting all of your wellness and fitness goals for the year, I highly recommend that you hire a coach and I hope that you’ll choose me. Go to 40PlusFitnessPodcast.com/Programs today. Thank you.
Another episode you may enjoy
Wellness Roadmap Part 1
Listener Questions – 3rd Anniversary Episode
Patreons
The following listeners have sponsored this show by pledging on our Patreon Page:
- Judy Murphy
Thank you!
On this episode, we celebrate the 3rd anniversary of the 40+ Fitness Podcast, the launch of The Wellness Roadmap book, and I answer listener questions.
Hello and thank you for being a part of the 40+ Fitness podcast. I am so glad you’re here today. This is going to be a special episode because today is the official third birthday for the 40+ Fitness podcast. Yes, I launched the podcast on December 6, 2015, and this episode that you’re hearing today is going live December 6, 2018. And my, how so much changed in just three years! It’s really quite amazing. I’m going to talk about the podcast, I’m going to talk a little bit about the new book, and then I’m going to talk about going forward what I want to do with the podcast, with my career, with the whole thing. If you’re not interested in all that and all you want to do is get to the Q&A, you might want to skip forward a little bit because this is going to get into the origin of the show, the things I’ve been doing for the past three years, the growth and where we are today. If you’re not interested in those types of things, then I’d encourage you to skip towards the end and you can pick up the Q&A. We got some really cool, good questions there that I know you’re going to get some value out of. So this is not an entire show about me and the podcast. It’s about you and how I can help you reach your health and fitness goals. Let’s go ahead and get started.
As I mentioned, the podcast started three years ago, and when I first started the podcast, I did a lot of things to try to jumpstart it and get it going early. I spent a lot of what I would call stupid money, building up some things that didn’t matter; I spent money on things that didn’t matter. I bought equipment that I’ve never actually ever used. It was really kind of a traffic wreck. Now, I had a full-time job, so I had the disposable income to do those types of things. But looking back at myself now, if you’re thinking about starting a podcast, email me, let me know. Let me give you a little bit of advice, because you don’t have to spend a ton of money to have a podcast. You do need to spend some money to have a good podcast, but you can get a decent podcast with not much of an investment if you’re willing to invest your time. I started the podcast because I had done some things for my health and wellbeing that I felt were quite valuable and a lot of people were asking me about it. They could physically see the change in me. I was a different person and they recognized that. So, more and more people were reaching out to me that I knew and I just got to thinking, I can’t not tell everybody. If this is something that’s going to work for me and it’s starting to work for other people, let’s prove the case.
So when I launched the podcast, I was extremely ambitious. Again, I did have a full time job, a very stressful full-time job at that. And as I reached out, I decided I was going to do the podcast five days a week. I was going to have shorter episodes of 15 minutes, enough time that you could go for a nice little walk and it wouldn’t take away too much of your day to spend 15 minutes, five days a week doing some moving around. That would basically put us at about 75 minutes, which is the minimum requirement of what the federal government says you should do. It’s by far a very low bar, but I thought this is doable for most people that I want to reach out to. So I did that for quite some time. I think we got all the way up into the 70s for the episodes. So, a good long time – probably eight, nine weeks or longer. I guess we’re looking at closer to 12, 13, 14 weeks that I ran this podcast for that amount of time. It was a lot of work, particularly when I was trying to do interviews and keep the interviews under the 15-minute mark – a real processing challenge for my head, for my stress. It was a little too much. So I made the bonus announcement that I was moving to three days a week and I was going to give myself some slack on the length of the show. If it needed to be a little bit longer, it’d be a little bit longer. If it could be a little bit shorter, I would make it a little bit shorter. That worked pretty well, but I found more and more I wanted to reach out to experts in the field. I wanted to do more interview shows, because I really felt like I could read a book and pull out some huge gems for folks – some great tactics, in many cases some good strategies to help us stay on track with our health and fitness. So I started reaching out to the guys out there that were writing books, and experts and whatnot. And I got some awesome guests on the show. There have been some huge ones, like Dr Fung, Jimmy Moore, Dr Friedman, Dr Greger. Just tons and tons of really good guys and ladies – sorry I missed a few of those. I had some really great shows. But I found working a full-time job and going through some pretty stressful events, that having to read three books per week… And a solo show actually probably takes me longer to prepare than an actual reading a book show. I know that sounds weird, but I spend a lot more time than the six or seven hours it takes me to read a book to actually plan one of these shows when I do a solo show. I spend a lot of time thinking about it, a lot of time doing some research to make sure that what I’m giving you is right. So, I prefer the interview style as a way of getting the information out there. So, I just found that doing three interviews shows per week was just a little too tough on me. So I tapped it back down a little bit more to once a week. And as you know if you’ve been listening for the last couple of months, I throw in bonus episodes every once in a while. So, it’s not like I’m just doing 52 episodes a year; I probably do closer to the realm of 60 a year, which is pretty good. It’s a good bit, but it’s not so much. Getting a lot of good feedback from that.
So, where have we come, where are we now? When I first started I was happy to see that first download, and it was me. The second download came and it was someone else, maybe even you, if you’ve been with me from the beginning. And that was pretty exciting. Now things are a lot bigger. This is actually being released as episode 358, which means there’s a ton of back catalogs. In fact, unless you’re subscribed to the podcast on iTunes, you don’t even see the first episode, because they only show the last 300 episodes on your player when you go to look for the podcast. Unless you’re subscribed, and then you can go all the way back. I’ve had over 205 guests on the show. In fact, I think I interviewed 206 today as I’m recording this. So, a lot of great folks have come on the show and provided great content, and I’m going to continue to strive week in and week out to get the best possible guests on the show that I can. There are some really cool, great guests coming up. I can’t tell you their names because they might miss their call and I don’t want to say they were here and then they’re not. So I’m not going to give you any false promises there, but I’ve got some really great episodes coming up that I know you’re going to enjoy. We’ve had over 1.3 million downloads and listens to the podcast over the three years. That’s phenomenal to me. It’s just an unbelievable number that we could have over a million people have been exposed to the 40+ Fitness podcast and are part of our family. And I think that’s really, really cool. Now, I know some of you listen to every episode, but when you realize 358 episodes and 1.3 million downloads and listens, that’s pretty significant, what we’re able to do here. So, really, really happy with that. We’ve been listened to in over 149 countries. And I can tell you most of the countries where we haven’t been heard are the countries that you would expect me not to be heard. It’s the Stan countries over in the Middle East and a few others in Africa and down in South America, but for the most part, this podcast is listened to around the world. So it’s gotten some really good guests from around the world, but it’s also gotten some wonderful listeners that are getting this content there. So I really appreciate you tuning in each and every week to be a part of this show, because it is a community. If we’re going to get healthy, we’re going to do this together. So I’m really, really happy to have both my North American-based listeners and also my international listeners. Thank you so much.
Now, the podcast is often featured on the top 100 in the Health & Fitness and in the Alternative Health space, which is really good. I look at the numbers that they throw out for podcast listens and all of that. We’re right in the mix to be a top tier podcast. We’re right in the top 10%, top 15% most weeks, so we’re right in that bailiwick of getting the good. We’re niche, we’re over 40, so I’m not trying to be everything to everybody. I don’t expect to be the major, major player here, but we are doing really good in the charts. The Facebook group continues to be a slow grow, but it’s a good, solid group. I love the feedback I get from you there. There are currently 571 members, and that can go up and down over time. If you’re not a member of the Facebook group, you can go to 40PlusFitnessPodcast.com/Group. I make a lot of announcements there, we interact there, you can ask questions there. I’m on the page. I go onto that group every single day to check in and see what’s going on with folks. So, really delightful community and I’m really glad for the folks that are a part of that. And then the Facebook page is just shy of 13,000 likes. We’re at 12,990. So if you haven’t liked the Facebook page, go look up 40+ Fitness, find the Facebook page and go ahead and give us a like. They don’t show those posts so it’s not like I’m going to inundate you on your feed, but it’s just nice to know that there are a lot of fans out there that are interested in what we’re doing. And that’s just another way to see it. And then of course the reviews on iTunes. We have basically 159 reviews. We’ve got a few more ratings. Some people rated it and didn’t leave a review. There are 159 reviews on the podcast, with an average rating of 4.96, which is phenomenal. A couple of people don’t like certain parts of the show, and I get that. I may say something that offends a person here or there, and I understand that. My goal is to get information out and let you disseminate how that information fits in your life. I’m not a doctor, I’m not a dietitian. I’m a personal trainer with some personal experience and I’ve interviewed over 205 guests at this point. So I think I know a thing or two to at least guide you in your own education of things that are there for you. So if I’m not making someone happy – please, go ahead and leave me a rating and review. It helps me. I’ve had some comments on the podcast page and I’ve had some reviews that have made me step up my game. One was for sound quality. So I’ve changed the way I record the podcast so that I can have better sound quality. I’ve had someone who was upset that I had too many ads at the beginning of an episode, so I went ahead and moved those to the back of the episode so he doesn’t have to listen to them. He can stop listening as soon as they play that last music bumper; he’s good to go. So, I do listen and read your reviews and I do make adjustments and will continue to do so. If you haven’t left a review for the show, please do it on whatever you’re listening to this podcast right now. I think you can do it and still be listening to me, so it doesn’t cost you any time. Just go ahead and leave a rating and review. It really does help me make the podcast better.
Allan (12:12): I just finished the whirlwind effort of publishing a book, and I wanted to talk a little bit about the origin of the book. The book came about because I was laid off. I was laid off last December and I was going through a lot of things and I was thinking the podcast has done a lot for a lot of people, but there’s a whole segment of folks out there that aren’t going to find the podcast. I know they’re listening to books on Audiobooks and I know they’re reading books. I want to try to hit more people, I want to try to touch more people. And being laid off, I had the time to invest in getting this message out there. So, I sat down and I kind of outlined what I thought the book would be about. And if you listen to episodes 295 to 299 – I call it The Wellness Roadmap – that’s actually the outline that became the book. I actually outlined it for you here on the podcast, and that became the staple, the basis for the writing of the book. I had that format when I went forward. And I hired people across the board, so I had editors, copy editors, layout people, the whole bit to help me get this book into production. I recorded the narrative on the audiobook, so if you do buy the audiobook, it’s going to be my voice reading my book, my words. I did hire a producer though to help me massage the files and get them up to Amazon standards. So that audiobook is now going to be available on Amazon, Audible and iTunes. The book itself, I published not just an ebook or a paperback; I also have a hardbound. You can order the hardbound book pretty much through any retailer. Right now the ebook and the paperback are only going to be available through Amazon. You can go to 40PlusFitnessPodcast.com/Book, and that’s going to take you to Amazon. The Kindle edition comes out on December 6. At least for the next couple of days, the Amazon Kindle version is going to be available for $0.99, and then it’s going to go back up to its normal price of $6.99. Still a bargain for what I think you get for this book. But I wanted to give everybody that needs this book or wants this book, regardless of what your budget is. If you can afford a $1 Kindle book, you can watch it on your computer, because you can download their app. Or you can do it on your phone with their app. I know Kindle, even though it’s kind of an Amazon thing, you can still watch it and listen to it anywhere. And it’s only $0.99, so please do reach out there. And if you’ve gotten the book or if you get the book, I would really appreciate a rating and review on the book. This is hyper-critical because Amazon shoppers do pay attention to those ratings. If they come across a book and it’s highly rated, or they come across a book that doesn’t have any ratings, they’re always going to opt for the one that had the ratings. They’re just not going to pay that much and spend that much time reading the description to understand if a book is for them. They’re going to immediately hit the page, they’re going to see the cover, they’re going to see the number of ratings and whatever rating level they got. Then and only then they might read the description and read some of the reviews. So, please do take just a moment to leave me a rating and review. It really does help the book grow and become something special.
So, going forward, what’s going on? I told you I got laid off, and you probably already knew that. When I got laid off, I was thinking about how my work affected my life and my health, and I made the decision to opt for health and wellness over the job. I love what I’m doing here, so I decided to double down on pulling in some clients. I have the most wonderful clients in the world. I really do. I love each and every one of them. Every week when we have our calls, whether it be the one-on-one calls or the group calls, I leave those calls pumped, because I know I’m making a difference. I see my clients getting results and we’re having these great conversations about our health and our wellness. So it’s been really, really cool to be able to ramp that up. And of course I’ve continued the podcast with some sponsors, but more often than not, without. It’s really not a sponsored podcast. It’s all pretty much out of pocket and what I’m able to raise with my clients. But what’s come to be is that that’s just not sustainable for the long term. If I look at my cash flows relative to my outflows, for the long period of time I can’t stay where I am. I can’t keep doing what I’m doing. Something has to change. So my wife and I have decided that we’re going to move to Panama. What that’s going to mean is that my overall cost of living will be somewhat lower, which will help me spread the time, before I have to do something. I’m going to continue to train clients, I’ll be able to do that. I’m offering a special because I do need more clients, I’ll just be frank about it. If I’m going to keep doing this, I’ve got to treat it like a business, and it is a business. So, you can go to 40PlusFitnessPodcast.com/Group-Training and use the coupon code podcast when you check out. That’s going to allow you to get the first month for a dollar. I want you to just try it out. There’s a 40-day money back guarantee, which basically says if you get in and spend your dollar, and then you get billed the next $75 for the first month, and you say, “No, no, I don’t want to do this. This isn’t working for me. I didn’t see the results.” Then I’ll give you your money back. I won’t ask any questions, I won’t bother with it. I’ll just say, “Okay, I get it. It just didn’t work for you. This wasn’t for you. I’m sorry I let you down, but we’re good. Here’s your money back.” So you get to try it for a dollar; there’s no risk to it. And I do believe that most people that are going to come in and give this a real shot and take me up on this $1 for the first month offer, you’re going to see some results and you’re going to see what it’s like to be part of a group that’s all striving to be well together. You’re going to have that support from me and from everyone else as much as you need, as much as you want. So, please do go check it out – 40PlusFitnessPodcast.com/Group-Training. Be sure to use the coupon code podcast at checkout.
And then finally, I’m going to carry on doing the podcast. It’s going to be a weekly show. Most of the episodes are going to be interviews. They’re the easier thing for me to do, they’re the thing I enjoy. Basically I’m getting paid pretty much to read books and interview people. Now, I say “getting paid”. I don’t get paid; the podcast is absolutely free for you. But if you would like to support what I’m doing here at the podcast, you can become a patron. Patreon is a service that lets me take in monthly contributions to cover the overall cost of producing the podcast. The podcast itself doesn’t cost a whole lot. There are some hosting costs for the website, there are some hosting costs for the audio file. Those are not significant. But I also pay someone to put the transcripts together, and I also pay someone to do the audio processing, and that’s where the dollars start actually adding up. This is a negative cash flow for me as a part of this, but I love doing this podcast. I’m going to probably keep doing the podcast even if you don’t become a patron. But if you go to 40PlusFitnessPodcast.com/Patreon, you can become a patron for as little as a dollar a month. I have some levels in there that I’m willing to do a little bit extra for you, if you’re willing to help me out a little bit more. And some of those are going to be pretty cool, I think, if you really want to be a part of it. You may not want to be a client, then don’t be a client; buy the book. You may not want to buy the book. If you want to help the podcast, there are several ways now to do it. You can purchase the book, leave a rating and review. You can become a client, and better yet I can help you personally reach your goals. Or you can become a patron through 40PlusFitnessPodcast.com/Patreon, and help support the show so I can keep it going and keep doing this. Right now I’m sustainable because we’re getting ready to move to Panama. My step is going to be lower stress, but it’s also going to be a change to my business and how I run things. So I’ll have to just look at that. But I am going to keep doing the podcast, I am going to keep doing the training, and who knows, there might even be another book in my future.
Allan (21:07): Another thing I want to do with the podcast going forward is I do want to make it more about you. I talked about how easy reading the books are for me to be able to put together a really good show. Another way that makes it really easy for me to do a good show is for me to answer your questions. If you put in some questions, it’s very easy for me to sit down and put together the content that I want to have and how I want to outline it. That I can do really quickly. And so, this is also a Q&A show. With no further ado, I will go ahead and skip into the questions. Most of these questions came through the Facebook group. If you’re not a part of the group, you can go to 40PlusFitnessPodcast.com/Group, and that’ll take you to the group page. This is where you’ll be able to ask those questions for when we have these Q&A episodes. I want to have more of them, so I’ll be putting them out there from time to time to see if I can build up enough questions to move forward. But most of these came from the group, so if you want to get in touch, that’s one of the best ways to do it. So, the first one comes from John. John asks, “What are your favorite mobility and balance routines?” This is a great question, because balance and mobility are something that I’m much more focused on now than I ever have been in my training. What I’ll start this out with is, a part of my overall philosophy of training is that you need to have a vision and you need to understand what you’re trying to accomplish before you can actually start on the task. So, my training for mobility and balance could be very different than yours, John. For example, I have very, very tight calves. I don’t know why they’re as tight as they are. I never wore high heels, I hardly ever wore boots. But for one reason or another, my calves are very, very tight. So, my mobility has to focus on my calves because my calves being tight adversely affects my movement pattern. If I want to improve my movement pattern, I have to address the tight muscles and I have to strengthen the weak muscles. So, my tight muscles are my hip flexors and my calves; my calves especially. My weak muscles tend to be my hamstrings and my quads. And so, I do a lot of strengthening for my hamstrings and my quads, and I do a lot of stretching and mobility work on my hip flexors and my calves. And that helps my overall squat form to be much more clean and much better. Now, there are other areas of my body that are tight. My chest is a little tight so I do stretches to the chest. My traps get a little tight from time to time, so I will occasionally do some self-myofascial release on my traps. Those are the areas that affect me. So, paying attention to your body and where you feel tight and where you know your lack strength – maybe the core – those are the areas where you want to focus on, on your general mobility.
As for balance, balance is an important aspect of day-to-day life. We could easily fall, and I can tell you as we get older, the likelihood of falls goes through the roof and the injuries and cause of death from a fall is so high. It really is unbelievable to me how many people over the age of 65 fall, and how many of them end up in the hospital or dead. This is not something you want to happen to you, so you do want to start a program to make sure that you’re improving your balance. I recently interviewed a wonderful woman, Carol Clements. That was episode 357, that just happened this last Monday. Her book is Better Balance for Life. She has a pretty interesting program where you do most of your balance work as a part of your normal day-to-day routine. So, perhaps while you’re brushing your teeth, you stand on one foot with your eyes closed. It sounds like a simple task, but it’s a lot harder than you would think it’d be. She just uses and builds it all into your day-to-day functional things that you’re doing to use balance as a protocol. I say that’s great. Just realize when you’re training balance, you’re trying to put yourself in a slightly imbalanced position, like standing on one foot or having two feet really close together – make sure you’re in a position where if you fall, you’re not going to hurt yourself. That’s the core thing I would say about balance. Now, to put it all together, the cool thing about mobility and balance is that these are things that you can do every day. You can work on them every day. You don’t have to, but the more you work on them, the easier it’s going to be, the more your balance will improve, the more your mobility will improve. So, it is something that I would encourage you to consider doing each and every day. And what I would say is, make balance a part of your regular life – standing with your feet closer together, standing on one foot, putting yourself in unbalanced positions, moving side to side, getting yourself comfortable with out of the box movements. That’s going to help your balance, and you can do that any day, anywhere. The second would be, as far as the mobility, just make that a part of your warmup. Do a little cardio warmup, get your body moving, and then spend a few minutes working on mobility, on the areas where you know you have tightness. That’s going to be the best protocol I can give you. There’s not any one protocol that’s out there. I have run the Functional Fitness Challenge before, where I did give some general protocols that addressed what I feel are the movement patterns for most people, the balance issues for most people, but we all differ in our own ways. So, there is no one-size-fits-all for just about anything in health and fitness. Take that into account, but make it a part of your daily movement patterns, daily activities like your workouts, and you’ll do a lot better.
The next one comes from Angie and Sammy. I’m going to combine their question, because it was kind of the same question, but they were asking it in a slightly different way. The question was, “How do I maintain endurance activity while in ketosis?” Ketosis basically means that your body becomes a fat burner. And it doesn’t do that overnight. If you’re moving from sugar burning, which most endurance athletes do, to fat burning, there’s a bit of a curve there, a bit of a time where you’re going to see a much, much lower performance rate. That’s hard for a lot of endurance runners, cyclists and swimmers to get through, because they really look at those PRs, they look at those times. And for them to see their performance drop, in many cases quite dramatically, is very, very hard for them. The answer to the question then is, how do you stick with it? Because you’ve got to outdo your brain and say, “I understand this is a momentary setback for a better position later.” When I was in the army, we came up on an enemy position. One of our stated goals, one of the things we would do fairly regularly is do what we call a flanking maneuver, and that’s where we would go back a bit and then circle around to come in on the side. So we were catching them from two planes. This is kind of what I’m saying with this – realize you are taking a couple of steps back to be able to put yourself in a better, safer position. Once your body gets fat-adapted… So we’re going to talk about two different types of adaptation here. Different people like to use different words, but I’ll just explain it this way: Initially, what you’re trying to do is get your body to adapt to using body fat for fuel. So that’s the fat adaptation. That’s when you hear things like “keto flu”. I prefer to call it carb withdraws, because your body isn’t getting the carbs it needs and it’s fighting you. It’s saying, “Get some carbs, eat something.” You’re going to feel miserable if you don’t eat anything. It’s trying to figure out how to start burning its own fat, and eventually it’ll figure that out. During that fat adaptation period, it’s important for you to make sure that you’re getting adequate fat in your diet, which might mean that you’re eating more overall calories than you did when you were a sugar burner. Again, we’re working toward performance, so that’s cool. It’s okay to do that for a while. And then you’ll back off of that fat that you’re eating when your body gets comfortable with fat and can actually start burning fat off your body. And you’ll know that’s happening when you start waking up in the morning and you’re not hungry. Intermittent fasting almost becomes something natural to you because you’re just not hungry that much. That’s when you’re starting to get that fat adaptation, and that takes up to a week. For most folks, it can be two or three days, but for some, it can be as long as a week. So you’re going to go through that fat adaptation phase.
Now, even as you go through that fat adaptation phase, you still might not see improvements in your overall performance. You might be slowly getting back to what you were doing, but you’re not seeing any real improvements beyond just seeming to catch up to where you were. So then we’re going to talk about the process called keto-adapted. Keto-adapted is where when you’re doing intense long stuff, your body can shift over and is quick enough and good enough at burning body fat to keep fueling you. Most of us have about a teaspoon of sugar in all of our bloodstream. And then we have glycogen in our muscles and our liver. That energy right there of what you basically would start out with on a normal everyday run or anything, it should be enough to keep you going for about 90 minutes with moderate intensity exercise. So if you’re going for a run of less than 90 minutes, which most of us do, you should be fine. You might see a little less performance, but that’s more probably feeling like you just don’t have the energy. It’s like a fatigue thing, but in a general sense, you have enough glycogen and glucose in your system to be able to carry you that far. Now, you’ve probably heard about the marathon bonk, which happens somewhere around mile 16 to 18, and that’s where you’ve used up the glycogen, you’ve used up your glucose and now you’re starting to effectively bonk. Folks on keto don’t bonk at that point. Most of them, if they’re keto-adapted, they just keep going because their body can adapt to turning the fat into glucose and glycogen and keep you going, and the ketones. So, just recognize that if you’re running less than 90 minutes, you probably aren’t going to see a huge decrease in performance that doesn’t come back really quick. Once you’re fat-adapted, you should be fine. Once you get past that, you want to start going further, then you’re going to have to wait until you’re keto-adapted, and the keto adaptation can actually take a year or more. Some people will see it in as early as three or four months, but some folks have to train for about a year to really get their body efficient enough with using ketones to be able to keep up the performance. And those that do, report back even better times, that their performance improves even beyond what they were capable of doing as a sugar burner.
I know that’s a long answer, but I still have a few more things I want to go through as you get through this because there are ways to kind of fuel around this. Two of the ways that I like to talk to people about – the first one is exogenous ketones. You can explore using exogenous ketones, which are basically ketones that you take by mouth to help fuel you while you’re moving, particularly as you’re getting close to the point where you would generally bonk because you’re not quite keto-adapted. So you’re going to go ahead and add in these ketones, esters usually, that are going to allow your body to start using those ketones efficiently to keep you going. So some people will do that. Others will revert back to some form of carbohydrate fueling, be that starch or they just decide, “I can take in a small amount of sugar while I’m doing the run. As long as I taper it, know what I’m doing, I won’t end up taking myself generally out of ketosis because I know I’m burning more than I’m putting in.” So, you can do that kind of stuff with your fueling – that’s to say either you’re going to add ketones or starches or some form of glucose, but a very limited amount as a fueling strategy for your longer runs. Or you can try to carb load a little bit by making sure that the small amount of carbohydrates that you do eat, they come on that front end. So, maybe you eat some carbohydrates for breakfast before a run, and then you can go into the run knowing that at least you’ve topped off your glycogen stores and your glucose, and your blood sugar is up a little bit because you just had some carbohydrates. But in any case, just realize that to get into deep ketosis and stay in ketosis and get all of the benefits that ketosis is going to give you, you are probably going to lose some performance for a while until you manage to get yourself all the way up to keto-adapted. And anything you do as far as taking in glucose or starches, that’s very likely to slow down the keto adaptation phase. So if you can suck it up, particularly during the off season, and get yourself keto-adapted, you’re going to see a much better race season next year.
Next question comes from Trent: “Is there a good way to know when to push through discomfort, pain, and when it’s better to back off?” The general rule of thumb is this: If you feel it in a joint, back off. Joints typically depict a tendon or ligament issue, and those take a good while to heal. You don’t want to flare those up. I know you’ve probably felt stuff like tendinitis and those types of things. You want to make sure if the pain is in a joint, that’s the time to slow down and get that assessed, spend some time away from it. The tendons and ligaments, because they don’t get the blood flow that a muscle gets, they take longer to heal. Now, as far as muscles are in a general sense, if you’re just getting general soreness, you’re probably okay to take your standard rest of anywhere from 24 to 48 hours of a normal rest phase before you go back to work. If you feel like the muscle’s recovered at that point, then you should be able to push just as hard. If you feel like you’ve torn something or you have a pull, then I would take a little bit more time off. Most muscles generally can repair themselves easily within a week or two. If it’s taking longer than that, then you may have done something more significant and I would go see a doctor. But the general rule is, if you feel it in the body of the muscle, it’s probably okay to just rest it for a day or two and then go back at it. If you feel it in a joint, that’s going to take a little bit more time, so I would take even more time off. And anything that has you feeling uncomfortable when you’re not doing anything after three days, I’d definitely go get that checked out with the doctor.
And the final question comes from Marcia, and it is: “As a mature woman, what should I be concerned about and what kind of exercise focus can I expect?” This is similar to the question that I had with John and the mobility and balance. It really comes down to what you want to accomplish. What are the highlights in your life, the things that you want to be able to do 20-30 years down the road? Do you want to be the grandma that can run 5Ks with your grandchildren? Do you want to be the person that is independent? Our visions are going to change over time. So the first thing I’d say is, really establish a vision of what you want to feel like and be like 10-15 years down the line. For most of us that’s going to involve some resistance training. And I say that in all honesty, because sarcopenia is a wasting of muscle, osteopenia is a wasting of bone. If we don’t lift weights – not necessarily weights, but if we don’t do resistance training, we’re going to see a decline in our muscle mass and our bone density. So, resistance training is very, very important for us to maintain good body composition and stay healthy. Additionally, our strength decreases for the same basic reason. If we’re not doing resistance training, we will get weaker and weaker. And there’s a point where that weakness then becomes an independence issue. And I say this in the book. If you have trouble sitting down and getting back up, that’s a problem, but it becomes a huge problem when it’s the bathroom, when you’re taking a toilet break and you can’t stand up. You can have rails installed in your bathroom and that’s going to help somewhat, but that’s not always going to be the case. Again, if you’re not building the strength or maintaining the strength, eventually your arms and your legs won’t be strong enough to stand you up. And then where are you? You’ve lost your independence. Someone has to help you in and out of the bathroom, and that’s not a pleasant place to be. So I would say resistance training is almost a must for every single one of us that can work out. If your doctor says you’re clear to work out and train, definitely resistance training is for all of us. I would say for many of us, most of us probably, endurance training is going to be important because we want to keep going. If we’re going with family and they want to go walk around the zoo or walk around the park or you just want to run out and play with your dogs, you’re going to need a little bit of stamina, endurance, to be able to keep up that activity level for any period of time. Otherwise you’re sitting on the bench watching. I don’t know anyone that enjoys sitting on the bench and watching, as much as they enjoy doing. So, endurance exercise is going to be important.
Next, for most of us over the age of 40, I would look at mobility and balance. The falls I talked about earlier – very important if you have the strength and the bone density that you don’t break something when you fall, but better yet, let’s not fall. So let’s work on our balance. And then our mobility is, again, our ability to tie our own shoes and reach and do the things we need to do. If we don’t have good mobility, our movement patterns are going to be bad and we risk injuring ourselves. There are a few other modalities out there that can be important. Agility – if you’re walking through the grocery store parking lot and a careless driver doesn’t see you and they start to back up at you, what’s your agility to be able to step out of the way of that car? All of these are generally important, but you have to preface which ones you’re going to spend the most time on, because we can’t do all of them all at the same time, all the time. We’re going to have to focus on some sometimes, and this is when you can use periodization and say, “I know the weather’s going to be good this time of year, so I’ll work on endurance in the spring and the summer. And then in the fall I’ll work on strength. And then in the winter when it’s really cold, I’ll do a lot of mobility and balance work, along with the strength work, the resistance training.” So, there’s an opportunity for you to make this seasonal, ebb and flow through it. Do it as it makes sense to keep the balance that’s keeping you moving towards your vision. Alright, so I hope you found this episode enjoyable. I really enjoy the fact that three years I’ve been providing this podcast and we’ve had such a great time. We’ve had awesome guests. Obviously, I have to thank you for being a part of 40+ Fitness podcast.
Breaking a Weight Loss Plateau
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- Judy Murphy
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I entitled today’s show “Breaking a Weight Loss Plateau”, but the lessons that I’m going to teach you today can actually be used for any plateau that you’re on, whether it’s a plateau on strength, on mass-building, on losing weight, or even a plateau on improving your diet, because every one of those things ends up in a plateau. I use an acronym called POPP, and I’m going to discuss that and show you how each element of POPP will help you pop your plateau. Let’s first start out with why we end up in plateaus.
It’s one of those things where we’ll start a diet, we’ll change some things and almost immediately we’ll see some reward, some benefit from making that change. I know when I cycle back into ketosis, literally I could lose six pounds overnight. It happens time and time again. If I’m a little bloated, a little inflamed, haven’t been taking care of myself or eating as well as I need to, I start that low-carb, and the next day the weight just washes out of me. I know a lot of that’s water. I have the head to know what’s actual fat loss and what’s just water loss. So I’m not getting all crazy about it, but there is going to be a point, even when you’re doing ketosis, where you are going to plateau. I know a lot of people think, “I’m losing 15 pounds a month. I want to stay in ketosis, but if I keep losing 15 pounds a month, I’m going to dwindle down to nothing.” That’s never going to happen, because your body is really, really smart. It does this thing called “homeostasis”.
Homeostasis is basically balance. It’s a fancy word that scientists like to use and it just means they balance out. So, you’ve gotten your body used to eating a certain amount of food or a certain type of food. Your body has adapted. It’s been using body fat for a while, but then it says, “We’re in a long-term bit of famine here. We’re not getting as many calories as we’re burning. We’re getting some great fat and we’re feeling full. Things are good, the nutrition is great. I don’t need anymore, so I’m not going to be hungry just for the sake of being hungry.” And then your body says, “Let’s stop shedding this body fat, because we kind of like it. We’re going to stay here.”
That’s what I call your body’s “happy weight”. It’s not your happy weight necessarily, but your body is happy with it. So, how do we break this weight loss plateau, or any plateau? That’s where the acronym POPP comes in. So POPP stands for Patience, Other measures, Persistence, and Progression. And I’m going to take a few minutes here to unwrap what each of those means and how you can use each of these and all of these to help you break this plateau.
The first one is patience. You knew this was coming. I’ve taught you already that homeostasis is just something that’s going to happen. It’s going to be there. So, just know that the journey to wellness is ever going. It’s your entire life. You’re always going to be in this mode. The first thing I hope that you haven’t done is that you haven’t looked at this whole process as temporary, as, “I’m going to go on a diet, and then I’m done.” Really to take care of your health for the long term, to include weight loss, which is really a side effect of living a healthy lifestyle.
That’s exactly what you want to do – you want to make it a lifestyle. Is this a way that you can live your life going forward? So, with the patience aspect of this, start exploring the things that are serving you and what are the things that maybe aren’t serving you. This is truly a good lifestyle that you want to maintain. As long as you’re maintaining a healthy lifestyle, then you use patience to say, “I know this is working. I know that I’m doing the right things for my body. If my body is at its happy weight at this point, maybe for the time being I need to be happy with that and accept that this is a long-term process. And over time I’ll probably see some progress, but I’m not going to see it at the rate I was perhaps expecting to.”
So, patience comes in regardless of how you look at plateaus, regardless of what you want to do about a plateau. You just have to recognize you’re going to have one now, you’ll probably have another one later, and another one after that, and another one after that. Before you get to your happy weight, your body’s going to find several of its own set points, its own happy weight, so just recognize this is a part of the game, a part of life. Make your eating choices, your workouts and everything you’re doing – make it lifestyle, make it sustainable for the long term, and you’ll see the benefits over time.
Now, that takes us to other measures. If I am looking at taking care of my health, then I’m going to see improvements elsewhere. So, maybe my skin looks a lot better, maybe your hair looks a lot healthier. Maybe some things that were happening to you before – you maybe had some eczema or irritable bowel problems, other things going on in your life that were making you uncomfortable and unhappy – and now because you’ve made a lifestyle change, you’re starting to feel a lot better there.
Maybe your waist size is going down. If you have a waist size over 40, that’s a strong, strong, strong indicator, direct correlation that you probably are at risk of cardiovascular disease. If you continue to see your waist get smaller, you’re onto the right track. A lot of women will tell me they get into this whole thing, they want to lose weight because they know if they lose 25 pounds, they’ll be able to fit in that dress that’s two sizes smaller.
But sometimes they’re not losing the weight. How are your clothes fitting? They’re fitting better. Okay, you’re getting smaller.
So, you can fit in that dress. Maybe the weight you thought you needed to be isn’t the weight you need to be, because now you’re shedding fat and maybe putting on a little bit of muscle, or maybe now you’re fully hydrated and before you were dehydrated. So, we’re not dehydrated; we’re in a healthy state. We’re seeing a lot of other markers, other health measures, other things going great for us. Turning your focus away from the weight and focusing on these other measures – my waist size getting smaller, my skin looking good, getting good night’s sleep, and maybe I’m not having problems going to the bathroom. All of those things matter. They add to the quality of our life.
Focusing a little bit more on these other health measures that are going your way will let you know that you’re on the right track. That goes back to patience. That’s going to feed your patience, because it’s going to say, “It’s working. I can’t get tied up on what that scale is saying to me right now. If my body’s at a happy weight, but other things are going good for me, I need to take that and accept that and understand this lifestyle is working. So I need to stick with it.”
The next one is persistence, and that’s the “stick with it” part. Sometimes it’s very easy to sit there and say, “This isn’t going to work. It stopped. I’ve lost it.” And many people do. They get frustrated and they regress. So, the persistence aspect of this is to keep going. It’s to not let yourself get deflated that things aren’t going exactly the way you want them to. It’s continuing to do your batch cooking on Sundays, it’s continuing to do your 30 minute walks each morning.
Maybe it’s continuing to keep your sugars as low as you possibly can and making sure that you’re drinking plenty of water. All of these healthy lifestyle changes that you’ve made that are now habits – you just need to be persistent and keep doing them, because they are working. If you’re looking at these other measures and you’re seeing improvement from where you were – that’s work. That’s good stuff. That’s what a healthy lifestyle will do for you, so keep persistently pursuing good health, wellness. Wellness is health, fitness and happiness. So, be looking for joy, be looking for the things that are going to help you. That’s the persistence of constantly taking this and going and moving and doing. Stay persistent in the battle, because it’s working.
And then the final P is progression. We talk about progression a lot when we’re looking at training, exercise, because we say, “I’m going to add an extra five pounds to my squat” or, “I’m going to add an extra 15 minutes to my walk” or, “I’m going to try to run a little bit faster, so my progression is to try to increase my speed.” All of these different progressions basically mean you’re adding a little bit more effort. Typically in training, like I said, it works out as volume. The way we explain it as trainers is your training volume increases, either because you’re working out longer, you’re adding more training sessions, or you’re adding more weight.
Whatever’s making that resistance harder, you’re doing more of that. So, progression is the adding more, and it needs to be done gradually. If you’re doing gradual progression on all the training things you’re doing, it’s time to maybe think about a progression for your food.
And here’s how that looks. It’s an approach I take when I go off of what I call my “seasonal feasting period”. And we’re just now about to roll out of that because we’re approaching Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving and Christmas end up being my feasting period. I’m in my feasting period, so what’s going to happen is I’m going to get into the new year and I’m going to say, “Not a special birthday; I don’t have to worry about it. This year coming up in February.
So now it’s time for me to go in my famine mode.” I’ll start into my famine mode with a very set approach of really, really low-carb, but the foods I like. I make sure I’m now doing my batch cooking and the different things I need to do to make sure I stay on plan. And then I start to shed the body fat. I’ll get to a point where the amount of fat I’m eating and the total calories I’m eating, I plateau. Like you, I will plateau. Now, I am much more focused on trying to add muscle and I’m much more focused on trying to lose fat. I might actually see my weight go up. So my measurement is not weight loss, but it’s the same concept – I’m trying to change my body composition.
Then I need to progress. And what that means to me is, I need to reduce my calories. What I’ll typically do is I will look to my percentages. I’m already fairly low-carb, so typically less than 20 net grams when I start. I look at my protein, and if my protein is where I need it to be and my carbs are where they need to be, then I slowly start trying to reduce the amount of fat in my daily intake. So I may cut another 100 calories off of my daily intake from where I was. Maybe I started at 2,100 calories and I’m going, going, going. I know I’m exercising, I’m going eat back some of those calories. On a given day, I might be eating 3,000 calories. If I had a really tough cardiovascular workout and burned 700-800 calories, I’ll eat those calories back. And then I’ll end up with maybe, like I said, close to 3,000 calories that day.
What’ll happen is I’ll say, “I need to tomorrow get it down to 2,900, or 100 less than what I would normally eat, plus what I would use.” That progression is just 100 calories. You shouldn’t think that 100 calories means that much, but 100 calories over the course of a year, is 10 pounds. So, it is a big number. It just doesn’t feel that big that day, because I’m not looking to say I’m cutting another 500, which I would typically then expect to see about a pound per week. My body’s going to plateau again really, really quickly. My energy levels, I’m not going to be able to do what I’m doing. For me, I just shave 100 off, and that 100 typically is enough for me to start seeing things moving a little bit more, not fast, but I see it, I feel it. It’s happening. That little bit of progression in my nutrition is typically enough to get me there.
The one thing I don’t sacrifice on or skimp on is, I still make sure I’m getting high-quality whole food, and I always try to make sure that I’m getting all of my nutrients. If I feel like my calorie load is not where it needs to be and I’m not eating as many carbs – so maybe I’m not getting as many vegetables or fruits – I may start taking a multivitamin supplement. I’ll probably start, because again, it’s typically in the early winter, late winter time period when I’m going through this plateau.
Often I’m not getting enough sun, so I’ll probably take a vitamin D supplement. I’m definitely taking some fish oil supplements and I’m calculating that as a function of my fat intake. As I look at all this, you can see I’m still making sure that I’m covered nutritionally. I’m only reducing a little bit of my fat calories and I’m trying to tell my body, “If you want that fat you enjoy, you’ve got to get it from the body. You’ve got to get it from me, because I’m not going to give it to you through my mouth.” And my body typically responds to that.
And now you wrap the whole POPP together, and it works like this: I’m patient enough to know that I can do this. I’m patient enough to know that my lifestyle is right and I just need to be there. I just need to have the patience to work with my body to get it where I want it to be – my happy place, not necessarily its happy place. I need to look at other measures to make sure that I’m on track with my health, and not just trying to chase after a single goal.
There was a time when I was training for a Spartan and I really wanted to be ready for that Spartan. So I was going to get stronger and I was working on my endurance. I had a strength coach; his name was Dave. And I was meeting Dave and my strength was just off the charts, going up. My deadlift when I started with Dave, was I think at 410. I was pulling 450-460 after about three months and I was like, “I could get to 500.” Suddenly I got this really, really focused mind on that singular thing, and I just started pushing. What happened was, my strength in my squat went down, my strength in my overhead press went down, and my strength in my bench press went down. My deadlift was going up, but some of the others were plateauing or stopping, and I just didn’t see it. Afterwards I looked at my journal and I was seeing over the course of a month 5% increase in strength in the deadlift, but I wasn’t seeing 5% in the other lifts, which told me I wasn’t balanced, I wasn’t focusing on the whole me. And I needed to be.
Unfortunately, during that period of time, that’s when I tore my shoulder – rotator cuff tore – so, some of the other exercises, like bench press, went down. I just dropped that. No overhead pressing. And I thought I’m still doing the deadlift, but after a while I realized I’m not there, I’m not going to make that 500. And I don’t need to be doing that 500, because now I need to be thinking about this Spartan race, and having a 500 pound deadlift is really not going to help me. I have a problem with my shoulder, and I need to make sure that I can get through this race without hurting myself any more than I need to. So, I got back on track. It took me a little while.
But you can’t get singularly focused on weight loss either. You need to be looking at these other health markers and making sure that they fit your life. Then there’s persistence, which means we should just stick to it. If you have good “stick to it-ivness”, you’ve made this a sustainable lifestyle, you now have the broad perspective of, you’re doing healthy things for yourself. That’s totally cool. Then you can sit down and have a basis for saying, “What’s the progression? If I really want to push myself out of this plateau, what are the things that I need to do to get out of that plateau?” So, you put all four of these together – POPP – Patience, Other measures, Persistence, and Progression, and now you have a model. You have a structure to approach every one of your plateaus with a plan – the last P here. So, have a plan. And that plan has to include POPP – Patience, Other measures, Persistence, and Progression.
The Wellness Roadmap is available now for pre-order. I’m offering it as a Kindle edition at a very, very steep discount price. You’re not going to get this book for this price after the pre-launch and the first few days of the launch. Once the book is live, I’m going to put the prices back up where they belong. But I’m basically giving the book to you. So if you’ll go to the Amazon page, look it up – it’s The Wellness Roadmap book, or you can look it up under my name, Allan Misner. You’ll find the book there.
The Kindle book edition is going to be as low as Amazon will let me put it, so basically as close to free as I could get it. I want it in your hands, and as soon as it goes live, you’ll be able to download it to your Kindle Reader. But I do ask one thing – once you’ve read the book, please do go give me an honest rating and review. Amazon loves those things. Amazon feeds off those things. Amazon will not show my book to anyone not looking for it, unless it sees these ratings and reviews are coming in, that people are seeing substance in the book.
All I ask is when you get the book and you’ve read it and you feel good about it, please do go out and give me an honest rating and review. It’s going to help propel the book and get it where it needs to be, which is in the hands and on the e-readers of people around the country and around the world.
Please do go to Amazon, look for the book The Wellness Roadmap, or search under my name, Allan Misner, and you’ll find the book there. Buy it at the steep, steep, steep discount. Like I said, it’s close to free as Amazon would let me put it. And then boom, there you go. Thank you for that.
Another episode you may enjoy
Health and fitness lessons I learned from crabbing
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The following listeners have sponsored this show by pledging on our Patreon Page:
- Judy Murphy
Thank you!
Today’s episode is a solo episode. When I was a kid going crabbing, I learned a lot of things that I now apply to my health and wellness. There are lessons about patience and perseverance, and also how to deal with people that aren’t in your corner. I got a lot of health lessons out of crabbing and I want to share those with you today. With no further ado, here we go.
I know you might be asking yourself, what on earth can crabbing have to do with being healthy? And it’s a lot more than just the fact that it’s actually a very, very healthy meat to eat. Crab meat’s delicious, by the way. If you haven’t tried it, I highly, highly recommended it. In South Mississippi and Louisiana in particular, catching blue crabs is kind of a cool thing. I’ve done crabbing up in Maryland when we lived there. But we were in Manchac, Louisiana, which is a little bitty town, I guess about halfway between McComb, Mississippi, and New Orleans. I know that probably doesn’t help a lot of you; just realize it’s way, way down there. Anyway, we would go crabbing. Our parents would take the traps out with the boat; and the kids – I was 15 – we would hang out on the dock and we would go crabbing from the dock. Now, we didn’t have traps, so we had a different way of catching crabs that took a lot more patience and a lot more time. But it kept us entertained and we did our thing. What you do is you take a turkey neck, a string, a net, and a bucket, and that’s all you need. You tie one end of the string to the turkey neck and then you toss the turkey neck into the water and you wait anywhere from three to five minutes or so. Then you slowly, slowly, slowly bring that turkey neck up to the surface. Now, I’d practiced with all kinds of little different ways of how I would bring it up, but basically finger over finger, slowly inching the turkey neck off the bottom, up to the surface of the water. And many, many times you would find a crab on that turkey neck. You see the crab as you get it close to the surface, you try to get it as close to the surface as you can, and then with the net you just scoop them up. And if they’re big enough to keep, you drop them in the bucket and you get going again.
So, what on earth would a turkey neck and standing on a pier, fishing for crabs and catching them one at a time like that – what on Earth could that teach me? The first thing it taught me was patience. You had to be extremely patient pulling the turkey neck to the surface, because you basically had to have the crabs so enveloped in the turkey, eating the turkey, that he or she didn’t know that they were being moved. They didn’t realize that there was a movement upward. So this was a very, very slow, methodical process to get the crab to the surface. And then you couldn’t get them too far to the surface, or else they would recognize what was going on and you wouldn’t get a chance to scoop them. So, very, very heavy on the patience, to make sure that you have patience to get the things that you want, which was the crabs.
The second thing it taught me was perseverance, meaning there were times when you’re out there and you’re just not getting any crabs to bite onto your turkey neck. So you just keep trying. You might move to a different part of the pier, you might go into the deeper water, you might go into the more shallow water. You just tested around to figure out what was going to work for you for that day. Crabs were finicky and sometimes there was a whole bunch of them there, and sometimes there weren’t.
The third thing it taught me was that you’re going to be dealing with a lot of adversity in your life. Where you would see this adversity when you’re crabbing is, you’d put the crabs in the bucket, and obviously the crab now wants to get out of the bucket. We had a little wet towel in there to keep them moist, but other than that, they knew they weren’t where they were supposed to be. So these crabs are trying to climb out of this bucket. The problem came in that the other crabs that were in the bucket also wanted to get out, and rather than perhaps working together, each of the crabs was trying to climb on the back of another crab to get where they wanted to go, to get out. So you could pretty much fill this bucket almost all the way to the top and the crabs very seldom were able to get out of the bucket, because by the time they got to the lip, another crab would pull them down to climb up on top of them. Because these crabs were fighting each other, these crabs in a bucket – almost none of the crabs ever got out of the bucket. You were safe to let the crabs stay in the bucket, and most of the time not have to worry about anything other than getting the next crab.
Those are three basic lessons, and I want to relate those to health and wellness and where those come to play in your health and wellness. We all are being brought up in this environment of, “I want it now”, instant gratification. And I can tell you that health and wellness are not instant gratification kind of things. I mean, seriously not. The reality is, it took us many, many decades in some cases to get out of good health, we lost our fitness over a series of years; and to get back to a state of fitness, to get back to a state of health is going to take some time. We have to be patient and keep at it, or we’re not going to get what we want. We may make a mistake and that sets us back. So, I’ve been sitting there for five minutes, I’m trying to bring this crab up and I make a mistake. In making that mistake, that crab gets away. Now I have to toss the net back down and wait a little while again. The process of getting healthy and well is going to take you time and you need to put in that time to make that happen. That means staying consistent as well.
The other one is perseverance that I talked about. Now, just because something isn’t working for you, you have to understand whether it’s your method or whether it’s just situational. When I talked about crabbing, we’re looking at maybe the place on the dock where I’m at – they’re not schooling down below there and I need to move to another place on the dock. I changed my tactics; I moved from one location to another. I didn’t change my approach. I’m still using the string, still using the turkey neck and the net, but I’ve moved to a new location. So sometimes when you’re training for something or you’re working on a diet and you’ve plateaued, you just need to have the perseverance to keep going. You may change your tactics to mix things up a little bit, but in a general sense, you just keep going. When you marry those two things together – patience and persistence, you have an excellent formula for getting whatever you want in your health and fitness. But you have to have both. Having both and applying both allows you to be successful. It allows you to get more crabs when you’re crabbing as well.
The final thing is the crabs in the bucket. If you’ve listened to the podcast before when I was doing a lot more solo shows, you’ve probably heard the episode when I talk about saboteurs. The saboteurs are just like those crabs. As you’re trying to climb out of that bucket, you’re trying to get healthy, they’re the ones that are doing things to pull you back down. And they’re doing it for the same exact reason that the crabs are – they want to be on top. They don’t want you to change, because it belittles them, it makes them feel bad about themselves. But I want you to listen to that statement – it makes them feel bad about themselves. That’s nothing that you’ve done. That’s all on them. That’s how they feel, how they are. Rather than cooperating with you and both of you working towards your health and wellness – them being a part of your accountability team, and you for them – they’ve decided to be the crab in the bucket that’s trying to pull you down to make themselves feel better.
So, don’t be like the crabs in a bucket. You can get out of the bucket. You know how to get out of the bucket – you get out of the bucket with patience and persistence. If you’re using patience and persistence in your health and wellness, you’re going to be outside the bucket and then you don’t have to worry about the other crabs in the bucket. They can just be crabs in a bucket.
I know this was a short episode, but I did want to take the time to share that lesson with you. Parts of this lesson are actually in The Wellness Roadmap book, so I’d encourage you to go out. It’s on presale at a discounted price right now, so I hope you will go out there and get the book. And again, please do leave me a review on Amazon. It’s really, really important to get the book noticed to have those reviews. Thank you very much, and I’ll talk to you next time.
I really need you on the launch team. If you could go to WellnessRoadmapBook.com, there you’ll find a signup form to be on the launch team. The launch team is going to get a lot more information about the book. They’re going to get some bonus material that I’m not going to be showing or giving out anywhere else. You’ve got to be on the launch team if you want these extras and these bonuses and some special things I’m going to be doing for them. All I’m asking are very small things from them to help me promote the book. So, I really do need you on the launch team. Go to WellnessRoadmapBook.com and you can sign up there.
Now, I am going to do something special for that week of the launch. I’m going to have a bonus episode on December 6th. That date actually happens to be the anniversary date of when I launched the podcast three years ago. So, that date holds some significance for the podcast and I want to make that a very special show. It’s going to celebrate the launch of the book and it’s going to celebrate you. And the way it’s going to celebrate you is I want you to submit your questions to me that I can then answer on the podcast. There’s going to be two ways that you can do this. You can go to the Contact page at 40PlusFitnessPodcast.com and record your question directly there, and then I can play that. That’ll be you asking your question, and then I’ll answer it. Or if you feel more comfortable, you can email me at allan@40plusfitnesspodcast.com. There I’ll have your written out question and I’ll organize those in a way that makes sense for the show. I’ll read your question or I’ll play your question, depending on how you choose to respond. We’ll make it a really cool Q&A session, celebrating you – the podcast listener, and the podcast, and the book. So it’s going to be a special celebration week for us, having a special episode on that Thursday, December 6th. Please do get your questions in because this is going to be a lot harder podcast for me to get organized and recorded, so I’m going to need plenty of time and at some point I’ll just have to cut off the questions. So the sooner you get your question in to me, the more likely you are to be featured on the show. I do want to hear from you, so please do send in your questions either via the SpeakPipe, which you can get at the Contact page on 40PlusFitnessPodcast.com. Or you can go ahead and email me – allan@40plusfitnesspodcast.com. I look forward to getting your questions, I look forward to helping you out on your journey, and I really look forward to sending off this book in the best way possible. So, please do join me on December 6th for the launch party, effectively the online launch party for the book. I’m really excited for you to be a part of this. I’m looking forward to your questions, I’m looking forward to having you on the launch team. Thank you.
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Setting your pace toward wellness
Hello and thank you for being a part of the 40+ Fitness podcast. I’m really excited to have you here today and I’m really excited to share today’s show with you. It’s going to be a solo episode. I got a lot of great feedback from the last one, so I did promise you and I am going to continue to give you some of these solo shows. And the topic we’re talking about today called “Modes of Transportation” is really, really important. It’s something that you really need to make sure you understand before you get into your wellness journey, until you get into your path. It’s a part of what I call the “Wellness GPS”.
What I find is so many people struggle to know what to do when, where to go, how to get there, and when they run into a problem, they really don’t have the tools to break away and get through what’s going on. So they’re in a plateau, they don’t know how to get around that. They get into a roadblock or they hit a stumble or a pot hole. They don’t know how to get around that. If you’ve set your GPS right, it will help you do those things, and if you’ve set your Wellness GPS well, you’ll know how to react and do the right things for your wellness.
I want to help you do that, so to do that, I’m going to launch a challenge. It’s going to be called the Wellness GPS Challenge. This is going to be a short-term challenge – I’m thinking probably something in the realm of about seven days. We’re going to walk through each and every step of the Wellness GPS path, get you completely set up to almost guarantee success.
My clients that have used this strategy, used this approach – they get results, and I want you to get results too.
Now, because I’m going to be working directly with you, I can’t bring on a whole lot of people to do this. It’s going to be a very small group, like 20 people. I’m only going to allow 20 people in, and if you want to be a part of it, you need to be on the waiting list, because I’m going to contact the waiting list first, allow 24 hours for them to join, and then I’ll start looking to announce it on the podcast and otherwise. But the first 20 slots are going to go to people that are on the waiting list if they want it. So you can go to 40PlusFitnessPodcast.com/GPS. And when you sign up on that mailing list, you’ll be getting some emails from me to let you know what the timing is and what we’re going to be doing, and then we’re going to go ahead and launch it. If I get to 20 just from this mailing list, then I’m done. So if you don’t want to miss out on this offer of being a part of the Wellness GPS challenge, I encourage you to go join that mailing list today. Again, that’s at 40PlusFitnessPodcast.com/GPS.
Let’s get into our topic – modes of transportation. So I want to set the scene for you. I was probably about five years into my wellness journey, as it would be, and basically it was a yo-yo experience, to say the least. At this particular time though I was in generally good shape. I felt really good, I’d been working out, things were going pretty well, but my work schedule was just getting insane. I was traveling about 90%, and this was one of those rare weekends that I was at home and I just decided I didn’t want to do anything. I was jet lagged, I was tired, so I’m sitting on the couch just pretty much working my thumb. It’s a Sunday morning and I’m flipping between Face the Nation and various infomercials. So as I’m flipping the channels and watching stuff, all of a sudden this commercial comes on for a program called Insanity. You might’ve heard of it – it’s from the same people who did P90X and all the Beachbody people. And this was Shaun T, and this dude looked great. The folks behind him were moving, they were exercising. It all looked really good. And what was really cool about it was that they didn’t need any equipment to do the work they were doing. I was like, “Wow, I travel a lot, it’s really hard for me to find a gym at points in time with all the travel I’m doing. This might actually be the answer.” So of course I get my credit card out, I dial the 1-800 number and I order the stuff.
I come back from my next business trip, and there it is in my mailbox. I was really, really excited about it, so I just decided to rip the covers off, see what’s in it. I knew that I couldn’t carry all these DVDs with me. There were about 12 of them or so. I couldn’t carry all of them with me, so I was saying, “What do I need to do? First thing I’ll do, I’ll rip all these to my computer. I’m getting on another trip soon, and instead of having the DVDs with me, it’d be easier if it’s on my computer. I’ll be more likely to do it on the road.” So I did that first, knowing myself, knowing I needed to have it handy if I was going to use it. Then as soon as I got done with that, I put the first DVD in and it was a fitness test. So I do this fitness test and I really push myself because I want to know how well this does, so I’m going to really push myself to do this fitness test. And it was hard. Not just hard; it was really, really hard. The next day I was basically incapacitated. I felt like I’d been strapped to my bed and beat with a baseball bat. I woke up and I felt so bad, and I really didn’t want to get up. I knew I had to get ready for work and I was laying there and I finally decided, “I’m so much pain, I won’t be able to concentrate. This won’t be a good day for me.” So I called in sick. It’s kind of embarrassing now to look back at it. It’s a little funny, but at the time I was really embarrassed that I pushed myself so hard in a workout that I literally can’t go.
I only tell you that story because I think a lot of us actually approach our health and fitness thinking, “I’ve got to get this done now.” The body weight, the things that we’re trying to get rid of, the things we’re trying to do. We didn’t get into the shape we were in just a couple of weeks, in a couple of days, in a couple months. But I think a lot of us have this general mindset that we want it now. And one of the things that’s going to be a limiting factor, and I’ve talked about this a lot on the show, is just physically what we’re capable of doing. I think in a sense we all know that if we push ourselves too hard, we’re going to break.
But there’s another point to pace that I really want you to take to heart. And it’s the one that’s really the hardest for us to deal with, because we’re gung-ho and we all want to get there – and that is, what vehicle are we going to have to choose to go? The vehicle we choose is going to determine the pace with which we get there. So, in a normal example, if I wanted to drive from here in my home in Pensacola Beach to Hattiesburg, it’s about a 3-hour drive. I’ve done that drive so many times I could do it with my eyes closed. It’s a relatively straight flat road. If I got into a sports car, I could probably get there in two and a half hours easy. I’ll break a couple of speed limits here and there. I know where to not break the speed limits by now, but I’d go really quick. It’s a really easy road, I know the way. Boom, I’m there. It’s just me and the car, and I’m in Hattiesburg. So if I want to be in Hattiesburg for a football game, I’m there. No problem.
So, if you’re single, got nothing else going on in your life, no other troubles, no other problems, no other passengers or baggage – sure, hop in the sports car and get there. As much as your body will allow you to do so, that should be your pace. That can be your pace. But unfortunately many of us do have baggage and passengers. So if I wanted to go to a football game, but I also wanted to set up the tailgate for everybody – I can’t take the sports car now because I can’t carry the tent, the chairs, the grill, the food, the cooler – all the different things that I would want for the tailgate. Now I have to bring my pickup truck. The pickup truck doesn’t handle as quickly as the sports car. It can’t go quite as fast and it’s not going to get there in the same amount of time. So now with the truck, it might take me three hours to get there, which is actually substantially more than two and a half when you sit down and do the math. But because I need to carry the baggage of the stuff in my life, it’s going to take me longer. So, if I have a job that has me working 18-hour days, I won’t be able to work out as often as I may have wanted to work out. If I have some other issues going on with people that are going to want to have food and I want a social life and I want to go tailgate, then I have baggage that’s going to keep me from moving as fast as I might have moved if I didn’t have that baggage. So I have to take the pickup truck – it’s going to take me longer to get there. If I can’t do the things I need to do all the time, without regard to any other timing, any other thing, I might have some difficulty getting there as quickly. And I have to accept that. That acceptance is a very, very important thing.
Before we really get into the acceptance though, I want to talk about the final one, and that is, what if I have passengers? So what if I have six people that want to travel with me to the game? I can’t take the truck because I can’t sit six people in my truck. Now I’m going to have to buy a bus or rent a bus, and the bus is going to be a little harder for me to handle. I might not be as familiar with the transmission, I’m going to have to slow down. And then invariably one of the six or seven of us that are going might have to go to the bathroom while we’re on there. So we’re probably going to be taking a few more pitstops, particularly if those passengers happen to be your children. So, recognizing that you have people in your life that are going to slow you down, you have stuff in your life, events, work, the gym closes, all these different things that can happen that are going to potentially slow you down – you have to set your mind to understand that there is going to be a pace of movement that is going to be most appropriate for you and the lifestyle you want and need and have.
I define wellness as being the happiest, healthiest, most fit person you can be, and I put happiness in there for a reason. Not having baggage can be great, not having passengers can be great. But I’m thinking to be the happiest person you want to be, you’re going to have the baggage, you’re going to have the passengers, you’re going to have those special events. You’re going to have the people – your children, your spouse. You’re going to have those people in your life, so you have to make sure that your fitness journey, the way you set all of this up basically is strategized to deal with that. You may have passengers, or baggage, or you may have both. So you have to choose the appropriate mode of transportation which is going to then reflect into the pace with which you see movement, with which you see the journey happen. Once you satisfy yourself with understanding that that’s how all of this works, it becomes a lot easier for you to accept that you don’t have to feel the acceleration of a sports car to know that you’re moving forward, as long as you stay the path and you keep moving forward. So, getting your mindset on the front end of what is possible and how you’re going to get there, with which vehicle and what that pace is going to be like, is going to go a long way towards helping you reach your goals.
I want to close with one other thing, and I know this is going to be a really short episode. This is a really, really important topic that you need to think about and wrap your mind around, because if you really do want to meet your goals, if you have certain fitness goals that you want to meet – it’s not if you’re going to meet those goals. You must meet those goals. Your health and fitness, your wellness should be the most important thing to you right now, and if it is, then you’re going to want to pick the right vehicle, and then just understand that it’s not if, it’s when you reach certain goals. If right now I wanted to train for a 10K, I have my wife, I have a couple of trips that are coming up. I have to consider the baggage and the passengers to decide, can I do a 10K? Am I capable of doing a 10K in six weeks, or maybe I need to sign up for the next one? I still have it. It’s still there, I still set it up. It’s just a different 10K at a slightly offset time, and I’m doing that because I’m being responsible to understanding what my baggage and my passengers are. And if you’ll do that, that’s going to lend into the whole happiness thing because you’re getting what you want out of your life and you’re meeting your goals. So it’s not if, it’s when. And now you’re on the path and you know you’re going at the pace that’s appropriate for you.
Closing, I do want to leave with one other thing. There are the passengers, there is the baggage, but you are the driver on your wellness journey, period. You have to make some hard decisions, and that might mean at points in time, asking your spouse to eat a little differently or to help you deal a little differently. It might mean telling your children they really can’t have Oreos in the cupboard all the time because you’re trying to accomplish a certain thing. It might mean that you skip a time out with your friends to go do a run because your actual race is coming up really quick. Those are the tradeoffs you’re going to make, but to get the full balance of what we’re trying to get out of wellness, which is happiness, health and fitness, you’re going to have to really tie into understanding the pace that’s the most appropriate to you. That’s not just what your body is capable of doing; it’s what your life is capable of supporting.
So, take some time to think about the pace with which you should be working towards your wellness goals, and then make that your reality. Make those goals happen when they’re supposed to happen for you. You’ll be so much happier, healthier and more fit, and therefore, well.
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