SPONSOR

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

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

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

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

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

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

SPONSOR

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let's Say Hello

Rachel was out this week, so we don't have a pre-show hello. She will be back next week.

Episode

Every once in a while, you might find yourself flat-footed without intending to. You've stopped moving. In fact, you might be letting some old habits return. Now this is a little different than a plateau. In a plateau, you're still doing the things that were working. They've just stopped working. But now you're standing there flat-footed and maybe not doing everything that you were doing. And it becomes sort of this feeling of inertia. It seems really hard to push forward and you just feel stuck.

So now this term inertia that I'm using is a kind of a term out of motion. It means motion, and it means no motion. So it's Newton's first law, and it basically says an object in motion tends to stay in motion, and an object at rest tends to stay at rest. And you probably feel this when you're in a car. If you hit the brakes in the car, you don't just stop there's. This tendency for the car to go forward a little bit further until it finally comes to a stop.

And the same is true. If you're sitting still, you have to give it a little more gas, a little bit more RPMs revolutions per minute to get the car moving. Now, once it gets up to a cruising speed, the rpm is dropped back down and you find a comfortable thing because you're not trying to accelerate with the gas and you're not trying to decelerate with the brakes. So realize the braking and the accelerating are kind of giving you the concepts of inertia. And then there's just sometimes you just feel like you're just parked.

You may not put your car in park. You may not think you're in park, but you're basically either in neutral sitting there or you're in park. In either case, you're not going anywhere. So I want to talk about today three things that you can do to get moving again to get going again. These are don't wait, start small and then lean into your strengths. So let's start with the first one. Don't wait. So I want to show of hands who's ever said I will start my diet or I will start my workout program on Monday, or I'll start my program on the first of next month.

It's a fairly common thing, and we see people doing it with New Year's resolutions all the time. I'll start my diet on January 1. I'll start getting in shape on January 1. It's a very common thing. So how many days are there between now and then? What you may be doing is not only that you're going to be sitting still for those number of days you might actually be creating inertia because you start moving backwards, and it's the same problem. An object in motion going backwards tends to stay in motion.

So the longer you wait, the less likely you are to be successful waiting till Monday. Waiting till the first never a good strategy. Now, a lot of times we do this because we think we need to go big. We think I'm going to have to completely cut out everything and do everything at once and that holds us back. That puts that procrastination in there because we want to steal ourselves and it will be easier for me to steal myself on Monday and do this. It will be easier for me to motivate myself over the weekend and through the rest of the month and then start on the first.

We approach them that way because we think we need this huge change, which takes me to the second point.

SPONSOR

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

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

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

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

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

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

Okay. The same works for rock slides. One single rock moves and that one single rock starts the rock slide. That can be huge. So which rock is it for you? What is one small thing that you can do today? Or better yet, right now that will get things moving. Perhaps you just need to stand up and walk around for a few minutes right now. If you can do it, you're listening to this and you're not already moving. Consider it. Stand up and walk around. It's one small thing.

Maybe you can get yourself a glass of water next time you want to go for a soft drink. So you go to the machine. You're like, I should really just get a glass of water and you get a glass of water and you cut out one small thing, that's soft drink, which was probably 39 grams of sugar and calories you didn't need because they're not nutritious. They're not helping you. Or maybe when you go out instead of going out to eat or getting your lunch, you can pick up at the grocery store.

So you give them a call and say, okay, I want to order a rotisserie chicken, some veggies, a prerossed salad. And rather than doing pizza night or calling a restaurant or going to a restaurant, I'm going to go buy the grocery store and pick up those things. And that's going to be our dinner. This is not like you're trying to completely change the world at once. You're just trying to make one small movement. That small movement, though, creates the next movement. That glass of water becomes the habit of drinking enough water every day where you stay hydrated and you're not always maybe confusing thirst with hunger.

Perhaps that getting up and walking around gets you more comfortable to say, I can walk a lot more while I'm trying to do other things like listen to a podcast or take a phone call or whatever, and then the picking the food and saying, no, I'm not going to go to the restaurant because it's easy because I didn't do what I needed to do. I'm going to go do a better choice. When I go in, I'm going to go to the deli. I'm going to find better food.

I'm going to go to the produce section, find better food, and I'm going to make better decisions as I go so that I'm not backtracking so that I'm not stuck. So it's this little small thing that can get the ball rolling or the rock sliding that's going to have a big payoff later. So look for the little things just to get the ball rolling later on. You can take that big leap of your big rocks and say, okay, now we're moving now. I can take on a big rock.

Okay. And then the third thing that I want to talk about here is leaning into your strengths. Most of us have this idea that improving our health and fitness involves eliminating something. I have to get rid of sweets. I have to get rid of soft drinks. I have to stop my sedentary lifestyle and not be watching Netflix all the time and doing those other things. And I'm not going to say that can't be a part of your solution. But if you're finding yourself flat footed, that might not be the best strategy.

The easiest and quickest way to get things moving is to do something you know you can do and that you enjoy. So it's a strength and maybe even a superpower, because if you know you enjoy walking and you can do it, just blocking out a little bit of time each day to take a short walk. Okay. We talked about in Tip two something little. It can be a short walk, but just something to get you started. And if you enjoy it all the better. Another example is maybe you enjoy dancing.

And so you say, okay, I really enjoy dancing, but I don't want to go out to the clubs and bars or whatever and do the dancing there, because then there's the alcohol and the friends and everything else. So maybe you go ahead and take a dance class so you can learn more complex techniques in your two step. I don't know. Or you just find some fitness class, like maybe a Zumba class or something like that that incorporates dance and music and you're moving. And so you know, you enjoy it.

You know, you're going to enjoy doing it and you're getting the fitness benefits, the health benefits of doing something or then another one. And this one fits me to a tea. Is I really like cooking. I like cooking big meals. I like cooking things and putting them together. So just sitting down and having a batch cooking session, invite a friend over, say, okay, look, you bring park the groceries, I bring park the groceries. We do a huge batch cooking together. You take half of it, I take half of it, and we've got meals for days.

Okay. It's tying into something that you enjoy, it's tying into something you're good at, it's tying into something that you know you can do. And so it's a strength, maybe even a superpower. And you're just going to lean into that.

SPONSOR

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

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

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

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

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

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

So I know this is a relatively short episode, but this is not a hard thing.

If you can get your mindset around it is that being stuck doesn't mean you're always stuck. Notice that Newton didn't say an object at rest can never be moved, or an object moving can never be stopped. It's just a function that it feels harder. There's an inertia. There's something pulling it or keeping it. And so what you can do within your power today is one start, two, start small, and three start with something. Do something that you enjoy and that you're good at because it'll be easier.

All those little, easy things gets the first rock going, gets the little bit going. And so if you find yourself flat-footed, you've lost your momentum. You feel like you're standing up. Don't beat yourself up. We all get into this place. This happens to every one of us. Every one of us will find ourselves at one point or another, not making the progress that we think we should make. And when we really are honest with ourselves, we know we're not putting in the same effort the same time, the same everything we were doing before we've let some things creep back in, and that's what slowed us down.

That's what eventually left us in this flat footed place. So don't beat yourself up. But know that this is within your power to stop, to start, not stop because you did stop. Let's start. Don't wait. Start small and lean into your strengths. Find something that will get you jumpstarted. Just that one little thing. Do it. Do it now and enjoy it. And that's going to be the thing that gets things rolling. Once you get them rolling, it's easier to keep them rolling. And that's what you do next.

But the first step is the first little rock. Just get it going.

Post Show/Recap

[00:18:30.090] – Allan

Hey, Raz.

[00:18:31.180] – Rachel

Hey, Allan. I really feel the inertia a lot, because sometimes it is hard to get going. And I've been stuck at a plateau. I feel like I've spun my wheels. It's just hard to make a pivot to get moving again. I really feel for people that have this issue.

[00:18:53.730] – Allan

Yeah. And I do want to go back and just kind of delineate the difference between a plateau because the plateau is hugely frustrating because you're saying I was eating this, my TEE says this and that and I'm logging everything and I'm measuring everything. And I'm doing the exercise and every day the numbers on the computer, the app I'm using are saying I should be losing 1 pound a week and I get to the end of the week and I didn't lose anything. And then I got to the end of the next week and I didn't lose anything and you're like, but I'm doing everything right.

[00:19:30.310] – Allan

And it was working so well. And now it's not. And that's just homeostasis. That's just our bodies adapting to what we're doing. So that's a very different thing to be hugely frustrating. And I've talked about plateaus before, so you can go back and you can kind of search and see if there's some shows there. Obviously, I will keep talking about plateaus because we all face them.

[00:19:54.400] – Allan

This is something slightly different. This is where you kind of just get a funk and, you know, you let up, you know, you're not putting on the gas as we talked to Delatoro. You know, you put the car in park or maybe now even into reverse. And so as you're making these decisions and you're doing these things now you have a harder start because you've put yourself in a stopped position.

[00:20:24.160] – Rachel

Yeah. Well, it's hard not to give up. It's hard not to see that progress and get so frustrated that you just what else are you going to do? Obviously, it is what it is and you just want to quit. But it's important that you don't. And it's important that you keep trying and do something different.

[00:20:44.830] – Rachel

But like the three tips that you offered to get out of this funk and to get out of this stopped/parked space. I think the first one is don't wait like you had mentioned. And don't wait till January 1 or Monday, but just do something get started somehow.

[00:21:02.150] – Allan

Yeah. I mean, this episode comes out on a Monday. This episode comes out on Monday 29th. If you're going to wait until Monday, that's a whole week if you're going to wait until January 1, that's 33 days.

[00:21:15.310] – Rachel

Yeah.

[00:21:16.060] – Allan

If you're listing this on the Monday it came out. And so you're just going to give away a month now if you think about it. Yeah. We have 70 years, maybe on average or maybe 80 years on average on this Earth. And then there's twelve times that. So it seems like a lot of months. But the distance between you right now and that 80 years is not that far, not as far, times twelve still seems like a relatively big number. But why give away an entire month?

[00:21:50.010] – Allan

Start something now and the easiest way to start something now is based on the other two tips of something small.

[00:21:57.770] – Rachel

Yes. Like you had mentioned replacing one glass of pop with a glass of water. I mean, you don't have to throw out your whole pantry.

[00:22:06.090] 

I didn't call it pop, but…

[00:22:14.350] – Rachel

I'm a pop girl. So we stayed up here in Michigan. But if you just make that one change, some people just want to go cold turkey, throw out all the junk food out of the pantry in the refrigerator, which breaks my financial heart a little bit. But instead of just going cold turkey and just revamping everything and making it such a drastic situation, just start with one thing. I think baby steps are far more effective than going cold turkey and making some drastic change.

[00:22:45.570] – Allan

Yeah. And those little habits stack pretty quickly, you realize? Okay. I went a couple of days without my Pepsi or without my Coke or Mountain Dew or Doctor Pepper or whatever. Your thing is a monster drink.

[00:23:02.110] – Rachel

No. Please don't.

[00:23:04.810] – Allan

So you do without that, you cut out 39 grams of sugar or maybe more per day. That's a big deal. And if you're drinking more than one and now you're drinking none, that's even bigger. And so you start moving down that trail, and then the next step is like, okay, what else? And that's where, again, leaning into something you're really strong at.

[00:23:35.120] – Allan

It's like, I really like playing tennis. Now, maybe at this point, you don't feel confident that you can go get on the tennis court and play. But you could get your tennis racket out and you could go and typically by tennis courts they have the practice walls with the line straw on the concrete. And you literally just sit there and just take the racket, take the ball and just start hitting the ball and jogging around a little bit, hitting the ball and just get into the act of moving. And it feels good. And it's something you love and it's coming back.

[00:24:07.740] – Allan

And now, you know, okay. If I can build up my stamina, then I'm going to be able to get back on the court. If I build up some strength, I'm going to get better. If I build up my speed, I'm going to get even better. If I help build my agility, I'm going to be able to play this sport. And you see it. You go out there and it's like a lot of younger people do play singles. And then some of the older people I noticed they tend to move to doubles or mixed doubles. And then as they get a little bit older, there's pickleball. So I've never played pickleball.

[00:24:42.250] – Rachel

I haven't either. But it does look very fun.

[00:24:44.970] – Allan

Yeah. And it was sort of when I was a kid, they had a golf team on the high school. And it's like, Why would I play an old man sport? Because to me, golf was an old man sport. When I was in high school, I'm like, I'm going to play football, baseball, whatever, and run track and tennis. And so I felt like I'm going to play these more aggressive sports. And then, yeah, now if we had a golf course, I would probably be playing a lot of golf.

[00:25:11.530] – Allan

But it's just one of those things of saying if there's something you really enjoy doing, you might not be doing it at the level you did 20 years ago, but doesn't mean you can't do it at some level, right? Even again, if it's just going out there and doing some practice serves and hitting the ball against the wall and just getting out and being active. Doing something you really enjoy doin

[00:25:35.770] – Rachel

That's exactly it you hit it right on the nose is finding what you love to do and embracing that and finding ways to do it. You had mentioned dancing and cooking, and I know that at my local YMCA, there are drop in classes where you could just take some yoga class or a cardio kickboxing class or something crazy.

[00:25:57.870] – Rachel

Why not try something new? Why not try something you've never done before because you might like it. And then on the other days, you had mentioned walking, if all you do is walk around your block, make it two times around the block or take a walking trip up to the grocery store or the coffee shop like I like to do almost every day.

[00:26:16.990] – Rachel

But as long as you're out moving, that is such a huge thing. And if you start moving now, you're 30 days or so ahead of the game, when New Year's resolutions roll around.

[00:26:28.750] – Allan

And if you're just not feeling it because there's a reason why you probably feel this inertia, there's a reason why you got held back. And now you're in park and to get past that is sometimes as a mental game, but just say, give it five minutes, put on your tennis shoes, put on some comfortable clothes, get out there and just go for five minutes. After five minutes, you're not feeling it. Then come back, shower and you're done even if you didn't bother to sweat. But shower and move on.

[00:27:00.760] – Allan

But most people will find five minutes is easily ten minutes is easily 15. And then you feel like you've actually accomplished something. And then the next day it's easy 15, and then it's 20. Then it's 30, and then you're out 45 minutes, and that's kind of the allotted time you have. So now you're walking a little bit further, a little bit faster. And those are the kind of things that snowball, the rock slide. It's just to get something small going, even if it's just the five minutes, walking is easy. Do it someplace that you love. So you're kind of doing all three.

[00:27:34.500] – Allan

You're not doing it. Now you're doing something small and you're doing something you enjoy, and that just builds on itself.

[00:27:40.960] – Rachel

I think that's absolutely perfect. Those are great tips.

[00:27:44.650] – Allan

All right. Well, Rachel, I will see you and everybody else next week.

[00:27:49.640] – Rachel

Take care.

[00:27:50.690] – Allan

You too.

Patreons

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

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

Thank you!

Another episode you may enjoy

Breaking a Weight Loss Plateau

Less...

SPONSOR

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let's Say Hello

[00:03:18.790] – Allan
Hey, Ras. How are things?

[00:03:20.570] – Rachel
Good, Allan. How are you today?

[00:03:22.810] – Allan
I'm doing pretty good. We've worked through kind of our first major holiday season here in Panama. Tomorrow is also a holiday here. They have three independence days in Panama because they're Spanish influence when they were under Spain as a part of Colombia. And then Colombia got away from Spain. And then with a little bit of assistance from the United States, Panama was broken off from Colombia. So they call independence from Columbia. And then now they had the third one, which is independence from the United States. When President Carter gave over the Panama Canal, we were occupying the canal zone for most of the time.

[00:04:12.470] – Allan
That canal existed because we came down and created the country and dug it. But then the United States pulls out about the time that Carter was in office. They also do an independent state for that. The biggest one they have is they do Spain, and then they do Columbia. Those are the big ones. But from a true independence and their own country and their own revenue and everything, this last one is really where they're now. Okay. You're on your own. And they've done well with the canal.

[00:04:48.650] – Allan
They redeveloped a lot of the areas where the military bases were and so pretty cool deal. We've had all these holidays and we've had different people in, like, really different people in. And so it's just been kind of this interesting moment. And then Tammy got sick just after that, just after the holiday, she got sick. And so now it's like, okay, I have to run the place. I have to check people in. I have to check out. It's like, okay. But that said it's nice because it's not like I have to be on 24/7 people understand, it's a bed and breakfast and not a hotel where you go down to the front desk at 03:00 in the morning and ask for something, so far.

[00:05:38.290] – Allan
But it is kind of a little hectic just checking doing the things you do to run a six room bed and breakfast and do the podcast and do my online training and own the gym. So there's a lot of moving parts in my life right now, but I'm pretty excited about all of it as we go into this final season of the year. And so, yeah, I'm happy where we're going, but it's a lot of work. But we're now making it. And we're actually seeing income from a bed and breakfast, which is so exciting.

[00:06:11.810] – Rachel
I love that. That's wonderful. I'm very happy for you. I hope Tammy feels better soon, but that's so exciting to see your bed and breakfast getting right off the ground.

[00:06:21.390] – Allan
Yeah. So I did the accounting. I'm the accountant, too.

[00:06:26.560] – Rachel
Okay.

[00:06:28.450] – Allan
And the bellboy, sometimes front desk staff and sometimes maintenance and whatever needs to get done. But yeah. So she had a horrible October because we were right at the beginning. We opened the middle of October, which we're buying all this food in anticipation of all the people that are checking in the first week of November. And then we had one room night in October, 1 night in October. But one room, one night that we had someone booked. And then after that, it's like, okay, now we've got bookings.

[00:07:05.760] – Allan
Now we've got this and people coming in and people walking up like, just before recording. So it's good. It's really good.

[00:07:14.720] – Rachel
That's fantastic. I'm so glad to hear that.

[00:07:17.400] – Allan
So how are things up there?

[00:07:18.810] – Rachel
Oh, good. I'm in the middle of packing my suitcase, so I'm pretty excited. In a couple of days, I'll be heading down to Pensacola Beach, even though it's not super hot down there. I'm actually going to be leaving Michigan at our first snow. So I'm kind of a little sad that I'm going to miss the first snow, but not that sad.

[00:07:41.210] – Allan
But, you know, the first snow is never the best snow.

[00:07:43.920] – Rachel
No.

[00:07:44.880] – Allan
Because if it comes and then it warms up that day and then it's flushing, it's gone. You're like, okay, what's pretty now it's just black and ugly. It's just dirty and ugly. And it's like, so we need a good freeze coating on the ground and then it sticks, and then we're good. That's the kind of snow you want. So you'll come back to that.

[00:08:03.140] – Rachel
I'll come back to that probably. Yeah. I think you're expecting about three inches of snow when I leave, so I need to go find my snow shovel for the kids.

[00:08:14.130] – Allan
Put them to work.

[00:08:15.130] – Rachel
Absolutely.

[00:08:16.060] – Allan
Got to keep it clean if you want me to come back.

[00:08:18.400] – Rachel
That's right.

[00:08:19.200] – Allan
Yeah. I saw Mike was already down in Pace, so I guess you're headed down there, which is nice.

[00:08:25.860] – Rachel
Yeah. He's actually working this week. And then next week we both get to take a vacation. So I'm pretty excited.

[00:08:31.540] – Allan
Yeah. Good. We'll tell everybody down there we miss them.

[00:08:34.790] – Rachel
Absolutely.

[00:08:36.090] – Allan
All right. So let's go ahead and have this conversation about how to deal with these holidays we're taking.

[00:08:42.410] – Rachel
Perfect.

Discussion

How to survive potluck/group meals without blowing your weight loss effort.

Did you know it's eating season? Yeah, it sure is. As we approach Thanksgiving in the United States, and there's a lot of eating seasons that are coming up. A lot of eating events, I might say, as we go into this New Year and isn't going towards the new year, this is eating season. There's no other way around it.

And so where we're going to find ourselves is going to office potlucks extended family meals. Or in my case, there's a group of us friends here in Bocas that are going to get together. Tammy ordered the Turkey. I'm pretty sure I'll be cooking it, which I enjoy doing. I actually really do enjoy cooking a Turkey. So I'll be making the Turkey, and I'll probably be carrying some other things but otherwise it's pretty much potluck, which means everybody's going to be bringing different things. And I can pretty much guarantee you that most of the things that are going to be around there, including beer and wine and everything else, are not really going to fit my plan.

If I want to stay on track of cutting some body weight as I go towards the upcoming events that I have. So if you're on a weight loss journey right now and you're facing eating season, you need a plan I'm going to share with you a few of the cool things or things I think of when I'm looking at an event like this or looking at the season like this and what I'll do. And I hope that you'll do as you go into it. So as we get ready to go into this process, there's a few things that we want to do now.

The first one is, do you want to make this a full detour? Do you want to go completely off plan and say, okay, it's fine. I'm on holiday. It's a holiday. I'm going to a holiday event. I'm going to eat Aunt Martha's cookies. I'm going to do this. I'm going to eat that, and I'm not going to care about it. And if you do, I'm going to say, Please enjoy it. Enjoy the crap out of it. Enjoy it. And we'll talk about that in more detail later.

The second one is if you decide you're not going on a full detour, you're going to have to do some planning, and that means you've got to know how you're going to approach that and what you're going to be doing and maybe some of your rules. And obviously, then with rules, there's structure. So you're going to have to set a structure for how you do things. And there are different ways that you can make these events easier to manage. And then finally, I want to talk to you about how we can take and make distractions that will keep us from potentially overeating mindlessly.

Okay. And so I'm going to talk about each of those three things if you decide this is not a full detour. But let's talk about the full detour first. Now, most of the time you're doing these things, they're not just events where you don't care about the people that are there. You're either doing this with the work colleagues, you're doing this with friends, you're doing this with family. And so these are social connections. And social connections are really important in the studying of the blue zones, which are the areas where people tend to live the longest.

They've noticed a common core component that those individuals have very strong social bonds. If you're going to live a long time, you do that because you've got connection. So realize that these events, these meals are a part of that social connection. And we see this in a lot of different things. But probably the best way I can articulate. It would be in the breaking of bread. We break bread with people we're close to, and that's kind of a symbolic we're together as a family. We're together as friends.

And that's a connection. Now the other thing to think about as you go into this, because whether you make a full detour or not is, as I mentioned, if Martha gets upset, if you don't eat her cookies, then are you really ready to go in and have that conversation? Or if you're on a certain way of eating, let's say you're going low carb and you're there and you're going to spend most of the day explaining to your family how you're not going to have a heart attack.

That's not going to be an enjoyable environment. Sometimes it's not worth going in and having this argument because you're now avoiding 99% of the food that's there. But if you're ready to do that, then that's cool. But if you want to go on the full detour, you kind of eliminate that because you can have a little bit of all these things. And while you might not be on plan, at least you know you're not on plan and you've made the conscious decision beforehand to do that.

So this is not just some random thing you knew going in, you were going on full detour and you're going to enjoy it. And then the final bit is when you go on a full detour. Now it completely removes all the guilt and all the stress out of all this, at least from a food perspective, because you can go in and basically not care what you eat. You maybe don't even care how much you eat. So those concepts are really important. If you want to really enjoy this meal, really enjoy this time, but pick your battles.

You can't do this every week, every time or you're going to slide. You're going to slide during the season. So I would just say if you're going to go into eating season, you're going to go into a potluck particularly, and you're going to just go full bore and make it a detour. Number one, enjoy it. But number two, just realize that you are off plan. You're going to have to get back on the road as quickly as you possibly can.

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Now, let's say you decide. No, I'm not going to make this a full detour, but I might want to do something a little bit different, so maybe a little bit of both. Eat your cake and have it, too. My first thing about planning and this is where we're going to go next, because when you go into one of these events, if you don't have a plan, you're going to struggle because you're going to see foods that you want.

You're going to see foods that you just have almost an urge for now that you've seen them and smelled them and tasted or maybe tasted them. Now you're going to want more. So as you go in, one of the things to consider is that the food that's there is maybe not always yours. So if you're going to bring the food, if you're part of the structure of bringing food like for a potluck, bring real food dishes, focus on protein and vegetables. And if you really want to get meticulous about this and do it right, I would encourage you to bring both.

As I mentioned earlier, I'm bringing the Turkey. I'm also probably going to bring some vegetables. Okay, so I'll bring the Turkey. I'll probably bring some vegetables. I don't think I could get my hands on some cranberry, so I won't be able to make cranberry sauce. But I'm going to go in and make at least the protein and the vegetables. So I have that readily available as a fallback to bulk up my plate to fill my plate with the foods that I know I can and should eat versus other foods that might be there.

I don't want to get myself stuck with what's there because I brought a bad dish. They brought bad dishes, that's all there is. So if you can and you're part of this, providing the food, bring real food dishes. You can still make them taste great. People love my Turkey. They may not eat my vegetables, but that's neither here nor there, which brings me up to my next point. Be prepared to bring home leftovers a lot of times. If you're bringing steamed vegetables. A lot of people are just going to walk right past them.

But if you brought steamed vegetables with a side of, say, a cheese sauce that they could pour over it, then they might do it. But if they don't just be prepared and realize you might be bringing some of your food back home. And that should be totally cool to you. Be prepared for that. Don't get yourself emotionally involved in your dish. They didn't like my steamed broccoli. I wonder why. You know why that's not what they eat on a day to day basis. And it's not the kind of crazy food they want for the holiday.

So it's not going to fit what they want. And so just realize, fine, you had the food you wanted to have and you had it there. And that's cool when you upset a few people as possible. And that's why I talk about why you might want to consider this a full detour. But if you want to make it a partial detour, bring some of your own. Bring your own protein, bring some of your own vegetables and go that way. Another thing of planning you can do if you just don't want to eat too much or eat too much of that stuff is to eat a little before you go.

Okay, so having a small, healthy meal before you get there means you're not going to arrive at what's basically a buffet potluck. You're not going to arrive there hungry and have the tendency to overload your plate. They tell you not to shop when you're hungry, and I'll tell you not to go to a potluck when you're hungry because you will overeat you can't help it. And then the final thing I'll say is this is make sure you're hydrated, so drink plenty of water, make sure you get your electrolytes, make sure you're hydrated going into it, because again, thirst can feel like hunger.

And if you go in hungry, you're probably going to overeat. So three things I'd say under planning is if you can and you're part of the food, bring healthier options that are made from real food. They can still be delicious. They can still be great, but make them out of real food. Second is to eat before you go, if that makes sense so that you don't arrive super hungry. And then three, make sure you're hydrated. If you'll do those things, you can get through the basis of setting up to go through your potluck without really having a hold back, you're in a good position.

Now, the second stage of this is to have a structure. So structure basically means that as you go through it, you have kind of a set of rules. And the first rule I'd say, is if there's different size plates because a lot of times you're at a family meeting and yeah, they got multiple sets of plates out. Go with a smaller plate, a smaller plate, you fill a smaller plate, you're going to get adequate number of protein. And we're going to talk about that in a minute, adequate amount of food and it's going to be on a smaller plate.

It'll feel like you're eating more. Okay, beyond the smaller plate as you approach the buffet or you approach the potlot, focus on the protein first. I've noticed when I go into a buffet, particularly that they tend to put the salad and vegetables first and they put the protein on the back. They do that from a cost perspective. They know that if you load your plate up with this other stuff, by the time you get to the meat, you're not going to use much of it. And I'm going to tell you to do that completely backwards.

And this is not about saving money or costing money. It's a function of the protein is going to serve you better. You're going to be better satiated and you're going to eat less. So focus on the protein. Now, a few things I'll tell you about that a portion of protein is about the size of your palm. Okay, so getting one or two of those on your plate first is key better if it's not souped up and gravy or a whole lot of other stuff. But basically making sure you have two types of one or two servings of protein.

And if it's baked, broiled or grilled even better. But focus on that first. So in the case of a Thanksgiving thing, go for the Turkey, and it can be the dark meat or the light meat doesn't matter. But go after that first. Okay, then go over vegetables and look for vegetables again that are not in casseroles and all this other creamy stuff with the little onion stuff on top. Avoid that kind of stuff. Focus on the vegetables that are well prepared and you know them, you see them.

So go for the protein, then the vegetables. And then if you're going to get some of the other stuff, maybe a dessert or maybe a little of this or a little bit of that. Just get a little bit. You don't need to load your plate up with a full serving of those things. So if you can take a partial serving, do that. So if you want a little bit of Aunt Martha's cookie, break the cookie in half and have half of it. If you want to go in for some of those creamy things, we talked about the casseroles and this and that and the other or this fruit salad or that or this dessert or that this pie that get a little piece, take a part of the piece, put that on your plate and then take your time and savor it.

We're going to talk about that in a minute. Okay. The second structure to this or third structure, I guess now is to eat slow. Okay. Eating slow by maybe putting your fork down between each bite. Having conversations with people where you're not eating during the conversation or during the talk can go a long way towards slowing you down and letting your body's natural satiety kick in to a point where you know that you're full and then you don't necessarily have to feel compelled to eat the whole plate of food.

You eat what you want to eat and then you stop. So if you feel like you're getting full, it's easier to stop, but you have to eat slow to make that happen. Also during the evening, during the day, whenever make sure you're drinking water. Okay. Yeah, you might have a beer, you might have some wine, you might have something else, but make sure you're also drinking water that will slow down everything. It'll make you feel Fuller. It'll help with the hydration so you won't feel any hungrier and it'll slow down your drinking.

So make sure you're drinking plenty of water during this. And then after you do your first round dump your plate, you're done. Most of us are not going to need a second or third or fourth serving because that's not going to serve us. We got what we needed from the first plate, we got our protein, we got our vegetables and a little bit of everything else that we wanted to taste, and now we're done. So throw your plate away so you avoid seconds and more and then move away from the food.

The closer you are to the food, the more likely you're going to be compelled to go again. So move away from the food, particularly if it's food that's going to tempt you. So if you happen to be sitting close to the dessert and that's your thing, your sweet tooth sitting there is not going to help you. It's not going to serve you. As you watch people walking up to that table, it's going to keep your attention on that, and you're eventually going to want to stand up and have some yourself. So move away from the food.

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And that takes us to kind of the final bit of this is use this event because again, you're with people and you're doing things, use it and find distractions.

Okay. So one of the things you can do is as soon as you finish eating, move away from the food and start visiting with people who are also not eating. So if they're past eating and they're moving on, you move on and you go over there and start having conversations with them that will get you away from the food, away from the temptation and keep you a little distracted. Consider other things like invite someone to go on a short walk with you. There's a study and I'll share this in the notes for this podcast that going for short walks after you eat helps moderate your blood sugar, so you can just tell someone it's like I read that going for a short walk ten to 15 minutes after I eat helps regulate blood sugar.

How about we go for a short walk and they may go with you? They may say no, but try to go for a short walk that's definitely going to help you. And if someone can go with you all the better. And then while you're taking that walk, if they decide to go with you, talk about things that both of you enjoy. Try to avoid the such and such as this disease and such and such as in the hospital and those types of things. Talk about things that bring you joy, the new grandchild that's in the family, the promotion that someone got, the great event that you had last year and how much this one's bigger and better.

Talk about things that bring you joy, because that's going to give you little shots of dopamine and dopamine is the exact same neurotransmitter that we get when we eat sweets. We eat foods that are kind of addictive. It's a dopamine hit. We're addicted to dopamine. We're not addicted to the food. So if you can do things that are going to provide the dopamine, you're going to have a much better event, a much better time and you're going to get your little dopamine hits. So you're not missing the dessert nearly as much.

So do things to distract yourself. Another great distraction is to do a game or a puzzle. I just got a new sponsor. I think they're going to come up in a couple of weeks. Well, I guess a few weeks, but they do puzzles. They make puzzles. And I just think that's great to sit down with people and start working on a puzzle and you're not so distracted. You can't have a conversation. But you're distracted enough. You're probably not thinking about the food that's sitting somewhere else in a building.

My wife, Tammy, what she likes to do at these events is she'll take and she'll take money and like lottery scratch off cards and then other little prizes and things like that. And she'll wrap it up in that plastic wrap, like Saran wrap. Okay, here's a little pro tip. If you're going to do this when I get done is cut those into three or four foot sections. Okay. So when you cut it, they have to keep finding the edge. But anyway, what you do is you take the stuff and you start making a ball and you roll it all in there.

So you put a little bit of prize and you roll it a little bit. Then you put maybe a dollar bill or something. Roll a little bit, put a scratch off ticket, roll a little bit, and you make this big, big plastic little ball with all these prizes in it. And someone looking at the plastic ball can see there's money in it. There's scratch off tickets, there's other stuff. So the way the game is played works like this. Okay. One person gets the prize ball, and the way I like to do is we take the youngest person gets to start with the price ball.

First, give it to the youngest person, and then the person to their immediate left gets two dice. You say, go, and the person who has the ball starts to try to find edges to open it up. Now you can't tear it. You have to actually find a true edge to start rolling it off that ball. The person with the dice starts rolling the dice. As soon as the person that rolls the dice gets doubles, meaning two of the same on the dice. Then the person that's unrolling has to stop and then you pass it over.

The person who's rolling the dice now gets the ball and the person with the dice passes the dice to their immediate left and you repeat the process until the ball is finished. And so what's cool about this is people are watching. They're seeing people win prizes. It's kind of a cool thing when someone realizes, OK, dollar bills came out or $5 bill or a lottery ticket or something like that. And you can decide how much you want to invest in making this kind of a better game or some more valuable game for the people playing.

But everybody starts watching this because it's just kind of exciting to watch someone who's under the time pressure trying to unroll this Saran wrap plastic wrap ball to win prizes while someone else is trying to frantically roll doubles because they want the ball next. And so it's kind of a cool dynamic. Tammy does those games at most of our Christmas parties and things like that, but she loves doing that. She loves putting it together. And it's just a good distraction when the food is done. When you're done with the food is to kind of start that process of having some distractions, a puzzle, a game, something that's going to keep people energized, something you enjoy again, the enjoyment and the joy with people.

It gives you the dopamine hit that you would have gotten from sugar and other things that you probably shouldn't be eating if you're trying to stay on plan with your weight loss goals. So we talked about a lot today, but I want to kind of just roll this up into one little thing when we go into a potluck or a family dinner or a group dinner or whatnot. These are not surprises. We almost always know these are coming up. They're on our calendar. Sometimes we're traveling to go to to these things.

So when you know it's coming up, then, you know, to get ready for it. So you have to have the plan. You have to make the decision. Ok. Is this going to be a detour, or do I need to prepare for something that's coming up on the road? If I need to prepare for something, then yes, it's planning and structure. And then once I'm in it, I need to have the distractions that keep me from going way off kilter. If I don't want to go all the way off Kilter, and then I need to have the plan to get right back on the road.

So if you go into these meals, enjoy them, please. But at the same time, recognize what your goals mean to you, what your commitment to them is, and then make the decision detour or not. If you make the decision to not detour, you have to have a plan. You have to have structure.

Post Show/Recap

[00:33:41.190] – Allan
Welcome back, Ras.

[00:33:42.820] – Rachel
Hey, Allan. Next to Summer, the eating season is my favorite season.

[00:33:49.170] – Allan
It is. Well, one, it's when most of us… Well, practically, it was the only time that I really was able to go out and spend some time seeing family. I was never a big summer vacationer because I lived in Pensacola, so going to the beach. I never saw as vacation because that's where I wanted to be and I didn't have family that lived on the beach. So if I went to the beach, it was typically just me and mine going to the beach. But during the holidays it used to be particularly Thanksgiving and early Christmas.

[00:34:27.590] – Allan
We would drive around and see family. And that was kind of Tammy and my thing. And then, you go in and it's like, okay, there's food and what do you want to eat? And I purposely started doing my keto in a seasonal way just to kind of accommodate some of that because it was like, how am I supposed to go into Christmas with Tammy's family and keep keto and not lose my mind? So the opportunity to take a detour and say, okay, this is a detour.

[00:35:02.590] – Allan
They're having their Christmas dinner at a pizza place. So, yeah, I can scrape off the top and be that weirdo or I can just say, okay, I'm eating pizza and move on with my life. I learned a lot of strategies as I was going along. I'm just saying, okay, sometimes it's just best to do a detour, but I know for a lot of people, you've worked up to a point. You're in ketosis or you're in this and you're trying that it's all working and you're just not necessarily terrified.

[00:35:33.940] – Allan
But you just know, okay, I'm going to go out of ketosis. I'm going to put on some weight. I'm going to hate this scale. I'm going to hate this. I'm going to feel bloated to feel sick and maybe have a bathroom issue. And, you know, those things are going to potentially happen if you take this detour. So I wanted to do this show just to show people that there are ways to strategize and structure this so that you don't feel like you're a freak. You're in the buffet line like everybody else or in the line with everything else.

[00:36:04.580] – Allan
You might be doing it a little backwards because you're not putting any vegetables on your plate. You're waiting till you get to the proteins and then do a little U turn. Go back, start at the end of the line and then start putting vegetables and the other things on there so that you have a plan as you go through or walk down the line front to back and say, okay, I see all the proteins here at the back, and then I get to the beginning and I'm like, okay, here's all this.

[00:36:30.270] – Allan
The desserts are over there on the right. I don't want to go on the right. As soon as I get through with my plate, I walk to the left and I go sit down. I want people to have some strategies where they would feel comfortable that they could go into these situations and not be completely lost.

[00:36:46.570] – Rachel
These are really great strategies, especially with starting with the protein part. I wish I had known this probably about 20 years ago. I was in my 30s. And when we get Halloween and all the delicious candy and then Thanksgiving hands down my absolute favorite meal of the year. There's nothing wrong with Thanksgiving. And then Christmas. And then you're spending all the time with family. And like you had mentioned in the podcast, people make these family heritage meaningful dishes that you almost have a guilt trip if you don't try.

[00:37:22.240] – Rachel
And every year at this time of year, I would start my New Year's resolutions with needing to lose ten or fifteen pounds because I enjoyed the eating season a little bit too much. And I never even had these strategies. It never dawned on me to pay a little bit more careful attention until I made running a priority in my life. And I was doing a lot of running and I can't digest this type of food and still maintain a good run. And then now that I'm keto, I really can't digest this food because I've had a couple of times where I've accidentally had too much sugar.

[00:37:58.100] – Rachel
I ordered something and I just wasn't thinking and there was so much sugar in it. I was sick for the rest of the night. So I have a pretty fast biofeedback loop. So, for Thanksgiving no detours for me. And for Christmas, I will definitely take a nibble of my mom's baklava. It's Greek heritage. It's a family dish and quite delicious, but I know not to over indulge because I'll just get sick, but the strategies you put in place are just spot on and so helpful for avoiding these extra pounds.

[00:38:31.430] – Allan
Yeah. So I'm going to go in and like, Tammy knew to volunteer us for the turkey for our friends, and we're going to have a big get together. And I'll probably also put together some form of vegetable dish. It's warm here, so it won't be heavy. It might even be just something like a cucumber and tomato vinaigrette salad kind of thing just to have something. And then that'll make up most of my plate is the Turkey, and I'll be the one that will go for the thigh meat, like nobody's business.

[00:39:05.550] – Allan
And then the skin. While I'm cooking the Turkey, I'll be eating the giblets because that's my thing because I get to because I bought the turkey. And I'm cooking it. And no one else wants it anyway. But no, I'll fill my plate 75% 80% with that. And then I'll go around and I'll be listening to people. And if someone seems emotionally invested in their dish, then I'll try some. And maybe it's a casserole where they did Ritz crackers and the fried onion things and all that stuff.

[00:39:40.230] – Allan
And it's like I had some of that that actually tasted really good. Now I had a tablespoon, maybe two, but I tried it and actually now opine on it of oh, you must put something in there other than cream of mushroom soup, because I actually ran into someone at the grocery store that was looking for that today. So I assume whatever she's cooking is going to have cream of mushroom soup in it.

[00:40:01.960] – Rachel
Yeah, that casserole.

[00:40:05.180] – Allan
if she can get it. Yes. And so that's cool. So I'll have her casserole, but it's just a little dab of this little dab of that so I can taste the different things that people brought and I can speak to it.

[00:40:16.620] – Allan
And then as I mentioned, as soon as I've finished eating, I'm away from the food. I'm over by the pool. A friend has a pool he had put in. I'll go over and I'll hang out by the pool, get some sun, maybe even go for a walk. I might just say, hey, I need to go for this walk, and I'll go for a walk, walk over to the beach and walk on the beach a little bit and say, okay, I'll walk back and then converse and do everything else with the pool and with everybody else.

[00:40:43.430] – Allan
So mine is going to be what I would call a partial detour, and I will probably have some wine just to relax and hang out with friends.

[00:40:52.960] – Allan
So on Friday after our Thanksgiving, which we have in the United States, is on Thursday. And I think that's when we're actually doing this, I won't be in ketosis. I'm, like, 75% 80% sure, I won't be in Ketosis that morning when I wake up. But it doesn't matter. I'll fast half the day if I need to do an intermittent fast just to kind of kickstart things and maybe do a long walk that morning just to kind of get some of that glycogen burned out of our muscles and my muscles in my liver and then say, okay, here I am ready to take on the day and get back into Ketosis. If not that Friday, then at least by Saturday.

[00:41:33.050] – Rachel
For sure, taking that walk will make you feel so much better. You probably won't even be hungry after eating so many delicious foods. I mean, it's not only physically filling it's emotionally feeling, too, to enjoy that time with your family and your special meals. So I think that's a fun thing to do the next day or plan for that the next day. I know that our Thanksgiving last year because we were in the middle of Covid. We didn't get to visit with our family for Thanksgiving. And so this year we can.

[00:42:02.570] – Rachel
And I am excited to see relatives that I haven't seen in quite a long time. So I imagine that we'll spend a lot of time also after the meal, away from extra food and seconds. And whatnot just chatting because it's been so long since we've seen each other.

[00:42:17.340] – Allan
Distractions.

[00:42:18.790] – Rachel
Absolutely. And I love that Saran Rat game that you described as well. I think that would be so much fun.

[00:42:26.780] – Allan
Yes. Tanny loves doing that. Everybody loves it when she walks out with that. And it's like, here's how the game goes. And I was like, oh, this is totally cool. And then they see money fall out of the thing. They're like it's $2. But I mean…

[00:42:38.370] – Rachel
I love it. It's still fun. And what talk about distraction? My goodness we often do a craft project or something like that, like make Christmas ornaments or something. We've done some unusual things for the holidays, but I like your game idea. That sounds like a lot of fun.

[00:42:54.260] – Allan
Yeah, we have a new sponsor coming up. Not on this show. I think this is this on the 22nd. So no, I think it's starting maybe next week, we have a sponsor Unidragon that makes these puzzles. And they're wooden puzzles, and they are gorgeous. And the pieces are not cut like standard puzzle pieces. Standard puzzle pieces with the ball in the hole. You put them together. These are totally different. Some of the pieces are actually in the shapes of little animals. They're totally cool. So, yeah, catch that.

[00:43:28.780] – Allan
If you go to the website, check out episode this coming out on November 29, I believe. And maybe December 6. Check them out. Reach out to that because that is and we do have a discount. Code 40plus. If you get a unit Dragon 40 plus and they're giving you 10% off. So while I'm giving them a little bit of extra kudos on this show, only because again, I think their puzzles are just awesome. And I'm going to bring the puzzle with me when we go up there to do the thing with everybody. And so if there's space and there's time and it makes sense, I'll go get the puzzle and we'll sit around and do the puzzle.

[00:44:06.070] – Rachel
That sounds like fun, too. That sounds great. Well, enjoy your Thanksgiving holiday.

[00:44:10.990] – Allan
Yes. And just let folks know that next week Ras is going to be on vacation. As she mentioned down in Pensacola Beach. I'm envious because I love that place. Go to Peg Leg Petes and tell them Alan said Hello.

[00:44:25.460] – Rachel
I will.

[00:44:30.410] – Allan
But next week on this show, there won't really be a Hello Segment. Unless I feel like there's just something I want to talk about before we get into the episode. Rachel, you enjoy yourself and we'll talk in about two weeks.

[00:44:43.720] – Rachel
Thank you. Take care.

[00:44:45.660] – Allan
You too.

Patreons

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Let's Say Hello

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[00:05:13.470] – Rachel
Sure.

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

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

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

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

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

[00:07:23.730] – Rachel
Nice.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[00:10:27.870] – Rachel
Sure.

Episode

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All right. Does that make sense? Okay.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Post Show/Recap

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[00:54:42.170] – Allan
All right.

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

[00:54:46.670] – Rachel
Take care.

[00:54:47.690] – Allan
You too.

[00:54:48.710] – Rachel
Thanks.

Patreons

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

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

Another episode you may enjoy

Finding your health and fitness pace

Less...

Let's Say Hello

[00:00:45.420] – Allan
Hey, Raz, how are things going?

[00:00:48.240] – Rachel
Good, Allan. How are you today?

[00:00:50.140] – Allan
I'm doing well. We're recording this a couple of weeks in advance, so I'm still on my trip in the United States, kind of rounding down the Miami area, finishing out the last couple of stops up further north in Florida and then into Mississippi. But by the time this goes live October 4, I should be back at the Bed and Breakfast in Bocas Del Toro and trying to get things back into some semblance of normal.

[00:01:20.850] – Rachel
Right. Well, good. I hope you've had a good time visiting all your family and friends.

[00:01:24.490] – Allan
Yeah, it's tiring. And then a friend of mine, he's doing a YouTube channel and he asked me to go out there and like it and comments and do things like that to help him get his YouTube channel going. I went out there and he had a video where he's eating at the restaurants that I would usually be eating at, talking to friends that I would normally be talking to. And so it kind of got me a little homesick, which is strange. I'm in the United States visiting family, but I'm home sick to get back to focus.

[00:01:54.190] – Rachel
Sure. How long have you guys lived in Panama?

[00:01:57.310] – Allan
we're approaching three years.

[00:01:58.820] – Rachel
Oh, my gosh. That's a long time. That's definitely your home. I can totally see that. Yeah.

[00:02:04.790] – Allan
Yeah. So our dogs are there and our place is there and then something happens like this guy, apparently, I don't know. He just decided he wanted to throw a flower pot at the window of the gym and bust the glass. And I did bust it open open, but he busted the glass and so it's now get that fixed. And the guy came back and apologize for doing it and said he would make it right. You pay for it. But it's not my building. So we're, like manager, insert my message.

[00:02:31.580] – Allan
We got to get that window fixed, so just stop. You know, it's like if you're there, those kind of things are not hard to deal with, but when you're over 3000 miles away, it's a little bit more difficult.

[00:02:43.600] – Rachel
Oh, for sure. My goodness. Well, I'm glad you've had a good time visiting family and friends. That's the most important part. It's a long trip for you, though, but I think 4000 miles.

[00:02:53.570] – Allan
You know, when we're getting done with get done with this, we'll put over 4000 miles on a rental car. Yeah. So Tammy is gonna drive down to Key West. I think tomorrow, and I'm not gonna go. She's gonna go down there and hang out with a friend and spend the night and then drive back the next day. But, yeah, I'm not doing that part of it. I'm gonna step here and hang out my family here. So we'll put on over 4000 miles on that rental car before we return.

[00:03:20.050] – Rachel
Amazing. My gosh.

[00:03:22.730] – Allan
So it'll be a long month, long five weeks, but good stuff.

[00:03:28.000] – Rachel
Yeah. I'm glad you got to spend the time here.

[00:03:31.270] – Allan
How are things up there in Michigan?

[00:03:33.320] – Rachel
Oh, good. Good things are good. You know, one of the great grand prizes for turning 50 is a colonoscopy. So I will be prepping for that in the next few days. And hopefully by the time this air, I'll have some good results to share. But this will be my first colonoscopy.

[00:03:50.940] – Allan
That sounds like a show.

[00:03:52.390] – Rachel
It is. It's actually, it's not terrible. The prep work, I'm sure it's going to be real thrilling later, but I'm kind of excited to have this done. Colon cancer does run in my family, and since I've hit that age, it's just one of those things I can check off the list like a mammogram, which I do every year anyway, but, yeah, it's just one of those things that will give me a little peace of mind.

[00:04:16.370] – Allan
Okay. Well, good. I hope it all comes out good.

[00:04:20.820] – Rachel
Good one. Yeah, it'll be fine. But I'll be sure to share my results once I know them.

[00:04:27.600] – Allan
Good. Are you ready to talk about some resistance training?

[00:04:30.880] – Rachel
Yes. Let's do this today.

Episode

Today, I want to take some time and talk to you about some of the more intermediate and advanced resistance training, things that you can do. And these are some of these things that are appropriate for people over 40. So I'll kind of emphasize this that if you're new at training haven't been doing something for more than a year, this episode is probably not going to be for you. You might learn a few things about muscle resistance training and things like that, but just recognize that the strategies and tactics that we're talking about here today are not for the new training.

If you haven't been training for at least six months and maybe a year or more, you might not want to look into these, but this is something, if you're really interested in weightlifting resistance training, you might find interesting. So I do want to start this episode off with a caution. If you're new, if you're new to this, then yeah, definitely think twice before trying some of these. These are not things that you do, particularly for if you're just bored with your program. If you're bored with your program, change up some of the exercises, change up your sets and reps do those other things that change up the workout and make it different and more interesting.

These are not something that you want to do if you're under trained, and that means, yes, probably about a year or so of consistent training, and then you kind of plateaued and you're not seeing the improvements that you wanted to see. Most people are going to be able to get enough benefit out of just basic weightlifting that they don't really need to do these things. You can build strength and muscle without these tools without these strategies, but just recognize that, yes, if you want to optimize your growth, optimize your strength, optimize your power.

These can be very powerful tools in your tool chest. And then the other side of it is when you implement some of these things because of the additional volume because of the way you're working, you do increase your risk of injury. I do take that into account. Injury is a very important thing. It's rule number one in resistance training, do not injure thyself, and so you do not want to injure yourself. So you really have to be very thoughtful about how you approach intermediate resistance training.

To start this conversation, I really want to get into volume because that's what we're really doing when we're doing these processes, we're trying to increase the volume of work or we're trying to increase the volume of intensity for what we're doing when we're doing these exercises. So just recognize that normally we could do weights, reps and sets, and that's going to be enough for us to improve or increase the volume of the work that we're doing. If I do one more set than I did before, then I've increased the volume.

If I've added more reps, I've potentially increase the volume. And obviously, if I'm doing the same number of reps and sets and I've increased the weight, you know that I've increased the volume and each of those is specific to how you're trying to train. So are you trying to train strength? Are you trying to train for muscle growth? Are you trying to train for muscular endurance or stamina or power? And so as you look at the way you're lifting, recognize that the way your lifting needs to align with what you're doing and the volume increases that you do also have to align with that.

So there are different ways. Like I said, we can do this. We can do more work per week. We can do more work per workout. We can increase the time that it takes for us to do each exercise. It's called time and attention, and we'll get into that in a minute. But what you do, what we're doing here is we're basically in most of these, we're trying to increase the volume of work, the volume of work that the muscle has to do. And so we'll get into a lot more detail in that as we go forward, but just recognize, I'm going to keep coming back this term volume and just realize that volume just means more work.

It means more work for the muscle, either in reps, set, time under tension or the weight we're lifting. Before you get started on a program like this, it's really important for you to define the purpose of why you're doing what you're doing, because each of these strategies helps a certain aspect of muscular development. And so you don't want to do something that's going to improve your strength if you're absolutely actually trying to increase power, and you may not want to increase muscle mass if you're trying to increase power.

So in looking at what you're trying to accomplish, recognize that the goal, the purpose drives the strategy that makes the most sense for you. Probably the most common way to increase volume. And the one that I would usually start with someone who's approaching the intermediate lifting stages, meaning they've done some lifting. They're comfortable with the full body workouts. It's an hour or so of work, and they get the reps in. They get the sets in, and as a result, they're seeing some benefit. But a lot of times what happens is then that kind of plateaus, and we need to add volume and a lot of times it's really hard to add volume to a single workout.

Meaning if I have you doing one exercise, two exercises for legs, one for chess, one for back, one for shoulders, and a little bit of core work. That's practically an entire hour workout already. To add more time to that workout isn't practical for a lot of people.

So one approach is to do splits. So typically a split. What that means is that you're splitting up the work across different body parts so that you can do more work each workout. But you're also going to have to do more workouts each week.

So a very common split is the upper and lower split. So what we'll do is we'll come in, say on Monday, and we'll do a lower body workout, so that's mostly leg work. So squats, leg press, lunges, split squats, maybe a little bit of machine work. And that's your leg workout. You'll hear the term leg day called out a lot. So you do a leg workout on Monday, and then on Tuesday, you come back in and you do an upper body workout. So that's where you're doing pushups, bench press, pulls, rows, different things like that.

You you might even throw up in some arm workout, some shoulder workout, and that's your upper body work. And so you've split into an upper lower Monday, Tuesday, maybe you take Wednesday off. You come back Thursday, Friday, and you do another lower upper. As a result, you hit your legs twice in the same week, which is what you would have done before. But now you've actually added more volume because you had more time to do more exercises, more exercises, then more sets and more reps for each of those parts. And as a result, they're getting more volume.

The other common split is called a push pull legs. And the way that works is you would come in and let's say on Monday, you go ahead and do your push and push is where you're moving away from your body. So you think of pushups bench press flies overhead, press that type of thing. So you're mostly working your chest and shoulders and then probably your triceps. A pull is when you're pulling something towards yourself. So you're doing a rows, you're doing lat pull downs and then potentially some other movements where you're working your biceps.

So that would then be the pull. And then your legs obviously is just a lower body workout, and you do a leg workout. Now the advantage of pushpull legs is then you've already given yourself the full two days off from that push workout. You could come right back the next day and do another push and you can rotate this all the way through and not have a day off effectively. Although I'd still encourage you every once in a while. Do take recovery day. There's a lot of volume.

So at some point it's probably worth taking a day off. So if I'm going to do a push pull legs, I'll do a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and then I take Sunday off and that's six days of lifting. Each day I'm working a different part of my body. I'm getting each body part in twice per week, which is what I was doing mostly when I was doing full body, and so it gives me the opportunity to add a lot more volume by doing the split.

But it also means you're dedicating a lot more time to the gym than you would if you were just doing two 1 hour full body workouts. Now you're in the gym up to 6 hours a week, which can be quite a bit of time. So recognize to get more volume, you've put more time in.

Now, one way to get around this little bit of volume and time is to mix in a thing we call super sets or monster sets. Now, this is where you're going to do two exercises pretty much in a circuit, and the two exercises work different body parts so effectively you can get an exercise in faster because your rest period is effectively when you're doing a different exercise.

So an example of that would be if I wanted to do bench press and then I wanted to do dumbbell rows. And so I would do my bench press. As soon as I finish my bench press, I turn around and do my set of rows. And then as I moved back to the bench and make sure I'm getting enough rest between exercises. But you can kind of see how because I did it that way. I cut out a rest period that I would have had in between each exercise.

And as a result, I could get a lot more done. A monster set is where you put three or more exercises together in a circuit. And I don't want you to get this confused with circuit training, where you would walk in and there's a series of machines and you're just doing these eight different exercises in the circuit. This is when you're going heavy. If you're intermediate lifting, you're doing a lot more weight than you would be doing on those machines. You're probably working with free weights.

And so you would put together potentially three exercises that could be again, it could be the bench press. It could be a dumbbell row, as I said. And maybe your third exercise is squats or something for your legs. And so you do that monster set, and then now you can go right back into another round, and you basically have eliminated the need for those rest that'll allow you to get more volume in a shorter period of time. So you don't necessarily have to split your workout in multiple days.

You can add super sets and monster sets to reduce the amount of time, which allows you to do more sets or exercises for each body part in the same amount of time. It also can be very fatiguing. And I found that super sets and monster sets really aren't for me because I don't recover from the cardiovascular perspective of just exercise exercise. I need that little bit of rest time to get myself fired back up to really be able to optimize the weight that I'm doing. And another aspect of this is it is really hard in a commercial gym to set up a series of super sets without really just being all over the gym.

And in an age of COVID, that's even worse if someone's trying to work out in a gym and you're taking up three or four pieces of equipment at a given point in time, it's really hard. Unless you're going to a commercial gym when no one else is there off hours or like me, own the gym, then you can go in and do it when you want to. But it's really hard in a commercial gym to do super sets and monster sets effectively without a lot of planning and doing it at times that are just more appropriate for that.

But that is a way to add more volume that you can do. So ways to add Volume Right now, we have split and we have super sets. And I mentioned earlier time under tension.

So when we're doing our normal workout and we're starting out, you probably notice a lot of muscle growth and you probably know, I mean, maybe not physically muscle growth, but you notice that you got stronger pretty quick. You might have started with five pound dumbbells and you're almost within a month, you're up to ten pound dumbbells.

That's 100% increase that's huge. What's typically happening during that period of time is not that you're piling on a bunch of muscle and getting a lot stronger. What you're doing is your brain and your muscles are beginning to communicate more effectively. So your brain is trying to fire off enough muscle fibers to do the movement that you're asking it to do. And as you go to do that movement, you get more efficient and that efficiency of the communication where your brain can know what a weight is and can fire off just the right amount of muscle fibers is a really cool thing that allows you to get stronger. Now, by doing time under tension, which just basically means slowing down our tempo.

So you think normally if you were going to do, let's say push up, you would go down a count of one, you go up. So it's really almost like up up up up right. Now, to do time under tension, I'd say slow that down to maybe 2 seconds, 3 seconds. So it's 3 seconds down 3 seconds up. Another way that you can put time under tension is when you're in that down position, maybe you stay there for a pause and that pause training will keep you fired. The muscles firing longer.

That will help your brain and your muscles talk much, much more. Because as you're trying to do the movement slower, the muscle is going to have to fire off more and more muscle fibers to keep the weight under control and moving. So time under tension is a very effective way of building muscle and strength. But time under tension is not beneficial if you're training for power. So if you're trying to do something like sprints and you want to be able to sprint faster, I would not do time under tension training for your legs because you're training your muscles to fire slowly and consistently, and that's not the kind of thing you need if you're trying to build power.

So if you want to build a little bit more muscle mass and you want to get a little stronger and you're looking for a way to kind of bump up the volume of what you're doing. Time under tension is a really good tool to do that. You can take a smaller amount of weight and make it harder for your body because you slowed down your body's, firing off more muscle fibers, and that's causing more stimulus, which will cause more growth in both the muscular and the strength aspects.

Another interesting approach is called variable resistance training, and you can do variable resistance training even as a beginner. But when you really want to kind of leverage some things, this is where a variable resistance training becomes really, really good. Basically, variable resistance training just means that you're providing a variable level of resistance based on where your strength points are in a movement. So to give you an example, because there's a certain amount of muscular leverage in working each bit of weight. If you think about a bicep curl.

So you're holding a dumbbell by your side and you want to bring that dumbbell up to basically your front deltoid to curl and use the bicep to do that. At the very bottom, you're at your worst leverage point. And so the weight that you can start at that bottom is much lighter than the way you could do. If you had your hands say just six inches away from your shoulder, you're at that point have a much better leverage point and can do a lot more weight.

So that's one of the disadvantages of fixed weights like dumbbells and kettlebells. And things like that is that they aren't variable, whereas you can use bands or chains or the cambers on certain machines to change up the resistance throughout the movement. So here's an example, let's say I had that same dumbbell in my hand, and instead of just the dumbbell, I had a chain draped over that dumbbell so that as I lifted the dumbbell closer to my chest, on my shoulder, as the dumbbell came up, more chain is off the floor, meaning there's more resistance against the movement.

So that at the top, I have a much higher resistance than I did at the bottom. Cables do the same thing. I mean, sorry, bands do the same thing. That's probably what you've experienced as you stretch a band. It provides a variable resistance. And then some machines, you may notice that if you're looking at the mechanism, the camber that's lifting the weight, that it typically spins and it's pulling typically a strap or something, it's pulling that and as it turns, if that's just around camber or around pulling, it's a very straight resistance if they put a camber on there where it's like lopsided that can provide variable resistance.

The NATOs machines were really famous for this in the 70s and 80s, as they provided this kind of variable resistance through different movements. So it's very common now to see those on machines. The cool thing about resistance training when it's variable resistance is that it is providing you the maximum amount of resistance or at least a better range of resistance as you do a lift. As you get that muscular leverage going, looking for ways to add variable resistance to an exercise can help a lot. So one way that you can do this is you can use bands.

So if you strap a band to something or you're doing the band curls that's band movements that's one thing. I talked about the chains. So you'll be doing a bench press and you can have chains over the bar. So the bar goes up, more chain is off the floor and therefore more resistance. And then there are bands that you can use to assist you on, like pull ups. So you take one of those bands, you wrap them over the bar, you put your foot in that band.

And then as you go down and you're in your weakest position at the bottom, then the band is fully extended. Therefore, it's giving you resistance up to help you. And as you get closer to the top, there's less pull on that band, and it's giving you less assistance. So there's lots of different ways to use variable resistance in assisting you to have the maximum amount of weight effectively resistance in an exercise. So you're increasing the resistance based on your strength profile and the leverage of your muscles.

So variable resistance is a pretty cool tool, and it can even be used by some beginners. And if you're using bands for your workout, then you've experienced some of that.

Another one is called negatives. And I'll explain this in a little bit more detail, because sometimes it really confuses people. But in every movement, you're going to be constricting muscle. Tighten a muscle to affect that movement. And so basically, if you're doing a curl, a bicep curl we talked about you are shortening your bicep. In shortening, it that is the concentric portion of the movement.

As you shorten your bicep, that brings the dumbbell up as you go back down, that's the eccentric portion of the movement. In the eccentric portion of the movement, you are resisting that resistance. Okay, that sounds weird, but your muscle is preventing the weight, the resistance from going where it wants to go. It's fighting gravity. And that's the point where your body is building core strength, getting really stronger and that you're firing off the things you need to be stronger to hold that weight against that resistance.

So a negative is effectively where you're doing a time under tension thing, but you're only doing it during the eccentric portion of the movement. Let's say I want to improve my pull ups, and I know I can do a few, but I want to be able to do more. I want to get stronger in the pull up. What I can do is I can get myself a little step ladder, and I can step up to a point where the bar is at my chest, and then I can let my body go down slowly fighting that resistance.

So I'm working through the negative portion of that exercise. The eccentric portion of that exercise. And I can tell you that don't do this unless you really want to have DOMS, because this is one of those situations where DOMS is going to happen if you're doing this. Another way that this could be done is you could be doing a dumbbell curl or barbell curl, and someone can help you get the bar up and then you fight it going down. And so that's another very common negative resistance training that people will do.

But again, this is is very extreme. It's a lot of volume and does some damage. So you just be aware that if you're using this as a means for building strength or some mass, but mostly strength, it's a really good tool to break through some Plateau. So if you're struggling with pull ups and you've been lifting for a while and you've been doing pull ups and doing other polls and things like that to build some strength, a negative approach, getting someone to help you through the positive or using step ladder in some cases can be a good way of getting a little bit of extra volume in there.

But again, be careful because this is bordering on more of the advanced stuff, and it is something you have to manage.

Another one I wanted to bring up, and I almost didn't want to talk about this one because it's one, it's a little controversial. And two, it's not entirely safe. You be very careful with this one. And it's called Occlusion. Now occlusion is basically where we're blocking blood flow to a muscle, and then we're doing work. And there's been some studies that basically show if you're looking to build muscle mass, Occlusion can be a good tool for allowing you to add that volume of that work and changing the nature of that work.

So the muscle does some different things. So basically what you do is let's say I wanted to do a bicep curl. I would put a strap on my arm above that bicep and tighten it just enough to slow down or reduce the blood flow to my arm. And then I would do those bicep curls. I've tried Occlusion before. It's moderately effective. It's not great effective. So it's not like some of the other things that we've talked about today, but for the advanced lifter that's looking to add a little bit more mass to a limb, because obviously there are certain parts here you just can't exclude.

So it's mostly used for arms and legs. And if you're looking to add a little bit more mass to those, this could be something you do, but I doubt there's very many people over the age of 40 that really ever need to consider Occlusion training. But I wanted you to know it was out there because you might see someone doing it and wonder what it's about. Now, by no means was this an exhaustive list of all of the things that you could find in a bodybuilding magazine or a power lifting magazine?

But I wanted to put this out there from the perspective of just understanding. There are additional strategies to mix this up. People who've been lifting for years don't necessarily still just go in and do the full body workout. And if you go into a gym, you might see some people doing some relatively strange things. And I wanted to just give you an idea of why they might be doing those things. If you have any questions, I do encourage you to come message me. Let me know what's going on.

If you have a question, you see someone doing something in a gym and you're just interested in why they might be doing that thing. Just let me know now, don't videotape them, but maybe you can just describe to me what you saw them doing.

So let me kind of summarize all this. If you've gotten into resistance training and you've lifted for a while and you find yourself beginning to Plateau with the workout that you have and you want to mix it up, that's cool. Mix it up. Add additional exercises, just pull out an exchange exercises.

Make sure you're covering all your bases. Don't be the guy that doesn't lift with the legs. You need that too. You need to at least make sure you're doing something for your legs. So if you're a runner and you want to build some more upper body strength, cool, do that. But make sure what you're doing is a balanced training based on what you're trying to accomplish. Now, when you're ready to do something more and you want to move into some of these more advanced lifting approaches, you're going to have to manage the volume.

You do not want to jump into these things full board. When I mentioned negatives, I'll only do negatives for one set. So I'll do my sets pull ups or whatever I'm doing. And then if I want to do negatives, it's only going to be pretty much on the last set. So I'm finishing out and I'll do that. Manage the volume. We're over 40. We don't want to get injured. So as you're increasing volume, do it responsibly and then have a purpose. So don't just go into this and say, I want to just try these different things for the sake of trying them.

Understand each of these different approaches has a different benefit. So don't just do something for the sake of doing it. Have a purpose, a mission, a reason why you want to do a certain thing. Time under tension is great, but not for power. It's great for muscle and strength. Negatives are really good for strength. Occlusion is good for additional muscles. So just understand what the work you're doing is going to do potentially different things and do the things that help you do that. Pick the right approach.

Like I said, don't just jump in and do something. Pick the approach or approaches. And I would recommend one at a time. So you see how it works for you. Make that change. Try it. If it doesn't work, check it. It's working for you. Then maybe you keep it. But don't pile on all of these. There's no reason for you to be doing variable resistance training, time under tension, negatives and Occlusion all at the same time. There's absolutely no reason for you to do that.

So find the thing that works for you and start working it in. And if it works, then keep it. If not, toss it out and then know when to say when. I was talking to a client, and he was asking the question, when am I strong enough? When is this enough? And the reality of it is it is enough when you can live the way you want to live now. I mentioned earlier in one of the earlier episodes that I'm planning to do a tough Mudder, and so now I have very specific purposes for my training, which is what I kind of needed.

So as I go into my training, I need to build strength, particularly in my ability to pull, because a lot of the tough Mudder activities are climbing related. So the ability to pull my body weight, it also means, yeah, I got to kind of lose a little bit of body weight and I get to build some stamina and then this one other little caveat, which is probably going to be the biggest challenge for me overall. Is there's one obstacle called the Everest. And it's a ramp that you have to run up and then jump and grab.

They do have a rope there, but I'm not sure about that, but they didn't have that when I did the first one. But running and jumping requires some speed. It requires some athleticism. And so I've got to do some work to build up a little bit of speed. So my training is going to be very specific to that. Now I know that doesn't relate to this whole process of talking about intermediate weightlifting, but just recognizing that to run faster, I need power in my legs. I don't need a lot of strength in my legs.

I need power. So I need strength in my upper body. I need grip strength. I need power to be able to run a little faster for at least a sprint. And those are the things that I'll be working on as I build what I got to build, to be able to be competitive and do what I want to do in this tough mudder. And I say you need to do the same. But also then know when to say when if you get into splits and you're working out every day of the week, eventually you're probably going to break yourself so kind of build in those rest days, build in those recovery periods and then pay attention to your body because your body is going to tell you when things are not going well, and you just have to be open minded and check the ego and listen to when your body tells you to stop.

Post Show/Recap

[00:32:27.880] – Allan
Welcome back, Raz.

[00:32:29.160] – Rachel
Hey, Allan. I do love to talk about resistance training, and sometimes I often use the word weight training, but I do my fair share of weight training and body weight training. But whenever I think about increasing what I'm doing or making things a little bit harder, I just simply think about adding weights or adding more weight to what I'm doing.

[00:32:52.800] – Allan
And for most of us, that's exactly the approach to take. You get to a certain strength level where you feel good about the amount of weight you're moving, then you're good. You're maintaining muscle, you're maintaining strength. And as long as you're not struggling with that same weight, then you're staying about where you need to, because that's quite frankly, no reason for anyone to be able to put 160 pounds over their head. The most you're ever going to probably ever try to put over your head is 25 pounds and that's just putting luggage

[00:33:22.920] – Allan
The overhead bin on an airplane. So if you want to be independent and be able to do that and then being able to open a jar, so there's things that you're going to want to do for independence purposes, but you're not going to have your body weight that you're trying to put into an overhead bin. That's just unless you're bringing a person with you, we don't want to talk about that. But just realize a functional level of strength for most of us is all we need.

[00:33:50.570] – Allan
Now I have set up to do a tough Mudder in August of 2022, and you can go to 40plusFitnesspodcast.com/Chicago. I'm on the 10 to 10:45 run of that. And so if you're interested in doing a tough Mudder, there's one in Chicago I'll be doing it. I'd love to see you. If there's enough people that are interested in, we might do a little meet up or something afterwards, have a couple of beers and have some dinner or whatever. So yeah, if you're interested in maybe doing a tough Mudder, the classic is the one I'm doing.

[00:34:23.940] – Allan
There's also a 5K in 10K. There's shorter versions of it. If you don't think you're going to be quite up to that. But that said, my training for the tough Mudder is going to fundamentally alter the way that I approach training. I'll be using several of these intermediate principles of ways to increase the volume of what I do. I'll definitely be using splits because for me to get done what I got to get done, I won't be able to get it done. Just doing two to two and a half workouts per week, on average, just doing full body, and then I'll be doing a lot of things and there'll be a lot of two days kind of things where I'll do the weight training in the morning and then later on I'll do some endurance work to get myself to a point.

[00:35:12.570] – Allan
But the way I do my training will change because I'm trying to affect different things. I'm trying to affect strengthen some places, I'm trying to affect power in others and then muscular endurance and others. And so as I go through my training more so towards the back end of it is I'm starting to specialize for that sport, if you will. But on the front end, there will be some basic things that I'll be doing to build up core competencies and strength, power and endurance so that I'm able to get that done.

[00:35:42.350] – Allan
And it won't be about muscle mass. So I'm not going to try to become a body builder for the sake of doing this event because that won't benefit me at all. In fact, the goal will be to actually get stronger and smaller, so it will change a little bit about what I do. But again, that's where these kind of these intermediate level things come in, because I will be specializing. I will be doing something different as you're doing longer runs, looking at doing an ultra or anything like that crazy stuff you did this weekend with the five K, ten K half and then full marathon, four days in a row, that kind of mileage.

[00:36:19.630] – Allan
Do you really want to have leg training in your full body workout? The Monday after you do all that and short answers? No.

[00:36:28.070] – Rachel
Definitely no. Yeah.

[00:36:31.360] – Allan
So you have opportunities to use some of these principles is intermediate principles to have volume where you need it and specialize it for the types of things you need where you need it.

[00:36:42.620] – Rachel
Well, that's exactly right. My goals right now are a little different than yours, but that's the whole point about putting these types of plans together based on your goal. And you mentioned you're not going to be adding muscle mass. You want to be leaner. So you're gonna choose activities that correspond with that goal. In the offseason, I'll probably spend a little bit more time in the gym not gaining mass. Like you said earlier, the keyword for me is maintaining strength. And so in the winter, when I'm not running as often, I can do some more of those leg days to keep some strength.

[00:37:23.240] – Rachel
And yeah, it just fluctuates with what my schedule is. And just like you, you've got your eyes set on this tough Mudder, so you'll be putting your training together to address those goals.

[00:37:34.660] – Allan
Yeah. And so in that specialization, and that's where this stuff really becomes critical as a beginner. It's really just about building fundamental skills when you first start lifting weights and to go back to the whole weight training because I will go back and forth. But just recognize, I know when I say weight training is like we don't want to go pick up iron bars in a gym. If all these sweaty guys grunting and all that stuff, it's about resistance is the end game of it. It's a little bit more technical term for what we're doing.

[00:38:05.300] – Allan
We're applying resistance to build strength, muscle endurance or muscle mass or power. And so if I use one interchangeably to me, it's all the same. But I understand that some people get turned off by terms like bodybuilding and weight lifting and all that. So just realize it's all resistance training just how you decide to do it, whether it's your body weight or its weight or its resistance bands or chains, whatever it is, it's still the same are generally the same. But the perfect example would be there's an obstacle called Everest, and it's basically it's a ramp that as you get to the top of it, it gets steeper and steeper until it's straight up.

[00:38:47.950] – Allan
And to get up this thing, you have to sprint, you have to sprint and you have to keep running. And then you reach out and try to grab the edge. Now, truly athletic people can run up, grab the edge, pull themselves up and over. But because this is a tough mudder and not a competition, there'll be plenty of people that will be sitting up there ready to help you. Oh, you reach your arms out as you're running up this thing, and they'll reach down and credit grab you and help you over.

[00:39:13.950] – Allan
So it's a very helpful, very cool vibe there. But that said, I'm not a sprinter from perspective of being 56 years old at that time and trying to sprint, I'm going to have to build some speed. I'm going to build some power into my legs. And that means when I get on like a squat or a leg press, I'm not going to have a whole ton of weight on there. And I'm not going to go slow, like time under tension, like I would normally do for muscle mass.

[00:39:41.210] – Allan
It's going to be about quick, high rep, low weight stuff to get my legs faster, pumping get with the strength relative to weight that I need to build the power so that a sprint will help me at least get myself halfway up that wall and then hopefully the other half of my body up his body length. And so hopefully at that point, I'll be able to grab the edge. And then I'll probably need one or two of those guys up there to help me over. And then I'll reach out and help the person behind me, which is what it's all about.

[00:40:15.370] – Allan
So it's a very different type of training. Then I would be doing otherwise because otherwise, like you, I'd be like, okay, add more weight, slow down time under tension splits to add volume. I'm not a big fan of super sets and monster sets. That's just not something I've ever really enjoyed when I was trying to put on muscle mass. Those were actually valuable for me, and I've used them, but I'm not a fan because I actually like to lift. I like to rest. For heavy weights,

[00:40:52.210] – Allan
I will easily take two minutes to three minutes off between each set so that I've got the maximum amount of energy to apply into the next one. And that really helps me for building muscle mass. But that's not again, not the type of training I'm going to be doing here. If I did a monster set, it would be because one I didn't feel like I had enough time to get everything in or it would be where I was actually just trying to do something fast. Again, building power in parts of my body.

[00:41:18.490] – Allan
So for my legs, I might put together a period of time where I did. I'm probably not a monster set, but a super set with two exercises that were working my legs in different ways and then just the quick back and forth between the two. So there's limited rest and trying to just raise my energy level for that. But each of these has their place. But probably the only one I'd say is just don't do is the Occlusion training. There's not a lot of reason unless you're going to try to do some kind of Masters level body building or something like that.

[00:41:58.970] – Allan
Occlusion is not safe. Unless you do it wrong. You can do it really wrong. So it's not one of those things I would encourage most people to try. I've done it before when I was trying to put on mass, and again, it shouldn't have been putting on mass because I was also training for a sport, but I don't always do the right things, but there's a lot to this stuff. There's some books, ebooks, volumes of books on how to do this stuff. So simple is good.

[00:42:32.620] – Allan
And then over time adapt because most of my clients all train for a while and it's like they get that neuromuscular connection and they start getting a lot stronger and that feels good. And then now you're starting the Plateau and you're like, oh, no. What am I going to do? And then I'm like, okay, well, you're just going to change the workout up a little bit, give you something new, some workouts, some exercises that are going to complement what you've been doing and build strength in a slightly different way.

[00:42:59.410] – Allan
And then you just keep doing that. And that can work for most people almost all the time. But then there's others. They'll say, okay, I want to take it to that next level, and that's where splits and time under tension and variable resistance. All of those things can come into play at one level or another. Not all necessarily at the same time, but at different points in time, we're going to do it. I will definitely be doing negatives. I talked a little bit about negatives. I will definitely be doing negatives to build strength in my back for pull ups.

[00:43:32.130] – Allan
there's gonna be pulls. So I will do like, I think I said it in there, that I'll climb on a ladder or step, and I'll get my chest up to the bar. And then I will hold myself in that position and slowly lower myself down as a function of trying to build more strength in my back and arms.

[00:43:53.630] – Rachel
Perfect.

[00:43:54.770] – Allan
It's gonna hurt. It's gonna hurt a lot. And I'll have DOMS the next day. But over time that's going to build a lot more strength in my back. I'll be able to hold positions that I wouldn't normally be able to hold because there's there's all kinds of, like monkey bars and swings, and that. So there's a lot of upper body strength required climbing ropes, all of that. So I'll want to build that that up to a really high strength level and one of the fastest ways for me to get there,

[00:44:27.350] – Allan
again, someone who's lifted for a while will be these negatives. But I would not encourage most people to do negatives unless you just really want to hurt or you want to build a much stronger back than you would normally have if you became a goal. Like Rachel, you said, okay, I want to do ten foot pull ups. I want to be able to do ten pullups. We would start with just you using doing lap pull downs and some other rows to get your body basically strong. And then we'd get a resistance band, and we would use that resistance band to assist you or have Mike stand behind you and give you a little bit of assist on your pull up, and you'll be able to start being able to do pull ups.

[00:45:06.560] – Allan
You'll get to a strength level, you can then it's just a function of doing more volume to get to where you can do. The ten that you want to do is your goal that if that is the goal, but a way to get past even that would be then as an intermediate lifter to start looking at negatives or effectively, maybe even attaching weight to your torso or your legs. So you're pulling more weight up than just your body weight. So then that might be again, another strategy that I use to increase the strength that I have in my back.

[00:45:41.560] – Rachel
Wow, that all sound like really wonderful methods that we could try to employ in the gym when it's time to do something different.

[00:45:50.460] – Allan
But not all at the same time.

[00:45:52.240] – Rachel
I know. One thing at a time, right?

[00:45:56.790] – Allan
I don't want you having straps around your biceps, and then you're doing variable resistance, negatives and trying to stay time under tension the whole time. Don't.

[00:46:09.680] – Rachel
But this is great because like I said earlier, whenever I think about making any advances in the gym, I'm sure a lot of people think the same way. Just add pounds, just add weight to your weights. And obviously there's a lot of other tactics that could be employed.

[00:46:26.300] – Allan
And no, like I said earlier, that's a perfect approach if you're getting there. But there's a point you're saying, okay, I did X weight, and then I did X plus five, and then I did that plus 5. And then it's like, okay, now I'm stuck at this weight. And so let's say your original weight was 40 pounds, and then you're doing 45, and then now you're doing 50. But now you just don't seem to be able to go past that. Every time you try to put 55, you get stuck, you're like, okay, I wanted to do this many, and I didn't.

[00:46:58.580] – Allan
And I can't yet. I can't yet. And so the question will be is, what can we do then, to get you past that? Because just adding more weight won't necessarily get you there. If you can't move that weight so we can look at things that would change it up a little bit and be a little bit different, taking long, sometimes even taking a longer rest before you try to do the next set can be all that you need to get that weight moving. But you can look at some of these strategies and say, okay, what's a way for me to do this.

[00:47:31.880] – Allan
I probably should have put in here now that I'm thinking about it. And that's called drop sets. And so let's say you're trying to do deadlifts and you're doing 50 and you want to be able to do 55. I might tell you. Okay, put the two and a half on the outside of the callers, start doing them, and then maybe you only get three done. Pull those two and a half off and finish your set. And so that drop set there again. It's just a strategy.

[00:47:59.340] – Allan
There's a lot of them. But I should have probably covered that one, how they think about it. But it's just there's these strategies. And so if you're struggling with something, particularly with your weight lifting, in this case, because we're talking about, come on to the Facebook group, ask that question, say, hey, I'm stuck at this or this isn't working the way I wanted it to or I want to understand this concept a little bit better. That's why we have the Facebook group. You can go to 40PlusFitnesspodcast.com/group

[00:48:27.890] – Allan
and ask any of those questions. I'm on there regularly. I've been on there less, of course, over the last few weeks because I'm spending time with family and taking some vacation and doing that. So I haven't been out there nearly as much as I was. But as this goes live, I'm there. I'm there for you. So if you have questions about weightlifting, resistance training, all of that, just feel free to come out there and give us a call. Let us know what's going on.

[00:48:51.480] – Rachel
Perfect. And you've got so much experience in the gym. I appreciate all your insight on this. This is great.

[00:48:57.690] – Allan
Well, thank you. But I'm serious about that colonoscopy. So we're going to get you on the line. We're going to have a conversation about your experience there. And because it is something we all need to be considering. I'm looking forward. I'm actually looking forward vicariously experiencing this three.

[00:49:16.750] – Rachel
I appreciate that. I'll take copious notes and I'll let you guys know how it goes.

[00:49:23.140] – Allan
Awesome. Well, Rachel, you'll enjoy your week and I'll talk to you next week.

[00:49:26.590] – Rachel
Thanks. Bye now.

Patreons

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

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Thank you!

Another episode you may enjoy

How to do weight lifting progression over 40

Less...

Let's Say Hello

Due to Allan's travel we recorded our hello and wrap up sessions beforehand and did not do our standard hello section for this episode.

Episode

Today we're going to talk about pace and how life isn't all sprints. I want to start this with basically two contrasting stories from my life. The first one was my tough mudder training. Now I've told the story in the book, and basically the concept here was that I decided I wanted to do a tough mudder with my daughter. And this was March when we made this decision.

And the race that I wanted to do was in November. My daughter was going to be 21 years old, close to 21 years old. She was a level one CrossFit coach and quite fit. And so in my planning for this tough Mudder, my training for this tough Mudder, I knew I was going to have to push myself pretty hard and pretty fast if I was going to be in shape for that tough Mudder. So going from March, where I was already generally training to November, I still had a lot of ground to make up, and so I did what I call a sprint.

I trained really hard. I worked on my nutrition really hard, and I sprinted, and I got it all done. I got the work done. The results were great. You can see the before and after picture on my Facebook and on my website, 40PlusFitnessPodcast.com.

And when I did it, I felt really good. I got that sprint done. I accomplished everything I wanted to do, so good for me. Right? Well, let's flash forward about five years, maybe a little bit further when I did the Spartan training.

Now I plan to do the Spartan race as a function. We were going to be traveling to Chicago, and there was a spartan in there, and I thought, hey, I could do a Spartan. And so I asked my younger brother if he wanted to do it with me, and he did. So I'm like, okay, let's do this Spartan. Let's go to Chicago and do a Spartan together.

The difference was I was in okay shape, but I needed to be in Spartan shape within about two and a half months. And so I started my sprint, and I pushed hard, and I worked on my nutrition, and I did everything I could do to be ready for this Spartan race until I broke my rotator cuff snapped in the middle of a workout. I was trying to do overhead presses with dumbbells, and the reality was I didn't hurt myself doing the presses. I hurt myself trying to get the weights up into the starting position.

I felt it snapped, and I knew immediately what I had done.

And in fact, it was a very bad tear. But it wasn't a tear that had happened just during that sprint. It was a tear that had been happening over a long period of time. And the only reason I tell you these two contrasting stories, I still did this part. It hurt like heck, I still did this part.

But the stories I'm telling here are really just to emphasize the fact that if we go too hard, too long, we will break. And that's not the purpose of what we're trying to accomplish here. The goal in health and fitness is not a destination. You might approach it and say, oh, I need to lose 40 lbs, and that's my goal. That's my thing.

That's my finish line. But after you've lost that 40 lbs, it's not like honey and roses for the rest of your life. You're still going to want to train and need to train. You're still going to have to focus on nutrition and do the things you're doing for your health. That doesn't change.

So don't feel like there's a finish line. Just like if you're saying you're going to do the couch to 5K and you complete that 5K, hopefully you're not hanging up your running shoes and saying, I'm done nothing more. No more training. I'm out. I accomplished the great thing, the 5K.

That's not how this works. We train to live and be the people we want to be, to be better tomorrow. And yes, while we might have goals in mind of certain things that we want to accomplish, be it a weight loss goal or completing a race or doing something else, those are just motivating goals. Those are just things that drive us the measurement criteria. So we know that we're successful at getting better.

The true goal here is to come up with a sustainable lifestyle and a sustainable lifestyle basically means you can eat the foods you like and not feel deprived. Now, are you eating as much of it as you want? Maybe not. Maybe you used to have pizza every night, and now you're only having pizza maybe once a month. But you're still having pizza.

So you're eating the foods that you enjoy and you're enjoying your foods. You're just not eating as much. And maybe you've changed your palette to a point that some of the foods that you used to enjoy, you don't enjoy as much now. So you've found a sustainable way of eating that you can eat most of the time, if not all the time. And you've also in sustainable lifestyle,

You've built a movement pattern that improves and helps you maintain your fitness without breaking you. So sustainable is something you can do for the long term. And that should be the overall objective of everything we do with our health and fitness is to find the sustainable path that we can stay on the vast majority of the time. It's not that you wouldn't depart from that, that you wouldn't take a detour. But once you take the detour, you know, to get right back on your sustainable path and keep pushing forward.

SPONSOR

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So let's talk a little bit about pace. The faster you go, the longer you go, the more likely you break. That's true in everything that we do, particularly when you're over 40. Now, my story at the beginning of this episode, we're about pushing too hard training for an event, and I broke, but the same can hold true for nutrition. If you deprive yourself of a type of food or you eat a certain way, that's really restrictive, the likelihood you're gonna fall off the wagon goes up substantially.

If you tell yourself I'm never going to have another drink, that might work for you. But the reality is for most people, they're going to find themselves at a party, they're going to find themselves at a bar and they're gonna have a drink, and that's okay. There's nothing substantially wrong with that. But the harder you push yourself, the more restrictive you are, the more likely you're going to fail at some point, it's just the way it works. So when I talk about pace, I like to think of them in three terms.

Okay. The first is the sprint or the Ferrari, the second is a moderate pace. I call the pickup truck, and the third is slow, which I call the minivan. And there's reasons for each and every one of these paces that goes beyond what you want to accomplish. So let's talk about sprints first.

Sprints

When you are ready to do a sprint, there should be nothing between you and the finish line. You want to be able to do straight forward without having to stop. You want to do it as quickly as you can responsibly. And that means there's nothing there to stop you. There's no one there to bother you.

There's nothing that is going to be in the way. So if you're training for something and you want to do a sprint, it's got to be there in your eyesight, in line of sight. And so in that case, it's got to be close enough. You're trying to go from A to B, not A to T. And while it might look from my before and after picture A to T, realize not all of that was really a true 100% sprint.

I wasn't sprinting every day, all day, but I was working toward getting better and better each day. And as I got better, I pushed harder and harder. So it was a sprint, in a sense, but it was an A to B, B to C, C to D kind of approach. I wasn't looking to go A to T. And if that's what you're trying to do, you're probably going to break before you get there.

And then the final bit with sprints, that's really a big one for me is you've got to keep the ego in check. Ego is your enemy when you're doing a sprint, because at that point, you're not looking at your red line. You're not looking at what's going on with the heat and your engine. And if you're pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing and you're not paying attention, snap, there you go.

Honest Truth, the weight I was doing when I was doing those overhead presses was far more than I should have been doing. I didn't need to be doing. I did it because I could until I couldn't. So you've got to keep your ego in check and know what you're doing is building you rather than breaking you. So sprints are important.

Moderate

You're in your Ferrari, you're rooming down the road, and as long as there's nothing to hold you back and you're not going to red line and break, go for it. Next is the moderate pace. So I was a big fan of tailgating when I lived in the United States, and so I had a pick up truck with a tonneau cover so I could put all of my tailgating gear in the back of the truck to go to Hattiesburg for the games. Now, here's the thing. I couldn't own a Ferrari and take all my tail gaining gear because it wouldn't fit.

And my pickup truck doesn't travel as fast as a Ferrari. So I couldn't get there as fast. I could get in the Ferrari. And other than law enforcement, pretty much be there from Pensacola to Hattiesburg. And I don't know, 3 hours, maybe.

Okay, but that wasn't going to work in a pickup truck. I had to go a little bit slower. I take a little bit longer, not much longer, but it would take longer. So it was a more moderate pace because I had baggage to carry. So what's the kind of baggage that would hold us up in general?

Well, we have vacations planned. We have family members that are around that maybe we need to do some things with them. Maybe we have a job, all those little things you got to carry around with you that might slow you down a little bit. And that's okay. If you're patient, you find yourself a sustainable pace that fits your lifestyle, again

That's the objective here. And then you move and you're in this for the long haul. So in general, you should probably be spending most of your time over the course of the next several years in the pickup truck going a moderate pace, you can carry the things you need, do the things you need. There's a lot of utility there to get things done. You just have to have the patience and look at this as the long haul.

Slow and Steady

And then the final pace that I like to talk about is slow. And that's where you're in the minivan. And so you got the kids and the wife and this and that and you got to stop and go to the bathroom, every other exit. And so these issues, these people, these things, they're all happening. And it's not necessarily outside, outside your control, but it's generally outside your control that these are things you also have to focus on.

Your health and fitness may not be the ultimate number one priority in your life, but it's got to be important enough that you're still moving forward. And that's the key. If you have even more patience and self compassion, you do keep moving forward. And that's the key of moving slow is that you're not sitting still and you're not sliding backwards. So at worst times, you're holding your ground.

But most of the time, there's this little push forward a little bit forward. And while the minivan can't go as fast as the pickup truck or the Ferrari, you're still doing something positive for yourself, and you have to keep your head up and realize that's the case. And so I titled this episode, you can't sprint all the time or something like that. But basically, it's not all about sprints for sure. So what is the right pace for you?

Well, the reality of it is it's probably at different points in time going to be all three. There are going to be times when a sprint makes sense. So you say, hey, I'm going to sign up for a 30 day challenge to do this thing, and that can be an awesome motivator. You can sit down and say, when we get to next spring, I want to be able to run a 5K, and now you're moving at a moderate pace, taking a very cool or easy couch the 5K program to get yourself to a point where you can complete that race safely.

And then there's going to be times when things are going on in your life that you just have to slow it down and get in the minivan.

So having the self awareness to know which one makes the most sense for you, and using that as a tool where you're moving forward, you're sprinting when you can. You're going a moderate pace most of the time, and occasionally a slower pace, so that self awareness gives you kind of the gist of all of it. So again, find the pace that you don't break yourself. Find the pace that keeps you moving forward and not going backwards and stay at that pace until it makes sense to change and do something different.

You have health and fitness goals. You know what your vision is, of what you want to accomplish. You have to go the right pace or it's not sustainable. So again, the overall objective of your health and fitness should be to find a sustainable lifestyle and understanding pace and being self aware are key components of making that happen.

Post Show/Recap

[00:16:18.293] – Allan
Hey Ras.

[00:16:18.860] – Rachel
Hey, Allan, while you're talking my language now. We're talking about paces and life is not a sprint.

[00:16:25.820] – Allan
Life is not a sprint in and of itself, but it should and probably will include some sprints. And so that's really kind of one of the cores of this. There's kind of three areas. And one is that so many people want to skip to the end. They come back and say, Well, I want to be able to run a marathon or I want to lose 75 pounds. And so they want to go from A to T and they want it now. It's like, I want it now. Just give it to me now.

[00:16:57.290]
And the reality is that's not how things work. If you push, you're going to probably break yourself, particularly in fitness. And then with weight loss, you've got to do sustainable over time. And so we got to go and we got to tick all the boxes, A B C all the way through. And then it eventually. If we keep at it, then we'll get to T.

[00:17:18.490] – Allan
And so it's just that function of we didn't get here in a day. For some of us, it was 40 years ago for some of us, it was 50 years ago. For some of us, it was more years than that that we weren't doing the right things all the time. And as a result, we have something to work on.

[00:17:32.610] – Rachel
Right.

[00:17:34.020] – Allan
And we work and we gradually get there.

[00:17:37.290] – Rachel
Well, we all want the short, quick, easiest way to lose weight or get stronger or whatever it is. We're always looking for the right diet or the right exercise modality. And the fact is that it's different for everybody. And there is no shortcut to success. It just takes time and hard work. And you mentioned if you push too hard for too long, you'll get injured in the running world. We call people like that weekend warriors. Were you think you can go from the couch to a 5K in a weekend?

[00:18:10.690] – Rachel
And in reality, it takes weeks to adapt. I mean, if you haven't run a mile, you need to start with a quarter mile or ten minutes or 15 minutes or 20 minutes out there and ease your way up. Otherwise, you'll get injured real quick. And how disappointing would that be?

[00:18:25.040] – Allan
So just realize that there needs to be a process. You've got to go through the hoops, you got to get from A to T the right way.

[00:18:34.880] – Allan
And the next piece of this is part of the reason why that happens is people just aren't patient enough. They think the process should be faster, they think that it should be consistent and that you should know if I lifted £100 yesterday, I should be able to lift 105 today. And it's like that's not how it works. It's seldom any of this weight loss, strength, endurance.

[00:18:59.330] – Allan
It's never linear. You're going to have days when you go out and run and you just feel like you've got all the energy in the world and you have this great run. And you're kind of like, wow, I did that run and I probably could have done it again. You know, I felt that good. And then another day you go out there and it's just trash. And then what happened? I was at this mileage and I had to stop and walk. What's going on? And so just recognizing that the human body was not built for linear change.

[00:19:31.450] – Allan
And so we've just got to have the patience to realize that if we have intelligence behind what we're doing, well, nudge ourselves to where we need to be. And we have to care about ourselves enough to say, okay, I'm not going to break myself by being silly. And then I'm also not going to punish myself for not being what I thought I was going to be. You just have that patience for sure.

[00:19:56.820] – Rachel
And we all hit these plateaus. I had mentioned a few episodes ago that I had a lot of weight to lose after my first child was born, and I gained a lot of weight over those nine months. And it took longer than nine months to take it off. But I also hit a few plateaus, which meant that my body was hitting like a homeostasis. My body got used to what I was doing, and it was time to switch it up. And sometimes you need, you know, a trainer or somebody to kind of guide you to try something else or do something different.

[00:20:27.140] – Rachel
It's not always easy to figure that out on our own.

[00:20:29.700] – Allan
That is one of the things having clients and talking to them, and they're setting their expectations and setting it at the right level. And then, yes, when those inevitable plateaus and they're good, you actually want plateaus to exist because that's your body protecting your body. And so we need that. If you're not getting enough food, your body is going to tell you, if you're trying to do too much work, your body's going to tell you. And so we have all these great feedback mechanisms to say, okay, what we were doing was working, but it's not going to work now.

[00:21:02.240] – Allan
And so what does that actually mean? And what can we do about it? And one of the core ones. And that's why I wanted to talk about these different paces of sprint and moderate paste and slow is that those are your tools. And there's going to be times when you say, okay, I've plateaued. I've been at this wait for now for a month and a half, and I'm ready to do something about it. So you say, okay, I'm going to do the sprint, meaning I'm going to try something a little different.

[00:21:31.570] – Allan
And I'm going to do the sprint for a period of time and see if that doesn't jump start things to coax my body to do something different. And so it can be something as simple as saying, okay, no alcohol for six weeks. Okay. And before you were having a couple drinks on Friday and a couple of drinks on Saturday and still losing weight, just say, okay, I'm going to try cutting out the alcohol for six weeks and see what happens. I would call that a sprint going from some to none is a sprint in the nutrition world.

[00:22:06.270] – Allan
And so you do that now. You don't do that with the expectation this is going to be my forever life. But some people do they actually get to that point. They're like, you know, I really didn't need that in my life, and I'm better off for it. And some people don't go back and they don't go back to drink. And so that's there. I think a lot of people get stuck in something comfortable, and particularly when it was working for a period of time and they're like, Well, I can have my cake and eat it, too.

[00:22:31.380] – Allan
And then eventually, maybe you got to forgo the cake a little bit more often because you are carrying that cake with you and you're not able to get rid of the weight you want to get rid of. So finding different paces when it matters. Like kids are going off to stay with grandma's for a few weeks instead of turning that into a holiday for you. Adult staycation stuff. And you guys are having mimosas and martinis and all of that. Maybe you say this is a great opportunity for me to do something a little bit more aggressive.

[00:23:04.470] – Allan
I can get out. And maybe I do two workouts today because I have this extra time that I don't have to worry taking care of children or taking them to practices or whatever I would have to do that would take up my time. Now I can dedicate more time to myself, self care and use that as an opportunity to sprint. So you come out better for it. But don't just do one pace. Don't think you're locked into one pace for the rest of your life. Your life will change, and that will give you opportunities to go faster.

[00:23:33.740] – Allan
And then there's just going to be times when you have to take the opportunity and go slower. My vacation. I took it slow, you know, they got out and did some things that played volleyball. I went for walks on the beach. I did some things, but I just told myself it's like, okay, I'm not going to stress out. This is a vacation. So I slowed down. I got out of the Ferrari. I got out of the truck and I walked over and said, oh, here's my minivan seat belt and I'm ready to go.

[00:24:02.270] – Allan
And then as I'm traveling, I know that I'm doing research. I can figure out where different things are. I know there's a YMCA in Asheboro, North Carolina I can go to. They charge $5 a day. I know where other gyms are along the route. Unfortunately, I don't have my anytime fitness gym membership anymore, so I won't be able to use that as a way because that was a key way that I would always find a a gym where I was going. So I have to pay some more drop in fees.

[00:24:30.220] – Allan
And I know that. And I know my progress won't be as fast because I'm driving and I'm going to be in the car a lot of days. But anyway, I know that I'm going to have to have a different pace at that point in time. And then when I get back, I get back in the fast lane. You know, it might not be a Ferrari. At first it might be the pickup truck until I feel like I've got my legs under me again. And then I'll go a little harder.

[00:24:53.860] – Rachel
That sounds great. Allan. I hope you enjoy your vacation and all the different places I can enjoy. Where all the cities where you get to spend some time. At least you can hike the trails or walk through parks and enjoy the different foods that you'll get to experience in all these different areas as well. It sounds like a wonderful time.

[00:25:14.270] – Allan
Yeah, Pensacola, I'm coming. I'm going to eat all your oysters.

[00:25:21.390] – Rachel
Well, enjoy that when you can.

[00:25:23.980] – Allan
I will. All right, Rachel, I'll talk to you next week.

[00:25:28.040] – Rachel
Great. Take care.

Patreons

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

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

Thank you!

Another episode you may enjoy

How to turn each and every slip-up into success

Less...

Let's Say Hello

Note: Because I'm traveling, and we recorded this episode on the same day we did episode 502, there won't be a hello section for this episode.

Episode

I want to start today with a little story. If you've read my book, The Wellness Roadmap, then you've heard this story. But maybe not as much as I'll try to share today. When I first started wanting to get healthy and fit, I had a basic problem. I traveled about 90% of the time just to kind of put that in context. So it kind of makes sense to you what that actually means because people will throw out those percentages, the travel percentages and not really kind of get a grasp of it.

I was on the road almost every single day. I made it home roughly about three days per month, and it was kind of sickening because I had a mortgage and a house I was trying to upkeep and it really wasn't working out for me. I just wasn't there. There really wasn't a reason for me to have that house. But the other thing that was happening was I was using that travel as an excuse. I was using that travel as a reason why I couldn't be healthy.

I would get on the road and, of course, get into a hotel, and I'd find myself in the bar having my dinner at the bar, having some drinks at the bar. And I really wasn't doing myself any favors because I was letting the travel direct what I was doing in my life rather than directing what I was doing in my life and looking at travel as a challenge, something that was potentially going to stop me from being successful, but only if I let it. So today I want to share with you some strategies, tactics, some things to think about.

If you find yourself traveling and you're concerned that travel is going to mess up your desire to get healthy and fit because it can be done. And today I'm going to share how that happens. So the first step when you're looking at a trip is to what I call outline the trip. And so you want to know the duration of the trip. The locations are going to be the purpose of the trip and the constraints. And I'm going to go through all four of those briefly here.

So you understand what I mean? The duration is pretty simple. How long are you going to be gone? If you're gone for a few days, maybe that's not a big deal, but if you're traveling for a few weeks like I am, as this episode is going live, then you've got to think about the long term of this. You don't necessarily want to take off the whole time, and I'll get into that in a little bit more detail in a minute. Second is the locations. If it's a trip to one location and you're going to be in that one location for a while, that actually may be pretty good.

If you're traveling to multiple locations, then this becomes a little bit more challenging and we have to look at our strategies and tactics a little bit differently. The third thing when you're looking at outlining a trip is what is the purpose of the trip is this holiday is vacation. Is this a work trip? Is this maybe a mix of all the above? And because of the purpose of the trip that might define some of the choices that you get to make more things might be out of your control depending on the purpose of the trip.

And the final thing when you're outlining the trip is to go through some of the constraints. So if you know that there's going to be business dinners and things like that happening or, you know, there's going to be family get together and that's going to make it very difficult for you to maintain your eating habits and things like that. You just want to know what those things are knowing and having a plan is going to help you. We're going to get into the planning in a minute, but outlining the trip gives you kind of the filler details so that you know what's possible and what's not.

And that takes us to the second step of this. And that's mindset, there are going to be things when you're traveling that will be just completely outside of your control. And there's really nothing you can do about it. Perfect example was this I was on a flight expecting to get home or actually get to my location on my hotel. I figured about 02:00 in the afternoon. I said, okay, I can go check into the hotel and then go across the street to this gym and I can get my work out in and we're golden only to have them come over the intercom and say the flight was delayed for at least an hour.

So I decided, okay, what can I do? And I started walking around the airport. Now the previous me would have found myself in a bar not far from my gate monitoring when the flight was going to take off. And that particular flight didn't take off for six more hours. So you can kind of see the difference. I decided to walk the airport instead of heading to the bar and having a few drinks. So having the right mindset to understand that things are going to happen, there's going to be constraints is really, really important.

And there's going to be things that you actually do have under your control. And that's where you want to start setting a reasonable pace. So as you get into the concept of making it work when you're outside of your routine, sometimes the things are going to hold you back, and sometimes things are going to work out in your favor, and you have to take the pace and do it the way that you can do it. So it's better to do something than to do nothing. And so finding the pace and being comfortable that your pace may change throughout this trip, under your control or not under your control is really important.

And next week, we're going to talk a lot more about pace. But I just wanted you to understand that the reason that we want to focus and understand pace is that really defines how we look at things. And if we don't feel like we're making the progress we need to a lot of people will quit. They'll say, oh, well, flights delayed. I'm not going to get the work out in and they find themselves sitting at the airport bar, set a reasonable pace, a planned pace. But at the same time realize you have to be flexible or things that are outside your control and be comfortable.

That's okay. But the other side of that coin is focus. So don't let the travel and the excitement and all the different things going on turn you away from what you really want to do, what you really need to do. And sometimes that's when you want to bring in accountability, find a friend, find a trainer, find somebody who can help you stay accountable to the plans that you make for those trips. When I'm working with my clients and they say, hey, I'm planning this trip.

I'm like, what's your plan? And when the client comes up with a plan before they take the trip, I can tell you almost 95% of the time they're going to come back from that trip, happier about what they accomplished and what they didn't do wrong. Then if they didn't have a plan at all. So that takes us to the next stage of this. And that's the planning. Now we've already outlined our trip. So we know a lot about where we're going to be, how long we're going to be there and some of the things that might constrain us or get in our way.

So now we need to do a little bit of research. And one of the types of research that's really, really important is understanding where you're going to be and what's available to you. So the first available to you thing is the room amenities. Maybe you can stay in a room that has a kitchenette or just a refrigerator or something that will help you. Also, you can research local grocery stores. Often I find if you go to the deli section of a good grocery store. They have prepared meals, and now I actually won't shy away from saying I will eat an entire rote chicken in one go.

I don't have a problem with that, but they often also have prepared salads with maybe some grilled chicken. Or you can get some boiled eggs. They often have those available and veggies and canned meats and all kinds of stuff. So if you're really smart about it and you know there's a grocery store right by and maybe you don't have a refrigerator, but you can buy food for that night. It's going to save you from messing up in the hotel bar. Go for it. Next is to research local restaurants and get online and check out their menus.

Oftentimes you'll find there are choices that you can make substitutions and things like that that you might be able to make to make most restaurants work for you, focus on the protein and then fill in with vegetables and then try to avoid the starches and the things that you know you wouldn't be eating. Otherwise. Just do that. Now, if you have some questions. For example, there's a restaurant in Pensacola. We're about to go back to that area in about a month, I guess. And when I get there, I know there's a restaurant and they typically have this pork dish.

Now I love it, but they glaze it with this glaze. Now I can order it without the glaze. But what I found is it's not nearly as delicious as it would be with the glaze. So I'll just look at their menu and find other things. They sell a lot of different fish dishes. They often have specials of the day, so I just make sure I know what's available around me so I can go into that restaurant and I can have a healthy meal.

SPONSOR

This episode of the 40+ Fitness Podcast is brought to you by Timeline Nutrition, the makers of MitoPure. We've talked about the importance of mitochondria the power generators at the heart of nearly every cell in our body. So, you know, keeping your mitochondria healthy is an important step in feeling good and slowing the aging process.

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We learned that it's the Urolithin A that seems to be what's improving the mitochondria and the pomegranate was providing a precursor. We can't get Urolithin A from food. Basically, our gut bacteria turn allegations in the pomegranate into Urolithin A. Unfortunately, most of us don't produce enough Urolithin A to optimize mitochondrial health. Urolithin A is the primary ingredient in true line nutritions Mitopure. Okay, science lesson over.

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Finally, is gyms, and this is important. Yes, you can do a workout in your room. You can do body weight work, obviously. And you do a lot of other things. And I'll talk about that in a minute. But if you're working out at a gym, if you're doing resistance training at a gym, sometimes it's really hard to find something that's exactly like what you had.

So it's worth doing the research to see what is available. Many hotels have a gym, although many of those gyms are not really up to standard, they may not have the equipment that you're used to working out with. So knowing that, okay, I'm going to this. They have dumbbells and they have a machine cable machine so I can do these things and then you plan a program. So you know what your program is going to be when you get there? Because you've looked at the hotel gym.

Also, a lot of gyms will have drop ins, or they'll have free trials. And so that's important to check out because I've paid as much as $15 to get a workout in because that was their drop in rate. And then I got back to my room. And I noticed when I was looking at their website that I could have signed up for a free week trial and probably gotten that workout for free. So do a little bit of research to make sure that if a gym has a drop in rate, what the drop in rate is, and if there's any kind of opportunity for you to get a free trial, and then the other is, if you're already a member of a gym, it's possible that the gyms in the area you're going to might have some form of reciprocal agreement.

I had a membership at Anytime Fitness, which entitle me to work out at Anytime Fitness just with the same key Fob. So I literally could go anywhere and work out in Anytime Fitness. And that served me quite well because they had one in Calgary, Canada, along with the one I did at home. And that just made things really, really easy for me to continue my training because there was a gym roughly a mile from my hotel. That was an Anytime Fitness that had reciprocal use.

So I was able to go in there and get my workout done and off hours. Because this was a 24 hours gym. Again, another thing to check out. If you're looking at the gym, what are their open hours? And how does that fit into the schedule that you have for this trip so that you can see that you can actually get in there? And then the other thing is to look for things like trails and tracks and other safe places to walk and run. Now there was a time when I said I was stuck and I walked the airport.

Airport's a very safe place to walk. But this was a very small airport, so I found myself going from end to end. And yet people are going to stare at you. I don't care. I needed to get something in. I needed to do something. The flight was delayed. I was not going to get my work out. So don't exclude doing things that a little bit odd walking around the parking lot of your hotel. If you don't feel that the neighborhood outside side of that area is safe, don't go there.

But trying to find tracks and trails and things that would be a safe place for you to go get in a walk or run will also be a good opportunity for you to explore and find new things. I remember walking around the city of Houston and I found myself in a park and they had these wonderful statues back there. The park was overgrown. It wasn't very well maintained, but the statues were just fantastic. I enjoyed that walk more than any other walk I ever made in Houston, but just finding safe places to be getting things done.

That's the name of the game. So looking for gyms and opportunities for you to do the different things that you're going to want to do. Do the research. Now, once you've done all the research, now it's time to kind of map out a plan. And maybe when you're at home, you're working out six days a week, some strength training, some stamina training and maybe some mobility work and things like that. Cool, right? You're like. Yeah, that's great. But be realistic if you know, you're going to have business dinners and those tend to run until 11:00, and you've got to go to the next meeting the next day at 07:00 or 08:00 in the morning.

You shouldn't realistically plan to wake up at 05:00 in the morning and get your workout in. You need your sleep. So be realistic about when and how you're going to get your training in and just realize you might not get it all in. Be realistic if you go in there thinking you're going to be able to do every day, it's probably not going to work. And I'll give you a perfect example of the trip I was planning and I'm on now. Okay, we're driving most of it.

If you've been on my face on the Facebook, you've probably seen my track that I'm going to be taking. And there are days when we're driving for seven or 8 hours and then we're going to stop and then we'll drive the next day to finish that trip, that actual leg of the trip. And so as I'm driving down, I'm obviously not necessarily going to get a workout in. But one of the things that I've kind of planned a little bit of upper time is that if I feel like it, I might just go ahead and say, every 2 hours I'll stop at a rest stop and I'll just walk around for 15 minutes.

And if I do that a few times over the course of those two days, I'm going to get a good half hour, 45 minutes, maybe an hour each day of walking in. And that's going to actually be pretty good. Also, I'm looking at the hotels I'm going to arrive at to see if they have gyms there. So if I arrive early enough in the afternoon, I go in, get a workout done, have my dinner later, shower and have dinner and work good. So I'm being realistic about it as I want to fit this stuff in.

But if I don't get an hour's worth of walking, I'm not going to beat myself up about it. I just know what's possible, and I'm going to try to get it done. The next is kind of build in contingencies. So yeah, maybe there is a hotel gym, but the reality is that they don't let you in the gym until 800 in the morning and they close it at seven. And that doesn't work for your schedule. A true story. Actually, some gyms will do that even though you're using in your electronic key to get in the room.

Get in the gym. It doesn't work until 08:00 until they have someone available to come down there and clean it and look after it. So just realize that you might have to build in some contingencies. So maybe you're bringing some resistance bands with you. That's a good thing. You pack those in your bags, you have those. You can do a workout in your room if you need to and carry food. Well, also with it brings some ten issues. If you're going to do some running walking, make sue, you have what you need and you want me to carry some food.

I would always get some really weird looks when I was going through checkouts when I was trying to do this stuff because I would carry sardines with me. I would carry smoked salmon in little packets. I would carry tuna, and I would carry protein powder in little Baggies. And sometimes they thought that those little Baggies in the powder were wrong and they would say something and I'm like, okay, it's protein powder. And I'm making a bicep muscle. One point, my bicep and muscle muscle protein. And they look at me and, yeah, there's a language barrier and there's an expectation I might be trafficking drugs.

And I was not trafficking drugs. It was protein powder, but just recognize some of those things are gonna happen. And one time I was in Hong Kong and I was traveling with my Club Bells is £1 club Bells when I had them in my carry on and they wouldn't let me carry them on. Once I was leaving Hong Kong, I had flown there with them, but they wouldn't let me fly home with them. And they said, you can ship them home. And it was like $120 to ship them home.

And I'm like, I could buy three more pair for that. Unfortunately, I lost my Club Bells, so just realize that there's going to be contingencies. Things are not always going to work out the way you want to, but to the extent that you can plan and map it out, make sure you do. So make sure you have some contingency plans. If things don't go as planned and then the final thing is action. Sometimes we come up with a plan. It all looks really good on paper.

And as Mike Tyson says, everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face, you've got to hold yourself to the plan. And whether that's having an accountability partner or marking things on your calendar or however, you motivate yourself or keep yourself engaged in this journey, you have to to really be diligent while you're traveling to make sure you don't fall off and you don't stay off. That happens more times than not. It did for me when I was first getting into all of this because I would get on a trip.

And invariably I'd have a great plan. I was going to work out at LA Fitness across the street. My hotel was great. I could get the foods I wanted locally. Everything was exactly the way it was supposed to be. And then I just didn't act on it. So I'm only saying that because if you don't do it, it doesn't happen. You have to do it. No one can do it for you. And then the final bit before we end this episode is be kind to yourself.

Nobody's perfect if you slip up if you decide, okay, I can't do this. I plan to do this. I'm not doing this. Don't beat yourself up. It's not worth it. Be kind to yourself. Show yourself compassion. Actually, don't let travel be the excuse. Don't tell yourself I can't do this because I'm traveling because I was traveling 90% of the time and I felt like there was no way on Earth I was going to be able to do it until I did it. And then once I committed myself and again, we get back to that word commitment.

Once you get back to that word: commitment, excuses don't seem to make that much sense. If you had told your spouse that you were going to call them every night and wish them good night, guess what you're going to do every night because you're committed and you love them. You're going to make that phone call, even if you didn't necessarily want to spend that 30 minutes on the phone with them every night. But you told them you do it. You're traveling. You need to do it.

It's part of your relationship. Make exercise, make a sustainable lifestyle, make nutrition, make the things you're doing, a part of you do it out of self-love. Do it out of commitment. And then don't let travel be the excuse.

Post Show/Recap

[00:22:43.180] – Allan
Hey, Ras.

[00:22:45.190] – Rachel
Hey, Allan. How are you?

[00:22:46.480] – Allan
I'm doing well. So, yeah, today's show, I am traveling as this goes Live, and I think I'm in Indiana. Maybe on my way to North Carolina somewhere in between. Probably. Yeah, maybe. I think I'm on my way to North Carolina. I haven't memorized this trip, but I do know where I'm going, and I know I'm there a place for about five days as we go, but yeah.

[00:23:15.150] – Allan
So when we're traveling and I used to travel a lot, like 90% of the time. And as I said in the episode earlier here, 90% sounds like this weird number. It's not like just four days out of a week or five days out of a week and you come home for weekends, I quite literally would be home maybe three days a month.

[00:23:36.300] – Rachel
Wow.

[00:23:37.650] – Allan
And so I'm staying a lot of times in the same hotels because we had offices in major cities around the world, and so I would be somewhere. And it was just a function of me knowing the place well enough, doing the research to find the right way to do it. For many, many years, I used travel as an excuse, and I didn't do what I was supposed to do. I was in the hotel bar having dinner and some drinks, and that was not the course I needed to be on.

[00:24:07.220] – Allan
So I started staying in better hotels with nice gyms, and I started avoiding the bar at night. And if I needed to eat something because it didn't plan properly to go to a restaurant. I knew some things on room service that were on the menu that I could order. That would give me what I needed without busting up what I was trying to do from a food perspective.

[00:24:28.980] – Rachel
Perfect. Traveling is so hard for both keeping on track with your dietary habits, but also with working out. It can be such a distraction because on the one hand, you've got literally anything at your fingertips restaurants, room service. And sometimes when you have that you feel like, well, you might as well take advantage of it and eat all this yummy, not healthy for me foods. But then, on the other hand, I know when Mike travels quite a bit. It makes it almost easier to choose the foods that align with his eating or your eating.

[00:25:06.970] – Rachel
So it's kind of a tough decision to make.

[00:25:11.110] – Allan
A restaurant eating is a tough one because they're going to find the foods that you enjoy there. They're going to have outlandish sized portions, and they make a habit of giving you the things that people want to see. So you sit down and restaurant and they plop a basket of bread in front of you. And the first thing they ask you is what do you want to drink? And so it's automatically assumed that you're going to have a beer or wine or a Martini or something. And if your company takes as an expense account item, then who cares? I'm going to expense a couple of martinis.

[00:25:52.800] – Rachel
Sure.

[00:25:52.800] – Allan
that kind of thing. But it's a problem. It can be a problem, because if you're traveling a lot, it's all the time. And even if it's just a one off. So you're going on a trip for a couple of weeks with friends or whatever. Maybe that's time to do that as a detour. And just say this is my detour. But what I've found with my clients that are traveling a lot or even when they're not is that if they set some boundaries that they know they can do because they've done the planning, then they do much better.

[00:26:28.610] – Allan
They come back from trips saying, you normally when I go there, I put on 5 pounds, but I went there this time and I didn't put on any weight. And those are huge wins when you're trying to lose weight and you take this huge backtrack in the middle of that journey because you were traveling.

[00:26:46.270] – Allan
So just having some basic research and planning done so you know where to go, you know what to do and you know, you have access to the equipment or you don't. You know what's there. Some hotels I'd stay in. I had to run through neighborhoods because it really wasn't a good way for me to work out in their gym. It was this little rinky dink thing with a yeah, there was a treadmill in there, but I didn't want to just sit on the treadmill and look at a TV, so I would get out. And I'd run these neighborhoods that were behind the hotel. And after a while, you kind of learned in the neighborhoods and learn loops. You learn where things are over a course of a few days, and if you ever go back there, you can already know. Okay. This is the safe neighborhood. It's well lit. I don't have to worry about twisting my ankle and a pothole or anything on the sidewalk.

[00:27:32.290] – Allan
So you start planning that trip and you mentioned something was we were getting ready to come on. Just how sometimes that's pretty exciting to you to be able to do something new, go someplace new or try a different piece of equipment that maybe you don't have at your gym or at your home.

[00:27:47.320] – Allan
Right.

[00:27:47.950] – Allan
There huge opportunities to make this fun, to make this exciting. And I read it somewhere was that most of us don't enjoy vacation as much as we love thinking about the vacation that's coming up. It's the anticipation of the vacation that brings us the most joy, maybe even more so than the vacation itself. So think about it. If you're going on a trip and here's your opportunity to say, okay, I get to look at all these menus and see what I have the opportunity to eat that's going to be healthy for me. I get to look around and find hotels that have really nice gyms, or you stay in a hotel that's a mile or so away from the office.

[00:28:32.510] – Allan
And I would do that in Calgary. They have this thing. I call it a Habitrail, but it called the 15+, and it's basically bridges above the roads that go from building the building. And then there's all these little shops and things in there, a jewelry store, a C-store, and all this kind of stuff through there. Anyway, I had to walk half a block to get into this thing, a block to get into this thing. And then I figured out how to walk all the way to our office without ever having to go outside, which is valuable when you're in Calgary and you don't live up there and you don't like the cold. So this was a way.

[00:29:11.430] – Allan
Now what it meant was, if I took the short route and I went outside a little bit more, I cut it down to a mile. But if I got in there and went ahead and went all the way from point pretty much point to point, it worked out to about a mile and a half. So the walking to work in the morning and the walking back was comfortable, wasn't cold, and I didn't have to deal with snow and ice and everything.

[00:29:34.830] – Allan
And it was already 3 miles of walking just added to my day because I chose to stay in hotel. Now most of the folks that worked with me, they would stay in the hotel that was right around the corner. And so they quite literally walk across the street kind of thing. And I would stay in this further hotel and do this walk every time.

[00:29:55.550] – Allan
So just recognize there are ways if I could do it with 90% travel, you can do it.

[00:30:02.280] – Rachel
That's awesome. What a good thing that you found that little Habitrail to extend your walk.

[00:30:07.800] – Allan
I'm sorry if you're from Calgary. I know you probably hate hearing that, but when there's just a bunch of people walking through tubes from building the building, it's a Habitrail.

[00:30:19.040] – Rachel
That's awesome, though. That is convenient, though, to keep people out of the snow and the bad weather. When Mike travels, he's got a new facility he has to travel to fairly often. And he found this really neat trail. It's asfault paved for the bikers. And on the side of it, there's about a foot foot and a half of a more rubberized surface for the runners to go on. And the way he described it to me, it goes through some breweries and some restaurants. And so he'll do his run in the morning before work.

[00:30:49.670] – Rachel
And then when he's done with work and comes home, he has a place to walk to for dinner and walk back to the hotel. Now that he runs a lot more, he finds these little places where he could get some exercise in and some helpful walking around dinner time. It's pretty neat.

[00:31:07.680] – Allan
Yeah. And that's another cool thing about this. If you're in a town that you're not that familiar with is sometimes these walks can just be wonderful ways to discover things that you never would have seen from a car.

[00:31:20.090] – Rachel
Absolutely.

[00:31:21.050] – Allan
I remember walking through Houston and I came upon a park, and so I said, okay, I'll just walk on this park anywhere. So I'm walking through this park and they've got these wonderful stuff, this angel statue and no one would know this was here, this park. You couldn't see it from any major road. And I was like, this is crazy. I could have come here and then this close to something that's cool and not knowing it was here. So getting out and doing these things, walking around, again in a safe place. You want to make sure safety first, but there's opportunities. If you take some time to do some research and then just get out and explore.

[00:32:01.680] – Rachel
That's awesome. I love that.

[00:32:03.740] – Allan
Alright. Well, Rachel, I'll talk to you next time.

[00:32:06.610] – Rachel
Alright. Take care.

Patreons

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

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

Thank you!

Another episode you may enjoy

Wellness Roadmap Part 1

Less...

Let's Say Hello

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[00:04:28.450] – Rachel
OK, sure.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Episode

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

1) S – Start inYour Head – Mindset.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2) Y – You.

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

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

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

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

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

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

3) S – Sustainable Lifestyle.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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4) T – Training.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

5) E – Eat Real Food.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

6) M – Moderation Threshold.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

7) S – Serve Yourself and Others

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Summary – Your Wellness SYSTEMS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why did you go with Coach Allan?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Post Show/Recap

Post show with Rach

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[01:47:38.430] – Rachel
Right.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Patreons

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

– Anne Lynch	– Eric More	– Leigh Tanner
– Deb Scarlett	– John Dachauer	– Margaret Bakalian
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– Eliza Lamb	– Judy Murphy	– Tim Alexander

Thank you!

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