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
– 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

[00:04:02.900] – Allan
Hey, Raz. How are you?

[00:04:04.790] – Rachel
Good, Allan. How are you today?

[00:04:07.540] – Allan
I'm doing good. We have finished construction.

[00:04:11.820] – Rachel
Yey. That's so wonderful. Congratulations.

[00:04:16.340] – Allan
Yeah. Yeah. Lula's is now the construction is over and now we're just trying to get it used to living in and figuring it out because all of our crates and everything were stored in our part of our living space or pulling those out and getting them organized the right way. And then because we now have a fence set up, it was funny because apparently the police were looking for somebody last night and they came up just as my dog was waking up.

[00:04:43.820] – Allan
And I told Tammy, I said, since we have the fence set up, I'm just going to open up the gate door and let him out. It just happened just as I let him out. The police drove up on their motorcycle, shined the flashlight because they were looking for somebody that had darted off the road right by our house. And so the dogs barking. And I'm like, and so anyway, we bring them back in.

[00:05:04.340] – Allan
And long story short, I was up at three o'clock in the morning. And he was in the back. He was in the yard and everything was fine. And then he found a way out and we just some waited. We didn't know he could manage to get out, but he managed to get out. So I'm chasing him down the road. He just thinks it's the funniest thing, he just stays just arm's length away from me and he just wags his tail.

[00:05:27.510] – Allan
He's running around in the dark and it's so much fun to him at three o'clock in the morning to be chased by daddy.

[00:05:34.770] – Rachel
Not fun.

[00:05:36.300] – Allan
So it took me a few hours before I could actually get back to sleep, but I did get another sleep cycle in, so I'm OK. But it was not the night I thought it was going to be.

[00:05:47.010] – Rachel
Wow. Yeah. What a night. My goodness.

[00:05:50.070] – Allan
How are things up there?

[00:05:51.390] – Rachel
Oh, good. We're doing good. July is a busy month for us. We have a ton of birthdays. We just celebrated our daughter's birthday. Mike and I have birthdays at the end of the month and my dad and his twin and cousin of ours. And it's just a busy month full of fun. So, yeah. Having a good time.

[00:06:10.340] – Allan
Awesome. All right. Are you ready to talk about weight training?

[00:06:14.130] – Rachel
Yes. Yes. This is exciting.

Episode

Really appreciate the questions that you guys set out there. I'm definitely going to do this type of thing again. And if you're interested in helping me make this podcast better, I'd really like to have you in the group. So come to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/group and join the 40 plus fitness group today.

Introduction

Do you feel like you're getting weaker as you age? Here's a hint. The jars aren't any tighter than they were in the 1990s.

If you're not doing weight lifting or resistance training, you are getting weaker. And there's a study I'm going to have a link in the show notes that cites that the number one reason we lose our independence as we age is because we get weaker, we lose our strength. Our enemies are sarcopenia and osteopenia. And if you're not progressing with your weight lifting, you're likely regressing. And we'll go into that in a lot more detail as we get into what progression really is and how you can do it and how you can keep it going to the point that you need it.

So get out your pens, because we're about to get really, really deep into weightlifting progression over 40.

Vision

In my wellness roadmap book, I talk about having a wellness GPS and in the Wellness GPS, the G stands for grounding and that's your reason why you're training, why you're dieting, why you're doing any of this. And the vision is also a really important part of this overall commitment to what you're doing. You have to have an idea of who you want to be.

And in reality, almost every single person I talk to about vision, one of the core elements is they want to be stronger. And they want to be more athletically looking, more athletic looking, and so they might use words like toned or fit, but they want that that's a part of this vision of who most of us want to be as we age. We don't want to be frail. We want to be strong. We want to be athletic.

We want to look good. And most of us need all of that. So we lift weights to get there. So with resistance training, I say the term resistance training, sometimes that's a little confusing. So I want to take a step back. Sometimes you're going to hear this as weight training, which is what I used for the title. I tend to use the term resistance training because it's a little less threatening than saying strength training, weight training or body building.

And the reality is they're all very similar. They're all using some form of resistance to affect the muscles in your body. And so for most of the time, you're going to hear me use the term resistance training. And I use it interchangeably with weight training, with strength training, with bodybuilding. You're going to have your own specific goals of what you're trying to accomplish, but you're going to probably do it with some form of weight training, resistance training or strength training, OK. For a muscle to grow, it needs three things.

It needs a stimulus. Now, that stimulus is typically us getting under some form of resistance, under some weight, doing a weight training episode of some sort. Now, it doesn't have to be that we went to the gym to do a workout or we did a workout round. It could be doing yard work. And you might notice after a day of doing some hard yard work and carrying, you know, bags of mulch around, you've got some aches and pains. You feel it. That's the stimulus. You give in your muscle a reason to change.

The second thing that you need is protein and carbs. And yes, we do need carbs for muscle building. We don't have to have them. But if we want to optimize our weight training gains, we definitely want to make sure that carbs are a mix of what we're eating. But protein is really kind of the core and protein kind of gets this really weird discussion when we get into weight training and bodybuilding and all of that.

And so all these little things have come about, these rules of thumb. This broscience. And there's one broscience myth that's out there that you can only consume or absorb 30 grams of protein per meal. Absolutely not true. There's other myths that say you need to spread your protein out throughout the day so that you're, you know, giving your body all the amino acids while it's repairing. And there's also even some myths that say you need to eat right before right after a train like you have some anabolic window.

And the reality is that some people saw great success. So with anecdotal evidence, they ran off and did this. But I actually have linked to a study that shows we don't really know what the upper limit for our protein absorption is. And there's a lot of variables. How much fat did you eat with that meal? How empty was your stomach? And just basically variations between people. I also have a link to a study in the show notes to talk a little bit about that.

They deep dove into it really good. And they linked to a lot of other studies. So what we do know is that the human body can absorb more than 30 grams of protein per meal. But the question comes down then is how much protein should I really be getting? As a general rule of thumb with my clients that are training, actually lifting, doing weight training, I recommend that they get one gram per pound or about half a little less than half a gram per kg the way that works out.

So whichever way you like to handle weight, that's there. Now, one other question that comes up is, well, what if I'm overweight? What if I'm carrying and, you know, instead of being the normal 220, I should be I'm 290. Do I need to be eating 290 grams of protein? And the short answer is probably not. So, you know, as a general rule there, if you feel like 290 grams of protein is too much, you can tap that down a little bit.

So, for example, if someone is overweight, they weigh about 290 kind of estimating what they would weigh without their body fat. We're probably saying, you know, that's a good, what, 70, 80 pounds, 90 pounds maybe of fat so they could try 200 grams. Again, this is if you're training hard, try 200 grams and then just see how you recover, see how your body reacts. Are you getting enough protein to stimulate the anabolic effect of muscle growth?

So if you don't feel like you want to try to eat the 290 and again, you don't have to distribute it across six meals or whatever across the day, you quite literally can have more than 30 grams of protein in any given meal. So it's not that hard to get up to a 180 to 200 grams, which is probably as much as many of us would need, we're not professional bodybuilders, but you can take that protein down a little bit and see. But again, just as a general rule, if you're trying to put on strength, trying to put on some muscle mass, I recommend one gram per pound.

the third thing that you need for muscle growth is rest. For many of this, this is actually the hardest part. The lifting is not already. Eating is not hard. It's when it comes to the rest. Now, there's going to be rest between each set in most cases, depending on how your workouts put together.

But in general, there's going to be rest between sets. Now, that rest time is when your body is taking its energy stores. Basically, the mitochondria that fire the muscle need ATP. So ATP is effectively the fuel for our muscles and our body can regenerate ATP. It just needs a little time to do that. So if we lift, we do a set and then we rest. The longer we rest, the more we allow the ATP to develop.

Now we don't want to wait too long or the muscle cools down and it's not really even the same workout anymore. But you do a good lift. You rest for anywhere from 60 seconds to three minutes and I would never recommend more than three minutes. But for most of us, 60 seconds, 90 seconds, maybe two minutes is going to be enough time between sets. And I'd say as a beginner, try 60 seconds and then see how your second set goes.

If you're almost fully recovered, you might not be fully recovered. Then you're hitting into the sweet spot. So the way I kind of look at is so if I can do 90 percent of what I did for the first set during the second set and then I'm less, you know, just 90 percent less than on a third set. And if I do a forty fourth set, then again, 90 percent less, it's just a little bit harder each set.

I might have to lower the weight a little bit, but in a general sense, I know I'm giving my muscle the stimulus it needs and then the rest it needs between sets rest between workouts. You know, a lot of people that are lifting and training all the time, they have really high recovery rates. They're in their 20s. They're doing great. If you're over 40, though, that's less likely that you're going to recover that fast.

And if you're not doing something like anabolic steroids or some other enhancement, you might find that it's you're going to need some time. I typically like to take at least two days before I work a body part again. So if I did a really good leg session on Monday, I'm probably not going to lift legs again until at least Thursday. And then you can play that by ear and just see how fast you recover. But you're going to need a couple days.

So the folks that go to the gym every single day and do the same workout every single day, they're not giving their body the rest between sets and therefore they're not doing things as intensely and will get into intensity and volume in a minute. But if you're doing an intense good workout that's giving you the proper stimulus for muscle growth and muscle and strength gains, then you're going to need a couple of days for that to happen. And then the final bit of rest is sleep.

Sleep is a very important component because sleep is when all of our hormones are kind of resetting and reorganizing. It's when we're healing internally. And so sleep is a very important component for strength gains, for muscle mass. If you're not getting good sleep, you're probably not going to recover as fast. So making sure that you're getting your rest is it's really important. So, again, the three things that you need for muscle growth is the stimulus that's lifting the weights.

It has to be appropriate. We'll talk about that a minute. You need the protein and carbs, but mostly the protein and make sure you're getting enough of it and then you need the rest. And again, making sure you're getting good quality sleep. You're taking time and breaks between each set and you're taking time in breaks between each workout for a given muscle group.

Sponsor
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Progression

So what is progression? Progression is basically where we're getting stronger or we're gaining more muscle and we're doing that generally consistently over time. Now for someone who's over 40, that looks a little different than someone who's a teenager or in their 20s.

Those individuals that are teenagers and 20s, they have a ton of testosterone and they have the opportunity to put on a great bit of muscle mass and a great bit of strength if they go through the proper training and do the rest and the other feeling and do all that stuff. When we get a little older, though, muscles aren't going to grow as fast, predominantly because we don't have the testosterone and also because we don't generally recover as fast.

So not recovering as fast means we can't lift as often. And not having the testosterone generally means we're not going to be able to lift as much and we're not going to be able to, again, recover as fast. So both of those are kind of against us when we're over 40 for, you know, getting tons of strength gains and muscle mass and all of that. So progression generally just means that we're continuing to build muscle and maintain muscle mass, maintain bone density and be strong up to the point.

We need to be strong. OK, I tore a rotator cuff a few years ago and so what I recognized was, OK, what I was doing was, I was trying to push to 80 pound dumbbells over my head from a seated position. And the struggle was not the pushing it over my head. The struggle was getting the dumbbells into the position. I needed them to start the lift. And that's where I hurt myself, where I tore my rotator cuff.

After that event, it really got me to thinking, do I ever have a situation where I would be putting one hundred and sixty pounds over my head for any reason whatsoever? And the short answer is no. I would ask for help so I don't need to be able to lift one hundred and sixty pounds over my head. I don't need to be able to deadlift 500 pounds. So the things that I was doing back then aren't really my priority.

Again, we talked about vision and I do want to be strong. I want to be strong enough to help my wife around if she needs it. I want to be strong enough to carry things that I need to carry for her. So, you know, we just moved into a bed and breakfast and I've got all my stuff in there and it's all in these bins. And some of them are quite heavy. And so my wife wants to go through those bins and she's like, get that bin for me and bring it in here.

I want to be strong enough to do that for her. So I don't have to hire somebody to be that person. So you're going to find strength the way you needed to find strength. You're going to define muscle mass and the look that you want and then you're going to want to work to progress to that point. And then after that point, the progression is really about just making sure we're building a cross or building a good platform. So we're not just strong in one direction, we're strong across all of it.

So we have that support. So there's less injury, less everything else. So progression, as I stated, is not necessarily that you just keep getting stronger and stronger and stronger or you just getting bigger and bigger and bigger. It's kind of a combination of just making sure that you're resilient and you're strong enough. So one question that comes up a lot is, well, should women do what men do? You know, we go and we start looking at exercises.

And, you know, women typically will approach the gym very differently than men until they actually get in there and figure a few things out. And then those women realize that the lifts the men are doing work just as well for them. In fact, what I have found is most women can get stronger than men pound for pound if they train hard. Women have a capacity to put up with stuff. They have a capacity to train hard. And while they don't have the testosterone to get as strong as a man or to get as big as a man, they do have some.

And so they are able to get very strong. They are able to get very fit. And so from a training perspective, there's not a real reason for a woman to train differently. With one caveat, women's knees tend to be a weak spot. Women have knee problems a lot more than men. They have hip problems a lot more than men. And so if you have a structural dysfunction, you want to make sure the way you're training is not causing you problems where you're going to injure yourself.

And I'm going to get into that in a minute because I think this is really, really important. So there's not a real reason for a woman to train different than a man other than playing your game. Don't don't necessarily feel like you have to do a certain lift just because the men can do it or are doing it. Recognize if you have a weakness, you have a movement dysfunction, don't play that game. But otherwise there's no reason a woman can't train just like a man.

Circuit training is another topic that comes up quite often, and I'm going to be honest with you, I'm not a huge fan. Circuit training is great for really one good reason that it gets people moving and it gets a workout done quickly. And if it's supervised and managed properly, it can be effective at building muscular endurance. It's typically not very good at building strength. And I'll get into that in a minute. There's a basic structure for most of the circuit training.

So you're going to go in and in some gyms, there's actually a set of equipment that set you just go through the loop and as soon as you finished with one, you move to the other and then the other and then the other. There's two basic approaches to this. One is the big muscle, little muscle. So you might start with leg press and some leg workout. Then you're going to move to maybe your back and then you can move to your chest and are going to move to your shoulders and then you can move to your arms.

And so there's kind of a circuit. You go around, you do when you move to the next machine, you can also do that would have that set up with dumbbells or barbells or whatever. But that's one way that a circuit would work. And there's another one and it's called peripheral hard action. And that's basically where you work a lower body and then you work in upper body. And the premise of circuit training is because you're working a different body part.

You don't have to take that break between sets because you're already automatically taking it, because you're not working that body part again until you come back around for another round. So a circuit can save a lot of time. You can get an hour, hour and a half workout done in less than 30 minutes in a circuit training setup. But there are some problems to it. OK, three reasons that I really don't like circuit training as we're talking about strength and building muscle is that one.

It splits your focus. And so you're going to end up lowering your weight and you're going to end up lowering your time and attention. OK, and I'll get into those topics in just a minute. But just that I call it kind of the Barbie workout and you'll see it where they're not really carrying any real weight. And you can tell they're not really resisting, they're not really struggling. They're just flop in their arms. And now they might do it in really good form and it might, you know, look like they're doing something.

But because there's not enough resistance and there's not enough time and attention, they're not getting the stimulus that we talked about. So, you know, if you go in and you do that, you're typically not optimizing the weightlifting elements of that circuit. If you do put the weight on there and you're doing it fast with the weight. Again, so we're we're doing it pretty quickly. That's more about power and so powers which are after at a given weight.

That's great. You can do that. And so most people are trying to work through the circuit quickly because that's they're thinking about the cardio component of this circuit and they're going through it. So they're not really developing really any core strength. And for a lot of people, when they're going through it, they tend to use the same weight every time. So they know I'm on peg eight, I'm on peg two, I'm on peg three. I'm on peg eight.

And they go around the circuit that way and every workouts the same. And in many cases, like I said, they come back every day and do that same workout. The final thing reason I'm not a big fan of circuit training is when you take speed and you add a load, you increase your risk of injury. So you might be on a machine. And that's great for avoiding injury a lot of times. But when you're moving fast, you're not necessarily paying attention to your form and the risk of injury goes up.

And so there's just a few reasons why I'm not a huge fan of circuit training as a way of getting stronger or building muscle mass. It's just not that effective and the risk is just too high.

So let's talk about resistance. When we're doing resistance, there's two types of resistance, there's fixed resistance and there's variable resistance now fixed resistance is using something like a dumbbell or your body weight or a kettlebell. It weighs the same through the entire length of the movement.

Now, one thing about our muscles is pur muscles are designed with different output capabilities at different points in a movement. So an example I can give you would be this. If you completely straighten your arm out and you grab a weight, you try to pull that weight up from the bottom of that movement. It's very difficult as you get closer to your shoulder to basically curl that weight, your bicep gets shorter in that angle for the lever gets better and you're able you're a lot stronger.

So you're stronger in one part of the movement. And that's where things like resistance bands providing a variable resistance can be actually sometimes as effective or not more effective than the free weights. So there is, for the most part, fixed and variable resistance most of the workout. So we're going to do unless you work with resistance bands and some of the things like chains and some of the other ways that you can create that variable resistance, some machines do it.

But most of the work week we tend to do in the gym or at home and with body weight particularly is fixed. OK, so what kind of resistance work can we do when we're talking about this? There's bodyweight, as I mentioned, resistance bands. There's machines, there's free weights and free weights can include barbells, dumbbells, kettle bells and the like. So which one is the best? And I kind of have a few answers for this.

First is, what do you have? I mean, obviously, I could tell you that, you know, if I could tell you that Dumbell and a barbell would be one of the best pieces of equipment for you to own to make your legs stronger. If you don't have it, you don't have it. So you're not going to be able to do that work. So, yeah, having it is kind of important. Next is what can you get?

So, you know, if I could go to a gym, I don't have to have it. I can go to a gym. So I effectively now have access to it or I can buy it and put it in my home gym and I have it. So, you know, if you can get it, then that's great. Have a plan for that. And then but the real answer I want to get to is that the best is the best tool for the job.

So I'll give you an example. If you wanted to open up a drain and it had a common head screw or three common head screws, you know, you'll be in a movie and you'll see someone take a paper clip and they're able to open that. Well, it's not hard. It's not easy using a paper clip to open a screw, but it can be done. If you had an electric screwdriver, you'd be done with that job in a matter of seconds.

So it's really, really important for you to have the tools you want, which builds all the way back to the vision. You can get yourself very, very strong with body weight, but with some of the implements that you might have access to in a in a gym membership or in a home gym, that you really work well to outfit, you might be able to get results faster. So just thinking about the investment that you want to make relative to the vision you have, you can you can build something.

And so I'm not going to say that body weight is less attractive or worse than dumbbells, but the flexibility you get with having both is better. So the better equipment you have, it's going to make the job easier. So it's just about having the right tool. So let's get into some of the meat of what we're talking about when we're getting into weight training, you'll hear the term reps and sets and I'll define those for you. The reps are repetitions that are the number of times that you move the weight through a certain movement pattern that you're doing for that workout.

So for a body weight squat, you're lowering your butt you're bending your legs down and then you're squatting down and you're getting to parallel below, and then you're coming back up to the starting position standing. That's a repetition. A set is the number of times you're going to do that repetition. So I could give you a workout. And the first exercise is body weight squats. And I'm going to say, I want you to do three sets of ten repetitions, so you're going to do ten repetitions, you're going to take a rest, say 60 seconds, and then you'll do your second set and then a rest and then your third and final set.

And that would be your sets across that exercise. So your reps and sets are that. The other way that we add to a workout and make it a better stimulus as we change the time under tension. So if you're looking to add muscle mass time under tension is your friend. Time and attention is simply the amount of time the muscle is working during each repetition. So the way that looks is I set a tempo for the lift of I'm going to bring the weight down slow.

So I says I'm doing my squat, I'm going to squat down slow for a count of three and then I'm going to squat up slow for a count of three. And I think you'll find if you try that right now, I don't know if you can do if you're driving, don't. But if you can try that, try just doing a quick little squat and feel what that feels like and then trying to do it when you go down for a count of three and then back up for a count of three.

And I think you can see how much more difficult adding time under tension makes that exercise. So sometimes it's not about adding more weight to an exercise, it's merely about slowing down and increasing the time and attention. Now, when we take the reps and the sets and the time and attention and the weight and we add those all up, we come up with what we call workout volume. OK, so for any given body part, your body is going to be capable of doing a given volume at a point in time.

And progression is merely being able to increase that volume. OK, we can do it by increasing the reps, we can do it by increasing the sets, we can do it by increasing the time under tension, and we can do it by increasing the weight. We never want to do all four at the same time. In fact, we only want to do one at a time. So typically, as you're putting a workout together or you're working with a trainer, you'll probably notice that you'll have a fixed workout with a set weight and you'll do that.

And then the next time you come in, if you got stronger, could handle the volume. They added more weight. That's the typical way we do this. But they might also add another setnce you get stronger, they might add a little bit more a few more reps are in or they might change the time and attention. All of those are ways that we can change the workout and increase the volume. And that's that's how we're getting the progression.

Now, one word of caution. When you're doing this weight training and you're over 40, you have to do gentle nudges, OK? And so the number one rule of weight lifting and if you take nothing else away from this episode, take this away. The most important part of weightlifting is to not injure yourself, because if you enjoy yourself, you're not weight training anymore, at least not with that body part. So the number one rule of weight training is do not hurt yourself.

And we do that with the gentle nudges. So a couple of things that are a little confusing as we get into this. So I'm asking you to add volume. I'm asking you to add a stimulus and do this. And typically you're going to recognize that that stimulus happened through pain. It's unfortunate, but it's normal. While you're doing the lift, you might feel a little bit of discomfort and afterwards you might. So when you feel pain after a workout and it's immediate, you need to be paying attention to two things.

Was it a muscle pain or was it a joint pain? If it's a muscle pain, that's probably something you just want to take off a little bit. If it's a joint pain, that's something you probably want get to some help for straight away. Joints don't have the ability to recover the way muscle does, but a terrible muscle is a bad thing, too. So if it's super intense, acute, go, go seek some medical attention.

It's a couple of days later you start feeling really, really sore or maybe even just the day later. That's called delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS). And that's not a bad thing or a good thing either. So you may experience DOMS when you're lifting and that's that doesn't mean you had a great workout. It just means yes, you did have the stimulus we're talking about, but you may not always have DOMS as you go through your workout.

So that should never be your focus, never be your intent. OK, as you're lifting and we talked about your vision, you really need to be thinking about what your intent for that lifting section is. OK, do you want to get stronger? Do you want to put on some more mass? This is called hypertrophy or do you just want to build some more power? So the ability to do something quickly with load is power. So in thinking about that vision that you had, what does that look and feel like?

So for most of us, over 40, it's about building strength. And maybe some muscular development. So as we're putting together your workouts, that's knowing that intent will help you do the workout the right way. OK, and know that you're getting the right result. If you don't have a target, you won't know when you're there. So when you get started, you might experience something called Newbie gains. And so that's usually for the first two to four months as someone comes in and starts lifting.

They notice that they get stronger a lot faster. So you may go in and say, OK, the first time I did this lift, I could really only do 10 pounds. And by two weeks later I've doubled that. And then four weeks later, I've tripled that. And it's like, you know, I went from 10 pounds to 30 pounds over the course of a month. And you're like, wow, I might be a power lifter for Olympics.

I don't know. The reality is no, that's just newbie gains. It will level off. There's a couple of reasons why newbie gains happen. The first is every time you try to use a muscle, your brain has to fire off for that muscle to fire and use certain muscle fibers. It almost never uses all of the muscle fibers at one time. It uses some of them and it uses just enough for what it thinks it needs to do to do that lift.

So if you are trying to pick up 10 pounds, it struggles with that at first. How many do I fire off? And then once it knows how many to fire off, it gets better at that and then get a little stronger and you can start increasing the weight as you increase the weight. Your brain again is learning how to fire new muscle fibers to do that. So you're basically teaching your muscle and your brain how to talk to each other.

That's basically the neuromuscular communication and that's a big part of what Newbie gains are. And then after that, it's the muscular development. And in many cases, that muscular development comes from a little bit of what I would like to call muscle memory. If your body was more muscular at one time, it knows how to get more muscular a little bit faster. It will turn the muscle fibers thicker. It will actually start adding muscle fibers less so when we're over 40.

But it will activate more muscle fibers and you will grow stronger and a little bit more muscular faster during those first two to four months. And then it's going to kind of level off. And when it does that level off, we call that a plateau. Now, you're probably much more familiar with plateau's from a weight loss perspective. That's a normal part of your body balancing and trying to save you from starving to death. With muscular growth, It's a very similar thing in that it's just not a linear process.

You're not just going to continue to get stronger until you can lift a car. This is not how it works. So at some point you will plateau that exercise that you're doing. You're going to find your peak PR, personal record. And for the most part, you're going to play around there for a long time. And if that's strong enough for that lift for what you're trying to do for your vision, then full stop. You did it. You're good.

OK, but if we want to break a plateau. The biggest and best way to do that is through a process called periodization.

Periodization

With periodization is kind of where we put all this stuff together. So we talk about the different exercises that we're going to do. We talk about the weights and the reps and the sets and the time and attention or tempo. And you've been doing a particular workout and maybe you do that workout for a number of months and then you get to your plateau.

Periodization is a way that we can avoid ever getting to a plateau. And the way a periodization works is we'll do a particular workout for six to eight weeks and then we'll switch it up, will change the exercises, will change the way you do it. So instead of doing say you were doing 100 pounds for 10 reps, we might change it and say you're going to do one hundred and twenty pounds for six reps. So, you know, the volume is very similar.

It's just a different lift. It's a much heavier weight and the reacts to your body tends to be a little different. OK, so a good periodization does a few things for you. One, it does help you prevent the plateaus that are inevitable. It won't prevent all of them, but it's a really good start. The other thing is it also works very well to improve the variety of your workouts. OK, so if you want some more variety to your workouts, you can do a standard six week deal.

You can even do it more often if you want to. But one of the things I find is if someone is changing out their workout all the time, they're not really getting the sense that they're any stronger. What you're experiencing is, OK, I can bench press 100 pounds and then I move over and I'm doing another exercise. So I still don't know if I'm getting stronger on the bench press. In all likelihood, you are.

But until you cycle back around and start doing bench presses, you really won't have that bad experience. You won't see it. So if something's working, my advice is typically leave it in, stick with it. But if you want to avoid plateaus and you want some more variety, you can mix that in and just recognize you might not see the gains, if you will, that other people will. So that's one of the things like a crosthwaite style workout where they're constantly varied in their workouts.

It's sometimes hard for them to measure where they are relative to how they were before. And unless they do the same workout again later. So they might do a workout like Murf and, you know, for Labor Day. And then a year later, after being in Crossfit for an additional year, they do murf again and they may find that they did a better they had better performance at it. Now, Murf is not necessarily a strength or a muscle mass thing, but it's just when you have that constant variety, you don't necessarily get that feedback that you've done something better.

So doing the same workout, doing those gentle nudges, feeling and seeing yourself get stronger, there's a lot of value to that as far as motivation and keeping you going.

Action. OK, none of this happens, I just taught you a ton of stuff, and if you had the pencil out, like I told you, you've probably been writing down feverishly. If you don't do it, it doesn't it doesn't help. It doesn't happen. You've got to be in the gym.

You've got to be consistent. OK, and I want to leave you with a tool that helps you do that, OK? And it's a tool that I learned from business coach, but I see it works just as well for what we're trying to do here. And it's called the Be do have model. OK, so Be OK. So the people that are like the vision you want to be, when you think about their vision, your vision, I mean, what are people that already have that look like?

what are they doing? What are strong and fit people doing? Well, they train, they actually it's not that they become gym rats per se, but it becomes ingrained in their lifestyle, they're training. They're working. They're in the gym and they're doing it. They're in their home gym and they're doing it. They're in their hotel room doing it, OK? And they grow to love it. That's the one thing that I've found for most people that are healthy and fit and exceptional fit.

They just love it and they're doing it every day. So the Be part is you just have to have that mindset of I'm going to love the process as much as I love the result. The Do part is training and that's just being consistent. So the Be is in your head. You've got to love it, you've got to want it, you've got to mean it. The Do is your training and then the Have is you'll get the strength, you'll get that look and you'll be your vision.

And so start with your vision. Develop your training around that. I gave you a lot of information about how that works. I'm going to be doing a call next week, I mean, this week on the group. And so if you're part of the group 40PlusFitnessPodcast.Com/Group, I do a Facebook live and I announce the Facebook live. So if you can't make the live, then at least go on to the invitation for the live for the event and leave some comments, leave some questions.

I'll be glad to during the live answer your questions. If you're on the live, I'm going to try to answer your questions. I want to make sure that this is more of an interactive podcast when we're doing these types of things, whether it's a solo show and I'm trying to teach and encourage and get you going, because if you want to be stronger and you want to have more mass and you want to be, you know, once your bone density to be where it is and you just want to be fit and tone.

those are not really words, but I'll use them anyway. You want to be that person, you've got to do the work and you've got to know the right way to do it. And you've got to follow rule number one, which is anybody? Right, don't injure yourself and you've got to know what you're doing to not injure yourself, and you've got to use gentle nudges and it's all of that. So there was a lot in this podcast episode.

If you have any questions whatsoever, please reach out to me. I'm on the Facebook group. I'm on Facebook. You can email me. You can even comment on the post for the show notes. As I mentioned, there were a couple studies that we got into. So if you have questions, I'm here for you. I thank you for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

Post Show/Recap

[00:48:20.330] – Allan
Welcome back, Raz.

[00:48:21.740] – Rachel
Hey, Allan. That was really a great discussion and weightlifting over 40 or the progression of weightlifting over 40, that was really helpful.

[00:48:30.290] – Allan
Yeah, I was really thankful for the folks that were on Facebook, you know, in our group at 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/group, because they asked some really great questions that, you know, if I had not asked them that question, there were bits that I would have probably left out that I shouldn't, now I can talk about weightlifting for months, like our books about it, obviously, you know. And so, you know, it's more than you can cover in any one podcast.

[00:48:58.520] – Allan
And so I've covered strength training before and we've had other, you know, people on authors and whatnot to talk about weight training, resistance training and like. And so it was just good to kind of go in and say, OK, you know, everybody is telling you to lift weights and then lift more weights and lift more weights. And, you know, like Rich, you know, he asked, when is progression too much? What have you done too much?

[00:49:21.560] – Allan
And or, you know, how do you stop or do you stop and, you know, what do you do? And and the reality is, you know, once you become a lifter. You think of yourself as a lifter, you know, you know, the gym becomes or your home gym becomes kind of a part of your training, a part of your daily life. It's you brush your teeth, you lift weights, you know.

[00:49:43.300] – Rachel
That's right. Yeah.

[00:49:45.500] – Allan
And so, you know, I was it was good to be able to go through that and get into it. But I would always preface this with, you know, I said the number one rule of weightlifting is to not injure yourself. And that happens if you follow rule number two, typically, and that is use good form. Whatever training you're going to do, I think it is really important for you to be strategic and really take your time to learn the movements.

[00:50:17.450] – Allan
Machines can seem really, really easy because it's really only one direction. You can push the way and only one direction. It can come back, but you can still injure yourself on the machine. And if that machine isn't aligned to you properly, you're pushing against a resistance in a way that your body's not designed to do it. So, you know, the seat height, for example, on a press machine can mean the difference between using your chest muscles and overly using your shoulder muscles, which can lead to an injury.

[00:50:50.220] – Allan
So even with machines, it's important for you to be strategic and know what you're doing and if necessary, find someone at the gym that knows what they're doing. You know, someone that works there, coach or hire a personal trainer.

[00:51:04.130] – Rachel
Oh, those are great tips. Years ago when I lived in Florida, I did have a gym membership and I would go in and I would just use the machines, just lighter weights. But just like you mentioned, I never always took the time to adjust the seats or maybe play around with different weights. I just kind of wanted to do my thing, get in and get out. But along that same line, though, I never had any personal trainers, anybody at the gym or any of the staff anyway, come up and teach me anything or show me.

[00:51:33.830] – Rachel
And there's some machines out there that I don't even know how to sit in, let alone me. It was probably there's some crazy devices out there.

[00:51:40.850] – Allan
There are. And you see and you see the videos on YouTube all the time how not to do it. And so, yeah, I've seen some pretty crazy things at the gym. The reality is a good gym that has trainers. The trainers should be walking the floor and offering suggestions. If you're in a gym that doesn't have active trainers and again, they're not getting a lot of times they're not getting paid for those hours that they're walking around the gym.

[00:52:07.160] – Allan
It's just expected as a part of their their contract to train people there is that they're walking the floor. It serves to help the people that are working out. It also serves as a sales opportunity because they can see that you need some guidance. And so at least they're there to step up and say, you know, come on in for free consult or something so we can make sure you don't hurt yourself again, rule number one.

[00:52:33.890] – Rachel
Well, that would be great. And there's no shortage of YouTube videos and articles and things out there that teach us how to do certain things. But there's no guarantee that the person showing you how to make that move or do that, that movement knows what they're doing. And even with the NSAM training that I've had, I feel more educated. I feel more aware of what I should and should not be doing. And as far as weightlifting goes, but there's still a few moves that I wouldn't touch.

[00:53:02.060] – Rachel
And the deadlift is one of them. I'm so concerned about doing it with perform, I'd be a lot more comfortable having somebody show me how to do it and teach me how to do it properly, just just to make sure I don't hurt myself at that particular one.

[00:53:14.540] – Allan
Yeah, the key to a deadlift that most people mess up is they think it's just like a squat with the bars in a different place. And it was nothing like the squat, but the deadlift is a hip hinge movement. You're literally all you're trying to do is hinge your hip and you do that by leaning forward more than you would on any kind of squat. And you literally drag the bar up your leg so your shins should be vertical, your shins should be vertical in this lift, whereas squat they won't be they're going to be at an angle out.

[00:53:56.390] – Allan
And so if your shins are straight and you're bent down, your whole center of mass is now well behind the bar. So you're talking a foot or more away from the bar and then you want to drag that bar up. You're up a good session for me that i've got bloody shins. Oh, it just is. The bevils on the bar that they rub up against that I don't wear high socks, you know, I'm not that girly girl yet, but I'm just.

[00:54:30.050] – Allan
Just drag it all the way up your legs, if it gets away from your legs, you're losing it and you need to lower the weight. And so if I'm going to work with someone and teach them the deadlift, it's let's start with a PVC pipe. Quite literally, it weighs next to nothing. Then I'll pick up one of those spin lock bars that weighs about 15 pounds. And that's a good time for them to at least feel a little bit of weight to it, drag it up along their leg, have a little bit more of that bevil I was talking about.

[00:54:59.450] – Allan
So they kind of feel that roughness as it's going up. And I understand what people are afraid of the deadlift because they keep being told that deadlifts are going to hurt your back. But I'm of the principle that you hurt your back because you're not doing deadlifts. The history of the deadlift as this is, is actually it was a technique taught to people to move human bodies, dead bodies. When people were having to remove dead bodies, they were they were hurting themselves doing it because the human body is heavy, especially when it's solid and it's awkward.

[00:55:34.580] – Allan
So they were teaching them how to lift a dead body without hurting themselves. And that's where the deadlift technique as lift came to be in the dead lift. So but they don't want you to hurt your back. And if you and reach over to lift up something heavy, like you want to, you know, lift up one end or pick up one end of a dresser, if you and someone else remove dresser or it's a hip hands movement because you can't get your knees underneath it, you're behind it, you're beside it.

[00:56:03.800] – Allan
So you have to use a hip hinge properly or you're using your lower back and that leads to injury. So learning good technique, even if you're not going to go super heavy on the deadlift, learning good technique for a given comfortable way isis valuable to not injuring your back. And so you should easily be able to do sets of of deadlift at half your body weight.

[00:56:27.620] – Rachel
Oh wow.

[00:56:28.160] – Allan
Think about the other things that you might want to lift.

[00:56:31.270] – Allan
OK, and that fits in like a bag of dog food. We have a fifty five pound bag of dog food because we have two hungry dogs. To pick that up, I have to use the Hip hinge deadlift and to pick up the dog food at least to get it up to waist high. But so it's a movement that we do and it's good for us to generally know how to do it safely and up to a specific level of strength.

[00:56:59.330] – Rachel
Yeah, that's a good one. And we were talking about squats to squats are another one. A lot of misconceptions apparently with that one.

[00:57:07.160] – Allan
There are. Because, you know, you'll hear your toes should be pointing directly forward and about shoulder width apart and then you'll hear your knees should never go beyond your toes and all of these other things. But the reality is all of us have different length legs. So depending on how long your shin bones are relative to the upper part of your leg, you're going to have a different lever system.

[00:57:31.880] – Allan
It's going to work and it's going to look different. So you can watch a guy do squats and you'll see it. Someone who's got a leaner frame can have their legs practically right beside each other. And just you'll see, it's more common in Asian countries. But one of the resting positions is literally to just squat down and the butt is right up against your heels sitting on the ground. And they're comfortable sitting in that position because they have the mobility.

[00:58:03.410] – Allan
They've small frames so their legs can be very close together and they can get down in that position. My hips are wider, so I have to spread my legs wider or I can't get my hips down without shifting motion, my synonomous forward. So if I'm going to shift it now, I'm more in a hip hinge, but the weights on my back, my shoulders. So that puts me at a bad place for my back.

[00:58:29.270] – Allan
So for me to keep my back in a neutral position, I have to spread my feet and I do point my toes out slightly and then the knees should always just track over the toes. And when I say over, they may go to the toes, they may go slightly past it again. The core of it is just to make sure that it's a smooth motion and that your knees are lined up properly with your toes. And then when you go down, you always want to go to parallel or below.

[00:58:58.430] – Allan
And there's a very important reason for that. When you go down to parallel or below, you have to fire your glutes. OK, prior to that, everything is being basically slowed down or controlled with your quadriceps. So if you can imagine having let's just say you put half your body weight on your shoulders and you start to squat down and you want to stop that movement, suddenly you're only using your quadriceps to do it. And that puts pressure on the knees.

[00:59:32.460] – Allan
OK, that's why there's knee pain for a lot of people doing squats is they do half squats. They don't know three quarter squats. If you get down to parallel or below, the quadriceps are out. They can't do anything. So the only way you stop that weight is to fire your glutes. And you use the glutes, one of the strongest muscle in your body. That used not much when we're sitting around, fire that off and that stops the momentum going down and can restart the momentum going up, therefore not putting pressure on your knees because the glutes are able the quadriceps on the front of your legs are able to relax and let the glutes take the weight.

[01:00:15.690] – Allan
So it's a handoff that happens right about parallel. So it's important to get to parallel so the glutes can fire. And one way I tell my clients that they want to really make sure that they feel that is to imagine that you have one hundred dollar bills squeezed between your butt cheeks. And if you hold on to it through the whole lift, you get to keep it.

[01:00:37.870] – Rachel
Oh, nice. That's a good trick. Good tip on that one. And that's an important movement. And I like to lift weights and do body resistance training and squats are always in my wheelhouse. I'm moving the glutes. Strengthening the glute is the most important thing for runners since more runners should spend time in the gym, that's for sure.

[01:01:00.550] – Allan
Well, yeah, because it balances you out. You know, if you're running, it's great. That's great. Cardiovascular stamina work. You do build leg musculature, but it's a muscular endurance. It's not a muscular strength. And then with weight training, you know, you can now start working in laterals. You know, you can do side lunges and you can do other work that's going to complement your legs and keep your knees healthier.

[01:01:27.580] – Allan
And you can find those movement issues that if running, you know, if running is going to hurt you over time, it's going to be either because you have an overuse injury or it's because you let other muscle groups get weaker. And, you know, remember, I had, was it John Vanquish. We talked about how weight lifting would be superior to cardio overall over time for weight loss. And that was predominantly because, again, yes, you don't have any muscular musculature in your if you're doing endurance running.

[01:02:04.690] – Allan
They have almost no musculature in their upper body because there's no usage of it. They're swinging their arms. But then that's not doing anything for them. So building a little bit of muscular strength makes you functional outside of running and building core strength and muscular strength in your legs, outside of just the running muscles of the quadriceps and the hamstrings, quite literally, will help you run faster. So, you know, particularly in the sprint. So if you get to the final hundred yards and you're like, you know, you're seeing that clock ticked down and there's a PR on that clock.

[01:02:37.720] – Allan
Yeah, I'm going.

[01:02:40.690] – Allan
And that's that extra strength and extra power that you're building by doing resistance training is going to help you do that.

[01:02:47.030] – Rachel
Oh, absolutely. I also want to point out one more thing you mentioned in your podcast about what did you say that the cans aren't getting any harder to open? The pickle jar? You know, and it's funny because, you know, it's not any harder, but I was that strong enough to begin with. But, you know, it's those types of functional movements. You know, it's one thing to be a well rounded, rounded runner. That's fine.

[01:03:11.830] – Rachel
But it's the functional movements of day to day life that could be enhanced by doing a little bit of resistance training, whether it's the dumbbells or the bands like you mentioned, or body weight like I do on occasion, you know, just that type of activity could make just daily tasks just that little bit easier.

[01:03:29.950] – Allan
it does. I mean, when you think about like we talked about the deadlift, OK, so what do you have to do with the deadlift when you're grabbing the bar? You have to have the grip strength. And for most people who work the deadlift up to a point, they realized that the limiting factor for them becomes their grip, not how much they can deadlift. And so then and now it's grip strength. And you'll see people if you go into a gym, you may see people using wraps where they strap on or hooks or something.

[01:03:59.410] – Allan
So it's taking away the requirement that they hold the bar for their lift. OK, which means then for the deadlift they can deadlift more because they've removed the single point of failure. But rather than get their grip strength stronger, they do that. So then so then you come up with terms like raw and ated and things like that. So there's deadlifts that people have done with straps that could deadlift more typically than someone deadlift without. And the prime factor of that is that they're using the straps to end a grip is not failing in that lift.

[01:04:34.840] – Allan
So but you do make your grip stronger. When you're doing it, I mean, just because you're walking around, you're holding something heavy, a dumbbell, a barbell or something, or you're doing a pulling movement every time you grab a bar, every time you grab something and you're having to hold that, that's grip strength. And so that's going to help you open that pickle jar.

[01:04:57.520] – Rachel
I sure hope so. That's my plan.

[01:05:00.520] – Allan
All right. Well, Rachel, I'll talk to you next week, OK?

[01:05:03.430] – Rachel
All right. Take care. Thanks, Allan.

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Another episode you may enjoy

How to Get Strong After 40

Less...

Say Hello

Hello and welcome to the 40+ Fitness Podcast. Rachel and I weren't able to get together to do our normal talk around with the show this week, she's traveling back from her ultramarathon. She did complete that. So it's going to be really cool to talk to her next week about how that went and how her recovery is going. So I'm really looking forward to that.

And then my wife was traveling back to the States for a friend's wedding and to see some family. So that kind of left me alone to manage the reconstruction work we're doing on her bed and breakfast. And it's a full time job. I'm not kidding, man. There's just so much going on with all the workers coming in, getting everybody everything they need and getting everything done. Dust everywhere. It's a real mess. Anyway, we're close to being done. I think another week or two and we should have all of the construction work done and we'll be one step closer to my wife having her bed and breakfast, Lula's bed and breakfast here in beautiful Bocas del Toro.

I hope sometime in the future you can come check her out there. It's a beautiful place in a wonderful location in the world and so really excited for her. Now, today, I'm going to be sharing the top 10 weight loss myths for people over 40. And hopefully I'll be shining a light on some of the things that might be holding you back. Mindset, nutrition and exercise, all play roles in weight loss. Unfortunately, most of us will emphasize one of these things and kind of deemphasize the other or not pay attention to the other.

And that usually is our undoing because a lot of times we're actually focused on the one thing that isn't the most effective of those three. So hopefully today I'll get you some information and get you started on doing something great. But I don't want you to stop there. If you're someone who has been stop and start dieting on your weight loss, you lose some weight, you gain some weight. You're on this roller coaster. I want you to ask yourself one question.

Haven't I done this before? It didn't work last time, so why will it work now? So if we keep doing the same things, we're going to get the same results. If you repeat old mistakes, you're not going to get a different result. You're going to get the same result you got last time, ninety-nine point nine percent of the time. I don't want you to do that. It's time to make the changes that will stick. These 10 weight loss myths for people over 40 will give you some guidance, but don't stop there.

If you're serious about weight loss, it's time to do something different, something more. It's time to hire a coach. I'd like to see if the 40+ Fitness 12-week gas program is for you. E-mail me at 40plusfitnesspodcast.com. We can set up a call so I can understand where you are and then we can put together a plan that will work for you. Don't let another day, week, month or year pass with you getting the same

You've always got get off the roller coaster. Email me at allan@40plusfitnesspodcast.com and get the guidance, accountability and support you need to lose the weight for good.

Episode

The top 10 weight loss myths for people over 40. As I went down and I was preparing for today's talk, I went through and I kind of cataloged the different myths into three basic categories, three focus areas, if you will. Exercise, nutrition and mindset. And as I go through each of these focus areas, I'm going to talk a little bit about their effectiveness in helping you with weight loss and why they're important.

And the reality of it is all three are important. If you're missing out on one of these three, you're going to slow your weight loss efforts. So let's get into it. The first category I'm gonna talk about is exercise. Now, that tends to be the one area where most people will put their effort in with regards to weight loss. You asked them why they gained the weight. And nine times out of ten, the answer is, well, I stopped exercising.

And while that probably played a little role in it, it wasn't the only reason why you're putting on weight. The lack of exercise is not a weight gain model. It's not necessary that you're going to have to put on body weight because you stopped exercising. But yes, exercise can be a helper. One of the side effects of exercising is that it can help you lose weight. It won't make you lose weight, but it can help. So exercise does play a role in weight loss. It's just not necessarily the role that a lot of us think.

1 – X is the best exercise for weight loss

The first myth associated with weight loss for exercise and when the exercise category is X is the best exercise for weight loss. And this usually comes out in the form of a question where someone will ask in a forum or they're asking you directly as a trainer, what's the best exercise I can do to lose weight? I hear that question practically every day. What exercise can I do for weight loss?

And the reality is you shouldn't be doing exercise for weight loss. You should be doing exercise to be fit for the things you like to do. If you like running, by all means, run. But if you've listened to the episode I had was with Sal DeStefano, you know that running and in that type of exercise isn't necessarily going to give you the body that you want. Yes, you probably will lose some weight running, but it's not going to give you the things you need.

And yes, lifting weights can make your body burn more calories at rest because you're carrying more muscle. We're over 40, though, so the ability for us to put on a ton of muscle isn't there. We can't put on some muscle and that will help, but it won't make you lose weight. So the best thing I can advise you is find exercises that you enjoy, find exercise that gives you the look and the feel and the ability to do the things you want to do. And do those exercises do them consistently. And yes, one of the side effects of most exercise is it helps in your weight loss journey.

2 – burning more calories will lead to weight loss

The second myth, burning more calories will lead to weight loss. And so this is sort of a corollary to the other myth we just said. Burning calories is great, but our bodies are very, very smart. They're set to balance. And so if we start trying to burn a bunch of extra calories, one of two things is going to happen.

One, we're going to get really, really hungry. Our body is going to say, hey, we need more calories. So it's going to amp up our hunger hormones. And that's not good if you're trying to lose weight. The other thing that can happen is if you're not eating. So maybe you yeah, you are hungry, but you're not eating more, your body will start shutting down systems that you're not using. So your reproductive system, your immune system, those things are going to function poorly.

You're going to notice it, and so burning more calories is not necessarily the answer for weight loss. If you're active, yes you are burning more calories. And a side effect of that can be that you're going to lose some weight, but you shouldn't be working to burn more calories so you can eat more food. That's not the model we want to go with. We want to go with the exercises that give our body what they need.

And we'll talk in nutrition later about how you should be approaching your metabolism and the amount of food you're eating and those types of things. But do exercises that give you the results you want, not weight loss. That'll just be a happy side effect.

3 – X is the best exercise for toning your butt, stomach, arms, etc.

The third one in this also tends to come in the form of a question, but is X is the best exercise for toning a certain part of your body. And so we'll hear someone will say, what is the best exercise I can do to make my waist smaller or my butt toned or my arms more toned?

First off, a toned or toned toning is a marketing term. It actually had no real meaning in the world. Now, most of us will believe what it means is that we do an exercise that means that our muscles are more fit and our arms are smaller, but is smaller. But the reality of it is to get smaller, you have to lose body fat and exercising is not going to do that. Now, if you get your body fat down below a certain threshold, you will begin to be able to see the muscle underneath.

So if you wanted a six pack abs, you're going to have to get your body fat down below 10 percent, which is not easy when we're over 40. When you do that, then, yes, it might make sense for you to do some abdominal exercises for the sake of building a little extra muscle there so that you can see it. You know, you can appreciate the what you've got there and you can make it look better, more full rounded, whatever you're trying to accomplish.

I mean, you know, with the butt it's a perfect example is people will do exercises to enhance their butt, but they're also already at a very low body fat percentage. And that makes it easier for those muscles to show. So there is no best exercise for toning a part of your body. You can't spot reduce. So it's best to just try to overall do your weight loss and try to lose body fat, do your exercises so you look and feel the way you want to.

Once you've lost the weight, then you can modify your resistance training, your running or other things to build the body. Look that you want the esthetic that you want, but you can't do an exercise to make that happen.

Sponsor

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

A little over two years ago, my wife and I moved to Bocas del Toro, Panama. It has opened our eyes to many things that you don't get exposed to in the United States. One is how much waste we humans create, and another is how impoverished people often live in unsanitary conditions. Reel Paper is a company that's working on both of these issues. Reel Paper sells toilet paper and paper towels made from 100% bamboo, which grows faster, requires less water, creates more oxygen, a.k.a. less greenhouse gases, and doesn't require replanting after harvesting.

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I often joke that my health and fitness vision is for me to be able to wipe my own butt at 105. If I have any say about it, it'll be Reel Paper on the toilet roll. Go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/reel and use the discount code, 40plus to get 25% off your first order.

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4 – Sweat is fat leaving the body

The fourth myth, and this is also in the weight loss category is sweat is fat leaving the body. I used to believe this one. This was one that was real to me. I would do my cardio and I would take pictures of the sweat on the floor underneath the elliptical machine. And while I got really good at doing the elliptical machine and I would sweat, I wasn't really losing weight.

That's not weight. That's water. And yes, there's water weight. But as soon as I drink a glass of water after I was done, I put that weight right back on. So it really wasn't fat leaving the body. It was me burning extra calories. Fine. But that wasn't fat leaving the body. That was me getting my stamina up, which was helpful, but it was not fat loss. And it's funny because, you know, they used to sell these vinyl suits that the sweat suits that you'd run around into sweat off the weight.

And they have these wraps that you wrap around your waist. And I thought those things were relics of the past, that the Smith maybe had disappeared into the into the ether. But here in Panama the other day, I saw a guy running down the street in one of those vinyl suits, now it's 85 degrees and it's 85 percent humidity. He's already sweating. And now he's got this vinyl suit on and he's running. And I'm thinking to myself, there's, you know, this is not good.

But I didn't stop and tell him he wasn't a client. And I'm not that guy. You know, it's going to come in and tell people how to live their lives. But he looked young and fit. And so I wasn't so worried he was going to have a heat stroke or keel over for another reason. But, you know, it was not a safe way. He was dehydrating his body. He was not really helping his fat loss goals.

That comes from other things. So no sweat is not fat leaving the body. It's just a way that your body cools itself by getting rid of water, put it in the water on the surface of the skin as it then evaporates, it gives a cooling effect. But you're also losing a lot of electrolytes during that period of time and you're dehydrating yourself. So it's not beneficial to sweat more. Don't think that's a win for you. It's good to sweat every day.

It's good to get out and do some things and get yourself moving and work up a sweat. But that's not a weight loss thing. It's just you enjoy getting out, moving around, doing those things. And yeah, you happen to sweat, to cool your body off. So that's the four top myths that I have related to weight loss in the exercise category.

5 – You have to cut carbs to lose weight

We'll move into the nutrition category now. So the fifth myth for weight loss for people over 40 is you have to cut out carbs to lose weight. This is a myth. Do not. Now, I know I probably should pause here and let you catch your breath. What, Allan? You believe in Keto, you follow Keto and it works for you. Yes, absolutely. So you must go low carb. You must think carbs make you fat. And the reality is, no, not all carbs. And I think that's where we lose the discussion because we want to simplify the rule.

And the reality is it's not all carbs. Fiber does not get you fat. Vegetables do not get you fat. In fact, I have never seen anyone who was fat because they ate vegetables. We get fat because we eat sugar. And refined carbs, and it's the refined carbs that are the problem. So if you can move to a more wholefood diet. So if it comes in a box, a bag, a jar or a can avoid it as much as possible. Look on the labels, the primary ingredients for anything you are eating should be food.

You know, if you buy a can of sauce, tomato sauce, the number one ingredient should be tomatoes. They don't need to add sugar. They don't need to add anything else. Just can the sugars. I mean, can the tomatoes and let that be it and you're fine. So, you know, some things in bags like you go to the frozen section and there's some vegetables that have been quick, free, frozen. There's fruits that have been quick frozen.

Those are awesome. Those are great. But sometimes you just look and for one reason or another, they had to add something else. And it's those processed, the highly processed we find carbs that are causing the weight gain. And yes, if you cut refined carbs and sugar, you will lose weight. Almost always. Everyone I've ever worked with, they cut the sugar, they cut the refined carbs, they lose weight. So, no, you don't have to cut carbs to lose weight.

You have to cut refined carbs. You have to start eating whole food. OK, so not all carbs are the same.

6 – Fat makes you fat

The second myth in the nutrition category and our sixth myth overall is fat makes you fat. Now, this comes from the camp of people who are calories in, calories out. And the reason they like to say this is a gram of fat has nine calories, a gram of carbs and an anagram of protein each have four calories.

So basically they're looking at fat and saying the easiest way to cut calories is to cut the fat out of food. Now, there's just one fundamental problem when they cut fat out of food, it tastes horrible. So they add sugar. Yeah, they add sugar and when they add you're going to make it taste better. And when they do that, what do they do? They make you fat. So the low fat stuff that you see, the low fat yogurts, walking through yogurt section, all of them are low fat.

That is very hard to find full fat yogurt these days because everybody wants to lose fat, they want to cut fat. And fat is so important for your body. Your brain is 60 percent fat. And I don't mean that in a bad way. I mean, it is constructed of fat. Your cells, every cell in your body is manufactured using some fat. So you need fat in your diet. In fact, there are some fats that are called essential fats, essential oils.

These essential fats are fats your body cannot make and you need to have them. So avoiding fat can actually be a problem because you're not giving your body the nutrition it needs to build itself, which kind of takes me to my next thought. OK, our food is our body. Our food is our energy. Our food is everything. If you're eating low quality food, you're making your body out of low quality stuff. And that's not how you want to go through life, if you're wondering why your joints are hurting, you're wondering why you're putting on weight.

It's the food. It's almost always the food. Go for nutritionally dense food, and that's going to be meat, eggs, fish and plants. And that's why I have no problem bringing on vegans and vegetarians, because one of the things that makes their way of eating good or great is it typically involves a lot of whole foods. And the better the quality of your diet, the better the quality of food you're eating, the more nutritionally dense it is, the better it is.

So that doesn't make you fat, fat in combination with refined carbs, makes you fat. So, yes, the fat in the pizza, combined with the refined carbs, makes you overeat the pizza. You're getting too many calories in a short period of time. And it's not nutritionally dense if it has vegetables on it at all, if it has meat on it at all. Those are processed meats. They're very little vegetables. In fact, you almost have to eat an entire pizza to get a serving of vegetables.

And that's not the way to go through life. Yes, occasionally have a piece of pizza, but recognize that it is should not be the staple, it should not be the go to source for nutrition. It's just not there and so it is fat in combination with refined carbs, that's the problem.

7 – Fat burners can help you lose weight

The third nutrition myth, and this will be our seventh overall weight loss myth for people over 40. Is these fat burners. And these ranged from benign to ridiculous to dangerous.

I was talking to a potential client the other day and she said, you know, she had gone low carb and it worked pretty well, but she plateaued. So now she was going to take this product. And I go look at the product. It's a multilevel marketing scheme where people are showing how much weight they've lost with this thing. But here's the trick. All the people photographed are in the multilevel marketing thing. They're all selling this stuff.

So, of course, they want to testimony the great people that are doing this, these people are trying to sell this stuff to. Now, did that product help them lose the weight? I don't know. But they definitely had a before and after picture that they could show you and they could show you that product. I have a before and after picture to show you, too.

You can also find it on the website. I didn't take any fat burners for that weight loss. I ate wholefood, I got nutritionally dense foods, I had gone paleo, I started lowering the carbs, I started pulling out the refined carbs and I got down to a point where I was eating meats and vegetables. And I lost that weight, I didn't need a fat burner to raise my metabolism, and in fact, many of these things have been found to be dangerous.

They can harm your heart. They can do a lot of those things. They get pulled, you know, the things that were approved by the FDA for weight loss, they later on find out cause problems and they get pulled off the market. There's a bunch of cases of different things over the years that have done that. And so rather than trying to ramp up your metabolism by either exercising yourself like crazy or taking one of these crazy fat burners, focus on getting nutritionally dense food, and by nature, you will eat fewer calories because your body's getting the nutrition it needs at a lower calorie level.

And then that's when exercise is beneficial because it kind of pushes this a little faster. So it really is it really does come down to the nutrition being the primary lever that's going to help you lose weight and all these fat burners and all these other things. I even, you know, at one time took that stuff that pulls the fat out of your food and leaves a nice little orange ring in the toilet. Yeah, I did that for a while, not for when I figured it out.

But during all those years when I was doing things wrong and starting and stopping, I was like, oh, well, I'll take this product here. I can buy it in a Wal-Mart. And I take it. And now, yeah, I'm leaving little orange rings in my toilet every time I go to the bathroom. Whereas all I really needed to do was focus on the quality of my food, eat whole food, stay away from the junk and you'll lose the weight.

8 – I'm genetically destined to be fat

So that kind of wraps up nutrition and now we'll jump into the mindset category. Now, this is the area within weight loss that almost always gets neglected, people will jump in and they will immediately say, OK, I'm going to go on this strict diet and I'm going to start exercising every day. And that usually lasts about three weeks. And then they quit. OK. And sometimes it's only because of the stories that they're telling themselves, their actual mindset.

So I have three more myths and they're all going to fall in this mindset category. So myth number eight of the top 10 weight loss myths for people over 40 is I'm genetically destined to be fat. The nice way people will say it is, well, we're a big boned family. You know, what you are is you're used to eating the way the rest of your family eats. And that's why we're all overweight. Family units tend to learn food habits from each other, and those food habits then become a part of our lifestyles.

And we all get fat. And so if your mother and father are fat, yes, you're more likely to be overweight. The reason is not because of genetics. None of us were genetically predisposed to be fat. There are some very rare, very, very rare genetic diseases that do cause people metabolic problems sometimes, yes, your your thyroid isn't functioning the way it needs to or some other things are going on in your body that are causing some of this weight gain.

But overall, the vast majority of people are not genetically flawed to be overweight. What we have, though, is a great system in our body that knows when we have excess of calories, it's good to store that is fat. That's a safety mechanism. So that if we get into a point in time when we don't have access to food, we have this energy store so we can have the energy to keep looking for food, to keep hunting and keep gathering.

So when we were hunters and gatherers, this was a survival mechanism. This was huge. This is really important. In a day where we have abundance of food, we can get it wherever we want. Quite literally, I don't know that I can walk more than 100 feet from where I am right now and not find three or four restaurants that will serve me all the crap I want. I can find three or four grocery stores all within 100 feet of where I'm sitting right now.

And so we have this abundance of food. So we don't ever have to go through those famines unless they're self-induced, so our body doesn't know how to jettison that fat that fast because it's never had to do it. It wants to hold on to it. It genetically wants to hold on to that fat and hormones are going to do what it needs to do to cause our body to stabilize so you can lose some weight and then you're probably going to plateau a bit.

And then it's time to shift and change, to slowly coax your body to understand it's OK to let go of the weight. So you do have to have the mindset that you can do this and that you stick with it, you have the patience to stick with it so that you're giving your body the right signals, the right coaxing to do the right thing. The body is going to fight you because the body needs to hold wants to hold on that fat for safety reasons, just like our blood pressure stays within a given range.

When we're healthy. Our blood stays within a certain range. Our body temperature stays within a certain range. Our body has weight set points that it doesn't want to go below for safety reasons. So we need to coax our body to go ahead and shed some of that fat and we need to stay persistent. And that's all about mindset.

9 – I lack the willpower to keep the weight off

The second one in the mindset cateogry is kind of related to that, so this is the ninth myth, I lacked the willpower to keep the weight off.

And as I mentioned before, you get really excited. You get in there and you do that first three weeks and then something happens to get you off or you plateau or something. And suddenly now it's really, really hard to stick to it. OK, willpower is not the problem. Commitment is the problem. If you didn't really dive deep into your mindset to understand why you're doing this and why it's really important to do it now. Then you're yes, you're never going to have the willpower to say no to the donuts.

I know I didn't. It wasn't till I was sitting there and I said, I have to do this. I don't have another choice. It's now or it's never. And I made the commitment to myself, to my family, to everything that I held dear, that I was going to change. It was a commitment and at that point, willpower didn't matter anymore. Because I had no desire to do anything but what was healthy and good for myself.

And I did. And I got myself where I needed to be. So this is not about willpower. This is about commitment. So I strongly encourage you to just jettison words like willpower, jettison words like resolution or even the word diet, and start looking at more positive ways to view this. I am committed to being different. I'm committed to making a change in my life. And then the other thing is lose some words like can't, I can't do this.

You know, if you can't do it, you won't. But if you're relying on willpower, well, maybe you can't, but if you've got that commitment and you're doing the right things, willpower becomes non-negotiable. It's just there it's not a willpower. My wife even says it to me. She said, I don't believe you have such great willpower. And the reality is, no, I just have a commitment. When I make a commitment, I keep it. And I know you can, too.

10 – I'll be happy when I lose X pounds

The tenth of the top 10 weight loss myths for people over 40 and the final one also in the mindset category is I'll be happy when I lose X pounds. So for some people, it's just five more pounds, not last five pounds. For some people, it's 10, 30, 50, maybe even more than 100. But you're telling yourself you'll be happy when that happens. And the reality is, no, you actually won't be any happier than you are right now.

You might be a little bit excited about the fact that you've done it. You'll have more energy because you're carrying around less weight. But that's not what's going to make you happy. I would encourage you to get happy now to do the things that bring you joy, to spend time with the people that bring you joy. So happiness is something you're working on with independent of the weight loss, but you're working on both. So if you're working to make yourself a happier person, you're going to be happy whether you lose that weight or not, because once you lose the weight, you may feel like you've reached some destination.

But the reality is that's not your reward. Weighing 50 pounds less is not a reward. The things you can do are reward. The things that you have in your life that are bringing you joy is the reward. So I would encourage you to focus on happiness, just like you do any other important thing in your life, set some goals, get some rules, go and get some things going. Build some habits that bring more joy into your life and get rid of some things. It can be a social media, you know, reading the news sometimes just get rid of some things that aren't bringing you joy, that aren't serving you, and you'll be happier.

Then when you lose the weight, you'll be a happier person at a lower weight. Not the other way around.

Summary

To recap, the top 10 weight loss myths for people over 40. In the exercise category, there are four, so number one is X is the best exercise for weight loss. The second myth, burning more calories will lead to weight loss. The third myth, x is the best exercise for toning some part of your body and four sweat is fat leaving the body.

Exercise should not be a part of your weight loss plan. It should just be an add on where you're building fitness, much like we talked about building happiness earlier, build fitness for the things you want to be able to do. Then the exercise will give you more, a lot more. And yes, as a side effect, most people that are active in exercising do see some benefits in the weight loss area, but it's minor and they have to be eating right to make that happen.

Which leads us to the next category, nutrition, and there are three myths in the nutrition category. Number five, you have to cut carbs to lose weight. Number six, fat makes you fat. And then number seven, fat burners will help you lose the weight, the reality of all this is a good nutrition plan, just where you're eating Whole Foods and staying away from the process crap, avoiding things, most things in a box bag, can or jar, knowing what you're putting in your mouth, getting the most nutritionally dense foods you can is going to help you lose weight.

And that might mean cutting carbs for most people it will because you're cutting out the refined carbs. For some people that might be eating less fat, you know, particularly if the fat you're getting is from those refined, high, processed foods. So you might actually end up cutting fat and you might actually end up cutting carbs. That's fine. You're going to find your calorie spot. You're going to be in that spot. You're going to be nourished because you're eating whole foods, you're eating nutritionally dense foods and you're going to feel better.

So those are the three that fit in the nutrition category. Now, we're going to move into the mindset category. And as I mentioned before, this is an area where most people don't spend much time and they should because it's a very, very important aspect to weight loss and more so to keeping the weight off. So number eight in the top 10, weight loss myths for people over 40. I'm genetically destined to be fat. Number nine, I lacked the willpower to keep off the weight, and then number 10, I'll be happy when I lose X pounds.

OK, the reality is mindset and the way you feel about yourself and all those things are things that you should be working on independent of your weight loss goals. Yes, you should want to lose weight if you need to lose weight, but if you think you can't because you're genetically predisposition for something or you think you can't because you just don't, you lack the willpower, the capacity to do it. You won't do it. You've given yourself too many obstacles.

If you have to beat your own genetics, you're not going to if you have to rely on willpower all the time, you're not going to. Commit to change. Whole Foods avoid the process crap, nutritionally dense foods exercise for the things that you enjoy doing, make exercise enjoyable when you're able to do the things you enjoy doing. You can exercise and now you can do those things. You're going to have more joy in your life. You're going to be a happier, healthier person.

So those are the top 10 weight loss myths for people over 40. I hope you take something valuable out of this. If you have some other myths that maybe I didn't cover that you'd like to discuss or at least share with us, come to the Facebook group at 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/group. It's a wonderful group of people. Share your myths there. I'd love to hear what yours are. If there's some other ones that you'd like to add or you have some questions about these that we talked about today, there'd be a great place for us to dive in a little bit deeper, go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/group and join the 40+ Fitness Group today.

Patreons

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

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Thank you!

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Let's Say Hello

[00:02:08.630] – Allan
Hey Raz, how you doing?

[00:02:10.220] – Rachel
Good, how are you today, Allan?

[00:02:12.200] – Allan
I'm doing better. I'm doing better. It's over at least as far as symptoms for me are. I can actually taste things again. I'm not sure about my smell being all the way back. It's really hard to tell because I didn't have a very good sense of smell to begin with, which has its benefits when you're dealing with stuff that you don't like or doesn't smell good, but also has its deterrence, because if you can't smell something smells bad, then you don't know it smells bad and that can put you in a bad place.

[00:02:42.470] – Allan
So I'm not the one. If you smell something bad, you say, do you smell that? My answer is probably going to be no. And especially after covid. Like I said, I don't know that I've fully recovered, but there wasn't that much to recover in the first place.

[00:02:53.930] – Rachel
Well, good. I'm glad you could taste food again. I can't imagine how weird that would be not to taste.

[00:03:00.080] – Allan
It was weird. And you know, the thing that a lot of folks wouldn't recognize or wouldn't know is that a big part of overeating is that people don't have the reward system for taste and therefore they're actually not tasting their food as much. And that's why we have a tendency to overeat. You know, the mindless sitting there eating a bag of chips while you're watching a movie, you don't taste those chips. You tasted the first bite, then you got into the movie and the crunch, crunch, crunch, empty bag.

[00:03:31.340] – Allan
And you didn't even actually taste that food. Your body just got the endorphins that got the dopamine hit. And that just sort of happened. And so when you're not tasting food, you actually it's hard to not overeat because you tend to just end up eating more of it. It doesn't signal your body that you're full. It doesn't tell you that you're eating foods and getting the right mix of foods. So the signaling is just haywire.

[00:03:59.810] – Allan
So it's really easy to overeat when you're not when you can't taste food. I know that sounds counterintuitive.

[00:04:06.740] – Rachel
Does sound weird.

[00:04:08.870] – Rachel
it's strange. If I couldn't taste anything, I don't know that I would waste time sitting at my table eating food.

[00:04:13.970] – Allan
I ate more than I would normally have eaten because I couldn't taste it. And I just kept eating, thinking, OK, I need to eat. And but I realized after I was done, I was like, you know, normally I would take that cut of steak and that would be two steaks. And I ate the whole steak and like, you know, still try to eat good stuff. But, you know, in a general sense, when I'm not feeling well, I kind of let myself do those other things, you know, then that I wouldn't normally do because it's like, OK, just

[00:04:46.270] – Allan
Chill, you know, I can't get people to go by the high quality foods that I want to buy. I need you to go here to that store and buy that for me and go to that store and only buy this if it says this on the label. And, you know, I couldn't get to folks, so I was like, I just buy me some potatoes, some chicken.

[00:05:03.910] – Rachel
And that's probably good enough.

[00:05:05.890] – Allan
Yeah. And well run with it.

[00:05:07.480] – Rachel
Oh my goodness, how crazy.

[00:05:09.820] – Allan
Yeah. The worst part of it was one of our neighbors, dear friends, she brought us some pasta with lobster. And I couldn't taste.

[00:05:19.370] – Rachel
Oh, no. Oh, how disappointing.

[00:05:24.970] – Allan
Like this looks like it would taste delicious.

[00:05:28.610] – Rachel
Oh my gosh. Well now you'll have to try it again once now that you're feeling better and can taste a little more.

[00:05:34.400] – Allan
I'll have to call her and say thank you. Can I have some more?

[00:05:39.500] – Rachel
Right!

[00:05:39.500] – Allan
See how that goes?

[00:05:40.370] – Rachel
Absolutely.

[00:05:41.870] – Allan
How are things up there?

[00:05:43.430] – Rachel
Good. Really good. You know, funny thing happened up here the other day. We lost power for no good reason whatsoever. It was a beautiful morning, but we lost power. And so I just went about my day cleaning. I knew the power would be back on in a few hours. But the funny part was every time I entered a room, I turned on the light switch because it's such a habit. And I knew the power was out.

[00:06:07.310] – Rachel
I knew what I was doing because the power was out. But every time I entered a room, I kept turning on the light switch and it got me thinking about habits. And I do have a lot. I drink coffee every morning. That's my morning habits. And I do like to run and I do prefer running in the morning. But I'm being kind of forced out of that habit right now because my 50 miler that's coming up starts at noon.

[00:06:31.280] – Rachel
So I've had to adjust that habit to run later in the day. And it's been a challenging adjustment for me. And I'm actually looking forward to getting this race over so I can go back to running in the mornings again. I am a creature of habit.

[00:06:47.420] – Allan
Well, we all are. We just like you said, we don't necessarily recognize it until something brings it to our attention, you know, like the light switch thing. A lot of us are that way even during the daytime. We're going to walk into a room. We're going to hit the light switch. It's a trigger thing. When you walk in the room, you're going through the door, you're going to do something.

[00:07:08.830] – Allan
It's, you know, kind of when you start to understand those triggers and then your immediate action, you know, that's when you can actually start making some decisions. You know, can I change this habit? You know, do we need the light on every time I walk in the room? And the answer at least half the time is probably no.

[00:07:27.440] – Rachel
Right.

[00:07:28.520] – Allan
You know, because half the time it's daylight and half the time it's dark. So half the time you don't necessarily need that light on. But that's not a habit that from a health perspective, you know, is damaging. But a lot of us do have those triggers for the bad habits, you know, and so being aware of that, that's self awareness is really, really important. So it's good to mix up your schedule. It's good to kind of have a little bit of that.

[00:07:58.130] – Allan
It's a learning opportunity. When you said a strange thing, the power went on like, what was it, Tuesday that happens every day here?

[00:08:05.970] – Rachel
Oh, gosh.

[00:08:08.150] – Allan
Not every day. No, that's that's a little oversell. But no, the power goes out regularly here. You know, sometimes we know it's going to happen because they'll say, well, you know, they want to clean the the growth around some of the wires, you know, and can't they just turn off that part of the, No, they've got to turn off the whole island. OK, but, you know, like, we can't get water in our house unless our pumps running.

[00:08:31.490] – Allan
Yeah. And so we don't have water. So when the power goes out, we don't have running water. We don't have power. Air conditioning, all that. You know, I've set it up now. My wife, we have uninterruptible power supplies here. You know, you almost have to. Yeah. So I've got the Wi-Fi router in the actual router. All of that set up now on our UPS the power goes out,

[00:09:00.130] – Allan
We'll have power for at least an hour or so to continue to do what we're doing. So if we were, you know, Snapchat being spread like doing the Zoom call, you know, it would all stay on everything around me would go dark. But then, you know, we could still keep going and then finish out what you're doing and then it's OK. I guess I'll go read a book outside. You know, but, you know, it happens.

[00:09:26.290] – Allan
You sleep and the power goes out and it's like, oh, and you know, most I know it because the air conditioning goes off. But if I leave my phone playing the sounds of the fan, I'm not going to wake up, you know, because I mean, I'm going to I'm going to wear my battery down and I'll wake up at three o'clock in the morning with no sound. And I'll realize that the battery on my phone died, too.

[00:09:46.750] – Allan
And so I don't want that to happen. So, you know, when the power goes out, they need to wake up, turn my phone off, try to sleep in the very dark room with no sound, which is odd for me. It's different. And that's what I'm saying. Sometimes just doing something that's a little out of the norm teaches you the habits. You know, for me, the habit is. Turn out the light, go to bed, turn on the fan noise on my phone, go to sleep, I'm almost like that, I mean, and almost that fast.

[00:10:16.470] – Allan
it's just because a habit I have a sleep routine and during that sleep routine just kind of puts me into the next step of the habit. Fall asleep. So someone could be good habits and some of them could be bad habits and some of them are just wasting a little electricity. Not a lot. Just a little. But, you know, this kind of one of those things that we learn, we learn more about ourselves doing something different than we do, doing what we always do.

[00:10:42.210] – Rachel
Yeah, that is right.

[00:10:44.730] – Allan
All right. Well, you ready to get into today's talk?

[00:10:47.160] – Rachel
Yes.

[00:10:48.330] – Allan
Cool.

Episode

On today's episode, I wanted to talk about coming back from injury or illness over 40. As you may have heard, I was diagnosed with covid a little over a month and a week ago and not a cool thing and not a cool thing at all, but they put me in an ambulance, drove me home and said, sit your butt in this house for two weeks.

They did give me some food and we had some friends that could shop for us. So we were OK. But it did kind of mess with my plans. I had the basic symptoms, fatigue, cold and flu stuff, loss of taste and smell, and this really weird phantom smell thing, which I won't go into, but just recognize that it set me back. And it's fairly common for this to be happening on a regular basis for anyone over the age of 40.

It's inevitable, I guess would be the better word for us to have some form of injury or some illness over the course of our adult lives. And so how we deal with this, particularly when we're over 40, is really, really important. OK, so I'm diagnosed with covid. I can't go anywhere. Definitely can't go to the gym. And while I'm on that topic, it's a regular thing people will be asking typically during the cold and flu season.

So maybe less now this time of year, because we're really more kind of into the allergy season. But during the cold flu season, the question be, should I go to the gym if I'm sick? OK, and I'll just go ahead and put this out there. As a general rule, if you can avoid going to the gym sick, please do. The rest of us don't want to get sick. You know, you have covid. Absolutely do not go to the gym, you know, but other than that, if you have symptoms above the neck, you're more than safe to go out and do some work.

I prefer you do it outside, do it away from people, do it at home. If it's in the chest or low, you know, below the neck, you don't really need to be doing anything. And if there's a fever involved, definitely not a time for you to be exercising. This is the time for you to be focused on recovery. And we'll talk about that in a few minutes. But in a general sense, if you're sick, this might be a good time for you to go ahead and take some time off and recover and get yourself better before you worry about doing anything else.

And obviously, again, with covid entirely different matter, with injuries, maybe even a little bit different, and we'll get into each of those a little bit further as we go along. So the first thing is to recognize that injuries and illnesses are inevitable. You're going to have to face them at some point in your adult life. And so it's not something where you need to push back on yourself and be angry, sad, you know, all those negative emotions that you might have about it.

Those aren't going to serve you. They're not going to help you at all, OK? What you need to do is be able to take a step back objectively and do a couple different things. So the first thing you want to do is, is a basic evaluation. Was there something in your basic behavior that caused this injury? So let's say you were out and about and you weren't paying attention and you tripped and you broke your arm. OK, obviously not watching what you're doing, not paying attention.

You fell. OK? And by falling, you broke yourself. OK, an evaluation would be OK. Probably don't need to have that there. And I probably need to be a little bit more aware of my surroundings when I do particular things. You know, my wife and I own this bed and breakfast and there's the stairs coming down from the top to the bottom. Now we're living upstairs. While we do the renovation, we move downstairs this won't be as big of an issue, but in the morning when I get up in it's dark, but the lights are on downstairs, the slats in the wood, kind of shine this really weird cross angles on the steps as you walk down.

And I see that and I say, OK, that's a trip and fall hazard because I might see the step going a certain way when it goes a different way. So I've had my wife put in some pads so it's more skid resistant and we're putting in some motion sensitive lights. So someone's walking down the stairs, the lights will shine and that will negate that cross light thing. So paying attention to your environment so you avoid injuries, not doing certain things that cause injuries.

Like when I was doing deadlifts and wanted for some reason, do 500 pound dead lift, you know, overdoing it, overstressing over, you know, those are opportunities where your body's telling you through that pain, which is the signal something's not right. Use that time and evaluate that pain, evaluate why it happened and see if your behavior needs to change. Many times that's not the case, but there are times it is so being aware of that's very, very important.

The next thing to understand about all this is that injuries and illness, particularly when you're over 40, is not a stop button. It's a pause button too many times I'll be talking to folks almost every day, actually, and someone will say, yeah, I hurt my back, I hurt my knee, hurt my hip. In many cases, like three, five, 10 years ago, And they're not doing any activity now because it hurts. And that's just tragic. That just I mean, that eats at my soul, because when you stop moving, you stop living.

When you stop moving, you start deteriorating and you have to move to live, so if we're not doing anything to improve our fitness, to improve our health because of an injury, basically that injury beat us and we're letting that injury beat us. So this is not a stop button. We just have to figure this out and it's just a pause button. So pause, figure it out and let's move forward. So the first step, recover, OK?

Too many times people will injure themselves and they won't go to physical therapy. They won't do their physical therapy homework. They won't do what's necessary to get past this. The doctor gave them the pain meds. The pain meds solve the problem or at least the symptom, and they move on with their lives. If they try to lift anything or do something, it hurts and they're back on the pain meds. They don't want to do that. So they stop.

OK, so recover first. Do your physical therapy, get your stuff done. Your quarantine is two weeks that I sat in that bed and breakfast recovering, couldn't go to the gym, couldn't do the things I wanted to do, but I did what I could do and I recovered. I got healthy. That's job number one.

Next is to look for opportunities and buy opportunities. I mean, OK, so let's say you broke your arm, OK? I have a client that happens this to. Actually two one one hurt his wrist, another hurt her elbow. But basically a client gets injured not through their lifting, not through their other stuff. They just have an accident and there's an injury. This is a perfect opportunity for them to work on other modalities, they can work on mobility in their legs and hips, they can work on strength in their legs and hips. They can if the jarring doesn't hurt too much, they can start working on stamina work. They can do core work. There's just so many opportunities, so many other modalities that you would normally neglect.

But now that you have an injury so you can't do your prime thing, this is a great opportunity for you to spend that time doing something else that's going to improve you overall. OK, so use this time as an opportunity. If it's an illness, I used that covid time as an opportunity to really work on mindfulness and meditation. I spent a lot of time thinking, a lot of time in my head that I wouldn't normally have given myself the time to do, but because I was so fatigued that I couldn't really exercise the way I wanted to, I couldn't go anywhere and do anything I wanted to do. It was a great opportunity for me to sit and reflect and do the things I needed to do for better mental health, better clarity. So look for opportunities during this recovery time.

And then when you do come back stronger, have the plan, have the thing ready to go. And so we go into this injury and we're at a certain level. And too many times people will say, OK, well, I'm losing so much ground, I'm losing so much ground. The reality is you're probably not losing as much ground as you think. And if you're working on other modalities and other things, if you're taking those opportunities, you're probably a lot better off than you would have been otherwise.

So take a step back. Yes, you do need to take that step back and then start to retrace your route. So how does this look? OK, from a stamina perspective, let's say you did something to your ankle and or your foot and you're no longer able to run. OK, if you're out for a few weeks, maybe you cut down your distance and speed by. I don't know, 10 percent. If you're out for more than two months, you might have to cut back 50 percent.

So what does that look like? Again, let's say you were running and your long runs were around, you know, five miles, your medium short runs or somewhere around the two to three miles. And so you go back to do your first run. After that, you're in the one to two mile range, your long runs or more in the three, three and a half range. And then you build up from there and it'll come back pretty quickly.

Muscle remembers it can get back to its previous state pretty quickly if you don't let too much time pass. And then promote like a weightlifting perspective, let's say you're working and you have a particular lift and you're doing 50 pounds on this particular lift. When you hurt yourself, when you come back, if you're out for a couple of weeks, a few weeks, maybe you drop it down to 45, so you cut about 10 percent off that and feel how that works for you.

If you're out longer than that, maybe you drop it down to 25 and you do some reps, you get your sets in and you see how things are going. You'll improve pretty quickly. And as I mentioned before, you have that muscle memory. So your body's going to come back a lot quicker than you think it would.

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So to wrap all this up, I think that kind of the core concepts of all this is one, recovering from injury and illness over 40 requires you to have a good mindset. You need to wrap your mind around the fact that you have control. You're not out of control. Yes, this happened. It was inevitable that eventually something bad was going to happen. It just does. Get past it.

This was not a stop button. This was a pause. So do your evaluation understand why this happened? See if there's things you need to correct around you, your environment, yourself, the way you approach things. Slow down in some cases if you need to, but understand why the injury occurred or why the illness occurred. And let's do something about it, OK? Next, your why envision probably haven't changed this whole thing. And if you stop, then you're losing it.

You're losing that whole thing that got you going in the first place. So go back to that mindset, get your mind right. Get yourself back thinking about your why envision. And then you're in a good place, then work through your recovery, make you recover your first priority, make recovery your workout, make recovery the most important thing you do for yourself, and then look for those other opportunities that you may have otherwise neglected, like working on mobility, working on balance, working on strength or, you know, working on stamina, things that you may not have paid much attention to when you were focused on other things that you can't do now because of injury or illness.

And then finally take that step back if you need to. Don't go in this full force thinking you're just as strong as you were the day you left. You need to give your body an opportunity to regroup, retrain and get back to where it was. So retrace your route. Don't go back in thinking you're right where you were. You are going to lose a little bit. You're not going to lose that much, but you are going to lose little.

So go into it smart and get yourself back where you deserve to be.

Post Show/Recap

[00:25:39.920] – Allan
Welcome back, Raz.

[00:25:41.420] – Rachel
Hey, Allan, that is a really timely podcast and all of the running forums I follow, there's a lot of questions from runners in particular about coming back from covid, but also all the time runners are always asking how to come back to running after an injury. So these are constantly timely topics, but in particular, they are good for today.

[00:26:04.340] – Allan
Yeah. You know, one of the things, particularly with running and also with weightlifting, is the propensity to injure ourselves. You know, with running, you're doing a repetitive motion sometimes on concrete or other surfaces that are just beaten to death. Maybe you don't have the best shoes. Maybe you don't have the best running stride. And so you just really pounding on your body a little bit more in a repetitive fashion where over time it causes some basic injuries or some basic problems.

[00:26:35.210] – Allan
And a lot of people, because, you know, let's face it, running can be addictive. they won't stop running. You know, it's like, no, I'm going to keep running and it just gets worse and worse and worse until they can't run. And then that's when they're in this kind of stuck position. So, yes, recovery from that. You know, with weight lifting, it tends to be letting the ego get ahead of the body and, you know, deciding, OK, I'm going to try to do this extra weight and I'm going to get, you know, this is going to be cool and, you know, so, yeah, you're throwing it.

[00:27:05.480] – Allan
And throwing, you know, 80 pound dumbbells onto my shoulders to do overhead press. And I feel good about being that strong until I hear a little crack and a snap. And now my rotator cuff is completely torn off m bone. And, you know, that arm no longer functions the way it did seconds earlier and so doing the right things to recover from that, but you're going to go through something kind of interesting, but it's going to use a lot of these concepts that I talked about today is when you do this 100 miles,

[00:27:39.370] – Rachel
50,

[00:27:39.940] – Allan
50, 50 miles. We were talking before we got on the phone.

[00:27:43.600] – Allan
We got to talk about there's also a one hundred mile component in a hundred miles. And so we got to talk about. So sorry. No, Rachel is not doing a hundred. it's a burn. Got twenty four hours. Who knows?

[00:27:54.580] – Rachel
I got the time.

[00:27:56.980] – Allan
If they don't stop, you just keep running. You might catch them. But, you know, we're going to do this long run. And as a result, we don't even really know right now how how your body is going to respond other than, you know, on the reading of the forums and your experience and running some long distance, and, you know, the marathon range is that, you know, that when you come back, the best way I can put it is you're going to have to go through a period of time that I would call post-hab.

[00:28:27.880] – Rachel
Yes.

[00:28:28.930] – Allan
And so can you talk a little bit about what some of your plans are for post hab as we go into this? Because it's not I mean, you're not self inflicting an injury here. We don't want anyone to think that that's what you ordered illness. But in a sense, your body's going to go through some stress. That's going to be very similar to that. So can you talk a little bit about what your plans are after this race?

[00:28:51.940] – Rachel
Sure. So I'll be running 50 miles and I am estimating it'll take give or take 12 hours. I'm not that fast. I plan on a lot of breaks. We have to check in to aid stations. There's going to be some things to get done on this run besides running. But what happens is, is I will probably be sucking out every possible nutrient out of my blood and liver and muscles. I will be just depleting my body dry of all nutrients and probably a lot of hydration.

[00:29:26.020] – Rachel
So right after the run, I will be drinking a lot of water and electrolytes as well, both liquids to rehydrate. And I will start getting some food coming back in my body just to maintain normal body functions. And I recognize that I will probably be walking probably more than the last few miles of the race, but I will plan on walking after the race is over as well. It's important just to keep the body moving and to come down to some sort of basic equilibrium after all of that motion.

[00:30:00.370] – Rachel
So I'll sit a little, I'll elevate my elevate my feet a little and walk a little. And I also have compression garments. I've got compression pants, and I also have compression calf sleeves that I'll wear to help promote blood flow as well. Since I'm not staying at my home, I'm actually camping in a camper. And so I will get back to our campsite, take a shower and do a lot of that type of post hab. So I've got the foam roller, I've got the compression.

[00:30:35.230] – Rachel
I will elevate and stay hydrated and I will keep walking and chances are really good as even though I'm going to finish. I start the race at noon on Saturday and I should finish around midnight or so. Saturday night. Sunday morning. I will probably be tired but I'll also probably be too amp to sleep. So if I am tossing and turning in bed, I will count that as elevation for a little while and then go out and walk a little bit around the campsite as well.

[00:31:03.760] – Rachel
So a lot of moving and a lot of eating and drinking is pretty much my main rehabs or post habs.

[00:31:10.750] – Allan
Yeah. And then recognizing that, you know, we talked about being a creature of habit that you would normally be getting up in the morning and going for a run. Yeah, that's not going to be Rachel's M.O. for a few weeks. At least you're gonna have to come in and kind of refresh, let your body actually recover from the stressors that it's gone through and then start a training program that picks up somewhere well below the mileage that you would normally be running.

[00:31:42.310] – Rachel
Oh, absolutely. I'm anticipating that I will take that first one full week off of all running altogether. That's an easy no brainer. But I will be walking and I will pick dogs and walk. I will walk around my neighborhood by myself and just keep the legs moving and see how the muscles are responding. You know, if I was 20 years younger, I might be rebounding a lot faster, in which case I wouldn't mind going for a light jog, you know, for a mile here, there.

[00:32:13.480] – Rachel
But for myself, as I said, I'm approaching fifty, rehab and posthab takes a little bit longer. Recovery just takes longer. And so I'll have hot baths and cold baths and walking. And I'll probably start a running regimen maybe a week to 10 days after this race, and when I do start, it won't be going back out where I was before. I'll probably do a walk run type interval, maybe run for a minute, walk for a minute or a couple of minutes and just see how my legs feel.

[00:32:46.120] – Allan
Yeah. If you haven't run before, then you might not recognize that there's a natural spring to your leg as you kind of are walking or running. And when you do something like this, like a 50, which I did before and I did it, I did it like an optimal situation. It was a pine forest horse trail through a pine forest was about as soft, a nice place you could actually run on, you know, so the damage to my legs from, you know, hard or, you know, hitting was not the problem.

[00:33:14.800] – Allan
It was just the total number of miles. But it was about a month for me from that 50 where I actually felt like my legs had recovered their spring, you know, had recovered to a point where they were where they were. For that whole month, all I did was walking and in the gym, upper body exercise, you know, resistance training. So, you know, I was bench pressing and pull ups and, you know, rose and things like that.

[00:33:43.630] – Allan
Nothing for the legs. Just let the legs recover and do some walking, keep the blood flow to them. So they're repairing and doing what they need to, making sure you get plenty of protein and the other things that my body needs for that repair, you know. So for me, it was still I was kind of astounded because I was 29 and it literally took me a month to really feel like I was ready to run again. But, you know, and I think I've told this story right after I finished the race, I pulled a Forrest Gump and said, I'm tired, I'm going home.

[00:34:15.070] – Allan
And I haven't run anything longer than a 10K since then. And I even did that one under protest because it was a friend. She calls me and says, my niece was running this 10K tomorrow. And, you know, we told her we would go with her, but she doesn't want to walk. She wants to actually run it. And you're the only person I know that can run that far. And I'm like, OK, so I ran that 10k with this girl.

[00:34:39.440] – Allan
I thought the girl was going to burn out because she just took off sprinting. I'm like, OK, it's like you can't keep sprinting like this and think you're going to do a 10k. And she proved me wrong. I think I broke my PR on that 10k, but it was flying. So that's definitely a young athlete in the making there. But because I think she was like nine and I was like, oh my gosh, she just took off.

[00:35:02.860] – Allan
I'm like, OK, look, you know, I've got a phase now this girl.

[00:35:06.880] – Rachel
All out, so turn on the burner.

[00:35:09.200] – Allan
And she kept doing it. So that was what was surprising to me is like, yeah, I was like, OK, you got something special here. But that was only one I ran. And like I said, I did it under protest and for a really dear friend at the time. So I was like, OK, I'll do this.

[00:35:21.460] – Allan
But I didn't think I was going to have to sprint it myself, but I did. But, you know, it's just as we kind of go through all of this in recognizing that, you know, injuries and illness, they're going to happen.

[00:35:34.960] – Allan
And sometimes you have a little bit of knowledge, a little bit of opportunity. Like when I hurt my shoulder, I knew, OK, I'm stoked. And this is, again, the probably, you know, too much ego, but it is what it is. Ego hurt me. And then ego kept me from deciding when I was going to do my surgery straightaway. I said, well, I've got this Spartan coming up. And I thought my brother was going to be doing it with me.

[00:35:58.180] – Allan
So I was like, I can't cancel on him, you know, I've got to do this thing. So I had it in my mind. I was going to do it and then I would go get my surgery. And so I did that. I also jumped out of an airplane for Tammy and she wanted to do that. So that's part of that whole weekend was I went up there and did a Spartan and then I jumped out of an airplane the next day, all with a torn rotator cuff.

[00:36:20.980] – Allan
And so I knew I was going to get the surgery, but I arranged for three weeks where I was not to be traveling for work. So I knew, OK, every day I can go in when I if I need to, I can go in and get my physical therapy because the doctor was telling me, you know, he didn't know what the physical therapist was going to need to do, but it was going to be a few times a week for about six to eight weeks, maybe up to twelve.

[00:36:45.280] – Allan
Depending on how I how I did, and so I kept training. I kept doing stuff physically, you know, anything that didn't hurt my shoulder, I kept doing, and then I scheduled my surgery and I went in for the surgery and came out and I went into rehab, went to the physical therapist. And he's like, your range of motion is phenomenal. And he said, what? What did you do? Because he said most people would come in, you know, adults, not because I deal with athletes as I see athletes that come in like this.

[00:37:16.170] – Allan
He says, but you're not an athlete like that. You know the college athlete like that. He says, what are you doing? I said, well, I just kept training. They said, if it didn't hurt, I kept doing it. He's like, well, most people. Yeah, said most people would have put their arm in a sling and stayed of sling until they got their surgery. Then they'd have finished their surgery and they'd waited for a few weeks.

[00:37:32.730] – Allan
And I was like, no, I got my I got my surgery on a Thursday and Monday morning. Monday morning I was in therapy. so, you know, if you if you can plan it like you're planning your posthab on your run, you know, the timing of your run, you know, when you're going about when you going to finish even and you've got to plan. And so if it's an injury and you're going to go in for surgery, talk to your doctor, talk to, you know, if you can a physical therapist know what the plan is for your recovery so you can hit it running.

[00:38:00.570] – Allan
There's things you need to be doing before the surgery. Do them, you know. Yeah, and do them. Do it all. Do your homework from the physical therapist. Do this three times a day, do it and just do it. Yes. It's inconvenient to take this and put it in cold water and then pull it out, put it in hot water and pull it out. Cold water. It doesn't feel good, but it helps.

[00:38:23.760] – Allan
It definitely makes things better. And so making sure that you do your homework, set yourself up and, you know, illness and injuries are going to happen to us and we don't necessarily have a plan and we didn't plan for it. It just happens. And then we have to deal with it. But if you can control certain things about it, you'll recover a lot faster and be a lot stronger for it.

[00:38:45.210] – Rachel
That's let me just highlight that right there, Allan, because I want to point out that you'll be a lot stronger for it. I mean, just because you're injured doesn't mean you're out. And you could have the best comeback you've ever seen in whatever sport that you do. I'm sure your shoulder feels great now when you lift.

[00:39:00.900] – Allan
Yeah, it's well, it is. It's funny because, you know, in talking to the orthopedic surgeon, he said, you know, he said they did a study, said every cadaver they cut up in these cadavers who were in their 90s, people who died in their 90s. And so they went through and they were looking at them and they saw every single one of them had a torn, torn rotator cuff. Some of them had surgery for it and others had not.

[00:39:26.730] – Allan
But every single one of them had an impingement and had a problem with their shoulder, the rotator cuff. And so he said it's inevitable for most of us we're going to have that problem. And if you're someone who lifts and does a lot with your upper body, the potential is even higher because there's just more wear and tear. With mine, I had an impingement, which is basically where the bone is pressing down on the muscle and over time it just wears it down.

[00:39:56.820] – Allan
And he said so the muscle when he got in there was like paper thin and it just tore right off the bone. It snapped. It was gone. And so I was talking to him. I said, you know, obviously we're not going to spend the money to do an X-ray and an MRI on the other shoulder. And he said, yeah, probably. You probably do have an impingement over there. It's probably is as bad. This one just broke first.

[00:40:21.180] – Allan
And so what do I don't do right now? I don't lift eighty pound dumbbells up to my shoulders to press over my head because I recognize the heaviest thing I'm ever going to have to press over my head is a carton of Christmas decorations that I'm going have to put on the top shelf in our storage. Other than that, there's nothing heavier. There's definitely nothing a hundred sixty pounds that I need to put over my head for any reason whatsoever.

[00:40:48.990] – Allan
And if I did, I'd call somebody to come help me. So, you know, recognizing that, you know, ego can get you broke.

[00:40:58.290] – Rachel
Sure.

[00:40:59.670] – Allan
And recognizing those limitations that we have, you know, part of that self-awareness is I know that I probably have an impingement on my left shoulder. So I'm not doing things that I know would adversely affect that. But I'm doing what I need to do to be functionally fit,

[00:41:18.030] – Rachel
perfect

[00:41:18.840] – Allan
fit to be the best Allan, I can be. And that doesn't necessarily mean that I have to be able to deadlift a certain amount of weight or press a certain amount of weight over my head.

[00:41:28.110] – Allan
It just means when it's time to get the Christmas lights down, I could do that. When it's time to put them back, I could do that.

[00:41:34.780] – Rachel
Perfect. Well, that's just the point is that, you know what your potential weakness could be and you just need to work around it and you're doing just that. That sounds perfect.

[00:41:44.580] – Allan
Yeah. So good luck with your run.

[00:41:47.070] – Rachel
Thank you.

[00:41:47.970] – Allan
Good luck with your post hab.

[00:41:49.540] – Rachel
Yes, thank you.

[00:41:51.210] – Allan
Maybe the next time we talk to you, I think we're going to be talking to you relatively soon after your post hab maybe about a week after you finish your run. Maybe a little over a week. You know, when you finish your run and so at that point, you should have some pretty interesting stories to show.

[00:42:08.110] – Allan
So I'm looking forward to that.

[00:42:10.120] – Rachel
hope to have some good tales to tell.

[00:42:13.110] – Allan
That's how you get them. You do something you've never done. You do something that the vast majority of people who have never done. And now you've got a story. Now you've got a life. Now you've done something special. And so I always encourage people, if you don't have a big, audacious goal of just something exciting that you wake up in the morning and know, this is why I'm running, this is why I'm lifting. This is why I'm living.

[00:42:36.130] – Allan
I want to do this thing. And it can be a vacation. It can be a run. It can be a combo. Camp out run.

[00:42:43.810] – Rachel
Right! My favorite.

[00:42:45.880] – Allan
so, you know, just recognize that you're going to have a lot of fun. You can have a good bit of pain

[00:42:53.230] – Rachel
a little bit

[00:42:53.800] – Allan
you're gonna have some challenges and you're going to have the pride of knowing that you took 100 percent of you out on those Indiana roads and left it all there.

[00:43:04.790] – Rachel
That'll be great. Yeah. I'll be up in northern Michigan, actually.

[00:43:08.920] – Allan
Oh, I thought it was Indiana. I don't know why, you were going to Indiana now.

[00:43:12.850] – Rachel
Heading north.

[00:43:13.780] – Allan
OK, north.

[00:43:14.980] – Rachel
yeah. Looking forward to a new adventure, that's for sure.

[00:43:18.250] – Allan
All right. Well, we'll talk to you then.

[00:43:20.410] – Rachel
Thanks. Bye.

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Another episode you may enjoy

Running injury free using the run walk run method with Jeff Galloway

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Let's Say Hello

Rachel Discussion

Interview

Text

Post Show/Recap

Post show with Rachel.

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

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Let's Say Hello

[00:01:31.880] – Allan
Raz, how are things?

[00:01:34.070] – Rachel
Good. Allan, how are you today?

[00:01:37.140] – Allan
I'm doing all right. I had had a really, really good weekend with just a little bit of not such good thing. I lost my phone again.

[00:01:44.850] – Rachel
Oh, my gosh.

[00:01:45.710] – Allan
We'll talk about that in more detail later. But yeah, same scenario shorts out to Bluff coming back in the golf cart lost but not the same outcome, though. The phone survived with no damage. And a nice taxi driver that we actually know here on the island found it. And so we were able to retrieve my phone, but not without a little bit of frustration. And we'll get into that in more detail in a minute.

[00:02:13.040] – Rachel
Sure. Well, I'm glad it has a good outcome. That's a good ending, then.

[00:02:16.910] – Allan
Yeah. How are things up there? Way up there in Michigan?

[00:02:20.900] – Rachel
Good. Things are good up here. On Friday, I got my vaccine. I got the Johnson and Johnson one and done covid vaccine. So I took the weekend just to relax, make sure I didn't have any adverse reactions to it, which I didn't. Just a little fatigue and I'm feeling pretty good. So I'm pretty excited. Some of my family has been vaccinated. The other family members are getting the other vaccines where you need two of them, but we're just that much closer to having a little bit more normalcy. So looking forward to that.

[00:02:55.250] – Allan
Yeah, they're not they have vaccinations here. They don't have as many as they planned to have. And they didn't order enough to vaccinate the whole country. So I'm not going to take a vaccination from Panama. One, there's there's citizens there are a lot older and a lot worse health than me that need it. And then, it's Panama. And so, you know, I'm not going to I'm not going to get it here, even though I could sign up and eventually being 55 would come up on the list.

[00:03:27.380] – Allan
I'm going to wait. My my wife and I are planning to come back to the States in September. And so we'll get tested before we get on an airplane. Don't worry. That's a requirement. Now for us to go to the States, we're going to have to have a test before we leave. So we'll get tested here and then we'll head back to the states and I think September time frame and then go ahead and get it there. We'll be in the States for at least three weeks. So if we have to get to the two stage one, we'll get one when we first get there. And then we'll get a second shot right before we leave.

[00:03:57.620] – Rachel
That would be great. That would be fantastic.

[00:04:00.860] – Allan
All right. So let's go ahead and get into this show, which is about mindset, which is yours and my favorite topic when we're talking about health and fitness. So here we go.

Are you prioritizing yourself?

Today, I want to get into a mindset. Topic that is actually probably one of the most important obstacles that many people face when they're looking to get healthy and fit, and it's not something that goes away without a little bit of work.

And so the question comes up is, are you prioritizing yourself?

Are you probably prioritizing your health and fitness? And it's it sounds like a simple thing, but it's actually a very deep, deep emotional mental adjustment to to have that kind of mindset where you are prioritizing yourself. So I want to dive into it a little bit. But before we go too far, we can start with something as simple as a little quiz. And so there's only three questions to this quiz.

So don't think we're going to be on here for a long time. It's not but three questions. And I want you to rate yourself from a one, which is this is completely untrue to a six – this describes me perfectly. OK, so again, one is the low end of the scale is completely untrue. Up to six, this is a good description of you. How how you actually feel, how you think.

OK, the first one is: I put others wishes before my own or else I feel guilty.

The second one is: I give more to other people than I get back in return.

And then the final one is: I'm so busy doing for the people whom I care about, that I have little time for myself.

All right, now add up those scores and think to yourself about what that number means, and I'll tell you what it means if that number. Is higher than, say, five or six, you might have a problem. You're not prioritizing yourself and what you're basically doing is self-sacrificing. You're taking others and saying they're so much more important than me that I can't do the things for myself that are necessary for me to be healthy and fit.

And I'm not going to jump into the whole airplane put your mask on thing. But this is a concept that unless you break through this effort of prioritizing yourself, if you are a self-sacrificer or you're really going to struggle to get healthy and fit and stay healthy and fit because it's never going to be the priority you need it to be.

A lot of people love those simple rules of the 80-20, and I try to tell people 80-20 is perfect when you're in maintenance mode. 80 at 20 is great. You can stay healthy and be healthy. The problem is for most of us, we're not already healthy. We're not at the weight we want to be at. We're not as strong as we need to be. And as a result, we need to put in more than 80%. If you don't prioritize yourself, that's just not going to happen.

So the first thing we have to look at when we are having this conversation is to actually think about the inner voice that we have, that voice that that tells you how you feel about something that's happening. So an event happens, maybe your alarm doesn't go off and you're late for work. You're going to be late for work. What does your inner voice tell you about that event? And that inner voice is the story, it's the story of our lives from an internal perspective. It often doesn't actually reflect reality.

And I want to take you through and this week, or at least for the next few days, I want you to think about some of the words that that inner voice is using, some of the things that you probably think. And the best way to kind of break that down for me is this phraseology called “absolute words.” And so I want you to pay attention to that inner voice over the course of the next day or two and maybe a little longer and see how often you use words like have to, need, must, ought to, should.

If you find yourself using those words a lot, those are absolute words. That means that your inner voice is feeding you something and saying this is an absolute necessity. You have to do it this way. And if that's the case, then you're not going to change. You're not. Whatever you think you have to do, you will do whatever you think you should do, you will probably do. Whatever you need to do, whatever someone else needs or you think is needed. And then obviously the word must if you must do something, it's something you've got to do and therefore you do it.

If you're not using those absolute words for your own health and fitness, then you're likely using them for other things. And if you are, that's a clear indication that you're not prioritizing your wellbeing. It's just not happening because these other haves, musts, ought tos, and shoulds are getting in your way.

So what's an easy solution for us with regards to these absolute words?

Well, one, when you catch yourself doing this, using those words and it's not toward you, it's not something that you are doing for you. Like I can say, I have to work out today. Obviously, that's not a bad phrase. It is an absolute. The absolute is about me taking care of myself. But if I say I've got to get the food for the kids, I must take them to the ball practice. I must do this and then I must make sure I get this report done at work. If I have all these other musts in my life, it'll be very hard for me to make sure that I go through it. So if I catch myself using one of these absolute words.

Again, there have to, need, must, ought, and should.

If you find yourself using those words with relation to someone else or something else besides your health and fitness, you need to stop and take a step back. And reevaluate if that is an absolute. In many cases, it's not. The world is not going to end if you don't do something that you had to do, that you should have done, that you ought to do, the world might not end. And so taking a moment to take that half step back and evaluate that statement that you just your inner voice just told you that is getting in the way of you being healthy and fit.

It's time to rephrase that and going through the practice of where your is telling you, you know, you must be home by 6:30pm so you don't have time to work out. Well, do you have to be home by 6:30pm. Just ask yourself that question. What happens if I'm not there? Then dinner's not ready at 7:00pm. Dinner's ready at what, maybe 7:30pm? Maybe your spouse can assist you by making dinner tonight. Maybe you go ahead and you order from a food company that delivers healthy choices and you order food in for the family.

So in many cases, when you catch yourself using an absolute word that is not geared towards you being healthy and fit when you really, truly need and want to prioritize yourself in your health and fitness, you've got to change the script. You've got to stop evaluate whether it's true. And I'll tell you, in most cases it's not true.

You're not going to get fired for being five minutes late for work. You're just not. Now, you might if you're constantly late. But for most people out there, a lot of the absolute words we have in our head are actually not true. They're stories that we're telling ourselves. They're stories that we're living to. And as a result, we're not getting the health and fitness that we deserve.

So I just used the word there, and I'm actually getting to a point in my life where I really kind of love words and those kind of things that they mean and what they bring up and how we relate to them. And so I'm using the word deserve.

And I can say with absolute clarity, you deserve self-care. You deserve to be able to take care of yourself. You deserve to be healthy and fit. So what does self-care actually look like?

Well, first and foremost, it includes self-love. I've asked many of my clients if they love themselves enough to do this for themselves. And it was funny because one of the first clients I ever had, her name was Sandy. She said she wasn't sure. Now, the problem came up and Sandy didn't follow through with everything we were doing, despite seeing good results at first. And I break it down to that point, she did not have the self-love necessary to make a change, to do the hard thing.

And so self-love is that expression where you care about yourself as much as you care about anyone else. It doesn't mean that you don't love other people as much because love is not this finite thing that we have that if I give this to this person, I don't have any left for me. That's not how love works. Love is infinite. And so you should be exploring yourself and understanding that if you don't start from my point of self-love, the commitment's never going to be there and you're not going to see the results. So if you find yourself having these kind of conversations where you're not liking yourself and that inner voice is actually a butthole. You need to work on your self-love. You need to actually sit down and start talking yourself through why you're worthy, why you deserve this, why you would love yourself. And I'm 100 percent sure you're going to come up with a ton of great reasons why you should love yourself and then you should love yourself.

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The next thing that comes in is you need to be frank and honest and you need to be frank and honest with not just other people. You need to be frank and honest with yourself. If the inner voice is, like I said, being a butthole, be honest about it. Understand, I have kind of a crappy self-image right now. What are the things I can do to improve that self-image? What are the things I can do to make that inner voice nicer?

Eliminating some of those absolute words is a good first step for that, but you've got to have this inner honesty. You've got to be honest with yourself and understand what's going on. And then, yes, you have to be frank and honest with the people around you. If you're going to do something for yourself, it often means that there's things that you would have been doing for someone else that you're now not able to do. They're going to live. They're going to be fine. But change in your life often means change in others.

I talked in my book, The Wellness Roadmap, about understanding the baggage that you have when you're traveling and how that can affect your path. Now, what I didn't say in there, but it should have been implied is you still need to have a vehicle. You still need to be moving forward. Your pace might be a little different, but you still have to be frank and honest with the people around you that the changes you're making are important to you and should be important to them, because in 99.9% of the cases out there, your why is them? You want to be healthy and you want to be fit for your kids, you and you and your grandkids. And you want to be there for your spouse and you don't want to be an obligation later in life to them because you want to be able to take care of yourself and you want that opportunity to be the person you're supposed to be.

And they should want that for you, too. So being honest and frank with them as far as what you need to be successful, is going to go a long way towards not having them resenting you for going to the gym every day or resenting you because you're not baking as often as you used to bake. Those types of things. So being frank and honest with yourself and others is a very important step towards self-care.

The next is consistency and frequency. You can't do something once and say, OK, that's my self-care for the month. It just doesn't quite work like that. Yes, going and getting a mani-pedi for some people are getting a massage is a great luxury for many and doing it once a month might be plenty. It would be for me. But to actually do what's necessary for you to be healthy and fit, it needs to become a part of a lifestyle that is frequent enough that it will elicit change. So if you're going to say lift weights, you can't lift weights once and say, well, gee, I don't understand why I'm not muscular. I don't understand why I didn't put on much muscle or because you didn't do it enough. Okay? So there has to be a frequency to it that is enough to stimulate a change in your body, to stimulate change in you.

And then the consistency part just means that doing something over and over and over is where you're going to get your real results. I had that conversation with Dr. Pontzer not long ago, and we talked about how you're not going to be able to lose a ton of weight really, really quickly without your body reacting to it at some level. And, so that reaction, which your body is going to do to change up your metabolism, that's going to happen. It's going to happen for all of us. Our bodies were made to do that so we can survive. But the consistency of doing the little things over and over and over, over time is where you kind of make this.

I was having a conversation with my clients the other day. And one of the things I said to them was the Grand Canyon was not built by something major coming through there and digging it out. It was that slow trickle of a small river over many, many years, millions of years, that made the Grand Canyon what it is today. And so you need that little trickle. You need that consistency to see monumental changes in your health and fitness.

So if you have a long journey to take before you're healthy and fit, you need the patience. But you also need that consistency. You have to keep showing up and you have to do it enough where your body recognizes the stimulus and reacts.

And then the final bit on the self-care, what it looks like. It's about an investment. If you're not willing to invest some time, effort, and money into yourself, you're not likely to see the results that you really want to have. Now, the biggest investment is going to be time and effort. You're going to have to make change and you're going to have to spend some time doing this. It's not just going to happen. As I mentioned before, we have a frequency and we have a consistency that has to happen. For that to happen, you have to invest time and effort towards making these things happen.

And then the money part can be a little bit of money. It can be as little as you're investing in some good quality shoes, or it can be as big as saying I'm going to build a home gym and I'm going to spend thousands of dollars to do that. For most people, the investment is somewhere in the middle of that. A small gym membership isn't all that expensive and it's hiring a trainer. When you look at the results that you get often isn't that expensive. If it's going to get you down the road faster.

My wife is working on building up a bed and breakfast, and the guy that was working it was him and his son. And he said, I've got these two other guys to come in and help. And she's like, sure. And the whole thing was by investing a little bit more each week, she's going to get the job done faster. So now she's got four people working instead of two. So the work's getting done faster. And that's what you have to think about with regards to where money can play a role in helping you with this whole thing.

So to kind of wrap this all up, if you did that quiz, that self-sacrificing quiz and you scored, twelve, if you scored thirteen or if you scored eighteen, then you have a self-sacrificing problem. And if you find that your inner voice is not your best friend, you've got a priority problem. Those are two internal things that you really have to get a grasp on.

And a couple of the ways that you can easily see this happening beyond just doing the quiz I talked about is to look for how often you're using those absolute words. They are using absolute words to define what you're supposed to do for someone else and not for yourself, something that would pull you away from doing something for yourself. Those are those trigger words. Those are the things that will tell you where you need to address your time and effort and you need to go and take that step back and analyze what that actually means. Is it actually true in most cases you're going to find it's not.

And then finally, self-care takes an investment. You have to love yourself. You've got to be open and honest with yourself. You've got to be consistent. You've got to put in a frequency of things happening so you can see change. And that typically takes an investment of time, effort and/or money.

So I hope you took something valuable from this lesson. If you did, I'd love to talk to you about it in more detail on the Facebook group. You can go to https://40plusfitnesspodcast.com/group, and we can have a great conversation there about your inner voice, about whether you are prioritizing yourself so you can get the health and fitness you deserve.

Post Show/Recap

[00:24:26.720] – Allan
Rachel, welcome back.

[00:24:28.460] – Rachel
Hey, Allan. Yep, mindset is one of my favorite topics of discussion. That was a really good episode you laid out for us.

[00:24:37.700] – Allan
Thank you. The interesting thing was that I recorded this episode last week and then this week and I lost my phone. And I have to say, there are no perfect people. And I think a lot of things you'll see on social media and Facebook will have you believing that there's something wrong with you and there's something right with everybody else. And particularly as we get into the health and fitness field, I'll just tell you, we're not perfect either. None of us are. And, I'm sitting there really, really angry with myself and the language that was in my head, was not kind. It was not kind at all.

[00:25:22.550] – Allan
Losing my phone the same way twice in really less than three months time. And this is not a cheap phone. This is a 1300 – $1300 phone. Really had me upset. So I'm walking the through the jungle right back to where the howler monkeys were, where I took the video and then that's why it fell out of my pocket was I didn't seal it in my pocket properly, went right back to those howler monkeys and they were just looking at me like I was the monkey.

[00:25:54.500] – Allan
So I just realized, OK, you know, as I walk, I've got to forgive myself. I slipped up. I made a mistake. I got to forgive myself. I've got to think about, Okay, you're letting this happen. This is a theme: going to Bluff, riding in a golf cart, wearing swimming trunks. Losing your phone is now a theme.

[00:26:16.370] – Allan
I have to think about that. I have to make sure I have a plan to make that not happen again. But that has to start with self-love. That has to start with the forgiveness of it. So just be aware that you're never completely on the other side of this, prioritizing yourself and finding self-love and doing those things. It's always a work in progess. You always have to manage that relationship and be aware when it's slipping up, when you're arguing with yourself.

[00:26:44.380] – Rachel
That's so true. Absolutely. And that was a very frustrating time for you, I'm sure. But it's good that you take a minute to assess the situation, kind of troubleshoot problem solve. And hopefully the next time you go find some howler monkeys to take pictures of, you won't you'll be better secure with your phone.

[00:27:03.860] – Allan
Yeah, well there was a lot of things I got on the front end and, and even then once it happened because I wasn't of sound mind, I guess the best way for me to say I was, I was very frustrated, very angry.

[00:27:14.930] – Rachel
Sure.

[00:27:15.380] – Allan
Myself. And it was, I was all that went inside. I wasn't thinking. So there were things that I could have done that would have made my search maybe easier. I found my phone on the Find My iPhone kind of thing. So I knew about where it was. And I just wanted to get there as fast as I could. And so as a result, I didn't think about, well, why not put find my phone on Tammy's phone? So while we're driving, if it starts moving around, we might see that. It didn't cross my mind till we were driving. And the interesting thing about an Apple account, when you try to log into it from another device, is it always wants to send you a code. Now it's going to send that code to one of your Apple devices. I happen to use a Mac, so if I had been sitting at my desk, I could have got her logged in to find my phone there. But because we were already halfway to where we were going, I couldn't actually use Find My iPhone on her phone. I could log into my apple account, but then it wanted to send me that code and I'm like, well, if I had my phone with me, I wouldn't need this code.

[00:28:20.840] – Allan
So I was not real happy with Apple either. Someone just has an iPhone. I don't even know what they do. But I guess they don't find their phone from another device. Anyway, that was my day. Or at least it was it wasn't my day. It was a part of my day.

[00:28:37.940] – Rachel
And that's just how it happens, though. And when life hands you these weird situations, it's easy to get flustered and all of your common sense and all of your reasoning and logic sometimes just goes right out the window until you can just take a minute and breathe and solve your own problem.

[00:28:55.100] – Rachel
Yeah, mindset is a tricky thing. And I guess when I was listening to what you were saying about having an inner voice and being able to prioritize your own health and fitness, it brought me back to the days when I was overweight. And not a lot of my friends knew me back then. But after I had two kids, I had a little bit of extra weight. And it's hard as a mom, for many moms, or moms with the small kids that you can't just leave the house, you can't just leave your kids unattended to go for a walk or run or do something.

[00:29:30.110] – Rachel
And so when I was at that point in my life, I would put the kids to bed at night. My husband was home and so I would go for a run around the neighborhood. I also had workout videos, VHS, aging myself here, but I had workout videos. And so when the kids would lay down for a nap, I would put in a 30-minute workout video and workout in the basement. And so was it an ideal situation? No, but that was the best that I could do at that time to put my health as a priority.

[00:30:02.900] – Rachel
And I did have weight to lose. I did have some things that I need to take care of so that I could be a healthier, happier person for my kids. So you just find these weird ways of getting around these situations that life just throws at you?

[00:30:17.990] – Allan
Yeah, I like to tell my clients quite often that life doesn't get in the way, life is the way.

[00:30:24.710] – Rachel
It is.

[00:30:25.550] – Allan
You're not going to get around it. You can't sit there and say, I'm going to wait to do this until I'm not as busy, or oh I screwed up. That will never happen again. I'm like, well, how often does that happen? Every time?

[00:30:39.830] – Allan
And so the point of this is, one, there's not another day. Every day you put off doing the right thing for yourself is lost forever and you're not going to get that time back. If you're looking at it and you're thinking, Okay, I need to prioritize myself but my kids and that's valid. You can't just leave a two-year-old and four-year0old alone in a house and go for a run around the neighborhood.

[00:31:09.770] – Rachel
That's right.

[00:31:10.760] – Allan
Even if you can still see your house from there, some people would call that irresponsible. So you've got to come up with another solution. Now, what does that take? Well, it could mean that you hire a babysitter when you go train. And I know not everybody can afford to do that, but that's an investment. Maybe it's that until your kids are old enough to somewhat be autonomous and be left alone, you invest in a treadmill. So you're like, okay, I've got a two-year-old, a four-year-old. I buy a treadmill. And for about the next ten years, I'm running on the treadmill when my significant other is not here to take care of the kids. And that's your investment in yourself. And so you've got to be willing to make that investment.

[00:31:52.730]
It's time, it's effort, it's money. And it can look like a lot of different things. But it's got to be a solution that you find because you have self-love, because you have to solve this problem. You can't just ignore it and say, oh, I'll wait till my kids are 12 and 14 before I start. Because it won't get easier.

[00:32:13.340] – Rachel
No, it doesn't. And you really have to remember, I know you didn't want to use the analogy of putting the air on when you're going down on an airplane, you put the air on you before you help the people next to you. But that's exactly it. You can't pour from an empty cup. You need to be full and happy and strong yourself, and you need to be healthy. And the more healthy and happy you are, the better person you are for those around you, your family and your friends and your coworkers and everybody else. And it's just so important. You are so important. And you really do need to put yourself first as best as you can.

[00:32:51.890] – Rachel
And often it's striking a balance. Sure, you've got family responsibilities, work responsibilities and all sorts of things, but you are so important to so many people and you should take yourself make yourself the best priority you can.

[00:33:04.400] – Allan
Yeah, it's you know, and it goes it goes even deeper than the being there for them while they're kids. I mean, we're in this I guess the term they use the sandwich generation and the concept is that many of us will be taking care of children at the same time we're taking care of our parents.

[00:33:21.860] – Rachel
Right.

[00:33:23.480] – Allan
Because people are having children later in life, they're putting it off and they're having them later in life. And as a result, they're beginning to have to take care of parents at the same time that they're still taking care of their kids. Now, I can tell you that only one of our boys has a daughter and she's older. It's from a prior relationship. So it's not his. But he's been in the kid's life since she was 10 months old or something like that. So she's dad and he's adopted her and all that.

[00:33:52.970] – Allan
But our other kids are already in their late 20s, early 30s, and they're not even thinking about kids in many cases. So, yeah, I'm going to probably be in my sixties before our daughters really start deciding that they're going to start afamily. And if that's the case, I don't want to be the 80-year old that she's just sending kids off to college. And now I've got to take care of dad.

[00:34:21.320] – Allan
You know, that's. That's not who I want to be, and so this self care is not just this selfish thing, it's really thinking about holistically who you are as a person and where you fit in to this whole scheme of a family and realizing that the healthier and stronger you keep yourself, the less of a burden you are on anybody in, the more you are able to help.

[00:34:45.880]
And so I can just imagine my daughters , look, hey, I'm fine. I'm 80 years old. Send my granddaughter down here to Bocas for six weeks. Come on down, bring her down and maybe we take her back up. But yeah, she can come down. I've got to be able to run on that deep sand and Bluff Beach. And I've got to be able to do the things that she wants to do and keep up with her. To be that individual that can be that caregiver without requiring caregiving myself is really the way I kind of like to couch this. You know, I want to be able to wipe my own butt when I'm 105. It's a funny way, I like to say it, but what it really means is I want to be able to run in deep sand with my granddaughter when I'm 80.

[00:35:36.940] – Rachel
Yeah. For sure.

[00:35:38.230] – Allan
That kind of thing. So, as we get into this, just realize that you have to love yourself. You have to do this every day you give away and don't do it is a day lost and you really need to turn this around. It's really about getting aware of that story in your head and trying to make it a different ending.

[00:36:02.410] – Rachel
Yeah, that sounds great in it. And if anyone listening has any questions or doesn't know where to start, reach out to Allen's Facebook page or email or anything, we would love to guide you and how to make these choices or how to figure out how you can make fitness a priority in your life. We'd love to help you with that.

[00:36:21.160] – Allan
You can go to https://40plusfitnesspodcast.com/group and join the awesome Facebook group that we have out there. There are weekly challenges and we're always having discussions about things that are going on in the health and fitness world. And there's a lot of fun, too. It's not just this and that. I post the pictures of the of the beach there and I believe I put even some pictures of the monkeys that kind of made a monkey out of me. I wouldn't have had those videos if I had found my phone. Those videos are alive and well and you can go out on a group and actually see them right now if you'd like.

[00:36:58.870] – Allan
So anything else you want to go over, Rachel, before you know that?

[00:37:02.680] – Rachel
That was great. Thanks so much.

[00:37:04.510] – Allan
All right. You take care and we'll talk next week.

[00:37:06.760] – Rachel
Yep. Take care.

Patreons

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

– Anne Lynch	– John Dachauer	– Margaret Bakalian
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– Eric More	– Leigh Tanner

Thank you!

Another episode you may enjoy

Wellness Roadmap Part 1

Less...

Let's Say Hello

[00:00:47.640] – Allan
Hey Raz! How are you doing?

[00:00:49.650] – Rachel
Great Allan. How are you today?

[00:00:51.480] – Allan
I'm doing all right. It's a busy week. I've got three interviews, which means three books. We're going to talk about today is a solo episode, which I basically put as much time into one of those as I would if it were a book. But there's a lot of reading going on. And the funny thing was they did a power outage on the island yesterday, which is why we had to delay our recording. We were going to do this recording yesterday and they just decided, okay, we need to do some work on the electric grid. So from about 10:00 this at 10:00 to five o'clock, they're going to cut out our power. It actually ended up being something like 10:30 to 7:15.

[00:01:28.650] – Allan
But I was in the process of trying to read this book, and it's on the computer because I don't get hard copies here. And I used my computer until the battery said 3%, 1%, then gone. I had it on my phone. So I had emailed it to me and I had it on my iPhone. And so that iPhone I just paid for. I read half of his book on an iPhone, and I was exhausted, I was like, this is hard. I don't want to read books on phones anymore.

[00:01:58.470] – Rachel
It's too small. Man, you'll need better glasses if you do that.

[00:02:03.470] – Allan
I did it. Yeah, but I needed to get the book read and I didn't have really have another option. But I and it was a fascinating book. So I'm really, really interested in that interview for sure, because he's he's a pretty fascinating guy with a lot of, a lot of good information. So that's going to be a great podcast with Dr. Pontzer coming up soon, a few weeks. I had to read his book, most of his book. I read it on my phone because I ran out of juice on my computer, but.

[00:02:30.640] – Rachel
Oh, my gosh.

[00:02:31.810] – Allan
Yesterday was an interesting day. And I had read a book today and I'm going to do interviews. So this is just a very busy week for me.

[00:02:40.630] – Allan
Wow. It sure sounds like it.

[00:02:42.730] – Allan
How about yourself?

[00:02:44.140] – Rachel
Great. Not quite as busy as you are now. We are out of the polar vortex now and I don't know if you can see, but we've got beautiful blue skies here in Michigan. It's nice and sunny and we're in the thirty degrees. So I might even have to break out some shorts now.

[00:03:00.950] – Allan
We're in the thirty degrees… Celsius, but…

[00:03:05.410] – Rachel
A little different.

[00:03:07.100] – Allan
A little different. I'm wearing a tank top and shorts and yeah.

[00:03:11.350] – Rachel
Yeah, I'm happy to see the sun.

[00:03:15.070] – Allan
All right. Well are you ready to get into today's episode.

[00:03:17.770] – Rachel
You bet. Let's do this.

Weight Loss Over 40

Today's discussion is going to be about why simple can be a bad long term strategy for weight loss. Let's face it, everybody likes simple rules. We like simple because simple, something we can wrap your mind around. And if it works, if that rule of thumb, if that simple thing is correct, it works. And that's beautiful. You know, the keep it super simple, KISS model, if you will. There's other versions of that, obviously, but I'll just I'll go with that clean one. And for a lot of people, that's actually what we want. We want the simplest solution to solve a problem. So why would I think or say that it's not a good long-term strategy for weight loss?

Well, before I get into that, I want to kind of take you back to 1999 when the movie came out called The Matrix. And this is one of my personal favorite movies I particularly like the first one that of them in the series were really, really good. But in this particular movie, Morpheus offers Neo, who was played by Keanu Reeves, two choices. And so he has his two hands out there. You can take the red pill or you can take the blue pill.

And Neo had to make that choice. But it seems for a lot of people in wanting simple we're doing the same thing with weight loss and the two operate offers are either Calories In Calories Out (CICO) or energy balance or your low carb/keto. And for most of the people that are on one side of the fence or another, they're in this tribe. It's this or that, and they're almost oblivious to the other side of the conversation. And as a result, no one's really having good conversations about what we should be doing for weight loss.

Today, I want to tell you and show you how this, this or that choice is an illusion that's actually part of the problem why so many people suffer and struggle to lose weight.

So the first reason I want to kind of get into is is kind of the most obvious one. Nutrition is not a simple thing. If it were really that simple, we would all just eat Twinkies and take multivitamins and we would be fine and obviously that's not the case because food is information.

What we eat, when we eat, how we eat and how much we eat are all bits and pieces of information that we're giving our body for our body to then do something with. Okay? And the body's this wonderful mechanism that can take us through hard times. It can make us thrive during good times, and the body adapts to everything that we do to it, including our food. So I want you to stop thinking about food as something that you just enjoy eating or something that's providing you with calories or anything like that.

Food is information.

And when you kind of wrap your mind around that, you can understand how food is just like a matrix. And the only way we're going to understand what works for us is to go ahead and peel back the layers of that matrix. And the way I like to visualize this is that there are three layers to this matrix.

Now, the first layer is very, very simple. It's like grade school math. The second layer is a little bit more complicated. So we'll say that's like high school algebra, maybe some geometry mixed in there. And then the final layer is extremely complex. In fact, the math is so difficult that in some cases we as human beings, science and everything have not really solved that puzzle, have not cracked that code. So let's take a moment to talk about these three layers and how they all affect your ability to lose weight.

So the first is the Calories In Calories Out model. This is a very simple model because it assumes what goes in has to come out. And so it's trying to play off of the law of thermodynamics. And in particular, that was Newton's laws, but it was the law of conservation of energy. So the expectation is if you put energy into a system, then the energy will have to come out or be stored, can't be lost anywhere. Now, that all makes sense and it's actually true. But there's just a couple problems with the Calories In Calories Out model being a pure thermodynamics play. And that's because the human body is not a closed system. See, the way they like to measure calories is in a closed system.

So they will literally burn something in a container and there's nothing else in that container but that thing. And that's where they figure out how many calories an item could produce based on burning it. Likewise, when they're looking at human performance, they're measuring the carbon dioxide output of a human being, doing some work. And that's where they're coming up with some estimates on how many calories the individual burned. Now, when you're in a closed system, that's very easy to measure. But unfortunately, we don't live in closed systems. We don't live in closed environments.

So pretty much everything we do related to calories is done on a formula and an estimate. And there are some big, big problems with those estimates, for example. They would assume if there was an Olympic athlete that weighed the same as I do, that we would both burn the same amount of energy, traveling the same distance. And that's just not true. I'm going to be much less efficient at my movement than an Olympic athlete. Therefore, the Olympic athlete is going to burn fewer bits of energy to accomplish the same task.

That's how they become elite performers. They're able to perform better. They're able to use utilize energy more effectively, more efficiently than someone normally would. If I were trying to outswim Michael Phelps, I'm going to flail and my legs and arms are not going to cooperate as well. He's going to glide through the water with almost no effort or at least looks like it's almost no effort. So you can't compare me to Michael Phelps from a calorie burning model.

Yet everything we have out there tells me if you spend an hour running, you're going to burn X number of calories. And again, these are all estimates. So they just don't really know at that point in time how many calories you might be burning. It's an estimate. Same with food. You know, if you're not measuring to the nth degree the volume of each and every ingredient in a recipe and then making sure that you're eating that specifically portion to portion, then you're going to potentially be off.

What does that mean? Well, if you're off just 16 calories on a meal and you're overeating by 16 calories every meal, you could be gaining as much as 10 pounds in a year. And so it's these finite what we think of as perfect formulas that are leading us astray quite often.

The other thing that's not quite right with calories in, calories out is a lot of people start to get hungry and then they get hangry. If you're eating predominantly a higher carb meal, which is what you inevitably end up doing in a Calories In Calories Out, pure model, because they look at fat and they say fat is nine calories per gram and a carb is four calories per gram. So if we substitute fat grams for carbs grams, we're going to reduce our total calorie input. And that is true.

The problem is we get hungry. Carbs burn through our system faster. They need to go somewhere faster. And as the result, it makes it very difficult for someone to stay at a calorie restriction and not have some hunger issues. And we're going to get into that in a little bit more detail when I talk about the next layer, because that hunger and all the stuff that's going on in our body, how fast we're burning energy, all those things is really dictated by the next two layers.

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So the second layer of this is going to be a little bit more complex because it's not just the simple math of which you studied in grade school. There's a little bit more to it. And that's macros. The macronutrients that your body needs to perform. Now, our brain and our body are made up of protein and fat. Now carbs such as just standard sugar or potato or a carrot or an apple or even some lettuce or broccoli are are all made up of carbs and some protein. But our body really only uses the carbs for energy, the protein and the fat is utilized for building materials.

So one of the things about macros that's really, really important to wrap your mind around is that like body temperature, which stays in a very tight range and blood pH which stays in the very tight range, our blood sugar level stays at a very tight range, or at least it's supposed to if we're living optimally. So when you start looking at blood sugar, just a simple little tip here is that a human body has less than a teaspoon of total sugar in our blood system at any given point in time when we eat something that has carbs in it and maybe even a little bit, if we eat something with protein, we're going to get an input of insulin.

The pancreas will put some insulin in there because it's going to say we don't need this much sugar in the blood. It's dangerous for our kidneys, it's dangerous for our brain. Let's regulate this. Let's keep it in this tight little range that we need to keep our blood sugar in to be healthy. If you're fairly active and maybe you did a good workout today, then the insulin can take that and put it in the muscles and the liver in the form of glycogen. So that it can refresh, basically restore the glycogen that was in the muscles and in the liver that we use during a hard workout.

Now, for most of us, though, we didn't do a hard workout necessarily. And we eat that sugar or we eat that carb and the body has only one other option, and that's to store it as fat. So we start accumulating fat because we have more blood sugar than our body needs and it stores it. If we're active, then those energy burn. And as I said, the first model is not wrong. We are burning those calories.

The problem is we get this little surge and we store a little. So little surge, little store, little surge, little store. And most of the people that preach the Calories In Calories Out model will also tell you you should eat six small meals per day so you're never super hungry. So they recognize that you're digesting that food really quickly. You're putting it to use in your body really quickly and you're going to be hungry, really quickly. And so they encourage you to eat more frequently. Well, again, that's a little surge and a little burn. A little surge, little burn.

You're never really giving your body the opportunity to go back to look at fat storage. Now, if you're slightly below your actual calorie usage, then, yes, there's the potential that you could actually use some of that body fat for energy.

But because you're eating all the time, there's not a lot of opportunity for that. And if you let yourself get hungry, you're very likely over eating those small meals or they're bigger meals than they should be. And now you're not in your calorie deficit.

Over time, what happens is we have this fat cells that are good at storing this energy, but even the fat cells themselves get a little overburdened. Ad a way you can kind of visualize this as imagine that every day that you're putting out garbage by your house and the that the trucks, the garbage trucks are coming by and they're picking up garbage. But that garbage, they don't really have anywhere to put it, sort of putting it in the garbage trucks that are driving around with garbage trucks. The garbage trucks get full and then the garbage trucks don't want to pick up any more garbage because they're full. So what are they doing? They're just they're driving around, but they're not picking up the trash. And so the trash collects. Now, blood sugar is that trash.

And so the pancreas says we need more of we need more of these these trucks. And so it starts trying to make more insulin. It tries to get more moving and force the fat cells to take on more, which they can do. They don't like it, but they do it. And that's when we start really having metabolic problems. And because the pancreas is working so hard to create all this excess insulin six times per day, boop, boop, boop, boop, it can get tired and it can fail.

And so we end up with these situations of insulin resistance and metabolic dysfunction because we keep feeding ourselves carbs and we're overeating. And a lot of that overeating actually comes from the fact that when we eat the standard American diet, it tends to not be low fat. And it also tends to not be low carb. It tends to be high carb, high fat and low in protein. And that's just a recipe for disaster, because there's too many calories and there's too many carbs, and our body is going to readily want to and need to store that sugar as fat.

Let's take a little bit of a step back now that we're into this, the second realm, because this is something even though it's a little bit complex, it's something that's fairly easy for us to wrap our minds around, because most of us know what protein, fat and carbs really are. They know where they come from. But the problem is most of us are not eating it from the right sources. We're not eating whole food. We're getting our food from a bag, box, can, or jar.

It has additives. It has added sugar. So it'll taste better and it'll have these like little labels all over them. “Healthy.” “Good for your heart.” All this stuff. Lies, lies, lies. They just are, okay? You need real food. That's what your body needs. That's when we talk about information. If you're putting processed foods in your body, it's getting garbled information and it's going to make poor choices for you.

It's going to store it. Now, one of the things, as I mentioned earlier, with the Calories In Calories Out model was that they they kind of turned on fat and they called fat the corporate culprit of why we're fat, why we have heart attacks and everything else is going on in our bodies. I've even seen people say that they believe diabetes is caused by excess fat in the diet. Again, not true, but I hear it. And so there's all this fat phobia and there has been for decades.

And it's not going to go away any time soon for most people. But I want you to think of it in these terms because everybody's afraid if I start eating more fat and more protein than my cholesterol is going to go up. So I hear the cholesterol conversation. Now, I'm not a doctor, so I'm not going to tell you what you should do relative to managing your cholesterol levels. I'm just going to say it in these simple terms.

Just because there are firemen and firewomen at a fire does not mean they are the cause of the fire. And just because there are more firemen and firewomen at a bigger fire doesn't mean, again, that the firemen are firewomen started that fire. There is no cause and effect. That one exists in a location at a given time. They're not causing you know, the firemen are not causing the fire.

If you follow the cholesterol model, that's what you believe, because my cholesterol is high. That's why I have clogged arteries, when the reality of it is it's that excess sugar, it's the insulin. It's all the stuff that's going on there that's creating the environment where cholesterol now has actually cake and do its thing to protect your blood vessels from leaking and then doing its job. Yes, you are now calcifying those in your in your arteries, and that is what's leading to heart disease and stroke.

And so if you can get past your fat phobia, then you're going to be able to make it into this next level.

And the third and final level is hormones. Now, if you're just a Calories In Calories Out model kind of person, then you may not think hormones have anything to do with fat. And it's not true. We know men can lose weight easier than women because we have testosterone. We know that a woman going through menopause begins to store fat differently because of estrogen and testosterone.

So if your hormones change and that's going to change where you store fat, it only makes reasonable sense that hormones do have a place in the fat storage system. And we've already talked about insulin, so we know that one. Now we're talking about the sex hormones, but thyroid, cortisol, glucagon, leptin and ghrelin, which are your hunger and satiety, all these different hormones are basically in a system of messaging that's happening in our body. And the food that goes in is information is then translated into our hormones.

So how do we manage the hormone system so that we're optimizing our opportunity to lose body fat and lose weight? Well, the first thing is, yes, you can go to your doctor and pretty much for thyroid, testosterone and estrogen, they can supplement. They can give you some. And that would definitely help alleviate if you're low. If your low T, if you've gone through menopause and you want to put some estrogen in there, that may make you feel a lot better. And then the same thing with thyroid. If your thyroid is under producing or converting, then your doctor might prescribe some thyroid again just to help you optimize where you need to be with those hormones.

But for most of the hormones that relate to what we're doing, trying to lose weight, there really isn't. A doctor way, there isn't a pill or a shot or something like that or a patch or something stuck under the skin that we can use to fix that problem, we have we have to manage it through lifestyle. And there are four core areas of lifestyle that are really important for managing your hormone system.

We've talked a bit about food, and if you're eating whole food and you're focused on food quality and you're eating a balanced diet, getting all the minerals and vitamins and things that you need.

And by the way, a lot of our hormones are made out of cholesterol. So, again, it's not necessarily a bad thing to have cholesterol. It's not evil. It's not terrible. But I'll let you manage that.

Anyway. Managing your nutrition, it should be the first step for weight loss. And so if you're eating a good balanced meal, you're getting some good proteins with each meal. There's some fat in there and a minimal amount of carbohydrates predominantly so that you can get your fiber and some vitamins and minerals.

Then you're signaling. The information you're putting in your body is that we have access to good food and we we don't need this extra body fat. It's okay to let go of it. And we're not going to be hungry all the time.

And we're not going to be eating six meals a day because we just don't need that food as a result of not needing that food. We are not eating as many calories. See the magic. So start with your nutrition and get that balanced and get that working for you.

The next is sleep. Most of the hormones in the human body, particularly with weight loss, are somewhat influenced by our circadian rhythm. If we're not getting a good night's sleep and we're not going to sleep early enough and we're setting alarms and we're waking up all frazzled, we're basically with that lack of sleep signaling to our body that we're in a stressful situation, something's bad, and we're not giving our body the opportunity to do the things it needs to do to optimize its own hormones. So after nutrition, the next thing I would focus on is improving quality of your sleep.

And then the next one is stress management. Now, when we're stressed, our body releases cortisol and sometimes it doesn't even have to be like seeing a bear or anything like that. Just in the morning, your cortisol levels are going to rise so that it's telling your body it's time to get up and start moving around. So cortisol has a very important purpose. But in our current day, we're all overstressed. We're all over sensitized. We're on the computer at night. We're watching shows, the news, everything that's going on in the world. So we end up in this kind of fight or flight mode almost all the time.

And if we're not managing that cortisol, cortisol has this really interesting relationship with your other hormones, particularly insulin. And it tells the body, don't burn excess energy, cut back on your energy. We're going to use this adrenaline and other stuff to get stuff done. But you focus on conservation because we need to survive. And if you're constantly in that state, you're going to probably be storing fat and it's really hard to lose fat. And you're also likely going to be breaking down muscle because cortisol is catabolic.

OK, next, I want to get into kind of some of the things that happen when we're not managing our stress. And a lot of times it just comes down to fatigue. We're just constantly dealing with information and we're trying to make the right decisions. And decisions are kind of finite. If we start doing too much, there's a fatigue. And as a result, we might make poor choices. We might decide I've had a tough day at work. I'm going to skip my workout. Or even worse, I had a tough day at work, I think I'm going to drink a bottle or two of wine and maybe someone takes up smoking again to manage their stress. So you see that this whole cycle of not managing your stress can lead you down a very dark path. That is, again, in each of those cases, communicating to your body. All is not good and we need to fight and we need to flight. And all those things are happening inside your body as expressed by your hormones. And then your actions.

And so the final one is movement, and this one, I saved it for last, but I don't want you to think that this is the most important thing, because the reality of it is you have to start with nutrition and then focus on your sleep and then focus on your stress. And movement is something that you blend into your life as you go.

It's great to start. Most people will start a weight loss program and they'll say, I'm going to eat very few calories and I'm going to bust my butt to try to lose this weight. The problem is you can't out exercise a bad diet. So, you know, you started out doing really, really well. You got hungry and then you you chewed into the Girl Scout cookies. And I mean, a whole pack of those is gone. And you you didn't do it and now it's time to exercise. You're not going to burn that box of Girl Scout cookies as fast as you hate them, you just can't. So you can't exercise, you can't out sleep, you can't out stress manage a bad diet. You got to get that right first.

So with the movement, this is something we want to talk about, kind of as a pretext to all the other stuff where we're trying to communicate to our hormones that it's okay to lose the weight. It's okay to use that energy for the right reasons. So as you do the exercises, recognize the type of exercise, how frequently you do it, how intensely you do it are communications to your body. So if you're lifting heavy weights, you're communicating to your body that you need more muscle, you need more strength, you need more bone density.

As such, your body actually starts producing a little bit more testosterone to aid in making those things happen. Again, exercise like just about everything else is lifestyle related, is going to be a communication strategy for your body, for you to tell your body that you want it to get stronger, you want it to go ahead and shed some of that body fat, get that growth hormone going. And that just kind of speeds the whole process up.

And then, don't don't feel like you've got to sit down and start this this massive exercise program straight away. Sometimes the simplest is easiest. And I know I started this by saying simple is not the best weight loss strategy, but sometimes with movement, I can tell you simple is actually the best. Go for a walk, go do something you enjoy, ride a bike, go hiking, do some things outside that you enjoy. And then as you get yourself more comfortable with movement as being a part of your every day, then you can start factoring in resistance, training, balance, mobility, all those different things. So you're building the body you want through the communication that came from the exercise that you did.

To sort of kind of roll this all together: Calories In, Calories Out is not wrong. The low-carb approach is not wrong. But the problem with only thinking you have those two choices is that you don't get the whole picture. They're all right at some level. But you've got to look at all of them and you've got to look at it from the perspective of this is all sitting on that complex model of hormones that even to this day, the best scientists in the world struggle to wrap their mind around how to optimize and make all those things work the way they're supposed to work. Because the human body is not simple. It is one of the most complex pieces of equipment you will ever have the ability to operate.

And we're doing it with these hormones. We're doing it with the information we feed our body and the time and day and how much and what macros they are. All of that matters. All of that's a part of it. I don't want to leave you thinking that this is just something that's outside the realm of your capacity to understand, because it's not. Any incremental improvement that you do is going to be good. Your body is going to respond. If you're not eating much whole food right now, most of your food is coming from a bag, box , jar, or can, start to change that. Go to a Farmer's Market this weekend and pick up some vegetables and meat, go to the butcher and find out ways that you can get meat at a cheaper discount, because sometimes they write off, they write down some of their higher priced, grass fed cow beef and some of their pasture chickens because they didn't sell at all. And you might have an opportunity to pick up on some of that at a discount look for a local co-op where they're selling things that are typically much cheaper because they're trying to make whole foods more accessible.

Start a process of looking for ways to improve your nutrition. And that's going to be the key to managing the hormones, looking at your macros, then looking at your calories, and then you've taken all of that math and all those layers and you've put together a formula that works for you. So, no, simple is not always the best alternative for long term weight loss, but once you know your rules, very likely those will be your rules for a long, long time.

And so learning how to eat, learning how to sleep better, learning how to reduce stress and manage stress and learning how to move should all be things that you look at each day to improve your health and fitness.

Post Show/Recap

[00:33:44.430] – Allan
Welcome back, Raz.

[00:33:45.840] – Rachel
Hey, Allan. Well, that's a lot of information you set out, and it sure makes sense. I can tell you that weight loss is nothing at all that simple. It's totally complex. And it gets worse with age, I think.

[00:33:58.200] – Allan
Yeah. It's hard for me to be having some conversations with people because they'll be tribal and they'll be like, oh, no, it's just it's this. It's this one rule and loose weight. You have to be in a calorie deficit. And the short answer is, yeah, you do. But what you think is a calorie deficit isn't necessarily calorie deficit. Then they say, well, no, you just calculate a formula and everybody follows the formula.

[00:34:27.840] – Allan
And I was like, okay, then everybody passes the test. There's a bell curve, there's a range. And some people are outside that range. And there's something's going on in your body that might be different than someone else. And so there's age is related to it. Size is related to it. Rather, you're going through an infection or not could have something to do with it. So everything that's going on in your body takes energy to do.

[00:34:51.450] – Allan
That's true. But your body will shut off the function if it doesn't need it, if it needs the energy to do something like feed your brain, keep you alive, it will do that and it will sacrifice reproductive system. It will sacrifice your spleen, all of that. It will just do it. And that's where people get lost. But no, it's not that simple. If everybody were the same, if it were perfectly the same, then yes. And those formulas that were calculated, the calculations are estimate. And if you're off by just a couple hundred here, there things aren't working the way that you think they should.

[00:35:32.070] – Allan
But and you can look at it, you go on my fitness pal and say I'm eating this much and you can weigh every bit of that. Every single morsel goes in your mouth. You can weigh every bit of it. Put that in there and you can go through and say, and here I am on the elliptical. Mr Elliptical said I just burned 750 calories in an hour. Put that into the formula and then I'd say, OK, in six weeks you should weigh fifteen pounds less.

[00:35:53.700] – Rachel
Mm hmm.

[00:35:54.780] – Allan
It's not a straight line. Why is it not a straight line. It should be. If I eat the same foods every day, did the same exercise every day, why would it be that one day I weigh less or more than another day. And so it's not just calories in. That's a part of it. It's true. But it is not everything.

[00:36:11.340] – Allan
The other side of it is then how we eat and what we eat is defining how hungry you are. And so where I said you could measure every morsel of food and you would know roughly how much you were eating. But most of us don't do that. Most of us say I had an Apple medium.

[00:36:30.420] – Rachel
Exactly.

[00:36:30.970] – Allan
When the actual apple they have is large. And they'll say, oh, I had a serving of almonds when in fact, they actually had two servings of almonds.

[00:36:39.670] – Rachel
Oh, yeah.

[00:36:40.650] – Allan
You know, I had a tablespoon of peanut butter when the way they scooped it out, they now actually have three tablespoons of peanut butter. And they forgot about the bag of popcorn that they ate at night.

[00:36:52.620] – Rachel
That's right.

[00:36:54.400] – Allan
I didn't log that. Darn. I don't understand why the formula is not working. And so what you how you feed yourself, whether you're hungry or not. And in many cases, if you start exercising, you're going to be hungrier. And they've done study after study and I've seen different numbers, but even nutritionists, people who should know exactly what they're putting in their mouths, underestimate how much they ate. And in some cases, that can be 29% or more. The numbers I've seen. So if you're off by about 30 percent of what you thought you ate, meaning you're underreporting that.

[00:37:32.940] – Allan
And then I can tell you on some cardiovascular machines, they're overstating it because I can tell you is extremely difficult to burn 750 calories in an hour. And so there was no way I was burning that many calories per hour. Just this wasn't happening. But the machine said it, so I should take it. And I say, okay, well, this is a Precore. And then I go get on this other one. And I work just as hard for an hour. And I don't like that machine because it only says 600. I like the one that says 750.

[00:38:03.981] – Rachel
For sure. I would to!

[00:38:07.980] – Allan
One hundred fifty difference. And when we're talking about six hundred that's twenty five percent. So if I'm off on one side I'm off on the other side of my formula it doesn't make any sense. So I want make sure I'm eating foods that fill me up or make sure I'm getting the nutrition my body needs. And so I have to look at my macros just to know, okay am I getting good quality food?

[00:38:28.920] – Allan
That can be fiber. So you are eating plant-based. That's fiber, it's protein, it's some fat. And those are all going to make you feel satiated because we know simple carbs and starches and processed grains in particular are going to make us hungry all the time faster.

[00:38:46.620] – Rachel
For sure.

[00:38:47.010] – Allan
And so if we're hungry all the time, we're eating more. We just are. We have to. Aand so you have to look at how your macros are affecting your hunger and satiation and and getting you the food you need.

[00:38:59.070] – Allan
And then the final bit of it is hormones. And you talked a little bit about aging. When we got into this. A woman's body, particularly between 45 and 65, is going through some huge hormonal shifts. Lower thyroid is is a huge thing. So if your thyroid hormones going down, that manages your metabolism. So that's going down. If you're losing muscle mass, your metabolism is going down. And because your estrogen and sex hormones are going down as well, you're storing fat in different locations and you may be storing more fat than you would have stored otherwise, or at least you're seeing it because you're storing it in places that you didn't have it before.

[00:39:45.710] – Allan
And if you're storing fat in general, it may be that not that you're you're moving that fat from one location to another, but you just actually storing more fat now and now. You still have that fat where you had it and now you have more where you didn't have it. Unfortunately, that's the thing.

[00:40:02.150] – Allan
So it is a lot more complex than just one model than just one thing. Now those simple rules can be good things to try to test.

[00:40:13.970] – Rachel
Yeah, for sure.

[00:40:15.380] – Allan
If I go on a low-carb diet, does it make it easier for me to restrict calories? And in doing so, am I doing the other things necessary to manage my hormones? So I'm keeping my stress level low. I'm getting good quality sleep. I'm getting some good movement and so my body understands I still want to be alive. Because I'm moving. I'm not laying here like I'm ready for a coffin and I'm not sitting here like I'm ready for a coffin and I'm moving like I actually want to stay alive and I need to be able to move. Then your body responds with hormones following a good circadian rhythm, a good cycle, and you improve your opportunity to shed that fat. But it's not something that just click happens and a lot of people will start and they'll start losing weight. And that feels good, particularly your low carb. You start flushing some water and four or five pounds down. I've got this under control. And then it's one pound and then it's half a pound and then it's half a pound and people get impatient.

[00:41:16.370] – Rachel
Oh, yeah.

[00:41:17.120] – Allan
And then they're going, oh, I, I want it to go faster. So now I'm going to go do this intense, start doing these intense workouts and now they're adrenals are all over the place and their cortisol is high and they're not recovering and maybe they're not sleeping as well because their legs hurt. They're cramping. They just don't feel good. I don't understand why am I not losing weight? It's like, well, to take a step back, you got to look how my managing my overall health.

[00:41:45.830] – Rachel
Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, it's a real big picture of you. If and I've been through this myself, I lose some weight gain some I've moved several times. Every time I move, I seem to gain a few pounds because my activity is off, my nutrition is off. There's these life situations. My kids in college, you know, we all go through these big life changes where things just get wonky and then you just need to get back into the rhythm of things.

[00:42:14.240] – Rachel
And like you had mentioned before, too, I've done the same thing. You know, back in my thirties, I used My Fitness Pal and I would measure I would get the weight scale out and look at what is an eight ounce piece of chicken or four ounces of cheese or whatever. And I'm always surprised I can't seem to remember what four ounces of cheese looks like. And I've got to go back and remeasure things. But that's a really common pitfall of eating more than what you're thinking you're eating. And there is a lot to it. And it is worth taking a step back and reevaluating everything that you're trying to do to lose weight.

[00:42:51.110] – Allan
And then, we are talking about weight loss here, but the other side of it is you've got to live your life.

[00:42:57.140] – Rachel
True.

[00:43:00.080] – Allan
If you're so obsessed with the weight loss that you're not enjoying yourself. So you're saying, I've got to weigh everything I put in my mouth or I've got to look at what the nutrition is on it, on my fitness pal before I can decide if I can have it. And then I'm trying to figure out how to have some cocktails with my friends that just kind of fit my macros or I'm going to a restaurant and I really can't even figure out what to eat there because, I don't even know what's in 90 percent of it. And I don't want to be the person at the table that spends fifteen minutes grilling the waiter on what's in my food. You didn't think to call ahead, but you didn't want to say what you want to do is go out, have a nice meal with your friends, have a couple drinks and call it a night and then you'll pick up tomorrow. And so, weight loss is important, but having a good quality of life now is as well.

[00:43:55.280] – Allan
So at least have the patience with yourself to live life now, but slowly start incorporating habits and changes to your activity level, to your sleep, to your stress that are going to support you going forward.

[00:44:12.710] – Rachel
Yeah, so true. It's all these different things and it's not worth obsessing about any particular thing. Just to your best, keep as best of balance as you can and make those little tiny incremental steps. I always say baby steps are the best way to reach your goals.

[00:44:29.140] – Allan
Yeah, give it a shot, try something, let it go for a while, see if it's sustainable, if it's working, keep it. If not, chuck it, just chuck it and start something else. Say, I did the my fitness pollen count the calories, and it worked for me for three weeks and it stopped working. Let's try something else. It was working so you don't necessarily chuck. But the question in is why, why am I not getting the results I expect to have? And you've got to look at those other layers and see what is it about these other layers that I might not be doing. Well, it's like, oh, I forgot to lug my popcorn every night.

[00:45:04.290] – Rachel
Yeah.

[00:45:05.800] – Allan
Maybe that was it. Maybe just having that extra popcorn was what did it. I still want my popcorn. So can I make that fit my lifestyle or not. And you've got to make those choices. But yeah, I think so many people get wrapped up in it's a simple rule. It should work, it works for everybody else. And the reality is it doesn't. Sixty-seven percent of people would not be overweight if it were as simple as calories in, calories out.

[00:45:31.390] – Rachel
That's right. Yep, that's absolutely right.

[00:45:34.150] – Allan
But calories in calories is right. It's just not the whole answer.

[00:45:38.920] – Rachel
Not the only thing out there is a lot of nuances to talk about.

[00:45:44.050] – Allan
And I've got some really great guests coming on in the next few weeks and we're going to get in a little bit deeper into some of these topics. So I'm really excited about that.

[00:45:52.480] – Rachel
Sweet. That sounds great.

[00:45:54.970] – Allan
Well, Rachel, you have an outstanding week and I'll talk to you next week.

[00:45:58.840] – Rachel
Thanks. Take care.

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