Let's Say Hello

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

Episode

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SPONSOR

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

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

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

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

Sprints

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

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

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

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

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

Moderate

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

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

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

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

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

Slow and Steady

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Post Show/Recap

[00:16:18.293] – Allan
Hey Ras.

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

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

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

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

[00:17:32.610] – Rachel
Right.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Thank you!

Another episode you may enjoy

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Let's Say Hello

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

Episode

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SPONSOR

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Post Show/Recap

[00:22:43.180] – Allan
Hey, Ras.

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

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

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

[00:23:36.300] – Rachel
Wow.

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

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

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

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

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

[00:25:52.800] – Rachel
Sure.

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

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

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

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

[00:27:47.320] – Allan
Right.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[00:31:20.090] – Rachel
Absolutely.

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

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

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

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

Patreons

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

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

Thank you!

Another episode you may enjoy

Wellness Roadmap Part 1

Less...

Let's Say Hello

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[00:04:28.450] – Rachel
OK, sure.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Episode

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

1) S – Start inYour Head – Mindset.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2) Y – You.

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

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

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

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

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

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

3) S – Sustainable Lifestyle.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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4) T – Training.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

5) E – Eat Real Food.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

6) M – Moderation Threshold.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

7) S – Serve Yourself and Others

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Summary – Your Wellness SYSTEMS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why did you go with Coach Allan?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Post Show/Recap

Post show with Rach

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[01:47:38.430] – Rachel
Right.

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

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

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

[01:48:33.450] – Allan
It feels like twenty percent of a week, maybe even less, but It's not.

[01:48:39.060] – Rachel
you know, it that just goes to show that even with all of your podcasts, even after all these 500 episodes, I still learn something that I never gave much thought to before.

[01:48:51.330] – Allan
OK. I hope we have 500 more but at doing 52, one per week that's good nine years or so down the line. So we'll see.

[01:49:03.540] – Rachel
I think you can cover a whole ton of topics between now and then.

[01:49:07.910] – Allan
There's so much to cover.

[01:49:09.320] – Rachel
There really is.

[01:49:10.880] – Allan
All right, Rachel. Well, I'll see you next week.

[01:49:13.110] – Rachel
Yup. Take care.

Patreons

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

– Anne Lynch	– Eric More	– Leigh Tanner
– Deb Scarlett	– John Dachauer	– Margaret Bakalian
– 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.

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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.

Patreons

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

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Thank you!

Another episode you may enjoy

How to 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

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Thank you!

Another episode you may enjoy

Why simple can be a bad long-term strategy for weight loss after 40

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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.

Patreons

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

– Anne Lynch	– Eric More	– Leigh Tanner
– Deb Scarlett	– John Dachauer	– Margaret Bakalian
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Thank you!

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SPONSOR

This episode of the 40+ Fitness podcast is sponsored by Naked Nutrition, what does getting naked mean for supplements? It means no unnecessary additives. It means premium sourced ingredients without fillers. So you don't need to compromise on your diet or your goals. That's what Naked Nutrition offers.

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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!

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