Let's Say Hello

[00:02:13.320] – Coach Allan

Hey, Ras, how are you?

[00:02:15.120] – Coach Rachel

Good, Allan. How are you today?

[00:02:16.950] – Coach Allan

Good. It looks like you're somewhere fun. I am. Well, you're in a hotel room, which is not fun. Well, it can be fun. I guess it can be fun. I don't want to hear anymore.

[00:02:25.990] – Coach Rachel

Yeah. Mike had to make a trip up to the outskirts of Boston. Actually, we're in Westborough right now where he's got a couple of plants that he needs to take a look at. And so we made a vacation out of it. So we just spent the weekend in downtown Boston, walking all over the city and enjoying the sights of Boston. Now we're here in Westborough for a couple of days, and I'm just going to take it easy talking with you today. I've got books to read and places to go walk, so I'll be a happy camper while he's at work.

[00:02:58.420] – Coach Allan

I lived up that way nearly 20 years ago. You start looking back and say, Well, when was I there? Well, I was at that job for 10 years, at that job for two years. And I'm like, Oh, wow. That was a while ago because I've been here now for a while. So I was like, Okay, yeah. From age 39 to 41, I lived up in Groton, which is a small little village town just outside the loop. And so, yeah, occasionally I'd go into Boston and just have some fun. But yeah, Boston is a really fun town, but it was a really weird town back then. But then things were changing. There's progression as they will. I was like, so they had, I think one of the rules they had just started doing was they had started no smoking in bars and restaurants. And so all the bar owners in downtown area of Boston, that big area, they were really concerned that they would lose all their customers. And I was talking to the bartender. He's like, Yeah, we're thinking we're going to lose all our business. And I'm like, Well, where do you think they're going to go to eat?

[00:04:06.770] – Coach Allan

Where do you think they're going to go to drink? They're still going to come out. They're not going to just stay home because you say they can't smoke there. They'll go outside and smoke. They're resilient. They'll deal with the cold and do it. And some might quit. But it was just interesting that that was happening. And I was sitting in that bar because, again, we were taking a weekend there. And I was like, Okay, I'd like a can of beer. The guy's like, I can't serve you a beer right now. I'm like, What do you mean? He says, Well, it's 1155 and I can't serve you a beer until noon. I'm like, Where in the hell am I?

[00:04:41.730] – Coach Rachel

Oh, my goodness. That's funny.

[00:04:44.900] – Coach Allan

Well, you're as up there, I guess, as you were in Michigan. It's probably straight line across.

[00:04:49.980] – Coach Rachel

Pretty much, yeah. It's hot right now. Hot and humid, but I'll take it. I'll take it. It's just nice to be outside.

[00:04:59.460] – Coach Allan

Get you some chowder and plenty of lobster. You're going to make a drive out to the horn, the Cape?

[00:05:08.580] – Coach Rachel

I'm not sure how much time we'll have for that. Mike's got a couple of long days of work ahead of him, and then we'll just explore the areas close by. But yeah, we.

[00:05:17.570] – Coach Allan

Have no plans. It's like a four hour drive over, but it's beautiful over there. But if you had the time, it's worth the trip. But yeah, you got to spend some time if you're going to make it matter.

[00:05:29.240] – Coach Rachel

Right. Yeah, we'll just explore the areas around where we are.

[00:05:32.810] – Coach Allan

Well, cool. All right. You ready to talk about calories?

[00:05:36.300] – Coach Rachel

Sure.

Episode

Today I want to talk about calories. If you've listened to me for any period of time, you know that I'm just not a huge fan of the calories in calories out model for a number of reasons we'll talk about today. But for a lot of people first starting out, counting calories can be a very beneficial activity because teaches you a little bit about how food works. And so today I want to give you the basics of how calories work in our body, how to do calories in, calories out, and then what to do when it stops working. Because for most people, it does stop working at some point, and that's because there are some limitations. But that said, it's a great way to jump start your journey to learn a lot about what you're eating and how much you're eating and what food is all about. So let's dive into it. Now, before we go too deep in this, calories in, calories out is a pretty simple basic thing. It's what I call just basically the pluses and minuses, the addition and subtract formulas for the way that you can lose weight and have enough energy.

That said, there are more complicated levels underneath this that, if they're not addressed, can cause you some problems. So the next level below that or above that, however you want to look at it, which is more complicated, you can think about the difference between addition and subtraction and when you started learning algebra is when we start talking about macronutrients and micronutrients. If we're not feeding our body what it needs, it's basically going to be a problem. So we can actually be overfed and undernourished. And so that happens a lot with the American diet, particularly with the processed foods and things that are going on today. But all that said, there is a more complex math underneath the calories in calories out model. But from a basic perspective, the calories in, calories out model is not wrong. They're both right. They just overlap. And then there's another level that's a little bit more deeper, a little bit more complicated. You can think of it as the calculus or differential equations. It's the complicated stuff that a lot of us won't be able to do a whole lot about, and that's hormones. Your hormones are going to affect how your body operates.

And so for certain individuals, no matter what they do, their hormones are going to be a progress slower, if you will. It's not going to stop you from necessarily losing weight. But you'll may notice that you don't lose weight as quickly as someone else does. So women have estrogen, men have testosterone. That additional testosterone makes it a little easier for men to lose weight. So if you notice that you and your significant other are basically eating the same foods, but they're losing weight and you're not, or you are losing weight and they're not, it's that hormones. It's not necessarily what you're eating or how much you're eating. It's just you're in a better balance from a hormone perspective to lose weight. So just realize that calories in, calories out is an easy to start model. Over time, it'll probably stop working for you. And that's when you want to start thinking about these other things and either set your expectations or make some adjustments to the quality of the food you're eating to make this continue to work for you. So let's get into the basics of calories in, calories out. A calorie is a measure of energy.

Now, when we use the term calorie, we're actually talking about kilo calories. But just to shorten it, we still call it a calorie. But a kilo calorie is basically the amount of energy necessary to warm one liter of water, one degree Celsius. And so we call it a calorie, but basically it is a measure of energy. And so the principles of what we're trying to do is we're trying to figure out exactly how many calories we're consuming and how many calories we are burning. And then the balance of those two or imbalance of those two is going to basically determine whether we're gaining weight or losing weight. So it's a thermodynamics of looking at energy into a system and energy out. Okay? So when we want to know what our energy burn is, most of the energy burn that we're doing when we're talking about it is a calculation. It's an estimate. So you get on one of those treadmills and it tells you for an hour's time running, you burn 400 calories. It's just an estimate. How they calculate that estimate inside that particular machine is particular to that machine. If you've ever gotten on one elliptical and then got on another elliptical and said, Well, I like the other elliptical more because within an hour I burn 700 calories, where this one says I'm burning 500, you're probably not burning 700 calories.

You may not be burning 500, but it's an estimate. And the only way you'd really know how much you were burning would be if you did some scientific tests where you were in a closed environment and they're measuring your carbon dioxide and they're measuring how much energy you're outputting. That's how they would know. But everything else is an estimate. Okay, now, when you start talking about the foods that we're consuming, for the most part, those are estimates too. What they've done for a lot of these different foods is they've burned them in a container and they've determined how much additional energy is put off when these things are set on fire. And that's assumed that our body would do the same thing, use the same amount of energy. So it's an estimate. And one of the other big issues is because these are both estimates, I prefer to look at these as guidelines and not absolute. But so many people get stuck in the math of, Oh, I'm eating 500 calorie deficit every day and I'm not losing weight. Or you go on to some of these applications and they tell you, You had a great day.

You're 1,000 calories under your requirement. If you eat like this for the next six weeks, you'll lose 30 pounds. And the reality is, one, you're not going to do that. Two, you may not have recorded your food right. And three, the estimates that are in there for your burn and for your consumption may be off. Okay, so what we want to try to do when we're looking at the food that we're eating and the energy that we're expending is just get an idea of balance. And so it gives us some basic information to make some decisions about how much we're eating and how much we're moving and what that means in relationship to each other. So let's dive a little bit deeper into each side of this calculation. So on the expenditure side, how many calories are you burning? Okay, one of the key terms that you'll hear is BMR. Okay, and BMR stands for basic metabolic rate. And what that means is how much do you need to just stay alive, meaning you're laying on your back in bed, completely at rest. How many calories do you need to stay alive? And that's keeping your brain alive, your organs alive, basic metabolic function.

And it's different based on age, gender, and your body composition. So you may have heard, if you have more muscle, burns more calories. And so that's where this all comes in. If you have more lean muscle mass, you're younger. And as I mentioned before, you're male, you're going to have a higher BMR than a woman. And it also has to do with your total size. So if you're 6 foot tall, you're going to burn more energy than someone who's 5 foot tall. So all of these things play into all of this burn. And so what you'll do with most of these things is you'll log in and they'll ask how tall you are, how much you weigh, and then they'll calculate a number. For most of us, the number is going to come somewhere between 1250 and 2,000. Again, that's a pretty wide range. But again, there's a wide range of people, so that range can be pretty wide. So if you're eating less than 1200 calories, it's very likely that you're under eating. You're not even giving your body enough to stay alive. And if you're out there doing exercise on top of that, that's even worse.

So that's where we come up with the term TD EE, or total daily energy expenditure. So if we're moving around, which most of us are, depending on our activity level, you add that to your BMR, and that will give you your total burn for the day. So I put into a calculator and I link to this as the Harris Benedict calculator, 40plusfitness. Com calorie will take you to that calculator. I didn't make that calculator. It's a website that just basically has that calculator, this link will just send you to that. But what it does, if you key in, okay, you're a 5 foot woman and you're basically sedentary, your basic metabolic rate is going to be just over 1200. If you're mildly active or you're sedentary, you're still going to burn more calories because you actually stand up every once in a while. You walk around, you got to go to the bathroom, you got to go to work. So you're moving around a little bit, just a little bit, and that's going to burn about 300 more calories. So for a basic woman to basically survive and deal with her daily expenditure, she's probably going to need, even a 5′ foot woman is going to probably need at least 1,500 calories just to stay in balance.

Now, if you're trying to lose a little bit of weight, you can go a little bit under that, but I would never go below your BMR. That's when you're starting to push yourself beyond. So what we want to do is basically say, okay, if I can up my activity, which we'll talk about and we can talk about, once you start actively increasing your activity, if you can just keep your food the same at roughly your TD EE, you're going to lose weight initially. So a good thing for this calculator is to say, what's the minimum amount I should eat? And that should at least be your BMR. I I would recommend you eat to your TD EE and then move more, just a little more. It doesn't have to be anything crazy, but if you can just add half an hour of activity each day, you're probably going to lose some weight there. Okay? So now let's talk about the consumption side. Okay? And again, this is just what we're trying to do is estimate how much energy is put off by the food that you're eating. And the only way you're really going to know that is to sit down and log it.

And the easiest thing I found to log it is an application called My Fitness Pal. They've got all these other foods out there so basically you can just plug this stuff in. There are other tools that other people have told me they like much more, but find your tool and this will help you in the initial. So what you want to do is you're going to look up what you're eating. So here I am eating a chicken breast and I'm going to have to look at how much that is. So what is that going to require? I need to weigh it. If I'm just estimating that this is a serving of chicken breast, it might be a larger breast or smaller breast. So I can't say both are the same number of calories. They're different. They're different sizes. So if you're going to do this and really get a good basis, you're probably going to need a food scale. You're probably going to need to go in and really pay attention to what goes into the foods that you're eating. Restaurants are notoriously off with their calorie counts. One study showed that they can be off by as much as 20 to 25 % understating your calories of a particular meal.

And so it's really easy to over consume and underestimate how much you've eaten. And so it's worth taking some time to sit down and log your food. But you've got to get the weight right. You've got to get how much you're getting, and you got to look at exactly what you're eating because just different additives, different things they put into it can really change the dynamics of how many calories are in a particular dish. It's a little easier, unfortunately, when you eat processed foods because they're putting it on the label. A serving of pasta has this many calories. A serving of hamburger helper mix has this many calories. So it's a little easier to look that stuff up. But that's not the nutrition your body needs. And so eventually, that's going to create a problem at those other math levels we talked about, the nutrition and the hormones. But that said, they make it a little bit easier for you to know. But if anytime you're eating something and you're not sure, like chicken breast, you can just Google, nutrition facts, chicken breast. If you're eating an apple, nutrition facts, and then the apple and the apple and just the size.

Is it small? Is it medium? Is it large? And that'll give you a basic idea. So now, as I mentioned, these are estimates. So your BMR and your TD EE are estimates of how much your body is burning. You're not actually ever going to really truly know that number, but you're getting an estimate. Unless you're going to take the time to weigh and measure all of your food, you're estimating how much of that you're eating. You're estimating serving sizes based on what's there. Even the numbers that are on the labels are estimates. So estimates of estimates, and you can see how this can run a little haphazard. Also, we sometimes miss things like grazing. So you didn't count on the fact that, or didn't think about, you're standing at your colleague's desk and they happen to have small chocolate there, and you popped two or three of those chocolate and you didn't log it. Well, that could have been 100 or more calories and you didn't log it. So you can see if you're not paying attention, it's easy to eat some things that you don't remember eating or you didn't get logged. So it looks on paper like you're at a deficit and maybe you aren't.

With labels, again, we're talking about processed foods here, and these things are engineered to make you want to eat more. So if you're sticking to processed foods as a way of doing this to make it a little easier, just realize they're engineering those foods to keep you hungry, to make you come back and eat more. They want you to eat more. That's how they make more money. So they're engineering their foods, and if they can fudge it on the label, they're going to fudge it on the label. So just be cognizant that processed foods are not really your friends, even if they make things a little easier and more convenient. The other thing that happens is in our bodies, as we exercise, as we do things physically, we become more efficient. I had Dr. Herman Pontzer on Episode 478. You can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/478. And he went out and studied the Hadza tribe, which is in Tansania. It's one of the only remaining hunter gatherer tribes out there. And they had a way of counting the total number of calories expended, utilizing carbon and a process with the urine and water.

And it's complex. But at the same time, they were looking at how many calories these had stuff who were at least nine miles a day traveling to get the foods that they needed. And so you would think, Okay, here's some really lean athletic guys that are moving around a lot. They're not sitting around much at all. And the ladies are digging for tubulars, and their men are climbing trees to get honey, and they're traveling around hunting and gathering. And what they found was that these individuals had gotten so efficient with movement and their bodies that they weren't really burning many more calories than a sedentary office worker sitting at their desk. So it was about 2,500 calories, which is the basic man of the same height and weight, same age, would basically be burning the same number of calories each day just sitting at their desk doing their job. So realize that over time, your body might get more efficient at using the calories as you get more fit. And that's just the way it works. And so as you're thinking about food, there's a whole lot that's not calculated into any of this. And it can just make it really hard that you feel hungry all the time because you're trying to hit a calorie number.

And sometimes the reason is that we're not counting the thermic effect of food. So protein, for example, requires a lot more processing in our body to process, to make it into something we can digest. That digestion is what we call the thermic effect of food. So if you ate 100 calories of chicken, you're not going to get 100 calories of energy out of that chicken. You're going to basically burn some of that to digest that. Whereas it f you had sugar water, it's going to go right into your system and there's not much processing of that at all. So if you're drinking a Coke or a pop, whatever you want to call it, if you're drinking that, that's going right on. There's no thermic effect. It's just calories straight in. Whereas, again, if you're eating something that takes a little bit longer to digest, there's a cost and that cost means you're getting fewer calories from that. So we may undercount calories for some things. The other thing is there are certain foods that are going to make you feel more satiated. They're going to keep you from being hungry or sooner. Fiber and protein are two examples of that where you're just going to feel fuller sooner and longer, and that's going to help you actually eat less.

And then, of course, with a lot of folks that are trying to do the calories in calories out model, they just start eating too little. And what this leads to later is binge eating or private eating and not logging. I don't know how many times I've been looking at a log for someone, and they've got 700 calories logged. And I'm like, You can't go day after day on 700 calories. They're complaining they're not losing weight, but they're obviously not logging everything, or they're eating too little for a few days, and everything's just shutting down. And while you can't really destroy your metabolism, it is what it is. Your body will start to shut down organs and things. It will start shutting things down if it feels like you're in a stressed, starving mode, and it will start shooting cortisol into your system to help hold on to fat while you're losing muscle. So realize you might see some weight loss at that level, but you may very well be losing the wrong weight. You might be losing muscle and not fat. So you're going to want to eat really close to that BMR number, if not to the TD EE, which is what I would personally recommend when you start.

But just make sure you're eating good quality food and that you're doing the right things for your body because this is not just about calories in, calories out. It can work and it does work. So basically just be careful that you don't get yourself into a mindset of that calories in, calories out is the answer because there's a little bit more to it. So I want to summarize a little bit here and just say, okay, as you go through this process, just start with the basics. Get to know what your numbers are as far as your BMR and your TD EE. Get those in your head. Start learning what the calories are in the various foods that you eat each day, making sure, again, you're getting adequate nutrition, log it for a while and log it correctly. Weigh the food, do the right things, get everything in there so that you have a really good idea of the volume of food that you're eating, the amount of energy you're putting in, and then be thinking honestly about how much energy you're putting out each day, and then watch for trends. If things are not moving the way that you want to, we can make some adjustments, but you just got to start with the trend.

I'm eating this way and I'm losing weight. I'm going to keep eating this way. The other thing is pay attention to your satiety levels and the kinds of foods that you're eating. You need nutrition. Food is not just calories, food is not just calories. Food is everything. Our body is made from food. So if we're not getting enough fat, if we're not getting enough minerals and vitamins, and we're getting the macros our body needs, the protein, if we're not getting those things, our body will not function well, and that can be a problem. So make sure, again, you're paying attention to the food you're eating and how you feel eating that food. And then you can just make adjustments. And I would say make micro adjustments, small adjustments. So never this drastic drop another 500 calories off of this thing. Because again, if I'm saying your TDE is 1,500, 500 calories a deficit means you're at one third of what your body needs to function the way it's functioning. So eventually you're going to find yourself fatigued. You're going to have some issues, and that's where that's coming from. You just went too drastic. But if you're eating to your TDEE and then you're moving on top of that, then that's when you're going to start to see the action.

That's when you're going to start to see things move the way you want to. So again, I'm not a huge fan of calories in, calories out as a model for weight loss. I think you just need to eat high quality whole food and your body is probably going to do what it's supposed to do. But if you're interested and you want to give it a go from the start, it's not a bad exercise for a period of time to at least understand what you're eating, how the food is affecting your body weight, and how you feel when you start eating the amount of food that your body really needs.

Post Show/Recap

[00:25:46.960] – Coach Allan

Welcome back, Ras.

[00:25:48.760] – Coach Rachel

Hey, Allan. I think it's really important to talk about the calories in calories out model on occasion. It's like the best reminder to pay close attention to what we're eating, especially when we have a weight loss goal in mind. There's just so many ways that we can do it wrong. So it's nice to have this refresher.

[00:26:07.360] – Coach Allan

Well, I don't think there's any ways to do it wrong. In fact, seriously, if we go off culture, it's because we're just not paying attention. 99 % of it you realize, okay, well, why am I not losing weight? And then you realize, well, damn it, Sally's got a chocolate on her desk and I'm eating five or six of those every day when I go by there and say good morning. And so you're like, okay, I got to stop doing that. But I don't. I keep doing it. So it's usually just when we stop paying attention. Now, a lot of people will get into Keto and then they're like, okay, well, I'm losing all this weight on Keto. And then they stop losing weight and they get to this point, they're like, I don't understand. I know all the foods that are Keto foods. I'm not eating any carbs, but I'm not losing any weight. Well, you're eating too many calories. I'm like, Well, no, calories don't matter if you're… Yes, they actually don't matter. Yeah, it all matters. And so it's not a bad idea to at least know. And then the other side of it is, I think the other concern I always have is people under eating, really under eating, and that causes other issues.

[00:27:14.530] – Coach Allan

So they'll sit there and say, well, okay, if I can be 500 calories down, I could lose a pound a week. If I can be 1,000 calories a day down, then I could lose two pounds a week. If I'm 1,500 calories down, then I could lose three pounds per week. And I've got 30 pounds to lose. I'd love to lose that in 10 weeks. So let's just do the math.

[00:27:34.960] – Coach Rachel

More is better, right?

[00:27:37.810] – Coach Allan

I got to get on that treadmill for an hour every day and only eat 800 calories. And they're starving all the time. And then they stop really counting all the calories because they're like, Well, I'm just going to have a bowl of cereal. And they eat three bowls of cereal or four. There have been times I probably ate a whole box of cereal in a sitting, just not not knowing and thinking about how many calories were in it. And it wasn't that the cereal was the problem. I just had too many servings of it, and I wasn't paying attention to how much it was. I wasn't paying attention to whether I was full or not. I just was really hungry. I poured a whole bowl of cereal in a big bowl, a whole bunch of milk, and just sat down with a spoon watching morning TV on a Sunday. And that's all the calories I probably should have had for the whole day.

[00:28:27.820] – Coach Rachel

Well, that's where I've gone wrong in the past. I have a cereal bowl at home that maybe it looks like I have a half a cup, the serving size of most cereals, but I know full well that I pour way more in my cereal bowl than half a cup. And I just, I eyeball it, but my eyeballs aren't super accurate. My measuring cups are probably a little bit.

[00:28:49.810] – Coach Allan

More accurate. They would be just a little more accurate. You got to pack it in there. I'm going to get the most out of that half cup.

[00:28:58.300] – Coach Rachel

But then, like you mentioned, too, cereals are usually super satisfying, barely great on the palate. And one bowl becomes two bowls, which becomes three bowls. And you're watching the morning news or something. And did I have one bowl of cereal or four bowls of cereal?

[00:29:15.040] – Coach Allan

You'll lose track pretty easily. I just jumped the chase and got a big bowl and just went at it.

[00:29:20.360] – Coach Rachel

Because.

[00:29:21.610] – Coach Allan

I was a growing boy and not growing the right way. But I think if you're struggling and you get to a point where you're stuck, this is a tool to just go back and assess, how much am I really eating? It's not that you have to log all the time and track and weigh everything forever, but it's just getting your head reset about what a portion size looks like and how many calories in it. And then making some basic decisions and realizing, oh, I could have that whole salad over there with chicken breast on it and the dressing that I like, and that's 500 calories, or I can have this little bag of chips.

[00:30:03.390] – Coach Rachel

And.

[00:30:04.370] – Coach Allan

I have the bag of chips and I'm hungry again in 20 minutes. Well, that's important. That salad is going to take me 20 minutes to eat. And so it's just this thing of just saying, okay, food is a building block and it's to provide calories for energy. And if you start thinking of it, yes, you should enjoy your food, have food that you enjoy, but know what's in it, know how much it is and start getting your head around what portion sizes are. E at a little slower. That'll make it easier to eat fewer calories because it's easy to eat a lot of calories if you eat really fast. You'll notice the people that are doing the eating contests on TV, they're not going slow. They're eating faster than their body can even pay attention to just so they can get all that stuff down. And so if you slow down, you'll feel satiated sooner. You'll get an idea when you start looking at it's okay, what's a serving of chicken breast look like? What does a serving of bread? Serving of bread is one slice of bread. Most loaves I've looked at, a serving of bread, who's eating one slice of bread?

[00:31:07.270] – Coach Rachel

You're.

[00:31:07.710] – Coach Allan

Already having two servings instead of having a sandwich. And you had two sandwiches, so four servings of bread. You get the idea. It's like, I think I'm eating 100 calories of bread. No, you're eating 250 calories of bread. And does that 150 calories mean a whole lot? Well, if it's 150 more than you needed, yeah, over time, that's going to add up. And so that's going to be extra pounds that you're not losing or you're trying to work off doing these exercises. And it's pretty easy. If I set up a thing of M&Ms in the little cup holder of your treadmill and I said, Okay, here's what I want you to do. Look at how many M&Ms are serving and look at how many M&Ms are now in the pack to get an idea. And say, okay, so if every M&M was like two calories, so walk long enough to burn two calories and then eat an M&M.

[00:31:58.950] – Coach Rachel

And.

[00:31:59.340] – Coach Allan

Think you'll see that bag of M&M is going to wear you out. You'll be on that treadmill for an hour to eat a little bag of it because there's so many calories you got to burn the 300 calories for that little bag of M&Ms. And people don't think that. They think they're burning a lot more calories. So it's a guideline. If you find yourself stuck, it's just an opportunity to sit back. But in addition to looking at the calories, think about the types of foods you've been choosing and which ones are really the better foods for you. I'm not going to say there's good foods and bad foods, but there are better choices.

[00:32:29.900] – Coach Rachel

Well, like you had mentioned, our bodies need nutrients, not food. That's an important thing to look at. Way back when I was using my fitness pal, I was actually pretty shocked to learn that my favorite McDonald's meal was about 1,200 calories in just that one sandwich, aburger and fries meal. And that was my whole day's worth of calories, according to my fitness pal. And there's no nutrients in that meal.

[00:32:58.440] – Coach Allan

But there is some protein. There is some protein, they do put some niacin in the bun to fortify it because they've stripped all the nutrition out of it. If you had pickle, if you had a little bit of ketchup, some lettuce, maybe tomato, there's a little bit. There's not what your body needs, but there's some nutrition there. And so it's just this concept of eat better quality food. It'll be more nutritionally dense than calorie dense. The calorie dense foods, occasionally as a treat, you can work those in. If it fits your load and you're okay with a detour, by all means, you don't have to deprive yourself of things, but you shouldn't think you can have cake every day. No. A cake should be something special. Donut should be something special. They should not be a staple. And unfortunately, too many people get wrapped up into the, every evening I'm going to have ice cream. And then they're having… And it's not a serving of ice cream. It's like, how many servings of ice cream did you put in the bowl? Be honest with yourself. Get a good scoop size. Look at it, understand it, and know how many calories are in that thing, and then make the decision.

[00:34:15.560] – Coach Allan

And if you want to have an extra couple of hundred calories of ice cream in the evening, by all means. But the whole court owns a lot of calories. So just realize that calories do count. You don't have to count them to lose weight, but it is a tool to find yourself stuck.

[00:34:31.860] – Coach Rachel

Yeah. And I think logging a meal periodically or your favorite snack or something, just paying attention to the size of the serving you're taking and what macros are in it as well as the calories. It's just an eye-opening exercise to do. So even if you just logged a dinner meal or your favorite after-work snack or something like that, it's just an eye-opening thing to do periodically.

[00:34:57.610] – Coach Allan

I agree. Yeah. All right. Well, Ras, I'll talk to you. Enjoy Boston and I will talk to you next week.

[00:35:04.190] – Coach Rachel

Great. Take care, Allan.

[00:35:05.540] – Coach Allan

You too.

Music by Dave Gerhart

Patreons

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

– Anne Lynch	– Ken McQuade	– Leigh Tanner
– Debbie Ralston	– John Dachauer	– Tim Alexander
– Eliza Lamb

Thank you!

Another episode you may enjoy

You are not a victim

Less...

Let's Say Hello

[00:03:06.520] – Allan

Hey, Ras, how are you doing?

[00:03:08.360] – Rachel

Good, Allan. How are you today?

[00:03:10.540] – Allan

Just another day in paradise.

[00:03:12.530] – Rachel

Of course it is. You lived own in Panama.

[00:03:15.210] – Allan

third-worldAnd a third world country, yeah. And so we're still having the water problems. We've had about an inch of rain in the past week, but we really almost need a foot or more of rain to get where we need to be with the reservoirs and all of that. And people say, Oh, my God. A foot of rain. Well, it could rain a foot in 24 hours here pretty easy.

[00:03:36.980] – Rachel

Wow.

[00:03:37.560] – Allan

But we got 24 inches, about 24 inches in 36 hours. So we can get a lot of rain when it's raining. So we just need one of those. We get some rain in, it's this and that. And we got some rain last night and it's early this morning, but it was hardly noticeable when it was all said and done. So yeah, we just need a good solid rain. But I've got full tanks and we don't have a ton of guests, so we're not hurting for water. It's just, you know, I feel bad that a lot of people on the island have been. And when you just don't have a means to get water, it can be very frustrating and difficult. So some of the people that live here are not too happy with the government for not making sure they have water, but hopefully we'll get some rain. So all you folks that are getting too much, just send it this way. Right.

[00:04:26.280] – Rachel

Oh, my goodness.

[00:04:28.110] – Allan

How are things up there?

[00:04:29.450] – Rachel

Good. It's just good. I had mentioned last week that Mike was having some more testing done, and he had the biopsy of his lymph nodes looking for potential cancer, and he's in the clear. So we've dodged that bullet. He's healthy, no evidence of cancer at this point. So we're hoping that immunotherapy just keeps moving and working like it's supposed to and we'll be past this soon enough.

[00:04:51.770] – Allan

Yeah, I hope so too. I really do.

[00:04:53.800] – Rachel

Big relief. Yeah.

[00:04:56.930] – Allan

All right. Well, are you ready to talk about weight loss?

[00:05:00.670] – Rachel

Sure.

Episode

Five keys to sustainable weight loss.

Now, when it comes to trying to lose weight and keeping it off, we really have to change not just what we eat, how we eat, when we eat. We have to change our whole self. We have to change our brain. And that is very difficult. Our brain resists change. It was in our best interests when we were hunter gatherers for our brain to keep us doing consistent things, seeing normal things, staying on a given path, doing things a certain way because it was less dangerous. And so our brain is wired to look for anomalies. It's wired to look for change because change is deemed dangerous within the framework of the way our brain works. I think you can see where that can be a big problem.

Now, if you find yourself overweight and you're way off the path, a lot of people like to approach this and say, Well, I don't have to really change anything. I can eat what I like to eat, I just have to eat a little less. And so they try diets that help them do that. And it's really just driving slowly in the same direction you've been driving. If you're lost and you're driving in the wrong direction, driving slower isn't necessarily going to get you what you want. You're still going to be off the path. We've got to make some significant changes, and that's going to be difficult. But if you follow these five keys, I think that's going to help you quite a bit.

As we go through the five keys, I'm going to be talking a little bit about how your brain works and a little bit about how this played out with one of my clients. Now, I'm going to change the names of my clients just so you know, but these are real clients. I'm changing the names because I don't really want to out my clients for certain things that they were dealing with when they were trying to go through this. But I just want you to have some examples of how this key, that key that I'm talking about applied in someone's journey.

Embrace Discomfort

The first key to sustainable weight loss is to embrace discomfort. Losing weight is going to be hard. You're going to have to change some things that you do. You're going to have to do some things that you weren't doing. And that difference is going to trigger your stress hormones. It's going to trigger the release of cortisol. And so you're going to feel this fight or flight thing hitting from time to time. It's going to be difficult. You're also likely going to feel hunger. But I'm here to tell you, hunger is not starvation.

Hunger is just your body telling you you should eat something, but it's not dangerous. You're not going to starved to death. But these are discomfort feelings, uncomfortable feelings. And so if you can't embrace the discomfort, you're going to give in to them. And so this first bit where you're trying to use some willpower, develop some strength in that, it's going to be uncomfortable and you have to embrace it.

Now, I had a client, her name was Susan, and she decided she was going to go hard in and she wanted to do low carb, she wanted to get into Keto. And I think if you've tried Keto, you've read about Keto, it can be very difficult, but it can also be very effective at helping people lose weight. Now, there was an unintended consequence with her Keto that a lot of people suffer with. She ended up with constipation. And as you can imagine, that's very uncomfortable.

A lot of people at that point would have said, Oh, I can't eat low carb. And she would have reverted back. But we talked her through it. And so she tweaked some of her food choices and she pressed through. Now, what we did was we added a little bit of fiber to her diet, and we got her to take a supplement of magnesium, and that solved her problem. She found a sustainable way for her to eat low carb, and her preservation paid off. She stuck with it, and she lost over 40 pounds.

So you have to push through and you have to embrace that discomfort. The discomfort is your body telling you something is different and that's not a bad thing. That's your body telling you that it's hungry or wants you to eat. That's not a bad thing. You just have to figure out how to work through that and find the right way that's going to work for you.

Perfection Rather Than Progress

Now, the second key is to focus on progress and not perfection. Now, a lot of people want perfect. They want fast progress. They want straight-line weight loss, and that's just not how it works. If we keep trying to strive for perfection, a part of our brain that's called the anterior singlet Cort is going to be activated. And so this is going to create anxiety, self-doubt.

And so instead of striving for perfection, what you want to do is focus on progress, even little small progresses. And you celebrate those wins, you're going to reward your brain. Your brain is going to say, hey, this is good. This feels good. It's a release of dopamine. Every time you congratulate yourself and you feel good. And so what that does is that it motivates your brain's reward system and you feel good. And so if you can start acknowledging small progress, and that's why a few weeks ago I did episode on journaling, and I think writing down your daily wins is a really good and valuable tool.

I had a client, Maria. Now, Maria wanted to lose weight, but here's the deal. She was working very long hours. It was a busy season for her at her job. She's a tax accountant. And so during tax season, right up until the filing deadline dates, it's insane, 60, 70 hours weeks plus. The food they're bringing in is not necessarily always the healthiest for you either.

There's a lot of stress. And so what she did was she just basically said, “Okay, I'm not going to have time to go to the gym and get workouts in.” So instead, she just focused on making better food choices. Now, what did this mean? That she was not seeing this perfection. Occasionally, she had to make a bad food choice because that's all that was available. But she ate less of it. And so she worked her way through this, and she managed to lose weight during this busy time because she focused on progress and not perfection.

And now the busy season's over, she's in the gym and she's doing great. So just realize that there's going to be times when you can sprint and there'll be times when you just have to go really slow or just hold your ground. And recognizing that pacing is really important and then rewards your progress. Know when you're doing something right and so your body rewards you for doing that.

Be Open To New Ideas

The third key to sustained weight loss is being open to new ideas. Now, our body wants regular things. It wants us to stay familiar. It wants predictability. And that makes it really difficult sometimes for us to acknowledge that things have to change. That's why it's so popular for people to put, eat whatever you want and lose weight. Keep eating the food you love and lose weight. You'll read that time and time again. And sadly, I'm here to tell you that's probably really not going to be the way that you have to go.

If you've eaten a certain way for a certain amount of time, that's where you are. That's what got you where you were. So trying new things, just trying a different strategy, trying new foods so you're getting more whole foods in your diet. The ability to try new things, to put new things in there, often can be the difference and can start crowding out things that weren't working for you that maybe you enjoyed.

I had a client, Mick. Now, Mick, at the very beginning, basically told me, I do not want to cook for myself. I don't enjoy cooking. I don't enjoy preparing meals. I want to go out and eat a dinner at a restaurant or something else. And so he didn't want to cook. So we were going to work with that. We were going to work with not cooking as an approach, even though I think he knew deep down that he needed to be willing to try it. And so what ended up happening was he started losing a little bit of weight, and he noticed that he lost more weight when he was cooking for himself. So he was starting to prepare more meals for himself. But when he was eating family meals, when he was eating what he prepared, his progress was better.

So this rewarded his brain, again, that whole process of saying, Hey, this actually feels good. This is what I need. Seeing that additional progress and recognizing why it was happening, again, not a bad reason to have a journal, he started cooking more. And he started actually enjoying the process of cooking because he knew what was going into his body. He knew it was fueling him, and he could see his weight drop and he could see his energy level increase. And so being open to new ideas is one of the key ones because what got us where we are is probably not going to get us where we want to be.

Believe In Yourself

The fourth key to sustainable weight loss is to believe in yourself. Okay? Yes, you've tried and you failed, and yes, you've failed and you failed and you tried, and maybe you lost weight and then you gained it back. But by believing in yourself and setting that self-efficacy and saying, I can do this, I am doing this, this is happening. When you start to get your brain wrapped around what you can do versus what you think you can't do, you start pushing yourself toward success.

I think it was Ford who said, whether you believe you can or you can't, you're right. And that's this principle is all about. When we go through in our brain and we tell ourselves that this is our new reality, this is what I know I can do. I believe in myself, I know this can happen, you activate your brain and it basically starts affirming you. So as you do these self affirmations, as you do these self reflections, as you say, I know I can't. I know I can lose the weight. I know I can get stronger. I know I can avoid certain situations. I know I can stop doing things that are not serving me. When you start making those choices and you're making those choices from a statement of belief and knowing that you can, it will change a lot.

Annette struggled with self-love and compassion. We talked about this a great deal, and she didn't feel good about herself, and as a result, that was holding her back. What I had her do is I had her do some daily work. She thought it was silly at first. Go in the morning, look at the reflection, and tell yourself how you feel about yourself, how you love yourself, how you believe in yourself, how you know that you deserve to be treated right.

And like I said, she thought it was a little funny. But over time, that started to shift. And what she was able to do after she started getting this belief system in place was she started tapping into her strengths and she started being more consistent and she started losing weight and feeling better. So the accomplishments then of losing weight reinforced the belief that she put in herself at the beginning and that just got stronger and stronger. And so if you find yourself struggling, take some moment to do some self reflection.

But above all, this is not going to happen if you don't have self compassion and self love. So believe in yourself. You can do this. You can lose the weight. You just have to believe in yourself and then do the things you know that are necessary.

Get Help

The fifth key is to get help. Now, a few months ago, maybe a couple of months ago, I shared a model for motivation, and I strongly believe that everybody has motivation backwards. Everybody believes motivation is just something you have, something that just comes on. It's like, oh, now I'm motivated and I wasn't motivated before. But the reality is motivation comes from doing something first. Now, there are multiple different types of motivation. The best kind are the intrinsic ones, but they take a little bit of time to develop. That self belief, that trying new things, all those things are helping you build that. But the easiest and fastest way to get motivated is to hire a coach. A leader coach, extrinsic motivator, which is an external motivator, a coach is going to be there to hold you accountable. They're going to be there to push you. And then you're going to do trial and error.

Things are going to work for you that don't work for others. Things are not going to work for you that did work for others. It's like, I don't understand. They ate this way and they did this thing and it worked for them, but that's not how it might work for you. Now, I went through eight years of just up and down, up and down, and I invested thousands of dollars. Once I figured out that I needed to be my own coach and I figured out that I needed to do some things, I wasn't sure how I could do that. I was traveling so much and my life was just so messed up and there really weren't online trainers like there are today.

So I just said, okay, I will work with a local nutritionist and I will have some conversations with them. I will spend the money, I spent thousands and thousands of dollars to educate myself, to get certifications so that I could know what to do when I was training. And then I took the information that the nutritionist gave me and I started training. And that's how I lost my weight. That's how I lost the weight and it basically kept it off is just from that process.

And I still hire coaches today.

So I started 40+ Fitness because I wanted to be there for people the way I didn't have someone there for me. There was no one online for me to say, okay, I'm over 40, I'm going to be at a different gym every week, I'm going to need programs that I can do in a room, I can need programs I can do in a gym, and I need substitutes if I go into a gym and they don't have a particular piece of equipment. So I trained myself to do that. And you don't have to today because there are online personal trainers available.

Now, I want to talk about someone named Jose. Jose came to me. We were on a call. He was about 60 pounds overweight. And we talked about it. And then it came down time to say, Okay, are you going to hire me, Jose? And his answer was, No, I don't want to spend that money. I think I can do it on my own.

About six months later, I get another email from Jose, and he wants to talk to me. He had gained another 10 pounds in that six months. He reached out to me. And again, when it came time to say, do you want to hire me, Jose? The answer was no. And so we've messaged a little bit since then, a little over a year, he still has that 70 pounds. He's still 70 pounds overweight and he still isn't ready to get help.

He's stuck and I can't be the answer. I can't help him if he won't get help. So the fifth key to sustainable weight loss is to get help.

Summary

I think as you can tell, the way our brains are wired is really working against us if we're looking to lose weight. And so if you're going to make a change, if you're going to lose the weight and keep it off, you've got to do a lot to change the way your mind works, your mindset works, and your brain works. And that means you have to embrace discomfort. This is not going to be easy. It's going to be hard. And you have to push through that. You have to focus on progress and not perfection. It's the progress that matters, even little bits of progress, if you can celebrate them, you're teaching your brain to want more and then teaching your brain to be consistent.

And that little progress that you're making over time adds up to a whole lot. You need to be open to new ideas. The way you're eating, the way you're moving, the things you're doing now might not be serving you and changing up some of them, trying things you might not thought you would try can go a long way towards making that change happen and making it sustainable. But you got to be open to it. You got to believe in yourself. If you don't believe you can do this, you're right, you can't. So you've got to work on that. You work on your self compassion, work on your self love, and really instill a mindset that you believe you can do this and you are going to do this.

And then finally, I just say, look, ask for help. It doesn't have to be me. You can be a person in the gym. It can be a nutritionist. I hired a local nutritionist, had some conversations with her about what I should eat and how I should eat. And then I ate that way. But that was a very different situation.

I have my 12 week Shed the Fat program going on right now. I have limited slots in that program. But if you're interested, you can message me, coach@40plusfitness.com. Reach out to me. Let's have a conversation.

These keys to sustainable weight loss are hard. They're not easy. And if you get help, it's going to make it so much easier because you're going to have that accountability. You're going to have done an action, hiring a coach, that's going to be the key to having your initial bout of motivation. That's going to help you see progress. That's going to help you be successful at the start. And that's going to keep you going when things get hard. So again, coach@40plusfitness.com.

Post Show/Recap

[00:22:19.040] – Allan

Welcome back, Ross.

[00:22:23.040] – Rachel

Hey, Allen. I have to tell you, truthfully, when I heard you mention the title being the five keys to sustainable weight loss, the first thing I was thinking of, okay, got to eat better, sleep more, exercise more. And then you gave me these five other keys that had literally no particular direct thing, but all great strategies for making a change with your weight loss journey?

[00:22:48.570] – Allan

Well, I just wanted to comment on that a little bit because it's just this thing that I… I've started really working deep with people on weight loss and having the right conversations. I've got the quiz out there at 40plusfitness. Com quiz. Just seeing the results and what people are coming up with, we all know what to do. Like you said, those five things, just do those five things. The healthy things that make you healthy will make you lose weight. And so I just repeated that. That's not really solving the problem. The real problem is why aren't we doing those things?

[00:23:23.090] – Rachel

That's the question.

[00:23:24.570] – Allan

Of the year. So that's the real key. We know the locks, we know what's there, we know how to do it. It's just getting it done. And so as I was thinking through this, it was like, I wanted to go that layer beneath all of that. How do I make myself do these things or get myself to do these things? And so these were more in the lines of, Okay, what's really in our way? And if someone says, Okay, well, I'm hungry and this is uncomfortable. Well, got to embrace that a little bit. If you want to lose some weight, you're probably going to be a little hungry at time. We talked about that with Brian last week. He had his little shark mode. He's a big man. He's over, I think, 6'5 or something like that. So grumpy guy who's 6'5 and weighs 300 pounds, stay out of his way, shark mode. But we're going to be a little uncomfortable. That's what these were really all about was how do we get ourselves to feel right about this so that we can stay successful?

[00:24:23.380] – Rachel

Right. Well, the one that stuck out the most with me was key number 3, be open to new ideas. And what really hit me with that was when I first started listening to your podcast, how long has it been now, Alan? Six years.

[00:24:37.620] – Allan

Seven years? Yeah. Well, I launched the podcast seven and a half years ago. Gosh.

[00:24:42.460] – Rachel

Well, about that time you started to introduce the information about the Keto diet and low carb eating. And at the time, I just had a lot of doubts with yet another fad diet out there, and I didn't want to cut out all the fruits that I like to eat during the day, the breads I love to have with dinner or pizza or anything like that. And I was very resistant to that idea. But at the time, I was at a crossing point here. I was at the bridge. I had to make a change, but I just couldn't figure out what to do. And so I was like, Okay, I'm going to be open to this. And I literally said, I'm just going to try this and see how it works. And so I dove right into the Keto way of eating, and I lost the weight that I needed to lose at that time. So it was sometimes these ideas are out there, or sometimes we don't want to give up our favorite foods or our favorite habits. But sometimes if you really want to make a change, you just have to do something a little different.

[00:25:45.170] – Allan

That was the whole point of the client I mentioned. I used the name Mick, not his real name, but he had told me the very first day we talked, he's like, I don't like cooking. I don't like being in the kitchen. I don't like doing any of that. I'm like, Okay, well, let's talk about strategies just to get you eating better food. And then we see where it goes. And the interesting thing was he went on a trip to see his family about three weeks. In the middle of a 12 week program, he's on vacation and he's sticking with it because the whole point was that's how his family actually lived. They cook their own meals. So he's having home cooked meals and he's starting to taste the nutrition and really realize, okay, this is serving me a lot better than the big US based portions that I'm getting at all these restaurants. And so he started to learn. It's like, this is what real food tastes like when you prepare it yourself. And so he started doing that and control the portions. He knew everything that was in the food. And then he and his wife just came to realize, Wow, this is actually fun.

[00:26:49.660] – Allan

We're spending time together. We're cooking our own meals. We're feeling better, we're looking better, and this is working for us. And so by the end of the 12 weeks, he actually said, We might eat out once every week or every two weeks. But most of the food that I'm eating, I'm preparing myself, and I actually like it that way. Whereas before, he was so resistant to, I'm not going to cook my own meals. I have to eat out every meal thing. Just start with that idea of, Okay, what if I cooked one extra meal per week for myself? Just one meal. What if I did a little bit of food prep on Sunday? I'm working on it for two or three hours, but then I don't have to do that the rest of the week. I just warm it up. So there's lots of opportunities there if you're willing to try new things.

[00:27:36.060] – Rachel

Yeah. Oh, I love that. And I'm with him. I don't like to cook either. But I also don't like to pay a whole ton of money for a restaurant meal that I don't like or that's not healthy. So you got to choose.

[00:27:47.800] – Allan

Yeah. Well, I think that's one of the things you don't have to choose, choose. But the whole point being is I told him, I said, well, we'll work with what you got, but you got to look at what a portion size is. And so when they bring out that big plate of food, that's three meals. That's three meals on that plate. The standard restaurant has to give you two and a half to three meals just for customers to feel like they got their money's worth. And so you go in there and you look at the calorie counts. Some of these restaurants to print that on their menus now, or you can look it up online and you're like, Okay, so this particular meal is 1,500 calories. Guess what? Rachel, for someone your size, that's almost all the calories.

[00:28:28.670] – Rachel

That's all in.

[00:28:29.470] – Allan

My day. If you're sedentary and you're 5'1?

[00:28:35.230] – Rachel

Two ish, yeah, and a good.

[00:28:36.900] – Allan

Hair day. But you can look that up. You can look that up and say, What's my TDE, which we're going to get into next week, actually, a little bit about calories. But that 1,500 is almost 100 % of the calories you need that day. So you start saying, okay, if I want to lose a little bit of weight, I eat that meal, but I also had breakfast and lunch. Now you start to see why you were gaining weight is we don't understand portion sizes, we don't understand meal sizes. And so is the whole point of when you're preparing it at home and you know what goes into it and you can plate yourself a real meal. Okay, I'm going to have two portions of protein and then some vegetables. And if I'm going to have something like rice or potatoes, I understand what a portion size is, and I'm going to eat maybe half a portion. So I still get to savor and enjoy the carbohydrates that I love. But I'm just not going to eat as much of them. I'm really going to take my time with them so that I enjoy them rather than scarf them down like you would do in a restaurant situation.

[00:29:40.870] – Rachel

Oh, gosh, yeah, for sure.

[00:29:43.370] – Allan

And you don't have people walking by constantly, Can I get you another beer? Can I get you another wine? Do you want another this? Do you want to know that? Do you want some dessert? Oh, look at this tray. You're on your own kitchen. You're not selling yourself that stuff. That's true. So it was just that thing. He opened himself up to a new idea as we were going along. But he still went out to eat occasionally. But now he understood, okay, that's two or three meals. So if I'm going to do it, I'm either going to not eat all the food that's there or I'm going to bring it home. So maybe I carry it to go container with me so that I just know as soon as they bring it out, because I used to do that, I'd order a steak and a sweet potato. I'd bring my own cinnamon because theirs was already mixed with sugar. I'd actually bring my own butter because they wouldn't give me. The stuff they had was the fluffy whipped stuff with honey in it. And so I was like, No, I don't want their butter and I don't want their cinnamon because it's already got the sugar in it.

[00:30:39.650] – Allan

So I'd bring my own cinnamon and I'd bring my own butter. Tammy was a little frustrated with me when I first started doing this, but she liked the results when I started losing the weight. And I would literally bring that container or ask for a container and I'd cut the stake in the other half or I'd cut one third off, depending on how hungry I was at that moment. And the sweet potato, I'd maybe eat a quarter of.

[00:31:00.900] – Rachel

It because it's.

[00:31:01.810] – Allan

Thighs of my head.

[00:31:04.220] – Rachel

Too big.

[00:31:05.910] – Allan

And so I just sit there and cut a piece off and I'd cut the stake and I'd put the rest of it in the container. And I'd know I've got lunch for two days sitting in that container and I'm going to have a nice meal here. So a nice Caesar salad with no croutons, that stake, which is a portion, four ounces, maybe a little bit more some days, and then the sweet potato with cinnamon on it. Cinnamon has the capacity to help blood sugar spikes. So putting regular sugar on a sweet potato works fine. You don't have to have the sugar to sweet potato. So I would adapt what the restaurant was serving me to serve me better. But it was just that that was an exercise. I had to go through at a restaurant, I'm carrying butter into a restaurant. You can't put that in your pocket.

[00:31:55.100] – Rachel

No.

[00:31:56.720] – Allan

Certainly not. Don't put that in your pocket. But it was just one of those adaptations to say, Okay, if I'm going to go out, then I'm going to look for the protein source and look for the vegetables. And if they bring me three meals, I'm going to take two of them home.

[00:32:09.190] – Rachel

That's awesome.

[00:32:10.200] – Allan

So it's just those little things. But it's new and it's a change, and it's outside your comfort zone. So when you start it, it is hard. But when you start to see the results, it's like, okay, if this, then that, and you know how your body works, those new ideas can become the new you. You're now you eat Keto. That's who you are. You've put that into your persona.

[00:32:35.000] – Rachel

How you live.

[00:32:35.790] – Allan

You don't even think about it anymore.

[00:32:37.910] – Rachel

No. I was asked the other day if I missed anything, if there was any particular food or meal or something that I've missed, having been Keto and very specific with what I choose to eat. And I don't crave anything anymore. I can pass up all those sweet pastries. They really mean nothing to me at this stage. So I don't miss any of that. But just one more thing I want to mention is the last key about hiring an expert or to going to hire a coach or a trainer. And I feel like that is so important, especially at this particular age where we are, over 40, I'm over 50, that I don't have time to play all the tricks. I don't have time to mess with different strategies anymore. If I want a result, I want to just go and get the result. And you just mentioned a whole bunch of really great ideas that I don't think the average person might have thought of on their own. When somebody were to hire you, Allen, you'd probably give them these types of strategies and these types of tips and things to look for, to think about.

[00:33:44.020] – Rachel

And I would rather be guided in those ways than to just hit and miss it on my own. There's a lot of benefit to hiring an expert right off the bat.

[00:33:54.550] – Allan

Yeah. The way I look at it is, okay, well, one, you can look at it from the motivation perspective. It's easy and it's immediate. So you have extrinsic motivation, accountability from a coach right there to start. That's huge. It is. For most people, as soon as they know, okay, I invested and I've got a coach and the coaches ask me what I can do and can't do, and then just pushing me just to the edge and just outside of my comfort zone, that's where the magic happens. You can't stay comfortable and change. That's not how it works. It's got to be just outside your comfort zone. You don't want to go too far outside your comfort zone because then it has the opportunity to backlash on you and cause some problems. But just outside your comfort zone is a place. When you start pushing that, your comfort zone gets bigger and then you push it a little bit more. And that's where a coach can really come in handy because we can start pushing. And when something just isn't working, I have clients that I say, Okay, here's your workout. And they come back and say, This particular exercise just doesn't feel good on my knees or my lower back or this.

[00:35:04.420] – Allan

Or they try something and they're like, I just don't like broccoli. Just do not like broccoli. I'm like, Well, broccoli isn't the only vegetable out there that you could try. There's lots of them. But some people equate. If I'm going to lose weight, I got to do chicken and broccoli. It's because that's what they're told or that's what they believe. And so it's just the, Okay, well, let's talk about other vegetables that would fit with what you're trying to do. Leafy greens. Are there any leafy greens that you like? Are there any other basically cruciferous vegetables? Which asparagus does not taste like broccoli. It's entirely different. Ca workflower does not taste like broccoli. And there's things you can do with either one of those to make them not the same texture, same quality. You can make a ca workflower into a mash and put some butter in there. And it's almost, I'm just not going to say it's mash potatoes, but.

[00:35:57.910] – Rachel

It's.

[00:35:58.660] – Allan

Fish. You can rice it and it can replace rice in some dishes. And so there's just opportunities there to have the conversations to see, okay, what would work and what can we try? And I always tell my clients, I'm like, let's try this. And if it's serving you, you should keep it. If it's not, toss it. And there's plenty of times we start a strategy and they're like, Okay, this is not working for me. Cool. Or it's a pivot like the client I had that she wanted to do Keto. She knew that she'd seen enough to know that that would be something that would help her lose weight. Me and a friend that referred her to me and all that, she saw, she knows. Okay, so she said, I'm going to try this. Well, she also got really bad constipation. And so we're a few weeks in and she's like, I can't keep doing this because this is not working. She said, I'm losing the weight. But she said, I'm miserable. So I'm like, okay, well, let's get you started taking a little bit of magnesium and let's eat some fiber. And she says, I thought I was supposed to stay away from carbs.

[00:37:03.690] – Allan

I'm like, No, you can have fiber. In fact, I want you to get a lot of fiber. So we just went out, picked some fiber rich foods, factored that into her nutrition plan. So she's like, Okay, you can eat these fibrous foods. You need to eat these fibrous foods. And a week after that, she's running clean. I love it. But the weight is coming off, too. She lost over 40 pounds. She stayed on after I finished the 12 weeks. She lost about half of that during that 12 weeks. And then she was like, wanted to stay after because she had an idea where she wanted to be. So she stayed on for another six months in my legacy program and got herself down. And it was just the consistency and her willingness to believe in herself when at first she didn't. Then just the pushing through and doing uncomfortable things. It was new things, it was uncomfortable things. It was just all of it. That's why I thought these five were really important because I see it over and over and over again, the people that don't do these five things, and as a result, they struggle.

[00:38:10.780] – Allan

And a coach is there. If you got a good coach, they're going to help you ride right on the outside edge of that comfort zone, keep you in the game long enough to start seeing results. And when you start seeing results, then you start to internalize that. And that's how you start building additional motivation that's intrinsic, which is where really the magic happens.

[00:38:33.310] – Rachel

Perfect. That's absolutely perfect. Great tips, Allen. Great keys.

[00:38:38.860] – Allan

Thank you. All right, well, I will see you next week. We're going to talk about calories next week. I know a lot of people think, Well, Allen's not calories in, calories out guy. Well, maybe I am.

[00:38:50.880] – Rachel

Well, I guess we'll see.

[00:38:52.260] – Allan

Yes. Talk to you then.

[00:38:54.390] – Rachel

Take care, Allen.

[00:38:55.480] – Allan

You too.

[00:38:56.290] – Rachel

Thanks. Bye bye.

Music by Dave Gerhart

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Rachel Discussion

Interview

Text – https://amzn.to/44eYf6C

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Post show with Rachel.

Music by Dave Gerhart

Patreons

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

– Anne Lynch	– Ken McQuade	– Leigh Tanner
– Debbie Ralston	– John Dachauer	– Tim Alexander
– Eliza Lamb

Thank you!

Another episode you may enjoy

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Let's Say Hello

[00:03:15.950] – Allan

Hey, Raz.

[00:03:17.250] – Rachel

Hey, Allan. How are you today?

[00:03:19.420] – Allan

I'm doing better. I had a cold for a few days, and so I was down, but I'm back and I'm doing well.

[00:03:25.240] – Rachel

Good.

[00:03:25.890] – Allan

Just catching up.

[00:03:28.050] – Rachel

Glad you're feeling better.

[00:03:29.780] – Allan

How are things up there?

[00:03:31.300] – Rachel

Good. Would you be surprised if I said I found a new run club to join?

[00:03:37.350] – Allan

How many days in a week are there?

[00:03:38.950] – Rachel

How many run clubs are not enough? Pretty much. And actually, it's not my fault. It's Mike's Fault. My husband Mike's Fault. One of the ladies in our local running club in the city that we live down in Middleville, she works at a brewery up near Grand Rapids, and she said she's been looking to start up again. They used to have a run club, and my husband said, wait, you don't have a run club? We should run there. So we took a field trip up there and ran a loop with a bunch of friends, and everybody loved it. And so our local brewery called Railtown Brewery has started up their run club, and we will be there tonight. As a matter of fact, you do.

[00:04:22.550] – Allan

That run club and then drive down and do that run club.

[00:04:26.030] – Rachel

Yeah, we're hitting them all.

[00:04:28.060] – Allan

Like shuttling kids to soccer practice.

[00:04:30.490] – Rachel

Exactly it.

[00:04:34.870] – Allan

I do have a couple of things to talk about. I got a message from a guy and he was looking at the retreat that I had scheduled that was actually supposed to happen a couple of weeks ago that would cancel because there really wasn't any interest. People were telling me it was just the timing was bad or this and that. So I am going to try one more time to have this retreat here in Bocas. And so I'm looking at right now, August 28, and that'll run through September 1. Because it's low season here in Bocas, I will be able to lower the price, particularly for the VIPs that are staying at Lula. And you'll be able to get cheaper airfare, cheaper flights, I mean, cheaper rooms. All of it will cost less this time of year. So I'm pretty excited to be trying to do that and see if that happens. But I'm just going to try it. This episode is supposed to go live kind of in the middle of June, but go ahead and message me or go to the page 40 plusfitness. Comretreat and sign up. If I don't have sign ups by about the first or second week of July, I'm going to pull the plug again because I can't put money into something that's not going to happen.

[00:05:51.330] – Allan

So you can be interested or you can actually sign up, two different things. So don't just tell me you're interested. Go ahead and go to this page 40 plusfitness.com retreat and go ahead and sign up. And if I get some sign ups, then we'll have this thing. I was pretty excited about it before, and then it kind of fizzled out and didn't happen. I hope this one will. So please do go check that out. And I also have a few slots left in my personal training for the twelve week Shed the Fat program. So if you're interested in that, one of the interesting things to think about is that if you do twelve weeks training, you're going to be in a lot better shape when you come to the retreat on August 28. So consider that, consider checking that out and you can go to 40 Plusfitness.com, message me from there and we can talk about getting you on the twelve week program.

[00:06:50.130] – Rachel

Awesome. That sounds great.

[00:06:52.020] – Allan

All right. So are you ready to talk about journaling?

[00:06:55.480] – Rachel

Sure.

Episode

You've probably heard me say more than once that you need to journal or journaling is a good tool. A lot of my guests have said journaling is a great tool for wellness, weight loss, fitness, health, all the way across the board. A journal can be a great tool to help you on your journey. The question is what should go into a good or a great wellness journal? So I want to talk about that today. When you think about a wellness journal, it's going to be custom to how you want to approach your journey. Things that matter more to you may matter less to me, and vice versa. So take these. These are just ideas. You could probably add other things you want to do. Some people will do a whole lot of extra logging, others want a very succinct and concise log. So it's really up to you how deep you go into this. But this is really about learning. This is a tool to help you learn, a tool to help keep you on track, a tool to keep you motivated. And so I strongly encourage you to journal as a part of your journey.

So when I talk about a journal, I basically break my journal into two pieces. So I've got my global, or kind of my planning stage of this. It's kind of the first few pages where I'll go through and break down my goals and my vision. And I usually look at these in a short term, medium term, long term kind of cycle. So my short term will be like the next 30 days. So what are some things that I want to accomplish in the next 30 days that lead me toward my vision? And then what are some things that I expect that I'll do in the next six months? Again, focused on my goals and my vision, and then the three to five years, which is usually a little bit more aligned with just what my vision is, what I want to look and feel like, how I want to be moving, what I want to be able to do. So I break that down into those three phases, the short term, medium term, and long term term. And I have all those documented. And so what I know is that my 30 day goals are going to lead toward me being able to hit my six month goals, which are going to lead towards me being able to hit my long term goals, which are usually in the range of somewhere between three to five years.

So you know that question, where do you want to be in five years? It's kind of that mindset of a vision, what am I aiming at? And then making sure everything I'm doing in between is leading towards that long term. And that's a part of my global approach. The Journal. And that's the front of my Journal. And then, like I said, I've set my 30 day goals. So now I work day to day. And so I set a daily set up. And each day I record a gratitude. What am I grateful for today? And it doesn't have to be anything huge. It can just be that we got rain because I live on an island and we need water. It can be that I had a great evening hanging out with my wife, or I enjoy spending some time with our dogs, or I went for a wonderful walk and just saw a sloth. It could be anything. But what is something today that I'm grateful for? And I do that first thing in the morning. That's the very first thing I do. And then I write my daily intention. What is the thing that I need to do today to move the needle forward?

And so when I'm looking at my wellness, that could be get my walk in, that could be get my lifting in, that could be whole food, it could be get myself into ketosis. It could be a number of different things. But what's my intention today? What am I going to do today? And having just one intention, because I've found if you have too many and you try to do too many things at one time, some of them get lost in the mix. So I have one major intention for each day. The next is basic logging. So if I'm doing a workout, I log my workout. If I'm looking at my nutrition, then I go ahead and I log my nutrition. And a lot of times I will do this on a hard copy just to see that I'm sticking to my goals. If I need more detail, like I need my macros or I need my calories, I typically will key that into an app like my fitness pal. But I may also record some of the results in my journal just to see how I ate today, what I ate today. And then what I do is I kind of look at how today went, and so I say, okay, based on my logging, how am I feeling?

What's my energy level? Based on how I ate yesterday, what do I feel today? And I kind of get an idea, like maybe I'm doing a really good job on my lifts. And so I'm lifting more weight. I want to tie that together with, okay, I've been consistent with my lifting for this month, and therefore my strength is going up pretty well on these particular exercises. And so I kind of take my log and I tie that into key findings, like, what are some of the takeaways that I have from what I did that lends into what went well today? So I'm always going to end a day with what do I feel like I did well on? So I can feel that success, I can celebrate that success in my journal. And then the next step, the next one is learnings. Okay, so did I do something poorly? Did I do something or something didn't go well? And I learned something from this. So what did I learn? Today is the next one, and then the final one is just wins. I finish out the day and say, okay, what are my key wins today?

And so when I talk about the seven things that are a part of my wellness journal, it includes the global, which is number one is my goals and vision. Okay? And then the rest of them are daily. I do a daily gratitude. That's number two. I do a daily intention. What am I going to do today that's most important? That's number three. Number four, logging and tying. So I log what I've done, my workouts, my walks, my food, my sleep, anything I feel like I need to be working on, I'm logging that, and then I'm tying that to what is going on in my life. And then number five is the what went well today? So giving myself a what went well? I know my lifts were good, my walk was good. Maybe I bonked on my walk, and that's what I learned. So that's the next one. Six, what are things that didn't go well today? But I don't look at it from the perspective of didn't go well. It's like, what did I learn? And I learned, okay, maybe if I'm going to do a 15 miles walk, I should actually eat something before that walk because I could bonk.

It might be that I'm starting to feel a little bit of stress on one of my joints, and I might want to ratchet down on that particular lift. And so the things I'm learning today, I want to carry forward. And then my wins. It's very important to celebrate each time you do something. If you hit your goals for the day, you're working towards consistency. You're getting the things done. Celebrate those often and celebrate even the small ones. So I take some time to write those things down. Now, something I also do, which you don't necessarily have to do, is I do a weekly recap at the end of the seven days. So I'll do the global, and I'll do the dailies, and then I'll have the seven day recap. My weekly recap and that's where I kind of flip back through my week and I say, okay, what are some of the things that I did this week that were good? What are some of the things that I learned this week? And I just kind of refocus my next week and saying, okay, based on what I've learned, based on what went well, what do I want to press on?

What do I want to be more intentional on this next week? And that kind of wraps up my journal. I don't do a monthly recap, although I do go back at times and look to see that I've reached my 30 day goal. And then again, if I need to reset that goal, I will recap and reset. But generally my 30 days are probably not going to be too different from my next 30 days building towards my six months, I tend to stick with stuff a little bit longer, but you may want to periodize. You may want to do something a little different. So you may change up every 30 days or every six weeks. Whatever makes the most sense for you. I tend to be a little bit more on the consistent side of doing the same thing. As long as it's working. I don't really shake things up too much, but I hope this has been helpful for you. I do value journaling a whole lot. I do it all the time. It's a pretty regular thing for me. I don't do it all the time, but I do it quite a bit. It is a great way to keep yourself on track.

It's a great way to document what you've done and what works and what doesn't work. You can look at your food and how your energy level is. You can look at your movement and maybe some pain and things that are going on, and it can give you some great information, some great data for you to understand how your body responds to the things that you're doing. So I highly recommend that you do a journal. And if you want to do a great wellness journal, I encourage you to use all seven of the elements I talked about today

Post Show/Recap

[00:15:21.190] – Allan

Welcome back, Raz.

[00:15:22.830] – Rachel

Hey, Allan. So, fun story. I love journaling. It's a great idea, and I have all my athletes do it, although I don't really do it myself. But after listening to how you line up your journal, I think I'd like to give it a try. I know it would be beneficial for myself to do it, but I have seen how successful it is for athletes in particular to journal. So sounds like a great thing to do.

[00:15:47.470] – Allan

Yeah. This is not a boil the ocean, spend a lot of time kind of thing. This is a pretty simple thing. Like, yeah, I do spend probably about an hour, half an hour maybe, going through my goals and my vision. And that's really just every month at the end of the month. So as we're recording this, I'm sitting down thinking about what I want to do for June, what I want the last half of this year to look like. And so as I go through that, I'm like, okay, here's what that looks like. Here's what I want to accomplish in 30 days. And that gives me a good idea of what each day needs to look like. And so that kind of helps with the motivation to know, okay, for me to meet this goal, I've got to look at each day, and this is the contribution that day makes to that goal. And then the only two things that I think are non negotiable is the first one is the gratitude. And the reason for that is if you express gratitude, you cut through stress, you cut through all the down talk, all the negative self talk.

[00:16:49.860] – Allan

All that stuff goes away, even if it's just for an instant. When you're in a state of gratitude, you just set yourself up to be in a really good mindset. And it doesn't have to be big. It can be just the morning you woke up, your dog was sitting there and looked up at you, and you got down on the floor and petted him, and you just felt that connection with him all over again. He's excited and happy to be in your life, and you're happy to have him in your life. And so you write that gratitude down, and for that instant, your stress is gone. For that instant, all the negative self talk is gone. And then you use that instant to set an intention for that day. And the intention can be something as simple as knowing, okay, this is going to be extremely busy day. I've got all these client meetings, so it's really going to be hard for me to get a workout in, but I want to get something in. So it could be as simple as saying, I'm going to put in five to ten minutes right before breakfast or right before my first call, I'm going to go for a walk, and then I know I've got to walk to my office is five minutes, and I got to walk back after it's five minutes.

[00:17:54.700] – Allan

So it's 20 minutes of walking. And if that's all I can do. And I know that I'm not going to have time to cook dinner because I've only got a little block of time on Mondays to eat dinner, then it might be good for me to pull something out of the freezer that I already had prepped from Sunday. So my intention is pull that out of the freezer and get in at that 20 minutes, and maybe it's broken the way I just tried to break it up. But I set my intention for that. That's my intention for the day, is to do those things. I say usually one thing. Occasionally, yes, I'll throw in a second one. But it's like, that's my intention and what it does, it keeps me on track. It keeps me from having to call out and order pizza. I'm satisfied with 20 minutes of walking when I know I could do 3 hours of walking, but I have to be satisfied with 20 minutes because that's where I am with what I have. And so I just think those two things can help you set up each day to be successful and then to measure that success with, okay, did I meet my intention today?

[00:18:58.730] – Rachel

Well, I love how you said right off the bat that you don't have to boil the ocean. And I think that's a lot of the problem that some people have with Journaling is that like, well, what do I write down? What do I need to focus on? And people get all anxious about it. And secondly, starting with the gratitude part, what's going right? Something positive. And the reason why I think that's particularly important is that it is really easy to find in our lives all the things that have gone wrong or things that are going sideways or things that are just being a pain in the side. But when you start with something that's positive, that things that are going right, something that you feel gratified for, that can learn how to look for happiness and realize some things that bring you joy that you may not instantly think of. So I think that's a really helpful practice. And then you went on to say that I always like to say, if you can't measure it, you can't monitor it. So if you're actually writing things down, what you ate that day and how you feel the next day, well, that could bring some really great insight, right?

[00:20:04.180] – Allan

Because most of us are here. We're here to make ourselves better. We're here to improve our health and fitness. And so data can drive decisions, and without the data, then you're winging it. And for a lot of people, that works. I just keep doing more, and sometimes that works. But for a lot of people, if you're wanting to improve your performance or you're wanting to lose weight, you're wanting to know that you're improving, you need to see it somewhere. So you talked about you keep data on your runs, but you're not really tying that back to, well, what is a bad performance day? What may have caused that that I can stop doing? And so if you find yourself binge eating or eating at midnight, waking up in the middle of night eating, or you're pulling into a drive through that you didn't intend to pull into, what was going on? What was going on when that happened? I'm reading a book with a guy we'll talk about in probably a couple of weeks, and he has this thing for Krispy Kreme, and he was living in a city that didn't have them, but there was one a few miles south of where he lived on a certain highway.

[00:21:13.850] – Allan

And every time he got on that highway, whether it was the intent was Krispy Kreme or not, his internal brain took him to that store. It was almost like automatic. He didn't want to stop. Even if he told himself he wasn't going to stop. He found himself in that parking lot. And so it was a question of him thinking through, why am I sitting where I'm sitting? Why am I doing what I'm doing? Why am I getting the results I'm getting? And he had to come to that. Self awareness and a journal is a great tool to take you through that process of learning what's going wrong and how you can prevent it, seeing what's going well. So not just thinking, oh, I ruined everything with that one meal. And I can't tell you how many times I see that on social media of someone saying, I've destroyed three weeks worth of work in one day or one meal. But they feel that way. But when you actually sit there and say, well, what did I actually do? And what did I learn from it?

[00:22:17.630] – Rachel

Well, that's an interesting part of the written word, too, is that if you're truthful in your journaling, so you went out and had a wonderful birthday dinner with a loved one and celebrated with a wonderful dinner and delicious dessert. There's a lot to be grateful for and happy about in that moment. And when you write that down in your journal, you can tell yourself that you did not just sabotage everything you've been working for. That was one meal. And then you could write down what you're going to do the next day. You're going to have your normal, healthy breakfast and your normal, healthy lunch and your normal, healthy dinner, and you're back on track. Literally one meal is gone. You could be fine about having done that and move on to the next day. And maybe if you see it down in writing, you'll feel better about it.

[00:23:04.750] – Allan

Yeah. And then again, I always like to close out on a positive note. I like to start on a positive note with the gratitude, and I like to close this out the day out with what were one of my wins. And so if my intention was just to walk the 20 minutes and eat the prepared meal, pull it out of the fridge and have freezer and have it ready for tonight, and I did that, that's a win. Those are both wins. And so I can say I walked my intention and I ate my intention, and I met my intention. That's the day. And so, again, if I can stack more days like that on top of each other across those 30 days and those six months, I'm going to be where I want to be.

[00:23:45.660] – Rachel

That's awesome.

[00:23:46.500] – Allan

Or really darn close, for sure.

[00:23:49.390] – Rachel

Now, when you have clients Allan do you have them do a journal or write anything in a journal?

[00:23:55.060] – Allan

I've talked through it with them. I'm not a prescriptive coach, so I can tell them. It's like I think that there'd be a lot of value to you journaling and I think a lot of them poo poo the idea because it sounds like work, always asking me to do work, but I do hold them accountable. And we do talk about these different tools because what's going to work for me might not work for you, but I strongly encourage most people. It's like if you're trying to figure something out, you want to have a plan, you want to measure to it and you want to learn from it. And so the weight loss and fitness thing is a learning exercise. And we talked about this before we came on air. Was it's important? Because we're not going to stay the same. We might know ourselves today, but tomorrow we might find ourselves in a whole different body, a whole different set of circumstances.

[00:24:55.380] – Rachel

That is right.

[00:24:56.460] – Allan

And if that were to happen, then we would need to relearn some things. We need to reapply and approach things from a different way. And so it's a consistent as we age, growing, changing, evolving, and hopefully evolving, like really getting better. Because we learn these tricks, we learn these tools, we learn what works and then we keep applying and we keep learning and we keep getting better. And a journal is kind of the key tool it is to make that happen. Because your inner dialogue is often going to tell you, oh, you had a horrible day, go eat some chocolate. And there you are eating chocolate at the end of the day, which was actually a really good day, except for one thing, and your whole internal dialogue focused on that one thing. You still got your 20 minutes in. You still did this. Okay, this went off the rails. And so now you're punishing yourself effectively for that. And that's that internal I call the fat bastard doing that thing. And so you just keep pushing gratitude, intention and learn. And that's the value of a journal is it gives us a tool to do that.

[00:26:13.180] – Rachel

I love that. Plus the positivity how you start with a gratitude and end with a win. I think that's so helpful. I think we can be our own worst critics, but when we write something of gratitude and write down one of our wins, we can quickly change our critic into our best cheerleader.

[00:26:31.160] – Allan

Yeah, well, it's been great. I'll talk to you next week.

[00:26:34.910] – Rachel

Rachel take care. Allan you too.

Music by Dave Gerhart

Patreons

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

– Anne Lynch	– Ken McQuade	– Leigh Tanner
– Debbie Ralston	– John Dachauer	– Tim Alexander
– Eliza Lamb

Thank you!

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[00:03:17.230] – Allan

Hey, Ras, how are you doing?

[00:03:19.200] – Rachel

Good, Allan. How are you today?

[00:03:21.230] – Allan

I'm doing all right. Just got back from the United States and is usually the case, at least in the last few years when I travel, because I'm not traveling all the time. I got a cold. And so, yeah, I'm just now getting a little under the weather and hopeful that my voice will hold out long enough to do what I've got to do this week as a podcaster and recording and being on other podcasts and all that. But anyway, so I have a little bit of a cold. If I sound a little nasally, I apologize. And I'll probably a lot of my intros for the next few weeks might sound a little nasally because I've got to record those as well. But how are things up there?

[00:03:57.130] – Rachel

Good. Almost the same, though, because the news calls it sneezing season. We're in the peak allergy season right now, and although I've been getting the allergy shots, I'm due for one, and they've been working really well. You just can't escape the pollen and the irritants in the air. So, yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if you got a touch of the pollen while you were here in the United States and maybe your body's reacting. But yeah, you know that we did time of year.

[00:04:24.420] – Allan

We did do that. We went out with one of her uncles and aunts to a place, the bar. They were having karaoke, and we walked up and the sign said, this is a smoking bar. And I didn't even know those still existed.

[00:04:36.060] – Rachel

No, me neither. Interesting.

[00:04:39.220] – Allan

So, yeah, we literally sat there for two or 3 hours in a bar where everyone is at a smoking bar. Pretty much everybody that's at a smoking bar smokes. So it was horrific hell on earth. And so it might just be that my sinuses are telling me that was stupid things you do for the people you love. So it might be that or cold, but I'll take care of it one way or another.

[00:05:07.030] – Rachel

Yeah, getting my allergy shots tomorrow. I'll be fine soon, but yeah, it's beautiful.

[00:05:11.590] – Allan

All right, well, are you ready to have a conversation with Satyen? 

[00:05:18.030] – Rachel

Sure. 

Interview

[00:05:44.730] – Allan

Satyen. Welcome to 40+ Fitness.

[00:05:47.560] – Satyen

Thanks, Allan, for having me. Looking forward to chat with you today.

[00:05:50.480] – Allan

Yeah. So the name of your book is called Accelerated Evolution: The Revolutionary Transformational Method for Clearing Problems, Achieving Your Goals and Accelerating Spiritual Awakening That's Sweeping the World. I'll have to blatantly admit I'm not someone who's really gotten into a whole lot of the spiritual. I'm going to call it touchy feely. Okay. For just lack of a better word, I kind of grew up old school. You take care of yourself. You take care of those around you. You form a good community. You form a good family. And we kind of work through that. But I think I see more and more where traumas and things that people have gone through are adversely affecting the quality of their life today. And so I think any tool that can help someone achieve clarity and get through and get past some of these things is at least worth a listen. So I'm glad to have you on the show where we can have this conversation. Thank you.

[00:06:47.830] – Satyen

Allan, what you shared regarding old school, that is the foundation you got to take care of yourself. So what you just shared is exactly what accelerated evolution is about. It's about getting solid with yourself, then getting solid with your family, getting solid with your contribution to society and how you flow with everything. And most people try to focus on many things out there, but when you start focusing on yourself first so I think you actually might be further away, further down the road of this than you might even realize, my friend.

[00:07:18.810] – Allan

Perhaps. Perhaps. But I know I still have a lot of work to do to be the guy that my dog looks to as I kind of saw that written on a sign somewhere. I just want to be the man that my dog thinks I am. So you talked in the book, and I've seen this, they look at the blue zones and they look at a lot of other things about why people live a long life, a long, good life. And it usually comes down, one of the key ones that they'll talk about their movement and their sleep and all that. But one of the big ones and one that often gets passed up is purpose. And in the book, you call it Dharma, which because I kind of knew that was really more from yoga than anything else, but from where I caught it from. But can you talk about Dharma and purpose and why that's important?

[00:08:08.830] – Satyen

Certainly. And because I'm 56. Just recently, last week. Fitness and health has been really close to my heart. Wellness of being. I started out as a therapist, very young shiatsu therapist doing body work, massage, that type of stuff. And Chinese and Japanese healing arts. And then I dove deep into martial arts. That was my base and still is now 43 years plus. And so fitness and well being, I recognize, is multidimensional. It's physical. Of course, we all know about that. The physicality is our vitality. But it's also mental. If we got a lot of mental noise in ourself, self limiting beliefs, we're putting ourselves down. Or our mind is looping around negative thoughts like, I'm not good enough. I'll never make it. And those can be many of them can be unconscious. Right? Then we need to have mental fitness as well. We also need to have emotional fitness of being. When we're all overwhelmed, filled with struggle, filled with tension of the day, of the era, of the time, of everything that we've got going on, then we're not going to be emotionally free to have emotional freedom, the capacity to be light, buoyant, joyful, loving, gracious, magnanimous rather than irritable, intense and filled with anger and vitriol and judgment.

[00:09:27.250] – Satyen

And all of this, when we have emotional fluidity in our being, our whole health goes through the roof. And then spiritual health is a connection to our soul, our heart, a connection to our higher purpose. Dharma, as you said. Now, whether you're religious or not, to me, spiritual means recognizing and getting clear that we actually do have a higher purpose here. We have a purpose of contribution in some way. It might not be world level contribution, it could be just contribution in our neighborhood. Don't ever underestimate that you are here and that we are here for a contribution. And contribution to me, is the pathway to our spiritual essence. So to me, fitness and well being is physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. And when we awaken all that within ourselves, we become unstoppable. Our health and fitness goes through the roof and we become magnetic. Success comes to us rather than us chasing it.

[00:10:22.020] – Allan

Now, one of the reasons, I guess, my purpose, if you will, of what I do is trying to help people get healthy and fit. That's why I started this podcast. That's why I coach people online. And the main reason that a lot of people say that they're coming to me is that they lack motivation and they struggle with motivation or staying motivated. Sometimes they get started, but then they fall back and they just can't keep that motivation going. In the book, you share the prime theory of motivation. Could you kind of go through those five elements of the prime theory and why those are important and how they can help us?

[00:10:55.410] – Satyen

Okay, so I'm going to give you the essence of all of that motivation. Those five boil down to one. Okay? What it is, is there is a plethora of knowledge, we all know that, on how to get well, how to be fit. You can go on YouTube, you can see tens of thousands of exercise videos, all for free all of that. Why we're not motivated is we have three main reasons we're not motivated, and it's all unconscious. Number one is limiting beliefs. We have beliefs about ourselves. I'm too old, I'm too young, I'm too fat, I'm too thin, I'm not strong enough. I'm to this, I'm too that. And we gain these. We pick up these limiting beliefs from challenges in our life. When we were earlier and someone said, hey, I don't know if you can do that, and you say, you're right, you bought into it. I don't know if I can do that. Every time we bought into these lies about ourselves, we created a false image about who we are, a limited image. And then we start thinking out of that mindset. And you can see that in a lot of people and even in ourselves, that if we listen to those limiting beliefs, we'll remain a prisoner, a slave to them.

[00:12:06.550] – Satyen

So that's the first thing we got to get in touch with, how to heal and transform our limiting beliefs. That is one of the main areas that holds us back from being fully motivated spontaneously, naturally, without this. Gregarious willpower right. The other number two block we have to being fully motivated and inspired to be fit and well is traumas. Traumas are negative or heavy duty things that have happened to our lives that we couldn't process or deal with or absorb or digest in the moment. And so that intensity of that experience is suspended in our images, in our mind, thoughts that we have, emotions that we have, and body sensations. So traumas get lodged in our whole psyche, our body, in our breath, in our being, and we don't even realize we're walking around with these traumas. It could be emotional ones, things that were just not right, that were overwhelming for you when you were wrong, that you had to defend yourself with or brace yourself. And that unconscious bracing is still inside. Traumas also can be physical. I remember years ago in a martial art injury I had, I was always nervous to do anything with my legs.

[00:13:22.920] – Satyen

I sprained my knees, hurt my knees multiple times. So I had this trauma in my knees and I felt if I do anything and I didn't know I was holding myself back because of this fear of if I go a little too far, I might hurt myself. This is an unconscious trauma that holds us back from our full engagement with our health. So number one is limiting beliefs. Number two is traumas. And the third part that holds us back from being fully motivated and engaged are unconscious family loyalties. We have loyalties to our family members. My father lived till like this, till 70, and I'm going to live till 70. Or we see a pattern. One of the interesting patterns is seeing family patterns of health up and down and seeing how my clients mirror those family patterns. Why? Because there's an unconscious loyalty to the good and the bad that's gone on in the past. So we got to find those, excavate them and heal them. So in our body of work, accelerated evolution, what we do is we find what those limiting beliefs are. We find what those traumas are. We find what those unconscious family loyalties that are not healthy, there's some that are healthy.

[00:14:35.390] – Satyen

We find what are not healthy. And deeply, rapidly and very fast in a rapid way, we clear them, we transform them. What would have taken months, years in therapy or traditional methods we're able to do in minutes when that unconscious loyalty is healed, when the limiting belief is transformed to one of great belief in yourself. And when you've removed the traumas, that energy that was stored in you now goes into your vitality. Now you become an unstoppable motivation machine, but in a natural way, not in this Gregarious willpower which will only burn out.

[00:15:11.490] – Allan

Now one of the big areas and it was kind of, I would say the last area for me in focusing with my health and wellness was stress. I initially started movement because for me that was the easiest one to start and then I moved into managing my nutrition and then sleep and so I ended up with still in a very stressful job at the time and it was just the stress was chronic. It was always there, the bear was always chasing me. How can we use this method to address stress?

[00:15:44.600] – Satyen

That's a great question. Well first of all I want to just really get this across that stress is the real pandemic that's across society now that is in ourselves, that's lurking in our mind, lurking in our emotions, lurking in our body. And stress first of all is an accumulation of importance. I need to do that now, I'm not here so far. How am I supposed to deal with all of that? All these incompleted communications, all this stuff that we stuffed down in ourselves, things that we wanted to share but we don't feel we're going to be heard. We feel that we're not understood. We feel that we're not gotten or loved or appreciated or valued enough. This all causes stress. The craziness of the demands of work nowadays tends to be extreme. We're being asked to and even within ourselves to do far more work in less time with better results, with more efficiency. No wonder we're killing ourselves with stress. Stress causes all these stress hormones that just bring our body down. It makes us hard to get up at. We need more rest, more sleep and we never get it. So we're burning ourselves out.

[00:16:57.170] – Satyen

And when we burn ourselves out, many of us are burned out or close to being burned out or over running being burned out. We're burned out already way back. But we're caffeinating ourselves, drinking ourselves, sugaring ourselves to run on top of the accumulated stress. So first of all you got to get that it's killing us and you got to get real with us. We got to get real with ourselves and not just put it aside and say one day I'll get to it because that one day will never happen. It'll never happen. The way we deal with it with accelerated evolution is we find where that stress is and we go to it immediately. Rather than circling around with long histories and talking about my background and for hours and hours and maybe after the third, 4th, 5th session with the therapist, you get to the stress or ten in less than an hour. We can get to the core of why you're creating the stress in the first place and what you're doing to reinforce it. And we go right to it, we transform it, we open it, and the stress then turns into wisdom, like right in your mind, right in your consciousness, you get to the core and you heal.

[00:18:03.590] – Satyen

That's not just the stress you heal why you are getting yourself in continuously stressful situations? Because dealing with stress on the outside, relaxation, therapies meditation, contraction, relaxation, herbs or supplements to comet, that's all on the external. It's not dealing with the cause. The cause is the excess importance, the excessive importance that we put on things that we should really back off and smile a bit and enjoy a bit. But it's hard to do that when we're wound up. So that's why we like to heal people in one session rather than take weeks and months. Everyone's too busy nowadays. We need a method and a way to resolve really this death knell march that we're doing as a society off the cliff with stress. We need to recapture our energy and focus on what's most important in our lives, our health, our well being, our families, our joy, our happiness. Stress then becomes a motivation and inspiration, not something that destroys us.

[00:19:11.330] – Allan

Thank you. So now another area where I think a lot of people will see some value from this is because, again, they're hiring a personal trainer. They want to lose some weight. They know that they got there predominantly from overeating. And so this method can be used to kind of get to the root of that too, right?

[00:19:28.790] – Satyen

Absolutely. If we look at the conditions, like being overweight, being overweight, because we're eating more than we need to, and you can get all the advice on, hey, stop this, lower your calories. But what about your emotions? Do they want you to stop eating? What about your inner mindset that hurt young person inside or the one that's lacking love inside of yourself? And the only way you can feel love is when you're eating food and getting that rush and feeling that fulfillment in your belly and eating that sugar. So we know mentally it's not well being, but emotionally it's fulfilling us temporarily. Until then, we go, what did I do? And we go down that spiral again of beating ourselves up and judging ourselves and okay, now we're going to get vehement and get healthy again. This is a crazy cycle that so many people have been on. The root of overeating is because we're trying to fill ourselves with love and connection and fulfillment and freedom. And since we're not getting it the real way through human connection and wholeness, we seek it through artificial, superficial, unhealthy ways. And so what we do with accelerated evolution, we get to the core of why we are seeking these unhealthy ways of being full.

[00:20:48.640] – Satyen

We reorient that. We reprogram our subconscious, we heal our subconscious mind. And now we're geared and training ourselves to seek true fulfillment from relationship rather than from the stuff that knocks us down.

[00:21:03.940] – Allan

If someone were going to go through an accelerated evolution session, what would that process look to them?

[00:21:10.940] – Satyen

It's really simple. A coach, a guide, first of all, will ask you what's the main challenge you've got going on that you'd like help with? What's the main thing that's bothering you? So come with honesty and realness. Okay, this is the thing I want most transformed in my life. It could be personal, could be professional, could be health, could be your food, it could be your weight, it could be your exercise. Whatever is most clogging you up, bring that honestly and directly to the accelerated evolution guide. Then, rather than taking a long, long case history, they're going to now say, okay, they're going to get you to take a few breaths and relax and get in touch with the disharmony. They're going to get you to feel the problem, not just talk about it. They're going to get you to quiet and feel how that affects you, how that's limiting your life, how that's hurting you. And you're going to feel where it is in your body, how it feels. And then the guide is going to take you through this beautiful process that step by step guides you within, that you'll actually feel it within minutes, how the tension, the self hate, the loathing, the contraction inside yourself starts to open and become lighter and freer and spacious.

[00:22:25.620] – Satyen

Then ultimately you're actually going to be in this place of joy and true freedom and inner insight. Then the guide will say, once you've got to that place and you've released the tension and the trauma and all that limiting beliefs that keep you in that stutt state, this happens very quickly, very quickly. Then what happens is they're going to say, okay, now how do you want to live this in life? They're going to give you guidance, support and insight on how to live this way so that the new way you're being is translating into life in a good wholesome way. And that all happens in under an hour.

[00:23:01.370] – Allan

I define wellness as being the healthiest, fittest and happiest you can be. What are three strategies or tactics to get and stay well?

[00:23:09.490] – Satyen

Okay. Number one is to recognize that your limits are a portal to your strengths. Number one, make a list of where you feel unwell, where you feel not fully happy, where you feel that you're not joyful enough. Don't hide from that. Make a list of the top three areas that are holding you back that you feel bad about or you feel guilty or shameful or not on about, and get real with them. That's number one. Just three. Don't make a list of 100, just three. Is good.

[00:23:47.460] – Allan

My list would be pretty long, too.

[00:23:49.060] – Satyen

Okay, start with the top three. We all have that, right? But if you make a list of 20 things, you're going to get depressed, you're going to go, I'll never get to top three. Number two, make a commitment that you make a commitment that you're going to go through any method, any ways, any means. And if accelerated evolution is inspiring you, come and experience that. Make a commitment that I'm not going to let those things keep me down. I'm going to use those as a slingshot and a doorway, a portal to my fullness, because every accelerated evolution guide or anyone who goes through it, they get to recognize my limitation is actually a gift. That actually is a powerful gift inside. So you got to do that. That's number two. Number three, make a commitment to a new narrative of your life. You'll change so rapidly within a short period of time, you now have to let go of the old story of how you used to be, and now you got to create a new story for yourself without the old baggage of yesterday. The new story is, now that I'm clear of this, here's how I'm going to live my life.

[00:25:00.660] – Satyen

Here's my morning routine I'm going to give myself as a gift. Here's my eating routine I'm going to give myself as a gift. So you start visualizing a new path, a new life, a new way of being. So I'll summarize. Number one, get real with your obstacles. Number two, be willing and vulnerable, doesn't matter who you are, and commit to doing the work to transform those limits into power. And number three, create a new narrative, a new visual, a new vision of how you live your life that's congruent with joy and your highest harmony and your highest well being.

[00:25:38.360] – Allan

Thank you for sharing that. Satyen, if someone wanted to learn more about you and learn more about Accelerated Evolution, where would you like for me to send them?

[00:25:45.890] – Satyen

Well, we have a gift for everyone here, and that's a live experience of accelerated evolution. And so go to the URL, the website acceleratedevolutiongift.com. acceleratedevolutiongift.com. This will give you the direct experience of all that I'm talking about. Come to that session. You'll see it's all online. It's exactly guided by myself. And then have the transformative experience yourself so you know what I'm talking about. You know this is real and not some pie in the sky thing. And then I'd love to hear from you. You'll have information on how to chat with me and how to continue.

[00:26:27.640] – Allan

you can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/593, and I'll be sure to have the links there. Satyen, thank you for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

[00:26:37.540] – Satyen

Allan, it's been a joy. Thank you so much for your kind, caring, the good work you do in the world.

Post Show/Recap

[00:26:51.010] – Allan

Welcome back. Ras.

[00:26:52.460] – Rachel

Hey, Allan, that was a really interesting interview and a couple of things that stuck out in my head when he said limiting beliefs. I have heard that and I felt that a few times. Having recently turned 50, I'll be 52 this summer. Just once I let it slip out like I'm too old for this. As soon as I heard myself say, I'm like, okay, no, I am not too old to be doing what I'm doing. I just need to reframe that. I'm working really hard, I'm getting really sore, I'm getting really tired. There's a lot going on. But yeah, I can see how limiting beliefs can really change your mindset.

[00:27:29.990] – Allan

Yeah. Again, I didn't go through one of his sessions, so I really can't opine on what those sessions are like. You would have to experience it yourself. If this is something that resonates with you, by all means, get the book, read through it, and you can get a free session with them to see if this is something that would work for you. But the core basis of it is if you believe that your life is hell, then it is. And if you believe that you have ultimate capacity to heal and grow, then you will. And so there is this idea that our brains can do things that you just wouldn't even believe. I'll give you a perfect example interview that's going to come up in a couple of weeks with Dr. Tom Walters. And in his book he had a concept where he said, our brain tells us something or our body tells us something, and it's not even really true, but we just react. And so the example he gave was your back might like you had low back pain at one point. You might have low back pain when you get a cold.

[00:28:34.930] – Allan

And so I'm walking over to the office and I'm feeling kind of achy in my lower back. And it didn't occur to me that I had like, something subliminal. It must have been in my head because there's nothing wrong with my back. I didn't do anything to my back and there's no injury, but it just felt a little achy as I was walking over here. And I'm like, you know, he put that in my head.

[00:28:58.830] – Rachel

Yeah.

[00:28:59.870] – Allan

And so there is a mind body thing, and where the brain goes, the body can go. If the brain doesn't go there, the body won't go. And so if you believe in things and you really put your faith in things and then you work, it's still going to take work. It's not something even though he says 1 hour and you might be able to do amazing things in 1 hour. But the reality of it is if you don't believe that something's going to help you or you don't believe you can resolve the pain or the trauma or the stress or whatever, then you obviously won't. And so a big part of stress management a big a part of some of the things that are out there that are big hold back problems, the limiting beliefs, the eating, relationships with food, all of those are about the way you're perceiving the world. And if you can change your perception, you can change your outcome.

[00:29:54.280] – Rachel

Very much so. I feel like if you could just be open to what you're experiencing and maybe even take a minute to ponder what you're doing, whether it's a relationship with food or relationship, what you do for exercise, I mean, ponder for a second, like I said the other day, I'm too old for this. And truly, if I had stuck with that mindset, I wouldn't do a lot of the things that I do. And I'm really pondering that a lot these days. What can I do? I guess the flip side of that is my opportunities are almost limitless as to what I can do. An age is just a number. It's kind of irrelevant. It's not like your body shuts down at a certain age or something. But if you really did take the time to evaluate what's troubling you or what's not serving you and find a way to fix it, as long as you're open, I guess, to the ability to fix it, it really is a lot about your attitude and what you want to accomplish.

[00:30:55.420] – Allan

A perfect example would be cupping or acupuncture. For me, I just look at those and say, not for me, I'm not going to believe it's going to work. So therefore I'm not interested,

[00:31:08.950] – Rachel

why waste your time?

[00:31:10.380] – Allan

So I'm not going to waste my time. But on the other end, some people do, they get acupuncture, they get different things done that you'd be like, okay, maybe there's something behind it, but I don't see it. But they say, no, I go and get acupuncture once a week and it helps with my pain and I feel great, I'm like, awesome, keep doing it. So if it's working, keep going. If you're open to it, then be open to it. Because if you sit down with a session and any of those things and you say, I don't believe this is going to help me, then it won't. So just realize who you are intrinsically and look for solutions for your problems that make sense for you based on how you're currently wired. Now you can rewire yourself, you can change some of those things, but it's not something where you can sit there and say, I believe cupping is going to solve my problem.

[00:32:01.880] – Allan

If you really don't believe cupping, so you go through a couple of cupping sessions and it does nothing for you other than leave those purple circles. Okay, did it solve your problem? Well, no, because you didn't really go in believing that it would. And so just as there's placebo effect and the nocebo effect, those are real, those are real sensations in your brain. Things are happening, the wiring and so if this is something that appeals to you, then I think you should check out his book. I think you should check out that free session he offered.

[00:32:33.410] – Rachel

That sounds awesome. Yeah, sounds really great.

[00:32:37.250] – Allan

All right, well, Ras, I'll talk to you next week.

[00:32:40.550] – Rachel

Take care, Allan.

[00:32:41.750] – Allan

You too.

[00:32:42.600] – Rachel

Thanks.

[00:32:43.380] – Allan

Bye.

[00:32:44.200] – Rachel

Bye.

Music by Dave Gerhart

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Less...

Let's Say Hello

[00:02:38.130] – Coach Allan

Hey, Ras. How are things?

[00:02:40.310] – Coach Rachel

Good, Allan. How are you today?

[00:02:42.480] – Coach Allan

I'm doing okay. We're having a water issue again, so I don't want to get into all that because it's just going to frustrate me again.

[00:02:50.040] – Coach Rachel

Oh, jeez.

[00:02:50.750] – Coach Allan

But we're working on it. But no, I'm happy to announce that I have a few things that I told last week. I started interviewing on different podcasts, and so some of those podcasts have come out now, and I wanted to share a few of them. I was on Paul Hanton's podcast called The Healthy Fit Life. You can find that one at 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/paul.

I was on Natural Health Matters with David Sandstrom. You can find that one at 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/david.

And then I was on Jillian Lockditch, which we had her on last week. I was on her podcast. Growing Older, living Younger with Jillian Lockditch. And that's at 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/gill. And that's Jill spelled G-I-L-L. Like from Jillian, but Gill and you can find that one.

So Paul, David, and Jill, I was on each of their podcasts. And so 40 Plusfitnesspodcast.com and then those names Paul, David or Jill. And you can catch those episodes there.

[00:04:01.180] – Coach Rachel

Awesome. That's exciting. I can't wait to give a listen to those.

[00:04:04.900] – Coach Allan

Yeah, it's interesting to be on the other side of the interview. Sure. Because even if we've discussed kind of what we want to talk about, I don't have a script. I don't go in this like, this is how I say these things. I listen to a question and then I say, okay, this is the best way to answer that. So it's a lot more off the cuff than a lot of the things that I do when I'm interviewing a guest on my podcast. I've read their book and I have specific things I want to discuss here. I go at it not necessarily knowing what they're going to ask me. So it can be kind of interesting. So, yeah, go check those out.

[00:04:46.960] – Coach Rachel

Awesome. That sounds fun.

[00:04:48.730] – Coach Allan

How are things up there?

[00:04:50.180] – Coach Rachel

Good. I just wanted to share with you and our listeners real quick. My doctor just told me some pretty important news the other day. I'm post menopausal. Yay, I made it. I made it. And kind of related to that, my thyroid is finally tanked out, so I'll be starting some thyroid medicine. I'm hypothyroid, which is now the reason why I've been so darn fatigued lately, just because my thyroid has not been functioning quite as well. And it's kind of funny because as an ultra marathoner, fatigue is kind of the name of my game to begin with. But now I really know why I'm actually as tired as I am, so I'll be starting that pretty soon.

[00:05:33.370] – Coach Allan

Man, you're going to be blowing out your PRS like nobody's business.

[00:05:36.350] – Coach Rachel

I'm hoping. I'm hoping to get some of my energy back, but I just wanted to share real quick as I learn more about what this means for me as a woman. And by the way, I'm 51, and I didn't know that 51 is the actual average age that women hit menopause. So yay, I'm textbook.

[00:05:57.890] – Coach Allan

I thought it was closer to 53, but yeah, okay, textbook.

[00:06:02.350] – Coach Rachel

Yeah. So as I figure some of this stuff out, I'd be happy to share my story with our listeners. But just for right now, I've got official notice I'm menopausal, and we'll see what happens.

[00:06:15.350] – Coach Allan

Basically, the way that I understand that they diagnose this is if you go without a period for a year, then they consider you in menopause.

[00:06:25.540] – Coach Rachel

Yeah, well, it gets kind of tricky because I had an Ablation done, so I haven't had a normal period in a couple of years. So that makes it a little difficult to figure that out. And I've had a lot of symptoms. The heat flashes during the day, night sweats at night, a little bit of moodiness. But again, those are kind of normal. And for pretty much any woman that actually either has a period or is going through the perimenopause and apparently now in post menopause. So it's important to know that some of these symptoms can get worse. My thyroid is probably in the mix with all these hormone fluctuations and changes, but it's important to spend time with your doctor as well. I go to my annual physical every year. I see a high risk breast cancer doctor, and now I see a women's health specialist who specializes in menopause and can give me a whole ton of information, but they did the right test at the right time. And now I know for sure what's happening with my hormones. And it's going to be very helpful as I navigate all these symptoms moving forward.

[00:07:38.760] – Coach Allan

We're good. I mean, you know, at least once a year I try to have a woman's health expert on. We're typically going to talk about perimenopause and menopause and that type of thing at least once per year, sometimes more. So I've had several episodes on, so there's lots of material out there. But this is going to be good because I'm going to have a pro on my side next time I do interview. That's right. Yeah. We can approach that one a little bit different, but cool. All right, well, are you ready to get into our episode about victimhood?

[00:08:12.420] – Coach Rachel

Sounds great.

Interview

You are not a victim. That's what I'm calling this episode. And it relates to kind of a cultural trend that I've been seeing out there lately where victimhood is being kind of almost touted like a virtue. And I'm here to tell you that if you're trying to improve your health and fitness, if you're trying to lose weight particularly, you're going to really struggle if you have this state of mind, this victimhood state of mind. So I'm going to go through some statements. These are statements that I've heard people say I've heard people or seen people post them on Facebook and or on Twitter. And it's so common that it was easy for me to find several different ways that this shows up. So the first one is I want something I don't have, therefore I'm a victim. So if someone has something you don't have, obviously you're a victim. The next one is, I struggle more than other people, therefore I'm a victim. And so this goes on, the idea that your life is harder than theirs and therefore you're a victim because you have to struggle so much harder to do the basic things that everyone else is doing or that you believe other people are doing to get their success.

Now, this is a very common one, particularly in weight loss areas. I'm addicted to sugar and carbs, therefore I'm a victim. And this one's really, really common. I see it a lot. Now, don't get me wrong, sugar and carb addiction is kind of a thing. But the reality of it is it's not as hard to break as some other addictions might be. And there are steps to take. You are not a victim. You chose to eat sugar and carbs, or at least you ate them when you were given them and you've continued to eat them and buy them. So having sugar and carbs around you is the same thing as maybe sending an alcoholic to a bar. It's just something you wouldn't do if you're trying to beat alcoholism and if you're trying to lose weight, being around sugar and carbs might make that very difficult for you, particularly if you believe you're a victim. I don't have the energy to work out. I love this one, therefore I'm a victim. Okay? I don't have the energy to work out. Now, there's this little known thing in our body that causes us to actually get hormones and endorphins feel good stuff in our brain when we work out, that gives us more energy.

When we build strength and endurance, we have more energy. So the not having energy to work out is really just an excuse to not get started, okay? Other people sabotage me, therefore I'm a victim. Now, don't get me wrong, there are plenty of people out there willing to sabotage you if you let them. But again, you're choosing victimhood. In this case, they're choosing to do what they do. They're choosing to try to take you off track in some cases. Sometimes they're not. Sometimes they actually think they're doing something nice for you. But if you feel like other people are your problem, you are the problem. You are not a victim. But you'll say you're a victim because those other people, well, they're in your way. And then I've tried everything, and nothing works. Therefore, I'm a victim. And again, this is just that concept that you've really given everything the best shot possible. You really worked your way through it, and all these failures have just become an evidence of your limitations. So we're going to talk about that a little bit about what victimhood is. Now, victimhood fits in the mindset frame of being a fixed mindset.

And this is a psychological concept that was developed by psychologist Carol Dweck. And so what she talks about in her writings and in her studies is that you either have a fixed mindset or a growth mindset. And guess what? Those aren't fixed. You can have the one that you choose to have. And there's a reason why these fixed mindsets are a problem. And one of the main things is that people with a fixed mindset, people who believe they're victims, they avoid challenges. And anytime there's a failure, even a little failure, you're more likely to see that as evidence of your limitations, okay? And so what that does is that creates fear of failure in yourself and you're not willing to take risks. So the signing up for a gym membership or hiring a coach or buying the food service that's going to be delivered to you, you don't want to take that step because if you fail, it's just more evidence that you're limited, that you're a victim, that you have a problem. And then another tendency that fixed mindset people have is to compare themselves to others. Now, in some cases, this is to seek external achievements so they can say, okay, well, at least I'm not as heavy as that person.

But they also end up with the negative and the limiting beliefs that they see someone else and they don't think they'll ever make it to that same spot. So these external comparisons are really holding them back on both sides. One is, well, I'm actually kind of normal. When I look at everybody else, they're all overweight. I'm overweight, therefore this is just the way it is. We're all victims, okay, and you're not. But that's a fixed mindset. Now, in contrast, a growth mindset refers to your belief in your ability and your intelligence that that can be developed, that you can improve yourself over time with hard work, dedication and perseverance. So the question you have to ask yourself is, do I believe that challenges and failures are opportunities for me to learn and grow rather than an indication that I'm going to fail? And if I fail, therefore I'm broke, therefore I have these limitations. So with a growth mindset, you always give yourself the best opportunity because you're willing to take the risk. You're willing to hire that coach, you're willing to join the gym, you're willing to try a diet or a way of eating or exercise program.

Again, even if you know everything else failed, you're going to go at it again. And you're going to go at it with the idea that these things that happen are teaching you something. They're giving you an opportunity to improve. And that's where the importance of this is. If you feel like you're a victim, you don't have control. But when you take on a growth mindset, you're suddenly taking on this idea that I am not limited by the mistakes and problems I've had in the past. Yes, I had problems with these donuts, and yes, I struggled when these things happened and yeah, with the stress of my job or the amount of time I was traveling, all those things, I could use those as excuses or I could try to find ways to improve my life despite those problems. And that's where the difference in these two come from. So to break away as a victim, there's a few things that you need to ask yourself, and these are important. So if you're not driving or running or doing something and you can get a pen out, this is a good time for you to write down these questions and really spend some time thinking about it.

Okay? This is not something you're just going to answer while you're listening to this podcast. So the first one is, are your actions consistent with your values? And here's what I mean by that. Let's say you want to be the best mother or the best father you can be or the best grandparent you can be. Okay. Are you living in a way that allows you to do that? You may say, I want to make sure that I'm there for my spouse, I'm there for my children. I want to be that person. Are you? Are you living in a way that makes that possible? Are you living in a way where you're going to be there for one and that you're going to be capable of doing the things that you want to do? How do you want to live the rest of your life? What are the values that you want to carry on? I've talked about it several times. I want to be there for my wife. I want to be there for my children. I want to be there for my grandchildren. I want to be there to run the bed and breakfast, to do the things.

I want to be able to physically train people for a long, long time. And I want to be independent my whole life. I do not want someone to have to take care of me. Those are my values. So then looking at your actions, ask yourself, are your actions consistent with your values? Because this can help you break through this. This can help you take that next step I'm going to talk about in a minute. Okay, the next question. Are you able to learn from mistakes or do you see them as evidence you're broken or flawed? So you go out for dinner and they bring around the dessert tray and it all looks awesome. And so you tell yourself, well, I'll just get a little bit of chocolate. I did go to the gym this morning, so I'm just going to go ahead and get a little bit of that chocolate death by chocolate thing. And they bring out this 32 ounce chocolate menagerie on your plate and you go digging into it. Now, the next day, how are you going to look back at that? Are you going to say, oh, my God, I failed, I'm a failure?

Well, no, you're not. That's an opportunity for you to learn. So ask yourself, do you really think you're broken when you do those things? And the short answer has to be no. That's an opportunity for you to see where you made a mistake. So you could just tell the waiter after you've gotten your meal, please do not bring that dessert tray by here. And if you're in the United States and you're listening to this, you can be very clear. If you bring that dessert tray by here, you will not get a tip from me, okay? Guess what that waiter or waitress is not going to do when you say something like that. They are not going to bring that dessert tray because they do not want to jeopardize their tip. So you just tell them, if you bring that dessert tray by here, I will not tip you. And guess what? You're going to get past that. So that's the second question. The third question is, are you willing to push outside your comfort zone? And this is a big one because most people want easy. They want the easy button. Tell me the diet.

Tell me what to eat. Tell me what not to eat. Tell me how to move. Tell me how to lose my gut. I just want to lose the belly fat. I don't care about anything else. I just want to lose the belly fat. They want the easy they want the thing that's inside their comfort zone. So they teach us. And when we go to coaching for our business, and they say, tell them that you can do X-Y-Z without them having to do this other thing. So you can tell them lose £20 without exercise or diet. And because people want to stay in their comfort zone, they don't want to exercise. They don't want to change the way they're eating. That sounds very appealing to a victim mindset person, to a fixed mindset person. So if I'm talking to you and you're feeling that way, are you willing to get outside your comfort zone? Because that's where the magic happens. The good things in your life do not happen in your comfort zone. Change does not happen in your comfort zone. You've got to be willing to push outside the comfort zone if you want to grow.

So again, the third question, are you willing to push outside your comfort zone? So those are three really important questions that you should be asking yourself over and over again to make sure that you're keeping a growth mindset, that you're not falling into that victimhood virtue thing, okay? So this can be very scary. Don't get me wrong. I know change is hard, okay? It's easier for you to stay in your comfort zone. That's where most people are today. Most people are very comfortable foods everywhere. Good. I'm never hungry. I'll never be hungry. I'll never try to be hungry. I'll never let myself get to a point where I'm hungry because food is readily available. But getting outside your comfort zone, saying, maybe I'm going to let myself get a little hungry from time to time. How about that? I'm going to feel what this feels like. I'm going to get out of it because I'm not starving. The words we say, I'm starving, but you're not starving. Starving takes days. Starving takes weeks. And so if you're a little hungry, you're not starving. And so, so many people are in that comfort zone that that's where we want to be.

The safety was safety with numbers, okay? And that's not where you need to be. You cannot be in your comfort zone and be successful. The other thing that makes change hard is it's so easy to compare yourself with others. I mean, look, 67% of Americans are overweight. Okay? What does that mean? Well, that means if you're overweight, you're in the majority. You're winning that vote. 40% of Americans are approaching obesity. So when you start looking at this, the vast majority of people out there are overweight and obese. And so you just look at that, well, I'm not as heavy as that person is, and, oh, look, I'm at the grocery store, and I'm actually maybe not the weakest person here. Maybe I'm not the fattest person here. And we justify where we are. So that's, again, that's a push against change, because staying where we are means we're just like everybody else, okay? And then change is really, really hard if you just decide that you want to change. And the reason is decision is really not a strong enough way to approach this. See, if you have a growth mindset, you're going to commit to this.

You're going to take that risk, and you're going to go all in. You're going to get outside your comfort zone, and you're going to make sure this happens. But that takes commitment. That takes that step, that daring, that knowing that, okay, I'm going to do this, but I'm not going to die. I'm going to get better, because I'm just going to keep pushing. I'm just going to be persistent. I'm going to do the hard work. I'm going to be dedicated, and I'm going to make this happen. Okay? That takes commitment.

Now, the one thing I'd like to leave you with on this is, yes, change can be scary, and change can be hard, and change is something that is not natural for a lot of us. But you're not alone. We have a wonderful Facebook community. You go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/group, and you can join our Facebook community. I do challenges. We're all there. If you want to share something, you need accountability, whatever you think you need. I have a group environment that's very caring, and we're not doing a bunch of that Flex Friday stuff and not trying to make others feel bad because we look good.

This is an environment where you can feel safe, and it's a private Facebook group, so it's not out on the interwebs for everybody to read. This is just for us to share and to support each other. I'm out there all the time, so I'll be answering questions if you have them. So you can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/group to join us there. And if you're really ready to commit to this, I'd encourage you to get in touch with me. I coach people to lose weight. I coach people to get more fit. I only coach people over the age of 40. And I look to help people develop a growth mindset, so they learn from their mistakes. They get better, they get more comfortable being outside their comfort zone, and they change and they grow and they get better. And I know you can, too. It just takes that scary thing. You got to do that scary thing. And if you need help, I'm here to help you.

Post Show/Recap

[00:23:54.000] – Coach Allan

Welcome back, Ras.

[00:23:56.540] – Coach Rachel

Hey, Alan. Well, that was a lot that was a lot of good information. And as a fellow coach, I have encountered some people with a fixed mindset and just the absolute I can't run because or I can't work out because, I can't lose weight because fill in the blank. I've heard some of those things. And it's hard as a coach to go back to that person and say, well, wait a second, what can we do? If you've got a problem, what do we need to do to solve it?

[00:24:27.510] – Coach Allan

Well, I've definitely had clients that I would say didn't have a growth mindset to start with, but they had to at some point or else they wouldn't succeed. The reality is, if you have a fixed mindset, you're not going to get outside your comfort zone. If you don't get outside your comfort zone, nothing's going to change for you, and you're going to be right where you are. So it's the Harry Ford quote. If you think you can't or think you can, you're right. You have to have the mindset that you're going to get it done. For some of us, that might just be the commitment. For a lot of other people, it's a health scare. And so something has to shake you out of being a victim. Someone comes screaming, and they slap them in the face. I mean, kind of the whole thing is the people are panicking, and you just slap them in the face to get their attention, and it's like, calm down. You're not accomplishing anything. And so I think people sometimes need that slap in the face to make this happen. But if you're listening to this podcast, then you want something to happen, then you just need to transition that over to a commitment, not just a decision.

[00:25:53.810] – Coach Rachel

Right.

[00:25:56.050] – Coach Allan

And I can tell you that if you're not willing to deal with setbacks, which this is where the victims really struggle, is that if you do something, maybe you're doing something and it's working, and, you know, okay, well, I've lost this same £20 over and over again. And then you get to the lose the £20, and then something happens. You have a bad day, and you go do something you didn't want to do. You ate some things you didn't want to eat, and now you're going to blow off your whole weekend because, well, it's kind of screwed up Friday night. And then it becomes this thing, and then you start seeing the scale move back up. So you just stop stepping on the scale. And then yeah, you find yourself six weeks later right back where you were, if not heavier. You start running, and you feel a little bit of a tweak in your ankle or a little bit of tweak in your foot. You're like, oh, no, I can't run anymore. Instead of trying to do the things that are necessary to rehabilitate that, so you can start running again, doing the things you can do.

[00:27:02.380] – Coach Allan

So I can pedal a bike, I can get an elliptical, so I can keep my stamina up. But that takes this idea that you have a choice. This is not put on you. You are not a victim, right? And until you get past that, you're not going to be there. And so most of my clients that come in with this growth mindset, they're fed up, and they're like, hey, this is it. I'm doing it. I'm doing it. I'm doing it now, okay? And once that light clicks on, it's like, this is too easy. This is actually not that hard. It was scary, and it never worked before, but it's different this time. And it's different because now they're looking at this and saying, okay, I don't have to be perfect, right? I don't have to worry about if I make a mistake. I can always course correct that's, right? And it just keeps them on task, and they're like, okay. And then they get a win, and then they get another one. So just even just this last week or so, one of my clients, he had gone to this thing, it was like a government thing, and he was just really talking about how if you guys, if, you know, is wearing a tie, he couldn't button his top button in his shirt, okay?

[00:28:25.220] – Coach Allan

And so he was like, that was part of what his self and that was affecting his self image, and he was unhappy with it. And then he's three weeks into my program, and he's like, I had to wear that suit again, and I could button the collar, the neck. And he's lost £10. And he's feeling great, and he's doing more and more now. He's getting ready for some exciting things, like 100 miles, bike ride. This is the way it works. Another client was a very similar situation. She got called in for an interview. She wasn't really thinking so much about doing work, but she heard about this position. She puts in her name, and they call her, and then it's this panic. How am I going to look in my clothes when I go in for this interview now? Because we have a kind of a weird self image sometimes of ourselves. She didn't recognize that she had lost a good bit of weight and that she was smaller. So she puts on those clothes and they fit perfect, and that boosts her confidence. And she goes in and. Aces that interview and pretty sure she's going to get that job.

[00:29:39.930] – Coach Allan

Okay. That's growth. That's a growth mindset. And sometimes we're not always 100% behind ourselves or we don't see it happening for ourselves, but we just stick with it.

[00:29:52.900] – Coach Rachel

Yeah.

[00:29:53.490] – Coach Allan

And the good things are happening.

[00:29:55.250] – Coach Rachel

It does. And the benefit to having a coach or like the run club groups that I have is that you get to see these types of examples. It is possible. And maybe when you get to see examples like with your clients, that other people are losing weight at a later age or under these difficult circumstances, it's possible for you, too. And if you just pause for a second and reevaluate your situation, you might be able to think through what you need to do next, whether it's hire a coach or not or join a run club or not. But you do have options, and sometimes you just need to think a little bit outside the box to see what might work for you. But that's the great thing about hearing stories, like with your clients. And as I see my runners develop in the run clubs I participate with, it's totally possible. It just shakes what your norms are.

[00:30:48.110] – Coach Allan

Well, if someone had first told you when you first started running that you were going to be doing ultras oh.

[00:30:53.350] – Coach Rachel

My gosh, I would have laughed.

[00:30:55.870] – Coach Allan

Yeah.

[00:30:56.850] – Coach Rachel

Or running 50 miles right before I turned 50, I would have laughed. It's just inconceivable for me.

[00:31:03.350] – Coach Allan

I remember you sitting up on a couch with your foot in a cast, and you were so upset, and you're like, and I'm losing it, and I'm losing it. And that was a very down time for you.

[00:31:15.520] – Coach Rachel

It was.

[00:31:16.250] – Coach Allan

But as soon as the doctor cleared you, you started working your way back up and way past where you were. You just blew that away after you got yourself healed. And so it's just understanding where we are and saying, okay, I can't make that up in a day.

[00:31:36.080] – Coach Rachel

Right.

[00:31:37.010] – Coach Allan

But I'm going to grind it out. I'm going to do it and then see what happens. And that growth mindset that you had going back into your training, training smarter. You don't do it again.

[00:31:49.970] – Coach Rachel

Yes.

[00:31:51.970] – Coach Allan

That's made all the difference.

[00:31:53.620] – Coach Rachel

All the difference, yeah. For sure.

[00:31:57.030] – Coach Allan

All right, well, Rachel, I will talk to you next week.

[00:32:00.950] – Coach Rachel

Awesome. Take care, Alan.

[00:32:02.620] – Coach Allan

You too. Bye.

[00:32:03.710] – Coach Rachel

Thank you. Bye bye.

Music by Dave Gerhart

Patreons

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

– Anne Lynch	– Ken McQuade	– Melissa Ball
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Another episode you may enjoy

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Let's Say Hello

[00:04:08.900] – Allan

Hey, Ras, how are things?

[00:04:12.650] – Rachel

Good, Allan. How are you today?

[00:04:14.520] – Allan

I'm doing great. I'm doing great. You came on to the podcast all bundled up.

[00:04:19.190] – Rachel

I am. It's only 20 degrees up here today, and we're expecting it to dip down into the single digits pretty soon. It's about to get cold.

[00:04:29.130] – Allan

Don't know why you do it. You can go up there in the summer and come down here in the winter.

[00:04:36.540] – Rachel

Yeah, it's all tempting.

[00:04:37.820] – Allan

But anyway, let's just say it's not 20 degrees here, at least not 20 Fahrenheit, which is good. Things are going pretty good here. I'm pretty excited. I've been planning the retreat, so I've been spending some time really thinking about what we're going to do and how we're going to do it and how it's going to work. And so I've really gotten some of the baseline planning for the retreat together. So this will be out. And I'll just say, if you didn't already join the interest list, I hope that you didn't miss out because I offered this pre-sale to the interest list, and I'm going to give them first shot at the slots because it's limited. It's me at Lula's deck, and there's only a certain number of people we can fit on that deck and make it work. And there's only a certain number of rooms for the VIPs that are going to come in because there's a VIP level that stays at Lula's and gets included breakfast and a lot more time with me and extra workouts and extra time to do stuff.

[00:05:40.360] – Allan

So there's at least two levels, the basic and then the VIP. I've put that all together and planned that out. But if you don't get on the interest list, then you may miss your chance. And some of you may have already missed a chance. I'm not sure because we're recording this a few weeks out from when this will have already happened. The list will go live from a recording this a week, but by the time you hear this, it's already been out more than a week. So I would go out there and check out 40plusfitness.com/retreat. And by now it's not an interest list anymore. It's an actual page describing what's going on here in Bocas Del Toro in May 28 through June 2 with some activities the day before and some activities the day after that are just extras that I'm throwing in there. But it's going to be really cool. I'm going to enjoy that. But the planning is really exciting because I'm like, Okay, this is all the cool stuff we're going to do, and this is all the cool stuff we're going to talk about. So I'm excited about that.

[00:06:35.980] – Rachel

It sounds wonderful. Sounds like a really fun time in a beautiful location.

[00:06:40.320] – Allan

Oh, it is. It is. And the deck looking out over the water, it's just magical. So it's going to be a really cool time.

[00:06:47.690] – Rachel

Wonderful. Sounds great.

[00:06:49.560] – Allan

Well, how about you? The slight shivering and bumbling.

[00:06:53.460] – Rachel

Yeah, I actually ran a half marathon in the snow over the weekend, so I spent some extra time outside on the snowy, icy trails. And it was tough. I won't kid you, not every mile was magnificent, but it was actually a really good time to be out and about and enjoying the beautiful… It is beautiful. The snow is gorgeous. Cold but gorgeous. So it's a fun time.

[00:07:14.680] – Allan

I saw a picture of you in a Tshirt, maybe shorts, but I saw it out in the snow and I was like, I wouldn't even want that to be like a filter on my phone. It just looked so miserably cold. But you enjoy it.

[00:07:27.800] – Rachel

Yeah, you got to love it. Otherwise, the winners would be miserable. So got to learn to love it.

[00:07:33.760] – Allan

I learned to love it. Jesus. I can learn to love a lot of things. Cold is not one of them, but I get it. I get it. It's not mine, but good. Good. All right, are you ready to talk to Dr. Johnson?

[00:07:49.440] – Rachel

Sure.

Interview

[00:08:41.000] – Allan

Dr. Johnson, welcome to 40+ Fitness.

[00:08:43.950] – Dr. Johnson

Allan, it's great to be here.

[00:08:46.140] – Allan

There's this book called, Nature Wants Us to Be Fat. And to be honest with you, conversations I've had with clients, things I see online, my own experiences, it made me wonder if biology was just flawed for one reason or another, and there really wasn't a way to lose the weight and keep the weight off. You can just look at the obesity levels and the overweight levels within any country that's westernized at all. And it almost looks like, yes, there's somebody out there pulling strings that's just keeping us fat.

[00:09:22.180] – Dr. Johnson

Yeah, you just have to look around and you know that nature wants us to be fat when you just see how common it is. And the truth is that there really is these pressures from nature that I should say, genetic changes that we've taken on that make us predisposed to getting fat. It's the truth. Don't feel bad if you're getting fat because nature wants you to be that way.

[00:09:45.150] – Allan

Well, and the core of it is that there can be some competitive advantages for a species that can get fat. Can we talk a little bit about that? Because I think when you're going to get to the biology of this and understanding why our body gets fat and why nature wants us fat is there's actually some benefits to it, if you will.

[00:10:05.060] – Dr. Johnson

Well, most of us, when we think about being fat, we don't see any advantage at all.

[00:10:10.230] – Allan

I can't outrun the lion anymore.

[00:10:12.240] – Dr. Johnson

Exactly. You can't. You can't outrun that lion. And not only that, being fat increases our risk for diabetes and increases our risk for fatty liver, increases our risk for high blood pressure. I mean, it's pretty hard to give an argument that fat is good. But the reality is that in nature, there are a lot of animals that will purposely try to become fat to help them during periods when there's no food around. And so when is there no food around. Well, in this dead of winter, it can be very hard for animals to find food. And so animals will hibernate and try to sleep through the winter. And in order to survive by just sleeping for four months, they have to have fat, and they use that fat to generate calories, because when they burn fat, they basically are producing energy. Fat is stored energy. Not only do they produce energy, but when you break down fat, you produce water. So these hibernating bear will get its water and energy from the fat that it's got. And so it's really important for the bear to become fat before it hibernates. So they actually maintain their normal weight throughout the summer.

[00:11:32.250] – Dr. Johnson

Spring and summer, they can run. They can evade a tiger if there was one around or fight it. But anyway, the bear will, in the fall, beginning two or three months before it hibernates, suddenly it will activate some mechanism where it will just come hungry all the time and will forge for food and it will eat as much as it can eat. It will gain 10 pounds or more a day. That's when you get fat pretty quickly. That way it'll double its fat. It'll become insulin resistant. All the things that we think of is bad, and yet it uses that to help it survive, because when it's insulin resistant, it keeps its glucose levels up and the brain uses glucose for its main fuel. And so it will keep the glucose levels up in its blood even when it's hibernating because it's insulin resistant. And that keeps the brain fueled while it's sleeping through the winter. And so it turns out that fat can be a survival mechanism. And other animals use fat, like in the desert, fat can be a source of not just calories because there's not a lot of food in the desert, but it can produce water.

[00:12:49.330] – Dr. Johnson

And so the animal has a hump of fat, and it will use that when it needs water. And the whale wants to be fat because it doesn't drink seawater, doesn't like seawater. It doesn't like seawater. And so it's too salty. So it tries to get its fresh water from the food it eats, and about a third of the water gets from the fat. So fat has a purpose. Fat can be good. And you want to have fat if you are in a period where there's no food. Now, in humans, there's pretty good data that people who are fat survive famines better than people who are not. And you certainly can show that in animals, that if you fatten a laboratory rat and then do caloric restriction, severe caloric restriction, it can survive because it can break down the fat that it has. So there's all this stuff that suggests that fat can be good. And what happened was humans in our past, it turns out evolutionarily, that there were times in our past when we went through periods of severe food shortage. And there was one period millions of years ago, there were been at least two times.

[00:13:59.960] – Dr. Johnson

And we had mutations that occurred then that increased our risk to become fat. And at that time, those mutations helped us store fat so that we could survive. And they didn't really make us fat. They just helped us store fat more effectively. But in today's society, these mutations are actually helping drive obesity because we're eating foods that are really not quite fattening and having these mutations just adds on to it. And so we have this great predisposition for fat.

[00:14:31.840] – Allan

Well, yeah. And then the key of it is not only is it easier to get fat, it's also you basically lower your energy usage. And so it's this double whammy that I think many of us have experienced. It's like my metabolism is nothing, and I'm gaining weight and I'm hungry all the time. If you've ever felt that, you've probably tripped what you call the survival switch. Can you talk a little bit about what the survival switch is? Because I've never faced a famine unless it was self induced. And then even then, I could walk away from it anytime I wanted to.

[00:15:07.630] – Dr. Johnson

Well, so we were very interested in what was this trigger that made animals gain weight. And so we've been studying this, and I've been studying this for over 20 years, and we discovered this switch, and the switch is driven. So remember that it's all about energy, right? You want to have energy to be able to do the things you want. And when you store fat, you're actually storing energy, and so you can use it. But what makes you store the energy? So it turns out that normally when an animal eats anyone, anything you eat, you get calories from it, and the calories are used to make energy. And the easiest way to think about this is that there's two types of energy. There's the energy that's immediately available that we use to do everything we want. We call that ATP. And then there's the stored energy, which is the fat. And so if you eat too much food, the extra gets turned over into fat. And if you don't eat enough food, then the fat you have gets broken down to provide the energy. And so you got the usable energy and the stored energy.

[00:16:16.150] – Dr. Johnson

Now, in most foods, the goal is to maintain high energy levels in the cell. So most animals, when they eat food, they're using it to generate high ATP levels, and the left over goes to fat. But when you eat a particular food called fructose, which is a sugar, it's present in table sugar, it's present in high fructose cornstarch. When you eat fructose, it acts differently than the other foods. And what it does is it blocks the production of ATP by knocking down the activity in the mitochondria. The mitochondria are in our cells, and that's what's making most of our ATP. And fructose induces oxidative stress and raises a substance called uric acid. And that uric acid suppresses the ATP production by the mitochondria. So now instead of the calories going to make ATP, you're blocking that so the calories get shunted to make fat. So the calories, the energy balance has to maintain. So if you're eating energy from food and you can't make the ATP, it goes into the fat. And then fructose also tries to block the fat from being turned into energy into ATP. So it blocks the burning of fat. So the fat accumulates and your ATP levels stay low.

[00:17:42.150] – Dr. Johnson

And when your ATP levels stay low, you become hungry and you have a low metabolism, just like you say. So it's really easier to gain weight because your metabolism is low, you're hungry, and the food you're eating is preferentially going to fat. And so this is like a switch. So normally, we don't have that going on. Normally it's the usual thing to try to maintain high ATP. But when you activate this switch, you suddenly are shifting the energy you eat into fat and reducing your metabolism. And so you like that bear. And that's exactly what happens to the bear. It starts eating all these berries and fruits that have a lot of fructose in it. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that fruits are necessarily bad. Often, the kinds of fruits we eat are often tart, and they have all these good vitamins like vitamin C and all these things. And they have things called flavanols, and they help neutralize the fruit dose. And then we only eat one or two fruit at a time. So we're only getting small amounts of fructose, whereas the verily 10,000 varies in a 24 hours period.

[00:18:53.720] – Dr. Johnson

And so they're getting a big dose of fructose. And when the fruit ripens, it tends to go good stuff tends to go down and the sugar goes up. So when a fruit ripens and they like really ripe fruit, we like it a little more tart. We don't like it mushy normally. And so the fruit dose is the problem. You can get it from fruit. But for us, the take home message is that eating a few natural fruits is not going to do it. But if you make a smoothie and you put 10 fruit in one, you break it down and make this big juice. With the juicer, what's happened is you end up with a fair amount of fructose and it's like drinking a soft drink. And so you can activate the switch by drinking fruit juice or drinking a soft drink. So soft drinks are the number one way to do this, but you can do it with fruit if you want.

[00:19:48.850] – Allan

Now, one of the interesting things as I was reading through your book and you were talking about fructose, I was thinking back to earlier in the book when you were talking about Emperor Penguin and how they want to put on fat because they've got to go inland and lay an egg. The one when the girl lays the egg. And of course, then the which I think is awesome, the guy, because he can put on more weight, he's going to sit there and sit on that egg and protect that egg until it's time. And then she'll come back after she's feeding and be there to feed the baby and deal with all that, then he can go eat. So they're putting on weight for survival purposes.

[00:20:20.480] – Dr. Johnson

Yeah, they're not eating fruit. Aren't they?

[00:20:23.500] – Allan

They're not eating fruit. And so a lot of people say, Well, I cut out sugar and I lost some weight, but now I'm putting it back on and I'm hungry and I want that. I want that very, very badly. And hey, we're coming up on Girl Scout cookie time.

[00:20:38.050] – Allan

So they're catching me every time I go in and out.

[00:20:42.300] – Dr. Johnson

I love Girl Scout cookies. Those thin mince cookies too.

[00:20:46.680] – Dr. Johnson

But yeah, it's depressing when you study it.

[00:20:49.580] – Allan

How is fructose playing into that?

[00:20:52.080] – Dr. Johnson

So that was the big question we had too, Allan. The question was, sure, okay, sugar can do it. I give sugar to animals to get fat. It turns out it's from the fructose. If I block the fructose because I have ways to block fructose metabolism that I can do in animals, for example, I can create an animal that can't metabolize fructose, and they stay thin and they're immune to the effects of sugar. And so I can really show that fructose can trigger this. And it explains very well how the bear activating the switch. But what about the Emperor Penguin? There's no apple trees and there's no bananas down there. So how do they do it? Well, this was a big question for us. And one of the things that we discovered was that you get fructose from food, of course, like sugar and high fructose corn syrup. And that's probably the major source of fructose for most of us. But you can also make fructose. This was so depressing, Allan, because I didn't really think that the body really made a lot of fructose. But we started studying this and we found to our amazement that the body can make a lot of fructose.

[00:22:08.860] – Dr. Johnson

And there's now data in humans showing the same. But our work initially was in laboratory animals. And one of the biggest sources is from carbs and especially these things called high glycemic carbs like cereal and bread and rice and potatoes. And all the things that I thought when I was originally studying this, I go, Oh, the problem of carbs is fructose. That's the problem. If I just take fructose out of my foods, it should solve the problem. And I knew that French fries weren't good, and they don't have fructose. But I kept thinking that it was the fructose had to be the problem because it didn't seem to be anything else. But it had to be involved something else. And it turns out that it is still fructose but it's being produced in our body. And when you eat high glycemic carbs like bread, rice, a lot of people say, Well, what's bad is blood glucose goes up in your blood and that stimulates this hormone insulin, and then the insulin makes you fat. And there may be a little bit of truth to that for sure. But when we did our experiments, we found that if we gave carbs like bread or rice or glucose to animals, they do get fat.

[00:23:29.560] – Dr. Johnson

But if we blocked fructose, we could prevent them from getting fat, and their insulin levels were still high. So this made me realize that actually the main mechanism by which carbs are causing obesity is because when the glucose goes up in the blood, that triggers some of it to be turned, converted to fructose. So it's still important to have carbs that raise glucose. It's really important. And if you have a glucose monitor and you're monitoring your glucose and you want to keep it the normal range, that's a good move. But it isn't just because you're blocking insulin, you're actually blocking the conversion of glucose to fructose. So it's the same benefit. I actually love the glucose monitor and I try to avoid eating high glycemic carbs. Really try not to eat a lot of rice and bread and potatoes because even though they taste good. And try to keep it down because they can be converted to fructose, and that is a mechanism for activating this switch. If you give bread to a bear, I bet you he'll get fat, because he'll do the same thing that we do. They'll convert that over to fructose. But the Penguin is not eating bread either.

[00:24:51.660] – Dr. Johnson

It's not eating rice and potatoes. And so it turns out there's yet a third way to do that. There's actually four big ways. And the third way is it's eating… So it turns out that the mechanism involves raising uric acid. And there are times in the year where the Penguin will start eating quill and things like this, as well as a lot of fish that are high in uric acid. And particularly, there are certain seasons where the uric acid goes up in the fish. And it's not so much the uric acid, it's like the RNA. And there are these things called the booming of the frill. And that's when the frill suddenly increase in numbers. And that's associated with a huge increase in nucleic acid in the cricket, which I don't know if we should go on into that. But then the fish eat that, and basically every animal starts feeding it and they start using it to get fatter. And then the pig will eat those fish in the frill, and it would times with the increasing of fat. And we found that is another mechanism. So I had a friend who was in the shrimp business, and shrimp is one of those foods that can also contain a lot of this stuff that makes uric acid.

[00:26:15.820] – Dr. Johnson

And he was eating fried shrimp. And I was thinking, well, he's off carbs. He's not eating a lot of carbs, but he's still gaining weight. The guy gained a lot of weight and became overweight. And I think it was because he was eating a lot of this shrimp that triggered the switch. And then having the fat in the fry was the calories that he could put on the weight quickly that way. So there are different ways to do this. But the number one way is probably from carbs and sugar. And so that's why the low carb diet works so well. The Keto diet works so well because it's blocking you from eating a lot of high glycemic carbs and also sugar and fructose.

[00:26:59.760] – Allan

Now, there was one other way that you brought up in the book that I thought was really interesting, particularly when someone goes low carb, you tell them, okay, well, because you're low carb, you're going to flush some water. And as a result, we want you to have more electrolytes so you can hold on to some of that water. And so folks are starting to salt their food a little bit more and do a little bit more. But that could also be problematic, couldn't it?

[00:27:21.220] – Dr. Johnson

Yeah. So let's talk about that. So it turns out that animals, as we mentioned, they use fat as a source of water. And actually, when you go on a low carb diet and you start burning the fat that first week and you're burning the glycogen and stored carbohydrates, they release water. And so it's very common in the first week of a low carb diet to lose a lot of water because you're basically breaking it. When you break down the fat and the carbs stored, the stored carbs like the glycogen, you release water. And so you do lose a lot of water. And it's not uncommon to become a little dehydrated the first few weeks on a low carb diet. Drinking a lot of water is very beneficial for sure. And this is well known in the low carb field. But what is not so well known is that mild dehydration can be a stimulus for obesity. And when you an animal is in the desert, they are living in a low water state, and so they tend to be mildly dehydrated. And that actually helps them store fat. If they become severely dehydrated, they'll break down the fat.

[00:28:31.080] – Dr. Johnson

But if they're just mildly dehydrated, they will gain fat. And the way that works, it's interesting. When you get mildly dehydrated, the salt concentration in your blood goes up because you're losing water. So blood is basically a combination of water and salt. And if you lose a little water, the salt concentration goes up. And when that happens, it triggers the release of a hormone called Vesopressin. And this helps you hold onto water because it concentrates the urine. And that's why when you dehydrate, the urine, it gets dark yellow. And it's because this hormone is turned on. And we found that that hormone actually triggers basically this survival switch as well. And when the hormone goes up, it tries to stimulate fat storage and so forth. Now, if you get really dehydrated, it goes into emergency mode and starts breaking down the fat. But in the mild dehydration, it actually stores fat. I don't know if you saw this, but in the last few months, there's been a number of papers that have come out showing that mild dehydration is a real risk factor for obesity, diabetes, and even premature mortality, and dementia, and all these things.

[00:29:46.370] – Dr. Johnson

It's like being associated with a lot of chronic diseases. And there was a paper from the National Institute of Health that looked at your serum salt. So whenever you get a blood test, Allan, you can get a serum salt and sodium, and no one ever looks at it because it's usually in the normal range in the vast majority of people.

[00:30:06.070] – Allan

I do because I actually like it.

[00:30:07.430] – Dr. Johnson

Good for you, man.

[00:30:08.780] – Allan

Well, okay, but only because I had an incident, an event. I went, what do they call it?

[00:30:16.000] – Allan

Hydro…

[00:30:16.130] – Dr. Johnson

Hyponatremia?

[00:30:17.360] – Allan

Yeah, basically too much water and not enough salt. And I flushed too much sodium out. And what I didn't know was I tend to be on the low end of the sodium. And so for me to lose sodium is not necessarily a good thing, and so I have to be careful with it. And yeah, my sodium dropped down to that level where I went into spasms and could have gone into a coma. But fortunately, I'm not.

[00:30:40.190] – Dr. Johnson

Oh, my gosh. Well, let's talk about that. Let's go into that a little bit.

[00:30:44.120] – Allan

Okay.

[00:30:44.720] – Dr. Johnson

So it turns out you have this thing called sodium. And when you get your blood test, it's almost everyone has this measured. And the sodium is NA, that's the symbol. And when you look at the sodium, the normal range is like 135 to 145. And what these studies show is that if you're in the 142 to 145 range, which we call normal, you actually have an increased risk for all these terrible diseases. Now, interestingly, if your sodium goes low, it also increases your risk. So if your sodium goes under 135 to a low level, it can be associated with its own problems, a lot of problems. And the most feared one is what happens to marathon runners. So when you're running a marathon, if you get a little bit behind in your fluids, you can start holding on to water because this vasopressin hormone goes up because you get dehydrated. And sometimes the vasopressin level will go up really high and you can start holding on to the water. And instead, normally the way vasopressin works is it helps you hold onto water.

[00:31:58.890] – Dr. Johnson

But when the serum sodium comes back to normal, it turns off. Then it turns off and then you just pee out the water and everything's good. But when you're a marathon runner, occasionally the vasopressin doesn't turn off. And when it doesn't turn off, the water you can… The serum sodium can actually become low and you can get into trouble. And so most people that's not the case because they're not running marathons and they're not holding on to water. But in some people, it can. And like you do, it apparently did. If that happens, you have to be very careful not to drink a lot of water. You need to talk to your doctor, maybe eat more salt and drink less water. But in most people, it turns out that we're usually on a high salt diet. We're eating a lot of salt, just like we're eating a lot of sugar. And all this processed food is injected with salt and salt and French fries and salt and pretzels and salted peanuts, and we're eating all this salt. And so most of us are eating a lot of salt, and we tend to run our sodiums. A lot of people run their sodium a little bit on the high side, mimicking dehydration.

[00:33:12.480] – Dr. Johnson

And what we found was that if you put animals on salt, that over months and months, in the first couple of months, nothing happens. But after several months, they start to become obese. And it's because they're stimulating this vasopressin chronically, and their sodium is a little high. And so they're turning on this survival switch and gaining fat. And when we looked at people who are overweight, most of them are on high salt diets, and most of them have evidence that they're eating too much salt. So it fit that that could be another risk factor for obesity. And then we found that high salt diet predicts obesity, and high salt diet predicts fatty liver, and high salt diet predicts diabetes. And then we took animals and we gave them water, and we could reduce the obesity from sugar by increasing water intake. And what we're doing is we're increasing it to eight… In a human, it would be eight eight ounce cups a day. That's where you want to go. You want to have your urine volume, like two to three liters a day. Normally, it's like one to two liters. So we're looking at trying to increase things a little bit more.

[00:34:22.430] – Dr. Johnson

So everyone is drinking four or five cups of water a day on average. And we're saying let's go up to eight, maybe 10. I'm not telling you to drink liters and liters and liters and liters because if you do, you might get hyponic traviates, spasm, and have seizures.

[00:34:41.440] – Dr. Johnson

There was a case a few years ago in the Boston Marathon where a young lady dropped dead, she was drinking huge amounts of water while she was running and she wasn't getting rid of it because her vasopressin was still turned on.

[00:34:56.820] – Allan

So we've talked about a few things here which I think are really important. So basically, these four known mechanisms. There might actually even be more. You're not done yet. So we're talking about fructose, we're talking about simple carbs, we're talking about uric acid, and we're talking about salt and making sure we get adequate water. Those are some high level things that I think a lot of us when we go on a diet of some sort or another, or our doctors talking to us about our blood pressure, we do a bit of this. And as a result, for at least a period of time, we actually see the benefits. We lose some weight, we're feeling good in spry, and lo and behold, a few months go by and something happens and we lose it all. When I say lose it all, we actually gain it all and we gain it all back and sometimes more. What are some things that we can do about that? Because I'm a solutions guy. I'm a guy who wants to have a question roll things. So what do we do to get ourselves on track here and moving in the right direction?

[00:35:55.030] – Dr. Johnson

Yeah, let's talk about that. So the way this switch works is you generate fructose, and then the fructose works on the mitochondria to block the energy production. Over time, the way it does it is it generates uric acid, which attacks the mitochondria, causes what we call oxidative stress. And initially, that is, it damages the mitochondria, but it's temporary. So it knocks down the mitochondria a bit, and then the mitochondria recover. But if you're doing this continuously with the drinking soft drinks and all these other things every day. Over time, the mitochondria becomes damaged permanently. And when they start getting permanent damage, then it's harder for them to come back up to normal. And so what happens is it's harder to lose weight because your mitochondria are low, so you're living on a low energy state. And so you can die and lose weight, but it seems like anything you eat will cause you to gain weight again. And so the question is, how do you break that? And the answer turns out to be scientifically simple, but hard to do. So let's just talk about it. So the scientific solution is to quit damaging the mitochondria. So cut out or reduce foods that can damage the mitochondria.

[00:37:15.620] – Dr. Johnson

The main thing is to reduce sugar and reduce carbs. That's difficult. But then the second big thing is to try to stimulate those mitochondria to regenerate. And there are ways to do it. And what you're doing now, this whole thing about fitness, fitness is a fantastic way to stimulate mitochondrial growth. So even just endurance exercises can stimulate those mitochondria and working, doing a stationary bike or biking or walking fast. The classic teaching is you want to exercise to the point where you can still talk, but not easily. And if you can still talk to your friend while you're jogging or walking really fast, but it's hard, that's the perfect place to be. And you want to do that for 30, 40 minutes. And regular exercise with weights, that's good too. They definitely help. But that endurance exercise can stimulate those mitochondria to come back. Taking things like vitamin C, vitamin C helps the mitochondria recover. Taking 500 milligrams twice a day, that's a wonderful way to do it. And it also lowers your acid without you having to take a drug. Another great thing to do is dark chocolate contains these things called flavanols, and they contain one that's called Epicatecan and green tea is another.

[00:38:40.680] – Dr. Johnson

It contains a similar one called Epigallic, but these flavanols helps stimulate mitochondria growth. And there's over the counter things like carnotene and some of these things are really CoQ10 or whatever. And there's a lot of these things that are probably good for mitochondria. Vitamin. Vitamin B1, 100 milligrams a day can really help stimulate energy in cells. It's an antidote we use when people have low energy from alcohol in their cells and they can get… Because vitamin can be a magical drug, and it's a vitamin. So what the heck? Anyway, so there are these things to do to try to stimulate the energy factories. And so reducing sugar, drinking more water, cutting back on salt, and following your preachings, Allan, following your preachings. And all these things can help. But even so, it's very hard if your mitochondria are knocked down, it takes months to rebuild them. So you have to have faith. You have to just keep going.

[00:39:48.440] – Allan

And that's one of the cool things with your book. This isn't just stuff you're throwing out a bunch of science at the end. You do have the switch diet, which you talk about, and that can help you. And in a sense, just really start building the platform for getting better. And then once you start losing the weight and then making sure that you're now getting the exercise to help keep it off, those are great. And that's all in your program. That's all in your book. I'd encourage someone, if you're really struggling with this and you just feel like your biology is fighting against you, this is a big part of the answer why it's hard. And if it were easy, then everybody would be thin and healthy, but it's not. So this is a challenge. And I appreciate that you've given us an opportunity book to know not just what to do, because that's what most books do. This is why it will work for you and having the patience to stick with it.

[00:40:41.510] – Allan

Dr. Johnson, I define wellness as being the healthiest, fittest, and happiest you can be. What are three strategies or tactics to get and stay well?

[00:40:51.220] – Dr. Johnson

So you want me to give you three recommendations. The first one is avoid sugary beverages. They are the number one driver. If you drink a soft drink, you're getting a big load of sugar in a very short period of time. So avoid sugary beverages. That includes sugary teas and it includes power drinks and it includes fruit juices. That's number one. Number two, drink more water. People are just not drinking enough. If you have a slow sodium problem, talk to your doctor about it. But for the vast majority of the world, people are not drinking enough water. There's so much data, eight eight ounce cups a day. They used to think it was a myth. The data now is very clear and just do that. I think the third one is develop a program for yourself that involves exercising three to four times a week and reducing those foods that we know aren't good for you, like carbs and especially high glycemic carbs and sugar, salty foods. They can do it. And there are certain meats, processed red meats in particular, a lot of seafood, especially shellfish, like shrimp and crab, those are rich foods for a reason.

[00:42:13.740] – Dr. Johnson

We call them rich foods, and they have a lot of this uric acid capability. But if you're on a low carb diet, you're probably protected from these meats because the way you make fructose is you make it from glucose. And so it turns out that a lot of if you're not eating any carbs at all, it's hard to make a lot of fructose. So you can get away with eating these foods, like a lot of them you can get away with. But still be careful not to eat too much of these really rich liver shrimp. A lot of them are. But I am a big fan of low carb food and the low carb diet. So I do like high protein diets, but there's just certain foods that are high protein that may not be the healthiest. And then also reduce alcohol, especially beer. Beer is one of the easiest ways to put on extra weight. It's similar to sugar, actually. So maybe I gave you four things.

[00:43:11.000] – Allan

That's awesome. All right. Like I said, I love the book. There's just so much in it, and I'm a geek. So if you want to just get in and really get into the biology of this and the studies he did to get to some of this information that's now been covered by others and basically verified. These are things, and I don't think any of this is really a surprise, but understanding that there is a biological switch that makes this happen for a very good reason. We just are switching it for the wrong reasons. And we need.

[00:43:44.350] – Dr. Johnson

nature wants us to be fat.

[00:43:46.560] – Allan

Nature wants us to be fat.

[00:43:49.120] – Dr. Johnson

And so don't feel bad if you're fat. Nature wants us to be fat. But there are things we can do.

[00:43:54.270] – Allan

Dr. Johnson, if someone wanted to learn more about you and learn more about your book, Nature Wants Us to Be Fat, where would you like for me to send them?

[00:44:01.780] – Dr. Johnson

So I have a website, drrichardjohnson.com, and it's kept up to date with a lot of information. And then my book is available through any bookstore, Amazon, Books a million, it's very easy to find. I do have an Instagram, Dr. Richard J. Johnson, that I use for a fair amount. But I think my website is probably the best place to go.

[00:44:26.350] – Allan

Okay. You can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/577 and I'll be sure to have links there. Dr. Johnson, thank you so much for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

[00:44:37.420] – Dr. Johnson

Thank you, Allan.

Post Show/Recap

[00:44:47.780] – Allan

Welcome back, Ras.

[00:44:48.820] – Rachel

Hey, Allan. I probably could have listened to you guys chat for a little bit longer about all these different triggers and the reasons why our bodies want to get fat and stay fat. It was actually really fascinating. But I'm going to tell you right now that fructose was not at the top of my list of things to be concerned about. Honestly, I was thinking 20 other things before that came up, but it was an interesting discussion.

[00:45:11.330] – Allan

Well, I think a lot of people lose sight of where fructose is. I think they think, oh, well, that's fruit. That's fruit. Fructose is fruit. And that's the only… No, table sugar is 50 50, glucose and fructose. That's table sugar. High fructose corn syrup, as the name implies, has more fructose than glucose. Fructose is sweetener than glucose. That's what makes it cheaper is they put it in the food. It's also shelf stable. There's a lot of other stuff. It's in almost everything that's processed. It's crazy. It's in ketchup. It's in your spaghetti sauce. It's anything that's in a box, bag, jar, or can you want to see. And two things to look at is you can look at the order. It happens in the ingredients list. You can look at the total amount of sugars because that's also going to be on the thing. But sugar can apply in multiple levels. So you may see high fructose corn syrup, and then you're going to see agave syrup, and then you're going to see nectar. You'll see these different words, and all they're saying is fructose. There's more fructose. And then, hey, here's a little more fructose to throw in there.

[00:46:28.460] – Allan

And that's all part of it. They'll tell you how much sugar is in it. They'll tell you, you're never really going to get that breakdown. Is this mostly glucose? Is it mostly fructose? And there's no need for you to memorize all this stuff. What I would say is if it's in a box, bag, jar or can pay attention. And then if you're looking at that label, how much of it is added sugars and how much of it is sugar, because that's really where the rubber hits the road. Now, there are other triggers that he brought up because he was mentioning the Emperor Penguin. And these guys are really cool because… Well, I didn't know, but again, I love reading this stuff because I learned things. But the Emperor Penguins, okay, so the males and the females will just go get themselves morbidly obese. And then right after they do that, the women go out and they lay the eggs. And then the boys, because they can put on more fat, they're bigger and they put on a lot more fat, they can sit out there on the egg for a lot longer than the female can.

[00:47:24.380] – Allan

So they go out there and sit on the egg and the female goes back to the Coast to eat and feed and then comes back and then the chicks are born and then she can regurgitate fish and stuff and feed the animal, feed the baby. But it's like, so they have to get morbidly obese so that they can survive. And if for one reason or another that the male didn't get fat enough, he has to leave the egg and go back to the Coast so he can feed because he can't feed out there. So it's a cycle that keeps them alive. But then you say, Okay, well, wait a minute, they are not eating fruit. This doesn't look like this is a great plan. Oh, wow. Here's this Emperor Penguin eating apples. It's like they don't even have hands, but they're eating apples. No, but that's why our bodies can create fructose. It can create those things. And so there's other triggers that are happening that are creating this environment in our body that says, get fat because something bad is about to happen. The famine is about to happen. The cold weather, the lack of food is going to happen and we need the excess or lack of water because we talked about how you look at a whale, there's no fresh water out in the ocean.

[00:48:37.780] – Allan

So the whale can't drink saltwater either. You think, okay, is a fish thirsty?

[00:48:47.760] – Rachel

What a concept.

[00:48:49.460] – Allan

Whales are thirsty and so they're not drinking enough water. They're not drinking water. And since they're not drinking water, well, because they can actually do ice and stuff like that, but they're not that much. So they're eating fish and all that. They're getting some water from that. But building fat in their fat stores then provide the same thing with camels. The hump in their back is not some water tank that they just fill up. It's fat. It's a series of fat that collects, and then they use that for water. So apparently, I guess when they're out of water, their little lumps are floppy. So again, it's this whole biological process where our body is triggering us to put on body fat to protect us from a coming winter or whatever. And unfortunately, we don't have those anymore. I mean, obviously, yeah, it's 20 degrees up there and it's 24 degrees down here. So we do have winters, but you're able to be in a house bundled up. You are not out in the elements nearly as more than most because you've got your running thing. But you don't need a whole bunch of body fat to survive the winter because you've got the manmade stuff that keeps you alive despite it.

[00:49:59.080] – Allan

So because we're not in that environment, because we're in a food abundant environment, we don't need those triggers. We don't need them, but we keep doing it. We keep triggering it and we don't understand. It's like, Well, I'm not. I look at the calories. I don't understand, or I'm always hungry. I don't know why I'm always hungry. And it's because you've triggered. And the trigger says, eat more. Just eat more.

[00:50:23.800] – Rachel

And hold on to it.

[00:50:25.190] – Allan

And hold on to that body fat. So it lowers your metabolism. It's not that you're not eating enough and that's lowering your metabolism. It's not that you're getting older and that's lowering your metabolism. Yes, our metabolism does start to slow down a little bit, but it's actually not that big until you're like 90. So a 90 year old's metabolism relative to a 40 year old's metabolism is lower, like maybe 20 % lower. But it's not this drastic number where you're like, when I was a kid, I could eat anything, and now I can't. It's not that drastic, but it does lower it when you got the trigger on because the process requires, the nature requires, the biology requires you to put on body fat. So it's doing both, lower the metabolism and increase your hunger. And that's what makes this so hard.

[00:51:17.460] – Rachel

But there's more to it. It's not just the fructose, it's all of the simple carbs, the high glycemic food items that we eat. And you also discuss uric acid and their level of hydration or dehydration has an impact as well.

[00:51:34.790] – Allan

Yeah. All of those are signals, I would say. I think anyone listen to this podcast that didn't know sugar was on that list, shocker, because he brought up, he was doing the research and it was like, Oh, wow. Everything's pointing to fructose. But then it didn't make sense what's going on with some animals that aren't eating fruit. How is that happening for them? And it was like, okay, there's something else going on. And he even talked to someone who was popular in the online space in podcasts and books around the low carb stuff. And he's like, the guy told him, he's like, I can't just cut out fructose. I have to cut out all carbs because otherwise, I don't lose weight at all. And so he was like, well, okay. At the time, they didn't jive with his model, his scientific model. But then he came back to realize it's like, what happens when we eat excess glucose? So it's high glycemic index foods. So bread, potatoes, rice, white rice. So anything that would come up as high in the glycemic index, or in some cases, glycemic load, if you're eating a mix of foods.

[00:52:46.320] – Allan

But if it's high in that glycemic index, then that's excess glucose. And your body will say, We can convert some of this to fructose.

[00:52:54.840] – Allan

And then it's going to trigger all those same things. And then if you're someone who's struggling with gout and you know your uric acid levels are high because this is another trigger high uric acid. And if you have gout, then you realize, okay, you know that it basically, because there's this excess uric acid, it turns into crystals. And so most people know and experience the arthritis that comes from having those crystals embedded in their joints and how painful that is. Here's what I got from the book. Those are also being embedded inside your arteries and inside your heart. And so if you're high in uric acid, if you've had episodes of gout, you're probably also having higher issues with cardiovascular problems. And so, again, another reason, even if you aren't overweight, but you do have uric acid issues and gout to keep those under control, which interestingly enough, fructose is one of the things that makes that happen as sometimes does red meat. So not that you have to avoid those things, but just knowing your status and how it's triggering. And then, yeah, it was the hydration.

[00:54:07.220] – Allan

And beyond just that of seeing that that could be your trigger, there's a lot of other reasons to stay hydrated. One is a lot of times we get hungry because we're dehydrated and we're actually thirsty, but we experience it as hunger because a lot of our water actually does come from the food. So you get a cucumber or watermelon or even most meats, there's a lot of water content in those things. And you see that, like, okay, if you dehydrate a stake to make jerky, the mass of it, the size of it, you're like, Well, where did the volume go? Well, the water. That much water was in that stake. So it gives you an idea of how much water, if you dehydrate something, how much smaller it is. But you can see how that's happening. So we eat those things for water. And so you need to make sure that you're drinking plenty of water so that you're not overly hungry, even though it's really thirst. And then the other side of it is when our liver is this really cool thing, it's smart. And I'm going to be talking to Dave Asprey in a few weeks.

[00:55:08.300] – Allan

And it's one of the things he puts out there is this laziness principle. And I think our liver is exactly like that. And what it is is that you're… And it sounds terrible, but it's actually how things work is everything's going to want to use as little power, as little effort, as little anything as it can to still get the job done. That's just smart. That's not dumb. And it's not things say lazy, but the reality is it's just smart. Our liver is the same way. And so we put all these chemicals in our liver based on what we're eating, drinking, smelling, and of course, what industry and everything else is putting in our environment. Thousands and thousands of chemicals and those get into our body and our liver is responsible for helping us deal with that. And if we're putting on body fat, our liver says, Well, I can just store this in this body fat. It's actually the easiest way for me to do this. So this person is eating plenty of fructose and all these chemicals because this and that. And I got to get rid of these, but I'm just over here building this fat for this person because they want me to.

[00:56:10.120] – Allan

And then it just says, Let's put those in there, too. So it just puts those toxins in the fat. And it's efficient because now I don't have to do anything about it. It's like you lift up the carpet and you sweep that dirt under there. Or you guys remember, clean up your room and you took everything and threw it in the closet and shut the door. I'm done. It's like, oh, wait, you're done. And it was just we covered it up and therefore, out of sight, out of mind, it's the same thing. But the problem then is when you do actually start losing the weight.

[00:56:41.100] – Allan

You're going to start what? Hitting that fat and processing it and using it for energy, which means it's going to get released. So you may notice you start a diet, you start losing a little bit of body fat, you got a headache. Not just Keto, but a lot of them, you start getting headaches. You're like, why am I so headic here? It's like you've released those chemicals into your system because you're now mobilizing that fat. So drinking plenty of water helps your kidneys, helps your liver, helps the whole process, lymph nodes, and everything else work better because you're not dehydrated. When you're dehydrated, then we got other things to worry about. We don't need to be worrying about lymph and getting rid of this stuff in the liver and all that. It's like, yeah, well, we'll keep them alive, but that's about it. And so that's the whole process is to make sure you're getting plenty to drink, you're eating whole foods. So if you need to, paying attention to the glycemic index of the food you're eating and potentially what it's doing for your uric acid levels.

[00:57:45.120] – Rachel

Perfect. Those are all great triggers to keep an eye on and to change. If you're stuck at a weight and you are trying to lose it, then these are the things you might want to look into.

[00:57:56.050] – Allan

If your body is constantly telling you you're hungry, even though you know you're eating enough and you're not losing the weight, in fact, you're putting it on and you're like, I'm not eating enough to get fat, but yet here we are, then that's something you want to pay attention to. It's not just calories in, calories out. Your body will make you eat more and it will make you stored as fat because it'll lower your metabolism and be pushing you to be hungry all the time. And that's a miserable way to be. So make sure you're giving yourself really good quality food where you can, dang off the high glycemic stuff and the added sugars and the fructose and all that and stay hydrated. And this is going to be a thousand fold easier for you. And so as Dr. Johnson says, nature wants us to be fat, but nature really wants us to be fat when we need to be fat.

[00:58:49.070] – Allan

And we don't need to be fat, so you can do something about it.

[00:58:54.920] – Rachel

That sounds great. Great interview.

[00:58:57.200] – Allan

I enjoyed it a lot. It was a really good book. You're interested in all of that. He did a lot of rat studies. And so he talks about his rats or the rats he has to get to be able to study how these different biological functions are happening of fructose and glucose and rats that can't process it, rats that don't like it, rats.

[00:59:19.900] – Rachel

Oh, my gosh. It's like a nightmare.

[00:59:23.710] – Allan

Yeah. Well, can he genetically modify me to not like sugar? That'd be great.

[00:59:30.040] – Rachel

If only it was that easy.

[00:59:31.400] – Allan

If only it was that easy. But we're not there yet. And so from a health perspective, what you can do right now, he does give you an idea of what those triggers are. And then you can structure your own self-experiment and figure out what works best for you.

[00:59:47.000] – Rachel

That's awesome. Fascinating.

[00:59:48.320] – Allan

All right. Well, Rachel, I'll talk to you next week.

[00:59:51.720] – Rachel

Take care, Allan.

[00:59:52.820] – Allan

You too.

Music by Dave Gerhart

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