Let's Say Hello

[00:01:12.910] – Allan

Hello, Ras. How are things?

[00:01:15.190] – Rachel

Good, Allan. How are you today?

[00:01:17.480] – Allan

Doing okay. I guess as this comes out, we'll be hitting the prime of tax season. And today I went ahead and said, okay, well, I got a new computer. I'm going to go ahead and move my files over and start my tax return because I got my accounting done for this and that I can't find my tax file from last year. So I'm a little bit of a freak out as we came into this call of I can't lose that file. It should be backed up somewhere. So hopefully that was backed up. I know my head backup is going. So I just got to go back somewhere and find something in the history and say, okay, Where's this file? Because it has to be out there somewhere. But it's not on my hard drive. And when I open up the old TurboTax, it doesn't find the file I filed with them. So I don't know, I don't do the online thing. I've always had it on my desktop because I don't always again, not always having connectivity. Sometimes web based apps are just not all that cool. Sometimes I just like having the application on my computer because again, if I went out there and tried to open up an old year's tax return, they'd say, oh, this is an old year.

[00:02:26.940] – Allan

You can't whatever. I like having the application on my computer. And I've been using TurboTax forever, so I should have all those returns. But we'll see what I got to do. I may have to request a transcript from the IRS just to do my damn taxes.

[00:02:42.970] – Rachel

Well, I hope it shows up. I'm sure it'll turn up somewhere.

[00:02:46.000] – Allan

Yes. How are things up there?

[00:02:47.870] – Rachel

Good. Spring is here, getting busy this season. My son graduates from College. And so we're planning all those types of celebrations. And it's really a beautiful time of year up here.

[00:03:00.340] – Allan

All right. Yeah, you showed I saw some pictures on your Facebook frogs and whatnot things that are coming out of there all of hibernation.

[00:03:10.630] – Rachel

They're all defrosting right now.

[00:03:13.450] – Allan

Frog man. I'd so be going south. They have it so made down

[00:03:18.910] – Rachel

Yeah, that's for sure. Yes. Beautiful. A lot of new animals are coming through. The birds are migrating. It's really a fun time of year to be outside.

[00:03:28.690] – Allan

Enjoy all six weeks of it.

[00:03:32.170] – Rachel

Right.

[00:03:33.430] – Allan

And in about a week or so, you're going to be doing your run. I mean, I think we're listening to this. You've done it probably, I guess, or you're close to doing it and then you're going to be on your way back. And so we'll know more. But you're in your taper.

[00:03:49.990] – Rachel

Yes, in the taper taking the mileage down, but not the intensity. And I've got a meeting with my coach coming up to talk about goals. I've surpassed what I had expected. So my five hour goal is pretty much in the bag. I just need to maybe tune into a better time goal, I think for me. So it should be interesting to have that conversation.

[00:04:13.570] – Allan

Yeah. All right. Well, so you'll have your pacing down and all that and kind of know a plan going into the right.

[00:04:19.580] – Rachel

Yeah, I'll have a race plan, hopefully in the next week or so.

[00:04:22.880] – Allan

Cool. Well, we'll talk about it next time we're on and we can get into your well, next time we're actually going to record two episodes and then the following time. So it will be a few weeks before you hear how Rachel did on her trial. Five hours is the goal. She's going to blow that out of the water, I'm pretty sure, but

[00:04:41.990] – Rachel

I hope so.

[00:04:42.840] – Allan

You will.

[00:04:43.790] – Rachel

That's the plan.

[00:04:45.490] – Allan

Don't play courts. Yeah. But anyway, we'll talk about it in a few weeks.

[00:04:52.280] – Rachel

All right. Great.

[00:04:53.310] – Allan

Are you ready to get into a conversation with Amy?

[00:04:56.120] – Rachel

Sure.

Interview

[00:05:37.150] – Allan

Amy, welcome to 40+ Fitness.

[00:05:40.100] – Amy

I'm so happy to be here, Allan. Thank you. Thrilled.

[00:05:43.130] – Allan

So your book, Food, one of my favorite topics, Food: Eat with Ease Every Day. Like you, I'm kind of a foodie, too. I love food and it's a big part of my life as well. I love cooking. I love having that as a part of my life. And for you it was. But then it became kind of a darker part of your life. We're going to get into that in a bit about what you went through a little bit. And some of the feelings and things that you had around food and dieting and exercise and all the stuff we're told, just move more, eat less kind of conversations and why that wasn't necessarily the way you needed to do this. And I think the message that you're going to bring out that you brought out in this book is a good message for a lot of people to hear.

[00:06:30.730] – Amy

Wonderful. Yeah. I'm a foodie, too. I love food. And I think one of the things that was so difficult was as a child, some of the things I went through, I turned to food to move through it. It was the only thing I had that was consistent, that I felt like I was in control of that was, quote, there for me all the time, no matter what. But what happened over time was constantly turning to food brought more problems, which for me was severe obesity, body pain, not being well, not being strong in my body. And then internally I say in the book, the bigger I got on the outside, the more I shrunk on the inside. Until honestly, I was a shadow of myself, trapped in a huge body, saying no when i desperately wanted to say yes and just not showing up the way I want to show up. And I know that's such an overused term now showing up. But for me, that truly was it, because I was just saying no to things. And Amy inside was like, please, I wish I could do that. I wish I could water ski.

[00:07:32.150] – Amy

I wish I could put on a bathing suit and go to the beach. I wish I could say yes. I don't know if the movie seat is going to be too tight on my hips. These are all things. That's how bad it got for me, so that I was just completely retreated within myself. And then there was always food. So I think Irene Pace summed it up really beautifully in the forward. She's a nutritionist. When she said what had once been adaptive for me and brilliant because it helped young Amy get through difficult things, ultimately became maladaptive. And she was quick to say, that doesn't mean we're bad or broken. It means in a way, we're brilliant. So I thought that was such a beautiful way to start the book because so many of us live with this hyperactive critic just beating us down all the time. And if you think about it as a moment of brilliance that got you through so that you're here today to make a new decision, it's really pretty powerful.

[00:08:31.810] – Allan

It is. I really want to ask you the question about the gorilla and your mother and the child.

[00:08:41.330] – Amy

You're the first person who brought that up. And I knew when I dropped that I was like, someone is going to ask me about this.

[00:08:49.130] – Allan

If you want to talk about it, we can. I've got another direction. We can go. We can talk about it offline or whatever. So.

[00:08:55.570] – Allan

Yeah, go ahead

[00:08:56.820] – Amy

tell the story?

[00:08:57.900] – Allan

Yes, please.

[00:08:58.870] – Amy

Okay. My mother was kind of a tough customer, and she took a bunch of us to a local game farm. That was, I think, by today's standard, probably illegal. There were like, Panthers there roaming around with basically a dog leash. They were riding around on the back of sort of like half car, half trucks with a little rope. And she brought a bunch of us kids. And I think I was six or seven, and my best friend's little brother was five. And they had this chain link fence with a full grown male gorilla inside and pulley system. So you dropped you pulled like a clothesline pulley system. You pulled the bucket. There was a bucket hanging off of it. You pull the bucket over to you. You dropped the food in. And the gorilla was so smart that it pulled the pulley back. It ate the food out of it. And that was the fun. Well, my friend's little brother somehow got up on the chain link fence and leaned his head over it so that the chain link was here somehow the rope got slipped behind his neck and the gorilla started pulling.

[00:10:12.590] – Amy

And what that did was trap him in between the chain link fence and the rope behind his neck. And he was hanging there. He wasn't dead or dying at that moment, he wasn't, but he was definitely in distress and he was definitely stuck. And then the gorilla started pulling, and then he was in big trouble. His face was red. He was hanging off the ground. He was literally trapped there. And my mother dropped what she was doing ran over. There was no help because this was like a really makeshift outfit here. And I remember her, she had long fingernails and she got natural. She got her fingernails under the rope between the rope and my friend little brother's skin. So she had to use so hard that she did scratch him and it did bleed. But she got just enough room between his skin and that rope. And she pulled and the gorilla started pulling and she pulled and he pulled and she pulled. And she got open enough that Kyle dropped to the ground while she was PO. She was furious. So she took Kyle and she went to the owner's office. And it really is kind of like a funny image.

[00:11:20.600] – Amy

And I still remember it. He had, like a Safari outfit on these big alligator skin boots, and he has them up on his desk and a big ten gallon cowboy hat on the desk. And she went in there, like raising hell. And she said, this is unacceptable. This child was injured. Look what happened to him. He was trapped. The gorilla had him pinned against the chain link fence. And I had to pull him out. And he said, hold on a minute, lady. What are you telling me here? Are you telling me that you had a tug of war, basically with a gorilla and you won? And she said, yes, I won. This child would have died. And he said that gorilla had the strength of ten men.

[00:11:56.760] – Allan

Yeah. Well, when you're in that kind of mindset, strange things, interesting things can happen. So thank you for sharing that story. In all fairness, it was just one sentence in the entire book. But I did have to ask.

[00:12:11.730] – Amy

I thought it was better to leave it as one sentence because it got your question like what?

[00:12:16.650] – Allan

It did get the question. Absolutely. Good.

[00:12:19.200] – Amy

Thank you for asking.

[00:12:20.460] – Allan

Yes. But there's one other story that I think is actually much more important, particularly of what we want to talk about today. And that was towards the end of your father's life, and he was talking to your son, and you were fortunate to be an observer in that conversation because he could have just as easily said, no, I want to talk to him alone. And you wouldn't have been in the room, but you were. And he said something that changed your life. And I'll let you say the quote because again, I think it means a lot to you, and I think it's going to mean a lot to our listeners if they hear you say this. But go ahead and say what you heard him say to your son.

[00:13:01.110] – Amy

Make the life you want, be happy.

[00:13:05.370] – Allan

And that's powerful. That is hugely powerful. I'm so glad your son heard that. I'm so glad you heard that because it really did change the direction of your life.

[00:13:16.530] – Amy

It absolutely did. And there's a simple sort of brilliance in it. There's no arguing with the logic for me. I do believe that we have the ability and actually taking it a step further, the responsibility to fashion a life that best suits us and those that we love in this life. And if you step into that responsibility and you make choices that align with it, amazing things happen.

[00:13:50.550] – Allan

Now, a lot of folks want to lose weight. And one of the ways they know to do this, and it's the way they try and they don't succeed. I'm not going to use the other word. They try and they don't succeed. They try and they don't succeed. And eventually even the word diet and dieting becomes synonymous with punishment.

[00:14:15.090] – Amy

I agree 100%. I'm nodding my head furiously here. When I was on just about every diet known to man and woman here. And none of them worked for me because the minute I started to diet, I felt I was being deprived. It was about deprivation. Now I can't have my favorite thing. Now I have to go to bed hungry. I have to eat small portions. And keep in mind, up until this point and including this point, actually, food is my go to coping mechanism. So without the ability to go to food, when I'm feeling an uncomfortable emotion, what do I do now? I'm not a drinker, I'm not a smoker. What do I reach for? What do I do? And that's I think for me why I always didn't succeed, to use your words, because I felt like I was deprived. I felt like I was being punished. Food is now my enemy. The thing that got me to live as long as I did is now my enemy. And I don't know how to be right with it. I couldn't make heads or tails of it up to that point.

[00:15:24.610] – Allan

We're going to get into some of those in a minute. But I did want to take one more step and have this conversation because this is the other side of it. You go to your doctor and they say, well, you need to go on a diet and you need to move more. And if you've ever been out of shape, like really out of shape, the concept of moving more is painful. The concept of doing these things, particularly around people at all, there's a lot of stuff going on in there in your head and what you're telling yourself. And so in a sense, it's another punishment.

[00:16:05.770] – Amy

You're exactly right. I didn't feel I belonged in a gym, a 320 pound woman getting on equipment. Am I going to hurt myself? The first thing I used to think was, am I going to break this? Is this thing going to hold my weight? Because I had been on things that didn't hold my weight. I was in a patio chair that collapsed. It's horrifying, it's mortifying, it's embarrassing. And I also knew that I wasn't tremendously fit. I think I always had sort of a strong structure under my body. First of all, I carried all that extra weight, so I had to be pretty strong, but I wasn't traditionally fit. You know, I sort of bullied my way through things. Bullied meaning in my own mind, I'll just do it. I just have to get that done with. Let me just get that done and then check it off. So for something like going to a gym, that's the mindset I would have. It was not enjoyable and it was scary and embarrassing because you know that if you're really and the really big people listening to this know what I'm saying, to put yourself in a spot where there's predominantly very healthy people, you feel like you're sort of an object of glances at the kindest and ridicule at the worst.

[00:17:28.950] – Amy

So it's nothing pleasant or fun about that proposition.

[00:17:33.490] – Allan

Well, I will say this, and it won't make any sense or it won't really necessarily change how you feel about this. But I can tell you that most of us at the gym are happy to have you there. We're happy to see you doing things that are positive for yourself.

[00:17:53.650] – Amy

Now that I'm a person who is a little more fit, who goes to the gym. I agree with you. But my experience as a 300 plus pound person, that was the critic in my head. Saying I didn't belong there. I was going to break something. I was going to hurt myself. And also, Allan, I had no confidence in my body's ability to do this. And as soon as my heart rate got a little faster, I was frightened, I'm going to die. I'm going to blow up my heart can't handle this weight. Just a lot of things. It means to your point, all internal within my head, I was so used to being ridiculed that I expected it. Everywhere I went, I said, oh, I'm asking for it. Going in here.

[00:18:38.410] – Allan

The way I like to couch this is you found a tool chest. Okay. You didn't have that tool chest when you started, when you heard the message from your father, make the life you want, be happy. You knew that's what you had to do, but at that point, you really didn't have even a plan, which in the end, I'm going to tell you to your benefit, because so many people throw tactics and strategies out there without actually figuring things out for themselves first. Now you call them the eat with ease commitments. And I love that word. That's a very important word in my vocabulary as well.

[00:19:22.870] – Amy

Which one? Ease or commitments?

[00:19:25.090] – Allan

Well, ease is not necessarily work commitment, for sure. And we'll get a little bit into it. You've talked a lot about your why and things like that. But to me, commitment is the marriage of the vision of where you're supposed to be, who you're supposed to be, that happy person living a life they're supposed to be living. And the commitment is the why you got to get there. You had a young boy, I had a daughter. There were reasons for us to decide, okay, I'm not going down this path. I need to get on a different path. My aging path. I see it's in front of me. If I keep doing this, then this there was no other thing but to change it because I made the commitment to be different. And predominantly at the time, it was my daughter that was the driving force emotionally for me, of why I did it. That's where I come up with commitment as a basic phrase. Now yours are these kind of steps, and they're tools, as I like to say, of how to get there, quite literally. Yeah. Listen to this part again. She's going to say these, but I want you to listen to it time and time again because these are not easy.

[00:20:38.410] – Allan

But when you have these in your tool chest, you've got the magic key, you've got the formula sitting right in front of you. So, Amy, if you would take us through the nine, eat with ease commitments.

[00:20:51.230] – Amy

Yes, I would love to and exactly what you said. I knew what I had to do, and that was aligned myself with now my new mantra, which is, make the life you want. Be happy. That's all I thought about. Like, how am I going to flip this and get to the point where I feel happy? I didn't know how to do it, and if I had to know how to do it, I never would have started. So what I realized when I sat down to write the book was that I owed it to the reader to sort of dissect what was my path in retrospect. So I want to just reiterate that you don't have to know how to get all the way to the end. It boils down to one choice, and that one choice can unfold and lead you to the next choice.

[00:21:36.630] – Amy

So the nine that I came up with in retrospect are the first one was patience. I had to accept. I'm a pretty intense person. I want to make a decision, make my life. I want to be happy. Now, I'm going to be happy, and I'm going to do it yesterday and I'm going to lay my head on the pillow and I don't have a check Mark on it.

[00:21:57.500] – Amy

I'm a big checker offer. I'm a total type A, but this weight owned me, so I couldn't type A it. So I had to take a breath and realize that it's okay. I don't have to know right now. I gave myself permission, and I trusted in myself enough that if I got really patient about it, time would work in my benefit. I, over time, will be able to figure this out. So that was the first step. Rather than looking for the quick fix, the shakes, all the things that I had not succeeded at in the past, let me be patient and see what unfolds and what I can figure out. Let me get my brain in on this and work through it. That was the first.

[00:22:38.020] – Amy

The second one was be curious, which goes right along with be patient, because you can be patient all day. But if you don't wonder about things, the answer may or may not start to unfold for itself. So I decided to, once I realized that I'm going to give myself time to figure it out, I realized how much I absolutely didn't know. I didn't know about my body.

[00:22:58.950] – Amy

I didn't know about metabolism. I didn't know about macronutrients. I didn't know about hey, here's the funniest thing. I didn't know that what you drink counted as calories. I don't know why I thought that. I thought that because it went right through. It was a zero. A lot of things I didn't know about my own body as a grown woman who'd given birth was, like, amazing, right? So I got curious about all the things that I didn't know about, and that came out in time. And what I realized looking back was that allowing myself to be curious really let me start to find things that worked for me. And I don't think this is a one size fits all, no pun intended proposition. I think people have to get curious and wonder about what really feels right to them, even for now, and that we can adjust as we go on because this has to work long term or else it absolutely falls apart.

[00:23:52.850] – Amy

Next one was I absolutely refused to punish myself around food. That was done because my whole life I suffered around being severely overweight or around food. It was time to give that whole thing hard stop done.

[00:24:09.870] – Amy

So I made that commitment. No more punishment, no more suffering around food. That means no starving, no going to bed hungry, no depriving myself of my favorite thing if I feel like having a little piece of dark chocolate that is not going to gnaw away at my head, that I can no longer have dark chocolate for the rest of my life, because, news flash, I'm going to quit. If you tell me I can't have dark chocolate, I'm out. It's a no deal thing. So I had to solve that, too. And then once I started to realize the things that would start to work and not work with me, I realized I needed to meet with some experts. That was someone who could help me move safely. A trainer or Pilates instructor, in my case, a nutritionist, somebody you know, who was right on my insurance plan that I was able to go speak with. And she taught me about my resting metabolic rate, why proteins and carbs and fats are different, how they work in the body. I had no idea about this level of chemistry or nutrition in the body and the cellular level and what your body actually needs to function well.

[00:25:18.120] – Amy

And I also didn't know, like, breaking down muscle and how you build it back up using protein. No idea. So once I started to meet with people who are experts, it sort of informed me. And then with the information they gave me, I was able to say yes and no to some things that fit that I knew I could commit to long term.

[00:25:37.550] – Amy

And then the next, speaking of committing, the next one was I promised to move my body. And my promise to myself was I wouldn't go to bed. I wouldn't put my head on the pillow that night unless I moved. I had to do something. It could be a couple of hours of housework. It could be walking around the village. It could be going to the gym. It could be a Pilates session, it could be yoga, it could be a stretching session. I was so disconnected from my body at that time. The Amy inside was so shrunken that I didn't inhabit my body. I didn't want to inhabit my body. So I had to mend that break. Again, I know this now. Back then, what I just could muster was I think I need to move my body.

[00:26:23.030] – Speaker 4

I need to feel like it's under me when I'm walking up a flight of steps. I know I have to get healthier because in the back of my mind, I'm going to be this 400 pound woman in a wheelchair in a nursing home sooner rather than later. And I didn't like that idea at all. So I knew I had to start to move a little bit.

[00:26:38.470] – Amy

And then we're up to number six. Number six was super helpful and I still do it today. I have a tracker on my smartphone and I enter everything I eat and I treat it like my trusted accountant. A friend of mine is like, oh, I don't want to track all day. I don't think of it as the negative. I think of it as like a really important tool in my to use your words, my tool chest. This thing is helping me to be successful with my food budget every day. And I know I really love food, right? We talked about this and I don't want to be deprived. So I'm having to find and get curious about ways to eat food that I really enjoy and still feel satisfied so that I can do this long term.

[00:27:23.500] – Amy

So the food tracker for me is the key. Also, because it tracks the nutrition, the nutrients, it really helps me try to look for that balance.

[00:27:33.130] – Amy

Number seven. I love this one. Discover my love tribe, which again, in retrospect, along the way, I had really nice people supportive. When you said there's people in the gym who are really happy to see you there, I did come across those people. I had this three mile route around my house and one day a woman pulled over and said, you don't know me and I don't mean to startle you, but I've been watching your transformation and you're amazing and you're inspiring me to do this too. So it's these people who will show up in your life and cheer you on, or more than that, become a partner in it and a buddy in it and really help you. And you don't have to know them now, just trust if you're ready to take this step that they're going to show up in your path for sure. I think of it like Dorothy and the wizard of Oz. Come across all these characters who help you get to the Emerald City.

[00:28:23.230] – Amy

Really cool. And then commitment eight, utilize new tools. For me, that was like weighing my food with a kitchen scale, getting a digital scale. These are the physical things that helped me. The food track around my phone, a good pair of sneakers. Just some basic things that helped me to get through. Not too expensive either. Affordable for most people.

[00:28:42.850] – Amy

And then nine, I committed to writing from what I call right from the spirit, which is I kept a Journal and I shared my trials and my tribulations and my love tribe started to get in on it and cheer me on or jump into and share their struggles around food. And we sort of like put our heads together and figure out, all right, is there a smart way that we can get through this and still maintain what we're trying to do for ourselves? So those were the nine with these commitments.

[00:29:12.370] – Allan

Yeah. And like I said, those are really great tools as you go through, and you don't have to have all of them. When you start this, over time, you're going to develop the things and develop in the way that's important, particularly if you're doing the first tip. You've got patience, which is maybe the hardest one. And then you add curiosity from there. The rest of it is just solving problems and putting it all together in a way that's sustainable for you as you go. It's not going to happen overnight. And it didn't happen overnight, but it was happening. And as it happened, you got momentum. You started snowballing. You met the right people. You brought the right people into your life. And over time, it just gets better and better and better.

[00:29:56.080] – Allan

Now, you mentioned Dorothy, and so I'm going to play off of that a little bit now. In the whole story of Dorothy, she always had what she needed to get home with her. Okay. And that's kind of the message that you brought up towards the end of the book is that this is all born out of self love. This is already in you.

[00:30:21.890] – Allan

And while you said the bigger you were on the outside, the smaller you felt on the inside first became true. And I'm going to say as you got bigger on the inside, you got smaller on the outside, because as I read the story, that's kind of how I interpreted it. You started getting bigger on the inside through self love and your health and your weight took care of themselves.

[00:30:51.650] – Amy

I love that. And I think there's some truth to that, although I didn't feel that way during the process, if that makes sense. And there's this sort of this push out there, oh, you just have to love yourself. You just have to love yourself. Well, my experience when I was so overweight, I didn't feel that I loved myself because I was at such disk ease with my body. It didn't feel good, Allan. I mean, I was painful. I was compulsively eating. I was saying no to things because of this vehicle didn't allow me spiritually to get out and do what I wanted to do. And that didn't feel very loving. But what I realized is that even by just choosing patience, that's a huge loving gesture. And wouldn't we do that with someone that we loved around us? Of course, if your child comes to you and they're really upset the first thing you have to do is be patient and listen to them hear them out, try to help them arrive to their own solution right? Be a sounding board yet the old Amy was overly critical and I wasn't patient with myself so I think the biggest step in starting the whole idea of self love to your point is that moment where I decided I'm going to do it differently now let me just start by being patient and I think you're right that was the creation of the whole thing. I have to say I didn't say let me love myself, I love myself and look myself in the mirror and say I love you Amy, none of that was happening, none of that but what was happening was I was exerting a sort of kindness to myself that I had

[00:32:44.460] – Amy

never done in the past and I didn't intellectualize it as I'm being extremely kind with myself. I intellectualized it as I'm going to make the life I want yeah, I was holding on to that mantra boy with white knuckled love that made such impact on me that I held onto that for literally my dear life.

[00:33:16.890] – Allan

And good.

[00:33:19.950] – Amy

Thank you, Dad.

[00:33:22.170] – Allan

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

[00:33:31.350] – Amy

This is a great question. Obviously, I'm going to have to go back to a couple of the commitments in the book the first one is we talked a lot about patience and curiosity and wondering about what feels good and what fits best for us but the next thing I want to add on to that is just expressing a level of kindness to ourselves. If someone out there wants to get started but they feel like they have to do it perfectly there's many of us who are perfectionists and that whole idea that I don't know what to do therefore I won't start I would just invite them to be beautifully imperfect, you know. There's a type of perfection in embracing our imperfection because it allows us to step forward and sometimes that's all we have to do the second thing that I would offer is that any journey, any decisions and actually everything and anything we do every day boils down to one choice at a time. So if you came to me, Allan and five years ago and said you know what, Amy? You have to lose 150 lbs and you have to know how to do it right now and you have to stick to it and you're going to do it, I would be out of my mind because I didn't have any of that skill set but what I did have was that mantra in my mind and that why so having the why for me was a way for me to put 1ft in front of the other and just try the next choice and also realize that if the choice wasn't perfect.

[00:35:01.340] – Amy

I could make another choice. So that was the second one. And the third thing I would say is start. Every day is a clean slate. And if we break it down even more, every moment is a clean slate. And there's so much opportunity in that.

[00:35:19.790] – Allan

Thank you, Amy. If someone wanted to learn more about you, learn more about the book, Food: Eat with Ease Every Day. Where would you like for me to send them?

[00:35:30.230] – Amy

If they want to learn more about me, they can jump on my website, which is amyfreinberg.com, and I'll spell it out. It's www.amyfreinberg.com. And if they want to grab the book, they can go to Amazon and it's Food: Eat with Ease Every Day.

[00:35:49.820] – Allan

Right? You can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/532 and I'll be sure to have the links there. Amy, thank you so much for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

[00:36:00.670] – Amy

Thank you. This was a blast. Love it.

[00:36:03.870] – Allan

Me, too. Thank you.

Post Show/Recap

[00:36:13.050] – Allan

Welcome back, Ras.

[00:36:14.790] – Rachel

Hey, Allan. That was really an interesting conversation with Amy. And food addiction is one of those really hard topics to tackle. But she seemed to get her situation together pretty well. And her nine rules, Eat with Ease Commitments, were a really nice guideline for her.

[00:36:32.960] – Allan

Yeah. You know what I really took away from this conversation, and I've had similar people on in the past, and I've had people that were on the exact opposite of this paradigm is that we all have this relationship with food, and some of them become, for a lack of better word, abusive relationships. We're using food at the time maybe for the right reasons. It helped her get past a very hard time in her life, but then it becomes a problem. And food is not something you just stay away from. You can sit there and say, okay, well, that's abusive. Stop it. This is not something you can just stop. You have to deal with it in your own way. And we had Susan on a few weeks ago, and she had a very clear I have to set my lines. I have to stay within the boundaries. And if I stay within the boundaries, then I'm successful and I feel good that I'm doing the right thing. Now, again, she knows because of the testing she's done that she's addicted to food, and therefore, there are certain foods that are going to trigger her. She knows those foods.

[00:37:38.790] – Allan

She's taking the time to do that, whereas Amy comes at it for more of a I'm going to have compassion for myself. I'm going to find my way through this because I believe in myself. That whole make yourself do your thing, be happy, which again, I misquoted that. But again, it's the concept of she deserves to be happy and recognizing that she deserves that she's doing the things that are necessary to care for herself, not all the time. She doesn't have to have those bright lines that Susan had to have, but she's doing her thing.

[00:38:15.450] – Rachel

Well, Amy mentioned her dad had mentioned make the life you want and be happy. And so that sounds like the foundation for what she needed to build on her plan to get healthy. Whereas Susan, like you said, she had some very hard lines with the flour and sugar, I think, were her triggers to send her spiraling out of control, whereas Amy had some different situations that she was able to navigate instead. But one of the couple of the top rules that she had for her eat with ease commitments was be a patient and be curious. And those are two great rules. You just need to be patient with yourself, and you need to learn how to live a different lifestyle, how to change your eating habits, and how to view food as fuel or for a different reason and not just coping from the hard situations in life.

[00:39:11.950] – Allan

Yeah, it's a big part of self awareness. And I've talked about this over and over again that you do have to know yourself because in this space, in this diet and exercise space, there are so many absolutisms. I just want to say, you have to go keto, you have to go vegan. You can't eat this. You must not do that. You have to abstain from these foods, all those different things. I tend to be a lot more holistic and agnostic about all this stuff and say if you're eating whole food, you've solved 99% of the problem. And then it's just making decisions on your day to day. When you're put into situations where something else is there and maybe the whole food option isn't available, you find yourself stuck. And now here you are in an airport, and it's like, okay, you're walking through the airport to try to find something healthy to eat, and they don't make it easy. You got to walk by six McDonald's and a subway to get to a place where you might find something that's a little bit more to your liking and fit what you're looking for. That's really hard going to dinner when 90% of the menu is not your menu.

[00:40:33.520] – Allan

It's not meant for you at this point. And so the absoluteisms of avoiding the word diet, avoiding these other things. I'm like, no, for some of us, it is a diet. It's a temporary thing. We do it and then we stop doing it. And that's okay. For others, it's the bright lines rope yourself off and you do your thing within those parameters. And we were talking before we came on. It's sort of like some of the laws that are out there, but I know it's okay with the traffic law, the speed limit. You're like, oh, well, if I go about 7 miles over the speed limit, no harm, no foul. Right? Whereas you say, well, I sort of Rob a bank.

[00:41:18.920] – Allan

yeah. Sometimes you need the bank robber rules of don't Rob banks, don't kill people, don't do these things. These are rules. They're specific and some of us really need those rules.

[00:41:30.130] – Rachel

Right.

[00:41:30.580] – Allan

And then other people if you tone it down a bit you're just a little over the speed limit. It's okay. So you say yes, I can have this temporarily or occasionally I can enjoy this detour and get back on the road and I really haven't lost any ground. For some people, that's fine. For others, it's like, no, these are bank robber rules and I've got to stay on my road. Yeah, exactly. And this is how I'm going to do it. So as I go into my tough mudder training it was okay, this is my food and I wouldn't normally do this but I step on the scale every single day. Every morning when I wake up, the scale is literally right beside my bed. I roll off the bed, I weigh myself every single morning and so I know how I'm tracking because I know that if I'm able to lose a certain amount of weight that is going to make my race better. Easier, more enjoyable. There's zero reason for me to try to carry 228.6 lbs on this race When I know I can get myself down to 200 or less. So for many of us, it is hard, fast rules.

[00:42:49.270] – Allan

For others, maybe a little softer approaches, a little bit more self compassion, a little bit more speed limiting type stuff where you give and take across time. But you have to know yourself. You have to have that self awareness.

[00:43:04.330] – Allan

All right, well, it looks like we had some internet issues on my side. Third world country issues. But it is what it is. Anyway, Rachel, I appreciate having you here. Good luck on your run and we'll talk next week.

[00:43:18.960] – Rachel

Thanks, Allan. Take care.

[00:43:20.430] – Allan

You too.

Patreons

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

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

Another episode you may enjoy

How to end the crash and burn cycle of food addiction with Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson

Less...

Let's Say Hello

[00:01:19.630] – Allan

Hey, Ras, how are things going?

[00:01:21.690] – Rachel

Great, Allan. How are you today?

[00:01:24.250] – Allan

As always.

[00:01:26.950] – Rachel

Busy?

[00:01:27.950] – Allan

Busy. Yeah. And just a lot of things coming together at the same time and this and that and things outside your control. Things in your control. But I do want to say something. I want to apologize. A couple of weeks ago, I put out an episode I didn't realize my new computer. I put all the settings for my recordings exactly the way they were on the old computer. Didn't realize how bad the quality was until I actually had to do the work to put it together because I got behind. So I didn't send that off for audio processing. I did this one myself and realized how terrible it was and I couldn't fix it. And I didn't have time to send it off or do anything else. I needed to get it published. It's the first time I've missed a Monday published date in over six years. I published it on a Tuesday, and I feel bad about that. But at the same time, it kind of opened up my eyes saying, okay, one, I'm not going to work through the weekend to try to solve a problem about a podcast episode. I'm just not going to do it.

[00:02:34.520] – Allan

Two, maybe Tuesdays are better days for releasing podcasts. Now, I'm not going to do it straight away because I do have a sponsor and I told them I'd be doing these episodes on Mondays. So bear with me as I deal with the sponsor and I get that done. But probably like starting in April, I'm going to start releasing episodes on Tuesday mornings. What that will do is that will give me Monday to get the episode finished up and done. So if I've missed something or need to do something, it's a work day. It's a podcast day. It's when we do normally, we do our recording for things. So I'm going to start making Monday put podcast together day. I don't know that I'll get all the interviews done on Mondays, but I'm going to start kind of trying to push things to certain days to try to make my schedule make more sense. And most of the books, the big books that I have authors on, they publish on Tuesdays. That's a standard publication date for books. Also when they release music. By the way, it's Tuesdays, but so I'm going to start releasing my podcast on Tuesdays.

[00:03:46.420] – Allan

That'll align me with what the publicist and the writers authors of the books like, because the episode will go live on the day it goes and therefore goes into their sales for best seller stuff. If it happens before like pre sales actually don't count towards your best seller status, which is kind of odd. But yeah, what sells that first week is what's going to get you into New York Times. So a lot of them want these episodes live the first week that the episodes out. But I also have a longer tail on my podcast. So I think releasing on a Tuesday will make them happier because I can release on the same date for a lot of these folks if I'm ahead. I think they'll like that anyway. So that's going to be my approach going forward. I'm going to start moving these to Tuesday. It's going to be a hit or miss for the next few weeks, like I said. And then boom, there you go, Tuesday release dates. And I'll try to stay consistent on that because consistency is really important as we'll get into in a few minutes. But how are things up there?

[00:04:50.980] – Rachel

Good. Really good. Well, our weather is a little inconsistent these days, warm and cold, but it's worked out over the weekend. We did our first Maple syrup boil. So up here when the weather is above freezing during the day but below freezing at night, we collect the SAP out of our Maples. And this last weekend we did a boil and yielded almost a gallon, just shy of a gallon of syrup. So we'll be collecting again because the weather continues to be inconsistent and we're going to do another collection and another boil pretty soon. But yeah, and hopefully after that, it might be spring.

[00:05:29.750] – Allan

Good for you. Spring is no different than any other season except for one thing. Except for one thing. And I do have to say this, we're recording this now before this happens. But this episode will go live after it happens is that we don't do daylight savings time here. And so we end up flipping. So the way you have to look at it from our perspective is when we're in the fall. So when we fall back, we end up in Eastern time zone, which means things that I do like client calls with a group and things like that, they're happening for me at 08:00. Well, if you guys will follow me for any amount of time at all, you know that I like to be in bed by nine. That doesn't happen when I have a group call at 08:00, which I do from November to March. And now we're going to do the spring forward, which puts me on central time zone until next November. And I'm so happy about that. I wish at least somebody would just stop doing that. We don't do it here and I'm so glad we don't. Plus, our days and our nights are generally about the same the 12 hours because we're closer to the equator.

[00:06:48.930] – Allan

So it's just kind of one of those things. It's like, okay, every day kind of can be the same if you want it to be. But then, yes, that whole flip flop of the United States. So as you're listening to this, we are now into the simple time zone and I'm getting to bed earlier every night, at least as far as the clock says it is. So, yeah, I'm going to be glad to do that because then I tell my wife it's like, oh, no, it's central time zone, 07:00. I got my call, 08:00. I'm in bed, hopefully.

[00:07:24.510] – Rachel

How funny.

[00:07:25.530] – Allan

Yeah. So that's my spring. The thing I look forward to with spring as we get back on a time that I'm much happier because everywhere I've lived, I've lived most of my life in the central time zone. I've lived in 13 different States, I've lived in four different US time zones. I'm just happy to be back into the central time zone as we do this, as you guys do this crazy spring forward thing. And I'm sorry you're losing an hour sleep, but make sure you go to bed an hour earlier so you don't actually lose that. And it might be harder to fall asleep, so kind of play yourself into it over the weekend. But yeah, there you go. All right, you're ready to have this conversation with Jeremy and Zack?

[00:08:09.750] – Rachel

Sounds good.

Interview

[00:08:31.410] – Allan

Jeremy, Zack, welcome to 40+ Fitness.

[00:08:34.690] – Jeremy

Thank you so much for having us.

[00:08:37.050] – Allan

You have the podcast called The Fitness. And I'm assuming again, maybe I shouldn't assume because I've learned my lesson about that in the past. Is that's kind of a build off of the Hotness that we would say, but more related to fitness.

[00:08:51.510] – Jeremy

Your assumption is close but incorrect. It actually was more just a play on how much of a mess it can be trying to figure out how to stay fit mentally, emotionally, physically. And so it was really just more of that trying to share that struggle with our listeners and with our community that we wanted them to know that they're not alone. We're here with them, learning right along with them, maybe a few steps ahead, maybe a few steps behind. But that's what we're there for, to be a resource to people that are going through all this together.

[00:09:18.510] – Allan

Yeah, it definitely gets messy. There's not a lack of information out there. And it seems kind of odd that we have these podcasts where we're putting information out there. But I try to think like, I'm a Sherpa. I've gone up the Hill. And while I can tell you my route won't be necessarily your route, I'm a Sherpa that's willing to go up that route with you again and again and again. And that's why I'm really glad to have the two of you on the show, because each of you have stories about how you change things for yourself. You went from and I'm actually going to call it normal, because being overweight, being obese in the United States is more and more becoming the norm versus the abnormal. And now you've found yourself pushing towards, I guess, no other way to say it, but being the outlier, the one that's in the not obese, not overweight category and actually pushing your fitness up to higher levels. So I do want to get into that. Both of you have really great stories. So, Jeremy, can you kind of start back with your origin story of what you did to fix your fitness, fix your health, fix your mind as you went through this process?

[00:10:37.350] – Jeremy

Yeah, I was definitely one of those guys that sort of needed external factors to make it happen and rock bottom to sort of be thrown at me. It was probably about ten years ago. I was 70lbs heavier than I am now. I was deeply depressed, stuck in an unfulfilling job, and I knew there had to be more, but I didn't know how to get there. And ultimately I ended up doing just like the dumbest knee injury that you've ever heard of. And that led me into a physical therapist office. And that physical therapist said, you should really get on a bike, otherwise your knees are going to just deteriorate and you're going to need to replace them later in life. And that sounded fine and good, but I hadn't ridden the bike since I was eight, so the whole idea of getting on a bike seemed ridiculous. I started talking to my brother about it and he said, look, man, if you want to do this, if you're going to be serious, you just have to decide you're that weird guy that rides your bike to work now, so go buy some cheap bike and start riding.

[00:11:32.500] – Jeremy

And so something about him saying that just about that making a decision totally clicked for me. He's like. And I was like, yeah, I can totally do that. I got on Craigslist within a week I had a bike and I started doing my bike commute and it was amazing how transformative it was because the need to be present in that moment, when you're on a bike, riding through city streets, there's nothing like it to force you to concentrate on the next you're going to die, right? If you don't do this right, you're going to die. And I found this weird peace in that and just, like letting all the stuff, I had no idea how much my mind was just dragging me from thing to thing. And when I was there, that was where I found peace. And I just decided I want more of that in my life. And that led me into my therapist's office. And fortunately, he was a well practiced meditator and he introduced me to meditation and that just kicked open all kinds of doors where I just started finding more and more ways to just be present in the moment, be at peace with who I was.

[00:12:34.020] – Jeremy

And that led to the massive weight loss. I lost 70lbs through a combination of just exercise and keto. And a lot of that came from talking to Zack. Zack was a couple of years ahead of me on the path. And so a lot of the things that I was starting to get curious about, I ended up sitting at a campfire next to him and he was saying, Well, here's what worked for me. Maybe it could work for you too.

[00:12:53.610] – Allan

So, Zach, you are his Sherpa.

[00:12:58.170] – Zack

It is, in many ways.

[00:13:00.930] – Allan

Tell us a little bit about your story.

[00:13:04.170] – Zack

So my story really started the day I was born. I was not set up for success in any way, shape or form. I had a fairly traumatic childhood. I didn't think it was a traumatic childhood. I thought it was normal. But in telling people they're surprised that I'm actually alive or not in jail, just really bad parenting, left to my own devices, no education on how to do anything to the point where when I was 21, 22 years old, I was about 300lbs of my really good friends was a manager at McDonald's. I ate there every single day because it was free. Drink two liters of Mountain Dew every day. Didn't move at all. Just smoked cigarettes. Smoked two packs of cigarettes a day. And one day I got my first real job out of College and my boss looked at me and said, you smoked cigarettes? I would have never hired you if I had known you smoked. And I was like, Whoa, like, mind blown, that's crazy. So I quit smoking. I started running. I started sign up for 5K and that was kind of the start of it. I was like, wow, I can run a 5K.

[00:14:17.050] – Zack

And I started to lose a whole bunch of weight. And then I started running all the time. And like Jeremy was mentioning, when you're running, you're like, in that mode, it's not quite like riding a bike. I know I was a little bit aggressive when I rode my bike in City Street, so I wasn't as worried. But I just started running. The weight started melting off, and then I started working on going, wait a minute. Well, my mind is clear. I like this feeling of being focused. I like this. It's not muddy up there anymore. So I started exploring all the different ways to continue to exercise in a way that would clear up my mind. And then that led me down the path of keto and nootropics and biohacking and all of these things. And fast forward many, many years now, and I'm at a good weight. I'm relatively healthy mentally, emotionally. And like Jeremy was saying, we were at a campfire one day. I was telling him about all this stuff, and that's actually how the show was born. Was we kind of looked at each other and said, guys need to be having this conversation right here. So let's normalize it.

[00:15:28.590] – Allan

Yeah. I mean, things you guys are saying definitely resonates with my story. I consider myself the fat bastard. Hated my job, hated my life, hated everything about it, was overweight, was unfit, and quite literally was just disgusted with myself. And anyone else that would have looked at me would have said, well, this guy has a perfect life. He's got this great salary, he's taking this vacation, he's doing these things. But no, I really didn't like who I'd become. And it was that wake up of, I can't keep going this way unless I'm going to keep going this way. And the end is close. It was almost like, okay, I'm not going to fulfill whatever I was here to be. There's something deeper that needs to go on. And it was being a great dad. It was hopefully eventually being a great grandfather. It was living a life I deserve to live, which I wasn't, despite the income and how good I was doing in my job. And so beyond decision, I had to take even a deeper step. For me, the word I use is commitment, because in a sense, it was not just okay.

[00:16:47.880] – Allan

I decided I'm not going to do something. I mean, you quit smoking, so that's not something you just decide to do. There's a lot more to that.

[00:16:59.570] – Zack

I still look back at that as the of all of the things I've ever had to do in my entire life, that is the number one hardest thing I ever did.

[00:17:09.570] – Allan

And then if your experience was like my experience, once you do that first thing. So the first day, Jeremy, that you rode your bike to work, how far was that?

[00:17:21.020] – Jeremy

The first day I did it. So it was a nine mile ride. The first day I only rode half of it because I just thought, I can't just get on a bike and ride 9 miles. And I was shocked because actually I did really well and after that, I did start doing the full 9 miles, but it was terrifying. It was scary, but exhilarating at the same time, for sure.

[00:17:39.660] – Allan

So you do that first thing, that first hard thing, that first scary thing, and it creates something. 

[00:17:45.470] – Jeremy

And that's what I was going to say is that so many of these things that are constantly in the back of our mind, the things that we're waiting for motivation to do that we're going to start doing that thing on Monday. We're going to think about doing that thing on the New Year or whatever, all that stuff. None of it matters. You really just have to decide and take the action today. You can't put it off because if you put it off, you're really just still sitting with indecision. Even by saying, I'll do this on Monday, you're still sitting in the indecision even if you can. For example, this year I hadn't been to a gym in months. I hadn't done any real physical workout in months. I'd done some running now and then. But at the start of this year, I decided that I was going to go to the gym every day and I couldn't figure out when it was going to work. So I got on my calendar and I put in a time to go every day. The whole first week I didn't go, but I took the first step of putting it on my calendar so that I could see and go.

[00:18:40.490] – Jeremy

I'm neglecting this time like I have the time. I have no excuse. The second week I went and I haven't missed a day since because I know I have the time now that I've gone and I feel good, I'm going in with a plan. I know what I'm doing when I get there and everything's falling into place from there. When I take that action, that action leads to another one. I'm eating better because I don't want the work I'm doing there to be for no reason. That's the way that so many of these things work is it's just such a domino. You have to just kick open that first door and you'll be amazed at how many more doors you'll find on the other side that lead to a better, happier life.

[00:19:15.850] – Sponsor

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[00:20:42.980] – Sponsor

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[00:21:17.170] – Allan

Yeah, I think so many people will sit back and they know the first door they have to kick through, they know the first domino, but there's something holding them back. Can we talk a little bit about how you went through a mind shift change to just really do that? Because quitting smoking or riding a bike in city traffic for most of us, because what we're not talking about is some fit guy who can pedal at the same speed as the cars that can maneuver and do all these things. I mean, you're at this point overweight, not completely comfortable on a new bike you just bought off Craigslist, right? There's something there something has to click in your brain to make that happen. What is that? What was your mindset?

[00:22:15.850] – Jeremy

For me, I know enough about myself to know that I am motivated by external factors. I can sit here and tell myself I need to do this, to be a good dad and I want to live a healthy life and all that. But that stuff is so it's just a figment of my imagination. There's nothing there tangibly that I can hold on to getting on the bike. My mom had just had at least one, if not both of her needs replaced by then. And to hear a physical therapist say, if you want that, keep doing what you're doing. If you don't want that, go buy a bike. And that was scary enough for me. I was shocked into action and I took the action. This year we have our own podcast. We were going to interview Tony Horton, the creator of the P90X workout. I had never done the P90X workout, and I just thought, I have to have some integrity here. I have to have at least done his workout to know what I'm doing. So I went and did his workout for a few days just so that I knew what I was talking about.

[00:23:08.720] – Jeremy

And then it turns out I fell in love with it. I'm like, oh, this is great. I'm going to just do this every day because this guy, I like his speed, I like his tempo. And so that's been pushing me. So for me, I have to look for is there an accountability system? Is there a friend? Can I call Zack and say, hey, Zack, I need you to text me every morning at seven and say, Get your ass to the gym, whatever it is. I know that I'm driven by something external. Something has to be bigger than me. And so I have to find what that is for whatever action is that I want to take.

[00:23:36.680] – Zack

Yeah, I'm kind of the same way. It's the external motivation. But in the last few years, I've been really trying to shift that mindset into external motivation. But for my future self. So my 60 year old self, I'm doing this for him. So I'm going to go to the gym, I'm going to go not eat pizza today, even though I work for a company where I get free pizza. So it's really hard. I'm doing all of this stuff for the future me. And that was a good shift for me because I was always external motivated or needed that external motivation in order to get something done. And just pretending in my head of like, all right, when I'm 65, living my retirement dreams, do I want to be stuck in the easy chair that my dad was stuck in? Or do I want to be out exploring, riding my bike, still doing things? Okay, I'm going to be driven for my future self.

[00:24:34.020] – Jeremy

And I want to jump on that too, because I was doing the same thing. I was following that advice that we picked up along the way. And I kept telling myself, Would the future version of me walk by this basket of laundry and just leave it undone with the future of me not do the dishes, whatever things I would normally let slide? And I was talking to my therapist about that, and my therapist reminded me, he said, that's a cute trick. And if that works for you, go for it. But keep in mind, there is no future you that doesn't exist. All that exists is this you. So if that you can do this, then this you can do this. If you can just own that identity that you are now the person who tidies up, who does the laundry, who does the dishes, who goes to the gym every day, who eats well, just own that identity. Put that on every day. Stop worrying about the future you and just know that that is who you are now. And when I think back, that's what happened on the bike. And so the more that I sort of incorporate that way of thinking into whatever challenges I'm taking on, the easier it becomes to do them, because I just own them as who I am rather than it being this thing I have to do.

[00:25:39.910] – Allan

Yeah. And I think kind of a bounce between what the two of you have said is that there is this concept of extrinsic reward or acknowledgment. So you have someone holding you accountable, and then there's this intrinsic drive. And the intrinsic drive is unique to you very much like what you've said, I like having something in front of me that's a big, scary, hairy deal. I'm doing a Tough Mudder. The difference is, the first time I did a Tough Mudder, I was 47 years old. Now I'm 56. So for me, 60 means I'm doing Tough Mudders. It doesn't mean sitting in a lounge chair, hanging out, although I will sit in a lounge chair probably after I do the Tough Mudder because I'm going to be sore as heck. But that said, I'm training towards something that's that. But the other side of it, what I do is I like to take those events, if you will, those kind of those intrinsic scary things. And I like to line them up in a way that is cohesive with who I want to be when I'm older. So when I have grandchildren, we didn't have Tough Mudders when I was younger.

[00:26:56.410] – Allan

We did the 5Ks and that kind of thing. And then as I got a little older, I got into marathons and ultras and lifting weights to see how much I could do that kind of thing. Those were what we did for fun. Now there's Tough Mudders and there's these other types of events, like the Ragnar and those types of things that I'd love to try and do. I don't know what they're going to be doing in 10, 15, 20 years from now, but I want to be able to at least make an effort of doing it. You know, I'm going to be the 75 year old guy that's out there with his grandkids doing whatever crazy little thing it is. And that kind of excites me from a future perspective. So I can kind of get hard to wrap your mind around it. But it's like I'm looking at it from a perspective of what I enjoy doing today, and it aligns with what I know that I'm likely going to enjoy in the future. You're talking about riding a bike and how immediately once you got on it, it became a part of you, a part of driving your whole existence.

[00:27:59.240] – Allan

You ride your bike every day. You were the weird guy who rode his bike to work every day, and then people probably watched you lose 70 lbs. It's like, I probably should buy a bike.

[00:28:10.210] – Jeremy

That is one of the surprising side effects of this whole thing. When you do start taking care of yourself, it is amazing how people suddenly just start asking questions like, oh, wow, what are you doing? What happened? And it's so funny how I've done this a few times. I've been up and down the scale enough to know how it goes. But it's so funny how almost every time it's just that I ate better and I worked out and they're like, oh, that's it.

[00:28:35.830] – Allan

I wanted an easy, but I didn't want to actually have to work for it.

[00:28:39.320] – Jeremy

You didn't just drink some magical drink in the morning and it just melted away. No, of course not.

[00:28:44.080] – Allan

That's what the commercial said on Sunday, the whole 60 Minutes, and then just didn't call that 800 number, which back in the day, that's how Tony sold those on those infomercials on a Sunday. And yes, I actually had it and did it back when it was the first ones and then actually tried to do insanity when it came out. But I was way too old and out of shape. And that left me.

[00:29:15.350] – Allan

Sean, I love the insanity work out.

[00:29:19.130] – Allan

I get it. I tried to be 20 when I wasn't, and my body reminded me. So I felt like I had basically been beat to death by being beat up with a baseball bat while I was asleep. And the next morning I said to call in sick for work because I couldn't get out of the bed because again. No, this was the Fit test. This was just that little test they do at the very beginning. And I'm like, go as hard as you can. Go as hard as you can. I'm like, I'm going as hard as I can. And then the next morning, it's like I can't get out of bed. So there is that. Don't let yourself get over excited. Let your mind understand where you are and start from there. Like you said, Jeremy, you knew potential. You might not be able to ride the whole 9 miles to and fro to do your ride. And so as a result, you had a plan B. And then you realized, okay, I can actually do this. And then you were on it. And I imagine after that, you're probably looking at your time and say, okay, I can get to work in six minutes. I can get to work in five minutes.

[00:30:28.790] – Jeremy

When I got down to like 33 minutes, I was like, awesome, actually, when it was shorter than riding the bus.

[00:30:37.080] – Allan

Exactly.

[00:30:37.410] – Jeremy

That was when I knew this is it. I'm never riding the bus again.

[00:30:41.050] – Allan

There you go.

[00:30:43.310] – Zack

I do want to just say it really quickly, like on the your future self and my motivation. I have actually an example from yesterday that I do think forward of, like, myself 20 years from now, but I also think forward of myself tomorrow and being ready for things tomorrow. I told Jeremy about this earlier, but yesterday I went to a 6:30 workout at a CrossFit gym, and it was a partner workout. So of course, I worked a little bit harder than I normally do. And then my friend is opening up a new gym. So I went to an 8:30 class there and did that. And then I went home and I did manual labor of like fixing a room for like six more hours. And 20 years ago I would have been dead. Like done. And I woke up this morning, I was a little stiff, but I was fine. That's for me, that's where the benefit comes in, like thinking about your future self. I am doing all this stuff so I can be okay tomorrow and I can go do anything that I want, whenever I want.

[00:31:50.290] – Allan

Yeah, well, we're moving the gym and so that's kind of one of the things is the concept of moving weights around, moving these horse mats away 100 lbs and are awkward and just getting those things in place and knowing I'm probably going to have to move them a dozen times to get them where I want them to be. And that's going to be about five days of my life next week. If I've been 47 when I first started this journey, there's no way in heck, there's no way. And then when I actually bought the gym three years ago, about two and a half years ago, actually, I used to do all the deep cleans by myself. So every piece of equipment at gym I would move out of the way, move all those mats out, wash all those mats myself, put all of them back in, put all the weight back on top of it over the course of a Saturday afternoon and a Sunday. And at that point I was a beast. And then covet happened and I came out of covid and I'm like, I'm not quite at that fitness level. I'm okay with where I am, I just have to realize who I am and where I am.

[00:32:53.640] – Allan

And so part of the vision is, okay, I can get back there and I will. But right now, yeah, I'm going to hire strong, healthy people to help me move some of those horse mats and some of those weights because there's no reason for me to try to kill myself to do those things. So it's a balance and it's having the right mindset of knowing what you're capable of and pushing yourself and pushing those comfort zones. And then the other side of it is not going nuts like I did with insanity. Or now maybe going nuts and thinking I can do the whole gym by myself, not going there. So it is a back and forth with yourself to not give yourself excuses and also know, okay, I can push I'm going to go do this work out because this is my friend, I'm going to go do these things around the house because I have those desires and those obligations. So those are really good drivers. And then like you said, you're fit enough, you've set yourself up to be able to do those things. That's really cool.

[00:33:49.750] – Zack

But I know that today is a rest day. I pushed it yesterday, so I went to yoga this morning, and that's it. That's all I'm doing today.

[00:33:59.850] – Allan

And recording this podcast.

[00:34:02.250] – Zack

Yes. The physical exertion of recording a podcast doesn't quite get to me.

[00:34:06.480] – Allan

yeah, I know. I tend to move my hands. So even though you might not see that on the camera, I'm working out here.

[00:34:14.670] – Allan

So we talk about motivation. And every time I see objections to the keto diet, because every year they do the I think it's US News and Roll Report, they do the best diets and worst diets out there. Keto is consistently at the bottom of the list. But I can tell you that I know more people who have lost weight and maintained that weight loss using keto than I do that have used any other diet, period. Even the Mediterranean diet, which I agree is probably the actual the best diet out there. But the keto diet, if you can do it, is really effective at weight loss, and it's not something you have to do forever. I've had guests on I do what I call seasonal ketosis. So I have off seasons and on seasons, some people are keto all the time. You guys use keto as a tool to lose weight. How did you motivate yourself to stick with what most experts would say is impossible?

[00:35:23.370] – Zack

Well, there was a couple of things. One, so I tried keto before Jeremy, I think. Once I figured out that I was not doing keto necessarily to lose weight, it was an added benefit for me, but I was doing it to try and help with inflammation in my body and brain fog and some of those things which were really important to me because my job required a lot of mental work and I just needed to try that. I also set myself up to so Shaunty was coming to town, and I was going to do a live workout. And I also signed up to do a go rock 50 miler star course. It's just a 50 miles of walking with a weight in your backpack. And probably four or five months before I started keto or before that, I started keto with the intention of being keto through all of these events. And so I set myself up like that to keep myself on track because keto, it can be really tough. And all the products that are on the market today that are marked keto are technically keto if that's the only thing you eat for the entire day.

[00:36:34.810] – Zack

But it is tough if you're going to stay in ketosis. If you have one day where you eat more than what your carbohydrates requirement is, you're out and you need a couple of days to get back in. So it is very binary. It's tough to get all of those things. But honestly, it was like meat and vegetables. And I found some really good dairy hacks with some protein powder that was keto friendly as well. So it's definitely possible. But the motivation for me was to find good food that I really liked and just eat the same thing over and over and over again and set something up for later on. So you have a goal that you're marching towards.

[00:37:16.690] – Jeremy

In my case, you know, it goes back to that campfire sitting with Zack, and he was showing me the chart of how much weight he'd lost on keto and some ridiculously short amount of time. And I was like, whatever that is, I want in. Show me how you did that. And so he told me about it, and I thought, well, that sounds insane. There's no way I can do that. Keep in mind, I'm a vegetarian, so doing keto as a vegetarian is nearly impossible. It's not impossible. It's very hard. But I took to heart what he said, and I just sort of broke it down in a way that made sense for me. And I thought, I'm going to just try. I'm just going to limit my carbs to 100 grams a day. Just start there and see what that does to my life. And I immediately was feeling better because just the food choices that I had to make have to be better. And so I don't even know that I ever really went full keto. I mean, I did the test strips, and I was in ketosis in and out. But for the most part, I really just cut out a lot of carbs and introduced a lot more protein and fat to my diet.

[00:38:12.930] – Jeremy

But again, that's the vegetarian. It was tricky because there aren't a lot of options for that. So I was relying heavily on the processed fake chickens and the fake meats to make sure I was getting the protein that I needed. I would not recommend that somebody do that, because we know that all that process stuff is not good for you to do on a regular basis by any means. But anything that just encourages you to eat fewer ingredients and real whole foods is what your body is craving. In terms of the motivation, the motivation came again from the external reward that Zack was dangling in front of me with the weight loss. But it really was how I felt and how the weight came off. And my entire relationship with food changed. There were days where coworkers would be sitting there eating cheese and crackers, and they would offer me some. And in the past, of course, free food, why would I say no? But when I would look at it, it wasn't even food anymore. It just didn't even register as food to eat a wheat then or whatever it was. So again, the motivation followed the action.

[00:39:18.210] – Jeremy

By taking the action, my body went, I like this, do more of this. And I had really no choice but to keep going because that was what my body was demanding of me.

[00:39:27.080] – Allan

So let's take a little bit deeper in that because I think what you said. There is super important. Your body told you, this is good. Okay, how do we open ourselves up to that conversation?

[00:39:44.350] – Jeremy

That, to me, goes back to the meditation topic. Any time that you can set aside every day to just shut the hell up and get out of your own way for a minute is going to just open your doors again, going back to the door analogy. But I just find that in quiet, I find all of the answers that I sit here racking my brain trying to come up with. So whether it was diet or last year, I moved to Canada, I moved to a new country, and I was Hemming and hawing and didn't know what to do. And, oh, man, how do I make this a tough decision? I got kids. Is this the right thing? And I finally just got quiet and just meditated. And I just kept verbally saying, Show me home. And I literally saw the home that I'm in now, like, it just appeared in my head. So that doesn't happen without my meditation practice. That doesn't happen without just taking time to get quiet and just listen to God, universe, energy, whatever your thing is. I don't subscribe to any of them. But there is something in me that gives me the answers, that gives me a path to follow.

[00:40:48.010] – Jeremy

If I can just get quiet enough to hear it.

[00:40:51.310] – Allan

Shut up and listen.

[00:40:53.770] – Jeremy

That's where all the answers are.

[00:40:57.310] – Allan

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

[00:41:06.610] – Zack

Move your body. That's number one for me. I know if I'm not moving in some way, shape or form, everything else kind of crumbles and falls apart. I go to the gym every single day for something. I'll either go for, like shoulder PT or do a full workout or go to power yoga class or something like that. But that is the number one thing for me. And then second is the mindfulness bit, which is why I go to yoga quite a bit. Unlike Jeremy, I can't actually sit still. I can't stand it. So sitting on a pillow meditating, saying, home is not my jam. I can't do it. So I do a lot of gentle yoga classes where you're not moving physically all that much. The whole point is the breathing. It's the meditation, but it's just enough movement where I'm comfortable with it. And then the third thing for me, and this actually ties into what we were just chatting about, was I read Tim Ferriss's Four Hour Workweek book a long time ago, and there was one piece in there about doing the opposite of what everyone else is doing and you'll find your way.

[00:42:19.000] – Zack

And I did that for nutrition one day, and I decided to just stop eating for a couple of days and fast. And I uncovered all of my emotional eating in that moment. So the number three thing for me is like eating in a way that's nourishing your body, not emotional eating, figuring out what your patterns are, why you eat, what you eat, and to Jeremy's point, right, like listening to your body and understanding that message. So for me, it was fasting unlocked a lot of that stuff. So moving my body, mindfulness and eating the right things to nourish your body.

[00:42:56.050] – Allan

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

[00:43:06.490] – Jeremy

I'm going to Echo Zach said just on the mindfulness thing. As I said, I just feel that any big answer, any big question I'm asking myself, it's in here somewhere and I just have to get out of my own way and listen to it. So meditation, mindfulness, however you can approach it, it's only going to help you. I also think that curiosity is just a huge tool to hang on in your toolbox because when you do find that you are emotionally eating or you're angry about something or you're just frustrated or whatever is going on, if you can again get into that moment and just get curious, why do I feel this way? Why am I opening this bag of Oreos? Why am I doing this thing? So often when I ask myself those questions while I'm doing the thing that I'm upset about or that I know I shouldn't be doing, I find that I no longer want to do that thing or that feeling dissipates because I can just shine this big bright light on it and make it really small and it goes away. So curiosity is huge. And then just kind of in terms of the bio hacking world, I can't get enough of the cold.

[00:44:04.230] – Jeremy

I wear shorts year round. My family teases me because I'll walk my kids to the bus stop in shorts and they're like, why are you wearing shorts? I feel at home in the cold. I always have. Even before I knew that cold exposure was a thing. I live next to a gigantic, beautiful Lake and as much as I can, I go and just sit in it for at least two minutes and just get cold because I just feel like it's this connection with nature, it's a reset. My whole body just reacts to it in a way that, again, makes me very present. When you're trying to stay alive for two minutes in twelve degree water, there's nothing quite like it. So to me, it's just all of that just kind of comes back to finding a way to just be in the moment and really know why you're doing what you're doing so that you can make the right choice to do the next right thing.

[00:44:50.260] – Allan

Okay. Thank you. Yeah, I'm going to go for the heat shock proteins. You can go for the cold.

[00:44:54.740] – Jeremy

All right. I've heard of hot yoga and I don't ever want to be anywhere near it. No, I can't do the heat.

[00:45:02.410] – Zack

I'll flip flop in between them. I love my cryo-chamber, but I also love the sauna.

[00:45:07.450] – Allan

Awesome. So guys, if someone wanted to learn more about you, learn more about your podcast, The Fit Mess, where would you like for me to send them?

[00:45:16.990] – Zack

We've got a website, thefitmess.com, all of our shows, all of our information is right there. We're also on social media all over the place as fitmess guys. And we are on every place you could download a podcast from. We're there.

[00:45:34.380] – Allan

Okay. Well, I'm going to put the link in the show notes. You can go to 40PlusFitnessPodcast.com/530. And I'll be sure to have those links there. Jeremy, Zack, thank you so much for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

[00:45:47.950] – Jeremy

Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

[00:45:49.580] – Zack

Yeah. Thank you.

Post Show/Recap

[00:45:57.650] – Allan

Welcome back, Ras.

[00:45:59.180] – Rachel

Hey, Allan. What a fun conversation with Jeremy and Zack. They both have really good stories to share. It was interesting to hear how they got to where they are today.

[00:46:08.160] – Allan

Yeah. There's a lot to unwrap. Someone does something like this and in a few weeks I'm going to be a little while. I have another guest. I'm reading her book now and she lost over 150 lbs. You get these individuals that have this exceptional weight loss and you want to think they're superheroes, they're often famous people or they become famous. And so we like to kind of put this hero moniker on them. And the reality is Zack and Jeremy are just normal guys with normal jobs, but they did something exceptional for themselves. And there was a trigger for each of them that kind of made that happen. And from that, I think one of the key takeaways is that they didn't just decide one day they're going to do something, something happened or they really got serious. But it wasn't just a decision. I made the decision and it was eight years before I really got to doing something, anything important. And that's when I learned that I needed to be committed. I needed something in front of me, I needed a commitment, I needed to be serious about it. And I think if it's not happening for you, you've got to go back and do that check in and you've got to be brutally honest with yourself.

[00:47:36.170] – Allan

Are you really in it? Are you really trying? Because it may seem like you're trying when I tried this diet, did you and I don't mean that in a bad way, but really self exploration, it's like well, yeah, it was good Monday through Friday and then the Saturday and Sunday while I was off plan. Okay. Well, then you weren't on.

[00:48:03.610] – Rachel

Well, I think that people often expect overnight success or if not overnight, then a week of changing your diet and seeing success or a week of exercise and seeing some success. But it's a multifaceted thing, and it requires more than just a week to kind of test the waters with something new or a change that you've tried to implement.

[00:48:27.830] – Allan

And it's this consistency thing, and it's a consistency of being outside your comfort zone. So you can look at Jeremy. Okay, what does Jeremy decide he needs to do? Because he's talking to a physical therapist, and it's like, okay, you need to use your legs or you're going to lose them. It's like, okay, well, I'm going to buy a bike on Craigslist and get on that bike and ride it to work.

[00:48:55.480] – Rachel

Be the weird guy that rides his bike to work.

[00:48:59.420] – Allan

Exactly. Be the weird guy. Okay. I'm the weird guy who goes out and doesn't drink beer or alcohol right now. Okay. If I go out, I'm not drinking. And everybody's starting to accept it. That don't even bother. He's not going to because he has a commitment, he has a goal. He's got something in front of him that he's charging toward, and that's outside your comfort zone. It'd be so easy for me to sit there and say, everybody's having beer. I'll have a beer, too. Everybody's having a drink. I'll have a drink, too. But what I know is that that step off of the path for me is not just a step off. It's not just a little detour that I'd be taking. It would be a complete derailment of what I've accomplished. And it would take me a good, long time to mentally fix myself and get back on that trail. You have to be uncomfortable. There's no comfortable way to change.

[00:50:05.810] – Rachel

Well, committed. Committed is a key word here, too, Jeremy, like you had said, or he had said that he had a knee issue just like his parents. And he was on track to get in that same position and be a little bit worse off in the future. And once he committed to riding his bike to work, other things fell into place as well. And he had a friend that helped describe what a possible diet he could try the keto diet, and he found some success with that. And it kind of snowballs into a good area once you get rolling on it, as long as you stay committed to it.

[00:50:43.330] – Allan

Yeah, it will. But it doesn't start snowballing the first day, if you can imagine. Okay, we're not talking about just riding your bike down a park path. We're talking about literally he decides he's going to get on a bicycle and he's going to ride on the bike Lane in a city with traffic and everything else going. And he's quite literally maybe just probably was because he said he was terrified, which I would probably be, too. I'm not going to die of a heart attack. I'm going to die of a car hitting me.

[00:51:20.870] – Rachel

Right.

[00:51:22.130] – Allan

But he had to put himself uncomfortable. And he put some safety things in there because he knew, okay, riding 9 miles the first day might not be something he could actually accomplish. It turned out it was. But he was not just dumb and saying, okay, I'm going to do 9 miles the first day. He said, okay, I'm going to start and I'm going to figure out if I can ride my bike to work. And I will ride my bike to work. And yes, I'll be weird, I'll be uncomfortable, I'll be outside of the norm. I will do all those things that are outside my comfort zone. And he did that. And he had a friend, Zack, that had done Keto to lose a lot of weight. And so he said, okay, tell me about this. And I tell people about things all the time. Every week you're on here and we're having this conversation or these conversations about health, about taking care of yourself and giving you actionable items every single week. I asked the question at the end of an episode. Tell me your tricks. Tell me your tactics. Tell me your strategies. Can you imagine hundreds of episodes now that I've asked that question?

[00:52:31.080] – Allan

How many tactics and strategies have been mentioned on this podcast? Yours is there. The ones that will work for you are in those podcasts. They're out there. Now, the question then is, are you going to do it? People know I run the gym. I run the gym. Hey, Allan. Gym is open, right? You moved. Yeah. That's awesome. I'll be by there on Monday to join. Okay. Hey, Allan, I hear you're training for this tough Mudder. You've lost some weight. You're looking great. You're really doing this. I'm aghast. So tell me what you do to lose weight. And I tell them. End of conversation. Crickets. Not even crickets. It's quieter than crickets. I think we do have crickets here, I think. But it's quieter than crickets. I'm they're not going to do it. They don't do it. They don't want to do it. It's not the magic pill. It's not the easy button. It seems impossible. How can someone not eat cake?

[00:53:40.650] – Rachel

I've been listening to your podcast since you started, and it was very early on that you introduced the idea of Keto. And I listened to those podcasts for a long time, and I thought, Keto is another fad diet, which it is. And I just didn't see the sense. I didn't see the logic, and I just sat on it for a while. But when I did try it, it agreed with me. I mean, not right away. I certainly had the Keto flu like a lot of people do. But over time, it really does agree with me. That particular way of eating does agree with me. But it did take me a while to come to terms with it and at least the parts of it that I can easily agree with. And then a lot of people would no sugar because I really believe sugar is not good for you. We've talked about that. And no refined grains, no white flour, no white rice, no white pasta and any such thing. There's just no nutrients in it. And over time it works with me and I'm very committed because I feel good when I eat well and healthy foods, whole foods, real foods, and it works for me.

[00:54:55.200] – Rachel

And other people might find similar success with the vegan diet or vegetarian diet or any other diet that has the name that's out there. But the point is that you have to try something and you have to give it a chance. Changing your diet for a week is not going to yield any sort of livable, useful results. You need to try something for a long time to be committed to it for some time.

[00:55:20.190] – Allan

Well, before we got on here, you used a word and I think it's a really important word for us to put out there. And the word is gap. There are gaps, if you will, in this path. It's not a straight line. There's gaps. There's bits that aren't there that you have to fill in those gaps and you have to make it happen. You have to do the work to get there. The very first gap is the start. You've got to get momentum and you get momentum by actually starting. If you've ever tried to push a stalled car when you first start pushing, it's heavy, even if you're going slightly downhill, it's still heavy to get the car going. Once you get going, you get some momentum. Okay, same way with anything, that one thing that you're going to do. Just pick one thing. For Jeremy, it was riding his bike. For me, it was eating whole food. It was literally okay if it didn't walk this Earth or grow in the ground, if it was not alive at some point and I can't recognize it as being something alive and I mean really alive, there was not any of this.

[00:56:33.770] – Allan

Oh, well, these were oats. So I eat oatmeal. No, not even close. If it did not resemble something that was alive, meaning I could not pick it out of the ground and it be what it was, I didn't eat it. Okay. That strenuous. That's the paleo I did. And as a result of eating that way and trying to stay satiated, I went into ketosis. Okay, then there's the gap. When it starts getting hard, when things Plateau that first weekend where you say, okay, I'm not going to drink alcohol. That's going to be one of my main things. And I'm going to eat whole foods. And those are my two those are my two biggies the two rules. And then you get to the weekend and it's like, oh, we'll come over to my house, we've got the ball game coming on and they've got all the food and all the stuff set out and you're kind of like, okay, and they got the beers and all, have yourself a beer. And before you know it, you're digging into the cheese and chips and all that, and you're drinking the beer and it's like, oh, I'm over here making these hamburger and hot dogs.

[00:57:43.930] – Allan

You want one? And yeah, you end up with one of each or both or more. But you see, it's the gaps. There's those things that you've got to get past. And then the snowball starts to happen. It's like, oh, I have more energy, I feel better. I've lost 15 lbs. Now, my knees don't actually hurt when I get out of bed in the morning. So I could actually go for a walk. And you go for that walk and you're like, oh, that felt pretty good to go for that walk before I got ready for work. Kind of woke me up, got me going. I could listen to Allan's podcast, maybe not the whole thing in one walk yet, but you'll get there because we go a little longer now. But the whole point being is going to have these gaps. You can have these things that happen. And that's what for the first eight years of my journey was the problem. Was I had made the decision I wanted to do something and then I would start and I would either not get momentum or I would. And then something would trip me up, something would come in between me and what was going on.

[00:58:54.380] – Allan

There would be a lack of success, there would be an event and that event would completely throw me off. And if you've ever sat down and said, okay, well, so far I've lost 20 lbs and that's awesome. And then you go do something silly over a weekend and you step on the scale and it's 6 lbs more.

[00:59:17.150] – Allan

It's easy to just quit.

[00:59:19.980] – Allan

It's easy to walk away. So you've got to have that commitment. And then above all, you just have to be open and honest with yourself, who you are, what you're doing, and you show up. You don't say, I'm going to get that gym membership on Monday, it's Tuesday. You're listening to this. Maybe on a Tuesday, I'll get the gym membership on Monday. Well, guess what I'm going to tell you right now. You probably won't. I mean, you might do it now to prove me wrong, but no, you had no intention. You had no real intention because you had no commitment. And that's a hard thing to hear and it's actually a hard thing to say to people. But when someone tells me they're going to meet me at the gym on a certain day, unless they've paid me the money to be there and show up, they're not going to be there. 99% of the time someone tells me they're going to do something at the gym on a certain day if they haven't already paid the money to do it, they won't be there.

[01:00:32.990] – Rachel

Yeah. It's about making that decision to make a change and then committing to it.

[01:00:38.340] – Allan

Committing to it and then doing it. Those are gaps. There's a decision gap. It's not like pushing a button and it's instant gratification. There's a gap and it's the doing. So, yes, you can walk in a gym and you can give that gym you can sign a paperwork to sign up for that gym for a year, and you can give them the $10 and you can go in there and they'll show you all the stuff. And then tomorrow maybe you wake up bright and early and you put on your workout gear and you get down there. Where are you three weeks later? Are you still there? Are you still showing up? You're still doing your thing? Because if you do, then you're going to start looking at other things. The riding the bike leads to wanting to eat better. And then wanting to eat better means you're doing the research and you're following the path that we've helped you set forward. And again, as you said, Rachel, it's not just choosing a path I took or that you took or that Zack and Jeremy took. That's our path. It worked very well for us. It may or may not work out for you.

[01:01:47.320] – Allan

But here's the key. Vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian, carnivore, keto, all of it. One thing in common, low if none processed foods, you cannot. I have yet and you guys can help me. There's a lot of you out there. Find me someone who got fat eating whole food. No, seriously, this shouldn't be that hard, right? If you eat meat, fish and vegetables and fruit and that's all you eat, did you get heavy doing that? The answer is no. I mean, I'm just telling you right now, you're not going to find that person. And the reason all their diets are great is because that's what they're made up of. And the reason they think every other diet is terrible, because they think every other diet, they're eating the terrible foods. So vegan thinks all we keto people eat is bacon. And unfortunately, we sell that because you get to eat bacon, but you don't live on it at all.

[01:03:06.100] – Rachel

No.

[01:03:06.910] – Allan

Bacon can be a part. I don't eat much bacon at all. I don't need it anymore. I eat whole food. I eat non processed food. In fact, the day I went grocery shopping, I bought four chicken thighs, a salad, premade salad and some broccoli. That's my dinner. And so every bit of it was something that I could have picked or killed. It was alive. And I know it was alive because it's in the form it was in when it was not a lot anymore. After it's picked, the processing on the chicken was to cut the thigh off. That was it. The processing for the plants. They washed and cleaned it a little bit and chopped it up for the salad. And the broccoli is a whole big sprout thing of broccoli. So slice it in the bucket, wrap in plastic and give a Talon charging $2.40 because broccoli is expensive here. I paid less for the chicken. But you get the idea is that every one of these diets, they work because they're whole food. That's it. Now to do that is challenging because what do I have to do to walk into a grocery store to get to the places where I needed these things?

[01:04:33.510] – Speaker 1

I had to walk by the chips, I had to walk by the dips. I had to walk by the cookies. I had to walk by the sodas. I had to walk by. You get the idea? All the breaded meats that are in the freezer section, all the processed meats that are in the freezer section. And I shop hungry, which you're not supposed to do, but still hungry. What does hungry mean? Hungry means I bought four instead of two. That's what it means. And I could have bought two chicken because they were all together. I mean, individuals. So I literally could have just said, okay, well, tonight for dinner I'll buy three or buy two. But I was like, no, I'm going to want two of these and I'm going to eat two of these and I'm going to enjoy the heck out of them. Baked chicken thigh. I'll season it with a little something, but basically that. And then I'll have a salad. I'll probably put some beets on it and some cucumber and tomato and then make a vinaigrette and boom, and then I'll Cook the broccoli and I may have a little bit of it, but most of that when I bought it for my wife because when I say 240, literally, that's enough for one and a half meals.

[01:05:39.270] – Allan

One and a half thing of broccoli. So it's not a lot of broccoli. It is quite expensive when you consider that broccoli, but it is where we are. So a little bit getting it here and I didn't buy the cauliflower because it was even more expensive. But that's what I eat. That's leafy Greens, cruciferous, vegetables and meat.

[01:06:01.650] – Rachel

That sounds delicious.

[01:06:02.790] – Allan

Every meal, all my meals, I have some nuts and seeds. I eat occasionally I will eat cream cheese or sour cream occasionally. I may put a little feta on my salad tonight. So a little bit of cheese here and there, but not a lot. But that's it. And that serves me very well. Now, of course, I didn't. I don't always because I have my on season and off season. But if it's not happening, you got to go deep and you got to be honest with yourself. And I'm pretty certain you're going to find the answer is no, you're actually not committed. You're not doing the things that you should be doing and you know it. Don't lie to yourself. Don't lie to anybody else if it's not happening. You're not flawed, physically or otherwise. You just haven't made the commitment yet. You're not emotionally where you need to be to make this happen. And that's okay. Except that you're not there. That's cool. You're learning things. These are tools. Build your tool chest. But don't pretend you're doing the right things and be disappointed with the results. If you're not. 80 20 is not Monday through Friday.

[01:07:23.050] – Allan

That's not the math. So let's be honest with ourselves. Let's make the right decisions. And we've gone long on this, but quite literally, this is going to be something we're showing episode 530. Yeah. It's nothing new in the sun, really. People going to ask, how do you do 530 episodes? It's like just finding one more person to listen that gets it and changes today. This is, you know, you're right. I haven't really gotten uncomfortable yet. I really haven't gotten out of my comfort zone and said, this is important. And it's not that you can't ever have a piece of cake. You can't ever have a piece of candy or whatever it is, whatever your thing is or can't ever have another beer. It's not what we're saying because you can you can manage that back in at some level, either as a sometimes thing or like I do a cycle in and out kind of thing. But you got to figure out what works for you first. But if you don't do the big thing to get where you want to be, then there's no off ramp you never got on. You might not even be driving down the frontage road.

[01:08:42.440] – Rachel

Yeah, well, like Jeremy, he had a scared straight situation. He was told that he's going to have problems in the future if he doesn't make a change. And Zack had a tough childhood. He had a long ways to go with his health as well. And it's when you are made aware of a situation, you need to figure out how you're going to change it and commit to that change and bridging that gap between learning you need to make a change and committing to it and actually doing it. It's hard sometimes, but there's a lot of resources out there. There's a lot of people that can help. And even us on this podcast, reach out to Allan's website and ask a question if you need help or support. That's what we're here for.

[01:09:26.620] – Allan

Yes, absolutely. That's the big thing. Just reach out, get this thing started. Because he had a scared straight moment. Unfortunately, there's a lot of people their first heart attack is not our last heart attack because they're not alive to have another one. People are dying at ages of 40 and 30 with heart attacks. It's their only heart attack. It's the last one. It's the only one, and it's the one that ends their lives. And so the whole point being is not that that's your fate, but just recognize that some people wake up calls are also their good night calls. So don't let that be the case. We know that your health is where it is. If you want to change it you don't have to have that huge health scare. You know it's there. You know it's there. Have it mentally go through it. Get yourself together and make the change.

[01:10:23.340] – Rachel

Yes. Absolutely.

[01:10:25.650] – Allan

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

[01:10:29.140] – Rachel

Great. Take care, Allan.

[01:10:30.510] – Rachel

You too. Bye.

[01:10:31.550] – Rachel

Thanks. Bye.

Patreons

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

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

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Less...

Let's Say Hello

[00:02:25.690] – Allan

Hey, Ras. How are things going?

[00:02:27.980] – Rachel

Good. How are you today, Allan?

[00:02:29.950] – Allan

Doing all right. Doing all right. Tammy took a weekend off with a friend to go to Boquete, which is another task town here in Panama. They were having some kind of festival, so she didn't know that when they booked it. But then she was going to go and we had our deep cleaning at the gym. So for me, it was a very busy weekend running Lula's and pushing the team at the deep clean to get that all done and walking back and forth between the two because I think they're about a third of a mile apart. Get up in the morning and get everything going. At Lula's, everything's good. Then walk over to the gym, get things going there, walk back to Lula's, make sure everything's where it needs to be, and then back to the gym, make sure the crew is doing everything, help them a little while, then back to Lula's.

So, yeah, I did all this walking one third mile increments back and forth. But we got everything done, got the gym clean and reopened this morning. So that's all good. And Lula's is doing well. We've got some guests that are having a good time and check in, check out. Things are going well.

[00:03:39.320] – Rachel

Good. Glad you got your mileage in, too. That's awesome.

[00:03:42.610] – Allan

How are things up there?

[00:03:44.890] – Rachel

Good. I mentioned a while back that one of my non fitness resolutions for the year was to read a book, a non health and fitness related book. And I just finished The Radium Girls by Kate Moore. Have you read that one yet?

[00:03:58.840] – Allan

I have not.

[00:04:00.620] – Rachel

It's a good book. It's an easy read, but it's also a difficult read. But back in the twenties, these girls were painting, using radium and watch faces for the military. And then we at that time didn't know that radium was as dangerous as it really is. And so these girls developed all these terrible health problems from eating radioactive material.

[00:04:25.990] – Allan

I thought you said this was fiction. Is this actually a historical fiction or actual fiction?

[00:04:31.120] – Rachel

Okay, it's a historical, legitimate book. And in fact, it wasn't until 2011 that a monument was put in Ottawa, Illinois, where one of these radium facilities were to memorialize these girls. Because really what they did was sadly the earliest days of learning what radioactivity was, how to measure it and what it does to the body and so a lot of what we know today about radium and radioactive material is from the work that these girls did, sadly. But it was a good book. I definitely would recommend it.

[00:05:07.760] – Allan

Good.

[00:05:08.630] – Rachel

Yeah.

[00:05:09.090] – Allan

Well, are you ready to have a conversation with Lisa?

[00:05:11.790] – Rachel

Sure.

Interview

[00:06:00.190] – Allan

Lisa, welcome to 40+ Fitness.

[00:06:02.750] – Lisa

Thank you for having me.

[00:06:04.230] – Allan

So the book is the Core Three Healthy Eating Plan: Discover the Simple, Sustainable Way to Lose Weight, Feel Great and Enjoy Your Food Freedom. I like those last two words, food freedom, because I think so many of us, the relationship we have with ourselves, the relationship we have with our body and the kind of the way we look at food and the way we classify food, it really sets us up to kind of almost have this master-servant relationship. And it's not a good one. It's a mean master because food doesn't care about you. It's either going to serve you or not. It's about the nutrition you get because that's one of the things. As I started going and different times that I've been eating, it's like, well, how do you avoid eating this or doing that? I don't even think of that. When I walk in a grocery store, I don't go in the middle aisles because there's no food there. It's like, why would I walk down the diaper aisle? I don't need diapers.

[00:07:03.670] – Lisa

Maybe not yet, right?

[00:07:07.390] – Allan

I'm almost 56 years old. I'm two days away from my 56th birthday as this one comes out. So no, the kids are done. In fact, my daughter just turned 29, and we have another daughter who's 28. Those are our babies. Our babies are 28 and 29. So, no, our days of worrying about diapers is sort of over, at least from this perspective. Now, there might be some grandparenting situations where I'm in the diaper aisle, but on a normal day, I don't find myself on that aisle. I don't find myself on the crackers aisle. I don't find myself on the chips aisle. I don't find myself in the candy aisle. They're just not places that I find myself. So I really appreciate the word food freedom. I think that's one of the key takeaways that I got from this. And you had something else. I wrote it down, but I'm going to use it because that's me not being on this.

[00:08:02.840] – Lisa

Yes. And even while you're looking for that food freedom, I just want to say too, is kind of used a lot, sometimes even misappropriated. And it's very important to understand when we're talking about food freedom, what we're really referring to. And that's just the unconditional permission to eat. That you could eat without any stipulations, without any caveats, without any compensation later and without any punishment. And a lot of times I hear and I do honestly cringe, and I try not to cringe, but people say, oh, that was so bad that I ate that I need to go for a five mile run tomorrow morning to burn that off. And I just think that, sure, exercise and exercise does burn fuel and burn calories. But by looking at, first of all, exercise that way, you're looking at it as a punishment and by thinking that you need to punish yourself for enjoying food, it just doesn't bode well. And I think that does set people up for this very dysfunctional, chaotic relationship with food and connection to it. And it kind of sets the precedent for other issues down the road. So that's why I thought it was very important to touch upon that.

[00:09:10.400] – Allan

Yeah. And what I think is, again, why I think that's important is that because of the way things have worked out with what the foods that are available and the way we think about foods and what we've been taught about foods and the calories in calories out, let's do this diet. Let's try that diet. We have distorted looks at food, and we're going to talk about that in a minute. But this is not something that's intrinsic to us now. It would have been as Huntergatherers, because what did you get today? Well, I got a rabbit. Well, what did you get? I got some blueberries. Hey, let's sit down and have dinner.

[00:09:43.450] – Lisa

That's delicious.

[00:09:44.330] – Allan

Yeah. But we've lost that talent or whatever it was that that's how it worked. And we were okay with it. And you put in a book, just pull this little quote, wellness is a skill. We've got to relearn these things

[00:10:01.820] – Lisa

totally. And that's what I really wanted to touch upon that specifically and highlight that. And I use that when I counsel clients one on one, too, because people just think there's a magic wand or a magic potion or give me a meal plan and I'll follow the plan or give me an exercise plan and I'll follow it and all of these things. But it's a skill that you have to practice. If anybody could just go on a diet and lose weight, but to really sustain it for long term and to reap all the benefits, that's something you have to practice. It doesn't just land in your lap. It's not just, oh, I'm going to pick up this book and my life is going to be changed. I mean, that's the hope. Right. And I hope this book does change people's lives, but there is some work that goes into it, but it's very rewarding. Anything that's worth in life achieving, we have to work towards.

[00:10:54.390] – Allan

Right. And the first thing and I'm glad you put this first, because I say this over and over. It's kind of a mantra when I'm working with someone is you have to think about how you look at yourself, your relationship with your body, your relationship with your mind, how you think about yourself, that voice in your head that tells you different things. And sometimes that voice is actually mean. If we don't start with ourselves, then really a lot of this other stuff just wasn't really going to stick. And so I'm glad you started with your relationship with yourself. Can you talk about some signs that someone would know that they have an unhealthy relationship with their body?

[00:11:39.410] – Lisa

Sure. And I think that's very important. I think a lot of people don't even realize that they don't have a healthy relationship with their body and with food. And so when you look at what makes a healthy relationship with your body, it means that you show signs of respect. It's almost like a relationship with another person. What is the fundamentals and the foundation of any health relationship? It's trust. It's respect, it's enjoyment, and it's feeling satisfied that you're getting something in return for what you're giving. And it's just like mutually beneficial. And so it's really important that you think of you and your body as a team and you work together. And it's not this constant needing to change or fight against it or deny and deprive and again, punish when you feel like it's not living up to either your expectations or society's expectations. Because let's face it, that's a big part of the reason people struggle with specifically body image issues is that there's that comparison to this person, this celebrity, this person on social media, this friend or neighbor or family member. And it's really hard not to compare. But the more you do that, it gets to the point of no return, diminishing return, because you just kind of feel worse and worse and worse and worse.

[00:12:58.460] – Lisa

And it's hard to get out of that phone. So I start off with talking about healthy relationship with your body, because if you don't have a healthy relationship with your body, inevitably it's going to affect your relationship with food. And if you don't have a healthy relationship with food, that's going to affect how you eat. So you can know everything there is to know. And believe me, coming not that I know everything there is to know at all. There's still so much to learn in the world of nutrition, but you can everything there is to know. But if you don't have that ability to listen to your body, trust your body, trust food. It takes knowledge, hunger, and fullness. So many people do mindless eating and they overeat and portion issues and they don't realize that they're looking externally. But it's got to start internally or intrinsically and we need to practice that. So when you have this unhealthy relationship with your body, some signs and symptoms are maybe you avoid social situations because you're afraid of putting on a bathing suit or you don't have anything to wear. Or maybe you do spend a ton of time trying to find ways to change it or alter it.

[00:14:08.140] – Lisa

Maybe you spend a lot of your paycheck trying to do the same. Maybe it interferes with your relationships in life or with putting yourself out there with getting a new job or finding a romantic partner. If you feel like almost that it affects your mental health, you feel down, you feel depressed. So those are just a few of the things that might come up if you don't have that healthy relationship with your body. And it brings on a lot of negative thinking, a lot of negative feelings. And those feelings and thoughts turn into very firm beliefs. And you don't realize a belief is just reoccurring thoughts. So you might believe that you're not good enough or you don't look good enough or you're not going to find someone that you can love you back and love you just as much as you love them because of your body. But that's stuff that you implanted and it's not your fault. But I think it's very empowering to know that that might not be true. It's just stuff that you've told yourself and told yourself or maybe other people have told you, which also is another whole conversation.

[00:15:11.190] – Lisa

But now all of a sudden you believe that to be the case and you haven't really given yourself a chance. So it's very important to work on that relationship with your body, especially for really everything, especially wellness, fitness and overall health.

[00:15:26.810] – Allan

Yeah. The way I like to look at it is if this was your friend, so you're sitting next to your best friend on a park bench and you notice that your friend is down and they're like, what's going on? It's like, well, I'm not really happy with how much I weigh and with my weight, my health. What conversation would you have with your best friend? How would you word it? What words would you use? And my guess is they'd be encouraging, they'd be coming from a place of love. And really, yes, you can acknowledge that they've got some work to do, but it's not acceptance in the way that you would say, okay, we're just going to live this way. It's like, okay, well, what's your plan? How can I help you? What do we need to do to make this work? So it's coming from self love. It's coming from that position of help, of being there, and we need to do the same thing for ourselves. We need to step up and say, I love myself and I want this to happen.

[00:16:29.750] – Lisa

Yes, I love that advice. And I've given that, too, for people that have a really tough time with negative self talk, and it's just constantly putting themselves down or putting a lot of pressure on themselves and just feeling like they never live up to that. I'll say, what would you say to your friends? Sometimes I hear, well, I would just and I hope none of my friends will do this right now, but sometimes I'll just tell my friends something to make her feel better. And I don't necessarily, but I still think that's important for ourselves. Even if you don't believe it in that moment, even if you're not really feeling it, you have to still talk to yourself and practice that positive self talk and those positive affirmations, because over time it's not going to change overnight. But over time, they will replace the negative thoughts, and that can be the only thing in your way. Sometimes people are like, oh, I don't have the motivation to go to the gym or I don't have the motivation to eat healthy, and I don't have the motivation to do all these things for myself. And they don't realize the biggest obstacle is themselves and their thinking patterns.

[00:17:34.410] – Lisa

And that's why I love psychology and I'm not a psychologist, but I believe that food can be very psychological and health and wellness can be very psychological. And that's why I really wanted to incorporate that in the book, because it's not something I see all the time is diet talking about the psychology. It's okay to want to lose weight, but you really have to focus on your relationship with food and your body first. It's paramount.

[00:18:00.020] – Allan

Yeah. And that's why I'm glad you put this in here, because I do read a lot of diet books and a lot of them are just like, okay, here's what we're going to eliminate, here's what we're going to include. And this is how you're going to eat. And here's the plan. And it's 28 days and you're going to lose to 12 pounds and you're going to feel great and you can like, well, you skip the step. You skip the big step of not knowing ourselves and our relationships and why we got where we got. Because if we don't address that first, then we're going to come back around after we finish this wonderful diet and we're going to start punishing ourselves again, we're going to start doing the things that we used to do. We're going to fall back on those messages.

[00:18:38.990] – Allan

Now, the next step then is looking at your relationship with food. And in the book you identified four distorted eater archetypes. Can you talk about those four? Because I think anyone that's ever had issues with food and with their weight is going to find one of these that just like, oh, that hit me in the gut because that was me.

[00:19:02.850] – Allan

And I think that's important for self awareness.

[00:19:05.560] – Lisa

Yes, absolutely. Part of the reason I did that was because I wanted to resonate and I wanted it to feel relatable. And it's also not uncommon to identify with more than one. And that's not an accident. There is a reason for that. So what I ended up doing after writing this chapter and really thinking about the things that I see in my practice is I was able to come up with a lot of the most common traits I see when people have these distorted or dysfunctional or even disordered views of food. And it ended up just falling into these four groups, these archetypes, like you said. So we have the erratic eater, the dependent eater, the judgmental eater, and the obsessive eater. The erratic eater might have a very hectic lifestyle. They might even thrive under stress, having a very busy schedule. Food could often be an afterthought. There is probably very little structure in the day. And for that reason, some of the pitfalls could be overeating later in the day or not eating enough, not eating enough food groups, not eating mindfully. And so that was a very important part of this, because I want people to say, oh, this is me, these are my issues, and this is how I can resolve or remedy them.

[00:20:32.280] – Lisa

And all four of these, too. I'm jumping ahead a little bit. But all four of these also, they're not all negative. It's okay that you're not someone that eats all day long and you don't constantly have food on you and you're not maybe like thinking about food until your body asks for it. That actually can be beneficial, because maybe in that sense you don't just eat for any reason. You're not someone that's, like more of a dependent eater. And that's the next archetype. The dependent eater is somebody who's almost the exact polar opposite. Food is a focal point. There might be thinking about dinner before lunch even comes. Plans and traveling plans and holiday plans and any social events might all revolve around food. There might be more emotional eating. There might be more eating for not just emotions and comfort, but stress to sort of enhance any type of experience. Like you go to the movies, you might not be hungry, but a big bowl of popcorn would make the movie more enjoyable. So you get the popcorn. So again, like the Erratic eater, yes, there's clear pitfall, but also that's not a bad thing either, to enjoy food.

[00:21:44.020] – Lisa

It's just the amount that you're doing it. And if you don't have anything else to look forward to, you don't have any other coping mechanisms to deal with emotions and stress. That's when it becomes problematic. That's when people can feel like they are overeating. And weight gain, of course, is one side effect of that. But other issues, too digestion issues and high cholesterol, high blood sugars. So all of those can also follow suit. And then we have the judgmental eater. This is the type of eater that I find has the most experience on diets. They kind of go from a cereal dieter. They just go from one diet to the next, always looking for the next best thing. And that's not anyone's fault. They're just looking for something that they can feel is working for them. That gives them some kind of hope, that makes them feel productive again, like they're doing something about their weight. But what happens is they end up kicking up on some of these what I like to call food rules. Where this is good, this is bad, you can't eat this at this time. You can't eat fruit with anything else.

[00:22:45.760] – Lisa

It's got to be by itself. No eating after 06:00 p.m.. And I included that in the book, too. I kind of break down those food rules. The most common ones I hear. Why they are quite kind of I don't want to say, like fully irrational, but some of them are kind of irrational and they come from places that make sense, but they just get just blown up and they snowball into these actual fears that people develop too, around food and then everything else unravels after that. So the judgmental eater, they might even do some food policing, not just of themselves, like oh, don't eat that or don't eat that. Or if you eat that, there's consequences. They might even do it. Project those judgments onto others as well. So those are some pitfalls of the judgmental eater. And like I said, they're not all bad. That comes out of them. With a judgmental eater, you might be somebody that knows a little bit more. You might know all the ins and outs of healthy eating and balanced eating and what foods are going to be more health promoting and what aren't going to be as health promoting.

[00:23:46.510] – Lisa

So that can work in your favor. You just have to know how to use that, what to do with it, and have more of a flexible approach with food as well. And then the fourth and final type is the obsessive eater. And this is someone who just spends an exorbitant amount of time looking at food labels, researching diets, feeling afraid. This is when the food fears come out. The obsessive eater really is meant to be the type of eater that's most at risk for developing a full blown eating disorder. And I had a big Disclaimer, and I wanted to make that very clear. This is not a book for anyone with an eating disorder. This is not to diagnose anyone with an eating disorder, but eating disorders are very prevalent and continue to be. And a lot of people that have them tend to go for diet books. I don't want to use this word term specifically, but it's kind of like the low hanging fruit a little bit with diet books is the ones who have the most issues with food might be the ones reading. And that's why I thought it was so important that I make that very clear that this might need a higher level of care intervention, because it's kind of running that thin line between what's distorted and what's actually distorted and what's actually an eating disorder.

[00:25:07.190] – Lisa

So those are the four main types. And then in that chapter, I do specifically focus on those strategies like mindful eating, which, let's face it, nobody's going to eat mindfully all the time. It's just not happening. We can't unless you have absolutely nothing in your day other than to sit with your food and pay attention to it and check in with yourself, it's not going to happen. But we eat mindlessly when we're not paying attention, when we're distracted, and we also eat mindlessly for a distraction. Some people will eat so that they can distract themselves from something else. And so those are the two different ways that that mindful eating can exist. And it's really important to address that, at least to be a less mindless eater, not a fully 100% of the time mindful eater, but a less mindless eater.

[00:25:53.290] – Allan

Yeah. And I think you'll find when you are focused more on your food, it tastes better, you know, when you're full and you stop. So it solves a lot of problems that we would otherwise have of picking something up and eating all of it versus going through. Like I said, I saw a few things on myself. I used to like Girl Scout cookies, the Thin Mints. And I say, okay, well, what's the serving of Thin Mints? You look on the box, and I think it's like three cookies or something like that. So I take the two or three cookies, whatever it was, put the package in the freezer, go sit down, eat the three cookies, get up, walk back to the freezer, get another three cookies, and put the package in the refrigerator. And then by the third trip, I'm just standing in the freezer, right with the freezer open, eating the rest of the pack of cookies. I was judgmental, but I set a rule for myself. And then I immediately say, okay, well, I'll have another serving. And then at that point, I was like, well, screw it, Allan, you want the rest of the cookies?

[00:27:01.310] – Lisa

I hope I'm saying it right. But if you're going to eat standing up in front of the fridge, you might as well pull up a seat, something to that effect. And it's just funny because I think everybody is at some point finds themselves doing that, eating over the counter, eating from the refrigerator, or eating a small serving or what they hoped would be enough. And it's just not. And there's other reasons behind that. But sometimes it's okay to just I ate a little bit more. But that's okay. Maybe I needed it. Maybe I need to get it out of my system. Maybe I'm done with the Girl Scout cookies for now. And I can put that to bed

[00:27:36.160] – Allan

because the box is gone. So, yeah, at that point.

[00:27:39.590] – Lisa

One way or another.

[00:27:42.050] – Allan

Yeah. And they only do that once a year at that point. Okay, now you have the plan, the core three healthy eating plan. Can you just give us an overview of how the plan works and why you think it's, because I saw a lot of great things in there. I'm like, yes, okay, so I understand the structure of it, but can you go through it and then explain the structure and how it works?

[00:28:05.510] – Lisa

We talked a lot about the psychology, but I really wanted to Hone in on the physiological parts of it. Can't talk. Sorry about that. And the science behind it, because it is very much a science based approach. And again, one of the things, one of the issues I've noticed over the years, counseling clients who try different plans is it's just not personalized. And that's very important when you are finding a plan. There are no two people exactly the same, and we all are going to have at least slightly different nutritional needs. So I really wanted to respect that bio individuality. So the premise of the plan and one of the reasons that three is in the title is because I touch upon three major macronutrients. Literally anything on your plate that you are eating is going to fall under a carbohydrate, a protein and a fat. And they're essential because our body needs them for different types of functions. So I go into the importance of carbohydrates and specifically higher fiber or fiber rich carbohydrates, and explain why fiber is very important in your diet, why it's very beneficial to focus on slower digesting food in general.

[00:29:22.040] – Lisa

And I really circle in the what I think really helps people with health in general and even weight loss and even gut health and immune system is blood sugar stability. So I try to loop that in and make it very clear that the plan's premise is to eat to stabilize blood sugar. And as a result, you can feel not only more energetic, better mood, but also notice that you are potentially losing weight if you have weight to lose, which is a whole other conversation. So then I go into protein. And again, why protein is important. I find people fall into two major categories. Either they don't eat enough protein or they eat way too much protein. And so I thought it was important to touch upon that it is a little bit more of a higher protein diet. And then I go into fats and the types of fats to pay attention to, specifically the anti inflammatory fats and the fats that are not bad and not to avoid, but the ones that can potentially be more pro inflammatory. And the other part that I really wanted to emphasize and really make clear is that there is no food off limits, that the healthiest diet is an all inclusive diet.

[00:30:37.490] – Lisa

Carbs, specifically, are the most demonized. There is a war against carbs. I see that in most diets, they cut them out one way or another. They're cutting out carbs, whether they're telling you you can eat grains or you can eat so much fruit or, you know, just eat more meat and fat. And the keto diet is 5%, I believe, calories from carbohydrates. That's very, very low carbohydrate. So this is a low carb, but it's not very low. And then what happens is you are given a very clear formula that you can use to personalize it to find out how many carbs can I eat? For my specific goals, how much protein should I be focusing on? And fast. But again, even though there is a plan in there and you're given amounts and there's even tons and tons of food charts where it will list out the types of carbs, proteins and fats, what I consider to be one serving and how many servings to have in a day, I do want to emphasize the importance of flexibility. And some days you might feel a little hungrier, and some days you might be okay to eat a little less.

[00:31:49.460] – Lisa

And that's also part of listening to your body. So you are given a clear idea of how much to aim for every day, but it's also very flexible. And then, of course, it is a higher fiber diet, like I mentioned. And I do talk also about the importance of some plant based eating not only for ourselves but for the environment, because I do think that's becoming increasingly important right now is the welfare of our planet.

[00:32:15.810] – Allan

Right. Now, you also included a requirement in there. I guess I should call a requirement a recommendation. But to at least try to get 3 hours of exercise per week. And you had an acronym in there to help someone who is exercise challenged from a motivation perspective. And I love acronyms, so that's why I had to include it in this episode. And the acronym is MOVE appropriately. Can you tell us what the acronym Move means and why each of those are important?

[00:32:56.190] – Lisa

Absolutely, yes. There's a whole chapter on exercise, and I'm not that person that some people are anti exercise, believe it or not. And exercise makes you hungrier, it's not going to help you with weight loss. I believe exercise is very beneficial for a lot of reasons. Weight loss can be a bonus because we're not exercising just for weight loss. It's definitely not a punishment. In fact, the chapter is that it should be a reward and a celebration, not a punishment. So it's very important to understand that. And I think indirectly it can help with weight management, because if you're someone who is stress eating, it can help you with that. It can help you manage that stress level better. If you're someone that's not sleeping well, guess what? It can improve your sleep, and that can be helping with what you put in your body during the day. So there's a lot of indirect benefits. So I thought it was very important to touch upon that. And strength training I'm all about, I think combination of cardio, strength training and more mindful movement is really important, especially for body image. So looping back in that first part of the book.

[00:33:52.980] – Lisa

So Move is supposed to be an easy way to, like you said, get people motivated to kind of make it more simple and more approachable. The M stands for Making it More Sociable. So it's important to have we often want to do things in life and everything is more fun when we do it with people. And not to mention being with people and having more plans with people that don't revolve around drinking. And not that eating out is bad, but eating at a restaurant, it's nice to have other things you can do together. So why not kill two birds with 1 stone and make it something that's more fun for you by recruiting some friends and family and people that you enjoy? The second part is to have obtained the accountability to have somebody there. We often do things the most successfully when we stay honest with ourselves when we have somebody looking back at us and saying, have you been doing this? Where are you at with these goals? I know you really wanted to work on this, so let me remind you of that. And that can come in the form of a personal trainer and a person.

[00:34:57.060] – Lisa

But not everybody has access to personal trainers for different reasons. So it could even be like a Journal or an app or just even a friend or family member who is also wanting to feel healthier and get in shape and improve their fitness levels. So those are the first two very important parts. And then the third part is to make sure that you find something that you love. So it's really important that you aren't just doing the treadmill because you think that's how you're supposed to lose weight. People become overwhelmed. They don't want to go to the gym because they don't like the cardio machines. They don't like the weight training. They don't even like being in a gym period because there's a lot of pressure. Maybe there. So walking is an example where if you enjoy walking and you're at nature and you can listen to a podcast and you can listen to good music on your phone, you want to make sure it's something you like doing. If you do not like doing it, you probably won't keep up with it. So it doesn't have to be one specific thing. There are plenty of ways to move your body and to actually enjoy it, and then you want to ease into it.

[00:36:05.620] – Lisa

So I hear a lot from people who come to me as clients one on one and say, I just started this new workout routine and I'm going to the gym seven days a week, really, seven days a week, every single day, not even one day in between? And my response is always, that's great, I'm so happy you're doing that. But how sustainable is that? And I'm afraid I want to encourage you to keep going because you're clearly in that mindset, which is amazing, but I don't want you to burn yourself out. And that burnout is such a thing with everything we do in life, especially with taking care of ourselves and fitness. So ease into it, create some small goals. That's another reason why I said those 3 hours, because I think it's fair. I think it's achievable. I think it's something that most people aren't overwhelmed with, like 30 minutes, five days a week, or even a little less than 1 hour, three days, 1 hour, three days a week. So I just feel that when you make it very small and achievable, then we're more likely to want to do stuff. And that's again, bringing back in that like psychology, behavioral science.

[00:37:13.710] – Lisa

And so it's important that you sort of ease into it slowly. Don't jump in with both feet, because you might find that after a short period of time you're like, this is too much. I have other stuff in my life that I need to do in the gym routine. This exercise routine is not going to fit into my lifestyle. And that's a shame.

[00:37:34.410] – Allan

And the other thing about that 3 hours when we talked about it, I think what's important to know is that it doesn't have to be an hour long three times a week or 45 minutes four times a week. It could be I'm going to park further away from the office and I'm going to walk up and that's a five minute walk. Okay, you've logged five minutes. You're going to walk back to your car. That's another five minutes. You do some of that at the grocery store. You say, okay, I'm going to walk over here. And then you stop at the park and you have a nice little 15 minutes walk during your lunch hour. All those little bits, they add up. It doesn't have to be this grueling 1 hour that you're just dedicating and losing your life, feeling like you're losing your life or not being a good parent or spouse. You're just investing 3 hours per week. However, it needs to be spread out, taking a voice call, you're going to be on a conference call, just taking a walk while you're on a conference call. You might be able to get your whole 45 minutes in just during that conference call if you don't have to participate.

[00:38:35.830] – Allan

So there's lots of ways to make this happen. I love to make it social. I love the account obtain accountability, because that's really how we make things stick because sometimes we won't do it for ourselves. But if someone else is counting on us to be there at the park after work, then we're at the park after work most of the time. And the two those kind of join each other a little bit because you have a social buddy that you're meeting to go to the park and walk. You got the social aspects of it and you got someone counting on you to be there. And I agree with varying it up and finding the things that you love, because that's really to me, fitness is about being fit for task. So if you want to be a hiker and you love going out in the nature and doing hikes, well, then going out and doing hikes is maybe the workout you need. If you can't do the hikes, at least do some walks around your neighborhood because you know you're making your hikes that much more enjoyable because you've got the fitness level to do it.

[00:39:32.290] – Lisa

Exactly right. And I think the other part of it, too that I really want to emphasize because I see this being a big deterrent, is that people who and I don't know if you find this too with the people you work with, but people that do get engaged in exercise, the motivation I would say the predominant driving force is I feel like weight loss, calorie burning. And I think that's the biggest reason why people do not have a healthy relationship with exercise, which I talk about healthy relationship with food, healthy relationship with your body. And so I thought it was very important to touch upon this because it really does affect everything. And I see that being the biggest issue. And if all you're focused on is the calorie burning, then sure, five minutes isn't going to feel like a lot. It's not going to feel like it makes a dent. 20 minutes even isn't going to feel like it makes a dent, or even worse, you give up because you're not noticing the results enough with the way you look and not paying attention enough to the real benefit, which is even five minutes can boost your mood, can increase those feel good neurotransmitters that can make your afternoon so much easier at work.

[00:40:34.690] – Lisa

It can actually and this is all science based, and I do include some studies in here of why I recommend those 3 hours. It could also increase creativity. So if you're really stuck on a project and you can't get past or you can't type out that email or you can't figure out what to say or something that you're trying to create, going for a little walk around the block can really boost that. It gives you a break that can really boost that. And then guess what, not only are you doing better and performing better, but you're logging those hours of exercise too, which is going to help in so many other areas. So just know that every little bit we're not just saying that to trick you into exercising more. It really does make a big difference. Just that little bit of movement can make you feel so much better. And again, for me, one of the biggest reasons I wanted to talk about it is because I think it drastically improves the way you feel about yourself and your body image and feeling your confidence to make other changes in your life.

[00:41:27.450] – Allan

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

[00:41:40.710] – Lisa

I love that question. And I think most people would expect me to start talking about like certain foods to eat. But, you know, I do touch upon a lot of that in the book. And I think it's very important to focus on what you're eating and how you're eating and the why behind your eating, which is something we didn't talk about today. But I fully think the intentions are the most important thing. Why are you eating those foods? But I'm going to go in a little bit of a different direction with my first big tip, which is to stop trying to make everyone happy. You're never going to feel your best if you're trying to make everyone else feel their best. And I think it's important to consider respect everyone else's feelings. Obviously, we all want to be decent humans to each other and respect each other. But you also have to put yourself first. If you try to make everybody else happy, you're never going to be happy. And that's going to affect other areas of life. Like you're not making that time to get movement and you're not making that time to grocery shop and prepare meals and focus on foods and eat mindfully because you're doing so many things to make everyone else happy, that's going to take its toll.

[00:42:45.290] – Lisa

So I really think that's super important, especially myself as a mother with a business and kids. Once I go down that path, it's really, really hard. Nobody wins because you're never going to make everybody happy, unfortunately. So that's my number one. My number two is to practice self awareness. I think it's so important to be aware of what you're doing. If you have a specific goal, if you want to feel your best, you want to be your healthiest, you want to improve your cholesterol levels, your blood sugar levels, or lose weight, you have to be aware of your habits and behaviors. What are you doing every day that's getting you there? And what are you doing every day that's not getting you there? And just kind of even if you have to Journal it for a day just to write it all down. So that awareness is incredibly important, especially that emotional awareness. Check in with yourself. How are you physically feeling today? Because whatever you do from eating and exercising standpoint, if it's not addressing some other needs, you're still going to feel like something's missing there. And then my third one is that self compassion.

[00:43:49.770] – Lisa

Nobody is perfect. We're not going to do everything that we always want to do. Some days are going to be easier than others. You might have a week where you felt like this was a great week. I got in my exercise. I feel as though I was listening to my body. I was able to do some food journaling. It was just a good week. And then some weeks are going to be a mess. And as we head into, well, I know it's not going to be the holidays, but when holidays come up, when vacations come up, when family events that are not planned come up, it's going to make things harder. And if you beat yourself up, if you make yourself feel bad for feeling bad, because that's what we do so well as humans, as we make ourselves feel bad for feeling bad, you're just going to again spiral. And it's going to be hard to get out of that funk and start making those positive changes you want to make. So I'm all about the compassion, and I'm going to cheat and add one more thing in there, which is just to have that cheating on just to have that gratitude in your life.

[00:44:45.230] – Lisa

I think that it's hard to feel positive all the time, and I think too much positivity can quite honestly feel toxic sometimes. But having that gratitude, counting your blessings, being grateful for the little things in life can instantly boost the way you feel about yourself, your mental health, and your physical health as a result.

[00:45:02.430] – Allan

Great. Lisa, if someone wanted to learn more about you or the book The Core 3 Healthy Eating Plan, where would you like for me to send them?

[00:45:11.250] – Lisa

Thank you so much. It's being sold at most major retailers online. So you have Amazon, Barnes and Noble. You can go right to the Simon and Schuster website. And then you can find me at my group practice. I'm in New York City, New York nutrition group. Or you can follow me on social @LisaMNutrition.

[00:45:35.400] – Allan

Great. You can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/523 and I'll be sure to have the links there. Lisa, thank you so much for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

[00:45:45.990] – Lisa

So much fun being here. Thank you, Allan.

Post Show/Recap

[00:45:55.090] – Allan

Welcome back, Ras.

[00:45:56.770] – Rachel

Hey, Allan. What a really neat book and a fun discussion you guys had. I'd like to start off with food freedom and what a nice concept that would be to give yourself permission to eat.

[00:46:09.850] – Allan

Yes. You know the whole point. Almost every diet, almost every single diet is some form of punishment, if you will. You can't have this food. So it's like what food can I have and what foods can I not have? A few of them will say, okay, well, you can eat everything you want, but you still have to log and do that. But that's still hard because. Okay, well, I have to keep up with all of this versus just saying I want some simple rules, but most of them are going to tell you, maybe even an entire food group or several different types of food groups you have to avoid and not do. And when you're not in total control of your schedule or where you live or where you are, that can be very hard. I'm in Panama. We have access to all the tropical fruits. All of them. I can buy fresh pineapple, papaya, mango, banana. All of that is just readily available every single day here. So if I was keto all the time and be like walking by the fruit stands every day because there's four or five of them between even here in the gym, they're all over the place.

[00:47:17.440] – Allan

So if I can't have fruit occasionally, then there's a struggle. And so the question you have to ask yourself is well, one, we got to get past the first pit, which we'll talk about in a minute. But what is food for me?

[00:47:35.050] – Rachel

Right.

[00:47:35.740] – Allan

And once you define food for yourself and so for me and what I define food predominantly is it was alive, it was running around or it's a product from something that was running around or it was growing in the ground. But at some point or another, it resembles something we know was alive. So that means I don't eat pancakes and syrup, I don't eat triskets and stuff like that. For the most part, I try to avoid things that are in a bag, box, jar or can, because most of them you can't trace back to it being alive. I can know that flour came from wheat, but it doesn't look like wheat. It's just a powder. And so from that perspective, I know it's ultra processed. I know it's just going to turn to sugar when it gets in. Things that are made out of wheat are delicious, don't get me wrong. But you have to find your line, you have to find those things that are going to work for you. And when you do, then anything that's within that realm is food. And there's a tremendous amount of freedom when you're not having to make decisions every single time you run into the grocery store and you walk in and the very first thing you see is the produce section.

[00:48:59.660] – Allan

But you're like, okay, that's going to require cutting and cooking. And I don't really want to mess with that. Yeah, there's some prewashed salads and wow, they even put the dressing right there with it. I could run back and grab some chicken, grill that up real quick and have a really great dinner. Or I walk right through that produce section, right over to the aisle that sells the Hamburger Helper and look on the box. It says, okay, for this to feed six people, I need to have 2 pounds of hamburger. They run back there, they grab 2 pounds of hamburger, they got their Hamburger Helper, they start to walk out, they get to the counter, oh, they're selling my favorite candy bar. They grab a candy bar, then they check out. Their home, yes, 30 minutes. They've got a cooked meal, the chili Mac for dinner, and the two of them eat six portions between them. And for a lot of people, that's there all the time. So they're following one of the distorted eating principles that Lisa talked about and there is that they're erratic. They don't really have a plan. They haven't really defined food.

[00:50:06.900] – Allan

And not defining food then means you have no freedom. You eat what is available, you eat what is convenient, you eat quickly. Instead of going into the grocery store, you just stop at McDonald's, you're on the phone, you're texting your significant other. Okay, I'm at McDonald's. What do you want? You know, and it's quick, it's easy, and you're already eating their fries before you get home.

[00:50:37.310] – Rachel

That doesn't do anything for you. Eating that type of food and choosing healthier options takes time. It takes planning. And like you said, you got to eat what's around you. But also you need to find out what works for you. What makes you feel good.

[00:50:54.570] – Allan

Yeah. So once we get there and we know, okay, these are the foods that serve me. These are the foods I enjoy occasionally, yeah, you can go ahead and order your dessert. And you're fine with that because you've done the groundwork to have a good relationship with food. You've done the groundwork to have a good relationship with yourself and your body. And when you do that groundwork now it's like, okay, if I occasionally want to have some cake, I can have my cake. But I know what my general rules are. Once you kind of have that mapped out, and then you start putting plans in place, strategies and tactics and say, okay, my cupboard is full of this. If I get really hungry and I want something, well, here Brazil nuts right here on my desk. So you have a freedom of saying I eat when I need to, and when I'm hungry, I eat the foods that I want to eat. So I'm not a victim of food.

[00:51:50.090] – Rachel

You know, the other thing she mentioned to that wellness is a skill and that it takes practice. And I really wanted to mention that because it does take time to figure all this stuff out. It's not like you can go and buy a book and here's the diet that I'm going to follow, because I know this is going to work for me. It's not like you can choose an exercise regimen. I know this is going to make me lose weight and be a healthier person. It takes time. We need to learn these things and implement them and try them. And there's going to be some wins and there's going to be some failures. But it's something that is a skill and it does take practice.

[00:52:25.140] – Allan

It does. Pretty much every diet works until it doesn't. Almost every exercise program is going to help you get better until it doesn't. And so there's this basic Bell curve. Whenever you get a book and they're like, okay, I want you to follow the Mediterranean diet. Here's how you do it, and here's your movement principles, and you follow that book to letter. For 80% of us, the vast majority of us, it's going to work for a period of time. There's a Bell curve there's outliers that basically aren't going to respond, but most of us are going to be able to do it. And sometimes we have issues. Something comes up. Now I'm staying over at my mother's, taking care of her. And so I don't have access to what I had before. And she doesn't like the food I Cook and I have to Cook for her. So now it's like, well, do I Cook two meals or how do I put this together? That's that figure out this thing. I said, okay, my mother is not going to eat this, and she's not going to eat that. But she wants this and she wants that so what do we do?

[00:53:25.120] – Allan

I'm like, I make a modular meal. I do some batch cooking on Sunday. So I have my proteins and my vegetables ready, and then she's going to want to starch and she's going to want a dessert. Then I have those available to her. As soon as we finish, I'm like, you're going to eat a protein and you're going to eat vegetables and you're going to have a starch. And that's what we're going to have. No, I'm not going to deep Fry and no, I'm not going to buy the TV dinners and stuff like that. Occasionally. Yeah. If you want a TV dinner, I'm in shopping on a Saturday, and I go in and say, hey, can you give me one of those Hungry Man? I'm like, sure, here you go. You can have Hungry Man first. Sunday afternoon, I'm going to be eating some of the batch cooked food that I made, and we're good popping in microwave. Four minutes later, she's got her molten lava cherry bomb cake thingy. It's fine. But just recognize that. Yeah. There's a skill involved in putting together strategies and tactics, because a lot of people will start with the strategies and tactics.

[00:54:27.240] – Allan

Like, oh, I'm going to go on the Mediterranean diet and I'm going to start walking every morning for 45 minutes, seven days a week, and that works until it's snowing on Saturday and like sleeping and probably pretty dangerous for me to be out. Are you still going to go? And if you miss one day, is that your excuse? Is that the crack in your ice that says, oh, well, there's still some snow on the ground, so I'm not going to do it on Sunday either. And now on Monday, you're off, you're not doing it. So there's a skill to it, and it's setting up reasonable expectations for yourself based on that. And the other side, we talk about food freedom or exercise freedom and all that. It's just recognizing that nothing ever goes exactly to plan. As Tyson has said, everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face. And so it's kind of having that expectation that things might not go the way you want them to. And you have to forgive yourself for these interruptions, for these detours, for these things happening, and do what's reasonable through self compassion and self love to get yourself back on the path, the most reasonable and expedient way possible.

[00:55:46.430] – Rachel

Yeah. She also mentioned that knowing what your relationship is with yourself and with food like we've talked about in the past, having a mindset is really the starting point. And that she even mentioned you need to respect yourself and love yourself and enjoy yourself to be successful in any of these endeavors.

[00:56:05.880] – Allan

Yes, I wish that was a book. I have a series of four books, guys. And the first book is just going to tell you how to Fallen Back in love with yourself. The second book will start talking about falling in love with food. And then we'll start talking about exercise and diet and sleep and other stuff because so many people want to skip to chapter three. What's the eating plan? What's the eating plan that's going to work for me in 21 days. And I'm like, no, spend the first month, maybe even the first year just saying, who am I and how can I fall back in love with who I am, who I was and who I will be? Because you can always look back and you can find things about yourself that you really are proud of that you did and were capable of doing. You can look at yourself today and find things that you're very proud of about who you are and who you've become. And then when you look ahead, as one of my clients said, she wants to be that little old lady that everybody is like, how does she keep going there's this way about looking at yourself with compassion and hope.

[00:57:21.770] – Allan

And many of us lose. We don't have that hope. Our hope is sort of this wish. It's not really what the word hope. It's like I wish I were thinner. I wish I could do these things. I wish my knees and ankles didn't hurt. Those are wishes. And a wish feels like you don't have control, whereas hope is inside you. It's like I have hope that I can get stronger. I have hope that I can rebuild my immune system. I have hope that I can take care of me and live a long, healthy life. So I'm hopeful that I'll be then I'm not me, but her, that little old lady that everybody's like, well, she just doesn't slow down. So the first part is falling in love with yourself. Full stop. That's the end of the book. Don't go to the second book until you finish this book. You're going to miss the plot. The big part of the plot starts in this first book of the series, and you don't go to the second book of the series and start reading it because you haven't gotten the fundamentals. And then the same thing happens with food.

[00:58:36.130] – Allan

How do you really feel about food? What are your limitations? What are your capacities? How do you really feel and think about food? And she put in some great archetypes in the book for you to really just sit there and say, you know, am I erratic? Am I really structured? Am I someone who's dependent on food? I use it as a crutch, the pint of ice cream at night to set myself up for getting past the stress of the day. Or is it worse? Is a point where I'm right on the edge of obsessive and maybe even struggling with an eating disorder. And so until you break those things down and say, okay, do I love myself? And then how do I feel about food? And what's my relationship with food and just realizing that it's nourishment, it's enjoyment, it's fuel, it's building materials and all those things. And it's information. It's information for your body. And so it's very important. Just like you need to have self compassion, you need to be compassionate with food and say, okay, what's going to nourish me, what's going to build me better? What do I enjoy but the ways I can make it?

[00:59:53.880] – Allan

Maybe you don't like Brussel sprouts. Tammy never liked Brussel sprouts until we found a way to cook Brussel sprouts that she actually liked them. It took her a while. So just recognize that you take your time and you find that relationship. And honestly, that building the skill thing you talked about. That's what this process is that so many people want to move on before they have the skills. It's like walking out on the NFL football field and thinking, okay, I got a chance of not dying out here. That linebacker is going to lay you out because you don't have the skills and not that you'll ever have the skills to be an NFL running back. But that said, if you are working on the skills to be the best you then you will be. But you've got to get the skills first. And that is that self love, self compassion, having a great relationship with food and then strategies and tactics.

[01:00:52.890] – Rachel

Absolutely. Just perfect. Be patient. You'll get there.

[01:00:57.060] – Allan

Yeah, definitely take some patience, because it's not a straight line. It's never a straight line.

[01:01:02.630] – Rachel

Never.

[01:01:03.320] – Allan

But every day you can take a breath is a day you can move in the right direction. So you woke up, you're listening to this. You want this. Take that first step. Just take a step today. Talk to yourself about love, compassion. How do you really feel? And then when you feel like you've gotten to a point where you're good with who you are and where you're going, then you start talking about your relationship with food and do those two things. Really, then the plan makes sense. Then her plan. I'll just step in here's a plan. I'm going to stick with this plan. And when that plan works and then maybe it stops working, you still fall back on that self love and self compassion and relationship with food. And then you tweak and you pivot and you find the way. So we talked in that episode about quitting. And sometimes to quit is a good thing, but sometimes it's quit and pivot and sometimes just grind it out. Just keep doing it. But until you get to a point where you're not blaming yourself, you're not gorging on foods that you know you shouldn't eat just because you want to punish yourself.

[01:02:11.590] – Allan

In a sense, until you get past that kind of behavior, then you're not going to be able to pivot effectively. You're not going to be able to deal with a Plateau. And those are going to set you back and they're going to happen. They always happen. So recognizing that you have control over who you are in the future and then starting that journey.

[01:02:31.930] – Rachel

Yeah, all great information. Sounds like a great book.

[01:02:36.400] – Allan

It is a good book. Yeah. Absolutely. But like I said, just read the first couple of chapters, get to working on that, then go back to the book and worry about the plan.

[01:02:46.710] – Rachel

Absolutely.

[01:02:48.270] – Allan

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

[01:02:52.130] – Rachel

Great. Take care.

[01:02:53.530] – Allan

You too.

[01:02:54.360] – Rachel

Thank you.

Patreons

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

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

Another episode you may enjoy

How to restart your weight loss and fitness journey when you feel stuck

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Let's Say Hello

[00:03:55.750] – Allan

Ras, how are you doing?

[00:03:58.400] – Rachel

Good, Allan. How are you today?

[00:04:00.970] – Allan

I'm doing all right. It's been a hectic little week. Last week, I had five interviews. This week, I had Santa Claus duty. Dressing up at Santa Claus at Lula's. And so the kids came in. I think I've got another one on the agenda to do for the Rotary Club. And then both of our daughters got proposed to this week.

[00:04:25.550] – Rachel

Is that right? Congratulations. How exciting.

[00:04:29.950] – Allan

Yeah. One of them just turned 29 and the other is 28, and she'll turn 29 in July. So, yeah, they were getting around that age where I guess you start saying I'm old enough that I'm not a kid anymore. And I'm young enough that I can have kids. So they're right. And I think the sweet spot they should at this point, know themselves pretty well. They seem to like the guys they're with.

[00:04:55.570] – Rachel

Good. That's important. Wow that's so exciting.

[00:05:01.910] – Allan

That'll change.

[00:05:04.850] – Rachel

That's so exciting. What a wonderful time then for both of them. Very exciting. Congratulations to them both.

[00:05:11.330] – Allan

How are you doing?

[00:05:12.680] – Rachel

Great. I'm doing good up here. Enjoying the up and down weather up here in Michigan. Sunny days, a little bit of snow, little bit of rain. You never know what you're going to get. But things are good. I just wrapped up a week of my marathon training plan, had a great week, good runs. It's really been a lot of fun.

[00:05:31.090] – Allan

Well, good. You know, this is also a time of the year where you kind of have to watch your health because the changing weather and everything else kind of beats up your immune system. You're inside a bit more than you normally would be. So we're exposed to a little bit more of this and that. Obviously when those the main virus Corona going around, but cold and flu season and a whole bit. So take care of yourself. Eat well, get plenty of rest and follow the basic protocols.

[00:05:58.820] – Allan

Wash your hands. Avoid sick people.

[00:06:02.270] – Rachel

Yes. Do the best you can.

[00:06:04.910] – Allan

Do the best you can with what you got. All right. Are you ready to have a talk with Susan?

[00:06:10.590] – Rachel

Sure.

Interview

[00:06:50.830] – Allan

Susan, welcome to 40+ Fitness.

[00:06:53.810] – Susan

Allan, so good to be here with you.

[00:06:56.010] – Allan

So your new book, Rezoom: The Powerful Reframe to End the Crash and Burn Cycle of Food Addiction. And while I scored a three out of your range of how really susceptible I am, just a three with food, there's other things that I wouldn't score as well on. I think this is a really important concept because so many people think of food as just eat better, just eat better, eat less. And for a lot of people, their brain just doesn't work that way. And that's what I thought was really cool about your book.

[00:07:34.540] – Allan

It's like, okay, now let's actually call it what it is, even though clinically, I guess the Association and all those folks, they don't want to call it that

[00:07:45.050] – Susan

Yet. They're going to have to because it is. Right.

[00:07:49.370] – Allan

But the whole point is if we don't treat it the way it needs to be treated. We don't get better.

[00:07:55.500] – Susan

That's right. You can't treat a condition that you don't know that you have or that you refuse to believe that you have. So food addiction is very real. And that's one of the big thrusts of this book it's actually the title of chapter two, food addiction is real. If we don't know that by now, sort of, Hello next live. Look around. Right. And the thing is that I think food addiction these days is an intuitive obvious thing for people, right? Either they experience it or they see people they know who experience cravings, who experience repeated attempts to cut back with no lasting success, who experience unintended use this slippery slope where you intended to eat a little bit, and then you find yourself eating more and more and more who experience real consequences.

[00:08:43.710] – Susan

I mean, 130,000 people in the United States this year prior year, right. Had their leg amputated because of the way they were eating 130,000 people. Now, if that's not shocking enough, 55% of them will have their second leg amputated within two years because having one leg amputated wasn't enough of a cue to cut back on sugar with their type two diabetes. Right. So if you don't think that that's sort of hazardous use or using beyond the beyond, it just it is right. Food is so addictive.

[00:09:17.430] – Susan

So that's what this book is about. And it's about a different approach to managing the treatment or the recovery. Or like, how do you lose weight and handle food addiction in a way that actually works and is actually sustainable? So that's what the book is about.

[00:09:33.380] – Allan

And this is not just some textbook. This is how you treat addiction. This is the way we've always treated addiction. You've lived and breathed addiction, not just food, but other things in your life. And that's where you're coming from in this book. And I really appreciate the opening up the vulnerability that you had to have a book like this where you're saying, no, I'm not some hottie taughty PhD that's going to tell you how to beat addiction. I talk from experience of successes and failure.

[00:10:04.850] – Susan

Yeah, totally. And that's I think why food addiction was so obvious to me. I mean, I knew food addiction was real when I was 21 because I had gotten clean from crack cocaine and Crystal meth. I got clean. Finally, at the age of 20, I spent my teenage years doing drugs and progressing to harder and harder and harder drugs, culminating in dropping out of high school, prostitution and just repeated cycles of going out to prostitute and then going into the Crack house to smoke cracks. So living like that without a place to live except the crack house.

[00:10:36.930] – Susan

Is that's a pretty serious case of addiction? And when I got clean, I never went back to drugs or alcohol after that moment, I just got clean. And yet within a year, my weight had started to pack on. And I was eating in a way that just looked felt and was just like my drug addiction. And food was harder to kick, Allan. That's the creepy thing. Food was harder to kick. I was not able to just kick food the way I had drugs. I mean, obviously you have to eat to live.

[00:11:10.210] – Susan

But there were a lot of things that made food harder. And before I knew it, I was obese and really struggling with food. And my weight has been the story of my life. I mean, I could say, in a way, I started using drugs at the age of 14 already to start to manage my food. I already had a weight problem. I already had a food problem, and that's why I turned to stimulants like Crystal meth to manage my food and my weight problem. So it went all the way back for me.

[00:11:34.530] – Susan

So, yeah, I don't come to this. I do have an academic background. I have the PhD and all that. But that's not the high mountain top from which I speak. I speak from the gutters of, like, here I am eating a pint of ice cream with tears streaming down my face. Why am I doing this again? Kind of place. So I get it at a visceral level.

[00:11:51.750] – Allan

Yeah. And as I said, I went through and I looked at your susceptibility chart and took the quiz and I said, okay, I scored a three, which for food

[00:12:03.380] – Allan

That makes sense for me because..

[00:12:05.120] – Susan

Just so people know on a scale from one to ten, ten is highly susceptible to food addiction. So it's a measure of how susceptible your brain is to food addiction. And, Allan, you're just a three, which means food isn't your thing.

[00:12:16.170] – Allan

Right?

[00:12:16.420] – Susan

It either means you're not susceptible to addiction at all, or it means you might be susceptible to other addictions. But food isn't your thing.

[00:12:22.660] – Allan

Right. And so, like I said for me, it was okay if I just say I'm not going to eat dessert. I don't eat dessert, and it's not like I leave that table after I said no to dessert and stop by the convenience store and buy some ice cream to eat at home in private. Because I really sugar. I wanted that sugar. I was addicted to that sugar. I just said no because that was the visual of me being at the dinner table and no one else wants dessert.

[00:12:53.150] – Allan

Why is it so hard for us to beat food addiction?

[00:12:57.230] – Susan

Food is the hardest addiction to kick. And I say that both as a hope to die addict in every way. But also clinically speaking, food has some very unique things about it. First of all, it is socially pushed, like no other drug, not just accepted, but pushed and pushed and pushed. Which means when you're trying to, let's say, abstain from sugar, right? Good luck getting through Thanksgiving or Valentine's Day or whatever without people actually pushing it on you. So that's one challenge you have to eat to live, which you have to eat to live.

[00:13:37.900] – Susan

But you don't have to eat Donuts to live, right? This is one of the things that bright line eating does well, is it helps people figure out the line between what you're eating and not eating, right? When you're an alcoholic. When you're a crack addict, the line is really clear. Don't drink, right? Don't smoke crack. It's not ambiguous. Generally speaking, I mean, with alcohol, Benadryl or whatever. There are some slight NyQuil, whatever. But generally speaking, the line is pretty clear with food. It's a minefield. And I spent eight and a half years after I got cleaned from drugs, trying to figure out where the first bite was.

[00:14:16.660] – Susan

I couldn't tell what I was eating. That was tripping me up, right? And finally I came to sugar and flour. That's what it seems to be. Sugar and flour. It's essentially the processed foods. But if you just abstain from sugar and flour, that's a good demarcation point. But, Allan, I could go on, and probably I should. I just don't want to soliloquise here for ten minutes on you. But there are a couple of other really fascinating reasons why food is harder than any other drug. It is the hardest.

[00:14:44.400] – Susan

It's the hardest.

[00:14:45.140] – Allan

Please do. I want to get into this topic because again, I think if you don't recognize the problem, you'll never find a solution. And if you think just forcing yourself to try something, another diet, another thing, and you don't get to the root cause of why this is so hard, then you're never going to solve the problem, particularly not solve it long term.

[00:15:09.960] – Susan

That's right. And here we are, early January, right. All these people have made resolutions to lose weight is always the number one resolution, and we probably have people listening who've made that resolution before. Right. So here's another reason why food is harder than anything else to kick, and it has to do with something that I think most people lump together with food addiction. But if you think about it, it's actually an entirely separate problem. And so to illustrate, I have an analogy that I like to give.

[00:15:43.470] – Susan

I call it the acne analogy. Imagine the universe, this is just a little thought experiment. Imagine a universe in which drinking alcohol over time caused acne to develop all over your skin and not just acne, but really bad disfiguring acne and not just really bad disfiguring acne, but fatal acne. Acne that research suddenly showed would kill you 10,15, maybe even 20 years before your time. So you learn this, you know this and like people will, because alcohol is fun to party with. Right and relax with, you start to drink, so you start to drink.

[00:16:30.780] – Susan

And at first it's not a problem. You start to develop a little bit of acne, but it's not that bad. And over time you drank more, you develop alcoholism, and the acne comes on hard and fast. So years go on. Your body is now covered with really bad acne, and you know it's going to kill you before your time. You try quitting drinking over and over and over again. You finally succeed, you get sober, but the acne persists. You still have it. And now your job is to figure out what to do with this acne because it's terribly unsightly.

[00:17:06.270] – Susan

You don't want to live with it, and it's going to kill you 5, 10, 20 years before your time. So you go to search for a solution to the acne, and you find one. There actually is only one solution to the acne, and you start to adopt this solution. But the problem is, it's got a side effect, and the side effect is powerfully driving urges to drink alcohol. And so in your life, you get stuck in this loop of drinking alcohol, quitting drinking alcohol, trying to solve the acne problem being driven back to drink alcohol.

[00:17:46.110] – Susan

This is the relationship of food addiction and excess weight. The problem with excess weight is the brain fights prolonged weight loss by driving you to eat, even if you're still maintaining 100 or 200 extra pounds on your body. If you've lost weight over any significant period of time, your brain makes hormonal adjustments to force you to regain weight, and it drives you back to your food addiction. So this is the maddening loop that people get stuck in. And that is, in my opinion, the biggest reason that food is the hardest addiction to kick.

[00:18:25.970] – Allan

Yeah, the hormones are really a big part of this because if you're constantly hungry, then you're going to struggle to stay away from food and then staying away from food makes you constantly hungry. It's a bad cycle. Now, one of the things I really liked about your book was you didn't just jump into a diet or a program and say, this is what you eat. These are your because you did talk about lines, but we're going to get to that. But the first thing we have to get into and we're going to talk about this is that selfwork.

[00:18:57.430] – Allan

That self awareness and not just this casual self awareness of. Oh, great. I have a sugar addiction. It's a much deeper awareness of that at points in time. And I don't mean from a schizophrenia perspective, but we're different people in the fact that at some point in time, the voice in our head is telling us, Well, go ahead and have that doughnut. And then there's another voice in our head, it's the controller. It says, no, you shouldn't have that. And they might be going back and forth.

[00:19:30.630] – Allan

And when they are, we find ourselves now obsessed with thoughts of food because we told ourselves no. And we've also told ourselves, yes. Can we talk a little bit about this parts work and how there's different voices and then kind of go into a couple of examples, like the one I just started about how that works dynamically within our brain.

[00:19:50.450] – Susan

Yes. Totally. Well, just to say, first of all, this perspective on human beings is spreading rapidly because it's so effective. It's called internal family systems, or IFS and more easily called parts work. Like you just referred to it as. And what's so helpful about it is that it allows us to create change really rapidly by relating to these different sort of selves that we all seem to embody. And I'm not talking about dissociative identity disorder or multiple personality disorder. I'm talking about every healthy psyche has multiple parts to it.

[00:20:33.330] – Susan

And this notion goes way back there's Egyptian hieroglyphs that have a parts dialogue on ancient tombs. Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato all talked about parts. Socrates said it best. And actually it pertains to the food idea like that you just mentioned Socrates said one mind cannot both want and not want at the same time. Therefore, we are all at least two. And so just bringing up this idea that there's different parts of us. So in bright line eating, we invoke this parts notion to help people heal at really, really deep levels.

[00:21:18.670] – Susan

Anyone really who wants to be healthy. I would wager even a three on the susceptibility scale of food addiction. Like you, Allan will have developed some version of these parts, the food indulger part and the food controller part. The food indulger says some version of, hey, why not? It's a special occasion. It's an important day or I deserve it. Or I feel like eating or whatever and gives us license to indulge a bit, right? Whatever that means to us.

[00:21:50.750] – Allan

It'S the devil on this shoulder and angel on this shoulder, and they're like, oh, come on. No. You said you were going to do this.

[00:21:59.050] – Susan

And the angel is the food controller that's trying to manage it, right? The food manager, and we have different versions of it. Some people just have a healthy version that's like, you don't want to do that because you'll feel a little yucky tomorrow morning. And, you know, you're getting up early for a run, and some people have a really perfectionistic and wickedly critical food controller that's really mean or really sets up a high standard that's almost impossible to live to, right? Super perfectionistic. But anyway, most of us have some version of that angel on the shoulder.

[00:22:36.990] – Susan

That's saying, no. And what we get into in the book Rezoom is we also introduce people to their authentic self, their highest self. I don't mean self like, ego, self. I mean self, as in grounded, centered self. You know, you're there when you're calm, clear, connected, curious, compassionate, like, in that kind of place, you can make decisions for yourself that are really empowered and not really driven by either of those voices. I think that's a really interesting awareness from this perspective is you're not actually trying to create a world where you're always siding with the angel, with the food controller, you're trying to settle into a truer version of yourself that is actually a step back from the control, right.

[00:23:28.230] – Susan

Anyway. Yeah. It's something we get into in the book a lot is what's the inner work you have to do in order to sort of transcend the war, the polarization between the food indulger and the food controller, because for people who are high on the food addiction susceptibility scale, it has become a full on war.

[00:23:46.990] – Allan

Yeah. And I think that's the key. If you do this self awareness work and you really think about it and it blends into your Rezoom process of okay, why did this happen? What were the voices? Who was I talking to when I did this? And why did I react the way then? You know, it's like, oh, well, I was just being a food rebel because I've been so strict on myself for so long and drill sergeanty, if you will. That okay. I just kind of popped a gasket and said, Damn it, I'm having a piece of pizza didn't kill me, didn't really throw me over the edge.

[00:24:18.800] – Allan

But just enough where I said, okay, maybe I just need to be kinder to myself instead of being so mean and rigid and thinking of myself as bad just for thinking about the pizza because it's creating that dynamic in yourself where either the rebel comes out and you have all these different characters

[00:24:37.430] – Susan

sort of archetypes. Yeah.

[00:24:41.090] – Allan

Who was I when I made this decision? Who was I when this happened? And every one of them and I think this is really important that you say in the book, every one of them is actually looking out for your best interests.

[00:24:53.940] – Allan

They're just doing it from their own paradigm.

[00:24:56.460] – Susan

Right. Totally. And Allan, this is the thing. So on the food addiction susceptibility scale, I'm a ten. And that's not surprising. Maybe hearing my addiction background. But here's the thing, Allan, is for people like me who are much higher on that scale, we're talking seven, eight, nine, tens. Once you get into certain territory on that scale, it might actually be true that the best path to peace to food neutrality, where food thoughts aren't dominating your day to physical health and weight loss. The best path to that might actually be a path that involves some form of abstinence.

[00:25:42.050] – Susan

Right. I abstained from sugar and flour, because when I include them in my diet at all, it's the sort of classic example of addiction. It's the same reason I don't try to smoke one cigarette. I tried that experiment again about four years ago and thus started about two years of trying to quit cigarettes. Quitting restarting again. I don't need to run the one cigarette experiment. It goes badly for me, right. And I just got to say the one cookie experiment goes just as badly. So I don't run that experiment anymore.

[00:26:11.790] – Susan

But the key is that I'm not doing it from a punishing food controller place. And so the Genesis of this book was really how do we present a reframe on food recovery for people who've gotten trapped in a Yoyo dieting cycle or in a food addiction recovery cycle? Because there's a lot of twelve step programs that talk about abstinence from certain foods as well. And people often get trapped in a relapse cycle. And I had gotten trapped in that cycle again myself, after many, many years of peace and being in my bright body, which is like what I call sort of a right sized body without carrying around all sorts of excess fat and stuff like that.

[00:26:53.350] – Susan

I've been there for a long time, and then I got trapped again in a relapse cycle. And coming out of that, I've been out of that for a few years now. Coming out of that, I got the awarenesses that I put into this book. It's a reframe on the perfectionistic tendencies that can naturally go along with an abstinence framework. But the kicker is, for some people, the abstinence is still necessary, right? It still doesn't mean that trying to eat the one piece of pizza for some people is going to be the right thing to do, because if you've run that experiment enough times, you know that for you, it might not work.

[00:27:27.500] – Susan

So this book is for people who are in that category and who need a reframe to get out of the crash and burn cycle because it's very painful.

[00:27:36.330] – Allan

Yeah. Because the quicker you get back on the road, the less damage you've done. I don't want to say the easier, but it just makes it you feel more in control because you didn't completely crash. You're sort of easing yourself back into traffic and moving forward.

[00:27:52.310] – Susan

Totally and this book helps people who have brains more like mine to actually avoid the crash before it happens. Coming from a place of more healing, more self compassion. It's really the shame and the self flagellation on the way to picking up the excess food, right? That accelerates the tragedy of it. And so this book is sort of the prescription of getting off of that horrible cycle altogether.

[00:28:23.570] – Allan

Now, one of the things you do in the book, which I think is really important. I'm a big fan of commitment. I would not have been successful in changing my health and fitness if it didn't start with a commitment to myself. You've done something, I think that's pretty special is you're looking at it from making a daily commitment. So when you wake up because you do have that structure, you do have that abstract mindset. You have these bright lines. And so right now, four, probably you have more because there are others.

[00:28:54.970] – Allan

We'll talk about those. But there are at least four base bright lines. And we're not talking about a line in the sand because a line in the sand you can easily miss over and not see you're talking about bright lines for a daily commitment, you actually write out exactly what you're going to eat the next day each day, and then you're able to report back to yourself on your commitment that I follow through with exactly what I told myself I should do today. Can you talk a little bit about bright lines eating and what the four core ones are and then go into some of the others because I think those can be equally as important.

[00:29:32.930] – Susan

Yeah. So in bright line eating, there are four essential bright lines with the food, and two of them have to do with the substance addiction, right? No sugar, no flour. That's keeping the alcohol, the nicotine, the crack cocaine out of our system, no sugar, no flour. The other two handle the process. Addiction, the behavioral addiction to just eating. And they are meals. So eating just meals, no grazing, no snacking. And typically we start people off three meals a day. There are some exceptions, like people who had bariatric surgery recently can't eat that much food at one meal and that sort of thing.

[00:30:10.590] – Susan

But generally speaking, it's three meals a day and then quantities. So we actually bound our food with a digital food scale. Yes. I weigh my food. And it's so funny because I just had a visitor who is a one on the susceptibility scale, literally a one. And he was visiting my house and we ate all our meals together for a few days. And he just kept talking about how he's like, okay, you told me you weighed your food, but you eat more than I do at every meal.

[00:30:38.340] – Susan

This is like a full grown man. Right. So we're weighing our food not to make for tiny quantities, but actually to make sure that we eat enough of a lot of foods, because people who have a history of dieting typically will not eat enough at each meal unless you make them actually account for it. Those are the four bright lines. A bright line is a legal term. Originally, it just means a clear, unambiguous boundary that you just don't cross. Right. So this is like the bright line that the alcoholic puts up for alcohol, right?

[00:31:09.760] – Susan

I'm just not going to drink no matter what. And then the other things I would count more as habits or behaviors or tools or whatever, like writing down your food the night before. That is a practice that people start when they start doing bright line eating. And, yes, committing it right. In some kind of way. I often recommend people even commit it to someone else, which can be very powerful. Like, this is what I'm eating and then circle around the next 24 hours and say, yes, I ate only in exactly that.

[00:31:35.080] – Susan

And here's what I'm eating tomorrow.

[00:31:38.570] – Allan

Well, that's why we have a ceremony. When we get married, we wear a ring when we get married. That's the public commitment. And you're like, okay, here I am. I'm committed to this relationship, and that's deeper meaning than you just saying to yourself before you go to bed. This is all I'm going to eat tomorrow, and no one else on Earth knows. So it does hold you a little bit more accountable to what you're doing, which again, if you need that support is really important.

[00:32:05.210] – Allan

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

[00:32:16.910] – Susan

Oh, my gosh. Say it again. You define wellness as being the healthiest,  fittest

[00:32:23.570] – Allan

healthiest, fittest and happiest you can be

[00:32:25.990] – Susan

Healthiest, fittest, happiest.

[00:32:28.170] – Allan

In my mind, you have to have all three.

[00:32:30.710] – Susan

All right. Healthiest, fittest, happiest. So I'll just share from my expertise, right. Because I'm sure people come on here and can say all kinds of things. Anyone can sort of spout off on that. But from my vantage point, one of the big ones is going to be look at and honestly face the amount of food addiction that you actually have on board with the brain you've got right now. Like, assess it like, Allan, you took the quiz, right? People should take the quiz, find out what kind of brain they've got, because if you're a one, two or three, it's a whole different ballgame.

[00:33:08.270] – Susan

Right? You don't need to worry about a little bit of sugar. You can have that recover really quickly. And absolutely. Research shows that being 90% to 95% true to a food plan is enough, right? When you're higher on the scale, that little bit of sugar turns into more and more, and also creates a lot of psychological chatter where you're thinking about what you've eaten or not eating, whether you're on your plan or off your plan, how many miles, how many calories, how many pounds to burn off that thing that you just ate in?

[00:33:37.080] – Susan

That's a state of mind that is not. Well, that's not healthy, right? That's not happy. It may or may not be fit, but it's definitely not healthy and it's not happy. So there's one right there. Like take a look. And if people want to take the quiz, they can go to Foodaddictionquiz.com. Foodaddictionquiz.com. So acknowledge however much food addiction you have on board, because it really does change the landscape of the type of food approach that will work for you. If you're trying to be well, you're trying to be fit and you're trying to be healthy.

[00:34:09.320] – Susan

Everyone who's trying to be fit knows that you can't out exercise a bad diet. Right. And if the diet piece is the piece that keeps slipping in your wellness regimen, take a look at that. And Allan, I don't know if we're going to have time to talk about it, but I just want to say because this is a podcast for people over a certain age, right? Is that sort of theme?

[00:34:29.640] – Allan

over 40. Yes.

[00:34:31.080] – Susan

All right. Well, maybe let me just mention it now, if I may. When you're over 40 and especially over 50, your diet impacts your body differently. And this is true whether you're male or female. And the reason is lowering estrogen. And as your estrogen becomes more probabilistic and lower, this is true for men, too. Don't be fooled. It's not just men have testosterone, women have estrogen, men and women have both. And as your estrogen goes down, you stop getting the synergistic and protective effects it has on your insulin response.

[00:35:10.630] – Susan

And that means that your body now responds very differently to the junk food that you might be eating. You don't get away with it anymore, and that is the source of the weight creep in the middle that people experience past a certain age. Now, we did a research study that we published in a peer reviewed scientific outlet that showed that doing bright line eating, which means eliminating sugar and flour on our program. In the first two months, people at every age category lost an equivalent amount of weight, which means that this type of approach to eating turned a 60 year old woman's body into a 30 or 20 year old woman's body.

[00:35:48.300] – Susan

Which is shocking, but just saying the older you get, the more you need to acknowledge the amount that the degree to which addiction to certain processed foods might be playing. Right. So there's that.

[00:36:02.510] – Susan

The second thing I would say is really note your meal timing in relation to your circadian rhythm. So here's something that I used to experience. I'm a night owl by Constitution like wickedly so. Like, left to my own devices. I'm up till three, four or five in the morning and I'm sleeping past noon every day since I started eating this way, which I did 18 years ago.

[00:36:26.660] – Susan

I've been eating this way now since I was 28 years old. I'm 47 now it's 18 years that I've been eating this way. I now go to bed and I'm like eyes drooping full melatonin at 09:00 p.m. Like last night I went to bed, I went to sleep at 08:39 p.m. And I was up easily at five. But I'm not that way constitutionally. The difference is I started changing my meal time since I started eating breakfast, lunch and dinner. It turns out that the timing of your meal has as big or a bigger impact on your circadian rhythm as light exposure.

[00:37:05.430] – Susan

So don't be fooled. Any calories you're putting into your system after dinner, they're mucking up your circadian rhythm. So really consider returning to breakfast, lunch and dinner, or at least watching your meal timing as it relates to your circadian rhythm. That also had a huge impact on my mood by giving up sugar and flour and changing my meal times the way I have. I used to have clinical depression really badly and I don't have it anymore. And then the third thing I think is make sure that you feel deeply supported and connected in life.

[00:37:43.370] – Susan

I used to teach, so I'm still a professor at the University of Rochester, but I don't teach as much anymore because I do so much research and with this bright line eating thing. But I used to teach positive psychology at the College level. And a few years ago researchers discovered that human connection is more potent for well being than the combination of diet and exercise put together. That's how important it is to not feel lonely. It's so important to be well supported and connected. And if you think you're an introvert, just saying in the book Rezoom, we've got a category or a part called the Isolator, right?

[00:38:23.980] – Susan

Which is different than healthy alone time. Introverts and all people really need a healthy amount of alone time. Isolation is a different thing. Isolation is keeping yourself from support that would actually be helpful. And research shows that introverts and extroverts alike experience the same degree of uplift when they add something to their schedule, like lunch with a good friend once a week. Right. So introverts just need fewer people and fewer superficial connections, but a few deep ones are absolutely necessary. So however you roll, just make sure that you would answer, oh heck yeah.

[00:39:02.010] – Susan

To a question like right now in your life, are you feeling deeply supported and connected? Those are my three.

[00:39:09.510] – Allan

Thank you, Doctor. If someone wanted to learn more about you or learn more about the book, Rezoom or your program bright lines Eating, where would you like for me to send them?

[00:39:20.690] – Susan

I would say probably the first step would be to take that quiz, go to foodaddictionquiz.com, but also Bright Line eating (brightlineeating.com) and you can get started with Bright Line eating for just $20 a month. So if you just want to give it a try and see, you were mentioning hunger earlier. We publish findings in the Journal of Nutrition and Weight Loss. Two years out, people haven't regained any of their weight. It's shocking the results that we're getting around here.

[00:39:54.070] – Susan

But also within the first two months, people's hunger and food cravings have gone away completely on our program. On average, literally hunger and craving levels down to below one and a half out of five. Like little to no hunger or cravings anymore ever. So. Yeah, brightlineeating.com people can give it a try for just $20 a month. It's probably the best deal in weight loss.

[00:40:15.270] – Allan

You can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/519. And I'll be sure to have the links there. So, Dr. Thompson, thank you so much for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

[00:40:26.190] – Susan

Thank you so much, Allan. It's been a pleasure.

Post Show/Recap

[00:40:35.950] – Allan

Welcome back, Ras.

[00:40:37.580] – Rachel

Hey, Allan, what a really fascinating interview you had with Susan. I'm really excited to get the chance to talk about food addiction because it's something a little bit different than your standard dieting type situation.

[00:40:51.850] – Allan

Yeah, I've had people on we've talked about how food can be used as kind of this emotional bridge, if you will, a best friend, something that takes the pain away. And I've never felt that compulsion with food as using food to do that adrenaline absolutely. I'll do something crazy, like jump off a building or something like that.

[00:41:23.050] – Rachel

No, thank you.

[00:41:28.370] – Allan

Select certain number of people that are susceptible to food actually becoming a problem if they're using it for the wrong reasons. And you and I were talking before we got on here, you took the quiz that I took and encouraged people to get out there and try it. I was a three. You were a two, and it's this self awareness thing. What is your relationship with food? And you really have to break that down to a core component of what does food mean to me. Now, I know you and I, we think it's fuel.

[00:42:10.140] – Allan

We're going to go for a run. It's fuel. And there's food that I just love that I know I'll eat more of than I should or that I need, especially when I can't get them all the time and then they're available. I kind of go a little bit overboard on it, but it's not that kind of food. It's pretty much moved away from the sugars and that. But I never really was. I would say I might have been addicted to bread, but the only reason I say that is when I went paleo the first time I would have dreams about bread.

[00:42:54.670] – Rachel

Wow, that's interesting.

[00:42:56.580] – Allan

Like smelling it, like in my sleep someone was cooking bread and I could smell it in the oven and just dreaming about bread. And I thought, this is so weird. I quit bread a week ago and I'm dreaming about bread. So maybe there was a little something there with bread. I don't know, but talk a little bit about from your experience, because again, you're too. So that's not how you look at food?

[00:43:23.980] – Rachel

No. Like you said, I definitely look at food as fuel. And I'm aware of the addictive nature of my personality, and I say potential addictive nature. When I was a kid, my grandmother, who I love and adore and respect and was crushed when she died from breast cancer. She was a smoker. And whenever we went to her house, her curtains and her couches and the blankets on her couch, everything reeked of cigarette smoke. When we drove in a car, she would smoke in the car. And even in the dead of winter, it could be 20 below.

[00:44:03.840] – Rachel

I just needed that little bit of window down so I could get some fresh air to get some relief. That smell was just so overpowering and influential to me that I knew I would never want to smoke ever in all of my life. And to this day, I've never even tried cigarettes or any other thing that you might smoke. I've never done it because I was so repulsed by that. But people who smoke it's an addiction. It's like Susan mentioned, she had a more serious drug addiction than cigarettes, but there is an addictive part to that whole thing.

[00:44:40.170] – Rachel

And I can see how food can become similar, whether you're physically in need of having that sugar rush, because, you know, carbs and sugar can be very addicting. Or is it more of her personality? Like Susan mentioned, she had a drug addiction. She replaced that compulsion with food. So there's something to that personality component as well. But being aware of that, having that self awareness like you mentioned, food never crossed my radar as being something that I was compelled to have. I don't hide food in my pantry and eat it later in the closet.

[00:45:18.560] – Rachel

Although the one thing I will admit to is coffee. If anybody knows me, I am a definite coffee addict. I have it every day. But even with that, I know that I don't have to have it to live. If I woke up tomorrow and was camping, like when I go to Isle Royal next year and I can't have my pureed coffee pot with me. I know I could go a couple of days without having it. I know I'll have some consequences, but it's a different type of addiction than I think sugar or flour is, like Susan had mentioned.

[00:45:52.990] – Allan

And we've had guests on Rosie was on, and the woman Cheryl was Sharon. I've had a couple of guests on that really had emotional, deep issues with food and the way they thought about their body, the way they thought about their food. And it was that relationship with food that was the problem. And so as you go through self awareness of your journey in health and fitness, it's critical for you to have that conversation with yourself and say, what kind of relationship do I have with food?

[00:46:35.010] – Allan

And why would I feel compelled if I went to the grocery store to go down the cookie aisle when I know that the cookie aisle is just not going to serve me in what I need for what I'm trying to do? And so as you look at that, if you feel compelled or take the test to probably give you some information there. But most of us, if we take a moment and we're honest, we can say I am a moderation person or I'm an all or none person.

[00:47:05.760] – Allan

And I can tell you I am an all or none person. Even though I scored very low on that test, it was really because it was just related to food. And I can say no to any food, and I can have a little of something and then not have any more. But there are other things that I'm all or none. And when it's all, I mean all until it's all gone, that kind of thing. And maybe I used to be with that. Like I talked about Girl Scout cookies, and I'd buy the thin ments, and the box would be gone the first day.

[00:47:43.690] – Allan

even if I was trying to be good, I'd go to the grocery store and go to the freezer because we'd put them in the freezer and I would take a serving, which I think was like three cookies and I'd eat a serving. And then I'd go sit down. I'd eat the three cookies. I'd get back up. I'd walk there, I'd get another three cookies and go sit down. And then I'm just standing in the freezer eating the rest of the cookies.

[00:48:05.630] – Rachel

Wrap them up, finish off, can't eat any if they're not there.

[00:48:09.800] – Allan

Yeah. And so I had to come up with some strategies that worked for Girl Scout cookies until it was just a point where I no longer thought of Girl Scout cookies as something that I needed. I actually would give the Girl Scout money and not take the cookies.

[00:48:25.170] – Rachel

Sure, that's wonderful.

[00:48:26.380] – Allan

I just say, okay, you're trying to raise money. I get it. Back then, okay. Again, to kind of date. This is a box of cookies was like 250. Someone's telling me that they're like $5 because I don't stop by the booth anymore if I came out of a grocery store in the United States in February, which I haven't done in three years. But you walk by. They're there and wants cookies here's 250. No, just buy yourself a box or give a box away or whatever. And then I just move on.

[00:48:58.470] – Allan

So this is a very important concept, and that self awareness is critical. Otherwise you're setting yourself up to fail because this stuff is everywhere. It is the flour and the sugar is in every single thing out there. It's just almost impossible to avoid. And there are going to be times when you go in and you're like, okay, I want something to eat. And what's this? How is it prepared? It's breaded. It's like, okay, can you make it not breaded? And sometimes they can. Sometimes they can't.

[00:49:31.030] – Allan

But then even then, there's sugar in the sauce or there's this and that. It's really hard to avoid these foods. And if they trigger you, like, Susan said she tried to smoke a cigarette, just one. And then, boom, she was right back to smoking, and it was just really she knows she can't even have a little bit or she's going to go off. And if that's you, then you have to be honest with yourself. And yes, cold Turkey, you're out. There is no moderation. There is no trying it. There is no detour with this stuff.

[00:50:08.980] – Allan

It's all or none. And you have to get that into your head if you care about your health and fitness.

[00:50:17.230] – Rachel

Susan mentioned the word abstinence, and I just want to keep that word in bold prints right front and center, because for some people, abstinence is absolutely necessary. And for her, with her type of an addiction, personality or physical addiction to food, she cannot allow herself a bite of sugar or a bite of flour because that could send her back down the spiral to where she was overweight and unhappy. And I think that there are a lot of people out there that need to come to terms with that word abstinence.

[00:50:49.870] – Rachel

For people like you or me moderation, we can live with that. We can have a couple of Girl Scout cookies and then wait until next season when Girl Scout cookies are sold again. But for people who have more of an addictive personality or that physical need for food, chips are in the grocery store every day. Cookies are in the grocery store every day. And sometimes abstinence would be the tool, the main tool to break that habit. I just want to keep that front and center.

[00:51:19.770] – Allan

And there's a reason in these grocery stores in these convenience stores that things are where they are. If you want to walk down to the milk aisle, you're probably going to have to walk through an aisle that's going to have sugar laden foods or chips or something. And you're going to turn around when you stop to buy something like bottled water. And there's the chips. And it's literally set up that way you get up to the counter and there's on both sides, candy lining both rows. But it's done on purpose.

[00:51:51.850] – Allan

They study that stuff. They literally studied the traffic flow and optimize their sales. They're putting that stuff in your way. So you see it, and then you buy it. Yeah. So you have to know yourself. You have to go back to your commitment. And if you do that, then yes, abstinence. And it's that point of saying abstinence is the only way. And then you have that relationship with yourself, and you have to say, okay, I'm not going to cheat. And you wouldn't cheat on your relationship and say, oh, that person looks really fine.

[00:52:27.400] – Allan

I'm going to go do that. No, you don't. But you have to have the same self love. You have to have the same self awareness and not put yourself in those situations if you don't need to be. And most of us, if we're trying to lose weight, trying to get more fit, we don't need that stuff.

[00:52:46.150] – Rachel

Absolutely. Yeah. You said the other word that I would like to highlight and bold. And that's commitment. And whether you're committed to moderation or committed to abstinence or whatever it is, just be committed to yourself for sure and make the best choices for you.

[00:53:01.420] – Allan

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

[00:53:03.750] – Rachel

Take care.

[00:53:04.700] – Allan

Bye

[00:53:05.320] – Rachel

Bye now.

Patreons

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

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Thank you!

Another episode you may enjoy

When food is your drug with Kristin Jones

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Let's Say Hello

[00:03:46.920] – Allan

Hey, Ras. How are things going?

[00:03:49.030] – Rachel

Good, Allan. How are you today?

[00:03:50.980] – Allan

I'm doing all right. Sort of. I did the requisite face plant that you did earlier.

[00:03:56.930] – Rachel

Oh, no.

[00:04:00.270] – Allan

Yeah. We were celebrating Thanksgiving, and then at night, I was like, okay, I've had a few glasses of wine, and I know I'm not going to want to get up at 6:00 in the morning and take these dogs out, so I'm going to take them out right before I go to bed, which means they might just let me sleep till seven. And I went to take them out and it was raining and it had been raining. And so I walked in this field, and it's sort of like someone jerking your hands when you're standing on an ice skate on ice.

[00:04:28.500] – Allan

And so my feet went completely out from under me when the dog decided he wanted to go in a direction, and I wasn't quite positioned for it. And when you have two leashes in your hand and you're falling, there's no breakage except the face. So I did a really good face plant, and Tammy was nice enough to patch me up with some bandage and stuff. So, yeah, just a kind of a face plant. There's no other way to say it, because it was just that, but I'm recovering.

[00:05:02.190] – Allan

It's fine. It's just some scrapes and scars and scrapes and stuff, and I'm probably going to have a nice little scar above my eyebrow for a little while, maybe for a long while, but it's just one of the kind of those things you say. Okay, I need to work on my balance. I need to work on my strength. I need to make sure that I'm not put in that position again as I get older. So it's just kind of one of those reminders of being aware of your environment, doing the right things so that we don't take those bills as often.

[00:05:36.170] – Allan

And if we do, our body has the resilience to get through it and protect us.

[00:05:41.460] – Rachel

Yes, absolutely. Just like you mentioned, I did the same thing a couple of weeks ago, and I'm recovering. I still have a tiny little bruise on my cheek, but it seems to be going away. But I was just mentioning with one of my running partners, like, I think this winter I'll be practicing my gait and learning how to lift my feet up a little bit better, making sure that I pay closer attention and do all those same things, too. Yes, it's a reminder and not a fun reminder to take care.

[00:06:13.830] – Allan

And actually, I kind of follows along with that method I put out there that slip to success, which is okay something happened in our cases, face plant and forgive yourself.

[00:06:26.380] – Allan

It happened. It happened. The circumstances were what they were. And then the second stage is learn from it and then apply it. And so you're going to be training your gait. I'm going to be working a lot more on balance and continue to work on strength. And then we'll hopefully not have to deal with another face plant.

[00:06:46.350] – Rachel

Absolutely. Fingers crossed. Absolutely.

[00:06:49.830] – Allan

All right. Well, you're ready to get into this discussion with Dr. Yeo?

[00:06:52.970] – Rachel

Sure. Let's do this.

Interview

[00:07:21.280] – Allan

Dr. Yeo, welcome to 40+ Fitness.

[00:07:23.850] – Dr. Yeo

Thank you so much for having me, Allan.

[00:07:25.930] – Allan

Now the book you have very compelling title, I might add, Why Calories Don't Count: How We Got the Science of Weight Loss Wrong. And that's a very compelling title.

[00:07:37.350] – Dr. Yeo

Thank you. Some people might even call it controversial. I don't think it is. I don't think it's a controversial title.

[00:07:43.380] – Allan

I don't either, especially when you go through the book several times saying, I'm not saying Calories don't entirely count. They do. If you eat in excess of the energy output, you are going to gain weight. And if you eat less than the energy output, you are going to lose weight. It's just really on how we kind of put this all together. But you had one statement in a book that it was towards the end. But I have to see this out front because this was probably the best sentence I've read a long, long time and it said, Rather than wasting our lives obsessing about our weight and how we look, we should instead focus on our health. If you focus on your health, your weight will take care of itself.

[00:08:22.830] – Dr. Yeo

Absolutely.

[00:08:24.390] – Allan

And I just love that. I'm going to use that over and over. I'm going to take that quote. And Dr. Yeo, and I'm going to post that everywhere because I think that's really the important thing of what we're after here. We take weight and we consider it some proxy for being healthy and fit and everything else is great in our lives. When it's usually just a side effect.

[00:08:47.910] – Dr. Yeo

It'S not only is it just a side effect, it's also, sadly, what we create to with beauty. And so people are going to say, Well, no, that's rubbish. I can lose a lot more weight. I don't look like how I look, but there's a difference between wanting to look like what you look in a mirror. Look, I want to look like Brad Pitt, but there are any number of reasons why I can't look like Brad Pitt. But if you actually get to the point where you're healthy, you can carry your kids.

[00:09:13.870] – Dr. Yeo

You can go up and down the stairs without getting out of breath. You can cycle to whatever you want to do and you can live your life and not feel that something is holding you back. So what if you're a little larger? I guess that's the point. Can you live your life? Can you do what you want to do and you need help for that rather than looks per se?

[00:09:30.770] – Allan

Absolutely. Now to start this off, you start off the book and you have a supposition here that talks about calories. And this is really kind of the principle of the book, and it's A does not equal B does not equal C, and I'll go through that. A is the number of calories actually in the food that does not equal the number of calories on the side of the pack, which does not equal the number of usable calories we finally get out of the food. So the trouble is this is if I'm going to look at the input, the calories that I'm eating and none of those numbers line up, then it's an impossible math for me to do, even if I have the information on the pack, even if I had a bomb called Kilometer in my house to burn everything I want to burn to figure it out, which I don't, and I'm not going to invest in one of those anyway.

[00:10:26.360] – Allan

But doesn't that create this complication to the calories in calories out model that we really can't overcome with math?

[00:10:34.560] – Dr. Yeo

I think so, at least not with the math that we're using right now. And I think that's the critical thing, as you said in the very beginning. Clearly, they count in some description to 200 calories of French fries is twice the portion of 100 calories of French fries. Clearly, obviously that's the case, but I guess so is 200 grams of French fries greater than twice the portion of 100 grams of French fries. And no one's out here trying to compare 200 grams of French fries to 200 grams of carrots.

[00:11:05.030] – Dr. Yeo

So I think there is this thing we got to get around where we need to be thinking about, sort of like the food we're eating. And while the calories have their use, I think they're complicating matters, because now you talk about people equating their weight to their health. People are equating the number of calories in a food to how good a food is. That is just not the case.

[00:11:30.270] – Allan

Because I can get a little packet of snacks and it's 100 calories, or I could eat 100 calories of chicken breasts.

[00:11:37.290] – Dr. Yeo

Exactly.

[00:11:38.110] – Allan

And it's a whole different dynamic. It's a whole different dynamic.

[00:11:40.680] – Dr. Yeo

It's absolutely different dynamic because of the amount of protein because chicken breast hasn't been processed, it's been cooked, it's been processed by being cooked. So I guess that equation, which I actually put out what it does mean is that the calories everywhere are wrong. That's the first piece of information that everyone gets out. But the issue is we eat food and we don't eat calories, and this is absolutely critically important. And our body has to work to differing degrees in order to pull the calories out after the food.

[00:12:15.730] – Dr. Yeo

And so when you actually eat something like a chicken breast, a piece of steak, a piece of fish. Ok. Like a whole food, you have to chew through it. It's either got a lot of protein or a lot of fiber depending on what you're eating. And so you have to kind of make your way through and your body takes time and takes energy. It takes energy to break down food. Whereas if you have something that's ultra processed, that's out of a pack and that has a shelf life of a million years.

[00:12:42.960] – Dr. Yeo

All right. It's been so ultra processed. And remember when I say ultra process, I'm not talking about fermenting. I'm not talking about the stuff you do in your kitchen. This is stuff that's done in a factory that we cannot replicate at home. Then, in effect, this procedure of auto processing is like an external stomach. So a lot of energy has already been in to the food and made the calories more available. So if you have 100 calories of chicken breast, as you said, versus 100 calories of an ultra processed foods, you will end up with a lot more calories from 100 calories of an ultra processed food.

[00:13:18.640] – Dr. Yeo

And naturally, an ultra processed food because of what's been happening to it has less protein and or less fiber, and it's higher in salt, sugar and fat. So this is the problem. Whereas if you have a chicken breast, you have a chicken breast, you can put salt on it if you wish. Pepper, soy sauce, whatever you want, you control what you add to it because you see the chicken breasts, you're doing something to it. Whereas when you get something out of a pack, we don't know what's in it.

[00:13:44.560] – Dr. Yeo

We just don't. And I think it's important to understand this fact.

[00:13:50.970] – Allan

Because in the key of what you just said there was we're eating food, we're not eating calories.

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[00:15:40.310] – Allan

Our ancestors before they invented calories in the I guess the late 1800 started talking about them. They didn't have calorie counts on their food. They ate till they were satiated, and then they stopped eating. And then they went back to work.

[00:15:56.320] – Dr. Yeo

So the whole concept of the calorie actually was not originally invented. It eventually became to look at human food, but was originally put together for farmers because what farmers were interested in was how much would you feed a cow or your chicken or your sheep and get good quality meat or eggs or milk or what have you that's a product. And so you could see why the farmers really cared. They really would care the calorie content of the food, what was coming out the other side of the animal.

[00:16:29.390] – Dr. Yeo

And so they could say, Well, we're going to change the food. We're going to make better investments in the food. It was only laterally that people said we can do this to human food, too. And that is when it became weaponized. Suddenly the calorie became not something about agriculture and talking about the food supply, but suddenly becoming equated to human beings. And then we worry about our health. And there we go.

[00:16:53.490] – Allan

Yeah, and all of it seems to get weaponized. I think that's what's actually kind of scary here is they'll say, okay, calories are weaponized and then, okay, fat, because fat has more grams more calories per gram than the other two. Then we've got to demonize fat. And then it's like, Well, no fat helps a little bit. But now we've got a demonized cholesterol. It's not the fast cholesterol. And then we got to demonize sugar. And then we got to demonize salt. And that's all the stuff that actually makes the food palatable in the first place, but in the right proportion in the right way.

[00:17:28.610] – Allan

The key of it to me, and you talked about this in the book was, can I eat less actual calories and be satiated? And there are certain foods that do that. And there are other foods that don't. And the first one I want to bring up is protein. Why is protein so important for weight loss?

[00:17:50.990] – Dr. Yeo

Okay, there are two different reasons, two broad reasons why, clearly, they're going to be associated. Famously, a calorie of protein makes you feel fuller, more satiated than a calorie of fat than a calorie of carb in that order. All right. And there are two different reasons why. Sorry. Like I said, we need food and not calorie. Freudian slip. And there are two stages your body goes through to extract calories from food. The first stage is digestion, which we talk about chewing, autochemical digestion. And there is a golden rule here, really quite a good golden rule, which works not only for protein, but also for fiber, but the longer something takes to digest, the farther down your gut it will go.

[00:18:41.240] – Dr. Yeo

And the farther down it goes, different hormones are released and you feel fuller. Okay. And so protein just happens to take longer to digest. It's more complicated. It's just more difficult to take it apart and something else. And so it tends to travel further down the gut, different hormones are released and you feel fuller. So that's the first thing. Now, protein is broken down into amino acids, the building blocks within your gut. And then that gets transported across the gut wall into your blood. And amino acids and sugar and fatty acids are themselves, not energy.

[00:19:16.890] – Dr. Yeo

They're few still. So they then transported to your organs, your cells, wherever you need them. They're then metabolized. And this is the second part of how we actually get the energy, digestion and metabolism. What happens with the metabolism is it takes a lot of energy to metabolize protein. For every 100 calories of protein that you eat, this is unusual. You don't normally do this. I'm just using it as an example, so that we understand. But for every 100 calories of protein we eat, we only ever use, on average, 70 calories.

[00:19:57.470] – Dr. Yeo

So it takes 30% of the protein calories you eat to handle protein. So just out of the blocks, all the protein calorie counts everywhere are 30% out because they don't take into account the 30% of energy it takes to actually deal with protein. And so it's a mix of the fact that protein takes longer to digest and more energy to metabolize together. It makes protein more satiating for us. It makes us feel fuller, even though we need exactly the same number of calories of protein and fats or carbs.

[00:20:31.210] – Allan

Yeah. Now the satiation is the important part. The 30% doesn't mean you get to eat 30% more.

[00:20:39.570] – Dr. Yeo

That's not what I mean. That's the wrong message.

[00:20:42.750] – Allan

Yeah. So just realizing that, yes. If you're looking at your macros and you're saying, okay, this meal is giving me a certain amount of protein. I think you said optimal is probably about 16%. And then I'm getting good carbs. And we'll talk about the good carbs in a minute and some fat. Then each of those is going to digest at their own pace. And because the protein takes longer to digest and uses more energy in the digestion, it makes it easier for you to stay satiated longer, eat less and lose weight.

[00:21:16.170] – Dr. Yeo

Now, that is absolutely right. But there is one thing. So if you happen to be trying to build your muscle and this could be because you're older or it could be because you are actually lifting and trying to bulk up, then there is a case to be made for thinking about how much protein you're actually getting in terms of protein calories and whether or not you need to alter whether or not you need to alter that. Now, this is not the case for everything, but I think there is a case to be made for.

[00:21:43.540] – Dr. Yeo

Maybe I need to up my protein a little bit more if I'm trying to bulk up.

[00:21:47.420] – Allan

And as a trainer, I would tell you if you feel like you're losing muscle mass due to sarcopenia because you're older, yes, you probably need more protein. And if you decide you want to take on a resistance training program for the sake of building muscle, you definitely need more protein. But as a basic, getting by 16% is probably a good number to start with. And then just see how you recover from your workouts, whether you are building muscle, losing muscle and change it out from there. Now the next one,

[00:22:18.250] – Allan

And we talked about carbs because there's different types of carbs. And I think many of us get conflated and saying, Well, okay, this is obviously a healthy carb because it grew in the ground. It's a plant. But then, of course, we dice it up and Fry it or batter it and Fry it.

[00:22:33.520] – Dr. Yeo

That's right.

[00:22:35.310] – Allan

Like in San Francisco, you talked about the baseball games, the garlic fries, where there's as much garlic as there are fries. We ruin good things all the time. But fiber and fiber, similar to protein, has a compelling path through our digestive tract that changes the way we digest it, which also metabolize it, which also again helps us with satiation.

[00:23:05.200] – Dr. Yeo

So yes, the first thing is it's quite clear we don't digest most fiber, so some fiber we're able to digest. We'll do that in a second. But the vast majority of fiber that's the stringy stuff we see in the pulp and Orange juice and celery. And what have you we don't digest. It comes out sweet corn, corn on the cob, it comes out the other side. And so as we were discussing with the protein, because the fiber, therefore slows down the digestion of everything it takes longer to digest, it makes you feel fuller.

[00:23:32.990] – Dr. Yeo

The other thing about fiber that is very useful is fiber tends to be found almost exclusively in plants, almost exclusively. The type of macros you'll find in a plant tends to be largely carbohydrates, and maybe a little bit of fat, depending on what kind of plant we're actually dealing with. And the crucial thing is the fiber slows down the extraction of the carbohydrates and therefore the absorption of the sugar. And so you'll have exactly. This is the equivalent of drinking Orange juice versus eating an Orange.

[00:24:06.290] – Dr. Yeo

Right. It's the same kind of comparison where you're getting exactly the same amount of sugar, exactly the same amount of sugar. But if you drink Orange juice, it just gets absorbed the moment it hits a small intestine, whereas the fiber takes time. And so you then have a different glucose profile. Blood sugar profile after you eat something with fiber versus not. And that plays a very big role in terms of not only satiation, but also the eventual feeling of hunger again later as well.

[00:24:36.040] – Allan

Yeah. We call that the roller coaster where basically blood sugar spikes up, insulin kicks in. It sucks that sugar sometimes sending it to the muscles and sometimes sending it to the liver. But most of the time storing it as fat. And then your sugar crashes. And now you want some more Orange juice.

[00:24:54.100] – Dr. Yeo

That's right. And the fiber, evens this whole thing out, even though you get exactly the same. And this is the thing. This is the thing you try and explain to someone says, look, I'm not saying the foods are different. I'm not saying that they are magic, and I'm not saying the different types of sugars, the actual rate and speed and kinetics. Shall we say it is everything. It's absolutely everything to how your body manages its energy.

[00:25:18.770] – Allan

Yeah. And then the fiber goes further because we're not going to be able to digest most of it into our system. So it's ending up all the way down in the large intestine and some magical things happened down there.

[00:25:30.340] – Dr. Yeo

Some magical things happened down there because fiber, as we know, keeps you regular. And that's a good thing we don't want to be storing in us unnecessarily, but more crucially or equally crucially rather. It is very important for your gut microbiome, for the bugs in your gut that actually live there, and it keeps them happy. It keeps them happy. And what do I mean by happy? It means it keeps a nice variety of bugs. That pretty much is what healthy means. When people say, What's a healthy gut microbiome, the bugs variety.

[00:26:03.330] – Dr. Yeo

You only end up with one mono, very few varieties that tends to be meaning that you eat a very boring and very uniform type of diet, which is not great for you. So variety is the spice of life, and fiber is the spice for these bugs. And it's very important for your overall health, for your gut health. For your immune system, there is hardly any body system because, look, if you have bad guts, you feel awful. You're not having a good day. So having healthy guts is important to your overall health.

[00:26:41.910] – Allan

Now, one of the fundamental problems with nutrition. And I wish we could fix this is that there are labels on processed food, and there's seldom labels on the foods that are high in protein and fiber. Because you're picking those up at a farmer's market. You're picking those up in a produce stand in a meat market, and they're not wrapped and packaged the way that's required, particularly in the United States, for them to be labeled. And so if you find yourself eating more processed food, sometimes, I don't think I'm not even sure we recognize how processed our foods are.

[00:27:17.140] – Allan

There's a scale you talk about. It's not your scale. It's a scale that's been out there for us called the Nova scales, Nova classifications. And there's four of them. Could you go through those four real quick? So we would have an understanding, because in my opinion. And again, I'm just a guy that eats and try to get choice to take care of myself is I'm always trying to eat in that number one category, most of my foods. And then if there's a two or three, it's a little bit or it's a way to flavor the one or two.

[00:27:47.650] – Allan

And then I try my best to stay away from the four as much as possible. But could you go through that scale of what that actually means?

[00:27:54.250] – Dr. Yeo

Okay. So this was actually come up from a Brazilian scientist. Oh, gosh, I'm going to have to remember his name. That's terrible. I'm going to forget it, but I'll come up with it in a second. Brazilian scientist actually came up with this Nova system of one to four relatively recently. Actually, we're probably only looking at something like 2011 to 2016 year. So what are the four Nova categories? And this is to talk about how processed the food is. So Nova one, these are what we would recognize fruit, what we recognize as whole food, a piece of steak, a chicken wing.

[00:28:29.510] – Dr. Yeo

All right. So these are just food, whole foods that we would actually go and buy from a market. And what have you now? Nova two are flavorings ingredients. Okay. So, for example, this could be ground black pepper because the pepper has been toasted. It could be oil. It could be, for example, olive oil. It could be purified salt. It could be sugar from sugar cane or otherwise. And these are there for Nova type two. Now, what happens when you mix Nova type one and two together?

[00:29:09.810] – Dr. Yeo

You get a Nova type three. So three are the processed foods that we recognize as processed, for example, bread. Because bread has gone through the process of you put yeast, some fermentation, it goes up, you do things you can drink, beer. Okay. Now beer has gone through the fermentation process. So those are Nova group three and other foods that you might Cook. So pickling. Okay. So Kimchi or Sauerkraut, that would be a Nova group three. So that is the vast majority of food. And actually Nova groups one to three are all pretty much fine, because together they form what we would call whole foods to just minimally processed foods.

[00:29:54.780] – Dr. Yeo

Then there's no group four. And the problem with Nova group four is that that is where in North America, in Europe, in the high income countries, we get more than 50% of our calories from. And these are pretty much every prepackaged foods that are out there that have gone through a process that we cannot replicate in a domestic kitchen or even a restaurant. When you go to a restaurant, you're not getting a proper restaurant, not a fast food restaurant. If you go to a proper restaurant where there's a chef and kitchen and cooking your food, those are never going to be Nova group four.

[00:30:29.590] – Dr. Yeo

Okay. Whereas if you actually have to go through a factory process, it's everything that is in there. And so that's a lot of things. Just to be clear, I'm not demonizing them per se. We eat too much of them. Ice cream is going to be nova group four, croissants are going to be Nova group Four. Pastries are going to be Nova group Four. So there are those, but they at least look something resembling sorts of Nova group four. But then you can go really extreme.

[00:31:01.050] – Dr. Yeo

Right. And you can get these cheaper Nuggets where, for example, the meat is not really meat. Meat is even a strong word.

[00:31:12.970] – Allan

I will never eat another chicken McNugget, as long as I live.

[00:31:18.250] – Dr. Yeo

I don't want to get sued by them, but it's true, but that's the way they actually make it. So those are the four Nova groups. What we've got to do. Why does the Nova group four exist? This is a question to ask. I think it's helped keep 7 billion people in the world alive. Okay. There was a reason why it came about because of the industrial processes. They have economies of scale to make. They typically have very long shelf lives and they're very easily movable, and they're very cheap calories.

[00:31:51.340] – Dr. Yeo

And so as a result, we can actually survive on food. Certainly in the UK, you can now get up to 900 calories in the old school for less than a pound, depending on where you're getting. And a pound is a dollar 20 or one dollar 30 something like that. Yeah, really cheap calories. The problem is the amount we're eating now, that's the first thing. And the second problem is that because it's cheap, the poorer among society, people in the lower socio economic classes end up eating the cheaper food.

[00:32:26.440] – Dr. Yeo

Why? Because that is what's available in their food that they happen to be living in, for example. And it is also what they happen to be able to afford. And so I think it's a double tragedy. It's a tragedy, in a sense, where it is bad for us to eat too much of it and actually the poorest amongst us who are already at risk of diseases and things anywhere also end up eating it the most. So I think there's a double tragedy that we need to try and fix.

[00:32:51.600] – Allan

Well, I think there's a third piece in there that the food companies are responsible for. They're hiring scientists to make the food hyper palatable to make it addictive. I'm going to be talking to someone in a week or so about food addiction and how we deal with that. But the reality is if you find yourself there's just this food, and I like to term it as kryptonite, like your Superman, it's going to kill you. But you can't stay away from it. You can't do anything about it.

[00:33:18.450] – Allan

They make these foods like Kryptonite, they're so delicious. Even they advertise it. You can't eat just one, stack your chips, eat three of them because different flavors, and you're going to eat a whole two of them. And that's more calories than you should have had for your dinner. And they're hyperpatable. They're going to basically become blood sugar as soon as they hit your system. I think that there's a third piece there.

[00:33:46.210] – Dr. Yeo

And it's an arms war, because what's interesting is obviously there is no Advertisement campaign for strawberries. Not that I know. Or the Advertisement, maybe sometimes the Orange juice company, but even that. But then the Advertisement campaigns that go out to support these foods are incredible. And it's weapons grade. We talk about weaponization. It's weapons grade. And so you're someone selling from the local farm because there is no way you can compete against that. Certainly when it comes to kids, I think a lot of it is adults.

[00:34:21.950] – Dr. Yeo

We are obviously impressionable, but it's the kids. It's the kids that they're looking at and watch the cartoons. And they buy the happy meals. And they do the thing.

[00:34:31.550] – Allan

And the Super Bowl, which is coming up, which Congratulations on San Francisco's win this week.

[00:34:37.190] – Dr. Yeo

Thank you.

[00:34:38.300] – Allan

Super bowl. They'll spend millions of dollars. And you think, how many bags of potato chips do they have to sell? But they obviously are because they've been doing these commercials forever. So it obviously sells more potato chips.

[00:34:56.850] – Dr. Yeo

Otherwise they won't do it right. These guys are mercenary. Of course they are. They're not going to be spending the money if they're not getting a return from this.

[00:35:04.870] – Allan

Yeah. So that's the other side of just recognizing that these ultra processed foods are food stuff. They're built to be hyperpatable. They're built to be addictive. And, yes, they are low cost. They're easy to transport. They're self stable for a long, long time. So there are benefits from a feeding the world perspective to having this technology. But I kind of think it's gone a little on the other direction. And that's part of why we're in the problems we're at. And if we can flip back and we can start thinking about this scale of how processes my food and the less processing for the most part, the better.

[00:35:43.540] – Allan

One, two, three and trying to weigh your food and think of your food in that order, the more I have in category one, the better category two is next and then three. And then occasionally, if you want that Mars bar, have a Mars bar, but recognize where you are and what you're doing and enjoy the heck out of it and then be done. Get back to protein and fiber and your weight loss goals.

[00:36:11.070] – Dr. Yeo

I mean, there is another which I do raise in the book and sort of middle ground because I do think we need somehow a society to reformulate our food system. I think somehow we've managed to in trying to keep 7 billion people alive. I do think we've broken significant elements of our food system. Okay. And we're not here to necessarily discuss that. So we need to fix that. But in the meantime, however, in the meantime, how do we try and be pragmatic? And so what I do say is yes, if we want a Mars bar, we can have a Mars bar, but can we make a better Mars bar?

[00:36:46.380] – Dr. Yeo

I think that's the question, right? Can we convince at least in the interim. So this is not the be all and end all. But can we get the companies to put in more nuts, more dates and figs to try and up the fiber and protein content of a chocolate bar or a frozen lasagna or something? And every time I say this, what's interesting is I'm not trying to countenance all of us moving to Nova four as. It's just not my point. But my point is, how do we help the people who through no fault of their own, are almost forced to live on Nova Four Foods?

[00:37:23.210] – Dr. Yeo

Can we get the companies to improve their Nova Four foods? And that's another thing I'm quite passionate about in trying to. And whenever a company, a food manufacturer, for example, speaks to me, okay. I never take money from food companies for the reason, so that I can go in and speak to the food companies and be honest with them. They can listen to me or not listen to me, but I can say, look, you guys can continue making your chocolate bars or lasagna, what have you but can you make it better?

[00:37:52.930] – Dr. Yeo

Can you up the protein? Can you up the fiber? Can you do that? Surely you can. Surely you can do it without really that much of a significant rise in cost.

[00:38:01.570] – Allan

I suppose they can, especially when you think about it. We have a tendency to think of protein as being meat coming from an animal. And we think of fiber as coming from a plant and more of this could be plant based, and you can get there. Fiber is easy. It's practically nothing from a density perspective and almost no flavor from a cost perspective.

[00:38:25.970] – Dr. Yeo

It doesn't cost anything, right?

[00:38:28.710] – Allan

Because they stripped it off of something else. It's sitting there. It's sitting there. It's ready so they can. I know they can. And hopefully they will. They'll see the problem and realize, okay, if I want my clients, my customers to live longer and eat more, I actually have to not kill them.

[00:38:45.660] – Dr. Yeo

Keep them alive. Don't kill your customer.

[00:38:52.170] – Allan

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

[00:39:00.240] – Dr. Yeo

Well, oh, my goodness. That's a very good question. Actually, I'm not going to start with nutrition. Obviously, nutrition is one of them. The first is moving and literally moving. Now the interesting thing. And this could be if you are able, going long distances running or cycling or pumping. It could be that. Or it could be going in your garden, walking your dog, mowing the lawn. They're doing something like that. And while moving per se. And maybe sometimes people don't notice. Moving per se is not a great way of losing weight per se, but it is fabulous for you.

[00:39:40.760] – Dr. Yeo

You will never, ever be able to replace the goodness of moving. And so we don't move enough. And so we got to move. So that's the first thing I would say, move. And then the second thing is really think about nutrition, not in an evangelical and puritanical fashion. You talk about it. You sound just from our conversation here. You have the right approach. Look, sometimes you want a Mars bar. Sometimes your kid has a birthday party, you want to have a slice of cake, but we have too much of that.

[00:40:08.770] – Dr. Yeo

So I think thinking about the nutrition and simply if you consider protein and fiber in the diet that you eating, even as a shorthand as a proxy. Obviously the other thing. But even if we consider protein and fiber and moving, I think those three things would actually get you a long way to getting healthier.

[00:40:31.530] – Allan

If someone wanted to learn more about you and your book, Why Calories Don't Count. Where would you like for me to send them?

[00:40:38.820] – Dr. Yeo

They can send all good bookshops. I know some people don't like Amazon, and I don't want to push people there, but all good bookshops should sell the book, Why Calories Don't Count. There's also one. And if you want to hear anything more, just me bibling on and interviewing various people. I also have a podcast called Dr. Giles Yeo, Choose the Fat and it's available at Apple and Spotify and all your favorite places.

[00:41:07.690] – Allan

Okay, well, this is Episode 516, so you can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/516, and I'll be sure to have links there. Dr. Yeo, thank you so much for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

[00:41:20.730] – Dr. Yeo

Allan, this has been a pleasure. Thanks so much for having me.

Post Show/Recap

[00:41:27.970] – Allan

Welcome back, Ras.

[00:41:30.030] – Rachel

Allan, oh, my gosh. I don't even know where to start. There's a lot we can talk about. But I do want to mention that back when I started my weight loss journey a long time ago, pre Internet days, counting calories was a nightmare. It was just something I never wanted to do, and it's just difficult. It's just a pain to do, especially before smartphones and apps that are so helpful today. But just like a lot of people who start their weight loss journey, that's the only thing I knew about at that time.

[00:42:00.700] – Allan

Yeah, I've been on my fitness pal and some of the others, and I've talked to different people over the years that are tracking and some of them, it's quite literally, like they're doing the accounting for General Electric. I mean, it's just crazy measure every calorie, calculate these numbers, and then you're looking at your weight and they're trying to evaluate and you're like, okay, well, maybe I was off by a pecan the other day. If you find that doing the calorie counting is stressing you out. You're doing it wrong.

[00:42:38.120] – Allan

Now, full disclosure or Disclaimer, or however you want to look at it. If you have a food addiction, if you have an eating disorder or you just find that the gamification of this actually is helping you stick with it, that's great. There are a lot of people that are like that, and that's cool that the whole world is made up of different people. So I'm not going to say there's one way fits all. That'll never be the case. But if you're stressing over the calories, oh, I can't eat this.

[00:43:09.220] – Allan

It has too many calories in it. It's chicken breasts.

[00:43:17.290] – Rachel

Well, that's a good point. I mean, think about what you're eating. I think one light bulb moment that I had many years ago when I did have my fitness pal was one of the foods I did like to eat after a half marathon. I used to go to McDonald's and get the Quarter Pounder meal because I craved the salt and the fat in that meal. And one day I realized that the calorie count for the Quarter Pounder with cheese meal was the equivalent of my total calorie intake for that day.

[00:43:49.700] – Rachel

And it was a big light bulb moment for me because obviously, I can't live on one meal per day, especially running half marathons. But that probably wasn't the most healthy choice that I could have picked for that time.

[00:44:05.750] – Allan

Yeah, one, I think if you read Doctor Yeo's book, you're not going to eat fast food ever again.

[00:44:18.170] – Allan

he actually taught you a lot of people don't want to know how they make the sausage. And I'll just say, you don't want to know how they make the burgers, and you don't want to know how they make the chicken McNuggets. So sue me, McDonald's if you have to. But I'm just going to say, okay, no. Just no.

[00:44:41.470] – Allan

It's okay to have those kinds of things if you start assessing about things and get granted if you have a food issue or things like that, then yeah, I'm going to have Dr. Susan on in a few weeks, probably right around the beginning of the year. And we're going to talk about that because she has these very strict rules in her life. And everybody she coaches very strict rules and those work. But she also has this resume process, which is when you go off kilter, you understand it, you learn from it, and you kind of get yourself back into your box.

[00:45:19.930] – Rachel

Perfect.

[00:45:21.950] – Allan

That approach works. Now most of us can't live in a calorie counting box. We have jobs, we have children, we have friends and family, and we have things that pop up. Like you said, I finished this run. I'm hungry.

[00:45:38.060] – Allan

What's there? McDonald's. Okay. Is it McDonald's or banana? And I'm sorry, but back in the day, McDonald's tastes better than the banana. You need the potassium. Okay, great. But I'm going to go for the burger, too, back in the day. But I think what we're trying to come out with this is number one. Look for the foods that serve you. And we talked with Dr. Yeo about how protein and fiber are going to be your friends in this pursuit. And if you're eating the foods that provide the best quality of that, then you're not necessarily eating a whole lot of meat to get your protein, because you can get that from a vegetable source, which is another thing he talks about in the book.

[00:46:28.330] – Allan

But you look at getting protein because it takes longer to digest and it's more energy burning as you do that. So you're getting less calories out of what appears to be a lot of calories, and it's going to keep you fuller longer. The other side is the fiber. And whether you want to go keto or you want to go as far as carnivore, he doesn't like those ways of eating. From the perspective, you're not getting the fiber. And so if you find that you try keto and you're just not pooping and taking a little bit of magnesium, which we're going to have Thomas DeLauer on the show in a week or so.

[00:47:03.090] – Allan

And we're going to talk about mineral deficiencies. So if you're having trouble at the loo, as Dr. Yeo would say, then you might want to try some magnesium. But if those things aren't working, what you're doing is not serving your body and you're not feeling good and healthy, then we're missing the point. The point is to try to get healthy. The weight loss is the side effect.

[00:47:26.110] – Rachel

I love that part when you and Dr. Yeo mentioned the weight losses, the side effect and also not obsessing. If counting calories becomes too much of an obsession, if it's distracting you, then it's really not the greatest tool in the toolbox. But also, I think focusing on the protein and the fiber and the healthy vegetables that'll give you the nutrients that you need to feel energetic throughout the day and satisfy whatever activities you do as well.

[00:47:56.510] – Allan

I couldn't even imagine sitting down at, like, a Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner and there being like, pumpkin pie there. And you're on my fitness pal trying to figure out how much is a slice to get the 100 grams and you're like, mom, do you have a scale so I can weigh this pumpkin pie? If you want some of the pumpkin pie, heat the pumpkin pie.

[00:48:22.560] – Rachel

Well, that's perfectly acceptable, especially during these holiday times when all these wonderful family traditional foods are coming out and you want to try your mom's recipe or your grandma's recipe or something important. I mean, there's so much meaning to that, and if you just enjoy it and have a taste of it and not overdo it, you're less likely to feel those after effects. Thanksgiving is my favorite meal. I tend to eat a little bit more than I normally do, and I feel the after effects later, so enjoy what you can and then get back to your normal eating and you'll feel much better in the days ahead.

[00:49:01.280] – Allan

Now, one of the cool things about Doctor Yeo's book is that when he gets into this, it is a lot of biochemistry, but he says it in a way that is actually follow able. Okay, he still has to use the words mitochondria, Krebs cycle or citric acid cycle and all the words because the words are the words. It's not like he can come up. But he comes up with a lot of ways to think about how that works and why things work the way they work. And then in the end, when he's explaining why protein is a better choice, why fiber is a better choice and those types of things, it clicks, you're like, oh, of course.

[00:49:45.750] – Allan

Why is it that you can eat sugar and your blood sugar shoots up and you can eat protein and it doesn't. Or you can eat sugar with fiber. And it doesn't like he was talking about the Orange juice and the Orange. And so he gives you all the background to understand. He didn't just make this up and say he doesn't want you drinking Orange juice. He's just trying to explain to you, if you're trying to lose weight, the Orange is the better deal.

[00:50:13.480] – Rachel

Sure, it makes total sense. That's so helpful, too. It's hard to imagine the glass of Orange juice being so much different than the actual Orange itself. But it does make sense when you discuss that in your interview.

[00:50:25.750] – Allan

It's not as convenient. And honestly to me, if you're trying to lose weight, drinking your calories is the worst way to do it, because again, if it's a liquid, your body is going to digest it very quickly. It's going to be out of your system and in your blood, and therefore it's not going to satiate you. It just won't. Whereas if you have to go through your system and you have to digest. Actually, physically digest that you're burning calories. Doing that digestion. If it's liquid, the digestion is over.

[00:50:55.060] – Allan

It's just flowing through and saying, okay, ha ladi da and then sugar. And it's in your system. So good. Pick me up in the morning, Orange juice and coffee. But then you're going to be hungry by 10:00am if you ate at seven because you didn't give your body that long term full feeling that it's going to get with the fiber and protein.

[00:51:20.130] – Rachel

It's important that we pay attention to how we feel after we eat these different foods. Because I think that once you find what you enjoy eating and you get a good feeling afterwards, you feel full. It's a better way to plan your meals, especially if you plan them around protein.

[00:51:39.830] – Allan

Yes. Absolutely. All right. Well, Rachel, I'll talk to you and I'll talk to everybody else next week.

[00:51:46.540] – Rachel

Take care.

[00:51:47.450] – Allan

You too.

[00:51:48.320] – Rachel

Thanks.

Patreons

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

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

Thank you!

Another episode you may enjoy

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SPONSOR

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

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

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SPONSOR

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let's Say Hello

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

Episode

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SPONSOR

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SPONSOR

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Post Show/Recap

[00:18:30.090] – Allan

Hey, Raz.

[00:18:31.180] – Rachel

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

[00:18:53.730] – Allan

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

[00:19:30.310] – Allan

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

[00:19:54.400] – Allan

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

[00:20:24.160] – Rachel

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

[00:20:44.830] – Rachel

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

[00:21:02.150] – Allan

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

[00:21:15.310] – Rachel

Yeah.

[00:21:16.060] – Allan

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

[00:21:50.010] – Allan

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

[00:21:57.770] – Rachel

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

[00:22:06.090] 

I didn't call it pop, but…

[00:22:14.350] – Rachel

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

[00:22:45.570] – Allan

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

[00:23:02.110] – Rachel

No. Please don't.

[00:23:04.810] – Allan

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

[00:23:35.120] – Allan

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

[00:24:07.740] – Allan

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

[00:24:42.250] – Rachel

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

[00:24:44.970] – Allan

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

[00:25:11.530] – Allan

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

[00:25:35.770] – Rachel

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

[00:25:57.870] – Rachel

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

[00:26:16.990] – Rachel

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

[00:26:28.750] – Allan

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

[00:27:00.760] – Allan

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

[00:27:34.500] – Allan

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

[00:27:40.960] – Rachel

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

[00:27:44.650] – Allan

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

[00:27:49.640] – Rachel

Take care.

[00:27:50.690] – Allan

You too.

Patreons

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

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

Another episode you may enjoy

Breaking a Weight Loss Plateau

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Let's Say Hello

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[00:06:26.560] – Rachel
Okay.

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

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

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

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

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

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

[00:07:43.920] – Rachel
No.

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

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

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

[00:08:15.130] – Rachel
Absolutely.

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

[00:08:18.400] – Rachel
That's right.

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

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

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

[00:08:34.790] – Rachel
Absolutely.

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

[00:08:42.410] – Rachel
Perfect.

Discussion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Post Show/Recap

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[00:42:17.340] – Allan
Distractions.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[00:44:25.460] – Rachel
I will.

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

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

[00:44:45.660] – Allan
You too.

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