Introduction

On episode 658 of the 40+ Fitness Podcast, we meet Philip Pape and discuss how we can manage our hormones through nutrition, movement, etc.

Episode Notes

Allan [00:03:00]:
Hey, Raz. How are you?

Rachel [00:03:04]:
Good, Allan. How are you today?

Allan [00:03:06]:
I'm doing pretty good. I'm doing pretty good. We launched the, the workshop this week, so that's going on. And it's gonna it's gonna I mean, I'm so excited. Right now, you know, we're recording this beforehand, and it's just really been just kinda developing it and putting it all together. I'm really, really proud of this workshop. I really am. And so that's going on.

Allan [00:03:27]:
And in that workshop, I'm making an announcement. I'm revamping my program. Okay? And so the new program that I'm launching now is pretty darn special, and there's some bonuses associated with it now that is it's pretty much guaranteed it's gonna get you the results you want. So

Rachel [00:03:48]:
Awesome.

Allan [00:03:48]:
If you've been thinking about I gotta do something, I gotta do something, and you put it off till September because, you know, school and everything else, this this is the time. This is the time to reach out and let me know that you're interested in learning more about it. But, yeah, it's the bonuses just by themselves are are are so special, making this so much more valuable that this is the time. If you're going to do it, do it now because I can't keep these bonuses. So I stopped this launch, but that's it. So reach out to me if you're interested. Coach@40plusfitness.com, And, we can talk about the program and whether it's a good whether it's a good fit for you. But That sounds awesome.

Allan [00:04:29]:
I'm really excited about it.

Rachel [00:04:31]:
Great. Glad to hear it, Allan. Excited for your clients.

Allan [00:04:34]:
Yeah. And we're also working through the the music to figure out the new music, or we're gonna do new music. There were some votes in a Facebook group. If you're not a member of the group, that's the best place to go because that's where I'm doing the voting. Go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/group. That will take you to the group request to enter, and then I'm gonna have a a new post because I initially put 5 songs out there, and I got the initial batch of votes. And so we have we can keep the new music keep the music we have if that's what you'd like, or there's I'm narrowing it down to the top 3. So the new video that will be out there starting today is gonna be just the top 3 of the previous voting.

Allan [00:05:19]:
So there's still an opportunity for you to be involved in helping us make this a really good place to be, music you enjoy listening to on the kickoff part of this show, and then at the end, the full full version of it. So I'm interested to see what you think. So I'm I'm excited people are coming out there and and into the music and and liking them and and making comments about what they like and what they don't like. So it's pretty cool. That's kinda cool.

Rachel [00:05:44]:
Yeah. Very cool. That sounds awesome.

Allan [00:05:46]:
Alright. So what's going on in your corner of the world?

Rachel [00:05:49]:
Not too much. It's actually been quiet. Last weekend, Mike and I were camping, and at the campsite we were at, there was no cell service. Couldn't send a text, which means I couldn't receive a text, couldn't get online, couldn't check my socials. It was 100% peace and quiet. I could not have been happier.

Allan [00:06:10]:
Excellent. Excellent. That is yeah. The the digital detox is is something I think people overlook and and might actually be a little afraid of, being out of contact and out of connection. You know, I live I live in a 3rd world country. So, yeah, stuff goes down, power goes down, internet goes down. But I relish those moments. And that's when I reach over here and I grab one of these, a paper book.

Allan [00:06:35]:
They still make these. They still print these. Can you believe it? And that's yeah. I'll sit down and start reading, because I can't do it. You know, most things, you have to have the Internet for it to even work. You know? You don't have the apps on your on your computer much anymore. So Yeah. I can't get my work done.

Allan [00:06:51]:
I may as well learn something new

Rachel [00:06:53]:
and

Allan [00:06:54]:
enjoy my day. So I pick up a book, and I love it too.

Rachel [00:06:58]:
Nice. Very nice. It's wonderful.

Allan [00:07:00]:
Awesome. Are you ready to have a conversation with Philip Pape? Sure. Our guest today is the owner and head coach at Wits and Waits Nutrition Coaching. He is the host of the Wits and Weights podcast where he cuts through the noise and deconstructs health and fitness with an engineering mindset. Known as the physique engineer, he helps individuals in their thirties and forties and beyond transform their physiques by building muscle, losing fat, breaking through plateaus, and optimizing their hormones and metabolism without restrictive diets, excessive cardio, boring workouts, or sacrificing their valuable time and lifestyle. With no further ado, here's Philip Pate. Philip, welcome to 40 plus fitness.

Philip Pape [00:07:43]:
Allan, thank you so much for the opportunity. Great to be here.

Allan [00:07:46]:
So I'm doing a little bit of research on you, trying to figure out, okay, who is this guy? And I come across your page, and it it says you're the physique engineer. So let let's let's dive into that a little bit. What's that one?

Philip Pape [00:08:01]:
That that's one of those self made monikers, but, my background is actually in engineering, software engineering, project engineering, engineering management. And I talk about on my podcast all the time taking the principles of engineering and applying them to nutrition, to training, and to developing our physique. So it's evidence based, but it's like how do engineers think? How do they design? How do they break things apart and use data and feedback to, you know, ultimately get better results? So that's that's what it where it comes from.

Allan [00:08:28]:
Yeah. You know, I worked I I worked for a company. I worked for software companies, but I also worked for some physical engineering companies. One of them was in oil and gas. And it was it was always fascinating. I always enjoyed the conversations with engineers across the board. They just have it they do. They have a different way of thinking.

Allan [00:08:46]:
They're looking at a problem, and they're saying, okay. I've I've gotta solve this problem. And so it is a different way. I remember I was out on a floating platform in the middle of the South Asia Sea, and we had these there were these ropes. They were 18 inches in diameter, so really, really big thick ropes, and they were holding the 2 pieces together. And so the the deal was they were supposed to be going through this pulley system, all 8 ropes, and the pulleys weren't turning the way they were supposed to turn. And as a result, it was wearing the ropes, and one of them broke. And they go ahead, and they contact the manufacturer and say, okay, we need another one of these little ropes.

Allan [00:09:27]:
Just replace the rope that just broke. And we're like, that's that's not how rope making works. We have to make one long rope and cut it into 8 sections so they all have the same tensile strength. If you put one rope in there that wasn't made with that batch, then you won't have the same. So they're like, okay. Well, then we need to order 8 new ropes. And so but in the meantime, they're like, we can't just let this platform just sort of flop around out there because it's also responsible for drilling, so it had to be stabilized. So they decide, well, the only solution we have is to tie this thing in a knot.

Allan [00:10:04]:
Can you imagine the engineering that's required to be sitting on a floating platform and take an 18 inch rope and tie it into a knot? So again yeah. And then, of course, the engineers, when I when I worked at 3 Comm, they would as soon as an engineer would leave, the new engineer would come, and he needed more RAM. So we were looking at the RAM purchases, and we're like, okay. Something's not adding up here, and what we realized was happening was the engineers were all pilfering the the RAM out of his out of the new computer when someone left. You know? They would leave, and all the engineers would just seize on all that RAM that they had and leave the new guy coming in with not enough RAM so he wouldn't make the request for RAM. Every new guy was requesting RAM even when he was using the same machine. But

Philip Pape [00:10:46]:
Got it.

Allan [00:10:47]:
And so now we couldn't just look at serial numbers when we were doing inventory. We literally had to open up every machine to see how much RAM was supposed to be in there and whether it had more RAM than it was supposed to. So yeah. You you

Philip Pape [00:11:00]:
know, it's funny. There's so many there's so many funny engineering stories I I could say, but, like, people do not understand what goes into the things that we make and that they depend on oftentimes for their lives. Like, in an airplane, there are so many computers. Right? And the computers have to be hardened against cosmic rays because a ray from the sun could flip a bit in the computer and cause the software to fail. Right? It's like little things like that. And so when I look at the human body, I'm like, that's actually pretty easy to, like, train and eat well and, like, do the things we talk about here in comparison, so, it kinda takes the pressure off and,

Allan [00:11:35]:
you know But and it does but it does follow that because, like, I'll I'll have the conversation with someone. I'm like, okay. Food is information.

Philip Pape [00:11:42]:
Mhmm.

Allan [00:11:42]:
Your body takes what you eat, the quality of it, the quantity of it, the nutrients that are in it, and it starts making decisions based on the programming your body has. And so you're either feeding it good information that food is plentiful, there's plenty of nutrition, or you're feeding it bad information that food is scarce or the quality of our food isn't isn't what it's supposed to be. And, nowhere is this really more apparent than hormones because our hormones are the messengers that kinda carry that whole thing out. As we get older, I think it's pretty clear for women because they they get into perimenopause, which can last up to 10 years, menopause, which is gonna last for the rest of your life. So they see that change as almost an abrupt end and restart at some level. I mean, it depends on the perimenopause. It can go longer. With men, it's it's it's a little bit more of a slowly gliding in thing.

Allan [00:12:39]:
We don't even feel it. The water's boiling, and we don't even know. Let's talk about a little bit about those changes and what they actually mean for us from a health and fitness perspective.

Philip Pape [00:12:49]:
Yeah. Like you said, hormones, they're what they're one of those misunderstood things, kind of like gut health today. Right? There's a lot of misunderstanding, misinformation. Before I get into that, like, we use hormones as this doomsday scenario, especially at women that I work with where once you hit 40, right, or once you hit perimenopause everything just declines and it's a new phase of life where where nothing works, my metabolism's broken, I don't have the energy, like, it's almost a defeatist kind of thinking because we we give so much credence to the hormones. Now we're gonna talk about what actually changes. I like to flip that around, like, like, reframe it and say, this is a huge opportunity in a wake up call to actually optimize our lifestyle knowing that when we do that, the things that we probably should have been doing since we were in our twenties, but our bodies, like, didn't give us a feedback that we necessarily needed it back then. It can mitigate largely mitigate many of those changes. And so I always like to say, start there and say, women, men, doesn't matter.

Philip Pape [00:13:46]:
If you're making the choices you need to make, the hormone situation is much less of a variable unless, you know, you have a medical condition or something like that. But it is true, like, women, peri and postmenopause are seen in decline in estrogen in progesterone. They get all the symptoms that we can't relate to, like hot flashes and mood swings, weight gain. Guys who are married, you've gotta be, very empathetic to your wives, you know, oftentimes on a cyclical basis. Right? And the when you don't have things like strength training and the other stuff we're gonna talk about in place, for women especially, it leads to things like more visceral fat storage, more bone density loss, more muscle mass loss, and it's faster for them than it is for men. And that's where the, like, you know, frustration often comes from. And then they have DHEA. They have growth hormone.

Philip Pape [00:14:36]:
Both men and women have testosterone. Right? So we see all of that, Allan, from women's perspective, and the industry loves to play off of that and, like, sell products for menopausal women. Right? We know that because of that, but we'll get into what you can do instead where you probably don't have to worry about, you know, replacement therapy as early as you might think and and all of that. Men, it's testosterone. I mean, it it really does come down to that. We're actually pretty simple. It just starts to decline for some men sooner than others, as well as DHEA, and it could affect your mood. It could affect your sex drive.

Philip Pape [00:15:07]:
It could affect your muscle mass. And so if you have symptoms, I would suggest getting or even if you don't have symptoms, I would suggest getting a number early on, like, in your thirties as a baseline so that you can see where it trends over time. And if you have to deal with it later, you'll have the information. So, yeah, that's the big picture, Allan.

Allan [00:15:23]:
Yeah. And I I think that couple things that I'd like to bring out there is that, a lot of a lot of folks don't know this, but both men and women have testosterone, produce testosterone. For women, it's it's much less, obviously, but it does it does impact their capacity to lift weights and how they feel. It affects their libido and all those different triggers and things that it does in our body. You can stop producing it too. Men will slowly so so for women, it's menopause. For men, we refer to as andropause. But we're we're all going through this, this aging curve.

Allan [00:15:59]:
And if we we don't do anything, we're just we're just free riding. Wherever this thing's gonna take me, it's gonna take me. But it's always downhill. So Yeah. And we we need to do something. So I'd like to start that conversation kinda talking about nutrition because I I think that there's an underappreciation for how much nutrition actually does for us or against us. I think we know. We eat too much.

Allan [00:16:24]:
We we gain weight, but I I think that's the line where people kinda just say, okay. That's all you really need to know, but there's more.

Philip Pape [00:16:31]:
For sure. I be I think of nutrition as a few different things. You mentioned gaining and losing weight. So there is the energy balance piece, and oftentimes, that has a greater impact on our hormones than necessarily what we eat. You You know, people like to go straight to hormone supporting foods, and I like to start from are you even eating enough and supplying the energy you need, especially if you're lifting weights and you're training. Right? So energy balance is important, calories are important. Then we have our micronutrients and that is where yes, healthy fats, you know, having enough fat, especially for women is important. Having enough carbs is important.

Philip Pape [00:17:07]:
See a lot of people are on low carb diets and will find that maybe a moderate to high carb diet might support their hormones better and in the older age age group, which again is a big source of misinformation in the industry. And then we have our micronutrients micronutrients and fiber to kinda round it out having that diverse diet that supports your gut. Our gut health becomes more and more critical as we age, and guess what? The gut is very closely attuned to our hormones, both the direct hormones in our intestinal system that affect things like hunger and cravings. You you hear of GLP 1. Right? That's it's one of those the peptides affects that hormone, but also are linked to our pituitary gland, our adrenal system, all the other hormones, cortisol, stress, everything else. So nutrition has a much bigger impact than we think, but I think if you are supporting your goals and listening to the feedback as we talked about earlier, like an engineer, if you're gathering the data on how does my stomach feel? Do I have bloating? Do I have gas? How's my hunger? How's my performance in the gym? We can tie that back to the food choices you make without having to cut carbs, cut this, cut that. So that's where I would start.

Allan [00:18:09]:
Okay. Let let's talk a little bit about protein because I do think that, you know, there's concern about eating too much protein. There's concern about not eating enough protein. Where do you stand on that?

Philip Pape [00:18:23]:
Most people aren't eating enough. I think I think you stand there too. Right? Like, the evidence doesn't show that you could really eat too much protein, to be honest. And if you did eat that much protein, I'd love to see your diet because I don't I don't think it'd be super sustainable. You'd be basically just eating pure chicken breast all day. Yeah. So I don't think you can have too much. I think most people are under consuming, probably half, and I'm sure you've talked about the guidelines.

Philip Pape [00:18:45]:
You know, the RDA guidelines tend to be willfully inadequate compared to what especially aging individuals, especially women need to support muscle protein synthesis and at least preserve muscle if not build new muscle tissue. And so it's in that, like, 0.7 to 1 gram per pound is usually the number we throw out.

Allan [00:19:03]:
Yeah. It's it's kind of the funny thing is is these standards will be out there, and you'll see it on the on the sheet, you know, on the back on the back of the label, and you'll say, okay. Well, this is what I'm supposed to be doing, and this is where I'm supposed to be, and this is what the government says. No. That's what the government says you need just to stay alive. Yeah. That's not an optimal way to live your life, is by government standards because it obviously not gonna serve you in the long run. I think one of the other things that's that's key with this because, again, I think one of the reasons people struggle so much with protein is the other information that's out there that they're now they gotta try to avoid.

Allan [00:19:40]:
Like, you know, I I don't I don't want the cholesterol. I don't want the saturated fat. And if I eat the saturated fat, then my cholesterol is gonna go up and and all that good. So tell us a little bit about that area, what your thoughts are there.

Philip Pape [00:19:53]:
I so there's a a whole bucket of things like that. Seed oils, saturated fat, you name it. I think if you have a diverse diet that's, like, 80% of whole foods, you're probably far beyond what most people are in terms of having the right balance of things in there. I will say there are you can have too much of things like saturated fat. You can definitely go a little bit overboard if you have a very high meat based diet. And if that's the case, you probably look at data and if your lipids are are higher than they should be, maybe that's an opportunity. But I don't like to fear monger with any of this stuff. Definitely seed oils, artificial sweeteners, like, they can be in your diet, you know? Again, you have to listen to your feedback, your biofeedback, and you have to see what it's doing for you.

Philip Pape [00:20:38]:
But, man, if you're lifting weights, if you're eating lots of protein, if you're if you're getting the energy, those things become much less of a concern, in my opinion.

Allan [00:20:45]:
Yeah. I I think 80 20 is is a good place to be for a general maintenance. But I say if you're trying to make some substantial change in your life, you're gonna need to go a little harder than that, at least for a period of time. Get your body clean. Get your body moving. Right? Because and you mentioned it earlier. It's like if we're eating the wrong foods or things that our body really actually doesn't know as food, if it's messing with our microbiome because of the things that we're eating, we're not getting enough fiber, we're not getting enough protein, we're gonna put ourselves in a state of inflammation, in many cases chronic inflammation. And that's got that's that's a cytokine storm.

Allan [00:21:25]:
You know? That's that's the cortisol going up. And cortisol is catabolic, so it's gonna make it very hard for you to put on muscle. And it's gonna be very likely that you're actually putting on fat in the one place where we don't want to put fat, which is our belly. And for women that are in menopause, that's some of the change. Is that stress and everything that's going on your body, that's where that fat's gonna end up now that you're wired slightly differently than you were before you went into menopause.

Philip Pape [00:21:52]:
Let let's let's talk about this a little more because I like that you challenged me a bit, and I can communicate a little bit better where I'm coming from here. So most people are consuming 60 to 70% processed foods in this country. Right?

Allan [00:22:04]:
Yeah. If I

Philip Pape [00:22:04]:
can get you to consume 80%, that's gonna that gets you from your 20 to 80%, you know, efficacy, let's say, minimum effective dose. But you're right in saying that we eat a lot of things that just don't work for us as individuals, and the only way you can do you can tell what those are is something like an elimination diet. It doesn't have to be extreme. But, you know, kind of backing off on certain things that you may find are trigger foods or think are trigger foods. And believe it or not, that could include something like broccoli. Even though we think of that as a perfectly healthy food, some individuals have a negative reaction to it. So I agree, Allan. There there's, like, a spectrum.

Philip Pape [00:22:40]:
It depends on who your client is and who we're talking to as a population. What I find is people will go right to the 1% solution first, and they'll just start cutting everything out, but they don't get enough protein, and they're not lifting weights, and they're not sleeping at least 7 you know what I mean? And and that's where we get into the kind of my approach is more let's let's let's do the big rock then the medium rock then the small rock, but I don't disagree that there are inflammatory foods and you don't want to eat more ultra processed foods and more triggering foods in than you should.

Allan [00:23:11]:
Yeah. Because sometimes it works like this. You sit there and you you it's, you know, girl scout season, and you you eat a whole sleeve of Thin Mints. Yes. It's happened.

Philip Pape [00:23:23]:
What's what's the what's the chocolate and coconut ones? Yeah.

Allan [00:23:26]:
Yeah. It's happened. And and but what happens then is because your body started tasting the sugar, it started thinking something sweet was gonna come with all the minerals and vitamins that would normally come with something like that. And you get through, and your your body's like, well, I didn't get the nutrition I I really thought I was gonna get. I want more. Now we're interpreting it more cookies, but that's not what our body was actually telling us. It's like, okay. There's there's supposed to be some vitamins and minerals in this stuff you're eating.

Allan [00:23:58]:
So where is it? You know? So I do think that we just we we do have to recognize that, you know, what 80 20 really is is not Girl Scout cookies. You know? Okay. So my calories for the week, you know, 20% of it was Girl Scout cookies. It's still generally trying to make sure you're giving your body the nutrition it needs.

Philip Pape [00:24:19]:
You know, it's interesting in that case, so I'm I'm gonna reverse engineer it.

Allan [00:24:23]:
Uh-huh. There you go.

Philip Pape [00:24:24]:
And if if somebody were to be eating that way, let's say it was a client of mine and they were tracking they'd be tracking things like hunger, they're also tracking the amount of fiber they get. Something's probably gonna be off in in that equation, like, they're they're not gonna feel great with their digestion or they're gonna have more hunger because they're eating this ultra processed food that doesn't fill them up. And so if you kind of account for the whole picture, the satiety, the fiber, you know, some micronutrients you're tracking, it it tend I find it tends to work for a lot of people that way as opposed to trying to force it necessarily. Yeah. It it's the same it's the same end result, Allan, is is what I'm getting at and I I totally agree we have to have the micronutrient diversity. Right? We have to have the fiber, the satiety. I want you to feel satisfied but not emotionally, you know, not not through emotional craving satisfaction, but through, hey. I'm full.

Philip Pape [00:25:13]:
My digestion's good. I can wake up in the morning after a restful night of sleep, and I can hit the gym and get all the reps. If anything's missing from that equation, then then then maybe there's a a problem there.

Allan [00:25:23]:
Alright. So let's move to the gym. We're gonna be working out. We wanna we want to lose most most folks would be in the state of saying, I wanna lose weight, and I'm adding more bat to my my belly. I know my muscle mass is going down, so I know the £20 I gained in the last 2 years. I know that's not muscle. I'm not gonna argue, and I'm gonna lie to myself that it's muscle. I know it's fat.

Allan [00:25:48]:
And I know if I'm losing muscle and I'm gaining fat and I'm getting heavier, that's that's not a really good route that you wanna take towards old age. What types of movement and how much should we be considering as a plan or at least a starting plan to get going?

Philip Pape [00:26:07]:
Number 1 for me is always gonna be building muscle, strength training, resistance training of some kind. I don't care who you are, how old you are, what limitations you have. You know, I I knew a guy, Kevin McShann, who is in wheelchair. He lifts weights. Like, you pretty much don't have an excuse. But more importantly from the positive perspective, lifting weights is so health centered more than people give it credit for. Hormones, yes. Right? Lifting weights can increase growth hormone and testosterone.

Philip Pape [00:26:35]:
We also know it improves your metabolic health. We also know it counteracts, frailty and loss of bone density and all of that. So oh, and it increases insulin sensitivity. Like, again, another thing people aren't all always aware of that it muscles are soup sync for glucose. So you can have a little bit more variety in your your diet, you can have the carbs, and you're supporting your activity. So that's the activity I'm gonna start with number 1. Number 2 would be just general movement. I think people need to be off their butt for a decent part of the day.

Philip Pape [00:27:06]:
Whether that's walking I'm not too specific about it other than getting enough activity because you know cardio is not gonna kill your gains you can walk as much as you want Just get up because being sedentary in sitting is its own risk factor, its own factor for mortality and disease. So lifting weights, moving, and not being sedentary are a good place to start.

Allan [00:27:28]:
Yeah. Now one of the things that I think a lot of people lose in this whole math is is they go with the concept that more is better. And when we're talking about hormones, that's not always the case.

Philip Pape [00:27:41]:
Okay. Is that a question? Sorry.

Allan [00:27:43]:
I sort of a question. I didn't ask it like a question, but I just

Philip Pape [00:27:45]:
I was I was giving you the space. Yeah. You could edit up

Allan [00:27:48]:
the the

Philip Pape [00:27:48]:
whole thing.

Allan [00:27:48]:
But but you kinda get the idea. So so tell tell me your thoughts on that, you know, the volume.

Philip Pape [00:27:54]:
So more in terms of training for Yeah. Hormones. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. No. For sure. No.

Philip Pape [00:27:58]:
I'm a huge fan of, like, time efficiency and and efficiency of movement here. That's why I love compound lifts. Right? That's why I love big, full functional natural movements like the squatting, pressing, lift, you know, picking things up with your deadlift, hinging, you know, overhead, etcetera. But not just because they use the most muscle mass and let you lift heavy weights, but they're super time efficient. You know, you could do a couple of those or 3 of those in a session that last 45 minutes and do that 3 times a week. And for most people that gets you into the range of, you know, the 5 to sense 5 to 10 sets per muscle group per week that's like the minimum for for busy people. Beyond that, you know, 3 or 4 days having a little bit of extra in there is great but a lot of people overdo it with the cardio. Right? They're doing 3, 4 days, an hour plus on whatever elliptical running stair stepper and then they might lift 2 days or they might not be lifting at all.

Philip Pape [00:28:55]:
And that could definitely backfire in terms of cortisol when we talk about hormones. Yeah. Too much stress, not recovering enough, having too much muscle tearing when you're doing, like, loaded cardio, like we see in CrossFit, boot camps, things like that. I could go on, but, like, it is a good balance of mostly lifting, some walking, a little bit of cardio, and getting plenty of sleep and rest.

Allan [00:29:16]:
Yeah. I think the sleep and rest is is kinda one of the key components there. We, more is not necessarily gonna be better. So beyond movement and nutrition, those are the 2 core areas I think we should be focused to get rolling once we get that kinda stabilized. What are some other areas we can be working on to improve our our hormone profile and and feel better and feel younger?

Philip Pape [00:29:40]:
You mentioned belly fat before, which is a big concern of women, especially, you know, they even have a term. They just call it menopause belly. Yeah. And men have the beer gut. It's really the same phenomenon. It's either hormonally related or stress related from hormones. And in in women's cases, the estrogen has a kind of a fat storage effect. And the ways to mitigate that are stress management and sleep.

Philip Pape [00:30:05]:
Right? It's it's not gonna be rocket science. Alan probably talks about it in 600 plus episodes, probably 300 of those episodes. I'm sure you've said, like, you guys just gotta sleep. We we have seen plenty of studies that show sleep deprivation, which is typically less than 5 and a half hours or so of sleep, can lead to greater visceral fat storage. So your fat distribution changes. Also, cravings go way up. Your hunger hormones go up. Right? Leptin ghrelin change so that your body says, I need to eat because you're not giving me the sleep, so I'm gonna make up for it over here with the food.

Philip Pape [00:30:36]:
So just getting more sleep and managing stress can go a massive way toward mitigating some of the hormonal, you know, issues.

Allan [00:30:44]:
And, you know, we we we talk a little bit here about losing weight, and, you know, typically, I don't like talking about it from weight. But I've I've in 9 plus years of of doing this, what I've found is I can't just say fat loss because no one no one's gonna no one's gonna pay any attention if we're just talking fat loss. But this is what we really wanna try to do. If we're carrying excess fat, it's producing estrogen. That's one of the other things that fat does. It's not just this benign thing that's hanging on our body, making us look and feel bad. It actually does produce estrogen. So, guys, that's where those moves are coming from.

Allan [00:31:20]:
You know, it's the it's your body basically saying, you know, I got all this extra estrogen, all this extra fat, and the fat's just producing this estrogen. And you see, you not only you have less testosterone if you're not training and trying to get rid of that body fat, your body's actively trying to find new places to store it. I mean, your chest is one of those.

Philip Pape [00:31:43]:
Yeah. I mean, rather I guess rather than try to, like, address hormone issues directly, we address these lifestyle things that cascade to help in your hormones, and some of them have, like, a big bang for your buck. Right? Like stress. I mean, chronic stress is just so high these days, and the older we get, we have families, we have life obligations, women who are the you know, taking care of their household. Lifting weights can counteract that. In fact, lifting weights is the number one factor for improved sleep quality as well according to some studies. But one hack that I really like is lifting in the morning. I used to be ambivalent about it or kind of neutral, and I would say, look.

Philip Pape [00:32:19]:
Just lift weights when you can. And some people would even say that lifting later in the day is slightly be more beneficial. But what we find is whatever time of day you lift, if it's consistent, you'll adapt. But secondly, doing it in the morning has shown to be beneficial for cortisol, especially in older individuals just because it, for lack of a better phrase, kinda burns off the cortisol or it it it sets you up for proper movement early in the day like we're supposed to, and then your cortisol kinda ramps down and then gets you ready for sleep later on. So just a nice little hack there.

Allan [00:32:49]:
Yeah. Excellent. So what are some things we should avoid if we're trying to manage our hormones better?

Philip Pape [00:32:58]:
Okay. So I was I wasn't gonna go here. I don't know what you think, Allan, about just toxins in the environment and plastics and personal care products and all that. Like, I used to be one of those, like, I filed in the woo category. I'm just curious of your thoughts on that before I go down that path.

Allan [00:33:14]:
Well well, it's a it's a couple different things. Okay? Everything that goes into our body is is information. But beyond that, our liver is is maybe one of the most intelligent things in our body besides our gut and our brain. And the reason is that the liver liver has to fix everything. You know, it has to fix everything. And so if we've got these toxins in our body, the liver has to process it. Okay. When you drink alcohol, the body has to process that first.

Allan [00:33:45]:
So it shifts all resources to doing that, meaning it's not doing your body's not necessarily doing other things that it should be doing. So that's that's one break in your whole metabolic process is the toxins are messing with the systems that keep you alive and keep you healthy. The other side of it is because the the liver is such a smart organ, it knows that while you're over here putting on extra fat, that's a really cool place to shuttle that stuff off to and just say goodbye to it. You know? And and if if you have a kind of a history of gaining more than you lose each time you lose weight and gain it back, it just that's what it's gonna do. It's a a repetitive process. Let's just store it there. Let's just store it there. And so you you end up with, and I I just had this interview with a doctor not long ago, sick fat.

Allan [00:34:34]:
You end up with the body that has very large fat cells and a lot of toxic crud in them, and that does that causes dysfunction of those of those fat cells. So it is it is hard, if not impossible, to avoid all of these toxins. You know, it just it just is. But to the extent that you can know, okay, I I know that, like, weed killer, glossphate glossphate or how whatever what it's called.

Philip Pape [00:35:06]:
Like a glossphate. Yeah.

Allan [00:35:08]:
Yeah. I'm like, we know. Okay. Yes. It it it does a great job of killing weeds and us.

Philip Pape [00:35:15]:
It's an endocrine disruptor. Yeah. Exactly. It goes right to the hormones.

Allan [00:35:18]:
You know? And and so I think I think there's there is a a balance, and and this is probably where the 80 20 rule makes the most sense because, you know, if you aren't paying any attention to what's in your skin care products, your hair care products, of course, like, I just use shaving cream, but or

Philip Pape [00:35:37]:
Plastic containers, you know? Yeah. You're clean. Right?

Allan [00:35:40]:
Or where you're drinking your water from, you know, and and how that's handled. Even just our municipal water supplies and what could, you know, possibly be in those. And so there I think there's just a lot of opportunity there for us to think about, can I clean up these things a little? Because if we can reduce the amount that we're exposed to, we give our body a better shot at Yeah. Hitting it and and and keeping up with it and keeping us healthier longer.

Philip Pape [00:36:08]:
Yeah. I agree. That's why I brought it up because nor normally, again, talk about the bigger things. You mentioned alcohol. I could have gone there, like, reducing alcohols only has upside for hormones. We talked about overtraining. We talked about getting enough sleep. So I was like, where where is the other thing that people are curious about? And I was thinking of that because we've seen just in my generation alone, fertility rates skyrocket and, you know, what perimenopause coming on earlier and you're like, what's going on? And and there are some links with some of these endocrine disruptors in the environment.

Philip Pape [00:36:36]:
And it's it's not a woo thing, like, there's everything is manufactured and there's so much plastic and and chemicals used. Like you said, it's just being aware and kind of being educated, but not fear mongering. Just

Allan [00:36:49]:
Yeah.

Philip Pape [00:36:50]:
Shifting, nudging, nudging yourself to make better informed decisions.

Allan [00:36:53]:
Yeah. Because I mean, you know, like, we could sit there. If if we really listened to what they say, then we would think, okay. There's no way I'm eating fish. I'm not gonna eat fish because there's microplastics in the ocean, and I don't wanna consume the microplastics. And the reality is, yeah, there are microplastics in the ocean, but also the the core and and and mercury and everything else. But the core is there are some fish that are longer lived fish that eat other fish that are higher risk. So, you know, have some swordfish now and again, but it shouldn't be a normal staple for you all the time.

Allan [00:37:30]:
Sardines are a better choice because they're not the kind of species that's eating other fish. They're not a species that are gonna be alive long enough to get as much exposure. So there are better there are better choices from time to time. But it's, you know, you need the omega 3. So don't, you know, don't pooh pooh your health over one thing because of another thing. As scary as it might sound, you know, microplastics and, you know, mercury and Yeah. It's the dose. Have some fish.

Allan [00:38:01]:
Have some fish, cheese.

Philip Pape [00:38:03]:
It's it's the dose it's the dose and the exposure. Right? Like Yeah. Diet soda gets a bad rap, but, again, I think if you're if you're if you're drinking in moderation, it's really not gonna affect you. And then same thing with, like, dyes and things like that. People are wondering about whey protein, for example. I get questions all the time, like, what brand of whey protein? I said, just pick the brand that has as few ingredients as you're hap you're comfortable with

Allan [00:38:23]:
or Yeah.

Philip Pape [00:38:23]:
Or as many as you're comfortable with but at the fewest because, yeah, if you're eating, you know, 8 scoops of protein powder every day, and it's the kind with artificial sweetener and red dye and everything, maybe there's some cumulative effect that you're not gonna like down the road, and better safe than sorry kind of, thought on that. You know?

Allan [00:38:39]:
Yeah. And and I I you're you're completely right. It's like people will ask me. It's like, you know, what what whey protein do you do you usually use? And I'm like, I don't usually have to supplement protein because I eat.

Philip Pape [00:38:54]:
There's that too.

Allan [00:38:54]:
For sure. You know? I eat protein, and, and so I don't really have to do that very often. When I when I choose that I need to do it or I wanna do it, then, yeah, I'm gonna go with the purest I can get because and this is kind of a little known thing, is that whey whey protein is a byproduct. Okay? And and so the dairy people, they don't need it. They don't want it. They should throw it away before we decided we were gonna start using it for protein. But it's all just accumulated. It's it's not like there's a you know, this guy's making better whey than that guy.

Allan [00:39:28]:
For the most part, it's all they're all buying the same way.

Philip Pape [00:39:32]:
Mhmm.

Allan [00:39:33]:
And they're putting in their product. They're adding their own flavors and preservatives and colors and and all that type of thing so that they could sell you strawberry and chocolate and mocha, whatever. And then we can put it in bars and sell it to you that way so you're just basically eating candy to get to your protein number.

Philip Pape [00:39:54]:
It's true because when when you sell somebody did you know they actually sell pure whey? You could just get that and then kind of flavor yourself in a smoothie. Well, I don't like how that tastes. I'm like, well, okay. Now we've got a problem here. Like Yeah. You know, there's Well,

Allan [00:40:05]:
that's why I I'll buy the I'll buy the grass fed, grass finished way. And in a, you know, usually in a big bin, you know, there's a few companies I trust that they're not gonna, you know, the labels are what they say they are. And when you look on the back to the label and you turn it around, it says whey. It's the only ingredient. Exactly. Okay. And the other thing you can look at is, okay. So here's a scoop, and the scoop is 36 grams.

Allan [00:40:33]:
And how much protein do I get?

Philip Pape [00:40:36]:

36. Right? Might be 35 with you know? Yeah.

Allan [00:40:41]:
You know? So there there are ways for us to reduce the exposure. There are ways for us to improve the quality and quantity of our sleep. There are ways for us to reduce our stress load through stress management and, getting negative people out of your life. And I think one of the biggest ones, and I'd like to get your take on this a little bit, is the effect that self talk has on our hormone profile.

Philip Pape [00:41:10]:
Oh, man. I mean, self talk goes directly to mood, right, and to mental health. In fact, I know we're gonna get to, like, 3 strategies to get and stay well. One of those I was gonna allude to was the positivity in your life. And and I use that kind of at a high level because I think everyone has different challenges. Right? Some people are more optimistic. Like, I have an optimism bias and so I tend to, like, think things are gonna go well and so I I I kind of embrace that future identity idea. Some people just everything the sky is falling all the time.

Philip Pape [00:41:43]:
Right? The sky is falling all the time. And so we do know that there's a direct link with the endocrine system with, you know, things like endorphins even just in the short term with it's not the self talk just in isolation, it's what the self talk then leads to. It it leads to kind of a lack of control, an external locus instead of an internal locus. Right? The lack of choice and empowerment and agency that's all associated with self determination. And, like, yes, I can go from here to there on my own volition. Maybe I need some support. That's great. That's fine.

Philip Pape [00:42:14]:
In fact, I encourage it. But, yeah, that that that's where I'd say the link occurs. And so Atomic Habits. Right? Everybody knows Atomic Habits by James Clear. I think in there, he talks about reversing how we think of what we do and and our behavior change instead of thinking, I need to do this to become this person. We think, I'm this person, so I'm gonna do this. And that's kinda like reframing the self talk into a positive identity. Yeah.

Philip Pape [00:42:38]:
So I think it's huge, Allan.

Allan [00:42:40]:
Yeah. Well, that's that's the that's the be, do, have kinda mindset where what are the people who do who are like this? What do they do? Just start doing those things, and then eventually, you will you'll be that person.

Philip Pape [00:42:53]:
Yeah. It's huge. So there's a woman in my group coaching. She calls me the positivity bully. That's what she's been calling me lately with in in all, like, positivity. Right? She but she's gotten to the point where she knows if something comes out of her mouth that's like a fixed mindset statement, like, I am this, she's immediately like, wait wait wait a minute. That's not the way I meant to say it, and she'll reframe it. So I'm like, I got you trained.

Allan [00:43:17]:
Yeah. It's working. It's not in the way.

Philip Pape [00:43:19]:
But it really is that. It's like reframing everything. And going back to being an engineer, like, one of the things engineers do is they don't have failure in their vocabulary. Everything that happens is just something that teaches you what to do. So even from a day to day, like, could either have an all or nothing mentality where I'm a failure and then boom I'm off my program or this happened, what do I learn from it and what do I do differently? And if I am having trouble doing something differently, there's another opportunity there with friction or reward system or whatever it is that encourages me to to make it easier on myself.

Allan [00:43:53]:
Well, Philip, I define wellness as being the healthiest, fittest, and happiest you can be. What are three strategies or tactics to get and stay well?

Philip Pape [00:44:01]:
Alright. So fittest has gotta be strength training. I just have to like, everybody's gotta do that, man. I don't I don't there's no excuse, for hormone health, for, mental health, for self identity, all of that stuff we just talked about. So I would say, you know, lift weights, build that muscle, be the fittest person you can be till you're 95 and like I say, you croak doing a deadlift when you're 95. That's what I wanna do. That's fittest. Healthiest would be from a nutrition standpoint, I think starting from the big rocks like I mentioned earlier.

Philip Pape [00:44:31]:
I mean, I I love everything Allan says here getting into the all the details we need to nail down eventually. Protein and fiber, I think is a good starting place. If every meal has that, you're you you've made a step change, and then from that point, you can start to to go down the the tracking and the micronutrients and everything else. And then from happiest, I think we kind of alluded to it. It's getting positivity in your life. That's people who are positive, who support you. They may not get you. They may not totally understand you.

Philip Pape [00:45:00]:
That's fine. We know how family is. But it's kinda getting rid of the toxicity, getting rid of the negatives. And one one great way to do that is listening to podcasts like Allan's, joining groups online who who have the same goals, and, you know, consuming consuming positive content rather than say, for example, the political news these days.

Allan [00:45:21]:
Yes. There is that. Thank you.

Philip Pape [00:45:24]:
I can't help myself because it is entertaining, but, yeah, it could be too much.

Allan [00:45:28]:
It is. It it's it is too much, but alright. So, Philip, if someone wanted to learn more about you, learn more about wits and weights, where would you like for me to send them?

Philip Pape [00:45:39]:
Send them to the podcast, wits and weights, and then they can just reach out to me at witsandweights.com. Alright.

Allan [00:45:45]:
So you can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.comforward/658, and I'll be sure to have links there. Philip, thank you for being a part of 40+ Fitness. Allan, thank you for the opportunity. Welcome back,

Rachel [00:45:59]:
Raz. Hey, Allan. That was a really fun interview. Philip sounds like a really interesting person and an engineer, a physique engineer. I sometimes it takes, like, a different way of thinking to figure things out. I I appreciate his, ability to do that.

Allan [00:46:16]:
Yeah. You know, whenever I'm working with someone, even when I was working with my just to myself Mhmm. I needed processes in place. I needed some things to make it easier, you know, to remove friction from what I wanted to do. And I didn't have a coach at the time to help me do that. So it was like, okay. What do I do to solve this problem? Because if I wanna do this, I have to solve this problem. So it was sometimes adding friction to things that I didn't wanna do and removing friction from things that I did wanna do.

Allan [00:46:48]:
And very much you start talking to engineers, friction can be a big part of any, anything that they're doing. And so that, you know yeah. I I I totally agree that you need to have some system that that you can rely on that's working for you and developing a good system for yourself. So that can be a challenge. But, once you get it done, it's it's it's actually really, really nice.

Rachel [00:47:10]:
Oh, absolutely. And it it's our lives change over time as we age. Like you had discussed, our hormones just get out of whack. I'm going through menopause and everything is different. And so, like, everything that I used to do in the past needs to change to address the way my body is working today, and and I think everybody that's aging is gonna go through similar situations. Maybe you're prone to heart disease or diabetes, or maybe you're prone to anemia or any other thing. So then there's no one size fits all. Everybody's gotta kinda troubleshoot little problem solving on their own issues and figure out how to deal with it.

Allan [00:47:51]:
Yeah. Well, there is no one size fits all, but there are some commonalities that we all share

Philip Pape [00:47:58]:
Mhmm.

Allan [00:47:58]:
You know, things we we should do and things we shouldn't do Mhmm. If if we wanna live healthy, you know, fit lives. And so, yeah, there there are some some similarities, but there are, yes, also some differences in how each of us apply those things.

Rachel [00:48:14]:
Mhmm. And on the things that we should do, you spent some time talking about strength training and how important that is at probably every age, but most importantly over 40.

Allan [00:48:24]:
Yeah. I would say don't don't don't strength train a kid under 10, but because they're growing and there's other things going on. But for everybody else, strength training should be core to what we do.

Rachel [00:48:36]:
Oh, absolutely. And then, like I had mentioned earlier, as as we do age and all of these things in our lives change, no matter how well you eat and no matter how well you exercise, if you can't manage stress and sleep, that's gonna just upset the balance of everything. It's 2 steps forward and one step back.

Allan [00:48:56]:
Yeah. Well, you know, stress stress is something that is basically, you know, in a normal situation, stress is good. I mean, you know, if there's a bear, the stress helps you. Like, if you're if you're about to step out into a highway and there's a car coming, and all of a sudden you get this surge of energy fight and flight, and you're able to jump back and not get hit by the car, that's that's that's good. I mean, you want that. You don't want to be relaxed, sloth, watching the car hit you. You you want that capacity to jump back and do the thing, that you wouldn't necessarily be able to do otherwise. But we live in a world of chronic stress.

Allan [00:49:34]:
So there's stressors that are always there. The bear is always there. The car is always there, and we can't we can't stay there. So we we have to implement things that are going to allow us to manage our own stress. And then where sleep is concerned. Yeah. It's it's the cycle that helps us do everything. Like, everything is built on that.

Allan [00:49:53]:
So if if you're not sleeping well and you're not going through full sleep cycles, you're not getting what your brain needs. You're not giving what your hormones need to cycle through because they're all set up on an on a cycle, a a daily cycle. And so that circadian rhythm is there to tell you, okay. And and so we know if you're not asleep between 10 and 2, that's a core time that your body would be doing the things Mhmm. That it needs to do. And, you know, a lot of people say, oh, I won't go to bed until 11 or 12. It's like, okay. That might be a problem if you're not feeling it.

Allan [00:50:29]:
If you feel like you're getting older faster than you should. You've got you've gotta get better sleep.

Rachel [00:50:34]:
Better sleep for sure. And then it was always nice to hear you discuss things to avoid. I mean, certainly the toxins in the environment, that's easy. We live around too many plastics and too many chemicals like our, Roundup and stuff like that. But you also mentioned alcohol, and that's kind of a controversial topic there.

Allan [00:50:54]:
Well, it can be, but it shouldn't be. I mean, let's let's face it. Okay. Most people that are using alcohol consistently, like on a almost daily basis, it is their regimen for stress management. It's, you know, and I understand that. I've been in a similar situation. I was working really hard and I was stressed in my job. You go back to the hotel, there's the hotel bar.

Allan [00:51:17]:
And it's nice. You have a few drinks, you forget about your day, and then you crash. The problem is that that doesn't really solve the stress problem. You just increased the cortisol problem. Again, the stress was still there. You masked it. You didn't solve it. You didn't reduce it.

Allan [00:51:36]:
And then as far as sleep, if you have alcohol in your system, you're not going through proper sleep cycles. You're not getting restful sleep. So you might be unconscious for 8 hours, but you did not get 8 hours of quality sleep. And so from that perspective, it is harming you more than it's helping you in all cases. And, yeah, okay, fine. Go have a couple drinks with your friends every once in a while. That's not a problem. But if you're using it as a coping mechanism, you really have to rethink that strategy because

Philip Pape [00:52:09]:
Oh, yeah.

Allan [00:52:09]:
It's it's not doing what you think it's doing.

Rachel [00:52:12]:
No. Gosh. Even maybe 10 or 15 years ago, it was kind of normal for the wine industry. You'd have a glass of red wine at dinner because it's supposedly good for you in some way. And and nowadays, there's just no way. I could not have a glass of wine with dinner and and sleep well. I just know that I'm up for a bed and I just sleep if I do. But, yeah, it's different, especially as you age.

Allan [00:52:38]:
Yeah. And so this is what we have to look at is is as we're trying to do this, you know, we're providing this information to our body, the quality of our sleep, the stress management, the strength training, the eating properly, the avoiding chemicals. All of those things are information in your body to get better, to heal, to feel better. And the way it does that is through hormones. And so if you can do the right things for your body, no matter your age, you're optimizing your hormones for what it is for where you are at that point in time. And as a result, you're going to get better results. You're going to feel better. You're going to be healthier.

Allan [00:53:21]:
You're going to lose weight. All those things that you want to do Mhmm. Just have to dial those things in. When we're older, we have to dial them in just a little bit more than we did when we were younger. But, yeah, it it you know, doing the things that your body needs you to do and avoiding the things that you shouldn't be, that's all a part of this challenge and how we get where we need to be.

Rachel [00:53:42]:
No. That's perfect. It was really great conversation.

Allan [00:53:45]:
Alright. Well, I will talk to you next week.

Rachel [00:53:47]:
Great. Take care, Allan.

Allan [00:53:49]:
You too. Bye.

Rachel [00:53:50]:
Thank you. Bye bye.

Music by Dave Gerhart

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Another episode you may enjoy

Introduction

On episode 657 of the 40+ Fitness Podcast, we discuss finding discipline in your health and fitness journey. 

Your Best Self Workshop – 40plusfitness.com/best.

Episode Notes

Coach Allan:
Hey, Raz. How are things?

Rachel:
Good, Allan. How are you today?

Coach Allan:
I am excellent. Thank you.

Rachel:
Good. That's good to hear.

Coach Allan:
Tammy's back.

Rachel:
So Yay. That's good.

Coach Allan:
So that's been good. And then, yes, I'm I'm in the the throes right now of launching my, workshop that starts in just a few days on on the second. That's a 5 day workshop, and it's for mindset and stuff. So some of the things we're talking about here, if this is an area where you struggle, that's what we're gonna do for those 5 sessions across 5 days. They are recorded. You know, as a bonus, I'll make those recordings available to the folks for a period of time, and there is a community, because I got a a review. The last one I did, I think I did it on a Saturday, and I did it. It it was like 4 hours. The review I got was a 3 star. It's the only 3 star review I've ever gotten. And, she said it was too long, and because no well, she said it was too long. It should have probably been broken up into at least 2 sessions.

Rachel:
Mhmm.

Coach Allan:
And and then she said because none of us none of the participants knew each other, no one was talking. Even though I was trying to solicit their involvement through the chat and through talking, no one would speak up, and she thinks that's because there wasn't a place for them to kinda get to know each other beforehand. So this has both of those. But, obviously, you know, join now. They're they're already in there having their party. So, you're gonna wanna go check it out. But it's at 40plusfitness.com/best. I'm calling it your best self workshop. Basically, everything you need to build a rock solid mindset and motivation to get you wherever you wanna go in your health and fitness.

Rachel:
That's awesome. That sounds like fun.

Coach Allan:
Alright. So what have you been up to?

Rachel:
Good. I I ran this morning, Allan. I ran 7 miles, and I am tired. I need a nap. Yeah. But it was a good run, and I have run club actually tonight. So I'm taking my break, getting my fueling in and some hydration, and I'll be ready to go again later tonight.

Coach Allan:
Yeah. So it's still kinda warm up there.

Rachel:
It is a little toasty, but it's okay. It it'll, I'm enjoying every minute of the summer.

Coach Allan:
Good. Good. Good. Alright. Are you ready to talk about discipline?

Rachel:
Sure.

Coach Allan:
Today, I wanna talk about a word used quite a bit on health and fitness, forums and Facebook groups and things like that, and the word is discipline. So today, I'm gonna help you find discipline if that's what we're really looking for. I'll describe the way this conversation typically goes. So we'll be on Facebook. There's a group. Someone's really struggling. Okay? They can't stick to the way of eating. They can't do the workouts, just, you know, a myriad of different reasons, excuses, if you will, for why they they cannot do what they want to do, and I think most of us can relate to that at some level.

Then somebody will step in and say, you just have to have discipline. You just have to get discipline. And they don't I decided, okay. 1, I don't think that's the right word. I decided I was just gonna go ahead and look it up. Okay? And in the Oxford Dictionary, it defines discipline as the practice of training people to obey rules or a code of behavior using punishment to correct disobedience. I don't want that. Is that what you want? And and I guess what really bothers me when they throw out that statement, you just have to be disciplined.

You have to find discipline or be disciplined. When they put that out there, it's not really helping the individual because the individual who's asking the question wants to be obedient. They want to be able to follow these rules. They want to obey the code of behavior. And so they want these things, but they're not quite there. And so just telling them to do it is like when I say, I don't know how. I can't fly. And they're like, well, just fly.

Just do it. And and you and you again, I if I don't know how to do it, I can't do it. So I wanted to talk a little bit about that because if you feel like you don't have discipline, or that you don't have what you need to be successful, we gotta figure that out. So the first thing is, do you really feel like you need punishment to comply? And I think for most of us, the answer is no. But the unfortunate thing is we have that voice in our head that does punish us over and over and over again. So we are punished when we feel guilt and remorse and shame and all those different things for not complying with a certain way of eating or a certain diet or a certain exercise program or just showing up, and it's just not working. So if you're struggling to eat right, to move right, to do some of these things, I don't think you need discipline. I don't think you need punishment.

I think you need a plan. And today, I'm gonna talk through the steps that you should take to go ahead and get a good plan going for yourself, one that will help you get this done. Okay? One that will get you to a point where you basically are disciplined, if you will. You are obedient. You are obeying these codes of behavior. You've got a plan. You need a plan to get there. So your plan should start with accountability.

Most of us skip this point. We just start doing the thing, and then we stop doing the thing because it's hard. We start doing the thing, and then after a while, we don't see results, so we quit doing the thing. So what you need is you need some accountability. And so who are you bringing on your team? Because this is the team sport. Getting healthy and fit is not an individual sport. Who are you bringing on your team to hold you accountable? Should you hire a coach, a personal trainer, or a nutritionist that you'll report back to? Do you have friends and family that will that will call you out when you're not following through? That you you know, if you've told them you wanna do this and then you don't, they're gonna feel disappointed in you. Do you have those people? Now me, personally, I look for as much accountability as I can get when I'm going into something like this.

And so as you start thinking about your journey, who is there to hold you accountable? Now maybe you're saying to yourself, I can't afford to hire a coach. And the truth is that's just a self limiting belief. You probably can, but what you haven't done is you haven't committed to change. Because when you're committed, you do what's necessary. You make things happen. So let me tell you a little story about what I went through when I was struggling. So I wanted to change. I really did.

And I tried, and I tried, and I tried, and I failed, and I failed, and I failed. And I found myself 8 years down the line in worse shape than I was when I started. I was heavier. I was less healthy. I was less fit, and I was miserable. And then I was on a call with my daughter, and she said to me, daddy, will you come watch me do a CrossFit competition? And that hit me in the gut because I had never really thought of myself as a spectator in her life. I always wanted to be a participant. I wanted to be able to do things with her, not watch her.

And so I sat down, and I I had this and I sat I tell people I do this all the time, and I do. I have this meeting with myself. Okay? And I was asking myself, why is this so hard? Why is losing weight? Why is getting fit? Why is being healthy so hard? And I've done hard things before. I've done some very hard things before. And that's when it hit me. I had committed to those other things. I had not yet committed to this. So when I was committed to doing something, I put in the hours.

I spent the money. So the CPA exam that I took, okay, back then, it was a 4 part exam. The pass rate on that was astronomically hard. It was harder than the than the medical board. It was harder than law bar exam. It was it was the most difficult professional exam I think you could take. There were 4 parts. You took over 2 and a half days.

If you didn't get a minimum score on some of them, you couldn't keep any of them, and you have to come back and take all 4 again. And so I was committed to pass the exam on the first try. And so what did that look like? Well, that looked like every waking moment that I was not working full time, which I had a full time job. I wasn't working or I wasn't in school. I was studying. And even when I was in school, I was taping taking subjects that were gonna be on the exam. So I literally studied every waking moment for 3 solid months. I bought cassette tapes that I could play in my car and under my bed when I was asleep.

I bought some software. It's most at that point in time, it was the most expensive thing I had bought. It was the software that I got to study was more expensive than the computer, and computers were not cheap back then. So I'd financed a computer so I could be at home studying, and I bought this software package, And I could so I could basically take the take the practice exams over and over and over again. I I and I bought all these Gleim books, all these books that I could just they had questions. They had discussion, and I would go through those books every day. That's commitment. That's investment.

Investing time, effort, and money. So when I finally did realize that's what I needed for my health and fitness, I made that commitment. And because of my work conditions that made it difficult, I couldn't really hire a trainer and meet with a trainer all the time, and there were no online trainers. I spent tens of 1,000 of dollars to become a personal trainer, to learn what I needed to know to fix myself. I don't recommend you to go that route. It's easier today. I paid for a session with a nutritionist because I wanted to get my stuff self started. I didn't wanna wait until I was getting into the nutrition part of my education, so I paid for a nutritionist to sit down and and come up with a plan for me.

Okay. I got a DEXA scan, and with that DEXA scan, I had the ugly fat jelly picture of myself where I could see that half of my body was fat. Nearly half of my body weight was fat, and I could see it on that picture. And then I signed up for a Tough Mudder with my daughter, and that's a hard race. I didn't want to let her down. I wanted to do the race with her. I wanted to be that person. I wanted to be a participant doing something I knew my daughter would enjoy that would challenge her and definitely challenge me.

So all of these things that I did there were commitment. And so once I had commitment and some accountability because, yeah, signing up for Tough Mudder and my daughter knowing November we're gonna go do a Tough Mudder, I have to show up. I have to do the work. I did. Okay? So what I want you to do now to start this whole process by building a team that will hold you accountable, And you're going to have to invest in yourself. Nobody's ever gotten there free. They just haven't. You have to invest in either some education and accountability.

You have to invest time, effort, and money. And that's what it's gonna take. If you invest in yourself, you're never gonna regret it. I never have. So make an investment, get the accountability and support you need, and then you're ready for the next step. Now, the next step in the plan is also very important, and this is where you have to put into your headspace that you are the CEO of your body. You're making all of the decisions for your body. You decide your movement.

You decide your nutrition. You decide your thoughts. You decide your stress levels that you're gonna accept. You decide your sleep. You decide all of that. Okay? So as the CEO, if you really wanna make sure this happens, then as a CEO, you've gotta put the things in place that will help you get there. Losing weight and getting stronger is not hard. We as the CEO have not made it easy yet.

Okay. So what are some ways that we can make it easier on ourself? Okay. And then as we're talking about being the CEO, we're talking about self management. So the first thing that you're gonna do is that you're gonna start setting goals for yourself. You're not gonna go at this half baked. You're not gonna say, okay. I'm gonna lift weights a little, and I'm gonna move a little. I'm gonna go to the gym a few times.

I'm gonna eat better. But you you're not measuring that. That's not a goal. You're not gonna do it. Set goals that you can measure and get done, and then just knock them out one right after the other as you progress. The next thing you wanna look at is ways that you can use friction to make this easier. And what I mean by friction is, okay, if I know I have a weakness for cookies, I do not want them sitting on the counter when I get home from work or I'm gonna be eating some cookies. Okay.

I had a a client, and she had a habit. So each day, she'd come in from work, and she would go by and pick up the mail out of the mailbox, and she'd go into the kitchen. She'd plop the mail on the countertop there, open up the cabinet, and start snacking while she opened up the mail. And she realized that this snacking was really making it difficult for her to be successful at weight loss. So what did she do? Well, first off, she didn't go into the in the kitchen to open the mail. She went into the living room, sat at the coffee table sat at the on the couch with the coffee table, and that's where she'd open the meals. So the snacks weren't in her face. That's friction.

Not having the stuff in your house is friction. But you also want to reduce friction for things that you want to do. So having a gym that's 20 miles away isn't really a good idea because there's gonna be days you just don't feel like making that drive. But having one in your house or having one that's really, really close to your house that maybe you could even walk to, that you're gonna drive by on your way to work every morning, that's reducing friction. Coming up with workouts you can do at home, reducing friction. And then the next thing is learning from mistakes. Okay? As a CEO, your business is gonna make mistakes, or things are just gonna happen. Okay? Your your body you're gonna do things that you don't mean to do.

And what you wanna do as a CEO is to analyze that and figure out why it happened and see what you can do to prevent it. So I've told this story before, and if you've heard it, apologize, but I'm gonna say it again. When I was first getting in this, I committed, and I was like, okay. So I'm gonna work out from 2 to 3 o'clock in the afternoon at the gym closest to my house and closest to my work. I lived about an hour away from the gym. So to reduce friction at gyms, I had a gym I had a gym membership in Louisiana where I live, and I had a gym membership in Arkansas where I worked. And then eventually, I built my own home gym because I wanted to. I had 3 gyms, basically, access to 3 different gyms.

So I realized because I would get to work, I would go to get changed for the gym, and sometimes there'd just be something missing from the bag. It might be the t shirt. It might be the shorts. It might be socks. One day, it was a shoe. I had one shoe in the bag, and the other shoe was not in the bag. And I don't know how that happened, but I realized that I was probably subconsciously sabotaging my own self. So that mistake was costing me workouts that I didn't wanna miss, but, invariably, I must have because I kept not packing my bag properly.

So I printed out and laminated a piece of paper that had a list of everything that needed to be in that bag. Everything. And I would sit there each night, and I'd go each down each item that was supposed to be on that that was on that list and make sure it went into the bag. I would pack up the bag, put that list in there, close the bag, and then I would take it over and set it by the door that I was gonna use in the morning to go walk out to the carport. And I would have to step over it to go outside. So it was there. I was gonna grab it, and I I was gonna have it. That reduced the number of times I didn't work out, which meant I was more consistent, which means I got better results.

So learning from your mistakes is a big part of this journey. Don't let them break you down. Look. Don't let them make you fail. Just learn from them and move on. Forgive yourself, learn from them, and move on. Okay? And then the final bit that you're gonna wanna do as a CEO is you're gonna wanna understand who you are because some of us are wired certain ways, and some of us are wired other ways. I'm an all or nothing guy.

Okay? If if I'm on, I'm way on. If I'm off, I'm way off. There's no moderation in practically anything I do. Almost none. And so I can't go in with the plan that I'm going to moderate my sugar intake, or I'm gonna moderate my alcohol intake, or I'm gonna moderate my exercise. Once I start getting into those things, I'm all in. So good or bad, it is what it is, and I need to understand that about myself so that I'm setting up a plan that works with that. I also need to understand my mindset.

Okay? And I have a quiz at 40plusfitness.com/quiz that'll help you find your health and fitness mindset. Most of the time, these mindsets are blocking us. We're these mindsets are stepping in the way, and they're keeping us from being successful. But once you know what that mindset is, you can go ahead and and do some work on yourself and flip that mindset. So what I know about myself is that right now, I'm what I call an atlas. Well, an atlas is someone who needs direction. I need to know where I'm going. I need to have something big or something I'm going toward in front of me.

If I don't, I begin to meander. I I don't feel like I'm accomplishing anything, and I'm not I don't really feel motivated to do anything. So by me knowing that I I need to have some things in front of me, I like to challenge myself with different stuff. And that's you heard the tough mutter. That was that part of my mindset coming out was I want something big and scary in front of me, so I'll do the work because I have a lot of work to do. And I did. You might have a different mindset and need to do something slightly different. So if you go take that quiz, 40plusfitness.com/quiz, takes about 60 seconds.

It's absolutely free. You'll get a free a free report custom for you and your mindset type, and it's gonna give you some guidance on how you can use your mindset as a superpower. And once you tackle that first mindset, you may need to look at some others. I did. And then as you work through those, now you have a plan. And so as you go through this and you realize, okay. I am committed. I have accountability.

I am the CEO, and I'm making this easier and easier as I go, and I'm correcting my mistakes. Then what you're gonna start to notice is that this becomes a part of you. The things that you're doing are a part of your habits and values. The thought of not doing them doesn't make sense to you, and you begin to identify as a healthy and fit person. And as the weight comes off, this is who you are. Okay? And when these guys on the social media, say you need, I you know, discipline, they already identify as someone who does the work. So they don't they don't look back and think, well, I needed accountability. I needed, you know, to commit, and I need it because those things probably happened so early in their life, they don't even remember that happening.

You know, they they probably don't remember a high school coach telling them they need to lift weights if they wanna make the football team. They probably don't remember going out with the team and not wanting to be the slowest, weakest guy or girl. They probably don't remember a lot of that stuff. But all that stuff happened at one point in their life, and then they began to identify as someone who is healthy and fit and eats good food, does the movement, does the things. That's who they are. Now you're gonna do that too. As you get through this, you're gonna feel like this is just a part of you, and it'll be hard for you to understand someone else struggling with it, but I want you to. So don't be asked like they are.

If you see someone complaining on Facebook that they just aren't getting anywhere, realize they just don't have commitment, and they don't have a plan. So I hope this was helpful. Just to kinda summarize this again. As you look at this health and fitness journey, it's not supposed to be hard. Okay? It's not. We make it hard. We make it hard because maybe we're just not committed enough. We're not doing the stuff.

We make it hard because we don't build a team for accountability, and we make it hard because we don't step up and take ownership of ourselves and self manage as the CEO of ourselves. And then we don't do these things consistently enough that they become our values and habits, and we begin to identify as the person we're supposed to be. So if you'll take the time to do this, make the commitment, do the stuff, you will get results.

Coach Allan:
Welcome back, Raz.

Rachel:
Hey, Allan. This was a really great discussion. I mean, discipline is definitely not a super fun word, and the Nike adage, just do it, is just it's not that easy. It just takes time to develop, and I love starting with accountability. I really think that having people in your life that can support you or having, you know, run like, I talk about run clubs all the time. Having something on the schedule and having people expecting you to be there is really a great place to start.

Coach Allan:
Yes. If you can count on them. So a lot of times, I think what people do is they they start out great. They've got you know, they tell someone, I, you know, I want you to help me do this. And the person's like, absolutely. Or, you know, it's a relative or something. You're gonna walk after work. And then something happens.

Coach Allan:
They break their foot. They, you know, their hours change. Something happens, and they're not showing up.

Rachel:
Mhmm.

Coach Allan:
And that support's not there, and then you quit doing the thing. And so if you're going to look at accountability, you have to realize that accountability is a limited resource. It will run out. It will end at some point. You can get into better and better accountability. Obviously, a group is gonna be better than an individual because the individual could go away. If you're gonna hire a coach, you know, how long are you gonna hire them, and what are you gonna use them for, and everything there. So there are ways to get accountability quickly, and then there are ways to make sure that you have a more robust accountability.

Coach Allan:
And so you should be working on that, but don't stop there. You need to start working on yourself, and that's self management and then getting habits and values because we have all these ruts in our in our mind that what we used to do and how we used to do things. And so if you tell your spouse, it's like, I'm gonna eat this certain way.

Rachel:
Mhmm.

Coach Allan:
And they're like, well, I don't really wanna eat that way. And you're like, that's okay. And then they come home with, a very large pizza that's your favorite kind of pizza. And you're like, well, pizza isn't on the plan. I have my food already in the refrigerator ready to warm up and go, and they're eating pizza. And now you're eating pizza. And and so, you know, you gotta realize that some of the accountability and things that you have are actually were pulling you in the other direction. And if you don't set up good structure and you don't get into the, okay, I am the boss myself and setting your own rules and and putting strategies in place so that you know? Because, again, if you came home and had to cook and that pizza's sitting there, you are definitely eating the pizza because you're not gonna take the time to cook a meal.

Coach Allan:
But if you had your stuff pre prepped

Rachel:
Mhmm.

Coach Allan:
It's a little easier to do. And but all this has to be built out, and it has to be built out to work for you. And that's why it's such a struggle when someone will be on there, and they're really upset, and they're they can't understand why they keep failing. Mhmm. And then some dude just pipes up and says, you just gotta have discipline. And I'm like…

Rachel:
If only I have that easy. Right?

Coach Allan:
It doesn't work. Like, it doesn't work like that. Discipline is something that you've earned through doing all these things. Even if you did it when you were a teenager, you don't remember it. But, you know, as a 14 year old walks into a gym and falls in love with the gym and the people there, he had accountability. He had all the guys at the gym that were his friends.

Rachel:
Mhmm.

Coach Allan:
He got and then he got the values and the habits of going to the gym all the time. Had he started hanging out with the wrong kids that were out drinking and smoking, he would have dropped the gym in a minute. Mhmm. And then that would have been his peer group, and that would have been his path. And then he would be in his forties saying, hey, you know, I can't change. I can't figure this out. And someone else would be telling him, well, get some discipline. So that that was just what upset me is I I know I know where folks are coming from when they're struggling.

Rachel:
Mhmm.

Coach Allan:
And, you know, social media can be a harsh, harsh thing. So if someone is out there and you're struggling and you've said something and they're, like, just get some discipline, just don't listen to them. That they're not there to help you. They they think they've got everything figured out. And, you know, I'm happy they're healthy, but it's it's not gonna help you, to think that you're missing something or that something's wrong with you. Because

Rachel:
Oh, yeah.

Coach Allan:
You lack the the willpower and the discipline today to do what you need to do.

Rachel:
Well, it's just not one thing. There is no one magic bullet or one thing that is going to turn the page on anybody's health and fitness journey. I mean, it takes all these different things, and it takes a ton of practice. Discipline, accountability, being the CEO of your own body. I mean, these are things that just do not happen overnight. And and we're all after it. We all wanna get to the end quicker. But as soon as you can just get out the calendar and start putting some things down on paper or a journal or something, like, all of these different things will lead you on the right path towards the right outcome, but it's definitely not an overnight thing.

Coach Allan:
Yeah. And and I think that's the struggle is they they see successful people and think they got successful by doing what they just told you to do, and that's that's not how it works.

Rachel:
Everybody is so unique. We all have our, strengths, and we all have our weaknesses. And we just need to we all take different paths on how to achieve the same outcome, and and that's just being healthier and fitter.

Coach Allan:
Yeah. I'm glad that they're on these forums asking questions because they they're trying to get help. They're trying to surround themselves with people so they're they're at least in the right ballpark for what they need. I just wish there weren't so many people out there, you know, pooh pooh ing what they're trying to do. Right. Like like they're like they're broken. You know? You should just be able to do this. And, you know, too many times, yeah, people will sit there and say, well, okay.

Coach Allan:
I know I need to do this. I know I need to do that. I know and they start doing things, but they're not doing the things that matter, like setting this foundation first and then implementing the things that will get them where they wanna go. But, they just think, well, I know I got a diet, so I'm just gonna, you know, start eating salads every day. And, you know, not that that's a terrible thing, but you'll get 3 weeks into it, and you'll be so sick of salad that…

Rachel:
Oh my gosh. Yeah.

Coach Allan:
And then so you stop eating the salad. Or, you know, someone goes out and says, well, we're doing a lunch order over at the Italian place. Do you want something? You're looking at your pathetic little salad. You know? Like, I want something. And so, again, it's just too hard to do if you don't set these these foundational things in place. And that's why most people really, really struggle with this is they think there's something wrong with them when it's not. It's that's how we're wired and what we're gonna do until we take the time to really establish the structure. And then when we have the structure, it makes it easier and easier, and the longer we do it, the more it becomes a habit and a value.

Coach Allan:
And then, yes, now you're standing there thinking you've got the to do what you need to do. You can say no to dessert with no problem. Mhmm. Say no to pizza with no problem, and do what you do your thing. If if you have these things in place, it that it that gets easier and easier.

Rachel:
It does. It and that's just the point. It gets easier over time. And one of the things you had mentioned towards the end of your discussion was learning from your mistakes. I mean, come on. We all make mistakes. If we know that that's our weakness, if pizza's our weakness or ice cream's our weakness, you know, we can add that, friction and and kind of remove the the make the way that it gets so easy to access ice cream. If cookies are your thing, don't buy the cookies. But it's not that easy, you know? It just takes time to to figure that out.

Coach Allan:
Yeah. Well, you know, they they had these donuts, and and when I get off the elevator, and you could smell them, they just hit you. It's like, oh gosh. And then all the people are at the break room chumming like sharks, and I'm like, okay. They've got spud nuts here. I go straight to my office. Mhmm. I grab a bag of nuts, and then I go into the break room to pour my coffee.

Coach Allan:
And I sit there nibbling the nuts because what I know is that's gonna provide friction. It's gonna keep me away from those those wonderful, wonderful donuts. But at the same time, I also then had a rule. Okay? And the rule was if there were spud nuts in the break room, they wouldn't eat them all. Mhmm. So I so the rule for the rest of the day was I had to if I needed to use the bathroom or I I needed I wanted to refresh on my coffee, I couldn't do it on this floor. I had to go to a different floor. And so that meant I was walking out, walking down down the stairs.

Coach Allan:
I would stay away from our break room because our to go to the bathroom, I'd have to walk by the break room To get coffee, I'd have to go in the break room. So what I found was it's just better for me to walk in the opposite direction, go down the stairwell, and go on the next floor. I end up putting in more steps those days.

Rachel:
Absolutely.

Coach Allan:
And I get a lot more done because I'm, you know, I'm I'm taking my coffee break and my pee break at the same time. Mhmm. So but I get a lot more steps in was the thing. And, again, friction, just putting friction in there, which was Yeah. A learning thing that didn't just happen. That was a practice.

Rachel:
Yep. I love that. It just takes a minute to think of these different unique ways to avoid some of the things that, are weaknesses to us. I love it.

Coach Allan:
Yeah. Alright. Well, I'll talk to you next week. Great.

Rachel:
Take care, Allan.

Your Best Self Workshop – 40plusfitness.com/best.

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Introduction

On episode 656 of the 40+ Fitness Podcast, we welcome Gwendolyn Bounds and discuss her book, Not Too Late: The Power of Pushing Limits at Any Age.

Episode Notes

Pending

Music by Dave Gerhart

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Introduction

In process….

Episode Notes

Music by Dave Gerhart

Patreons

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

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Another episode you may enjoy

Introduction

On episode 654 of the 40+ Fitness Podcast, we discuss how to measure success in your health and fitness.

Episode Notes

• I’m a big fan of having data
• Things we shouldn’t measure:
  • Things we don’t have control over.
  • Comparing ourselves to others
  • Things that don’t matter
  • Measuring everything
  • Things that are more likely to disappoint us.
• Things we should measure:
  • Investment (time, effort, and money)
  • Things that make us more healthy and fit
  • Things we have control of (40 plusfitness.com/goals)
  • Where we are now versus where we were before we started
    • Not where we were in our 20s.
  • Wins, even the little ones
    • Wins are not only outcomes
    • Wins are successful efforts
• Gratitude

Music by Dave Gerhart

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Introduction

On episode 653 of the 40+ Fitness Podcast, we discuss strategies for losing those last 10-15 pounds (or losing weight whenever you feel stuck).

Episode Notes

1. Allan's Personal Experience and Lifestyle Changes

– Overworking, excessive exercise, and high stress levels

– Transition from intense cardio to strength training and morning walks

– Adjusting sleep patterns and finding a beneficial walking route

– Incorporating resistance training in the afternoon

2. Body's Natural Ranges and Weight Management

– Body's functions within set ranges for health

– Weight loss triggers the body's survival instincts

– Muscle mass's impact on calorie burning

3. Factors Affecting Body Function and Weight Loss

– Nutrition, movement, stress, and sleep as key factors

– Scarcity influencing fat conservation

– Stress levels hindering weight loss

4. Model Life Concept: Unconscious Habits and Influences

– Unconscious eating habits

– Incorrect workout intensity and data

– Impact of stress and changes in sleep

– Negative self-talk

5. Tips for Addressing Lifestyle Factors

– Journaling and logging lifestyle factors

– Balancing sleep, movement, and cortisol levels

– Learning new approaches to weight loss

– Seeking help and using data for decision-making

6. Importance of Data and Individualized Approaches

– Using data for health and wellness decisions

– Tailoring approaches based on circumstances and hormone levels

– Potential need for unconventional strategies

– Differences in weight loss strategies for men and women

7. Building a Positive Relationship with Oneself

– Impact of negative inner dialogue on progress

– Building self-love and motivation

8. Misconceptions and Lack of Awareness

– Misinformation about healthy eating

– Overestimation of healthy eating habits

– Lack of awareness about exercise efficiency, recovery, and stress impact

9. Quality of Sleep and Unknowing Aspects of Modern Lifestyle

– Importance of sleep quality

– Impact of negative inner dialogue on behavior

– Recognizing and addressing areas of unknowing in modern lifestyle

10. Summary

– Allan and Rachel's personal experiences

– Introduction to the main theme of breaking weight loss plateaus

– Discussion on the body's survival instinct and set point

Music by Dave Gerhart

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Introduction

On this episode, we discuss how to design your perfect mobility workout.

Episode Notes

Music by Dave Gerhart

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